Daniel watched for a minute, then left Steve's simulated room.
He wasn't a creep; he had zero interest in staring at a sleeping American hero's backside forever.
The real surveillance was handled by the night-shift grunts anyway. Daniel just had to stay on call.
He found a quiet corner, pulled out a battered Spider-Man comic, and went into idle mode.
"Poor Goblin… getting his teeth kicked in by the friendly neighborhood menace again."
The next morning.
The alert came: Rogers was waking up. Daniel teleported straight to the observation wing.
He arrived just in time to hear chaos inside.
Steve had opened his eyes thirty seconds ago and immediately saw through the fake 1940s street outside his window; the kind of realization that took Truman thirty years, Steve managed in thirty seconds.
When the nervous agents tried to calm him down with their scripted lines, the freshly thawed super-soldier put all three of them on the floor in under five seconds.
Then he sprinted for the exit like the building was on fire.
He was fast; ridiculously fast for a guy who'd been a Capsicle until yesterday.
"Move!" Steve growled, spotting Daniel blocking the doorway.
Daniel smiled pleasantly. "Sorry, road's closed."
Steve lowered his shoulder to bulldoze past; Daniel yelled, "Watch the punch!" and immediately threw a front kick instead.
Steve's eyes flashed with outrage at the blatant lie, but muscle memory took over; he crossed his forearms to block.
BOOM.
The impact echoed like a gunshot. Steve's heels skidded backward across the tiles, arms trembling from a force he hadn't felt since the Red Skull on steroids.
He stared at Daniel in disbelief. One casual kick, and he'd almost lost his balance.
Another super-soldier?
Steve didn't hesitate. He exploded forward with a textbook combination; every punch and kick honed by decades of war and training.
Daniel slipped them all like he could read the future, because he literally could.
"Muay Thai, incoming!"
He whipped a vicious elbow straight into Steve's chest. (He'd aimed for the jaw, but those pecs were honestly distracting.)
"Guuh!"
Steve flew back three meters, crashed into a fake lamppost, and clutched his sternum with a wounded expression.
Daniel spread his hands. "Give up yet, Captain?"
Steve?"
Steve gritted his teeth, fists clenched. "I can do this all day, Hydra scum."
Daniel blinked. "…Come again?"
In Steve's mind, he'd just gone down over the Arctic right after crushing Hydra's European branch. Waking up to fake nostalgia and black-clad goons? Obviously a Hydra prison. Ergo, Daniel = Hydra.
He wasn't… completely wrong.
Before Daniel could explain, the corridor filled with the clatter of boots. Dozens of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents poured in, weapons raised, sealing every exit.
Steve's shoulders sagged. Captured. No shield. Surrounded. Great.
A deep voice cut through the tension.
"Stand down. He's not the enemy."
The agents parted like the Red Sea. Nick Fury strode in, black trench coat flapping, eye patch gleaming under the fluorescents.
Steve narrowed his eyes. The man looked exactly like the kind of final boss Hydra would put in charge of a secret base.
"I'm Nick Fury, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.," Fury said calmly. "You've been asleep for almost seventy years, soldier. This isn't a Hydra facility. I promise."
Steve's jaw worked silently.
Fury dismissed everyone except Daniel, then spent the next twenty minutes laying out the truth: the war's end, S.H.I.E.L.D.'s founding by Peggy Carter and Howard Stark, the modern world waiting outside.
When words weren't enough, Fury personally escorted Steve out of the hidden New York base and into Times Square.
The flashing billboards, flying cars, and smartphones finally did what no speech could.
Steve stood in the middle of the sidewalk, staring up at a world that had moved on without him, looking suddenly very small despite the muscles.
Daniel clapped a gentle hand on his shoulder. "Rough, huh? Waking up seventy years later and discovering your new management is… a little darker than you remember."
Nick Fury slowly turned his head.
Daniel offered an innocent smile.
Fury's single eye promised a long conversation later.