Steve Rogers weighed ninety pounds and wanted to fight a war. He stood on a stage in a bright field suit, shaking hands, selling war bonds to a crowd that laughed at his skinny arms. The Strategic Scientific Reserve had made him a mascot. He wanted the front. He was afraid the war would end before anyone let him near it. After the show, a doctor found him behind the curtain. The serum was ready. One dose. One frail man who might die on the table. Steve did not hesitate. He climbed into the machine before they finished asking. The pod sealed. Light poured through the seams. Steve's bones stretched. His chest broadened. Pain tore through every muscle at once, and he bit down and refused to scream. When the doctors opened the pod, a different man stepped out. Taller. Corded with muscle. Steady on his feet for the first time in his life. But the machine's power spike drew attention. A saboteur in the crowd fired a pistol, killed the lead scientist, and ran. The serum was gone. Steve was the last of it. That meant the SSR could no longer waste him on stages. It also meant enemies now knew what he was. They shipped him toward the front to prove himself. His unit walked into a French forest already burning. Shells had scattered the men. Steve found a soldier crouched in a shell crater, alone, sharpening a knife on his boot like the war was a chore. The soldier's uniform hung in strips. Old scars crossed his forearms. He looked up without alarm, sized Steve up, and went back to the blade. "You the one they built in a box?" the soldier said. "Word travels." "Steve Rogers." He offered a hand. The soldier ignored it. "Logan. Got cut off from my unit. Been walking since." He stood. He was shorter than Steve now but held himself like nothing on earth could move him. "You lost too?" "No. I'm going forward." Logan studied him a moment. Something eased in his face. "Been a while since I saw a friendly one," he admitted, and it seemed to cost him. "Fine. Forward." Machine-gun fire opened from the treeline. Steve shoved Logan flat as rounds chewed the crater rim. The enemy had them pinned. Steve grabbed a fallen shield from the mud, rose, and charged the gun nest alone. Bullets rang off the metal. Logan came up beside him, blades out, snarling. They took the nest in under a minute. When it was over, Logan wiped his knife and looked at the shield in Steve's grip. "That your choice," he said, "or theirs?" Steve looked at the dead men, then at the ground he'd won. "Mine. Starting now." He was on the front at last. But a whole enemy line stood between them and their scattered units, and Logan was the only man beside him.

Steve and Logan cut through the enemy line for a week. Word spread. Scattered soldiers found them and stayed. By the end they were a squad, hard men who took the fights nobody else would. They called themselves the Howling Commandos. A young rifleman with a steady hand fought at Steve's shoulder in every raid. Steve trusted him more than anyone but Logan. They learned the enemy's leader had a name. The men called him Baron Zemo. He ran a fortress full of weapons that should not exist. Steve chose to hit it. The raid went wrong at the gate. A shape dropped from the wall and landed among them. It wore a shredded American uniform. Its teeth were long and yellow. Its nails were claws. Logan went still. "I know him," he said. "Creed." Victor Creed grinned at the blood on his own hands. He moved like Logan moved, fast and impossible to kill. He tore into the squad. Steve caught two claw strikes on the shield and could not stop him. Logan met him blade to nail. They rolled through the dirt, two animals who had done this before. "Go!" Logan shouted. "He's mine. Get inside." Steve ran for the fortress with his squad behind him. He found the Baron Zemo in a stone hall lined with machines. HeHe reached for a lever that would flood the room with fire. Steve threw the shield. It struck the Zemo’s arm and knocked him back. Then Steve was on him. He hit him twice and drove him to the floor. Zemo clawed for a hidden pistol. The young rifleman shot it from his hand. Together they wrestled the Skull into an iron cell built for his own prisoners. Steve slammed the door. The bolt dropped. The Baron Zemo screamed behind steel and could not reach the machines. "Sir," the rifleman said. "His fire switch." A timer had started when the Zemo grabbed the lever. Red numbers fell. The whole hall would burn. The heavy door out had begun to seal. The rifleman shoved Steve toward the closing gap. "You get out. I'll jam it open." "No." Steve grabbed his arm. "You're the only one of you there is." The young man pulled free and jammed his rifle into the door track. The gears ground on the steel. The gap held. Steve dove through. He turned back. The rifleman braced the door with both hands, holding it for him, not himself. The hall went white. The blast threw Steve into the dirt. When the smoke cleared, the fortress had a hole where the hall had been. The young man was gone. Logan limped out of the ruins, alone. Creed had fled. Steve knelt in the ash and could not speak. Baron Zemo was locked away. The squad had its win. Steve had led the raid. He had also led one of his own men to die for it. That was the cost of the front he had wanted.

After Zemo's fortress fell, Steve learned the enemy had a master above the Baron. Prisoners named him: the Red Skull. He had built a plane to carry a bomb across the ocean. Steve tracked him to a snowbound airfield. Logan came with him. So did the memory of the rifleman who had died holding a door. The Red Skull met them on the runway. His face was a red skull, bare bone and burning eyes above a black coat. He did not run. "You are the weak one they made strong," he said, calm as a man reading a report. "It does not matter. The strong take what they want." A snarl cut the air. Victor Creed dropped from the plane's ramp, teeth long, claws out. His torn Army uniform hung off him. "You," Logan said. Creed grinned at the men who had once worn his colors. He lunged at Logan, and the two beasts crashed into the snow, rolling, tearing. "Get the Skull!" Logan shouted. "Go!" Steve ran up the ramp. The plane's engines screamed. It lurched forward and lifted off the ice. Steve slammed the shield into the hull door and forced it shut behind him. He was inside now. There was no way off. The Red Skull turned from the controls. Steve threw the shield. It struck the Skull's chest and knocked him from the pilot seat. Steve was on him fast. He hit him twice. The Skull clawed at his throat and drove him back into a bank of instruments. They fought down the length of the cabin. Steve caught a fist meant to crush his windpipe. He drove the Red Skull against the bomb rack and pinned him there. "Kill me," the Skull said. "Another will take my place. I am the future." Steve looked past him. The bomb was armed. The plane pointed at open water and beyond it, home. He grabbed the controls and hauled them down. The nose dropped toward the white sea below. The Red Skull lunged one last time. Steve met him with the shield's edge and put him down hard. The Skull did not rise. The ice came up fast. Steve held the yoke and steered the plane away from the shipping lanes, toward the empty arctic. He thought of Logan in the snow. He thought of the front he had wanted so badly. The plane hit the ice at full speed. Metal tore. The hull split and the cold ocean poured in. Steve was thrown against the wall. Water climbed his chest, then his neck. It was colder than anything he had known. He did not fight it. The bomb was gone. The Skull was down. He had reached the war and ended this part of it. The water closed over him. It froze around his body and held him still. The plane sank into the dark, carrying Captain America down with it, sealed in ice where no one would find him.