All it took was a few more seconds of observing to realize what Hydra was doing. A group of scientists had gathered around the hole of bubbling lava and the American duo watched as they slid slender metal cylinders into the menacing liquid. A moment later, the individuals retracted the cylinders and placed the objects into the back of a truck sporting the familiar skull and tentacles of Hydra's logo.

"That must be where they're getting their super-human juice," Howard whispered beside her. Not that he needed to; Angie had strung that info together by herself and it pissed her off to think that he assumed she hadn't put two and two together already. Or maybe it was just because she found him revolting now that every little thing he did made her want to push him off the roof. "The bacteria in your system that gave you your powers must originate from this area of Europe. We need to stop them."

Ah, the bacteria. That had been Stark's biggest breakthrough on how her new body functioned. It had been one of his favorite topics to talk about around the dinner table back at his lab. How could she have been so blind when it came to his conquest for advancing himself? To his lust for knowledge and being one step ahead of anyone who even neared his level of intelligence? From a certain angle, Howard was no better than the Hydra scientists themselves.

"I know, dip-shit," She growled at him under her breath. He recoiled at her tone and took a few satisfying steps back. She could see the fire in her eyes reflecting in his own. "The question is how we're going to do that." The woman began to subconsciously pace back and forth across the roof, folding her arms over her chest and lifting a hand to her chin. 

If this had been a normal mission like she'd expected, Angie could've just barreled straight through the entire base. Each bullet that hit her would've been returned with an ever harder hit to the Hydra soldier unfortunate enough to stand in her way. She'd been looking forward to experimenting a bit as well to see if bigger weapons had the same effects as bullets, only much more powerful. If taking the hit from a grenade didn't kill her, would she be able to return the blast over to the opposing team? It was a question she truly wanted to explore, but not if it meant putting the mission at risk.

What were they going to do?

"We could sneak in and sabotage their machine?" Howard suggested from a safe distance away. Angie just shook her head.

"We can't just sabotage it," the woman began. "We need to completely destroy this place. No survivors. Nothing left behind. We've never encountered something like this before, so we need to make sure we never have to encounter it again." Howard nodded in understanding.

"I see your point. None of the other Hydra camps had tech like this. If we nip this at the bud, get rid of all their plans and blueprints or whatever else they've got that could be replicated, we could stop the source of their super-human experiments right now."

"We need to blow this place up," Evangeline began and her eyes glanced back at the scene below, where Hydra soldiers were continuing their duties around the burning pit of death. She scanned the ground til her gaze caught something that peeked her interest even more: a possible way to stop the flow of bacteria throughout the lava below. "Or just get rid of it in general. Not just this facility. We need to destroy the source as well. All of it." Howard's eyes widened a bit as he repeated her words in his mind. Then he chuckled.

"You want to destroy the lava?" Hearing him say it like he was addressing September after she'd asked a less than intelligent question made Angie ball her hands into fists at her sides. Using her last sense of restraint, she grabbed Howard by the ear and dragged him to the edge of the roof. He gasped and spluttered in sudden fear but she didn't toss him off, Angie instead directed his head to turn towards a spot where multiple Hydra soldiers were standing along the opposite end of the camp. Resting just behind their look-out towers was one of the beautiful mountains northern Europe was famous for, covered in millions upon millions of pounds of snow.

"You know my condition better than I do," She snarled. "What was the only thing that could slow me down?" It was her turn to treat him like a child and as the cogs in Howard's mind began to move, he caught on to what she was thinking.

"The cold."

"So what do you think is going to even slightly get rid of our problem here?"

"An avalanche."

"Good work," She let him go and he stumbled backwards, away from the edge of the rooftop. "This is what we're going to do: We're going to put a big enough crater in the ground to expose the majority of the lava in a ten-mile radius, which means blowing this place to high Hell. Next, we cause an avalanche that'll destroy the uppermost layers of bacteria once the snow buries every last trace of this camp."

"When you say it like that, it sounds so simple," The man chuckled once again, this time with a little more humility as he gingerly dabbed his fingers at his blistering earlobe, then sighed. "We're going to need another plane, aren't we?"

"Already thinking ahead to our escape," For the first time that night, Angie smiled. "About damn time you became useful during this trip."

***

Once Evangeline and Howard had left camp and taken to the air, the tone was switched over to something a bit more tolerable than discomfort: anxiety.

It was an emotion everyone felt before a mission, though each soldier expressed it in their own individual ways. Some smoked, using the tobacco and nicotine to take the edge off their nerves while others did push-ups on the damp dirt, jumping-jacks or lunges in hopes of getting their endorphins moving ahead of the crowd. 

Neither Bucky nor Steve took part in those activities.

It wasn't long before day turned to night and night turned to morning. The time to embark on their own quest approached, but as the early hours of dawn continued on, there had been no sign of Evangeline or Howard. It wasn't a topic either men wanted to discuss, especially since yesterday's revelations left a deep chasm between Steve and Bucky's trust. 

With tensions high and the need to keep their attention on the task at hand rising, the captain and the sergeant loaded their weapons and gathered around with their men to brief everyone on the plan they'd use to take down the last Hydra base.

"This mission is going to be a bit trickier than the norm," Buck began as he and the rest of the men gathered around a map on the ground. Marked with a little red 'x' towards the center of the map along triangular shapes depicting mountains was their temporary destination. "Fifteen miles from here is a railway that leads into the mountains and what we assume is the secret location to Hydra's last facility. Once we've reached the railway, an informant of ours will radio to us when the Hydra train is closing in on our view point."

"If our informants are correct," Steve started as he stood beside Buck. "Doctor Arnim Zola-" Bucky's shoulders clenched slightly at the name. "-will be on board. He's going to be our ticket into the base."

"Our mission is to sneak onto and hijack the train. Once that happens, we'll get to the base and take out Schmidt. The colonel wants him alive but if things go wrong," Bucky put air quotes around the word 'wrong', showing just how much he didn't want to follow orders on that topic. "We beat that sucker's ass and drag him to the pits of Hell where he belongs!" The men all cheered in agreement before grabbing the last of their supplies and heading for the trucks that would carry them the first ten miles towards their destination.

The shouts had barely died down before Steve suddenly felt his stomach drop and he took a quick breath. Something was wrong. Something was terribly, horribly wrong and the super-soldier could sense it before anyone else even heard the sonic BOOM that shook the camp to its core. The ground quivered beneath his feet, as if a giant creature from beneath was trying to dig itself out, and the captain fell to the ground.

Bucky was at his side before Steve's knees even touched the dirt. 

"You alright?" He asked his friend, both men putting their grudges aside as a gust of wind swept through the encampment and the ground quaked once more. Bucky grabbed Steve by the arm and hauled him to his feet. The soldiers around camp all exchanged shocked expressions, but that was the most they could do with the information they had. "What the hell was that?"

"I have no idea," Steve said honestly, but only a few minutes had passed before the answer came sprinting into the view, eyes wide with terror and exhaustion. He didn't look very old, probably in his mid-teens at the most, and was smeared with mud and dirty globs of melting snow. The young man had only one boot and his bare foot was caked in dirt and blood, his cheeks were red and his short hair stuck to his face from sweat. From the uniform he wore, they could tell he was one of their scouts.

"It's gone! It's gone!"

"What the hell is going on out here?" Colonel Phillips yelled as he exited his tent. A crowd of soldiers had gathered around the kid, some carrying medical supplies while others brought him blankets and a hot bowl of soup.

"What's gone?" Bucky questioned when the medics made the boy sit down on a wooden chair someone had snagged from a nearby tent, though Steve already knew the answer. If Evangeline's mission had been as easy as she'd made it out to be, she would've been here by now. She and Howard would've been back before anyone even woke up. 

"It's gone!" The boy shrieked again and this time everyone saw the blood dripping from his ears. He was deaf and in hysterics. "It's gone! The base! The mountain! Sucked into the ground! The mountain's gone! "

Bucky and Steve turned to each other, eyes just as wide as the scout's and they looked over to the colonel, still holding his morning cup of coffee. The old man blinked, seemingly unfazed by this turn of events, and took a sip.

"Since when have you ever followed my orders, you idiots? Go get her already."

"The train'll be stopped anyway," Bucky attempted to explain as he and his best friend sprinted for the nearest empty truck and climbed inside. "If a mountain is missing, Hydra would be stupid to keep it running when everyone is on high alert. They'll be on lock-down at the very least." But Steve wasn't listening. He climbed into the passenger's side of the vehicle and buckled his seat-belt over his torso.

"Let's just get moving, we don't know how much time Angie has left."