Angie didn't know what time it was when she'd dragged Henry from the woods and into the safety of their American camp. As soon as they'd stepped foot within fifty yards of the place, one of the soldiers on patrol duty caught sight of them (more specifically, their American badges) and immediately yelled for help. In less than a minute, Henry was being lifted from her shoulder, carried away to a nearby medical station, while they took Evangeline in the opposite direction. Though she told the soldiers she was fine and that Henry was in more need of assistance than she was, her words didn't stop them from carrying her to a tent far away from the medical station and bringing her through the tent's flap.

"Mr.Stark, you need to see this."

The tones of their voices were low and they gently set her down on a cot in the corner of the room. She knew what they wanted and why they were freaking out; it didn't take a rocket scientist. Steve's coat did a good job of of hiding any markings on her arms and upper area of her legs, but her hands, neck, and everything below her knees was still exposed, showing the glowing red veins that now spider-webbed across her body. And her hand had grown back.

Evangeline hadn't met Howard Stark, though she'd nearly seen him before leaving New York at the World Exposition of Tomorrow, where he'd been debuting his latest inventions. In all honesty, he wasn't quite as amazing as she'd been led to believe. The man was kind of short, dressed as any other working man in the military, with a little black mustache the same color of his hair. He was much younger than she thought he'd be, too, probably only a few years older than herself. She had to admit, that part was pretty impressive, to achieve so many  amazing things at such a young age. But other than the fact that he wasn't nearly as old as other inventors and scientists with his skill, that was where his impressiveness ended.

"Holy moley," The man muttered under his breath, eye bulging at the sight of the luminescent veins, and reached for her hand before pausing for a moment. "May I?" She nodded, noting how polite he was compared to the last person who wanted to examine her body, and allowed him to push her sleeve up a little farther, exposing more of her forearm. "What the hell did they do to you?" 

"It blows up."

The soldiers who had escorted her to the tent immediately raised their rifles at her and Howard took a weary step back.

"No, I can explain," She began after realizing just how scary that last sentence was when you were in the middle of a battlefield. "I can control it. The gooey stuff that comes out of my fingers is made of explosive chemicals mixed in with my blood. Its like gun powder; the only way it'll go boom is if something ignites it, or hits it really hard. I'm not a threat, I swear, you just need to be careful when handling it, like any other explosive." The tenseness in their shoulders began to subside at the sound of that, but their eyes still appeared alert as ever.

"Go get Colonel Phillips," Howard told them as he walked over to his desk, grabbed a small glass vile and cork stopper, before returning to Evangeline's side. The soldiers nodded and did as they were told, leaving the tent without another word. The scientist, who was much nicer than the Hydra bastards she'd had to deal with, gave her a small smile and knelt down in front of the sitting woman, becoming eye-level with her. "Would you mind showing me how it works, sweetheart?"

"By putting some in there?" She nodded to the glass vile.

"If you're comfortable with that."

"Yes, I'm fine with that, I just can't put too much in there," Angie told him truthfully, took the little clear container and poked the inside of it with her index finger. The glowing orange and red dot she left behind was smaller than a dime, though she still wondered if it was too much. Howard saw the small amount and raised an eyebrow. "I covered a small piece of shrapnel in the stuff and ended up making a crater bigger than a tank. Trust me, that's plenty." The scientist nodded in understanding.

"Thank you, sweetheart," He took the vile from her hand and put the cork stopper in the top. "Is there any other information you have that could be helpful? Anything the scientists said or did that could help us figure this out?" She chuckled, layed back on the cot, and looked up at the tent's ceiling as if she were in the middle of therapy.

"Pull up a chair and get out a pen and notepad, because this is going to take a while."

**********

The fact that Buck and Steve managed to get out of the destructive base was an absolute miracle, even more so when they took into account all the other American prisoners Steve had managed to save before Azzano went ka-boom. As the one-oh-seventh and Captain America began their long trek through the woods, back to their own territory, Steve caught sight of a fire burning off in the distance, like an angry star had fallen from the night sky and set the ground ablaze.

At first, he didn't think much of it. The night had been full of fire and burning and inferno; it didn't shock him too much to see one ignited on the side of the road. But as the group of recently-escaped POWs grew closer to the burning object, Steve felt his stomach roll and his heart fall to his shoes. It was a truck.

"Oh no..." He muttered under his breath and began to sprint for the damaged vehicle.

"What? What's wrong?" Bucky called back behind him and chased after his friend. "It's a truck, what's the big deal? There was loads of them back at Azzano. Maybe the Germans were trying to get away and crashed."

Steve wasn't paying attention to him, he was too scared for what he didn't want to see. 

Please don't be inside. Please don't be inside. Please don't be inside.

"Woah, buddy, stop!" Bucky managed to snag Steve's wrist before he could fall into the abyss in the middle of the road, still steaming from what must have been an explosion before. Steve hadn't even noticed it, he was so focused on the burning truck in the ditch. "What the hell happened here?" When the two finally looked up from the smoldering pit smack-dab in the middle of the road, their eyes found the burnt trees along what remained of the gravel path, completely leveled in a perfect circle.

Now beyond worried, Steve sprinted around the pit and made his way to what remained of the burning truck. He would've searched the back, but there was no more back of the vehicle; it had completely flown off. The only thing even slightly intact was the front of the truck where the driver must have been sitting. 

"Holy shit," Buck gasped.

There on the ground was the crispiest corpse any of them had ever seen. It was laying on its side, so only half of the body had been exposed to the flames, leaving the other half somewhat together. Though most of the clothes on it were gone, Steve saw one thing on the shoulder of the dead body that sent a bolt of fear up his spine and had him start running at full speed towards the base camp.

An American badge.

That was Angie's truck.