"Johan Schmitt belongs in a bug-house," Colonel Philips declared. Quite a way to begin the meeting that was taking place in the bunker beneath the fortified town a few clicks away from where base-camp was out in the middle of the forest. The bunker where the intelligence analysts worked with the civilian contractors. "He thinks he's a god and he's willing to blow up half the world to prove it, starting with the USA."
"Schmitt's working with powers beyond our capabilities," Howard Stark added firmly as he took his seat, only slightly late to the meeting. Evangeline had been introduced to Stark because she needed the co-operation of the engineering genius they had on hand to get the materials to make Barnes' prosthetic. Or would, as soon as the plans were in hand. "He gets across the Atlantic? He'll wipe out the entire eastern seaboard in an hour."
There was a heavy silence that followed that pronouncement.
"How much time we got?" asked Gabe Jones, one of the Howling Commandos (he hated that name, but had been overruled). He was clearly of African heritage, but his accent placed him as an American, and his linguistic skills as a man who had definitely had the benefit of an expensive education.
"According to my new best friend, less than twenty-four hours," Colonel Philips relayed, less than pleased about the information, but glad to have it all the same.
"Where is he now?" queried one of the intelligence crew.
"Hydra's last base is here," Colonel Philips answered, and held up a photograph, finger laid over a specific point. "In the Alps. Five-hundred feet below the surface."
"So what are we supposed to do?" asked another of the Commandos. Asian face, American accent, minimal manners. In the flying introduction she'd had to all of the Howling Commandos when they converged on her to express their relief over Barnes' survival, he'd given his name as Jim Morita. "I mean, it's not like we can just knock on the front door."
"Why not?" Rogers asked.
"Because that's a level of suicide, Steve," Barnes immediately reprimanded, "and I've had enough brushes with death this week, thanks."
Rogers winced at the reminder.
"And Schmitt's 'powers' might be beyond your capabilities Stark," Barnes continued, "but unless I really was completely delirious at the time, then I don't think they're beyond Doctor Potter's."
"What could the pretty lady doctor do that a weapons engineer of my calibre couldn't?" Stark questioned, a clear sceptic with the amount of sarcasm in his voice.
"You'd be surprised," Barnes defended.
"That's very sweet of you to say so, Sergeant Barnes," Evangeline spoke up with a smile.
Heads whipped around, searching for her.
Evangeline bit her lip to keep the laughter in, and pulled off her invisibility cloak. She probably shouldn't have snuck in, but she'd gotten to have an uninterrupted hour with Zola, and her methods were much more effective than Colonel Philips'.
"Holy -!"
Men were biting off swears all around the room, in sweet deference to the presence of Agent Carter and Evangeline herself. Not all of them bothered with the politeness though. Colonel Philips swore long, loud, and colourfully.
"No need for any of that," Evangeline dismissed as she fought back a chuckle and neatly folded the heirloom cloak. "I grant that it's certainly a bit esoteric, but not holy. Not to my knowledge, anyway."
"Hell, you got any more of those?" Colonel Philips asked, more than just half-hopeful while at the same time completely, cynically realistic as to the probability. Also a good deal less concerned about being well-mannered because he was in mixed company.
"I'm sorry, but this is a family heirloom," Evangeline replied. "I also hope you weren't too terribly attached to Zola, as he is now little more than a drooling sack of flesh."
"Dammit!"
"Colonel, in my experience, suicidal devotion to the cause is a wonderful thing to have in your enemies," Evangeline stated as she conjured a chair next to Barnes, completely uncaring of all the bug-eyed stares she got for it. "It means that when you find someone in such an organisation that doesn't kill themselves, they're the ones to bleed dry of information and then bleed them dry of everything else. There is a difference between giving your life to a cause and dedicating your life to it."
"Just what are you getting at, Doctor Potter?" Colonel Philips demanded.
"People who give their lives for the cause die, Colonel. They fight and they die and they don't care that they die as long as the agenda is furthered," Evangeline declared. "People who dedicate their lives to the cause, however, these people live. They pretend to be harmless, they pretend to be helpless, they pretend they didn't like a lot of what they did, and they pretend to surrender. Then they offer information, and offer to put themselves to use for you. But you know what they're really doing? They're insinuating themselves, planting the seeds of the cause they have dedicated themselves to in new, fertile, ignorant soil, where they can quietly nurture their cause back from the brink of death."
"You killed Zola," Agent Carter realised. "A prisoner of war."
"No, I lobotomised him," Evangeline corrected, her tone as though she were speaking of having cut roses instead of brain matter. "I cut off the first two fingers of each hand, and I sliced his poisonous little tongue in half, and no, I didn't torture him. I'm a doctor. I did it properly, with more care than he had for anybody under his knife. As you can see, there's not so much as a spot of blood on me anywhere, and blood would certainly show up on a white blouse like this one."
Barnes, once he'd shaken off the reminder of his time on Zola's cutting table, snorted in amusement at Evangeline's black wit.
"You get what you wanted from him?" he asked. "I know you said you wanted some answers only he could give you."
"Yes," Evangeline declared proudly, chin raised. "Hydra has a couple of allies hiding in Russia, among other places, and the Russians have designs for a mechanical arm that I'm sure I'll be able to adapt. The plans aren't Zola's, so I'll have to find them first, but I have the recipe for the formula that he pumped into you. I also have the location of three more Hydra bases."
"What?!" went up the cry all around the room.
"Two are scientific research facilities, full of more brilliant and passionate psychopaths, sociopaths, and amoral, ambitious bastards like Zola and Schmitt. The other is a combined camp for weapons testing and prisoners, Jews and POWs alike, that they... haven't found a use for yet," Evangeline supplied with a good level of distaste. "Johan Schmitt's cousin, one Klaus Schmidt, is in charge of that one. Zola met him once. Liked him quite well. Nasty piece of work, really."
"You're going to tell us where those bases are," Colonel Philips ordered.
"I have already put the pins on the map," Evangeline waved off, setting aside her discomfort and the unhappy memories it all brought back. "Gentlemen, Agent Carter, hydras need to have a stump from which to grow new heads. The soldiers that you have been decimating up until this point are so many heads. Zola and Schmitt are the bodies from which more heads grow. Do you understand?"
"Yeah, we get it," Colonel Philips agreed, though he was still a bit unhappy about things, not least of which was being told how to handle his valuable prisoners by a civilian woman. "Might have been useful to pick his brains a bit more though. He belongs in a bug-house just as much as Schmitt, but he was useful."
"If you want me to, I can play his entire life, from his perspective, on a movie screen," Evangeline stated coolly. "But I will not stand for him to draw breath only to spew poisonous miasma into the ears of powerful fools. He's safer this way."
"...You're not wrong," Colonel Philips agreed reluctantly once he'd processed that the woman before him could apparently play the man's life on a movie screen. "Useful as he could have been, I don't want to leave a legacy of freedom only to have also left a legacy for Hydra to spring up from again. Alright Doc, you got any other fancy tricks that can help us out here?"
"Give me a wish-list," she instructed. "Be as outlandish as you like, I'll tell you if I can't do it."
"If everyone had a shield like mine," Rogers spoke up, "well, it seems to be the only thing that stops whatever it is they're firing at us."
Evangeline held out her hand imperiously, and when the shield was handed over, she narrowed her eyes at it.
"It's vibranium," Stark offered. "It's stronger than steel, and a third the weight. It's completely vibration absorbent, and that right there? That's all we've got of the stuff. It's the rarest metal on earth."
"Make a pile of the same in whatever you have handy," she instructed absently as she continued to examine the metal. "I'll make it a lot less rare for a little while."
"You can do that?" Howard asked, eyes wide and excited.
"The alchemical transfiguration will last for roughly... a month, though possibly up to a year, before it begins to deteriorate, depending on what you make them from initially," Evangeline answered as she handed Rogers his shield back. "But make the shield first, then transmutation. That way around will be much easier for me."
"Not sure we've got time for that," Agent Carter reminded them.
"I can personally travel up to twenty-four hours backward in time at a pop, and I can carry as many as five people with me at a time," Evangeline offered. "No more, and I can't skip forwards."
Stunned silence descended.
Then Howard was up out of his seat and moving.
"Stark!" Philips snapped. "Where are you going?"
"To set up a few extra forges. If Doctor Potter can take five of my people back twenty-four hours, then by the time this meeting is over, I'll have a bunch of people ready to be taken back to make shields for the men. They'll just need space to do it," he answered, and continued to jog out of the meeting room.
"And warning!" Evangeline called after him. "We don't want to cause a paradox!"
Howard Stark, civilian contractor, paused to turn and give her a mock-salute, a smirk dancing on his moustachioed face.
"Once we've got a squad of five men outfitted, we'll give them orders and send them off," Colonel Philips declared firmly. "And I'd like to send them off as soon as this meeting is finished, if that's possible."
"Should be," Evangeline agreed tentatively. "Would you like me to make them harder to spot as well?"
"I thought you only had one of those fancy bits of cloth that made you invisible," Colonel Philips countered.
Evangeline took a deep breath, drew her wand, focused on the spell, and tapped the top of Barnes' head lightly.
"I feel like I just got egged," he complained as he twitched his shoulders.
"You look like a ghost," countered Timothy "Dum Dum" Dugan, the largest member of the Howling Commandos bar Rogers. His handlebar moustache twitched as he grinned beneath his bowler hat. "I can see the chair right through you."
"And this bit of fun is something you can do for everyone?" asked James Montgomery 'Monty' Falsworth, the British member of Rogers' team, eagerly. "How long will it last?"
"I can do this for every single soldier in the company," Evangeline answered. "I'll be tired after, but I can do it, and it should last about five hours from casting, unless I specifically remove it."
"That's as good as invisible if the men move quietly and stick to the shadows," Agent Carter admired, her brown eyes wide.
"I don't suppose there's also some way you can drop them men at the base without us having to worry about transport?" Colonel Philips queried, a dash of sarcasm in his voice even as he was hoping for a positive response.
"Only if you want them queasy from the journey," Evangeline answered plainly. "Travel by supernatural means is... rough until you get used to it."
"How long will they be throwing up?" Colonel Philips asked. "What sort of experience will it be?"
"A hook behind your navel and you're spinning faster than laundry in a washing machine. If you give me exact co-ordinates for where you want each squad, down to the minute, then they will be there down to the minute," Evangeline stated. "I can send them off without having to go with them. I can even make sure they appear back here either on a timer or a coded word."
With a last decisive nod, Colonel Philips started giving orders.