"Fascinating," Howard murmured, turning over the phone and inspecting the casing.

"So, believe us now? Or getting closer to?" Alissa raised an eyebrow at him, making no move to take her phone back yet.

"We'll see," Howard said. "For all I know, this could be a useless bit of flash. I need to study it more before I decide."

Alissa snorted. "Right, fine, do what you have to." She found a spot in the lab to settle and wait. She was still doing a bit of adjusting herself, after all.

Taylor made her way over to Alissa and just stayed close.

"The machine over there is weird," she murmured. "I can't figure out what it's supposed to be doing. It looks kind of like an early precursor to a computer. I know it's seventy years behind what we're used to, but it should still be doing something recognizable, right?"

"You'd think so," Alissa murmured in agreement, frowning a bit and glancing around. "Then again, this is Stark, who knows what he's doing."

"True," Taylor replied, nodding. She paused for a second. "Though I remember reading somewhere that he was doing work with some new kind of energy."

"Yeah, I remember that too. It wasn't Arc reactor yet, it was something else." Alissa frowned, looking around and trying to figure out what it was the crazy scientist was working on.

"Yeah, I don't remember what it was called," Taylor mused, making sure to stay out of the crazy genius's way.

"T-something," Alissa muttered. "I remember that much, I think."

"I don't remember what it was called," Taylor said, frowning a bit. "Damn, this is going to bother me now."

"It'll come to us later, when we're not thinking about it," Alissa said with a disgusted snort, because that's always how it worked.

"Probably," Taylor agreed. She settled onto her seat a bit more, just watching the goings-on in the lab.

The girls had several more minutes of quiet before Howard came back. Apparently he believed them, enough to ask a few questions.

"So, Barnes mentioned that you said you work at Stark Industries," he said, looking at them both, a not quite manic gleam in his eyes. "Does that mean you work for me?"

"If by you you mean your legacy, then yeah, we'll go with that," Taylor replied carefully. She wasn't about to tell him about the infamous Tony Stark, not yet.

"And Stark Industries is a big company?" Howard pressed, clearly ready to just take in all the details.

"Enormous," Taylor replied. "The very top of the technology sector. Last I heard, there were talks of branching out, but that was a while ago. I'm just a trouble-shooter for some of the mass-market tech-toys, I don't hear much from the top."

Howard looked interested at that. "Oh really? Branching out? How much does the company branch out already? How many buildings are there?"

Taylor blinked.

"A lot?" she ventured. It wasn't like she had a fact sheet in front of her or anything.

Howard gave her a bit of a look. "Technology, you mentioned technology, that's good, I know I'd work in that. What else does my company make?"

"A lot of things," Taylor said cautiously. "I think one guy was dabbling in appliances at one point." That was as close as she could come to mentioning the infamous toaster incident everyone had heard about.

Howard eyed her, debating how much more information he could pry out of her. "Alright. What else can you tell me? You both work there, you should know about the company you work for."

"I told you, I work in IT," Taylor replied. "Troubleshooting for fun little gadgety things. That's literally a drop in the metaphorical bucket, here."

Howard looked really kind of gleeful at that. He barely noticed when Steve and Bucky came in to get the girls and give them more coffee, but he did notice the way Alissa looked at Bucky for a moment, like she was still so confused by him. But that wasn't normal, and the gears started turning in Howard's mind, because there was something more behind that look, and he needed to know. He considered Steve a friend, and Bucky wasn't bad himself, and if something was going to happen to them...

Well, he just happened to have two ladies from the future there to give him advance warning.

"Afternoon," Steve greeted, nodding to the girls with a little smile.

"Hi," Taylor replied, taking the coffee gratefully. She wrapped her hands around it, just feeling the warmth. "Thanks." She glanced at him, and looked down again. It was still kind of hard to believe it was actually him.

Bucky handed the second coffee to Alissa.

"Here," he said. "Not half bad, even."