Search for the Soul Gem

Chapter Sixty-Three

(Tony Stark's Point of View)

     Lucy's hand was in mine as we followed Peter and Rhodey back down the hallway. Her entire body was trembling.

     "You know it's me, don't you Tony?" she whispered to me. I looked over at her, conflicted. She looked like my Lucy and sounded like my Lucy, but was she really? I stopped where we were in the hallway and pulled her to a stop. The other continued around the corner, the footsteps disappearing off in the distance. I turned to face her, placing my hands on her upper arms and lowering myself down to look into her face. 

     "Tell me something. Something only Lucy would know," I ushered. She looked back at me and thought. 

     "My name is Lucinda Margarett Scaffer. I got my degrees at Columbia University. You plucked me out of the desert in Niger. Fury sent me to the Raft. While I was there, Kalahan tortured me with waterboarding. I still have nightmares about it," she said. I stared into her eyes for a moment longer. No one else could have known that; she almost hadn't told me. I nodded my head slightly and stood back up. 

     "Stark!" Rhodey called out from down the hallway. I took her hand in mine and pulled her after me. We turned the corner and Natasha stood there with Clint. Between them stood Lucy, or a copy of her. I couldn't believe my eyes. I thought I'd know as soon as I saw her but I didn't. The Lucy between Nat and Clint looked up at me and an expression of fear crossed her face. Her eyes darted around to everyone, unsure. The Lucy next to me squeezed my hand tighter and shifted closer to me. 

     "Who is that?" she muttered. No one said anything for a while. 

     "How do we tell them apart? Who's real?" Steve asked. 

     "I am!" Lucy piped up from next to me. The other Lucy looked around like she was unsure about everything. 

     "I think I'm real," she muttered.

     "Can we ask them questions?" Peter asked. 

     "Who are you named after?" I asked. 

     "My grandma," they both said. 

     "Where did we find you?" Natasha asked. 

     "Niger," they both said again. 

     "You talk in your sleep in what language?" I asked. 

     "French," they said again. 

     "Well, this isn't gonna work," Sam said. 

     "I told you, Loki can access personal memories," Thor said. 

     "Then what do we do?" T'Challa asked. 

     "We could threaten them," Okeye said. 

     "Absolutely not," Steve responded quickly. 

     "Then what do we do?" Bucky asked. 

     "I don't really know if this will help, but there are some weird heat signatures coming from the two Lucys," Shuri said in her Comm. 

     "What do you mean?" I asked. 

     "The Lucy that is standing next to you Mr. Stark is unnaturally warm, her temp is running about 100° F. The lucy by Natasha and Clint is unnaturally cold, she's running a low temp of 96° F," Shuri said. 

     "She's colder than normal," I said, motioning toward Lucy by Nat with my chin. All eyes spun to face her. She wrung her hands in front of her, her fingers trembling. She backed away slightly, her face contorting in utter fear. 

     "I've be-been in d-dark rooms for-for days," she stuttered. 

     "Bodies don't drop temperature like that," Natasha said, turning. Clint brought his bow up to aim at her chest. 

     "You know who is cold," Clint started. Thor appeared next to Clint with his hammer in his hands. He stepped forward and took her shirt in his fist. He hoisted her up and slammed her back against the wall. Her face was twisted in terror, her chest rising and falling rapidly. 

     "Loki," he growled, shaking her slightly, "show yourself, brother! Stop this madness!" he shouted, shaking her violently, her back and head slamming against the wall multiple times. 

     "I'm not Loki," she quivered, tears spilling from her eyes. I clenched my jaw, struggling to watch this. 

     "You know she's lying, right?" Lucy muttered. I looked down at her, her eyes pouring into mine. Before I could say anything, Thor drew my attention back. The Lucy he'd been holding suddenly disappeared. Thor spun around quickly, trying to find her. 

     "Loki!" he roared. 

     "Tony," Lucy piped up. I looked down at her, "I don't feel so good," she said. Her fingers quivered before she disappeared in front of me. 

     "Lucy? Lucy!" I called, turning to look for her. 

     "What the hell just happened?" Sam asked. 

     "The heat signatures disappeared," Shuri said. 

     "Yebo, where did they go?" T'Challa asked. 

     "Uh, I'm picking up similar signatures further into the base. Closer to the back of the mountain where the base juts out over the ravine," Shuri said. 

     "How the hell did he do that?" Steve asked as T'Challa led the group through the halls. 

     "He lived for confusion. Who knows if those two were even real and not figments," Thor said. I clenched my jaw hard. 

     "She looked pretty real," Rhodey said. 

     "She felt real," I muttered. 

     "Loki is skilled in the art of diseption. It is not shocking that she looked, sounded, and felt real. And if he has been in contacts with her physically, it is not shocking that he had access to her stored memories as well," Thor said. 

     "Then how will we tell when it's the real Lucy?" Bucky asked. 

      "We have to figure out something that Lucy can do or know that there is no possible way for Loki to gain access to. It cannot be a memory or something that she can remember. It has to be something that she knows but is unaware of her knowledge of," Thor explained. 

     "How exactly are we supposed to do that?" Sam asked. 

     "That I have not figured out yet," Thor sighed. T'Challa led us further into the base. The further we traveled into the base, the more soldiers and Chituri we encountered. It seemed that they grouped in higher numbers the further we got. We reached a corner and T'Challa stopped. 

     "Around this corner is the place Shuri is talking about," T'Challa muttered. 

     "J," I muttered. The small jet popped up from my shoulder and flew around the corner. The hologram appeared in front of me from my wrist and everyone crowded around me. The camera turned the corner and no one was guarding the door. 

     "No guards," Nat commented. 

     "That doesn't make sense," Steve said. 

     "Well, we will just have to be cautious," T'Challa said. The jet came back and locked on my shoulder. T'Challa stepped around the corner, the rest of us following. We made our way to the door. T'Challa hesitated before throwing the door open. The room was empty except for the two Lucys standing on opposite sides of the room. The room hung over the cliff with full windows covering the wall. 

     "Tony!" Lucy called out and ran over to me. I caught her in my arms, cautiously. 

     "Shuri?" I muttered. 

     "She's the warm one, Mr. Stark," she confirmed. I held her tighter and looked around the room carefully. Sitting on the table pushed against the far wall was the Stone. I'd almost completely forgotten about it until now. 

     "I know how we can tell them apart," I blurted out.