I stand in the doorway, looking at the big, glass cage in the center of the room. In it, leaning against the wall, Loki.
"I'm surprised your ego fits in that cage."
"The cage was built for something bigger than my ego." Loki says, turning my way, with a menacing grin. I'm here, talking to the one person they told me not to. Oh boy, they're not gonna be happy if they find out.
"Do you know what people you're surrounded with, child?" He asks. I step a little closer.
"Better than you do." I say, crossing my arms.
He laughs quietly.
"Plus, I don't like being called a child. Please, call me Andie."
"Assassins, monsters, liars, traitors. No place for children." He says, completely ignoring what I just said.
"What are you doing here?" He asks, squinting his eyes.
"I've been asked that many, many times. I still don't know. But I like it here." I say, shrugging my shoulders.
"I don't mean here with you, 'cause you're a very pessimistic person."
"Not pessimistic, realistic. You're blinded by false promises." He says standing so close to the glass I'm pretty sure he's gonna hit his head.
"Yeah I may look very smart and all, but I do not understand what you mean by that." I shrug again.
"What are you doing here? 'Cause I'm sure they told you not to talk to me." He says, crossing his arms.
"Well, I'm here to annoy the evil out of you."
"Ouch, I'm not evil. I'm what this puny planet needs." He says, acting as if he's hurt.
"Well, I'm not saying that's completely untrue," I say, walking closer towards the cage. I don't get far.
"Brooke!" A voice behind me calls.
Uh oh ...
"Hey director! Nice to see you. How are you do-"
"Come with me." He says, with unpleasant long pauses between the words. He walks back out of the room.
I follow him, partly scared, partly annoyed, because he sees everything, even with one eye. Possibly because there are cameras everywhere.
As we leave the cage room and walk a few moments, he starts talking.
"I'm very close to throwing you out of the plane."
I frown my eyebrows.
"That's not something you would say."
He halts and turns.
"I just did."
He continues walking towards the bridge, where I notice Coulson and Thor talking.
We walk past some agents before Fury stops again and points at an empty seet, next to agent Sitwell.
He's got to be joking.
"You're gonna sit down here, and watch whatever boring stuff agent Sitwell is doing."
Sitwell looks at the director, looking a little nervous and hurt at the same time.
"I don't like Sitwell," I whisper, quietly enough for only Fury to hear.
"And I don't care," he responds, while raising his eyebrows and waving at the chair.
"Is this your way of grounding me?"
"We're not even on the ground," Fury says, before turning and walking away.
"Pf. What a stupid, stupid joke."
I look to the people around me. Sitwells doing some boring stuff with graphs. I spin and look behind me. There's Thor walking towards the window. He had just been talking to Fury. The director leaves the room. There are some agents talking to each other. Maria is checking in with agent Byrne. That man's playing Galaga ... again. Dude's got nothing else to do.
I turn back to agent Sitwell.
"Whatcha doing?" I ask, leaning my chin on my hand.
"Uh, I'm just checking some of the helicarrier stats."
"What does that mean?" I say, pointing at a flashing circle.
He starts a whole explanation of what the stupid circle means. I don't really listen, because who cares. I do notice Thor walking the same way Fury just did.
Should I follow them? Or should I just stay here, as they told me?
I ask myself that question when I'm already in the hallway. There are so many doors, yet there's only one room where there's the sound of people arguing. I walk closer and look inside the room through the window.
Thor and Bruce are fighting, Nat's talking to Fury and Tony's yelling at Steve. What a team.
The door slides open and Nat and Fury look my way. Nat roles her eyes as in 'get me the hell out of here' and Fury does the same as in 'this kid really is a pain in my ass'.
"Always a way out. You may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero." Steve says. He's standing close to Tony, but he doesn't seem to feel threatened.
"A hero? Like you? You're a labratory experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle," Tony retorts.
I look to my left and see the slight surprise on Natasha's face.
"Put on the suit. Let's go a few rounds," Steve says, and Thor starts laughing.
While they keep discussing, Nat leans to my ear.
"I'm so tired of them already," she sighs. I scoff when Fury addresses Natasha.
"Would you escort Dr. Banner to his..."
"Where? You rented my room!" Bruce snaps. Everyone looks at Bruce now.
Fury moves his hands in a calming gesture. "The cell was just-"
"In case you needed to kill me! But you can't, I know, I tried!" It feels like his words echo back to reach our brains properly. My bottom lip trembles. I've always found this heartbreaking, but to hear him say this while looking me straight in the face, is something different.
"I didn't see an end so I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spit it right out. So I moved on. I focused on helping people. It went good until you dragged me into this freak show and put everyone here at risk," he speaks directly to Natasha now. "So you wanna know my secret agent Romanoff? You wanna know how I stay calm?"
There's a shift in the room as Bruce's hand grip around the scepter. Natasha takes a small step forward so she's standing between me and Bruce. She and Fury both reach for their guns.
"Doctor Banner, put down the scepter." Fury says softly. Bruce looks surprised that he's holding the scepter while the monitor behind us beeps, making me jump a bit. The beep means that the Tesseract's been found. Bruce puts the scepter down and walks past us towards the monitor.
"Sorry kids, you don't get to see my party trick after all," he sighs.
And suddenly it hits me. This place's about to blow. While Steve and Tony start fighting again, I tap Natasha repeatedly on the shoulder.
"Uh ... Nat."
She turns and looks worried seeing the expression on my face.
"What's wrong?" She asks, putting a hand on my shoulder.
"We should get out of this room!" I exclaim.
But it's too late. The first explosion makes the room tremble, and there's no time for us to leave.
The second explosion sends all of us flying. I can't hear anything anymore, except the loud ringing in my ears. I can only see and taste the smoke around me. My arms and legs are completely controlled by the force of the explosion. I can't use them to break my fall, and I hit my head against a table. Hard.