CHAPTER FIVE
He's Adopted
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HELLICARRIER
"In case it's unclear..."
Director Fury stood in front of the large, glass cell Loki had been sealed into after Steve, Tony and Thor realised fighting each other would prove useless and time wasting. Thor agreed to hand over Loki, tagging along to keep an eye on his brother, and to better understand the crisis the group were trying to solve. Nick walked along the catwalk that connected to the glass cell, up to the control panel. Loki had eyes eyes on him, closely observing the Director. He then stepped back into the middle of the caged glass, listening as Nick continued.
"You try to escape, you so much as scratch that glass." Nick pressed a button which opened up a hatch underneath Loki's cell. Loki peered as much as he could down the side of the glass cell. Without seeing much, the sounds of gusting wind gave him the image he needed.
"Thirty thousand feet, straight down in a steel trap!" Nick said. "You get how that works?" He closed the hatch and pointed at Loki. "Ant." He then pointed at the button which can drop Loki. "Boot."
Loki let out an amused chuckle. "It's an impressive cage. Not built, I think, for me." He said, walking backwards.
"Built for something a lot stronger than you." Nick remarked.
"Oh, I've heard." Loki smirked, glancing up at the camera in his cell, knowing that his enemies would be watching. And they were watching, sitting at a briefing table and listening to the conversation between the two men below them. Ana sat next to Natasha, both of them watching their shared monitor intently. They were desperate to get their partner back. They needed Clint safe.
"A mindless beast, makes play he's still a man." Loki continued. "How desperate are you? That you call upon such lost creatures to defend you?"
"How desperate am I?" Fury echoed, scoffing. He stepped closer to the cell and stared Loki down with his one eye. "You threaten my world with war. You steal a force you can't hope to control. You talk about peace, and you kill because it's fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did."
"Ooh..." Loki whispered. "It burns you to have come so close. To have the Tesseract. To have power — unlimited power. And for what?" He smiled, and turned to stare at them through the camera again. "A warm light for all mankind to share... and then to be reminded what real power is." Loki turned back to face Fury.
Nick glared at him, not saying another word. He had enough. He turned to walk around and head back to the bridge. "Well, let me know if real power wants a magazine or something."
The monitors on the table disappeared, leaving the group to collect their thoughts. Ana looked up and leaned against her seat, still stunned by Loki's words. A part of her felt capturing Loki was too easy. "He really grows on you, doesn't he?" Bruce asked, breaking the silence.
"Loki's gonna drag this out." Steve said and looked up at Thor, who stood in front of the table, arms crossed over his chest. "So, Thor, what's his play?"
Thor had been very silent, probably thinking about Loki and what his plan was. "He has an army called the Chitauri. They're not of Asgard, nor any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the Earth. In return, I suspect, for the Tesseract." Thor explained, turning to face the table.
"An army." Steve repeated, "From outer space."
"So he's building another portal." Bruce concluded, taking off his glasses. "That's what he needs Eric Selvig for."
"Selvig?" Thor asked, glancing at Bruce.
"He's an astrophysicist." Bruce explained, not knowing of their friendship.
"He's a friend." Thor stated.
Ana stood from her seat, and circled around the table to stand next to Thor. "We'll do everything we can to get him back. Him, and all the others Loki has enslaved." She assured him, earning a nod in return.
"Loki has him under some kind of spell. Along with one of ours." Natasha said, sharing a look with Ana.
"I wanna know why he let us take him." Steve cut in. "He's not leading an army from here."
"I don't think we should be focusing on Loki." Bruce shook his head, fiddling with his glasses. "That guy's brain is a bag full of cats, you can smell crazy on him."
"Have care how you speak." Thor said, stepping forward. "Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard, and he is my brother."
"He killed eighty people in two days." Natasha told him.
"He's adopted." Thor corrected.
"Iridium, what did they need the Iridium for?" Bruce asked, glancing around the table in hopes that someone had an answer.
"It's a stabilising agent." Tony said suddenly. The group turned their heads when Tony and Coulson walked down the hallway toward them. "Means the portal won't collapse on itself like it did at S.H.I.E.L.D." He explained. He neared Thor, who stood in an aggressive manner. He was still not over their fight. "No hard feelings, Point Break. You've got a mean swing," Tony patted Thor's arm, trying to get him to loosen up.
Thor leaned closer to Ana, brows furrowed in puzzlement. "Point Break?" He questioned.
Ana chuckled, and whispered back. "It's a movie. He just means you look like guy starring in it."
"Also, it means the portal can open as wide and stay open as long as Loki wants." Tony made his way to Nick's command station, and glanced at the agents curiously. "Uh, raise the mid-mast, ship the top sails." Tony said, glancing at the rest of the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents at their stations. They turned to stare at him questionably. "That man is playing Galaga!" Tony pointed to an agent, who froze in his seat. "Thought we wouldn't notice. But we did."
Ana smiled in amusement when Tony held up one hand to his eye demonstrating Fury's eye patch. "How does Fury even see these?"
"He turns." Maria said, overlooking the agents at their workstations.
"Sounds exhausting." Tony commented lightly. He started to touch the screens in front of him. "The rest of the raw materials, Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. Only major component he still needs is a power source." He pressed something small onto the side of the computers, which made Ana frown. As far as she knew, she was the only one who noticed. "With a high energy density. Something to..." Tony clicked his fingers. "Kick start the cube."
"When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" Maria asked, arms crossed as she looked at Tony.
"Last night." Tony said simply. "The packet. Selvig's notes. The extraction theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading?" He asked, looking at the rest of them with his arms out by his sides.
"Got me." Ana shrugged. Tony sent her an unimpressed look, before walking away from Nick's station.
"Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" Steve asked.
"He's got to heat the cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier." Bruce said, as he paced slowly back and forth.
"Unless, Selvig has figured out how to stabilise the quantum tunnelling effect." Tony said, walking over to Bruce. Ana put a hand on her head as she tried to understand the science. Natasha smiled beside her when she let out a quiet groan of frustration.
"Well, if he could do that he could achieve heavy ion fusion at any reactor on the planet." Bruce said.
"Finally!" Tony pointed to Bruce. "Someone who speaks English."
"Is that what just happened?" Steve questioned.
Ana shrugged. "Uh huh."
"It's good to finally meet you, Dr. Banner." Tony said as the two scientists shook hands. "You're work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."
Bruce glanced down and then at Tony. "Thanks." He murmured.
"Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube," Director Fury said, joining them on the bridge. "I was hoping you might join him."
"Let's start with that stick of his." Steve said. "It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon."
"I don't know about that." Fury said. "But it is powered by the cube. And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys."
Thor frowned, his eyebrows furrowed with confusion. "Monkeys? I do not understand..."
"I do!" Steve said happily, nearly jumping out of his seat. Ana couldn't help but smile at him. "I understood that reference."
Tony rolled his eyes as Steve looked proud of himself.
The team looked at each other in silence before Tony turned to Bruce. "Shall we play, Doctor?"
Bruce showed him the way. "Let's play some." Bruce said, and the two scientists left to head back to the lab.
Ana stood up from her seat, noticing that Natasha reactivated the security surveillance in Loki's cell. Ana's eyes squinted slightly. She assumed Natasha had a plan. They both wanted Clint back. But the Widow had the means to get answers. Ana was still learning. There was so much she had to take in before she could advance from Level 6 to Level 7. Fury pushed her to do more. To study more. Practise more. Get more experience. He wanted her to eventually settle in with Maria at Level 9 in the future. In Ana's case, career wins wouldn't get her any higher on the ladder at S.H.I.E.L.D. like it did for other agents, but putting in the work and commitment would. She knew they all treated her differently because she was different. But there was something else to it. Ana just didn't know what.
Before she could question Natasha's next move, Thor approached her, gaining all of her attention while Romanoff slid out of her seat and vanished through the doors. "Lady Ana, if it's not too much trouble, may I ask something of you?" He asked.
"Of course, what do you need?" She asked.
"Jane Foster." He said simply. Ana had to smile. She found it sweet that the woman was on his mind at a time like this. She nodded and led him over to a free computer station. She had reached out to pull the chair from the desk, though Thor had already beat her to it. offering her a chivalrous smile. Ana grinned at the God of Thunder, "That's a first." She muttered with a chuckle and sat down after thanking him, and logged onto the system.
Phil joined them, standing beside Thor with his arms crossed over his chest. Ana brought up all of the S.H.I.E.L.D. files she had access to on Jane Foster, including her current whereabouts. "As soon as Loki took the doctor, we moved Jane Foster." Phil informed Thor, leaning over to point at a blinking dot on the map of the world. "They've got an excellent observatory in Tromsø. She was asked to consult there very suddenly yesterday. Handsome fee, private plane, very remote."
"She'll be safe." Ana added, glancing up at Thor.
"Thank you." He smiled down at Ana. She nodded in response and exited Jane's files. An alert popped up at the bottom left corner of her screen and she snorted to herself when a secure chat between her and Agent Ward began. Grant had sent her a photo of him zip lining from the Eiffel Tower in Paris. She quickly typed 'Your big head is ruining the view' and sent it before logging off.
"It's no accident, Loki taking Erik Selvig. I dread what he plans for him once he's done. Erik is a good man." Thor sighed.
"He talks about you a lot." Phil told him as Ana stood up from the computer station. "You changed his life. You changed everything around here." He said and Ana nodded.
"I'm reading books on Norse Mythology now when I'm supposed to be studying for my field exams." Ana said, earning an amused glance from Thor.
"They were better as they were. We pretend on Asgard that we're more advanced, but we... we come here battling like Bilgesnipe." Thor said and Phil and Ana looked at each other confused before looking up at the God.
"Like what?" Phil asked.
"Bilgesnipe? You know, huge, scaly, big antlers." Thor deepened his voice as he used his fingers to mime antlers. When neither one of them responded in a way that told him they understood, he frowned. "You don't have those?" He questioned.
Phil shook his head. "Don't think so."
"Kinda want to see one now." Ana mumbled.
"Well, they are repulsive, and they trample everything in their path." Thor walked over to the side of the ship and gazed out the window, lamenting about what has happened and what may come. "When I first came to Earth, Loki's rage followed me here, and your people paid the price. And now, again. In my youth, I courted war."
"War hasn't started yet." Fury said as he walked to the rail behind them. He rested his elbows on the metal bar and eyed Thor. "You think you can make Loki tell us where the Tesseract is?"
"I do not know. Loki's mind is far afield, it's not just power he craves, it's vengeance upon me." He said sorrowfully, "There's no pain that would prise that need from him."
"A lot of guys think that, until the pain starts." Fury said.
"What are you asking me to do?" Thor asked.
"I'm asking, what are you prepared to do?" He replied with a question.
"Loki is a prisoner."
"Then why do I feel like he's the only person on this boat that wants to be here?" Thor doesn't answer him.
Phil and Ana turned to look at each other. She shrugged. "I like being here."
Phil nodded in agreement. "The view is pretty good."
Ana let out a small laugh before movement on a screen caught her eye. She excused herself from the men and walked past the surveillance team that were monitoring the Helicarrier. The agents weren't too attuned to the fact that Steve Rogers was making his way to the archive levels deep down inside the carrier. The first question that popped into her mind was simply why he was going down there. Knowing Fury wouldn't let her go an investigate on her own, she pulled a Black Widow and vanished from the scene without drawing too much attention. Ana believed sending in a battalion to question Steve would spook him, and the last thing she wanted was for Captain America to see her as a threat.
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The more levels she went down, the more darker the atmosphere got. The lights weren't as bright and the hallways were longer. Ana wasn't particularly interested in lurking inside the sub levels of the Helicarrier, knowing they only stored equipment, spare Quinjet parts and old files. To gain access to these storage rooms the agent had to be Level 5 and above, though they also had to go through Commander Hill to gain her consent.
Ana's hand trailed along the cold walls of the halls as she turned a corner. Her shoulder came into contact with the star on Steve's chest, and she stepped back to look up at him. Steve wanted to question her on why she was following him, though kept his mouth shut when she crossed her arms over her chest.
"Is everything alright, Captain?" She asked, genuinely curious to find out what he was searching for.
Steve glanced over her shoulder, expecting other agents to flood the halls behind her. When he realised she was alone, that no one else was coming to question his decisions to drift along the sub levels, Steve let himself breathe a little easier. "Fury's lying about what he knows and what he doesn't. S.H.I.E.L.D. is using the Tesseract to build weapons. I know it."
"If S.H.I.E.L.D. was making weapons of mass destruction, I would know. I think..." She trailed off unsurely. He raised his eyebrow at her and she huffed, "What are you up to?" She asked.
Steve walked towards the storage door labelled 10-C. "I think there's something in here that can prove it. You interested in finding out?"
Ana followed him with a nod, "Yeah, okay, fine. But you're going to need a keycard to—" Steve, with all his might, slid the locked, metal door from its hinges and strolled right in.
Ana blinked and looked around before jogging in after him, "Or you could just use your super strength to rip the door out of its socket, no biggie." She half whispered. She watched as he lifted himself up onto the rail above the floor and sighed. "Got it. You go high. I go low."
The storage warehouse was filled with metal crates and boxes. Ana didn't even know where to begin. She kept on glancing over her shoulder at the door, expecting Fury or Hill to storm in and scold her for going in without their go ahead. She didn't have the proper tools to open any of the crates, and frowned when she heard locks being torn open above her. Steve had resulted in using his strength to unlock the crates. With a sigh, Ana supposed there was no going back now. She mirrored his efforts and used her hands to pry open the boxes. Old school rifles with the S.S.R. logo was all that she could find. She moved down the aisle, opening more crates until finally Steve joined her at the end.
Steve saw her hand moulds in the steel crates behind her. Ana sent him a look. "They're gonna know it was me. So unless there's something in here that can act as my Get Out of Jail Free card, I'm in so much trouble."
Steve brushed off the comment. "I'll take full responsibility."
Ana's eyes softened. "Oh, I didn't mean it like that..."
Steve sent her a shadow of a smile. "I know."
Steve opened the last crate. He stepped back when he found what he was looking for, allowing Ana to step in and peer inside. She didn't expect there to be an array of decommissioned HYDRA weapons and tactical gear stacked together. She reached in and picked out one of the firearms, lifting it up to her eye level as she examined the weapon closely. Ana's disappointment was clear in her eyes, and Steve took the firearm from her hands, jaw clenched while he turned it over.
"Fury lied to all of us."
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Q- What's your favourite Tony Stark quote?