1.
He stared into the sky, the brilliant shimmer that was the Bifrost etching itself temporarily onto his retinas. He closed his eyes, brought his head back down, then opened them again.
They were surrounded by guards, Thor and himself, though the guards were meant for only one of them. He flexed his hands, the shackles at his wrist clanking softly, and smiled at the nearest guard who looked to be a young man though the body armor hid most physical attributes save height and weight. The winds this high up from the streets far below, buffeted them, throwing Thor's red cloak madly about his body.
"Shall we? I doubt they want me out in the open for long."
Thor glanced at him then at the guards, one of whom turned, opened the landing pad hatch and stepped back to allow the group passage. He took in all as they led him through the lower landing pad and into the building proper. The number they had pushed once on the elevator at the far end of the vast room. The layout of the corridors, the twists and turns they had been taking, the palpable apprehension of the guards escorting him. When they stopped to wait before a door, he fixed with a stare, the young guard he'd first smiled at when they'd arrived, enjoying the look of surprise he garnered when he'd finally caught the guard's eye.
He had been about to ask the guard what he was so afraid of when the door slid open and Thor was pulling him by the arm into a small blue room. Three agents, two men and one woman, stood at a short table stacked with various items and papers. The only other items in the room were two chairs at the far end of the table. Thor guided him along until he was standing before the woman.
"I will talk with you later, see that you do what they say if you wish to remain here, brother."
He glared at Thor, watched him walk out the door with five of the seven guards who had escorted them, leaving two at the doorway watching his every move. The sudden movement at his wrists caused him to pull back with a hiss of breath.
"You want to leave the shackles on, be my guest." The woman put the key back in her pocket, leaned over and wrote something on a piece of paper, then stood back up,
"Now are we ready to have them off?"
He grinned widely, "Do you think you have enough manpower to take them off?"
The woman looked at him curiously, "I'm not going to saw them off, I have a key."
His grin faded into a grim frown, "You misunderstand my meaning, woman. Do you think you have enough manpower to control me?"
The resulting grin on the woman's face took him aback as she took the key back out of her pocket, pulled the centerpiece of the shackle to her and undid the lock, sliding them off his wrists.
He pulled his hands away and rubbed where the shackles had dug into his skin.
"Put your hands on your head, fingers together, palms up." The woman walked closer to him and stood, hands on her hips, waiting for him to comply.
"Will this take very long? I desperately need to relieve myself."
She stared at him.
"Perhaps I should use Midgardian terms, I need to take a piss."
She wrinkled her nose in disgust but simply shrugged, "I would say that depends on you. If you're compliant, this will be over quickly so you just go at your own pace."
He rolled his eyes but assumed the position she asked of him. She took in the simple outfit he wore, a brown tunic tied at the neck, a pair of black breeches and high boots.
"You look like you just stepped out of the Middle Ages." She mumbled as she knelt down, missing the expression of contempt that crossed his face as he gazed down at her.
"Stay still while I pat you down. If I perceive any aggression on your part, I will make sure you go down hard and quick, understood?"
She looked up at him, suddenly chilled by the hard stare of his blue green eyes, angry that she'd faltered, "Understood?"
He nodded once, startled as she began to pat first one leg then the other, flinching when she reached the top of his thighs, drawing her hands around his waist, continuing up his chest, under his arms, smirking when she had to stand on her tiptoes to reach his wrists, unable to resist talking to her when she was so close, "So I'm to be treated as a common Midgardian criminal."
She stepped back from him abruptly, "I would say that is a correct approximation of your situation. Open your mouth."
He cocked his head, started to bring his arms down,
"Leave those hands on your head until I say you can put them down." She had her hand at her pocket again, waiting. He reset his hands on his head with a sneer. "Now open your mouth,"
He complied.
"Raise your tongue so I can see the underside." He again complied, waiting until she turned towards the table to waggle it obscenely at her.
She looked up at him, "Nice manners. Put your arms down and follow me."
He walked behind her to the other end of the table where sat a wide blue pad with a card beside it. "Okay you're going to let me take first one hand then the other and I'm going to take your fingerprints. Once again, I won't hurt you if you won't hurt me."
He chuckled at this, "I've nothing to fear from you. You're a woman, a Midgardian at that."
She grabbed one hand roughly, yanking him forward to the table, "Are you willing to test that theory?"
He watched her press his right thumb to the ink pad and press it to the card afterwards. She took his index finger next, following the same procedure but for the fact that as his index finger touched the card, he moved his finger, smudging the print. She let his hand go and pushed her dark brown hair back from her face.
"We can do this all day if this is your idea of fun, or we can get the niceties out of the way."
He said nothing in reply, stood there and smiled as she took his hand again, pulled out a fresh card and started anew. Three minutes later, she was handing him a baby wipe, "It won't get all the ink but it'll get most of it."
She took a pen from her pocket and clicked it open, "Spell your last name."
"L..A..U..F..E..Y..S..O..N." She finished, filling in his first name without asking.
She picked up the fingerprint card and put it into a fat folder sitting at the end of the table, unclipping a thin metal bracelet with a blue strip running through the center, from the edge of the folder.
"Hold your hand out."
He looked at the thin band, "What is it?"
"This is a perimeter band. If you move outside the set distance for the band, it will trigger an alarm and an immediate response, sort of like the invisible fences for dogs." In her mind she was begging for him to ask her what they were and he seemed happy to comply,
"Enlighten me on these invisible fences. How do they work if they are invisible?" He put his hand out and she snapped the bracelet together.
"Here," She said, taking a small Ipad up from the table and tapping it a few times. "The perimeter is set for three feet from your present location" She backed away from him, could see the guards at the far end of the room smiling at her. "Try to touch me."
He grinned, a cold contrast to the guards behind him, lunged at her and in less than two seconds, was to the floor on his hands and knees, panting for breath, the sharp searing pain that had tensed up each and every muscle in his body, subsiding as quickly as it had hit him. He heard her tapping the Ipad again.
She knelt to one knee before him, "And you engineered all that chaos out there?"
She stood back up, waiting for him to regain his feet which he did, growling at her, "Watch your tongue Sarah Miller," She had been picking up the folder from the table and now turned her head towards him.
He narrowed his eyes at her, "I would not be so condescending if I were you. You have not yet begun to witness what I am capable of."
With each word, he had moved closer to her until now he was standing nearly face to face with her.
She reached up to the Ipad atop her folder and tapped it again.
He felt the life drain from his legs again as his knees buckled, his muscles singing as if he'd been a finely tuned violin with all the strings suddenly cut.
"It also works on automatic." She leaned over him with a tight lipped grin, "Welcome back to Earth, Loki."
2.
Sarah had taken him by the arm and helped him back to his feet, her touch revolting him. He yanked his arm from her grasp as soon as he regained his balance but was forced to put his hand on her shoulder when his legs threatened to give way as he took a step forward.
She shot him a look of pleasure so pure that when before took his hand away from her shoulder, it was with great effort that he held himself back from letting his other hand steal upward to grab her by the head and give it a swift turn, freezing her smile upon her face for all eternity. He would have to think of another way to torture her in the very near future. As a fast option formed in his mind, he smiled back at her.
"Are you ready now?"
He waved at her and she shook her head, "You will walk in front of me. I'll tell you where to go."
They reached the door where he'd first entered the room and it slid open. The two guards who had been waiting quietly on either side, walked out of the room first and waited for him to enter the corridor. Sarah followed closely behind Loki, watching the way he walked, a bounce to his step, a grace in every movement he made, even the turn of his head as he glanced behind himself at her.
"This phrase, "Heaven doesn't want me and Hell is afraid I'll take over" I wonder, was it meant for me?"
Sarah's steps faltered slightly, the phrase itself had been in her mind when he had stepped into the processing room ten minutes earlier but she was a quick wit and refused to show him she'd been thrown, if only slightly, by his revelation, "I think we'd have to change the place names though, don't you think?"
They entered the elevator at the end of the corridor and Sarah pushed the number three on the panel as the doors slid shut. She looked at Loki who was wearing a self-satisfied smirk upon his face. He watched the numbers descend on the window above the panel for a moment, then his eyes slid to hers.
"I would call my step confident if nothing else….and a garden salad seems such a simple meal for one of your means but one can hardly expect a single woman to cook a large…"
"If you don't shut up," She pointed to the Ipad still seated atop the folder, "And stop being so incredibly rude. They'll have to carry you to your quarters."
His smirk faded and he stared at her, "I am forced to wonder how it is that someone can feel so alone in one of the biggest cities on Midgard."
The elevator doors slid open but he hesitated, still staring at her for emphasis, then strode from the elevator.