Tony was elbow deep into circuitry when Bruce approached him. It had been a few months since the attack on New York, and despite telling Tony that he would only stay for a few days before going off on his own, Bruce was still around. Tony had shown off all of his toys with Pepper standing nearby with one of her bemused smiles, and practically gave the man a floor to himself with access to (some) of his personal labs. At first Bruce just fiddled around, investigating all the machines that Tony had custom built. Then something had clicked and Bruce threw himself into his own personal research. Something to do with the Gamma radiation of the Tesseract and Loki's scepter. Tony didn't really ask much; he just supplied whatever Bruce asked for and went on with his own work. The scientist had seemed content, if not quietly happy, but then recently that had changed around the same time that Loki had broken out of whatever cell Shield had stuck him in.

Thor had been pissed when they were told. Steve started making attack plans for when Loki came back for revenge. Natasha and Clint had gone all steely faced and Tony wasn't going near either of them if he could help it. Bruce's reaction had been an anti-reaction, as in there wasn't one. He just kept watching Fury as the man talked everyone down.

He'd been especially reserved since then, and that was quite an accomplishment considering that it was Bruce. Everyone else went and handled the news in their own way. Clint was currently the proud owner of one of the largest custom made arrow collections, and practiced daily on a target with Loki's face on it. Thor spent nearly every minute of every day with his girlfriend. Apparently Loki had threatened to visit the woman in the heat of a previous battle, and Thor was taking the threat very seriously.

Bruce had hid himself away at a bank of computers, and hadn't ventured out much until now.

"What do you need?" Tony asked and Bruce shifted uncomfortably. Cute.

"Ah, actually… you."

Tony swivelled around in his chair and gave Bruce a filthy grin. "I knew you'd come around eventually." Bruce snorted but Tony kept on going. "So how do you want me? On the workbench? There's a cot in the corner if you're feeling traditional. Not in the cars though, I don't think they could take it."

"Tony-"

"Yes darling?"

Bruce was smiling though, which was the point after all. "I need you to break into the Shield database." he admitted, a grin still affixed to his face.

"Done."

"Really?"

Tony snorted at his disbelieving tone. "Well yeah, I do it every Monday, or during really boring meetings, or if I need to do something really mundane like solitaire. It's fun!"

"You consider breaking into high security government secret files fun?"

"Well it depends what you're looking for. For example, did you know Steve's birthday is July 4th? I'm not making this stuff up, I swear! I can't wait for this summer. Tell me, is getting him a big red white and blue cake with a stripper in it considered too tacky?"

"I... you know what? Go for it, just make sure there's pictures."

Tony smirked and spun around on his stool once. "So, back to business. We've established that I have no moral compunctions against breaking into Shield computers. The question now is... what do you want to know?"

Bruce took a moment to wipe the grin off his face and leaned against a nearby worktable. "I want to find out what happened to Loki."

Tony frowned. "You mean like how he got out?"

"More like 'if'?"

Now things were getting interesting. Tony made a 'continue' gesture and Bruce took one of his deep calming breath before he did.

"I've been monitoring basic Shield activity since we were told about the breakout. I figured we'd get called back, maybe to try and find a way to trace his uh, his magic I guess. But we didn't get called. No one did. And there weren't any extra agents sent out looking for him. I thought that was kind of strange. It's not really like Shield to take the sit and wait approach. And then when you take into account the timing..."

"Timing?"

"Oh, well, before he broke out, Thor had been bugging Fury about seeing Loki. I guess just to make sure he was secure or even if he was all right. Apparently Shield had been putting it off stating that solitary confinement means no visitation rights. They'd just agreed to let Thor go see him when Loki allegedly broke out. I just... I know they're supposed to be the good guys, but I really don't trust Shield."

Neither did Tony, not that he needed to tell that to Bruce. Obviously the scientist already had some idea that his loyalties to the shady government branch that was Shield were less than sturdy, he wouldn't have approached Tony otherwise. Bruce had several very good and legitimate reasons not to trust the government, especially military government, but Tony didn't think that Bruce was being paranoid here either. "You think they still have him?"

"There's no way Shield would let someone like Loki go that easy. A handful of deaths reported, and some cosmetic damage to the front of a building? No, I'm almost certain they still have him. Which, by the way, I'm still all for. I mean, he deserves to be locked up for what he did. But hiding him? Lying to his brother, Thor, who helped us capture him in the first place? No, that's setting off a whole lot of alarms for me."

Same for Tony. He stood up and strode over to his main work desk and with a gesture he activated all of the monitors. "Well, let's see what we can find then shall we?" he said, his voice deadly serious. He could think of several reasons why a government agency would cover up Loki's imprisonment, and absolutely none of them were good.

Hacking into Shield wasn't exactly as easy as he'd made it out to be, especially what he was doing. Sure, some stuff was a breeze, like altering cafeteria orders so that the kitchens of the helicarrier were filled to the brim with mini weenies. The deep dives into secret files were much more difficult, and way more dangerous. He could not be detected, there were only so many things Pepper could get him out of but Tony was pretty sure that this wouldn't be one of them. It took hours, with Jarvis running secondary algorithms to cover his tracks as he snooped around. What he found in some of those files were very interesting indeed. There was a file on the Avengers, different from the ones he'd already peeked at. These files included methods to stop each member if they went rogue, including him. He made note of the specialized EMP Shield had constructed and would start working on counter measures as soon as he was done here. The list they had on Bruce was longer, and included shooting him into space as a permanent solution. Bruce had gone a little pale when he read his list, but thankfully he didn't turn green and Tony pressed on. The official files for Loki stated the he'd been placed in a vibranium cell, with round the clock guards and only one entrance. Each day he was fed three meals, which were delivered through a small slot. The blueprints of the cell showed it to be of average size with a bed, toilet and sink.

It was a decoy file. Tony knew this when he saw that the cell was supposed to be fitted with six separate cameras for supervision, but there were no vid files recorded. Dread filling his gut, Tony kept searching. It was an hour later when he finally found it.

"Got something!" he said without turning from the screens. Bruce pulled himself from the cot where he'd been napping lightly, and trudged over to where Tony sat. "What did you find?"

"A specialized holding cell, still being tested out. They've got a test subject in it though, and guess how long he's been in there?"

"I'm guessing since we brought Loki in?"

"To the date. I got everything here, schematics, medical observations, aaaand video!" he said with flourish, tapping one last illuminated key. The middle, and largest, monitor was suddenly filled with the scene of the inside of the testing cell and Tony felt as if he'd been punched in the lungs by the Hulk.

"Jesus..." he heard Bruce breathe from behind him. "It that... that isn't Loki is it?"

Tony could understand what he meant. The poor creature laying on the floor of the cell looked nothing like the God they'd defeated months ago. Dressed in a filthy pair of scrubs, the figure was nothing more that skin and bones. Long hair matted with grease and sweat clung to red, sun ravaged skin. They couldn't see his face, as the figure had one arm shielding as much of his head as possible.

"What did they do? Stick him in a microwave?" Bruce asked incredulously, his eyes already moving over the medical observations that Tony had pulled up.

"More like an oven," Tony corrected, his eyes taking every detail of the schematics. "They've got him under a high powered UV lamp, and the cell is kept at a constant 113 degrees. They've been slow cooking him for months."

Bruce cursed softly, and Tony knew that he was thinking that it could easily have been Bruce in that room. If the Hulk hadn't been useful, if he hadn't been needed...

Time to sidetrack that train of thought, instead Tony squinted at the medical files. From what he was seeing, it didn't look like Loki was going to last much longer. "Why a hotbox?" he asked suddenly as the thought came into his mind. "I mean, yeah, it's obviously effective, but why is that Shield's go-to torture device?"

Bruce was still immersed in the med files, but managed to answer anyways. "It says here that he's not from Asgard at all. He's something called a Frost Giant? I guess Thor really wasn't kidding when he said Loki was adopted."

"Huh, ok that makes sense. Put frosty in the homemade easy-bake and see what happens." The joke fell flat though as Tony continued to watch Loki's chest rise and fall in an irregular pattern. He glanced at Bruce, "How are we going to do this?"

"You mean break him out? I have no idea."

Tony grinned. Bruce wasn't even questioning whether or not they should, it was already decided that they would. "Well thankfully, I think I do. I need to call in a friend first though."