Disclaimer: I can't really say I own the name, The Phoenix, but I own Katherine, her story and her family. All movie plots and situations belong to Marvel.
Chapter Four
Loki Situations
As I made my way through the hall, I could hear all of the whispers and hushed conversations about the triumphant capture of Loki. Honestly, in my mind, this whole thing is a set-up. The bridge wasn't by far as tense and busy as it was when I had first come along, now it was less crowded, which made me assume that some agents had went off to rest. I walked past it and kept moving toward the conference table. When I got there, Steve and Natasha were already seated and a tall and hulking blonde standing off to the side with a pensive and calculating gaze.
"I see you were successful." I commented as I made my presence known in the room. The large man that I recognize as Thor regards me with minor interest. I walk toward the man and offer my hand. "You must be Thor." I offer my hand. "Katherine Silver. I'm helping to locate the tesseract."
"Yes, I am the Son of Odin. I'm pleased to meet you Lady Silver." Thor nods to me, politely. My eyebrows raise at the nickname, but he doesn't notice as he seems to be deep in thought.
I stand behind the chair that's a seat away from the Captain. I feel almost unworthy, standing this close to him while he was in full armor. Moments later, Bruce joined us and the screens lit on the glass table as Fury had just closed the cage door on Loki.
"In case it wasn't clear," Fury began as he walked over to a control panel, "you try to escape, if you so much as scratch that glass," Fury opens the cage-sized hatch below, "it's thirty-thousand feet down in a steel trap." He closes the hatch door, "You see how this works?" He gestures to Loki. "Ant." He gestures back to the control panel, "Boot." I almost scoff at Fury's jab.
Loki begins talking, so I tap the camera that is focused on him. "It's an impressive cage. Not built, I think, for me." I refuse the urge to look in Bruce's direction, which would probably further solidify the accusation.
"It's built for something much stronger than you." Fury replies.
Loki stops pacing and faces Fury once more. "Oh, I've heard," He grins almost evilly into the camera that I was looking into. "The mindless beast, makes play he's still a man. How desperate are you, that you call upon such lost creatures to defend you?"
He seems to be amused by the list of minds and heroes Fury called upon. He's a little too comfortable with his arrangement and it was really beginning to irk me. We had no idea how he was to use the tesseract to attempt to rule the earth.
"How desperate am I?" Fury says with incredulity. He walks into the direction of the cage. "You threaten my world with war. You steal a force you can't hope to control. You talk about peace and you kill cause it's fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did."
I took Fury's words as a final threat, but apparently, Loki didn't. "Ooh," He smiles mockingly, "It burns you to have come this close. To have the Tesseract, to have power, unlimited power. And for what?" Loki looks back into his camera. "A warm light for all mankind to share," Loki finally looks back at Fury. "and then to be reminded what real power is."
"Well let me know if Real Power needs a magazine or something." Nick Fury just walks off, leaving Loki to smirk a the camera. I stared in Loki's figure, mostly into his eyes which lacked any life humanity (relatively speaking, of course). However, the screen cut off, leaving us to figure out our next move.
Thor's back was turned from us, causing me to believe that he was bothered by his brother's actions or possibly trying to figure out his next move.
I push myself off the chair and lean on the railing behind the Captain. "He really grows on you, doesn't he?" Bruce comments, breaking the stunned silence in the room.
"Loki's gonna drag this out," Steve starts, getting down to business. "So, Thor, what's his play?"
Thor seems to have finally snapped out of his internal thoughts and faces everyone in the room. "He has an army called the Chitauri. They're not of Asgard or any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the earth. In return, I suspect, for the Tesseract."
"An army?" Steve stares, clearly in disbelief. "From outer space?"
"So he must be building another portal." I hypothesized. "That's why he needs Selvig."
"Selvig?" Thor familiarizes.
"He's an astrophysicist." Banner explains.
"He's a friend." Thor tells us.
"Loki has him under his spell," Natasha tells Thor, "along with one of our own."
"I want to know why Loki let us take him? It's not like he's leading any armies from here." Steve thinks aloud.
"Cap's right. He's been all grins and smirks since he's got here." I added. "That doesn't really scream compromised plans to me."
"I don't think we should be focusing on Loki." Banner insists. "That guy's mind is bag full of cats. You could smell the crazy on him."
"Have care how you speak!" Thor defends. "Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard. And he is my brother.
"He killed eighty people in two days." Natasha informs in a deadpan voice.
Thor looks slightly stunned and embarrassed. "He's adopted."
"Hmph." I scoff almost inaudibly.
"It's about the mechanics." Banner interjects. "The iridium, what did they need the iridium for?"
"It's a stabilizing agent." Curiously, everyone's eyes shift toward the door, where Tony Stark is just walking in with Coulson and also finishing off a previous conversation."It means that the portal won't collapse on itself, like it did back at SHIELD. No offense Point Break," As he walks passed Thor, he lightly taps the demigod's arm. "You've got a mean swing." Even though this is Tony Stark were talking about, I was quite surprised at his audacity. He managed to made the admission of defeat sound condescending.
"It also means the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long, as Loki wants." I add to the conversation.
"Uh, raise the mid-mast, ship the topsails." Tony orders the confused crew members. He points to someone I can't see from my position. "That man is playing GALAGA! Thought we wouldn't notice. But we did."
As he walks around Agent Hill, she rolls her eyes, confirming that she disliked the genius. Honestly, I wasn't sure that Maria Hill likes anyone. He continues walking over to Fury's desk as he covers his eye, he looks around. "How does Fury even see these?"
"He turns."' Hill answers stiffly.
"Well, that sounds exhausting." Tony comments. "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. A high energy density, something to kick start the cube."
"When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?" Agent Hill asks defiantly.
"Last night." Stark answers her sharply. "The packet, Selvig's notes, the Extraction Theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading?"
"Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?" Steve cut in.
"He'd have to heat the cube to a hundred million Kelvin just to break the Coulomb barrier." Banner informs Steve, who looks a little confused, to say the least. I push off the railing and move over to where Bruce is standing
Stark nods. "Unless, Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunnelling effect."
"Well, if he could do that he could achieve Heavy Ion Fusion at any reactor on the planet." I add to Stark's comment.
"Finally, people who speak English."
"Is that what just happened?" Steve asks the partly bewildered people in the room.
"Good to finally meet you, Ms. Silver." I was taken aback by the formal greeting. Simply I just shook his hand. "It's about time SHIELD opens it's doors to mutants." Stark leans closer, "By the way, I'm 100% with the movement." Before I could move my lips to say something, Mr. Stark just pats my left shoulder and moves on to Dr. Banner. I look over to Agent Romanoff, and all she does is shake her head, as if silently saying just go with it.
"It's good to meet you as well, Dr. Banner." Stark greets Dr. Banner as the two shake hands. "Your 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."
Banner frowned slightly at the reminder. "Thanks." I believe the I think was implied at the end.
"Dr. Banner and Ms. Silver are only here to track the cube. I was hoping you might join them." Fury states firmly, walking into the room. I'd have jumped from his loud and authoritative voice if I hadn't heard his footsteps coming down the hall five seconds ago.
"Let's start with that stick of his. It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon." Steve suggested.
"I don't know about that," Fury answers. "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."
"Monkeys?" Thor pipes up, clearly confused. "I do not understand."
"I do!" Steve blurts out. "I understood that reference." Tony rolls his eyes, while Cap looks proud of himself. I hold my chuckle in, and turn to Stark and Dr. Banner's direction.
"Shall we do science?"
"This way, sir." Banner smiles pleasantly, and Stark lets me go ahead of him as he follows behind me.
I wasn't really paying much attention to Tony Stark's ramblings as we made our way back to the lab. I was more focused on staying in control, considering the fact that I managed to sit in that room full of people and nothing was floating in the air, or moving. I was on a roll that that wanted to keep up. As we entered the lab, I started to fix some of the equations and algorithms that I had left unsolved the last time I left.
"The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract. But it's gonna take weeks to process." Bruce tells him.
"If we bypass their mainframe and directa reroute to the Homer cluster, we can clock this around six hundred teraflops."
"All I packed was a tooth brush." Bruce chuckles.
"You know, you should come by Stark Tower sometime. Top ten floors, all R&D. You guys would love it. It's like Candyland." Stark said as he walked over to a computer.
I shrugged as I brought myself back into the conversation. "Sounds like fun." I say, sending an encouraging glance to Bruce.
"Thanks, but the last time I was in New York I kind of broke...Harlem." Bruce reminds him.
"Well, I promise a stress free environment. No tension. No surprises." Suddenly, Tony pokes Banner with a miniature electric prod.
"OW!" Bruce shouts.
"Where the hell did you even get that?" I asked, staring at the thin gadget closely.
Tony looks at Banner closely. "Nothing?"
"Hey! Are you nuts?" I turn around to face the Captain as he entered the room.
"Jury's out." Tony dismisses to Steve's annoyance. He resumes speaking to Dr. Banner. "You really have got a lid on it,haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?"
"Is everything a joke to you?" Steve walks closer to Tony. Oh shit. I'm just standing on the other side of the lab, watching. Bruce looks to me for help, but I just shrug. I mean, how can you really stop an argument between Iron Man and Captain America?
"Funny things are." Tony continues.
"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny." My eyebrows raise, and I almost shake my head at the paranoia on this ship. "No offense, doctor."
"No, it's alright. I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things." I reluctantly look away and use my powers to bring my bag to me from the entrance.
"You're tiptoeing, big man. You need to strut. Like Silver over there." I freeze and stop what I'm doing, causing my bag to fall onto the edge of the table, and then the floor. All three men were looking at me. Bruce was just curious, Tony looked fascinated and smug, and Steve had a disapproving look.
"And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark."
"You think I'm not? Why did Fury call us and why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables."
"You think Fury's hiding something?"
"He's a spy. Captain, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets." I walked over to the spear to analyze the signature and use the algorithm to connect it to the system. "It's bugging them too, isn't it?" Stark gestures to where Bruce and I were standing.
"Katherine?" Steve asks me, and I realize that he wants my opinion.
"I always think Fury's hiding something." I say, carefully. "I usually try to stay out of it, but ... Bruce?" He looked up at me. "Help me out here?"
Bruce begins stammering, not really wanting to be a part of the arguing. "Uh...I just wanna finish my work here and..."
"Doctor?"
He sighs, then goes around the table. "'A warm light for all mankind', Loki's jab at Fury about the cube."
"I heard it." Steve nods.
"Well, I think that was meant for you." Bruce says, pointing in Tony's direction. "Even if Barton didn't say anything, that was all over the news."
"The Stark Tower? That big ugly ..." Steve pauses and Tony gives him a look. "...building in New York?"
Bruce continues, making me believe that he put a lot of thought into this. "It's powered by Stark Reactors, self-sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for what, a year?"
"That's just the prototype. I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now." Tony boasts.
"So, why didn't SHIELD bring him in on the Tesseract project? Or even Katherine? Her father was on the project before he disappeared." Bruce expressed something that I had been thinking about for months. "I mean, what are they doing in the energy business in the first place?"
"I should probably look into that once my decryption programmer finishes breaking into all of SHIELD's secure files." Tony says casually. I frowned, considering he pretty much beat me to it.
"I'm sorry, did you say...?"
"That's pretty impressive." I stated. Tony grinned in my direction, and I completely avoided looking the Captain's way.
"Jarvis has been running it since I hit the bridge." Tony says smugly. "In a few hours we'll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide." Tony holds out a bag of blueberries to me. "Blueberry?"
I reach my hand in and grab a few as Bruce and I watch. "Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around?"
"An intelligence organization that fears intelligence? Historically, not awesome." Tony points out.
"I think Loki's trying to wind us up. This is a man who means to start a war, and if we don't stay focused, he'll succeed. We have orders, we should follow them." Steve shared, reminded me of my earlier thoughts about Loki.
"Following is not really my style." Tony brushes his thoughts off.
Steve smiles sarcastically. "And you're all about style, aren't you?"
I visibly see Tony's temper flare. "Of the people in this room, which one is; A. wearing a spangly outfit, and B. not of use?
"Steve, tell me none of this smells a little funky to you?" Bruce finally steps in.
Steve takes in the possibly, but as an obedient soldier, shakes it off. Instead of answering, he just walks off. "Just find the cube." Still torn apart by the possibility, he walks away, towards the hull of the ship.
From the table behind me, I hear a light vibration. When I turn around, I realize its a message from Romanoff.
MEET ME AT THE CAGE ASAP. I NEED ASSISTANCE.
"Okay, that's not ominous at all." I mutter to myself. "Romanoff needs me." I announce. "I'll be back in fifteen." I say as I start to leave.
"Silver, bring me back some Raisinets!" I hear Tony call after me. I don't answer and keep going.
As I take the hallway to the elevator closest to the detention area, I see the Captain. This was weird because I hadn't seen him go this way before. I decided to catch up to him. "Hey, Steve? Steve?" I try to call after him in hushed tones. He stops walking and turns.
As I reach him I say, "Keep walking and don't turn around."
"What's going on, Ms. Silver?" Steve demands firmly.
"Katherine." I correct, only to receive an exasperated gaze. "Right. If you by chance did believe us, I know a little something about something." I say as I lead him to the elevator where I was going.
Steve nods slowly. "Ok, suppose I do believe you. What is it?"
We stepped into the elevator and I tapped the B for Basement level. "While you guys were off in Stuttgart, I came across a classified room with clearance for agents and research staff level 6 and up."
"How did you find out about it?" Steve looks at me curiously.
"I hacked into the secured files on my dad's laptop." I admitted without shame. I didn't miss the look of irritation on Steve's face. "Come on, I did this in my free time."
After a short pause, Steve sighs reluctantly. "Fine. Give me the room number."
"BA-217. The security code is ..."
Steve cuts me off as he steps off the elevator. "I think I'll manage."
I raised my eyebrow, "Okay, I'll see you then." I walked off in the other direction, enroute to meet Agent Romanoff by the cage.
Not too eventful ... but what does Natasha want? How will Katherine fit into the attack on the ship? Not much Thor interaction, but that we change later. Tony seems to like her though. And she's obviously comfortable with Bruce already.
Next Chapter: Romanoff and Battleship attack!
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RealHuntress18