Chapter Four: Impartiality

x

The day went past at an unprecedented speed, as days often do when a deadline is looming and there is much work to be done.

Winters came to provide Q with the specifications of her coffee machine of choice, earning a blank look. Hurtfew, standing behind her shoulder, professed her undying hatred for Q, cursed himself and his descendants with pox, which caused Q to question the logic of her curse, since him catching pox would preclude him from having descendants… and that was when he knew he was tired. Not that his brain did not usually work along these lines, but he was mostly able to keep his thoughts private (unless he deliberately voiced them to confuse his foes and random witnesses), and right at this moment he didn't have enough time to go and make himself another cup of tea (he didn't mind it cold, but it was stale) much less to start a pointless argument about nothing.

"It's bad," Winters concluded after a glance at his face.

Q did not respond, but that as such was an answer.

Winters and Hurtfew shared a meaningful look and nodded. "We thought it would be, once the circus upstairs started, but from what I've seen the World Security Council are only vaguely aware of some unspecified threat that might or might not have been sighted around New York sometime over the past three days." She stole Q's mug, took a draught, and grimaced.

She had done it to herself. At least she didn't spit the liquid back out.

"Basically, they want guided missiles aimed at New York."

Q felt his eyebrows rise. Really? Midgardian mortals had yet to cease to amaze him. This was a more destructive measure – he could not even claim it to be a solution – than he, as a self-proclaimed purveyor of chaos could have devised.

If all else failed, he would so be putting this information on all major social nets.

"M told them what?" Q inquired. Hopefully, something along the lines that tomorrow was the great inventory day and none of the British missiles would be available.

Hurtfew sighed.

Winters sat down into an abandoned chair. Q had a unique opportunity to see only her unscarred profile. No doubt she had done it intentionally – she tended to stand to the left of him at all times – but at the moment she looked too stressed to be called beautiful. "What could he say? The PM's signed on the dotted line. If the WSC asks for military support, we're obliged to provide it."

Q huffed. They wanted to play hardball? Fine with him. He was going to see who the WSC was obliged to. Juvenal and Plato asked quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Q had an answer: himself, in this instance.

"Go home," he instructed both women, "but stay accessible. This mission may grow hot at a moment's notice."

"But…" Hurfew sighed again. "Double-oh-seven put in for leave."

Q blinked. After Trevelyan, that was the second double-oh agent in two days performing the same wildly out-of-character action. Surely someone must have paused… no. No, they wouldn't have paused. Q had not alerted anyone to the fact that everything was not perfectly alright with Bond and his broken saviour complex, and now Bond had run for the hills to lick his wounds. Right in the middle of this bloody situation.

"And he got it, because Medical stumbled over themselves to grant it before he changed his mind," Q filled in.

Still, that left him with nine – well, eight – agents. They were not his preferred ones, but this way at least he could play up his supposed impartiality.

"Fine," Q said. "Protocols as during any active level one mission. Go home and sleep."

"You should sleep too, Boss," Hurtfew replied, timid as though it was her personal failing that Bond wasn't available.

"I could-"

"Obey orders," Q cut in, unnecessarily sharply, before Winters could suggest anything 'improper.'

"Make you a new cup of tea before I go," she finished tonelessly.

Q sighed. "Just go."

Winters and Hurtfew both nodded and left. Q remained alone with the LED lights and the blue glow from the screens in front of him. He packed up his work station and moved to his office. It took three minutes for the kettle to boil; he settled the mug of steaming tea on his table and called Stark's machine.

"Good evening, Mr Smith."

It wasn't evening where the machine was, but Q decided it was polite enough to reply: "Likewise."

"With Mr Stark's permission, I have established who, with the probability of ninety-seven point eight-six-six percent is the American representative on the World Security Council."

The name itself, however, wasn't forthcoming.

"But?" Q suggested.

"I was instructed by Mr Stark to only divulge it to you on the condition of reciprocity."

"That depends." It depended entirely of what Stark would do with the knowledge. If he wanted to find something to hold over those people's heads, he was welcome to it. If he wanted to go on a killing spree… Q might be convinced to keep quiet about it. If, however, he wanted to play those people's families' hero in titanium-gold-alloy armour, Q was not giving him a single letter of the name.

"I regret that I cannot acquiesce to your request."

"Can you call Mr Stark? Make it a conference call."

There was quiet on the line, then the distant, muted sound of ringing, and moments later Stark picked up with: "What's up, J?"

"Mr Smith suggested a conference call as a means of negotiation," the machine explained.

"Ring up Pepper, too," Stark ordered.

"Sir," the AI said, sounding somehow nervous, "Miss Potts' phone is inaccessible."

"There is no place in the States where the Starknet doesn't have signal," Stark pointed out. "And Pepper doesn't turn her phone off."

"I am trying Agent Coulson," the machine informed them initiatively. "The same response."

"Fuck," Stark stated succinctly.

"I could try from my end," Q offered.

"Don't bother. My tech is superior to yours."

That Q was forced to concede.

"But you called for a reason, sugarpie. Out with it."

Q smelled his tea. It was too hot to drink yet, but it already had an invigorating effect on him. "If I give you the name, what will you do with it?"

"Ruin their credit score," Stark blurted without thinking about it. At least he didn't have any elaborate altruistic plan.

"So you know about the guided missiles?"

"What- Ah, you mean guided missiles." Someone caught a coughing fit in the background; apparently Stark wasn't alone. He must have made fast friends with… Banner, yes, it was the man that housed the beast.

"It gets worse, then?" Q guessed. If Stark hadn't been so fired up at the WSC because of their militant actions, there must have been an additional reason.

"Oh, you've no idea." That wasn't strictly true, but if thinking it made Stark happy, he could go on. "Say that someone starts asking around about the geezers on this Council, and so I get curious. I set my very personal AI on it, of course. And J finds not only who this geezer is, but also why he never made it as a Congressman."

"You're going to keep me in suspense?"

"If anyone made I-heart-nuclear-weapons t-shirts, he'd be wearing one."

Q mused on that. It did sound ever more likely that the bastards intended to murder several millions of people in New York for whatever reason, and have decided that the recent spot of extraterrestrial trouble was a sufficient excuse. He wondered what their siblings and spouses and kids would think once they've found out.

"Let me guess – he has no family or friends left in New York."

"None whatsoever," the machine agreed.

"The British representative is Serena Aurelia Nottingham, née Bings. Date of birth is the third of January nineteen sixty-two."

"J?"

"Processing data, sir. Mrs Nottingham is a former Army officer."

"A widow," Q added, "three sons, two in the Army, one dead. Never appeared in public – she seems to have been drafted for this chair straight from active duty."

"Ours – I say ours, but I think I mean theirs – J, what are the prerequisites for forming your own nation? I must be rich enough for that, right?"

"You are indeed more wealthy than most of the world's countries," the machine assured Stark."

"Ha! But I was saying – JARVIS has determined that the American representative is David Tybalt Kimberley, informally known as 'Duke,' a nickname left over from his days of college football. A married man with two grown and married children and three grandchildren with another statistically on its way."

Q already had the man identified – there were few of that name – and found that much of his life's documentation was missing or had been redacted. Presumably, he had been a contractor for the military, owning a company that specialised in pyrotechnics. Nuclear weapons were his hobby – his life's passion, so to say. He had made a run for the Congress after some success in local politics, and had been quickly sidelined into a quiet position out of the public's sight.

"What does the WSC have to do with the Tesseract?" Stark asked after a while.

Q with some difficulty suppressed a sigh. The tea helped. "As far as I know, nothing."

"So we're fighting on two fronts. What are the chances they'll take one another out?"

"Nil," Q stated, grimly certain.

The WSC was geographically spread all over the globe, and no one strike would wipe them all out. The Chitauri would not be destroyed with a guided missile, whether or not the warhead was nuclear.

"I agree," the machine said.

"That's what I was afraid you'd say." Stark conferred with Banner under his breath, then gustily sighed and returned to the conversation. "Fine. Fine. Pookie, tell me about this scepter-waving alien that's mind-fucked Barton." Of course he had gotten at SHIELD agents' reports.

There was a while of silence over the line. Eventually, perhaps fifteen second later, the AI spoke: "Were you addressing me, sir?"

"No, J," Stark replied. "I was talking to the British boffin."

"Oh," Q intoned. He had been deliberating on how much he was going to share with Stark, and came to the conclusion that in the interest of the planet's survival, he was going to share all but what would implicate himself. "After I dealt with its original wielder, the Scepter seized another victim." He had no idea whom, but since the weapon was not in SHIELD's possession, it must have been one of the two women at the scene. "I freed Bond and Barton, but Selvig is still in its power, and that means they will open the portal."

"How do we stop them?" Stark asked instead of inquiring about what portal Q meant, so he had wised up to that much on his end. Good. Presumably Barton's report was at least as comprehensive as Bond's. Apropos, that was something that he might like to read.

His fingers danced over the keyboard.

"I know of no way," Q admitted. Would that he could send in Bond and have him blow up everything. He would even gladly sacrifice all Bond's equipment – this one time.

"Can we close the portal?"

"I don't know – can you?"

Stark did something evil to the microphone that sent a disgusting smacking, squelching, screeching sound through it. "Me and Bruce will get on it."

With that both he and his AI dropped the call.

Q leaned back in his chair and sensed his way into his spell's consciousness. He received the memory of the same conversation from the other side, with very little additional information mainly consisting of the beast's reactions to the revelations.

"When I said that about nuking the kindergarten," Banner spoke gloomily, standing above a screen and watching data compile itself, "I didn't mean it that seriously."

"Nukes are pretty serious things, Doc," Stark replied mechanically, concentrating on something else.

"You know, yesterday I was earning my rupees as a medicine man in India. Now I'm handling equipment that cost millions of dollars, trying to look for an alien answer to inexhaustible energy source."

"You're a diverse man, buddy," Stark said in the same absent tone.

The beast glanced over. "I don't suppose you could explain to me how are these aliens going to power their Star Gate? If the numbers are right, we're looking at them hijacking at least a nuclear power plant. Can't we just… cut them off at the source?"

Stark suddenly jerked and looked up. He meandered through the lab to the opposite side, adjusted the lid of a laptop, dismissed the screensaver (consisting of an animated logo of the SI switching with the picture of the Iron Man armour) and with one hand lackadaisically typed for a while. "Sixty-five of them, hundred and four reactors. That's a lot, but maybe not too much… that was a strike of brilliance, rock cabbage! You've deserved your pay for today!" he spun on his heel and set off, presumably to find Fury and alert him to a potential solution to their problem, however half-baked it was.

"I wasn't aware I was getting paid for this gig," the beast muttered, but he went after Stark.

Q's construct quickly made a round of the screens and had a look at what they were working on. Still searching for the Hypercube, it seemed, hoping to find it and the scepter. At the same time, they were trying to come up with at least a rough project of a device that could open a wormhole. They didn't have a lot.

They had enough to start Q off on his own research, but that would have to wait until they weren't so pressed for time. And until after Q had had a good night's sleep.

By the time the spell had caught up to Stark and Banner, they had apparently given their report, meagre as it was. A discussion sparked among the executive officers – notably Fury, Hill, and one of the mostly interchangeable agents apparently ousted from the lab that temporarily belonged to Stark and his new friend – who, it seemed, understood about as much as 'aliens will need a power plant.'

Q was a little disappointed that Stark had stopped looking after realising that. Surely there was something else Selvig would require? Some materials were common enough that they could be bought at any corner store, but others…

And what, in Hel's name, was in Stuttgart?

"Stark?" Fury asked, cutting off the blabbering around him.

Barton, Romanov, Rogers and Thor were standing in various spots scattered across the Bridge and seemed to be trying to garner at least an outline of an idea of what was going on. Incidentally, Barton and Romanov appeared to be the only successful ones.

Stark pretended to contemplate whether he was able to tell them more precisely what kind of plant they should be looking for. "Hmm… yeah, no. Get me the specs on the doohickey Selvig's building for them, and I'll tell you."

"We may have to ask Dr Foster after all-"

"Thor will step on you if you do that. You know he can."

Fury did not even look in the Ás' direction. "I will deal with that when I find the time – in the next decade, by the looks of things. Right now I need some sodding geniuses to figure out this shit, so I'm having her brought in."

Stark shrugged. "Your funeral."

"I would not challenge he who invited Jane to walk on an island with me," Thor assured Rogers, who was standing next to him, "however, I would much prefer to be assured of her safety. I would certainly give much effort to convince her against coming."

Rogers stared at him for a while and then turned to face the front again. "Some dames are much stronger than they appear. To keep them from the battlefield would be dishonoring them."

"I shall never commit such an injustice upon the fair Jane!" Thor boomed, disturbing the conversation that had in the meantime come to completely exclude the scientists. "If, however, our circumstances are so dire that she of the keen eye and keen mind must risk herself, I must attempt to seek out my brother ere the mighty battle!"

Several people spoke at once, creating an unintelligible cacophony.

Thor ignored them all. He raised Mjölnir in a mute valediction, and set off to find one of the exits leading to the topside of the aircraft.

Q bit the inside of his cheek and after careful consideration decided that he was not nervous yet. There were only two ways for that giant oaf to succeed – one was that serendipity would sway his feet to trip over Q; the other was if Q did magic. Of course, the idea that his magic would be available to him and yet he refrained from engaging in it must have been preposterous to some, but those persons probably knew nothing of artificial lighting, central heating and socks. Socks, Q admitted, were the one invention that had made him reconsider the blanket inferiority of the Midgardians. He liked cold, but his circulation wasn't the best even on an exciting day, and long standing in underground laboratories would have taken its toll on his magic-less feet.

For the time being then, he would be playing a mortal.

Q slept in his office, in the sleeping bag he kept there for this purpose. It happened often. He had the training to make the experience almost comfortable, so he woke up rested and nigh on cheerful, until he made the trek to the bathroom and over its course realised that there was less than two percent chance that he would make it until the evening without revealing his origins.

"Q Branch think tank!" Q barked, entering the main office. "Call in all nonessential personnel! Call in people from other branches if they can help with strategy and tactics! If you know anyone vetted who's exceptional at strategic games, call them in too. I want everyone who's not already tasked with saving the planet… or the nation," he allowed, "to get to the mess hall. Starting at nine, sharp! Stragglers will be electrocuted!" Then he passed through to his personal office and slammed the door shut behind himself.

The room was soundproof, but he did have the feed from the security cameras available, and thus knew that he had caused shock and consternation among his underlings. Very few had ever seen him in a similar state before, and those were now reassuring the others that he had not, in fact, been poisoned, or high, or hallucinating due to overwork and neglecting sleep.

At five to nine, about two hundred people were sardined inside the mess hall, sitting on and around the tables, many on chairs they had brought in themselves, others on the floor. Under Q's management the Q Branch had absorbed the entire R&D and IT departments, so it wasn't nearly everyone, but perhaps everyone currently in the building not busy with anything vitally important. There were laptops of all brands everywhere, but there were also a few paper notebooks and some attendees seemed to have nothing but their phones on them. Quite a lot of heads periodically turned to the entrances, but no one else was coming in, so it appeared like they would not have the chance to observe anyone being electrocuted.

Q wasn't entirely sure if he had meant the threat when he had proclaimed it, but in hindsight it did not seem like a bad idea at all.

He said a few choice phrases to the cook that had attempted to oust them, and since he was so many rungs above her that there really was no comparison, she clenched her teeth and bustled off to complain to her boss, who would complain to their boss, who might complain to their boss, who most certainly would not complain to their boss for fear that they may complain to Tanner, of whose existence these people were perhaps vaguely aware. After that cameo Q judged that they were ready to start. He climbed onto the serving counter that usually offered a variety of salads and waited the five seconds it took the room to fall quiet.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he started, skipping over all the niceties (these people worked for him or thereabouts; he was under no obligation to be unfailingly polite), "we're facing an invasion. It's quite unlike any invasion we've faced before, and we do not have a viable defence strategy as of yet." He paused; then it occurred to him that it might be relevant to inform them that: "We need one."

Some of the less sane members of the crowd chuckled at that. The rest was staring at Q in confusion about why he was stalling.

x

By three o'clock in the afternoon the cooks had turned off their cookers and were holding a bridge tournament, going by the sounds occasionally filtering in from the kitchen.

Tanner had come by to complain to Q, but upon a short interrogation it became clear that it was Legal that had come to complain to him, because they were hungry and the mess door was shocking them. Tanner himself had a mildly electrocuted and largely annoyed look about him.

"The Q Branch had the necessary spatial accommodations in the previous building. As this is only temporary housing," Q said with much irony, letting the entire eavesdropping room know not only that their leadership had considered staying here permanently, but also that Q strongly disagreed with this choice, "I understand that we cannot expect a similar level of comfort. However, we are tasked with providing your agents with the means to succeed on their missions, and I say we need an assembly room. You're welcome to remind M of my previous suggestions for premises."

Tanner rubbed his temples. "We're in the middle of a crisis," he hissed, as if that was supposed to have been some huge secret, and the rest of the room hadn't yet been aware of it. "Can't this wait a week?"

Q gave Tanner a look that must have been truly ogrish, for even this hardened man that almost routinely denied Winters paled and subconsciously took a step backwards.

"What," Q breathed, and the temperature around him sank to the point that Tanner's breath condensed into little clouds of vapour as he exhaled, "do you imagine we are working on?! This is the last ditch effort to save your self-important skin, along with six billion others." He raised himself to his full, if unimpressive height, extended his arm and pointed his index finger at the door Tanner had come in through. "Leave."

Tanner swallowed. He looked around the room.

The scientists and assorted clever people were staring at Q as though he had just hung the Moon. The ones closest had felt the temperature change, but they seemed like they had ascribed it to some Boothroydesque device Q had created for the double-ohs to use in some completely predictable situation that would require them to lower the atmosphere's temperature.

Tanner nodded. He looked Q in the eye and said: "In that case, work hard. Good luck."

He left, having impressed Q a little, for there were few who had dared to as much as face him after he had given them a taste of his anger. Once Q truly let loose, he was capable of frightening even Thor, and that Ás was ridiculously unconcerned about his self-preservation.

"Balls like an elephant," someone muttered.

"Do you have something to say?" Q turned in that direction. The temperature was back to its air-conditioned twenty-seven degrees, but his mere attention seemed to freeze those upon whom it fell.

A young man with dreadlocks in his voluminous hair stood up and helped his colleague – a woman on two crutches – to her foot.

"Sir," she spoke, "you said they had a sort of a hive mind. That's a major weakness. That means they are absolutely dependent on continuous communication. So, unless it's telepathy or something else we've never encountered, we could disrupt that."

Q nodded, tapping the pads of his fingers against his lower lip. He didn't know how the Chitauri communicated. "Much of their technology is… biological, for a lack of a better descriptor."

He was still somewhat astounded by how well these mortals had handled the revelation that there indeed were other sentient species in the universe, and that they were about to be attacked by one.

"It's a crying pity we don't have any bio material to analyse," sounded from the other end of the room.

"If we at least knew what their planet consists of… and their atmosphere… can they even breathe air? Do they need to breath?"

Good questions. Great ones, even. If they could not… no, they would be.

"They can," Q said, based on moral certainty. The creature that had brought the scepter to Midgard had been able to, but it had previously survived the Chitauri's world, and while it was indeed possible that it had used protection from the atmosphere and breathing support, such a meeting would be too impractical to facilitate for the gain of one mere puppet.

He tried to recall if he had heard anything else of the species, even a rumour, but nothing came to mind. He had, however, never heard of a creature that was alive and yet did not breathe. And much as they might have resembled constructs, the Chitauri were, indeed, living beings.

"So, what it comes down to is, we need an Iris?"

Q, intermittently unfamiliar with the popular culture as he was, fortunately recognised this reference, if only because the plans for a similar device already existed in the archives. Sadly, without a solid ring to limit the portal, there was no way to install such a lock – and they still did not know enough about the portal to even dream about limiting it.

"No, that only worked because matter could traverse the wormhole only in one way… Q, will this portal be traversable both ways?"

Q bit onto the end of his index finger's nail. It was more difficult than he had expected to apply magical theory to phenomena caused by Midgardian science, but if he took into account the fact that the science was using the Hypercube as a source of direction, while, presumably drawing on a nuclear reactor as a source of power, than it would stand to reason that the Hypercube's functionality would translate.

"Assume both ways," Q instructed them, before remembering that he was speaking practically with a finger in his mouth. How sloppy.

"We need to stopper it, then," the crowd suggested.

"Or make a grille. We make a net of microfibers; they'll kill themselves with their own momentum."

"Yeah, if we had six months to engineer it."

"It's not a bad idea in principle. We can't do it right now, so let's do what we can."

"Have the army spread around and cover it. How big will the portal be?"

Q had no idea.

"We would still need a location for that."

"They won't bother to try and move a reactor."

"A minefield. We can set that up in ten minutes."

"They could come through underwater. Or ten miles above the surface."

"Not if they use a reactor as battery."

Q bit on another nail, itching to move, apparently getting into one of his maniacal phases. No one liked it when he was maniacal. He couldn't stand still.

He wished Bond was there to share the little corner of unrepentant cynicism and perpetually victorious mindset with him.

"Hey, how about we tell them we surrender and then poison their celebratory beer?"

Well, they had been at it for more than seven hours with little success. Against certain enemies – notably the Æsir – that might have been a working plan.

Or Q could let himself be taken prisoner by the Chitauri and strike at them from the inside of their camp. Like Silva, the Ymir-whore. Well, he might have had some rather pointed feelings about it, but it was a valid infiltration strategy and, depending on his enemy, Q might one day decide to implement it, too. Not against the Chitauri, though. He had a feeling that they only gave quarter when they could use mind-control or their captives.

He needed some genius idea. Something completely different from everything that had been suggested – and which did not involve guided missiles with nuclear warheads.

Too bad nothing was occurring to him.

He yawned and narrowed his eyes. Oh fine. So Thor might have the slightest chance to 'make him' as they said at the MI-6. He rested his chin in his palm, reconstructed the link to his spell and delved into its consciousness.

The beast cleaned its glasses, put them on and hunched over to more closely scrutinise a screen. "Who is that?"

"It is Benigno Esteban de Pato, Dr Banner," came from the laptop's speaker in the familiar voice of Stark's machine.

"A passionate fisherman, I see," Romanov remarked, giving the picture of the middle aged man holding a three-foot long catfish a look over Banner's shoulder.

The beast flinched, startled, which in turn made Romanov flinch and attempt to moonwalk away from him.

"What else is he?" Romanov asked, reflexively changing her posture and facial expression to the dewy-eyed, puffy-lipped strong-willed yet doomed woman that had been trained into her. Q found it supremely unattractive, but he had known enough men in the past, mortal and not, who would have ripped their hearts out of their chests and offered them.

Banner looked away, then at her as if he couldn't help himself, and once more away, shaking his head. He took off his glasses again.

Stark did not even notice her pantomime. He was engaged in a typed conversation with his AI, and kept half an ear to the door. "An acquaintance of an acquaintance," he said easily. Since he knew the richest two percent of the world, mostly personally, he probably wasn't even lying. He did, however, close the app, stand in front of the laptop, clap his hands once and smile insincerely. "Dave Kimberley. You know him, Fury?"

"I don't have the time to schmooze in between putting out urban fires," the Director grumbled, appearing in the doorway a moment later.

"Yes, yes, we know." Stark waved one hand, continuously typing with the other. "Enough work to employ two LMDs fulltime."

"Don't I know it." Fury sighed and took a seat. He leaned back, his head falling over the backrest so that he would have been staring at the ceiling, had he bothered to keep his eye open.

Romanov moved toward the scientists' pot to pour him a paper-cup of coffee, but a myopic look from Banner – which was as much of an expression of anxiety as the beast ever showed – froze her. She raised both hands slightly, one still holding the paper-cup, showing that she was not holding a weapon, and was not going to use violence to steal coffee from its rightful addicts.

"Director Fury," Stark's AI spoke, "you have not slept in more than fifty-six hours. Sleep is necessary for the optimalization of-"

"Not having this discussion in front of my subordinates, JARVIS," Fury grumbled.

Stark for a split second met his eye, before Fury closed it again. Unexpectedly – to Q at least – there must have been a little less resentment between these two men than Stark's earlier diatribes would have implied. Perhaps it was just SHIELD then than Stark despised so ardently?

"You seem distracted," Banner pointed out when he caught Stark staring in a different direction and forgetting to type.

Stark took a gulp of his coffee, grimaced, and then turned to Romanov. "When's the last time Coulson's reported in?"

He still hadn't reestablished contact with him and Potts? Q felt warm dread spread through his bones, but was not given much time to divine its reasons, because the grille covering the air vent moved aside and Agent Barton landed in a crouch between Romanov and Fury – who had sat up and scowled in response to Stark's question.

"Why the sudden interest, Stark?" Romanov inquired coyly.

Stark turned to Fury. "Because last I saw Pepper, she left with him, and I haven't heard from her in over twenty-four hours. If this is your scheme, Nick, I'll be pissed, but if not, I need to go find her and break whoever touched her."

"I did not have your girlfriend abducted," Fury replied solemnly, with a flat attempt at sounding annoyed by the accusation.

"You're sure about that?" Stark mocked, but the lines around his eyes deepened in genuine distress. "I know sometimes these minutiae can slip one's mind… I mean, so many schemes to plot, so many people to manipulate or extort-"

"Stark!" Fury barked. He pointed two fingers to the floor in a gesture that seemed to have a meaning only to the two men engaged in the argument, and which made them both deflate. "It crossed my mind, yes. But Coulson had a few pointed counterarguments."

Barton nodded. He glided over to Romanov and muttered: "It was epic. I wouldn't cross Coulson if you paid me."

"You keep missing the point," Stark said, moving back to his computer and starting another written conversation, this one requiring a lot of emphatic Enter-pressing. "Coulson's incommunicado, too. At this point I don't care who's got them. I'm kicking ass and not bothering with names. It's no skin off my nose if you've got to sign a hundred condolences letters tomorrow."

"Stark," Fury repeated, audibly exhausted.

Stark shut the laptop, took it under his arm and looked at the trinity of SHIELD agents. "I'll believe it when I see it. You haven't given me any reason to trust a word out of your mouth."

"It's not us," Fury promised, and even Q wanted to believe him at this point, which showed some serious skills in manipulation. "We've lost contact with the quinjet somewhere around the Vancouver Island."

"And not bothered to tell me," Stark retorted.

"We cannot afford to have you – either of you – distracted now!" Fury gave as a token protest.

"Tough luck."

"Tony…" the beast spoke up gingerly. "I'll keep at it. If I find anything or think of anything…"

"JARVIS will let me know, right buddy?" Stark concluded.

"Of course, sir," the machine replied from the terminal speakers. Apparently, it was already infiltrated deep into the SHIELD servers.

Without further debate or any fanfares, Stark left. Banner instantly shrunk, as if the agents were going to lock him inside a cage now that his protector had left, but Fury only tiredly rubbed the edge of his eye-patch and threw a weary glare at his subordinates.

Barton was absently juggling five glass beakers.

Romanov pursed her lips and crossed her arms. "With all due respect, sir, if Potts comes to harm, it's the last time we'll have gotten Stark to cooperate with us. In fact, it might just push him to the other side entirely."

"Your assessment of Stark missed a few salient points, Agent Romanov," Fury replied in a gravelly voice. "If both Potts and Coulson come to harm, we might as well start redrawing the maps, because Stark will set the world on fire." He shook his head. "You haven't seen him go insane yet."

Q blinked and mentally went over the short meeting between Stark and Coulson that he had witnessed. He couldn't recall anything at all in the direction of what Fury had suggested, but then… who knew? Stark was interesting because he was inscrutable, and Potts seemed like she had been born of ice. There was no telling what treasures lay hidden beneath Coulson's suit.

Back in his office, Q uploaded pictures of Potts and Coulson and let the facial recognition software run. It was a long shot, but if there was any chance, he quite viscerally wanted to aid. Then he had an idea that was either genius or absolutely retarded, and he narrowed the search parameters.