'Bumpy' was a bit of an understatement; they flew out of the valley in a jagged, circuitous line that was the furthest thing from straight Steve had ever seen a plane take. He wouldn't even have thought it possible, if he hadn't known how much input Tony had had into the flight systems of the revamped quinjets.
Once past the perimeter that the J-20s were flying, they still remained subsonic. "We've got enough eyes searching for the carrier that we'll be taking the slow route back for a while," the pilot explained. The pair of medics kept working on Shapanka, setting up an IV and checking the emergency first aid that Natasha had done; Steve watched them, exhausted. His left arm ached with a dull, throbbing pain, and both his ears were still ringing slightly.
He drifted off into a sort of stupor, his senses aware enough of what was going on around him, but his mind no longer really processing anything, until finally the jet went supersonic. One of the medics eventually started checking them over while the other kept attending to Shapanka, but she started with Natasha, first – who was idly rubbing at the ankle that had been encased in ice – and by the time she got around to Steve, even the ringing in his ears was gone. It was still hard to muster the energy to do anything more than slump in his seat; the medic shoved a bottle of something that tasted like a protein shake into his hands and told him to finish it before they got back to the Helicarrier.
He didn't have much of a chance to; they arrived only a few minutes later. Fury wasn't waiting out on the flight deck – although a medical team, all wearing O2 masks, were, and they immediately took charge of Shapanka as he was wheeled out of the jet on a stretcher. The medics had donned masks, too, and looked disapprovingly at Steve, Natasha, and Clint when they couldn't be bothered. Evidently it wasn't important enough that they were willing to face down a trio of Avengers in a snit, though, because neither of them actually said anything.
It was only a brief walk to get inside, anyway, and there Fury was waiting for them, taking in their dishevelled and blood-stained uniforms – they'd all had a turn carrying Shapanka at some point – with a single glance. But he didn't give them the option of going to clean up before debriefing, instead turning on his heel and striding off, every line in his posture signalling his full expectation that they would follow. "Thor fried his comm again," he said flatly as they strode along, heading in the direction of the bridge. "I have one report from a pilot, now in the custody of the Chinese military, about a dragon; another pilot downed by dragonfire; and a third who dropped so quickly we don't yet know what got him." So Borjigin had taken down the SHIELD jet that had pursued him. Damn.
The bridge doors swooshed open, and they emerged onto the bridge, where Maria was standing at the command post. She drew herself up sharply as they approached. "Sir."
"I think it's safe to say that Borjigin isn't exactly ordinary," Clint said wryly, pulling out a chair and easing himself into it. Yeah, he'd strained muscles throwing himself out of the way of one of those blasts, Steve thought, looking at him. Or maybe that was from the crash; Natasha was also moving stiffly in a similar fashion. "But if he's a mutant, that's one hell of a mutation."
"He kept pointing whenever he was about to do something," Steve chipped in, claiming a seat of his own. It was tempting to allow himself to drift off again, but now that they'd assembled on the bridge, it became more obvious than ever that they had three teammates missing. Maybe the two of them still out there were nigh-invulnerable, but they were still worth worrying about.
"You caught those rings he had?" Clint asked him. "Big, tacky things – and I'd eat my bow if I they're at all traditional – "
"Yeah," Steve nodded. He didn't know anything about Vietnamese – if Borjigin even was Vietnamese – or Chinese or Mongolian tradition, but the rings certainly had been tacky, in a way – sort of the same way that Thor's getup, if worn by anybody except Thor, would be incredibly tacky –
"The Makluan," Steve said, meeting Clint and Natasha's eyes and getting nods from both of them. He looked to Fury. "Thor said the dragon was a Makluan – another race of aliens, I guess. If those rings were really some sort of alien weapon, then that'd explain a lot."
"Have we got eyes back on our two wayward Avengers?" Fury asked Hill, sounding slightly frustrated.
She sounded the same way when she replied. "No, sir. From their last reported trajectory they should be crossing into Russia within the next five minutes, and we'll have eyes then." For people used to being able to pinpoint anyone, anywhere, with satellites, being unable to rely upon that network had to be frustrating. Another window popped up on her display, and she grimaced. "Sir, the Council is on the line for you."
Fury narrowed his eye. "Put 'em on in the other room." He looked around the table, and nodded to them all before striding out.
Natasha uncurled from her seated position, stretching subtly, and managing to give the impression of a cat flexing her claws. Definitely not a housecat, though – a puma, maybe. "Is Shapanka cleared by medical yet?" she asked Maria.
The 2IC tapped at another of the displays. "They're just finishing up. Shouldn't be long, if you want to go stake out an interrogation room." She smiled coldly, a look that Natasha returned.
"I think I'll do that." She sauntered out of the room.
Steve pulled up a document on the table and started tapping out his report for their latest mission, swapping theories with Clint about Borjigin's powers. "He's got to have something else we didn't see if he took down a jet too quick to get a report back."
"That blast he used against the Hulk would do it," Clint suggested.
"Yeah, and why didn't he use that one again?" Conventional weapons needed ammo, but in Steve's experience, weapons based on alien technology tended to have no such limitations.
"Power overload?"
"Wonder where they get their power from..."
"...scientists can have that one."
"Shapanka's out," Natasha reported over the team commline.
Clint stood at the same time as Steve did, then grinned and tilted his head, inviting Steve to follow him. "Always fun to watch Nat make an idiot out of somebody. As long as it's not you. And even then it's kinda fun, sometimes," he finished contemplatively. "Kinda like – "
"I get the picture," Steve interrupted him. Underneath his irritation he got what Clint was trying to do, he did, but he wasn't in the mood to be distracted.
The interrogation rooms were tiny boxes, ten-by-ten-by-ten cube cells brightly lit from the ceiling with one-way mirrors on three sides – although from the inside, they didn't look like mirrors so much as they looked like plaster. Steve and Clint stood behind one of the mirrors, listening to the interrogation through Natasha's comm - but it was entirely in Russian, so Clint had to translate for Steve. Although Clint was mostly fluent in Russian, he occasionally stumbled, and Steve thought of JARVIS, briefly, before he could shove the thought away.
"You're not what I expected from reading your CV," Natasha opened, settling into her chair with just a hint of wariness. She'd cleaned up and changed into a fresh suit, then added a jacket over top. It added to the picture she was presenting: trying for casualness, but letting her caution – maybe even fear – show. If Steve had never seen her before, he might have even fallen for it – but the Black Widow was always on guard, and it never meant fear.
Shapanka's right hand was entirely encased within a cast, but it couldn't have been too bad a wound, or he wouldn't have been out of medical so quick. He did look drugged, though: eyes hazed over, listing slightly to one side. That could also have been insouciance; he was slumped in his chair like a recalcitrant child.
He didn't reply to Natasha's statement, just eyed her up and down. She leaned back beneath his gaze, and said, "Then again, I guess you've been out of your field for a long time."
"I kept up," Sharpanka growled at her – or tried to. The drugs, though, kept his voice from settling quite into the register he was aiming for. "A lot of time to read and think in prison. SHIELD enjoyed my thoughts, eh?"
Steve closed his eyes. Damn it, Tony. Of course Tony would have needed him up-to-date… but he couldn't help but feel betrayed, looking at the man as he gloated.
Natasha acknowledged the point with a nod, and riposted, "From the results of your research in China, it doesn't look like that thinking got you very far."
Shapanka slammed his good hand down on the table. "That was not my fault! I told those idiots it was not ready for deployment. Ha, that it works as well as it does is to my credit!"
Clint grimaced as the scientist went on, while Natasha began to look slowly, grudgingly impressed. "He's speaking science now – that's no more Russian than 'English' is English. A tech'll have to translate the footage."
Watching Shapanka spill his guts so easily, watching Natasha's reactions, felt… unsatisfying. In his head, he knew it was the desired outcome. But a part of him wanted Natasha to stand up and smile coldly at Shapanka, to thank him for his help and leave a look of utter bewilderment on his face, just like she'd done to Loki. That wouldn't work here – Loki's plan had been based in power plays, in bold actions, while the current mess was about the fine intricacies of cutting-edge science; alienating Shapanka wouldn't be to their advantage. But reality didn't stop him from wanting it, from wanting to see the dismay on Shapanka's pudgy face, the knowledge that he'd been thoroughly had. It was cruel, and petty, and – Steve felt shame heat his cheeks, and said instead, "She's good."
Clint shrugged. "It's all in the initial approach – reading people, all that shit. Sometimes I wonder if she's not telepathic." He sounded fond, and a bit distracted, listening. "Huh. Sounds like Borjigin was the guy calling all the shots," he said, after Shapanka said his name several times, with unkind-sounding syllables in between. Then he swore. "'Hidden castles, bolt holes – guards and minions – as bad as Stark,'" he translated, when Steve looked at him questioningly. "'Yanking us about without telling us where we were going, or how – a paranoid madman.'"
Carefully, with first occasional comments and then a bit more sympathy, Natasha worked him around, weaning him away from the science-babble. "They didn't value you enough to take you with them."
"They don't value anything. They are idiots," Shapanka said, and he sounded angry – not at Natasha, but at his erstwhile scientists. "I told them that the matches needed to be closer, that the rejection ratio was not going to solve itself – but they do not care. Hansen has fallen in love with her work – she's blind to its faults. Borjigin wants to improve the human race and doesn't care how he does it."
"Yet you didn't leave them," she pointed out.
"And go where? Borjigin is a cult leader! Stark had cut me off, left me with nowhere to go – I had no choice! Better to stay where I at least had some chance to defend myself!"
"The ice gauntlets." She smiled. "It works particularly well against them, doesn't it?"
He glared at her, as if suddenly realizing what he'd given away, and something small and ugly within Steve enjoyed it.
"Sir, recommendation: try ice against extremis," Clint said into his comm., on another channel.
Natasha leaned forward, putting one hand over the table. "Your research doesn't have to end here," she said, and Shapanka's expression went calculating again. "We're looking for a way to shut extremis down, or make it less… lethal. Your research lies along those areas. We'd be happy to have you on board – all the funding and equipment you need would be provided."
"I will not work for a secret master again," he spat.
"Funding, equipment, and – " she paused, " – publication rights."
He stared at her, not answering – but from the greed in his eyes, the want, Steve knew that Natasha had won a deal.
They continued the discussion for a while longer, Shapanka soon launching back into science babble – "Man, he has a hate-on for those two," Clint commented. "Sounds like he's ripping their work to shreds."
"Drenkov break this fast?"
"Yeah, they got Bruce to sit down in front of him and he pretty much started screaming in incoherent rage."
Shapanka's eyes were even more glazed over now – pain and fatigue wearing at him after an extremely trying day, no doubt. He was swaying back and forth, just a bit, enough to be hypnotizing; Steve blinked and had to look away. He could use a hot shower himself.
"If you need to rest before you can start working," Natasha said, solicitously, but Shapanka stopped her off with an almost drunken cutting gesture.
"No! I have lost too much time already."
"Very well." Natasha rose, her movements unhurried and almost deferential – slipping back into the first role she had been playing. She exited, leaving her out of Clint and Natasha's view; Shapanka leaned back in his chair and looked impatient, and also in pain, grimacing as soon as the door closed behind her.
Clint chuckled. "Macho guy."
Half a minute later, a pair of black-clad guards entered and escorted Shapanka from the room, and Natasha joined them in their observation spot. She looked vaguely unsatisfied with the results of the interrogation. "He won't be able to fix the problem," she said with a frown. "The entire team of them working for months couldn't do it."
"All it needs is an off-switch," Clint pointed out.
"An off-switch isn't good enough," Steve shook his head. "There're over a million people infected by that thing."
"If it can make it go inert in their blood…" Clint shrugged. "It doesn't have to be an off-switch for them. I don't know, I'm not a scientist."
Steve sighed. "Has Bruce – " but the pair of them were already shaking their heads firmly.
"Do not ask him that," Natasha said. "It's very far out of his field."
Oh. He supposed that was unfair, to expect miracles from Bruce – sure, Tony had joked about learning thermonuclear physics overnight, but when Steve had asked him and Bruce about that, they'd both chuckled.
"Actually, already was an expert." Tony had winked, and tapped the arc reactor. "Hill isn't, though."
"It's not really – the mechanism is quite different," Bruce had shrugged, pondering the faint light glowing through Tony's shirt.
"Well, yeah, but I had to have somewhere to start when I – " and that was the last that Steve had understood of that conversation.
Hill's voice echoed through their comms. "You have excellent timing, as always, Agent Romanoff," she said, the sleek, cold tone of her voice reminding Steve of how she'd smiled at Natasha before. He'd never seen them interact before – maybe for good reason. They made a vaguely terrifying duo. "Your teammates are on their way back."
They got to the bridge in time to see the real-time footage of Thor landing, carrying a semi-conscious Bruce wrapped up in his cape. A medical team rushed out to meet them, armed with oxygen and electric blankets – along with a technician carrying a spare comm. for Thor. Sheepishly, Thor pulled the old one out of his left ear and replaced it with the new one. He looked as unscathed as always, at least.
"I am sorry," he said quietly into it. "I have failed. The Mandarin lost us in the mountains."
"Is Bruce alright?" Steve asked, flicking a glance Fury's way. Maybe it wasn't his place to demand the first answers, but he had a responsibility to his team. But Fury was staring at Hill, in a way that suggested they were having an entire conversation made out of silences; she nodded, and her fingers flew over the display, bringing up a file that Steve couldn't read from this angle. Steve recognized that look, though: realization. What did SHIELD know about 'the Mandarin'?
"I am not sure," Thor sounded concerned as he trailed after the medical team, who were making haste to bring Bruce inside on a stretcher; Bruce's eyes were opening and closing, but he didn't really look all there. "The transformation left him exhausted, I think."
The Mandarin would wait; his team came first. Steve nodded to Fury and left for medical, Natasha and Clint following after a silent eye-conversation of their own.
"What did you mean, the Mandarin?" Fury asked over the comm.
"T'was what the Makluan called the scientist, Borjigin, while coming to his aid. I thought it some form of title."
"Hmm." There was a pause, then, and Steve would have been willing to bet that he was having another conversation with Hill – either silently or off comms, it didn't matter. "Care to fill us in on the latest alien invaders?"
Thor's tone changed, growing more sombre. "The Makluans are a peaceful, benevolent people – but in ages past they have had their share of renegades, exiled from their world for their inclinations toward conquest."
"Making it somebody else's problem," Steve said dryly.
"It is not a wise strategy, and it has made them indebted to other worlds in the past, as they are now to Earth; if your grievance is taken before them I have no doubt they would offer recompense. But that, like Asgard's repayment, will also have to wait upon the Bifrost's repairs; their world is much further from Earth than Asgard."
"We'll keep that in mind," Fury said. "Anything else you can tell us?"
"If this one has been working with this Borjigin, as would seem likely by the rings he now commands, then you should keep a sharp eye, for they are shapeshifters of great skill and may assume any form they please. Although this renegade fled your world, I do not think he will have gone far – if only because their bridging magic is not so advanced as that of Asgard."Thor's voice in his ear was only a fraction of a second or so behind the voice Steve could hear from around the corner; he entered medical in time to see Thor shake his head. "That, and his pride was sorely wounded, to hurl such imprecations at me as he did."
"Was that all roaring, or did he have some other... way of talking?" Natasha asked, looking intrigued. "It didn't sound like words."
"It would not, to your ears," Thor agreed. "The Makluan speak in many tones at once, all overlaid; each tone, a word; all of them together, a sentence. T'is far different from your own speech, but the Allspeak is universal."
They clustered outside of medical, watching as a doctor and two nurses fussed over Bruce, until he began to wake up and they got waved in. While Bruce sat huddled under a blanket on a nearby bed, wearing a nasal cannula for O2 and drinking something warm and sugary, Dr. Reese berated Thor, until he promised that the next time he had a passenger for more than a minute, he would either fly at low altitude or bring along O2 for them.
"You're lucky he doesn't have brain damage," Dr. Reese finished off, planting his hands on his hips. Thor, perhaps because Bruce did look rather miserable, bowed his head in contrition and agreed.
"And you," Reese rounded on Steve then, "are still not cleared to be debarking. I accept that it was an emergency situation, but you need to finish getting cleared."
"Is that really necessary?" Natasha said neutrally, claiming a warm and sugary drink for herself from one of the nurses, who nodded approvingly and pressed them on Steve and Clint, as well. Which... wasn't really necessary, but didn't hurt, either.
Steve put his arm out and rotated each joint, testing the motion and the flex of muscles. "It feels fine," he shrugged. Really, it did – still a bit weaker than normal, but okay.
"We need x-rays," Reese said sternly. We being the operative word, Steve thought; he was pretty sure that SHIELD medical wasn't concerned with his health half so much as they were with their data on the serum.
"I apologize for not signing your cast," Thor said, rather out of the blue, staring at his drink contemplatively, as if he found it strange. Steve took a sip of his own, and decided that yes, it was rather strange-tasting, like somebody had thrown a bunch of tropical fruits in a blender with a hamburger. Yet strangely, it worked. "I had not known it to be a tradition."
"It's fine," Steve said, a bit bemused. "I only had it on for a day. That I was awake, anyway."
"Your healing factor from major traumatic injury is way beyond expectations," Bruce mumbled around his straw, before frowning down at it and removing the straw from his mouth. Still a bit out of it, then. "It help explain why you managed to survive the ice – you didn't appear to have any injuries when you woke up, and really, you ought to have done a number on yourself – I mean. Uh." He fumbled for his glasses, looking even more nervous when he realized he didn't have any. "Sorry. I don't know why I said that."
Natasha and Clint were tag-teaming Reese with matching frowns, now, and the nurse who'd handed them the drinks chivvied him away. It was, Steve reflected, always the nurses with common sense and compassion... the real nurses, at least. With SHIELD it was sometimes hard to tell.
"S'okay, Doc," Steve said, doing his level best to keep his voice even. Happily, he succeeded. "I, uh – it was pretty quick." He was pretty sure it had been, at least, since he didn't have much memory of it – though as he'd told Leo in the past, sometimes he dreamed about lying there for hours, while the cold crept over him one agonizing inch at a time. But other times, he dreamed about the crash, death rushing up and over him in an instant, and upon waking he could never figure out which was the true version – if either of them were.
"This world is such a fragile one," Thor said softly. Bruce was looking between the pair of them, now, his drink abandoned entirely. "And I have failed it too many times already. I still do not know how my brother slipped free his cage, nor what other mischief he might have wrought whilst doing so. Neither may I investigate it further, while I must remain upon Earth to assist with this disaster."
That Steve really had no answer for. Loki's fingerprints were popping up periodically in this investigation – Asgard had screwed up. But still, the possibility lingered that it might not be Loki – that it was the Cube, or even some other alien force entirely.
Or maybe just brilliant, fallible humanity.
Fury appeared then, looking displeased; none of them straightened at his ire, and Steve wondered when he'd stopped caring about the opinions of his sort-of superior officer. It had been a long day. "Sir," Clint acknowledged him; Natasha just nodded cordially. Steve startled a bit at them; they'd been doing such good impressions of background art fixtures that he'd half-forgotten they were there.
"The Council is under extreme pressure from China to extradite you," Fury said, crossing his arms over his chest. "They graciously understand that extraditing you two," this was at Bruce and Thor, "would bit a bit difficult."
"And are we being extradited?" Steve asked him, tilting his head to indicate himself, Clint, and Natasha.
Fury snorted. "Do you want to be?"
"Not really."
"Well, then. I'd highly recommend you hole up somewhere nice and public on American soil," Fury told him. "I'd suggest Stark Tower, as Ms. Potts needs to get off my damn ship before she launches a corporate takeover of it, and for appearances' sake somebody should be keeping an eye on her – for her own safety, as well."
Well, that explained how Pepper had been keeping busy. Fury's words also meant that the WSC was willing to throw Pepper to the wolves – not that Steve had any doubts about their lack of moral integrity in the first place. But if Pepper was no longer safe on the Helicarrier...
"That we can do," he agreed. Babysitting was a tedious assignment, but at least it was something he could do. Until their missing scientists popped back up on the grid, there was nothing he could do here.
"Tower's got a lot of security holes without JARVIS to keep an eye on it," Clint observed.
"The techs we've had there have been working on it," Fury waved off this concern. "By now it should be up to minimum standards. If you're so concerned about the situation, Agent Barton, you might try giving them some pointers."
"Sir yes sir," Clint murmured.
"I want you three back on US soil, and the Avengers back in the public eye before the Council gets any more ideas. You're on press conference duty until further notice."
Steve allowed himself to close his eyes, briefly. Oh, Lord. He hated press conferences.
"We get our own bird?" Clint demanded. Steve raised an eyebrow at him. A quinjet could land on the renovated and reinforced balcony of the Tower, just barely, but there wasn't exactly any place to stick it – the bay wasn't finished yet (might never be finished, now) and leaving an open bird on top of a skyscraper was just asking for trouble.
Fury snorted, apparently finding the request just as ridiculous as Steve did – Clint's love of flying things could get a bit stupid at times. "You already crashed one bird in Manhattan, Barton, I'm not giving you another to play with."
"You're no fun, sir," Clint retorted easily.
"I aim to displease. Scram."
Clint saluted lazily and left. Fury glared at them all, was apparently satisfied that they'd do as he bid, and left as well.
"Alas that I must remain here," Thor lamented, his voice lowering as he became even more serious. "There is no honour in slaying these foes, changed against their will as they are." He frowned, a brooding look in his eyes, and a wave of empathy crashed over Steve.
"Maybe we should stay," he suggested.
"No, you shouldn't," Fury informed him over the comm., apparently having overheard. "We've got weaponry in the works to assist Thor; the Avengers are neither needed nor wanted here."
"Do not borrow my troubles, Steve," Thor shook his head. "Perhaps I will yet discover how to capture them without slaying them. No, you must go, and reassure your citizens before the panic worsens. Dr. Banner," he turned to Bruce, growing concerned again, "are you fit to walk?"
Dr. Reese returned, evidently summoned by the thought of somebody wanting to remove a patient from his care, and took one look at them and sighed. "You can have him if you take him in a wheel chair, and take the O2 tank. Leave that on," he told Bruce firmly, when the latter reached up to pull away the nasal cannula. "You of all people ought to have a bit more care for your brain!" Then, apparently realizing just what he'd said and to whom, he backpedaled, "Well, all of you should..."
"Here." Natasha pushed a wheelchair – evidently summoned from thin air, or perhaps from one of the nurses – around next to the bed.
Bruce rolled his eyes, got up, and sat himself back down in it, but didn't protest, perhaps because Dr. Reese was still looking nervous. The rest of them closed ranks around the chair, sheltering Dr. Reese from Bruce's view, and as a group they went up to the top bay where the quinjets were housed.
"Farewell, my friends," Thor bade them after he had helped settle Bruce in – refusing to take with him the O2 tank that Bruce had somewhat irritably shoved at him. "Perhaps soon we shall be fortunate enough to be called together again by a nobler cause."
"So long as I can stay at home, I'm perfectly fine by that," Pepper murmured. She was strapped in near the front of the plane, and spoke low enough that while Steve could hear her easily, only Thor also caught the words.
"Lady Pepper – " he began, and then faltered, hesitating. Steve could read his thoughts on his face; they matched his own. It was Tony's work, used in a way he'd doubtless never intended – but he'd been the one to pull together scientists to create it, and he'd kept it secret. You do it and you figure out what to do about it after...a stupid sentiment, when you didn't know that there was going to be an after.
Everybody always thought they'd have more time than they did.
Pepper smiled thinly and stepped in to fill the gap Thor had left. "We'd be pleased to see you if you got a chance to drop by. And please let Jane know that the standing offer made to her by Stark Industries remains so long as we are still solvent."
"I shall do so." Thor gave them all a small, regal nod, and stepped back; the ramp of the quinjet raised upward, closing on the sight of crew clearing the way for the bay door to open overhead. The jet jolted, slightly, as it was raised, light steaming in through the cockpit window – and then they were off.
The Tower felt empty upon their arrival, although there were several floors full of SHIELD agents not too far below, and the entirety of the SI New York headquarters below those. But there was nobody waiting for them to welcome them home, and a lump lodged itself in Steve's throat when he realized he was expecting JARVIS to greet them. They all dispersed quickly; only Pepper had much in the way of luggage, and hers was all on wheels, easily manageable by herself and the SHIELD agents who followed her.
The Tower systems still mostly worked, even without JARVIS, and after some difficulty Steve was able to check his email. There were only a few new messages of importance. One was from Leo, asking about a virtual appointment scheduled for tomorrow afternoon; Steve tapped out a reply in the affirmative and sent it off quickly. He felt oddly reluctant to speak to Leo, but knew that if he didn't, it would raise flags with SHIELD, and the thought of dealing with the potential consequences of that was exhausting. At least Leo wouldn't mind if Steve ended up spending most of the session sitting in silence, or just sketching.
The second email was even more wearying – it was from Sitwell, a prepared package for tomorrow's press conference: 11am sharp, this was what he was expected to cover, these were the answers and phrasing SHIELD suggested to questions he might be asked – and Steve was sure they were only suggestions: he'd made himself clear enough to SHIELD on that front – and thesewere restricted topics. The third list was much longer than the first; that was always so, with SHIELD-prepared press conferences.
There were items on the second two lists that he didn't recognize: commentary about places that sounded like they were in China, but hadn't been on the list of attacked sites that he'd gotten when he'd checked the news on the Helicarrier; lawsuits, launched against SI, against provincial Chinese governments, against China, against America, against (for some unfathomable reason) Norway; accusations against governments, SHIELD, and SI of everything under the sun from weapons development to eugenics programs. He pulled up a browser and searched some of them out, reading until he felt faintly nauseous; and then he went down in the gym and tried to run himself into a fugue, the treadmill set almost as high as it could go.
Two hours later, he gave up, came back up from the gym and took a shower. But the empty quiet in his quarters soon drove him out again, up to the communal kitchen. The Tower felt so lonely that for a moment he thought no one else would be there, but instead he walked in upon an argument – Bruce against Fury, who was up on a video screen hovering over the table.
"None of that data is cleared to be shared with him," Fury was saying as Steve walked in. Clint and Natasha stood off to the side, watching, both of them in 'off-duty' postures: Natasha in balance, as she always was, but leaning against a wall, while Clint slouched beside her.
"You're the Director, you can clear it." Bruce took off his glasses and rubbed at them with his shirt-tails – a sure sign that he was trying to distract himself.
Next to Fury was an open file, but all Steve could make out of it was that it was a long list of numbers. He had no idea what they could possibly mean, although he could tell that there was a general overall grouping to it. Other, equally obscure files were spread out on the table.
"What's going on?" Steve asked Natasha and Clint quietly, nodding at the screen when Fury glanced his way. "Sir."
"I cracked Tony's encryption," Bruce put his glasses back on and picked up a tablet pen, using it to point at the files on the table, "on the files that you pulled out," he pointed to Steve, "from Shenzhen."
Steve hadn't even known they were encrypted. "What'd you find?"
"Coordinates. Test results. This stuff?" Bruce made a circling gesture in the air over the left-hand side of the table, "It's results data. SHIELD's been trying to open a portal – any portal, let alone a stable one – for the last half-year. Losing the Cube really set them back. Tony? He did it four and a half months ago."
"Is there any record of how he managed it?" Fury asked neutrally, apparently unphased by this latest demonstration of Tony showing up SHIELD.
"Don't know. I'll keep looking," Bruce said. "But that's not the interesting part – or that's not what Tony was interested in, anyway. He opened up a couple of stable portals, there're results for that – and then he keeps going, trying for further out. Further away." Bruce paused for a moment, considering his words. "He's got a list of coordinates here – there's an underlying aim, I know it, but I'm not sure what it is yet. Thor's the only person who might be able to tell us where those coordinates lead."
"Tony went to considerable difficulty to keep all of this research hidden from our alien friends," Fury replied.
"Right, okay. But – look." Bruce pointed at the file hovering in mid-air. "This isn't from Shenzhen – this is from one of the drives that got reconstructed, data that JARVIS was able to restore." He looked at them all expectantly.
"And it is..." Clint spread his hands, apparently attempting to convey his lack of understanding. Steve sympathized – he had no idea what it was, either. Although, the more he looked at it, the more a sense of a pattern stood out – the file Bruce was pointing at was laid out in the same pattern as the ones on the table.
"Right, well, at first I had no idea because it didn't make much sense – if it was a signal, it was just all noise. But then I got these open," he pointed to the table, "And it's the same. They're coordinates. But these ones?" he pointed back to the floating file, "This file was created almost six months ago exactly. The same day of the invasion. Timestamp has it being only a few hours after."
"If he got an idea of where the Chitauri came from..." Natasha suggested, but Bruce shook his head.
"No, no – see, that's not all of it. These coordinates are in the Generalized Foster Theory – it's expanded to the full eleven dimensions," he started to explain, and then obviously realized he was about to lose his audience and backtracked. "Look. It's like – the previous coordinates we used were all points on a line, we could go back and forth in 1D only. And the new system's a cube – we don't just have length, we have height and depth. It's... more generalized. But Foster only came up with it two months ago, which puts it at a couple months after Tony put these coordinates in," he pointed to the floating file, "And after he opened a portal using coordinates of this form," he pointed to one of the files on the table. "Somehow he got the correct type of coordinates right from the start." Bruce looked around at them all. "He didn't do that on his own."
"The Cube," Clint said, staring at the floor. "Has to be. The things..." he trailed off, before looking up and speaking directly to Fury. "Sir, we told you our theory on that." He exchanged a meaningful glance with Steve. Natasha looked like she understood what he meant, too, so maybe Clint had shared it with her, too – but he obviously hadn't with Bruce, because Bruce looked slightly out of the loop.
Steve studied the file, glancing back and forth. No further patterns leaped out at him – but Bruce was right. "We need to know where these go," he said, throwing his weight behind Bruce's argument. Bruce shot him a quick look of gratitude, before raising his chin and staring back at Fury. Left unsaid was that if Bruce really wanted to talk to Thor, there wasn't much that SHIELD could do to stop him, short of escalating to all-out hostilities.
Fury sighed. "I'll get him on the line."
"I am no scholar in the ways of magic, but I know the realms as well as any child of Asgard," Thor agreed, once he'd been filled in on the situation. "Tell me these directions, then."
"Easier to send them to you, I think," Bruce said, pulling up a window to do just that, but Thor held up a hand to forestall him.
"Unfortunately, it is not. Although the Allspeech encompasses all spoken words, I am unable to decipher your written language."
"Really?" asked Bruce, looking surprised. "The input matters that much?"
"Indeed. The Allspeech only functions for auditory communication, for its evolution was governed by concussive phenomena."
Steve blinked. Not that he'd thought Thor was stupid, but that had been significantly more 'English' than he'd expected from the guy. Then again, considering who Thor was talking to, maybe that was also a facet of the Allspeech. He could get why SHIELD's scientists wanted to pick Thor's brain, certainly.
"Fascinating," Bruce murmured. "Uh – and not helpful. Each of these is... pretty long. Can you read Norse?"
"Aye, well enough."
"Let me just... run these numbers through a translation program, then..." On the screen, a file began growing, with blocky runes instead of numerals. Bruce hadn't been exaggerating about the length, Steve noted, with some dismay. This was supposed to be a single set of coordinates? There were way more than just eleven numbers up on the screen.
Well, it was a step above rocket science.
Thor, though, read incredibly quickly, scrolling by as though he were merely skimming the file, for all that he was frowning hard.
"Any of that making sense?" Bruce asked after a few minutes. Thor held up a hand to stay him.
He reached the end and paused for some time more, looking like he was doing some very complicated mental calculations, before he finally nodded. "Aye. That would open a portal to Vanaheim, homeworld of the Vanir. I visited there often in my youth; our realms have been allies since long before my birth."
Bruce noted that down, and sent over another translated file, which Thor considered equally contemplatively – this time for even longer. "Nithafjoll, if I calculate aright. One of the lesser worlds of the svartalfar."
Bruce looked like he would have happily let Thor fill him in on cosmology all day, but Steve interrupted. "Those are worlds he managed to get a portal, to, right? He can't have been that interested in them if he didn't follow up. What about the ones he was trying to get to? Or some of those?" He pointed to the file that still hung next to Fury and Thor's images.
Nodding, Bruce sent one of those over, but Thor, after frowning in thought for several minutes, shook his head. "I can make nothing of those directions," he admitted. "They are nonsensical –one might as well give directions to climb a mountain by swimming."
"Really?" Bruce stared at them. "I haven't had time to test them yet... I'll have to..." he trailed off, and Steve stepped in before he could get too lost in thought.
"If those don't work, then what about the ones he was trying to open portals to?"
As he read this time, Thor's expression became grave and melancholy. "Ah."
"What is it?" Steve asked, but it came out so flat that it almost wasn't a question at all.
"I do not know the realm to which those directions lead," Thor said, "but I recognize the distance, for it is much further than the bridge to any place within the Nine Realms. It is not something discussed beyond the royal family of Asgard." His expression was closed off, brooding.
"I don't know if you've noticed, but we're on Midgard," Fury countered. "And one of us figured it out – maybe even all by himself." He glanced to Bruce.
"He was really close to getting that one, I think," Bruce said, pushing his glasses up on his nose with one finger. "Readings put it as pulling in too much power on the last trial run, but projections put it that he'd be able to get it open within the next month – "
"I see," Thor said, holding up a hand. "You have the right to know, my friends, although I do not think the knowledge will do you any good. We call them elseworlds – worlds within other copies of the Nine Realms, subtly altered by past events and by drift within time."
There was silence, for a moment, as they all absorbed this.
"Alternate realities," Bruce said faintly, and then, stronger, "Oh my god, alternate realities. The logical extension – Jane was saying that it had to be, in one of the higher dimensions it would start branching – "
"Branching," Steve said slowly. He wasn't quite sure he was on the right track – wasn't sure he wanted to be on the right track. How likely was it that sci-fi authors would get this right? "You mean like that idea where every time someone makes a choice, there's another world where the opposite decision was made."
"That's a simplification of it – it, uh, actually has to do with quantum states... but it's a good metaphor, I guess," Bruce agreed. "In one world, you turn left, in another, right – two possible worlds split from that, and then those split, and so on, so that there's infinitely many worlds out there, where at least one thing is different."
"Not so," Thor shook his head. "The sum of possible worlds is enormous indeed, but it is finite."
Bruce looked taken aback, like his worldview had been suddenly knocked over, and then, even more abruptly, had a bucket of ice water dumped over its head. "What? But then how - ?" he broke off, mumbling to himself, and opened up a blank document on the table that he started scrawling equations in.
"Dr. Banner," Thor interrupted sternly, and then he repeated himself again; Bruce looked up the second time. "Do not dwell upon this. It will do you no good. We keep this knowledge in trust because it is dangerous; in times past, even some of the greatest sorcerers of our people went mad from searching these far corners of the universe. The vagaries of the elseworlds do not lend themselves to use or function; the insight gained by their study is far outweighed by the costs it presents. Tony would not be the first to give in to the despair conjured by the possibilities of a life lived differently. Gaze far enough, and it is inevitable."
Tony's name put a damper on Bruce's enthusiasm; he gently laid down the pen on the table, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath before opening them. "Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, 'it might have been'." Steinbeck.
"Yes," Thor agreed.
"So why'd the Cube show him that?" Steve looked sharply at Thor. He, too, felt the weight of Tony's name – Tony's work. A reason for his actions, finally, for the sudden, abrupt left turn in his decisions – but it was an empty reason, just as hollow of meaning as any accident – or, no, even worse than that. A punishment, handed down for scientific arrogance – Tony had looked too far, and the Abyss had looked back.
Steve had never believed much in the idea of karma, and cosmic retribution. Pettiness was for humans; God's forgiveness was infinite. Thor's warnings made him feel beaten down, in a way that getting beaten up in back alleys by bullies never had – beaten down in the same way he'd felt when Bucky had died, when he'd woken up seventy years in the future, when he'd found Tony's corpse.
"I do not know."
Natasha shook her head, pursing her lips in a way that meant she was about to play Devil's Advocate, even if she didn't especially believe in what she was saying. "It might not have been the Cube – it could have been Loki. Tony was out of communications for over a minute while he spoke to him."
"Why would he have showed Tony this?" Bruce asked, pointing at the coordinate sets again.
"I do not know that Loki would have had this knowledge, although perhaps he gained it in his time elsewhere," Thor put in. "In Asgard we do not keep records of the paths to the elseworlds."
"But it's possible. Why would Tony have seen it in the Cube?" Natasha countered. "The original coordinates – you said they're nonsense."
"They are," Thor affirmed.
"No, wait," Bruce said, holding up a hand. "How? You said they're like – trying to swim through a mountain – "
"I did not intend it to be taken literally – "
"No, but – what if there's not a mountain? What if these coordinates are from... somewhere else? It doesn't make any sense to tell somebody to drive east for a thousand miles if you start in New York, but if you started on the other coast – "
Thor paused for thought. "They should need to be very far away, indeed, to have a chance to be more than nonsense," he said finally, sounding reluctant. "I cannot imagine that the whole of the Earth, even in decades hence, would be able to muster the power to bridge there."
"Maybe you underestimate Tony, then," Bruce said.
"I do not," Thor said, his eyes compassionate. "It is not the ingenuity of our fallen friend that is in question. Rather, it is that I doubt this Realm possesses enough energy to be conjured forth, no matter the means."
"Oh," said Bruce, his eyes widening. "That kind of far."
"I do not even know that creating such a bridge would be within Asgard's capabilities; methinks it would lead beyond even Heimdall's sight, and that is very far, indeed. The Tesseract, perhaps, might be capable, but its nature is far more ancient."
Fury scowled. "Loki's presence has been all over this situation from the beginning. If he involved the Tesseract, then anything might be possible. My respect for your mother notwithstanding, you need to let us have our own experts examine his prison."
"There is no way out of that cell. I swear to it." Thor's brow was crinkled in frustration.
"Loki doesn't know how to use the Tesseract. He needed human scientists for that." Clint's face was blank and cold. "What about from the other side?"
Everybody turned to look at him; he crooked his mouth into a parody of a smile, and said to Fury, "Doors still open both ways, sir. If not that one," he tilted his head toward the screen, "then another."
"You're suggesting interference from one of these elseworlds," Fury said flatly.
Steve felt like somebody had grabbed hold of his insides and squeezed. A door opened from the other side. Tony had – if there was any possibility – if it hadn't been him –
Thor shook his head, and Steve had to stop himself from clenching his hands into fists, the sudden urge to punch him strong even through the distances separating him, even through the more logical portion of his brain pointing out how stupid an idea it was, how useless. Tony hadn't gone suddenly insane two weeks ago – he'd been doing strange things for months, things he'd managed to hide from all of them. "Perhaps. But it is not likely. The elseworlds may be different, but they are subject to the same limitations as our own."
"What about where those other coordinates come from?" Clint asked pointedly.
"Physical laws remain the same across the multiverse," Thor said, but he was more doubtful, now.
"Do you think there's any chance that your father might be willing to let us study the Cube?" Fury asked him. Thor shook his head in reply, grimacing. "I let both it and Loki go because we couldn't hold him. But if Asgard isn't capable of doing so – "
"You'd have better luck trying to get the Alterans to share their tech," Clint muttered from his spot against the wall as Fury negotiated with Thor. When Steve looked at him blankly, he said, "Crappy sci-fi? No? We gotta educate you on that. But seriously, they didn't even want to explain how the lights worked."
Steve let the words roll over him as he tried to ground himself again, to get the nausea to subside. He wanted to go back to the gym, to hit something, violently, and at the same time he felt revulsion at himself for having that urge.
"We shouldn't have let it go," Natasha said, very softly – soft enough that the mics wouldn't pick it up, although Steve's hearing did.
"And then what?" Steve asked her. "It changes more of us?" His voice came out flat, bitter.
"We don't know," Bruce said, dropping his pen on the table and shoving his hands in his pockets, hunching over just like he used to back when Steve first met him, back when Loki had first started causing trouble six months ago. "That's the point, that's - we can't know. He cut us out of everything." He ran his hands through his hair. "Loki wanted the Cube and he was nuts, Tony looked at it and he went nuts - "
"Plenty of people looked at it without losing their minds, Dr. Banner," Fury broke off to interrupt him, pulling the discussion away from an argument with sheer force of gravitas alone. "This is good work. Until such time as we - " he halted, obviously listening to something in his earpiece. "Well. If you'll excuse me, I have to go keep the rest of the world from tearing itself apart. Thor, you're up in five."
His image winked out. Thor nodded in resignation. "Farewell. I hope to see you soon in person. Dr. Banner – please, heed my warning." Then his image, too, vanished.
Steve tapped the table and pulled up a few news sites. There was nothing out, yet, but something that called for Thor like that could only be one thing – more people enhanced and driven insane by extremis. He clenched his fist, and tried not to dent the table. Without Tony – without JARVIS – no doubt it would be difficult to get it fixed.
"WeapDev doesn't figure out those cryoweapons soon, he'll be fighting a losing battle," Clint commented. He sounded as angry as Steve felt, but his was a bitter, controlled anger hiding behind an almost flippant tone. "Those those things can cover a lot of ground."
"They're people, Clint."
"They were people," Clint muttered, and headed for the door. Steve sighed and let him go, feeling very tired. Natasha nodded to him once, and then followed Clint out.
The gym held no solace for him; he was well and truly sick of hitting things for exercise. Steve found himself wandering down to Tony's floor, instead - because the lab had always been Tony's space, far more than his personal quarters had been. He keyed in his code and stepped through the door, then spent several minutes hunting for a light-switch futilely. This floor had never been designed to function without JARVIS in residence. The only light came from that shining through from the elevator landing.
DUM-E and U still lay in the middle of the room, where Bruce had had them laid out - metal corpses. Children's corpses. What was the death toll from this fuck up? He knew he couldn't lay all the blame at Tony's feet - he'd had security measures, particularly JARVIS, which should have worked, would have worked, if not for the exceptionally extraordinary circumstances that they'd found themselves in. Hansen and Borjigin would never have been able to release the virus, except for that. Except for Tony killing himself, and all his children before him.
Senselessly.
"I thought I'd find answers in China," Steve said softly, breaking the dead silence of the lab. "I thought I'd find... something... that would let me understand..."
Six months ago. Everything pointed to that as a timeframe: Tony had started to act strangely after the invasion, before Steve had ever really gotten to know him at all. Maybe the Cube had shown him something, maybe Loki had – or maybe he'd seen something on the other side of the portal.
"The footage was lost," Tony had insisted, when Fury had pressed. "Strangely, frying the armour was not the best way to preserve the data."
"Your brain get fried as well?" Fury had asked.
"There wasn't much to see," he'd shrugged. "It was dark, and I was losing containment on the onboard atmo, okay? I knew there were more of 'em out there..."
Steve had thought Tony was hedging, then, but he hadn't been – he'd been flat out lying. That time by the map had proven it – because Tony tore himself up over his own perceived crimes, but he hadn't created innocent victims from whole cloth; Steve had read his file, he knew what Stark Industries' weapons had done to the Middle East when placed in the wrong hands. But that time in Bruce's lab had been the only time Tony had ever been willing to talk about it – the map with the red concentric circles had disappeared shortly thereafter, and whenever Steve had tried to bring it up, Tony had shut him down quickly.
Was that what it had been? Guilt? PTSD? Was that what he had seen? Clint spoke of clarity and truth, but trying to imagine that degree of outside influence...
Steve took a deep, ragged breath. "I wonder what it was I didn't see. I know... I've talked to Leo, y'know. I – mental illness doesn't just appear from nowhere. There should've been signs. But you - you'd be smart enough to hide those, if you wanted to." He reached out and laid one hand upon DUM-E's lifeless, ruined arm.
"You shouldn't have. All those times - all that time we spent together, and we'd - we'd joke, or laugh. And I told you - I told you things I hadn't told anyone, about Bucky. You told me about Howard, about disappointment - you cried on my shoulder when Pepper left - " he felt metal begin to bend beneath his fingertips and snatched his hand away before he could do more harm. "I thought you trusted me. I thought I - I thought I could be trusted, and I never saw - "
For all that Tony had a cot down in his workshop, Steve had never actually seen him use it (although he'd kipped out on it a few times himself, when dark thoughts drove him from his own bed in the middle of the night). The one time he'd seen Tony sleeping, he'd fallen asleep at his work bench, and although Steve had felt a bit bad that Tony was undoubtedly going to wake up with a crick in his neck, he'd been too afraid of waking him to move him. Instead, he'd settled into his usual chair and pulled out a sketchbook, studying how to better draw sleeping people. Tony made a terrible model when he was awake – he was always too much in motion.
The drawing had gone fine for a few minutes, and then Tony had awoken with a yelp, sitting bolt upright and searching about wildly. His eyes had alighted on Steve, and he'd breathed out, sounding afraid and hopeful all at once, "Steve?"
"Yeah," Steve had said, staring back at him, not knowing how to reassure him.
Tony's shoulders had crumpled inwards, and he'd muttered, "Shit," scrubbing at his face with shaking hands. "Shit. I'm sorry."
Carefully, Steve had put down the pencil, and joined him over at his lab bench. And when he'd wrapped an arm around Tony's shoulders and pulled him into a hug, Tony hadn't resisted; he'd leaned into it, breathed in deeply, and his shaking had subsided. He'd let himself take comfort from Steve's presence, that one time, at least – Steve was sure of that, sure that if everything else was affectation, that one time had been real.
But Steve hadn't been there the time it would have counted the most.
He fell to his knees and pounded his fist into the concrete floor; his skin split and blood ran down his knuckles. "I'm sorry," he said, and it came out as a sob. "I'm so damn sorry, you son of a bitch, you fucked everything up - you killed your robots, your kids - I shouldn't even miss you, for that, you bastard. You went so far over the line – "
There was no answer. Tony's lab was as dead as he was, all his most precious creations destroyed by his own hand. All of his work gone, all of himself gone: no explanation for how he'd justified installing suicide chips in other people; no whisper of his reasons for letting murderous, scheming scientists have access to equipment they could use to kill so many people. No excuses for how he'd lied to Steve, to them all, and in the process endangered the entire human race. No answers at all.
Steve knelt on the floor and cried.
...
He wasn't certain how long he knelt there. Long enough to stop crying, for his tears to dry on his cheeks, leaving them feeling sticky with salt. A deep listlessness suffused him; he might have knelt there for hours, uncaring.
Then light flashed, brilliantly, shockingly, momentarily blinding. Steve leapt to his feet before his vision could clear, instinctively reaching for his shield - when his hands ended up empty, he grabbed the nearest object, instead - one of the pieces of U. He almost dropped it when he realized what he was holding; using that as a weapon felt sacrilegious.
Smoke; there had been working electronics in the room - small cameras installed, no doubt, by SHIELD - and now the smell of burning metal hit him again, throwing his memory back in time to that awful day. But as his vision cleared, there was no body on the floor, missing a head - but the man who had appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the lab was certainly, almost definitely, Tony Stark.
Steve gaped at him, rendered both speechless and immobile. It was Tony. It had to be Tony - there was no mistaking those features, the angle of his jaw-line – for all that he didn't have a beard, only a mustache – the look of concentration on his face. But at the same time, the man standing before him was at least ten years younger than Tony, and was wearing an outfit consisting of leather boots, blue silk pyjamas, and a cape that would not have looked out of place on Thor. Half a metal faceplate covered the left side of his face, and he was holding a small device in his hands, blue and white energy stretched around it.
"Excellent," the man murmured, peering at the device. He glanced up just long enough to see Steve gaping at him, and said casually, "Oh, hello, Steve."
Steve felt frozen, paralyzed. Tony was dead. Tony was - he was dead, Steve had seen him dead, on the floor, had seen his body. There was - he'd hoped, as soon as Thor had mentioned the elseworlds, but this wasn't Tony, even if it was - this -
The device that the man was holding gave a small beep; he exclaimed triumphantly at it, as light flowed out from his hands and around it. "Aha! My modulated detector has amplified the signals that the Eye can see; I am close on the trail - almost at the source!" His voice deepened as he dropped into a chant; the blue light intensified, brightening into white that almost covered him. "Powers of Vishanti, grant me to find, across worlds and dimensions - "
The light had brought him here - he was leaving the same way. Steve lunged forward, clamping his hand around the other man's arm, just as he finished, " - this spell that so binds!"
The light flared again, and the workshop vanished around them.
When SHIELD agents burst from the stairwell a moment later, there was no sign of an intruder.
In fact, there was no one in the workshop at all.
...
End notes
Many thanks to Cyphomandra and V, as always. Many thanks also to Ibrahil for creating some fantastic art for this story, which is linked to on my profile page.
...
Minor Marvel comics' characters present in this story:
Please note, some of these are more 'based upon' rather than 'import of'. Also, FFN has stripped out all my links, but these names are all quite Googleable. Much of the trivia I mention here is from the Marvel Comics Wiki.
Leonard Samson, aka Doc Samson, is a psychiatrist tied mainly into the Hulk's storyline (but who, like basically everybody in the Marvel universe, eventually branched out and had interactions with other people, too). He first debuted in 1971.
Chen Lu is the Iron Man villain Radioactive Man, who first debuted in 1963 as a communist enemy of Thor. He has since worked for both the Mandarin and Obidiah Stane, who are both very Iron Man-centric villains. He is of no relation to Lu Wei – Lu is just an extremely common Chinese family name. Lu Wei and his assistants are all OCs.
Arthur Parks is the Living Laser, who deputed in 1966, and eventually became Exactly What It Says On the Tin. Ah, comic book science, how I love thee!
Maya Hansen is, indeed, the scientist who created the extremis enhancile. She was introduced in 2005, and promptly jailed at the end of her introductory storyline for the exact same crime described in this fic.
Lt. (and Dr.) Gina Dyson was introduced in 1989, when she saved her boyfriend's life (or... possibly resurrected him) using cybernetics. I wound up cutting her role down to a mere mention in this fic – but I'm hopeful she'll get at least a mention in IMIII, as apparently her boyfriend, Coldblood, will be appearing in it.
Alex Nevsky was Anton Vanko's scientific protégé in the comics and in 1969 he became the third Crimson Dynamo, a long-running Iron Man foe. He hated the Russian government just as much as he hated Tony Stark, however, and in his backstory here ended up pissing off the wrong people in Russia.
Tem Borjigin is one of the aliases used by the Mandarin in the comics. Makluans are a race of alien reptiles that sort of accidentally invaded China; the Mandarin's abilities come from Makluan technology, and he often has one working for him (sort of), Fin Fang Foom. In 616 Makluans resemble giant lizard-people; I used the Iron Man: Armored Adventures version, where they resemble Chinese dragons.
Gregor Shapanka was the first Blizzard, who originally debuted as 'Jack Frost' in 1963. Alas for him, he didn't have much luck under either identity.
Morgan Stark is Tony's no-good cousin, who has been around since 1965 and is sort of just incompetently evil.
Ralph Roberts is Cobalt Man, a scientist introduced in 1967 who was studying the effects of nuclear radiation involving... cobolt, surprise surprise. Guess what his (inevitable, eventual) suit of armour was made out of? Presumably it wasn't cobolt-60 despite the direction of his studies, although given comic-book science, I would not be surprised to discover that yes, yes it was.
Igor Drenkov is one of Bruce Banner's villains – his first villain, in fact, introduced in 1962. Just before Bruce ran onto the field to tell Rick Jones to get the hell away, since there was a gamma ...experiment... (don't question the crazy science) about to go off, he told one of his coworkers to shut off the experiment. That coworker was Drenkov, a spy for the Soviet Union, and his decision to not pause the experiment is what caused Bruce to be irradiated and become the Hulk.
The special guest at the very end is Tony Stark, Sorcerer Supreme of Earth-9810. For anyone out there who has not read that story, it's What If? Vol. 2 Issue No. 113, and I would highly recommend it if you like Tony, because he's still an engineer – just now he also has magic! And a dramatic cape! And a tendency to switch from his normal mode of speech into sudden DRAMATIC PROCLAMATIONS! Unlike regular Marvel stories, it's self-contained within the single issue (well, other than being an AU for Tony Stark and Dr. Strange, but it even opens with a summary of the basic premises of their non-AU characters), so go on, give it a shot – it's a great read!
...
Misc. references:
Tony mumbling 'nutshell' is a reference, but I don't think I should say to what.
Blowing somebody's head completely off with a repulsor was not my idea; thank the Extremis storyline for that.
Tony's paraphrase of Oppenheimer is from quotes available on Wiki-quotes. He's sort of mangling up two quotes in his explanation to Steve, which I will quote here, directly from that wiki page:
"When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and argue about what to do about it only after you've had your technical success. That is the way it was with the atomic bomb."
- Testifying in his defense in his 1954 security hearings (page 81 of the official transcript)
"But when you come right down to it the reason that we did this job is because it was an organic necessity. If you are a scientist you cannot stop such a thing. If you are a scientist you believe that it is good to find out how the world works; that it is good to find out what the realities are; that it is good to turn over to mankind at large the greatest possible power to control the world and to deal with it according to its lights and its values."
- Speech to the Association of Los Alamos Scientists, 2 November 1945
Travel times throughout the fic were calculated only roughly, but by and large assumed access to supersonic travel capabilities. Are the quinjets capable of going supersonic in canon? I have no idea, but rather doubt it based on their shape and hover ability. However, I find myself unable to justify logically why SHIELD would not have supersonic passenger jets available to them...
They are the quinjets that can do anything
They can far surpass the speed of sound
They can hover, and turn invisible!
Because they're the quinjets that can do anything!
Except avoid getting blown up, apparently.
Orsen Scott Card is a bigoted homophobe. This doesn't arise in the conversation about him because it wasn't immediately relevant to the point that they were discussing, and adding in something related to it would have turned it into A Very Special Conversation.
Forbes Fictional 15 estimates that Tony Stark, the fifth richest fictional character in the world, is worth somewhere between 9 and 10 billion dollars. This seems unusually low to me, since comics (and movie!) characters tend to have way more money than would ever be possible in the real world (...either that, or the stuff they want to buy costs way less for them compared to Marvel Joe Average), and yet a measly $9B dollars would only juuuust barely put Tony in the top 100 (from the Forbes list of real-life billionaires. Yeah, anyone feeling envious?). So I increased his fortune for this storyline enough to stick him up in the top 10.
I'm no expert in game theory, but I do understand the basics of it. The reporter's misunderstanding about what 'multiple solutions' means is deliberate.
The speed and force of those enhanced by extremis is on comics' level, which tends to be higher than superheroes display in movies. To compensate, I wrote Thor at something nearer to his power level in comics' canon.
The rings that the Mandarin uses are mainly those that are customarily on his left hand (Steve breaks his right arm): Black Light, Disintegration Beam (what he used to injure the Hulk; this ring has a recharge time limit. Technically it only works on inanimate objects, but damn it, animate objects are made of molecules too), Vortex Beam (how he flies), Impact Beam (his general weapon), and the Matter Rearranger (which he used to take down one of the SHIELD jets off-screen). He also uses the Lightning ring on his right hand to redirect Thor's lightning bolt.
"Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, 'it might have been'," is a famous quotation from Of Mice and Men, an incredibly depressing novel by John Steinbeck.
