11.
. . .
Thor watched Leamhan visibly wrestle with himself, the man's fine and noble face shadowed with perfect woe. The Elf was on the other side of the magical wall that kept Thor within his cell, and despite that wall, Thor managed to stay calm. There was no point to mindless berserker anger at the moment. He could, yes, call the thunder and cut himself right on out of Alfheim without a look back over his shoulder, but though he'd been deadly furious at the inn, he'd known enough not to do mortal harm there, either. Easy anger would lead to even easier complications.
Over the years, he'd learned that much from his brother's colder tactics. If not Odin's own mistakes. There was a lot of use in remembering to stop and think, even if just for a second before acting. He should have said so to Loki at some point. In any case, Thor wasn't surprised when Leamhan, sorrowful and handwringing, started at last to speak to him.
"My good prince, my friend. I'm so sorry to be the one to tell you. Your brother has left Alfheim."
Thor shifted on the soft brocade bench they'd given him. The lady Adenium was a sharp little woman, but she wasn't cruel. Even the food she'd ordered brought to him had made for a good sup. A far hardier meal than the inn, with good meat and a loaf of bread for his own. No mead, but that was just as well. Though, for a moment, he found he missed the pizza he'd had on Earth the other day. That stuck to the ribs in a way he liked very much.
There was a paradox in Adenium's treatment, somewhere. Thor left it alone for now, realizing his thoughts were wandering. Leamhan continued to study him, perhaps looking for some reaction to the bad news he'd granted.
"He was in a hurry, desperate to leave." The hands twisted, as if the spindly man were in personal pain. "I'm certain whatever it was, it was important enough to leave his good brother's side, and yet, I'm struck by his departure." The fine voice lilted and lowered, probing at Thor. Yes. He was definitely looking for something.
Ah, Thor thought, not entirely sure what he'd realized, but knowing there was something in Leamhan's study he should pay attention to. Meanwhile, he said nothing. Only watched. Another thing he learned from Loki.
Leamhan swallowed. "I advocated for his stay, of course. This… dreadful… matter being so complicated, it would have been a great help if he would have remained to help sort it during this most crucial time, but he left with the help of the Jotunheim ambassador." He shook his head, tastefully disapproving. "I must make no judgment of this. I'm quite sure it was a matter of some new diplomatic kindness. As I am equally sure the reason we hold you will be revealed to be some mistake. I cannot possibly believe that you are any enemy of this realm, not from that first night I met you at the village inn."
Thor leaned back on his bench, and the thought crystallized further into fact. He had made a sort of simple mistake at that first meeting, a trap anyone could have fallen into. This man was no friend, and he lied using truth.
He knew this, because there was absolutely no gleam of falsity in Leamhan's words, but Thor also knew his brother, and his brother's friends - and because of all of that, he also knew a bit about how men can lie in that easy, weaving way. "I'm sure of that as well," he said, cheerful and certainly unconcerned. Sounding as free as he could inside a cage. The happy lie could go both ways, and he'd learned that from his brother, too. "Ah well. Can't be helped. The matter will get sorted."
Leamhan almost but not quite flinched, a crinkle at the corner of his eye, something newly tense in the hands. Thor tried to not grin. "My prince-"
"Loki will return, my good friend Leamhan. I'm sure if we wait for him, all this will be sorted out as clean as any of us could want. No misunderstandings." Now Thor grinned as if he were still drinking in the inn. "This ambassador, they vouched for his safe departure, but I'm sure they also vowed for his return return." Standard diplomatic protocols. Maybe jotun 'hostage' style vouchsafing, almost every realm had something like it. A simple vow between parties, and Thor was functionally the hostage in this scenario. Good on the jotun, and to Hel with Leamhan for trying to use that as another wedge. "And I'm quite sure this was done with the permission of the queen." This he was fuzzier on, but Loki had said something vaguely favorable about the royal house. It was worth the gamble.
"Ah, of course." Leamhan smiled, that tension still behind his eyes. Thor read it. The gamble was a good one. "Nothing in our realm is done without the bright eye of our queen on it."
"Then there's indeed nothing at all to worry about." Thor clapped his hands together once, firm and strong, all but a royal dismissal of Leamhan for now. He had that much power as a prince, even behind the magick'd wall. Without another witness to the interview, without Loki in realm, Thor wasn't about to start answering questions on any of this. Not with Leamhan now sucking up to him, playing to sympathies. "Let's wait a while, have some more sup. All will turn out fine, Leamhan. Just fine."
Thor watched Leamhan back away from his cell with a promise to bring more food, polite and the barest bit stiff, knowing he'd taken a victory away from the Elf. For now, he would have to hope that his recently reforged faith in Loki was wise.
Thor leaned back on his bench, calm but not complacent. He believed it was.
. . .
Loki ran both hands through his hair, looking at the busy wall of information and its three additional live feeds of armed SHIELD teams in Europe, and shook his head. He tried to ignore the sensation of his brain physically wiggling as he did so, the ache and exhaustion setting in hard amidst the ringing jangle of his mixing thoughts. He looked back at Coulson and Mack. "It doesn't make sense. None of this does. Tell me again what you spotted."
Mack pulled up his notes. "The reason that group vidcall got canceled, the one you checked in with me on. We had a guy at the embassy do a follow-up on it."
"The one with no discernible reason for that cancellation."
"Right. It didn't come from the ambassador himself, it came from a guy in his retinue. That guy, we ran a check, his background seems clean. And that guy doesn't remember canceling the call. Which, so what, you think, fifteen parties didn't sit on a phone call about stuff we don't even actually care about yet. Big whoop. He could have been really tired and it was in between six other things he was doing for his boss and he forgot about it."
"But," said Loki.
"But, we saw something in the Wakandan intelligence. Something about an interference drone being deployed, using new tech. So Fitz did a call with the UN onsite teams and had them do a scan on three different frequencies our information indicated. Nothing, really. All pretty inert stuff."
Loki nodded, seeing where this was going. "Inert. But put it all together and they found something."
"Yup. Now we think someone might've wanted the outgoing lines at all related embassies clear that night so they could splice in that new kind of intercept on all audio coming from them."
Daisy interrupted. "Okay wait, shit, I read that and I didn't fully comprehend it. We found something that's gonna be able to compromise all diplomatic phones? The encrypted ones?"
"It's a jacked up version of the eavesdropping tools we've been seeing pop up in DC lately. Only this thing's decrypting even current secure keys at a 1:1 ratio. It comes in noise, it goes out to the listener like stereo. That's new. That's not even current, that's next decade tech." Mack didn't say it. No one wanted to watch Loki pop off again.
Loki took it in the spirit that was intended. "Which matches what we got from Wakanda. Whether the actors are from Latveria or not, it's Latverian level technology. And it's going to be subtle. So with the intercept figured out, having spotted it, the team did a backtrace and while they were at it, found something else going on. Activity. The emergency."
"Yeah." Mack scrolled again. "Looked like a passive situation, but it's got a problem in it if you look close. Let me tie this back in first, though. The guy that doesn't remember cancelling the vidcall. Maybe he got spoofed, maybe he glitched. His boss says he's got a clean background."
"But is it actually clean?" Loki stuck a hand out to Mack.
Mack handed him the tablet, making sure the relevant data was up. "Nope. He's got recent dead time, off grid. We got him flying DC to Istanbul, then he's gone. Pops up four days later, Istanbul back to Dubai International."
"That's not proof, though. Just a man traveling through an area where dead time can happen. The records through there are going to be spotty. I assume we're looking for eyewitnesses." Loki studied the tablet, unaware he wasn't actually reading it.
He missed what Mack said next.
Passivity, he thought, suddenly disjointed. Passive situation. Inert.
He jerked his head up, seeing that no one had noticed him fade out.
"So like I say," said Mack. "It's not that we got proof, it's like we got the absence of proof. We've got this dude with his missing time, and we've got this new tech, but it's only going one way and we don't know where it actually came from. And then it all feeds towards the real problem. The emergency. Coulson."
"It's going back to what we got out of Ambassador Engels this morning," said Coulson, apparently following up on something else Loki had missed in an earlier fugue state. "His warning is a big deal, that's why we were trying to get you on the line. I trust the German eyes on this as much as I do Wakanda."
Right. He remembered now. The warning. The bit that had apparently set off Loki's phone while he'd been in a holding area trying to figure out what the hell to do. German intel passed to them some chatter on a darknet line that matched previous warnings. A build up to an actual event. Loki nodded. "But nothing's been found at the site yet. Still no sign of a deployed device, nor any suspicious actors in the area. We're on emergency activation, but there's no sign of the fire. Even a Latverian device is going to show if we're looking for it, and we've gotten a good handle on their reactive camouflage programs in recent years. No more surprise death robots."
"Red team's about to start its third sweep."
Daisy spoke up with a grumble. "Which means we just cancelled like six hours of diplomatic grip and gripe that the Human Rights council really needed."
And had given Loki damn near a heart attack while in holding, but he chose to not to get into that with his friends.
"Better than getting killed." Mack leaned back against the wall, watching the livecam of the Red team on the move through a corridor so new they could probably still smell the paint. "The warning made it look like they were ready to go. If they got wind that we came in to stop it… I mean, yeah. Maybe we can't know if we already won. Maybe that danger passed. It's hard stuff."
"Still. All this noise and yet not much real to show for it. The proof is… it's vague, and we don't yet know who stands to benefit from it. And half of the main players, I don't even know what they look like." Loki handed the tablet back. The world looked grey again.
"Loki?" Coulson squinted at him. "You know Engels. You know the Turkish team better than we do."
"Hm?" Loki shook his head, realizing he'd done it again. Faded out. Crossed the mental streams. He was carrying too much. "Right. I do."
"Are you alright?"
"I'm fine." That was true, wasn't it? The absolute truth. He was fine. Thor was in a cell, just like he had been for years. Maybe even sitting in there thinking his brother was having a cynical laugh about it. The manacle's on the other foot at last, brother. Are you happy? "I'm here." It sounded normal in his mouth, those words. Hadn't they?
Coulson studied his face, saying nothing. Maybe they hadn't.
Loki almost reached for the tablet again, not sure why, then stopped himself. He turned away from his friends and looked at the livestream wall and all of its scrolling data, and read none of it. "So the scenario is that… is that there are parties somehow highly invested in listening in and then using taken information to plan their own moves, and while the chaos is useful, so far no one's gotten actually hurt. And they're using diplomatic… players… that may not even be aware they're involved." He stopped. "I'm sorry, I'm trying to detangle two situations at the same time. There's just enough overlap that. Well. I've got a lot on the mind."
He heard silence behind him. He still wasn't reading the screen. "You ever feel like you're missing something ridiculously important, but it's small, and you've probably looked right at it, and it's not going to unlock everything, but it's the right place to start?"
"Every goddamn day, Loki." He heard Coulson shift. "You see something?"
Passive. Inert. Small.
Adenium doesn't like me but she's so honest about it, said Queen Aelsa in his head, as if she were there with him in the command room. I can trust her because I know where things stand. She doesn't pretend. Whoop, here comes Leamhan. Good for a drink and a jape, friendly fellow. Do watch his expression, good prince. Watch him.
The tiny, tiny sneer. The tightening hands. Leamhan's mask, slipping.
I know you saw, young prince, said the ghost queen.
Yes. I did. I doubted myself a little for a while, just as I doubted Thor, just a little, deep down, because I wasn't there and I don't have all the information. I wasn't there. But you told me not to trust Leamhan, by not saying anything at all. You wanted me to know that about him. Why? What else is here?
The mask where Mooar's face should have been, because Loki didn't know what he looked like. But was he an actual threat, or was he just a diplomat's assistant with dead time in his ledger? The mask drifted away.
Another thought came filtering back. Passive. A watchman's 'chant stone. Like his own spell, on the border of Latveria. It did nothing, except when it did something. Like listen, maybe, and tell a watchman who wasn't really just a watchman?
Maybe only that? Maybe something more dangerous? The scenario ran through his head again. He shook his head, tried to look at the screen. It was white noise. He wasn't here, either.
"Loki?"
"I can't do this," Loki heard himself say at last, the words dragging out of him like rubble. He always told himself he could run from a fight, from his own defeat, forever if that's what it took. Until he couldn't. The words were a struggle. "I can't."
There was silence in the room.
Loki turned around, saw Coulson looking at him, and Mack, and Daisy. He didn't know how he sounded. "I can't do this. I can't do both. I can't… I can't help resolve this… this Latverian ghost, and help Thor. My brother is in a cell and I'm here, and whatever monstrous tangled shit some bastard's whipped up to drive us all deranged has got me knotted up and I can't help resolve this from there, and I can't save him if I'm doing this. I can't. I cannot do two things at once like this. I…"
Coulson leaned his butt against the command room desk, just watching him.
There was only one answer. Loki had made a promise. He'd wanted, at least a little, to try. "Coulson, I need to go. I told him I'd help, and right now he's in a godsdamned cell because I haven't been as much help as I needed to be, and some arsehole snuck in behind me and got him in a jam for reasons I don't understand. Because I wasn't there to see it happen."
Loki took a breath, not sure what he was feeling. Laser focus came back, just one jolt of it, necessary. All the gears of his mind crunching through what he could give. "We know it's not Latveria. I promise you that. Call… Call Miss Romanoff. Have her run down the black market sales of tech from Latveria's previous games. She'll have most of what I know, she can parse my report from Latveria better than anyone. We know from history that Roxxon and its subsidiaries had access to that tech through von Bardas. Call her, too, see if she's in one of her stable phases. See who was acting as buyer conduits, that'll get you the new intercept devices. The lost time, that I don't know. I can't shake that this is a wagging dog, that-"
"Agent Loki." Coulson put a hand up to stop him. He was calm, and his face said he understood. "Go. Get out of here. We've got this. I'll get Romanoff on the line. You just go help your brother. He needs you."
Loki opened his mouth, realized he didn't know what to say, and got.
. . .
Mack shrugged as Coulson shared a look with him and Daisy. "I got a little brother. It's just how it is sometimes. You have the Romanoff call, Coulson?"
"Sure do. Daisy, can you try the clinic, see how Lucia's feeling? Mack, keep an eye on the teams for me. I'm going to go catch up with Talbot first real quick, let him know I want a fourth squad onsite at the UN building, and I want a silent lockdown on all communications routed through there. He asks why, I'll tell him he can send a subpoena after he gives me the authorization because it's an emergency. I believe Loki. It's not Latveria, and maybe he's right on the rest. It's a ghost. It really is gonna come down to us chasing our tails like dogs." Coulson took the tablet from Mack, glancing at the livestreams before looking at Daisy. "We definitely have this."
"You think he's okay?" Daisy looked up into his face, worried. "Loki usually doesn't, like, show actual emotion like that. I don't think he knew he did. He was strung out. He was feeling really guilty about nearly cracking up there, and I shouldn't be able to tell you that."
"It's a big ol' messed up family, Daisy, and the hell of it is they do care about each other when it gets serious. That's the priority. When he comes down, he'll know we get that. No problem. Come on, let's go save the world again."
