Maggie almost ran into Natasha as she strode around yet another corner in the Helicarrier's maze of corridors. The redheaded spy walked with purpose in the direction of the lower decks. Maggie had been walking without purpose, just trying to cool off and settle her erratic heartbeat.

"You okay?" Natasha asked her, eyebrow quirked.

Maggie waved a hand. "Fine. Just a lot of… personalities on this ship."

"Absolutely." Nat cocked her head. "Any luck in the lab?"

"We've figured out the scepter and the Tesseract have similar gamma radiation outputs, but still no luck on tracing the Tesseract. We might have to think about other ways of tracking Loki's men."

"Where were you going?"

She hesitated. "Where were you going?"

"To interrogate Loki."

She blinked. "Really?" Natasha's expression did not waver. "Can I come?"

"No."

Maggie blinked again. "Okay."

Natasha tipped her head slightly. "I would be happy to teach you interrogation techniques any other day, but this is too important. Besides, you'd be a distraction. Loki would be too tempted to taunt you and make you angry. I want him to try that on me."

"Oh. Clever." Maggie drew in a breath. "Well, good luck." She eyed Natasha. "Is there… is there anything else I should know?"

Nat returned her assessing gaze. "Such as…?"

Maggie sighed. "These people aren't idiots, Natasha. Maybe it's on me for going so many months content not to question SHIELD, but Tony, and Banner, and the others… they aren't going to play ball if they feel like someone's lying to them. So stop lying."

Natasha's lips quirked. "I'm not sure whether to be flattered or offended that you came to me expecting me to reveal SHIELD secrets."

Maggie rolled her eyes. "Just… whatever the secret is, you know it's going to come out."

Natasha flicked her eyes over Maggie's face, dipped her chin in a noncommittal nod, and then strode on down the corridor.

Maggie let out a heavy sigh and walked on. When she ran into another agent she pulled them aside. "Which way to the bridge?"

The second Maggie pushed through the doors onto the bridge she spotted Coulson down in the lower deck, his arms crossed as he watched over the agents working in the computer bays. He was silhouetted by the far windows and the night sky beyond.

Maggie strode along the upper deck and down one of the stairways, her boots clanging on the metal. "Coulson," she called when she was in earshot, "do you really think-"

But she broke off when she bumped into what felt like a wall of muscles and metal. Thor. She had somehow not spotted him at the base of the stairs, where he was looking out at the night sky.

"Sorry!" Maggie exclaimed, even though he hadn't moved an inch and she'd practically pinballed off him. He turned and grabbed her elbow to steady her. Holy muscles, Batman.

Coulson smiled. He and Thor must have been speaking. "It's good to see you, Maggie. I'm glad you could be here to help." And then he strode away into the computer banks before she could chase him.

Dammit.

Maggie turned back to Thor. He had drawn his gaze away from the windows, but he still looked pensive and troubled, with a furrow in his brow and a grim set to his mouth. She supposed he, like Steve, didn't have a lot to do now that the fight was over.

She sighed. "Hey. You and I both have weirdo brothers. Want to bond over that?"

Thor blinked, appeared to think about it, and then shrugged. "I fear comparison will do neither of them justice."

He spoke like someone out of a classical novel. She scrutinized him. "That's probably true. I'm Maggie, by the way." She held out her hand, and almost laughed when he reached out to take it with both of his in a warm, firm grip.

"I am Thor, son of Odin," he said gravely. He bent over their hands in a shallow bow. "It was an honor to fight with you, lady Wyvern." He shot her a smile then: a strangely child-like grin.

Maggie almost blushed. "Thank you." He let go of her hand and she flexed her fingers. "I can't help but notice you seem a little at odds up here."

Thor gazed around at the activity in the bridge. "Fury asked me to force my brother to spill his secrets. I fear if he keeps his silence much longer, I may have to try."

She watched Thor's dark expression. She couldn't imagine interrogating Tony, torturing Tony, no matter what he'd done. "Well." She blew out a breath. "I should really be heading back to the lab, but you're welcome to join me? Check out some Earth science?"

After a moment of contemplation Thor nodded. "I have some experience of Midgardian science. I would like to see how you are attempting to hunt the Tesseract."

Maggie smiled. "Follow me."

They strode back up the stairs and off the bridge, heading down the industrial corridors of the Helicarrier. Before they left the bridge, Maggie grabbed her wingpack - it made her nervous to be without it, with Loki so near and SHIELD keeping secrets.

"You mentioned you knew Doctor Selvig?" Maggie prompted, because Thor still seemed caught up in his own head.

"Yes. I was on Earth once before."

"So you would have met Jane Foster and Darcy Lewis as well, then?"

Thor blinked and turned to her. "You know Jane?"

The way his face lit up made Maggie smile. That explains how Jane was acting in Puente Antiguo. "Yes, we're friends. She didn't tell me about you, but I know she's been keeping something secret all these months - she's been out of her mind looking for you, you know."

Thor's smile dimmed. "I was… kept from returning. But Coulson informed me that she is well, and currently safe at a SHIELD observatory in Norway."

"Yes, I heard." Maggie cocked her head. "I suppose the further she is from Loki, the better." She watched Thor's expression fall. "Can you… could you tell me about him? Loki? I don't imagine he was like this all his life."

Thor sighed. "Loki is… a complicated soul."

"Aren't they all," she mused. "I mean it though, I'd like to hear about him. If you don't mind telling me." That was one thing Natasha had drilled into Maggie, after all - know your enemy better than they know you.

Thor cleared his throat. "Alright. Loki is originally from a frost realm called Jotunheim…"

One floor up from the lab, Maggie and Thor heard quick footsteps behind them and turned to see Natasha, her eyes sharp as she jogged toward them.

"I just spoke with Loki," she said in a clipped tone. "He's planning to trigger the Hulk." Her eyes fell on Thor. "We need you down there now."

Maggie frowned. "Banner seems to have it under control, Nat-"

"We still need to contain this. Move."

Maggie and Thor obeyed. They quickened their steps as they headed to the lab, and when they rounded the corner they heard raised voices.

"What is Phase 2?"

A clang, then Steve's voice: "Phase 2 is SHIELD uses the cube to make weapons."

Maggie could see into the lab now - the sun was rising, illuminating the figures of Tony and Banner at the main workspace, Fury before them, and Steve, his hand hovering over a shining metal gun on another lab table.

"Sorry," Steve said to Tony, "computer was moving a little slow for me."

Maggie quickened her pace as their voices kept rising, arguing about the Tesseract and the strange weapon.

Finally she reached the door to the lab and stepped inside, closely followed by Thor and Nat. Her eyes darted over the scene: the strange silver and black gun between Fury and Steve, and the missile designs that Tony had uncovered in the SHIELD systems, etched in blue light on Tony's screen. Tension crackled in the room.

"I wish I could say I was surprised," Maggie said, her eyes on Fury. But her anger turned inward. I should have suspected. I should have asked more questions, looked more closely. She'd been too charmed by the idea of her father's organization.

Banner glanced over at Natasha. "Did you know about this?"

"You wanna think about removing yourself from this situation?" she responded calmly.

He laughed. "I was in Calcutta, I was pretty well removed."

Banner and Natasha traded barbs, and Maggie instinctually sidled into the best strategic position she could think of - a straight shot to the exit, equidistant from Fury and Nat, with Tony behind her right shoulder so she could cover him. She rolled down her uniform sleeves so her wrist blasters were free. When she realized what she'd done, she hesitated. Did she really think a fight was going to break out? And if so, who would she be fighting? Her skin prickled and her muscles felt tense, a sure sign of oncoming danger. Her head ached. She ran her eyes over the people in the room. All of them impossibly dangerous. She briefly met Tony's gaze - his eyes were dark with concern and anger.

Banner gestured to the Phase 2 plans. "I'd like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to make weapons of mass destruction."

All eyes fell on Fury. He held his silence for a beat, then pointed at Thor. "Because of him."

Thor frowned. "Me?"

"Last year Earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that levelled a small town," Fury said. "We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly - hilariously - outgunned."

Thor protested and Fury argued back, with Steve casting passive-agressive barbs, until:

"You forced our hand," Fury protested, "We had to come up with-"

"A nuclear deterrent?" Tony finished for him. Maggie didn't look over her shoulder at him. "Because that always calms everything right down."

"Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark?" Fury shot back.

Maggie took a step forward and almost flinched at how that single movement seemed to amp up the tension crackling in the air. "Really? You want to turn this back on us?"

Steve stepped forward as well, his hard eyes on Tony. "I'm sure if he still made weapons, Stark would be neck-deep in-"

"Wait wait, hold on," Tony cut in, drawing level with Maggie. "How is this now about me?"

"I'm sorry, isn't everything?" Steve snapped.

Thor and Fury kept at it, and so did Steve and Tony, and as they argued back and forth Natasha chimed in with: "Are you boys really that naive? SHIELD monitors potential threats."

"Captain America's on a threat watch?" Banner commented, his arms crossed.

"We all are-"

"So exactly who is having a Tesseract-powered WMD pointed at them, then?" Maggie asked Natasha, her voice hard. Nat turned on her with flinty eyes and then they were arguing, and Maggie's ears hurt from everyone snapping and trading insults. Their raised voices bounced around the clinical space of the lab.

Tony stepped toward Steve, making some crack about the threat watch, and jostled Maggie's shoulder. She touched his arm as she argued with Natasha, but then he shook off her hand roughly and she cut off mid-sentence to look at him.

Tony held up his hands at something Steve had said. "That's a threat! I feel threatened!"

Maggie frowned. "Tony, if you'd give up the snark for just one second-"

He didn't take his eyes off Steve's hard face. "Then what, Maggie, I'm going to magically get along with Captain Tight-Ass here?" Steve's brows lowered.

"You're saying you wouldn't have used the Tesseract to make weapons?" Steve shot back.

Tony threw up his hands. "Maggie will you step up, here?"

She glared at him. "What do you want me to do, yell everyone into submission?"

He finally turned to look at her. "At least it'd be something, instead of sneaking around in the shadows-"

She stepped forward, incensed. "I don't sneak, asshat, just because I think things through doesn't mean I'm not making a difference. You could stand to think once or twice."

His eyebrows rose. "What, and end up jumping into bed with the super secret spy agency? No thanks."

Thor's voice rose above the noise: "You speak of control, yet you court chaos!" It drew everyone's attention, which was good, since Maggie's fingers were curling into fists.

"That's Fury's MO, isn't it?" Banner said. His voice was low, but it commanded attention. "I mean what are we, a team?" he asked Fury. "No, we're a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We're… we're a time bomb."

"You," Fury replied, "need to step away."

Maggie didn't even listen to Tony and Steve's continued arguing until Steve's voice lowered. "Yeah. Big man in a suit of armor," he said, and Maggie turned to see him circling Tony with a wry, sarcastic smile. "Take that off, what are you?"

Tony lazily turned to meet Steve's eyes. "Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist."

Maggie was still irritated with Tony, so she hung back with her arms folded. But then Steve leaned in without a trace of kindness and hissed:

"I know guys with none of that worth ten of you."

"Hey," she frowned.

Steve didn't glance away. "I've seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself." Tony held his gaze. "You're not the guy to make the sacrifice play. To lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you-"

"I think I would just cut the wire," Tony replied easily.

Steve smiled again, holding Tony's gaze unerringly. "Always a way out." The smile dropped. "You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero."

"Hey."

Steve blinked and looked over his shoulder as Maggie started forward, her expression thunderous. She might be pissed at Tony, but she wouldn't let anyone speak like that about him. The force of her anger seemed to startle Steve, but then Romanoff reached forward and grabbed Maggie's arm. Maggie turned to glare at her.

"A hero?" Tony shot back at Steve. "Like you? You're a laboratory experiment, Rogers." He took a step toward the Captain so they were nearly nose-to-nose. "Everything special about you came out of a bottle."

Maggie shook off Nat's grip. She took a step back, trying to regain control over herself as the other snapped and traded cold insults. But before she could settle her breathing, her attention caught on Banner's voice as he argued with Fury about the containment unit in the detention level.

"The cell was just-"

"In case you needed to kill me, but you can't," Banner snapped. "I know, I tried."

Maggie went cold.

The tension in the room shifted, settling into something heavy and thick. Banner sensed their sudden focus and his shoulders hunched.

"I got low. I didn't see an end, so I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spit it out." His chin jutted. "So I moved on. I focused on helping other people. I was good. Until you dragged me back into this freak show, put everyone here at risk." His voice cracked. "You wanna know my secret, Agent Romanoff, you wanna know how I stay calm?"

Maggie sensed Fury's focus drop, and she followed his gaze. When she saw Banner's hand clenched around the body of the staff, she powered up her wrist blasters.

"Doctor Banner," Steve said, forcefully calm once more. "Put down the scepter."

Banner glanced down at the scepter in his grip, as if surprised to see it there. His brow furrowed, and then he looked up.

In the next second, the computer processor Tony had set up at the back of the lab let out a loud chime. Everyone glanced over.

"That's the gamma signature locator," Maggie realized.

"We got it," Tony murmured.

Banner set down the scepter. "Sorry kids, you don't get to see my party trick after all." He strode over to the processor.

"You've located the Tesseract?" Thor questioned. The others burst out talking again - Tony and Steve argued about who would go to find the cube, and Thor called after them that no human could be a match for the Tesseract. Maggie jogged to where she'd set down her wingpack. When she pulled it out from under one of the gleaming tables, she looked up to see that Steve had seized Tony's arm.

Tony smacked his hand away. "You gonna stop me?"

"Put on the suit, let's find out," Steve argued back.

"Stop it," Maggie hissed as she hoisted her wingpack.

Tony got up in Steve's face again. "I'm not afraid to hit an old man."

"I'll hit both of you," she snapped as she got to her feet.

"Put on the suit," Steve hissed.

"Oh my god," Banner breathed, and Maggie glanced over to see him staring at the computer screen, his eyes wide.

"Banner, what-"

In the next second she was flung off her feet by a blast of hot air and flames.

For a moment she was as helpless as a leaf in a firestorm. The eruption of light seared her vision and the thunderous boom of the explosion deafened her. When her lower back hit a hard, flat edge her head snapped back and she crashed onto the glass instruments and computer on top of one of the worktables. A burst of flame and debris washed over her.

The Helicarrier shuddered in midair. Glass smashed and metal wrenched apart, and molten pieces of engine broke away and plummeted through the sky. In the lab, flames and smoke filled the air.

Coughing, Maggie rolled her head to one side and squinted in the flickering firelight. What had been a clean, gleaming lab had turned into a blast zone - she eyed the gaping hole in the floor and her rattled mind put it together: they hadn't been directly hit, but there must have been an explosion elsewhere on the Helicarrier and the blast had travelled down the air duct below the lab, exploding up through the floor.

We're under attack.

She heard Steve's voice. "Put on the suit," he breathed.

"Yeah," Tony grunted in reply. "Maggie?"

"Here," Maggie called, and managed to slide off the table she'd been hurled onto. Glass crinkled beneath her back, and the floor creaked treacherously beneath her boots when she landed. She had her wingpack still, since her wrist had been looped into one of the harness straps when the explosion went off. She scanned the lab, but smoke had filled the space and she couldn't see anyone except Steve and Tony sprawled by the door. She had to hope the others were okay.

Tony lurched to his feet, and Steve reached to steady him. Maggie ran to meet them and together they escaped into the corridor.

Red alarm lights flashed overhead, and sparks and smoke spilled from the airducts.

"What happened?" Tony gasped as they ran down the corridor. Maggie shot him a glance; he looked dazed, but not hurt.

"Helicarrier's been hit," Steve panted.

"No shit," Tony shot back. "Where, and by who?"

"Hang on." Maggie pulled her earpiece out of her pocket and switched it to the SHIELD channel. Steve, too, pulled an earpiece from a pocket of his uniform, then another, which he handed to Tony. Tony took it, leading them where he'd stored his suit. Agents rushed past in all directions, coughing in the smoke.

Panicked voices filled the comms.

"We've been hit-"

"Number three engine is down!" That was Hill's voice. "Can they get a run in? Talk to me."

"Turbine is mostly intact, but it's impossible to get out there to make repairs while we're in the air."

"We lose one more engine, we won't be," Hill said grimly. "Somebody's got to get outside and patch that engine."

"Stark, you copy that?" Fury's voice.

Maggie and Tony replied simultaneously. "On it," Tony called, as Maggie said "We copy." They shared a glance.

Fury continued giving orders over the comms to Coulson and Romanoff. Maggie and the others passed a stairwell up to the deck, and she hesitated.

"Tony," she called. He looked over his shoulder. "You go get suited up, I'm going to head up there now and see if I can find whoever attacked us."

He nodded once. "Be careful."

"You too, idiot."

"Rogers, you head to Engine Three, we'll meet you there." Tony and Steve hurried down the passageway.

Maggie backtracked to the stairs and pounded up them three at a time, her boots clanging on the metal. As she ran she pulled on her gloves and her cowl. When she burst up through the hatch onto the deck she fastened the last straps on her wingpack harness and felt the ports on either side of her spine whir open to connect with the cool metal.

She instantly had to brace herself in the wind whipping over the deck. The sun had risen and they were well above the clouds, pale mist rushing in a stream over the runway. In the far corner of the deck she could see a thick plume of black smoke, and the occasional piece of debris breaking away in the wind. Maggie scanned the sky around them. No aircraft or flying assailants in sight.

Maggie jumped, letting the racing wind pluck at her for a weightless moment, and then flung her wings wide. She was instantly flung a hundred feet off the deck, the wind snatching at every surface of her wings and body and trying to buffet her about. But Maggie's engines burned to life and she steadied. She soared over the Helicarrier, wings beating, and got an overview of the situation.

The Helicarrier held steady in the sky, but the rear left engine was obscured by a thick pillar of black smoke. Maggie could make out hot beacons of fire within the smoke, and shorn-up pieces of metal kept breaking away to plummet through the sky behind the Helicarrier. From what she could make out, it was mostly the front part of the engine which had been hit, not the turbines. That would have taken out a few of the necessary systems, but it could be fixable. She peered down. They were still over land - it would be a nasty landing if they crashed. Her mind worked. She'd have to get closer to the engine to figure out how to fix it, but the agents on the bridge had still been able to get performance readouts, which meant the engine was still connected to the Helicarrier powergrid. A good sign, she told herself.

Maggie angled her wings down to the engine, but then she spotted an out-of-place shape on deck. Most of the Quinjets were berthed in neat rows along the edge of the deck, but there was a single, dark Quinjet parked askew in the middle of the main runway. Maggie peered at it through her HUD, and the thermal readout showed her that the engines were still warm.

She dropped back down to the runway, pulling her wings in tight so the wind couldn't snatch her up again, and carefully approached the back of the Quinjet. The loading ramp was down, but she couldn't see anyone inside. She peered around and spotted a broken deck vent a few yards away. She jogged over and looked down.

The vent itself had been smashed inwards, and lay broken on the grate floor below. A cable stretched from the edge down to the level below, but she couldn't see anyone around.

Maggie grit her teeth and touched the comms unit in her ear. "Fury. we've got an unknown number of assailants on the Helicarrier. They infiltrated via the northwest deck vent."

"Copy. Defense teams, mobilize Beta protocol," Fury said in response.

Maggie stepped reluctantly away from the vent, then hesitated when she heard a rumbling, furious roar from somewhere within the belly of the Helicarrier. The sound seemed to echo through the metal itself, sending a chill down her spine with the absolute fury of it.

Banner.

"Stark!" came Steve's voice, crackly with buffeting wind interference. "Stark, Maggie, I'm here!"

"Good," Tony said, and Maggie spotted the burning arc of Iron Man as he rose up over the deckline and toward the engine. Maggie flared her wings and jumped back into the air to join him. He nodded to her. She wondered briefly why Tony was Stark and she was just Maggie, but then they both lowered down in front of the destroyed front section of the engine. Sparks flew in the air around them. Maggie could just make out the small blue figure of Steve on a half-shredded gantry walkway below the engine.

"Let's see what we've got," Tony said. He synced his HUD to Maggie's, so they could both see the diagnostic overlay of the engine's interior. The digital lines overlaid themselves on Maggie's physical view of the engine, like an x ray. She beat her wings to hold steady in the air.

"Mostly mechanical," Maggie noted as she flicked through the layers. The explosion had mangled a lot of metal and the debris had jammed the turbines. "But we can't access the turbine unless-"

"We get the superconducting cooling system back online," Tony finished. "Then we can work on dislodging the debris."

Maggie craned her neck to take in the rest of the overlay. "These fires are fuel-fed, I'll reroute the fuel lines to suffocate them and then…"

"The exhaust vents are blocked in the compressor chamber," Tony noted.

Maggie looked below the rotors, where the compressor chamber sat above the combustion chamber, and noted the blockage in red. "Yeah, I can fit in there. Let's do this."

Tony hovered in closer to the mangled accessory drives, and Maggie let herself drop beneath the mid levels to access the ring of fuel lines. Her eyes darted over the intake lines until she found the one fuelling the fires. She flew down and gripped the edge of a broken gantry walkway until her feet found a narrow steel beam to balance on. Engines still burning to keep herself steady, she yanked away a half-crumpled metal sheet until she spotted the reinforced fuel lines snaking through the structure.

Two levels above her, Tony shoved a piece of the cooling system back into place and then turned to Steve, who had been watching them hover. "I need you to get to that engine control panel and tell me which relays are in overload position."

Maggie didn't hear Steve's reply, but a moment later she heard the sounds of him climbing.

She shuffled along her steel beam, hand running over the fuel line until she found the manual intake valve. Wind ripped strangely through the mangled engine, tugging her this way and that. She gripped the valve lever and began to twist.

"What's it look like in there?" Tony prompted Steve.

The Captain let out a sigh. "It seems to run on some form of electricity."

Despite herself, Maggie smiled.

"Well, you're not wrong," Tony replied.

Maggie cranked the lever closed, and then touched the fuel line, feeling the vibrations slow, then stop. She'd just cut off fuel to the worst-hit section of the engine, but there was still enough intake to keep the vital parts running. "Steve, have those fires gone out?"

There was a pause. Then Steve called back: "Yeah, they're going out now. The panel?"

"There should be annotations somewhere on it, maybe try the reverse of the housing?" Maggie suggested. She heard a clang and looked up - she could only see the mess of twisted metal and wires, but her HUD showed her that Tony was inside the accessory drive now, repairing the cooling system.

"Uh… okay, here's something," Steve said.

Maggie clambered further into the engine, ducking between beams and over shattered gantryways, using her wings to balance. She slid between two massive air intake pipes to reach the outside of the combustion chamber. It got hotter the further she went in, making her sweat inside her flightsuit. The air around the complex combustion chamber was shimmering.

"Tony, you've got to get that cooling system online or things are going to keep breaking," she warned. She found the main exhaust vent, which appeared to be clogged with metal shards, ash, and tangled wires. It had done its best to vent the debris from the explosion to keep the chamber running, but hadn't been able to cope.

As Maggie worked her way down to the vent, narrowly dodging a sparking live wire, she tuned into the comms. Steve was now reading out relay positions to Tony, but beyond that she could hear the chaos in the Helicarrier - panicked agents were reporting that the Hulk was loose in the storage section, and the navigation systems were still down. Fury kept asking for updates on the detention level.

Maggie heard a hum of power and a moment later the air temperature around her dropped incrementally. Cooling system's back online. Well done, Tony.

"The relays are intact!" Steve called. "What's our next move?"

Maggie glanced up and her HUD showed her that Tony had made it through to the rotors of the engine. She was still in the bowels beneath, digging debris out of the massive combustion chamber exhaust vent with her hands. She straightened a bent fan blade with a well-placed kick.

"Even if we clear the rotors, this thing won't reengage without a jump," Tony said. Maggie gritted her teeth. "I'm going to have to get in there and push."

"Well if that thing gets up to speed, you'll get shredded!" Steve protested.

"No," Maggie said, clicking on to Tony's plan even though she didn't like it. "Steve, there's an option - the rotors at speed partly use magnetic propulsion, so if you can access that control unit near you to reverse the polarity long enough to disengage mag-lev, then-"

"Speak English," Steve shot back.

Tony sighed. "See that red lever? It'll slow down the rotors long enough for me to get out. Stand by it, wait for my word."

Maggie rolled her eyes and pushed the exhaust vent with her heel. It moved in a smooth turn, dislodging a clump of ash. She glanced around. "I've cleared the exhaust vents, that should equalize the bypass ratio. Once the engine gets moving, that is."

"Great, so we now have a fully functioning engine that doesn't move," Tony said with sarcastic cheer. "Come help me shift this debris?"

Maggie wriggled her way out of the combustion chamber, sliding over metal surfaces and ducking wires. When she could see blue sky again she dove outward, weightless for a moment before she fired her engines and looped up over the massive turbine. Tony stood on one of the long rotors, trying to yank a shard of metal out from between two blades but struggling with the awkward shape of it. Maggie landed beside him and put her shoulder into it. The hunk of metal groaned, then twisted under their combined pressure and slid through the rotors. Maggie watched the wind snatch it and whisk it away.

"The bridge is under attack, we've got a perimeter breach!" called an agent Maggie didn't recognize into the comms. "Hostiles are in SHIELD gear. Call-outs at every junction."

Another agent called: "We have the Hulk and Thor on Research Level 4, Levels 2 and 3 are dark!"

Maggie gritted her teeth. She half ran, half flew to a tangle of wires that had wrapped themselves around another engine rotor, and listened as Hill ordered a jet to go target the Hulk. She couldn't imagine the damage the Hulk could wreak inside the contained Helicarrier.

A moment later as she was cutting through the wires, she heard a roar and looked down to see a smoking F-35 spiralling below the Helicarrier, being torn apart by -

"Holy shit," she breathed.

She could barely see the massive green figure through the smoke billowing from the damaged jet, but she could hear his roars. The jet was dropping fast. Maggie held her breath, then let it go when she saw a chute bloom in the sky above the jet - the pilot had gotten out. Half a second later the jet exploded in a bright blossom of flame. Maggie lost sight of it as it fell.

I hope Banner will be alright. She cut through the last wire and tugged it all free, sending it slipping below the rotors.

Her head jerked up when she heard a muted explosion on the other side of the engine, followed by the sounds of fighting over Steve's comms, and then gunfire.

"Steve!" Maggie shouted over the roaring wind.

Tony smashed the last piece of debris and then looked up at Maggie. "Go, save the idiot. I'll jumpstart this."

"Don't be stupid about it," she warned.

Maggie took a running leap off the engine rotor and rocketed over the edge, twisting to try to spot Steve's bright uniform amidst the wreckage at the front of the engine. She heard a rattle of gunfire and found him: he'd somehow gotten a machine gun and was holding his position by the mag-lev control lever. It was poor cover: he was trading fire with a man in thick black SHIELD assault gear, who had emerged from within the Helicarrier itself. Another man in the SHIELD gear lay fallen on the walkway just outside his hidey-hole.

Maggie swooped down to Steve's walkway with a clang, lifting her wing to shield them both from a volley of bullets. Steve blinked at her sudden appearance. When the hostile firing on them paused, Maggie whisked the black wing back and fired an energy pulse at the doorway. She craned her neck, trying to figure out if she'd hit him, but then she felt the metal beneath her feet shudder.

There was a pause, and suddenly the world seemed a little quieter. Maggie tried to figure out what had changed, when an agent said into the comms:

"Engine one is now in shutdown."

As if the Helicarrier had suddenly realized it too, they began to fall.

It didn't really feel like falling, on such a huge structure, but the floor tilted beneath Maggie and Steve's feet and gravity seemed to shift and ebb. The wind seemed to change direction as well, no longer rushing from ahead, but rising from below. Steve gripped the railing to balance himself. They shared a glance.

"We are in an uncontrolled descent," the agent reported over the comms. Maggie swung her gaze in the direction of Engine One, trusting her HUD to give her the overlay. I didn't hear another explosion… but what she saw was much worse. All power had been cut to the engine, from the mainframe. She didn't know how the hostiles had done it.

"Maggie, go," Steve urged her. "They need you inside."

She glanced at him, and then back at the doorway into the Helicarrier. "There could be more-"

"I've got this," he reassured her, gesturing with his machine gun.

She ground her jaw for a moment, but he was right. "Keep my brother in one piece, Rogers."

He nodded once, and then Maggie flared her wings and tipped backwards off the walkway.

She dropped beneath the Helicarrier, thinking get to Engine 1, get to the power relays. Though if the central computer had been hit instead, that might not be something she could fix. But then Fury spoke into the comms:

"It's Barton. He's taken out our computers, he's headed for the detention level. Does anybody copy?"

"This is Agent Romanoff," Nat responded, her voice low and almost forcefully steady. "I copy."

Maggie cut in: "Fury, what's the situation at the bridge? The computers were hit?"

"We're working on rebooting them, but I need eyes on the detention level-"

"Got it, I'm on my way." She boosted her engines and headed for the belly of the Helicarrier.

"Copy," Fury acknowledged. "Mr Stark, we're losing altitude."

"Yep, noticed," came Tony's curt voice. Maggie could hear repulsors and clanking metal from his end, and she looked over her shoulder to see movement from Engine 3. More gunfire rattled from Steve's line, but she had to trust he could handle it.

Maggie soared just under the massive emblazoned 64 on the underbelly of the Helicarrier, trying to work out from memory where the detention level would be. Her plan was to blast a hole right through the floor, but then she spotted the large, circular hatch built into the base of the level. It gaped wide open, the wind rushing up into it with an eerie moaning sound.

Maggie's stomach twisted. Did someone drop Loki out in that glass cell, like Fury threatened to do?

She drew her wings in tight and soared straight up through the open chute, wobbling slightly in the change in air pressure, before she alighted on the edge of the hatch.

It took her a second to process what she had flown into. The glass cage was still suspended above the open hatch, but it was Thor inside, his fists clenched as he glared, and against the far wall of the room-

"Coulson," Maggie gasped, stepping forward.

Coulson was slumped against the wall with a gaping bloody hole torn in his chest. He gasped shallowly for breath, his face pale and blood at the corner of his mouth. He had a strange glowing weapon propped in his lap.

But before Maggie could take another step a flicker of movement to her left made her turn.

Loki. He stood at the containment unit control panel, gripping his bloody-tipped sceptre, looking at her in faint surprise.

Maggie's eyes widened and she flung up her hands to fire twin energy bolts straight at the Asgardian. Loki snarled and jerked back as one of them caught his shoulder, then fired at her with the scepter. Maggie ducked and he missed once, twice. The crackling blue projectiles collided against the far wall. Wind sucked and howled in the detention chamber, louder than Maggie's pounding heart.

She whirled, pulled a knife from her boot, and flung it at Loki - it struck him, cutting through the leather of his sleeve before glancing away. But then Coulson groaned, and her attention flickered - and Loki's next scepter blast caught her full in the chest, knocking her to the edge of the open hole in the floor.

Maggie gasped, on her knees, and just managed to lift her left wing to shield herself when Loki fired again. This blast shredded through the webbing of her wing and knocked her half over the edge. Maggie felt the wing tear and cried out in shock. The power seemed to crackle out of her wings at the blast, like the scepter had drained them.

Maggie hung over the edge of the hole in the floor, gasping and dazed. Thor stood in the glass cell above her, staring down with agonizingly helpless eyes. She fought not to fall, fought to keep drawing in breath past the pain in her chest. Her wing snapped helplessly in the gusting wind.

Loki lowered his scepter and cocked his head at Maggie's fallen form. "Perhaps you might be worth something to me after all," he mused. "Perhaps you are their soft underbelly." He took a step toward her, his eyes gleaming.

"No!" Thor pounded on the glass of his cell.

Maggie managed to prop herself on her elbow and oriented herself. She took in the tall figure of Loki prowling toward her, a slight smile on his lips. He lifted his scepter and pointed its blade at her chest. The tip was stained red with blood.

She made several very quick calculations. She looked at her useless wing. She looked at Thor, raging impotently in a cage. Looked at Coulson's anguished eyes, on hers. She looked back to Loki and his scepter, only an arm's length away now. The orb glowed blue.

"Come, Wyvern," Loki smiled.

And Maggie tipped backward, out the hole in the bottom of the floor.

She fell, wing trailing behind her, and just heard Thor's echoing cry of "No!" before the slipstream plucked her from the detention chute, slammed her into the bottom hull of the Helicarrier then whisked her down, and she lost all sense of where she was.

Reviews

DBZFAN45: I'm glad you liked all the character interactions last chapter! I hope you enjoyed the return to action this chapter ;)

The1975Love: The actor is very talented! I am enjoying seeing him slowly losing his mind haha. Hope you enjoyed this chapter!

Don't touch Lola: Thank you so much! I'm enjoying exploring Maggie and Steve's friendship more in this story :) Hope you enjoyed this chapter and the return of the action! I agree with you about Zemo haha, I wasn't expecting to like him so much! I'm worried Sharon will turn out to be a villain though.