HELICARRIER HALLWAY

DOZENS of SHIELD POLICE escort Loki, who is in handcuffs, smiling. As they pass the HELICARRIER LAB, Banner stops working on the CHITAURI SCEPTER and looks up. Loki eyes him as he walks, nodding and smiling. BANNER rubs his head.

HELICARRIER DETENTION SECTION

Loki is now free from his cuffs and is contained in a LARGE GLASS CELL held by HYDRAULIC RIGS. Fury walks up the control panel of the cell.

NICK FURY "In case it's unclear. You try to escape. You so much as scratch that glass."

Fury presses a button which OPENS UP a HATCH underneath Loki's cell. Loki peers as much as he can from the glass. Without seeing, the sounds of GUSTING WIND would make men shit there pants. Not a god, though.

NICK FURY "Thirty thousand feet, straight down in a steel trap. You get how that works?!"

Fury closes the hatch. Points at Loki.

NICK FURY "Ant."

Then points at the button which would drop Loki into the steel trap.

NICK FURY "Boot."

LOKI (SMIRKING) "It's an impressive cage. Not built, I think, for me."

NICK FURY "Built for something a lot stronger than you."

LOKI "Oh, I've heard."

Loki looks into the camera.

BACK INSIDE THE BRIEFING ROOM

The others watch on the monitor Loki getting interrogated. Banner looks at the monitor, intently.

BACK INSIDE THE HELICARRIER DETENTION SECTION

LOKI "The mindless beast, makes play he's still a man. How desperate are you, that you call upon such lost creatures to defend you?"

NICK FURY "How desperate am I? You threaten my world with war. You steal a force you can't hope to control. You talk about peace and you kill cause it's fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did."

LOKI "Ooh. It burns you to come so close. To have the Tesseract, to have power, unlimited power. And for what? A warm light for all mankind to share, and then to be reminded what real power is."

NICK FURY (SMILING) "Well, you let me know if Real Power wants a magazine or something."

Fury walks off leaving Loki in his glass cell. Loki looks back at the camera, smirking.

BACK INSIDE THE BRIEFING ROOM

Steve watches until the monitor goes black. Thor, who didn't even look, just listened, stands there, torn apart. They all just stand there in stunned SILENCE. Finally --

LINCOLN "He really grows on you, doesn't he?"

STEVE "Loki's gonna drag this out. So, Thor, what's his play?"

THOR (COMING TOO) He has an army called the Chitauri. They're not of Asgard or any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the earth. In return, I suspect, for the Tesseract.

LINCOLN (SERIOUSLY) "An army? From outer space?"

BANNER "So he's building another portal. That's what he needs Erik Selvig for."

THOR "Selvig?"

BANNER "He's an astrophysicist."

THOR "He's a friend."

NATASHA "Loki has him under some kind of spell, along with one of ours."

STEVE "I wanna know why Loki let us take him. He's not leading an army from here."

BANNER "I don't think we should be focusing on Loki. That guy's brain is a bag full of cats, you could smell crazy on him."

THOR "Have care how you speak. Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard, and he's my brother."

NATASHA "He killed eighty people in two days."

LINCOLN "He's adopted."

Thor looks at him and has a curious look on his face

THOR "how do you know that?"

LINCOLN "I have read up on the history of Norse mythology for a class I had at college last year"

BANNER "Iridium, what did they need the Iridium for?"

TONY "It's a stabilizing agent. (walks in with Coulson; to COULSON) I'll fly you there. Keep the love alive. Means the portal won't collapse on itself, like it did at SHIELD."

TONY (TO THOR) No hard feelings, Point Break. You've got a mean swing. (referring to the Iridium) Also, it means the portal can open as wide, and stay open as long, as Loki wants (TO CREW) Uh, raise the mid-mast, ship the top sails. That man is playing GALAGA Thought we wouldn't notice. But we did (covering his eye, looks AROUND) How does Fury do this?

AGENT MARIA HILL "He turns.

Tony looks around the monitors and places a BUTTON SIZE HACKING IMPLANT under Fury's desk, without anyone but Lincoln noticing

LINCOLN "Well, that sounds exhausting. The rest of the raw materials, Agent Barton can get his hands on pretty easily. Only major component he still needs is a power source. A high energy density, something to kick start the cube."

AGENT MARIA HILL "When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?

LINCOLN "Last night. The packet, Selvig's notes, the Extraction Theory papers. Am I the only one who did the reading?"

TONY "I did but you beat me to it...nice job hothead"

STEVE "Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?"

BANNER "He's got to heat the cube to a hundredand twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier."

TONY "Unless, Selvig has figured out how to stabilize the quantum tunneling effect."

LINCOLN "Well, if he could do that he could achieve Heavy Ion Fusion at any reactor on the planet."

TONY "Finally, people who speak English."

STEVE "Is that what just happened?"

Tony, Banner and Lincoln shake hands. A glimmer in their eyes shines as the mutual respect for each other shows.

TONY "It's good to meet you, Dr. Banner. You're work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled. And I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."

LINCOLN "same and stark your work on alternative fuel and power is also outstanding"

TONY "thanks kid and the way you can control fire like a fire bender is nice to"

BANNER (LOOKS DOWN) Thanks.

NICK FURY (WALKING IN) "Dr. Banner is only here to track the cube. I was hoping you might join him."

LINCOLN "is there anyway I can join them to MR. Fury?"

NICK FURY "I don't see why not sure go ahead"

STEVE "Let's start with that stick of his. It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a HYDRA weapon."

NICK FURY "I don't know about that, but it is powered by the cube. And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys."

THOR "Monkeys? I do not understand."

STEVE "I do! I understood that reference.

Tony rolls his eyes, while Cap looks proud of himself.

TONY "Shall we play, doctor?"

BANNER "Let's play some. Lincoln you coming with?"

Lincoln nods and follows them both

As Banner, Tony and Lincoln walk out, the GALAGA PLAYER turns ever so discreetly, watches as everyone else disperses and goes back to playing.

BANNER'S LAB AT NIGHT

Banner continuously scans with a gamma ray detection scanner on the scepter for radiation.

Tony looks at his monitors, shifting and solving as many algorithms and equations.

LINCOLN "The gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract. But it's gonna take weeks to process."

TONY "If we bypass their mainframe and direct a reroute to the Homer cluster, we can clock this around six hundred teraflops."

BANNER "All I packed was a tooth brush."

LINCOLN "and all I got is the clothes on my back here and the one in the locker"

TONY (SMILES) "You know, you should come by STARK TOWERS sometime. Top ten floors, all RD. You'd love it, it's candy land."

BANNER "Thanks, but the last time I was in New York I kind of broke...Harlem."

TONY "Well, I promise a stress free environment. No tension. No surprises."

Suddenly, Tony pokes Banner with a MINIATURE ELECTRICAL PROD.

Steve walks in on them, pissed at Tony.

BANNER "OW!"

Tony looks at Banner closely.

TONY "Nothing?"

STEVE (TO STARK) Hey! Are you nuts?"

TONY "You really have got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz? Bongo drums? Huge bag of weed?"

LINCOLN "If you have that last one...let me get some ok Dr. banner?"

STEVE "Is everything a joke to you?

TONY "Funny things are.

Lincoln nods at that comment but is more focused on his work

STEVE "Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny. No offense, doctor.

BANNER "No, it's alright. I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things."

TONY "You're tiptoeing, big man. You need to strut."

LINCOLN "And we need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark. but I see your point"

STEVE "still focus on the problem"

TONY "You think I'm not? Why did Fury call us and why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables."

STEVE "You think Fury's hiding something?"

LINCOLN "He's a spy. Captain, he's the spy. His secrets have secrets." (points to Banner and Tony) "It's bugging Them too, isn't it?"

BANNER (bobbling the words) "Uh...I just wanna finish my work here and..."

STEVE "Doctor?"

A beat later

BANNER " 'A warm light for all mankind', Loki's jab at Fury about the cube.

STEVE "I heard it."

BANNER (pointing at Lincoln and Tony ) "Well, I think that was meant for you both. Even if Barton didn't post that all over the news."

STEVE "The Stark Tower? That big ugly (Tony gives him a look)...building in New York?

BANNER "It's powered by Stark Reactors, self-sustaining energy source. That building will run itself for what, a year?"

TONY "That's just the prototype. I'm kind of the only name in clean energy right now."

LINCOLN (looking at banner) I see your point Dr. banner (looks to Steve and referring to Tony) So, why didn't SHIELD bring him in on the Tesseract project? I mean, what are they doing in the energy business in the first place?

TONY "I should probably look into that once my decryption programmer finishes breaking into all of SHIELD's secure files."

STEVE (taken by that) "I'm sorry, did you say...?"

LINCOLN "He put something on the command station when we where on the bridge earlier"

Tony looks at Lincoln and smiles

TONY "Jarvis has been running it since I hit the bridge. In a few hours we'll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide. (holds out a bag of blueberries) Blueberry?"

STEVE "Yet you're confused about why they didn't want you around?

LINCOLN "An intelligence organization that fears intelligence? Historically, not possible."

STEVE "I think Loki's trying to wind us up. This is a man who means to start a war, and if we don't stay focused, he'll succeed. We have orders, we should follow them.

TONY "Following is not really my style."

LINCOLN "same here Cap I'm more of a doer then a follower it's not my style either"

STEVE (SMILING) "And both of you are all about style, aren't you?"

LINCOLN (a nerve hit) "Of the people in this room, which one is; A. wearing a spangly outfit, and B. not of use?"

Lincoln says as his hands start to heat up and you everyone can feel the heat coming off of him

BANNER "Steve, tell me none of this smells a little funky to you? and Lincoln please try to calm down a bit"

Steve takes in the possibility, but as an obedient soldier, shakes it off.

and Lincoln calms down enough to get back to work

STEVE "Just find the cube."

Steve walks out of the lab. Still torn apart by the possibility, he walks away, towards the HULL of the ship.

BACK IN THE LAB

TONY "That's the guy my dad never shut up about? Wondering if they shouldn't have kept him on ice.

LINCOLN "The guy's not wrong about Loki. He does have the jump on us."

TONY "What he's got is an ACME dynamite kit. It's gonna blow up in his face, and I'm gonna be there when it does."

BANNER "And I'll read all about it.

LINCOLN "Uh-huh. Or you'll be suiting up like the rest of us."

BANNER "Ah, see. I don't get a suit of armor. I'm exposed, like a nerve. It's a nightmare."

TONY "You know, I've got a cluster of shrapnel, trying every second to crawl its way into my heart. (points at the MINI-ARC REACTOR in his chest) This stops it. This little circle of light. It's part of me now, not just armor. It's a... terrible privilege."

LINCOLN "same with my fire...it's a curse and a blessing...if my sister's piss me off then I could very much burn the house down but...I can use it as a way to help people"

BANNER "But you can control it."

TONY "Because I learned how."

LINCOLN "Same, but unlike you...I'm always angry...I just know how to control my anger

BANNER "It's different."

Banner tries to read the computer screen, but Tony slides the data aside with his finger so the two can see face-to-face.

TONY "Hey, I've read all about your accident. That much gamma exposure should have killed you."

BANNER "So you're saying that the Hulk... the other guy... saved my life? That's nice. It's a nice sentiment. Saved it for what?"

LINCOLN (A BEAT) "I guess we'll find out."

Banner, Stark and Lincoln get back to work at their respective computers.

BANNER "You might not like that."

TONY

"You just might."