Abigail Brand is standing on a table, speaking loudly over the crowd. It is only to be expected, Loki supposes with a mild distaste, that she should come to a party of the most impressively moneyed upper classes in her black leathers. Loki has seen her several times over the years, either in the halls of the X-Mansion or stalking the halls of SHIELD. Just once, she had visited Kuldeheim Industries, demanding a private contact that Loki had readily assented to, and since…

"Ladies, gentlemen and esteemed guests," she calls over the crowd, and Loki smiles slightly, feeling his lips quirk up at the edges. On distant planets, where magic is but myth and fairy tale, he had once adored to hear the different ways in which a culture addressed those that were not man or woman, and mostly on Midgard, he is forced to abandon such addresses as flights of fancy. But Abigail Brand, leading the Sentient World Operation and Response Department, is so many leagues ahead of this world. "Please, remain calm. Stay here, in the main hall, and our agents will check what's up – seems to us that it's just a small tremor!"

"Small?" asks a harsh, biting voice. Loki looks at the man, who is wearing round spectacles and a fitted suit, wearing the gaudiest of gold rings. He has a Southern accent, and he looks around the room with great distaste. "What the Hell do you mean, small? We coulda—"

"The tremor only felt so severe as a result of the storey we're on," Loki breaks in. He sees the head of every person in the room turn to face him. "The Hamish Institute is a skyscraper, sir: assuming our proximity to the epicentre, of course we'll feel the tremor, but statistically, we are much safer than those on the streets below. Earthquakes themselves do not kill, sir. Falling rubble, rocks, et cetera – those are the true danger. Ms Brand, pray continue."

"Thank you, Mr Svensson," Brand says, in such a tone as to imply he may later be shot for his interruption. Loki's fond smile grows slightly wider. For so many years, now, he has forced himself to live by human rules, causing no harm to anybody – except for a few clever words here and there – and he's grown rather patient with the slights an individual might throw in his direction. And slights from Abigail Brand? Oh, Loki always has time for her threats and implications: she does them ever so well. "Everyone, remain in this room, and continue with the party. We'll sort everything out."

After a rather lengthy silence, people begin to reluctantly speak with one another. He sees Thor looking across the room, his eye caught by the waving hand of Clint Barton, who stands with a few of the other Avengers. What, Loki wonders, are they supposed to be avenging? He supposes it isn't his place to ask.

"Loki," Thor says. "I must go."

"Go. Speak with the other Avengers: keep us safe." Thor smiles, the expression warm, and he turns away. Slipping sly as a thief from his own seat, Loki begins to move across the room, keeping a measured pace in order not to be noticed. That man, that stranger in the pin-striped suit, is nowhere to be seen.

But Loki smells him.

There are not a great amount of physiological differences between the Asgardian and the Midgardian, so similar as they are, but there are a few. There is more density to the physical flesh, of course (a paltry bullet couldn't pierce Thor's epidermis, let alone his muscles and organs, and no mere human could lift him or face his brute force), and a greater lifespan, with magic in the very flesh and bones, but there is yet one more. The Asgardian sense of taste can pick up all but the most delicate of poisons, and the Asgardian sense of smell…

Perhaps Loki does not smell pheromones or feelings on the air, as the mighty Wolverine, but he remembers scents from planets that have long since burned with the ether, knows the taste of stardust as much as he knows the taste of cherries.

And this stranger leaves stardust in his wake.

✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯MY STARS FOR AN EMPIRE ✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯

Sliding between the slightly open door and the jamb, the Doctor makes his way into the staff corridor and out of the main hall. The tremor had come up all the way from the ground floor of the Hamish Institute, and from the way the building had shook, the Doctor knows they must be at the very epicentre. Stepping into a service lift, the Doctor scans the buttons, and then presses M1. Nothing happens. The little light doesn't even go out behind the button spread. Clicking his tongue in frustration, the Doctor frowns. He presses the M1 button again, and nothing happens then either.

He taps the metal casing of the elevator's buttons, but nothing happens. The little light is on behind the museum buttons, but they're obviously not activated yet, probably to keep people from descending that far by accident. Well, that's easily fixed, at least – the Doctor begins to rifle through his pockets, trying to remember where he last placed his sonic screwdriver.

"Oh, I shouldn't bother with whatever gadget you have to hand, sir. Why not use me?" Loki Svensson's voice has a slight accent to it, betraying his Norwegian roots, and the Doctor turns to look at him. Svensson stands there, in his suit, with his hair tied up behind his head and a pair of oval-lensed glasses on his nose. Bifocals, from the look of them. The Doctor watches as he reaches out, pressing the button himself, and there is no DNA lock, nothing special about him, but when Svensson presses M1, the lift doors close behind him, and the elevator begins to descend.

"Glasses?" the Doctor asks, and he grins, grossing his arms over his chest. Up close, he feels a strange energy surrounding the other man, clinging to his body. The Doctor sticks out his tongue, tasting the biodata in the air – he failed his exams back on Gallifrey, always forgetting or mixing up DNA strands, and he usually needs to put something physically on his tongue to identify it, but human? Human biodata he knows pretty well, and Svensson has it… Except it's wrong. "Bet you don't need those."

"You've got glasses in your breast pocket," Svensson murmurs. Like the Doctor himself, he shows no outward signs of being nervous or uncertain of the situation: Svennson's chin is high, his shoulders squared, and he exudes confidence. "Do you need yours?"

"Oh," the Doctor says, shaking his head. It's not just the biodata. Here, in close quarters, he feels the instinctive understanding of this man's impact on the timeline: Svensson feels old. Ridiculously old. Older than him. He's not old enough that the Doctor feels any particular revulsion – there's no time energy on this guy at all, and his lifespan seems natural – but it's enough that he feels a little bit wrong, a little bit unsettling. "That's not even—" The Doctor scoffs, shaking his head. "You can see the outline of them through the suit!"

"This lift wasn't hooked into the circuitry," Svensson says casually, pushing his own glasses a little further up his nose. "Even by removing the elevator panel and adjusting the circuitry within, you'd not have been able to make it move down to the basement level, not without a length of steel wire and a firm will." The Doctor frowns, glancing between Svensson and the lift.

"So what did you do?" the Doctor asks, more curious than anything. Svensson seems to hesitate. It seems to be more than modesty, this hesitation, and the Doctor wonders how much it relates to his inhumanity.

"I channelled electricity down the elevator line, down to a control panel in the basement that retains an active basement control. The panels in the basement, inaccessible by stairwell, remain unaltered." Svensson's explanation is quiet and measured, but completely confident – he must have some personal link to the Magda Korporacja, but what it is, the Doctor couldn't say.

"Then why press the button?" the Doctor asks mildly. Svensson blinks, looking at him quizzically, and the Doctor adds, "Why press the button, if you were just channelling electricity down the line? Why not just press your hand to the wall?" Svensson chuckles.

"It wouldn't have looked nearly as good," he says, as if the answer is obvious, and the Doctor chuckles too. "What have you done to this building?" Svensson asks, his head tilted to the side. Jackie's magazine had gone on and on about how handsome he is, but the Doctor doesn't really see it. Perhaps it's just how modern he is, with his manbun, his light beard, his spectacles, that make people look twice.

"What have I done?" the Doctor demands, his shoulders rising. "What do you mean, what have I done? What have you and the Magda Korp. done?" Svensson's eyebrows furrow, his head tilting to the side.

"The Magda Korp. is a charity, sir. Do you really think they're to risk the funds they're raising to shake this building at its foundations?" The lift comes to a stop, and the doors glide open. Svensson steps out into the darkness of the room, and the Doctor frowns. The museum is in pitch black, without even emergency lights on, but he hears Svensson's steps on the ground. The man walks confidently, as if he can see everything perfectly. "One moment! I'll get the lights!"

"Can you see?"

"Here we are," he hears Svensson's voice from across an echoing room, and he hears several switches flicked in succession. Bright lights burn down from the ceiling, and the Doctor blinks a few times to allow his eyes to get used to it. Stepping out of the elevator, he finds that they're in a large storage room, with a high ceiling. This is a basement level of the Hamish Institute, but there's a height of at least three stories between them and the ground floor above.

"Come," Svensson says. "I believe the access to the museum is this way!" And then he just begins walking! Walking away! As if there isn't an urgency to the situation! It's… Strangely impressive, and for a second, the Doctor wonders if this is what it's like to be around him. What a horrible thought.

The Doctor runs after him.

"Have you been down here already?" the Doctor asks as they make their way through two double doors that swing easily shut behind them: the lights come on automatically, and they're permitted a sight of the museum itself, which is in a state of partial completion. Some exhibits are put together in their entirety, mounted on walls or on tables, behind glass. None of them yet have information slides beside them, but the Doctor can see what some of the artefacts are – bits and pieces of alien life, here and there.

"Just once," Svensson says. "I hadn't noticed anything untoward…" He and the Doctor stop at the same time, and the Doctor frowns slightly, inhaling. All he can feel is the strange energy that clings around Svensson, so he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his sonic screwdriver, setting it on a scanning frequency. "What is that?"

"It's a sonic screwdriver," the Doctor mutters, pressing the button down and listening carefully to the following whir. "This way, down to the right." Walking briskly together, the Doctor finds that Svensson easily matches his stride, and he glances at the man out of the corner of his eye.

"Was your name on the guest-list?" Svensson asks, with a wry smile on his face.

"Doctor John Smith?" the Doctor asks, his eyebrows raising, and then he grins. "No." Svensson chuckles, shaking his head, and he pushes the next set of doors open, before skidding to a rather abrupt stop; the Doctor frowns, taking a few steps forwards and coming through the door himself. They're in a central hall of the museum, now, with a high, domed ceiling and four corridors coming away from it on each side. In the centre of the room, mounted on poles and protected by glass, is a marble.

Not a glass marble, no, no, but a marble slab with carvings on it – carvings of men and women walking on water, with images of what seems like energy around their heads. The slab is big, at least ten feet high at its tallest and forty feet wide, shaped like a triangle, and the carving is positively magnificent, completed in beautiful detail.

"A pediment," Svensson murmurs. "This was once mounted upon a temple." He takes a few steps forwards, reaching out, but there's a sudden sound, a crack and a sizzle, and he cries out as he recoils. Rushing forwards, the Doctor grabs at Svensson's shoulder: Svensson's left hand is burnt, the flesh under the skin red and bared to the air. Gasping in pain, Svensson grits his teeth tightly together, and the Doctor can't help but wince as he looks at the wound. Sudden heat has burned away Svensson's top layer of skin and a little of the muscle, leaving the tendons and the bones on the palm and wrist exposed.

"You need medical attention," the Doctor says, shaking his head. "Go back upstairs, go—"

"Shush, shush a moment," Svensson mutters, curling his lip as he stares down as his ruined hand, slowly moving his fingers. He must have an insane pain threshold to wiggle his knuckles like that, even with half the nerves charred to a cinder, and— The Doctor feels his lips part, his eyes widening. It's like watching a video of a scab played at highspeed, the way that the flesh slowly rebuilds itself, layering itself again exactly as it should be, and then skin grows over the wound again like a film. Throughout it all, Svensson twists his mouth and nose, gasping and letting out soft sounds of pain, but there is no surprise, no horror – he does it as if this is entirely routine.

"What are you, then?" the Doctor asks, and Svensson lets out a sharp huff of surprise, giving him a surprisingly stern look.

"I believe we have rather more crucial concerns to consider. Do sort out your priorities." Svensson chides, his blond brows knitting together. Pointing to the tablet with his perfectly-healed hand (this time from a safe distance), Svensson demands, "What is that?" The Doctor opens his mouth slightly, glancing from the pediment, which seems to hum with electric energy, and back to Svensson.

"Well," the Doctor says, leaning from his left foot to his right foot and then bringing his hands up in order to gesticulate with. Making a vague circular motion with his hands, he tries to think of something clever to say, and finds he can't come up with anything especially good. "It's a big alien death machine." Svensson stares at him, uncomprehending.

"Yes," he says, lowly, with a dangerous impatience. "And are you planning to do anything about it?"

"What are you?" the Doctor asks instead of answering his question, crossing his own arms over his chest and tilting his head to the side. "You're obviously some sort of alien: the knowledge aside, you can see in the dark, you've got some pretty mad regenerative abilities… You've masked your own biodata, changed it somehow." The Doctor wiggles his fingers in the air, as if to illustrate the point: "You look like a human, feel like a human, but you're not one. How did you do that?"

"There aren't many species that can sense biodata without some manner of chemical test," Svensson says. His apparent irritation fades somewhat, a small smirk appearing on his face. He seems pleased, somehow, like this is an interaction he's won.

"But—"

"If I might make a suggestion… Perhaps we ought attend to the, as you call it, big alien death machine before we share our respective family histories? It's merely that it seems to be gathering energy somehow." Svensson wrinkles his nose as he looks at the slab of carved marble, rotating his hand upon his wrist, making the bones crack quietly in the silence of the room. "We might stop for a coffee and a chat later on."

"Who are you?"

"Who are you?" Svensson retorts, wheeling on the Doctor and coming directly into his space, so that they are nose-to-nose, almost mouth to mouth. Svensson's breath, underneath the champagne from upstairs, smells of fruits the like of which Earth has never dreamed of, let alone seen – not in this century, anyway. Despite how close Svensson is, despite how much his body seems charged with a foreign energy, the Doctor grins. He grins widely.

And Svensson grins back.

✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯MY STARS FOR AN EMPIRE ✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯

Tony sits on a counter in the kitchen, his back leaned against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. Beside him, Steve has his hands in the pockets of his suit trousers, which are tight against his thighs and are obviously struggling to hold the muscle of his body underneath – tailored suits were never designed for super soldiers. Abigail Brand has laid out a tablet in the middle of the room, and it projects a three-dimensional blueprint of the Institute's design, showing her people in green dots as they move between floors.

"SWORD are doing rounds of the rest of the floors in teams of two, looking for any signs of trouble." Nick Fury stands with his hands on his hips, glaring at Brand with his eyebrows raised. His single eye is focused on her, and he doesn't look friendly.

"Yeah, uh huh, well, SHIELD is scanning the building for biosigns with drones, from the outside. Ain't no point in doing patrols on foot – it's a waste of time!" Fury stamps his foot down on the ground, taking a step forwards, but Brand isn't the type of woman to be physically intimidated: she steps into Fury's space and snaps right back.

"Your drones are not equipped to search for alien life—"

"Why would you assume it's aliens!? You SWORD people, everywhere you look, you think it's aliens. You burn your morning waffle? Shit, man, it's aliens. You got no parking space? It's aliens! You—"

"Shut up!" Brand snaps. She and Fury really clash when they're thrown together, and Tony had half-expected Steve to jump in and take control of the situation, but he's been pretty much silent. Tony isn't sure why he's here, either – maybe because Sam Wilson isn't around, and Steve figured he needed back-up in a room full of team co-ordinators? Yeah. Tony doubts that.

"No, you shut up, I—"

"I've traced the power fluctuation," says a SHIELD agent beside them, bent over a laptop and frowning at it. He tilts the laptop to the side, and then balances it on his knee again, typing rapid commands into a control screen. Fury's irritation at the interruption soon fades away as he stalks across the room, looking over the agent's shoulder. He's young, Tony thinks – younger than it seems a SHIELD agent should be, but a lot of the people in this business seem like kids to him these days. Maybe Tony's just getting old. "It's on the lower levels, in the basement."

"No one can get down to the basement," Brand says, at the same time Fury says, "The basement's closed off." That much is true, Tony knows, he'd heard a few of the security talking about it – they'd taken the lower levels right off the control panels for the elevators, to make sure no one could get down into the museum, in case of anyone using the gala to steal any of the artefacts the Hamish Museum had been collecting for exhibits.

"What's down there?" Steve asks, directing the question at the agent. The agent's eyes are wide, and he seems anxious to be in his position, but when Fury gives him a glance, he begins to talk, his head held high and his shoulders straight, as if he has to remind himself to make his posture good. Some of the SHIELD agents are soldiers, but this guy, he isn't a soldier. Tony can clock a soldier a mile off. This guy's a boffin – a natural scientist, meant to be kept away from the field so he can get his best work done. He's not American, either, but it doesn't surprise Tony too much: SHIELD seem to grab up the best and brightest from all over the world, and although they're not quite as varied as the SWORD staff, they're not limited to the homegrown stock of potential engineers, scientists and soldiers.

"Uh, we didn't go down there," the kid says, shrugging his shoulders. "It isn't relevant to us, the museum – the manager cut off access to protect the exhibits, and there's no way up or down."

"What do you mean, no way?" Tony asks. "What about the stairs?"

"There are no stairs, sir," the kid says. He hesitates, glancing to Brand and to Fury, and then says, "I was talking to one of the archaeologists who works down there, and he was saying there's no stairs at all. They have lifts for staff, and they have loading bays coming off the lifts: when the Hamish Museum opens, visitors will enter via an ancient teleport system built by the Inhumans. It's part of the tourist attraction." The guy seems to get excited at the very thought, and Tony has to admit – it's one way to get people more actively interested in archaeology.

"What's your name?" Steve asks, his voice very quiet.

"Fitz, sir, Leopold Fitz."

"Fitz, this teleport system… Is it online yet? Could that be causing the power fluctuation?" Steve asks. His brow is furrowed, and Tony can see the lines forming on his forehead.

"No, sir," Fitz says immediately, shaking his head. As he does so, his tightly curled hair shifts on his head with the vigorous movement. "They're testing the system at an out base somewhere in Alaska, so they can make sure it's working perfectly before they install it here. But from my data here, the fluctuation is surging, getting a little more—" Fitz stops. He stares down at his computer, his mouth open, and it seems like he's forgotten entirely where he is.

"What is it, kid?" Tony asks, even as he shares a concerned look with Steve.

"It's— There's someone in the lift."

"What?" Fury demands, and he turns Fitz' computer to face him, his single eye squinting down at the screen. Fury's jaw is set, and Tony can see the way he tightens his fist at his side. Tony glances between Fitz' pale features and Fury's angry ones. "Two life signs," Fury barks to Brand. "Moving down and down… Why didn't your drones catch that?"

"They're not tracking the elevator shafts," Brand mutters quietly. "Do we know who they are? Have we got security footage?"

"It's a staff elevator," Fitz mutters, sheepishly shaking his head. "I—" The double doors open with a clatter, and Tony feels the sudden whoosh of air over his face, but when he looks to the doors, they're closed and locked again. Fury stands up straight, scanning the room, and Tony lets out a quiet sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Don't play the Invisible Man, Maximoff," Tony says to the room at large, and Maximoff stops flitting about the room and avoiding a look from the naked eye, instead skidding to a stop beside Abigail Brand. Tony looks at Maximoff, taking in a quiet breath, and glances to Steve: Steve is looking at Maximoff with a mix of distrust and uncertainty. "You here for a reason?"

"This room is sound-proofed," Maximoff mutters, tapping his fingers so quickly on the side of his thigh that they're just a blur against the blue fabric of his suit. His blue eyes are intense, and he looks just like his father, for the barest flash of a moment. There's a difference, of course: Tony might not like Maximoff, all the time, but he trusts the guy. He'd never trust Magneto. "You, boy. What's your security clearance?"

"Uh—"

"Don't answer that," Fury mutters, stepping slightly forwards. The intention, Tony guesses, is to intimidate Maximoff a little, but he's about the same height as Fury, and he doesn't seem deterred in the least. "Maximoff, what—"

"Hush. Can you be trusted with a secret, child?" Maximoff is across the room, staring directly down at Fitz. He's a tall man, broad-shouldered even though he's lithe in build, and Fitz stares up at him, gaping like a fish.

"Yes, sir. Mr Maximoff." Maximoff turns to face the rest of them, his eyes flitting at high speed between Steve, Tony, Brand and Fury. Tony's never seen the guy look this anxious outside of when Wanda's dragging him somewhere for a family dinner, and he feels his heart pulse a little faster behind the Arc reactor whirring in his chest. What the Hell is he gonna say, that Magneto has something to do with this?

"Firstly, I am the founder and CEO of the Magda Korporacja.," Maximoff says. He says it almost casually, as if this is an ordinary introduction. Tony glances around, and sees the others look about as shocked as he does. "The party tonight is of my organising, albeit through a great many surrogates and shell companies." All five of them, Tony included, are staring at him. Maximoff is not known in any circles for his self-control or for the particular kindness of his heart – he's a harsh man who likes to keep to himself, and the idea that he'd be running any kind of business blows Tony out of the water.

"Is there a reason you're telling us this now?" Brand asks lowly.

"There's an energy disturbance coming from the basements, but no one ought be able to reach the lower levels—"

"We know," Fury interrupts, his tone biting. Maximoff looks ready to snarl at the other man, but he holds himself back, pressing his thin lips together before he continues.

"There are various elements of ancient technology down there, but naught that should cause such a disruption. My head archaeologist, Doctor Alraune, is leading a dig in the Australian outback, and cannot be contacted. We have one or two of our staff here, but they're all interns or assistants, here to learn more than to deliver their expertise. The bulk of our scientific team is with her: none of them wanted to come to a party of the rich and useless when they had an opportunity for something so crucial." Maximoff seems to realize what he's said, and says in a very mild, but not especially heartfelt tone, mostly to Tony: "My apologies."

"Thanks," Tony says, unconvinced. "So you don't know what the deal is either?"

"No," Maximoff says. "But it would take me little more than a few minutes to re-attach one of the elevators to the basement levels – it's something that would take an engineer a few hours, but I can do it."

"You're an engineer now, Maximoff?" Steve asks. "What must your father think?" Maximoff recoils slightly, looking at Steve as if the other man has actually hit him. Tony frowns slightly: even he thinks it's a little bit of a low blow, but there's no love lost between Steve and Pietro, from what Tony's heard.

"I don't think my father thinks about me, Captain," Maximoff says in a reservedly polite tone. "If it's all the same to you." Steve scowls, uncrossing his arms and looking like he's about to go on, but Fitz' computer fizzles with sudden static and whiteness across the screen, and then the monitor blinks into a camera feed.

✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯MY STARS FOR AN EMPIRE ✯ ⇜ ⇝ ✯

Loki examines his hand, slowly flexing his fingers and thumb, then shifting his wrist gently from side to side. He feels the soft pulse of seiðr in the new flesh, but the burst of energy will be disguised by that which is coming from the pediment in slow, roiling waves, and Loki feels it pulse through his chest with every thrum.

"Some kind of security system," Loki says mildly, turning away from the Doctor and stepping toward the pediment. He makes sure to keep back from the energy field slowly building around it, his lips pressed together, his brow furrowed. The carvings are slightly crude, with frowning faces and slightly off proportions: limbs that are too long, necks too wide, and heads slightly too large or too small. "These are very early carvings," Loki murmurs quietly. "They're not human." Doctor Smith, who had been bent over a computer console that will one day declare all the details of the exhibit, turns to glance at him.

"What?"

"You didn't look very closely, did you?" Loki asks mildly, and Smith lets out a low chuckle.

"Little distraction," he says in response, gesturing to Loki's hand, and then Smith straightens up, looking at him thoughtfully, analytically. Loki so does love to be analysed. He turns away from the computer console, instead looking to the statues upon the pediment, and Loki can see him frown. "You're right. This is much too old to have this sort of sophistication… Three-dimensional sculpting like this, with separate legs, arms— But this is tens of thousands of years old."

"And if you look to the details," Loki murmurs, pointing to the figure of one woman at the very centre of the pediment. She has something between her shoulder blades, and Loki sees the curving shape of the feathered wings, although the carving itself is crude. Another has claws in place of fingertips, and it has a different shape to its face.

"That's a Silurian," Doctor Smith murmurs, coming over and standing right next to Loki, looking over his shoulder. He frowns, staring at the surface of the sculpture, and adds, "They're more complicated, you see. Look, the sculptor's tried to form the flares in the skull, the different ridges."

"I fear I'm unfamiliar with the Silurians," Loki says mildly, but he recognizes other elements of the varied sculpted figures. Another figure has lines upon his skull, not quite as well-defined as that of the Silurian figure, but enough to show itself as the form of a Skrull. The Skrulls, why, Loki is comfortably acquainted with them.

Looking upon this earthly temple, so far removed from the capabilities of any humans, Loki feels astonished to look upon something so very old, and yet so carefully constructed. The power is still radiating in slow, rhythmic waves, and Loki feels it rove over his skin like a breeze. He holds up a hand, letting out a little tendril of seiðr and reaching out with it, seeing a shield flare visibly around the pediment, in a soft lilac.

"Ah," Loki says. Smith glances to him.

"What?" he asks.

"Look at the shield," Loki whispers. He spreads the tendril out, and he feels the ever-so-slight pressure of the lilac shield of energy against the tendril, like something pressing against his palm. "Is it merely my imagination, or…?"

"It's expanding," Smith confirms, and Loki reconsiders the burning, savage agony of the energy eating through his flesh, right down to the very bone. Perhaps, were he wearing his true skin instead of this weak, human coat, it might have taken longer, or may not even have eaten through more than the surface level. Or perhaps not – he was lucky to have drawn away so quickly. "Oh, no. Oh no, oh no…" Smith is slowly shaking his head, and he steps back toward the computer console, tapping against the monitor and pressing some sort of sonic device against it, letting it whir against the casing.

The monitor flares into life, displaying a crude informational screen. There is no formatting to the piece of text, no images or aesthetic elements: instead, it is merely green text on a black screen, still unedited.

This pediment was retrived from an undersea ruin in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Although digs are still underway, we believe this pediment used to form the front of the temple of (name of island when agreed on). The island was populated by the early Inhumans, as well as other non-human races that inhabited earth at the time.. by being on the island, they were safe from early humans that wanted to hunt/kill them (Doc Alraune says sentence is too inflammatory, rewrite)

"Well," Loki says dryly. "So long as it was retrived."

"They obviously didn't have spellcheck," Doctor Smith says impatiently, and he scans the text again, glancing from the screen up to the pediment. "Doesn't make any mention of a security system, though… Alright, what's this?" Smith taps a few pieces of the screen, and it defaults to the desktop of a basic operating system, a touchscreen keyboard taking up around a third of the monitor. He begins typing rapidly with one hand, the other holding his sonic device to the screen, and the screen shows footage of a kitchen, but no audio. It's one of the kitchens from upstairs, it seems, and Loki recognizes Pietro on the screen, as well as the strapping form of Nick Fury.

"Have you hacked a computer feed from upstairs?" Loki asks: spreading both hands out, he lets a few tendrils of seiðr escape his palms and sets them to rotate over the surface of the energy field, keeping it visible even as he moves away. The lilac bubble is easily a few inches broader than it had been when Loki had first touched it, and he comes to bend over the screen with Doctor Smith.

"They can't see us," Smith says, tapping the monitor and scrunching up his nose. "I want to talk to them, but there's no camera here – no security cameras down here yet, either, so—" Reaching into his pocket, Loki ignores Smith as he continues to ramble, and then he pulls out his Isaz. Unfolding it into its tablet form, he neatly separates it in half, clipping one half to the top of the monitor and holding the other in his hand. Smith's complaints and mutterings trail off as Loki opens the camera on the separate half of his tablet, and on the half in his hand, begins to synchronize the feed with the monitor.

"Is that the Isaz I?" Smith asks, and Loki chuckles, giving a shake of his head.

"No, this is my tablet. It's rather a few steps ahead of the Isaz I, I'm sorry to say, although aesthetically, they're similar: I continuously add to it, change pieces out or rebuild it." The separate parts of his tablet can function independently, either in halves or in all four quarters, and although most of the features are as yet experimental, separating the Isaz into a camera and control is something he's well-practised with. "This is the Isaz Mark… Fourteen, I suppose."

Doctor Smith is smiling at him, smiling with a sort of lopsided, brilliant grin, and Loki glances at him as he sparks the camera feed into life, affecting it to appear on the screen upstairs. As it loads, Loki looks at the other man quizzically, and Doctor Smith just shakes his head: the sonic device is dropped neatly into one of his suit pockets.

There are many faces in front of the screen, now – Loki sees Tony Stark and Pietro, but then Steve Rogers, Abigail Brand, Nick Fury… And a young boy, presumably one of Fury's agents. It's a great relief to see Pietro in the room, but Loki knows what it means – Pietro must have told them about the Magda Korporacja.

"Hallo," Smith says. "Now, before you jump to conclusions—"

"What the Hell are you doing down there?" Fury snaps out. "There's an energy… What the Hell is that?"

"It's a big, glowing energy field," Smith says.

"It appears to be some sort of ancient shield," Loki says, looking into the camera. "We're wary of getting too close, but we think the forcefield is dangerous to those it hits – fiercely corrosive. Some sort of protection. Pietro, what do you know about this pediment?"

"What the Hell are you doing down there?" Brand demands.

"I saw a handsome man suspiciously leave the room, and I followed him. You can hardly blame me," Loki says with a wink, and he sees Tony grin on the screen. Pietro's lips twitch minutely, although the expressions of Brand, Fury and Rogers remain stony. But despite the slight mistruth, it isn't entirely a lie: for so many years, Loki has put aside his title of Liesmith, forged in silver and blood, but now he can hold it in his heart once more, and oh, what a rush it is. "Pietro?"

"The pediment was retrieved from an island in the Atlantic, some few hundred miles off the coast of Ireland. We have workers out there now, but it's not exactly easy – the vast majority of our workers need to be able to amphibious at least, as the pressure is too much for most of our equipment, and they're working under his highness, the Prince Namor. There's… A lot of red tape." Pietro is speaking rather fast, and then continues, "The temple itself has yet to be recovered, but there shouldn't be any sort of energy field: my team wouldn't bring anything out if it was still functioning. That pediment is over twenty thousand years old, and with no energy source—"

"Did your sister look at it?" Loki asks. Pietro stops short, as if Loki's interruption has put a brake on the very workings of his quick-working brain. Loki cannot display the full workings of his knowledge, but such an ancient machine will work in ways Loki himself is familiar with – it must power itself with the natural flows of magic through the universe, not with electricity. Latent energy found in the air, travelling through what the Midgardians call their ley-lines, but permeating the very atmosphere.

"Hallo," Smith says, waving onto the screen and interrupting the current train of thought, and he offers them each a winning smile. He has a handsome smile, Loki thinks – a handsome smile, and such deep, dark eyes. Old eyes, ancient eyes. "I'm John Smith—"

"There was no John Smith on the guest list," Pietro says immediately.

"He's a quick one, isn't he?" Smith asks Loki, and Loki snorts.

"You've no idea," he mutters, thinking of the way Pietro Maximoff flies from one side of the room to the next at any given time, and he sees the way Pietro scowls on the screen. Glancing back, Loki sees the little burst of seiðr he'd sent in orbit of the field, enough to colour it lilac, disappear with a soft crackle. The field is invisible again, now, but Loki can feel where it is now that he knows its energy.

"Anyway," Smith continues, "Loki here is right – this tablet here has an energy field that's expanding pretty quickly. Every minute that passes it's growing an inch or two, and we do not want it leaving this room."

"We haven't got time for this," Fury snaps on the screen, and Loki looks to him as he brings a communicator at his wrist to his mouth. "Get the alpha team into the main museum hall. Derrick and Hansen, go."

"Wait, wait, wait—" Smith says, but before he's finished, there is a soft hiss of energy in the corner of the room, and the two of them turn to look at it. The energy is slightly distasteful, giving off a burnt sweetness that lingers in the air, and Loki pinpoints it to the cuffs each of the two soldiers wear – basic teleportation devices. How very primeval.

"We're here, sir," says the taller of the two young men, "We've got eyes on Mr Svensson and the other guy."

"Smith," Smith says helpfully, and he puts his hands in the pockets of his suit jacket, looking over at the two young men. They're carrying rather large sub-machine guns, which he looks to with a mild disapproval. "Do you need those?" The young men arm the weapons, and hold them up, aiming at Smith and Loki respectively. Loki glances to the energy field, which is slowly expanding – the young men had teleported to be only a few inches away, and Loki could, he supposes, warn them back, but he must know what the field will do.

He reaches for his half of the tablet. "I need to run some analyses," he says into the camera, and before any of them can protest, he picks it from where it's clipped to the monitor and clicks it back into his tablet.

"What are you doing?" demands the shorter one.

"I need it in its entirety to run an analytical programme," Loki answers, flattening his tablet into a whole piece and beginning to rapidly type onto the screen with one hand, holding it steady with the other. The camera on the back adjusts itself, letting out a beam of light, and the light scans the pediment's front. "Stay where you are. There's a deadly energy field right in front of you."

"What are you going to compare that to?" Smith asks, looking over his shoulder and frowning at the screen as Loki's tablet creates a three-dimensional recreation of the pediment. As he scans over Loki's quickly written coding and the image itself, Loki notes the intelligence in Smith's dark eyes. Hansen and Derrick are speaking amongst themselves, exchanging code words and order numbers, and Loki knows they won't heed his warning – young, soldier types, why, they think they know everything. Thor was like that, once upon a time.

"I'm not going to compare it to anything," Loki says, and he taps twice on the image, showing an image of the hollow inside. "Ah, there we are…"

"How could they have missed this?" Smith asks, staring at the re-creation of the pediment's insides, and Loki shakes his head, giving a quiet tut. There are lines after line of hieroglyphic inscription, mingled with the occasional Skrull symbol and a third text that Loki himself does not know by heart, but becomes slowly comprehensible as the Allspeak takes effect. Silurian, he would wager.

"They don't have the technology – there's a protection around the pediment, so that it reads as entirely solid, and without bypassing it—"

Loki glances down at his Isaz as it begins to ring.

Tony Stark is calling you, the screen declares in silver text, and Loki, feeling rather put-upon, accepts the call. The screen bursts into life, displaying Stark first and foremost, seated on a stool, with Rogers looking over his shoulder.

"Hello, darling," Loki says mildly.

"You're using the wrong camera. I can't see your face, you idiot," Tony says, looking amusedly at his own camera as if Loki is some sort of luddite, and Loki frowns. Tapping the button to swap cameras doesn't seem to do anything, and he mutters curses to Facebook under his breath as he lifts the camera a little higher, trying to see if he's somehow pressed the wrong button. The two soldiers are in the camera view, and Loki sees they look rather incensed.

"Are you on the phone? Sir, put that down!" the taller one orders, and as one, Hansen and Derrick step forward – right into the energy field. Smith is already putting his hands out, letting out a cry for them to stop, but the two of them burn as they step into the way of the field, and they haven't even the time to scream. They burn so quickly that all they leave behind them is a little burst of grey smoke and wisp of black dust on the air, and Loki wrinkles his nose.

"Did you see that?" Loki asks, quietly. The camera finally switches to displaying his own face, which he carefully ensures displays shock and grief over the fates of the two idiot soldiers, lest someone find him any more suspicious than he already is.

"Yeah," Tony says, and he turns to Rogers, who is shaking his head. "Are you okay down there?"

"We thought it best not to get into the path of the field," Loki lies. "It seems our instincts proved correct." Smith snatches the Isaz away from him like a child taking a toy, and Loki suppresses the sudden urge to scold him.

"Have you had any luck contacting the archaeologists who worked on this?" he asks.

"Who the Hell are you, buddy?" Rogers demands, and Loki rolls his eyes. The camera is on Smith's face, and Loki steps in front of Smith, gesturing over the Isaz.

Hang up, he mouths. Smith gives him a stern glance, and looks back to Rogers. "Look, you can ask questions about who I am later. For now, I'm a man that happens to be down here, where I can work on the problem. This energy field is slowly expanding, and it seems to burn up everything it touches."

"It isn't burning the floor," Loki says, thoughtfully, turning away. "But it burned up their guns, their clothes…" He reaches down, carefully unfastening his tiepin, and throws it into the path of the field: it melts upon the air, the silver evaporating into the ether. "Objects on their own also seem affected, but what about something with its own energy source? Give me that."

"Oh, don't do it," Tony says, his voice raising. "Don't you do it!"

"I'm splitting the Isaz in half," Loki says, in the voice of a TV chef narrating his actions. The faces on the screen halve in size as he splits the Isaz upon its seam, and he can see Tony shaking his head and bouncing in his seat as Loki splits the other half of the Isaz into halves again. One quarter he slips into his pocket: the other, he throws into the field.

Initially, he braces himself for the sizzle, but it does not come: the screen hovers in the midst of the field, crackling as energy overloads its circuits, and Loki raises his eyebrows, looking on in curiosity as sparks spit away from the Isaz quarter. His version of the Isaz works from a battery, but can take charge from alternative sources – Loki has powered it by magic in the past, or from latent nuclear radiation, but whatever ancient energy is coming from this pediment, it supersedes his carefully designed buffers and controls. With a quiet whine, the quarter of the Isaz goes dark, and Loki feels the vibration from the one in his pocket.

"New notification," Smith reads off, quietly. "Segment 3 is offline. Oh… The call dropped. They must have hung up."

"No," Loki replies, taking back the Isaz. "Segment 3 hosts the primary satellite capability, and the other segments can't work internet access without special permissions enabled. I just thought it would look suspicious if I hung up of my own accord." Closing the Facebook Messenger tab, he returns to his recreation of the text inside the pediment, frowning deeply. It is most certainly magical in nature, but Loki can hardly blame the archaeological team for missing that – the pediment certainly appears solid, and he imagines there is some warding to keep anybody from realizing it is hollow. Smith is frowning at the energy field, and he is wearing the glasses Loki had noticed in his pocket now, squinting through the lenses at the pediment.

Taking a step back from the energy field as it comes a little too close for comfort, the corpse of Segment 3 hanging uselessly in the air just before him, Loki frowns down at his Isaz as his program digests its recreation and begins to show only the text upon the screen. Smith is holding up that sonic device again, examining the field carefully and ensuring he keep out of its reach. Loki scans the security protocols, examining them with care: now that he sees them laid cleanly out upon the screen, like this, they seem fit for purpose, and not unusual compared to any other protocols he's become familiar with in the many centuries he's been alive.

"Ah, here we are, Doctor Smith," Loki says, tapping the screen and zooming in on a particular line of text. "LAST ACTIVATION [32128… 2.34] 192 THREATS DETECTED, PROTECTIVE FIELD TRIGGERED. The first few lines are some sort of date system I'm afraid I'm unfamiliar with, but 192 seems to be the number of threats it considers still active."

"192?" Smith repeats, tilting his head to the side and turning away from the device, which ceases its quiet whirring. "What's significant about that number? Is that how many guests are upstairs?"

"No," Loki says, shaking his head. "There are around 250 guests, and staff, including the security, bring that number up to perhaps 300. Let me see if there's a number of active threats… Ah. 224." He tries to bring up a specific list of attributes that surround the threats, but nothing comes up: they all come under a lump category that is only specified by a number rather than a descriptor.

"224… And all of these are living people?"

"I think so," Loki says, twisting his mouth. "Although I make no promises in that regard." Glancing to the pediment's design once more, he frowns. "It didn't work on me, the field, the way that it's supposed to."

"Well, you're not human," Smith says, shrugging his shoulders. "The system didn't know what to do with you."

"I'm not human, no," Loki agrees. "But my biodata says that I am. It's only once one cuts me open that I appear a little wrong." Smith glances up, pushing his spectacles up his nose. They rather suit him, frame his face – he looks even more handsome with them on. "Upstairs, a majority of the guests are human, with some of them mutants, others, like us, aliens…" Loki glances between the fragment of his Isaz and the space where his tiepin had burnt up, nodding his head.

Loki looks up, grinning at Smith. "I believe we have a solution." Smith's eyebrows raise, his lips quirking into a smile.

"Oh? What's that?" When Loki shoves Smith in the chest, throwing him into the path of the field, Smith doesn't even have the chance to protest: when he cries out in pain, Loki can't help but laugh.