Chapter 4: Interrogation
Wearing the Iron Man armor with the faceplate open, Tony confronted the survivor of Steve's attack. Brawny arms crossed, Thor glowered from in front of the door. Dressed in ominous black and twirling knives, Natasha and Clint prowled around the prisoner's chair, making him nervous every time they passed behind him.
The prisoner — whose ID read Andrew Garth — was really frightened to find himself facing the Avengers, but he tried to bluster.
"It was a prank, man, a flash mob. All we were supposed to do was hassle the rich bit…"
Garth suddenly found himself out of the chair and pressed against the wall with Iron Man's hand at his throat.
"That's my girlfriend you're talking about," Tony snarled.
The prisoner clawed helplessly at the metal gauntlet.
"Stark!" Thor barked, then said more gently, "Stark, this is not the way to make him speak."
He put his hand on Iron Man's arm. Silently, Tony lowered the man to his feet. The man panted.
"Have you regained your breath?" Thor asked him.
"Yes."
"Good." Thor's huge hand swooped down, grabbed the prisoner by his ankle and hoisted him in the air upside-down.
"This way there is no impediment to him speaking," Thor explained to Tony, dangling the man easily.
The others had to agree it was effective. In addition to the head rush and the fear, gravity tended to pull the free leg down, pulling painfully at the crotch of Garth's too-tight jeans.
Passing on his circuit, Clint ducked his head down to the prisoner's level. "Gee, that looks uncomfortable," he commented, giving the free leg an extra tug as he passed.
"You can't do this! I have rights. Where's Captain America?" Garth demanded. "He'd never stand for something illegal like this."
Natasha took out a cellphone and turned it so the prisoner could see a surveillance photo of Steve sprawled on the sidewalk with the dart in his hand. Garth lay unconscious beside him.
"That is Captain America," Natasha said. "He's in the hospital, maybe dying, because of your 'prank,'" Natasha snarled. "We're waiting for a call to find out whether he lives or dies."
"If he dies, there will be no more Mr. Nice God. Your ass will belong to Black Widow," Tony said with satisfaction.
Natasha ran the tip of her knife along Garth's shirt. The razor-sharp blade split the fibers with no effort at all.
"Black Widow really likes Cap," Clint hissed in the prisoner's ear, as he passed again, circling behind him like a shark in the water. "I'd hate to be you if she got bad news."
Natasha's phone rang. She gave Garth a very nasty smile. "Time's up!"
"No, wait!" Still upside down, the man pleaded to tell what he knew, trying to ameliorate the bad news.
Behind the prisoner, Clint smirked and put away his phone. Coming forward he warned, "You'd better tell the truth. We work for a shadowy, quasi-governmental agency. We can send you places that make Gitmo look like a church summer camp."
He slapped Garth in the back, a pseudo friendly gesture that made the man cry out and swing in Thor's unyielding grip.
"OK, OK," Garth said. "I don't know much, but I'll tell you everything I know."
Natasha put her phone away. The fake call had done its job. "No change," she told the others mendaciously. "Lucky for you," she told the prisoner ominously.
The man gulped and began to talk.
He knew enough to let Tony trace the emails Garth had received arranging the flash mob. The caller had hidden his tracks well, bouncing the messages from server to server, but he hadn't counted on Tony Stark and Jarvis. Unfortunately they found his phone was a burner that had been trampled during the attack on Pepper.
"We need to look at the records for that phone," Natasha said, but Jarvis interrupted. "Sir, I've discovered an anomaly in the surveillance videos from the scenes."
"Thor, can you keep an eye on him?"
"Of course," the thunder god said without lowering his brawny arm.
"And I think you can put him down now," Natasha suggested.
"Please?" said Garth, whose face was turning purple.
"Very well." Thor opened his hand. Garth crashed to the floor, rolling over his shoulder to land flat on his back. He blinked up at the Asgardian who looked as tall as Mt. Rushmore from there, and as stone-faced.
"Don't move," Clint told Garth.
"No problem."
Tony and the two spies went to a screen in the other room. "Put it up, J."
One after another, six close-up photos came up on the screen. They showed one face from different angles.
"What are we looking at?" Natasha asked, puzzled.
"Why is this guy important?" Clint asked.
"Because he was at every crime scene," Jarvis replied. The cameras pulled back and the Avengers could see each man wore different clothes and the backgrounds were different.
"Wait, the attacks were at the same time, weren't they?"
"Indeed, Agent Barton." Jarvis brought up the time stamps on the photos. All were within half an hour of each other. Two were scarcely a minute apart.
"That's impossible," Natasha said flatly.
"Says the woman who was fighting aliens alongside a recently thawed WWII veteran and an Asgardian god," Clint said dryly.
"So what are we looking at, J? Time travel? Clones? Sextuplets?" Tony asked matter-of-factly, though his companions regarded him very oddly.
"I'd start with disguise or plastic surgery," Natasha said dryly.
"Magic," Clint said darkly, remembering Loki's doppelgangers.
"J?"
"I believe we can eliminate time travel, sir. There are no signs of temporal anomalies. Close analysis of the images shows no evidence of disguise or plastic surgery, Agent Romanoff. The men appear to be identical with small variations such as a scratch on a hand or five o'clock shadow. Sextuplets or clones would be possible but the birth of six identical baby boys would be world news."
"So, clones," Tony said.
"That would seem most probable, sir. Though whether the clones are a product of science or magic, I lack the data to say."
A/N: Yes, things are going to get weirder before they get better.
So, my faithful Five-0 followers, do you think McGarrett possibly influenced this chapter?