12

The truck was left standing a block away.

It wouldn't do to drive right up to the house unless I was planning to smash through the gate and front door and steal the hypercube for myself. And I wasn't.

I walked down the road with my hood pulled over my eyes and my hands buried in my pockets. Lots of people went walking in the night. Just in case, I broke into a slight jog as I neared the house. When I was a yard or two away from the gate, I made a great fuss about my back and stopped to breathe heavily. Resting my hands on my knees, I caught my breath and bent down to fix my shoelace. I could hear the camera above me swivelling around for a better look. It stayed on me for a moment and then focused its attention elsewhere. The whole exercise gave me the chance to have a look at the layout of the house. There was the impenetrable gate, the long walkway and the front porch - the door of which was obstinately shut. But there was a light on in the side. A service entrance. I stretched and continued down the road at a light pace. When I was well out of sight from the cameras, I ducked into the bushes and probed around the side fence. There was always a way in.

Just how many cheap Saturday night flicks have you been watching, Paton? Shut up. There must be some truth in it. As I was feeling around the fence for a loose plank or a crevice I could squeeze in through, I heard a door slam on the other side. Freezing, with my hair standing on end, I listened.

"That thing's not gonna be stable very long, Director," a man with a heavy voice was saying. I listened to him argue with a mute partner. There was a crack in the fence, too thin for my use, but through which I could see the old man pacing, a phone pressed to his cheek. At long last he hung up, but he continued to pace and mutter.

"Fix it, Selvig," he sneered. "Always fix it, Selvig."

I was crouched in an uncomfortable way with twigs and leaves in my hair and ears, waiting for him to go back inside or spout out some valuable information. Neither happened. Instead, i made the mistake of shifting my weight and before I knew it, the earth under me had disappeared and I was tumbling down a long metal shaft that seem to go on endlessly.

When I came out the other side, luckily it wasn't on my head. I winced and mourned my bottom and blinked through the darkness.

What the hell was that! I don't know? Trap door? Pressure pads? Whatever it was, I was about to find out, because the lights went on and I scrambled behind some furniture, with my heart in my mouth. Trespassing. Do you know what people get for trespassing? Twenty five to life. That's probably not true, but either way, it would be difficult to explain myself under the circumstances.

I rolled underneath a desk, nearly hitting my head on the keyboard pull-out and curling up. I heard footsteps tapping their way about. Through the gap in the wooden paneling, I could see a number of curious instruments laid out across the room: measuring devices, gauges, pipes, crates, charts and a wheely whiteboard.

What is this place? A lab. That's what it was. A lab. I realized there was a high possibility of the cube being stored in a place like this.

The man I had seen earlier suddenly came into view. I slapped my hand over my mouth and watched him closely. He was fiddling with a large safe in one corner of the room. When he stepped back, he came away with a large titanium case and placed it squarely on the table before him. I could not believe my lucky stars at the vantage point that chance had gifted me. I watched him unlatch the case and pull out a curious object. It wasn't very large, but it took some effort from his old bones to hold it aloft. It was beautiful. Radiant. Blue at the core.

I had found it. I had found the hypercube. I had let it slip out of my hands once, but I had found it. I had found it for him. I paused. Loki wasn't even here and yet he was all I could think about. I cursed myself internally and watched the old man's movements. Just then, there was a sharp hiss and the wall a few meters from me opened up. I watched in fright and interest as a human figure slid through, landing neatly on his feet. He dusted his suit briskly and straightened his name-tag. From what I could read, it said 'Coulson'. I watched him move along the tables until he was level with my eyes, standing beside the old man and the case.

"How's it going, Selvig?"

The old man shook his head, "We can't afford to keep it here much longer. It could be dangerous."

"The new facility's still under construction."

"I know, I know, but I can't afford another month for the safe zone. The Tesseract can't stay here, Coulson."

I wondered if Loki was telepathic. I had the greatest need to let him know where I was and what was unfolding. If he was too late, he would miss his chance and there would still be disgruntled aliens in my backyard and a prince with a wounded heart plaguing my mind. I decided it was more for my own sake than anybody else's that I was here spying on Loki's prize. Sure, honey, you keep telling yourself that.

The man named Coulson muttered something to the other. They discussed something at length and Selvig began to replace the cube in its case and then the safe.

"Well," Selvig sighed. "Maybe you should come up and talked to Agent Romanoff. She's been meaning to address the issue of-" their voices trailed away as I heard them leave. A hiss followed by another hiss, two sliding glass doors. And then silence. The lights went out after that.

Just as well. Don't want anybody catching you here.

I fiddled around my pockets for my keys. There was a cheap cereal-prize torch on the key ring. I pressed the button on its flat exterior and a feeble green light filled a corner of the room. It was the strangest place I had ever been to. I held the light up to a board on which a number of maps and plans had been tacked up. Something caught my eye. It was a photograph, a hazy one, but sufficiently distinct, accompanied by a series of reports and graphs. I studied the photo a long while; there was something unsettlingly familiar about it - the regal face, the blonde hair, the tough armour and red cape.

My eyes fell upon the description beneath it. Thor.

The second time around was just as unbelievable. Loki was no longer an abstract idea, a cross-hatch sketch on an old yellow page. He was very real. But Thor was a photograph, attached with some vague possibility. I wondered just how many Norse gods were flying around the area. I stared at the photograph with mounting resentment. Here was the root of all of Loki's troubles.

I heard footsteps coming down and quickly made a dash for my hiding place. Peering out of the gap in the wood, I saw two young men in black suits come into the lab. One carried a box and the other a tablet device through which he was scrolling diligently.

"All I'm saying is, he could definitely take Stark." The one with the box said stubbornly.

"Aaron, come on man," the other rolled his eyes. "Sure he's got a mean swing and guns the size of baby dolphins, but the guy isn't exactly mortal."

"I call bullshit on that."

"No, check this out," the second one thrust the tablet under his companion's nose, "read that."

A moment of silence while the first man scanned the tablet. He muttered something and turned around, "You'd better stop messing around with Coulson's stuff."

The second set the tablet down next to the box and they went out the door, still arguing.

The minute their voiced disappeared, the lights went out again.

More out of curiosity than anything else, I snuck over to the new items and perused through them. The box contained sheafs and sheafs of papers with diagrams and figures that made no sense to me. The tablet, still open and glowing, had across it the words: "How to kill a Norse God."