Chapter 2

May 4, 2012

Manhattan

They landed, if you could call it that, down the street from Stark Tower, just in front of Pershing Square.

After everything, Stevie thought. After flying aircraft carriers and fighting gods, we've come right back to the start.

Already, the alien troops were coming through a hole in the sky. She couldn't get a good look at them – they glinted like metal, whether it was armor or some kind of of exoskeleton she couldn't say. They flew in a swirling cloud, using some kind of small hover-platforms that seemed to be molded into their very flesh. And they were legion.

Aliens are real, and they really are trying to kill us. It's like War of the Worlds. And I always thought that book was far-fetched.

The team Fury had assembled were all around her: Natasha in a black catsuit with a small arsenal of handguns, Clint with his bow and arrows, Doctor Banner incongruous in a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles and a collared shirt, and...Thor. The god, more or less. All of them staring at the sky, looking as gobsmacked as she felt.

Thor was the first to react.

"I must speak to my brother," he began, spinning his hammer, wind and electricity stirring his long, red cape, poised to spring into the air and fly. She seized his wrist.

"No."

He frowned in confusion. All Thor's emotions were larger than life, and this frown was like a thunderhead.

"Loki knows you too well," Stevie continued. "He'll play on your emotions, use them to manipulate you. Tell me I'm wrong."

He didn't.

"Loki's set up the Tesseract on top of my tower." Tony's voice came over her headset, indignant. He had flown ahead, and now he streaked by above them in his red and gold armor, firing energy blasts at random alien troops. "It's shielded. Repulsors and missiles did nothing. If you have some kind of plan, Cap, now's the time. Because if you're not too busy I could use a little...Holy shit!"

A silver...space whale...had just come through the hole in the sky. That was the only way Stevie could really describe it. Sinuous and metallic, skeletal-looking yet undeniably, horribly alive. It undulated through the air, casually scraping the side of an office building, sending broken glass and brick crashing to the street below.

"Should I bring out the big guy?" Banner rubbed his hands together nervously.

All the pieces came together in Stevie's mind. Aliens, superpowers, technology – it was all window-dressing. The tactics were simple. Troops and topography. Her resources versus theirs.

"I don't need the big guy," she said. "I need you."

Banner's eyebrows shot up under his dark curls.

"You're the smartest person in the room," she said.

"Harsh," Tony interrupted, as he came in for a landing. "I'm right here."

Stevie ignored him.

"I need you to find a way to shut that portal down. If we don't, there could be fifty more of those things," she gestured at the whale. "Waiting in the wings. Natasha, Clint, go with Banner. Don't let anything touch him until the portal's down. Not even Loki. Can you do that?" They nodded. "Tony, Thor, once you've taken them up to the Tower, concentrate on the portal. Nothing gets through." The portal was the choke point in this scenario, the equivalent of a narrow mountain pass.

It worked in Thermopylae, she thought. It should work here. Although, at Thermopylae the Spartans had fought Persians, not flying aliens.

"What about you?" Natasha asked as she racked the slide of her pistol with practiced efficiency.

"I'll coordinate the evacuation down here."

Tony picked up Natasha and Barton, one on each arm. "Clench up, Legolas," he quipped, before blasting off.

Thor took Banner, who gave the hammer a suspicious look. "How does that even woooah!"

Stevie let out a breath. Everyone had their orders. The plan would work, or it wouldn't. They would succeed, or they wouldn't. Now she had to do her part, lead the police, National Guard and civilians. They must be terrified. She should be terrified, really. But instead she felt - clarity. After a month of frustration, of stagnation, grief, confusion, and now, the additional complication that Dr. Rao had dumped on her, it was a relief to get back to the purity of combat. Stop the enemy. Save the innocent. All there was to it.

Alien warriors filled the streets and skies, blasting bolts of blue-white energy from weapons that looked more like staves and spears than guns. They fired at cars, buildings, groups of fleeing civilians, seemingly at random. No visible strategy, besides overwhelming firepower. No tactics, beyond creating fear. They whirled in the air like a cloud of gnats, a being with many bodies but one purpose.

They aren't an army, Stevie realized. They're a swarm.

There were too many points of attack, too many targets to defend effectively. The whole city was a target. She had to find some help. She rounded a corner and there, like a miracle, stood six black-and-white squad cars, officers standing behind them, gun raised, eyes wide in shock and disbelief. Nothing in their training had remotely prepared them for this. A blue bolt cracked over Stevie's shoulder. She picked up speed and vaulted over the nearest squad car.

"Officers," she said. They looked as surprised to see her as they had been to see aliens pouring from the sky. She did look like a six-foot walking Stars and Stripes. Maybe that was a bit alarming up close.

"I need men in those buildings. There are people in there who could run into the line of fire. Take them through the basement or through the subway. Keep them off the streets. We need a perimeter as far back as 39th."

Their sergeant nodded, started barking orders into his radio, a little of the fear in the officers' eyes replaced by purpose.

Some people just need to be told what they know already, Stevie reflected, as she found other pockets of police, directed them to hold the perimeter, evacuate civilians. They need to see someone who isn't panicking. That was her job in this situation, she supposed; to be the one who wasn't panicking.

The giant, horrible, whale thing flicked its tail and took a chunk out of the Met Life building. Glass fell like rain.

I just hope Banner can pull it off.

Bruce's ride to the top of Stark Tower was something he never wanted to repeat, a chaos of wind and sudden, sickening lurches. Just because he knew he wouldn't be hurt if he fell didn't make him want to chance it. The huge man...god?...set him on his feet and looked up at the portal. This close, Bruce could see it in all its terrible glory - a tear in space, on the other side, a black void, alien stars, and thousands of soldiers.

"I wish you luck, Banner," the other man said.

"Yeah." He tried to keep his legs from collapsing under him. "You too."

Thor grinned fiercely, then spun his hammer until it was a blur and launched himself into the air.

That thing does not obey the laws of physics, Bruce thought, and Stark touched down behind him, Natasha on his arm, the archer conspicuously absent.

"Looks like we've all got our work cut out for us," he said, voice tinny through the suit speakers, then Stark was gone, too, flying up to join Thor circling the portal's mouth. Lighting and explosions burst overhead as the two men engaged the alien army.

"Let's get to it," Natasha said, cool as if she was heading off to another day at the office. A dead alien fell on the roof with a crunch like someone hitting a bunch of celery with a bat. He started violently. She stepped over it like it wasn't there.

"Right," Bruce said. "Where's Barton?"

"Covering our backs."

Natasha stopped him just as they were about to step out from behind a huge fan, checked around it, pistol in hand, gestured him to follow.

"There it is," she said.

The Tesseract floated in the center of some strange mechanism, a column of blue-white light ascending into the sky, where the portal gaped like some Medieval hellmouth. Beside it lay a white-haired man.

"Dr. Selvig!" Natasha ran to him, checked his pulse. He had a cut on his head, bleeding into his hair. "He's alive," she said. "But unconscious. Shame. He could have helped. If we could break through Loki's mind control."

Bruce looked at the interfaces, computer screen mounted outside the mechanism's force field. They were...strange. To say the least.

"It's like the work of an alien madman," he said to himself. "It routes energy directed at it into another dimension. An impossible shape, folding around itself…This is incredible."

"Can you get through it? Or turn it off?"

"I don't know."

Gravel crunched, and Natasha tensed beside him. Bruce looked over his shoulder, and saw Loki - god of chaos, little brother of Thor, would-be conqueror of Earth - appear in full regalia. Horned helmet, green cloak, gold armor, glowing staff.

He certainly doesn't believe in half measures. Wait...that staff.

Something tickled the back of Bruce's mind, but he was too busy trying not to panic to tease out what it might be. He could feel the other guy twitching. Waking up. If he felt too threatened, the other guy would come out and then he wouldn't be able to think at all. He took a deep breath. Counted four in. Held it. Counted four out.

My feelings are mine. My mind moves itself. I am in control.

"Well, well, well," Loki said, his voice like Bruce imagined a tiger's would sound if it could speak. "You're the ones they sent to face me? The monster and the…"

Whatever he would have said was cut off by an arrow hitting him in the neck. Loki looked...annoyed. Like a man who'd been stung unexpectedly by a fly. He made a "tt" noise, and tried to pull it out, but electricity arced from the bolt into his hand.

"Argh!" He jerked out the bolt and flung it to the ground. "Show yourself, archer!" He cried, voice carrying unnaturally. "I will reach into your mind and break it!"

Another arrow flew, Loki knocked it from the air with his staff. Another, so close behind the first that it must have been fired at the same time. Loki caught it a hair's breadth from his nose, with a smug grin. Then it exploded in his face.

That was when the Black Widow moved, leaping to kick the staff from Loki's hand. He struck at her and she barely dodged, shooting bolts from her electric gauntlets at his eyes. When he whirled on her, another arrow hit him the hand.

They're buying me time, Bruce realized. But he couldn't take his eyes from Loki's staff. What did it remind him of? Then he knew. The model Stark had made of it when they'd had it in the helicarrier – God, was it yesterday? An intelligent network, like an artificial brain. The secret SHIELD files on the Tesseract. It was the same system. The same patterns. The same origin? And then everything clicked.

It can't defend against itself.

Loki was swatting around himself, like a man being attacked by a pair of unusually persistent bees. As good as Barton and Natasha were, they couldn't hold out forever.

Bruce took off his glasses, and set them carefully on the roof.

"Natasha!" He yelled. "Use the staff!"

She darted her eyes at him. He didn't have time to explain, but she'd figure it out.

"On the Tesseract! Use it now!"

The last word became a roar. As always, letting the other guy out was as easy as falling asleep. His body burned; muscles bulging, bones thickening. The constant worry and clatter of his own mind clarifying to simple instinct. Before he lost himself, Bruce saw Loki's eyes widen with fear.

It felt good.

The evacuation was going as well as could be expected. Police and some off-duty military personnel were clearing buildings and maintaining the perimeter as she'd told them. Stevie's job, after rounding up everyone who could help and putting them to work, was to attract attention. She dispatched any aliens on the ground with swift strikes, or knocked fliers out of the sky with her shield, drawing fire so the regular people could get in and out unnoticed. The insect-like creatures seemed to have no awareness of this tactic, at least at first. But the more Stevie did it, the more they seemed to anticipate it - even if they had no way of observing her.

A swarm, she thought again as she ducked into an alley. Acting like one creature. Like...the limbs of one body.

"Captain!" Her earpiece blared. It was the NYPD sergeant. She'd given him her frequency so they could coordinate their efforts.

"I'm here." Stevie crouched behind a dumpster, out of view. "What is it?"

"Our boys got some reports - the bank on 42nd and Madison. Lot of civilians trapped inside."

"I'm on it."

She was already sprinting, ducking and weaving through abandoned and burning cars, hurdling the ones she couldn't avoid. There were a lot of banks on 42nd Street, but it wasn't hard to see which one he'd meant. Stevie skidded to a stop behind a smoldering delivery truck, peered around the corner of the truck bed for a better look. Through the plate glass windows, she could see about three dozen terrified people standing in a clump, hands up in a gesture of surrender that probably meant nothing to their captors. There couldn't be that many people in CitiBank on Friday morning. They'd been herded there. Why? As hostages? Slaves? Post-battle snacks? But that wasn't the important question. That was - how was she going to take out the aliens without any of the people inside getting hurt?

There was one alien standing at the front door. A second at the far end of the long room. A third, its back to the windows, facing the crowd.

Only three? Piece of cake, Stevie thought. They had no idea how to secure a location. This bank was a terrible choice. What kind of planets did these rubes usually invade? Still, she'd have to be fast. Use the element of surprise and hope her speed let her take them out before anyone got hurt. If they started firing into the crowd of hostages…Stevie cut off that line of thought.

I'm not going to let that happen. She took a deep breath. Time to go.

She vaulted to the top of the truck, took two steps, and threw herself through the window - shield first.

She rolled as she hit the floor and came up ready to fight. The closest creature raised its staff and she brought the edge of her shield down hard on its strangely-jointed forearm. There was a wet crack, and before the strange weapon could hit the ground, Stevie smashed the shield back up into its face. Or where its face would be if it had one, instead of an assembly of metallic plates. The alien flopped to the floor like a broken doll.

Stevie scanned the room. The hostages were screaming, hands over their heads. Where were the other aliens? There - on her right. Clear line of fire - all the hostages were crouching in fear. Stevie hurled the shield and it rebounded from the creature's chitinous chest with a crunch like crumpling metal. She caught the shield and whirled, just in time to deflect a shot from the third alien's energy weapon. The blast bounced back at the shooter, leaving his chest a smoking ruin. That was when the first alien jumped her from behind.

Stevie staggered back - its hands were wrapped around her face, clawing at her eyes. Obviously it wasn't as dead as she'd thought. It keened into her ear, a scream almost too high to hear. She tried to get a grip on it, throw it off her - but its skin was slick and smooth, all its joints bending in ways she didn't expect. She couldn't get any purchase. A claw opened up a gash across her cheek. Dammit!

Suddenly, there was a flash of blue, and the alien went limp so abruptly the Stevie almost lost her balance. She turned. The alien lay on the ground, smoking and charred. A woman stood in front of her – dark-haired and disheveled. She held one of their staff weapons, looking from it to the alien corpse with a horrified expression.

"Thanks," Stevie said, catching her breath. The woman started.

"I think, maybe," Stevie reached out and took the staff gently. "You should leave this with me."

"Oh…right."

Stevie got everyone to the nearest subway entrance, sending the dark-haired hero on her way with a hearty handshake.

Out in the street, she took a moment to look up at the hole in the sky. It was apocalyptic – the silver swarm, lighting bolts, blue-white blasts of force and fiery red explosions. Tony and Thor - keeping the reinforcements bottled up. They were all playing for time, Stevie knew. If Banner couldn't shut down the portal, there was no way they could stop an entire alien armada from steamrolling over Manhattan.

As if her thoughts had made it happen, Stevie's earpiece crackled to life.

"I've got the key to the portal," Natasha said, even her cool voice betraying the urgency of the situation. "Any reason I shouldn't close it?"

Stevie felt a surge of relief that became exhilaration. They'd done it- beaten incredible odds. It was going to work.

But just as she opened her mouth to give the order, Tony's voice interrupted.

"Um. Might want to wait on that."

Stevie saw a red-and-gold figure streak away from the portal mouth at full speed.

"Tony," she barked into her headset. "What are you doing?"

"I got a nuke coming in," he said, the barest tremor under his usual bravado. "It's going to blow in less than a minute. And I know just where to put it."

Stevie felt her blood run cold. She'd done some reading about how the War had ended. She knew what a nuclear weapon could do. Shadows burned into the buildings. People's eyes melting out of their heads. It had given her nightmares. Fury's bosses had fired that at New York? Then, the rest of Tony's message suddenly registered.

"Into the portal? Tony...that's a one-way trip!"

He didn't answer, but she saw it in the sky - a shining spot intercepting a dark one, pulling it off course, right past the dot that was Thor, into that tear in the sky. One second passed. Two. Three.

An explosion bloomed on the other side of the portal, like a second sun. There was another high scream - this time from a thousand throats. Stevie covered her ears and doubled over in pain. The alien warriors stiffened, twitched and fell, the huge flying leviathan crashing down atop the Roosevelt Hotel.

"Captain," Natasha said over the earpiece. "Should I close the portal?"

No, Stevie thought. Tony's still in there. But that fireball wouldn't magically stop when it reached the gateway. How many people lived in Manhattan? A million? A million lives against one, she thought. No choice at all. But still she hesitated. One moment. Two.

"Close it," she said - but the words had barely left her mouth when she saw it - something falling through the gate, shining red and gold, slipping through the tear just as it sealed itself.

Stevie's heart leaped. He'd made it, scraping by just under the wire. He'd buzz the city, maybe play some loud song in celebration. But then she realized he wasn't flying. He was falling.

"Tony!" she shouted into her headset, but there was no answer.

Thor turned in the air, dove after the falling man like a bird of prey, but he was too late - a huge green figure launched itself from the top of Stark Tower and caught him. Banner. The Hulk.

Stevie ran to the Tower as fast as her long legs would carry her, arriving just in time to see the Hulk deposit Tony on the ground between rows of wrecked cars. He raised his huge hand to Tony's face and removed his mask with surprising gentleness. Stevie dropped her shield and knelt beside him, the armor pads on her suit crunching on the broken glass.

"Tony." She touched his cheek. No response. Was he breathing? It was impossible to tell with him locked into his stupid suit. She heard Thor land heavily but didn't turn around. She felt a hollow disbelief. They'd just won. He couldn't die now. Not after everything else. Not Howard's son, too.

The Hulk roared. A sound that mixed the primal terror of an enraged bear with with the volume of a foghorn at close range. Stevie almost shrieked.

Tony came to with a start.

"Ahhh!" He looked around, limbs moving feebly in his underpowered armor. "What the hell? What just happened? Please tell me Hulk didn't kiss me."

Stevie rested her hand on his suit, just above his glowing heart, and laughed to keep from crying.

After they had reunited, Tony insisted they all go out for something called "shawarma." Stevie had never heard of it, but after the long shot they pulled she was ready to celebrate - and Tony certainly deserved it. They'd had to break him out of his depowered suit like a lobster from its shell.

Shawarma turned out to be a richly spiced chicken in flatbread, which might have been available somewhere in 1944, but not on the street Stevie lived.

Maybe the future isn't so bad after all.

Everyone's post-victory energy was flagging, and they chewed in silence as the store's proprietor - a supremely unflappable gray-haired man - swept brick dust and glass from the floors. Tony suddenly put down his half-eaten sandwich.

"Gotta hit the head," he explained. "Hey, are the facilities still standing?"

The stone-faced man nodded and pointed without pausing.

After a moment, Stevie followed him. He was, after all, her best and oldest friend in this strange new world. Who else did she have to tell? And after almost being killed by aliens and fried by a nuclear bomb in the same afternoon, she felt like pregnancy was maybe not the most frightening thing she had to deal with.

The door had come half off its hinges, and Stevie could see Tony at the sink, rinsing his face. His hands were shaking, she noticed. Not so unusual after a fight like that. She knocked on what was left of the door.

"Oh, hello," Tony said with a lopsided smile. He looked around for a second. "I think the paper towels were a casualty of war," he said, resignedly drying his hands on the front of his black trousers. "These things are not absorbent at all."

"That was a brave thing you did," Stevie said.

Tony feigned surprise. "What?" He put his hand on his chest, over the glowing light where the reactor in his chest shone through his shirt. "You mean where I put my own safety on the line to push a nuclear warhead through a horrific space portal and saved 1.6 million lives? Another day at office, really."

"I'm pregnant."

Tony blinked. He opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.

"Sorry," he said. "It's just that was bit of a non-sequitur."

A look of horror slowly dawned on his face. "It isn't...I mean, it's not my father…"

Stevie realized what he was asking and felt her face go hot with embarrassment.

"Oh, God! No, no...it's not your...not Howard's. Definitely, definitely not."

"Thank God," Tony said, leaning back against the sink, which creaked dangerously. "That would have been so awkward."

"Worse than this conversation?"

"Who…?" He began, then cut himself off. "You know, that's none of my business. This is great news! Congratulations! I get to be Uncle Tony right? Maybe make a little suit, just for training purposes…" He must have seen the look on Stevie's face, because he quickly backtracked. "Maybe not."

"You know," he continued after a moment. "I've been told I'm not the best at providing emotional support to people. Is this a happy thing? Is this 'get excited' thing?"

Stevie paused to think about it. She'd thrown herself into a fight that was way above her weight class just to be able to stop thinking about her pregnancy for two days. Last month she'd woken up in a strange world, and wondered if she belonged anywhere. Yesterday she'd punched a god. Today she'd helped save at least a million lives. She closed her eyes for a moment, smelled spices and bread, dust and a hint of Pine Sol. Heard the old man's broom fighting a losing battle with the rubble. She wanted to live.

"Yeah," she said, opening her eyes. "It's a 'get excited thing."

This chapter was so much fun. I changed the tactics of the Battle of New York to play up Stevie's focus on strategy. In my continuity, pre-serum Stevie was a military history and strategy buff, while pre-serum Steve tried to learn how to box and got into fights in alleyways. That would alter their approaches to superheroic battles.

I liked my brief detour into the mind of Bruce Banner, and hope the POV switch wasn't too jarring. Let me know if it was.

History note: Pine Sol was invented in 1929, and is a familiar odor to Stevie. I have to look these things up a lot.