Fire and Ice

•6•

Kate, Bruce, and Cap all follow Nat inside, Cap walking next to Kate. She resists the urge to squeal, then noticing how amazed he is when they enter the control room.

"Awesome, right?" she says.

He nods, still looking around. "Pretty awesome..." They move over towards the large, round table in the back of the room where Nat and Bruce are standing.

Fury walks over to them. "Gentlemen, ladies."

Cap passes Fury some money before he walks off, observing. Kate wants to follow — and ask why he's giving Fury money — but stays put, hoping some time away will help her be more calm the next time they speak. Best to avoid another incident where she brings up things that are painful to him...

Fury goes to Bruce. "Doctor, thank you for coming."

"Thanks for asking nicely," he replies. "So, uh, how long am I staying?"

"Once we get our hands on the Tesseract, you're in the clear."

"Where are you with that?"

Coulson walks over. "We're sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet. Cellphones, laptops. If it's connected to a satellite, it's eyes and ears for us."

Kate sighs. "That's still not gonna find them in time."

"You have to narrow the field. How many spectrometers do you have access to?" Bruce asks.

Fury raises a brow. "How many are there?"

Bruce shrugs out of his jacket. "Call every lab you know, tell them to put the spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays. I'll rough out a tracking algorithm, basic cluster recognition. At least we could rule out a few places. Do you have somewhere for me to work?"

Fury looks at Kate. "Dr. Carson, would you show Dr. Banner to the laboratory?"

"So now we're formal when you want to impress, huh, Fury?" Kate says, causing him to roll his eye. She turns to Bruce. "You're gonna love it. Everything's been set up exactly to my specifications."

He doesn't seem convinced. "I mean, I do biochem, but we'll need different specs to find the Tesseract."

"I told you I do more than chem here, Dr. Banner. We have all the specs."

~_~_~_~_~

Kate and Bruce begin working for about half an hour — setting things up, getting at least part of it running — before Nat walks in. "They got a hit on Loki in Stuttgart. We're moving out."

"We?" Bruce asks in disbelief. "I never agreed to-"

Nat shakes her head. "No, you can stay. He wants Kate."

She groans. "Seriously? It's not like he's a fire monster or anything."

"Yeah, but Fury said you really scared him when he took the Tesseract. I'm sure the sarcasm helped, not to mention you nearly burned his eyebrows off and stole his spear from what I understand."

Kate shrugs, reluctant to leave the lab. "Best to keep up the illusion for him, don't you think?"

"Okay, it's your call." Nat turns to go, her tone taking on a tantalizing air. "But Cap is going."

Kate pauses, biting her lip. She really wants to stay and research, get to know Bruce and what he knows, and she definitely wants to keep Fury from making field missions a regular thing for her.

But it's Captain America.

"Fine, but I'm not putting on a super suit or whatever." She pulls off her lab coat and follows Nat out. "Catch you later, Dr. Banner."