Fire and Ice

•8•

Once in the lab, after Kate gives Tony a small tour, Bruce begins scanning Loki's spear — the scepter. "The gamma readings are definitely consistent with your and Selvig's reports on the Tesseract, Dr. Carson," he says. "But it's gonna take weeks to process."

Tony, meanwhile, has opened his own case, which displays a screen. "If we bypass their mainframe and direct a reroute to the Homer cluster, we can clock this around six hundred teraflops."

"And all I packed was a toothbrush," Bruce chuckles.

But Kate stops, turning to Tony with a suspicious squint. "And whose mainframe are we are bypassing here?"

"Yours," he replies casually. "My, uh, technological buddy JARVIS is hacking into SHIELD's secure files."

"You're what?"

"He's kind of like a UI. We're pals."

Kate huffs. "No, not whoever JARVIS is, the hacking into SHIELD's files part!"

"Keep it down. You really want Fury to know?"

Kate goes to answer him, indignant, but then it occurs to her, what this all means. A thousand possibilities run through her head. She'd never seriously thought to do it before, seeing as she couldn't anyway. But SHIELD isn't Tony's entire life; he can afford to risk it. He can get her answers to all the questions that Fury's shut down.

"Well?" Tony asks.

Kate sighs. "If he asks, I can't promise he won't figure it out even if I try to lie. So your pal JARVIS better be quick."

"Oh, he will be," Tony replies. "You know, you guys should come by Stark Tower sometime. Top ten floors, all R&D. You'd love it, it's candy land."

Bruce continues typing, only glancing at Tony as he walks over. "Thanks, but the last time I was in New York I kind of broke... Harlem."

Kate shrugs, thinking of all the info Tony must have stored in his labs, the type of equipment he would have. "I'm down — as long you got plenty of fire extinguishers. And special sprinklers." They're a standard here at SHIELD, but Kate isn't sure if Tony has them installed or not.

He glances up, clearly just noticing the extra safety precautions. "Well, I promise a stress free environment. No tension, no surprises."

He then jabs Bruce in the side with something, causing the latter to exclaim, "Ow!"

"Hey!" Cap shouts, walking in and beating Kate to the punch.

Tony ignores him, still looking at Bruce. "Nothing?"

"Are you nuts?"

"Jury's out," Tony replies, turning back to a chuckling Bruce again. "You've really got a lid on it, haven't you? What's your secret? Mellow jazz, bongo drums?"

Cap glares. "Is everything a joke to you?"

"Funny things are."

"Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn't funny." Cap glances at Bruce. "No offense, Doc."

"I- It's alright; I wouldn't have come aboard if I couldn't handle pointy things," Bruce replies.

Tony turns to him again. "You're tip-toeing, big man. You need to strut."

"And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark," Cap cuts in again.

Tony raises a brow, walking to a corner of the lab briefly, picking up a baggy. "Do you think I'm not? Why did Fury call us in and why now? Why not before? What isn't he telling us? I can't do the equation unless I have all the variables."