Liberty Is Mine |2| The Liberty Saga

Chapter Seven: The Cage

Once they had returned to the helicarrier, Loki was taken into the custody of S.H.I.E.L.D. A dozen-strong strike team, each armed with automatic weapons, escorted him through the corridors, his wrists bound in front of him.

And as he passed the glass walls of Bruce's lab, he met the man's eyes and smiled a slow, chilling smile.

***

A little while later, he was being hydraulic-sealed into a large glass cell in the detention centre. Fury walked up to the control panel, talking to him. "In case it's unclear: you try to escape, you so much as scratch that glass?" He opened up the hatch beneath the cell, filling the room with the roars of the gusting winds below. "Thirty thousand feet straight down in a steel trap. You get how that works?" He closed the hatch, then pointed to Loki. "Ant." Then he gestured to the controls. "Boot."

Loki chuckled. "It's an impressive cage. Not built, I think, for me."

"Built for something a lot stronger than you," Fury agreed.

"Oh, I've heard." Loki turned, looking into the camera in the top corner of his cell. "The mindless beast makes play he's still a man. How desperate are you, that you call upon such lost creatures to defend you?"

"How desperate am I?" Fury asked incredulously. "You threaten my world with war. You steal a force you can't hope to control. You talk about peace and you kill 'cause it's fun. You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did."

"Oh, it burns you to come so close," Loki realised. "To have the Tesseract, to have power, unlimited power... And for what? A warm light for all mankind to share, and then to be reminded what real power is."

Fury smirked. "Well, you let me know if Real Power wants a magazine or something." He walked away.

***

On the bridge, the hologram screens disappeared, leaving Steve, Elke, Bruce, Natasha and Thor to sit in silence, considering what they'd just seen. For a long moment, they were silent. Then Bruce said, "He really grows on you, doesn't he?"

Elke sighed. "Well, he's going to drag this out. Thor, you say you know him. What's his goal?"

"He has an army called the Chitauri," Thor began, standing near the table with his arms folded. "They're not of Asgard or any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the Earth—in return, I suspect, for the Tesseract."

"An army?" Steve echoed, deadpan. "From outer space?"

"So he's building another portal," Bruce realised. "That's what he needs Erik Selvig for."

Thor blinked. "Selvig?"

"He's an astrophysicist," Bruce clarified.

"He's a friend," Thor corrected.

Natasha tilted her head. "Loki has him under some kind of spell, along with one of ours."

"I wanna know why Loki let us take him," Steve said, frowning. "He's not leading an army from here."

"Well, perhaps he doesn't need to," Elke theorised. "If Barton is loyal, he could be continuing with the next part of the plan without him."

Bruce made a face. "I don't think we should be focussing on Loki at all. That guy's brain is a bag full of cats, you could smell the crazy on him."

"Have care how you speak," Thor warned, his brow furrowed. "Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard, and he's my brother."

"He killed eighty people in two days," Natasha reminded him.

Thor hesitated. "He's adopted."

"Look, if Dr Banner is right, and Loki's people intend to build another portal, then we need to stop them," Elke reasoned. "Any ideas?"

"I think it's about the mechanics," Bruce theorised. "Iridium, what did they need the iridium for?"

"It's a stabilising agent," Tony said as he walked in with Coulson. "Means the portal won't collapse in on itself like it did at S.H.I.E.L.D." He punched Thor in the arm playfully. "No hard feelings, Point Break. You've got a mean swing."

Elke sighed. "Oh, I miss Howard."

"Also," Tony continued, ignoring her, "it means the portal can open as wide and stay open as long as Loki wants." He stood at Fury's command centre, pointing over to one of the crew. "That man is playing Galaga! Thought we wouldn't notice. But we did." As the others rolled their eyes, he covered one of his, looking around at the screens with a frown. "How does Fury do this?"

"He turns," Agent Hill told him icily.

Tony placed a button-sized hacking chip on the computer surreptitiously. "Well, that sounds exhausting."

"Most of the raw materials Barton should be able to get his hands on without too much trouble," Elke pointed out. "From what I can tell, the only major component he still needs is a power source to open the portal."

Hill narrowed her eyes, surprised. "When did you become an expert in thermonuclear astrophysics?"

Elke blinked. "Last night, when I read the packet, Selvig's notes, the Extraction Theory. What? There was a glossary and everything."

"I'm sorry," said Bruce, frowning. "I thought you were from the forties?"

"Ja," she agreed, "the forties, not the Middle Ages. Let's not forget this is the same era they invented the supersoldier serum, which, no offence, the biggest brains of this century have so far failed to do. You don't work with Howard Stark for ten years and not pick up a thing or two."

"Huh," Tony said, clapping her on the shoulder. "And here I thought we'd have to explain the internet."

She met his gaze, deadpan. "Is that something to do with fishing?"

Beside her, Steve sighed. "Does Loki need any particular kind of power source?"

"He's got to heat the cube to a hundred and twenty million Kelvin just to break through the Coulomb barrier," Bruce explained.

"Unless Selvig has figured out how to stabilise the quantum tunnelling effect," Tony pointed out.

Bruce tilted his head. "Well, if he could do that, he could achieve heavy ion fusion at any reactor on the planet."

Tony grinned. "Finally, someone who speaks English."

"Is that what just happened?" Steve asked, confused.

"It's good to meet you, Dr Banner," Tony said, shaking the man's hand. "Your work on anti-electron collisions is unparalleled, and I'm a huge fan of the way you lose control and turn into an enormous green rage monster."

"Mein Gott," Elke said, sighing.

"Thanks," Bruce said awkwardly.

"Dr Banner is only here to track the cube," Fury said as he entered the bridge. "I was hoping you might join him."

"Let's start with that stick of his," Steve decided. "It may be magical, but it works an awful lot like a Hydra weapon."

Elke was nodding. "Ja, maybe if we figure out how it works, we can defend against it."

"Maybe," Fury agreed. "It's definitely powered by the cube. And I'd like to know how Loki used it to turn two of the sharpest men I know into his personal flying monkeys."

"Monkeys?" Thor echoed, frowning. "I do not understand."

Steve perked up, relieved to finally have the upper hand on at least someone in terms of understanding. "I do!" A lot of faces turned his way, and he hesitated. "I understood that reference."

Tony rolled his eyes behind Steve's back, then turned to Bruce. "Shall we play, doctor?"

"Let's play some," Bruce agreed, leading the way to his lab.

And as everyone else dispersed to their duties, the young man Tony had spotted looked discreetly over his shoulder, then started playing Galaga once more.

~~~