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A few weeks of disappointment followed as attempts at finding the sceptre once belonging to Loki failed time and time again. I was compelled to laugh at myself each time I thought about it, for I had only ever known Loki to be a myth, and yet his mere presence had brought a slew of missions.
We had traversed across the globe in search of it, yet every time we thought we were close, just shy of our goal, we were faced with the truth of inexplicable loss. It was why I was holed up in the laboratory in the Avengers Tower with narrowed eyes as I typed away on the keyboard violently.
I scrunched my face, pushing up my glasses that had gradually slid down the bridge of my upturned nose. I could faintly hear voices conversing and laughter erupting from outside the lab, reminding myself of the presence of my colleagues that were indulging in a quick break. I snuck a glance at the piece of paper resting just before my keyboard, its white surface covered in messy, black letters. My father always mentioned how my handwriting was never the neatest. Yet, he claimed its illegibility reflected the mess that circulated my mind, the thoughts and realisations that spewed out endlessly.
"You haven't moved an inch," said Banner as he entered the lab.
My manicured nails traced my notes before returning my gaze to the large screen in front of me. "I'd rather get this done sooner than later."
Banner's footsteps echoed lightly into the quiet and barren atmosphere. I knew he was looking over my shoulder to examine my work. He wouldn't understand any of it, not because of its messiness or because he wasn't intelligent enough (he most certainly was, and far more than I), but because of the language I had written it in.
"You were first hired to work with the Avengers because the Tesseract emitted gamma radiation, right?" I asked, punching away at the keyboard. It was, in a way, a rhetorical question. Grabbing my pen, I used it to point at the screen. "Turns out, the sceptre emits it too, and at a level higher than the Tesseract. If we look throughout the Tesseract's time at the Joint Dark Energy Mission Facility, we see the gamma radiation levels remain steady until Loki appears spontaneously. And again, in Stuttgart, when Loki was there, the gamma radiation levels spike."
"So if we want to find the sceptre, we just have to look at the gamma radiation levels around the world over a few years—to see any changes," Banner realised. His expression began to soften as the information seeped into his mind. A slight smile curved at his full lips. "We can get J.A.R.V.I.S. to do that."
I clicked my tongue against the roof of my mouth. "Already did. I was just rendering the layers."
With a swipe of my hand, a map of the world projected against the window that looked into the living area. I slid off my stool and stepped towards the large image with Banner trailing after me. I splayed my fingers, allowing a second layer to plaster itself onto the map: ever-shifting blobs of yellow, red, purple, and blue decorated the map, showing levels of gamma radiation found across the world.
