Heat of the New World - Book 2 (The Avengers)

Chapter 1 - Recruitment

Steve pounded the punching bag, memories racing through his mind. Annabelle looked up from her computer screen as the bag went flying across the room, sand spilling out. Steve sighed, picking another bag up from the line beside him before resuming his workout.

"Trouble sleeping?" came a voice from the doorway, causing Steve to pause his assault.

"I slept for seventy years, sir," Steve told him, starting again. "I think I've had my fill."

"Then you should be out, celebrating, seeing the world."

"Why do that when you have these?" Annabelle held up the laptop she was using, swinging under the rope and jumping down from the wrestling ring.

Steve sat next to his bag sitting on the bench, unwrapping his hands. "When I went under, the world was at war. I wake up, they say we won. They didn't say what we lost."

"We've made some mistakes along the way," Fury agreed as he walked closer to them. "Some very recently."

"Are you here with a mission, sir?"

"I am."

"Trying to get me back in the world?"

"Trying to save it." He handed each of them a file.

"Hydra's secret weapon," Steve said as he saw the first page.

"You call it the Tesseract now?" Annabelle glanced up at him.

"What did you call it?"

"Nothing. It was a blue cube. Wasn't really at the forefront of our discussions."

"Howard Stark fished that out of the ocean when he was looking for you two. He thought what we think: the Tesseract could be the key to unlimited sustainable energy. That's something the world sorely needs."

"Who took it from you?" Steve asked as they handed the folders back.

"He's called Loki. He's... not from around here."

"Like, not from America or..."
"There's a lot we'll have to bring you up to speed on if you're in," he told her. "The world has gotten even stranger than you already know."

"At this point, I doubt anything would surprise me," Steve said as he stood and grabbed his bag.

"Ten bucks says you're wrong."

"Don't look at me," she held up her hands. "I'm not getting in on this."

"There's a debriefing packet waiting for you back at your apartment," Fury continued as Steve grabbed one of the punching bags on his way out. "Is there anything you can tell us about the Tesseract that we ought to know now?"

"You should have left it in the ocean," Steve said simply, the door closing behind him. Fury looked at her.

"We don't know the extent of what that thing can do. What we've seen of it... What it did to me... No one wants that. Especially not me."

***

"We're about forty minutes our from home base, sir," the pilot informed Coulson.

"So this Dr. Banner was trying to replicate the serum they used on me?" Steve asked as went through the information they had given them.

"A lot of people were. You were the world's first superhero. Banner thought gamma radiation might hold the key to unlocking Erskine's original formula."

"Didn't really go his way, did it?" he asked as he watched the video of the Hulk.

"Not so much. When he's not that thing though, the guy's like a Stephen Hawking." Steve looked up at Coulson. "He's like a smart person."