Life Dies In The End

Chapter 4

I was soon joined by Thor and Natasha. The three of us all heading to the same place, the lab. We needed to prevent Banner from changing into his less friendly self. Reaching the lab, we entered to immediately be struck by four very angry people, Stark, Rogers, Banner and Fury. I scanned the room and saw a Hydra weapon on the table and a file, Phase 2, on one of the computers. Was this what Fury planned to use the Tesseract for, to make more Hydra weapons?

"Did you know about this?" Banner looked towards Natasha.

"You want to think about removing yourself from this environment, Doctor?" Natasha stepped towards Banner trying to defuse his anger.

"I was in Calcutta. I was pretty well removed." Banner dismissed Natasha.

"Loki is manipulating you." Natasha continued to press to remove Banner from the situation.

"And you've been doing what, exactly?" Banner snapped back at Natasha.

"You didn't come here because I bat my eyelashes at you." Natasha countered.

"Yes, and I'm not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy." Banner pointed to a screen displaying a design for a weapon based off of the Tesseract. "I want to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction."

A silence fell with Banner's question. I glanced over at Stark who had his eyes locked on me. It was almost as if he thought I was hiding something from him. Which I was, but it had nothing to do with the Tesseract or SHIELD. I knew nothing about what SHIELD was doing with the Tesseract or that they even had it in the first place. I sent Stark a look conveying that I had no idea about this. He only nodded as he looked towards Fury, who broke the silence.

"Because of him." Fury pointed to Thor.

"Me?" Thor asked, confusion evident in his voice.

"Last year, Earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town. We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, out gunned." Fury spoke, glancing around the room at everyone.

"My people want nothing but peace with your planet." Thor defended his home.

"But you're not the only people out there, are you?" Fury asked, looking towards Thor. "And you're not the only threat. The world's filling up with people who can't be matched, that can't be controlled."

"Like you controlled the Cube?" Rogers snapped at Fury.

"Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies." Thor stepped towards Fury. "It is a signal to all the realms that the Earth is ready for a higher form of war."

"A higher form?" Rogers mumbled.

"You forced our hand. We had to come up with something." Fury defended his actions.

"A nuclear deterrent. Because that always calms everything right down." Stark quipped at Fury.

"Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark." Fury snapped back.

"I'm sure if he still made weapons, Stark would be neck deep-" Rogers started only to be cut off by Stark.

Soon the whole room was full of fighting as I watched. What the hell had gotten into everybody? This wasn't the time to be fighting; we needed to get Banner out of here before something happened. Yet nobody seemed to care. My eyes stayed locked on Banner, looking for any signs he might turn on us.

That's when I spotted something. The scepter. It was glowing almost as if it was being fueled by the fighting. No, more like it was causing the fighting. Like it was warping everyone's minds. Why wasn't it affecting mine? I watched it closely as it started to glow brighter and yelling got louder. I glanced up seeing Rogers and Stark face to face, both of them pissed at each other.