Kindred Spirits

All is Revealed

  "By the gods, you are your father's son," I grumbled, rubbing my temples as I attempted to ignore Tony's shameless flirting. It had been a few hours since he had joined us in the lab, but he had been flirting pretty much nonstop since we left the bridge.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" He asked fairly abruptly.

  "It means that you are basically a carbon copy of your father when he was young, he wouldn't stop flirting until I threatened bodily harm as well," I explained as I scanned the energy coming off of the scepter that had been taken from Loki when he was captured.

  "What-" he was cut off when I held a knife up to his throat without glancing his way.

  "Either cut it out or I'll take care of the problem permanently," I paused my work to send him a bone chilling glare. I was happy to see his face pale considerably as he nodded and backed away.

  Looking up as the door opened, I shut my laptop as Steve rushed in to yell at Tony.

  "Steve! Come with me, gotta show you something," he didn't get the chance to reply before I was pulling him down the hallway.

  "But he-" "I know exactly what makes Bruce Banner tick and that's not it, Cap"

  He was quiet as I led him through a labyrinth of corridors until we got to a storage room. 

  "Cover me," I moved him in front of the camera as I went to work on the keypad next to the door. He grumbled a bit, shiftily keeping watch while i fiddled with the wires keeping the door closed.

  I pulled him in after I got it open, pulling him down a poorly lit corridor, stopping as I reached a case that was stamped 'Phase 2'.

  "What are you-?" He was cut off as I yanked the lid open, revealing the perfectly preserved HYDRA weapons hiding in the crate. He slowly reached forward, holding the gun in his hand and looking to me for an explanation.

  "I wasn't confused in the slightest with what SHIELD was doing with the Tesseract, Steve," I leaned back against a wall, "HYDRA had the most advanced weaponry the world had ever seen, it only makes sense that the organization with it in their possession, along with people that had seen firsthand what it was capable of, would want to find a way to harness that energy for something more than clean energy."

  He was quiet as he processed the information I was giving him. "You knew," he whispered.

  "I've been in SHEILD's files long before they ever realized that I was there. I've been trying to find a way to get to you since they found you, but they thankfully brought me to you. I wanted you to know the full story about who you were working for, Steve, no cloak and daggers."

  Steve glared at the floor before moving back towards the door with the weapon in his hand. I followed him silently, watching as he stormed back into the lab and slammed the weapon on the table.

  "Phase 2 is SHEILD uses the cube to make weapons," he announced angrily, glaring over at Fury as I finally stepped into the lab.

  He gave Steve a deadpan stare before looking over at me. "Looks like we need to beef up security."

  "You can try," I gave him a sarcastic smile. I looked over to Tony as he  finally managed to crack the last of SHEILD's firewall. "Pretty weak that you needed a physical assist to crack that, I managed it on a chromebook."

  He studiously ignored me as he revealed a bomb diagram to the rest of the room as Thor and Natasha walked in. "Looks fairly strong to me, should be able to take out any problem SHEILD deems necessary."

  "Did you know about this?" Bruce asked Natasha testily.

  I gave a bark of laughter. "You think a former Red Room agent so far under SHEILD'S thumb that she'd follow them blindly wasn't in on this from the beginning?" I gave her a razor sharp smile as she glared at me across the room.

  "You wanna think about removing yourself from this situation?" "He was in Calcutta, he was pretty well removed." I interjected readily, my composure unshaken as she shot me another glare.

  "Loki is manipulating you," she gritted out. "And you've been doing what exactly?" Banner and I asked at the same time.

  "You didn't come with me because I bat my eyelashes at you," she tried to object.

  "And I'm not leaving because you're getting a little twitchy," he gestured to the screen, "I want to know why SHEILD is using the cube to make weapons of mass destruction."

  Everyone was quiet as we looked to Fury, though I was glad to give out the answer. 

  "Because of him," I gestured to Thor, who looked at me confused.

  "Imagine you're SHEILD," I begin, coming to the center of the room. "You're a top secret government sect that has no budget and has been at the forefront of every field of technological development thanks to the contributions of Howard Stark. Then, you get an extraterrestrial visitor that has the capacity to level a small town with what equates to a playground spat between brothers." I clasp my hands in front of me, "You discover that you are lightyears behind even the most primitive alien species, so what's the fastest and easiest way to close the gap?"

  They were quiet as they listened to my monologue. "But my people want nothing but peace with this planet."

  "But you're not the only people out there," Fury finally spoke up, "And you're not the only threat. We had to come up with-"

  "A nuclear deterrent," Stark interrupted, "Because that always calms things right down."

  "Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark?" Fury retorted dryly.

  I heaved out a sigh as they devolved into more arguing, before noticing that Loki's scepter was glowing more as they continued. I hurried from the room, making my way to the bridge when the ship was rocked by an explosion. Stumbling, I righted myself as I changed course to head for the detention center.