𝕋𝕙𝕖 𝕊𝕦𝕟 𝕚𝕤 𝔾𝕖𝕥𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕃𝕠𝕨𝕖𝕣- completed but editing

Chapter 8

My fingers traced the edge of the golden scepter, gently brushing the cool surface. As they moved toward the stone, the metal began to emit heat. The stone. Its blue surface was warm to the touch and with my eyes closed, I was able to see inside it, the innards of it moving behind my eyes.

"What do you see?" Dad asked. He was leaning in close to me, his warm breath on my shoulder.

Golden swirls danced behind my closed eyelids accompanied by blue splotches. In my vision I was flying toward a pulsing void. A voice called out to me. You, I know you.

I jerked out of the dream. "It's an individual. I heard it talking to me. Like a mind."

Dad leaned even closer. "What did it say?"

Tony walked over from the tracking device in the corner.

"It said that it knew me. That I was familiar." My voice faltered, the words dying on my tongue. "And I feel it too."

My father began to pace. "Li Anne, you focus on the scepter. Try to get it to talk more. Tony and I will work on the cube."

I nodded and closed my eyes again.

I flew toward the void again, my mind empty of all other thoughts. As I neared the glowing middle, I called out.

Hello?

Greetings.

My breath hitched.

You have returned to me.

I need to talk to you.

Speak.

How do you know me?

My senses feel one of my brothers in you.

Your brothers?

Other stones like me and my other siblings.

Oh.

My hair was floating loose around my shoulders in my vision and suddenly it parted, exposing my puckered scar.

Inside your head is a piece of my brother. He has given you the powers you possess. My brother has evolved inside your head.

Is there anything else I need to know?

Yes. Be careful. There will be those who wish to use, abuse, and destroy you, me, and all of my siblings. Protect us.

I nodded.

Thank you.

"The Gamma readings are definitely consistent with Selvig's reports on the Tesseract. But it's gonna take weeks to process," my father was saying. Neither he or Tony noticed that I had returned from the depths of the scepter so I leaned against the table and listened.

Tony answered, his voice sounding distracted as he frantically typed on a screen nearby. "If we bypass their mainframe and direct route to the Homer cluster we can clock this at around six hundred teraflops."

"All I packed was a toothbrush."

Tony chuckled. "You know, you should come by Stark Tower some time. Top ten floors all R and D. You'd love it, it's a candy land."

I smirked slightly because I knew that Dad hadn't even had a chance to grab a toothbrush nor would he want to visit New York. Both of us were hurried into planes and shipped across the ocean.