"Let me guess," Natasha said coolly. "Once you win and become the king of Earth—what happens to Barton?"
"I expanded his mind," Loki replied calmly. "Elevated it to an entirely new level—one far beyond what humans like you could ever imagine."
While the two of them probed each other with words, a large warning suddenly popped up in Nick Fury's command center:
UNKNOWN VIRUS INTRUSION DETECTED.
Fury immediately thought of Skye and Tony. Only those two were capable of something like this. At the same time, a sense of dread crept into his heart—something he had been deliberately hiding was likely about to be exposed.
At the same moment, in the weapons storage bay, Steve Rogers finally found what he had been searching for, tucked away in a corner on the second level.
He picked up the oddly shaped firearm. The instant he recognized its design, his expression darkened. He slammed the storage case shut with force.
---
Meanwhile, Natasha had already extracted the information she wanted from Loki.
"So… it's because of Banner?" she said, turning to face him.
"What?!"
Loki froze. He never imagined that he, the God of Mischief, would be outplayed in a verbal exchange by an ordinary human. He was usually the one manipulating others with words—yet now he had fallen straight into her trap.
"You all heard that, right?" Natasha said into her comms. "Loki plans to turn Bruce into the Hulk. He wants Dr. Banner to stay in the lab and not leave. I'm on my way."
She hurried toward the lab, leaving behind a stunned Loki, who stared in disbelief at the direction she disappeared.
---
On another deck, Nick Fury stormed into the laboratory and confronted Tony.
"What the hell are you doing, Tony?!"
"I should be asking you that," Tony shot back. "What exactly are you hiding?"
Tony completely ignored Fury's anger.
"Tony is tracking the Tesseract's signal," Bruce added calmly. "If nothing goes wrong, we'll soon be able to narrow it down to a one-kilometer radius."
He gestured for Fury to look at the screen.
"Now," Tony said, fingers flying over the keyboard, "let's see what secrets our great director has been keeping."
At that moment, Natasha and Thor also arrived at the lab. Both of them were there for Bruce—after all, Loki's plan centered entirely around him.
"I may not be good with computers," Steve suddenly said as he burst into the room, "but I have a faster way."
He joined in, openly confronting Fury.
"Listen, Steve," Fury said quickly, "we're only collecting data on the Tesseract. We're not building weapons—"
"That's enough, Black Baldy," Tony cut him off mercilessly. He shoved the screen right in front of Fury's face.
Displayed on it was the internal structure of a missile warhead. At its core glowed a faint blue light—it was unmistakably a high-yield weapon.
Steve stepped forward and threw the laser rifle he had found onto the table in front of Fury.
At that point, Fury had nothing left to say.
"So the world never really changed," Steve said quietly, bitter disappointment etched into his face. "The only difference is that the man pulling the strings is someone else. I gave everything for this country… and in the end, it became another Nazi regime."
Captain America was devastated. He had devoted his entire life to serving his country, only to realize it had merely become another Red Skull wearing a different mask.
Before Fury could respond, Bruce turned to Natasha.
"You knew about this too, didn't you?" Bruce asked. "Let me guess—Lucas knew as well?"
"Bruce, you're right," Lucas said calmly, having appeared at the doorway without anyone noticing. "I knew. And these weapons—most of them were designed to deal with me, weren't they, Black Baldy?"
He didn't bother hiding it. There was no point.
"Dr. Banner, Loki is manipulating you," Natasha said quickly. "Now isn't the time—"
"Oh? He's manipulating me?" Bruce snapped. "Then what about you? On one hand, you say I'm not a threat. On the other, you build a giant cage meant to lock me up. Now all these weapons show up. Do you really think I can feel safe?!"
His emotions surged, his heartbeat steadily accelerating.
"I want to know why you used the Tesseract to create weapons of mass destruction," Bruce demanded, pointing at the screen in front of Fury.
"Because of him—and him," Fury finally said, raising his hand and pointing at Lucas and Thor in turn.
Thor froze. He hadn't said a single word up to that point—how had he suddenly become part of this?
"Me?" Thor asked. "What does this have to do with me?"
Fury looked at Lucas and Thor before continuing.
"A few years ago, a completely ordinary man with no record of powers suddenly appeared in Hell's Kitchen. With a single tornado, he wiped out an entire gang. Later, that same man turned into a hundred-meter-tall monster on the streets of New York, leveling entire city blocks—including dozens of skyscrapers over a hundred floors tall. That kind of apocalyptic power still keeps me awake at night. From that moment on, he was classified as an S-level threat."
Then Fury pointed at Thor.
"And last year, in New Mexico, a mysterious hammer fell from the sky. Shortly after, a man claiming to be a god showed up—and tore apart an entire town."
Lucas remained indifferent. Fury was stating facts, and Lucas didn't care in the slightest. Thor, however, was still processing what he was hearing.
"Compared to them," Fury continued, "humanity is pathetically fragile. We only want to protect ourselves with our own strength. Is that wrong?"
"We of Asgard seek peaceful coexistence with the people of Midgard," Thor said firmly. "We have no intention of waging war against your world."
"But you're not the only lifeforms in the universe," Fury countered sharply. "There are countless alien civilizations out there. Just because you value peace doesn't mean all of them do. The Chitauri are living proof of that."
His gaze locked onto Thor, his tone leaving no room for argument—and he wasn't wrong.
"So that's why you set your sights on the Tesseract?" Steve asked, still unable to accept it.
Thor immediately retorted, his voice echoing through the room.
"He's right about one thing—you opened the Tesseract recklessly. And by doing so, you sent a message to the entire Nine Realms—no, to the entire universe. You declared that Midgard was ready for war, at the highest possible level. You unknowingly provoked every civilization out there!"
As the future king of Asgard, Thor understood better than anyone what it meant to activate the Tesseract.
It wasn't exploration.
It was a challenge.
A declaration of war.
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