Morning arrived the way cheap curtains let it: a thin seep of light that turned the ceiling into milk and the fan into a silhouette practicing its rattle. I stretched on the edge of the futon until joints popped like polite applause. The apartment smelled like yesterday's coffee and someone else's detergent history. Three soldiers filled a room designed for one.
Alpha-01 was at the door, arms folded, the building's spine in human form. He doesn't slouch. He doesn't lean. He just is, which does a lot of the same work for a different price. Alpha-02 sat on the floor in his three-step offset, legs crossed, eyes closed, breath two-in two-out with that faint three-note hum I'd begun to hear like punctuation. Alpha-03 took the window—the sky man—watching the street the way you watch surf to read rips.
"Morning, boys," I said, rubbing sleep out of new eyes that had decided to be cooperative. "Sleep well?"
Silence, which is their favorite punchline.
"You don't even sleep, do you?"
"Rest is optional," Alpha-02 said, eyes opening like someone had pulled a chord. Calm. Present. The hum faded.
"Optional?" I retrieved a bottle of water from the counter, took a sip that told my brain we still lived here. "You know what else is optional? Personality. You three should try it."
They accepted the insult as breakfast and declined to chew. I laughed, because you have to, and leaned on the kitchenette; the laminate had survived at least one life more than mine.
"All right—bags are packed, tickets booked," I said. The system's HUD slid into place with a whisper: Points: 1,000. "We're flying to New Mexico to get up close and personal with a god who's about to have a dreadful week."
"Thor Odinson," Alpha-01 said, neutral like a label on a box.
"Exactly. Odin's about to put him in time-out, and we get to be the welcoming committee."
"Objective," Alpha-03 prompted, because he has learned that clarity arrives faster when you invite it.
"Help him. Protect him. Look good while doing it." I grinned. "That'll net more points than babysitting Hell's Kitchen for a year. You'll get your training soon, rookie—promise."
He nodded once, a sprinter on a starting line who'd happily stand there forever if the gun never fired.
"To New Mexico," I toasted with the water. "Land of deserts, tumbleweeds, and one very confused Asgardian."
Cabs, Codes, and the Church of TSA
The drive to the airport was New York's usual morning argument with itself. Horns layered over horns. A bus merged like it had done the math on its own mass. A street vendor sang egg sandwich theology to a line of believers. I took the wheel; Alpha-01 claimed the passenger seat and mapped exits with his eyes the way some men memorize poems. Alpha-02 and Alpha-03—six and a half feet of potential crammed into fabric and restraint—folded into the back with the patience of monks and the shoulder width of refrigerators.
"Comfortable back there?" I asked, merging around a delivery truck whose blinker believed signaling was a vibe and not a communication.
"Yes," Alpha-02 said without complaint. It sounded like truth. He would have said the same staring down a foxhole.
Alpha-03's head brushed the roof. Micro-trait: he angled his neck and shifted his weight to full foot to save his scalp. "Window seat later," he murmured, barely there.
"You look like you're being smuggled across state lines," I said. "Don't worry—economy will make this seem luxurious. You'll miss this."
At the terminal, we became a moving eddy. People flowed around and through us until they noticed posture and quiet and potential, and then they made space the way crowds do when they sense a purpose that isn't theirs. I wore a hoodie and jeans—the uniform of anonymity—and the Alphas wore their version of civilian: clean lines, no logos, friend-shaped if your friends did deadlifts for dessert. Broad shoulders, perfect posture, unwavering gazes. We looked like a recruitment poster for an organization that didn't exist yet.
"You'd make a killer mall cop," I told Alpha-01 in the check-in line. "Just glare at teenagers until they return the stolen lip gloss."
He didn't bother to answer. I'm going to hook a laugh out of him one day; I'll mount it over the mantle.
Security is a ritual. Shoes off, laptops out, belt surrendered to the gods of inconvenience. Our duffel contained nothing sharp because I like my travel days without federal interviews. We put our hats in the plastic bins and our pockets were already empty because pre-briefs are how you save time, and time is a kind of money.
A blue-gloved agent gave us the human equivalent of the find tool: a quick scan of faces for pattern recognition—military? trouble? story?—and settled on polite curiosity. The randomizer chose Alpha-02 for a secondary swab. He held out his hands, palms up, acquiring dust and consent with equal discipline. The machine blinked the color that means you may pass.
"High observation," Alpha-02 murmured as we put ourselves back together. No edge; just a note.
"Relax," I said. "You look like Marines on leave. Worst case, someone asks you to open a pickle jar."
At the far end of security, a toddler lost a war with a stroller buckle and burst into operatic despair. His mother juggled boarding passes and a car seat with that ferocious grace specific to parents and acrobats. Alpha-03 moved without looking like he moved. "May I?" he asked, hands visible, voice tuned to soft.
She blinked at the size of him and then at the care in his hands as he collapsed the stroller with a single decisive motion and clicked the safety strap into obedience. "Thank you," she said, relief like a sigh. The toddler sniffed, considered making a scene, and then made eye contact with Alpha-03. The universe explained mass to him; he reevaluated his options.
Ding.
Assistance (Parent/Child): +2
Ethical Multiplier: +1 (consent requested)
Heat: 0
At the gate, a storm-chaser t-shirt and a stack of printouts finished our cover nicely. I patted the clipboard in my pack—the one with a fake work order for "Solar Install—Puente Antiguo"—and took two burner phones out to label them with our Harper aliases. I looked, briefly, like a man who had paperwork under control. People trust clipboards. Clipboards never lie; the hands holding them sometimes do.
We took seats near a window. Alpha-01 faced the room with his back to the glass—line-of-sight geometry is his love language. He pulled the safety card from the pocket of the chair next to him and read it like a catechism he already knew by heart; he counted rows to the nearest exits and logged them. Alpha-02 tracked gate announcements and the ambient shape of a crowd in a hurry. Alpha-03 pressed his palm to the window and watched a taxiing plane draw calligraphy in fumes.
A teenage girl across the aisle wore a Popular Science hoodie and stared at Alpha-02's hands as if she'd seen a diagram come to life. I caught her eye and pointed at the magazine tucked in her bag. "What's the feature this month? Please tell me it's not a think piece on jetpacks."
She laughed—a small, bright sound. "Solar farms," she said, then caught herself. "Sorry, I just—um—are you guys—"
"Installers," I said smoothly. "Headed west."
Her eyebrows did a dance called I knew it. "Cool."
"Stay in school," I said, because sometimes mentoring is brevity. She rolled her eyes in the way kids do when you've said something true without flavor. Ding. +1 (encouragement) — okay, system; apparently pep talks are microtransactions now.
Boarding, Banter, and the Theology of Takeoff
Boarding is a cattle call that has learned to put on lipstick. We shuffled in the slow, polite parade toward a door that promised compressed air and rules. Four seats at the back—our little kingdom. I took the aisle so I could be a hinge if the day required, Alpha-01 next to me, Alpha-02 and Alpha-03 finishing the row. The seat backs did their best impression of shoulders that wanted to breathe; the armrests negotiated peace treaties with elbows that had never lost a fight.
Passengers whispered immediately. Part fear, part excitement, part instinct to narrate when life hands you something cinematic.
"Told you," I murmured, buckling in. "Instant celebrities."
"Attention unnecessary," Alpha-03 said, eyes on the wing. He didn't sound annoyed. He sounded like a man who preferred the sky to applause.
"Oh, come on—you love it," I said.
He considered, and if you've never watched a Spartan consider a sentence, imagine a chess engine choosing to play checkers for you. "Window seat," he said, by way of concession.
A flight attendant lingered by our row, eyeing shoulders that strained the boundaries of economy and checking the bin above us like it would have to defend itself in court. I smiled my most unthreatening smile. "They're gentle giants," I said. "No trouble—unless someone tries to hijack the plane. Then it'll be a short fight."
She exhaled a laugh she hadn't given permission to and moved on. A man across the aisle gave us a look that said please be bored for the next four hours. We obliged.
Takeoff is ritual, too. Seat belts clicked into covenant. Safety demo performed its choreography: mask yourself before you help the small person next to you, life vest under the chair like a secret. Alpha-01 counted rows to the nearest exit again, this time with eyes closed. He mapped aisle width, cart positions, crew stations—not because he intended to be a hero on a plane, but because knowing is what steadies him.
The plane rolled, roared, and threw the ground behind us. Manhattan became a model; bridges became toys suspended by string. The sun caught the river and turned it into a cut wire. You are mortal, the system reminded me in a voice that liked to be helpful. I let the sentence settle and then usefully vanish. Mortality didn't scare me in a sky this honest. It made me deliberate.
I popped in headphones and popped them back out because music would drown out humor, and I wasn't ready to stop poking the bear.
"First plane ride," I said to the row. "Thoughts?"
"Functional transport," Alpha-02 said, watching the clouds the way a lab tech looks at data. I am often tempted to complain that their jokes need patches; then one of them does almost a joke and I have to pretend I didn't see it.
"That's all?" I said. "No awe at giant metal tube flying? Does it even serve a purpose?"
"You exaggerate," Alpha-01 said flatly.
I gasped. "Was that sarcasm? Did you—did you joke?"
No reaction, but I swear a mouth corner considered if only to kill the idea. Progress. I whispered it like a spell.
The hours crawled the way time does when knees and seat backs disagree. Turbulence introduced itself like a drunk uncle and then left when the pilot gave it the look. A baby two rows up dialed grief to eleven. Alpha-02 glanced at the baby, then at the mother's hands white on the armrests. He took a slow breath, two beats in and out, and exaggerated it slightly until the woman saw him. He held two fingers up—one, two—and she mirrored him without consciously deciding to, matching rhythm to rhythm until the baby took the hint. The crying softened.
Ding.
Assistance (Anxious Passenger): +2
Ethical Multiplier: +1 (non-intrusive, modeled calm)
Flight attendants did the cart thing, the conference of smiles that says we all know gravity is real and we'd like to pretend otherwise while you eat pretzels. Trays arrived like offerings. "Chicken or pasta?" the attendant asked.
"I'll take chicken," I said. "You guys get pasta so we can compare."
They all picked chicken.
"Seriously? Diversify! What if the pasta is secretly amazing?"
"Chicken is fuel," Alpha-02 said, gravely enough that my laugh earned me a look from a man with reading glasses who had opinions about laughter in public.
We ate like people who understand calories are social contract and privilege. Alpha-03 arranged his napkin, aligned the plastic fork with the tray's right edge, then tapped it twice. Micro-trait: order as thanks. He chewed with perfect efficiency and then looked back out at the wing like the sky had missed a line and he wanted to help.
Halfway through, weather off the wing did a trick and painted the horizon a subtle bruise. I skimmed the cabin with my eyes. Two rows up, a guy in a suit had taken to staring at us in the way men do when they are building a theory out of nothing and confidence. S.H.I.E.L.D.? FBI? Sales? Hard to tell. I touched my shoulder like scratching and murmured, "The weather looks bad."
Alpha-01's gaze slid to the man and away again. "Pepperoni," he murmured back after a beat—low. No posturing. Just a note in a language we now spoke.
We rode the last hour in that quiet planes hatch when everyone's bravado has been replaced by the nickel smell of stale air and the shared fatigue of sitting next to strangers. I pulled the notebook out of the seat pocket and wrote the LINES again, because repetition builds muscle memory in ethics as much as it does in legs:
We do not escalate when a flex will do.
We do not make messes we expect other people to clean.
We do not turn people into point drops.
We do not show up where cameras want us; we show up where people need us.
We pick our battles—and sometimes the battle is a parking ticket.
We protect the timeline only insofar as it protects people.
We treat Spartans as people. (If I forget, they remind me.)
I underlined number three until the pen dug a small trench in airline paper.
A seatmate across the aisle leaned over as if suddenly brave. "Are you guys team sports?" he asked.
"Solar install," I said, and presented a smile that had been calibrated for gate agents and grandmas. "Headed west. Storm chasers on the weekend."
He nodded, accepting the world as explained, and returned to his crossword. People want to know that the story around them won't spill. We did our part to keep the cup steady.
Descent, Heat, and the Geography of Dry
Landing is a ballet of trust: wheels finding ground, flaps yawning like wings puzzled by physics, the body relenting and letting gravity back into the conversation. We touched down, and the cabin did the ritual clap like a nervous laugh it couldn't stifle.
The moment the door opened, New Mexico introduced itself without perfume. Dry heat spilled in—honest heat that didn't carry the city's sweat—air that felt like it had been ironing itself for hours. Jet fuel and sunlight. Dust and altitude. The scent of a place that erases edges and leaves shadows crisp.
We stepped onto the jet bridge and the humidity we'd brought with us tried to negotiate terms with desert and lost. Alpha-03 pulled in a breath and smiled a fraction, as if lungs had found a flavor they hadn't met. "Sky is good," he said, to no one in particular. It felt like a prayer, or a recipe.
Baggage claim is the sociology of spin. We watched an endless belt deliver strangers' decisions wrapped in fabric. I grabbed our duffel—tape and paracord coiled neat inside, battery banks stacked like patient bricks, hats and sunscreen and chapstick pretending to be mundane. An elderly man had a suitcase doing the "I refuse to leave the belt" act; Alpha-01 stepped forward, lifted it with one hand, and set it down gently like putting a baby in a crib. The man patted his arm as if he'd just touched a myth and said "Thank you, son," with a capital S.
Ding.
Assistance (Elderly): +1
Ethical Multiplier: +1
Financial Penalty: −1 (checked bag fee)
"Cost of doing business," I muttered at the HUD, which threw me a dry advisory about budget awareness. We paid the baggage fee without drama because rule five doesn't exist for decoration.
Outside, sun did its level best to make shade a religion. Heat pressed in from every direction like sincere advice. The lot glittered with rental cars and regret. We chose something with tired tires and good bones, the color of dust and therefore already at home. The rental agent looked at the three large men behind me, offered an upgrade with the reflex of a good employee, and swallowed his sales pitch when Alpha-02 read the contract aloud in the tone of a man who understands fine print is a weapon.
"Installers," I said to the agent when he looked like he wanted a story. "Short contract. We'll keep the seats clean."
He nodded like a man who has seen worse. We loaded gear with the choreography of practice. Alpha-03 aligned the duffel's straps with the cargo area's lip and tapped twice. Micro-trait: gratitude via alignment. Alpha-01 did a perimeter check out of habit and because habits write luck. Alpha-02 adjusted the mirrors and set the radio to nothing.
We pulled out into desert like stepping onto a blank page. The landscape did not ask for permission to be itself: long flats of scrub and low brush; mountains on the horizon like patient animals; sky doing its best impression of infinity and not failing. Road heat shimmered in waves; a hawk drew a geometry lesson for anyone who looked up.
"Welcome to New Mexico, boys," I said, whistling once because the sound wanted to try itself in this air. "Home of Thor's midlife crisis."
"Weather looks bad?" Alpha-01 asked lightly, because humor sometimes wears code.
"Pepperoni," I said. "Low. For now."
Errands in a State That Doesn't Apologize
We didn't drive straight to Puente Antiguo. We stopped at a big box store that smelled like tires and fluorescent light and usefulness. We bought what you buy when the day is about to ask for help: water by the case; electrolyte packets; sunscreen that made Alpha-02 read the active ingredients like chemical poetry; first aid restock that would make any ER nurse nod; zip ties, because Alpha-03 was right—restraints are better than boots on shoulders; a roll of gaffer's tape; AA batteries for the flashlights; cheap sunglasses (not black—black sunglasses make you look like you stepped out of a magazine; brown makes you someone's competent cousin).
The cashier gave the pile a look and decided we were either contractors or apocalypse men. Alpha-03 smiled exactly the amount that makes you less mysterious and more human. The system hummed a tiny approval at the fact that we had not tried to be interesting.
On the way out, a news segment played on a TV near the registers—sound too low to matter—with a crawl that read UNUSUAL METEOROLOGICAL ACTIVITY above a satellite image that looked like someone had bruised the air north of town. A man in a cheap suit pointed at the middle of nowhere like the middle of nowhere had offended him. The words golf-ball-sized hail floated by. I didn't need sound to hear Coulson in the negative space.
We used the parking lot shade to run a communications check. "If I say, 'How's the slice?'"
"Pepperoni, sausage, anchovy," Alpha-02 replied. "Low, medium, bad."
"And weather?"
"Looks bad means eyes up," Alpha-01 said. "Breaking means S.H.I.E.L.D. in proximity. Clearing means no immediate surveillance."
"And the timeline?"
"We protect it when it protects people," Alpha-03 said carefully, as if reciting something that mattered. "We do not worship canon."
"Good," I said, because repeating rules in the shadow of a Home & Garden sign felt like the only sensible way to start a myth. "Seat belts. Water. Turn the AC on like you mean it. We have an appointment with a man who used to be a god and a hammer that is about to turn a desert into a pilgrimage."
No one said anything. The road stretched its back and invited us to run fingers down its spine.
We drove.
Air Between Heartbeats
The highway unrolled in a convincingly straight line. A billboard warned about rattlesnakes the way a grandmother warns you about men in bands. Alpha-01 counted mile markers and studied the places where sand collected along fences—wind tells—because terrain is a character in any fight, and you learn its habits the same way you learn a man's. Alpha-02 watched the temperature tick on the dash and dosed water like a combat medic with a plan. Alpha-03 tracked the sky like he wanted to memorize the names of clouds so he could call them later.
I thought about Thor falling out of royalty and onto asphalt. The system wants to make that a number. I'm fighting to make it a promise. We help people. If the people have titles, fine. If the people swing hammers that erase problems other folks don't get to erase, fine. The rule doesn't change: we don't turn people into point drops.
The HUD stayed polite. It didn't nag me for strategy; it didn't whisper multipliers. It did offer one line I took as gospel for the next twenty-four hours:
Advisory:Scientific work (Jane Foster, Erik Selvig, Darcy Lewis) carries high ethical multiplier if preserved from disruption/appropriation.
"Copy," I told it. "We guard Jane's data the way other people guard vaults."
"Jane?" Alpha-03 asked.
"Jane Foster," I said. "Physicist. We're not here to steal her work or be the reason it gets confiscated. We put our bodies between her and appropriation if we have to."
"Understood," Alpha-01 said. He accepts mission expansion when it sounds like keeping the line.
We passed a sign that offered access to Puente Antiguo like a suggestion. The road narrowed. The sky widened. Heat put a hand on the back of my neck and pressed just enough to remind me it was real. A tumbleweed auditioned for a movie. Somewhere, a radio station found Springsteen again because America is a loop if you listen too long.
We crested a rise, and the world ahead did that shimmer mirage trick—the one that looks like a puddle and is actually air between heartbeats.
"Welcome to New Mexico," I said softly, almost to myself. "Home of Thor's midlife crisis."
"Sky is good," Alpha-03 whispered back, and I chose to think he meant ours, too.
We kept driving. The mission continues.