The airport doors hissed like polite snakes and exhaled us into New Mexico. Heat hit first—honest, unperfumed, the kind that doesn't stick so much as press, all palms and no apologies. The air tasted like dust and jet fuel; sunlight slid off chrome and kept going. I put on sunglasses because ritual demands props.
"Ah, yes," I said. "Welcome to New Mexico, boys. Population: us, a fallen god, and many questionable fashion choices."
Alpha-01 scanned the lot without moving his head much—lines of sight mapped against cover that didn't exist. "Unfamiliar terrain," he said. His voice always makes the obvious sound like intelligence.
Alpha-02 shaded his eyes with two fingers and measured the distance between pillars and curb, curb and lanes, lanes and the human river. "Visibility high," he murmured. "Cover limited."
Alpha-03 said nothing. He tracked the people instead of the place—where the crowd thickened, where it thinned, where the flows pinched or pooled. Micro-trait: when he assesses human motion, he aligns his breathing to it; his chest rose and fell on the same rhythm as the sliding doors.
"Relax," I said. "It's just an airport. The only danger here is overpriced bottled water."
Then the danger arrived.
It didn't announce itself. It did the opposite. The group near the exit was ordinary until it wasn't. Bodies clotted. Conversations thinned. The noise floor dropped half a notch the way rooms do before a toast or a fight. Jackets too uniform for locals in August. Hands inside pockets for longer than pockets deserve. Boots with a stomp meant for alleys, not terminals. Gun oil has a smell if you know it; it carries a memory if you don't.
"Clock it," I said softly.
"Fifteen," Alpha-01 said immediately. He recalculated halfway through his sentence. "Twenty-two. Twenty-seven. Flanking left, eight."
The shape completed. Forty, give or take, moving together without looking at each other. From the rideshare curb and the short-term exit both. Plain jackets. Stiff shoulders. A few ball caps low. Not tourists. Not a family reunion. Not airport staff. Organization without uniform.
They flowed until they were where they wanted to be: between us and the lot. Conversation pivoted away like iron filings obeying a magnet. Bystanders turned casual into elsewhere. Phones came out, because phones are modern prayer—please let me be a witness and not a participant.
I tilted my head. "Forty guys?" I stage-whispered, smiling like a man reviewing a menu and disappointed by portion sizes. "A bit excessive, don't you think? Group discount on bad decisions?"
They didn't answer. They did what bad decisions always do: they produced props. A glimpse of stainless. A receiver. A shotgun's distinctive silhouette surfacing from a jacket like a whale remembering gravity. A handful of knives. Two bats for men who wanted to feel manual in a digital age.
I didn't let my grin change. "Weather looks bad," I said.
"Anchovy," Alpha-01 returned, which is our for bad idea. He shifted his stance a half-inch, which for him is the equivalent of putting a hand on a holster he doesn't carry.
"No gunfire," I said, not quiet, not loud. I pitched it for my row; it carried farther because command does, even when you didn't intend it. "We control hands. We push. We pin. We do not make the news for the wrong reason."
"Copy," Alpha-02 said. Alpha-03 breathed in and out and lined his rhythm with the sliding doors again. The pattern became a countdown.
"Civilians first," I added, because reminders are muscle memory if you say them enough. "If you have to pick between winning fast and protecting someone squishy, you pick the squishy."
A woman at my elbow held a toddler whose patience had already boarded a different flight. I pointed her toward a concrete pillar. "Behind that," I said, brisk and bright like a man giving directions to a gift shop. "Airport drill. Two minutes."
"Is this—" she started.
"Yep," I said, and lifted my voice just enough to include three more families in the new truth. "Drill. Inside, please. Gate agents are handing out vouchers." A small lie that moved feet without igniting panic. People want to be told which way to go. I pointed. They went.
"Make me a lane," I told the Alphas, and set off at an angle that didn't look like retreat but was.
The first man to commit did it like he'd practiced: shoulders forward, pistol low, eyes high. He took two steps that said I have friends, then raised the gun because he wanted control of the room. Alpha-01 was already there. His hand closed on the man's wrist, not like steel—like instruction. He peeled the pistol back and up in a spiral that told the joint what it could be doing instead of this. The gun never pointed at anyone with a future. The man learned about knees and pavement without losing any teeth he'd miss.
Three to Alpha-01's left decided numbers could bully physics. He broke that math by steering them: a shoulder check with precision turns a man ninety degrees and seats him on the curb without insult. Elbow, wrist, stun. Knife came up on his blind side; Alpha-01 didn't turn his head. He hooked the blade hand with his free hand, pinched the tendons, and parked it on the pillar like he was moving a magnet to a fridge.
Alpha-02 flanked instead of charged. He made space the way you do with crowd control, not brawl. He pushed one man into two and borrowed their imbalance to make three fall down. A bat swung in; Alpha-02 stepped inside the arc and let the bat smack the back of the man who swung it. Elbow to sternum, palm to ribs—he used the hammer he carries, sure, but he swung it carefully. A knife appeared—he saw it in the reflection on the window first—caught the wrist, rotated, and placed the arm across the owner's spine like a backpack that had made poor choices.
Alpha-03 did not have the training overlay yet, and you could see it in the seams when he moved. But raw force plus good intentions covers a multitude of sins. A shotgun came up and he took the barrel without drama, twisted, and owned it. He didn't try to wield it—good boy; we're not making this an escalation—he used the stock like a club, cracked a jaw with the kind of apology you can't say in words, and then pushed a second man so hard he did the over-the-bumper tumble you only see in insurance commercials.
I became environment. I grabbed a luggage cart with one hand and turned it sideways into a barrier without clipping any ankles, walled off three civilians behind it, and pointed them in. "Inside," I said. "Gate agents. Vouchers." The word is catnip. A man lunged with a pistol, but fear makes motions telegraph. I ducked, shoved the cart into his shins, and put a fist in his ribs with the minimum power required to change his plan. As he folded, I took the gun because guns should not be where panic is. I racked the slide to eject the chambered round—clink on concrete—and tucked the pistol under the cart wheel. My fingers remembered how this felt the day a horn erased me. I let the memory burn, not rule.
I wanted something to make cover out of and the world gave me fire extinguisher—red cylinder, white hose, a classical solution hiding in plain sight. I yanked it from the pillar bracket and popped the pin. "Eyes!" I yelled for my own row and fogged ground level with white—not a blinding, just confusion at knee height. Men who like standing up get clumsy when they can't see their feet. Alpha-02 was already shifting his weight to account for slickness; he planted his heel, not his toe, and folded a man into the foam like it were a pillow someone had offended.
The shotguns never fired. The pistols never did either. That is not fate. That is forty bad ideas confronted by three Spartans who understand time. We caught wrists before triggers. We placed barrels toward pavement. When someone insisted on raising a gun anyway, Alpha-01 let him discover what pressure on the web between thumb and finger can do to a plan. Alpha-03 took a bat across the back with the stoicism of a man who'll feel it later and snapped the bat over his knee in a neat demonstration of why wood is a poor life choice next to bone density.
Two minutes is long in a fight and short in an airport. We made it short. I lost track at thirty bodies on the ground because counting is for reports and we were busy. We didn't break bones we didn't need to; we broke ideas. A knife skittered under a minivan and made a sound like it regretted its owner. A shotgun slide rattled uselessly in its new home under a luggage cart. Someone tried the runner strategy; Alpha-02 caught him at the belt and ended the run with a gentle slam into a bollard that has seen worse.
When it was done, groans replaced yells; foam replaced bravado; concrete felt like a conversation people weren't winning. We stood in the middle of almost forty men who would be telling creative stories later and zero civilians bleeding on the ground. The crowd's soundtrack reset from fear to awe; phones tilted into portrait because portrait is for stories, and that is what this would become as soon as upload met Internet.
Alpha-01 did a straggler scan with his peripheral vision; he keeps his chin level when he does it so he doesn't startle men who have noticed they've lost. Alpha-02 shook a little foam off his hands and wiped his knuckles on his pants; you couldn't see blood because there wasn't any on him that didn't belong where it stayed. Alpha-03 breathed heavier—his rhythm had been thrown off by improvisation—but he stood tall and didn't pretend it hadn't cost him.
"Well," I said, sliding my hands into my hoodie pocket like a man who had simply finished a grocery list, "that was fun. Forty guys and not a scratch. Remind me to leave you three terrible Yelp reviews—way too efficient, not enough drama."
The system didn't laugh. It dinged.
Assistance: Civilians (aggregate) (+500)Collateral Avoided: (airport firearm discharge) +100 (prevented)Ethical Multiplier: +1 (non-lethal control; civilian egress facilitated)Attention (Airport/NYPD/TSA): +0.9Attention (Unknown Org): +0.4
I exhaled a grin. Before the fight: 1,000. Now: 1,600 by the HUD's count; it had silently added a prevented catastrophe bonus I wasn't going to argue about. Enough to train Alpha-03 and keep the jar from going empty.
Sirens began their yodel far away and came closer. Blue lights flowered at the edge of the lot. A PA crackled a polite command about "remaining calm" that the crowd had already obeyed, because people like instructions when the story gets big.
"Time to leave," I said, because this had stopped being ours the second the first strobe started bouncing off glass. "We do not stick around to explain to federal employees why we turned forty jackets into modern art in front of a terminal."
"You are bleeding," Alpha-02 said.
I glanced down. My right forearm had a pink kiss where a watchband buckle on a man with a punch had caught me wrong. "Cosmetic," I said. "I'll let you put a Band-Aid on it later so you can feel useful."
He didn't rise to it. He did sweep his eyes over Alpha-03's back and note the bruise the bat had written. "Cold compress," he said, already filing treatment.
"Inside, please," I told a small cluster of frozen watchers, because exiting discreetly requires cover. "Airport drill. Vouchers."
They moved. We moved with them, because flow hides intention better than speed. Alpha-01 took the outside of our wedge, Alpha-02 the inside—he screened the toddler mom with his body as if he'd been born for it. Alpha-03 floated a half-step behind me, making our footprint look like family. We crossed the lane like men thinking about coffee and not sirens. Phones aimed and swallowed us; every frame makes a decision. I tried to give them one that said calm and civil and someone else's problem now.
A white SUV stood a block away—the unremarkable one I'd reserved. I handed the keys to Alpha-01 because driving under noise is where he shines. He slid behind the wheel and set his mirrors without moving his torso, then turned the engine like he had built it.
"New Mexico didn't waste time," I said as he pulled us into traffic with the grace of a man carrying a dinner plate through a crowded kitchen. "Forty guns on arrival, and now we've got what we need to make Alpha-03 official."
"Mission success," Alpha-02 said, the cadence of a logbook, not a boast.
"Training confirmed," Alpha-03 added, and if you didn't know him you wouldn't have heard the bright under the neutral.
"You guys are the best backup singers," I said. "Always on key."
We didn't take the direct route. Airport roads are loops designed to make pursuit difficult if you know what you're doing and impossible if you don't. Alpha-01 did small nothings that add up to something: one extra lane change to see if the silver sedan with the extra antenna mirrored us (it didn't), one too-early exit then a re-entry to check for tails (none stuck), one slow roll past a parked vehicle with two men sighting over their shoulders (not FBI, not S.H.I.E.L.D.; wrong posture). We joined the main highway like local weather.
"Weather?" I asked as the sirens faded into memory.
"Sausage," Alpha-01 said. Medium. "Airport security saw faces. Patterns flagged. We will be reviewed."
"Then we give them a boring story to review," I said. "Three brothers helping push carts when a brawl broke out. Oh look, here we are, a mile away, buying water."
"Understood."
A House That Doesn't Apologize
The rental house was a single-story stucco with a low slouch and a satellite dish that had seen fewer shows than storms. The driveway was scuffed by tires that had not loved it; the porch had two chairs that didn't match but tried. The AC unit hummed the way mine in New York never had: not as complaint, but competence.
"Home sweet home," I said, dropping my bag onto tile that survived on easy cleaning and hope. "No peeling paint, no cockroaches, working AC. Compared to our New York shoebox, this is paradise."
Alpha-01 staged his bag against the wall where he could reach it if the door yelled. Alpha-02 mirrored him exactly and then nudged his three inches to create a lane; micro-trait: he cannot abide clutter by exits. Alpha-03 took the window, scanning instinctively, the sky man making a truce with glass.
The system took a step forward like a waiter with a tray. I pulled the HUD up.
Points: 1,600Spartan-II Training Overlay (complete): 1,500
I looked at Alpha-03. He didn't fidget. He didn't ask. Patience sat on him like a well-fitted jacket. My grin widened despite myself. "Ready, Rookie? Push this button and you're not just Alpha-03—you're Alpha-03, Spartan-II."
He nodded. "Acknowledged."
"Man," I said, thumbing the confirm, "I am never getting tired of this."
Ding.
Alpha-03 — Spartan-II Training OverlayCost: 1,500 (deducted)Modules: Neuro-muscular optimization; bone density augmentation (simulated adaptation protocols); tactical doctrine (urban/open terrain); comms discipline; legal/ethical framework (civilian priority—reinforced); first aid (EMT-B); restraint escalation ladder; stress inoculation (simulated); heat adaptation protocol (desert).Mode: Non-invasive overlay integrating during idle/rest cycles. Casualties: impossible.Duration: Accelerated; continuous while idle.Progress: 0% → 3% (initialization)… 4%
Light isn't light, exactly, when the system gets to work; it's the air agreeing to a new arrangement. It moved over Alpha-03 like an idea taking shape. His eyes went far for a heartbeat—the way minds do when they're reading something you can't. He breathed once, two-in, two-out, and came back with the edge his brothers carry so casually you forget it's there. He rolled his shoulders once. Micro-trait: he rechecked breathing cadence after he changes.
"Congratulations," I said. "You just leveled up in a way my last life's video games never prepared me for."
"Understood," he said. The neutral sat different now; there was calm in it, not just control.
Points: 1,600 → 100 (after training)
The HUD quietly added heat:
Advisory: Airport incident under review by local/federal (airport authority, TSA). Expect footage correlation.Advisory: Unknown organization correlation +0.2 (failed op).Advisory: S.H.I.E.L.D. background awareness +0.05 (regional activity uptick).
"Consequences," I said out loud, because it's a better bedtime story than denial. "Airport incident is going to get scrubbed. We didn't shoot; we didn't break; we did their job for them. We'll be a weird footnote. Still—patterns kill. We keep our heads down, we keep helping, and we don't farm fights."
"Understood," Alpha-01 said. He had the front door open and closed without noise, learning the way the hinges wanted to be treated.
"Cold pack," Alpha-02 reminded Alpha-03, already rummaging through the first aid kit. He applied a compress to the bat bruise with the gentle efficiency of a man who knows what swelling does to range of motion. Micro-trait: he taps the edge of a compress twice to seat it, same as he does with draws and dishes and knives he isn't allowed to align near salt shakers anymore.
"Thank you," Alpha-03 said. Not required. He said it anyway. I caught Alpha-01 hearing that and filing it.
We assigned corners like we always do. Alpha-01 took the door and the hallway and the part of the house that could funnel a problem into a narrow. Alpha-02 got the kitchen and the gear—batteries charging on the counter, radios on the table despite the fact that here our comms would be words and eyes. Alpha-03 got the windows and the sky—barometer app open, weather service ping set, a new habit that looked a lot like curiosity with a job.
I stood there and let gratitude be a thing that could exist in my chest without making me suspect my motives. We were in a house with working AC. No one had shot a gun in an airport. A woman and a toddler had gone home with a story and no holes. Thor was about to fall out of a family argument and we were going to be who we say we are: helpful.
I wrote the LINES on a Post-it and stuck it to the fridge because rules should live where you feed yourself:
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.)
"Say them," I said, because repetition makes bones.
They did, in order. When Alpha-03 hit number three this time, he added, quietly, "Especially when points arrive after people, not before."
I looked at him like he'd told me a joke only I was allowed to laugh at. "Copy," I said.
We ate from a bag because groceries would be tomorrow's errand and Carmen's food was a thousand miles behind us. Alpha-03 arranged the takeout cartons neatly, aligned the chopsticks, and tapped the edge once. Alpha-01 checked the door a second time and then checked himself for doing it, a man building trust with new wood. Alpha-02 drank water like he was training his organs to remember desert.
"Those forty weren't locals," I said when the room agreed to conversation. "Wrong boots. Wrong way of carrying weight. Wrong confidence for a place with this many cameras."
"Fisk?" Alpha-01 asked.
"Maybe," I said. "Could be someone else with a ledger. Could be S.H.I.E.L.D. baiting a trap and someone else biting. Could be a contractor with more bodies than skill. Whoever they are, they don't get to be the reason I do something stupid tomorrow."
"Understood."
"And tomorrow," I added, "we go find Jane Foster before S.H.I.E.L.D. decides the phrase national security means taking her work. Our job is to keep her data from being turned into something with black bars on top. Our job is to keep Thor from being evidence: not because he's Thor, but because he's a person who's about to have his worst week."
"Assist," Alpha-02 said.
"Assist," Alpha-03 echoed. He touched the cold pack and repositioned it by a half-inch, breath on count. Training ticked 5% on the HUD and told me the overlay was learning the shape of him.
The house settled. The AC did its good work and pretended it wasn't a miracle in a world full of them. I went to the sink and washed airport off my hands—the smell of foam, the memory of oil. The burn on my forearm from earlier made its presence known and then forgave me. I taped a Band-Aid on with dramatic flourish; Alpha-02 rolled his eyes so slightly I almost missed it. I will be dining out on that eye roll forever.
On the coffee table, my notebook opened to the page where I'd written LINES in three different rooms and four different moods. I added a new line below, not numbered because numbers make things sound like commandments and this one felt like a prayer:
— We will not turn this place into a stage. The desert deserves quiet.
I closed the book. The system hummed acknowledgement like a cat agreeing to stay in your lap another minute.
Advisory: Thor impact window approaching. Puente Antiguo quadrant.Advisory: Ethical multiplier increased for non-interference with scientific process while preserving safety.
"Copy," I told the air. "We'll be the hinge, not the hammer."
The sky outside had shifted to that peculiar late-afternoon color that makes shadows look like decisions. A dust devil tried out a dance in the lot across the way and then embarrassed itself into stopping. Somewhere down the road a teenager revved a car that had wanted to be a motorcycle since birth. New Mexico has a way of letting you hear distance; it makes you humble or loud. I was going to try for humble tomorrow.
"Rest cycles," I said. "Overlay integration needs idle. We rotate watch: Alpha-01 till midnight, Alpha-03 midnight to four, Alpha-02 four to eight. We're on the road at dawn."
"Understood," Alpha-01 said, taking his place at the door as if the house had been built to hold him there.
"Copy," Alpha-03 said, listening to the AC and the road and maybe the sky.
"Affirmative," Alpha-02 said, adjusting the cold pack once more and checking the screens like a man who trusts electricity because he's seen what happens when it stops.
I lay down on a couch pretending to be a bed and stared at a ceiling that had survived three paint jobs and one careless tenant with a high-backed chair. The Saint Florian medal Mia had pressed into my palm was warm from my pocket. I set it on the table because I don't know how to pray, but I know how to remember.
Today we'd landed in a place that doesn't try to be anything but itself. A crowd had wanted to turn violence into noise; we'd turned it into breathing. Points had become tools instead of permission. A rookie had become a Spartan because work earns trust. Sirens had belonged to someone else. For now.
"Tomorrow," I told the room, the men, the system, "we go be a welcome committee for a man whose family thinks falling is education."
"Assist a person," Alpha-02 said without looking up.
"Exactly," I said. "We assist a person."
The desert settled its weight around the house, brave and quiet. The fan in New York would have rattled; this AC purred. Somewhere, Phil Coulson stood next to a stretch of nothing and pretended to be surprised by what fell from the sky. Somewhere, Jane Foster loaded a sensor into a truck and swore softly at a battery like it had betrayed her. Somewhere a man with a hammer in his heart and nothing in his hands fell faster than pride can explain.
We were ready to catch what we're allowed to catch.
The mission continues.