SHIELD Helicarrier – Medical Bay1 Hour Later
Consciousness returned not with a gasp, but with a system check.
Ribs 4 through 6: Fractured. Lung capacity: 85%. Concussion: Moderate.
Elias sat up, tearing the IV line from his arm. The pain was sharp, immediate, and grounding. He welcomed it. It meant he was alive.
"Sir," Alfred's voice was urgent in his ear. "I strongly advise against movement. Your encounter with the Hulk resulted in trauma equivalent to a head-on collision with a semi-truck."
"I've had worse Tuesdays, Alfred. Status?"
"Agent Coulson is dead. Loki has escaped. The Tesseract is gone. Mr. Stark is repairing the rotor. Captain Rogers and Agent Romanoff are preparing to depart for New York."
Elias froze. Coulson.
He stood up, swaying slightly. He walked to his pile of gear on the side table. His cowl was cracked, the left lens shattered. He picked it up, his fingers tracing the fracture.
"Sir?"
"Inject the adrenaline compound, Alfred. Maximum dosage."
"That is highly inadvisable—"
"Do it."
A hiss sounded from his suit's collar. A cold fire spread through his veins, masking the pain, sharpening the senses. His pupils dilated. The fatigue vanished, replaced by a cold, predatory focus.
Elias grabbed a spare lens from his utility belt, clicked it into place, and pulled the cowl over his head.
"Let's go to war."
New York City
The Quinjet screamed over the East River. Inside, the mood was funeral-quiet. Steve Rogers sharpened his shield straps. Natasha checked her glocks. Clint flew the bird, his eyes hard.
Elias sat near the ramp, silent. He was busy calibrating his suit's heuristic processors to Chitauri physiology based on the footage from the attack on the Helicarrier.
"Stark is already engaging," Clint called out. "He's trying to provoke Loki."
"We're three minutes out," Steve said. He looked at Elias. "Thorne. You good?"
Elias looked up. The glowing blue eyes of his cowl met Steve's. "I'm functional."
"Good. Because we're gonna need those eyes."
They broke the cloud layer. Stark Tower loomed ahead, the machine on the roof spitting a beam of pure energy into the sky.
The portal opened.
It wasn't a hole; it was a tear in the fabric of reality. Out poured the Chitauri—hundreds of them on flying chariots, screaming like banshees.
"Light 'em up!" Steve yelled.
The Quinjet's guns roared. Elias didn't wait for them to land.
"Alfred, drop calculation."
"Altitude 400 feet. Intercept vector plotted."
Elias hit the ramp release.
"Thorne! What are you doing?" Natasha shouted.
Elias didn't answer. He sprinted off the back of the moving jet and dove into the chaos.
The Art of War
He fell in a free dive, his cape rigid, gliding toward a squadron of Chitauri chariots.
He didn't aim for the soldiers; he aimed for the pilot.
As he neared the lead chariot, Elias fired a grapple line, snagging the alien craft's rail. The jolt nearly dislocated his shoulder, but the adrenaline cocktail held him together. He swung up, landing behind the Chitauri pilot.
Analysis: Cybernetic interface. Neural link to the vehicle.
Elias didn't punch the alien. He watched its hands.
Eyes of the Lord: Active.
In a split second, Elias understood the alien control scheme. He saw how the Chitauri shifted its weight to bank, how it twitched a finger to accelerate.
Copying Pilot Proficiency.
Elias grabbed the alien by the neck, threw it off the chariot, and took the controls. He flew the alien craft better than the alien had.
He banked hard, swinging the chariot around. He located the trigger mechanism for the energy cannon.
Target acquired.
Elias opened fire on the other chariots. He wove through the skyscrapers of Manhattan, dogfighting with three alien craft. He flew with impossible precision, skimming the glass of office buildings, forcing his pursuers to crash into the architecture.
He drifted the chariot around the corner of 42nd Street, blasting two Chitauri soldiers out of the sky, then bailed out as his ride took a critical hit.
He crashed through the window of an office floor, rolling to a stop amidst terrified civilians.
"Excuse me," Elias said, standing up and checking his gadgets. "You should probably take the stairs."
He shattered the window and jumped back out.
Assemble
The battle raged for twenty minutes. It was chaos.
The team eventually converged on the overpass near Grand Central. Cap, Widow, Hawkeye. Thor landed, summoning lightning to bottle-neck the portal. Tony flew overhead, trailing a Leviathan.
And then, the Hulk arrived.
"I'm always angry."
Bruce punched the Leviathan in the face. The armor crumpled. The beast flipped, crashing into the station.
The Avengers stood in a circle, weapons ready. The Chitauri army screeched, surrounding them.
Elias landed last. He dropped from a gargoyle, his cape settling around him. He stood between Cap and Thor.
"Call it, Captain," Tony said.
"Alright, listen up," Steve commanded. "Until we can close that portal, our priority is containment. Barton, I want you on that roof, eyes on everything. Stark, you got the perimeter. Anything gets more than three blocks out, you turn it back or you turn it to ash."
"Wanna give me a lift?" Clint asked Tony.
"Right. Better clench up, Legolas."
"Thor," Steve continued. "You've got the lightning. Light the bastards up."
Thor spun Mjolnir and flew off.
"Natasha, you and Cap keep the fight on the ground," Elias interrupted, his voice calm amidst the explosions.
Steve looked at him. "And you?"
Elias looked up at the portal. More Leviathans were coming.
"I'm going to introduce a variable they didn't account for."
"Which is?"
"Fear."
Elias grappled away. He didn't fight like a soldier; he fought like a predator.
He moved through the alleys and the shadows. When a squad of Chitauri cornered a group of police officers, Elias dropped a smoke pellet.
In the gray haze, blue eyes glowed.
Snap. Crack. Break.
The Chitauri fired blindly into the smoke. Elias moved through the laser fire effortlessly. He replicated their agility but added martial arts precision. He tore the energy rifles from their hands and used them as batons.
He didn't just beat them; he dismantled them.
"Sir," Alfred warned. "Body temperature rising. Suit cooling systems at 60%."
"Hold it together."
Elias reached the main thoroughfare. A Leviathan was strafing the street, its energy cannons ripping apart cars. Iron Man was busy on the other side of the city.
Elias saw a discarded Chitauri energy rifle—the heavy kind, meant to be mounted on a turret.
He picked it up. It was heavy, awkward.
Analysis: Energy output insufficient to penetrate Leviathan armor.
"Unless..."
Elias looked at the Leviathan. It had gill-like vents on its side that opened to vent heat.
Window of opportunity: 0.4 seconds.
Elias needed a higher vantage point. He saw Cap reflecting energy blasts off his shield nearby.
"Rogers!" Elias shouted.
Cap turned. "Thorne!"
"Launch me!"
Elias sprinted toward Captain America. Steve didn't question it. He crouched and raised the shield.
Elias stepped onto the Vibranium disc. Cap pushed upward with super-soldier strength.
Elias launched into the air, soaring fifty feet up.
Time slowed. Eyes of the Lord.
He saw the Leviathan passing underneath him. He saw the gill vent opening. He saw the sensitive biological machinery inside.
Elias aimed the heavy alien rifle. He didn't fire a spray; he fired a single, overcharged shot right into the open vent.
BOOM.
The shot ignited the internal gases of the creature. The Leviathan convulsed, fire erupting from its mouth and gills. It crashed into the street, sliding to a halt, dead.
Elias landed on a lamppost, panting.
"That counts as one!" he yelled at Gimli—no, at Thor, who was flying past.
The battle was turning, but they were exhausted.
"I can close it!" Natasha's voice came over the comms. "I can use the Scepter!"
"Do it!" Steve yelled.
"No, wait," Tony cut in. "I got a nuke coming in. It's gonna blow in less than a minute."
Elias froze. The Council. He had anticipated they might try a sterilization protocol, but he didn't think they'd be this fast.
"Tony," Elias said, his mind racing. "The portal. It's the only place to put it."
"I know," Tony said, his voice strained. "I'm flying it in."
Elias watched Iron Man catch the missile. He watched him fly upward, past the tower, toward the hole in the sky.
"Alfred," Elias whispered. "Calculate the trajectory. If he loses power on the other side..."
"Probability of return is less than 8%."
Elias felt a pang of respect. Stark, the narcissist, was making the sacrifice play.
The missile entered the portal.
"Close it," Tony's voice faded.
"Wait!" Steve shouted.
The explosion happened on the other side. The Chitauri on the ground all collapsed simultaneously, their neural link severed.
Tony didn't fall.
"Come on, Stark," Elias whispered, clutching the lamppost.
The portal began to shrink. Natasha was hesitating.
"Close it, Natasha!" Steve ordered.
Just as the aperture became a sliver, a speck of red and gold fell through.
"He's out!" Elias shouted.
But he wasn't slowing down.
"He's not braking," Thor noted.
Thor spun his hammer to catch him, but the Hulk got there first, snatching Tony out of the air and sliding down the side of a building.
They crashed into the street.
Elias dropped down, joining Cap and Thor as they ran to the fallen Avenger. Hulk ripped the faceplate off. Tony wasn't breathing.
Elias scanned him. Heart stopped. Electrical system failure.
"Shock him," Elias ordered Thor.
"What?"
"He's a battery! Jump start him!"
Before Thor could summon lightning, the Hulk roared.
RRAAAARRRGGHH!
Tony gasped, his eyes flying open. "What the hell? What happened? Please tell me nobody kissed me."
Elias let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. He sat down on a piece of rubble, his adrenaline crashing.
"We won," Steve said, exhausted.
Tony looked at Elias. "Hey, Ninja. You look like crap."
Elias's suit was torn, his cape shredded, his cowl cracked. "You should see the other guys."
"I think we're done here," Thor said, looking at the tower.
"Yeah," Tony said. "Shawarma? There's a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don't know what it is, but I wanna try it."
Elias stood up, wincing as his ribs shifted. "I'm buying."
Two Days Later
The team had gone their separate ways. Thor took Loki and the Tesseract back to Asgard. Banner drove off with Tony. Steve rode his motorcycle into the sunset.
Elias stood in his office at Thorne Industries, looking at the news reports. Heroes of New York.
"Sir," Alfred said. "Director Fury is on line one."
"Put him through."
"Thorne," Fury's voice was calm. "You did good out there. For a consultant."
"I did what was necessary, Nick."
"The World Security Council is asking questions. About you. They want to know where you got that tech. They want to know if you're a threat."
Elias walked to the window. He looked at the reconstruction of Stark Tower.
"Tell them," Elias said, his voice dropping an octave, "that I'm the guy watching the watchers. Tell them that if they ever try to nuke my city again, I won't just stop the missile. I'll come for the launch codes."
He hung up.
He turned to his desk. On it lay a schematic.
During the fight, while hijacking the Chitauri chariot, Elias's suit had passively scanned the alien propulsion drive. He also had scans of Stark's Arc Reactor, Cap's Vibranium shield, and the residual energy of the Bifrost.
He picked up a pencil.
"Alfred," Elias said, his eyes flashing with the cosmic pattern for a brief second. "Open a new file."
"Title, Sir?"
"Project: Justice."
He began to draw. He wasn't just going to build a better suit. He was going to build a contingency plan for every member of the Avengers. Because he had seen the cosmos now. He knew what was out there.
And next time, a hammer and a shield wouldn't be enough.