The shockwave threw the room completely off balance. Smoke poured through the ventilation shafts as the Helicarrier abruptly tilted as sirens blared over the intercom.
"Put on the suit," Steve told Tony.
Tony was already moving toward the door. "Yep."
Fury grabbed the edge of a console, fighting to stay upright on the slanted floor. "Hill, what happened?"
"External detonation," Maria Hill's voice cracked over the comms. "Engine three is down. We are losing altitude fast."
Tearing metal echoed through the ship's infrastructure. Banner and Natasha had dropped through a collapsed section of the deck. Reaching out with my senses, I felt the suffocating pressure inside the doctor's mind fracture. The Hulk was waking up.
Thor sprinted down the corridor, heading straight for the detention block to find Loki.
Leaving him to it, I focused on the ship. Hundreds would die even if canon follows. Bypassing the sparking, chaotic hallways, I headed straight for the damaged engine room.
The damage was clear. Half the outer hull was simply gone, exposing the giant turbine to the freezing slipstream. Wind invaded through the breach. Smoke blinded the surviving engineers while debris rained into the stalled rotor blades.
Another explosion rocked the port side. The upper catwalk struggled under the stress and snapped. Four SHIELD technicians screamed, plummeting toward the jagged metal and the deadly drop below.
I raised my hand.
The screaming stopped.
The four technicians froze in mid-air. I caught them with telekinesis, wrapping them in an invisible force. With a slight motion of my fingers, I guided them safely onto a stable gantry away from the breach. They collapsed against the wall, gasping for air.
Immediate threat is still not secured, I turned to the real problem. The primary steel strut holding the turbine housing was buckling. Shrieking metal echoed over the wind. If that beam snapped, the entire engine would rip free.
I extended my hand toward the failing structure.
My aura expanded into the physical space. The air around the failing structure distorted as crushing telekinetic force gripped the metal. Hundreds of tons of dead weight hit my invisible barrier, made way more heavier by the aerodynamic drag of the falling carrier.
Steel struggled in protest yet I locked the collapsing housing in place effortlessly, stabilizing the wreckage with sheer will.
A blast of repulsor energy lit up the smoke. Iron Man flew into the massive space, fighting the erratic wind currents to hover near the stalled rotors. Cap sprinted onto the lower catwalk beneath me, raising his shield against the flying debris.
Tony looked at the massive, hovering structure, held together by nothing but distorted air and sheer force. The sheared steel of the support beam hovered exactly where it needed to be.
"Well," Tony's voice came over the external speakers. "That's definitely not in the SHIELD handbook. You got that, Adrian?"
"I've got it, Tony," I said evenly. "But the beam is severed. Weld it."
"On it." Tony said. He flew up to the fractured beam. A high-intensity cutting laser fired from his wrist, glowing blindingly white as he rapidly fused the steel plates back together, using my telekinetic grip as a perfect.
From the lower deck, Steve glanced up at the sheer scale of the suspended turbine.
"Stark, what's next?" he yelled.
Tony finished the weld and dropped down toward the massive fan housing. "The strut'll hold....I need to kickstart the rotors. Cap, get to the panel!"
Above us, mercenaries in gear suddenly rappelled from the observation deck, laying down suppressive fire.
Deflecting the barrage with his shield, Steve launched himself into the fight. He covered the control panel while taking down Hawkeye's men in the tight space while Tony strained against the dead fan blades to break their inertia.
Anchoring the repaired metal, I held the line. My telekinesis isolated the structure from the violent vibrations of the firefight and the slipstream, keeping the environment perfectly stable for them to work.
A sudden, massive jolt shook the ship from the inside, banking the Helicarrier sharply. The psychic signature coming from the detention block vanished. Thor was gone, and Loki had just dropped the cage.
"Cap, pull the lever!" Tony yelled, thrusters burning at maximum capacity.
Dropping a mercenary with a spinning kick, Steve grabbed the heavy red lever and yanked it down.
Sparking and groaning, the engine finally roared to life. The turbine blades caught the air. Slowly, the Helicarrier leveled out as the repulsors took the weight of the ship once more.
I released my hold. The crushing, invisible pressure in the space vanished instantly.
Lowering my hand, I smoothed the cuffs of my suit, completely unaffected by the physical exertion.
Steve walked up the metal stairs, his chest heaving as he holstered his shield. He looked at the fully repaired strut, then back at me.
"You okay?" Steve asked, catching his breath.
"I am fine, Captain," I said. "But we have a bigger problem."