The door held for three more blows.
On the fourth, it flew inward — it didn't open, didn't slide aside; it flew, torn off its hinges by a force that had nothing to do with brute mechanics. Magic. Dark, heavy, smelling of something burnt.
I didn't move.
Chitauri poured into the compartment like cockroaches from under a baseboard — fast, coordinated, weapons ready. A dozen? Fifteen? Counting didn't matter. Enough to turn me into a sieve if I so much as twitched.
But I didn't twitch.
Instead, I stood in the dim compartment, leaning on my spear like a cane, and looked at them with the expression the original Loki had refined for a thousand years.
Boredom. Light contempt. And absolute confidence in my own superiority.
"Finally," I said in the Universal Tongue. Loki's voice was… pleasant. Velvety. The perfect instrument for manipulation. "I was starting to think the service in this sector had completely degraded."
The Chitauri froze. They'd clearly expected anything — resistance, pleading, an escape attempt — but not this.
Then the crowd parted.
And for the first time, I saw the Other.
In the films he looked like… a second-rate villain out of The Lord of the Rings. A wrinkled face under a hood, pompous speeches, unconvincing menace.
In reality…
In reality, he made me want to vomit.
Not because of ugliness — though yes, he was ugly. Skin the color of rotten meat stretched over a skull with too many angles. Eyes — two pits into nowhere, reflecting no light. A mouth — a slit that reeked of something sweet and nauseating.
No, the nausea came from his presence.
He carried an aura. Crushing, sticky, seeping under the skin. Every instinct in my body screamed: RUN. Every cell demanded: FIGHT. And at the same time something deep inside whispered: Submit. Lie down. Die.
It wasn't fear.
It was magic.
Mental influence, the analytical part of my mind noted coldly. Passive suppression aura. Works on primitive levels of consciousness.
And then, with grim satisfaction: The firewall is holding.
I showed nothing. No fear, no disgust, not even tension. I merely raised an eyebrow — the gesture Loki used when Thor said something especially stupid.
"And here comes the welcoming committee," I drawled. "I'll admit, I expected something more… impressive."
The Other stopped three meters from me. His head tilted — unnaturally, like an insect's.
"Loki," his voice was a rustle, a scrape, a whisper from a crypt. "Prince of Asgard. Son of Odin."
"Former," I corrected. "On both counts."
"We know."
Of course you do, I thought. Thanos watched Asgard. Watched the Tesseract. Watched me.
"Then you also know," I let my voice harden, "that I'm not some cosmic trash you can kick around. I am a god. And I demand appropriate treatment."
Silence.
The Chitauri around us tensed. The Other… the Other made a sound that might have been laughter.
"God," he repeated. "A god who fell. A god who lost. A god lying on a dump like a broken toy."
"Temporary difficulties," I snapped. "Everyone has bad days. I'm sure even your master knows that feeling."
The air changed.
The crushing aura surged tenfold. I felt something cold and sharp scrape at the edge of my mind — a probing strike, testing my defenses.
The firewall creaks, the inner voice observed. But it holds.
"You dare—" the Other began.
"I dare," I cut him off. "Because I have something your master needs. Information. Abilities. Access to Asgard and its treasury." I paused. "Or do you think I ended up here by accident? That the Abyss spits travelers right onto Sanctuary's doorstep by pure coincidence?"
A lie.
Pure, concentrated lie.
And I said it with such certainty that for a fraction of a second I almost believed it myself.
And then something strange happened.
The lie… answered.
I felt it — faint, barely there, like an echo in an empty hall. Something in the fabric of reality bent under my words. Not changed — but bent. As if the universe hesitated for an instant: what if he's telling the truth?
God of Lies, I remembered. Not just a title. A function.
The Other froze. His empty eyes drilled into me, trying to push deeper.
I let him see something.
Not the truth — gods forbid. A carefully built set. A broken prince hungry for revenge. Hatred for Odin, who betrayed him. Hatred for Thor, who stole his place. The desire to prove he was worthy — of anything, at any price.
All of that lived in the real Loki. I merely dragged it to the surface and let it shine.
And behind that facade — my server room. My firewall. My real thoughts.
The Other stepped back.
"The master will decide," he rasped. "Come."
The walk to the throne hall — or whatever this place called it — took an eternity.
They led me through corridors that shouldn't have existed. Sanctuary's geometry spat on Euclid and laughed at common sense. Stairs went down, yet we climbed. Corridors bent at angles that made my eyes ache. Sometimes gravity shifted — and we walked on walls while the ceiling became the floor.
Spatial distortions, my mind cataloged. Either technology or magic. Most likely both.
Around us there was… a lot.
Chitauri — thousands of them, swarming through vast hive-barracks. Machines — alien, pulsing, clearly not built by humanoid hands. And creatures — dozens of species, most of which I couldn't identify even with Loki's memory. Prisoners? Slaves? Allies? Impossible to tell.
An army, I realized. He's building an army. And this is only one outpost.
The scale hit like a wave.
In the films, Thanos was a villain. Big, terrifying, but still — a villain you could defeat. Here, seeing a sliver of his empire…
Here, he was a force of nature.
Don't panic, I ordered myself. Information is an advantage. Use your eyes. Remember.
I remembered.
The throne hall was… empty.
A vast space carved into the asteroid's heart. No banners, no drapery, not even lighting — only the dull glow of strange minerals in the walls. In the center — steps leading to…
Him.
Thanos wasn't sitting on a throne. Thanos was the throne — or the throne was his continuation. A massive figure, motionless as a statue. I'd known he was huge — but knowing and seeing were two different things.
Three meters tall. Shoulders a compact car could fit into. Hands that could crush my skull like a grape. And the face…
The face was calm.
That was the most frightening part. Not malice, not madness, not bloodlust — just calm. Patient, all-encompassing calm of a being who knows time is on his side.
He looks at me, I realized, the way I look at an ant.
And then: Fine. Let's see how you look when this ant bites.
"Son of Odin," Thanos's voice was deep as an ocean trench. He didn't raise it — there was no need. It simply filled the space. "Or rather… not a son. A foundling. Laufey's stolen child."
I climbed the steps. Not because I was allowed — because standing below with my head tilted back would have meant accepting the posture of a supplicant.
Loki wasn't a supplicant.
Neither was I.
"Laufey was a biological donor," I replied, stopping halfway up. Close enough that it wasn't an audience shouted across distance. Far enough to leave room to move. "As was Odin. Neither of them defines who I am."
"And who are you?"
Good question.
"Someone who can be useful," I said. "Or someone who can be a problem. The choice is yours."
Thanos tilted his head. Barely — on a creature his size, any motion looked monumental.
"You're insolent. For someone who was lying in the trash."
"I was a god before I ended up in the trash. I'll be a god after. That's a state, not a circumstance."
"Gods," something like a smirk touched Thanos's voice. "I have destroyed gods. Dozens of pantheons. Hundreds of 'immortal' beings. They all believed titles would protect them."
"They were fools," I agreed. "I am not."
"Really?"
He rose.
I didn't step back. Every cell in my body screamed at me to run, but I didn't step back.
Thanos descended the steps. Slowly. Unhurried. Each step sent a tremor through the stone. He stopped in front of me — close enough that I could feel the heat of his body.
He gives off heat, a part of my mind noted. Metabolism. Interesting.
"I sense ancient cold in you," Thanos said. "Jotun blood. The oldest race of the Nine Realms."
"The oldest after the Aesir."
"No." His eyes met mine. "Before Asgard was Jotunheim. Before Odin was Ymir. The Asgardians built their empire on the bones of your ancestors, prince. Stole their magic. Twisted their history."
I knew this. Loki's memory knew it — and rejected it, buried it, refused to accept it.
I accepted it.
"Perhaps," I said. "But that is ancient history. I'm interested in the present. And the future."
Thanos watched me for a long time. A minute? Two? Time lost meaning again.
Then he returned to his throne.
"The Other," he said. "Prepare him."
There it is, I thought. It begins.
"Prepare" turned out to be a euphemism.
They didn't beat me. Didn't break bones or pull out fingernails — that would have been too primitive. Too inefficient.
Instead, the Other brought me into a small cell, sat me on a stone slab, and began to speak.
Only he wasn't speaking to me.
He was speaking into me.
"You are broken," his voice rustled, slipping under the skin. "You are rejected. No one needs you."
The words carried a charge. Mental, emotional — they hooked into my mind like fishing barbs and pulled, pulled, pulled…
Firewall, I ordered myself. Hold the firewall.
The Other increased the pressure.
"Odin used you. Thor despised you. Frigga pitied you. You were a mistake — from the beginning."
Images. He projected images straight into my brain.
Thor receiving Mjolnir. Radiant, golden, loved by all.
Me — Loki — in the shadow, with a crooked smile.
Odin on the throne. "You were both born to be kings." A lie. A lie from the start.
Frigga teaching magic. "This is your path, my son." The path of the weak. The path of those who weren't meant to fight.
Not mine, I reminded myself. His pain. Not mine.
But the pain was real. A thousand years of resentment, disappointment, betrayal — it all lived in the body that was now mine. And the Other pulled it out, one by one.
"You are nothing," he whispered. "You were always nothing. But the Master can give you purpose. Direction. Strength."
Classic, I thought wearily through the pain. Break, then offer salvation. Interrogation psychology, chapter one.
I knew the tactic. I'd seen it in films, read it in books, studied it in information security trainings. Social engineering — that's what it was called in my world.
But knowing isn't enough, I realized. I have to do something.
So I did.
Instead of resisting — I yielded.
No, I didn't break. I… bent.
I let the pain drown me — on the surface. Let the images tear at my mind — the outer layers of my mind. I cried, screamed, writhed on the stone slab — Loki's body remembered how to do that.
And inside, behind the firewall, I watched.
The Other saw a broken prince. A desperate creature ready for anything to make the pain stop. He saw exactly what he wanted to see.
He didn't see the server room.
He didn't see me cataloging his techniques. Memorizing the cadence of his mental strikes. Analyzing weak points in his own defenses.
He didn't see me learning.
If he can project images, I thought through my feigned sobs, then so can I. Mind magic. Seidr. I just need to understand the principle…
The torture lasted for hours. Or days — there was no light in the cell, no time. When the Other finally stopped, I was curled on the floor in a fetal position. My body shook violently. My gaze unfocused. A perfect performance. Bravo. Now send me to Midgard.
"Enough…" the Other rasped. He loomed over me, drawing in the scent of my fear — fake, yet no less intoxicating to him. "…for now." I froze. My internal rhythm skipped. "You sing nicely of obedience, little prince," he hissed. "But I still hear false notes. The pain hasn't rooted deeply enough." He straightened, his shadow swallowing me whole. "You must be broken slowly. So the cracks run not only through the body, but through the soul. There is no need to rush." He turned to the exit. "Rest. Think of eternity. We will continue later."
The door slammed shut, cutting me off from the outside world. I stayed on the cold stone. The trembling I'd been acting out slowly started to become real. Cold seeped into my bones. He didn't believe me. Or he simply enjoys the process. Either way, the game isn't over, I thought, folding my mental shields to conserve strength. A break has been declared. And I'd better use it to strengthen my defenses. Because tomorrow he'll hit harder.
I was alive. I was (technically) free. And I'd just spent hours inside the head of an ancient telepath, studying his methods.
Knowledge is power.
Soon they would bring me the Scepter. The Mind Stone. A tool capable of amplifying any mental abilities a thousandfold.
Thanos thinks he's handing a toy to a broken puppet.
He's wrong.
He's handing a weapon to his future enemy.
Fool, I thought, staring into the cell's darkness. Though I might be wrong too. We'll see which of us is wrong less.
Somewhere in Sanctuary's depths, beyond walls and corridors, a purple titan waited with his plans.
And here, on a cold stone floor, I was building mine.
The game had begun.