After Fury told Adam to stay where he could see him, the tower became quiet.
The battle outside was over, but the room was still full of weapons and agents. Loki was on the floor with Thor near him. The Tesseract was being sealed, and agents were watching the scepter. Rumlow and Sitwell were both there, and Adam could feel their eyes on him.
Adam hated that because some of these agents were Hydra hiding inside S.H.I.E.L.D., and every second they looked at the Omnitrix made his skin feel tight.
Fury stood in front of him with one eye fixed on his face.
"You helped save the city," Fury said. "That is why I am asking first instead of locking you in a room. Who are you?"
Adam opened his mouth, but nothing useful came out. A wrong answer could put him in a cell, a lab, or a file that Hydra would read before dinner.
"Adam," he said.
Fury did not blink. "That is a name."
"That is the only part I can prove right now."
Tony gave a small sound through his damaged helmet. "He is terrible at interviews."
Adam looked at Fury again and made the first lie he could hold together.
"I am not from here," he said. "Not from this planet."
The room changed at once. Steve's face became serious, Natasha's eyes sharpened, and several agents looked straight at Adam's wrist.
"Explain."
Adam swallowed.
"When that rift opened, something went wrong on my side too," Adam said. "I was supposed to go somewhere else. Then there was a technical difficulty, and I got thrown here."
Tony slowly turned his head. "You are calling an alien portal a technical difficulty?"
Adam looked at him. "It sounds better than cosmic wrong turn."
'What am I even saying?' Adam thought. 'Should I tell them they are movie characters where I came from?.'
Fury stepped closer. "Where is your planet?"
Adam shook his head. "I am not giving coordinates in a room full of people I do not know."
Rumlow's eyes narrowed.
Fury's voice stayed flat. "Cannot, or will not?"
"Both," Adam said. "I do not know who is listening, and I do not know who everyone here really works for."
Adam did not look at Rumlow, though he wanted to see if that line hit anything. He acted like he meant aliens, not Hydra.
Sitwell looked down at his tablet. "Then give us the name."
Adam's mind grabbed the safest Ben 10 answer it could find.
"Galvan Prime," he said.
Thor's brows lifted a little. "I know many realms, but not that one."
"Good," Adam said quickly. "Let us keep it that way."
Tony's attention had moved to the Omnitrix again. "And the powers? Ice, crystal, ghost routine. That is all from the watch?"
Adam lifted his left wrist a little but kept it close to his body.
"Not exactly," he said. "It does not hand me powers like a tool. It reacts to my body and pushes the ability I need in that situation."
"That fits what I saw," Tony said at last. "You did not become a full alien. You stayed mostly you, but the power set changed."
Adam nodded at once. "Yes. That is what I am saying."
It was close enough to the truth. The system had said his human appearance would stay mostly the same, so Adam was only hiding the dangerous parts.
Several agents were staring at the Omnitrix now. Rumlow's gaze had become too still, and Sitwell had stopped typing. Adam saw it and felt his stomach drop.
'Wonderful,' he thought. 'Now the people I trust least want my watch.'
Tony stepped closer. "I need a closer look."
Steve looked at him. "Tony."
"I said look," Tony replied. "I did not say open it with a screwdriver."
Adam hesitated. He did not want anyone touching the Omnitrix, but refusing too hard would make it look valuable.
"Fine," Adam said slowly.
He raised his wrist.
Tony reached out with one armored hand and touched the side of the Omnitrix.
Green light flashed across the dial. A sharp burst of energy snapped outward and struck Tony's armor. Frost spread from his hand to his forearm, then across the chest plate. The armor locked in place with a harsh mechanical sound.
Inside the helmet, JARVIS began speaking fast.
"Sir, unknown intrusion detected. Suit functions are offline, communication is unstable, and movement control is locked."
Tony stood completely still.
Then Steve stepped forward. "Adam, did you do that?"
"Noo!" Adam said at once. "I did not do that."
Tony's voice came through broken speakers, rough and annoyed. "For the record, I cannot move."
Adam pointed at the Omnitrix with his free hand. "That was the watch defending itself. I did not know it would hit that hard."
Natasha's eyes moved from Tony to the watch. Clint took one careful step to the side. Fury's face became even harder.
Adam looked at the frozen armor and then at the Omnitrix.
'In Ben 10, people could not just pull the watch off,' he thought. 'But this is worse. This thing is a system.'
He took a slow breath and forced himself to speak before the wrong people reached the wrong idea.
"Nobody can take it," Adam said. "It is bound to me. It answers to my body, my energy, and whatever code it reads inside me."
Tony made a strained sound. "That explains almost nothing."
Adam ignored him and pointed toward Thor's hammer.
"Think of it like that," he said. "It listens only to the person it accepted. If someone else tries to force it, the watch fights back."
Thor looked from Mjolnir to the Omnitrix and gave Adam a small nod. "A worthy weapon can be stubborn."
"Exactly," Adam said quickly. "Mine is just less polite about it."
The joke did not fully hide the warning.
Adam looked around the room, letting his eyes pass over the Avengers and the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents near the elevator.
"So do not look at it like something you can collect," he said. "If someone wants this watch, they would have to kill me first."
The room became quiet again.
Adam kept his hand close to his chest and felt the Omnitrix sit heavy on his wrist. He had said it to warn them away, but as Rumlow's eyes stayed on him, Adam realized he might have given the wrong people a better reason to come after his life.