With the shield down, Iron Man could fly straight through the fortress’s large windows into what looked like a command center. The soldiers inside hit him with everything they had, mostly machine guns, but they couldn’t hurt the suit. “Let’s talk this over,” Tony said, holding up his arms...​then he took every single one of them out with a burst of disabling fire from his shoulder guns. He nodded, surveying what he had done. “Good talk.”

Most of the soldiers weren’t in any shape to reply, but one of them groaned. “No, it wasn’t.”

Grinning, Tony moved deeper into the fortress. He found a scientist busy at a computer terminal in another room and leveled him with a repulsor blast. Then he looked at the computer and opened the Iron Man armor to get out of it. “Sentry mode,” he said. Then he pulled out a small device and set it next to the computer. It lit up and started copying all the data from the terminal. “Okay, Jarvis, you know I want it all. Make sure you copy Hill at HQ.”

Outside, two legionnaires carried Hawkeye on a stretcher as Black Widow watched. “We’re all locked down out here,” she said. The rest of the soldiers were surrendering, with Thor making sure they didn’t get any ideas about further resistance.

Captain America was going inside. “Then get to Banner,” he said. “It’s time for a lullaby.” The Hulk was a powerful ally, but he could also be dangerous. Black Widow had the best rapport with him and was the best at getting him to turn back into Bruce Banner.

Back at the computer terminal, Tony was looking around. “He’s got to be hiding more than data,” he said out loud. “Jarvis, give me an IR scan.” Maybe something would show up on infrared that Tony couldn’t see.

“The wall to your left,” Jarvis said. “I’m reading steel reinforcement...​and an air current.”

Tony looked more closely. There was a tiny line in the wall. He followed it with his fingertips, looking...“Please be a secret door, please be a secret door...”

With a click, the door slid aside.

“Yay,” Tony said. On the other side of the doorway was a long, dark stairway. He headed down.

Black Widow found the Hulk tearing apart the remains of an enemy tank. She approached carefully and sat where he could see her. “Hey, big guy,” she said. “Sun’s getting real low.”

The Hulk stopped what he was doing and scowled at her. She held out one hand, palm up. He hesitated, then did the same. Natasha ran her fingers softly over his palm and up the inside of his wrist. She felt the tensions simmering in every fiber of the Hulk’s muscles. He sighed and pulled away from her, walking -slowly—​-and his change started. He shrank and the green color vanished from his skin. By the time he reached the other side of the clearing from the destroyed tank, he was Bruce Banner again, staring into space as he recovered from the change. Natasha found a blanket and put it over him. She was the only Avenger who could do this. It had started to mean a lot to her. Bruce was still haunted by some of the things he’d done while he was the Hulk, and it made Natasha feel better to know that he trusted her. She waited with him and also for word from inside Baron Strucker’s fortress.

Captain America punched his way through the fortress garrison until he caught Strucker trying to escape deeper into the maze of passages and rooms. “Baron Strucker,” Cap said. “HYDRA’s number one thug.”

“Technically, I’m a thug for S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Strucker said.

“Well, then, technically you’re unemployed,” Cap shot back. “Where’s Loki’s scepter?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll give you the precious scepter. I know when I’m beat. You’ll mention how I cooperated, I hope?”

“I’ll put it right under ‘illegal human experimentation,’” Cap said, referring to the Enhanced they had seen outside. “How many are there?”

Strucker was looking over his shoulder, a sudden smile on his face. Cap turned to see a young woman coming out of the shadows. She was slim and alluring, but also strange, her eyes wide and not quite focused on him. There was definitely something off about her. He had just completed that thought when she flicked her wrist and sent him flying without ever touching him. He rolled down a flight of stairs, his shield absorbing some of the impact. By the time he’d gotten to his feet and raced back into the room, she was gone. A heavy vault door ground shut behind her.

“We’ve got a second Enhanced,” he warned the team. “Female. Do not engage.”

Strucker was gloating. “You’re going to have to move faster than that -if—”

Captain America was out of patience. He knocked Strucker into the wall and considered what to do next.

Coming out of the tunnel at the bottom of the secret staircase, Tony Stark found himself in a huge chamber littered with equipment. He was still taking it all in when Cap’s voice came over the comm link. “Guys, I got Strucker.”

“Yeah,” Tony said. “I got...​something bigger.”

Suspended from the ceiling was a Chitauri Leviathan. The last time Tony had seen one of them, it had been trying to destroy New York City. He looked up at it, then got himself focused on the lab equipment again. There were prototype weapons, some robotic components, strange biotech assemblies...​it would take him some time to figure out what all of it was.

And there, set into a pedestal with cables and conduits running out of it, was Loki’s scepter. “Thor,” Tony said into the comm. “I got eyes on the prize.”

He started toward the scepter, looking closely at it to see if it was defended in some way. He was so focused on it that he never saw the woman next to him, whispering in his ear as red tendrils of magical energy wormed out from her fingertips and into his mind.

Tony turned and saw the Leviathan, whole and roaring over him. He was in an alien landscape, the sky overhead thick with stars. There were bodies everywhere, soldiers in strange uniforms...​and the Avengers. Thor, Black Widow, the Hulk, Captain America. All dead. Cap was closest. Still eyeing the Leviathan, Tony knelt to see if Cap still bore any signs of -life—​-and Cap’s arm shot out! He grabbed Tony. “You could have saved us. Why? Why didn’t you do more? We could have...​saved...”

Cap’s hand fell away, and he died.

Tony looked up and saw not one Leviathan but ten, then a hundred, surrounded by an endless fleet of alien vessels, all lifting off from this dead planet and heading for Earth, which hung like a shining blue marble in distant space...

Tony snapped out of it, dropping to his knees, sweat pouring down his face from the intensity of the vision. What had happened to him? Must have been a flashback from the Battle of New York. He looked back to the scepter. All their problems had started there, and once the Avengers had the scepter, those problems would be over. He reached out and took Loki’s scepter.

From the shadows, the twins watched. “We’re just going to let him take it?” the man asked quietly.

His sister nodded, a wicked smile on her face. She had a plan. 9DhxZf61MC/0I1dp4CTVMTCcmG42JLHNR3zc5xTBQvkuohlkxaIVQNzdUqJ3ST1t