Once they arrived in the lab, Bruce got straight to work while Tony looked over the equipment. Bruce scanned a device over Loki’s scepter. “The gamma rays are definitely consistent with Selvig’s reports on the Tesseract. But it’s going to take weeks to process.”

Tony was already looking at the structure of the S.H.I.E.L.D. computers they had available. “If we bypass their mainframe and route directly to the Homer cluster, we can clock this at around six hundred teraflops,” he said. That was a lot faster than what Fury was working with as the system stood.

“All I packed was a toothbrush,” Bruce chuckled.

“You know, you should come by Stark Tower sometime. Top ten floors, all R&D,” Tony said. “You’d love it. It’s Candy Land.”

“Thanks, but the last time I was in New York, I kind of . . . broke Harlem.”

“Well, I promise a stress-free environment. No tension, no surprises . . . ” As he spoke, Tony walked around behind Bruce and gave him a little zap with an electrical instrument.

“Ow!” Bruce said.

Tony looked closely at him. “Nothing?” He’d been testing Bruce to see how well he controlled the Hulk. The little shock hadn’t provoked any kind of unusual reaction, which Tony seemed to find a little disappointing.

“Are you nuts?” said Captain America as he came into the lab.

“Jury’s out,” Tony said. Turning back to Bruce, he asked, “You really have got a lid on it, haven’t you? What’s your secret? Mellow jazz, bongo drums . . . ?”

“Is everything a joke to you?” Cap said.

“Funny things are,” Tony said.

“Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn’t funny. No offense, Doc.”

“It’s all right. I wouldn’t have come on board if I couldn’t handle pointy things and little surprises.”

Tony shook his head. “You’re tiptoeing, big man. You need to strut.”

“And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark,” Captain America said. What was Tony doing, trying to get Bruce to turn into the Hulk? What good would that do any of them? They had more important things to do than stand around while Tony Stark played stupid games.

“Do you think I’m not?” Tony asked him. He paused and then fired off a series of questions. “Why did Fury call us in? Why now? Why not before? What isn’t he telling us? I can’t do the equation unless I have all the variables.”

Cap wasn’t following his line of thinking. None of that mattered to him. “You think Fury’s hiding something?”

“He’s a spy. Captain, he’s the spy. His secrets have secrets.” Tony waved at Bruce, who was buried in his instruments. “It’s bugging him, too. Isn’t it?”

“Ahh, I just want to finish my work here,” Bruce said, trying to stay out of it.

“Doctor,” Cap said. He wasn’t going to let this go.

Bruce sighed and took off his glasses. “‘A warm light for all mankind,’” he quoted. “Loki’s jab at Fury about the cube.”

“I heard it,” Cap said.

“Well, I think that was meant for you,” Bruce said to Tony. “Even if Barton didn’t tell Loki about the tower, it was still all over the news.”

“The Stark Tower? That big ugly . . . ” Tony looked up. “. . . building . . .” Cap finished. “In New York?”

“It’s powered by an Arc Reactor, a self-sustaining energy source,” Bruce pointed out. “That building will run itself for, what? A year?”

“That’s just the prototype,” Tony said. “I’m kind of the only name in clean energy right now,” he explained to Cap. “That’s what he’s getting at.”

Cap didn’t know what he meant by clean energy, but he could tell it was another of Tony’s typical boasts, so he let it pass.

“So why didn’t S.H.I.E.L.D. bring him in on the Tesseract project?” Bruce asked. “What are they doing in the energy business in the first place?”

“I should probably look into that once my decryption program finishes breaking into all of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s secure files.” Tony looked at a tiny computer tablet, barely bigger than a credit card.

“I’m sorry,” Cap said. “Did you say—”

“Jarvis has been running it since I hit the bridge,” Tony said. “In a few hours, I’ll know every dirty secret S.H.I.E.L.D. has ever tried to hide.”

“Yet you’re confused about why they didn’t want you around,” Cap said.

“An intelligence organization that fears intelligence?” Tony said. “That’s historically . . . not awesome.”

Cap felt his temper starting to rise. He got it under control. There was one angle on their situation that none of them had talked about yet. “I think Loki’s trying to wind us up,” he said. “This is a man who means to start a war, and if we don’t stay focused, he’ll succeed. We have orders. We should follow them.”

“Following’s not really my style,” Tony said through a mouthful of dried blueberries.

“And you’re all about style, aren’t you?” Cap said.

“Steve,” Bruce said, “tell me none of this smells a little funky to you.”

Cap looked back and forth between the two scientists. Bruce could tell he was struggling with something . . . but he also wasn’t going to share it. He was too much of a good soldier for that.

“Just find the cube,” he said, and walked out of the lab.

“That’s the guy my dad never shut up about?” Tony said when he was gone. “Maybe they should have kept him on ice.”

“He’s not wrong about Loki.” Bruce was adding new data to a screen showing surveillance results. “He does have the jump on us.”

“What he’s got is an Acme dynamite kit,” Tony said. “It’s going to blow up in his face . . . and I’m going to be there when it does.”

“Yeah. I’ll read all about it.”

“Or you’ll be suiting up with the rest of us.”

Bruce shook his head with a regretful smile, “No, see, I don’t get a suit of armor. I’m exposed. Like a nerve. It’s a nightmare.”

Tony stood on the other side of the transparent screen Bruce was using. “You know,” he said, “I’ve got a cluster of shrapnel trying every second to crawl its way into my heart.” He tapped the miniature Arc Reactor in his chest. “This stops it. This little circle of light, it’s part of me now. Not just armor. It’s a . . . terrible privilege.”

“But you can control it,” Bruce said. He was willing to listen to Tony, but he didn’t feel like being lectured on what it was like to have problems. Bruce Banner knew about problems.

“Because I learned how,” Tony said.

Bruce shook his head. “It’s different.”

“Hey.” Suddenly serious, Tony swiped all the data away from the screen so they could see each other clearly. “I read all about your accident. That much gamma exposure should have killed you.”

“So you’re staying that the Hulk . . . the other guy . . . saved my life? That’s nice,” Bruce said. “Nice sentiment. Saved it for what?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Tony said.

Bruce swiped the data back onto the screen. “You may not enjoy that.”

Tony also got back to work. “And you just might.” QZEWtoJFlgr+QyAwyXCX1TQMISk547d4eVMYlO5NiAKLlsDw+qXaqJZ1PwXK6wQn