Nick Fury came into the lab with a look on his face that said it wasn’t just a social call. He singled Tony out right away. “What are you doing, Mr. Stark?”

So S.H.I.E.L.D. cybersecurity had finally noticed Jarvis’s infiltration. “Uh, kind of been wondering the same thing about you,” Tony answered. He didn’t look upset that Fury had found him out. Instead he looked ready for a confrontation. They needed answers.

“You’re supposed to be locating the Tesseract,” Fury reminded them.

“We are,” Bruce said. He pointed at a screen running his search algorithm using all of the spectrometers S.H.I.E.L.D. had been able to commandeer. “The model’s locked, and we’re sweeping for the signature now. When we get a hit, we’ll have the location within half a mile.”

“Yeah, then you get the cube back. No muss, no fuss.” Tony kept going and changed the subject. “What is Phase Two?”

Something banged on a table near the lab door, and they all turned to see that Captain America had entered and set down a prototype rifle of some kind, loud enough to purposely draw their attention.

No, Tony realized when he’d gotten a closer look at the rifle. Not a prototype. An old weapon. A Hydra weapon from World War II.

“Phase Two is S.H.I.E.L.D. uses the cube to make weapons,” Cap said. “Sorry,” he added to Tony. “Computer was moving a little slow for me.” He’d been worried by what Tony and Bruce had said. He wasn’t going to tell them that, but it was true. When he’d left the lab, he’d headed for an archive level deep down inside the Helicarrier. It was a hangar space filled with steel crates, extending many levels above and below him . . .

And in some of those crates, he had found a lot of weapons like the one he was now showing the rest of the team.

Fury saw that he couldn’t duck their questions anymore. He started trying to explain. “Rogers, we gathered everything related to the Tesseract,” Fury said. “This does not mean that we’re making—”

“I’m sorry, Nick,” Tony interrupted. He spun a display around so it showed classified S.H.I.E.L.D. designs for Tesseract-powered weaponry. “Why were you lying?”

“I was wrong, Director,” Cap said. “The world hasn’t changed a bit.” He looked angry and disappointed. Captain America was a big believer in shooting straight and telling the truth. He didn’t like spies and he didn’t like lies, and now he saw he was knee-deep in both.

“Did you know about this?” Bruce asked Natasha as she came in with Thor.

She glanced at Fury and then said calmly, “You want to think about removing yourself from this environment, Doctor?”

“I was in Calcutta,” Bruce said. “I was pretty well removed.”

“Loki is manipulating you,” she said.

“And you’ve been doing what, exactly?”

Natasha gave him an are-you-serious? look. “You didn’t come here because I batted my eyelashes at you.”

“Yes, and I’m not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy,” Bruce said. He kept his calm, but they could all tell he wasn’t happy. None of them wanted him to get upset; they’d all seen the video of what happened the last time the Hulk went on a rampage. “I’d like to know why S.H.I.E.L.D. is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction,” Bruce finished.

“Because of him,” Fury said, pointing at Thor.

“Me?”

“Last year, Earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town,” Fury said. “We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned.”

“My people want nothing but peace with your planet,” Thor said.

“But you’re not the only people out there, are you? And you’re not the only threat.” Fury looked at each of them in turn, letting them know he was talking about them. “The world’s filling up with people who can’t be matched, can’t be controlled.”

“Like you controlled the cube?” Cap shot back.

“Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies,” Thor said. “It is a signal to all the realms that the Earth is ready for a higher form of war.”

“A higher form? You forced our hand,” Fury argued. “We had to come up with something.”

“A nuclear deterrent,” Tony said. “Because that always calms everything right down.”

“Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark,” Fury said coldly.

“I’m sure if he still made weapons, Stark would be neck-deep,” Cap said.

Tony held up one hand. “Hold on. How is this now about me?”

“I’m sorry,” Cap said. “Isn’t everything?” He and Tony faced each other, looking like they were ready to fight.

“I thought humans were more evolved than this,” Thor commented.

Tony turned on Thor. “Excuse me, did we come to your planet and blow stuff up?”

Just like that, all of them were arguing. Cap and Tony were nose to nose, while Bruce and Natasha fired remarks back and forth. Thor stood off to the side, contempt plain on his face.

None of them noticed when the gem set into Loki’s scepter started to glow. DrKDJ1sODvN17/24jghCY3FtmmUv2+8373cJ3v8o/fLdKcs645GfOMdtvNTuy2+v