Tony and Cap squared off over an argument that they couldn’t even remember starting. Tony was still mad about the last thing Cap had said to him . . . whatever it was. He gave Cap a little brush-back with his shoulder. “Back off,” Cap said.

“I’m starting to want you to make me,” Tony said.

Cap stood his ground. “Big man in a suit of armor. Take that off, what are you?”

Tony had an answer ready for this one. “Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.”

“I know guys with none of that worth ten of you,” Cap said. “I’ve seen the footage. The only thing you really fight for is yourself. You’re not the guy to make the sacrifice play, to lay down on a wire and let the other guy crawl over you.”

Tony smirked. “I think I would just cut the wire.”

“Always a way out. You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero.”

“A hero? Like you? You’re a lab experiment, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle.”

“Put on the suit,” Cap said. “Let’s go a few rounds.”

Thor laughed. “You people are so petty . . . and tiny.”

“Yeah, this is a team,” Bruce said.

Fury could see things were spiraling out of control. He started trying to get them all back on track. “Agent Romanoff,” he said, “would you escort Dr. Banner back to—”

“Where?” Bruce interrupted. “My room? You rented my room.”

Nobody had said it out loud, but they all knew the cell currently holding Loki was designed for the Hulk. Fury admitted it. “The cell was just in case—”

Again Bruce interrupted. “In case you needed to kill me.” The words hung there. Nobody contradicted him. “But you can’t. I know. I tried.” Bruce swallowed. It was hard for him to admit that. “So I moved on. I focused on helping people. I was good. Until you dragged me into this freak show and put everyone else in danger. You want to know my secret, Agent Romanoff ? You want to know how I stay calm?”

“Dr. Banner,” Cap said. “Put down the scepter.”

Bruce looked down. He hadn’t even known he’d picked it up. He looked back up and saw Natasha’s hand on her sidearm. Fury was also ready to draw. The others were drawing back from him as well.

Even though he could see what was going on, the hostility in the air was still thick enough that Bruce didn’t know whether he could back everyone down . . . or whether he could back himself down. He could feel tension rising inside him. He could feel the monster trying to get loose.

Luckily for all of them, that was when the computer beeped. 95% MATCH glowed a red status message on the screen. “Sorry, kids, you don’t get to see my party trick after all,” Bruce said. He set the scepter down and went to see where the Tesseract was. That was the only thing that could have set off that particular alert.

But even though he was now refocused on the mission, the others still bickered. Loki had gotten into their heads, sowing discord and setting them against each other.

“The Tesseract belongs to Asgard,” Thor said. “No human is a match for it.”

“I’ll go after it,” Tony said.

“No you don’t,” Cap said, stepping into his way. He wasn’t ready to forget the way Tony had insulted him.

Tony stopped just short of making physical contact with Cap. “You going to stop me?”

“Put on the suit,” Cap said, deadly serious.

Fury didn’t know how it had happened, but they were at each other’s throats, again, or still . . . except Bruce, who was absorbed in the data coming from the gamma radiation scanning program. 100% match said the red status bar.

“Oh, my God,” Bruce said, and that’s when the first of the explosions rocked the Helicarrier. IUKoSTl6C4YfQ//nf+dnA9UyQrdKp1uBCCE6ijh00IV/KxW6jYbsZuogJ/jbcuv+