Tony had gotten away from the group, but he found his way to the detention area where Loki had been held . . . and where Phil Coulson had died. He stood there thinking for a while, and then he noticed Steve Rogers had found his way there, too. Tony hoped Cap wasn’t interested in picking up their argument where they’d left it off. He didn’t have much stomach for a fight right then, at least not with Cap.

But Cap wasn’t looking for a fight, either. He stood for a minute, reflecting on what had happened in that room. Then he asked, “Was he married?”

“No,” Tony said. “There was a, uh . . . cellist. I think.” That was all he knew about Coulson’s personal life, and he only knew that because of what he’d overheard when Pepper talked to Coulson. To Tony, Coulson had always been an irritation, and now he was regretting that.

“I’m sorry. He seemed like a good man,” Cap said.

“He was an idiot,” Tony said.

“Why? For believing?”

“For taking on Loki alone,” Tony said.

“He was doing his job,” Cap insisted.

Cap’s stubbornness made Tony angry. “He was out of his league,” he said. “He should have waited. He should have . . .”

“Sometimes there isn’t a way out, Tony,” Cap said.

And there they were again, arguing over heroism. “Right,” Tony said. “I’ve heard that before.”

Cap walked toward him, not quite aggressive but definitely pressing his point. “Is this the first time you’ve lost a soldier?”

“We are not soldiers!” Tony said, barely keeping his voice below a shout. He was Tony Stark, billionaire genius! He was Iron Man! He was nobody’s cannon fodder. “I am not marching to Fury’s fife!”

“Neither am I! He’s got the same blood on his hands that Loki does. But right now we’ve got to put that behind us and get this done. Loki needs a power source . . . ” He stopped as he saw Tony’s attitude change.

Tony had been struck by an idea. “He made it personal,” he said.

“That’s not the point,” Cap said.

“That is the point,” Tony insisted. “That’s Loki’s point! He hit us all right where we live. Why?”

Like he was talking to a child, Cap said, “To tear us apart.”

“Yeah, divide and conquer is great, but he knows he has to take us out to win, right?” Now Tony was rolling. He had Loki figured out. “That’s what he wants. He wants to beat us; he wants to be seen doing it. He wants an audience.”

“Right. I caught his act at Stuttgart,” Cap said.

“That was just previews,” Tony said. “This is opening night. And Loki, he’s a full-tilt diva, right? He wants flowers, he wants parades. He wants a monument built to the skies with his name plastered . . . ”

That was it. Tony looked at Cap, and saw that he knew it, too. “Son of a gun,” Tony said.

They both knew where Loki would strike next.

Erik Selvig had nearly completed the greatest scientific work of his life. The machine holding the Tesseract was complete, and ready for activation. It resembled the containment structure he had built in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s New Mexico facility, but he had made some improvements. This new machine was designed not to measure the Tesseract’s power but to amplify and channel it. The Tesseract itself was the core of the machine. Around it was a plasma chamber and a conical array of mirrors and lenses. When the portal generator powered up, it would superheat the plasma in the chamber. Then the lenses would focus that energy into a beam that would tear open a hole in the universe and let the Chitauri through. Once that portal was open, Loki’s triumph would be assured. No force on Earth would be able to oppose him.

He opened up his laptop—the same one he had used when he was working with Jane Foster, before they had ever seen Thor, or the Destroyer, or Loki. He ran through a series of software checks. Everything was in order. Soon, very soon, they would do something no human had ever dreamed of being able to do. Not even the Red Skull had understood the latent potential of the Tesseract.

And best of all, they would begin their conquest using Tony Stark’s Arc Reactor in Tony Stark’s magnificent new tower. Selvig looked out over the city of New York from the top of Stark Tower. By the end of the day, he thought, the world would be utterly transformed. xhtfPHtEsJPOZ0KO3I+voV0hSqXSQesa86fNY6TE6A5B+hvPYiCOH53ulthtIFqX