Steve was taking down Chitauri as fast as he could. There were always more of them. He fought with everything he had, from the streets near Grand Central to a bank where he freed a roomful of hostages . . . but when that fight was over, he stood in the street and thought maybe they weren’t going to win after all. The National Guard had arrived, but all they could do was coordinate evacuations and provide a little covering fire. They couldn’t mount an effective opposition to the Chitauri. Steve stood and for a moment he felt something he’d never felt before.

Hopeless.

Maybe that was just Loki, but Steve was starting to feel like the Chitauri were going to absorb every punch the Avengers could throw. They had to close that portal, or nothing was going to stop the invasion.

Fury stood and listened to the World Security Council explain that they had decided to take the operation out of his hands. They were going to use a nuclear missile to destroy the Tesseract and close the portal—but at the cost of untold civilian lives. Fury protested as strongly as he could and one of the councilors cut him off. “Director Fury. The Council has made a decision.”

“I recognize the Council has made a decision,” Fury said. “But given that it’s a stupid decision, I’ve elected to ignore it.”

“Director, you’re closer than any of our subs. You scramble that jet.”

“That is the island of Manhattan, Councilor. Until I am certain my men cannot hold it, I will not order a nuclear strike against a civilian population.”

“If we don’t hold them here, we lose everything.”

That’s what you don’t understand, Fury thought. “If I send that bird out, we already have.”

Natasha was having trouble shaking the last Chitauri pursuing her. When she glanced over her shoulder, she understood why.

It was Loki.

“Hawkeye,” she said, pulling her craft into a tight turn back toward his position. He was still on the rooftop where Iron Man had dropped him, across the street from Stark Tower, and he was still picking Chitauri out of the sky with his incredible accuracy.

“I got him,” he said. He lined up an arrow and shot.

It was an incredible shot, over a distance of several hundred yards at a moving target, and it was perfect—until Loki reached up and snatched the arrow out of the air just inches from his face. He looked in Hawkeye’s direction and smiled . . .

And that was when the explosive arrowhead detonated and blew him off the Chitauri craft.

He fell onto the Stark Tower balcony as the out-of-control craft destroyed the S and the T in the Stark logo. Thor had already inadvertently smashed the R before.

The Black Widow followed, leaping off her craft and rolling into a combat stance. Loki saw her and stood. She knew she didn’t have a chance against him in a straight-up fight, but that wasn’t going to stop her from trying.

But she never got the chance. The Hulk, flying out of nowhere, crashed into Loki and drove him through the last intact balcony window into Tony’s living room. He pounded the floor and came after Loki again, but Loki stood up and screamed, “Enough!”

The Hulk paused, confused.

“You are, all of you, beneath me!” Loki raged. “I am a god, you dull creature, and I will not be bullied by—”

The Hulk didn’t bother to listen to anymore. He grabbed Loki’s leg, swung Loki over his head, and pounded him down into the floor six or seven times as hard as he could. When it was over, the floor was trashed and so was Loki. He lay staring up at the ceiling, an expression of incredible surprise on his face.

“Puny god,” the Hulk snarled, and stomped off to rejoin the fight.

On the rooftop, Natasha approached the machine holding the Tesseract, wondering what she could do. “The scepter,” said Erik Selvig. She looked over at him and saw that he was free of Loki’s spell. How had that happened? She knew Iron Man had tried to destroy the machine. Maybe the explosion from his repulsors had shocked Selvig back to his senses, just like Hawkeye had been freed from Loki by a sharp blow to the head.

“What about it?” she asked.

“The energy. The Tesseract can’t fight it. You can’t protect against yourself.” He was wracked with guilt, she could see it on his face. Again, just like Barton. Both of them were suffering from the knowledge of what they had done under Loki’s control.

She knelt next to him and said, “It’s not your fault. You didn’t know what you were doing.”

Selvig digested this for a moment and then said, “Actually I think I did. I built in a safety to cut the power source.”

“Loki’s scepter,” she said, understanding. The scepter was given its power by the same source as the Tesseract. It could reach through the energy barrier!

“Maybe it will close the portal,” he said, and glanced down over the edge of the rooftop to a lower floor. “And I’m looking right at it.”

Elsewhere on the battlefield, the Chitauri were slowly but surely gaining the upper hand. There were just too many of them, thousands and thousands—against only six Avengers. Hawkeye ran out of arrows and was forced to flee his rooftop sniper’s perch. Iron Man’s energy was running desperately low after he destroyed another Leviathan by flying into its mouth and exploding it from the inside on his way through. Captain America was battered and at the edge of his strength.

And in a hangar on the Helicarrier, a pilot was receiving orders: “Director Fury is no longer in command. Override order 7A11.”

“7A11 confirmed,” the pilot said. “We’re go for takeoff.”

He lifted off, carrying a nuclear missile designed to put an end to the Chitauri threat once and for all . . . but it would also be the end of every living thing on the island of Manhattan.

On the bridge, Maria Hill called out, “We have a rogue bird! Someone stop it!”

Nick Fury himself ran out onto the flight deck with a shoulder-fired missile launcher. He blew the landing gear out from under the taxiing jet, and it skidded to a halt on the edge of the deck . . . but then a second jet screamed past, taking off before he could do anything about it.

The World Security Council had gone behind his back. And they had sent two planes anticipating he would be able to react fast enough to get one.

Now it didn’t make any difference, unless . . . Fury got on the radio and pinged Iron Man directly, not wanting to distract the rest of the team. “Stark. Do you hear me? You have a missile headed straight for the city.”

The sounds of battle crackled back through the radio along with Tony Stark’s voice. “How long?”

“Three minutes, max,” Fury said. “The payload will wipe out Midtown. At least.”

Tony didn’t ask any more questions. “Jarvis, put everything we’ve got into the thrusters,” Fury heard him say. When he got back inside to the bridge, he could see that Iron Man had shed his Chitauri pursuit and rocketed away from the battle, heading south to intercept the missile. +Pp2f8eNVT4wmdJXpVPR9RZ7mKdTPlfj1pHgcob52S6jK3qeNBje3/6R1sBF4ysO