9

The Quinjet roared in toward the aircraft carrier stationed off the East Coast of the United States. Its pilot brought it in skillfully, using the Quinjet’s vertical takeoff and landing capability to bring it down near the command superstructure.

“Stow the captain’s gear,”Coulson instructed one of the crew members as they disembarked.

A red-haired woman in civilian clothing—except for the sidearm in a holster on her left thigh—was coming across the flight deck to meet them. Coulson introduced them.“Agent Romanoff, Captain Rogers.”

“Ma’am.”Steve nodded.

“Hi,”she said to Steve. To Coulson she added,“They need you on the bridge. They’re starting the face trace.”

“See you there,”Coulson said.

As he left, Agent Romanoff started walking with Steve.“It was quite the buzz around here, finding you in the ice,”she said.“I thought Coulson was going to swoon. Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?”

“Trading cards?”

“They’re vintage. He’s very proud.”

Steve saw Bruce Banner looking at one of the S.H.I.E.L.D. fighter jets nearby and called out to him.“Dr. Banner.”

Bruce came over and shook his hand.“Oh, yeah, hi. They told me you’d be coming.”

“Word is you can find the cube,”Steve said.

“Is that the only word on me?”Bruce asked.

Steve knew what his real question was.“Only word I care about,”he said. He didn’t judge Bruce for what the Hulk had done. All that mattered was whether the scientist could contribute to the mission.

“It must be strange for you, all of this,”Bruce said as they walked along the aircraft carrier’s flight deck.

“Well, this is actually kind of familiar,”Steve said. He was comfortable in a military setting, and he had been on aircraft carriers before. The Yorktown, the Enterprise ... a long time ago.

“Gentlemen,”Agent Romanoff said.“You might want to step inside in a minute. It’s going to get a little hard to breathe.”

“ Flight crew, secure the deck, ”a voice said over the ship’s speakers.

“Is this a submarine?”Steve asked. He couldn’t imagine an aircraft carrier that could operate underwater. How would you seal it? Where would all the planes go? Wouldn’t the drag from the water tear up the flight deck and the gun turrets?

“Really?”Bruce said.“They want me in a submerged, pressurized metal container?”

They walked to the edge of the deck and Steve saw he’d had it exactly wrong. The carrier wasn’t going down ... it was going up.

Huge turbines, each fifty yards across, appeared, churning the ocean into froth. Crews ran to lock the planes in place on the flight deck and secure other essential equipment.

“No, this is much worse,”Bruce said.

The carrier lifted into the air. Steve couldn’t believe what he was seeing. An aircraft carrier that could fly!

“Welcome aboard the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier,”Agent Romanoff said.“Now if you’ll come with me?”

Steve and Bruce followed her from the flight deck down to the Helicarrier’s bridge, which was underwater while it was in naval operation mode. Now it was a glass-walled hive of activity, full of officers and command staff. Steve had a moment to look around. The commanding officer appeared to be the woman with short dark hair reeling off orders from near the center of the bridge.“S.H.I.E.L.D. Emergency Protocol 193.6 in effect,”she was saying after a series of status orders and acknowledgments. Steve didn’t know what protocol that was. At the moment, all he knew was that he was on a flying aircraft carrier ... and wasn’t that enough? Amazing.

“We’re at level, sir,”she said, and that was when Steve saw Nick Fury, at his own station. He was over-seeing everything, not interfering, trusting his people to do their jobs.

“Good,”he said.“Let’s vanish, Agent Hill.”

She nodded.“Engage retro-reflection panels.”

The Helicarrier disappeared from view. From the inside, it didn’t look any different, but Steve saw monitors from satellite feeds, and on those, the Helicarrier had simply become invisible. He corrected himself: He wasn’t just on a flying aircraft carrier. He was on an invisible flying aircraft carrier.

The future was pretty ... cool, was the word everyone used now.

“Gentlemen,”Fury said in greeting.

Steve got out his wallet and handed Fury ten dollars. Fury had won the bet fair and square; Steve was in fact surprised by what he was seeing. Not just surprised—astounded. Fury nodded, with just the hint of a smile, and stowed the bill in his pocket.

“Doctor, thank you for coming,”he said to Bruce. A crew member at a navigation terminal called out the Helicarrier’s altitude: twenty-four thousand feet and climbing toward an operational cruising altitude of thirty thousand.

“Thanks for asking nicely,”Bruce said.“So how long am I staying?”

“Once we get our hands on the Tesseract, you’re in the wind.”

Bruce nodded.“Where are you with that?”

Fury looked to Coulson, who said,“We’re sweeping every wirelessly accessible camera on the planet. Cell phones, laptops ... if it’s connected to a satellite, it’s eyes and ears for us.”

“That’s still not going to find them in time,”Agent Romanoff said.

Bruce seemed to agree.“You have to narrow your field. How many spectrometers do you have access to?”

“How many are there?”Fury asked, meaning that S.H.I.E.L.D. could get access to all of them if necessary.

“Call every lab you know. Tell them to put the spectrometers on the roof and calibrate them for gamma rays. I’ll rough out a tracking algorithm basic cluster recognition. At least we can rule out a few places that way.”Bruce had taken off his jacket. Now he was rolling up his sleeves.“You have somewhere for me to work?”

“Agent Romanoff?”Fury called. She looked over.“Show Dr. Banner to his laboratory, please?”

“You’re going to love it, Doc,”she said as she led him off the bridge.“You’ve got all the toys.”

In Loki’s hideout, Erik Selvig was receiving a new shipment of supplies and parts.“Put it over there,”he ordered as a group of technicians wheeled in the crates. He was putting the final touches on the machine Loki had commissioned him to create.“Where did you find all these people?”he asked Barton, who was tapping at a tablet nearby.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. has no shortage of enemies, Doctor,”Barton said.“Is this the stuff you need?”

“Yeah, iridium. It’s found in meteorites,”Selvig explained.“It forms antiprotons. It’s very hard to get hold of.”

“Especially if S.H.I.E.L.D. knows you need it,”Barton commented.

“Well, I didn’t know.”Barton’s comment made Selvig a little defensive. It wasn’t like he had planned to need iridium when he’d gone to work in New Mexico three days ago. But he brightened as he saw Loki approach.“Hey, the Tesseract has shown me so much.”Selvig struggled to find words that would convey what he had experienced working with the cube.“It’s more than knowledge,”he said.“It’s ... truth.”

“I know,”Loki said.“What did it show you, Agent Barton?”

Barton turned to look at Loki.“My next target,”he said.

Loki nodded.“Tell me what you need.”

Barton took one his bows out of a case and snapped it into shape with a flick of his arm.“I need a distraction,”he said.“And a biometric ID.”