2

Maria Hill saw Hawkeye come out of the lab into the garage with Selvig, a liaison officer, and a stranger carrying a spear. He looked more like one of the people they’d been recruiting into the Avengers Initiative than an ordinary technician or S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.“Who’s that?”she asked.

“They didn’t tell me,”Hawkeye said.

The stranger got into the back of a light armored vehicle. The situation looked suspicious to Hill, but Hawkeye was one of their more trusted operatives. She wasn’t sure what to think.

Then her walkie-talkie crackled.“Hill, do you copy?”came Nick Fury’s voice.“Barton has turned!”

She barely had time to dive for cover before Hawkeye was shooting at her. Selvig and the other S.H.I.E.L.D. agent were already in the truck. Hawkeye jumped into another vehicle, and they screeched out of the garage and up the ramp toward the surface. Hill fired after them, but her bullets pinged off the truck’s armored exterior.

“They’ve got the Tesseract!”Fury radioed her.“Shut them down!”

She jumped into a jeep and headed after them. Other S.H.I.E.LD. vehicles followed, filled with agents. They roared along the underground access road that led up to the surface in the New Mexico desert. She was gaining on them and firing as she drove. Sooner or later, she’d be close enough to have a good shot at the stranger.

The stranger had other ideas, though. When he saw the pursuing convoy get too close, he pointed his spear at them. The tip of it flared bright blue, and a bolt of energy lashed out from it, striking the vehicle in front of Hill and shattering the right side of its passenger compartment. The vehicle slewed around and flipped, rolling and landing sideways across the road. They were blocked.

At least most of them were. Hill bounced her jeep over a divider into an access road that ran parallel to the road Hawkeye was using. She stood on the gas and hoped she’d be able to cut him off before they got to the surface. Her walkie-talkie was full of voices as Coulson continued to coordinate the evacuation. The energy field they’d created to hold the Tesseract was going to overload very soon.

She heard Coulson’s voice:“We’re clear upstairs, sir. We need to go.”Did that mean Fury had gotten out of the lab? She couldn’t stop to find out.

Hill shot out of the side road in front of Hawkeye’s car. She yanked her jeep into a reverse slide, spinning it one hundred and eighty degrees so it was suddenly going backward, right in front of Hawkeye. She could see the surprise on his face. She shot at him, shattering both of their windshields. He fired back. Their bumpers met, and both of them nearly lost control—but Hawkeye had more drive going forward, and he forced her out of the way. She spun out, then slammed the jeep back into gear and took off after him again.

The blue orb of the Tesseract containment field collapsed into itself. There was a pause. Then all that energy exploded outward. The entire S.H.I.E.L.D. base heaved and collapsed into itself. The shock wave coming out from the explosion buckled the road. Hill saw Hawkeye’s vehicle ahead of the main wave, but she was caught right in it. Debris rained down on the road. She was close to the edge of the base, but she didn’t know how much of it was going to collapse from the huge underground crater the explosion had created. She raced forward, hoping she would have enough time.

Fury slammed through the fire doors at the top of the stairs from the laboratory levels. There was a helicopter waiting for him, rotors already spinning. He jumped on, and the helicopter lifted off, just ahead of the shock wave from the explosion. The vehicle carrying Hawkeye and Selvig and Loki—and, more importantly, the Tesseract—roared off into the night. Fury pointed, and the helicopter pilot chased it.

They got around ahead of the truck, and Fury leaned out of the helicopter’s side door. He fired, emptying his clip at the truck. He could tell from the sparks that some of the bullets had hit, but he was too far away to see if they’d done any damage.

His real target was Loki, but he was protected by the cab of the truck. Fury couldn’t get a good shot at him.

Leaning over the truck’s roof and keeping low, however, Loki could get a good shot at the helicopter. A blue bolt lanced out and struck the helicopter’s rotor assembly. All the control mechanisms went haywire, and the helicopter spiraled down out of the sky. The truck drove underneath them as they were about to crash, close enough that Fury could see the gloating expression on Loki’s face.

Fury jumped when they were only twenty feet or so from the ground. He landed hard and rolled, bruising himself pretty well on the rocky ground. The helicopter went over his head and skidded into a crash, its rotors shattering as they spun into the ground. But it didn’t explode. He was glad the crew would be safe.

The truck’s lights bounced as it drove away across the desert ... out of Fury’s reach.

“Director.”It was Coulson’s voice.“Director Fury, do you copy?”

“The Tesseract is with a hostile force. I have men down. Hill?”

Her voice crackled over the radio. She was still in the edges of the collapsed base.“A lot of men still under. I don’t know how many survivors.”

“Sound a general call,”Fury said.“I want every living soul not working rescue looking for that briefcase.”

“Roger that,”she said.

“Coulson, get back to base. This is a Level Seven,”Fury said. He’d never had to say that before, but there was no sense shying away from the truth. Level Seven was S.H.I.E.L.D.’s highest alert status.“As of right now, we are at war.”

“What do we do?”Coulson asked after a pause.

Fury knew there was only one answer.