by Thomas Macri
CHAPTER NINETEEN
SOMETHING WAS HAPPENING in the Arctic Circle, one of the most inhospitable regions on Earth. Wind whipped up snow and ice so furiously that visibility was reduced to within mere feet. Anyone who could bear to leave their naked eyes open long enough would see only thick sheets of snow and ice blowing before him. The arctic desert beat on the rescue vehicles like a frozen sandstorm. As their bright headlights cut through the thick storm around them, wandering aimlessly through the terrain for a place to land, they hit upon the figure of a man, dressed in Inuit garb and waving a flare to signal the vehicle.
The scouts stepped from the relative warmth of their vehicle into the solid snow.
“Are you the guys from Washington?” the man with the flare asked.
“You get many other visitors out here?” one of the men answered, speaking loudly to be heard over the wail of the wind.
“How long have you been on-site?” His companion asked, straining his voice as well.
“Since this morning. A Russian oil team called it in about eighteen hours ago.”
“How come nobody spotted it before?”
“It’s really not that surprising, This landscape’s changing all the time,” the man with the flair said as he motioned to the squalls of snow whipping up and over snow-dunes. “You got any idea what this thing is exactly?”
“I don’t know, it’s probably a weather balloon,” one of the men from Washington replied.
“I don’t think so.” The guide chuckled. “You know, we don’t have the equipment for a job like this.”
“How long before we can start craning it out?”
“I don’t think you quite understand.…You guys are going to need one mighty big crane!”
With that, their guide beamed his flashlight toward a huge ice-covered steel slab jutting out from the frozen landscape, like the head of a mammoth whale breaking the surface of the ocean. It appeared to be the wing of some sort of aircraft, but neither of the men had ever before seen a craft like this. The three men looked up at it in awe, wondering what it could possibly be. The flashlights of a half dozen other workers surveyed the metal, examining it for any clues. One of the agents rushed back to the truck and brought back a device that looked equal parts drill and buzz saw. He called for some of the others to assist him, and soon set it on top of the craft.
He flipped a switch and activated the device. The nozzle began to spin with a steady cadence. A blue stream of bright energy shot from the nozzle and cut right through the craft’s hull. The cut steel crashed a great distance below, creating a chasm in what now clearly appeared to be some sort of ship.
The agents quickly attached grapples to the body of the vessel and lowered themselves into the craft. The softly falling snow illuminated by the bluish floodlight glowing above the blue aperture heightened the feeling that the men were traveling a passageway to another world.
“What is this?” one of the men asked as the two scouted the area with their flashlight beams.
The men tried to keep themselves steady as they traversed the craft’s ice-covered steel and made their way through an area lit only by their flashlights and whatever dim radiance could make its way through the incision above them.
One of the agents’ flashlight beams landed on something covered by a thin veil of ice crystals. It looked like a symbol of some sort—a star, circles. There was something familiar about the patterns, but the agent couldn’t determine what exactly. He wiped the ice from the object. Whatever he’d found, it should yield some clues to the ship’s purpose.
“Lieutenant!” the agent called.
The other approached quickly from behind.
“What is it?” the agent asked the lieutenant.
The lieutenant stared down in dumbfounded amazement. It was an unmistakable emblem—a bold white star set over blue metal—not just any metal, vibranium. And it was ringed with red and white circles. A shield—one that belonged to a hero that some discounted as a myth, a hoax.
“BASE!” the lieutenant called into his monitor. “Give me a line to the colonel”
“It’s three a.m. for him, sir,” the base responded.
“I don’t care what time it is,” the lieutenant said. “This one’s waited long enough.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
SINCE HIS BATTLE with the Abomination, Bruce had been moving from town to town and country to country, so as not to be tracked down. He knew that S.H.I.E.L.D. was looking for him. He also knew Ross wanted to capture him, force the Hulk out, then dissect it to study and replicate it. But Bruce was the only one who understood just how dangerous and unpredictable the Hulk’s power was. He’d been living with it inside him for years now and had spent most of his time finding ways to keep the Hulk locked up. For long stretches, he’d been successful. But on the occasions when someone had been able to track him down, things went terribly wrong.
Bruce was becoming encouraged by the fact that he’d finally gotten the Hulk under some sort control and that he could bring some of himself into the Hulk. He did this when he protected Betty and General Ross from the Abomination, and even when he attacked the Abomination itself—he knew what he was doing, knew what was at stake. And for all the injuries the Hulk caused—and Bruce felt partly responsible for each and every one of them—he’d saved scores of other people who might have perished if the Abomination hadn’t been stopped.
What Bruce did not feel great about was S.H.I.E.L.D.’s understanding of what the Hulk was. As he tried to explain on so many occasions, the Hulk was not the kind of thing that could ever be captured, controlled, or studied. S.H.I.E.L.D. seemed to disagree. Keeping himself out of their hands not only protected Bruce himself, but also anyone who would get in the Hulk’s way once he’d become enraged.
As a result, he returned to his wandering ways, just as he’d done years ago when he was hiding out in Brazil, where he worked in a bottling plant, or squatting in Mexico as a beggar. Whenever he could do so, he helped whoever needed it along the way. He currently found himself in Calcutta. Bruce had made a life for himself here, and there was really no end to the number of people in need. This kept Bruce in the city longer than most places.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
STEVE ROGERS WOKE in unfamiliar surroundings. He felt refreshed. His head was clear and he was full of energy, but he couldn’t figure out where he was or how he’d gotten here.
The institutional-looking room was spare. The steel-frame cot that Steve slept on looked like government issue. The mint-green walls were bare. At the far corner of the room, a radio played a baseball game. The Brooklyn Dodgers. Something was wrong.
Steve looked over toward the window from his bed. The sun was shining and a pleasant breeze was blowing in. By the angle of the sunlight it appeared to be late morning.
Judging by the soaring brick towers, he could tell he was in Manhattan. He was dressed in a T-shirt emblazoned with the insignia of the SSR—the Special Scientific Reserve organization that had given him strength and agility that were the pinnacle of human potential.
Steve again considered the game on the radio. The Dodgers had scored another three runs. Yes, something was very wrong.
The steel knob of the only door in the room turned, and a pretty nurse walked into Steve’s quarters.
“Good morning,” she said. “Or should I say afternoon?”
“Where am I?” Steve asked.
“You’re in a recovery room in New York City.”
“Where am I, really?” Steve asked again, more emphatic this time.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” the nurse said, smiling.
“The game. It’s from May 1941. I know because I was there. Now I’m going to ask you again—where am I?”
“Captain Rogers…” the nurse tried to explain.
“Who are you?” Steve shouted.
Steve noticed the nurse click a device concealed in her hand. He sprang up and used all his power to smash through a far wall. The illusion of th
e room fell away as Steve stepped into what looked like the backstage area of the movie sets he knew from recording newsreel footage.
“Backstage,” Steve realized that the images of New York skyscrapers and the late morning sky were simply extremely high-tech projections. He rushed out of the strange room and found himself outside of the building in an alien world that seemed something like the one he’d known, but unbelievably different at the same time.
An imposing man in a long trench coat stepped forward. He wore a patch over his left eye.
“At ease, soldier,” the man called out. “Look, I’m sorry about that little show back there, but we thought it best to break it to you slowly.”
“Break what?” Steve asked.
“You’ve been asleep, Cap. For almost seventy years.”
Steve was speechless. To the passersby in Times Square this was all ordinary.
But to Steve, this was the future.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
DR. ERIK SELVIG found himself in a dimly lit corridor at a S.H.I.E.L.D. research compound. Not long ago he was just a scientist, and now he suddenly found himself in the middle of cross-dimensional superheroic struggles.
“Dr. Selvig,” came a voice at the end of the hall.
Selvig turned to see Colonel Fury.
“So, you’re the man behind all of this?” Selvig asked. “It’s quite a labyrinth. I was thinking you were taking me down here to kill me.” He laughed uncomfortably.
Fury did not return his laughter, paused, and then walked toward the doctor.
“I’ve been hearing about the New Mexico situation. Your work has impressed a lot of people who are much smarter than I am,” Fury said.
“I have a lot to work with. A gateway to another dimension—it’s unprecedented.”
Fury looked Selvig in the eye.
“Isn’t it?” Selvig asked.
Fury continued down the hall, with Selvig in tow.
“Legend tells us one thing, history another,” Fury said. “But every now and then we find something that belongs to both.”
He opened a secure box. Inside was illuminated red circuitry, a security keypad and, in the center, an unusual glittering blue cube, smoother and shinier than anything Selvig had ever seen before. It crackled with electricity, and forks of charged current danced around it.
“What is it?” Selvig asked.
“Power, doctor,” Fury replied. “If we can figure out how to tap it, maybe unlimited power.”
Selvig stared at the cube in awe. But unseen by Fury or Selvig, the spirit of something else looked on—something far more powerful than either of them. Something from another world—a prince of lies, a power-hungry god: Loki.
“Well, I guess that’s worth a look…” Loki hissed, grinning, unheard by the mortals surrounding him.
“Well, I guess that’s worth a look,” Selvig repeated, not realizing the words were not his own—that he was simply captivated by Loki’s spell.
Loki was pleased. Thor and Odin thought him dead. He’d tricked them when he fell from the Bifrost. They would not be interfering with his plan. He’d find a way to send himself, body and soul, back to Midgard, and once he was there, he would rule these simple mortals, in a way he wasn’t able to rule Asgard.
A Realm would be his at last—just as he deserved.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
IN DR. SELVIG’S research, he uncovered the storied history of the cube—or the Tesseract, as it was officially known. It was once the jewel of Odin’s treasure room. The details of how it came to Earth were unclear, but it surely happened when Asgardians traveled over the Bifrost. Ultimately, the Tesseract came to be guarded by a secret society in Tonsberg, Norway. But in March 1942, it was stolen by Johann Schmidt and used as a weapon against HYDRA’s enemies—including Captain America. During the Captain’s struggle with the Red Skull aboard the HYDRA Valkyrie aircraft—a battle that sent Cap into a frozen deep sleep—the Tesseract was activated, burned through the hull, and plummeted to Earth, where it was buried near the crash site and later retrieved by S.H.I.E.L.D. They knew that, like Thor’s hammer, the Tesseract needed to be guarded by their best agent, and so they put Barton on duty overseeing it.
Doctor Selvig found the cube amazing. The way light and matter and energy reacted around it was like nothing he had ever seen. But not long into Dr. Selvig’s study of the Tesseract, it began to act oddly, even for a mystical object.
Upon learning from Dr. Selvig that the cube had activated itself, so to speak, Colonel Fury called an emergency meeting with Agents Coulson and Maria Hill. Dr. Selvig told the group that the cube was pulling energy from space and emitting low levels of gamma radiation.
In describing the way in which energy was flowing from—or rather into the cube—Agent Hill expressed the very real concern that it could be pulling enough dark energy toward it to collapse all matter on Earth and create a black hole.
“Dr. Selvig,” Fury said, “I need a report on the Tesseract.”
“She’s been misbehaving,” Selvig said, never taking his eyes from the cube.
“Where’s Barton?” Fury asked.
“The Hawk is in his nest,” Selvig replied.
* * *
“I thought I told you to stay close, Agent,” Fury shouted up to Barton, who was watching the cube from a crow’s nest above.
“My eyesight is better from up here,” Barton replied.
“Well, if that’s the case, have you seen anything or anyone come or go that might be causing it to act this way?”
Agent Barton rappelled down to speak to Fury face-to-face, and responded in the negative. As Barton understood it, the Tesseract was a doorway to the other end of space. “If there’s tampering going on,” he said, “it’s not from our side of the doorway, but the other one.”
Suddenly the cube began to spin, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. It began to glow brighter until it seemed to tear a hole in the very air, revealing stars and celestial dust within.
“Oh, my…” Dr. Selvig began.
A man clawed his way through this portal, clutching a staff. He was crouched and shaking—his face regal but gaunt and fatigued, clearly weary from his journey. Still, without delay, he lifted his staff and began to use it to blast violent streams of energy at the agents in the room.
Fury yelled to protect the Tesseract, and the agents, led by Agent Barton, rushed it to safety.
The being who had just entered the room looked up wearily. Mustering as much strength as he could, he touched his staff to Selvig’s heart, then turned and did the same to Barton. The men’s eyes went completely white, then a lightless black, and finally back to normal—but something had changed in them. They stared vacantly, as if due to an underlying soullessness.
As the frantic battle continued within the facility, the portal began to close. It began pulling in all the matter around it. Agent Hill estimated that they had thirteen minutes before the entire compound would be sucked into the portal’s vacuum.
Barton aimed an arrow, but his target was not what the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents might have expected—it was trained on Colonel Fury. It was clear that their enemy’s staff had some strange affect on Barton. He let his arrow fly, and it flew straight into Fury’s Kevlar vest.
With Barton holding Fury at bay, the infiltrator grabbed the Tesseract and, together with Selvig and Barton, fled the compound and raced into an SUV. Agent Hill radioed any and all S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who might receive her message. One of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best agents and a brilliant scientist had just escaped with the Tesseract, accompanied by a powerful being who could only be Loki, son of Odin, brother of Thor.
Hill rushed out toward the parking structure. The fugitives were still in sight, so she jumped in her own SUV and gave chase. She sped through the complex’s labyrinthine tunnels, skidding against the walls as she followed in hot pursuit. Agent Barton fired shots at Hill from the enemy vehicle, but Hill couldn’t help but note that he was less accurate than usual.
As Loki’s vehicle emerged from the tunnel, a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicopter descended and picked up the chase where Hill had left off. Fury leaned out one of the doors and began to fire upon the escape vehicle, but the escapees managed to swerve and avoid the barrage. At the same time, Barton, with his hawklike eyes, returned fire and managed to hit a rotor on the copter, which plunged to earth.
Fury managed to escape the craft seconds before it exploded. Then he looked up as the SUV drove off with the most powerful energy source in the known universe inside.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THIS WAS A VERY different New York City than the one Steve Rogers had known. His beloved Brooklyn Dodgers had left “the borough of churches” for the glitz and glamour of Los Angeles. Their uptown rivals, baseball’s New York Giants, had also up and left for the West Coast. The spectacular adverts in Times Square—always impressive—had transformed from mechanical gimmickry to mind-blowing high-tech LED lights. The skyline had nearly doubled its height during the time he’d been away. Subways were faster—and cleaner. Traffic was more congested than ever, but the cars were sleeker. Gone were the phone booths—people now carried personal phones that had no need for wires. And these devices were not merely used for speaking, but also watching films, reading books, listening to music, and sending and receiving information instantaneously.
Steve was reminded of Howard Stark’s vision of the future at the World Exposition that had changed Steve’s life back in 1941. Steve was sure that in no small way, Howard was responsible for many of these great advancements.
This was the new world outside of Steve’s apartment window. Inside, Colonel Fury had used new technologies to supply Steve with everything he needed to familiarize himself with the new world in which he found himself. It was jarring to emerge from the mid twentieth century into the twenty-first. To make the leap from never having seen a television to fidgeting with a tablet device would not be easy. Steve needed to know about everything that had come in between.