by Alex Irvine
He got back together with Hawkeye and the Black Widow. The three of them took Chitauri down as fast as guns, bow, and shield could do it. Even so, they were close to being overwhelmed—until lightning struck out of a clear blue sky, decimating the Chitauri in the area.
Thor dropped down to land in front of them. He looked wounded, tired… and as angry as any of them had ever seen a man look.
In that moment, Steve was glad he wasn’t a Chitauri. And he was especially glad he wasn’t Loki. “So what’s the story upstairs?” he asked.
“The power surrounding the cube is impenetrable,” Thor said.
“Thor’s right,” Tony said as he zipped by overhead. “You’ve got to deal with these guys.”
“How do we do this?” Natasha asked.
“As a team,” Steve said.
Thor was still watching the Chitauri zipping overhead. “I have unfinished business with Loki.”
“Yeah?” Hawkeye said. “Get in line.”
“Save it,” Steve said. “Loki’s going to keep this fight focused on us, and that’s what we need. Otherwise those things could run wild. We’ve got Stark up on top—”
He broke off as a motorcycle engine approached, idling down. Steve glanced over and saw the welcome sight of Bruce Banner. “So,” Bruce said. “This all seems horrible.”
“I’ve seen worse,” the Black Widow said.
He knew what she meant. “Sorry.”
“No,” she said. “We could use a little worse.”
“Stark,” Steve said into his mic. “We got him.”
“Banner?” Tony said.
Steve nodded. “Just like you said.”
“Then tell him to suit up,” Tony said. “I’m bringing the party to you.”
A moment later, they saw Iron Man swoop around a corner to their north… and right behind him, the gargantuan armored Leviathan, shattering the corner building as it made the turn in pursuit. “I… I don’t see how that’s a party,” Natasha said.
Iron Man dropped almost down to street level, and the Leviathan followed, smashing cars and streetlights out of the way as it bore down on the group of heroes. “Dr. Banner,” Steve said. “Now might be a really good time for you to get angry.”
Bruce was already walking toward the Leviathan. “That’s my secret, Captain,” he said over his shoulder. “I’m always angry.”
When he turned back to face the Leviathan, his transformation was already beginning. He grew, his clothes shredding away from his body as ordinary Bruce Banner became the eight-foot-tall, two-thousand-pound mass of invincible rage called the Hulk. As the Leviathan ducked its head toward him, the Hulk brought his fist down on the creature’s head with a booming crunch that shook the bridge the Avengers stood on. The Leviathan’s head dug into the road surface, plowing up chunks of concrete. Its momentum shoved the Hulk back, but he stopped himself as the rest of the Leviathan’s body toppled up and over them. It crashed to the street below and lay still.
All over the city, the Chitauri stopped and screeched in sudden shock, as if they had never imagined the great beast could be defeated. The Avengers looked around. All six of them were together as a group for the first time in combat. Maybe the tide was beginning to turn, Steve thought.
Then Natasha, looking up into the sky, said, “Guys?”
They all looked. More Chitauri poured through the portal… and more Leviathans. What they had thought was the climactic battle had in fact just been the beginning.
CHAPTER 28
Call it, Captain!” Iron Man said.
“All right, listen up,” Steve said. “Until we can close that portal, our priority’s containment. Barton, I want you on that roof, eyes on everything. Call out patterns and strays. Stark, you got the perimeter. Anything gets more than three blocks out, you turn it back or you turn it to ash.”
Hawkeye turned to Iron Man. “Want to give me a lift?”
“Right,” Iron Man said. He wrapped an arm around Hawkeye’s waist. “Better clench up.” He rocketed straight up to the rooftop Steve had pointed out, and released Hawkeye before taking off to hold the perimeter around Stark Tower.
“Thor,” Steve went on, “you have to try to bottleneck that portal. Slow ’em down. You got the lightning. Light the bastards up.”
Thor swung Mjolnir in a tight circle and flew off, smashing Chitauri out of his way as he rose higher against the New York City skyline. Steve turned to the Black Widow. “You and me, we stay here on the ground, keep the fighting here,” he said. “And, Hulk?”
The Hulk turned and glowered at Steve.
There was really only one order you could give the Hulk, Steve thought. One word. “Smash.”
The Hulk bared his teeth and leaped away. He bounded up the sides of nearby buildings, crushing Chitauri with single blows whenever he was in arm’s reach of them. Then he leaped into the air and swatted their flyers down before charging off into the chaos.
Thor reached the top of the Empire State Building and lifted Mjolnir. Storm clouds gathered and lightning struck down, hundreds of bolts reaching for Mjolnir. Thor turned the Empire State Building’s iconic spire into a lightning rod, gathering the force of the elements into it. Then he thrust Mjolnir in the direction of the portal. All the energy he had built up blazed out in a single forking bolt. It struck and destroyed every single Chitauri between the Empire State Building and the portal itself. Hundreds of them exploded and tumbled from the sky at once, including several of the Leviathans that tumbled down to smash into buildings below.
He had earned them a breather, but only for a moment. It was up to the rest of the Avengers to put it to good use and turn the tide against Loki.
On the Helicarrier, Fury and Hill watched. She cocked her head and listened as a message came over her earbud. “Sir? The Council is on.”
This was the last thing Fury needed in the middle of a war. But he turned to answer the call.
From his sniper’s perch, Hawkeye shot arrow after arrow, every one finding its mark. He also tried to keep an eye on what threats the rest of the team was facing. “Stark? Got a lot of strays sniffing your tail.”
“Just trying to keep them off the streets,” Tony joked.
“Well, they can’t bank the way you can,” Hawkeye said. “You might want to find a tight corner.”
“I will roger that,” Tony said.
Hawkeye watched as Iron Man peeled his Chitauri pursuers off in a series of maneuvers through tight spaces. They crashed into overpasses and blew up, or spun out of control trying to stay with Iron Man through tight turns between tall buildings. The last of them lit up the front of a bank building with a fireball and Tony said, “Nice call. What else you got?”
“Well,” Hawkeye said, “Thor’s taking on a squadron down on Sixth.”
“And he didn’t invite me,” Tony said in mock anger.
That’s the attitude, Hawkeye thought.
The Hulk charged through a building, leaping out the window to land on the muzzle of an approaching Leviathan before it could tear the building down. Workers screamed as he pulled it around to the side and down, hammering away at its armor-plated skull.
He brought it down to the street and finished it off, not far from where the Black Widow and Captain America were holding their own against overwhelming numbers of Chitauri on foot. They couldn’t do it forever.
“Captain,” the Black Widow said, “none of this is going to mean a thing if we don’t close that portal.”
“Our biggest guns couldn’t touch it,” Cap said.
“Well, maybe it’s not about guns,” she suggested.
Steve thought he knew what she was getting at. She was mighty good in close quarters. “If you want to get up there, you’re gonna need a ride,” he said.
She eyed a passing Chitauri flyer. “I can get a ride. I could use a boost, though.”
“Are you sure about this?” he asked.
She looked up, gauging the distance and speed of an oncoming flyer. “Yeah. It’s gonna be fun.”<
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She ran and leaped onto his shield, and Steve flung her into the air. She caught the bottom of the Chitauri craft and was gone, riding it out of sight.
Iron Man saw her fly past and figured he might know what she was up to. He picked off the nearest Chitauri following her and then peeled back to give Cap a hand. He was all by himself facing down maybe twenty Chitauri. Tony hit the ground firing and evened the odds a little. He still hadn’t found Thor’s little party that Hawkeye had mentioned.
That was because Thor and the Hulk were on the back of a Leviathan. The Hulk wrenched loose one of its dorsal plates, reared back, and pounded it into the base of the Leviathan’s skull. Thor followed with a blow from Mjolnir and the Leviathan heeled over to one side. They smashed through the windows of a train station’s upper level and came to rest. Satisfied, Thor nodded and glanced over at the Hulk. Perhaps the scales were evened from their last fight against each other on the Helicarrier—
The Hulk shot out his left fist and smashed Thor all the way across the block-long gallery. Then it was his turn to look satisfied.
Very well, Thor thought. Now we’re even. Let us take the fight to the Chitauri, and to Loki!
CHAPTER 29
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 the train station 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 military 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 let it fly.
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 the Asgardian 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 seven alpha one one.”
“Seven alpha one one 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 h
e 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.
CHAPTER 30
On the rooftop, Natasha had the scepter. She pushed the tip against the energy barrier protecting the portal generator. It went through, slowly. “I can close it,” she said, hoping she could be heard over the wash of electromagnetic energy from the barrier. “Can anybody copy? I can shut the portal down!”
“Do it!” Captain America replied immediately.
But as she leaned on the scepter to push it the rest of the way through to the Tesseract itself, Iron Man broke in. “No, wait!”
“Stark, these things are still coming!” Cap argued.
“I got a nuke coming in,” Tony answered. “It’s going to blow in less than a minute, and I know just where to put it.”
Natasha looked around. She couldn’t see Tony.… No, there he was, far away to the south, the contrail of his boot thrusters leading away from the battle. A nuke, she thought. Fury wouldn’t have done that. The only people on Earth who would turn Manhattan into a radioactive crater—other than various terrorist groups and lunatic super villains—were the World Security Council. They had to be behind this.
She waited, holding the scepter in place. If anyone could pull this off, it would be Tony Stark… but Natasha wasn’t sure anyone could pull this off.
Tony caught the missile right after it went under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. He had to time everything perfectly or he would either miss the portal or not get to it in time. He rode the missile north, streaking over Battery Park, the Financial District, Little Italy, Chinatown, the Village… then he started trying to force it higher into the sky, away from its target location over Midtown Manhattan—and toward the hole in space created by the Tesseract.