Chapter 159
Chapter 159:
– Pepper Potts –
Pepper Potts had developed several highly specific looks over the years.
The look she was giving Tony across the dining table belonged to a category all its own.
It was the look of a woman whose fiancé had hired two obvious spies, and possibly a third, in the span of a single afternoon.
Tony knew exactly what the look meant. That was the infuriating part.
He sat at the other end of the penthouse dining table with one arm draped over the back of his chair, appearing completely at ease. The open collar of his black shirt framed the pale blue glow of the arc reactor beneath the fabric. One ankle rested casually over the opposite knee. He held an empty wineglass by the stem, turning it between his fingers as if inspecting the quality of the crystal rather than delaying an unavoidable conversation.
Pepper waited.
Tony continued examining the glass.
Pepper’s stare intensified.
He finally glanced up. "What?" The single word was delivered with such perfect innocence that Pepper almost admired it.
She lowered her fork to her plate with deliberate care. The soft click of silver against porcelain seemed unnaturally loud in the dining room.
"What’s wrong?" Tony asked.
Pepper’s eyes narrowed. "You know what’s wrong."
"I have several theories."
"I’m sure you do."
"Is it the wine?" Tony held the glass up toward the light. "Because I didn’t choose it. The sommelier did. If it’s terrible, we can fire him."
"We are not firing the sommelier."
"Good. I like him. He laughs at my jokes."
"He’s paid to laugh at your jokes."
"That still counts."
Pepper drew in a slow breath through her nose.
The penthouse around them was calm in a way the rest of the day had not been. Manhattan glittered beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city spread beneath them in ribbons of white and red light. The dining room itself was warm and tastefully understated—or as understated as anything Tony owned could be—with polished dark wood, soft recessed lighting, and a table long enough to seat an entire board of directors.
It should have been peaceful.
Instead, Pepper felt as though she had spent the last several hours trapped in an unusually attractive espionage convention. "I cannot believe you hired them," she said.
Tony set down the wineglass. "Ah. That."
"Yes, Tony. That."
"Which one are we talking about?"
"Both of them."
"Oh." His eyebrows rose. "So not the wine..."
"Natalie Rushman is obviously a spy," she blurted out.
He rolled his eyes. "Obviously..."
Pepper blinked. She had expected an argument. Tony’s immediate agreement caught her off guard for exactly half a second. Then the rest of his response registered. "You knew?"
"Pepper, please." Tony placed a hand over his chest, looking wounded by the question. "She walked into my gym with a résumé so aggressively perfect it may as well have been printed on government letterhead. She speaks at least four languages, has advanced legal training, does martial arts, and moved like she was calculating twelve different ways to kill Happy with a hand towel."
Pepper closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, Tony was smiling. "And you hired her anyway," she said. "And then there was Milim..."
His mouth twitched.
Pepper pointed her fork at him. "Do not laugh."
"I’m not laughing."
"You’re about to."
"I’m thinking about something serious."
"You’re thinking about how she announced she wasn’t a spy!" Seriously, what was wrong with that pink haired girl...?
Tony chuckled, ducking his head as he reached for the water carafe. "Come on. You heard her. She specifically said she was not a spy sent to protect me from bad people. I don’t know how she could have been clearer."
"She was wearing a fake earpiece too!" he chuckled. "That’s what made it convincing. No signals for our scanners to detect."
Pepper picked up her fork.
She threw it.
Tony ducked.
The fork sailed over his head, struck the wall behind him with a metallic clink, and dropped onto the carpet.
For one deeply satisfying second, Tony remained bent sideways in his chair, staring at the place where the fork had disappeared. Then he straightened and smoothed his shirt. "I always did have good reflexes," he said. "Still got it."
"Do you want to test them against the knife next?"
Tony glanced at the knife beside her plate. "No thank you, dear..."
She sat back in her chair. "Milim admitted she was here to protect you. Natalie might as well have arrived wearing a badge that said ’government operative.’ You hired both of them without checking references, without a real interview, and without giving me enough time to determine which intelligence agency they belong to. And what happens when they decide to put listening devices throughout the building?"
"JARVIS finds them."
"What happens when they steal proprietary technology?"
"JARVIS stops them."
"What happens when one of them attempts to kidnap you?"
"Iron Man."
"What happens when—"
"Pepper." Something in Tony’s voice stopped her. It was still light. Still amused. Still carrying the easy, irreverent confidence he used whenever the world became too serious for his liking.
But there was an edge beneath it.
Pepper had been noticing those edges more often lately.
The brief wince whenever he moved too quickly. The grey tone that sometimes appeared beneath his skin. The moments when she caught him staring at nothing, expression distant, before he snapped back with a joke. The strange new fixation on his own legacy. The increasingly reckless decisions.
Tony was hiding something from her. She knew it. She simply hadn’t figured out what it was yet.
He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table.
"It’ll be fine," he said. "The government is playing games. The government always plays games. They put people in the building, I figure out what they want, everyone goes home feeling clever."
Pepper folded her arms. "That plan assumes you’re the smartest person involved."
"I am."
"That level of confidence is exactly why people keep trying to kill you."
"It’s also why I’m difficult to kill."
"Tooooooooony..."
"Peeeeeeeepper..." He matched her tone perfectly, then smiled. "I’m Tony Stark. I’m ready for anything."
The declaration should have sounded arrogant. It did sound arrogant. But Pepper knew him too well to miss the strain beneath it. He had been saying things like that more often recently, as if repeating them might transform bravado into fact.
Before she could press him on it, Tony leaned back and gestured toward the empty plates in front of them.
"Besides, we have a more important situation to address."
Pepper looked down at the table. "Which is?"
"The chef."
Her eyes narrowed again. "You mean the possible third spy."
"I mean the guy who walked into one of the most expensive private kitchens in Manhattan and gave my entire culinary staff a collective religious experience!"
Pepper tried to maintain her irritation. Unfortunately, she knew exactly what he meant.
The security footage had been difficult to forget.
Stark Industries employed some of the finest culinary professionals money could hire. The executive kitchen staff included chefs trained in Paris, Tokyo, Copenhagen, and New York. One had worked in a three-Michelin-star restaurant. Another had prepared meals for two presidents and an actual king. The pastry chef had once created a wedding cake that required structural engineers.
Haru had reduced all of them to emotional wreckage in less than an hour.
When Pepper and Tony had checked the kitchen cameras, they had found grown adults crying over bowls of food.
One chef had been sitting on the floor with his back against a cabinet, staring into the middle distance as though reconsidering every decision that had led him into the culinary profession.
It had been one of the strangest things Pepper had seen in Stark Tower.
Tony tapped the tabletop. "He broke my Head Chef’s mind! Nobody does that to Bernard with just three carrots and a bottle of soy sauce!"
Pepper sighed. "His name is Bertrand..."
"That’s what I said."
"No, it isn’t."
"Meh, close enough. The point is, I’ve seen him throw a copper pan at someone for overcooking asparagus. Today he was sobbing into a bowl and calling a nineteen-year-old his culinary messiah. With a résumé that mysteriously changed between the time it entered the building and the time it reached my desk."
Pepper went still. "It changed?"
Tony’s expression became unbearably smug. "You didn’t notice?"
"I was occupied with the tiny pink haired woman who announced she wasn’t a spy."
"Understandable. She’s very distracting."
Pepper kicked him beneath the table.
Tony jerked in his chair. "Ow."
"Keep talking."
"The original résumé said our mystery chef graduated second in his class. The version in the system now says first!"
Pepper blinked. "He altered his employment file? And you hired him?"
"I hired him because he altered his employment file."
Pepper stared at him in disbelief.
Tony spread his hands. "You have to respect initiative. He also added several years of experience at a restaurant that doesn’t appear in any municipal, financial, or commercial database I can access. The Fox Hole. Which sounds less like a restaurant and more like a place where someone wakes up in a bathtub missing a kidney."
Pepper grimaced. "That is a deeply unpleasant interpretation."
He winked at her. "You’re welcome! And he brought Milim with him. She said he was her boyfriend. She also said he was the greatest chef in existence. Which, based on the kitchen staff’s reaction, may not have been hyperbole."
Pepper disliked that she couldn’t immediately disagree.
She had spent years attending business dinners, charity galas, political receptions, and parties where the food was prepared by chefs whose names were used as marketing tools. She appreciated good food, but she had never developed Tony’s tendency to turn every luxury into a competition. Most meals were functional to her, something eaten between meetings, calls, and whatever crisis Tony had created that day.
She was NOT a foodie. She was certainly not someone who cried over dinner. Still, the footage from the kitchen had made her curious. There was no point denying it. "I will admit," she said carefully, "that the display downstairs was unusual."
Tony grinned. "You want to try his cooking really badly too, don’t you?"
Before Pepper could respond, the soft chime that preceded JARVIS’s announcements sounded throughout the dining room.
"Mr. Stark, Ms. Potts," the artificial intelligence said, his cultured voice carrying from the concealed speakers. "Chef Haru has arrived with your dinner."
Tony straightened in his chair.
Pepper did the same, although she told herself it was out of caution rather than anticipation.
The dining-room doors opened.
The man who entered did not look like a spy. That meant very little, of course. But he was handsome in a way that caught her attention before she could stop it. That was fine though, Tony checked out women all the time, Pepper could look at handsome men if she wanted to.
His hands rested lightly on the handle of a polished serving cart.
Then Pepper noticed the food.
Any further attempt at professional analysis became significantly more difficult.
One dish featured slices of meat glazed to a deep mahogany sheen, arranged beside impossibly smooth golden purée and vegetables whose bright colors had somehow survived roasting. A shallow black bowl held a clear broth with delicate curls of steam drifting from its surface, carrying the scents of ginger, roasted bone, and something floral Pepper couldn’t identify. Fresh bread rested in a linen-lined basket, its dark crust still crackling softly from the oven. Beside it sat a small dish of whipped butter streaked with honey and flecks of sea salt.
There were sauces too. One dark and glossy, another pale green, a third the vivid orange-red of reduced citrus.
Pepper’s mouth filled with saliva. It was involuntary. Immediate. Embarrassingly intense.
She hadn’t even tasted anything, and her body had already decided this was the best meal she had encountered in years.
"Mr. Stark. Ms. Potts." Haru’s voice was warm, confident, and touched by an accent Pepper couldn’t immediately place. Japanese, perhaps, but softened by something else. "Good evening. I hope you’re both hungry."
Pepper managed to close her mouth.
She had been waiting for Tony to say something.
A joke about Haru’s age. A comment about the weeping chefs downstairs. A pointed question disguised as casual conversation. Tony was constitutionally incapable of meeting a suspicious person without poking at them until something interesting happened. Pepper fully expected him to start interrogating the young chef before the first plate touched the table.
The silence stretched.
Haru looked politely between them.
Pepper turned toward her fiancé.
Tony Stark, the billionaire futurist, impossible egotist, and man who had spent the last ten minutes pretending to be utterly prepared for anything, was staring at the serving cart with his lips slightly parted.
He was drooling too...
– Natasha –
Somehow, they had survived an entire day working for Tony Stark.
More surprisingly, no one had been fired, arrested, or forcibly removed from Stark Industries.
Natasha considered that a... tactical success. Sort of...
A deeply confusing tactical success, but a success nonetheless.
Tony knew they were spies. He might not have known precisely which agency had sent them, or what Milim was, but he had identified Natasha as a government operative within minutes of meeting her. Milim had then eliminated any remaining ambiguity by loudly announcing that she was not a spy sent to protect him from bad people.
Tony had hired both of them anyway.
Pepper Potts had looked as if she wanted to strangle him with a necktie.
Natasha could sympathize.
She was now sitting in a S.H.I.E.L.D. safehouse apartment three blocks from Stark Tower, waiting for Haru to return from his shift as Tony’s newly appointed private chef.
The windows offered an excellent view of the upper floors of Stark Tower.
Milim had spent the last twenty minutes pressing her face to the glass and trying to spot Haru through one of them.
Natasha sat at the small dining table with her Stark Industries identification badge beside her and an encrypted S.H.I.E.L.D. tablet open in front of her.
She had already filed the preliminary report.
The official version was concise:
Cover status: Compromised.
Target response: Unexpectedly permissive.
Protective detail status: Active.
Immediate hostile activity: None observed.
Additional anomalous asset: Milim Nava. Classification... pending.
Milim’s report had not yet been written.
Natasha wasn’t convinced Milim knew reports existed.
The petite ancient Demon Lord had abandoned her business jacket somewhere during the afternoon and was now dressed in a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled to her elbows. The garment had been tailored for an adult office worker and looked comically oversized on her smaller body. She had discarded her shoes beside the couch and tied her pink hair back into two twin tails. Milim abruptly lifted her head. Her blue eyes brightened. "He’s here!"
Natasha looked toward the door.
The door opened, and Haru walked in wearing the black chef’s coat he had used throughout the day. He carried a small paper bag in one hand and had a tired but deeply satisfied smile on his face. "Working with that many chefs under me was a strange experience," he muttered as he shut the door. "I think three of them asked me to adopt them..."
The human disguise he had worn inside Stark Tower dissolved the moment the door clicked closed. Golden fox ears appeared among his hair. Ten enormous tails unfurled behind him in a wave of shimmering gold, filling half the entryway before settling into the space. His ordinary-looking brown eyes shifted to their natural molten gold, the pupils narrowing into vertical slits.
The sheer amount of power contained behind that harmless smile still put Natasha’s instincts on edge.
She had spent her life around dangerous people. Assassins, soldiers, killers, enhanced operatives. She knew how to judge the position of a hand, the balance of a stance, the direction of someone’s gaze. She could enter a room and identify the most dangerous person in it before anyone finished drawing a weapon.
Haru made those instincts useless. He did not move like a soldier. He moved like a chef coming home after a long shift. Yet every report Fury had given her described a being who had killed gods, fought dragons, torn apart monsters capable of destroying cities, and evolved into something S.H.I.E.L.D.’s analysts had eventually classified as a potential extinction-level entity.
Natasha suspected that classification was optimistic.
Milim spun away from the window. "YAY! HARU’S BACK!"
She crossed the apartment faster than Natasha’s eyes could properly follow. One second she stood near the glass. The next she struck Haru in the chest with enough enthusiasm to send a lesser man through the wall.
Haru barely shifted. His paper bag floated from his hand, caught by one tail before it could fall, while his arms closed around Milim automatically.
She wrapped both arms and legs around him. "I missed you!"
"It’s been six hours."
"That’s a long time!" Milim began planting rapid kisses across his face. One cheek. The other. His nose. His forehead. The corner of his mouth. Then directly on his lips, making a pleased little sound when he kissed her back.
Haru’s ears twitched.
Both golden ears angled forward with unmistakable happiness. His tails began wagging behind him in great sweeping arcs, one thumping against the wall hard enough to make a framed landscape rattle.
Milim kissed him again.
Haru laughed against her lips and adjusted his hold beneath her thighs.
The scene was absurdly adorable. At the same time, watching Haru hold Milim as though she were the most precious thing in the room made even Natasha’s surgically ruined ovaries give a small, traitorous twinge of jealousy...
She allowed herself to feel it for one second.
Then she locked it down. Natasha Romanoff was not going to sit in a beige S.H.I.E.L.D. apartment and become emotionally compromised by wagging fox tails.
She cleared her throat. Neither of them reacted.
Milim was now kissing Haru passionately.
Natasha cleared her throat again, louder.
One of Haru’s ears rotated toward her. His attention did not otherwise leave Milim.
"Some of us are still in the room," Natasha said.
Haru turned his head.
Milim remained wrapped around him, apparently seeing no reason to move.
"Hello, Natasha."
"Hello, Haru."
Natasha tapped one finger against the encrypted tablet. "This is supposed to be a debrief."
Milim lifted her face from Haru’s neck. "Is that like a meeting?" Her nose wrinkled. "Those are boring."
"This one is mandatory."
Milim considered that, then slowly began sliding down Haru’s body. Her feet touched the floor, but she kept both arms around his waist for another second before releasing him. Haru kissed the crown of her head. She beamed at him, then skipped toward the table.
Haru followed at a more reasonable pace.
Natasha looked at the bag. "What’s in that?"
"Dessert."
Milim immediately spun around. "What kind?"
"Chocolate cake."
"Can I have it now?"
"After the debrief."
Milim’s shoulders slumped.
Natasha filed the information away.
Apparently dessert was an effective motivational tool for Demon Lords.
Milim hopped into the chair across from Natasha, planted both palms on the table, and sat up so straight that the sudden display of military discipline would have been convincing if she had not still had a piece of blue candy stuck to one cheek.
Haru took the chair beside her. His tails spread across the floor and curled around the furniture, one winding loosely around the back legs of Milim’s chair.
Natasha looked between them. "Let’s start with the basic objective. You were both supposed to maintain your covers, observe Stark Industries personnel, identify any suspicious behavior, and intervene if an immediate threat developed."
Milim nodded eagerly.
Natasha glanced at the tablet. "You spent seven hours on the executive floor. You were given access to personnel schedules, communications, internal documents, and Mr. Stark’s private calendar. What did you review?"
Milim’s confident expression remained perfectly fixed. "The paperwork looked boring," Milim continued nodding. "So I didn’t do it!"
Natasha stared at her. "Of course..."
"I took a nap instead!"
Natasha’s face did not move. She was proud of that.
The cameras had shown Milim sweeping an entire stack of onboarding documents onto the floor, arranging her folded jacket into a pillow, and curling up on top of the desk beneath the astonished gaze of three executives.
Tony had walked past twice.
The first time, he had stopped to take a photograph.
The second time, he had balanced a pair of sunglasses on Milim’s sleeping face and placed a handwritten sign beside her that read:
EXTREMELY COVERT GOVERNMENT OPERATIVE. DO NOT DISTURB.
Milim had slept through all of it.
"No spies woke me up," Milim continued proudly, "so they must have been scared off!"
Natasha opened her mouth. Nothing came out. She closed it again.
Milim waited expectantly for praise. Natasha considered explaining that napping for most of a security assignment did not count as counterintelligence. She considered explaining that spies generally avoided waking sleeping people when infiltrating secure facilities. She considered pointing out that everyone in Stark Tower already knew Milim was there to protect Tony because Milim had personally announced it within thirty seconds of entering the building.
No combination of words seemed capable of addressing the full scope of the problem.
She had no idea how to respond to Milim.
So she didn’t.
Natasha slowly turned her head toward Haru. "Your report."
Haru leaned back in his chair. "I caught a HYDRA spy in the kitchen."
Natasha blinked once.
Milim looked delighted. "You did?"
"Yep!"
Natasha’s focus sharpened instantly. Her fatigue disappeared beneath a flood of professional instinct. "Who?"
"One of the assistant sous-chefs. His name was Elias Mercer. Thirty-seven years old. He’d been working at Stark Industries for fourteen months."
She reached for the tablet. "How did you identify him?"
"Oh, he told me."
Natasha’s fingers stopped above the screen. "What...? He told you he was a spy...? Voluntarily?" Natasha studied Haru’s face for any sign that he was joking.
He looked entirely sincere.
"Start at the beginning."
Haru nodded. "I was working on a braised short rib when Mercer approached me. He watched me cook for about twenty minutes. Then he tried the sauce."
Natasha waited.
Haru waited too, as though that explained everything.
"And?" she asked with a sigh.
Haru shrugged. "And then he started crying..."
Natasha looked briefly at Milim.
Milim nodded as if crying over Haru’s food were the most reasonable behavior in the world.
Haru’s ears twitched. "Mercer ate the sauce. Then he said it reminded him of Sunday dinners with his mother before she died. He started talking about why he became a chef. Apparently, he’d wanted to open a restaurant with his younger sister, but he got into debt after culinary school. HYDRA paid it off and recruited him."
Natasha wanted to dismiss such an absurd explanation.
Before encountering the Fox Hole, she would have.
Before meeting Haru, she would have considered the idea sentimental nonsense. People did not abandon deeply entrenched ideologies because lunch reminded them of their mothers. HYDRA agents did not confess operational intelligence because a delicious sauce awakened their conscience...
Evil did not disappear over a well-prepared meal.
Except Haru’s cooking had already done things that S.H.I.E.L.D. could not scientifically explain. Entire factions crossed dimensions for the opportunity to eat at Haru’s restaurant.
Natasha looked back at him. "You’re saying your cooking purged the evil from his heart."
He waved a hand at her. "I wouldn’t phrase it that dramatically."
Milim raised her hand. "I would!"
"Of course you would."
Haru considered the question. "I think it reminded him that he didn’t want to be that person anymore. He made his own decision after that."
"Where is he now?"
"In the executive kitchen."
Natasha’s eyebrows rose. "You left a confessed HYDRA operative inside Stark Tower!?"
"He’s washing stockpots."
"He’s what?"
"He said he wanted to become a chef like me. I told him redemption required work, and the stockpots needed cleaning..."
Natasha pinched the bridge of her nose.
Haru continued before she could respond. "He said he was going to turn himself in to the proper authorities once his shift ended. I believed him."
"And somehow I also believe you..." Natasha studied him for another long moment. Then she activated the encrypted communication panel on her tablet. She sent Fury a short priority message requesting a covert extraction team, followed by Mercer’s identity and location. She locked the tablet and looked at Haru. "Good work."
His ears perked up. The simple reaction was disarmingly endearing. "Thank you."
Milim pointed at herself. "I also did good work!"
Natasha looked at her. "You slept on a desk for seven hours."
"And no one attacked Tony while I was asleep."
"That was not because of you."
"You can’t prove that!"
Natasha decided against trying.
She closed the tablet and leaned back, letting some of the tension leave her shoulders.
"Tomorrow will be different. Stark is flying to Monte Carlo for the Grand Prix. Pepper Potts, Happy Hogan, and several Stark employees will accompany him. We’re going with them. Good work today," she told Haru. Then she pointed at Milim. "You—try to remain conscious tomorrow."
Milim brightened. "Do I get cake now?"
Haru finally opened the bag.
The smell of chocolate filled the safehouse.
Natasha’s professional focus lasted approximately three seconds. Then she reached for a slice herself.
– Haru –
I was back in my human disguise by the time Tony Stark’s private jet climbed above the clouds.
Maintaining the disguise wasn’t difficult. It was still annoying.
Fox ears were vastly superior to human ones, and keeping my tails hidden for hours made me feel like I was walking around without pants. I knew everything important was still there, but my instincts kept insisting something was horribly wrong.
Milim’s bright pink hair had already stretched our collective credibility as far as it could go.
The private jet was halfway across the Atlantic, carrying us toward Monte Carlo for some kind of historic racing event.
I had to admit the jet was impressive by modern human standards. The cabin was wide enough for several seating areas, a dining table, a private office, two bedrooms, and a bar stocked with bottles that would have funded a small village in some of the worlds connected to the Fox Hole.
The galley was disappointingly small.
It was better equipped than a normal airplane kitchen, but that was an insultingly low standard. There were two induction burners, a narrow convection oven, several refrigerated drawers, and less preparation space than I had behind the Fox Hole’s bar.
I’d cooked in worse conditions.
I made soft French omelets filled with herbs and a small amount of aged cheese, crisp potato rösti, roasted cherry tomatoes, sourdough toast, honeyed yogurt, and fresh fruit dressed with citrus and mint. I added seared steak for Happy and Tony, who both had the dietary instincts of men convinced cholesterol was a challenge issued directly against their masculinity.
Tony’s meal required more care.
The palladium poisoning had progressed farther than he wanted anyone to know. I could smell the metallic corruption in his blood every time he came within twenty feet of me. It was bitter, and deeply wrong, like someone had dissolved a battery inside his chest.
He covered it well.
His breakfast contained ingredients selected to support his liver and kidneys, encourage his body to expel heavy metals, stabilize his heart, and replenish several nutrients the poisoning had depleted. My Ultimate Skill refined the meal further, removing anything that could worsen his condition and enhancing the properties his body needed.
It wouldn’t solve the underlying problem. As long as the reactor in his chest continued using palladium, the poison would keep accumulating.
But it would buy him time before he fixed himself. I could do it of course, but there was no need and it would just stifle his growth as a hero in this world.
The flight attendants began appearing in the galley shortly afterward.
Tony had apparently hired them from an agency specializing in private aviation. Every one of them was beautiful and dressed in a fitted dark uniform that emphasized rather than concealed her figure. Their skirts ended well above the knee, their jackets hugged their waists, and their blouses had just enough buttons undone to suggest the uniform policy was more flexible aboard Stark aircraft.
Several of them watched me cook.
One lingered beside the galley entrance, pretending to inspect a cabinet that hadn’t needed inspecting the first four times she opened it. Another asked detailed questions about the omelets while looking at my arms instead of the pan. A brunette named Elise leaned against the counter and told me she had never seen anyone move so comfortably in an airplane kitchen.
"I’ve cooked in smaller spaces," I said.
"Really?" Her gaze drifted over me. "You must be very flexible." There were at least three possible interpretations of that comment. Judging from her smile, she had intended all of them.
Another attendant asked whether I gave private cooking lessons?
A third had leaned over the counter far enough to display a generous amount of cleavage while asking if I needed help cleaning up?
Before I could answer, a low growl rolled through the cabin. It was not a human sound.
I looked over her shoulder.
Milim sat at the dining table with a fork in one hand and the last piece of steak suspended halfway to her mouth. Her blue eyes had narrowed to slits. She wasn’t releasing any real power, but the air around her felt suddenly heavier.
The flight attendants went still.
Milim slowly put the steak into her mouth, chewed, and continued staring.
Elise stepped away from the counter. "Is there anything else you need, Chef Haru?"
"No, thank you."
"Wonderful. I’ll—um—I’ll check the cabin." She left quickly.
The others discovered equally urgent tasks elsewhere.
Milim watched them retreat, then turned to me with a bright, innocent smile. "What?"
I raised an eyebrow. Jealous Milim was cute.
Natasha sat across from Milim and pinched the bridge of her nose. Her cover remained technically active, although no one aboard the jet believed she was an ordinary legal assistant anymore. Tony had addressed her as ’Agent Rushman’ twice that morning just to watch her left eye twitch.
When I finished serving the crew, I carried a fresh pot of coffee back toward the main seating area.
Pepper and Tony occupied a pair of cream-colored seats facing one another across a polished table. Their empty plates sat between them completely empty.
Tony had used the last corner of his sourdough toast to wipe up the remaining sauce. Pepper’s plate looked almost as clean, although she had arranged her knife and fork neatly across it in a transparent attempt to preserve some dignity.
They had done the same thing at dinner the previous night.
Tony looked up as I approached.
I set the coffee pot on the table and collected both plates. "Do either of you need anything else?"
Pepper’s mouth opened. Then closed. Her eyes flicked toward the empty plate as if asking for more would constitute a personal failure.
Tony displayed a similar hesitation. He looked at the plate, then at me, then down at his stomach. Finally, he leaned back in his seat. "No." The answer lacked conviction.
Pepper gave him a sideways look.
Tony frowned at me. "Is this some kind of government trick to make me fat?"
I blinked. "What?"
"You know. Weaponized breakfast. Operation Love Handles. They send in a suspiciously talented chef, make everything too good to stop eating, and six months later I can’t fit into the Iron Man suit!"
Pepper gave him the blank, exhausted stare of a woman who had heard too many sentences like that before breakfast. "Tony..." she said.
"What? There are crazier conspiracies that turned out to be true!"
"Name one!"
"Aliens!"
"That is not a government conspiracy!"
"Fine then. Government aliens! They walk among us and can even shape shift into us!"
"You just added the word ’government’ to the word ’aliens.’ And that conspiracy is stupid, I have no idea why it was trending last year..." Pepper grumbled out.
I poured more coffee into his cup. "You have nothing to worry about, Mr Stark. I balance the calories and nutrients in every meal I make."
Tony looked down at his stomach again. "So, I can eat food like this every day and maintain my perfectly engineered physique?"
"I could keep you at a healthy weight," I said. "Whether anything about you qualifies as perfectly engineered is a separate question."
Pepper hid a smile behind her coffee cup.
Tony pointed at me as if I had just demonstrated a valuable professional qualification. "That. I like that. You can cook and insult me without becoming visibly afraid. People usally find me too intimidating to do that!"
"No, they don’t," Pepper said. "They find you exhausting."
Tony looked at me again, expression suddenly more serious beneath the humor. "You should quit being a spy and work for me full-time."
I glanced toward Natasha. She was watching from the other side of the cabin. Her face remained professionally neutral. Only someone paying very close attention would have noticed her fingers tighten around her coffee cup.
"I’m not a spy," I said.
"Sure you aren’t buddy..."
"I have no idea what you’re talking about."
"Of course not. You’re just a totally normal nineteen-year-old chef with no verifiable history, a résumé that edits itself, and the ability to make my culinary staff abandon their previous religions. You know what? I’ll give you a million dollars a year!"
I chuckled. The wealth I had at this point made that number seem like nothing...
Tony mistook the sound for disbelief. "Base salary," he added. "Housing, benefits, travel expenses, unlimited kitchen budget, and a bonus structure. I’ll even let you keep whatever government pension you’re definitely not receiving."
"I’m not a spy."
"Right."
"And I don’t need the money..."
"Everyone says that until I increase the number."
"We’re definitely not spies!" Milim called from across the cabin.
Natasha closed her eyes.
Tony turned toward Milim.
She had finished breakfast and now sat sideways in her chair, pressing her face close to the window. Beneath us, an endless expanse of cloud stretched toward the horizon, glowing white beneath the morning sun.
The aircraft encountered a small patch of turbulence.
The cabin gave a gentle shudder.
Milim’s fingers dug into the edge of the window frame. "Humans fly in strange machines," she muttered. "I don’t like it very much."
Tony stared at her. Pepper rolled her eyes before he even opened his mouth. "You know," Tony said, "pink isn’t exactly a natural hair color."
Milim looked away from the window. "It is for me."
"And you keep saying ’humans’ like you’re not included in the category."
"That’s because I’m not."
Natasha’s eyes opened. She looked genuinely panicked. "Milim... Please stop talking," she said carefully.
Milim ignored her.
Tony leaned forward, fascinated. "Are you... an alien?"
Pepper sighed. "Tony..."
"What? It’s a reasonable question!"
"It is not a reasonable question!"
"She has pink hair, claims she isn’t human, and admitted she was sent to protect me from bad people." Tony looked back at Milim. "So? Alien? Genetically engineered superhuman? Escaped laboratory experiment? Sentient anime character?"
Milim scoffed. She slid out of her chair, planted both fists against her hips, and lifted her chin. "I am not an alien!" Milim thrust one hand toward the ceiling in what she apparently considered a sufficiently dramatic pose. "I am Milim Nava, the great and powerful Demon Lord!"
The cabin went silent.
One of the flight attendants stopped in the aisle.
Happy lowered the newspaper he had been reading.
Pepper stared at Milim.
Natasha looked as though she were calculating whether it was possible to open the emergency exit and jump into the Atlantic.
Milim spread her arms. "Fear me, mortals! Mwahahahaha!" Her attempt at sinister laughter lasted several seconds.
Tony slowly nodded. The expression on his face told me he did not believe her at all. "Sure thing, Your Powerful Evilness..."
"Umu, that is a good way to address me!" Milim declared.
...My hidden fox ears snapped upright beneath the illusion. A presence was approaching the jet from behind. Fast. Very fast.
I twisted, turning toward the rear of the cabin even though there was nothing to see through the polished wall. Whatever was coming had already closed to within several miles of us, moving at roughly the same altitude and far faster than any civilian aircraft had a right to move.
That was too close.
With my senses on alert, I should have detected it much sooner. I could normally feel powerful creatures, magical energy, hostile intent, and even subtle disturbances in the air long before anything entered striking range. These objects had somehow concealed their approach until they were practically on top of us.
Some kind of stealth technology?
"Milim. Can you handle them?" My voice cracked through the cabin.
Milim’s head turned toward me instantly. She had noticed them too. Then a wide, delighted grin spread across her face. ’Finally, something interesting happened.’
"Oh, no..." Natasha said.
Milim sprang from her seat.
"Milim, wait—" Natasha didn’t get the rest out.
Milim blurred across the cabin, moving so quickly that the human eye probably registered little more than a streak of pink and black. She raced toward the emergency exit set into the rear section of the plane.
She kicked the door. The reinforced emergency hatch exploded out of its frame.
Warning lights immediately flashed throughout the cabin. A violent roar swallowed every other sound as the interior pressure tried to escape through the new opening. Loose napkins, cups, and several sheets of paper shot toward the breach. Pepper’s hair whipped across her face, and Tony nearly lost the coffee he was holding.
At the same time, I threw my power across the opening.
A translucent blue barrier snapped into place over the hole, sealing the cabin before the decompression could become dangerous. The wall of energy shimmered like blue-tinted glass, perfectly transparent but completely airtight.
The shriek of escaping air stopped almost instantly.
Several loose sheets of paper struck the barrier and fluttered harmlessly to the floor.
Milim had already jumped through the opening. For a brief moment, she hung in the sky beyond the barrier, framed against miles of pale blue and the endless white field of clouds below us.
Then two enormous wings erupted from her back. The pressure of their manifestation sent a visible shockwave rolling through the clouds.
Milim’s grin widened. Then she launched herself backward through the sky. Within seconds, she disappeared behind the plane.
I turned around.
Tony and Pepper were staring at the empty emergency exit door which was now just a hole in the side of the plane.
Pepper’s eyes were so wide that I could see white around her irises.
Tony’s mouth hung open. He looked at the barrier. Then he looked at me. Then he looked at the barrier again.
Natasha lowered her face into one hand. "Well," she grumbled. "Our cover is completely blown." She slowly dragged her hand down her face. "She just grew wings and jumped out of an airplane."
Tony pointed toward the hole in the side of his plane. "Can someone explain what just happened?"
"She went outside," I said.
"I gathered that part when she kicked out a reinforced door!"
Pepper finally found her voice. "WHY DID SHE GO OUTSIDE?"
"Something followed us," I told them.
Tony’s expression shifted. The shock didn’t disappear, exactly, but it shifted behind the focused intensity of an inventor, soldier, and paranoid billionaire whose private plane had just been breached in the middle of the Atlantic. He touched the control panel beside his seat. "JARVIS?"
The cabin lights dimmed slightly as the entertainment screens switched off.
"Sir," JARVIS replied, his usually composed voice carrying a subtle inflection I could only describe as alarm, "I have detected two aircraft approaching from our rear."
A holographic display appeared over the central table.
At first, it showed nothing except our plane and the empty air behind it.
Then red outlines flickered into view around two vaguely aircraft-shaped distortions. The objects seemed to bend the sky around themselves. Even after JARVIS highlighted them, I could barely make out their forms. Light passed across their hulls as if nothing occupied the space, while their engine signatures were almost completely suppressed.
Tony leaned forward. "Those are S.H.I.E.L.D. aircraft I think?"
Natasha was out of her chair before he finished speaking. She stepped closer to the hologram, every trace of embarrassment replaced by cold professional focus. "They’re modified stealth fighters," she said. "Possibly prototype interception craft."
JARVIS highlighted four objects separating from the fighters. "Sir, the pursuing aircraft have deployed missiles."
Tony’s head snapped toward the ceiling. "You could have led with that!"
"My apologies, sir. I was also attempting to analyze the fact that Miss Nava exited the aircraft without a parachute."
"Yeah, we all saw it."
"I must additionally report that she appears to have wings." There was a brief pause.
Two additional screens descended from the ceiling and displayed exterior camera feeds. JARVIS enhanced the footage, compensating for the glare and the violent motion of the aircraft.
Milim appeared on the largest screen. She was flying backward through the sky with her purple-black wings spread wide, facing the approaching fighters. Her pink twin-tails whipped behind her, and her business suit snapped violently in the high-altitude wind.
The speed alone should have torn a normal human apart.
Milim looked like she was having the time of her life.
Four missiles streaked toward her, leaving pale trails through the air.
Natasha’s face tightened. "Is she gonna be okay?"
"She’ll be fine," I said calmly.
The first missile reached Milim.
She punched it.
The missile shot away from her and detonated several hundred feet to the side, producing a blossom of orange fire and black smoke.
Pepper made a strangled sound.
The second and third missiles approached from different angles.
Milim spun between them.
One fist struck the first missile downward. Her other hand backhanded the second away with such casual contempt that it disappeared into the clouds before exploding far below.
The fourth missile came directly at her face.
Milim caught it.
She wrapped both arms around the metal cylinder, spun once in the air, and threw it back toward the aircraft that had launched it.
The missile struck the empty-looking patch of sky where the fighter should have been.
Its active camouflage flickered.
For a fraction of a second, the aircraft became visible bearing a faded S.H.I.E.L.D. insignia on one wing.
Then the missile exploded. Flames rolled across the jet’s hull. Its camouflage failed completely, revealing damaged armor and a burning weapons pod.
Tony stared at the screen.
Pepper stared at the screen.
Even Natasha looked stunned despite everything she should already know about Milim, though she recovered faster than either of them.
The second fighter opened fire. Streams of tracer rounds tore through the sky, converging on Milim from several weapon mounts.
Milim laughed. The exterior cameras couldn’t capture sound through the thin atmosphere, but I knew that laugh. It was the delighted, uninhibited cackle she made whenever someone tried something catastrophically stupid.
She accelerated. One moment, she floated hundreds of feet behind us. The next, she appeared directly on top of the undamaged fighter.
Its active camouflage rippled around her body, creating a strange image of Milim apparently standing on empty air. She crouched, dug her fingers into something the cameras couldn’t see, and pulled.
A panel tore free from the fighter, breaking the camouflage across half its hull.
Milim tossed the section over her shoulder.
The pilots rolled the aircraft violently, apparently trying to throw her off.
It didn’t work.
She planted her feet against the fuselage, grabbed one of the wings with both hands, and ripped it off. Ripped it completely away from the body of the aircraft.
Tony surged out of his seat. "That wing is made of titanium! How strong is she!?"
Milim swung the severed wing like an enormous club and smashed it into the fighter’s remaining weapons pod. The pod disintegrated. Fragments of metal scattered across the sky, glittering in the sunlight before falling toward the ocean.
The fighter rolled out of control.
Milim jumped away from it and launched herself toward the damaged aircraft behind it.
The first pilot, or perhaps autopilot, attempted to retreat.
Milim caught up in less than a second. She drove both hands into the back of the jet and tore open the engine housing. Flames burst around her, washing across her body without leaving so much as a mark on her clothes.
Then she reached deeper into the aircraft.
The entire engine came free in her hands.
She threw it into the ocean.
The stealth fighter dropped several hundred feet before emergency systems deployed. Stabilizing fins snapped into place, and the cockpit separated from the ruined body in what appeared to be some kind of escape capsule.
The other aircraft did the same.
Two dark capsules drifted downward beneath emergency parachutes while the remains of the fighters tumbled toward the Atlantic.
Milim hovered between them, hands planted on her hips. She looked enormously pleased with herself.
Tony slowly turned away from the screen. His gaze landed on me. Then on the blue barrier covering the hole in his aircraft. Then back to the screen, where Milim was apparently yelling at the descending escape capsules and shaking one fist in triumph. His head whipped toward me again.
"Holy shit."
Pepper swallowed. "Tony—"
"YOU GUYS ARE ACTUALLY SHAPE-SHIFTING ALIENS!"
Natasha Romanoff, one of the most dangerous and disciplined spies in the world, face-palmed for the second time in less than five minutes.
– Steve Rogers –
Steve Rogers opened his eyes.
He came awake with a violent gasp, his lungs dragging in air as the memory of black water closed around him. For one disorienting second, he was still strapped into the pilot’s seat of the Valkyrie, its engines screaming as the massive HYDRA bomber plunged toward the Arctic Ocean.
He could hear Peggy’s voice through the radio. Trying so hard not to sound frightened. She had been talking about dancing. A Saturday night at the Stork Club. Eight o’clock. No lateness permitted.
Steve had promised he wouldn’t know how to dance. Peggy had promised to teach him. Then the controls had shuddered beneath his hands. The ice had rushed toward the cockpit windows. He had tried to keep talking because he hadn’t wanted her final memory of him to be silence.
The plane had struck the water. Then—Nothing.
Steve’s breath came hard and fast as the present forced itself around him. He wasn’t inside the Valkyrie. He wasn’t underwater. He was sitting on a sheet of blue-white ice beneath an enormous open sky.
The Arctic surrounded him in every direction, jagged ridges of ice, endless snow, distant mountains reduced to pale silhouettes beneath the low grey clouds. Wind pushed loose crystals across the frozen ground in glittering trails.
Yet the cold didn’t bite as deeply as it should have.
Steve looked down at himself.
He was still wearing his uniform. The fabric was stiff, faded, and torn in several places, but unmistakably his. The leather straps across his chest remained intact. His gloves were cracked with age, or exposure, though he couldn’t understand how enough time could have passed for leather to age when the crash had happened only moments ago.
Hadn’t it? His mind struggled to assemble a timeline.
He remembered the impact. He remembered freezing water swallowing the cockpit. If the plane had broken apart and thrown him clear, someone might have found him before he drowned.
Except he wasn’t wet.
His clothing held a faint layer of frost, but there was no water dripping from it. His hair was dry. His body didn’t ache from the crash. There was no pressure in his lungs, no pain in his ribs, no numbness in his extremities.
He felt—
Steve flexed his hands. Strong. Rested, even.
He turned his head, taking stock of his surroundings.
The wreckage of the Valkyrie protruded from a torn trench in the glacier several dozen yards away. Its black metal hull had been peeled open by the impact and the crushing force of the ice. One enormous wing rose at an angle from the snow, the red HYDRA insignia still faintly visible beneath decades, or what looked like decades, of damage.
Part of the glacier surrounding the bomber had been melted away in a perfectly circular basin. The ice didn’t look broken or excavated. It looked as though it had flowed aside, gently and deliberately, to expose the aircraft buried within.
There were men and women who looked like scientists moving around it, eagerly studying it.
Steve pushed himself upright. His balance wavered for less than a second before the serum corrected it. His senses snapped to focus, feeding him details almost faster than he could process them.
There were footprints in the snow. Several people nearby. His shield lay half-buried in the ice a few feet away, its familiar red, white, and blue surface scratched and dulled but otherwise intact. Someone had recovered it from the wreckage and placed it near him. That meant whoever had found him knew who he was.
Before Steve could reach for it, a woman spoke. "Well. Captain Rogers actually appears to be healthy and alive after all this time." Her voice was low, haughty, and touched with dark amusement.
Steve turned.
Two women stood several yards away.
The one who had spoken was impossible to overlook.
She was taller than almost any woman Steve had ever met. Nearly as tall as he was, perhaps taller in the heeled boots she wore. Her hair was black as coal and fell past her shoulders in a wild, deliberate cascade. Pale skin contrasted sharply with the dark green and black leathers molded around her body.
Steve’s gaze caught on the outfit before he could stop it.
Calling it armor would have been generous. It looked more like combat leathers designed by someone who considered modesty a personal insult. The dark material hugged every curve with such tightness that Steve felt heat crawl up the back of his neck despite the surrounding ice. The neckline plunged much lower than anything a woman would have worn openly in Brooklyn, while the fitted trousers made it difficult to look at her without becoming acutely aware of just how much the world might have changed.
Since when did women dress like that?
He immediately scolded himself for the thought. Peggy would have smacked him.
The black-haired woman noticed his embarrassment. One corner of her mouth curled upward into a wicked, knowing smile.
Steve forced his attention to the second woman.
That didn’t help.
She was every bit as beautiful, though in an entirely different way. Long golden hair fell around her shoulders in graceful waves. She wore an elegant pale blue gown beneath a cream-colored cloak trimmed with silver. The clothes looked almost medieval, but the material shimmered subtly whenever she moved, as if moonlight had been woven directly into the fabric.
She watched Steve with calm blue eyes and a gentle smile. There was kindness in that expression.
The dark-haired woman glanced toward her. "Good work thawing him out, Mother."
Mother? Steve looked between them.
They appeared too close in age for that to make any sense. The blonde woman looked mature, certainly, but not old enough to have an adult daughter. The black-haired woman could have been anywhere from twenty-five to thirty.
Something about both of them made those estimates feel ridiculous.
The blonde woman’s smile deepened. "His body did most of the work," she said. "The serum preserved him remarkably well. I merely persuaded the ice to release its hold."
Steve stared at her. Persuaded the ice? "What’s going on?" he asked. His voice came out rough, as though he hadn’t spoken in years. The thought sent a chill through him that had nothing to do with the Arctic. He cleared his throat and tried again. "What happened?"
The blonde woman stepped closer, though she stopped well outside striking range. Steve noticed that. Either she was trying not to frighten him, or she understood exactly how quickly he could move. "You were trapped within the glacier," she said gently. "Your aircraft and your body were preserved beneath the ice."
"For how long?"
The two women exchanged a glance.
That was not reassuring.
Before either could answer, a man in a dark suit hurried around the exposed side of the Valkyrie.
He was perhaps in his forties, with neatly combed brown hair and the carefully controlled posture of a government agent. His suit was different. The cut was slimmer than Steve remembered, the tie narrower, and the black coat he wore over it was made from some synthetic material Steve couldn’t identify.
A small device sat in the man’s hand. It was thinner than a cigarette case, its surface made almost entirely of glass.
The man stopped when he saw Steve standing. His eyes widened. For a moment, he simply stared...
Steve recognized the expression. He had seen it throughout the war-bond tour in crowded theaters, on factory floors, and among children waiting behind ropes for Captain America’s autograph. Men and women had looked at him as though they were meeting the living embodiment of every poster and newsreel they had ever seen.
Peggy never had. That was one of the many things he’d liked about her. She had looked at Steve Rogers and seen a stubborn idiot who had thrown himself on a grenade before he had enough muscle to fill out his uniform.
The man in the suit appeared to have forgotten how to speak. "C—Captain Rogers," he finally managed.
Steve straightened.
"My name is Agent Phil Coulson." The man stepped forward and extended one hand, then seemed to reconsider whether shaking hands was appropriate under the circumstances. "Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division."
Steve glanced at the offered hand before taking it.
Coulson’s grip was firm but distracted. He was still staring.
"I’ve never heard of it," Steve said.
"No, sir. You wouldn’t have. S.H.I.E.L.D. was founded after—"
Coulson stopped himself.
After. The single unfinished word seemed to hollow out the space in Steve’s chest. "After what?"
Coulson’s expression shifted. The awe remained, but concern entered alongside it. "Captain, it’s an honor to meet you," he said. "A genuine honor. I grew up hearing stories about you. My father—"
"Yes, yes," the dark-haired woman interrupted. "I’m certain your inner fangirl is squealing, Agent Coulson, but we have what we came for."
Coulson’s jaw tightened. "Lady Hela—"
"We found the cube. We found the lost soldier. Your precious Captain America appears remarkably well preserved." She swept one hand toward the endless white landscape. "Therefore, we can finally leave this frozen shithole. It reminds me far too much of Jotunheim for my tastes."
Steve barely heard the unfamiliar name. His attention had fixed on the object in her other hand.
A cube?
It was roughly the size of a man’s fist, its surface formed from translucent blue material. Light rolled beneath that surface in restless patterns, pulsing through an endless series of geometric shapes that seemed larger on the inside than the outside. The air around it shimmered. Tiny arcs of blue energy crawled across the woman’s fingers without harming her.
Steve knew that light. He had watched HYDRA weapons burn men to ash with it. He had seen Johann Schmidt place the cube into one of Zola’s machines. He had seen the Red Skull vanish when he tried to wield its power.
The Tesseract.
Memory and instinct aligned inside Steve with perfect clarity.
Whatever else had happened, whoever these people were, however long he had been asleep, the most dangerous weapon on Earth was in the hands of a stranger who had just announced that it was what she had come to retrieve.
His gaze shifted to Coulson.
The agent noticed. "Captain," Coulson said carefully, "I know this looks—"
"I’m going to need you to hand that over," Steve said sternly.
The dark-haired woman looked down at the Tesseract. Then she looked back at him. Her eyebrows rose with open amusement. "I beg your pardon?"
Coulson lifted both hands. "Everyone, let’s take a second. Captain Rogers has been unconscious for—"
"How long?" Steve demanded.
Coulson hesitated again.
That was answer enough to confirm Steve’s worst fears, even if it didn’t provide a number.
The blonde woman stepped forward. "Captain Rogers, my name is Frigga," she said. "My companion is Hela. I understand your caution, but—"
Steve cut her off. His full attention was on the taller woman holding the Tesseract. "Put the cube down."
Her eyes gleamed. There was no surprise in them. In fact, she almost looked delighted by the challenge in his voice. As if she wasn’t afraid of him at all. "...Or what?"
Steve felt the mood change.
Frigga’s smile disappeared. Coulson went tense.
Steve shifted his weight subtly toward the shield lying in the snow. "I’ve seen what it can do in the wrong hands." Steve glanced at the strange armor, the green light in her eyes, and the way she held the most dangerous object he had ever encountered like it was nothing more than a paperweight. "I don’t know who you are," he continued, "or what you want with it. But I’m not letting you walk away with that cube."
Hela noticed him sizing her up. "That is rather the point, Captain," she said, lifting the Tesseract so its blue light painted sharp shadows across her face. "I do not want it in safe hands. I want it in my hands."
"Hela," Frigga warned.
"What?" Hela glanced at her. "I see little benefit in lying to him." Hela’s smirk widened. "I know everything the cube is capable of. That is precisely the reason I intend to use it for MY war."
The word WAR struck Steve. He didn’t hesitate. His shield lay several feet away, but distance had never meant much since the serum. He lunged sideways, fingers closing around the familiar leather strap as he came out of his crouch. In the same fluid motion, he pivoted and launched himself across the ice.
He had sacrificed his life once to keep the Tesseract out of the hands of a would-be conqueror. He wasn’t going to let another one walk away with it now.
Steve attacked!
XXX
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