Tony held the Mind Scepter as he followed Banner into the laboratory that had been prepared long ago.
Leo followed behind them, while Captain Rogers, still wearing his Combat Suit, came in as well.
Inside the laboratory, Banner placed the Mind Scepter on a stand and began using a scanner to read the gamma radiation it emitted.
Leo watched the Mind Scepter, which was glowing faintly.
Tony walked over to Leo.
He patted him on the shoulder.
"Leo, you've changed a lot over the past few months. You're not a little runt anymore."
"You've been staring at this scepter the whole time. Do you know something?"
Tony leaned closer and said softly.
"What are you hiding? Like Nick Fury—some shameful secret?"
"The gamma readings match Dr. Erik's report on the Tesseract, but processing them will take several weeks."
Banner looked at the readings on the computer and spoke to the two people sitting nearby.
"Mr. Stark, the close connection between this scepter and the Tesseract, the identical gamma readings, and the link between the two—what does that make you think of?"
"You mean..."
Tony's eyes turned toward the scepter in front of Banner. He thought of the information Leo had told him last time and fell silent.
He stood up and walked over to Banner's computer.
"Bypassing S.H.I.E.L.D.'s main system and entering the subsystem cluster would speed it up to six quadrillion floating-point operations per second."
Banner immediately came up with a solution after seeing Tony's response, and he laughed at once.
"Too bad I only brought a toothbrush. Otherwise, I'd really like to talk with you for a few more days."
"You should come by Stark Tower when you have time. The top ten floors are all used for research and development. You'll enjoy yourself."
Stark glanced at the