John's underground laboratory now held three objects from beyond this world.
The Destroyer, the Casket of Ancient Winters, and the Mind Stone Scepter.
But in terms of how extraordinary they were, the Mind Stone Scepter came first. The Mind Stone inside it was one of the Infinity Stones, capable of easily brainwashing agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
People in a specialized profession like espionage needed considerable willpower and intelligence to begin with.
As one of the best among them, Barton's abilities were beyond question.
The Wizarding World also had a means of brainwashing and controlling others.
The Imperius Curse.
It was an evil power known as one of the Three Unforgivable Curses.
For a time, the Wizarding World had been plunged into chaos by the followers of a noseless evil wizard named Voldemort.
After Voldemort's downfall, some of his followers had claimed they had been under the Imperius Curse to clear their names and escape imprisonment in Azkaban.
Both could control people, but the Imperius Curse was nowhere near as powerful as the Mind Stone.
People with strong wills could break free of the Imperius Curse or even resist it altogether.
A certain Mr. Potter, who preferred to remain anonymous and was now a legendary Auror in the Wizarding World, had successfully thrown off the Imperius Curse through sheer willpower while attending Hogwarts.
And those had only been students.
Controlling agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., each of whom stood among the finest ordinary humans, would be far more difficult.
John opened the delivery box and took out the Mind Stone Scepter, Loki's greatest asset when he had come to this world.
It was also the Mind Stone Scepter that had allowed Loki to brainwash Selvig and the others into serving him and building a machine to activate the Tesseract.
Now, holding it, John could