The group followed Coulson into the bridge. The Helicarrier's command center was busier than Lynn had imagined. Three layers of circular control panels were stacked in front of a huge holographic projection screen. Dozens of agents, wearing headsets, were simultaneously processing intelligence streams from all over the world at their respective workstations. The air was filled with the slight heat unique to electronic devices in operation and a certain inexplicable tension. Fury stood on the top command platform, the hem of his long black trench coat swaying slightly in the air conditioning. His one eye was fixed on the tactical screen in front of him. Hearing footsteps, he turned around.
Before Coulson could even begin to introduce them, Rogers had already pulled a ten-dollar bill from his pocket, held it between two fingers, and handed it to Fury with a businesslike expression. Fury's lips curled slightly as he took the bill, folded it neatly, and stuffed it into the inside pocket of his trench coat.
Seeing this, Lynn mentally crossed out all his previous suggestions about "having Coulson arrange things for Captain America in advance." It was all for nothing. Coulson probably, possibly did try to persuade him, but Fury, with his stubbornness, didn't trust anyone. No matter how capable Coulson was, he couldn't make decisions for the director. He just couldn't understand why things could be so complicated. Captain America could have adapted to modern society in a safe place first, and then gradually integrated after this crisis was over, instead of being thrown into the mess of an alien invasion right away.
Ignoring the stares of the others, Fury walked straight to Tony, his one eye lingering on each of the four men for a moment before he spoke, his voice low and steady, as if conducting a routine briefing. "Thank you for coming. Our primary objective right now is to locate and retrieve the Tesseract."
Tony didn't reply. He took his hand out of his pocket, slowly removed one glove, and looked down to check his fingertips. Ivan stood next to Tony, the parrot on his shoulder tilting its head to examine Fury's bald head, while Ivan himself remained silent, his expression somewhere between "I don't know you" and "I don't care about you."
Banner glanced at Tony and Ivan's reactions, then took the initiative to speak, his tone still that of a gentle physicist, but with a touch more businesslike professionalism. "Where's the progress so far?"
Coulson took a step forward and gestured to a screen displaying a map of the global satellite network topology. "We're scanning all cameras, phones, and computers connected to the network worldwide; they'll become our eyes and ears."
Just as Banner was about to ask another question, a female voice that Lynn knew all too well came from behind.
"But this is too slow." Natasha Romanoff emerged from the side corridor of the bridge, dressed in a dark, form-fitting combat suit, her red hair tied back in a neat ponytail. She held a holographic tablet in her hand, its screen displaying real-time updates of newly connected network nodes. She stopped beside Fury, her gaze sweeping over everyone present. "Currently, the investigation is only covering three-thousandths of the global nodes per hour. To pinpoint the exact location of the Tesseract's Cube could take weeks, which we can't afford. Therefore, we need your help to narrow down the search area."
When Lynn saw Natasha, the angry expression on his face instantly switched to a silly grin, as if a switch had been flipped. He walked past Tony and Ivan to Natasha, tilted his head to look at her, and said with an obvious and undisguised expectation in his tone, "Miss Natasha, it's nice to see you again. The butler position we talked about last time is still open. The salary will be paid by Tony, and room and board are included. You should have seen the work environment when you came to my house last time. When do you start work?"
Natasha rolled her eyes at him, not replying with a single syllable, and looked down at her holographic tablet again, swiping her finger across the screen to zoom in on the global heat map of abnormal energy fluctuations to the North Atlantic region.
"That's why I really hate your practice of keeping everything secret." Tony put his gloves back on, looking at the grinning Lynn, knowing he couldn't be of much help. His impatience grew more pronounced. He looked at Fury, his chin slightly raised. "If you could have informed us beforehand, instead of waiting until we'd been on a plane for hours and landed on a stealth carrier, we could have resolved this at Stark Tower. We wouldn't have needed to come all this way. A waste of time and energy."
He pointed to the location of the new reactor on his chest. "According to advance information from a kind person, we've already developed a specialized device for tracking gamma rays and deployed it on several of Stark Industries ' low-Earth orbit satellites. While we can't perform a large-scale, simultaneous scan, using the process of elimination is much faster than you blindly searching through cameras worldwide."
Fury's expression remained unchanged, but his one-eyed gaze shifted from Tony's chest to his face, pausing for a moment. Tony ignored his scrutinizing gaze and turned to Banner and Ivan, saying, "You two stay on the mothership for now. Banner, your Spectrum experience will come in handy here; narrow down the scope first. I'll go back and work on both fronts simultaneously. That will be faster. Ivan, how's the modification of your arc generator coming along? I believe Director Fury prepared all the experimental equipment before calling us here. You and Banner can work together. Do any adjustments here. You know what I mean; if anything goes wrong, Banner is in your hands."
" Lynn and I will return to Stark Tower and use satellite data to run a process of elimination." He raised his hand and drew a circle in the air, orange sparks blooming in the center of the bridge. On the other side of the portal was the familiar cold white light of the Stark Tower's ground floor laboratory and the eerie blue glow of the holographic screen. He then glanced at Fury. "I'll let you know when I find the coordinates. Contact me immediately if you discover anything."
Then he nodded towards Lynn, indicating it was time to go. Lynn glanced at Natasha one last time; she didn't even lift her eyelids, only showing him a profile focused on studying the holographic tablet. He sighed, turned, and followed Tony into the portal.
The orange glow of the portal slowly dissipated into the air above the bridge, and the once tense and busy command hall became subtly quiet as the two suddenly left.