Several men escorted Loki back to the Helicarrier. Fury was already waiting on the deck, his black trench coat fluttering in the airflow. His one eye lingered on Loki for a moment before he gestured to the agent beside him. Several fully armed guards led Loki to a specially designed cylindrical glass cage on the lower level of the bridge. Fury stood in front of the control panel outside the cage and pressed a button. A section of the floor at the bottom of the glass cage silently slid open, revealing the churning sea of clouds below. The thin atmosphere and frigid temperature of ten thousand meters above the ground poured in through the opening, condensing a thin layer of frost on the inner glass wall.
"If you try anything funny, the cage will drop you from ten thousand meters in the air. Understand?"
Loki stood in the center of the glass cage, hands behind his back, that unchanging smile on his lips. He slowly turned around, surveying the cage prepared for him, then spoke, a hint of amusement in his voice. "The cage is well-made. But I can tell this cage wasn't made for me."
"Tailor-made for monsters far stronger than you." Fury's tone remained unchanged.
Loki's smile deepened. He tilted his head slightly, his gaze piercing through the transparent wall of the glass cage towards the laboratory, as if he could see that figure. "Oh, I've heard. It's a Beast that's lost its mind, disguised as a human."
He turned his gaze back to Fury, his tone full of contempt. "You've fallen so low that you have to rely on monsters to protect the Earth?" Before Fury could answer, he took two steps forward, his voice suddenly lowering as if sharing a secret only he and Fury understood. "Watching the Tesseract and infinite power slip through your fingers must be painful, right? I'll show you what true power is."
Fury stared at him for a moment, neither angry nor retorting. "Fine, call me when your 'supreme authority' gets bored and wants to read a magazine." With that, he turned and left.
In the laboratory, a holographic screen was playing a loop of surveillance footage from the Hawkeye raid on the iridium mine warehouse, while 3D scanned models of several iridium raw material containers slowly rotated in one corner of the screen. Banner sat at the workbench, several Spectrum data sheets and a cup of cold coffee spread out in front of him. He noticed that several people around him were staring at him, so he took off his goggles and smiled indifferently.
"I might have minded before. Lynn has helped me understand myself. It's okay... so could you please stop looking at me like that?" He put his goggles on the table, picked up his coffee and took a sip, his tone as calm as if he wasn't the one who had just been called a " Beast " by the Asgard gods.
Captain Rogers, standing nearby, quickly steered the conversation back on track. He turned to Thor, who was leaning against the lab table. " Thor, you know him best. What exactly is he trying to do?"
Thor crossed his arms over his chest, Mjolnir resting on the ground at his feet. His brow furrowed, and his voice was low. " Loki has an army, not the army of Asgard, nor any legion in the known world. Loki wants to lead them to attack Earth."
Banner put down his coffee cup. "So they needed to build another portal. That's why they took Selvig; Selvig is an astrophysicist who studies the Bifrost and wormholes. Loki used the power of the Tesseract as coordinates to set up the first anchor point and teleported here."
He paused for a moment, then looked up at Thor. "We shouldn't try to guess Loki's thoughts. He's a madman."
Thor's body tensed instinctively, and he took a step forward. "No matter what, he's still my brother."
Natasha leaned against the lab door, holding a holographic tablet, and said without looking up, "He killed eighty people in two days."
A moment of silence fell over the lab. Thor changed his tune, his tone awkward but clearly trying to salvage the situation. "We're not brothers."
Just as everyone was discussing why Hawkeye went to steal Iridium, Tony walked into the lab. He had changed out of his mud-stained armor and was wearing a dark gray casual jacket, holding a freshly brewed cup of coffee. He glanced at the surveillance footage on the holographic screen, walked to the workbench, and lightly tapped the atomic structure diagram of iridium on the screen. "Iridium is a stabilizer. That's why Loki wants it. To get an entire army here, the door needs to be bigger and more stable. Iridium can meet his needs. He thought no one else knew, but I found out." He put the coffee cup on the table, then suddenly changed the subject, "By the way... how does Fury keep track of both screens?"
He didn't wait for anyone's answer. That wasn't the question he really wanted to ask. He leaned against the lab bench, arms crossed, his gaze passing over the holographic screen's eerie blue light and landing on Fury's back outside the observation window. Then he raised his voice, making sure Fury, who was still standing by the glass cage and hadn't had time to walk far, could hear him.
"However, Fury, let's put everything else aside for now. I like to figure out the reasons before tackling the problem. As far as I know, someone had Coulson warn you about the consequences of your research on the Tesseract before you even started, trying to get you to give up. Why didn't you listen then? Your intention to protect Earth is not wrong, but why did you insist on researching something you completely understand? You didn't even know what the consequences would be, and you still went ahead despite the risk warnings. Don't you think that's incredibly irresponsible? Loki is now using the Tesseract's coordinates activated by your research institute as an anchor point to teleport here, steal the Tesseract, and slaughter civilians. And now you're still acting all high and mighty, calling us over to clean up your mess without even a decent explanation? Aren't you going to say anything?"
The lab fell silent. Banner's data panel hovered in mid-air, Rogers ' fingers moved away from the edge of his shield. Thor stood in the doorway, his red cape no longer fluttering. Everyone stared at Fury in disbelief.
Fury stood still, his one eye meeting Tony's gaze through the glass wall.