On the Sky Carrier, Loki was escorted by two teams of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents into a specially constructed circular cell. The automatic air valve locked shut. Nick Fury stood outside, his single eye gleaming sharply.
"If you try to escape, or have any other schemes, even if you just lightly scratch the glass." The Black director tapped the touchscreen on the control panel a few times. "You'll free-fall from nine thousand meters up along with this iron cage. Do you understand your situation now?"
One side of the circular cell opened into a massive hollow, where powerful gusts howled with a piercing wail. As a veteran agent, Nick Fury knew exactly how to employ psychological warfare.
At the moment, the two most important things to him were recovering the Tesseract and uncovering Loki's plan. If not for the other man's status as an Asgardian Prince, the Black director might have resorted to more aggressive measures. Torture and interrogation were merely basic agent procedure.
Unfortunately, the hot-tempered Thor would never stand by and watch his brother suffer, even if Loki had killed eighty-eight people in two days and was plotting to destroy the world. So Fury could only threaten him verbally for now.
He had a mountain of headaches. Those who could hardly be called united—the Avengers—were each a problem. Iron Man Tony Stark was frivolous and wary of S.H.I.E.L.D. Bruce Banner himself was an uncontrollable danger, like a ticking time bomb. And Thor, the alien from Asgard, was not someone to be trusted, at least not for the time being.
By that reckoning, the only ones Nick Fury could rely on were Natasha, who had returned to the team, and S.H.I.E.L.D.'s own strength.
Still, it was worth noting that Umbrella, Sean Sipes's rapidly rising research organization, possessed such formidable defensive power.