Disclaimer - All the usual Yada Yada Yada. I don't own any rights to any characters in this fic save for my OCs. Don't sue me.
Anywho, without further ado - read on.
Earth-6161 [May 2012]
Helicarrier
–Bruce Banner–
He was led to a lab, with Tony and Agent Romanoff with him. On the way to the lab, he couldn't help but ask, "Who is that lady? I just saw her name and nothing more. Is she like a super soldier of some sort?"
Tony snorted out loud, "Oh, believe me, doc. If she were really a super soldier and under the control of the government, we would not be having the problems we have right now, and more importantly, there would be no other countries left on the planet."
His eyes widened as Romanoff nodded as well, agreeing with Stark, "Stark is correct. That is Samantha Webers, she is…independent. We have kept a watch over her for years now but she does not work for us, she is working with us to retrieve the TEsseract before she is on her way."
"I thought so. Say, how did you guys convince her to join your band anyway? Aside from the planetary threat, obviously." Tony asked both of them as he sprinted forward and then started walking backward, facing both him and Romanoff.
"As far as I am aware, we told her that the Tesseract needs to be retrieved, else there will be an alien invasion and she agreed."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that. Oh, here we are," Romanoff stopped and then gestured at an unassuming looking door, "You are going to love it here, doc. We have all the best toys and the Sceptre should be here soon enough, you can get a baseline reading from that. Hopefully it helps you."
He nodded at her, "Thank you."
She then opened the door, gave both him and Stark their access cards, and left.
"So, you believe that BS?" Tony asked him and he had to consider his response here. He couldn't exactly spill his true feelings here, it was not safe, for both him and all the people aboard the ship.
He settled on, "I am just here to track the Tesseract and leave."
"And if the time comes, when you have to put on the green makeup? To fight with us, against Loki?"
He chuckled, "Oh, that is no suit of armour, Tony. It is like an exposed nerve, hurting you for every second that I turn into that–that monster," He hissed at the man and then jerked back as he didn't know why he just did that.
The sceptre had arrived and he was calibrating all the sensors that SHIELD had access to, just in case the ridiculous number of Stark satellites already searching for the signature were not enough.
"I have recorded the signature and created the algorithm. Can you check if it is optimal for your satellites because they are the primary destination for this?"
Tony looked up from his workstation, mouth full of blueberries, "Yeah, sure. Just once I am done with this."
He straightened up, having a sinking feeling about what Tony was doing, and…yup, he was hacking SHIELD, right in front of him and all the cameras in the lab, Tony was doing it. He slowly breathed out, making sure that his heart didn't start racing at the thought of a little cybercrime that amounted to treason.
"Tony, you should not be doing that." He whispered to the man, making sure to avoid looking at the screen. He did not want to know what was being hacked or whatnot.
"Oh, please. Don't worry, Doc. I know what I am doing. This will be easy pea–"
The screen flashed red with bold letters, telling them: ACCESS DENIED
He sagged in relief at that but at the same time, a streak of curiosity flashed in his mind. What could be so secure in their database that Tony Stark himself could not hack it? Or more likely the VI program that Tony had built for himself could not hack it. The security must be really tight around here.
"Hey, Doc, see here, I got something about Samantha. She is designated as Subject S1 and a warning is written below, DO NOT APPROACH. Damn!" Tony whistled as he read out what was most likely a very classified document.
He hastily rushed over and swiped his hand over the base of the display, shutting it down, "What are you doing? Please, do it on your own time. I am looking to find the Tesseract and then leave, as soon as possible. Just being here is stressful enough. I don't want–"
The display beeped before the hacked screen popped right back up, displaying a plethora of information right now.
"Oh, look! The rest of the database is not as secure as her file. What a surprise!" Stark turned to him with a grin on his face.
He shook his head and turned around, heading back to his workstation. He could get the optimization done himself, no need for Stark's crime committing hands to be involved.
...
…..
"There," he muttered to himself as the upload finally began. The algorithms were working properly, the simulations said so and the localised scan results gave promising results. It would propagate to Stark satellites first and then begin copying itself across every marked terminal across the planet, which was an alarming number of labs, globally.
It would seem that SHIELD's reach truly was very vast. He had a spectrometer from a lab in North Korea, marked as available, for god's sake.
Now, all that was left was–
He looked up as the door opened with a slight whine, as the Captain entered the lab.
"Where are we on the Tesseract, doctor?"
"Uh, we have marked the energy signature and created the tracking algorithm. Now, it's just a game of waiting until we hit something." He explained it as best as he could to the Captain who was clearly not all up to the mark on the modern world.
He then looked at Tony, with his display chock full of hacked documents with the classified symbol on them clear for the Captain to see.
"What are you doing?" The Captain, obviously someone who respected the rules, stepped forward and demanded from Tony.
"What does it look like? I am trying to find what SHIELD was actually doing with the Tesseract, because I, for one, don't believe their bullshit about being in the energy sector, at all. Why would a government agency be in the energy sector anyway? You've had the same doubts, Bruce, why don't you tell him."
Both of them looked at him and his hands suddenly felt clammy, "I-I don't want to–"
"Doctor." One word from the Captain and he suddenly felt resigned to what this would lead to but had to get it off his chest because it truly had been bugging him since the beginning.
"I didn't want to say anything but why would a government agency, especially with reach as wide as SHIELD, foray into the energy department, especially since he–" He gestured to Tony and more specifically, his Arc Reactor that was faintly visible through his T-shirt, "--already has a very viable alternative on the market, without the use of world ending artefacts. Something doesn't add up in that equation, because energy could not be the end goal of a project like that."
"See, I told you. Arc reactor tech is perfectly safe and capable of being used anywhere, without needing a shiny blue rock." Stark just drove in the nail as he continued to work on hacking the files, right in front of the Captain, who probably actually had the authority to arrest someone, probably.
The Captain visibly struggled with his thoughts before biting out, "Just focus on the Tesseract," before storming out of the lab.
"Well, what can you do? Guess Old people really don't like their worldviews being challenged, huh? Blueberry?" He took the offer and went back to quietly work on something that was not hacking SHIELD.
But still, the thoughts of what SHIELD could be doing with the Tesseract persisted in his mind. In some corner of his mind, a corner that told him that trusting any government was a bad idea, he knew what SHIELD was doing or at least what they were after.
Even if they were using the Tesseract to generate electricity in the first phase, they would most certainly be after weapons. Tesseract powered energy weapons, that must be their end goal.
The only question was: How far did they come with their progress? And was that research the reason why Loki was able to come to Earth and kill all these people?
A/N -
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