—chapter nine:
broken into
from all angles

"SENSORY OVERLOAD
LOADING. . .100%."

Jackson stood at Tony's work station, watching the screen scan the globe for a potential energy that matched the Tesseract. The bar was loading slowly, the match getting more and more specific with each upward percentage.

    "I don't think staring at it is gonna make it move any faster, Marie," Tony commented, sidling up beside her. "Or are you playing your little—" he wiggled his fingers, "—mind games again?"

    "If I had played any—" Jackson wiggled her own fingers, "—mind games or had any mind games to begin with, then we'd all be home by now. I would've forced Loki to tell me where the Tesseract is, we'd go and get it, and then we'd all go home. I probably would've forced either Coulson or Fury to tell us what they were planning to do with the Tesseract once we got it back but that's easier said than done. Uh, any luck over there with the hacking?"

    Tony waved her over. "Come with me." The two of them crossed the room over to Bruce's work station where one of the screens was testing every password possible to get into S.H.I.E.L.D's files. "New password every second. Once we get the right password, it's gonna tell us 'Access Granted', and then we'll get to see what's behind door number three."

    Jackson nodded and then looked over to Bruce, who was looking back at her. "What?" she asked.

     "Are you feeling any better?" he asked in return, wearing a sad smile. "Oh," she responded, "yeah. Yeah, I'm feeling better. Head's still pounding a little bit but it doesn't feel like much of a headache, though."

     "Brain's still fried?" Tony piped in. Jackson huffed out a laugh. "Something like that. I had this really weird dream about these colorful, gem-looking things and it seemed a little too real to be just a dream but what do I know? I'm not omniscient."

    "Yup, brain's still fried," Tony confirmed, tilting her head and pretending to look her over, "did you get into Bruce's huge bag of weed by any chance?"

    "No," Jackson snorted, smacking his hands away, "lack of sleep can pretty much give you the same effect. And hallucinogenics. But that's beside the point."

    Their little laugh party was soon over when Fury marched in demanding, "What are you doing, Mr. Stark?"

    "Kinda wondering the same thing about you," Tony retorted. Jackson wandered back over to Tony's work station to check on the scanning. Forty-seven percent.

    "Shouldn't you be locating the Tesseract?"

    "They are," Jackson interjected, "they're tracing the heat signature right now. Once it reaches one hundred percent, we'll have a hit within half a mile."

    "What she said," Tony added, "then you'll get your precious cube back. No muss, no fuss." His attention was then taken by the screen in front of him as it decrypted the information it's been trying to decrypt for the past several hours. "What is 'Phase Two'?"

    Steve then came in with what looked like some sort of gun and Jackson felt the tension in the room skyrocket. It was almost palpable with how thick it was.

    "'Phase Two' is S.H.I.E.L.D uses the Tesseract to make weapons." Steve then dropped the weapon onto the table, his face the most stoic and impassive it's ever been. "Sorry, the computer was moving a little slow."

    "So you did know something." Jackson came over to the table to take a look at the weapon and reached a hand out to touch it but she forced her hand back. Everyone saw her do it and she shook her hand. "Practicing self-control. It's harder than it looks. Anyway, back to Steve. So you did know something?"

    "You were in on this?" Fury turned to Steve, who remained emotionless, like the true soldier he had become.

    "No," he replied stiffly, "I wasn't."

    Fury sighed. "Rogers, I assure you that we have gathered everything related to the Tesseract. This does not mean— "

    "I'm sorry, Nick," Tony swung the screen around to show the Tesseract being used to make some sort of weapon. "What were you lying?"

    Jackson walked up to the screen to get a closer look; it was displaying a diagram of some sort of nuclear weapon and where the Tesseract would be placed to make it work.

   "I was wrong, director," Steve spoke as Thor and Natasha came into the lab, "the world hasn't changed a bit."

   Bruce turned to Natasha and used his glasses to point at the screen. "Did you know about this?"

    Jackson's mind flashed back to when the three of them were in the abandoned shack in Kolkata, Natasha telling Bruce about the Tesseract that had been stolen from S.H.I.E.L.D, giving him a brief mission report. For all Jackson knew, Natasha could've known just as much as the rest of them. But for someone who was working at S.H.I.E.L.D and was practically Fury's right-hand man, she could've known all along.

     "You wanna think about removing yourself from this environment, Doctor?" asked Natasha, stepping up and swiftly avoiding Bruce's question. Bruce let out a dry laugh. "Oh, I was in Kolkata. I was pretty well removed."

     "Loki's manipulating you."

     "And you've been doing what, exactly?" Bruce bit back, raising a sarcastic brow.

     "Wait, go back," Jackson interrupted, holding up a hand, "what do you mean by saying that Loki is manipulating Bruce?" There really wasn't a need to ask because it was pretty much written all over Natasha's face. Jackson could see it. Her face fell when she realized. "Loki wants to unleash the Hulk."

     "And why would he want to do that?" Bruce questioned. Jackson was quick to answer as she turned to him. "He wants you to create a distraction, to do all of the dirty work so he doesn't have to do the heavy lifting when he gets the Tesseract."

     "You didn't come here because you'd think I'd bat my eyelashes at you," Natasha responded. "And now I'm not leaving because you decide to get a little twitchy." Bruce pointed to the screen again. "What I wanna know is why S.H.I.E.L.D is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction."

     "Yeah, I wanna know, too, because I figured that we would've learned something from—oh, I don't know—every war ever?" Jackson added, letting out a scoff afterward.

     The room went so silent that Jackson could hear a pin drop. She could feel the tension thickening even more and then, Fury lifted a finger and pointed at Thor. "It's because of him."

     Thor pointed to himself and asked, "Me?"

     "A year ago, Earth had a visitor from another planet with a grudge match that leveled a small town," Fury started, "we not only learned that we are not alone, but we are enormously, and hilariously, outgunned."

     "My people want nothing but peace with your planet," Thor replied, exasperated. Fury turned to look at him. "But you're not the only people out there, are you? And you're not the only threat. The world's filling up with people that can't be matched. That can't be controlled."

     A familiar pounding made its way back into Jackson's skull, ramming itself against her frontal lobes. It started out like a light, constant pinch, and she scrunched up her face as she tried to control it, tried to make it go away. She slowly walked back until she felt the cool metal of the work station underneath her fingertips. Bruce quickly glanced over at her, concerned. I'm fine, she mouthed, waving a hand to dismiss him.

     "Your work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to you," Thor pointed out, "and his allies. It's a signal that tells that the Earth is ready for a higher form of war."

     "A higher form?" Steve asked incredulously.

     "You forced our hand," said Fury, "we had to come up with— "

     "A nuclear deterrent," Tony finished, "because that just calms everything right down."

    "Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark?" Fury questioned.

     "I'm sure if he was still making them, he'd be neck-deep in— " Steve started but was then quickly interrupted by Tony. "Wait, hold on," he said, "how is this now about me?"

    "I'm sorry. Isn't everything?"

     The pinching in Jackson's brain soon began to increase as the argument got louder. She hid behind the work station, took off her gloves, and grasped at her head, massaging her temples, the pounding almost making her want to vomit. Looking up, she noticed that the little blue hull inside the scepter was glowing rampantly, heightening everyone's emotions in the room, including hers.

     "You want control, yet you court chaos," Thor stated, laughing a little as if he found it hard to believe.

     "That's his MO, isn't it?" Bruce added, "What are we, a team? No, no, no. We're a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We're. . .we're a time bomb."

     "You need to step away," Fury instructed.

    "Yeah," Tony agreed, laying a hand on Steve's shoulder, "why shouldn't he let off a little steam?"

    Steve smacked Tony's hand away. "You know damn well why, back off."

    "I'm starting to want you to make me." Tony sized Steve up.

    Jackson was gasping for air at this point, struggling to breathe, but she couldn't get up. The constant ramming against her skull was too much for her to move. Her brain might've gone into overdrive the first time, but her emotions must've actually been reaching the boiling point. The tension in the room felt like it was choking her and she couldn't get its hand off of her throat.

    "Ms. Romanoff, I think it's time to escort Banner back to— "

     "Where?" Bruce interrupted Fury, "You rented my room."

     "The cell was just in case— "

     "In case you needed to kill me, but you can't. I know, I've tried."

     That was the part that made Jackson go numb and cold inside. Her hearing got fuzzy as she zoned out and she couldn't hear the rest of it, didn't want to hear the rest of it. Hearing Bruce say that he tried to take his own life broke her heart. Out of all of the things they've both shared, that was the one thing she never heard. Which was understandable, of course, but hearing it this way in this sort of circumstance didn't feel right.

     "I was good," Jackson heard Bruce say as she got some of her hearing back, but it was still a little groggy, like she was in some sort of limbo, "until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk. You wanna know how I stay— " Bruce turned around to see that the scepter was missing.

    Looking over the work station, he saw Jackson up against the wall with her knees to her chest and holding onto the scepter for dear life, the hull of it still glowing. "Oh, no."

    Everyone soon huddled around her as Bruce tried to pull her back to reality, cupping her face the same way she's done to him several times over. Natasha pulled the scepter out of her hands and Jackson let in a big gulp of air, feeling the same feeling of ice water being poured over her like before.

    Looking up at everyone around her, her eyes then landed on what was in front of her, which was Bruce with the most devastated look on his face. Jackson could feel something else that was underlying the devastation but she was too out of it to actually understand it.

     The screen over at Tony's work station then beeped, signaling that they finally got a hit. "Somebody please get Jackson out of here," Bruce instructed as he went to go check the status of the signature.

    Thor pulled Jackson up bridal style and went to go find a place for her to rest. They didn't get far as there was an explosion that knocked everyone off of their feet. Jackson rolled over and groaned, not knowing where she landed. Her head was protected by Thor's arm and she felt like she was about to pass out.

     "Lady Edwards?" Thor asked, checking her over, "Are you with me?"

     "I'm fine," she replied, groaning some more, "I'm okay."

     "You need to get out of here. Head back to the hull of the ship. They will know what to do."

     Thor got up and pulled Jackson up with him, who was still a little out of it. "Or perhaps I will carry you there." He picked her up bridal style once more and made his way to the hull of the ship. Jackson only saw a little bit of flying debris before her world was overcome by black.