Word that the Science Division was making gear reached Hawkeye, who was preparing to retire, and he came knocking too.
In his own words, he didn't want to come home missing an arm or a leg, and now was exactly when he needed protection most.
The same super-elastic combat suit, but since he still fought with a bow, his suit had no sleeves, all the protection concentrated on the torso.
Factoring in his strength level and load-bearing capacity, Daisy worked Secondary Adamantium into the combat vest.
Hawkeye's bow got a good deal of rare metals added too, and the arrowheads were forged entirely from Adamantium.
Just like that, all three of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s fierce warriors had been upgraded.
A sudden call interrupted Hawkeye as he admired his new arrowheads. He listened for a couple of sentences and immediately hung up.
"There's a problem over at the research center. Dr. Selvig says that an hour ago the Tesseract sent out a pulse of energy to the outside world?" Energy this, energy that—Hawkeye didn't understand any of it, but his instincts were remarkable, and without the slightest hesitation he reported it to Daisy, the Deputy Director.
No one understood better than Daisy what this meant. Whether or not Loki was coming back didn't matter. What mattered was that, at last, someone had taken notice of Earth.
"Notify Nick. I'll head over first." To keep Hawkeye from being controlled again, from staining his hands with agents' blood a second time, Daisy figured that having him arrive a little later could surely change a few outcomes.
As for Victoria Hand, that old spinster, surely no one would want to mind-control her; her value was too low, not worth the trouble.
Realizing there was still some time, she didn't use teleportation. Teleporting near the Tesseract was, in fact, an extremely dangerous thing. She chose instead to take a helicopter to the Dark Matter Research Center on the outskirts of New York.
Half an hour later she reached the research center, where Hand was already waiting for her.
"The energy amplification keeps growing. We don't know—"
"Arrange for personnel to evacuate." Daisy studied the nearby energy fluctuations. As someone who'd been to Asgard and to K'un-Lun, those other-dimensional realms, she could tell the spatial fluctuations here were extremely intense.
"What?" Victoria Hand looked a bit incredulous.
"Arrange for a rapid evacuation. It's dangerous here. If anything happens, I'll take responsibility. Carry out the order." She didn't spare the old spinster a kind look, and the other woman sensed something was off, more than happy to run, and went off to make the arrangements without another word.
The old man who liked to do his thinking in his underwear had reined himself in quite a bit lately. In the research institute hundreds of meters (over a thousand feet) underground, when Daisy found the guy, he'd finally put on a pair of pants.
"I didn't trigger this. It's emitting energy on its own. This—" The old man rattled off another mountain of jargon, the gist being that he had nothing to do with any of it.
"What happens if the energy keeps growing? How much time do we have?" she asked, a touch urgently. Even if the Tesseract didn't accept her, it couldn't be snatched away by some random riffraff. This was S.H.I.E.L.D.'s property, and it would stay with S.H.I.E.L.D. until the day she could use it.
The old man thought it over. "It should take about two more hours for the energy to hit its calculated peak, but I don't know what'll happen then."
"Prepare to evacuate, Doctor. Get all the staff out of here. I'll deal with NASA."
This kind of joint venture was nothing but trouble. On the surface it was S.H.I.E.L.D. and NASA, but everyone knew this was really cooperation with the U.S. government, done only to save face for the other four major powers. Pure self-deception.
"Doctor, get the cube down from there." Daisy frowned. These people had known there was a problem an hour ago, yet they'd stayed carefree, no idea what they were waiting for.
The old man glanced left and right and could only grit his teeth and answer, "It can't be taken down."
"Why not?" Daisy could tell the guy wasn't stonewalling. She quietly sensed it: the Tesseract appeared to be mounted on the equipment, but in reality some force of suction seemed to act upon it. Even if you dismantled the apparatus, the cube would likely still hover in its current position.
She lifted her chin, and a scientist under S.H.I.E.L.D. steeled himself and stepped forward, took up a pair of pliers, gripped the cube, and jiggled it side to side. Then, teeth clenched, he put his whole body's strength into it. The cube didn't budge a hair.
This stumped Daisy. She didn't dare recklessly probe with her own powers. What if it teleported her into outer space?
She could only issue orders like countless leaders before her. "I don't care what method you use. Shut this thing down right now, and get that cube off there!"
The on-site research staff, like so many subordinates, bustled around in a headless-chicken panic.
As time passed, plenty of calls came through to her, from Fury, from the NASA director.
She had no choice but to convene a video conference. "The situation on-site is serious. This experimental project is completely out of control—"
Barely two sentences in, the feed cut out. Staring at the static on the screen, she frowned.
"Ma'am, the interference here is too strong. I'm afraid—" The old man's face was drenched in sweat.
Daisy directed them like a foreman directing laborers, and the entire research facility was dug up from its foundations. Yet even with the instruments removed, the cube still hung suspended in midair, its position not shifting in the slightest.
This made Daisy very curious. How were the people on the other side of the cube starting it up from such an extreme distance? Considering the Tesseract had once been stored in Asgard for ages before coming to the Nordic lands, perhaps it was a contingency Loki had planted a thousand years ago?
There was no way to know.
Hand reported to her that the institute's staff had begun evacuating. Daisy felt it was still too slow and urged her to pick up the pace.
"How much longer?" Her panther-sense was warning her of danger, and she was getting ready to pull back too.
"About an hour and a half?" The old man wasn't very sure.
"You're out of time, people of Earth."
A shaft of blue light descended from the sky, piercing through the institute like a keen blade and driving deep into this research facility hundreds of meters underground.
The blue light was utterly pure, like a clear spring, yet its energy was astonishing, its cut edges immaculately clean, and it landed straight and true right in front of them.
Horned helmet, green cape, the Mind Scepter in hand—Loki stepped out first.
"Long time no see, lovely lady. You've grown even more beautiful." Loki still bowed with the same courtesy, just as he had when the two of them fought Jörmungandr together.
Daisy's eyes blazed with light. Combining her psychic power with her super-vision, she saw what was off about Loki.
It was a bit like the way Chthon had forcibly twisted a daughter into existence for Viper; Loki's mind had been tampered with too. If you likened one's own psyche to a great tree, his branches now bore countless foreign attachments.
The tree was still the same tree, but through inch-by-inch alteration, his thinking had already changed.
Two more figures emerged from the blue light. Following the pull of her psychic sense, Daisy's gaze went automatically to Loki's left. She was the one who'd spoken first, a gaunt woman with blue skin and a white hood, swaying gracefully as she walked.