The Sage of the Mind

Chapter 112: Chapter 111 : Tick Tock! The Count till freedom!



Disclaimer - The rights of the respective characters are with their respective owners. I don't mean to violate their intellectual property rights and thus, only my original characters are my IP. 

The Sage of the Mind: Chapter 111[May 2012]

StarkJet

–Randall–

He didn't need as much rest as Tony or even Bruce did in his base form because he was permanently enhanced. So, when the alarm rang, he immediately sprang into action, sprinting from his quarters, straight to Tony and Bruce's rooms, worried that someone had targeted them. 

Tony was quite vulnerable, being the most squishy member on the Jet, and Bruce would be fine but his transformation would wreck the plane, which would make all of them…not fine.

"Jarvis, talk to me," He snapped as he walked through door after door, in curves, as Tony had built the chambers around a huge central block that housed the conference room and their labs.

"Sir, I am detecting an unusual energy surge in the conference room, with light interference blocking all sensors including cameras, sir."

"Shit," He muttered as he changed course and ran back towards the entrance of the conference room, which was on the lower floors. The alarms were still blaring and he was sure that everyone was up by now, even Agent Romanoff but she was basically on house arrest so she should be safe in her quarters.

The question remained, just what in the hell was Thor doing? He assured them that Loki would not be able to do anything with Thor keeping an eye on him. He slid to a halt and opened the door, and had to immediately shield his eyes from the intense light that assaulted his eyes.

"Urgh,"

The light subsided after a moment but before he could recover his vision, he heard Thor curse and grunt. He rapidly blinked his eyes as his healing factor went to work, restoring his vision from what was essentially a flashbang on steroids.

What he saw was just Thor standing around, looking around with Mjolnir in his hand, surveying the area warily.

"What happened? He asked Thor as he entered the room cautiously, looking for Loki but it was as he had feared.

"What in the world?" Bruce and Tony followed through, entering the room and joining him in examining the blue dust that was left near the sofa, where Thor and Loki had sat.

"One moment, Loki was right beside me, and the next, my hand burned with a searing heat unlike anything I have ever experienced. And then, Loki was gone," Thor informed them and his heart sank as he realised that Loki had successfully escaped from them, and more importantly, if he could do it now, it meant that he could do it again.

Being able to teleport and escape from any custody meant that there was effectively no way of containing Loki, even for the Invisible Man, because it did not seem like the teleportation was activated from Loki's side.

"Aye, Loki seemed surprised as well because I felt his body seize before it burned my hand," Thor said as he shook his left hand, which was still discoloured but was rapidly healing, right in front of their eyes.

"So, we have someone on Loki's side who can just teleport him out of trouble from their end? Great. That's just fantastic," TOY said and stalked out of the conference room, Bruce following suit. They were probably on their way to see if they got any useful data from the myriad of sensors that were installed in and around the conference room.

"Don't mind him. We will find Loki, it is just a matter of time." He tried to console Thor who replied.

"No, I am not worried about Loki. He will surface, he has to. I am worried about the Invasion. If they have machines capable of doing this, then, we don't know what else they might have in store," Thor said, seemingly half to himself.

His eyes widened as he scrambled out of the room and back to the lab, hoping that they had some sort of trail they could track Loki with, if not, they were going to be in big trouble.

He reached the lab, to see Tony and Bruce discussing animatedly about what had just happened, all the while the ETA- 12 minutes was displayed on the side screen.

"Okay, so, we know they used teleportation now, which means they used the Tesseract. Jarvis, see if you find any unusual dips in Grid energy across the planet."

"Nothing on the reports sir although I must inform you that we simply don't have the most accurate grid data of various developing countries,"

"Yeah, I was afraid of that," Tony muttered as he went over the various energy readings, most of which were completely nonsensical, as their sensors were simply not built to scan energies of that level.

"That dust withered soon after, leaving no trace whatsoever,"

"Which means our theory of the Tesseract energy being just a portal opener was right. It also means that–"

"Wait. Do we know that if the inertia of the object is nullified while travelling through the Tesseract?" Bruce interrupted Tony and both of them looked at Bruce for a moment, then they exploded in motion.

"Jarvis, track for any high speed projectile on Earth or in the air, mostly in the air, around remote areas with speeds matching ours," Tony informed JAvis who immediately began pulling up radar records from all over the world, and began laying filters.

"Dismiss nothing, Jarvis. We don't know if activities that seemed planned on paper were actually orchestrated or not. This Loki guy really does know how to plan in advance," Tony commented.

Then, alarms began blaring once again, but this time, they were yellow.

"Sir, Mr.Thor is trying to force his way out of the conference room."

"What? No, keep him there. Tell him that he will come out to meet the Invisible Man soon enough,"

Unfortunately, his enhanced senses picked up on the groaning of metal before a loud impact was heard, which should have been obvious to them, considering the sheer strength of Thor.

"He has breached the door, sir." Jarvis helpfully reminded them.

"Don't worry about it. I will bring him here, don't worry, the Invisible Man has told me that he can be trusted implicitly in the current scenario" 

Saying so, he ran out of the lab. Damn, this was so not going how he pictured it to go.

_____xx_____

Manhattan

–Axle Riddle–

What in the fuck?

His mind ran a mile a minute, as he tried to reconcile the reports he was getting. Loki fled? No, that was not the right term. Loki was extracted from the Jet by the use of the Tesseract. 

But who could do that? Loki came to Earth alone and there was no way that any human could perform such a targeted application of the portal properties of the Tesseract, especially since Loki was moving at such high speeds.

He sighed and groaned, as he waited for some reply from the President. Last he had spoken, he had warned POTUS about the impending threat from Loki and how PIerce was hiding everything from him, putting the entire country and potentially, the world in danger.

As a result of that, a member of the Secret Service was stationed in Manhattan, who would relay POTUS' words to him and vice versa. That was days ago and so far, he had not heard anything.

He knew, from SHIELD's live updating database that militaries across the world, major ones anyway, were gearing up for action but he needed to know the President's stance on SHIELD and this tense atmosphere was the perfect time to get his true opinion on it.

Damn, his mind was running in a million different directions. He was much stronger than when the Guy Below attacked and he knew that neither the Chitauri nor Loki were much of a threat, especially once he had confirmation about Loki's illusions but even then, he was going to be hidden and safe, away from Loki and his sceptre so he was not worried about that.

What he was getting anxious about, was that curtain. He was getting excited, afraid, and worried, all at the same time, about the curtain and whether it would be lifted or not.

He absolutely could not live in Manhattan all his life, even though it is a perfectly fine city that was made even better due to his presence in it.

The StarkJet, along with Thor and Romanoff should be here soon. Once that was done, he was immediately going to whisk them away into the subterranean base and then establish contact with POTUS, to tell him that they had alien royalty with them and that Thor was going to help them apprehend Loki, which seemed more and more difficult due to the new abilities that just keep popping up.

Loki most certainly did not have someone or something that could do this in canon. It complicated things though he was sure that doing that again was going to be almost certainly impossible, considering they did not have the oomph required to create a portal, like they did in the movies.

Argh, when will that damned portal open and he will be free?

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