Chapter Text
Merlin stepped out of the helicopter behind agent Hill and director Fury, wondering whether the director had his coat tailor made to billow dramatically.
“How bad is it?” The director asked agent Coulson, raising his voice to be heard over the sound of the helicopter above.
“That’s the problem, sir. We don’t know,” Coulson responded in kind.
“Clearly bad enough that we were called in,” Merlin muttered under his breath, low enough that the sound of the helicopter drowned him out.
Or so he thought.
Coulson glanced his way, the corners of his mouth twitching into the briefest of smirks, before his unflappable mask dropped back down, and he was all professionalism once again.
They were ushered into an elevator, and continued down into the depths of the facility.
“Doctor Selvig read an energy surge from the Tesseract four hours ago,” Coulson told them as they stepped out into a bustling hallway filled with scaffolding and metal pipes.
“NASA didn't authorize Selvig to test phase,” Fury sounded nearly accusatory, not that the agent took notice.
“He wasn't testing it,” Coulson said. “He wasn't even in the room. Spontaneous event.”
Merlin frowned thoughtfully.
“It just turned itself on?” Agent Hill wondered.
“What are the energy levels now?” Fury asked.
“Climbing,” Coulson answered. “When Selvig couldn't shut it down, we ordered evac.”
“How long to get everyone out?”
“Campus should be clear in the next half hour.”
“Do better,” Fury told him, and Coulson nodded, turning back the way they had come.
Merlin rolled his eyes behind Fury’s back.
“Sir, evacuation may be futile,” Hill informed him as they walked down a long curved staircase.
“We should tell them to go back to sleep?” Fury asked sarcastically.
Agent Hill ignored the jab. “If we can't control the Tesseract's energy, there may not be a minimum safe distance.”
The directer ignored that. “I need you to make sure the Phase Two prototypes are shipped out,” he ordered.
The agent was even more confused now. “Sir, is that really a priority right now?”
Merlin just wondered what on earth ‘Phase Two’ was.
Fury paused with one foot on the bottom step of another, smaller, staircase and spun to look at her. “Until such a time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.” He turned to begin climbing it and said, “Clear out the tech below. Every piece of Phase Two on a truck and gone.”
“Yes sir,” agent Hill said mildly, then, to two agents she passed between, “With me.”
“You didn’t have to chew her out like that you know,” Merlin said wryly.
“Agent Hill is a fine Agent,” Fury said. “But she needs to learn that there is a time and a place for questioning authority.”
Merlin sighed and shook his head, knowing arguing would get them nowhere.
“Talk to me, doctor,” Fury said as they stepped into the lab.
“Director,” doctor Selvig said, stepping down from where he was working on a glowy machine of some sort and walking over to meet them. Merlin couldn’t make heads nor tails of the thing.
Merlin paused, staring at the machine. He felt like he was going blind and deaf while being buried alive under the sheer force of the magical energy pouring off of it. He had to forcefully tear his attention away from it to be able to listen to the conversation next to him.
“Is there anything we know for certain?” Fury asked.
“The Tesseract is misbehaving,” Selvig said just as another scientist poked said object with a literal metal stick, only to be repelled by the energy practically pouring off of it.
“Is that supposed to be funny?” Fury demanded.
“No, it's not funny at all,” Selvig responded. “The Tesseract is not only active, she's... behaving.” The doctor seemed to have run out of explanations.
Merlin squinted at it. It was powerful- more powerful than he’d felt from anything in centuries. What the hell was it?
Fury and Selvig were still talking, moving deeper into the lab with Merlin trailing along behind. “I assume you pulled the plug,” Fury remarked.
The doctor’s response was grim. “She's an energy source. If we turn off the power, she turns it back on. If she reaches peak level…”
Fury interrupted him, “We've prepared for this doctor. Harnessing energy from space.”
“She’s not just from space,” Merlin murmured, drawing Fury’s attention. It felt like everything ,everywhere, all at once, grass, trees, planets, solar systems, galaxies, and the space beyond, all concentrated into a cube small enough to carry around in the bottom of a backpack.
Doctor Selvig glanced at him briefly, but soldiered on with his explanation, “But we don't have the harness. Our calculations are far from complete. Now she's throwing off interference, radiation. Nothing harmful, low levels of gamma radiation.”
Fury looked back at Selvig and murmured, “That can be harmful.” Probably remembering the recent incidents with doctor Banner. “Where's Barton?”
Doctor Selvig scoffed. “The Hawk?” He gestured back with his thumb. “Up in his nest, as usual.”
Merlin squinted in the indicated direction and saw a figure sitting up on some bright yellow scaffolding near the ceiling of the building, watching the room with his feet dangling over the edge.
Fury tapped into the comms. “Agent Barton, report.”
The man stood up and hurried over to a cable hung from the ceiling, rappelling down to meet them. They said their ‘hello’s, Fury introducing Merlin as, “my assistant,” and not elaborating.
Merlin shook agent Barton’s hand and smiled enthusiastically, “A pleasure, Agent.”
Barton nodded and raised his eyebrows. “You got a name, friend?”
Merlin pursed his lips. He hadn’t actually bothered making any official identity for himself this time around, and even if he had, Hawkeye would probably be able to find the holes in his story. Or if not him, the Black Widow would.
Agent Barton eyebrows climbed higher at Merlin’s pause.
“Marvin,” Merlin decided.
Barton glanced between him and Fury, but seeing as the director wasn’t concerned with Merlin’s obvious lie, Barton seemed to decide not to worry himself over it too much either.
“No chance that’s actually your real name, is it?” He asked jokingly.
Merlin smirked, but didn’t respond.
“I gave you this mission so you could keep a close eye on things,” Fury told Barton as they walked through the facility.
“Well I see better from a distance,” Barton told him, irritated at the scolding no doubt.
“Are you seeing anything that might set this thing off?” Fury asked.
Merlin winced as the cube sent out another wave of magic that grated against his own.
A blond woman interrupted them, leaning around her computer to tell Selvig, “Doctor, It's spiking again.”
“No one's come or gone,” Agent Barton reported as they continued over to take a look at the tesseract. “Selvig's clean. No contacts, no I.M.s. If there was any tampering, sir, it wasn't at this end.” He crossed his arms as he looked down at the cube.
Fury looked up sharply. “At this end?”
Barton looked up for a moment. “Yeah, the cube is a doorway to space right?” He shrugged. “Doors open from both sides.”
Merlin’s eyes widened as he felt an even stronger pulse of power from the cube. “Director,” he warned.
A moment later, the cube flashed and hummed, then it pulsed again, shaking the building as it rumbled like thunder. It built up in strength, and Merlin didn’t waste a second, grabbing the director and Barton by their jacket collars and dragging them back as the energy around the tesseract started swirling around like a whirlpool.
All of a sudden, the energy collapsed into the tesseract, then, it exploded forward in a concentrated beam that hit an invisible wall on the other side of the room, and started tearing open a hole. The hole stretched open like a portal to GOD KNOWS WHAT, getting nearly twenty feet tall, then it collapsed, sending out a shockwave of energy that rushed over everyone in the room, leaving them all nearly blind for a moment. Where the portal once stood, was something covered in blue flames that curled up off of it to caress the ceiling before dying down, leaving whatever it was to smoke quietly.
A few agents with guns that Merlin didn’t know the names of stalked forward, as the shape resolved itself into a man with a glowing spear, who stood and raised his head with a menacing smile.