Hands grasped Loki's shoulders and he started, whipping around, but it was only Bishop. Her eyes were worried as she looked at him, her hand going to his face. "Loki," she murmured, her gaze sweeping every inch of his features. "Loki, are you okay?"

No, I'm not okay.

But he couldn't say that.

Slowly, Loki rose to his feet, Bishop helping him gain his balance. His head felt like it had been split in half, like Thor had just knocked him upside the head with a lightning-imbued Mjolnir. He staggered slightly as he shook his head, trying to clear the pain and haze from it. He needed to think, to think clearly and sharply.

Tekahionwake and Mordo were standing in the middle of the street, staring in disgust at the spot where the portal had been. Loki could only assume it had vanished, cutting off their path to the Dark Elves. And with Tidal gone, there was no way to track them. Thor and Hailstohm stood nearby, conversing in low tones. Loki wished sardonically that Odin had thought to marry them together, for they looked like they got on fabulously. Instantly, he felt a twinge of regret. Could I really wish that on Thor? After all, he does love Jane. I cannot believe he'd ever wish that on me.

The other agent and Romanoff were checking the corpses of the Dark Elves, ensuring they were all dead. Sam Wilson, his wings retracted back into the pack on his back, strode along beside them. DiNozzo was currently crouched beside Agent Sniper, looking concerned but not sure what to do as she brushed aside his helping hand. Loki remembered that she had once been Special Agent Kate Todd, Tony's former partner.

Jane stepped out of the building, hurrying across the pavement. "Thor!" she exclaimed, embracing him. Thor folded her in his arms and held her close.

"Where's Gibbs?" Loki asked Bishop in a low voice. "And McGee and Rogers? Why is Sniper here? And Sam Wilson? And Jane Foster? And who is the other mortal?"

"Gibbs, McGee, and Rogers were following up a lead," Bishop told him. "Sniper and Agent Torres have offered us their help. Torres was working undercover in HYDRA as part of a joint NCIS-SHIELD operation. And Jane and Sam are also lending their help." She knit her brows. "What's been happening with you?"

Loki gave her a quick rundown on their breaking Tidal and, accidently, Drax out of prison, their run in with Gamora and subsequent team up with her, Rocket, and Groot, all of whom were now waiting in the ship on Jotunheim. "Now what?" Bishop asked when he finished. "Will you go after them again?"

"I swore an oath to my mother," Loki said quietly. "So yes."

"Uh, everyone?" Sam called, from where he stood beside the building Loki had blown a hole into. "There are people down here."

Swiftly, Loki strode over to him, just barely beating Tekahionwake there. The jogger was gazing down into the basement, brow furrowed above his goggles. "Looks like someone had a meth lab down here."

"Did we bust Breaking Bad?" DiNozzo asked, running over and peering in. "Look out, Walter White!"

"That's not a meth lab," Torres said quietly as he joined them. He glanced at Sniper. "This is one of SHIELD's. INTEL, more specifically. The lab Jane picked up with her dark matter scanner-thingy."

The others gathered around, Jane calling back excitedly to Darcy and Ian, who were lurking in the doorway of the other building, to grab her equipment. Loki frowned at the two bodies sprawled on the floor of the lab, moaning from the effects of the blast.

Wait a moment...he recognized one of them. No, both of them.

The recognition seemed to hit Thor at the same moment, for he exclaimed. "Selvig? And, uh...the SHIELD agent whose name escapes me?"

"Jasper Sitwell," Romanoff supplied, her face darkening. "What is he doing here?"

Thor leapt effortlessly down into the basement, striding over to Selvig. "Selvig? Selvig, are you all right?"

"Thor?" Selvig asked, sounding in a daze. "Is that you, Thor?"

"Yes, it is me, Selvig," Thor said reassuringly. "Jane is here, also. Let me get you out of here." Carefully, Thor slung the stunned astrophysicist over his shoulder and jumped out of the basement, setting him down on the pavement as Jane knelt beside him. Hailstohm, meanwhile, had descended into the basement and very ungently hauled Sitwell out of the wreckage, dumping him unceremoniously on the pavement a bit away from Selvig.

"What side is he on?" DiNozzo asked, glancing at the dazed Sitwell.

"Not ours," Torres said firmly. "If he was, he wouldn't be in that lab. It's too closely affiliated with INTEL for him not to be connected with HYDRA."

"And what about Selvig?" Romanoff asked, her gaze drifting to the scientist.

"He is not HYDRA!" Jane snapped. "Don't even think it, redhead."

Romanoff shot her a dirty look. "We found him in an INTEL lab, Foster. What else shall we assume? I doubt he's been mind-controlled twice. That would just be coincidence."

"They took me," Selvig mumbled. "Out of the psychiatric ward of...I don't remember where. Had me working on this dark matter distillation for some experiment. They never said what."

"Hayden Jacklin," Sniper muttered. "The Dark Soldier. This is how they created him."

Darcy and Ian hurried toward them, loaded down with some of Jane's equipment. Thor's girlfriend sprang to her feet and took one of the instruments from Darcy before turning and studying the rubble leading down into the underground lab. "I need to get down there."

Thor hurried over to her side and escorted Jane down into the lab, Darcy and Ian following carefully behind them.

"Dark matter," Loki mused. "Any connection to the Dark Elves?"

"We'll see," Tekahionwake said grimly, and she and Mordo jumped down into the basement.

Meanwhile, Selvig's eyes had widened on hearing Loki speak. "I'd hoped you were dead!" he exclaimed, his face falling and fear sparking in his eyes. "I thought for sure Asgard would have executed you."

"Sorry to disappoint," Loki drawled. "Didn't know my rehabilitation would upset so many."

"How long were you in that lab?" DiNozzo asked curiously.

Selvig waved his hand. "A year? Two? I don't know. It's been a while. I lose track of time so easily now."

"That explains why he doesn't know about you," DiNozzo said to Loki. "He missed your debut as an Avenger."

"He's an Avenger?" Selvig repeated, and Loki thought for a second that the astrophysicist would have a stroke at the news. "Don't they have some sort of prohibition against those with previous felonies or something?"

"If they did, Agent Romanoff and my brother, at the very least, would be barred from participating," Loki said dryly. "Superhero teams can't be choosers when it comes to end of the world crises, I have found. If they could, it wouldn't be such a crisis, would it?"

Sitwell tried to sit up and Romanoff drove her knee into her back, forcing him back into the asphalt. "Where do you think you're going, Sitwell?" she asked.

The agent groaned. "If you think I'll talk, you're wrong."

"Hey!" Loki heard, and snapped his head over to see Gibbs, McGee, and Rogers striding toward them. They were dirtied, dried blood and scrapes marking their faces, and their clothes were torn and covered in grime. "What happened here?"

"Battle with Dark Elves," Loki told Gibbs grimly, gesturing to the bodies. "And we found an INTEL lab, dealing with dark matter. Selvig and this Jasper Sitwell –" he nudged the SHIELD agent with his boot "– were inside. We were about to get some answers."

"Good," Rogers said. "We have some questions of our own for Sitwell."

"I'll never talk," Sitwell swore.

DiNozzo glanced over at Sam. "Hey, Wilson, wanna take him for a flight? Maybe shake the cat that's got his tongue?"

"My pleasure," Sam said, snapping his wings out. Romanoff stood and he grabbed Sitwell's collar, rocketing up into the air. Loki could hear Sitwell's scream begin and then fade away as they shot up into the sky.

"How long do you think it will take?" Kate asked curiously.

"Not long," Loki assured her. "Flying with my brother is bad enough, and I'm a lot stronger than that measly mortal."

Turned out Loki was right, for within minutes Sam came flying back toward them, dropping Sitwell when he wasn't that far off the ground. He was gasping and trembling, his suit coat drenched in sweat. "I'll talk, I'll talk," he almost choked.

"What's with the lab?" Bishop demanded.

"To cull dark matter for enhancement and weapons purposes," Sitwell said, panting. "Op-Op-Operation Blackout."

McGee crouched down in front of Sitwell. "Tell us about Zola's algorithm, the one for use in Project Insight."

"It targets people, okay?" the agent said. "Anyone who could be a threat. The algorithm studies every aspect of someone's life and determines if they'll be a threat or not."

"Like who?" Rogers demanded.

"You!" Sitwell exclaimed. "Leroy Jethro Gibbs, Loki Laufeyson, Stephen Strange, Bruce Banner, Ziva David, the kid who stole the blueprints from NASA, a math professor at CalSci, New York City's police commissioner, a cocky trial scientist – you name it! Why do you think it's called Project Insight?"

"What's at Bradendale Mall?" Gibbs asked, after a second of stunned silence.

This time, Sitwell let out a deranged laugh. "The last satellite," he spat. "The one that will make the Dark Soldier completely operational. It'll be launching soon. And this should make you feel special, Agent McGee – you're the one who made it all possible."

[----]

Tidal's body was wrapped carefully in an old tarp and, by Mordo creating a portal, sent into space for burial. Loki and Thor knew nothing about the burial rites of the Light Elves, but it seemed better than burying him in the suffocating earth of Midgard, or leaving him in the basement lab.

Sitwell was handcuffed and, due to another portal, deposited in Cell 45XA, where Tidal had once sat in solitary. Loki got grim amusement from the fact that they had just sent Jasper Sitwell to the high security wing of the Kyln. Tekahionwake and Mordo resolved to use a third portal to rejoin Quill and the others on the Milano and continue to hunt the Dark Elves from there.

Loki was torn when Tekahionwake asked if he was going to join them. He wanted to go, needed to go, but after hearing what had happened since he left Midgard, he couldn't bring himself to go. His team, the only family he had left at this point besides Thor, needed him here, to bring down the Dark Soldier and Operation Blackout.

"I'm staying," he told the sorcerer. "The Dark Elves will come to me anyway, eventually. I have what they want. I'll get to kill them, in the end. But for now, I'm needed here." Despite the twinge of guilt he had about stepping to the sidelines in pursuing his mother's killer, he somehow knew Frigga would like this better. Some sort of feeling told him so.

Hailstohm had decided to stay, as well. "It's time Midgard saw us as more than monsters," she had told the sorcerers, flicking a glance at Loki as she did so. "And that means we have to give them a reason to see us as heroes."

Loki chose to interpret that as she still just really wanting to kill Halo.

Thor, on the other hand, had opted to join the sorcerers and hunt the Dark Elves. Loki wished his brother luck and watched as they left through a portal. For a moment, he glimpsed the inside of Quill's ship, Rocket's "It's about damn time" drifting through before it closed.

Beside Loki, DiNozzo jumped. "Was that – was that a raccoon?"

"No," Loki said, shaking his head. "It's a rabbit."

DiNozzo gave him a strange look. "Rabbits don't talk."

Loki furrowed his brow in confusion. "Do raccoons talk, then?"

"Actually, no," DiNozzo admitted.

"Then what was the point?"

DiNozzo was forced to concede that there hadn't been one.

While Jane, Darcy, and Ian finished analyzing the lab, Romanoff and McGee were talking with Selvig about his time there. Sam was doing reconnaissance while Gibbs, Rogers, Bishop, and Torres discussed the layout of the mall and where they needed to go to destroy the satellite before it could get launched. DiNozzo headed over to join them and that left Loki and Sniper, standing in the alleyway alone.

The first thing out of Sniper's mouth was "What the hell?"

"Excuse me?" Loki asked, stiffening.

"You kept throwing me off out there," Sniper said, gesturing. "During the battle."

"Me?" Loki demanded. "You were the one who kept messing with my aim, preventing me from killing those monsters. It was your fault, Sniper."

"It's Kate," Sniper said stiffly. "Kate Todd. And I know who you are, Loki Laufeyson. I've been in your head for the past week." She scowled at him. "You know, I've just been wanting to say that you are some piece of work, the way you treated your family. And that poor girl you're with now? Ellie Bishop has no idea what she's getting herself into. She should have shot you, when she had the chance back in the squad room. She'll live to regret she didn't, for you'll drag her down with you when you fall again." She paused. "And you will fall again. Monsters like you always do."

Stung, Loki drew back. "And how are you any better, Caitlyn Todd?" he hissed. "You attempted to assassinate the people you saw as your own family, and killed many others as well. You worked for the enemy, and you knew it. You're just as despicable as me."

The two glared at each other until Gibbs shouted over to them. Reluctantly, Loki tore his gaze away from Sniper – Kate – and strode toward the others, the former NCIS agent trailing after him. Anger and fear roiled inside him, uncertainty warring with his convictions over his reformed nature.

This isn't over, he seethed silently at Kate. I'll show you, I'll show you you're wrong.

A disbelieving laugh sounded in his head. He almost jumped – he'd forgotten she could see his thoughts. "Oh, I can't wait. Get me a front row ticket to your meltdown."

/**/

What did you think? Of finding the lab, of interrogating Sitwell, of Kate's remarks to Loki? Do you know who else Sitwell was referring to there? Any guesses?

Skylar Wittenborn