Compared to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s wall of hardware, Li Feng's method for probing the Cube looked primitive—almost casual. He let his mind unfurl, brushed the Tesseract's casing with bare fingertips, and listened to the rhythm of the energy pulsing inside.
People lied. Numbers didn't. But to pull numbers from the Cube, S.H.I.E.L.D. needed a small city's worth of gear. After their initial jolt at Li Feng's hands-on approach, the researchers swarmed like a pit crew, wheeling instruments into place around him.
Li Feng glanced up at the camera in the corner. "Those toys still work once we're in the mirror dimension?"
Fury's voice crackled over the speakers. "You said you needed a sandbox that couldn't touch the real world. I brought pre-powered rigs. They can ride in with you."
Li Feng scratched his head. "And you? Once we're in there, you can't see a thing. Don't you want a front-row seat to a once-in-a-century show? I promise you'll be safe." He tipped his chin at the hazmat suits. "And you can ditch the raincoats. See? Regular clothes."
Regular, my ass, Fury thought. He'd already seen those "regular" clothes ping a sensor. Aloud, he chuckled, smooth and warning all at once. "Relax. I've got a way to watch what happens inside."
Li Feng rolled his eyes. Sure you do. If S.H.I.E.L.D. could monitor the mirror dimension in real time, the Ancient One would be at their door in minutes demanding answers.
The researchers finished their checks and nodded. Ready.
Li Feng opened the mirror dimension.
The air folded. Crystal walls bloomed around them. The hazmat team gawked like tourists, hands skimming the facets, momentarily more fascinated by the impossible room than the artifact they'd come to study.
The Cube floated over Li Feng's palm. With his free hand he tapped the wall—quick, precise motions. The floor shuddered. Their snug lab unspooled from five hundred square feet to more than two thousand. Jaws dropped.
Li Feng, meanwhile, frowned at the Cube. Yes, he could snap his fingers and make the mirror space expand, but only because the Tesseract carried him. Strip it away, and he'd be back to the basics—ten extra square feet would be a miracle. He fixed the feel of that last weave in his mind—every tug, every resonance—so one day, without the Cube, he could still spread a net of space with a flick. Maybe even cage real space itself.
Time slid. His mental reserves thinned to threads. He set the Tesseract down reluctantly, collapsed the mirror dimension, and grabbed his water like it was lightning in a bottle, throwing it back in one go. The researchers stared.
He lowered the bottle and looked past them at the Cube, lips tight. Damn shame. All he could touch was the shell—and only for short bursts. The Stone itself? Off-limits. Brush the Space Stone bare and he wouldn't just end up like Chi You, hacked apart—he'd be diced into cosmic confetti.
Later, he told himself. When I'm stronger. Then we talk about walking out with the Cube.
He sat cross-legged and dropped into meditation.
In the next room, Fury watched the feed: a sorcerer breathing slow, a team uploading energy profiles into a waiting database. When Li Feng opened the mirror space again, the monitors blinked to emptiness. Fury rubbed the bridge of his nose. If the sorcerer hadn't insisted on his sandbox, he'd have stormed the room with a tac team—purely for science, of course. And if the mirror dimension really was as safe as it looked, he wanted one for S.H.I.E.L.D.
Then the feed repopulated: Li Feng and the team back in real space, the Cube still on the table. Fury let out a breath he hadn't noticed he was holding. At least the man didn't steal it.
They repeated the cycle—mirror, probe, notes; mirror, probe, notes—until Li Feng's focus went glassy and his body felt wrung out. He knew the line where push turned to snap; he had no plans to cross it. He stood, satisfied, gave the camera a lazy wave, and cut a portal into the air.
Gone.
Fury glared at the empty chair. This was a black-site bunker, not the neighbor's kitchen. Was it too much to ask a level-ten threat to use the front door? He swallowed the curses. There were only so many he could say out loud without an HR memo.
Stark Tower Rooftop
Banner stood alone in the wind, wrapped in the warding cloak, a "small" satchel slung over his back that was anything but small inside. He hugged a stack of fresh purchases and kept glancing over his shoulder like Ross might drop out of the clouds.
A portal irised open. Relief washed over him. He hustled across the roof. "I thought you'd forgotten me up here freezing."
Li Feng clocked the tension in his shoulders and grinned. "Not used to pedestrians ignoring you?"
"No," Banner said, voice soft even when nervous. "I like it. I'm just not sure what happens if Hulk comes out. If people keep ignoring me then… I don't want to imagine it."
"Maybe." Li Feng opened another portal and gestured. "I think you can keep him in check. And the cloak's magic, not indestructible. If you pop, it's going to look like you're wearing decorative streamers."
Banner tugged the hem, weighing fabric versus fury, then stepped through into the RV. He slid off the satchel and handed it over. "Books you asked for. And Stark's card."
Li Feng closed the portal and eyed the bag. "Books and card are mine. The bag's payment—for tutoring me in nuclear physics." He paused. "If you'd rather cash, keep the card."
Banner looked down at the satchel. He hesitated. "Back in New York, you did save—"
Li Feng waved him off. "Different situation. That was saving everyone. This is you teaching me. And—" he gestured around the cabin, hinting at the bug-hunt ahead—"working."
He flopped onto the sofa like a magnanimous boss. "If you're on my payroll, I'm not the kind that skimps. If it's light, say so—we'll adjust."
Banner thought, then smiled. "Like you said—I think I'll like the bag." He cracked his knuckles and started unloading books. "I don't know what you already understand, so I grabbed everything on fusion—and some nuclear fundamentals."
The stream of volumes looked endless, an avalanche of spines and equations. Li Feng swallowed, dabbed at nonexistent sweat, and pointed at the growing tower—already close to a yard high. "I… have to read all of those?"
Banner nodded.
Li Feng's limbs went weak. The room dimmed. I'm a study-lightweight, he thought bleakly. By the time I finish these, my headstone will have had three lawn crews.
He sagged into the cushions, froth of despair at the corners of his mouth. But the path was chosen. If he wanted a fusion-grade fireball, the formulas came first. He pinched the ridge above his lip, hauled himself back from melodrama, and breathed.
Books later.
Cube first.
Li Feng drew up a study plan, slept hard for one night, then turned up at S.H.I.E.L.D.'s underground site with dry rations and luggage—tent, bedroll, the works. He looked ready to lock himself in with the Tesseract for five straight days.
Fury, who hadn't left the base yet, stared. A tent? A sleeping bag? Planning to turn my black site into a motel? Should I bill him for lodging?
Five days later, the man who'd walked in brimming with magic and iron will staggered out raccoon-eyed, legs trembling. And that was with him sipping the Fountain of Youth like bottled water whenever his vitality flagged.
The researchers had it worse. Ordinary flesh, no mana buffer—they could only watch with envy as Li Feng cat-napped three or four hours a night while they pulled full all-nighters: mapping the Cube, parsing his meditation patterns, logging mirror-dimension parameters, annotating every space-bending gesture.
By day three they were glassy-eyed, mumbling at oscilloscopes. Fury finally snapped and ordered soldiers to sedate them in shifts before someone literally worked to death. Otherwise Li Feng would stroll out whistling while S.H.I.E.L.D. processed a stack of benefits claims—and lawsuits about treating staff like draft animals.
After surrendering the Cube and portaling back to the RV, Li Feng collapsed onto his king bed and slept twenty-four hours straight, clawing his way back from a very unmagical death by overwork.
He woke ready to celebrate his sharpened space magic—right until Banner smiled, set a half-yard-high stack of physics texts on the table, and said, "Since you're rested, let's start nuclear physics."
For one treacherous heartbeat Li Feng considered clubbing Banner, then debated whether to fling Hulk to another planet for some remodeling… or just bury the big guy in the Mariana Trench.
He swallowed it. Banner's brain was liquid gold; knowledge was power, and power was wealth. You didn't waste treasure.
So he sat down and learned. Grimly.
By the end of day one, Banner privately contemplated paving the Mariana Trench with Li Feng. The diagnosis was precise: worst student he'd ever had. Not one of many. The worst. If you subtracted Li Feng's freakish mental stamina—the only thing letting him memorize bullet points quickly—Banner estimated that by the time the sorcerer could spin up a fusion-grade fireball, Earth's resources would be gone and humanity would be renting space in another galaxy.
A few mornings later, Li Feng shuffled to the table with dead eyes and a boiled egg, mumbling yesterday's lesson under his breath:
"Nuclear fusion—the process by which light nuclei combine into heavier nuclei, releasing tremendous energy. Because it occurs at the nuclear level, fusion is not a chemical change—"
The phone rang. He stared at the wall unit until it wouldn't be ignored, picked up, and kept reciting around a mouthful of egg.
On the other end, Tony Stark blinked at the handset, then at the caller ID. Wrong number? Nope. "Austin, buddy," he said, baffled and amused, "age is a privilege and I know you've got potions for days, but even sorcerers should pace their private life. Look at me. Plenty of time in the sheets, never fried my brain. Career first. You secure the career and then you party."
"Get lost." Li Feng forced the last bite down. "This is for my career."
"Sure," Tony said dryly. "Anyway—when can you swing by? OR's ready. Just waiting on your magic juice."
Stark's getting the shrapnel out today? Which meant… a day off from fusion theory. Li Feng scratched his head, feeling the giddy relief of a kid on the last day before summer break. "Sit tight. I'm on my way."
He hung up, snatched a cruller and a sesame flatbread. "Kreacher, bring the green gourd."
The house-elf popped in with cloak, satchel, and a jade-green gourd.
Banner jogged back from a loop around the RV, sweat steaming in the desert air. "Where to?"
"Stark's," Li Feng said, slinging the satchel. "He's getting the micro-shrapnel out. I'll keep the reaper off him. If luck turns, I'll nudge him back." He tilted his head. "Bored here? Come along. Good way to dodge the sun."
Banner did want people around—he wasn't a convict; isolation in a sea of sand wasn't therapy. Humans were social; stay alone long enough and your mind reinvented itself in unhelpful ways. But… "I'm worried Hulk might, you know, interrupt the surgery."
"If you're that worried, I'll peel your spirit-body out to watch from a safe corner," Li Feng offered.
Banner's mouth twitched. He understood now—spirit body wasn't soul—but the idea of his body napping while a ghostly him wandered the halls made his skin crawl. If Li Feng slipped? Goodbye, world.
"I'll stay here and watch a movie," he said, gentle but firm.
Li Feng cocked an eyebrow, then popped a portal and hooked Banner by the elbow anyway. "Relax. If something breaks, it's not my house. Stark's loaded. He probably wants an excuse to level the place and build a bigger trophy room for his suits."
They stepped into Stark's residence as Tony, at the bar, caught that last line. If the surgeons and a not-quite-friend Bruce Banner hadn't been present, he'd have thrown his glass at Li Feng's head. Decorum, sadly, was a thing.
"Maybe next time I just demolish your RV," Tony said through a smile that didn't reach his eyes. He smoothed his lapel and offered Banner a handshake. "Dr. Banner—Bruce. Long time."
"Just Bruce is fine," Banner said, shy smile back in place. He glanced past Tony at two men in suits. "Those are your surgeons?"
Tony cut a look at Li Feng—now rummaging behind the bar for beer, settling, disappointed, on a bottle of whiskey—and steered Bruce toward the corridor. "Military referrals. Dr. Cliff Owen. And the steadiest hands in the business—Dr. Stephen Strange."
Li Feng took a pull and sprayed whiskey in a golden arc, staring at the clean-cut surgeon. Young, smooth-skinned, impossibly steady.
The name hit like a hammer. Stephen Strange.
Wong hadn't appeared; fine. But this? If Strange got a whiff of the mystic arts now—if he and Stark clicked and the man's path bent off its ordained line—would the Ancient One peel Li Feng like an orange?
A chill crawled up his spine. He could practically feel her gaze from just out of sight—cool, precise, unamused.