The light was different.
Not the chaos of the Abyss — a kaleidoscope of madness that melted the brain. Not the dead glow of Sanctuary, etched into stone over millions of years. This was the light of a portal — directed, purposeful, carrying me through the fabric of space like an arrow through water.
The Tesseract sang.
I could feel it even from here, from the other side of the universe — an ancient voice calling to its brother. The Mind Stone in the Scepter responded, vibrating in my hand, and for a moment I felt something strange: longing. Not mine — theirs. Six fragments of the primordial light, scattered across the cosmos, forever seeking one another.
Somewhere deep in my mind, a memory surfaced: an image from the scrolls I had stolen in Sanctuary. Six singularities born at the moment of the Big Bang. Six aspects of reality that gained form and will. Space, Time, Mind, Soul, Power, Reality.
Thanos wanted to gather them all.
And I held one in my hand and flew toward the second.
The portal spat me out onto Earth.
My knees struck the concrete. Pain shot through my joints — sharp, earthly, almost pleasant after the endless numbness of space. My lungs burned: the air here was different. Dense, humid, smelling of machine oil, human sweat, and something chemical — ozone? chlorine? — I could not tell. After the sterile emptiness of Sanctuary, it was almost painful.
I straightened, letting my body adapt, and looked around.
An underground complex. High concrete vaults, metal structures, blinking emergency lights. Wires slithered along the walls toward the center of the hall, where something resembling the altar of a mad priest loomed: an entanglement of technologies mortals did not even understand.
And at the heart of it all — the cube.
The Tesseract.
It was smaller than I had imagined. A perfect blue cube, the size of a fist, suspended within a web of wires and energy fields. Waves of power emanated from it — I felt them through the Mind Stone like a blind man feeling sunlight on his face. Warmth. Attraction. Hunger.
The Stone in the Scepter trembled, reaching toward its brother.
Later, I promised it. First — business.
People. There were many people around — in uniform, with weapons, with frightened eyes. They looked at me as one looks at an alien from space. Which, in truth, was not far from reality.
"Sir! Please put down the spear!"
A voice. Sharp, commanding, accustomed to being obeyed. I turned my head and saw a man in black — tall, bald, with an eyepatch and an expression that said: I've seen all kinds of shit, and you're not the strangest.
Nick Fury. Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. The man who would assemble the Avengers.
In the films he had seemed... well, a character. Cool, competent, but still a figure on a screen. Here, in reality, something else radiated from him. Willpower compressed into human form. He stood ten meters from a creature that had just fallen out of an interdimensional portal — and did not flinch.
Impressive.
I allowed myself a smile.
"I come in peace," I said. Loki's voice sounded perfect — velvety, with a hint of condescending amusement. Millennia of the original's practice plus weeks of my own training. "Though I admit, my arrival may have seemed… dramatic."
Fury did not lower his weapon. Behind him stood others in tactical gear, aiming modified rifles at me. Laser sights danced across my chest like fireflies in a mating dance.
Smart people. Useless precautions — but smart.
"Who are you?"
"Loki." I stepped forward, and a dozen barrels shifted toward me. "Of Asgard. And I bring you… a message."
"What message?"
I swept my gaze across the hall. Scientists in white coats frozen at their terminals. Guards ready to fire. And — interesting — two who stood out from the crowd.
One stood by the Tesseract: a gray-haired man with kind eyes and the expression of someone who had just seen confirmation of his mad theory. Erik Selvig. I recognized him from Loki's memory — they had met in New Mexico when Thor first fell to Earth.
The second stood beside Fury. Short, wiry, a bow in his hands. The bow looked like an anachronism in a room full of firearms, yet something in the man's posture said he was more dangerous than any rifle. Clint Barton. Hawkeye.
My future tools, I thought. And immediately corrected myself: No. My future unwilling allies.
The distinction mattered.
"A message about what is coming," I said aloud, returning to my role. "About forces you cannot imagine. About beings for whom your planet is no more than a speck on a map."
"Sounds like a threat," Fury remarked.
"It sounds like the truth. A threat is when I say I will destroy you if I do not get what I want." I took another step. "And I am not saying that."
"Then what are you saying?"
Thanos was watching.
I felt his presence — distant as thunder beyond the horizon, yet real. The Scepter was a bridge between us. The Mind Stone did not transmit words — it transmitted something deeper. Intentions. Emotions. Shades of will.
Right now, the Titan sensed my resolve. My hunger. My hatred for these pitiful mortals who dared stand in my way.
At least — that was what he had to sense.
I summoned memories of Sanctuary. The Other's torture — hours, days, an eternity of pain penetrating to the core. Humiliation before Thanos's throne. And hatred — the true, genuine hatred of the original Loki for Odin, for Thor, for the entire universe that had rejected him.
These emotions were not mine. But they lived in this body, etched into every cell, every nerve. I simply let them rise to the surface.
The Scepter warmed in my hand. Approval? Resonance? It did not matter. Thanos saw what he was meant to see: a broken prince thirsting for vengeance.
And deeper, in that part of me I had learned to hide within the shadows of my own mind…
Deeper was silence. Calculation. A plan.
"I need the Tesseract," I said, returning to the role. "And you will give it to me. Voluntarily or not — the choice is yours."
Fury shook his head.
"I'm afraid that's not in our plans."
"Your plans," I smirked, "do not interest me."
I raised the Scepter.
A moment — and the world exploded.
A blue beam of energy burst from its tip, slamming into the installation behind Fury. Metal groaned, sparks sprayed in a fountain, something ignited. People screamed — some ran for the exit, others dropped to the floor.
The guards opened fire.
Bullets bounced off me like peas off a wall. I did not even slow my step. Lead propelled by gunpowder — children's toys against a body forged by the magic of Asgard and the ice of Jotunheim. One bullet struck my cheek and flattened without leaving a mark. Another hit my chest — I felt a slight push, nothing more.
Mortals, Loki's voice whispered in my mind. Insects.
I suppressed the thought. Not now.
In the chaos, I moved.
The body remembered. Millennia of training embedded in muscle, in sinew, in the very structure of the nervous system. I did not think about movements — I simply let them flow. A strike with the Scepter's shaft — a guard fell clutching a broken arm. A turn, a dodge from a burst of fire — bullets whistled past, one tearing my cloak. A blast of energy — the second guard was hurled into the wall with a crunch.
Alive? the thought flashed.
Most likely, I answered myself. Most likely alive.
But the guards were not my goal.
I scanned the hall through the Mind Stone. Not with my eyes — with something else, the sense I had developed over weeks in Sanctuary. Human minds glowed around me like candles in the dark. Each unique, with its own shade, its own texture.
Fear. Panic. Determination. Anger.
And three minds shone brighter than the rest.
Selvig — by the Tesseract. His consciousness was… strange. Open. Curiosity outweighed fear even now, at the center of chaos. He looked at me not as a threat — but as a phenomenon. A mystery to be solved.
Scientists. The same everywhere.
Barton — beside Fury. His mind was entirely different: sharp, focused like a knife's edge. No fear — only calculation. Distance to target. Angle of fire. Probability of a hit. He saw me not as a god — but as a target.
And Fury himself. His mind… surprised me. Where others were open books — complex, layered — the director of S.H.I.E.L.D. was an abyss. Darkness where something moved. Secrets buried so deeply he himself may have forgotten some of them. Paranoia elevated to an art. And the cold, calculating will of a man who had long decided that the end justifies the means.
Dangerous, I noted. Not as a warrior. As a player.
We were of the same breed — he and I. Manipulators. Liars in pursuit of a higher goal. The difference was scale: he wove intrigues on one planet, I — between worlds.
But Fury was not my first target.
Barton — he was the one I needed. A professional. A dangerous professional. And he had already made his decision.
An arrow flew.
I caught it in the air.
Loki's reflexes — divine reflexes — acted faster than thought. My hand snapped forward, fingers closing around the shaft. The sharp, deadly tip stopped a centimeter from my eye.
Barton was already reaching for the next arrow. His face did not change. No surprise, no fear. Only recalculation: the first shot failed, therefore — the second.
I like this man, I thought.
A pity I would have to break him.
"Impressive," I said aloud. "But insufficient."
And I stepped toward him.
Controlling the Chitauri mind had been simple. Crude. Their consciousness resembled empty clay vessels — I merely poured my will into them, and they filled without resistance. Obedience was natural, almost desired. They had been created for it — biomechanical soldiers bred for submission.
Humans were different.
Barton's mind met me like a fortress.
Not literally — he had no magical protection, no shields built through years of meditation. But he was… complex. Layered. An interweaving of memories, beliefs, traumas, hopes — an entire life compressed into a single whole.
I perceived it as a labyrinth. Endless corridors leading to the core. On the walls — images: a red-haired woman laughing at something. Children — two? three? — running across green grass. The smell of gunpowder and fresh blood. The cold of a sniper's position at dawn.
There were scars — many scars. People he had killed. Missions that had gone wrong. Moments when he made a choice — and the choice proved wrong.
And something bright at the very depth. Faith. Not religious — practical. Faith that his work had meaning. That he protected those who could not protect themselves.
A hero, I realized. A true hero, not from comic books. A man who kills so others may live.
Force my way in? The Mind Stone could. I felt its readiness — hungry, impatient. It wanted this mind. Wanted to devour it, dissolve it into itself, make it part of its endless network.
But I did not want to break him.
Instead of a blow — a touch. Instead of a command — an offer.
I found what made Barton Barton: his loyalty. His desire to protect. And I… redirected it.
You are not the enemy, I whispered to him. Not in words — in images, sensations. I showed him the threat: Thanos on his throne, armies waiting beyond the stars, the snap after which half the universe would turn to ash. I am not the enemy. The enemy is there, in the darkness. And to defeat him, I need your help.
A lie?
Not entirely. A half-truth. The most dangerous kind of deception.
I truly intended to fight Thanos. Just… not as Barton imagined.
Trust me, I continued. For a while. And I will help you protect those you love.
His resistance wavered.
Not broken — wavered. Like a wall where a crack had appeared. I did not press — I simply waited, letting my images seep through the crack, filling the gaps.
And when his will finally yielded…
I did not seize his mind. I joined it to mine.
Barton's eyes grew clouded. The blue glow of the Stone reflected in his pupils — a sign of connection, a seal of control. But it was not a chain binding a slave. More like a thread connecting two partners.
Thin. Almost invisible.
And with one weakness.
I left a loophole. Deliberately. A tiny crack in the fabric of control through which his true self could seep back. A sufficiently strong blow to the head — a physical shock capable of breaking the link — and Barton would awaken. Not immediately. Not fully. But he would awaken.
Romanoff would manage. In the canon she did. And here she would too, because I would make sure of it.
Insurance, I thought. Insurance is always necessary.
"Barton?"
Fury's voice was tense. He saw how his best agent had frozen, how his eyes had changed. He did not understand — but he sensed: something had gone wrong.
The archer straightened. Lowered his bow. Turned to me.
"Sir?"
One word. Calm, businesslike. As if he had waited his entire life for this moment.
Fury drew his pistol.
"I need extraction," I said, ignoring the director. "And him." I nodded toward Selvig.
"Understood."
Barton moved toward the scientist. Fast, confident, like a man who knew exactly what he was doing. Fury fired — but he did not aim at me. At Barton.
My return shot from the Scepter threw the director against the wall. I aimed for the shoulder — not the chest, not the head. He was needed alive. He was needed angry, motivated, ready to assemble a team.
The container fell from his hands, rolling across the floor.
I stepped to it before anyone could react. My fingers closed around the cold metal of the case. Inside — a pulse. The heartbeat of ancient power confined in perfect form.
The Tesseract.
The Mind Stone in the Scepter sang — softly, at the edge of perception. A greeting to a brother it had not seen for eternity. The cube's blue glow intensified, as if answering.
Two of six, I thought as I rose. Thanos will be delighted.
If, of course, I allow him to obtain them.
Selvig did not resist.
When Barton led him to me, the scientist's eyes held a strange expression. Not fear. Not anger. Admiration? Curiosity?
"The Tesseract," he whispered. "You came for it, didn't you? From another world?"
"From many worlds," I replied.
And I touched him with the Scepter.
Selvig's mind opened like a flower to the sun.
It was… unexpected. Where Barton resisted, Selvig almost welcomed the intrusion. His consciousness was different: not a fortress, but a library. Endless shelves of knowledge, theories, hypotheses. He had spent his life seeking answers — and now the answers had come to him.
Show me, I felt his desire. Show me everything.
Tempting. Very tempting.
But I did not show everything. Instead — I gave him a task. To build a portal. To stabilize the connection between the Tesseract and a destination point. To let an army through.
Selvig accepted the task with the joy of a genius given an interesting problem.
And here too I left a loophole.
Deeper than with Barton. In those layers of consciousness where scientific integrity lived, an insatiable desire to understand. Selvig was a scientist to the core — and scientists do not trust solutions they cannot explain.
Sooner or later, part of his mind would begin asking questions. It would seek a way to undo what he had created. And it would find it — because I had already embedded the answer within the structure of his task.
Emergency shutdown, I thought. Every good system must have an emergency shutdown.
"Let's go," I ordered.
We moved toward the exit. Barton led, I followed with the container under my arm, Selvig between us. Somewhere behind us something exploded — my first shot had damaged the installation's reactor, and now it was dying, tearing the complex apart from within.
The corridors were nearly empty — evacuation had begun, people running for the exits. But not all.
Three guards blocked our path. Young — younger than Barton, perhaps younger than I had been in my previous life. Their faces were pale with fear, but their hands did not tremble on their weapons.
Heroes, I thought. Or fools who did not understand what they faced.
Sometimes those are the same.
"Stop!" one shouted. "On the ground! Hands behind your head!"
Barton raised his bow.
"No," I said.
The archer froze. The guards too — they stared at me, and in their eyes was something I did not expect.
Not fear.
Resolve.
They knew they would die. Knew they could not stop me. But they stood — because it was their job. Their duty.
Like that old man in Stuttgart, the thought flashed. An image from a future that had not yet come. An old man who refused to kneel. The same everywhere.
"Step aside," I said. "You do not need to die today."
"Go to hell," one of them replied.
And opened fire.
Bullets clicked against my chest like raindrops on stone. I stood motionless, letting them empty their magazines. Let them see. Let them understand what they faced.
When the last cartridge left the chamber, I still stood. Without a single scratch, without a single drop of blood.
Thanos was watching.
I felt his attention — heavy, oppressive. He waited. Waited for me to do what the real Loki would do. Destroy these mortal insects with a single motion, prove my cruelty, my devotion to the mission.
And if I did not…
If I showed weakness…
The Other would sense it. Ebony Maw would sense it. And then everything I had built — all these weeks of disguise, all these layers of lies — would collapse.
I raised the Scepter.
The first shot — into the chest of the nearest guard.
Blue energy passed through his body armor like wet paper. The man did not even cry out — he simply fell, and the light in his eyes went out before his body touched the floor.
The second shot.
The third.
Three bodies. Three lives. Three people who woke this morning not knowing it would be their last day.
I stepped over them without looking back.
Inside — somewhere deep beneath layers of control and calculation — something trembled. Something human. Or what remained of the human within me.
They were enemies, I told myself. They shot at you. It was self-defense.
A lie. A complete, absolute lie.
They were just people. People doing their jobs. People who perhaps had families, dreams, plans for the future.
And I killed them to preserve my disguise.
The price, I thought. Everything has a price. And I have only begun to pay.
We stepped outside.
Night. The desert — endless, flat, strewn with stars. The air was cold and dry, smelling of wormwood and dust. Somewhere in the distance sirens howled — the complex behind us was collapsing, the Tesseract tearing it apart from within.
A helicopter waited on the landing pad — Barton knew where to find it. A black, predatory silhouette against the starry sky.
I paused for a moment.
Looked up at the constellations, both familiar and alien. Earth's sky. The sky of my world — that first world left somewhere in another reality.
Home, I thought.
But it was not home. It was a battlefield.
Somewhere out there among those stars, Thanos sat upon his throne and smiled. He believed he had gained an obedient puppet. Believed the Scepter was the leash by which he held me.
Somewhere here, on this planet, the Avengers did not yet know they would soon assemble. That a strange alien from space would become the threat forcing them to work together.
And I stood between them.
The God of Lies with a stolen face. A transmigrator playing a game whose rules only he knew. A man who had just killed three to save millions.
Or so I tell myself, I thought. Because the alternative is to admit that I am simply a murderer.
Barton called out to me.
"Sir? We need to leave."
I nodded.
I boarded the helicopter. The Tesseract lay on my knees — a blue cube pulsing with power capable of tearing space apart. The Scepter in my hand. Two Infinity Stones, two fragments of the primordial light.
The helicopter lifted into the air.
The complex behind us exploded — a pillar of fire and smoke rising toward the stars. Project Pegasus ceased to exist.
The first step completed.
Ahead — Stuttgart. New York. The Avengers.
Ahead — a war I intended to lose.
But to lose in such a way as to win.
Three corpses remained in the corridor.
I remembered their faces.