moonshadows

“Loki!”

It was a woman’s voice, barely out of her second decade, and not one he recognized. The self-exiled prince of Asgard continued strolling down the sidewalk as if it had never happened. Perhaps it had been part of a conversation he hadn’t witnessed the rest of. Certainly, no one would be trying to get his attention by calling his name – or at least, no one he cared to associate with while not dressed in his Asgardian best and hip-deep in some nefarious plot.

“Loki!”

Nerves taut now, he kept walking without the slightest flinch of hesitation to prove he’d heard her. If he gave no reaction, maybe she’d give up. Footsteps, approaching rapidly from behind, swiftly killed that hope.

“Loki!” A young woman, Darcy’s age, slowed to fall into step with him.

“I’m afraid you have mistaken me for someone else,” he said in a chilly tone. Beneath his calm expression, iron will restrained the growing seeds of panic. He really didn’t want his alias to be compromised, not after all the effort he’d gone through to establish it, and he absolutely did not want to be responsible, even by association, for SHIELD having to cover up any leakage this fool might cause.

“No.” She grinned up at him, smugly pleased. “You’re Loki of Asgard, and you’re in danger.”

“Your sense of subtlety leaves much to be desired,” he muttered, the hand closest to her already holding a small knife, the shape concealed by the pocket of his trousers. If he killed her, would it damage the unspoken agreement he had with Fury? Perhaps if he confessed as soon as possible…

She shrugged, auburn hair bouncing slightly. “Yeah, well, you’re not exactly easy to get a hold of.”

Loki was beginning to resign himself to having been somehow identified by someone who was neither an employee of SHIELD, nor going to be dissuaded. “If I were who you claim me to be,” he said carefully, “you would be taking a great risk in confronting me like this.”

“I’m not the one at risk,” she proclaimed. “SHIELD doesn’t even know I exist. But you…they know who you are. They know where you live. And they’ve got an agent spying on you.”

The smile he lavished on her would not have fooled Darcy for a moment. “And you feel comfortable discussing this in public, on the sidewalk, where any passer-by could be ears for another?”

“I’m sure you know a more private place,” she told him with smug assurance.

The magic wrapped around her, around them, erasing them from eyes and ears. “Indeed I do.”

The summoning circle on his terrace was protected from observation coming from any direction save overhead. A flick of two fingers activated the wards as he stepped out of them. When his guest tried to follow, she discovered she couldn’t force her limbs to move.

“Yes,” he purred as he shed wool for leather and metal, donning his ‘thwarted evil overlord’ persona along with his armor. “This is much better. Now then, you are not one of SHIELD’s little minions.”

She snorted, hiding fear beneath bravado. “As if. Your girlfriend is, though.”

The scepter materialized at his silent command, and he caressed her cheek with the curved blade of it. “You say this as if it were not something I’ve known from the beginning.”

The bravado cracked. “If you knew, then why…” The magic squeezed her throat shut gently.

“Ah-ah, it is no longer your place to ask the questions. Who are you?”

“Skye,” she whispered.

“How did you find me?”

“I’m a hacker.” Her made-up eyes were wide and trembling.

He let that pass; the labyrinthine corridors of magic were his stomping grounds, but the maze of Midgardian internet was a mystery he did not care to explore further than he had to, not with other, more pressing concerns weighing on him. “Have you told anyone else?”

“No.” Then, “I work alone.”

The energy of the Tesseract came at his call, enveloping the head of the scepter with tiny bolts of blue lightning, flowing along the curve of the blade to seep into her skin. Skye shuddered as the energy integrated itself into her own, as his will overrode hers, as her eyes tingled with an electric overlay of sapphire. Then she relaxed, awaiting his command.

“You’re intelligent,” he murmured, “but not clever. It would have gotten you into trouble someday even if you had been wise enough to avoid me.”

“I have a van,” she volunteered.

Loki smiled, the same expression he’d worn when the crowd in Stuttgart had knelt before him. “Excellent.”

When Loki suddenly appeared by Darcy’s cubicle, she didn’t say a word. In a practiced motion, she grabbed a pen and brought it to her lips while tilting her head towards the ceiling, to all appearances gnawing the implement while contemplating something. When none of her co-workers reacted, she muttered, “What’s up?”

“I need you to send a message to Fury,” Loki’s projection said in a voice only she would hear.

Slowly, a step at a time, hiding each action by sandwiching it between flipping through several other windows, she opened an unassuming box with no title and a single, blinking cursor. “Go.”

“There is a level seven package awaiting pickup. Driver suggested.”

“It’s a vehicle?” she murmured without looking.

“It’s inside a van, but the van itself might be valuable.”

Typing. Window-shuffling. “What’s in the package?”

Loki’s projection scowled. “A highly-intrusive pest. With proper education in when and how to approach a supervillain’s secret identity, or if kept away from the streets, she might be a useful asset rather than a murder statistic waiting to happen.” He sighed. “A young woman, early twenties, bound wrists to ankles, gagged, blindfolded, and knocked unconscious. She has not been physically harmed, nor emotionally past moderate terror. I used magic to put her to sleep.”

Darcy swallowed a laugh. “Address?”

He gave it; she typed it. Minutes passed before a response appeared in the plain text box.

“He’s sending someone out to pick it up. We still on for karaoke night this Friday?”

“I’m looking forward to it,” he said, favoring her with a smile.

When she blinked, he was gone.