Chapter One
Loki was in the middle of explaining the basics of quantum mechanics when a spy slid into the room. She was dressed like a business executive in a pressed pencil skirt, wicked red lipstick, and power heels that likely doubled as deadly weapons. It was a killer disguise and a disguise for a killer. Loki knew a lie and a predator when he saw one.
She sat down in the back row, eyes tracking him as he paced in front of the power point. He supposed it was a good thing that she was posing as an executive instead of a student. If she was a student, this could be the set up for an assassination, which would be annoying as he liked his current persona and would hate to have it implicated in the death of a spy. On the other hand, he didn’t like executives, not even fake ones, and his tolerance for them was lower than usual at the moment.
Just last week a man from Hammer Tech tried to poach him from the University. Usually, Loki handled poaching attempts from executives by accepting a dinner invitation, ordering the most expensive thing on the menu, and turning them down with backhanded insults. But after the guy said Hammer for the thirty-ninth time Loki allowed himself to unleash some repressed rage and dumped expensive wine down the executives shirt front and called his penis “the little hammer” in front of the entire restaurant.
If her ability to craft a disguise is any indicator of her proficiency as a spy, she knows he always accepts a dinner invite from business executives and has only once poured wine on one. If her goal was to get him to talk one-on-one, she found the perfect disguise to pull it off.
Despite his hyperawareness of the presence of Ms. Spy, he wrapped up class at his usual pace, dismissing the students with a quick reminder to do the assigned reading, a cruel three chapters from the textbook. Laura, one of his more brilliant students and an subtle brownnoser, came over and struck up a discussion about next week’s material. Loki let the discussion carry on at a natural pace and soon as Laura left the room, Ms. Spy stalked over, heels click-clacking down the linoleum.
“Mr. Laufey, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” She said, offering her hand, her smile the perfect mix of faux politeness, greed, and excitement. Loki gripped her hand and was surprised to find it free of the calluses he’d expect from handling weapons. Out of professional curiosity, she wondered how she managed that.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you too Ms.…”
“Rushman.”
“Well, what can I do for you Ms. Rushman?” He asked.
“I am employed at Stark industries, which, as you might know, is currently working on broadening the field of renewable energy. On behalf of the company, I’d like to hire you to do some contractor work.”
Loki’s eyebrow ticked up. He hadn’t expected that. “I have a PhD in Astrophysics, Ms. Rushman.” And Medicine, and History, not that she’d know that. “I cannot imagine I have much to offer Stark Industries in the field of renewable energy.”
“You’d be surprised.” She said and hiked up her purse, unzipping it with her perfectly lacquered fingernails.
He watched her idly. He had the same bag at home. It was a vintage Gucci and big enough to store all his usual stuff, plus his knifes, without an expansion spell. Ms. Rushman had great taste.
She pulled out a folder and handed it to him.
“What’s this?” He asked.
“Open it and see.”
Loki had never been one to forgo curiosity. He flipped open the folder and read the data once, and then again, his heart rate rising. Phantom tendrils of ice shivered across his skin. He recalled power spiking in his blood, a universe unfolding beneath his hands. Suddenly he was standing on the playing field of an entirely new game.
“Ms. Rushman, where did you get this?” He asked, letting the tremble spread through his voice. She’d think it was the excitement of a scientist, and in a way it was.
“Where we got it isn’t the issue. We want you to use an algorithm to trace its radiation.”
“You lost it.” Loki said, unthinkingly, still feeling the vibration of winter in his bones.
Ms. Rushman’s eyes narrowed minutely, a motion too small and too fast for a human to follow. But Loki was no human and had been on the tail end of that look more times than would be feasible to count. Suspicion.
“How did Stark manage to loose something generating this much raw energy?” He added.
“Well, you know how rich men are with their toys.”
“Hardly, I live off a Professors salary.”
She smiled and he knew he was back in the clear as much as he could be with someone whose job was to be suspicious. “So, will you do it?”
Loki could taste the acceptance on his lips but swallowed it down. Appearing too eager would re-rouse suspicion. “I am not the primer scientist when it comes to gamma radiation, Ms. Rushman. Why have you come to me?”
“Last year you hosted a talk on a theoretical algorithm for tracing certain elements through space. We have reason to believe that you completed the work. We want you to adapt that algorithm to our technology.”
Ymir’s balls, I hope its not off world.
“What is it, this thing that I’m tracing?” He asked.
She smiled. “Sign the contract in the folder and I’ll release the rest of the pertinent information later.”
Loki pulled out the contract, read it, and asked for a pen.
-----
Loki knew Ms. Rushman, and the woman behind the veneer, were in a hurry. He was in a hurry himself. However, as far as he knew (and he knew a lot) most Professors couldn’t summon clothes and weapons to their person, so playing human meant going home to get an overnight bag.
Ms. Rushman walked him to the gates of Columbia and gave him the run down. He was to go home and get his bag and come to the address on the paper in the folder (as if anyone couldn’t just Google Stark Tower). After that he would be debriefed on the object he was being hired to help find. He hated being ordered around, but in this case he would wether it. He'd be pulling the strings soon enough.
Loki gave her a nod at the gates before striding down the streets of New York. His skin buzzed with the urge to teleport, but he could feel eyes on him, other spies following him down the street. He might have signed a Stark contract, but he knew this was bigger than one billionaire. With the artifact in play, it had to be. He was guessing it was SHEILD, but he wouldn’t bet his Professors salary on it. He didn’t know enough about the current state of human intelligence agencies to be sure. He’d been lax in that respect, which was something he’d remedy as soon as possible.
Regardless of who had fucked up, if the artifact was active again he had to find it. The last time it was active, Loki had been in no place to hear about it much less stop it. He’d traveled off-world right before World War II to deal with his grief on a planet where he could wrack up a body count. He'd been pit fighting for seven Midgardian years by the time the news of the artifacts stirrings reached him. By the time he returned the cube had fallen back asleep and vanished from his sight.
Naively, he hoped it would stay that way for a while, but things moved fast on Midgard. Humans died too fast and too easy for anything else. This time he would not succumb to foolish hope. He would not rest until he captured the artifact. Humans could not be trusted with it. He would not let his life on Midgard be threatened by anyone, this planet was his to do with as he wished, he would not allow any other meddlers onto his game board.
A few minutes later, he stalked into the lobby of his building, his reflection bouncing off mirrors and tinted windows. Lucy Gomez, the doorwoman, smiled when she saw him and he remembered fondly the good old days, when humans shook at the sight of his anger and presented him with offerings.
“Mr. Laufey, how are you this evening?”
Loki’s responding smile hid a grit of teeth as he jammed the elevator button. Humans were always in a rush but Midgardian technology was so slow. “I’m doing good Lucy. I’m just coming back to grab some things before a late night at the office.”
“You work too much.” She said.
“And you worry too much.” He said, scoffing internally. His job at Columbia was hardly work, all of his ground breaking research on the subject of Astrophysics never saw the light of day. He only revealed enough to the humans to make sure they knew he was a Genius without arousing suspicion as to the extent of his knowledge. Plus, as a child his intellect had be largely ignored in favor of his brothers strength. To have mortals complement him for it now was no hardship.
She shook her head at him as he hopped in the elevator, muttering something in Spanish about always being in such a rush. He decided to benevolently ignore the irony as the doors sluggishly closed.
Loki’s apartment was on the tenth floor at the end of the hall. The door was an unremarkable brown with a bronze 107 stamped onto it. There was no buzz of technology in the hallway, which meant the people hiring him hadn’t installed cameras, so he didn’t bother to use a key. He pressed his hand to the wood, right over the numbering, and the door swung open, warm air sweeping over his skin in greeting.
He stepped inside and the space unfurled around him, stone walls on either side sweeping upward, hung with pictures and housing deep-set windows that peered into the forests of his pocket dimension. Above him, the ceiling soared, dragon headed support beams snarling and laughing, crisscrossed with leafy vines and hanging baskets full of wild flowers.
“I’m home.” He greeted, feeling the house wake up around him, the familiar magic chasing away the lingering cold and some of the tension in his shoulders.
He headed deeper into the space, stepping lightly across the overlapping rugs that were spread across the floor and past various chairs and couches that were clustered around the room. Several bookshelves dotted the space, crammed with centuries worth of literature.
On opposite side of the great hall, an wooden arch carved with serpents was embedded in the stone. Usually it led into a hallway but today it led directly to his bedroom. His bag was already laying on his bed, ready to be filled.
“Thank you.” He said, heading over the dresser to grab several changes of casual clothes and then heading into his closet for several suits. “Lokakot, raise all your defenses please. Also, call an Uber for me.”
The house’s magic hummed against his skin in response. He walked to the bag and tucked his clothes in, wincing as he folded the suits, which he just knew would wrinkle. Then he moved to the area that comprised his workspace, a massive desk bordered by cases full of magic grimoires, weapons, and his favorite artifacts.
He grabbed a calf-skin bound journal that was spelled so that only he could write in it and read it, and sent it flying into his bag with a flick of the wrist. Next he reached to pull down his spear from its wall mount. As soon as he brushed it with the tips of his fingers it transformed into a bracelet in the shape of a golden snake swallowing its own tail. He looped it around his wrist and reached for the hilt of Gram, the truth-blade, which became another oroborus in the form of a ring.
Arming himself like this was centering. As a child he had worn weapons in the way of Asgard, holstering his spear across his back to conform to delicate Aesir notions of masculinity. But as he grew older, and more himself, and spread out across the universe, he stopped bothering to garishly present his weapons and began to disguise them. There was little more satisfying than felling a man with jewelry, aside from killing them with a pair of pumps, that is.
With that in mind he summoned his green stilettos with knife sharp heels from the closet with one hand and his bag with the other. After tucking the shoes carefully inside he slung the bag over his shoulder. As he headed back through the archway and into the main space, Lokakot murmured goodbye and goodluck and goodwill.
He thanked her. He had the feeling that he could use as much of all three as he could get.