Chapter 102
[Classified Location], Sinaloa Warehouse, Mexico
November 2011
Loki promptly decided that the desert was his least favorite of all the Midgardian ecosystems he’d encountered this far.
It was the sand, mostly, and the wind. He could tell the sun and heat would be unbearable in the summer, though now, verging on winter, there was only a mild bite to the air this evening. Mild, that is, to him. He supposed it could be more bothersome to the others, given that they were mortals, not Jotnar.
He brushed a layer of sand off of his arms and curled his lips.
“We go in thirty seconds,” Rogers said over their comms. “Loki, your disguise will hold up to cameras?”
“Yes,” he said, biting back impatience. They’d been over this already.
“Everything looks normal,” Bruce said. “On scans. They’re winding down for the night.”
“Perfect.”
Loki glanced to his left and right. The Avengers had decided on greater subtlety than their last assault, the one on the Hydra base in Europe. They’d be hijacking a supply truck.
“Truck’s coming,” Bruce said.
“Everyone ready,” Rogers ordered.
Loki drew an illusion about himself of an olive-skinned man, shorter than himself and stouter, with wider-set eyes and much shorter hair.
“Creepy,” Clint muttered next to him.
Loki sighed. “You work with a man who turns into an eight-foot-tall ‘rage monster,’ as your files so charmingly phrased it, yet you say I am the creepy one.”
“Yeah, Gamma is just frightening,” Clint said seriously, sticking to their call signs.
“Hey,” Bruce protested.
“I wanna be frightening,” Stark interjected.
Clint snorted. “You’re too obnoxious.”
“Ouch,” Stark said. Loki couldn’t see him; he was hiding on the other side of a sand dune across the dirt road, given that his suit was far from subtle. “You wound me.”
“You’ll survive,” Rogers cut in, amusement in his voice. “Stow it, guys, time to go.”
Loki felt the truck coming. Flexed his fingers. Rogers hadn’t liked this part of the plan; it crossed some kind of moral line in his head, but he had eventually weighed efficiency over the questionable nature of Loki’s proposal, for which Loki respected him. Though he had perhaps led Rogers to believe it would not harm the driver at all, which was not… precisely… true. He wouldn’t feel pain. But neither would he–or she, Loki supposed–experience no side effects whatsoever.
“Magician, you ready?” Rogers asked.
“Indeed,” Loki said with a sharp smile. It felt good to be doing something of use once more. Or at least engaging.
He walked out into the center of the road and waited.
The truck rattled forward and slowed when it was perhaps fifty meters away. Loki used a combination of illusion and acting to appear stumbling, weak, sunburned, and desperate. Playing to the driver’s compassion.
Sure enough, the truck began to creep forward. Stopped again only forty feet from Loki.
“Help,” he called out, in a rasping, weak voice. “Please… Water…”
The driver climbed out, gun at the ready but not aimed at Loki, and began to approach. “Hola,” he called. Another language–Spanish, of the Mexican variant. Translated into Allspeak as “What are you doing out here?”
Too easy, Loki thought.
“Using you,” he said with a grin, and leaned on his Allspeak so the man would hear it as his native language. “Let us into your truck.” He pressed power into his voice, trust me, you want to help us, it’s in your best interest.
The man blinked. “Uh. Okay, sure. How many…”
His voice trailed off as Loki signaled the rest of the team. They emerged from the dunes and scrub grass around the road and converged on the truck.
The driver stood there, turned eagerly to Loki. He wasn’t very old, even by Midgardian standards. Face round and unlined.
Perhaps I pushed somewhat harder than was necessary.
“Drive us to the warehouse,” Loki ordered. “Inform no one of our presence.”
“Got it,” the kid said, and sprang eagerly back into the cab of his truck.
Loki climbed into the back with the rest of his team.
“Do I want to know how you did that?” Rogers asked.
“I did not reach into his mind, if that is what you are asking,” Loki said. “I simply… persuaded him.”
Maria shook her head.
“They didn’t train us for this,” Clint muttered.
“But it’s damn useful,” Natasha pointed out, and nodded to Loki. He could barely see her in the dim storage container on the back of the truck, but her expression seemed… approving.
Not surprising, that the Black Widow did not disagree with his tactics.
Rogers was still frowning, but he said no more beyond a brief command to not converse. Loki settled back against the rattling wall of the truck and tried to ignore the uncomfortably stale air in the compartment, the sand that chafed already inside his boots and the cuffs of his shirt.
He was decidedly not fond of the desert.
The ride in the stale, shaking truck stretched long enough to make Loki’s bones ache from the rattling and his mind numb from boredom. He was sorely tempted to cast an illusion of snakes or spiders or piling sand to cause some mild chaos, but given that he was skating on thin ice, he resisted the urge and resolved to perhaps work some mischief once they returned to the Tower. It had been too long since he indulged the aspect of his personality that had gained him the title “Trickster”.
Perhaps he could even do so with Darcy’s assistance.
Loki was momentarily pleased by the prospect, and then furious at himself for being pleased. Not only would this attachment be a weakness to be exploited, but it was seven kinds of foolish: he had millenia remaining in his lifespan, barring any unfortunate accidents, while Midgardians had mere decades. And simply using a Midgardian woman to satisfy physical pleasures was base and crude in a way Loki preferred never to behave. Such action was much more Thor’s prerogative than his own. Perhaps Thor was even engaged to Sif now, or another maiden appropriately Asgardian.
There are the apples of Idunn, he couldn’t help thinking. Perhaps–
But no. That was idiotic. Very, very idiotic. Loki clenched his right hand. He would not allow himself to grow so attached to any of these mortals that he would offer them one of the Apples.
Love was a weakness; he’d learned that lesson too well already.
Loki couldn’t quite resolve to break himself away from Darcy entirely–she had grown closest to him by far–but he did decide, firmly, that he would not allow their… friendship… to develop any further.
Really, he should leave now, before he became too fond of any of these mortals. They would die in the blink of an eye while he remained unchanged. It was like to a fruit fly gaining sentience and befriending a human for the few days of its life.
But he was genuinely interested, perhaps even invested, in the Avengers’ crusade and in Midgard’s development. This realm was trembling on the edge of entering the Nine Realms as a force to be considered in its own right, a sovereign species, young and ambitious. The humans were encountering offrealm entities for the first time since they’d gained the capacity to search for comprehension, and truly enhanced humans were beginning to play a more significant role in Midgard’s politics and culture. It was a time of flux; when Loki reached out into Yggdrasil he could feel the infinite possibilities spooling out into the future, though he lacked the gift of walking between them as his mother–Frigga–did. And he was at its center.
I shall stay, then, he determined.
Rogers’ posture changed. Loki refocused on the interior of the transport vehicle. “Almost there,” Rogers said in a hushed voice. “Everyone set? You know your targets?”
A round of affirmatives went through the cabin. Loki made sure he knew precisely which illusions to cast that would allow himself, Rogers, and Clint to walk into the compound unobstructed. Stark and Wilson were providing air support, cruising the perimeter to make sure no one made it off the facility and coordinate with UN forces or Mexican authorities should any arrive. Barnes, Natasha, and Hill would begin hitting the sleeping quarters and the main dining area, where satellite imaging had revealed most of the cartel’s employees congregated at this time of the evening. Their distraction would allow Loki’s team to infiltrate the building and verify the size and location of the drug stores, which would determine their next move.
The truck rolled to a halt.
Loki heard shouting in the language of this country; it took only a simple working to translate. “The driver is speaking with the guard at the gate,” he murmured into his earpiece. “Bantering, primarily.” He paused. “We have been waved through.”
The truck began to pull forward.
“Aren’t you useful,” Clint drawled.
Loki gave Clint his blandest smile.
The truck stopped again. Its engine powered off. Rogers made a chopping motion across his throat that Loki took to mean no talking and gestured at the back of the truck.
Loki carefully hid the sound they made shifting into formation and cast an illusion hiding the group from notice.
The doors were hauled open.
The Avengers flinched. Loki shook his head. They had no faith in his seidr yet.
Cartel members, wearing sweat-stained, sandy, layered cotton clothing with weapons that even Loki could tell were poor quality slung over their backs, began climbing into the truck. One by one, his teammates relaxed fractionally as they accepted that no one would notice them and slipped out of the truck around the edges of the opening.
As Loki passed the driver, he murmured, “Go find a vehicle, drive to the nearest town, get some rest, and forget you ever saw us,” with a little more power in his voice. The kid nodded as though his head were on a hinge and took off at a jog around the corner of the truck. Hopefully sleeping would mitigate the effects of Loki’s persuasion, which he knew from experience could leave his targets with headaches, temporary aimlessness or forgetfulness, and on two memorable occasions, a tendency to speak in tongues they did not understand. Those had been extreme situations, however, and he did not expect the young Sinaloa man to suffer from sudden fluency in Sirren.
They congregated behind a long, low building used for storing vehicles.
“Strike team, you ready?” Rogers asked.
Hill glanced at Barnes and Natasha, who nodded. “Ready,” she said.
“Once the first grenade hits, we’ll wait thirty seconds and then go,” Steve said, looking at Loki and Clint for confirmation. “Exit plan still to be determined.”
“Bruce, have you heard from the UN troops?” Clint asked.
The comms crackled, and Bruce’s voice joined back in. “-hear you–interference–stationed five miles out–orders–”
Rogers frowned. “Interference…”
“Hydra’s protecting their asset,” Natasha said grimly. “Probably gave the Sinaloa a little help with their jamming tech. Nothing the cartels use can match what we have. We should operate on the assumption that they can hear us, too. Ironside, Falcon, do you copy?”
Nothing.
“They are obviously outside communications range,” Loki said. “We should proceed as quickly as possible, before they begin to wonder what is wrong and come looking.”
“Okay.” Rogers grimaced. “I don’t like it, but we can make this work. Assume exit plan A until further notice.”
“Copy that.” Hill looked around. She’d been given informal command over the strike team for the sake of precision. “Move it out.”
Natasha, Barnes, and Hill disappeared around the edge of the garage. Loki pulled his working back from them. Focused on Clint and Rogers and making sure the three of them would appear as members of the cartel. It took time to develop new, unique faces, but Loki simply borrowed the appearances of several cartel members he’d seen near the truck and added a red armband to each.
“I’m going to cast the illusion,” he said quietly. “We will be unfamiliar to one another, but for red armbands on the left biceps. Use that as identification should we be separated, or should you forget which face belongs to your teammate and which to our opponents.”
“And we have to stay near you,” Clint checked, though they’d gone over it on the jet. “Or the illusions will fade.”
Not quite true, but Loki refused to allow them to know his full capacity as of yet, so he nodded. “There is a certain range depended on what else I am doing while maintaining the illusion, yes. It is best if you stay within twenty feet of me, or within my sight.”
“Cool,” Clint said, bouncing on his toes. “Go for it, Magic Man.”
“You will not nickname me,” Loki said flatly, and cast the illusion.
Seconds later, the first explosion sent shivers through the building before them.
Loki took a deep breath in through his nose and out through his mouth. It felt good to cycle all the air in his lungs.
Rogers and Clint, looking for all the world like members of the cartel to any non-mage, readied themselves.
“Go,” Rogers said, and they broke into a run.