"Stay close," Captain America ordered, his shield up as he scanned the skyline. "And keep your head down. What's your name, son?"
"Atlas," I said, the name slipping out before I could think of a fake one. It was the gamer tag I'd used for years. "Just Atlas."
"Okay, Atlas. We need to get these civilians into the subway. Can you move?"
I looked down at my legs. They were shaking, but the System interface was pulsing with a soft, reassuring blue light in the corner of my vision.
[PASSIVE EFFECT ACTIVE: Adrenaline Junkie] [Fear is suppressed by 40%. Cognitive functions heightened.]
"I can move," I said, surprised by how steady my voice sounded.
We moved. And let me tell you, running through a warzone with a Super Soldier is a humbling experience. Rogers didn't run; he flowed. Every step he took was calculated. He swatted away plasma bolts like they were annoying flies.
Me? I was just trying not to vomit.
The noise was deafening. The Chitauri screeches sounded like metal grinding on bone. We rounded a corner onto 42nd Street, and the chaos multiplied. A bus was overturned, burning. A squad of Chitauri ground troops—five of them—were pinning down a group of NYPD officers behind a squad car.
"Get down," Rogers hissed, pulling me behind a concrete planter.
He was assessing the tactical situation. I could see the gears turning in his head. He was going to throw the shield, bank it off the lamppost, and take out two, then charge the rest.
But I saw something he didn't.
My vision glitched. The world turned into a wireframe grid for a split second. A red exclamation mark appeared over a parked hot dog cart about thirty feet away from the aliens.
[PLOT ARMOR INTERVENTION AVAILABLE] [Type: Environmental Hazard] [Cost: 5 Dignity Points]
Dignity points? What the hell is a dignity point?
I didn't have time to ask. The Chitauri were priming a grenade.
"Cap, the cart!" I yelled, pointing.
Rogers didn't hesitate. He trusted the shout. He didn't throw his shield at the aliens; he hurled it with terrifying force at the base of the hot dog cart.
The shield struck the propane tank underneath just as a stray Chitauri bolt—which the System had helpfully highlighted with a trajectory line—whizzed past it.
BOOM.
The explosion was massive. A cloud of mustard, ketchup, and shrapnel engulfed the aliens. The force of the blast knocked the Chitauri flat, their armor smoking.
Rogers caught his shield on the rebound, looking stunned. "How did you know that tank was leaking?"
"I... I smelled the gas?" I improvised. Lie level: Amateur.
Rogers nodded, impressed. "Good nose. Let's go."
We sprinted forward to check on the cops. One of them, a sergeant with a bleeding forehead, looked up at Cap with wide eyes.
"Captain America? I thought you were a myth."
"I get that a lot," Steve said, helping the man up. "Get your men to the Grand Central station basement. Go!"
As the cops scrambled away, a shadow fell over us. A repulsor whine screamed overhead, and Iron Man—the Mark VII armor, gleaming red and gold—landed with a heavy thud beside us.
"Cap," Tony Stark's voice filtered through the helmet speaker, laced with stress. "Review. The barrier is pure energy. Can't break it. And Loki's running a darker version of the Tesseract. It's a party up there."
The faceplate slid up. Tony Stark looked exhausted. Then, his eyes flicked to me.
"Who's the kid? Junior Avenger? Did we lower the recruitment age?"
"Civilian," Cap said shortly. "He's got good situational awareness. Helped me clear the street."
Tony raised an eyebrow. "Civilian in a hoodie. Right. Kid, get to shelter. The grown-ups are working."
I bristled. I knew this Tony. This was The Avengers Tony—ego-driven, defensive, and terrified of what he was seeing in space.
"The portal," I blurted out.
Tony paused, looking back at me. "What?"
The System screen popped up again.
[DIALOGUE OPTION DETECTED] [Option A: Remain Silent (Safety guaranteed)] [Option B: Reveal Future Knowledge (High Risk / High Reward)]
I chose B. If I wanted to be the Main Character, I had to be useful.
"The portal," I said, pointing up at the tear in the sky. "It's sustained by the scepter. Selvig built in a failsafe. You can't blow it up from the outside, Stark. You have to close it from the roof."
Tony froze. The snark vanished from his face. "Selvig... how do you know about Selvig? How do you know about the scepter?"
"I read a lot," I said, my heart hammering against my ribs. "And I know that Loki is a diva. He wants an audience. He's right there at Stark Tower. If you want to stop the flow, you need to wake Selvig up. Hit him on the head. Hard."
Tony stared at me for a long second. The HUD inside his suit was probably running facial recognition, scanning databases, finding nothing but my empty, fabricated history.
"Cap," Tony said slowly, never taking his eyes off me. "Keep him close. If he's right, he's a genius. If he's wrong, or if he's working for Reindeer Games..."
"I've got him," Steve said, his hand landing heavily on my shoulder. It felt less like a comfort and more like a restraint.
[RELATIONSHIP UPDATE] [Tony Stark: Suspicion (LVL 10)] [Steve Rogers: Protective/Wary (LVL 5)]
"Great," I muttered. "Now I'm a suspect."
"Incoming!" Steve roared.
We all looked up. A Leviathan was coming down low, scraping the sides of the buildings, shedding Chitauri soldiers like fleas. One of them landed directly on top of a nearby taxi, weapon raised.
Tony blasted it, but three more dropped. Cap engaged one in melee.
I was left alone with the third one.
It was seven feet tall, smelling of rot and void-space. It snarled, raising a spear that glowed with blue energy.
I scrambled back, tripping over a curb. Again with the tripping.
[COMBAT PROTOCOL INITIATED] [User has no combat skills.] [User has no weapons.] [ACTIVATING: "ACCIDENTAL MASTERY"]
The alien lunged.
I didn't dodge. I sneezed.
A violent, dust-induced sneeze that jerked my entire body forward. My head butted into the alien's solar plexus just as it thrust the spear. The impact knocked the wind out of the creature. It stumbled back, stepping on a loose manhole cover that— thank you, System —flipped up like a cartoon rake.
The heavy iron cover smacked the alien directly in the chin with a bone-shattering crunch. The creature fell backward, its spear flying out of its hand.
The spear spun in the air. I threw my hand up to protect my face.
The spear landed perfectly in my grip.
I stood there, blinking, holding an alien energy weapon that was humming with power. The alien was unconscious on the ground, knocked out by a sewer grate.
Tony Stark, who had just finished blasting his targets, hovered mid-air, watching me.
"Okay," Tony said, his voice flat. "Who exactly are you?"
I looked at the weapon in my hand, then at the sky, then at the two greatest heroes on Earth staring at me.
"I'm just a guy having a really weird Tuesday," I said.
[SYSTEM ALERT] [Objective Complete: Impress the Avengers.] [Reward: Beginner's Luck (Passive) has been upgraded to: "The Protagonist's Aura".] [Warning: The timeline is shifting. Thanos has turned his gaze toward Earth.]
A chill that had nothing to do with the wind swept through me.
Thanos.
I had barely survived a foot soldier, and the Mad Titan was already looking my way?
"We need to move," I said, gripping the alien spear tighter. "Thor is going to need help at the Chrysler Building."
Cap frowned. "Thor? How do you know—"
"Less talking, more saving the world!" I yelled, starting to run.
To my shock, Captain America followed.
I was leading the Avengers. This was going to go horribly, horribly wrong.