I watched Natasha take the Scepter. Her hands were steady—far steadier than mine.
As soon as the Mind Stone left my grip, the voices in my head vanished, replaced by a sudden, crushing migraine. My knees finally gave up the ghost, and I slid down the wall of the stairwell access, sitting on the cold concrete of the roof.
"Dr. Selvig," Natasha said, her voice sharp. She was shaking the older man who was currently trying to crawl away from the edge. "Erik, look at me!"
Selvig blinked, his eyes clearing. The blue tint was gone. "Natasha? The... the Tesseract. It's showing me... truth. It's beautiful."
"It's messy," she corrected. "How do we shut it down?"
" The Scepter," Selvig stammered, pointing at the glowing device in her hand. "The scepter... if the Tesseract is the engine, the Scepter is the key. It can cut the power. I built in a failsafe."
I closed my eyes, listening to the comms chatter in my ear. I had stolen the earpiece from the Chitauri chariot pilot's rig—don't ask how it worked, the System just auto-translated the frequency to the Avengers' channel.
"I got a nuke coming in hot," Tony's voice crackled. "It's going to blow in less than a minute."
My eyes snapped open. The Nuke.
This was the pivot point. The moment the MCU went from "superhero romp" to "existential PTSD."
"Tony," Cap's voice was strained. "You know that's a one-way trip."
"Save the rest," Tony said. "I'm taking it through the hole."
I looked up. High above, a streak of white smoke was arcing toward the tower. Iron Man intercepted it, latching onto the underbelly of the missile. He banked hard, rocketing straight up toward the portal.
Natasha looked at me, then up at Tony. She had the Scepter poised near the Tesseract generator.
"I can close it!" she yelled into her comms.
"Hold on!" Steve shouted. "Tony's still in there!"
I struggled to my feet. This was the script. This was canon. Tony goes in, destroys the command ship, falls out, Hulk catches him. Everyone goes for Shawarma.
But the System flared red.
[NARRATIVE ANOMALY DETECTED] [The Timeline has been destabilized by your interaction with Loki.] [Calculated Probability of Tony Stark's return: 48%]
"Forty-eight?" I whispered, horror washing over me. "It should be 100."
In the original timeline, Tony barely made it back. But I had delayed Loki. I had changed the timing of the Hulk's arrival. The variables had shifted. If Tony ran out of power three seconds earlier, the portal would close on his neck.
I scrambled toward the generator.
"Wait!" I yelled at Natasha.
She looked at me, eyes wide. "He's going to die if I don't close it, the radiation—"
"Don't close it yet!" I screamed, stumbling over a loose cable. "Wait for the flash! You have to wait for the flash!"
Natasha hesitated. It was a split-second choice. Trust the professional spy instinct to mitigate damage, or trust the random guy in a hoodie who predicted the Scepter's failsafe.
Up in the sky, Tony disappeared into the black void of space.
One second. Two seconds.
Silence. Even the Chitauri seemed to pause.
Then, space exploded.
Through the portal, a silent, expanding ring of orange fire bloomed. The command ship disintegrated.
"Close it!" Steve yelled.
"NO!" I lunged forward, grabbing Natasha's wrist. She flinched, almost dropping the Scepter. "Not yet! He's not out!"
"He's gone, Atlas!" she snapped, trying to shake me off. "The shockwave is coming through!"
"Look!" I pointed.
A tiny speck fell out of the fire. A dead suit of armor, tumbling through the vacuum.
"Now!" I gasped, letting go of her arm. "Do it now!"
Natasha didn't argue. She plunged the Scepter into the energy barrier.
ZHOOM.
The beam of pure blue energy shot into the Tesseract. The machine screamed, the feedback loop shattering the connection.
Above us, the portal began to collapse. It shrank rapidly, chasing the falling Iron Man.
He was falling too fast. The portal snapped shut just as he cleared the threshold, clipping the heels of his boots.
He was plummeting toward the streets.
"He's not slowing down," Thor's voice boomed over the comms.
"Is he...?" Steve trailed off.
I held my breath. In the movie, Hulk catches him. But Hulk was on the ground floor, and I had sent him to the roof earlier to fight Loki.
Oh no.
"Hulk!" I yelled, running to the edge of the balcony. "Catch him!"
There was no roar. Hulk was still smashing the Chitauri who had dropped dead when the mothership blew. He was distracted.
[CRITICAL INTERVENTION REQUIRED] [Cost: ALL REMAINING STAMINA + "Plot Armor" Charge] [Action: PROBABILITY NUDGE]
I didn't have telekinesis. I couldn't fly. But I could edit the margins.
I focused on the falling suit. I focused on the wind currents. I focused on the drag coefficient.
Nudge.
A sudden, violent gust of updraft—caused by the thermal collapse of the portal—slammed into the Iron Man suit. It didn't stop him, but it pushed him. It pushed him ten feet to the west.
Straight into the path of a swinging construction crane cable.
The cable snagged the suit's arm. It snapped instantly under the weight, but it slowed him down. It turned a terminal velocity impact into a survivable crash.
Tony swung wildly, smashing through a billboard and skidding along the side of the building before crashing onto the lower balcony—the same one I had landed on earlier.
Silence descended on New York.
The Chitauri were all dead, dropping like puppets with cut strings.
I slumped against the railing, my vision blurring.
[MISSION COMPLETE: The Battle of New York] [Performance Rating: S] [Timeline Deviation: 12%] [Reward: "S.H.I.E.L.D. Consultant" Status Unlocked.]
Natasha was already moving, rappelling down to the balcony to check on Tony. I just sat there, listening to the sirens start up in the distance.
I had done it. I had survived Chapter 1.
A shadow fell over me.
I looked up. Thor landed on the roof, Mjolnir in hand. He looked majestic, untouched by the grime of war. He looked at Selvig, then at the Tesseract, and finally at me.
"You," Thor boomed. "The Man of Spiders said you fought bravely."
"Man of Spiders?" I blinked, my brain sluggish. "Oh. Spiderman? No, wait, he's in Queens. You mean Hawkeye?"
"The archer," Thor corrected. "He says you fly like a drunken goat, but you have the sight of Heimdall."
I laughed. It was a weak, breathless sound. "Drunken goat. I'll put that on my resume."
Thor offered me a hand. It was the size of a dinner plate.
"Come, friend Atlas," the God of Thunder said. "Stark lives. The beast has roared him awake. We have finished the fight. Now..." He grinned. "Stark speaks of a... 'Shawarma'?"
I took his hand. "Yeah. Shawarma sounds good."
I stood up, and for the first time since I woke up in that dumpster, the System was silent. No warnings. No red text.
Just the sunrise over a broken city, and the realization that the hard part wasn't surviving the war.
The hard part was going to be explaining all of this to Nick Fury.