Chapter Text
Loki stood in his prison cell, glass walls on every side, and reflected that it wasn’t the worst place he had ever been kept. They weren’t currently actively torturing him, which was a plus. He would have appreciated a place to sit down, though.
With slow, long-legged strides, he slowly walked around the perimeter of his cell, eyes flickering around. He could see at least three security cameras, small black orbs that vaguely resembled pupil-less eyes. Quickly performing some mental arithmetic, he deduced that there was a small blind spot right next to one of the left-most walls. It was also apparent that this cell had not been built for him. Whispers reached him that it was built for the Hulk; in other words, it could withstand vast amounts of strength, but he would probably be able to pick the lock, the great green beast not having the greatest record of intelligence or manual dexterity. It was also surrounded by a metallic walkway, where a flickering hologram screen provided the controls that would drop it from the sky. How helpful that S.H.I.E.L.D. had provided him with an escape pod.
He was still musing over the information Agent Bob McGraw of Hydra had told him. In some ways the information didn’t matter- he merely needed to mentally replace one morally dubious paramilitary government espionage organisation with another. In others, however, the information mattered very much. S.H.I.E.L.D., as the brainchild of Nick Fury, had the intention to protect and save the world with the Avengers, and so would be working broadly in Loki’s favour. Within that wider organisation, however, was Hydra, whose motives were inscrutable but probably not benevolent. To borrow one of the metaphors the brainwashed Langdon liked to use, it was like a Russian nesting doll situation, except the interior doll was a Nazi.
When he was in this prison, therefore, he needed to ensure that the formation of the Avengers was not ruined by the insidious presence of Hydra. That was a task easier said than done.
Case in point.
Loki looked up as someone cleared their throat. The man on the other side of the glass met nobody’s image of a spy. Like Coulson, he seemed like a mildly depressed civil servant, dressed in a neat (but not well-tailored) black suit and a pair of government prescription glasses. Perhaps it was their nondescript nature that made them so effective in the field of espionage. He spoke softly, in the voice of somebody repeating their coffee order for the sixth time.
“Loki of Asgard,” said the man. “Or do you prefer ‘your majesty?’”
The man could clearly grovel with the best of them.
“Loki is fine,” the God of Mischief returned, waving the question away.
“My name is Agent Jasper Sitwell,” returned the spy. “I work for an organisation with a invested interest in world domination, and I believe our goals align in this matter.”
Loki raised an apathetic eyebrow. It had taken centuries of training to get the effect precisely right. “Oh yes? Which organisation would that be?”
Sitwell gave an excited flush. “We call ourselves Hydra, after the figure of Greek Mythology, but we have always been fully devoted to the Norse. May I say, sir, it’s an honour to meet you.”
“I see,” said Loki, who didn’t.
“Since it’s very foundations, Hydra has always modelled itself on the view of humanity espoused by the Norse Gods. The Thule Society and Johann Schmidt have always been very interested in the tales of Thor and Loki, particularly you, your highness. Why, the ship stocked with bombs that Captain America foolishly crashed into the ocean was even called the
Valkyrie,
after the legendary Asgardian warriors
.”
Loki did not let a single iota of his disgust for this man show on his face.
“I have a collection of memorabilia relating to the inspirations of our cause,” said Sitwell, “Would you perhaps be able to sign them?”
He began to pull out a variety of small cards, each with a different cultural mark on them. The Vril, Mjolnir, the Ultima Thule… The symbologist Robert Langdon would have had a field day. Loki himself felt a mixture of awkwardness and bile. Norns, he thought to himself. He’s the anti-Coulson. Mild mannered accountant by day, Hydra sleeper agent by night.
“Another time, perhaps,” said Loki.
Sitwell gave a slimy little servile bow, of all things, like he was auditioning for an episode of a period drama.
“Of course, of course,” he smarmed, filing the cards away. “Now, I believe in this case our goals align. Those known as the Avengers have the potential to provide something of a thorn in the side of our organisation- particularly Rogers and Romanoff. They are also the group who are most likely to oppose your, aheh, ‘glorious purpose’. I have taken some steps to neutralise them, but I believe we could work together to end them once and for all.”
“Is that so?” said Loki. “And, pray tell, what are these steps that you have taken?”
“Division is the root of it all,” replied Sitwell, a smile growing on his mouth. “A six-part campaign to sow dissension and discord, disrupting military tactics and introducing conflict for a future occasion. The plan has been heavily peer-reviewed by various different think-tanks, and has gone through no less than three quality assurance checks.”
“I am all ears,” said Loki.
Sitwell continued. “I am pleased to say that the first stage has been completed, your majesty, even before the Avengers have been fully formed. Already they show distrust- already the careful mechanism established by Fury shows signs of running down. Hail Hydra.”
“Are you going to tell me what you have done, or continue drip feeding me exposition?” replied Loki. Sitwell looked somewhat put-out; as Loki knew from self-analysis, all megalomaniacs loved to monologue.
“We have already doctored the files of each member of the putative Avengers,” said Sitwell. “‘ Clint Barton Psych. Eval.’ ‘Black Widow Program Brainwashing Extant.’ ‘Hulk Death Count in Harlem’. ‘Steve Rogers Cryopreservation Damage’. ‘Tony Stark Not Recommended’. A hundred little ways to make each individual member look at the other with a modicum of suspicion.”
Loki hmmmed thoughtfully. “Interesting, but how small-minded. Tell me, do you know why they are called ‘the Avengers’?”
Jasper Sitwell seemed put off his rhythm, a used car salesman who suddenly found no cars to sell. “I believe that was named after the call-sign of one Carol Danvers, an early enhanced operative from circa 1995. Fury applied the name to the Initiative due to some… misplaced affection.”
“I see,” said Loki. “I see that despite all of the lip service you give to the Old Ways you still have no sense of the Laws that govern Gods and mortals. Names have power, and some names have enough power to conjure with. The ‘Avengers’ is not a title, but an instruction; they are left powerless without something to avenge. That is the first law of magic, that the part can resemble the whole; it is this law that affects everything from invocations to voodoo dolls. But you wouldn’t know anything about magic, would you, Mr. Sitwell?”
The Hydra agent could feel the conversation rapidly falling away from him. “I feel it important to note, Loki of Asgard, that if you are not for us, you are against us.”
Loki chuckled. “Ah, how quickly the friendly veneer disappears to expose the teeth beneath. I suppose that makes us enemies, then. I am already fighting one paramilitary spy organisation; another will hardly be a hardship.”
Something ugly rested in Sitwell’s face for a moment, and he turned to leave without a word. Just before he left, Loki called out to him.
“I believe I have one of your own- the man they call Agent Robert McGraw. Would you like him back?”
Sitwell snorted. “He’s only a henchman, cannon fodder. Rest assured, Loki of Asgard, we have people in far higher places, such as the World Security Council. They say the Security of the world is a dream, but we at Hydra are the dreamers. There are heads of Hydra everywhere.”
Alexander Pierce, agent of Hydra, looked out into the array of computer screens, each one representing a figure with immense amounts of political power. This meeting of the World Security Council was more impromptu than most. Normally, there was a waiting list, with everyone’s schedules worked out several weeks in advance. This was an emergency, however, and so the various component members of the Council were in some state of disarray. Senator Clayton Davis was still in his pajamas, and as his camera flickered on, a skinny-looking blonde could be seen quickly exiting the scene.
“What’s the matter?” he asked. “And did it have to interrupt my… political business?”
“Alien invasion,” said Tessa Phillips shortly. Tessa was a high ranking agent of MI5, and had forgotten more about espionage than most people would covertly obtain in a lifetime.
“ Shit,” swore Davis, elongating the syllable into meaningless.
Another screen blinked into existence.
“Is that a spy code for something?” asked Arnold Vinick, Secretary of State .
“No,” said Tessa. “The espionage callsign for an alien invasion is a Lazuli Three. I chose to use the phrase ‘Alien Invasion’ because it gets straight to the point.”
Pierce cleared his throat. “Our course of action is clear. Only an immense show of force will stop the alien threat of an incoming invasion. This is precisely why I felt that Operation: Insight was so important.”
“Now, Alexander, we’ve talked about this,” said Davis. “I’m not sure about the optics of having satellites that can murder people from outer space. This is election year, and we need to think about the popular vote.”
The Director of the CIA, a greying man in a bulky suit, flickered onto one of the monitors. He began frantically yelling into the screen, but no words came out; he was just furiously miming imprecations, earnestly demanding things that went unvoiced.
“Dammit,” said Vinick. “Alan, you’re on mute again.”
CIA director Alan Hunley looked confused, and began making various threatening gestures.
“Press the red microphone at the bottom of the screen,” insisted Tessa. She gestured downwards. Alan swore silently at the camera.
A sixth and final screen flickered into view, and the World Security Council was treated to the sour face of Nick Fury, Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. He glowered cyclopically at the gathered spymasters and politicians.
“We are gathered today, gentlemen, because we face a grave threat, a threat that threatens the entire world.”
“Not the entire world,” clarified Tessa. “The data you have sent me seems to suggest that he will be focusing his efforts on New York.”
“New York, not Baltimore?” asked Davis. “Well, that’s fine then.”
“It’s not fine,” shrieked Vinick. “ I live in New York!”
Fury (the person, not the concept) cut through the squabbles.
“This is urgent. The Norse God of Mischief is trying to take over the entire world if we don’t stop him.”
“Or rather, an ancient alien claiming to be the God of Mischief,” clarified Pierce. “Does anyone watch the History Channel?”
“That brings us nicely to an issue I wished to raise, actually,” said Tessa. “I’m here with the Prime Minister of Norway, Jesper Berg, and he has something urgent to bring up.”
The camera panned around to a well-dressed man, hair graying at his temples, who was paging through a thick dossier.
“I’m afraid I can’t allow you to attack the entity known as Loki,” said Jesper Berg, a trace of accent in his voice. “A good portion of Norway still believes in Modern Paganism, and taking any direct action against him will constitute as discrimination against our religion.”
Nick Fury closed his single eye. Sometimes it didn’t pay to wake up in the morning. Vinick let out a high-pitched wail; Davis an elongated swear-word.
“Fine,” growled Fury, living up to his name. “Any retaliatory action will be focused on the army of motherfuckin’ aliens that are going to attack, and not on the politically immune God. We will try to keep the battle focused on one place, and Vinick, I suggest you leave the city now. Is everyone happy with those arrangements?”
There are five murmurs of assent. Only Alan Hunley said nothing, as his face was locked in a rictus of bemusement.
“Alan’s screen is bloody frozen,” swore Tessa. “Somebody send someone to fix their Wi-Fi.”
It was a strange and unfortunate set of circumstances that Tony Stark was hated more for what he represented than for who he was.
Many hated him for being the public face of Stark Industries, the company that had used America’s War on Terror paranoia to sell weapons on a globally unprecedented scale, before the dramatic shift into clean energy in 2008. Many others hated him as his manifestation of capitalistic ‘Big Business’, his propensity to refer to himself as a self-made engineer while working from his dad’s million pound trust fund. His former gun-toting second amendment supporters hated him for his perceived betrayal of their values, while the military hated his propensity to resist their control and set himself up as an alternative to the Army.
In the dark moments at the bottom of a whiskey glass, Tony Stark hated himself for looking like his father.
“JARVIS,” he said, eyes cataloguing everything in the room. “Have the Mark 3 ready, okay? I want to talk with Ren Faire over here.”
“Right away, sir,” the mechanised voice said.
In truth, Tony Stark was not who many people thought he was. He was a playboy, admittedly, and a hero to some (although he never described himself as such). But beneath all that was a performer, a con-man, someone who could look his board of investors in the eye and sell them the finest quality bullshit. And when Stark looked at Loki, he saw the best bullshitter he had ever seen. It took one to know one.
“How’s life, Snidely Whiplash?” asked Tony, hands in blazer pockets in a carefully cultivated casual pose. His t-shirt said ‘ All the Good Ones Argon’ , but the dull glow of the arc reactor distorted the text of the punchline.
“Ah,” said Loki, smiling. “You must be the latest one chosen to interrogate the prisoner. The princess sacrificed to the resident dragon.”
“No, actually,” said Stark. “I’m here off the grid, if you must know. The cameras are currently showing a fifteen second loop.” He held his phone up to show off the string of code.
“Well, well, well,” said Loki. “How intriguing. What is it, may I ask, that has provoked one of Midgard’s mightiest defenders into slipping his master’s leash?”
Stark leant back, and scrutinised Loki carefully. “I’m a businessman, you know that? Cut my teeth in stocks and shares for the company, growing up. Most kids got toy trains or action figures; my dad threw a ring-binder with investment tips into my crib and called it a day. Not the greatest guy, was ol’ Howard. Went off the deep-end in his old days, gave up parenting in favour of hunting Captain America and rewatching Ice Station Zebra. But enough of my childhood trauma; from what I hear of your stories, your dad was a bit of a bastard too. The point is, he taught me one important lesson: follow the money.”
Loki felt reluctantly impressed. Only Stark, he felt, would weaponise his own trauma and weaknesses.
“Your point being?” Loki returned.
“My point is that I don’t know what you’re getting from this. And don’t tell me world domination: in my experience, most people who want to conquer the world like to take it out for a spin first, and you’ve just got here. You got captured awfully quickly too- don’t think I didn’t notice you hanging around the Black Forest, waiting for us to finish our little spat. Thor tells me you didn’t leave home with an army in your pocket, so the weapons dealer in me is asking where you got that stuff, and who would be willing to cut a deal with you so easily.”
Stark was not only intelligent, Loki realised with a growing relief, he was smart. Any old fool could milk a few qualifications out of university if they had enough money, but it took a special breed of person to see patterns out of disparate data sets and come to the right conclusion. It was just a shame they had to be on opposite sides for this little game.
“Confident, are you?” said Loki. “In your little assessment?”
“I don’t play the game if I haven’t already won,” said Stark.
Loki gave a shark’s grin. “Then yes, there is another player on the board. Someone who will bring an army that, unless stopped, will easily ravage your little world. I’ve heard much about you, Man of Iron, and the threat you face is far larger than a disgruntled Russian or a vengeful business partner. You’re going to have to trade up from missiles and energy repulsors if you want to win.”
“See that,” said Stark, wagging a finger at him, “that sounds like advice. I stopped taking advice from people who hate me after my first crazy ex.”
“Not advice, but cold, hard fact,” replied Loki. “The tesseract creates portals, yes? Have you given any thought as to what is at the other side? The cold expanse of space, filled with horrors and alien beings the likes of which you have never seen.”
“Hey, hey, I’ve seen Independence Day. Alien invasion, yada yada. So what are you in all this? The hype man?”
“Don’t think so reductively, Stark. I do not ‘hype’ anyone. I shall pose a riddle for you. If you had the choice between seeing half the universe destroyed, or one measly city, which one would you choose?”
Stark raised his eyebrows. “Oh, like the trolley problem, right?”
“Sorry?”
“Yeah, the trolley problem. You’ve got a bunch of people tied to the track, and you’re piloting a trolley bus towards them. If you want, you can pull the lever and switch lanes onto another track with less people tied to it. So, the question is do you make an active choice and kill fewer people, or not do anything and allow an atrocity to happen?”
Loki gave a hollow laugh. “Not doing anything is still an active choice. What would you do, Stark?”
The inventor winked. “I’m Tony Stark. If it’s technology, I can hack it. A trolley bus is nothing compared to a box of scraps. But what would you do, oh God of Mischief?”
“Oh, I would pull the lever. But I’d make sure that whoever built the trolley bus was tied to the tracks.”
“Was that a threat?” asked Stark.
“No, you buffoon, that was a Socratic dialogue.”
Loki paced closer, eyes level with Stark's.
“But this is about you. Soon, very soon, you will have to make this decision, the same decision I have made, the decision you made in a cave in Afghanistan.”
“Sorry?”
Loki raised his eyebrows. “There will come a time, Stark, when your wealth and your suits won’t save you. When you will be the one tied down on the tracks. When you will have to make a choice. What will you do then, I wonder? Will you send metal armour to do a man’s job? Or will you stand true to your self-imposed vow to stop war and bloodshed? You asked me earlier if I was giving you advice. I wasn’t then, but I will now, if you only have the intelligence to take heed.”
He leaned forward, fingers splayed on the glass.
“After you’ve won, after you’ve saved the day with your so-called ‘Avengers’, I want you to dig deep into your soul, into every scrap of courage and skill you’ve amassed in your years on the planet, and lose.”
The words had shaken Stark, Loki could tell; just for a second, his eyes were shadowed with uncertainty and confusion. Then the mask of the charismatic playboy shuttered over it, and he gave a smirk that was almost entirely perfect.
“Yeah, we’re not gonna lose just because you tell us to,” Stark drawled. “You need to step up your playground tactics if that’s the level you’re working at.”
He gave a mocking salute, and, with a well-practised move, swivelled on his heel to saunter off. Loki was left, as before, in an empty cell.
In truth, it was conversations like the one he had just had that were more important than any military campaign or show of force; placing doubts and concepts within the head of his opponent, in the hope that they would bear fruit on some later occasion. It was far better to fight wars with words than swords; that was why he was called Lie-Smith and Silvertongue and not Thunderstrike or Bloodaxe. He had done his best there; it was left to Stark to see how he would react to the information he had gained.
Having talked to the majority of figures in the Helicarrier- Stark, Romanoff, Sitwell, Fury- there was little else he could do while trapped inside his cage. The question was, what do you do when you can’t make a move?
The answer was easy. Destroy the board.
“Agent Barton,” Loki murmured into his earpiece. “Move in.”
In this bold and brutal new century, there was only room for two types of people: the heroes, brave figures who believe in truth and justice, and the villains, who skulked and schemed in the darkness. Bob McGraw, Agent of HYDRA, was none of those things. He was a bottom feeder, a little goby fish nipping around the ankles of larger supervillains. As a professional henchman, he was a natural fit for HYDRA’s brand of indentured fanaticism; before working for the Nazi organisation, he had worked for cyberterrorist Raoul Silvia , and before that, he had ran around setting up traps for serial killer John Kramer , and before that, he had interned at Wolfram & Hart . Before that, he had lurked around the school playground, standing back as silent muscle as other bullies beat up kids for their lunch money. The Mind Stone only worked on the weak-minded; for Bob McGraw, Loki had barely needed it at all.
“So, what’s the plan?” asked Bob.
Hawkeye rolled his eyes, and notched another arrow to his bow. “That was Loki’s signal. We fly in and start shooting. I insert a computer virus into the helicarrier system. We cause as much chaos as possible, and make sure that flying circus crashes out of the sky.”
“Like Icarus,” said Robert Langdon. “Flying on wings made of wax too close to the sun, a living monument to man’s hubris.”
Agent Ecks turned around from where he was sitting at the Quinjet’s controls. “Would you three quiet down? I can’t concentrate with you talking all the time.”
The Quinjet moved into cloud cover, the sudden darkness necessitating the removal of Agent Ecks’ sunglasses. The engines whirred with a metallic harshness. Below them lay the Helicarrier, the SHIELD agents scurrying around on its surface like ants.
The comms crackled. “Master Loki?”, said Hawkeye into his mouthpiece. “We’re coming in.”
The Helicarrier was a masterpiece of modern aerial aircraft invention, being a vast improvement of the earlier Spectrum Cloudbase from the sixties. It was propelled through the skies with four enormous fans, a whirring mass of steel and plastic that belched smoke into the air. It was a miracle of modern science, and it folded like a house of cards.
As the quinjet fired on the Helicarrier, disabling the large fans, Loki took the time to leisurely exit his cell. It was a mistake on the Midgardians’ part not to ward it against magic. He briefly encountered his brother on his way out, before tricking him into his recently departed cell (“Are you ever not going to fall for that?”) and sending it plummeting into the Atlantic. Also on his departure, he counted the not-Sitwell, Agent Coulson, threatening him with a large gun forcibly commandeered from the Taelons . Loki had no real anger in his heart for the agent; in truth, he was nothing more than a means to the end, one more final push so that the Avengers would swing back at him, twice as hard. In his original conception, it was going to have been the Eye of the Hawk, but his arrows would be invaluable against the Chi Tauri army. Coulson gasped as the sceptre stabbed through him. He arched back, blood emerging from his lips, as he entered his death throes. Loki’s face was blank; in his mind, he was picturing Sitwell. Loki walked over his bleeding body, and headed for the exit.
Soon after, Nick Fury crouched down to Coulson’s prone form, looking at the wound that was leaking lifeblood through his cotton shirt. It was fatal. He removed some cards from his inside pocket, and looked at them, face blank. They were the Captain America card collection that Coulson had always bragged about. He let them fall into the wound, watching as the blood slowly began to stain them.
“They just need a push,” he said to himself.
His choice to name the Initiative ‘The Avengers’ was unwittingly prophetic. In truth, the group of superheroes was useless without something to avenge. On this, Nick Fury and Loki were of one accord, although neither party realised.
Fury closed his eyes, and signalled to some nearby S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to move Coulson to intensive care.
Oh well, Fury sighed to himself. There’ll always be T.A.H.I.T.I.
The sirens of the Helicarrier warbled as the Spymaster of S.H.I.E.L.D., battered and bruised, limped away.
In the end, it turned out that a flying machine was not the most secure base for a secret paramilitary organisation. Who knew?
Loki watched from the Quinjet as the Helicarrier crumbled into itself, crashing in a burning, screeching husk of metal into the ocean. This action was necessary. The Avengers were in their nascent form, barely functional and squabbling amongst themselves; a baptism in fire and chaos would make them rise like the phoenix into an actual army. The weapon had to be forged in flames before being turned against Thanos.
“Where now, boss?” asked Agent Bob of Hydra, channeling every 1930s gangster to have ever existed.
“We go to Stark’s tower,” said Loki. “That is a suitable location for opening the portal. Then the Chitauri army will flood through. The Avengers will try, I am sure, to defeat them.”
Left unspoken, of course, was Loki’s wish that they would succeed in stopping Thanos’ army.
“We lost Barton,” said Langdon.
“What?” asked Loki.
“Barton is back with S.H.I.E.L.D. The mind control broke,” said Robert Langdon, while Agent Ecks mimed a bang on the head.
Good, thought Loki. The more people in the Avengers the better. Out loud, however, he declaimed, “No matter. Our plans will continue uninterrupted.”
All of a sudden, as if summoned by his words, the quinjet began to swirl and fade in front of his eyes, the shadows growing longer and connecting to swirl around him. With a sickening lurch, the comforting firmness of the metal beneath his feet gave way to hard asteroidal rock, the charming buffoonery of Agent Bob and Agent Ecks transforming into the cruelties of the Chi Tauri army. The mind link rippled open, Loki’s surroundings disappearing into the black abyss of space. Kl’rt, the Other, appeared in front of him, lipless mouth contorted into a sneer.
“SNIVELLING WORM,” grunted the Other, his words echoing into the void. They were spoken telepathically as well as vocally, and so rattled about Loki’s head, beating painfully against the sides. Loki winced against the incoming migraine.
“Yes?” Loki drawled, not even attempting the barrage of syllables that made up his name.
“YOU HAVE BEEN ABSENT, LOKI. YOU HAVE BEEN WAITING IN A CELL FOR THREE DAYS, AND NOT PREPARING FOR OUR GLORIOUS MASTER. WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN, LOKI?”
“I was… a little tied up,” replied the God of Mischief.
“THAT IS NOT SUFFICIENT,” came the Other’s sonorous voice. “WE HAVE PLANS FOR YOU, LOKI. PLANS THAT WILL SEE YOU TORN APART WHILE THE CHI TAURI FEAST UPON YOUR INNARDS IF YOU FAIL. YOU THINK YOU KNOW PAIN? YOU THINK YOU KNOW SUFFERING? YOU KNOW NOTHING. HE WILL MAKE YOU LONG FOR THE SWEET EMBRACE OF DEATH.”
“I assure you, the battle that you and the Chitauri long for will come,” said Loki. “The Tesseract will open the doorway to a shining new age, and it will be glorious. But you must be patient.”
“I AM NOT BUILT FOR PATIENCE,” the Other growled, and a searing pain burst in Loki’s forehead. It felt like the cells in his brain were bulging against his skull, throbbing with the force of a migraine.
“COMPLETE YOUR PURPOSE, CHILD OF THANOS,” was the last thing Loki heard before he blacked out.
The first face he saw upon coming to was, dismayingly, Agent Bob McGraw. Fleetingly, Loki thought about taking his chances with the Chitauri.
“You okay, boss?” Agent Bob said, elongating the ‘oss’ syllable.
“Quite fine,” said Loki, wiping his nose. It was bleeding. He lurched to his feet, and stared out of the Quinjet window. “How far until New York?”
“T minus thirty minutes,” said Agent Ecks.
“Very well,” said Loki, eyes drifting closed. “We must prefer for our glorious purpose; for, however this day goes, it will usher in a new age for the world.”
Below the quinjet, the glittering city of New York spread out into the distance, glass skyscrapers and boxy grey buildings. Millions of people walked about their business, unaware of the destruction that would shortly rain down upon them.
The game was set, the trolley was on the tracks, and whichever way it turned there would be bloodshed.