IN DR. SELVIG’S research, he uncovered the storied history of the cube—or the Tesseract, as it was officially known. It was once the jewel of Odin’s treasure room. The details of how it came to Earth were unclear, but it surely happened when Asgardians traveled over the Bifrost. Ultimately, the Tesseract came to be guarded by a secret society in Tonsberg, Norway. But in March 1942, it was stolen by Johann Schmidt and used as a weapon against HYDRA’s enemies—including Captain America. During the Captain’s struggle with the Red Skull aboard the HYDRA Valkyrie aircraft—a battle that sent Cap into a frozen deep sleep—the Tesseract was activated, burned through the hull, and plummeted to Earth, where it was buried near the crash site and later retrieved by S.H.I.E.L.D. They knew that, like Thor’s hammer, the Tesseract needed to be guarded by their best agent, and so they put Barton on duty overseeing it.
Doctor Selvig found the cube amazing. The way light and matter and energy reacted around it was like nothing he had ever seen. But not long into Dr. Selvig’s study of the Tesseract, it began to act oddly, even for a mystical object.
Upon learning from Dr. Selvig that the cube had activated itself, so to speak, Colonel Fury called an emergency meeting with Agents Coulson and Maria Hill. Dr. Selvig told the group that the cube was pulling energy from space and emitting low levels of gamma radiation.
In describing the way in which energy was flowing from—or rather into the cube—Agent Hill expressed the very real concern that it could be pulling enough dark energy toward it to collapse all matter on Earth and create a black hole.
“Dr. Selvig,” Fury said, “I need a report on the Tesseract.”
“She’s been misbehaving,” Selvig said, never taking his eyes from the cube.
“Where’s Barton?” Fury asked.
“The Hawk is in his nest,” Selvig replied.
* * *
“I thought I told you to stay close, Agent,” Fury shouted up to Barton, who was watching the cube from a crow’s nest above.
“My eyesight is better from up here,” Barton replied.
“Well, if that’s the case, have you seen anything or anyone come or go that might be causing it to act this way?”
Agent Barton rappelled down to speak to Fury face-to-face, and responded in the negative. As Barton understood it, the Tesseract was a doorway to the other end of space. “If there’s tampering going on,” he said, “it’s not from our side of the doorway, but the other one.”
Suddenly the cube began to spin, slowly at first, and then faster and faster. It began to glow brighter until it seemed to tear a hole in the very air, revealing stars and celestial dust within.
“Oh, my…” Dr. Selvig began.
A man clawed his way through this portal, clutching a staff. He was crouched and shaking—his face regal but gaunt and fatigued, clearly weary from his journey. Still, without delay, he lifted his staff and began to use it to blast violent streams of energy at the agents in the room.
Fury yelled to protect the Tesseract, and the agents, led by Agent Barton, rushed it to safety.
The being who had just entered the room looked up wearily. Mustering as much strength as he could, he touched his staff to Selvig’s heart, then turned and did the same to Barton. The men’s eyes went completely white, then a lightless black, and finally back to normal—but something had changed in them. They stared vacantly, as if due to an underlying soullessness.
As the frantic battle continued within the facility, the portal began to close. It began pulling in all the matter around it. Agent Hill estimated that they had thirteen minutes before the entire compound would be sucked into the portal’s vacuum.
Barton aimed an arrow, but his target was not what the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents might have expected—it was trained on Colonel Fury. It was clear that their enemy’s staff had some strange affect on Barton. He let his arrow fly, and it flew straight into Fury’s Kevlar vest.
With Barton holding Fury at bay, the infiltrator grabbed the Tesseract and, together with Selvig and Barton, fled the compound and raced into an SUV. Agent Hill radioed any and all S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who might receive her message. One of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s best agents and a brilliant scientist had just escaped with the Tesseract, accompanied by a powerful being who could only be Loki, son of Odin, brother of Thor.
Hill rushed out toward the parking structure. The fugitives were still in sight, so she jumped in her own SUV and gave chase. She sped through the complex’s labyrinthine tunnels, skidding against the walls as she followed in hot pursuit. Agent Barton fired shots at Hill from the enemy vehicle, but Hill couldn’t help but note that he was less accurate than usual.
Even so, one of Barton’s arrows exploded near Agent Hill’s SUV, causing it to tumble.
As Loki’s vehicle emerged from the tunnel, a S.H.I.E.L.D. helicopter descended and picked up the chase where Hill had left off. Fury leaned out one of the doors and began to fire upon the escape vehicle, but the escapees managed to swerve and avoid the barrage. At the same time, Barton, with his hawklike eyes, returned fire and managed to hit a rotor on the copter, which plunged to earth.
Fury managed to escape the craft seconds before it exploded. Then he looked up as the SUV drove off with the most powerful energy source in the known universe inside.