His Nokia floated back into the pile of clothes beside the bed. Tony could wait.
Three Dark Elf women remained with Lucius. The largest sat across his lap, silver-white hair falling around them while she worked her mouth from his jaw to his throat. Whenever her nails pressed harder, black-violet lines showed beneath her skin.
She caught him watching and tightened her grip. "Is this when your strength becomes impressive?"
"No." Lucius closed one hand around both her wrists, and her smile faltered when he rolled her beneath him.
The mattress dipped under their combined weight. She hooked one leg around his hip and pulled him closer, recovering enough of her challenge to test his grip. Dark Energy gathered around her forearms and warmed the air between them. It did nothing to his skin.
"Tell me what you want," Lucius said.
Her hips lifted against him. "Do not stop."
He did not. The black-violet light sharpened when his mouth closed over one nipple and his free hand took the other breast. She fought his grip until pleasure broke the effort into smaller movements, and her taunts shortened with them.
One bite failed against his shoulder. She tried again, harder, then lost the breath required to insult him when he drove deeper.
Lucius kept her wrists above her head. The energy flooded her eyes and drifted from her lashes as her body tightened around him. She came in violent waves, still trying to pull free after strength had stopped mattering. He slowed only when the challenge left her grip and something unsteady replaced it.
The petite woman attacked before her sister recovered, catching Lucius by the hair and pulling his mouth to hers. The kiss split her lower lip against his teeth. Her skin closed over the cut almost at once, leaving a trace of blood she licked away.
"Mine," she said.
"You are confused."
"Correct me."
Lucius caught her around the waist and put her on her back. She landed laughing, drove one heel into the mattress, and twisted when he followed, but he stopped her without effort. His hand settled around her throat without closing. "This?"
The laughter left her face. She covered his wrist with both hands and pressed it more firmly against her skin.
"Yes."
The third woman laughed from the ruined sheets.
Lucius held the petite one still. Each breath remained clear beneath his palm, quickening as his other hand moved from her ribs to her hip. She had demanded force before learning how quickly it could remove speech.
She bit his thumb when it touched her lips. "Vicious little thing."
Her teeth loosened. She drew the thumb into her mouth without looking away from him. Dark Energy gathered inside her eyes.
Lucius set the rhythm she had asked for. Light spread across her cheeks when he refused to let her turn away and snapped between her fingers after another failed attempt to escape his grip. A joint in the bed frame creaked beneath them.
"Harder," the third woman said.
The petite one bared her teeth. "I did not ask you."
"You were taking too long."
The petite woman dragged his face down and kissed him. Her aggression failed before her appetite did. She clung to him through the first hard convulsion, breath breaking against his mouth as Dark Energy scattered over the pillows.
"More."
He obliged until her hands lost their grip.
The third woman seized his shoulder. "My turn."
"You seemed content to watch."
"I was being polite."
She moved her smaller sister aside only far enough to make room, then climbed over Lucius. Unlike the other two, she did not test his strength. She placed his hands at her waist, then lower along the curve of her hips, and used his grip to control her angle.
"You may continue."
"Generous."
She kissed him before he could add to it. Dark Energy rolled over her shoulders in slow ribbons, and when Lucius pulled her closer, she redirected part of it toward the petite woman. The contact made her sister shiver against the sheets.
Lucius noticed the transfer and stored the fact without interrupting what he was doing.
Much later, the room quieted. The petite woman still trembled with one hand resting over Lucius's wrist. The largest had taken most of a pillow. The third lay across his chest, watching the other two with an expression that promised another dispute once they could stand.
Lucius looked at the fading black-violet light and the women tangled around him. They were his, and the remaining three would receive attention when Tony stopped manufacturing reasons to call.
He left them arguing over the shower, washed, selected a suit, and vanished while fastening the second cuff.
-
Alexander Pierce returned to his office with a commercial agreement and a problem in Sokovia.
The secure call connected without ceremony. Zola's electronic face assembled across the central screen. Gideon Malick occupied a second window. Baron Wolfgang von Strucker joined last and appeared offended before Pierce began.
"Noctis accepted the order," Pierce said. "One thousand regular Strengthening Potions and two hundred enhanced vials. One and a half billion dollars in cash, delivered to his estate."
Zola displayed the projected terms beside his face. "The inflated offer established HYDRA as a serious buyer and appealed to his stated priorities. Direct negotiation was optimal."
"Your projection included my death."
"A low-probability outcome."
Strucker looked down at the figures. "You agreed without reducing the price."
"The enhanced formula offers tenfold strength, speed, endurance, and healing for two hours."
"According to Noctis. We have not tested it."
"You wanted to put him in your laboratory, Strucker. I doubt your judgment of price is the reason for your displeasure. Additionally, he was aware of your interest in him and had a request."
Strucker's hands settled on the table. "What else did he demand?"
Pierce let the pause answer first. "Temporary use of the sceptre."
The Baron's face stopped moving.
"No."
"I agreed to arrange it."
"It is not yours to offer."
"Noctis knew where it was before I arrived. He knew you controlled it and knew you had discussed restraining him. Refusing would not have protected the sceptre. It would have brought him to Sokovia."
Strucker leaned toward the camera. "The Maximoff twins are the only subjects who survived exposure. They have not reached the limits of what the artefact gave them. You promised away our most valuable instrument to avoid an uncomfortable negotiation."
"I avoided a visit from a man whose limits none of us can calculate."
Zola replaced the financial projection with a survival model. "Secretary Pierce's decision reduced the probability of an immediate attack on the Sokovia facility by eighty-three per cent."
Strucker turned toward his screen. "You calculated surrender."
"I calculated the continued availability of your laboratory."
Pierce opened the remainder of his report. Four lines described the woman he had seen at Sands Point: light-purple skin, silver-white hair, an unfamiliar energy around her hand, and Noctis sending her back to her sisters.
Strucker read the entry twice. "A female Dark Elf."
"At least one."
"A natural survivor?"
"Unknown."
"She controlled the same energy used during the invasion of London?"
"I observed wisps of it around her hand. Nothing more."
Strucker looked toward Zola. "The female subject's power changed after exposure to the sceptre. If the Dark Elf manipulates an alien force naturally, the mechanisms may be related."
Pierce knew he meant Wanda Maximoff. The girl was a mutant with telepathy and telekinesis before HYDRA placed the sceptre near her. What came afterwards was above every useful name.
"Similarity does not mean they are the same; we can not be sure if it is the same energy," Malick said.
"That is why laboratories test specimens."
Strucker ordered Zola to calculate an acquisition operation.
"No," Pierce said.
Malick answered along with him. "Leave them there."
Strucker looked through their faces. "We have a new species and a possible route to understanding our only successful female subject."
"We have an eyewitness report," Pierce replied. "The women are inside an estate that Noctis controls. Taking one will produce a response we cannot contain."
"Fear has made you conservative."
Pierce did not answer the insult. "Run the model."
Zola's face froze while the projection divided through approaches, entry teams, containment, extraction, and retaliation. Every branch that reached the estate collapsed into red.
"A successful abduction cannot be supported by available evidence," Zola concluded. "Conventional teams fail at entry. Enhanced teams fail at containment. Deployment of the Winter Soldier does not create a viable extraction. Noctis's demonstrated abilities exceed every controllable asset in the model."
Strucker studied the failed branches. "Your model lacks variables."
"The missing variables belong primarily to Noctis."
Malick rested one hand on his desk. "We should honour the agreement to preserve the channel. Let him return the sceptre when he is finished."
"If he returns it," Strucker said and disconnected.
His screen went black.
"He will proceed," Zola said.
Malick shook his head. "Not openly. He is arrogant, but not completely stupid."
Pierce closed the report. HYDRA's divided leadership had allowed the organisation to survive every attempt to cut off its head. It also meant he could not command Strucker inside Sokovia.
If the Baron tested Noctis, HYDRA would lose a leader and inherit whatever laboratories survived him.
-
King T'Chaka waited in the secured chamber in New York.
To the Americans outside, the equipment belonged to a diplomatic mission from a poor African nation. The disguise had protected Wakanda for generations.
N'Jobu had called that protection cowardice.
T'Chaka remembered his brother's anger more clearly than the room in which he had expressed it. N'Jobu had lived among descendants of Africans sold into foreign lands and had watched their suffering become ordinary. He wanted Wakandan weapons placed in their hands.
T'Chaka had heard treason because the alternative was admitting that his brother had named a real wound.
Weapons would not have healed it. The first proof of Wakanda's wealth would bring requests, pressure, espionage, and theft. Nations that threatened one another daily would cooperate long enough to divide Vibranium between them. Once the curtain moved, Wakanda could not decide how far it opened.
That danger remained real, as did the suffering Wakanda had chosen not to address. T'Chaka let both truths remain without trying to settle them. A king could carry doubt and still act.
The War Dogs would return with Noctis's movements, his defences, and whatever could be learned about the vials. The Strengthening Potion produced an effect similar to the Heart-Shaped Herb and did so with ingredients Wakandan science could identify but not reproduce. No trace of the herb had been found.
If Noctis had stolen Wakandan knowledge, T'Chaka would recover it. If he had created something new, the danger was greater. Other nations could buy temporary enhanced soldiers without ever approaching Wakanda's borders.
The laboratory distinction mattered, but it did not change the king's responsibility. The method could not remain beyond Wakanda's reach.