Frozen Web

Chapter 2

Loki sat a café in Brooklyn, watching the crowd of pitiful humans stream by him. None of them recognized him, since he had transformed himself to look like just another bland face in the crowd. If he'd walked in with his true visage, they would surely all run screaming from the building. While he relished their fear, he knew the attention would inevitably attract those damned Avengers, and he wasn't ready—yet—to wage another war against them.

But he would. He'd wage a war against every one of those so-called "superheroes," but this time, the plan would be different. Even he had to admit it had been a mistake to try to take out all of them at once. They were surprisingly effective as a team, despite all their squabbling. No, this time, he would pick them off one by one. It would be easy in this disguise; they would never see him coming.

And when he came—oh, what vengeance he would wreak against those cursed mortals who had thwarted his magnificent plan and snatched away the glory that was rightfully his. He would make them all suffer in painfully individual ways, in the ways that would hurt the most. He savored his fantasies of all the different ways they would suffer, writhing in agony and begging for mercy until he crushed them under his boot.

And there was one Avenger in particular he imagined: Natasha Romanov.

She infuriated him the most, because she had used her wiles to manipulate him into revealing his intentions. In fact, if she hadn't tricked him, he probably would have been able to unleash the monster on his own timing and successfully pull off that part of his master plan. And that could have changed the whole course of the entire war. It was her fault he hadn't succeeded in taking control of earth. She had dared trick the god of trickery—and he hated her for it.

He could still remember her smug smile as she had walked away in the heliocarrier, and that mocking goodbye: "Thank you for your cooperation."

He would wipe that smile off her face. He would torture her in every possible way, leaving her humiliated and broken—if he deigned to let her live at all. Oh yes, for all her tough posturing, he knew her frailties—Barton had been most forthcoming about the weaknesses of the so-called "Black Widow." She was just as human as the rest of her teammates, and she had just as many weak spots. And he was going to hit her in every single one.

There was only one problem: he didn't know where she was.

He had kept an eye out for her after the events in New York, expecting her to go back to her regular life of being Fury's lackey. But after a few team appearances, she had simply disappeared. He knew she hated attention and had retreated into comfortable hiding; like him, she was a creature of the dark.

He was content to let her hide for a while, lulling her into a sense of security and complacency. He knew she would always been on guard—it was how she was wired—but he hoped that if he didn't come after any of the Avengers for some time, they would all start to relax.

Now it was time to make his grand reappearance. Maybe he didn't know where Natasha Romanov was, but he knew who would: Clint Barton. And while Barton was almost as reclusive as Natasha, Loki had an advantage there: he had combed through Barton's memories, and he knew all about the hawk's "secret" cabin in the woods outside of New York City.

Loki stood and stretched his legs. It was time to call on Clint Barton.