After realizing that trying to squeeze the location of the Space Stone out of Nick Fury's paranoid brain was like trying to get blood from a stone, Huang Wen shifted his focus.
"I told him I'd send Steve Rogers back, but I never promised I'd send the ice cube along for the ride," Huang Wen muttered to himself, his gaze drifting to the frost-covered legend. "If I give him the block, Fury will just treat it like a government science project. If I give him the man, it's a whole different game."
Freeing the Captain wasn't just a matter of pointing a hairdryer at him. This was seventy-year-old biological suspension. Even with the "Silly Girl" AI—his high-tech assistant from another world—the process would be painstakingly slow if he wanted to ensure zero cellular damage. He needed the heavy hitters. He needed the guys who looked at "impossible" biology and "alien" physics and saw a Tuesday afternoon.
He pulled out his phone and shot a message to Bruce Banner.
He already knew where Tony Stark was—Base Two, probably smelling like ozone and stale coffee, buried under the hull of the Chitauri-magic hybrid ship. Tony had been obsessed. The combination of Chitauri metallurgy and dark-elf-adjacent runes had turned the world's greatest engineer into a frustrated student.
A few seconds later, Huang Wen's phone buzzed.
"Hulk? Master? Do we have a smashing emergency?"
Huang Wen's lip twitched. Ever since Bruce had started gaining a modicum of control over his greener half, the Hulk had developed a weird, psychic respect for Huang Wen. Apparently, being beaten into the dirt by a human-sized martial artist earned you a "Master" title in the Hulk's vocabulary.
"Ahem, sorry about that," Bruce followed up quickly, his tone shifting back to his usual polite, slightly awkward self. "Is there something wrong at the base, Sir?"
"Not a problem, just a patient," Huang Wen replied, shaking his head to clear the image of the Hulk wearing a karate gi. "I've got a guy here who's been on ice for about seventy years. Heart is still beating, somehow. I need your medical and biological expertise to thaw him out without, you know, killing a national treasure."
"Seventy years?!" Bruce's voice went up an octave, the sound of a chair scraping against the floor echoing through the line. "Still alive? Is he a mutant with a regenerative factor like Logan? Or some kind of exotic alien life form?"
"Neither," Huang Wen said, pausing for dramatic effect. "Though 'National Treasure' is literal in this case. You might have heard of him. People usually call him Captain America."
The silence on the other end lasted exactly two seconds before the sound of frantic movement took over. "Oh my god! Captain Rogers? You found him?! I'm at the front door. Pick me up. Now. Please!"
Huang Wen didn't waste time. He focused on Bruce's signature—currently at General Ross's estate, where the scientist was essentially "house-sitting" under the military's watchful (and terrified) eye. With a soft pop of displaced air, Huang Wen vanished and reappeared at the doorstep. Bruce was already there, wearing a mismatched sweater and holding a medical bag like it was a holy relic.
A second later, they were both back in the sub-zero chamber of Base One.
"It's really him," Bruce whispered, his breath hitching as he stepped up to the massive block of ice. He reached out, his fingers trembling as he brushed the frost away from the star-spangled shield visible through the side. "Naturally formed glacial ice. The mineral content suggests the North Atlantic... Sir, the fact that he's even remotely viable is a biological miracle. The Super Soldier Serum must have acted as a massive cryo-protectant, keeping his cells from crystallizing."
"That's why I called you," Huang Wen said softly. "I need him out, and I need him conscious. Stay here and run the diagnostics. I'm going to go grab our resident genius-billionaire-playboy-mechanic. We're going to need some serious thermal regulation equipment."
Without waiting for a reply, Huang Wen vanished again, this time reappearing in the cavernous belly of Base Two.
The air here was different—thick with the scent of soldering iron, ionized gas, and a very human musk. It had been over two weeks since Tony Stark had seen the sun. Aside from the occasional flight out to grab a burger or a crate of green juice for "sustenance," the man had practically merged with the alien spaceship. Stark Industries was being run by Pepper Potts, a fact Tony was immensely grateful for, even if he felt a pang of guilt for disappearing right after they'd finally made things official.
Huang Wen walked past a pile of discarded Iron Man gauntlets and found Tony staring intensely at a glowing purple conduit.
"You know, for a guy who prides himself on his looks, you're starting to look like a shipwrecked sailor," Huang Wen remarked, leaning against a work table. "Maybe shave the beard? Or at least use some deodorant?"
Tony jumped nearly a foot into the air, a high-tech wrench clattering to the floor. "My god! Do you have a bell? A buzzer? Anything? You're like a jump-scare in a bad horror movie!" He wiped grease onto his forehead, only making the smudge worse. "And I don't want to hear it from the 'Ghost Boss.' I've been here for half a month doing the heavy lifting while you've been... what? Meditating? Fighting ninjas?"
Huang Wen raised an eyebrow, a smirk playing on his lips. "Actually, I've been bargaining with Nick Fury and finding World War II legends. How's the 'internship' going, Tony? Is the big scary alien ship winning?"
Tony let out a long, frustrated groan, gesturing to the massive structure behind him. "It's a nightmare, Wen. A beautiful, glowing, logic-defying nightmare. I've mapped about sixty percent of the kinetic systems. The engine, the thrusters, even the weapon arrays—I get the 'how.' It's advanced plasma physics. But then I hit the power core, and the laws of physics just pack their bags and move to another dimension."
"The magic," Huang Wen noted.
"The magic," Tony repeated, his voice filled with a mix of awe and irritation. "The power source isn't a reactor. It's a series of inscribed artifacts that seem to pull energy from... somewhere else. It's like trying to fix a computer that runs on ghosts. I can see the output, but I can't replicate the input. My tech is screaming at me that this shouldn't work, yet the ship is sitting here huming like a contented cat."
Huang Wen walked over to the main console, looking at the complex runes etched into the metal. "Then stop trying to be a wizard, Tony. You're an engineer. If the magic is the problem, ignore the magic for now. Strip the tech out. Reverse-engineer the weapon systems and the plating. We don't need to mass-produce 'ghost ships.' We just need to upgrade our own stuff with their superior metallurgy and energy efficiency."
"Easier said than done," Tony sighed, rubbing his eyes. "The weapons system on this thing is incredible. If I can figure out the plasma compression tech, I could make an Iron Man beam look like a laser pointer. But there's a new wall: the energy requirements. My New Element arc reactor? It's the peak of human achievement, and it's still not enough."
Huang Wen looked genuinely surprised. "The New Element isn't enough? That thing puts out more power than a nuclear plant."
Tony gave him the look a professor gives a student who thinks 1+1 equals 3. "Wen, think about the scale. This ship is designed for interstellar combat. According to my simulations, firing the main battery just once consumes as much energy as ten Iron Man suits fighting for an entire hour. It's an energy hog. If I can't figure out the 'conversion' layer—the part where the magic feeds the tech—I'm just building the world's most expensive paperweight."
He leaned back against the alien hull, his face showing the true weight of his exhaustion. "I need to understand how the Chitauri bridged the gap. If I can find that bridge, I can swap their 'magic' for my arc reactors and we'll have a fleet that can actually leave the atmosphere. But right now? I'm just a guy with a very complicated puzzle and no edge pieces."