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double take over the phone. "You son of a bitch," Fury growled, and hung up again.
    Thor laughed. What could you do?
    He leaned forward and tapped the pilot on the shoulder. The pilot leaned his head back, still keeping his eyes front. "Where can you put me down in Brooklyn?" Thor shouted into his ear. The pilot leaned forward to consult some gauge or other, then leaned back again. "What part of Brooklyn?"
    "I believe it's called Flatbush?"
    "What?"
    Thor sighed. "Flatbush!" he shouted. "Flatbush Avenue!" Again the pilot consulted a display. "I can't get you down any closer than the Brooklyn Navy Yard," he yelled. "Unless you want to set down in an empty lot."
    "Fine, yes," Thor shouted, nodding, "let's do that."
    "You going to explain it to General Fury?"
    "He'll know why. Just do it."
    Ten minutes later Thor was stooping as the helicopter angled up and away to the southwest. He was in the middle of an acre or so of cracked and weedy asphalt, once a truck yard and now just one more place where the commerce of New York had come and gone. When he got to the fence, he jumped up and caught the razor wire, bracing his feet on the top of a fencepost before vaulting over. As his feet hit the ground, he saw three passing teenagers gaping at him. "Pretty good trick, isn't it?" he said with a grin, spreading his hands so they could see that he hadn't cut himself.
    "Damn," one of them said. "Homey's a ninja."
    They watched him walk down Flatbush Avenue back toward Rogers's apartment, which was in the as-yet-ungentrified hinterlands of Brooklyn. The block Rogers lived on looked like nobody had put a coat of paint on anything since he'd left for the war. At times like these, Thor thought, I would just as soon fly, and to hell with this pretense for mortals and their small fears. He felt the absence of Mjolnir in his hands. Then he cracked a smile again, thinking of the teenagers and their wonder and what must have seemed an impossible thing to them. Being immortal had its privileges... and its drawbacks, Thor thought, remembering the dark and shining malice on the face of his half brother.
    Steve Rogers is my favorite , Loki had said. That much Thor had told Fury. What he had not mentioned was that Loki had said something else. Rogers I love, Loki had said, because he will squeeze so hard with his fists of order that chaos will inevitably squirt out . And laughed, Loki had, long and loud. Thor picked up his pace, spurred on by a sense he couldn't shake that something was about to happen, some trick about to be played on a man whose goodness would be the lever that evil would use against him. To be a god was to know things; the joke of fate was that too often, what even the gods knew was not quite enough.
    Rogers wasn't home. Thor stood on the street, watching the mortals pass. What would he have told Rogers? That Loki had taken a special interest in him? Rogers believed in flag and country, nothing else. His was a pure belief, not ignorant of nuance but dismissive of it, deeply invested in a black-and-white view of the world. There was an innocence about it that gave Rogers much of his strength, but that innocence was also part of what made him a useful tool for those who operated by deceit. Strength of belief, Thor thought, was admirable, but it was a lever that when used against you always tipped you long before you knew it was being used.
    And so, Thor thought. I have come looking for him to call him a naif and tell him that my half brother, another god he doesn't believe in, has a plan for him. Hardly an errand with good prospects of success. To know and not to be believed. This was the lot of gods. All the same, Thor was glad he wasn't a mortal. Fate would do what Fate did, to Steve Rogers and to them all.
    7
    One thing about coming out of a fifty-seven-year deep freeze was that it diminished the number of people you could turn to when you needed to figure something out and couldn't do it on your own. All I have left, Steve thought