The Last Shifter (a Loki romance)

Chapter 113

Once the team was all together in the lab, Steve and I began showing the photo around.

"What's this?"

"A message. Ultron killed Strucker." Stark waltzed up and Thor slammed the iPad into his chest.

"And he did a Banksy at the crime scene, just for us."

"This is a smokescreen. Why send a message when you've just given a speech?"

"Strucker knew something that Ultron wanted us to miss." Natasha was typing away.

"I bet he–yep. Everything we have on Strucker's been erased."

"Not everything. Come on.

Stark led us to a level in the Tower that I'd never been to before. It was more of a basement than anything, but it was above ground. There were shelves upon shelves of labeled boxes.

"It's all alphabetized, let's take it upstairs and start going through it." When I saw just how much info Stark had on Strucker, I turned to him.

"Why wasn't this all online for me to use months ago?"

"It was. Plus all the information we've gather over the last ten or so years."

"Oh." I balanced a box of known associates on either shoulder and followed the others back to the elevator.

"All of these are known associates?" Steve commented when I put mine down with the half dozen already there.

"I guess Strucker had a lot of friends." We each picked a box and began sifting through them. The process was painfully slow.

"Well these people are all horrible." Bruce plopped another folder down on his growing pile of 'read'.

"Wait! I know that guy." He handed him the one he'd just opened and we all gathered around him.

"From back in the day. He operates off the African coast. Black market arms." Steve and I gave him matching looks of disapproval, "There are conventions, alright? You meet people. I didn't sell him anything. But he was talking about finding something knew, a game-changer. It was all very...Ahab." We'd split up the papers in the folder. This Ulysses Klaue was indeed a terrible person.

"This." Thor pointed to a picture on his page.

"Uh, that's a tattoo. I don't think he had it."

"No, those are tattoos. This is a brand." Said brand was located on the side of his neck. At the time the picture was taken, it looked rather recent. So, we scanned the picture and Bruce ran a search.

"Oh yeah. It's a word in an African dialect meaning 'thief'...in a much less friendly way."

"What dialect?"

"Wakinada...." He moved closer to the screen, "Wa-wa-Wakandan." There was only one resource on Earth that Wakanda was known for, and it was the only source of it.

"You think this guy got out of Wakanda with some of their trade goods?"

"I thought your father said he got the last of it."

"He thought he did. He never stopped bragging about it."

"I don't follow. What comes out of Wakanda?" Stark, Steve, and I looked at the shield casually resting against the cabinets.

"The strongest metal on Earth."

"Vibranium. Exceedingly light and unimaginable strength. A game changer indeed." I said bitterly.