The number of security guards at the entrance to the Palisade had been doubled when Thanos had returned to Theta-Three. Now the numbers had been doubled again. The result bordered on comical. The entrance wasn't all that wide and the security personnel struggled to position themselves in a way that they didn't choke the flow of traffic in and out of the Palisade.

Not that Loki or Brunnhilde were laughing. A slip up here would have dire consequences.

Brunnhilde went first, handing Jalmar's identity card over to the desk clerk and trying not to cling too tightly to her bag.

'Didn't you leave like an hour ago?' the desk clerk said between an impressive succession of yawns. 'You're missing the evening meal.'

Brunnhilde shrugged her shoulders tiredly. 'You are too, aren't you?'

'The work never stops.' The desk clerk snickered, then handed Jalmar's card back to Brunnhilde. 'Enjoy your evening, darling.'

Loki made a conscious effort not to track Brunnhilde's passage past the last rings of guards. Looking anxious and watching people too intently was the first step to attracting unwanted attention from Thanos' armed thugs. So he simply passed Lysante's identity card to the clerk and commiserated about the constant necessity to work long past reasonable hours, especially now that there were two fugitives in town. By the time Loki got the card back, he was certain the desk clerk had been a missed opportunity to recruit one of Thanos' men to Loki's cause.

For every path we tread, we leave behind a dozen paths untrodden.

'Good evening, gentlemen,' Loki said pleasantly to the security guard at the back of the atrium as he moved past them, then, the moment he was out of their sight, wiped his cordial smile off his face. 'You needn't have waited for me, Jalmar.'

'The way you were going, I thought you were about to ask the clerk out on a date,' Brunnhilde replied.

Loki swallowed about half a dozen inappropriate responses and motioned in the direction they needed to go to reach the upper levels. Few people crossed their path in the labyrinthine corridors in the Palisade. Those who were still working, and there were a decent number doing so, were busy at their terminals, trying to finish off the day's work rather than idling in the hallways. More numerous were the cleaning drones, preoccupied with scrubbing the floor and removing built-up dust on the light-fixtures.

Brunnhilde took in a sharp breath as they finally reached the complex section where the inner circle's personal quarters were situated. Loki patted her on the shoulder, more relieved than anything else that he wasn't the only one struggling with his nerves.

This area of the Palisade didn't have the brutalist aesthetic dominant through much of the rest of the complex. Plush carpeting stretched out with nary a scuff-mark to be seen and in the small recessed bays set into the walls, climbing plants snaked their way out of their glazed pots. Loki could barely breathe as they passed one door after another. They weren't labelled, but Loki could imagine who occupied the suites that lay on the other side of those doors. It was imperative they weren't discovered here.

'This'll work out,' he said softly.

'Of course it will,' Brunnhilde replied.

The door to Thanos' apartments was at the end of this hallway. Its size -- it had to be twelve feet tall -- immediately set it apart from the rest. Brunnhilde gestured for Loki to hang back, while she strode over to the panel used to input the security code to the door. He did as bidden, although he wasn't sure what he would do if they were discovered while Brunnhilde pulled off the panel's casing and plugged in her datapad in order to break into the Palisade's security system. The small blaster hidden under his clothes didn't inspire him with confidence.

'Any luck?' Loki asked after a few minutes of furious typing and several irritated grunts emanated from Brunnhilde.

'Wait for it,' she muttered. 'Wait... here.' She grinned, but when she scrolled down her expression faltered somewhat. 'It's odd, the password hasn't been changed in more than two months.'

'And it should've been updated the moment they discovered they'd had a break in,' Loki said, more to himself than in reply to Brunnhilde. He and the Valkyrie exchanged uneasy looks, but neither of them had an answer. 'It could just be an oversight I suppose.'

'Or it's hubris.'

'I don't...'

Brunnhilde pulled out the cord she'd connected to the wall-side panel with more force than was necessary, sending a dull thump down the hallway. 'Maybe it's one thing, maybe it's the other. Our plan stays the same, doesn't it?'

'True.'

She was already typing in the code before Loki had finished speaking. When she pressed the last button, something inside the wall shifted and the door popped open. His hand on his stolen blaster, Loki crept into the suite.

Lights flickered on, revealing a cavernous room. Thanos, it seemed, thought interior walls unnecessary. The same could have been said for most comforts an average person would clutter their house with. The carpet ended at the threshold and unpolished tile covered the floor without so much as a rug to make the cold floor more palatable. The few pieces of furniture - a lonely table in the middle, two cupboards pressed against the side wall, a pair of straight-backed chairs - were all made out of steel and discoloured wood.

'This suite isn't a place to live, this is a punishment,' Brunnhilde said as she shut the door behind them.

Loki's gaze lingered on the cacophony of steel poles and leather straps that dominated the right side of the space - some kind of exercise equipment as best as he could guess. 'The cavern of a fanatic.'

'At least we know he sleeps.' Brunnhilde pointed to the shadowed space behind the rigged up exercise equipment, which Loki hadn't noticed until this moment. There was a bed back there: steel frame, a thin mattress, no blanket. 'This layout isn't ideal. I expected a more enclosed space.'

'There must've been walls here once,' Loki said, peering at the tile-work under his feet. There were obvious breaks in the pattern that roughly matched the suite layout from the files Brunnhilde had stolen. 'He must've had them removed. We'll have to manage with the layout as it is. What do you think in regards to placement?'

'Oh, that bed-frame will drown him in shrapnel.'

Brunnhilde set down her bag and unzipped it. This was another fiddly part of the operation. For their own safety, they had packed the explosives and the detonators separately, which meant that they now had to assemble the bombs. Loki started to help, but Brunnhilde was more proficient with the various wires and he seemed to only get in her way. He slipped the remote to the detonators into his pocket, then pulled out the camera they also needed to set up in here.

It was a small thing -- about the width of his thumb, but the lack of internal walls complicated matters. He had planned to plant the camera above the doorway to the bedroom, which as it had turned out, didn't exist. Loki examined the exercise equipment, then dismissed the idea. Chances were Thanos would want to train and he was bound to notice something attached to his equipment.

'You two shouldn't be in here,' Nebula said.

Loki jerked around to find Nebula standing just past the doorway, a drawn sword in her right hand. He winced. The door had moved quietly and he had been preoccupied with his thoughts; he hadn't noticed it open.

Do I... Honestly, the chances of talking our way out of this one are rather low.

Behind him, Brunnhilde rose to her feet and Loki suddenly had another thing to think about. The form Brunnhilde had adopted this evening was a small one, possessing a great capacity to perform complex calculations without a need for a computer and no muscle mass worth noting.

'How did you know we were in here?' he asked. He stalled, but the answer was also likely to give a clue about what they should expect if he and Brunnhilde were to make it back to the other side of the door.

'I made updates to the Palisade's security systems. A few tricks - an alert should an old password be used, a fake interface for anyone trying to hack their way in, and so on. I'm not as stupid as you think I am, Loki.' Nebula's jaw shifted forward as she swallowed. 'It is Loki, isn't it? I'd recognise your voice no matter whose face you wear.'

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

'Of course you would,' Brunnhilde shot back. She had come up to stand next to Loki, but didn't stay rooted in place there. She offered him a meaningful side-long look, then kept moving sideways. Nebula would probably assume Brunnhilde was trying to encircle her. In truth, neither Brunnhilde nor Loki wanted to be in the vicinity of the explosives. 'It's the kind of thing you always know about the person you love.'

Nebula's eyes widened and when she spoke, her words were spat out through clenched teeth. 'He nearly killed my sister. If I'm reading this right, you are here to kill my father.'

'I am,' Loki declared. Both Nebula and Brunnhilde stared at him. It had been a long time since he had uttered anything with that degree of boldness. He took a few steps towards Nebula, confident now that there was no one watching her back - she was here on a personal mission. 'You know why I'm doing this. Just look around you, look at yourself and remember everything he has done to you. He's wrecked your entire life. He -'

'He's my father!'

'He's a cancer to the universe.'

Nebula drew her second blade and descended upon him with such fury that Loki didn't have time to register what was happening. Only Brunnhilde's blaster saved him. The shot obliterated the blade of the weapon in Nebula's left hand, sending molten shards of metal into Loki and Nebula's eyes.

Half-blind and all too aware of the gouges the metal had singed into his face, Loki rolled off to the side. He rubbed his eyes, then clambered up only to find himself short of an opponent. Nebula had abandoned her assault on him for an attempt to take out Brunnhilde and her blaster.

Brunnhilde fired off another two shots, both of which Nebula managed to avoid. On the next one, the blaster misfired. That was the problem with these weapons. The smaller they were, the less charge they held and the few of this type in the Sanctuary's inventory were of shoddy quality. Loki wasn't the least surprised that the blaster had all of half a dozen rounds in it. There was no recharging it right now either, so Brunnhilde tossed aside and ducked out of the way of Nebula's attack.

'Nebula! Listen to me!' Loki shouted. 'He's not your father. He killed your family and took you as a pet.'

She spun around to face him. 'Not a word more, Loki.'

He hurried forward lest her attention turn back to Brunnhilde and met her remaining sword with his knives. Nebula's fury was palpable in every strike. There was no changing her mind - not tonight, possibly not ever. She fought with such intensity that even against two opponents she held her own and in fact, she was slowly driving them backwards.

Then Loki went for a low strike, but found neither Nebula nor her sword. She had slid sideways and caught the fistful of Brunnhilde's clothing, which gave her enough leverage to throw Brunnhilde into Thanos' exercise rig.

The move left Nebula facing away from Loki and he seized his chance. He leapt for her. She ducked and Loki tumbled gracelessly over the top. He landed hard on the tile floor, his skull coming down with such a force that he was sure he had cracked a floor tile. Nebula pulled the knives out of his hands.

'You'll regret this,' Loki mumbled and grimaced as he tasted blood.

Nebula frowned, then leaned forward. 'I can't quite hear you begging for mercy there, Loki.'

'You'll regret this,' he repeated more loudly, but the words came out slurred. He had bitten deep into his cheek as he fell and blood was now pooling into his mouth. He swallowed as much of it as he could. From his vantage, he could see between Nebula's heavy boots - Brunnhilde had scrambled back to the explosives and was doing something with the wires. 'Nebula, listen to me. There's nothing Thanos can offer you other than blood, murder and a painful, premature death.'

'You're a liar,' Nebula spat back. 'There's a reason your own kind want nothing to do with you.'

'Yes, I know.'

Loki sighed, then let out an unhinged, mirthless laugh as he begged the air for the base materials he sought. It didn't take much after that - a push up, a thrust of his arm, a release of his magic. An ice spear crackled into existence in Loki's hand, striking just under Nebula's sternum then up into her chest cavity. He let go of his makeshift spear as Nebula's feet gave in under her and she tumbled down.

'Here's one lesson we never got to,' Loki said. He caught Nebula's sword and pulled it out of her reach. 'Never share your real tricks with the enemy.'

Nebula tried to reply, but only frothed-up blood spurted out. However much of her had been modified, by the way she trembled, not quite able to move for the pain, Loki guessed he had found a part of Nebula that had been mere Luthomoid. He turned away, uncertain if the nausea that threatened to overwhelm him originated in the blood he had swallowed or in what he had just done.

'Solid work there, Odinson,' Brunnhilde said. 'We should put her out of her misery though. Better Thanos finds her body than she crawl over and call an alarm.'

Nebula let out a violent gargle. 'Ooh late.'

'What?' Loki grabbed her by the collar.

'L...ock.' More froth followed and something like a cough. Nebula clenched her eyes. 'Down.'

Loki released his grip on her and scrambled back, less because of Nebula's words, than his inability to look at her. He sprinted over to the wide window at the far end of the suite. The window overlooked the back of the Palisade complex and had a good view of the perimeter wall. Every sentry post was lit and there were soldiers everywhere. While lacking immediate back up, Nebula had ordered the entirety of the Palisade to go into lock down mode before she came to confront Loki and Brunnhilde.

What now? They'll be searching inside the complex too, they'll get to this room soon enough.

'This has got to be salvageable,' he said even as he realised that they might have blown their opportunity to set up a trap for Thanos.

He took stock of the room - they could attempt to scrub it of all evidence that a physical altercation than taken place here, he could even figure out what could be done about Nebula, but the computer systems would betray them. There would be a log of an unauthorised entry already. They didn't know what other protective measures Nebula had set up and in attempting to clean up the log, they might only make things worse. Nebula certainly wasn't about to explain to them what she had done.

'The bombs are ready,' he muttered, desperately hoping a solution would come to him if he only thought hard enough. There was one answer, an ugly one, but his mind kept circling back to it. 'Maybe if we just wait here.'

'No, you and I are getting out of here.' Brunnhilde grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him along towards the door. 'Thanos isn't happening today, but there is still a way out of here and we're going to take it. Thanos' own ship is docked here in the Palisade. What's the bet they keep it fuelled and prepped to go?'

'It'll be guarded.'

'Everything that's worth anything is guarded on this asteroid.'

Loki shook Brunnhilde's hand off his shoulder and reclaimed his knives. 'We came here to kill Thanos.'

'Don't be an idiot,' Brunnhilde replied. 'What's the likelihood he'll be the next person to walk into this room, not a squadron of armed guards? It's done. We had a chance, it didn't happen. We're not blowing ourselves up for nothing.'

'Fine,' he spat out. 'Fine.'

Loki cursed the Norns; for good measure he slipped in a few curses he had picked up from Wong as well. They had come so far and it had come to nothing. As the Valkyrie pressed the exit button to the door, Loki glanced back to Nebula. She lay on the ground, quivering and surrounded by an ever-growing puddle. There was a peculiar sheen to it. Oil mixed in with her blood, Loki realised. He flinched away and followed Brunnhilde back out to the hallway.

Not a moment after Loki's heels struck the carpeted floor, the doors to the neighbouring suites burst open and armed men poured out. It seemed Nebula too had left a trick up her sleeve. Loki swore. Five. Six. Nine. He lost count, but there were too many - the odds entirely against him and Brunnhilde.

'Hold on, hold on!' Brunnhilde shouted. 'What's going on here?'

'You are trespassing,' replied a one-eyed Kronan, who had stepped out the front of the gaggle of guards now blocking the hallway. The squadron leader from his uniform insignia. Loki wished he still wore his own; he could have attempted to pull rank. 'Drop those weapons and come along with us.'

'Yeah, no.'

Brunnhilde had appropriated Nebula's surviving sword and now brought it up. Loki pulled a face. Knives and swords wouldn't be enough here, nor the small blaster Loki still had hidden. He dropped the glamour over Brunnhilde, then the concealment spells woven over his own body.

'It's the ones everyone's been looking for!' one of the guards exclaimed.

His words met those words with raucous laughter. Those who brought the two fugitives to Thanos had been promised great rewards. Loki imagined that with them pinned as they were - the only other exit out of Thanos' quarters was through the window and the grounds beneath that window were crawling with armed men too - this squadron of guards could already fantasise about the glories they would earn in exchange for Loki's head.

The night's not over yet, my friends.

He flung out his hand and unleashed a torrent of ice at the guardsmen. Its force knocked them off their feet, sending them crashing into the walls. Loki sprinted over the now drenched carpet, Brunnhilde in step just behind him. This show of Jotunn magic hadn't bought them much time, however. Almost immediately, Loki could hear them moving and shouting to one other.

'They'll have comms units,' Brunnhilde shouted. 'They'll call for back up!'

He understood what she didn't say - he still had the remote detonator in his pocket. Trying not to slow his pace, he fumbled for it, but at the same time tried to come up with an alternative. He came up short. The blaster didn't have enough shots to take them all out and would probably be too slow anyway. Bring down the ceiling on them? No guarantee someone wouldn't survive the crush.

Knowing that every step he took tested the remote detonator's range and diminished their chances, Loki made his decision. He sank his fingers into the buttons on the remote. The building roared and a violent trio of vibrations tore through the floor. They were far enough not to feel the explosion's heat, but within moments the smell caught up with them.

'Fire control, sectors forty-four, fifty-three, sixty-one!' blared the smooth, robotic voice of the Palisade's emergency system. 'Evacuation order for all non-essential personnel. Evacuation order for all non-essential personnel. Fire control, sectors forty-four, fifty-three, fifty-two, sixty-one!'

Loki snuck a glance back, but saw only smoke. Still, he and Brunnhilde didn't moderate their pace. On the stairs, they found pandemonium. Administrative and service staff, who had been told the complex was in lock down only minutes ago, had now been told to evacuate and were in complete panic. Plenty of the soldiers were no better - debating between themselves as to who constituted essential personnel in this situation. Others yet scrambled to get up the stairs and do something about the spreading fire. No one had a second to spare to take a careful look at Loki and Brunnhilde so they simply pushed their way down and through to the seventh sector.

A frazzled-looking Chitauri Other swept in front of them at the exit to sector seven. 'Who are you?' she said. 'You can't use these doors.'

'The fucking building's on fire, you idiot!' Brunnhilde replied.

That left the Other hesitating, but then she narrowed his eyes. 'You look like --'

Loki aimed his blaster at the woman. An eye-watering flash. The Other fell to the ground, a sizzling hole where her right cheekbone had been.

Brunnhilde skirted around the still-twitching body and threw open the door the Other had been guarding. Loki grinned. Finally, some proof that the Norns didn't utterly despise him -- Thanos' ship was a mere fifty metres away.