With most people, greed means eating from the bowl while eyeing the pot. Nick Fury wasn't "most people." He was the guy chewing braised pork by the mouthful, checking how much sauce was left in the pan, and quietly planning how to acquire the entire pig farm.
And Li wanted to "borrow" the Tesseract with a few choice words? Cute.
Fury threaded a needle of a smile. "How about this: I assign Coulson to shadow you and brief you on global security dynamics every day, and in exchange you teach him how to become a sorcerer."
Li sprang up like his coat was on fire. "Based on what—"
"Based on what you're asking," Fury cut in, dry as salt. "Why should a few sentences from you unlock my toy box?"
Li paused. So that's how you want to play it.
He rolled his eyes, shook the green gourd in his hand, and thunked it onto the coffee table. "Who said it's 'just' an explanation? I planned to trade you a drop of Fountain of Life for lab time with the cube."
"A drop?" Fury's lip hitch barely qualified as a smile. "You have the nerve. Even for a whole gourd, I'd think about it."
He picked up the gourd, turning it over, tracing the dense sigils etched into the lacquer. "These runes—your work? How big is the space inside? Really enough to drown eight hundred of me?"
Li ignored the joke and squinted at him instead. "You recognize runes?"
Fury enjoyed the flicker of surprise. Mystique mattered. Let the magician wonder what the spy knew. He kept his face blank, worked the stopper for show—and it didn't budge.
"Huh." He glanced sideways. "Magic lockout like your book—pretty way to say 'hands off.'" He set it down. "Fine. Start with the cube. Then we negotiate the 'loan.'"
Li sliced a hand through the air. "The Tesseract is the Space Stone. The name tells you what it does."
"Space," Fury echoed, leaning in. "As in…?"
"As in it embodies the law of space," Li said. "Whoever holds it can wield spatial power. You've seen me open portals—pop up anywhere on Earth. That's spellwork. No spell, no portal. And I can't hit Mars because it's too far and my power's finite."
He tapped the gourd. "With the Stone? Even a non-mage—if they can bear the load—can go anywhere. Eat breakfast here, wave your hand, step out on Mars for a post-meal stroll." His smile turned sly. "Or you magnify a vessel's internal space without limit. If your insight's deep enough, you could forge a gourd that holds a sun."
He let that settle, then added, "Tech can harness it too. Twelve years ago, that alien scientist hiding in Earth orbit? I'd bet her endgame was a fighter that could punch clean through a wormhole."
Li lifted both palms. "I'm not trying to master the Stone. I just want to borrow it—taste the law inside, refine my own spatial spells. Maybe when I'm done I can take you to the Moon for a photo op."
Fury rubbed his jaw. A law. Artifacts that weren't just batteries, but principles in solid form. If Hell was real—as Li claimed—maybe some "myths" were receipts, not fairy tales. What did that make the stranger objects in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s vaults?
Also: the man already blinked around the planet at will. Surveillance hated that. And if "only sorcerers" could learn portal craft… then the Sanctum people could be anywhere. Could he find them by tracking impossible travel footprints—people appearing in two places the same day, continents apart?
He angled in. "You have any sense of the Stone's output? That kind of energy isn't for weekend wizards." A new thought snapped into place. "You knew what it was twelve years ago?"
Li nodded.
Fury rewound the tape in his head: Li's early caution avoiding S.H.I.E.L.D.; his casual stroll through the Triskelion today; "laws" falling out of his mouth like a man with a library card to the universe. A drifter with no teacher, no legacy vault, no patron—twelve years from rookie to talking about comprehending a law?
People who touched laws in legends were gods or close enough to shake their hands.
And this guy wanted to borrow the Space Stone for "insight."
The headache arrived on cue. If a teacherless stray can push this far, what about the ones with temples and libraries? What happens when the robe crowd decides to "modernize" Earth on their terms?
Li watched the calculations scroll across Fury's face and smiled inside. He'd intentionally left air in the explanation—room for Fury to fill with his own worries. Once the Director accepted how critical the cube was, sinking it in a dark ocean vault was off the table. He'd increase security and accelerate research.
And for that, he'd need someone who understood the cube.
Who else could read that language?
Fury pressed thumb and forefinger to his temple, breathed through the throb, then looked up. "How long is 'a borrow'?"
Li feigned a beat of surprise; inside, he was pumping a fist. "Hard to say. I won't know until I try."
That wasn't false modesty. Years ago, when he'd first touched the Tesseract, the power had outmassed him; merely holding it felt like gripping a thunderhead with bare skin. He hadn't been worthy of the Infinite.
Now? He wasn't at the summit, but the Stone was wrapped in its cube shell, and he'd climbed more than a few rungs since. The itch under his skin said now was the window.
He saw second thoughts trying to take root and pressed. "You can watch. All of you. Maybe your lab rats get a nudge or two watching how a mage interfaces with it."
That did not help. Fury studied him, then the gourd, then him again. "You look… determined."
Caught that, did you? Li kept the grin inside and lifted a shoulder. "So? Yes or no?"
Silence, then a long, slow exhale. Fury's eye cooled. "Tell me how much Fountain water you can put on the table."