Marvel, page 18
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“And he wanted to do that?” Quinn asked. She rightly assessed that it was time to get moving, and grabbed her backpack from the couch, and her father’s washed flannel, and went to fidget by the door.
“Well…I don’t know. I don’t know how that works, exactly,” said Jane. Her bag rustled with the bits of paper inside, as if she were carrying around a purse full of dried leaves. “Whether he picked it or not, that’s how it is. In Asgard, Daddy’s land, he’s the God of Mischief.”
Quinn frowned. She had an annoyingly large vocabulary already. “Mischief isn’t all bad. Doesn’t it also mean silly?”
“He prefers a pretty liberal interpretation of the word.”
“What’s that mean?” her daughter asked, running out into the hall ahead of Jane.
“That he’s not just silly, he’s bad. Very bad.”
“Uncle Loki is evil?” Quinn gasped.
“Yes,” said Jane, tired. “And that’s why we have to stay away from him.”
Quinn chewed that over while they went down to the car together. It was already there, early. When they climbed in, the chauffeur holding the door, there was a variety box of bagels on the middle seat. They were from Mike’s. Someone had gone all the way to Washington Heights for them. Jane tossed the driver a wan smile.
“Would you want one?” she asked.
He ducked behind his cap and slid into the front seat. “No, thank you, ma’am. Please enjoy.”
“Bagels!” Quinn screamed, diving for them.
Her daughter tore into a blueberry bagel like a feral hyena while Jane stared out the window, lost in thought. This was the right thing to do, to march in there and tell Tony in person that she wasn’t willing to consult anymore. Once it was done, she would take Quinn somewhere outside the city for a long vacation, just the way Dean had suggested. Her publisher would understand that she needed to cut the promo short. This was urgent. They were going into temporary hiding, just until Tony Stark and Uncle Loki lost interest.
Quinn loved the beach. They could just rent a tiny home or a shack somewhere warm. It was going to be fine.
Jane didn’t feel great about leaving her kid at the on-site Stark Industries playgroup, but she was also growing uncomfortable with how much money he had given her for babysitting. So far, she hadn’t signed anything stronger than an NDA, and she intended to keep it that way. Gwen was at her part-time job that day, and Jane wasn’t going to introduce her child to the weird megalomaniac building doomsday machines in the basement. The sliding glass door of the daycare whooshed open, and a tidy young man in a tracksuit greeted them with a beaming smile. He knelt, introducing himself to Quinn, and handed her a tablet wrapped in a silver Stark Industries cover.
“We’re so glad you’re here,” he chirped. “We’re going to have the best time ever. Come on in, we were just starting to build a collaborative world using machine learning and good old-fashioned imagination!”
“Okay, that sounds weird,” Quinn said, shrugging. She didn’t seem thrilled. “I think my world should have Darth Vader as president, but this time he is also a martial arts expert, maybe a black belt, but also? He’s the God of Thunder and has a PhD. Science and magic. Yes. But he’s sensitive, too, and his cabinet is run by rescue animals.”
“Good luck,” Jane told him, and bopped Quinn on the head before locating Pepper near the lobby’s front desk.
“How were the bagels?” Pepper asked, escorting her to the elevators.
“Quinn loved them, thanks.”
“She’s adorable. Those eyes! Is she in sports? Looks like a born athlete. Future Olympics, watch out!”
Jane frowned. The girl was already huge for her age group and trying to eat them out of house and home. “Just trying to keep her alive at this point.”
“Don’t worry, Dr. Foster. She’ll have a blast with Jason, he’s just so, so good with kids. Our daycare was voted best children’s corporate care two years running, and we’re exceptionally proud of that,” said Pepper, aglow with achievement. The elevator arrived, and Jane felt her stomach tighten up as they stepped inside. Tony Stark didn’t strike her as someone who heard no very often.
Pepper only joined her as far as the stop down in the workshop. “There will be some paperwork for you after today’s meeting. Everything is moving so fast on this project. Classic Tony. But I really do apologize that it took our lawyers this long to approve the contract.”
Shouldn’t have bothered.
This time, Tony was not alone in his work cave. There was a flurry of activity, particularly from a service entrance to the right of the elevator bank. Loading-dock employees wheeled in massive black plastic crates. They were completely unlabeled. Tony oversaw the distribution of these crates, directing the workers here and there like an orchestra conductor. Either he owned a lot of the same clothes, or he hadn’t changed since the last time she saw him.
“Dr. Foster! Excellent, excellent, excellent.” He caught sight of her ambling slowly up the lit walkway toward the computers, monitors, and holograms on the elevated crescent of floor at the back of the workspace. A Bluetooth in his ear, Tony held up one hand toward her while he turned circles amid the chaos. “No, I hear you, I do, but I think we need to restructure the timeline on this. There’s already been an energetic response from foreign markets, but we can stall until the demo. When? Like I said, timeline is in flux. Adjustments every hour. Every minute.” Here he paused and winked at Jane. “Should know more in the next fifteen or so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, tell the C-suite bozos to have a juice box and a nap, we can conference them in later this afternoon.”
He ripped the device out of his ear and soft-shoed down the shallow stairs toward her. “Just the woman I was hoping to see. The woman of the hour, in fact!”
“What’s going on?” she asked, watching anxiously as more and more crates were stacked behind him. Her heart inched up her throat.
“A breakthrough,” said Tony. “Breakthroughs, actually. Big Brother finally delivered the goods.” He led her back the way he had come, up the stairs and to a box that had already been crowbarred open, packing peanuts spilling over the edge, littering the floor. Flipping open the lid, Jane felt her breath catch in her throat. The empty, lifeless metal head of the Asgardian Destroyer stared up at her. “But wait!” he cried, laughing. “There’s more!”
“Oh boy,” she replied, in a tiny voice.
“Feast your eyes,” Tony whispered, gesturing to the neon-blue holographic display rotating beyond his desk, “on the power that will let me create my very own wormhole. We’ll have to rebrand that after the demo. There’s something just kind of unsavory about the word wormhole, you know? But we can play around with it later…”
Jane was ignoring him and looking at a topographic map and some kind of drone constantly updating with energy readouts and fluctuations. Her brain supplied all the hundred thousand reasons Tony Stark would never be able to reverse-engineer a wormhole, no matter how much money he pissed away doing it, but then she noticed the different squared-off bubbles along the edges of the hologram.
Leaning toward it, she didn’t have to pretend to be stunned. “What do you suppose is generating that kind of power?”
“This. It’s this.” Tony spun toward one of the monitors suspended over his desk. “J.A.R.V.I.S., show her the clip.”
“Right away, sir,” said the robotically polite voice of his AI butler.
Jane was familiar with the day itself, but not this footage. It was an isolated portion of a recording taken by a professional camera. This was probably government stuff, she thought, too steady and clear to be from a phone camera or news station. It showed Thor’s hammer, Mjolnir, on the ground not far from Tony himself. In slow motion, a vortex of energy swirled around the hammer, forming a tunnel, fractals of light dancing around the cylinder before Mjolnir was sucked up into the sky. She wondered if Tony could actually hear how hard her heart was punching against her rib cage.
“Same exact energy readings,” Tony murmured. “We have on-site, DOD, and satellite data confirming it. It’s this hammer. It traveled somewhere in a wormhole, then returned.”
Bad. This was capital-B Bad. Mjolnir had returned to their realm. It was the one thing she needed to stay far, far away, safely in Asgard, protected from people who asked Can we? instead of Should we? People like Tony Stark.
Somehow, she knew Loki had something to do with it.
Jane caught the groan before it escaped her throat. Her entire reason for being there was to bow out, but it was also to make sure Tony didn’t succeed. Those objectives now went hand in hand. Which came first, she may have to reconsider. “Surely, this object isn’t generating its own energy field strong enough to spontaneously travel space–time. There must be something moving it from place to place.”
Something like, say, the Bifrost controlled by someone like Heimdall.
Jane shrugged lightly but took note of the coordinates on the map, burning them into her brain. She could feel his breath on her shoulder, on her neck, as he observed the hologram. “It’s the key,” he said. “I know it.”
She glanced at the Destroyer’s head nestled inertly in the crate. What would a man like Tony Stark do when he realized Mjolnir was immovable, wieldable only by those of worthiness? He would move heaven and earth. The crates had finally been fully unloaded into his workspace. With power, with money, with influence, he had fleeced the government of unseen alien technology. He was never going to stop.
“The key,” Jane repeated softly. “So, what now?”
“We harness this thing’s power for the project,” he said, backing up. Pivoting to his desk, he yanked open a top drawer and extracted a red nylon bag. Unzipping it, he checked the contents and then handed the satchel to Jane. “I’m flying you out to Buffalo to handle the retrieval. I want your eyes on this thing first, and your expertise leading our approach. I’m assuming you’ve got a tablet? What am I saying? You’ve got a kid, of course you have one.”
Jane nodded, numb.
“There’s a chit in here, pop it into the USB on your tablet and it will give you a linkup to J.A.R.V.I.S. There’s some other tech in the bag, he’ll walk you through it. How do you like Kevin?”
She stared. “Kevin?”
“The driver. The one you offered a bagel? The guy who’s been picking you up every morning? Kevin?”
“Kevin! He’s fine, I guess, why?”
“I’ll send him with you for security. My drones haven’t picked up any activity around the site that would require a bigger presence. In fact, I think the quieter we are about this, the better. You’ve got a light touch, use it. If any of the locals act up, Kevin will be there.” Tony touched her shoulder, inhaling deeply. “This is it, yeah? The culmination of your life’s work. The culmination of mine. We’re doing something special here together. Are you amped? I’m…look, I haven’t slept in days if we’re being honest, so I know this is all…” He made a motion like scrubbing one hand over his face and made a vomiting sound. “Blagh! Ghastly, I’m sure. Anyway. Are you amped, Jane?”
He took her by both shoulders and shook, chuckling.
Jane peeled her lips apart and showed her teeth. “It’s…wow. It just hasn’t really sunk in yet. I’m sure it will feel more real when I get eyes on this thing. Amped is an understatement.”
“There’s my girl, there’s the spirit.” Tony pumped his fist. “Talk to Pepper about arrangements for your kid, I’m sure she can find someone great on short notice.”
Jane took the red nylon bag from him and hesitated. “I’d rather have her with me.”
Tony lifted a brow. “Oh. You’re sure?”
“Yeah,” said Jane. She was going to beat Tony Stark to the hammer, they would figure out what to do with it, and then she would disappear with Quinn to the ends of the earth. If it all went according to plan, she would never have to see his smug face again. They wouldn’t even have internet wherever they disappeared to, they would just go.
It was a fainthearted hope, but part of her wondered if Asgard would take them.
“Yeah,” she repeated. “It’s a hard time for us right now. I don’t like being away from her.”
“Got it.” Tony clipped the earpiece back in its place and turned toward the open box. Reverently, he lifted the Destroyer’s head out of the crate, grunting from the effort. “Pepper will book her a seat. This is it, Jane. Are you ready? This is it.”
“I’m ready,” she replied. To stop you. To protect the legacy and safety of a place that’s never even acknowledged we exist. Maybe they don’t know. Maybe it doesn’t matter. The Destroyer’s presence unnerved her. She shoved the nylon bag in her purse and hurried back to the elevators.
* * *
JANE DIDN’T SEE THE single piece of folded paper that fluttered to the ground as she left, but Tony saw it. He put the Destroyer’s head back in its box. Sweeping up the folded paper, he fidgeted with its hard edges absently, feeling, strangely, at peace. Everything was moving along as it should. Progress. Successes.
It’s happening, Happy. I won’t let them get away with what they did to you.
He felt better now that the Destroyer was where it belonged. It couldn’t hurt the wrong people ever again. Tony would make sure of that. Leaning against one of the heavy delivery crates, he opened the slip of paper from Jane’s bag, curious. There was a childlike scrawl across it, and a single question:
If Daddy was the God of Thunder, is he with us whenever it storms?
19
LOKI JERKED AWAKE ON the couch, his legs lashing out, kicking away invisible demons.
“Shut up!” he shouted, finishing an argument that had started in his dreams. In his head. He rolled partially onto the floor. The looming specters had vanished, and he found himself alone in the buttery-yellow bloom of early morning rising against the shades.
Still here. Not going anywhere.
He was imagining the voices. He had to be. It wasn’t Rūna, she was gods knew where doing gods knew what. His throat was dry. His head pounded. Rūna and Donna had managed to throw a tarp over the gigantic hole in his ceiling, but it did nothing to keep out the sounds of cars driving by and dogs barking. It was hard to say if he had slept, but he had certainly dreamed.
Kicking the books and magazines out of the way, he went to the kitchen, pouring a large glass of water from the tap and guzzling it while the birds began calling to one another noisily. It was the start of another day, but it felt like something else to him, perhaps like the beginning of a different sort of incarceration, a more vicious punishment.
Mjolnir was here. His brother’s hammer.
It couldn’t just stay there. It begged to have something done with it.
The bloody thing was as much his brother as it was the god’s chosen weapon. The two could not be teased apart. That it was now smoldering in what was left of his living room was incredibly irritating. It hadn’t gotten there by accident. The gods did nothing arbitrarily. Stupidly? Sure, all the time. But not randomly. Did his mother truly believe he was worthy of wielding it? Did she forget every single moment of his life up until that point? Was she, well, well?
Loki chucked his cup in the sink and stalked to the crater, looming over the hammer.
“This is about that kid. Just the possibility of a grandchild is giving them brain rot. I don’t want you here,” he growled. “Mockery. You’re just here to mock me.”
And, mockingly, the hammer remained. Inert. Pompous.
“Go,” he said, furious. “Return to Asgard and await the coming of the Chosen One’s Precious Child. Is this degradation not enough? Must the wounds be rubbed and salted?”
It seemed only to laugh at him. He needed sleep. He was imagining things.
“Will you be satisfied if I try and fail? Is that what you want? Is that why you came? To make my humiliation complete? Very well. Observe. Enjoy it, I will not make the attempt again.”
Loki slid down into the hole, heedless of the shards of laminate floor that tore at his shirt. The hammer offered itself up. Vulnerable. Tantalizing. The shaft seemed to call for a hand, to whisper of possibility and power, so Loki obliged it. Leaning down, grunting, he took hold of Mjolnir, knowing that it would resist him, and pulled. A mean voice in his head suggested it might work, it might budge, but of course it didn’t. The hammer was not just too heavy to lift, not just immovable, but straining actively against him.
But what if…?
No, never.
“Yet all the things I could accomplish with you,” Loki whispered. Sweat gathered at his temples. “Are you not curious?”
After weeks of observation, he was wise to what petty anesthetizing grievances motivated most Midgardians. They craved the sweet complacency of comfort. Even more, they desired authority, always seeking heroes and saviors, a charismatic godling to promise they were safe, that they were doing everything just right. Loki could deliver this to them with ease, even without his Asgardian powers, but imagining his serpent throne and the supplicating masses barely moved him. It conjured, at best, a wobbly half smile.
Loki took hold of the hammer again, yanked, swore, and struggled, but it steadfastly resisted.
What was victory, what was domination, if there was no Thor to see him have it? If there was no equal, opposing force to move against him? Who would be his rival now? A little girl?
“I’m done with you,” he muttered, climbing out of the crater and fixing his shirt. He retrieved a fleece Buffalo Bills blanket from the couch and used it to cover the hammer. Out of sight, out of mind. “If you go, and you should, leave the blanket. I’ve taken enough from Donna already.”
