It took several minutes to register and then she froze, already certain of what she would see when she turned to look over her shoulder, at first only struck by the thought that villagers with pitchforks had come to call. The next thought was that it was either fortunate or telling that she'd been the only one home. After that, sheer vulnerability. Did she dare come down? Did she dare stay put? Her heart competed with the volume of the droning cables overhead.
Were they searching for her now in the brush? How long would it be before they thought to look up? To keep her eyes adapted to the dark she didn't look at the fire, instead looking below her into the inky void, the nothing that prevented her from being afraid of the enormous height.
Who, who, who? Was it a message for her? S.H.I.E.L.D.'s way of not taking no for an answer? Or was she supposed to be down there, burning at the stake?
She could either risk them having night field equipment on the ground or wait for someone to climb up after her. Running rapid pros and cons, she decided if someone was out to get her, they'd have to come and get her. So with silent care, she re-ascended the fifty feet that she'd come down and waited out a long, long night.
It was very cold when the first grey light spread over the landscape. Exhaustion had overpowered her terror and she had nodded off for a while, she couldn't be sure how long. Her hiking jacket had kept her from freezing, but her fingers were stiff inside the rubber-coated work gloves, her throat dry and constricted with fear.
An unusual layer of cloud shrouded the nascent sunrise, washing the sky red. Working feeling back into her hands, she carefully removed her cell phone from her pocket. She'd turned it off hours ago, afraid of broadcasting her location, but wanting desperately to warn Darce and Erik. Now she hesitated still, searching for any sign of activity.
The lab had been little more than a corrugated barn with a heavy-weight climate control system, now it was a smoking, blackened frame. Had the small safe where she kept her backups survived without baking it's contents? It was still difficult to see in the grey predawn light.
Cursing silently, she turned on her phone and called Darcy, hands unsteady. If anything had happened to her overnight, she'd never forgive herself. Erik was on the other side of the world wrapping up some of his research and she could only hope that he was safely out of range.
It rang and rang and then, "Hey! This is Darcy. Send me a text!" Then, "This mail box is full. Goodbye."
It was startlingly mundane. Darcy never did answer her phone, and for the first time Jane wondered if there had been any faulty wiring in her equipment. Maybe she'd just scared the shit out of herself over a straight-forward accident. Maybe she'd slept dangling from a high voltage transmission tower for no reason at all. Maybe.
Either way, her lab had burnt to the ground. That was bad enough that maybe an unknown threat was just the distraction she needed. She couldn't stay up on the tower forever. She left Erik a voicemail detailing her situation and hoped she wouldn't be the death of him. Then she descended.
The sky was very strange as the sun rose under cloud cover, shining like a dirty quarter and evoking the old proverb about sailors taking warning. If she hadn't been so focused on scanning the area for any movement, she might have realized how freakish the gathering storm was for the time of year.
When her feet touched the ground, she considered dropping into a marine's belly crawl, but when nothing terrible sprung out at her, she considered the snakes and scorpions who were her neighbors.
A low crouch would have to do.
The thing about the desert was that it was deathly, impossibly quiet. There was only wind to keep you company and without that was complete silence. It could be startling, but it hadn't ever bothered Jane until now. Now her heart beat seemed truly audible and just as liable to give her away as her footfalls.
She made her way to a small ridge between the lab and the dirt access road and lay low to compose herself and decide what to do.
There was a funny taste in her mouth. The thirty yards distance to the road seemed insurmountable. She could walk to town, but it would take hours and when the sun emerged heat stroke would become a serious danger.
She wavered, then convulsed as a cloud of dust approached: a vehicle. As it got closer, it slowed, as the driver noticed the smoking ruins, and then floored it, jerking to a halt with a spray of sandy dirt. It was Darcy. Jane sagged with relief as she jumped out of the van.
"JANE!"
Instantly Jane was on her feet, but her reply died on her lips as something rose from the ashes and began to walk—no, walking wasn't the right description—something began to move towards Darcy.
There was a fierce, almost metallic taste in Jane's sinuses and the back of her mouth, like ozone, almost as if she were going to sneeze, and her pounding heart had sped up so fast that it droned like the high voltage cables and Jane wondered if she was about to faint because her ears seemed to have closed up, but she had to protect Darcy—how? somehow—from whatever that nightmare was and she dizzily stumbled forward as she ripped lightning down from the sky and incinerated it.
The heavens boomed in approval as she gasped in for breath as her eyes found Darcy's. At some point, Jane had fallen to her knees and she realized that her hands were shaking.
She also realized that there was absolutely nothing humanoid about the crumpled, lifeless form within the lightning strike.
Darcy's jaw was slack when she finally looked back to Jane.
"That was you, wasn't it?"
Jane felt herself nod.
"Cowabunga," Darcy whispered. "Holy shit, do you think you could do it again?"
Jane felt herself nod again. The funny part was that she was sure that it had been her who called the lightning down and she was sure that she could do it again.
She took a deep breath, ozone flooded her nose and a jagged streak kissed a lightning rod on the tower and seethed down into the earth. It felt like being hit between the shoulder blades, like having the wind knocked out of her, but it didn't particularly hurt.
Her hands absolutely shook now.
"Maybe you picked it up off Thor, like magnets charging."
Jane let out a choked laugh, "Physics." She gasped to catch her breath, adding, "Or you mean, we had great chemistry?"
Darcy cringed and groaned, "Hey Zeus, woman. You really are unstoppable." She paused, staring at Jane with a different sort of amazement, the sort of amazement people reserved for double downs and airbrush wizard vans.
"At least I know it's really you and not something zipped up in a Jane suit."
"You know, you don't seem too worried about that, honestly."
"Uh, because you look absolutely terrified? You're shaking like a leaf, Jane. Do you think Ironman and who'shisface were afraid of their own superpowers? This is awesome!"
She shook her head now.
"Is it? We need to get out of here Darcy. We're lucky—lucky that that was combustible."
She couldn't bring herself to look at it. A strange, completely new life form and for the first time she could remember the force of curiosity that had propelled all of her decisions her entire life was utterly absent.
