With every passing minute, Loki became more suspicious that he wasn't really here to give T.V.A. a report on his search for a rogue variant of himself.
In fact, he was starting to doubt he was going to leave alive.
The dark skinned woman sitting across the table from him.
"Mr. Odinson...Can I call you Mr. Odinson? Or do you prefer 'Loki'?"
"Whichever you like, Miss..."
"Hunter B-15. Loki, I understand you have been here on various assignments for the T.V.A. for several months now."
"Yeah. Everyone knows that," Loki replied.
"True. There are several websites that report sightings and post photos and videos of so-called superheroes and other enhanced individuals, some of them specifically devoted to you."
Loki tapped the table, trying to look more impatient than nervous. "Can you get to your point?"
"What do you know about the town of Westview, Connecticut, around May 16th?" Hunter B-15 asked.
Westview?
What the hell is Westview?
"Doesn't sound familiar," Loki said. "Ive been here with you all this time."
"Oh really?" Hunter B-15 leaned back in her chair, folding her arms.
"I'm sorry. I wish I could help you, but I don't remember a place called Westview. If you tell us what this is about, maybe we could look into it."
Hunter B-15 gave a pouty frown and a shrug. "Can't."
Loki stared at him for a moment. "I'm free to go?"
"Of course. You're not under arrest."
Mobius was waiting in the lobby for an elevator when Loki came in, having been rather abruptly dismissed from his interrogation.
"Hey."
"Hey," he replied.
They stood in silence for a minute, looking at the lit arrow above the elevator door.
"That was weird," Mobius said.
"Yeah. They were asking me about a place called Westview," Loki prevaricated. The lobby might be bugged.
"Me too," Mobius replied. "Ever heard of it?"
"No. You?"
"Not that I can remember. That's what I told them."
Loki nodded.
They would, of course, go check it out as soon as possible.
They waited in silence another ten seconds.
"I don't think the elevator's coming," Loki said.
Mobius was already clutching his riot stick, ready to fight their way out if they had to.
A door to the back room flew open, and the young dark-haired woman who hadn't said anything while he was being questioned rushed out, unarmed but waving her laptop like she might try to stab them with it.
"You liars! We know you know something about Westview! Tell us!"
Hunter B-15 and another man ran out behind her. "Doctor Lewis..." Hunter said warningly.
"No. My friend is in there, and I'm going to find out what happened to her one way or another!"
"Darcy, we talked about this," the other man said.
"Yeah, we talked. I said we should just ask the Avengers for help, you shot me down."
"Hold up a minute," Mobius said. "What happened to your friend?"
Hunter grimaced, but didn't try to stop her from answering.
"Over the past few months, my friend, Dr. Jane Foster..."
"Wait," Loki interrupted her. "Thor's Jane?"
"No, her own Jane. But yeah, she used to date Thor. Anyway, a few months ago she was measuring background magnetic field patterns but they kept getting interrupted by distortions. She figured out they were coming from somewhere along the East Coast. She was measuring it from London and I was in New York, so she asked me to start measuring it too so we could compare notes. Then on June 30th, 7:48 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, the distortion suddenly got a whole lot stronger. Like, at first it was barely, like, five Planck lengths, and then all of a sudden it's nudging measurements all over the world. Jane decided to go check it out. She triangulated the distortions to this town in Connecticut on July 6th, and that's the last I heard from her. You have to understand, what she was tracking shouldn't have been dangerous. Like, a threat to virtual particles maybe, but nothing that would affect anything on a macro scale. But about then, my measurements recorded another jump in the strength of the disruptions."
Hunter D-13 cleared his throat. "The early morning of July 7th, there was a strong, localized, and completely inexplicable electrical storm over Westview. Ever since then, no one has been able to contact anyone in the area. We lose signals from any drones we send in. One of our agents entered the perimeter to investigate and never came out. Satellite data and aerial surveillance are too distorted to make any sense of. That's what we know. So I'll ask you again: what were you doing in Westview back in May?"
Loki subtly glanced at Mobius, leaving the answer up to him.
"Told you they wouldn't help us," D-13 said. He walked out of the room.
"Come on, guys," Dr. Lewis pleaded. "Jane's trapped in there. Thor would want you to help us."
She was probably right,
"I'm saying we don't know what happened, or why it happened," Mobius said. Which was true.
Loki looked at Mobius, Mobius sighed. "Fine. New plan. We're heading to Westview lets go"
