DESERT STORM

MAY 27, 2010; SOMEWHERE ALONG I-25; NEW MEXICO

Even before the sun had risen, Audrey's thighs were sweat-sticky against the black leather seat of the S.H.I.E.L.D. van. This part of the country always reminded her, with little fondness, of her time in San Bernardino, back when she was still working in the archives. New Mexico was prettier, though, dawn clawing at the sky and pulling pink from its skin.

"Are we there yet?" Jessica asked from the backseat, though her sleep-drenched voice made it sound more like, rwethryeh?

"Not yet," Audrey replied. "An hour out."

"God, it's hot," Carmen complained from the passenger seat. She had half a library balanced precariously on her lap, books on magnets, books on gravity, books on dirt. The 0-8-4, as far as they knew, was a mallet wedged so firmly in the earth that it wouldn't move. In the time since they'd left Chicago, the four of them had thrown out as many hypotheses as they could come up with. Carmen, resident archaeologist, was torn between believing that it was something to do with magnets and something to do with the dirt. Before she'd put in her headphones and fallen asleep, Lindsey, their engineer, had theorized a reaction between the dense metal of the hammerhead and the unrelenting desert sun. Jessica, who'd at some point been a medical student before she became an autopsist, had guessed aliens, before tuning out and picking up some kids' books on mythology.

Audrey had no idea. She wasn't a scientist by training—she wasn't anything by training, really, and even if her semester of architecture classes counted for anything anywhere (they didn't) they certainly weren't going to make a difference now. When she'd asked Fury three years ago for reassignment to something more interesting than the archives, he'd given her administrative leadership of an 0-8-4 team based in Chicago. It wasn't combat, but she couldn't complain. Her office had windows now, and she was better at putting things together than she'd expected to be. Peggy would be proud, if they ever talked.

In the backseat, Jessica fished out her book from under the pile of road-trip-detritus that had acquired over the last day—magazines, candy wrappers, hoodies discarded on the car floor. In her excavation, she jostled Lindsey, who snapped awake suddenly and winced. "Ohmygodit'ssohot," she exhaled, immediately digging into the pile for something—a fan, and waving it at her face.

"We're an hour out," Audrey repeated, passing the AUX cord back to Lindsey without asking. She didn't care much about the music, but when she'd attempted to play some Cyndi Lauper in the office, once, she'd been almost immediately shut down. Carmen was hardly any better, listening only to classical music (baroque, she insisted, not that anyone could tell the difference) and Jessica's affinity for country was deemed unacceptable. And so Lindsey always chose the music, with a remarkable talent for finding songs that everyone of them would enjoy, even if they weren't Cyndi Lauper.

When they finally did arrive at Puente Antiguo, it took another thirty minutes to locate the hammer, which had no address, and which Coulson had only unhelpfully described as being "in a ditch." He was flanked by a few other agents when they parked and emerged, and from the rim of the crater, they could make out a couple dozen locals tailgating below. "Are they having any luck?" Audrey asked.

"Not so far," Coulson replied dryly.

"Are we waiting for them to leave?"

"We're waiting for backup to arrive, so that we can make them leave."

"Who's backup?" Audrey asked, but Coulson only smirked, heading back to his SUV. "Coulson?"

"I hate that guy," Jessica muttered, bracing her hands on her knees and squinting out at the party below. "It's like, can't you just answer one question straightforwardly? Why is it always all we're waiting for backup, and we'll see about that, and I don't know if I can change what they serve in the cantina?" When Audrey didn't answer, too distracted by the sight of a truckbed detaching itself from the cab as it strained to pull the hammer from the ground, Jessica continued, "You know?"

"When are we starting?" Carmen asked, rubbing her hands together. "I wanna see if it's the dirt."

"It's probably the same dirt as here," Audrey offered. "Does it look special to you?"

Carmen squatted low to the ground and traced some of it, pinching it between her fingers. "Honestly? Not really. Doesn't feel special, either."

"Was this indent already here?" Lindsey asked, gesturing widely to the bowl surrounding the hammer's epicenter. "If it was created by the hammer, it would've caused an earthquake. Something this big doesn't just happen."

"Sometimes it does," Jessica argued.

"Only in those sci-fi books," Lindsey sang.

"Your guess was aliens," Jessica huffed.

Coulson returned from his car a moment later. "We've got a lead," he announced. "Follow me."


MAY 27, 2010; FOSTER LABS; PUENTE ANTIGUO, NEW MEXICO

Their lead was a woman named Jane Foster, and while Audrey had suggested that they collaborate with her, since neither she nor Coulson had brought an astrophysicist of their own, Coulson had insisted on a more heavy handed approach and promptly confiscated all of her equipment, data, and records. She stood with her team in the doorway as men in suits hauled boxes of things back to the S.H.I.E.L.D. vans. This was the backup Coulson had mentioned, she supposed, and maybe it was good that he hadn't told her their names. All her time in her archives meant that she'd memorized most personnel files and could rattle off a half-dozen facts about anybody on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s payroll—in fact, she often couldn't help but do that.

"Wanna play chopsticks?" Jessica asked, holding out her fingers. Carmen shrugged and, bored enough, obliged. Their game only lasted a few seconds, though, cut off by the arrival of a woman that Audrey presumed was Jane Foster, along with an older guy with graying hair and a younger brunette.

"What the hell is going on here?" Foster demanded, looking more frazzled than anything else. She made a weak attempt to yank a piece of machinery out of an agent's arms, but he was twice her size and completely unphased.

Audrey's eyes slid over to Coulson. This had been his plan—she decided to let him handle that question. "Ms. Foster," he said.

"Doctor Foster," Audrey interrupted.

Coulson shot her a weary look. "Doctor Foster," he amended. "I'm Agent Coulson, with S.H.I.E.L.D."

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?" Jane demanded, trying again to wrench a stack of files from an agent's hands, with no yield. "You can't just do this!" she insisted.

"Jane," the older man with her hissed, yanking her aside and muttering something into her ear that Audrey couldn't quite make out. She glanced sideways at her team, who still held out their fingers in a long abandoned game of chopsticks, and found them gaping at the scene.

"This is my life!" Foster shouted, shoving the man off of her.

"We're investigating a security threat," Coulson excused blankly. Audrey pinched her lips together. There was no security threat that they knew of—S.H.I.E.L.D. just wanted to get enough material into custody that FBI or CIA wouldn't want to do the paperwork to appropriate the investigation. The American Intelligence Infrastructure functioned on a principle that was something along the lines of, I licked it, so it's mine. It was why Coulson, who spent most of his time as a handler for Strike Team Delta, was in the middle of New Mexico investigating a hammer. He'd just been the closest guy nearby.

Meanwhile Audrey, who had spent the better part of three years now actually managing this kind of investigation, was stuck with a bored team and pissed-off witnesses. Coulson and his agents departed with several truckloads of equipment soon after handing Jane a check. Audrey's phone pinged.

PHIL COULSON: Meet you back at site in 10.

She considered the message, and the horrified expression on Lindsey's face.

AUDREY CARTER: One of my team needs food. I'm taking her to a diner, but De Leon and DuBois will be there soon.

PHIL COULSON: 10-4.

"What's the plan?" Jessica asked, a nervous edge to her voice.

Audrey glanced over at where Jane was literally shaking from rage, and then back at her team. "Carmen, Lindsey—take the car back to the test site. Both of you take a look at the hammer. I'm going to talk to Foster with Jess."

"Uh," said Lindsey. "You want to talk to her?"

"I think she's a valuable asset to the investigation," Audrey said.

"Does she want to talk to us?" Jessica asked.

Audrey pursed her lips. "It'll be fine," she said, though she wasn't sure how true that was. She tossed the keys to Carmen anyway. "Let me know if you find anything. Don't let Coulson and his interns scare you off."

"Copy," Carmen said, saluting as she went.

Jane's mood had not improved much by the time Audrey chose to approach, but she approached nonetheless. "Hi," she said, even though it felt like the wrong thing to say. "I'm Audrey Carter, also with S.H.I.E.L.D. This is Doctor Jessica Ly, a bioforencicist on my team."

At that, Jane scoffed. "What? You want to take more from me? You want my shoes?" She bent over and started tugging the galoshes off of her feet.

"Why would I want your shoes?" Audrey asked.

Jane paused and straightened. "Fine. What do you want, then?"

Audrey sighed. "Between you and me, Coulson isn't even qualified for this type of thing. He belongs in an office calling out coordinates over a walkie-talkie."

"Exactly," Jessica chimed in. "Total poser. No idea how investigations work. We, however—we're amazing investigators. It's our thing."

"It is literally our thing," Audrey agreed, showing Jane her badge. "Coulson took your stuff, but if I heard you correctly, you built most of that equipment?"

Dubiously, Jane said, "...Yes."

"So you're probably the best person to operate it, right?" Audrey asked.

"Absolutely," said the younger brunette at Jane's side. "Darcy Lewis. Political Science." She stuck out her hand. "Nobody knows how to use these machines, even me, and I helped her put a bunch of them together."

Audrey shook her hand. "Um, hello," she said. "Well, exactly. We don't have an astrophysicist on site yet, but we know something happened here, and we know that you're our best shot at figuring it out. If you tell us, I can help you get your equipment back."

"You're extorting me?" Jane asked.

"No," Jessica said, before Audrey could argue. "Extortion is such a strong word. I think it's more like a deal. You know? You help us figure out why there's a hammer stuck in the ground, we 'lose' the paperwork that said we had your equipment in the first place. She handles all that, by the way." She elbowed Audrey. "The paperwork, I mean."

"Yeah," said Jane. "I got that."

"Right," Jessica said, beaming. "So what do you say? You want lunch? Our treat."


MAY 27, 2010; TALLULAH'S; PUENTE ANTIGUO, NEW MEXICO

"So," said Darcy Lewis, Political Science. "I would say it all started when Jane hit this guy with her car."

"It did not," Jane immediately disagreed. "It started way before that. I'm a researcher at Culver University."

"Go Tigers," Jessica said.

"We're—" Jane paused. "I think it's the Eagles."

"Really?" Jessica asked, swiveling toward Audrey, as if for verification. When Audrey shrugged, Jessica continued, "Well, anyway."

"Anyway, I'm a researcher at Culver, but I've been working here the last six months looking at storms and anomalies in weather patterns. Most of my work concerns theoretical studies of Einstein-Rosen bridges, but I'm beginning to apply that more technically and empirically, now that I've finally gotten funding." To Jessica, she said, "I'm sure you get it."

"I'm...not that kind of doctor," Jessica said, her mouth half-full of veggie burger. She dusted her hands off. "But I do sort of get it. Astrophysics doesn't get as much funding because it's not ripe with weapons-contract potential or life-saving vaccines."

"Yeah," said Jane. "Well, anyway, we've been here since December, and I know that you wouldn't usually expect that a—you know, a storm within our atmosphere has anything to do with space, and wormholes, and potential ways to fastrack space travel, but my data said differently."

"Plus, there's the guy who fell out of the sky," Darcy added.

Audrey looked up from the notebook where she was scribbling down details. "The guy who fell out of the sky?"

"Yeah," Darcy replied. "Tall dude—major hunk, with, like, bleached eyebrows. I tased him."

"Where is he now?" Audrey asked.

"Um," said Jane. "There's a satellite—he says it's his."

"No way," said Jessica. "Is it a hammer?"

Jane nodded. "He called it, uh—"

"Mew-mew," Darcy supplied.

"Mjølnir," Erik Selvig corrected. "But that's a non-starter, he's delusional. He was probably just drunk and lost in the desert, and hit his head during the storm."

"How do you spell that?" Jessica asked, tearing Audrey's notebook away from her and sliding it across the table. "Mjølnir."

Selvig pondered the page for a moment, before scratching something out messily. It wasn't at all what Audrey expected a word that sounded like that to look like, but when he slid the notebook back across the table, Jessica was giddy with recognition. "Oh my God." She grabbed onto Audrey's shoulder. "Oh my God. We gotta go."

"Go where?" Audrey asked, but Jessica was already shoving her out of the booth. She stood up straighter. "We don't have a car." Jessica seemed so insistent and enthusiastic, though, that Audrey knew it had to be something good. "Can you give us a ride?" she asked Jane.

"Where?" Jane asked.

Audrey deferred to Jessica. "Test site," she said. "We'll meet the others."

And so they loaded themselves into Jane's van, which was really more of a tank, than anything, and began navigating west. Only a few blocks later, she slammed on the brakes. "That's him!" she shouted, rolling down the window and sticking her head out. "Hey!"

A blond man in the middle of the street turned when he heard her call. He squinted against the sunlight but approached, and Audrey suddenly came to terms with the undeniable fact that this man was huge. He cleared six feet easily, and was likely closer to about seven, with hair down to his shoulders and a lost sort of look in his eye. She didn't blame Darcy for tasing him—he was terrifying up close. Even to her.

"Do you need a ride?" Jane asked, a little breathlessly.

The man nodded. "I am going to retrieve what's mine."

"Here we go again," Selvig muttered in the backseat.

"Get in," said Jane.

Audrey watched through the rearview mirror as Darcy and Jessica both shoved themselves into the third row of seats to make room for this strange man, and he tucked up his legs almos comically in an attempt to fit into the backseat next to Selvig. "I am Thor Odinson," he greeted. "Of Asgard."

"I knew it!" Jessica shouted. "You're from Norse myths."

"Wait," said Audrey, twisting around in her seat to look at her. "Your lead was from that sci-fi book you're reading?"

"It's not sci-fi," Jessica insisted. "It is a treasured story about kids who have descended from the Norse Gods and their adventures during a student exchange program in Norway." She paused. "And if I was going to classify its genre, I would call it middle-grade fantasy."

"Great," said Audrey. "So your lead is not only a fictional book, it's a kids book that is categorically fantasy."

"Children's literature is actually some of the most culturally significant literature, anthropologically speaking," Selvig piped up. Nobody said anything to that.

"Who are you?" Thor Odinson of Asgard asked. "The raven-haired one and her friend."

Audrey glared at him in the rearview mirror. "I'm Doctor Jessica Ly," said Jessica. "Formerly of Michigan. Now of Chicago."

"Where is that?" Thor asked. "Midgard?"

"Um," said Jessica. "Midwest."

Thor nodded jovially but clearly had no idea what Jessica was saying. At least they seemed to be on equal footing in terms of understanding each other, and the lack of hostility was encouraging. "Who are you?" Thor asked, poking his head forward to observe Audrey. "The frowning one."

"I'm not frowning," Audrey denied, though she was, and she knew it. "I'm Agent Carter."

"Wonderful. Doctor Ly, Agent Carter, I look forward to serving with you in the battle to reclaim my hammer."

"Battle?" Audrey muttered out the window, squinting against the skyline. She hadn't worn the right shoes for that kind of thing—even if she had, she wasn't going to war for this giddy stranger and his toolkit. On her lap, her phone buzzed.

CARMEN DE LEON: Chaos here. Hammer hasn't moved. You?

AUDREY CARTER: We picked up a hitchhiker who says it's his. Scientists will help and are driving us there now, but this guy's weird. Seems completely out of it.

CARMEN DE LEON: How far are you?

Audrey glanced out the window at a highway sign and found it unhelpful. So she made a guess.

AUDREY CARTER: 15. See you there?

CARMEN DE LEON: Yeah.

CARMEN DE LEON: PS—They brought in one of the assassins for security. Just so you know what you're getting into.

AUDREY CARTER: Security from what? Truckers passing through?

CARMEN DE LEON: Not sure. Coulson seems worried.

AUDREY CARTER: He's always worried. Let me know if you find out who they brought.

"Is there air conditioning in this thing?" Audrey asked, reaching for the dials on the dash and fumbling with them awkwardly. She hadn't spent prolonged time in the desert since the 90s, and even the years she spent in the Mojave mostly resonated as one long migraine.

"I wish," Darcy snorted. "You can crank the window down, though."

Audrey wound the window open, sticking her head out the window like a golden retriever. Her sunglasses clung to the sweat on the bridge of her nose. Another thing about the serum? She ran 10° warmer than she was supposed to. In weather like this, her own body became almost unbearable. "So," she started. "Thor. What significance does the hammer have to you?"

"The hammer is my birthright," he announced. "Through Mjølnir, I am imbued with the power of lightning. It is what makes me a god, and it is what entitles me to the throne of Asgard."

Audrey made a face, angling her head so that it wasn't visible to him in the mirror. "Do you know Odin?" Jessica asked, bending forward to get a closer look at him.

"Odin is my father," said Thor. "A great king. He has served Asgard wisely in his two-thousand-year rule. But his age is beginning to show."

"Only now?" Darcy asked, strangely genuine.

"We are not like you. How long have you been alive, Darcy Lewis?"

"Uh," she said. "Twenty-seven years."

"A mere twenty-seven!" Thor huffed. "When I was only twenty-seven years old, I still suckled from my mother's breast."

Audrey swallowed a gag at that. "Enough about your mother's breast. If you're two-thousand years old and from a place called Asgard, why are you here?"

He hesitated. "I am unsure of that."

The lie was obvious enough, but in such a confined space, she knew better than to call him out on it. Would it be so difficult to believe that he was being honest? To believe that he was, in fact, a hammer-wielding god from another world? Ten years ago, she would've been dubious. But then there had been the incident in Harlem—the birth and death of the Incredible Hulk, Tony Stark's Iron Man suit. Her impulse was to read him as delusional, but there was something else there that wasn't quite as easy to dismiss. "Can you move the hammer?" she asked. "Mjølnir?"

"Only I can lift it," Thor confirmed. "Only I am worthy."

She couldn't argue with that—not yet, at least. S.H.I.E.L.D. had a hundred scientists on site attempting to understand the satellite, and last Audrey checked, none of them had made a breakthrough. If one guy with bleached eyebrows and a dream managed to surpass their experience and skill by simply picking it up, who was she to judge?

CARMEN DE LEON: They got Barton. Whoever your guy is, if they can't keep him calm, they're going to take him out.

AUDREY CARTER: He says he can lift it. Are you willing to find out?

CARMEN DE LEON: That's potentially a major security breach. If he's wrong, he'll have manipulated his way onto a secure site, and you know what SHIELD does to people who end up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Audrey worried her bottom lip. Jane was humming along as she drove, optimistic about her odds of retrieving her equipment. In the backseat, Darcy and Jess fussed over Thor, interrogating him about where he was from. Neither seemed to doubt him in the slightest. As for Audrey, though—she would need to see it to believe it.


A/N: hello community...thank you for reading i love yall !