Chapter 17

Ruby woke up before her alarm and lay in bed debating getting up or trying to go back to sleep. It didn't take long before the excitement of working on something that mattered and with Bruce drove her out from under the covers and into the shower. Digging through her clothes, she found a pair of jeans and a blouse that was a flattering shade of blue. Twisting her damp hair up in a messy bun, she considered putting on a bit of makeup. Would that be overdoing it? She ended up settling on mascara and lip gloss.

She stuffed her trophy into her bag followed by the picture of her mother before she left her room. Grabbing a muffin and soda from the kitchen, she left the dormitory and crossed the dew-moistened grounds to the Hagar. Even though the sun wasn't peeking above the treetops, there was still activity on the campus. Pausing to allow a formation of trainees in identical shorts and tee-shirts run past, she caught sight of a familiar dark, curly head disappearing into the hangar.

What was Izzy doing up this early? And why would she be doing in the Hangar? Ruby couldn't for the life of her think of a reason.

Hurrying the rest of the way once the trainees had passed, she pushed through the glass doors at the entrance and looked around. Her friend was not in the open atrium just inside.

"Izzy?" Ruby called. Maybe she was still close enough to hear?

A chime on the far wall sounded as an elevator reached the ground floor and the door opened revealing an empty interior.

"Strange," she mused. Maybe Izzy had pushed the button to summon it, then decided to take the stairs. The building was, she racked her brain to remember what agent Reynolds had told them yesterday, only three or four stories. It would make sense that her impatient friend would opt to take the stairs if the elevator had been slow.

Oh, well, she shrugged, walking over to the empty elevator and pushing the button because it had already closed. Izzy is an adult. It wasn't any of her business what her friend was doing. Maybe she found a hookup. Who knows?

Thankfully, she only had to ask the computer directions twice to find the lab in the labyrinth that comprised the second floor.

"Tomorrow's goal is just once," she smiled to herself as she placed her palm on the bio scanner and stepped in to have her retina scanned.

As Ruby entered the room, the lights automatically came on, so she didn't have to hunt for the light switches. Convenient, she thought as she walked over to her desk. Digging the trophy out of her bag, she placed it on the corner of her desk and patted it. The photo was next, but without a frame, she was at a loss how to display it. She finally settled for propping it up against the trophy. The decorative medallion on the front was a little loose and she tried to slide the top edge of the photo under it to hold it in place, but it popped off and bounced across the desk and to the floor.

"Are you kidding me?" she huffed. It must have got knocked loose when it fell over during the fight in her old office.

She had to search for it on the floor to find it, then she tossed it into one of the desk's drawers. She would have to get some superglue when she picked up a new picture frame and glue it back on.

Putting it out of her mind, she settled behind her computer and opened the files from yesterday. After a few minutes, she found she was struggling to concentrate in the quiet of the lab. Normally, she would have pulled up her playlist on her cell phone and used her earbuds, but her phone had been confiscated and her earbuds were lost sometime in the last few days.

Looking over at the panel by the door, she chewed her lip nervously. Nah, she could work without music.

Only five more minutes passed before she shoved away from the desk and walked determinedly to the panel.

Selecting the icon, she asked, "computer, do you have music files available?"

"Of course, Ms. Beaumont. I have a complete music library on file."

"Am I allowed access to it?"

"Yes. Is there a particular genre that you would like to hear?"

"Um, I don't know if I have a genre. I just listen to what I have on my phone."

"Would you like me to access your playlist on your phone?"

"You can do that?"

"Of course. I have access to all electronic devices on the campus."

"Cool," her day was looking up already. "Yes, please access my play list and randomize the songs."


Bruce woke up feeling more optimistic than he had in a long time. Finally, they had a crucial piece of the puzzle in their possession. They could make headway on the first long-range human space craft. To make it even better, he was going to be working with Ruby on it. While he still missed working with Tony, few could come close to matching his genius, Ruby was so much more pleasant to work with. Plus, he had never fantasized about kissing Tony!

As he walked into the building's atrium, he had a little extra spring in his step.

"Excuse me, Dr. Banner?"

Turning, he saw Izzy approaching. "It's just Bruce," he smiled. "What can I do for you this morning, Izzy?"

"Okay, Bruce it is," her smile was bright and contagious. "I don't know if you were aware, but Ruby's birthday is tomorrow."

"No, really?"

"Yeah, she'll be a whopping twenty-five years old. I know it's been a long time since you were that young, but you know how us youngsters are about parties," she giggled a bit.

"Um, yeah. Sure." He was a little taken aback by her insinuation that he was old.

"So, anyway, I'm trying to put together a little party for her. I want to invite a some of the trainees and a couple of the younger agents. Ruby thinks a couple of them are hot. Do you know who I would talk to about inviting them?"

"Um, I'm not sure, but agent Reynolds should be able to point you in the right direction."

Izzy beamed brightly, "why didn't I think of that? Thanks, Bruce!"

She started to walk away, then spun around, "Oh, Bruce, if you have children her age, please let them know they're invited. Bye!"

Stunned, he watched her leave the building. Shaking his head, he continued to the elevators, the spring in his step gone.

As he approached the lab, a thrumming could be heard that grew progressively louder as he got closer to the room. Remembering when he burst into her office at the institute, he smiled. Maybe she was more like Tony that he originally thought.

As the door opened for him, he was greeted not only by the loud, strangely discordant music she was listening to, but also to the lights strobing different colors in an attempt to synchronize with its beat. And failing. It was a disorienting effect.

In the middle of the confusion with her back to him, Ruby stood at a white board, making notes underneath a printout that she had taped to its surface. Across the expanse of the board, other printouts were taped with notes in different colors written under and around them and arrows drawn between various ones.

"Friday, music off!" he yelled into the panel.

Abruptly, the music stopped, and the lights returned to normal.


Ruby spun around, dropping the marker.

"Bruce! You scared the bejesus out of me," she slumped against the board, mindless of any damage she might do to her notes.

Instead of responding to her outburst, he stared past her at the board, "how long have you been here?"

"Oh, I woke up early and decided to go ahead and get started. Is that okay?"

Her exuberance over the project sputtered and died down as he walked slowly into the room, not taking his eyes off her work. Reaching the board, he walked along it, touching a printout or note from time to time. At the end, he stopped and turned towards her, wonder in his eyes.

"You did all this? This morning?"

"Um, yeah. Did I do something wrong?"

He smiled and shook his head, "no, Ruby, not at all. This is amazing, actually. Want to tell me what I'm looking at?"

Feeling better, she stepped up to his side and began to explain what she had found and deducted.

"Okay," she took a breath, "here is the first of my equations that those biscuit eaters stole," she pointed to the printout on the far left and ignored his snicker. "They're using it to solve this," she followed a red arrow to a sheet that was part of a series of printouts in the middle of the board.

Bruce spent a moment looking at the figures and she stayed quiet, waiting on him to figure it out.

"This is for FTL travel," he breathed.

"I agree."

"And the rest of these?" he indicated the other pages in the cluster.

"They are all part of the same problem."

"Yeah, I see that. I mean, where do they tie in?"

"Well," she pointed to one, "this one ties to…," she stepped over to another section of the board, "this equation."

"Which you solved."

"Yeah," she sighed. "And this one, also," she pointed to a third section.

He rubbed the back of his neck, "what's left?"

"That is the good news," Ruby perked up a little and went back to the big cluster in the center. "These three do not tie to any of my work, thank the glorious universe, and there's no indication that they have solved them either."

"That's something," he agreed, nodding. "Anything else?"

"There is this," she stepped over to a set of printouts on the far right of the board that had no arrows connecting them to anything else on the board. "This is the equation that was solved last year by the winner of the Millennial Math Competition and this one is a theorem by a 12-year-old math protégé at MIT."

He studied the prints, "I'm familiar with the first but not the second."

"This one is supposed to be the missing link in the effort to find the unifying theory of everything."

"No shit?"

Ruby suppressed the urge to scold him and just nodded, "yep. If we can solve this, we will be able to tie the quantum theory, relative theory, and string mechanics together in a neat bundle. With that, FTL, time-travel, teleportation, all and more might be possible." She was almost bouncing in place.

"How do they tie into that?" Bruce pointed back to the cluster in the middle.

"As far as I can tell, they don't. At least, not yet."

He stepped back from the board, "what's that?" He pointed to a single page along the bottom edge of the board with no notes.

"Oh, I had just put that up when you came in. It's one of the files in the abandoned file."

Stepping up to it, he bent to examine in, the snatched it off the board and stood up straight, "this is one of mine."

"It is?" she took a step away and the edge of anger in his voice.

"Yeah," he sighed, "just before we reversed the Snap, we had to travel back in time. We used Pym particles to enter the quantum realm. This is one of my calculations for navigating once inside."

"Wait," she didn't believe what he had just said. "You time traveled?"

He nodded.

Her legs felt weak, so she sank down on the corner of the nearest table.

"Wow."

For a long moment, neither said anything. Ruby was quiet because her brain was overloaded with questions. Picking just one to voice seemed like a Herculean task. She finally settled on a simple one, but before she could ask it, he held up a hand, stopping her.

"I know and I would love to spend hours with you discussing it, but we don't have the time for that now."

Swallowing her disappointment with effort, she nodded slowly, "okay. But we can talk about it sometime?"

He smiled at her, "absolutely. I haven't had anyone to talk about it with on my level since Tony…," his smile died.

Again, silence descended. Ruby wanted desperately to hug him and offer him comfort. He was obviously hurting from the loss.

"I would love it if you would tell me about him sometime," she said instead. "I never got to meet him."

Bruce nodded silently, then visibly pulled himself together, "so how does it tie in to all this?"

"What?" It took her a second to figure out he was referring to lone printout. "Oh!" She grabbed the marker out of the tray and drew an arrow between it and the potential solution to the theory of everything, "I think it might tie into this, but I'll have to play around a bit with it."

"If I gave you the complete equation," he pointed at the lone sheet, "do you think you could solve it?"

"The theory of everything?" she squeaked, not believing he was asking her if she could solve the most important equation in human history.

He turned to meet her eyes, "yes."

Swallowing her doubt, she nodded, "I can try."


After leaving Dr. Banner to stew over her comments, Izzy wandered back towards the dormitory. She had been a little disappointed that she couldn't access the lab where Ruby and the scientist were working, but it wasn't completely unexpected. They weren't going to make it easy on her, but that was fine. She loved a challenge.

"Izzy!" a familiar voice called out.

Coming across the open space from the main building was agent Reynolds.

She smiled as he got within speaking distance, "Robbie, just the person I was looking for."

"Really?"

"Absolutely."

"Then what can I do for you this morning?"

She explained about Ruby's birthday and the party that she wanted to throw for her friend.

"Well, we haven't had anything to celebrate around here for a while, so this will be great for morale," Reynolds smiled broadly when she was done.

Izzy looped her arm around his and leaned into him, "then let's get started."

She could see him swallow before he answered, "come with me. I know the perfect people to get this ball rolling."

Reynolds retraced his steps back to the main building. At the entrance, he used the hand and retina scanner to enter. As they passed through, Izzy casually dropped an object she had been holding in her hand. It made no sound as it hit the concrete and tumbled end over end to come to stop when it hit the wall under the scanner. Barely larger than a pea, it was irregular in shape with a pitted, mat exterior in shades of tan and brown. Anyone passing through the door would think it was a pebble that had been kicked up from the bare ground beyond the concrete, if they noticed it at all.


The day passed quickly for Ruby. Applying the Bruce's equation to the theorem was out of the question until she understood it. Working with him as she picked her way through it, getting his insights on the way he approached aspects increased her appreciation of his intellect. Though not a mathematician, he was still quite brilliant. It was in application that he far outstripped her, but she was a quick study and managed to hold her own.

Lunch had been delivered to them at the lab as Ruby moved on from his equation to the theorem. The files that Hydra had on the child prodigy, Davita James, and her work were impressive. They included all her notes and early iterations of the formula. Painstakingly, Ruby pieced together the evolution of the theorem.

Late in the afternoon, she came across a set of pages that looked familiar.

"Bruce?"

At his desk, Bruce left her in peace once she understood his work and had dove back into the files from the institute to try to glean any additional information from them.

"Did you find something?"

"Maybe." She typed rapidly then leaned back. "I just sent you a file from Davita's notes. Look familiar?"

"This is similar to my work," he said after studying the file.

"That's what I thought. Now I know why Hydra had your equation."

"Makes sense. Good catch."

"That looks like a good place to stop for the day. What do you think?" she smiled across at him. "Want to call it and go get some dinner?"

"You go ahead. I think I'm going to stay a little longer and try to get through the rest of this mess."

Slightly put off by his disinterest in spending any more time with her, she bit her tongue and didn't say anything. Maybe she had misread the signals he was putting out last night. Logging off her computer, she grabbed her purse and headed towards the door.

Before she pushed through it, she chanced a glance back at him, "have a good night, Bruce."

"You too, Ruby," he said, but didn't look up from his screen.

Her shoulders slumped as she pushed the door open and left.

"Men," she huffed out in the hall and safely out of his hearing, "I just don't get them."


Bruce waited until he thought Ruby had enough time to reach the dormitory before he shut down his computer. The afternoon had been excruciatingly long for him once Ruby settled down to work on her own. He had half-heartedly sorted through the rest of the files from the institute and was sure he would have to go through them again when he was less distracted.

He had caught himself staring at her sitting across from him time and time again. Whether she was chewing on her lip, absently twirling a lock or her hair, or furiously writing on her pad of paper, she completely captivated him. It wasn't just her looks, granted she was gorgeous, but her personality was sunny and brightened any room she was in. Well, at least it brightened any room he shared with her.

The only thing that kept him from giving in to his desire to pull her into his arms and kiss her senseless, was the nagging seed of doubt that her friend had unknowingly planted that morning. For God's sake, she was only twenty-five! He was old enough to be her father. He had no business even thinking about some of the things he wanted to do to her.

So, throughout the miserable afternoon, he had stayed at his desk, arguing with himself over it. When she declared she was through for the day, he was ready to jump up and leave with her but had reigned in that urge also. He could tell she was let down when he didn't do so, but it was for her own good. She needed to be with others her own age. She needed live and be young and do foolish things, not be tied down to someone past his prime and burdened with a high-maintenance alter-ego.

Leaving the building, rain began to fall from a dark, cloudy sky, soaking him and turning the grounds of the campus unto a giant mud-hole.

"Perfect," he growled as he trudged towards the main building and his room.