A/N: Happy New Year! Hope it's better than the last one.
My sincere apologies for the very, very late update.
To be perfectly honest, I'd written this chapter and a few others during Nanowrimo of 2020. It's only in December that I realized that Nanowrimo, while brilliant for getting words out there, does not lead to a good story in and of itself. I discovered significant plot holes in everything I'd written, and had to overhaul a lot to get it to something resembling a coherent narrative.
I'm really, really sorry. Suffice to say, I will not be attempting Nanowrimo until I've done some intensive plotting beforehand.
But, in the interest of making amends, I have updated, not one, but four chapters.
Well, sorta.
You see, stories evolve. Sometimes beyond our ken. And that is a good thing. You might feel as though the initial plotting you've done for your story would suffice, but it's only later, when you're actually into a few chapters that you realize - damn, this could've been so much better if I'd done it way.
It's only now, coming on almost a year since I started posting do I realize - some of the earlier chapters have major issues with them. Especially the Svartalfheim arc. Some characters, some plot lines are redundant now, no longer applicable to where I'm taking the story. Frankly, I'm glad I'm getting rid of them because I never much liked them in the first place. I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote them.
Or whether I was thinking at all.
So, I request you to please re-read the three chapters involving the Svartalfheim arc -
Chapter 5. Upon Whose Brow Famine had Written Fiend
Chapter 6. The World Was Void
Chapter 7. She was the Universe
I've made some major changes - changes that will be referenced heavily in the upcoming chapters. Without that new context, things will NOT make sense in the next few arcs. I apologize for the inconvenience, but I believe it also to be a way to redeem myself.
Thanks a lot.
I also cannot guarantee any sort of update schedule any longer. I'm in my final semester, and my workload is mind-boggling. I don't think my future hiatuses will be as long as the recent one, but... honestly, I can't say.
WARNING: This is a very sciency chapter. Lots of revelations at the end. I tried to smooth it as much as possible, but I'm not sure whether I succeeded completely. Let me know your thoughts.
Night comes and stars their wonted vigils keep
In soft unfathomable depths of sky:
In mystic veil of shadowy darkness lie
The infinite expanses of the deep,—
- Night; E. G. A. Holmes
In a darkened conference room aboard the space station known as Peak VII, four individuals are faintly illuminated by bluish holograms rotating in the center of the room.
So far, Soren has been silent. After hours of debate, they've narrowed down their list of potentials to just four. And for once, Nick Fury's choice is utterly predictable.
"Despite your misgivings, Talos," he says, " - Collins is an elite soldier. We're planning on subjecting our candidates through the worst; she's already been through it."
"Fine. Then I vote for him," Talos replies, tossing another hologram into the mix.
Fury's face visibly pinches at the virtual likeness of Bucky Barnes. Soren feels a familiar empathy curling in her bones. Talos has never been one for direct arguments; he prefers to make his displeasure known through passive-aggressive actions.
While his choice has less to do with the actual proficiency of the White Wolf and more to do with his unabated hostility towards Aquamarine, it's not completely subjective. For their fledgling program to be a success, they need the crème de la crème, and even Fury can't disagree that Barnes qualifies.
She arches an exasperated eyebrow at Maria Hill, who picks up on the subtle cues of tension radiating from the men. "We need a baseline human," she says loudly. "To balance things out between an Enhanced and a Gifted. I propose one Alec Ryder. "
Fury turns pensive as he reviews the detailed assessment. Excellent grades, but… " - risky to have someone new this early in the game, Hill."
"He's hardly a raw recruit. Proved himself in the Second Civil War by shaping the battlefield using a combination of engineering and ingenuity. His designs are skirting on the edge of legality," she snorts, " - typical of the system to complain about the tech that saved them - so I bagged him before someone else could."
"But would he be a suitable trial run?"
"Can't think of anyone better."
Fury inclines his head. "Soren, last one's on you."
She hums. She'd already made her choice but had held back just in case their decisions affected hers, even though, somewhere deep down, she'd known they wouldn't. It's surprisingly hard to admit her true reason - she'd been stalling. "I want one of our own," she murmurs, pitching a hologram from her tablet.
Predictably, Talos stiffens, instantly forgetting all about Collins in light of the gauntlet she'd just thrown. "We're not at war, anymore, Soren," he warns. "Our children do not need to grow up the way we did."
"We've been at war for a thousand years, Talos. A couple of decades of faked peace is not a reprieve - Thanos reminded us of that. We have a responsibility to send our best, and our daughter is the best."
After a long moment, he nods, resigned. He turns towards Fury, has banished all holos but for their candidates.
The first line of defense, the brightest of the species inhabiting the Sol system. If the program is successful, many more will come.
Fury sighs.
"I'll make the call."
June 26th, 2026
Singapore International Spaceport
Docking Bay
Despite being on edge, James Rhodes' love of aviation kicks in at the sight of his assigned corvette.
He is leaning against the railing, admiring the streamlined elegance of the PSV Albatross when he feels her presence. A tingle runs down his back; a phantom memory of mischievous fingers trailing his spine, making him shiver.
As always, she's surprised when he turns - having trained to be as silent as inhumanly possible. There was a time he'd relished that look of startled amazement.
Now, all it does is make him feel old.
"Didn't think you'd go to such lengths to avoid me," Izzy murmurs.
He suppresses a flinch.
Jim had been busy dealing with the aftermath of the Second Civil War when the reveal of alien ruins on Mars had flooded the airwaves. The Decimation is still an unhealed wound; he'd been forced to fast-talk his way into a very loose alliance with the military and S.W.O.R.D. (ostensibly S.H.I.E.L.D. - Fury's little space project is highly classified) to prevent mass panic.
The catch was a rushed promotion to Brigadier General - a rank that still feels somewhat unearned - and the newfound responsibilities that had hardly left time for his marriage. Stolen moments in between endless meetings were more frustrating than rewarding.
"I'm an Air Force liaison to S.W.O.R.D.," he tries. "When the President personally asks me to oversee a scientific expedition to the edge of the solar system, I can't exactly refuse."
She's shaking her head before he's even finished. "You don't get to pull that. Fury briefed me. He made it a request, not an order - which means whatever this is, it's big." She purses her lips. "He also said you did your damnedest to sideline me for this mission."
Her eyes flicker, dart away. "Is this because of my no-show at the Battle of Washington?"
"Jesus, no," he says, running a hand down his face. "That wasn't on you. Wakanda needed you to put out those fires more than DC."
There's a pause, and for a brief, panicked second, he thinks he's lost her but then she slips in and links arms with him. Some of the tension from his shoulders drains from where his skin brushes against hers. He sighs in relief, letting her bear his weight for a moment.
"Then why? I'm trying not to take this personally, Rhodey..."
"I didn't want you anywhere near this," he blurts.
Izzy stares. "What are you trying to protect me from?"
"You didn't check the flight manifest, did you?"
She shakes at the apparent non-sequitur. "Didn't have time; I only got the call this morning."
Jim nods over her shoulder. "I suppose you won't have to, now."
He watches her honing in on the cluster of individuals huddled near the dock of the Albatross. It's like watching an avalanche, a slow slide into inescapable, terrifying realization.
She walks forward - confusion warring with anxiety across her face. He wipes his own clean of all emotion as he falls in, just in time to overhear Monica Rambeau. "Shame Selvig isn't here. I was looking forward to picking his brain."
Master Wong - not a scientist, but an expert in his own way - shuffles in place. "Has there been any word from him, Dr. Foster?"
"He hasn't been picking up my calls," Jane admits. "S.H.I.E.L.D. claims they couldn't find him. For once, I'm inclined to believe them."
Bruce Banner nods. "He wouldn't have missed this for anything."
"Could've used someone else on the 'Snapped-scientists' boat," Princess Shuri, the science lead of the expedition, mock-grouses.
"Let me guess," Izzy finally interjects, exchanging an incomprehensible glance with Rambeau, " - the Decimation made it a very small world."
Jane shifts in place. "Tony brought us all together," she says, squaring her shoulders under the full force of his wife's attention. Her eyes rove across Izzy's face with a desperation he's guilty of as well - as though trying to find the brother in the sister's features. "We worked for five years to reverse the effects of Thanos' Snap. To... bring you home."
In the ensuing silence, Jim watches his wife as the pieces fall into place, but he can tell she's still shying away from considering the specifics of this particular group's involvement in the Decimation.
He's not watching an avalanche. He's under one.
Rambeau snorts, an uncharacteristically bleak look on her face. "Turns out, all we needed to figure out was time travel. Five years of work, washed down the drain. Story of my life."
"Knowledge is never useless, Monica, even when not immediately applicable." Jane sighs. "Tony taught me that."
"If not for time travel," Izzy says. Jim's stomach plummets to his knees. "What were you working on?"
It's Banner who finally answers. "Isn't it obvious?"
"We were looking to rebuild the Infinity Stones."
Briefing Room
PSV Albatross
The scientists cluster around one half of the circular holo-table, opposite Rhodey, Hill, and Fury. Isabelle has eschewed assembling in favor of leaning against one of the windows, eyes fixed unseeingly at the blue shimmering waves of FTL interrupting the dark banality of space.
Tony never liked to back just one strategy.
Coulson had said that after she'd returned from Svartalfheim. Still reeling from the aftereffects of Gabriel Reyes' exorcism, she hadn't questioned him further. In hindsight, rebuilding the Infinity Stones sounds just like the kind of impossible project Tony would've backed in his grief-fueled desperation.
The sound of a throat clearing yanks her out of her reverie.
Shuri is pulling up some images of the Prothean vaults. A miniature wireframe of the monolith is displayed front and center, slowly rotating over the table. "Global efforts to decipher records found in the Prothean observation post have yielded mixed results. While we've cracked the secrets of eezo and FTL travel, translation of historical records is still ongoing."
"However, there are patterns in the data that are concerning, not only to the international scientific community, but the world leaders as well, for reasons that will shortly be clear."
A holographic icy orb replaces the images of the vaults. "Charon," Rambeau says, " - largest of Pluto's moons. Super unremarkable - low gravity, lower temperatures, no atmosphere worth a damn. But… the Prothean data makes repeated mentions to a massive device nearby."
A frown crisscrosses Fury's forehead. "What device? Gagarin's automated scanners have been combing that entire section for months; there's nothing there."
"Fifty-thousand years is a long time," Talos points out. "Maybe whatever it was got destroyed beyond recovery of debris. Or maybe it got, I don't know, towed away."
The implication descends like a shroud.
Shuri clears her throat. "We'd have left it at that, if not for the fact that the layer of ice has been disturbed recently, starting with as recent as a decade."
"By what?"
Rambeau hesitates. "... spring of 2018, the Peak was on the far side of Luna, undergoing some necessary repairs. Comms and sensors were down, so we didn't notice a giant alien donut entering Earth's orbit, followed by an even bigger spaceship."
Fury sighs heavily.
She brings up a graph, traces the sudden, sharp increase on an otherwise level line. "Our first indication of trouble was when I recorded a spike of dark energy near Charon, so massive it overloaded my sensors and set my workshop on fire." She swallows roughly. "I was so intent on recovering what I could - I didn't notice my friends turning to dust behind me until the screaming started."
The silence hangs thick and heavy.
"Of course, we had much bigger problems after that, so it got completely buried... until five years later, when the phenomenon occurred three more times, in the span of half an hour."
Isabelle is adept at shoving aside her memories by latching on to the nearest distraction, so she's the first to recover and bridge the dots. "Four mysterious energy bursts... coinciding with each time the Infinity Gauntlet was used. You think the energy released somehow affected this Prothean device."
Rambeau nods. "Charon wasn't the only spike; my sensors recorded identical bursts in different parts of the galaxy. I'm thinking this device is part of a network that… disseminated the energy." She sighs. "Just for an instant, then it vanished."
"Have you tried looking out a window?" Bruce's joke falls flat, unable to shatter the image running through the minds of everyone - six glowing singularities, somehow connected to this mysterious Prothean device.
Two universes - once assumed to be reassuringly distinct but revealed to have collided eons ago.
"Nothing but a big icy moon," Rambeau confirms, then exchanges a dark look with Shuri. "There's only one place we haven't been able to scan yet - beneath the surface of Charon. "
As if on cue, the ship falls out of FTL. It's a sudden, jarring change, as though the ship has been yanked to a stop, even though the inertial dampeners ensure they don't feel a thing.
The Gagarin Station materializes as a tiny, dark shadow against the backdrop of an icy expanse. The alien moon drifts past, silent and still, barely illuminated by a far-flung sun that's only marginally larger than the stars. "Your sensors can't penetrate the ice?"
Rambeau shakes her head. "It's miles deep - we need specialized devices placed manually on the surface to get readings."
"I've modified some mining drones," Shuri pipes up. "Once placed at predetermined locations, they'll emit pulses and receive signals, flagging down any anomalies, similar to SONAR."
Wong, who's been silent so far, leans forward. "What's a Hazard Level 2-class planet?" He's staring at the hologram, which is now accompanied by a stream of data - relevant statistics of the celestial body.
"... temperature's -360 degree Fahrenheit," Shuri replies. "I've upgraded the suits as best as I can, but disembarkation shouldn't be necessary - the drones can be deployed from within environmentally-sealed rovers."
Fury pushes himself to his feet. "You've been assigned personal quarters aboard the Gagarin. Mission's at 1200 tomorrow. Get some rest."
As they disperse, Isabelle's eyes flicker to each member of this expedition. Bruce Banner, who'd assisted in exploring Loki's Scepter, twice. Jane Foster, who had been almost consumed by the Aether. Wong, the only one to know anything about the Time Stone in the absence of its owner.
A group, forever incomplete, because Isabelle is a poor substitute for her brother, especially in the face of the unthinkable.
A group, once ensnared in a perversion of existence - a half-life brewed by a genocidal maniac - so much so that their lives are forever altered by exposure to powerful artifacts that haunt their footsteps even when destroyed.
A group that knows, better than most -
No good can ever come of the Infinity Stones.
Personal Quarters
Gagarin Station
Her dreams are less formless tonight.
Vague shapes rise above the once-featureless, tangerine landscape. A city, she realizes - with buildings that cut an impressive skyline over the horizon. In the center looms a citadel, with a distinctive shape that resembles a longship with a large sail hoisted far above the deck.
Against the canvas, something moves. Many somethings, formless at first, undulating and pulsating. One by one, they manifest from the mist, brushing past her as though she's little more than a shadow.
Or perhaps they are.
No… not shadows, she thinks, her fingers trailing through their muslin-thin forms. Ghosts. Their presence is heavy, making her throat go tight and hard.
She suddenly, desperately misses the bland, featureless orange.
Between one heartbeat and the next, a spine-chilling screech rends the dream open.
Isabelle's eyes snap open. Her heart is pounding so loudly she can feel it in her teeth. Adrenaline is thick and bitter on her tongue, freezing her body in place as though she's just been confronted by a black mamba.
She'd forgotten. God, how easily she'd forgotten.
Eyes dart around, analyzing her surroundings. Compact quarters - cabinets affixed to the walls, tiny bathroom, cubby hole behind her bed. A shuttered, octagonal-shaped window. Thick bedspread, soaked with her sweat. And finally, an arm, loose but comfortably heavy, thrown across her waist.
She can't see Jim's face, but she matches her own breaths with his deep ones until she escapes the final vestiges of that dreadful orange. When she can finally move her body, she slides out carefully. Her toes curl against the coolness of the deck, and she stumbles, catching herself against a panel interface. With a decisive swipe, she activates it.
The shutters peel back, revealing a high-definition visual of Charon. Her eyes sweep across its gargantuan surface, goosebumps erupting across her skin as the ice throws up faint reflections that paint her personal quarters.
Isabelle reaches for the small box in the cubby hole, pulls out the transdermal patches, and stares at them.
It's twice her usual dosage.
She knows better than to get addicted. When she'd realized she was getting resistant to the 'toxin, she started alternating between the patches and draining the pool.
She has no such luxury here, aboard the Gagarin.
June 27th, 2026
Charon
The eezo-blue flare of the microthrusters sputters as it pulls up inches from the glacier. It hovers midair for a second, then settles into place with a hard thump.
"Rough landing," Isabelle comments from the passenger's seat.
"Got us here, didn't it?" Rambeau activates the booster and steps on it, gritting her teeth as the wheels skid on the glass-smooth surface before it stabilizes.
The ground crew has been assigned a rover and a region to disperse Shuri's drones. Shuri and Bruce are overseeing ops on the Albatross, while Wong and Jane are re-examining Rambeau's data on Gagarin.
Beyond the rover, the ice stretches out to a nearly unbroken horizon, wider than any ocean back on Earth. Jagged, sharp-tipped mountains dramatically arc over the plains. The sun is a tiny speck in the sky; cold, distant, yet brighter than it has any right to be.
Rambeau's mood seems to fit in with Charon's desolation perfectly.
Isabelle shelves her concern - it will not be welcome, they barely know each other. But her need for answers won't be denied any longer. Two birds with one stone - Rambeau might even appreciate a distraction. "Which one did you work on?"
"The Space Stone," is the swift reply. "Captain Marvel was my mom's best friend. Her powers are derived from the Tesseract. I had... notes."
"That's how you know Pepper. Because you worked with Tony " She glances at her sharply. "She doesn't like you very much."
Rambeau smiles humorlessly. "Mrs. Stark blames me for... fueling his obsession towards reversing the Snap."
"Was she right?"
"...yes. I was the one to propose the idea of rebuilding the Stones."
Isabelle leans back against her seat, resisting the urge to ensure she's not ashes and dust. "How is it even possible to restore something that's been wiped from existence?"
Is she asking after the Stones, or herself?
The rover skids to a stop. Rambeau gestures over the holographic dashboard, deploying a drone. Shuri is considering ice mining operations as a dual role for the drones - it's not as if Charon's lacking, and the colonies on Mars and Luna could certainly use the water.
"Science," she replies as they once again propel forward. "Everything we know about the Stones points to an undeniable conclusion - it is possible to replicate their energies, their capabilities in technological form. We already had proof of concept - a technology derived from a Stone."
Isabelle feels a shiver run down her spine. "The arc reactor," she whispers. "But Starkium is a power source; it can't create portals."
"The design was ingenious, but limited - it just needed a few modifications. The others had to start from scratch on their own Stone counterparts."
Rambeau draws a deep breath. "I was this close to a breakthrough when he cracked time travel, rendering the entire effort moot."
Briefing Room
PSV Albatross
"Rhodes' drones just came online," Bruce calls, tossing her a holo. "His rover's well beyond the estimated radius."
Shuri hums. "Discharge the pulses. Let's see what we get."
Ripples spread across the oscillating 3D graph of Charon's topology. Shuri imagines massive ice shelves shifting and breaking apart under the impact of her tech.
"That's not normal, is it?" He gestures to the other graph - a resolute flatline.
She shakes her head. "The flatline represents the ice... and only the ice. Even without the presence of the device in that particular region, there should've been minor distortions... especially when detecting Charon's crust."
He buzzes Monica's omni-tool. "On-site samples could provide some numbers to crunch."
Charon
The rover swerves sharply, scouring a diverging path along the ice.
"We're being redirected?" Isabelle asks.
"Shuri wants samples of the crust. Rhodes' drones are equipped with automated samplers - needs proximity to activate, though." Rambeau slams on the breaks. "He's too far away."
Isabelle cranes her neck. "... I don't see anything."
The rover blasts upward, hovering in mid-air, just long enough for her to notice the narrow rift cutting through the ice shelf a few dozen feet away. "It's deployed down there," Rambeau explains. "I chose it because it has to dig through the least amount of ice."
"Good call," Isabelle says, remotely activating the drone. "Initiating the sampler... now."
Her eyes flutter shut as she registers the faintest shudders reverberate through the ice. Hairline cracks spread from the point of contact as the sampler burrows into the ground, probing for the crust that has never seen the light of day.
Something sour settles on her tongue as her mind follows the path of displaced ice. She feels the moment the sampler slams into a screeching halt, deep beneath the surface. The dashboard erupts into a variety of alarming beeps and shrieks.
Her eyes snap open. Warning red light swirls in front of her eyes. "What the hell was that?"
Rambeau swears, fingers flying. "Sampler overloaded. A malfunction of some kind. Can't isolate the fault from here."
"The drone was monitoring its progress - but I'm unable to access the data logs." Isabelle thinks furiously. The rift had appeared far too narrow for the rover, but it didn't look too deep, so maybe... "Water ice, right, not nitrogen?"
There's a hum of affirmation.
"And environmental controls can be compartmentalized in the rover?"
Rambeau looks over suspiciously. "Yeah, I can put up a shield around the driver section. What are you planning?"
"Let me out; I'll jump in, scan the sampler, forward you the readings." Her brows furrow. "You should be protected by the shielding, but put on a helmet anyway."
The younger woman blinks. "You don't even see the line, do you?"
"Excuse me?"
"There's adrenaline junkie, and there's suicidal, Collins. You going out there, even with Shuri's armor mods? Is the latter."
Isabelle pauses in the middle of securing her helmet seals. "My abilities allow me to thermoconform, Operative. I can grow colder than most places back on Earth."
"I doubt you can one-up Charon," she snarls. "I've read your personnel file. Even you have limits. I know that because you've reached them, jumping over the line."
She arches an eyebrow, more amused than offended. "... I appreciate the unexpected concern. And the compliment." Rising, she heads over to the door, a hand gripping the large latch mechanism. "I'll sublimate the ice, create a heat shield around myself. Should keep the worst of it out."
Rambeau exhales, shakes her head. With a few gestures on the dash, a blue shield flickers into place between the cabins. Isabelle's side depressurizes rapidly. "Keep an eye on the hazard meter," she warns through Isabelle's comms.
"Will do." With a wrench, the door opens.
—-
The deadening cold brushes past her suit's protections and slams into the thick wall of steam she hastily erects around herself. It roils against the barrier angrily, trying to maul its way through with all the strength of eternity.
-360 degrees Fahrenheit. -220 degrees Celsius. Barely a few dozen Kelvins above absolute zero.
Isabelle gasps as her body armors itself with ice in a vain attempt to balance the scales. The suit registers the changes, alarms cacophonous in the silence of the moon. She flexes the stiffness out of her fingers and calibrates the hazard meter to adjust to her current temperature. Even so, the needle wavers between green and yellow as she steps forth.
It feels like floating, but not quite. There is gravity here, just on this side of negligible that makes her feel as though true weightlessness would've been more welcome. She's being anchored to the surface by a very thin string, and she has no idea when it will snap and toss her out into the vacuum.
It's almost cruel, that uncertainty.
She has underestimated this sunless rock.
"How's it out there? " Rambeau's worry is barely concealed.
"Crispy," she grits out and springs forward. Within a few bounds, she's at the lip of the rift. Not too deep, no, and the pitch darkness of the fissure is broken by the faintest of reflections - the drone. "Doesn't look damaged from here. Can't be sure without a closer look."
Without warning, she jumps into the rift.
Observational Lounge
Gagarin Station
Jane brings up the galaxy map Monica had constructed - filtered with a network of every Gauntlet surge.
Recalling to mind the latest NASA star charts, she finds she can identify some of the loci - Horsehead, Eagle, Hourglass - all nebulae, clusters of several star systems. One device per cluster then, perhaps placed within the systems themselves, like Sol.
The automated doors slide open, ushering in Wong. "Dr. Foster, may I impose on your time?"
Not as though she was doing much more than theorizing. After her experiences with the Dark World, she's not eager to step onto another uninhabitable planet and is perfectly content to remain on the sidelines, here on Gagarin. "How can I help, Wong?"
He crosses his arms, as though debating where to begin. "When Thanos destroyed the Stones, the backlash of that act - of self destroying self - created breaches across the universe."
"I'm aware," she says dryly. In more than one sense of the term, she doesn't add.
"If Monica's scans are accurate," he gestures to the map, " - then Charon was one of the dispersal points of Infinity Stones energy. Logic dictates that the number of breaches should be the highest on this barren moon."
Her heart stills - then breaks into a furious gallop.
"If it's not too much trouble, could you set up a program to scan for them?"
"Uh... that's not necessary," she says unthinkingly, then flushes when he arches an eyebrow. "I mean, I've set up all of my devices to automatically pick up breach-related readings. There's nothing."
"I see," he says. Something in his tone makes sweat pool at the base of her spine. God, Jane has never been good at secrets. "Then it's not just a scientific anomaly... but a mystical one."
"As acting Sorcerer Supreme, it is my prerogative to investigate." He bows deeply. "Thank you, Dr. Foster. I'll leave you to it."
Jane turns back to the screen, staring unseeingly at the galaxy map, unease coiling in her belly.
Charon
The rift is barely deep enough to have made much of a difference for the sampler, no matter Rambeau's thoughts on the matter. Keeping her thoughts to herself, Isabelle activates her omni-tool.
Orange light washes over the drone, identifying and discarding any potential aberrations when they come up clean, before finally highlighting the fault in a deep glowing red.
Over the comms, Rambeau hums. "Internal heat warp due to overload. An easy fix. Origin remains a mystery, though, especially at this temperature. "
"Maybe it's the ice itself that's the problem. How thick is the shelf?"
"Shuri didn't think we needed to measure it. Those drones were built to mine vibranium pretty deep into the earth. "
"Yeah, but this isn't Earth." Silence from the other end. "Maybe the sampler hit something before it could reach the crust, overloaded trying to dig past it."
"Doubt it - the drone didn't give out any anomalous readings. But... we're dealing with alien tech; can't be sure of anything. "
"Only one way to find out. I'll reach out with my mind into the ice. We'll know if I bounce back from anything that isn't supposed to be here."
"Collins... "
"I'm good for it, Rambeau."
Her bones creak as she crouches, an armored glove brushing the ice clear. It reflects the blackness of space above her, with no stars visible to pierce the infinity. Inexplicably, she's reminded of Rambeau's warning on the Peak, almost a year ago.
Methuselah.
She inhales, her breath razor-edged and silver in her throat, and casts her mind into the ice.
Initially, her senses scour across the surface in an attempt to find something of foreign, artificial origin. Encountering nothing beyond the ordinary, she probes deeper, slowly at first, and then - when nothing jumps out at her - zipping down at the speed of light.
She encounters the sampler deep into the ice. Her mind trails the cylindrical form, feeling the searing heat of the fault a microsecond before it's sucked away by the cold. The crust remains elusive, and there's nothing nearby that could contribute to the malfunction, so she takes a metaphorical breath and plunges.
Charon
Skrulls are a prejudiced lot when it comes to Inhumans. Even more so than the Kree. So it'd be easy to brush off their warnings as paranoia - but Monica has never taken them as anything but what they are. History.
The truth.
Inhumans were cultivated to destroy entire worlds.
She knows exactly how much she can break if she's not careful. She also knows what can break her.
And right up until the screaming starts, she'd fooled herself into believing Isabelle Collins did too.
Monica shoots upright as the woman's vitals explode on the screen. "Collins!" Her startled cry is drowned out by the shrill, unearthly sounds from her comms. "What the hell is going on down there?!"
When no reply is forthcoming, she steps on it, pushes the rover as close to the edge as she dares. From this angle, she can see nothing, so she breathes, centers herself.
Outside, rays of light bend in unnatural ways, projecting an image on the back of her retinas - a trembling form curled at the bottom of the fissure. The sight confirms the scans; Collins' symptoms aren't a result of physical strain, but mental. She'd sent her mind into the ice. And for some reason, she wasn't coming back out.
Monica's pulse is skyrocketing. Helplessness rears its ugly, familiar head as she realizes she's trapped by her own limitations. She can't go out there; she won't last three seconds.
Her fingers hover over the comms, an inch from connecting to the rest of Albatross, but Collins' won't hold that long, even if they could find a solution. Rhodes, the closest one to her position, doesn't have his armor.
No, Monica is all Collins has.
And there's precious little she can do.
She slams a hand on the dash - once, twice. Redundant.
Think. Think. She's still capable of that, isn't she? Regardless of how inept she's become over the last year, she still has her brains. She still has her gift.
Another scream rings out.
She still has a voice. "I didn't think you were capable of such sounds," Monica blurts the first thing that pops into her mind. "But then… I didn't think you could be this much of an idiot either, so what do I know?"
The scream ends in a choking sob. Monica pretends that she'd contributed to the difference, instead of Collins finally running out of breath. "Fuss all you like," she mutters, focusing. "I'm not coming down there. Charon's nippy this time of the year."
Her fingers move in specific patterns, as though she's coupling invisible strings. Outside, warm light - yellow, identical to the distant Sol - coalesces into a cocoon around the fetal form, cradling her. "Right about now, Jane would tell you to 'follow her voice' or some such New Age-y bull. Unfortunately for both of us, all you got is me."
Another muffled howl.
"So I'm gonna chatter your ear off until you claw your way out just to tell me to shut my trap." This is something she can do. This is easy. Monica is sarcastic, irreverent, and capable of being greatly annoying when she puts her mind to it.
She can become very hard to ignore.
And so she goes, rambling incessantly, even throwing in the occasional colorful insult when the screams become too piercing. Simultaneously, she summons light from too-distant sources and coaxes them to wrap around Collins. Her control over other EM waves is shaky, but she does her best to warm her up. "... fair if I demand another partner; you're more trouble than you're worth…"
"Rambeau," a low groan effectively cuts off her stream of words. "Shut your trap."
Monica's laugh is hoarse, and more than a little hysterical. "Well, your noggin seems to be fine, if my name's the first thing that pops out. What's with the tantrum, Collins?"
Over the comms, Collins audibly swallows. "Overextended myself. I didn't think… "
"Yeah, I bet you didn't." The relief and helpless worry from earlier is morphing into a slow, simmering anger. Outside, the light burns a little hotter as her emotions bleed through. "Get back to the rover."
There's a pause. "Can't climb. Can't fly. "
"Your hardsuit has a jetpack, genius. Fire it up; it'll clear the edge."
The moron doesn't even pull herself to a sitting position before deploying. Fortunately, Shuri's mods include situational awareness software; the suit autocorrects before Collins smashes into the icy wall.
She almost slams into the rover instead, groans as she hits the ground. Monica reminds herself that going out there and throttling her would just be wasteful. "In the rover, not on it," she says, unable to keep the edge from her voice. "Time's a-wastin'."
Rising on unsteady feet, Collins stumbles to the hatch, which slides open at her approach, then barely takes two steps in before collapsing. Monica cranks up the heat and pressurization, then, when it's safe, disengages the driver's environmental systems and rushes to her side. The older Inhuman is freezing - frost clings to the ends of her hair, and her lips are blue.
Monica helps the woman sit up, runs an omni-tool scan. Strained auricular nerve. High blood pressure. Light hypothermia.
The rage peaks - she tamps down the urge to give Collins a good, hard slap. She sticks to a snarled " - kill yourself at your own time, Collins; not on my watch!"
Color starts trickling back to her cheeks. "Research requires risk," she whispers.
Monica scoffs. "Tell me it was worth it, at least."
After a moment, she nods.
"I know where the device is."
Med-Bay
Gagarin Station
Isabelle had resigned herself to a medical examination, but flat out refuses to stay overnight for further observation, even though her head is pounding and she can feel Rhodey's silent glare burning a hole in her forehead.
But she does have a briefing to give, so they all cluster around her in the med-bay, their faces comically stupefied after she drops the bomb. Monica, the one already in the know, is bristling against the wall, agitated for reasons far beyond Isabelle's ill-advised trip into the cold.
Jane blinks first. "Is that... a euphemism?"
Isabelle resists the urge to sigh. "No, it's a fact. That thing out there most definitely is not a moon."
"How could you possibly know that?" Bruce asks.
"Because," she snaps, " - besides being hydrokinetic, I also have a Ph.D. in Oceanography. The thickest ice shelf back on Earth is five kilometers deep. I figured this could be a dozen, not more. But what I sensed was a depth of at least hundreds of kilometers."
She takes a deep breath to dull the throbbing in her brain. "And beneath that... no crust, no mantle, no core."
"This confirms my scans," Shuri says finally, looking intrigued and troubled in equal measures. "It's not an ice shelf; it's an ice shell. Hollow." She hesitates. "A casing."
"Casing?"
"We've been looking for a device. An enormous device, capable of redirecting Infinity-levels of energy. A device that our best sensors haven't been able to detect - because the device isn't on Charon."
"It is Charon."
Personal Quarters
Her brain is pounding hard enough to leak out of her ears. "Can you get me some ice?" she asks hoarsely. "Don't want to risk conjuring right now."
Rhodey stomps over to the mini-fridge, hands over a makeshift cold compress. Sinking into the bed, she presses the compress to the side of her face, sighing as it takes the edge of the pain.
She's put this off long enough. "Well, go on then. Let me have it. You know you want to."
"How magnanimous of you, Isabelle," he drawls. She winces; he only calls her by her full name when he's really pissed. "Help me fill in the missing blanks. What happened after you went ashore ?"
Rhodey has never been one to become conveniently half-blind. Everyone had assumed that she'd strained her senses from within the confines of the rover - which moron would attempt otherwise - neither she nor Rambeau had corrected that notion.
"Wasn't that cold," she says, and before he can call her out on the lie, she hastily adds, " - but I misjudged my range. I... lost myself in the ice."
There was no end to it. Casting her mind so deep that she hadn't been able to find a way out. Rambeau's inane chatter had been more comforting than useful. "Finally, I had to cut the connection abruptly." Her mind, stretched to breaking point, had snapped back like a rubber band. "I don't remember much after that."
"Looked through your armor's metabolic scans, Izzy. You blacked out for a few seconds."
"Blacking out does imply I don't remember a goddamn thing, Rhodes," she says, unable to stop her tone from slipping into a warning. Back off. Please.
He slams the shutters, sealing off the view of the alien moon. The gesture is ultimately futile, because the swathe of bone-white sheets on the bed is bright enough to mirror those hostile fields of ice perfectly.
"This is why I didn't want you anywhere near this," he grits out.
"You'll keep pushing and pushing and pushing until either you break, or everyone else around you does. Just like him."
He laughs hoarsely. "But then, I deserve it."
Isabelle blinks, looks at him.
"Post-Snap, the backbone of my life? Guilt. I was so desperate to relieve it, I failed to save the things most precious to me."
"Rhodey…"
He shudders out a breath. "I should've sent Nebula first, on Morag."
Maybe she never left the ice. Charon's eternal winter steals her breath all over again.
"Should've made sure she got home… even if I didn't."
Her throat is thick. They should've had this conversation three years ago. In her attempt to flee any reminder of her pain, she'd ignored everyone else's. "You couldn't have known what that would lead to. That wasn't on you."
He smiles as though he doesn't believe her for an instant, nor does he appreciate her belated empathy. "I dealt with it, Izzy. On my own, because you weren't there ."
He exhales. "I know you lost more than anyone else - but you've gotta understand… I lost him too."
"I'm trying."
"I know. But we could be trying together. That's the point - the rings, our vows. Marriage is a deal," and he swallows then, and pain lances through her as she realizes what's he going to say next, " - and you're not keeping up your end of the bargain."
She shakes her head, a tear trickling down her cheek. "... I love you," she whispers.
It's the wrong thing to say, so she tries again, " - but I'm drowning ."
He stills, immediately understanding the significance of those words.
"Deeper every day." The grief is as fresh as it was the day of the funeral. It'd always be that fresh. "I won't pull you down with me."
He sinks into the bed next to her, leans his head against hers. "I won't mind helping you swim back up."
She wants to grab onto the present tense, but she won't tie him to her. He's been patient long enough. "Neither of us will survive."
"Then at least we go down together." He kisses her then, rough but deep enough to make her feel as though she's drowning in him. Their tears mix, creating a volatile mixture that burns through the ice that had overtaken her. "I've almost lost you thrice since you came back - Svartálfheim, Venice, and now this."
He cups her face, forcing her to lock gazes with him. "I won't survive another, Izzy."
"We won't. "
June 28th, 2026
Meeting Room
Nick is familiar with obsessions. That unending, burning drive in his blood. For the most part, he keeps it leashed. But even his closest associates know to surrender when he's in that feverish mood that precedes some reckless gambit.
So he's a little thrown when greeted with incredulous expressions that silently judge his mental health.
"Do I look like I'm joking?" He glares at Jane Foster, who is, impressively, not that impressed. But then, she has never been cowed by his authority. "I'm not having a possible alien threat hanging out our window any longer than it's already been there."
"So your solution is to break a moon? " she demands. "What about the consequences? Pluto's tidally locked to Charon, and it's mutual! Even a minor disturbance to the orbit could cause a catastrophic chain reaction!"
"Isn't that the kind of problem you're here to fix?" He sighs. "Dr. Foster, the Mars discovery has the world on edge; no one is willing to brush it aside like they did after New York. Soon enough, I'm not gonna be the only one who wants to crack open that shell."
"So," he takes a deep, calming breath, which doesn't work. "I ask again."
"Can it be done? "
July 1st, 2026
Three days of feverish calculations, fueled by caffeine and arguments. Three days of calibrating and upgrading the drones. Three days of Jane watching Monica sink into furious misery before she's finally had it.
She drags her into a quiet, unused lab when neither of them will be missed. "Alright, I've had enough," Jane says, folding her arms across her chest. "You've been off your game for a while now. What gives?"
"You try stopping the runaway express that is Isabelle Collins…"
"Monica, you can smell bullshit a mile away, and Starks like to hide behind a whole lot of it. But you didn't catch it. So. What gives? "
Despairing rage burns bright in her eyes. Jane suspects it's the only thing that's keeping her afloat these days. " … six minutes, " Monica snarls.
"What?"
"Six minutes to reach Charon at FTL. I could do a trip 'round the solar system in an hour ." Her nostrils flare. "You know how long it took to build the Gagarin?"
She's starting to have an inkling of where this is going. "Thirteen years."
"Thirteen ye…," Monica breaks off. Golden light coalesces at her tight fist. "Chief called it the 'pinnacle of humanity's reach' ." She punches the wall hard. " Eezo - ," she spits, " - made my life's work redundant within a year of its construction."
She laughs hoarsely. "Can't even study the stars - Sol's too young and even with FTL, it'll take us decades to reach the nearest relevant system! And without light… I'm redundant, too."
Jane shuts her eyes.
"All our billionaire backers are flat broke, you know? Funding was never even on the radar before I screwed up." Her smile is joyless. "Even the chief knows eezo's left me behind centuries."
You're not the only one, Jane wants to shout. She's an astrophysicist who has had her understanding of the universe completely upended. But Darcy's rubbed off on her - so she recognizes that what Monica needs is some sense knocked into her stupid. "Self-pity is not a good look on you."
Her eyes burn molten gold. "How dare you."
"No, how dare you." Jane would be burning too, if she could. "Pinnacle of humanity's reach, not Rambeau's! This isn't where you peak! Gagarin's redundant? But not what you do here! As for the stars…"
She exhales. "Monica. You're a brilliant engineer. But that's what you are - an engineer. To investigate the stars, you need an astrophysicist."
Monica's mouth opens in an 'O', as though the thought hasn't occurred to her this whole year. Jane internally rolls her eyes - is this what Darcy had felt, every time she had sprouted crippling insecurity?
"Enough wallowing, Rambeau. We've got work to do."
Personal Quarters
Isabelle watches her husband pack his bags with militaristic efficiency. "Thought you were gonna stick it out till the end of this thing."
"Well, we didn't exactly anticipate having to break open a moon," he replies absently. "No matter what Fury says, this isn't a scenario where asking for forgiveness instead of permission is going to cut it. The Alliance needs to be told in person."
"I could come with."
He must've heard the suppressed guilt in her voice, the fear even, because he pauses in the middle of neatly folding his socks to look at her softly. "You haven't been sleeping."
It's not a question.
"Took me a while to get it. While your nightmares jolt you awake, stuff like that," and he gestures vaguely towards the moon-that-is-not-a-moon, " - the unknowable and the unexplainable… they keep you awake."
He shakes his head. "I won't get in the way of that."
He's right, as always. But - "I'm tired," she admits finally. "It's always… the next mission. The next fight. The next mystery to solve. I still wanna know what's out there… but I also wish I could just." She gestures helplessly. " Stop ."
It's the first time in a long time that she's even approached requesting help, and a large part of her wants to retreat behind her walls again, but she shoves it down deep.
"You will. There'll be a line you won't want to cross," he says, with the assurance of someone who's been there many, many times. "And as for the dreams…"
He squeezes her hand. "Talk to someone. Doesn't have to be me. Or it'll eat you alive."
"Kind of a unique circumstance, Rhodey." How could she possibly explain this?
"You don't need someone who shares your experience, or your problems. You just need someone who has their own."
"Someone who feels just as alone. "
July 2nd, 2026
Main Lab
Shuri clears her throat. "While we wait for the official directive, more research into the device itself is required."
"What do we have?" Monica asks.
"Physical properties are difficult to measure; the device has been... enhanced, somehow, by the energy of the Gauntlet. Bruce, you have conducted the most experiments on the Stones."
"Unfortunately," he nods. "You want me to model the effects of their distortion to isolate any emissions solely from the device."
She nods. "Jane, coordinate with him but narrow your focus to dark energy. Your expertise with interdimensional breaches could be useful."
Jane winces, shifts a little so the sight of the moon is shunted to the edges of her vision. Once is chance, two is a coincidence, she reminds herself.
"Monica, find out what the device actually does, besides transmitting massive amounts of energy. Wong, continue with your mystical investigation. Jane - being the foremost link between magic and science - will be working with him as well."
"I'm gonna conduct a thorough material analysis."
Shuri's gaze is alert. "We're not working in isolation - every discovery, no matter how seemingly insignificant, might be important to someone else."
"Get to work."
Personalization is not really something they were aiming for, or even something they had time for, but it seems to have crept up in their workspaces anyway, driving home their uniqueness more than their preferences.
Bruce takes up the most room, his instruments enlarged, the tint of his towering holographic interface an unironical green. Monica has holed herself in the brightly-lit tech lab.
Shuri's workstation is alien in the truest sense of the word; her technology is so completely different from anything they've ever seen, yet somehow easily integrates with the familiar. She gestures expansively, constantly muttering even without an audience.
Jane, however, has gotten far too used to the feel of her gadgets in her hands, so her space is the smallest; cluttered with a variety of hand-held devices that the Princess had scoffed at good-naturedly, then turned around and calibrated to a degree Jane could never have achieved by herself.
"Dark energy projection rates continue to climb far beyond initial calculations. Consistent with an inactive eezo core, though," she tells Bruce. "Anything on your end?"
In response, he forwards his own data, which is in sharp contrast to her own - a flatline graph stretching out to eternity - but as equally alarming to those who share a love for the absolute, unchanging laws of nature. "We thought it was because our scans couldn't penetrate that ice. But the metal is cold, in more than one sense of the term."
"Did you try looking for gamma?"
He gives her a droll look, as though to say - look who you are talking to. It's particularly impressive in his massive face; she winces as the words linger awkwardly between them. "Gamma, UV, IR, x-ray… the entire EM spectrum - nada."
"Whatever this device is - it doesn't emit anything; no heat, no radiation. Nothing to distinguish it from deep space. Like I said, cold."
She struggles to blurt 'impossible' in reply. That's not a word thrown around lightly post-Decimation. "Maybe it'll be different once we activate it to hundred-percent functionality."
"Only in terms of the dark energy manipulated by the core." Static flickers across his holograms as he throws up his hands. "I'm old, Jane," he sighs. "Set in my ways. I'm not particularly fond of theoretical concepts that break the laws of thermodynamics."
She rubs at her forehead hard. Cold objects shouldn't be possible, yet here they are. Something about the concept seems oddly familiar, gnawing at the back of her mind. She reaches for that thought, but it slips away from her, sinking deeper into the quicksand where all forgotten memories go. "Well, you can't actually will it to come up with favorable readings."
"You have a better idea?"
"What about a better use of your time?" She minimizes all the windows, pulls up the archives. "I need a new pair of eyes. I was about to run a comparison analysis between my projections and the energy bursts Monica's scanners recorded aboard the Peak. Let's exchange assignments."
"What are you gonna do?"
"Go looking for my absent muse."
Observation Lounge
Jane wasn't expecting the lounge to be occupied. "Oh, sorry, I didn't know... didn't you get labspace?"
Wong rises smoothly and pats himself down. "I hardly require one. But I do prefer my meditation space to be more open than my quarters. Would you like some tea?"
She shrugs, settles on the couch when Wong waves away her offer of help. The aroma wafts upwards in swirling patterns. Something about it settles her insides, smooths away her worries. "Was your meditation useful?"
"Perhaps," he shrugs, sipping his tea. "I've been investigating the universal ley lines of mystical energy - the paths through which magic travels. Strangely, some of them converge on this device - and presumably, all the other devices in the network."
"What does that mean?"
"The device did not just redirect the Gauntlet energy, it absorbed some of it. Magic made it stronger. An inherent property of the metal itself, I suspect."
The quicksand stirs. She resolutely stays away. "Or the Stones."
Something flickers behind his eyes. "An interesting hypothesis. There's a saying - 'That which is touched by the Stones is forevermore changed by the Stones.' Even when destroyed, there's evidence that they've left traces of themselves."
In hindsight, she probably should've kept her mouth shut. She wonders if the tea's been laced, and then wonders if he'd been waiting for her here, in this semi-regular haunt of hers. Then she decides she doesn't really care. "Hypothetically... could they have, I don't know, left traces… in people?"
His steady, unblinking gaze feels like being under a spotlight. "You are asking after Dr. Selvig."
She exhales in a rush. He drowns it out by loudly, rudely, deliberately slurping at his tea.
She feels a sudden wave of affection for the sorcerer. "Yeah," she lies, taking the out. "Erik was never the same, after Loki's Sceptre."
Wong hums. "The Mind Stone is the very embodiment of intellect and information. I believe it did little more than open his mind to new possibilities. To knowledge he'd have never otherwise accessed."
She nods, her mind rapidly deconstructing and modifying his words to suit her own needs.
"But if you see him again, caution him," he continues. "The Stones very rarely had a positive impact on the universe."
"It is best not to advertise the fact that he bears their remnants."
July 3rd, 2026
Galley
The galley is where the fatigued science team usually gathers in the wee hours of the morning - after having spent the night researching and experimenting - comparing notes and arriving at conclusions.
Tonight, however, Jane encounters someone unexpected. She arches an eyebrow at Isabelle Collins, who's bleary-eyed and clutching at a mug of coffee.
"Scientists don't have a monopoly on insomnia," Izzy explains. "Graveyard shift, my quarters overlook Charon. Not a moment I want to revisit."
"How are you?"
"Recovering," she admits, and Jane knows she only does so because the exhaustion from having her diurnal rhythm knocked off-course has lowered her inhibitions. "Still, not the worst world to be stuck on."
She glances at her sideways. "But then - you know all about the Dark World. Heard I have you to thank for getting me out of there."
"That was mostly Erik," Jane tries, busying herself with fiddling with the coffee maker. An attempt at deflection - one that's half-hearted, because, wait for it -
"Both of you, then. You've been hunting breaches, haven't you? Any tips on how to avoid tumbling into more of those?" She smiles. "Maybe a breach-detector device?"
- three times' a pattern. Or enemy action, Ian Fleming would say.
It's just banter from a woman who'd rather not recall that which had compelled her to leave her quarters to hide out here in the dead of night.
But Jane's not firing on all cylinders either. "There's no device," she blurts. "There never was."
"But how do you...?"
Wong had warned her, but she's bursting at the seams trying to hold this in.
"It's me," Jane says. "I can sense them. Specifically, the dark energy that pours out whenever a breach is formed."
Izzy stiffens, her eyes sharpening into a question. The bags beneath look even more pronounced.
"The Aether," Jane explains. "Reality is shaped by dark energy, and the Stone... left something of itself behind when it left my body." She swallows. "An awareness that is… stronger now that it's been destroyed. Eezo certainly doesn't help."
She's afraid to look over, to see Izzy's reaction. It's a miracle she's not screaming, after everything the Stones have stolen from her. But then, Izzy's fury has always burned cold.
Jane still can't bring herself to regret it. There's something freeing about saying it out loud.
A deep sigh. "I have nightmares about the time I was dead," Izzy admits finally.
Jane almost bursts into tears. Darcy had taught her that comparison of vulnerabilities is the lowest form of empathy. But Izzy's words don't elevate one pain over another. They equalize both. "That is much worse," she laughs wetly.
"I don't know. At least I have them only at night."
"And I go crazy only around breaches…"
They downplay their issues well into the morning.
July 5th, 2026
Research Hub
All the final preparations are over with. All the calculations made, all the permissions obtained. They're just waiting for Shuri's cue.
Jane's working her way through the archives when Monica emerges from her overly-bright tech lab and makes a beeline for her. "Oh, good," she chirps, " - I was just about to call you. I have doubts."
Jane heaves an internal sigh of relief. Things had been awkward since her admittedly harsh talking-to, and Monica had vacillated between angry gloom and mania for a while before settling into something approaching determination. "Engineering isn't really my area of expertise…"
"No, not that," Monica waves a hand impatiently. "I went through the Foster theory on Einstein-Rosen Bridges - fascinating stuff, by the way - but I don't really get the difference between the Bifrost and normal wormholes."
"What's that got to do with…?"
"Humor me."
She shrugs, activates the projector table. Unlike traditional holo-workstations, this runs on vibranium sand tech generously loaned by Wakanda. Besides Shuri, Jane has had the best luck manipulating it so far; it's incredibly intuitive, almost like building sandcastles at the beach. Running her fingers through the sand, she asks, " - what's your experience with wormholes?"
"The Universal Neural Teleportation Network," is the prompt reply. "A network of wormholes, limited only by the number of jumps one can take at a time. Not even the Skrulls know who built it - been there longer than any written history."
Jane feels a stab of professional envy. Oh, the data she'd be able to gather with just one jump alone could win her another Nobel Prize. "Think I can fill in some of the blanks. Are they mapped out?"
In response, Monica raises her arms. Golden threads trickle through Monica's veins like luminous braiding, knotting at the tips of her fingers. A projection of the cosmos branches outward, washing the room with light. Specific locations are highlighted with golden rings; the Network's wormholes.
Monica's eyes are bright. "I memorized them. Thought it might come in handy."
"Impressive," Jane smiles. "My turn."
The sand is cool and smooth as she molds it into the familiar form of a gnarly ash tree. Over the years, her interest in this has never waned, just oscillated from obsessive hobby to legitimate scientific interest. "I've found that real-life borderline fringe physics often mirrors ancient myths - specifically Norse."
Monica looks skeptical. "You can't possibly be serious."
She ignores her. "In Norse legends, Yggdrasil is the depiction of the entire universe," she says, detailing the trunk perhaps a little more than strictly necessary. "A unique constellation not limited to any one galaxy. Each of its main branches connects to a different galactic supercluster, then fork to different solar systems."
Splitting the aforementioned branches from the tree, she weaves them through the wormholes on Monica's map, like threading the eye of a needle, only exponentially simpler.
"I propose the Neural Network wormholes tap into Yggdrasil's branches, moving through existing pathways in the universe," she traces a branch with her finger, demonstrating how it connects to others of its kind, " - allowing one to travel almost instantaneously across space."
"There's no proof," Monica grumbles, eyeing the mythical tree suspiciously. As though it somehow offends her modern sensibilities to find even a kernel of scientific truth in legends. Erik had been the same once.
"Not what I'm here for, anyway. Limitation is the key." Jane adds the final touch - the barest hint of strong, deep-seated roots disappearing into the projector table.
She'd always wondered about the cosmic reality that the roots represent; Thor had gone white the one and only time she'd asked.
She takes a step back, examining her handiwork. Inactive, the sand takes on a concrete-like consistency.
The World Tree looms over them, its branches painted in the gold of Monica's light. The sight brings a lump to her throat, reminding her of the first time she'd seen a representation of Yggdrasil.
The digital sketch Thor had once drawn for her. Jane doesn't look too closely as to the reasons behind her holding on to the original all these years. It still lies in her bedside drawer back home, not lost, never forgotten.
The quicksand stirs again, the memory at the tip of her tongue, but she doesn't poke at it. It'll come to her, or it won't. "Do you have the Nine Realms mapped out?"
A rainbow-hued set of delicate spheres materialize on the map. Asgard is represented by a flat asteroid. "The Bifrost," Jane explains, " - just like all other Einstein-Rosen bridges, punches a hole through space-time. But, while powerful, it could only connect to the Nine Realms located in nine separate galaxies," she gestures to the spheres, " - so that's all the Asgardians concerned themselves."
"While the Universal Neural Teleportation Network can connect anywhere, but can't be used too often successively," Monica finishes. "Limitation ."
Jane straightens. She recognizes that tone. "What's this really about?"
With a swift gesture, Monica banishes their creations. The sand structure collapses, individual particles sinking back onto the projector table. Above, the map dissolves into a swirl of colors, reemerging into a projection of the one thing Jane's somehow supposed to investigate without making it too obvious that just looking at the damn thing makes nausea churn in her gut.
"Tentative designation: Phase Gate," Monica says, grimacing. "Shuri's idea; but she already got to coin eezo and we need a better alternative." She zooms into Charon. "There's evidence of an inactive core, a massive one."
Jane nods. "Yes, the device is basically a huge mass effect engine able to manipulate massive amounts of dark energy." An understatement; her estimates had abandoned 'off the charts' several days ago.
An image of the galaxy comes up next, red lines springing up between points across the spiral. "And we know that the Stones activated it for a brief moment, dispersing energy across the Milky Way?"
"Yeah…" Jane's brilliant mind connects the dots without prompting. Her heart skips a beat. "But eezo is also able to manipulate mass, which means this network can't just disperse energy… but matter."
"If I'm right, each gate connects to another one in the network, creating a mass-free corridor. A bridge … to whatever's on the other side."
"It's a transit device. Like a wormhole."
Monica shakes her head. "This is more elegant. Wormholes break reality, these… mass relays," her eyes brighten for a moment, and Jane knows she's going to do whatever it takes to get the term approved, " - bend it. A network of them, allowing interstellar travel, but just within the Milky Way. There's your limitation."
"I've mapped them out," she says, "but there's no way to know which one Charon connects to." Golden light trickles back into Monica's veins, plunging the hub into darkness. "Don't suppose you could call Thor? Would like to conduct some tests on that Stormbreaker of his."
Jane stills. Goosebumps slide along the back of her neck. "What did you just say?" she whispers.
Monica squints at her. "Stormbreaker? That big, mighty ax - capable of summoning Einstein-Rosen Bridges at will?" She shakes her head. "Man, I thought that hammer was impressive - what kind of a metal is capable of sustaining that much lightning…?"
Stormbreaker. Hammer.
The quicksand stirs violently, like a vortex, but she's grabbed onto the memory now, and she's not letting go. Her head spins as she staggers her way into the main lab, the roaring in her ears drowning out her friend's exclamation. "I need to… Shuri."
The Princess - not someone who is easily disturbed when in the middle of research - must've heard something in her tone, because she looks up, her petite features morphing into concern. "What is it?"
Jane attempts to compose herself, if for no other reason than rearranging her scattered thoughts. "What did you find from the structural and compositional analysis?"
Shuri brings up her data. "It's incredibly resilient. Non-sparking, highly immalleable, unknown ductility. I don't want to imagine the energy it would take to forge this metal…"
"Elaborate on the resilience."
Shuri blinks. "Well, uh… the atomic structure is locked in place by a… quantum shield that makes it nearly impervious to damage. Pretty sure it could survive a supernova. I've never seen anything like it."
Magic made it stronger. An inherent property of the metal itself, I suspect.
Jane nods mutely, taking a step backward. Then another. Then another, until she feels the comforting edge of her own workspace. "But I have," she whispers, recalling the data S.H.I.E.L.D. had sent over as an apology gift after the event with the Destroyer.
Back then, she'd been trying to flee the reality of Thor's abandonment, so she'd buried it deep within her personal database, but some conclusions had latched themselves onto her brain nevertheless. She'd attributed those scans to unknown energies, having conveniently forgotten her own mantra on the connection between magic and science.
The memory of the hammer blooms in her mind, mighty and forceful. The delicately carved, looping knots on the chamfered edges of the head, and the triquetra to the side, representing Odin's mandate on worthiness.
Mjolnir.
As if on cue, the shutters open, revealing the backdrop of Charon against the dark infinity of space. Oh, Jane thinks, heart stuttering in her chest. Shuri must have been initializing the project when she'd barged in.
As she watches, a tremor sweeps across the icy facade; an entire moon shuddering in fear. The cracks are faint at this distance, but spread rapidly across the surface, forking under the pressure of Shuri's pulse emitters.
Slowly, as though unwilling to break free, huge chunks of glaciers split from the whole. They tumble through space for brief moments before finally escaping Charon's feeble gravity.
An hour flies by as she stares at the spectacular cataclysm which feels like a metaphor, or perhaps a prophecy, of her life.
An egg hatching with cracks spreading all over it.
And inside the egg…
At first, she sees nothing. But then -
Her immediate impression is of a gigantic tuning fork - two long, curved arms, arching around a pair of gyroscopic rings. A lifeless device whose contours carve out the starry expanse of space, finally liberated from its camouflage of ice.
Changing the face of the Sol System forever.
Meeting Room
The realization that this convergence of the two universes is not just limited to the Infinity Stones drops like an anvil over the group. "What? "
"Thor called it Uru," Jane explains. "A metal, forged in the heart of a neutron star - Nidavellir, the home of the dwarves, and one of the Nine Realms of Yggdrasil."
Isabelle blinks. "You think the Asgardians built this?" She points to the recently uncovered device.
"That ice hasn't been disturbed for fifty thousand years, Izzy," Jane replies. "The entirety of Asgardian civilization isn't even half that long."
"Another interesting coincidence to think about," Bruce continues. "Eezo is generated when a planet is affected by a star going supernova. Said star is either destroyed completely or collapses into a neutron star."
"Were the Asgardians aware of all of this - eezo, the Prothean ruins, these relays?" Fury asks, scowling at the thought of not having interrogated the remnants of the species that have even now made their home in Tønsberg, Norway.
"They didn't have to be - not with the Bifrost."
"Has anyone heard of this before?"
Talos shakes his head. "This is new for us. We were too busy fighting a losing war to concern ourselves with the Milky Way. I've been trying to connect to the Neural Network, reach out to my spies in Andromeda for any intel they might have… but it's blocked. Something has cut us off. Probably the Kree," Talos grouses.
Wong shifts uncomfortably. "The Masters of the Mystic Arts have long since been aware of Uru," he admits. "I have never seen it in person, which is why I did not immediately place its unique mystical properties."
He clears his throat. "Uru has a natural affinity for magic. Not only is it easy to enchant, but it also absorbs magic like a sponge, making it more durable. The energies it is unable to absorb, it redirects - as Mjolnir did with Thor's lightning."
"And like the Charon relay did with the combined juice of six Infinity Stones." Fury exhales explosively.
"By all accounts, the youngest civilization to know about these might've been the Protheans, who probably built them," Shuri says into the silence. "With further translations of the Archives, I'm sure I can find a way to reactivate them."
Isabelle stirs in her seat. There's a realization building in her mind, slow because she's still recovering, but nevertheless reaching its apex. "You… called it a corridor. Which makes this… a doorway. To the other end of space."
Monica grimaces at the oversimplification but nods. She brings up the relay, zooms in. "See those gyroscopic rings enclosing the inactive core? Helps in stabilizing navigational systems in the dead of space…"
But Isabelle's not listening anymore. Her eyes are drawn to Fury, who is the palest she's ever seen him. He's recognized those words too, the specific way she'd phrased them.
Because they'd both been there at the beginning, when interfering with alien technology had plunged them into a life-altering war. When Clint Barton had proven himself to be as intelligent as Erik Selvig, much to their detriment.
If there was any tampering, sir, it wasn't at this end.
At this end?
Yeah, the cube is a doorway to the other end of space right?
Doors open from both sides.
July 7th, 2026
Space Dock
They're waiting on Rhodes to bring the Albatross back from Earth. Jane is re-checking her belongings when Monica steps next to her. "I hope you don't have any plans, because you're going to be my assistant for the next few years."
Jane glances at her sideways. She's seen a lot of sides of her friend, but the look Monica's sporting right now usually precedes Jane being dragged into a lot of dangerous situations. Exciting, yes, but dangerous. "I'm older than you," she points out. "If anything, you'd be my assistant."
She really shouldn't be encouraging her, but damn if the prospect of more scientific expeditions isn't thrilling. The initial shock of the truth behind the relays had given away to an explosion of possibilities. "What are you planning?"
"Chief's agreed - I'm piloting the first ship through the relay. Set up some bases around stars, take some readings. Thing is," Monica sighs, " - you were right; I was going about this all wrong."
Jane arches an eyebrow.
She hesitates, then steels herself. "Just science isn't gonna cut it. The connection between relays and Uru made me realize… the answers might be found in old Norse mythos, too."
A broad smile pulls at her lips. "Why, Monica… have I successfully converted you?"
Monica scowls. "Save it. There's no guarantee. Science always rules."
Unable to argue with that, Jane shrugs. The Albatross jumps into view, its shadow a speck against the unearthly sheen of the Charon relay.
"And magic is just science we don't understand yet. "
The Peak VII
Isabelle feels Fury's gaze as she goes through the proposal. Her fingers brush through the hologram of the red-and-white logo. "Interplanetary Combatives Training. Why me?"
"I need you for what you were always trained for," he replies, " - be a bridge to whatever's on the other side. "
She sighs, swipes away the holo. "Nick…"
"With the Tesseract, we were caught off-guard. Never again." He slashes a hand through the air. "We know how to work this; we need to send someone through before the other end starts getting any ideas."
Collins presses trembling fingers to her brow. "I'm not going to be a part of that. This is how it begins, and I'm not… I can't do this again."
"This is what you signed up for."
"No. I'm a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent - Phil Coulson is my superior officer."
"Not for long; if I'm reading the winds right," he sighs. "You have somewhere better to be?"
"Yeah," she bites out. "Home. It's time I get back to my family - Aquamarine's had a good enough run."
He snorts. "Will that satisfy you?"
"More than," she says and finds that she absolutely means it. She aches to know them, to know these new versions of them that she hadn't wanted to learn earlier, that she hadn't wanted to taint earlier.
Rhodey's confession had shaken something loose inside her. Forced her in front of a mirror, made her confront what she has become, how far she has drifted since the Blip, if she hasn't even bothered to find out her husband's pain. How many more has she been ignoring?
The only mysteries she needs to solve are the ones that involve her family.
He squeezes the bridge of his nose, then pushes an OSD across the desk. "Let me know if you change your mind."
Long after Collins is gone, Nick is absently thumbing at the holo-projector when Hill comes up from behind him. "You're still holding out hope?" Her voice is incredulous.
"She's so close. She just needs one last push."
"She won't let you manipulate her into making it personal again, Nick."
The hologram pops up, displaying a brilliantly bold N7 logo against a dark background.
"Something tells me I won't have to."
MCU Context
Remnants of Infinity Stones: This is actually evident in canon. Selvig himself admitted that the Mind Stone changed him. It's inconceivable to think that after absorbing one of the most volatile Stones in existence, it left no lasting impact on Jane Foster.
I like to think the Stones 'did not go gently into that good night.'
This is a super important plot point.
Monica Rambeau: First appearance of Monica Rambeau in WandaVision! She's bold, brilliant, and beautiful!
My version, obviously, is very different. Inhuman, less self-assured (as evidenced by this chapter). She'll grow into her full potential and that journey is what I'm interested in exploring.
I expanded on her light-bending gifts in this chapter. Like Collins, she can call upon light rays from external sources, but not generate them. She can bend them, using them to see around corners if she so wishes. She is capable of holographic projections, invisibility etc.
She is hesitant to use them offensively because of the warnings drilled into her by the Skrulls.
Marvel Comics Context
Uru: The mystical metal ore capable of storing energy, especially magic. In ME canon, it is unknown which metal was used to create the mass relays. So I decided to add another element of convergence between these two universes.
The lore fits. Both Uru and the mass relays are enormously resilient, and I'm pretty sure whatever canonical metal it was in ME would've required extreme methods to forge it. Why not the heart of a neutron star?
Another convergence is the connection between eezo and neutron stars.
Honestly, I don't come up with this. This is all just there, ripe for the taking. Every time I stumble across stuff like this, I laugh like a maniac.
Mass Effect Context
Systems Alliance: Yeah, that 'alliance' Rhodey was talking about between the military and S.H.I.E.L.D. is the Systems Alliance, the representative body of Earth and human colonies.
Alec Ryder: Father of the protagonist in Mass Effect: Andromeda. Canonical information is woefully lacking, so I'm planning on creating a backstory for him.
I wasn't gonna have ME:A involved at all, but then I realized - the Kree and Skrulls come from Andromeda. So maybe I can bridge those two universes as well. Not in any great detail - I'm limiting myself to the Milky Way - but just enough.
PSV Albatross: A corvette - a small, ten-man craft. There's no naming convention given in the wiki, so I'm naming them after large seabirds.
Charon: It was absolutely thrilling to use Charon as the collision point between universes. It is the first of many answers to the question that may have occurred to you - how did the Snap affect the Mass Effect universe?
The Gauntlet energy traveling through the mass relay network echoes another instance of something similar happening at the very controversial ending of Mass Effect 3. A long way from here.
'Cold' Objects: In canon, the relays are 'cold; they don't emit heat or radiation, unlike starships, making them difficult to find if their position changes. The eezo core, of course, emits dark energy, and also is capable of disseminating other forms of energy.
Wormholes, Bifrost and Relays: Yet another point of convergence. Bifrost is a sort of wormhole, and, this isn't canon, but I think it can connect only to the Nine Realms.
The Universal Neural Teleportation Network is a plot device using in GotG Vol 2. A network of wormholes. I linked them with Norse Mythology, because I like to find connections between truly disparate elements.
Mass relays are a whole different ballgame. And I loved comparing the Charon relay to the Tesseract. A blue glowing thing acting as an interstellar gateway? The parallels were shoving themselves at me.
Ooh, and 'phase gate' is a shout out to the creators' original name for the relays.
Interplanetary Combatives Training: aka N7 training. Boy, have I been waiting for this!
To non-fans, N7 is a vocational code in the System Alliance military. 'N' denotes special forces. There are six levels of horrifically grueling training; if you manage to complete all six, you'll be an N7.
There is little shame in failing an N course - the training is so extreme that even qualifying for N1 elevates an officer to a position of respect.
It's why I involved Alec Ryder as well; another N7 graduate.
Maybe I should've posted this chapter on November 7th - would've been brilliant. Oh, well.
OSD: Optical Storage Device - a small, portable data storage unit, like a CD or a USB.