Beneath
Chapter Thirty-Six – Fear
Jane woke slowly the next day, and remained lazily in bed, letting yesterday's events wash over her, filtering slowly through her early morning haze. She'd left Loki out at MAPO and come back here and gone right to sleep. Loki had presumably followed later and gone back to his own spartan room two doors down.
Something felt off about the whole thing. Loki is the Bad Guy. That makes me the Good Guy. The Good Guy isn't supposed to help the Bad Guy…right? Even if his goals line up with yours? Jane tried and tried to find a reason why she shouldn't help Loki get back to Asgard, and she couldn't. He got what he wanted, and she got what she wanted. Him gone. And…oh, and that was shameful. She got to be the first to prove through science that traversable wormholes – even if they weren't exactly what she initially expected, or at least this one wasn't – really existed. Isn't that what they call a Faustian deal or bargain or something like that?
Ultimately, though, she rejected that notion. She wasn't doing this, helping Loki by continuing her work, for science. What she learned scientifically would be a fringe benefit that would hardly make up for the years this stress was going to take off her life. If she could directly contact Thor and if she could know that he could come here, collect Loki, and take him anywhere in the universe that was not Earth, that would be her Plan A. But since she couldn't do that, sending him back to Asgard herself in a few days, if Pathfinder and Yggdrasil did what they wanted them to do, that was almost as good. She pictured herself sticking a bow onto his shoulder with a little card. "He's all yours again! No returns accepted."
Jane sat up and scooted around to rest her back against the wall, pulling her legs up to her chest and hugging them tight as she rotated her neck around in a slow circle to work out a kink. The fact that she could even imagine such a farce was, quite possibly, an early sign that she was finally losing her mind. The psych eval for coming out here, after all, had asked about hearing voices and dealing with isolation and having a temper and substance abuse and getting a thrill out of fire. It hadn't asked anything at all about spending the winter trapped with a deranged Norse god.
Her lungs filled in a rush and her eyelids fluttered closed as a beautiful memory came back to her so strongly she could almost imagine she was there instead of here. A green and blue aurora slowly undulated through the night sky over the Norwegian Sea and she was underdressed for the cold, but she huddled into the warmth beside her. "Come with me."
An invitation like none other. And she'd turned it down to come here.
Why didn't you insist? Why didn't you ask again? Why didn't you try even the tiniest bit to convince me?
She sighed and gave her legs a squeeze. Blaming Thor was petty. This wasn't his fault. He'd warned her, he'd checked on her. And somehow, somehow…
How did Loki do all this? How did he even get here? They had his name at the CDC. He was on the flight manifest. He had a room assigned here. There was that e-mail from SHIELD telling her they were sending her an assistant named Lucas Cane. How could he possibly have…
Jane clamped a hand over her mouth as something twisted in her gut. What if there was a real Lucas Cane, and Loki had killed him and taken his place? She had to take the hand away from her mouth because she was no longer getting enough air through just her nose. Some poor innocent grad student out there, studying astrophysics, given the chance of a lifetime, tracked down by Loki…
A bundle of raw nerves, Jane pushed away from the wall and jumped to the floor, ignoring the footstool and the pain upon impact with the floor. She was nearly overwhelmed with the urge to run. But there was nowhere to run to, unless she wanted to run laps back and forth through the station's corridors, or take a hypothermia-inducing sprint to one of the outbuildings. Even if she first bundled up in every piece of clothing she had here, the furthest she could get from exactly where she stood right now – and survive after getting there – was maybe a mile and a half. So she paced. It was hard enough to do even that in an eight by ten room.
And then she remembered. No. There's no real Lucas Cane. Not one he killed and replaced, anyway. She'd looked him up online already. No hint of an astrophysicist out there with that name. She remembered she'd been suspicious because his name wasn't even on his university department's webpage. He said...changed his name…hiding from his family…that scar…
She froze in her pacing, in the middle of the room, and put a hand out to grip the back of her chair. Was some of that true? It was just too much to take in all at once. She flipped the chair around so it was facing the door and let herself fall into it. He is hiding from them. Thor certainly doesn't know he's here. But the scar…he said his family branded him with a…a family seal of some sort. What was that? Some kind of play for my sympathy? She didn't for a minute believe that was true. Thor loved his father. He'd been heartbroken when he'd thought his father was dead, thought that he was somehow responsible for it. Odin couldn't possibly be so abusive. And Loki said his brother was there, that he just stood there and watched while his father pressed a hot poker into his wrist. She also knew Thor loved his brother, and that he wouldn't stand by while such a cruel thing was done to him. Of course, Loki had also mentioned a sister, and as far as she knew they had no sister, so who knew what was true and what wasn't?
He'd looked so frightening when he was staring down at that scar, so full of rage. That was Loki, she realized. That was the real him. And it was terrifying.
Jane twisted around so that her upper body faced the desk; she turned on her laptop and brought up her e-mail. No new messages. No responses to her plea for help, nothing at all. Somehow Loki really had made sure no one would get that message. Magic? But if he can do that with some kind of magic, why can't he just send himself to… Right. His "task." He has to use our technology. Maybe he was telling the truth, then. At least about that.
Everything else, though, from the very beginning, must have been a lie, Jane reasoned. When he first found her, in Sydney. "I'm Lucas Cane." Sure you are, you- Jane's eyes narrowed. There was something strange about that memory, of first meeting him. She'd been relaxing on a bench looking out over Sydney Cove; she'd turned and seen him. He'd looked familiar, but she hadn't been able to immediately place him. Like when you see someone you know in such a completely unexpected context that you don't recognize the person right away. He'd looked familiar…and then he hadn't.
He did something to me! Jane realized with equal measure of horror and anger. He made me not remember him. That image she'd seen so many times of him taking over Erik's and two other people's minds played themselves again in rapid sequence. Her breathing became so rapid and shallow it was approaching hyperventilation. But he doesn't…he doesn't control me, she tried to reason with herself. He doesn't have that blue glowy magic thing. He doesn't have the tesseract. And Erik had told her it was like being in a fog, and that he didn't remember much of it. Though she had never entirely believed him, suspecting that was a way to avoid talking about it.
Regardless of how exactly it worked, it was clear that the people under his control were doing what Loki wanted, without even any instruction from him, without any consideration for what they wanted. Clint Barton had shot Nick Fury; Erik had opened up a portal to permit Earth's invasion. I'm not feeling any desire to go serve Loki.
Her breathing slowed and her stomach dropped. Except that's exactly what I did last night.
Right back to Square One. The Good Guy doesn't help the Bad Guy.
And so the argument started up again, and she'd gotten fully halfway back to its end-/beginning-point when she realized what was going on. Before she could follow the latest horrifying revelation too far, though, there was a knock at her door, and that meant Loki.
Jane glanced down at herself; she had slept in her long johns. They weren't exactly a revealing garment, but still she jumped up and grabbed for the blue terrycloth robe that had been slung over the foot of the bed's tall frame. She wrapped it tightly around herself and opened the door.
"Good morning, Jane. Did you sleep well?" Loki asked. There was something utterly farcical about it, to both of them – Loki because he was falling into the pattern of the South Pole greeting and Jane because she knew Loki wasn't the slightest bit concerned about how well she'd slept. Loki, though, was concerned about how she'd slept; he knew she'd need it more than he to be able to work efficiently.
Jane regarded him for a split second, in his dockers and dark green-gray ribbed turtleneck sweater that made him look even taller than he was. "I'm not helping you anymore," Jane blurted out. Oh, God, did I just say that out loud? she asked herself with such clarity it could have been spoken aloud, and if it was an actual appeal to anyone it was an appeal to God and certainly not to the man standing in front of her who seemed to want to share the title according to what she'd read in SHIELD's reports. Don't antagonize him! she reminded herself. Too late.
"What?" Loki's face was cold, unemotional, but tension was clear in his voice. He stepped forward and Jane, so much shorter, could either be toppled over or step back.
She stepped back. He closed the door behind him.
"I think I must have misheard you. Would you care to explain what you meant to say?" Loki asked, demanded, really. It had been unpleasant enough to have this conversation once; there'd been no enjoyment in it the way there had been in his earlier manipulations of her, only necessity. Not to mention it was highly inconvenient. He didn't want to have to convince her anew every day.
Jane swallowed with some difficulty. She'd opened this door; she had too much pride – foolishness? – to try to pretend she hadn't and sneak it closed. She wasn't good at not antagonizing. She was good at saying what was on her mind. "You lied to me."
You'll have to be more specific than that, Loki wanted to say, but he certainly knew better. "I've told you the truth about everything but my name. And even then I told you I'd changed it. Would you care to inspect my passport? My driver's license? They say 'Lucas Cane,' just as I told you."
"How can you stand there and say that? You've lied to me about everything since the day we met. You told me SHIELD sent you. SHIELD never sent you. I'm guessing SHIELD's never heard of Lucas Cane. I mentioned you once or twice in my e-mails; you must have made sure those didn't go through, too. Or else you…you did something so that they never saw your name. And then you told me that SHIELD tried to get you to spy on me, and that Selby was asking questions about me, and you implied that anyone here could've been recruited to report to SHIELD. I cut myself off from everyone here. Everyone except you. And it was all lies, Lucas, every word of it. The only one here spying on me was you, from the very beginning. You were trying to control me just like Erik, only they took your…your…that staff thing away." Jane caught herself on another realization and broke into anxiety-fueled laughter completely disconnected from the fear she knew she should be feeling. "You said you wanted to destroy SHIELD. That stuck in my memory because sometimes I really hate them and even I wouldn't say that. But you did, didn't you? You wanted to destroy them. And maybe you still do? I have no idea what you really want to accomplish here. Even if all you really want to do is go back to Asgard…I can't help you. I won't. Not after everything you've done here."
"After everything I've done here? Like what, Jane? I've worked by your side all day and studied all night. Do you think we study 'dark matter' and 'muons' and 'neutrinos' and 'Einstein-Rosen Bridges' on Asgard? We look at things in a completely different way, but I gave up sleep so that I could learn the Midgardian way. Your way. I've scrubbed sinks and toilets and floors and dishes. Do you think I ever had to do such things in my entire life before this? I was born a prince. You said I lied about everything? I lied about very little. I told you I had servants for such things. I played darts with your friends and went on that miserable excuse for a sled ride and went to the sunset dinner and the concert and party afterward and I watched a movie and I went skiing. Oh, and let's not forget, I pretended to be unconscious so you could practice your emergency response skills."
"You were faking being sick that one day, weren't you," Jane said before he could go on. It wasn't a question. She knew now. He'd faked everything every minute he'd been here.
"Can you blame me?" Loki asked with a sigh. "Jane…I only wanted to keep you focused on your work. That's all I've ever wanted, and it's all I want now. So 'after everything I've done here'…are these the deeds over which you now refuse to help me return to my family?" Loki asked, keeping his expression simple and open. Too earnest and she wouldn't believe him, he knew. And he didn't want to upset her by pressing her on the family issue, but he would if he had to. He hoped mentioning it would be enough.
Jane was caught on "are these the deeds" and barely noticed the reference to family. You know perfectly well those aren't the "deeds" I was referring to. How about trying to kill Thor? How about trying to kill half of New York and rule the other half plus the rest of the world? How about Phil Coulson? How about Jocelyn Waters? How about what you did to Erik?! But somehow she managed to pull herself back from giving any of those thoughts voice, just barely. "Fine. I'll help you," she finally said. Not because she wanted to, really, but because as she saw it she had little choice. It was the safest, fastest way to be free of him.
"Thank you, Jane," Loki said with a look of honest relief, glad that at least this time convincing her had been quick and fairly easy. "I-" I appreciate it, he'd intended to say, to demonstrate his "humanity," but he'd also reached out. For what exactly he wasn't even sure after the fact – perhaps for her arm, perhaps simply as a gesture – because she stepped away from him before he could finish. And quite unexpectedly, it stung. It shouldn't matter; the only thing that should matter was that she had agreed to continue working with him. It stung nevertheless.
"Jane…what can I do to convince you you're in no danger from me?"
Jane's eyes went wide with disbelief. "Uhhh, I don't know, turn back the clock and not try to conquer my planet? There's nothing you can do. You killed people. I don't usually hang out with mass murderers, okay? So you'll have to forgive me if I'm not entirely comfortable around you, if I don't feel safe."
"Have you ever 'hung out' with soldiers? You said Gary the machinist was in your military. Has he not fought in battles and killed his enemies?"
"I have no idea. But are you seriously comparing yourself to Gary? To any soldier? You aren't a soldier. You attacked us entirely unprovoked and killed a lot of innocent people!" And somewhere in all that the fear was crowded out by the anger, and don't antagonize him was totally forgotten.
"Lower your voice!" Loki hissed. Half the station could have heard that, and that was a complication he certainly didn't need. "And what nonsense is this? Innocent people? When would I have found the time for that? I was leading a battle. I killed none who were not actively opposing me."
"Are you serious?" Jane asked, incredulous. "Did you see New York? Did you ever stop and look at it?"
He had stopped. He had looked. It was exciting and magnificent and horrific. And after he'd had his fill of stopping and looking he'd stabbed Thor and jumped onto a racer to join the wider battle, where the Chitauri – not him, the Chitauri – were causing wanton destruction. "You cannot blame me for what the Chitauri did. What your own 'Avengers' did, especially your Hulk."
"You took control of my friend's mind," Jane said softly, angrily, backing away from the bigger picture that he apparently felt no responsibility for and turning almost inevitably, it felt like, to what had hurt her personally the most.
"I never hurt him," Loki said, not bothering to try to lie about it. He knew she knew; he knew she'd seen the video. "And more importantly I'm not taking control of your mind."
Jane took a moment to steady herself, to rein in her urge to physically lash out at him for his casual denial that he'd hurt Erik. "But you did control my thoughts. You just did it with words and not magic or alien technology."
Loki likewise took a moment. He was growing impatient, and impatience right now would be most unhelpful. "We have already had this conversation, Jane. You have accused me of telling you nothing but lies. You have insulted me. You have blamed me for deaths. You have done this here in your room, with no one else around to see what happens. And tell me, what awful revenge have I inflicted on you in response?"
He has a point, Jane thought with a defeated sigh. But she wasn't about to concede the point out loud. "Wait," she blurted out, remembering another thing that had set her off earlier. "You did something to me. When we first met. What did you do to me?"
"I did nothing."
"Yes, you did. I know you did. If you want me to help you, you have to tell me. I need to know," she said, desperation growing in her voice, for she couldn't imagine anything more awful than the idea of him having access to her mind, able to manipulate her thoughts and memories.
Loki stared at her in curiosity. One minute she was cowering in fear, the next minute she was yelling at him, and the next she was almost trembling. He tried to appear non-threatening, because he understood that last fear, much as he'd hoped to avoid discussing it. He'd trembled and worse when the Chitauri had tried to toy with his memories. What he'd done to Jane was nothing by comparison. "That?" he asked dismissively. "I did very little. Merely obscured my appearance in your memories. I felt I had no choice. As I've already told you, I knew you would be unlikely to help me if you knew who I really was. Your memories are your own, Jane. I did nothing else, and I will do nothing else."
"Swear it," she said immediately. She wasn't sure if it really meant anything to him or not. He'd said it did; of course he was also an unrepentant liar and manipulator, but it was all she had.
"All right. I swear it." He would take whatever good faith he could get. Besides, once one figured out what was going on, it was more difficult to be fooled that way again. If he tried to obscure any further memories it was highly unlikely to work and would cost him every bit of trust he might otherwise earn.
Jane sighed and nodded. She was out of words. She was exhausted and it couldn't be 7 AM yet.
"If you're feeling better, then…" Loki prompted, when Jane remained silent.
She looked up at him, and her mind almost…almost!...switched fully over to work mode. The transmitter test. "Did you finish the circuit boards?"
"I did. And I assembled the hollow probe. We can test as soon as we get out there and get the equipment set up."
"Okay," Jane said, nodding. "I need breakfast. I'll get dressed, grab something quick, and we can go do it."
"Good. I'll go out now and start getting things ready."
/
/
A little over an hour later, Jane and Loki stood together in front of a laptop, a familiar position now made unfamiliar and uncomfortable for Jane.
But this was work. She could do this. She told herself she could, at least. Constantly. "Everything looks good," she said. "I think we're ready to launch."
"Agreed," Loki said, pulling his balaclava back on in preparation for going outside into the twilight again.
As they made their way out to where Pathfinder was set up behind the jamesway, Jane found her thoughts drifting from the safety of work toward unsettling questions. She had so many of them, and more arose every time she had a chance to think about things. She wasn't sure if she should ask – how he would react to it – but both by inclination and by training, asking questions was her nature.
"Do you… What happened between you and Thor?" she finally asked, carefully keeping the question accusation-free. They were already just steps from Pathfinder.
"I could ask the same of you," Loki said immediately.
Jane stopped short and stared at Loki's back as he continued forward over the ice, alongside the snow drifts building up behind the jamesway.
Loki carefully set the nearly-hollow probe on its stand atop Pathfinder, then turned around to face Jane. "Did you really expect me to answer? I certainly didn't expect you to. As I said before, we aren't friends. I don't talk about my family, and you don't talk about… All we need to talk about is this," he said, pointing down at Pathfinder. He'd talked about his "family" before, but he'd done so from behind a mask, and he'd done it for a purpose. The mask was gone now, the outermost layer of it, anyway, so that was not happening again. There was no need. And if she had surprised him and decided to talk about whatever feelings she had for Thor, he would probably have clamped a hand over her mouth to physically prevent it. Even if the subject did hold a certain morbid fascination for him.
"I remember that. When you said we aren't friends. You actually-" Hurt my feelings. What a joke! Jane thought, shaking her head. I wanted to make friends with the guy who… Jane let the thought trail off. No use going down that path again. "But you…," she began, faltering, as snatches of different conversations filtered through emerging memories. "The way you talked about your mother. I wanted to help you. I wanted her to know you were okay. Your mother, all the things you said about your family, did you mean any of that? Do you-"
"Jane. Stop it. My mother…is none of your concern." Loki tried to put something of a warning edge in his voice, but it didn't come out quite right, because at that moment, as he was about to take another step toward leaving Midgard, toward perhaps never seeing his mother again, other emotions had slipped in through the cracks of the barriers he'd built against them. His mother was a weakness for him, he realized then, and that was unacceptable. He needed to rid himself of all weakness.
Loki has a mother. And he loves her. Jane wanted to laugh. Not because it was funny. Because it was so…incongruous. Unexpected. And yet obvious once given a moment's thought. Loki was the Bad Guy. But even Bad Guys were people. Capable of love, capable of being loved. Jane knew Thor loved him, and the way Loki talked about his mother, he had no doubt she loved him, too. She remembered how wistful and warm he'd looked when he talked about her, about how she'd never fixed a clogged sink and the thought was…appalling but funny, Jane thought he'd said. And of course that made even more sense now. His mother wasn't some rich society woman, she was the queen of an entire planet. Or whatever Asgard was. And Loki loved her.
"Jane. Pathfinder," Loki said, both words commands tinged with anger. She was staring at him, staring through him, through the layers, cutting them away. Like acid. That was also unacceptable.
Jane took a deep breath of cold air through the balaclava and nodded. "Everything's ready. Go ahead." She took several more steps back and watched as Loki pressed the launch primer button – an act which had gone from anti-climactic to simply routine now that it was being done for the fourth time, except that now it was Loki doing it. He stepped back to stand at her side as the seconds ticked down, then came the familiar flash of blue light and the probe shell was gone too fast for the eye to track. In an hour they would try to recall the probe and determine if the changes – the use of one of Young-Soo's new lens filters on Pathfinder, Loki's increasing the battery power in the transmitter, and a few minor tweaks in the programming – had worked. If so, then the next step would be to launch an actual probe, one of the three remaining that had been built with SHIELD's resources, and that probe would tell them where something sent through Yggdrasil wound up.
"Wait…this is really Yggdrasil then?" Jane suddenly asked as they lingered watching Pathfinder and its now-empty launch stand, each lost to their own thoughts. "Did you know that all along? I was the one who first mentioned it to you. But you must have known all along."
"I'm not-"
"And don't tell me you're not here to satisfy my curiosity. You owe me this much, after everything you've put me through. And it's relevant to the work. Tell me what you know about Yggdrasil." Her eyes then went a little wide at her own boldness and sudden complete lack of fear. Where did that come from? "You owe me?" But somehow he seemed a little more human now, a little less terrifying.
"I wasn't going to say that. You're right; it is relevant. But you're wrong that you first suggested it to me. I first suggested it to you. Early one morning."
She nodded slowly, remembering that morning. "'An ancient wormhole.' You knew all along."
He shook his head. "I had just figured it out."
"How?"
"It doesn't matter." And I'll never tell you about that. "We use the bifrost for travel; you know that, right? You may know it as the Rainbow Bridge."
"Yes. But I don't know much about it. I don't know how it works." I know Thor was forced to destroy it to stop you from destroying Jotunheim.
"No one really knows how it works. It simply does." Perhaps Heimdall, he thought, but he wasn't going to tell her anything beyond what was directly relevant to travel through Yggdrasil. "I now believe that the bifrost powers and directs matter through Yggdrasil. We currently have no way to direct where the probe goes once it enters Yggdrasil."
"We might be able to-"
"I know, we might be able to program it once we see what data we get back from a functioning probe. But the bifrost…" Loki thought back to when he'd used it. It was easy. Of course, he'd had Gungnir then, and Gungnir tended to make things easy. "You need only activate it, and think of your intended destination, and it opens and takes you where you wish to go."
"Magic," Jane said, captivated.
"Yes," Loki answered with a single nod.
"Can you…do that with Pathfinder?"
"Do what? Turn it on and think my way to Asgard? No, Jane. And if I could, that wouldn't satisfy the requirements of my task, now, would it?"
Arrogant condescending jerk. But the fear wasn't truly completely gone and Jane still had at least some self-control.
"There's not much more I can tell you, except that I do believe it leads to Asgard by default, if you will. When we speak of Yggdrasil as the worlds' tree, we describe Asgard as being at the very top, in its crown." Because "we" Aesir are nothing if not arrogant and condescending. Odin's Asgard could stand to be knocked a few branches lower, Loki thought, and wondered if perhaps he could assist with the knocking once he was free of Odin's restrictions. That would show the All-Father the impermanence of his lessons.
"Where is Midgard?" Jane asked, remembering the sketch in her notebook. Thor had started from the bottom with Midgard, but she hadn't assigned any significance to that other than the fact that it was their point of commonality, a good place to begin.
Loki smiled maliciously, knowing Jane couldn't see it. "At the bottom."
Jane was spared from what might be an unhealthy response to that statement by a sudden brightness in the post-sunset twilight. She and Loki both turned away from each other and toward Pathfinder.
The probe was back.
After a second or two of shock Jane was racing forward, Loki following behind her. She reached out instinctively to touch the round metal shell, but even leaning over it she could feel the ice melting around the material over her mouth. It was probably too hot to touch.
"How did it come back?" Loki asked, staring at it suspiciously, then glancing upward. If it had been discovered on Asgard, and sent back here by Heimdall, everything he'd worked for here was about to be for nothing.
Jane shook her head, then straightened up and slapped her gloved right head against her forehead. "The pre-sets! I completely forgot. You can trigger a recall through Pathfinder, but there are also programmable automated recalls, one for distance and one for time. And they were pre-set to something…something ridiculous, something enormous…a million light years' distance and a million years' time, I don't know, I don't remember. I never expected them to be activated. My original plans-"
"It hasn't been a million years."
"I know."
"That means-"
"I know."
"We need to get a real probe ready."
"Can you boost the power on its transmitter's battery?"
Loki nodded.
"How long?"
"An hour. Perhaps two." It was a lie, of course. He would do it through magic, and the only real time required would be for opening the probe's shell, taking the transmitter out and apart, and putting everything back together again. But if he told her it would take ten minutes she would want to wait with him while he did it, and he didn't want her to see him adjusting the battery with magic, since that would fly in the face of what he'd told her about having to accomplish his task solely through Earth's science. He took no particular pleasure now in lying to Jane or manipulating her, but he did take satisfaction in the rather impeccable logic of his story and he wasn't going to risk it blowing up in his face.
"I could stay and wait…"
"No, Jane. I don't need you staring over my shoulder. Why don't you go back to the station, work on your original project? Neither of us needs SHIELD wondering where your next update or data package is, right?"
Jane looked away and gave a reluctant nod. She wondered if she was imagining the veiled threat in his words. "Fine. But I have to do house mouse chores first. Funny how you managed to get out of it again."
"What must be done today?"
"Clearing the station's emergency stairs of snow."
"Go work on your data. I'll come get you when I'm done here and we'll launch the probe. Then I'll clear the stairs. We won't be able to do anything else until we get data back and get it analyzed, right?" They both won this way, Loki figured. He needed Jane's trust and this might help him earn some points with her, and she got out of a chore which was physically taxing for her. Besides, once they launched the probe with all of its high-tech sensors and data loggers, Loki expected the distraction of physical labor would be a welcome one.
Jane agreed and left him to his work back inside the minimally heated jamesway. He worked quickly, not fully trusting Jane to stick to her agreement not to reveal him. She could do nothing via e-mail. Over her computer she could make phone calls, but if she used the word Loki or Lucas the connection would be cut and he would receive an alert in his e-mail; she would be unable to use her VOIP system again until he permitted it. It was hardly a foolproof plan, but it was the best he'd been able to do under the circumstances. Then there were the satellite telephones. Short of disabling every one at the station there was nothing he could do about that. And disabling them all would raise too many alarms.
When half an hour had passed, he decided to go find Jane and tell her the battery recalibration took less time than expected. He tugged all of his gear back on, thinking with a small smile that he wouldn't have to do that many times more. He found Jane right where he expected – or at least hoped – she would be, working in the Station's Science Lab; she stopped what she was doing and followed eagerly, seemingly more at ease with him now. He knew if she could stop focusing on her fear of him and focus on the science instead, everything would go smoothly. It was working. She was probably even as anxious to get this data back as he was.
They stood before Pathfinder again, a probe that was not nearly empty resting on the stand.
"You're sure five minutes is enough?" Loki asked for the second time.
"It was gone less than that before. That's more than enough time to reach its destination," Jane said for the second time.
"Yes, but how will we-"
"When the probe emerges from the wormhole, it'll collect all sorts of data right away. It really only needs a few seconds to gather what we need. It's the analysis, turning all that compressed raw data into something useable, that'll take a while. Got it?"
"Got it, Dr. Foster," Loki answered in annoyance.
Jane wheeled away from him to face Pathfinder, afraid she'd say something in response he might make her regret. "All right, then. Ready?" She glanced up at Loki, and once he nodded she pressed the launch primer and they repeated the ritual.
As they stood there waiting for the adjusted pre-set timer to count down and bring the probe back, Jane glanced surreptitiously at Loki. Something still felt off about the whole thing. Maybe it was impossible to stand inches from Loki and not feel like there was something off. "So…you're supposed to learn to appreciate people while you're here. Mortals."
Loki turned to stare at her for a moment before settling his gaze back on Pathfinder. "Yes." And he hoped she would leave it at that but he knew her well enough to know she wouldn't. Especially now that she had begun to relax around him and fear wasn't tempering her tongue as much.
"What have you learned?"
His lips thinned and his expression turned hard. How to manipulate you into doing exactly what I want you to do without even the tiniest wisp of magic. Father will be so pleased.
"I'm serious. If we find out the probe made it to Asgard and we can work out a few more problems, you'll be gone before long. So what have you learned?" Because it doesn't sound like you've learned anything. Except you haven't killed anyone else. That I know of, she thought with a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold.
Loki stared hard at Pathfinder and willed it to bring the probe back now. "I've learned to appreciate your technology. Your science," he finally said.
"I thought you were supposed to learn to appreciate our people."
"I…yes. And I have." And oh, how thankful Loki was for the balaclava hiding his venomous expression. He could not bear much more of this ridiculous questioning.
"But you…you don't…you don't regret what you did before." "Innocent people…nonsense." If he could say that Jane knew he hadn't learned anything at all.
"I regret it," Loki said, forcing the words out. "I regret it greatly." I regret that I failed. I regret that this enables you to have the audacity to question me so. "It's difficult for me to talk about it," he added, because he knew he didn't sound much like he regretted it.
I think you regret that you failed. That you don't care at all about the lives you took. The lives you destroyed. Is this what punishment is where you're from? You get to come down here, learn a little science, keep looking down on us and lying to us and then go home and everything's just fine and dandy? Jane gave up staring at Loki's profile and turned back to Pathfinder, too. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. He shouldn't get to go back that easily. But the obvious alternative was him not going back. Him staying here. And in that case…she would do everything in her power to make sure he went back, as soon as possible. There was no reason, however, that she couldn't try to make him learn something before he left, at the same time as she did her best to expedite his departure.
A light flashed, Jane blinked, and the probe was back. She sighed in relief; the earlier success wasn't a fluke. Pathfinder worked. The transmitter worked. The probe had just come from somewhere. "Go on and take care of the stairs. I'll take care of this."
"Very well," Loki said, relieved to get away from her and her insulting comments. The waiting game began now.
Jane waited a few minutes for the probe to cool – it didn't take long out here – then brought it into the jamesway and opened the shell to get at the data it had gathered and stored on its five-minute journey. She hooked it up to her laptop and left data conversion and analysis programs running on it, then packed up the rest of her things in her backpack, got her gear back on, and headed back to the station.
It was almost lunchtime, but with Loki occupied outside, there was something she needed to do first. When she got back inside she went straight for the Computer Room.
/
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In Asgard, as battles raged on into the night and the next day, as one portal was closed and another was opened, as Aesir fell and healers sent as many as possible back into the fray, as Heimdall stretched his gaze across seven realms to try to provide advance notice of the attacks, no one noticed as first one, then another unknown metallic sphere appeared where the bifrost observatory had once stood.
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Previews for Ch. 37 "Squeeze": Loki's in a foul mood and Jane pushes his buttons (I remind you of Ch. 27 "Fun" - "Dr. Foster, you'll know it if you've pushed me too hard."); Loki tries out some new lies but his heart just really isn't in it anymore and he wonders if the truth might be more effective; Jane is left stunned and Loki is left to think; Gullveig and the seven realms add a new tactic. Things are still rather chaotic in Asgard; we catch up more fully with events there (and some of your questions will be answered) in Chapter 38 (not yet titled...but already with a few pages written, yay!)
And the excerpt (Loki POV):
He spotted it immediately. Something on his desk that had not been there before. Experience had taught him to be aware of such things, but as his desk was entirely clear otherwise, anything on top of it stood out immediately. Someone had been in his room.
Hypervigilant now for anything else – sight, sound, smell – not as it should be, Loki stepped forward slowly, silently. The desk, against the wall to the right, was only a few steps away. The foreign object was a thick packet of white printer paper, bound with a single large clip of metal and black plastic in the upper left corner, and placed precisely in the center.
