Chapter 18
They returned back to London the following day with no more information than they had before and even more questions.
Sharon busied herself with emails and case notes, occasionally talking to an operative on the phone on what they had found in the days while she was chasing false leads in the north. Peggy left her to it, feeling she had stuck her oar in enough into Sharon’s case. She mulled instead on the problem of the serum. There were samples of blood out there, ones with trace amounts of the serum that the US government was just giving away. Who else had them? Had anyone else been successful? How widely spread was this, and was anyone keeping track? She circled back on these again and again, the enormity of it leaving her somewhat panicked. How could she even start with this? Where did she even begin?
They arrived back in London in the evening, travel-weary and exhausted. Neither said much as they settled back into the old Carter house, filled with its ghosts. Sharon made food for which neither of them were particularly hungry, and both fell into their respective beds soon after. Peggy lay staring up at the ceiling of her room, recalling simpler days when she would dream of adventures here, of finding buried treasures and lost cities, of being a hero. What a pity that was not how life actually worked out. How did things get so much more complicated once she grew up?
She realized in the moments before sleep finally claimed her, that she very much missed Michael and wished that she could talk to him about all of this.
The next morning Sharon was back off to the office in the city while Peggy lazed about. She could have checked with everyone, she supposed. She had peeked at her own email long enough to see several from Cassandra, one from Banner, and another from Betty Ross. That one she noted given the questions of the serum she now faced, but hadn’t the energy to engage. She had only managed a brief text to Steve, hoping he would read it when he woke up, assuring him she was back from York and that she’d have much to tell him when she saw him next. It was all the energy she could find to deal with responsibilities, at least for the morning.
Instead, she found herself in her mother’s gardens. Everything was brown and dying with fall, but she found comfort in walking the same paths, of standing for a while under the same tree she climbed as a girl. She wandered to the back, where the garden shed was, and her old fortress she once had there, hidden among the tarps and tools that were kept behind. Those were all long gone, as was the shed, as a matter of fact, bringing a bittersweet sort of pang. She had spent so much of her life trying to escape and run away, to move forward and forget the disappointments of family and the hurt of dashed expectations. Now she wished she had been a bit more circumspect, had perhaps thought just a little bit before running off, had stopped to have those conversations.
She had made her choices, however, and the twenty-first century was where she was now at. Much like Buck Rogers from her old adventure magazines, she’d moved to the future and now was facing this new reality with its shadowy figures, international knots of intrigue, aliens, superheroes and the Avengers. But most of all, here...here she had Steve and a whole future with him. It wasn’t what they had planned, it wasn’t even in the realm of possibility in 1945, but it was their life now. She would, she realized, always regret the choices she made, and there would be a part of her that would always be hurt by the choices Michael had made. But it was what it was, and it was all in the past now. He figured out how to live with his decisions and move forward, to have a family, and to do better. Peggy now must follow her elder brother’s example.
She showered and packed, sending a follow up message to Steve that she planned to be on a flight that afternoon from London to New York and one to Cassandra saying much the same thing. With her things organized, she took one last look around the old place: the stairs with the still squeaky spot in it if you stepped on it wrong, the redone, modern kitchen that looked nothing like the neat and tidy domain of Mrs. Jenkins, her father’s old study that still smelled of his pipe tobacco and law books. Her home was different now, a home used by new generations, unfamiliar, but still...a part of her. Perhaps, when she and Steve both had more time, they could come back. She didn’t want to lose her own past as he had.
She was just preparing to lock up and call for a driver to take her to the airport when her phone rang in her hand, Sharon’s cheery smile lighting up the screen. Peggy flicked the phone on, holding it to her ear. “I was just going to let you know I packed up…”
“Change of plans,” Sharon cut in with direct curtness. “Couple of things. First, something doesn’t add up with that whole super soldier, serum, CIA angle. I don’t know, something about it all feels off.”
Peggy leaned on an arm of a sofa in what had been the sitting room. “Feels off how?”
“If the CIA knew that MST Pharmaceuticals had the serum and that they were targeted for this bombing, why did they give up the case so readily to SHIELD? Why not fight to keep it? This is the thing you wouldn’t want getting out there, that you are messing with the serum, and if that was a possibility, then why would they just let it go?”
“They also didn’t tell you about the other bombing sites, remember? I get the feeling the CIA barely knows where it’s own arse is half the time.”
“True,” Sharon admitted, as someone muttered something behind her, causing her to pull away from the phone briefly. When she came back, it was with a slightly harried tone. “Also, Darcy Lewis has been calling the office frantic for the last hour. She was with Jane Foster doing research into some anomaly...I couldn’t tell you half of the science shit she said...and she claims that Jane just disappeared, right in the middle of an industrial warehouse. I’ll give you three guesses as to where that warehouse is.”
Peggy didn’t need the three. “How close to MST Pharmaceutical’s facility?”
“Less than a mile. I’ve got a guy coming up to get you and bring you here. You may want to call Darcy and let her know the calvary is coming. She’s freaked out.”
“I’m on it,” Peggy assured her. Without even a goodbye, she clicked off the line, thumbing through the various contacts she had till she found a number for Darcy Lewis. The girl picked up in one ring.
“Oh my God, Director Carter, I didn’t know what to do, and I’m freaked, and Jane’s not here, and…”
“Darcy!” She cut across the girl’s frantic babbling. “What happened? Where are you?”
“South London, I think. I don’t know, this isn’t even a proper city that’s all one city. It’s like you took all the cities and smooshed them together and said ‘yay, London, done!’ We are south of the river, though, big industrial lot. Some old factory no one has been to in ages.”
Peggy smiled at Darcy’s description of London. It wasn’t wholly inaccurate. “SHIELD is sending a team out right now. I’m in town and heading to you. What were you and Dr. Foster doing?”
Darcy sucked in a shaky breath on the other end of the line. “We were following up on the readings she was getting on her equipment...well, the readings I was getting on her equipment. She had gone off to lunch with this Richard guy, seems nice, but not enough spine for Jane, I think. Anyway, I hunted her down and then we came here to follow up. The electrometers were going off the charts. We haven’t seen readings like this since New Mexico...well, I guess New York, but I wasn’t invited to that party.”
In her usual, rambling fashion, Darcy was leading Peggy around the point, but not to it. “What did you find there?”
“Well...nothing...at first, till we hit up these kids who were playing in this abandoned space. Then, it got really freaky. Gravity seemed to just stop being a thing. So did dimensional space. Basically, the fabric of reality is doing some kooky shit, and we didn’t know what was up, but Jane hit up something on the monitor and wandered off and that was over an hour ago. I don’t know what’s happened to her and I’m too afraid of going back in there to find out.”
This had not been how Peggy expected her day to go. “Right...well, stay where you are for now. I’ll be there as soon as I can. You let me know if anything about your situation changes of if you are in any danger.”
“I should be safe,” Darcy replied, somewhat reassuringly. “I’ve got Ian here with me!”
Peggy wondered if this was a person she was supposed to know. “Who?”
“Ian, he’s my intern!”
Peggy knew she would regret asking this. “But aren’t you Dr. Foster’s intern?”
“Yeah, and he gets paid worse than I do. But he helps out.”
Wonderful, Peggy sighed, considering that there were now two young people in an area of town that had recently just had a terrorist attack and had witnessed the disappearance of a prominent scientist. “Both of you stay where you are. If anything happens, you call me directly. I will be there as soon as I can.”
When she, Sharon, and the contingency of SHIELD operatives arrived on the scene an hour-and-a-half later, it was already chaos. For whatever reason Metropolitan police were on the scene, cars surrounding what looked like a group of derelict factories and a red vehicle with a rather befuddled looking young man leaning against it. The lot of them eyed the SHIELD SUVs suspiciously as Peggy and Sharon stepped out.
“Thank God!” From around one of the yellow and blue checkered vehicles the figure of Darcy Lewis dodged, her dark hair streaming out of a knit purple cap. “Look, sorry, I called them first and they got here faster. I tried telling them that SHIELD was on the way and that Jane sort of more or less works for you guys, but they weren’t biting.”
Peggy half absorbed what she rattled off, patting her on the shoulder as she looked to the officer who seemed to be in charge. He was at least the one looking the most grumpy with the arrival of half-a-dozen dark vehicles surrounding him. He glared particularly at Peggy, to whom Darcy had run first.
“Good afternoon, Constable,” Peggy greeted, holding out a hand. “I believe we are here about the same matter.”
“Here, what is all this,” he asked, glaring at the agents gathering in their SHIELD emblazoned jackets. “Who called you lot?”
“I did,” Darcy held up her hand, looking far from apologetic. “I mean, I told you, I panicked, and I called the first people I could think of! That was you! And then I realized that my boss does work for this super global intelligence and spy organization, so it could be construed as a thing, and maybe I should call her…”
The officer glowered at Darcy, who trailed off, shrugging. He turned his ire on Peggy, annoyed already at how all of this was turning. “This is a case of a missing person, which is in our jurisdiction.”
“Yes, but it is a case of a missing person who happens to work for the Avengers Initiative under SHIELD’s aegis, and at a site that is less than a mile from where a terrorist bomb went off just a week ago. You can perhaps understand why we have cause for concern.
Judging from the way his glare softened a hair, Peggy guessed he could. “You think they are tied?”
“We don’t know,” Sharon spoke up, finally placing herself into the situation. “We are here to figure that out, if your people want to work with us. We aren’t here to run roughshod on your jurisdiction.”
He didn’t look as if he believed that, but relented. “All right, then. We got here about an hour ago on a report, I presume from Miss Lewis here that a woman had gone missing. Beyond the bombing, this area is known for some rough activity, so we jumped on it.”
“There was nothing ‘rough’ going on here,” Darcy protested. “It was just a bunch of kids messing around! They figured out that there are wormholes randomly forming here and were playing with them.”
That had Peggy’s attention. “Wormholes?”
The constable and his partner shared a look that said they thought the whole explanation was madness.
“Wormholes,” the other constable muttered, half on a laugh. “You mean, like...science fiction?”
Darcy rolled her dark eyes behind her thick-framed glasses. “Yeah, science fiction, what the hell do you think opened up over New York, dummy?”
“Hey now,” the head constable cautioned as Peggy reached a warning hand to the irritated younger woman. “We don’t want to make the situation worse, now, do we miss?”
“She didn’t mean anything by it,” Peggy returned, evenly, with a look that said both of them needed to heed their own advice and not antagonize things. “As to wormholes, they are real enough. Having seen one myself and the after effects, believe me, it’s less science fiction and more of a bigger problem unless we figure out why. Now, I believe that if this situation is what Miss Lewis says it is, then we will need to call SHIELD and…”
She got no further before Darcy beside her shrieked. “Jane!”
They turned to see Jane Foster wandering out of one of the buildings on the site, looking mildly confused by the fuss that she found parked just outside of the building.
“Where the hell were you?” Darcy continued to yell as she marched over.
The constable who seemed to have taken point looked to Peggy. “Is that your scientist?”
“That appears to be, yes.” No sooner had the confirmation left her mouth than the gray, overcast sky, which had been threatening all day, finally crackled with the rumble of distant thunder, as the heavens opened up over them. Yelps and squeals sounded as people jumped for cars and vehicles, or tried pulling up jackets over their heads. As if by magic, an agent slid up beside Peggy, holding an umbrella for her and Sharon to huddle under.
“Thanks,” Peggy offered, gratefully, as the agent ducked back into the rain and to the shelter of one of the SUVs. She glanced at Sharon huddled beside her. “Let’s go see what is going on.”
They came up on the two women bickering, Darcy trying to get a word in edgewise on Foster, who was ranting about research and opportunities and why her intern shouldn’t have called the authorities. Darcy finally had to shout down the other woman before she would listen.
“Jane, you were gone for five hours!”
That caught the scientist up short. “What?”
It took Peggy a moment to realize that while all of them were ducking under cover as best they could under the stinging, cold autumn rain pouring around them, Jane Foster was standing perfectly dry. Not even her long, chestnut hair was damp. Darcy in front of her was also as dry as a bone. In fact, even the pavement around then was relatively unscathed as puddles and streams of water ran down the broken pavement. Clearly, the scientist had noticed as well, as she looked all around them, drawing the attention of her intern.
“That’s weird,” Darcy murmured. However, something had caught Jane’s eye, and without a word, she simply passed whatever instrument she had in hand to Darcy, blindly, as she and her bubble of dryness moved away from the girl and towards…
“Is that...Thor?” Sharon was disbelieving beside Peggy.
Peggy was as surprised as Sharon, honestly. The last she had seen of the Asgardian prince had been earlier that year in Central Park, taking his no-account brother back to Asgard and justice. “Well, he is the only person I know who dresses in armor and a flowing red cape with any regularity, so I am guessing yes. Also, he is likely the cause of our sudden downpour.”
Poor Darcy, however, was now left in the middle of all of it. Peggy easily maneuvered them over to where the now slightly bedraggled intern stood, bringing her under the shelter of their umbrella as much as she could. “Here, it’s at least better than standing in the full wet.”
“Every time Prince Charming over there shows up, I’m chopped liver,” she mumbled, as they followed in Foster’s wake to where she and Thor were now having...well, their reunion, Peggy supposed. They were very clearly caught up in their conversation...or, more accurately, each other.
“Do you think we should go and maybe say hello?” Darcy asked, shivering slightly with the damp.
“I think that the last thing they care about is us saying hello to them,” Sharon offered, more than a bit amused.
“And who are you, again?” Darcy turned to frown quizzically at Sharon. It occurred to Peggy that the two hadn’t met.
“Agent Sharon Carter.” She held out her hand to Darcy. “I work with SHIELD as well, just a different division.”
“Carter?” Darcy arched an inquisitive eye at Peggy. “I assume related?”
“Her grandfather was my elder brother, so she’s my great-niece.”
Darcy digested that. “Is that ever not weird, cause you two could be sisters?”
“No,” admitted Sharon. “We usually just say we are cousins in the field.”
“Time travel is crazy,” Darcy admitted, as if this were a universal truth that everyone understood.
“Excuse me, is someone going to give us some answers?” The head constable who had been overseeing the incident cut in, looking expectantly at Peggy to fix this.
She sighed. “Yes, let's...we will just and grab Dr. Foster for you.”
She nudged Darcy forward, pointedly. She moved, albeit reluctantly, towards the couple who looked to be three seconds away from the sort of passionate embrace one saw in films. Peggy wasn't sure if they should be obnoxiously obvious, or if she should do the very British polite clearing of the throat to make their presence known.
“Honestly, she hasn’t seen him in six months and she’s already all over him?” Darcy sounded quietly disappointed.
“Aren’t they always this way together?” From the moment Peggy had met the pair they had the habit of always gazing at each other with the sort of dewey eyed affection that made one's teeth hurt.
Sharon beside her was more circumspect. “They remind me of you and Steve.”
Peggy was nearly affronted by that. “We aren’t that...bad.”
Sharon’s silent side eye was all the response she needed to make regarding her opinions on the matter.
“Jane,” Darcy broke from them, bounding up to the couple, his lips inches away from hers. “Hey!”
That was enough to cut the gravitational pull between Thor and Foster, who broke apart, Foster looking as if she’d much rather smack her assistant at the moment. Darcy was hardly sorry for it, looking to Thor instead. “Is this you?”
It must have just occurred to the god of thunder that he was causing the rain that was showering them at the moment. With a shrug, the downpour ceased, as if someone had turned off the tap to a shower head, the soft roar of the drops falling to earth turning into a deafening silence.
Foster was still not amused. “We’re kind of in the middle of something here,” she snapped at her intern.
“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure we are getting arrested.”
It took Foster that long to turn, see Peggy and Sharon standing there and then beyond them the constables, looking rather put out by all of this.
“Errr...yeah...Peggy, hi!” She flushed, tucking a lock of dark hair behind one ear. “You didn’t need to come all the way out.”
“I was in town when Darcy called. I take it seriously when one of the people on my team vanishes.”
“Well, I didn’t vanish, really, just...things got weird.” She frowned. “Um...let me at least go explain to the police what happened, and then I will fill you in, because...yeah.”
She turned on her heels, marching to the waiting constable, who clearly wanted something to put into a report. Peggy had a feeling it would all sound mad when he wrote it up.
“Look at you,” Darcy muttered to Thor, poking him, lightly. “All muscly and everything! How is space?”
“Space is fine,” he assured her, blankly, bemused by her small talk. He turned instead to great Peggy with a broad smile and a small, courtly bow. “Lady Margaret, it’s good to see you!”
Peggy snorted at his charming pretense, shaking out her umbrella as she closed it. “Your highness, it is good seeing you!”
“Lady Margaret?” Sharon had missed out on Peggy’s adventures with the Asgardian prince and the name he had for her.
“It’s a long story,” Peggy assured her. “How are things in the Nine Realms since your brother was returned to Asgard?”
“Chaos,” he admitted, bluntly. “Loki’s damage had far reaching consequences. Without the Bifrost to get us across the universe, Asgard could not go about its duty overseeing the worlds under our protection, and people took advantage of that. The Bifrost has only just been repaired. I’ve spent much of my time just overseeing the various rebellions and invasions.”
“So...you have those in space?” Sharon blinked, clearly fascinated. “Invasions...rebellions?”
“Of course! Just like I am sure Midgard does. Not every planet has a SHIELD, or the Avengers. Speaking of them, how do they fair?”
“Well, for now,” Peggy assured him. “Stark has been rebuilding his tower, he’s fitting out the upper floors for the Avengers. I think we will be discussing moving our operations there as soon as he is done. You are very welcome to come there when you are done with affairs for your father.”
Thor nodded, in the vague sort of way that said he was only half listening, his eyes completely on Foster. “Yes, well I did tell Stark I’d visit again, and…”
Out of nowhere, the world exploded.
On instinct, Peggy ducked, covering Sharon beside her, who did the same. Thor grabbed Darcy, tucking her protectively in front of him as he turned his back to catch whatever was coming towards them. A flash of red energy shot out, knocking over the various members of the police and SHIELD, rocking vehicles and breaking the glass in their windows. In the middle of the chaos, Foster fell, knocked to the ground as she lay on the damp pavement, stunned.
“What in the hell,” Sharon gasped, but Thor was already up and running towards where Foster lay.
“Jane! Are you all right?” Thor bent to help the fazed Foster up, even as Peggy and Sharon trailed behind. Peggy could see the police reaction and knew this wasn’t going to end happily for anyone. One of them, clearly very shaken, approached Foster as if she were a wild animal.
“Put your hands on your head,” he ordered, a club at the ready.
“Stand down,” Peggy snapped at him, but he ignored her, as two of his fellows closed in with weapons. Silently, she looked to the SHIELD agents, several of whom already had weapons at the ready...though for whom and what wasn’t as clear.
“This woman is unwell,” Thor insisted, firmly, ignoring the tense nervousness all around him.
“She’s dangerous,” he insisted, hand shaking as he inched closer.
Thor’s scowl warned the poor man off. “So am I.”
That was the poor police constable's undoing. With a quivering voice, he spoke into the radio at his lapel. “Requesting armed assistance…”
“I said stand down,” Peggy repeated, angrily, stepping around Thor and Foster and up in front of the man. He glared back at her mutinously.
“SHIELD has no jurisdiction here.”
“I can get jurisdiction very quickly if you don’t do what I tell you,” she shot back, threateningly.
In the end, it was a moot point. The air around them became charged and Peggy could feel her hair lifting. She had a feeling she knew was coming, had seen the blinding light once before when Thor had disappeared with his ne’er-do-well brother. Still, it was enough to knock the constable back several feet, his hat flying off as Peggy winced, ducking against the raw energy she knew was generated from the portal that opened up behind her. When it disappeared, she turned, finding a smoldering, still glowing pattern burnt into the cracked and faded asphalt at their feet. Everyone stood, stunned, staring at the glowing swirls and whirls of what looked to be a Celtic or Scandinavian design, the light barely faded as first Sharon, then Darcy, stepped into the pattern, staring up into the flash of light that disappeared in the gray sky.
“Holy shit,” Darcy breathed, delighted, as she watched her friend and nominal boss get whisked away to another planet through a wormhole.
Everyone else was silent for a long, pregnant moment.
“Where did they go,” the constable who had threatened Foster gasped, his voice a hoarse whisper. The poor man looked as if he had seen one too many strange things with his day and he was not having it anymore.
“To Asgard, I’d imagine,” Peggy replied, pulling out her badge from her pocket. “Right, as of right now, this case is being taken over by SHIELD. You gentlemen and ladies can go on about your business now.”
“On what grounds,” the head of the lot snapped, gruffly, standing by his broken vehicle, nursing one of his shoulders.
“Whatever that explosion is related to a case that SHIELD is investigating.”
The man was having none of that. “She was trespassing on private property!”
“Are you really going to argue with an alien prince and an Avenger when he is about SHIELD business?” Peggy was bluffing, but she needed anything to shut him up and move this along. “You are done here. SHIELD is taking this over.”
“And who are you again, giving orders?”
Peggy resisted the urge to punch him. “Director Peggy Carter, I run the Avengers. Now, do I need to get on the phone with your supervisor?”
After several sullen moments of glaring at her, he shook his head. “Come on, all of you. You heard what she said, it isn’t our case anymore.”
He turned, giving orders to several of them as they got into their checkered cars, under the watchful eye of SHIELD. Peggy turned to Sharon. “Sorry to pull rank on you like that, but things were getting a bit heated.”
“No...no, you did good.” Sharon shook her head. “So...that explosion…”
“I don’t know if it’s tied to any of this at all, Sharon.” She turned to the stunned Darcy who was still eyeing everything with wide-eyed fascination. “That energy that just burst out of Dr. Foster…”
“She did not have that this morning when she woke up,” Darcy supplied, as if that was the answer Peggy was seeking. “I told you, she was gone for five hours. I don’t know where she went. If there are wormholes appearing here she could have gone somewhere else briefly and gotten infected with anything before coming back.”
“You think she would have noticed if something happened to her that gave her that sort of ability,” Sharon offered.
“You literally just saw a dude zap himself off this planet and you want to use logic and reason on space magic?” Darcy smirked, shaking her head. “I don’t know, she didn’t even notice that much time had passed. Wherever she was, there was likely a time dilation between here and there. Things are getting weird here and we don’t know why.”
Sharon gave Peggy a pointed look. “How long have they been weird here?”
“I don’t know...for a while, judging by how long those kids have been dropping bottles of soda through wormholes.”
“That bombing was last week,” Sharon pointed out. “And kids do tend to talk.”
It finally clicked with Darcy where Sharon was going. “That terrorist attack? You don’t think it’s tied to this?”
“We have no idea and we aren’t taking chances,” Peggy replied. “Sharon, I’ll let you gather your team and figure out logistics. Darcy, where is your...assistant?”
The younger woman cast a lazy hand out towards the red car with its windows blown out and the tall, rangy young man looking rather confused by everything happening around him. “That’s Ian. I think he has a last name, but I don’t remember it. Something having to do with a booth?”
Somehow, the fact that Darcy had a helper whose last name she didn’t know somehow didn’t feel as odd as it probably should have. One look at the boy and Peggy could pick up why Darcy likely hired him. “Right, get your friend, you are both coming with me.”
“But the car…”
“Will be fine here for now.” She hoped it would be at least. The police weren’t wrong, it was a rough neighborhood. “Given the anomalies and now that Thor is involved I’m calling in the team.”
It took Darcy less than a blink of an eye to figure out what that meant. “You are calling in the Avengers! Sweet! I’ll just...IAN!”
Her scream across the lot not only startled the agents huddled around Sharon, but caught the attention of the young man, who looked as if he were happy just to sit there until things calmed down, thank you very much.
“WE ARE GOING TO MEET THE AVENGERS, COME ON!”
Peggy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Do you have a place where we can get everyone together?”
“Errr…” Darcy thought about it for a moment. “Jane’s mom’s apartment is where we are staying for the moment. It’s nice, but not that big.”
“Fine, then I vote we go there first. You two get whatever things you need and we go back to the house Sharon and I have been staying in.” She figured her family home was big enough to get everyone in it without problem. She pulled her phone from her pocket, finding Cassandra’s number immediately. Given the time difference, she knew she would be up and already headed to the office.
Predictably, she answered on the first ring. “Hey, boss, got your flight back home yet?”
“Slight change of plans,” Peggy informed her. “I need you to get the team assembled and on the first flights over here. The others might need a bit to get here, but I need Banner over here as soon as possible. We’ve had something come up?”
“Having to do with the Mandarin case?”
“I’m not sure yet.” Perhaps it did, perhaps it didn’t. Frankly, every assumption Peggy had made in all of this had been wrong, and she was half afraid to make any more connections without further evidence. “It does have to do with Jane Foster, wormholes, and Thor. He’s been and gone again and took Foster with him and we have strange anomalies without any more explanation.”
“Okay, so none of that sounds good,” Cassandra muttered with the sort of matter-of-fact acceptance of “anomalies,” “wormholes,” and space gods that might have been concerning if it weren’t for their experiences. “I’ll see if I can get Banner on a flight to you as soon as possible and the others as soon as I can get them.”
“I’ll give you coordinates where you can have them land.” She had a feeling that there would be some people very bewildered by a quinjet or two landing in Hampstead.
“I’m on it,” Cassandra assured her, singing off as Peggy turned to Darcy and her hapless assistant.
“Well, you two will be coming with me. I need to know everything you have on these anomalies and what is going on.”
Darcy turned to Ian. “Go get the equipment we brought, all of it.”
The young fellow blinked, owlishly, between Darcy and Peggy. “But...the car.”
“Leave it! Just go get the stuff!”
He did as Darcy requested, shuffling off to gather whatever it was that they used. Peggy watched him go, feeling half sorry for him as he opened the back, pulling out a rucksack and several other strange items.
“Aren’t you going to help him?” Her gaze slid over to the girl who watched him with a critically expectant expression.
“Nah, that’s what I hired him for. No joke, I have my own work in Jane’s research now that I’m prepping for grad school. I’m the brains and he...he’s the, you know, muscle.”
Darcy’s smile became unfocused, slightly, seeming to confirm Peggy’s suspicions on why poor Ian was hired in the first place. She shook her head, snagging Darcy’s arm and pushing her towards the car. “All right, we will help him and speed this up, shall we. We haven’t got all day.”