Chapter 20
“Good news, bad news.” Banner greeted Peggy first thing in the morning with a cup of tea - surprisingly well brewed - and an apology. “The good news, we were able to compare the data Jane was picking up to what she had from New York. As far as we can tell, it’s not the Tesseract, but it is wormholes. They seem to be naturally occurring points in space that are forming between different areas and in random ways.”
“All right,” Peggy sipped her tea and tried to fortify herself. “What’s the bad news?”
Banner exhaled, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Well, this is very much not my area of expertise. We are able to track the anomalies, and I see that they are growing. Darcy has got a program running tracking all of them, but I’m not the guy who digs into this work. I mean, this is what Jane eats and breathes. She’s the one who understands this best.”
Peggy had a feeling he would say that. “Yes, well, Thor has whisked her away and we don’t know when they are coming back.”
“And things are going missing,” Darcy greeted them as she entered the room, tousle headed from a night kipping in one of the guest rooms. She put her phone on the counter between Peggy and Banner, an article headline screaming about a car going missing right in Croyden right in front of its owners eyes.
Banner thumbed up the glass, scanning the article. “Jesus, was anyone hurt?”
“No, they were lucky, they just had gotten back with their groceries. Turned around and the car literally vanished.” She pursed her lips in worry, glancing between them both. “It’s getting worse, isn’t it?”
“Looks like it, kid.” Banner passed the phone back to her. “I mean...the only other person I know who really delves into this sort of stuff is Erik. We could maybe call…”
Peggy held up her hand, silently, but the words were already belting out of Darcy. “We’ve tried...like...a lot.”
They hadn’t explained that piece to Banner the night before.
“Like...what is a lot,” he frowned, concern clear.
“Like I’ve been calling him since yesterday afternoon, repeatedly, on all of his numbers. He isn’t answering.”
That had Banner’s attention. He and Selvig were friends of long standing, having once worked side-by-side at Culver University. When the Hulk had been prepared to destroy the monster that was Emil Blonsky in the middle of Harlem, it was Selvig who talked him down, assuring him Betty was all right. It made sense now that he would be worried when they couldn’t track down the scientist.
“Well, have you tracked down his apartment? He’s in Oxford right now, right? How far is that? Maybe he’s there, his phone off...or maybe in his lab…”
“I tried calling there, too, no dice,” Darcy assured him, softly. “I don’t know where he is.”
“I have a feeling I do!”
They turned to Betty, coming in from the back garden, her tablet in hand and a stricken look on her face. “It was on local news yesterday. Erik got arrested at Stonehenge yesterday.”
That had not been what any of them expected.
“For doing what?” Darcy recovered first, making a grab for Betty’s tablet.
“Running around like a naked lunatic for starters,” Betty replied, both bemused and worried. “He was streaking around the place with scientific equipment, insisting that something was going to happen. They didn’t give details, but it doesn’t look good.”
Darcy had tapped on the video, allowing it to play. On the screen poor Erik Selvig was being chased by police around several of the large stones, and judging from the largely blurred bit in the middle, was stark naked as he did it. The video froze on a rather unfortunate shot of the police catching and corralling Selvig, looking decidedly unhinged.
“What happened,” Banner muttered, shocked and alarmed at the state of his friend and colleague.
“Loki happened,” Darcy shot back, darkly, passing the tablet back to Betty with a determined grimace. “We can’t just leave him like this.”
“She’s right,” Betty readily agreed. “I’m sure there is a reasonable explanation for all of this.:
Bruce snorted, shrugging helplessly. “For Erik running around buck naked around a national monument? Sure there is, he had a magic space stone in his head. That is enough to make anyone bonkers, worse when it is Loki who was wielding it. He’s insane all by himself and likely passed it on to Erik.”
“Maybe,” Betty conceded, firmly. “But that isn’t his fault. Do we know where he was taken to?”
It took them all a second to realize what she was implying, and Banner was the first to object. “Betty...look, if they have taken him in, it’s likely because they are worried for him. Don’t you think it’s best if we let the professionals handle their business?”
“Erik is one of your good friends. He was there for me when I thought I had lost you. Do you seriously think that I am just going to stand by while they label him as crazy because of what some alien god did to him?”
“I’d like to note he’s one of my good friends, too,” Darcy spoke up to the room in general, feeling perhaps a bit overlooked in all of this. “I mean, he was friends with Jane’s dad and did help mentor her, so I guess he’s sort of my mentor too.”
“Which is all well and good, but we don’t know what’s going on with him,” Banner insisted, gently. “I mean, speaking as a guy who constantly worries about how his mental state might manifest into, I don’t know, the destruction of cities, if there are people who can help Erik, maybe we should let them.”
“Yeah, and how well did all those efforts to try and catch you and sedate you work out,” Betty tossed back, crossing her arms to glare at him. Peggy thought she could see Banner physically flinch at that.
“That wasn’t the same,” he replied, calmly. “I am just saying, as a friend who cares for him, I want him to have help and be in the safest situation he can be in, that’s all.”
“But you said you needed him to understand this data,” Peggy countered, finally interjecting herself into all of this. They all turned to blink at her, perhaps having forgotten, momentarily, she was there. “Jane is on Asgard and we don’t have anyone else who can understand this. That’s what you said, correct?”
Banner could sense defeat on the horizon. “I did say that.”
“Well then,” Peggy turned to Darcy and Betty. “Let me connect with Sharon. We’ll find out where he’s being kept and perhaps stage an intervention.”
So it was two hours later Peggy, Darcy, Betty and Sharon found themselves outside of a police station in London, one attached to the facility where Erik was being held “for observation.”
“I still say we should have brought Ian. He could have said he was his nephew or something.” Darcy was still rather put out that her cunning plan had been nixed rather quickly by both Sharon and Peggy.
“First rule of any operation, keep it simple,” Sharon advised the obviously inexperienced Darcy as they climbed out of their SHIELD SUV. “We come in here with a hijinked story and it might invite people to ask questions.”
“And you don’t think SHIELD rolling into the place won’t make them ask questions? It’s not like people don’t know that Erik was involved in the business in New York. Now they will think SHIELD is covering something up.”
Darcy did have a point, but Peggy wasn’t particularly in the mood to put something more cunning together. “Let them think that. It is more important we get Selvig out and helping us.”
“For a bunch of spies, you don’t do this espionage stuff very much,” Darcy pouted, but relented.”
It was the sort of red-brick-and-concrete structure that the Victorians were fond of, very official and officious. Inside was grim and institutional, much like any place you would see in New York, with ugly yellow tile and fluorescent lights overhead. Peggy walked up the steps to the lobby, carrying herself with the sort of authority she once used on the training fields of Camp Lehigh.
“Excuse me,” she called to the officer behind the front desk. He was a bored looking young fellow, blonde haired and round faced, in a constables uniform, who gave Peggy a once over and a bored sort of expression as she walked up.
“Can I help you?” His polite, but unimpressed expression flickered from Peggy to the entourage of Sharon, Betty and Darcy in the back.
Peggy simply raised her badge, laying it on the counter in front of him. “I’m Director Peggy Carter with SHIELD. I am here to pick up one of my men from your custody, a Dr. Erik Selvig. I believed he was passed over to you from Wiltshire authorities yesterday?”
The man frowned, awkwardly, looked down at her badge, then back up at Peggy. “Is this some kind of joke?”
“Does this look like a joke,” Peggy asked, simply, as beside her Sharon held up her badge as well. “I could speak to your watch supervisor, if needs be.”
The desk officer shook his head, sighing with the sort of depth of feeling that said he very much did not want any of this to get that complicated, and instead reached for his files. “No, no, just...let me get the paperwork.”
Peggy waited patiently as he flipped through files and pulled out papers, attaching them to a clipboard and passing it over to her. “If you could sign here for him. He was real worked up when they brought him in yesterday, but he seems to have calmed down a bit. Even managed to keep his clothes on.”
“He had an alien god in his head, so...yeah, you’ll have to excuse him,” Darcy called, in what Peggy imagined she thought was a helpful bit of knowledge to drop, but wasn’t.
“Right,” the officer drawled, slowly, eyeing Darcy as if she herself needed to be checked into the facility. “Let me have someone go fetch him from where he’s being held.”
Five minutes later Selvig appeared, led by another business-like officers. The poor scientist looked very disheveled and disoriented as he marched down the hallway. He was dressed, rather incongruously, in short pants and a cardigan, with socks and his sturdy shoes on his feet His expression was glassy-eyed and strung out, ragged in a way Peggy didn’t think she had ever seen the man.
“Erik,” Darcy exclaimed, rushing over to him to fuss over him, Betty close at her heels.
The officer at the desk began pulling out items, leaving them on the counter in front of Peggy. “One man’s leather wallet, brown.” He tapped the functional bit of leather, before placing beside it a key of rings. “One key ring, three keys.”
He then pulled out a giant plastic bag of pill bottles, of all shapes and sizes, all in the name of Erik Selvig. “Prescription medicine," he muttered in a manner that said he was trying not to be judgmental, but was anyway. "Various.”
He then bent down, pulling out from under his desk a bundle of heavy, metal rods, all attached to some sort of devices. He lay these on the top of the counter with a grunt. “And these.”
Peggy stared at the devices, as unsure of them as she was of Jane Foster’s home brewed machines. “Those?”
“Beats me what they are for,” the young man shrugged. “He was trying to stick them all over Stonehenge. I guess maybe they are for calibrating the moon, or the sun, or some equinox?”
“It’s October,” Peggy pointed out.
“Then ask your scientist what they are for, I have no idea.” The officer huffed, turning away.
Meanwhile, Selvig had wrapped Darcy in a hug, relieved to see her face. “How did you find me?”
“You were naked on TV,” Betty explained, shaking her head at him. “Which was not a thing I ever would have thought of you.”
“Betty,” he cried, letting go of Darcy, embracing Betty up as well. “What are you doing here?”
“Getting you out,” she said, pulling away from him with some effort. “Things are getting weird out there.”
“And sadly, you are the only man we have to get it all figured out,” Peggy added, drawing the addled man’s attention.
He blinked at seeing Peggy, true concern and a hint of fear flickering to life in his wife, pale eyes. “It doesn’t have to do with...he’s not back here again, is he?”
“Who,” Betty asked, laying a staying hand on him as Selvig appeared ready to bolt.
“You know who,” he spat back at her, cringing. “He’s not…”
“No,” Peggy assured the poor, frightened man as kindly as she could. “No, it isn’t about Loki, though it is about Thor.”
“Thor?” That seemed to reassure Selvig greatly. “What about him?”
“We aren’t sure, but Jane is with him. She was investigating anomalies, and something happened to her.”
“Is she all right?” That sobered up Selvig considerably. It was comforting to know that Jane’s well being was something he took seriously enough.
“We don’t know,” Darcy admitted. “Like, she was gone for five hours, she showed back up, then she exploded with this red energy, and then Thor whisked her off to Asgard and we haven’t heard from her since. But the anomalies are getting worse. I was up all nights, practically, with Dr. Banner. We are tracking it, but I’m an intern and I don’t know jack about any of this! I’m not paid enough to know any of this...I’m not paid, period!”
The devices on the officer’s desk began beeping ominously, causing Peggy to jump and the watch officer to stare at it as if it were a bomb. In fairness, they all stared at the things as if they might explode, all save Erik, who marched over and studied each of them.
“It’s happening, sooner than I had calculated.”
“Errr...what’s happening,” Peggy hazarded, half afraid to know the answer.
“The convergence,” he replied, matter-of-factly, as if that had any hope of making any sense. He turned to Darcy, eagerly. “These anomalies, what are they?”
“Errr...wormholes, mostly. Places where things are disappearing for no explainable reason, or disappearing and reappearing somewhere else.”
Selvig nodded to himself. “That sounds about right. Well, I suppose we need to get to work. If someone can help me with these.” He grabbed one of the devices off the desk, much to the officer's relief. Darcy and Betty swooped in to help with the other as it beeped, softly.
“You’ll want these,” Peggy snagged Selvig’s wallet and keys, before grabbing the giant bag of pills.
“Leave those,” Selvig ordered, nodding to the bag in Peggy’s fingers.
“But your medication…”
“Leave it,” he said, firmly, a small smile on his face. “Let me tell you, there is nothing more reassuring than realizing that the world is crazier than you are.”
From a certain point of view, Peggy supposed, that made sense.
“Come along,” he called as he led the way out of the building. “Take me to where Bruce is set up. We’ve got a lot of work to do!"