CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS A TYPICALLY rainy day in London, and astrophysicist Jane Foster was nervous. She was running late for a meeting, but not one that had to do with science or what had happened a few years back in New Mexico. Nor was it anything S.H.I.E.L.D.-related. No, for Jane, this was much worse: Jane had a date.

Jane regarded herself in her bedroom mirror as she put on more eye shadow. Then, for the fourth time in five minutes, she brushed her brown hair. Then she fixed her shirt again. Then it was back to her hair. With a sigh, Jane finally gave in. She grabbed her jacket and made her way through her tiny flat to the door, passing a variety of scientific equipment along the way. As Jane slammed the door, she was unaware that one of her scanners had suddenly come to life and begun to go haywire.

Inside the Italian restaurant, Jane hid her face behind her menu, lifting it only slightly to peek across at her date, Richard, and give him a practiced smile. It was clear, at least to her, that she did not want to be there.

“The osso buco here is great,” Richard said, trying to start some sort of conversation, but Jane just stared at him blankly. “On your profile it said you liked Italian,” he continued, but again, Jane just stared back, expressionless. Richard sighed, put down the menu, and folded his hands on the table. “Someone else wrote your profile, didn’t they?” he asked.

“How did you know?” Jane said, trying to make it seem like she really cared.

“Because when I asked you to dinner, you said no, then yes, then yes but not now, then yes but not dinner, and now you’ve spent the first ten minutes of lunch studying a menu which only has three choices.” Richard smiled. “Hence the osso buco.”

Jane gave him a warm, genuine smile. “It’s complicated,” she said, finally starting to open up.

“Is it another guy?” he asked.

“Sort of,” Jane smiled. How could she tell him that the “other guy” was really Thor—Prince of Asgard, son of Odin Allfather, wielder of Mjolnir, and also a member of the Avengers?

“Is he still around?”

“No, he went away,” Jane said with a slight sadness in her voice.

“Is he coming back?”

“I can’t count on it,” she said.

“Have you moved on?” Richard wondered.

“I’m…trying to,” Jane said with all sincerity. Even though time had passed, she still wasn’t over Thor. And she still missed him.

Richard tried to lighten the mood. “I’m honored to be your first stop,” he said. “This moving on, is that why you’re in London?”

“Well, my dad was English, so I spent my summers here,” Jane replied.

“I’m terribly sorry,” he said dryly. Jane smiled at his English sense of humor.

“I’m here for work,” she confessed.

“Your profile said that you were a scientist?”

Jane winced. “How did that read again?” But the next voice Jane heard wasn’t Richard’s.

“Beautiful scientist seeks bubbly Brit for good times and possible long-term relationship,” said Darcy Lewis, interrupting. Both Jane and Richard looked up to see the quirky brunette standing before them. Darcy didn’t wait for introductions. She immediately reached out her hand to shake Richard’s. “I’m Darcy,” she said before turning to Jane and mouthing the words He’s cute to her.

“What are you doing here?” Jane asked, embarrassed. It was bad enough that Darcy put her up to this; it was even worse that she was crashing her blind date.

Darcy pulled up a chair, took a piece of bread from the basket on their table, then began to butter it with Richard’s knife. “So, I show up to work at your lab-slash-girl cave, expecting you to be moping around in your pajamas—”

“There really needs to be a point to this!” Jane quickly said, cutting Darcy off.

“You know all that scientific equipment you don’t look at anymore?” Darcy said in between bites. “You might want to start.”

Darcy reached into her bag and pulled out Jane’s phase meter. The needle on the device was still spiking and a wave of curiosity flashed in Jane’s eyes. “It kind of looks like the reading Selvig was rambling about,” Darcy continued. Then she turned to Richard to explain just who Selvig was. “Our friend. Brilliant scientist,” she said, nonchalantly. “Kinda went crazy.”

Jane had had enough and shot Darcy an evil look. “You need to go now.”

Darcy sat at the table and stared at them both before finally rising to her feet. “I give you five minutes,” she said to Jane. Then she turned to Richard and said, “She’s great, huh?” Richard smiled. Then Darcy smiled. She reached down, grabbed the rest of the bread, and walked out of the restaurant.

Richard and Jane stared at one another in disbelief. “So…why are you in London?” Jane finally asked, trying desperately to bring herself back to the table with Richard. But it was no use. Darcy was right. Jane couldn’t stay at lunch. She had to get out of there. She had to check the phase meter and calculate the coordinates of the spike. She had to find Thor!

In less than five minutes, Jane was sliding into the passenger seat of the red sedan that was idling outside the restaurant. Darcy was behind the wheel, and someone Jane didn’t know was in the backseat.

“Did you bring the butter?” the English college kid in the backseat asked.

Jane turned to the lanky guy in the backseat. “Who are you?” she asked.

“He’s my intern,” Darcy said with pride. “He’s free.”

“It’s a great honor to be working with you, Dr. Foster,” the intern said. Jane was taken aback, then decided to accept the situation and handed him the phase meter.

“Okay, intern. Find this!” she said. The kid looked at the coordinates and gave Darcy directions. Their car drove wildly through the streets of London, much to the dismay of other drivers, pedestrians, and even pigeons.

“I’ve totally mastered London driving,” Darcy said with complete satisfaction as she continued to endanger anyone, and anything, that might be on the street or in her path.

As they drove closer and closer to their unknown destination, Jane tried to call Erik Selvig once more. “Erik, it’s me again. Where are you? I flew here because you said you were on to something, and then you just vanished.” Jane’s tone grew more serious with every word. “You have to call us back. I think I found what you found.”

Jane was worried about her friend. He hadn’t returned any of their calls in six months, and deep down, she was concerned that he still might be under the influence of Thor’s evil brother, Loki, who had manipulated Selvig’s mind in an attempt to take over the world. Thor and the Avengers saved Selvig—and the world—but perhaps Selvig was still suffering the aftereffects.

“Straight ahead, one hundred meters!” the intern yelled from the backseat as the car careened through the narrow London streets.

“Maybe he’s in the bathroom?” Darcy said in reference to Selvig. She turned to look at Jane, unaware that she was driving them directly toward a brick wall.

“Sixty meters…forty…twenty…” the intern continued from the back, also unaware of the impending impact.

“Darcy!” Jane yelled. Darcy whipped her head around and jammed on the brakes. The car stopped just in time—mere inches from the brick wall. They got out, lucky to have survived the ride, and looked around.

“Which way, intern?” Jane asked the college kid whom she had just met.

“This way. And it’s Ian,” he said.

“Lead the way, Ian,” Jane replied, following him. Darcy looked from them, to the building, then back to them again.

“How come these things never happen in a nice park?” she asked. “I like parks.”

The three of them continued forward, following the beeping of the phase meter. They were at their destination: an abandoned industrial complex in London’s south side.