Jane Foster hadn't registered a single word the handsome man across from her was saying. Nor did she taste a thing from the plate of fish and chips in front of her.
Finally, unable to pretend anymore, she offered a polite apology and canceled the rest of the date. By the time she climbed into her car, she couldn't even remember the poor guy's name.
She felt a little guilty. The man had been a perfect gentleman. Ever since that event, she'd tried to go on dates with different men. Each one had a different profession, a different charm. She'd even clicked with a couple of them.
But no matter how hard she tried—she just couldn't focus. Her mind always drifted back to him. To that moment.
The moment in New Mexico.
It sounded ridiculous when said aloud: A god from Norse mythology falls to Earth, loses his powers, meets a woman—a physicist—and they fall in love. Things escalate as expected. And then… he promises to come back for her.
She waited. A whole year.
She'd seen him once on TV—fighting aliens in New York alongside a group called the Avengers. But even after returning to Earth, he never visited her. Never said a word.
Jane had begun to question if it had all been one-sided. Maybe he never intended to return. Maybe it was just a fleeting episode in his immortal life. A mortal tryst in the blink of a divine eye.
Thor. Prince of Asgard.
He was her thunderstorm—and her heartbreak.
But recently, things had started to change.
Reports came in about strange spatial anomalies in a city tower. Jane immediately packed her bags, grabbed her intern—and her intern's intern—and raced to the scene to take measurements.
What they discovered was mind-bending.
It was like the three-dimensional fabric of space had been torn open, like someone had punched through the bottom of a soda can. The gap seemed to lead into another realm. They dropped a coin through the rift and watched it loop endlessly—like it was trapped in a recursive loop.
At first, she was intrigued.
Then she saw the phase fluctuation readings.
Her heart skipped a beat.
They were identical to the ones she recorded in New Mexico.
The same readings from the day Thor fell from the sky.
Jane's entire body trembled with something primal. Her blood surged with adrenaline. Every cell in her body seemed to ignite. Her eyes burned with new purpose—she felt alive again.
At this very moment, she was in the building's hallway, scanning the area with a device not unlike the one Erik Selvig had used at Stonehenge. The abandoned corridor was dim, cold, and a little creepy.
Suddenly, her detector shrieked with an urgent alarm.
Jane felt it immediately—an invisible force locked her limbs in place.
She opened her mouth to scream… but no sound came out.
The space around her had muted all sound—sealed it.
Before she could even understand what was happening, a powerful force yanked her out of the hallway and into… somewhere else.
Everything returned to normal.
No. Not normal. Far from it.
Jane's eyes widened as she took in the world around her.
It was bleak. The wind howled. Something was growling in the distance. She turned to look behind her—and her jaw nearly hit the ground.
No hallway. No corridor. No building.
Behind her stretched a shadowy wasteland.
She was standing at the edge of a cliff, two jagged stones stacked beside her. Between the crevices, something red pulsed.
It shimmered. Shifted.
Drawn by a force she couldn't explain, Jane reached into the gap.
Maybe she should've waited for rescue. Maybe this was foolish.
But she did it anyway.
The red substance reacted immediately. Like living clay, it latched onto her hand, flowing over her skin.
She gasped and tried to pull away—but it was too late.
The instant she withdrew her hand, the crevice vanished. Then the dizziness hit—hard. Her vision blurred. Her knees buckled.
Jane Foster collapsed.
Less than five minutes later, a beam of golden light shimmered through the darkened hallway where she had vanished.
A figure emerged from the light—encased in sleek black armor.
Twin red "V"-shaped lenses glowed on the helmet. Strange glyphs and codes danced across the HUD.
Gene Mason had arrived.
"Enhance visual spectrum. Run magical analysis," he commanded.
Instantly, the neural interface in his armor came alive, flooding with data. Light traces. Phase echoes. Dimensional pressure scans. He stood silently as the suit processed everything.
Then, the red lenses flickered.
The phase-space here was unstable. Dimensional walls were thin. Whatever happened had opened a direct passage to another realm.
"Looks like someone's already been through," Gene muttered.
From the dimensional residue and biometric trails, the calculations confirmed it.
A single adult female.
Gene narrowed his eyes.
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