Chapter Text
Stark Tower looked less like a building and more like someone had stabbed Manhattan with an ego.
Darcy Lewis stood on the sidewalk with a suitcase in each hand, a laptop bag cutting into her shoulder, and her sunglasses sliding slowly down the bridge of her nose as she tilted her head back.
The tower went up and up and up, glass and steel and aggressive branding, the clean silver edge of it catching the late morning light. The name on the side was impossible to miss. It was not enough, apparently, to own a skyscraper. One also had to make sure the entire skyline knew whose skyscraper it was.
Darcy let out a low whistle.
“Well,” she said. “Subtle.”
Jane, beside her, was not looking at the tower.
Jane was looking at her tablet.
That was not unusual. Jane had looked at that tablet in airports, taxis, hotel lobbies, breakfast places, customs lines, one truly memorable Norwegian train station, and once while walking directly into a glass door in London. Darcy had saved her from traffic in three countries. Four, if she counted New Mexico, which she did because S.H.I.E.L.D. had absolutely counted as a hostile nation.
“Jane.”
“Hm?”
“Tower.”
“Hm.”
“Big tower.”
“Yeah, I saw it in the car.”
“You saw it in the car for half a second before you started reading an article titled something like quantum gravitational smooching.”
“Quantum gravitational lensing.”
“Basically what I said.”
Jane made a distracted noise. Her thumb flicked across the tablet screen. Her hair had been pulled into a bun at some point during the flight and had since decided, strand by strand, that it did not believe in authority. She looked tired, brilliant, faintly under-caffeinated, and completely unaware that her scarf was inside out.
Darcy shifted both suitcases into one hand, reached over, and tugged the scarf free.
Jane blinked as Darcy flipped it, straightened it, and tucked it back into place.
“Thanks.”
“Uh-huh. I am putting that on my invoice.”
“I pay you now.”
“Not yet you don’t. Technically Stark Industries pays me now, which means I’m about to become a corporate girlie.”
Jane finally looked up.
Darcy spread her arms as much as two suitcases and a laptop bag allowed. “Do I look corporate?”
Jane looked her up and down with the sober intensity of someone evaluating an unusual field reading.
Darcy had dressed for comfort, but comfort had never meant surrender. Black dress, black cardigan, wide dark red belt at her waist, boots, rings, bracelets stacked at her wrist, lipstick a shade too bold for an airport pickup and therefore exactly right. Her brown hair fell straight and heavy around her shoulders, glossy from the blowout she had insisted on getting two days before because moving cities was no reason to look like a raccoon in public.
“You look like you bullied corporate into crying,” Jane said.
Darcy placed a hand over her heart. “That is the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
The driver, a patient man in a dark suit who had introduced himself as Happy Hogan and then immediately looked like he regretted being perceived, cleared his throat.
“Dr. Foster? Ms. Lewis? We should go in.”
“Darcy,” Darcy said automatically. “Ms. Lewis makes me sound like I own a yacht and sue restaurants.”
Happy looked briefly at her, then at the tower, then at Jane, as if calculating which of them was most likely to become his problem.
Darcy smiled brightly.
He chose not to answer.
Good instincts.
The lobby was absurd.
Of course it was. Darcy had expected absurd. There were levels of wealth that made people buy nice furniture, and then there were levels of wealth that made people build lobbies where the air itself seemed expensive. The floor was polished dark stone. The ceiling rose too high. The security desk looked like it belonged in a science fiction movie. Everything smelled clean and cool, like glass, metal, and money.
People moved through the space with badges and suits and purposeful expressions. Some glanced at Jane. More glanced at Darcy. Darcy was used to both kinds of glances: the quick academic recognition Jane got now after London, and the slower, more assessing ones Darcy got because men had been men since before anyone invented pants.
She ignored them.
Happy guided them toward security.
“Temporary badges first. Permanent access should be ready by the end of the day.”
“Should be?” Darcy repeated.
Happy glanced back.
Darcy lowered her sunglasses just enough to look at him over the top of them.
“Mr. Hogan, I’ve had my life’s work seized by a fake government agency in the desert. I don’t trust should be.”
“It wasn’t your life’s work,” Jane said, still scrolling.
“It was emotionally mine.”
“It was my life’s work.”
“And I was there. Holding a taser. Providing ambiance.”
Happy stopped at the security desk and looked like he had several questions and did not want the answer to any of them.
The woman at the desk, whose name tag said Alvarez, smiled with the practiced calm of someone who had seen enough Stark Industries weirdness to stop reacting to the first layer of anything.
“Dr. Foster. Ms. Lewis. Welcome to Stark Tower.”
“Darcy,” Darcy said again.
Alvarez’s smile warmed by half a degree. “Darcy.”
Darcy liked her immediately.
There was paperwork. There were signatures. There was a security photo Darcy insisted on retaking because the first one made her look like she had been arrested for stealing office supplies. Jane forgot to look at the camera entirely. Her final badge photo showed her staring down at her tablet with the distracted intensity of a prophet receiving instructions from the universe.
Darcy looked at it.
“Perfect.”
Jane reached for the badge without checking it.
Darcy pulled it back.
“Nope. Lanyard.”
“I don’t need a lanyard.”
“You lost your passport in Norway for twelve hours.”
“It was in your bag.”
“Because I put it there after you left it next to a coffee machine.”
“That still means it wasn’t lost.”
“That means you were lucky I love you.”
Jane took the lanyard.
Happy looked like he was filing away the information for future survival.
When the elevator doors opened, Darcy expected mirrors, maybe gold trim, maybe something deeply stupid involving polished chrome.
Instead, it was sleek and quiet, brushed metal, dark glass, a smooth panel that lit when Happy scanned his badge. The doors closed with a soft hush.
They started rising.
The display above the doors counted upward.
10.
11.
12.
Darcy watched Manhattan drop away through the glass side of the elevator.
“Okay,” she said. “That part is cool.”
Jane hummed.
The lights in the elevator shifted slightly.
A voice spoke from overhead, smooth, masculine, and British.
“Good morning, Dr. Foster. Miss Lewis. Welcome to Stark Tower.”
Jane startled so hard she nearly dropped her tablet.
Darcy looked at the ceiling.
“Elevator ghost?”
Happy sighed, very quietly.
“My name is JARVIS,” the voice said. “I am Mr. Stark’s artificial intelligence system.”
Jane’s eyes went wide, interest snapping awake like a flare.
Darcy pointed upward with two fingers. “Hi, JARVIS.”
“Good morning, Miss Lewis.”
“Darcy.”
“Noted.”
Jane was still staring at the ceiling.
“Artificial intelligence?” she asked.
“Yes, Dr. Foster.”
“Natural language processing or actual adaptive cognition?”
There was a pause. If an AI could sound politely amused, JARVIS managed it.
“That depends on how generous one is feeling toward Mr. Stark’s terminology.”
Darcy grinned.
Jane’s face lit.
Happy closed his eyes briefly, as if silently mourning the next hour of his life.
“Can I ask you questions?” Jane asked.
“Dr. Foster,” Happy said.
“What?”
“We are going to the lab.”
“This is relevant to the lab.”
“Everything is relevant to the lab when you say it like that.”
Jane looked prepared to argue.
Darcy cut in. “JARVIS, are you everywhere?”
“From Level Fifty-One upward, with varying degrees of system integration.”
“Not downstairs?”
“Corporate systems below Level Fifty-One have limited AI oversight.”
“Smart. Nobody wants accounting haunted by a British ghost.”
“I am not a ghost, Miss Lewis.”
“Again, Darcy.”
“My apologies. Darcy.”
Jane looked between the ceiling and Darcy with bright, immediate curiosity. She had been given a lab, funding, and a building that talked. Darcy knew that look. Jane’s day had just improved by at least sixty percent.
Darcy leaned against the side rail.
“Artificial intelligence in an elevator,” she murmured. “Sure. Why not. I met a Norse god with better hair than me. This tracks.”
Happy’s mouth twitched.
Tiny victory.
The elevator stopped at Level Sixty.
The doors opened.
Jane forgot JARVIS existed.
For a moment, she forgot everything.
The lab stretched out beyond the elevator lobby in bright glass and polished steel. It was huge, the kind of huge that made Darcy understand, with a strange little twist beneath her ribs, just how much Jane had been working without. There were sealed workspaces, long benches, dark monitors waiting to wake, wall-mounted screens, storage units, whiteboards, and rooms behind glass that looked like they had been designed by people who knew what shielding actually meant.
A whole section had been prepared for Jane.
Not a corner.
Not borrowed space.
Not a university closet with a heater that made concerning noises.
A real lab.
Her lab.
Jane took one step forward.
Then another.
The glass doors slid open.
Lights came up.
Screens flickered awake across the main workstation.
“Dr. Foster,” JARVIS said from the lab speakers, “your primary workspace is active. Your archived materials from Culver, Puente Antiguo, Tromsø, and London have been uploaded into the secure drive specified in your onboarding packet. Physical equipment crates are still being unpacked. Several items require verification before use.”
Jane walked slowly to the center of the lab.
Darcy stayed near the door.
She liked watching this part.
Jane reached out and touched the edge of the nearest workstation with two fingers, as if checking it was real.
Darcy swallowed around something soft in her throat.
Jane had deserved this years ago.
Before the desert. Before S.H.I.E.L.D. stole her life’s work and left her with nothing but anger, a ruined van, and Darcy, who had been an unpaid intern with a taser, a political science major, and no idea what an Einstein-Rosen bridge was except probably something old men argued about in sweaters.
Jane had clawed her way back anyway.
With duct tape.
With rage.
With scraps.
With Darcy typing notes at two in the morning and labeling files with names like DO NOT DELETE THIS ONE JANE I SWEAR TO GOD.
And now they were here.
Jane looked over her shoulder.
Her eyes were wet.
Darcy pointed at her immediately.
“Nope. Don’t do it. If you cry, I’ll cry, and then Happy will have to deal with emotional women in a science lab, and he has not been paid enough.”
“I definitely have not,” Happy said.
Jane laughed. It came out a little broken.
Darcy walked in and dropped her bags by the door.
“Okay. Tour me. Show me the shiny stuff before I start investigating whether the coffee situation is acceptable.”
Jane did.
For nearly thirty minutes, Jane moved through the lab in a state of reverent outrage. She was happy, but it came out as criticism because Jane Foster did not trust good things until she had kicked the tires.
“This table should be closer to the secondary monitors.”
“Can the environmental controls be adjusted independently in the sample room?”
“Why is the Faraday cage there? No, that makes no sense with the window exposure.”
“These outlets are wrong.”
“Who put the whiteboards here? I need them on that wall.”
Darcy followed, taking notes on her phone with both thumbs.
Move table.
Env controls.
Faraday cage placement.
Outlets.
Whiteboards.
Ask about cable trays.
Unpack crate 4B first.
Crate 7C contains the lens Jane will panic about if not found by tonight.
Happy watched them with the expression of a man realizing that “lab ready” had been an optimistic phrase.
JARVIS, to his credit, kept up without sounding offended.
By the time Jane found the first crate of old equipment, she had forgotten her scarf again, her suitcase, the time, and probably the concept of hunger.
Darcy had not.
“Okay,” Darcy said at last. “Pause.”
Jane was already kneeling beside a crate with a screwdriver she had produced from somewhere. “No.”
“Jane.”
“I need to see if the sensors survived shipping.”
“You need to eat.”
“I ate.”
“You ate a protein bar at six this morning while walking through airport security. I watched you drop half of it into your bag.”
Jane frowned. “That counts.”
“It counts as purse seasoning.”
Happy made a small sound.
Darcy turned to him. “Do you have food in this building?”
“We have several cafeterias.”
“Good. Where?”
“Levels Two through Ten have shared spaces. There are also kitchen facilities on Sixty-Five and Sixty-Seven.”
Darcy looked at Jane, then at the open crate, then at the expensive lab around them.
“Fine. I’ll go. But if I come back and find you elbow-deep in machinery with low blood sugar, I will tell Thor.”
Jane froze.
Darcy smiled sweetly.
Jane pointed at her. “That is a low blow.”
“Damn right.”
Happy looked between them. “Thor?”
“Long story,” Darcy said. “Tall guy. Hammer. Great arms. Terrible with coffee machines.”
“I know who Thor is.”
“Good for you. We all have trauma.”
Jane rolled her eyes and went back to the crate.
Darcy grabbed her temporary badge and one of the tote bags she had folded into her suitcase because she believed in being prepared and also in stealing hotel toiletries. Happy offered to take her down. Darcy told him she was a grown woman with a master’s degree and could probably locate a sandwich inside a skyscraper.
Happy looked unconvinced.
JARVIS directed her anyway.
The tower was less intimidating once she started moving through it.
Buildings were buildings. Even stupidly expensive ones. They had patterns, flows, staff habits, hidden shortcuts, bad signage, good bathrooms, dead spots where people went to smoke, and places where no one looked because everyone assumed someone else was looking. Darcy had learned that in universities, airports, government buildings, research facilities, and one S.H.I.E.L.D. compound she had absolutely not been supposed to access after the first day.
Stark Tower was cleaner than most.
That did not make it less readable.
JARVIS directed her to Level Seven, where the cafeteria looked less like a cafeteria and more like the kind of place tech executives pretended was casual. There were multiple food stations, a coffee bar, sleek tables, floor-to-ceiling windows, and employees trying very hard not to stare at her temporary badge.
Darcy stared back at one man until he looked away.
Then she bought too much food.
A salad for Jane because Jane would eat it if Darcy physically put it near her. A sandwich for Jane because Jane would complain about the salad. Two coffees. A muffin. A second muffin in case of emergency. A bottle of water. Another bottle of water because Jane had a body and frequently forgot this.
The barista, whose name tag said Maya, looked at the tray.
“First day?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“You still look impressed by the options.”
“I once lived on Pop-Tarts and desert dust for three months.”
Maya paused. “Are you with Dr. Foster?”
Darcy brightened. “Yes. Darcy Lewis. Assistant, wrangler, occasional electrician, emotional support human.”
Maya smiled. “Welcome to the tower.”
“Thanks. Please tell me the coffee is good.”
“It’s better than Mr. Stark deserves.”
Darcy gasped. “Maya. We just met, and already I trust you with my life.”
Maya laughed.
By the time Darcy returned to Level Sixty, Jane had opened three crates, misplaced the screwdriver, found the screwdriver in her back pocket, and started arguing with a monitor.
Darcy was not sure whether JARVIS was arguing back or whether Jane had simply become advanced enough to argue with screens independently.
Both were possible.
“Jane, food.”
“In a minute.”
“Nope.”
Darcy set the tray on a clear table, then removed the coffee from Jane’s reach because Jane would drink it and ignore the solids.
Jane looked offended.
Darcy pointed at the sandwich. “Chew.”
“I’m working.”
“You will work better with nutrients. That’s not politics. That’s biology. I checked.”
Jane took the sandwich with bad grace.
Darcy handed her the salad too.
Jane looked at it.
“For later,” Darcy said.
“You always say that.”
“And later always comes. Linear time. Very upsetting.”
Jane took one bite of the sandwich, then another, already staring past Darcy toward the open crate.
Darcy unpacked her own muffin and sat cross-legged on the floor beside a box labeled FRAGILE in Jane’s handwriting.
There were already papers in it.
Of course there were.
Jane packed like a raccoon under academic pressure. Equipment, notes, socks, adapters, a hairbrush, four notebooks, two dead batteries, a cracked mug from Culver, and one half-empty package of tea were all apparently the same category of object.
Darcy began sorting.
Not because anyone asked her to.
Because otherwise they would lose something important by dinner.
She had three piles by the time the elevator doors opened again.
This time, Happy was not with them.
Tony Stark walked onto Level Sixty like the building had been waiting for him to remember he owned it.
Darcy had seen him on TV, obviously. Everyone had. Tony Stark had spent most of her life being one of those public figures who existed half as a man and half as a headline: genius, billionaire, weapons manufacturer, playboy, Iron Man, disaster, hero, disaster again.
He was taller than she expected, which was irritating. Famous men were supposed to be shorter in person. It was one of the universe’s few reliable jokes.
He wore dark jeans, a black T-shirt, tinted glasses, and the kind of expression that said he had already decided the room was his and was now waiting for reality to catch up.
His gaze moved across the lab fast.
Equipment.
Crates.
Jane.
Open panels.
Darcy on the floor.
It paused.
Not on her face.
Darcy knew that pause.
She had known that pause since she was thirteen and a grown man at a grocery store had looked too long at the front of her shirt and made her understand, with sudden sharp disgust, that bodies became public property without permission.
Tony Stark’s pause was faster than most.
Not slimier.
Not careful.
Just there.
A flicker. A note taken. Nice rack. Moving on.
It still counted.
His eyes came up to her face.
Darcy lifted her muffin in greeting.
Tony Stark looked amused.
“Dr. Foster,” he said, turning toward Jane. “You’re already redecorating.”
Jane had half a sandwich in one hand and a tablet in the other. “Your outlet placement is wrong.”
“That’s my fault. I usually begin all professional relationships by sabotaging electrical access.”
“The Faraday cage is also wrong.”
“Good to know we’re bonding.”
Jane put the sandwich down, forgot she had done so, and walked toward him with the tablet. “Look at this.”
Tony did not take the tablet.
He glanced at it where she held it out, then at Jane.
“I don't like being handed things. Put it on the table.”
Jane blinked.
Darcy, sitting on the floor, watched the moment register and file itself away.
Jane, who cared about many things but not always the social mechanics of them, set the tablet down on the nearest workstation. Tony leaned over it, swiped with two fingers, and the screen mirrored instantly onto one of the larger displays.
Darcy bit into her muffin.
Okay. That was cool.
Annoying, but cool.
Jane and Tony stood side by side in front of the display. They were not similar, exactly. Jane was all forward motion, sharp questions, wild hair, and fierce conviction. Tony was looser, more performative, moving as if part of him was always aware of the audience even when he pretended not to be.
But their brains hit a rhythm quickly.
Jane pointed at a section of the diagram.
Tony enlarged it.
Jane said, “That’s where the distortion starts.”
Tony said, “That’s where your model stops being cute.”
“My model is not cute.”
“It’s a little cute.”
“It predicted the event.”
“It predicted the event after the event happened.”
Darcy made a face at her muffin. “Wow. Science flirting is awful.”
Both of them looked at her.
Jane looked annoyed.
Tony looked entertained.
Darcy took another bite, unbothered.
Jane said, “Darcy.”
“What? It is. I have ears.”
Tony’s mouth curved. “You’re the assistant.”
Darcy gave him her brightest smile. “And you’re Tony Stark.”
One eyebrow lifted behind the tinted glasses.
“Good,” he said. “Glad we’re both caught up.”
Jane made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan.
Darcy swallowed.
“Technically,” Tony said, “I’m your employer.”
“Technically Stark Industries is my employer.”
Tony glanced at her.
“That’s a very political science answer.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m not sure it was a compliment.”
“That’s okay. I accepted it anyway.”
Jane looked like she wanted to return both of them to the manufacturer.
Tony turned back toward the display.
The conversation should have ended there.
Most people would have let it end there.
Darcy, unfortunately, had never shown much respect for endings.
“Besides,” she added, “if we’re being technical, I work for Jane.”
“You work for Stark Industries.”
“I work for Jane.”
Tony looked back.
Darcy pointed with her muffin.
“Stark Industries signs my paycheck.”
Another point.
“Jane decides whether I spend my day organizing research files.”
Another.
“Tracking down missing notebooks.”
Another.
“Stopping her from accidentally becoming one with a laboratory.”
Jane, infuriatingly, did not deny it.
She also did not look embarrassed.
Which probably meant it was true.
Tony looked at Foster.
Foster looked back.
Neither of them seemed interested in defending the distinction.
He filed it somewhere shallow.
The lab was more interesting.
Foster was more interesting.
The work was definitely more interesting.
Tony turned back to the screen. “Your Faraday cage is wrong.”
Jane threw both hands up. “Thank you.”
Darcy smirked into her coffee.
There it was. The thing Jane had wanted. Not politeness. Not donor appreciation. Not someone telling her the lab was beautiful and the funding was generous. Jane wanted someone to argue with her properly.
Tony Stark, for all his many public personality defects, seemed capable of doing that.
Darcy could respect it.
A little.
Not too much. She had standards.
The argument lasted forty-five minutes and covered three screens, two whiteboards, one holographic model that made Darcy sit up straighter despite herself, and a memorable exchange in which Jane called one of Tony’s assumptions “mechanically elegant and astrophysically stupid.”
Tony looked delighted.
Darcy typed notes.
Not all of them were professional.
Some read:
TS likes being insulted if insult accurate?
Ask Maya coffee hours.
Jane needs whiteboards moved.
Stark does not like handed objects. Table only.
Faraday cage problem: Stark right but do not say like that.
By the end of the hour, Tony had forgotten he was supposed to be giving a welcome tour, Jane had forgotten food existed again, and Darcy had quietly opened three more crates and found the missing set of Norwegian field notebooks Jane had been searching for since Heathrow.
She placed them on Jane’s main workstation without comment.
Jane, mid-sentence, reached out and touched the top notebook.
Then she stopped.
Her eyes flicked to Darcy.
Darcy did not look up from the crate she was unpacking.
Jane’s face softened for a second, almost invisible.
Tony did not notice.
He was looking at the model.
“Well,” he said, clapping once, “good news. The cage is moving. Bad news, I’m right.”
Jane frowned. “You’re partially right.”
“My favorite kind.”
Darcy stood, brushing dust off her dress. “If this is going to become a regular thing, I need a whistle.”
Tony looked at her. “For what?”
“To separate you two when the academic mating displays get too intense.”
Jane said, “Darcy.”
Tony said, “Mating displays?”
“Peacocks have feathers. Scientists have models. Billionaires have towers. Nature is beautiful.”
Tony’s grin flashed quick and sharp.
It was the kind of grin that had probably gotten him out of consequences for decades.
Darcy refused to be charmed on principle.
Not because he was unattractive.
She had eyes.
But because men like Tony Stark had whole economies built around being charming, and Darcy believed in resisting capitalism where possible.
Jane took her tablet back from the table. “Can we please focus?”
“I am focused,” Tony said. “I’m focused on the wounded pride of my tower.”
“Your tower will survive.”
“She says, after attacking my outlets.”
“They deserve it.”
“They’re very sensitive.”
Darcy picked up the empty food wrappers and decided this was going to be exhausting.
Possibly fun.
But exhausting.
By late afternoon, Darcy had seen Jane’s apartment, her own apartment, the common floor, and three different conference rooms she did not care about.
Her apartment was ridiculous.
Not tasteful-rich ridiculous. It was actually nice. Too nice. Floor-to-ceiling windows, a view over the city, a kitchen with appliances that probably had advanced degrees, a bathroom larger than her first dorm room, and a bedroom big enough to make her feel vaguely suspicious.
Darcy stood in the middle of it with her hands on her hips.
Jane, who had followed her in despite claiming she needed to go back to the lab immediately, looked around.
“It’s nice.”
“It has a wine fridge.”
“Do you drink wine?”
“I might start. Out of respect.”
Jane smiled.
Darcy walked to the window. Manhattan glittered below, sharp and loud and alive. She could see traffic moving in bright lines. Buildings everywhere. People everywhere. New York had always felt like a place that wanted to eat you and invite you to brunch at the same time.
She loved it already.
Her mother would have hated the height.
The thought came fast, as those thoughts sometimes did. No warning. Just Darlene Lewis in her old kitchen, blonde hair twisted up, blue eyes laughing, saying absolutely not, baby, rich people can keep their sky coffins.
Darcy breathed in.
Then out.
Jane was quiet behind her.
Darcy turned around before the silence could become something tender and therefore dangerous.
“So,” she said, “which one is Thor’s apartment?”
Jane gave her a look.
“What? I need to know where not to be if he comes back shirtless.”
“Darcy.”
“I am only human, Jane.”
Jane shook her head, but she was smiling again, so Darcy counted that as a win.
They unpacked enough to make the space livable. Darcy hung up clothes, lined her shoes near the closet, set her laptop on the desk, plugged in three chargers, and placed a framed photo of her mom on the bedside table.
Darlene Lewis smiled out of the frame in a yellow sundress, sunburned nose, big sunglasses, one arm around a twenty-year-old Darcy at a beach neither of them had planned to visit. They had taken a wrong turn and stayed two days.
Darcy touched the edge of the frame once.
Then she went back to unpacking.
Jane did not say anything.
That was why Darcy loved her.
By seven, Jane had returned to the lab.
Darcy gave her until eight before following.
She found Jane exactly where she expected: in the lab, surrounded by open crates, standing barefoot on a rolling chair while trying to tape a sheet of paper to the glass wall because the whiteboards had not been moved yet.
“Jane.”
Jane glanced down. “What?”
“Get off the chair.”
“I’m fine.”
“You are a MacArthur-level fall risk.”
“I don’t have a MacArthur.”
“Yet. Don’t ruin your chances by dying stupid.”
Jane climbed down, but only because Darcy held up dinner like a hostage negotiation. They ate on the floor between crates because none of the tables were clear. Jane talked with her hands, rice in one hand, pen in the other, pointing at equipment she wanted unpacked in the morning.
Darcy took notes.
The lab lights reflected off the glass until the city outside looked like a second set of stars.
At some point, Jane fell asleep sitting against a crate.
Darcy finished labeling the last folder before she woke her.
“JARVIS,” Jane said sleepily from the chair Darcy had forced her into, “what time is it?”
“Nearly midnight, Dr. Foster.”
Jane sat up. “What? No. We just ate.”
“That was three hours ago,” Darcy said.
Jane frowned.
Darcy peeled off a label and stuck it onto a storage box.
“Welcome back to linear time. Still upsetting.”
Jane blinked at the box.
“You found the Norway notes.”
“I found the Norway notes, the backup drive you said you lost, two adapters, and the mug Erik told you not to steal.”
“I didn’t steal it.”
“Jane.”
“I borrowed it.”
“You borrowed it across an ocean.”
Jane looked at the mug.
Then at Darcy.
“Can we not tell Erik?”
Darcy smiled and printed another label.
“Your secrets are safe with me, Dr. Foster.”