The onset of autumn was evident in the brisk breeze that whipped down the sidewalk. A particularly strong gust was the deciding factor that placed Thor, Jane, Darcy and Loki in Starbucks this morning, to order something warm for the rest of their walk. While the café was warm and inviting they chose to power through the morning cold with drinks in hand, mostly at Jane’s command, so that they wouldn’t be late. She and Selvig (along with Darcy’s unfailing presence and occasional help) were working in a make-shift observatory trying to find answers to the strange energy phenomenon plaguing Earth for the past year. According to Jane, SHIELD claimed to lack enough funds to keep them in a decent workspace. It was clear she still harbored sour feelings on the matter.
Regardless, they had made relative progress in tracking relative events. Had they discovered anything particularly useful, not exactly. But the previous evening Selvig stayed late and had apparently found something interesting, which he requested Jane come in and see immediately. Darcy was the obvious tag-along being Jane’s intern— as for Thor and Loki, they were a pleasant and not-so pleasant surprise respectively. Thor had stopped by Jane’s apartment that morning for a simple greeting, and had run into Darcy on the way. Loki was with Thor because SHIELD had yet to make other babysitting arrangements, as Darcy later summarized. Jane was more than willing to invite Thor along. She even made attempts to include Loki in the group’s conversations, but Loki’s gleaming positivity snuffed out every topic that came his way. Thor apologized numerous times, and each time Jane politely assured him it was all right while she shot withering glances Loki’s direction. From Starbucks onward Loki tailed the group silently and sourly.
Darcy just told a story that involved a string of embarrassing events courtesy of Jane (who denied each as they slipped from her intern’s lips), and she had barely finished when Thor (as he begged Jane’s forgiveness) began laughing outright. He laughed so hard he lost his balance and nearly bowled over a young woman passing the other way. He reacted quickly, though, and caught her arm as she reached with the other to brace herself.
“Forgive me!” Thor uttered, and was about to insist on his fault when the girl’s kind smile cut him off. Without a word she turned and continued on her way. Thor watched her disappear into the crowd.
“Thor!”
He jolted back to reality at the sound of Jane’s voice.
“I’m sorry,” he said again, returning his attention.
“At least you didn’t knock her into the street,” Darcy pointed out.
“That would have been a tragedy,” Loki agreed dryly.
Both Thor and Jane were about to chide him when the chorus of Bubblegum Bitch belted out of Jane’s pocket. She huffed and fumbled for her phone, mostly to stop the noise than to answer it. She huffed again when she found it.
“It’s Erik,” she mumbled. “I knew we were going to be late— Hello! Yes, I know, we’re on our way! We just stopped by Starbucks…Yes, okay. Okay. We’ll be right there. Bye.”
“So, how’s Erik?” Darcy hummed, nibbling on the tip of her straw. Jane stowed the phone.
“You are going to tell me how to change the ringtone on this thing, and you are not going to set it yourself again, have we got that?” Jane mothered. “Erik says we should hurry, he’s got news on SHIELD as well.”

---

Selvig was less than pleased to see Loki come through the door. In fact, he looked like he might cry.
“I thought you said he was dead,” Selvig directed to Thor without letting Loki out of his sights.
“At the time I said that, I believed he was,” Thor stated.
“So what happened?”
“Many things. None that I can readily share.” Thor looked to Selvig with understanding and apology and then to Loki, daring him to misbehave. Loki, unfazed, moved around the room to look at the charts and photographs pinned haphazardly on the walls.
“So what did you find?” Jane cued, hoping to ease some of the tension. Selvig hurried around to a desk— or what would have been a desk if it were not for the paper stacked on top and tapped to the sides— and produced an unfolded map. He spread it out on the clearest table.
“We’ve already observed that these energy clouds or whatever they are drift about and never really disappear,” Selvig began. “But I looked again at the data from three days ago—”
“We didn’t get any data,” Jane interrupted. “The machines went haywire.”
“Yes, they did, but I looked at where the cloud was before that, and at the location after.”
Selvig pointed first to a general location in the mid-south and then directly to New York City.
“Based on the information we’ve gathered so far, in one day, that cloud would not have traveled that fast,” Selvig said. “And on top of that, it was concentrated to an incredibly precise area. Whatever happened three days ago spiked this cloud’s activity and drew it to this location.”
“Where is it now?” Jane asked. Selvig went back to the desk to retrieve his laptop.
“Back where it began, hovering over the southern states,” he said.
“I don’t mean to interrupt,” Thor started, “but what exactly is this cloud you speak of?”
Selvig and Jane looked at each other, but Darcy started first.
“Weird shit started happening after your last little visit,” she eloquently explained. “And SHEILD had Jane and Selvig look into it thinking it was more of those portal-things.”
“Incursions,” Jane corrected. “And they weren’t. And first off, what Darcy meant was that…unusual things were happening around the world…like…”
She looked to Selvig for help.
“Ghosts,” Darcy whispered to her.
“Supernatural things,” Selvig said. “Reports of human and sometimes animal possession for the most part.”
“And we all thought that there might have been something coming from another realm or dimension that was taking control of other people’s bodies,” Jane said.
“Or that there could be some bacteria or virus that was causing delusions,” Selvig added.
“But when we looked into the patterns of these events, we noticed this weird energy picking up on our satellite images, directly relating to the areas of the world were these reports were coming in. For instance, if the cloud was over…Texas, say, then there would be a ridiculous increase of these supernatural events in Texas. And when the cloud moved on, the activity would drop,” Jane said.
“All the activity SHEILD gets info on have been coming from inside the US,” Darcy added. “Usually from the Land of Dixie. Which is also weird.”
“Dixie?” Thor frowned.
“The south part of the country. The southern states,” Jane clarified.
“We knew pretty early on that what we were looking at was nothing like the Incursions,” Selvig said. “Or even like the portals created by the Tesseract. Those were very visible doorways between worlds. And they didn’t just move around— if they did, they would close up and reopen somewhere else. This cloud of energy can’t be seen by the naked eye and up until this week moved very slowly and predictably, seemingly leaking out negative energy wherever it went.”
“Not negative like radioactive,” Jane clarified, “negative—”
“Demonic,” Darcy interjected.
“It seems like this is something humans would react poorly too, leading to mass hysteria,” Loki commented from the back of the room.
Selvig rotated a pencil in his hands. “Well, yes, there has been a steady stream of false reports— people wanting attention, that sort of thing. But SHEILD created a team to investigate all incidents and determine what was real or not.”
“Do you know what caused this…cloud?” Thor asked.
“We suspect that all the energy put off by the Tesseract in New York and the Incursions over London stirred it up,” Selvig shrugged. “We only started following it about a year ago, and for all we know it’s been around longer. Maybe it just didn’t have a way to manifest before now.”
“I don’t claim to be an expert in bad news,” Loki chimed in again, “but that sounds like a great deal of grief waiting to be discovered in the near future.”
Thor and Selvig glanced at each other.
“It looks like it’s getting bigger,” Darcy commented as she watched the laptop over Jane’s shoulder.
“Yeah,” Jane said absently, “It’s covering more area…looks fairly stationary too, now that you mention it…”
Then she remembered something.
“You said that you had something about SHEILD, too,” she said to Selvig. His face lit up.
“That’s right! Let’s see here…I think I saved it to the desktop…a report on something SHEILD had looked into exactly three days ago.”
“I can already tell this is gonna be good,” Darcy grinned expectantly.
“Here we go—” Selvig handed the laptop back to Jane. She scanned the report quickly, then stopped, and went back to look closer at some passages.
“Oh my god.” Jane frowned.
“What? What?” Darcy moved closer.
“One of the people SHEILD has been looking for in connection to these events, Ronne Gorman, was found dead in a burning car three days ago, here in New York,” Selvig said to Thor. He then turned back to Jane. “But that isn’t all. And I know you probably aren’t going to like this next part.”
“Does it have to do with baseless superstitions?” Darcy asked.
“Almost. I’ve heard that Agent Coulson is currently in North Georgia, looking into a possible relative that may have been the one to kill Gorman. But I was also told that this supposed relative has been dead for 15 years,” Selvig said.
“No way,” Darcy looked excitedly between Selvig, Jane, and Thor.
“Oh, that’s ridiculous. Who’d you even hear that from?” Jane scoffed.
Selvig winced a little. “From Stark, but it’s no secret he’s been hacking into SHEILD’s system for ages; he very well could be right.”
“I’m sorry, but that all that just came out of your mouth sounds like something from a horror movie,” Jane said pointedly.
“Well we are dealing with an invisible cloud of demonic energy that wanders the globe possessing people,” Darcy reminded.
“Ok then, you tell me— if it is true that whoever killed Gorman, whether they’re related to Agent Coulson or not, lived or died or both in the south, where this energy cloud is right now, and was in New York to kill Gorman three days ago—” Jane threw her hands in the air. “I don’t even know what I’m asking. What’s the connection? What does it matter? What does this prove or disprove? How does this help us?”
“You have to at least admit that it’s a very noticeable coincidence,” Darcy said. “I mean, what are the odds?”
“Well,” Thor said slowly, causing the others to look up as though they’d forgotten his presence, “Agent Coulson is supposed to come to New York to give us further details on Loki’s arrangements. Perhaps we can ask him in person.”
“That I can agree to,” Jane concurred.

Notes