Phase One: Thor Page 4

  He knew what must be done. Laufey made his move, raising the ice blade and striking it toward Odin—but the All-Father was prepared. He raised his mighty spear, Gungnir, high over his head and slammed it down into the ice. The massive impact knocked back the advancing Frost Giants and caused the ice to break and crack. Odin then quickly called upon the Bifrost. Another hole ripped the sky, and before Laufey or the other Frost Giants could react, Odin pulled himself and the other Asgardians up and out of Jotunheim.

  They were safe for the moment. But Laufey would not forget the insult Thor had dealt him. There would be war with the Jotuns.

  And now Odin would have to deal with Thor.

  As soon as they arrived back in the Observatory, Odin sent Lady Sif and the Warriors Three back to the palace. Fandral and Volstagg needed healing, and what Odin had to say was to be said only to family. Turning to his elder son, he looked for any sign that Thor was sorry for what he had done. A sign that he knew his actions were those of a bold and arrogant young man not yet ready to rule. But Odin saw none, even when he told Thor he’d been wrong for going to Jotunheim, and that he had almost put an end to a peace that had lasted for years. Even then, Thor just stood there, defiant as always.

  “The Jotuns must know that the new king of Asgard will not be held in contempt,” Thor said.

  “That’s pride and vanity talking,” Odin said. “Have you forgotten everything I taught you? What of a warrior’s patience?”

  “While you’re patient, the Nine Realms laugh at us!” Thor shouted. “You’d give speeches while Asgard falls!”

  Thor’s anger stoked Odin’s temper. “You’re a vain, greedy, cruel boy,” he growled, the words hot on his tongue.

  “And you are an old man and a fool!” Thor shouted back.

  Odin felt a great weariness wash over him. The trip through the Bifrost had taken more energy than he had left to give, and his son’s words stabbed at him. “Yes,” he said, his voice bitter. “I was a fool to think you were ready.”

  Odin did not act without thought. And he had thought through the past day’s events quite thoroughly. He knew what he had to do, even if it meant losing his son forever. Thor needed to learn to be a true king. He needed to learn compassion and humility and patience, and he couldn’t do that here in Asgard.

  Thor needed to be stripped of his godly powers and sent to a realm where he would bleed and hurt like a mortal. He had to learn to put the needs of others before his own, so that he would be able to do the same for his people. There was no other choice. Thor needed to be sent to Midgard, the mortal realm whose people called it by another name: Earth.

  Stepping forward, Odin went to stand in front of the panel that controlled the Bifrost. He plunged his spear into the device, and the Observatory began to hum with energy. Turning, he walked over toward his elder son as his younger looked on.

  “You are unworthy of this realm,” he said, ripping a disk off Thor’s chest armor.

  “Unworthy of your title…” He ripped away Thor’s cloak.

  “Unworthy of the loved ones you’ve betrayed.” Odin’s voice cracked with emotion as he went on. “I hereby take from you your powers.” He held out a hand and Mjolnir flew into it.

  Thor’s eyes grew wide as the reality of the situation began to hit him. But his father wasn’t finished. “In the name of my father,” Odin continued, “and of his father before…

  “I cast you out!” Odin exclaimed. The Bifrost glowed strong, and in one swift move Odin pushed Thor through the portal. In moments, his son was gone from view.

  Then, looking down at the hammer he still held, Odin quietly added, “Whosoever holds this hammer, if he be worthy, shall possess the power of Thor.” With the last of his strength, he flung the hammer into the portal and watched it disappear.

  A violent shaking then overtook Odin. Time was running out, and there was much at stake. Would Asgard once again be at war with Jotunheim? Would Thor ever learn his lesson and find his way back home? Would father and son ever reconcile?

  And, most pressing, with Thor gone and Odin sleeping, who would rule the realm?

  Odin did not act without thought. But as the Odinsleep consumed him, he feared his thoughtful actions this time might mean the very end of Asgard.…

  A STRANGER’S ARRIVAL

  The air was dry and still. In Puente Antiguo, New Mexico, the stores were closed for the night, and the houses were quiet. The local residents were tucked inside, eating dinner and watching television. Parked on Main Street, which ran north and south through the center of town, was an old, beat-up utility vehicle. Darcy Lewis, a college intern working on Jane Foster’s newest research project, sat in the driver’s seat, swiping through social media posts on her phone. Jane’s mentor and friend, Dr. Erik Selvig, read through various papers on his laptop in the passenger seat.

  In the back of the van, Jane sat in front of a row of computer monitors and a variety of other scientific equipment. Most everything in the vehicle—including itself—had seen better days. The monitors were held together by duct tape, and some of the equipment was generations behind the most recent models—though Jane had managed to sneak in some very high-tech machines. As an astrophysicist who studied the stars for signs of spatial anomalies, she didn’t have a lot of people pounding down the door to give her funding for research or equipment.

  But that would change soon enough. She was sure of it. Her work here was getting her closer and closer to actual findings. And if tonight’s readings were any indication, something big was about to happen. Something very big.

  “Let’s go,” Jane said. Darcy put her phone away and started the van.

  They headed into the dark desert. For a while, there was only the sound of the wind through the open windows and the occasional beep from the computers. Finally, about twenty miles outside town, the van came to a stop. They had arrived at their destination.

  Jane popped the roof panels off the van and put her magnetometer on the roof. It would give her a reading about where the astral event would happen. There was a thunk below her, and Selvig said, “Ouch!” Then he stuck his head up next to Jane.

  “So what’s this anomaly of yours supposed to look like?” he asked.

  Jane climbed onto the roof and got settled.

  “It’s a little different each time,” she said. “Once it looked like, I don’t know, melted stars pooling in a corner of the sky. But last week it was a rolling rainbow ribbon—”

  “Racing round Orion?” Selvig teased her. “I always said you should have been a poet.”

  He was a colleague and friend of Jane’s father, and he knew that her potential was limitless. He just wished she had chosen a field of study that was more easily accepted by the rest of the scientific community. While he had always believed in her, he feared her ideas might be too far ahead of their time for the rest of the world. Selvig’s thoughts were interrupted by the beeping from one of Jane’s devices.

  The beeping increased, and Jane checked the magnetometer again.

  “Here we go…” she said, excitement in her voice as she stared up at the sky. Selvig joined her. “In three… two… one… now!”

  Nothing happened.

  “Wait for it,” Jane said.

  Still nothing.

  Leaning out the front window, Darcy looked up at Jane. “Can I turn on the radio?” she asked. It was pretty boring out there in the dark.

  Jane shot her a look. “No,” she snapped.

  Frustrated, Jane sank back into the van. Selvig’s expression was sympathetic. He knew how much this night had meant to Jane. He watched as she opened a notebook full of calculations. She didn’t go anywhere without that notebook. It held her life’s work. Which, at the moment, seemed useless. If she couldn’t prove to Selvig—who believed in her—that she had actual data that added up to something, she would never be able to convince a stranger. This was her last chance.

  “The last seventeen occurrences have been predictable to the second, Erik!” s
he cried. She ran a hand through her light brown hair, her usually beautiful features marred by tension. “I just don’t understand.”

  Turning back to her monitors, she began to rerun the calculations, looking for an error in her numbers, something, anything, to explain why nothing had happened. Focused on the screens, she didn’t notice the odd glowing clouds that had formed in the sky. They came out of nowhere, their edges tinted in faint rainbow colors.

  Darcy, however, did notice. “Jane?” she said over her shoulder.

  “What?” Jane shouted back. Now was not the time to ask about music or if Darcy could do her nails or whatever else might be on Darcy’s mind. “There’s got to be a variable I haven’t considered,” she said, talking to herself. Displays on her equipment started to flicker and show obviously incorrect readings. “Or an equipment problem.” She tapped one of the monitors, on the off chance that the problem was a loose connection she could jar back into place.

  But then the whole van started to shake. Darcy said, “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your equipment.” Her tone was serious, so Jane lifted her head and looked through the front window.

  Her jaw dropped.

  In front of her was something unlike anything she had ever seen before. It looked as if the constellations had been sucked down from the sky and had gathered in a huge cloud. The rainbow light had grown stronger, brightening the area of the desert below the hovering cloud.

  “That’s your subtle aurora?” Selvig asked. He looked amazed.

  “No—yes! Drive!” she shouted to Darcy before turning around and grabbing a camera.

  As they raced through the night, Jane popped up out of the roof again and began filming. Her mind raced with the possibilities of what this could mean. Funding would be no problem once people got ahold of this footage. It was unbelievable. Then she frowned. Was it too unbelievable?

  “You’re seeing it, too, right?” she asked Selvig. “I’m not crazy!”

  Popping his head up through the roof, he said, “That’s debatable!” over the sound of the gathering storm. Jane relaxed. If Selvig was joking with her, that meant he believed her. He got serious only when he was questioning something.

  The winds grew stronger. At the center of the clouds, a dark mass began to swirl faster and faster, forming a tornado. The strange rainbow light grew even brighter. “We’ve got to get closer!” Jane shouted to Darcy just as a huge bolt of lightning cut through the clouds and struck the ground. The van rocked on its wheels, and Darcy struggled to keep the vehicle level.

  “That’s it!” she cried. “I’m done! I’m not dying for six college credits!” Yanking the wheel with both hands, she tried to turn the van. But Jane wasn’t about to let that happen. Jumping forward, she reached toward the wheel and tried to grab it. The two struggled for control while the wind outside whipped and howled. The van’s headlights bounced over the desert, illuminating the form of a large man!

  The man stumbled out of the storm, his clothes tattered and his eyes dazed. Looking up, Jane had only a moment to see confusion in his striking blue eyes. Jerking the wheel, she tried to avoid him, but—BAM! The van sideswiped the man, sending him flying.

  The vehicle came to a stop, and a shocked silence filled the space as Jane, Darcy, and Selvig stared first at each other and then at the crumpled body on the ground. Then, as if jolted by electricity, they all leaped out of the van, Jane in the lead. She raced over to the man’s side and knelt down, hoping and praying that she would find him breathing.

  But she hadn’t expected or hoped to find the handsomest man she had ever seen. His features looked as though they had been sculpted out of marble by a master. His chest was wide and his shoulders chiseled. His long blond hair lay undisturbed despite the windy conditions, and Jane had the overwhelming urge to run her hands through it. I hit a model, Jane thought, as she stared at him. This is going to get me in so much trouble.

  “I think that was legally your fault,” Darcy said.

  Jane didn’t have time to argue about it. “Get the first-aid kit!” she snapped. Darcy ran back to the van.

  Jane leaned over the man and said, “Come on, big guy, do me a favor and don’t be dead, okay?”

  At the sound of her voice, the man groaned, and his eyelids fluttered. Then eyes of the deepest azure locked on Jane, and, for a moment, she forgot to breathe.

  “His eyes…” she said.

  “Are dreamy,” Darcy said. She’d come back with the first-aid kit, but she wasn’t thinking about it now.

  Shaking her head, Jane rocked back on her heels. She needed to get a grip. She was more levelheaded than this. Clearly, this evening’s events had made her a bit more emotional than she usually was, and the stress of hitting this guy was making her feel sympathy for him, nothing more. She was a scientist. Not some foolish young girl falling for a stranger. Yes, she thought, it’s just the night making me think foolish things.

  “We still need to get him to a hospital,” Selvig said.

  Jane sighed. “After we finish our readings?” she suggested.

  But the night sky was clearing, and the wind calmed to an ordinary desert breeze. If Jane hadn’t been right in the middle of it, she would never have known the night had turned so stormy. And why, she wondered, did it seem connected with this man lying in front of her?

  Looking back down at him, she narrowed her gaze. Where had he come from?

  A few uneasy moments passed. Then the man lying on the ground in front of Jane sat up abruptly, startling her. Staggering to his feet, he gazed down at his clothes, then up at the sky, and then back at Jane, who still sat on the desert floor. Stumbling from the impact, the stranger looked at them with a mixture of disappointment and disgust.

  “Are you okay?” Jane asked, realizing even as she spoke that it was a rather silly question since he was obviously fine, though a bit disoriented. The blond man didn’t answer. Instead, he continued to scan the ground. “Hammer,” he said finally.

  Jane didn’t know what to say to that. She was about to respond, when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw odd markings etched in the sand near where the man had landed. “We’ve got to move fast, before anything changes,” she said, her earlier excitement returning. Jane grabbed handfuls of soil samples, hoping to run a battery of tests on the earth when they got back to the lab. Then she realized it would be good to write everything down, so she reached for her notebook.

  In fact, Jane was so absorbed in her work that she didn’t notice Selvig and Darcy giving her odd looks. Finally, Selvig spoke. “Jane,” he said gently, “we need to get him to a hospital.” He nodded in the direction of the large man, who was wandering around the area, looking lost and sad.

  Jane shook her head and kneeled down to scoop up another soil sample. “Look at him,” she said absently. “He’s fine.”

  “Father! Heimdall!” the man screamed, raising his hands to the sky. “Open the bridge!”

  So maybe he wasn’t completely fine. But Jane wasn’t about to waste time taking a mental case to the hospital when there was so much to go over here. “You and Darcy take him to the hospital,” she said. “I’ll stay here.”

  As she spoke, the man approached Darcy. “You!” he said, his voice booming in the quiet desert. “What world is this? Alfheim? Nornheim?”

  “Uh… New Mexico,” Darcy said, raising an eyebrow. What was this guy on? He may have been the hottest thing she’d ever seen, but he was seriously loopy.

  Suddenly, he whirled, his expression furious. Darcy took an involuntary step back and reached into her pocket for the weapon she always carried with her. Holding it up in front of her, she tried to keep her finger from shaking.

  “You dare threaten Thor with so puny a—”

  Thor, as he called himself, didn’t get to finish. Darcy fired, and he fell to the ground, convulsing with the electrical jolts. A moment later, he was unconscious.

  Looking at the man on the ground and then at Darcy, Jane sighed. It seemed she would be
going to the hospital after all.

  Puente Antiguo was not busy, even in the middle of the day. But in the dead of night, it was practically a ghost town. The county hospital was no different. A few townies roamed the emergency room, having been dropped off after spending a bit too much time at the local tavern. The skeleton crew of nurses and doctors barely gave them any notice. Apparently, this happened almost every night.

  What did not happen every night was having a man like Thor brought into the place. With considerable effort, Jane, Selvig, and Darcy managed to get him from the van and onto a gurney. Leaving the others to keep an eye on him, Jane made her way to the admitting area. A young nurse sat behind the desk, filing her nails. Jane cleared her throat.

  Looking up, the nurse smiled. Then, in a manner that could only be described as painstaking, she began the process of admitting Thor.

  “Name?” she asked, her fingers poised over the keyboard.

  “He said it was Thor,” Jane answered.

  The nurse typed out each letter with one finger. T-H-O-R. “And your relationship to him?”

  “I’ve never met him before,” Jane said.

  “Until she hit him with the car,” Darcy added helpfully.

  Jane shot her a look. “Grazed him, actually. And she stunned him,” she quickly added, trying to make that sound worse than hitting him with her car.

  “I’m going to need a name and contact number,” the nurse said, either too tired or not bright enough to care that Jane had just admitted to hitting a man with her car. As Jane spelled out her name, the nurse once again slowly typed each letter. Click-click-click. Jane felt her shoulders tensing, and she was just about to scream when Selvig walked over and handed his card to the nurse.