18831/Ex Umbra: Rivers of Belief

Ex Umbra: Rivers of Belief
Date of Scene:	14 August 2024
Location:	Attilan: Technical Quarter
Synopsis:	No description
Cast of Characters:	Jane Foster, Daisy Johnson, Jemma Simmons
Tinyplot:	Praxidike

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Jane Foster has posed:
Sometime around midnight...

It may be midnight local time to the Moon, but the lunar timezone hasn't been properly ratified by NASA, so who knows what time it's actually in New York City. Enough the Moon rises in the sky as a growing golden orb from the summer humidity, not quite achieving its fullness for a few days yet. Jupiter and Mars hang perilously close to the satellite in the tightest alignment of any planets in the sky in this year. A pretty sight for anyone determined to enjoy the view outside the city's glare, though even two brighter objects in the sky remain difficult to spot through the nebulous halo of light pollution wrapping the metropolis in its sickly sulfurous splendour.

Tonight is nothing special, by celestial standards, or at least no more special than the other 363 days of the year. Exclusions apply for the full solar eclipse witnessed over much of North America, and another exciting and terrible arrival just over the horizons. Those perturbations ripple gently across Earth to known agencies, SHIELD certainly among them.

SHIELD has plenty of reason to worry about the Earth being devoured. They aren't, as a rule, looking at the unremarkable satellite most noteworthy for a Justice League-initiated space station floating around the place. They don't exactly know about the hidden civilisation that's been ensconced up there for quite some time nor the energy fluctuations that ripple out from a given, obscured point and hit relays carefully obscured by advanced technology that would barely register on black ops satellites. There's a reason for that; see hidden as a clarification. But one moment there's silence.

Another, on a forgotten device stuffed long ago in a Delaware bunker, then stored in a lab, then thrust into lunar protection when angels were flying around -- literally that long ago, no? -- comes a volley of entangled biometric data, signals of oxygen levels plummeting, containment failing, and one ferocious spike before all systems stop. Entirely. Nothing, nada, zilch.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
".... I am serious, Sir."

That's Daisy, finishing her talk with JENKINS, the evil supervisor who is none too happy with the Inhuman superhero not having been around for her SHIELD duties. Which just meant more forms in triplicate for poor Jenkins. And now Daisy was due some graveyard shifts. Oh joy! She leaves the meeting room with a sigh, fishing out her phone to send a message on the Furiae group, which was her default contact with Jemma these days.

Text to Furiae group Hey Jemma, you at the lab?

Jane Foster has posed:
That telling silence from readings or recordings going to a particular person in the world simply falls off a cliff. Not a blip, not a momentary pause. Seconds tick on and they relay nothing, an ominous silence from the realm of the Silent King.

Appropriate, no?

Daisy Johnson has posed:
Another message is shot out right after, those Daisy fingers on fire.

[Text to Furiae Group] Jemma! I am incoming ETA on your lab in 2 minutes.
[Text to Furiae Group] Do you need anything?

Daisy starts pacing towards the lab, just a small detour to the vending machine for a couple of chocolate bars. She knows Jemma has a sweet tooth. And then off she goes up towards the lab at a brisk pace.

Jane Foster has posed:
"What... you just... get back!" Jenkins has to qualify his intent as Daisy heads out, sticking his head out of the doorway of their office. He can hardly shout down the hallway; it wouldn't do for his superiors to hear *him* possibly disclosing classified information. There are reports to run, checks to make, and heaps of intel to parse through. He throws his hands to his thinning hair, pushing it back, as if he has a choice in the matter.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
A solidary word shimmers into view to the singular question asked.

Text to Furiae Group Yes.

Then, a few seconds later, another response.

Text to Furiae Group No.

Both...came from Jemma. No other explanation, other than yes, she is in the lab. No, she doesn't need anything. Makes perfect sense. At least to her.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
With Jenkins peering out to call her back in Daisy just quickens the pace, full-on pretending she didn't hear him at all. She is too busy texting it out with her bestie! And may just go and commiserate about the unfairness of it all. Hence the chocolate for Jemma to not just throw her off the lab.

[Text to Furiae Group] Too late, I already got u goodies

She understands Jemma text-speech easily enough to interpret the meaning behind it. And soon enough she is nearing the door, looking over her shoulder to make sure Jenkins hasn't pursued her here.

And she pushes into the lab at last.

Jane Foster has posed:
Jenkins goes back to his desk, looking perfectly out of sorts. He pulls on his headset and daydreams of a concert he won't get to see with the hours he works. Nothing like having a truculent co-worker under his watch, even if they're both high ranking and fully capable agents. "Hmph."

He has something to write up later.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
And...as the doors push open, there is one Doctor Jemma Simmons.

And, she is in her element. With the labcoat on and what appears to be a newer model of the tablet she usually carries, the brunette is standing with her back to the door, her eyes upon the screens before her as it looks like she is analyzing some sort of organic compound with a much-too-long name.

Without turning around, she calls out. "Hello, Daisy. Just give me a moment. This is a particularly tricky substance, so I just want to finish while I have it in the crystallization stage the complex compound is in now."

Translation? Sensitive scientific stuff going on. Jemma will be with Daisy in a moment.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
Was Daisy expecting to be received apotheotically? Not really, this is par for the course where it comes to Daisy coming to meet Jemma at her sanctum. The work and science comes first! So she grins and remains quiet to let Jemma get through examining what she's tending to, walking towards the counter next to Jemma.

It's a quietude that lasts only a few moments because it's Daisy and she likes to talk, "Tricky? How tricky are we talking about?" because of course she wants to know all the details.

The chocolate bag is set on the counter and she mmms at something on a screen, lips pursing together.

"Is that supposed to be blinking red..?" she wonders.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
"Tricky like building a sand castle on a speaker." That should give Daisy an idea. "The crystalline matrix needs a few moments to solidity or it all tumbles down like a house of cards." Oh, another visual for Daisy. "we are almost......" The word hangs in the air as Jemma holds a finger, watching for some telltale sign that her work isn't for naught.

"There. Done. We're past the critical stage."

Brown eyes flick up to regard Daisy. "So...hello to you, Daisy." Those eyes flicker with confusion as Daisy asks about a blinking red light. "Wait...what?"

Jemma quickly turns around to see what Daisy is talking about. And...considering this is Jemma's personal setup, she immediately has a pretty good feeling what red light is flashing. The tablet is snatched up as Jemma flicks a screen closed, only to go to open another. A screen shortcut that sits in prominent view.

A shortcut labeled 'Jane - Medical'.

Jane Foster has posed:
If every agent came bearing chocolate, AIM would be flummoxed, plenty of scientists less given to evil, and worker morale could see a significant high. Someone tell Fury or Hill.

Whatever experiments that Jemma might conduct, surely it's for the good of all and sundry.

Someone spent all the taxpayer money in these labs. They certainly are best used and not left to molder under dust or turn to sand, decomposing slowly.

The red light in question is tied to the dashboard or whatever elegant interface the likes of Dr. Simmons might have designed, refined or forgot about. Details become pretty plain in the numbers crashing to zero, the signal failing, the absolute lack of data played out over a certain span. Absolutely no fluctuations for seeming eons, a flat line that shudders like an angry toddler manhandling a pencil, shallow needle darts up and down until skidding under the baseline and jaggedly spiking and crashing across a good ten minute interval. Comparatively spiking anyway as the oxygen level plummets slowly at first, and then as the staccato marks rise ever higher, takes a straight plunge off the deep end.

Temperature changes a little, creeping upwards. Integrity of said 80s over-engineering produces small fluctuations until the whole thing simply fails to give any readings at all, a minute ripple that becomes a rogue wave without any precursor whatsoever even a hundredth of its force.

The only weirdness before that -- inert gas displacement registering three separate 'pops' that suggest changing volumes before going back completely to normal. All in a sequence of microseconds, until the third one, lasting a full 2.94 seconds.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
It's only a blinking red light, right? What could go wrong? When Jemma steps back to go check it Daisy takes a moment to inspect that crystalline matrix, peering in through the microscope. As said earlier this is Jemma's sanctum so what could go wrong?

Though as she looks back up again and spots that 'Jane - Medical' shortcut she blinks and is immediately on Jemma's case.

Which in this case means she is looming right behind her and looking over the Brit's shoulder to what's going on at the screen, "So, it's finally happening..." whatever is Daisy talking about? Was she expecting something like this to happen?

And for some reason it's almost as if she expected Jemma to know about it too.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
"What do you mean by 'finally happening'?"

That answer betrays a singular fact. Jemma has no idea what Daisy is talking about. "Were you expecting this?" Because Jemma surely was not.

The medical doctor starts to run the numbers. Looking at the pressures and whatnot now do not do much. But it is not now that Jemma is looking at. She is looking at historical data. "There is a 10 minute delay for updates. Whatever happened has happened recently. So we should be able to see what it is from the archival data." When did she have time to set that up? One of the many things that Jemma doesn't mention. But...as she looks over the data, there is a slow but pronounced widening of the eyes. "If...if I am not mistaken, Daisy, I would swear that Jane just woke up."

Are there cameras on site? Of course there are. And, Jemma throws in a password to flick them on...

Jane Foster has posed:
Crunching data that hasn't altered in months upon years, even during the odd lunaquake, says something.

Numbers stay stable. Gas volumes and atomic compositions simply don't fluctuate much. The very occasional jarred movement, probably because of some sort of physical necessity like cleaning or checking on matters up there -- in a shrouded space where few are free to roam around wherever they like -- otherwise marks a completely boring set of parameters going back as far as Jemma's collected data. Indeed, there aren't any changes whatsoever in the threshold of being stuck in cryostasis. That's the point. Ice holds heroes eternal, just ask Steve Rogers. Everyone knows that; his decades-long rest in Antarctica is a little unlike the containment field used by his once paramour, but the point applies.

Now the sensors simply aren't detecting anything except for one fragmentary chunk of residual information pinging weakly at a 70-something percent nitrogen and much closer to twenty-two percent oxygen, stable and completely unaltered. Definitely not the hollow, inert atmosphere at frigid temperatures that bespeak an unchanging state of affairs for someone dead. Preserved, however that goes.

The plunge over a cliff is commensurate with something more sudden, destructive.

Dark; the cameras aren't going to pick up light because there's no reason for the space wherever this was contained to be lit -- and besides, if there were cameras, it's bound to be an extraordinarily narrow focus among a xenophobic, insular people barely tolerant of the human in their midst, because the human herself is the property of one shadowy figure probably visible or at least -- in his way -- audible.

A narrow frame in the dark shows the faint glimmers of broken glass. A silhouette in the dark on the ground, others rushing in -- words soft, not English, but to Daisy probably vaguely familiar as sounds of concern, comments of worry, almost all with a masculine selection of gender-nuanced verbs and nouns. Not the feminine; that one shows up only sporadically. Though the mistake of putting a hand on the smaller of the figures is evidenced in a good deal of the glass scattering backwards along the floor, another person with it. Oops.

Daisy Johnson has posed:
"Jemma. The whole adventure we went through? When you didn't tell me anything I figured you wanted us to stay quiet until we got confirmation. I mean, it was quite the ordeal..." Daisy is looking at Jemms with a bit of a raised brow but that talk seems postponed when the images come up and they get to see some of what happened. She points at the screen.

"Look!" and then she blinks a few times, "They seem to be in panic about someone returning..., but they are talking about a him, not Jane.." that confuses her.

"Was this Jane's pod?" She asks, looking at Jemma and then back to the screen again, "We need to go up there." easier said than done without a Lockjaw nearby.

"My mother may be able to contact Attilan." She suggests.

Jemma Simmons has posed:
There isn't an immediate answer for Daisy. Jemma is still too concerned with pulling up past info. But....there is an answer after a few moments of silence. "It is her pod. On the dark side of the moon." And that is about all of the answer she gives in terms of the screen.

Jemma does, however, stop to look at Daisy, inquisitively. "What adventure? I have no idea what you are talking about, Daisy. I haven't been out in the field for quite some time." It doesn't take an expert to know that what Jemma says is what she feels to be true. "We did something? Are you sure you are feeling well?"

Because why else would Daisy insist they went through something major when Jemma has absolutely no recollection of it whatsoever. Jemma just doesn't forget things.

Does she?

Jane Foster has posed:
Oh, there's a venture into the darkest annals of Hell. A chase across the golden river where angels watched over the first mortals made this time around.

Daisy gets a translation of the general concern for a male individual from the mostly ruined speakers on said cryo-pod, which lies in thousands of pieces, none terribly big, all around the floor. Excellent technology that preserved Peggy Carter to the modern era did the same, albeit on a much shorter time frame, for its current occupant.

The one garnering far less interest than, say, the woman present. Conversations rattle off about getting them out of the way; yes, mind the glass. No, soundproofed chamber. Somewhere safe. Tell the others - make them decide where. As if... no, not the Human Quarter, does someone want to lose their privileges or status? Hardly!

Hush grows even more profound except for a trailing sigh, a breathless noise pushed out from lungs still freshly accustoming themselves to the business of doing what nature intended them to do. Muscles aching, tensing from the demands push out the merest syllables of a whisper. "... ckagar?"

Then a summary crunch suggests movement of a group of people, out of ruined pod room #7.