Even before the sun had risen, Audrey's thighs were sweat-sticky against the black leather seat of the S.H.I.E.L.D. van. This part of the country always reminded her, with little fondness, of her time in San Bernardino, back when she was still working in the archives. New Mexico was prettier, though, dawn clawing at the sky and pulling pink from its skin.
"Are we there yet?" Jessica asked from the backseat, though her sleep-drenched voice made it sound more like, rwethryeh?
"Not yet," Audrey replied. "An hour out."
"God, it's hot," Carmen complained from the passenger seat. She had half a library balanced precariously on her lap, books on magnets, books on gravity, books on dirt. The 0-8-4, as far as they knew, was a mallet wedged so firmly in the earth that it wouldn't move. In the time since they'd left Chicago, the four of them had thrown out as many hypotheses as they could come up with. Carmen, resident archaeologist, was torn between believing that it was something to do with magnets and something to do with the dirt. Before she'd put in her headphones and fallen asleep, Lindsey, their engineer, had theorized a reaction between the dense metal of the hammerhead and the unrelenting desert sun. Jessica, who'd at some point been a medical student before she became an autopsist, had guessed aliens, before tuning out and picking up some kids' books on mythology.
Audrey had no idea. She wasn't a scientist by training—she wasn't anything by training, really, and even if her semester of architecture classes counted for anything anywhere (they didn't) they certainly weren't going to make a difference now. When she'd asked Fury three years ago for reassignment to something more interesting than the archives, he'd given her administrative leadership of an 0-8-4 team based in Chicago. It wasn't combat, but she couldn't complain. Her office had windows now, and she was better at putting things together than she'd expected to be. Peggy would be proud, if they ever talked.
