It’s just her and Jemma Fitzsimmons in the lab most days, and the latter is always there first. She’s glad for that. She hasn’t absolved her for what she’s done, and Stacey can admit she probably shouldn’t. But she has admitted that, “noone’s hands are clean in this place,” and more than that, she’s kind to her. Especially about the various psychological issues she still has even half a year of having her own mind back. Leo Fitzsimmons apparently suffered from mind invasion/control twice.
Including that she still struggles with just the thought of space, and aliens, and all the other terrifying things out there she knew too much about even before she came here and learned more about them. So she’s not much help on Jemma’s quest to find her husband. Which she’s sorry for; especially when it’s nice to think one of them might still get that.
Today, however, Stacey finds her at her own table, the container with Old Lace’s remains is on it, next to a transparent container holding some sort of floating dark substance; Stacey can’t tell whether it’s liquid or plasma. She looks up to see her enter without really reacting. “We have a new sample of material from LA which was confiscated from the Watchdogs. Thankfully they had no real idea what it was, but can only tell us vaguely where they accidentally dug it up. It bears qualities similar to Darkforce, as well as a similar substance found in New Orleans. And very similar quantities of trace elements to those we found in your dinosaur dust.”
Stacey shakes her head as she comes over. “We bred her completely apart from Jonah and his stuff. If she had it, and others didn’t-which I suppose we can’t know-then she got it from somewhere else. Maybe on the road with Dale and Gert? I never learned exactly what happened to them there.” They can ask Gert, Stacey supposes, and she might or might not be willing to tell them. She won’t tell her mother, that’s for sure.
“I don’t think it was your alien friends either. There’ve been multiple incidents in LA involving an unidentified substance that I’m thinking was probably also related, may have even been this. The first back in 1947, and the old SSR records paint a picture I don’t think Jonah’s persona at the time would fit into easily. In fact, it indicates this stuff may be less from outer space and more interdimensional-because other dimensions do exist; we’ve seen more than enough of them here at S.H.I.E.L.D.”
“Really” Stacey doesn’t hide her fascination. “What’s come out of there?” A sudden, wild, crazy, hopeful thought hit her. “And what have they absorbed into them? Do you think…if they left behind these particles, are we sure what happened was everyone dying and not…not…” It’s so overwhelming a thought she can’t finish it. If everybody just needs to be rescued…if could at least have Dale again to share this new life with her…
From Jemma’s somber expression, she can tell she’s already thought this. “I don’t know everything about how it happened,” she says. “But I know the individual who caused her was very deliberately planning to kill half of all life in the universe, and by all accounts it looks like he succeeded.”
“I know his name is Thanos, and he used a bunch of magic stones,” Stacey tells her, because she’s hardly the only one who’s heard that by now. “But are you sure he really knew what they did? Where did he find them? What history do we have on them? Has anyone looked into any of this?”
“I would think the Avengers would have,” says Jemma, but she suddenly doesn’t sound without hope anymore. “I do wish they would pass such information down to us. They don’t trust us, you know.”
Stacey wouldn’t expect them to trust her anyway. She can work with this situation. “But if we can pass information up to them, maybe we can look further into this? How many samples of things do we have in the Lighthouse?”
“A few, and we may get more, all the places we’ve been going to lately. Meanwhile, we have this and the remains of your dinosaur. There are a good number of properties of both of those we haven’t determined. I want to see how this sample interacts with certain substances in gas form. Why don’t you look over the list and see which ones you want to do first?”
It’s the first time anyone’s ask Stacey for any kind of input in what she or anyone else will be doing since she was possessed full time and denied even full consciousness, let alone choice. She won’t say anything to that, but maybe Jemma knows what she’s done, as she goes for another tablet and taps commands. She herself picks up the one she was working with, taking a look first at all the data Jemma’s entered this morning.