Precisely because Thor had returned to Asgard and never come back, Jane simply couldn't let go of her research on the Bifrost.
Especially after the Battle of New York—when she realized Thor had come back to Earth without coming to see her—she grew increasingly anxious and insecure, even starting to think she should find herself a new boyfriend.
What Jane didn't know was that because Loki had tried to use the Bifrost to destroy Jotunheim, Thor had been forced to destroy the Bifrost himself. He had saved Jotunheim, yes, but in doing so, Asgard had lost its grip on the Nine Realms, and the Nine Realms had plunged into chaos and war.
Afterward, Odin had paid a heavy price just to send Thor to Earth.
Thor's participation in the Battle of New York had been nothing more than an accident. His real purpose in coming to Earth had been to bring back Loki and the Tesseract—because only the Tesseract's power could repair the Bifrost, and only once the Bifrost was repaired could he travel swiftly to every corner of the Nine Realms and quell the wars as quickly as possible.
As it turned out, the Tesseract went missing. In truth, Heimdall knew the Tesseract was in Zodhis's hands, and Odin knew as well—but they didn't tell Thor.
The main reason was that Zodhis's strength had already become invincible. He had subdued Gladiator, the strongest warrior of the Shi'ar Empire—a powerhouse even Odin wasn't confident he could handle.
So yes, Thor had been too busy dealing with the Nine Realms' problems to return to Earth.
But Thor had been away from Jane for so long that she was now trying to find a new boyfriend.
However, just as she was about to meet the new guy, Jane's good assistant and best friend, Darcy Lewis, showed up with an instrument displaying abnormal readings, claiming the anomalies matched exactly what Dr. Selvig had been rambling about.
Darcy knew all about Jane and Thor's story, so she deliberately—or not so deliberately—sabotaged the date. Just like that, Jane's date ended before it even began.
With the date ruined, Jane headed out with Darcy and Darcy's assistant Ian to investigate the gravitational anomaly zone. Along the way, she tried calling Dr. Selvig, but no one picked up, so she had to leave a voicemail.
In reality, Dr. Selvig wasn't avoiding her call—he'd been detained by British police.
As a scientist who had studied the Tesseract, he had his own theories about cosmic space. To prove his hypothesis, he'd gone to Stonehenge to take some measurements, and for reasons unknown, had also gone streaking while he was at it.
Stonehenge is one of the world's great unsolved mysteries—a famous prehistoric cultural temple site in Europe, located on the Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, southwest of London, built around 2300 BC.
Streaking at a world-famous landmark like that, it would've been strange if Dr. Selvig hadn't been arrested. But Jane and Darcy knew nothing about this. They simply followed the instrument's readings toward the gravitational anomaly zone.
The location indicated by the instrument was an abandoned factory. Even the sky there looked different from elsewhere—dark and gloomy, as if it might rain at any moment.
And some of the old shipping containers were stacked in strange ways, most of them standing upright.
The abandoned factory was vast and empty. When Jane's group entered, they were surprised to spot figures inside.
Jane couldn't help but voice her concern.
"I did not sign up for a science project where I end up getting stabbed to death."
Darcy didn't want that either, and she loudly announced that she was American.
Fortunately, the figures turned out to be two boys and a girl—three kids.
They had stumbled upon the gravitational anomaly here by accident and had turned it into a form of entertainment.
After some conversation, the kids led them to see a cement truck.
Inside a large warehouse, a miraculous sight unfolded before everyone's eyes.
A cement truck weighing over a dozen tons floated silently in midair. With just a light lift from two of a child's fingers, it slowly began to rotate in the air.
The scene completely stunned everyone present.
"That is not normal!" Darcy murmured.
But a Black boy standing nearby spoke up.
"There's something even weirder. Follow me."
Following the boy's lead, everyone climbed up to the fourth floor of an unfinished building.
On the open-air stairwell, the boy picked up an empty bottle and dropped it into the gap in the middle of the stairwell. The bottle didn't shatter—it vanished before hitting the ground, as if sinking into an invisible surface.
Seeing the bottle disappear like that, Jane couldn't help asking.
"Where did it go?"
The only girl in the group pointed overhead—and then—
Everyone witnessed something even more astonishing. The bottle suddenly appeared in the sky, continuing to fall, then vanished again before hitting the ground, repeating the cycle over and over until the boy caught it.
"This is incredible!" Jane exclaimed.
She picked up a soda can and tried it herself. Sure enough, after she dropped it, it disappeared—but it never came back.
Everyone stared up at the sky for a long while, but the can never reappeared. Jane looked completely baffled.
"What's going on?"
The girl explained.
"Sometimes they come back. Sometimes they don't."
While Darcy and the others were absorbed in their game of dropping things, Jane noticed that the instrument's readings closely resembled the values from back in Mexico, when Thor had first appeared. She decided to take the instrument and search for the exact center of the readings on her own.
She walked deeper into the corridor. In a dim hallway, the instrument in Jane's hand began beeping with alarms.
Jane checked the readings and muttered to herself.
"The values have maxed out. Let's see what's up ahead."
The hallway was dark, and Jane could barely make anything out.
She took a few steps forward when she felt a cold wind blow from behind her, followed by an immense suction force pulling at her, dragging her forward.
For an ordinary person, this force would be absolutely overwhelming. Jane could barely resist as she was pulled in completely.
Then she found herself in a pitch-dark space, with only the faintest glimmers of light. She stood at the edge of a cliff, and below was a bottomless abyss.
In this deathly silent space, like a chasm of nothingness, broken stone pillars lay scattered everywhere. Closest to her were two rectangular stone blocks stacked together.
The two blocks were pressed tightly against each other.
Behind the stone pillars floated a cluster of crimson crystal particles, swirling and flowing like liquid, giving off a dreamlike, ethereal feeling.
This fog-like substance—impossible to tell whether it was solid or liquid—was enveloping Jane.
She quickly lost consciousness.
…
In the far depths of the universe, enormous meteorites orbited a pitch-black warship.
In the blink of an eye, specks of red light began to flicker to life across the vessel.
/-\
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