Jupiter [Marvel Phase I]

sixteen.

Jenn awoke with a startled cry, body nearly launching her out of the bed. A hand found her heart, beating rapidly under her palm. Her breathing was fast and labored.

Outside her window, a shock of lightning lit the room. Her room. Jenn was at home. She was safe.

Seconds later, a loud crash shook the room. Thunder. Maybe that was what had awoken her; not another kind of nearby explosion.

When Jenn closed her eyes, she could see it all in excruciating detail. The way the smell of smoke lingered in her hair, the echo of sirens ringing in her ears....Harry's face, illuminated by warning lights.

It was just a dream, Jenn tried to tell herself, but it felt so real. So lived in. What's more, it felt nostalgic. If Jenn thought back on it hard enough, she could sense glimmers of what had happened before and what came after.

Another flash of lightning helped clear images of that smoky hallway from her mind. Jenn looked around, trying to discern what about her room seemed out of place. The smell of ozone, which her abilities were quickly acquainting her with, permeated the air. Had she been sending off sparks in her sleep? The next flash of lightning gave her a good look at the scorch marks she'd left on the sheets. And, wait, where was her comforter?

The crash of her door being thrown open, combined with a conveniently-timed thunderclap, had Jenn nearly screaming all over again. When she saw who it was in the doorway, she scrambled to cover the burnt sheets.

"Jenn! Jenn, are you alright?" Harry's familiar voice soothed her panic. "I thought I heard screaming."

With the light streaming in from the hall, she could finally see it; the comforter, stuck to the ceiling by static cling. Oh, that was so not normal. What if Harry saw it? Jenn gulped, desperately hoping not to draw attention to it.

"Um, yeah, yeah- All good. I'm fine," Jenn rushed out. "Just having a bit of a bad dream."

"A bad dream? Was it about...?" Harry asked in that hesitant tone he always got when the crash was brought up.

Jenn shook her head. In the corner of her eye, she could see part of the comforter begin to droop. One side of her nervous smile, her grimace, started slipping too. She needed Harry out of here. Fast.

"No, no. Something else," Jenn replied. "It was just a bad dream is all." If it wasn't about the crash, then he wouldn't really care, she hoped. Sure, he'd made an appearance in the dream, but he didn't need to know that.

"Oh, really? What about?" Harry pressed.

"Nothing, um, nothing important. Just one of those 'gotta escape this building 'cause it's on fire' kind of ordeals," Jenn said with as much casualty as she could muster.

"Some kind of place like, I dunno, a laboratory?" Harry asked and Jenn felt her breath hitch.

How the hell- "Erm, yeah, a bit like that, actually," Jenn nodded slowly. His face, or rather the way he'd appeared in her dream - younger, still brunette - flashed in her mind. Suddenly, the comforter on her ceiling wasn't her most pressing concern.

"Well, I know it's not about the crash, but you do seem pretty shaken by this," Harry began, but something in his voice didn't sound right - like all the pauses and inflections were planned in advance. "You haven't seen Dr. Ingram in a while. Like me to schedule a visit?"

Actually...If her dream really had been a memory, there was a chance someone like a psychiatrist could help her dig up the rest of it. Find out what Harry had really been doing there.

"You know what," Jenn said, looking Harry directly in the eye. "That's not such a bad idea."

xxx

"That is a terrible idea," Dev nearly cried when Jenn told him everything in class the following morning.

"What? Why?" Jenn replied. "Dr. Ingram practically wrote the book on memory repression. He helped me uncover everything about the crash. Maybe he can help me make sense of this too."

"I wouldn't be too sure of that," Dev winced. He threw a look at the board, copying down the most recent set of notes. When Jenn hadn't said anything by the time he finished, he went on. "Look, this has all happened before, just a few months ago, last time you had this dream."

The statement hit Jenn like a punch to the solar plexus. "W-what are you talking about? I've never had this dream before."

Dev heaved a sigh. The kind people let out when they have to repeat themselves. "You're in a lab hallway. There's smoke everywhere and emergency sirens going off. Explosions. Dr. Sutton's there," he recited. Jenn could feel her blood freeze in her veins.

"I...I didn't tell you Harry was in my dream," she stammered.

"Not this time," Dev shook his head at his notes. When he finally looked up, it was right into Jenn's eyes. "You told me all about it right before your appointment, but afterwards, you insisted you hadn't. You had no memory of the dream or the conversation."

No, she really didn't. Jenn tried rooting around in her memories, only to come up empty-handed. She remembered laughing Dev off when he brought up the possibility of another dream and she remembered reliving the crash at Dr. Ingram's office...but that was all.

"There's something else you should know," Dev began, finally setting his pencil down. He leaned in close and added in a whisper, "When the professor called me out after class the other day, it was to ask about you. What he was saying...I think you were right, Jenn. I think he knows."

With her heart in her throat, it was impossible to respond. Jenn tried swallowing it down, but her mouth had gone dry. Her eyes found the back of Harry's head, but she couldn't make sense of what he was saying.

"He implied that he knows something is up, at least," Dev went on. "Told me to stop you somehow. Threatened me, I'm pretty sure."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Jenn hissed.

"Did you not hear the part about him threatening me?" Dev shot back.

Harry threatening someone? That sounded even more unlikely than Jenn's own powers. He was always civil to the point of annoyance. And yet...He was there, her thoughts reminded her. He knew it was a lab. What else did he know? What more could he be hiding?

Jenn's gaze landed on Harry again, his familiar form not as reassuring as it had been the previous night. It wasn't even familiar anymore. Her stomach churned. She understood the odds. He might not've had all the details of her vigilantism, but there was no way he was oblivious to Dr. Ingram's machinations. There was no way he wasn't involved himself.

As she continued to stare, Harry turned around. It was to address the class, but he must've felt the weight of Jenn's gaze. His eyes picked her out of the crowd immediately. When he smiled at her, Jenn found she couldn't return the look. She could hardly even look at him. But when Harry's grin began to shift to a frown, something tightened in Jenn's chest.

Before she could think about it too hard, Jenn looked away. The distant part of her mind still paying attention to class told her Harry had gotten right back into his end of lecture notes. Jenn was more focused on the clock and the five minutes left in class.

"Dev, what the hell should do?" Jenn breathed, trying in vain to come up with escape plans.

"Well, you can't go, obviously," Dev replied. "What if that's what's making you forget?"

"I know, I know...but I think I have to," Jenn furrowed her brows. "I can't keep figuring my way out of it." She exhaled, letting all the tension flow from her body and breathing in her resolve. "Besides...I have to find out what's really going on."