“I prefer to create life, to guide it.” He waved his arms, trying without words to express his frustration. “I am weary of destroying anything that might have the potential to be a threat. What of the potential to be something better, rather than something worse? What of the possibilities for redemption and growth? We’re Gardeners, not destroyers. Gardens need to be tended, weeds pulled, yes—but not every life is a weed.”
Ex Nihilo gestured, and a form manifested in the air beside him. It was a human form; though mature, it was pulled into a fetal position.
“Observe, even as we speak I am completing the creation of one of their kind—a human without any of the flaws inherent in the species. He will be our new Adam. He will be the first of a perfect race that can replace the flawed.”
His sister spoke softly.
“They’ve sent some of theirs,” she announced. “They send their best fighters to stop us.”
“APES,” Aleph responded. “THEY SEND APES.”
Ex Nihilo nodded. “Perhaps, but they are apes with which we can reason.”
* * *
“WANT TO explain to me how it is we have green vegetation on Mars?”
Captain America frowned as he looked at the heavy forest in which they had landed. The ship settled gently, yet a palpable tension gripped everyone on board. Thor and the Black Widow nodded silently. Hawkeye just glared.
“Why wouldn’t it be there?” Iron Man shook his head. His red-and-gold armor glinted in the dim lighting of the ship’s cabin. “The first bombs that hit Earth completely changed the biospheres of the impact zones. Whoever we’re dealing with, they’ve altered billions of years of evolution in minutes. That’s very nearly godlike.”
Thor snorted in contempt. Iron Man ignored him and turned to address another passenger aboard the quincruiser, a modified Avengers quinjet. With this craft, they could even reach faster- than-light speeds.
“Bruce, you’re better at this sort of thing than I am. Anything you can suggest? How could someone produce a forest out of nowhere?”
Banner scanned the area. Ever since the Curiosity and InSight landings, mankind viewed Mars as a desert landscape—always red, flat or with rolling hills, and dotted with rocks. Where they stood now, it was thick with vegetation—jungle-like with trees and twisted vines and dense undergrowth.
“Tony, two of the first bombs hit Perth and Regina. Those alone affected over two million people.” His voice began to change, growing deeper. His body morphed, as well, growing in size at an alarming rate—even as his skin went from a pale peach hue to a shade of green as deep as the darkest emerald.
“I think we’re done talking,” he growled.
The Hulk left the ship through the rear port. He was walking when he exited, and then broke into a run. Tony Stark sighed inside his armor and moved after the green goliath.
Three figures stood not far away. The first was a woman, dressed mostly in black, with long, thick black hair that seemed made of living shadows. Next was a humanoid male, with golden skin and an Omega sign painted across his chest. He had no hair, but two mismatched horns perched on the sides of his head. His eyes were solid blue, with no pupils, and a third one sat in the middle of his forehead directly above his nose. Off to one side a humanoid figure floated in the air, unmoving.
Even as the Hulk charged, the golden-skinned man smiled warmly.
“Visitors!” he exclaimed. “And not the boring kind.”
Some people just aren’t very bright, Stark mused.
Before the Hulk could reach the smiling horned man, however, the woman made a gesture. A thick dome of black shadows appeared in his path. Carried by his own momentum, the Hulk vanished inside.
“Well, damn,” Stark muttered. “That’s not a good sign.” Quickly running through a set of protocols, he prepared to launch an assault. Abruptly he felt a tugging, and a warning alarm sounded inside his armor.
“Armor integrity compromised. Systems failing. Power levels at twenty percent… thirteen percent… six percent…”
“What the hell?”
The tugging continued as the plant life around him wormed its way into his armor.
“Powering dow—”
All systems ground to a halt.
“Come to me, metal man!” The voice came from the golden figure, who was still smiling as he gestured. “Thank the Goddess in all her splendor… I am dying for some entertainment.”
The plants responded to him, hauling around Tony and his inactive ninety-five pounds of inert armor like it was nothing at all. Before he could respond, the plants began stripping away the metal shielding. It shouldn’t have been that easy. There were redundancies in place, yet it was like peeling an orange.
“You have an exoskeleton!” the golden man exclaimed. “Only three percent of races possess exoskeletons. You are a rare find indeed!” He sounded so cheerful as the armor continued to peel back. “Let’s see what you look like after we speed up your evolu—” Abruptly he screamed in pain, his teeth clenching past bared lips as explosions erupted from his back. All traces of cheer dissolved as he turned to face his attackers.
“Step away from the man with all the money,” Black Widow said tersely.
Hawkeye finished with, “Please.”
Regaining his balance, the golden man crackled with energy.
“You dare violence?” he said. “Violence for the sake of violence? When I offer so much to your people and your planet?” Such was the energy that his skin was obscured in the glare of power that surrounded him. “This is the thanks you offer, for all I would gift you?”
The energies around him coalesced and flared outward into a blast that struck where the two Avengers stood, shredding the trees and plants alike. Stark couldn’t tell whether they were alive or dead.
To his relief, as the flash and debris of the attack diminished, the Black Widow and Hawkeye emerged from cover to either side. Beyond them there was motion as the woman with the shadows in her hair slid into the sphere of darkness that surrounded the Hulk. An instant later the green goliath burst out of the shadow sphere and shot straight toward Thor, one massive fist forward.
The golden man struck a second time. This time the impact caught both of his targets, sending them rolling across the ground and trying their best to absorb the force of the assault. When they skidded to a stop, they lay there, unmoving. Stark hoped they were only unconscious.
The Asgardian had just long enough to be surprised before the Hulk’s massive fist made contact with his head and sent him sprawling backward. He hit a tree and knocked it down, bounced off a second tree, and then crashed into the dense foliage. His assailant went after him, roaring like an animal. As Thor slowly but surely rose to his feet, the Hulk crashed into him again, roaring his fury for all to hear.
As he did, the woman in black emerged from the dome, which faded away.
The golden man started to turn from his defeated foes when a disc-shaped shield cut through the air and smashed into his face. It ricocheted off and into the back of the shadow woman’s head, knocking her to the ground.
Still gripped by the vines and unable to move, Stark noticed the third figure standing impassively not far away. Distance made a trick of the thing. At first he thought the newcomer was the same size as the golden man—largish, but roughly the height of a human.
No. It was much larger.
Reaching Captain America in four strides, it seemed to grow as it moved closer. The shield was flying back toward Cap’s waiting hand when the robot moved and intercepted it, catching the object before it could reach its owner. As it stepped up next to the star-spangled Avenger, the thing stood at least twelve feet tall.
It looked like a grown man addressing a third-grader.
“YIELD?” The thing looked down and asked once.
“No.” Captain America spoke just as softly.
Its free hand was a blur, moving too fast to follow, as the alien pounded a fist into his opponent’s face. Something in its movements
convinced Stark it was entirely mechanical.
“YIELD,” it said.
“No.”
Cap tried to block the next blow, but the robot was merciless, unyielding, and fast. He slammed the Avenger’s head into the ground with the second blow, and then a third, a fourth. He was ready to strike again when the golden man stopped it.
“Enough, Aleph. We have no need to kill him. We will send him back home with a message. We will let the Earth know that resistance is a futile waste of time. They will adapt to the changes we make, or they will die.”
Sounds of carnage indicated Thor and the Hulk were continuing their fight somewhere out of sight. Through it all, Tony Stark strained to turn his head to see what was occurring. He tried to incite his armor to work, tried to break free of the vines that held him and his armor alike, and through it all he failed miserably.
Without warning, all was silent.
The Hulk and Thor, both unconscious, were gripped in the vines and brought toward him, wrapped in greenery. The same was done with the Widow and Hawkeye—all except Captain America. When the vines lifted his badly battered form, it was moved into their ship, followed by the golden man.
Moments later the alien left the vessel and nodded his satisfaction. The hatch shut with a metallic click, and the vessel launched into the atmosphere of Mars, receding until it was little more than a bright glow.
And then it was gone.
The golden man smiled.
“You see?” he said, his cheerful demeanor returning. “We choose not to harm you. We want only what is best for your Earth. We want to make you better.” He smiled at Tony as he approached. “We will reshape your planet as it should be.”
The woman was up and standing now, alongside the towering robot.
What now? Stark thought, his mind racing. Well, where tech failed, maybe communication will work. If it doesn’t… He couldn’t bring himself to finish the thought.
“So what happens now…” he began. “I’m sorry, Goldie, what’s your name?”
Goldie smiled. “I am Ex Nihilo. This is my sister, Abyss”—he gestured—“and this is Aleph. We are here to change your world, to save it from itself.”
“Yeah, well, we’ve seen how that works,” Stark replied. “It’s not that we don’t appreciate your concern, but no thanks. We’ll pass.”
Goldie laughed and spoke to him as if he might be addled.
“We are not here to ask if you want our help,” he said. “We are here to change you before the Builders decide to change you.” His expression went serious. “They will not be as kind, or as forgiving.”
“What do you mean?” Stark responded, and he had a feeling he wasn’t going to like the answer.
“Your world has two choices,” Ex Nihilo said. “Adapt or perish. We are here to help you adapt. Your people will not survive, but what comes after them will be much better for the effort, and your world will continue on. If we fail in this, your world will die. The Builders will see to that.”
Tony smiled grimly. “Okay, work with me here and assume I’ve never heard of these ‘Builders.’ What are we dealing with?”
“At the dawn of everything, there were the Builders. They were the first race, the oldest living things in the cosmos.” Goldie smiled again and looked warmly at Tony. It made his skin crawl. “They were a perfect people, and for a while they worshipped the Goddess, the Mother maker herself. The universe.”
He stepped back and gestured. “Eventually they grew beyond this way of life. They abandoned the old ways of reverence for a new path of, well… of relevance. As expansion and evolution occurred, the Builders created aggressive systems to direct, control, and shape the very structure of space and time. The first of these systems were the Gardeners.” He pointed toward the robot. “Alephs sent out into the wild to purge species unfit and unsuitable for the Builders’ new universe.
“This is our Aleph,” he continued. “For countless millions of years, it razed world after world, destroying all it deemed unfit for progress, until finally it found a world with potential. One worthy of keeping. One worthy of evolution. Then the Gardener released the seeds it had kept inside of itself for all that time.”
Goldie looked around, seeming to forget Stark was even there, and spoke with a subtle awe in his voice.
“No two seeds are the same. The Builders, in all of their wisdom, knew that creation is chaos and embraced this inconstant constant. This Aleph—our Aleph—yielded my sister and myself. From that day until now, whenever we encounter a world that is living or has the potential for life, we either offer it change or we end the life that exists. Here we are, ready to offer your planet the chance to transcend all that it is, and offer it far greater potential than currently exists. Aleph says we should destroy your world. I disagree, and so we approach with evolution in mind.”
“And whatever happened to the idea of free choice?” Stark demanded. “What say do we have? It is our planet, after all.”
“There is no free choice here,” Ex Nihilo said, again as if to a simpleton. It was beginning to get on Stark’s nerves. “Your world will evolve, or it will be destroyed.”
Stark closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It was going to be a long argument, but talk was all he had to work with.
CHAPTER THREE
A GATHERING OF FORCES
STEVE ROGERS woke in Avengers Tower in Manhattan. That was where the ship had originated, and where it had returned. It took twenty minutes to bring him up to date on what had transpired. The rest of the away team had not returned.
He had been sent back as a warning.
Cap was urged to remain in bed, to allow his body to recuperate from the vicious beating he’d received. He listened to the medical staff, then responded in the only way he could. There were calls that had to be made, and he made them. Then he took a brief shower, and suited up.
His face ached where he had not yet fully healed. Thanks to the Super-Soldier Serum, he was faster at recovering from injuries than most people, but still he was only human.
As he prepared for the return mission, those he had contacted answered his call. There were more of them this time—they would not be caught ill-prepared again. Some of those who arrived were mutants, others had been altered in ways that couldn’t easily be explained. They were humans and superhumans alike, and they answered the summons because it was more than just a call to arms.
It was a call from Captain America.
* * *
“SO THE signal originated from Mars?”
Cannonball frowned and peered at the display in front of him. He had been off-planet before, yet the very prospect remained both exhilarating and frightening at the same time. Hailing from Kentucky, Sam Guthrie been raised among coal miners and had expected to live his life with them. Then his mutant powers had manifested. The world since then had never been quite what he’d been raised in, but it had always been… interesting.
“Well, it didn’t come from Planet X.”
Guthrie pressed his lips together to avoid making a comment. He admired Spider-Man. He had seen footage, watched videos, heard stories from any number of people who had worked with the man, but he didn’t much like him. He was too sarcastic. He lacked manners.
The guy standing next to him was an Aborigine—an indigenous Australian. His name was Eden, though they called him Manifold. A teleporter. Never in a million years would Guthrie have expected to meet someone like him.
“We are going to Mars,” the man said. Manifold’s accent was different than what Sam might have expected, but he couldn’t have said just how. Really, sometimes the world just seemed incredibly large, even after all he’d seen.
“Thank you, all of you, for coming.” Captain America looked around and nodded. They all knew the situation, and the mood in the room was grim. “This isn’t going to be easy. We’re going to have to go very fast, and take these people out before they can pull any of the tricks they did on the first wave of Avengers. I don’t know if a
ny of that team is even alive—I just know that we have to stop these people before they can cause any more damage down here.”
Guthrie stared at him, stunned. There were people who just had a kind of presence, and Captain America was one of them. He seemed larger than life. Sam had met heroes and villains aplenty, but few of them came close to making him feel like he was in the wrong room. And yet the Captain had called him and invited him to join the Avengers.
You just don’t say no to that.
“You ready, Sam?” Roberto tapped him on the arm, and he jumped a little. He’d known Sunspot ever since he’d become a super hero.
Guthrie nodded. The team Cap had chosen gathered together—Sam himself, Sunspot, a massively muscular man called Hyperion, Smasher, Captain Marvel, Captain Universe, Shang-Chi, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, Wolverine, and Manifold— and began to glow. It lasted only an instant, and there wasn’t any of the vertigo Sam had expected to experience. One moment they were standing in Avengers Tower—
—the next moment they were facing their targets. Targets they’d only seen in surveillance images taken by the quincruiser.
The photos hadn’t done them justice.
CHAPTER FOUR
RESCUE MISSION
THEY’D HAD all the talks they were going to have. Each time it came down to the same thing.
Evolve or die.
Near as Tony understood it, Ex Nihilo—the Golden Child— wanted to save the Earth by forcing evolution. Aleph wanted to end the whole thing, and Abyss didn’t care either way. She was just going with the flow. The new human Ex Nihilo had created didn’t seem capable of caring about much of anything. Yet it spoke, and when it spoke Goldie was like a proud papa excited to discover his new life-form had developed speech.
He wasn’t sure what the language was, but gathered it was the same language the Builders spoke, so Tony did his best to memorize the words, even if he couldn’t understand them. The other Avengers were nearby, still unconscious and held firm by a gargantuan, unnatural tree-thing.
“Did you hear that, Abyss?” Goldie said, gesturing toward his creation. “That was life. Life happened. Unforeseen, uncontrollable, wild, unfettered life!” He laughed. “I know because this is who I am, sister. I’ve created something new. Something unexpected.”
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