“Very well, let me show you the abyss.”
A blinding light shone from his left hand, while he used the right one to fashion glowing, interlocked rings. The effect was simultaneously mesmerizing and terrifying. Tentacles of energy materialized and lashed at the air. They became solid, vaguely reptilian, then wrapped themselves around the woman—and especially Black Bolt.
“Again, Inhuman,” she said, fear edging her words. “Scream for me!”
Black Bolt screamed, and the tendrils that tried to wrap him into a package were shredded, as were the ones that had caught his puppet master. This time the sonic assault broke through Strange’s defenses. He was knocked backward, a scream peeling past his lips, utterly unheard in the cacophony.
Suddenly new tendrils caught Black Bolt, wrapping around his face and cutting off his voice. These were fleshier, and the strands wrapped up both him and the woman. She screamed her frustration as she tried to break free.
“T’Challa, I can’t hold them for long,” Reed Richards said as he struggled with his captives. ”Quickly.”
“All I have is a rumbler,” the Black Panther said, “but there’s no way we won’t be caught in the—”
“Use it!”
Holding down the safety T’Challa pushed the red button on his Vibranium sound grenade. The shockwave lifted all of them into the air, and the explosive noise shook their brains inside of their skulls. It left them stunned and half deaf.
The blue woman was the first to recover, and she stepped toward an antimatter bomb. T’Challa’s suit had absorbed some of the impact, and he made it to his hands and knees a second later.
“Don’t… don’t do it,” he said unsteadily. “Don’t be a fool.” He could feel cool air rushing over his flesh where his suit had been torn open. “There’s only… a few seconds’ delay. You’ll kill yourself, along with everything else.”
“Do you know where Thanos found me?” She peered down at him, and when she spoke it was as if she were talking to a child. “In an orphanage for the badly damaged, the unwell. The lost ones who had experienced so much horror at a young age that all they wanted was for life to end. Like all of the others, I had been tortured and abused. I was… different.
“My crib mate was Thanos’ very first tribute,” she continued. “I watched as he butchered his own child, and then I begged him to honor me the same way. He promised me he would, but only if I would help him kill all his other children—the other bastards he’d spawned. I gave him the only thing I had of value. I gave him my word.”
She put her hand on the bomb. The energies cracked and sparked, but they were still contained, if only barely.
“Then I waited years for the tyrant to finish what he had started. Years for him to do what he promised. Now the last child of Thanos is on Earth.” Suddenly, she wasn’t speaking to T’Challa. She was speaking to her master. “And here I am, fulfilling my word. I am not afraid to die. This will be your end, as well, for making me wait.”
T’Challa tried to stand. He had to stop her. His world and his people needed him. Still she hit the switch on the side of the bomb’s casing, and the energy levels spiked higher. The very air around the device crackled and snapped with energy.
“The bomb is finally charged, and according to the knowledge I stole from the Inhuman king, all that remains is to activate the trigger—and then your world ends.”
Again the king of Wakanda tried to stand, but his limbs wouldn’t obey him. His arms quivered. His legs shook, then collapsed under his weight. All he could do was watch.
“Ahem…”
The blue-skinned alien looked toward the spot where she had thought to find the trigger mechanism. It was a large metallic box with two handles and a half-dozen safeties. And it wasn’t there.
“Now normally, you’re just my kind of crazy,” Maximus said, a sly smile playing across his face. He sat on a pile of rubble. “But there are plans underway, and I’m invested in them, so… I find myself torn.”
She held out her hand. “Give it to me.” There was a flicker of light in her eyes, and T’Challa suspected she was trying to capture the man’s mind as she had his brother’s. However, his grin just grew wider.
“How about I give you what you want if I get what I want?”
“Which is?” Her frustration seemed obvious enough.
“The same thing I always want,” he replied as if she should have known. “I want to look like the smartest person in the room. Believe it or not, with this crowd it isn’t as easy as you’d think.” She frowned.
“Deal?” he said. “Yes, let’s call it a deal. So here’s your bomb being triggered.” He hit the switches, tapping them in the right order, and T’Challa felt his soul go numb. The world—the whole of it—and the madman was going to end it for the sake of his ego.
“And here’s me telling you that you forgot about the most dangerous thing in the room.”
The area around the antimatter bomb glowed for a moment, and Lockjaw appeared. The glow continued—
“No!” the alien woman cried out, then both she and the bomb vanished—as did the Inhuman teleporter. Maximus dropped the trigger and grinned. He looked directly at T’Challa.
“Really, why would the lot of you make a bomb like that?” he asked brightly. “That’s the sort of thing I would do. You’re supposed to be the heroes of the story.”
* * *
THE WORLD warped, and an instant later the room in the Necropolis disappeared from her sight, to be replaced by a vast, unearthly frozen wasteland. Beside Supergiant the antimatter bomb whined at a high enough pitch to make the ice shiver beneath it.
“No.”
She glanced around frantically, taken off guard by the change. The massive dog looked at her and said, “Woof.”
And then it disappeared.
Faster than thought she was wrapped in a flash so bright it burned her eyes, followed by a detonation that consumed everything.
* * *
“ANYONE HOME?” The voice crackled in his ear.
Tony stood still for a moment, doing a full systems check. Surprisingly, he was alive and his armor was functional.
“Natasha? Is that you?”
“It’s me. We’ve locked down local space. What’s left of Thanos’ fleet suffered heavy losses and is in full retreat. The council ships are moving off. We’re back to being on our own, Tony.”
He looked around the room. The bomb was gone. Just plain gone. The Beast and Namor helped Doctor Strange get to his feet. Reed was helping T’Challa stand. The man’s panther outfit was blown half away from his body. None of them looked very steady.
There were remnants of… tentacles? Some of them were still wriggling. All of them were bleeding a weird orangish goo. Black Bolt was free, and Maximus was right next to him, rubbing the side of Lockjaw’s head.
“All right. Good,” Stark said. “You’ve got overwatch. Pick the hottest of the hot spots and send reinforcements if you can. New York, Wakanda. I’m sending you the coordinates of where we’re headed.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
WAR
THANOS WALKED among the ruins of Orollan and savored the sights that lay before him. Behind him, his son pounded the walls of the glowing golden energy tube that held him. By rights he should have already killed the boy. Thane was a threat. He was the stuff of nightmares.
In his youth Thanos had found many a woman to satisfy his urges. He also knew what the repercussions would be. Sooner or later his children would find him and try to kill him, to take his place. He had sought to end his father’s existence, and the fact that he had thus far failed was a wound that would not heal. Something he would, in due time, seek to rectify.
His children could do no less.
And yet…
The boy had killed all of the people in the city around them, and he had done so without even trying. If Thanos could harness that power, if he could somehow make it his, it could aid him in his ultimate goals.
This was
a tantalizing puzzle.
It was also the sort of quandary that might be used against him if he were not careful.
“We have lost contact with Black Dwarf and our agents on the Peak, Master.” Corvus Glaive moved up behind him—cautiously, as it was unwise to surprise Thanos. “It seems the human heroes have returned here with significant support from other worlds. Our time runs short.”
Thanos replied as if he hadn’t even heard. “Don’t you love chaos, Corvus?” He turned and looked at his second. “It’s when the chaos comes that lesser creatures lose their mettle, submit to instinct and panic—but it’s when those like you and I thrive.” He looked past the man to the energy prison.
“I will kill my son now. Not as some reaction to the noise, but because it pleases me to do so.” All around him he found death, and it was good. “Maw, release the boy. Let him do his best against me before he dies.” Before any of them could move, the ground shook under their feet. It was a minor tremor, but it was there just the same, accompanied by a brief pounding sound.
“What is this?” He turned in the direction of the sound. A small figure appeared, rapidly growing larger, aimed at him like a missile.
The Hulk roared as he descended.
Simple physics state that a falling body cannot control its descent, and it cannot change direction. Thanos was ready. He struck the Hulk, combining his own strength with the green behemoth’s momentum. This sent his attacker hurtling backward into one building after another, shattering stone and destroying the structures in a chain reaction that left a trail of destruction. The wall of the Eternal Chasm stopped him, but only after he broke away a portion of it.
The Hulk was a powerful beast, but it would not be alone. There was no reason for it to seek him out if it hadn’t been directed to do so by someone else. It wasn’t in the monster’s nature.
“Do you see, Corvus?” As Thanos pointed, the green monster regained his feet, groggy and dazed as he was. “All life is noise. All life is a distraction Therefore it has no real value and must be treated as the diversion it is. Kill this beast for me. Make it suffer.”
Corvus Glaive and Proxima Midnight both responded, launching themselves at the Hulk as their master watched them. With another Earth-shaking vibration, the Hulk returned the favor, hurling himself in their direction and landing with an impact that nearly knocked them off their feet.
“He’s fast, my love.” Proxima leaped to the side as the half- ton of green fury crashed into the ground where she had stood just a moment before. Corvus dodged the assault, but barely.
Spinning in the air, she hurled her spear, and it broke into three separate missiles. The weapon had been forged from a sun trapped in distorted space-time. It had been a life-giving new star and a blazing supernova. She had earned it from Thanos long after he had taken it from its maker’s corpse.
The three missiles hit their target and burned into the Hulk’s flesh. At her command, black tendrils writhed around him. The spear’s parts grew heavier, enough to make even the Hulk groan and fall forward to catch himself on hands and knees.
“Do you feel that, monster?” she crowed. “It’s the weight of a star holding you down.”
His blood flowed green from wounds that tried to heal, yet could not as the pieces dug deeper. While he struggled, the blade of Corvus Glaive slid to his throat and cut into jade flesh, drawing more blood.
“A thick hide on this beast, Proxima, but even super-dense skin cannot stop my blade,” he said, wearing a cruel grin. “My glaive can cut atoms, beast. It can cut you, too. I’ll hang your head above my mantel, and watch it as it glows above the fire. I’ll look up at it and—”
A metal disc slammed into the side of his head, and he was thrown back. The weapon was well known to Thanos. It was wielded by one of the Avengers.
“Ah.” Thanos looked up into the sun. “Now this is more what I expected.”
Captain America caught the shield in midair on the rebound. Coming down from the sky behind him were three more: Captain Marvel, the would-be god Thor, and a red-haired figure wearing a cape. That one he did not know.
Captain Marvel caught Proxima by her arm and threw her. As she hurtled through the air, however, Proxima summoned her spear; the three burning stars of energy tore themselves away from the Hulk’s body in an effort to obey their mistress. As they did, the Hulk staggered to his feet… and began to shrink. He let out a roar of fury that dwindled into a gasp of shock. The man who remained looked at Proxima.
“How did you do that?”
She answered him with a savage backhand that knocked him unconscious.
“I can do so much worse, fool.”
Not far away Ebony Maw whispered to Thanos’ son. The words were too distant to hear.
Corvus swung his blade at the leader of the new arrivals. Captain America deflected it with his shield, which he then used to bash him in the face. Corvus had grown complacent and cocky, Thanos mused.
It is time for him to learn a lesson.
The red-haired man in the blue and gold stepped closer and braced himself, ready for a fight. Corvus’ lessons, it seemed, were about to begin.
* * *
“ARE YOU watching, Thane?” The Ebony Maw looked at his prize and smiled softly. He gestured to the newcomers who fought against Thanos and his Black Order. “They are here, your last chance at salvation. The human heroes of Earth. They are your only hope.”
One of the newcomers summoned lightning from the skies and cast the bolts at his father, who barely seemed to notice them. A woman joined his efforts and launched energy blasts from her hands. The energies sprayed ineffectually off Thanos, and he knocked her back with twin beams from his eyes. Turning quickly he did the same to the warrior with the hammer, striking the man so squarely that he flew back until he vanished from sight.
“Do you think they can save you?” the Maw continued. “I do not. You’ve likely spent your entire life believing how all of this should be. You probably were taught to cherish life. To lift up the unfortunate. Be honorable and, above all, be a good man. Do these things, and the universe will reward you in some way.”
Proxima joined her husband in his assault on the shield- wielding man, pounding her restored spear into the ground. The explosive concussion knocked all of their opponents off their feet.
Ebony Maw shook his head and frowned. “It’s an ethos—and a noble one at that. Believing in hope. But listen to me, boy.” The newcomers tried to stagger to their feet, with little success. “All hope is fleeting in the face of Thanos.”
Thane peered at his father, a man he hadn’t met until a short while ago.
So much to process in so little time…
“Your father plans to kill you, Thane,” the Maw said frankly. “That is his goal, and that is what will happen—if he has the chance.”
“What are you telling me?” the son of Thanos demanded. “That I should give up? That there isn’t a chance? I don’t believe that. There’s always a chance.”
“Not at all,” the Maw replied. “At least not in the way you mean. Not in any way you would imagine.” A momentary lull ended and the fight raged again as the red-haired warrior shot eye-beams toward Proxima. “There is light and there is darkness, Thane. Both exist. There is no unwritten law that says good men will always win, and so they don’t.”
Glaive struck from behind, cutting into the shoulder of Proxima’s opponent. For all the strength the man appeared to possess, he bellowed in pain. It had to be excruciating.
“In the end, Thane,” the Maw continued as if everything else was just a distraction, “all that remains are the whispered prayers of the condemned, and the hope that there is a god listening.”
* * *
“CAROL… GET up,” Captain America said. She was still stunned from the blue woman’s assault. Hyperion struggled with the figure in the tattered cape. Thor was nowhere to be seen. “We’ve got to—”
“Steve, behind you,” Captain Marvel said, and he spun. Pro
xima Midnight drew back her glowing spear, energies crackling where she gripped it.
“Two great captains,” Proxima said, “doing what all captains do best.” She hurled it, and the weapon separated. “Farewell, humans. You were weak and deserved such a humble ending.”
“Get behind my shield, Carol—” Cap said, then all three missiles struck. Two careened off the shield, but a third one caught him in the midsection, causing him to cry out in pain.
“Impressive—he deflected two of—” Proxima said, then, “No. No!” The two gleaming bolts came at her husband from behind, driving into him and through him. He only had time to grunt. Yet he never dropped his weapon, and still it cut his opponent.
“Tell me, monster, does it sting?” Hyperion said, grabbing the glaive and pulling it free. “Does it burn? Because this is your end.”
Blood pouring from his face, Corvus Glaive replied, “You cannot threaten someone… with what they want.”
“Call it a gift, then,” Hyperion said. The energies that came from the man’s eyes were as bright as the sun and when they struck, Corvus burned as if he had fallen into the sun’s very heart. The light blasted through him, searing meat and bone alike into a blackened ash.
“Corvus!” Proxima Midnight screamed.
“CORVUS!”
She reached for his weapon. “I have it,” she said. “I have you.” Before she could grasp it, however, Captain Marvel struck with a two-handed burst of energy, knocking her back.
“Get up,” Carol Danvers said as her opponent did just that. Energy danced around her hands and turned her hair to fire. “We’re not done here. We haven’t even starte—”
A massive fist struck Captain Marvel and knocked her twenty yards through a solid stone wall. She disappeared behind mounds of rubble. Thanos stood over Proxima as she gripped her husband’s weapon, and then fell to her knees where his ashes began to dissipate with the wind.
Avengers Page 24
