by Stuart Moore
A grinding noise, from the far wall. Four muscular Kree were in the process of sliding shut a high garage-style door, which Drax had forced open earlier to let them inside. Judging from their grunts and groans, it was a difficult, laborious process.
“Why are they bothering?” Gamora asked. “The roof is…” She gestured up.
“Habit, I guess,” Mohawk Kree replied. “We been warned not to be seen outside. Go straight from here to the factory and back again, they said. Break those rules, you could lose your job.”
“Who warned you?” she persisted. “Whose rules are they? Stark’s?”
“Stark!” Drax glanced up at Tony and let out a short laugh. “He is a mere ‘suit’, as we say here on Earth.”
“We don’t know who makes the rules,” Mohawk said. “The assembly line’s completely automated. All our assignments come in on computer screens.”
Gamora’s eyes narrowed. This place was evil, without a doubt, and yet, it was starting to sound as if someone other than Tony Stark was to blame. She felt a strange claustrophobic sensation, as if a deliberate plot – some strange cosmic web – were closing in around her.
“We never even seen Stark before today,” Mohawk continued. “In fact, the human workers pretty much stay away from this side of the plant.”
“Not that they work weekends anyway!” Drax slapped his friend on the back. “Am I right, My-ronn?”
Rocket blinked. “Your name is Myron?”
The Kree nodded. “My-ronn.”
“I named him.” Drax puffed out his chest with pride. “I am excellent with names.”
“I didn’t like my old name.” My-ronn shrugged. “I named him Horse, in return.”
“Which I despise,” Drax said calmly.
“Oh! Sorry, dude. You should have said something.”
“Why?” Drax turned and started off. “Come. I have errands to perform.”
Drax led them on a winding path in and around the picnic tables, stopping frequently to exchange a few words with the Kree families. My-ronn split off, joining a group of his friends who were taking apart an Earth laptop computer.
A few of the Kree ate from bare plastic plates; some were engrossed in their phones. Most of them looked up when Drax approached, flashing small smiles. They all seemed to accept him, but not quite as one of them. More like a friendly outsider who’d earned their trust.
He has changed, Gamora realized. He seemed calmer, less angry, more centered – as if he’d found his purpose here, in this grim place. She found herself envying him. Her own anger, her craving for vengeance, still burned.
A hollow feeling inside made her wonder: do I still have a purpose?
A young Kree man in a jumpsuit sat alone, staring straight ahead. When he didn’t respond to Drax’s greeting, the Destroyer thumped him on the back, hard. The man looked up, blinked, and smiled.
That was when Gamora realized there were a lot more men here than women.
Drax steered the group around a shard of metal that had fallen in the collapse of the roof. It was embedded in the floor, jutting up at a dangerous angle, and still smoking slightly. The Kree ignored it, detouring around it with their trays and their phones. Just one more speed bump in the obstacle course of their lives.
Drax paused at a pair of doors inset into a temporary, corrugated-metal wall. “I must gather some supplies from the kitchen,” he said. “But first…”
When he threw open the left-hand door, a burst of giggles and screams greeted him. Gamora followed the group inside, where a dozen or more young children scrambled and chased each other across the floor. A single old Kree woman with tired eyes sat on a folding chair off to the side, playing a game on her phone.
The children turned to look, and all at once they froze. They stared up at Drax with wide eyes.
“Horse!” they yelled.
Then they were all over him, tugging and screaming and laughing. A girl climbed up his side, giggling. Drax laughed in return and flexed his bicep. A little blue boy perched on his shoulder, grinning, and flexed his own tiny arm.
The caretaker looked up from her phone, shrugged, and turned away again.
“Ride!” the kids yelled, one and two and three at a time. “Give us a ride!”
“Later, little Kree-tures,” Drax said. That sent them off into giggles again. “They enjoy my wordplay,” he added.
“Yeah, it’s legendary,” Rocket said.
“Come. We must – no, Val-ar, you may not have one of my knives – we must move on.”
He brushed off the last of the children and led the group through another swinging door. All at once, the laughter stopped.
They stepped into a kitchen no bigger than a large bathroom, lined with grimy, yellowed tiles. Three old ovens had been crammed into one half of the room; they were caked with old food, and one of the doors hung askew, held on with coat-hanger wire. Two women and a man, all in their forties, looked up from their work at a low table.
“I require a few ration packs,” Drax said. “For my rounds.”
One of the women nodded and rose, grabbing for a crutch. She limped over to a giant freezer and pulled hard at the door. A large rat scurried out from behind the freezer and into the corner.
“This tiny kitchen,” Gamora said, “feeds the entire facility?”
The woman paused in her labor and gave Gamora an annoyed look. “It’s all we got,” she said.
The other two Kree turned to watch. The table in front of them was strewn with half-peeled vegetables: turnips, carrots, celery. None of it looked very fresh.
Rocket sidled up to Gamora. “This Stark dude sure knows how to run a sweatshop,” he muttered.
She turned away, studying a ragged bulletin board hanging above the nearest stove. Handwritten notes and circled newspaper clippings promised better housing, deals on bulk foodstuffs, and assorted goods for sale.
“Thank you,” Drax said, accepting a large paper bag. “Oh, I almost forgot! I must also pick up some fresh linens.”
As he started toward the far door, the Kree exchanged alarmed glances. The man and woman rose from the table and moved quickly to block his way. The woman couldn’t have been more than five feet tall.
“You can’t go in there,” she said.
Drax paused for a moment, considering. Then he nodded and grimaced. “Of course. I forgot.”
Gamora frowned, looking up. The edge of the exposed roof hung over the kitchen; the room beyond was still covered, hidden from view – even from above. “Why can’t we go in there?” she asked. “What’s in that room?”
The small woman turned toward her. “The laundry room is a safe space for women.”
“Horse,” the man said. “Chir-na will fetch your linens for you.”
Drax nodded. The small woman grimaced at him and started toward the door. Then she stopped and turned around slowly. Her hard eyes locked on Gamora’s.
“You can come if you like,” she said.
Gamora hesitated. Some instinct warned her of danger, but that made no sense. Did the Kree mean her harm? Were they still angry about the incident out on the pier? If they were, surely they wouldn’t lure her into a kitchen and ambush her in the laundromat!
She gestured for the woman, Chir-na, to go first. When they stepped inside, the hum and grinding of large industrial washer/dryers filled the air – and something else: the whistle of blades. Gamora reached for her sword–
–and froze. Four women stood in the cramped space, all young, muscular, and sweating in the thick air. And all holding up knives. They’d turned away from their work, folding clothes and stuffing oversized loads into creaky washers, in order to guard against possible attackers. Their unblinking eyes locked onto Gamora as she followed Chir-na to a table of folded blankets.
Chir-na barely acknowledged the workers. She picked up a single gr
ay blanket, nodded to the woman at the end of the line, and started back toward the kitchen.
The air hung heavy with steam; the tumbling of dryers, the rushing of water formed an oppressive din. Like the kitchen, this room bore witness to a badly overstressed support system. Even with the machines running night and day, it could never keep up with the needs of the several hundred Kree in this facility.
Gamora walked slowly to the door, keeping her hands in view and her movements steady. She bore no kinship, shared no blood with these women, these silent wary refugees from a dead world. But she understood their plight. All too well, she understood.
Chapter 28
Kamala Khan sat alone on the factory loading dock, squeezing her eyes shut. Her head still ached. In fact, her whole body ached. If this was a typical day in the life of an Avenger, she didn’t know if she’d live to graduate high school.
She craned her neck, peering at the low metal building. That faded flag pattern covered the side wall. She could just see the big door, down at the far end, that Horse – Drax? – had opened in order to let his friends inside. But she couldn’t make out what was inside it, and from this angle, she couldn’t see over the wall, either.
She could see one thing, though. Tony Stark, in full Iron Man costume, floating in the sky above. He was barely moving, the lights of his eye-lenses glowing against the midday clouds.
She jumped down from the dock and stumbled over to the flag-building, shaking her head. When she reached the building, she leaned her hands against the cold metal wall. This was a bad idea, she knew. She needed to give herself time to heal. If she used her powers now, she could really injure herself.
But she had to know.
Bracing herself, she willed her legs to grow, to extend, stretching herself up along the wall. It wasn’t very high – maybe twenty feet or so. When she reached the top, she grabbed hold of the exposed edge of the wall, which was still warm from the Guardian ship’s ray-blast. To her left, the intact part of the roof ended in a jagged line of molten metal.
She hoisted herself up and looked down. Directly below, inside the building, was a hospital or sick bay of some kind. All three beds and two makeshift cot-mattresses were full; a single medic in dirty scrubs hustled among the patients, administering pills and taking temperatures. One patient, hooked up to a feeding tube with tape on it, was coughing uncontrollably.
Kamala frowned. The equipment looked dated, worn out. She cast a quick glance across the exposed part of the building. Dining room, kitchen, and what looked like a daycare setup of some kind, filled with children. All of them crowded, all filled with rusty, dangerous fixtures.
She remembered Jennifer Walters’s words about the Kree’s plight: it’s real. And it’s a problem.
Two men entered the infirmary with blood on their faces. The medic shrugged and gestured for them to stand in the corner. The coughing man began to vomit helplessly, all over the floor. Two women in aprons rushed in to assist.
Kamala tensed, preparing to jump down inside. But the women seemed to have the situation under control. So she turned to look up at the gleaming metallic form of Iron Man, still hovering over it all.
Let’s see if we can solve the bigger problem, she thought.
She let go of the roof and stretched her legs, rising even higher. Stars exploded before her eyes; she felt briefly lightheaded. But she ignored the pain and kept growing, leaning forward to brace her knees against the lip of the roof.
“Mister Stark,” she said.
He didn’t reply. His eye-lenses scanned the building below, as if he were cataloguing insects. He looked like an emotionless robot, or maybe a metallic god hovering over its dominion.
“Tony.” The edge in her voice made him look up. “Whatcha doing?”
“Hey, kid. You look like crap.”
“I’m doing better than them, I think.” She waved an elongated hand down.
“Yeeeeah.” He reached up to scratch his armored neck. “That’s the thing, isn’t it?”
He retracted his helmet, allowing her to see his face. The effect was startling. He looked like a person now, not some god or automaton. His brow was lined, his expression filled with worry. Guilt, too.
“Are you OK?” she asked.
He cocked his head, listening to something coming from his earpiece. “Kid,” he said, “I gotta go.”
“Go?” She frowned, wobbling a little on eighteen-foot legs. “You said you’d get to the bottom of this.”
“I am. That’s where I’m going.” He smiled, reached out to touch her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Kamala. This isn’t the way I wanted to spend my Saturday, either.”
She stared, aghast. “Are you actually making this about yourself?”
“No. No, of course not. I’m just…” He turned away. “Do me a favor? Get together with the Guardians. I know, I know. Just… help these people, any way you can. OK?”
She nodded, wincing at the pain in her head.
“Uh-huh,” Tony said to the air. “Thanks, F.R.I.D.A.Y.” He turned back to Kamala. “One other thing. Keep keeping me honest, OK?”
Keep me honest. She knew he meant it as a compliment, but somehow it just made her angry. “That’s not what I’m here for,” she snapped. “I’m not your conscience. I’m a person.”
“I’m sorry, again. I didn’t mean….” He tilted in midair, staring at the grim beehive below. “I’m sorry.”
Then he turned upward, willed his helmet down, and shot off into the clouds.
Kamala stood for a moment, watching him go. Fists clenched, shaking with anger. Had Halla-ar been right, she wondered? Was Stark just a tyrant, a manipulative billionaire who used people up and washed his hands of them? Was that what he was doing, right now – running away from the mess he’d made?
Or was he really trying to clean it up?
She looked down into the building, at the maze-like sleeping quarters stacked three levels high. The plight of those people, trudging up and down the ladders and through the common areas, made her sick to watch. She took a step back and began to shrink down, hoping she could reach the ground before she passed out.
•••
“Here is the clean blanket you requested, Zi-lah,” Drax said. “I intimidated the launderers into using extra Snuggle for you.”
If the Kree woman realized that was a joke, she gave no sign. She just took the blanket, threw it on the bed, and turned back to the seven children clamoring for her attention. All of them were toddlers except for one preteen boy, who sat on a wooden chair in the corner of the small room, tapping at a phone.
Drax turned and headed for the door. Rocket and Gamora followed.
“Hell of a brood,” Rocket said as they stepped into the corridor. “They all hers?”
“Why in the world would I ask that?” Drax replied.
“Yeah. Yeah, you’re right.” The raccoonoid turned away, ashamed. “We ain’t any closer to findin’ this planet-killer, you know. Gam, you still think they’re here?”
“I’m not sure.” Gamora frowned. “Would a planet-killer live in a place like this?”
“They would not,” Drax said firmly. “Or at least, they do not. I am certain of it.”
He led them down a long windowless corridor, into the still-intact portion of the building. The roof closed in over them, giving the space an even more oppressive atmosphere. It felt, Gamora thought, like a trap.
“Only one more stop,” Drax said. “My bag is almost empty.”
The corridor grew darker; the sound of Kree activity faded. Drax walked up to a plywood door at the very end of the hall and, without knocking, pushed it open. A smell of decay washed over them; Rocket held a hand up to his nose. Gamora had to force herself inside.
In a tiny room, a single blue Kree sat shivering in an armchair. He was naked, wrapped only in a filthy blanket. He stared straig
ht ahead; his eyes didn’t even register the newcomers.
“Sha-karr,” Drax said. “Sha-Karr.”
The man’s eyes flickered briefly to Drax. A look of panic crossed his face, then he looked away again.
“I have food for you, Sha-karr.” Drax held out the last of the rations. “You must eat something.”
The ration fell limply into the man’s lap. Drax frowned, dropped to his knees, and took the man’s hands in his own. Sha-karr looked up, startled.
“You must eat,” Drax repeated.
Sha-karr stared for a moment. His chest was dirty; a few strands of deep blue hair were matted to his scalp. A small insect crawled up the blanket and onto his head.
“Will you do this?” Drax shook his hands, gently. “Will you eat for me?”
Sha-karr nodded.
“Good.”
Drax stood up and turned away. Without another word, he led Rocket and Gamora out of the room. Just before the door closed, she saw the blue Kree peeling open a sandwich, staring at it with something that might have been dread.
“Whew,” Rocket said. “What happened to him?”
“I do not know exactly,” Drax replied. “But his entire extended family, all that he knew, was lost in the explosion of Praeterus. The others say that, back there, he was a leading member of the community.”
Gamora glanced back at the door. What was it that Thanos had taught her, growing up? Tragedy forges us into fine steel.
“No,” she said aloud. “Tragedy breaks people.”
Drax nodded as if he understood. As if he’d followed every word of the conversation in her mind.
“Some people, at any rate,” he said. “And those people must be treated with sympathy and kindness. Not simply discarded like trash.”
He started back down the hallway. Rocket turned to Gamora, and for a moment she thought he was about to make a sarcastic comment. But he just shrugged and loped off after Drax.
She followed, feeling oddly lost.
Chapter 29
“I hate you,” Halla-ar said.
