Thanos E-Book

Stuart Moore

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Seventh title in Titan Books' Marvel fiction reissue program, featuring the Thanos story, Death Sentence. A NEW LIFE FOR THE MAD TITAN! Thanos' pursuit of the Infinity Gems has always defined him. But when the Marvel heroes defeat him once again, Thanos' beloved Mistress Death grants him one final chance. Stripped of his powers and his old skin, Thanos embarks on a cosmic walkabout to reassert his power over himself and the Multiverse. Haunted by family – or the semblances of it – the Mad Titan may become something else entirely. Will he maintain his illusions of grandeur, or is this a new path for a lost god? THIS ORIGINAL TALE EXPLORES THE INNER LIFE OF ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL BEINGS IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Book One: Infinity

One

Two

Three

Four

Interlude One: The Sentence

Book Two: Sacrosanct

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Interlude Two: The Passage

Book Three: Hala

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Interlude Three: The Light

Book Four: The Velt

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Epilogue One

Epilogue Two

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

Thanos: Death Sentence

Print edition ISBN: 9781789092424

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789092431

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First Titan edition: April 2019

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

© 2019 MARVEL

Interior art: Simone Bianchi and Riccardo Pieruccini

Cover art by Aleksi Briclot

VP Production & Special Projects: Jeff Youngquist

Assistant Editor: Caitlin O’Connell

Associate Editor: Sarah Brunstad

Director, Licensed Publishing: Sven Larsen

SVP Print, Sales & Marketing: David Gabriel

Editor in Chief: C. B. Cebulski

Chief Creative Officer: Joe Quesada

President: Dan Buckley

Executive Producer: Alan Fine

Special thanks to editor Joan Hilty

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

This one’s for Jim Starlin, Prince, and the two Cordwainers: Smith and Bird. Also for Mimi, who didn’t deserve this.

BOOK ONE

INFINITY

He was quick-witted, sharp-eyed, and perpetually dissatisfied. He craved power and wisdom, but not for his own gratification. He was Kronos, first of the Titans, and he dreamed of a better world.

Kronos built a city, a haven, a sanctuary called Olympus. A place of beauty, where the gods lived together in harmony. But Kronos’s dissatisfied nature proved his undoing. Bored with peaceful contemplation, he sought to bend the laws of nature. One day he probed too far into the bands of hyperspace, snapped the superstrings, and unleashed power beyond comprehension. The catastrophic explosion shattered Olympus, toppling it from its high peak.

Thus died Paradise.

One of Kronos’s sons, a good man named A’Lars, gathered his starlost siblings. He founded a new society on Titan, largest moon of a ringed world called Saturn. Mindful of his father’s mistakes, A’Lars ruled over Titan with a careful eye. He hoped to restore the values of peace and wisdom that had been lost in the fall of Olympus.

And so it was for a time beyond mortal reckoning. Until the coming of A’Lars’s own son, his deadly seed…

…the Mad Titan called THANOS.

FROMTHE BOOK OF TITAN

(last known copy destroyed in the First Thanos Genocide)

ONE

THOR was the first to die. A blast of pure cosmic force struck him in the chest, lighting up his muscular form. The Thunder God tensed, arched his back, and tightened his grip on the hammer Mjolnir. Fire burned through him, searing his flesh and peeling away layers of muscle to reveal bones that had fought a thousand battles, endured for hundreds of years. His mouth gaped open in a silent scream.

Thor flared bright against the stars, and was gone. Mjolnir spiraled away, an orphan in the sky, and vanished into the depths of space.

At that moment, a shiver ran up Thanos’s spine. The universe shifted; the strings, the bands, the swirls of existence vibrated, sounding a chord of triumph. To Thanos, death was a song, an ode, a lyric poem. It was his art.

He looked down. On his left fist gleamed the Infinity Gauntlet, power radiating from the six Gems studding its surface. The yellow stone—the Power Gem—still flared. A moment ago, it had loosed the bolt that ended Thor’s life.

Thanos smiled. The Power Gem was the least of the six—and it had just claimed the life of Earth’s most powerful defender.

Soon, all existence would bow to Thanos. If he felt merciful, he would grant it the greatest gift of all: nonexistence.

When Thanos spoke, his voice was like granite plates. Shifting and rumbling, jangling the chords of hyperspace.

“LET THE GAME BEGIN,” he said.

Half a mile away, in free space, the next wave of Earth’s heroes shot forth to face him. Carol Danvers, the energy-powered Captain Marvel. The Silver Surfer, gleaming on his board. The Vision, an artificial being. The cosmic peace officer called Nova.

And their leader, Captain America, grim and determined in a red-and-blue spacesuit flecked with white stars. He motioned to the others, gathering them to him and speaking in low, short tones over the radio in his helmet. The Captain had no special abilities, no invulnerable skin or energy-channeling powers. But Thanos could feel his thoughts in the ether, more focused and intense than any of the others.

Thanos clenched his fist tighter, poured his will into the Gems. His diamond-hard, gray-skinned body began to grow in size, dwarfing his enemies. Already he was as tall as a skyscraper; soon he would be as large as a moon, then a planet. Eventually, all matter in the universe would be absorbed within his omnipotent form.

As he grew, his awareness expanded. He could sense the bands of hyperspace, an ever-growing range of dimensions, each a glittering string to be plucked and played. Seven strings radiated out from each gem—42 in all, each a window into a unique reality. The strings spread like webs through the stars, wormholes linking all time and space. They could be picked, moved, tied, rewoven, or snapped at his will.

Thanos saw without seeing, perceived multiple planes of existence. Before him, Captain America and Captain Marvel argued strategy, casting urgent glances at Thanos. The word “diversion” fluttered past his awareness, and he laughed.

“YOU SPEAK OF DIVERSIONS,” he boomed. “DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THAT I SEE EVERYTHING AT ONCE?”

The Silver Surfer’s blank eyes went wide. He understands, Thanos realized. Alone among the heroes, the Surfer possessed cosmic awareness.

A small vessel circled nearby, keeping a careful distance from Thanos’s ever-growing form. Its engines were strictly sublight, its hull patched together from alien ships and experimental human shuttles. Its pilot, a misshapen creature called Ben Grimm, barked out warnings to his passengers, then sent the ship on a wide-angled course for the outer system.

Thanos cast his awareness wider, surveying the totality of his surroundings. The Space Gem burned bright on his fist, feeding power back into its owner. Several miles off, in a small capsule, a third contingent of attackers waited. This was Captain America’s emergency team, a trio of extremely volatile entities. A green-skinned behemoth; a demon with a flaming skull. A man with cold metal pressed against a hideously scarred face.

Thanos’s ship Sanctuary floated at the edge of his awareness, out beyond the orbit of Mars. Its crew of space pirates and degenerates was not strictly necessary to his purpose. But he knew: Even a god needs followers.

Exactly one million miles sunward, the Earth floated helpless in space.

“Thanos.”

Thanos turned, startled. He’d almost forgotten Captain America. The muscular human floated with his comrades, addressing Thanos directly.

“You have the Infinity Gems,” Captain America said. “That gives you power.”

The voice was tinged with anger. Over the death of his friend, no doubt. Thanos grinned.

“But power is a hollow thing,” the Captain continued.

“YOU BELIEVE SO?”

“I know it.” Captain America grimaced. “I’ve seen the abuse of power—time and time again. It always backfires.”

Thanos tuned out the small voice. He was still growing, approaching planetary size. His atoms drew farther apart; he became a specter against the stars. Soon he would engulf this solar system, then the galaxy.

No power—no force of nature or technology—would stand before him. The Space Gem could take him anywhere in the universe. The Soul Gem would break his enemies’ will. The Time Gem would grant him access to past and future; the Mind Gem would lay all secrets bare to him. The Power Gem would feed and energize the others.

And if all five of those somehow failed, the Reality Gem alone could shape the universe into any form Thanos desired.

He could feel the power suffusing his form. The universe would kneel before him. It would become him.

And yet…

Something nagged at him, casting a shadow over his impending triumph. Yes, the stars themselves had cried out at Thor’s death. The trumpets had sounded; the strings had been plucked. Thanos’s offering had been heard and accepted.

But something was missing. Some absence tugged at Thanos’s stone heart. When the Thunder God perished, Thanos had still been alone. The voice in his heart, the one entity he loved more than any other, had not spoken.

Mistress Death was silent.

In all the universe, only one entity—one concept—owned Thanos’s loyalty: Death. Oblivion. All his life, throughout countless human lifetimes, he had worshiped her, adored her, sought to please her. She spoke to him in dreams, waking and sleeping, urging him on to slaughter and genocide. Her dark eyes glittered; her scarlet mouth promised peace and a final contentment.

But it was never enough. No matter how many beings, how many worlds that Thanos reduced to cinders, Death had never fully accepted him. Her lips brushed his ear, whispered words of temptation and promise. And then, always, she was gone.

The Infinity Gems glittered on his fist. They were his last chance, his final bid for Death’s love. The Gems’ power was so great, so universally feared, that they had long ago been scattered and placed in the care of a group of cosmic entities. To accumulate them, Thanos had tricked, trapped, and vanquished the Collector, the Gardener, the Grandmaster, and others he could barely even recall.

Now the power was his. The power to control the universe—to rule it, or to raze it to dust. The greatest gift any being, throughout time and space, had ever granted to Death.

And still she withheld her love.

A burst of cosmic energy blasted against Thanos, disrupting his expanding atomic structure. For a moment, he felt…not pain, exactly. The ghostly memory of the sensation. A whisper of hurt, a flash of anger.

He turned stone eyes to the source of the blast. The Silver Surfer stood astride his board, channeling unimaginable power through his outstretched hand. That power had been granted the Surfer by Galactus, the Devourer of Worlds. One of the few beings whose strength rivaled Thanos’s own.

But the Surfer alone could not have pierced Thanos’s enhanced body. The Vision floated nearby, channeling a steady blast of solar energy through the jewel in his forehead. The young hero called Nova gritted his teeth, shooting forth pulses of gravimetric force through his outstretched hands. Captain Marvel thrust forward one fist after the other, sending radiant energy that flared in blinding bursts.

Captain America floated behind them, directing the assault. Eyes wide with alarm.

Again, Thanos smiled. You should be alarmed, Captain.

He sent a thought-command to the Power Gem, and the assault simply ceased. The range of energies, of solar and cosmic and gravimetric power, stopped short of Thanos, as if a force field had been erected.

Now, Thanos decided, casting his thoughts forth to Mistress Death. Now the slaughter begins.

The Power Gem flared—and then died down again at his command. Why just kill them all? he thought. Much better to show them the full power of the Gems first. A display, a demonstration to the assembled universe of what was to come.

He turned first to Captain Marvel. She bore a trace of Kree power within her, the legacy of the most fearsome warrior race in the galaxy. Yet she herself was human, mortal. A fragile speck in a large, hostile universe.

The Space Gem pulsed. With the slightest twitch of a cosmic string, Thanos shifted space around Captain Marvel. A moment of disorientation, and she found herself alone and helpless, far from her world, her teammates, her ship. Far from the raging battle.

Somewhere near the orbit of Pluto.

Billions of miles away, Thanos reveled in her panic. She would die in the depths of space, far from Earth, as hunger and thirst inevitably destroyed her human form.

“Close ranks!” Captain America called.

The Surfer, Nova, and the Vision moved closer together, renewing their assault. They couldn’t keep this up forever, Thanos knew. It would be easy enough to wait them out, to allow them to exhaust themselves.

But where was the fun in that?

With a quick pulse of the Mind Gem, Thanos swooped inside the Surfer’s thoughts. In a millisecond, the Titan witnessed the tortured creature’s entire history: his childhood as Norrin Radd on the peaceful planet Zenn-La, his enlistment by the Devourer as herald, and the triumphant moment when he had turned on his master, refusing to scout worlds for Galactus to consume.

Thanos’s fingers, each the size of a moon now, twitched. The Mind Gem subsided; the Soul Gem flared. Cruelly, surgically, Thanos reached into the Surfer’s mind and altered his essence.

The Surfer stiffened. He looked around at his comrades, as if seeing them for the first time. Then he turned and flew off into the void, ignoring Captain America’s protests.

Thanos smiled. The Soul Gem had returned Norrin Radd to a cold, emotionless state, as he had been when Galactus recruited him. This Silver Surfer cared nothing for humans, for love or friendship, for the survival of worlds. His inside matched his exterior: hard, gleaming, allowing no light to penetrate his soul.

The Vision launched himself toward Thanos, his solar jewel blazing bright. Thanos cocked his head, studying the tiny android. Then he raised the Gauntlet and aimed the Reality Gem.

All around the Vision, space went mad. Planets careened and crashed, moons and comets appearing out of nowhere. Captain America’s voice in the Vision’s ear became a deafening shout, then a gibbering squeak. All directions became one; the Vision scrabbled and flailed in the void, unable to find his way.

The android’s strength, Thanos knew, came from the rigid order of his artificial brain. Without that, the Vision was helpless. Trapped in a private hell.

Thanos became aware of a voice breaking his concentration. A faint sound, almost too quiet to make out. Despite himself, his heart surged with hope. Was this Mistress Death? Had she arrived, at last, to share in his glory?

“Uh, guys? Not to complain, but I’m kind of drowning in lizards here.”

Anger surged through Thanos. This was not Death’s voice. It was a tiny human, a chittering insect he’d faced before. A mote, a speck of dirt.

Spider-Man.

Thanos frowned, seeking the source, then raised an enormous stone eyebrow in surprise. While he’d been occupied with Captain America’s assault, Ben Grimm had successfully boarded Thanos’s starship, Sanctuary. Spider-Man was among Grimm’s team.

I’m not yet used to operating on multiple planes at once, Thanos realized. I must learn to divide my attention, to live in all time and space simultaneously. I have been a Titan all my life, but I must learn what it means to be a god.

He swept his fist wide, sending a trail of Gem-power flaring across the orbit of Mars. Captain America and Nova winked out of existence. There was no burst of power, no meeting of weapons in battle. They were there, and then they were gone.

Voices cried out, chattering over suit radios. Thanos folded the bands of space and turned his attention to Sanctuary. He thrust his awareness inside, through the gleaming hull, and searched the two wings of the ship until he reached Main Mission, in the thick central section.

A fierce battle raged under the glaring lights and floor-to-ceiling viewports of Main Mission. The Black Panther leapt out, stunning Thanos’s officers with his charged gauntlets. The alien crew members fell back, firing lasers. Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, soared overhead, raining fireballs down on the crew.

Captain Styx, a salmon-colored humanoid with white eyes, stepped cautiously into the room. He swept his hand forward, and a horde of enlisted men—most of them recruited from lizard races—swarmed in after him. Spider-Man launched himself into their midst, punching and spraying webbing from both hands.

“This looks kind of…what’s that thing that isn’t good?” Spider-Man webbed an armed lizard in the face. “Bad.”

A hatch clanged open, propelled inward by the force of a rocky orange fist. Ben Grimm, the Thing, charged into Main Mission, followed by the muscular She-Hulk. A slim figure followed, soaring gracefully through the air. He wore a space helmet, but unlike those worn by Captain America’s team, his wasn’t filled with air.

Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, drew in a deep breath of water and charged.

Grimm and She-Hulk waded into the lizardmen, punching and jabbing. The Torch swooped up and down beneath the high ceiling, bombarding the enemy with fireballs. Namor launched himself like a missile through the air, mowing down Thanos’s officers with his steel-hard fists. The Panther kicked and thrust with his Vibranium claws; Spider-Man cast a web at the ceiling and swung himself upward, then reached down to clog a few laser rifles with well-placed bursts of webbing.

As Thanos watched, an odd emotion came over him. It took him a moment to recognize it as boredom.

The Space Gem flared. In an instant, Namor was gone. He reappeared on a desert world, far across the galaxy—a world with no seas, no lakes, no natural bodies of water.

With the tiniest pulse of the Reality Gem, Thanos turned Namor’s helmet to hydrogen. The last of the monarch’s precious water spilled out around him, evaporating as it struck the arid sand below.

Namor raised his head and cursed Thanos. Thanos laughed.

“Um, guys? Prince Finding Nemo just kind of… winked out.”

Spider-Man again. His voice was like a nail on slate. Thanos vowed to make him suffer.

But first…

Another burst of the Space Gem, and half of Grimm’s team vanished. She-Hulk, the Panther, and the Torch all winked back in at the bottom of a deep alien sea. The Torch’s flame hissed and died.

This world was the exact opposite of the one to which Namor had been exiled—a planet entirely covered, from one end to the other, with water.

The Panther tore off his mask, struggling to breathe. She-Hulk’s eyes began to bulge. The Torch’s hands sputtered with flame—but he, too, was helpless. Thanos considered using the Time Gem to slow time, to prolong their agony. But his goal was not to cause suffering—merely death.

Death. Still she tortured him; still she was silent. Thanos clenched his fist. Where was she?

Aboard Sanctuary, Ben Grimm winked out, reappearing just outside the ship. Pressure built inside his body; his eyes bugged out, red veins bulging. He exploded into a storm of orange rocks, tiny against the surrounding asteroids.

“Okay, boys.” Again, the nagging voice. “Looks like it’s just yours truly against an army of green scaly dudes. Now, I may look severely, even hopelessly, outnumbered. I may seem way out of my urban comfort zone here on the Starship Crazypants. But no matter where I am, I’m still your Friendly Neighborhood—”

Thanos thrust his giant fist forward. The Time Gem glowed, with a tiny assist from the Space Gem. Dimensions folded; superstrings struck dissonant chords. Spider-Man rose up, twisted sideways, and warped through space-time.

Thanos smiled. He reached out with the Mind Gem, joining his consciousness with Spider-Man’s. He wanted to feel every moment of the agony to come.

Spider-Man felt himself growing smaller, younger. His awareness narrowed, sharpening down to a single, horrific moment. The moment when, with savagery in his heart, he’d held his Uncle Ben’s killer in his hands.

The worst moment of young Peter Parker’s life.

He pulled the man’s face up to his own and remembered: It’s the burglar who ran past me. The one I didn’t stop when I had the chance. Once again, for the first time in his life, he realized that his own lack of responsibility had brought about his uncle’s death.

But Thanos was not finished. He reached out into the 42 bands of hyperspace and caught hold of a single superstring. He twisted the string and tied it closed, into a loop.

As Spider-Man watched in horror, the moment repeated itself. Again he grabbed the burglar, raised him up to view the man’s face. Again he felt the first rush of guilt, the shame that would follow him the rest of his life.

Then again.

And again.

Thanos laughed. He withdrew from Spider-Man’s mind, leaving the young hero in a hell that would never end.

Thanos’s body was the size of Jupiter now. I’ve only scratched the surface, he realized. The options, the perversions made possible by the Gems—they’re endless.

More defenders rushed to tackle him. The Hulk, his furious energy channeled and amplified by a specially designed spacesuit. Doctor Doom, lashing out with a mixture of dark magic and stolen cosmic power. Ghost Rider, his blazing skull a portrait of elemental fury astride a rocket-fueled motorcycle.

From a space warp, a starship appeared. Gleaming, sharp angles—a vessel of war. For a moment, Thanos hoped the Shi’ar had actually dared to challenge him. But when he cast his vision inside, he found only the X-Men. Magneto, Psylocke, Sabretooth, Archangel, Storm, and a strangely young Jean Grey.

One by one, they met their doom. The Hulk’s soul, reduced to that of Banner at his lowest state. Storm, trapped alive in a coffin for all time. Jean Grey, exiled to a deadly time loop of mass murder and endless regret. Ghost Rider confined forever to Mephisto’s fiery hell. Magneto returned to the death camps, his great mind crippled along with his powerless body.

Thanos raised his head to the heavens and cried out. “IS IT ENOUGH? NOW WILL YOU ACCEPT MY LOVE?”

A tiny whisper in the night. Too quiet to make out. But it could be her.

He allowed himself to hope.

All around him, the bands were silent. Bodies drifted among the asteroids; shards of spacesuits sparked harmlessly in the night. Captain Styx had resumed command of Sanctuary, and was beginning to turn it toward Earth.

Earth. A dot against the sun, a speck of foul matter with a needle-sharp satellite orbiting it. Thanos sensed eyes aboard the satellite, watching him. Plotting a final, hopeless defense.

Those defenders, too, would have their turn. They would find exile in their own unique hells. Or else the Titan would simply kill them, grant them the bliss of nonexistence.

For now, he allowed himself a moment of satisfaction. His mind roamed the dimensions, raced up and down the superstring paths. He watched Namor sink to the pitiless sands, felt Spider-Man cycle through unending grief and horror. Sensed Captain Marvel’s growing panic at her hopeless exile, relished She-Hulk’s moment of drowning as water filled her gamma-irradiated lungs.

Each death, an offering. A token of his love.

He was larger than the sun now, vaster than the solar system. Yet still he was incomplete. Still he yearned for her embrace.

And there was something else. Something speeding toward him like an arrow, through the bands of hyperspace. A monster, a weapon, a creature designed and engineered for a single purpose: the murder of the Mad Titan.

Despite his size, despite his power, Thanos felt a twinge of fear. As he tensed, awaiting the attack, a single word bubbled to the surface of his consciousness, taunting and threatening him. A word he hadn’t heard for a long time.

Destroyer.

He clenched his fists, willed the Gems to full strength, and awaited the battle to come.

TWO

“WELL,” Tony Stark murmured, flipping up his faceplate to view the hologram before him. “Not a bad seat for the end of the world.”

“That’s your bright side?”

Maria Hill, director of S.H.I.E.L.D., gestured at the three-dimensional image of Thanos. The Mad Titan hovered in space, teeth clenched, fists held out before him. Thanos had grown to enormous size: Stars, comets, asteroids were visible through his cosmically enhanced form. Pieces of destroyed ships surrounded him; bodies, too, though at this magnification they were too small to identify.

“The Gems,” Tony said. “He finally got ’em all.”

“We knew this day would come,” Hill replied.

Tony squinted at the holo. “Wish we could get a better look.”

“Richards is working on it.” Hill flashed him a glance. “You worried?”

“Not yet.” Tony grimaced. “Check back in five.”

The multileveled bridge hummed with activity. Computers buzzed, alarms rang out. Agents of both S.H.I.E.L.D. and its sister agency S.W.O.R.D. bustled around, barking orders and hustling to obey.

The Peak was the satellite command post for S.W.O.R.D.—the Sentient World Observation and Response Department. While S.H.I.E.L.D. handled terrestrial threats, the Peak kept watch on the skies. It hung like a sharp-pointed dart in Earth orbit, surrounded by rings of docking bays, holding facilities, and scientific laboratories.

Under normal circumstances, S.H.I.E.L.D. and S.W.O.R.D. operated independently. But a threat of this level required total coordination. Ships of all nations buzzed around the Peak, preparing to defend their shared world.

“The Infinity War,” Tony said. “Or is this the Crusade? I forgot my handbook.” He shook his head. “Any word from Fury?”

“He’s in Moscow.” Hill tapped, distracted, at a tablet computer. “Assembling a multinational military force to make a stand on the Earth. Assuming Thanos gets here.”

“If that walking mountain gets here, there won’t be an Earth. What about Abigail Brand?”

“Coordinating with Fury. She’s circling the globe, rounding up Inhumans.” Hill let out a long sigh. “We’re doing all we can…even launched the new Starcore station ahead of schedule. The nations of the world are actually, sort of, coming together. I’ve even got a North Korean rep in my office. But against that…”

On the holo, Thanos raised his enormous head, as if responding to some unseen threat. He lifted his fist, and the Infinity Gems glowed bright, one after the other.

“I’ve fought a lot of bad guys in my time,” Tony said. “But this feels different.”

“Different?” She paused, lowered her tablet. “How?”

“It feels…final.”

He fidgeted, adjusting his armor. He’d been wearing the Iron Man suit for ten hours now; it was starting to itch. He studied the holo, but couldn’t make out any sign of Captain America’s team.

“Radio contact with the attack teams has been lost,” Hill said. “That’s not good.”

“You’re a pessimist.” Tony flashed her a humorless smile. “I knew we had something in common.”

“How’s the plan going?”

“I’ve built the machine. It’s up to the others now.” He frowned at the hologram. “Wish I was out there.”

“Me, too.” She turned to squint, sharply, at the image. “What’s that?”

“Wide view,” Tony ordered.

The hologram zoomed out, the view expanding to include Sanctuary. Thanos’s enormous form still dominated the image. Tony reached out with both hands, swiveling the view. A green-and-violet streak appeared above the sun, shooting toward the Titan at unimaginable speed.

“That,” Tony said, “is the diversion we’ve been waiting for.”

The streak slowed on approach, resolving into a humanoid figure. His body was huge and muscular, marked with fierce red tattoos. His eyes glowed white, and he carried an enormous, jagged knife in each hand.

“Drax,” Hill said.

“Any old Destroyer in a storm.” Tony shook his head. “Fascinating dude. Dropping out of hyperspace without even a suit…that should have ripped his flesh to shreds.”

Drax the Destroyer swooped up in front of Thanos. Drax was smaller than the Titan’s nose—but for a just moment, a look of fear seemed to cross Thanos’s face.

Drax dropped straight down, reared back, and stabbed both his knives into Thanos’s enormous chest. Thanos recoiled, his mouth flying open in a silent scream.

Hill frowned. “How can he do that?”

“The Destroyer was created to battle Thanos. Invented, if you will. He’s a living weapon.”

“Can he...you know...destroy him?”

“No chance. None.”

“What about the rest of the Guardians? Are they coming?”

“They’re busy across the galaxy somewhere. Something about Annihilation Waves, a group of assassins called the Black Order…another front in Thanos’s war. Anyway, I’m not sure a raccoon gnawing Thanos to death is our best plan.”

“Then what is?” Hill gestured helplessly at the Destroyer. “If a human weapon created specifically to kill Thanos is useless, what else can we possibly throw against him?”

On the hologram, Thanos clenched his fist tight. A beam of Gem-energy shot out toward the Destroyer. Drax dodged and weaved in space, but the beam grazed his side. He grimaced in pain, his blood bubbling out into free space.

“When the invention fails,” Tony said, “go back to the inventor.”

He turned to gaze across the huge, circular bridge. A strange machine stood against the far wall, past dozens of frantic S.H.I.E.L.D. and S.W.O.R.D. agents. Its most prominent feature was an irregularly shaped viewscreen framed by a bronze border studded with Mayan and Egyptian symbols. The ancient pictograms clashed sharply with S.W.O.R.D.’s high-tech decor.

A slim, red-cloaked figure knelt before the machine, head bowed. Eldritch energy billowed up from the figure’s outstretched hands, rising into the air and feeding power into the glowing device.

“Well?” Hill asked. “Is it ready?”

“Just waiting for Reed’s dimensional-turbulence inhibitor.” Tony turned, calling out, “Richards! Where are you?”

Hill grimaced. She pointed her thumb at a balcony three stories above.

“You better get up there,” she said.

Something in her voice made Tony obey. Not bothering to flip down his faceplate, he triggered his boot-jets with a mental command. As he shot up into the air, he caught a last glimpse of Drax’s tiny form, lashing out again at the giant figure of Thanos.

On the upper level, high above the activity of the bridge floor, a balcony alcove had been cleared for Reed Richards’s use. The pliable scientist’s body seemed to fill the entire space, his limbs stretched and coiled around consoles and machines, fingers absently manipulating viewscreen controls several yards away from his staring eyes. But Reed Richards’s stretching power was actually the least of his talents. His incredible mind allowed him to adapt any situation, any combination of equipment, to his own needs. That innate problem-solving ability was what truly made him Mister Fantastic.

But as Tony jetted in to land on the balcony, he realized something was wrong. Reed’s equipment was studded with screens, mounted at all different heights: small screens and large, square- and oval-shaped, some of them no doubt built for alien use. Reed’s long fingers reached out to pinch and enlarge one image, then danced across consoles to the next. His eyes flickered from one image to another.

Every screen showed jagged chunks of orange rock floating in space.

Tony laid a metal hand on Reed’s shoulder. The gauntlet almost sank into Reed’s pliable flesh.

“Ben,” Reed murmured.

Tony nodded. Now he recognized the images on the screens: chunks of Ben Grimm’s cosmically altered body, blown to pieces by Thanos.

“Reed,” Tony said, struggling to keep an edge of impatience out of his voice. “We gotta close this deal.”

When Reed looked up, Tony almost flinched. The scientist appeared older, more tired than Tony had ever seen him before.

“I couldn’t save him,” Reed whispered.

There’s no time for this, Tony thought. His mind shifted into hyperspeed, proposing and discarding a dozen courses of action in milliseconds. Yell at Reed? Commiserate? Pick him up and carry him down to the bridge?

Slap him?

“Reed.” Tony kept his voice steady. “Where’s Sue?”

“With Fury. In Moscow.” Reed shook his head. “They’ll never survive against Thanos.”

“Let’s make sure they don’t have to.”

Reed looked away.

“Come on, Reed. Don’t make me do this. You know I suck at pep talks.”

“This is true.” Reed nodded. “What do you need?”

“What do I need? I need the gizmo! The turbulence inhibitor!”

“That? I finished it ten minutes ago.” The scientist held up a small cube covered with intricate circuitry. “I thought you were still working on the portal.”

Tony snatched it out of his hands. “Now I really want to slap you,” he muttered.

“Mm?”

“Nothing.” He jetted up into the air. “Let’s not tell Hill about this, ’kay?”

“Tony?”

Tony looked back down. Reed’s 13-inch finger was pointed at a small screen in the corner of the work alcove. A large chunk of Ben Grimm’s body, perhaps a piece of his chest, floated in space. As Tony watched, the spinning hammer of Thor tumbled across the screen, tiny against the star-flecked blackness.

Tony said nothing. With a mental command, he flipped down his helmet faceplate. As his armor’s circuit closed, Iron Man’s bright, white eyes glowed to life.

“Come on,” he said.

He kept the faceplate on during his descent. Tony had built the Iron Man suit to shield himself from attacks, but sometimes it served another purpose. To the world outside, no expression showed on that gleaming gold visage. No tears welled up in those blinding white eyes.

Reed followed, his body extending and contracting, grabbing onto railings and tumbling down levels like a Slinky on stairs. Tony was about to touch down when the station shook with a violent impact.

“Battle stations!” Hill yelled.

Tony pivoted, veering sideways, and came in for a landing next to Hill. She stood before the main holo-display, which showed a large, three-segmented spaceship firing particle beams.

“Sanctuary,” Reed said. Tony jumped—he hadn’t seen the scientist’s head and elongated neck swoop up next to him. “Thanos’s ship.”

“Softening us up,” Tony breathed.

“Scramble all fighters,” Hill said, pressing a comm button on her shoulder. “S.W.O.R.D., S.H.I.E.L.D., everything we’ve got. And alert Fury: The battle’s come to us.”

A small secondary holo-window in the corner of the display still showed Drax dodging and weaving in space, avoiding Thanos’s blasts. The image flickered and vanished. A technician turned to Hill and said, “Remote feed lost.”

Hill turned, astonished, to Tony and Reed. “What the hell are you two waiting for?”

Tony touched Reed on the shoulder—at least, he thought it was the shoulder. With Reed’s arms stretched out over half the bridge, it was hard to tell. “You got the dingus?”

“You took it from me.”

“Oh. Right.”

They crossed the bridge, dodging and leaping around frantic S.W.O.R.D. agents. Another blast struck the Peak; Tony jetted up into the air to avoid stumbling.

When he reached the machine with the Egyptian symbols, Tony glanced back at the main holo-display. A phalanx of Earth fighters—at least two dozen—had surrounded Thanos’s ship, firing particle weapons and small nukes. They looked like mosquitoes trying to bring down an elephant.

“Wanda,” Tony said. “Ready to make some magic?”

The kneeling figure turned and blinked, as if noticing him for the first time. Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, wore a ceremonial red cloak and tiara. Behind her, a strange pattern of static hissed and flickered on the machine’s flat, oddly shaped screen.

“Wanda?”

“I am ready,” she said. She turned back toward the machine, knelt down, and fired off a blast of chaos magic into it.

Static flashed bright. A wave of energy swept across the screen and sharpened into an image of fast-moving clouds. Tony couldn’t explain it, but the clouds seemed almost alive.

Wanda shivered.

Reed slinked up beside Tony. “Is she ready for this?” he whispered.

“Wanda’s proved herself plenty of times.” The bridge shook under another impact. “Besides, we’re out of options.”

The screen shifted again, a fierce wind blowing across it. “I have reached him,” Wanda said. “I have located the one we seek.”

Tony shot Reed a look that said: See?

Clouds whipped across the screen. Staring into their depths, Tony could feel their power. The winds died down, revealing a hazy, flickering image of a man with mustache, goatee, and piercing eyes.

“Oh,” Tony said. “That one.”

“Doctor Strange,” Reed said. “Where are you?”

“I’m afraid the answer to that question wouldn’t… much sense.” Strange’s voice faded in and out. “I have crossed many…sional planes to reach this place.”

Another blast struck the bridge. The screen went blank; Strange’s face vanished. Tony swore, opened a panel in his gauntlet, and initiated a force-reboot by remote control.

Wanda stabbed her hands out rigidly and poured more energy into the machine. The Sorcerer Supreme reappeared. He seemed disoriented, buffeted about by the otherworldly winds.

“I fear I have…lost myself. The dimensions are shifting…out of alignment. The paths are not as they were.”

“I can speak to you, Doctor.” Wanda glanced up at Strange. “But I cannot locate you.”

“Doc,” Tony said. “We’re running out of time. You found our boy yet?”

“Yes. He resides in the nether dimension where Thanos … him. But I cannot pierce the turbulence surrounding that realm.”