My sword flickered out once, charged with wind and dimensional energy. It split reality in front of me into equal halves that slid sideways like a mirror cut in two. Lauren's face froze in horror—then she winked, her body distorting into monstrous, winged, amorphous shades with razor claws, wings, and jaws wide enough to crush a human skull. I switched to Aquila and filled the air around me with floating shurikens of dimensional and wind energy, shredding the monsters before they could move centimeters.
A wall of blaster fire erupted around me, carving through most of my summoned shurikens. There had been no warning, no sign, just full fire. I recognized the ability from my time with the Time Stone. It was some type of advanced invisibility. Combine that with her cloning mutation, mind shield, various flavors of pistol fire, sword, magic, and now shadow magic, and she'd become the perfect assassin.
Too bad I had some new advantages of my own.
Space folded around me, and I was standing in the courtyard, hundreds of yards away from the library as it was torn apart. Bits of masonry went flying, and entire sections of the building simply vanished, as if they'd been transported by one of my dimensional spells.
Pity. I'd wanted to save that building.
Flooding Aquila with dimensional energy, I targeted the barrier locking me into Kamar-Taj and swung, sending out a massive spectral blade.
Predictably, Lauren tried to attack me the moment the blade left my weapon, hoping to catch me off guard, but I was one step ahead. The air around me exploded with purple fire as I activated Supernova, channeling the Ancient Fire rune array etched into my armor.
She hopped back, her body ablaze. Slowly, she shed the fire along with a layer of shadows, letting it droop to the ground below us like liquid. The barrier enclosing Kamar-Taj was gone now.
"Still haven't figured out a counter for that yet," she said smoothly, "but I probably will by the next time we fight."
"There won't be a next time," I said, my armor churning with energy. I called on my Mind Cloak and activated every amplification rune on my armor, funneling its full might—and a chunk of my substantial energy pool—into my ancient Mind Array.
A mental spike slammed into her consciousness faster than the speed of thought, instantly breaking her Mind Shield. Her eyes glazed over, and I swiped forward with Aquila, trying to finish her with a lance of Anathema fire—but shadow erupted out of her compromised body, flooding the mountain range in an instant. Fire clashed with darkness.
I sliced, ripped, tore at the faceless, endless monsters, whipping Aquila into a frenzy. Thousands died in an instant, eviscerated by spectral blades.
Then the clones joined in, firing beams of disintegration. I teleported, feeding runes into Time Warp to radically increase my movement. Each one repositioned or teleported before I could line up a clear shot. Eventually, I was forced to summon my full array of weapons and repeat what I'd done on Mars.
My Mind rune array began to overheat and gutter out, forcing me to reinforce it with my affinity as I initiated the attack. I flooded the consciousness of everything present with my most painful memory, warped and amplified for maximum damage.
The memory was vivid, as if it had happened only yesterday. It was the moment just before I received Anathema-Fire as a skill and awakened Angelic Ascension.
I'd been certain the pain of getting burned alive would break me, and a heightened version was guaranteed to do just that to Lauren.
I was right...mostly.
The shadows vanished, leaving ten versions of Lauren wincing and doubling over. They looked up and recombined, each one reinforcing the last until she stood whole again, completely recovered, staring at me.
I swung, sending a wave of Anathema fire at her.
She teleported behind me, landing on a distant mountain.
"You've lost," she declared. "You just don't know it yet."
I launched a dimensional slash at her. She vanished before it connected. The blow sheared the top off the mountain, and I scowled, frustrated by the entire exchange.
—
Dr. Betty Ross — POV
"Astounding work, Dr. Ross. We are almost ready to begin testing," Andrea, the Novan scientist, said.
She was a Xandarian biologist, flown in by the Novan Council for our joint supersoldier project. So far, so good. Things were proceeding faster than I could have ever imagined. Their technology and software accelerated our research by light-years. What should have taken decades to puzzle out was about to be finished in record time.
"I still can't believe we're nearly done," I said, turning and leaning against the table.
Andrea hummed, her bright yellow irises fluttering.
"I mean, what we've done here… the results—they're more than eight times Erskine's. The soldiers we'll be making could topple nations."
The nagging doubt I'd mostly ignored since the project began resurfaced. I'd joined to keep Bruce safe, then doubled down when the Xandarians promised a potential cure should we succeed. Now that the rewards were in sight, I found myself hesitating.
"They just might," Andrea said, turning to a holographic display and typing rapidly. She pulled up a gene sequence and began analyzing it.
"And that doesn't bother you?"
"Not particularly," she replied. "The Demons, the Kree, the Shi'ar Empire, the Skrulls, and every other major galactic power possess soldiers whose physical capabilities match or exceed what your gamma serum grants. If your government is intelligent, it will mass-produce enhanced soldiers. It is the only way your world survives."
She spoke with a clinical detachment I'd come to both admire and dread.
Her words eased some of my guilt, though I wasn't sure that was a good thing. Scientific progress was her north star. Ethics were secondary to survival, and in her view, the demons were relentless—every advantage had to be exploited.
"Regardless of how you feel, it's out of your hands now," she said simply, closing the sequence and opening a new file.
It was a full-body scan of Bruce, pre- and post-transformation. Something made her wrinkle her perfectly symmetrical face.
"You're not supposed to be here."
"What?" I asked, stepping closer.
She zoomed in with a gesture, revealing a foreign body embedded deep in his system. A virus. She isolated it, exposing its structure—long, serpentine, and utterly alien.
She tapped a few commands and initiated a database search.
"What is it?" I asked.
"I do not know," she said, her voice tight with unease.
My stomach clenched. Andrea had a photographic memory, was over a hundred years old, and ranked among the foremost biologists in the galaxy. If she didn't recognize it, Bruce was in serious trouble.
The computer ran for nearly a minute before freezing on a long-extinct pathogen the locals had once dubbed Red Death.
The best way I could describe it in human terms is genetically programmed super Ebola.
It propagated through every known vector and carried a near-total fatality rate. What we'd discovered was an improved strain. The original vaccines and cures were practically useless against it.
"Those animals," Andrea whispered in quiet rage, "They've doomed us all."
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