The final assault on the Dominator flagship launched at dawn.
Every available hero and SHIELD asset converged on Central Park, where the massive ship still dominated the skyline. Iron Man led an aerial squadron. Captain America coordinated ground forces. Thor crackled with lightning, ready to bring the storm.
And in the middle of it all, my small team prepared for the most dangerous infiltration of our lives.
"All teams in position," Fury's voice came through comms. "Cole, you're up. Make this count."
I stood alone in a clearing, hands raised in surrender. Above, the Dominator flagship's weapons tracked me, dozens of gun emplacements aimed at my head.
Through my telepathy, I broadcast a simple message to every mind on that ship: *I am Marcus Cole, the anomaly. I surrender myself for study. I have information about Earth's defenses.*
For a long moment, nothing happened. Then a beam of light engulfed me, and I was yanked skyward in a teleportation field.
I materialized in a massive chamber aboard the flagship. Dominator soldiers surrounded me immediately, weapons ready. And at the far end of the chamber, on a throne of crystalline technology, sat the Commander.
"The anomaly delivers itself," the Commander rumbled. "How… convenient."
"I'm here to negotiate," I said, keeping my mental shields tight. "Earth's forces are depleting. We can't win a prolonged conflict. I'm offering myself as a bargaining chip—you let my world live, you get to study the telepathic anomaly that shouldn't exist."
The Commander leaned forward, its massive form radiating interest. "You believe you have value beyond your abilities?"
"I know I do. You said it yourself—I'm not in your intelligence. I appeared from nowhere with powers that don't match any known human baseline. Don't you want to know why?"
It considered this. I could feel its mind working behind those impenetrable shields, weighing options and outcomes.
"Bring him closer," it finally commanded.
The soldiers shoved me forward. As I walked, I reached out with the barest thread of telepathy—not to the Commander, whose shields were impenetrable, but to the ship's systems.
The Dominator flagship wasn't just a machine. Like their jamming array, it was partially alive, a bio-technological hybrid with its own primitive awareness. And unlike the Commander, it had no mental shields.
I touched the ship's consciousness, gentle as a whisper, and planted a single command: *Sleep. In five minutes, sleep.*
The ship's awareness rippled, accepting the suggestion. It would take time for the command to propagate through its entire system, but when it did…
"You are stalling," the Commander observed. "Clever. Your team is already aboard, attempting to reach the core systems."
My blood went cold. It knew.
"Yes, we detected their entry seventeen seconds ago. You are not as subtle as you believe, anomaly." The Commander stood, its massive frame towering over me. "But I am curious. What did you think you could accomplish? Even if you reached the core, my personal command override would prevent any sabotage."
It was toying with me. The entire plan was compromised.
"Tell me," the Commander continued, moving closer. "That ability you demonstrated before. The one that froze me in place. How did you accomplish that?"
"I don't know."
"Fascinating. An instinctive reality manipulation. We have seen such abilities before, in species far more evolved than humans." It reached out one massive hand toward my head. "Let us see what secrets your primitive mind holds."
The moment it touched me, everything changed.
The Commander's telepathic probe was like nothing I'd experienced.
It didn't assault my shields—it bypassed them, sliding through my defenses like they were tissue paper. This wasn't brute force. This was surgical precision honed over centuries.
My mind opened like a book. The Commander rifled through my memories, my thoughts, my very identity. It saw everything—my death in another world, my arrival in this one, every manipulation I'd performed, every skill I'd absorbed.
*Impossible,* its mental voice echoed. *You are not native to this reality. You are a transplant, an insertion from outside the quantum structure.*
It saw the truth I'd hidden even from myself. I wasn't just from another Earth—I was from outside this entire universe's causal chain. An anomaly that shouldn't exist according to this reality's rules.
*This explains your impossible abilities. You do not follow our universe's laws because you were not born to them.* The Commander's probe went deeper. *Fascinating. And useful. If we can replicate the process that brought you here, we could insert agents into any reality, any timeline.*
It was going to dissect me. Take me apart piece by piece to understand how I'd crossed dimensional barriers.
But it made one critical mistake—it was so focused on my mind that it ignored my body.
And it was touching me.
I reversed the flow. Instead of defending against its probe, I opened my mind completely and pulled.
The technique was something I'd learned from Rogue—not just absorbing powers, but absorbing consciousness itself. The Commander's mind was vast, ancient, and powerful. But it had made physical contact, and that was all I needed.
I yanked its consciousness into mine, trying to contain it, to trap it the way I'd helped Rogue trap the alien fragment.
The Commander realized its error immediately. It tried to pull back, but I held on with desperate strength.
*Release me, anomaly!*
"Not a chance."
What followed was a psychic battle that existed outside normal perception. Two minds locked together, each trying to overwhelm the other. The Commander had centuries of experience and raw power. But I had something it didn't—I was fighting for survival, and I knew tricks from a universe it had never encountered.
I used techniques Emma had taught me, combined with absorbed knowledge from every telepath I'd ever touched. I created false pathways and mental traps. I showed it futures that didn't exist and pasts that never were.
And most importantly, I used that strange reality manipulation again. If I didn't follow this universe's rules, then neither did the battle in my head.
The Commander's consciousness began to fragment. Not because I was stronger—I wasn't—but because I was fighting in ways it couldn't predict or counter.
*What… are you?* it demanded, its mental voice weakening.
"Your worst nightmare. Someone who doesn't play by the rules."
With one final surge, I compressed the Commander's consciousness into a tiny corner of my mind and locked it away. Its physical body slumped, catatonic.
I collapsed, bleeding from eyes and nose, my brain feeling like it had been through a blender. But I'd won.
The Dominator Supreme Commander was trapped in my head.
The moment the Commander fell, chaos erupted across the ship.
Every Dominator soldier stopped, their coordination shattered without their leader's presence. The ship itself shuddered, my planted command finally taking effect, its bio-technological systems shutting down.
Through the comm system, I heard Felicia's voice: "Marcus! Whatever you did, it worked. The ship's defenses are offline. We're at the core!"
"Do it!" I gasped. "Trigger the self-destruct!"
"Already on it. You've got two minutes to get off this thing."
Two minutes to evacuate a ship the size of an aircraft carrier.
I stumbled toward the exit, my legs barely working. The psychic battle had taken everything I had. Around me, Dominator soldiers were starting to recover from the shock of losing their Commander, but they were confused, disorganized.
I pushed past them, using what little telepathic energy I had left to create confusion and misdirection.
One minute thirty seconds.
I found an observation deck with view ports. Below, the battle had turned. Earth's forces were routing the Dominator ground troops. The smaller craft were fleeing. We were winning.
But I was still on a ship about to explode.
"Strange!" I called out mentally, hoping the wizard was listening. "I could use that extraction now!"
No response.
One minute.
A golden portal opened beside me. Doctor Strange stepped through, his expression grave.
"That was foolish," he said.
"Got the job done."
"At what cost? You have an alien consciousness trapped in your mind. That will have consequences."
"Later. Right now—"
The ship shuddered violently. Thirty seconds.
Strange grabbed my arm and yanked me through the portal. We emerged in Central Park, surrounded by cheering heroes and soldiers.
Above us, the Dominator flagship's core reached critical mass.
The explosion was visible from space—a miniature sun blooming in Earth's atmosphere. The shockwave rattled windows across Manhattan. When the light faded, the flagship was gone, reduced to glowing debris falling like meteors.
And with it, the Dominator invasion was broken.
The celebration was muted.
We'd won, but the cost was severe. Entire city blocks were destroyed. Casualties numbered in the thousands. And the psychological impact of knowing aliens existed and wanted to conquer us would reshape human society.
But we'd survived. Earth remained free.
I spent the first day in SHIELD medical, being examined by every doctor and telepath they had. The Commander's consciousness in my head was a concern—Xavier couldn't remove it, neither could Jean. It was too deeply integrated, too alien to extract without destroying my mind in the process.
"You'll have to contain it," Xavier said finally. "Like Rogue did with the array's consciousness. Wall it off, keep it dormant. But Marcus… it will always be there. A foreign presence in your psyche."
"Can I access its knowledge?"
"Possibly. But I wouldn't recommend it. Every time you touch that consciousness, you risk it gaining influence over you."
"I'll be careful."
On the second day, the team finally regrouped. Everyone was battered, exhausted, but alive. That was what mattered.
"We did it," Felicia said, looking out at the city. Reconstruction had already begun, heroes and civilians working side by side to rebuild. "We actually survived an alien invasion."
"First one," Elektra corrected. "Now that Earth is on the galactic radar, there will be more."
"Cheerful as always," Jessica muttered.
"Just realistic."
Rogue approached me privately. "Ah wanted to thank you. For helping me contain that thing in my head. Ah know you're dealing with your own now."
"We help each other. That's what family does."
"Yeah." She smiled. "Family. Ah like that."
Maya signed something, and I translated for the others: "She wants to know what's next. The Dominators are gone, but we're not exactly heroes. We're still operating in the shadows."
"Maybe that's where we need to be," I said. "The Avengers handle the public threats. The X-Men protect mutants. But there are threats that fall through the cracks. Situations that need a team willing to get their hands dirty."
"So we keep doing what we've been doing," Felicia concluded. "Just on a bigger scale."
"Exactly."
Three weeks after the invasion, we held a proper team meeting.
The base had been repaired, upgraded with salvaged Dominator technology. SHIELD had officially designated us as "independent consultants"—their way of acknowledging we existed without putting us on the books.
Fury had visited personally to deliver the news, along with a warning: "You're being watched, Cole. By multiple agencies, multiple governments. They want to know what you are, what you can do. Keep your noses clean, or I can't protect you."
We'd accepted those terms.
Now, sitting around the conference table, we looked different. More professional. More experienced. We'd started as a ragtag group of misfits. We'd become something more.
"So," Felicia said, pulling up a holographic display. "I've been monitoring potential threats. There's a situation in Madripoor—weapons smuggling using Dominator tech. Another in Latveria—Doctor Doom is collecting alien artifacts. And then there's this."
She zoomed in on a particular signal. "Unknown energy signature in the Pacific. Could be nothing. Could be another threat."
"Which do we tackle first?" Jessica asked.
"All of them, eventually," I said. "But we need to expand. Six people can't cover global threats."
"So we recruit," Elektra concluded. "Carefully. People we trust."
"Silver Sable is still on the table," Maya signed. "And there are others. Enhanced individuals who don't fit with traditional teams."
"We'll reach out," I decided. "But carefully. Our strength is staying small, mobile, unpredictable. We grow too large, we lose that advantage."
As the meeting continued, planning our next moves, I felt the Commander's consciousness stir in the back of my mind. It was dormant, contained, but aware. Watching.
*You cannot keep me imprisoned forever,* it whispered.
*Watch me,* I replied mentally.
It subsided, but I knew Xavier was right. This would be a lifelong battle—keeping that alien presence contained while using its knowledge when necessary.
Just another challenge to overcome.
After the meeting, my women gathered in our quarters. All of us together, taking a moment to simply exist without crisis or threat.
"You know what I realized?" Felicia said, curled against my side. "We've become the exact thing governments fear. A private team with significant power, operating outside official channels, answering to no one."
"Are you worried?" I asked.
"A little. But also… proud? We did something impossible. Saved Earth when everyone else was focused on the big battles. That matters."
"It does," Rogue agreed from her position on my other side. "We matter. Not because we're the strongest or the most famous. But because we're willing to do what others won't."
Maya signed: "What's next for us? More aliens? Cosmic threats?"
"Whatever comes," I said. "We've proven we can handle the impossible. Now we just keep doing it."
"One impossible task at a time," Jessica added. "I can live with that."
Elektra, sitting slightly apart but still part of the circle, spoke quietly: "I've spent my whole life fighting. For the Hand, against the Hand, for myself. This is the first time I've fought for something that actually matters. For people I care about."
"You're stuck with us now," Felicia assured her. "No take-backs."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
We sat together in comfortable silence, each of us processing everything we'd been through. The invasion had changed us. Made us harder, more experienced, more aware of how fragile civilization really was.
But it had also proved something important: together, we could face anything.
Six Months Later
The team had evolved significantly.
We'd recruited Silver Sable as a consultant, handling operations in Europe and Asia when we couldn't be everywhere. Kate Bishop had joined as a part-time member, bringing her exceptional archery skills and Hawkeye's training.
Rogue split her time between us and the X-Men, serving as a bridge between our organizations. It worked surprisingly well.
I'd continued my skill acquisition, though more carefully now. The Commander's consciousness in my head made rapid transfers dangerous—it tried to hijack the process, to gain control while my defenses were down. But I'd learned to manage it, to use its knowledge without letting it influence me.
My relationship with my core team had deepened in ways I hadn't expected. We weren't just lovers or teammates anymore. We were something more profound—a family forged in cosmic fire.
Tonight, we gathered on the rooftop of our base, looking out at the Manhattan skyline. The city had recovered remarkably well. Humans were resilient like that.
"Think they'll come back?" Felicia asked. "The Dominators?"
"Eventually," I said. "We embarrassed them. Destroyed their flagship. Killed their Supreme Commander. That's not something a spacefaring empire just forgives."
"Then we'll be ready," Elektra said simply.
"We will," I agreed.
In the distance, Stark Tower gleamed. Avengers Tower stood proud. The Baxter Building's lights blazed against the night. Earth's heroes, rebuilding and preparing for the next threat.
But here, in our hidden base, we did the same work from the shadows. Handling threats before they became public. Stopping dangers that never made the news.
It wasn't glamorous. It wasn't always heroic. But it was necessary.
"Marcus?" Rogue's voice pulled me from my thoughts. "You okay?"
"Yeah. Just thinking about how far we've come. A year ago, I was just a telepath trying to survive in this universe. Now…"
"Now you're a telepath with a small army, alien technology, and a cosmic consciousness trapped in your head," Felicia finished. "You've moved up in the world."
I laughed. "When you put it that way…"
"She's right though," Jessica said. "You've built something here. Something important. Don't forget that when the next impossible situation comes up."
"I won't."
Maya signed: "To impossible situations and the family that faces them together."
"To family," everyone echoed.
As we stood together on that rooftop, I felt the weight of responsibility but also the strength of connection. Whatever came next—more aliens, cosmic threats, dimensional invaders—we'd face it as we always had.
Together.
In the shadows.
Making the impossible possible, one mission at a time.