Wong escorted Thena out with the quiet competence he applied to everything, leaving Smith alone with the Ancient One.
She waited until the door closed. Then: "You know the Eternals' mission."
"Yes."
"I saw it in her memories." The Ancient One moved to the window, her back to him for a moment. "Every deployment. Every planet. Every emergence." She turned around. "The same pattern, repeated across the universe. The civilization grows, the Celestial gestates, and when it's ready, the planet breaks apart. The Eternals' memories are sealed afterward and they're sent somewhere new to begin again." A pause. "There's one gestating here. In Earth's core."
"I know."
She studied him. "You knew before today."
"Yes."
"And you've decided to let the Eternals handle it."
"I've told them it's their responsibility. If they compete for wish access and solve it that way, the problem ends cleanly." Smith kept his voice level. "If they can't manage it, I'll cover the outcome. But provoking the Celestial hierarchy directly before I'm in a position to back that up would be wasteful."
The Ancient One nodded slowly. "The Dragon Ball solution is the correct approach for now. Repair the Earth after emergence, restore the lives lost — it can be done in two wishes if the timing is right." She looked at him steadily. "But Smith. Some of the Celestials have already surpassed the tier you're building toward. Even Odin, armored in the Destroyer and wielding multiple Infinity Stones, has had that reality demonstrated to him. Don't force a confrontation before the gap is closed."
Smith understood the warning. It wasn't a constraint he resented — it was accurate. The Celestials in this universe operated at a level that his current ceiling, however high it had climbed, didn't reach. Three hundred million base power with stacked Kaioken was meaningful against most things. Against the architects of star systems, it was a starting point.
"I'll handle it carefully."
The Ancient One held his gaze for a moment longer, then nodded once. The conversation was finished. "Take Thena and go. I'll look after your student."
Skye had been in New York for ten days and had produced more useful investigative content than in the previous three months combined.
She sat in her van with the door cracked, laptop open, the city noise a constant backdrop, and worked through her third script of the day.
The first video was already live — Smith Doyle stepping out of an alien spacecraft, S.H.I.E.L.D. having evacuated a full city block in advance of what turned out to be a product test. She'd used synthesized audio over the footage she'd captured from the rooftop. The framing was straightforward: Is single-person space travel no longer a technical barrier? What does a civilian product launch look like when the manufacturer can land on New York?
The second video had taken longer to construct. She'd been tracking the Sky Curtain phenomenon through three years of records — the annual darkening event, the correlation with reported anomalies, the pattern of coverage and suppression. The New York resurrection had been too large to suppress entirely, but the framing remained vague. She connected the dots carefully: If the Sky Curtain event is linked to the resurrections, what happened in the previous two? Who came back that we haven't been told about?
She left the question open. She didn't have the answer yet. But the shape of it was right.
The third video was about the stones.
She'd watched the market move in real time — spherical natural stones going from geological curiosity to commodity to frenzy within weeks. Multiple large-scale buyers, none of them identifying themselves. Prices spiking, counterfeiters flooding in, the whole ecosystem of a speculative bubble assembling itself at speed.
But underneath the stone story was the other thing she'd found. The Dragon Balls — a specific category of spherical object, distinct from the regular stone market, trading hands on the dark web at prices that had climbed from $3 million at first appearance to over $30 million now. She had a photograph of one. She had transaction records she'd pulled from three separate dark web markets.
She didn't know what they did. But the price trajectory over three years told her that someone had decided they were worth almost anything to acquire.
She put the video together, kept the tone curious rather than declarative, and let the numbers speak.
All three went live through the Rising Tide network's distribution channels simultaneously. Within forty minutes, all three were trending. The Dragon Ball video outperformed the spacecraft footage by a factor of three within the first hour.
Skye leaned back and read the comment sections with the focused attention of a researcher watching data come in.
People are noticing, she thought. Good.
Smith returned Thena to the Brotherhood and brought her directly to Ajak.
"The Mahd Wy'ry has been resolved. The Ancient One sealed the source. Barring interference with the seal, it won't resurface."
Ajak exhaled — a controlled thing, but genuine. "Thank you, Smith. Truly."
Thena looked at him directly. She had the bearing of someone who'd been carrying a weight for so long that its absence felt strange and needed to be consciously acknowledged. "I owe you a favor, Mr. Smith. I'm aware that's not a small thing to say to someone like you, but I mean it."
Ajak didn't discourage this. Thena bore a striking resemblance to Fox — the bone structure, the quality of stillness — and Ajak was perceptive enough to notice that Smith had accepted the thanks without deflecting, which was its own kind of signal.
Sersi had been quiet since the tour of the compound, but something had clearly been working through her since then. She looked at Smith now with the expression of someone who had arrived at a practical question.
"Korin Tower," she said. "The structure at the base of your compound. I'd like to propose something."
Smith waited.
"Piling raw metal near the tower's base — on both sides — would give me a working surface to convert from. Vibranium and primary adamantium don't need to be mined from underground; if you give me enough source material, I can convert it into surface-accessible deposits." She paused. "Additionally, I could reinforce the tower's foundation using the same materials — embed primary adamantium into the base structure so it's anchored properly. The tower is tall enough that the foundation work is worth doing."
Smith thought about this. Korin Tower was three thousand meters of vertical construction with a cultivation facility at the summit. The foundation question was legitimate — he'd relied on Bulma's original engineering, which was excellent, but primary adamantium anchoring was a different category of solution.
"The tower's stability during conversion," he said. "You're confident the surface deposit approach doesn't create ground stress?"
"The conversion happens at the molecular level — no excavation, no thermal event above ambient. The structure won't feel it." Sersi kept her answer precise. "If you prefer, I can also work from your storage facility and bring the finished material out. Either method works."
Smith considered for a moment, then nodded. "Do it at the tower. Surface deposit approach, foundation reinforcement while you're at it." He looked at her. "I'll have someone show you the base layout."