Sometimes, the multiverse was just objectively absurd.
No matter what the brilliant minds of Earth-2149 had tried, they had completely failed to stop the Hunger Gospel. Or, more accurately, they hadn't actually wanted to. The Reed Richards of this dying world, arguably the smartest man on the planet, had looked at the necrotic infection and somehow concluded it was the next logical step in human evolution. He had actively embraced the virus. He had intentionally infected his own family. He had even managed to bite Thor, Doctor Strange, and Luke Cage—beings with unbreakable skin or mystical wards that should have made them immune to a simple bite. How he had pulled that off was a horrifying testament to what an unhinged genius could accomplish.
Meanwhile, it had taken the Earth-616 Reed Richards less than two hours inside a sterile, secure Latverian laboratory to successfully synthesize a neutralizing vaccine.
It was a small, pressurized vial filled with a murky, orange-yellow fluid. It wasn't a permanent cure, and its most realistic application right now was just marinating the survivors so the zombies wouldn't digest them immediately, but it worked.
Peter leaned against the cold stone wall of the castle's main hall, crossing his arms. Frankly, he and the 616 Doctor Doom could have just packed up and left. They had secured the primary survivors. This universe was a sinking ship on fire, and lingering here was fundamentally a terrible idea. But Doom had flatly refused to leave. For whatever twisted, egotistical reason, the monarch insisted on saving the local Latverian populace, and neither Peter nor the Fantastic Four were going to argue against saving innocent lives.
At the central medical table, Reed pressed a pneumatic syringe against Susan's arm. The device hissed, injecting the temporary vaccine into her bloodstream.
Susan winced slightly, rubbing her shoulder. She looked up at her husband, her brow furrowed. "You know, Reed... I was talking to this world's Doctor Doom. He told me that the 2149 version of you actually believed this virus was a form of elevated evolution. That's why he infected the others."
Reed paused. He set the empty syringe down on a stainless steel tray with a sharp clatter. He looked at Susan, his expression twisting with profound physical revulsion.
"Only a complete fool would call this evolution," Reed said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "Putting aside the drastic degradation of cellular structure and physical stamina, we've fought those things out there. They are not evolved. They are entirely enslaved by their own appetites, completely incapable of fighting their base desires. Biologically, their dead bodies don't even need to consume calories to function, yet they are driven by a ceaseless, agonizing mental torment to feed. That isn't evolution, Sue. It's enslavement. Some unknown, highly engineered virus is turning us into mindless cattle."
Susan raised an eyebrow, digesting the information, but stayed quiet. It was clear Reed was deeply disturbed by the fact that a version of himself with the exact same intellect had arrived at such a horrifyingly wrong conclusion.
Across the hall, Peter pushed off the wall and walked over to the towering multiverse portal archway. The Doctor Doom of Earth-2149 stood before the console, his arms crossed over his chest plate.
"I can take responsibility for destroying the portal once the evacuation is complete," Peter said, pointing a thumb at his own chest. "Reed already calibrated the vibrational frequencies for Earth-21923. The Wasteland universe. It's a harsh place, but it's completely isolated from this infection. Once you and the refugees step through, I'll smash the control array so the zombies can't follow. I can use my own dimensional tether to swing back to 616 after the console is scrap."
The 2149 Doom slowly nodded, accepting the tactical logic.
A few feet away, the Earth-616 Doctor Doom stood silently by the secondary control panel. He wasn't participating in the evacuation logistics. His metal fingers glided millimeters above the alien circuitry, his eyes tracking the energy pathways. No one noticed that the monarch had already discovered a hidden anomaly in the machine's architecture.
A sharp, phantom itch flared in T'Challa's right hand.
He groaned, his eyes fluttering open to a dark, vaulted stone ceiling. The air smelled heavily of medicinal alcohol and burning ozone. The last clear memory he had was the deafening sound of shattering glass, followed by Hank Pym's jaw unhinging to impossible proportions as the Ant-Man lunged for him.
Am I dead? T'Challa thought, his heart rate spiking. Or did I turn into one of those monsters?
He gritted his teeth and forced himself to sit up on the medical cot. He looked down.
His right arm and left leg were gone. In their place were sleek, articulated Latverian prosthetics, bolted directly into his nerve endings with cold, gray metal.
"You are safe, T'Challa," a trembling voice echoed from the far corner of the dimly lit room. "At least for the next few hours."
T'Challa snapped his head toward the sound. A figure stepped out of the shadows. It was Magneto, but the Master of Magnetism looked completely broken. His shoulders slumped, his white hair disheveled, and his eyes were hollow and red-rimmed.
"Erik?" T'Challa rasped, testing his new metallic arm. The servos whined softly. "Did you... did you save me?"
"No," Magneto whispered, shaking his head. "It was not me. Heroes from another universe wandered into this nightmare. You are currently inside Castle Doom in Latveria. Doom has constructed a portal capable of traversing the multiverse. He plans to send the remaining survivors to a safe reality."
A safe reality.
T'Challa stared blankly at the stone floor. The sheer scale of the devastation was difficult to process. He looked back up at Magneto, finally noticing the tears pooling in the old mutant's eyes. It didn't take a genius to calculate the odds. The Brotherhood of Mutants had been on the front lines. Magneto's children were almost certainly dead, or worse, among the infected horde.
T'Challa softened his tone. "Erik... are you alright?"
Magneto covered his face with his hands. A wretched, ragged sob tore from his throat. "I... oh, my god. What have I done?"
T'Challa frowned, shifting his weight on the cot. "What are you talking about?"
"It is all my fault, T'Challa," Magneto choked out, dropping to his knees. "It is all me."
Under T'Challa's shocked gaze, Magneto confessed to the ultimate sin. Twenty-four hours earlier, Magneto had been intercepted on secure comms aboard his orbital base, Asteroid X. A mysterious, unidentified figure had contacted him, claiming to possess a highly advanced, targeted biological weapon. The figure promised the virus could differentiate between baseline humans and those with the X-gene.
Blinded by his lifelong crusade, Magneto believed he was being handed the ultimate tool to finally eradicate human oppression and secure the Earth for mutantkind. He made the deal.
The moment Magneto authorized the deployment from Asteroid X, a massive bolt of lightning had struck downtown Manhattan. It delivered a superhero Magneto had never seen before—an infected, glowing man in a golden cape. The Sentry.
The mysterious figure hadn't lied; the virus could differentiate between humans and superhumans. But Magneto had been played. The virus didn't spare the powered individuals. It actively sought them out, targeting superhumans first because they were the most efficient vectors for spreading the plague.
"Who was this mysterious person?" T'Challa demanded, his voice hardening into the authoritative tone of a Wakandan King.
Magneto blinked, wiping his face. "I... I do not know. He kept his face hidden. He routed the signal directly into the mainframe on Asteroid X."
"Where is Asteroid X now?"
"I brought it down into the Latverian courtyard when we fell back."
T'Challa didn't say another word. He swung his legs over the side of the cot. The prosthetic foot hit the stone floor with a heavy clank. Ignoring the blinding pain radiating from his severed nerves, T'Challa stood up. He limped past Magneto, pushed open the heavy wooden doors, and walked straight out into the castle courtyard.
He ignored the bewildered stares of the surviving X-Men and Brotherhood members huddling near the crashed, smoking hull of Asteroid X. T'Challa climbed the boarding ramp, breached the command center, and dropped heavily into the primary operations chair.
His metallic fingers flew across the control panel, pulling up the deep-encrypted communication logs. If this apocalypse wasn't a natural mutation, but a targeted, engineered conspiracy, then the mastermind pulling the strings had to have a contingency plan.
T'Challa ran a brute-force decryption on the last incoming transmission.
Error. Logs purged. Origin unknown.
T'Challa let out a sharp breath of frustration and slammed his organic fist against the console, cracking the glass display.
"Hi! How are you?"
T'Challa startled, looking up. Peter was hanging upside down from the ceiling wiring, his mask peeled up just past his nose.
Peter swung down, landing lightly on his feet. "Sorry, Your Highness. I was actually looking for the Scarlet Witch to let her know Magneto is still kicking. Didn't mean to interrupt your brooding session."
T'Challa rubbed his temples, letting out a long, exhausted sigh. "It is fine, Spider-Man. I just..." He gestured to the cracked screen. "The mastermind behind this entire outbreak was the one who deployed the virus. I was attempting to trace his original communication signal. He might possess the key to reversing this."
"Yeah, well, your method is a little flawed there, King T'Challa," Peter said, walking over to the console and peering at the code. "If the patient zero—the zombie Sentry—came from an alternate universe, then the guy holding his leash is probably sitting in a completely different reality too. You're searching local bandwidth for an inter-dimensional phone call."
Peter cracked his knuckles, slipping past T'Challa to take the keyboard. "Fortunately, traversing the multiverse is kind of my entire job description right now. I picked up a few tricks about resonant vibrational frequencies from a friend of mine. Let's just recalibrate the signal origin to bounce off the dimensional barrier..."
Peter's fingers blurred across the keys, inputting a localized quantum bypass.
The primary monitor on Asteroid X hummed loudly. The static cleared in a wave of pixelated distortion.
The screen lit up, illuminating the dark command center. A massive, shiny bald head filled the monitor. The mastermind blinked, clearly shocked to find a Spider-Man staring back at him from a dead universe.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Writing takes time, coffee, and a lot of love.If you'd like to support my work, join me at [email protected]/GoldenGaruda
You'll get early access to over 50 chapters, selection on new series, and the satisfaction of knowing your support directly fuels more stories.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~