"You never mentioned you were worthy enough to lift the magic hammer, web-head!"
Johnny Storm hovered fifty feet in the air, his entire body radiating white-hot plasma. He blasted a concentrated stream of fire at Zombie Nova, instantly turning the undead cosmic hero into a plummeting, charred husk. He pumped a fist in the air, genuinely thrilled by the sheer absurdity of the battlefield.
Below him, Peter Parker was a blur of black symbiote, blue bio-electricity, and blinding white Asgardian thunder.
Peter swung Mjolnir in a wide, devastating arc. A massive chain-lightning strike erupted from the Uru metal, arcing through a tightly packed cluster of zombie foot-soldiers and reducing them to fine gray ash.
"To be fair, Goldilocks is usually super territorial about his toys!" Peter shouted back through the comms channel. "I rarely get a turn!"
Peter didn't stop moving. He launched himself off the hood of a crushed taxi, bringing the hammer down with bone-shattering force. He caved in the skull of Zombie Thor with a single, sickening crunch. Without missing a beat, he pivoted, spinning Mjolnir to generate a concussive shockwave. The blast caught the heavily armored, high-defense zombies—Luke Cage and Wolverine—square in the chest, hurling them backward into the crumbling castle walls.
"Oh my god... is that me?"
Peter froze. He landed softly on a pile of rubble.
Standing a few yards away was the Spider-Man of Earth-2149. His red and blue suit was torn to rags. Gray, rotting skin hung loosely from his jaw. The lenses of his mask were shattered, revealing sunken, milky eyes.
"Hey! Over here!" the undead Peter Parker croaked, waving a decaying arm at the sky. "Look at me! I'm right here!"
Peter's stomach violently flipped. He stared at the twisted mirror image of himself. There was no witty comeback for this. He just raised the hammer.
A localized lightning bolt struck the courtyard. The blinding flash engulfed the zombie Spider-Man, instantly incinerating his corrupted flesh to dust.
As the white light consumed him, the undead Peter Parker felt a fleeting, final moment of clarity. The endless, gnawing hunger vanished. In that microscopic fraction of a second before his consciousness dissolved, he thought of his Aunt May. He thought of Mary Jane. He remembered the metallic taste of their blood on his tongue when the virus completely overrode his humanity.
Thank you, the dying echo of his mind whispered. Thank you for avenging them.
Peter lowered the hammer. His lenses narrowed. He had initially debated the ethics of disrupting the Watcher's closed time loop, but seeing his own rotting corpse had completely erased any lingering hesitation. The timeline was already broken. These monsters just needed to be put down.
He gripped the leather-wrapped handle, channeling his symbiote-enhanced bio-electricity directly into Mjolnir. He unleashed an infinite, rolling combo of thunder strikes, sweeping the courtyard clean.
Unfortunately, the ambient atmospheric charge in this decaying universe felt sluggish. The lightning simply wasn't as potent or efficient as the storms he had summoned back in the Wasteland reality of Earth-21923.
"Target the hammer!" a rotting voice barked.
Zombie Captain America stood behind the shattered remains of his vibranium shield. He pointed a decaying finger at Peter. "Take him down! If we don't crack him open, none of us are making it to the banquet alive! Hulk! Crush the bug!"
"Hulk want eat bug!"
The ground trembled. Zombie Hulk launched himself from the back of the horde. He blotted out the sun, descending toward Peter with his massive, rotting green fists clasped together for a lethal hammer-blow.
A massive orange blur intercepted him mid-air.
Ben Grimm slammed shoulder-first into the undead behemoth's ribcage. The sheer kinetic impact completely derailed the Hulk's trajectory.
"Hey, jolly green!" the Thing roared, driving a rocky uppercut directly into the zombie's jaw. "How about you pick on someone in your own weight class?"
The two heavyweights crashed into the mud, tearing at each other in a flurry of brutal, earth-shaking blows.
Around the perimeter, the castle defense held firm. Any flying zombies that got too close to the upper windows were immediately roasted by the Human Torch. Susan Storm stood on the balcony, her hands raised, maintaining a massive, shimmering force field over the inner courtyard. Magneto hovered near the Asteroid X, tearing massive chunks of steel from the hull and hurling them like meteorites into the undead crowd. On the battlements, Dazzler and the Scarlet Witch rained down photon blasts and chaos magic, while the 2149 Doctor Doom deployed swarms of heavily armed Doombots to sweep the flanks.
Inside the central hall, the atmosphere was completely different.
The Earth-616 Reed Richards and Doctor Doom stood at the main console, rapidly inputting the final sequence for the multiverse portal.
"This entirely conflicts with the primary evacuation protocol, Victor," Reed said, typing frantically. "If you intend to detonate the dimensional drive and blow up this entire Earth, someone has to physically remain behind to trigger the manual override. You can't remotely detonate a reality-ending bomb."
Reed glanced nervously at the monitors showing the courtyard. "And Spider-Man isn't doing it. The moment he flips that switch, the planet shatters. He will die here."
"I never intended to sacrifice the boy," Doom replied smoothly, his hands gliding over the control deck. "Doom understands the value of a unique piece on the board."
Doom slowly turned his masked head. He looked across the room at the Doctor Doom of Earth-2149, who was busy directing the last wave of civilian refugees into the glowing portal.
Reed followed his gaze. His eyes widened. "Victor... are you planning to sacrifice yourself? I honestly did not expect you to be so noble."
"Do not insult me with your sentimentality, Richards," Doom scoffed. "When I proposed this localized destruction plan, he immediately agreed. My counterpart is arrogant. He has undoubtedly already formulated a spell to mind-control me, leave me locked in this room to trigger the bomb, and then impersonate me to conquer our universe."
Doom folded his arms. "My strategy is profoundly simple. I am merely going to strike first."
Reed stared at him. Classic Doom.
Ironically, the 616 Doom was absolutely correct. The 2149 Doom was currently mentally prepping a localized subjugation hex, fully intending to hijack his alternate self's life. He simply didn't realize the 616 Doom was already three steps ahead of the betrayal.
Before the chess match could escalate, the massive hologram of Uatu the Watcher flickered wildly. The cosmic being's stoic, impassive face contorted into an expression of sheer, unadulterated terror.
"Oh no," Uatu boomed, his voice shaking the stone walls. "You must accelerate the transit! You must hurry! He is coming!"
Outside in the courtyard, Peter's Spider-Sense didn't just tingle. It detonated.
It felt like a jagged ice pick had been driven directly into the base of his skull. The warning klaxons in his brain screamed louder than they had since the spider-god Anansi and Knull. But unlike that encounter, the alarm didn't fade. It sustained a blinding, deafening pitch.
Peter dropped to one knee, clutching his head. He looked up.
A streak of corrupted, blinding gold tore through the polluted clouds.
It was a robust, heavily muscled superhuman wearing a tattered yellow and blue suit. A glowing, golden "S" was etched into his belt. He radiated a terrifying, suffocating aura of necrotic solar energy. It was the Zombie Sentry.
"Meat!" the Sentry roared, his voice sounding like tearing metal. "I want fresh meat!"
The Sentry didn't even bother swinging his fists. He simply flew straight through the battlefield. Wherever his golden aura touched, zombies and skeletal warriors alike were instantly flash-vaporized into nothingness.
He locked onto Peter. The golden god descended in a blur, his rotting, blood-stained maw unhinging to an impossible width.
Peter didn't retreat. He gripped Mjolnir with both hands, aimed it directly at the incoming Sentry, and unleashed the single largest, most concentrated blast of lightning he could generate.
The white-hot pillar of thunder swallowed the Sentry whole. Peter poured every ounce of bio-electric venom energy into the strike, bathing the courtyard in blinding light.
High above, Johnny Storm shielded his eyes. "Who the hell is that?!" Johnny yelled into his comms. "I've never seen that guy before! Is he one of yours, Peter?!"
"That is patient zero," Uatu's voice echoed through their earpieces, laced with cosmic dread. "That is the Sentry. He is a being who has never natively existed in Universe 2149. He possesses the unbridled power of a million exploding suns."
Inside the castle, Doctor Doom froze. He looked up at the Watcher's hologram.
If that statement was a literal biological fact, and not a dramatic exaggeration, then Doom's entire contingency plan was completely useless. You cannot kill a creature powered by a million exploding stars by simply blowing up a single, insignificant planet. The Sentry would survive the planetary detonation.
Reed grabbed the edge of the console, his knuckles turning white. "We have to revert to the sabotage protocol. We smash the portal controls and run!"
Reed looked at the terrified crowd still bottlenecked at the dimensional gateway. "It will take at least three more minutes to get the last civilians through the rift!"
"You cannot survive for three minutes," Uatu stated flatly, lowering his head. "Neither Spider-Man nor the Human Torch possess the mathematical capability to stall the Sentry."
Out in the courtyard, the pillar of lightning faded.
The Sentry hovered in the air, completely untouched. The devastating, point-blank lightning strike hadn't even singed his decaying costume.
Johnny ignited for a nova burst, preparing to dive bomb the monster.
"Johnny, no! Stay back!" Peter screamed, his voice raw with panic. "Do not come anywhere near him! You are not in his weight class!"
Peter stood up slowly. His muscles ached. His suit rippled nervously against his skin. He gripped the leather handle of Mjolnir, feeling the cold weight of the Uru metal.
He had heard Reed over the comms. Three minutes.
Peter took a deep, shaky breath, letting the cold air fill his lungs. The tactical objective was simple. It was also completely impossible.
He just had to stall a dead god for one hundred and eighty seconds.