It was obvious enough.
Ian had found the right place.
He had just arrived a little too late.
The fight was already over.
"Which is normal. I'm from DC. In our world, even the fastest man alive is always late."
Ian looked out over the frozen plaza. Corpses of soldiers were strewn across the ground in every direction. And in the middle of the carnage, Gwen Stacy was slumped against a shattered wall.
She was still wearing that combat suit, but the suit had been ripped open by a massive tear, and her organs were spilling from her abdomen, dragging a horrifying trail across the snow.
"Hey, Gwen! Good evening!"
Ian waved at her warmly. After all, out of all the mangled soldiers on the ground, she was the only person he recognized who was still breathing.
"It's morning..."
Gwen had spotted Ian too. She was thoroughly exasperated by this man who always appeared mysteriously and disappeared just as mysteriously. Even half-dead, she still found the energy to correct him.
"For my body clock, this counts as night."
Ian did not care about her attitude. He looked around at the blood-soaked ground and was a little surprised by how quickly he seemed to be getting used to it.
"What happened here?"
Ian picked up a relatively clean gun and poked at Gwen, who was slumped against the edge of the fountain wall. Since Gwen had her eyes closed, he suspected she might die at any second.
Of course,
unlike the soldiers around them, Ian knew Gwen could still "come back."
"Don't poke my mouth!"
Gwen, who looked seconds from death, somehow still had enough strength to grab the gun barrel in one hand. Then, in a voice drained by her near-death state, she asked Ian for help.
"Kill me."
Yes.
That was her asking for help.
Her unusual constitution meant she simply would not die, and that powerful vitality had become a curse. Ian raised a brow, but before he could say anything, the demon at his waist spoke first.
"He doesn't like killing. He promised his stern father."
The demon head hanging at Ian's side was obviously trying to please him, trying to cooperate with what it thought was a dimensional demon god pretending to be a human child.
However,
"Shut up!"
Ian immediately slapped the demon head.
"Then again, a father's words don't always have to be obeyed. My own father told me to serve Trigon, and just look where that got me."
The demon promptly changed its stance.
It truly could not read Ian at all.
"Demon..."
Gwen looked at the talking head hanging from Ian's waist. Yet another extraordinary being untouched by corruption.
A complicated look flashed through her eyes.
When she looked back up at Ian, her gaze was full of confusion.
"How is this possible? Everyone... demons... they should all be gone."
Her chest rose and fell unevenly. She looked like she could finally die any second, except that final breath refused to leave her.
"Help me."
She asked again.
"Do you have to die before you come back? Can't there just be ten of you at once? No, a hundred thousand of you?"
Ian could more or less tell why she was desperate to die. And if there really could be that many Gwens, a rather bold idea started forming in his mind.
"We're not clones."
Seeing that Ian still had not acted, Gwen let out a sigh and answered his unspoken question.
"You really don't know anything. That's not normal. Tony didn't record our data and memories."
"You're underestimating him. Underestimating our final savior. What he carries are the souls of every person in the universe, not some vague set of biological records."
Gwen's hand fell weakly away from the gun again. Her pale lips barely moved, and her voice was as faint as falling snow.
"He can do that? So this isn't some Gwen Sister Level 6 Shift Project?"
Ian looked stunned.
"He can do that? What's a Gwen Sister Level 6 Shift Project?"
The demon head became a rather imperfect echo.
Not intentionally.
It just had also heard something far beyond its understanding.
"I don't understand what you're talking about. Can you kill me now? You can ask Tony the rest later. His information processing speed should be fast enough to keep up with your thought process."
There was genuine pleading in Gwen's voice now, and Ian started to feel a little awkward for still dragging this out.
"No problem. I've seen assassin movies. I'm very good at killing people."
Having made that confident promise, Ian hurried forward, crouched down, and first tried to cover Gwen's mouth and nose with one hand.
Unfortunately,
after realizing his hand was not big enough, he dropped the laser gun he had been holding and, under Gwen's blank stare, used both hands to carry out what even a detective would have called an absurd "murder."
"Don't fight it. Honestly, fighting back won't help anyway. I'm definitely stronger than you now. We can compare later if you want."
One hand pinched Gwen's nose shut, the other covered her slightly open mouth. This killing technique managed to stun not only Gwen, but the bull-headed demon as well.
"You should snap her neck."
In the end, the demon could not help offering a sincere suggestion.
"I know! But then blood would come out of her mouth and nose! Do you know how expensive this outfit is?"
Ian still remembered how hard it had been to wash blood out of his clothes the last time.
"..."
"..."
The demon and Gwen, whose nose and mouth were both covered, went silent at the same time.
Gwen's eyes widened.
She could not speak.
So she dipped a finger into the blood on the ground and started writing in the snow beside her.
I want to die faster... and you're standing on my colon!!!
Her handwriting was messy.
The three exclamation points at the end expressed her feelings very clearly. Ian lowered his head and saw that he was indeed stepping on Gwen's exposed intestines.
"A woman's mouth is full of lies. That's clearly your appendix."
Ian stepped back a couple of paces and let go, which allowed Gwen, who had nearly suffocated, to start breathing again.
?!!?
Gwen could not even find words to curse with anymore. She hated how little she had prepared for a situation like this. Gritting her teeth, she slowly reached toward her own abdominal cavity with a trembling hand.
At this point, she had decided ending things herself would be much easier than letting this horrible boy help.
And then, as if she suddenly saw something, she stopped.
"The sky! The test subject!"
Even in her weakened state, there was tension in her voice.
"The test subject?"
Ian looked up and saw nothing at all.
At that moment, the demon at his waist spoke again.
"She means that thing, probably. It really is beautiful. Oh, what a remarkable dimension, to produce lifeforms with this kind of aesthetic appeal."
Its tone was almost admiring.
Ian immediately turned to look up at the sky.
The next second,
"Oh, for the love of God... what the hell is that?"
Ian's head started buzzing. He looked like he had been struck by lightning. He almost wanted to dig his own eyes out and wash them in disinfectant.
"Great. So when the apocalypse can't get cheap takeout, it moves straight on to stitched-together corpses?"
Ian understood it now.
The survivors of this world were clearly experimenting with some kind of very innovative invention.
Floating in midair was an unnatural figure.
It wore Homelander's iconic blue suit over a strong torso, but grafted onto that body were Hulk's massive arms and thighs.
Those grotesquely swollen limbs looked completely absurd compared to the relatively slimmer torso.
Snowflakes drifted down.
And melted away at once.
The stitched-together corpse fixed its glowing red eyes on Ian.
(End of Chapter)
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