Chapter 140
Arc 9 - Ch 7: The Annihilation Wave
Location: Lamentis-1, Edge of Kree Space, 2075
The screaming reached him first. High-pitched, desperate, cutting through the roar of the approaching swarm. Tyson's fingers dug into the tower's edge. Metal groaned. The wrongness crawled up his spine through every steel beam in the city.
His spider-sense prickled at the base of his skull, a persistent low-grade warning that spread across his shoulders like static electricity. Not the sharp spike of immediate danger, but the steady hum of threat approaching. Inevitable. Inescapable. The sensation built with each passing second as the swarm drew closer, a slowly tightening vice around his awareness.
The vibration hit him; a subsonic thrumming that made his teeth ache and his magnetic sense shriek warnings. The Annihilation Wave stretched across the horizon, not like a storm, but like the horizon itself had come alive. The air tasted metallic, bitter, as if the atmosphere was being digested ahead of their advance.
Sylvie joined him. "How much time do we have?"
Four minutes. Maybe less.
The warning from his spider-sense intensified as he watched the horizon, no longer just a tingle but a steady pressure behind his eyes. His body wanted him to move, to act, to do something about the approaching threat. The instinct to flee warred with his determination to stand.
"Not long enough." He glanced down. "This isn't a tower defense. We can't fight that. We need to survive it."
"What are you thinking?"
"We're going to have to turtle for this one."
Her brow furrowed. "What?"
"You don't have turtles in Asgard?"
"This isn't the time to be cheeky."
He turned serious. "We need a fully defensible position. Have them crash against the walls. They have fliers and overwhelming numbers. High ground doesn't work against aerial forces."
He pointed to his weapon. "Keep Nexus close. I'm going to gather supplies and survivors." His voice dropped. "The more we have with us, the larger the ripples, right?"
Before she could respond, he stepped off the tower. Hovered. Then shot forward, streaking between burning buildings.
The city was nearly lost. Flames licked at structures. Streets littered with debris. He extended his hands as he flew, feeling for everything metallic. Lampposts, vehicles, building supports, all of it tearing free and following in his wake like a comet tail.
Movement in an alleyway. Three people huddled behind an overturned cart. He descended, landing hard enough to crack the pavement.
"Come with me if you want to live." He grimaced at his own line.
The survivors stared.
"The evacuation ships are gone," one said, voice cracking. "We're trapped here."
"I know somewhere safe." He gestured to the growing cloud of materials hovering behind him, creating a platform and walling it off. "Get on."
A distant explosion rocked the ground.
He took to the air again. Six barricaded in a restaurant kitchen. Four more in an apartment complex. Three hiding in a library basement. Each time he repeated, "Come with me, bring what you can carry, move quickly." Some refused. He scooped them up anyway.
Screams from a school building. He crashed through a window into a gymnasium. A dozen children and two adults cornered by three insectoid creatures, massive beetles with razor-sharp appendages and glowing red eyes.
"Get behind me."
The creatures charged. His spider-sense spiked the instant before the nearest creature lunged, sharp enough that he'd already begun moving before his conscious mind registered the attack. The warning came in a burst. Left mandible, right claw, center mass charging. His body processed threats faster than thought.
Three metal spears fashioned from street signs shot through the air, impaling them. They writhed, then collapsed.
"Are there others?" he asked one of the adults, a tall woman with short gray hair.
"Just us. We were having a special evening program when the attack started."
"Grab the children. We're leaving."
He gathered his group in a central plaza. Thirty-seven people. A mix of ages and professions. Some injured, most terrified, all looking to him for direction.
With a gesture, he brought the collected materials forward. Tons of it now, floating in a massive, churning cloud. He began reshaping it, forming plates and beams, constructing a makeshift fortress around them.
"What are you doing?" asked one of the men.
"Building us a shell."
The materials continued to form, creating a dome-like structure with reinforced walls. He left strategic openings for observation and air, but the structure could be sealed completely if necessary.
"This won't hold forever," Sylvie said, appearing beside him.
"It doesn't need to." He continued his work. "Just long enough to cause the Nexus Event."
She surveyed the gathered survivors. "And what happens when the wave breaks through?"
He paused, looking at the frightened faces. Children clutching stuffed animals. Elderly couples holding hands. Strangers united by circumstance and fear.
"It won't." He gestured toward the fortress. "In you go." He wanted them inside, safe, where he wouldn't have to see their faces if this went wrong. Where he wouldn't have to watch them die.
Sylvie crossed her arms, planting her feet. "You can't stand alone out here. You'll be eviscerated. I'm not going in without you."
He shook his head. But she was right. Standing out here alone, he'd last maybe ten minutes. The question was whether her company would extend that to twenty, or just mean they'd die together.
"I'm Valravn, god of life, death, illusion, prophecy, and—" He paused, looking out at the advancing horde. "Battlefields."
The survivors watched from inside the structure, silent, tense.
Sylvie stepped closer. Close enough that he could see the green of her eyes, the set of her jaw. "I've been living through apocalypses all my life. Alone. Every time, I told myself it was a strategy. Survival. That standing and fighting was just another word for dying." Her voice dropped, something raw bleeding through. "This is the first time someone has been with me. I'm not going to let you face it alone like I did for all those years. I'm tired of running."
He'd seen her fight, seen her cunning, her tactical mind. But this vulnerability was something else entirely.
"I can survive out here. There's no guarantee you can." He held out his hand, palm up. The same offer he'd made on the train. "If you want to help, if you want me not to be alone… Then take my hand. Let me know you, let me borrow your power, and let me fight with your strength."
The words felt inadequate for what he was asking. For what he was offering in return. He'd carry her pain. Her memories. Her centuries of survival. And maybe, if he was strong enough, he'd finally give her something worth staying for.
The survivors watched through the observation slits. The gray-haired woman gathered the children close, shielding their eyes.
Sylvie stared at his outstretched hand. Conflict played across her face in the tightening around her eyes, the way her jaw worked, the slight forward lean followed by immediate retreat.
"You don't know what you're asking," she whispered.
"I know exactly what I'm asking. I carry the weight of others with me always. Their memories. Their powers. Their pain."
A scout creature spotted them, wings beating furiously as it changed direction. Sylvie glanced at it, then back at him.
"You'll see everything. Every apocalypse. Every death. Every moment I've spent running."
"And you'll give me the strength to make sure this isn't just another apocalypse you escape." His hand remained steady. "This will be the one where we fight back."
The scout screeched, alerting others. More appeared.
Her fingers hovered above his palm. "Your fortress won't hold against them. Not for long."
"It will hold as long as it needs to."
The ground trembled as the first wave neared the city's edge. The buzzing drowned out all other sound.
Sylvie took a deep breath.
Placed her hand in his.
"Take it. Take what you need."
He opened himself up to her.
Her memories didn't flood, they crashed. Centuries compressed into seconds.
She was born a princess of Asgard, a daughter of Odin and Frigga, though her name then was not Sylvie but Loki. She had a natural talent for mischief, for seeing the cracks in people and systems. Her childhood in Asgard was not unhappy. She remembered playing with toy soldiers in her chamber, pretending to be a Valkyrie slaying a dragon when the air crackled and split open. Men in strange armor stepped through a glowing doorway into her royal chambers. Before she could call for the guards, before she could even scream, they seized her.
She was just a child, perhaps six or seven, when the Time Variance Authority decided she shouldn't exist. They told her she was a "variant," a version of Loki who had strayed from the "Sacred Timeline." For this deviation, the TVA sentenced her to be "pruned" from existence. She stole the soldier's device and escaped, slipping away into the timestream before they could erase her. Thus began her life as a fugitive across time and space.
She adopted the name Sylvie, shedding "Loki" along with any hope of returning home. She taught herself to survive, jumping from apocalypse to apocalypse where her presence wouldn't be detected. Ragnarok on countless worlds, extinction-level events, these became her hiding places. She grew up amid destruction, watching worlds end over and over. In these apocalyptic settings, she learned to fight, to hide, to steal what she needed without detection. She studied the TVA, learning their methods, their technology, their weaknesses. She taught herself magic, honing her enchantment abilities through trial and error.
Years stretched into decades until time became meaningless. Sometimes she found temporary sanctuary, a few years before the asteroid strike, months in a doomed kingdom where she posed as a noblewoman, weeks in cities before their collapse. But she never stayed long, never formed lasting bonds. Attachment was a luxury she couldn't afford. The TVA never stopped hunting her. As she grew from frightened child to hardened survivor, rage crystallized within her. She didn't just want to escape the TVA. She wanted to destroy it. She wanted to find the Time-Keepers who had deemed her existence a mistake and make them pay. This vendetta became her north star, guiding every decision, every calculated risk. By the time she had grown into a skilled warrior and self- taught enchantress, she had formulated her plan. She began ambushing their agents across various points in time, killing Minutemen and taking their reset charges.
In the final phase, she knew they would send hunters. What she didn't expect was who they would send—a variant of herself. As she prepared to come face-to-face with another Loki for the first time, she felt something unexpected.
Curiosity.
This was the life she might have had, the person she might have become if the TVA hadn't interfered.
But her curiosity had been sated by another.
Tyson.
Then she pulled him close, her free hand gripping the back of his neck.
Their eyes locked. Green meeting gray. Centuries of survival reflected in her gaze, something fierce and desperate and alive burning behind it.
The world around them slowed. The buzz of the Annihilation Wave faded to a distant hum. The frightened whispers of the survivors disappeared. There was only this moment, suspended between the past and whatever came next.
She leaned in.
Her lips met his. Soft, careful, testing whether this moment was real or another cruel trick of the timeline. Testing whether it might shatter if she pressed too hard.
For a heartbeat, neither of them moved. The contact was fragile, uncertain. Tyson felt her breath against his mouth, cold and quick. Felt the slight tremor in her fingers where they gripped his neck.
This wasn't just a kiss.
It was a question.
It was permission.
It was the first time in centuries she'd let herself want something beyond revenge and survival.
Then something shifted.
The kiss deepened. What had been tentative became fierce, necessary, a connection forged not from desperation but from recognition. She'd spent centuries running from endings. He'd spent years carrying the weight of others' pain. Two people who understood what it meant to survive when survival was supposed to be impossible.
Her fingers tightened on the back of his neck, pulling him closer. He responded in kind, his hand coming up to cup her face. Her skin was cool beneath his palm, smooth and real and right there. She tilted her head, changing the angle, and he followed, matching her intensity.
The world narrowed to sensation. Her warmth against him. The taste of defiance on her lips. The way she kissed him like she was claiming something she'd been denied too long. The strength in her grip. His other hand found her waist, steadying her, anchoring them both.
The survivors looked away, giving them privacy in this intimate moment amidst impending doom. The children peeked through their fingers.
When she finally broke the kiss, she kept her forehead pressed against his. Her breath came fast and cold against his face. Her eyes glowed with emerald energy that flowed between them, a visible manifestation of the power they were sharing.
But beneath the magic, he saw something more vulnerable.
Uncertainty mixed with determination.
Fear mixed with hope.
"Now you know," she whispered. "Everything I am. Everything I've done."
There was a question in those words, unspoken but clear. Was it too much? Was she too broken, too damaged, too dangerous to stand beside?
The weight of her memories sat heavily in his chest. The loneliness of it. The endless running. The worlds that ended while she watched, again and again, powerless to stop it but determined to survive it.
"I do." His voice was rougher than he intended. "And now I fight. For us."
He sealed the final opening in the fortress, leaving only slits for observation. Through one such opening, Sylvie watched as the sky disappeared entirely, replaced by a living darkness that descended upon the city.
The wave was getting closer. So close she could make out individuals in the impossible curtain of death heading for them. Countless insectoid bodies, wings beating, mandibles clicking with hunger. The sound was deafening now, a roar composed of millions of tiny, terrible noises.
"Tyson!" Her voice cracked.
He stood motionless, eyes closed, arms at his sides. The survivors huddled in their fortress, some praying, others weeping quietly. The gray-haired woman had gathered the children in a tight circle, singing softly to drown out the approaching doom.
"What are you waiting for? They're almost here!"
His eyes snapped open.
"I needed to feel it all. Every piece in this city. Every bolt, every beam, every nail."
He dragged the metal from across the city with him as he gathered survivors. But when Tyson finally moved, he reached, not for that, but with both hands toward the skyscraper, the tower they'd initially intended to make their stand on. His fingers splayed wide.
The tower groaned. The concrete cracked. Windows shattered in sequence, a cascade of glittering fragments raining down like deadly confetti. The building shuddered, resisting his pull for one defiant moment.
Then it began to tilt.
Slowly at first, almost imperceptibly, the skyscraper leaned away from its foundation. The movement accelerated, gathering momentum as gravity joined forces with his power. The top floors swung through the air like the pendulum of an apocalyptic clock.
The survivors gasped collectively, faces pressed against the observation slits. Even the children stopped crying, transfixed.
For a second, the sound of the building collapsing drowned out the oncoming insects. Steel screamed as it bent beyond its limits. Concrete pulverized into dust. Glass exploded outward. The ground beneath their feet trembled.
The tower struck the earth with cataclysmic force, sending a shockwave rippling through the city. Dust billowed upward in a cloud that momentarily obscured their view of the Annihilation Wave.
He didn't wait for the dust to clear before thrusting his arms out. The building went sliding forward, a battering ram crushing every creature in its path. The fallen skyscraper, hundreds of thousands of tons, moved across the ground like a massive plow, driven by his will and power.
Sylvie stared. The materials in their shelter vibrated in sympathy with his exertion, humming like a tuning fork. She could see the focus on his face, but there was no strain. His jaw wasn't clenching. He wasn't sweating.
This wasn't his limit.
The building carved through the Annihilation Wave like a knife. Countless creatures were crushed instantly, their chitinous bodies offering no more resistance than eggshells. Others were flung aside by the impact, tumbling through the air in broken arcs before crashing back to earth.
Those that could fly scattered momentarily, their formation disrupted.
The survivors cheered, voices rising in a chorus of desperate hope. "Is it working?" one of the men asked, voice hoarse.
Sylvie didn't answer, attention fixed on Tyson.
The skyscraper continued its deadly slide, pushing farther and farther into the swarm. Creatures that had been at the forefront were now nothing but pulp beneath the massive structure. Others tried to flow around it, only to be caught in the debris field.
Finally, with a sound like thunder, the skyscraper ground to a halt. The dust settled, revealing a hole in the Annihilation Wave. Skyscraper-wide and quarter-mile-long, leading from their position to where the building had come to rest. A corridor carved through the living darkness.
For a heartbeat, hope flickered in Sylvie's chest.
Then the Annihilation Wave filled in the space with startling speed. Like water rushing to fill a vacuum, the creatures poured into the gap from all sides. They moved with singular purpose, their individual bodies merging once more into that terrifying, living curtain of death.
Sylvie's heart dropped as she watched the black curtain close in. The swarm filled the gap Tyson had created, their chitinous bodies forming an impenetrable wall that rushed toward them with unstoppable momentum. The skyscraper he had wielded like a weapon had barely made a dent.
"It wasn't enough," she whispered. "There are too many."
The survivors huddled in the hastily constructed fortress, faces etched with terror as they watched their final moments approach. Sylvie had seen countless apocalyptic events throughout her time jumping across the timeline. There was always the chance of dying in one, but she had never expected it to happen.
Tyson's body began to expand. Muscles swelled. Bones elongated. The survivors gasped and retreated further as his height doubled.
Pain wasn't the right word for it. His skeleton stretched, each bone lengthening with sounds like ice cracking on a frozen lake. His skin burned cold as it shifted from human flesh to something else, the Jotun heritage written into his DNA through his touch with Sylvie, given full physical expression.
For a moment, the sensation overwhelmed him, too big, too different, his center of gravity all wrong. But it was quickly replaced with something comfortable. Darker. More honest.
This form felt right.
Felt like coming home to a place he'd never been. The cold felt natural. The size felt like what he'd always been meant to be.
Within moments, where Tyson had stood was now a towering frost giant, twelve feet tall with skin the color of glacial ice. His woolly hair remained, though now frosted white at the tips, flowing back from a face that retained his features. The adamantium claws at his fingertips had grown proportionally. Muscles rippled beneath his blue skin, and the air around him crackled with cold, small ice crystals forming and dissipating with each breath.
He raised his massive arms. The ground beneath their feet trembled. All the metal he gathered shook. Sheets of material, beams, fragments flew through the air toward him like iron filings to a magnet. The first pieces slammed into his body, not striking him but adhering to his blue skin, molding themselves to his form. More continued to flow toward him, layer upon layer forming around his massive frame. Crude armor took shape. Chest plate, greaves, gauntlets, all forged and reformed under his control, strengthening and interlocking.
The first wave of creatures reached him just as the makeshift helmet formed around his head, leaving only his glowing grey eyes visible, an additional red ring joining the green and blue. A massive insectoid, larger than the others, leapt at him with mandibles spread wide. He caught it midair with one armored hand, the creature's limbs scrabbling uselessly.
"I think not," his voice rumbled from within the helmet.
With a casual flick, he hurled the creature back into the swarm with such force that it bowled over dozens of its kind.
More materials continued to flow toward him, not just forming armor now but reshaping into massive walls.
Sylvie thought at first he was trying to funnel them. But instead, he thinned out sections, creating nothing more than floating horizontal bars stretching high into the sky. She had no idea what purpose they would serve. They would hardly stem the tide.
"What are you doing?" she called out, voice nearly lost in the cacophony of chittering mandibles. "Those bars are too thin. They'll break through!"
He ignored her, concentration absolute as he manipulated the materials with precise movements of his hands.
The first bar began to rotate, slowly at first, then picking up speed until it was nothing but a blur. Then another joined it. And another. Until dozens spun in concentric circles around their position, gaining speed.
The bars weren't meant to keep the wave out.
They were its destruction.
The thin bars began moving at incredible speeds, turning the entire area into a blender with them at the center. The first rank of insectoids hit the spinning barriers and disintegrated into a spray of ichor and chitin fragments. The sound was a horrific, constant, wet thudding punctuated by the high-pitched screams of dying creatures.
"Gods," Sylvie breathed. "It's brilliant."
One of the survivors, a middle-aged man with terror in his eyes, clutched at her arm. "Will it hold? Will we survive this?"
Sylvie watched the whirling death machine Tyson had created and felt something she hadn't expected.
Hope.
"Maybe. Just maybe."
The spinning bars created a zone of absolute carnage. Insectoids flew into the deadly fan and were instantly shredded, their remains flung outward to splatter against their advancing brethren. The creatures seemed incapable of recognizing the danger, driven forward by blind instinct or some greater controlling force.
His spider-sense had settled into a constant state of alert, no longer spiking but never silent. The steady pressure at the base of his skull became background noise, like he'd tuned it out. Thousands of tiny threats surrounded him from all directions, each minor in itself but collectively overwhelming. He'd adjusted to the sensation, incorporated it into his trance-like state, letting it inform his movements without dominating his attention.
Relief flooded through Tyson, sharp and dizzying.
It was working.
The defense was holding.
He could feel the strain in his arms, the way his magnetic sense stretched thin trying to maintain precise control over so many moving pieces simultaneously, but it was manageable. Sustainable.
Behind him, the survivors' frightened breathing had steadied slightly, their panic receding as his plan proved effective.
He allowed himself one moment of satisfaction, one breath where he wasn't already calculating the next problem. One second to think that maybe they'd actually survive this.
Any insectoids that made it through the spinning fan were swiftly impaled by a rod that extended from his wrist, or his claws, or by ice he summoned from thin air.
A child among the survivors pointed upward, her scream piercing through the noise of battle. "Look! Above us!"
Sylvie watched as the plan seemed to be working. But then, like an arm reaching from the swarm, a large grouping flew above Tyson's tall defenses to dive in through the center of the 'fan' where there was no danger. Hundreds of the creatures had discovered the weakness.
The open sky above them.
"Tyson!" Sylvie shouted, pointing upward at the descending mass of chittering death. "They're coming from above!"
But he had noticed.
He clapped his hands and raised them to the sky. Materials from around their shelter quickly rose and coalesced into a cone-shaped dome, perfectly formed to protect the opening above.
The creatures hit the cone and slid down its smooth surface, unable to find purchase. They tumbled helplessly into the spinning bars below, bodies torn apart on contact. A rain of insectoid parts fell around the shelter, but none made it through the combined defenses.
Sylvie watched in awe as he maintained both the spinning bars and the protective dome.
"How long can you keep this up?" she asked.
"Long enough." His voice was strained but determined. "I have to."
But all the mass from the dead insects had to go somewhere.
Tyson's blender churned them into small bits, but even that quickly piled up. The shredded remains formed a gruesome slurry that began to clog the lowest spinning bars, slowing their deadly rotation. Gore splattered against the dome, sliding down in thick, viscous streams that congealed at the base of their shelter.
The stench was overwhelming.
His massive form tensed, muscles bunching beneath his makeshift armor. Without warning, he slammed his hands together in another clap, the sound reverberating like thunder. All the materials condensed and lengthened to form a solid sheet covering him and the shelter.
For a moment they were left in total darkness.
The survivors huddled together, breathing loud in the sudden silence. The constant chittering continued outside, muffled now by the thick barrier between them. A child whimpered in the darkness, quickly hushed by a parent's whispered comfort.
"What's happening?" someone asked, voice trembling.
Sylvie felt the air change, becoming charged with potential energy.
Then the shelter began to hum.
The sound started low, barely perceptible, but quickly grew in intensity until the walls vibrated with it. The survivors pressed hands against their ears as the humming reached a painful pitch.
Tyson threw his hands outward in a violent gesture of release.
The walls split apart with explosive force and flew out in all directions like shrapnel from a bomb. The sheets rocketed outward at incredible speed, thinning and lengthening as they went, pushing back the Annihilation Wave with unstoppable momentum. The creatures caught in the path were crushed instantly, bodies adding to the gore that the sheets shoveled away from the shelter.
Where moments ago they had been surrounded by a seething mass, now there was a clear circle extending hundreds of yards in every direction. The ground was scoured clean, the materials having pushed all the accumulated gore and ichor far away.
For one breathtaking moment, they stood in the eye of the storm, a perfect circle of calm amid the chaos. The survivors looked around in disbelief, some laughing with hysterical relief, others weeping openly at this momentary reprieve.
But the reprieve was brief. Already, the wave was surging forward to fill the empty space, countless more creatures pouring in from all sides to reclaim lost territory. They moved with singular purpose, as if directed by some greater intelligence.
"They're coming back!" a woman screamed, pointing at the advancing wall.
Before the wave could fill the empty space, Tyson splayed his fingers. The materials that had been flung outward responded instantly, separating back into the bars and roof that had protected them before. The pieces flew through the air, slicing through any creatures in their path before reforming into the original defensive configuration.
The blender started all over again, bars spinning at dizzying speeds. Fresh insects met fresh carnage as the deadly rotation resumed its work. The dome reformed above, sealing off the aerial approach.
Sylvie watched him with newfound respect. The power he commanded was far beyond what she had initially assessed. Not just strength or the ability to manipulate materials, but a tactical mind.
"How did you know that would work?"
"Physics. Mass displacement. Create space, then defend it." His voice rumbled from within his helmet, strained but determined. His sentences were clipped, costing him effort as he maintained the complex defense system.
"Can you keep this up?" she called.
"Have to. No choice."
The spinning bars continued their deadly work, shredding the advancing creatures into pulp. But already the accumulation of gore was beginning again.
Tyson's hands shook as he gathered himself for the next push. Sweat ran down his face despite the cold emanating from his frost giant form. His shoulders burned with accumulated fatigue. Each repetition of this defensive cycle cost more than the last, not in power, but in focus. His concentration frayed at the edges. He had to force himself to visualize each piece, each trajectory, each adjustment.
One mistake would mean gaps in the defense.
Gaps meant creatures getting through.
His jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached.
And he needed to repeat this process every few minutes.
Each time, the materials would become clogged with the remains of slaughtered creatures, forcing him to condense it all into a solid barrier, then explosively clear the area before reestablishing the defensive perimeter.
He fell into a rhythm. The barriers whirled, slicing through the insectoid creatures. Blood and viscera splattered against the dome. His power worked on autopilot, his mind entering a trance-like state as he maintained the defenses.
Time became elastic, meaningless. Each rotation of the blades was the same rotation, repeated infinitely. His consciousness drifted somewhere between meditation and dissociation, his awareness expanding to encompass every piece in his control while simultaneously contracting to a single point of will.
His spider-sense wove itself into the rhythm of his defenses, becoming another sense alongside his magnetic awareness. Threats registered at the periphery of his consciousness; a creature approaching from the left, another diving from above, a cluster breaking away from the main swarm. His body responded to each warning automatically, adjusting the spinning bars' speed and trajectory without conscious thought. The danger had become routine. Predictable. Almost comfortable in its consistency.
Hold the line.
Part of him remained present, monitoring threats and adapting tactics. The rest of him existed in that strange space, the white room and its surrounding environments, where every person he'd ever touched still echoed faintly. He could feel them there now, those ghosts, watching through his eyes as he fought. Lending him their strength. Their determination. Their refusal to let him fail.
The exhaustion building in his muscles, building in his mind, was distant, manageable.
He could maintain this.
He would maintain this.
Failure was unacceptable. Unthinkable.
The constant drone of chittering mandibles and the wet sounds of exoskeletons being shredded had become almost comforting in its predictability.
He was so entranced that he almost missed when there was a break in the death.
The absence of sound registered before his conscious mind caught up. His arms continued their motions, directing the spinning blades to clear away bodies and ichor that weren't there anymore.
There were no more creatures to kill.
A voice called out from inside the shelter. "Hey! Look outside!" A weathered miner with soot-stained cheeks pressed his face against a small viewing port. "They're gone! The bugs are gone!" His voice cracked with disbelief.
More faces appeared at the windows. "He did it!" someone shouted, voice trembling. "He won!"
The shelter erupted in cheers, the sound muffled by the walls but unmistakable in its joy. Children laughed. Adults embraced. Tears flowed freely. The celebration of survival washed over the huddled masses who had been preparing for death.
He manipulated the dome, creating a door just large enough for a person to step through. The materials reshaped themselves, forming a perfect archway.
Tyson didn't join the celebration. Couldn't. His hands trembled with fine tremors that had nothing to do with exhaustion and everything to do with the sudden absence of threat.
But his spider-sense hadn't stopped. That was the problem. The constant pressure at the base of his skull remained, unchanged from the height of battle. His body still screamed danger even as the visible threat disappeared. The warning had shifted quality, no longer the sharp directional alerts of immediate attack, but something broader, more ominous.
A sense of something worse gathering.
His instincts knew what his mind was beginning to suspect.
This wasn't over. The threat hadn't disappeared.
The sensation in his skull had changed from the constant barrage of immediate danger to something deeper, colder. Like standing on thin ice and hearing it crack. The warning built slowly, steadily, a pressure system moving in rather than a sudden storm. Whatever was coming would make the Annihilation Wave look like the opening act.
The Annihilation Wave shouldn't have just stopped.
It didn't pause for breath or regroup or give up.
Something was wrong.
The victory felt too easy, too clean, and in his experience, easy victories were just the universe setting up a larger fall. His chest tightened with a dread he couldn't name, couldn't articulate, but that sat in his gut like a stone.
They weren't done yet.
He knew it with the same certainty he knew the sun would rise. If any of them lived to see it.
Sylvie stepped out and surveyed the landscape. It was barren for hundreds of yards, then a wall of thousands of minced insectoid corpses littered the ground. She narrowed her eyes, scanning the horizon. "That can't be it. If it was, the TVA would've shown up by now."
"You're right."
They both looked up at the sky where the massive planet Lamentis loomed, filling nearly half the visible heavens. Its surface was angry reds with the start of massive fissures visible even from this distance.
Sylvie pointed upward, finger tracing something in the sky. "Look."
Against the backdrop of the dying planet, a shape appeared. At first, it seemed like just another piece of planetary debris, but its movement was too purposeful, too controlled. As it drew closer, details became clearer.
A massive spacecraft.
It approached the fractured planet with deliberate intent, positioning itself above one of the larger fissures.
From the vessel, a beam of intense blue light shot downward, connecting with the planet's surface. Where it touched, the planet's material seemed to flow upward, as if being siphoned into the ship.
"What is that?" he asked, voice hushed with awe and dread.
"Some kind of harvester. It's stripping the planet for resources even as it dies."
The refugees began to emerge from the shelter, their celebrations quieting as they too noticed the spectacle above. Some fell to their knees in prayer. Others simply stared in mute horror.
The ship continued its work, extracting whatever valuable materials it could from Lamentis. Other ships became visible now, smaller but numerous, like vultures circling a dying beast.
"How big does a ship need to be to see it from this distance?" Tyson asked rhetorically.
His eyes fixed on a peculiar disturbance in the atmosphere. Something approached from the direction of the massive harvester craft, leaving behind a strange trail, not quite smoke, more like light, that glowed against the backdrop of the dying planet.
His spider-sense began to escalate, transitioning from the steady background pressure to something more immediate. The quality of the warning shifted with each passing second as the figure drew closer. Not the scattered alerts of the swarm but a single, focused point of danger. Concentrated. Intense. His body tensed involuntarily, every muscle preparing for action even as his mind tried to assess what approached.
"What is that?" he muttered, squinting to focus on the anomaly.
The figure disappeared momentarily behind a cloud of debris, then reappeared much closer, until finally, it stopped, hovering about fifty yards away.
His spider-sense detonated like a bomb going off inside his skull. The warning slammed into him with such force that he actually staggered, one hand coming up instinctively to his temple. This wasn't the persistent hum of the swarm or the sharp spikes of individual attacks. This was something qualitatively different, louder and more insistent than anything he'd felt since gaining the power. Every nerve ending in his body lit up simultaneously, his enhanced awareness identifying this single being as more dangerous than the thousands of creatures he'd just slaughtered combined.
The being before them was approximately seven feet tall, encased in armor of deep purple threaded with green patterns. Its face was insectoid, angular, and alien. Wings extended from its back, protected by the same plating, pulsing with energy that kept it aloft rather than flapping. Through his magnetic sense, Tyson felt nothing from the armor.
Not composed of anything he could control, then.
An aura of wrongness emanated from the being. Not just its appearance, but something fundamental about its existence.
Sylvie blanched. Her body went rigid, genuine fear flooding her eyes.
"We're doomed." The words came out barely audible. "It's Annihilus."
Tyson looked at her, then back at the hovering figure.
"You said we were doomed before."
His spider-sense told him everything he needed to know about how much danger he was in. The warning didn't spike and fade like it normally did; it stayed at maximum intensity, a relentless assault on his nervous system, trying to override conscious thought with pure survival instinct. It screamed at him to run, to grab the survivors and find any way off this moon. But there was nowhere to run. The sensation was so intense it bordered on physical pain, pressure building behind his eyes.
He was in the presence of something that could kill him. Easily. Permanently.
The fear was there, cold and sharp in his chest. Real. Undeniable.
He could still taste Sylvie on his lips. Could still feel the weight of her memories sitting heavy in his mind. Centuries of running, of hiding, of watching worlds end because she couldn't save them. How many times had she stood exactly where he was standing now, facing something impossible, knowing she had no choice but to flee?
Every time, she'd run. She'd had to. Survival had demanded it.
She'd said she was tired of running.
He glanced at her. She stood rigid beside him, fear flooding her eyes, but her feet were planted. Not running. Not this time. She'd given him her strength, her power, her trust. She'd let him see everything she was, every broken piece and sharp edge, and asked if it was too much.
It wasn't too much.
And neither was this.
His spider-sense continued its relentless screaming, painting futures where he died in a dozen different ways. But it didn't show him a future where he ran and lived with himself afterward. Where he faced Sylvie, knowing he'd proven her right, that standing and fighting really was just another word for dying.
Maybe it was. Maybe that's exactly what it was.
He was afraid.
He was going to fight anyway.
Not because he thought he could win. Sometimes bravery was just lying convincingly enough that other people found their own courage. He could do that much. Even if his hands shook. Even if his voice cracked. Even if every fiber of his being knew it was a bluff.
Taking a breath, he forced his hands to stop shaking.
His spider-sense screamed louder, as if offended he wasn't listening.
He ignored it.
Tyson made himself look at the hovering figure. Made himself meet the compound eyes in that insectoid face. His spider-sense hit a new pitch of urgency, but he kept his feet planted.
"He doesn't look so tough."