Chapter 161 - Arc 10 - Ch 1: Infinity War

Chapter 152

Arc 10 - Ch 1: Infinity War

Saturday, May 05, 2012.

Location: Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York

Illyana emerged behind Thanos with a flash of light, leading with her Soulsword. The Mad Titan pivoted with surprising speed, the three Infinity Stones in his gauntlet flaring.

"Your parlor tricks grow tiresome, little witch," he said, swinging the gauntlet in a wide arc.

Illyana ducked beneath the blow, thrusting her Soulsword upward, aiming for the unarmored section beneath his chin.

Thanos caught her wrist with his free hand, squeezing until the bones ground together. Illyana refused to scream. She vanished from his grip and reappeared ten feet away.

The Ancient One traced glowing mandalas in the air. Green energy from the Time Stone pulsed at her chest as she manipulated the temporal field around Thanos, slowing his movements to a crawl.

"Now, Illyana!" the Ancient One called.

Illyana plunged through another portal, driving her Soulsword toward Thanos's chest. For a moment, it seemed she would connect, until there was a pulse from the Space Stone. The purple energy caught Illyana mid-strike, sending her tumbling across the battlefield.

The Ancient One created a shield of mystical energy as Thanos turned his attention to her. "You're quite skilled, sorceress. But you aren't the only one here who knows magic."

"And yet you understand so little about it." The Ancient One duplicated herself into a dozen mirror images that surrounded the Titan.

Thanos closed his eyes. The orange Soul Stone blazed to life, and a wave of amber light washed over the battlefield, passing through each mirror image like sunlight through glass. Eleven of the twelve Ancient Ones dissolved into nothing. The twelfth flinched.

"There you are."

Thanos raised the gauntlet and spoke a word. The air split. Black fire roared from his palm in a torrent. This was not the brute force of the Infinity Stones. This was sorcery, old and foul, drawn from the magics that Thanos had plundered in his centuries of conquest across a thousand worlds.

The Ancient One crossed her arms, and a mandala shield bloomed before her. The black fire struck it and the golden shield held, but the edges began to corrode, the patterns unraveling like thread pulled from a tapestry.

"You studied the magics of the Black Quadrant," the Ancient One said, adjusting her stance, feeding more power into the barrier. "I recognize their stench."

"Among others." Thanos poured that void-fire with one hand while the other traced sigils in the air with his bare fingers. The sigils were crude compared to the Ancient One's elegant mandalas. "The Witches of Titan, before I silenced them. Even your own Kamar-Taj texts found their way to me, Sorcerer Supreme. You guard your libraries poorly."

He completed the sigil and slammed his fist into it. The symbol detonated outward in a shockwave of violet energy that shattered the Ancient One's shield and sent her skidding backward.

She recovered fast, spinning her hands to conjure the Bolts of Balthakk. Crimson energy lanced toward Thanos in rapid succession. He absorbed the first bolt with the gauntlet, deflected the second with a ward that materialized across his forearm like a bracer of dark light, and caught the third in his bare hand. He crushed it. Sparks of red energy bled between his fingers and died.

Thanos opened his hand and released the stolen energy back at her, twisted now, corrupted. The Ancient One sidestepped and the bolt struck the ground behind her, leaving a crater that smoked with a smell like burnt copper. He pressed forward, combining Stone and sorcery in ways that should have been impossible. The Space Stone warped the geometry around the Ancient One, folding the ground beneath her feet while he simultaneously wove binding spells that snaked toward her ankles like living chains. She severed them with precise cuts of golden energy, but each counterspell cost her a fraction of a second, and Thanos was already casting the next spell.

Tyson had seen this movie. He'd seen Infinity War. He knew how it ended. Not the details, the details were all wrong now, shuffled and rewritten by his presence in this timeline. Not this exact battle, not these exact combatants, but the shape of it. The Mad Titan with Infinity Stones, pressing forward through everything thrown at him, absorbing attacks that should have been decisive. In a movie theater in another life, he had watched Doctor Strange and Tony Stark and Peter Parker and half the Guardians of the Galaxy, throw everything they had at this man, and he'd thrown a moon in retaliation.

That Thanos had come away with nothing but a scratched cheek.

This Thanos was just as unstoppable, and he knew magic of his own, which made him stronger.

The Ancient One was more skilled than any of them had been. Illyana was more vicious. And it didn't matter. The shape was the same. Tony Stark didn't know that yet. Logan didn't know that. Natasha did, but believed in him anyway. They were fighting like people who believed they could win, and Tyson envied them. Because he saw the noose tightening.

Thanos with three Infinity Stones was not a problem that could solved.

Across the battlefield, he faced off against Ebony Maw. The alien telekinetic lifted a shower of debris, transforming it into deadly projectiles that hurtled toward Tyson.

Tyson extended his hands, calling upon Magneto's power. The metal components in the debris halted mid-air, then reversed direction. Maw deflected most, but howled when a jagged piece of rebar scratched his shoulder.

Maw snarled. "Your power is nothing compared to mine."

"Let's test that theory." Tyson wrapped a steel beam in a magnetic field and swung it like a baseball bat. Maw created a telekinetic shield, but the force of Tyson's attack drove him back fifty feet into a wall.

The ground shook as Hulk and Cull Obsidian traded earth-shattering blows nearby. Hulk caught one of Cull's massive fists and roared in his face, veins bulging across green skin.

"HULK SMASH SPACE MONSTER!"

Cull Obsidian responded by headbutting Hulk, drawing blood from the green giant's nose. Hulk staggered back, then launched himself forward with a shout, tackling Cull through a concrete pillar. The structure collapsed around them in a cloud of dust and debris.

Tyson was already losing, and he knew it. Not his fight with Maw; that he was winning, or could win, if it were the only thing happening. But it wasn't the only thing happening. Nothing on this battlefield was the only thing happening. Cap was down. Not dead, his magnetic sense could feel the faint pulse of blood moving; unconscious and lying fifteen feet from a Hulk and Cull Obsidian, whose fight was displacing tons of concrete and rebar in a radius that was going to catch anyone nearby.

He didn't think. He reached out with Magneto's power and seized the metal, the reinforced plating in the tactical suit, and the vibranium shield still strapped to his arm, and pulled. Steve's body slid across the rubble like a hockey puck on ice, dragged by the magnetic grip on his gear. The concrete slab that would have crushed his skull slammed into the ground a half-second later, right where his head had been.

Maw hit him for it. A concrete chunk the size of a car caught Tyson across the shoulders while his attention was split, driving him to one knee. The telekinetic didn't waste words this time, just pressed, a constant telekinetic vice squeezing Tyson's magnetic shield from every angle.

Tyson shoved back, stabilizing his shield, and dragged Steve another forty feet toward the collapsed storefront that offered the closest thing to cover on this battlefield. It wasn't enough. Nothing here was enough. But it was better than leaving him in the open.

The vibranium shield had protected him from Proxima's spear. She'd hit him three times before Tyson had drawn Thanos's attention, and Steve had taken all three without going down. The fourth hit was a flying blindside from the freed Angela. The angel had landed the blow while Tyson wasn't watching, and now Steve was over there, not moving but alive.

One person out of the fire. One fire at a time. And there were six fires burning.

Logan and Natasha fought back-to-back against Proxima Midnight and Corvus Glaive. Logan's adamantium claws deflected Corvus's glaive with a shower of sparks.

"These two are starting to piss me off," Logan growled, blood dried across his forehead from a wound that had already healed.

Natasha ducked under Proxima's spear thrust, firing a webline at the alien warrior's side. Proxima twisted and the web sailed past her hip. "Focus on the one with the fancy stick. I've got the lady."

A blue figure dropped from above. Natasha's spider-sense screamed, and she threw herself sideways as Nebula's electroshock batons slammed into the ground where she'd been standing. The cyborg daughter of Thanos rose from her crouch, dead black eyes locked on Natasha.

"Two ladies now," Natasha muttered.

"Go," Logan said. He didn't look back. He was already driving Corvus away with a vicious combination of slashes, adamantium meeting the polearm blade in a rapid staccato of ringing metal.

Tyson couldn't be in six places at once. He'd tried. What he could do was make Maw think he wasn't trying, and use the space that bought him.

He reached for Jason's power. It required focus he couldn't afford, but a half-second distraction could save a life on a battlefield moving this fast.

He threw a phantom Hulk into Nebula's sightline as she flanked Natasha. The cyborg dodged sideways on instinct, giving Natasha room to breathe. He painted a false bus across Corvus's approach, forcing the alien to circle wide and buying Logan three extra seconds to reset his stance. He used Loki's power to project a duplicate of himself thirty yards east, trying to draw Maw's telekinetic barrage toward nothing while he reinforced his shield. It didn't work.

Each illusion cost him concentration. And on a battlefield where a telekinetic was actively trying to kill him, concentration was the most expensive currency he had.

He'd become something he'd never planned to be. A battlefield conductor. Not a fighter. Not a tactician. Something messier. The person who noticed the gap in Logan's defense a half-second before Corvus exploited it and threw a phantom image into the gap to buy time. The person who felt Cap's unconscious body through the magnetic field and kept one thread of awareness on it in case anything came near him. The person who watched the Ancient One's mandala shields through peripheral awareness and guessed at how long she could hold.

Maw was the opponent in front of him. Everything else was the opponent around him. This was the job now. Get hit, heal, throw another illusion, throw some metal, get hit again, heal again. Keep the others alive, one purchased second at a time. And hope the Ancient One and Illyana could hold Thanos long enough for any of it to matter.

Proxima and Nebula split apart, flanking Natasha from opposite sides. Proxima came in high with her spear while Nebula attacked low, sweeping her batons at Natasha's knees. Natasha jumped, tucking her legs above Nebula's strike, and caught Proxima's spear shaft with both hands. She used the momentum to swing herself over Proxima's head, planting both feet into the alien's back and sending her stumbling into Nebula. The two collided, and Natasha landed in a crouch.

Proxima snarled and swept at Natasha's legs. Natasha vaulted the spear, twisted midair, and brought her heel down on the shaft. It drove into the ground. She seized it as leverage and kicked Proxima across the jaw.

"You fight well for a human," Proxima said, spitting blue blood.

"I've had practice." Natasha flipped to her feet.

Nebula was already closing the gap. She was fast, mechanically enhanced, each strike precise and relentless. Natasha wove between the attacks, her spider-sense feeding her the trajectory of each baton a half-second before it arrived. She caught Nebula's wrist, twisted, and fired a webline point-blank into the cyborg's face. The adhesive webbing covered Nebula's eyes, and she staggered, clawing at the obstruction with her free hand. Proxima charged from behind. Natasha didn't need to look. She felt the displacement of air, the prickling certainty of incoming danger, and dropped flat. The spear passed through the space Natasha's head had occupied and struck Nebula in the shoulder, knocking her sprawling.

Natasha sprang up between them, webbing Proxima's spear to the ground with three rapid shots. Before the alien could wrench it free, she closed the distance and drove her knee into Proxima's stomach, following with an elbow to the back of her neck that put her face-first into the dirt.

Nebula tore the webbing from her eyes and rushed back in. Natasha sidestepped the first baton, caught the second under her arm, and headbutted Nebula square in the nose. Something crunched, metal and cartilage both. Nebula reeled. Natasha ripped the baton from her grip and cracked it across Nebula's temple, dropping her to one knee. Both aliens were bleeding.

Something hit Tyson from above. Not Maw, the telekinetic was still forty yards east, directing debris. This was physical. A body, dropping from the sky. He felt her coming before he saw her. Not through the magnetic sense, she carried no metal anymore. He rolled with the impact, came up in a crouch, and saw her.

Angela.

The bikini was all that remained of the battle regalia she'd worn before Tyson had stripped the rest. Without her Heven-forged armor, without her weapons, she should have been a non-threat.

Angela closed the distance. She was still raised in the forges of Heven, and furious enough to fight a war. He deflected both her first strikes. She didn't slow down. She continued coming at him with her fists.

"I don't have time for you," Tyson growled, catching her wrist and redirecting her momentum into the ground. She hit concrete, cracked it, and was already rising.

Behind him, Maw launched another barrage. Tyson's shield flickered as his attention split three ways. Maw, Angela, and the tactical awareness of every other fight on the field, and a chunk of masonry punched through the gap and clipped his hip hard enough to spin him sideways.

Angela smiled. She was already pressing forward, and Maw was adjusting his angle of attack to complement hers.

Logan locked claws with Corvus's weapon, pushing against the alien's strength. "That toothpick of yours won't cut through adamantium, bub."

"It will cut through anything," Corvus replied with a grim smile. He twisted the glaive suddenly, slicing across Logan's chest.

Logan howled in pain as the wound refused to close immediately, the mystical properties of the glaive temporarily suppressing his healing factor. He staggered back. "Now you've really made me mad."

At the center of the battlefield, Iron Man hovered above the unconscious form of Captain America, his repulsors trained on Thor, who was still under mind control.

"Thor, buddy, I don't want to hurt you," Tony said, voice amplified through his suit. "But I will if I have to."

Thor raised Mjolnir, lightning crackling along its edge. "You are an obstacle to the great balance," he intoned in a voice not entirely his own.

"Yeah, that's definitely not you talking." Tony fired a unibeam blast that Thor deflected with his hammer, splitting the energy around himself.

Iron Man's HUD flashed with warnings as his systems analyzed Thor's movements. "Jarvis, give me countermeasures for mind control."

"No known countermeasures in database," Jarvis responded. "Recommend maximum non-lethal force and defeating the source of the mind control."

"Great. Just great." Tony tanked a lightning bolt, adding to his power reserves while circling to stay between Thor and the still-unconscious Steve Rogers.

Tony didn't know he was being managed. None of them did.

When Mjolnir arced toward Tony's blind spot, Tyson nudged its trajectory through the electromagnetic field. Not enough to stop it, but enough to shift the point of impact from center chestplate to shoulder glance, from faceplate to pauldron. The damage still landed, but it landed where the adamantium plating prevented the worst of the hit. The difference between a suit breach and a bruise.

Meanwhile, Maw was learning his rhythms. Each time Tyson split his focus, the telekinetic tested a different angle. A crushing pressure from above. Shrapnel from the northeast. A slow, grinding squeeze on his magnetic shield's lower hemisphere. Maw was probing.

That was the problem with fighting a genius. They adapted.

Tyson adapted back. He stopped trying to hide his interventions and started using them as bait; visibly redirecting a lightning bolt, letting Maw commit to the opening, then launching his own attack from behind as the telekinetic counterattacked. It worked once. Maw didn't fall for it again.

Tony banked hard as another lightning bolt scorched the air where he'd been hovering. Thor was already winding up for the next throw, Mjolnir spinning in a tight circle at his side.

"Jarvis, forget Thor. Find the blue giant. She went intangible somewhere on this field, and she's the one pulling his strings."

"Scanning now, sir. Target identified as Supergiant. Intangible entities do not register on standard electromagnetic sensors."

"Then use non-standard ones." Tony dodged a hammer throw, watching Mjolnir arc past him and loop back to Thor's waiting hand. "Thermal, emf, gravitational displacement. Maybe she's got mass even when she's phased. Find the anomaly."

"Recalibrating. Searching for gravitational micro-distortions consistent with a phased biological entity."

Thor launched himself skyward, closing the distance between them with terrifying speed. Tony threw up both palms and hit him with twin repulsor blasts that slowed the god's advance but didn't stop it. Thor grabbed Tony's ankle and whipped him downward. Tony fired his boot thrusters at full power, tearing free before he hit the ground, leaving a trench in the dirt where he skimmed the surface.

"Any day now, Jarvis."

"I have her, sir. Bearing two-seven-zero, forty-three meters west. She is maintaining her position behind a collapsed support column. Gravitational signature is faint but consistent."

Tony rolled to avoid another bolt of lightning and locked the coordinates into his HUD. A small red diamond appeared on his display, pulsing against the rubble.

"Got you."

Thanos advanced on the Ancient One, who gathered her strength. "The Time Stone has been under my protection for centuries. I will not relinquish it easily."

"You misunderstand. I'm no longer asking."

The combined power of three Infinity Stones lashed out toward the Ancient One. The green glow of the Time Stone pulsed faster at her throat. She moved with apparent superspeed, dodging and evading the beam as she used the Stone to slow the world around herself.

Illyana teleported back into the fray, her Soulsword cutting toward Thanos, the disruption forcing the Mad Titan to end his attack.

"The Time Stone stays with us," she declared.

Thanos regarded her with something approaching respect. "Your determination is admirable. Misguided, but admirable."

The Ancient One took advantage of the momentary distraction to unleash the full power of the Time Stone, trapping Thanos in a loop of fractured seconds. His movements became disjointed, each motion reversing before it could complete.

"We cannot hold him forever," the Ancient One warned loud enough for the others to hear. "We need assistance."

Ebony Maw's face contorted with frustration as Tyson deflected another barrage of debris. Blood trickled from both the alien telekinetic's nostrils as he strained against Tyson's magnetic counterforce.

"You shouldn't be able to match me," Maw hissed, his skeletal fingers trembling with effort.

Tyson pushed back. "Get used to disappointment."

Maw glanced toward Hulk and Cull Obsidian locked in their titanic struggle, then toward Natasha as she ducked and weaved around Proxima Midnight's spear thrusts. His thin lips curled into a cruel smile.

"Kill the spider-woman," he commanded loudly, his voice carrying across the battlefield.

Hulk froze mid-punch, his massive green head swiveling toward Natasha. The rage in his eyes shifted, focusing on a new target as whatever mind control affected Thor now seized the green giant, too.

"Spider..." Hulk growled, abandoning his fight with Cull Obsidian.

Natasha sensed the change immediately, her spider-sense screaming danger as she backflipped away from Proxima's spear. "Banner? Bruce? What are you doing?"

Hulk roared and launched himself toward her, bounding across the battlefield.

Logan saw the shift and sprinted toward them, claws extended. "Round two, bub?" he snarled, intercepting Hulk with a flying tackle that barely slowed the green behemoth.

Cull Obsidian, freed from Hulk's assault, turned his attention to Natasha as well, hefting his massive hammer-axe. The alien warrior charged forward, joining Proxima and Corvus in surrounding the outnumbered spider-powered spy.

He recognized the pattern.

It was unmistakable.

Events were bending toward the same conclusion they always bent toward. The universe was pushing back.

The Avengers were falling one by one.

Angela was back.

He'd thrown her through a wall minutes ago. She'd crawled out of the rubble with a dislocated jaw; he could see the bone sitting wrong beneath the skin, and now she was attacking him again with a slab of concrete she was using as a club. Her jaw reset itself as she swung. Healing. Not as fast as his, but fast enough that nothing short of killing her would keep her down.

He didn't want to kill her. She was a pawn. That didn't make her less dangerous. It made her more tragic, and it made the decision about what to do with her take up space in his head that he couldn't afford to give.

He caught the concrete slab with a nearby car he launched with his magnetism, and put her down again by wrapping her in it and sending her skipping across the pavement like a stone across water. She'd be back. She was always back.

Maw capitalized on the distraction. Something heavy hit Tyson's shield.

Captain America lay unconscious nearby.

Iron Man's armor sparked with damage, despite its adamantium coating, as he tried to contain Thor.

And now, the Black Order had a second mind-controller in Ebony Maw, or Supergiant had good timing and was trying to throw the blame toward the stronger telekinetic. Either way, they'd turned Hulk and Thor to their side, leaving Natasha pressed from all sides by the Black Order.

Everything collapsed to a single point.

Tyson had seen this before.

Not here, not on this battlefield, but in the quiet dark of a theater seat in another life, watching a woman fall from a cliff on Vormir. The details were different. The setting was wrong. But the shape of it was the same. This was Infinity War, and the universe was closing around Natasha Romanoff like a fist, and every blow she dodged, every web she fired, every impossible acrobatic escape only delayed what was coming.

Cull Obsidian swung his hammer-axe in a wide arc from the west. Proxima and Nebula pressed from the south and east, driving her backward toward the collapsed overpass where there was nowhere left to retreat. Corvus Glaive circled north, cutting off the last avenue. Five threats converging on one woman, and Logan was pinned beneath Hulk's foot, healing factor working overtime just to keep his ribcage intact.

This was how it happened.

This was how she died.

The Soul Stone and its orange light were already pulsing in Thanos's gauntlet. Every major event he had witnessed in this universe had eventually bent toward its destined path. Alkali Lake. The Stark Expo. The Rainbow Bridge. The Battle of New York. No matter how things started differently, no matter what he changed or who he saved, the current always corrected. The river always found the sea.

And Natasha Romanoff was meant to die.

Not for the Soul Stone this time. But the result, the cost, that remained fixed. The universe demanded her, and it had arranged the pieces on the board.

Death's warning detonated in his memory like a landmine he'd finally stepped on.

She had offered him a choice on Lamentis. Sylvie instead of someone he loved.

A substitution.

A mercy, by Death's standards.

Tyson had refused.

He'd looked Death in the face and told her no. She knew. She always knew. The scales would balance.

Proxima's spear caught Natasha across the ribs. She twisted with the impact, turning it into a roll, the adamantium in her armor preventing a devastating slash. Cull Obsidian's shadow fell over her, and she fired a desperate webline to pull herself clear, but Nebula severed it with a baton strike. Natasha hit the ground hard.

She got back up.

But she wouldn't get back up forever.

"Not this time," Tyson muttered, and abandoned his telekinetic duel with Ebony Maw.

Angela was between him and Natasha. Of course she was.

She was already coming at him again, rising from the car he'd wrapped her in. Tyson didn't have time for another round. He grabbed her wrist. She snarled and drove her knee toward his groin. He shifted his hip and held.

"I'm done being gentle with you," he said, reaching for the adamantium weave layered within his armor. Adamantium flowed from his right forearm, drawn out by his magnetic control.

Angela flinched. She tried to dodge, but his grip held. The adamantium, wrapped around her torso, her arms, her legs, hardening into a cocoon that pinned her limbs to her body. She thrashed inside it, straining against the hardest metal in the known universe.

It held.

"Stay," Tyson said, already turning away. He'd deal with her later. Right now, Natasha was surrounded, and the universe was trying to kill her.

He threw up a magnetic shield around himself, hoping it would hold against whatever Maw might throw at him.

Natasha leaped twenty feet straight up, her agility allowing her to evade Proxima's thrust, but Cull Obsidian was already there, leaping, swinging his massive weapon in a deadly arc toward her mid-air form.

Tyson reached out with Magneto's power flowing through him, seizing the metal components in Cull's weapon. With a violent shove, he yanked the hammer-axe in the opposite direction. The weapon dragged its surprised wielder along with it, sending Cull Obsidian hurtling into a nearby building. Tyson opened his hand, and Cull's weapon shattered. With a gesture, he directed the shards into the massive enemy. It all hit the building with enough force to collapse the walls around him.

"Thanks for the assist!" Natasha called, landing in a crouch.

Her relief was short-lived as Hulk's shadow loomed over her. "Heads up!" Logan shouted, clinging to Hulk's back, his claws digging into the green flesh that slowly healed as he cut it. The massive green figure descended from above, having leaped to intercept her. At the same time, Proxima Midnight circled from behind, her spear poised to strike.

Natasha's spider-sense tingled furiously. She twisted between the attacks with inhuman flexibility, but even her enhanced reflexes had limits. She couldn't dodge in all directions at once.

Tyson reached Natasha before Hulk could land. Mjolnir in hand, the one he'd acquired in the Void at the End of Time. He swung with all his might, connecting with Hulk's chest.

The impact released a shockwave that cracked the ground beneath them. Hulk flew backward, taking Logan with him, both crashing through a concrete barrier and sent tumbling.

"I've got this!" Tyson shouted to Natasha as he spun to face Proxima Midnight, who was already lunging with her spear.

Nexus flashed into Tyson's other hand, the mystical blade slicing through the air, forcing Proxima to jerk backward, the edge of the blade missing her throat by inches. She retreated, wary now.

"Not today," Tyson declared, placing himself between Natasha and her attackers.

Corvus Glaive circled to their flank. Tyson had already discovered his glaive was somehow resistant to magnetic manipulation, one of the few metals he couldn't control.

"Then you will die together," Corvus declared.

Tyson hurled Mjolnir with all his strength, propelled by his magnetism. The hammer streaked through the air, too fast for Corvus's reflexes. It struck him squarely in the chest with a sickening crunch of collapsing ribs and sternum. Corvus dropped to his knees, the glaive falling from his grasp, before collapsing face-first onto the ground.

Proxima Midnight screamed in rage at her fallen mate, charging with renewed fury.

Natasha rolled under the attack, webbing Proxima's ankles. "He's gone, give up!"

Tyson raised his hand to recall Mjolnir, ready to end this fight, when his magnetic sense detected a massive wave of debris hurtling toward them from behind.

"Tyson, look out!" Natasha shouted, her spider-sense warning her of the danger.

He turned to see Ebony Maw, hovering above the battlefield, directing a torrent of concrete chunks, metal beams, and shattered glass directly at them.

"Did you think I would allow you to interfere?" Maw announced.

The debris slammed into his shield with the force of a freight train. Tyson's magnetic shield held against the onslaught. Rather than fighting against the momentum, he went with it, letting the cloud of dust and debris conceal his movements as he was pushed farther from the heart of the battlefield. The world spun in a haze of glass, concrete, and metal. The telekinetic barrage continued, Maw clearly assuming his target was still trapped within the maelstrom.

Perfect.

Tyson slashed Nexus through the air. Reality split open, revealing a shimmering portal. He flew through, the sounds of battle instantly silenced as the portal sealed behind him.

Limbo. The air smelled of sulfur and ash, neither hot nor cold, suspended in the timeless space between realities. Tyson took a deep breath, then another. Think. Slow down.

"Think," he muttered. "You have time. There's no time in limbo. You have forever. You can fix this."

The battle had spiraled out of control. Thor and Hulk mind-controlled, Cap unconscious, Iron Man overwhelmed, and the Ancient One and Illyana barely holding Thanos at bay. Worst of all, the universe, maybe Death herself, was trying to impose their will and take Natasha Romanoff from him.

Tyson clenched his fist. Not this time. Not while he still had cards to play.

Tyson was already running through options as he crossed the barren expanse of Limbo.

Thanos had three Infinity Stones. The Power Stone, the Space Stone, the Soul Stone. The Ancient One wielded the Time Stone and was barely holding him off. You didn't beat three Infinity Stones with muscle and metal. You beat them with Infinity Stones.

The Mind Stone.

It was the answer to everything falling apart on that battlefield. With it, he could shatter whatever telepathic hold Supergiant had woven through Thor and Hulk's minds. Two of the heaviest hitters on the field, turned back to their side in an instant. It would even the odds. It might be enough.

He'd fought the Mind Stone for control earlier that day during the Battle of New York. Technically. Before the TVA, before the months he'd spent there, before everything with Sylvie and He Who Remains. In real time, it had only been hours since he'd waged a psychic war against the sentient will embedded in that gem. The stone had pushed his mind, inhabiting Jubilee within the Hallway of Possibilities. He'd won. Barely. Only with the help of his lovers and the Phoenix Force had he pushed the stone back. He'd bound the Mind Stone inside an amulet he'd forged from one of Magneto's telepathy-blocking helmets, acquired from Jamie Madrox during the Battle of Times Square. The amulet contained the stone's influence, kept it dormant, and shielded.

He'd stored it here. In Limbo. The one place outside of time, outside of reach, where no one could stumble across an Infinity Stone by accident.

Tyson ran through the math.

Best case, he uses the Mind Stone to shatter whatever telepathic hold Ebony Maw and the blue giant had woven through Thor and Hulk. Two of the strongest beings on the planet, back on their side. From there, the Mind Stone would grant him access to the Hallway of Possibilities, that corridor within his mind where every power he'd ever absorbed lived. With the Stone, all of the doors would be open. Everything he'd taken, everything he'd stored, unleashed at once. He could take the fight directly to Thanos with the kind of power that might actually matter against three Infinity Stones.

That was the best case.

The realistic case was messier.

The Mind Stone wasn't a battery you plugged into. It was sentient, or close enough that the distinction didn't matter. The last time he'd touched its power directly, he'd won the fight, but only because the Phoenix Force had been there behind one of those doors, and his lovers had anchored him to reality while the Stone tried to dissolve his sense of self. This time, he'd be alone. No anchor. No backup. Just him. So the realistic case meant he'd get pulled into the Hallway, and have to fight the Mind Stone for dominance all over again. If he could reach the Phoenix Force door, hopefully, he could tap into that cosmic fire a second time; he'd have enough raw power to burn through the Mind Stone and whatever Thanos threw at him. The Phoenix Force wasn't something you wielded. It was something you survived. But survival was a secondary concern at this point.

Then there was the worst case.

The worst case was that the Mind Stone ate him alive. Overwrote his personality, his memories, his will, and wore his body like a suit. Or the Phoenix Force consumed him instead, burning through his consciousness like kindling, leaving nothing behind but a weapon pointed in Thanos's general direction. Either way, he'd be gone. But either way, whatever was left of him would still be fighting. The Mind Stone wanted to dominate. The Phoenix Force wanted to destroy. Both of those impulses, pointed at Thanos, might be enough to buy the others time. Enough to save Natasha. Enough to keep the Time Stone out of the gauntlet.

He'd go down with the ship. But the ship would go down fighting.

It wasn't a good plan. It wasn't even a plan, really. It was the kind of desperate, cornered-animal calculus that happened when every other option had been exhausted. Somewhere between a Hail Mary and an admission that everything had gone sideways beyond recovery.

But everything had gone sideways beyond recovery. Thanos was here, and he was tougher than he should have been, and had magic. Cap was unconscious. Tony was getting dismantled by a mind-controlled Thunder God. The Ancient One and Illyana were burning through everything they had just to keep Thanos at bay. Logan was getting stomped by a Hulk who didn't know friend from enemy. And Natasha was surrounded by the Black Order with the weight of cosmic inevitability pressing down on her like a boot on a throat.

Shit was fucked. And he was the only one who could unfuck it.

Tyson strode toward the metal home he'd built after salvaging materials from the ruins of Alkali Lake. The closest thing he had to a home in this dead dimension.

He pushed through the entrance and moved quickly through the sparse interior.

Tyson stopped. He stared at the bare metal surface where the Amulet of Captured Thoughts should have been bound. His hand was still half-raised, fingers spread to magnetically retrieve it.

Nothing. No amulet. Just cold, empty metal.

The Mind Stone was gone.

"No, no, no," Tyson growled, scanning the room frantically. He tore through the walls, liquifying and rebuilding them, searching for any sign of the missing Infinity Stone.

Nothing.

Someone had been here. Someone who knew about Limbo, could access Limbo, knew about his sanctuary, and knew exactly what to take. Who could retrieve it through adamantium?

Tyson's fist punched clean through the wall. The metal screamed and folded around his knuckles, and he left it there for a second, breathing hard, feeling the dull ache travel up his forearm. The pain helped. It gave him something to hold onto while the rest of his mind threatened to come apart.

The Mind Stone was gone. Someone had taken it. Someone who could walk into Limbo, bypass adamantium, and vanish without a trace. That was a problem. A massive, terrifying problem.

But it wasn't today's problem. Not the immediate one, anyway.

"Focus," he said, pulling his fist free. "Okay, so somehow I don't have an Infinity Stone. That plan sucked ass anyway. What now? The battle. You're strong. You've saved the world before. You can do it again." He closed his eyes and let the battlefield map rebuild itself, piece by piece, like assembling a puzzle from memory.

The Black Order's strength was coordination. That was the whole game. Individually, they were dangerous. Proxima and Nebula were relentless fighters, but not a threat to their heavy hitters. Corvus was dead. Cull Obsidian hit like a freight train, but he'd destroyed Cull's weapon and might have done more damage if it had been able to penetrate his skin.

The real threat was the telepaths.

Ebony Maw was the one he'd been fighting directly, the gaunt telekinetic who moved debris like a conductor directing an orchestra. But Maw wasn't the one controlling Thor and Hulk. That was the other one. The blue-skinned woman who'd been lurking at the edges of the fight, barely visible, doing her work from the shadows. Supergiant. She was the puppet master. Maw might have been able to do it as well, but the initial hooks in Thor's minds had been all her.

A telepath and another telekinetic, maybe a telepath as well. Two mind-controlled powerhouses from their side. Simple equation.

Take out the controllers, free the powerhouses.

Tyson rolled his shoulders and felt the weight of Nexus in his soul, ready to be called. Mjolnir was still on the battlefield where he'd thrown it into Corvus's chest. He could recall it the moment he returned.

He couldn't fight on multiple fronts anymore. That was what had gotten him into this mess. Spreading himself thin, trying to shield Natasha, duel Maw, counter Hulk, and support the Ancient One all at once. Trying to save everyone simultaneously meant saving no one.

Natasha was in the greatest danger. The universe wanted her dead, and the Black Order was happy to oblige. But she was also spider-powered, and far stronger than her movie counterpart. She could survive. She had to survive, long enough for him to cut the strings.

The Ancient One and Illyana were holding Thanos. Barely. But barely was enough. Tony was getting hammered by Thor, but the adamantium armor was buying him time.

Trust them. Trust all of them. Just long enough.

Tyson slashed Nexus through the air. The portal tore open, and the sounds of battle crashed back over him.

The battle came into focus through the dimensional tear. He could see Maw hovering above the battlefield, directing the debris with skeletal fingers while Supergiant stood nearby, her hands pressed to her temples as she maintained control over Thor and Hulk.

Tyson stepped through the portal, where he'd slashed Nexus at the same moment he'd left for Limbo, using both Jason's Illusions, and Loki's magic to cover himself.

Noone on the battlefield seemed to notice him.

Good. He planted his feet firmly on the ground, feeling the Earth's magnetic field coursing around him. It was time for the rail gun technique.

He aligned his body with the magnetic poles, drawing power from the planet itself. The air crackled with electromagnetic energy as he pulled Nexus back, ready to strike. He channeled magnetic force through his adamantium skeleton, creating opposing fields that would launch him forward with devastating speed.

"Hey, squid-face!" Tyson shouted.

Maw turned. Too slow.

Tyson released the magnetic tension.

His body shot forward like a hypersonic bullet, Nexus extended before him like a spear-point. The world blurred around him as he accelerated to near Mach 7, breaking the sound barrier with a thunderous crack.

Maw's reaction was immediate. The telekinetic threw his full power against the human missile hurtling toward him. Invisible force slammed into Tyson, trying to divert his course, crush his organs, stop his momentum.

The telekinetic pressure was immense, enough to pulverize concrete. Tyson felt his soft tissue compress painfully against his adamantium skeleton. Ribs cracked, blood vessels burst beneath his skin, but the adamantium frame couldn't be crushed, and his healing factor was already kicking in, repairing the damage as quickly as it occurred.

The telekinetic push deflected him slightly, sending him off his perfect trajectory. Instead of impaling Maw through the chest as intended, Tyson's path shifted.

Nexus caught Maw in the shoulder instead.

The blade, moving at hypersonic speed and backed by Tyson's considerable mass, didn't just cut, it obliterated. It sheared through flesh and bone, severing Maw's arm completely. The limb spiraled away in a spray of alien blood.

Maw's scream was cut short as the impact continued to carry them both backward. They crashed through a partially collapsed wall, tumbling across rubble in a tangle of limbs. Tyson outweighed the slender alien considerably, his adamantium skeleton alone heavier than Maw's entire body.

They came to rest with Tyson on top, pinning the telekinetic beneath him. Maw's face contorted with pain and fury. Blood poured from the stump of his shoulder, but his remaining hand was already rising, fingers splayed as he prepared another telekinetic attack.

"You think this changes anything? The great balance will—"

Tyson squeezed his throat. Bones cracked under his grip. Maw tried to howl but couldn't manage a wheeze, his concentration shattering as he fought for breath. His life force siphoned away with every second Tyson held on.

Maw's face twisted with hatred. He tried to speak, but Tyson crushed his throat. The alien's eyes bulged, his remaining hand clawing weakly at Tyson's grip. No time to linger. Fifty yards away, Supergiant stood with her hands pressed to her temples, eyes glowing with psionic energy as she maintained control over Thor and Hulk.

"You first, then her," Tyson growled to Maw, who gurgled in response.

With his free hand, Tyson summoned Nexus back to him. The blade appeared in his palm. He rose to his feet, dragging the struggling telekinetic up with him. Maw's feet dangled above the ground.

Tyson locked onto Supergiant. She hadn't noticed him yet, too focused on maintaining her telepathic control. Perfect.

He hurled Nexus with all his might, channeling magnetic force through the blade to increase its velocity. The sword became a blur, streaking toward the unsuspecting telepath. At the same time, Tyson launched himself forward, dragging Maw along like a child with a plushie.

At the last possible moment, Supergiant sensed the attack. She spun. Nexus should have impaled her through the chest, but instead, the blade passed harmlessly through her body as she turned intangible, her form becoming translucent and ghostlike.

"Shit," Tyson muttered, still rocketing toward her with Maw in tow.

He held out his hand, not for Nexus but for Mjolnir. The hammer responded instantly to his call from where it had laid after striking Corvus. It slammed into his palm. Lightning crackled along the hammer's surface as it unleashed a blinding bolt of electricity toward Supergiant.

The blue woman reacted with startling speed. Rather than turning intangible again, she simply sank into the ground, literally melting through the concrete like it was water. The lightning strike obliterated the spot where she had stood, leaving only a smoking crater.

Tyson skidded to a halt, scanning for any trace of the telepath. The street was empty where she had vanished. No ripple in the concrete, no shimmer in the air. Gone. For now.

The hand around Maw's throat had never loosened. Not during the throw, not during the lightning strike, not during the desperate scan for Supergiant. Tyson had held on through all of it, fingers locked around the alien's windpipe, and the whole time his absorption had been working. Pulling. Draining. Taking everything Ebony Maw had ever been.

He felt the moment it ended.

Not a gradual fade. A snap. The last thread of Maw's life force severed cleanly, and everything the alien had been rushed into Tyson in a single, violent flood.

He was born on a dying world. A place of ash and famine where the strong devoured the weak and called it mercy. He was not strong. He was thin, frail, forgettable. But he could move things with his mind, and that made him useful. Thanos found him in the rubble of a collapsed temple, pulling corpses from the stone to search for food. The Titan did not offer kindness. He offered purpose. He said the universe was sick, bloated, choking on its own excess, and that the cure required sacrifice. The boy believed him because he'd lived it. He learned to kneel. He learned to speak softly and move mountains. He learned that devotion was its own kind of power. He called Thanos father because the word filled a hole in him that nothing else could reach. He tortured for the cause. He killed for the balance. He flayed minds open and read them like scripture, searching for stones, for weapons, for anything that would bring his father's vision closer to completion. He never questioned. Questioning was weakness, and weakness was death, and death was what happened to other people. He was the Maw. He was the voice. He was the faithful son who would see the great work done, who would stand at his father's side when the universe finally knew peace. He believed this with every fiber of his being, right up until the moment a hand closed around his throat and the darkness came.

Tyson staggered. The flood of memories hit like a psychic concussion, and for one disorienting heartbeat, he looked across the battlefield at Thanos, and the loyalty was there, immediate and desperate.

Father needs me. I should be at his side. The balance must be—

No.

Tyson killed the thought. That wasn't him. That was Maw's ghost, still trying to kneel. He looked down at the body dangling from his fist. Maw's eyes were open, empty, his remaining arm hanging limp. The alien weighed almost nothing. Tyson slashed Nexus through the air. The portal to Limbo tore open, and he tossed Maw's corpse through it like garbage. The body tumbled once, twice, and lay still on the barren ground.

The portal sealed shut.

He turned his attention to the greater threat. Thirty yards away, Thanos struggled against the Ancient One's time manipulation, his movements jerky and disjointed. Illyana slashed at him with her Soulsword whenever an opening appeared.

Tyson hefted Mjolnir, then, with a savage grunt, he hurled the hammer toward Thanos' back, channeling magnetic acceleration to send it flying faster than should have been possible.

Mjolnir struck Thanos square between the shoulder blades with a thunderous impact. The sound echoed across the battlefield like a cannon shot.

Despite the enormous force behind the blow from the legendary weapon, further propelled by his magnetism, Thanos merely stumbled forward two steps. The Mad Titan turned, annoyed, as if he'd been bumped on a crowded sidewalk.

"Is that all?" Thanos called out.

Two steps.

Tyson had thrown a weapon forged in the heart of a dying star, propelled by magnetic force strong enough to accelerate a human body to Mach 7, and Thanos had stumbled forward two steps.

Tyson's hand was still outstretched from the throw. He lowered it slowly. Around him, the sounds of battle continued; Thor's lightning, Hulk's roaring, the crack of Natasha's weblines, but they'd become background noise to the cold truth rearranging everything inside his chest. He had felt this before. Twice. Recently. On Lamentis, he failed to crack Annihilus's armor. In the Citadel at the End of Time, standing across from He Who Remains. The distance between himself and ultimate powers was measured not in feet but in categories. He was strong. He was perhaps the strongest person on this planet. He'd known this was coming. He'd been preparing. And preparation didn't close a gap measured in Infinity.

Before Tyson could respond, the concrete beside Thanos rippled. Supergiant rose from the ground like a ghost, her blue form solidifying as she emerged. Her eyes flashed bright white as she turned her attention to Illyana. The Russian mutant froze mid-attack, her face going slack. Slowly, she lowered her Soulsword, leaving herself completely vulnerable to Thanos.

"No!" Tyson shouted.

He launched himself toward Illyana, magnetic forces propelling him across the battlefield. The distance closed rapidly. He was almost within reach, which put him dangerously close to Thanos as well.

But instead of attacking directly, or grabbing Illyana, Tyson called Mjolnir back to his hand. The hammer reversed course, streaking through the air behind Supergiant. At the same time, Tyson flung his sword to the side without looking, guided only by his metal sense, feeling the exact position of Nexus through its connection to him and the magnetic field around Mjolnir.

Supergiant never saw it coming. Mjolnir slammed into her back, driving her forward. Simultaneously, Nexus, guided by Tyson's magnetic control, impaled her through the chest, just below the neck, pinning her between the two mystical weapons.

Blue blood poured from the wound as Supergiant gasped, her intangibility powers never having a chance to activate before the dual impact. Nexus opened another portal, and as the light left Supergiant's eyes, her body fell through. Ending her telepathic control over Thor, Illyana, and Hulk.

Tyson smiled grimly. "Got you."

Three of the Black Order down. Supergiant dead, her mind control shattered, his allies shaking off the telepathic fog. Maw, absorbed. Corvus Glaive, dead. The battlefield arithmetic had shifted dramatically in their favor.

It should have felt like a turning point.

The tide didn't feel turned.

It felt like clearing debris from a road that ended at a cliff.

Tyson could feel Thanos behind him, the way you could feel the ocean behind a seawall. Everything he'd just accomplished, the Mach 7 kill, the coordinated dual-weapon strike, the liberation of three mind-controlled allies, had been done around Thanos. At the edges. He'd been dismantling the supporting structure while the central pillar stood untouched.

And the central pillar had three Infinity Stones.

The grim smile faded. He hefted Mjolnir and turned toward Thanos.

Killing the Black Order was the easy part.

He had only a split second to savor the victory before Thanos had raised his gauntleted hand, the Power Stone glowing with violent purple energy.

Raw power erupted from the Infinity Stone, an unimaginable force that sent Tyson flying backward through three concrete walls. Every nerve ending screamed in agony as the energy coursed through him, threatening to tear him apart at the molecular level.

His adamantium skeleton held, but the flesh around it burned. His healing factor kicked into overdrive, struggling to repair the damage even as it continued to accumulate.

It was like when Loki had hit him with Gungnir, but far, far worse.

His vision blurred in one eye. Through it, he saw Thanos advancing.

He raised his magnetic shield as the purple energy from the Power Stone surged toward him again. The raw cosmic force collided with his hastily erected defense, most of it deflecting around him in a maelstrom of destructive power. But not all.

The shield wavered, then cracked. The concentrated power of an Infinity Stone blazed through the opening and burned through his right side, vaporizing flesh and muscle in an instant. His right arm, shoulder, and half his torso simply ceased to exist, leaving only the adamantium bones exposed to the air.

His nervous system went into shock as the right side of his face melted away, leaving his skull exposed, his eye gone. The smell of his own cooked flesh filled what remained of his nostrils.

Still, he held the shield. It was all that stood between him and complete annihilation.

Half-blind and reassembling, Tyson watched his healing factor work. Muscle fibers stretched across exposed metal, blood vessels threading themselves back into existence, nerve endings finding each other and reconnecting with a pain that made the Power Stone's assault seem clean by comparison. But the process would take precious seconds he didn't have. His vision blurred, cleared, blurred again as his right eye rebuilt itself inside a socket.

Agony.

But something in the background caught his attention. Past Thanos's imposing form, a figure stood watching.

A woman in an elegant black dress. Pale lips. A knowing smile. Any other moment, she'd have been just a civilian too stupid to run. But he'd encountered her enough times now.

Standing on the battlefield like a patron at a gallery viewing.

Lady Death.

She'd told him that she would take something from him. And she'd told him when.

Today.

Her voice, her final words to him, right after that encounter with Annihilus. It felt like a lifetime ago.

I will take something from you. Today.

Today. The same today that had started on the helicarrier forty thousand feet over Manhattan. The same today that had carried him through the Battle of New York, through the TVA, through months of subjective time that the universe had compressed into a single revolution of the Earth.

May 5th, 2012. Still May 5th, 2012. It was always going to be May 5th, 2012.

She wasn't watching the battle. She was watching the clock. And the clock had been running since before he'd known what it was counting down to.

Death smiled at him from across the battlefield, and Tyson felt the debt come due.

Thanos raised the gauntlet again, the Power Stone blazing with violent purple light. "Your resilience is incredible, but I am Inevitable."

The cosmic energy slammed into Tyson's magnetic shield with the force of a collapsing star. This time, the barrier didn't just waver. It shattered completely. Purple fire engulfed half his body, burning through him with merciless intensity.

His flesh vaporized instantly, muscle and sinew turning to ash. The Power Stone's energy ate through him like acid, destroying everything organic it touched. But the adamantium weave and skeleton remained.

The Stone began to burn it away, and his healing factor responded with desperate fury. The adamantium weave melted away. As the metal bones dissolved, they were reformed just as quickly.

He was dying and being reborn simultaneously, caught in an endless cycle of destruction and regeneration. The Power Stone continued its assault, but his healing factor matched it, creating a horrific equilibrium where he neither lived nor died.

Through the agony, he heard Thanos's voice, almost respectful. "Your body refuses to surrender, even when faced with the power of infinity itself."

He couldn't move. He could look.

In the fragments of awareness the equilibrium allowed him, he scanned the battlefield and assembled the picture he hadn't had time to build while he was still fighting in it. The picture was worse than he'd expected.

Steve was still down. The shield lay thirty feet from where Rogers lay. Clint had retreated early in the fight when his quiver went empty. Logan was still in it. He had Proxima's full attention, and she had his number. The spear's reach gave her the advantage; his claws couldn't close, but he was healing faster than she was cutting him, but not fast enough to gain ground. He was bleeding from more places than Tyson could count, but they were rapidly closing. He was still moving forward.

Thor was in the air. He was still calling lightning. The hammer was still answering. But the exchanges with Cull Obsidian revealed the difference between Thor at full strength and Thor running on fumes.

The Ancient One was —

He couldn't find the Ancient One. Thanos was focusing on him fully, and she wasn't here to help.

Lady Death's smile widened in his peripheral vision. She was watching him the way a collector watched an auction.

Thanos studied the orange Soul Stone embedded in his gauntlet, its surface pulsing with light that seemed to look directly into Tyson. "The Power Stone destroys, but you regenerate. But what happens when I target not your body..."

The Soul Stone flared to brilliant orange life.

"...but your very soul?"

The energy that erupted from the Soul Stone was unlike anything Tyson had ever experienced. Where the Power Stone had been raw destruction, this was something far more insidious. It didn't burn his flesh or shatter his bones; it reached deeper, grasping at the fundamental essence of what made him who he was.

Tyson felt his soul being pulled, stretched like taffy between his body and the Stone's inexorable draw. Not pain in any physical sense, but a violation so profound it made every torture he'd endured seem trivial by comparison.

His healing factor continued its work, rebuilding his body even as the Soul Stone tore at his spirit. But this wasn't something that could be healed or regenerated. This was the very core of his being under assault. He tried to scream, but the sound that emerged was something inhuman, the cry of a soul being torn from its moorings. His consciousness began to fragment, pieces of his identity scattering like leaves in a hurricane.

Lady Death stepped closer, her form becoming more solid, more real. She was no longer a background figure but an active participant in his destruction. Her pale hand reached toward him, fingers extended as if to catch something precious that was about to fall.

Power and soul between them hold the answer. What one hand preserves, another must collect.

The words arrived in the middle of the Soul Stone's assault as if they had been waiting for exactly this moment to make sense.

Madness already dreams of me, and I shall guide his hand.

The Power Stone, The Soul Stone. Thanos. She had told him. He hadn't understood what she was telling him.

You are not meant to. Not yet.

He understood now.

The Soul Stone's energy intensified, and Tyson felt the final threads connecting his soul to his body beginning to snap. His adamantium skeleton might be indestructible, his healing factor might be able to rebuild any injury, but neither could anchor a soul that was being forcibly extracted by one of the fundamental forces of the universe.

His vision began to fade, not from physical damage but from the dissolution of his very essence. The last thing he saw clearly was Lady Death's triumphant smile as she prepared to claim what the Soul Stone was delivering to her.

— Rogue Redemption —

Consciousness returned in fragments. Hard ground beneath him. Copper taste of blood. The dull, whole-body throb of a healing factor that had won a war while he was unconscious.

His right arm and torso had reformed completely. The adamantium skeleton that had been exposed was once again covered with muscle and skin. But the protective weave was gone where the Power Stone hit. His face had healed, his right eye restored. His healing factor had won the battle against the Power Stone's destructive energy.

But the Soul Stone... that was different. Tyson felt hollowed out, as though something essential had been scooped from inside him.

Around him, the sounds of battle continued. Thunder cracked, followed by the Hulk's roars and a metallic clash. Then, cutting through the chaos of his thoughts, a voice spoke. Not from outside, but within his mind, clear as crystal and cold as winter.

"I see you now. You're on my list."

The words settled into him like ice water in his veins. Death's voice. He'd heard it before, her words surfaced through the fog of pain and disorientation.

"Because his name is not in my book. Do you understand what that means? Precious few have had their name struck from my list. You cannot comprehend how rare such a thing is."

That had been months ago. The failed summoning, when he'd tried to pull Jubilee's spirit back from Valhalla. Death had spoken of her ledger like it was scripture, immutable law written into the fabric of existence itself. And his name, somehow, had been absent from it.

Not anymore.

The Soul Stone had given Death a handhold, a way to read him, to find him. His name was back on the list.

Did that mean he'd just died?

And there was the other thing. The promise. The payment she'd mentioned on Lamentis. She'd said she would take someone from him. Not him. From him.

She hadn't collected. Yet.

Tyson tried to sit up, his body responding sluggishly as if he were moving through molasses. The battlefield swam before his eyes. Still groggy, he shook his head and forced himself to his knees. Death and her promises could wait. Not with Thanos still standing.

He spotted Illyana. The Russian mutant shook her head violently, blonde hair whipping around her face as consciousness returned to her eyes. She was still shaking off the telepathic control that was broken when Supergiant died. He couldn't have been out that long if she was still shaking off that disorientation—

A blade punched through her chest.

It erupted from her sternum in a grotesque fountain of crimson.

The adamantium weave that should have protected her split apart like tissue, the edges of the wound blackening and curling inward as if the metal itself were dying. Blood cascaded down the front of her armor, steaming where it touched the glaive's surface.

Corvus Glaive stepped out of the shadows from behind her.

"No," Tyson gasped through half-formed lips. "Impossible."

Illyana's eyes bulged, her mouth opening in a silent scream. The blade had somehow severed her connection to Limbo. Tyson could feel it through Nexus, could feel it in his soul. Her body convulsed, impaled completely, lifted slightly off the ground by the force of the thrust.

Corvus twisted the blade with sadistic pleasure.

Her Soulsword clattered to the ground, its mystical light flickering and dying as the weapon faded away.

"ILLYANA!" The scream tore from Tyson's throat, raw and primal.

Magnetic forces gathered around him, propelling his body forward with the speed of a bullet.

Corvus saw him coming. The alien pulled his weapon free from Illyana's body with a sickening, wet sound. Her limp form collapsed to the ground as Corvus turned to face the new threat, glaive held defensively before him.

Tyson summoned Nexus to his left hand, the soulsword materializing in a flash. He slashed downward with all his strength, aiming for Corvus's neck.

The alien raised his glaive to intercept. Sparks erupted where the weapons met, cascading around both combatants in a shower of mystical discharge.

"I killed you!" Tyson snarled.

Corvus's thin lips pulled back in a ghastly smile. "My glaive sustains me. As long as the blade remains unbroken, so too shall I endure."

Tyson got it. He called Mjolnir to his newly reformed right hand. The hammer streaked through the air, slapping into his palm with a sound like thunder.

Tyson swung Mjolnir in a wide arc, forcing Corvus to shift his glaive to block. The moment the weapons connected, Tyson channeled every volt of electricity the hammer could summon. Lightning exploded outward, engulfing both weapons and Corvus himself.

The alien's body went rigid, muscles seizing as electricity coursed through him. His jaw locked open in a silent scream, eyes wide with shock and pain. The glaive remained clutched in his paralyzed hands, but he could no longer wield it effectively.

Seizing the opening, Tyson drove Nexus forward with all his strength. The soulsword plunged into Corvus's chest, parting armor and flesh with equal ease. The blade emerged from the alien's back, dripping with dark blood.

Corvus convulsed, the electricity still locking his muscles, preventing him from falling. His eyes, though, registered understanding and fear.

Tyson withdrew Nexus with a savage jerk, then raised Mjolnir high above his head. With a roar that came from the very depths of his soul, he brought the hammer down in a devastating overhead strike.

Mjolnir connected with Corvus's skull with a sickening crunch. Bone shattered, tissue compressed, brain matter yielded to the unstoppable force of Uru metal backed by rage and muscle. The alien's head deformed under the impact, flattening like a ripe fruit under a boot heel.

But Tyson didn't stop. Again and again, he brought Mjolnir down on what remained of Corvus Glaive's head. Each impact produced less resistance than the last as skull fragments gave way to pulverized tissue. Blood and darker fluids splattered across Tyson, his face, the ground around them.

"Stay. Dead. This. Time," Tyson grunted between strikes, punctuating each word with another devastating blow.

When he finally stopped, nothing remained of Corvus's head but a dark stain beneath Mjolnir and scattered fragments of bone. The alien's body collapsed to the ground, the glaive still clutched in lifeless hands.

Tyson stood over the corpse, chest heaving, muscles trembling with exertion and fading adrenaline. His healing factor had completed its work, his body whole again, though phantom pain still echoed through his restored nervous system. He stared at the glaive still clutched in Corvus's lifeless fingers. He wouldn't take chances this time.

"No more resurrections," Tyson growled.

He turned the blade and drove it into Corvus. The weapon sliced through his armor and flesh with terrifying ease, piercing his heart.

Pulling the blade out, he began striking it with Mjolnir. The weapon shuddered, then, after the fifth strike, fractured. Cracks raced along its length until, with a sound like shattering glass, the blade disintegrated into glittering dust.

He turned toward Illyana's fallen form. The wound in her chest was unlike anything he had ever seen; the edges of the adamantium armor curled and blackened, as if the metal itself had been corrupted by whatever dark energy powered Corvus's weapon.

Tyson fell to his knees beside Illyana's crumpled form, his heart hammering against his ribs. Blood pooled beneath her, spreading in a dark crimson circle across the broken concrete.

"No, no, no," he whispered, gathering her into his arms. Her body felt lighter than it should, as if something essential was already draining away.

Tyson closed his eyes, reaching deep inside himself for Healer's absorbed power. The familiar warmth gathered in his palms as he pressed them against the ragged hole in her chest.

Nothing happened.

He pushed harder, channeling more energy, directing it into the wound. The healing power flowed from his hands into her body, but instead of knitting flesh and metal back together, it disappeared into nothing. Like pouring water into sand.

"Come on," he growled, increasing the flow of power. "Work, damn you!"

Then he remembered the potion. His hand flew to his pocket, but that one had been vaporized by the Power Stone.

"No," Tyson choked out, tears blurring his vision. "I'm not letting you go. Not like Jubilee. Not again."

He pressed his hands to her chest again, channeling healing energy with desperate intensity. Nothing happened. He tried again, pushing so much power through his palms that they began to glow white-hot with the strain.

Still nothing.

His power reached for her, the absorption activating. He'd been trying since he touched her and hadn't noticed until now, because it had always worked before, because he had never needed to notice. His ability reached into Illyana the way it had reached into every living person he had ever touched.

It found nothing.

Not resistance. Not what he'd encountered with He Who Remains or Rogue. This was different. His power reached and kept reaching and came back empty.

He kept his hands pressed against the wound. He didn't move them.

Tyson had felt it.

The moment Death claimed her.

Something intangible but unmistakable departed, leaving only an empty shell in his arms. The connection he'd always felt with her, that invisible tether binding their souls together, snapped like an overstretched wire.

His absorption had come back empty. The healing had found nothing but a void. Every piece of information said the same thing, stacked on top of each other in the space of seconds, and his body had understood before his mind had caught up, and his mind was catching up now, and he was not ready.

He thought about Jubilee. He thought about the gold, and his hands grasping at something that moved through his fingers without caring about his grief. He thought about the phantom sensation she'd left behind, the ozone and bubblegum scent that lingered after the motes had gone.

Illyana smelled like vanilla, jasmine, and leather. He concentrated on that. He stayed very still and concentrated on that, and didn't look at her hands yet.

"No," he growled, shaking her gently. "Illyana. ILLYANA!"

The battlefield existed somewhere outside the circle of his arms. Thunder, and Hulk roaring, but it was distant, irrelevant, happening in a world he wasn't in. He was here. He was holding her, just holding her, for this one moment before he had to do something.

The warmth in his arms was already changing. He could feel it at the edges. He didn't look at her hands.

"Please," he begged, voice breaking. "Please don't leave me."

As if in cruel answer to his plea, Illyana's body began to change. It started at her fingertips, a subtle shimmer, a golden luminescence that spread slowly up her arms. Her flesh, blood, and bone dissolving into motes of golden light.

Tyson recognized it immediately, horror washing through him in an icy wave. He had seen this before.

Jubilee.

"No!" he roared, clutching Illyana tighter as her body continued to disintegrate. The golden particles floated upward, despite his attempts to hold them together. "Not again. NOT AGAIN!"

He reached for his magnetic powers, trying to grip the metallic elements in her body, in her blood, to hold her together through sheer force of will. But the golden motes slipped through his powers like water through fingers, unbound by the laws of physics that governed normal matter.

"Please," he sobbed, watching helplessly as more of her dissolved. Her torso, her shoulders, her neck, all transforming into the beautiful, terrible golden light. "Don't go."

Her face was the last to change, those piercing blue eyes. Then they too dissolved, becoming part of the shimmering cloud that rose slowly into the air above him.

Tyson knelt alone on the bloodstained concrete, arms still outstretched as if cradling an invisible body. His hands grasped at the golden motes, trying to catch them, to hold onto something, anything, of Illyana. But they slipped through his fingers, dancing mockingly beyond his reach before floating higher, carried away on currents of air he couldn't control.

"ILLYANA!" The name tore from his throat, a primal howl of loss and rage that echoed across the battlefield.

No answer came. The golden particles dispersed, spreading thinner and rising higher until they were indistinguishable from dust motes in the sunlight.

Tyson remained kneeling, staring up at the empty sky where the last traces of Illyana Rasputin had vanished.

His healing factor could repair his body. It couldn't touch this.

He lowered his head, shoulders shaking. In the midst of war, surrounded by gods and monsters fighting for the fate of the universe, Tyson knelt alone with his grief.

Somewhere behind him, he could feel Mjolnir being wielded. Somewhere to his left, Logan was still fighting because Logan was always still fighting. The sounds of combat were the sounds of combat. He couldn't make himself care about any of it.

He looked up at the sky where the gold had gone.

Empty. Just sky. The gold was gone. She was gone. The sky had accepted her and closed over the space she'd occupied and moved on. Because the universe did not pause for his grief.

He had knelt in the ruins of Times Square and watched Jubilee disperse into gold. He had learned, eventually, what the gold meant. He had spoken to her in Valhalla. He had tried to bring her back and been told no because the lesson the universe most wanted him to learn was the one he was worst at learning.

And now he was kneeling in Greenwich Village, having learned nothing.

His arms still remembered the shape of holding her, remembered the specific warmth that wasn't there anymore. He wondered if here was visible from Valhalla. He wondered if she could see him kneeling in the street, looking like an idiot. He wondered if she already knew what had happened.

He stayed there, looking up. He waited for nothing, because there was nothing to wait for.

It started in his hands.

It wasn't his decision. Not a choice he made consciously. The power simply answered the grief the way fire answered oxygen, automatically, completely, without asking permission. Magneto's ability had always been the largest thing in his arsenal. He had kept it measured. Controlled. Used it surgically because he understood what uncontrolled looked like. He'd done it on Lamentis. And had promised himself he would never be that on Earth.

That promise had been made before he watched Illyana dissolve into gold.

The magnetic field erupted outward from him in a wave that had nothing surgical about it. Metal shrieked. Vehicles two blocks away crumpled like paper. The rebar inside every building on the street groaned as it strained toward him, the concrete around it fracturing. Somewhere beneath his feet, the deep magnetic currents of the earth itself stirred. Not the localized fields he used for flight and combat, but the foundational architecture of a planet's electromagnetic core, responding to the thing that was reaching for it.

The ground cracked in a ring around him, a perfect circle fifteen feet out, then twenty, spreading.

The heroes still fighting pulled back without being told to. Some of them couldn't move, the metal in their gear, their weapons, the fillings in their teeth, all dragging them toward the epicenter of whatever Tyson was becoming. Thor hauled Natasha backward with one arm, his feet finding purchase only because Mjolnir's enchantment gave him something to hold against the pull. Tony's suit locked up entirely, every servo screaming as the magnetic force trying to collapse it fought the repulsors trying to keep it open. He hit the ground and stayed there.

The Black Order retreated. Even Thanos took a measured step backward as he assessed.

Tyson didn't notice any of it.

The earth groaned beneath him. The crack in the pavement widened. A fire hydrant thirty feet away sheared off its base and rocketed toward him, flattening against an invisible wall in the air. Then another. Then a Con Edison transformer from the corner, tearing free of its mounting and spinning slowly in the field like a satellite in orbit, arcing electricity.

She was right here, he thought. She was right here, and now she's gone, and I am done. I am done with this. I am done with all of it.

The magnetic field pulsed outward again, stronger. The ring in the pavement was thirty feet now, then forty. Buildings on both sides of the street shed their facades, sheet metal and steel framing, and window frames all peeling away toward him. The air filled with debris that couldn't decide whether to orbit or impact, everything metal within a city block was caught in the competing fields.

"Kid."

The voice came from close.

Too close.

Tyson's awareness registered it distantly, the way you registered background noise when your attention was somewhere else entirely. He didn't pull the power back. He didn't look toward the voice.

Something moved through the orbiting debris field.

He felt it before he saw it.

Logan moved toward the epicenter. Toward him.

Each step cost him visibly. The adamantium in his skeleton was doing what adamantium did in a magnetic field at this intensity, trying to answer the pull with everything it had, which meant every step Logan took toward Tyson was a step taken against the full force of Magneto's power trying to drag him forward faster than he chose to go. The muscles in his jaw were locked. His knuckles had deployed without his meaning them to, all six claws out, driven by the involuntary firing of every muscle in both forearms as the field worked on the metal beneath his skin.

He kept walking.

A section of steel framing broke free from the building to Tyson's left and swung through the arc of Logan's path. He ducked under it, barely, the metal catching him across the shoulder and spinning him half around. He righted himself and kept moving. Another piece came from the right. He took it across the back, went to one knee, healed, and stood up.

He was ten feet away now.

"Tyson."

This time, the name reached him. Tyson turned his head slowly.

Logan looked like he'd been through a compactor. His jacket was shredded. Both forearms were a continuous cycle of opening and closing wounds. There was blood in his eyes, already healing but not fast enough to keep up with the field's constant work on the metal of his skull. He was standing at the edge of the debris ring, five feet from the epicenter, and he was standing straight.

"That's enough," Logan said.

Tyson stared at him. The field pulsed again, involuntarily, and Logan staggered, two steps back, caught himself, came forward three. Closer now. Four feet.

"She's gone," Tyson said. His voice didn't sound like his voice. "She's gone and I can… I can end this. Right now. I can end all of it."

"I know you can." Logan didn't flinch from it. Didn't try to argue. "I know exactly what you can do. I've known since the first day."

Something in that landed.

The magnetic field surged again, and a piece of rebar shot toward Logan like a javelin. He caught it with both hands, the metal trying to drive itself into his palms. He dropped the rebar and took the last four feet in two strides, closing the distance before the field could build another surge, and put one hand on Tyson's shoulder.

The metal in Logan's body screamed. Every bone in his hand and forearm strained toward Tyson's field with everything the magnetism had, and Logan's muscles fought it the way they'd been fighting it since he entered the ring. He left his hand on Tyson's shoulder anyway.

"I was there for Illyana," Logan said. "When we fought Azazel." The words came out clipped, effortful, because holding the hand in place was taking most of what he had. "I watched that girl fight for everything she had. And she knew you. She picked you."

Tyson looked at him.

"She didn't pick someone who does this."

The field pulsed, but smaller this time.

"The world ends with this," Logan said. "You know that. You know what this becomes if you don't stop." He didn't say don't do it. He didn't say she wouldn't want this. "You pull back, or you don't. That's the choice. I'm not going anywhere either way."

He meant it. That was the thing. He was standing in the middle of a magnetic field that was tearing his body apart, and he had not moved back; somehow, impossibly, he'd moved through it, and he was not going to move back, and Tyson could feel that. Could feel the stubborn, unreasonable weight of a person who had decided where they were standing and could not be moved from it by force.

He had felt it before. The fight against Azazel. After Jubilee's death. His first week in this world. A man who had met him in a fight and decided that he was worth something.

The power began to pull back.

Not all at once. Not cleanly. It receded the way a tide receded, slowly, incompletely, leaving debris behind. The orbiting field collapsed. Metal that had been suspended for a block in every direction dropped. The crack in the pavement stopped spreading. The groaning from beneath the earth quieted, then stilled.

Logan's hand stayed on his shoulder. The claws retracted, slowly, back through the wounds in his knuckles, which closed immediately. He didn't say anything else. He crouched down to Tyson's level and stayed there, one hand on his shoulder, not speaking, not leaving, while the magnetic field finished its recession and the city around them settled back into the particular silence of a street that had just survived something it didn't fully understand.

After a while, seconds, Logan said, "She went to Valhalla."

Tyson looked at him.

"Gold motes," Logan said. "Jubilee went the same way. That's Valhalla. She's somewhere. She's not nowhere."

Still kneeling, staring at the sky, Tyson heard his name being called. It sounded far away, like someone was trying to get his attention from a great distance.

"Tyson... Tyson..."

The voice barely registered. The battle had continued around him, concrete shattering, the roars of combatants both human and alien. Even Logan was gone, had reengaged. But it all seemed muted, inconsequential.

How long had he been staring at the sky?

"TYSON!"

The urgency finally broke through. He blinked, tears tracking down his blood-streaked face.

The sky above him tore open.

It wasn't a subtle rift or portal. Reality itself split apart, edges fraying like torn cloth. Beyond the jagged opening lay a vista that didn't belong in the sky.

A golden city.

Light poured through the breach, not sunlight but something purer, more fundamental.

From this radiant tear in the sky came figures.

Women with wings.

One, then five, then dozens, then hundreds streamed through the opening, their wings leaving trails of luminescence behind them.

Angels.

The word formed in Tyson's mind unbidden.

They've come for Illyana, he thought with numb certainty. They've come to take what's left of her soul.

He wanted to scream at them, to demand they return her. But his voice was gone. Only the hollow ache remained.

The angels descended, and for one breathless moment, Tyson believed.

Not consciously, deeper, in the place where a young boy in a different life had sat in a wooden pew and listened to his grandmother sing hymns; desperately looking up at wings backlit by golden light and believing. Angels. Descending from a city of gold in the sky. Coming down to a broken world where good people had fought and bled and died.

Coming to save them.

The feeling lasted two seconds. Maybe three. Long enough for his chest to fill with something that wasn't grief, something warm and lifting and terrible in its hope. Long enough for him to think, absurdly, We're not alone. Someone saw. Someone is coming.

A wet, rattling cough pulled his attention from the sky.

The Ancient One lay sprawled twenty feet away, her normally immaculate robes torn and stained with blood. Her face was a map of cuts and bruises, one eye swollen shut. Despite her injuries, she had propped herself up against a chunk of fallen building. The Time Stone gleamed green at her throat, housed in its protective amulet, the Eye of Agamotto.

"Tyson," she called again, her voice stronger but strained with pain. "It's not what you think."

He stared at her uncomprehendingly.

"They aren't here for Illyana's soul." Blood bubbled at the corner of her mouth as she spoke. The Ancient One's undamaged eye tracked the descending spiral of winged figures with the grim recognition of someone watching the last piece fall into place. "Heven. Thanos freed them from their prison as payment for Angela's service. They're his reinforcement. And we have nothing left to meet them with."

"He's had this planned since before he sent the Chitauri. The invasion was never the main assault. This is. They're here for revenge, against Odin. The end has begun."

The battle that Tyson had been losing since Thanos arrived had just become unwinnable. Hundreds of warrior angels, each one Asgardian in power, descending on a battlefield where the Earth's defenders were already broken, battered, and out of reserves.

The first angel drew her sword and pointed it not at their enemies. But at them. The warmth in his chest curdled into something black.

God wasn't sending his host to save them.

They weren't salvation. They were judgment.

As if the universe had chosen this specific image to deliver its verdict on the people bleeding in the streets below.

Then it... stopped.

Not halted, but frozen in place, as if time itself had ceased to flow around them.

Because it had.

"We've lost," the Ancient One continued, raising her trembling hand to the Eye. Green light spilled from between her fingers as she manipulated the amulet's mechanism. "Thanos has won."

The stone within the amulet pulsed, emerald energy flowing out. The symbols coalesced around her wrist and forearm, forming several rotating mandalas.

"But this doesn't have to be the outcome." She coughed, and the cough turned wet. She kept going. "Time is not a river but an ocean."

Tyson finally found his voice. "What?"

"Giving us another chance." The Ancient One's face contorted with effort and pain. The mandalas around her arm spun faster, throwing viridian light across her blood-streaked features. "I can send you back."

Hope and horror collided in Tyson's chest. "You can save her?"

The Ancient One's undamaged eye fixed on him with sudden intensity. "I cannot. I'm sorry, but you cannot either." She extended her arm toward him, palm facing outward. "You're our only hope. You must change everything. But change nothing. Or you'll cause a branch. The trunk cannot branch."

Around them, the battle was frozen. A massive explosion hung in the air fifty yards away, its fireball neither expanding nor receding. Combatants stood locked frozen.

"Why me?" Tyson asked, his voice raw.

"Because you're the nexus of possibilities. You are the only one who could always be there, but never be seen."

"What about Illyana?" he asked, unable to let her go.

The Ancient One was quiet for a moment. "Time travel is not resurrection, Tyson. If you try to save her. Everyone here, including what remains of Illyana, will be gone. She will be alive, but you will have to let her go. I'm sorry for having to ask this of you."

"I was wrong." The Ancient One's hand began to turn, as if rotating an invisible doorknob. The mandalas around her wrist spun. "Your cost, and your quest are a greater burden than any man should have to bear."

The Ancient One completed the turning motion with her hand. The mandalas around her wrist shot forward, expanding as they flew toward Tyson. They surrounded him in concentric rings of emerald light, spinning in opposite directions.

The rings collapsed inward, compressing around Tyson until they pressed against his skin. Then they passed through him, carrying him backward...

Time unraveled.

The battle rewound. The arrival of Thanos reversed. Minutes, hours, flashed by in reverse, a kaleidoscope of events running backward.

For one impossible instant, Tyson existed in all of it simultaneously. The worst part wasn't the reversal. The worst part was that fraction of a second lasted an eternity. The emerald light carried him backward, and he felt every moment he passed through, not as memory but as experience, lived in reverse, each second peeling away from him like skin from a burn.

He felt the battle unhappen. The angel host ascended back into the rift. The Ancient One's blood unspilling. He felt the golden motes slipping backward through his fingers. Illyana's golden motes drawing back together, condensing, solidifying. He felt Illyana dissolving in his arms. He felt the tether snap. Then he felt the tether whole, felt her alive, felt her warmth against him. And then the moment moved past him, and she was further away, fighting Thanos, then further still, arriving at the Sanctum, then further still, her hand in his.

He tried to hold onto it.

The emerald current didn't care.

He was past that too, and past the Avengers assembling on the Sanctum steps, and past the chess game with Stan, and past the Shawarma spot, and past the months in the TVA that had happened between a few heartbeats of this endless, merciless day.

The emerald light compressed. The reverse kaleidoscope slowed. Time found its footing.

Then stillness.

Tyson remained kneeling on the street in the exact same spot. Half of his adamantium weave was destroyed, and he was half-naked.

But the street was clean, the buildings weren't destroyed, there was no debris, and there was no spaceship in the sky. A car honked. Someone laughed on the sidewalk. A woman walked past him with a phone pressed to her ear, complaining about a delayed package.

He knelt on clean concrete and felt the weight of Illyana's dissolving body in his arms. His healing factor had repaired every wound; the vaporized flesh, the shattered bones, but it couldn't repair the thing that was broken now. The thing that was broken now wasn't physical.

And it went beyond the soul-torn hollowness left by the Soul Stone.

Somewhere in this world, Illyana Rasputin was alive. Somewhere, the Ancient One stood whole and unbloodied. Somewhere, Logan was unburdened by the memory of standing in the path of Tyson's grief and refusing to move.

None of them knew.

The world was intact and ordinary and had no idea what it had just been saved from, or that it hadn't been saved at all, that it had simply been rewound to a point before it needed saving, and the only person who knew the difference was kneeling on a sidewalk in Greenwich Village with tears he couldn't explain tracking down a face that pedestrians were actively trying not to look at.

Illyana was lost. They lost.

And only Tyson remembered how it all ended.

Behind the Scenes

- I tried to mimic the opening of Infinity War, where we don't see the battle between the Asgardians and Thanos, just the aftermath. In the first draft, the scene was only half-length, starting even further into the battle at the point where Tyson hits Thanos with Mjolnir. I did write the start of the battle first, and that included the sections with Maw and Supergiant, which I didn't want to cut. So during editing, I re-added the battle and cut the fat from the very start. So we didn't miss much, and recapped Cap's fall.

- Originally, this chapter was number 150. Since Chapter 100 was a milestone, I wanted this one to be as well. But some of the chapters from Arc 9 ran long, and I split them, plus I needed a little more time to get this chapter right because it was so big.

- On the Maw Absorption: Typically, I do the life flash when Tyson grabs someone for the first time. In this case, I pushed it back to when Maw died. This was done for the story flow, not for any change in Tyson's power. Getting Maw's life flash initially would've been in the middle of combat, moving it to after Supergiant's escape allowed the battle to continue and the life flash to happen during a lull.

- Back when I did Tyson's power poll, and it was voted for him to get Magneto's power, I knew I would do Ultimatum at some point. Illyana's death seemed like the perfect moment. Having Logan pull him back from the edge felt like the story coming back to its start, with Logan 'saving' Tyson.

- If it wasn't clear through the narrative, Thanos and the Black Order were closer to their comic counterparts than their MCU ones. This is most clearly demonstrated through Corvus' weapon and Thanos' magic.

- Death wasn't the only one who warned Tyson what was coming through prophecy. In the last chapter, Stan said… a lot… Perhaps more than Death on Lamentis… But he warned Tyson directly that the battle wasn't over: The old man looked up at the sky, where the tear in reality had been just hours before. "Bigger things. Much bigger. That hole in the sky? Just a peek through the keyhole. The door's still there, waiting to be opened."

"Doors can swing both ways," Tyson observed.

"Indeed, they can." The old man nodded sagely. "And what comes through might make those aliens look like a Sunday picnic."

- Tyson not being on Death's list was brought up in Chapter 113: Beyond the Veil. Death pointed at Tyson and snapped, "Because his name is not in my book. Do you understand what that means? Precious few have had their name struck from my list. You cannot comprehend how rare such a thing is."

Here, Death states clearly: "I see you now. You're on my list."

Followed by Tyson's realization: The Soul Stone had given Death a handhold, a way to read him, to find him. His name was back on the list. Did that mean he'd just died?

- Illyana's Death has been foreshadowed for a while. There are subtle clues, some of which I still can't point out because they're tied to other, future spoilers. But the biggest, most obvious clue came from Death's speech in Chapter 141. I posted a part of it in the last chapter's author's note, giving you the picture, but it wasn't the whole picture. Now you can see it all: "I offer you a choice, here and now. A single death among them, one life given willingly to restore partial balance, and I will ensure the others live long, full existences. They will die peacefully in their time, deaths that come with dignity and completion. Refuse, and I take my payment in a way you cannot predict, from a source you cannot protect, at a time I alone will choose." Her eyes locked onto his, bottomless and patient. "This is mercy, Tyson. This is the opportunity to pay the debt rather than having it collected. What you have taken from me will be returned. The only question is whether you have the courage to choose the how."

Also in the same chapter: "I do not threaten." The interruption was soft but absolute. "I simply am. I have existed since the first spark of life emerged, and I will remain when the last star burns out." She leaned closer, and Tyson's vision began to gray at the edges. "You've taken something from me today. The universe abhors such imbalances. It will correct itself. With instruments already in motion, I will take something from you. Today."

Today was the key.

It was the last word of Death's speech.

A day hadn't passed since the Battle of New York. Death is beyond time, and we went on Tyson's journey with him, but everything that Tyson experienced in the TVA happened the same day. "Today" is Saturday, May 5th, 2012. I put the date on every chapter where it's applicable. But functionally, "Today" encompasses everything from chapter 128: 40,000 Feet, up through this chapter.