[Aeon Biotech Headquarters, New York, Same Time]
The executive floor of Aeon Biotech occupied the top three levels of the building, and Diana's office sat at the corner of the uppermost one with floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides that looked out over the Manhattan skyline.
At this hour the city light came through at a low angle, painting the dark wood desk and the shelves and the neat stack of documents in amber and long shadow.
Diana sat behind the desk in a deep charcoal blazer with her hair pinned back and her reading glasses on, a pen in hand, working through the document in front of her with the focused efficiency she brought to everything she chose to take seriously.
Across from her sat two people who had arrived by flying up to her window and knocking on it.
She had observed this without comment.
Ajak sat with her coffee cup held in both hands, her posture easy, a faint smile on her face. She was dressed simply, nothing that distinguished her from any other woman in her apparent late thirties.
Ikaris sat with his back straight and his hands resting on his knees and said nothing. He had said very little since they arrived. His eyes moved across the office steadily, taking inventory of everything in it without lingering on anything. He did not look hostile. He looked like he was running calculations.
Diana set her pen down and looked between them over the rim of her coffee cup.
She said. "I am going to be direct with you because I value everyone's time, including my own."
She set the cup down on its saucer with a soft click. "Can you introduce yourselves properly, beyond your names? And then tell me clearly what you need with Ethan."
Ajak smiled, unhurried. "Of course." She set her own cup down. "We are Eternals. Placed on Earth by the Celestial Arishem the Judge thousands of years ago, to guide humanity's development and protect them from the Deviants."
She gave a brief account of what that had meant in practice: millennia of quiet intervention, battles fought in the shadows of human history, civilisations nudged along a path none of them had known was being tended.
She kept it concise, reading Diana's attention well enough to know that she did not need the long version.
"But our mission has a deeper layer," Ajak continued, "that most humans are unaware of. The reason Arishem cultivates life on planets is because intelligent life generates the cosmic energy necessary for a Celestial to be born. There is a Celestial seedling at the core of this planet right now. It is growing."
She watched Diana's face carefully as she said it.
Diana took a calm sip of her coffee. Nothing moved in her face.
Ajak tilted her head slightly, reading this. "You do not believe this, do you," she said.
"Ethan has told me a great deal about the Celestials," Diana said. "But I do not believe he knew about this." She set her cup down. "Which means this is new information and I need a moment to properly consider it."
She paused. "Continue, please."
Ajak nodded. "When the seedling reaches maturity, its emergence will mean the end of this planet and every living thing on it. That is the natural process and it has happened on many worlds before this one."
Something genuine moved through her face, something that did not fit neatly into the professional frame she was using. "But Arishem contacted me recently with something unexpected."
"What did he say?" Diana asked.
"That Ethan Carter has the potential to become a Celestial's equal," Ajak said, giving each word the weight it deserved.
"Arishem has been watching him carefully. The scope of his abilities, the rate at which he grows, the trajectory that growth is on. Arishem does not want conflict with someone operating at that level."
She held Diana's gaze steadily. "He wants a conversation. About the seedling, about the Emergence, about whether there is a path forward that does not end the way it usually ends. He sent us to open that conversation."
Diana was quiet for a moment.
'If this had been five years ago,' she thought, 'I would already be drafting a plan to remove the seed from the planet through whatever combination of divine weapons and magic I could assemble. I would have considered that the responsible response.'
She had spent enough time with Ethan to have revised that instinct considerably. Every problem had a solution if you thought carefully enough.
And if thinking ran out, there was always enough force available to handle what thinking could not. The point was not to skip to the force before the thinking was finished.
'So. Think first.'
"When does the population reach the required threshold?" Diana asked. "For the Emergence to become imminent?"
Ajak said, "Based on the current growth rate, five to ten years. Possibly closer to ten."
Diana nodded, filing this away.
She looked at Ikaris. He had not spoken once during the entire exchange. "What is your read on this?" she asked him directly.
Ikaris looked at her. His jaw was level and his eyes gave nothing away. "Arishem's instructions are clear. I follow them."
"That is not what I asked," Diana said.
Ikaris fell silent.
He held her gaze for a moment, and then he looked away toward the window. "I follow Arishem's instructions," he said again, and this time it was not deflection but something closer to honesty, the answer of a man who had built himself entirely around one fixed point and genuinely did not know how to answer a question that asked him to look past it.
Diana looked at him for a moment longer, then turned her attention inward.
She reached along the telepathic connection she shared with Ethan, the one that had become as natural to her over time as breathing, and sent her thought forward.
'Ethan. Are you there?'
His voice arrived in her mind almost immediately. 'Diana, my future queen. Did you miss me already?'
She smiled before she could stop it. 'Yes, but that is not why I am calling.'
She began to pass him the information efficiently, Ajak and Ikaris, the Eternals, the Celestial seedling in the Earth's core, Arishem's message, the request for a meeting. She gave him everything Ajak had said and waited.
She felt him thinking on the other end of the connection. It lasted a few seconds.
'Alright,' he said. 'I am busy today. Tell them tomorrow evening, same time. I will be there.' A slight pause. 'And Diana. Love you. See you at home tonight.'
She felt the smile return, warmer this time. 'Love you too. See you tonight.'
She closed the connection and looked back at Ajak and Ikaris.
"I have spoken with Ethan," she said. "He will meet with you tomorrow evening, same time as today, here."
She let a brief pause settle. "He asks that next time you use the elevator. The window works, but the building staff have questions."
Ajak laughed, quiet and genuine. "If we had used the elevator today it would have taken considerably longer to reach you. But noted."
She met Diana's eyes, warm and sincere. "Thank you, Ms. Prince. This is more than we expected."
"Do not thank me yet," Diana said. "The conversation still has to happen."
She looked at Ajak directly, and the question she had been turning over since the beginning of the meeting came forward.
"You have been on this planet for thousands of years," she said. "You have watched humanity from the beginning and you know what the Emergence means."
She held Ajak's gaze. "Do you believe there is a solution? One that does not require this planet to end."
Ajak was quiet. She looked down at her coffee cup for a moment, then back up at Diana, and what was in her eyes was uncomplicated and completely honest.
"I hope so," she said. "I genuinely hope so."
Ikaris said nothing. He looked out at the Manhattan skyline, the city spread below them in the amber evening light, and whatever he was thinking, he kept it exactly where he had put it.
Diana looked between them both, reached a private conclusion she intended to share only with Ethan, and picked up her pen.
"I will be in touch," she said.
They left through the door this time, which Diana noted with quiet satisfaction.
...
[Nick Fury's Apartment, New York, Same Evening]
The apartment was lived-in and practical, the home of a man who spent most of his time somewhere else and had never seen a reason to pretend otherwise. The furniture was functional. The fridge had beer and not much else. The lighting was what it was.
Fury sat on his couch with a coffee mug in both hands, looking like a man who had spent the last few months dealing with problems he never asked for and would have happily avoided.
Talos sat in the armchair across from him with a glass of something stronger than coffee.
Ethan sat in the chair by the window, relaxed, one ankle crossed over his knee, looking like he had been there for hours.
Anna was beside him eating cake directly from a small plate balanced on her knee with the complete contentment of someone who had earned dessert.
"I am sorry," Ethan said, not sounding particularly sorry. "My girlfriend called about some important business. Anyway, let's continue."
He looked at Fury. "Where were we? Right, Skrulls." He tilted his head slightly. "So tell me, Fury. Are you fully aware of your mistake now, or do you need me to walk through it again?"
Fury took a long sip of his coffee. "I know, Carter. No need to pour salt in the wound. That Skrull motherfucker got me this time."
Anna looked up from her cake. "That is actually one of the reasons we caught on to him."
She pointed her fork toward Fury. "He didn't say 'motherfucker.' Even though we never met in person, from everything I could tell, he didn't swear once in several months. Eventually, that was what gave him away."
Fury looked at her. "Really, girl? That is what you are leading with?"
"Apart from other things, like denying Sharon permission to visit us and placing surveillance on our company. Oh, and Jean used her telepathy to find out about it and asked me to handle it. But the main reason? That was the one."
Talos looked at Anna, then at Fury, then back at Anna. "She might have a point though."
Fury turned to Talos slowly. "You motherfuc..."
He stopped and took a sip of coffee instead.
Ethan spread his hands. "See. That is exactly what she was talking about."
"Can we," Fury said, setting his mug down with more force than necessary, "move on to the actual topic of the Skrulls? Please?"
Ethan gestured graciously. "By all means."
Fury looked at him directly. "What are you going to do about it, Carter?"
Ethan raised both eyebrows. "Why do you assume I am going to do anything about it? You created this situation, Fury. You made a promise to displaced people and then got busy and hoped the problem would stay quiet."
"You won't walk away from this without a solution," Fury said flatly. "I have been around you long enough to know that. You do not get involved in things unless you intend to finish them. So stop performing and let the cat out of the bag."
He leaned forward. "Unless you are planning to use mass telepathy on the human population to make them accept Skrulls living openly among them, in which case I need to know that upfront."
Talos's head turned sharply toward Ethan. "You can do that?"
Anna took a bite of cake. "Oh, he can do considerably more than that."
Ethan smiled, easy and unhurried. "I have a better option than rewriting eight billion people's opinions about aliens."
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and looked at Talos directly. "Would you believe me if I told you I found a planet?"
The room went still.
Talos set his glass down slowly. "Is that true?"
Fury's eye narrowed. "Where? How? Carol and I spent years looking and found nothing viable."
Anna shook her head once, returned to her cake, and said nothing, which somehow communicated everything.
Ethan smiled lightly. "It is straightforward, Fury. When you cannot find what you are looking for, you build it yourself."
He looked at Talos steadily. "Here is what I need you to do. Get word to every Skrull currently living on this planet. All ten million of them. Tell them to be ready in three days. I will move every single one of them to the new planet myself. They will have full ability to travel between Earth and their new home whenever they choose."
He paused. "The only condition is that they abandon any plans involving the conquest or replacement of Earth's population. This planet is mine. That line does not move."
Fury stared at him, then he turned to Talos.
"Ten million?" His voice had dropped to something dangerously level. "Ten million Skrulls... On this planet... Right now."
He turned back to Talos slowly. "Please tell me he is lying."
Talos opened his mouth but no words came out.