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Knowhere - Collector's Sanctum
The Grandmaster lounged in his chair, grinning ear to ear.
"Brother! Did you see that human? Tossing Infinity Stones around like they were party favors! Magnificent! My Contest of Champions would explode with him in it!"
The Collector didn't flinch. "Entertainment aside, he's a threat. With stones in his possession and powers beyond comprehension. This isn't a game anymore."
The Grandmaster laughed, leaning back. "Oh, come on! Chaos is fun! I haven't had a proper thrill in millennia. IĀ haveĀ to get him into my Contestā¦ eventually."
"Your amusement is irrelevant," the Collector said coolly. "I need to know what he wants. Every being, even a reality warper, has desires. Once we know thatā¦ we act."
"Patience, dear brother!" The Grandmaster waved a hand dramatically. "The suspense is the best part. Good things come to those who wait!"
And with a flash of golden light, he was gone.
The Collector remained, staring at the empty chair.
"Everyone wants something," he murmured.
High Evolutionary's Laboratory
The High Evolutionary stood before multiple holographic displays, his hand trembling and breathing quickly, "Magnificent," he managed.
The displays showed the broadcast. Thousands of mutants and inhumans simultaneously teleported across the globe. Each one a unique expression of human evolution.
But it was Jay who truly captured his attention.
"He's impossibility made flesh," the High Evolutionary mused, fingers dancing across holographic controls. "Human genetic structure with capabilities that defy anything we know."
"The pinnacle of human evolution," the High Evolutionary said with reverence. "No, beyond human. Trans-human maybe? Post-human even. A bridge between mortal limitation and cosmic power."
He'd spent centuries trying to create perfect beings. His New Men, his Counter-Earth, his countless experiments in forced evolution. All of them pale shadows compared to what Jay had become.
"But how?" His fingers flew across controls. "The adaptation is too perfect and too precise. This isn't a natural mutation. This is..."
He paused, realization dawning.
"Accumulated powers." The High Evolutionary's voice rose with excitement. "He's building himself! Each power carefully selected to be perfectly merged! Evolution through acquisition rather than natural selection!"
The concept was revolutionary. Evolution didn't need to wait for random mutation and selective pressure. It could be directed, chosen and optimized by the subject itself.
"If I could replicate this..." He turned to a new section of his laboratory, where a golden cocoon sat in a stasis chamber. "Yes. Yes, this could work."
His hands moved with purpose now, pulling up genetic templates, power matrices, evolutionary algorithms. The cocoon pulsed with contained potential.
"I will create something perfect," he declared. "A being who can choose its own evolution, optimize itself for any threat, become the ultimate expression of what life can achieve."
The cocoon's pulsing intensified as he began inputting new parameters.
"I shall call you Adam, after their first Man", the High Evolutionary said softly. "Adam Warlock. And you will be my masterpiece."
Asgard - Royal Palace
The golden halls of Asgard echoed with the uproar of nobles shouting and worries pounding their fists on tables.
"YOU MUST ACT!" one advisor bellowed. His face was red with indignation. "That mortal dared to threaten the Allfather himself! Called you pathetic! Demanded you come to Earth like some common supplicant!"
Odin Borson sat upon his throne. Gungnir held loosely in one hand. His remaining eye half-closed. Around him, the court churned with the chaos of nobles demanding action and warriors calling for war.
Frigga stood beside the throne. Her expression serene despite the chaos.
"The mortal has imprisoned our son," another noble added. "Transformed him into a playing card! The indignity of it! Loki is a prince of Asgard! He deserves to be tried here, under our laws!"
"Loki committed war crimes, and worse, submitted to the Mad Titan." Odin said quietly.
The room fell silent.
"He invaded a realm under our protection using forces from Thanos. He killed mortals. He attempted to enslave an entire planet."
"He is your son!"
"Which is why this is so shameful." Odin's voice carried the weight of ages. "My son chose conquest over honor. Chose servitude to the Mad Titan over loyalty to his realm. The mortal's anger is justified."
"But he is still our son!" Frigga's voice cracked. Not the serene queen now. A mother. Desperate. Afraid. "Our child, Odin. I raised him. I taught him his first spell, sang him his first lullaby, held him when he had nightmares about being different." Tears streamed down her face. "He made terrible choices. He committed terrible crimes. But he is my son. My baby. And I cannot... I will not abandon him to whatever fate the mortals decide."
The raw emotion silenced the entire court. Even the most warlike nobles looked away.
"Please," Frigga whispered, as the word held millennia of love and pain. "Bring him home. However, we must. Whatever it costs, just bring our son home."
Heimdall's voice echoed through the chamber. "Allfather, if I may speak?"
"Speak."
"I have watched the mortal realm. I have seen what Thor has accomplished there, the bonds he has formed. The Power Broker Jay, the one who imprisoned Loki, is known to Thor. They are not enemies. Perhaps, instead of demanding or threatening, we could negotiate."
"Negotiate?" A warrior spat the word. "Asgard does not negotiate with mortals!"
"Asgard," Thor's voice rang out, and suddenly his image appeared in the center of the throne room, projected through Heimdall's all-seeing eyes. The gatekeeper's power made Thor seem to stand among them despite being in Midgard. "Asgard will do what is wise, not what is proud."
Every head turned as they saw their prince's expression was serious.
"Son," Frigga breathed, reaching toward his projection.
"I have fought alongside Earth's heroes," Thor said. "I have seen their strength, their courage, their determination. And I have witnessed Jay's capabilities firsthand. Father, if you go to Earth demanding Loki's release, it will end in war. A war we cannot win."
"You dare suggest Asgard would lose to mortals?"
"I suggest," Thor said carefully, "that the Power Broker demonstrated abilities that rival your own in your prime, Father. He brought back the dead. He awakened thousands of warriors with a thought. He imprisoned Loki in a way that even our greatest sorcerers might struggle to undo." He met Odin's gaze. "And he did it all with just a snap of his finger."
The throne room fell silent.
Odin studied his son. Thor had truly grown. The arrogant boy who'd been banished to Midgard had returned a man who understood when to fight and when to think.
"What would you suggest?" Odin asked.
"Let me negotiate Loki's return through diplomacy rather than demands." Thor's grip tightened on Mjolnir. "And if negotiation fails, then we consider other options. But we start with words, not threats."
Frigga looked at her husband pleadingly. Odin's jaw worked. Pride warring with wisdom.
Finally, he nodded.
"Very well, but Thor," Odin's voice hardened, "if they refuse, if they mock our request, then Asgard's honor must be satisfied. One way or another."
Thor bowed. "I understand, Father."
His projection faded, leaving only Heimdall's golden light.
Odin settled back into his throne. Suddenly feeling every one of his millennia of age.'
Earth
The internet had lost its collective mind.
#AlienInvasion trended alongside #NorseGodsAreReal, #MiracleDoctor and #PowerBrokerSavesTheDay. Videos of the battle played on loop. Each angle analyzed frame by frame. Conspiracy theories spawned faster than they could be debunked.
But it was the resurrections that truly broke people's brains.
Interviews flooded news stations. People who'd been confirmed dead, who had death certificates being processed, who'd been in body bags, were now walking around alive and healthy.
"I remember dying," one woman said on CNN. Her hands shook as she clutched a coffee cup. "I was crushed by debris. I even felt my ribs break, and felt drowning as my lungs filled with blood. And then... then I was somewhere else. It was so peaceful, warm, and there was this light, and my grandmother was there. She'd been dead for ten years, but she was there, and she smiled at me and said, 'Not yet, honey. Not yet.'"
Her voice cracked. "Then I blinked, and I was standing three meters away from where I died. The building that crushed me was still there. But I was fine, like it never happened. Except I remember it did happen."
But not all testimonies were peaceful.
"I saw hell," a man said on Fox News. His eyes were haunted. "I know how that sounds. But I'm telling you, I died, and I went somewhere dark and hot. And there were things there, ravenously hungry." He shuddered violently now sobbing. "Then I was back here alive. But I remember. I know what's waiting for me."
On MSNBC, a woman described something different. "There was nothing. Just... void. No light, or darkness, not even any sensation. Just nothing. I was conscious, but there was nothing to be conscious of. No time was passing, nor any space to occupy. Just existence without anything to exist in." She was crying. "It was the most terrifying thing I've ever experienced. And now I'm back, and I don't know if I'm grateful or horrified because now I know I'll be punished for not believing in the Heavenly Ghost."
On BBC World, an elderly man spoke calmly. "I saw the wheel. The great wheel of dharma, turning eternally. I saw my past lives. All of them. Every choice, every consequence, every moment of suffering and joy spiraling outward forever. I was about to merge with it, to become part of the cycle again, when something pulled me back. Ripped me from enlightenment and threw me back into this meat prison we call a body." He smiled sadly. "I'm alive. But I'm not sure that's a mercy."
Similar stories flooded in from across the city. Twelve hundred people were now twelve hundred impossible returns.
And every single one of them reported seeing something after death.
Christians saw Jesus or angels, and Muslims saw gardens of paradise, but on the other hand, Hindus described Yama's court, while Buddhists felt the wheel of dharma pause.
Reddit's r/Afterlife exploded overnight from a small community to millions of subscribers. Religious subreddits crashed from traffic overload. Philosophy departments worldwide received unprecedented funding requests.
Proof of an afterlife. Actual, documented and repeatable proof.
"We need to study this," one researcher said on a talk show. "These people were dead for varying amounts of time, from minutes to hours. Their brains showed no activity. And yet they have coherent, detailed memories of experiences during that period. This challenges everything we understand about consciousness, about death, about the nature of existence itself!"
But the problems started when the numbers didn't add up.
"We counted twelve hundred confirmed dead," a SHIELD agent told reporters. Their face were deliberately obscured. "But we can only account for eleven hundred and eighty-eight returned. Twelve are still missing."
"Missing how?" the reporter pressed.
"They just vanished from morgues, shelters and hospitals. One moment they were there, returned and alive. The next gone as if some other power collected them."
The conspiracy theories that spawned from that information made the previous ones look tame.
Government experiments. Alien abductions. Secret organizations harvesting people with resurrection experience.
But one theory gained more traction than the rest:
"What if they didn't want to come back?" a Reddit post asked. "What if some of them saw paradise, saw loved ones and peace, but the Power Broker brought them back anyway? What if twelve of them found a way to return to death? To go back to whatever waited for them?"
The post went viral with millions of upvotes and thousands of comments debating the ethics of resurrection without consent.
And underneath it all, a new question: If someone wants to die after experiencing death, is that suicide or just going home?
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