After the conference at the UN, I flew back to my private penthouse. The skies were quieter than they'd ever been. The cold wind rushing past my face was a stark contrast to the sterile warmth of the UN building. As I touched down on the balcony, stepping through the sliding glass doors, Eve was waiting for me in the center of the living room.
Physically, she was fine, but when I looked at her face, she didn't look like she was in the best of conditions. I could see the heavy bags beneath her eyes.
"Mark," she breathed out, her voice filled with relief.
She closed the distance between us in a second, wrapping her arms tightly around my neck and burying her face in my chest.
"Aye, Eve," I responded, hugging her back.
She gave me the type of hug you give someone you haven't seen in the longest of times. Which made sense since, the last time she had seen me, I was getting brutally mangled and dragged across the country by four bloodthirsty variants.
Now that I think about it, she probably waited through my entire two-week coma, pacing the floors, only to watch me wake up and instantly jump into a corporate press conference on live television without even a phone call.
The more I thought, the more I realized something: I didn't feel the overwhelming warmth or relief that I knew I was supposed to feel. All I really felt was the low, internal, mechanical hum of the Solar Charger vibrating against my sternum.
Oh, shit. The thought of checking up on her and the others didn't really cross my mind, I realized, staring blankly over her shoulder. Am I becoming a sociopath?
When I woke up, my mind had immediately gone towards the PR spin, cybernetic upgrades, and the Viltrumite War. I hadn't even thought to ask if my own mother was alive.
Maybe… maybe I am, I reasoned coldly. I might seem insane, but it's for the greater good. Besides, I've come too far now to have any types of apprehensions about how I'm moving.
I actively forced my facial muscles to soften, deliberately mimicking the correct emotional response. I pulled back slightly, looking at her with manufactured sympathy.
Shit, I'm doing it so easily, I thought. It's like breathing.
"I was gonna come see you, promise," I said softly, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear. "Everything was just happening all at once, so I needed to put the world at ease first. My bad."
She sniffled, wiping her eyes. "You idiot. I thought you were dead. We all did."
"I'm still here," I reassured her. "But I need an update. How is everyone?"
Eve took a breath and started filling me in. The Guardians were mostly fine. Rex and Black Samson had been heavily injured holding off the clones, but they were recovering rapidly thanks to the healing pods Invincible Inc. had provided. The Immortal had been beheaded—again—but after being put back together, he had officially retired from superhero work alongside Kate. William and Rick had almost been crushed under falling rubble while they were in the city, but Rick's cyborg enhancements allowed him to save them both.
"What about my mom? And Oliver?" I asked.
"Debbie's safe," Eve nodded. "She was evacuated to a civilian safety bunker with Paul when the attack started. But Oliver... he was in critical condition for a week. He's stabilized now and moving around, but it was close."
Dang, a lot happened to them too, I thought, my expression concerned. "I should see them."
We spent the next few hours making the rounds.
We visited my mom and Paul first, which involved a lot of crying on Debbie's part and me offering more practiced, comforting reassurances. Then we checked on Rick and William, making sure their housing and needs were completely covered by Invincible Inc.
Finally, we arrived at the GDA medical wing to check on Oliver and the remaining Guardians.
Oliver was sitting up in his hospital bed, covered in bandages but looking remarkably alert for a kid who had been beaten half to death. As I walked in to check on him, my eyes narrowed slightly.
I bet Cecil ran every scan in the book on Oliver while he was unconscious to find weaknesses in Viltrumite biology, I assumed internally.
Right on cue, the sliding doors to the medical bay hissed open, and Cecil walked in, flanked closely by Robot.
Cecil looked me up and down, his scarred face unreadable. "Nice speech at the UN today," he remarked dryly. "Very polished. Your new PR team really earns their paychecks."
"PR? Nah, that came from the heart," I replied casually, not taking the bait.
His face twitched a bit in a clear sign of skepticism.
"Those clones were crazy though," I said, crossing my arms. "Any leads on who sent them?"
"We're working on that," he said, then his eyes narrowed. "The mastermind behind this must really hate your guts."
Nice bait, dickhead, but you ain't getting me today.
"You got that right," I replied smoothly. "It could be anyone."
"And it could also be more than one," Robot interjected, his helmet opening to reveal his face. "According to video surveillance across the globe, the clones seemed to appear from some kind of synchronized interdimensional portal."
Saved by the nerd, I mused internally. Maybe I can spin this.
"Like the Flaxans?" I asked. "Do you think they have something to do with this?"
"It is a plausible hypothesis," Robot replied. "However, the energy signatures of these portals did not match previous Flaxan incursions. All we can do now is wait for another response to confirm. Other than that, I will continue to analyze the data and look into things."
Yea right. He ain't just gonna sit around and wait, I thought, knowing Robot's obsessive intellect. He's definitely gonna try to reverse engineer the portal to see if it really is them. It's a good thing Angstrom and I evacuated that dimension, or else I don't know what I might've had to do if he came snooping around.
"Sounds good," I nodded.
Cecil crossed his arms, clearly not buying what I was selling. He had a look that said he knew the things the variants said about my true nature before the feeds were cut had to have had some kind of truth to them. Which was why Invincible Inc. was trying to aggressively push the 'rogue faction' angle. Everything was fitting together too nicely around me and Invincible Inc., and he was highly skeptical all around.
"Great," he grunted. "Now that that's one thing more or less cleared up, how 'bout you tell us who that Old Man was."
"Old Man?" I said, looking at him, genuinely confused for a fraction of a second.
Oh, right, I realized internally. He didn't know that Conquest was coming at all because I never told him after Anissa beat my ass. In the canon, Mark radioed Cecil through his earpiece and he heard the conversation, but since I'm not working under him, he's been completely in the dark. No wonder he's even more suspicious than ever.
"Right," I said, rubbing the back of my neck. "I thought I told you. It must have slipped my mind, my bad. Yeah, that was a very powerful Viltrumite. The other female Viltrumite that came here told me he was going to subjugate the Earth if I didn't do it. Which was the reason why I went into isolated training immediately. I was going to just handle it quietly off-planet, but then these clones came out of nowhere and that plan got thrown out the window."
Cecil's composure completely broke. His face flushed with anger.
"It slipped your mind?!" he yelled, stepping toward me. "An extinction-level alien comes to destroy the planet, and it slipped your mind?!"
"Honest mistake," I answered casually, shrugging. "It's been handled for now, so you don't gotta worry about it too much."
He pinched the bridge of his nose, attempting to regain his composure. "Are there more coming?!"
"Maybe. I'm not exactly sure on the timeline," I replied, my tone remaining dangerously calm. "But you should prepare for other incoming Viltrumites, just in case. There's a strong chance that a full-scale fleet might eventually come to try and conquer this planet. And there's a high probability my old man is still alive and will be coming back to recruit me to fight against them."
The room went dead silent.
Cecil stared at me, the anger draining from him completely, replaced by extreme, suffocating stress. He dragged a hand down his scarred cheek.
"Oh, you've got to be fucking shitting me," he muttered. "There are more space Nazis coming to Earth? And each one is possibly strong enough to turn the Earth into dust?"
"Not possibly. They are capable of turning it into dust," I corrected him flatly. "But, be at ease. You'll only be the last line of defense if they manage to get past us."
Cecil looked at me, realizing just how desperately he had to rely on my company. "Can you win?" he questioned.
"Possibly," I responded. "From what I've… heard about their leader, he's incredibly powerful. He's practically a god among even them. If he doesn't go down, then the Earth is doomed."
"Fan-fucking-tastic," Cecil sighed heavily. "So, what're you going to do now?"
"I'm going to go hunt for those remaining clones."
"What?!" Eve gasped, stepping forward. "You just woke up. You aren't in any condition to be moving!"
"Eve's right," Oliver chimed in from the bed, wincing as he tried to sit up further. "I'll go with—"
"No," I cut him off, my voice leaving no room for argument. "My strength right now is more than enough to handle them. And it's been two weeks. There's no telling what kind of chaos and destruction they could cause elsewhere, which could lead back here and put the Earth in even more danger."
Cecil looked between me and Eve, then nodded slowly. "He's right. It's the proper response," he said, turning back to me. "When do you leave?"
"Tomorrow morning, after a little more recovery."
The Next Day, Several Hours Later…
The vacuum of space was as silent and uneventful as I remembered it to be.
Even after moving with ruthless efficiency and hunting the remaining variants down, being in deep space still seemed pretty overrated to me.
You'll either run across the scariest shit you've ever experienced in your life, or nothing happens at all, I mused, flying past some traveling asteroids. A complete and utter coin toss.
I had taken down five of six variants across different places in the galaxy so far.
I tracked the first variant to a deep oceanic trench on a distant, uninhabited water world. I didn't even announce my presence to him. I dragged him down into the darkest depths of the water and snapped his neck before he could even register what happened.
The second and third variants had grouped up and stopped on a barren moon in a neighboring solar system. I dropped from orbit like a meteor, crushing their skulls into the gray dirt before they could even blink.
The fourth and fifth variants were drifting in an asteroid belt, trying to repair a hijacked Coalition shuttle to find a way back to their home dimensions. I flew straight through the shuttle's core, igniting the engine, blowing up the shuttle, and subsequently decapitating both of them as the blast expanded.
Five down. One to go, I thought, picking up my speed.
I followed the coordinates of the sixth and final variant, which led me to the orbit of a desolate, rocky planet on the edge of the sector. As I approached, my eyes locked onto a massive, sleek, unmistakable vessel hovering in orbit: a Viltrumite warship.
I instantly killed my momentum and hid myself in the shadow of a large, floating asteroid. I peered over the jagged rock.
Floating in the vacuum of space, right outside the warship's airlock, were two heavily muscled Viltrumite executioners. Suspended between them, battered, bloody, and screaming silently into the void, was the sixth variant. Visually, he looked exactly like me, and wore a tattered version of the classic blue-and-yellow Invincible suit. However, physically, he was nowhere close to me; the density of his smart atoms was definitely not at my level.
I watched as the two executioners grabbed the variant by his arms and legs and, with a brutal, synchronized pull, literally ripped him in half. The variant's blood boiled instantly in the vacuum.
Through the telepathic communication chip the Maulers installed in my ear some time ago, I used my wrist communicator to expand their frequency just in time to hear them "speak."
"This is the traitor Anissa and Conquest were raving on about?!" one of the executioners scoffed, tossing the severed torso away like garbage. "Pathetic!"
"The Empire will be pleased with the defeat of this weakling," the second executioner sneered. "Now let's return and report his death to General Kregg."
Oh, what an opportunity, I thought, my eyes widening slightly behind my goggles. The Viltrumite Empire didn't know about the multiversal clones. They saw a kid with my exact face and executed him. And now, they were going to report back to Kregg that 'Mark Grayson' was dead.
I smiled—a dark, sinister smile. The ultimate element of surprise for the Viltrumite War had been bestowed upon me like an act of providence.
I discreetly pushed off the asteroid, flying back into the depths of deep space like a ghost, leaving the Empire to bask in their premature victory.
It's time to get those upgrades, I thought, pinging Angstrom's frequency on my wrist communicator. And push into completely unstoppable territory.