I COULD NOT FORESEE THIS THING HAPPENING TO YOU

By Dale Glaser

Dragon Man’s wide clawed feet sank heavily into the treacherous mix of sand and ash covering the ground. As the massive android finished stepping through the swirling, purple-tinged-white of the circular portal suspended in the dust-choked air, the glowing disc closed in upon itself. Dragon Man mutely assumed a position at the rear of the loose cluster of A.R.M.O.R. operatives who comprised Away Team Raido. Raydeen, like Dragon Man, was effectively immune to the risks posed by the elevated temperature and depleted atmosphere of Earth Z-1.1.5.8; the brightly primary colored, samurai-styled exoskeleton sheltered its miniaturized human pilot, Richard Carson, from the blighted environment. But the other members of Away Team Raido – four humans, a Polemachian, and an albino siamang gibbon – wore trapezoidal backpacks with bronze casings connected to enviro-helmets with polarized domes.

Don Remming quickly surveyed the area to which the team had been transported. The dull umber expanse was flat and unbroken for close to a mile on any side, then interrupted by the splintered, jutting remains of ruined and semi-collapsed city buildings. Turning in a slow circle, Remming shook his head within the hard bubble of his helmet. “Kind of messes with me to see Central Park like this,” he admitted. “But I guess that’s true any time your former stomping grounds end up looking like hell.”

“I thought your old wrestling stagename was Jersey Devil, not Manhattan Devil,” Abigail Dunton pointed out. The petite Chinese woman’s forced jocularity betrayed her discomfort with the landscape’s deathly disintegration.

Jillian Marie Woods, the heroine once known as Shadowoman, was far more composed and unaffected. “New Jersey’s just one big mega-suburb of New York,” she countered matter-of-factly.

“She’s right,” Remming confirmed. “It’s tough to get overly attached to Trenton. And Newark would be impossible. New York City, though, that’s a place you get sentimental about …”

“Shall we proceed?” Micah Synn interjected impatiently.

“Yes, surely your dissection of the minutiae of Earth-specific regional allegiances can be continued once we return to the Hollow,” Firat of Polemachius added. Synn and Firat exchanged uneasy glances, unaccustomed to finding themselves in agreement. Though both were members of warrior cultures, the two considered themselves more different than similar. The contrast of Synn’s partially braided locks of black flecked with white and full beard as opposed to Firat’s straight light brown hair and clean-shaven jaw, or Firat’s lean and spare frame compared to Synn’s more thewy mass, better characterized their regard for one another than the fact that both men were tall, long-haired and muscular.

“Right,” Remming agreed. He craned his thick neck to look up into the sand-flecked sky and oriented on the hazy bright spot which was the obscured sun, then consulted the HUD output of his onboard quadrant-analyzer. “Should be this way,” he indicated, leading the team in a vaguely eastern direction.

Gusts of wind threw up billowing sheets of gray and brown particulate, slowing the expedition’s progress, but the eight figures steadily continued on their course even as their footprints and every trace of their passage was instantly obliterated in their wake. The dying Earth seemed not so much hostile to the A.R.M.O.R. team as indifferent and unaware, wracked by death throes so all-consuming that not an iota of mercy could be spared for creatures struggling across its surface. Even when, far in the distance, a great heaving could be heard as another eroded skyscraper collapsed in a shriek of rending steel and concrete, the echoes were quickly smothered by the oppressive sandstorm conditions.

The Raido Team reached their target, a stone edifice which had once framed the gates to the grounds of a mansion. The wrought-iron doorway which had formerly spanned the pillars, however, had long since been torn away, as had the fencing which previously extended from either side of the formal entrance. The pillars themselves were pitted and cracked, and surmounted by the fragmentary remains of a pair of statues, segments of legs and nothing more, one set a faded, scoured red and the other a bleached shade of blue.

“Look upon my works, ye mighty,” Jillian quoted darkly.

“DM, Ray, give me a boost,” Abigail requested.

Dragon Man and Raydeen stepped forward. The Shogun Warrior lifted the young woman easily and settled her on Dragon Man’s massive, tyrian shoulders. The android approached the toothless, silent howl of the empty gateway and rose from his customary hunched crouch to his full height, bringing Abigail more or less level with the statues’ boots. Abigail reached out and laid one hand atop the right foot that had been carved from blue marble.

Before becoming an operative for A.R.M.O.R., Abigail Dunton had worked for Damage Control under the codename Visioneer, using her post-cognitive abilities to read the physical detritus at disaster sites. Now she closed her eyes and allowed the statuary to reveal what it had experienced shortly before the end of the world. In her mind the sculptures began to reassemble. First the figure beneath her palm grew from its stumps, reversing entropy to reveal swashbuckler boots, a torso etched with broad stripes and a chest emblazoned with a carved star, a muscular arm brandishing a round shield, another arm raising a defiant fist in a flared glove, a head held high and sculpted with a winged cowl. Then the other statue – a memorial, Abigail realized amidst her vision – reclaimed its original shape, a man similar to its counterpart down to its impressive physique and its mirrored pose, although the costume was much more streamlined from head to toe, its only apparent decoration the outline of half a maple leaf etched across its marble chest. Both statues deepened to their original colors, one bright red and the other brilliant blue, and then the entirety of the time and place to which those versions of the objects belonged came to life in Abigail’s psychic sight.

“Cap should be here for this,” Hawkeye proclaimed. He was one of ten figures standing ready before the gates of the mansion headquarters of the Northern Avengers, but he spoke to no one in particular. Like the archer, his companions were the only remaining survivors of the confederation of superheroes who had banded together against the tide of bloodshed that had surged out of South America, empowered by the pantheon known as the Ahau. The ten gathered heroes were not simply the battered remnants of that alliance, but constituted a large segment of the only mortal population still living on Earth. An enclave of mutants led by the Externals Gideon and Candra had made their way to the Savage Land, while a powerful faction of sorcerers united by Baron Mordo and Daimon Hellstorm had decamped to the Tibetan Himalayas; those were the only other known pockets of resistance on the globe. Like the Northern Avengers in New York City, the mutants and magic-users were entrenched for their last stands.

“Even without the living legend, we’ll handle this, down to the last one standing,” Wonder Man insisted in response to Hawkeye’s wish. The ionic Avenger’s jade and vermilion sleeveless costume was one of the few uniforms remaining intact among the Northern Avengers, although he had long since lost his trademark sunglasses, and hot scarlet energy leaked from his eyes.

“I’m not saying Cap would’ve swung the battle, or we’re hopeless without him,” Hawkeye clarified. After months of guerilla street fighting before the summons to the mansion, his own garb had been reduced to mostly intact cobalt chainmail with small tatters of purple fabric. “Just that he would’ve wanted it that way.”

“I know,” Sasquatch nodded. He wore no attire other than the bestial form of Tanaraq, but his shaggy orange fur was marred by a deep scar crisscrossing his chest. “Mac would’ve wanted to be here, too.”

“They’re here in spirit, guys,” Justice asserted. His navy and white bodysuit appeared black and gray with acquired grime, with several tears and most of its left leg missing. “Sorry if that sounds like a platitude.”

“It is truer than you know,” Shaman assured him. The Tsuut’ina medicine man’s green and gamboge costume was in a similar state of disrepair as the young telekinetic’s, although Shaman’s leather pouch still appeared remarkably well-maintained.

“No more talk about spirits or anything morbid,” Wasp commanded. Upon her arrival at the mansion she had donned a fresh, if outdated, costume in hues of coral and tangerine. She had also shaved her head completely bald, yet refused to discuss her motivations for doing so. “We’re the ones here, and we have a job to do.”

“Even at googleplex-to-one odds?” Box asked, his crimson and silver armor dented and gashed in testament to countless previous battles.

“Nothing we’ve ever done has been based on our chances of success,” Black Knight insisted, his own attire very similar to Hawkeye’s; his steel armor had survived the rigors of war far better than his black and gold tabard. “Only on what’s right. That’s the only thing that matters.”

“So be it,” Northstar confirmed. The Quebecois speedster had dispensed with his uniform altogether save for a black speedo. The vast majority of the skin on the right side of his body was covered with raw, blistered burns, and he seemed defiantly proud of the visible trauma. “It has been an unexpected honor.”

“Et voila,” Aurora, heedless as yet another seam burst on her leotard and nearly separated the white starburst from its sunlight-colored field, pointed to the south. “They are here.”

The sky changed to molten gold from one horizon to the other in a breathtakingly short span as three gods of the Ahau pantheon soared into view, their divine radiance overwhelming the very vault of heaven itself. Ixchel the moon goddess glided through the air with lithe arms outstretched, silver bracelets shining as luminously as the round metallic symbols of her lunar domain which decorated her throat and waist, attached to her bloodred skirt and halter. Ahpuch the death god cut across the sky like an arrow, his fleshless skull visible within an ornate iron helmet, threadbare ceremonial robes draping his eerily still limbs. Leading the triad of deities was Hunab Ku, the god of the sky and king of the Ahau. Crowned with a golden headdress modeled after a coiled serpent and festooned with bright feathers, Hunab Ku’s divine form was naked except for an elaborate gold and copper necklace and a dazzlingly white linen loincloth.

The Ahau pantheon numbered nine in total, and presumably the remaining six had journeyed as two other trios to Tibet and Antarctica. With the inexorable sense that two years of brutal supernatural warfare were nearing their endpoint, the Northern Avengers watched as Ixchel, Ahpuch and Hunab Ku took up a position hundreds of feet above the deserted surface of Fifth Avenue. Hawkeye readied a shaft against his bowstring as Black Knight unsheathed the Ebony Blade. Shaman flipped open his medicine pouch while Box activated his boot-thrusters and rose upward on their quietly propulsive hum. Aurora and Justice floated off the ground as well, she in a luminous corona and he in a cerise telekinetic aura. Wonder Man rolled his shoulders, Sasquatch flexed his claws, and Northstar balanced himself in a sprinter’s starting brace.

Ahpuch raised a skeletal hand and pointed toward the heroes. In answer to the ominous gesture, the streets of midtown were shattered by monsters erupting out of the very earth. The gigantic creatures walked on four legs like lizards, but their horned skulls were as fleshless as the god who commanded them, while their bodies were armored with skins like cacti, poisonous green covered in deadly spines. Cars exploded under their stampeding taloned feet, and building foundations were pulverized by their lashing tails, bringing down the upper floors of the doomed structures in avalanches of shattered mortar and twisted girders.

Wasp shrank to a few inches of height as her gossamer wings grew from her shoulder blades and lifted her into the air, but through the roaring din of the city’s razing her voice was as piercing as a clarion: “NORTHERN AVENGERS ASSEMBLE!”

Abigail listed dazedly to her right and nearly fell to the ground, but Remming was quick to Dragon Man’s side and caught his teammate. “You all right?” he asked.

“Fine,” Abigail insisted, extricating herself from the cradle of Remming’s burly arms.

“And the weapon we seek?” Firat inquired. “We will find it here?”

“That’s right,” Abigail nodded. “Assuming the sub-basements survived the mansion’s collapse, the temple-buster bomb should still be inside. They kept it a secret hoping they could use it later, and they never got the chance.”

“Why not?” Jillian asked.

“Let’s get in there, get the bomb, and get going,” Abigail advised. “I’ll explain along the way.

Charles Little Sky, director of A.R.M.O.R., regarded the lone visitor to his office with cool but unwavering attention, his face bearing the look of someone not enjoying what he saw but unable to turn away for fear of what might happen in the absence of supervision. The figure occupying the chair opposite the director’s desk was largely yet not entirely unfamiliar to Little Sky, although that particular paradox was nothing new. From the neck down the visitor’s body was an aggregation of strange contradictions: laid out along a quadruped frame which nevertheless sat comfortably in the chair with human ease, the shape of the trunk and musculature of the limbs evoked a great cat yet were scaled to enlarged proportions; the creature enjoyed a free range of liquid, graceful movement, despite being composed of a smooth, lustrous mineral polished to the point where it seemed to glow with amber and burgundy light from within; from the leonine shoulders, two small stylized wings sprouted, physically too small to conceivably allow the creature to become airborne, yet composed entirely of such obviously advanced technology that their limitations were hard to guess.

All of the recognizable features of the visitor were present from the neck up. The entirely human face, gaunt, timeworn, hairless except for the angular slashes of black eyebrows and an even more unruly white goatee, belonged to Chondu the Mystic. “You haven’t even mentioned my latest embodiment,” Chondu noted, gesturing at his sphinx-like anatomy with one chatoyant paw. “I can see you studying it.”

“Then I don’t need to mention it,” Little Sky rejoined. “Do I?”

“But I don’t know what you’re thinking about it,” Chondu went on. “You couldn’t be harder to read if you were actually made of wood and standing outside a cigar shop, if you don’t mind me making an Indian joke. I beg your pardon, a Native American joke, is that would you’d prefer I call it?”

“It’s a bit flamboyant, even for you,” Little Sky replied levelly, refusing to rise to the bait even as Chondu made no effort to hide a pernicious smirk. “Planning on making the look permanent?”

Chondu shrugged, flexing his metallic feathered wings extravagantly. “This form possesses almost as many limitations as advantages,” he sighed.

“Such as?” Little Sky inquired.

Chondu met Little Sky’s eyes and smiled tightly, an expression devoid of anything but exploitative cunning. “And why would I share that information with you?”

“You’re the one who apparently thought this meeting was lacking in chitchat,” Little Sky answered dismissively, returning his attention to his computer monitor. “Feel free to leave the gems and go, I have more than enough work at hand to keep me busy.”

“Now, come come, Charles,” Chondu admonished mockingly as he tilted his head far back and revealed the life-support collar which affixed his head to its current body. Twin panels on the collar slid open, allowing Chondu to dip a single claw into the neck and draw forth a slender pouch from a hidden cavity within the sphinx’s stony chest. Chondu slapped the pouch onto Little Sky’s desk, where its contents clicked and rattled.

“Is that one of that body’s advantages, or drawbacks?” Little Sky asked as he lifted the pouch.

“An excellent question,” Chondu conceded, pointedly refusing to answer it as the collar panels snapped shut.

Little Sky emptied the contents of the pouch onto the palm of his hand. The gems numbered only a dozen, each no larger than an aspirin, all impenetrably black and cold enough to give off steam in the presence of Little Sky’s own bodily warmth.

“Anergy stones are difficult enough to come by that you should find them quite useful to barter with, in almost any dimension,” Chondu boasted. “I came upon these quite by accident.”

Little Sky looked at the mystic skeptically. “Did you?”

Chondu smiled conspiratorially. “Almost by accident, then. They previously belonged to an Ul’lula’n reprobate who …”

“I really don’t want to know,” Little Sky shook his head decisively as he returned the anergy stones to their pouch.

“Charles, Charles, Charles,” Chondu laughed mirthlessly. “I know it can’t be easy for you, maintaining an interdimensional paramilitary force on nothing but charity …”

“A.R.M.O.R. is hardly a paramilitary force,” Little Sky cut in. He held up the pouch. “And this is not charity.”

“Of course not,” Chondu nodded patronizingly. “Frankly I’ve always been a little bit impressed at your unshakable commitment to that idea, that there’s a legitimate above-board exchange going on here. You accept handouts from those who can afford to offer them, and in return you selflessly patrol the borders of the universe itself. Everything that happens on every world and in every subordinate dimension must be settled internally by those with a stake in such matters, and you remain above and beyond such concerns, keeping the external multiverse at bay.”

“Do you think that’s unfair?” Little Sky challenged.

“Unfair, no,” Chondu granted. “Beside the point, perhaps. More to the point is that, if you gathered up every altruist in this reality who could contribute measurably toward your coffers, via independent wealth or access to more … exotic resources,” he looked at the anergy stones’ pouch meaningfully, “you would still not amass a fraction of the resources needed to meet the infinite demands of this self-appointed task.”

“Are you looking for a job in my accounting division, Harvey?”

Chondu scowled at the use of his given name. “Merely noting that you and I both know your stance of neutrality is one calculated to maximize your potential sources of funding. A universe free to proceed towards its own destiny without interference from more predatory parallel realities is all well and good as metaphysical twaddle goes, but in fact it’s merely semantic cover for you to accept coin from those who think you save lives on one day, and jewels from those who would not hesitate to exploit you in seizing power in the next.”

“Your point?”

“I’m sure you have dealt and continue to deal with individuals far less savory than I,” the mystic huffed, with something very close to genuinely hurt feelings creeping into his voice. “And I fail to see why I merit such a large portion of your scorn.”

Little Sky laughed. “You have no idea how unsavory. But maybe what you’ve failed to consider is that I don’t differentiate degrees of bastards.”

“Then perhaps it falls upon me to differentiate myself,” Chondu said. “Allow me to do you a kindness. The anergy stones have already settled our business, so anything else can only be a favor.”

“You want to do me a favor?” Little Sky asked, not bothering to conceal his irritation. “Tell me who sent a stampede of Undying Ones through the Hollow, and tell me why they did it.”

“Undying Ones, you say?” Chondu repeated, twirling a claw in the wispy hairs of his chin. “Such dark savages are no trifling matter. Unfortunately for you, especially here at your balance point between one universe and all others, there is no shortage of powers profound enough to manipulate such a demonic race, if they so chose.”

“Could you do it?”

“Perhaps,” Chondu acknowledged. “Do you suspect me?”

“Not unless you give me reason to,” Little Sky asserted.

“I would sooner not,” Chondu admitted. “Perhaps I will remove all doubt by discovering who was responsible. If I am able to determine as much, you will be the first to know.” With that Chondu rose to leave, almost immediately assuming a four-legged stance. Little Sky stood as well and opened the office door, allowing Chondu to proceed into the antechamber beyond.

In the reception area, the rest of the Headmen awaited their leader. Dr. Jerold Morgan was seated on the couch on the far side of the room, and looked up from the issue of Time Variant Authority Digest he had been perusing; the slack folds of his forehead involuted as his beady eyes flicked away from the pages. Thursday Rubinstein stood beside Director Little Sky’s administrative assistant Prithita, and the Slorg was admiring the woman’s manicure. Rubinstein’s low-cut and flare-collared lavender leotard and maroon kneehigh boots remained in place on her well-proportioned body, while the small cherry red sphere of the organic computer atop her neck had grown a clamping appendage to hold her maroon opera gloves, allowing the scientist to freely display her exquisitely painted fingernails to the delighted Prithita. Against the doorframe leading to the Hollow corridor leaned Dr. Arthur Nagan, who roughly shoved his labcoat-clad gorilla’s back away from the wall and snarled, “Are we done wasting time here?”

“Manners, Arthur, manners,” Chondu advised, with a sideways, longsuffering glance at Little Sky. The mystic’s sphinx form bowed to the A.R.M.O.R. director slightly, then departed. Gorilla Man stomped out immediately after, with Shrunken Bones shuffling along awkwardly behind. Ruby Thursday crossed the reception area casually while pulling on her gloves once again, each step punctuated by an elegant click of her bootheels as she exited.

Little Sky turned to Prithita. “Anything urgent?” he asked in a tone indicating that only the narrowest interpretation of urgency need be applied.

“Just this.” The director’s assistant delicately pinched a sheet of paper with a bend of her serpentine tail and held it out. “The analysts have finished going over the anomalous readings from the Odium. This is the abstract Agent Whitting delivered, and he said to tell you the full report is stored on the network as usual.”

Little Sky took the one-page summary and quickly scanned it. “Do you remember when I first requested this analysis, Prithita?” he asked.

“I think it was about three weeks ago, sir,” she replied.

Little Sky nodded. “A lot has happened since then, which makes the Odium no longer an urgent priority.” Prithita opened her mouth to apologize but was silenced by the director’s upraised hand. “But someone needs to keep an eye on it. Ibrahim isn’t on the clock right now, is he?”

“No, sir, he’s on personal liberty time for another few hours,” Prithita confirmed.

“That’s fine, but the next time he checks in tell him he has a new project to oversee,” Little Sky indicated. “And tell Whitting to direct any updates to Ibrahim as well.” The director turned and re-entered his personal office, closing the door behind him.

The Park occupied the center of the lowermost level of the Hollow, and was accessible by four different corridors equally spaced along its perimeter. Within the windowless and totally self-contained facility of A.R.M.O.R.’s base of operations, the cardinal compass points of north, south, east and west held no meaning, so the four axial corridors were instead named after the four celestial animals of Chinese astronomy: Dragon, Tortoise, Phoenix and Tiger. The Tortoise Corridor’s lower level served as the main hall for the dormitory-style living quarters of the Hollow’s full-time staff, and it was from that corridor that Ibrahim al-Bazzaz, after a quick stop at his room, emerged into the arboretum.

As Ibrahim cut across the grassy surface and headed in a direction midway between the Phoenix and Tiger Corridors, he noted a custodial worker tending to a nearby flowerbed. The kneeling worker wore the white and bronze coveralls of the Hollow’s labor force, but the visible parts of its body were bizarrely alien. In place of a head, a growth resembling a foot-wide blade of grass emerged from the coveralls’ neck, while tendrils studded with thorns extended from the sleeves, all a rich shade of mulberry. Ibrahim noted no unusual energy signatures around the creature and realized it was simply an extraterrestrial botanical lifeform.

Near the exact center of the Park, Ibrahim approached a pair of figures traveling in the opposite direction. Walking on the left was a woman with curly blonde hair in the uniform of an A.R.M.O.R. security officer, but all of Ibrahim’s attention was immediately focused on the man on the right. Ibrahim assumed it was a man, given the proportions of the gleaming chromium armor the figure wore, but the full multi-layered exoskeleton afforded no view of the wearer within. The vambraces and greaves were scalloped, while the smoother upper arms and legs were sculpted to suggest protruding bones. The helm obscured the man’s mouth with vertical grill-slats and covered the eyes with red lenses, and was decorated by two sets of horns, long metal curves running parallel to the ground evoking a bull as well as shorter upright metal points similar to a goat’s; the base of the skull was fringed with steel-gray dreadlocks. In one hand, the armored man carried a long-handled weapon with a jaggedly stylized blade at one end. To Ibrahim’s mutant senses, the blade shed energy as prodigiously as an exploding car battery, yet its output was dwarfed by the sheer power contained within its wielder.

Ibrahim barely heard a word the security officer was saying to the man in armor as he tried to process the raw cosmic forces harnessed by the visitor, as well as the stray traces of myriad disparate dimensions clinging tenaciously to him. Then the duo had passed by Ibrahim on their way, leaving the director’s aide-de-camp slightly off-balance. Ibrahim only came fully back to his immediate environs when his straying feet caused him to nearly stumble into a group of five shortish creatures conversing amongst themselves beside the path. The creatures were humanoid in shape, with thin rod-like limbs and heads fashioned like grooved helmets. Their faces were featureless illuminated amber ovals, their skin was semi-reflective and brass-colored, and the language they spoke was a combination of sounds and tones unlike any Earthly tongue, reminiscent of ringing tuning forks and clicking ratchets. Ibrahim shook his head to clear it and went on.

Finally Ibrahim arrived at his destination, the Park’s garden café. The patio of the café furnished eight wrought-iron tables for its patrons use, although five were unclaimed at the moment. At a table near the patio entrance sat Dr. Helene Althea, forgoing a chair as the equine lower half of her centaur body reclined on the flagstones. She was joined by an enormous being that Ibrahim guessed would stand over nine feet tall, were it not seated, and which was cloaked in a combination of extradimensional and mystical patterns of energy. Its body was a massive conical shape completely covered in long, silken white hair. Three arms grew radially out of the central mass, and four eerily human eyes were asymmetrically arrayed in the middle of the portion facing the table. The monstrosity and Dr. Althea appeared to be having tea, despite the fact that the bizarre lifeform had no visible mouth.

“Hello, Ibrahim,” Dr. Althea smiled in greeting as he stepped onto the patio. Gesturing to her companion, she said, “This is Xhoohx.”

“Hey,” Ibrahim waved.

“Aroo,” the creature replied.

“Would you care to join us?” Dr. Althea asked.

“Oh, uh … no, thanks,” Ibrahim demurred. “I’m actually … I said I’d meet someone else,” he explained, glancing over his shoulder.

Dr. Althea followed his sightline and looked over at five individuals who had pulled two tables together and seated themselves around the figure eight formation. She returned her gaze to Ibrahim and offered him an unmistakable “boys will be boys” expression. “I won’t keep you,” she said.

Ibrahim nodded gratefully and made his way across the patio to the other group, which included Joshua Speer. Several pitchers of what Ibrahim presumed to be beer, notwithstanding that one of them contained a foamy purple liquid, were spread across the two tables, and pint glasses sat in front of each of the figures seated there. Ibrahim stood between two empty chairs and caught Speer’s eye.

“Hey there, Ibrahim, what do you say?” Speer hailed him with a lopsided grin.

Ibrahim ran his thumb over his soulpatch nervously. “I, uh … I wanted to get back to you about that question you asked me earlier. But I don’t think I can answer it.”

“No?” Speer asked.

Ibrahim shook his head. “I narrowed it down to either Nova or She-Hulk, but I just can’t seem to break the tie.”

Speer shook his head as his companions laughed knowingly. “Can’t blame you there,” he allowed. He kicked one of the empty chairs toward Ibrahim. “Take a load off, hoss,” he suggested.

“Thanks,” Ibrahim said as he took the proffered seat.

“Let me introduce you to the guys,” Speer offered. “This is Bobby O’Doyle,” he elbowed the man to his right. Like Speer, O’Doyle appeared to have no unusual energy signatures. He was slightly taller than Speer, with graying brown hair and a thin moustache and goatee, and shook Ibrahim’s hand in a heavy, calloused grip. “And this is Yaphet Nyokong,” Speer indicated the man to O’Doyle’s right.

“We’ve met,” Ibrahim said with a nod to the black security officer in iridescent green sunglasses, still all but crackling audibly with ionic impulses. Agent Nyokong saluted Ibrahim by lifting a glass of beer in his direction.

“Right, then,” Speer went on. “This waste of space is Jack Getty.” The man on Speer’s left waved noncommittally with a hand holding a lit cigarette, then promptly returned it to the corner of his mouth. Like Speer, Getty wore glasses, although his were thicker-framed, much as his body was heavier-set. Dark brown hair flopped across his pale forehead, and he had a tattoo on the upper part of his right arm: the letters TCB with a lightning bolt pictogram under the C. “And, of course, Stefan Scorpulus,” Speer concluded.

“Just Stefan,” the figure to Getty’s left insisted. The final member of the group was not, and by Ibrahim’s measure had never been, human. Ibrahim was able to recognize the bioaura indicators of extensive genetic manipulation, as well as the differences between animals and the homo sapiens and homo superior species. Stefan was a man-sized scorpion, his carapace a stippled shade of lapis lazuli, offering a ponderous claw to Ibrahim. “Welcome,” Stefan said. “Would you like a drink?”

Ibrahim, a Pakistani-American just shy of nineteen years old, reflexively asked, “Is that legal?”

The question brought a fresh round of laughter from all sides of the tables. “Depends on the jurisdiction, doesn’t it?” Getty asked wryly, before taking another long drag on his cigarette. “So the deeper question is,” he gestured extravagantly at the Hollow’s dome high overhead, “where exactly do you suppose we are?”

Ibrahim realized he had no idea.

A.R.M.O.R.’s away team Raido traversed the lifeless ash of the former Central Park once again, this time with additional cargo carried in front by Dragon Man and from behind by Raydeen. The temple-buster bomb consisted of a thermobaric detonation matrix encased in an articulated magnalium cylinder and weighed two tons, but the alchemically animated android and the robotic triumph of the Luminan race handled its hyper-dense mass easily.

“So these Mayan gods,” Richard Carson said through Raydeen’s speakers, “just basically flipped out and set off on a rampage of planetary genocide.”

“As far as I can tell, that’s the deal,” Abigail Dunton confirmed.

“And the Northern Avengers had this weapon, which might have been able to vaporize the temples that anchored the gods to the physical world,” he went on, “but … they never used it?”

“Right,” Abigail nodded. “They didn’t have time. They barely finished this prototype as it was. It started as a collaborative effort among the resistance groups. Some of the mutants like Forge and Saul and Takashi Matsuya brainstormed the technological aspects, and occult experts like Dakimh the Enchanter and Necrodamus and Zaladane weighed in on the god-weakening aspects. The actual construction took place in Avengers Mansion because they had a lab and materials that the Savage Land and the Himalayan monastery didn’t. Then satellite communication was disrupted and Madison Jeffries and Dane Whitman did what they could to finish the bomb. Then the Ahau attacked.”

“But ultimately the Ahau gods didn’t find the bomb, either,” Carson pointed out. “It was still right where it was before that battle, waiting for us to collect it.”

“True enough,” Jillian Marie Woods agreed. “So?”

“So if the bomb was a non-factor, and the gods won the war, shouldn’t this place be a jungle paradise or something?” Carson wondered.

“Maybe it was, for a little while,” Remming suggested. “The Ahau weren’t just insane, they were suicidal. Wiping out humanity meant wiping out their only source of worshippers, so the Ahau died off, too. Or, who knows, left for a different planet or different dimension to start over. But when they were gone, then whatever image they remade the world in collapsed.”

“Things fall apart,” Jillian added.

“Mow would never allow such a thing to happen,” Micah Synn proclaimed, reverently invoking the god of his Kinjorge tribe.

“Mow did allow it to happen,” Remming pointed out sadly. “The Ahau took out all the other pantheons, the Olympians, the Asgardians … they could have snuffed Mow before breakfast.”

“Perhaps in this universe Mow was excluded from creation,” Synn deflected. “It would explain much.”

“But guys, listen,” Carson pressed. “This planet isn’t neglected, like the Ahau died off or otherwise abandoned it. It’s way worse than that. This isn’t something that just happened on its own, it’s more directed. It’s like it was … cauterized.”

“By whom?” Firat demanded.

“Exactly,” Carson agreed. “A whole pantheon of power-mad gods rises up on a Class 1 Earth and wipes out humanity, and then disappears? The evidence of a scorched earth campaign is all around us, and if that’s what took out the Ahau …”

Carson was interrupted by a shriek from Stanislav the siamang. The members of the away team looked to the albino ape, then followed the direction of the animal’s wildly gesticulating arm upwards. In the granulated swirls of the dun sky, a dark winged shape was spiraling downward, growing larger as it descended. It landed moments later in a rush of wind that sent eddies of the devastated earth whirling in all directions.

The entity stood twenty feet tall, a looming ogre with skin the lurid orange-red color of corroded iron, and its leathery wings of crimson and black spanned over forty feet. Its head was a mound of flesh rising up from its chest, the base of which extended from one shoulder to another, its face consisting solely of two white-hot slashes of eyes and a snarling black maw beneath them. It contained other faces, however; the outlines of numerous small sets of eyes, noses and mouths were visible, embedded just beneath the dermis, all over the entity. Some were larger and more distinct: the monstrous batlike visage of Camazotz, god of darkness, strained against the skin of the entity’s barrel chest; the wizened countenance of Kulkulkan, god of the wind, jutted from the entity’s left hip; and the crowned head of Hunab Ku, god of the sky and king of the Ahau, screamed furiously within the entity’s upper right arm.

“I wondered when another pantheon might attempt to take root on this earthly plane,” the entity’s abyssal voice boomed at the A.R.M.O.R. operatives. “But this world has been purged of godheads, and thus will it remain, so swears the Demogorge!”

“He … thinks we’re … gods?” Abigail stammered.

“I don’t think that’s a misunderstanding we need to sort out right now,” Remming suggested, as his helmet’s HUD flashed. A few yards away, the iris of an interdimensional disc opened perpendicular to the blasted ground. “Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

Before any of the team could approach the portal, the Demogorge lunged toward it and plunged a hand into its pulsating aperture. The dimension-bridging energies were instantly siphoned into the Demogorge’s body, and the portal blinked out of existence.

“Plan B?” Jillian asked.

TO BE CONTINUED…