While the heavily armed Earthlings stood in a tense, confused semicircle, the Guardians of the Galaxy retreated to the base of their ship's loading ramp to hold a hushed, frantic huddle.
Peter Quill crossed his arms over his leather jacket, shooting a deeply skeptical glare over his shoulder at the teenager in the spider suit. "I'm just saying, I don't trust the kid," Quill whispered loudly. "Look at him. He's wearing a skin-tight, full-body spandex onesie. Normal people don't dress like that. He's obviously a total freak."
"Do not judge a book by its cover, Quill," Adam Warlock countered. The golden-skinned being floated an inch off the metal ramp, his posture perfectly rigid. "I have looked upon the young man. He possesses an incomparably pure and noble soul. It surpasses the moral baseline of nearly everyone on this vessel. He is trustworthy."
"Wow, great. We found a Boy Scout," Rocket muttered. The raccoon aggressively racked the bolt of his oversized plasma rifle, completely uninterested in the moral debate. "You think we can fleece him for anything good? Maybe lift that experimental energy gun off the military guy and pawn it in the next sector?"
Strictly speaking, Rocket hadn't even agreed to take this job. Investigating Michael Korvac was a suicide run. The Guardians had personally watched the cosmic entity completely disintegrate a Kree colony world. Even the Nova Corps armada couldn't put a dent in a monster like that. A ragtag crew of mercenaries didn't stand a chance.
"This planet is currently under threat of total annihilation," Drax stated, his deep voice cutting through the bickering. "We should at least inform the locals that they are about to die."
Gamora rubbed her temples, her green skin slick with the humid jungle heat. She looked at the scarred warrior. "And then what, Drax?"
"And then we leave, because we cannot kill that monster," Drax answered smoothly, as if this were the most obvious military strategy in the universe.
While the aliens debated the ethics of abandoning Earth to a cosmic horror, Peter Parker was holding his own impromptu war council.
The Puerto Rican sun was beating down on the tarmac, and the black symbiote suit was absorbing every ounce of the heat. Peter ask Venom to change his suit to the red and blue version to at least redirect the sun heat.
He turned to Major Carol Danvers and Dr. Michael Rossi.
"Look, I'm not exactly up to date on my standard intergalactic diplomatic protocols," Peter said, gesturing vaguely toward the arguing aliens. "But since an unregistered spacecraft just parked on a classified U.S. military installation, shouldn't you guys be handling first contact?"
Carol Danvers was currently just an ordinary human Air Force officer. The explosive, reality-bending events that would eventually turn her into Captain Marvel hadn't occurred yet in this timeline. The Skrull refugee crisis hadn't reached Earth.
But Peter wasn't really focused on Carol. His eyes kept drifting to Dr. Michael Rossi.
Every time Peter stepped within three feet of the Chief Scientist, his Spider-Sense emitted a low, localized static buzz at the base of his skull. It wasn't a blaring alarm of immediate danger, but a quiet, persistent warning. The man wasn't what he seemed.
Peter's mind raced through his comic book knowledge. If the Kree Empire is active, and Project Pegasus is attempting to build faster-than-light engines... Rossi has to be Mar-Vell. The original Kree spy sent to infiltrate Earth and sabotage their aerospace programs. Peter kept his expression perfectly neutral, filing the revelation away for later. He couldn't blow the Kree scientist's cover right now. They had bigger problems.
Carol shifted her weight, exchanging a deeply uncomfortable look with Rossi. "Spider-Man, the military doesn't have a manual for receiving extraterrestrial dignitaries. We've never actually seen aliens before. Hell, officially, we weren't even sure they existed until Thor landed in New Mexico."
Peter raised an eyebrow. "Really? Major, the massive alien symbiote invasion that tore through Manhattan last week was caused by extraterrestrial biological assets the U.S. military was quietly keeping."
Carol's jaw dropped slightly. She stared at Spider-Man, completely blindsided. She had heard the conspiracy theories buzzing around, but hearing an Avenger casually confirm that the military had caused the New York event was entirely different.
Rossi, however, didn't look surprised in the slightest. He offered Carol a cynical, thin-lipped smile. "Did you really think the United States Military were the absolute pinnacle of righteous benevolence, Major?"
Before Carol could snap back, the Guardians apparently reached a consensus. Quill and Adam Warlock detached from the group and walked over to the Earthlings.
As they approached, Peter's eyes locked onto the center of Adam Warlock's forehead. A brilliant, golden-orange gemstone rested perfectly flush against the alien's skin, practically humming with latent, terrifying cosmic power.
Peter held up a hand, pointing directly at Adam's face. "Hold on a second. Is that... an Infinity Stone?"
Quill stumbled mid-step. He let out a nervous, awkward chuckle. "Oh. Cool. Yeah, you know about those." He paused, his brain catching up to the situation. His eyes went wide. "Wait, how the hell do you know about those?!"
"Which one is it?" Peter pressed, ignoring the question. He stepped closer, squinting at the gem. "The Soul Stone?"
A cold knot formed in Peter's stomach. If the Soul Stone was currently embedded in a golden alien's skull, the timeline was fracturing faster than he thought. Strange no longer had the Time Stone. If the cosmic singularities were suddenly shifting around the board, the universe was incredibly vulnerable.
Adam Warlock's serene expression faltered. He looked genuinely astonished. "You are aware of the Infinity Stones? But... how? Earth is a primitive world."
"They have a habit of showing up here," Peter said dryly. "During World War II, a Nazi splinter group dug up the Tesseract, which housed the Space Stone. Earlier this year, an Asgardian prince brought an alien armada to New York carrying a scepter powered by the Mind Stone. We stopped the invasion. Asgard took the Space Stone back to the vault, but the Mind Stone is still down here."
Quill and Adam stared at him in complete, stunned silence. To the rest of the galaxy, the Infinity Stones were mythical, apocalyptic legends. On Earth, they were apparently just passing through customs on a regular basis.
Adam slowly nodded, recovering his composure. "I see. Then you require no further explanation regarding the stakes of our universe."
The gemstone on Adam's forehead suddenly flared with a blinding, liquid-gold light.
Peter didn't have time to react. The tarmac, the jungle, and the blazing sun instantly dissolved. A wave of psychic energy washed over the group, pulling Peter, Cindy, Carol, and Rossi into a shared, telepathic projection.
Sensory details flooded Peter's mind. He felt weightless, suspended in a cool, dark void that felt exactly like floating inside a massive aquarium. Beyond an invisible barrier of glass, a three-dimensional, hyper-realistic memory began to play out.
It was the origin of the Guardians.
Peter watched a holographic Quill steal the Soul Stone from a high-tech vault. He watched the Sovereign—a race of genetically perfect, gold-skinned elitists—use the Stone's cosmic energy to artificially birth Adam Warlock from a birthing pod. But the Soul Stone granted Adam absolute empathy. He immediately saw the toxic, arrogant nature of his creators' souls. Disgusted, Adam broke Quill out of a holding cell, triggering a chaotic, laser-filled prison break that eventually roped in the rest of the crew.
It was a slightly remixed origin story, but the core beats remained. A group of heavily armed, wildly unstable screw-ups banded together, accidentally saved a sector of space, and formed a mercenary team.
The golden void shifted abruptly. The architecture changed from the pristine gold of the Sovereign to the harsh, brutalist black metal of the Kree Empire.
"We recently received a commission from the Kree High Command," Adam's voice echoed from everywhere at once within the illusion. "Ronan the Accuser hired us to investigate a series of catastrophic planetary sabotage events. The Kree military is entirely occupied by their border war with the Skrull Empire, leaving their outer colonies undefended."
In the real world, Peter kept a portion of his focus anchored. He watched Rossi's physical body. At the mention of the "Kree Empire," a micro-expression of absolute tension flickered across the scientist's face. His jaw locked.
Gotcha, Peter thought.
"We tracked the source of the destruction," Adam continued, the illusion shifting again to show a cracked, burning planet torn down to its mantle. "We expected an armada. A celestial weapon. We did not expect a single, solitary being."
The golden projection zoomed in on the epicenter of the shattered world.
Standing amidst the apocalyptic ash and floating debris was a man. He wasn't wearing armor. He possessed no visible weapons. He was just an impossibly thin, haggard-looking human, his eyes glowing with a terrifying, vacant light.
"The entity destroying the galaxy," Adam's voice whispered heavily, "is an Earthling."