Proxima Midnight
The rudimentary city of stone and glass flies by beneath them as their Q-ship slips through the sky like one of the hawkress birds of planet Gamesh, invincible in its camouflage and sleek in its movement.
Proxima looked away from the viewing glass and the primitives below and focused on the radar on her screen. The device was a carefully crafted one, a high-frequency locator that was keyed to a single energy frequency. The frequency of an Infinity Stone.
In the vastness of space, the device was useless, which was the main reason it had taken her lord and master so long to find the stones. No matter how powerful the technology, searching for it via the machine was a waste of time, for there were as many stars in the galaxy as there were sands on this planet.
However, it was not completely useless. What it sacrificed for range, it made up for accuracy. On a planet as small as this primitive dirtball, its range was wide enough to encompass every landmass, every putrid ocean, and every twisted landscape to find the stones. That was how they found the first, hanging off the sorcerer’s neck, and that is how they were tracking the second.
Ping.
The device made a sound that brought a smile to her icy features. They had lost their target a few minutes before, but its loss was only temporary. It did not take them long to recalibrate the sensors and to find the missing android, and once more, they had. This time, their artificial prey had been kind enough to finally put a stop to its strange, irregular movement of hopping around and had found a place to bunker down.
A place it thought itself safe. Proxima Midnight smiled, and her smile was not a nice one. She glanced back at where her mate remained, working on something to give them an edge. She doubted they would need it against the pale giant back on Asgard; she might have, but her prey this time were much cruder creatures than Asgardians. Against such barbaric creatures, they would go through them like a threshbird in an enclosure, and yet Proxima had not stopped her mate from his tinkering.
There was no need to. If it worked as he hoped, they would be off the planet faster, with their prizes in hand. If it did not? Well, it was not like they explicitly needed it in the first place, for in the end, what defense could they put up against the coming tide, against the Black Order and the children of Thanos themselves?
She repositioned the ship and sent it blasting in the new direction the stone signature told them its bearer had come to. They would be there soon; the planet was small enough that this New York was only a hop away.
x
“I need to leave,” Stark said, but his attention was no longer on us. He was looking outside, his features twisted into a frown at some knowledge hidden from the rest of us, or perhaps from Wong, because I understood his sudden worry.
Two of the Infinity Stones were here on Earth: the Time Stone with Strange, and the Mind Stone with Vision. I caressed the head of my hammer, still resting on my hips as I thought, a hum escaping my lips.
Things had changed. The timeline had been twisted into something I barely recognized. I knew the actors, yet their roles had been changed if I was getting this right. My coming to New York had not solely been to help Tony or to find Strange, but to crush the two most powerful members of the Black Order before they could kidnap Strange.
That plan had surprisingly gone off the rails. Instead of Strange meeting me here, according to Wong, he was away investigating the strange phenomenon that was the Merge, and his distance away from the Sanctum was not something that had occurred originally, which made me wonder just how accurate my knowledge of the plot still was in the wider scheme of things.
“Do you hear me, Ginger? If aliens are truly coming for the stones, then Vision was correct, and that is not a sentence I ever thought I would make before today,” Stark called my attention back to the present, his signature humor slipping in despite the hardness of his features.
“Go, protect your friend,” I said with a nod, turning to face Wong. “ I shall follow alongside the sorcerer and find Strange, then return to you.”
Tony stood in place, a complicated emotion on his face. His loyalty to his team, even fractured as it was after the Civil War that had occurred amongst them, or his agreement with me. I stood at ease and watched him until he came to a decision. With a last and single decisive nod at me, his faceplate slipped down and locked into place, and then he was off, shooting out of the hole I had made in the previously pristine structure, and rocketing away.
The force of his blast-off shook the entire building and sent anything not nailed down via magical means scattering. When things settled, I turned to Wong, who had created a shield to protect himself.
“Where is he?”
“I was the one to open his last portal. Come with me,” he said.
He turned from me, magic coming to life around him as his sling ring activated. Circular movements with his arms created the familiar glowing portal that the sorcerers were popular for, and the moment it formed, my electric blue eyes immediately picked up on it.
Blood.
I stepped past Wong, shouldering him away to step through the portal first, with only the shirt on my back, the jeans on my hips, the boots on my feet, the hammer on my hip, and the bird on my shoulder for company.
The moment I crossed the boundary formed by the golden portal, it felt like I stepped through a bubble. Gone was the background noise of honking cars, pedestrian traffic, and random calls from different people. All of a sudden, I was greeted with silence. The silence of the countryside, broken only by the chittering of random birds. It was an all too familiar silence, and I would have basked in it if not for the blood that littered the ground.
Electric blue eyes scanned around, but whatever battle had happened here was over. There was no enemy here for my pet sorcerer and mobile transport to die to from a stray attack.
I moved, removing my bulk from the portal and allowing the other man through. He did not gasp at the copious amount of blood, but he frowned hard enough to wrinkle his pudgy cheeks. He knelt down and took a pinch of the blood coated with sand, and with the flex of his wrist, a gold energy band filled with magical letters and runes came to life, scanning the blood. Whatever result it gave him before turning off was enough to make his frown tighten.
“It is Strange. It is his blood.”
I looked around at the scene, my martial-focused mind coming to life as I tried to analyze it. The first blood streak was straight up, an eruption instead of a sideways splash.
“He was ambushed, with a stab from behind him.”
I turned to the smaller blood splashes. They were confusing, too small to tell with any confidence. My feet carried me forward, spotting the small but visible blood stains that trailed away.
“He managed to get away from the ambush, but he was already bleeding. He could not have gone very far.” I turned to the distance, my hand once more caressing Mjolnir’s runed head in preparation.
“Why did he not return then?” Wong asked, confusion and worry fighting for a place across his features.
I turned back to the smaller splashes of blood in realization. “They struck his hands, maybe his fingers. He must have lost his sling ring there.” Then I turned back to Wong. “Come. I am no hunter, but I can follow a blood trail well enough.”
Wong shook his head. “There is no need.” Then he turned to the golden bird that had followed behind him, and with an all too human nod at Wong, it exploded with a brief flare of magic, turning into golden dust that rearranged itself, forming a 3D map of our environment with a blinking dot somewhere in the distance. “I know where we should go.”
The formation of the second portal was almost routine, and once more I stepped through before Wong could. But just like the first location, there was no sign of Strange, only a bloody smear from the rocky outcrop where he must have rested his back, waiting for his pursuers to catch up to him.
Strange was gone.
His body was not here, so he should be alive. Likely using the same gamble he used against Ebony Maw, which should buy him some time at least.
I refocused. Looking at the two scenes, I was forced to contemplate just how much things had changed. Even with only a single glance, I could tell that this was not the work of Obsidian Cull, too much finesse and not enough collateral damage. Neither was it Ebony Maw, nor was there enough display of telekinesis either. This was the work of the other two, Proxima and Corvus. But they should have no business with Strange. Instead, they should be hunting for... Vision.
Blue eyes narrowed in realization. I didn't know where they were now, but i knew where they were going to be. I turned to Wong. “A portal to New York. Now!” I let out a grunt.
“What about Strange?”
“He is alive, but we have to go now.”
Wong’s portal opened, and I stepped through before it even finished forming. Mjolnir was already in my meaty grip.
The Sanctum’s broken window framed the city beyond it, and I did not need to look very hard to see the first sign of trouble and the confirmation of my suspicions. The smoke was visible from here, a dark column rising from somewhere in the middle distance, a tower of smog that rose like a mountain to kiss the sky.
I tuned out the panicked murmurs from the civilians at the street level. They were too far away to be panicked, but close enough to worry that whatever was happening could get to them. My eyes tracked it, calculated the distance, and then I moved, hurling myself out of the broken window before Wong could even step out of the portal.
The air hit me the moment I cleared the building. I was rusty. The last time I had truly taken to the skies, it was to battle Ragnarok. I could hardly call the maneuvering I did mid-air against Icarus flight. But it did not matter. Unlike the Thor that this world was familiar with, I did not fly simply because of a magical hammer. I flew because the sky was my territory and Mjolnir an amplifier. With a flex of my will, I shot off, Mjolnir pointed ahead of me, the wind coming alive against my face, blowing back red locks in a way that Tony’s jet had deprived me.
The first few seconds were awkward, the rhythm slightly off, my control not as smooth. It lasted for all of five seconds before everything came back, the instinctive corrections made, and the city blurred beneath me as I followed the smoke. The column grew larger and more specific as I closed the distance, and then I was above it, a wide compound with multiple buildings.
Stark's compound. Yet even with my Asgardian eyes, the smog was too deep, so I let go of my control, thanking the skies for carrying me and relinquishing my grip.
Then I dropped, pulling Mjolnir back and letting gravity and my own weight do the rest.
I hit the ground hard enough to crater it, yet the force of my fall was enough to send a sound wave that cleared the dust and the smoke.
I looked around in the split second where shock and surprise reigned.
A red-haired woman was on the ground, her left arm twisted to the side, and the red jacket told me it was Wanda Maximoff, even if her face was covered with enough blood to hide her features. I could not tell if she was dead. I did not have the time to. Vision was between her and where I stood, and he was crawling his way to her. His fingers dragging across the broken pavement, the jagged gash on his lower back told me his spine had been severed. Corvus Glaive’s work.
Proxima was dead.
She was on her back some distance from Wanda, and the wound that had ended her was a gaping absence. A still steaming hole had found its way through her midsection, a midsection that still glowed faintly at the edges. It was the kind of cauterization that came from something boring through at extreme heat. Her face was twisted into one of surprise. I doubt she had even felt the pain. Her death had been fast, shock holding off the pain till death took her. Tony’s work, almost certainly. The repulsor blast at full output.
I turned right, and Tony was on the ground. He was fighting for his life, but I could tell he had already lost before I got here.
Corvus stood over him, and the glaive was buried in Tony’s chest; the nanotech armor parted around it with disgusting ease. The miniature arc reactor that Tony had put back into his chest glowed dull, losing power with every microsecond that passed. The glaive had penetrated it.
Time resumed, and Corvus turned.
The expression on his face slowed me for a half second.
It was not rage, for I had seen rage, both in the mirror and on the other side while looking at Kratos. I knew anger. I knew rage. What I did not know was the emotion on the alien face, and it took me that half second to know it, to understand it.
It was anguish.
Corvus and Proxima had been partners in more ways than one, and Tony had killed her.
I knew it. Now I understood it.
Corvus did not hesitate. He did not spend the half-second I did to try to know or understand. Instead, he saw a man where there had been none, a figure standing whole where his wife was broken, a figure who did not share in his agony and anguish, and he disagreed and tried to rectify that.
He pulled the glaive from Tony’s chest, and I saw a flash of green. It was a faint thing, a hue around the glaive’s head that my eyes registered just as I raised Mjolnir, confident in being faster regardless of the anguish and agony that fueled him. And yet I looked down at the length of alien metal that had embedded itself in me.
I had not even seen him throw it. Yet there it was, a piece of sharpened Uru metal through my gut, and in response to the first mortal injury I had received since I came to this new Earth, to this new world? I laughed, a full bellow that shook what remained of Stark compound. Here I thought all I would have to do was swing my hammer, and this problem would be over in a second.
I smiled through bloodstained teeth. I was happy to be proven wrong.