Captain Marvel: Shadow Code E-Book

Gilly Segal

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 416

Beschreibung

Marvel's most powerful super hero, Captain Marvel, must battle an old enemy in this brand-new original novel with help from her friends Tony Stark, Spectrum, Hazmat and Spider-Woman! CAPTAIN MARVEL IS ASKED FOR A SIMPLE FAVOR, BUT SHE SOON MEETS AN ADVERSARY WITH UNPARALLELED POWER. Tony Stark wants Carol to keep an eye on brilliant grad student Mara Melamed, who is struggling to find her feet at Empire State University. Although reluctant at first, Carol meets Mara and is soon impressed by the young woman. But trouble quickly finds Captain Marvel in the form of a controversial operating system from DigiTech—whose mysterious CEO only appears as a hologram. To make matters worse, one of Carol's closest friends has been framed for murder. And Mara Melamed is at the tangled center of it all. Carol is driven to her darkest edge as she questions her identity and sense of belonging in the world. With her allies at her side, Carol must face her self-doubt and protect the world from impending doom.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

Acknowledgments

About the Author

A NOVEL OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE

SHADOW CODE

NOVELS OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE BY TITAN BOOKS

Ant-Man: Natural Enemy by Jason Starr

Avengers: Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Dan Abnett

Avengers: Infinity by James A. Moore

Black Panther: Panther’s Rage by Sheree Renée Thomas

Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda by Jesse J. Holland

Black Panther: Who is the Black Panther? by Jesse J. Holland

Captain America: Dark Designs by Stefan Petrucha

Captain Marvel: Liberation Run by Tess Sharpe

Civil War by Stuart Moore

Deadpool: Paws by Stefan Petrucha

Morbius: The Living Vampire – Blood Ties by Brendan Deneen

Spider-Man: Forever Young by Stefan Petrucha

Spider-Man: Kraven’s Last Hunt by Neil Kleid

Spider-Man: The Darkest Hours Omnibus by Jim Butcher, Keith R.A. DeCandido, and Christopher L. Bennett

Spider-Man: The Venom Factor Omnibus by Diane Duane

Thanos: Death Sentence by Stuart Moore

Venom: Lethal Protector by James R. Tuck

Wolverine: Weapon X Omnibus by Marc Cerasini, David Alan Mack and Hugh Matthews

X-Men: Days of Future Past by Alex Irvine

X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga by Stuart Moore

X-Men: The Mutant Empire Omnibus by Christopher Golden

X-Men & The Avengers: The Gamma Quest Omnibus by Greg Cox

ALSO FROM TITAN AND TITAN BOOKS

Marvel Contest of Champions: The Art of the Battlerealm by Paul Davies

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy: No Guts, No Glory by M.K. England

Marvel’s Midnight Suns: Infernal Rising by S.D. Perry

Marvel’s Spider-Man: The Art of the Game by Paul Davies

Obsessed with Marvel by Peter Sanderson and Marc Sumerak

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse – The Art of the Movie by Ramin Zahed

Spider-Man: Hostile Takeover by David Liss

Spider-Man: Miles Morales – Wings of Fury by Brittney Morris

The Art of Iron Man (10th Anniversary Edition) by John Rhett Thomas

The Marvel Vault by Matthew K. Manning, Peter Sanderson, and Roy Thomas

Ant-Man and the Wasp: The Official Movie Special

Avengers: Endgame – The Official Movie Special

Avengers: Infinity War – The Official Movie Special

Black Panther: The Official Movie Companion

Black Panther: The Official Movie Special

Captain Marvel: The Official Movie Special

Marvel Studios: The First 10 Years

Marvel’s Avengers – Script to Page

Marvel’s Black Panther – Script to Page

Marvel’s Black Widow: The Official Movie Special

Marvel’s Spider-Man – Script to Page

Spider-Man: Far From Home: The Official Movie Special

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse: Movie Special

Thor: Ragnarok The Official Movie Special

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CAPTAIN MARVEL: SHADOW CODE

Print edition ISBN: 9781803361802

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803361819

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First hardback edition: May 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

FOR MARVEL PUBLISHING

Jeff Youngquist, VP Production and Special Projects

Sarah Singer, Editor, Special Projects

Jeremy West, Manager, Licensed Publishing

Sven Larsen, VP, Licensed Publishing

David Gabriel, SVP of Sales & Marketing, Publishing

C.B. Cebulski, Editor in Chief

© 2023 MARVEL

Special thanks to Sarah Brunstad.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For my crew who, like Carol’s, always answers the call.

G.S.

1

WHEN SHE was training to become a pilot, Carol Danvers would have said nothing compared to the feel of commanding a fighter jet as it hurtled across a cobalt sky. Back then, she had no idea of all the ways her life would change. She never imagined she’d know the exhilaration of rocketing through an endless darkness punctuated by the glimmer of stars that were now within reach. Carol was no poet, but the possibilities of an infinite universe at her fingertips made her wax lyrical. With the push of a button, she could send this spacecraft to chase the farthest pinpricks of light. In fact, she had reached many of those distant planets, had landed there and explored. That pleased the deepest part of her soul that was never satisfied being anchored by gravity.

The alien part of her soul?

Carol wondered if all Kree wanted to fly farther than the instruments could measure. Maybe she inherited the need to take flight from her mother, along with her blond hair and the angle of her jaw.

The bedrock upon which Carol had built her life shifted when she learned her true heritage not long ago. She was half-alien, born to a Kree mother and a human father. The Psyche-Magnitron had not bestowed her powers, as she always thought; it had awakened them. Not only did she have an alien mother who’d been a powerful and important member of Kree society, she had a fully alien half-sister. The revelations made her see her family, her experiences as Captain Marvel, even herself, differently, like she was at the eye doctor, being asked which lens made things clearer and which made them more blurry. Metaphorically, of course. Carol’s more than 20/20 vision was definitely inherited from her mom, Mari-Ell, Captain First of the Supreme Protectorate, Champion of the Kree Empire, Daughter of Hala by Bloodright and Starlight.

What a mouthful.

Most days, Carol could tell you what she knew to be true about herself. But she couldn’t say how she felt about any of it. Growing up, telling Carol no had had the effect of activating hyper-mode. She’d work harder than anyone else, longer than anyone else, work herself into the ground, even when the world told her she’d never be able to do it. Especially then. She’d attained every goal she set for herself, realized every dream. Everything she’d fought to accomplish—pilot, astronaut, super hero, Avenger, Alpha Flight leader—she’d attributed those achievements to her grit, her determination. And maybe her stubbornness.

Now she had to reckon with the fact that there had been other factors at play. She’d tried to dissect which of her traits came from being human and which were Kree. It made her head spin. No matter how long she pondered, she could never answer the question that plagued her. Did being an alien make those accomplishments more worthy—or less?

She’d spent so long coming to grips with having alien powers that working through what it meant to actually be an alien felt like diving into a vortex.

Been there, she thought. Hard pass on doing it again.

The crackle of the ship’s comms drew Carol out of her thoughts. Fortunately, flight demanded her full attention. She’d have to navel gaze some other time—likenever—or else risk piloting her borrowed spacecraft into a star. The Peregrine was a first-of-its-kind decasonic microcraft, designed to fly small crews to remote planets at outrageous speeds. In theory, anyway. The designers were still figuring out how far it could reliably go without losing thrust and overheating. Hence, working with Carol for flight tests, since no other qualified pilot could bail out in deep space and find her own way home. She’d only been at the command of the Peregrine a few times, but it was fun. The cabin was sleek and streamlined, a tad claustrophobic, if she was honest, but the ship’s movement was not unlike how it felt propelling her body through space—lithe, maneuverable, and fast. She wasn’t about to let a bunch of feelings prevent her from enjoying this ride.

“Earth to Danvers,” a familiar voice called through the comms. “Literally and figuratively. Danvers, do you read?”

Tony Stark would find a way to pester her, even here. She considered ignoring the call, but since that tactic never made him go away, she flicked the lever. “I read you, Tony. What do you want?”

“Is that any way to greet your long lost best friend?”

“I saw you last week.” Carol already regretted opening the comms channel. “And don’t let Jess hear you call yourself that.”

“You think I can’t take Spider-Woman in a fight?” Tony’s mock-wounded tone sounded almost convincing.

“I think we’re not going to invoke trouble with hypotheticals.”

“Did you know that at some fan cons, they have ‘versus’ sessions where they debate the merits of super hero skills to decide who’d win a one-on-one? I have it on good authority that Iron Man is always a moneyline bet.”

Carol rolled her eyes. No doubt “good authority” really meant firsthand knowledge. “Tony, do we have to have the talk about cos-playing as yourself again?”

“There’s no evidence of that that anyone can find,” he said. “Anyway, Danvers, I need a favor. Where are you?”

“Off planet.” Carol checked her gauges. She was just a couple of hours from being on-planet again—on Throneworld II.

“I know that. Couldn’t geolocate you through your phone. That only happens when you’re in outer space.”

“What did we say about tracking our friends’ devices without permission?”

“Only do it for ethical reasons, like determining whether you need to rescind the APB you put out on a missing friend?”

“Tony, no. You didn’t.” The resulting silence stretched uncomfortably through the time and space between Carol’s speeding craft and Tony back on Earth. She groaned. “Who’d you call?”

“Jess. And maybe Monica.”

Monica Rambeau, A.K.A. Spectrum, wouldn’t get as high-stress as Jess, but she’d check in at least twice.

“Also, possibly Jenn.”

Aw man. Jennifer Takeda, A.K.A. Hazmat, would definitely fret. Carol’s notifications were going to be a mess when she got back to Earth.

“I’m not AWOL. I’m going to visit Lauri-Ell.”

Months had passed since Carol last saw her half-sister, Kree Accuser Lauri-Ell, who was currently on Throneworld II. The pieces of Carol’s shattered past were inescapable, it seemed. The Peregrine test flight had offered her a chance to kill two Chitauri with one punch. Figure out if the ship could reliably reach as far as they hoped, plus stop by to see Lauri with a built-in exit strategy. She’d have to get the craft back to Earth promptly—no time to linger and talk about dysfunctional family matters.

“Ah,” he said, pausing respectfully for a beat. He might not know everything going on in Carol’s mixed up mind, but he knew enough. “Perhaps it’s not the best timing, but I do need a favor. And it’s a little bit time sensitive.”

She sighed. Tony had the tact of a wrecking ball, but when he called, something was usually up. “What’s going on?”

“Bad reception…” Tony breathed heavily into his mic, faking a crackling sound. “You must… space tunnel.”

“Tony, you designed this comms system. Are you telling me a Stark invention can’t handle a little interstellar space debris?”

“Stark technology is completely trustworthy.” His voice leveled, all faux-brokenness vanishing. “The same can’t be said for everything else. I need you, Carol. Right away.”

The comms line went dead, leaving her no chance to ask for further details.

She was overdue for this visit to Throneworld II. Jess had been telling her for months that she needed to go see Lauri-Ell, spend time among the Kree. Figure out the parts of herself that were currently more mysterious than the black hole she’d done some fancy flying to avoid about an hour ago. Jess would be a pain about it until Carol finally listened. She really shouldn’t turn back.

But Tony’s words and tone reverberated in her mind. Okay, so he had a bad habit of needing her right when she finally took a few days for herself. He also had an annoying tendency to be strategically ambiguous when sharing intel. Still, she trusted him. And he never missed an opportunity to engage in a battle of wits with her. Today, he’d not only passed up sniping back when she teased him about Stark tech, but he’d gotten defensive. That was peculiar. Concerning, even.

Maybe she’d head back, see what more Tony had to say. This was an early stage test flight. Nothing urgent. Plenty of time to assess the Peregrine’s long distance flight capabilities. The engineers could tweak its comms systems in the meanwhile. She definitely had feedback on how easy it was to hail this craft. It needed a feature that let the pilot set their call status to “away” or “unavailable” or “leave me alone, Tony Stark” or something else universally relevant like that.

Carol splayed her fingers over the instrument panel, adjusting her altitude and easing back on the yoke to chart a course for Earth. Throneworld II wasn’t going anywhere, nor were all her questions about herself.

2

“JASON, MY phone’s been off for all of two hours. How bad could it possibly be?”

Laurence Faber strode through his penthouse, phone pressed to his ear. The place was empty. His wife had combined a business trip to London with a visit to their daughter at LSE and wouldn’t be back for several days. The extensive staff that kept the Faber family and business organized, clean, clothed, fed and transported had all gone home for the night. Faber balked at the idea of live-in staff; he valued his privacy too much. Thus, he returned home more often than not to a quiet, empty house. He passed the great room, where the Tiffany side lamps were dimly lit, welcoming him home, loosening his bow tie on the way to his study.

Jason, his executive assistant, was high strung. Made him fantastic at managing the details of Faber’s work, but prone to dramatic reactions. One of these days, the annoyance of the fuss would outweigh the efficiency Jason offered. Not tonight, though. His zealous assistant had hunted down someone on the waitstaff at the charity gala Faber had been attending and paid them to yank Faber aside to check his messages. Fourteen texts from Jason insisted, more and more vehemently as they accumulated, that Faber leave the event at once and get home.

“Mr. Faber, it’s bad. DigiTech is the lead story. Not just on Bloomberg—the general news channels are covering it, too.”

The study was Faber’s refuge, the only room in the house over which he’d had complete design control—if by complete, one meant the power to make suggestions that his wife and her designer would then approve. The dark paneling, high ceilings, double-decker bookshelves and mile-wide polished oak desk resembled the university library fantasies of his youth, back when he thought he’d be an economics professor. Instead, junior year of college, he’d lent a few thousand dollars from his savings to a friend who wanted to start up a delivery service that brought students homecooked meals to their dorms during exams. That friend became his wife, and her business mushroomed into one of the largest food delivery services in the world and made Faber his first fortune. His wife still ran that company, while he went on to a long and illustrious career as an angel investor.

Tossing his jacket on the leather couch, Faber helped himself to a glass of whiskey from the decanter at the wet bar. The remote that brought out a TV, cleverly concealed behind a mirror over the fireplace, sat beside the tray of cut glass tumblers. Faber twirled it in his fingers, debating whether he had the energy for the latest DigiTech roller coaster.

He’d bought shares in the company a year or so ago at the urging of his sometime investing partner, Marian Sutherland. DigiTech Systems, Inc. had been a sleepy old computer hardware company, nothing like the wave-of-the-future AI people were so excited about. Most investors Faber knew were prone to join the cult of every new Silicon Valley hotshot who emerged wearing a turtleneck and a perpetual scowl, promising to revolutionize tech. Faber snorted. Everybody said their thing was the thing. He sat out those flash-in-the-pan opportunities and never regretted it.

He had that in common with Marian. They met early in their careers and discovered a complementary style characterized by thoughtfulness and intuition over glitz. She was as careful an investor as he’d ever met, doing twice the diligence he did. She brought DigiTech to his attention when the company’s newly hired president announced she was looking for an involved board. That piqued Faber’s interest. The sunset of his investing career was approaching and he knew it. His daughter was training to be the next head of Faber Investments, and she’d want to do things her own way when she took over. He respected that. Out with the old. He’d do the same, in her shoes. The current crop of young whizz kid founders didn’t want anything more than his money. All his years of buying and selling companies, building empires, disrupting industries, reorganizing the way business is done—that knowledge and experience went to waste when all he did was cut a check. He wanted to have a hand in a company’s success before he hung up the checkbook for good. He wanted a legacy.

Investing in DigiTech had, frankly, been more lucrative than betting on a Vegas long shot that paid out. He’d been minting money since they diversified into software, a vote that had been one of the first Faber supported when he joined the board. The success made it difficult to understand the recent rash of stock sell-offs. Laurence wasn’t losing sleep over it, though. People made foolish investment choices all the time. No doubt the news was covering those with their usual doom-and-gloom predictions about collapses. The media never got the investing mindset right.

Still. Might as well take a peek at what they were saying, if for no other reason than to let some of the helium out of Jason’s voice. He flicked a button on the remote and found a twenty-four-hour news network. Instead of the usual image of a talking head above a crawl, there was footage of Marian Sutherland being led from the very same charity fundraiser he’d left not thirty minutes ago. In handcuffs.

Laurence Faber choked on his whiskey, spitting half the mouthful across the marble countertop. The tinny sound of Jason’s voice piped up from the phone that sat abandoned on the tray beside the decanter. “As I said, sir.”

Faber stabbed at the phone screen, disconnecting the call and silencing his assistant’s told-you-so superiority. So the kid had been right. That mattered little in the face of the arrest of his fellow DigiTech board member. He pumped up the volume in time to catch the newscaster intoning breaking news in a fake-grave timbre.

“—Sutherland, a prominent investor known for her land development portfolio, recently forayed into the digital space when she purchased substantial shares in DigiTech Systems. She’s in federal custody tonight and sources tell us she’ll be charged with securities fraud, in connection—”

Fraud? Marian? She was as T’s-crossed-and-i’s-dotted as they come.

Faber paced toward the French doors that led from his study to a private balcony overlooking the city. Normally he loved the feeling of towering over the world, lights spreading below in all directions. He imagined it felt a little bit like flying through space. Tonight, the view gave him vertigo. Maybe a blast of the January wind would ease this dizzy spell. He opened the door but the barely concealed glee in the newscaster’s tone caught his attention again.

“—a felony which carries a penalty of twenty years in prison and a hefty fine—”

Felony. Geez. He definitely needed air.

Faber turned back to the balcony and gasped. Not two feet from him stood a figure shrouded in darkness. Whatthe—? The glass slipped from his hand and shattered on the hardwood, splashing liquid across his loafers. No one had been standing there a moment ago, he was sure. Was he hallucinating?

Faber backed up a step. The figure glided forward with a swish that brought Faber’s eyes to the ground. The light was dim, but he could see fabric swirling around—acloak? And was there a kind of glow emanating from the figure?

“Knock, knock, Mr. Faber.”

If this was a hallucination, it was an especially vivid one. The voice was low and pleasant but unfamiliar. “Who—who are you? How did you get here?”

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

He sure as hell was not. Faber fumbled in his pockets for the phone that wasn’t there. The device sat on the wet bar behind him, where he’d left it after hanging up on Jason. Dammit, if only he’d left the line open, he could shout for his assistant to call 911. He glanced over and saw the screen light up with an incoming call, no doubt from the young man himself. He had to get to that device and tell Jason that… an ethereal cloaked figure had turned up on his balcony?

He’d sound like he had been overcome by a flight of fancy. He had a hard time believing it himself, despite the evidence his eyes supplied.

Besides, he wouldn’t really call this thing ethereal. That shine wasn’t a pleasant firefly kind of glow. It was sinister. He couldn’t make out anything important about this creature—it held itself like a person. But it glimmered. And his penthouse occupied the thirtieth floor of this building. There was no way a human could just appear on his terrace in the span of a few seconds. He felt suddenly short of breath and clutched his chest, thinking bizarrely that he’d rather the intruder get him than a heart attack.

Wait, no. No way was he going down to a caped balcony prowler. Faber scrambled back, his shoes sliding in the liquid he’d spilled.

The figure flashed out of sight, leaving behind a faint blur. Faber grabbed for his phone—which was already in the hands of his visitor, who now stood beside the bar. How? Faber could not formulate a coherent question for himself, let alone speak it aloud. He’d scarcely seen the person—or whatever it was—move. It disappeared and reappeared in a way that should not be possible.

“I don’t think we’ll be needing this, will we?” The figure dropped the phone on the ground, pulverizing it beneath a boot heel.

Faber had not turned on any lights when he entered the room, and he cursed himself for it now. The flickering TV was useless in his efforts to make out a face. That voice, emanating from deep within the hood of the cloak, had a songlike cadence, smooth and rich and even. Like a yoga instructor. It would have been calming, had it not been coming from a glowing figure that had flown onto this thirtieth-story terrace in the middle of the night.

“We wouldn’t want Jason’s paranoia to disrupt our little chat.”

They knew his assistant? Who the hell was this?

“I don’t have cash here if that’s what you’re looking for,” he said, fighting for a level tone of voice. He handled multi-billion-dollar negotiations for a living. Surely, that’s all this was. A transaction. They wanted something from him and he wanted his life. He just needed to understand this, er—person’s goal, and he could do a deal for his survival.

“Not as such, Mr. Faber.”

The figure came no closer; it was more than an arm’s length away, but Faber felt it looming over him, smothering him. More than a human arm’s reach, anyway. But the speed with which it moved…

“Then what?”

“Tomorrow morning, you’ll receive an offer to buy your DigiTech stock. You’ll accept the offer.”

That caught him off guard. He narrowed his eyes, trying—pointlessly—to make out something beneath that hood. DigiTech was trading high at the moment, probably near peak. It was no coup to get in on it now, unless—“You want me to give a below-the-market order?”

“The offer will be market value.”

“How much stock?”

“All of it.”

Faber fought against the instinct to just say yes, to agree to anything as long as this creature left him alone. He stiffened his knees to keep them from knocking. This made no sense. Selling and buying high? There was no money to be made. He was missing something. The creature hadn’t done anything particularly threatening, other than magically appear on his balcony and order him to sell stock he wanted to keep. And yet, he was plagued by the sense that this was a robbery of some kind. “It’s a bad deal. If you—or uh, your investor is looking for a good deal, I could provide some advice. A—a tip. I have access to all kinds of valuable information.”

“You assume we don’t have access to the same information?” A slight ripple of the cloak gave the only indication of the figure’s movement, but it had unmistakably drawn closer to Faber. “Perigee Partners doesn’t need your tips.”

Faber swiped a hand across the back of his mouth, leaning back to preserve his space, his safety. His head told him the effort was illusory, but it made him breathe easier. A little. Perigee Partners, Ltd. was a holding company, the ownership well-shrouded behind layers of legal protections. Faber had done some research when they first began acquiring DigiTech stock, and there’d been no red flags. As he thought through it now, he realized they were the buyer in many—most?—of the recent stock sales. They had amassed quite a lot of shares. Faber cast about in his memories, trying to recall how many exactly. With his portion added to what they’d already acquired, he thought Perigee might gain a controlling interest in DigiTech. Again, the sense that there was more at play here than he understood pricked at his conscience. Faber didn’t like surprises. “What if there was another stock? Any other stock. I’d cut you a good deal.”

The figure stayed silent, motionless and glowing, and then a gloved hand waved toward the television. An image of Faber and Marian filled the screen—a photo taken earlier that very night as the two posed together with the emcee of the event, some star too young for Faber to have recognized.

“Such troubling news about your dear friend. Allegations like these, they can’t help but spread. Like a virus.”

Was the creature creeping closer again? It was too damn dark in here. Most of the light seemed to come from the glow filtering from beneath that nonsensical cloak. “Marian and I haven’t done a deal together in years. I don’t have anything to worry about.”

“Don’t you?”

His pulse began to throb again and he felt a sensation like the one he experienced two years ago, right before the “episode” he refused to call a heart attack. He needed air. He needed space. Over the years, Faber had dabbled in a few gray areas when it came to securities law. Who didn’t? Investors collectively lobbied to keep the statutes vague so they’d be able to argue the line wasn’t where any prosecutor wanted to draw it. But that was all. He was nearly certain. He paid an army of lawyers to ensure he remained firmly within sight of the right side of the law.

“You own a big share in a surgical laser tool manufacturer. Cutting edge, minimally invasive, all the buzzwords that attract doctors and patients, right? How strange that soon after launch, they signed an exclusive deal with a company that makes the precision prisms needed for those laser tools. That resulted in a substantial price increase and boxed out competition. You were an early investor in the prism manufacturer, weren’t you? Few people know of that.”

No. No one knew about that. Rumors, maybe. Nothing concrete.

“Wouldn’t it be interesting to learn there were records of your involvement in those deals? Records showing you traded stocks based on your access to confidential information about that deal?”

“Those records don’t exist.” The tech guys said there was no trace. Scrubbed. Wiped. Double deleted. They assured him.

“In your files, perhaps.” The figure was moving, closing in. Faber’s pulse raced even faster. “Larry—I can call you Larry, right? Like friends. It would be better for you if we were friends.”

“There’s no proof.”

The figure hummed, low and satisfied. “Everyone keeps files, Larry. You can’t control what’s out of your reach, can you?”

Had he ever corresponded with Marian about the laser/prism companies? She had been part of that deal. Had the Feds got ahold of her files? Who was this creature working for?

“Call your broker, Larry. Give the order to sell. Unless you think, as Marian Sutherland did, that you can play games with me. And if twenty years in a federal penitentiary aren’t enough to persuade you to be reasonable, we have other ways.” The figure’s hands shot forward, balls of light blooming on the upturned palms.

Faber gasped, pressing a hand to his chest. The light from the pulsating energy balls reflected in his wide, terrified eyes.

“Tomorrow morning, Larry. I wouldn’t want to have to visit again.”

3

AFTER PILOTING the Peregrine to its top secret hangar, expertly maneuvering the ship down through the rooftop bay doors, Carol turned the craft over to the anxious aerospace engineers tasked with developing and testing it. They immediately swarmed the ship, examining every steel plate, every bolt, every wire, every blinking light on the instrument panel. The clink of their gear and buzz of their excited conversations echoed through the cavernous belly of the hangar, which had been outfitted with the most advanced tech military money could buy, but was empty of vehicles other than the single prototype ship Carol had just returned. She watched the flurry of activity with bemusement.

“How’d she run?” The ranking engineer on the team beelined toward her as soon as she popped the ship’s door open.

Carol grinned as she dropped to the floor beside Senior Master Sergeant Alexander. He stood a head shorter than her, his coveralls rolled neatly at the sleeves and ankles, the pockets bulging with tools and devices. She’d run into the Georgia Tech-trained aerospace engineer a number of times over the years, as she consulted on military research and development; he had a knack for being involved with the most cutting-edge projects.

“You thought I’d take your baby out for her first test drive and wrap her around a tree, didn’t you?”

“Or planet,” Alexander laughed, running a hand over his regulation buzz cut, the line above his ears so perfectly straight he probably had a level in his grooming kit. The hair at his temples had silvered since Carol last saw him, though the gleam in his eyes made him look like a kid on his first mission. “No overheating issues?”

“Well, I didn’t make the full trip. But for as long as I had her in the air, no. And I pushed her hard.” Alexander pumped his fist in the air, and Carol quirked one eyebrow. “You’re unusually excited about a ship not overheating, Master Sergeant. What didn’t you tell me before I took her up?”

“We’re trying out a new thermoacoustic cooling system. Combines sound waves and inert gas to create a refrigerant effect. Super powerful. Lightweight. Energy efficient. No moving parts.” He launched into an animated mini-lecture on how the cooling system worked, which Carol did her best to follow. “It actually recovers energy waste, converts thermal management from a burden to an asset.”

She smiled. This was her favorite version of Alexander, the one hyped about physics and unable to resist sharing his delight. Nothing like hearing from an inventor thrilled about his latest invention. “Sounds like a dream.”

“It could be. We’ve been experimenting to make sure the combo doesn’t cause drag on the thrust.”

“I think you’re nearly there,” she said, giving him a complimentary nod before heading to the locker room.

Carol strode across the hangar, returning salutes from the various scattered airmen who interrupted their work to acknowledge her. She no longer technically held her Air Force rank, but when she had, she’d far outranked all the personnel in the hangar, including the Senior Master Sergeant. Most of the soldiers she worked with now still honored that, and the part of Carol that held tight to the memories of working herself raw to earn that bird on her flight cap appreciated the gesture. But she didn’t dawdle. They had work to do, as did she, the vibration of the phone in the pocket of her flight suit reminded her. Inside the locker room, she glanced at the device screen, counting no less than five texts from Tony. The first had come minutes after she entered the atmosphere. She wrinkled her nose, making a mental note to uninstall whatever tracking app he put on there. Honestly, Carol hadn’t expected him to wait that long to nag her. He probably expected her to come directly to the meeting location without taking the time to change. But she didn’t want to get a reputation with the supply officer for having sticky fingers. She’d already “borrowed” an unfair share of flight suits over the years.

Carol opened Tony’s most recent message and found he’d dropped a location pin. No further information. With no hint at the expected dress code for this mission, Carol swapped her flight suit for her preferred civvies—her “Carol Danvers” uniform. She’d stowed a set of jeans and a black sweater in the locker on base while she worked with the Peregrine team. As a nod to the chilly New York morning, she tugged on a leather jacket and pulled a black toque over her hair. Tucking tendrils in around the edges, she reconsidered the length for the millionth time. The short ’do had been much easier for upkeep, but Carol liked the long wheat-colored waves currently spilling from beneath her hat. Kept her neck warm this time of year.

Absently, she slammed her locker shut, studying that location in a map app. It would be a long walk from the base. Carol wouldn’t have minded a chance to stretch her legs after the flight, but that would also give her time to mull over why she’d been so quick to brush off the meeting with Lauri-Ell. Flying, as always, would be much faster and provide her less time to stew. It was about efficiency, really, like Alexander and his thermoacoustic cooling system.

Maybe that was a little self-serving, but hey, no reason you couldn’t do well for yourself and do good for the world. Carol slipped out of the gargantuan hangar into the bustle of the Air Force base. She glanced around, admiring the hum and hustle. Carol rarely longed for her military days, though sometimes she did miss the dynamism of a place like this, of a massive crew focused on achieving a common mission together. Maybe she did need Tony’s quest, if for no other reason than to shake off the nostalgia tugging her back in time toward a past she could never relive. Shaking her head, she gathered her energy, dug the balls of her feet into the ground, and lifted off.

*   *   *

SHE WAS still blocks out from her destination when she caught sight of the crowd. From her vantage point, the sidewalks brimmed with ants she knew to be people. Tens of thousands of them, all thronging toward the convention center. That must be where she was headed.

Tony, she groaned inwardly, please tell me your emergency did not have to do with attending a fan con!

Carol dropped down and joined the horde on the street—none of whom wore costumes of any kind. They did, however, sport badges on lanyards and totes emblazoned with a black, silver, and purple logo. The crowd ebbed and flowed, some heading in the direction of the convention center, others peeling off and entering the buildings around them—mostlyhotels—all of which were marked with banners bearing that same logo. The banners displayed letters each a full story in length—GTSS. What in the Multiverse was that?

Two blocks later, she bumped into the answer. A massive glass arch, at least ten stories high, stretched across the street, the apex rising even higher with a glowing black, silver, and purple logo declaring this to be the entrance to the Global Technovation Supernova Show. As Carol watched, glass elevator platforms hoisted convention attendees up the arch. The structure itself proved to be a touch screen. Wherever someone threw out a hand, displays burst to life, leaping off the screen, coating people in augmented-reality experiences. Here, a 3D map rendered itself in the air; there, a flying car burst out of the arch, its sides emblazoned with a booth number on the convention floor; and there, a VR display coated a viewer in a billowy virtual ballgown that looked real enough to touch.

A tech con? Carol shook her head, wending her way through the crush toward the convention center entrance, where Tony’s latest text told her he was waiting. He was abstruse on the best of days, but this might be a new record. Around her, sign-throwers and product-hawkers created chaos, yelling, dancing, inviting people to scan codes with their phones to claim giveaway items. Convention employees wearing jackets with light-up displays on the back attempted crowd control. Carol saw now that the logo comprised what looked like a star falling into a black hole.

She wondered if there was a deeper meaning behind naming a convention about futuristic tech after a stellar explosion that resulted in the progenitor dying. Something about disruption of the old ways? Carol liked Tony’s tech buds best in limited doses, but she’d heard plenty of platitudes like innovate or die even in the insignificant time she’d spent with them. A smirk rose to her mouth. She’d bet a ride in the Peregrine they hadn’t consulted an astronomer before they named this con.

The entrance teemed with security and attendees negotiating the complex dance of mass ingress and egress. Carol noted a still spot among the crowd. Tony Stark, in his own civilian gear—expensive jeans, a designer jacket, and sneakers that cost more than Carol’s rent—stood off to the side, leaning against a barricade, eyes glued to his phone. He wore no hat, probably so his spiky dark hair wouldn’t get unintentionally instead of intentionally mussed.

“Surprised you’re not in the Iron Man suit, Stark,” she grumbled as she reached him.

“One time, Danvers,” he said, holding out a GTSS badge to her. This one, unlike most she saw around her, was silver and inscribed with the letters VIP and matched the badge hanging from the lanyard around Tony’s own neck. “I did that one time.”

“One time too many. What I am doing here?”

“Besides making fun of me? Come on, we’re going to see a panel.”

Incredulous, Carol followed Tony as he powered through the convention center lobby to the exhibition hall. Left on her own, she might have liked to poke around the demonstrations a little. She wouldn’t mind seeing what the car bursting out of the arch had been all about. It was high time someone besides Tony Stark had access to a flying car, in her opinion. But Tony had not a minute to spare for the exhibitions, marching past the most lurid of future-tech spectacles. He must really want to see this panel, she mused, because this stuff was normally Tony’s catnip. With Carol on his heels, he turned into a massive auditorium that was full to overflowing. From the size and the crowd, she guessed this panel must be one of the main attractions of the convention. A cordoned-off area toward the front of the room declared itself reserved for VIPs, but despite their badges, Tony steered them away. Instead, they climbed over knees and stumbled on tote bags to find two seats tucked in the shadow of the sound engineer’s panel.

The chatting of eager convention-goers making plans to meet up for later panels collided with the sound of audio recordings promoting sponsor products being played at full volume from the speakers that dotted the perimeter of the room. Together, they brought the noise level to a painful decibel.

“Let me guess, Banner, Lang, and Cho were all busy?” Carol said, naming everyone she could think of that would be a more natural companion to attend NERDCON with Tony.

He shushed her vigorously, drawing the attention of a few people seated around them. Carol slunk into her seat, pulling her toque lower and scowling. Tony might not mind being swarmed at places like this, but he knew she hated that kind of attention. She wasn’t anonymous these days, even as Carol Danvers, but she preferred not to have more eyeballs and camera phones focused on her than absolutely necessary. She missed the days when her Captain Marvel suit was enough to protect her secret identity. She’d stumbled across one too many overblown opinion pieces about her half-alien status rendering her a questionable ally when she was just trying to read the news. Hala knew what they’d make of her attending an event like this.

Luckily, the dimming of the house lights and the sudden flare of blue-white spotlights shining on the stage claimed the crowd’s attention before anyone beyond the closest few rows distinguished that Iron Man and Captain Marvel were sitting among them.

Two figures emerged from backstage. Carol recognized neither, but a disembodied announcer introduced one as the interviewer—a tech reporter named Miller—and the other as the apparent star of the show, Griselda Seales. Carol leaned forward, involuntarily drawn toward the woman. Though she was of average height and dressed in the same jeans and blazer combo as Miller, she commanded the stage. Her dark hair draped to her chin on one side, hanging smoothly over one eye and coming to a razor-sharp edge, while the other side had been shaved close to her scalp. It was impossible not to focus on her. The crowd roared at the mere mention of her name. Carol didn’t pay much attention to tech culture, but she was guessing this woman was the kind of star that transcended Silicon Valley and became a pop culture sensation.

Seales, graceful even in tall pumps with a pointed toe and a telltale red sole, trailed Miller to a pair of stools positioned center stage. Carol caught sight of an odd kind of glint around Seales’s feet as she moved. She rubbed her eyes with the heel of her hand, wondering if maybe it had been a trick of the light. But no, there it was again.

“Did she flicker?” she whispered out of the corner of her mouth to Tony.

He chuckled. “Good observation, Danvers. She’s a hologram.”

“What?!”

“Shhhh,” he hissed again, more harsh than teasing this time. Carol glanced over and found his face puckered like he’d just sucked on a lemon.

Interesting. Tony hated this woman.

On stage, a massive IMAX-sized screen flashed up yet another logo Carol didn’t recognize. Luckily, this one didn’t require decoding. In staid blue block letters, the words DigiTech Systems rotated and twirled and even leaped off the screen to circle over Miller and Seales’s heads. Despite the backlighting, Seales remained as visible she had been a second before. Didn’t holograms disappear or fade to blinking pixels in that much light?

“She looks solid,” Carol said. “Without that little flicker when she was walking, you could never tell she was a projection. Incredible.”

“Nice bit of tech, but pretentious as hell, if you ask me.”

She side-eyed him again and he looked even more petulant. Tony didn’t wear his feelings on his face often, but he couldn’t hide them now. “How so?”

“She only makes appearances in holo form. Showy nonsense.”

Says the man who wears a sparkly red and gold suit, she thought. Carol didn’t mind snarking back and forth with Tony, but theirs was a mutually admiring antagonism. He seemed genuinely ruffled by Seales. She stifled both her smile and the rejoinder on the tip of her tongue and turned her attention back to Miller, who’d wrapped up a fawning intro of Seales and moved on to talking about the company.

“Just over one year ago, DigiTech went from an unexciting, unadventurous hardware manufacturer to the hottest tech property in the world with the release of its revolutionary operating system, BOS-MA.”

The audience screamed its approval.

“Oh, you’ve heard of it?” Miller teased. “Nah, who am I kidding? GTSS attracts the savviest tech crowd in the world, so you are all probably BOS-MA alpha users, aren’t you? I mean, if your stack isn’t running on BOS-MA, is it even running? Amirite?” Cheering, laughter. Carol wrinkled her nose. This was a language she didn’t speak, though everyone else in the room was fluent. “And now little ol’ BOS-MA is here.” Images began materializing on the screen behind him. First, a picture of the Federal Reserve Bank. Then some private banks. Then the Wall Street sign. “And here.” A power station. A dam. Logos for all the major voice and internet communications providers. “And here.” Images of every type of phone and tablet.

“Basically, everywhere! If you’ve upgraded any time in the last year, you’re running on BOS-MA. And the woman responsible for it all, Wall Street’s darling, technology’s savior, the wunderkind, is sitting right here beside me, on these dime store stools! Seriously, guys, we couldn’t get a couch? A love seat? An armchair? Something?” Miller mock-wobbled on his chair, flinging his feet out and rocking on the flimsy plastic stool. Seales sat—“sat”?—serenely on her own seat and smiled at the antics. The expression lay flatly on the holographic face, showing too-bright teeth but failing to carve laugh lines at the corners of her mouth. Now that she was looking for them, Carol picked out more signs that there was no flesh on those bones. It was more than a little disconcerting.

Tony’s phone pinged, then lit up, and this time he was the shushee, drawing the crowd’s ire. A few made infuriated shut-it-down gestures.

“Come on,” he said, without bothering to whisper. “I’ve seen enough of the clown show.”

“Tony, what? Why—” He’d dragged her all the way down here, gotten VIP passes and dead center seats with a view, to watch two minutes of introductions? Carol didn’t even know what that BOS-MA thing was yet. But Stark was already on his way out the door. She scrambled after him, clambering over the irritated attendees in their row, whom they’d just crawled around on the way in. Carol whispered apologies over Miller’s renewed droning about the operating system’s humble origins as a military technology.

In the light of the lobby, Tony’s wrinkled brow betrayed his irritation. He strode toward the exit to the building, tearing off his GTSS badge and grousing under his breath. Carol raked her memories for the last time she’d seen him so riled up and came up blank.

It wasn’t until they were outside, back in the brisk winter air, that it dawned on her. She grabbed his shoulder and pulled him to a halt, forcing the crowd to eddy around them. “You’re jealous!”

“Absolutely not,” he said. “Of what?”

“They’re lauding her as the greatest tech genius on Earth or whatever. You’re used to that being you.”

“Every significant piece of tech in the last seventy years has come from Stark Industries. Or, at least, from a Stark. But here comes this nobody working for a hardware manufacturer who resurrects a defunct military tech that becomes the world’s leading OS? I mean, DigiTech Systems?” He flung his hands out, palms up, to indicate the absurdity of such a thing, and narrowly avoided dealing a resounding thwap to a guy walking past. Carol shot the startled man a brief, apologetic look, as Tony ranted on. “They were assembling motherboard components a minute ago. And not even very good ones.”

“Okay, but so what?”

“I think it’s odd I’d never even heard of Griselda Seales.” Tony shook off Carol’s hand and resumed his march through the lobby. He picked up speed toward the exit, wending his way through the crowd, down the convention center steps and into the flow of folks heading away from GTSS.

“Do you know everyone in the tech world, Tony?”

“Most of them, yes,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. Of course he did, she thought. “Where did she come from?”

Carol nodded back toward the building, where no doubt Seales was still answering interview questions and being cheered like a rockstar. “Why not go straight to the source? Ask for an audience with the new reigning queen of tech?”

“She’s not—no way is she—that’s not what she is!” Tony spluttered, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his peacoat. “Anyway, she won’t speak with me.”

Carol eyed his stiff-shouldered posture and his sullen scowl. “Maybe she’s too busy running a company to deal with jealous competitors.”

“Busy, I can respect. But Griselda Seales refuses to let even her staff go near me. She fires anyone who mentions my name. You might think this is professional jealousy, but it’s not. DigiTech’s rise was meteoric and our atmosphere doesn’t have capacity to withstand a meteor crash.”

“Lot of space analogies there, bud,” Carol said. “Come on back to Earth.”

Throughout Tony’s rant, they hadn’t stopped moving, progressing onto a quiet side street populated with storefronts and office entrances and one modest coffee shop.

Tony paused, turning to Carol with a grave expression. “Seales is manning an empire that now forms the basis of our entire interconnected technology network—an