Marvel's Secret Invasion Prose Novel E-Book

Paul Cornell

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

Seitenzahl: 450

Beschreibung

A shapeshifting alien race invades the Marvel Universe in this exciting re-imagining of the bestselling comic book event from the author of one of its original tie-ins. WHO DO YOU TRUST? The shapeshifting alien race known as the Skrulls have infiltrated every branch of the Marvel Universe, from S.H.I.E.L.D., to the Avengers, and even interplanetary defence force S.W.O.R.D. As the New Avengers watch leader of the Hand, Elektra, transform into a Skrull after her death, they come to realise that an attack is coming, one that has been planned for many years. From heroes to villains, anyone could be a Skrull in disguise. Uncertain of who to trust, the team tries desperately to unite against an unseen foe. But it is too late. The invasion has begun. A crashed ship in the Savage Land. A prison break at the Raft. Thunderbolts Mountain under attack. And an armada of Skrull ships approaching Earth. Scattered and hopeless, heroes and villains alike must team up to fight a war they never saw coming, the fallout of which will change the face of the Marvel Universe as we know it. BASED ON THE BESTSELLING MARVEL EVENT BY BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS AND LEINIL FRANCIS YU.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Novels of the Marvel Universe by Titan Books

Also from Titan and Titan Books

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue: Tony Stark

One: Abigail Brand

Two: Tony Stark

Three: Danny Rand

Four: Abigail Brand

Five: Tony Stark

Six: Norman Osborn

Seven: Johnny Storm

Eight: Danny Rand

Nine: Reed Richards

Ten: Danny Rand

Eleven: Bob Reynolds

Twelve: Tony Stark

Thirteen: Clint Barton

Fourteen: Teddy Altman

Fifteen: Balkamar

Sixteen: Norman Osborn

Seventeen: Cassie Lang

Eighteen: Veranke

Nineteen: Cassie Lang

Twenty: Carol Danvers

Twenty-One: Natasha Romanoff

Twenty-Two: Abigail Brand

Twenty-Three: Parker Robbins

Twenty-Four: Norman Osborn

Twenty-Five: Nick Fury

Twenty-Six: Abigail Brand

Twenty-Seven: Balkamar

Twenty-Eight: Abigail Brand

Twenty-Nine: Clint Barton

Thirty: Noh-Varr

Thirty-One: Om’Noll

Thirty-Two: Tony Stark

Thirty-Three: Alice Creasy

Thirty-Four: Matthew Chavinsky

Thirty-Five: Om’Noll

Thirty-Six: Thor Odinson

Thirty-Seven: Janet Van Dyne

Thirty-Eight: Peter Parker

Thirty-Nine: Jessica Jones

Forty: Clint Barton

Forty-One: Janet Van Dyne

Forty-Two: Balkamar

Forty-Three: Janet Van Dyne

Forty-Four: Thor Odinson

Forty-Five: Tony Stark

Forty-Six: Jessica Jones

Forty-Seven: Clint Barton

Forty-Eight: Reed Richards

Forty-Nine: Tony Stark

Fifty: Teddy Altman

Fifty-One: Tony Stark

Fifty-Two: Peter Parker

Fifty-Three: Jessica Jones

Epilogue One: Abigail Brand

Epilogue Two: Alice Creasy

About the Author

Also Available from Titan Books

NOVELS OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE BY TITAN BOOKS

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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

Captain Marvel: Shadow Code by Gilly Segal

Civil War by Stuart Moore

Deadpool: Paws by Stefan Petrucha

Guardians of the Galaxy: Annihilation by Brendan Deneen

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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SECRET INVASION

Print edition ISBN: 9781803362489

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803362502

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: September 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

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.

With thanks to the original writers and pencilers:Brian Michael Bendis & Leinil Francis Yu and Jason Aaron & Jefte Palo, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa & Barry Kitson, Mike Carey & Cary Nord & Terry Dodson, Matt Fraction & Gabrielle Dell’Otto & Doug Braithwaite, Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente & Rafa Sandoval, Jim Cheung, Leonard Kirk, Brian Reed, Alex Maleev, Khoi Pham and John Romita Jr., Michael Gaydos, David Mack and Billy Tan, Marco Castiello, Adriano Melo, Christopher Yost, Takeshi Miyazawa, Christos Gage & Fernando Blanco and to Tade Thompson and Douglas Wolk.

PROLOGUE

TONY STARK

TONY STARK had never felt more alone.

That was saying a lot. He’d felt pretty damn alone on several occasions in the last year or so, never mind during his excuse for a childhood. He’d felt pretty damn alone when he’d been captured in a war zone. At least then he’d ended up imprisoned with a genius who’d designed the first version of what he’d been working on and improving ever since: the powered cutting-edge-tech armor that made him Iron Man, founding member of the Avengers and the one who usually picked up the tab for all their good works. But even during all those years of being a public hero—one who, eventually, the public came to know by name and to trust—he’d still felt pretty damn alone through all that.

But right now… yeah, this was the nadir. He’d kept fighting for what was right, pushing hard to keep the public onside with the super hero community. Since he’d become Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., the global taskforce that was the official liaison between the political world and the super hero community, he’d pushed through the Superhuman Registration Act, which had been an attempt to hold his fellow heroes accountable, to give them official status and training, to make them more than a bunch of distrusted vigilantes. He’d also spearheaded the plan to send the Hulk off into space to live on a peaceful alien world where “smashing” was, hey, probably just saying hello. Both steps had saved countless lives, those of the everyday people super heroes were meant to protect.

But from moment one of all that, Tony’s so-called “friends” had jumped on their high horses.

Steve Rogers had actually led an army against him. Because, it seemed, Steve Rogers, when push came to shove, cared more about getting to be Captain America than about, you know, America. The media had started to call it the Super Hero Civil War. That made it sound much more glamorous than it had been. It had felt more like the end of the world. Tony’s side had won, like they were always going to, because getting the public onside with “I want to wear a flag and beat up whoever I like with no consequences” can only get you so far. But it had been such a hollow victory. Even those he’d been onside with now seemed to be holding him at a slight distance. It had been a bitter business, they seemed to think, and that bitterness now felt like it was being directed at him. These days he was basically in charge of super hero culture, and he was absolutely sure the world was now a safer place because of it, but it had left him… yeah, pretty damn alone.

And of course, Steve had gotten himself arrested, and the bad guys had used that opportunity to… to assassinate him. Steve Rogers was dead. Captain America was dead. Tony closed his eyes at the pain of the thought. His job was to anticipate consequences, to follow chains of cause and effect as far as chaos would allow. He should have seen that coming. That thought haunted him night and day. He opened his eyes again. No. He couldn’t let himself be drawn back into brooding about that, because… because…

Because now, now with what he’d just discovered… well, it was the worst possible time for him to be isolated, and the worst time for there to be no Steve Rogers to annoy the hell out of him, because it turned out the world was being threatened by something else he hadn’t anticipated—and what was coming might be the actual, not metaphorical, end of it.

He sat now, in his Iron Man armor, in a randomly selected empty warehouse belonging to Funtime Inc., a shuttered Stark Enterprises subsidiary. He sat with a body bag at his feet. He sat there waiting to see if anyone would respond to the call he’d sent out.

Energy fluctuation detected, said his armor, matching Dr. Stephen Strange’s projection from the astral plane. Identity confirmed. Occupation: Sorcerer Supreme.

And there he was, Doctor Strange, cape and all, shimmering before him, not quite there, an angry look on his face. Strange was the guy who’d made it his job, solo, to deal with all the threats to the world that came from the brand of extra-dimensional advanced technology that people like Strange liked to call “magic.” He was, justifiably, an arrogant so-and-so, quite akin to Tony himself. They didn’t ever seem to see eye-to-eye as a result. And Strange had become a big part of the alternative or rebel faction of super heroes who still sought to oppose what they probably saw as his evil deeds. Whatever. Tony was incredibly heartened to see him now.

“Whose body is that?” Strange said. So, straight past the hellos.

“I didn’t think you’d show up.”

“Curiosity… got the better of me.”

“Well, of part of you.”

“I’m on the astral plane. I thought it best if there was a barrier between us. All things considered. Now, who is that?”

Tony found he couldn’t help himself. “How is everyone? How are your Avengers?” Because that was what they still felt able to call themselves, the team that Strange had committed himself to, the team the public supported now (according to the polls) but would, as soon as they messed up, quickly come to regard as vigilantes with no official sanction.

Strange sighed. “Please do not start your ‘why are you doing this?’ thing with me—”

“I wasn’t going to. I don’t care about any of that right now.”

His armor beeped to signal an approaching presence. Blackagar Boltagon, it said in his ear. Alias: Black Bolt. Occupation: Monarch of the Inhumans. Identity confirmed. So, it wasn’t going to be just the two of them.

Into the room strode the king of that hidden race of genetically altered people, silent as always. He pointed immediately to the body bag. Strange just shrugged at him, the closest Tony had ever seen the Sorcerer Supreme come to rolling his eyes. Tony had no idea where the Inhumans stood on all he’d achieved. As foreign nationals, the Superhuman Registration Act didn’t apply to them, and they’d never seemed to have any special fondness for the Hulk. Were they even super heroes?

His plan not to say anything until a significant number of his peers had deigned to join him in the flesh then paid off. Inside the room appeared Reed Richards, the leader of the group of scientific adventurers known as the Fantastic Four and, beside him, the halfmutant half-Atlantean Namor, King of Atlantis, both of whom had previously been invisible. Much of what applied to Black Bolt also applied to Namor, with a side order of “foolish humans and their petty conflicts.” Reed, however, had always stood by Tony, because here was a man who valued rationality above all else. He had even stuck to his principles when his rather more, err, feisty, wife, Susan Storm-Richards, had sided with the rebels. Those two were trying to work it out now, and Tony was being a little lax with the rules to let them do that. Which was, hey, corruption, from a certain point of view, but he was pretty sure that was the only time he’d ever given in to the idea of one law for his people, another for the rebels. And it had been about showing mercy to someone on the other side. The fact that Reed, of all people, should join his frenemy Namor in wanting to arrive here stealthily… well, that was what Tony meant about his friends keeping him at arm’s length now. “Tony,” said Reed. Namor just folded his arms.

The door opened and in walked… walked, okay, because he was usually in a wheelchair, but hey, such transformations happened in their line of work… Professor Charles Xavier. Xavier was the visionary who’d anticipated a future of conflict between Homo sapiens and the mutant offshoot of it who called themselves Homo superior. Which was just terrible branding. Such people usually had super-powers, and Xavier had wisely made them into a community of super heroes. And thus, many of them had fallen under the purview of the new laws. But a few months ago, in a terrible event that had been nothing to do with Tony, thank god, one of their own—a former Avenger even—had decimated their ranks, removing the powers of 91.4 percent of all Earth’s mutants. Many of the remainder, under the aegis of Xavier’s “X-Men” project, now lived on an island off San Francisco, which Tony called putting all your eggs in one basket, but hey, whatever suited them. Xavier had always insisted that X-Men live under the local laws, and honestly Tony’s issues were the least of his problems, given that he was currently at odds with those living on that island, but neither had he been returning Tony’s calls lately. “Good day, everyone,” he said now, mild as ever, on the surface.

Tony’s armor confirmed the identities of everyone present… as far as it could.

So, they had all finally decided to join him. These were the individuals who’d taken it upon themselves, before the Civil War, to hold summits about the state of the super hero community. The six of them had sometimes saved the world just on their lonesome. They were the great power brokers of their kind, and Tony felt pathetically grateful that he could still bring them together. Perhaps there was now some hope after all.

“Is… is that Captain America?” said Namor, pointing at the body bag, a look on his face that was schoolboy adulation morphing into fury.

“Of course not,” said Tony, yet again enormously frustrated with what his colleagues believed him to be capable of. He bent to unzip the bag. “This was brought to me. I thought it was worth getting us together again. To show you this.” He stepped back from the bag to let them see what was revealed.

Inside the bag lay the corpse of an alien Skrull, one of a shape-shifting interstellar empire that had occasionally been a thorn in the side of he and his colleagues and, well, Earth. Skrulls could impersonate anyone, really well. And this one, as its costume revealed, had been impersonating Elektra Natchios, the great assassin and occasional right hand of the crimelord known as the Kingpin.

“How the hell did you get that?” said Strange.

Tony had been anticipating that reaction. “Jessica Drew, Spider-Woman, brought it to me. Your ‘Avengers’ found it in Japan. And you didn’t think to tell me?”

Strange had an awkward look on his face. “Given your recent actions, we thought you might be a Skrull.”

“Because my recent actions aren’t, you know, in character?”

Strange shrugged. “There is that. Still, I’m surprised at Jessica. I thought she was one of us.”

“She still is.” Tony refrained from adding “you idiot.” In actual fact, Jess was clearly trying to keep her friends in both camps, which Tony honestly thought was admirable, if kind of misguided. “She’s just got a sense of responsibility about the bigger picture. From what I’ve been told, Skrull Elektra was quietly taking control of the Japanese underworld.”

“She was undetectable by my magic,” said Strange, “by Wolverine’s mutant senses and by Spider-Man’s superhuman ones. We only realized she was a Skrull when she died and reverted to her natural form.”

Richards stood up from checking the body with one of his many scanning devices. He was always fascinated by Skrulls. His team had been the first super heroes to meet them, and had immediately ticked them off. “That’s an entirely new development. That’s fascinating. We’ll need to do an autopsy on it.”

“Yes,” said Tony, relieved. “We need to find a way to detect them while they’re still alive.”

“Where is the real Elektra?” asked Xavier.

“Dead. Gone. I don’t know. I got S.H.I.E.L.D. to search. She’s nowhere to be found. I brought this to you because I think this means we’re at war. And I think it’s our fault.”

The looks on their faces told Tony that they got what he meant. Though it had happened years ago, the memory of it was fresh for all of them.

*   *   *

THE SIX of them had journeyed to the Skrull homeworld, immediately after the Avengers—united and mighty back then—had put an end to the Skrulls’ devastating war with the militaristic aliens known as the Kree. The six of them had hidden their spacecraft using Strange’s magic, and had listened in on the Skrull Emperor delivering the mother of all “it’s been a bad year for us and there are going to be layoffs” speeches. The Emperor had spoken of a prophecy, that the Skrull homeworld would be destroyed, but that the Skrulls would find a new home having conquered Earth. Yet, and this had brought a smile to Tony’s face back then, they’d just had their asses kicked by one single human being, a civilian at that, whose latent psychic powers had turned the tide of battle in the Kree-Skrull War. A Skrull scientist had stepped forward then and talked of how Earth was home to an unusually high number of such “genetic atrocities,” the sort that Skrulls killed at birth.

“We simply cannot expect to conquer the Earth with a frontal attack.” That was what the scientist had said. Those words came back to Tony now with particular force.

Now he wished they’d listened a bit further, but that had been the moment when, surfing the drama, Tony and his colleagues had elected to reveal themselves, their images projected into the Emperor’s chamber by Strange. “We will not tolerate another invasion attempt on the Earth,” Richards had told them. Because it was Richards, who was almost as malleable in form as the Skrulls were, who’d always beaten them from their first encounter, that they feared the most. “This is a warning. Our world is defended. However, if the Emperor were to declare that the Skrulls have no claim on the Earth… then there could be peace between us. And the fruits of mutual exchange.”

The Emperor, to give him credit, had taken a moment to think it over. “Every single member of your species will die under my rule,” he’d finally said. “And your families will be the first blood I taste.”

Richards, always the daddy, had looked more disappointed than angry. “Well, obviously I’m sorry to hear you say that—”

“Black Bolt,” Tony had interrupted, because he’d had no more regards to give, “what do you have to say?”

And the King of the Inhumans had opened his mouth that day and had allowed himself to utter a single syllable. That was Black Bolt’s power and his curse, that his words had literal, gravitational, weight. He had to keep his silence, always, or disaster erupted.

That single syllable, something like a sigh, had blasted the Skrull Emperor’s barge into subatomic particles from stem to stern.

They had tried to speed away in the craft that had brought them there, Namor exulting in the deaths of their foes, Richards tutting at him for it, but nemesis had swiftly come for them. The Skrull defense systems closed around them like a fist. They had always known it was going to be tough. They had thought it would be worth it to neutralize a future threat. But Tony had realized, as he floated in space that day, the ship flying to pieces around him, Skrull forces closing in from all sides, that hey, maybe they had shown a little hubris here, just six of them taking on an entire empire.

*   *   *

HIS MEMORIES left him, and he was back in the room with the corpse and his (maybe) friends. “One Skrull dresses up,” Namor was saying, pacing and gesturing like he was onstage at the Met, “and you say that means we’re at war?”

So Tony was going to have to go there. “After the year we’ve had? Yes. The Avengers have been torn apart. The mutants are all but gone. Your own undersea nation has been devastated. Nick Fury, the guy who created S.H.I.E.L.D., got paranoid and seems to be in hiding and Cap… CaptainAmerica… is dead. Doesn’t it feel like we’re being worked over, manipulated from within?”

“A lot of that,” said Namor, “was you.”

“No! I mean, yes, okay! But also no! Everything is upside-down. I can see it now. Looming ahead of us. And this body… this is the key!”

He looked around them. If they could have seen his face under his mask—which he wasn’t going to remove around his antagonistic former friends with super-powers—they’d have seen how wild he probably looked at this moment. Because Skrulls got to him like they got to all of them. All six of these people had been captured by them, tortured by them…

*   *   *

IN HIS case, the Skrulls had just taken away his armor. Later, he’d heard the awful things they’d done to the others after their capture following the destruction of the Imperial Barge, but in his case they had just realized he had a heart condition, that his armor kept him alive—or at least it had back then—and so they had deprived him of it. They’d put him in a cell, naked, waiting to see what happened.

Or that’s what he initially thought they were doing. Because then they had done something else, something that his mind was dragging him back to now. The guards outside his cell had been suddenly cut down by lightning. A magic Viking hammer had blasted the door open. And there had appeared the Avengers of that time, with the Vision and Quicksilver.

“It seems thou art in need of some friendly assistance!” Thor had bellowed.

It had taken Tony a moment, but he’d got there. “Oh, come on! How dumb do you think I am?”

The Skrulls impersonating the Avengers had immediately given it up and started arguing amongst themselves about how this wasn’t the way to get information out of him. But one of them had had a brain on them, the one playing Cap, of course. “Wait,” they’d said, “this is interesting. He didn’t expect his teammates to rescue him. No one knows he and the others came here!”

Excited by having gained that tidbit of intel, the Skrulls, laughing, had come closer, Thor giving Tony a little slap just because he could.

Which had been the moment when Tony had seized that devastating technological Skrull weapon in the shape of a hammer from his hand, and, having figured out from across the room how the alien activated it, fried them all.

He’d managed to execute, at high speed, an escape plan, improvised on the fly. He’d freed Strange and Xavier first and they had brought vast destruction down on the Skrulls as they’d freed the others. They’d finally sped off into space with a magical and mental image of Galactus, the Great Devourer, protecting them.

It had all been… so easy.

*   *   *

NOW HE looked back to the others around him, to Namor pointing in his face and again yelling at him. “Tell us plainly what you are trying to say!”

All right then. “We’re at war because the first shot has been fired. That shot was Strange and the Avengers not trusting me about this corpse, thinking I might be a Skrull. That distrust is a shot, because it was fired by the Skrulls’ main weapon: stealth. None of us could have detected this thing. So we need to find a way to… trust each other again, to build that trust! And if that means I have to—”

“Actually,” said Black Bolt, “I have a better idea. I take the body.” Everyone turned to stare at that very precise, very English voice that none of them had heard before. That completely impossible voice. That voice that meant— “And your people die,” Black Bolt finished, “so that my people may live.” And then he took a breath.

Massive energy fluctuation detected! shouted Tony’s armor.

Everything around them turned to fire.

*   *   *

TONY LAY in the rubble, recovering from the enormous noise, from the shock of his world becoming a blur of motion. His armor had saved him, had taken the blast, and was now desperately trying to recharge as he was desperately trying to raise himself, hoping against hope that his colleagues… hisfriends… hadsomehow… somehow…

A shadow fell over him. A Super-Skrull, the enhanced warrior form of their military class. Tony saw, through the smoke, its body morph smoothly from the form of Black Bolt into its natural green, muscular shape, ears spiking backward, eyes full of hate. Except this one, as Super-Skrulls tended to do, wore the colors of one of its foes, the power set of which it was now duplicating, a costume that Namor had once favored. Oh god, did that mean—

Out of the smoke flew Namor, straight at the impostor, bellowing his battle cry. “Imperius Rex!”

Well, that answered that question, at least. But Tony’s mind was stacking a whole bunch of others, including whether the Inhumans had been ruled by that Skrull, and for how long, because there was surely a set of decisions that had subtly shaped the world—

The Super-Skrull spoke another syllable with his synthesized Black Bolt powers and Namor went flying.

But then Strange was up, his hands blazing with power. “Conjuring a containment spell. If someone—”

And there was Xavier, his hands to his temples. “You monster!” he shouted at the Skrull, getting its attention.

The Skrull actually laughed. “Monster? I am you.”

What did that mean?! Xavier staggered back, shouting in pain. Did this thing have his powers too, or… or was that all for show? Was this even the real Xavier?

Tony got a ping from his armor indicating it was back to full power just as the Skrull leapt toward him at super-speed. He managed to get a gauntlet in the way and blasted it in the face. Then Richards was on the alien, his malleable form wrapped around it, finding its weak points.

“It wants the corpse,” he shouted. “Tony, get it and you out of here!”

The Skrull hauled Richards into a ribbon and threw him aside.

“Cyttorak’s Crimson Bands!” shouted Strange, and there they were, impossible bonds, the nature of which itched at Tony’s rational explanations, wrapping around the beast.

It broke them with a single effort, sending weird energies flying across the room, making them all stagger. Tony saw Strange wink out of existence when the wave hit him, there and then gone.

And then Namor was on the Skrull again, his face that of a soldier. It was a look Tony rarely saw on his colleagues, a look he associated with… with Cap.

Except Namor was no Captain America. “Die, you Skrull bastard!” he bellowed, and spun its neck in his hands as he hauled it off its feet.

“You can’t snap the neck of a shape-shifter!” it laughed.

Namor flung the beast by the head. Its body slammed into a spike of jutting metal. It burst up through its chest. The Skrull tried to haul itself up. It roared a final, defiant cry—

And then it died.

“I know,” said Namor calmly, “I was distracting you.” He spat on the ground.

“You… you killed it?” whispered Tony.

“Excellent observation skills. As you yourself said, this is war.”

“I… I mean it had information.” Tony saw that Strange had appeared again. “Where the hell did you go?”

Strange looked taken aback. “That was… like nothing I ever—”

Alien life-forms incoming, said Tony’s armor.

What was left of the roof exploded and two more Super-Skrulls dropped into the room. Tony felt his heart rate spike and his oxygen levels hit critical. They had barely survived one of these things! So… so it was time. Already. To do something he had only thought of as a final, desperate weapon of war. “Charles,” he shouted, “you have my consent, see in my thoughts what I’m planning to do! Tell the others telepathically!”

What about you? the voice came back in his head. Tony had felt nothing, the psychic intrusion completely undetectable.

Just do it! he thought.

And he did. Tony saw Strange teleport the rest of them out. As the two enormous creatures rushed at him.

He had what he needed now. His armor had been connecting to the clustered power plants of an entire state, downloading their power at the quantum foam level. This was his last gambit. He’d been brought to the point of using that now. At the start of this war.

The Skrulls reached him. He let the power seep out from the universe underneath this one at a distance of one nanometer from his armor.

Again, the world around him exploded.

*   *   *

THEY FOUND him, ten minutes later, once again sitting beside the corpse, at the center of a perfect circle of smooth glass. Somewhere in that glass was what was left of the Skrulls. Half of the East Coast would now be without power for a day. He hoped the emergency generators had kicked in. He was pretty sure what he’d just done would have killed at least one innocent bystander. He would have to find out and do what he could to make amends. But he had had no choice.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” said Richards.

“Just the once. Now they know about it, that’s the end of its usefulness. If you’re a species with a faster-than-light drive, it’s child’s play to block it.”

“I couldn’t read their thoughts,” said Xavier. He seemed shaken. It was the first time Tony had ever heard his voice sound like that. “The first one… its surface thoughts were exactly what I would expect of Black Bolt.”

“Where is the real Black Bolt?” asked Richards.

“We have to assume the worst,” said Tony.

“As you said,” said Namor, “they are trying to turn us against each other.”

“What have they changed so we can’t detect them by any means?” said Richards. “Before… super senses, telepathy, magic: they could all work if you knew where to look.”

“When they captured us,” said Strange, “they took something.”

“‘I am you,’” said Tony, realizing what Strange meant. “That’s what the first Super-Skrull said.”

“Our genetic material,” said Richards. “My god. And it’s not just us. How many of our community have needed medical treatment over the years, have given blood samples?”

“We need to move fast,” said Tony. “Because, yes, we are at war, and maybe we’ve already lost.”

Namor was looking around them all, his expression calculating. “No,” he said. “No.” And suddenly he was airborne, shouting as he departed. “I can’t trust any of you!”

The four of them were left standing there, looking at each other. “He’s… right,” said Richards. “I… we… I need to be certain of a few things before we can resume…”

“I cannot continue this conversation,” said Strange.

“I am… used to sensing thoughts, knowing who… who…” said Xavier, looking agonized.

“Please,” said Tony, “wait!”

But within seconds, in their various different ways, they all departed.

Tony Stark had thought earlier that he had never felt more alone. Now he knew he had been lying to himself.

Now he was alone, they were all alone, and they were at war.

And it seemed this would be a war they could not fight together.

ONE

ABIGAIL BRAND

ABIGAIL BRAND was feeling dutiful and yet also a little impatient. She was the Director of S.W.O.R.D., the Sentient World Observation and Response Department, a sister organization to S.H.I.E.L.D. that maintained as its headquarters The Peak, a space station orbiting Earth. That was the vantage point from which Brand tried, a little desperately, to keep track of all the potential alien threats in what was now looking like an extremely packed cosmos. One space station housing one agency was supposed to pay attention to literally the rest of the universe. The priorities of government in a nutshell.

So, Abigail Brand took her lunches while walking and she never needed to check her step count. But while being very busy and really quite seriously motivated by the possibility of missing some world-ending threat, she was also, as a bureaucrat by training, highly aware of morale and protocol and impressing the right people by being seen to participate in organizational tradition. That last part was particularly important to her as a mutant and an outsider appointment, and as someone who the senior members of various security organizations still looked at with sighs on their faces when her naturally green hair appeared on their Zoom calls. All of which was why, when Commander Timothy Aloysius Cadwallader “Dum Dum” Dugan, the longest-serving surviving officer of S.H.I.E.L.D., declared he was coming up for a tour of inspection, she got her department heads, and everyone else who needed a boost, assembled on the shuttle deck to meet him. Dugan had actually served in the Second World War, in Nick Fury’s Howling Commandos, and was alive now only as a result of extraordinary robotics, drugs and hey, probably some magic in there too. Or maybe only his jaunty bowler hat kept his head from falling off.

“At ease,” he drawled, as he doffed it to the crew, proving her wrong about that part. “This is just a get-together of two world-savin’ agencies, nothin’ to get the balloons out fer.”

Homespun charm: check. Brand found herself satisfied at the grins she saw on the faces of her people. Now they could all damn well get back to work. “Let me show you the—”

Which was when the red alert sounded and the whole deck started flashing and blaring. She ran to the command center, Dugan and several of the department heads beside her. “We got a bogie,” said Hadley, hitting sensor controls. “And it’s coming in fast.”

“Give me details,” called Brand as the approaching spaceship swam into view. The cameras had caught it and were now focusing in at speed. It had a sleek shape, designed for atmospheric entry, but it was coming in too fast and at too steep an angle. Which meant it was either damaged or on course for a surprise attack. It was rounded, without hard points, suggesting a cargo vehicle, and it had no obvious weapon ports.

Hadley put out a radio call on all the frequencies regularly used by recognized alien species. “Unidentified alien craft hitting Earth space at vector—”

“That’s a Skrull ship,” said Brand. “Could be the troop transport variant. Read the damn manual.”

“Ma’am.”

“One Skrull ship?” She shook her head at how odd that was. “Keep looking. Is this an invasion?”

“Nothing, ma’am, scanning whole sky,” called another technician.

“It’s entered Earth’s atmosphere,” said Hadley. “And… it’s flying. Just about. It slid out of the dive but it’s still not looking like it’s under proper control.”

“What is this?!” Brand looked over her shoulder to see Dugan watching calmly. She was grateful to him for leaving her to it. That’s what you got with the real professionals. She looked back to the screens. “Where’s it headed?”

“It’s… going to crash land… southernhemisphere… very southern, coordinate estimation puts it coming down…” The technician looked up at her, understanding the implication of what he’d just seen. “It’ll land in the Savage Land, ma’am.”

That was a hell of a place for anyone, particularly insurgent aliens, to land by coincidence. The Savage Land was an anomalous region of the Antarctic that had been created by aliens in prehistoric times. It was full of extraordinary resources: super-powered schemes were always in motion there, along with continuing general weirdness, and, yeah, actual dinosaurs. It was a rich stew already, never mind with added Skrulls. Brand turned to her communications officer. “Get me Tony Stark.”

TWO

TONY STARK

IT TOOK a week, but the promise of getting to conduct the autopsy on Skrull Elektra had persuaded Reed Richards to once again be in the same room as Tony. Richards had, at the door, told Tony that he had an exit ready, should, presumably, Tony show any signs of growing pointy green ears. He continued to look judgmental as well as nervous. Tony understood the latter feeling all too well. A week ago they’d both met with a Xavier who could walk, a Strange who’d vanished and seemingly returned and a Namor who’d survived the power of “Black Bolt” almost unscathed. Any and all of those things, in previous times, wouldn’t have been worth mentioning… well, maybe the walking thing. But Xavier had done exactly that once before without being a Skrull. Tony would have consoled himself with the idea that Namor had killed that Skrull, except that Skrulls were absolutely ruthless enough to do things like that as part of a cover. Even now, he didn’t feel he trusted Richards entirely, but he was the one with the expertise here, and Tony had decided he would keep an ear open for the sort of carefully dropped misinformation the Skrulls were so adept at.

Tony had opted to bring another specialist into the circle today, an Avenger who’d seen his point of view during the Civil War: Henry Pym, the former Ant-Man, Giant-Man, and all sorts of other identities. Pym never could seem to choose one and stick to it. Pym only ever looked judgmental and nervous at Tony when the subject of Pym’s ex-wife (and Tony’s ex-girlfriend) Janet Van Dyne came up; that probably wasn’t going to happen while the three of them were standing around an operating table upon which lay the naked corpse of a green alien woman. Tony brought Pym up to speed, adding that every futurist bone in his body—which was his whole skeleton—was screaming that undetectable Skrulls, undetectable freaking Super-Skrulls, on Earth meant that this now was war.

“Okay,” Pym said, puffing out his cheeks in amazement, “you say they’re undetectable now. What if they’re not? What if it’s just a trick?”

“How… could it be a ‘trick’?” said Richards. He always treated Pym like he was a promising if slightly too eager pupil.

“Maybe those rebel Avengers are the only Skrulls and they’re messing with Tony by setting this up. I mean, they’re the only source we’ve got on them being undetectable, right? Them and Xavier? Maybe that explains why that group weren’t onside for putting super heroes under official oversight!”

Oh, wasn’t that a tempting thought? It didn’t feel quite right, though. “Let’s table that for now, and—”

An alarm went off inside Tony’s armor. “Director Stark, this is Maria Hill at S.H.I.E.L.D. actual. You asked to be immediately informed of anything about the Skrulls. Word from S.W.O.R.D. is we’ve got a downed alien craft. It’s a Skrull transport ship.” His vision flooded with images of the crash site. Oh god, the Savage Land?! There was so much there the Skrulls could use. “Any survivors?”

“We can’t tell from the satellite imaging. The Savage Land plays hell with our sensors. We have to send a team in. I can lead it myself.”

“No, I’ll do it.” Tony turned to the others. “I have to go.”

“Understandable,” said Richards, “but this autopsy is also of the highest—”

“I’ll call in for reports.”

Henry Pym gave Tony that judgmental and nervous look, which was, it seemed, not entirely reserved for the topic of Janet. He shrugged at Richards. “He’ll call in.”

Tony raised his hands in frustration, wanting to pause for a moment to explain, but no, he had no time. The roof opened and a moment later he was airborne, the lab shrinking below him. He brought up the priority line to Avengers Tower. “Avengers assemble,” he said. For all the good it was going to do.

THREE

DANNY RAND

DANNY RAND watched Luke Cage’s posture shift as he took the call. His old friend, the hero formerly known as Power Man, the Hero for Hire, stood in front of the picture window in this empty office block in Manhattan. An empty office block that their team of Avengers—what the press were calling the “Rebel Avengers”—were secretly using as their headquarters. As the result of a racist experiment conducted when he’d been in prison for a crime he hadn’t committed, Luke Cage had gained steel-hard skin and considerable added strength. He had served with huge distinction as a member of the official Avengers before Tony Stark had asked him to kowtow to authority, and Luke had been the very first person to tell him where to shove it. Danny had been proud to be at his side when he’d done that, and was proud of all his friend had done since. Luke had been initially relaxed to hear the voice of their friend Jessica Drew. She’d always maintained links with Stark’s “official” Avengers—indeed, she’d just returned to their ranks, obviously because that Skrull-Elektra corpse had made her feel she had to tell someone official.

But then Luke had tensed, straightened, ready for a fight. Danny knew he was going to switch the phone to speaker before he’d done it. Some of this foresight was down to Danny having fought alongside Luke for decades, as Power Man and Iron Fist. Some of it was down to Danny’s training as a master of the martial arts. And maybe some of it was because he had the people skills to keep his enormous business empire ticking over even while he was on the run from the law, though it was pretty hard to access much of it right now without tipping off the authorities as to the location of the heroes who wouldn’t sign up for official registration.

Jessica’s voice rang out across the room. “Guys, I’m sorry, I had to take them that Skrull. I just had to. I knew you’d argue with me about it. Tony agreed I wouldn’t have to say a word about how to find you, and we can’t be tracked on this phone, and—”

“It’s okay,” said Luke. “We appreciate you keeping the lines of communication open, and we trust you. How’s the other Jess doing?” That was Luke’s wife, Jessica Jones, the super-powered P.I. who, following something terrible in her past, had given up on being a super hero. She had been with the rebels for the longest time but when they were attacked at their last safe house, she—with Luke’s blessing—put the safety of their baby, Danielle, first, and gave herself up to Tony Stark, signing the Superhero Registration Act. In return, he let her and Danielle live with his Avengers at the Tower. Stark liked to make these grand gestures of reconciliation. Jess had carefully left at a point where she didn’t know where the team were headed, but the current location of “the two Jessicas” had made the remaining rebels uneasy. Luke was putting the best possible face on all that. “Just tell us what’s happening right now.”

“Okay, thank you. Love you guys. I just got the call to assemble, but everyone’s scattered, it’s going to take a while for us to ship out. A Skrull ship just crashed in the Savage Land.”

Danny looked around the room at the expressions on the faces of the others. The man known as Logan, or Wolverine, just grimly nodded. He’d been saying how he expected the Skrulls to make a move sooner rather than later. Logan was a mutant, a member of the X-Men who split his time between working with them and helping out their team. It was just as well being stealthy was one of the two things he claimed to be “the best at”—the other thing being extreme, bloody violence, facilitated by the adamantium skeleton and retractable claws that had been implanted within him against his will as well as by his natural mutant ability to heal just about any wound. That ability made him very long-lived and thus very certain, in an old man way, about what he stood for. He too quickly told Stark where to go.

Clint Barton had closed his eyes. He seemed to take their discovery of Skrull Elektra in Japan personally, his bad year getting exponentially worse. Clint was an Avengers loyalist, a former criminal who’d been saved from that life by Steve Rogers and set up as a super hero, an Avenger. All he’d had then was his skill with a bow—albeit an incredible level of skill—and back then he’d called himself Hawkeye. While he was with the rebels, he wore a different costume, using only the martial arts skills he’d honed throughout his career, calling himself Ronin. He’d declared that he’d be Hawkeye again when the Avengers were united once more. As though he was keeping that name pristine. Also, of course, someone else, with Clint’s blessing, was using it now. And maybe he was giving her space with this gesture also.

Maya Lopez, known as Echo, the skilled martial artist who had killed Elektra and thus revealed this whole issue, looked perplexed and angry. Danny realized that, being deaf, she couldn’t hear what was being said over the phone. In that moment Clint realized too and brought her up to speed using sign language. He wore a hearing aid to help with his partial deafness and she did not. Danny got the impression those two were together now, at least on and off, but if they were they kept that to themselves. Echo possessed the amazing power of photographic reflexes, meaning that she only had to see a physical movement once, even the most skilled of martial arts sequences, and she could copy it precisely. Danny envied her that and hoped he’d never have to test his own skills against someone so familiar. He doubted the real Elektra would have survived the encounter.

Pacing, his expression unreadable under his mask, but his body language showing the righteous anger that made Danny so continually pleased by him, was the Amazing Spider-Man. He had thoroughly explored both sides in the Civil War, drawn to Stark’s concept of order, but finally opting for the freedom to always do the right thing. Because here was the purest super hero of any of them. He’d been doing this since he was a kid, and he did it for the best of reasons. Lately he’d taken to saying that all he was after right now was “a win that felt like a win.” Of all the people in the room, if Danny ever needed to trust someone with his life, it’d be whoever was under that mask. Luke was Danny’s closest friend, but Danny could say that about Spidey to Luke’s face and Luke would just be like, “Mm-hm.”

The only irregular member of the group they hadn’t been able to locate to summon to this meeting, convened after they’d returned from Japan to talk over the next step, was Doctor Strange. His absence, given that without magic they were basically people who hit things and loosed arrows, was very much felt.

“What do you want a bunch of heroes on the run from the law to do about that?” Luke was saying to Jessica now.

“At this point,” Jessica said, her voice over the phone warm and humane as always, “I trust you more than Stark to, you know, not be a Skrull. So I may have picked the wrong team here. But hey, now I’ve told you this, maybe you could get a head start. Wouldn’t you like a head start? Oh. Sorry. Gotta go.”

Luke ended the call, glanced at them, saw they were ready and willing, and hit another number. “Hey, man,” he said, “I need a quick drop. Yeah? Great. Okay.” He emailed some details then turned back to the room. “So,” he said, “you guys ready to piss off everyone?”

*   *   *

DANNY ALMOST felt sorry for Natasha Romanoff as she stood beside the Quinjet on the takeoff ramp atop Avengers Tower. The Black Widow, even when she’d been leading the Avengers, had only ever associated with super heroes, rather than understanding the culture. She was, at heart, an intelligence officer, a spy, and she, like Logan, went back a long way. She was practical to the point of horror, and of course she’d seen Stark’s point, choosing to stay in his team. Now he saw a moment of horrified reaction on her face as their team literally appeared out of thin air. They’d been teleported through a chilling nothingness by the man Danny only knew as Cloak and appeared on the other side of it at this new location, stepping out of the cloak that gave their helper his name. Cloak was someone who’d demonstrated no interest in either side of the Civil War, and yet was willing to be summoned by Luke Cage to help out. In that second, Natasha got halfway to aiming her wrist blaster with one hand while the other went to an alarm. But a moment later Spider-Man’s web plastered her flat against the wall.

“You people are out of your—” she yelled before another web left her unable to do anything more than yell in an entirely muffled way.

“You guys have fun stealing Tony’s car,” said Cloak in a voice that had the emptiness of the void about it, and vanished.

They all piled into the Avengers Quinjet. “Man, Nat’s going to have so much stuff to yell at me about,” said Clint.

“You two used to go out, right?” said Luke, taking the controls.

Echo looked sidelong at Clint as they strapped into their seats. “Who haven’t you gone out with?”

Clint managed an awkward grin. His answer, if there was one, was lost in the roar of takeoff. Which was probably just as well.

*   *   *

THE SHEER speed of a Quinjet always amazed Danny. They were out over the Atlantic and heading south in seconds. “Uh,” said Spider-Man, “just FYI, Tony can control Quinjets from his armor.”

“Not anymore,” said Logan, holding up a mess of electronics on the end of his claws.

“He can still follow us,” said Danny, “he controls the world’s satellites.”

“He knows where we’re headed,” said Luke grimly.

“I thought the Savage Land was, you know, made up,” said Maya.

“It’s real,” said Logan. “I spent a lot of time there. Completely different temperature, different ecosystem, prehistoric animals. Great place for a vacation.” His Canadian rasp was so dry that Danny never knew when Logan was being sarcastic.

“How do we know this isn’t a Skrull trap?” said Spider-Man.

“Oh,” said Luke, “I hope it is. I’m so sick of hiding. I’m sick of not trusting each other. Avenger against Avenger. I miss my wife and kid. I want to put this right. I want things to go back to normal.”

“Amen to that,” said Clint.

“When were things ever normal?” said Maya.

“Relatively speaking,” said Luke, flashing her a grin. “Hey, if it takes me punching a Skrull to get us on the path back to that, I’m going to stand right there and do that. When Tony Stark arrives, he can damn well join in.”

*   *   *

THE JOURNEY took eight hours. They talked about Japan, about how Skrull Elektra had been in political control of the organization of ninja assassins known as the Hand, about how the Hand had exercised their own mystical form of mind control over Maya. She had fought back through sheer willpower and killed her tormentor, Elektra, only to find another nightmare beneath. The idea of a Skrull being at the apex of that pyramid of dominance scared all of them. Danny spent some time sleeping and meditating, readying himself for what was to come.

With five minutes or so of their journey left, the expanse of the Antarctic ice caps beneath them, Clint, in the co-pilot’s seat, reported that their pursuers were in sensor range: four flying figures and another Quinjet. The sheer firepower Stark’s Avengers had compared to theirs had always made Danny hope they’d never get into a direct confrontation.

Well, maybe Luke was right about the Skrulls being something they could unite around. Ahead, clouds were rushing closer, surrounding an unlikely mass of green and brown far below. Luke set the Quinjet into a dive through the cloudbanks. They were going to have less than an hour on the ground before the other team got here. An hour in which to find the crashed Skrull ship. They’d beaten longer odds,