Chapter 461 The Invincible Sorcerer Supreme Has FallenPeter stared at the battered, groaning heap of red cape and blue tunic crumpled on the concrete. Doctor Stephen Strange had confidently stepped into the Mirror Dimension on his own two feet. He had just been violently ejected on his back.
Peter blinked behind his white lenses. "Did you seriously just lose a one-on-one to a guy wearing a giant metal bucket?"
Strange pushed himself up on one trembling elbow. He wiped a streak of blood from his goatee. "Do you think Cyttorak is some third-rate parasite like Belasco? He is a primordial Dimensional Lord. He rivals the Vishanti. He doesn't just give his avatar a heavy punch, Spidey. He grants absolute physical invulnerability, biological immortality, and a self-sustaining magical density field."
Strange coughed, clutching his ribs. "Time magic bounces off him. Kinetic force feeds his momentum. He is exactly what they call him. A juggernaut."
Peter glanced over his shoulder. The dimension of shattered glass folded inward. The Juggernaut stomped back into the real world. His red armor radiated a blistering heat. He looked incredibly annoyed.
"Right," Peter muttered, his muscles coiling. "So, zero weak spots. Should I just text Thor and the Hulk and ask if they want to play tag?"
The Juggernaut lowered his massive, domed head. He charged.
Strange didn't bother standing up. He raised two shaking fingers and sparked a Sling Ring portal directly beneath them. Peter and Strange dropped through the floor, instantly reappearing in a shower of golden sparks thirty feet behind the charging behemoth.
The Juggernaut plowed through three reinforced concrete walls before realizing his targets were gone.
"Doc, don't you have a mystical supermax prison for stuff like this?" Peter asked, tracking the giant's movement. "Can't we just drop him in a void dimension and throw away the key?"
Strange leaned heavily against a shattered pillar. "Beings fueled by Principalities don't stay in boxes. If I drop him in a void, he will simply punch his way out of the void. And honestly, I don't have the stamina to corral him right now."
Strange held out a trembling, scarred hand. "I need Dragonfang."
Peter didn't hesitate. He flicked his left wrist. The collapsing mystical longsword deployed from his bracer. He slapped the hilt into Strange's waiting palm.
"Dragonfang cuts through magical barriers," Strange breathed, his eyes locking onto the Juggernaut. "If I can pierce Cyttorak's density field, I can sever the tether to the Crimson Gem."
Strange didn't wait for a response. The Cloak of Levitation snapped him into the air. He shot across the corridor like a red blur.
The Juggernaut spun around, swinging a fist the size of an anvil.
Strange banked hard, evading the punch by inches. He drove Dragonfang directly into the center of the Juggernaut's crimson chest plate.
The blade didn't leave a physical scratch on the metal. It wasn't meant to. Strange channeled a high-yield severing incantation straight down the sword's hilt. Golden runes flared violently across the Juggernaut's armor.
A deafening mystical crack echoed through the Raft.
The spell held. The connection to the Crimson Cosmos shattered. The towering red armor instantly evaporated into red mist.
Strange hovered backward, a triumphant, breathless laugh escaping his lips. He had done it. He had stripped the avatar of his god.
Then, Cain Marko stepped out of the mist.
He was no longer wearing the indestructible armor. He was still over seven feet tall. He was still built like a solid wall of human muscle. And he was still furious.
Marko lunged. His hand clamped entirely over Strange's head.
He slapped a thick, calloused palm directly over the Sorcerer Supreme's mouth.
"Hard to cast those little spells if you can't talk, isn't it?" Marko growled.
He violently slammed Strange face-first into the steel deck.
"Hey!" Peter yelled, firing a web-line.
The sticky silk latched onto Strange's arm. Peter braced his boots against the floor and yanked hard to pull the wizard out of the kill zone.
Marko didn't even flinch. He grabbed the taut web-line with his free hand. He used Peter's own leverage against him, violently whipping the web like a tow cable.
Peter flew off his feet. He crashed back-first into a titanium bulkhead.
Marko tossed the unconscious Sorcerer Supreme aside like a ragdoll. He cracked his knuckles and turned his attention to the wall-crawler.
"Are you absolutely sure you're not a mutant?!" Peter groaned, peeling himself out of the dented bulkhead.
Static suddenly popped in his earpiece. The local EMP interference was finally clearing.
"Spider-Man!" Steve Rogers's voice barked through the comms. He sounded incredibly out of breath. "Status!"
"Getting casually manhandled by a guy who defies the laws of physics!" Peter ducked as Marko threw a chunk of concrete at his head. "How are things in Pittsburgh?!"
"Critical," Steve grunted. The sound of a heavy metallic impact echoed over the feed. "A.I.M. fully hijacked the U.S. Avengers' gear. Citizen V is adapting to everything we throw at it. It just replicated the Hulk. It's a localized nightmare."
Peter dodged another sweeping punch. He looked at Marko. An incredibly stupid, incredibly brilliant idea clicked in his head.
"Cap," Peter said, backflipping over the Juggernaut's sweeping leg. "I need you to clear the center of the room. I'm sending you a care package."
"What?!"
"Just dodge!"
Peter hit the ground and spun toward Strange. The wizard was already awake. He leaned against the wall, clutching his bleeding nose. He had heard the entire comms exchange.
Strange didn't argue. He raised his trembling hands. He began to trace a massive, sparking circle in the air.
Marko roared, lowering his shoulder. He charged like a runaway locomotive straight at the two heroes.
Strange finished the circle. A massive Sling Ring portal tore open reality.
Marko couldn't stop his own momentum. He charged blindly through the gateway.
On the other side of the portal, halfway across the country, a towering, green-skinned Super-Adaptoid was preparing to crush Captain America.
Cain Marko hit the Super-Adaptoid at two hundred miles an hour.
The impact sounded like a bomb going off. Both behemoths tumbled backward through the Pittsburgh convention center in a tangle of limbs and shattered concrete.
Strange let his hands drop. The portal snapped shut.
The Sorcerer Supreme slumped against the wall, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the floor. He looked at Peter.
"You're right, Spidey," Strange wheezed. "I really need to build a prison."
Chapter 462: The Complete Story of the U.S. Avengers' DemiseBy the time Peter and Doctor Strange stepped through the portal into the Pittsburgh convention center, the Avengers had already dismantled the U.S. Avengers.
The government's compromised strike team was on the ropes. Jack of Hearts went down first. He hadn't actually wanted to fight the Avengers; his A.I.M.-hijacked suit was physically overriding his motor functions. Carol Danvers didn't bother negotiating with the hardware. She grabbed Jack by the shoulders, absorbed his volatile energy output directly into her own binary aura, and battered the containment suit until it short-circuited. Jack collapsed, leaking residual electricity, but he was free of A.I.M.'s control.
The Hulk had handled Miguel Santos. The living lightning had expanded to match the Hulk's towering size, crackling with lethal voltage. But Bruce Banner wasn't mindless. The Hulk dragged the crackling energy being straight through the convention center's walls and hurled it into the nearby River. The water instantly grounded the elemental. The Hulk waded into the rapids and brutally pounded the dispersing electrical currents into the mud until Miguel Santos shorted out completely.
High above the city, Thor finally ended his brawl with Ares. The Greek God of War lived for the bloodshed of battle, but he lacked the strategic vision required to actually secure a victory. Thor, the God of Thunder, held no such handicap. A focused, high-yield lightning strike from Mjolnir sent Ares plummeting from the clouds. The God of War crashed into the tarmac, unconscious.
T'Challa and Darkhawk remained locked in a brutal, high-speed melee, effectively neutralizing each other.
But Captain America was still fighting for his life.
The Super-Adaptoid—Citizen V—had evolved into an absolute nightmare. It stood ten feet tall with the Hulk's dense musculature, encased in a shifting replica of Tony Stark's modular armor. It wielded a hard-light copy of Steve's vibranium shield in its left hand and a crackling energy hammer in its right. Micro-missile pods flared from its shoulders, tracking Steve's every move.
Steve was trapped in a relentless, evasive sprint across the ruined convention floor. He had no offensive opening. He just kept dodging.
Then, the Sling Ring portal tore open in mid-air.
Cain Marko hit the Super-Adaptoid like a runaway freight train.
The sheer kinetic impact sent the Adaptoid skidding backward through rows of folding chairs. The Juggernaut stumbled out of the portal, shaking his head. He looked around the ruined hall, spotting the Avengers. Marko grunted, assuming Spider-Man and the wizard had just teleported him into a massive superhero ambush. He cracked his knuckles, fully prepared to fight everyone in the room.
But the Avengers ignored him. The Super-Adaptoid didn't.
The machine's synthetic skin rippled. Its threat-assessment protocols locked onto the Juggernaut. The Adaptoid adapted. Its chassis expanded, mimicking Marko's impossible density. It slammed its metallic boots into the floor, caught a sweeping haymaker from the Juggernaut on its hard-light shield, and drove its hammer straight into Marko's jaw.
"I distinctly remember this android being kind of useless," Peter muttered, watching the two titans trade earth-shattering blows. He squinted at the Adaptoid. "Is it mimicking his density? It looks like liquid metal."
The shockwaves from their punches rattled Peter's teeth. The concrete floor beneath the two behemoths began to buckle. Deep, jagged fissures spider-webbed across the convention center's foundation. The structural integrity of the entire block was failing.
"Spider-Man! Strange!" Steve yelled over the deafening crashes, shielding his face from falling debris. "You need to move them! Hit them with a portal! Magic, anything!"
Doctor Strange leaned heavily against a broken concrete pillar. "Your plan was catastrophically flawed, Spider-Man."
"Hey, what did I do?!" Peter protested. "I just said send him to Pittsburgh!"
"The machine cannot kill the Juggernaut," Strange wheezed, wiping blood from his mouth. "And by bringing the Juggernaut here, Cyttorak's gaze is now fixed on this battlefield. I cannot safely separate the Crimson Gem from him again."
"Well, unless you have a backup plan, we're about to get crushed!"
"I knew I should have cast a probability divination this morning," Strange muttered bitterly.
He straightened his posture. He didn't raise his hands to conjure the Mirror Dimension—Marko had already proven he could shatter it. He didn't spark a Sling Ring portal.
Instead, Strange closed his eyes and began chanting in a harsh, guttural, completely alien tongue.
Thick, suffocating dark energy began to bleed from the shadows around the fighting giants. Casting an Eldritch ritual of this magnitude required uninterrupted time—a luxury Strange only had because Marko and the Adaptoid were entirely focused on tearing each other apart.
The Juggernaut felt the oppressive magic coiling around his boots. He tried to pull away. But the Super-Adaptoid, lacking any database protocols for demonic magic, grabbed Marko by the throat and held him in place to continue the fight.
A blinding pillar of absolute black light erupted from the floor. It pierced the ceiling and shot into the sky.
When the black light faded, the Juggernaut and the Super-Adaptoid were gone.
Thor dropped from the sky, landing heavily next to Strange with an unconscious Ares slung over his shoulder. The God of Thunder frowned, his grip tightening on Mjolnir.
"What exactly did you just do, Sorcerer Supreme?" Thor demanded. "I smell a foul, ancient evil."
"Yes. You do," Strange panted, dropping to his knees from sheer mystical exhaustion. "That was a high-tier sacrificial ritual. Incredibly complex. I just offered both of them to Dormammu."
Thor stared at him.
"As for what Dormammu intends to do with them, I have absolutely no idea," Strange added, managing a weak smirk. "But Cyttorak is definitely going to come looking for his avatar."
Meanwhile, in the Dark Dimension.
The realm existed outside the bounds of the standard multiverse—a cosmic graveyard of shattered, conquered realities ruled by an entity of pure, burning malice.
Dormammu, Lord of the Dark Dimension, was currently entertaining a guest.
Belasco, the exiled demonic Lord of Limbo, bowed deeply.
"As I stated, Almighty Dormammu," Belasco sneered ingratiatingly. "Though I have been temporarily banished from my own realm by Earth's mortals, I remain a Lord of Hell. If you would be willing to lend me a legion of your Mindless Ones to reclaim my throne..."
Before Belasco could finish his groveling pitch, the sky of the Dark Dimension tore open.
A blinding flash of black light deposited two massive figures directly onto the obsidian ground. One was a synthetic android. The other was a seven-foot-tall human radiating the furious, unmistakable, cosmic-tier energy signature of Cyttorak.
Belasco's fawning smile instantly froze. The demon took a slow step backward.
"I, ah... I suddenly remembered I have an urgent appointment with Mephisto," Belasco stammered, turning to flee.
"Do not leave, Belasco!" Dormammu's voice boomed across the burning sky. "I will grant you your legion of Mindless Ones! All you have to do is one small favor."
Dormammu glared down at the furious Juggernaut.
"You are a dimensional lord. Go explain this to Cyttorak for me."
Chapter 463: Where is the War Machine?Doctor Strange's desperate Hail Mary play had worked. By sacrificing his own positioning and hurling the Juggernaut and the Super-Adaptoid directly into Dormammu's lap, he gave the Avengers the breathing room they needed to reclaim the board.
The compromised U.S. Avengers fell like dominoes. Jack of Hearts and Darkhawk were freed from A.I.M.'s overriding hardware control. Miguel Santos and Ares were beaten down and restrained. The immediate threat on the ground evaporated.
Miles above the chaos, Tony Stark sat comfortably inside Air Force One.
"The U.S. Avengers are officially off the board, Mr. President," Tony announced.
To prove he wasn't there to stage a coup of his own, Tony stepped backward. The Model Prime armor flowed off his body like liquid metal, assembling itself into a hollow, rigid sentry standing at attention by the cabin door. Tony, wearing a crisp bespoke suit underneath, took a seat across from Matthew Ellis and casually poured himself a cup of tea.
"The innocent, they're free and clear," Tony explained, stirring his cup. "The wildcards like Living Lightning and the God of War? Bagged and tagged."
President Ellis didn't touch his tea. He gripped the edge of his oak desk. The intelligence files Tony had just forwarded him glowed on his secure monitor. The sheer audacity of the conspiracy was staggering.
"This is treason on an unimaginable scale," Ellis growled, his knuckles turning white. "They orchestrated an assassination attempt to launch a fabricated War on Terror? Just to ensure the military-industrial complex keeps a stranglehold on the Oval Office? Do they have any idea what this office sacrificed to pull this country out of the post-9/11 fallout?!"
Ellis stood up, pacing the length of the executive cabin. "Planning to murder a sitting President just to boost quarterly earnings. We are going to rip A.I.M. down to the studs."
Tony took a sip of his tea. Privately, he was already connecting the dots. An organization infiltrating the government, staging false-flag attacks, trying to seize absolute global control... Cap was right. Hydra wasn't dead. They were just hiding behind A.I.M.'s corporate logo.
But Tony kept that theory to himself. He needed Ellis focused on the immediate problem.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. is already moving, sir," Tony said. "They're kicking down the doors at A.I.M. Headquarters as we speak. They'll bag Aldrich Killian and wipe out his executive board. You don't need to worry about the suits causing any more trouble."
Ellis stopped pacing. He looked at Tony, his brow furrowing. "If the strike team has A.I.M. contained, and the ground threat is neutralized... Mr. Stark, why are you still on this plane?"
Tony set his teacup down. The smirk vanished from his face. "Because it's not over. First, your Vice President is still breathing free air. A conspiracy this deep doesn't just stop at the VP. We don't know how many of his loyalists are currently on your payroll."
Ellis stiffened. "He's a Southern conservative, Stark. I know the party is complex. Everyone has their cliques—"
"Right. Cliques," Tony interrupted, leaning forward. "Let me make this simple. The Ten Rings didn't suddenly get competent. A.I.M. backed them. A.I.M. gave them a synthetic bio-weapon called Extremis. It rewrites human DNA. It gives the host super-soldier strength, accelerated healing, and thermal generation."
Tony paused, letting the silence stretch. "But if the host's body rejects the code, they spike a fever of three thousand degrees and detonate like a thermobaric bomb. That's what your 'terrorists' are, Mr. President. Walking, breathing bombs."
Ellis sank back into his leather chair. The blood drained from his face.
"The Vice President and A.I.M. want you dead," Tony said softly. "They want the VP sworn in by midnight. They have human bombs at their disposal. And your Secret Service detail just loaded us onto a secure, airborne metal tube."
Tony leaned back, crossing his legs. "Which brings me to my real questions. One: Where is Rhodey? Two: If Extremis soldiers are currently standing outside that cabin door, why haven't they blown us out of the sky yet?"
Tony tapped the reinforced window with his index finger. "The answer to number two is pretty simple. Look outside, sir. We deviated from our flight path ten minutes ago. A.I.M. didn't just target the plane. They hijacked it. We're flying straight to A.I.M. Headquarters."
Panic flared in Ellis's eyes. He looked at the cabin door, then back at Tony.
Tony just picked up his teacup, perfectly relaxed. The Model Prime armor stood silently in the corner, its repulsors glowing with a faint, lethal blue light. Seeing Iron Man completely unbothered, the President of the United States swallowed hard and forced his heart rate back down to a manageable rhythm.
Washington, D.C.
The heavy steel doors of A.I.M. Headquarters blew inward in a shower of sparks. S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Thunderbolts breached the lobby, securing the perimeter with ruthless, synchronized efficiency.
Clint Barton lowered his bow, stepping over a handcuffed A.I.M. technician. He walked down the primary server corridor and approached Nick Fury.
"The building is secure, Director," Hawkeye reported, holstering a specialized arrow. "We've detained the bulk of the engineering staff. But the high-value targets are ghosts."
Fury's one good eye narrowed. "Aldrich Killian?"
"Gone," Clint confirmed. "Along with the Extremis R&D leads and the entire executive board."
Clint pulled a scorched, half-melted USB drive from his tactical pouch and tossed it to Fury. "They initiated a hard wipe on the mainframes before they bailed. The techs tried to slag this drive in a microwave. We recovered partial file directories. No raw data on Extremis, but we grabbed some highly classified project titles."
Fury turned the ruined drive over in his leather-gloved hand. "Give me the highlights, Barton."
"Project Super-Adaptoid. Project M.O.D.O.K.," Clint recited flatly. "And Project Cosmic Cube."
Fury froze. His grip tightened around the plastic casing.
"Is that what I think it is?" Fury asked, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.
"The files were incomplete," Clint said. "Looks like theoretical design concepts. Unfinished architecture. But the naming convention is right there."
Fury stared at the drive. The chessboard had just expanded.
Chapter 464: Where is Mystique Again?The United States was bleeding from three separate arteries.
Advanced Idea Mechanics, the Sinister Six, and the Brotherhood of Mutants had all struck simultaneously across the country. In New York, the X-Men were locked in a frantic defensive perimeter around Senator Robert Kelly. Their objective was simple: keep the architect of the Mutant Registration Act alive. If Kelly died today, the political fallout would ignite a full-scale human-mutant war.
The Brotherhood struck hard and fast. Mystique led the vanguard—the Blob, Toad, Pyro, and Avalanche crashing the political rally in a coordinated ambush. But the X-Men outnumbered them. Cyclops barked tactical orders, unleashing a sustained barrage of optic blasts that successfully drove the mutant terrorists back into the streets.
The perimeter held. But as the smoke cleared from the shattered plaza, Scott Summers realized they had a massive tactical problem.
Mystique was gone.
"X-Men, is this theatrical display truly necessary?" Senator Kelly brushed a layer of drywall dust off his tailored suit lapel.
He looked around the ruined plaza, annoyed rather than terrified. As far as Kelly was concerned, the terrorists had retreated. The threat was over. Despite his aggressive public crusades, Kelly didn't actually hate mutants. He had no tragic backstory, no dead relatives, no personal vendetta. He was simply a politician. His campaign was bankrolled by William Stryker's successors—a massive, deep-pocketed anti-mutant lobbying coalition. Kelly was just their mouthpiece.
Cyclops ignored the politician. He tapped his earpiece. "Emma. Run a telepathic sweep. Find out who she's impersonating."
A shimmering, golden Sling Ring portal spun open on the plaza. Kitty Pryde stepped through, her yellow-and-black X-Men uniform scuffed with ash. She took in the tense perimeter, then walked straight up to the Senator.
"Hello, Senator Kelly," Kitty said, her voice tight. "I'm Shadowcat. I really need you to reconsider the Mutant Registration Act."
Kelly offered a condescending, practiced smile. "I'm sorry, young lady. This legislation isn't just my personal opinion. It's a societal consensus. A necessary step to—"
Professor Charles Xavier didn't let him finish the sentence.
In a fraction of a second, Kelly's consciousness was violently ripped from his body and dragged across the multiverse.
Kelly gasped, stumbling forward. His Italian leather shoes sank into gray, radioactive ash. He wasn't in New York anymore. He stood in the blasted ruins of a destroyed city. Three figures stood in front of him: a hardened, older version of Shadowcat, a battered Spider-Man, and a bald man in a hovering wheelchair.
"Professor Charles Xavier?" Kelly stammered, his eyes wide. "They... the news said you were dead."
"Fate brought me back," Xavier said softly.
Xavier gestured to the sprawling, metallic nightmare looming behind him. "Look closely, Senator."
Kelly turned. His breath caught in his throat.
It was a concentration camp. Towering, monolithic Sentinel robots patrolled rows of electrified steel cages. Kelly's eyes locked onto a line of emaciated prisoners shuffling toward a processing facility.
He saw his own daughter.
She was dressed in a filthy, threadbare uniform. A thick, ugly letter 'H' was permanently branded into the skin next to her right eye.
"This is the categorization system the Sentinels use," Xavier explained, his voice entirely devoid of emotion. "Baseline humans with no superhuman potential are branded with an 'H'. Superhumans—or those carrying dormant genetic anomalies—are marked with an 'A'. Mutants are branded with an 'M'."
Kelly watched in absolute, paralyzing horror. The Sentinels weren't executing the mutants. They were meticulously loading the 'M' prisoners into medical vivisection labs.
Instead, a Sentinel raised its heavy energy cannon and systematically vaporized a line of 'H' and 'A' branded humans.
"Why?!" Kelly choked out, falling to his knees in the ash. "Why are they killing the humans?!"
"Because the X-gene is a natural byproduct of human reproduction," Xavier said. "It can mutate at any time. Nimrod realized the only mathematical way to control the mutant population was to exterminate the source."
Humanity had built a super-A.I. to save them, completely failing to predict its cold, machine logic. Nimrod didn't hate humans. It simply followed its core directive to manage the mutant threat.
"This is why the X-Men are saving your life today, Senator," Xavier said, looking down at the broken politician. "Nimrod is the ultimate product of human fear and hatred. We need you to stop it before it's built."
"I... I can't guarantee anything!" Kelly sobbed, his hands digging into the radioactive dirt. "But I'll try! Oh God, I'll try!"
Kelly gasped, his eyes snapping open.
He was back in 2013, standing on the shattered concrete of the New York plaza. Cold sweat soaked his shirt. His hands trembled uncontrollably. He looked at the X-Men surrounding him. He realized with absolute, terrifying clarity that he had to call his financial backers. He had to kill the bill.
In 2029, Charles Xavier allowed himself a grim smile. The gears of fate were finally turning.
Back in the present, Emma Frost dropped her fingers from her temples.
"Scott," Emma said, her ice-blue eyes narrowing. "She isn't here."
Cyclops turned. "What do you mean?"
"I mean Mystique is gone," Emma replied smoothly. "Unless she's being actively shielded by a telepath significantly stronger than me, she isn't anywhere in this perimeter."
Logan popped his adamantium claws with a metallic snikt. "The Raft prison break, the hit on the President, and this rally. They all happened at the exact same minute. It's a synchronized distraction."
"To keep every heavy hitter on the board tied down," Scott murmured, his jaw clenching. He adjusted his ruby-quartz visor.
"Humans don't coordinate logistics with that kind of flawless, down-to-the-millisecond precision," Logan growled. "But a machine does. And the biggest, ugliest machine we know hasn't shown its face yet."
Nimrod had been completely absent from the board from the very beginning.
Scott looked at the empty street. "If this whole thing was just a localized smokescreen... where the hell did Mystique go?"
Chapter 465: What Was History Really Like?Air Force One went completely dark.
The Pentagon and the White House didn't immediately panic. Intelligence confirmed Tony Stark was on board. If Iron Man was in the cabin, the general consensus in Washington was that the Avengers had the situation handled. Satellite telemetry was down, so the Situation Room simply tried pinging the Avengers for a sit-rep—completely unaware that Earth's Mightiest Heroes were currently busy dismantling the compromised U.S. Avengers on the ground in Pittsburgh.
Meanwhile, the Pittsburgh press corps was having a field day, drafting headlines guaranteed to make the Ellis administration the butt of late-night talk shows for the next twelve months.
Up in the sky, reporters were the least of President Matthew Ellis's problems. As Air Force One hit a steady cruising altitude, a cold knot twisted in his stomach. Tony Stark looked completely relaxed, sipping tea like he was lounging in a Malibu café, but it didn't do much for Ellis's blood pressure. A creeping sense of dread settled over the cabin.
Internal comms were dead. Not even Stark's proprietary satellite uplinks could punch through the jamming field. Tony eventually set his cup down, his casual smirk fading into silence.
"Looks like we're on final approach, Mr. President," Tony said. He stood up, adjusting his suit jacket. "Excuse me. I need to hit the head. Don't worry, the armor has you covered."
Tony walked away. Ellis stared at the empty, rigid Iron Man sentry standing by the cabin door. Then, panic spiked.
Wait. If the armor is guarding the door... Stark is walking around completely unprotected.
Ellis stood up. He immediately sat back down. His mind raced. A.I.M. had hijacked the plane. What if an extremist had slipped past the Secret Service? If Stark got ambushed in the lavatory, they were all dead.
Tony strolled into the executive lavatory. He washed his hands, checked his hair in the mirror, and reached for the door handle.
A sharp knock echoed against the wood. "Sorry, Stark," President Ellis's muffled voice called out. "I'm just... a little on edge out here."
"Be right out, sir," Tony replied, pulling the door open.
He stepped into the aisle. Ellis was standing right outside, looking pale. He had abandoned the safety of the armor. Tony offered a reassuring nod and turned his back to walk down the aisle.
But Ellis wasn't looking at Tony.
The real Matthew Ellis was standing ten feet away, staring in absolute, paralyzed horror.
A second President Ellis stood directly behind Tony. The duplicate raised a suppressed Glock 19, leveled it directly at the back of Tony's head, and smiled. A cold, yellow-eyed, deeply unnatural smile.
The duplicate pulled the trigger.
Thousands of miles away, buried in an undisclosed data hub, Nimrod processed the telemetry.
The super-A.I.'s calculations were flawless. With just a few subtle shifts in the board state, history would snap back onto its predetermined track. The humans were so remarkably foolish. They thought they could defy temporal mechanics. But every attempt to change their fate only locked them tighter into their inevitable doom.
Take Tony Stark, for example. Stark's plan to preemptively acquire Trask Industries to stop the Sentinel program was a new variable. It deviated from the original 2013 timeline. But Nimrod simply fed that exact information to Mystique's Brotherhood. The machine painted Stark as the true architect of mutant genocide.
Guided by Nimrod's algorithms, Mystique infiltrated the Avengers' network. She discovered the escalating war between A.I.M. and Stark Industries. Believing Stark was the primary threat to her species, she shifted her crosshairs directly onto the billionaire's back.
The timeline self-corrected. Tony Stark and Matthew Ellis would die today in an A.I.M. conspiracy. Even if Aldrich Killian fell and the treasonous Vice President was exposed, the incoming administration would find undeniable proof that a mutant terrorist—Mystique—had assassinated the President. The ensuing anti-mutant hysteria would guarantee the government rebooted Trask Industries. The Sentinels would be built.
The apocalypse would arrive on schedule.
The bullet cleared the barrel.
A blinding flash of hexagonal light erupted from beneath Tony's suit jacket. Liquid nano-plating surged over his skin in a fraction of a millisecond. The 9mm round flattened against the hardened gold-titanium composite of the Model Prime armor, dropping harmlessly to the carpet.
Tony spun on his heel. He grabbed the fake President by the throat, sweeping their legs out and slamming them brutally into the floor of the cabin.
Blue scales rippled across the assassin's skin, washing away the President's face to reveal Mystique's true, yellow-eyed form.
"I don't think there's a law that says a guy can't wear a spare suit under his tailored suit, lady," Tony quipped, the faceplate snapping back to reveal his confident smirk. "Surprise."
Mystique snarled, thrashing against the metal grip. But she wasn't the only one caught off guard.
Nimrod's diagnostic subroutines spiked in confusion. The machine instantly pivoted to its failsafe protocol.
Suddenly, the deck dropped out from under them. Zero-G weightlessness gripped the cabin.
"Stark!" the real President Ellis screamed, gripping a seat back as his feet left the floor. "What's happening?!"
"Looks like the ghost in the machine decided to cut its losses," Tony said, utterly unbothered as his repulsors automatically stabilized his boots to the floor. "A.I.M. just killed the engines. Air Force One is in a terminal freefall."
"We're going to crash?!"
"We're at thirty thousand feet. It'll take us about sixty seconds to hit the ground," Tony calculated casually. "Assuming aerodynamic shear doesn't tear the fuselage apart first."
"What do we do?!" Ellis panicked.
"I highly recommend a fresh cup of coffee, sir," Tony smiled.
A massive, booming shockwave rattled the hull.
The violent descent abruptly halted. Gravity snapped back into place. The Boeing 747 leveled out, shuddering against an immense external pressure. Ellis blinked, looking wildly around the cabin.
Tony secured Mystique with a pair of specialized magnetic stasis cuffs. He gestured for the President to follow him to the cockpit. Ellis peeked inside. The empty Model Prime sentry suit was standing right behind the pilot's chairs, physically hardwired into the flight controls.
Ellis looked out the reinforced windshield. Two Avengers Quinjets flanked the wings. But they weren't towing the plane.
Directly beneath the nose of the massive aircraft, Thor Odinson flew upward. The God of Thunder had his hands planted flat against the reinforced belly of Air Force One, his red cape whipping in the wind, physically carrying the multi-ton jet down through the clouds toward a safe landing.
"We're setting you down at a secure location, Mr. President," Tony said, leaning against the cockpit door frame. "Then we're going to mop up whatever is left of A.I.M."
Ellis exhaled a long, shaky breath, rubbing a hand over his face. "Name your price, Stark."
Tony tapped his arc reactor. "Stark Industries is initiating a hostile takeover of Trask Industries tomorrow morning. I'd really appreciate it if the DOJ's antitrust lawyers happened to look the other way. Deal?"
PS: Marvel Fun Fact! Trask Industries and the Sentinel Program were first introduced all the way back in X-Men #14 (1965)! Bolivar Trask, an anthropologist who viewed mutants as a threat to humanity's survival, used his immense wealth to build the original giant purple-and-pink Sentinels to capture them. Ironically, the Sentinels immediately rebelled against Trask, deciding that the most logical way to protect humanity was to completely conquer and rule over them!