Darcy practically hauled Jane into the car, where Ian Boothby was already revving the engine. The interior of the small vehicle was a chaotic mess of sensor displays and tangled cables, all of them humming with an erratic, high-pitched frequency.
"Jane, nice to see you again. So, Darcy must have told you the dilemma we are currently having and how the readings aren't just spiking," Ian said, his eyes glued to a monitor as they sped through the London streets. "The 'Honored One' energy from that residual 'Purple' attack he used in space, it's like it's acting as a homing beacon. It's merged with the localized gravity anomalies. The signals are bouncing off each other, amplifying."
"It's a feedback loop," Jane muttered, checking the triangulation on her tablet. "The fight three months ago thinned the veil. Now, whatever natural cycle the universe is going through is hitting those weak spots like a hammer and being relayed back to earth with its weaker spots."
They pulled up to a decaying, skeletal storage warehouse on the edge of town. The air here felt thick, vibrating with a low-frequency hum that made the hair on Jane's arms stand up. Inside, the laws of physics had clearly decided to take a vacation. A cement truck floated five feet off the ground, rotating slowly, while a group of local kids were dropping shoes into a patch of empty air, only to watch them vanish and reappear from the ceiling.
"This is it," Jane breathed, stepping deeper into the shadows of the warehouse. "The convergence point. That white-haired guy and Annihilus... when they tore into space-time during their final standoff, they seemed to have jumpstarted a total gravitational collapse."
She began running her hand over a portable scanner, her eyes darting between two swirling distortions in the air. "Woah... look at the thermal variance. The spatial curvature here is almost infinite."
"Jane, look!" Darcy pointed toward the far wall.
A sudden burst of violent purple light erupted from a new rift, followed immediately by a pulse of brilliant azure blue that immediately sucked in everything with a few feet and then it stopped. The shockwave of the appearance knocked a stack of crates over, but the energy didn't dissipate; it clung to the air like static.
"The same readings," Jane whispered, her face illuminated by the flickering glow. "The blue is the attractive force, the purple is the imaginary mass... it's exactly the energy the white haired guy used used. The readings from this 'Purple' energy is impressive, it literally cauterized a wound in the universe, and now that wound is reopening."
While Darcy and Ian began excitedly throwing things into the rifts to see where they would fall, Jane moved toward a faint, rhythmic thumping sound coming from a dark corner of the facility. She stepped toward a distortion that looked like a smudge of oil on a lens.
"Ian, Darcy, be careful with those—"
Before she could finish, the smudge expanded into a vacuum. Jane didn't even have time to scream as the air was sucked out of her lungs and she was pulled headlong into a swirling vortex of shadow.
Jane hit the ground hard. The air was cold, stale, and smelled of ancient dust and copper. She was in a dark chasm, the walls made of a jagged, black stone that seemed to absorb the very light of her flashlight.
In the center of the chamber sat a vault, a monolith of obsidian etched with runes that looked like bleeding wounds. It certainly didn't belong to Earth. It was something older, something primeval.
Driven by a scientist's curiosity and a strange, magnetic pull she couldn't resist, Jane reached out. The moment her fingertips brushed the stone, the vault groaned and dissolved as a viscous, crimson substance erupted from the stone. It didn't spill like liquid; it moved like a swarm of angry hornets. Jane tried to scramble back, but the red mist surged forward, swirling around her limbs before diving beneath her skin. She gasped, her veins glowing a dark, angry red as the ancient power infested her body, claiming her as its new vessel.
As she collapsed to her knees, clutching her chest, a soft footfall echoed in the silence of the chasm.
Jane looked up, her vision blurring, to see a figure standing just a few feet away.
———-
A few moments prior
The Bifrost Observatory hummed with the rotation of ancient gears as Gojo and Thor touched down on the shimmering platform. Standing at the center was Heimdall, his golden armor reflecting the light of a billion stars and his great sword, Hofund, planted firmly before him.
The moment Gojo's boots hit the floor, his Six Eyes flared. He didn't just see a man; he saw a cosmic conduit. He watched the way the energy of the universe flowed through Heimdall's veins and pooled in those amber, all-seeing eyes. Simultaneously, Heimdall turned his head, his gaze piercing through Gojo's blindfold.
"You possess unique eyes, traveler," Heimdall rumbled, his voice like grinding stones. "They do not merely see; they perceive the fundamental weight of existence."
Gojo chuckled, adjusting his blindfold. "I could say the same about you, Big Gold. You're basically a living satellite dish. Pretty impressive."
Thor stepped forward, his expression urgent. "Heimdall, we seek clarity. Reports of these 'Rabids' and the dark ships are they moving toward Midgard? Has the harvest reached my friends?"
Heimdall turned back to the abyss of space, his eyes glowing brighter. "I have watched the borders of Earth since your return, Prince. I have seen no dark ships, no grey husks. All seemed... as it should be."
"Seemed?" Gojo interjected, stepping closer. "That's a very specific word for someone who sees everything. Look again."
Heimdall went silent, his focus deepening until the air around him began to vibrate and he finally spoke the truth. "The world has become... strained. Distorted."
"How so? What is causing it to be unstable" Gojo asked, crossing his arms.
"You," Heimdall stated, glancing back at Gojo. "Your clash with the Annihilator did more than break buildings. The sheer density of the 'Purple' and the 'Infinity' you unleashed against the attack from the cosmic rod shifted the local space-time fabric out of sync by a fraction. The world is trying to breathe, but its lungs are scarred."
Gojo rubbed the back of his neck, a sheepish grin appearing. "Oops. My bad. In my defense, the other guy was trying to enslave the world and turn us all into insects. What does that mean for the locals?"
"The world will fix itself eventually," Heimdall replied, "but for now, the walls are thin. The Convergence is coming, and your battle has acted as a catalyst, pulling at the threads of reality."
'Did he just say the convergence.' Gojo thought with narrowed eyes.
Thor, his heart clearly elsewhere, moved to the edge. "And Jane? What of Jane Foster? Is she safe?"
Gojo noticed a small, fleeting smile ghost across Heimdall's stoic face before he looked back into the cosmos. "She is well. She works even now on the phenomenon of the energy you left behind from Satoru's battle. She and her companions have traveled to a location they believe will produce results."
"Is she alright?" Thor pressed.
"Yes," Heimdall said. Then, his brow furrowed. His pupils contracted, and he tilted his head as if listening to a sound that had suddenly stopped.
Gojo's Six Eyes spiked. 'Uh oh,' he thought, his stomach dropping. 'I know that look. That's the look of a sensor losing a signal.'
"I cannot see her anymore," Heimdall whispered, a hint of genuine shock in his voice. "She is gone. Most likely into a realm sharing a space with that particular location like a pocket dimension of a sort."
Gojo's eyes widened. In his mind, the puzzle pieces snapped together, the thinned reality, convergence and the sudden disappearance into a pocket dimension. "Shit. Heimdall, take us down. Now!"
Thor gripped Gojo's arm, his face pale. "What is happening? Where has she gone?"
"If I'm right," Gojo said, his voice turning deadly serious "and what I think is about to happen really is about to happen... then we aren't just dealing with a few kidnappers. We're about to face an old adversary of Asgard that should have stayed in the grave."
"Heimdall, the Bifrost!" Gojo shouted.
Heimdall didn't hesitate. He plunged Hofund into the control pedestal and twisted. A pillar of rainbow light erupted from the observatory, swallowing Gojo and Thor in a violent roar of energy. In a flash of light, they were gone, hurtling toward the grey skies of London.
The roar of the Bifrost slammed into the London warehouse with the force of a falling star, scorching the concrete floors. Before the rainbow light had even fully receded, Gojo was already in motion. His Six Eyes were screaming, detecting the overlapping resonance of his own residual "Blue" and "Purple" energy acting like a bleeding wound in the fabric of the room.
"Thor! Keep them safe!" Gojo shouted, gesturing toward a bewildered Darcy and Ian.
Without waiting for a response, Gojo dived headlong into the most unstable rift, the one pulsing with a sickly, familiar violet hue. He folded space, accelerating his arrival into the unknown.
In the crushing darkness of the chasm, Jane Foster was losing consciousness. Her skin was a map of glowing red veins, the Aether pulsing through her like liquid fire. Just as her knees hit the stone, a flash of white appeared in the gloom.
Gojo suddenly materialized in the realm, his hand outstretched. "Gotcha," he muttered.
But the moment he touched her shoulder, the remaining Aether, the portion that hadn't yet settled into Jane's marrow sensed a superior vessel. Through the Six Eyes, Gojo saw it in horrifying detail: the red substance didn't just move; it existed outside the standard laws of energy or matter. It was a primordial reality-warper.
Gojo's instincts flared as the neutral application of the Limitless manifested around him.
Usually, nothing touched him. Not heat, not blades, not even the vacuum of space. But the Aether didn't care about distance. It bypassed the infinite division of space as if the barrier didn't exist, slicing through his defense like a hot knife through butter.
"Oh, shit—"
The crimson mist surged into Gojo's chest and eyes. His breath hitched, his lungs seizing. For a moment that felt stretched into an eternity, his brain began to boil. The Aether attempted to overwrite his neural pathways, clashing violently with the near-infinite information processing of the Six Eyes.
Gojo's brilliant blue eyes suddenly bled into a dark, pulsing Red. His heart hammered against his ribs, a rhythmic thump-thump that echoed in the silent chamber like a drum of war.
Then, as quickly as the invasion began, the energy stabilized, sinking deep into his core. The strain was too much even for him. His body went limp, steam rising from his skin as if he'd been cooked from the inside out.
The spatial anchor holding them in the chasm snapped. With a violent, pressurized pop, Gojo and the unconscious Jane Foster were spat back through the rift, collapsing onto the cold, hard floor of the London warehouse