"We may not be able to go that far," Wanda was the first to speak. She awkwardly tapped her shoe heel and then quietly thanked Daisy Johnson, who was helping trim her singed hair. The mixed-race hacker nodded cheerfully. Her own short hair, dampened and dried repeatedly by sweat, now clung in disheveled strands to her cheeks. Yet, when it came to Wanda's long, deep crimson hair, she was exceptionally careful, snipping away the charred, curled ends with a small pair of scissors.
Fitz looked at them like he was witnessing an impossible miracle—astonished at how the two women had, in the blink of an eye, flipped some invisible switch and gone from deadly hostility to peaceful cooperation. The speed of their emotional shift was as quick and silent as a magnesium strip reacting with acid. Women were truly unfathomable creatures: one moment they seemed ready to tear each other's throats out, the next they were grooming each other like cats, and the next they might be scheming to kill again. Fitz quietly stepped back, putting some distance between himself and the two of them.
As part of the collaboration, Robbie Reyes had lost all say in the matter, as he was currently receiving an IV drip and looked like he'd be sleeping for hours. With Immortal City clearly taking the lead, S.H.I.E.L.D. could only cooperate—just like when they'd rescued Fitz and Jemma Simmons from an alien world.
For all S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, that wasn't exactly a pleasant memory. After all, no one could say for sure whether that nuclear warhead hanging over their heads would be launched. Even knowing it was a necessary safeguard didn't make it any easier to accept.
Constantine didn't have any objections. He didn't mind treating these people like servants, as long as they could find out where the magic book had been hidden. As a gesture of goodwill, Wanda pulled a small bottle of potion the color of garnet from her pouch and handed it over. At that moment, Mike completely forgot about the emotional mess caused by Daisy and Yo-Yo's secrecy. He tried to stop the bottle from being passed, but Daisy Johnson took it without hesitation, uncapped it, and downed it in one gulp—completely ignoring Mike's grumbling about the need for chemical analysis.
"I know what this potion does," she said, showing him her arms. After drinking the potion, the bruises on her limbs healed before their eyes. Daisy fought against the intense itching that came with accelerated bone healing and then eagerly unleashed her powers on the ruins of the battle site. With the pain gone, her spirits lifted significantly.
"I'm healed. I can fight," she declared. "And by the way, this stuff actually tastes pretty good."
"Teacher likes to make healing potions strawberry- or pomegranate-flavored," Wanda replied. "That's probably the tastiest one."
"Add some carbonation and it'd be even more popular."
"I don't care about the potion," Fitz muttered, arms crossed. "Can we please talk about the mission? The Quinjet turned into a monster and then got shoved into some kind of magical trash compactor." He'd already discarded the freeze gun—completely useless against everyone here. "Now we've gotta take a damn bus to investigate, and somehow stuff this three-meter-tall guy into it. If someone like him walks down the street, the cops will stop him in less than a minute. Then he'll kill everyone, and the news choppers will be overhead in seconds, and we'll be completely exposed."
"That's because the Quinjet was corrupted by the Spirit of Vengeance…"
Wanda tried to explain, but the Praetorian Guard cut her off with a simple gesture. "I don't need your transport," Constantine said coldly, towering over them. "I'll go to the mission site on my own. Wanda Maximoff, the jet bike can carry one regular passenger. Daisy Johnson, you take Robbie Reyes. Leopold Fitz and Mike, you said your base has seen spiritual anomalies. I need you to investigate that—find out how many spirits are loose."
"I should stay behind. If I leave and Robbie gets possessed by the Spirit of Vengeance again, it'll be bad," Wanda hesitated. "Besides, I need to supervise the investigation. Every team needs someone who can deal with ghosts."
"After the Quinjet was destroyed, S.H.I.E.L.D. HQ should've received the auto-generated distress call. Aren't you worried we'll tell... tell someone about all this?" Mike looked up at Constantine. The Guard gave him a glance and then turned to leave the sulfur-stinking room.
"Tell whoever you like, if you think you can handle the consequences," Constantine replied. "I care only about the mission target. Nothing else."
"Hey, wait, we haven't even added you to the comm channel yet!"
"No need. I've already hacked in. I can hear everything you say."
Stephanie pressed the fast-forward button.
This whole situation—scientists with no magical background using knowledge from a magic book to create miracles—wasn't the first case recorded by Kamar-Taj. Between the late 20th and early 21st century, a former Methodist pastor with a fascination for electricity did almost the exact same thing. Officially, his body was found in his bed.
The man had once been gentle and deeply curious about both science (especially electricity) and faith. He'd built a finger-sized mechanical Jesus that could glide across a homemade pond using clear rails, mimicking the miracle of walking on water. He had a beautiful wife and a sweet son. But when his wife and child were killed in a car crash on a shopping trip, all that beauty vanished.
He lost his faith. After publicly denouncing the lies of religion, he was excommunicated and ended up surviving as a sideshow magician in a circus.
Fifty years later, he resurfaced. The internet had now taken hold, and the former pastor took to the road with a thousand-person white revival tent, mimicking evangelical traditions. On each hand, he wore gold-colored rings that were actually disguised electric batteries. He claimed he could heal incurable diseases like muscular atrophy, drug addiction, and cancer. At his revivals, he often performed fake tumor removals using sheep or cow organs. Though the tricks were clumsy, many believed him—especially the families of those seemingly "healed." It was as if they never realized he was electroshocking their brains.
But the truth was, he had healed some people—because he understood the science behind it.
And so the faithful knelt in the tent and sang "Hallelujah."
Yet every patient he healed developed side effects. Former heroin addicts stabbed their arms with forks. People cured of cataracts dumped salt in their eyes. Those cured of tinnitus experienced hallucinations. The muscular atrophy patients ended up in psychiatric hospitals, fed through tubes.
Healing wasn't his true goal. The donations from his flock went into building one machine.
A machine that could draw energy from extradimensional realms. A machine that could bring the dead back to life.
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