Thanos' army numbered in the millions, a writhing mass of undead flesh that had once terrorized the cosmos. But numbers meant nothing here. The tentacles that erupted from the corrupted earth devoured every zombie in their path, pulling them down into the churning biomass with mechanical efficiency.
The bursting flesh transformed the landscape into something primordial and wrong. Massive pillars of meat and sinew thrust skyward, their surfaces glistening with an oily sheen. Between the pulsing columns, bloated maggots the size of dogs leaped and squirmed, accelerating the spread of the living terrain. The air itself seemed to thicken with the smell of copper and rot.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
When the chaos finally subsided, the survivors of Wakanda saw something new emerge from the carnage. A humanoid figure walked across the field of impaled zombies with casual confidence, each footfall deliberate and unhurried. The infected corpses twitched on their tentacle stakes, but the figure paid them no mind.
"What... what is he going to do?"
The whispered question came from somewhere in the huddled group of survivors. Others murmured their agreement, fear and curiosity warring in their expressions. They'd seen plenty of horrors since the outbreak began, but this was different.
This thing was clearly more dangerous than the zombies—that much was obvious from the way reality itself seemed to bend around it. Yet the tentacles had specifically avoided the survivors, weaving between them without so much as brushing their skin. The zombies had been impaled, torn apart, consumed. But the living humans? Untouched.
Why?
The truth was simpler than they could imagine. Marcus had no interest in devouring humans. Zombies had become hollow things, dead meat animated by viral code. By consuming them, he could not only enhance his armor's capabilities but also eradicate the spreading infection entirely. Despite everything he'd become, despite the alien systems running through his consciousness and the Warframe abilities reshaping his existence, Marcus still thought of himself as human.
Some habits died hard.
"Well, well," Marcus murmured, his voice carrying an edge of dark amusement. He gazed at the gauntlet on the zombie Thanos' arm, where five Infinity Stones gleamed with malevolent light. "The Infinity Stones, all collected in one place. How convenient."
The Mad Titan who'd gathered five of the six most powerful artifacts in the universe hadn't been able to escape his fate. Zombie or not, Thanos was just another corpse now.
Marcus' eyes—or what passed for eyes in his current form—gleamed behind his helmet. "I'd bet the entire universe is in chaos by now. Perfect conditions for a complete promotion."
Without warning, Marcus stomped the ground hard. The impact sent shockwaves through the flesh-covered earth, and countless tentacles erupted like a tidal wave, surging toward zombie Thanos with predatory intent.
The undead Titan was the last one standing. Even infected, even reduced to a shambling hunger, Thanos still possessed five Infinity Stones. The Space Stone flickered blue as he teleported away from a cluster of tentacles. The Power Stone flared purple, disintegrating another wave. He moved with unnatural grace for a corpse, leveraging cosmic power to stay one step ahead of annihilation.
"Not bad," Marcus commented, watching the display with clinical interest. "But not good enough."
He raised one hand, and the power of Void energy flooded through him—infinite empowerment channeling through Warframe-enhanced systems. The tentacles responded instantly, their surfaces sprouting razor-sharp metallic spines that gleamed like Orokin technology. They lanced forward with devastating force.
CRUNCH.
Zombie Thanos' arm bent backward at an impossible angle, bone splintering under the pressure. Even with the Power Stone's defensive aura, the Mad Titan couldn't offset the raw violence of Marcus' attack. These tentacles didn't play by conventional rules—they simply overwhelmed through sheer, brutal force.
One tentacle punched straight through Thanos' skull, purple ichor spraying. Another wrapped around his torso, then another, until the zombie was completely enveloped in a cocoon of writhing biomass. The Infinity Gauntlet pulsed frantically, stones flashing in desperate sequence, but Marcus' Void energy poured forth like a dam breaking, suppressing each attempt at retaliation.
BOOM!!!
A massive sphere of light expanded from Thanos' position, raw cosmic energy fighting for release. The survivors cried out, shielding their eyes as the brilliance threatened to blind them.
Marcus simply raised one hand and gave a gentle push.
The expanding sphere stopped, frozen mid-detonation. The light dimmed, revealing the aftermath. Where Thanos and hundreds of zombies had stood, there was now only a perfectly smooth crater, as if a giant hand had scooped out the earth itself. Not even ash remained.
"Holy shit," someone whispered in Wakanda's ranks.
"What kind of power..." another survivor breathed, unable to finish the thought.
The Infinity Gauntlet floated before Marcus, all five stones still socketed and gleaming. He regarded it for a moment, then shook his head with something like disappointment.
"Both artifacts, sure, but the Infinity Stones are still the real prize. This gauntlet?" He waved dismissively. "Already falling apart."
With a casual gesture, Marcus plucked the five stones free. The moment they left their settings, the Infinity Gauntlet crumbled to ash, particles scattering on the wind like dying embers.
"Shame the stones aren't as useful to me as they could be," Marcus mused, watching the gems hover in the air before him. They spun slowly, each one pulsing with barely contained power. "But they're from this universe, which means they work best in this universe."
He could feel the potential humming through them. The Reality Stone, the Power Stone, the Space Stone, the Time Stone, the Soul Stone—each one a key to reshaping existence itself. Separately powerful. Together? Godlike.
"And I can use that."
The five stones shrank as he concentrated, compressing down until they were small enough to embed into his watch-like device. He set them carefully into prepared slots, each one clicking into place with a sense of finality.
"The I-series virus," Marcus continued, speaking more to himself than to any audience. "I can spread it to every corner of this reality. Every zombie, every infected world. This entire universe will become the foundation for my armor's ascension."
With all five stones embedded, he turned toward Wakanda's energy barrier. His gaze focused on the central power source—a device that had kept the nation hidden and protected for generations.
"Just missing one more," he said quietly. "The Mind Stone."
The tentacles responded to his will before the words finished leaving his mouth. They wove together into a single massive appendage, then shot forward like a harpoon.
BOOM!!!
The survivors screamed as the tentacle punched through Wakanda's energy core, ripping through shielding that had withstood conventional weapons for decades. It returned just as quickly, carrying the device that housed the Mind Stone in its grip.
The explosion was still echoing when Marcus plucked the yellow gem free.
"Collecting these twice in my lifetime," he chuckled, turning the Mind Stone over in his fingers. "Never thought I'd see the day."
He embedded it in the final slot.
The moment all six Infinity Stones united, colorful energy exploded across Marcus' form. Rainbow light cascaded over his armor, seeping into every crack and crevice. His Void empowerment was powerful—stronger than any single Infinity Stone—but six stones working in concert? That was something else entirely.
The energy surge would have killed a normal person instantly. Even with his enhancements, Marcus felt the raw power burning through his systems, demanding to be used, to be unleashed.
He didn't resist.
The energy flowed down through his body and into the flesh-covered earth beneath his feet. The biomass reacted, pulsing like a living heart given a shot of adrenaline. The spread that had been methodical suddenly became voracious, expanding outward at ten times its previous speed.
Marcus smiled beneath his helmet. "Won't be long now. The whole planet will be consumed. Then the universe."
He glanced back at the survivors of Wakanda, huddled together behind their failing barrier. "You still have some time," his voice carried to their ears, gentle despite the cosmic horror of his appearance. "Save your last sanctuary while you can."
As if responding to his words, the tentacles shifted, creating a protective dome around Wakanda—a cylinder of writhing flesh with an open sky above, like a grotesque patio.
"You—" Peter Parker started to speak, his spider-sense screaming warnings.
Bucky Barnes' metal hand clamped over the young man's mouth. "Not now," the former Winter Soldier hissed, dragging Peter back. "Just... not now."
The survivors understood the unspoken message. Whatever Marcus was, whatever he intended, he wasn't immediately hostile to them. That was the only advantage they had, and they couldn't afford to waste it by drawing his attention.
The Wakandans retreated slowly, careful not to make sudden movements. Fear kept them silent—fear of the being that had just casually defeated Thanos, who'd rearranged reality itself with a gesture.
"Earth isn't safe anymore," T'Challa said once they were back in Wakanda proper, his voice heavy with resignation. "Even if there are still pockets of uninfected land, how long can we survive? Days? Weeks?"
"We need to leave," another council member agreed. "Build a ship. Get off-world before—"
"Before what?" someone interrupted. "Before that thing finishes with the zombies and decides we're next?"
The Black Panther's jaw tightened. Abandoning Wakanda felt like tearing out his own heart, but the alternative was extinction. "We build the fastest, largest ship we can manage. We take everyone. We leave this planet behind."
"My spider-sense is going crazy," Peter interjected, his face pale. "Those tentacles... they're watching us. Like predators watching prey. The only reason they haven't attacked is because of him." He jerked his chin toward the distant figure of Marcus. "If we take too long, if he changes his mind..."
T'Challa nodded grimly. "Then we work fast. Wakanda has built impossible things before. We'll do it again."
Across the cosmos, the zombie plague spread like wildfire.
The virus had found the perfect vectors—spacefaring heroes and villains who could cross the void between stars. Every planet they reached became a new outbreak, a new feeding ground.
A streak of light blazed through the darkness of space. If you looked closely, you'd see it was a woman wreathed in golden energy, her costume torn and stained with dried blood.
Carol Danvers. Captain Marvel. Once humanity's greatest champion.
Now just another zombie.
She'd been helping evacuate a colony world when she encountered an infected Kree warrior. The battle had been brutal, and though Carol emerged victorious, she'd taken wounds. Scratches. Bites. Such small things.
Small enough to doom her.
The transformation had been agonizing and swift. Her first action as a zombie was to slaughter the very people she'd been trying to save. Thousands dead. Millions more as she moved from planet to planet, an unstoppable force driven by an insatiable hunger.
Now she was racing toward another populated system, her enhanced senses already picking up the electromagnetic signatures of billions of living beings. Fresh meat.
Splat.
Something pink and squirming landed on her back mid-flight. Carol didn't even notice at first—her zombie brain was too focused on the feast ahead. But the thing that had latched onto her was already burrowing, drilling through energy aura and dead flesh alike.
A parasitic maggot, grotesquely mutated, its body pulsing with unnatural life.
It found the wound on her shoulder blade and squeezed inside.
Carol kept flying, oblivious. But beneath her skin, tentacles were spreading. Pustules formed along her arms and back, filled with something that writhed and grew. The infection within the infection.
She wasn't alone.
All across the universe, zombies were experiencing the same phenomenon. Maggots appearing from nowhere. Spores drifting on solar winds. Every infected being was becoming host to something worse, something that would transform them from mindless hunger into organic machinery.
The source of this cosmic infestation sat atop a pillar of flesh that stretched toward Earth's stratosphere.
Marcus watched his work with satisfaction. "The six stones make this almost too easy," he mused. Using the Space Stone's power, he'd distributed his creations across light-years in an instant. The Reality Stone ensured they could survive the void. The Power Stone gave them the strength to burrow into even the most durable zombies.
"Let me speed this up."
He poured more energy into the Infinity Stones. They blazed with light, and more spores erupted from his flesh-covered Earth, shooting into orbit and beyond. The Space Stone opened rifts, sending them to every corner of the universe where zombies lurked.
Planets that had fallen to the infection began sprouting pillars of biomass. The pillars grew tentacles. The tentacles hunted. Everything organic was consumed and repurposed, feeding the massive transformation Marcus had initiated.
And those worlds that hadn't yet fallen? The zombies would reach them soon enough, carrying Marcus' gift with them.
The entire universe was becoming a zombie paradise.
Marcus was turning that paradise into his garden.
Weeks passed.
Earth, except for Wakanda's protective cylinder, was completely covered. The planet had become a sphere of writhing flesh, pulsing with unnatural life. Tentacles kilometers long drifted in the upper atmosphere like grotesque clouds.
Marcus sat cross-legged atop the highest flesh pillar, meditating while his consciousness spread through the network he'd created. He could feel every tentacle, every maggot, every infected zombie across millions of light-years.
He could also feel the frantic activity in Wakanda below.
Opening his eyes, he looked down with something like admiration. The Wakandans had worked miracles. In mere weeks, they'd constructed a massive ark-ship, large enough to hold their entire population. The vessel gleamed with vibranium alloys and repulsor technology, a testament to human ingenuity in the face of extinction.
"Clever," Marcus murmured. "But futile."
There was nowhere in this universe they could run. The infection had spread too far. Every habitable world was either consumed or in the process of falling. The zombie plague he was eradicating would have killed them anyway.
At least this way, their end served a purpose.
As the last Wakandans filed into the ship, Marcus tilted his head. A thought caused the surrounding tentacles to stir, shifting in ways that made the survivors' hearts race with fresh terror.
"Those tentacles are moving!"
Peter Parker's voice cracked with panic. His spider-sense had been at a low roar for weeks, but now it was a scream, every nerve in his body demanding he run, fight, do something.
"They've been watching us like food this whole time," he gasped. "Now they're getting ready to eat."
"All engines online!" T'Challa commanded from the bridge. "We're leaving. Now!"
The ship's thrusters ignited, bathing Wakanda in blue-white light. The massive vessel rose slowly, fighting against gravity and its own enormous mass. Through the viewport, the survivors watched their home disappear beneath them.
The tentacles were moving now, no longer content to simply surround. They flowed into Wakanda like a tide, covering buildings, monuments, the very palace where generations of Black Panthers had ruled. In minutes, everything was gone—just more biomass for the growing network.
When the ship finally broke through Earth's atmosphere, someone sobbed.
The planet below was unrecognizable. Not blue and green, but red and pink and pustulent. A meat-ball hanging in space, covered in massive tentacles that waved like the cilia of some cosmic microorganism.
"Where do we go?" The question was barely a whisper.
No one had an answer. They set a course for the nearest system with a habitable planet and prayed they'd find sanctuary.
They wouldn't.
As the Wakandan ship drifted through space, they began to see the truth. Every planet they passed was the same—covered in flesh pillars, transformed into a living nightmare. Some were completely consumed. Others were still in the process, tentacles spreading across continents while zombies writhed in their grip.
"My God," Shuri breathed, staring at a readout. "It's everywhere. The entire universe..."
"The zombie outbreak must have spread faster than we thought," Okoye said quietly. "If this is happening on every world—"
"Then those pillars are consuming them all," Peter finished. "But wait." His scientific mind was catching up with his fear. "Those things prey on zombies, right? They're actually cleaning up the infection?"
It was true. The biomass didn't attack living humans—it hunted the undead. Every zombie-infested planet was being systematically purged, the infected biomass consumed and repurposed.
But that realization brought no comfort. Because once all the zombies were gone...
What then?
Marcus felt the ship leave Earth's orbit. He didn't stop them. Let them run. Let them see. They'd understand soon enough that there was no escape, no safe harbor left in this reality.
His consciousness expanded further, linking with every infected planet simultaneously. The network was nearly complete. Billions of zombies consumed. Hundreds of worlds transformed. The I-series virus spreading through it all, connecting everything into one massive, living system.
His armor was drinking it all in, evolving with every passing moment. The Helminth strain growing stronger. The Warframe systems integrating more deeply. The Void energy expanding to encompass an entire universe's worth of biomass.
This was what promotion truly meant.
Not just power, but scale.
Marcus smiled and reached out through the Space Stone, opening connections between transformed worlds. Tentacles that had been separate now touched across light-years, linked by portals and wormholes. The network became truly universal.
"Soon," he whispered to the void. "Soon, the foundation will be complete."
And then?
Then he would ascend to something beyond even the gods of this universe could comprehend.