The video cut out.
Silence filled the chamber, thick and heavy.
No one spoke. The air itself felt heavy, unspoken tension settling.
Tony took a cautious step back from the screen, his eyebrows furrowed beneath the glow of his HUD.
"Well," he muttered, "that's not ominous at all." His attempt at lightening the tension fell on deaf ears.
Bruce's hands clenched tighter, his breathing becoming shallow and erratic. Something about this chamber—no, that crystal—was wrong.
The air crackled faintly, the metal walls creaked. Something deep within the machinery hummed.
Bruce flinched, sweat beading across his forehead. His pupils dilated.
Steve stepped forward. "Bruce?"
Bruce didn't answer. The screen on his tablet reflected danger soon to come. The radiation count wasn't just climbing—it was spiking, unstable.
His hands trembled.
He staggered. Legs giving way.
"Banner!" Thor moved fast, catching him. His skin burned—even through the fabric.
Bruce groaned. "I can't hold on. Quickly—"
His eyes flashed a sickly neon green.
Clint's hand shot to his bow. "Shit."
Bruce's hands twitched violently, his body shaking. His muscles rippled and something under his skin surged. His right arm—already darkening and engorged—slammed down without warning.
CRACK.
The impact resounded through the chamber. Machinery upturned, the walls dented. The containment crystal dislodged, wires snapping. It fell to the floor and shattered, scattering across the ground.
A shrill whine echoed through the chamber as the green runes lining the pod dimmed and flickered, their luminescence vanishing by the second.
Bruce collapsed, the green already faded from his eyes. Natasha moved quickly to help him up, his arm slung over her shoulder.
A dull hiss echoed through the chamber.
The team looked up.
The pod hissed open.
Metal slid back with a deep groan, locks releasing one by one after countless years.
A pale figure slumped forward out of the pod, limbs limp.
Steve stepped in without hesitation, catching him before he hit the floor.
The boy looked seventeen, maybe younger. Thin, yet impossibly sturdy. His body slick with freezing fluid, his chest rising and falling with shallow, drawn-out breaths. A tight white bodysuit clung to his skin. A black collar hugged his neck, still glowing with pulsing green runes.
Tony stepped closer, visor scanning. "He's alive."
Steve knelt next to the boy, his gaze complex.
There was something familiar about it all, a sense of déjà vu. Not his face—but the feeling. Like looking in a mirror after years frozen in ice.
He didn't say anything. Just nodded when Natasha offered the reinforced cuffs.
The boy's wrists were bound. The collar stayed in place, humming quietly.
Steve's voice rang out. "Let's head back to HQ. Take him to SHIELD. To Fury."
A FEW MINUTES LATER – OUTSIDE
The Quinjet waited, engines hot. The sun remained just past the horizon, casting streaks of gold across the icy tundra.
Thor carried the boy, slung across his shoulder, as they stepped out of the hatch.
Sunlight splayed across their features—and across his skin.
And something changed.
It started under the surface, deep within his body. A pulse.
Cells, long frozen, reactivated. Light soaked into his body like air into drowning lungs. A heart that had remained in hibernation for who knew how long, sped up.
One beat.
Two.
Three.
Rapid.
The collar pulsed harder, draining, trying and failing to keep up.
INSIDE THE QUINJET
Minutes later, the boy was strapped down in the rear of the jet, cuffed and unconscious.
Thor sat beside him silently. Waiting. Watching.
Then—
His eyes snapped open.
Thor rose immediately, Mjolnir already in his grasp.
"Stand ready! The boy is awake."
The boy sat up slowly, eyes wild.
Steve stepped forward. "Easy. You're safe. We mean you no harm."
The boy looked at him—really looked—and something shattered behind his eyes.
In his mind...
Memories surfaced, coiling and fragmented.
Two lives colliding, merging, rupturing.
Fire.
A ruined planet.
A woman faintly calling for Kal-El.
A farm.
An S?
And another voice—
College.
His parents.
His friends.
Late nights watching movies.
Back in the jet….
He stared at his trembling hands, his mind clouded and confused.
Then the room pulsed with heat. The air shimmered around him, as if the sun itself lived beneath his skin. The metal beneath him steamed. The Quinjet's lights flickered.
Tony's visor slid down. "Temperatures rising—he's surging quickly."
The boy clutched his head.
"Too loud—too bright—I can't—"
His head snapped back, eyes glowing an infernal red, unleashing a beam of fire across the ceiling.
He jerked back in horror at the scorch marks, the red fading from his eyes. "I didn't mean to! I swear—"
Steve raised both hands, attempting to placate him. "It's okay. It's okay. Just—just breathe."
He tried. Taking deep, gulping breaths. Desperate for it to end.
But his body didn't listen.
His skin cracked with golden light, the temperature surging. Panels hissed and restraints melted.
Just when it seemed he would burn a hole straight through the jet, the collar flared a bright green—its final failsafe activated.
A pulse of sickly green energy passed through him. The light around his body flickered and slowly dimmed. He gasped and slammed back on the stretcher, landing unconscious amongst the wreckage.
Steam curled off his body, his white jumpsuit strangely untouched.
"He's out," Bruce called from the other side of the jet, unwilling to get close to the glowing collar for fear of losing control again.
"What kind of attack was that?" Tony muttered, attempting to escape his suit, whose panels had fused together under the heat.
Steve picked his shield up from where it had fallen. "That wasn't an attack."
"No," Bruce agreed. "That was panic."
Natasha holstered her gun. "A kid with enough power to melt this jet into liquid. Who's scared out of his mind. He's a ticking time bomb."
Steve looked down at the unconscious boy—glowing faintly beneath the light.
"...then we better figure out how long we've got before he goes off again."
Behind his closed eyes, the boy dreamed of red skies.
Of two worlds.
Of someone he wasn't.
And of things he shouldn't know.
He stirred faintly, lips moving. His weak voice missed by the Avengers. One word escaped his mouth:
"...Marvel?"