The battleship did not enter Earth's atmosphere.
Alex had learned long ago that power was most effective when it went unseen.
A single needle craft detached from the hull, wrapped in layered stealth fields derived from Cybertronian cloaking algorithms, Wakandan light-bending tech, and his own reality-anchored suppression systems. To every sensor on the planet, it did not exist. To reality itself, it was a rounding error.
Below him, the American desert stretched endlessly, moonlight washing over sand and stone. Nestled within that emptiness lay Hoover Dam, an icon of human engineering and, buried beneath it, one of humanity's greatest mistakes.
The Cube.
The AllSpark.
Alex watched the structure grow in his view as the craft descended, slipping between radar blind spots and satellite passes with mathematical precision. SHIELD's defenses were extensive, but they were designed to stop intruders who obeyed physics, bureaucracy, and fear.
Alex obeyed none of those.
The craft phased into a concealed cavern several kilometers from the dam and powered down. Alex stepped out, robes replaced by a nondescript tactical cloak, his presence muted to the point where even probability bent around him.
Gear's voice whispered in his ear. Multiple Sector 7 personnel detected. High electromagnetic interference. Energon resonance confirmed.
Alex smiled faintly. As expected.
He moved.
The underground facility was vast, a hollowed-out cathedral of steel and reinforced concrete carved deep into the bedrock. Floodlights illuminated catwalks, containment chambers, and research labs humming with restrained energy. Soldiers patrolled in predictable patterns. Scientists worked behind glass, unaware of how close they were to forces that could erase them from existence.
Alex slipped through them like a ghost.
Cameras showed nothing but static for a fraction of a second as he passed. Motion sensors registered background noise. Infrared systems saw only ambient heat. To the human eye, the facility was unchanged.
To Alex, it was an open book.
He reached the first objective quickly.
Megatron.
The Decepticon lay suspended in a vertical containment chamber, frozen in stasis, his massive form restrained by electromagnetic clamps and Energon dampeners. Even dormant, he radiated menace. Ancient. Violent. Brilliant in the way conquerors often were.
Alex stood before the chamber and regarded him with detached curiosity.
So this is the tyrant who taught machines how to hate, he thought.
He extended a thin filament of nanotech from his wrist and pierced the containment field with surgical precision. The filament slid into Megatron's cranial interface, bypassing damaged security layers and corrupted firewalls.
The data hit him like a storm.
Megatron's mind was fractured but vast. Battle strategies spanning millennia. Space Bridge deployments. Energon weaponization. Cybertronian politics viewed through the lens of domination. Alex sifted through it all, ignoring ideology and extracting only what mattered.
Military doctrines. Adaptive combat logic. Deep-space navigation charts. Weapon blueprints more brutal than elegant.
And something else.
Fear.
Buried deep in Megatron's memory was an understanding of the AllSpark that went beyond reverence or ambition. He had seen what it could truly do. Not just create life, but rewrite it. Not just empower, but enslave.
Alex took that knowledge as well.
Gear confirmed. Data acquisition complete. Decepticon tactical and engineering databases integrated.
Alex withdrew the filament. Megatron did not stir.
Good, Alex said softly. Sleep.
He turned and moved deeper into the facility.
The Cube was housed in a chamber designed to look mundane, almost unimpressive. A massive block of metal sat suspended within a containment field, its surface etched with alien geometry that hurt to look at directly. Energon-like energy pulsed beneath its surface, slow and patient.
The AllSpark was not alive.
It was possibility given form.
Alex felt it immediately. Not as pressure, but as invitation. The Cube recognized him as something different. Not Cybertronian. Not human. Something that operated on a scale it understood instinctively.
He approached without hesitation.
Containment protocols flared as he crossed the threshold. Alarms should have sounded. Power levels should have spiked.
They did not.
Alex placed his hand on the Cube.
The universe held its breath.
In an instant, he saw everything it had ever done and everything it could do. The creation of the first Cybertronians. The seeding of machine life across worlds. The capacity to imbue any construct with sentience, loyalty, purpose.
Dangerous.
Alex did not need another god.
He rewrote the interaction.
The Reality Stone did not manifest physically, but its influence bled into the chamber as Alex altered the Cube's response parameters. He did not dominate it. He constrained it. Limited its activation conditions. Locked its creative functions behind layers of authorization only he could provide.
Then he took it.
The Cube vanished into his system space, containment fields collapsing harmlessly as if it had never been there.
The moment it disappeared, the facility reacted.
Power fluctuations rippled outward. Scientists looked up in confusion. Soldiers checked instruments that suddenly made no sense.
Alex was already gone.
He retraced his path through the facility, moving faster now but no less invisible. A pair of agents passed within arm's reach, oblivious. A technician rubbed his eyes, convinced he had just felt something brush past him.
By the time alarms finally began to wail, Alex was already airborne.
The needle craft lifted silently from the cavern and vanished into the night sky, slipping back into folded space before any response could be mounted.
Minutes later, the battleship received him.
The Cube was secured within a null-reality vault, its energy signatures isolated and monitored. Megatron's data streamed into Alex's core systems, enriching his already terrifying arsenal of knowledge.
Gear spoke with measured caution. The AllSpark represents a non trivial existential variable.
Alex nodded. Which is why it will not be used lightly.
He stood on the command deck and looked at Earth below, unaware of how close it had come to catastrophe and salvation in the same night.
Set course for the next target, Alex said. Begin integration of AllSpark data under restricted parameters. No autonomous propagation. No unsupervised sentience.
Acknowledged.
The battleship turned, its hull catching starlight as it prepared to leave.
Behind them, Hoover Dam stood silent, its greatest secret gone.
Alex did not look back.
The war ahead would require tools no single universe had ever been meant to wield.
And Alex Price was done asking permission.