Six months.
In galactic standard time, it was barely a blink—a fractional moment in the vast sweep of cosmic history that saw empires rise and fall across millennia. Civilizations that had existed for ten thousand years considered six months to be an afternoon, a brief pause between more significant events.
In six months, Sylux had become the most feared entity in known space.
The transformation had not been gradual. It had been exponential, each completed contract feeding into the next, each demonstration of capability amplifying the reputation that preceded him. The Guardians' brokerage had provided the initial connections, but word of mouth had done the rest—whispered conversations in criminal dens, urgent warnings passed between warlords, intelligence reports that circulated through every major power's networks.
There was something out there. Something that could not be stopped, could not be reasoned with, could not be bought or threatened or deterred. Something that appeared without warning, completed its objective with terrifying efficiency, and vanished before anyone could mount a meaningful response.
Something silent.
The Nova Corps maintained a file on him that had grown from a preliminary assessment to a comprehensive dossier spanning thousands of pages. They tracked his confirmed kills—currently numbering in the high hundreds, with estimated totals significantly higher—and mapped the patterns of his operations across dozens of systems. Their analysts had attempted to predict his movements, to anticipate his target selection, to understand the methodology behind his choices.
They had failed.
Sylux did not operate according to predictable logic. He took contracts that interested him and refused those that didn't, with no apparent pattern beyond some internal criteria that defied external analysis. He eliminated slaver kings and petty criminals with equal efficiency, treating a planetary warlord with the same clinical detachment he showed a local gang leader. Scale was irrelevant. Only the hunt mattered.
The criminal underworld had adapted, as criminal underworlds do. Safe houses were established with his specific capabilities in mind—sensor-blocking materials, energy-dampening fields, architectural designs intended to complicate his approach. Bodyguard details were expanded, equipped with the best weapons available, trained in tactics that might provide a few additional seconds of survival.
None of it worked.
The slaver king Rothax the Butcher had spent three million units fortifying his palace on Morag IV, surrounding himself with an army of two thousand warriors and defenses that were supposed to be impenetrable. He had laughed when he heard Sylux was coming for him, confident that his preparations would prove sufficient.
Sylux had walked through the army like it wasn't there. The warriors had fired everything they had—energy weapons, projectile weapons, exotic technologies acquired from a dozen different civilizations—and accomplished nothing beyond providing a light show. The defenses had activated exactly as designed and had been systematically disabled by weapons that operated on principles they weren't built to counter.
Rothax had died in his throne room, surrounded by the bodies of his elite guard, the Shock Coil draining the life from him while his remaining forces watched through security feeds and understood, finally, that there was no safety. Not from this.
The recording of his death had spread across the criminal networks within hours, and three other slaver operations had voluntarily disbanded rather than risk similar attention.
The arms dealer collective known as the Black Market Syndicate had attempted a different approach. Rather than fortify and resist, they had pooled their resources and placed a bounty on Sylux himself—one hundred million units, payable to anyone who could eliminate the threat.
The bounty had attracted hunters from across the galaxy. Professionals with decades of experience, specialists in exotic assassination techniques, teams that had taken down targets previously considered untouchable. They had tracked Sylux's movements, set ambushes, deployed technologies specifically designed to counter his capabilities.
Within two weeks, every hunter who had taken the contract was dead.
Sylux had not simply defended himself. He had hunted the hunters, tracked them down one by one, eliminated them with the same efficiency he showed his contracted targets. The message was unmistakable: attempting to hunt him was suicide.
The bounty had been quietly withdrawn.
The Kree Empire, whose expansion had brought them into conflict with several systems under Nova Corps protection, had initially dismissed reports of the new hunter as exaggeration. Their military was one of the most powerful in the galaxy, their warriors among the most capable, their technology refined through millennia of conquest.
Then Sylux had accepted a contract on one of their border admirals—a commander whose aggressive tactics had resulted in the destruction of three civilian convoys—and the Kree had learned what everyone else was learning.
The admiral had been aboard his flagship, surrounded by a fleet of twelve warships, protected by the finest warriors the Kree military could provide. The fleet's sensors had detected Sylux's approach and had responded with overwhelming force, filling the space around his vessel with enough firepower to destroy a small moon.
The Delano 7 had flown through the barrage without slowing. Its shields, upgraded by Nova Corps technicians and further enhanced by Sylux's ongoing modifications, had absorbed everything the Kree threw at it. Its weapons had responded with surgical precision, disabling ship after ship without destroying them—because Sylux wanted witnesses, wanted survivors who could report what they had seen.
He had boarded the flagship alone, walking through its corridors while Kree warriors threw themselves at him in waves. The ship's security recordings, later recovered by Nova Corps intelligence, showed him moving through the vessel like a force of nature, unstoppable and unhurried, eliminating resistance with an economy of motion that suggested he found the whole exercise slightly tedious.
The admiral had died in his command center, and Sylux had walked back to his ship through corridors now lined with unconscious and dead Kree, boarded the Delano 7, and departed without ever having spoken a word.
The Kree high command had quietly added him to their list of entities not to be engaged under any circumstances.
The Shi'ar had been more pragmatic. Rather than test themselves against an unknown quantity, they had reached out through diplomatic channels, establishing a non-aggression understanding that benefited both parties. Sylux would not accept contracts targeting Shi'ar interests; the Shi'ar would not interfere with his operations in their space.
It was, their diplomats reasoned, simply good business.
The Ravager clans had responded with their typical approach to new power players: recruitment attempts. Multiple captains had extended invitations for Sylux to join their crews, offering shares of profits, access to resources, the camaraderie of like-minded individuals.
Sylux had responded to each invitation with the same projected message:
I WORK ALONE
When one particularly persistent captain had attempted to press the issue in person, cornering Sylux in a station bar and refusing to accept his refusal, the response had been educational for everyone watching.
The captain had been left alive—barely—as an example. His crew had carried him back to his ship and had immediately departed the sector, and word had spread through the Ravager networks that Sylux was not to be bothered.
The Collector had expressed interest, as he did with all unique entities, and had dispatched representatives to acquire the fascinating hunter for his collection. The representatives had not returned. When he dispatched a second team, they had returned—but only to deliver a message, projected in glowing text that hung in the air before the Collector's throne:
NOT FOR SALE
He had, wisely, not dispatched a third team.
Even the cosmic entities had taken notice. Sylux's operations had occasionally intersected with events of larger significance—conflicts that drew the attention of beings who existed on scales that made galaxies seem small—and reports suggested that at least some of those beings had paused their eternal games long enough to observe the strange silent hunter who was reshaping the underworld's power dynamics.
None had intervened. Whether this was because they found him uninteresting, because they approved of his activities, or because they were waiting to see what he became, no one could say.
But they were watching.
Everyone was watching.
The Guardians of the Galaxy had benefited enormously from their association with him. Their ten percent brokerage fee on his contracts had made them wealthy beyond their previous imaginations, and the reflected reputation of being his "representatives" had elevated their status in circles that had previously dismissed them as chaotic amateurs.
"You know," Peter Quill said during one of their infrequent meetings, "when we offered you that deal, I didn't expect you to become the boogeyman of the entire galaxy within six months. I figured maybe you'd take a few contracts, build a solid reputation, the usual progression."
Sylux didn't respond.
"But no, you had to go and terrify literally everyone. The Kree are scared of you. The Kree! They've been conquering worlds since before Earth had agriculture, and they're telling their admirals to avoid the scary silent guy."
"I am Groot," the tree added.
"Yeah, he's right," Rocket translated. "It's impressive, but it's also making some people nervous. When you're so scary that major empires are adjusting their policies around you, that's... that's a level of power that draws attention from things that are even scarier."
Sylux considered this observation. The Guardians were not wrong—his rapid ascent had not gone unnoticed by entities that existed above the normal hierarchies of galactic civilization. He had detected surveillance that could not be attributed to any known power, sensor ghosts that suggested observation by technologies or beings he couldn't identify.
ACCEPTABLE RISK
"Easy for you to say," Rocket muttered. "You're the one with the invincible armor and the life-draining weapon. The rest of us are squishy."
"We're not asking you to slow down," Gamora clarified. "We're just advising you to be aware. The universe has... balance. Forces that maintain it. When something disrupts that balance too dramatically, those forces sometimes respond."
THIS IS A WARNING
"Call it friendly advice from people who've seen what happens when cosmic powers take notice." Gamora's expression was serious. "We've dealt with beings that could unmake stars. Trust me when I say you don't want that kind of attention."
Sylux absorbed the warning and filed it for future consideration. The Guardians' concern was legitimate—they had experience with cosmic-level threats that exceeded his own—but he was not particularly inclined to modify his operations based on hypothetical attention from hypothetical entities.
He would deal with problems as they arose. That was what he did.
I WILL CONSIDER YOUR ADVICE
"That means he's going to ignore us," Rocket observed. "Classic."
"I am Groot."
"Yeah, I know. But we tried."
The meeting concluded with the usual exchange of contract information and payment confirmations, and Sylux departed for his next target: a trafficking network that operated across seven systems, dealing in sentient beings for purposes that his intelligence suggested were even worse than standard slavery.
The network fell within three weeks. Forty-seven facilities, hundreds of operatives, thousands of victims freed and directed toward appropriate support services. The leadership died hard, each one experiencing the full attention of the upgraded Shock Coil, their final moments spent understanding exactly why Sylux had come for them.
His reputation grew further.
On Earth, the impact of his absence was being felt in unexpected ways.
SHIELD had noted the significant reduction in high-profile criminal activity during the six months since Sylux had begun his galactic operations. The criminal underworld had not received any direct visits from their most terrifying predator, but the knowledge that he existed—that he could return at any moment—had created a chilling effect that made ambitious operations seem inadvisable.
Why risk building something that might attract Sylux's attention?
Spider-Gwen continued to patrol, though she found herself with less to do than usual. The criminals who remained active were smaller-scale, less organized, the kind of threats she could handle without the assistance of her missing mentor-figure-thing.
She missed him.
She would never admit it out loud, but she missed the silent presence, the efficient violence, the inexplicable feeling of safety that came from knowing something that terrifying was on her side. His absence left a void that her usual activities couldn't quite fill.
She-Hulk had thrown herself into her legal work, taking on cases that pushed the boundaries of superhuman law and establishing precedents that would shape the field for decades. She told herself she wasn't waiting for him to return, wasn't checking her communication channels every few hours for messages that never came.
She was lying to herself, but she was doing it well enough that she could almost believe it.
Black Widow had continued to observe from a distance, compiling intelligence on Sylux's galactic activities through SHIELD's extraterrestrial contacts. The reports she received painted a picture of exponentially increasing capability and influence, of an entity that was reshaping power dynamics across known space.
She found herself wondering, sometimes, what it would be like to work with him directly. To be part of his operations, his methodology, his silent efficiency.
She told herself it was professional interest.
She was probably lying too.
Nick Fury had upgraded Sylux's threat assessment from "significant concern" to "potential extinction-level event if hostile," which was the highest category SHIELD maintained for individual entities. The assessment was not based on any hostile action—Sylux had never moved against Earth's interests—but on pure capability analysis.
If Sylux decided Earth was a problem, Earth would have a very bad day.
The fact that this seemed unlikely didn't make the assessment less accurate.
Six months.
In six months, Sylux had gone from unknown entity to galactic legend. His name was spoken in whispers across a thousand worlds, invoked as a warning to those who considered monstrous actions, used as a threat by those who wanted to suggest consequences for crossing certain lines.
He had become what the universe needed him to be: a predator that hunted predators, a silence that preceded endings, a force that could not be reasoned with or bargained with or stopped.
And somewhere in the depths of his consciousness, the fragment that had once been Marcus from Ohio observed all of this with a mixture of awe and existential uncertainty.
He had been nobody. A forgettable person living a forgettable life, dying a forgettable death. And now he was this—a legend, a nightmare, a name that made warlords flinch and empires adjust their strategies.
Was this what he wanted?
He didn't know anymore. The question itself seemed to belong to a different person, someone who had concerns about identity and purpose and meaning. Sylux didn't have those concerns. Sylux had targets and objectives and the endless hunt that gave his existence structure.
Maybe that was enough.
Maybe it had to be.
The return to Earth happened without announcement or ceremony. The Delano 7 dropped out of FTL at the edge of the solar system and proceeded at sub-light speeds toward the small blue planet that had been his base of operations before his galactic expansion.
He had unfinished business there. People who had been waiting for him, apparently. A reputation to maintain, contacts to renew, and the strange social entanglements that he still didn't fully understand.
Spider-Gwen's communication channel activated before he reached lunar orbit.
"SYLUX! You're back! You're actually back! I can see your ship on the long-range sensors and—oh my god, you have no idea how much I have to tell you. So much has happened. Well, not that much, actually, things have been kind of quiet because everyone's scared of you even when you're not here, but still—"
He let her talk.
The familiar chatter filled the silence of his cockpit, and somewhere in the parts of him that were still capable of such things, something that might have been contentment stirred.
He was home.
Such as it was.
The hunt would continue—it always continued—but for now, in this moment, the silence could be filled with something other than violence.
It was, he decided, acceptable.