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"Ego?"
Yondu flinched as if the name itself were dangerous, his voice dropping to a tremor. "Lady Witch, why would you suddenly bring him up?"
Hermione watched his expression shift in an instant. The corner of her lips curled up just slightly.
"You think I can't see that Quill has half a Celestial bloodline?"
Yondu went still. She really did know Quill was Ego's son.
"Relax. I have no interest in the old history between you, Quill, and that Ego."
Hermione turned the doll over in her hands, idly, like she was barely thinking about it. "I just want to know where Ego is right now."
Some of the tension left Yondu's chest.
Years ago, Ego had hired him to go to Earth and bring back the young Peter Quill. At the time, Ego had played the grieving father searching for his missing boy, generous, soft-spoken, nothing about him that suggested anything wrong.
Who could have guessed he was a madman who wanted to use his own son as fuel for a universe-devouring plan?
When he saw the bones piled in that cave, so many of them, he finally understood how far gone that big-headed freak really was. Every child who failed to inherit the light. Dead.
So Yondu had done something rare. He felt pity. He didn't hand Quill over. He ran the same night.
He'd let the other Ravagers think he was a kidnapper before he'd let the kid find out the truth and go looking for Ego himself.
"Lady Witch..."
He chose his next words carefully.
"What exactly are you looking for Ego for?" he asked, keeping his voice quiet.
Hermione finally looked up. Something sharp moved through her eyes. "He has something I want."
"And since he's unlikely to hand it over willingly, I'll have to take it myself."
Yondu turned that over in his mind.
Anything worth this witch's attention was no ordinary thing.
He drew a slow breath and lowered his voice. "Lady Witch, Ego is not someone you want to underestimate. Not at all."
He knew Hermione's reputation. He'd seen enough to believe it. But Ego was something else entirely. That was an ancient Celestial, millions of years old. A living planet. Even knowing what Hermione could do, Yondu couldn't quite settle his nerves.
But he also knew better than to argue with her. He could only hope Quill wouldn't end up caught in the middle of whatever was coming.
---
Not long after, word came in from the Nova Corps.
Quill had broken out of prison, taking several high-risk inmates with him. They'd fled aboard a battered ship, destination: Knowhere.
Hermione raised an eyebrow when she heard it. Nothing more than that, as if she'd already seen it coming. She turned to Yondu.
"Let's move, Moll. We're going to Knowhere."
Yondu straightened. "Yes."
Minutes later, an Asgardian ship slipped silently out of the Xandar starport and accelerated into the dark between stars.
---
Knowhere.
From a distance, it looked like a colossal skull drifting through the void, hollowed out, massive, trailing a faint and sickly glow against the black.
Up close, you realized the inside was a city.
Mining tunnels ran through the skull's interior in every direction, strung with lights, crammed with every kind of person the universe could produce. It was the most lawless place in existence: no empire's jurisdiction reached here, no authority held sway. Smugglers, bounty hunters, pirates: they all called it home.
The skull itself was said to be all that remained of a dead Celestial. Someone had built the most infamous black market in the universe inside it.
That someone was the Collector, Tivan. And Tivan controlled everything Knowhere had to offer.
---
Inside a towering structure at the heart of Knowhere, Tivan stood gazing at the Orb on the table before him. Deep in his eyes, something hungry and covetous moved.
Across from him stood Quill, Gamora, Rocket, Groot, and Drax.
After the prison break, after the chaos, after somehow forging something like trust with the people around him, Quill had retrieved the real Orb from where he'd stashed it and come straight here.
"Mr. Collector," Quill said, putting on his most composed voice, while his stomach did something complicated. "The goods are here."
It was his first time dealing with a player at Tivan's level. Hard not to be nervous.
Tivan's gaze swept over the group, settled on the Orb in Quill's hands, and a thin smile of satisfaction crossed his face. "Young man. How much do you want?"
Quill breathed in. He named what he figured was an outrageous number.
"Five billion units."
"Done." Tivan didn't even blink.
Quill froze.
"...Huh?"
Had he heard that right? That fast?
The next second, his stomach sank. Realization punched him square in the chest.
He'd underbid. Badly.
He looked at Gamora. She rolled her eyes at him, expression flat.
Tivan seemed to find this entertaining. He explained, almost kindly: "A cosmic treasure of this caliber cannot be valued in currency. Five billion units is a symbolic gesture, my way of showing good faith. If you feel it's insufficient, I can increase the offer."
"Sure, that'd be great!" Quill said immediately, then felt even more lost than before.
What was this thing? What could make a person care so little about money?
He couldn't help himself. "Sir — what's actually inside it?"
Tivan smiled. He set the Orb in a specialized mount and opened it slowly.
Purple light flooded the room.
At the sphere's center, a gemstone pulsed with a deep, vivid violet glow, radiating waves of energy that pressed against the chest like a second heartbeat.
"One of the six Infinity Stones," Tivan said, his voice tipping toward something almost reverent. "The Power Stone."
"The..." Quill stared into the light. The energy coming off it was enormous, something ancient and wrong and completely beyond him. "What does that mean?"
Tivan, in genuinely high spirits from acquiring the Stone without a fight, settled in and explained. The dawn of the universe, six singularities, six Infinity Stones, their nature, their power, what they could do to reality itself.
He didn't talk down to them. He seemed to enjoy it.
Everyone except Gamora listened with their mouths open, completely flattened by the scale of what they'd just been carrying around in a metal ball.
That tiny thing contained all of that?
Then Tivan turned and nodded toward Gamora.
"The woman beside you, Gamora. She already knows what this is." He let the pause sit for a moment. "It seems she chose not to share that with you."
Quill looked at her.
Gamora exhaled slowly. Things had gone too far for half-truths.
"I know what it is," she said. "Thanos sent me. My mission was to take the Power Stone."
She met Quill's eyes directly.
"But after seeing what it actually does — what it could do in the wrong hands — I made a different choice. I won't let it reach Thanos. I won't let it reach Ronan." Her voice stayed level. "If either of them gets hold of this, the casualties will be catastrophic. I couldn't let that happen."
➤ Next: The Oriole Behind
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