Chapter 31 - The Skull

They chose the mission and were walking back to the Milano when Eli remembered why he wanted to come to Knowhere in the first place.

The skull.

He actually forgot about it.

Damn, he thought. I can't believe I forgot this. (I actually forgot about it 😅)

He paused, stopping in the middle of the walkway. His boots scraped against the metal grating. Around him, the crowds of Knowhere continued moving—thieves, smugglers, bounty hunters, all of them with somewhere to be and someone to cheat.

The others looked back at him.

"What's wrong?" Peter asked. "Did something happen?"

Eli looked at them. Five faces staring back at him. Concerned. Confused. Impatient.

He couldn't tell them about his smelting powers. That wasn't something he shared. That was his secret. His edge. The thing that made him different from every other enhanced person in the galaxy.

So he lied.

"No, I actually forgot what I wanted to do here, and I just remembered."

Rocket's eyes narrowed. His whiskers twitched. "So the mission was not your purpose?"

"No. I wanted to at least touch the outside of the skull."

Eli said it even though he knew it might sound crazy or weird. Which it was. Who traveled across the galaxy just to touch a dead god's head? Who risked missing a mission—a mission that could save an entire planet—just to scratch a piece off an ancient skull?

But the inside of Knowhere was so polluted. He didn't trust just picking something off the ground and smelting it. The ground here had seen everything—spilled drinks, blood, worse. He might end up with something like rock hardness. Or worse, poop.

He shuddered at the thought.

The Guardians looked at him like he was crazy.

"You are kidding, right?" Peter said. "Because that monster might reach the planet in at least seven hours at the earliest and twenty at the latest. And you want to be a tourist of Knowhere?"

"You are being a moron," said Drax from the side. His voice was flat. Matter-of-fact. Like he was stating the color of the sky.

Eli ignored him. He was already flying up, his feet lifting off the ground, wind gathering around him. "Don't worry, I won't take long! You can start the ship. I will catch up to you in a sec. Just don't use the quantum drive to jump!"

Then he disappeared.

Flying at light speed looked like teleporting to some people. One moment he was there. The next—gone. Just a white streak fading into the darkness above.

---

When he got out of space, he was still moving fast.

About half the speed of light, since that was his max speed without any flying tech. The vacuum of space offered no resistance, no wind to slow him down, no sound to mark his passage. Just stars. Just silence. Just him and the skull.

Though he could still process information at near-light speed. That was the strange part—his mind kept up. His reflexes kept up. The world around him slowed down while he stayed fast.

He moved closer to the skull.

It was massive.

So massive that it didn't look real. Like something from a dream. Or a nightmare. A god's head, floating in space, hollowed out and turned into a mining colony. The bone was ancient—older than most civilizations, older than some stars. It had been dead for eons, but it still felt present. Like it was watching him.

Eli shivered.

He reached out and tried to do the same thing he did with the fighter jet back on Earth—just scratching a piece off. Back then, he had scraped his hand along the jet's hull and pulled away a handful of metal shavings. Easy. Simple.

But he was surprised when he couldn't do anything to the skull.

His fingers scraped against the surface. Nothing. No dust. No fragments. Not even a scratch.

The skull was harder than anything he'd ever touched. Harder than vibranium. Harder than the Dark Aster's hull. Harder than anything he'd smelted before.

What is this thing made of? he wondered. What kind of god leaves behind bones this strong?

He wasn't discouraged.

He tried again.

Scratching the same spot at high speed, using all his strength. His fingers dug into the bone. Sparks flew—tiny flashes of light in the darkness. But still, nothing came off.

Again.

Again.

Again.

His arm ached. His fingers burned. But he kept going. He had come all this way. He wasn't leaving empty-handed.

After a while—though to him it felt like a long time, it really just took about two seconds—he finally scratched out a piece.

It was small.

Tiny, even.

A fragment no bigger than his thumbnail.

But it was his.

He held it up to the starlight, turning it over in his fingers. The fragment was dark—almost black—with faint veins of gold running through it. It felt warm. Alive. Like it still remembered what it was part of.

He looked at the piece, and a smile appeared on his face.

He was really happy.

---

He was about to smelt it when he felt something.

A kind of warning.

Not a voice. Not a sound. Just a feeling—deep in his chest, behind his ribs, somewhere that didn't have a name. A sense that if he did this, if he absorbed this piece of a dead god, he would change.

Not a small change like with the ant—that had just made him more willing to follow orders. That had been subtle. Easy to ignore.

This would be systematic.

It would change the way he looked at life as a whole. The way he looked at his friends. The way he looked at Natasha.

He thought about her. About her green eyes. About the way she said his name. About the vacation they never took.

He didn't want to lose that.

He didn't want to lose her.

Not yet. Maybe not ever.

So he pocketed the piece for later. He tucked it into a small pouch on his belt, somewhere safe, somewhere secure. An emergency power-up. Something to use when there was no other choice.

He was about to fly back when he saw the Milano just floating outside the skull's atmosphere, waiting for him. The ship's lights blinked in the darkness. A beacon. A home.

"So," Rocket said over the comms, his voice crackling through the speaker, "are you satisfied with it now? Since you didn't even take that long."

Eli floated there for a moment, looking at the skull one last time. Then he nodded, even though Rocket couldn't see him.

"Yes, I did," he said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the fragment. "And I even took a little something. I want you to make a necklace or something that can store it."

"Okay," Rocket agreed like it was nothing. Like Eli had just asked him to pass the salt.

But to Eli, it was the best thing.

Because if a situation like the one on Xandar ever happened again—if he ever faced something that pushed him past his limits, something that demanded more power than he had—he would have an emergency power-up in his hands.

A piece of a god.

Waiting for him.

---

He flew back to the Milano and landed on the ramp, his boots clicking against the metal. The others were already inside, strapping in, preparing for the jump.

Peter looked up from the controls. "You get what you needed?"

Eli touched the pouch on his belt. The fragment was still there. Still warm.

"Yeah," he said. "I got it."

"Good," Rocket said from the pilot's seat. "Now sit down and buckle up. We've got a monster to kill."

Eli smiled.

He sat down.

And the Milano shot into the stars.