Chapter 234: The Infected Living Planet, Ego
Up among the clouds.
Matthew stood by the ship's window, watching the chaos unfolding below on Knowhere, a faint smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, a flicker of amusement in his eyes.
"Dog eat dog... no matter how many times I watch this kind of thing play out, it never gets old."
He pulled the two bank cards he'd taken off the Collector and Ronan out of his pocket, nodding to himself in satisfaction.
With this much money, he could probably outfit Earth with a genuinely impressive fleet of spacecraft.
Now that he had both the Power Stone and this small fortune in hand, Matthew didn't plan to head straight back to Asgard using the Bifröst crystal. Instead, he figured he'd take his time exploring the universe a bit first.
After all, even though Earth was the "eye of the storm" in the Marvel universe, there was no shortage of interesting events and worthwhile finds out beyond it.
The ship kept jumping across the galaxy, billions of stars flickering into and out of existence in front of Matthew's eyes.
Throughout the trip, he rarely came across any planets that actually harbored life.
Which made sense, in a way.
Plenty of species existed across the universe, sure, but most planets were barren wastelands with brutal climates, and only a small fraction were suited to giving rise to life in the first place.
Add in the fact that some alien species held open hostility toward lower civilizations, and it made sense that a civilization capable of both producing life and eventually leaving its home planet was a genuine rarity.
Just as Matthew stood by the window, taking in the view outside, the ship's alert chime suddenly went off without warning.
The sound was piercingly sharp.
[Beep, beep, beep — attention! Attention!]
[This is the Nova Corps, your galactic law enforcement, alerting you that you have entered a Biohazard Exclusion Zone. Please leave immediately, or you may be placed in danger.]
[Warning: the planet ahead has been identified as the Chitauri homeworld, currently infected by an unidentified biological virus.
Observation confirms this virus spreads via four vectors: airborne transmission, bodily fluid transmission, contact transmission, and waterborne transmission.
The virus is capable of rewriting the DNA of both animal and plant life, and produces an intense consumption and assimilation drive in nearby living organisms.]
[Beyond the mystery virus itself, the Nova Corps has also detected what appears to be an unknown insectoid species infected by this same virus on the Chitauri homeworld, already present in significant numbers.]
[For your safety, please stay well clear of this planet.]
On the holographic display, a deep red warning kept flashing, and Matthew's hand paused mid-motion.
The Chitauri homeworld...
Was this the same Chitauri planet he remembered?
If he recalled correctly, hadn't he only dropped a single virus payload onto their mothership?
Well, technically, before releasing it, he had used the System to broaden that particular virus's transmissibility a bit, and sped up how fast it turned people into zombies.
He hadn't expected a few doses of the refined T-Virus to be enough to wreck an entire Chitauri homeworld, though.
Of course, the Xenomorph eggs he'd dropped in deserved plenty of credit too.
Presumably, once those eggs had been separated from the control of the original Xenomorph Queen, they would have found a way to birth a new Queen of their own eventually.
And as long as that Queen survived, she could use the zombified population to build herself an entire Xenomorph army.
Though, according to the Nova Corps, it sounded like that army had ended up zombified too, in the end.
He glanced down at the planet, wrapped in its shroud of grey mist.
The Chitauri homeworld held no real use to him anymore at this point, whether it was the zombies or the Xenomorphs down there, none of it was anything he could realistically bring back with him.
And bringing something like that back to Earth was obviously not the wisest move, so he figured he'd just let them all keep to themselves down there, quietly.
After a moment's thought, Matthew was about to steer the ship somewhere else entirely.
But before he'd managed more than a couple of taps on the control panel—
Off in the distance, not far from the Chitauri homeworld, another planet suddenly shifted.
Not the ordinary kind of orbital or rotational motion.
It genuinely "moved."
"Hm?!" Matthew's fingers paused mid-tap, his gaze locking onto the planet that had just moved.
Even as he registered his own confusion, the distant planet shuddered again, then rapidly rotated, revealing a massive face that had been hidden on its far side.
That face, made entirely of mountains and swirling cloud, was easily half the size of the planet itself.
Pale blue streams of energy pulsed and flickered from its features, and that face slowly turned to meet Matthew's gaze.
"Is this... Ego, the Living Planet?" Matthew's eyebrow rose, a flash of genuine surprise in his eyes.
He honestly hadn't expected to run into Ego out here, of all things.
After all, as a living planet, Ego spent his time either carrying out his own "expansion plan," roaming the universe scattering seeds, or in transit toward some new world to plant them.
The odds of Matthew running into him on his very first trip out were basically nonexistent.
"Though... why does Ego look different from how he did in the movie?" Matthew's brow furrowed slightly.
In the film, viewed from space, Ego's true form was mostly wrapped in red mist and mountains, its features resembling those of an old man.
But right now.
Most of the Ego in front of him was covered in black rock.
Within that rock, molten lava churned in vast quantities, and every trace of vegetation had been wiped out entirely.
Pale blue energy surged violently through the swirling mist, the face twisted, its mouth stretched impossibly wide, as if trying to bite down on something. The whole thing looked deranged.
Matthew watched Ego rocketing toward him, then glanced back at the Chitauri homeworld in the distance.
Before long, an almost unthinkable theory started forming in his mind.
"This thing... it's not infected with the T-Virus, is it?" Matthew muttered to himself, then shook his head. "...No, that doesn't add up. Even with my modifications, the T-Virus's transmissibility only got a bit of a boost. There's no way it should have this kind of terrifying infectiousness..."
"There's no way it could infect something like Ego, a Celestial."
"So then... what exactly is going on here?" A chill settled over Matthew's thoughts.
A portal snapped open in front of him.
Matthew stepped through.
The next instant, he found himself standing directly in open space.
Matthew hovered in the void, his gaze fixed on Ego, closing in fast.
For all his massive size, Ego moved with none of the clumsiness his bulk should have suggested.
The living planet came barreling toward Matthew, wrapped in churning lava and pale blue energy, moving at a speed that had no business matching a body that size.
Everywhere he passed, cosmic dust was swept entirely aside, and small celestial bodies were smashed to pieces on contact.
In the span of a single blink, that planet, far larger than any ordinary world, was already right in front of Matthew.
That colossal face, pieced together from volcanoes and canyons, loomed over him from above, expression twisted into something manic, its enormous mouth stretched wide, as if trying to swallow everything in sight whole.
Matthew looked into that mouth, an abyss unto itself, his eyes narrowing, his confusion deepening even further.
His form flickered, and he vanished from the spot instantly.
And in the exact instant he left!
Ego's terrifying mouth snapped shut with tremendous force.
Right before Matthew's eyes, the asteroids and the ship that had just occupied that space a moment ago were swallowed whole, completely.
Once that was done, Ego's mouth began to chew.
Before long, his eyes shifted, turning once more toward Matthew, still floating there in the void.
And once again, that manic expression exploded across his face.
The massive mouth opened again, ready to repeat the exact same move.
Watching this unfold, Matthew's confusion deepened even further.
"In the original story, Ego never once opened his mouth to bite anyone, did he..."
"Something's genuinely wrong with this Ego!" Matthew muttered to himself, a rare seriousness settling into his eyes.
Just to be safe, a gravity field instantly wrapped around him, transforming into an invisible storm, annihilating and destroying anything that tried to approach.
Facing an enemy on this level for the first time, Matthew wasn't about to let himself get careless, not even a little.
With his gravity manipulation fully deployed, whatever debris Ego hurled his way never even made it within a hundred meters of his body before the gravity field ground it into dust.
And just to eliminate any risk entirely, he even drained away every trace of the air Ego's attacks had displaced, putting himself in an absolute vacuum, ruling out any possibility of a hidden threat slipping through.
Out in the void, Ego chased relentlessly.
That massive mouth, built from mountains and swirling mist, kept opening again and again, snapping at Matthew each time, trying to swallow this creature carrying some unknown power source inside it.
Facing Ego's attacks, Matthew kept crossing between portals to evade.
Even as he dodged Ego's strangely abnormal assault, his thoughts kept racing.
Ego, the Living Planet: a Celestial possessing complete sentience and intelligence.
Under normal circumstances, his attacks would rely far more on controlling his own energy to bombard an enemy from range. There was no way he should be fighting this primitively, and there was absolutely no way he should be reduced to trying to physically bite a single target with his mouth.
What he was doing right now was like handing a modern man a gun, and instead of aiming it at his enemy, he decided to use it as a fireplace poker.
"Now that really is strange."
Matthew watched Ego's deranged thrashing with an almost leisurely calm.
A chilling thought surfaced in his mind, unbidden.
Sure, the T-Virus he'd released couldn't possibly have infected Ego. But there was one virus that could.
The Quantum Zombie Virus.
According to what the Ancient One had told him, the fabric of space-time itself was already in serious disarray right now, meaning something from another universe entirely could plausibly turn up out of nowhere.
And with the Ancient One currently occupied dealing with the Dark Dimension, her attention toward preventing incursions from other universes into this reality would inevitably be divided...
Which meant the Quantum Zombie Virus showing up here wasn't entirely out of the question.
"Could it really be that?"
"Has the Quantum Zombie Virus already slipped into this universe without anyone noticing?!" The thought made Matthew's eyes narrow slightly.
The Quantum Zombie Virus's danger hardly needed explaining.
Capable of infecting an entire planet in an incredibly short window of time, even spreading across the universe itself, that kind of transmission rate was rare even among viruses in general.
He had no idea whether the Blacklight Virus in his own body could actually consume the Quantum Zombie Virus, so just to be safe, Matthew didn't rush to land directly on Ego's body.
He gave a wave of his hand.
A "Werewolf," modified through E-Type Mold infection, appeared suddenly at his side.
This was a Pass reward the System had given him under the E-Type Mold theme, though unfortunately it wasn't of much use to him personally these days.
The moment the Werewolf was released, its body immediately began frosting over in the punishing cold of open space, on the verge of freezing solid into an ice sculpture.
Matthew glanced at it and flicked a finger.
A single drop of blood, laced with the Blacklight Virus, shot from his fingertip and landed precisely on the Werewolf's exposed skin.
The blood burst apart the instant it touched the Werewolf's flesh.
The scattered droplets transformed midair into countless black threads, spreading across the Werewolf's body at incredible speed.
Everywhere those threads passed, the Werewolf's body was rapidly consumed and rebuilt.
Its bones let out a series of teeth-grating cracks, and the muscle beneath its skin reorganized itself at breakneck speed.
Within seconds.
The Werewolf, which had been on the verge of freezing to death moments earlier, had been converted into a Blacklight Virus vessel carrying a small fragment of Matthew's own consciousness.
Matthew turned to look at Ego, already rocketing toward him again.
Without a moment's hesitation.
He grabbed the modified Werewolf's head with one hand and hurled it forward with tremendous force.
The next instant!
Whoosh—
The Werewolf blurred into a streak of black, tearing through the void, and slammed directly into Ego's still-open, abyssal mouth.
The instant the Werewolf entered that mouth, the Blacklight Virus inside it erupted into a frenzy!
Not fear. Not greed. Pure agitation.
Whenever the Blacklight Virus had encountered other viruses or organisms in the past, it had always treated them as raw material to be consumed. But the moment it landed inside Ego's body, it was like it had spotted something just as impossible to deal with as itself, and its first instinct was to charge out and destroy it on sight.
In short: it was basically two eldritch horrors sizing each other up.
Neither one thought much of the other.
The fragment of Matthew's consciousness housed inside the Werewolf, seeing what was happening, immediately seized full control of its body and deliberately tore open a wound in its own flesh as it fell deeper into Ego's mouth.
Before the Werewolf had even fully reached the depths of Ego's body, Matthew felt something go wrong with it.
At the wound site, Blacklight Virus biomass surged furiously, trying to force out whatever had latched onto it.
Meanwhile, the thing clinging to the wound kept pushing to force its way in deeper, advancing straight toward the Werewolf's brain.
In an instant, the two sides locked into a standoff, neither able to overpower the other.
"I remember: the core mechanism of the Quantum Zombie Virus is to attack the brain, rewriting its base-level function, and turning the host into something that only knows how to feed. That's exactly why, in the original story, the Mind Stone was able to act as an antidote against the Quantum Zombie Virus."
"So then — what if I don't have a brain in the first place?"
With that thought, Matthew's other arm instantly transformed into a massive blade of flesh and blood.
A single flash of the blade's edge!
The Werewolf's brain dropped to the ground.
That single change left the Quantum Zombie Virus with no target left to attack, all at once.
With nowhere left to advance, the Quantum Zombie Virus was immediately squeezed straight out by the Blacklight Virus.
Seeing the method actually work, Matthew's eyes lit up instantly!
"Just as I thought! No brain, no way for the virus to attack my brain!"
"And if it can't attack my brain, there's no way I turn into a zombie in the first place!"
The logic was basically the same as saying: if I'm completely useless, nobody can exploit me for anything.
Test complete.
Matthew watched Ego open his mouth to come at him again, and this time, he didn't hesitate for a second.
In his own words: now that he had a way to cure it, why hesitate at all? Just go for it.
An afterimage flickered past, and Matthew charged directly into Ego's body.
The gravity field around him surged violently, grinding every nearby rock and mountain into dust.
Right now, Matthew was like a drill spinning endlessly downward, and even after boring straight through Ego's mouth, he kept pressing on, deeper and deeper, without pausing for even a moment.
By his own reasoning, the fact that Ego had been infected at all most likely came down to the fact that his true core was, at the end of the day, a brain.
If he could just find that brain and destroy it, everything else would fall into place far more easily.
And of course, who knew, maybe he could use the Blacklight Virus to drain this Celestial's very essence dry in the process, and push the Blacklight Virus into another evolution altogether.
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