Chapter 3. Old flames, Part2:

What becomes

It was the sound, more than anything else:

They'd been on vacation, visiting the old farm where Drax had grown up, because people should understand where they come from, and despite it being a universal rule that any long journey with a child soon becomes a unique and personal slice of hell, Heather had never been like that and they'd all had an enjoyable trip and, as usual, were almost on time. Their family finances had stabilised and despite the rocky patch of the previous year Drax was feeling good about the future. They had recently refuelled the groundcar's cell and Yvette was resting sleepily against his shoulder as he begun to drive across the desert. Despite the groundcar having climate control, Drax had wound down the window: he's always enjoyed the smell of the desert at night, and the cool air and quiet Agave scented desolation was a comfort.

There were a lot of stars out that night.

Drax guessed that this far from the light pollution of the city you would see so much better, and he went to say as much to his wife when he released that she'd fallen asleep on his shoulder. He smiled and shared a glance in his rear-view mirror with Heather, who giggled at her mother and went back to star-gazing thought the window-roof. Her eyes were wide and full, and Drax felt proud that his child always managed to find in even the smallest things the beauty and the wonder.

Heather's face froze and her brows creased in confusion.

"Da?"

"Yes?" he asked. She pointed.

Drax ducked his head slightly to see a higher angle in the mirror. A bright light was streaking across the sky parallel to the road they were on.

"A meteorite. You are privileged: people used to believe that to see one would bring luck."

Heather shook her head dismissively at such childishness as only a nine year old could. "Meteorites don't change direction." She said, confused and suddenly, just a little afraid.

There was a deep thummm as the meteorite made a second course-correction and zoomed down low. Suddenly the desert highway was lit in an unpleasant violet light, necrotic and throbbing. Yvette woke suddenly, and, confused, asked "What?"

(for quite a long time afterwards Drax wondered whether she might have said something better than "What", or if he should have, but at that point there was really nothing else to say. It didn't stop him dwelling on it, though.)

Drax stared stupidly, and like all fathers, went into explanation mode, even when unwarranted.

"It's a scout ship!" he said. He'd done a few models for military vessels in the last few years, and so knew all the major types. His world was neutral in the war between the Kree and Nova empires, but did business with both sides and favoured Nova as shamelessly as they dared without breaking their neutrality. His world was peaceful and unimportant: neither side came there.

"A scout ship?" asked his daughter.

(… why those words?...)

"A scout ship." He repeated. "Kree."

It was the sound, more than anything else.

No screeching. No bangs: just a whump so loud you felt it in your chest and then a liquid sloshing, the surprisingly papery crackle of metal crumpling and the flex and pop the carbonate windshield as it deformed and spiderweb'd. With his head full of the noise, it took him a moment to realize that the sloshing was the liquid in his inner ear, and it was only then that he twigged that the car was rolling. The glove box deformed and the door popped off into his wife's chest and as its contents mixed with the litter from the footwell and the papers hung suspended in the vehicle like snow and he thought, dully, that he really should have kept the vehicle cleaner. It was a rental after all.

And then his safety-harness snapped and the centripetal force threw him out of the window that he, and only he, had opened, and into the desert air.

"Drax?"

Drax looked down. Rocket was standing by his foot, holding up a low-profile com unit, the sort that fit in your ear, Groot, and a worried expression.

"You okay big guy?" he asked, shifting Groot's pot so that his corsetry of Velcro splints took some of the weight: He was still too badly wounded to take point on this as he would have liked, and so Quill had put him in charge of running back-of-shop for this job.

"I am well." Said Drax, taking the com and inserting it into his ear. "I was just thinking."

"Uh-huh?" well, don't… don't think like that." said Rocket, looking at him sideways. Drax only then realised that he'd been cradling one of his knifes to his chest. He took it, picked some lint of the blade, and sheathed it, leaving an inch of blade showing so he could draw quickly.

"One mammal overly fond of his weapons to another, there are times when you worry me big-man." Said Rocket. "You gonna keep to the plan, or is this going to get personal?"

Drax considered this. "Both." He said, evenly. Rocket pulled a face, but put on his C2 headset and didn't comment.

"Com's check, com's check, com's check. Sound-off, you bald-bodies, and let's get this over with."

"G1 here."

"Q 1 here."

"D1 here." said Drax. The trick with call-signs was to make then as simple and memorable as possible, so that when you forgot them and screamed someone's real name in a fire-fight you looked like right idiot.

"Okay, R1 and G2 running C2. Is it too much to ask that someone has eyes-mark-one on T1?"

"T1 one approaching rendezvous, right on schedule." Said Quill. "Heading for his usual spot… carrying a news-filmy. That's new."

"Weapon?" asked Rocket. There was a brief crackle of to-close-to-the-mic-idiot-breath as Quill shifted his position and then.

"Could be, big enough, wrapped into a cylinder. He's not unrolled it, so he's not interested in reading it. Too small for a nerco-blaster, Disrupter maybe."

Rocket sighed and pinched the bridge of his snout. "Fickin' perfect." He muttered, with the transmitter-off, before "G1, eyes on T2?"

"Leaving her motel. Concealed plasma-Taser. Possible concealed blaster. Observing and tailing."

"Heading?"

"Right for the Rendezvous."

Rocket nodded. "Affirmative." He looked to Drax. "Almost time to roll, big-guy."

Drax nodded. He would be glad to get down: Rocket had picked his spot well; the top of a concrete fed-silo in a farm on the edge of the star port. The Refugee camp had grown right up to the razor-ribbon fence of the farm and the new neighbours had scared off the farms owner giving them unlimited access and perfect views over the port, town and camp. It was, however, a hot, dusty exposed place, and they had been there since 0800 watching and waiting. It was 1157, in three minutes the local postal office would open and the trap would be sprung. Good: The spot had the rank, sticky smell of silage, and the concrete was already too hot to walk on underfoot.

Its grittiness reminded him unpleasantly of desert sands.

Rocket grunted and put down Groot in the shade of a miniature parasol, crudely lashed to a folding camp-chair of Quill's Rocket had found. He checked the com's relay once, just in case, and shuffled over to the long, thin bundle he'd had Drax bring up. He might be too badly hurt to run point, but as he'd told Quill, there was more than one way to skin a womp-rat, and the team needed him as more than a voice down a mic.

"R1 and D1 ready, and backstop running hot." Said Rocket, flipping the dust-cover off his railgun. It was an anti-material version, scratch-built from gods'-knew-what and at least four times as long as it's owner. The optics alone must have weighed nearly as much as Rocket did, but it was perfectly balanced around the bipod and he claimed it could penetrate the weak-spots on a Badoon grav-tank behind the grav-tank you were aiming at, and that the advanced muzzle break made the recoil something that even his wounded shoulder could handle.

(Quill had asked what would have happened if the muzzle break failed. Rocket grinned and said "Well, then I get my balls sanded off by the concrete and I shoot backwards off that silo at about mac three. But don't stress about it: that mountain-range will break my fall." To Drax's knowledge, there were no mountain ranges on this continent.)

Rocket synced the weapon to the HUD on his C2 headset, and, wincing, lay down behind it. He kept one paw on an old medical gel-pack wedged under the buttstock, and squeezed it gently to force the stock up or down by minute amounts until he had the main drag of the town, specifically the dusty crossing between the Café and the postal-office, in his sights. The then pulled out the breach-flag and worked the bolt-action with a distinctive rattle and clunk. Drax looked at that surprised, and Rocket caught him looking out of the corner of his eye and shrugged.

"Yeah, ancient shit I know. I just like the noise, okay?" said Rocket, as Drax patted Groot on the head for luck, and begun to climb down the rungs set into the silo's side

Rocket squinted down the sights, giving any inhabitants of the town who might have happened to look up at the right moment a view of 10g's worth of liner-accelerator couplings, spite, and one overly magnified eye.

"Showtime." Muttered Rocket.


Drax moved forward along the Edge of the refugee camp. The plan was to get him into a position where he could intercept if either of their targets managed to flee towards the camp or spaceport. If all else failed, Rocket was there to make sure no-one crossed their arbitrary Backstop line and made it into the camp, but given that actually firing that railgun across what amounted to an international border between two hostile nations would probably start a war, he'd got order not to do so unless lives were at stake.

This made it pretty important that Drax was the one who stopped their targets escape, and that suited him just fine.

Sanding by the improvised border-control booth, he stopped and turned, looking up the main street. A wind blew little eddies of dust up and down and a paper-bag tumbleweed-ed along the wooden sidewalks in the backwash of an unmanned air-taxi as the Coms gave him a surreal little narration of what he could see.

"Okay, Q1 here, I can see T1 walking out across the street towards the front of the postal-office." Said Quills Voice as Vince Sandhurst appeared in a dust-stained white suit and bleached straw hat. Across the street, a feminine figure slipped buy on the edge of vision.

"G1, T2 is making her way towards the back of the Post-house." Said Gamora, and whilst Drax couldn't see her, he felt confident she was right behind the second target.

"R1, everything seems clear, we have zero, repeat zero civilians out in this heat, clear lines of fire. The second they get that package engage with extreme frickin' prejudice." Drax wondered what prejudice Rocket could have towards the targets given hat they were both of his race and Rocket had never behaved in a discriminatory manner towards him, but he put that question aside for later because she had just stepped into view, elegant as ever, and hurrying towards the postal office.

Rockets voice sounded in his ear. "R1, I can see them on the hacked camera-feed from inside the post-room. T1 has the package, repeat, T1 has the package."

"Q1 ready across the street to intercept." Said a slightly tinny version of Quill's voice a fraction of a second after Drax saw him raise two fingers to his hidden coms-unit.

"G1 ready." Said Gamora's voice and T2, Isha, waited outside the postal office. It had seemed strange that Sandhurst only waited until the post office opened, and then left in a huff each day. What if the package arrived once the office was opened, in the afternoon? Seeing Isha waiting in the bar had let the team know that the office was watched in shifts, by two people. They had presumed Sandhurst was working alone because that's what the evidence they had suggested; they had never suspected an accomplice.

That's what she is. Again. Drax thought, as Vince Sandhurst stepped out of the postal office, Isha falling into place behind him as he begun to walk towards the space-port. Quill begun to walk parallel to them on the opposite sidewalk.

"Okay," said Rocket. " On my mark Spring the trap in three, two, on-"

And then Isha pulled out a plasma Taser and shot Sandhurst in the spine, and everything went wrong at once

Quill was no doubt just as surprised as anyone to find that Isha was not in fact working with Sandhurst, but to his credit he didn't hesitate at all and flipped his helmet down and sprinted towards her, reaching for his blasters. It was however an incredibly stupid thing to do as all it did was cause her to notice him and swing around, trigger held down. The small laser in the plasma Taser ionised the air just enough for it to conduct electricity and so a glittering laser-straight beam swung across the street and moved-down everything in it's past, which other than dust and flies, was Quill. He went down spasming as his com-feed burst into static . Gamora suddenly materialised on the roof of an abandoned flop-house next to the postal-office and leapt down at Isha, a tranq syringe in each hand, when there was a Bloop as the air-taxi hovering over the street focused it's forward safety shield onto her and fired a force-field bubble that knocked her backwards into and through the ply-board whorehouse wall. Isha snatched up the package and ran of r the air taxi, which pirouetted mid-air and came towards her, open-doored. Drax became suddenly aware of Rocket shouting down the com.

"I have a shot, yes or no? G1? Q1? Someone, anyone I have a shot!"

Drax watched the woman he nearly married reach for the taxi door, for the second time in his life. He raised he hands to his comn-bead.

"This is Drax. Take the shot."

There was a moment of agony and waiting, and then the air around the silo visibly budged and then bust into the sharp V or hypersonic flight. The air-taxi was joined to the silo by a thin line of friction-scorched air and suddenly leapt sideways ten feet, turned itself inside out mid-air, and showered the street with brightly coloured metallic confetti before its surviving engine pod started to leak oily black smoke that the enter thing drifted, gently, into the street next to the post-office and exploded.

Isha paused; hand still outstretched, and then looked down the street.

Their eyes met. And then the sonic boom from Rocket's overpowered military penis-enlarger washed over them, and threw Drax forwards into the dust.


It was the sound, more than anything else.

The desert sands felt gritty under Drax's back, and his head spun as the papers from the glove-compartment rained down on him. He felt that something important was happening, but for a moment he couldn't remember what.

The sound of his daughter crying out in pain brought him back to his senses.

His eyes snapped open, and he tried to sit up. He heard a hissing sound, and that, the desert air and and his daughter fear made him think serpent until he remembered that he had been in a car crash. Groggily, he tried to sit up again, and found he could barely move. He looked down at his leg, and felt a little lightheaded surprise to see his own bone poking clearly though the meat of his thigh.

His daughter shouted again, in pain, and the hissing continued. Gas tank he realised, with cold fear. The hydrogen cell had ruptured, and he'd filled up the tank with fresh H2 not an hour ago.

"Heather!?" he shouted. His daughter wailed back "Yvette!?" Silence.

He grabbed hold of his thigh, and begun to try and shuffle himself towards his car with his other leg, shouting all the while. It was a good thirty paces from where he had landed in the furrow his car had made in the dirt, to where the wreckage lay, and he made maybe five. He was aware of a pulsing blue light behind him. Of heavy footsteps. Police? He shouted for help.

Police. The police would help they would call the rescue services, and save his wife and daughter. He had to tell the police there were people still in that car. He had to tell them what had happened, tell them about that…

Kree ship. He thought.

The footsteps grew much louder, and then came to a halt just beside him. He saw armoured uniform boots, the haft of some poll-arm, and the hem of a robe of small, interlocking scales.

The tall Kree looked down at him from under the head-dress of an accuser of the Kree empire, impassive in his war-paint, and knelt down to pick something out of the rubble. A scrap of paper. He help it up and examined it in some detail it was old, and sun faded, but the drawing of the girl in the spring park was still clear as sin.

"A pretty picture." Said the Kree, looking down. "Your wife?" he asked, causally as the hammer resting on his shoulder begun to pulse with a sickly light as it charged up.

"Ronan!" yelled another Kree approaching. "We have searched the wreckage, and have yet to find any trace of-"

Ronan held out two fingers casually, silencing him, the picture between them like he was in a bistro and asking for the bill.

"Our reconnoitring of this world is almost complete?" he asked.

The Kree solder looked from Ronan, to the paper, t o the wounded man at his feet before replying, nervously "Yes sir."

"Good. Then we will return to the dark aster and ready our attack."

The Kree soldier looked from Drax, to the wrecked groundcar, to Ronan. "My lord, there are two females in the ground car. One at least is still alive. "

One at least… Drax's brain just stopped working at that point.

Ronan the accuser looked calmly and cooling into Drax's eye, whilst replying to his underling.

"Our attack must have complete surprise. There can be no witnesses to our recognisance."

Drax screamed, and tried to drag himself towards the car. The Kree soldier smacked him across the back with his weapon and pressed the muzzle to the back of his neck, when Ronan cut in, his voice soft.

"No weapons fire. Necro-blasts would be as telling a testament as survivors. It must look like an accident. Leave this one, he will not survive." He said, looking at the picture in his hand as if committing it to memory. He then tossed it back onto Drax's wounded leg, causally. "Let us finish here, we have much work to do."

The Kree solider licked his lip nervously and withdrew the weapon. "And the females?"

Rona looked to the solder, then back to Drax. He held out his hammer, and stepped to one side. Drax would always remember that afterwards, he stepped to one side, to give him a good view. He held out his hammer.

"Universal weapon." He said, in a high and commanding tone. The hammer bleeped and moaned as it woke up, and the violet light bathed all of them in its cloying radiance.

Drax heard Heather scream again, and the hissing of the gas. As a result he didn't hear the hammer bleep out, asking him to pick his ammunition type.

Ronan charged up the weapon, and pointed the hammer at the wrecked groundcar, almost bored. "Incendiary."

It was the sound, more than anything else.


The dust was gritty under his hands. Drax woke to hear Quill and Rocket both screaming in his com.

The sonic boom form Rockets' rail-gun had blown out every pane of glass in town, and some of the flimsier buildings in the shanty town had actually fallen over. The wrecked and smoking air-taxi was strewn over half the street in a way that was eerily familiar to Drax, and the first cogent thing he made out was Quill saying. "Rocket, I really hope that taxi was un-manned."

"Cry about that later, where's the fucking target?" screamed Rocket. "l do not have eyes on her, repeat, I do not have eyes on our mark!"

Drax saw Isha duck into a side alley. He was up and after her knives, out before anything as crude as thought was involved.

"I can see T2 and I am in pursuit." Said Drax, calmly as he spun in to an alley after her. The narrow, twisting back-streets were much cooler than the main roads and so far more crowed, and people were everywhere trying to see what the hell had just happened, it he thought he could still gain on her. "Is T1 secure, and what had happened to G1?"

There was a pause, as a clearly shaken Rocket tried to remember who had which call sign.

"G1's vitals are good, I'm monitoring her remotely. Look like she's had her com taken out by the blast from that taxi. Q1?"

""Um, yeah I've got target one cuffed and secure, tazed but unhurt, he has no package, repeat, no package. Oh shit!" there was a crackle of weapons fire, and heavy breathing.

"Q1, call in! Q1 call in!" shouted Rocket.

"yeah, I have an unknown hostile, probably the guy who was controlling that taxi, fired upon me form a rooftop. He's fleeing towards the edge of the Kree shanty-town, G1 is in rooftop pursuit, I'm following at street level. The guy's a dead ringer for T1!"

"What?" yelled Rocket. "Wait, didn't the guy have a brother?"

"We can discuss that later." Said Drax, shoving though a crowd. They let Isha though easily enough, she was a woman, but a huge dust-covered man running along with a knife in each had provoked a differed response, and people were practically climbing over each other to get out of his way. He saw Isha reach a plywood board advertising something or other dumped up against the edge of the shanty-town, lift it to reveal a hole in the razor-fence, sand step though. "She is entering he Kree refugee camp, I am in pursuit."

"Negative, D1! I can't see you in there and I can't risk a shot, it's too crowded with civilians!" yelled. Rocket. "Let me pull back to the Milano, follow them when they try to leave on a ship and…" Rocket Squinted though his optics "and you've just gone through, haven't you?" he said.

"What gives you that impression?" asked Drax over the com, as Rocket watched panicked Kree refugees starting to pour out of alleyways near Drax's last location. Gamora reached the fence of the town and leapt over, landing on the roof on a shanty dwelling and rolling onto the next. There was a lick of Rocket-boots, and Quill sailed up to join her. Rocket watched in horror. "Ten units say they don't make it", he muttered to Groot.

Drax could hear Rocket and Quill exchange short, sharp status updates over the com, but it was just noise to him. The shanty town was a mess, an awful slum with no real street lay out and little sanitation, and in the heat and the dust it stank. He was getting some very unfriendly looks as he ran though, but worse ones from Isha as she stopped every few streets to try and tazer him. She'd be out of power soon, and he was gaining.

There were few real landmarks in the slum, and the fuel -tanks for the space-port loomed large over everything. It was to one of these that Isha seemed to be heading. He though he was about to catch her, when a hard-looking Kree steeped in front of him, brandishing a pick-axe handle. He slashed the weapon in half and punched him out with the pommel of one of his knives, but it cost him precious seconds and Isha had made it to the steps at the base of the tank.

He found her on the very top.

She was as beautiful as ever, wearing a Kree woman's head-scarf that snapped and popped in the wind as ships rose and fell behind her, and although her eyes were wild and her clothes dust-stained she kept the aim on the baster she had pulled out remarkably steady. The plasma tazer lay drained on the last step. He stropped, looked, and then stepped over it.

"Stop! Stop Drax, or I'll shoot.! I will you know!"

"Then shoot." He said, stepping forwards. Her eyes winded further still, but she kept the baster pointed at him.

"I never, I never wanted any of this. You have to understand, they left me no choice!"

"Choice? You betrayed your people. Or planet." He paused, and took in a deep shuddering breath, trying to keep the rage under con troll. "My family. I want…. Before I Kill you, I want to know why."

"Drax." Said a voice in his ear. "Drax you're not replying to D1 so fuck it. This is Rocket. Good thinking getting her high above the camp: I have a shot, big guy, but you keep getting your head in the way. Repeat, I have a shot on her, just take a step to the left and we can end this."

Drax ignored him, and advanced on Isha. "Stay away!" she screamed, and pulled the trigger on the blaster. A shot pinged into the steel of the fuel-tank by his foot, but didn't penetrate. This time. Drax froze for a second, his face blank, and then took another step forwards. She screamed again. "Stay away! I had no choice!"

"You will not escape this rooftop. You saw what my friend's rifle will do. If you shoot me, he will gun you down. If you shoot to miss again, you might burst the fuel tank and kill us both and many Kree. You are defeated. So, just tell me why you did it. He sheathed one knife, and reached into his pocket, and pulled out a scrap of paper. Isha stared, on the paper, Isha looked back at her.

"I drew this because you asked me to, kept it because I had feelings for you, and all I want to know, Isha, all I want to know is one thing. That night when we met up, that night we got drunk, did you give this to me because you wanted to elicit an extra-marital affair," he said, showing the picture, and then turning it though ninety degrees so the scribbled lab notes in the margin were readable. "Or was it because you knew Thanos was hunting whoever had this formula?"


It was the sound, more than anything else.

The lab burned, screaming alarms and flashing light adding to the chaos and confusion. Kree and Sakaarans shouted and screamed and Drax grappled with them. He'd made it to the capitol in time to warn the people, and the people, hadn't listened. A widower, driven mad with grief and, some said guilt that he'd fallen asleep at the wheel, seeking to put the blame of Kree UFO's forcing him of the road. The war was over, Kree and nova were signing a peace deal, and only a few rouge officers on each side would keep fighting.

Then, six months later, the dark aster hit.

He'd come there to confront her about the picture, about the formula once he figured it out. To kill her, If he was honest with himself. He'd just had the bad luck to pick the day that Ronan invaded the city. They day he'd come for the rest of that lab's research. The Kree invasion had suddenly justified him and his warnings, but it had put bodies between him and his revenge.

He'd garbed a necro-blaster, he didn't remember from where, and made it onto her floor. He killed people, his own people, to get there.

He was too late. Rona stood at the end of the corridor as the lab brunt abound him, holding her by the back of the neck like a pet that might bite with one hand, and studying her notebook with the other, showing a faint distaste as if trying to pick the least-awful thing of a bad menu. Drax screamed and fired a necro-blast at him. He was not good with guns, and missed by a good yard. Rona looked up, uninterested, as Drax charged him. He threw Isha into a wall with a flick of a wrist and drew his hammer and thrust it lazily at him. The universal weapon pulsed and Drax was flung back as if he'd run unto a brick wall.

Rona calmly looked at the book, and as Drax lay there stunned on the ground, found what he was looking for. A gap on an otherwise full page. He paused, and very carefully wrote, from memory, the formula. He then handed the book to the figure next to him and said "that completes my side of the bargain."

The figure next to him leaned out of the shadows, unconcerned with smoke or flame, and looked at the book. He then nodded and made some minute adjustments to something under his robe, and pulled out a hunk of stage metal. Drax was no expert, but it looked chitari, he then turned to a wall behind him, and snapped his fingered. One of Ronan's Sakaarans dragged Isha over, and held her face to the retnal scanner.

The wall slid back, and there in a hidden high-power containment unit floated… something, a stone, perhaps, something small and blue-grey and lit from within. The hooded figure, leaned in with the chitari scepter and, carefully, toughed it to the thing. It snapped into place in a slot for it at the end of the scepter, and the figure withdrew it and hid it under his robe.

Ronan frowned. "What manner of thing is that?" the figure chuckled, but did not reply. His face was withered and grey, scared and hidden with some sort of weird metal mesh. Ronan frowned.

"I will work out whatever it is that makes you value that so much."

"Mayhaps. But not in my lifetime, I think. One down… my master will be most pleased, he will give you the power to cloak your ship form Nova, you may go where you wish, and you will not be seen."

"And the power to destroy Xandar?"

The hooded figure held up the chitari scepter again. "One down, one reward. Find your master the next item, and you will have what you wish. Come." He swept from the room, and to a hole in the adjacent wall. He boarded a necro-craft, and like that, was gone. Ronan looked to Isha "her research has been valuable. Spare her, if she comes." He said, before walking onto the next craft.

Isha turned to look at Drax, her eyes swelling with tears in the smoke, but then she turned her back on him and, crying, stepped into the craft too.


"Drax!" screamed Rocket. "She just put a fucking round into the fuel tank! Step aside, and I have a shot on the crazy bitch! Just step to the left!" Yelled Rocket, snapping him out of his memory.

"Drax, this is Quill. As much as I want everyone to get out of this alive and never see that gun fired again, Ranger dickwad there has a point. Just take one step to the left, and let Rocket deal with it. I don't know what history you two have, but this is no time to make it person-"

Drax pulled out his ear-com, and threw it over the edge of the tank.

"I just need to know if you knew." Drax said. "I just need to know why." He said stepping forwards. Isa winced, and pulled the trigger again. It burnt into the tank next to his foot, but didn't pierce it.

"I just need to know why." He said, taking the gun out of her hands, and giving her the picture."

Crying silently, Isa stared deep into his eyes, and then pulled out something from her clothes. Drax watched. It would not be a weapon: she had proved that she could not kill him already.

It was a picture. He'd seen it before at that bar, on the way back from the gym. A young boy, about his daughter's age.

"They took my son… Ronan's scout party, they knew what I was researching, so they took my son." Drax watched, and, knife in hand, put one and on her shoulder, and raised the other one.

"I know. "He said, as his had moved.

"I know." He said, as he, gently, patted her on the other shoulder the exact moment a sweating and painting Gamora ran onto the roof. He looked to her, and nodded. She lowered her sword, and nodded back.

"I think we need to take Isha and her friend, and have a talk." He said.

Isha stared weeping. Somehow, that still had the power to hurt him.

It was the sound, more than anything else.


"I…I just got drunk. I was lonely, and horny, and had had a little too much, and I gave him my room number. I honestly didn't realize the formula was on there." She said.

Quill, Groot and Drax stared. They were back on the Milano, with Isha, (target two) Vince Sandhurst (target one), and Isha's mystery taxi-hacker who, predictably, turned out to be prominent fellow scientist Baz Sandhurst, his brother .

They all looked to Gamora, who had her fingers on Isah's pulse, and Rocket, who was standing near-by to give the expert opinion of his nose. Gamora nodded, and Rocket said "True." Between he two of them they were a pretty good living lie detector. Reference questions had taken half an hour, and Gamora had spent longer letting Rocket re-wire her bionics to detect changes in skin conductivity with her fingertips.

"You hand no idea?" asked Drax. Crying, Isha shook her head.

"It was two days before I realised that part of the equation was missing. When I worked out what had happened, I called you to try and get the picture back. I sent letters, came round you house, everything. You wouldn't answer or see me."

Drax stared. "I thought you were trying to start an affair. I burnt your letters unopened."

"You had no idea?" asked Baz, who had been one of her co—workers on trying to discover what their mystery stone was and why it made people more venerable to suggestion. Drax shook his head. "None. And you had No idea that Thanos would send Ronan after it?"

Isha shook her head. Gamora and Rocket nodded.

"And your son?" asked Drax. He'd heard her some was missing after Ronan attack, and put two and two together soon after.

"We managed to escape from Ronan's ship." Answered Baz. "He held us captive in lab, so we had access to plenty of materials to override his teleport controls."

"Frickin' amateur." Muttered Rocket. "Never lock someone in a store-cupboard, let alone a lab."

"We fled into the Kree empire. Hooked up with a resistance group who helped us continue our research. This… this mind stone, if that's what it is." Said Baz, "I nearly died as a child. Xandarian TB. After my brother so kindly sabotaged my lab out of envy as well, I've had uncontrollable shaking. Post-traumatic stress, they say, after the explosion. All I've wanted my whole life, was control: control enough to fix myself. PTSD. The breathing problems, the shakes… this stone, the power it gave for autohypnosis, simply undoing the PTSD, curing mental illness with a single touch, the potential applications... we had to pursue it."

Rocket snorted. "And the Weaponised mind-control , that was just a plus? A perk? I know how things go down in labs with lots of defence spending behind them, and let me tell you, it wasn't just curing vets of their PTSD that got your military to fund you! It's all fun and games at the start and then there electrodes and REM depravation and-" Rocket noticed the other staring.

"I don't trust the military –industrial complex, is all."

"Says the guy whose gun just leveled a shanty town by being too noisy!" said Quill. "It's a miracle no-one died!" Baz leaned in. "After Ronan's death, the research we had done under him was up for grabs. We found out and came to collect it. Vince is my next of kin, and we were missing assumed dead. He knew he could make a small fortune selling info on the mind-stone, and so had all the remaining research sent to him. I found out, and we decided we had to stop him."

"Why not call nova?" asked Quill.

"We don't trust them." said Isha.

Rocket snorted. "Got that about right."

Quill looked at the package. Another non-digital, un-hack-able harddrive: a notebook.

"And this is it all?" he asked.

Baz and Isha nodded.

"and you say you need it for your resistance group, and to work on a PTSD cure?"

They nodded. Quill ran his fingers though his hair. A hard one.

"Oooookay. Here's what we're going to do. a copy of this goes to Nova, to Dey. All of it. " he added, before either Baz or Rocket could object. "We hand in this, and your brother, for the reward, and you get the original. That way there's, like, a balance of power: no one group has this mind-control stuff, but both you and nova get a chance to use it for good, and if either of you uses it for evil I bet the other will be there to stop them. Mutually assured destruction." Quill paused. "and we keep a copy too, in case both you and nova choose to act like total dicks."

Baz frowned.

"I suppose there's no room for negotiation on this?"

"Not unless you want us to sell you and your resistance group to the Kree for a quick buck." Said Quill. Rocket looked at him approvingly.

"You don't know that you can trust them!" said Isha.

"yeah, but they're not the ones who tazed me today, so lets call it quits." Said Quill. He checked his watch.

"And now, if you want to get that transport to meet up with your resistance buddies, we better get a move on."

It took a surprisingly long time to clear security at the space-port. Apparently some psychotic vandal had destroyed an unmanned air-taxi with some sort of super-weapon, and after that everyone was understandably jumpy. The Kree were looking for some know resistance members on their side of the border too, but Rocket made a pretty good fake ID and so Mr Murray Burnett and Miss Joan Alison made it through un-scathed.

Drax walked her to the space-ship. It seemed polite, and she owed her that much at least.

"I.." she said. "if I had known when i gave you that note, your family.."

"You didn't." he said.

Her face took on a very strange shade. "but after that, after I heard they were dead-"

"Ronan had your child. Any other reason, and I think I might had killed you but protecting your only child?" he looked at his hands. They were scarred and callused, and he had killed more people with them that he liked to think about. "That I understand. I cannot forgive you it, but I can understand that you must find a way to cope. As must I."

"I… that day, in the bar, when I gave you the paper… I really thought you were going to follow me to my room. I saw you call a taxi to follow and everything."

Her smiled, sadly. " did. I made it almost all the way to your hotel when we passed that park, where we drew that picture. It's a wreck now, ugly children's pay areas and fast food outlets. I reminded me that what we had, was in the past, and there was no getting that back. He looked at his hands, where he still wore the battered ring.

"I was a married man, Isha. I still am." He looked up. Baz is the father of your child." It was not a question.

She nodded. "Does he know?" she hesitated, and then nodded. He nodded back. A workplace affair would explain her 'amicable divorce '. She hesitated. "But I don't love him. Come with me, we can do so much to undermine the Kree, to get revenge on them for-"

"For what you helped Ronan do. No. I still have some feelings for you, I admit, but it can never work. It couldn't that day in the bar, it barely even worked that day in the park. You have to go on that ship, and make your way, make amends for that you've done, as best you can, or regret it for the rest of your life." He looked at his hands.

"We do what we have to do. I'm sorry."

He turned his back, and walked away. He heard Baz Sandhurst call her name, so she must have loitered, but he didn't look back until he heard the ships engines fire up. As he turned then, he saw here waiting at one of the viewing slits, and then the girl in the park was gone.

Awesome mix tape part 2: What becomes of the broken hearted; Jimmy Ruffin

Quill walked up to him. "You okay bro?

Drax considered this.

"I have felt better, I admit, but I do not believe that we are related."

"Could be, sein' as he don't know who his dandy is. If it were me I'd check that out Asap." Said Rocket followed by "Ow!" and Gamora shushing. Quill continued.

"I just want you to know, you ever have any, yanno, any stuff about your past, about what happened, the whole quest for vengeance thing, you know you can share that with us? Right? I promise we won't freak out. We're all just as screwed up as you are. Rocket's probably even worse."

"Hey at least you got to meet one of your parents, Hey quit it Gamora. Bully."

Gamora held a hand to her ear. "What's that Rocket? I can't hear you over the tinnitus that I and every other person in this shity hick town has now thanks to you."

"Still no cause to take Natasha away from me!"

"Seriously, you name your guns? I think taking that monstrosity away from you counts as both self-defence and an intervention."

Quill ignored the bickering behind him, and eyed up Drax as Drax considered his offer. Eventually, Drax nodded.

"Agreed. No matter how personal, you are my captain. If I have emotional issues that might affect my actions. I will endeavour to let you know in advance."

Quill grinned, and held out his hand. "Put it there, buddy." Drax stared.

"Put what exactly?"

"I… you know, never mind." It's just good we're being honest and open with each other." said Quill, slapping Drax on the back and putting an arm around him until he realized that forced him to step on tip-toes.

"This could be the start of a beautiful friendship." Said Quill.

Drax considered this. "I had assumed that we were already friends."

"I… no, that's… I'm doing Casablanca, your story, what just happened, it and parallels to an old movie I saw once." Drax gave him a blank expression. "You're right, never mind, let's all shut up, walk home, sell Vince to the cops and get drunk in that bar. I think I saw a nightclub that's nerved booze until one am.

"Club Brazzaville" supplied Rocket helpfully.

"Should you be drinking on your medication?"

"Meh, at least it will be a cheap night out."

"Fair enough." Said Quill, as they all walked off into the sunset.

"Quill, since we are now being completely open with each other I must warn you that if you do not remove you arm form around my shoulders, I will rip out your spine."

"Opps, sorry there." said Quill, shifting who's hand was on whose back.

"Same with me." said Gamora.

"Fair enough."

"Hey, what are me and Groot, chopped Badoon liver?"

"You bite people who try to hug you."

"Yeah, but I should get the opportunity same as everyone else!"

"You're all idiots." Said Drax.


"They're all idiots." Said Baz Sandhurst, opening his cabin door on the ship. "We've got nothing to worry about my dear."

"But what if one of them works it out?" said Isha? "What if they look at their copy of the research and realise-"

"They'll never crack that cipher, the notes on stage two trials were hidden within the notes for stage one. Nova might, five, ten years down the line. By then it will be too late, we'll have gone to product and be in beta testing. We can't be caught." He said, reaching in and taking her hands. "and if we are, we'll just kill them. But seriously, they even bought that guff about the resistance cell: you'd think that they would have been a little more paranoid, they try a cut-rate polygraph on you after we've admitted were working on mind control and autohypnosis? They deserve what they get if they believed that. They all derive what they're going to get." he said, looking sideways.

They suit wasn't ready yet it was still missing a few components that he couldn't get, but now they had the old research back, he could bargain to get what he needed. He grinned, and in the light of the cabin's bare bulb, the flat discs of the drones stood silent, in their neat wracks like dead things.

not dead he thought waiting.

"Ah if only my brother could see this. He always liked to play his games, think that he knew oh so much, that he was in control…. No. I am the controller, no-one else…"

"Are you coming to bed, dear?" said Isha, as she walked into her adjoining cabin, holding the heavily sound-proofed door open with one hand.

"No, not yet. Tuck Jimmy up for me, too: we've lost far too much time on that planet, and I want to catch up on my phase two trial. Call K.L.S, and tell them that we are ready to press on, and that I want what's coming to me." He paused. "Oh, and tell them that I think I've found some of their lost property too. Doctor Kessler will be so pleased to hear that."

Isha nodded, and closed the door. he'd be an hour least, she knew.

He went over to the wrack of drones by the wall, and activated one. Now that he had the equation back, he should start to see real progress.

The first of the crates next to the wall was plastic, a yard by a yard, like all the others, heavy duty, easy clean, blank except for a series of air-holes, and a stylised wedge-shaped corporate logo. It looked like the top of an arch, marred by a stylised keyhole for an old-fashioned mortise lock. He popped the seals and opened it. As always the stink it him before anything else.

It filched away from the light and tried to slink back into the corner when it saw him, and it shuddered when it saw the drone. It knew what came next.

Even though he was making good progress, was getting close to proper control, part of him still, foolishly, weekly, found this part distasteful.

It was the sound, more than anything else.