The farmhouse that Steve had spotted was a gutted ruin – and not from the slow decay of time, either. Half of it had been burnt down, although the ashes had long since gone cold and started to scatter. The fields were a mess, fought on and bled on and the crops ground into the soil – not quite as bad as some as some that Steve had seen in the War, but. Bad enough.
There were no bodies anywhere to be found.
"Something terrible is happening here, Steve," said Tripitaka, with a meaningful glance at Tony.
Steve ignored him, focusing on searching the remains of the house instead – but even the part that was still standing had been hollowed out by the fire. It was the outline of a structure, nothing more. Like in the fields, there were no bodies, no discarded weapons... no personal effects, either. Hopefully the occupants had had time to flee before a battle had been fought across their land. There was no way to know, not without abandoning their primary mission.
There was a well near the farmhouse, but the water at the bottom was an unhealthy greenish colour. Steve licked cracked lips and glanced at the sky – still no clouds except at the horizon, and those were faint and white, not rain-clouds.
"We keep going," Steve said, and they did.
It was slow going. Not just because of Tripitaka, although he didn't slow them down as much as Steve had expected. But the road – and it was still hard to think of it like that – was a far cry from the road. In places it was clear that masses of people had used it for some time, and slogged the entire thing to mud and uneven footing – walking through the grass beside it would have been much easier, but given the nature of roads in this world, Steve was afraid to try. True, it might not be the great white road made of technology that could bend space-time, but the masses of people that had been travelling... their tracks would peter out, suddenly, without sign of where they had all gone, where they had left the road. It seemed like a pretty good clue that something was still hinky.
And then they stumbled across the monastery.
The first clue was the smoke in the distance, winding its way into the air. The need to get off the road, to find cover, was now almost a physical itch; Steve struggled to push it away. He was glad that Tripitaka had volunteered to run – because even if he hadn't, Steve wouldn't have been able to carry him: he needed to be free and ready to react.
When they rounded a boulder and got a good sight of what lay before them, Steve halted them at once, dragging Tripitaka physically back out of sight – Yulong, at least, had the sense to hide on his own. "Stay here," Steve ordered them – feeling like a hypocrite, but what could he do? Yulong and Tripitaka – even if the latter was suddenly no longer tripping over his own feet – were not exactly made for 'subtle'.
He wished badly that Tony were awake.
Since it was now in sight, Steve left the road, sticking to the brush as he circled around, keeping the ruined monastery in view. The ashes at the farmhouse had been cold – but this was still burning, one last silken wall yet refusing to die. The other walls, except for those made of stone, had already fallen; the roof had collapsed in as well. Whatever the silk stuff really was, it let off a foul grey smoke, making his nose twitch.
He listened. Over the occasional hiss from the still-burning flames, and the light wind brushing against trees, brush, and ruins, he couldn't hear any sounds that would speak of enemies still being about. Not that he knew who the enemies here were – on Earth, Steve would have condemned anybody willing to attack a monastery – and from the layout of the remaining walls, so similar to the one they'd stayed at before, Steve knew that was what it was – but, Hell, despite the welcome of the one monastery they'd come across, he believed Tripitaka when he said that many temples in this land were unfriendly, at best.
Wait – there. The wind lulled, and Steve's ears caught a faint hitch in breathing coming from somewhere among the ruins – faint, but laboured. Not a threat. He took another careful scan and then darted out of his hiding place – keeping eyes and ears peeled all the while, shield ready: movement attracted attention. But none came. He made it to the ruins – the awful smoke was thicker here, almost choking, and making him almost wish he had a full mask like Tony's. And beneath it... beneath it was the unmistakable smell of death.
There were bodies here, inside the walls – men and women, mostly looking human, a few not quite. He could not say what had killed them; there was no wound he could easily see on any of them. There were not many – six in all, before he came across source of the breathing that he could still just faintly pick out.
The monk was lying beside what had been a garden – had been, but now the beds had been trampled over, destroyed. She was curled inward on herself, clutching her hands against her chest, her eyes wide and frightened – and when Steve stepped into her line of vision, she gave a hoarse, quiet cry. Fear.
"I'm a friend," Steve said immediately, holding his hands wide apart. She wasn't armed – not that he'd been able to see – none of the monks had been. Which maybe meant nothing, but he couldn't assume it did. "I'm not with whoever did this – I can help you. Are you injured?"
He stepped nearer, and she curled even more toward the floor. "Don't touch me!"
"Okay," Steve said, making his voice as mild as he possibly could. He stopped. "Okay, I'm not going to touch you. I'm not going to hurt you. They're gone – you're safe – "
"I'm dying, you idiot," the monk wheezed, and squeezed her eyes shut tight – from fear or pain, Steve couldn't tell. "If you touch me, it'll – jump to you."
Steve closed his own eyes, listening to the wheeze – it was a full crackle, now. Fluid in the lungs. He knelt down and looked at her as best he could without getting closer – blunt force trauma? There was no blood. If it was an infection – but what sort of disease worked so fast? And this did: the monks, including her, had been left lying where they'd fallen. Not to mention all the other signs.
"Who did this to you?"
"You don't know?" Her eyes opened to slits. "Of course – you're a pilgrim." She laughed, a horrible rattling thing that nearly started her coughing; from his own experience, Steve wasn't sure how she managed to avoid it. "The Titan's troops. You picked a – bad time to visit."
The Titan. Not a title he'd heard before – but according to Thor, Loki wasn't Asgardian by birth. He was a frost-giant.
Loki had done this.
"I'm sorry," he told her.
"That's – my apology... things are probably – bad..." she seemed to lose track of what she was saying and just laid there for a moment, struggling to breathe. "Bad where you – come from? We've failed you. All of you."
He remembered the Chief Magistrate's promise. Her power – her dedication. "It's not your fault," he told the monk.
"We're failing." Her eyes tracked to his. "Don't touch me – us. Bodies."
"I won't."
"Go home."
"I can't."
"Idiot," she wheezed. "This isn't – your mortal Empire. This is Maklu. The cycle is not like – you know it. If you die..."
"I know," he said, to spare her the breath. "I'm from a different world."
She glanced up at him – hate and fear and –
"I'm not one of the Titan's troops," Steve promised. "And I'll oppose him to the death."
Her mouth twitched – a smile, tiny and pressed with pain. "So would – we all," she managed, and died.
Her eyes were still open. Steve wanted to close them – to offer that much dignity, even if he knew none of her funeral rites, and couldn't afford the time to bury her – to bury them all. Instead he stood and bowed his head to her, all the final respect he could offer her.
"May whatever greater Good is out there, enfold you in Its embrace," he murmured, and headed back.
Yulong and Tripitaka were waiting for him anxiously. Steve checked on Tony first – he was still unconscious, but he was still breathing – and gestured them grimly onward. "No one out in front," he muttered. "We keep moving."
"There were no survivors?" Tripitaka asked in a small voice.
"No." He locked eyes with Tripitaka. "Maklu is under siege. What you want from them – they're not going be able to give it. You should go back."
"I will not," Tripitaka said, frightened but determined, and Steve nodded.
They kept moving.
By nightfall, Tony had still not woken. They had found several more burnt-out farms, but no more bodies, and not a single living soul, either. On the fourth farm, they managed to find a small secondary well that seemed to have been overlooked by the invaders – at least the water wasn't a poisonous green. By then, Steve's head was spinning from hunger and thirst, and he'd been willing to chance it. So they drank their fill, rested, and drank some more, enough that Steve had to haul back both Tripitaka and himself before they could make themselves sick. And then they moved on.
"Can you see in the dark?" he asked Yulong as the sun set. The dragon-horse bobbed his head up and down.
"I cannot," said Tripitaka.
Steve grimaced. Tony was still unconscious; Steve had just checked five minutes ago. He didn't want to put the two of them together, but Steve would need his hands free if he had to defend them – and on land, he was a more capable fighter than Yulong. "Alright. Then you'll need to ride as well."
It took a bit of situating, and slowed them further – Yulong could see, but he was apparently pickier about his footing when attempting to keep safe two completely inept passengers – but they pressed on. Steve had slept last night; he was hungry, but that was nothing sleep would solve. Running was better, even if it was uneven running, forcing him to watch his feet like he never had to when he pounded the New York streets for exercise. That he had to look down so often, instead of being able to keep his eyes wholly on their surroundings, put him on edge. There were more ruins now, and still no people – the occasional low wall, bigger farms, bigger houses – and other buildings, broken, that he could no longer identify. It was dark enough that while he could see to run, he couldn't see to identify everything around them; he forced himself not to look too hard at anything in particular and instead keep his eyes ready to catch movement. There was nothing.
One step further and he was in the middle of a war zone.
Their surroundings had changed in the blink of an eye. It was still night, but now there were lights – energy weapons firing high above, most of them focusing against on a titanic shield erected ahead – it seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon, curving gently away so that he couldn't see how tall it was. Ships swarmed: small, fast, dart-like things with black wings, much stranger shapes that might actually be creatures, larger ovaloids that moved like giants through the swarms. He couldn't tell who was supposed to be fighting who. The explosions were all around them, loud and distracting and sending Steve's mind into overdrive.
Ground troops, he saw ground troops, not firing but definitely armed as they swarmed over rubble, not taking notice of the four of them yet, but they would – "Get down!" he yelled at Tripitaka, turning back and throwing himself towards Yulong, who –
– wasn't there –
– was there, and was rearing up in shock –
Steve grabbed his neck and dragged him backward, away, and they stepped out of the battle.
His own breathing was harsh in his ears. He pulled Yulong further back.
"What was that?" Tripitaka squeaked – he sounded terrified.
"Cloak," Steve panted. Maybe. "Had to be." Did it? Tony's illusions didn't block sound – ah, but the demon's had. What were the odds that Loki had some sort of similar technology? Or maybe it was the makluans – if the shield was theirs, then they probably had the technology.
If he'd doubted it before, it was clear now: Maklu was under siege. How were they supposed to get past that? On his own – he'd taken on worse odds, by far. But with Tripitaka? Not to mention Yulong – who looked pretty fierce as a dragon, but wasn't exactly mobile in a fight on land. And Tony, who was already injured in some way that Steve couldn't see.
"It's an active battle-zone. Going around might take us to the wrong place – we need to wait it out, scout when it's safer, and try then." And hope the right side won – or that they could successfully keep out of site. "We'll go a couple miles back, and hide off-road – whoever loses might be coming back this way." They had ships, shields, illusions – how were they supposed to hide against people who might have scanners better than Tony's?
"But – "
"No buts, Tripitaka," Steve said, as they began to trot along faster, Yulong apparently seeing the wisdom in Steve's plan – what little there was of it.
"But you're going the wrong way," said a different voice entirely.
All of Steve's nerves were strung tighter than a wire. Every breath he took – and that Tripitaka and Yulong and Tony took – he was aware of; every brush of the wind over their otherwise-silent surrounds, so different from the battlefield behind them. His vision was as clear at the periphery as it was at his centre of view, and he was keeping a sharp eye on their surroundings – yet he could not have said when the creature to their left had appeared, if it had appeared. It might have been there all along.
It was the cat from the underworld – the White Tiger. It was sprawled on a tree-branch from a tree that Steve also could not be sure he had noticed, if it had been there at all; the cat somehow managed to give the impression that the tree was only there to be sprawled upon. As Steve and Yulong drew up short, the cat yawned widely at them, showing long incisors – longer than any normal cat, Steve would have sworn, but they didn't show when it had lazily closed its mouth again, licking a tongue across and around its lower face.
"Who are you, really?" Steve demanded, stepping between it and Yulong – and Yulong's passengers – with his shield at the ready.
"The Great Guardian of the West," said Tripitaka reverentially, and Steve heard him scramble down from Yulong's back, and the rustle of cloth as he bowed – no doubt deeply.
The cat nodded at Tripitaka. "What he said. And you're going the wrong way."
"We'll be coming back, but that's a battlefield," Steve retorted. "And I thought you were supposed to be guarding the other side."
The cat sighed and jumped to the ground; Steve twitched and restrained himself from throwing his shield at it. It didn't go unnoticed by the cat. "I am on your side, politically as well as physically, Steve Rogers; in both cases, there is nowhere else I could be. The Western Gate is gone – and if we do not want the same to happen to the Eastern Gate, then we need to get your friend to Kuan-Yin as soon as possible."
"Me?" said Tripitaka, sounding stricken at the disapproval in the cat's tone.
"Not you," said the cat derisively. "You should go home. If you enter this city, nothing but death awaits you."
"Oh," said Tripitaka faintly.
"You want his help – or mine? Then take that headband off of him," Steve said. He could feel his chin jutting out – stupidly, childishly – but he didn't have any patience left.
"I can't. Only Kuan-Yin can do that," the cat said, an eye-roll audible in its voice, and it turned its nose toward Yulong. "You should also go home," and what came out of his throat next sounded like a tiger's roar, but also like a name: one that suited Yulong far more than 'Yulong' did. "Your debt is discharged and you cannot be of service here; your lack of true form will kill you."
Yulong whinnied, but very quietly. Steve didn't look over his shoulder – but he then he heard a thump as Yulong went to his knees, and he couldn't help but look. Yulong had turned his head back, and was gently nosing Tony's still form off of his back – Steve strode forward, keeping the cat in his peripheral vision, and grabbed Tony before he could just fall into the dirt. Yulong rose immediately, and gave him an apologetic look as Steve pulled Tony into a fireman's carry.
"I understand," said Steve. His throat felt tight. "Go."
Yulong turned to Tripitaka and nickered softly.
"I'm staying," said Tripitaka.
"You're a fool," said the cat.
"Often, Honoured One," Tripitaka admitted. "But Kuan-Yin called me, and I don't think it was only to come this far." He patted Yulong gently on the nose, and Yulong bowed his head one more time – and then took off for the east at a gallop.
Damn. "I don't have time to protect you," Steve told Tripitaka. "You get hit, you die – you do not take it out on Tony. This is on your own head."
"I meant what I said before," said Tripitaka, and then he looked down ruefully. "Although you had reason to be distracted, so I shall say it again. Iwill not harm him knowingly. If I had known he did not have a soul – perhaps I would have chosen that evil even still, before I reached transcendence," he admitted. "But never again."
"He doesn't have a soul?" The cat's voice was flat, so much that it almost wasn't a question. It stepped forward, in a way that made Steve step backward, very much on guard – "Relax. I am your ally. He does not have a soul..."
"No," said Steve shortly.
"Not so far as I can tell," added Tripitaka miserably.
"That is very strange," remarked the cat. "And it is stranger still that he can be within these lands, and alive – he is alive, isn't he?" it asked doubtfully.
"He is."
"Well. Then our purpose remains the same. I shall escort you to the Eastern Gate – the guardian there knows me, and shall let us in. We must make all haste. Maklu is breaking apart, as you saw - you have arrived at a very late hour."
Steve's temper boiled over. He glared down at the cat – which looked back, smugly, because it was a Goddamned cat, and he snarled, "You could have made the trip here a bit easier, y'know." Weeks, they'd been on the road – weeks, with people back home dying, and people here dying, and the cat was going to blame them for being put through the alien-world merry-go-round? Like Hell.
"The shields could not be lowered," said the cat. It sounded bored, and yawned again to prove it, providing another flash of those too-long teeth. "That would have been disastrous. Thanos is right on our doorstep, if you hadn't noticed."
"Thanos?" That sounded... Greek. Right? Did Loki have an ally from the Greek pantheon?
"The Mad Titan."
Steve blinked. "The Titan." If Thanos was the Titan, then who –
"Yes," said the cat, regarding him with a faint trace of curiosity, a larger portion of boredom, and a middling amount of impatience. "Who did you think the Titan was?"
Loki. Reindeer games. Norse – that one worked. "Norse god of chaos."
"Ah, the Outsider? Of course you would be confused," murmured the cat. It began to saunter off down the road – back toward the battlefield – with its tail waving in the air like a very fluffy banner. Steve glared after it – and grabbed Tony more securely, briefly passing his hand in front of Tony's face. Still breathing – and still not awake. He started after the cat, Tripitaka trotting behind them both.
"What do you mean, 'of course'?" Steve demanded.
"Your precautions – wise precautions," the cat admitted, sounding like it was having teeth pulled to make it say that, "of not saying the Outsider's name... powers of such levels can track it." It turned its head to the side, allowing Steve to see all of its very white teeth when it grinned – much like the Cheshire Cat, Steve thought, and great, that was all they needed. "But Thanos is of such a level that he will know we discuss him no matter what pseudonym is used, so in his case misdirection is quite useless."
Steve felt all his conclusions shift. "Thanos is the one that's been attacking the pantheons?"
"No," said the cat, again sounding impatient. "The pantheons are attacking him; Thanos is attacking the cluster. Of multiverses," he elaborated, his drawl implying that he didn't expect them to understand what he meant.
Steve did. And it sounded an awful lot like 'trying to destroy everything'.
"So it is true," said Tripitaka. "The end times – death has come to break the cycle at last."
"Perhaps," said the cat.
"Then where does the Outsider fit in?" Tony's self-appointed mission. Another cluster dead and unable to be reborn. This was entirely separate?
Did that make it nothing more than revenge? No – Loki existed to cause chaos. By the name 'Outsider', apparently the 'powers' in this place knew that Loki wasn't from this cluster – so they probably had some inkling of how his original one had met its end. If he was their enemy –
"He doesn't, except that he's loud and distracting," said the cat dryly. "Which, admittedly, has proved useful several times in the defence against Thanos, and no doubt shall again, although I personally wouldn't trust him as far as you could swing a cat."
Loki was on their side?
Tony, damn you, wake up, Steve thought grimly.
"This way, now," the cat purred, and they stepped back into the war.
He hadn't been expecting it that soon. The boundary had moved ten yards forward, dropping them back into the middle of the firefight before he'd been ready – and it was a firefight now: the ground troops that had been moving forward earlier were now falling back, ducking for cover as bolts of light lanced out from the left to smash them into dust. Small clouds of it lingered wherever the energy bolts had met a target.
Fortunately, reflexes born of Erskine's serum and honed in a different world's war didn't need Steve to be prepared: he raised his shield and stepped in front of Tripitaka just in time to deflect a blast that otherwise would have taken the monk's head off – or disintegrated him. More beams blasted out of the dark, and Steve shoved Tripitaka toward the closest cover he could see – regrettably, already occupied, but that was preferable to the alternative. He hop-skipped backward, avoiding wild shots at his feet – not so wild when any one of them might kill him – and looking around desperately for the cat. Its white fur was nowhere to be seen.
He ducked behind cover, shield last, propping Tony up so he could be sure the armour was entirely out of the way – and ducked a claw to the face, grabbing Tripitaka and throwing him flat just in time to prevent the panicked monk from running away from their new attackers and right back into the line of fire. Tripitaka stayed down and Steve swung out low and vicious with the shield – Maklu's defenders might be the ones firing on them right now, but they didn't know there were friendlies out here. These were the same soldiers as had been attacking earlier. Steve deflected a strike with some sort of humming blade and backhanded the soldier across the face, catching its helmet with the edge of his shield; the helmet splintered beneath the blow, revealing familiar features: elongated jaw (almost beak-like, really) with a flattened nose, eyes set too wide apart, dark purple skin that was more like hide.
His mind faltered; his body did not. The chitauri soldier reeled back, screeching, and Steve kicked out, keeping himself low – ever mindful of the shots whistling by overhead, of the terrible flimsiness of their cover – and kicked it out into cover. A glancing shot caught it in the arm and turned it into another eerily still dust-cloud.
Chitauri. Loki – the Loki he had fought – had been their ally, something of like their leader. Thor had said he thought his brother was a pawn. Was Loki in league with Thanos, then?
Two versions of the same guy, Steve reminded himself. He needed to keep his eyes open and gather more intel before jumping to conclusions.
Tripitaka was panicking, trying to flee – Steve snagged him without effort and hauled him down, half-tripping him over Tony's motionless form. He stuck a hand across Tripitaka's mouth before the monk could scream – again. "Listen to me!" Steve demanded. "You follow orders, you don't get killed. We're going to get through this – but you have to follow my commands!"
The monk nodded, his head shaking so fast that Steve wasn't entirely sure it wasn't just that – but Steve let him go and he didn't start screaming again. "I'll follow," he said instead, voice weak and thread and barely audible over the continuing fire across ground and sky.
At least nobody's decided to start firing down on us, Steve thought, and made thanks for large blessings.
More chitauri fled as all cover was slowly but methodically blown away by the city's defenders. Steve could feel it through their own pile of rubble – nobody was focusing on them, but every so often a shot would go astray and eat through another foot of their cover. They were going to need to find a better spot. Where?
The objective was to move forward; cover that accomplished that objective was superior to cover that didn't. He focused to the left, and hoped that a sixty-degree angle wouldn't be too far off – if only that damn cat hadn't run off.
Or gotten turned to dust by its own side.
Firefight's a bad time to be maudlin, Rogers. It's a cat, it'll be fine. Nine lives, right?
He glanced down at Tony's body. Form. Not body – not just a body, not yet.
"See that?" Steve shifted his grip to grab Tripitaka's shoulder and pointed out the cover. Fifteen feet – and better angles from there. "When I say go, you run."
"I will never make that," said Tripitaka, with the soul-deep belief of someone who had spent his entire life tripping over his own sandals.
"You ran across a damn tightrope, you can do it," said Steve. "I'm gonna cover you – on my mark. Three Two. One. Run!"
Steve hurtled himself out from behind cover, body tucked into a roll, limbs curled up behind his shield – he felt the impacts of these weapons, felt his shield shake beneath them in a way it never had for bullets or chitauri beams. Behind him Tripitaka was running – Steve intercepted two shots meant for him, unthinking; this was battle and he didn't need to think for this. More fire, seemingly random; Steve leapt, deflected more from Tripitaka, and nearly did a one-handed cartwheel getting back to Tony.
Overhead, one of the big ovaloid ships dropped lower and began pumping out fire down upon the defenders' location, green rain that shrieked as it fell. Steve didn't waste time regretting their losses – he grabbed Tony and booked it, skidding into a position beside Tripitaka for a moment, and then shoving Tripitaka up and onward. Now he had to worry about fire from both sides: with reinforcements, the chitauri weren't going to keep hiding for long. Sure enough, as Steve dragged Tripitaka low, behind a pile of rubble little more than two feet high, an armoured head took a quick glance out from a spot just a bit behind them.
When its head didn't get blown off from that first look, it took a longer look, this time with its weapon – and Steve leapt on it, grabbing the spear-staff-whatever and throwing it forward as violently as he could while twisting his entire body over in midair. He hit the ground and rolled with it, the razor-edge of his shield slicing deeply into an alien limb, almost severing it; he absorbed a kick to the side (or rather, let the suit Tony had designed for him absorb it) and yanked that foe's foot out from under it, bringing his legs around in a swift move that landed with its head on the ground and his knee halfway through its skull. There was a third, but it was running – Steve ducked back out, swatted aside blue staff-fire, and caught Tony's lifeless hand well enough to be able to drag him further forward. The armour could withstand hits from the chitauri weapons; he wasn't sure if it was the same when it came to the makluans', so he kept his shield focused on that and tried not to wince when Tony got hit twice by blasts from behind. The makluans were still firing – but not very often anymore.
Something dropped, off to their left, something that Steve didn't see but felt shake through his skin and bones. He stumbled, shoved Tripitaka forward, and they were out.
Out. Elsewhere. Night had turned to twilight; the faintest glimmer of a red sky could still be seen in the west. Even as Steve plastered himself to one of the now-standing walls, he couldn't quite believe his eyes. The city-shield was gone, razed or defeated, but they weren't surrounded by ruins anymore – these buildings still stood, not rubble that looked like stone, but some material that looked and felt more like glass. And aliens,everywhere – blue-skinned and pointy-eared, or furry green, and ones with more limbs than Steve's brain liked. None had wings, but some had hair that flowed like capes, and as they hurried along he couldn't see how they didn't trip up on it, or how no one else did either.
"Intruders!" someone cried, and then they were at the centre of attention, weapons turning toward them; by the reactions, alien as they were, he could immediately pinpoint which of them were trained military and which weren't, and the differences in clothing styles – uniforms – snapped into place. He was already standing over Tony; Steve shoved Tripitaka behind him. He'd never dropped his shield from its raised position.
"Don't be idiots!" roared another voice – a woman's, deep and full of authority. The alien woman who shoved her way forward wore that authority like a cloak as easily as she wore the deep grey plate armour that clad her head-to-toe. "They're pilgrims – leave off!"
The military aliens lowered their weapons in smooth movements and hurried on with their business; the civilians, all looking rather more frightened, scattered. The armoured woman walked up uncomfortably close – as close as anyone had in Shenzhen – and stared down at him: Steve forced himself to stay on guard and not lash out. "Ma'am."
"You need to go back to your empire," she said harshly. Her voice seemed to come through a series of slits in her helmet on either side of where her mouth ought to be... but with a closer look, Steve wasn't sure that those slits weren't her mouth. Mouths. "This realm is about to be under siege; I'm sorry, but your pilgrimage is over."
Blood was thrumming in Steve's ears. What was going on? More illusions? Some sort of teleportation as they stepped over an invisible border? "We have to find Kuan-Yin," he said. It wasn't teleportation. He could see it now, amber street-lights reflecting off of the buildings behind them – buildings they'd left behind, but he could pick out now how they would be after the battle: he could see the shape of the ruins among them.
"She can't see you," snapped the armoured woman. She had to be an officer of some sort. "Didn't you hear me? Go home."
"The battle already started," Steve told her. "We were just in it." They had run – up, there, beside that weirdly-shaped building – no wonder the rubble piles seemed so strange, so inhuman. These buildings were inhuman: as well they might be, built by aliens. "What's happening?"
The slits where her eyes might be seemed to gleam, and she brought a hand up toward his shield. Steve braced himself, but she didn't do more than touch it with a fingertip before dropping her hand back to her side. "The city is breaking," she said, like a murmur, almost to herself.
"What does that mean?" asked Tripitaka anxiously, poking his head out from behind Steve.
"It means don't repeat that," snapped the officer, and in a quieter voice, "We don't need a panic. Your friend – I see now." She flicked her fingers against the shield, and it shivered in Steve's grip, like it never had at the touch of anyone else – he knew how to make it do that, to make it hum at its own unique frequency, but how did she? The feeling was almost one of betrayal, but then she pointed onward, and said, "There. That'll give you authority to pass through. Proceed."
"Ma'am?"
She stepped aside, and almost instantly seemed to fade into a crowd of other soldiers jogging toward where Steve knew the battle would be. They didn't magically fade away as the crossed the invisible line, though – they kept going for the front, feet not quite in time. Steve crouched and hauled Tony up – wake up, please wake up – and grabbed Tripitaka long enough to ensure that the monk was following. "Come on."
It was the same place – the same place, but at different times, and these people didn't know what was coming.
No. That was wrong. They knew exactly what was coming; they just hadn't met it yet.
"Come on," he told Tripitaka again, grabbing Tony again and stepping forward. "And stay behind me." The shield went first – the shield always went first. Into the unknown.
The streets were like the streets of Europe: twisty, thinning and widening without warning: they weren't the neatly planned avenues of New York. Glass-fronted buildings ran right up against ones made of material that looked like brick, that looked like silk, that looked like some sort of overgrown plant; they jammed up against once another without mercy in a constant competition for space. The streets, however, were all made of the same material: the elegantly-sculpted white stone of the road.
They crossed through four intersections and had to wait at a fifth while a train of floating vehicles went through, carrying blank-faced, trembling civilians off to the north. After that, vehicle traffic increased. There was no sign of the flying ships that had been present before – or rather, later – but then, maybe those were all military; and in any case, they were now among sky-scrapers. Some of the objects being transported were obvious: guns, even advanced guns, were recognizable. The rest, Steve could only guess at the purpose of.
"I don't understand what's going on," Tripitaka complained eventually. Apparently transcendence didn't fix whining.
"Join the club," Steve told him.
A shrill whistle pierced the air, and everyone in sight threw themselves away from the middle of the street to press up against the nearby buildings – Steve followed their lead, and a moment later felt the rumbling footsteps of something enormous, just before a hairy grey thing, which looked like a hippo crossed with a lion, came charging down the street and off toward the east. It wasn't pursued by any sort of handler – hell, maybe it was its own handler. Maybe that was their general, and that was why everybody got out of the way, rather than just its size.
Steve didn't know and didn't care. He was waiting for the transition. Every footfall was a gamble, every step forward filled with anticipation: where would they end up next?
It wasn't a war zone, he discovered, as the world changed utterly between two breaths. It was a darkness and a silence so absolute that if it hadn't been for the breathtaking cold, he'd have thought he'd passed out. The cold burned, searing his exposed skin, and he tripped and nearly fell over something in his path that he couldn't see.
"Oh, no," said Tripitaka. "No..."
Steve looked over his shoulder. A moment later, his eyes adjusted, and he could see Tripitaka – just faintly. There was still light coming from Tony's arc reactor, even muffled as it was with him thrown over Steve's shoulder. These weren't the same ruins as before: the ground was uneven, but the piles of rubble had long since been flattened, losing their individual forms. Tripitaka was staring about in horror.
Tony made an indistinct noise, and the armour stirred.
"Thank You," Steve offered up under his breath, hurriedly kneeling and setting Tony down into a sitting position, wincing as the light from the arc reactor burned away the best of his night vision again. "Tony?"
"What – " Tony sounded groggy, but he quickly got over it – and began sounding as horrified as Tripitaka had looked. "No. No, no – "
"Tony – "
Tony's eyes slid past Steve and settled on Tripitaka, and he lunged to his feet, ducking past Steve and grabbing Tripitaka by the collar - and lifting, and squeezing. "You! Why you? WHY?" he shouted, shaking Tripitaka like a leaf. The monk shoved at his arms feebly, mouth opening and closing without drawing in a breath.
"Tony, put him down!" Steve ordered, trying to pull Tony's arm down, but he might as well have tried the move on Thor, or the Hulk. "Tony!" If Tony didn't stop squeezing Tripitaka, it wouldn't matter that he hadn't used enough force to break Tripitaka's neck outright: he'd strangle Tripitaka to death instead.
Tony stilled, staring at Tripitaka wordlessly – the monk was still trying, completely hopelessly, to fight him off. Yet he didn't use the headband against Tony, although he'd proven before that he didn't need to speak aloud to make it work. He just – scrabbled, pathetically.
The armour's fingers opened stiffly, like they were directed by an automaton and not a person. Tripitaka dropped into a heap, wheezing and hacking and shaking all over – and he had to be in danger of frostbite or hypothermia, now. Steve's face had already gone numb, and while the suit kept him warm enough for now, that wouldn't last much longer. He cupped his hands over his lower face belatedly.
"Tony," Steve tried again. His hands muffled the words, but not to the point where they were unintelligible. "Tony – I'm really glad you're awake. But we need to move on and get out of here."
"There's nowhere to go," Tony said quietly. His arms dropped back to his sides and he sagged: half the marionette's strings cut, and it couldn't quite hold itself up on its own.
Steve rubbed a hand briskly over his face, trying to generate some heat. Whatever was going on in Tony's head, Steve needed him, if not moving, then at least not actively opposing forward movement while they were stuck in this particular spot. It was as lethal as the active battlefield had been, if in a different way. But they were only just inside the border going the other way, so – he set his feet and shoved at Tony, following after and snagging Tripitaka on his way by. The monk wasn't up to standing on his own.
But the darkness didn't change, didn't give way to the light and the noise of the streets before. And Tony just let himself be shoved over, not catching his balance as he so easily could have done, instead falling on his ass and sending chips of concrete-glass-material scattering as he slid to a stop. He sat there, staring up at Steve as Steve kept going, and found nothing more than the dark.
"I told you," Tony said, his voice dull and lifeless.
Steve pulled out the faceplate his pocket and chucked it at Tony; it hit him right over the arc reactor and bounced off to land at his feet. "Since when do you give up without even trying? I don't know where you think this is, but you were only unconscious a couple of hours, and this place isn't forever. We walked in, we needta find the other side and walk out. Get up."
Tony stared at the faceplate, and then at Steve. "You're warm," he said, sounding surprised, and wonder of wonders, climbed to his feet. "You're as warm as he is."
"I think my face has frostbite." Steve rubbed at it again, then stopped as a memory floated to mind, something about not damaging frozen skin and cells. He glanced down at Tripitaka – who wasn't making much of an effort to stand on his own. Tripitaka was wearing far less insulation than Steve, and he was half his mass, to boot – he should have been going hypothermic by now, yet he was instead looking between the two of them with an expression that seemed to flicker between hope and despair.
"You're... not dead. Yet," and on the 'yet', Tony looked down and to the side.
"I don't plan to be," said Steve. He set Tripitaka back onto his own feet – the monk stood up without a wobble – and put his hands on Tony's shoulders. As soon as his gloves came into contact with the armour, it was like all of the heat leached out of them right into the metal; it took an effort not to recoil. "Tony, this city, it's messed up. Some places are at different times than others. We need to get to another place where the time is different – because right now it is lethally cold. Please, listen to me – I need you to fly us someplace else."
Heat began seeping from the armour into his hands, a burning sensation that made his fingers spasm before he got a hold of himself. "Anywhere you ask," Tony murmured. The broken faceplate at his feet turned into a gleaming puddle and fused with his nearest foot, quickly being absorbed by the rest of the armour, which now formed a new faceplate. "Hang on."
Steve barely had time to grab for Tripitaka before his other hand locked in place. A plated arm slid around his side and mag-locked as well, and then they took off – speed low, or so Steve thought. It was hard to tell with his jawbone beginning to go numb. His internal sense of movement seemed out of balance; it was hard to tell when they sped up or slowed down. Perhaps it was the total lack of external cues – as soon as the ground fell away, there was nothing but Tripitaka – bug-eyed, with his hands clasped over his mouth – and Tony, a silent statue against the sky. He could tell that they were moving parallel to the ground, not just up, and then –
Light flooded his eyes, blinding him; a few seconds of frantic blinking brought it back to normal, made him realize that the sun-bright day he'd thought they'd flown into was actually cloudy and overcast. They were sharing airspace with the occasional other thin, purple dart zipping through the sky, and far off in the distance – over a city that seemed to sprawl on forever, as though the towers of downtown Manhattan had spread across all of New York State – he could see a pair of dragons flying in concert.
Tony made a choked noise through the armour's speakers, and they dropped a couple dozen feet; Steve's heart leapt up into his throat before Tony regained control and brought them in for a fast landing. Steve barely stayed on his feet – but Tripitaka didn't seem to have any such problems; the monk twisted free of Steve's grip and raised his hands to the sky, his face open with wonder.
Tony, though, staggered like he was drunk.
Around them, aliens like they'd seen before parted as though crazy people falling out of the sky was a matter of no consequence – possibly they all had better things to do. There were none of the same type of military personnel that Steve had seen before, but now everyone wore some sort of non-dyed robe, and carried a weapon such as a sword or a spear.
Slow, still half in-control, Tony fell to one knee, one palm against the pavement. Steve steadied him before he could fall any further, kneeling with him – "Hey, look at me," he tried. "Lower the faceplate – " the damned thing kept him from being able to tell if Tony was breathing, let alone what he was thinking. Armour had its uses, but that didn't mean it should be worn all the damn time.
The helmet vanished slowly, crawling back in a way that was creepily organic, like some living thing. Which it might as well have been – a living shell that Tony cocooned himself within. One of the fastest minds on earth, and he was hiding away like a snail – all of this was wrong. Behind the faceplate Tony looked dazed. A thin sheen of sweat coated his skin. When he met Steve's eyes, his own were electric blue.
"Tony," Steve said carefully, "your eyes are glowing."
"Network," Tony breathed. "S'internet. Alien. Big." His gaze began to drift again – Steve waved a hand in front of his face, and Tony only half-tracked the motion.
"Their minds inhabit not just their bodies, but the whole of the city," said Tripitaka, and he bowed to no one in particular with profound respect. "I hear it now. It is open. They are at war, but not yet under siege."
"What?" Steve glanced between them. Tony – that, he got. But Tripitaka?
"The river," said Tony. He blinked, and began to look a bit more aware, but the blue haze hadn't faded from his eyes – and it was swimming just beneath his skin, too, barely perceptible but definitely there. Had he designed extremis to do that? "Nanites. All the rivers."
"He has nanites in him?" Steve asked, and looked from Tony to Tripitaka and back again. Tripitaka's eyes weren't glowing – but he'd been dead. Steve had pulled his body out – "He is nanites." He looked around him. These people – were their entire bodies made of nanites?
"We are more than the sum of our parts," said Tripitaka serenely.
He was a copy. Were they all copies? "You killed your original – "
"No," Tripitaka held up a hand. "The soul – the consciousness – is transferred, not replicated." He looked sadly at Tony. "The nanites may assist... but we are beyond matter."
"Borjigin corrupted extremis," Tony said. The armour pulled away from one hand and he rubbed at his face – Steve took the human gesture as a good sign, even if Tony was still crouched and not standing. "Used alien tech – bastardized alien tech. This is pure form." He grinned, and his teeth were ridiculously white. "Mine's extremis, s'poor copy. Got overloaded there."
"You're back now?" Steve asked, because Tony might now be using full sentences – more or less – but the grin was not actually reassuring.
"Sure," said Tony, standing – Steve stood with him. "Got the lowdown off the news networks, too. Realm in serious jeopardy, different sections splintering off into different times, Kuan-Yin has a world-wide APB out on us."
Steve looked around. The city might be under attack, but right now – whenever that was – although there were plenty of aliens hurrying around with weapons, it seemed a more workmanlike hurry than an active crisis-inspired rush. "Tony – it wasn't the guy we thought it was. It's somebody else called Thanos."
"Yeah, got that too," said Tony. It was just a shade too flippant. "And I think you're all crazy if you think he's on your side. You wanna know what happened back there?" He pointed a thumb over his shoulder with his bare hand. "That was the end of the universe. I'd know, 'cause I've seen it before. Guess who caused it?"
That wasn't all that happened back there, Steve thought, but he didn't say it aloud. "He's still not the immediate threat right now. The city's breaking apart and they think it's something you did."
"Uh-huh, APB," Tony agreed.
Steve glanced around at the aliens giving them a conspicuous amount of space. "They're not trying to arrest us."
"Not that sort of APB. Point is, fuck her," Tony said, suddenly turning vicious. "She wants something, she can come explain what the hell's going on."
"You can't talk that way about the Bodhisattva," said Tripitaka, sounding horrified.
Tony rounded on him, cold and impassive – and facing him directly, unflinching. "I heard you, back there," he said, sounding too calm – too calm, but it wasn't because he was afraid. This was anger, the sort of rage that made Steve narrow his eyes, because it was controlled and directed and Steve didn't know where at. "Not much else to hear there. I know exactly what you would and wouldn't have done if you'd known."
"Why should she have known? You are impossible," Tripitaka argued back. "And she is the Goddess of Mercy."
Steve felt like he was missing half the conversation – he could almost tell what was going on from what he did hear, but it was as if they shared something now that he lacked, making him slow to keep up. A petty resentment, but it was easy to entertain. Too easy.
"Then you go find her!" Tony threw out a hand to indicate himself and Steve as well, and just like that the resentment vanished. "We came here for Earth, and there is a library nexus two miles – " he pointed, " – that way. I can get everything I need from there."
Tripitaka looked very grim. "I will find her and bring her there," he promised – and vanished.
Steve started. "What the – when did he – "
"Probably just now, when he hooked into the realmnet," Tony answered. An ugly sort of jealously flickered over his face. "We get to go the slow way." Metal crawled over his exposed skin, and he offered an armoured hand to Steve.
"Two miles?" Steve looked at the relative peace around them. "This won't last." He grabbed on.
"I know," said Tony, and they were sky-bound.
Access requested: 2394.9201
no
Access requested: 2332.1039
no
Access reque
no
Even with his quickly-written auto-deny script, the network access requests were distracting, annoying, tying up ports and memory. But the thought of just turning everything off, the way he had when he'd gone after the koi-fish – no. Not with the memory of an altogether more absolute silence so close, a void not just of deliberately requested signals but of everything, the stars themselves silent –
stop
He was here and Steve was alive. Against all odds and hostile aliens, they'd made it to Maklu, and the key to fixing extremis was so close he could almost taste it.
Warnings lit up across his sensor processing suites and targeting went from a background process to priority: missiles inbound. The sky had changed its frequencies, slewing over to the red end of the spectrum, a bloody dawn – and it was no longer mostly-empty. Tony dropped, pulling and half-rewriting on the fly evasive and countermeasure subroutines crippled by having Steve hanging on – belatedly, he activated the ICG, but it was too late and he shut it off a moment later rather than drain power further.
They – and the entire city – were beneath some sort of shield, a massive construction with energy readings so high that they saturated half the sensors unfortunate enough to be pointed at it. But it wasn't complete: there were cracks in it, jagged energy disturbances that spoke of weakness – and in two places it had failed entirely. One, a tiny hole no larger than the one over Manhattan had been, was blockaded by a swarm of dragons – but the other, some thirty kilometers off, was a rent in the sky probably larger than Manhattan itself, and from it chaos poured forth.
Thirty klicks and they'd be somewhen else, but some of the enemy had already advanced across that distance and skirmishes were being fought everywhere – like the one they'd flown into, a match-up between people dressed like Huns and Celts, and Tony didn't think either side was actively targeting them so much as they were both shooting at anything that wasn't firmly friendly. Flares deployed – more nanites lost – and they were nearly to the far edge of the fight, which was a damn good thing, because Tony wasn't quite sure how Steve hadn't blacked out or thrown up from the Gs they were pulling.
"Hang on, almost there," Tony reassured him, getting a muffled grunt in reply – and then they were clear, because the sky changed again – shifting bluer – and half-emptied.
Unfortunately, Tony was pretty sure it was the wrong half.
The city-shield – well, realm-shield, to be more accurate – was gone. Black, not-quite-spherical ships hung in the sky, each one large enough to dwarf Stark Tower, and below them the city was burning. Smoke curled into the sky, and the occasional bright gout of flame, carrying with it the sounds of street-to-street fighting – but this was the last resistance, because the sky was clearly, firmly the dominion of the enemy. If Tony hadn't realized that immediately, then the point was driven home a moment later, when their flight path took him into the middle of an invisible trip-wire – or maybe it was something aimed at him, he couldn't tell – and he had time to briefly, viciously think oh fuck before extremis shut down.
It was worse than going blind – he was blind, there was no HUD in this version of the suit. He was deaf, as well, trapped in his own head – all his sensors were down. Particle analysis – from sub-microscopic to sub-atomic – pressure sensors, temperature sensors, cloaking, spectrums that ordinary humans couldn't see – it was gone. It was gone and it was even worse than being in that shell of Maklu, the end of the world, and he wasn't even sure how he was still conscious – extremis was wired into him and he wanted it back, please, stopstopstopstopstop and it wasn't working –
Gyroscopic sensors of an altogether more rudimentary sort pinged at his brain; he was tumbling. He was falling, which meant Steve was falling. Without extremis active, Tony might not survive hitting the ground. Steve, without a suit, definitely wouldn't. Steve, who was – still holding on, please let him still be holding on – Tony flailed with his limbs and he could feel something in the way; he latched on with what was probably painful pressure, but better that than the alternative of dropping him. They were dropping fast enough anyway.
He was falling and he couldn't tell which way was up; he was too dizzy and anyway they were in freefall, a state which emulated zero-G. But he could tell which way met wind-resistance if he stuck out a limb, and just like that the horizon that he couldn't see levelled out in his brain and he flipped himself over, twisting like a cat (or a man twenty years younger than he should be) – movement achieved and momentum conserved even without the repulsors to shunt it elsewhere –
Pressure, so much as to be painful – they'd hit something hard – but they were still falling, albeit with their speed much greatly reduced; luck was on their side and –
They hit the ground and Tony blacked out.
One moment they were flying through the air in a series of evasive manoeuvres that put every other bit of flying Steve had ever seen to shame, the next they were falling out of the sky at the same speed that they'd been fleeing from the fight. The repulsors had cut, and for the first instant Steve thought that Tony was just dropping them again as he had before, away from the massive enemy ships overhead – but the mag-lock had failed, too, and the wind-shear nearly tore them apart before Steve could grab hold of him, and find himself grabbed in turn – and then flipped as Tony forced them around through aerial acrobatics so that the armour took the force of the crash as they slammed through a thick glass pane. Steve brought his hands up to shield his face – the most he could do, really – and they continued to fall for another half-second before they hit the floor. Tony took the brunt of it, but Steve still felt all the wind get knocked out of him. He rolled off of Tony and waited for his muscles to stop spasming long enough for him to draw breath – too long. Tony wasn't moving at all.
"Tony," Steve said – well, mouthed; he didn't have the air to speak as he tried to shake Tony's shoulder. "Tony," he tried again on a gasping inhale – "Tony, damn it, not again, wake up, you're fine, you've gotta be fine – "
"Nrk," said Tony, and the armour turned to putty beneath Steve's fingers. It didn't fall off of Tony in pieces the way it had that one horrible, awful time, but it was definitely no longer entirely solid. Thankfully, it at least in part cleared away from Tony's face – Steve immediately leaned over, checking if Tony was able to focus.
"You gotta stop doing this to me," Steve half-complained at him – Tony's eyes flicked up to Steve's face and seemed clear, thank God.
"Oof," muttered Tony, struggling to sit up. The armour sludged off of him, although it wasn't a mess – the blobs of it that landed on the floor bounced up like enormous water droplets on waxed paper, keeping to themselves. "Ow."
"You okay?" Other worries belatedly asserted themselves. If extremis wasn't working, then Tony lacked its healing factor; and without that, it probably wasn't such a great idea to let him be moving after the hit he'd just taken. "The armour – "
"Hard reset," Tony said tiredly, and he scrubbed at his eyes and ears. "It'll reboot in a sec. Jesus, I dunno how you live like this."
"Like what?" Steve sat back on his heels and let a larger portion of his attention turn to their surroundings – enough to actually take them in instead of just assess immediate threats.
He didn't think there were any immediate threats. The battle might still be going on outside, but inside, it was both peaceful and deserted. They'd landed in an open atrium of some sort, lit mostly by the sky outside beyond a soaring ceiling made almost entirely of glass –now with a large hole in it where they'd crashed through. A few shards of glass littered the floor around them; otherwise, aside from themselves, there was really nothing here. The air was clean and still – perhaps slightly stale – and he couldn't hear anything other than their own voices echoing back. There were at least three exits, aside from the hole in the roof: an enormous set of sliding silk doors, and two smaller ones, done up in discreet black.
"With regular human senses," Tony said wryly.
"I don't," Steve pointed out. "Though it's not that bad, from what I remember."
"Yeah, that's what I thought," Tony muttered. "Okay, reboot in three, two, on-holyfuckingshit," he gasped, his eyes opening and flaring blue. The liquid-armour shimmered, and then ran up around him to clothe him again, but it didn't cover his head.
"Tony!" Steve leaned in again.
"I'm good! My god, this place is amazing – it's built for this, and it's genius, holy crap – this is multi-core processing fully realized, Steve, Steve, you have no idea – " he was grinning, wild-eyed with delight, and clutching at Steve's arm with one hand – Steve wasn't sure if it was because of enthusiasm or a need for support to keep himself from falling over. "It's here, it's all here – "
"This is the library," Steve realized. Even in free-fall, Tony had managed to aim them for it, somehow.
"Oh yeah. Not really a library – it's an interface point," Tony said, leaning more and more of his weight against Steve; Steve shifted to steady him better, ready to catch him if he fell. "The net, here, the information – it's big. Way more data than I've got processing power to look at, especially since extremis is decades behind anything they've got... this place has spare datanodes, lets me run in parallel, enough to look through the stacks."
"Like a card catalogue," said Steve when Tony paused – more to fill the silence than anything else. He needed to keep Tony grounded.
"No, more like – getting fifty million minions and telling them to go see what the card catalogue contains," Tony said, and laughed. It came out more like a giggle – Steve was almost entirely holding him up now. "Even the index is beyond Earth comparisons. And – ohhh," he said, and slumped entirely forward. Steve caught him.
"Tony?" He carefully lowered Tony to the floor, then snapped his fingers in front of Tony's face. "Tony?"
"I got it," Tony said, the words slurring together. "Steve, sorry – I needta devote more onboard processing power to this if I want it to still make sense after I disconnect. But I got it. I can fix extremis." His grip on Steve's arm tightened briefly and then slackened, his hand falling away as he went limp.
"Damn it, Tony!" Steve swore at him.