MARVEL's Avengers: Infinity War: Thanos

by Barry Lyga

  It was A’Lars.

  He had survived.

  His jaw dropped as he beheld his father, surely the last person he expected to see. “Father!” Thanos exclaimed, then berated himself for saying something so obvious and pointless. For all he’d accomplished since his exile, he reverted to a child in the presence of his father. Foolish.

  As he watched, his father climbed smoothly and gracefully out of the crate, then stood erect and, gazing directly at Thanos, began to speak.

  “Welcome. I am A’Lars, architect of the Eternal City of Titan. You are speaking to a synthetically intelligent version of myself. I, tragically, died in the environmental collapse that killed the population of Titan.”

  “Wait.” Thanos stepped forward. “Repeat that.”

  The synth that wore his father’s face tilted its head and smiled somewhat indulgently. “I am equipped with a variety of personality inventories depending upon my conversation partner. Please hold still for bioscan.”

  Closer to his father than he’d been in years, yet farther away than ever, Thanos stood motionless as the synth scanned him. When the scan was done, its facial expression softened just slightly.

  “Thanos,” it said. “My son.”

  “Father. What’s happened? Where are the survivors?”

  The synth smiled sadly. “There are no survivors. The environmental disasters combined with a global pandemic to form an extinction-level event. Every living thing on Titan is no more.”

  It delivered the news in an approximation of a gentle tone, which somehow infuriated Thanos all the more. His father had never used such a tone with him, and yet he had programmed his synth to speak to him thusly, should the synth encounter him. And since A’Lars had bothered programming the synth to recognize Thanos, that meant…

  “You knew I’d come,” Thanos whispered. “You banished me from my home, but you knew I’d come. You were relying on me to save you, despite yourself.”

  “My son.” The synth opened its arms for an embrace, still smiling that sad smile. “My faith in you has been rewarded. You have returned to us. We are saved.”

  “Saved?” The synth’s biotechnical circuitry must have corrupted over the years, in spite of the clean room in which it “lived.” “There’s no one to save. Everyone died.”

  He realized that he’d clenched his fists and his jaw, that angry white flecks of spittle had gathered on his lips and in the grooves of his chin.

  “My son,” A’Lars said from the synthetic realm of almost-life, with a sympathy and a kindness he’d never expressed while alive. “There is a way. Let me show you.”

  And he smiled. Not a sad smile. A bright one, a joyous one, and it twisted his face into something unrecognizable, something that had never existed in life.

  “You let them all die!” Thanos stepped back. “I told you it was coming, and you ignored me! No, you did worse than ignore me. If you’d ignored me, I could have forgiven you. Because at least then you would have the excuse of not hearing my warning. But you listened to me. You heard everything I had to say. And you still banished me!”

  “Thanos, that is all in the past. There is a path to the future, for you and for Titan. Please. Hear me out. Our people are dead, but they may yet still live.”

  Shaking his head, Thanos felt the room press around him. He was keenly aware that he was fifty stories beneath the surface, fifty stories away from open space and air, no matter how befouled. Fifty stories under a tower that listed dangerously and could collapse in on him at any moment. He’d never been claustrophobic before, but now the walls seemed closer, the ceiling lower.

  “You’re mad,” he said, his voice trembling in a combination of fury and fear.

  “No, Thanos. Behold! The Gene Library!” With that, a small hatch in the floor at Thanos’s feet opened and an orb the size of a head drifted up, hovering in position between them.

  “Gene Library?”

  “My greatest invention,” said not-A’Lars. “Long after your exile, I found myself reexamining your data and predictions. I arrived at similar conclusions, with variances well within a statistical regularity. Once I realized that your predicted environmental collapse could actually occur, I took it upon myself to collect DNA from certain Titans, the very best of us. These samples have been preserved here, in perfect cryo-stasis, waiting for rescue. With them, you can clone our people back into existence, Thanos. Titan will live again!”

  Staring at the Gene Library and its smooth, unlined surface, Thanos found himself—quite to his surprise—performing calculations. DNA samples could be small. The globe was only half a meter in diameter, but that could contain hundreds of thousands of samples, properly and conservatively stored.

  Including… His mother? Sintaa? Gwinth? Dare he believe it?

  No. He knew his father. A’Lars preserved “the very best” of Titan. Sintaa and Gwinth would not have met his elitist standards. Nor would poor, mad, flawed Sui-San.

  Thanos reached out and touched the cold, perfect exterior of the Gene Library. It was functional and beautiful, a true testament to his father’s craftsmanship and dedication to detail.

  Dedication to detail. Yes. To all details except the ones that mattered.

  “You took nothing upon yourself,” he said quietly.

  “I’m afraid I didn’t hear you,” A’Lars said calmly.

  Thanos’s upper lip curled. He pulled his hand away from the Gene Library.

  “I said, you took nothing upon yourself! You’re a synthetic person. A thing. You think you’re A’Lars, but you’re just his ghost. You’re what he thinks he was, rattling around in the confines of your artificial skull.”

  “You’re upset,” the synth said soothingly. “This is understandable. You’ve endured serious trauma. I can offer you a mood-stabilizer, if you like. Then you are to take the Gene Library with you. Return to a place of safety, and use it to resurrect Titan.”

  “Couldn’t resist investing your simulacrum with your penchant for giving orders, eh, Father?” Thanos said sardonically. “Still telling me what to do from beyond the grave.”

  The synth clucked its tongue in a way A’Lars never had, though perhaps he thought he had. “Thanos. Think things through and you’ll agree that my way is best.”

  “Fight me!” Thanos shouted. “Tell me I’m wrong and you’re right! Then maybe I’ll believe you’re A’Lars and do your bidding!”

  The synth smiled somewhat indulgently. “I’m not programmed for conflict with you, Thanos.”

  Somehow, that spiked his rage higher, fueled his anger. Not programmed. Not programmed for conflict with you, Thanos?

  With a roar, Thanos unsheathed the Chitauri battle-staff at his side. It snapped to its full length instantly, and he swung it in a wide arc, bringing its electrified blade into contact with the synth’s neck. For an instant, the synth’s expression was one of such horror and shock that Thanos thought it was truly his father brought back to life, that he’d made a terrible mistake.

  But the blade continued, severing the head, and Thanos saw not actual blood, but rather what he knew to be the viscous biofuel that coursed through the artificial veins of a synth. The head bounced once on the floor, then lay there. The synth’s body remained standing, poised, as though rudely interrupted mid-thought.

  For some reason, that odd, headless preternatural calm enraged him further. He raised the staff and brought it down again, this time cleaving the synth’s torso in two down to the end of the sternum.

  “This is conflict!” he shouted. “This is conflict with Thanos!”

  When he wrenched the staff’s blade free, it skidded off to one side, striking the floating Gene Library, which shot away from him and spanged off a wall. It hovered a little lower in the air now, dented on one side. As he stalked over to it, Thanos detected the hissing sound of escaping gases. The liquid nitrogen with which A’Lars had preserved the DNA samples was turning to gas and escaping.

  “Good!” Thanos crowed. “Good! You deserve
it!”

  He raised the staff over his head and brought it down on the Gene Library. Sparks shot out at the impact, and the globe smacked into the floor, then bobbled back up into the air, spinning on its equator. Another crack had appeared in it.

  “Good!” he cried again. “You deserve to die! You all deserve to die!”

  With each word, he smashed the staff against the globe again. It ricocheted off a wall, shook wildly, spun away, drifted in the air, hanging there, unable to maintain its normal height.

  He hit it again.

  “You should have listened to me!”

  Smack!

  “Why didn’t you listen to me?!”

  Smack! The globe pinged off the floor, bounced, rolled. It couldn’t hover any longer.

  “You could have lived! I could have saved you!” he bellowed, throwing aside the staff, kicking the globe across the room, where it cracked against another wall. He scooped it up and found purchase in one of the cracks.

  He ripped open the Gene Library. Liquid nitrogen containers spilled everywhere, freezing the floor and sending up a cold mist. A splash of it landed on his bare skin, freezing it instantly, but he barely felt it.

  Slender tubes fit into precise little grooves on plates within. Thanos started breaking them open, first one at a time, delighting in it, then by the fistful when one at a time was too slow.

  He was there for a long time, killing Titan all over again, as the synth that pretended to be A’Lars slowly sank to its knees, then tipped over and performed its own simulation of dying.

  “You could have been alive,” Thanos whispered when he was finished. “Half of you could have survived.”

  Tears streamed down his face and hissed in the pools of liquid nitrogen.

  “I brought no miracles, Kebbi. Why did I even bother trying?”

  CHAPTER XXIX

  WHEN HE DOCKED WITH SANCTUARY MANY HOURS LATER, Thanos had regained his composure. The time in the survival room beneath Titan seemed to have taken place long, long ago. As though it had happened in history and he had heard about it from someone who’d read the story.

  They were gone. All gone. The Mad Titan was the only Titan to survive. He was the last son of a dead world.

  Cha raced eagerly to the command module once atmosphere was restored to the docking chamber. “The shuttles are all ready. I’m just waiting for your word.”

  Thanos regarded Cha with pity. Cha would never understand. Cha never could understand. Cha believed that there was a purpose to all things, including suffering. But Thanos knew the truth: There was no purpose. There was no plan. There was only luck and bleak coincidence.

  And stupidity. And arrogance.

  “There are no survivors,” Thanos told him.

  “But the beacon—”

  “Automated system. No one is left alive.” He brushed past Cha and made for the airlock that led back into Sanctuary.

  “But, Thanos…!” Cha called after him. “What do we do? What do we do now? Thanos? Thanos!”

  CHAPTER XXX

  DEPRESSION OFTEN YIELDED LASSITUDE AND LACK OF hunger. In Thanos’s case, it was the opposite.

  He returned from the surface of Titan and within a day, found himself absolutely ravenous. Cha brought him great steaming trays of food from the ship’s replicators, seemingly more than any one being could consume without becoming ill. Thanos downed it all and asked for more.

  He set up a makeshift gym in one of the ship’s cavernous cargo bays and exercised as though sweat and exertion could resurrect the dead. Between enormous meals, he pushed his body to its limits and beyond.

  Sanctuary remained in a parking orbit around Titan for weeks, then months, as Thanos ate and trained through his grief and rage. Cha spoke little, for there was no point in speaking. Thanos did not respond.

  Except once. One time. When Cha ventured to tell him that Thanos did not need to let the death of Titan define him, that his life could still be meaningful and—

  Thanos had turned to Cha with murder gleaming in his eyes. “Enough.”

  One word. Two syllables. They sufficed. Cha spoke no more.

  The rental period on the ship expired. Cha fielded hails from the owner, stalling and hoping that Thanos would come to his senses sooner rather than later. He contemplated piloting the ship back to occupied space on his own. But what good would that do? To have them both arrested and thrown into debtors’ prison somewhere along the Galactic Edge?

  Cha believed in Thanos because Cha believed in his own place in the universe. That it was not random or haphazard. And if Cha’s place in the universe was by Thanos’s side, then Thanos’s mission must be good and right.

  But what now? What now, with the mission forever null and void? Could this be the end? Did his path and Thanos’s path end in defeat?

  Or—as Cha suspected but could not voice to his friend—did the universe have a grander plan? The destruction of Titan was a setback that would lead to a greater victory.

  The hails from Sanctuary’s owner were becoming more frequent and more incensed. Cha didn’t even bother opening the channel anymore when a hail came through. Having abuse heaped upon him by an irate Kree would not help Thanos, and it obviously wasn’t helpful to Cha, either.

  At last, Thanos deigned to leave his makeshift gym/quarters. He came to the bridge, where Cha was listlessly watching Titan spin below, an orange-encircled tomb for an entire race. He couldn’t imagine the horror.

  “Cha,” Thanos said, the first time in months he’d spoken Cha’s name.

  “Yes?”

  “Flush the starboard cargo bay into space. Then let’s put in a course.”

  Cha blinked. Thanos had been living in the starboard cargo bay for months now. “Flush…?”

  Thanos shrugged and took a seat in the navigator’s chair. “It disgusts me. There’s nothing in there I need. Purge it.”

  Cha shrugged and keyed in the command. An airlock opened on the starboard side of the ship, and everything within—all of Thanos’s discarded food, sweaty clothing, and improvised exercise equipment—was sucked out into the vacuum of space.

  “Where exactly are we setting a course to?” Cha asked. Thanos was sitting in the navigator’s chair, but he’d not moved to enter in coordinates, so Cha summoned a star chart hologram at his seat.

  “We’re returning to the Chitauri homeworld.”

  “The owner of this ship is—”

  “I am the owner of this ship,” Thanos said. “If the previous owner wishes to contradict me, he can discuss it with my army of Chitauri.”

  “So… we’re thieves?”

  Thanos turned to Cha, but without heat or anger. His expression was mild. “I have need of the ship. I have a greater cause than transporting fruits or machine parts.”

  “Oh? Transporting an army?”

  “No, Cha. We are transporting two things you care about quite a bit: hope. And salvation.”

  On the Chitauri homeworld, they picked up two squadrons of armed and armored Chitauri warriors, as well as the Other. Then, Thanos had Cha lay in a course for the planet Fenilop XI, a world three light-hours from the jump gate at Ceti Beta.

  “Why this world?” Cha asked.

  “I’ve been studying it,” Thanos revealed. “It has similar environmental and population dynamics as Titan. We’re going to save them from themselves, Cha. You were right: The end of Titan is not the end of my quest. And I was right, too—we must kill half to save the rest. This time, I won’t fail. This time, we have proof, the evidence of Titan’s fall. We will succeed.”

  Bearing in mind his failure at the Asgardian outpost, Thanos this time chose to remain aboard Sanctuary, sending the Other as his emissary to the king of Fenilop XI.

  King was actually a misnomer. The ruling monarch was elected, not selected by accident of birth, and served for a term of thirty local years. For that term, though, he or she was supreme ruler, aided by a legislative body, but not bound to it. Unlike the wretched democracy of Titan, this form o
f government made things simple: Convince one person and you’ve made your will into law.

  They rigged the Other with a microphone and transmitter so they could monitor the negotiations from aboard the ship.

  The Fenilops were tall. Almost obscenely tall—two and a half meters on average. They were slender, with a pliable, almost breakable appearance, and grayish-silver skin that sparkled in any available light. The Other had never looked more like an insect than when he approached the court of His Majesty Loruph I.

  “Your Majesty,” the Other said, as he’d been coached, “I am humbled and honored to speak to you on behalf of my lord, Thanos.”

  “I’ve not heard of Thanos,” said the king. “What world does he call home?”

  “He calls no world home, Your Majesty. He is a nomad, world-less. He has lost his people and his planet to the same plagues that lurk in your own paradise. Have you heard of Titan?”

  An adviser leaned in to whisper in the king’s ear, but His Majesty flicked him away. “I have. A most wretched and sorrowful happenstance. Thanos hails from Titan?”

  “He is the last of their kind, Your Majesty. And his tragedy has charged him with a mission: to prevent Titan’s fate from befalling other worlds.”

  On Sanctuary, Thanos listened, holding his breath. He and Cha exchanged a hopeful glance.

  “You speak true,” the king said, sighing. “My own science advisers have warned me that we are in grave danger of complete environmental collapse. For all my power and authority, I am helpless to stop it. I can do many things, but I cannot compel my people to stop reproducing.” He leaned back in his throne. “Your lord, Thanos, he has a solution?”

  “He does. I will let him explain it to you.”

  With that, the Other activated a holographic receiver built into his armor, which projected an image of Thanos from Sanctuary into the throne room. They had scaled up the hologram so Thanos’s eyes were on level with the king’s.

  Thanos decided that a bow would not make him seem weak, and was, in fact, the polite thing to do. He bowed to the king of Fenilop XI.