by Barry Lyga
Nebula’s jaw dropped. “Why especially her?!”
“Because she actually killed him.” Thanos pressed a hand to his chest wound, the worst of those inflicted on him. It was already clotting nicely. “We’ll be leaving now. Get that and bring it with us.” He gestured to the head, which had rolled into the kitchen and fetched up against the freezer.
Nebula and Gamora raced to grab it. Nebula just barely edged out her sister, pouncing on the head and holding it up by the hair.
“What about this thing?” Gamora asked, pointing to the Scepter. It had landed close to the Lorespeaker’s body.
“Don’t touch it,” Thanos ordered. Gamora hesitated just an instant, then backed away.
Lips pursed in concentration, Thanos crouched by the Infinity Stone. The blue stone glimmered. He half expected a shock when he touched the Scepter, but he felt nothing more than smooth alloy. He picked it up in one hand.
It seemed so small. It seemed infinitely large.
“Um,” said Nebula, still holding up the Lorespeaker’s head. Blood dripped out of the severed neck. “Why are we taking this?”
“His brain was exceptional. I want to examine it to see if it can be of use. As for the rest of this place, we’ll firebomb it from orbit.” He strode to the door, then paused, turning to look back at them. “Why did you come for me?”
The girls exchanged a look that was subtle but unmistakably confused. “You weren’t in touch,” Gamora began slowly. “It was the longest we’d been without…” She trailed off helplessly.
His brainwashing, it seemed, was complete.
Nebula jumped in, sneering. “You always said that if we were concerned or worried, there’s probably a reason. So…”
“Yes. I also taught you always to aim for the head. When we get back to Sanctuary, you’ll be on restricted rations for a week, Nebula.”
CHAPTER XLIV
ABOARD SANCTUARY, THANOS WATCHED AS TWO INFINITY-class orbit-to-surface missiles etched a slow, glowing arc down to the Lorespeaker’s enclave. The rotation of the moon meant that the missiles disappeared over the curvature of the orb, vanishing from view.
An instant later, twin mushroom clouds blossomed from the other side of the moon, erupting up and out with such force that they were visible even from orbit. The moon shuddered, and an alarm klaxon went off on Sanctuary.
“Looks like we knocked that moon out of its orbit,” Gamora said.
From a spot across the bridge, where she lounged against the bulkhead, both arms crossed over her chest, Nebula said in a bored tone, “Told you two missiles was overkill.”
“What do we do now?” Gamora asked him.
Thanos had no ready answer. He watched the nuclear fire spilling into space as the moon juddered and twitched out of its orbit. It would most likely be caught up in the nearest planet’s gravity well, possibly colliding with it and driving that celestial body out of its own orbit. A cascading effect, no doubt. He did the math in his head, calculating orbital velocities, elliptical orbits, apogees, and perigees. If his rough reckoning was right, the worlds of the KelDim Sorrow would end up either pulverized or spinning into the remains of the nearby sun.
Good enough.
“What do we do now?” he said to Gamora, repeating her hanging question in his own grave voice. “What I do best.”
“Kill more people.”
“No. I’m going to think.”
He left them on the bridge, alone, and retreated to his quarters.
He spent most of the trip to civilized space—out of the KelDim Sorrow and back through the Raven’s Sweep—in his quarters, thinking. Plotting. Planning. He placed the Scepter that bore the Mind Stone in a bracket on the wall and spent long hours staring at it, drinking it in. Its power throbbed and seemed to melt the air around it. He yearned for it and feared it in equal measure.
That was as it should be, he knew. Utilizing an item of such power should not be undertaken lightly.
The Infinity Stones weighed on his mind. He’d thought that a Stone could solve his problem, but his experience in the Mind Stone’s thrall had taught that for all the Stones’ power and despite their name, their power was still limited. As the people of Morag had learned, Power alone was not enough. It had to be applied appropriately.
The Mind Stone could make people agree with him, yes, but he would still need to travel from world to world. Perhaps if joined with the Space Stone, to shrink the distance between worlds… But he would still need to conquer each one.
The Time Stone, then. Roll back the years; save those who’d already been lost… but it would only work locally. And so on.
And then the solution occurred to him. It was so simple and so vastly complex at the same time that it wrenched from him the first genuine laughter he’d experienced in years.
Emerging from his quarters just as Sanctuary emerged from the Raven’s Sweep, Thanos was met by a Nebula who looked leaner and angrier for her ration restriction. He allowed himself a slight grin of satisfaction. In addition to her food punishment, he’d also charged her with cleaning every pulsoglass opening along the hull of the ship. When she’d complained, he told her that this had been his very first duty in space, and that he expected her to excel at it.
The portholes gleamed.
“We’ve emerged from the Sweep one light-month from Mistifir,” she told him. “Prime opportunity for us. They’re on the brink of environmental collapse. They’ll listen or we can take—”
“Maybe later,” Thanos told her as they entered the bridge. Gamora, sitting in the command chair, leaped up.
“We’re hunters now,” he told them. “Seeking very specific prey.”
“Who?” asked his favorite.
“Not who, my dear Gamora—what. The Infinity Stones.”
The girls stared at each other, then turned to him. “Which one?”
“Not which one. We’re going to get all of them. But no one must know that I am the one collecting them. The two of you will be my vanguard.” He sighed in contentment and reached out to stroke their faces. “In a few short years, you will be the age I was when I was exiled from Titan. Unlike me, you will not have to founder and thrash about for purpose, for a cause. You are fortunate, my darlings, to be my daughters. We will gather our Stones, and no one will realize I have them until it’s too late.”
Gamora said nothing. Nebula elbowed her sister, but when she could not prod anything out of her, finally spoke up herself. “You want the two of us to traipse around the universe looking for a bunch of glowing pebbles? Do you have any idea how long that’ll take?”
“I do. That’s why you won’t do it alone. You’ll work through underlings, minions.” He stroked his jaw, thinking. “We killed a platoon of the Xandarian Nova Corps. They will never look at us with anything but hate and death, but the Kree, for example, may be amenable. And there will be others.”
He walked over to the foremost extreme of the bridge and stared out at the speckling of stars. The Raven’s Sweep was receding behind them. The past was receding behind them. Ahead lay the Stones and the future and all its glorious possibilities.
Time and Soul and Mind and Reality and Space and Power.
No single Stone would achieve his goal. But all of them…
With such power, he could wrest planets from the sky.
And he heard a voice in his head. Cha’s. Or maybe it was Sintaa’s. Already, they were merging, his past rapidly fusing into a single block of memory that could not inhibit him.
Don’t get too far ahead of yourself, the voice said. Before you start pulling planets down, you have to find the other Stones. And…
He would need protection from such power, lest it destroy him. If Odin had possessed a Stone, then Odin was the answer. Thanos would return to the Chitauri homeworld and plunder the wreckage of the Blood Edda for a Norse metal strong enough to shield him from the Stones’ power.
Space roared by. The stars blurred.
You cannot save everyone, she had to
ld him in his dream. And with that, he banished her from his memory, purged her. He was no longer Thanos of Titan or Warlord Thanos.
He was simply Thanos. Savior of the Universe.
He clenched his fist, imagining a gauntlet there, and he smiled.
No, he could not save everyone. He could not even save most of them.
But that was never the plan. He would save half. Exactly half.
While Nebula sulked, Gamora approached him. She was not bold enough to touch him, but she stood close by, her reflection hovering near his own in the pulsoglass.
“What are you thinking?” she asked him.
After some hesitation, he answered her. “I am thinking of the Asgardians.”
“What about them?”
“They called themselves gods.” He snorted a laugh. He had faced down Asgardians when at a thousandth of his current power and defeated them. With the Stones in his hand…
Thanos curled his lips, peeling them back to reveal vulpine teeth and a deadly, knowing smile.
“I will show them what true power is. I will become a god….”
CHAPTER XLV
TIME IS NOT ABSTRACT.
Time is a Stone.
“You’re a coward, Thanos!” Cha tells me. “A coward! You hide behind this ship, behind the Other and the Chitauri, and now behind those girls!”
It is years later. Cha is dead. Titan is dead. Soon, half the universe will be dead. I am aboard Sanctuary. The protective doors to my vault slide open and the Gauntlet glimmers there in half-light, not quite gold.
I have seen this moment before. I have lived it. It is happening for the first time, the second time, the millionth time.
I reach for it. I reach for my truth, my destiny, my inevitability.
(Gamora, falling from the cliff. Cha, neck snapping in my hands. I am alone, alone in my past, my present, my future. As it was meant to be. As it must be.)
“Fine,” I say. “I’ll do it myself.”
Looking for the latest news on your favorite YA authors?
Want early access to new books and the chance to win advance copies?
Bring the (book) party to your in-box with the NOVL e-newsletter:
theNOVL.com/enewsletter
Join the NOVL community:
theNOVL.com
Twitter.com/TheNovl
Instagram.com/TheNovl
Facebook.com/TheNovl
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“Fun” isn’t something one considers when thanking people who helped out, but this does put a smile on my face.
First off: Thanks to Russ Busse, who signed me up for this insane gig, held my hand, and kept me from setting things on fire. Also many thanks to Alvina Ling, who has always had my back. I am especially grateful for my agent, Kathleen Anderson, who has shepherded my career to this point, and who said to me, “So, they want to talk to you about someone called Thanos. Do you know who that is?” Oh yes.
I have to thank everyone at Little, Brown who made this book possible, including Lindsay Walter-Greaney, Barbara Bakowski, and all the folks in Design and Production who made this book look so good. Big shout-out to the folks in Sales and Marketing, too—the book doesn’t matter if you don’t know about it, people!
Over at Disney Publishing, thanks to Stephanie Everett, Elana Cohen, Julia Vargas, and Chelsea Alon. And at Marvel Studios, thanks to Will Corona Pilgrim, Nick Fratto, Eleena Khamedoost, and Ariel Gonzalez.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Jim Starlin, without whom there would be no Big Purple, no Snap, no Gauntlet.
Lastly, thanks to my friends and family who tolerated my disappearance into the MCU for wide swaths of time, especially my long-suffering wife, Morgan Baden. I promise, babe—you survived The Snap.