Amanda's eyes were bloodshot as she passed through the facility. Her communication lines had all been terminated.
Those worthless… she thought angrily as she pushed open a door. "Doctor! You better have a solution—"
The lab was empty. It seemed an evacuation had taken place.
He said my name… Her expression grew more sour by the second.
"Morrow!" Amanda howled in anger. She was about to pull out her phone. You thought I wouldn't have contingencies for something like this? Her frustration had reached a new height.
"Director!" The doctor called out, gaining her attention.
"Did you finish it?" she asked. Her barely trembling hand was visible only to her.
Morrow nodded. "It will force an evolution in the Sentinels. But instability. Rapid decay. Like tearing open a vein you can't close." He raised the syringe, let her see it, then pulled it back.
Amanda's voice dropped. "What do you think you're doing?"
"I'll hand it over. But I need the antidote."
Her jaw clenched.
"Oh, did you think I wouldn't notice?" he continued, his tone sharper now. "The poison in the rations. The slowing agent in their systems. The guillotine no one could see until it fell. They're realizing it now, I'm sure." He pulled a sandwich from his coat, unwrapped it with steady fingers. "Cafeteria food. I'll live. But I want the real antidote."
Amanda clicked her tongue. "You…" A low growl rose in her throat. I don't have time for this. She thrust a vial at him.
He swallowed it fast. Relief hit him like oxygen to starved lungs.
"Our cooperation is finished, Director." He handed over the syringe. His next movement was quicker—metal gleaming in his grip. A weapon. Pointed at her.
"I'll be on my way." He backed out, gun never wavering, until the dark swallowed him.
Once the doctor vanished into the shadows, she turned and descended into a basement room.
"Sentinel No. 2, where are you?" she asked into a radio.
Sentinel No. 2 was trying his hardest to outrun the Speedster. He placed his hand over his microphone.
"Moth—Director!" he called as he ducked behind a boulder.
"Defeating the Flash might not be something I can do," he admitted, his young voice trembling. He darted backward with incredible speed when he realized Barry was right beside him.
"You're way more powerful than I am, kid, but you're slow. Just surrender, and I can take you to see your sister," Barry said.
"You're lying!" the boy shouted back.
"Go supernova and lose him. I need you here now, son…" Amanda's voice crackled over the intercom.
"Y-you mean… go critical and—"
"Yes, my son. Otherwise, it seems you won't be able to lose Flash. It's disappointing, but Mother can help you become even stronger. Just come back to me," she said, as Sentinel No. 2's eyes widened.
"You'll be able to rescue your sister, and we can be a family again," Amanda whispered, wiping her brow in anticipation.
Barry's eyes narrowed slightly as he noticed the boy suddenly stop moving. The boy turned to him.
"Leave me alone!" he screamed, unleashing an incredible explosive wave. Barry, who had been chasing him, now sprinted away from the nuke-like blast.
It went silent as a flash of light could be seen from orbit. Sentinel No. 2 stood in the center of a massive crater, the clouds above blown away.
Around the world, the chronoton core's power drop caused untold casualties. Hospitals everywhere, already preparing for a large influx of patients who had died, were rocked again by an incredible earthquake.
Barry raced into the center, heart pounding. Shattered armor. Blood. No boy. A trail, maybe—if he followed it fast enough.
His comm sputtered. "Flash, Central City needs you. Whatever that was—it's triggering quakes. Disasters worldwide. Any word on the kid?" Martian Manhunter's voice, warped by static.
Barry's jaw locked. His hand pressed to his comm.
"Roger. It was him. Sentinel No. 2. He detonated with the force of a nuke."
Out in the Abyss, a thin line suddenly tore through the void after hours of silence. From it, Gohan and Vermont stepped out of the 6th dimension and near a multiverse barely clinging to life. The broadcast shimmered faintly, then restored itself.
A sudden distortion lashed toward them. Both reacted instantly—Gohan twisting aside while Vermont steadied his staff against the anomaly.
"Woah," Gohan muttered, his eyes narrowing.
The distortion quivered, then was drawn into Vermont's staff with a sound like glass sinking into water. He tilted his head, studying the glow. "How peculiar. A frozen pocket dimension… housing several individuals."
Gohan leaned closer, peering into the shifting light within the staff. "You're right. And there's another signature—farther out. Six, maybe seven hours through the 6th dimension." His gaze turned back toward the direction of another flickering multiverse.
"For now," he said, his voice low but decisive, "let's unfreeze these ones. They don't feel like apex combat gods, so it's a mystery how they wound up outside their reality."
Vermont nodded. The staff began to radiate brighter and brighter until it intensified to a blinding solar flare, then collapsed inward. With a sound like a shattering glacier, the pocket dimension dissolved, and nine figures were deposited roughly onto the invisible floor of the God Cube.
They were a tableau of frozen motion and sudden collapse. Iron Man and War Machine landed in a heap of dead metal, their repulsors dark and armor scarred. Thor hit the ground on one knee, Mjolnir still clenched in his fist, his face a mask of stunned exertion. Captain America rolled with the impact, coming up into a defensive crouch, his shield raised instinctively against the two unknown figures before him.
The others were more graceful. Black Widow and Hawkeye were already on their feet, back-to-back, weapons drawn in a seamless, practiced motion, scanning the impossible nothingness. Nebula remained coiled and tense, her cybernetic eyes whirring as she analyzed their new surroundings. Ant-Man simply groaned, clutching his helmet.
For a moment, there was only the sound of ragged breathing and the faint hum of rebooting arc reactors.
Tony Stark was the first to break the silence, his voice filtered through a cracked faceplate, trying for levity that didn't hide the confusion.
"Okay. Definitely not New York. Hotel check-in was smoother there. Anyone get the number of the space-time truck that hit us?" Despite his seemingly jolly mood, Friday was already calculating.
"Stark, not now," Steve Rogers cut in, his tone tense. His eyes stayed locked on Gohan and Vermont. "Who are you? Where are we?"
Gohan studied them without hostility, but with a kind of detached, watchful curiosity. He could feel the strange residue clinging to them—unstable, disruptive, something caught between movement and stasis. Not exactly familiar, but dangerous.
"They're not supposed to be here," Vermont murmured, his staff glowing faintly. "This place is Abyss. Nothing belongs."
Thor staggered upright, still bracing himself on Mjolnir. His gaze darted warily between the strangers. "If this is not Thanos' doing… then whose?"
"No one's trap," Vermont answered. "You were caught in a construct of your own making. Entropy bound you. Another cycle and you would have unraveled entirely." Who knows how long they would have been frozen.
Scott Lang's voice spoke out, struggling to catch his breath "I… I felt it. Everything slowing down. Couldn't change. Couldn't move. Like being… erased." His previous trip ring through his mind.
"It felt like I was trapped in the quantum realm again, but I just knew I would have lost my mind like that," he explained trembling, stuck conscious for what could be an eternity would have been a far worse torture for him.
"That matches what I sensed," Gohan said, his tone level, analytical. "A frozen paradox with no resolution. We intervened only because your presence was destabilizing the currents around this place." His gaze shifted toward the faint glow of the dying multiverse in the distance. "We're not here for you. We're investigating something else."
Natasha's eyes narrowed, sharp as her stance. She didn't feel what Scott felt, perhaps because it was her first quantum entangle paradox. "Then what does that make us? Collateral?"
"Accidents," Vermont corrected gently, though his eyes were stern. "Ones we could not ignore."
Rhodey groaned as his suit whined back to life. "So let me get this straight. You're not with Thanos. You're not here to kill us. You just… happened to pull us out of cosmic quicksand?"
"In simple terms, yes," Gohan replied. His aura pulsed faintly, not threatening, but carrying a pressure that was impossible to ignore. "Your presence here was never intended. Whatever brought you into this state—it is not my concern. But I can't return you until I know what damage you carry with you."
Clint Barton lowered his bow just slightly. "So what happens now?"
Gohan exchanged a brief glance with Vermont before answering. "Now, we make sure the Abyss has no further claim on you. After that… we'll decide where you belong." Vermont tapped his staff on an invisible surface, a gently pulse washed over them, relieving whatever pain or ailments they had.
Tony finally managed to pry his helmet open, revealing a pale, grease-smeared face and a familiar glint of sharp defiance in his eyes. "Sir..." Friday started but Tony cut her off.
"Alright, Void Wardens or Cosmic Custodians or whatever you are—you've got our attention. But if this is some kind of debrief, I'll need coffee first." Tony finished.