Reality twisted, as if someone had grabbed the fabric of space and wrung it out like a wet towel.
Domino's stomach lurched, her inner ear screamed conflicting information about which way was up, and her enhanced senses, usually so reliable, went haywire trying to process what was happening to her body at the molecular level.
Shrinking.
They were shrinking.
The lab around them expanded, or they contracted, perspective becoming meaningless as size lost all context. The workbench that had been at eye level suddenly towered like a skyscraper, Dust motes became boulders and the air itself gained texture, molecules visible as they rushed past the shuttle's hull.
Smaller.
Smaller still.
The quantum realm opened up around them, direction losing all meaning in this space where physics became suggestions rather than laws.
Colors that shouldn't exist in normal space blazed past the viewport, hues that made Domino's eye ache trying to process them. Sounds that had no right existing in vacuum resonated through the hull. Time stretched and compressed, each second lasting both forever and no time at all.
"Beginning sweep pattern," Hope's voice cut through the disorientation, steady despite the cosmic horror unfolding outside. "Looking for human life signs."
Scott gripped his seat's armrests hard enough to make the metal creak, "Holy shit. I've done this before but it's still... this is insane. How is any of this real?"
Domino's probability manipulation ran without conscious thought, her senses parsing the quantum chaos and finding patterns the way a musician heard melody in noise. Her luck bent around the shuttle like armor, a protective bubble of favorable outcomes that guided them through energy streams capable of tearing apart molecular bonds.
The quantum foam recognized her. Responded to her presence like it was greeting something familiar. The probabilities shifted, aligning themselves to her will with the ease of thought.
She didn't question it anymore. Just accepted that this space, this fundamental layer of reality where size and time became suggestions, knew her somehow.
Her hands moved. Crimson strings wove together without her directing them, forming a compass that pulsed with quantum resonance. The needle didn't point north. Pointed toward something her probability manipulation knew they needed to find.
"Hope," Domino's voice carried quiet certainty, "there. Adjust course to where this compass is pointing."
"Really? We're pulling a Pirates of the Caribbean?" Scott's question died mid-sentence when he saw the reading. "Wait, that's actually working?"
"I see it." Hope's hands moved across the controls with practiced precision. "Energy signature matching my suit's profile. It's faint..." Her voice caught. "But it's there. She's there."
Through the viewport, Domino saw it: a city that defied every law of architecture, gleaming with technology that made Reed Richards' work look like latest gimmick. Spires of crystallized quantum foam rose into a sky that couldn't exist, connected by bridges of solidified energy channels. Buildings grew organically from the substrate like metal corals.
A pocket of stability in the quantum chaos, like someone had carved out a bubble of semi-normal space and anchored it against the dimensional tides.
And inside that bubble, figures moved. Humanoid and non-humanoid shapes going about their lives in this impossible place.
"Quantum residents?" Hank whispered, his voice carrying wonder that made him sound decades younger. "I theorized this realm might have its own life and culture, but seeing it..."
The shuttle angled toward the city, but Domino wrapped her strings around the hull instinctively, bending energies to render it invisible to casual observation.
They landed in what might have been a market district as the shuttle's hatch opened with a hiss of equalizing pressure.
Domino stepped out first, her feet touching ground that felt solid but somehow uncertain, like it was constantly deciding whether to be matter or energy. The air tasted electric, charged with potential that made her hair stand on end.
The city's inhabitants stopped and stared. They were humanoid, mostly, but their forms shifted subtly as Domino watched. Extra limbs appeared and disappeared, faces morphed between expressions that shouldn't be anatomically possible, clothes woven from light itself changed colors with their moods.
Hank emerged next, his eyes scanning the impossible architecture with scientific fervor that couldn't quite mask his desperation. Hope followed, her hand never far from her suit's shrink button. Scott brought up the rear, his head on a swivel as he tried to take in everything at once.
"Okay," Scott said finally. "I've this is... this place shouldn't exist. How are we even breathing?"
"Quantum variance," Hank said absently, already moving toward the nearest structure. "The realm stabilizes around conscious observation, creates localized bubbles of what we'd consider normal physics. It's responding to our presence, reshaping itself to accommodate..."
He stopped mid-sentence when one of the inhabitants approached. The being stood roughly seven feet tall, its form flickering between genders and body types like a channel being rapidly changed. When it spoke, the words came out as just meaningless sound and meaning without language.
Scott tried to respond, gesturing wildly and speaking slowly like that would help. "We're looking for someone. Janet. Van Dyne? Human woman, about this tall, been here for thirty years?" He mimed height and waited hopefully.
The being's form solidified slightly, coalescing into something vaguely female, and responded with more sound that made Scott's face fall.
"Right. Language barrier. Of course there's a language barrier." He turned to Domino with pleading eyes. "You don't happen to have a quantum babel fish in that bag of tricks, do you?"
Domino sighed, already knowing what needed to be done. Her hands moved, crimson strings weaving together into four rings that pulsed with soft red light. She tossed one to each member of their group, and the rings dissolved on contact, forming into a perfect fit for their fingers.
Everyone looked at her with subtle surprise and inquiry.
"Universal translators," Domino explained, her voice carrying confidence. "Should work on anything with intent to communicate. Mostly…."
The woman spoke again, and this time the meaningless sound resolved into understandable speech. "You seek the sky-faller? The advisor to the leaders of rebellion?"
"Yes!" Hank stepped forward so quickly he nearly stumbled. "Janet van Dyne. My wife. Is she... is she alive? Please, I need to know."
The being's form rippled with what might have been sympathy. "There are two Sky-Fallers in Axia who remember the upper world. One holds court in the palace, drunk on power. The other tends the broken at the edge of Axia." The woman's head tilted again. "Which does your mate sound like?"
"Janet never had a taste for pretentious luxury," Hank said immediately, certainty flooding his voice. "Where is this... Axia?"
The helpful woman pointed toward the more run-down section of the city, where the buildings were less crystalline and more makeshift, cobbled together from salvaged quantum foam and debris.
They made their way through the market, drawing stares from inhabitants who clearly didn't see many visitors from above. The buildings here were fascinating in their wrongness. Doors opened onto spaces larger than their exteriors should contain. Windows showed views of places that couldn't all exist in the same location. Gravity changed direction every few blocks, requiring them to walk on walls that insisted they were floors.
Scott nearly walked into a gravity well before Hope grabbed his collar. "Stop gawking and watch where you're going. This place will kill you if you're not careful, and I am not explaining to Cassie why her dad got erased from existence because he was staring."
They found what passed for a bar at the edge of Axia. The sign above the door flickered between languages, settling on "Last Refuge" in English when they approached. The building itself looked like it had been assembled from the wreckage of a dozen different structures, each piece maintaining its original quantum signature even as it merged with the whole.
Hank pushed through the door first, his eyes scanning the dim interior with desperate hope.
The bar was surprisingly normal by quantum standards. Tables and chairs that mostly agreed on which dimension they occupied. A counter that stayed solid more often than not. Patrons who kept their extra limbs tucked away while drinking substances that glowed with their own light.
Behind the bar, facing away as she cleaned glasses that existed in multiple states simultaneously, stood a figure in a one-piece dress with a black vest.
After not seeing Janet, Hank's legs nearly gave out. He stumbled to the bar, collapsed onto a stool, and managed to speak in a voice barely above a whisper. "Whatever passes for alcohol here. I need it."
The bartender turned, and Hope's hand flew to her mouth, muffling a sound that was half-sob, half-laugh.
Hank had been staring down at the counter, composing himself, when a glass materialized in front of him. Not set down, but instead of liquid, it was full of light changing into rainbow colors.
He looked up, irritated at the strange service, ready to complain.
And froze.
The face was older than the one carved into his memory, weathered by thirty years in this impossible place. Gray streaked through dark hair that used to be pure black. Lines creased the corners of eyes that had seen too much strangeness. But it was her. It was absolutely, undeniably her.
"Janet?" The name came out broken, disbelieving, desperate.
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