Chapter 1
The last thing Aron remembered was the screech of tires and the smell of burnt rubber. It was a mundane Tuesday, the kind of day where the biggest worry should have been a mid-term exam or a cold cup of coffee. Then, the world turned into a chaotic blur of white metal and shattering glass. There was no pain—not at first—just a sudden, jarring displacement of reality, and then, the void.
The void wasn't as empty as the textbooks suggested. It wasn't a cold, soul-crushing expanse of nothingness. Instead, it felt like standing in a room where the walls had been replaced by the very concept of silence. Aron floated, or perhaps he simply existed, without the weight of a body to anchor him. He tried to scream, but he had no lungs. He tried to reach out, but he had no hands.
Then, the truck appeared.
It wasn't the mangled heap of metal that had ended his life. This was something else—a shimmering, spectral entity that took the form of a massive, glowing semi-truck. It didn't drive; it drifted through the nothingness, its headlights casting beams of pure destiny across the darkness. As it drew near, the grill of the truck shifted, warping into a face that wasn't a face, radiating an aura of bored omnipotence.
"Another one," a voice echoed, vibrating through Aron's very essence. It wasn't spoken; it was felt. "The wheels must turn. The balance must be struck. You were taken too early, little spark. Now, let the Wheel of Destiny decide your path."
In front of Aron's consciousness, three massive, ethereal wheels materialized. They were interconnected by chains of starlight, spinning with a low hum that sounded like the heartbeat of a universe.
The first wheel began to spin. Names of worlds flickered by too fast to read—realms of magic, galaxies of high technology, and dark pits of horror. The blur slowed, the clicking sound growing louder until it stopped on a symbol Aron recognized instantly: a stylized 'A' encircled by a ring.
"The Marvel Cinematic Universe," the voice boomed. "A playground of gods, monsters, and men in iron suits. A dangerous choice, but the wheel has spoken."
Aron felt a surge of excitement override his lingering shock. The MCU. He knew this world. He had watched the movies, read the lore. But knowing it and living in it were two very different things. In a world where aliens invaded New York and a purple titan could snap away half of existence, a normal human was nothing more than collateral damage.
"The second wheel," the voice commanded.
This wheel was different. It glowed with a violent, crimson light. It felt heavier, more primal. As it spun, Aron felt a cold shiver run through his nonexistent spine. The wheel slowed, landing on a double-helix strand of DNA that pulsed with an angry, grey light.
"[Perfected Doomsday Gene]," the voice announced, and for the first time, there was a hint of surprise in that cosmic tone. "The ultimate survivor from the DC Universe. But this... this is perfected. You will not be a mindless beast. You will possess the adaptability of the creature that killed Superman, the raw power of every iteration of the Man of Steel, and the immunity to all their weaknesses. No rock, no red sun, no death can hold you. What kills you only makes you an evolution beyond."
Aron felt a sudden, crushing weight. It was as if the very concept of "invincibility" was being compressed into his soul. It was too much power for one person, but the wheels weren't finished.
The third wheel began its rotation. This one spun with a serene, azure glow, humming a melody of pure logic and infinite calculation. It stopped on a crown of blue light.
"[Wisdom Lord Raphael]," the voice whispered. "The ultimate administrator. The one who sees all, knows all, and calculates the path to victory. With this, your mind will match your body. You will not just be a force of nature; you will be the architect of your own destiny."
"It is time," the truck-entity rumbled. "Aron Stark, go forth. You are the second son, the shadow in the light of the genius. Grow. Evolve. Survive."
The void shattered.
The first thing Aron felt was the cold. It was a sharp, biting contrast to the warmth of the void. Then came the noise—muffled voices, the clinking of metal, and the rhythmic thump-thump of a heart that wasn't his own. He tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids felt like lead. His body was small, weak, and frustratingly uncoordinated.
A voice, calm and melodic, echoed in the back of his mind. It wasn't the booming voice of the truck. This was Raphael.
I'm a baby, Aron thought, the realization hitting him with the force of a freight train. I'm actually a baby. And... 1974?
The door to the room creaked open. Aron forced his eyes to flicker, catching a glimpse of a sterile, high-end hospital room. A man walked in, his footsteps heavy and rhythmic. He smelled of expensive scotch and machine oil.
Howard Stark.
The man looked younger than the holograms Aron remembered from the movies, but the mustache and the sharp, calculating eyes were unmistakable. He looked tired, his suit wrinkled as if he'd been living in a lab for days. He approached the bassinet where Aron lay, his expression a complicated mix of duty and a distant, buried affection.
"He's quiet," Howard remarked, his voice raspy.
"He's perfect, Howard," a softer voice replied. Maria Stark moved into Aron's line of sight. She looked radiant despite the exhaustion of childbirth, her eyes warm as she looked down at him. She reached out, her finger gently stroking Aron's cheek. "Look at him. He has your eyes."
"Let's hope he doesn't have my temperament," Howard muttered, though he reached out and awkwardly patted Aron's small hand. "Two sons. Two Starks to carry the weight of the future. Tony is already tearing apart his clocks; God knows what this one will do."
"His name is Aron," Maria reminded him gently. "Aron Stark."
Aron stared up at them, his tiny heart racing. This was real. These were his parents. And somewhere in this house, a three-year-old Tony Stark was probably building a circuit board out of Legos.
Four hundred percent? Aron thought. Won't they notice that?
Raphael replied.
Aron let out a small, soft cry—not because he was hungry or tired, but because it was what a baby was supposed to do. Maria immediately scooped him up, cradling him against her chest.
"Shh, it's alright, Aron," she whispered. "You're home."
As Aron drifted into a shallow sleep, his mind began to process the sheer scale of what was coming. He was a Stark in a world that would eventually be besieged by gods and aliens. He had the power to become a god himself, but for now, he was just a small boy in a big house, listening to the heartbeat of a mother who, in another timeline, was destined for a tragic end.
He wouldn't let that happen. He couldn't. Not with the power of Doomsday and the wisdom of Raphael. The MCU was about to change.
The first few years of Aron's life were a blur of sensory input and data collection. While other toddlers were learning to stack blocks, Aron was watching the world through the lens of Raphael's analysis. He learned to walk at seven months, but Raphael forced his muscles to stumble occasionally to maintain the illusion of normalcy. He learned to speak in full sentences by one year, but he kept his vocabulary limited when Howard was in the room.
Tony, however, was a different story.
His older brother was a whirlwind of nervous energy and terrifying intellect. Tony didn't see a "normal" baby brother; he saw a captive audience. By the time Aron was two, Tony was already dragging him into the workshop Howard kept at the mansion.
"Look, Ronnie," Tony said, holding up a dismantled transistor radio. He was five now, his dark hair perpetually messy. "If I bridge these two, the signal gets clearer. But if I add a capacitor here, I can probably intercept the neighbor's phone calls. Don't tell Dad."
Aron sat on the floor, chewing on a rubber ring that Raphael informed him was actually being slowly dissolved by his evolving digestive enzymes. He looked at the circuit board. Thanks to Raphael, he understood the physics better than Tony did, but he simply pointed and made a happy noise.
"Yeah, exactly!" Tony grinned, ruffling Aron's hair. "You get it. You're way better than the kids at the park. They just want to eat sand."
Aron liked Tony. There was a raw, desperate need for connection in his brother that Howard's coldness couldn't satisfy. Howard was a man of the "Greatest Generation"—he believed in hard work, secrets, and the big picture. He didn't know how to talk to a five-year-old genius, so he mostly didn't.
But Aron was different. He was the "quiet" one. The "easy" one.
At three years old? Aron asked internally.
What kind of anomaly?
Aron looked toward the door. He could hear Howard's footsteps in the hall. They were slower today, hesitant.
The door opened, and Howard stepped in. He wasn't carrying a drink this time. He was carrying a small, handheld scanner—a prototype of something that probably wouldn't be public for another twenty years.
"Aron," Howard said, sitting on the edge of the bed. "How are you feeling today, son?"
"I'm good, Daddy," Aron said, his voice high and innocent.
Howard ran the scanner over Aron's arm. He frowned at the reading. "Your vitals are... remarkably consistent. Almost too consistent. It's like your heart doesn't even care that you were just running around with Tony."
"I'm just strong," Aron said, giving him a bright smile.
Howard sighed, rubbing his temples. "I hope so. I've seen things in this world, Aron. Things that don't make sense. I've spent my life trying to build shields against the things I can't explain." He looked at his son, and for a moment, the cold scientist vanished, replaced by a father who was genuinely terrified. "I just want you and your brother to be safe."
"We will be," Aron said, reaching out to touch Howard's hand.
In that moment, Aron made a decision. He wouldn't just be a passive observer of the MCU. He was a Stark. And Starks changed the world.
Aron felt a dull thrum of power beneath his skin. He was three years old, sitting in a mansion in 1977, and he was already the most dangerous thing on the planet. And he was only getting started.
As the years bled into the late 1970s, the Stark mansion in Malibu became a fortress of intellect and silent evolution. To the outside world, Aron Stark was the "spare"—the quiet, handsome younger brother to the flamboyant and chaotic Tony. While Tony was making headlines for hacking into the Department of Defense on a dare at age nine, Aron was content to stay in the background, a shadow that moved with a grace that felt almost unnatural.
By age seven, Aron's physical form was starting to defy the laws of biology. Under the guidance of Raphael, he had mastered the art of "weight simulation." To anyone who picked him up or bumped into him, he felt like a normal, lean child. But internally, his molecular structure was becoming denser than white dwarf star matter.
Noted, Aron thought. How is the "adaptation" sub-routine?
Suddenly, the world exploded in sound.
Aron winced, dropping his book. He could hear the heartbeat of a bird in a tree three miles away. He could hear the friction of tectonic plates grinding deep beneath the California coast. Most clearly, he could hear the hushed, urgent argument happening in Howard's private study three floors down.
"...it's not natural, Maria!" Howard's voice was a jagged glass whisper. "I looked at the blood samples I took from his last scrape. The cells... they don't die. They don't even age normally. They just consume the light from the microscope and multiply. It's like the Super Soldier Serum, but... self-generating."
"He's your son, Howard!" Maria's voice was trembling. "Not a project. Not a lab rat. If he's healthy, why can't you just be grateful?"
"Because I know what the world does to things it doesn't understand," Howard snapped. "S.H.I.E.L.D. is already breathing down my neck about the Tesseract. If they find out one of my sons is a biological anomaly, they'll put him in a vacuum-sealed box before he hits puberty."
Aron felt a cold knot in his stomach. He looked down at his hands. They looked like the hands of a seven-year-old boy, but he knew that if he clenched his fist, he could level the wing of this mansion.
You're right, Aron thought. Let's give the old man a distraction.
Aron stood up and walked toward the stairs. As he passed Tony's workshop, he saw his brother—now ten years old—frantically trying to stabilize a miniature arc reactor prototype. It was sparking violently, a precursor to the technology that would one day save his life in a cave in Afghanistan.
"The cooling loop is too small, Tony," Aron said softly, leaning against the doorframe.
Tony jumped, nearly dropping a soldering iron. "Geez, Ronnie! Don't do that. And what do you know about cooling loops? You're supposed to be playing with GI Joes."
"The thermal expansion of the copper will crack the housing in approximately twelve seconds," Aron said, his eyes glowing with a faint, imperceptible blue light as Raphael fed him the calculations. "If you switch to a silver-palladium alloy and widen the intake, it'll hold."
Tony blinked, looking from his brother to the machine. He did the math in his head, his eyes widening. "Wait... silver-palladium? That's... that's actually brilliant. How did you—?"
"I read a book," Aron lied effortlessly.
"You're a weird kid, you know that?" Tony laughed, already reaching for the new materials. "But hey, stick around. I need a lab assistant who doesn't complain about the music."
For the next few hours, Aron played the role of the "Prodigy's Assistant." He helped Tony stabilize the reactor, purposely making a few "lucky guesses" that saved the project. When Howard eventually walked into the workshop, looking for a fight or a drink, he found his two sons working in perfect synchronicity.
Howard froze. He watched Aron hold a delicate wire with a steady hand, explaining a complex chemical reaction to Tony as if it were common knowledge.
"Aron?" Howard asked, his voice softer now. "Since when do you study cold fusion?"
"Since I got bored of the Middle Ages, Dad," Aron said, giving him a calm, level look.
Howard stayed in the doorway for a long time. The fear in his eyes began to shift into something else—pride, tempered by an even deeper layer of concern. He didn't mention the blood samples again. He simply nodded and walked away.
Good, Aron thought. He's going to need every advantage he can get.
As the 1980s shifted into the 90s, Aron grew into a tall, imposing young man. By the time he was fifteen, he stood over six feet tall, with a physique that looked like it had been carved from marble. He played sports at school—mostly to blend in—but he had to spend every second of every game in a state of hyper-focus, ensuring he didn't accidentally decapitate a teammate with a stray pass or shatter the basketball backboard.
He was the "Golden Boy." Tony was the rebel, the MIT graduate at seventeen, the one who crashed cars and dated models. Aron was the one who stayed home, the one who sat with Maria and listened to her stories, and the one who secretly monitored the world's communications via Raphael.
He knew about the Winter Soldier. He knew about the Red Room. He knew about the whispers of a "Sorcerer Supreme" in New York.
But most importantly, he knew about December 16th, 1991.
As the date approached, Aron felt a mounting sense of dread that even the Doomsday Gene couldn't evolve away. This was the nexus point. If Howard and Maria died, Tony would become Iron Man, but at the cost of his soul and a decade of self-destruction. If they lived, the future was an unknown variable.
Raphael, calculate the probability of saving them without revealing my nature to S.H.I.E.L.D. or Hydra, Aron commanded one night as he sat on the roof of the Malibu mansion, watching the stars.
I'm not just going to sabotage the car, Aron thought, his jaw tightening. I'm going to be there.
Aron looked at his hand. He moved it, and for a split second, it blurred out of existence. He wasn't just fast; he was beginning to tap into the Speed Force-like physics that some versions of Superman possessed.
"Aron?"
He turned to see Tony standing on the balcony below. Tony was twenty-one now, draped in a silk robe, holding a glass of expensive bourbon. He looked at his younger brother with a mixture of envy and affection.
"You're always up here, staring at the sky," Tony said. "What are you looking for? Aliens? Gold?"
"Just looking at the future, Tony," Aron replied, jumping down from the roof and landing silently beside his brother. He didn't even bend his knees.
Tony narrowed his eyes. "You're getting weirder as you get older. Dad wants us to go to the bahamas for the holidays. He's obsessed with this 'super soldier' serum project he's delivering to the Pentagon. Wants to leave in a few days."
Aron felt a chill. "He shouldn't go. Not by car."
"Since when are you afraid of driving?" Tony scoffed. "Dad's a better driver than most of the guys I race with."
"Just a feeling, Tony. A bad one."
Tony sighed, clapping Aron on the shoulder. "Look, you're the smart one when it comes to books, but you gotta relax. Life's too short to worry about 'feelings.' Come on, let's go see if we can hack into the Pentagon's satellite feed and watch the game."
Aron followed him, but his mind was elsewhere. He could feel the Doomsday Gene pulsing, as if it sensed the coming violence. It wanted the conflict. It wanted to be tested.
I'll be ready, Aron promised himself.
December 16th, 1991.
The air in Long Island was biting, a damp cold that seeped through layers of wool and leather. Aron sat in the back of the black sedan, his eyes closed, though he wasn't sleeping. Beside him, Maria was humming a soft tune, looking through a travel brochure. In the front, Howard was focused on the road, his hands gripped tight on the steering wheel. He was nervous, though he tried to hide it. The briefcase containing the super-soldier serum sat on the floorboards between his feet—a prize that smelled like blood to those who knew of its existence.
Here we go, Aron thought. He felt his heart rate begin to climb, not out of fear, but because the Doomsday Gene was awakening. It sensed a predator. It sensed a challenge.
"Howard, you're driving a bit fast," Maria said gently, noticing the speedometer creeping up.
"I just want to get to the airport, Maria," Howard grunted. "The sooner this is out of my hands, the better."
Suddenly, a loud bang echoed through the cabin. The car jerked violently to the left.
"The tire!" Howard shouted, wrestling with the steering wheel.
Aron didn't wait for the car to hit the tree. Time slowed down. To his parents, the world was a chaotic mess of screaming metal and G-force. To Aron, it was a static frame. He watched the glass of the side window begin to crack as the car veered off the road. He watched the shadow of the motorcycle rider—the Winter Soldier—swinging around for the kill.
Aron moved. He was a blur of motion, unbuckling his seatbelt and leaning forward in the millisecond before impact. He wrapped his arms around the back of the front seats, his body acting as a living roll cage.
The sedan slammed into the dirt embankment, but instead of the fatal, bone-crushing halt, Aron's strength absorbed the kinetic energy. He held the frame of the car together with raw physical might, preventing the engine block from sliding into Howard's lap.
The car came to a rest, smoking and crumpled, but the cabin remained intact.
"Howard? Maria?" Aron whispered, his voice steady.
"I... I think I'm okay," Howard gasped, coughing against the deployed airbag. Maria was dazed, but conscious.
Then came the sound of boots on gravel. Heavy, rhythmic, and relentless.
Aron kicked the rear door open. He didn't just push it; the door flew off its hinges, whistling through the air like a frisbee before embedding itself three inches deep into a nearby oak tree. He stepped out into the cold night air, his eyes fixated on the man walking toward them.
The Winter Soldier looked exactly as he did in the records of the future—long, dark hair, a tactical mask, and a silver arm that gleamed under the pale moonlight. He paused, looking at the door embedded in the tree, then at the teenager standing in front of the wreckage.
The Soldier didn't speak. He simply raised a custom handgun and fired.
Aron didn't flinch. He watched the bullet leave the barrel. It moved like a slow-motion insect. He reached out and caught it between two fingers. The lead squashed flat against his skin, the heat of the friction barely a tickle.
The Winter Soldier dropped the gun, his mask hiding his shock, and lunged. He swung his metal arm in a wide arc, a blow that would have turned a normal man's head into a red mist.
Aron caught the metal fist.
The sound of the impact was like two freight trains colliding. The ground beneath Aron's feet cracked, but he didn't move an inch. He looked at the Winter Soldier—the man who was once Bucky Barnes—and felt a pang of pity.
"You're not yourself," Aron said quietly.
The Soldier roared, trying to pull his arm back, but Aron's grip was like a hydraulic vice. With a sharp twist, Aron buckled the titanium plating of the cybernetic arm. He then delivered a precise strike to the Soldier's solar plexus—not hard enough to kill, but hard enough to shut down his nervous system.
The Winter Soldier collapsed into the dirt, unconscious.
"Aron?"
He turned. Howard had crawled out of the car, his face covered in soot and blood. He was staring at his son, then at the flattened bullet in Aron's hand, and then at the unconscious assassin.
"What... what are you?" Howard whispered, the horror and awe battling for dominance in his voice.
Aron looked at his father. The secret was out. There was no going back to being the "quiet" younger brother.
"I'm the one who saves this family, Dad," Aron said. He looked toward the horizon, where he could hear the distant sirens of S.H.I.E.L.D. backup. "But we need to go. Now."
Aron picked up the Winter Soldier like a sack of flour. He couldn't leave Bucky there for Hydra to reclaim, and he couldn't let S.H.I.E.L.D. take him yet. He needed a place to hide him—a place Howard kept off the books.
"The bunker in New Jersey," Aron commanded, looking at Howard. "The one you told me about when you were drunk last Christmas. Tell me the coordinates."
Howard hesitated, then nodded frantically. "40.7128 North, 74.0060 West. It's an old SSR outpost. It's not on the modern maps."
"Get Mom in the other car," Aron said, pointing to the Winter Soldier's motorcycle. "I'll meet you there."
Without another word, Aron crouched low, the ground shattering under the pressure of his legs, and took off. He didn't fly—not yet—but he ran so fast that he became a blur of displaced air, a sonic boom echoing through the New York woods.
The New Jersey bunker was cold and smelled of ozone. Aron had secured Bucky Barnes in a reinforced holding cell, using the Winter Soldier's own magnetic shackles to keep him contained. Howard and Maria sat in the corner of the room, wrapped in emergency blankets, watching their youngest son with a profound sense of estrangement.
"You've known," Howard said, his voice hollow. "All these years. The blood samples... I wasn't crazy."
"No, you weren't," Aron said, leaning against the cold concrete wall. "But I had to grow. If I had told you when I was five, you would have tried to study me. You would have tried to 'fix' me or weaponize me. I needed time for the gene to stabilize."
"The gene?" Howard stood up. "What gene? I didn't create you in a lab, Aron. You're my son."
"It's complicated, Dad. Let's just say I was born with the ability to adapt. To everything." Aron walked over and knelt in front of Maria. "Mom, I'm sorry I lied. But they were coming for you. They've been in S.H.I.E.L.D. since the beginning."
"Who?" Maria asked, her voice trembling.
"Hydra," Aron said.
Howard's face went pale. "Hydra was defeated in '45. Steve gave his life to—"
"They didn't die, Howard. They grew like a parasite inside the organization you built. And that man in the cell? That's Bucky Barnes. Sergeant Barnes. Your friend."
Howard staggered back, looking through the reinforced glass at the sleeping assassin. "Bucky? No... no, he fell from the train. He died."
"They found him first," Aron said grimly. "They turned him into a ghost. And they sent him to kill you tonight so they could take your serum."
The silence in the bunker was heavy. The weight of the revelation settled over them like lead. Aron could feel the Doomsday Gene humming, its task complete for the moment, but already looking for the next threat.
What is it?
Aron looked up at the ceiling, as if he could see through the miles of rock and earth to the satellite orbiting above.
"Let them watch," Aron whispered.
He was done hiding. He was a Stark, he was an apex predator, and he was the smartest mind in the room. The world was about to get a lot bigger, and he was the only one ready for it.
The following morning, the bunker felt less like a sanctuary and more like a tomb for the life Aron had previously known. Howard was hunched over a flickering monitor, his fingers flying across a keyboard as he accessed back-channel S.H.I.E.L.D. files he hadn't touched in a decade. Maria sat nearby, her hand resting on Aron's arm, her touch both a comfort and a silent question.
"I've scrubbed the local police band," Howard muttered, his voice regaining some of its old authority. "And I've flagged the accident site as a chemical spill to keep the locals away. But S.H.I.E.L.D. is crawling with people I don't recognize, Aron. If what you said about Hydra is true..."
"It's true, Dad," Aron said, his gaze fixed on the heavy steel door where Bucky Barnes remained sedated. "They've been waiting for this moment. They wanted your serum to create an army. If you'd died last night, the world would have started spinning toward a very dark place."
Block it, Aron commanded. And trace the source.
Aron stood up, his movement so sudden and fluid that Howard jumped. "Stay here. Lock the primary seals. Tony will be in the city in three hours; I've already sent a coded message to his private server. He'll meet you here."
"Where are you going?" Maria asked, her eyes wide with worry.
"To finish the job," Aron said. He looked at his father. "Keep an eye on Barnes. He's not a monster, he's a victim. If he wakes up and his eyes are clear, tell him Steve would be ashamed of him for giving up."
Before they could argue, Aron walked to the bunker's elevator shaft. Instead of waiting for the car, he forced the doors open with his bare hands, the metal groaning and shearing like wet paper. He stepped into the dark void of the shaft and looked up.
I don't need to fly yet, Aron thought. I just need to jump.
He crouched, the concrete floor beneath him spider-webbing from the sheer pressure. Then, he launched.
He moved like a kinetic missile, shattering the roof of the elevator housing and soaring hundreds of feet into the gray morning sky. For a moment, he hung there, suspended at the apex of his leap, the world spread out beneath him—a patchwork of forests and distant city lights. Then, the Gene reacted to the sensation of falling. His cells hummed, drawing in the faint ultraviolet light piercing through the clouds.
Gravity lost its hold. Aron didn't fall; he surged forward, breaking the sound barrier with a thunderous crack that shattered windows for miles.
In the middle of the Atlantic, on a nondescript cargo ship bristling with hidden antennas, a man known as Vasily Karpov stared at a blank monitor.
"The signal is being jammed," a technician reported, sweat beading on his forehead. "And we've lost contact with the Soldier. There was... an anomaly at the crash site."
"What kind of anomaly?" Karpov hissed, his hand tightening on a red book emblazoned with a black star.
"A heat signature. Massive. And a radar blip that just clocked in at Mach 2, heading directly for our—"
The ship suddenly lurched. A massive hole appeared in the center of the deck, the reinforced steel peeling back as if a meteor had struck it. A figure landed in the center of the bridge, the shockwave of the landing blowing out every screen and knocking the armed guards to their feet.
Aron stepped out of the smoke. He wasn't wearing a suit or a mask; he was still in his blood-stained sweater and jeans. To the Hydra agents, he looked like a college student, but his eyes were glowing with a terrifying, rhythmic crimson light.
"You're looking for Sergeant Barnes," Aron said, his voice echoing in the enclosed space. "He's unavailable."
"Kill him!" Karpov screamed.
The guards opened fire. Assault rifles barked, filling the bridge with lead. Aron didn't move. He stood there as the bullets struck his chest and face, flattening into useless pancakes of metal and falling to the floor with a rhythmic clink-clink-clink.
Aron chose the shockwave. He clapped his hands together.
The resulting blast of air sent the guards flying through the bulkheads, their weapons shattered. He walked toward Karpov, who was trembling, clutching the red book to his chest like a shield.
"That book," Aron said, reaching out and plucking it from Karpov's frozen fingers. "A lot of misery inside these pages."
With a simple squeeze, the book burst into flames in Aron's hand, the "Perfected Doomsday Gene" generating enough thermal energy to incinerate the reinforced binding in seconds.
"Who... what are you?" Karpov whimpered.
"I'm the new variable," Aron said. He looked at the technician who was still cowering by the radar. "Tell your masters at the top. Tell Pierce. Tell whoever is hiding in the shadows. The Starks are off-limits. If I see a Hydra shadow near my family again, I won't just sink a ship. I'll tear the organization out by its roots."
Aron turned and walked back to the hole in the deck. He looked back over his shoulder, his expression cold and humanly detached. "And tell them to enjoy the silence. Because I can hear every secret they whisper."
He took off, the backwash of his flight capsizing the lifeboats on the deck.
Two hours later, Aron landed softly in the woods behind the New Jersey bunker. He felt different. The evolution was accelerating. Every time he used his power, the Gene pushed him further, making him faster, stronger, and more attuned to the world around him.
Inside the bunker, the atmosphere had shifted. Tony had arrived. He was pacing the length of the room, looking at the unconscious Winter Soldier and then at Howard.
"So, let me get this straight," Tony said, gesturing wildly. "Mom and Dad are alive because my 'quiet' brother is actually a cross between a god and a super-computer? And we're currently hiding in a hole in the ground because the government is actually a Nazi front?"
"Pretty much covers it," Aron said, stepping into the room.
Tony spun around, looking at his brother. He walked up to Aron, circling him like he was a new piece of tech. He poked Aron's shoulder. It felt like poking a diamond pillar.
"You've been holding out on me, Ronnie," Tony said, his voice a mix of awe and hurt. "The cooling loops? The physics? You weren't reading books. You were just... being you."
"I'm sorry, Tony. I wanted you to have a normal life for as long as possible."
"Normal?" Tony laughed, though there were tears in his eyes. "Dad's a legend, Mom's a saint, and I'm... well, I'm a genius. Normal was never on the menu. But this?" He looked at Bucky Barnes. "This is big. This is 'the world is ending' big."
"It's only ending for the people who think they're in charge," Aron said. He looked at Howard. "We need a plan. S.H.I.E.L.D. will come looking. We can't stay in this bunker forever."
Howard looked at his two sons—the builder and the force of nature. For the first time in his life, Howard Stark didn't feel like the smartest man in the room, and strangely, he found he didn't mind.
"We go back to Malibu," Howard decided. "We act like the accident was just an accident. We bury the serum. And we start building." He looked at Aron. "What do we build?"
Aron looked at Tony, then at the horizon.
"We build a future where we don't have to hide," Aron said. "We build the Avengers. But we do it our way."
Aron smiled. It was a small, dangerous smile.
"Let's get to work."