Shin's eyes revealed nothing, but that impassivity in and of itself told me I was onto something.
"Yes," Shin conceded with a casual shrug, "it will cost me some power to heal her, but it'll be well worth it, considering everything I stand to gain."
He was, of course, right. The Infinity Stones—and my universe—would be his with the way things were going…
So, I wondered for the second time: why show his face at all?
Was it to beg for her life? Or manipulate me into handing over my soul? He knew me well enough to know that wouldn't work. So, there was an angle I wasn't seeing yet.
I spread the psychic flame around my body, intensifying the cloak that already surrounded me, further scarring my soul, but it beefed up my mental defenses. He snorted.
"I have never needed to read your mind to predict what you'll do next, Axel. You might've surprised me in the beginning, but not now. So," he folded his arms, "are you going to do it? Try and kill her?"
I narrowed my eyes, suddenly cautious.
"That's a no then," Shin nodded with a self-satisfied smirk. "You think this is a trap of some kind."
I offered no response, and that only seemed to delight Shin even more.
"Let me show you something."
He waved his hand, transforming the Astral dimension with his eldritch energy.
We were floating in the skies above a version of New York I intimately recognized. The streets were overrun with mutated or dying humans. There was a visible reddish haze that permeated the air.
"The virus," I muttered, my gut twisting in horror. We'd gone through a great deal of trouble to make sure this exact thing didn't happen. "We synthesized an antidote."
"Oh yes, you did," he admitted, the delight in his voice unmistakable. "But Fury never got the chance to use it."
"How did you—"
"Know about what you were up to?" he asked. "I didn't read your mind, if that's what you're thinking. We did it the old-fashioned way. Exploited human greed. Or in your case, godly greed."
"Loki?" My eyes widened in realization.
He cackled in delight. "I can't believe you didn't see that coming! But the virus is the least of Earth's worries."
The scene before me shifted, panning to the mothership that eclipsed New York. It was the size of Texas and made entirely out of flesh.
Hundreds of jumpships poured out, carrying millions of flesh-warped humanoids fused at the wrist with mechanical, high-tech cannons. They rode dragon-like beasts the size of school buses that spat caustic energy beams, hammering into the runic shields I'd erected above New York.
The Avengers, the Widows, and Fury's people fought back furiously using their powers and the armor I gave them, cutting through the armies like wheat, but they didn't stay dead for long. Dead soldiers and beasts rejoined and grew new organs and limbs, resuming their assaults like undying zombies.
I even spotted Pietro and Wanda fighting somewhere in the mix, killing monsters by the bucketloads, but it was still a drop in the bucket.
It was clear they'd be overrun. It was just a matter of when.
"And don't get me started on your dimension," he said, showing me snapshots of it. Jean, the X-Men, Yelena, and the Sentinels were up against a regenerating army of symbiotes, fifteen Lauren clones, and were visibly struggling.
Outside the fortress, it was a warzone.
I saw Storm rain down red lightning and hail on my extensive defenses and shields, while an armored swordsman wrapped in shogun-style Adamantium armor bounced from ship to ship, splitting them in half with a single slice of his sword.
There was a third mutant—he was younger than the rest—and he was tearing islands apart with a tug of his hand. I recognized him from my Time Stone meditation sessions.
"No…" I shuddered. "This can't be real. You're trying to manipulate me."
"Clearly," Shin said casually, sweetly, "but I don't have to lie to do that. Those parasites you call allies need removing, and I wanted to reiterate the point I made at the start of this. There's absolutely nothing you can do to stop what comes next."
My psychic self had gone faint, my mind completely overtaken by fear. I was certain it was all mine.
"Right now, you're probably trying to think up a way to bargain or threaten your way out of this," Shin's voice was ice-cold. "Don't. I don't need your soul in one piece anymore. I'll settle for the scraps."
With a dismissive wave of his hand, he pushed me out of the Astral realm. My ears popped, and I was hit with a backlash headache so bad it accelerated my soul collapse by two whole points.
Soul Collapse 79%
-Red Orb or Soul Containment rupture has accelerated to 50,000 lost/minute out of (800,525,682)
"Have fun in dreamland?" Lauren asked. She looked different now. She wore a distinctive bony mask with three sharp horns, a small jaw, and wielded a katana the length of a spear in her left hand.
Her black blade was gone, and her armor seemed sleeker now, stronger—kind of like what a ninja might wear.
There was an undeniable weight to her—a pressure that reminded me of the complicated mishmash of soul stuff hanging from my chest.
So, this is what the bastard meant when he said he would settle for the scraps. This was the angle I hadn't seen yet. He didn't need me alive anymore.
He made her a fucking Shinigami.