Manhattan Island. Deep underground.
The base hall had not been abandoned so much as swallowed. More than half of the original structure had come down at some point, ceiling sections folded into the floor, support columns sheered off at mid-height, entire corridors blocked by walls that had simply given up. What remained had been cleared by hand: rubble pushed to the perimeter, wreckage stacked and sorted, a wide central area swept clean down to the scarred metal plating beneath.
The floor was covered in equipment now. Crates of supplies stacked three deep. Cabling running in thick bundles from a central device toward the far corridor, the cable jackets dark and slightly warm to the touch. The device itself sat in the middle of the cleared space, diamond-shaped, roughly the height of a man, its surface covered in components that had no earthly manufacturing origin. It pulsed with a low resonance that was more felt than heard, a vibration that sat at the edge of perception and did not go away.
Some of the original lighting had survived. Not much. The lamps that still functioned cast dim pools across the metal floor, and everything between them was shadow.
In one of those shadows, in a corner where crates of supplies formed three walls and the collapsed ceiling formed the fourth, Nick Fury sat alone.
His old black leather coat was draped across his shoulders rather than worn, sleeves hanging empty at his sides. In his right hand, resting loosely on his knee, was the burned-down remains of a cigar, barely more than a stub, the ember at its tip flickering green at the edges in a way that had nothing to do with tobacco. His left hand was extended, palm up, holding a food container from the Skrull supply stock. The synthetic protein inside had cooled and congealed into something that no longer resembled food in any category Fury recognized.
He was not looking at either of them. He was looking at the middle distance, at nothing in particular, jaw slack, the cigar forgotten.
Footsteps from the corridor.
A Skrull entered the hall. Tall, pointed ears, green skin roughened by age, moving with the unhurried confidence of someone who had long stopped being startled by collapsed architecture. Behind him, dozens more of his kind worked in the corridor, methodically connecting components of the transmission array, checking power feeds, exchanging brief verbal confirmations in a language that clicked softly at the consonants.
"Mr. Fury." The Skrull's voice was even, careful. "Are you dissatisfied with the synthetic rations? We can source something from the surface, if you prefer."
Fury came back from wherever he had been. He raised his face, and the dim light found the lines in it. He looked older than he had a year ago. Not in any way that panacea could fix.
"Don't worry about it, old friend." He set the food container down and shook his head. "The situation outside puts me on edge. I got into my own head. Nothing to do with the food."
He looked at the container for a moment.
"Your people's relationship with food is purely functional. I understand that. Earth's relationship with it would probably read like fiction to you."
The Skrull who had entered, Talos, moved to the corner and leaned his back against the supply crates beside Fury, arms loose at his sides, making himself comfortable in the cramped space. He looked down at his old friend without condescension.
"The transmission device is nearly complete," he said. "If nothing disrupts the final stages, we can be clear of the Earth within twelve hours. Clear of the solar system shortly after."
He paused.
"What are your intentions, after that? For the life ahead of you."
Fury took a long pull from the cigar. The ember flared, and he let the smoke travel all the way down before exhaling it slowly into the dim air.
"A little over a year ago," he said, "I was running the largest intelligence organization on the planet. Every day I was managing financial oversight from above, coordinating field operations across six continents, handling situations that nobody else had the clearance to even know about." He turned the cigar stub in his fingers. "Now I'm a wanted man in every country with a functioning government, hiding in a collapsed basement, and the people chasing me aren't even a government. They're something else entirely."
He stopped. The smoke drifted upward and spread across the low ceiling.
"Future plans. I never made them. I assumed I'd die in the chair, still director, and people would say something decent at the service." A short sound that was not quite a laugh. "I did a lot of things wrong. I can see that now. Looking back at it clearly. No wonder it ended this way."
Talos was quiet for a moment.
"We Skrulls," he said carefully, "have some of your memories, as you know. The ability goes both ways, at close range. I won't claim I understand what you're feeling. But I will say this: for a species with your lifespan, changing the form of a life is not the same as ending it. The universe is very large. There are planets and peoples that no human has ever seen, cultures that would take centuries to fully understand. We are wanderers who were driven from our home. We survived by finding that worth something, rather than only mourning what we had lost."
He glanced sideways at Fury.
"It is not wisdom. It is just the only option that kept working."
Fury was quiet for a moment. Then he turned and looked at Talos directly.
"Talos." His voice had dropped, and the self-deprecation had gone out of it. "Some of your people died because of me. Because I was worth protecting, in their judgment. I'm not certain that was the right call."
Talos shook his head firmly.
"Miss Danvers would have asked what we were doing if we had left her handful of human contacts to face this alone. The Skrull wanderers who have lived under her protection for decades would have had no answer to give her. That is not a position any of us were willing to accept."
He pushed off from the crates and straightened, and something in his posture shifted: less old friend, more spokesman.
"Beyond that: the Guardians of Terra's declaration to the world has been a significant problem for every Skrull in this system. The organization does not speak for humanity. A declaration that treats Earth as a closed domain, issued by a private military force with no mandate from any elected body, is not something we were prepared to accept without objection. We simply needed the right moment."
Fury exhaled again, slower this time.
"That's the part that might have been salvageable," he said. "If humanity is going to leave this planet someday, it needs guidance. Someone who knows how the wider universe actually works, what the rules are between species, what gets you killed and what gets you a seat at the table. That was the role I wanted your people to fill. Teachers. Not allies of convenience." He turned the dead cigar in his hand. "I had a program. The Avengers Initiative. A team of people with the capability to respond to threats that conventional forces couldn't handle. It never got past the planning stage. Everything collapsed before I could put it together."
He looked at the cigar for a moment, then set it aside.
"The Cosmic Cube was supposed to give humanity something to bargain with. A power source that could match what was already out there. A reason for other civilizations to negotiate instead of dismiss." He laced his fingers together. "None of it happened."
Talos opened his mouth to respond.
The sound reached them before the words did.
A deep, compressed concussion, distant but structured, the kind of noise that only came from shaped explosive charges detonating in sequence. Then another. Closer.
Fury was on his feet before the second one finished echoing. The food container hit the floor. His hands were shaking at the fingertips, and he spun toward Talos, whose face had already closed into something flat and ready.
"They." The word came out through his teeth. "They are still catching up!"