The bolters fired.
The sound of it in the enclosed passage was enormous, the kind of noise that stopped thought, each shot compounding with the next until the air itself seemed to be vibrating. Rounds crossed the space in both directions at once, the Lamenters firing from the front while the five Stormtroopers, already moving, swung their ceramite arms forward and ignited their vibranium power swords. The azure decomposition fields along the blades cast cold light across the walls as their magnetic boots hit the floor in a charging rhythm, closing the distance to Fury and the Skrulls from behind.
A Skrull's palm went up.
Blue particles condensed in the air between the incoming fire and the group it was protecting, thickening into a curved barrier that the bolter rounds struck and spread across without penetrating. The explosions came fast, each one adding to the stress fractures spreading through the energy field, and the Skrull maintaining it had its teeth clenched, its body bent forward with the effort, blue blood beginning to run from one nostril.
"Fury!" Talos's voice cut through the noise. He did not look at Fury when he shouted it; he was watching the shield. "Activate the Cube. We cannot escape this. Better to end it ourselves than let them tear us apart."
In the gap between one impact and the next, the remaining Skrulls made their decision. They abandoned the shield's protection and came out the sides, taking on augmented physical forms or projecting energy, copies of powers they had absorbed from human contacts, and threw themselves at the Lamenters and Stormtroopers converging from two directions.
It lasted seconds.
Power swords and chain swords came down in short, efficient arcs, and the Skrulls who had thrown themselves forward found that the abilities they had copied were insufficient for the targets they had chosen. The counterattack collapsed into blue blood and falling bodies before it could find its footing. The ones still standing fell back, and then there were not enough standing to matter.
Fury's hand tightened on the activation device.
He looked at Talos, close beside him, for one moment. His lips moved without making a sound. Then he pressed the trigger.
The explosion did not come.
Fury's head turned. The mechanical device stood intact, its housing undamaged, its cable bundles still attached. But inside, running through every component, strands of scarlet energy moved like fingers through circuitry, pulling, tearing, methodically destroying each precision element from within.
Doom's voice came across the space, level and unhurried.
"She does not understand alien machinery. But she has never needed to understand a thing to destroy it. Your only remaining option is gone."
His power armor moved forward. Both ceramite palms came up beneath the dark green cloak, and the invisible weight of his telekinesis gathered and drove forward like a collapsing wall, striking the energy shield at its most damaged point. The Skrull holding it screamed, blue blood erupting from its mouth and nose as the mental force exceeded what its body could channel, and it dropped to one knee.
The shield came apart in fragments of dissipating light.
In the same motion, the telekinesis found Nick Fury's throat and pulled him across the room, dragging him off his feet and depositing him directly in front of Doom's faceplate with enough force to make his vision swim.
A single impact beam from Doom's other hand crossed the room behind him and ended the last Skrull that was attempting to rise.
Doom looked at Fury. Fury hung in the telekinetic grip, trying to breathe through it, his eyes filling with broken vessels, his hands at his sides having given up their struggle.
"The alien matter is settled," Doom said quietly. "Do you have anything to say, before the end, for betraying your own species?"
Fury's breath came in a long, compressed hiss. His eyes stayed on Doom's helmet.
"Time will prove my right or wrong." A pause to pull in air. "I'll wait for you in hell."
Doom did not answer.
His hand opened, and hellfire poured out of it, the deep and sourceless flame from the border of dimensions that burned without needing oxygen and did not stop until Doom chose to stop it. Nick Fury was gone in seconds, and what Doom let fall to the floor afterward bore no resemblance to the man.
He turned toward the device to locate the Cosmic Cube.
"Teacher!"
"Doom!"
Both voices at the same instant, Wanda and Jessica, from two different positions, and the alarm in them was identical.
The mechanical creation was no longer inert. Through every crack in its housing, through the gaps Wanda's power had torn through its internals, blue energy was pouring outward, not dissipating but building, radiating in pulses that pushed against the walls and floor of the underground space like something testing the boundaries of a container.
"Wanda." Doom did not raise his voice. "Engage the Cube directly. Suppression. Everyone else, pull back through the passage now. Move."
The Lamenters and Stormtroopers went without debate, their armored footsteps receding rapidly into the dark behind them.
Wanda stepped forward into the blue light without hesitation, both hands rising, and the scarlet energy poured out of her in volume, driving toward the Cube's housing and pressing inward against the source of the radiation.
Jessica covered the distance to Doom in two steps, her power scythe held ready. She turned her helmet toward him.
"Doom. Leave the Cube for now. Let it exhaust the activation energy and stabilize on its own. Why is Wanda taking this risk?"
Doom did not look at her. He was watching Wanda work.
"Because this is not an activation sequence," he said. "Wanda has completely destroyed the alien device. There is no functional mechanism left to trigger an explosion. If this were a contingency Fury and the Skrulls had planned, we would already be dead." His eyes stayed on the pulsing blue light. "I believe the Cube itself is the source of this. Not a backup plan. The Cube."
"Wait." Jessica's voice slowed. "You mean..."
"The Space Stone can open a portal to anywhere in the universe." Doom finally turned his helmet toward her. "If it is a door, then a door can be opened from either side." His cloak moved in a wind that existed only around him. "Someone is opening it from the other side."
He faced the blue light again, and everything about his posture shifted, weight settling forward, ceramite palms coming up to either side, witchcraft gestures forming slowly between his fingers.
"If I'm not mistaken, something is coming!"