"A warning from the future," Namor rumbled, grasping the implication.
"Exactly!" Tony exclaimed. "But here's the question that's bothering me. How did he know T'Challa was watching that future at that moment? How did he target him? Precognition is a passive ability. It's like a radio receiver picking up a stray signal. You can't broadcast to a radio receiver. Not unless..."
A new theory began to form in his eyes.
"Not unless the 'signal' itself is intelligent," he murmured to himself. "What if... what if T'Challa's precognition isn't him seeing the future? What if it's the future... seeing him?"
He looked at Aryan. "Your power. When it's awakened. You're a being of unimaginable energy. The sun. Maybe... maybe your power is so immense that it transcends linear time. Maybe you're not just a man in the future; maybe you exist at all points in your timeline simultaneously, once you're awakened."
"Tony, that's..." Wanda started.
"Insane, I know," he said, holding up a hand. "But think about it! It fits the facts. Future Aryan, in the midst of a universal collapse, detects the 'imprint' of T'Challa's precognitive sense looking at him from the past. He then uses his own time spanning power to piggyback on that connection, to force feed a targeted vision and a message back down the timeline. He's sending us a warning."
"The words..." T'Challa said. "He said, 'The seed was planted in the past.' He's telling us that the end of the world... it's the consequence of something that has already happened."
"And he's telling us what that 'something' is," Tony concluded. "Steve Rogers. The 'man out of time'."
For a minute, no one spoke. They were caught in the grip of a dizzying cognitive dissonance.
A dying universe, Aryan as a god of fire… those were terrifying concepts. But the name... the name was an undeniable piece of history, a bedrock of their shared culture.
Steve Rogers.
Captain America.
"That... that's impossible," Pietro was the first to stammer. He looked around the room, his expression one of pure confusion. "Captain America? He died in 1945."
"He was just a piece of surface world propaganda from your last great tribal war, and he was a myth, not a man." Namor stated.
"Oh, he was a man, alright," Tony said. He was the son of Howard Stark, and Captain America had been a near mythical figure in his childhood. "My father knew him."
He turned to Bucky. "And you knew him better than anyone."
Bucky nodded. "He was my friend," he said.
"But he's dead," Sharon insisted. "How can a man who has been dead for seventy years be the 'seed' of a future apocalypse?"
"It doesn't matter if he's dead or just a popsicle," Tony said. "The message was 'Find the man out of time.' That's his defining feature."
He looked at T'Challa. "And 'He is the unraveling.' Present tense. Not 'he was' or 'he will be'. Is. Right now."
The Leader brought them back to the core of the problem. "We are operating under two conflicting sets of data. Fact: Captain Steve Rogers was lost and presumed dead in 1945. Vision: Captain Steve Rogers is the active cause of a future universal collapse. Both cannot be true. Therefore, one of our foundational assumptions must be wrong."
Namor turned to Aryan. "Aryan, you've... had more experience with the... unusual nature of reality than any of us. Your thoughts?"
Aryan leaned forward. "The message is the key," he said. "The future version of me... he chose his words carefully. 'The man out of time.' It's a very specific descriptor. It could mean the man from the past. But..."
He let a look of dawning insight cross his face. "...it could also mean a man who is literally... out of our time. From a different one."
"A temporal anomaly," T'Challa murmured. "Another universe."
"Like Klein Moretti," Wanda whispered.
"It's a working theory," Tony said, immediately latching onto the idea. "Okay, let's play this out. Let's assume the vision isn't talking about our Steve Rogers. Let's assume it's talking about a Steve Rogers from another timeline who has somehow crossed over into ours. Why would his presence cause an incursion?"
"Butterfly effect," Sharon said instantly. "One small change can have massive consequences. A being from another reality, living here, would be the biggest butterfly imaginable. His every action is a paradox, a ripple in the fabric of our specific reality."
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