The street in suburban Virginia had been in a state of silent lockdown.
The operation had been executed with the flawless efficiency.
A series of "emergencies"… a sudden gas main leak at one end of the block, a downed power line at the other, a team in hazmat suits investigating a "sewer contamination" in the middle… had resulted in a mandatory evacuation of all residents.
The neighborhood was now completely isolated from the outside world.
The only person who remained, the one resident whose house was at the very center of the containment zone, knew nothing of the silent quarantine.
The peace inside the house was shattered by a powerful thrum that vibrated in the very bones of the earth.
From inside his quiet home, an old man with clear blue eyes and white hair, who had been reading a book in his armchair, set the book down.
He had felt the ground shake. Steve Rogers got to his feet, and walked to his front door.
He opened it, and the sight that greeted him was a EDF 'Stingray' transport, settled on his front lawn, its engines creating the resonant hum that was now shaking his entire house.
Arrayed in a semi circle between the transport and his porch, were the new gods of Earth.
Tony Stark was there, his arms crossed, his faceplate retracted on his sleek armor, his expression grim.
Beside him stood T'Challa, his suit silent and menacing.
Floating a few inches off the crushed grass was Namor, his trident held loosely in his hand, his eyes burning with a fury.
Wanda Maximoff stood with her hands glowing faintly with a crackling red energy.
Slightly behind them were: Bucky Barnes, Pietro Maximoff, Sharon Carter.
And at the center of them all stood Aryan Spencer.
Steve Rogers stepped out onto his porch, closing the door behind him.
"Can I help you?" he asked, the voice of a man who had long ago accepted that his past would one day come for him.
"Steven Grant," Aryan said. "Or do you still answer to Steve Rogers?"
"I've answered to both," Steve replied.
"You're a hard man to find," Tony said. "For a man the whole world thinks is a national hero, frozen at the bottom of the ocean, you've been remarkably good at hiding."
"A quiet life was all I ever wanted," Steve said. "I'm a ninety year old man. Whatever you think I've done..."
"What you've done," Namor's voice boomed, "is condemn us all."
Steve stared, completely baffled. "What are you talking about?"
It was T'Challa who explained. "We have seen a vision of the future. A future born from your presence here. We have seen our reality colliding with another. We have seen the death of two universes. The end of everything. And a voice from that dying future sent us a message. It told us that you... that you are the cause. 'The man out of time,' it said."
The words hit Steve with the force of a physical blow. His quiet life, his stolen peace... had it all been a lie? Had his one happy choice somehow doomed the entire world?
The weight of a guilt so profound it was almost unimaginable crashed down on him.
"How?" he whispered.
"That's what we're here to find out," Tony said. "The one who sent the message said the 'seed was planted in the past.' We think he was talking about whatever piece of technology you used to get here. A temporal GPS, a quantum tunneler... whatever it is, it's a wound in the fabric of spacetime. And it's festering. And it's going to kill us all."
His accusation hung in the quiet suburban air. The anger from the group was palpable.
They had just been given the most terrifying burden in existence… the knowledge that their entire universe was on a path to annihilation.
And the source of it all, the patient zero of their apocalypse, was this unassuming old man who had been hiding from his own legacy.
Wanda stepped forward. "We have spent years," she said, "building a future. And all this time, you have been sitting here, a time bomb, waiting to take it all away from us."
Steve looked at their faces. He saw the anger in Tony's eyes, the cold judgment in T'Challa's, the furious impatience in Namor's. He saw the hurt and the fear in Wanda's.
If what they were saying was true, then he was guilty of a crime on a scale he couldn't even comprehend.
"I... I didn't know," he said.
Aryan spoke. "We believe you," he said, and the simple statement seemed to momentarily disarm the tension. "But your ignorance does not change the consequences."
He took a step forward, his gaze never leaving Steve's. "This is not the time, or the place, for this discussion. You are going to come with us."
Steve looked past them, at his quiet house.
The home where he had lived a lifetime. The place where he had loved, and where he had lost, his Peggy.
He knew that if he walked away from it now, he would never be coming back.
With a sigh, Steve Rogers gave a nod. "Alright," he said. "I'll come with you."
He took one last look at his home, at the life that had been his, and then he turned and walked toward the waiting aircraft, leaving his stolen peace behind him forever.
As Steve was escorted up the ramp by Bucky, who refused to meet his old friend's gaze. Aryan turned to Tony.
"Tony, I want a deep scan of the entire property."
"On it," Tony said, his faceplate snapping shut. He flew from the lawn, through the open front door, and into the house.
A few minutes later, his voice crackled over their comms.
"I've got something," he said. "There's a wooden chest. But whatever's inside... it's giving off faint chroniton radiation and residual Pym Particle decay."
"Can you identify it?" Aryan asked.
"Not without opening it, and I am not doing that here," Tony replied. "The energy signature is unstable. If this is the device that brought him here, cracking it open could be like uncorking a black hole."
"Understood," Aryan commanded.
Tony emerged from the house a moment later, levitating a old fashioned wooden chest in a shimmering magnetic field.
Tony carefully guided the chest up the ramp of the Stingray and secured it in a specialized containment unit.
PS: We need only 50 more Power Stones for the bonus chapter.
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PS: I'm really sorry, guys, for not uploading any chapters over the last two weeks cause we were on a free trip to the Philippines, hahaha. The whole trip was sponsored by our HOD cause it was his birthday. So first of all, huge thanks to HOD for letting me experience some really beautiful beaches. Seriously, it was beach after beach after beach, hahaha. We also tried some exotic food like "balut," which is a fertilized egg. It was really weird at first, but honestly, it was kind of tasty, haha. We also tried all kinds of seafood during the trip. Anyway, I'm back now, so I'll start working on the chapters again. No worries, hahaha.