Aryan closed his eyes, and his consciousness sank into the Fog Dimension. With a thought, an identical copy of himself coalesced from the mists.
He then turned his attention to the "True Creative System." He searched for a non functional replica of the Advanced Tech Suit and the Temporal GPS.
But it will be built with a catastrophic flaw at its core… a complete and total quantum decoherence.
He envisioned the diagnostic report of absolute failure: 'Pym Particles have decayed into a chaotic cascade of exotic radiation. The core temporal GPS is worse. The quantum entanglement that made it work has fully decohered, leaving behind nothing but corrupted data streams. It's like a hard drive that's been wiped, shredded, and then set on fire. The original design was a masterpiece. But whatever this suit went through, or however long it sat dormant, it scrambled the very science it was built on. There is nothing to replicate, nothing to reverse engineer. It's just a beautifully designed piece of radioactive junk.'
The perfect worthless replica materialized in the Fog Dimension. The clone took the replica, its form shimmering and then vanishing as it activated its own power of absolute invisibility, and stepped out into the real world.
Old Steve Rogers, his mind and body finally succumbing to the emotional exhaustion of the last few days, was in a dreamless slumber.
An invisible presence passed through the locked front door. His Boy Eye vision allowed the quantum trails left by its inhabitants, the subtle energy signature of the anomalous technology hidden within.
He moved to the back of a dusty closet in the spare bedroom. He saw the false bottom of the old wooden chest.
He extended its Omega level Magnetism. He instructed the individual metal tumblers within the lock to align, clicking open.
Inside, he found the Advanced Tech Suit and the Temporal GPS. It was a masterpiece from another world, a beautiful key to the corridors of time.
With a motion, he swapped the genuine articles with the flawless, inert replicas he had brought.
He placed the real suit and GPS into his fog dimension. He then phased his hand back out, leaving the chest exactly as it had been.
Having fulfilled his directive, standing in the darkness of the hallway, the clone dissolved.
Its form breaking down into a swirling cascade of inert particles that caught the moonlight from the window for a fraction of a second before fading into absolutely nothing, leaving not even a flicker of residual energy behind.
…
Weeks later, the mood in the Sentinel Complex's main council chamber was calm and optimistic.
The reports on Project Aegis were ahead of schedule.
The first swarms of Project Genesis's beautiful, iridescent G-Bees had been released in a test sector of the Amazon and were performing beyond all expectations.
The six members of the Illuminati Council were gathered around their vibranium table. The mood was light, the conversation a comfortable mix of official business and friendly banter.
It was in the middle of a discussion about allocating more resources to the G-Bee project that T'Challa's head snapped up, his eyes staring at something a million miles away.
He saw another earth in the sky, both earth on the verge of colliding, cities on both earths turning to dust, oceans boiling away into nothing. It was the death of everything, a vision of absolute annihilation.
And then he saw him in the shattered sky between the two dying worlds, a figure floating, blazing with a light so intense it was like a new sun being born.
It was Aryan. But this Aryan was a being of pure power.
Aryan in the sky seemed to turn, his gaze piercing through the layers of time and space, looking directly at the T'Challa who was witnessing it all.
"IT IS TOO LATE FOR THIS INCURSION." His voice, a sound of infinite regret. "THE SEED WAS PLANTED IN THE PAST. FIND THE MAN OUT OF TIME. FIND STEVE ROGERS. HE IS THE UNRAVELING. HE IS THE…."
The vision shattered.
T'Challa cried out, and collapsed back into his chair, his body trembling, sweat pouring down his face. He was left gasping, his heart hammering in his chest.
Aryan stood up, walked over, and placed his hand on T'Challa's shoulder. "Breathe, T'Challa," he said.
T'Challa looked up, his eyes wild with the lingering horror of the cosmic apocalypse he had just witnessed.
He looked at Aryan, at the concerned face of his friend, and saw the blazing god from his vision.
"The end," T'Challa whispered, his voice shaking. "I saw the end of everything."
He gripped Aryan's arm. "And your power... it had awakened."
His gaze then became fragmented, as he tried to piece together the cryptic command from the vision. "You told me... you told me to find... Steve Rogers. You said he was the cause. You said he was... the..."
But the final word was lost, an echo that faded before he could grasp it.
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