Chapter 293: The Chitauri Legion Arrives
Three days had passed since Ethan's trip to Kamar-Taj.
Right now, Ethan stood atop Fisk Tower, Hell's Kitchen's tallest building, looking out over the neighborhood below and Manhattan stretched out in the distance. Word had already reached most of the island's wealthy elite and government officials, and evacuations were underway.
A small handful had chosen instead to pay for a little peace of mind in Hell's Kitchen — though those trusting Hell's Kitchen enough to actually do so remained the minority. Most of the city's rich still put their faith in themselves, or the federal government.
"What are these people even doing? Their idea of 'evacuating' is moving from Manhattan to Brooklyn? That's one bridge over — you call THAT an evacuation? Bunch of idiots!" Tony grumbled, watching the sluggish exodus below with mounting frustration. He'd already pushed word out through the media and worked with the federal government to spread the warning, and still, half the population — civilians and billionaires alike — weren't taking it remotely seriously.
Not that Tony could exactly tell them the actual truth: aliens are coming. He was fairly sure that if he said that out loud, he'd have someone showing up at his door with a stern warning the very next day.
Ethan just shook his head. The Big Apple's residents had already lived through so many disasters by now that this had practically become routine for them. Anyone who couldn't stomach that lifestyle had already packed up and left after the last giant-mushroom-cloud incident. Everyone still here had either made peace with the chaos, or simply refused to believe the city could possibly be hit with disaster yet again.
Either way, Ethan had done his part warning people. Whatever happened to them from here was no longer his problem.
"You're sure they're coming today, though?" Tony asked, turning to Ethan, genuinely curious how he could be so certain of the timing.
Ethan smiled faintly and nodded. "They'll be here soon." He didn't bother explaining how he knew — he could hardly tell Tony that he could sense the residual Space Stone energy still lingering on Loki's person.
Today, he'd felt it clearly: Loki was already on Earth. Which meant the alien fleet was almost certainly close behind.
Ethan took a slow breath, his eyes drifting back out toward the horizon.
"Is this some kind of hoax? Reed. Kadoya. Listen to me very carefully — if this turns out to be an empty threat, if there's no actual sign of an alien invasion anywhere, I want you both to understand something: I am taking on enormous political risk by acting on this right now.
If this turns out to be nothing but hot air, Reed, you're going to spend the rest of your life behind bars — for spreading false panic and endangering public order. And don't think you're getting off the hook either, Kadoya!" Pierce's voice dripped with fury and menace, his eyes practically burning.
Pierce had initially been deeply skeptical of Reed and Tsukasa's warning about an imminent alien invasion.
But between Loki's cryptic ramblings earlier and the unusual activity coming out of Hell's Kitchen, he'd decided to take the gamble.
After all — if the intelligence turned out to be genuine, this was a golden opportunity to score enormous political capital and goodwill within the federal government.
Still, deep down, real anxiety gnawed at him.
He knew perfectly well: if this was a hoax, it could end his entire career on the spot.
Worse still — he might lose his freedom entirely, spending the rest of his life in prison.
So he'd done the sensible thing, in his own mind: shifted the risk onto Reed and Tsukasa, making the two of them his convenient scapegoats.
Reed's stomach dropped at Pierce's threat.
He knew exactly what kind of man his superior was — the instant this went sideways, Pierce would throw him under the bus without a second's hesitation.
Still, Reed didn't back down. A genuine sense of justice burned in him — he couldn't stand by and let the people of the Big Apple walk blindly into a crisis.
And Reed had real confidence in the intelligence itself.
After all, it had come straight from Ben, over at Hell's Kitchen — and Ben, in turn, had heard it directly from Ethan.
However much Reed despised Ethan as an uncontrollable variable, he knew the man well enough to know he never fired blanks.
So despite the fear and dread churning in his chest, Reed made his choice: take the gamble.
Tsukasa, hearing Pierce's threat, looked utterly unbothered. He'd already been planning to leave Earth once this whole war wrapped up anyway, to continue his travels through the next world.
The only reason he was still hanging around at all was one unfinished piece of business with Ethan — a rematch, promised for after the fighting was over.
So Pierce's threat barely registered with him at all.
Kaito had stayed behind too. Ethan had promised to find him someone to teach him how to properly use the portal ability — whether Kaito actually managed to learn it was entirely up to him.
Just as Pierce was working himself up to keep laying into Reed and the others, something extraordinary suddenly ripped across the sky over central Manhattan.
The clear blue sky shattered in an instant, torn open by a massive beam of blue light — surging upward through the clouds like some monstrous dragon rising from the deep, splitting the once-unbroken sky wide open.
The sudden spectacle stopped everyone in the Big Apple and Hell's Kitchen alike dead in their tracks, heads craning skyward, faces frozen in shock and dawning panic.
At S.H.I.E.L.D., Pierce, Reed, and the others shot up from their seats at once, eyes locked on the enormous beam of light, wary and confused in equal measure.
"What in god's name is that? Some new kind of weapon?" Pierce demanded, brow furrowed, mind racing.
His first instinct was to assume this was Ethan's doing, over in Hell's Kitchen — after all, as far as he knew, Ethan was the only one in this entire city capable of that kind of raw power.
But S.H.I.E.L.D.'s agents came back with a very different answer. Fingers flying across keyboards, they scrambled to trace the beam's true origin.
After a moment, one of them called out: "Sir — the beam isn't coming from Hell's Kitchen. It's originating from central Manhattan itself. We haven't pinpointed exactly what it is yet."
Just as Pierce opened his mouth to order a deeper investigation, the sky changed again — violently. The already-torn sky split open further, as if wrenched apart by some invisible, unstoppable force, revealing a massive black hole hanging in the air. Deep, unfathomable, seemingly a gateway straight into another world.
An instant later, a colossal object came surging out of the black hole — enormous beyond reckoning, radiating a faint, unsettling glow that sent a chill through anyone who looked at it. More dark shapes followed close behind, pouring out of the portal, wheeling and swarming through the air, as if warming up for the disaster about to unfold.
In that moment, every resident of the Big Apple, every agent inside S.H.I.E.L.D., stood frozen, utterly speechless.
None of them had ever witnessed anything like this. None of them had ever imagined a disaster of this scale descending on their city.
They stared up at the black hole and the swarming dark shapes above, hearts pounding with dread.
And atop Fisk Tower, Ethan watched the same shapes fill the sky — and let a slow, knowing smile spread across his face.
Showtime.
Who's the hunter here, and who's the prey? That's really anyone's guess.
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