Marvel's Avengers: The Extinction Key, page 26
“Better things,” he agreed.
Together, they went into their labs.
EPILOGUE
IT had already been an exciting day for Kamala Khan. She had never flown before, and watching the entire breadth of America unfurl below her was amazing. She’d pressed her face to the window for so much of the trip she now had a slight crick in her neck. And that had been on a regular airplane.
After they had landed at the airport in San Francisco, a woman with her name on a placard—her name—had led her and her father to a special gate, to board not just another plane but a Quinjet, where a bunch of other kids and their parents were also boarding. They’d had to wait there while flights from other parts of the country arrived, but she hadn’t been bored in the slightest. How could she be? The controls and displays were the same ones the Avengers used. One of them might have been in the very seat she was sitting in at the moment. But which one? Thor? Captain America?
Captain Marvel? But that was silly. She didn’t need a Quinjet. She could fly. She could do anything.
Whatever. That wasn’t important. She—Kamala Khan, eleven years old—was in a Quinjet, headed to “Avengers Day,” the celebratory grand opening of the Avengers’ West Coast base. It was just so cool.
Her father didn’t seem as excited. He fell asleep almost as soon as he was in his seat.
And then came the takeoff. Not like the plane earlier, zooming down a runway and tilting into the air, but jumping straight up, like a helicopter, then rocketing off toward their destination. The airport was south of downtown San Francisco, and she had a great view of the city, the ocean, the bay. They turned out to sea, and then back, and ahead she saw the long orange-colored span she had seen in a hundred movies and television shows.
“I can see the bridge, Abu,” she said. “Look!”
Her father snorted, rousing from his nap. He groaned, shifting in his seat.
“Uh,” he grunted. “It’s about time. Oh! These seats don’t recline.”
“It’s so beautiful,” Kamala said.
“Huh,” he remarked. “Why call it the Golden Gate Bridge if it’s not golden?”
Typical Abu, she thought. Sometimes she wondered if anything really impressed him. She glanced around at the other passengers. About half of them were kids around her own age, the other finalists in the contest.
Worry crept into her excitement. She had been ecstatic when her fan-fiction was chosen for the A-Day contest finals. No one else she knew had been chosen—no one else from New Jersey, in fact. But now she was looking at the competition and feeling a little deflated. They all looked so formidable. She was suddenly, acutely aware of the Captain Marvel t-shirt she had on. Everyone else she saw just had on regular shirts. Was she too geeked-out?
“There are so many other kids,” she sighed. “I bet their stories are all amazing.”
“Competition is what makes us strong,” Abu said, calmly.
“What if they don’t like my story?” she said, thumbing through her manuscript, eying each page critically. “What if it doesn’t fit in? It’s gotta be perfect, y’know?”
Her father looked at her.
“When you were born,” he said, “your brother said you had googly eyes.”
She looked up at him. That sounded like something Aamir would say—the jerk—but why was Abu bringing it up now?
“What?”
“But I thought your eyes were the most beautiful things I had ever seen,” he went on. “We are all unique, Kamala. You should be proud of who you are.”
She felt a little smile spread on her face.
“I love you, Abu,” she said.
“I love you more,” he said. He leaned a little closer, and spoke more confidentially. “And I’m pretty sure you’re gonna win this thing.”
“Oh! Could you imagine?” she said. “And the winner! For best fan fiction ever is… ‘The Avengers versus the Evil Sewer Lizards’ by Kamala Khan! And the crowd goes wild! Ahhhh! Ssshh!”
“That’s the spirit!” Abu said.
Kamala giggled.
“Promise me something,” Abu said, a little more seriously. “Win or lose—”
“Oh,” she said. “I’ll always be good, Abu.”
“No, beta,” he reproved. “Good isn’t a thing you are—”
“—it’s a thing you do,” she finished.
“That’s my girl,” Abu said.
“Folks,” the pilot said. “We’re approaching the Avengers’ West Coast headquarters on the left, and we’ll be touching down in three, two…”
Kamala didn’t hear the rest of it. She was too busy staring at the skyscraper with the giant “A” on it—and then the Helicarrier below, festooned with banners and balloons.
She felt her heart lift. Abu was right: win or lose, she was here. Nothing so exciting had ever happened to her before and for all she knew might never again.
She promised herself she would make the best of it.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GREG KEYES was born in Meridian, Mississippi, on April 11, 1963. His mother read to him early and often, until he learned to read—and soon after that, to write. To his delight, he discovered that writing books was actually a job, and so he decided he should do that. He wrote, he listened to the oral traditions of his family, he studied, he went to college. He earned degrees in anthropology; travelled; played strange, violent games; learned to play music; associated with interesting people. In 1996 he managed to get the job he’d been working toward when his first novel, The Waterborn, was published.
Since that time Greg has published over thirty books, including the original series Children of the Changeling, The Age of Unreason, and The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone, as well as the standalone books The Hounds of Ash and Footsteps in the Sky. He has also had the great fortune to be asked to contribute to other universes, writing books for Babylon 5, Star Wars, Planet of the Apes, Pacific Rim, The Elder Scrolls, X-COM and Independence Day, and to novelize the films Interstellar and Godzilla: King of the Monsters. He is currently finishing the third book in his newest trilogy, The High and Faraway. He lives, writes, fences and cooks in Savannah, Georgia, with his wife Nell, son John (formerly known as Archer), daughter Dorothy (formerly known as Nellah), and a small pack of wiener dogs.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
AT Titan, thanks to my editor, Steve Saffel, London editors Craig Leyenaar and Davi Lancett, Hayley Shepherd, Nick Landau, Vivian Cheung, Laura Price, George Sandison, and Natasha MacKenzie. Thanks also at Marvel to Loni Clark, Isabel Hsu, Sven Larsen, Dakota Maysonet, Becka McIntosh, Eric Monacelli, Caitlin O’Connell, Bill Rosemann, and Jeff Youngquist. Thanks to Uroš Perišić for his help with the Croatian language.
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Greg Keyes, Marvel's Avengers: The Extinction Key
