Marvel's Secret Invasion Prose Novel, page 15
“Oh, hey,” said Spider-Man, “anyone in the mood to hit a Denny’s on the way home?”
“Jokes?” said Maya Lopez. “Really?”
“Well, very nearly,” said Spidey. “Doing my best here. I don’t like silences, okay? Silences say, ‘we think the other guy is a Skrull’ when right now we absolutely, positively, know everyone in this ship isn’t one, right?”
“Right,” said Simon Williams. “But the silences might also say ‘we think the other guy is the guy who disrupted my entire body at a microscopic level while trying to escape lawful arrest for a crime they actually committed,’ so—”
“Oh, you want some?!” shouted Luke. “You want to try to arrest my ass right now?!”
“Silence!” bellowed Ares. Shocked, everyone turned to look at him. “We are shipmates,” he said. “We are comrades in arms. We carry with us the body of one of our glorious dead. Some more of us will die for each other. Well, some of you will. I am immortal. But my point is—”
“His point is a good one,” said Janet. And she walked into the middle of the deck and looked around them all. “I’m going to say two words and I want you all to say them back to me. These are two words I think you’re all going to want to say, though I know it’ll be difficult for some of you.”
Tony looked up from his work, feeling admiration for this woman he’d once loved, and with that a horrible taste of hope.
“Oh, oh, I think I know what she’s going to say!” said Spider-Man.
“Don’t spoil it,” said Luke, now looking a lot happier.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Avengers assemble,” said Janet, very quietly.
They nodded, they muttered it. Some of them looked like they didn’t know if they were allowed to say it. Tony said it carefully and out loud.
“Avengers assemble!” said Janet, more loudly. There might have been a time when that would have been returned to her as a shout. But now, yet again, there was only a mutter. “Damn it,” she said, and raised her hands, looking like she wondered what it was going to take to make any of them see sense.
More than that, thought Tony. I’m sorry, Jan.
“I just want to know that after I’ve fought alongside you guys,” said Danny, “if we win, you’re not then going to try to arrest us.”
Tony realized everyone in the chamber had their eyes on him. “I think we… have obviously suspended…” The whole room groaned. “Well, what do you want me to say?!”
“‘Sorry,’ for a start,” said Luke. “‘Suspended,’ my ass!”
Tony found that he really wanted to say it. But he stopped himself. More was riding on this than just his needs, and he didn’t want to be a hypocrite about it. “I get that,” he said.
Luke swore at him.
“But in combat—” began Janet.
“We’re all on the same side,” said Luke. “I get that.”
“Hey,” said Rand, “anyone else worried that while we’re all caring and sharing, the Skrulls might be following us or about to blow us out of the sky?”
“The ship is cloaked, Mr. Rand,” said Reed, who sounded like any moment he was going to tell them all if they didn’t stop fighting, he’d turn this spaceship around.
“But it’s their cloak,” said Cage.
“A cloak is a cloak, Luke.”
“Depends on the movie. But point taken. Okay, so now we’re at least talking about stuff… the elephant in the room: Jessica Drew.”
“Yeah,” said Maya.
“The real Jess would love being called that,” said Spider-Man.
“She was a Skrull,’ said Tony, getting there before the rest of them did, “and I brought her onto my team.”
“Because you were running out of anyone in a costume to be on your side,” said Rand. “And because you wanted someone to come over from ours.”
“And they knew that,” admitted Tony, “and they played me using it. They’ve been playing all of us all the while during the Civil War. And way before.”
“I was enjoyin’ that until he got to ‘all of us,’” said Logan. “I want to know how long she was a duplicate.”
“He wants to know,” said Spider-Man, “for, you know, reasons.”
Logan glowered at him.
“And, most importantly,” said Tony, trying really hard not to behave like he was the leader here, but not doing so well, honestly, “where is the real Jessica? And is she okay? And who else did they get?” He looked up at the others, hoping they saw how deep his sickness went. “This is all my fault. I know it.”
“There was nothing you could have done,” said Janet, landing on his shoulder at Wasp size, which was always what she did when she wanted to talk intimately. “It would have been whoever was in charge.”
There was a loud clamor of disagreement about that. Tony again tried to say it first. “Nick Fury saw this coming.”
Jan seemed as though she was about to argue, but Spider-Man spoke before she could. “Jan,” he said, “this guilt of Tony’s is a good thing. Not just for all these guys,” he gestured to the room, “but for Tony too, okay? Let him have this.”
Jan glared at him like she was getting deeply frustrated that she could no longer unite these people. But that was because nobody could. Not now.
“I know him,” said Barton, suddenly looking up from his sullen anger and pointing at Tony. “I fought him often enough. Back in the day. When I was a villain and he was a hero.” Ouch. “He’s getting his second wind. Right?”
Tony realized, to his own surprise, that he was kind of right. “Oh, we’re going to fight back,” he said. “Of course we are. All I need to do is… okay, hack this server, beat the virus, map the Skrull attacks and—” He stopped. “And the rest will be up to all of us. All of you.”
Cage made eye contact for just about the first time and gave him a nod. “They came here,” he said, turning to the others, “they came all the way here, they threw everything they had at us, with one hell of a plan. And look. We’re still here. And we’re comin’ to get ’em.”
There were nods and calls of “yeah” and heroes thumping surfaces. Tony couldn’t quite imagine how their community was going to be afterward, but maybe… maybe the healing started here? Jan joined in, but with a look on her face that was asking why they couldn’t have heard this from her.
Because you chose the wrong side, kid. Not that you ever seemed to have wholeheartedly made that choice. Sorry.
“Guys,” said Brand from the flight deck. “You’d better see this.”
They all moved forward. Through the forward screens they could see New York City in the distance. Dozens of Skrull ships floated in the sky above it.
And beneath them, the City of Super Heroes was on fire.
THIRTY-THREE
ALICE CREASY
ALICE CREASY had stopped seeing the difference between “heroes” and “villains” a long time ago. She was nineteen, and where she worked, at a twenty-four-hour drug store, the young staff would listen to Sullivan, the proprietor, talking in his boomer way about how some mystery hero had saved his life in the 1970s, about the latest Avengers gossip, who was in and who was out, who was dating who… and they would look at each other, baffled. It was like hearing someone excitedly talk about romances in the NYPD or the government. It didn’t help that Sullivan had told them all the story of him being rescued at one time or another, but he couldn’t seem to keep straight in his memory which super hero had saved him. The only constant was that it was one of the ones who’d been around “before they’d started poppin’ outta the woodwork.” Alice suspected the story might not actually be true, that Sullivan had started telling it to make himself sound more important by association or whatever, and now believed it had actually happened to him.
“Captain America is dead, dude,” one of her fellow employees had once said to Sullivan, “get over it.” He had quickly found himself on the zombie shift.
But that had just been the truth, said out loud. Captain America was dead and super hero culture was a toxic mess that nobody in her generation cared about. Ever since Alice could remember, whenever a super hero was in the news it was because they were literally destroying some building in New York, having their weekly battle with Terrible Man or whoever it was, not caring if innocent bystanders got hit by the wreckage. That was what had happened to Alice’s Gran Creasy. She hadn’t been the same since She-Hulk had demolished a wall, sending one brick randomly flying precisely at the center of Gran’s forehead. Now Gran sometimes bled from the nose, and had episodes of forgetfulness, but every time Alice said to her that here was a class action suit waiting to happen, Gran looked at her with horror and said that She-Hulk was both an Avenger and had been one of that lovely Reed Richards’ people and so she would never… blah, blah, blah.
It was like the USA had invented a monarchy for themselves.
The Super Hero Civil War had been, to Alice and her friends and millions like them online, just the latest idiocy these hugely privileged morons had perpetrated against the everyday people of New York. I mean, great, now they didn’t even need villains, they were picking sides and fighting each other. Had one side been better than the other? Well, given that Tony Stark was an out-and-out fascist who’d finally shown his true colors, and that Captain America… well, even Alice had to admit that there was one guy who’d never crossed the line, who even the most radical of her friends always gave a pass to, so, yeah, maybe the “rebels” had been better than the “official Avengers.” But even so. It was still just grown people with too much money and too much power fighting over trivial differences of opinion while climate change was a thing, and the so-called “heroes” were doing nothing to stop it. The idea that super hero culture should be accountable was absolutely right. What was wrong was that the “accounting” was being done by those complicit in the problems.
Because a “super hero” never seemed to be able to stand up to the big companies and say “actually, the Mighty Thor is going to spend Tuesday sending every oil well in the world off to Asgard” or “Dr. Strange is going to say a spell to end cancer” or “Reed Richards is going to take some of his amazing tech and use it to create proper transport infrastructure” or even just “actually, I think transgender people have a right to live their lives in peace.” Because these ridiculously powerful twits thought that staying on the fence was the way to keep the public onside, instead of, say, never allowing a member of the public to come to harm. Or how about let’s not have Captain America arrested and get him killed? The only member of that culture Alice had ever truly liked was Magneto, and so of course he was often portrayed in the media as a “villain.”
Watching older generations being invested in the “ethics” of these monsters was like watching them get involved with pro wrestling. Nothing about “super heroes” was real. Memories got rewritten. Reality got rewritten too. There were so many convincing social media posts about how ordinary people’s memories had been messed with by magic and powers and whatever, time after time.
And being under it all, in the shadow of it all, oppressed by it all, made living in New York especially, but in any of the big cities since the Initiative, like being an ant in a garden where giants trod wherever they liked. Every part of that sentence had, at one time or another, ceased to even be a metaphor for some ordinary person somewhere. Even the “ant” part. Her generation especially, those not brainwashed by the wonder of these heroes first appearing at a time when, okay, perhaps they had genuinely just helped people, they were the ones who suffered the most.
So, when the Skrulls had made their broadcast, okay, obviously some of it was intended for those who couldn’t read media as well as Alice and her friends could. Because some of it was obviously not true. And using those familiar faces, that was creepy as hell, but hey, they were dealing with an extraterrestrial culture here, who probably thought that would have played better than it had. But some of the messages, some of the exact plans the Skrulls had put out on social media immediately after the broadcast… that was good stuff. The idea that the world’s great cities would be designated as safe zones, where all acts of violence would be prohibited by Skrull tech… that would come as a blessed relief. The idea that there would be trials for super heroes guilty of breaking everyday human laws, that U.S. law would be enforced equally for U.S. citizens by unbiased Skrull judges who saw all humans as equal… that was pleasing too. Truth and reconciliation commissions to sort out the grievances of all those hurt by super hero culture, sanctuaries for all those persecuted by Earth governments and international laws that would apply to all, immediate action to halt global warming and put in place clean fusion energy… wow. No wonder the heroes had wanted to keep Earth out of interstellar politics. The Skrulls weren’t on the fence. They were radicals. They were going to put in place all the changes that Earth had needed for so long.
Alice and her friends weren’t idiots. They knew the Skrulls were doing this to gain allies amongst humans. It was so obviously a “hearts and minds” strategy. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
Lots of her friends, it turned out, felt the same way. Some just felt that anything was better than what they had now, but a lot of others, like Alice, felt that the Skrulls actually had a point. Besides, all the online fascists had immediately swung onside with the official Avengers, yelling that all Skrulls must die, uploading pictures of themselves with guns ready to defend their neighborhoods under the Stars and Stripes and… no. Just no.
Even the Skrull religion, what little of it had been revealed, seemed okay. All they talked about was love, even to their enemies. Wasn’t that meant to be the point of Christianity, before a ton of people had started to use it as an instrument of oppression?
So, Alice had decided, this afternoon as the Skrull ships hung in the sky over the city, that she was going to do something brave in response to their broadcast. She would show them that their message had been heard. She got in touch with those of her friends who lived in the same neighborhood, bringing them together to quickly make some signs. Then they stepped out onto the street together and made their way downtown as best they could, driving some of the way and walking the rest after they had to abandon the cars. Sure, the fires and the destruction were scary, but the fighting seemed to be over, and, good as their word, the Skrulls seemed only to be attacking those who attacked them. The media had said, before it was shut down—again, yay—that there’d been a battle in Times Square. If there had, the Skrulls seemed to have won it. Because there were now no super heroes to be seen anywhere.
They received mixed reactions to their placards. Some older people called them traitors. One ranting, wandering religious guy, who appeared to be hurt and was covered in brick dust, told them they were a sign of the end times. A reporter walked beside them for a while, taking quotes and making notes, a sad look on his face.
Their signs said “Welcome, Skrulls” and “Fix the World For Us” and “Peace Across the Galaxy” and “Embrace Change.” As they walked, a handful of people came out of their houses, rushing to join them, a wild, proud expression on their faces. “It’s the revolution,” said one old lady, “finally. I actually thought it would be us doing it, back in the old days. But no. Of course. It needs a higher power.”
Alice thought that old lady sounded kind of weird, honestly, but hey, the more the merrier. They’d got to where the major destruction started, in midtown, and found some of the older buildings crumbling. The sight didn’t feel odd to Alice. It felt like Tuesday. She, like all her generation, was used to random super hero destruction. “Where are they?” asked Maddy, who’d come all the way from Brooklyn for this.
“Look up,” said Kels, who was kind of annoying in person, in that what had come over as righteous anger online was just whiny in real life. He kept earnestly telling them things they already knew.
“Yeah, I know, the spaceships, but where are they so we can greet them and make them see some humans are on their side?”
Ahead of them a cop car was stopped at the corner, and two NYPD morons were actually… oh, come on, they were arresting a looter! During the transformation of all human society! It was so perfect, it was a summation of everything that was wrong. They were literally failing to see anything above their little world!
Alice got out her phone and took a picture. “Pigs!” she shouted. “You have no power here! The Skrulls are the law now!”
The cops turned to look at them, uncomprehending. “What the hell?” one of them said. “You get back—”
“Back in the box where you want to keep us?!” yelled Kels. “No! No!”
The others took up the chant. “We are here to welcome them!” yelled Maddy.
“Welcome who?!” said the other cop, taking a step toward them, obviously unprepared for this moment and still living in the wrong decade.
“They have come here to save us,” called Kels.
“Are you out of your minds?!” The first cop threw the looter in the back of the car and marched over. “We’re being invaded! The Fantastic Four are dead!”
“Good!” bellowed Kels. “Death to the super fascists!”
“You’re just worried because you’re out of a job,” said Alice, getting in the cop’s face. “Utopia means you don’t get to use that big stick of yours.”
The cop looked to his partner, a tired look on his face. “My big stick’d be wasted on the likes of you. You gotta get to safety before—”
“Mike,” called his partner, pointing and then drawing his gun.
They all turned to look.
They were approaching through the smoke that was billowing down a sidestreet. They were walking casually, calmly, as if the world already belonged to them. There was one of the big ones who wore the super hero garb of their enemies, with an X on his chest, while the other two, smaller than him but still bigger than most humans, were in their military uniforms. Altogether, they were the strangest and most liberating things Alice had ever seen.
“They’re beautiful,” said Kels. “They’re so different, so above the flesh. Look at the way their skin glistens.”
