Vers nodded. The Skrull nodded as well, though to be honest, neither Vers nor Minn-Erva cared very much whether the Skrull was ready or not.

  “Count of three,” Minn-Erva said. “One . . . two . . . three!”

  She squeezed the trigger on her sidearm, and a blast of energy stabbed at the membrane. The force of the energy crackled against the membrane, and the tunnel rocked back and forth, shaking, knocking Minn-Erva backward.

  Vers caught her as they both tumbled into the Skrull. They stared at the membrane.

  It was still whole. The blast hadn’t affected it in the slightest.

  The same couldn’t be said for the tunnel. All around them, the tunnel walls began to ooze more mud, and it was bubbling, as it had before. Except this time, vines were rising to the surface. They pulsed, and suddenly vines began erupting from the walls themselves.

  “Watch out!” Vers yelled, ducking as one of the vines whipped around, narrowly missing her head. The vine slammed into the wall behind her, slicing right through it, as more thick mud poured out.

  “It’s trying to kill us!” the Skrull shouted.

  “So, so obvious,” Vers replied, as she pulled Minn-Erva out of the way of another vine. It narrowly missed Minn-Erva, but stabbed right into Vers’s right thigh with a hiss. Vers felt white-hot pain for just a second as she grabbed the vine and threw it off. The place where it had touched her was now smoldering, like the vine was coated in some kind of acid.

  The hole in the Skrull’s chest, she thought.

  More vines unfurled from the walls, and several wrapped themselves around the Skrull.

  “Hey, twinklefists!” Minn-Erva shouted.

  Vers spun around to face her teammate.

  “Now would be a good time to blast something with those hands of yours,” Minn-Erva said, squeezing off shots from her sidearm at the vines. Every one she hit, and she hit plenty, would split in half, spewing acidic liquid of some kind. But they were reproducing faster than she could take them out.

  Vers looked down at her hands. She wasn’t sure if she had recharged enough, but if she didn’t use her powers now, they were as good as dead.

  Or worse.

  Vers closed her eyes briefly, felt the buzzing start at the back of her head, and let the power build.

  The buzzing in her ears. It was all Vers could hear at that moment. She opened her eyes and looked around, and saw only chaos. There had to be hundreds of vines now, swirling, swinging, stabbing at the three occupants of the tunnel.

  The hair on the back of her neck stood on end. Vers felt the power flowing into her hands, gathering in her fingertips.

  The vines had encircled Minn-Erva. Despite her attempts to shoot and fight her way free, the vines were winning. Minn-Erva screamed as one of the vines struck at her, through the armor on her chest.

  Vers couldn’t even see the Skrull now; his body had been completely entangled in vines.

  The buzzing grew louder, and louder still, until Vers could no longer hold anything back.

  Pure, blinding photon energy streamed from her hands and into the membrane in front of her. Almost instantly, the membrane exploded into a million tiny pieces, spraying Vers, Minn-Erva, and the Skrull in the process and covering them with flecks of the filmy material.

  Vers wiped the specks of goo out of her eyes. She had done it.

  But in doing so, she had also unleashed a torrent of mud from the cavern that now flowed freely into the tunnel. The sudden force of it knocked her back, and she slammed into the wall. The vines lashed out, trying to grab her, but Vers managed to pull herself free. She barely had time to take one last breath of oxygen before the tunnel became completely flooded.

  Then she turned to Minn-Erva, who was now almost entirely enveloped, just like the Skrull. Vers pointed her fists at the wall right behind her, where the vines were snaking from, and unleashed another burst of photon energy.

  The vines sizzled as they were sliced in half, burnt off at the point where Vers’s blast had struck them. The half that had captured Minn-Erva immediately went slack, lifeless, and Minn-Erva fell to the ground.

  Vers swiveled to face the vines that had trapped the Skrull. She managed another burst, destroying the vines behind him. They, too, dropped away, leaving the Skrull to slump down into the muck and mud.

  Though Minn-Erva was now free, she seemed to be struggling from her fight with the vines and the sudden lack of oxygen. Vers grabbed her by the arm. She swam over to the Skrull, who appeared to be unconscious. She took him by the waist and pulled him close.

  Then she headed for the broken membrane and swam through, tugging Minn-Erva and the Skrull along with her.

  “I’m fine, I’m fine,” Minn-Erva panted, but even as the warrior protested Vers’s efforts, she clung to Vers, her body confirming a weakened state that her pride wouldn’t let her admit to.

  Vers rolled her eyes. Stubborn to the last, she thought. “Minn-Erva, don’t waste your energy on resisting me,” she said. “Let me help.”

  Minn-Erva fell silent, but Vers felt her tighten her hold marginally, which she took as a sign of assent. She trudged on.

  Inside, the cavern was a vast sea of translucent muck. As Vers stared up toward the surface, she saw that the Kree fighter was still there.

  So far, so good, she thought.

  On her own, the trip from the cavern toward the surface would have been a struggle. The muck didn’t allow for any kind of rapid movement. It resisted each stroke, tried to push her back even as she was trying to pull ahead.

  Add two passengers to the effort, and it was nearly impossible.

  But Vers wasn’t giving up. She wasn’t ready to die. Not today.

  Not ever.

  With all her might, she kicked upward over and over, driving herself and her two companions slowly, inexorably toward the surface.

  Down below, she could see that the cavern was ringed with membranes, just like the one Vers had just emerged through. One by one, the membranes were now opening, and vines began to snake out.

  Hundreds.

  Thousands.

  They were slowly slithering through the muck, winding their way toward Vers.

  It seemed whatever this thing was really wanted to keep them right where they were. If the planet really were like a cancer, then the vines must be trying to absorb her. To feed off of them for fuel to keep surviving.

  Gross.

  She was near the surface now, and only a few meters away from the ship. Yet it seemed so far. The vines were snaking closer and closer, and the muck seemed to be getting thicker toward the surface. It was becoming increasingly difficult for Vers to make any progress whatsoever.

  Realizing that she couldn’t go any farther in her current state, Vers decided to lighten her load. She let go of the Skrull briefly, and he stayed still, suspended in the surrounding muck, like a fly in amber. Then she grabbed hold of Minn-Erva’s waist. Summoning all her strength, Vers pushed Minn-Erva forward, up to the surface and toward the ship.

  Vers watched as she saw Minn-Erva slowly ascend until her body broke through the muck. She wasn’t sure if Minn-Erva was even still conscious at this point.

  Then it was the Skrull’s turn. She reached out for the unconscious alien, grabbed him around his waist, and shoved him toward the surface as well.

  Now it was her turn. She kicked hard.

  Nothing happened.

  The muck above her seemed to be pushing her down, farther and farther. The more she kicked and fought, the more she struggled, the more the muck seemed to press back.

  Vers couldn’t comprehend what was happening. All she knew was that she couldn’t hold her breath any longer, and the surface wasn’t any closer.

  But the vines were.

  They had already grabbed her left leg, and Vers could feel their force pulling her down below.

  Thinking that she might have enough in her for one last photon blast, Vers pointed a fist at the vine. The buzzing sound slowly filled her ears, when it was abruptly overpowered by a high-pitched whining sound.

  Vers jerked as she saw a sliver of light pierce through the muck, hitting the vine, severing it in two.

  Minn-Erva.

  Vers kicked as hard as she could, and pointed both hands toward the surface. The buzzing in her head built up once more, as the hairs on the back of her neck pricked up.

  With one last-ditch effort, she blasted through the muck above.

  “You in any kind of shape to fly this thing?” Minn-Erva yelled in Vers’s direction. Apparently recovered from her bout with the vines, Minn-Erva was standing on the hull of the Kree fighter, firing her blaster repeatedly into the muck below. Vines were breaking the surface by the dozen, all of them desperately grabbing for the ship, and the three life-forms that stood atop it.

  Vers was trying to catch her breath, clutching the side of the ship. She had barely managed to escape from the muck, even with Minn-Erva’s intervention and her own abilities. In the process, she had expended an incredible amount of photon energy, and felt like she was in a daze.

  But if Minn-Erva could push through, so could she. “I can fly anything, anywhere,” Vers said, and she meant it. A vine whipped past her face, but she didn’t even flinch. She opened the fighter hatch, then grabbed the unconscious but still-breathing Skrull, and shoved him inside.

  Minn-Erva kept on blasting away, keeping the vines subdued. Every now and then, one would slip through, but Vers managed to neutralize them before they took hold.

  She slipped into the hatch and hopped into the pilot’s seat. She switched on the engines, avoiding any and all pre-flight procedures that were required to warm up the ship. There wasn’t any time for that.

  “If you wanna come with, you better get in here now!” Vers hollered, hoping that she was loud enough to be heard outside.

  A second later, she heard a clang as the hatch shut tight. Minn-Erva was standing inside the ship, clutching her left arm. She was bleeding.

  “Get this bucket out of here,” she said with a grimace.

  “With pleasure,” Vers replied, and she yanked back on the ship’s yoke as the thrusters fired at maximum strength.

  The craft exploded from the surface, blasting a crater into the muck. The air was filled with the most piercing sound Vers had ever heard. She wanted desperately to cover her ears with her hands, but she couldn’t—it took everything she had to keep both hands on the yoke.

  The sound cut through the hull of the ship itself. Minn-Erva made her way to the copilot’s seat and strapped herself in. “What is that sound?” Minn-Erva asked, as it started to fade the farther they got from the surface.

  “The planet was screaming,” Vers said.

  Within seconds, the ship had punched through the atmosphere of what had once been Aphos Prime, again moving with such blinding speed as to avoid detection by any Skrull sensors.

  Both warriors visibly relaxed as the decimated, diseased shell of a planet receded farther and farther in the distance. Vers cast a glance over her shoulder at the Skrull, who was still passed out, his chest rising and falling weakly. She turned back toward Minn-Erva.

  “Thanks,” Vers said. “For what you did back there.”

  “You would have done the same for me,” Minn-Erva said, not looking at Vers. “And, in fact, you kind of did. So thank you for that.”

  Vers barely suppressed a laugh.

  “What’s so funny?” Minn-Erva asked.

  “I told you that you’d thank me before the mission was over,” Vers said with a grin. “Look who was right!”

  “What about the Skrull prisoner?” Vers asked.

  “He will be interrogated. Then we will decide what to do with him,” Yon-Rogg said. The pair walked along the hallway toward the briefing chamber. The other members of Starforce—Minn-Erva, Att-Lass, Bron-Char, and Korath—were waiting for them.

  Vers couldn’t resist asking the question that had been troubling her since the realization on Aphos Prime of what the planet truly was, and what very real danger she and Minn-Erva had been placed into by the Kree. “Yon-Rogg . . . did you know about Aphos Prime?” Vers asked. “And, if you did—why didn’t you warn us?”

  “We had no idea,” Yon-Rogg said. “What happened on Aphos Prime is a mystery to us all.” He waved his hand, as though declaring the topic closed to further discussion. “Now prepare for the briefing.”

  Vers was frustrated as she walked ahead of her commander toward the briefing room. She felt that Yon-Rogg knew more, that there was something he wasn’t telling her.

  Despite the peril they’d faced, the mission to Aphos Prime had been an important one. Vers and Minn-Erva had uncovered a terrible power, and at least they’d brought back a witness who could potentially provide more information. And, Vers had to admit, she’d learned that she could get along with Minn-Erva well enough to complete a mission. They’d even had each other’s backs, which shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did.

  As Vers approached the door to the briefing chamber, she looked behind her, and saw Yon-Rogg type something into his tablet.

  If she had been able to see the screen, Vers would have seen the words Aphos Prime/Peer Kaal/test complete.

  But she would have to wait to learn what they meant.

  “Leave her!”

  “We’re not leaving.” SSSHHRRRZZZZZKKKK. “—not an option.”

  KRRRZZZZZZKKK. “—compromised everything!”

  ZRRRKKKKKKK. “—don’t trust—” KRRRRRKKK.

  The chatter over her comm-link cut in and out, the static obscuring most of the words, squawking in her ears, nearly deafening. But Vers had heard enough.

  She was in trouble.

  Not that she needed to hear any of the comm-link back-and-forth to know it. For starters, there was the six-inch-long gash in her right leg. Then there was the blue blood that flowed freely from the wound—which stubbornly refused to close, thanks to the Xandarian knife that she had unceremoniously yanked from her leg less than a minute ago.

  Then there was the twisted body of the Xandarian scientist who lay before her, lifeless. Peer Kaal.

  It hadn’t happened by her hand. No, that had been a direct result of the explosion. The one that had destroyed the bunker that Vers had so stealthily invaded. It was a miracle she was still alive.

  Peer hadn’t been quite as lucky.

  Vers gasped in pain, trying to draw in a breath of fresh air. Her lungs burned, and her pulse thrummed in her temples, matching the ceaseless throb in her leg. With every beat, a little more blood pumped through the wound, forming a small pool on the concrete floor beneath her.

  She winced, blinking a few times to clear her eyes. They were blurry, and she rubbed them. Light-headedness overtook her as her temples began to ache more insistently.

  Pull it together, Vers. No one’s gonna get you out of this. You’re on your own.

  So get a grip.

  And get a good look.

  Sitting up, craning her neck, she scanned from left to right, taking in her situation. Trapped in a bombed-out bunker, crouched behind a pile of rubble. Xandarians on the ridge to her left, and down the passageway to the right. How many were there? She couldn’t tell; they were too well-hidden. Were they Nova Corps? The one who tried to kill her mere moments before certainly wasn’t. The Nova Corps operated under at least some code of conduct, of honor—Vers knew this. They didn’t typically carry knives and go the route of assassins, sneaking up behind their prey.

  Unless she was wrong about the Xandarians, and Yon-Rogg was right.

  Yon-Rogg is always right.

  Unless . . . this time he isn’t.

  Vers slid along the ground, pulling her wounded leg through the debris, leaving a trail of blood in her wake. She tore a piece of fabric from the pant of her uniform and tied it around the gash. The makeshift tourniquet seemed to stanch the bleeding a little—but only a little.

  If she didn’t get out of there, and soon, she would bleed out.

  She needed to rejoin her teammates.

  If they hadn’t already left her for dead.

  I screwed up, I screwed up, I screwed up. . . .

  It seemed like just yesterday that Vers had, as usual, been trying to outpace her demons on her morning run. Her feet hit the ground, pounding one after the other. The pace was relentless. She had to keep running.

  Stay focused.

  And she did stay focused. So focused that she didn’t even see it coming. At the last second, when she finally became aware, it was already too late.

  “Hey!”

  The old man went barreling over onto the pavement as Vers collided with his side. He slammed into the hard surface, landing with a resounding thump and rubbing his tailbone as he glared up at her. Her own momentum nearly threw her to the ground as well, but she caught herself, hopping on first her right then her left foot, maintaining her balance before coming to a stop.

  “Why don’t you watch where you’re going? I oughtta—”

  The man, balding, with sparse hair around his temples, furrowed his brow as he looked up at Vers. She saw the expression on his face, the confusion and apprehension, as he took in the pale skin and fair hair that marked her as “different.” That look changed as his eyes glanced quickly at the clothes she wore and the insignia displayed upon them. Suddenly, his surly demeanor changed. “I’m sorry,” he said, his tone suddenly soft and placating. “So, so sorry; all my fault.”

  Vers extended a hand. “No, it was my fault,” she said. Her breathing was calm and controlled, even though she had been out running for nearly an hour. “I should have watched where I was going, but—”

  The man waved Vers’s hand away. “No, please, I should have been more aware of my surroundings. Thank you for your service,” he said, as he pulled himself to his feet and dusted off his knees, wincing a bit, but turning his grimace into a smile when he noticed Vers was still watching him closely.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Perfectly fine,” he said, scurrying away with an odd little bow.

 

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