EXCLUSIVE CHAPTER SAMPLER

FROM TITAN BOOKS

Including

SECRET INVASION
by PAUL CORNELL
CAPTAIN MARVEL: SHADOW CODE
by GILLY SEGAL
and
LOKI: JOURNEY IN MYSTERY
by KATHERINE LOCKE

© 2023 MARVEL
 SECRET INVASION
Print edition ISBN: 9781803362489
E-book edition ISBN: 9781803362502

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
[Link]

First edition: September 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events

portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for
satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

FOR MARVEL PUBLISHING

Jeff Youngquist, VP Production and Special Projects
Sarah Singer, Editor, Special Projects
Jeremy West, Manager, Licensed Publishing
Sven Larsen, VP, Licensed Publishing
David Gabriel, SVP of Sales & Marketing, Publishing
C.B. Cebulski, Editor in Chief

© 2023 MARVEL

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of
the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other
than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed
on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY
 PROLOGUE

TONY STARK

TONY STARK had never felt more alone.

That was saying a lot. He’d felt pretty damn alone on several
occasions in the last year or so, never mind during his excuse for a
childhood. He’d felt pretty damn alone when he’d been captured in
a war zone. At least then he’d ended up imprisoned with a genius
who’d designed the first version of what he’d been working on
and improving ever since: the powered cutting-edge-tech armor
that made him Iron Man, founding member of the Avengers and
the one who usually picked up the tab for all their good works.
But even during all those years of being a public hero—one who,
eventually, the public came to know by name and to trust—he’d
still felt pretty damn alone through all that.
But right now… yeah, this was the nadir. He’d kept fighting
for what was right, pushing hard to keep the public onside with the
super hero community. Since he’d become Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.,
the global taskforce that was the official liaison between the political
world and the super hero community, he’d pushed through the
Superhuman Registration Act, which had been an attempt to
hold his fellow heroes accountable, to give them official status
and training, to make them more than a bunch of distrusted
vigilantes. He’d also spearheaded the plan to send the Hulk off
into space to live on a peaceful alien world where “smashing” was,
hey, probably just saying hello. Both steps had saved countless
lives, those of the everyday people super heroes were meant
to protect.
But from moment one of all that, Tony’s so-called “friends”
had jumped on their high horses.
Steve Rogers had actually led an army against him. Because, it
seemed, Steve Rogers, when push came to shove, cared more about
getting to be Captain America than about, you know, America.
The media had started to call it the Super Hero Civil War. That
made it sound much more glamorous than it had been. It had felt
more like the end of the world. Tony’s side had won, like they were
always going to, because getting the public onside with “I want to
wear a flag and beat up whoever I like with no consequences” can
only get you so far. But it had been such a hollow victory. Even
those he’d been onside with now seemed to be holding him at a
slight distance. It had been a bitter business, they seemed to think,
and that bitterness now felt like it was being directed at him. These
days he was basically in charge of super hero culture, and he was
absolutely sure the world was now a safer place because of it, but it
had left him… yeah, pretty damn alone.
And of course, Steve had gotten himself arrested, and the bad
guys had used that opportunity to… to assassinate him. Steve
Rogers was dead. Captain America was dead. Tony closed his eyes
at the pain of the thought. His job was to anticipate consequences,
to follow chains of cause and effect as far as chaos would allow. He
should have seen that coming. That thought haunted him night
and day. He opened his eyes again. No. He couldn’t let himself be
drawn back into brooding about that, because… because…
Because now, now with what he’d just discovered… well, it
was the worst possible time for him to be isolated, and the worst
time for there to be no Steve Rogers to annoy the hell out of him,
because it turned out the world was being threatened by something
else he hadn’t anticipated—and what was coming might be the
actual, not metaphorical, end of it.
He sat now, in his Iron Man armor, in a randomly selected
empty warehouse belonging to Funtime Inc., a shuttered Stark
Enterprises subsidiary. He sat with a body bag at his feet. He
sat there waiting to see if anyone would respond to the call he’d
sent out.
Energy fluctuation detected, said his armor, matching Dr.
Stephen Strange’s projection from the astral plane. Identity confirmed.
Occupation: Sorcerer Supreme.
And there he was, Doctor Strange, cape and all, shimmering
before him, not quite there, an angry look on his face. Strange was
the guy who’d made it his job, solo, to deal with all the threats to
the world that came from the brand of extra-dimensional advanced
technology that people like Strange liked to call “magic.” He was,
justifiably, an arrogant so-and-so, quite akin to Tony himself. They
didn’t ever seem to see eye-to-eye as a result. And Strange had
become a big part of the alternative or rebel faction of super heroes
who still sought to oppose what they probably saw as his evil deeds.
Whatever. Tony was incredibly heartened to see him now.
“Whose body is that?” Strange said. So, straight past the
hellos.
“I didn’t think you’d show up.”
“Curiosity… got the better of me.”
“Well, of part of you.”
“I’m on the astral plane. I thought it best if there was a barrier
between us. All things considered. Now, who is that?”
Tony found he couldn’t help himself. “How is everyone? How
are your Avengers?” Because that was what they still felt able to call
themselves, the team that Strange had committed himself to, the
team the public supported now (according to the polls) but would,
as soon as they messed up, quickly come to regard as vigilantes
with no official sanction.
Strange sighed. “Please do not start your ‘why are you doing
this?’ thing with me—”
 “I wasn’t going to. I don’t care about any of that right now.”
His armor beeped to signal an approaching presence. Blackagar
Boltagon, it said in his ear. Alias: Black Bolt. Occupation: Monarch of
the Inhumans. Identity confirmed. So, it wasn’t going to be just the
two of them.
Into the room strode the king of that hidden race of genetically
altered people, silent as always. He pointed immediately to the
body bag. Strange just shrugged at him, the closest Tony had ever
seen the Sorcerer Supreme come to rolling his eyes. Tony had no
idea where the Inhumans stood on all he’d achieved. As foreign
nationals, the Superhuman Registration Act didn’t apply to them,
and they’d never seemed to have any special fondness for the Hulk.
Were they even super heroes?
His plan not to say anything until a significant number of his
peers had deigned to join him in the flesh then paid off. Inside the
room appeared Reed Richards, the leader of the group of scientific
adventurers known as the Fantastic Four and, beside him, the half-
mutant half-Atlantean Namor, King of Atlantis, both of whom had
previously been invisible. Much of what applied to Black Bolt also
applied to Namor, with a side order of “foolish humans and their
petty conflicts.” Reed, however, had always stood by Tony, because
here was a man who valued rationality above all else. He had even
stuck to his principles when his rather more, err, feisty, wife, Susan
Storm-Richards, had sided with the rebels. Those two were trying
to work it out now, and Tony was being a little lax with the rules
to let them do that. Which was, hey, corruption, from a certain
point of view, but he was pretty sure that was the only time he’d
ever given in to the idea of one law for his people, another for the
rebels. And it had been about showing mercy to someone on the
other side. The fact that Reed, of all people, should join his frenemy
Namor in wanting to arrive here stealthily… well, that was what
Tony meant about his friends keeping him at arm’s length now.
“Tony,” said Reed. Namor just folded his arms.
The door opened and in walked… walked, okay, because
he was usually in a wheelchair, but hey, such transformations
happened in their line of work… Professor Charles Xavier. Xavier
was the visionary who’d anticipated a future of conflict between
Homo sapiens and the mutant offshoot of it who called themselves
Homo superior. Which was just terrible branding. Such people
usually had super-powers, and Xavier had wisely made them into
a community of super heroes. And thus, many of them had fallen
under the purview of the new laws. But a few months ago, in a
terrible event that had been nothing to do with Tony, thank god,
one of their own—a former Avenger even—had decimated their
ranks, removing the powers of 91.4 percent of all Earth’s mutants.
Many of the remainder, under the aegis of Xavier’s “X-Men” project,
now lived on an island off San Francisco, which Tony called putting
all your eggs in one basket, but hey, whatever suited them. Xavier
had always insisted that X-Men live under the local laws, and
honestly Tony’s issues were the least of his problems, given that he
was currently at odds with those living on that island, but neither
had he been returning Tony’s calls lately. “Good day, everyone,” he
said now, mild as ever, on the surface.
Tony’s armor confirmed the identities of everyone present…
as far as it could.
So, they had all finally decided to join him. These were the
individuals who’d taken it upon themselves, before the Civil War,
to hold summits about the state of the super hero community. The
six of them had sometimes saved the world just on their lonesome.
They were the great power brokers of their kind, and Tony felt
pathetically grateful that he could still bring them together. Perhaps
there was now some hope after all.
“Is… is that Captain America?” said Namor, pointing at the
body bag, a look on his face that was schoolboy adulation morphing
into fury.
“Of course not,” said Tony, yet again enormously frustrated
with what his colleagues believed him to be capable of. He bent to
unzip the bag. “This was brought to me. I thought it was worth
getting us together again. To show you this.” He stepped back from
the bag to let them see what was revealed.
 Inside the bag lay the corpse of an alien Skrull, one of a shape-
shifting interstellar empire that had occasionally been a thorn in
the side of he and his colleagues and, well, Earth. Skrulls could
impersonate anyone, really well. And this one, as its costume
revealed, had been impersonating Elektra Natchios, the great
assassin and occasional right hand of the crimelord known as
the Kingpin.
“How the hell did you get that?” said Strange.
Tony had been anticipating that reaction. “Jessica Drew,
Spider-Woman, brought it to me. Your ‘Avengers’ found it in Japan.
And you didn’t think to tell me?”
Strange had an awkward look on his face. “Given your recent
actions, we thought you might be a Skrull.”
“Because my recent actions aren’t, you know, in character ?”
Strange shrugged. “There is that. Still, I’m surprised at Jessica.
I thought she was one of us.”
“She still is.” Tony refrained from adding “you idiot.” In actual
fact, Jess was clearly trying to keep her friends in both camps,
which Tony honestly thought was admirable, if kind of misguided.
“She’s just got a sense of responsibility about the bigger picture.
From what I’ve been told, Skrull Elektra was quietly taking control
of the Japanese underworld.”
“She was undetectable by my magic,” said Strange, “by
Wolverine’s mutant senses and by Spider-Man’s superhuman ones.
We only realized she was a Skrull when she died and reverted to
her natural form.”
Richards stood up from checking the body with one of his
many scanning devices. He was always fascinated by Skrulls.
His team had been the first super heroes to meet them, and had
immediately ticked them off. “That’s an entirely new development.
That’s fascinating. We’ll need to do an autopsy on it.”
“Yes,” said Tony, relieved. “We need to find a way to detect
them while they’re still alive.”
“Where is the real Elektra?” asked Xavier.
“Dead. Gone. I don’t know. I got S.H.I.E.L.D. to search.
She’s nowhere to be found. I brought this to you because I think
this means we’re at war. And I think it’s our fault.”
The looks on their faces told Tony that they got what he
meant. Though it had happened years ago, the memory of it was
fresh for all of them.

THE SIX of them had journeyed to the Skrull homeworld,

immediately after the Avengers—united and mighty back then—­
had put an end to the Skrulls’ devastating war with the militaristic
aliens known as the Kree. The six of them had hidden their
spacecraft using Strange’s magic, and had listened in on the
Skrull Emperor delivering the mother of all “it’s been a bad year
for us and there are going to be layoffs” speeches. The Emperor
had spoken of a prophecy, that the Skrull homeworld would be
destroyed, but that the Skrulls would find a new home having
conquered Earth. Yet, and this had brought a smile to Tony’s face
back then, they’d just had their asses kicked by one single human
being, a civilian at that, whose latent psychic powers had turned
the tide of battle in the Kree-Skrull War. A Skrull scientist had
stepped forward then and talked of how Earth was home to an
unusually high number of such “genetic atrocities,” the sort that
Skrulls killed at birth.
“We simply cannot expect to conquer the Earth with a frontal
attack.” That was what the scientist had said. Those words came
back to Tony now with particular force.
Now he wished they’d listened a bit further, but that had been
the moment when, surfing the drama, Tony and his colleagues
had elected to reveal themselves, their images projected into the
Emperor’s chamber by Strange. “We will not tolerate another
invasion attempt on the Earth,” Richards had told them. Because it
was Richards, who was almost as malleable in form as the Skrulls
were, who’d always beaten them from their first encounter, that
they feared the most. “This is a warning. Our world is defended.
However, if the Emperor were to declare that the Skrulls have no
claim on the Earth… then there could be peace between us. And the
fruits of mutual exchange.”
The Emperor, to give him credit, had taken a moment to
think it over. “Every single member of your species will die under
my rule,” he’d finally said. “And your families will be the first blood
I taste.”
Richards, always the daddy, had looked more disappointed than
angry. “Well, obviously I’m sorry to hear you say that—”
“Black Bolt,” Tony had interrupted, because he’d had no more
regards to give, “what do you have to say?”
And the King of the Inhumans had opened his mouth that day
and had allowed himself to utter a single syllable. That was Black
Bolt’s power and his curse, that his words had literal, gravitational,
weight. He had to keep his silence, always, or disaster erupted.
That single syllable, something like a sigh, had blasted the Skrull
Emperor’s barge into subatomic particles from stem to stern.
They had tried to speed away in the craft that had brought
them there, Namor exulting in the deaths of their foes, Richards
tutting at him for it, but nemesis had swiftly come for them.
The Skrull defense systems closed around them like a fist. They
had always known it was going to be tough. They had thought
it would be worth it to neutralize a future threat. But Tony had
realized, as he floated in space that day, the ship flying to pieces
around him, Skrull forces closing in from all sides, that hey, maybe
they had shown a little hubris here, just six of them taking on an
entire empire.

HIS MEMORIES left him, and he was back in the room with the
corpse and his (maybe) friends. “One Skrull dresses up,” Namor
was saying, pacing and gesturing like he was onstage at the Met,
“and you say that means we’re at war?”
So Tony was going to have to go there. “After the year we’ve
had? Yes. The Avengers have been torn apart. The mutants are all
but gone. Your own undersea nation has been devastated. Nick
Fury, the guy who created S.H.I.E.L.D., got paranoid and seems
to be in hiding and Cap… Captain America… is dead. Doesn’t it
feel like we’re being worked over, manipulated from within?”
“A lot of that,” said Namor, “was you.”
“No! I mean, yes, okay! But also no! Everything is upside-
down. I can see it now. Looming ahead of us. And this body… this
is the key!”
He looked around them. If they could have seen his face
under his mask—which he wasn’t going to remove around his
antagonistic former friends with super-powers—they’d have seen
how wild he probably looked at this moment. Because Skrulls got
to him like they got to all of them. All six of these people had been
captured by them, tortured by them…

IN HIS case, the Skrulls had just taken away his armor. Later,
he’d heard the awful things they’d done to the others after their
capture following the destruction of the Imperial Barge, but in his
case they had just realized he had a heart condition, that his armor
kept him alive—or at least it had back then—and so they had
deprived him of it. They’d put him in a cell, naked, waiting to see
what happened.
Or that’s what he initially thought they were doing. Because
then they had done something else, something that his mind was
dragging him back to now. The guards outside his cell had been
suddenly cut down by lightning. A magic Viking hammer had
blasted the door open. And there had appeared the Avengers of that
time, with the Vision and Quicksilver.
“It seems thou art in need of some friendly assistance!” Thor
had bellowed.
It had taken Tony a moment, but he’d got there. “Oh, come on!
How dumb do you think I am?”
The Skrulls impersonating the Avengers had immediately given
it up and started arguing amongst themselves about how this wasn’t
the way to get information out of him. But one of them had had a
brain on them, the one playing Cap, of course. “Wait,” they’d said,
“this is interesting. He didn’t expect his teammates to rescue him.
No one knows he and the others came here!”
Excited by having gained that tidbit of intel, the Skrulls,
laughing, had come closer, Thor giving Tony a little slap just because
he could.
Which had been the moment when Tony had seized that
devastating technological Skrull weapon in the shape of a hammer
from his hand, and, having figured out from across the room how
the alien activated it, fried them all.
He’d managed to execute, at high speed, an escape plan,
improvised on the fly. He’d freed Strange and Xavier first and they
had brought vast destruction down on the Skrulls as they’d freed
the others. They’d finally sped off into space with a magical and
mental image of Galactus, the Great Devourer, protecting them.
It had all been… so easy.

NOW HE looked back to the others around him, to Namor

pointing in his face and again yelling at him. “Tell us plainly what
you are trying to say!”
All right then. “We’re at war because the first shot has been
fired. That shot was Strange and the Avengers not trusting me
about this corpse, thinking I might be a Skrull. That distrust is
a shot, because it was fired by the Skrulls’ main weapon: stealth.
None of us could have detected this thing. So we need to find a way
to… trust each other again, to build that trust! And if that means
I have to—”
“Actually,” said Black Bolt, “I have a better idea. I take the body.”
Everyone turned to stare at that very precise, very English voice
that none of them had heard before. That completely impossible
voice. That voice that meant— “And your people die,” Black Bolt
finished, “so that my people may live.” And then he took a breath.
Massive energy fluctuation detected! shouted Tony’s armor.
Everything around them turned to fire.
TONY LAY in the rubble, recovering from the enormous noise,
from the shock of his world becoming a blur of motion. His armor
had saved him, had taken the blast, and was now desperately
trying to recharge as he was desperately trying to raise himself,
hoping against hope that his colleagues… his friends… had
somehow… somehow…
A shadow fell over him. A Super-Skrull, the enhanced warrior
form of their military class. Tony saw, through the smoke, its body
morph smoothly from the form of Black Bolt into its natural green,
muscular shape, ears spiking backward, eyes full of hate. Except
this one, as Super-Skrulls tended to do, wore the colors of one of its
foes, the power set of which it was now duplicating, a costume that
Namor had once favored. Oh god, did that mean—
Out of the smoke flew Namor, straight at the impostor,
bellowing his battle cry. “Imperius Rex!”
Well, that answered that question, at least. But Tony’s mind was
stacking a whole bunch of others, including whether the Inhumans
had been ruled by that Skrull, and for how long, because there was
surely a set of decisions that had subtly shaped the world—
The Super-Skrull spoke another syllable with his synthesized
Black Bolt powers and Namor went flying.
But then Strange was up, his hands blazing with power.
“Conjuring a containment spell. If someone—”
And there was Xavier, his hands to his temples. “You monster!”
he shouted at the Skrull, getting its attention.
The Skrull actually laughed. “Monster? I am you.”
What did that mean?! Xavier staggered back, shouting in pain.
Did this thing have his powers too, or… or was that all for show?
Was this even the real Xavier?
Tony got a ping from his armor indicating it was back to
full power just as the Skrull leapt toward him at super-speed. He
managed to get a gauntlet in the way and blasted it in the face.
Then Richards was on the alien, his malleable form wrapped around
it, finding its weak points.
 “It wants the corpse,” he shouted. “Tony, get it and you out
of here!”
The Skrull hauled Richards into a ribbon and threw him aside.
“Cyttorak’s Crimson Bands!” shouted Strange, and there they
were, impossible bonds, the nature of which itched at Tony’s rational
explanations, wrapping around the beast.
It broke them with a single effort, sending weird energies flying
across the room, making them all stagger. Tony saw Strange wink
out of existence when the wave hit him, there and then gone.
And then Namor was on the Skrull again, his face that of a
soldier. It was a look Tony rarely saw on his colleagues, a look he
associated with… with Cap.
Except Namor was no Captain America. “Die, you Skrull
bastard!” he bellowed, and spun its neck in his hands as he hauled
it off its feet.
“You can’t snap the neck of a shape-shifter!” it laughed.
Namor flung the beast by the head. Its body slammed into a
spike of jutting metal. It burst up through its chest. The Skrull tried
to haul itself up. It roared a final, defiant cry—
And then it died.
“I know,” said Namor calmly, “I was distracting you.” He spat
on the ground.
“You… you killed it?” whispered Tony.
“Excellent observation skills. As you yourself said, this is war.”
“I… I mean it had information.” Tony saw that Strange had
appeared again. “Where the hell did you go?”
Strange looked taken aback. “That was… like nothing I ever—”
Alien life-forms incoming, said Tony’s armor.
What was left of the roof exploded and two more Super-Skrulls
dropped into the room. Tony felt his heart rate spike and his oxygen
levels hit critical. They had barely survived one of these things!
So… so it was time. Already. To do something he had only thought
of as a final, desperate weapon of war. “Charles,” he shouted, “you
have my consent, see in my thoughts what I’m planning to do!
Tell the others telepathically!”
 What about you? the voice came back in his head. Tony had
felt nothing, the psychic intrusion completely undetectable.
Just do it! he thought.
And he did. Tony saw Strange teleport the rest of them out.
As the two enormous creatures rushed at him.
He had what he needed now. His armor had been connecting
to the clustered power plants of an entire state, downloading their
power at the quantum foam level. This was his last gambit. He’d
been brought to the point of using that now. At the start of this war.
The Skrulls reached him. He let the power seep out from the
universe underneath this one at a distance of one nanometer from
his armor.
Again, the world around him exploded.

THEY FOUND him, ten minutes later, once again sitting beside the
corpse, at the center of a perfect circle of smooth glass. Somewhere
in that glass was what was left of the Skrulls. Half of the East Coast
would now be without power for a day. He hoped the emergency
generators had kicked in. He was pretty sure what he’d just done
would have killed at least one innocent bystander. He would have
to find out and do what he could to make amends. But he had had
no choice.
“I didn’t know you could do that,” said Richards.
“Just the once. Now they know about it, that’s the end of its
usefulness. If you’re a species with a faster-than-light drive, it’s child’s
play to block it.”
“I couldn’t read their thoughts,” said Xavier. He seemed shaken.
It was the first time Tony had ever heard his voice sound like that.
“The first one… its surface thoughts were exactly what I would
expect of Black Bolt.”
“Where is the real Black Bolt?” asked Richards.
“We have to assume the worst,” said Tony.
“As you said,” said Namor, “they are trying to turn us against
each other.”
 “What have they changed so we can’t detect them by any
means?” said Richards. “Before… super senses, telepathy, magic:
they could all work if you knew where to look.”
“When they captured us,” said Strange, “they took something.”
“‘I am you,’” said Tony, realizing what Strange meant. “That’s
what the first Super-Skrull said.”
“Our genetic material,” said Richards. “My god. And it’s not just
us. How many of our community have needed medical treatment
over the years, have given blood samples?”
“We need to move fast,” said Tony. “Because, yes, we are at war,
and maybe we’ve already lost.”
Namor was looking around them all, his expression calculating.
“No,” he said. “No.” And suddenly he was airborne, shouting as he
departed. “I can’t trust any of you!”
The four of them were left standing there, looking at each other.
“He’s… right,” said Richards. “I… we… I need to be certain of a
few things before we can resume…”
“I cannot continue this conversation,” said Strange.
“I am… used to sensing thoughts, knowing who… who…”
said Xavier, looking agonized.
“Please,” said Tony, “wait!”
But within seconds, in their various different ways, they all
departed.
Tony Stark had thought earlier that he had never felt more
alone. Now he knew he had been lying to himself.
Now he was alone, they were all alone, and they were at war.
And it seemed this would be a war they could not fight together.
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Available now in all good book

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© 2023 MARVEL
 CAPTAIN MARVEL: SHADOW CODE
Print edition ISBN: 9781803361802
E-book edition ISBN: 9781803361819

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
[Link]

First hardback edition: May 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events

portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are
used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for
satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

FOR MARVEL PUBLISHING

Jeff Youngquist, VP Production and Special Projects
Sarah Singer, Editor, Special Projects
Jeremy West, Manager, Licensed Publishing
Sven Larsen, VP, Licensed Publishing
David Gabriel, SVP of Sales & Marketing, Publishing
C.B. Cebulski, Editor in Chief

© 2023 MARVEL

Special thanks to Sarah Brunstad.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of
the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other
than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed
on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY.
 1

WHEN SHE was training to become a pilot, Carol Danvers would

have said nothing compared to the feel of commanding a fighter
jet as it hurtled across a cobalt sky. Back then, she had no idea
of all the ways her life would change. She never imagined she’d
know the exhilaration of rocketing through an endless darkness
punctuated by the glimmer of stars that were now within reach.
Carol was no poet, but the possibilities of an infinite universe at
her fingertips made her wax lyrical. With the push of a button,
she could send this spacecraft to chase the farthest pinpricks of
light. In fact, she had reached many of those distant planets, had
landed there and explored. That pleased the deepest part of her
soul that was never satisfied being anchored by gravity.
The alien part of her soul?
Carol wondered if all Kree wanted to fly farther than the
instruments could measure. Maybe she inherited the need to
take flight from her mother, along with her blond hair and the
angle of her jaw.
The bedrock upon which Carol had built her life shifted when
she learned her true heritage not long ago. She was half-alien, born
to a Kree mother and a human father. The Psyche-Magnitron
had not bestowed her powers, as she always thought; it had
awakened them. Not only did she have an alien mother who’d
been a powerful and important member of Kree society, she had a
fully alien half-sister. The revelations made her see her family, her
experiences as Captain Marvel, even herself, differently, like she
was at the eye doctor, being asked which lens made things clearer
and which made them more blurry. Metaphorically, of course.
Carol’s more than 20/20 vision was definitely inherited from
her mom, Mari-Ell, Captain First of the Supreme Protectorate,
Champion of the Kree Empire, Daughter of Hala by Bloodright
and Starlight.
What a mouthful.
Most days, Carol could tell you what she knew to be true about
herself. But she couldn’t say how she felt about any of it. Growing
up, telling Carol no had had the effect of activating hyper-mode.
She’d work harder than anyone else, longer than anyone else,
work herself into the ground, even when the world told her she’d
never be able to do it. Especially then. She’d attained every goal
she set for herself, realized every dream. Everything she’d fought
to accomplish—pilot, astronaut, super hero, Avenger, Alpha
Flight leader—she’d attributed those achievements to her grit, her
determination. And maybe her stubbornness.
Now she had to reckon with the fact that there had been
other factors at play. She’d tried to dissect which of her traits
came from being human and which were Kree. It made her head
spin. No matter how long she pondered, she could never answer
the question that plagued her. Did being an alien make those
accomplishments more worthy—or less?
She’d spent so long coming to grips with having alien powers
that working through what it meant to actually be an alien felt
like diving into a vortex.
Been there, she thought. Hard pass on doing it again.
The crackle of the ship’s comms drew Carol out of her thoughts.
Fortunately, flight demanded her full attention. She’d have to
navel gaze some other time—like never—or else risk piloting her
borrowed spacecraft into a star. The Peregrine was a first-of-its-kind
decasonic microcraft, designed to fly small crews to remote planets
at outrageous speeds. In theory, anyway. The designers were still
figuring out how far it could reliably go without losing thrust and
overheating. Hence, working with Carol for flight tests, since no
other qualified pilot could bail out in deep space and find her own
way home. She’d only been at the command of the Peregrine a few
times, but it was fun. The cabin was sleek and streamlined, a tad
claustrophobic, if she was honest, but the ship’s movement was
not unlike how it felt propelling her body through space—lithe,
maneuverable, and fast. She wasn’t about to let a bunch of feelings
prevent her from enjoying this ride.
“Earth to Danvers,” a familiar voice called through the
comms. “Literally and figuratively. Danvers, do you read?”
Tony Stark would find a way to pester her, even here. She
considered ignoring the call, but since that tactic never made him go
away, she flicked the lever. “I read you, Tony. What do you want?”
“Is that any way to greet your long lost best friend?”
“I saw you last week.” Carol already regretted opening the
comms channel. “And don’t let Jess hear you call yourself that.”
“You think I can’t take Spider-Woman in a fight?” Tony’s
mock-wounded tone sounded almost convincing.
“I think we’re not going to invoke trouble with hypotheticals.”
“Did you know that at some fan cons, they have ‘versus’
sessions where they debate the merits of super hero skills to decide
who’d win a one-on-one? I have it on good authority that Iron
Man is always a moneyline bet. ”
Carol rolled her eyes. No doubt “good authority” really meant
firsthand knowledge. “Tony, do we have to have the talk about
cos-playing as yourself again?”
“There’s no evidence of that that anyone can find,” he said.
“Anyway, Danvers, I need a favor. Where are you?”
“Off planet.” Carol checked her gauges. She was just a couple
of hours from being on-planet again—on Throneworld II.
 “I know that. Couldn’t geolocate you through your phone.
That only happens when you’re in outer space.”
“What did we say about tracking our friends’ devices without
permission?”
“Only do it for ethical reasons, like determining whether you
need to rescind the APB you put out on a missing friend?”
“Tony, no. You didn’t.” The resulting silence stretched
uncomfortably through the time and space between Carol’s speeding
craft and Tony back on Earth. She groaned. “Who’d you call?”
“Jess. And maybe Monica.”
Monica Rambeau, A.K.A. Spectrum, wouldn’t get as high-
stress as Jess, but she’d check in at least twice.
“Also, possibly Jenn.”
Aw man. Jennifer Takeda, A.K.A. Hazmat, would definitely
fret. Carol’s notifications were going to be a mess when she got
back to Earth.
“I’m not AWOL. I’m going to visit Lauri-Ell.”
Months had passed since Carol last saw her half-sister, Kree
Accuser Lauri-Ell, who was currently on Throneworld II. The
pieces of Carol’s shattered past were inescapable, it seemed. The
Peregrine test flight had offered her a chance to kill two Chitauri
with one punch. Figure out if the ship could reliably reach as
far as they hoped, plus stop by to see Lauri with a built-in exit
strategy. She’d have to get the craft back to Earth promptly—no
time to linger and talk about dysfunctional family matters.
“Ah,” he said, pausing respectfully for a beat. He might not
know everything going on in Carol’s mixed up mind, but he knew
enough. “Perhaps it’s not the best timing, but I do need a favor.
And it’s a little bit time sensitive.”
She sighed. Tony had the tact of a wrecking ball, but when he
called, something was usually up. “What’s going on?”
“Bad reception…” Tony breathed heavily into his mic, faking
a crackling sound. “You must… space tunnel.”
“Tony, you designed this comms system. Are you telling me
a Stark invention can’t handle a little interstellar space debris?”
 “Stark technology is completely trustworthy.” His voice
leveled, all faux-brokenness vanishing. “The same can’t be said for
everything else. I need you, Carol. Right away.”
The comms line went dead, leaving her no chance to ask for
further details.
She was overdue for this visit to Throneworld II. Jess had been
telling her for months that she needed to go see Lauri-Ell, spend
time among the Kree. Figure out the parts of herself that were
currently more mysterious than the black hole she’d done some
fancy flying to avoid about an hour ago. Jess would be a pain about
it until Carol finally listened. She really shouldn’t turn back.
But Tony’s words and tone reverberated in her mind. Okay,
so he had a bad habit of needing her right when she finally took
a few days for herself. He also had an annoying tendency to be
strategically ambiguous when sharing intel. Still, she trusted him.
And he never missed an opportunity to engage in a battle of wits
with her. Today, he’d not only passed up sniping back when she
teased him about Stark tech, but he’d gotten defensive. That was
peculiar. Concerning, even.
Maybe she’d head back, see what more Tony had to say. This
was an early stage test flight. Nothing urgent. Plenty of time
to assess the Peregrine’s long distance flight capabilities. The
engineers could tweak its comms systems in the meanwhile. She
definitely had feedback on how easy it was to hail this craft. It
needed a feature that let the pilot set their call status to “away” or
“unavailable” or “leave me alone, Tony Stark” or something else
universally relevant like that.
Carol splayed her fingers over the instrument panel, adjusting
her altitude and easing back on the yoke to chart a course for
Earth. Throneworld II wasn’t going anywhere, nor were all her
questions about herself.
 2

“JASON, MY phone’s been off for all of two hours. How bad
could it possibly be?”
Laurence Faber strode through his penthouse, phone pressed
to his ear. The place was empty. His wife had combined a business
trip to London with a visit to their daughter at LSE and wouldn’t
be back for several days. The extensive staff that kept the Faber
family and business organized, clean, clothed, fed and transported
had all gone home for the night. Faber balked at the idea of live-
in staff; he valued his privacy too much. Thus, he returned home
more often than not to a quiet, empty house. He passed the great
room, where the Tiffany side lamps were dimly lit, welcoming
him home, loosening his bow tie on the way to his study.
Jason, his executive assistant, was high strung. Made him
fantastic at managing the details of Faber’s work, but prone to
dramatic reactions. One of these days, the annoyance of the fuss
would outweigh the efficiency Jason offered. Not tonight, though.
His zealous assistant had hunted down someone on the waitstaff
at the charity gala Faber had been attending and paid them to
yank Faber aside to check his messages. Fourteen texts from Jason
insisted, more and more vehemently as they accumulated, that
Faber leave the event at once and get home.
“Mr. Faber, it’s bad. DigiTech is the lead story. Not just on
Bloomberg—the general news channels are covering it, too.”
The study was Faber’s refuge, the only room in the house
over which he’d had complete design control—if by complete,
one meant the power to make suggestions that his wife and her
designer would then approve. The dark paneling, high ceilings,
double-decker bookshelves and mile-wide polished oak desk
resembled the university library fantasies of his youth, back when
he thought he’d be an economics professor. Instead, junior year
of college, he’d lent a few thousand dollars from his savings to
a friend who wanted to start up a delivery service that brought
students homecooked meals to their dorms during exams. That
friend became his wife, and her business mushroomed into one of
the largest food delivery services in the world and made Faber his
first fortune. His wife still ran that company, while he went on to
a long and illustrious career as an angel investor.
Tossing his jacket on the leather couch, Faber helped himself
to a glass of whiskey from the decanter at the wet bar. The remote
that brought out a TV, cleverly concealed behind a mirror over the
fireplace, sat beside the tray of cut glass tumblers. Faber twirled it
in his fingers, debating whether he had the energy for the latest
DigiTech roller coaster.
He’d bought shares in the company a year or so ago at the
urging of his sometime investing partner, Marian Sutherland.
DigiTech Systems, Inc. had been a sleepy old computer hardware
company, nothing like the wave-of-the-future AI people were so
excited about. Most investors Faber knew were prone to join the
cult of every new Silicon Valley hotshot who emerged wearing a
turtleneck and a perpetual scowl, promising to revolutionize tech.
Faber snorted. Everybody said their thing was the thing. He sat out
those flash-in-the-pan opportunities and never regretted it.
He had that in common with Marian. They met early in
their careers and discovered a complementary style characterized
by thoughtfulness and intuition over glitz. She was as careful an
investor as he’d ever met, doing twice the diligence he did. She
brought DigiTech to his attention when the company’s newly
hired president announced she was looking for an involved board.
That piqued Faber’s interest. The sunset of his investing career
was approaching and he knew it. His daughter was training to be
the next head of Faber Investments, and she’d want to do things
her own way when she took over. He respected that. Out with the
old. He’d do the same, in her shoes. The current crop of young
whizz kid founders didn’t want anything more than his money.
All his years of buying and selling companies, building empires,
disrupting industries, reorganizing the way business is done—
that knowledge and experience went to waste when all he did was
cut a check. He wanted to have a hand in a company’s success
before he hung up the checkbook for good. He wanted a legacy.
Investing in DigiTech had, frankly, been more lucrative than
betting on a Vegas long shot that paid out. He’d been minting
money since they diversified into software, a vote that had been
one of the first Faber supported when he joined the board. The
success made it difficult to understand the recent rash of stock
sell-offs. Laurence wasn’t losing sleep over it, though. People
made foolish investment choices all the time. No doubt the news
was covering those with their usual doom-and-gloom predictions
about collapses. The media never got the investing mindset right.
Still. Might as well take a peek at what they were saying, if for no
other reason than to let some of the helium out of Jason’s voice. He
flicked a button on the remote and found a twenty-four-hour news
network. Instead of the usual image of a talking head above a crawl,
there was footage of Marian Sutherland being led from the very same
charity fundraiser he’d left not thirty minutes ago. In handcuffs.
Laurence Faber choked on his whiskey, spitting half the
mouthful across the marble countertop. The tinny sound of
Jason’s voice piped up from the phone that sat abandoned on the
tray beside the decanter. “As I said, sir.”
Faber stabbed at the phone screen, disconnecting the call and
silencing his assistant’s told-you-so superiority. So the kid had been
right. That mattered little in the face of the arrest of his fellow
DigiTech board member. He pumped up the volume in time to
catch the newscaster intoning breaking news in a fake-grave timbre.
“—Sutherland, a prominent investor known for her land
development portfolio, recently forayed into the digital space
when she purchased substantial shares in DigiTech Systems. She’s
in federal custody tonight and sources tell us she’ll be charged
with securities fraud, in connection—”
Fraud? Marian? She was as T’s-crossed-and-i’s-dotted as they
come.
Faber paced toward the French doors that led from his study
to a private balcony overlooking the city. Normally he loved the
feeling of towering over the world, lights spreading below in all
directions. He imagined it felt a little bit like flying through space.
Tonight, the view gave him vertigo. Maybe a blast of the January
wind would ease this dizzy spell. He opened the door but the barely
concealed glee in the newscaster’s tone caught his attention again.
“—a felony which carries a penalty of twenty years in prison
and a hefty fine—”
Felony. Geez. He definitely needed air.
Faber turned back to the balcony and gasped. Not two feet
from him stood a figure shrouded in darkness. What the—? The
glass slipped from his hand and shattered on the hardwood,
splashing liquid across his loafers. No one had been standing
there a moment ago, he was sure. Was he hallucinating?
Faber backed up a step. The figure glided forward with a
swish that brought Faber’s eyes to the ground. The light was dim,
but he could see fabric swirling around—a cloak? And was there a
kind of glow emanating from the figure?
“Knock, knock, Mr. Faber.”
If this was a hallucination, it was an especially vivid one. The
voice was low and pleasant but unfamiliar. “Who—who are you?
How did you get here?”
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
 He sure as hell was not. Faber fumbled in his pockets for the
phone that wasn’t there. The device sat on the wet bar behind him,
where he’d left it after hanging up on Jason. Dammit, if only he’d left
the line open, he could shout for his assistant to call 911. He glanced
over and saw the screen light up with an incoming call, no doubt
from the young man himself. He had to get to that device and tell
Jason that… an ethereal cloaked figure had turned up on his balcony?
He’d sound like he had been overcome by a flight of fancy.
He had a hard time believing it himself, despite the evidence his
eyes supplied.
Besides, he wouldn’t really call this thing ethereal. That shine
wasn’t a pleasant firefly kind of glow. It was sinister. He couldn’t
make out anything important about this creature—it held itself
like a person. But it glimmered. And his penthouse occupied
the thirtieth floor of this building. There was no way a human
could just appear on his terrace in the span of a few seconds.
He felt suddenly short of breath and clutched his chest, thinking
bizarrely that he’d rather the intruder get him than a heart attack.
Wait, no. No way was he going down to a caped balcony prowler.
Faber scrambled back, his shoes sliding in the liquid he’d spilled.
The figure flashed out of sight, leaving behind a faint blur.
Faber grabbed for his phone—which was already in the hands
of his visitor, who now stood beside the bar. How? Faber could
not formulate a coherent question for himself, let alone speak it
aloud. He’d scarcely seen the person—or whatever it was—move.
It disappeared and reappeared in a way that should not be possible.
“I don’t think we’ll be needing this, will we?” The figure dropped
the phone on the ground, pulverizing it beneath a boot heel.
Faber had not turned on any lights when he entered the room,
and he cursed himself for it now. The flickering TV was useless in
his efforts to make out a face. That voice, emanating from deep
within the hood of the cloak, had a songlike cadence, smooth and
rich and even. Like a yoga instructor. It would have been calming,
had it not been coming from a glowing figure that had flown onto
this thirtieth-story terrace in the middle of the night.
 “We wouldn’t want Jason’s paranoia to disrupt our little chat.”
They knew his assistant? Who the hell was this?
“I don’t have cash here if that’s what you’re looking for,” he
said, fighting for a level tone of voice. He handled multi-billion-
dollar negotiations for a living. Surely, that’s all this was. A
transaction. They wanted something from him and he wanted his
life. He just needed to understand this, er—person’s goal, and he
could do a deal for his survival.
“Not as such, Mr. Faber.”
The figure came no closer; it was more than an arm’s length away,
but Faber felt it looming over him, smothering him. More than a
human arm’s reach, anyway. But the speed with which it moved…
“Then what?”
“Tomorrow morning, you’ll receive an offer to buy your
DigiTech stock. You’ll accept the offer.”
That caught him off guard. He narrowed his eyes, trying—
pointlessly—to make out something beneath that hood. DigiTech
was trading high at the moment, probably near peak. It was no
coup to get in on it now, unless—“You want me to give a below-
the-market order?”
“The offer will be market value.”
“How much stock?”
“All of it.”
Faber fought against the instinct to just say yes, to agree to
anything as long as this creature left him alone. He stiffened his knees
to keep them from knocking. This made no sense. Selling and buying
high? There was no money to be made. He was missing something.
The creature hadn’t done anything particularly threatening, other
than magically appear on his balcony and order him to sell stock he
wanted to keep. And yet, he was plagued by the sense that this was a
robbery of some kind. “It’s a bad deal. If you—or uh, your investor
is looking for a good deal, I could provide some advice. A—a tip. I
have access to all kinds of valuable information.”
“You assume we don’t have access to the same information?”
A slight ripple of the cloak gave the only indication of the figure’s
movement, but it had unmistakably drawn closer to Faber.
“Perigee Partners doesn’t need your tips.”
Faber swiped a hand across the back of his mouth, leaning back
to preserve his space, his safety. His head told him the effort was
illusory, but it made him breathe easier. A little. Perigee Partners,
Ltd. was a holding company, the ownership well-shrouded behind
layers of legal protections. Faber had done some research when
they first began acquiring DigiTech stock, and there’d been no
red flags. As he thought through it now, he realized they were
the buyer in many—most?—of the recent stock sales. They had
amassed quite a lot of shares. Faber cast about in his memories,
trying to recall how many exactly. With his portion added to
what they’d already acquired, he thought Perigee might gain a
controlling interest in DigiTech. Again, the sense that there was
more at play here than he understood pricked at his conscience.
Faber didn’t like surprises. “What if there was another stock? Any
other stock. I’d cut you a good deal.”
The figure stayed silent, motionless and glowing, and then a
gloved hand waved toward the television. An image of Faber and
Marian filled the screen—a photo taken earlier that very night as
the two posed together with the emcee of the event, some star too
young for Faber to have recognized.
“Such troubling news about your dear friend. Allegations like
these, they can’t help but spread. Like a virus.”
Was the creature creeping closer again? It was too damn dark
in here. Most of the light seemed to come from the glow filtering
from beneath that nonsensical cloak. “Marian and I haven’t done
a deal together in years. I don’t have anything to worry about.”
“Don’t you?”
His pulse began to throb again and he felt a sensation like
the one he experienced two years ago, right before the “episode”
he refused to call a heart attack. He needed air. He needed space.
Over the years, Faber had dabbled in a few gray areas when it
came to securities law. Who didn’t? Investors collectively lobbied
to keep the statutes vague so they’d be able to argue the line wasn’t
where any prosecutor wanted to draw it. But that was all. He was
nearly certain. He paid an army of lawyers to ensure he remained
firmly within sight of the right side of the law.
“You own a big share in a surgical laser tool manufacturer.
Cutting edge, minimally invasive, all the buzzwords that attract
doctors and patients, right? How strange that soon after launch, they
signed an exclusive deal with a company that makes the precision
prisms needed for those laser tools. That resulted in a substantial
price increase and boxed out competition. You were an early investor
in the prism manufacturer, weren’t you? Few people know of that.”
No. No one knew about that. Rumors, maybe. Nothing concrete.
“Wouldn’t it be interesting to learn there were records of your
involvement in those deals? Records showing you traded stocks
based on your access to confidential information about that deal?”
“Those records don’t exist.” The tech guys said there was no
trace. Scrubbed. Wiped. Double deleted. They assured him.
“In your files, perhaps.” The figure was moving, closing in.
Faber’s pulse raced even faster. “Larry—I can call you Larry, right?
Like friends. It would be better for you if we were friends.”
“There’s no proof.”
The figure hummed, low and satisfied. “Everyone keeps files,
Larry. You can’t control what’s out of your reach, can you?”
Had he ever corresponded with Marian about the laser/prism
companies? She had been part of that deal. Had the Feds got
ahold of her files? Who was this creature working for?
“Call your broker, Larry. Give the order to sell. Unless you
think, as Marian Sutherland did, that you can play games with
me. And if twenty years in a federal penitentiary aren’t enough to
persuade you to be reasonable, we have other ways.” The figure’s
hands shot forward, balls of light blooming on the upturned palms.
Faber gasped, pressing a hand to his chest. The light from the
pulsating energy balls reflected in his wide, terrified eyes.
“Tomorrow morning, Larry. I wouldn’t want to have to visit
again.”
You have just read an excerpt from

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© 2023 MARVEL
 LOKI: JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY
Print edition ISBN: 9781803362540
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First edition: December 2023

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 ONE

ALL STORIES have beginnings.

The good ones don’t have endings.
In every world, stories are told. By gods or mortals, it doesn’t
matter. Stories are currency. Stories are power. Stories are sustenance.
Stories transcend.
Many millennia ago, I read a fairytale that began like this: Once
there was where there was not.
This isn’t a fairytale. Not strictly speaking.
So, it doesn’t start like that.
It starts with birds.
You probably weren’t expecting birds, were you?
Settle in. I am the Teller , and even I found myself
surprised by the events that followed. Even the unfeathered
ones .
It starts with seven magpies. If you are lucky enough to live
in a place without magpies, then here’s the thing to know about
magpies: they are tricksters. They’re cleverer than most birds, even
ravens and crows, small enough that they can fit into all sorts of
places they shouldn’t, and craftier than a fox.
 You may see where this is going. Because magpies could only
be called to one god.
Seven magpies looked back at the remains of the destroyed
Asgard. Loki had brought chaos and destruction to Asgard, and it’d
ultimately been his own ending. Even those who didn’t feel for Loki,
even those who’d been cheering for his demise, could still hear the
echoes of his screams in their dreams. No one spoke about it, of
course. There was nothing left for Loki except animosity.
No one knows what the magpies saw when they looked upon
Asgard. Perhaps they were looking to see if Loki was truly dead.
Perhaps they were waiting for a rebirth. Perhaps they were simply
procrastinating, for the distance they had to travel was long and
arduous. Seven took flight, but not all would make it.
The first magpie did not make it far before she was overcome
with grief. Hollow bones can fill with grief and weigh a bird down
like stones from her feet.
Every magpie’s grief is theirs to carry.
The others fly on.
The second magpie left after days at sea. The magpie knew that
oceans are endless, and all oceans are one. He remembered a distant
shore where he’d left one who made his heart flutter. Grief can look
like searching for lost love too.
A third magpie was lost to Alfheim, where he stopped to feed
on the eyes of a fallen elf girl. She’d been torn apart like an over-
optimistic dream. Magpies were scavengers and he couldn’t bear to
leave those eyes, so beautiful and open, staring up at an uncaring
sky forever.
Magpies do not like to think of themselves as scavengers.
They think themselves above the ravens and the crows of
the worlds. They’re cleverer, remember. And so the other
magpies chattered dismissively about the third, leaving him
behind in disgust more than pity. It would be best if you did
not tell them that I called them scavengers.
It was not long after they passed Alfheim that word reached
the magpies that Thor had returned Loki to life, as a child.
 The news struck the fourth magpie straight out of the sky. He
plummeted to the earth and his final thought was, “What was the
Odinson thinking?”
It wasn’t often that the magpies said something so universal,
but there was hardly a soul who didn’t wonder the same.
Another magpie thought, “I’m sure he knows what he’s doing.”
He didn’t have time to convince himself before he was shot with
an arrow while passing through Hela’s Valhalla.
Collateral damage from Loki’s misdeeds, I suspect.
The sixth died in Hell. It would be best not to dwell on this one
too long. It is gruesome, even for me.
It is important that you know about all the magpies, because
now you understand what the seventh magpie survived. You see
the distance and the flight, the internal and external dangers that
this seventh magpie overcame. The seventh magpie did not fly on
to his final destination quite yet. He made some stops along the
way but that is neither here nor there. The important thing was,
he made it, at last.
He turned for home.
This last magpie, he could not stop thinking about Loki and
the choices he made. Why did he destroy Asgard? A good question.
He suspected there was a logic there that he didn’t know. Maybe it’d
make sense to someone else. Just not him. He didn’t like to admit
this as he was a magpie, cleverer than most.
When the magpie returned to Asgard, he found that the
heroes had won, as heroes are wont to do. The magpie had missed
the triumph and he was a little peeved about that. They should have
waited, he thought, though he knew they couldn’t. He’d flown for
forty-nine days and nights, and seen worlds he’d never dreamt of
seeing. He’d flown until he could fly no more. And now he was home.
He wished he was not the only magpie to deliver this secret,
but the others had died or left him, and that was that.
The magpie fluttered into the window of a tower, ready to
deliver the message.
But the young master Loki was not there.
AS FOR me, I came into this story because I was summoned.
Because if a story goes untold, it hasn’t truly begun. Or, at least,
that’s one way to tell the tale.
I was summoned, because that’s what foolish young gods do.
They summon eldritch gods, the way they beckon their friends to
come over and see what happens when they poke the alligator with
the stick.
He poked me.
 TWO

LOKI, DARK-HAIRED and bright-eyed, his jaw set in an all-too-

familiar way, sat on a pile of rubble, scrolling through his phone
with a frustrated twitch of his thumb. The comments section
of his post was—well, just the way comment sections typically
went. He’d posted a picture of himself in Asgard, throwing a
peace sign.

Lensman47: Awesome. What filter is that?

There hadn’t been a filter on it. So, Loki said as much.

Lensman47 came back with a string of all-caps accusations,
calling Loki a liar and a wannabe influencer. Three hundred and
forty-two people had liked Lensman47’s comment.
Only one had liked Loki’s.
And it looked like a bot, so that didn’t really count.
“Even people online think I’m lying,” Loki muttered. “Why
do people always assume that?”
A passing soldier spat on the ground. “You know why, you
despicable weasel. What is that device, anyways?”
 Loki scoffed, shoving the phone into his pocket. “I’d explain
it to you, but I don’t have all day.”
He probably should have looked up before he said that.
Because after he said it, and after he looked up, he reconsidered
the tone of his voice. The soldier loomed over him, face darkening
like a stormy sky.
“You helspawned lickspittle,” the soldier growled. “You brought
Asgard nothing but ruin and sent many good souls to the pits—I
am going to break you in half and feed you to the—”
“Is there a problem here?”
A familiar, soothing voice. Jealousy warred with relief in Loki
at the sight of Thor walking around the corner, his stride long
and purposeful. Loki tried to push the feelings away, the envy at
his brother’s confidence and ease, the embarrassment that he still
needed his brother’s rescue.
“Lord Thor, he was disrespectful,” the soldier stammered, trying
to hold his position but clearly cowering in the presence of the
God of Thunder.
A crowd gathered, people wandering by slowing when they saw
Thor, and stopping when they saw the commotion involved Loki.
They shifted, a murmuration of bodies, until they stood behind
the soldier like a wall. Loki wasn’t even sure that they knew they’d
chosen a side. Maybe it was instinctual. Whatever was happening,
they wanted to be facing him, not standing behind him. Even
him in this form. Not some past-Loki. The possibility soured
his stomach.
“I’m sorry,” Loki interjected quickly before Thor could ask
for details, and before the crowd decided he was at fault. “I wasn’t
thinking. And I’m tired and hungry. Hanger always makes me say
regretful things.”
Thor looked like a smile might twitch at the corner of his
mouth. “And do you accept this?”
The soldier did not want to accept it. He wanted to pummel
Loki or throw him from the highest height in the ruins of Asgard.
That much was clear to Loki and everyone else who’d gathered
around. But this was Thor, and the soldier knew better. He bowed
his head, accepting the apology, and beat a quick retreat.
Loki scrambled to his feet, dusting off his clothes. Thor waved
dismissively at the crowd and they dissipated, slowly, and then
quickly once they realized Thor wasn’t going to say anything more,
and Loki wasn’t going to provide more antics.
Only when they were gone did Thor sigh and set a hand on
Loki’s shoulder. “This will pass, Loki.”
Loki frowned at his feet. “I don’t know if it will. I’m not him.
I’m me.”
“They know, it’s just hard for them to believe it. They will
come around,” promised Thor. He didn’t have the right to promise
it, but Loki felt his brother’s need for justice and optimism come
through in the words. He might not have the right, or the ability,
to make it so, but he’d try. If not for Loki, for whom he was
responsible, but because this was who Thor was, right down to
his core.
And Loki appreciated it. He needed that right now. The way
the crowd stood around, siding with the soldiers, not ready to leap
in to defend Loki being held accountable even for his past self ’s
crimes—that hurt. He belonged here. He wanted to be a part
of Asgard.
“I know,” Loki lied. It came easily. It slipped off his tongue
before he realized it.
“How did you get that phone? It’s Stark tech,” Thor said,
reaching and tugging it out of Loki’s pocket.
“Merchants of Broxton,” Loki said, gesturing vaguely in the
direction of the Midgardian town. “I bought it.”
He instantly regretted telling the truth. The defensiveness
seeped from his words and Thor noted it. His brother’s shoulders
stiffened and he peered down at Loki suspiciously.
“And how did you pay for it?”
Loki did not want to lie again, even though the opportunity
was right there. “With gold. They seemed pleased with the deal!
I didn’t rip them off.”
 Thor pursed his lips. “And how did you get the gold?”
“I got it off some dwarves.” Loki could see the next question on
his brother’s tongue. “And before you ask, yes, we were gambling.
See? I’m trying truthfulness!”
Thor pressed his fingers to his forehead. “Were you cheating
when you gambled, Loki?”
“Okay, yes, but”—Loki raised his voice before Thor could
interrupt him—“they were cheating too! Cheating was basically
part of the game. I won unfairly, but in a game of who could win
most unfairly!”
Thor looked as if he wanted to laugh, or cry, or walk into the
sea. “I’m not sure I should approve.”
“You know what’s worse than cheating? The humans of the
internet.”
“Are you reading the comments again? Stark says the first rule
of the internet is never read the comments,” Thor reminded him.
“You know he reads all the comments about him, though,” Loki
pointed out.
Thor tilted his head, conceding the point. “The humans are
a frustrating people. But they are good. They are better than they
know. And by coming together, we will build Asgard anew.”
Loki was a kid, but he was just as clever as always. Rather, he
certainly believed he was. He knew that Thor was really talking
about him when he was talking about the humans.
“Why did you buy a phone?” Thor asked, starting to walk back
through the ruins. These had once been buildings, piles of rubble
punctuated by columns that stuck up through the wreckage like
flagpoles with no flags.
Loki scrambled through the boulders after him, wishing his
brother’s legs weren’t as long as they were. Or rather, wishing that
he, Loki, had the height to match his brother’s stride. What was
the point of being half-giant if one did not come out the size of
the half-giants?
“I want to learn. Mostly, I’ve learned that mortals like to—”
He brought up a website and waved it in front of Thor’s face.
 Thor took one look and winced. “That is not appropriate for
someone of your age.”
“I knew that mortals liked to document everything pictorially
but I did not realize that meant everything. I thought it was just their
pets and their food, but it truly is everything,” Loki said excitedly.
“Like all sorts of things I did not know you could share.”
“Just because you can doesn’t mean you should,” Thor said with
a sigh.
They made their way to a road that wound its way along the
river and up toward the fallen city. They stopped to look at it, and
Loki felt pangs of regret even as he gazed upon a destruction he
knew he did not cause.
The road swooped in toward main gates that had once stood
taller than any of the most ancient buildings, but now those
buildings were half-caved in, and the gates of the city had been
utterly destroyed. Piles of stone and mortar. The rare and exotic
plants that once grew alongside the gate wilted on their way to
death. The only thing that marked the beginning of this once-
majestic city was the narrowing of the road. Even from this distance,
they could see people slowly sifting through rubble. They were no
longer looking for survivors. Now they were simply trying to find
the bottom of the destruction so they could rebuild. Wheelbarrows
and wagonfuls of rock were hauled away. Dust clouded the city.
Loki didn’t need to be down there to know that everyone’s faces were
drawn and tired—people who had gone through a war, survived,
and found it was still not over.
Thor must have read his mind because he ruffled Loki’s hair
affectionately. “You are not as wicked as those mortals on the Stark
phone, I think.”
“I’d have to try terribly hard to be that terrible,” Loki agreed,
relieved that his brother had broken the silence.
Thor slung his arm around Loki’s shoulder. “They will learn,
Loki, that you are you, and not past-Loki’s choices. But it will
take time.”
Loki wanted to say that he didn’t want it to take time. It felt like
wasted time, waiting for people to figure out what he already knew.
But he didn’t argue with Thor any more than the average soldier did.
“I know,” he said. And it was only partly a lie.

LATER, THAT night, when Loki arrived back in his room, he found
a magpie perched in the window, its beady eyes fixed on him. It’d
been waiting for him, he was certain.
“Hello, Mr. Magpie,” he said cheerfully.
The bird opened his mouth and it sounded as if he were about
to say Loki’s name, but instead he exploded, a disgusting slurry of
feathers and bird guts splattering on the walls, all over Loki, and
worse, over Loki’s books.
“Ugh,” muttered Loki, flicking entrails off his chest. “Gross.”
Where the magpie had sat was a key.
Loki couldn’t help himself. Who could have expected him to?
He picked up the key and accepted its silent quest.
It took him a while to find the chest in the basement that the key
unlocked, and when it creaked open, dust floating around it, Loki
peered inside with a peculiar mixture of anxiety and excitement.
The chest was empty, save for another key.
This was the best kind of puzzle. No one made puzzles like this
anymore: the kind that took cleverness and brains and brazenness
to solve. He took that key and followed its clues. One mystery
led to another, a path through the city, through tunnels and into
towers, to the dwarves, and the elves, and back again.
And when he realized where the magpie’s clues were leading
him, when he’d untangled the final rune of the final puzzle, when
he watched the dot beneath the question mark on the page grow
and grow until it swallowed the ground beneath his feet and he
began to fall, he whispered, without any hint of deceit, “Oh. I know
where I’m going.”

IT ISN’T a lie if it isn’t the truth but you don’t know it yet.
 THREE

AS SOON as Loki said he knew where he was going, the ground

dropped out from beneath him. What was once a tower, a pile of
books, torn papers, a key, magpie feathers, and the night sky of
Asgard became nothingness around him. He tumbled head over
heels as if he were falling through space and time itself, swinging his
arms and legs out wildly in the hope of colliding with something
to grab onto.
Loki hit the ground with a thunk, dust exploding up around
him. He lay on his back, wheezing for a second, before he rolled
over and sat up. Light glinted off metal, illuminating a small eerie
space around him. He could see no walls, no tunnels, no paths.
Nothing except the spot where he landed, and a helmet with curved
horns on a pedestal, a magpie perched in the center.
Part of Loki hummed with excitement when he saw the magpie.
It’d brought him a puzzle last time, and he’d solved it. What would
it bring him this time?
But last time he’d been in his own territory. In Asgard. In a city
he knew and loved, even if it did not love him.
He did not know where he was now.
He did not know what kind of puzzle could be solved if he did
not know where he needed to go next.
He rose slowly. “Hello, Mr. Magpie.”
Again, he thought to himself.
Green meteors burst from the dark emptiness above, striking
the ground around him. Loki threw an arm over his face to shield
himself from the spray of rocks. The heat blistered his skin.
Loki, cast in green fire, loomed above him, nearly as tall as the
tower from which Loki had fallen. His face was familiar but not
the face that Loki had seen in the mirror. It was chiseled and aged,
cut by sharp lines where the younger Loki had only seen smooth
and round cheeks when he’d washed his face that morning.
“I am Loki,” boomed the Loki made of green fire. “Loki, whose
whim brought Asgard crashing down. I am Loki, whose tongue
was an anvil where the sharpest lies were forged. I am Loki, and I
have things to say that you must know. I am Loki, who you must
not trust.”
So his past self had a flare for the dramatic. The green fire
around the base of the Past Loki seemed like overkill, but Young
Loki wisely decided not to mention that.
“What are the chances?” he said loftily. “I’m Loki too. We
should be the very best of friends.” He gestured around at the
emptiness. “Where’d you bring me? What are you, precisely?”
“I am the echo of a scream. This room is hidden behind a
whim, buried in a daydream, covered in bad thoughts and malice,”
said Past Loki.
“You could have just said you didn’t know,” observed Young
Loki.
This was the thing with young gods. Sometimes they thought
of something clever, and they couldn’t resist saying it. The jibe slid
from Loki’s tongue as easily as lies.
Past Loki scowled at the younger one. “It is a place that Thor
would never locate.”
“I got that,” said Young Loki, “from the ‘covered in bad thoughts
and malice’ part. Thor would never.”
 “Would never what?” snapped Past Loki.
Young Loki shrugged, delighting in getting under Past Loki’s
skin. “He just would never.”
“This place is my message from me to you,” said the specter.
“I feel like you could have just sent a letter, a text, an email. This
is a little dramatic, don’t you think?” said Loki, glancing around.
Then he shrugged. “Speak then, elder-self. I solved your riddle.
I demand amusements.”
“Amusements?” Past Loki repeated.
But Young Loki didn’t want to explain amusements, or
his tone, to this past Loki. He actually didn’t even want to be
entertained. He wanted answers. Because this Loki was the reason
he existed, yes, but also the reason of how he existed. The reason
everyone around him thought he was a betrayer, the downfall
of Asgard, someone not to be trusted, someone who wasn’t a
good friend.
He straightened his shoulders. “Explain why you destroyed
Asgard, but then sacrificed yourself to save it.”
“Is that what you think I did?” A glint in the green fire of Past
Loki’s eyes clued Young Loki in.
He narrowed his eyes. “Maybe not.” The words crystallized in
his mind. He wasn’t one to think before he spoke. Some things came
by instinct. And he was speaking to himself. He ought to know.
“If you wanted to live, you would have hidden yourself beneath
the rug of the universe before the final blow was struck.”
Past Loki’s mouth turned up in one corner. The flames that
encircled Young Loki rose, burned brighter. He was on the right
path.
“You chose to die,” he accused. “You wanted to die. That means
you needed to die.”
“And?” prompted Past Loki.
Young Loki frowned, stretching his fingers as he thought. “I
don’t know why, though.”
“There is only one who Loki would sacrifice himself for,” said
Past Loki, gesturing at Young Loki.
 Young Loki blinked. Being caught off-guard wasn’t one of his
strong suits. “You sacrificed yourself… for yourself?”
“Gods of chaos fall into a single trap: their capriciousness is
its own pattern. They become predictable.” Past Loki shrugged.
“I wrote myself out of the book of death. I slipped predestination’s
noose. I would be found, or I’d find my way back. A new Loki.
A fresh page with fresh ink to write a free future.”
Past Loki had told Young Loki not to trust him, and Loki
could feel that warning tug at him right now. He wanted to believe
Loki. He wanted to believe his past self. But this sounded too
believable—it tugged at our young protagonist’s heart strings, his
own desires and wants.
“You went into oblivion with nothing but the hope that there
was something out there? Or that someone would show you the
path home?” he ventured.
“It’s as the people of Midgard say. Change or die,” said Past
Loki simply.
“And you’d rather die than not change,” said Loki with quiet
understanding.
“I’d rather be nothing,” countered Past Loki. He straightened, a
tower above Young Loki again. “Thankfully, it did not come to that.”
“I should tell Thor of this. Or Odin,” Loki said, trying to
think of what their reactions would be. He corrected himself.
“Definitely Thor.”
“Yes, you should,” murmured Past Loki.
Young Loki paced back and forth in the circle of green fire,
ignoring the heat that blasted his face. “If I wanted to be killed, I
should tell Thor. Thor couldn’t keep them from my head. They’d
think me part of some scheme or plan from beyond the grave.”
“Hmmm,” said Past Loki, making a noise of agreement.
Loki’s head jerked up. “And they’d be correct, wouldn’t they?”
He hadn’t realized it until just now but in his truthfulness,
Past Loki was telling him everything he needed to know. Young
Loki spun on his heel to face his past self, “This is a scheme from
beyond the grave!”
 “Beyond their imagination, I imagine,” said Past Loki lightly.
“What now?” asked Young Loki.
“Power corrupts. Therefore, you’ll have little. You must become
a new Loki, with naught but your wits to guard the Nine Realms.”
Past Loki pulled the green fire from the circle around him like a
cloak, and the sudden absence of warmth made young Loki shiver.
He was engulfed in the darkness once again.
“Soon they will be in peril,” said Past Loki.
“Looming peril? Our specialty,” said Loki dryly.
“They think we’re the only one who can bring wickedness and
treachery into the world. And they are wrong,” said Past Loki.
“This is all very vague. If you’re offering me advice, at least
be specific about it,” Young Loki countered, but his mind was
whirling like a storm. Who was they? Asgard, he must be talking
about Asgard. Loki wouldn’t stand up for Midgard, would he? It
seemed unlikely. And why would Past Loki help him? It seemed
like a trap, a trick of some sort, a way for Past Loki to write his way
into this story. But it didn’t belong to him. Not anymore.
“If I gave you advice, you shouldn’t pay any attention to
it,” chided Past Loki. “Knowledge is what I have and what you
should take. Know the difference. I have lifetime upon lifetime of
mysteries, packed into this spirit by your dead older self. But I can
be whatever you wish.”
Mentor. Advisor. Brother. Past.
Loki knew what he wanted. “What I wish,” he said, stepping
from the dark into the ghastly green glow of Past Loki’s flames, “is
to be Loki. To be myself, and not you.” He threw up his hands at
his past self. “You are done. You are gone.”
Past Loki’s face widened in surprise, green fire streaking through
him into the air as light exploded around them.
Young Loki called, “You are now my Ikol, my opposite, my
bird. You are an ear-whisperer and a worm-eater. You’ll tell me what
I want and nothing more.”
Past Loki made an awful groaning sound, like an enormous
metal door being slammed shut, and then he was gone, a helmet
clattering to the ground, a black and white magpie flapping his
wings as he alighted on Young Loki’s arm.
Loki had said he’d be whatever Young Loki needed.
This seemed to be the safest way, the most trustworthy way, to
gain that wisdom—without all the trouble.
“Let’s go home,” said Loki, trying to catch his breath.
“Yes, master,” said Ikol, cawing softly.
Loki’s smile grew on his face. “I like that.”
You have just read an excerpt from

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 NOVELS OF THE MARVEL UNIVERSE BY TITAN BOOKS
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Avengers: Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Dan Abnett
Avengers: Infinity by James A. Moore
Black Panther: Panther’s Rage by Sheree Renée Thomas
Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda by Jesse J. Holland
Black Panther: Who is the Black Panther? by Jesse J. Holland
Captain America: Dark Designs by Stefan Petrucha
Captain Marvel: Liberation Run by Tess Sharpe
Captain Marvel: Shadow Code by Gilly Segal
Civil War by Stuart Moore
Deadpool: Paws by Stefan Petrucha
Guardians of the Galaxy: Annihilation by Brendan Deneen
Morbius: The Living Vampire – Blood Ties by Brendan Deneen
Secret Invasion by Paul Cornell
Spider-Man: Forever Young by Stefan Petrucha
Spider-Man: Kraven’s Last Hunt by Neil Kleid
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Christopher L. Bennett
Spider-Man: The Venom Factor Omnibus by Diane Duane
Thanos: Death Sentence by Stuart Moore
Venom: Lethal Protector by James R. Tuck
Wolverine: Weapon X Omnibus by Marc Cerasini, David Alan Mack, and Hugh Matthews
X-Men: Days of Future Past by Alex Irvine
X-Men: The Dark Phoenix Saga by Stuart Moore
X-Men: The Mutant Empire Omnibus by Christopher Golden
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