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Page 65

He pointed at Carroll.

Carol took a deep breath, her eyes now filled with unwavering determination: "I'm going up there, to find the lab, and then I'm going to find the Kree and settle this score."

“Very good.” Fury nodded, then looked at Chu Hang. “Aren’t you going up?”

“Of course I’ll go,” Chu Hang said. “I have to make sure she doesn’t get too excited and tear the lab down. Also, Talos has to go; he needs to confirm the coordinates with his own eyes.”

Fury frowned: "Let a Skrull board S.H.I.E.L.D.'s most advanced spacecraft?"

"Is there a problem?" Chu Hang retorted. "Director Fury, you need to understand. Now is not the time for you to make demands. You're just providing the venue. Besides, aren't you curious about the Skrulls' expressions when they see the pinnacle of human technology? This is firsthand intelligence."

Fury was speechless. He realized that he could never gain the upper hand when talking to Chu Hang.

“Alright,” he finally conceded. “I’ll make the arrangements. But ground command must remain in my hands.”

"Whatever." Chu Hang shrugged indifferently.

The three of them left the office and headed towards the secret hangar deep within the base.

Just before boarding the plane, Chu Hang suddenly stopped, turned around, and said something to Fury who was following behind him.

"Director Fury."

"Your 'Avengers' plan is a good idea." Chu Hang's tone was calm, as if he were commenting on a dish. "Find some special people to fight some special battles. But you have to remember one thing."

He took a step forward, leaned close to Fury's ear, and said in a voice only the two of them could hear:

Don't put all your eggs in one basket. And don't assume that the trump card you find is the best card on the table.

After saying that, he patted Fury on the shoulder, turned around, and boarded the futuristic-looking Quinjet.

Chapter 77 Entering the Mar-Will

The Quinjet's engine sound changed, abruptly rising from a deep roar to a piercing shriek.

The aircraft jolted violently, a savage thrust pressing the three people firmly into their seats. This prototype, a fusion of cutting-edge human technology and some alien technology, shot straight through the camouflage rock layer of the base's dome like a javelin, hurtling relentlessly towards the cloudless sky.

Carroll gripped the control stick tightly, her expression utterly focused. She didn't need to look at the complex instrument panel; her body seemed to have become one with the cold machine. She could feel every tiny tremor as the wings sliced ​​through the thin air, and she could sense the strength of each energy pulse from the engine core.

"The design is very rough."

Talos's voice came from the back seat, tinged with a hoarseness characteristic of Skrulls. He had unbuckled his seatbelt at some point, and despite the immense G-forces that would dislocate an ordinary person's internal organs, he stood steadily, calmly floating to the center of the cockpit. Outside the window, the clouds rapidly converged into a boundless white ocean below them, while the sky above visibly transitioned from azure to deep blue, and then to pure black.

Chu Hang leaned back lazily in the passenger seat, arms crossed, eyes closed. His relaxed demeanor made it seem as if he were not on an interstellar flight, but rather taking a long-distance bus ride home. He glanced at Carol's profile out of the corner of his eye. She was biting her lower lip tightly, her eyes filled with a mixture of excitement, nervousness, and a hint of barely perceptible confusion.

“We’re about to break through the Carmen Line.” Carol’s voice trembled slightly, not from fear, but from the instinctive reaction of returning to the long-lost universe.

As soon as he finished speaking, the heavy feeling that had been pressing down on him suddenly eased, and the violent vibrations and ear-piercing noise of the machine disappeared without a trace in the same instant.

The world fell silent.

Outside the window, absolute darkness reigned, so profound it seemed to swallow all light. Against this backdrop of absolute darkness, countless stars shone eerily brightly, unlike the gentle glow they possessed on Earth; instead, they gleamed like shattered diamonds, their light cold and sharp. Below them, a vast, serene, breathtakingly beautiful blue planet, draped in a veil of clouds, slowly rotated.

The spacecraft successfully entered its designated orbit, and the engines switched to low-power cruise mode. The cabin was completely free from the constraints of gravity.

Talos, like a child, clumsily floated to the porthole, reaching out as if to touch that distant planet. He gazed greedily at the azure and pure white expanse, his eyes filled with complex emotions. It was the ideal home his people had dreamed of countless times during their escape, a place brimming with life and hope, yet one they could never possess. War had taken their home planet, and now, like cosmic dust, they could only search for a corner where they could breathe.

Carol released the control stick, letting her body float in the weightless environment. She gazed at the blue planet, silent. She didn't remember exactly where on that continent she was born, but she could feel a connection, a bloodline, emanating from that planet, tugging at her heart. There lay her past, there lay the life that had been taken from her.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

Chu Hang's calm voice broke the silence in the cabin. He also floated to the window and stood beside them, gazing at the magnificent view.

“I’ve seen many planets,” Talos said hoarsely, his voice tinged with weariness. “Burning planets, frozen planets, planets shrouded in poison gas… but like this… so full of life, so gently covered by life, is rare. It’s like a miracle.”

"Yeah," Chu Hang replied casually, then turned his gaze to Carol. "Find the lab, get back your lost memories, and then what? What do you plan to do?"

Carol slowly withdrew her gaze, the confusion in her eyes replaced by a cold flame: "I will go to the High Intelligence. I will expose its hypocritical rhetoric in front of all the Kree. I will make Yon Rogge pay for everything he did to me."

Her voice wasn't loud, but every word seemed to be squeezed out from between her teeth, filled with an undeniable determination.

"Revenge." Chu Hang summarized her plan in two words. "Sounds good. Simple, direct, and with a clear objective."

He paused, then abruptly changed the subject, his words like a scalpel precisely cutting into the most vulnerable part of her plan: "But have you considered that the Supreme Intelligence isn't a person? It's a program, a super artificial intelligence formed by the fusion of the brains of countless Kree elite leaders. How do you plan to expose the lies of a program? Rush to the High Temple on Hala and punch that giant green head? And then what?"

Carol was stunned.

She truly hadn't considered any of that. In her mind, revenge was the only right thing to do. Yon-Rog had deceived her, and the Supreme Intelligence was the mastermind behind it all, so she should expose them, give them a good beating, and make them admit their mistakes before the entire universe. Wasn't that the right thing to do?

“Even if you destroy that green head, it won’t make a difference.” Chu Hang’s voice was very calm. “Its core code is backed up in the networks of every military base in the Kree Empire, and even in the central computers of every capital warship. As long as the Kree Empire’s massive war machine continues to operate, the Supreme Intelligence will never die. You are not facing one or a few enemies, but a deeply rooted system, a civilization that has continued for thousands of years. You alone cannot destroy a system.”

Talos, who had remained silent all along, listened with deep agreement in his eyes. No one knew better than him how hopeless it was to fight against a vast interstellar empire. The Skrulls had tried it before, and the result was the destruction of their homeworld, the displacement of their people, and sixty years of being hunted in the universe.

"Then what do you suggest we do?!" Carol retorted, somewhat annoyed. She felt as if she had thrown a punch with all her might, only to land heavily on nothing; that sense of powerlessness made her extremely uncomfortable.

“I don’t know.” Chu Hang’s answer was blunt, making Carol feel a lump in her throat. “I’m just reminding you not to oversimplify things. Revenge won’t solve the fundamental problem; it will only create more problems. You killed Yon Rogge, and the Kree Empire will send ten commanders stronger and more ruthless than him. You destroyed the Supreme Intelligence’s mainframe on Hala, and they will immediately activate the backup system, then designate you as the Empire’s number one enemy and mobilize all their forces to hunt you down throughout the universe. What do you plan to do then? Like them, wander the endless universe for decades, never finding a place where you can sleep peacefully?”

He pointed to Talos beside him.

Talos's body stiffened visibly, his eyes dimmed instantly, and his green face was filled with pain and sorrow.

“We…don’t want revenge,” he whispered. “We just want to survive, find a place, and rebuild our homes. We’ve had enough of war.”

Carol fell completely silent. Chu Hang's words and Talos's pain were like a bucket of ice water poured over her raging anger. For the first time, she began to think about what she could do, what she should do, besides anger and revenge.

"Drip drip..."

Just then, the monotonous beeping of the navigation system interrupted the heavy conversation.

"Target coordinates have been reached."

The three of them floated towards the cockpit. Looking out through the huge forward window, all they saw was a vast, empty, dark universe. There was nothing but distant stars.

"What's going on?" Talos's voice was filled with barely suppressed anxiety. "Are the coordinates wrong? Or... is this another Kree hoax?"

“No, it’s right there,” Carol suddenly said, her voice soft but unusually firm.

Her eyes had begun to glow with a faint golden light. She stared at the seemingly empty darkness before her, as if she saw something that others could not see.

“I can feel it,” she murmured. “An energy from the same source as us, very faint, shielded by some kind of force field. But it’s there. Like… a sleeping heartbeat.”

She stretched out her hand and pointed to the dark sky about thirty degrees to the left.

Chu Hang raised an eyebrow. It seemed that the energy of the Cosmic Cube did indeed resonate across different individuals of the same origin, transcending space. Under his guidance, Carol's perception of energy had become quite acute.

"Can you make it appear?" Chu Hang asked.

Carol closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Following Chu Hang's instructions, she stopped trying to sense it with brute force and instead emptied her mind, allowing the cosmic energy within her body to feel the ripples brought about by that faint "heartbeat," like the surface of a calm lake.

This was more difficult than any of the finer manipulations she had ever practiced on Earth. It was like trying to discern the breathing of a single audience member in a noisy rock concert.

A few minutes passed, and fine beads of sweat appeared on her forehead.

"No...it's too faint, I can't catch it." She opened her eyes in frustration.

"Don't 'grab' it." Chu Hang's voice rang in her ears like a clear spring. "Go 'call' it. Treat it as part of your body, like your fingers. You don't need to 'grab' your fingers to control them. You only need a thought, and it will move on its own."

Carol paused for a moment, then seemed to understand.

She closed her eyes again. This time, she didn't try to capture the energy, but instead completely opened her consciousness, imagining herself as a boundless ocean of energy, and that faint energy as a distant drop of water from the same source. She didn't chase after it, didn't grasp at it, but simply gently and continuously called out to it.

Gradually, she sensed a response.

That faint heartbeat began to become clear. It was no longer a distant and blurry point, but seemed to be drawn to her by her call, actively moving closer to her.

"Now is the time," Chu Hang whispered a reminder.

Carol suddenly opened her eyes, the golden light in them intensifying in an instant. She stretched out her right hand, palm facing forward, and a highly concentrated beam of golden energy, like a precise laser, silently shot towards the point she sensed.

There was no explosion as expected, no earth-shattering noise.

The golden beam of energy pierced the darkness like a drop of ink falling into clear water.

Centered on the point where the beam of light landed, a layer of visible, water-like ripples rapidly spread across the smooth space. Wherever the ripples passed, the previously empty space of the universe began to distort and blur. Then, the outline of a colossal object gradually emerged from nothingness amidst the shifting light and shadow.

That's a space station.

A space station with an extremely beautiful design.

It doesn't resemble any spaceship built by humans or the Kree; it lacks that cold, angular military style.

Its overall structure resembles a metal lotus blooming in the universe, with smooth curves and a huge ring structure.

Countless enormous blue observation windows, like quiet eyes, gently gaze upon the azure planet below. The entire space station is covered in an advanced optical camouflage, blending seamlessly into the surrounding cosmic environment; without the guidance of a shared energy source, no radar or detector can detect its existence.

On the central part of the space station, its name is engraved in an elegant, non-Earth script.

—Marwell.

Talos gazed at the space station that had appeared out of nowhere, trembling with excitement. For the first time, tears welled in his weathered eyes. Sixty years of exile, decades of searching, the sacrifice of countless people… they had finally found their last hope.

Carol stared blankly at the space station named after her mentor. A strong sense of belonging and an indescribable sadness welled up inside her at the same time. This was Dr. Lawson's true home, a place far away from war and turmoil, a place that truly belonged to her.

As the Quinjet slowly approached the space station, as if guided by some force, a hidden docking hatch that was originally perfectly integrated with the ship's hull automatically slid open to both sides, revealing the brightly lit parking apron inside.

"Let's go." Chu Hang patted Carol on the shoulder, who was still in a daze. "Let's go see your real past."

The spacecraft smoothly entered the docking module and came to a stop amidst slight vibrations.

The hatch opened, and the three stepped onto the cold metal deck. A long-stale, yet not unpleasant, smell wafted towards them.

Before them stretched a long, pure white corridor, its design simple yet spacious. The moment they stepped in, the corridor lights automatically illuminated, casting a soft, non-glaring glow. On the walls lining the corridor hung holographic photographs: magnificent nebulae, breathtaking galaxies, and some… snapshots of everyday life.

Carol stopped in front of a photograph. In it, a young Dr. Lawson and a young girl, both dressed in Earth Air Force flight suits, were leaning against an old-fashioned propeller plane, laughing heartily. The girl was laughing carefree, the sunlight making her blonde hair seem to glow.

She reached out, her fingertips trembling, wanting to touch the smiling self in the photo.

Just then, from the depths of the corridor, a very faint metallic scraping sound suddenly came, as if something was moving.

Talos reacted the fastest. He instantly became alert, turned around sharply, assumed a fighting stance, and stared intently at the end of the dark corridor.

Chu Hang's brows furrowed slightly. His energy perception had already covered the entire space station. He could clearly sense that there was a fourth... no, a fifth life signal in this seemingly empty space station.

One signal source was very strong, filled with pure energy. The other... was very strange, like both life and machine.

A slightly stiff, synthesized female voice suddenly broke the long silence from the broadcasting system that spanned the space station.

"Unknown visitor, identity verification failed. Initiating... Level 1 defense protocol."

Chapter 78 Reencounter with the Cosmic Cube

A mechanical, synthesized female voice echoed in the empty corridor, each word carrying a metallic chill.

"Level 1 defense protocol... activated."