The street outside the station wasn't a street anymore.
It had the bones of one—cracked pavement, scattered signage, the skeletal remains of a hot dog cart—but everything else was wrong. The sky pulsed like a migraine, flickering between overcast gray and deep violet every few seconds. Neon signs down the block blinked in reverse. Some hovered upside down. One floated mid-air, spinning slowly as if stuck in time.
Aidan followed two paces behind Juno, trying not to panic.
"This area looks...broken," he muttered.
"It is," she replied. "Fracture zones are where timelines bled into each other during the incursions. Most stabilize. This one didn't."
They moved under a rusted scaffolding half-phased into a ruined SUV. The vehicle's back end was stuck inside a tree that hadn't existed in this timeline ten years ago, based on the fact that it was somehow growing through the car's engine block.
"How do you even walk around here without losing your mind?" Aidan asked, ducking as a floating mailbox drifted overhead like a balloon.
"Keep your senses sharp and don't trust your memory," Juno said. "Time loops form in pockets. If something feels like déjà vu, backtrack fast or you'll end up stuck repeating your own scream."
"That's...specific."
"Everything I say is."
They passed a subway entrance where the stairs glowed faintly and descended into nothing. Just a void—pure black, like someone had cut the stairs short and forgotten to install a bottom. Aidan shivered as he caught the faint echo of someone's voice repeating: "Please stand clear of the closing doors," over and over in a tone that grew more warped with each pass.
Up ahead, the road buckled upward—like a wave frozen mid-surge. Cars were perched sideways along its slope, some dangling by axles. A traffic cone floated three feet above the ground, spinning gently, defying all logic and physics.
"This is Midtown?" Aidan asked.
"Used to be. Now it's a time cancer."
She reached into her coat, pulled out a small disc, and activated it. A ripple of blue energy expanded around them, forming a dome that bent the warped air into something more walkable.
"What's that?" Aidan asked, stepping into it behind her.
"Stability bubble," she said. "Courtesy of stolen Illuminati research and a friend with very relaxed moral standards."
"Do all scavengers carry dimensional bubble tech?"
"No," she said, deadpan. "Most of them carry regrets."
Aidan glanced around at the fractured ruins of what used to be one of the busiest parts of Manhattan.
"Great. Just making sure I was underqualified and underprepared."
Juno crouched beside a mound of shattered concrete and pulled out a scanner shaped like a cross between binoculars and a Geiger counter. She swept the area slowly. Red lights blinked as it pulsed.
"Keep up," she said. "The reality wound's close. If we're lucky, no one's gotten to it yet."
"And if we're not lucky?"
She didn't answer.
The hum in the air grew deeper as they walked—like the world was charging up something unspeakable just out of sight.
Aidan had a horrible feeling the world wasn't glitching anymore.
It was bleeding.
The street cracked open ahead of them like an old scar trying to split again.
Aidan stopped short when he saw it—an unnatural basin in the middle of what used to be a parking lot, rimmed with twisted lampposts and debris warped into spirals. The edges of the crater pulsed with gold and red light, twitching like nerves exposed to air.
Dead center, a tear hung in space.
Not a hole. Not a portal.
A wound.
Reality peeled back in jagged threads, the inside of it shifting colors like a heat mirage. He saw flickers—trees upside down, flickering walls made of glass and bone, shadows of buildings from nowhere. One moment it resembled Stark Tower; the next, it was just smoke.
Juno stepped forward like she'd done this a hundred times. She knelt beside a charred bench and pulled something small from the ground—a cylindrical node half-buried in melted asphalt.
"What is that?" Aidan asked, keeping his distance.
"Multiversal stabilizer pod. Or what's left of one." She tapped a button. The device let out a spark and died. "That tear must've swallowed a whole transfer ship."
"I didn't know those were real."
"They weren't," she muttered. "Until a few timelines ago."
He scanned the surrounding debris: burnt-out Stark drones, a partial Quinjet engine still twitching, the head of a Sentinel lodged in a crushed school bus. Everything looked wrong, like it had been halfway through changing into something else and just… stopped.
Aidan's eyes drifted back to the wound.
It was beautiful, in the way lightning is beautiful just before it hits you. The threads of light seemed to flutter, but they weren't moving with wind—they were pulsing outward, subtly, with each heartbeat of the breach.
"Is it supposed to do that?" he asked quietly.
Juno stood. "Do what?"
He pointed. "It's… growing."
She frowned and pulled out her scanner again. "It shouldn't be. That zone's been dormant for three days. This is supposed to be a grab-and-go."
"Well, it's definitely grabbing something."
The pulsing intensified. A swirl of light sparked at the center. A low thoom vibrated through the ground.
Juno's eyes narrowed.
"No. That's not right."
She turned toward him. "We need to—"
But the wound shrieked.
It wasn't a sound made for ears. More like a pressure spike in the soul. The air flexed, light bent, and then—
Something dropped out of it.
Massive. Hulking. Misshapen.
It slammed into the earth hard enough to crack the crater deeper, dust spraying in every direction.
Aidan hit the ground hard, coughing, trying to see through the swirling haze.
The shape straightened.
Eight feet tall. Skin like molten stone. Arms like hydraulic pistons. A brow that jutted like a cliff face, and eyes full of fury.
It looked almost like…
"The Hulk," Aidan whispered.
But not.
Parts of it were orange and rock-like—Thing-like. Its shoulders rippled with unstable gamma residue. Its breathing sounded like a dying engine.
Juno took one look and whispered, "That's not from here."
The creature opened its mouth and roared.
Not just a roar—an echo.
And everything nearby—metal, glass, even sound—shuddered like it wanted to collapse.
The fusion-beast took a staggering step forward, the ground cracking beneath each footfall.
Aidan scrambled behind an overturned food truck, heart pounding against his ribs like it wanted to make a break for it without him. He peeked around the twisted metal, eyes locked on the creature.
It wasn't just strong.
It was wrong.
The skin rippled like a poorly rendered texture, shifting between orange and green. Its muscles looked stitched together with strands of broken light. One arm bulged with gamma radiation; the other crackled with molten stone. Its eyes glowed white-blue, not with rage—but confusion.
It looked lost.
And then it looked angry.
Juno raised her rifle and fired without hesitation.
The first shot struck its shoulder—nothing. The second, a core blast to the chest. The creature reeled back, but didn't fall.
Instead, it turned.
And roared again.
This time the sound hit. Aidan felt it vibrate through his teeth, shaking every bone in his body. Behind him, the metal of the truck rippled, liquefying for a second before hardening again.
"RUN!" Juno shouted, diving behind a cracked billboard.
"I am!" Aidan shouted back, even though he hadn't moved yet.
The beast charged, tearing through a pile of debris like it was tissue paper. Juno rolled, came up firing again. Her blasts sparked off the creature's arms, slowing it—but not stopping it.
"Why is it here?" Aidan cried, ducking behind a pile of collapsed rebar.
Juno didn't answer. She was busy ejecting a power cell and slamming in another.
The creature bellowed and slammed its fists into the ground. The crater cracked open further, a wave of distortion spreading outward. Light bent. Trees flickered in and out. A distant building phased through itself and collapsed.
Aidan's ears rang. Dust choked his lungs.
He ducked lower, trying to think.
It came through the breach. It's unstable. It's not supposed to be here.
Then it clicked.
The fusion was echoing. The way it flickered—the way the wound responded to it—it wasn't just a monster.
It was a temporal parasite.
"Juno!" he shouted. "It's syncing with the bleed!"
"What?"
"It's feeding off the instability—it doesn't recognize this world, so it's forcing the environment to match it! That's why everything's phasing!"
She looked at him like he'd grown a second head. "What are you even—?"
The creature roared again and hurled a car in their direction.
Aidan flinched as it smashed into the far wall. Fire licked up the frame.
Juno crouched beside him, breath ragged, rifle shaking slightly.
"You got a plan, Glitch-boy?"
Aidan swallowed.
"Maybe."
Because if he was right—if the creature needed a temporal anchor to stay coherent—then maybe they could overload it. Destabilize its resonance. Or at least stall it long enough for Juno to take it out.
He just needed one working power cell.
And something to make it angry.
He turned back toward the crater, knuckles white.
"Yeah," he muttered. "I've got a really stupid plan."
Aidan dove toward the crater's edge, heart racing like it was trying to punch its way through his ribs. His shoes skidded across unstable pavement—some of it flickering between brick and smooth obsidian. He barely noticed. His focus locked on a heap of scrap Juno had tossed aside earlier: cracked armor plating, a few fizzled Stark cores, and—
There. A repulsor gauntlet.
The glove was mangled, but intact enough to still power up. One of the inner circuits blinked faintly.
He yanked it free, burning his palm on the still-warm metal. "Sorry, Tony," he muttered, flipping it over.
From behind him: WHAM—the Hulk-Thing hybrid struck a building, and the whole block trembled.
Juno fired again. The shots kept it distracted, but not wounded.
Aidan ducked beside a melted chunk of ultron-bot spine, pried the cap off a scorched power cell, and used the gauntlet's damaged socket to wedge it in. Sparks danced. The repulsor flickered, groaned—and then buzzed to life with a sickly orange glow.
He yelped. "Okay. That's alive. That's… probably alive."
The creature roared again.
The glow in its eyes brightened—and so did the pulse in the wound behind it.
Just like before. It was syncing.
The power surges.
They were tied together.
Aidan jumped onto a broken slab of concrete, raised the gauntlet, and shouted, "HEY, YOU BIG, ILLEGAL LAVA JELLO!"
The hybrid turned.
That was enough.
Aidan slammed his fist down, jamming the charged gauntlet into a chunk of feedback stone crackling with bleed energy. The repulsor exploded with light—and the stone amplified the surge like a tuning fork.
The creature howled.
Its body rippled. Lines of code-like light crackled across its skin. Its form glitched, stuttering between Thing, Hulk, and something that looked briefly like the Abomination. It stumbled.
"JUNO! NOW!"
A pulse of plasma tore through the air.
Juno's final shot slammed into the creature's skull as it phased mid-collapse. The blast didn't just hit—it shattered the link.
The creature screamed—one last, glitched bellow—and then its body folded into itself, breaking into thousands of flickering fragments that dissolved into the air like static.
Silence.
The crater stopped pulsing. The air went still.
Aidan dropped to his knees, the gauntlet sparking and dead in his hand.
Juno walked up, panting, bruised, her eyes unreadable.
She looked at the remains, then at him.
Then, finally, she said, "Okay."
He looked up at her, eyebrows raised.
She tossed him a fresh water canister.
"Not bad for a glitch."
The crater still hissed faintly, its edges glowing like coals. But the wound had sealed—or at least paused. The colors had stopped churning. The light no longer screamed. Just a faint hum, fading like a fever dream.
Aidan sat cross-legged at the crater's edge, the dead repulsor gauntlet lying next to him like a broken toy. His hands were shaking. His hoodie was scorched at the sleeve. He couldn't tell if his heartbeat was fast because of adrenaline or if it was trying to exit his body through his teeth.
Juno stood nearby, silent.
She paced in a slow circle around the crater's rim, scanning, checking for flickers, probably already deciding if there was anything left to salvage. Eventually, she crouched, grabbed one of the feedback stones, turned it over, and stuffed it into her pouch.
Only then did she speak.
"You shouldn't have done that."
Aidan looked up at her, face still pale. "Cool. Which part? The yelling, the improvised science, or the suicidal power-punch into bleeding reality?"
"Yes."
He gave a faint laugh—just one breath. It felt weird. Raw. Like maybe he needed to start laughing again just to keep from screaming.
Juno stepped closer, crouched to his level.
"You figured something out I didn't," she said.
"…Wait. Was that a compliment?"
She stood. "It was an observation. Don't get greedy."
She reached into a duffel and pulled something out: a battered chest harness with plated nodes, faded Hydra paint scratched off the side.
"Armor," she said. "It'll protect you from small shocks, low-grade feedback, and maybe a mild uppercut from a time-displaced Skrull."
Aidan blinked at her. "You're giving me a souvenir?"
"No. I'm giving you something because I hate losing tools I haven't finished using."
"Right. Of course. This is a professional relationship based on mutual life-saving and snark."
She slung her rifle back across her shoulder and looked at the crater one last time.
"You glitched something loose today," she said.
Then she looked at him—just for a second, and something shifted in her eyes. Not quite trust.
But curiosity.
"We'll see if that's good or bad."
And with that, she turned, walking back into the broken city.
Aidan, still catching his breath, slowly pulled the armor harness over his hoodie, strapping it across his chest.
It didn't fit perfectly.
But it felt like a start.