The Pentagon had already been dying for hours.

Smoke curled through the ruined corridors like veins trying to pump life into a corpse. Shredded metal hung from collapsed ceilings. Lights flickered in spasms, twitching between on and off as if unsure whether to give up. Alarms blared when they still had enough electricity to try.

Cecil had seen the worst humanity had to offer—wars, monsters, gods, Viltrumites—but this was different. This time, the threat didn't come from aliens or alternate timelines or ancient prophecies.

It came from Mark, multiplied thirtyfold.

Thirty versions of Invincible, each from a different universe, each brought here by Angstrom Levy to destroy Cecil’s world the way their own might’ve been destroyed before. Some of them cruel. Some of them unhinged. Some just bored and angry at everything in their path. Together, they were a plague.

Two days.

Two days of global attacks. Two days of annihilation disguised as men in yellow and blue.

The Pentagon had become Cecil’s graveyard headquarters, held together by force fields and stubbornness more than architecture. He had just returned from talking to his Mark—the one that still had some conscience left, the one beginning to see reason again. The one who looked exhausted and broken and so painfully young.

Mark was close to breaking on Cecil again. Close to trusting him. Close to hating him. Cecil wasn’t sure which outcome would be preferable right now.

He’d stepped back through the secured entry shaft expecting chaos, but not this.

The shaft collapsed behind him.

Dust, sparks, and rubble showered the room. Cecil lifted an arm, coughing once into the crook of his sleeve as he waved smoke out of his eyes. It was barely over two steps into the main operations hub when his world narrowed.

Donald lay on the ground—half-crushed by debris, systems exposed, his human facade torn open like a broken doll. His remaining organic eye flickered faintly, but he didn’t move.

Half the staff was dead. Some were burned. Some were still buried and might’ve been alive or might’ve been nothing but limbs under concrete. Equipment lay smashed, screens shattered, wires ripped out like nerves.

More silence than sound existed here now.

Cecil’s heart thudded harder once.

Twice.

Then he saw movement.

Not panicked movement. Not struggling. Not searching for survivors.

Something hovered above the destruction as if it wasn’t destruction at all. As if gravity itself respected them too much to tug them down with the rest of the rubble.

Floating.

Arms loose at their sides. Shoulders relaxed. Expression unreadable from this distance, but posture? Indifferent.

Another Viltrumite.

A new one.

Not one of the Invincibles—Cecil could recognize the uniform, the colors, the general demeanor. This wasn’t Mark. Not one of the multiversal versions either. Their stance was different. Controlled. Poised in a way that felt… practiced.

Cecil had never seen them in his life.

Which meant they were a wildcard.

Worse than that—one who’d dropped into the most vulnerable moment of the Pentagon’s existence and stood calmly in the center of its ruin.

A low inhale was all Cecil allowed himself.

His jaw tightened.

Whoever they were, they weren’t here for diplomacy.

And they weren’t here to help.

His eyes narrowed behind his glasses as he spotted them fully—silhouette framed by firelight, floating above the dying heart of the Pentagon like a herald of something far, far worse.

“…Well, shit.”

His voice was quiet, barely above a mutter.

Because now Cecil knew exactly what he was looking at.

A Viltrumite who wasn’t supposed to exist.. At least not here.

A Viltrumite untouched by his files, unknown to his satellites, and standing in the ruins of his headquarters as if this was all beneath them.

And whatever they were here for?

It wasn’t going to be good.