Ceres Dahal was cursed by a witch to live forever and watch her loved ones die.
Steve Rogers woke after 70 years in the ice and emerged into a whole new world.
They may not have much. But, in a universe that's constantly changing faster than they ca...
NOT FOR THE first time, and certainly not for the last, New York City is in shambles.
Debris fills the air, creating a slightly smoky haze from the half-crumbled buildings and small fires littering the streets, stinging Ceres Dahal's eyes. She coughs and fights to clear her burning lungs of the toxic substances floating in front of her face. The clouds of smoke are so thick that she has to fight to see as she staggers along the vacant road.
It's incredible how quickly everything had fallen apart. Of course this had to happen on the one day Ceres has off from work. Normally, she'd be well out of the danger zone in the café she works at in Brooklyn, but today, she'd dragged herself out of bed after sleeping in and gone to grab lunch at a diner in Manhattan. She'd almost forced her roommate, Ilyas Ravel, to come with her, but he'd been out— probably to go buy more cigarettes, alcohol, or whatever substance he'd felt like poisoning himself with at the moment.
Ceres uses one hand to cover her mouth and nose with her shirt collar, then allows a small amount of light to pool into her palm in the other. The additional brightness doesn't do much to enhance her vision. The street is still dark, she's getting covered with white debris, and she really wishes she could tell which way she's going.
Before, she'd been relying on the horrid noises of battle. In the thick of the action, the sounds of alien spacecrafts zooming through the air, gunfire, and Iron Man's repulsor rays had been nearly deafening, but now everything is so ear-piercing that it no longer helps. Her skull pulses with pain after every step. It causes her vision to waver, blending the hazy sky with the ash-coated street, threatening to turn her stomach upside down. God, what she'd give for a second of precious silence right now.
The thought threatens to make Ceres laugh. She'd already given up her life. What more could she afford to pay?
Her body tenses as an alien spacecraft soars above her. It's some kind of flying motorcycle-type thing, running on alien technology and with one of the horrible-looking beasts on top of it. Blinking against the dirt getting into her eyes, she aims her palm at the invader and squints at the blinding burst of light that streams from her hand. The alien releases a guttural screech as her solar powers melt its armor, turning it a glowing orange through the smog, and threatening to char its skin as well. The heat would have melted it from the outside in if it hadn't been interrupted. The hovercraft veers dangerously to the right, smashing into a building and causing the beast to drop lifelessly to the ground. Molten bits of metal rain down onto the sidewalk.
