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POV: Emma Frost
Summary: As New York falls into chaos, Emma Frost retreats to a quiet S.H.I.E.L.D. observation deck, not out of fear—but curiosity. She pulls Garou's classified file again, looking for any weakness. Instead, she finds a heavily redacted cross-reference with a cosmic "asset" that S.H.I.E.L.D. refuses to name—someone who once tried to intercept Garou before he landed. Emma begins to realize Garou may not be an accident… but a convergence point.
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Emma hated panic.
She didn't mind chaos—that could be artful—but raw, stupid panic? Pointless. Sloppy. Loud.
The kind she was watching now from behind a tinted wall of reinforced glass: helicopters spiraling, Chitauri swarming, people running in every direction like ants before a boot.
Emma Frost sipped her wine.
They'd offered her a seat on one of the evacuation birds. She laughed in the agent's face. "Darling, if New York burns, I plan to watch it from the top floor with a chilled glass and an insult ready."
Now she stood alone in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s East Wing substation, half-buried beneath Avengers Tower, lit only by emergency power and flickering monitors. No one had the courage to remove her. Not yet.
She pulled up Garou's file on the main terminal.
The biometric data had grown more erratic since the invasion began. Heart rate? Slower than resting. Cortisol levels? Dropping. Muscular tension? Unreadable. He wasn't reacting to stress.
He was tuning to it.
"How predictable," she muttered. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"
She tapped through the psychological logs. Most were vague summaries from Steve. A few clipped warnings from Fury. But something new caught her eye—newly unlocked.
TOP CLEARANCE – INTERSECTED FILE: EXOBIO-CLASS ENTITY 002B
Status: Redacted
Name: Unknown
S.H.I.E.L.D. Tag: PHOTON
Emma raised an eyebrow.
She tapped again.
Redaction.
She tapped harder, sliding through backdoor channels. "Come on, Nicholas. Don't pretend I haven't already seen your private shame folder…"
More redactions.
But one note escaped the purge:
> "PHOTON encountered hostile energy signature near lunar orbit three months prior to Earthfall. Contact failed. Subject disappeared into alternate flowpath."
"Earthfall," she repeated aloud.
She stared at the date.
It matched Garou's arrival. The anomaly in the ice. The second body.
"Someone tried to stop him," she whispered. "Before he ever landed."
She leaned back from the screen, processing it.
So… there was someone strong enough, fast enough, and dangerous enough that S.H.I.E.L.D. kept her name buried. Someone whose cosmic intervention still failed to stop whatever Garou was.
Emma closed the file.
Her reflection stared back at her on the black screen. Blonde. Beautiful. Sharp enough to cut marble.
And suddenly, for the first time in years, she felt like the second-most dangerous thing in the room.
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