Schiller had just gotten out of bed and felt deeply exhausted. He had gone to so much trouble, yet still received no compensation. It made him feel terrible.
Whenever Schiller was unhappy, he tried to make someone else unhappy. As long as someone else was unhappy, he felt much better.
Since the universe had been reset, the contract he had made with Death was gone too. But not long ago, he had happened to acquire a new phone—the Obelisk—so Schiller decided to call Death a few more times and reminisce about their pleasant past cooperation.
But the moment he picked up the Obelisk he had obtained earlier, Schiller discovered that Death's power had vanished from it. No matter how he activated it, the phone no longer responded at all.
Schiller sat on the edge of his bed, placed the Obelisk on his nightstand, and stared at it in thought.
Red Skull had once said that the Obelisk possessed the power to explain death itself, and after getting his hands on it, Schiller had found that to be true.
Based on the plot of the S.H.I.E.L.D. TV series, as well as the fact that Coulson could be resurrected using the GH pharmaceutical agent made by the Kree, the Obelisk was very likely similar to the Scale once used by the Egyptian pantheon: a tool the Kree used to communicate with Death.
If that was the case, then like the Scale, it should have been able to serve as a phone to contact Death. Schiller had never used the Obelisk to call Death before, so he had not confirmed whether this phone worked. But at the time, the Obelisk had indeed carried Death's aura. There was no doubt about that.
But now, that aura had completely disappeared. Schiller did not know what