Threat Level—Extremely High!
An unnamed coast somewhere in the Eastern Hemisphere.
Deep into the night, waves crashed against the reefs in endless layers. Beneath the thick, overcast clouds, the spray rose in fine foam before a towering white lighthouse, cutting jagged, pallid lines through the pitch-black darkness.
It was the closed season for fishing, and the keeper had left the beacon dark.
If he'd had anywhere else to go, the old lighthouse keeper wouldn't have stayed behind to smoke his pipe and enjoy this "magnificent" nightscape, which he'd spent most of his life gazing upon, with a glass of rum.
Each flare of tobacco illuminated the dense wrinkles etched across his face. He looked like a cactus in the desert, shriveling from thirst. Besides those cracked creases, scraggly stubble jutted from his cheeks. Beneath that rough exterior, everything about him seemed perfectly suited to a tale like The Old Man and the Sea.
At the farthest point on the horizon, a brilliant streak of light plunged toward the sea. It cut through the dark sky and shattered the keeper's distant reverie.
He thought it was a shooting star. Dully, he wondered what wish he could still pray for, so lonely and close to death. Then the "shooting star" abruptly climbed again, shot north, and vanished.
Another point of light fell from the night sky behind it, following the distant glow with uncanny purpose before disappearing as well. The strange sight flashed across the old keeper's cloudy eyes for no more than a couple of blinks, then was gone without a trace, as if his vision had blurred.
The old lighthouse keeper suspected he couldn't hold his liquor as well as he used to.
In a brief tumble lasting only a few dozen seconds, Carol Danvers relived her entire life, though