Inside the safe house, the dread left by that cold "gaze" slowly faded, but tension still hung heavy in the air.
"Fuck... what the hell was that?" Star-Lord wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, still shaken. "It felt like the will of the entire universe just glared at us!"
"Not the will of the universe. Some kind of... highly concentrated collective of cold, merciless observational consciousnesses." Dr. Banner's projection stabilized, his tone more serious than ever. "The frequency we simulated was like a key that accidentally opened a door we should never have opened, alerting the 'warden' behind it."
"A warden? The highest level of the Observers?" Gamora pressed.
"More like... the core AI of their vast information network, or some kind of... living cosmic law," Banner speculated. "Its form of existence is already beyond our comprehension."
Rocket inspected the energy simulator, which had just overloaded and started smoking, and cursed. "That thing nearly fried my precious equipment! I'm never messing around with those damn frequencies again!"
"But it wasn't a complete waste," Lin Ye said slowly, his gaze sharp. "The instant that 'gaze' was annihilated, I caught a faint spatial coordinate feedback signal. It was vague, but it pointed in a clear direction."
He raised a hand and marked an area on the star chart-not the distant Gamma-7 Nebula, but... a deep section inside Horizon Port, near its central reactor and beneath the Port Authority headquarters!
"What?! The Observers have a base inside Horizon Port?!" Star-Lord exclaimed in shock. "How is that possible? Wouldn't Portmaster Ayla know?"
"Either she doesn't know, or..." Gamora's gaze darkened. "She knows and tolerates it. Maybe she's even... working with them?"
That possibility sent a chill down everyone's spine. If Ayla, the Star-Speaker who controlled Horizon Port, had ties to the mysterious and