Entering Mar-Vell

The Quinjet's engine note changed, rising abruptly from a deep roar into a piercing shriek.

The fuselage jolted violently, and a savage thrust pinned all three of them hard against their seats. This prototype, combining humanity's finest technology with portions of alien tech, shot like a hurled spear through the disguised rock layer above the base's dome and plunged straight into the cloudless sky without slowing down.

Carol gripped the controls with both hands, her expression utterly focused. She did not need to look at the complicated instrument panels; her body seemed to have become one with the cold machine. She could feel every tiny tremor as the wings sliced through the thin air, and every fluctuation in the engine core's energy pulses.

"The design is crude."

Talos's voice came from the rear seat, carrying the distinctive rasp of a Skrull. At some point, he had already unfastened his seat belt. Under the crushing g-forces that would have displaced an ordinary person's organs, he stood as steadily as if nothing were happening and calmly floated into the middle of the cockpit. Outside, clouds rapidly gathered beneath them into a boundless white sea, while the sky overhead visibly shifted from azure to deep indigo, then to pure black.

Chu Hang lounged in the copilot's seat with his arms folded and his eyes closed. He looked as though he were not on an interstellar flight, but riding a long-distance bus home. From the corner of his eye, he watched Carol's profile. She bit her lower lip tightly, excitement and tension mingling in her gaze with a trace of barely perceptible confusion.

"We're about to cross the Kármán line." Carol's voice trembled slightly, not from fear, but from the instinctive response of returning to the universe she had been separated from for so