Stark Tower.
Avengers has gathered.
To be precise, it is the first generation Avengers.
Only Thor is missing from the team, and there is a one-eyed man wearing a black leather trench coat.
Nick Fury was sitting at the conference table, his only single eye scanning the crowd.
Banner, Steve, Natasha, Hawkeye, and finally stopped at Tony.
"So, Stark, you called me over from S.H.I.E.L.D. Headquarters in the middle of the night, and summoned all these people to your building." Fury's voice was low, "Just to wait for someone who didn't even see a shadow?"
"Correction, I didn't ask you to come, he asked me to inform you." Tony took a sip of wine, "And this building is now under my control. I can invite whoever I want to come."
"He said there is a crisis related to the survival of the earth." Fury crossed his hands on the table, "Where is the crisis? Alien invasion? Or is some kind of secret weapon out of control? Can any of you give me accurate information?"
Tony leaned on the back of the chair and spread his hands.
"I really don't know that."
Fury narrowed his one eye. He hated this feeling of being out of control the most. A person with unfathomable strength now actually bypassed S.H.I.E.L.D. and directly summoned Avengers Squad that he had worked so hard to prepare.
"You don't know?"
"I only know that he asked me to summon you, but he didn't tell me who the enemy was or how to fight."
Tony raised his eyebrows.
"To be honest, I really want to know now. After all, it is very impolite for the initiator of the meeting to be late."
Steve glanced out the window.
"Is the world so dangerous now?" Steve sighed, his eyes a little complicated, "I slept for seventy years, and when I woke up I found that not only did I have to face aliens flying all over the sky, but I also had to deal with unknown enemies who were preparing to destroy the earth."
"Captain, just get used to it. Villains these days don't play by the rules." Tony added smoothly.
"If it's a real crisis, we really need to prepare in advance." Natasha turned around, "But first, we have to know where the enemy is."
Fury did not participate in their small talk.
He stared at the entrance to the conference room and tapped his fingers on the table.
What exactly does he want to do?
Is it to summon Avengers to fight against some kind of enemy, or is it to gather all the super heroes together in the name of crisis?
In the former case, they need Lucian.
In the latter case, they need to be more prepared for Lucian.
At this moment, the conference room door was pushed open.
Lucian walked in with Helen Cho and Shuri.
"Good evening."
His eyes swept across everyone and stopped on Nick Fury.
"You don't have to call me Avengers this time."
Lucian took a step forward.
"This time we are Preventers."
Tony stared at the two unfamiliar faces behind Lucian, an Asian woman and a black girl, with raised eyebrows.
"Preventers? Is this the helper you found?"
"Dr. Helen Cho, biotechnology expert."
Lucian points to Shuri.
"The most outstanding researchers in the field of Shuri, Princess of Wakanda, Vibranium Technology."
Lucian's eyes swept over everyone present, from Tony's cynicism, to Steve's seriousness, to Nick Fury's one eye full of scrutiny.
On the way back, he kept thinking about how to make these heroes believe in the coming crisis.
Lie? Deception? He prepared several versions of the story, but gave up in the end.
Dealing with an old fox like Nick Fury, he will sniff out the flaws in any lie.
Therefore, Lucian chose the truth.
Of course, the truth is that key information was concealed.
"It's very troublesome to explain."
Lucian took a step forward.
"Why don't you see it with your own eyes?"
The scene before everyone's eyes suddenly distorted and shattered.
Stark Tower disappeared, replaced by an endless dark universe.
Stars passed by them one by one.
Immediately afterwards, a huge figure appeared at the end of the field of vision.
It was a humanoid creature. He just stretched out his hand casually and could hold a star in the palm of his hand, like crushing a candy.
"Celestials."
The voice of Lucian sounded in everyone's mind.
The screen switches rapidly.
They came to the earth in ancient times, which was wild and primitive.
Celestials used incomprehensible power to create a group of beings that looked the same as humans but possessed extraordinary abilities.
Faces flashed before Avengers's eyes, and they were exactly the people Lucian needed to deal with in his plan.
Ikaris, Gilgamesh, Thena...
"They are the creations of Eternals and Celestials. Their mission is to protect humans on the earth, eliminate all threats, and allow the human race to thrive."
In the illusion, time begins to speed up.
Human beings have gone from eating hair and drinking blood to establishing civilization, from slash-and-burn farming to the industrial revolution. The figure of Eternals has always been hidden in the shadow of history, silently guarding it all.
Steve even saw the battlefield of World War II, but Eternals did not appear.
"But God-given kindness often comes with a price tag."
Lucian's voice sounded again, with a hint of mockery.
The picture suddenly sank into the center of the earth.
Deep in the hot magma, a curled-up, equally huge embryo was slowly pulsing.
Every heartbeat seems to be absorbing the life energy of hundreds of millions of creatures on the surface of the earth.
"When the number of intelligent life reaches a certain critical point, it will become the nourishment for the new gods buried deep in the earth."
"When the new god breaks out of his shell, he will destroy the entire earth."
"They call this process 'Emergence'."
Boom!
The illusion disappears.
Everyone in the conference room suddenly came to their senses, several people gasped uncontrollably, and there was cold sweat on their foreheads.
The immersive experience just now was too real. The shock of the planet being crushed and the fear brought about by the giant child in the center of the earth still linger in my heart.
The entire conference room fell into a deadly silence.
After a long time, it was Nick Fury who broke the silence first.
His one eye was locked firmly on Lucian, and his voice was deep.
"A very interesting story, like a well-made science fiction movie."
"But I have a few doubts."
"First, how do you know these things?"
"Second, if what you said is true, Eternals wants to ensure the number of humans, then why have they disappeared? Two world wars, hundreds of millions of people were killed and injured, where are they? Not long ago, New York had an alien invasion and the earth was almost destroyed, where were they?"
"Third," Fury's one eye narrowed, "All of this is just your one-sided statement. How can we confirm that what you said is true? After all, you and the Eternals you speak of are both threats that appear out of nowhere in my eyes."
Fury's words were like a basin of cold water, pouring on Avengers who had woken up and was still immersed in shock.
Yes, Lucian itself is a huge unknown.
Why should you believe a doomsday prophecy brought by an unknown person?
Lucian had long expected this scenario.
This was exactly the purpose of calling Nick Fury.
Let this group of people explore and learn the truth on their own, which is far more trustworthy than his earnest persuasion.
Moreover, Nick also holds a trump card in his hand that can summon Captain Marvel, which is the final insurance.
He was about to speak and guide them to investigate some Silk horse tracks.
Tony suddenly spoke up.
"Okay, guys."
All eyes turned to him.
I saw Tony's eyes filled with a rare emotion that was mixed with horror and absurdity.
"Let's not talk about other aspects, but the person called 'Eternals' by this guy... seems to be really abnormal."
"What do you mean?" Steve asked.
Tony did not answer, but said to the air, "JARVIS, submit the search results just now and show them all."
"Yes, sir."
The next second, several huge holographic projections unfolded in the center of the conference room.
On the screen, a clear portrait of a member of Eternals displayed by Lucian appeared.
Then, next to the portrait, pictures with historical marks were displayed.
A yellowed black and white photo, taken on the Europe battlefield in 1918. In the corner of the photo, the face is clearly visible.
A newspaper from the 1960s, with a social event on the front page, and the same face in the crowd.
A screenshot of a surveillance video from the 1990s. Under the blurry pixels, you can still make out the unchanged face.
One photo after another, one video after another, spanning hundreds of years.
As for the man in the photo, his appearance and demeanor have not changed at all, as if time has completely stopped on him.
"Just now, I asked JARVIS to use the faces of those people in your illusion to conduct facial recognition comparison in the global database."
"Then, we found this..."
"A horrifying fact."
On the holographic screen, faces belonging to different Eternals members were displayed side by side. Under each face, there was a long list of historical information from different eras and countries.
Some of them were ancient philosophers, some were the Cavalry in the Middle Ages, and some were modern movie stars.
They appear in every corner of human history, but they never grow old.
Tony swallowed, pointed at the screen, and said word by word:
"They will never grow old."