In a dark back alley in Lower Manhattan.
The dull thuds of blunt weapons gradually died away.
The Skrull sanitation worker who had tried to escape into the sewers had reverted to his alien form, with green skin and pointed ears. He lay in a pool of blood, a fire axe having split a deep gash in his head, two switchblades buried in his chest. He had long since stopped breathing.
The twenty-odd burly men in the alley panted heavily, green blood still dripping from their baseball bats and steel pipes.
No one spoke.
The fervor of fighting side by side quickly faded the moment the corpse went completely cold, replaced by deathly silence and gazes that grew increasingly greedy and wary.
Ten million dollars.
Or a dose of "Extremis Five" Super-Soldier Serum that could make someone impervious to blades and bullets and regrow severed limbs!
There was only one corpse, but twenty-three people in the alley.
"I spotted this monster first!"
A burly bald man with a brutish face broke the silence first. He stepped forward, holding his bloody fire axe across his chest as he swept a vicious glare over the others. "And I landed the killing blow, too! This body's mine. Anyone who tries to take it, don't blame me if my axe doesn't care who you are!"
"Bullshit!"
A young Black man in a leather jacket immediately drew a Glock and pressed its dark muzzle straight against the bald man's forehead. "I put three rounds in his gut! Without those three shots, what would've stopped him from getting away? Get lost if you know what's good for you. That serum's mine!"
"Nobody move! Whoever takes that body dies here!"
Clatter!
The remaining twenty-odd people instantly split into several groups. Some raised hunting shotguns, others tightened their