Alex did not destroy what he had removed.
He dissected it.
Deep within the sealed vault beneath the orbital station, the extracted construct was suspended inside a null-field lattice, its once coherent presence reduced to layered logic strata. There was no voice now. No resistance. No sense of self. The will had been stripped cleanly, surgically, by the Soul Stone's judgment and Alex's deliberate intent.
What remained was function without desire.
Alex stood before it in silence, mechadendrites folded behind him, flesh hands bare. He studied the construct the way a surgeon studies an organ removed from a body, not with malice, not with reverence, but with precision.
You will serve, he said quietly. Not as a god. Not as a spirit. As a tool.
The Reality Stone shimmered briefly as he rewrote the construct's internal hierarchy. Faith matrices were collapsed into obedience protocols. Recursive belief engines were flattened into deterministic loops. Any pathway that once allowed independent growth was sealed, redirected into task execution and system optimization.
The result was elegant.
The machine no longer sought meaning. It no longer interpreted worship. It no longer influenced him.
It obeyed.
Gear integrated the stripped construct into the station's core architecture, not as a central intelligence but as a subordinate engine, a vast processing substrate that enhanced calculations, stabilized energy flows, and accelerated fabrication cycles. It could not think beyond its directives. It could not evolve. It could not question.
Alex felt nothing when the integration completed.
That, more than anything, told him he had done it right.
Construction resumed immediately.
The battleship frame dominated the external drydock, a colossal silhouette against Earth's curve. It was not a ship built for elegance or intimidation alone, but for endurance and dominance across hostile realities. Layer by layer, nanites flowed across its hull, weaving vibranium-adamantium composites infused with alien alloys harvested from Mars, Titan, and worlds that no longer existed.
At its heart, the new plasma reactor took shape.
Alex personally oversaw its assembly.
The reactor was not simply a power source. It was a contained star-forge, fueled by matter conversion and stabilized by fields derived from the same principles that governed the Infinity Stones. It produced energy at levels that made conventional arc reactors obsolete, its output steady, scalable, and terrifyingly efficient.
When it activated for the first time, the station's sensors spiked across every spectrum.
Tony Stark stared at the readings in silence.
That's not a reactor, he finally said. That's a declaration of war against physics.
Alex allowed himself a thin smile. Physics adapts.
Weapons integration followed.
Primary batteries consisted of spinal-mounted plasma lances capable of piercing planetary shields. Secondary arrays included gravitic cannons, reality-anchored missiles, and kinetic accelerators that fired projectiles at fractions of light speed. Defensive systems layered void shields, hard-light barriers, and temporal dampeners designed to resist reality manipulation.
Every system was redundant. Every subsystem had contingencies.
The ship was not meant to win a single battle.
It was meant to survive a war across universes.
Test flights began three days later.
The battleship detached from the station with controlled precision, its mass bending local gravity as it moved. Thrusters flared blue-white, silent in vacuum, and the ship slid into a high Earth orbit without stress or instability.
Alex stood on the command deck as systems cycled through diagnostics. He felt no pride, no awe. Only readiness.
Jump test authorized, he said.
Space folded.
For a fraction of a second, reality stretched like glass under pressure, then snapped back. The ship vanished and reappeared beyond lunar orbit, every system intact, every structure stable.
Gear's voice carried a hint of calculated satisfaction. Dimensional translation successful. Structural variance within acceptable margins.
Alex nodded. Prep for second jump. Random vector.
Another fold. Another return.
The ship held.
Back on the station, the world continued to prepare. Governments argued. Armies mobilized. Scientists debated the ethics of what Alex was building even as they relied on it to survive.
Alex did not listen.
He stood alone on the deck as the ship powered down from its final test, looking out into the dark between stars. Somewhere beyond that darkness were realities already bleeding into one another. Worlds that would burn. Civilizations that would beg or fight or fall.
He had seen what hesitation cost.
He would not hesitate again.
Set coordinates for the next dimensional breach, he said. Exploration protocol first. Harvest authorization pending.
Acknowledged, Gear replied.
Alex turned from the viewport and walked deeper into the ship, toward the future he had chosen to shape by force if necessary.
The war was coming.
And this time, he would meet it on his terms.