Y/N lay still in the dark, watching the slow rotation of the ceiling fan stir the thick summer air. No earpieces buzzing with tactical data. No flashing red lights of the Red Room. No government officials demanding she sign her life away under the Sokovia Accords. Just the rhythmic chirping of cicadas and the vast, open sky above her farm.

Peace, she reminded herself. This is peace.

The empty side of the bed was a familiar weight tonight. Dale was out—probably at The Rusty Spur, nursing a whiskey and complaining about the price of feed. Good. She'd learned to savor the quiet when he wasn't around.

Then the sky tore open.

It wasn't the rumble of summer thunder. It was a violent, metallic shriek that vibrated deep in her chest—a sound she hadn't heard since the skies over Sokovia. Her body moved before her mind caught up, instincts slamming into overdrive. Bare feet hit the hardwood floor. The ceiling fan spun forgotten.

No. No, no, no.

She took the stairs two at a time, a phantom weight at the small of her back where her Glock used to sit. The front door slammed against the porch rail as she burst outside in her threadbare sleep shorts and thin tank top.

The sky was burning.

A massive, fiercely burning starship—unlike anything the modern military possessed—streaked through the atmosphere. Trailing thick black smoke and shedding white-hot hull plating, it skipped violently across her upper pasture, tearing a massive, smoking trench through the rolling green hills before slamming to a grinding, concussive halt right in the middle of her cornfield.

The impact shook the earth beneath her bare feet. A shockwave of dust and debris rolled over her, hot against her skin. Then silence descended again, save for the hiss of escaping steam and the crackle of burning crop rows.

Y/N stood at the edge of her porch, hand reaching instinctively for the small of her back. Her heart hammered against her ribs, not out of fear, but from the sudden, terrifying realization that her quiet sanctuary was gone.

Across the ruined field, through the haze of smoke and drifting ash, the ship's pressurized boarding ramp hissed. It groaned under warped metal tension, then blew entirely off its hinges, thudding heavily into the dirt.

A figure stumbled out, coughing violently, waving a hand to clear the air. Even from a distance, Y/N could see the flash of a dark tunic, the glint of something metallic at his hip.

"I told you," a sharp, cultured voice echoed from inside the wreckage, dripping with exhaustion and annoyance, "taking the auxiliary hyperdrive offline was a mistake, Anakin."

"We're alive, aren't we?" a younger, brash voice shot back, followed by the heavy thud of armored boots hitting the Carolina soil.

Two more figures emerged from the smoke—soldiers in blue and orange painted armor, helmets tucked under their arms, scanning the ruined field with sharp, military precision. Their movements were trained. Efficient. Deadly.

Y/N narrowed her eyes, her assassin's gaze locking onto them. Whoever they were, they weren't SHIELD. They weren't the government. And they definitely weren't from around here.