Home On Knowhere

Let me tell you about the strangest city in the galaxy.

It had no police, no government, and no regular garbage collection. It had three dozen cantinas, a thousand market stalls, and air that smelled of solder and spiced food and something you could only call adventure — or possibly trouble, because the two smell exactly alike.

It was called Knowhere. And it was built inside a skull.

Not a small skull. The skull of a Celestial — one of the ancient enormous beings who had shaped the universe long before any planet grew its first tree or its first ocean. The skull was the size of a small moon, and over centuries, miners and merchants and wanderers had carved it hollow and filled it with tunnels and chambers and a glowing, purple-lit city that clung to the inside of ancient bone. The Milano slipped in through the eye socket, and everyone pressed to the windows to look.

Even Rocket, who had been to most places in the galaxy and claimed to be impressed by none of them.

The person they had come to meet was the Collector — Taneleer Tivan — who kept a museum on the far edge of Knowhere filled with the rarest objects from a thousand worlds. He was a thin, pale man with a sweep of white hair and a coat trimmed with fur, and he looked at the Orb the way a person looks at something they have been waiting for their whole life.

He lifted it in its case, and the purple glow lit up his face.

"The Power Stone," he said softly. "One of the six Infinity Stones. Ancient beyond measuring. It can destroy entire planets. Anyone who touches it unprotected is annihilated instantly." He turned it in the light. "I want it very much."

Everyone in the room was quiet for a moment, thinking about the fact that Peter had been carrying this in a regular satchel.

And then one of the Collector's displays shattered from the inside.

A woman in a glass case had been waiting long enough. She smashed through and grabbed the Stone and purple fire went EVERYWHERE — up the walls, across the ceiling, into the Collector's collection of irreplaceable things. Everyone ran. The deal was over before it began.

Outside, in the winding corridors of Knowhere, the team caught their breath — and then the sky went dark.

The Dark Aster. Ronan's warship. It floated over Knowhere like a moving mountain, and from it came Nebula.

Nebula was blue, spare, and cold. Her arms and parts of her face were machine, replaced one by one by Thanos as punishment across years of training and battle. She was Gamora's sister — not by blood, but by the terrible shared experience of being taken in by the same fearsome father. They had spent years fighting side by side. And then Gamora had left, and Nebula had stayed, and the distance between them had hardened into something like rage.

Nebula found Gamora and tore her ship apart. The explosion left Gamora spinning in the void. Peter, without stopping to think, grabbed a spare mask, punched the hatch, and jumped into space after her.

Just jumped.

Into the dark.

Rocket watched on the screen. The Orb was gone — Nebula had taken it to Ronan. The mission had failed. Gamora and Peter were drifting. It would be perfectly logical to plot a course away from here, somewhere Ronan's fleet couldn't find them.

Rocket is very logical. He will be the first to tell you this.

He sat for a moment, twitching his nose, thinking about logic.

Then he turned the Milano around.

He never explained it. He didn't need to. Drax exhaled slowly. Groot uncurled from his seat and grew a small bright bud from his fingertip, as if celebrating something. Rocket muttered to himself and flew them into the dark after their friends.

The Ravagers were there — Yondu Udonta's fleet, silver ships with red fins, attracted by Peter's emergency beacon. They scooped everyone up. It was not comfortable, and Yondu was not in a good mood, and there was going to be a lot of arguing very soon.

But everyone was together.

And sometimes that is the only thing that matters at the end of a long, strange day — everyone accounted for, everyone aboard, the ship still flying.

Close your eyes, and listen: somewhere in the dark, five sets of footsteps make their way back to a battered ship that always feels like home.