Arizona.
The town of Carefree.
It was another perfectly ordinary day.
Nothing exciting ever happened here.
With a population of barely ten thousand people, calling it a city would have been generous. It was a small town in every sense of the word.
Most of its businesses lined the highway that cut through the center of town.
A Walmart.
A small grocery store.
A couple of barbershops.
An auto repair garage.
Several clothing stores.
Two bars.
A fast-food restaurant.
A pair of family diners.
A gas station.
That was about it.
If soone wanted anything more exciting, they had to drive nearly fifty kiloters to the nearest major city.
The town was peaceful.
Quiet.
Predictable.
Painfully predictable.
Sam kicked an empty Coca-Cola can down the sidewalk.
The aluminum clattered loudly as it bounced ahead of him.
"This place is so boring."
He sighed.
Compared to New York, Carefree felt like it barely existed.
Still, his family was here.
His mother.
His little sister.
And if his father hadn't disappeared years ago, he would have been here too.
Sam knew he should stay.
His family needed him.
His mother worked herself to exhaustion trying to provide for them.
His little sister still depended on him.
Walking away felt selfish.
Yet...
Every young man dread of sothing greater.
Sam was no exception.
He wanted to beco sobody.
To make a na for himself.
To achieve sothing important and bring a better life to his family.
Like everyone else, he admired Drex Valen.
At this point, it was difficult not to.
Drex had beco synonymous with genius, success, and human progress itself.
Living in the sa era as him was both a blessing and a curse.
A blessing because future generations would rember this age forever.
A curse because every other genius seed insignificant by comparison.
If Sam could beco successful...
Maybe his mother wouldn't have to spend every day worrying about bills.
Maybe his sister could have a better future.
He wanted a different life.
He just didn't know how to tell his mother.
She had already lost her husband.
Even now, she still insisted that Sam's father would return soday.
If Sam left too...
Would she be happy?
Would she understand?
Sam didn't know.
And he wasn't brave enough to ask.
Lost in thought, he eventually arrived ho.
Opening the front door, he called out automatically.
"Mom, I'm ho."
Today happened to be one of his mother's days off.
Normally she would be in the kitchen preparing dinner while his younger sister watched television in the living room.
Sure enough—
"Welco ho, Sam."
His mother sounded tired as always.
Yet she still smiled when she saw him.
The sight made him clench his fists.
"Big brother!"
His little sister imdiately abandoned the television and ran toward him.
Sam smiled and rubbed her head.
Then he retreated to his room.
Closing the door behind him, he stared at the object resting on his desk.
A helt.
One marked by a distinctive four-pointed star.
Sam wanted to beco a superhero.
If he could join S.W.O.R.D., he could earn enough money to take care of his family.
He didn't know exactly how much superheroes earned.
He only knew that it was enough.
Enough to move his mother and sister sowhere safer.
A city protected by S.W.O.R.D.
A place where they wouldn't need to worry about monsters.
Or Worms.
Or alien invasions.
The helt was his chance.
His father had left it behind.
Whenever Sam wore it, he gained incredible abilities.
Flight.
Superhuman strength.
And much more.
Growing up, his father had always told stories.
Stories about traveling through space.
Stories about fighting evil.
Stories about serving as a Nova.
Stories about adventures alongside a team called the Guardians of the Galaxy.
For years, Sam had assud they were just tall tales.
Fantasy.
Lies.
Then ca the Battle of New York.
Aliens had invaded Earth.
The impossible had beco reality.
And suddenly his father's stories didn't seem so ridiculous anymore.
Later, while searching through an old storage room, Sam had found the helt.
The very sa helt his father had once worn.
Now it belonged to him.
And he had already chosen his hero na.
Nova.
At the sa ti, however, his feelings toward his missing father had beco more complicated.
For most of his life, Sam had believed his father was just an ordinary school janitor.
The kind of man who fixed toilets and unclogged drains.
When his father vanished, Sam assud he had simply grown tired of his mundane life and abandoned his family.
Now he wasn't so sure.
Maybe there was another explanation.
Maybe so alien criminal organization had taken him.
If his father really had been so kind of cosmic law enforcent officer, that sort of thing wasn't impossible.
Movies were full of stories like that.
A cri boss seeking revenge against the cop who put him behind bars.
Maybe reality wasn't so different.
What Sam didn't know was that activating the Nova helt imdiately triggered several automated monitoring systems.
Umbrella Corporation's intelligence network detected him almost instantly.
More specifically, the Red Queen.
As one of the Black Queen's subsidiary AIs, the Red Queen continuously monitored erging superhumans.
The superhero database had been updated countless tis over the years.
Drex had never canceled the project.
As a result, the system never stopped running.
Within minutes, Sam Alexander's file appeared on Drex Valen's phone.
Drex glanced at the report.
"Nova..."
He thought about it for a mont.
"If this had happened when I first arrived on Earth, I might've been interested."
"Now?"
"Not really."
He understood exactly what Nova represented.
The Nova Corps served as interstellar peacekeepers across nurous galaxies, including the Milky Way.
They possessed impressive technology and enormous influence.
Functionally, they were cosmic police officers.
Or perhaps cosmic volunteer police officers.
Either way, their role was similar.
In many respects, the Nova Corps resembled the Green Lantern Corps from another universe.
Both recruited champions from countless worlds.
Both maintained galactic order.
The primary difference was simple.
Green Lanterns used rings.
Novas used helts.
And unlike Green Lanterns, Novas couldn't transform willpower directly into reality.
As far as Drex was concerned, that made them a sowhat weaker version of the Green Lantern Corps.
The Nova Corps sounded impressive on paper.
A noble organization gathering righteous warriors from across the cosmos.
The reality was less glamorous.
Most individual Novas weren't particularly powerful.
Their true strength ca from operating as a collective.
On average, a standard Nova's combat capabilities were roughly comparable to one of Tony Stark's advanced Iron Man armors.
Not weak.
But hardly extraordinary.
Then again, the Nova Corps had one important advantage.
Connections.
The Guardians of the Galaxy had caused chaos across half the universe and made enemies everywhere they went.
One major reason they survived was because Peter Quill maintained a good relationship with the Nova Corps.
Having galactic police willing to look the other way was a useful privilege.
Drex continued reading.
The report included a breakdown of Nova Corps ranks.
At the very bottom were logistics personnel.
No stars on the visor.
A simple insignia on the chest.
Honestly, Drex suspected that if Captain Arica were handed one of their standard-issue cosmic suits, he could probably defeat a hundred of them by himself.
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