Extraordinary Measures

Synopsis

Marcus Veil was once a man who stood beside gods — literally. A former strategist and civilian partner to Captain Marvel, he spent years navigating alien invasions, infinity-level catastrophes, and the complicated glory of being the unremarkable husband of Earth's mightiest hero. But that chapter is over. Carol is gone — not dead, but departed, called back to the cosmos on a mission that has stretched from months into years, leaving behind only silence and a wedding ring on a kitchen counter in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Now fifty-one, Marcus teaches high school chemistry in the same desert city where superpowers are just something you see on the news. A routine medical scan reveals an aggressive, inoperable neural condition — the price, doctors suspect, of years of exposure to photon radiation from Carol's energy output. He has perhaps eighteen months. His savings are gutted. His estranged brother owes nothing. His pride owes everything. But Marcus is not ordinary. He carries knowledge — of advanced chemistry, of alien synthesization techniques absorbed from Kree science, of a mind sharpened by years of planning operations against supervillains. When a chance encounter with a former S.H.I.E.L.D. field contact exposes him to the staggering profitability of the southwestern drug trade, something cold and calculated clicks into place behind his eyes. He will not die broke and forgotten. He will not let his daughter inherit debt and shame. He begins cooking — and what he produces is unlike anything the criminal world has ever seen. Enhanced by techniques no human chemist should possess, Marcus Veil's product is perfect. And perfection, in the drug trade, makes you a god. But gods have enemies. And the man who once helped save the universe is now building an empire that may destroy him from the inside out — one brilliant, monstrous decision at a time.