Captain Marvel draws extra strength from his Nega-Band to aid him against the Destroyer, but their battle ends due to the intervention of Fawn. She touches Drax, which implants knowledge in his mind of Rick's peril and, of more concern to him, the continued existence of Thanos, whom he immediately departs to hunt down. Fawn also touches Mar-Vell to alert him to Rick's situation, though he continues to be the only one that can't see her.

Mar-Vell quickly finds a dying, comatose Rick and does all he can to stabilize him with the remaining shared energy of the Nega-Bands, but knows his only hope is to get them to Deneb IV. As he tries to help Rick, he finds it increasingly difficult to focus and his internal monologue becomes less sophisticated. He finds Rusty the robot mule mysteriously back in working condition (the Supreme Intelligence having restored it during the battle because he wanted them to hurry along to the planet), so they are able to jump to Debeb IV only to find it devastated, and just before Rusty breaks down again.

After Mar-Vell gets Rick into a life-support chamber, he flies out to find the source of the planet's destruction. He runs into an army of Null-Trons -- giant, robotic, monolithic heads created as enforcers for the Kree Empire that had been supposedly decommissioned when the Supreme Intelligence first came to power. They are now rampaging across the planet, bent on eliminating all life. Mar-Vell escapes his encounter with the Null-Trons only to be captured by group of underground-dwelling cyborgs, the remaining resistance forces of the native population led by a Denebian head grafted to a Null-Tron as his body. The cyborgs have also retrieved the comatose Rick Jones. The Head reveals to Mar-Vell that they need the duo's help reclaiming their planet, offering a solution to their own internal problem in return, revealing that the cause of Rick's coma and Mar-Vell's deteriorating concentration is that their minds are merging into one.

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