For the second time in the last hour, Azari found himself staring down death. This time, instead of tall, blonde, and Asgardian, it was short, dark, and angry. Really, really angry.

"I give up?" he tried.

Laura's eyes were black, her pupils dilated. Her teeth were bared in a feral snarl that showed a lot of sharp incisor. The skin of her knuckles was white around the metal claws, and her arm was quivering, making the blades waver. She was close enough that he could feel her breath on his face.

His own Panther instincts gleefully howled: Fight!

But his better judgment took a step back and said: What, are you crazy?!

"Seriously," he said. "You win!"

"He gets the point, Laura," Marrow said, rough voice rich with dark amusement. "Back off."

Laura made a guttural sound and her arm twitched forward. The tips of the claws pricked the skin of his neck, and Azari tried not to wince.

Then the blades snapped back inside her arm, and she stood, giving one curt shake all over. Azari recognized the gesture with a quick flip of disorientation – he did something similar himself, sometimes. He pushed himself into a cross-legged sitting position, shackled hands in his lap.

"Leech," Marrow said, a whipcrack of accusation.

A small figure was propelled – by Hemingway, it seemed – into the center of the throne room. It was a chubby little man of indeterminate age, with enormous white eyes and lumpy, dusty pale green skin. He fell to his knees in front of Marrow's dais, quaking and cowering. "Leech is trying!" he wailed. "Leech is blocking that one's mutant powers like leader Marrow said! But – but not all that one's powers mutant!"

That was very true. Azari drew himself straighter and proclaimed, "My powers come from the Panther God of Wa-"

Laura cuffed him on the back of the head, making him bite down on his tongue mid-word. "No one cares."

He glared up at her. She glared back.

Marrow made a noise of disgust. "Go hide in the corner some more," she told Leech. "Useless halfscan waste."

"Y-yes, leader Marrow!" Leech clambered to his feet and scuttled back behind Hemingway, Ever, and the false Torunn.

Marrow rose from the throne and walked across the floor, planting the butt of her homemade spear on the flagstone next to Azari's crossed legs and then crouching down. Bone cracked and popped with the motion. "We keep Leech around 'cuz every now and then he's not a total loss," she said. "But you're a different story. Come with a short expiration date, you do. What's your name, kid? And remember, I'm just asking to be polite. Ever already picked your brains."

His nose wrinkled involuntarily; she didn't smell much better than her throne room. Up close he could see old scars crisscrossing her body and raw, bald patches where bones had grown through her scalp. "Azari."

For some reason, a small, triumphant smile began to creep across Marrow's unpretty face. "You ever hear about the Morlocks?"

A faint tug at his memory – but it was gone before he could begin to pin it down. He shook his head.

"Callisto?"

He shook his head again.

"Mikhail?"

Impatient with this string of random, meaningless names, he said emphatically, "I've never heard of any of them."

"Well, forget about the last two. They're history. And we're the Morlocks," she added, jerking a thumb at herself and then at the other people in the room. "The ones who matter, anyway. All of us here in the Hill are mutants. You know about mutants, right?"

Tony had explained mutant genetics to them, once Azari and Pym started zapping things every time they sneezed. A few twists of DNA seemed inconsequential to Azari, but according to Tony, being born with an x-gene had been a dangerous thing to do in the world pre-Ultron.

That was the world Marrow and the Morlocks were used to. He would have to remember that.

"Yes," he said in answer to her question, reluctant to agree with anything Marrow said – even if it was true.

Her smile widened into something sly and vicious. "Okay, kid. Who're your parents?"

Azari looked beyond Marrow, trying to see where Laura had positioned herself. He wasn't stupid enough to try another attack with half of his powers gone - not if a blood-crazed fighter was within easy striking distance, just waiting for another chance.

Laura was less than a yard away. Her hands hung at her side, but her fingers were twitching, obviously wanting to pop those claws again.

Azari shoved down his feeling of disappointment and refocused on Marrow, saying, with all the dignity he could muster while sitting handcuffed in a pile of garbage, "My father was the Black Panther."

Marrow briefly looked over her shoulder at one of her goons. Her smile grew larger. "And your mother?"

Azari realized that he hated this woman. He had known her for under fifteen minutes and he would have cheerfully electrocuted that smirk off, with no regret or remorse. He hated her just as much as he had Ultron, and that both surprised and dismayed him.

It did not, however, change the fact that he hated her.

"I don't know," he said through clenched teeth.

"Couldn't hear you, kid. Say it again." Her smile was predatory now, but also – for the first time – genuinely delighted. "Louder."

"I said I don't know!" he shouted. "No one ever told me, and I don't remember! Okay? Are you happy?"

Marrow reached over and slapped his cheek lightly – just hard enough to sting. "Oh, yeah, I'm happy," she said, standing again. "Ever, send the word out. I want all the Morlocks up here, doubletime. We're gonna have a trial."

Ever – the brain guy – warbled, "Yes, Marrow," in dispassionate tones.

Marrow stood next to Laura (who was still glaring) and rested a hand on the girl's shoulder. "Go get Callisto out of the dungeon," she ordered. "The other brats too."

Laura stalked off, and Marrow smiled down at Azari.

"Yeah. A nice public trial. And then," Marrow said, "we're gonna have an execution."