Chapter 76: Xaviers School for Gifted Youngsters
At six o'clock the next morning, three cups of coffee were set on the table.
Wanda was already dressed in her coat, standing by the door.
Emma was thirty seconds later than her. Her white combat suit had been repaired, her blonde hair was down, and her aura of oppression was back on display.
The two met in the entryway, locking eyes for half a second; neither spoke.
"Let's go." Arthur walked toward the door, carrying his own cup.
The Teleportation circle expanded on the living room floor. Pietro poked his head out from the bedroom, an energy bar hanging from his mouth.
"What if that old bald guy is hard to get along with?"
"Then we won't stay for tea."
Blue light swallowed the three of them.
Westchester County. 6:11 AM.
The first thing they smelled was the scent of the lawn. Freshly mowed.
The manor gates were two hundred meters away—wrought iron fences half-covered in climbing vines. Behind the fence lay a straight gravel path lined with neatly trimmed oaks, stretching toward the main building complex in the distance.
Gothic style. Pointed arches, flying buttresses, high windows. It was the real deal, an old structure moved foundation and all from another Universe. The stone walls bore traces of weathering, with grooves carved by a hundred years of rainfall.
Wanda's Chaos Magic perception flared for a moment before she withdrew it.
"Every stone is saturated with mental power. It's not a defense; it's more like a habit. He has sat here for many years."
Emma said nothing. She was all too familiar with this building.
The iron gates opened on their own.
Footsteps echoed on the gravel path. Two young people stepped out from the shadows of the oaks. The one in front had short brown hair and wore a tracksuit, with wariness written all over his face. Behind him followed a blue-skinned girl, her yellow pupils shining piercingly bright in the morning light.
"The Headmaster says we have guests." The short-haired boy stood in the middle of the path, arms crossed. "Follow me."
He didn't say welcome.
The blue-skinned girl stared at Arthur for three seconds before scanning Wanda and Emma. Her tail—she had a tail—flicked uneasily.
There were at least four others behind the trees on both sides of the road. They didn't show themselves, but they couldn't hide their presence. One had an absurdly high body temperature, while another felt intensely metallic.
Using the reception party as guards. Xavier was being cautious.
As they passed through the front hall, seven or eight adolescents were peeking from the corridor. A boy clutching a doorframe had two red beams shoot from his eyes, only for them to be slapped out by the girl next to him.
As Arthur walked across the floor, ice-blue Arcanepatterns spread a few centimeters from his soles before retracting. It wasn't an active release—the mental residue deposited in the building over so long had simply brushed against his mana and pulled back.
Two energy systems, distinct and separate.
The expressions of several peeking children changed.
The study was on the east side of the second floor. The door was slightly ajar.
The short-haired boy pushed the door open, stepped aside, and left, moving faster than when he arrived.
Charles Xavier sat by the window. His wheelchair was old, the paint on the armrests worn down to the natural wood. Three cups sat on the desk, tea already poured.
"I should have prepared an extra cup." Xavier's gaze lingered on Wanda for a beat. "I originally thought there were only two."
A rare lapse in judgment for an Omega-level telepath. The field of Chaos Magic had caused his long-range scan to lose focus; he had only locked onto two signal sources.
"Wanda drinks tea too." Arthur walked in, pulled out a chair, and sat down.
Wanda sat to his left. Emma stood behind him to his right, remaining standing.
Xavier personally poured tea into the third cup. Darjeeling, at ninety degrees. The duties of a host, and nothing more.
He looked at Emma first and nodded. Then he looked at Wanda—watching her for a full two seconds, using no abilities, reading her purely through experience.
Finally, he looked at Arthur.
Two completely different weights pressed into the same space simultaneously.
Neither gave way first.
"Please sit—though you already have." Xavier withdrew his hand, which had just begun to rise. "You are more casual than I expected."
"I didn't come here to negotiate." Arthur picked up the teacup and took a sip. Darjeeling, the perfect temperature. "Professor, let's save time. If you have questions, ask them directly."
Xavier folded his hands over his knees.
"That young lady." He looked at Wanda. "Your energy signature is very unique. It's not the x-gene, but it is highly consistent with the underlying code of Chaos Magic. You have been in contact with the Mind Stone."
It wasn't a question.
Wanda's fingers twitched. "You can read that?"
"I don't need to read it. Your Chaos field is repelling my perception; the method of repulsion itself is information." Xavier held his tea, his tone like someone discussing the weather. "The Mind Stone didn't activate your ability; it activated something you already had. The stone was merely a key."
Wanda didn't speak. Arthur noticed her breathing rhythm quicken by half a beat.
This was the answer she had always wanted to know—what exactly she was. A HYDRA experiment, or someone who was meant to possess this power from birth.
"We can talk about her later." Arthur took over the conversation. "Professor, I have a few things to say."
"Please."
"First. The two Universes are stitching together; it's irreversible. Your students, your race—from today on, you are residents of this World. You handle the residency issues yourself; you can argue the political issues with Fury."
"Second." Arthur set down his teacup. "Your x-gene, your cerebro—they are completely useless against me. It has nothing to do with strength; the systems are incompatible."
The study fell silent for two seconds.
In those two seconds, Wanda perceived something.
It wasn't a mental probe; Xavier didn't repeat the mistake Emma had warned him about. He did something smarter—as Arthur said 'the systems are incompatible,' every stone in the study saturated with mental power vibrated slightly, their frequency resonating with Arthur's sound waves.
Indirect detection. Using the environmental medium instead of direct contact.
The passive field of the Arcane Mark expanded by two centimeters.
The mental residue in those stones was washed clean in the same second.
Xavier's hand froze on the armrest.
"...Completely incompatible."
He repeated those two words.
"Professor." Arthur's tone didn't change. "I can see what methods you're using. Don't let it happen again."
Xavier looked at him, silent for three seconds. Three seconds in this setting was a long time.
"I apologize." He set his teacup down. "This is the first time in my fifty years of life that I have encountered a consciousness that is entirely unperceivable."
He paused.
"Frankly, it is unsettling."
"It's right to be unsettled." Arthur stood up and walked to the window.
On the lawn, several children were practicing their abilities. One girl shot ice spikes from her fingertips, while another boy hung suspended three meters in the air, his legs still kicking.
"The disagreement between you and your old friend ultimately boils down to one question: whether Mutants and humans can coexist."
"My stance is simple—if someone lives their life peacefully, I don't care. But if someone wants to flip the table..."
He didn't finish his sentence.
The Arcane Mark grew hot.
A red warning exploded on the system panel in the top right of his vision:
[Magneto's signal is suddenly accelerating! Large-scale magnetic field displacement! All railway tracks within New York State are deflecting simultaneously!]
[Estimated time of arrival in Westchester County: Original 31 hours → Revised to... 47 minutes.]
Arthur turned his head.
Xavier's hand was already pressed to his temple. That magnetic signal was rushing in from a hundred kilometers away at an irrational speed, twisting the metal infrastructure along its path into pretzels.
"Eric doesn't want to wait anymore." Xavier's voice was calm, but the blanket on his knees was gripped into folds. "He must have seen the news of the Hellfire Club's downfall."
He looked at Arthur.
"He has a daughter named Lorna Dane. She has been missing for three months. She was last seen in the peripheral records of the Hellfire Club."
Arthur withdrew his gaze from outside the window.
Wanda remained seated, unmoving. But her Chaos perception had already reached the outskirts of the manor—on the southern horizon, the scent of metal was growing thicker, and a pressure invisible to the naked eye permeated the air.
Iron was moving. A massive amount of iron.
Outside the window, the southern sky was torn open by a silver ribbon of light.
Hundreds of tons of steel soared, driven by magnetic fields, the reflected sunlight dyeing half the sky white.
Emma's fingers tightened.
The children practicing on the lawn stopped and all looked up; an ice spike fell from a young girl's hand and shattered on the ground.
Xavier closed his eyes for a moment.
"It's not even forty-seven minutes."
Arthur leaned against the window frame, watching the approaching silver ribbon of light.
"Lorna Dane." He repeated the name.
He turned to look at Xavier.
"Professor, when your old friend arrives, will he ask questions before he starts a fight?"
Xavier didn't answer.
The iron nails in the window frame were humming.
Chapter 77: The Boundary of Iron and Ice
The window frame shattered.
Four hand-forged iron nails were pulled from the oak frame; the cast-iron hinges, latches, and trim strips detached from the wooden structure simultaneously, taking half a wall's worth of lime coating with them. Broken glass and iron pieces flew outward as the wind rushed in.
Wanda's Chaos Perception lit up 0.3 seconds before the shattering, red light shielding Arthur's left shoulder. It wasn't needed. All the metal fragments were flying outward, summoned by another force from outside.
The children practicing on the lawn were gone. The girl who had been firing ice shards just moments ago was being pulled toward the main building by a short-haired boy; a blue-skinned girl stood motionless behind an oak tree, her yellow pupils looking south.
A section of the southern sky was severed.
A silvery-white band of light rose from the horizon, its width covering half the field of vision. It was all metal. Rails were uprooted from their roadbeds, bent into arcs, and joined end to end. Steel beams were torn from the skeletons of construction sites, bringing concrete fragments with them. Car wreckage, entire vehicles with doors wide open and steering wheels still in place, were seized by magnetic force and lifted into the sky.
Hundreds of tons.
Everything converged above the manor into a floating mountain of metal, obscuring the Sun. Shadows fell on the lawn, cutting the morning light in half.
A person stood atop the mountain.
A dark red cape billowed, pulled by the magnetic field's currents. The reflection from his helmet hid most of his face, revealing only a clenched jaw.
Magneto Erik Lehnsherr did not look at Xavier.
He looked down from the peak of the metal mountain, past the shattered window, past the teacups and chairs in the study, his gaze landing directly on Emma.
"The Hellfire Club has been leveled."
He spoke in a low voice, every syllable conducted along the metal particles in the air; the steel skeleton of the entire manor hummed in response.
"Lorna was last seen there."
Emma's back straightened by half an inch. Instinct. In her original World, this voice meant one thing: everything containing iron within a three-kilometer radius no longer belonged to you.
Arthur stood by the window, broken glass falling on his shoulders, a few shards catching on the fabric of his hoodie without falling. He didn't move.
The metal mountain began to disintegrate.
Orderly disassembly. Every steel beam, every section of rail, every car door panel was separated, sharpened at the tips, bent, and compressed.
Three seconds. Hundreds of tons of scrap metal turned into thousands of steel spears, two meters long and three centimeters thick.
They hung in the air. All the spear tips were pointed toward the study.
Xavier's hands pressed against the armrests of his wheelchair, his knuckles white. He didn't speak; his mental power spread a thin buffer field across the interior walls of the study to prevent the Impact from injuring the children in the building.
"Eric," Xavier's voice was steady. "She is not here."
Magneto did not respond.
The steel spears began to accelerate. The first wave of thirty-six, in a conical formation, aimed for the front wall of the study. Their speed exceeded the speed of sound, and the air in front of the spear tips was compressed into a white conical mist.
Arthur struck the ground with his staff.
Blue. An Arcane Barrier expanded from the Base of the staff, laying along the inner walls of the study and covering the four walls and the ceiling. Every stone brick's surface was plated with a film woven from Arcane laws.
The thirty-six steel spears slammed into the blue barrier.
The sound was muffled and short, with no echo. The moment they touched the barrier, the magnetism on the spear tips was stripped away. The acceleration Magnetohad granted them lost its medium; momentum remained, but steel without a magnetic field's guidance was just dead weight. They hit, bounced off, and fell crookedly onto the lawn, piercing into the soil.
The second wave. A hundred spears. Denser, faster.
Bounced off.
The third wave. Five hundred spears. Covering all exposed surfaces of the study.
All bounced off.
The lawn was filled with steel spears, a forest of metal growing from the dirt.
Humming. Two force fields collided in the space of the study. Magneto's magnetic field pressed inward from the outside, while Arthur's Arcane field pushed outward from within. The two energies crushed air molecules at their interface, their frequencies overlapping to produce a low-frequency vibration audible to the human ear.
Every glass window in the manor shook simultaneously.
Xavier's wheelchair was between the two force fields, motionless. His mental field wrapped him in an independent stable zone. But the tea in his cup was rippling.
Magneto stepped down from the wreckage of the metal mountain, the steel plates beneath his feet descending step by step. With every step he took, the irrigation pipes buried in the lawn vibrated.
He stopped three meters outside the window.
Inside the study, Arthur leaned against the window frame, broken glass beneath his feet. The two men looked at each other across the blue Arcane Barrier.
Magneto sized him up. From the staff to the tips of his shoes, and from the tips of his shoes back to the staff.
"You are the one who burned the Hellfire Club to ashes."
Arthur's posture while holding his cup didn't change. "Yes."
"Where is my daughter?"
"Not there."
Magneto's jaw muscles tightened. He shifted his gaze back to Emma.
"Emma Frost. My daughter was sent to the Eastern Europebranch by your Club's people three months ago; I found the transport records. Then your Club was leveled by this man. Where is Lorna?"
Emma stood half a step behind Arthur to his right, neither retreating nor stepping forward.
"Lorna's transfer to the Eastern Europe branch was an internal operation of the rebels; I was unaware while I was trapped at the core Base." Her voice returned to the White Queen's channel—clear, with all excess emotion stripped away.
"Arthur destroyed the New York headquarters; the Eastern Europe stronghold was untouched."
"Then where is the Eastern Europe stronghold?"
"The Carpathian Mountains. A Cold War-era underground military fortress, converted into a Mutant laboratory."
"Laboratory." Magneto chewed on those words.
The magnetic field fluctuations in the air jumped a notch. The tips of the steel spears on the lawn pivoted two degrees simultaneously, turning from the study toward the sky. An emotional leak.
Wanda pulled her hands back to her knees. Her Chaos Perception was reading this man's emotional spectrum; no intrusion was needed, as the overflowing magnetic field itself was an open electrocardiogram.
Fear. A deep, deep fear buried beneath anger.
A father afraid of hearing the worst news.
Xavier's voice drifted out from the study. "Eric, come in and sit."
"I'm not here for tea, Charles."
"I know. But while you stand outside, my students cannot leave their dorms for breakfast."
Magneto tilted his head to look at the windows of the main building. Over a dozen faces were pressed against the glass, big and small, some of them trembling.
He retracted the pressure range of his magnetic field by thirty percent.
Then he stepped over the window frame and into the study, treading on broken glass. With every step, a faint magnetic pulse was exchanged between the metal buckles of his boots and the wiring in the floor. An unconscious scan.
He passed by Arthur, the distance between them less than a meter.
The magnetic field hit the passive field of the Arcane Mark. Magneto's pace faltered.
"You have no metal on your person."
His tone shifted from questioning to confirmation. He took another step, head unturned, his magnetic sense having already scanned Arthur from head to toe.
"Not a single bit. No zippers on your clothes, no buttons, no rivets. No steel plates in your soles. No metal fillings in your mouth."
"You are the first person for whom I cannot find a point of leverage."
He walked to the side opposite Xavier but did not sit.
"I don't need metal." Arthur switched his staff to his other hand. "You should have noticed what happens when your magnetic field hits my shield."
"I noticed." Magneto turned around. "Your shield stripped the magnetism from my steel spears. A rewriting of rules."
The study fell silent for a second.
Xavier watched the two of them, his fingers not relaxing on the armrests.
Magneto's next words were directed at Emma.
"You followed him."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because he can do what you cannot."
A faint creak came from the iron hinges behind the study door.
Magneto looked back at Arthur.
"I don't care who you are, what ability you use, or where you come from."
With every comma he spoke, a metal object in the study shifted: a teaspoon turned thirty degrees, the door lock retracted half a turn, and a remaining section of an iron nail in the window frame was pulled out another two millimeters.
"I only ask one question. Do you know where my daughter is?"
"I know," Arthur said.
Magneto waited.
"The Carpathian Mountains, sixth floor underground. She is still alive, being used as a test subject for a Magnetic Weaponization Project."
The metal skeleton of the entire building shook simultaneously, clenched tight and then released.
"When did you find out?"
"Last night."
"Why didn't you go?"
"I planned to go today. You arrived a bit early."
Magneto stared at him for three seconds.
Then he waved his hand.
All the metal lines beneath the study floor suddenly erupted—water pipes, heating pipes, cable conduits—bursting through the gaps in the wooden floor, twisting and bending in the air, closing in from all directions to lock Arthur in a metal cage on the spot.
Wanda's red light flared.
Arthur raised his left hand, palm facing Wanda, signaling her not to move.
The iron cage closed around him at a distance of one meter.
Chapter 78: Metal is Ineffective Against magic
The iron cage closed to a distance of one meter and stopped.
The pipes were still moving, the screeching of metal friction squeezing in from all directions, making the study's wooden wall panels tremble.
"He's not holding back." Wanda took half a step back, her Chaos Perception pushed to maximum power as red light climbed from her fingertips along her arms to the crook of her elbows. "The magnetic field is still intensifying."
The pipes twisted and squeezed toward the center. The thickest heating pipe had already bent into a U-shape, the paint on its cast-iron exterior cracking and peeling. Shards flicked past Wanda's cheek, but she didn't flinch.
Her gaze was fixed on the point where those pipes touched the air surrounding Arthur.
Red light flickered twice in the depths of her eyes.
The changes at the contact surface were visible without any instruments; the gray at the ends of the pipes was changing, the luster of the iron fading inch by inch into a matte, lifeless texture.
"The arrangement of the iron molecules has changed." Her voice was very low. "The magnetism... it's just gone."
Emma stood to the right rear, diamond patterns flashing from her fingertips before receding.
She stared at those lusterless pipes for three seconds; the equations in her mind no longer added up.
"The Arcane laws overlaid them, stripping the magnetic properties from the molecular structure."
She paused for a beat.
"Iron is still iron, it just no longer responds to magnetic fields. It's no different from wood."
The pipes that were screaming and squeezing a second ago went limp the next. They slumped crookedly onto the floor, with one coming to rest on Arthur's shoe.
Arthur glanced down and flicked it away with the tip of his toe.
Magneto's hand was still raised.
The angle of his five splayed fingers hadn't changed, but the magnetic field lines beneath his palm could no longer find an anchor point.
"Interesting." His voice was low, the humming still present, but his tone now carried a hint of appraisal. "Your barrier stripped away my magnetic field."
"You have it backward." Arthur held his teacup, his wrist unmoving. "It's your magnetic field that failed upon touching my rules."
Magneto stared at him for two seconds.
The hem of his cape swayed back and forth in the magnetic currents.
"Try again."
He flipped his palm over and spread his fingers.
Muffled thuds of ground tremors echoed from outside the manor, one after another in rapid succession, as if something beneath the surface was being uprooted.
Thousands of steel spears planted in the lawn were pulled from the soil and rose into the sky simultaneously. In the distant parking lot, three school buses were flipped entirely, their bodies crushed into iron discs in mid-air as glass shards showered the sky.
"The railway tracks outside are also shifting." Wanda's Chaos Perception extended outward, her voice tightening. "They're converging here from all directions. All across New York State."
The sky darkened.
Thousands of tons of metal blocked all light from outside the ceiling. A dome compressed from steel was shrinking toward the center of the manor, the sounds of metal clashing against metal layering into a roar thicker than thunder.
Xavier's wheelchair rolled back half a step. A mental force field enveloped the entire main building. The windows shook, and bits of plaster fell from the ceiling piece by piece.
"Eric, that's enough."
Magneto didn't listen.
The dome began to press down. Thousands of tons of steel squeezed toward the study simultaneously, cracks in the walls climbing from the foundation all the way to the roof.
"He's testing your limit," Wanda said.
"I know."
Arthur set down his teacup with a very light motion. The sound of the cup hitting the coffee table was almost inaudible amidst the humming of the dome.
No staff was raised, no incantations were spoken, and no extra casting gestures were made.
Frost Nova.
An absolute zero force field expanded outward from beneath his feet. Silently, it passed through the gaps in the study floor, through the remaining iron fixtures on both sides of the corridor, through the steel rebar inside the walls, and through the perimeter fence, reaching the dome in three seconds.
The first cracking sound came from the north.
"It broke." Wanda turned her head in that direction. "The steel beams compressed into solid pillars have split right down the middle. The cross-sections are so smooth you could count the grains."
A second sound, a third, and then a continuous sequence of shattering.
As the temperature dropped below the material's brittle transition point, the inertia of the metal's own movement accelerated the spread of the cracks.
He didn't have to do anything; the mass of metal would shatter on its own.
Ice-blue cracks spread across the dome. Steel beams snapped, railway tracks shattered, and vehicle wreckage disintegrated.
Thousands of tons, in five seconds, all turned into iron dust.
Gray dust drifted down from the sky, landing on the lawn, on the oak leaves, and on the remaining windowsills of the study, accumulating in a thin layer. When the sunlight shone through again, the dust floated in the beams of light, covering the entire manor in a layer of gray snow.
Magneto's hand was still raised.
"He can still sense every single particle," Wandawhispered.
"It's useless." Emma's tone remained flat. "To accelerate sand-sized iron dust to the speed of a bullet requires as much mental energy as accelerating a single steel spear. The orders of magnitude have changed; the equations can no longer be solved."
Magneto lowered his hand.
Silence fell over the study for three seconds, with only the dust swirling in the shafts of light.
Arthur looked down at the layer of dust on his shoes.
"Your ability controls magnetic fields." He looked up.
Magneto didn't move.
"Magnetic fields act on metal." Arthur held his cup, his tone no different from when he was pouring tea earlier. "But my shield isn't metal, my bones aren't metal, and what flows in my veins isn't iron."
"What do you have to fight me with?"
Magneto fell silent.
One second, two, three, five.
His right index finger twitched and then relaxed. This hand hadn't been idle since he stepped into the manor—either raising, pointing, or clenching. Now it hung by his side, his knuckles without purpose.
Wanda stood behind Arthur, her Chaos Perception active throughout.
She whispered two words.
"Lost."
Emma understood. All the chips had been pushed onto the table, but the person opposite them wasn't even playing the same game.
The study door creaked as Xavier's wheelchair rolled forward half a foot.
"Eric, sit down."
Magneto didn't turn his head.
"You need to finish hearing about Lorna."
Xavier picked up the teapot and refilled a cup. The stream from the spout was steady as he pushed it toward the empty spot across the table.
"The Carpathian Mountains, an underground fortress, a mutant weaponization project—he has already shared this information." Xavier looked at his old friend. "You have two choices now."
"Fly there alone, uproot half of Romania's metal, and smash it into the sixth basement level."
He paused.
"Or sit down and listen to what he plans to do."
Magneto finally turned around.
He glanced at the iron dust on the floor, then at the layer of gray on Arthur's shoes.
The chair was by the desk, made of oak, with no metal parts.
Magneto walked over, his cape sweeping across the iron dust on the floor and kicking up a fine gray mist. He sat down.
Throughout the entire process, his back never bent.
"That ice of yours." His voice was half a tone lower than before. "How large is its coverage?"
"You saw it just now." Arthur poured a fresh cup of tea.
"I'm asking about the limit."
"You're asking the wrong question." Arthur held his cup. "What you should be asking is whether I can dismantle that fortress without hurting your daughter on the sixth basement level."
Magneto's jaw muscle twitched.
Wanda's Chaos Perception recorded a detail: the moment he sat down, his magnetic field contracted to within three centimeters of his body for the first time since he entered.
"You just said 'without hurting her'." Magneto's voice changed in quality, harder than metal yet more brittle. "Have you seen her?"
"I haven't." Arthur set down his teacup. "But I've locked onto her coordinates. The signal is weak."
He paused for a second.
"And it's still fading."
Outside the window, the iron dust on the lawn was stirred by the morning breeze, shimmering with a dull gray light in the sun. Magneto's hand gripped the armrest, his knuckles tightening one by one.
Chapter 79: The Father's Name
Magneto's grip did not loosen.
Two shallow finger indentations were pressed into the armrest, the wood grain splitting apart on either side.
Xavier picked up the teapot and aimed the spout at the empty cup in front of Magneto. The sound of the flowing water was exceptionally clear in the study.
"Drink some tea, Eric."
"I'm not thirsty."
"You aren't hungry, or tired, and you don't need to sleep. You uprooted two hundred kilometers of rails on your way here, yet your physical exertion is effectively zero." Xavierset the pot down. "But you need to sit and listen to what comes next. It will be more useful than you flipping half of Romania upside down."
Magneto did not reach for the cup.
"Speak."
Xavier looked at Emma.
Emma took a step forward. Her posture while reporting was even stiffer than when she wore her combat suit; every word carried the precision of a file serial number.
"The internal rebellion within the Hellfire Club occurred forty-eight hours before I was trapped. The primary objective of the rebels was the Mutant asset list, including all project files from the Eastern Europe branch."
"Lorna Dane's name appeared in the peripheral D-level Index, serial number ending in 1873. She was a new experimental subject received by the Eastern Europebranch from external channels three months ago."
"New experimental subject." Magneto ground the three words out. A paperclip in the desk drawer gave a sharp twitch.
"The source of acquisition was labeled with two words: Wild Capture." Emma did not avoid his gaze. "Hunter Squads specialize in scouring for young Mutants in their early stages of awakening and transporting them to Eastern Europe for weaponization. Lorna was one of them."
"You knew about this."
"I did not know she was your daughter."
Magneto's jaw tightened.
"The D-level Index contains no family information, only ability assessments and genetic codes," Emma's voice was flat. "After the rebellion, I was trapped in the core Base's isolation layer. Club communications were completely paralyzed, and the status of the Eastern Europe branch could not be confirmed until Arthur brought me out."
Wanda stood by the chair, her Chaos Perception active the entire time.
She didn't actively read Magneto's emotions. She didn't need to. That man's magnetic field wore his emotions on the outside; every fluctuation was etched into the air and into the micro-vibrations of the residual pipe fragments beneath the floor.
Arthur set down his teacup, his finger pausing for a beat on the rim.
"When I destroyed the Hellfire Club's New Yorkheadquarters, clearing from the first basement level to the seventh, I took a mirror backup of the core server." His tone was blunt. "Lorna's file is in that backup."
"You didn't notice it before?"
"There are fourteen hundred entries in the D-level Index. My primary mission at the time was to get Emma out, not to perform a line-by-line audit of a criminal organization's asset list."
Magneto stared at him.
The answer held no apology and no provocation. It was a clean statement of fact.
"Last night, Daisy brought over residual Hellfirecommunication records intercepted by S.H.I.E.L.D. One of the encrypted files points to the transport logs of the Eastern Europe branch," Arthur continued. "Lorna Danewas transferred to an underground fortress in the Carpathian Mountains three months ago. Project code: Magnetic Weaponization."
Magneto's right hand lifted from the armrest, then lowered again.
Every residual metal fragment in the building trembled simultaneously. The hinges on the hallway doorframes, the intact cable sheaths in the ceiling, and that deformed paperclip in the drawer.
The teacup slid two millimeters across the table.
"Magnetic Weaponization." Magneto's Adam's apple moved slightly, his voice dropping half a pitch. "They knew where her power came from."
"Not necessarily," Emma said. "Hunters don't do genetic tracing—the cost is too high. They only look at ability ratings. A magnetic-type Mutant is top-tier raw material for a weaponization project in her own right. They didn't need to know her last name."
"Raw material."
As those words left his lips, the paperclip in the drawer twisted itself into a dead knot.
The red glow of Wanda's magic flickered at her fingertips for half a second before dying out. She spoke only to Arthur, her voice very low.
"He isn't afraid that he won't find her. He's afraid that by the time he does, it will be too late."
Arthur set down his cup.
"I can find her."
Magneto's gaze cut toward him.
"An Arcane Mark can track energy residue." Arthur tapped two fingers on the table, and a thin film of blue light rose beneath his fingertips. "The Hellfire backup has Lorna's genetic sequence and power waveform, but the data isn't precise enough. By overlaying your magnetic field characteristics for a cross-reference, the search accuracy can be improved by three orders of magnitude."
He looked at Magneto.
"Your magnetic frequencies are the same. The genetic link between father and daughter leaves resonance markers in the waveform. You just dropped several thousand tons of iron on my head; my Mark has already recorded your complete spectrum."
Magneto's lips moved, but no sound came out.
Xavier spoke softly.
"Eric, this is the best offer you're going to get today."
Magneto stood up.
The finger marks on the armrest grew deeper, the wood grain splitting to reveal the pale, fresh fibers within.
He walked toward the door, his cape sweeping across the iron powder on the floor and kicking up a fine gray mist. He stopped by the doorframe without looking back.
"Seventy-two hours."
Wanda's Chaos Perception read his magnetic frequency. It shifted from chaotic to ordered, from high frequency to low. He was wrenching his paternal instincts back into place, tightening his grip on his reason, turn by turn.
"If my daughter has not been found in seventy-two hours, I will do things my own way."
He paused for a beat.
"My way is not as gentle as yours."
The sound of footsteps receded down the hallway. A low hum of shifting metal came from outside the manor, moving upward. Magneto didn't use the door; he ascended directly through the gap in the second-floor window. The oppressive weight of his magnetic field withdrew from the manor within thirty seconds.
Four people remained in the study.
Xavier picked up his cup and took a sip of the now cold tea.
"He will stay near Westchester. He won't go far, and he won't interfere. He needs a place to wait."
"Will he keep his word?" Wanda asked.
"For seventy-two hours, yes." Xavier looked at the curved trail of iron powder swept by the cape on the floor. "After that, he will flip that fortress and the mountains beneath it upside down."
The staff in Arthur's hand rotated half a turn.
"It won't take seventy-two hours."
The three of them looked at him simultaneously.
"Emma, have Daisy pull the fortress blueprints; you know the security protocols best. Wanda, your Chaos Magic can interfere with the fortress's internal surveillance."
The staff struck the ground. Blue patterns expanded in a circle from the Base before retracting.
"We leave tomorrow. The three of us are enough."
Xavier watched him for two seconds.
"You don't need support from the X-Men?"
"No." Arthur walked toward the door. "Professor, keep your students in check. The seventy-two-hour countdown isn't just for me. If your old friend can't wait and makes a move early, please stop him."
"I will do my best."
"That's enough."
Three sets of footsteps vanished at the end of the corridor.
The study was empty. Xavier pushed his wheelchair to the window, looking at the iron powder scattered across the lawn and the mud holes left by the steel spears.
His psychic power probed northward. Five kilometers away, atop an abandoned water tower, was a stationary magnetic signal.
Facing east.
In the direction of Romania.
Xavier withdrew his perception.
That mage said it wouldn't take seventy-two hours.
He believed him.
But the way Magneto stood on that water tower... he wasn't waiting.
He was counting.
Chapter 80: The Mage's Kitchen and the War of Women
When the blue light of the teleportation faded, the air in the apartment didn't smell quite right.
It wasn't danger. It was fur.
White fluff floated in the air, spreading from the living room all the way to the balcony door.
Seventy-two hours. Magneto's words hadn't quite faded from his mind yet when Arthur first saw Pietro leaning against the kitchen doorframe, clutching an electric razor with wet clumps of fur tangled in the blade head.
Behind him, Loki Goat was hunkered down under the coffee table.
The fur on the right side of its body was shaved clean, exposing pink skin. The left side remained as fluffy as before.
Green vertical pupils glared out from the shadows, staring at the back of Pietro's head.
"He bit me." Pietro raised his left hand, showing a ring of teeth marks on his index finger where the skin was broken. "I retaliated."
"You shaved half the fur off the Prince of Asgard."
"You told me to watch him. You didn't say I couldn't groom him."
Arthur glanced at Loki Goat's new look. The right side was no different from a freshly plucked turkey.
"He looks like a work in progress right now."
"All art is unfinished."
Wanda stepped out from behind Arthur, taking in the room full of flying fur, Loki Goat's pathetic state, and the razor in Pietro's hand.
"You were home alone for three hours and this is what you did?"
"I also made sandwiches." Pietro pointed to the stack of four on the kitchen counter. "Ham and cheese, they're not bad."
Emma was the last to step out of the teleportation portal, her high heels clicking on the floor.
She looked down; a strand of white fluff was stuck to the top of her shoe. She didn't bend down to pick it off.
She stopped in the middle of the living room and tilted her head to look at Loki Goat.
Loki Goat looked back at her. Thirty percent of the killing intent in its vertical pupils shifted from Pietro to her.
"He holds a grudge," Emma said.
"He's the God of Mischief; holding a grudge is a basic skill." Arthur leaned his staff against the corner and went into the kitchen to get a Water cup.
"What about the Magneto situation?" Pietro threw the razor into the sink, his tone dropping an octave.
He asked casually, but his shoulders were tense as he leaned against the doorframe.
Wanda walked over to him, not answering, and pulled his hand over to look at the wound on his index finger.
"He's in a hurry." Arthur took four glasses from the cabinet and lined them up to pour Water. "Lorna's signal is fading. He knows it, and I know it. He gave us seventy-two hours."
"And then?"
"Then he'll do it his way. His way will wipe Romania off the map."
Pietro processed this for two seconds.
"So we have to get her out within seventy-two hours."
"Right."
Wanda let go of her brother's hand and sat on the sofa.
"His relationship with Xavier is more complicated than Emma described. Even sitting at the same table, their magnetic fields are still searching for each other's weaknesses."
"Friends for forty years," Emma sat down on another sofa and crossed her legs. "The kind who both want to strangle each other and can't live without each other."
Arthur came out with two glasses of Water, handing one to Wanda and placing the other in front of Emma.
Wanda's fingers brushed his knuckles as she took the Water, and she paused for a beat.
Emma watched that pause and picked up her own glass.
"Xavier's mental space is very interesting." She took a sip, her voice neither loud nor soft, but clear to everyone in the living room. "He and I talked in there for a long time. The flow of time is different; a few seconds outside is about fifteen minutes inside."
She paused for a beat.
"Though compared to the time I spent with Arthur in the Hellfire Club's mental space, it was still quite short."
Wanda's fingers tightened around her glass.
"When were you ever alone with him in a mental space?"
"When you weren't around."
Emma didn't change her posture as she drank, looking at Wanda over the rim of her glass. A standard White Queenfactory setting.
A ring of red light glowed from Wanda's fingertips.
On the kitchen counter, next to the sandwiches, three glass cups began to show fine cracks.
Arthur heard the prelude of that high-frequency vibration.
"Wanda."
"I'm not angry."
The first glass shattered.
The shards didn't fly out; the red light caught them all as they burst, but the Impact knocked over the nearby salt shaker.
"I'm really not angry."
The second one.
Pietro used his super speed to rescue the third one before it shattered, holding it as he retreated behind the refrigerator.
"Emma." Arthur's tone was flat. "You're doing this on purpose."
"I'm just stating facts."
"I'm the one who told you to talk to Xavier in the mental space. The Hellfire incident was also a mission requirement. You chose this moment, this tone, to say it to Wanda."
Arthur stood between the two sofas, glass in hand.
"The White Queen's information tactics work well on enemies. Using them on our own people is inappropriate."
Emma's fingers stopped on the rim of the glass.
She didn't argue.
Wanda looked at her. "You chose this moment to say those things just to see my reaction."
"I saw it." Emma put down her glass. "Three cups."
The two of them stared at each other across the coffee table.
Pietro clutched the last surviving cup, his legs already calculating an escape route.
"I'll use Cleanse to collect the shards." Arthur walked to the kitchen counter. With a flash of blue light from his palm, the glass shards and scattered salt were gathered by Arcane laws within three seconds, compressed into a fist-sized transparent sphere, and dropped into the trash can.
He looked at the half-empty counter.
"I wasn't even this tired when Ultron came."
Pietro raised his hand from behind the fridge. "Should I go buy new cups?"
"No need. The speed at which they break cups is faster than you can buy them."
The corner of Wanda's mouth twitched; she didn't quite smile, but the red light vanished completely.
Emma took a sip of Water and said no more.
The air in the apartment relaxed.
Loki Goat poked half its head out from under the coffee table. Its bare right side shivered in the air conditioning, and it ducked back in.
Pietro came out from behind the fridge, put the cup back on the counter, looked at his sister, then at Emma, and then at Arthur.
"Should I move out?"
"You're not allowed," Wanda said.
"Just asking."
The afternoon passed in a strange calm.
Pietro shaved the other half of Loki Goat. During that time, Wanda meditated in the bedroom, the fluctuations of Chaos Magic through the door crack dimming the hallway lights by two degrees. Emma worked remotely in the guest room on her remaining intelligence network. No one came out to interfere with Pietro's creation.
By the time he finished, Loki Goat didn't have a single hair left. Its green vertical pupils took up a third of its bald face.
"At least it's symmetrical now." Pietro expressed satisfaction with his work.
At six in the evening, the doorbell rang.
Arthur opened the door. Daisy stood in the hallway, carrying two large bags of Chinese takeout in her left hand and an encrypted folder under her right arm.
"Pad Thai, Kung Pao Chicken, and that Hot and Sour Soup you said was good last time." She handed over the bags. "The stuff I gave you last time was just peripheral communication fragments. This is different—deep encryption from the Hellfire core database, only finished decoding this morning."
Arthur took the bags and stepped aside to let her in.
Daisy scanned the room as she walked into the living room.
Wanda came out of the bedroom and stood at the end of the hallway. Emma came out of the guest room and leaned against the doorframe.
Both of them looked over at the same time.
Daisy placed the folder on the coffee table and sat in the furthest chair at the dining table under their gazes. She took her phone out of her pocket and set it on the table face down, her index finger rubbing the edge of the case.
"Is the atmosphere a bit off?"
"Standard level." Arthur unpacked the takeout, eight food containers filling the table.
Pietro was at the table 0.2 seconds after the food appeared, chopsticks already in hand.
"Finally, some real food. My sandwiches don't count."
The five of them ate around the table.
Loki Goat was under the table. Pietro secretly dropped a piece of chicken, but it didn't eat it, kicking it aside with its hoof.
Arthur flipped through the encrypted folder while eating his noodles.
It was on a completely different level from the peripheral fragments from last night. After the core database's encryption layers were brute-forced, a large number of internal operating documents, personnel records, fund flows, and project approval chains were recovered.
His chopsticks stopped when he reached page thirty-seven.
An internal transfer order, issued three months ago. The sender's code had been destroyed, and the recipient was marked as Eastern Europe Branch, Sector Seven.
Transfer Subject: Lorna Dane.
The purpose column had only four words.
Magnetic Weaponization.
The peripheral fragments from last night only yielded coordinates and project codes. This official transfer order's attachment also included a facility modification list: Chitauri energy containment device, full-coverage gene suppression, live magnetic field extraction system.
Arthur swallowed his noodles and put down his chopsticks.
The movements of the other four at the table slowed for a beat.
"What is it?" Daisy spoke first.
Arthur turned the folder around, flipped to that page, and pushed it to the center of the table.
Wanda put down her spoon and looked down for three seconds.
Emma glanced from across the table and set down her chopsticks.
"Eastern Europe." Arthur took a sip of the hot and sour soup and put it down. "Eastern Europe again."
He looked at Emma.
"Your former employer's facility in Eastern Europe—how far has the Chitauri modification gone?"
Emma's chopsticks rested on the rim of her bowl, her knuckles tightening one by one.
"The list you see is only the surface."
She lowered her voice. The White Queen shell was still there, but something else was showing through underneath.
"That's not a facility. It's a Fortress."
The table went silent for two seconds. The seventy-two-hour countdown was still ticking. Magneto wasn't waiting for them to finish this meal.
Chapter 81: Seventy-Two Hour Countdown
The takeout boxes were cleared away, leaving the tabletop empty.
Arthur turned the encrypted folder to page thirty-seven, flattened it, and pressed his palm onto the center of the page. Arcane patterns seeped from between his fingers, spreading along the paper fibers and peeling away the layers of encoded information remaining in the ink.
"Emma, start from the beginning."
Emma stood on the opposite side of the table, leaning her hands on the edge.
"The northern slope of the Carpathian Mountains, at an altitude of 2,300 meters. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union dug a missile silo in the mountains; it was abandoned in '89 and bought by the Eastern Europebranch of the Club in the nineties."
She tapped her fingertip on the facility modification list in the appendix.
"The original structure has six levels, all underground, in an inverted cone shape; the further down you go, the smaller the space and the thicker the protection. The missile silo shaft was converted into a freight elevator, twelve meters in diameter. There are three alloy isolation doors between each floor, with independent power supplies and offline operation."
"Offline." Daisy tapped her fingers twice on the table. "No wonder I couldn't scan it before."
"Being offline is just the outermost layer," Emma continued.
A bird's chirp came from outside the window, muffled by the building's walls.
"After the Battle of New York, the Club obtained three complete sets of Chitauri energy constraint modules from the black market, disassembled and reassembled them, and stuffed them all into the fourth through sixth levels."
Wanda got up from the sofa and walked to the table.
"Chitauri constraint devices. That's the kind of thing Strucker used to lock up Pietro and me in his Base."
"What you saw were HYDRA imitations, only possessing constraint functions." Emma shook her head. "Hellfire got the original goods, with magnetic field isolation and biological signal interference. They've been modified specifically to target magnetism-based Mutants."
The energy bar in Pietro's mouth stopped moving.
"Targeting magnetism-based ones from the very beginning?"
"The screening criteria for the Hunter Squad are very clear. magnetism-based ones rank in the first tier of weaponization value ratings; catching one yields a return thirty times higher than catching ten fire-type ones."
Wanda's hand rested on the table edge, her knuckles tightening slightly. She didn't speak. Those years in Strucker's Base, the days she and Pietro spent strapped to experimental tables, were not far from what Lorna was currently experiencing.
"Gene suppression coverage range." Arthur's Arcanepatterns finished a circuit on the document, and he withdrew his fingertips.
"The first three levels have conventional suppression fields; ordinary Mutants are basically rendered useless upon entering. From the fourth level down, Chitauri modules are stacked, suppressing even Telepathy into nothingness." Emma paused for a beat here, her jaw tightening slightly. "Diamond Form isn't affected by gene suppression, but the Chitauri magnetic isolation interferes with the stability of the transformation. I can transform, but the duration is compromised."
"Wanda's Chaos Magic drive source has nothing to do with the x-gene, so gene suppression is useless against her. Is the Chitauri module's energy constraint effective against Chaos Magic?"
"There is no precedent," Wanda answered herself.
No one spoke. A drip sounded from the kitchen faucet.
"No precedent is needed." Arthur closed the folder and pushed it aside. "The foundation of Chitauri technology is a low-dimensional application of spatial laws. I dismantled it during the Battle of New York; the logic isn't complex. The Arcane Mark is completely immune to this stuff. Wanda's Chaos Magic takes a different path and isn't within its jurisdiction either."
He held out his right hand. A fist-sized blue ball of light floated in his palm, with countless fine runes rotating inside.
"What I'm doing now is locking the coordinates."
Lorna's genetic sequence data in the encrypted folder was deconstructed into energy waveforms by Arcane laws and cross-referenced with the Magneto magnetic field spectrum recorded at the Xavier Estate three hours ago.
The two waveforms overlapped within the light sphere. The genetic link between father and daughter left a mark at the resonance point.
"Found her." Arthur closed his fingers, and the light sphere shrank into a fingertip-sized point of light. "Carpathian Mountains, northern slope, sixth level underground. Survival confirmed."
Someone in the living room let out a breath of relief.
"The signal is decaying."
That released breath tightened up again.
Arthur pulled the point of light into his palm.
"Compared to the initial data provided by Xavier eight hours ago, it has decayed by twelve percent."
No one spoke.
Pietro put down the energy bar.
"What does twelve percent mean?"
"At this rate, the signal will drop below the threshold in seventy-two hours."
"Below the threshold?"
"I won't be able to find her. Magneto won't be able to find her. No one will."
The energy bar was left on the counter; Pietro didn't touch it again.
No one around the table moved. Seventy-two hours for a girl none of them had ever met.
Daisy moved first.
She picked up her phone from the table, unlocked it, and swiped the screen.
"Fortress architectural blueprints. Emma has internal intelligence, but the structural diagrams are incomplete. The original Cold War designs belong to the Soviet Militaryarchives and were transferred to the Romania Department of Defense in '91. S.H.I.E.L.D. has an undercover contact in Eastern Europe who can access them."
"Encryption level?"
"NATO Level C. It takes seven days to go through the official process."
"You don't plan on going through the process."
"When have I ever?"
Daisy placed her phone flat on the table, covered it with her palm, and spread her fingers slightly.
Beneath the skin of her fingertips, vibrations were running at a frequency too high for the naked eye to see, but Arthur's Arcane Mark caught the wavelength.
The vibrations conducted from her fingertips to the screen, penetrated the panel, entered the chip, and automatically adjusted their wavelength upon hitting a layer of encryption protocol, peeling them away one by one.
Wanda's Chaos Perception flickered. "She's using vibration frequencies to decode."
"Three months ago, you couldn't even control the Water in a cup." Emma tilted her head and looked at Daisy for two seconds. "Now you can use shockwaves to read a hard drive?"
"Arthur taught me." Daisy didn't look up, her fingers finely adjusting their angle on the screen. "I've adapted the method of controlling frequencies with Arcane energy to my shockwaves. The precision has increased by four orders of magnitude."
The screen flashed three times, each time an encryption layer was penetrated. On the fourth flash, a Russian document popped up, accompanied by twelve high-definition structural diagrams.
Daisy pushed the phone in front of Arthur.
"Fifteen minutes. The blueprints you wanted."
Arthur picked up the phone and swiped from the first level to the sixth. The sixth level had only one room, with walls two meters thick made of tungsten-infused special concrete. The missile silo shaft ran through all six levels, with hydraulic gates at the third and fifth levels.
He overlaid the blueprint data with Emma's security information in his mind.
The ventilation duct was the only non-frontal path to enter the fourth level from the outside. A metal grate was welded every five meters inside the duct.
"The grates are connected to the main metal structure of the fortress," Emma added. "The sound of cutting will trigger acoustic alarms."
"No need to cut. Frost Nova will make the metal brittle; it'll shatter with a touch, making no sound."
Arthur put down the phone.
Wanda stood up.
"I'll go."
Emma stood up half a second after her.
"I'm more familiar with their security protocols; only I know the patrol routes."
The two stood on opposite sides of the table.
Arthur looked at Wanda, then at Emma.
If he took Wanda and Emma stayed at the apartment, not a single cup would be left when they returned.
If he took Emma and Wanda stayed at the apartment, the apartment itself wouldn't be left.
"Both of you are going."
Both of them looked over at the same time.
"Pietro stays to watch the house. Daisy."
Daisy was putting away her phone and looked up.
"You stay here and maintain communication with Xavier. If we aren't back in twelve hours, send Lorna's coordinates to Magneto."
Daisy gripped her phone tightly, the shockwaves from her fingertips leaving a ring of extremely fine vibration patterns on the casing.
"Twelve hours."
"Twelve hours."
Pietro peeked out from beside the refrigerator.
"Why can't I go?"
"That fortress is entirely made of metal structures, and the gene suppression field covers the first three levels. If you go in, your speed will be cut by eighty percent. Without your speed, you're just a six-foot-tall target."
Pietro opened his mouth, then closed it.
Arthur picked up his staff from the corner and turned to look at Daisy.
"If it gets to the point where Magneto has to take action..."
The staff thudded onto the floor, and the blue magic circle of Teleportation expanded from the Base of the staff, its light reflecting on everyone's faces.
"...Romania will be gone."
Three beams of blue light swallowed the three of them.
Pietro, Daisy, and a completely bald Loki Goat were left in the apartment.
Pietro watched the remaining blue light traces on the floor slowly dissipate, having finished chewing the energy bar in his mouth.
Daisy sat back in her chair, phone screen facing up, the green indicator light of the S.H.I.E.L.D. communication channel blinking.
The Loki Goat crawled out from under the coffee table, its hairless body huddled in a ball, its green vertical pupils staring at that patch of floor for a long time. Its hooves tapped twice on the floor tiles, the sound very soft.
Outside the window, the New York skyline was lit up.
Five kilometers away, atop an abandoned water tower, a magnetic signal faced east, motionless.
Chapter 82: The Carpathian Fortress
The blue light of the teleportation dispersed in the cedar forest, breaking into dozens of light filaments that hung from the branches, melting away two seconds later as they were absorbed by the needles.
When Arthur landed, he stepped on a thin layer of ice. The sound was crisp but didn't travel far in the dense forest.
Wanda exhaled a puff of white mist to his left; a ring of red light glowed around her wrist before fading.
Emma landed steadily on his right, looking down at her flat combat boots—black, with no metal fasteners.
"I changed before we left," she said, catching Arthur's sweeping gaze. "You said that with Magneto's perception radius, anyone entering the fortress can't have a single iron nail on them."
Arthur didn't reply. He tapped his staff on the ground, and the blue patterns at its Base seeped down into the frozen Earth, passing through rock folds and underground currents, probing three kilometers to the east.
Wanda stood by and waited, counting his breaths.
Two.
Three.
On the fourth breath, he pulled the staff out, its tip carrying a trace of frozen soil debris.
"Does it match the blueprints?" Wanda asked.
"Six levels, inverted cone shape, a shaft running straight to the bottom, isolation doors all closed."
He didn't say more.
Wanda watched his profile for a second, waiting.
"And Lorna?"
"Still there."
"But?"
Arthur switched the staff to his other hand and took two steps toward the northern slope.
"Let's go."
Wanda didn't press further. She knelt, placing her palm on the snow. Red light seeped from her fingers, spreading a thin perception web toward the fortress.
She retracted it three seconds later and stood up, brushing snow from her palm.
"I can suppress the first three floors; I can sense the minds of the patrols."
She rubbed her fingers, and red light flickered twice at her fingertips.
"Below the fourth floor won't work. Chitauri technology is interfering with my frequency; I'll be blind once we're in."
"You handle the first three floors."
Arthur didn't even look back.
"I'll handle everything below the fourth."
The three of them walked toward the northern slope, cedar branches brushing past their shoulders as ice crystals on the needles shattered against their clothes.
No one spoke for twenty minutes.
The northern slope.
The ventilation duct entrance was buried under rubble and dead branches, looking no different from a natural landslide.
Arthur knelt and pressed his palm against it. Arcanepatterns spread from the contact point, and the rubble was pushed aside silently, piece by piece.
The cast-iron pipe opening was revealed, 1.2 meters in diameter, with condensation on the inner walls.
"I'll go first."
He positioned himself sideways at the mouth of the pipe, glancing back at the two behind him.
"Emma in the middle, Wanda in the rear."
"No talking. Use hand signals."
He slid sideways into the pipe.
The temperature of the cast-iron surface transferred through his clothes to his skin—cold and tinged with rust.
It slanted downward at a thirty-five-degree angle.
The first manganese steel grate appeared in the blue light of the staff. The weld points were rough, with rust crawling out from the seams.
Arthur placed his left hand on it. Frost seeped from his palm into the metal, and the steel's color changed from grayish-black to grayish-white.
He placed his index finger in the center of the grate and gave a gentle push.
The entire grate snapped at the weld points, breaking into four pieces. Mana held them, placing them silently into the grooves of the pipe wall.
Behind him, Wanda raised a finger and then lowered it.
Clear.
The second one.
The third one.
By the eighth grate, the pipe's incline grew steeper. The three of them began to slide down, using their elbows against the walls to slow down.
Arthur stopped.
Emma spoke in a low, muffled voice behind him, her breathy words traveling along the cast-iron wall.
"Smell that?"
"Disinfectant."
Arthur pressed the back of his hand against the pipe wall.
"And formaldehyde."
Emma didn't speak again, but her breathing rhythm changed—her inhalations shortened by half a beat, and her exhalations doubled in length.
Welding patches began to appear on the pipe walls, the color difference between the old and new metal visible to the naked eye.
Arthur's Arcane Vision penetrated the cast iron to probe the layer beyond.
Outside the pipe was the fourth-floor corridor. The lights were cold white; the ceiling wasn't fitted with ordinary tubes, but Chitauri Energy Cells. The light band's frequency did not belong to the Earth's spectrum.
He turned and gave a hand signal.
Wanda nodded, her Chaos Perception shifting frequencies to penetrate the pipe wall and seep outward.
Three seconds later, she tapped the wall very lightly.
The tip of Arthur's staff drew a circle on the wall. Arcanelaws rearranged the cast-iron molecules, turning the circular area into a transparent observation window.
The three of them lay in the pipe, looking through the temporary window at the entirety of the fourth floor.
Twelve glass pods.
They were shaped like coffins, standing upright on metal Bases. The pod walls were transparent, filled with a pale blue conductive fluid.
There were people inside.
Lines were connected to their spines, extending along their backs to collection devices outside the pods.
Their chests rose and fell with movements so slight one almost had to count to see them.
The green lines on the heart rate monitors moved incredibly slowly, with long flatlines between each beat.
Below thirty beats.
The threshold.
Any lower and they were dead.
Emma's fingers pressed against the pipe wall, her fingertips turning white from the pressure.
She pointed to pod number seven.
Then to number eleven.
Her finger trembled once.
She pulled it back.
Then pointed again.
Steady now.
Wanda leaned in, looking in the direction she was pointing.
The person in pod seven had a tattoo on the inside of their left arm. The pattern was bleached by the conductive fluid, but the outline remained.
The mark of a low-level Hellfire pawn.
On the neck of number eleven was the same brand.
Wanda's breathy voice slid along the pipe wall; her lips barely moved.
"Your people?"
Emma's jawline tightened into a sharp angle.
She nodded once.
Wanda watched her hand as she retracted it and then extended it again, seeing the faint rust stains on her finger. She didn't ask anything else.
Thousands of kilometers separated the lab tables in Strucker's Base from these glass pods.
But there was no real difference.
The air in the pipe began to turn cold.
The temperature of the staff was dropping. Frost spread from the tip, crawling down the shaft, passing over Arthur's fingers, covering the back of his hand, and reaching his wrist.
He wasn't casting a spell.
Wanda glanced sideways at him.
In the cold white light from the observation window, his expression was no different than when he was browsing encrypted folders in the apartment.
But the staff was speaking for him.
The temperature in the pipe dropped four degrees.
Wanda didn't reach out to touch him.
She gently rested her Chaos Perception against the edge of his Arcane field—red touching blue, not intruding, just leaning there.
The spread of the frost slowed.
It stopped.
Arthur's chest rose and fell once, deeper than usual.
He closed the observation window. The cast-iron molecules reset, becoming opaque once more.
Three fingers pointed downward.
Continue.
The pipe passed through the partition between the fourth and fifth floors. The temperature grew lower and lower, and the white mist from their breath lingered longer against the inner walls. The fortress's own cooling system was running at full power; it had nothing to do with the staff.
Magneto's seventy-two hours were still ticking away.
Between the fifth and sixth floors, the pipe narrowed, its diameter shrinking from 1.2 meters to eighty centimeters.
The three of them could only crawl forward, alternating elbows and knees against the pipe walls. Every movement produced the faint sound of fabric rubbing against cast iron.
The final grate.
The sixteenth one.
Just as Arthur's frost touched the metal surface, his hand stopped.
Vibration.
It came from deep within the pipe behind the grate—low frequency, intermittent, and irregular.
It was too chaotic. No mechanical system would operate with such a rhythm.
It was the rhythm of a biological organism struggling.
Wanda's Chaos Perception caught the same signal. Her fingers tightened against the pipe wall, her nails scraping the cast iron with a tiny, sharp screech.
The vibration carried a sound.
After being dampened by five layers of concrete and Chitauri Energy Fields, only the tail end of the sound reached them.
Metallic resonance.
It was the same frequency as the hum in the air when Magneto clenched his fist.
But Magneto's resonance was controlled, contained.
This one was out of control.
It was a scream carrying magnetic oscillation, forced from the depths of a throat by a young voice pushed to the absolute limit of pain.
When the sound penetrated the pipe walls, even the cast iron shuddered with it.
Arthur's hand remained on the grate.
Frost expanded from his fingertips, covering the entire grate and two meters of the pipe wall in both directions, forming a layer of ice an inch thick.
The grate cracked within the ice. The fragments were held by mana, making no sound.
The temperature in the pipe dropped below zero.
The white mist from Wanda's breath turned into a pink fog in the red light.
Behind them, Emma's breathy voice came along the wall.
A single word.
"Her."
Arthur turned to look at the two behind him.
He didn't use hand signals.
He spoke, his voice very soft, but in the sub-zero air, every word carried a trail of white mist.
"No more stealth."
Waiting for more to be unlocked on WTR-lab