The jump went clean.
A silent descent through moon-choked clouds, the wind whipping past us in freezing gusts as we sliced toward the earth. We landed without alerting the perimeter patrols—barely a whisper of sound as our boots hit the cold Polish soil. The air reeked of ash, of something burnt into the land.
Emma didn't speak, but I could feel her mind brushing against mine. It wasn't intrusive—just a soft tether, a shared awareness for the mission. I answered with a thought of my own.
'North tower first. Cut surveillance. Then move to the labs.'
She nodded, then ghosted into the trees beside me, silent as frost on steel.
The outer fences were easy. I downed the gait and clearance codes of a patrol officer I'd copied, and Emma masked our approach with a light psychic haze—a mental blind spot. They never even turned their heads as we slipped past them.
The north watchtower went dark ten minutes later.
Emma had found the minds inside—two guards. One asleep. One chewing on stale bread and rehearsing a German folk song in his head.
Neither saw the knife coming. Emma's psychic blade slipped into their thoughts like ice cracking through glass. No mess. No alarms.
We breached the lab building next—low, squat, and humming with energy. The deeper we went, the more I felt it—something rotten beneath the concrete.
And then we saw it.
The experimentation rooms.
Steel slabs. Leather restraints. Surgical tools soaked in dried blood. Journals written in meticulous German, detailing 'mutagenic anomalies' and 'extreme response stimuli.'
Emma's hand trembled. Just once. Then stilled.
She reached out, her mind diving into the residual psychic waves.
"Children," she whispered. "He experimented on children."
I felt it too. The emotions through the air—terror, agony, helplessness.
We moved further.
The demolitions were precise. Timed charges placed along the power grid, the comms relay, and Shaw's main lab. I copied the expertise from a demolitions expert we'd intercepted weeks ago. I knew the blast radii, the weak points.
We were in the heart of the camp when everything went wrong.
A team of guards found us. Emma dropped three with a psychic scream before they could raise weapons. I took out the rest—bone-breaking speed, ruthless efficiency. No witnesses. No mercy.
We finally reached Shaw's quarters—hidden beneath a secure bunker with layers of shielding around it. But the room was empty.
The files, the equipment, the notes—all gone.
Only one thing remained.
A single metal ID badge on the desk. "Dr. Klaus Schmidt." Still warm.
He'd been here. Recently.
Emma looked at me, eyes sharp. "He ran."
"No," I said grimly, lifting a burned folder from the trash bin. "He finished."
Inside, a photo. A boy. Maybe ten. Dark hair. Terrified eyes. A serial number tattooed on his arm.
The name listed beside it chilled me.
Erik Lehnsherr.
My breath caught. Shaw didn't just escape—he'd already taken him.
And that meant…
That meant it's already happened.
His mother was dead. Erik had been pushed and awakened his powers. and soon will be trained by Shaw wanted. The spark of vengeance already burning in child Magneto's soul.
I felt Emma's hand on my arm. Her voice was soft but laced with steel.
"What do we do now?"
I clenched the photo in my fist.
"We destroy it all."
But as we turned to leave, I felt it—a pulse. Faint. Psychic pulse.
Something beneath the lab's substructure. A sealed door hidden behind a false wall. High-level clearance. But the system recognized Dr. Schmidt's credentials.
The door hissed open, releasing a burst of icy air.
Emma stepped back as frost curled along the floor.
The room was stark white—cold enough to burn your lungs if you breathed too deep. Medical tables. Cryogenic tubes. And in the center of it all, a single preserved capsule surrounded by monitors and genetic sequencing machines humming softly.
A woman lay inside. Frozen in perfect stillness.
Her eyes were closed, but the resemblance was unmistakable.
Erik Lehnsherr's mother.
Edie Lehnsherr.
Emma gasped behind me, her psychic shields spiking instinctively.
I stepped forward, breath fogging the glass. Scans ran along the sides of the tube—DNA patterns, histological analyses, X-gene maps annotated in German.
They had preserved her. Dissected tissue. Extracted bone marrow. Sliced muscle fiber and still kept her… whole.
"Why?" Emma asked, horror barely concealed in her voice.
I translated the text for her.
"Subject M shows no signs of active mutation. However, maternal tissue contains dormant sequences linked to offspring mutation events. Possible epigenetic X-gene activation via trauma-induced stress in Subject E (child). Hypothesis: emotional catalysts may unlock genetic anomalies. Further testing required."
"They used her to study the origin of his mutation," I said coldly. "Trying to understand how a child born to two ordinary parents became something… extraordinary."
Emma's voice was tight. "So they kept her… like this?"
"Like a specimen."
That's when I heard the voices.
In the far corner of the lab, behind a partition, three scientists in long coats stared at us in terror. One reached for a silent alarm.
Too late.
I blurred across the room, slamming the man into the wall with enough force to crack his skull. The other two turned to run.
Emma caught them in a psychic net, suspending them mid-air as they screamed silently. She looked at me, waiting.
I stepped between them.
"Shaw might be gone," I said softly, "but you all stayed. You chose this."
The first man's mind was strong. Military Training. Trained to resist interrogation. So I didn't interrogate. I reached in, peeled back every layer of knowledge, and copied it.
[Genetics. Mutant theory. Cryo-preservation. X-gene classification. Experimental neural mapping]
Mine now.
The second man had more. Data on Erik. Observational logs. The moment his powers first manifested.
All mine now.
I dropped them. Their bodies convulsed—brains fried from the strain. Emma didn't blink.
We stood before the capsule again.
"What now?" she asked.
I placed my hand on the glass. Closed my eyes. And whispered, "Rest."
Then I took the Cryo-Machine and the cryo-chamber with us along with her corpse.
We planted the last charges. As we exited the lab, fire and frost collided behind us—the explosion swallowing the twisted heart of the camp in a roar of vengeance.
The charges detonated as we left—flames and smoke tearing into the sky behind us. Screams erupted as the guard towers collapsed and the lab went up in fire. We moved through the chaos, opening cages, guiding survivors, breaking locks and doors.
And then we vanished into the night.
No names. No flags. No glory.
Just ashes in our wake.
Hours later, back at the estate, Emma stared at the photo in silence.
"He's going to become something... dangerous." she said after sometime.
"Yes." I looked down at my reflection in the window. "But maybe we still can salvage this."
She tilted her head. "Save him?"
"No." My voice was flat. "We will not be bale to save him. Now no one will be able to find him. Shaw will make sure of that. But we can stop him in the future if he becomes a threat to us. And maybe he will join us then."
"And we already took a step in that direction. After all we saved his mother's dead body from being further disrespected."
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