Darkness.
Not peaceful. Not warm. Cold, like a morgue drawer. Quiet, like an apology never said. Max Walker didn't remember the exact moment he died — only that it felt sudden and stupid.
One second, he was jaywalking on a rainy street in Northampton, hoodie drenched, headphones blaring The Prodigy. The next, headlights. Screeching tires. A thump. Then weightlessness.
Then silence.
Then—agony.
His whole body pulsed like it was being rewired. Nerves twitching. Chest struggling to expand. He couldn't see clearly, just red… a bloody sky... dust, shouting... movement.
He blinked. Vision blurred. Somewhere above him — a helicopter whirred. He caught a glimpse of a bow, someone screaming, "Clint, watch out!" and a silver blur collapsing next to a boy.
It hit him. Hard.
Sokovia. Quicksilver. This is the scene where he dies.
"You didn't see that coming..."
"No," Max croaked, voice like broken glass, "I didn't."
A gun fired again nearby. People screamed. Then: silence. Max tried to scream but coughed instead. Blood pooled beneath him.
"This is a dream," he told himself. "Or a coma. Something."
But dreams don't hurt like this.
He closed his eyes, bracing for whatever came next.
Clank.
Metal on metal.
Max woke in motion, body swaying slightly. Cold air bit at his arms. A heavy coat, rough and synthetic, clung to him. His wrists — bound. Ankles too. His back pressed against steel.
A van. Moving. Six soldiers sat around him, guns across their laps. All of them had the same hard eyes and insignias on their shoulders.
Russian.
One of them looked at him, muttered something. "On ochelsya. Ne dvigaysya."
Max didn't understand it, but the guy's posture said enough: stay down, freak.
Max licked his cracked lips. He wanted to speak, to ask what the hell was going on, but when he opened his mouth, his voice cracked.
"Where… am I?"
Another soldier raised his rifle.
"MOLCHI!" the man barked. "Shut up."
Max shut up.
The van's ceiling bulb flickered. Max caught a glimpse of his reflection in a scratched metal panel.
And stared.
His face was different. Older. A full beard shaded his jaw, dark and thick. His hair — no longer cropped and silver like Pietro's in the movies — now fell to his knees in messy silver-black ropes.
"The hell happened to me?"
Panic buzzed in his chest. He looked down. His body was bulkier. Scarred. Barely any bullet wounds — just faint, purple bruises like he'd healed weeks ago.
But he hadn't. He'd only just... come back.
FLASHBACK
He was 16 again. Hoodie up. Comic shop bag in hand. Kebab wrapper in the other. Kick-Ass Vol. 3 peeking from the bag.
He remembered stepping off the curb without looking.
SMASH.
Windshield glass. Bone cracking.
He blinked again. Back in the van.
"I should be dead. I was dead. And now I'm... him?"
Was this punishment? Reincarnation? Some freak cosmic reboot?
His wrists tingled. A strange vibration under the skin. His muscles felt alive, buzzing faintly — like he was seconds from sprinting but frozen mid-thought.
He clenched his fists. And suddenly—
FLASH!
Everything slowed.
The lights flickered again — but not once. A thousand flickers in a second.
A fly buzzed in the corner — then hovered, frozen in midair.
A soldier blinked — but Max saw every phase of it. Iris twitching, lid dragging down in slow motion.
"What the—"
Then the pain hit. Like a migraine behind his eyes. Reality snapped back to normal and he gasped, falling forward against the restraints.
He didn't know how to control it. His powers were raw, chaotic. Like a gun without a safety.
One soldier leaned forward, muttered, "Ty videl eto? On dvigalsya." (Did you see that? He moved.)
Another looked alarmed. "On ne dolzhen umeet. On umiral."(He shouldn't be able to. He was dead.)
Max met their gaze. They looked at him like a bomb waiting to go off.
He breathed slowly, trying to center himself.
"Okay," he whispered. "You're in Quicksilver's body. You're halfway across the world. You've got powers you don't understand. So... what the hell are you gonna do about it, Max?"
Silence.
And then something deep inside him — something ancient and cold — laughed.
Max flinched. It hadn't come from the soldiers.
It had come from himself.
(Internal Monologue)
"I used to dream of this. Waking up with powers. Being a hero. Like Kick-Ass, Daredevil, Pietro... But this isn't a dream. This is a prison van. My face isn't mine. My body isn't mine. And there's something else — something watching me from inside this shell."
"I wanted to be more. Now I am. But at what cost?"
He looked up.
Snow began falling outside the cracks in the armored doors.
Somewhere in the white void, the prison waited.
And something worse beyond it.
They made one mistake.
They let him live.