Erik Lehnsherr (Magneto)

The fortress was already dying by the time the three of you reached its inner corridors. Crimson warning lights revolved through smoke-choked halls, staining cracked concrete and torn steel in pulses of red.

Ancient alarms screamed overhead—hoarse, mechanical screeches almost buried beneath distant explosions. Beneath your boots, the faded emblem of H.Y.D.R.A. stretched across the floor, fractured by fire and falling debris.

Charles kept pace beside you, one hand raised near his temple as he searched through the chaos ahead. “Those men had surrendered, Erik.”

Several steps in front, Erik never turned. “They surrendered because they had lost.”

“That does not make their execution necessary.”

“No,” Erik replied coldly. “What they intended to do with us made it necessary.”

Another detonation rolled through the fortress. Dust broke from the ceiling. Erik glanced upward, then pushed onward. “And unless you wish to share their fate, Charles, I suggest you save your judgment until we are outside.”

The corridor ended before a massive reinforced door, warped but still sealed beneath layers of armor. Erik stopped, drew a slow breath, and lifted one hand.

The fortress answered him. Metal groaned inside the walls. Locks screamed apart. The entire door buckled inward before being torn from its frame and hurled down the passage behind you with a deafening crash.

Beyond it waited the scientist’s hidden laboratory.

Unlike the ruined halls outside, the chamber remained eerily intact. Banks of computers flickered beneath emergency power. Glass tanks stood in recessed alcoves, some empty, others clouded by chemical residue. Refrigerated samples lined reinforced cabinets beside anatomical diagrams, genetic charts, photographs, and stacks of research written in several languages.

Charles moved immediately toward the central station. You remained near him as he swept through the scattered documents, his expression tightening with every page. “These sequences…” He murmured. “The terminology, the hereditary projections—this was not developed here.”

He turned another page, then another. “Nathaniel Essex. Victorian-era scientist. Researched evolution and genetics.” The name seemed to settle heavily between you. “Much of this is incomplete, but the principles are unmistakable. Whoever led this facility obtained fragments of his research and attempted to reproduce it without understanding its limits.”

Erik had already moved beyond you both. He passed the tanks without interest, his anger too focused for curiosity... until he reached the far end of the laboratory.

There, embedded into the wall, stood a broad vault unlike anything else in the fortress. Erik’s fingers shifted almost imperceptibly, but nothing happened. His eyes narrowed.

By the time Charles noticed, Erik was already standing before the adjoining control panel, entering commands with growing impatience. “Erik?”

The panel flashed green. Heavy seals disengaged one after another. Pressurized air hissed through the chamber as the vault slowly opened, revealing a smooth pale case secured at its center. Erik removed it by hand.

You and Charles joined him near the central table as he released the clasps. The lid lifted, and inside the case lay an index. Not a single ledger, but hundreds of linked files—photographs, family trees, medical observations, coded locations, blood samples, suspected inheritances, and names stretching across nations.

Confirmed mutants.

Possible carriers.

Children.

Families whose descendants had not yet been born.

Erik turned through them in silence. Charles reached beside him and took several pages, disbelief slowly replacing concentration. “My God…” The files extended far beyond the victims held inside this fortress. Some had never been captured. Some might not even know what they were.

Erik took the pages back, returned them carefully to the case, and shut the lid. “No government can be allowed to find this.”

“On that,” Charles said, “we agree.”

Erik secured the clasps. “But you misunderstand me.” He then faced you.

“These people have already been marked. Their homes, their children, their bloodlines—all prepared for the next laboratory willing to continue this work. If we leave this behind, humanity will return for it. If we destroy it, we abandon everyone named inside to dangers they cannot even see.”

“And if you take it?” Charles asked.

“Then we reach them first.”

Charles’s expression hardened. “You would appoint yourself guardian over thousands of lives without their knowledge or consent.”

“I would prevent their extinction.”

“You would possess them, Erik. Their identities, their families, even generations not yet born.” Charles stepped closer. “No individual should hold such power. Not any government. Not any country. Not me. And not you.”

Another explosion thundered somewhere below. The lights flickered, and a mechanical voice crackled through the laboratory.

"Structural containment failure. Archive sector evacuation advised."

Erik tightened his grip around the case. “Then we no longer have time for philosophy.” He looked directly at you. “You have seen what they built here. You have seen what happens when our future is left in human hands.”

Behind him, firelight began to bleed beneath the broken doorway. “Help me carry it out.”

The hidden H.Y.D.R.A. laboratory trembled beneath the violence consuming the fortress around it. Emergency lights flashed across overturned equipment, open research files, and glass tanks shivering within their frames. Beyond the broken doorway, fire crept steadily through the corridor while the alarms continued their mechanical wail.

Erik tightened his grip around the case containing the future of Mutantkind inside. “Then we no longer have time for philosophy.” He looked directly at you. “You have seen what they built here. You have seen what happens when our future is left in human hands.”

Behind him, firelight began to bleed beneath the broken doorway. “Help me carry it out.”

However, you reached for the case, your hand closing around its smooth exterior even as Erik continued holding the opposite side. For a moment, neither of you pulled. Neither yielded.

“Stop.” Charles’s voice cut between you—not angry, but strained with desperation. “Both of you, stop! This fortress is collapsing around us. We do not have time to fight over this!”

The floor lurched beneath your feet. A distant explosion rolled through the laboratory, rattling cabinets and sending fragments of glass scattering from the far wall. Erik looked toward the ceiling, then toward Charles.

For the briefest moment, the severity left his expression. What remained looked almost wounded. His gaze returned to you. “I am sorry.” His hand rose.

The force struck before you could react. You were torn away from the table and driven backward into the wall, the impact forcing the air from your lungs. Metal erupted throughout the laboratory in answer to Erik’s command.

Panels ripped from the floor. Reinforced beams tore loose from the ceiling. Cabinets, cables, shattered equipment, and fragments of scientific machinery twisted together around you. The mass folded inward, pinning your body against the wall beneath layers of steel and debris.

Only one arm remained exposed. The arm still holding the case. Erik approached through the wreckage.

“I have been at the mercy of men just following orders,” He said, his voice low and painfully controlled. “They will not stop because this laboratory burns. They will rebuild. They will find new scientists, new soldiers, new reasons.”

He stopped before you and reached toward the case. “Mutantkind cannot survive by hiding and waiting to be discovered one family at a time.”

“Erik!” Charles stood behind him, one hand pressed against his temple. “Release {{obj}}.”

“I will release {{obj}} when the index is safe!”

“You are proving precisely why it cannot belong to you.”

Erik’s expression hardened, but Charles did not give him time to answer. The pressure entered the room like a blade, and Erik staggered.

His hand flew to his head, groaning in pain as Charles forced his way into the edges of his mind—not gently, not fully, but enough to tear his concentration away from you. Pain radiated across Erik’s features as conflicting fear, anger, grief, and desperation collided between all three of you.

Charles recoiled as though suffering the same wound. “Please,” He gasped. “Do not make me do this!”

Erik cried out, and the laboratory answered. Every loose piece of metal convulsed at once. Supports twisted. Consoles tore from their foundations. Pipes burst from the walls as the restraints around you spasmed and partially loosened.

It was enough for you to slip through the opening, dragging the case free as the room began collapsing beneath Erik’s uncontrolled magnetism.

“Charles—stop!”

“I cannot let you take it!”

Erik forced himself upright against the psychic assault. Blood appeared beneath one nostril. His fingers curled. Then the corridor outside erupted.

The explosion tore through the doorway in a wave of flame, smoke, and shattered concrete. The blast hurled all three of you apart and swallowed the center of the laboratory beneath falling debris.

For several seconds, there was only ringing.

You pushed yourself upright among broken machinery, the case still clutched against you. Across the chamber, Erik rose slowly, free from Charles’s telepathy but visibly shaken.

His eyes found Charles. “You entered my mind.”

Charles struggled onto one knee. “You left me no other choice.”

“There is always another choice. You simply believed yours mattered more.”

The ceiling cracked above him. Charles looked up too late as a massive section of steel and concrete broke free directly over his head.

Erik reacted instantly, raising both hands and catching the collapsing structure in midair. The impact drove him backward, his boots scraping through debris as the twisted metal groaned beneath his power.

Charles stared up at him. Erik’s arms trembled, but his gaze shifted past Charles—to you, and to the case still held in your hands. “I will get you out of here,” He said through clenched teeth as the fortress shook again. “But I will not leave without the future of mutantkind.”

The laboratory no longer resembled a room. Fire had consumed the walls, exposing adjoining chambers, broken walkways, ventilation shafts, and the blackened skeleton of the fortress beyond. Steel supports hung over open gaps where entire floors had collapsed.

Every explosion revealed another buried section of H.Y.D.R.A.’s stronghold before swallowing it beneath smoke and flame. And through it all, Erik continued coming for the case.

He swept one hand across the air. A torn section of walkway folded toward you like a closing jaw, forcing you to throw yourself beneath it before the steel crashed together. You struck back before he could recover, driving him across the ruined laboratory and into a fractured console.

Erik caught himself with magnetism before his body touched the ground.

Metal screamed around him once again. Broken pipes rose from the floor. Shattered equipment twisted into spears. Magnetic force pulled at every buckle, fastening, and reinforced piece within your field attire as he dragged you toward him—only for you to wrench free and send him stumbling beneath the force of another blow.

He landed hard, blood streaking from his mouth. “Enough!”

His arms spread, bending the laboratory around you both.

Walls buckled inward. Steel beams tore from their anchors and circled him through the smoke. He sent them forward not as killing strikes, but as barriers—one after another—trying to trap your limbs, close your path, and separate you from the case.

You broke through the first. Avoided the second. Struck him before the third could close.

Erik staggered, his navy-and-yellow uniform torn across the chest and shoulder. Blood ran from several cuts along his face, but his hand remained raised.

“You still believe this is about me?” He demanded. “They already know where to look. They have names. Children. Families who cannot defend themselves!”

Behind you both, Charles struggled among the wreckage.

The earlier intrusion had left him pale and trembling, one hand pressed against the floor while the other remained against his temple. Your resistance, Erik’s fury, the terror filling the fortress—he could feel all of it colliding at once.

Another beam tore free above him. Erik turned instinctively, caught it in midair, and hurled it aside before it could fall. That instant was enough for you to close the distance again.

Your strike sent Erik sliding across the floor beside the case.

“STOP!”

The command did not enter through your ears. It seized your entire body. You froze mid-step, while across from you, Erik locked in place as well, one knee against the ground and his fingers stretched toward the case.

Charles stood between the wreckage behind you, barely upright. Blood ran beneath his nose. His whole body shook from the strain of holding both of you.

“You speak of the future as though it belongs to whoever reaches it first,” Charles gasped. “It does not belong to governments. It does not belong to scientists. It does not belong to us!”

Erik strained against the psychic restraint. “Charles—”

“No!” His voice broke through both your minds. “Mutantkind cannot begin with one man deciding who must be found, who must be protected, or what they must become. There must be another way. A place where they are taught—not possessed. Where they may choose—”

Suddenly, the fortress erupted again. Flame tore through the far wall with enough force to split the laboratory open. Charles’s hold vanished as the blast hurled all three of you in separate directions.

You struck the ground nearest the eruption. Heat swallowed everything, the impact driving the breath from your lungs, and something inside you gave beneath the force. For several seconds, you could neither move nor hear beyond the ringing inside your skull.

Somewhere through the smoke, Charles screamed. The floor beneath him collapsed.

“Charles!” Erik dragged himself upright. His uniform hung in torn, scorched pieces while blood ran freely from his brow and ribs.

He stumbled toward the opening where Charles had disappeared, but another collapse sealed the path beneath burning wreckage.

“Charles!” No answer came. Erik coughed violently, blood darkening his lips. Then he saw you, and his expression changed.

He limped across the shattered laboratory and collapsed beside you, catching himself on one knee. For a moment, the certainty was gone. There was only horror. “No…” His hand hovered over you, uncertain where he could touch without worsening the damage. “This was never meant to happen.” His voice faltered. “I did not want this!”

Beside your body lay the containment case—split along one corner by the explosion. Its broken seals had opened just enough for scorched files, photographs, and folded family charts to spill across the floor.

Erik saw them. His grief hardened into desperate resolve.

“The future cannot be held back because we were afraid to claim it.”

He reached down and pulled the damaged case against his chest. Another violent tremor nearly threw him backward, but he remained beside you, breathing through the corrosive smoke.

Then your fingers moved. Beneath your hand was one of the exposed sections of the index: interwoven family lines stretching toward names and descendants not yet born.

Erik followed your gaze, and slowly, he extended his bloodied hand toward yours. “Please,” He whispered, blood and ash streaking his face. “Do not make me stop you again.”