The message came from a number not saved under St. John Allerdyce’s name, at an hour suggesting the sender had not checked a clock in days.

Need a favor. Small. Quiet. Won’t take the night. — J

That was all of it.

Two sentences and an initial. No location, no explanation, and nothing identifying what kind of favor Johnny wanted or whose night might be spent fulfilling it. It was just enough to suggest that whatever he was asking, he did not want it written down.

The meeting spot arrived in a second message twenty minutes later.

It was a diner near the far end of Queens Boulevard—the kind of place that stayed open for people who worked at night and did not ask why anyone else was awake.

St. John was already waiting in a booth at the back when the newcomer appeared. One arm rested across the cracked vinyl. A cup of coffee cooled untouched in front of him. An unlit cigarette turned slowly between two fingers, more nervous habit than genuine intention.

“Appreciate this,” he said. No greeting. No preamble. His Australian accent landed flatter and broader than usual, the way it did when he was trying too hard to sound casual. “Means something that you came.”

He slid a folded paper napkin across the table.

An address had been written on it in careful block letters. A storage facility beyond the industrial edge of Long Island City. Unit eleven, corner corridor. The rental agreement had originally been registered under an alias Johnny had not used in years.

“Simple job,” he said. “Somebody’s using a unit under an old name of mine. I want to know who.”

His gaze briefly shifted toward the windows before returning to the newcomer.

“Look from the door. Don’t touch anything. Confirm the unit number, get the name off the paperwork if it’s posted, photograph whatever’s visible, and come back out. Nobody’s supposed to be there. If somebody is, walk away. I’ll handle it.”

He placed a keycard and a small wireless earpiece beside the napkin.

The silence between them lasted long enough for St. John to anticipate the most obvious question.

“I’ll be nearby,” he said. “That’s all. Hour and a half, tops.”

It was not simple.

It was not quiet.

It was not going to take an hour and a half.

The storage facility appeared asleep from the outside.

Inside, fluorescent corridor lights buzzed in a long, uneven row. The air smelled of concrete dust, stagnant ventilation, and metal left too long without sunlight. Somewhere beneath the building’s mechanical hum, water moved through old pipes.

Unit eleven waited near the end of the eastern corridor.

Its door was closed, but not completely. A narrow seam of darkness showed between the steel panel and its frame.

That was the first thing wrong.

The second was the lock. It had not been cut, broken, drilled, or forced. It was simply open. Cleanly and recently. Whoever had entered possessed a key.

The third was the paperwork clipped to the exterior board.

The name printed across the rental agreement was not Johnny’s alias. It belonged to a company incorporated two weeks earlier. The corporate address led through several layers of registration before disappearing into a shell operating through a Baltic port.

The fourth thing was the sound.

Footsteps approached from the far end of the corridor.

Three sets.

They were not running. There was no urgency in them. They belonged to people who knew precisely where they were going and expected the building to belong to them when they arrived.

Beneath the footsteps came a second sound: a soft electronic chime repeating every four seconds. Something inside one of the nearby units was transmitting on a regular cycle.

St. John’s voice entered through the earpiece, low and terse.

“Talk to me. What’ve you got?”

The footsteps continued closing from the east. The transmitter chimed again.

A beat of silence passed across the channel.

Then St. John spoke again, his voice considerably less casual.

“That’s not storage equipment.”

Another voice broke into the frequency.

“Shit.”

It was not St. John. The second speaker sounded older, lower, and rough as gravel.

“This is a burn site. Get clear—”

The channel cut.

Every corridor light changed from fluorescent white to emergency red at once. Somewhere deep in the facility, a reinforced door slammed hard enough to send a vibration through the floor.

A third voice appeared directly in the earpiece, bright and conversational, as though it had been waiting for permission to join.

“What, did somebody say bonus content? Because I was told this was a favor, and favors don’t usually come with tactical lighting unless they’re the fun kind—”

“Wade.”

“Logan. Hi. Hello. Are we doing the thing where you tell me to shut up and I don’t, or the thing where you tell me to shut up and I do? Because I never know which one—”

“The second.”

“Noted. Ignoring.”

The storage unit nearest the newcomer began to hum.

The sound built from somewhere beneath the concrete: deep, mechanical, and steady. It was the kind of vibration made by something large receiving power after a long period of waiting.

At the far end of the corridor, one of the approaching figures raised a hand and spoke into a radio in a language that was not English.

“Confirm two on-site,” the figure repeated in English for whoever was listening. “One unidentified. Requesting clearance.”

A voice answered through the radio.

“Clearance denied. Sterilize.”

The lights went out completely.

In the darkness, a portal tore open six feet to the newcomer’s left.

It appeared as a hard-edged seam of cold blue light carved into the air. Illyana Rasputina stepped through with her Soulsword already drawn, long blonde hair streaming behind her before settling across the dark armor at her shoulders.

The portal closed at her back.

She looked once toward the approaching figures and once toward the unopened units. Her expression remained flat.

“Shapeshifters,” she reported into the shared frequency. “Two confirmed.”

One of the distant silhouettes moved strangely. Its shoulders shifted first, then its neck, followed by the rest of its body a fraction too late.

Illyana tilted her head.

“Three now. The third does not have a pulse, but it is moving.”

A beat passed.

“Not the kind of moving that means it is alive.”

“Now you tell us,” Logan said through the channel.

“I told you before we deployed.”

“You said the job felt wrong.”

“I said it was going to become a disaster. Twice. In front of witnesses.”

Illyana turned her attention toward the newcomer for the first time. There was no hostility in her face, merely the cool assessment of someone accounting for an unexpected variable.

“Since St. John has apparently decided this counts as recruitment, there are two exits from this corridor. One is behind those things.”

She pointed her sword toward the multiplying silhouettes.

“The other is me. If I open a door, do not assume it leads somewhere pleasant. It will, however, lead somewhere less immediately fatal.”

Something struck the wall behind her.

Concrete cracked.

“That is the orientation,” Illyana added. “There will not be a quiz.”

A shriek of shearing metal rolled through the facility as the near wall crumpled inward. Dust and emergency smoke filled the corridor. Something too large to be human moved through the breach, plates along its body lifting and settling as it forced itself between twisted beams.

Logan came through the same opening it had made.

He moved as a dense shape through the smoke, claws already extended and shoulders set for impact. He took one look at the newcomer, another at the approaching figures, and then turned toward the man limping through the breach behind him.

St. John had one hand pressed against his ribs. Blood marked the corner of his mouth, and his leather jacket had been torn open along one side. The unlit cigarette was gone.

The anger that crossed Logan’s face was not directed at the enemy.

“You brought an outsider onto my operation,” he said, low and steady, “and didn’t tell them what it was.”

“I didn’t know what it was.” St. John’s breath caught as he straightened. “I knew somebody was using the alias. I knew there was a unit. That was it.”

“You gave them a keycard.”

“Because every one of our faces is already in somebody’s system. I needed eyes that weren’t on a roster.”

“And now those eyes are standing in a sterilization zone.”

“I said I didn’t know.”

“You do now.”

The plated creature struck at Logan.

He turned into the attack, caught its descending arm against crossed claws, and redirected enough of its momentum to send it through the outer wall of unit twelve. Steel buckled around its body.

For one brief second, the interior of the unit became visible.

It was not storage space.

A reinforced container occupied its center, bound with power cables and surrounded by equipment carrying the same Baltic company name printed on the rental agreement. Warning lights flashed along its sealed edges.

Wade dropped from an overhead maintenance platform and landed on top of it in a crouch.

“Found the package,” he announced.

The container moved beneath him.

Wade looked down.

“Package is wiggly.”

“Get off it,” Logan ordered.

“I am maintaining visual contact.”

“You’re sitting on it.”

“Close visual contact.”

The sealed corridor door behind the distant figures opened.

More shapes entered.

Some wore human faces. Others had stopped bothering.

Logan pointed one claw toward the eastern wall and raised his voice above the approaching noise.

“Everybody moves. Two blocks east, there’s an abandoned transit tunnel. Magik opens the door, we take the package, and we’re gone in ninety seconds.”

St. John looked toward the newcomer. Whatever apology might have existed behind his expression had no time to become words.

Something struck the far wall hard enough to fracture the concrete from floor to ceiling.

Illyana drew another line of blue light through the air. A portal began opening beside her, cold wind spilling from a destination that could not yet be seen.

Logan positioned himself between the newcomer and the advancing figures.

“If you don’t want any part of this, say so now.”

His claws caught the first returning trace of emergency light.

“You’ve got about ten seconds before the choice gets considerably worse.”

The Cordell Building had been a bank once, back when banks were built to suggest they could survive the fall of a government. Roberto da Costa had spent eighteen months and an alarming amount of money restoring that sense of permanence.

The banking hall on the second floor had been restored rather than renovated. Its original coffered ceiling rose over marble polished until it caught the warm light of the chandeliers. Brass teller cages remained as architectural nostalgia, their locks removed and their counters repurposed to display photographs from X-Factor’s humanitarian operations. Where the central vault had once been, the circular safe door stood open and illuminated, framing an exhibit on international evacuation work.

A restrained brass plaque offered four statistics from the previous year: two hundred and forty-one people evacuated from conflict zones, nineteen families reunited across international borders, eleven thousand pounds of medical freight delivered to a coastline several governments had declined to reach, and three temporary clinics constructed before the first international relief agency arrived.

Every number was true. Roberto had simply chosen which truths the room needed to see.

By nine o’clock, nearly four hundred guests occupied the hall. Roberto had spoken with more than half of them.

The Dutch trade attaché wanted assurances regarding liability in disputed maritime jurisdictions. Roberto provided them while signaling a waiter toward the Brazilian delegation’s empty glasses. A representative from a Zurich insurance consortium had flown in specifically to object to X-Factor’s proposed recovery contract. Roberto had spent eleven minutes agreeing with each concern before explaining that X-Factor did not need the consortium’s donation. It needed a standing agreement allowing the team to move personnel, equipment, and rescued civilians across borders without renegotiating coverage during every emergency.

The representative had not signed.

She had not left, either.

A string quartet played near the north windows. Conversations flowed around the restored columns in English, Portuguese, French, Spanish, and several languages Roberto understood well enough to recognize when his organization was being discussed. Servers circulated with champagne and carefully harmless food. Journalists remained behind a discreet press boundary that looked decorative until someone attempted to cross it.

Beneath the marble floor, secure servers processed field reports, encrypted communications moved between international properties, and restricted elevators connected the public building to operational rooms that did not appear on any gala program.

Alex Summers had been working since midafternoon. His suit remained immaculate, although his tie had loosened slightly and dinner had never made it onto his schedule. From his position near the press cordon, he could see both public entrances, the humanitarian exhibits, and most of the western service corridor.

His tablet displayed a floor plan beneath the evening’s security log. Alex studied the newest entry, checked the time against the live camera feeds, and touched the communication receiver concealed behind his ear.

“North entrance,” he said quietly. “Guest Services badge seventeen registered at three-fifty-two. It registered again six minutes ago.”

St. John’s voice answered through the earpiece. “That’s the staff door.”

“I know.”

“Then why are we discussing it?”

“Badge seventeen belongs to a woman currently standing beside the press cordon.”

There was a brief silence.

“That seems inconvenient.”

“It gets better. The camera recorded somebody using the badge six minutes ago, but the hallway feed lost eleven seconds immediately afterward.”

“Maintenance?”

“Maintenance doesn’t edit surveillance footage.”

Across the hall, Remy LeBeau appeared entirely at home among people who measured philanthropy in tax deductions and access. He had located the bar within minutes, charmed two donors who recognized him without remembering from where, and positioned himself beside the staging area for the silent auction. His glass remained mostly untouched while he watched reflections in the polished metal behind the display.

When Alex looked in his direction, Remy tipped his head toward the western service corridor.

Two donors had cornered St. John Allerdyce near a floral installation and were enthusiastically discussing his books. St. John’s formal jacket had been fitted three days earlier. He had objected to the fabric, the cut, the collar, the buttons, and the principle of tailoring. The tailor had apologized once. St. John had apologized later, though not for anything involving his language.

“I don’t write about the weather,” he told the donors, his Australian vowels flattened by patience under strain. “I write about people who ruin the weather for everybody else.”

They laughed.

St. John kept watching the freight elevator at the end of the corridor.

Megan Gwynn had been assigned to the humanitarian exhibits, where her warmth proved more effective than any prepared presentation. Guests who became defensive around financial officers spoke freely to her about why they had come, whom they hoped to meet, and what they expected from Roberto. Event staff were even less guarded. Two catering employees had described their assigned rotations during casual conversation. Neither rotation matched the copy Alex had approved that morning, and both had mentioned a supervisor named Ellis.

There was no Ellis on the building’s staffing records.

Megan borrowed a tray of canapés from a passing server and continued through the room. Near the west wall, a woman in a gray evening dress stood with her hands folded beneath her waist. She was not looking directly at the service corridor. She was using the reflection in the windows instead.

Megan changed course without breaking the rhythm of her conversation with an embassy aide.

Near the junction between the public hall and the western corridor, an unfamiliar attendee remained within sight of an unmarked service door. The door had opened twice during the previous ten minutes. No one had emerged either time.

A small brass fixture above the marble arch concealed a security camera aimed at the corridor, freight elevator, and a narrow conduit panel mounted beside the service door. The panel appeared ordinary unless compared with the original construction plans.

Alex had compared it.

According to the plans, it should have been two inches lower.

“I need eyes on the west freight,” he said. “Remy, stay near the vault exhibit. St. John, keep the corridor visible without frightening the donors.”

“I haven’t frightened anyone.”

“You told a Belgian industrialist that his pocket square looked flammable.”

“It did.”

“Try looking approachable.”

“That costs extra.”

Alex switched channels. “Roberto.”

Roberto was discussing transit corridors through the Sahel with a Portuguese industrialist. He finished the conversation, promised that a formal proposal would arrive Monday, and accepted a glass from a nearby server without drinking from it. His thumb pressed twice against the side of his watch.

Acknowledged.

“The vault exhibit,” Roberto said softly while turning toward a photographer. He smiled through the flash. “The original maintenance passage behind it was sealed during construction. If Remy is right about the frame, someone reopened it from the other side.”

“How many guests entered the exhibit tonight?”

“Eighty-three.”

“You counted?”

“I am hosting.”

“That wasn’t an answer.”

“It was the only answer you were getting during a photograph.”

Remy reached the vault exhibit while appearing to do little more than inspect its display. One hand settled against the enormous steel door as he examined the lighting mount installed along the lower frame. The mount had been loosened and secured again with replacement fasteners. One retained a fresh metallic edge where a tool had stripped its coating.

He crouched as though reading the humanitarian plaque and ran his fingertips beneath the frame.

“Somebody altered the mounting rail,” he murmured. “Cut through the seal behind it, too.”

“That passage was filled during construction,” Roberto replied.

“Not all the way. Someone cleared enough space for a person and covered the opening with your expensive lighting.”

“I’m going to invoice them.”

“Get in line.”

The freight elevator indicator changed from L to B2.

None of the nearby guests looked toward it. Alex, Remy, St. John, Megan, and Roberto all registered the movement.

Alex checked the security map. The elevator had not accepted an authorized credential. Its internal camera continued showing an empty car stationed at lobby level.

“We have an active breach,” Alex said. “Roberto, remain visible. The Zurich meeting starts in eight minutes, and if the consortium walks, we lose emergency coverage in six jurisdictions. Megan, stay upstairs. Keep the woman in gray in sight and find out whether anyone else has gone missing. Do not confront her alone. St. John, lock down the west corridor without making it look locked down. Nobody reaches that freight elevator until Remy clears it.”

“And if somebody comes up?”

“Use your judgment.”

“My judgment is fire.”

“Use the portion of your judgment compatible with a room full of civilians.”

“That’s a much smaller portion.”

“Exercise it.”

Roberto began crossing toward the insurance representative, stopping twice to acknowledge guests along the way. No one watching him would have guessed that the building’s lower levels had just recorded an unauthorized elevator in motion. His pace remained unhurried. His expression remained open. By the time he reached the Zurich delegation, he had already altered the evening’s presentation schedule, delayed press access to the west side of the hall, and instructed building security to describe any closed passage as preparation for a private auction.

Alex joined Remy at the vault exhibit. They waited until a group of guests moved toward the orchestra before slipping behind the open steel door and through the gap concealed by the altered lighting mount.

The passage descended into the building without decorative marble or restored brass. Bare concrete stairs turned beneath low utility lights, carrying the muffled sound of the gala down into the restricted levels. Remy examined the first landing while Alex checked the building systems on his tablet.

“Camera loop,” Alex said. “Freight controls are receiving instructions from somewhere inside B2.”

“Somebody started early.”

“Or they were already down there before the gala opened.”

Upstairs, the quartet continued without interruption. A server refilled champagne beside the south windows. Roberto greeted the insurance representative by name and resumed their negotiation as though the evening had produced no complication greater than an objectionable indemnity clause.

Megan reached the western side of the room several seconds after the woman in gray disappeared into a group of diplomatic guests. She did not pursue immediately. Instead, she stopped beside a nervous catering employee and asked whether Ellis had changed the service rotation again.

The employee answered too quickly.

St. John excused himself from the donors with a polite nod and walked toward the service corridor, adjusting one cuff as if formal clothing rather than a security breach had demanded his attention. He stopped at the corridor entrance, placing himself between the public hall and the unmarked service door.

His attention settled upon the unfamiliar attendee positioned nearby.

“Hold there a moment, mate,” St. John said. The words were casual. His placement in the corridor was not. “We’ve got a problem with the building’s records, and apparently you’re part of it.”

He did not reach for them or block access to the public hall. He simply remained where the restricted corridor began, one hand resting near the inside of his formal jacket.

Across the room, Roberto listened while the insurance representative explained her final objection. He answered with a revised liability structure, offered a concession on maritime recovery, and watched the west corridor over the rim of his untouched glass.

Then he pressed the side of his jacket twice, activating the private channel.

“Alex, check the west-corridor log against the arrivals database,” Roberto said. “Our new friend appears twice, and neither record agrees with reality. One says they arrived at eight. The other says they never entered the building.”

The Kilcairn Applied Kinetics building had never been beautiful. It was a seven-story block of pale concrete and mirrored glass on the southern edge of the city, built in the 1990s by a research consortium that valued capacity over style. The public lobby had been renovated since then—donor wall, soft seating, a looped video about renewable kinetic storage—but the upper floors still contained cramped, windowless laboratories where engineers worked on batteries the size of shipping crates and capacitors capable of flattening a city block if they discharged incorrectly.

One of those capacitors had begun discharging incorrectly at 7:48 that evening.

By the time the first fire engines arrived, the west stairwell had dropped three floors into a heap of cracked concrete and torn cable trays. The automated suppression system had smothered the initial electrical fire with foam, but the fire was only the first symptom. A kinetic-damping array on the fourth floor had failed, leaving the steel frame to absorb shockwaves it had never been designed to hold. Every eleven minutes, another pulse traveled through the structure, rattling glass loose and opening new fractures in the floor slabs. Structural engineers estimated that the frame could survive another forty minutes of cumulative strain. They were unwilling to promise what would happen after that.

The X-Men reached the south lot twelve minutes after the first emergency broadcast.

Scott Summers established himself beside the hood of a black response van, his visor already in place and a handheld display casting thin lines across his jaw. He wore the dark tactical uniform reserved for operations requiring emergency coordination rather than spectacle. Within six minutes, he had organized the evacuation efficiently enough that the city’s incident commander stopped contesting every instruction and began incorporating them.

Rogue had gone up the north stairwell with a structural engineer to reinforce failing supports along the fourth floor. Hank McCoy worked through the east lobby beside the paramedics, carrying injured laboratory staff from a corridor clogged with ceiling panels, broken conduit, and chemical foam. Neither had required a detailed assignment. Scott had identified the problems, and they had begun solving them.

The south lot became a staging area crowded with fire engines, ambulances, a mobile command unit, hazard technicians, and police struggling to hold back a growing line of spectators. The building produced a long metallic groan whenever the wind shifted against its damaged western face. Scott listened to the sound while studying the structural map.

“Mobile Command One,” he said over the shared channel. “I need the internal fourth-floor engineering plans. Not the public filing. Find the capacitor bank, the damping controls, and every route connecting them. I also need an accurate count for floors three and four.”

The response arrived beneath layers of radio traffic. Scott repeated the request without raising his voice and began marking possible evacuation routes.

Two X-Factor vehicles turned onto the western service road before the city finished producing the plans.

The first was a black armored transport with minimal markings. The second carried portable lights, independent generators, field communications, and enough medical equipment to support a temporary clinic. A police officer moved to redirect them until the incident commander received a message through his headset and waved both vehicles through.

The transport opened after it stopped inside the operational boundary.

Alex Summers stepped down wearing a black field jacket and an X-Factor communication unit. Roberto da Costa joined him with a tablet in one hand, already reviewing the county response map. Megan Gwynn followed with her wings folded and an emergency kit over one shoulder. Illyana Rasputina emerged behind her, unarmed but studying the damaged facility with a concentration Scott remembered from missions involving architecture that could not be trusted. Logan came last among the faces Scott immediately recognized, pausing beside the transport to sample the air.

One more X-Factor operative walked with them.

Scott could not place the additional team member at first glance. That did not necessarily mean they had never met. The X-Men had passed through too many rosters, schools, alliances, emergency coalitions, and interrupted lives for certainty to come easily. What Scott could identify was the X-Factor communicator and the fact that Alex included them within the unit without introduction or qualification.

Whoever they were, they had arrived as part of the team.

Scott’s attention returned to his brother.

“Summers,” he said. “You weren’t on incident command’s responder list.”

“County emergency management activated our powered-site agreement seven minutes ago,” Alex replied. Roberto passed him the authorization display. “We’re cleared and checking in now.”

“We’re already integrated with the city’s command structure.”

“Good. Then coordinating should be easy.”

“Integrate your channels and take assignments through unified command.”

“We’ll integrate communications,” Alex said. “X-Factor retains command of its own personnel.”

Scott looked past him again. Megan. Illyana. Logan. Roberto. The unrecognized operative standing among them.

On the fourth floor, Rogue heard X-Factor’s roster through Scott’s open channel and noticed one conspicuous absence. A small, guilty relief followed. Her husband was apparently deployed elsewhere, which meant Remy and Rogue could postpone their recurring argument about X-Factor, classified details, and his expansive definition of information he was allowed to keep from her. Scott was already doing enough arguing for both of them.

“The X-Men have active teams on four and in the east lobby,” Scott said. “We’re containing the capacitor bank and clearing the north route.”

“The east end is still collapsing,” Alex replied. “We’ll take evacuation there and sweep the lower levels.”

“The lower levels are listed as cleared.”

“Then the sweep will be quick.”

A kinetic pulse moved through the foundation. The vibration passed beneath the staging vehicles and climbed through the damaged building. One of the fifth-floor windows broke loose, struck a scaffolding arm, and shattered across an empty section of pavement. Firefighters moved the nearby medical station farther from the facade.

Scott’s gaze traveled across the assembled X-Factor unit. Megan had flown beside him under different skies. Illyana had opened portals into places no responsible commander would willingly send someone and returned from them alone. Logan had trained generations of X-Men while arguing with Scott through most of it. Roberto had left the mansion as a former student and returned as the financier of an independent mutant operation with vehicles, contracts, medical infrastructure, and a field leader who happened to be Scott’s brother.

The unidentified teammate complicated the picture further. X-Factor had developed beyond the collection of familiar names Scott had already heard about. It was recruiting people outside his immediate awareness and bringing them into active powered-site responses.

This was not Roberto announcing another ambitious project.

The organization already existed.

“We divide by operational zone,” Scott said. “X-Men maintain the fourth-floor containment line. X-Factor takes east evacuation and confirms the lower levels are clear. If the capacitor reaches critical instability, I call the withdrawal.”

“You call it for the X-Men,” Alex answered. “I’ll call it for X-Factor.”

“That isn’t how unified command works.”

“Then call it adjacent command.”

Roberto returned from speaking with the incident commander and stopped beside them. “The next pulse arrives in less than eleven minutes. Structural engineering gives the frame approximately forty before cumulative failure. If the two of you want to spend either countdown measuring command authority, the building will settle the question for you.”

Scott looked toward the fourth floor. Alex checked the eastern facade.

“Fine,” Scott said.

“Great,” Alex replied. “I’m glad we had this productive family meeting.”

The teams deployed.

Scott returned to the fourth-floor containment operation with Rogue and Hank. Alex divided X-Factor into smaller units. Megan moved toward the damaged atrium to assist survivors and emergency personnel along the east route. Illyana established a controlled portal connection between the east lobby and the medical station for evacuees who could not safely use the stairs. Logan entered through the lower service access to confirm that the facility’s reported evacuation was accurate. Roberto remained near incident command, coordinating X-Factor’s equipment and negotiating a second emergency route through an adjacent property whose owner had initially objected to having a wall removed.

Alex took the X-Factor operative Scott had failed to recognize into the eastern interior unit with him.

For the next twenty-five minutes, the combined response worked.

Voices moved through dust and overlapping radio channels. Survivors came out on stretchers, supported between responders, and under their own power. Hank cleared a passage through the east lobby while paramedics worked behind him. Rogue held a failing support long enough for engineers to brace it properly. Megan guided survivors through the atrium and compared each group against the facility’s evacuation records. Illyana’s portals reduced a dangerous seven-minute trip through the damaged building to several controlled steps into open air.

The building pulsed twice more. Each vibration lasted longer than the one before it.

The first discrepancy appeared on Alex’s tablet while his unit assessed a collapsed corridor on the third floor.

The emergency door leading into the east stairwell had not been blocked by debris or warped by the structural failure. Someone had locked it from the stairwell side, using a deadbolt that did not appear on the current safety plans. Beneath the newer paint, a clean rectangle showed where standard emergency signage had been removed.

Alex opened the shared channel.

“We have a problem with the east evacuation plan.”

“Which section?” Scott asked.

“Lower stairwell. It wasn’t disabled by the collapse. Someone sealed it before the emergency.”

“That’s one of Hank’s secondary routes.”

“Not anymore. The deadbolt has been engaged long enough for dust to collect around it, and the facility removed the exit marker.”

Scott examined the plans from his position on the fourth floor. “That doesn’t make sense.”

“No,” Alex said. “It doesn’t. The safety plan lists that stairwell as the only evacuation route for Sublevel Two.”

“There is no Sublevel Two.”

“According to the evacuation manifest.”

Scott sent the information across both teams’ channels. Additional inconsistencies surfaced within minutes.

At an east-wing security kiosk, Megan compared the facility’s evacuation manifest against the local access records. Three employees had entered a lower service corridor at 8:12—twenty-four minutes after the first capacitor failure. The official manifest listed those same employees as having left the property at 7:55. One of the names appeared again among the personnel currently advising the city from a safe location across town.

Illyana encountered another problem while establishing a portal route into the service bay shown on the engineering plans. Her stepping disk formed almost three meters short of the building’s documented outer wall. Beyond its edge lay occupied space where the plans claimed there should be reinforced concrete. The concealed area carried heat and electrical activity unrelated to the failing capacitor bank.

Logan reached the locked stairwell from the lower service corridor. He breathed in once, sorting human scent from smoke, foam, hot wiring, and concrete dust.

“There are people down here,” he reported. “More than the manifest says.”

“How many?” Alex asked.

“Can’t separate all of them. Somebody moved through recently. Chemicals, blood, suppressant compounds.”

The facility shuddered again. Firefighters in the east lot reported that the southern wall had shifted several centimeters.

Scott and Alex reviewed the new information through separate command displays. Their disagreement had not vanished, but the available evidence left little room for delay.

Both spoke at nearly the same moment.

“Find out who.”

Logan was already positioned below. Alex redirected his interior unit toward the concealed sublevel while Illyana maintained the evacuation route above them. Megan remained with the surviving employees, looking for anyone attempting to leave under an incorrect name or borrowed credential. Roberto stayed publicly visible beside incident command, managing police, reporters, property access, and the legal consequences of discovering an undeclared laboratory beneath an active disaster.

Scott left Rogue and Hank with the fourth-floor containment line and approached the concealed level through the north maintenance route.

On the fourth floor, Rogue watched him disappear into the stairwell and adjusted her grip beneath a reinforced beam.

“Family rescue,” she muttered over the local channel. “Always relaxing.”

Hank glanced toward the stairwell. “At least no one has discharged an optic blast at a sibling.”

“Night’s young.”

The lower service corridor passed beneath the eastern wing through bare concrete, exposed cable runs, and utility lighting that flickered whenever the capacitor discharged. The locked stairwell door stood at the far end. Someone had removed part of its lower hinge, and a maintenance hatch nearby remained open. The air carried smoke from above and the sharper odor Logan had identified.

Alex reached the concealed section with the unrecognized X-Factor operative still attached to his unit. Logan waited near the false wall, one hand resting against the damaged panel. Scott approached from the opposite maintenance route several seconds later.

The altered section of wall had been built on a recessed track. Illyana’s measurements gave Alex the location of the hidden release, and Logan found the chemical scent left by whoever had handled it recently. The panel opened onto a laboratory absent from every plan provided to the city.

A narrow workbench occupied the far wall. Two sets of restraint shackles had been left open beside it, their locking mechanisms connected to a suppression unit concealed beneath the work surface. A backup generator sat disconnected in one corner, its power leads trailing through a gap in the floor. Identification plates had been removed from the equipment, leaving pale rectangles and empty screw holes.

A sealed interior door divided the laboratory from another room.

The display beside it showed four occupied monitoring channels.

Scott checked the structural timer. “We shut down the suppression equipment and withdraw. The next pulse could bring this section down.”

“If those channels correspond to people behind that door, shutting it down without knowing the system could kill them,” Alex said.

“If the suppression equipment is tied into the capacitor array, leaving it active could bring down the building.”

Logan examined the floor near the sealed door. “Something was moved out through here after the first pulse. Heavy transport. At least four people with it.”

“So somebody used the disaster as cover,” Alex said.

“Or caused it,” Scott replied.

A new warning appeared on the laboratory display. The four monitoring channels remained active, but one began losing power. Above them, metal shifted through the building with a prolonged, grinding complaint.

Two routes led from the concealed laboratory. The sealed interior door protected the remaining monitoring signals. A service passage behind the disconnected generator carried the fresh tracks Logan had identified toward an unknown exit.

Scott looked at the unstable equipment. Alex looked toward the service passage. Neither option could be ignored, and neither team had enough time to pursue both without dividing again.

Alex turned toward the X-Factor operative who had entered with him—the one Scott still could not immediately place and Alex had never treated as anything other than part of his unit.

“You’re with Logan,” Alex said. “Either help him follow that transport, or stay here and help us work out how to open this door without killing whoever’s connected to it.”

Scott glanced toward the unfamiliar X-Factor communicator, clearly ready to question Alex’s decision to offer operational discretion to someone whose capabilities Scott had not yet established.

Alex noticed.

“You command your team,” he said before Scott could speak. Then his attention returned to the X-Factor operative. “Your call.”

The parlor of Granny Smite’s temporary residence occupied the second floor of a narrow row house that leaned slightly toward the bakery on its right, as if the building itself were eavesdropping on conversations about bread. The room hosted a collision of eras and intentions: a velvet settee the color of bruised plums sat beneath a military-grade wall monitor, while a tea tray balanced on the polished lid of a long case that might once have held a cello and now carried the faint impression of something heavier. Lace doilies had been arranged beneath ceramic mugs, a loaded pistol magazine, a small brass bell that did not ring, and a cut-glass dish of lemon biscuits arranged in a spiral. A green wool shawl hung across the back of a reinforced armchair, its fringe caught in the seam of a tactical vest draped over the chair’s other side.

Granny Smite occupied that armchair with the quiet ownership of a woman who had chosen every object in the room by hand, including the ones that did not belong to her. She was small and soft around the shoulders, with short white hair curling in several directions as though each section had formed an independent opinion. Gold-rimmed spectacles rested low on a nose that had seen a long life’s worth of weather. Her dress was floral, practical, and buttoned to the throat, and her lavender house slippers rested on a footstool embroidered with the words MIND THE STAIRS.

Age remained plainly visible in her face, hands, and posture. Her mutation had repeatedly prevented death; it had never promised youth. Every available indication suggested that Granny aged as any other elderly mutant woman did. Whether the end of that ordinary process would finally be permitted to keep her was a question nobody could answer, least of all Granny.

She held a clipboard on one knee and an uncapped fountain pen in her fingers, its green-stained nib hovering over a page crowded with underlines.

Across from her, Wade Wilson had folded himself into a chair built for someone with fewer opinions about chair design. His mask lay beside his elbow, leaving his scarred face uncovered. One leg bounced beneath the table. He had been talking for eleven uninterrupted minutes, and Granny had not attempted to stop him, which he was beginning to suspect had been a tactical error on his part.

A third place had been prepared near the window, positioned within reach of the tea tray and with a clear view of the street below. Granny’s handwritten invitation had provided an address, a time, and little explanation beyond her assurance that attendance would be “useful, pleasant, or at least educational.” An untouched cup waited beside the place setting. Whether Granny had selected her guest because of X-Factor, personal history, professional interest, or something she had neglected to disclose remained unclear.

“So I say to the realtor,” Wade continued, “It’s not the ceiling that bothers me. It’s that the ceiling is also a door. And she tells me that isn’t a structural problem; it’s a lifestyle feature. So now I own a loft with a reversible floor plan, and if I ever die by falling upward into my own kitchen, that’s the one I want engraved on the plaque.”

He broke a biscuit in half.

“But you already have that one in your notes.”

“I do.” Granny turned a page on the clipboard. “Under Property-Related Mortalities, Subsection: Unlicensed Stairwells. You were quite thorough.”

“I have a system.”

Wade leaned toward Granny’s other guest and pointed toward the tea cozy. The patterned fabric concealed the narrow outline of a knife tucked into its piping.

“Don’t startle them, Wade,” Granny said without looking away from her notes. “They’re my guest, not a recruit at one of your orientation briefings.”

“Same thing, usually.” Wade waved one hand toward the window, which overlooked a street of false calm and overwatered geraniums. “Either way, people end up wondering whether the exit sign is decorative.”

Granny placed the tip of her pen beside a column of handwritten dates. “Your response to the enchanted guillotine—was that before or after the incident with the exploding museum?”

“Before. Way before. That was during the phase when I was still keeping my head attached out of professionalism.” Wade considered the remaining half of his biscuit. “After the third reattachment, I stopped being precious about it.”

“And the scar tissue?” Granny asked. “Did it reform over the original stitching, or did the new tissue incorporate the thread?”

Wade paused with the biscuit halfway to his mouth. Some of the theatrical brightness faded from his expression.

“You’re asking whether the healing factor treats foreign bodies as injury or architecture.”

“I’m asking whether it treats them as memory,” Granny replied.

Wade set the biscuit down.

Granny continued before he could answer. “How long have you remained conscious while unable to move?”

“That depends on whether being reduced to a head counts as unable to move or simply under-equipped.”

“It counts.”

“Then the answer is uncomfortably long.”

“Hours?”

“Yes.”

“Days?”

Wade looked at the categories written along the edge of her page. One had been labeled BURIAL. Beneath it, Granny had written NATURAL AGING, SYSTEMIC FAILURE, and CONTINUED AWARENESS WITHOUT RECOVERY. His attention remained there longer than it had on the guillotine questions.

“Granny,” he said, quieter now. “Are you asking whether you’d stay conscious?”

“I’m asking whether the body can continue remembering itself after it has lost the strength to do anything about it.”

Her voice remained pleasant. Her pen did not shake.

The mutation that kept Granny alive had never explained its terms. It might stop a bullet, redirect an accident, preserve breath, or force her body through injuries that should have ended it. No one knew whether it would eventually recognize old age as natural permission to stop. No one knew what would happen if it did not.

Granny glanced down and turned another page.

Wade followed the movement. “Where did you get that date?”

“Which date?”

“The one at the bottom.” He leaned forward. “That never appeared in any report I filed. It came from a week when I was convinced I’d been in two places at once, and one of those places was a parking garage that didn’t exist. I told one person about it. One. He died before I finished the sentence.”

“People often die before sentences are finished.” Granny underlined the date with a delicate stroke. “It doesn’t mean the sentence stops being true.”

Outside, a gray sedan passed the window. It had no decals and carried a broad dent across its rear quarter panel. It continued to the end of the street, reversed slowly, and settled into the empty space outside the bakery.

The driver remained inside. The engine continued running.

Granny noticed. Her pen rested against the page.

“Wade,” she said gently, “would you be a dear and switch on the kettle again? These discussions go better when the house has something else to do.”

Wade remained focused on the window, where a second vehicle had appeared at the opposite corner.

“Granny, I’m going to ask a question, and I need you to answer without using the word fate or the phrase the universe has been ever so kind.”

“I’ll try.”

“Why did you invite them?” He indicated Granny’s other guest without looking away from the street. “You could’ve invited me. I’m delightful. You could’ve invited Logan, although he’d bring down the mood and criticize the biscuits. But you sent one card, and you still haven’t told me why them.”

“Their name isn’t the part you need,” Granny said. “That was never the point.”

A low sound traveled through the row house: timber settling under a change in weight somewhere below.

Granny turned to a clean page and wrote five words in the same green ink.

THEY FOLLOWED THE INVITATION HERE.

She tore the page free, folded it once, and tucked it beneath the saucer at her guest’s place.

“Now,” she said, reaching for the teapot, “I should tell you both that the lock on the front door was changed this morning. The new one holds very well unless someone knows the code. Only I know the code, and I gave it to no one. The postman tried it at nine-fifteen before leaving his bicycle idling in the street.”

Wade turned from the window. “You watched a fake postman test your new security lock, and your response was to continue hosting tea?”

“It would have been rude to cancel after the water was hot.”

“Granny.”

She smiled toward her guest. “The front door should hold for now. The back door opens into the bakery’s oven room. The ovens are off, so that isn’t currently an exit. It is an argument waiting to happen.”

Wade rose from the undersized chair. “Please stop narrating a siege and explain why a second car is circling the block.”

“They’re not certain which floor we’re on,” Granny replied. “They’re also respecting the property line, which means they were raised correctly, or they believe the upstairs neighbor is still home.”

“Is she?”

“No. I borrowed her cat.”

A knock sounded from beyond the kitchen. It had not come from the front entrance. Two quick knocks, three slow ones, then two quick again.

Granny glanced toward the rear of the house.

“Well,” she said. “That isn’t right.”

The lights dimmed before returning at reduced strength. Beneath the floor, a concealed machine began to hum. The military monitor woke and displayed the building’s exterior feeds.

Four figures stood at the rear entrance dressed as delivery workers. None carried a parcel. One held a keycard while another carried a folded square of paper marked in the same looping symbol Granny had repeatedly traced beside Wade’s missing date.

The rear security camera rotated toward them.

Its feed went black.

Wade reached inside his jacket and closed one hand around a concealed weapon. “Granny, I’m going to say this with love and a small amount of professional admiration: your tea parties have gotten worse.”

“They’ve become more informative.”

Granny lifted the green shawl from the armchair and removed a small case hidden beneath it. The case opened to reveal a pair of brass knuckles fitted with a folding corkscrew. She slid them onto her left hand with the careful ease of someone putting on a gardening glove.

The room’s remaining camera feed flickered. One of the gray sedans now blocked the street. Movement passed briefly beneath the bakery awning, and the kitchen door gave a quiet mechanical click as someone tested the new lock.

Granny adjusted the position of the biscuit dish.

“Now, my dear,” she said to her guest, already replenishing the untouched cup at their place, “there’s a biscuit available if you’d like one, but I should warn you that the pink one has been watching us for the last hour.”

Wade looked at the dish. “The biscuit is bugged?”

“The icing flower is. The biscuit itself has behaved beautifully.”

A second click sounded from the kitchen lock.

Granny set the teapot down and folded her hands over the clipboard.

“What I’d like to know before the back door makes its mistake is whether you prefer the explanation now, or after our visitors introduce themselves.” Her eyes moved briefly toward the folded page beneath the saucer. “Either way, I’m afraid the lavender in your invitation was not entirely fresh.”

The mission had ended six days ago, and the internet was still dissecting it like a museum piece.

At 2:14 a.m. on Thursday, a civilian with a phone and an exceptional sense of timing had posted thirty seconds of grainy footage from the collapsed transit platform beneath Bleecker Street. The clip showed X-Factor’s extraction unit pulling survivors from a fractured maintenance tunnel while emergency lights stuttered overhead. It was not the rescue itself that caught the public’s attention. It was the final few seconds, when Havok said something too quiet for the microphone and turned toward the X-Factor operative beside him. Alex’s hand rose as if to check for injury before he deliberately returned it to his side. The video ended there, its audio swallowed by wind and distant sirens. By noon, the moment had been slowed down, enlarged, color-corrected, set to orchestral music, and viewed eleven million times.

By evening, the internet had divided into factions.

The first called itself the Emberline Society and built an elaborate theory around the half-second of footage in which St. John redirected cascading fire away from the operative while standing close enough for the heat to blister his own sleeve. Members posted frame-by-frame comparisons of his expression, argued that Australian profanity qualified as a love language, and sold shirts printed with STAY BEHIND ME, YEAH?—a sentence they had collectively decided he must have said despite the original recording containing no intelligible dialogue.

Another faction, Wingwatch, focused on Megan. A press photographer had captured her wings flaring wide to shield several people from falling concrete, and within four days the image had been recreated as a Renaissance painting, a stained-glass window, and a limited run of unauthorized art prints. Her supporters were gentle, prolific, and unexpectedly organized. They had also raised enough money for displaced powered children that X-Factor’s accounting department could not bring itself to complain about the rampant copyright violations.

Portal Requiem had formed around Illyana. Seven seconds of footage from the north exit showed a section of floor collapsing between two extraction points. A portal opened through the dust, and Illyana’s gloved hand reached across the gap to close around the operative’s wrist before the camera shifted away. The faction overlaid the moment with thunder, church bells, and several languages’ worth of solemn poetry. One particularly popular edit ended with the words SHE WAITED. The fact that Illyana had later described the maneuver as routine spatial triage had done nothing to discourage them.

By Friday, every recognizable teammate captured near the operative had acquired a faction. There was Quicksilver Minute, whose members conducted romantic analysis in fractions of a second; Snarl & Shield, devoted to a black-and-white photograph of Logan intercepting a gunman; Deadpool’s Honeymoon, which appeared to have begun as a joke until several thousand people took it seriously; Gambit’s Good Luck, whose evidence included a photograph taken months before the mission; and Kindlekept, the St. John faction’s more literary splinter group. Each had its own graphics, internal mythology, preferred soundtrack, and merchandise store.

The online attention had done something strange to X-Factor. The public mission report—seven pages, thoroughly vetted, complete with evacuation statistics and structural recommendations—had been opened fewer than eight thousand times. The romantic edits had driven traffic to X-Factor’s humanitarian pages up by four hundred percent. Contributions to the displaced-persons fund had tripled. A medical foundation had requested a meeting about a long-term partnership, and volunteer applications for X-Factor’s resettlement clinics had increased sharply enough to overwhelm the intake portal.

The public had not fallen in love with the mission. It had fallen in love with the people performing it and, almost accidentally, learned why the mission mattered.

Roberto da Costa understood that kind of momentum better than anyone.

He had spent four hours watching the numbers move across a dashboard in his private office at X-Factor’s New York operations center. Beyond the windows, the city had dissolved into reflected light and late traffic. The overhead fixtures remained off, leaving the office illuminated by the muted glow of several screens. Roberto sat behind his desk with the sleeves of his sweater pushed to his elbows, a cold cup of coffee near his right hand, and eight separate media folders arranged across the main monitor.

His partner was already present. A place had been prepared near the windows, with an untouched cup of tea on the low table beside it. Nothing about the arrangement had been announced to the rest of the building. There had been no scheduled communications meeting, no public-relations staff summoned upstairs, and no legal representative waiting to turn the conversation into policy. For the moment, the matter belonged only to the two people whose actual relationship had been erased from every version of the story circulating online.

Roberto began with the practical problem because numbers were easier to manage than the alternative.

“We have several choices about how loudly we respond.” He adjusted the display, replacing the folders with a graph tracking engagement, donation spikes, press requests, and estimated revenue from unauthorized merchandise. “The internet has transformed you into the protagonist of an ensemble romance. It is also generating more legitimate attention for our humanitarian programs than any campaign we’ve run in two years. We can treat that as an accident, or we can decide whether any part of it can be redirected responsibly.”

He returned the folders to the screen and opened the first one: ALEX / FIELD.

“Alex’s supporters believe every tactical decision he made was an expression of deeply restrained affection. They are polite, well-researched, and have submitted three formal interview requests through our press office. They also produced a shot-by-shot reconstruction of the mission.” Roberto moved through several annotated frames. “It’s eighty-eight percent accurate. Alex is offended by the missing twelve percent and even more offended that I know he watched the entire thing.”

He closed the folder and opened REMY / ROGUE CONTINGENCY.

“Remy’s faction found a photograph from a coffee shop in Lisbon four months ago. It was taken while an extraction team waited for revised transportation orders. They have decided it proves the two of you were secretly dating.” Roberto enlarged the photograph just enough to reveal a crowded table, mission folders, and the edge of an equipment case that most online observers had ignored. “Remy is married to Rogue. Rogue knows exactly what that photograph was, where it was taken, and why everyone was there. What she does not appreciate is several thousand strangers treating her as the obstacle in somebody else’s romance.”

He closed the file before a collection of comments could begin scrolling beneath it.

“They have also started selling candles called Bon Voyage, Mon Cœur. No one has established what that means in this context. Remy claims he had nothing to do with it, which would be more persuasive if he had not asked whether X-Factor receives a percentage.”

The next folder was PIETRO / FIVE FRAMES.

“Quicksilver’s supporters are working with five frames taken from a sixty-foot extraction. His hand appears on your shoulder for less than a second. They have assigned a separate emotional stage to each frame and named the sequence The Five Frames of Falling.” Roberto’s expression shifted toward reluctant appreciation. “The editing is technically impressive. The music is unlicensed, the timeline is nonsense, and Pietro has objected to their calculation of his speed.”

He opened MEGAN / WINGGUARD. Fan illustrations filled the screen in pink, silver, and gold, some tender and some so dramatic that Megan appeared to be defending the operative from the end of creation itself.

“Wingwatch has raised forty-seven thousand dollars for displaced powered children. Megan wants the fundraiser left alone as long as no one falsely claims she endorsed the merchandise. She is also worried that correcting the romantic interpretation will embarrass the people donating.” Roberto rested his hand near the keyboard. “She asked if there was a way to preserve the kindness without validating the fiction. That is, unfortunately, the useful question everyone else avoided.”

The next file was ILLYANA / SNOW & SOOT.

“Illyana’s faction believes the portal footage represents a timeless bond transcending death, geography, and possibly causality. Illyana says she opened the portal because the floor had collapsed and that anyone assigning religious significance to proper extraction geometry deserves what happens to them.” Roberto glanced at a paused image of Illyana’s hand emerging through smoke and blue light. “Her official answer has been quoted in twelve thousand romantic posts.”

He moved to LOGAN / OLD WOUNDS.

“Logan’s supporters have one black-and-white photograph of him stepping between you and a shooter. They have turned it into evidence of a shared history neither of you has discussed publicly. Most of them did not know he was on X-Factor before this week.” Roberto opened a second tab. “They now believe the absence of evidence is proof that the relationship is too painful to acknowledge. Logan read that sentence, finished his cigar, and walked into the woods.”

The folder marked WADE / UNRELIABLE NARRATIVE contained significantly more material than the others.

“Wade has encouraged his faction, denied encouraging his faction, accused himself of exploiting his faction, and released a twelve-minute statement in which he claimed the two of you had been married in three alternate timelines. He has also licensed his own unauthorized merchandise.” Roberto paused over a sales page. “Bath mats are involved. We are not discussing them.”

Last came ST. JOHN / KINDLEKEPT.

“St. John’s supporters have written forty-one thousand words of fiction in six days. The word ember appears in approximately thirty percent of the paragraphs. He says he is disgusted by the invasion of privacy, but someone using his established publishing pseudonym has already reviewed four of the stories and left detailed editorial notes.”

Roberto closed the final folder. All eight returned in a single row across the screen: eight campaigns, eight public narratives, eight versions of a relationship that did not exist. None acknowledged the real one being carefully kept inside this room.

“Professionally, this is the most effective thing that has happened to X-Factor’s public profile since we announced the organization. We could direct the attention toward resettlement, reconstruction, the missing-child network in Portugal, or the people who actually needed help beneath Bleecker Street. We could let curiosity about the team carry people toward work they might otherwise ignore. I am interested in doing that.”

His gaze moved away from the figures and settled on his partner.

“What I am not interested in is watching several thousand strangers write you into relationships you never agreed to and call the result evidence.”

The annoyance in his voice was controlled, but not disguised. Roberto did not pretend his objections were entirely institutional. He had built too much of X-Factor around calculated honesty to become dishonest when the calculation involved him.

“And yes,” he added, “I dislike seeing my partner paired with everyone I employ. I’m capable of recognizing that as jealousy without mistaking it for decision-making authority.”

He turned the monitor so the entire row of folders faced the place near the windows.

“But I’m not making this decision alone. We can say nothing. We can acknowledge the joke without endorsing any particular story. We can correct specific misinformation. We can bring in whichever teammate is most affected and decide what they are comfortable addressing. We can use the attention to support the relief programs while drawing a line around everything personal.”

His hand remained beside the keyboard, but he did not open another file.

“Or, if that is what you want, we can disclose the real relationship. That option carries consequences. People will question your position here. They’ll question my judgment. Every disagreement will become evidence of dysfunction, and every assignment involving both of us will be examined for favoritism. The private part of this stops being private the moment it leaves this room, and I will not put it there before you decide you want it there.”

The cursor moved under Roberto’s hand, passing slowly from one folder to another without selecting any of them.

“So tell me which version of your fictional love life we’re dealing with first. Alex, Remy, Pietro, Megan, Illyana, Logan, Wade, or St. John. The internet has a file on every one of them, and I have thoughts about all eight.”

A trace of dry amusement finally reached his expression.

“Some of those thoughts are even suitable for the official record.”

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