As night slowly descended over New York, two separate groups of mutants moved toward the same destination.
Under ordinary circumstances, the farmhouse would not have drawn much attention. People around the area considered it strange, certainly, but strange was hardly unusual in New York anymore. Odd buildings, suspicious owners, unexplained disappearances—most people learned quickly that asking questions often brought more trouble than answers.
The X-Men approached cautiously from the eastern side of the property. Even without some of their strongest members present, the team Storm had assembled was still formidable. Rogue and Colossus advanced at the front while Wolverine prowled slightly ahead of the group, senses alert for anything unusual. Gambit moved with practiced ease beside Jean Grey, whose expression had remained tense ever since they entered the area surrounding the farmhouse.
Meanwhile, the Brotherhood approached from the front without even pretending subtlety.
Mystique led the group with Pyro, Sabertooth, Toad, and Juggernaut following behind her. There was also one additional member whose presence had little to do with the Brotherhood itself.
Regan Wyngarde.
Daughter of Jason Wyngarde.
And perhaps the one person present who hated him more than anyone else alive.
She had not come for the mission. She had not come to rescue anyone. The others understood that clearly enough. Regan was here for one reason alone—to confront her father and trap him inside the same kind of nightmare he had forced onto countless others.
The Brotherhood had promised they would help her if the opportunity arose.
An illusion for an illusion.
A punishment fitting for someone like Jason.
Regan wanted him to feel helplessness. Dependency. Fear. She wanted him trapped inside a reality so convincing that he would finally understand what he had done to her.
As they approached the property, the farmhouse itself appeared disappointingly ordinary. A fenced stretch of land surrounded a moderately sized house sitting alone beneath the darkening sky. Sparse patches of grass and neglected plants covered the area, though there were no large trees or crops anywhere nearby despite the place technically being called a farmhouse.
It looked empty.
Too empty.
Still, none of them slowed down.
This was never meant to be an infiltration mission.
Juggernaut walked directly through the front entrance without bothering to open the door properly. Wood exploded inward around his shoulders as the massive man forced his way inside, leaving the others to follow casually behind him.
Very little resistance greeted them.
That alone should have been suspicious.
Within minutes they located an elevator leading underground. No guards blocked access. No security systems activated. There was not even a keycard requirement.
Pyro frowned slightly as the elevator descended. “This feels way too easy,” he muttered. “Maybe Jason really isn’t all that impressive.”
No one answered him immediately.
The underground level opened into what appeared to be a clean containment chamber with smooth metallic walls and almost no furniture beyond several reinforced holding cages. The atmosphere felt sterile to an uncomfortable degree, more like a laboratory than a hideout.
Inside two of the cages sat the captured girls.
Relieved expressions crossed their faces the moment the Brotherhood entered.
Pyro smirked slightly and sent flames roaring through the locking mechanisms. Metal warped and collapsed under the heat almost instantly while the girls hurried out, thanking them repeatedly.
Everything about the situation felt strangely perfect.
Too perfect.
Even the brief resistance they encountered seemed almost laughable. A handful of armed guards appeared alongside an enormous brute of a man, but Juggernaut tore through them effortlessly while Sabertooth ripped apart the rest with savage enthusiasm.
To Pyro, it looked like exactly what they expected—a weak operation folding the moment real power arrived.
To Regan, however, the scene unfolding before her was something else entirely.
She watched with growing satisfaction as Sabertooth drove his claws into Jason’s body and hurled him violently across the room. Every impact filled her with a deep, vicious sense of relief. Part of her wanted to be the one tearing him apart herself, but another part understood this was better. Safer.
Jason looked terrified.
Weak.
Pathetic.
For once, he looked like prey.
And Regan wanted to savor every second of it.
Only Mystique remained visibly uneasy.
Something was wrong.
The feeling crawled beneath her skin with increasing intensity, though she struggled to identify exactly what it was. The rescue had happened too smoothly. The guards had folded too quickly. Even the captives themselves felt oddly convenient.
Her eyes slowly moved around the room again.
That was when she noticed Juggernaut was no longer there.
The moment the elevator doors had opened earlier, everyone in the room had been struck by an invisible crimson pulse emitted from somewhere deeper underground. It had washed through them so quickly most had not consciously registered it at all.
But the effects had already begun.
The Brimstone Mutation Disruptor.
Built from discarded Project Wideawake technology and powered through the Brimstone Connector, the machine weakened the X-Gene itself while simultaneously amplifying Jason’s illusions to terrifying levels.
Most mutants never even realized they had been affected.
Their powers weakened.
Their minds softened.
And Jason stepped in before they could notice the difference.
Pyro still believed he had rescued prisoners.
Regan still believed Sabertooth was torturing Jason.
Others had already drifted completely into personalized fantasies without even understanding what was happening around them anymore. Some spoke softly to people who did not exist. Others wandered aimlessly through the empty room while believing they were somewhere else entirely.
One mutant repeatedly walked face-first into a wall while smiling faintly, completely immersed in an illusion only they could see.
Juggernaut alone had resisted fully.
The crimson wave had affected him too—he could feel it grinding against the mutant portion of his power, weakening it enough to irritate him immediately—but Cain Marko was not merely a mutant. The power of Cyttorak still burned within him, allowing him to force his way through the mental interference through sheer rage alone.
The moment the illusion settled over the others, Juggernaut had smashed straight through one of the reinforced walls and continued deeper underground.
Now he stormed through a massive chamber beyond the containment room, each step shaking the metal floor beneath him.
The true facility finally revealed itself there.
A colossal machine dominated the center of the hall, black metal covered in crimson energy lines pulsing rhythmically throughout its surface. The Brimstone Mutation Disruptor was still accumulating power for another wave, unstable energy crackling through thick cables running across the ceiling and walls.
And above it all, seated casually atop a raised platform overlooking the chamber, sat Jason Wyngarde.
One of his boots rested against the back of a young woman forced onto her hands and knees beneath him like furniture. Her face carried an almost euphoric smile despite the degrading position she had been reduced to, her vacant eyes making it painfully obvious that her mind no longer fully belonged to herself.
Jason barely acknowledged the cruelty of it.
To him, people were tools. Toys. Things to reshape until they became useful.
The moment he noticed Juggernaut approaching, however, his expression shifted slightly with genuine surprise before amusement slowly followed.
“So it actually works,” Jason muttered quietly while glancing toward the machine below.
Juggernaut answered by charging straight at him.
Jason immediately unleashed the remaining captives.
Dozens of mutants poured into the chamber from reinforced side corridors, many of them visibly unstable. None were especially powerful individually, but every single one possessed some irritating or dangerous ability, and under Jason’s control they attacked without hesitation.
Juggernaut crashed into them like a living avalanche.
The first mutant exploded apart on impact as Cain’s shoulder hit him hard enough to turn bone and flesh into red paste across the floor. Another tried to restrain him with tendrils of hardened biomass only for Juggernaut to rip both the mutant and the restraints apart together before hurling the screaming body into a cluster of others.
Energy blasts hammered against him from multiple directions while another mutant distorted gravity beneath his feet, briefly slowing his advance.
It only made him angrier.
Juggernaut grabbed one attacker by the skull and smashed him into the metal wall hard enough to leave a crater before stomping another mutant beneath his feet with enough force to crack the reinforced flooring.
Even weakened, he felt monstrous.
And somewhere behind him, buried beneath layers upon layers of false reality, Mystique finally realized the horrifying truth.
None of them had rescued anyone.
The realization hit her abruptly enough that for a brief moment she felt clarity return. The underground chamber around her suddenly seemed distorted, details no longer lining up correctly. The rescued girls, the guards, even the flow of events themselves all carried inconsistencies she should have noticed earlier.
But that moment of awareness was itself another illusion.
Jason Wyngarde had not earned the name Mastermind through simple telepathy alone. He understood people too well for that. He understood how suspicion formed, how intelligent minds questioned inconsistencies, how experienced operatives like Mystique instinctively searched for hidden traps the moment something felt wrong.
So he prepared for it.
For people like her, Jason never created a single illusion.
He created layers.
One false awakening hidden inside another.
A mind escaping one illusion only to feel relieved while unknowingly falling deeper into the next was far easier to control than someone trapped blindly from the beginning. The moment Mystique “realized” the truth, Jason had already accounted for that reaction long before she experienced it.
Elsewhere inside the facility, Jason watched the security monitors with growing interest.
“Oh… I didn’t expect this,” he muttered softly.
Another group had entered the property.
The X-Men.
His expression darkened slightly as he observed them moving through the farmhouse. The Brotherhood arriving had not surprised him much. Having connections within global intelligence circles—and occasionally access to the world’s greatest spy—naturally came with advantages. Information leaked. Patterns emerged. Attacks became predictable.
But the X-Men arriving on the same night, at nearly the exact same time?
That was not coincidence.
Someone was moving against him deliberately.
Still, Jason did not panic.
The moment unauthorized intruders entered the property, the facility’s internal systems subtly redirected them toward the same underground chamber where the Brotherhood was already trapped. Hallways shifted through projected illusions. Doors appeared where none existed. Distances subtly changed. Anyone entering eventually found themselves funneled toward the containment room whether they realized it or not.
And now Jason wanted to see how effective the Brimstone Mutation Disruptor truly was against stronger opponents.
Azazel was already present somewhere deeper within the facility, but Jason still contacted the Hellfire Club for support regardless. Calling them would cost him favors later, perhaps expensive ones, yet he had no intention of gambling with his own survival simply because things appeared under control.
Especially not tonight.
The X-Men entered cautiously.
The moment they stepped into the chamber, they saw what appeared to be the Brotherhood surrounding Jason while restrained mutants suffered nearby beneath experimental machinery.
Storm’s eyes narrowed immediately.
Had the Brotherhood truly fallen this low?
Mutant experimentation?
The idea disgusted her instantly, and that emotional reaction alone gave Jason the opening he needed.
The crimson pulse released by the Brimstone Mutation Disruptor swept through the room again, subtle yet devastating. It weakened the X-Gene directly, dulling mutant abilities while simultaneously making the mind far more vulnerable to psychic manipulation.
Illusions settled over the team almost immediately.
Sabertooth reacted first the moment he noticed Wolverine.
There was no hesitation.
The two launched at each other instantly, years of hatred igniting before either could think rationally. Claws collided violently as both crashed through the chamber like wild animals, each convinced the other had chosen this battlefield willingly.
Rogue experienced something entirely different.
In her mind, Jason was not a monster.
He was a mutant scientist trying to help his own kind.
Yes, his methods were questionable. Yes, people suffered during the process. But beneath it all she saw progress. Hope. A future where mutants like her no longer had to live in fear of their own touch.
For one painful moment, she imagined herself walking through the world freely. No gloves. No layers of fabric separating her from everyone else. No fear of accidentally hurting someone simply because she wanted human contact.
The illusion wrapped around that desire expertly.
It felt real enough to hurt.
Jean Grey, however, realized the trap almost immediately.
The instant she crossed into the chamber, she felt the psychic distortion surrounding the area. Her telepathy strained violently against something invasive and unnatural layered across the entire facility.
An illusion.
A powerful one.
Normally she would have shattered something like this quickly, but the Brimstone Mutation Disruptor had weakened her connection substantially. Fighting another telepath was already difficult under ordinary circumstances. Fighting one while her powers were being actively suppressed turned the situation into something far more dangerous.
Worse still, Jason was careful.
He never pushed too hard against Jean directly. Instead, he flooded the environment with contradictions, emotional manipulations, false sensory details, and layered psychic noise designed to exhaust her concentration little by little.
For the first time in years, Jean genuinely struggled to determine what around her was real.
And throughout the underground facility, both the Brotherhood and the X-Men slowly collapsed into chaos without fully understanding it.
Some fought enemies that did not exist.
Others stood motionless while trapped inside fabricated realities tailored specifically for them.
A few continued conversations with hallucinations completely invisible to everyone else.
For a brief moment, it almost seemed as though a single member of the Hellfire Club had dismantled both teams entirely on his own.