Fifty points for a year of boxing classes was a joke.
A solid left hook wouldn’t do a damn thing against a mutant who could melt concrete with a thought, let alone whatever killer robots were coming down the pipeline.
Surviving a fistfight with anyone from the main plot was impossible.
Surviving at all meant staying entirely out of the crossfire.
He needed to know whose life he had stolen, and he needed cash to run.
Mentally confirming the first two options dropped his balance to exactly ten points.
The transaction didn’t come with a cheerful chime.
It hit as a sharp, icy spike driven straight through his temples.
He squeezed his eyes shut, pressing the heels of his hands against his skull.
It wasn’t blinding agony, just a sudden, heavy pressure, like a massive, incredibly boring file unpacking directly into his brain tissue.
The phone’s four-digit passcode.
The name of the heavy-footed building supervisor.
The subway route to a dead-end data-entry job in Midtown.
The exact, annoying upward yank required to unstick the bottom drawer of the cheap desk across the room.
When he opened his eyes, the dingy apartment didn’t feel like a stranger’s anymore.
It just felt like a trap he lived in.
A soft, heavy rustle of paper whispered from the desk.
Checking to make sure the girl on the bed was still breathing evenly in her sleep, he crossed the floorboards.
He gripped the bottom drawer’s handle, gave it that specific upward jerk, and pulled.
Sitting right next to a stack of past-due electric bills was a thick, rubber-banded brick of crisp hundred-dollar bills.
Five grand.
Untraceable.
It was a lifeline in paper form—enough for fake IDs, cheap motels, and a bus ticket out of state.
He slid the drawer shut just as the glow from the muted television shifted.
The late-night broadcast had moved on from Tony Stark’s Monaco disaster.
Now, a helicopter shot circled a sleek, towering skyscraper dominating the Manhattan skyline.
A stylized, glowing diamond “F” logo was branded near the top floor.
The ticker tape across the bottom rolled by in bold letters: Frost International CEO to testify at Senate Hearing on Private Tech Monopolies.
The footage cut to the steps of a courthouse.
A woman stepped out of a black town car into a sea of flashing bulbs and shouting reporters.
She wore a razor-sharp, tailored white business suit, her platinum blonde hair perfectly styled.
Her expression was completely, utterly bored as she walked right through the chaos without blinking.
Emma Frost.
The anchor’s ticker updated: Insiders suggest Senator Stern looking to Frost as defense alternative following Stark’s refusal to surrender Iron Man armor.
Marcus leaned against the edge of the desk, staring at the screen.
If Emma Frost was a legitimate corporate titan right now instead of running around in a corset with the Hellfire Club, this timeline was deeply, dangerously fractured.
She wasn’t an underground mutant hiding from the government.
She was a billionaire telepath playing high-level political chess with Hydra agents like Stern, and actively competing with Tony Stark.
“What the fuck,” Marcus muttered, the sound barely audible over the steady drumming of rain against the window.
Which Marvel timeline had he even dropped into?
The movies?
The comics?
Neither.
It was some mangled, high-stakes hybrid.
If a ruthless, diamond-skinned telepath was openly cutting defense deals with Hydra in the middle of Iron Man 2, the background lore was completely off the rails.
He was officially flying blind in a universe where the villains had bottomless bank accounts, military backing, and the ability to literally read minds.
He was so deeply screwed.
Dragging his gaze away from the glowing screen, he looked back toward the bed.
Marie hadn’t moved.
The shivering had finally stopped, replaced by the slow, heavy breathing of total exhaustion.
She looked incredibly small, drowning in the oversized leather jacket, clinging to that faded green towel like it was the only thing anchoring her to the earth.
A few minutes ago, letting Xavier’s people track her down seemed like the smartest play.
Walk away, wash his hands of the mutant drama, and disappear with his cash.
Not anymore.
If the world was this distorted, who knew what the X-Men were actually like here?
Handing over a volatile kid with lethal, power-draining abilities to a guy with a global mind-reading machine was a massive gamble.
But mostly, his decision came down to cold, hard math.
He had ten points left.
No armor, no powers, no real defense against the kind of threats currently playing out on the nightly news.
The System had made the rules painfully clear: Bonded Heirs.
Influence.
That was the only currency that mattered.
Without her, the point stream dried up completely.
There were no other quests pinging in his vision, no convenient low-level thugs hanging around to beat up for easy experience.
He had no other way to force the System to pay out.
His only golden goose was a terrified runaway currently soaking his mattress.
Keeping a fugitive mutant hidden from a telepathic GPS was basically painting a target on his own back.
But letting her go meant staying completely powerless in a world that was only going to get deadlier.
He pulled the flat, yellowed pillow closer to the wall and sat down on the floorboards, stretching his legs out in the cramped space.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
The sound was dull but heavy, cutting straight through the white noise of the storm outside.
Every muscle in his body locked up.
He stared at the battered wooden door, holding his breath.
The digital clock on the microwave in the tiny kitchenette blinked 2:14 AM.
Nobody came knocking on a Tuesday morning in this neighborhood unless they were selling something illegal, collecting a debt, or looking to break ribs.
And a mutant fugitive had just walked through that exact door less than twenty minutes ago.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Louder this time.
Impatient.
The springs on the mattress groaned as Marie shifted in her sleep, completely oblivious to the threat hovering on the other side of the drywall.
Moving silently, he pushed himself up from the floorboards.
The newly downloaded memories provided a quick, automatic inventory of the room.
He bypassed the kitchen counter—the knives were dull, cheap aluminum—and crouched by a small metal toolbox tucked beneath the sink.
His fingers closed around a heavy, solid-steel pipe wrench.
The cold metal felt grounding in his grip, carrying enough weight to do serious damage if swung hard enough.
He stepped quietly to the entryway, keeping his back flush against the wall.
Sliding the wrench behind his back.
With his free hand, he reached for the deadbolt.
Click.