Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters didn't sit within the New York City limits. The sprawling, European-style manor occupied a massive estate in the Westchester County suburbs, northeast of the city. It had been abandoned for nearly six years. Only two people remained in its echoing halls: Scott Summers, the legal owner of the estate, and Hank McCoy.
Scott sat on the edge of his bed. His thumbs traced the edges of a framed photograph—the original five X-Men standing alongside Professor Charles Xavier. After the Professor's death and Jean's disappearance, Scott had tried to hold the fractured team together. He failed. Everyone scattered, leaving just him and Hank to maintain the dust.
"I miss you so much, Jean," he murmured to the empty room.
The intercom chimed, harsh and metallic. Scott exhaled. She was relentlessly persistent. Didn't she understand he would never sell Charles's legacy?
"I've told you already, Emma," Scott said, pressing the comms button.
"It's obvious that whoever you're talking about, it isn't me."
Nick Fury's voice crackled through the speaker.
Scott looked up. He set the frame face-down on the mattress, stood, and adjusted his ruby-quartz glasses.
He walked down the grand staircase and out to the sealed iron gates. Nick Fury stood on the other side. A young Asian girl stood silently next to him.
"Another mutant incident?" Scott asked.
"Nothing to do with mutants," Fury said. "One of Tony Stark's young Avengers scheduled a medical consult with you. I came to chaperone."
Scott unlocked the gate and pulled it open, gesturing for them to follow him up the overgrown driveway.
"You look alright, Scott," Fury noted, stepping onto the grounds. "At least you're still shaving."
"I don't have much else to do. The world doesn't need the X-Men anymore," Scott said, his voice flat. "More and more of us are choosing to go to Genosha instead of staying out here."
He led them into the manor and navigated to the half of the living room that still had functioning electricity. He tossed Fury and the girl two cans of black coffee. It was all he had.
Fury caught his can, raised a single eyebrow, and set it on a side table without opening it.
Before Scott could speak, the doorbell chimed again.
Scott scratched the back of his neck. "Looks like your friend is here. Wait here."
Peter Parker arrived in full Spider-Man gear, riding in the back of a Stark Industries town car driven by Happy Hogan. Gwen Stacy sat entirely too comfortably right next to him. Peter had spent the entire drive trying to convince her to go home. He failed. As usual.
"Isn't today Cindy's first day transferring to Midtown?" Gwen asked, leaning forward to look out the window. "Didn't she switch schools because of you? Won't she be mad you ditched her?"
"This is completely out of my control," Peter groaned. "I literally have no say in this."
Happy honked the horn. Peter pushed his door open and hopped out onto the gravel.
A black luxury sedan already idled near the entrance. A second later, tires crunched over the gravel as a pristine white supercar glided up the driveway and parked right next to Happy's car.
Oh, great, Peter thought. Gwen isn't wearing a mask. Please let this just be a normal, non-homicidal person.
His hopes died instantly.
The driver's side door swung up. A woman stepped out.
She looked to be in her late twenties. She wore a skin-tight white dress, matching thigh-high white boots, and a thick white fur shawl draped over her shoulders. Diamond earrings caught the morning light. Everything about her was aggressively, immaculately white, right down to the icy blue tint of her lipstick.
She tossed her long blonde hair over her shoulder, pulled off a pair of oversized sunglasses, and locked piercing blue eyes onto Peter. She stood roughly six feet tall in her heels. She leaned back against the hood of the supercar.
"Spider-Man," she purred. "I didn't expect to see you here. Does this mean you're a mutant?"
Peter's spider-sense spiked.
A sharp, sudden jolt slammed against the inside of his skull. His muscles tensed, ready to dodge—but no physical attack came. The pressure in his head flared and instantly vanished, slamming into a brick wall inside his own mind.
The woman flinched. Genuine surprise cracked her perfectly composed features, quickly melting into deep, calculating curiosity. She tilted her head, studying Peter as if he were a puzzle box, then shifted her gaze to Gwen, and finally to Happy, who was currently flashing her a painfully eager smile.
Peter knew exactly who she was.
The heavy oak front doors swung open. Scott Summers stepped onto the porch.
"Emma Frost," Scott said, his tone devoid of warmth. "I've told you this repeatedly. You are not welcome at Xavier's School."
Emma smiled, unbothered.
"I will never allow the Hellfire Club or the Massachusetts Academy to acquire this estate," Scott continued, glaring at her through his ruby lenses. "I'm not selling the land, and I'm not selling the school."
"Why not, Scott?" Emma asked, stepping away from her car. "If you refuse to inherit Charles Xavier's dream, why not hand it over to someone better equipped to manage it?"
"The Hellfire Club?" Scott let out a dry, humorless chuckle. He shoved his hands into his pockets. "Go tell Sebastian Shaw he doesn't deserve it."
Scott turned his back on her and looked at Peter. "Come inside, kids. Nick Fury is waiting for you." He threw a wave over his shoulder. "Goodbye forever, Emma."
Peter shrugged at Gwen. They jogged up the steps and followed Scott inside.
They entered the partially powered living room. Nick Fury stood near a dust-covered sofa, with Cindy Moon standing silently at his side.
Fury's single eye zeroed in on Gwen. He didn't blink. His jaw set into a hard line. Peter winced, bracing for a lecture on operational security, but Fury kept his mouth shut.
"Hey, you must be Cindy," Gwen said cheerfully. She marched straight up to the undercover S.H.I.E.L.D. agent and stuck her hand out. "I'm Gwen Stacy. Peter's oldest friend."
Cindy blinked. She reached up, pulled her face mask up to cover her lower features, and briefly shook Gwen's hand. "Cindy Moon."
Gwen tilted her head. "Weren't you supposed to start at Midtown High today? Why aren't you in first period?"
"This mission takes priority," Cindy said flatly. "It concerns Spider-Man."
Deep in the manor's underground laboratories, Hank McCoy tightened a tourniquet around Peter's arm. The massive, blue-furred Beast worked with startling precision, drawing a vial of blood and carrying it over to a humming centrifuge.
The lab itself was a disaster zone—half the terminals were dead, and loose wires hung from the ceiling—but Hank moved through it like a maestro.
After a few minutes of typing at a glowing monitor, Hank turned around.
"First of all, you are not a mutant," Hank said, a warm, rumbling half-joke in his voice.
He picked up a tablet and tapped the screen. "Secondly, your genetics are incredibly stable. The two distinct sets of modified DNA inside you are currently intermingling. They're fusing. Your recent loss of power calibration is just a temporary side effect of this integration. In a few months, once the sequences fully lock together, your control will return to normal."
"A few months?" Peter repeated. That was an eternity in Manhattan time.
"There is a shortcut," Hank offered, leaning his massive knuckles against the steel table. "We could use Nathaniel Essex's gene-editing device. He originally used it to force artificial mutant expressions. It would act as a catalyst and resolve your calibration issues immediately."
"Okay. What's the catch?" Peter asked.
"The catch is that only two of those machines still exist," Hank said. "One is in Genosha. And under current federal law, traveling to Magneto's sovereign island is highly illegal."
"There's another one," Nick Fury said from the doorway.
Scott picked up his unopened can of coffee, cracked the tab, and took a slow sip.
"It's in a complicated location," Fury continued, his single eye panning across the room. "A place where S.H.I.E.L.D. has zero operational authority and cannot guarantee your safety. Madripoor."
Scott lowered his coffee. He stared at the can for a second, then casually tossed it across the room. It clattered into a trash bin in the corner.
He turned to look at Fury.
"That's not a problem," Scott said quietly. "Logan is right there."
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