Scott Summers didn't waste time. He saw the calculated weight of Nick Fury's single eye as he watched Spider-Man, and he immediately recognized leverage.
"We need a transport to Madripoor to fix the kid's powers," Scott said, his voice flat and perfectly even. "In exchange for us running the escort, S.H.I.E.L.D. puts this estate under federal protection. You keep Emma Frost and the Hellfire Club off the property."
He wasn't going to let Charles's legacy get swallowed up by another ambitious telepath.
Fury didn't blink. He didn't even pretend to negotiate. "Done. But I have a condition of my own." He nodded toward Cindy. "Agent Moon goes with you."
Peter, Gwen, and Cindy all turned to look at him.
"Wait," Peter said, pulling his mask up past his nose so he could speak clearly. "Didn't Cindy officially transfer to Midtown High today?"
"Her primary assignment is you, Parker," Fury said smoothly. "Especially after you demonstrated the ability to punch holes into other universes. Her schedule adjusts to yours." He crossed his arms, his leather coat creaking. "Besides, Agent Spider-Silk was specifically trained for this. If your powers completely recalibrate and you lose control over the Pacific Ocean, she's the best equipped to subdue you. And she can passively track your physical state. It's not a request."
Gwen looked at Cindy. Cindy didn't look back; her dark eyes remained focused on the far wall, her expression perfectly neutral. Gwen swallowed the sudden, tight knot in her throat. She had no authority here. No reason to stop this. And, she hated to admit it, Fury was right. Cindy was practically tethered to Peter's biology. She could actually help him.
If only I had been the one bitten at the Osborn Expo that day, Gwen thought, her fingernails digging into the palms of her hands inside her jacket pockets. At least then she wouldn't be standing on the sidelines.
Peter, however, was spiraling in a completely different direction.
"What about New York?" Peter asked, his pitch rising. "I mean, if I leave, and Cindy stays, at least the city still has a Spider-person. But if we both leave? Who's watching Manhattan?"
Fury let out a short, rough laugh. He shook his head. "Do you honestly believe New York City stops spinning when you're not looking at it, kid?" He stepped closer. "You're gone for a week. Max. How much worse do you think New York can get in seven days? We're done here. Wheels up immediately."
S.H.I.E.L.D. moved fast. Within the hour, a sleek, matte-black Quinjet descended onto the overgrown lawn of the academy, kicking up decades of dead leaves in a violent cyclone.
Peter, still battling the phantom surges of his own nervous system, gave Gwen a quick wave from the boarding ramp. Happy Hogan stood by the town car, ready to drive her back to Queens. For some reason, just as Peter stepped backward into the bay, Fury pointed two fingers at his own eye, then sharply at Peter—the universal I'm watching you gesture. Happy, standing thirty feet away, simultaneously did the exact same thing. Peter frowned under his mask.
Gwen just stood on the lawn, looking up as the heavy ramp sealed shut, locking Peter inside.
Inside the Quinjet, the hum of the engines was surprisingly quiet. Peter strapped into a jump seat across from Hank McCoy.
"So," Peter said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder toward the cockpit. "I've read the forums. The X-Men have their own supersonic stealth jet, right? The Blackbird? Why aren't we taking that?"
Hank didn't look up from the tablet in his massive blue hands. "Because it's broken."
"Oh." Peter blinked. "Well. That is incredibly straightforward."
He looked from Hank to Scott. Cyclops sat rigid in his harness, his ruby-quartz visor glowing faintly in the dim cabin light.
"The X-Men disbanded six years ago," Scott said over the engine hum. "No one maintained the hangar. Six years of deferred maintenance means most of the avionics are shot."
Peter hesitated. He tapped his fingers against his knee, then asked the question he'd been chewing on since he woke up in this universe. He knew the broad strokes, but the specifics of this Earth's timeline were full of blank spots.
"How did it happen?" Peter asked. "Why did the X-Men fall apart?"
Scott didn't answer right away. Hank finally set his tablet down, his heavy shoulders shifting against the safety straps.
"It's a long story, Peter," Hank rumbled.
"We've got a long flight to Madripoor," Peter pointed out.
Hank sighed, adjusting his glasses. "Before World War II, most mutants were dismissed as folklore. Witches, shamans, things that went bump in the night. Our abilities weren't as pronounced back then, so most hid to avoid persecution. But during the war, Nazi Germany actively hunted us. They threw us into camps for human experimentation."
Hank's expression darkened, the fur around his jaw bristling slightly. "After the war, the U.S. military seized that research. They didn't destroy it. They expanded it. By the time Vietnam escalated, the military was actively deploying mutant conscripts as living weapons."
"Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr met around that time," Scott chimed in, staring at the steel floor grating. "They were close. Charles was a genetics professor; Erik was a Holocaust survivor. Charles published the foundational papers on the X-gene, proving we weren't aliens or demons, just Homo sapiens with a genetic divergence."
"They campaigned together," Hank continued. "Fought for civil rights. But eventually, they both went to the front lines in Vietnam to track the mutant platoons. Erik saw the living conditions. He saw the black-site collars, the experimentation. He looked at the American military camps and saw Auschwitz all over again."
Hank rubbed his jaw. "It broke something in him. Or maybe it just woke it up. Erik went radical. He wanted to unleash his powers right there, tear the camps apart, and lead a violent rebellion to liberate the soldiers. Charles wanted to extract them, bring them home, and use their testimonies to win legal civil rights."
"That was the schism," Scott said. "Their ideologies diverged permanently. Erik started believing mutants were the next evolutionary step. That we were destined to replace baseline humans, just like Homo sapiens replaced the Neanderthals. And the data technically supported him—the newer generations were manifesting stronger powers, and our numbers were climbing."
"And Professor Xavier?" Peter asked.
"Charles believed we were a minority group," Hank said gently. "That we had to integrate. Live in harmony through the existing legal frameworks."
Peter tilted his head. He processed the biology and the sociology simultaneously, his brow furrowing under the mask.
"Wait," Peter said. "Why did he call mutants a minority group? Or a separate race?"
Hank raised a blue eyebrow. "Explain."
"I mean, biologically speaking," Peter said, leaning forward against his harness. "Mutants don't qualify as a distinct ethnic group or a separate species. You cross every racial and geographic line—there are white mutants, Black mutants, Asian mutants. You can intermarry with baseline humans and produce viable offspring, so there's no reproductive isolation. More importantly, your abilities don't follow the rules of natural selection or environmental adaptation. They're completely random. So why did Magneto and Professor X build their entire philosophies on the idea that mutants are a separate, distinct race of people?"
Silence filled the cabin.
Hank and Scott slowly turned their heads to look at each other.
Hank let out a heavy breath, a small, concessionary smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "The kid's grasp of genetics is entirely accurate."
Scott pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He looked at Peter, and for a second, the weary tension in his jaw relaxed into something resembling fond nostalgia.
"You have to understand the era they grew up in, Peter," Scott said quietly. "Charles and Erik came of age during the civil rights movements of the sixties and seventies. That was the framework they knew. They took the political language of their time and applied it to the X-gene because it was the only way they knew how to fight."
Scott turned his gaze back to the floor, the blue glow of the jet's instruments reflecting off his visor.
"If they had known what the world was going to look like today," Scott added softly, "I'm sure they would have realized they were fighting the wrong war."