The biting draft leaking through the cracked window frame woke Adrian Kovac before the sirens did.
He sat up on the narrow cot, pulling a threadbare wool blanket tight around his shoulders. The room was small, smelling of damp concrete and cheap coal smoke. In his mind, two distinct streams of memory settled into place—twenty-one years of enduring post-Soviet poverty and food rations in Novi Grad, overlaid with the clear, quiet memories of an ordinary life from another world.
Before the disorientation could pull him under, a faint, pale blue light pulsed across his vision.
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Sign-in System Activated │
│ │
│ Sign-in available: Year 2007 │
│ │
│ Sign-in? [ Y / N ] │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Adrian stared at the floating text for a long second. He didn't jump, nor did he laugh. Growing up in a fractured Balkan state taught you not to trust sudden windfalls, but in a place like this, having nothing left to lose was its own form of currency.
He drew a slow breath and focused his intent on Y.
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ Sign-in Successful! │
│ │
│ Reward: Cassandra Nova's Template │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
With a thought, Adrian willed the interface to show his current status. The translucent window shifted obediently, condensing into a clean, minimalist readout:
╔══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗
║ STATUS PANEL ║
╠══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╣
║ Name : Adrian Kovac ║
║ Age : 21 ║
║ Rewards Claimed : Cassandra Nova's Template ║
╚══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝
The panel flickered out, and reality struck like a sledgehammer.
A sudden, sharp pressure drove into his temples. Warmth trickled over his upper lip—a nosebleed. The sheer volume of ambient human consciousness from four surrounding blocks caved inward against his skull.
"The landlord is coming today..."
"Where is the kerosene?"
"If the militia sets up another checkpoint on the bridge..."
Dozens of fragmented worries, domestic arguments, and dull aches rushed into his thoughts at once. His vision blurred. Adrian dropped to one knee, bracing his palms against the rough floorboards.
Calm down, he told himself, forcing his breathing into a strict rhythm. Don't fight the tide. Just close the door.
Treating his focus like a dial on an old radio, he visualized heavy iron plates dropping around the perimeter of his thoughts. He pulled his perception inward, inch by painful inch, boxing the cacophony away until the voices faded into a distant, muffled hum.
He wiped the blood from his lip with the back of his sleeve. His heart was hammering against his ribs.
Adrian reached out to grip the rusty cast-iron radiator beneath the window to pull himself up. His focus flickered—and his fingers passed straight into the solid metal casing without resistance, sinking an inch deep into cold iron before snapping back to solid flesh.
He yanked his hand back with a sharp gasp. His fingertips throbbed with a dull, icy ache.
"Careful," he muttered under his breath, staring at his trembling fingers. "Take it slow."
He didn't feel like a god. He felt like an ordinary man holding a live artillery shell by the fuse. Cassandra Nova's abilities were staggering—telepathy, molecular intangibility, telekinesis—but right now, his body was still made of mortal bone and blood. A sniper across the street, a stray piece of shrapnel while he slept, or a single misfire of his own phasing could end him before he ever made a mark on this world.
Outside, a muffled boom rumbled across the valley.
The windowpane rattled in its wooden frame. Three streets to the north, a dirty plume of gray smoke climbed into the overcast Balkan sky. Another mortar shell, either stray ordinance or militia crossfire, had collapsed an old residential block.
Adrian didn't panic. He carefully extended a thin, suppressed thread of psionic awareness toward the rising smoke, keeping the reach narrow so it wouldn't flare like a beacon.
Underneath the cracked concrete and twisted rebar of the ruined tenement, several heartbeats were rapidly fading. But buried deep beneath the cellar foundations, two small, distinct signatures flickered with unnatural energy:
One pulsed with a volatile, jagged crimson hum that distorted probability by pure instinct.
The other beat at an erratic, abnormally fast kinetic frequency.
Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. Trapped beneath the ceiling slabs, with an unexploded Stark Industries mortar resting just feet away.
Adrian stood up, retrieved a worn dark canvas coat from the back of his chair, and pulled it on. He checked his boots, pulled his collar up against the cold, and quietly walked out into the stairwell.
Keep your head down, he reminded himself as he stepped out into the freezing Balkan rain. Don't get cocky. Just get them out alive.