The cursor blinked in quiet defiance on Ethan Vale's laptop screen.He'd rewritten the opening line of his college essay at least six times, and none of them felt right. How did you summarize a life in six hundred words? How did you turn loss, exhaustion, and curiosity into something an admissions board would find inspiring?
He exhaled and started typing again.
"I've always believed every mystery has an answer — you just need to ask the right question."
That sounded like him. Clean. Focused. Maybe even honest.
He leaned back in his chair, glancing at the clock. 11:42 p.m. The glow from the screen painted the walls of his room in pale blue light. Midtown High's advanced program had its perks — research opportunities, lab access, and a workload heavy enough to make most seniors quit halfway through the semester. But Ethan thrived on it. Structure gave him something solid to hold on to.
His essay continued to grow:
"After my parents were killed in a random robbery when I was thirteen, I thought justice was a simple equation — find the guilty, and the world is right again. But as years passed, the world didn't fix itself. The criminal was never caught. Instead of closing a case, I opened a door. I wanted to understand how people break, and how the system misses what's in plain sight."
He paused. The words sat heavy on the page, but they were true. The kind of truth that didn't fade with time.
Ethan rubbed his eyes, then scrolled down to the next section — the one that listed references.He smiled faintly as he typed.
Aunt May Parker, community volunteer at the Queens Soup Kitchen — "one of the kindest people I've ever met."He'd volunteered with her since freshman year, serving meals, helping repair shelves, and staying late to clean. She'd always call him "one of the good ones." He never told her how much that mattered.
Dr. Curt Connors, Midtown High's visiting biology professor. Ethan had spent most weekends in his lab running protein analysis and helping with data entry. "The kid has potential," Connors had said once, smiling faintly. "He asks why more than how."
Dr. Susan Storm, co-founder of the Baxter Foundation. A two-week summer internship had turned into something closer to mentorship. She'd trusted him with lab samples worth more than his entire neighborhood, and he hadn't let her down. She'd told him to "keep chasing the questions no one else is asking." He intended to.
His essay shifted toward ambition:
"I plan to study forensic science and criminal law — to understand both evidence and intent. I believe answers are written into every system, whether biological, technological, or legal. We just need to learn how to read the code."
That last line gave him pause."Read the code." He smiled at his own unintentional metaphor. It felt poetic — like something that meant more than it should.
Ethan reread his work, making small edits until fatigue dulled his focus. The quiet hum of the city outside his window blurred into a rhythm — cars, neon lights, someone's distant music. Everything pulsed together in slow, familiar sync.
He didn't know it yet, but this was the last night the world would feel ordinary.
Tomorrow, he'd help escort a group of students to Oscorp as a senior volunteer.
Ethan Vale woke to the sound of his heart trying to break free from his chest.The world was shaking.
The digital clock on his nightstand blinked 4:03 A.M. — two hours before his alarm — but the trembling wasn't from the subway or passing trucks. It was everywhere. The air itself quivered, the floor rippling under his bare feet like water trapped beneath glass.
Instinct kicked in. He stumbled toward the doorway — the safest place during an earthquake, his mind supplied automatically — but then the world stopped.
Stopped, yet didn't.
The motion didn't fade; it changed.Every atom in the room was vibrating, slow enough for him to see it. The paint on his walls shimmered with light, his breath left ripples through the air, and for a heartbeat, he saw not color or form — but code.
A web of endless threads stretched in every direction, each line humming a different note in an infinite song. The vibration resonated inside him, through him, as him.He saw New York — no, Earth — no, the entire cosmos, folded into itself like a living equation, everything moving in patterns too perfect to be random.
He could taste sunlight. Hear gravity. Feel the pulse of electrons in motion.Every sense bled into the next until he wasn't Ethan anymore — he was awareness itself.
Then pain.
His mind convulsed as if the weight of existence were crushing it. His nose bled freely now, droplets floating upward instead of down. He gasped, clutching at his skull. It wasn't noise — it was meaning, raw and infinite, forcing itself into a brain too small to contain it.
And then, two commands burned themselves into his thoughts — sharp, pure, undeniable:
/open_character_panel/allocate_point
The vision fractured.Reality snapped like an overstretched string, and Ethan's body hit the floor, unconscious before he could finish exhaling.
Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters – Westchester, New York
Half a continent away, Professor Charles Xavier woke with a gasp, his mind ablaze. He clutched the arms of his wheelchair as the echo hit him again — not a voice, not even a thought, but a wave of power that rolled through the astral plane like a solar flare.
Every psychic instinct screamed the same thing: something new had awakened.
In the next room, Jean Grey jolted upright with a cry. The walls around her flickered, objects rising from the floor as her powers reacted on instinct. Her eyes glowed for a moment — gold and frightened.
"Professor—? Did you feel that?"
Charles was already there, his mental projection flickering at her doorway like a ghost. Sweat dripped down his temple.
"Yes, Jean. I felt it. The entire psychic network resonated at once. It wasn't just a mutant awakening — it was as if reality itself… rippled."
Jean clutched her head, trying to shut out the echoes.
"It touched everything. I could feel the oceans, the stars— and then… nothing. It just vanished."
Before Charles could respond, the mansion doors slammed open.
Logan burst in, hair wild, shirt half-buttoned, claws half-drawn. His usual growl was gone — replaced by something rare in him: uncertainty.
"What the hell was that?" he barked. "Felt like the whole damn planet screamed."
Charles met his eyes, pale and shaken. His voice was quiet, but it carried a weight that made even Wolverine pause.
"Something… or someone… just came online, Logan.""Online?" Logan repeated, frowning."Yes." Xavier's gaze drifted toward the horizon, as if he could still sense the faint echo that had already faded beyond reach."A mutant unlike any we've ever known. One that didn't just feel the world…" He hesitated, voice trembling."…one that read it."
Jean swallowed hard.
"And now it's gone. Like it hid itself.""No," Charles whispered. "Not hidden. Asleep again… but when it wakes?"
He turned back toward the window, his reflection pale in the moonlight.
"When it wakes, everything we thought we knew about mutants — about evolution itself — may change forever."
Logan grunted, folding his arms, unease flickering beneath his usual stoicism.
"Well, when it wakes up, Chuck, you better hope it's on our side."