As Gabriela wrestled with her doubts, they reached a door at the end of the hall marked STORAGE.
"Mr. Spider-Man, we're here. This is where they keep confiscated items."
"Is it? Thanks a million! I can finally get back into my work clothes. You know, the ensemble that actually matches the mask."
Peter popped the lock easily. inside, lying in an open locker, was his suit. It was a bit battered, with dust coating the chest and arms, but that raised spider emblem—the one woven from black nylon—still looked striking.
Peter traced the spider logo with his finger, like he was reuniting with an old friend after years apart.
Without hesitation, he stripped off the borrowed tactical gear. He folded it neatly (even taking a moment to pat off the dust), stuffed it into a canvas bag, and webbed it securely to his waist. Then, he slipped back into the red and blue.
As the fabric hugged his skin, he let out a long breath. It felt like a circuit closing.
No matter what had happened, no matter how much he had changed or what strange memories of a past life were flooding back, this suit was part of his soul.
Back in the red and blue, he was invincible. The corridor ahead wasn't a hallway anymore; it was his stage.
Thwip! Thwip!
Reinforcements arrived, but they were barely a speed bump. Before the mercenaries could even register a shadow moving, they were cocooned in white webbing, screaming as they were yanked upward to become new ceiling decorations.
It was a total washout. By the time the ceiling was lined with whimpering prey, Peter and Gabriela had reached the heavy metal door of the detention area without breaking a sweat.
Gabriela, having planned this escape for a long time, didn't wait for Peter to hack the keypad. She swiped a stolen key card across the sensor.
Creak!
The heavy alloy doors slid open. The sight behind them made Peter catch his breath.
Dozens of children were crowded into a room filled with exercise equipment. Most looked to be around ten years old, their skin pale from a lack of sunlight, all dressed in clinical white scrubs. Their eyes were wide with fear of the unknown.
But when they saw who was standing in the doorway, the fear evaporated, replaced by pure, unadulterated joy.
"It's Spider-Man! Ms. Gabriela brought a cosplayer! That's so cool!" a little boy with a missing front tooth shrieked.
If the armed guards were nightmares, Gabriela was their angel. If she brought someone, they had to be good.
"He looks exactly like the one in that comic book you brought!" a little girl whispered, pointing timidly. "Look at the spider on his chest. It's real."
The children surged forward, swarming Peter in an instant. Their chatter filled the room, their pale faces flushing with excitement. The vibrant rush of life washed over Peter, chasing away the cold, clinical deathliness of the laboratory.
When Gabriela explained that this wasn't an impersonator, but the real Spider-Man, the excitement hit a fever pitch. It was no different than if the X-Men themselves had kicked down the door.
"Did God send you to save us?" one child asked, staring up with eyes full of hope.
"Children! Quiet! Listen to me!" Gabriela raised her voice over the din. "Spider-Man is here to get us out. Now, hush. Is everyone here? Check your friends."
Gabriela held serious sway over the group. The kids quieted down, looking around and nodding to confirm the headcount.
Peter scanned the crowd. At the back, one child stood apart. A blonde girl, maybe eleven or twelve, leaned against the wall with an expression of unshakeable indifference. Even the arrival of Spider-Man hadn't made her look up from the comic book in her hands.
With his enhanced vision, Peter could clearly see the X-Men logo on the cover. Wolverine, clad in his classic suit, snarled back at him.
"Mr. Spider-Man, did you really come all this way to save us?" The timid little girl from earlier tugged at Peter's gloved finger.
"Of course. I'm getting you all out of here." Peter politely patted her head, then paused. "But, uh, quick correction. I'm not that old, I'm just a student! You can remove the 'Mr', y'know, just call me Spider-Man or Spidey!"
Spider-Man, the guy who catches bad guys, is still a student?!
Gabriela paused, then smiled. "You heard him. Spider-Man!"
"Everyone needs to stick close to us. Don't wander off. We're going to get out of here safely, and then you can see what the outside world is really like."
"That's right, kids! Listen to Ms. Gabriela," Peter said, raising his hands to gesture for silence.
The motion was a bit awkward, but it didn't stop a curious boy from grabbing Peter's wrist and twisting it, looking for the mechanical web-shooters.
But Peter was an organic web-shooter variant; there was no mechanism to find.
"I appreciate the fan service, guys, really. If we weren't in a super-villain lair, I'd let you all take a swing, but we need to move. Quiet and fast. Capiche?"
As he spoke, his mind was racing. He needed to call someone. The X-Mansion? The Brotherhood? There were at least forty Mutant children here. Even if he got them out, he couldn't exactly babysit a platoon of super-powered kids in his apartment.
"I hope the signal isn't jammed. I need to make a call..."
Peter muttered to himself, glancing down at his wrist.
He froze.
A white light flared into existence exactly where the radioactive spider had bitten him years ago. It was dazzling for a split second before receding, transforming into a glowing, virtual 'X' shape beneath his skin.
What the hell?
A Cheat Code? A System update?
He looked around. No one else seemed to notice the light. To make sure he wasn't hallucinating from a concussion, Peter blinked hard and wiped the lenses of his mask.
He looked again.
The 'X' symbol was still there, solidifying. Suddenly, motes of light—like fireflies—drifted out from the heads of the surrounding children. They floated toward Peter, converging and sinking into the glowing mark on his wrist.
As the symbol absorbed the lights, it pulsed, looking almost alive. Then, it seemed to burrow deeper into Peter's arm.
"What the—?!"
Peter's body jerked.
An indescribable sensation flooded his nervous system. It was as if a dormant genetic switch had been violently flipped on.
He felt... metal.
All of it. The steel door frames, the handcuffs on the wall, even the zippers on the children's jumpsuits. They were no longer cold, lifeless objects. They felt alive. They were whispering to him, singing a song of intimacy and absolute obedience.
No way.
In disbelief, he raised a finger, following the strange new instinct pulsing in his veins. He hooked his finger toward a steel rivet on a training bench across the room.
Nobody else noticed, but the rivet trembled. It wiggled loose... and floated up.
It hovered silently in the air, obeying the command of his fingertip.
Beneath the mask, Peter Parker's mouth formed a perfect 'O'.
He had just become Magneto.
Peter's casual finger-flick went largely unnoticed in the chaotic crowd of children.
A few sharp-eyed kids, or perhaps those with a sensitivity to metal, might have glimpsed a rivet momentarily defying gravity. But in a facility filled with over forty Mutant test subjects, a floating screw was hardly the weirdest thing they'd seen that day. Most probably wrote it off as a friend playing a trick.
For Peter, confirming the anomaly was real was enough. He didn't dwell on it. Priorities first: escape.
He crawled to the door, checking the corridor. Clear. He glanced down at the webbed-up security guard on the ceiling and fished a communication device from the man's belt.
Everyone knows the classic Spider-Man suit is a marvel of design, but it has one fatal flaw: no pockets. He couldn't exactly carry an iPhone.
Furthermore, classified military black sites like this usually jammed civilian signals. He needed their hardware. Fortunately, this radio seemed to have a secure line out.
"Hello, this is Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Make it quick," a gruff, gravelly voice answered.
"I need the Professor. I've got over forty Mutant children trapped in a lab who need an extract, yesterday."
"Shit! Someone is actually pulling this crap right under our noses? I'll inform the Professor immediately."
The voice on the other end was practically vibrating with suppressed rage. Peter didn't need his recovered memories to identify the speaker. Based on the temper and the attitude, that was definitely Wolverine.
A minute later, Peter ended the call. He had spoken briefly with the Professor to confirm coordinates. The X-Men wouldn't stand idly by; they were already scrambling a jet.
However, Peter frowned beneath his mask. During the brief exchange, the Professor's voice had sounded weak, strained... as if he were battling a serious illness.
Peter shook his head. Maybe he was overthinking it.
"The X-Men are coming. The Cavalry is on the way!"
When the children heard that Spider-Man had contacted the legendary X-Men, the fear in the room evaporated. Even Gabriela looked relieved; sending these children to Xavier's School had been her dream for them.
Seeing the hope on their faces, Peter knew he'd made the right call. It was a good thing he didn't have the Brotherhood's number; that might have been a much stickier situation.
Under Gabriela's gentle but firm direction, the children calmed down. They formed a plan: move slowly toward the main entrance to meet the rescue team. Waiting here for the enemy to regroup wasn't an option.
Peter took point, crawling along the ceiling to maximize his field of view and Spider-Sense range. The children formed two neat lines behind him, with Gabriela bringing up the rear, clutching a stolen shotgun.
Don't underestimate these kids. While young and untrained, forty cornered Mutants were a force to be reckoned with.
As they moved into the corridor, Peter realized something disturbing. The piercing alarm had stopped. It hadn't faded; it had been cut, as if by an invisible hand.
The corridor fell into an eerie, chilling silence. The only sound was the shuffle of small feet echoing against cold metal walls. Each step sounded like a drumbeat of fear.
"It's a little too quiet..." Peter's voice was muffled slightly by the mask as he scanned the shadows. "Based on my extensive research into B-grade horror movies, this is the part where a maniac with a chainsaw jumps out yelling 'Here's Johnny!' If that happens, nobody scream, okay? I'll web his mouth shut. Can't have him scaring the kids."
He used humor to cut the tension, but his mind was working on the problem of the glowing lights he had absorbed earlier. He dropped back slightly to whisper to Gabriela.
"Ms. Gabriela, serious question. These kids... what exactly can they do?"
Gabriela looked at the children, her eyes lingering on a few of them. She whispered back, "Most of them... it's telekinesis. Like Jean. But because they're so young, it's extremely unstable. It comes and goes. If we hit real trouble, we can't rely on them to fight."
"Telekinesis?" Peter rubbed his chin through the mask.
That didn't add up. Telekinesis was the manipulation of matter with the mind. Why did his new power feel so specifically attuned to metal?
As if sensing Peter's confusion, Gabriela hesitated, then leaned in closer, her voice barely audible.
"The genetic templates for these clones... they came from Magneto and Professor X."
Professor X and Magneto.
The pieces clicked into place. The ability he had absorbed was a fusion.
He reached out with his senses. He wasn't just sensing the steel walls; he could feel the magnetic fields, the electrons, the very forces binding the matter together.
It looked like telekinesis, but it was something more primal.
If this was a fusion, it made sense. Xavier's power was purely psionic—mental domination and projection. But Magneto? Peter's transmigrator memories supplied the science. Magneto didn't just "bend spoons." He manipulated the electromagnetic spectrum—one of the four fundamental forces of the universe.
Theoretically, with enough control, Magneto could manipulate anything, not just metal. He could rearrange matter at a molecular level.
"So..." Peter's heart hammered against his ribs. "The Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is evolving into... Electro-Magnetic Spider-Man? Okay, that sounds way cooler than 'Sparky'."
Was this a mutation? Or was it a 'Golden Finger'—a gift from the system that brought his memories back?
As a transmigrator, Peter decided not to overthink the logic. In a world of superheroes, the impossible was just a Tuesday.
"Wait!"
Peter stopped dead, hanging inverted from the ceiling. He raised a hand, signaling a hard halt. The column of children froze instantly.
"My Spider-Sense is screaming. We've got a bogie. A big one."
No sooner had the words left his mouth than a massive silhouette detached itself from the shadows at the far end of the corridor.
Heavy, rhythmic footsteps shook the floor. The dim emergency lights cast a long, distorted shadow against the walls, projecting a suffocating sense of oppression before the figure even stepped into the light.