"Ethan, find a data port and plug in the USB I gave you," Katie's voice echoed clearly in his mind.
"Got it. Is this spot good enough?" Ethan asked, slipping the drive into the panel near the server rack.
"Perfect. Give me a second." Katie went quiet.
For a few long minutes, there was nothing but the faint click of keyboards.
Then her voice came back, calm but satisfied. "I'm in. I've hacked into the base's data system and rerouted most of the camera feeds. You just need to avoid the patrols. I've only got thirty minutes before they notice, though. After that, they'll find my backdoor."
"Thirty minutes is plenty," said the White Queen as she walked confidently toward the door.
The moment she opened it, they were met by two armed guards.
The soldiers immediately raised their rifles—disciplined, alert.
But the Emma didn't flinch. With a calm, almost playful smile, she stepped forward and gently brushed a hand across one of the soldiers' cheeks.
"Easy now," she said in a soft, persuasive voice. "You didn't see anyone come out of this room... did you?"
The men's eyes clouded for a moment.
Then, almost in sync, they lowered their weapons and returned to their post like nothing had happened.
"Katie, any idea where it is now?" Ethan asked.
"Yup. Go left, then keep straight. If you follow my instructions, you'll be at the vault in ten minutes," Katie replied.
"Lead the way," Ethan nodded.
With the Azazel and Emma Frost herself beside him, Ethan moved swiftly.
Thanks to Katie's control over the surveillance, they didn't need to sneak around.
And even if they crossed paths with guards, the Emma's psychic influence kept them invisible in pyschologically.
"This is it," Ethan said as they reached a sealed storage chamber labeled Box 10.
"Go ahead. I've already disabled the alarm on that container," Katie assured him.
Ethan unlatched the heavy lid. Inside, nestled in protective foam, lay a strange, arm-thick obelisk made of dark metal.
Its surface was etched with glowing, ancient runes—alien, elegant, and full of dormant energy.
After nearly seventy years, the relic was finally exposed to air once again.
A sudden blare of sirens shattered the quiet.
"Katie, I thought you disabled the alarms," Ethan muttered, tensing.
"I did! That wasn't us..." Her voice paused, then returned with urgency. "There's someone else in the base. Someone triggered a separate system. We're not the only ones breaking in."
A burst of automatic gunfire echoed down the hallway.
"Yeah, I hear it too," Ethan said grimly.
Boom!
The wall beside them exploded inwards, sending concrete and debris flying.
Seven or eight masked soldiers in tactical armor stormed in through the breach.
They paused when they spotted Ethan and the others standing beside the open vault.
"So... I take it you're not here for a tour either?" Ethan quipped, shifting into a combat stance.
The intruders raised their rifles, ignoring his words.
"Yeah, didn't think so." Ethan's eyes narrowed as he stepped forward, hands already glowing with the soft distortion as he controlled the vector forces surrounding him.
"Let's get this over with."
"Da da da~!" The masked soldiers opened fire all at once.
But the bullets never made it. As soon as they hit the road, they clattered to the ground like they'd lost all momentum.
Ethan didn't even flinch.
He neutralized the kinetic force of everything that came near him. It was too recognizable though, too flashy.
To avoid attracting unnecessary attention, he'd shut off his auto-reflex and instead took manual control, stopping only the attacks that truly posed a threat.
"Sorry, but you're already mine." With zero concern for the hail of bullets, Ethan lunged forward in a quick burst of speed, appearing as nothing more than a blur.
In the blink of an eye, he had gripped the squad captain by the neck.
Around them, chaos erupted—then stopped all at once.
A wave of crimson light blinked through the scene, and the Azazel teleported in and knocked the rest of the squad out cold.
"Alright. Now, you're going to talk. Who are you? Who sent you?" Ethan's voice dropped low and rough, intense enough to make anyone flinch.
But the captain didn't answer.
He glanced around at his unconscious teammates.
Realizing no help was coming, his expression hardened. Then—
"Wait—your mouth—!" Ethan suddenly caught on, pried the man's jaw open—but he was too late.
The man's eyes rolled back, limbs spasming. Poison. A hidden capsule in the tooth. Self-inflicted.
"Emma! Stop the others! They've all got poison in their teeth! Don't let them die!" Ethan shouted over his shoulder.
The White Queen, who had instinctively transformed into her diamond form during the earlier blast, shimmered back into her human shape.
Her eyes glowed faintly as her psychic energy surged.
A heartbeat later, the remaining conscious soldiers froze mid-motion.
Their eyes turned glassy
. The three who hadn't been knocked out began walking toward Ethan, blank-faced.
"Who's behind this—" Ethan began, but a faint ticking sound cut him off.
He ripped open one of their jackets—and there it was. A strapped-on remote bomb.
"Oh, you've gotta be kidding me!" he growled.
Boom.
The entire squad went up in a brutal explosion.
When the dust settled, Ethan stepped out of the smoke, untouched.
A swirling shield of wind, shaped from redirected vectors, had absorbed the blast entirely.
But the fury in his eyes? That was harder to contain.
The White Queen approached. "What's the next move?"
Ethan didn't answer right away.
He stared at the scorched ground, deep in thought. Whoever these people were, they weren't amateurs.
'Hydra, huh. Are those pests planning to reveal themselves soon?'
"We're pulling back," he said at last. "They came prepared. That means there's more. Maybe even a mole in the base. If they wanted the obelisk too, then someone else is pulling the strings. And I think I know who."
The Azazel didn't ask questions.
He simply placed a hand on Ethan's shoulder, grabbed Emma's arm, and in a flash of red light, the three of them were gone.
They reappeared beside the car where Katie was waiting.
Another blink of red light—and then the car vanished too.
...
"This is what you're looking for." In a sleek office nestled deep within a hidden mutant sanctuary, Ethan and the others handed a metallic case to Calvin.
"That's it. The relic we've been chasing," Calvin said, eyes lighting up as he passed the box to Jiaying
She opened it with care.
Inside was an obelisk pulsing faintly with golden light.
"Now, how do we use this to find the ruins?" Ethan asked, leaning in with curiosity.
"Simple," Jiaying said as she gently picked up the obelisk.
The moment her fingers touched its surface, mysterious symbols engraved on it shimmered with a soft glow.
"Only certain people can handle these kinds of relics. Unqualified ones? It'll kill them instantly. But for a select few, the obelisk guides the way—revealing the path to the sanctuary."
"So it's bound by some kind of biological authority," Ethan murmured, nodding.
'Only certain inhuman are genetically compatible. Like a living key.'
"Exactly," Jiaying replied, before taking out a pen and paper. She began sketching cryptic symbols, her hand moving almost as if guided by instinct.
"What are you drawing?" Ethan asked, watching her fill the page with alien markings.
"A map," she replied. "Daisy, come here."
Daisy Johnson—formerly known as Skye—stepped over. "What do you need?"
"Input these symbols into the computer. It'll generate a visual map."
"Alright," Daisy said, typing the runes into the system. She stared at the screen with confusion. "This... doesn't look like a map. Are we supposed to decode it somehow?"
"There's no decoding needed," Jiaying replied casually. "Just flip it upside down, rotate it three degrees, and convert it to 3D."
Daisy blinked. "That's it?"
Ethan chuckled to himself, recalling an old SHIELD file about Phil Coulson obsessing over a similar mystery—carving symbols into his walls, chasing clues, fighting mini-bosses, all to solve something that apparently just needed a 3D view.
"Daisy, make a copy of the map for our mutant friends," Jiaying said as she carefully set the obelisk back into the case.
She turned to Ethan. "We'll move out in two days. Sound good?"
"No problem," Ethan replied. "Oh—by the way, we ran into another group while retrieving the obelisk. Same goal. Any idea who they might be?"
Jiaying's brow furrowed. "Were they Inhumans too?"
"No. Just regular people. But heavily armed, well-coordinated. Definitely not freelance mercs."
Calvin's face darkened. "It's Whitehall. Has to be. He was the first to discover the obelisk. He's been trying to unlock its secrets for years. One day, I swear I'll rip him apart—"
"Calvin." Emma placed a calming hand on his arm. "Now's not the time."
With the briefing wrapped up and their suspicions confirmed, Ethan nodded to the Azazel. In an instant, the mutant teleporter blinked them away in a flash of red light.
Two days later, the X-Men's stealth jet hovered above the coordinates pulled from the obelisk. Below them was a quiet, run-down town—small, sparse, and unassuming.