Word had spread through the tunnels like wildfire. Their mysterious benefactor had finally shown himself, and the platform filled with Morlocks of all ages—curious, suspicious, all drawn to someone who didn't flinch at their appearances.
The crowd pressed in from every tunnel entrance. Ape emerged from the eastern passage, knuckles scraping stone. Tar Baby oozed down from an overhead grate, her liquid form reforming as she hit the platform. Even reclusive Cybelle had ventured from her deep sanctuary, her pale form ghostlike in the shadows.
Callisto pushed through the crowd, scarred face hard with suspicion. "Enough games. Who are you really, and what do you want?"
The question hung in the air like a blade. Jay felt dozens of eyes on him—some barely human, others achingly so. The weight of a community that had learned the hard way not to trust surface dwellers pressed down on his shoulders.
Behind Callisto, other leaders had gathered. Masque's gray flesh rippled with tension. Beautiful Dreamer's luminous features were guarded, though curiosity flickered in her otherworldly eyes. Even Plague, usually content to lurk in the deepest tunnels, had surfaced for this confrontation.
"You've been generous," Callisto continued, her enhanced hearing picking up every shift in his breathing, every micro-expression. "More generous than anyone from up there has ever been. But generosity always comes with a price."
Murmurs of agreement rippled through the crowd. These people had been burned before—by scientists, by government agents, by well-meaning do-gooders who saw them as problems to be solved rather than people to be helped.
Jay stood slowly from his position beside Leech. The boy—sensing something important was about to happen—moved behind him, still clutching his new handheld game. The small device seemed almost ridiculous now, a child's toy in the face of whatever was coming.
"You want to know why I do this?" Jay asked, his voice carrying clearly in the tunnel's acoustics. "Why I send supplies down here? Why I care what happens to people the world has written off?"
The crowd leaned in despite themselves. Even the most suspicious among them wanted answers.
"I've seen what the surface world does to people who are different," Jay said. "The fear. The hatred. The assumption that different means dangerous. The labs, the experiments, the casual cruelty of people who think mutation makes you less than human."
His voice hardened with memory. "I've watched children torn from their families because their gifts scared their neighbors. I've seen mutants imprisoned for crimes they never committed, simply because someone needed a scapegoat. I've stood in rooms where supposedly civilized people debated whether mutants deserved basic human rights."
Sack shifted his massive frame closer, radiation scars glowing faintly in the dim light. "You talk like someone who's been there."
"Because I have been," Jay said calculatingly. "And I decided that's not acceptable. Not anymore."
"Pretty words," Callisto shot back, her scarred features skeptical. "But words don't change anything. They never have."
"You're right." Jay's expression hardened, something fundamental shifting in his posture. "Words don't change the world. Power does."
Something shifted in the tunnel itself—a pressure that made everyone suddenly aware they were in the presence of something extraordinary. The air seemed to thicken, charged with potential energy that raised the hair on every arm, human or otherwise.
Leech looked up sharply, his power-nullifying abilities registering something impossible. His yellow eyes widened as he felt... nothing. No drain. Whatever power was building in this man existed beyond his reach.
Jay knelt beside the boy again, his voice gentle despite the energy crackling around him. "May I show them something, buddy?"
The crowd held its collective breath. Leech looked up with those too-old eyes, processing the weight of the moment. He'd learned to read adults, to see through their masks and promises. But in Jay, he saw something different.
The boy nodded with the complete trust only children could give.
What happened next shattered everything the Morlocks thought they knew about mutation and power.
The transformation was instantaneous, impossible & revolutionary. Despite Leech's presence, despite the boy's power-nullifying field that could drain any mutant ability within yards, Jay's power blazed to life like a star being born.
Jay to create an impact, artificially let Light emanate from him, warm white radiance. The very stones of the tunnel seemed to respond, ancient concrete and steel humming with newfound energy.
But it wasn't the light that stopped every heart on the platform. It was what it was doing to Leech.
The boy gasped as his transformation began. His pale, sickly green skin bloomed with a healthy color. The gaunt angles of his face, the hollow cheeks and sunken eyes that spoke of too many missed meals, filled out into those of a normal twelve-year-old.
His thin, brittle hair grew thick and lustrous brown before their eyes. When he looked up at Jay in wonder, his flat yellow eyes—the mark of his mutation—had become warm, human hazel.
The change was profound, transcendent. This wasn't just healing. This was possibility made flesh, hope given form.
The silence that followed was absolute. Not a breath, not a heartbeat seemed to disturb the cathedral quiet of that moment.
Then Annalee whispered, "Impossible," and the dam burst.
Gasps erupted from dozens of throats. Cries of amazement, prayers in languages both human and other echoed through the tunnel.
Even Masque's usually impassive features showed something approaching awe, his gray flesh cycling through colors it had never displayed before.
"You're still you," Jay said softly to Leech, his voice somehow carrying to every corner of the vast space despite its gentle tone. The boy stared at his own hands in amazement, flexing fingers that looked nothing like what he'd known all his life. "All the important parts are exactly the same. Your kindness, your courage, your heart—that's all still there. But now you can choose how the world sees you."
When he stood and turned to address the crowd, every eye was fixed on him with a mixture of reverence and desperate hope.
"My name is Power Broker," he announced, and his voice carried an authority that seemed to resonate in the very stones around them. "And I'm here to make you an offer."
He didn't need to raise his voice. The presence he commanded was absolute, through the simple, undeniable proof of what he could offer. Here was someone who could do what no government program, no charitable organization, no well-meaning X-Men ever could; give them choice.
"I can't promise to cure everyone," he continued, his gaze sweeping across the crowd. "Some of you may not want to be cured. Some mutations are gifts, not curses. But I can promise this - any one of you who wants to join me, who wants to use your abilities to help others like yourselves, will never want for anything again."
His voice grew stronger, more confident. "Food that doesn't come from dumpsters. Shelter that doesn't leak when it rains. Medical care from doctors who see you as patients, not specimens. Education that doesn't end because someone's afraid of how you look."
The crowd stirred. These were dreams most had long ago abandoned.
Chunks stepped forward on unsteady legs, her voice barely audible. "What... what do you want in return?"
"Help," Jay stated with a controlled tone. "There are others like you all over the world. Mutants who've been driven underground, persecuted for being different, told they're monsters when they're really just people with extraordinary gifts. I want to find them. I want to help them. And I want to build something better than the world that rejected us."
Caliban emerged from the shadows where he'd been watching, his pale features intense as he studied the aura surrounding Jay. His ability to track mutants was telling him something impossible—that Jay's power signature was unlike anything he'd ever encountered.
"You speak truth," he whispered, his voice carrying the weight of someone who could sense deception in others. "But there is power in you beyond understanding. Dangerous power."
"All power is dangerous," Jay replied, meeting the mutant tracker's unsettling gaze without flinching. "The question is how we choose to use it. I could have stayed hidden, used my abilities for myself alone. Instead, I'm here, offering to share what I can do with people who need it most."
The tunnel's atmosphere had transformed completely. Children who'd been taught to hide pressed forward, their eyes bright with wonder at the possibility of walking in sunlight without shame. Adults who had learned to expect nothing but cruelty found themselves believing in something they'd thought impossible; hope.
"What about those who don't want to leave?" Callisto asked, her voice still carried its earlier suspicion. The sight of Leech—healthy, whole, human-looking but still himself—had shaken her worldview to its core.
"Then this place becomes better," Jay declared with absolute conviction. "Better supplied, better protected, better connected to the resources you need. I'm not here to destroy what you've built in these tunnels. You've created something remarkable down here—a community, a family. I'm here to make sure you have choices."
The response started with Sack. The massive, radiation-scarred mutant stepped forward, his movements deliberate and ceremonial. Slowly—with the gravity of a moment that would define their future—he dropped to one knee.
"You offer us hope," he rumbled, his deep voice carrying absolute conviction. "That is more than the surface world has ever given any of us."
What followed was unlike anything the tunnels had ever seen. One by one, then in groups, then in a wave that swept across the entire platform, the Morlocks knelt. Not in submission, but in recognition of something they had thought lost forever- the possibility of being more than just their mutations, more than just survivors hiding in the dark.
Tubbs knelt beside his guardian, Annalee. Erg dropped to his knees despite the energy constantly crackling around his form. Even proud Caliban, tracker of the outcasts, slowly bent his knee, tears he hadn't shed in years cutting tracks down his scarred face.
Jay looked out over them all—dozens of beings who had been cast out, rejected, told they were abominations—and felt the weight of their faith like a physical thing pressing against his chest. The guilt tried to resurface again more intensely than usual, but Jay was practiced in suppressing it.
"I want you to remember something," he said, his voice carrying perfect clarity to every corner of the platform. "You are not mistakes. You are not monsters. You are not accidents of nature to be hidden away and forgotten."
The words seemed to take on a life of their own, echoing through the tunnel and hearts that had been told the opposite for far too long. Some wept openly. Others whispered prayers to gods they'd thought had abandoned them. All felt something fundamental shift in their understanding of what was possible.
"You are pioneers," Jay continued, gesturing to the community they had built in impossible circumstances. "You're building something new in a world that wasn't ready for you yet. But that world is changing, whether it wants to or not."
And in that moment, surrounded by the faithful, radiating power and purpose like a beacon in the darkness, Jay understood that he had crossed a line from which there could be no return. He was no longer just someone with abilities trying to help.
He had become their savior.
And whether willingly or unwillingly, they had become his people.