The air hit different when I came up out of the subway — hot pretzels, car exhaust, bodies brushing past like the city was trying to move faster than time. New York. Loud, messy, alive.
Times Square pulled me in first. The screens weren't quite vicious yet, but big enough to make you feel small. Stock tickers rolled, Broadway shows yelled for attention, a soda ad looped like it hadn't learned subtlety.
I kept scanning the news crawl, half expecting to see a name that didn't show up — Tony Stark, mutant sighting. Nothing. Baseball scores, the mayor, Wall Street headlines. Ordinary. For now.
A vendor shoved a magazine into my hand. Scientific American. Cover story: Tony Stark — America's Boy Genius. Stark's face looked like every slick-engineer stereotype: neat suit, cocky grin. Not Iron Man yet. Just a name getting louder in print.
I headed south — Empire State, Flatiron. Stopped at the Daily Bugle, half-expecting an old man to start shouting about menaces from a window. No Jameson. Just tourists crowding the sidewalk, cameras up, oblivious.
By late morning, I found the Captain America exhibit tucked into the Smithsonian annex. The air smelled like glass polish and old paper. Kids pressed their noses to the cases, pointing at the shield locked under thick glass. Wartime posters—Buy Bonds! Do Your Part!—lined the walls.
Black-and-white photos of Steve Rogers and the Howling Commandos were watched in silence. I lingered at one panel: Presumed Lost, 1945. To most people, it was history. To me, it read like a bookmark in a book someone decided to stop writing.
At noon, I went downtown. Ground Zero hit harder than anything else that day. Fences lined with flowers, flags, scribbled notes. People stood quietly in clusters, and the silence was loud enough to bruise. I didn't move. Some scars are the same no matter the world.
After that, I ducked into a diner. Greasy tables, burnt coffee, the kind of place that smelled like people's lives. The waitress topped off my cup without asking."You're not local," she said, with a half-smile."Guess not," she smirked.
"You keep looking up," she smirked. "New Yorkers don't do that. Too busy trying to get somewhere."She was gone before I could answer, but she'd nailed something. I kept looking up anyway. In this city, maybe looking up would matter.
In the afternoon, I took the ferry. Wind in my face, kids pressed against the rail, the Statue of Liberty standing like she'd been holding her torch forever.
The guide droned on dates and facts; I didn't listen. I scanned the skyline instead — wondering which buildings hid secrets. Oscorp? Baxter? Something stranger, waiting in plain sight.
I finished the day in Central Park. Joggers cut past, kids chased dogs, a sax player leaned against a lamppost and made the air softer.
I dropped a bill in his case and sat on a bench. The sky went gold; trees caught it like they'd been waiting all day. For the first time that morning, the city slowed.
All that walking — the noise, the smells, the skyline pressing down and stretching up at the same time — it could've been a sightseeing run. But under the surface, it wasn't. Not here, not now. That's Marvel for you.
I didn't take a cab or the train back. I walked, letting the blocks fold into each other, letting the city stop being foreign and start being something I could move through.
Fourteen days. Nothing to pack, nowhere I had to be. Training could wait for the Academy. No rush.
My phone buzzed. Bullhead — my handler.
"Congratulations, kid," he said, voice sharp as ever. "Heard you got promoted. Different outfit now. Higher-ups are pleased."
"Thanks. Honestly, I just got lucky on the mission."
"Lucky, my ass. Don't sell it short. You did well. Parties are in order. I'm tied up in L.A. right now, but I'll be in New York in two months. We'll celebrate then."
"As you say, boss."
He laughed, asked a few more questions — a check-in, a poke, a joke — and hung up. The apartment felt quieter after that. Too quiet.
His sister popped into my head. Her face arrived with a memory I hadn't asked for: the same rough childhood, the same bright streak that kept her going. He'd protected her the best he could. Those memories—his memories—sat heavy in my chest. Maybe they were mine now.
I scrolled to her number and hit call before I talked myself out of it.
"Hello?" Her voice was warm and sharp.
"Hey, Samy. How're you doing?"
A beat. "What happened? Why are you calling at this hour? Did the cops finally catch you?"
I let out a short laugh. "I'm with the FBI now. Think I'd manage."
"Uh-huh. So what's up?"
"Just wanted to talk," I said. "Finished a mission. Been busy. Thought maybe we could meet. Celebrate your birthday week, if you're free."
She was quiet for a second. "I'm free. When?"
"Tomorrow?"
"Yeah. Alright. But… you sound different. You okay?"
"It's me. Just me," I said. True and not true. I was John, and I was him, and both of those things were true at the same time.
"Okay," she said finally. "See you tomorrow."
"See you."
I set the phone down and for a minute let quiet crawl back over me. I could convince myself it was a strategy, keeping tabs, playing the part. But it wasn't just that. It was his memory — wanting his sister to be safe and happy — settling into mine.
Maybe I wanted that, too.
Fourteen days before the Academy. Time enough to carry someone else's weight. Time enough to breathe. Time enough to actually live in this world a little before S.H.I.E.L.D. swallowed me whole.
Back at the apartment, I opened the laptop Coulson had left me. I'd expected basic field tech. What I got felt like someone had smuggled the future into 2002.
The machine hummed, smooth and immediate — encrypted drives, a built-in VPN routing through three continents, voice-command recognition, and a kernel-level sandbox for testing exploits.
Terminal access, packet sniffers, and a predictive AI stub. It was like a hacker's playground wrapped in a spy's toolbox.
I clicked through menus like muscle memory. The UI was clean, the backdoors labeled in a language I knew too well. Someone at S.H.I.E.L.D. either paid off a lot of labs or had a time machine. Either way, it was nice to be out-equipped.
Work could wait. I called a travel agency the old-fashioned way and booked a flight — 8 a.m. out of JFK to Massachusetts. Then I crashed, because the morning would come faster than I wanted.
-----------------------------------------
Next day: cab, airport, boarding pass. Smooth ride out. When I stepped out of the terminal in Massachusetts, there she was — my sister. She spotted me before I could even wave. I raised a hand, she jogged a little, and then we were hugging, tight, like we were trying to make up for all the time apart in one go.
"How've you been?" I asked, pulling back just enough to see her face. "You look… thinner. Don't tell me you're just living on coffee and textbooks."
She rolled her eyes. "And you — what the hell happened to you? You're built now. Since when do you look like you live at the gym?"
"Eh, picked up a few habits," I said with a shrug.
We walked toward the cabs, still grinning like idiots. It didn't matter how long it had been — everything clicked right back into place. She teased me about my hair being too short, I poked fun at her glasses sliding down her nose. Stupid little things, but it felt good. Normal.
We slid into a cab, bags shoved into the trunk. The driver had one of those pine-tree air fresheners swinging from the mirror, only making the car smell more like old vinyl.
"You know," I said, watching her buckle in, "you still push your glasses up the same way. Two fingers, right on the bridge."
She groaned. "Seriously? That's what you notice after months apart?"
"Hey, details matter," I said. "Next thing you'll tell me you still eat cereal at night."
"I do," she admitted, mock-defensive. "It's efficient. One bowl, done. Way better than you and your midnight omelets."
"Those were masterpieces. You begged me for one every time."
She laughed, shaking her head. "They were burnt half the time."
"Charred," I corrected. "That's flavor."
The driver cut through a side street, and I glanced at her. "So where are we heading, anyway? That address didn't sound like a dorm."
She tilted her chin up a little, proud she'd been holding this back. "Because it's not. I got pulled into a research project. Tissue Engineering & Regenerative Medicine."
I nearly choked. "Wait — undergrad, second or third year, and you're already messing around with building body parts? What the hell?"
She grinned. "It's not body parts. Yet. We're studying scaffolding for cellular growth."
I put a hand to my chest. "Scaffolding? Like… tiny construction sites inside people?"
She rolled her eyes. "You're impossible. But yeah, sort of."
I leaned back, pretending I wasn't floored. "Good, good. Once you graduate, you can, uh… move to higher topics."
Meanwhile, I was thinking maybe the water in Marvel really does make people smarter. Then again, I remembered what I was doing at her age in both my lives and, yeah — no comparison.
"Oh yeah?" she said, side-eyeing me. "Like what?"
I looked out the window. "You'll know when you're ready." Smooth bluff. My poker face barely held.
To recover, I threw out: "Anyway, I got promoted. Salary doubled, perks doubled, everything."
She blinked. "Promoted? Already? You've barely been in the job. Isn't government work supposed to be buried under paperwork?"
"Normally, yes. But when you're me, they fast-track things."
"Sure," she said. "If you were in my lab, you'd have blown something up by now."
"Or discovered time travel. Depends on perspective."
She smacked my arm. "Remember when you failed the SAT and locked yourself in your room? You only crawled out after writing that sappy college essay about 'fighting for justice' just to get accepted anywhere."
I groaned. "I told you never to bring that up."
"Oh, I'm bringing it up at every family gathering until I die."
"Let bygones be bygones," I muttered.
We laughed all the way until the cab slowed at the gates. She pulled out her ID, the guard waved us through, and the car rolled into a campus that looked more like a research park than a school. Glass buildings, trimmed lawns, a little too quiet. Past the checkpoint, rows of living quarters lined up neatly, with soft yellow lights glowing in the windows.
The labs were deeper inside, off-limits unless you had clearance. Fine by me.
I was just glad to sit there next to her, watching her world take shape — watching her grow, finding her own place in this universe.
From the little girl who cried at night over Dad's drinking and missing Mom, to an independent woman giving me advice and teaching me about life, time really does fly.
[Congratulations, Host. Full merger with John Harland achieved. Reward: 5 Low-Level Gacha Boxes.]
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