The first thing I remember is drowning.
Not in water—in *information*. An overwhelming deluge of thoughts, memories, sensations that weren't mine but were simultaneously becoming mine. Images of a life lived and lost, flickering past like a streaming service on fast-forward: college graduation, a dead-end job, an apartment that smelled like old takeout, scrolling through social media at 2 AM, the bright lights of an oncoming truck—
Then nothing.
Then *everything*.
I gasped awake, bolting upright in bed, my heart hammering against my ribs. Sweat soaked through the expensive Egyptian cotton sheets beneath me. My hands—younger, stronger hands than I remembered—gripped the fabric as I struggled to breathe.
*Where the hell am I?*
The room around me was dark, illuminated only by the amber glow of New York City bleeding through floor-to-ceiling windows. I recognized that skyline. I'd seen it a thousand times in movies, shows, comics—
Wait.
Comics.
The realization hit me like a freight train. This wasn't just New York. This was *that* New York. Marvel's New York. The city where gods walked the streets, where teenagers swung between skyscrapers on webs, where the Avengers saved the world every other Tuesday.
I stumbled out of bed, my legs shaky, and approached the window. Forty stories below, the city pulsed with life. Yellow cabs, pedestrians, the distant wail of sirens. It looked real. Felt real. But in the distance, I could see it—Stark Tower, illuminated against the night sky, the massive 'A' visible even from here.
"Holy shit," I whispered, my voice—*Marcus Cole's voice*—sounding strange to my ears. "Holy shit, I'm in the Marvel Universe."
The memories solidified, clicking into place like puzzle pieces. I was Marcus Cole, twenty-five years old, trust fund brat whose parents died in a car accident two years ago, leaving me with millions. I lived alone in this penthouse in Manhattan's Upper East Side. I had no job, no purpose, no direction.
Or at least, the original Marcus Cole didn't.
But I wasn't him anymore. I was someone else wearing his skin, possessing his memories like borrowed clothes. The knowledge should have terrified me. Instead, a strange calm settled over my mind, as if something deep in my brain was smoothing out the panic, reorganizing my thoughts with mathematical precision.
That's when I felt it.
A presence. Not physical—mental. Like sensing someone standing behind you in a dark room, except this was inside my own head. A vast, sleeping power that had awakened with my consciousness. I reached for it instinctively, and it responded.
The world exploded into color.
I staggered, catching myself on the window frame as my mind suddenly expanded outward. It was like going from seeing in black and white to suddenly perceiving the entire spectrum—except instead of colors, I was seeing *minds*.
Forty stories below, hundreds of them glittered like stars. Each one a constellation of thoughts, memories, desires, fears. The doorman in the lobby thinking about his daughter's graduation. The woman in apartment 3812 wondering if her husband was cheating. The teenage couple in the stairwell, their minds alight with teenage hormones and forbidden excitement.
I could feel them all. More than that—I could *touch* them.
The power hummed beneath my consciousness, eager, waiting. It wanted to reach out, to sink invisible fingers into those minds and reshape them like clay. The temptation was intoxicating. I could make the doorman forget he ever saw me. Make the woman believe her husband was faithful. Make the teenagers think they were somewhere else entirely.
I could do anything.
"No," I said aloud, pulling back. The mental connections snapped shut like rubber bands, and suddenly I was alone in my head again. I was breathing hard, my hands shaking. "No, no, no. That's not—I can't just—"
But I could. That was the problem.
I stumbled to the bathroom, flicking on the lights. The face that stared back at me from the mirror was younger than I remembered, more handsome, with dark grey eyes that seemed to catch the light strangely. As I watched, they flickered with a faint violet glow before fading back to normal.
Marcus Cole. Wealthy orphan. And now, apparently, a psychic powerful enough to sense hundreds of minds simultaneously.
I gripped the marble sink, forcing myself to think rationally. This was real. I was in the Marvel Universe with some kind of mental superpower. That meant danger. Incredible, world-ending danger lurking around every corner. But it also meant opportunity.
If I played this right—if I was smart, careful, and ruthless when necessary—I could not only survive but thrive.
I just needed to understand exactly what I could do.
Over the next few hours, I experimented.
I started small. There was a spider in the corner of my bedroom—probably not a radioactive one, but you never know—and I focused on its tiny mind. It was like touching a pinprick of consciousness, simple and instinctual. I *pushed*, and suddenly the spider was moving exactly where I wanted it to move. Onto my hand. Up my arm. Back to the corner.
Perfect control.
Next, I turned my attention inward. If I could sense other minds, could I affect my own? I focused on a memory—my first day of high school—and *pulled*. The memory rose with perfect clarity, as if I was living it again. Every detail, every sensation, crystal clear.
Then I pushed it away and tried to recall what I had for breakfast three days ago as the original Marcus. Nothing. The memory was gone, locked away where I couldn't access it without effort.
But I could bring it back. I focused, and there it was: scrambled eggs and coffee, prepared by the building's concierge service.
My power worked on my own mind too. That explained the unnatural calm I'd felt earlier. My brain had automatically reorganized itself to handle the stress of awakening in a new reality. Given time and focus, I could probably enhance my own cognitive abilities, improve my reflexes, even grant myself perfect recall of anything I'd experienced.
The possibilities were staggering.
By the time dawn broke over New York, I'd made several discoveries:
1. Range: I could sense minds up to about a hundred meters away clearly. Beyond that, it became fuzzy.
2. Control: With concentration, I could issue commands to anyone whose mind I touched. The spider had been the proof of concept, but I could feel it would work on humans too.
3. Reading: I could skim surface thoughts easily, but deeper memories required more focus and time.
4. Permanence: Changes I made seemed to stick. I'd convinced a pigeon outside my window that it was nighttime. Three hours later, it was still roosting instead of flying around.
5. Resistance: Stronger minds would be harder to control. I could sense the difference in complexity between the spider, the pigeon, and the humans below. Someone with a powerful will or enhanced mind would take more effort.
6. Immunity: When I tried to make my power affect itself—to shut it off or diminish it—nothing happened. Whatever this ability was, it protected itself. That also meant I was likely immune to other psychics trying to control me.
That last point was crucial. In a world with Charles Xavier, Emma Frost, and the Shadow King, psychic immunity might save my life.
As sunlight flooded my penthouse, I stood before the windows and looked out at the city that was now my home. Somewhere out there, Spider-Man was probably just waking up in his aunt's house. The Avengers might be planning their next mission. Wilson Fisk was expanding his criminal empire. Hydra was lurking in SHIELD's shadow.
And I had the power to walk among them all, invisible and unstoppable.
A smile crossed my face.
"Alright, Marvel Universe," I murmured. "Let's see what you've got."