The White House Lawn
Azazel and the extraction team did not reveal themselves.
They remained anchored in a pocket dimension, a microscopic fold in space maintained by the Red Devil's power. They were undetectable ghosts watching history unfold.
Below them, Magneto commanded the world's stage.
He ripped the stadium from its foundations, surrounding the White House in an impenetrable fortress of twisted steel.
He was poised to execute the President and assert mutant dominance.
Azazel watched, his muscles coiled. If Eric crossed the absolute line, he would intervene.
But Emma Frost's telepathy spiked.
She detected a localized anomaly in the crowd. It wasn't a Secret Service agent. It was Mystique.
Azazel tensed, ready to jump, but he held his ground. He knew Raven had a plan.
The climax was brief and brutal.
Exploiting a momentary distraction, Mystique struck.
She didn't use metal. She used a plastic gun, grazing Magneto's neck, stripping him of his telepathy-blocking helmet.
Professor Xavier's mind slammed into Magneto, subduing him instantly.
Mystique stood before the cameras not as an assassin, but as a savior. She had saved the President. She had saved the future.
The timeline violently reset itself.
As the chaos peaked and the authorities swarmed, Azazel blinked out of the shadow dimension.
He grabbed Magneto and vanished.
- - - - - - - - - - - - -
Underground Safehouse - Unknown Location
The environment shifted with a violent crack of displaced air.
Magneto opened his eyes.
He was no longer on the White House lawn. He was in a sprawling, subterranean concrete bunker.
Azazel stood over him, flanked by the White Queen, Riptide, and Angel.
Behind them stood dozens of mutants. Many were veterans of the original Brotherhood.
"Azazel," Magneto rasped, sitting up and offering a grim smile.
"I didn't expect you to save me. I thought you would let me rot in a plastic cell."
"I didn't want to save you, Eric," Azazel replied coldly. He gestured to the crowd in the shadows.
"They did."
Azazel turned to face the gathered mutants.
"The Brotherhood is fractured," Azazel announced, his demonic voice echoing off the concrete.
"Some of you believe in Eric's path of blood and supremacy. Others see what Raven did today. She chose heroism."
Azazel crossed his arms.
"Make your choice. Those who want war stand with Magneto. Those who want a different path, follow me."
The room shifted.
The mutants divided. The vast majority crossed the floor, standing behind Magneto's dark magnetism.
Only a dozen quietly walked over to stand behind the Red Devil.
Azazel didn't look surprised. He reached into his coat and tossed a heavy, leather-bound ledger onto Magneto's lap.
"The deeds and accounts of the Brotherhood," Azazel stated.
"During your imprisonment, I managed your empire. I am taking a ten percent to support those who leave with me. The rest is yours."
Azazel didn't wait for a response.
He turned his back on his former leader. With a massive cloud of black brimstone, Azazel, Emma, and their defectors vanished.
Magneto sat alone with his loyalists.
He clutched the ledger, his eyes burning with renewed, dark determination.
- - - - - - - -
The Potomac River - Washington, D.C.
The mutant civil war fractured, but Ernst didn't care.
He was standing on the surface of the freezing river, entirely disconnected from the political theater.
Suspended in the air before him was Logan.
The time-traveler was unconscious, pierced through the torso and limbs by a dozen twisted steel bars.
Ernst stood calmly, his right hand pressed firmly against Logan's forehead.
Around Ernst's neck, the Reality Gem pulsed with a blinding, terrifying crimson light. The cosmic energy washed over Logan's skull.
To an outsider, the scene was horrific.
But no outsider could see them. Ernst had wrapped the river in a localized perception filter.
He wasn't torturing Logan. He was harvesting.
In the original timeline, Kitty Pryde's power didn't overwrite the past; it created a branched parallel dimension.
Ernst was using the Reality Gem to trace the quantum tether back to Logan's apocalyptic future.
He was mapping the coordinates of the multiverse.
After an indeterminate amount of time, the crimson light faded.
Ernst withdrew his hand. He had exactly what he needed.
With a casual flick of his wrist, the steel bars snapped.
He telekinetically pulled them from Logan's flesh and dropped them into the dark water.
Logan dropped to the river's surface, held aloft by Ernst's magic.
The Wolverine's healing factor engaged instantly.
The massive, gaping wounds knit together, sealing shut in less than ten seconds.
Logan gasped, his eyes snapping open.
The first thing he saw was Ernst, standing inches away.
"What the hell are you doing?" Logan roared, scrambling backward and popping his bone claws.
"You're too dull, Logan," Ernst sighed, stepping back.
"Am I really that frightening? I just saved your life."
Logan blinked, looking down at his healed chest, then around at the impossible water beneath his feet.
"Oh. It's you," Logan grunted, retracting his claws.
"Sorry. Just woke up. Where are we? Why am I standing on a river?"
"Quiet down. It's magic," Ernst said dismissively.
"The Red Queen will brief you."
Logan's watch flared to life, projecting a rapid, holographic summary of the White House climax.
Ernst watched Logan's face.
Logan didn't look relieved. He looked haunted.
"Don't look so constipated," Ernst teased.
"You saved the world. Slept with a mob boss's daughter, and now you're moping?"
"Shut up," Logan growled, rubbing his temples.
"Is the future safe? Did it work?"
"Perfectly," Ernst nodded.
"Mystique didn't kill Trask. She saved the President. Magneto looks like a terrorist, and Trask's illegal mutant experiments have been exposed. He'll spend his life in a federal black site. The Sentinels are dead in the water."
Logan let out a long, shuddering breath.
"Then I'm done."
"What's your plan?" Ernst asked.
"Back to the island?"
"No," Logan shook his head.
"I'm going to wander. The island is too quiet for me."
"Suit yourself. I'll give you a lift to the shore."
Ernst placed a hand on Logan's shoulder.
Crack.
- - - - - - - - - - -
D.C. General Hospital - Washington, D.C.
They materialized in a dark alleyway in the capital.
Logan stumbled, complaining that teleportation was worse than turbulence, declined Ernst's offer for a drink, and walked off into the night.
Ernst wasn't in a hurry to return to his farm.
He strolled alone down the bustling avenues, watching the vintage cars and the neon signs.
The world was evolving rapidly.
As he walked past a large, brick hospital, Ernst stopped.
He sensed an anomaly.
It wasn't a mutant gene. It was a magical fluctuation, but incredibly obscure.
A deep, stagnant aura of immortality.
Only a mind as hyper-evolved as Ernst's could have detected it.
Intrigued, Ernst cast a disillusionment charm over himself and walked through the hospital's sliding doors.
He followed the invisible tether of energy through the sterile corridors until he found his target.
It was a middle-aged doctor in a white lab coat, reviewing a patient's chart.
Ernst stared at the man. Familiarity sparked in the deep, archived vaults of his brain.
It was a fragment of a memory, nearly thirty years old.
Germany. 1945.
A liberated concentration camp. Captain America and the Howling Commandos standing in the snow.
A dead facility, save for a single surviving infant.
And the two people who had saved that baby: a field nurse and an Allied doctor.
Ernst looked closely at the man.
He had a neat beard and graying temples. But Ernst's eyes pierced the illusion.
The gray hair was a dye. The wrinkles were subtle makeup.
The man hadn't aged a single day since the Second World War.
He was a true immortal, hiding in plain sight.
Ernst smiled from the shadows.
"Dr. Henry Morgan," Ernst whispered to himself.
-------------
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