Chapter 65: The Ancient One Pays a Visit
Hell's Kitchen. The Lucky Dragon.
"Going forward, everything runs through Wanda. Wanda's orders are my orders."
Ethan swept his gaze across the room, voice level and unmistakable. "That's all. Dismissed."
The men he was addressing didn't look like the kind of people you wanted giving you a business card. Hard faces. Hard eyes. Mob guys, every one of them — Uncle Fisk's people.
They filed out of the restaurant without a word. Wanda stayed behind.
Ethan turned to her, and his whole register shifted softer.
"Wanda. Your job from now on is to take over Uncle Fisk's operations. Don't put too much weight on yourself about it."
"This is a huge new challenge for you. I wouldn't hand it to you if I didn't think you could do it."
"As much as possible, cut loose the illegal side of the business. We get the company clean, then we get it running right. That's what we said we wanted."
"And — really — don't stress. It's not like we're hurting for money." Ethan tacked that last part on gently.
"I can do this," Wanda said. Her eyes were steady. Then she turned and left, heading for Fisk Tower.
Walking out, she was quietly pep-talking herself. She was going to do this well. For two reasons. One: she wasn't going to let Ethan down after he'd put this much trust in her. Two: she wanted to be the thing Ethan could lean on. That was how she stayed by his side.
"That's a lot to put on her," Ethan said to the empty room, watching her go.
She was twenty. Twenty years old, inheriting a company this size.
But Ethan didn't exactly have a bench to draw from. His people were either hardened killers pushing sixty, or Wade. The one reasonable option — Winston — had already been shipped off to run the Continental.
Ethan tried, for about a half-second, to imagine handing the company over to Wade. Wade would have liquidated every cent of operating capital into a cross-country flirting tour by Tuesday.
He was still turning that over when a golden circle of light spun itself into existence in the middle of the restaurant — symbols rotating inside its rim, strange and precise.
Ethan saw the portal and he already had a pretty good idea who was on the other end of it.
A heartbeat later, the space around the restaurant shivered. It was like staring through a pane of glass the instant before it cracks — and then, as quickly as it had warped, the world settled back into place.
Mirror Dimension. She'd brought out the Mirror Dimension, which meant there was exactly one person this could be. The bald master magician who — Ethan's inner movie critic noted — the script eventually killed off because her CGI budget got too expensive.
The Ancient One stepped through the ring of gold. Yellow robes, gleaming scalp catching the restaurant's overhead lights. Her eyes were calm and very, very deep.
"You don't look surprised, Mr. Cross. Almost as if you knew I was coming."
Her voice was even. Unhurried.
Ethan's complete lack of reaction seemed to genuinely intrigue her.
Did this man have foresight? Or was he just this confident in his own power? Either answer was interesting to her.
The Ancient One could see the arc of a person's life — backwards and forwards both. But when she tried to look into Ethan's future, she hit a wall. She couldn't read him.
What she could confirm was that Ethan belonged to this universe. He was native.
"Ancient One. I've heard a lot about you."
Ethan dropped the pretense. She'd done her homework before coming — he was sure of it. No point performing ignorance.
"I've been watching you for some time. Everything you've done recently — none of it matches the future I saw."
"But you've done better. Hell's Kitchen has a better future because of you." Her tone was almost complimentary.
"Flattered. So — what brings you to my restaurant?" Ethan genuinely didn't know. He hadn't been out there committing crimes against the planet lately.
"Two things. First — recently, a knight from another universe attempted to cross over into Earth. I intercepted him in time. But you should stay alert." The look of this other-universe knight had been strikingly similar to a form Ethan himself had taken not long ago. It was a safe bet the visitor had been looking for him.
"Second. I came to take your guest from another universe home." She looked at Ethan pointedly.
Ethan cut in. "The knight. What color was he?"
She thought for a beat. "Pink."
Ethan's head hurt just hearing it.
Oh no. Ming. The destroyer-of-worlds one. The one who breaks every setting he touches.
Thank god the Ancient One had caught him at the door. If that guy had gotten in, there was no telling what kind of nonsense Ethan would have woken up to.
The second point — returning Miles — didn't surprise him at all. Ethan had actually been planning to ask the Ancient One for help with exactly that. He just hadn't had the juice to set up the meeting himself.
"Appreciate the heads-up. Want me to go grab Miles now — you take him home?"
"Not yet. There's more I need to tell you."
Her face got serious.
"Do you know where your guest is actually from?"
Miles's appearance had rippled across the multiverse. Every Spider-Man in every universe had been nudged, a little, off their intended path.
Ethan looked at her serious face and started actually thinking about the implications.
Then something clicked.
"You're saying Miles isn't supposed to be Spider-Man. He's a variable — something that shouldn't have happened, which then made other things happen in other universes that also shouldn't have happened."
In Miles's own original track, he was supposed to grow up to be the Prowler. Not Spider-Man.
The Ancient One nodded, grave. "Exactly. Each universe gets one Spider-Man. And every Spider-Man pays the same price — they lose someone they love. That's the covenant. That's what being Spider-Man means."
"And the spider that bit him — the one that gave him his powers — wasn't from his universe at all. That spider belonged to Earth-42. Miles stole that universe's Spider-Man from it." She laid it out. "In Earth-42, Peter Parker never became Spider-Man. He died. And without a Spider-Man, that universe began collapsing."
"Two Spider-Man universes adjacent to ours are now in crisis. I can't leave Earth right now. I need you to handle it."
She couldn't leave. Not now. Too many variables had stacked up, and she had to make sure the succession of the next Sorcerer Supreme went cleanly. Which meant staying on Earth, eyes open. Her time was running short, and she knew it.
And she'd come to Ethan specifically because Ethan had something the other candidates didn't — he had possibility. An uncapped amount of it.
"Okay, but — those two universes collapsing doesn't affect ours, right? So why me? Why do I have to go?"
Ethan did not, in a direct and factual sense, care what happened to people in other universes. He also didn't want the assignment.
"Because they are adjacent universes. When a universe dies, it leaves tears in spacetime. People slip through those tears into neighboring realities — exactly like your guest did. Those refugees bring chaos with them, into our universe." The Ancient One's tone stayed even.
What she wasn't saying out loud — in the worst case, our universe gets erased.
"Well, if the sky falls, we've got you for that, Ancient One. And anyway, I can't even travel between universes." Ethan was really trying to weasel out of this.
The Ancient One was not remotely ruffled. It was like she'd seen this conversation coming.
She tossed him a Sling Ring.
"Consider this payment. I'll teach you how to open portals."
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