The laboratory fell silent except for their ragged breathing.

  Jay stood over Sinister's liquefied remains, his hands still glowing faintly red. The decay aura pulsed once more before he forced it back down, watching the malevolent crimson fade.

  But it didn't disappear completely.

  The red wouldn't leave. Jay focused harder, channeling his Duality power in reverse, trying to invert what he'd done to Tommy's healing gift. The yin-yang symbol in his mindscape spun.

  "Come on," he muttered. Sweat beaded on his forehead. "Come on."

  Slowly, painfully, the red began to fade. The green grew brighter, purer.

  Then he noticed the Darwin-chimeras.

  All four remaining duplicates had stopped moving. Frozen mid-lunge, arms extended toward where Domino had been fighting. The automated defenses continued firing at them, turrets whirring and plasma cannons charging. The chimeras' skin rippled, adapting to each new threat. Fire-resistant tissue sprouted where flames had touched. Ice-proof scales formed where cryogenic spray had landed.

  But they didn't attack. Didn't move. Didn't even breathe in sync anymore.

  The puppets had lost their strings.

  "Jay!" Domino's voice cut through his observation. "A little help here!"

  He turned.

  She was leaning against a shattered surgical table, one hand pressed to her ribs. Blood seeped between her fingers. Her left arm hung at an odd angle. A gash across her forehead painted half her face red.

  But she was alive. Her luck had kept the fatal blows from landing.

  "Jay, what's taking so long?" She tried for sarcasm but it came out half-gasped. "Heal me already. I'm not used to being this banged up in a battle of all places."

  Jay first used his Technomorphing to stop all security attacks.

  Then he crossed the laboratory. Each step felt heavier than the last. His hands glowed green as he knelt beside her, Tommy's healing aura responding to his will.

  Then he stopped. His hands hovered over her broken ribs.

  "I'm sorry, Dom."

  "What?"

  "I can't always be there to fix you." The words came out quiet. "Every fight, every time you get hurt, I just heal you. You've gotten comfortable with it."

  Domino stared at him. Blood dripped from her forehead into her eye, but she blinked it away. "Are you serious right now?"

  "You've gotten reckless."

  "I have luck. Recklessness is kind of my thing."

  "And what happens when I'm not there?" Jay's voice cracked. "What happens when you're alone and bleeding out because you assumed I'd save you? Because you've forgotten how to survive without me as your safety net?"

  The silence between them was heavy. Domino's jaw worked like she wanted to say something.

  But the words wouldn't come.

  Instead, her eyes went hard. "So what? you're teaching me a lesson? While I'm bleeding?"

  "I'm teaching you survival." He picked her up, ignoring her grunt of pain. "And I'm giving you something better than dependence on my healing."

  "Fuck you," she said, but there was no heat in it.

  Just exhaustion and pain.

  "Yeah. Probably deserve it."

  He carried her across the laboratory to where Cyclops-Wolverine's body lay. The chimera's head had been slowly regenerating, the healing factor working to repair catastrophic brain damage.

  Slowly.

  Too slowly.

  Jay set Domino down and placed his hand on the chimera's chest. His power theft activated.

  The process was different this time. More deliberate. He could feel the chimera's abilities like layers of sedimentary rock. The optic blasts that channeled kinetic energy through specialized cells behind the eyes. The bone claws that extended through channels in the forearms. The feral instincts that overrode all reason.

  And underneath it all, the healing factor. The constant cellular regeneration that made Wolverine nearly immortal.

  Jay began dissecting the power structure in his mind. Separating components. Isolating the healing factor from everything else. It was like untangling a knot made of living tissue.

  Three minutes passed.

  "What are you doing?" Domino asked. Her voice had gotten weaker.

  "Surgery." Jay didn't open his eyes. His consciousness was deep in the genetic structure, carefully removing the optic blast genetics, excising the bone claw formations and feral instincts, leaving only the pure healing factor behind. "This is why I couldn't just steal their complicated powers mid-fight. Why Sinister knew I'd be limited and planned a barrage of nonstop attacks with chimeras made of intertwining complex genes."

  Another five minutes passed. Jay's head started pounding.

  "Jay?" Domino's voice was distant.

  "Almost there."

  Ten minutes total. That's how long it took. The complexity was staggering. Each power wasn't just grafted on. It was woven through the chimera's entire genetic structure.

  Finally, Jay extracted a glowing thread of pure healing factor. Not the optic blasts. Not the claws. Not the ferality.

  Just the regenerative ability that made Wolverine legendary.

  He transferred it to Domino. Carefully. Deliberately.

  The effect was immediate and violent.

  Her wounds began closing, but not cleanly. The broken ribs realigned with audible cracks that made her scream. The dislocated shoulder popped back into place with a wet grinding sound. The gash on her forehead sealed shut, but she could feel it happening. Feel her skin knitting together cell by cell.

  "Fuck! Fuck, that hurts!" Domino clutched at her ribs, feeling bones shift under her fingers. "You didn't mention it would hurt!"

  "Wolverine's used to it," Jay said, exhausted. "You're not. Your nervous system is registering the accelerated healing as trauma."

  The pain faded after a few minutes. Domino watched her arm straighten, the bruises disappearing like someone was erasing them. The sensation was foreign and wrong but welcome.

  "This feels... weird." She flexed her fingers. Tested her ribs.

  No pain. Just the memory of pain.

  "How long did that take?"

  "About three minutes for major injuries. Minor cuts and bruises will take thirty seconds to a minute."

  "I dissected a major chunk of the power to keep it pure", Jay continued. "I'm sorry Dom, but getting your healing to Wolverine-level regeneration will take months. Maybe years. Your body needs to adapt to the mutation and let it develop naturally."

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  Behind them, the Cyclops-Wolverine chimera's breathing stopped. Its healing factor had been the only thing keeping it alive after decapitation.

  Without it, biology caught up.

  Domino flexed her newly-healed arm, watching the last traces of bruising fade. Then she grinned. "Are you kidding me? This is a godsend." She stood up, testing her ribs.

  No pain.

  "Not to mention, with my luck, I'll rarely get hurt if ever. This is just insurance."

  The grin faded when she looked at Jay's face. He was staring at the dead chimera.

  "So what now?" she asked quietly. "Any better mood now that you've dealt with Sinister?"

  Jay shook his head. "He was a clone."

  "What?"

  "When I killed him, I checked his genetic markers while I was using the decay aura." Jay's hands clenched. "Telltale signs of cloning, not subtle at all. It was as if Sinister was mocking me for missing the real one. Not to mention he himself stated it during his fucking monologue."

  Domino processed this. All that effort. All that brutality.

  And they'd only killed a copy.

  "Fuck," she said. Then louder. "Fuck!"

  She kicked a piece of debris. "We went through all this. You went through all this. And it was just a goddamn clone?"

  "Yeah."

  "That's bullshit. That's complete bullshit."

  "I know." He continued, "But we'll find the real one. All of them. However many clones he has. We'll find them."

  "Yeah." She said. "We will. But right now, you need to breathe."

  They stood there for a moment, surrounded by corpses and ruined equipment. The Darwin-chimeras remained frozen, four blue statues in the center of the laboratory.

  "So what do we do with those things?" Domino gestured at them.

  Jay pulled back from the embrace. His expression hardened. "I need to do one more thing first."

  He approached the nearest Darwin-chimera carefully. It still hadn't moved.

  Jay placed his hand on the chimera's chest.

  His Power theft activated.

  But this time, he went deeper. Past the surface mutations. Into the genetic structure itself.

  The Darwin-chimera was a triple fusion: Mystique's shapeshifting, Multiple Man's duplication, and Darwin's reactive evolution. Sinister had forced them together, used Darwin's adaptation as genetic glue to make incompatible powers coexist in a single body.

  Jay began operating. To successfully take the powers, he had to untangle the mess first. Separate the three distinct mutation sources. Remove the artificial connections Sinister had created.

  It was genetic surgery on a level that made dissecting the Cyclops-Wolverine chimera look simple.

  Darwin's reactive evolution was the foundation. The glue holding everything together. It was adapting constantly to keep the other two powers from rejecting each other, to keep the body stable despite hosting incompatible mutations.

  If he removed it, the whole structure would collapse. Mystique's shapeshifting and Multiple Man's duplication would tear the body apart trying to assert dominance over the same cellular structure.

  Jay hesitated. Mystique's shapeshifting was valuable. Incredibly valuable. The ability to become anyone, to infiltrate anywhere. Combined with his other powers, it would make him unstoppable in espionage.

  But looking at the frozen chimera, seeing the way its skin still rippled with adaptive responses despite having no consciousness directing it, Jay made his choice.

  The adaptation was too good to give up.

  He carefully extracted Darwin's reactive evolution, pulling it free from the genetic structure strand by strand. The moment he removed the last connection, he felt Mystique's and Multiple Man's powers beginning to destabilize. Fighting each other. Tearing the body apart from the inside.

  So Jay let them go. Just pulled Darwin's adaptation free and stepped back.

  From Domino's perspective, Jay just stood there with his hand on the chimera's chest. Unmoving. Barely breathing. His face had gone pale.

  After twenty minutes, she thought he might collapse.

  Finally, after nearly an hour of standing perfectly still, Jay pulled his hand back.

  The chimera's chest caved in.

  All four duplicates collapsed simultaneously. Connected through Multiple Man's power, what happened to one happened to all.

  Their bodies turned to liquid. Blue flesh melting into pools of blood and dissolved tissue that spread across the laboratory floor. Bone turned to paste, organs dissolved, and in seconds, there was nothing left but puddles and the stench of decomposition.

  "That was intense," Domino said, trying not to gag.

  Jay swayed on his feet, but Domino caught him before he fell.

  "Easy. I've got you."

  "I'm fine." But he leaned on her anyway. "Just... tired."

  "That wasn't tired. That was almost passing out." She helped him sit against a wall. "What the hell did you just do?"

  "Failed product," Jay said. His voice was hoarse. "Darwin's reactive evolution was acting as duct tape, holding incompatible genetic structures together. I removed the glue, and the chimeras came apart."

  He looked at the puddles.

  "It was mercy, really. Those things were suffering every second they existed."

  They sat there for a few minutes in silence. Just breathing. Letting the adrenaline drain away.

  Finally, Domino stood and offered him her hand. "Come on. Let's loot this shithole."

  That got a small smile. "You know me too well."

  Jay took her hand, letting her pull him up.

  They spent the next hour stripping the laboratory of anything useful. Domino found a weapons cache that made her eyes light up.

  "Holy shit." She lifted a plasma rifle, testing its weight. "This thing is beautiful."

  "Sinister had good taste in guns at least," Jay said, sorting through ammunition.

  "Good taste? Babe, this is a handheld railgun." Domino held up a weapon that looked like someone had crossed a sniper rifle with a particle accelerator. "Do you know what I could do with this?"

  "Probably something illegal."

  "Definitely something illegal." She grinned, loading it into a shadow portal Jay opened. "What about these?"

  She pointed at a rack of hoverboards and even a sleek jet.

  "Take it all," Jay said. "We'll sort through it back at the base."

  "Now we have a proper lair," she said, loading equipment into shadow portals to their Savage Land base. "With guns and lasers and all the good shit. I'm never leaving."

  "We still need furniture."

  "Guns are furniture."

  "That's not how furniture works."

  "It is now."

  In the midst of their banter, Jay worked on the computers. His technomorphing allowed him to interface directly with Sinister's encrypted systems. Data began flowing, terabytes of research and experimentation. Chimera creation processes, mutant genetic profiles. Lists of targets and future experiments.

  It made him sick.

  But he forced himself to read it. To understand what Sinister had been planning. Who else might be in danger.

  There were names. Hundreds of them. Mutants Sinister had been tracking. Children with developing X-genes. Adults with rare genetic markers.

  All potential victims for future experiments.

  Jay flagged them all for monitoring. He'd need to warn Xavier as soon as possible. These people needed protection.

  The clone locations were there too. Most of them, anyway. Encrypted heavily, but Jay's combination of Sage's intelligence and technomorphing cracked it. He found seven facilities worldwide.

  New York, London, Cairo, Tokyo, S?o Paulo, Mumbai and Sydney.

  All of them producing Sinister clones. All of them preparing for the "death" of the prime consciousness.

  "Found them," Jay muttered. "Found all the clone labs."

  "Good." Domino was sorting through exotic ammunition. "Since you've already visited these places, we'll hit them all at once."

  The data transfer took twenty minutes. When it finished, Jay stood and looked around the laboratory one last time.

  All the equipment they wanted was gone. The bodies remained.

  "Is that everything?" Domino asked.

  "Almost." Jay moved to the door at the back of the laboratory. The one they hadn't opened yet.

  The cloning room.

  Jay's technomorphing had shown him what was inside during his initial infiltration.

  But seeing it in person was different.

  Dozens of cloning vats lined the walls. Each one contained a figure suspended in green liquid. Some were complete. Others were half-formed, bodies growing from genetic material in accelerated development.

  And every single one wore Nathaniel Essex's face.

  Some were younger versions. Some older. A few had slight variations, genetic tweaks to improve on the base model.

  But they were all Sinister. All the same malevolent intelligence preserved across multiple bodies.

  Except now they were all brain-dead. When Jay had killed the Sinister clone in the laboratory, a failsafe had triggered. Neural kill-switches built into every clone. A final "fuck you" to anyone who thought killing him would mean anything.

  The clones' higher brain functions had been erased instantly, leaving only autonomic nervous systems keeping the bodies alive as mindless flesh. Waiting for a consciousness that would never come because Jay had killed this version before it could transfer.

  Jay's mood soured completely.

  "Jesus," Domino whispered behind him. "How many are there?"

  "Thirty-seven." Jay's voice was flat. "Thirty-seven bodies ready for him to jump into if his main body died."

  "But they're all dead now, right? Brain-dead?"

  "This batch, yes. The failsafe erased their consciousness." Jay turned away from the vats. "But he said he had clones. Plural. Hidden labs around the world. I found seven other facilities in the data. This is just one of eight."

  Domino processed that. "So we killed him here, but seven other versions could still be alive."

  "Or the prime consciousness is in one of those facilities, and we just killed a decoy he sent to the Savage Land." Jay's hands clenched. "Either way, Nathaniel Essex is still out there."

  They stood there, surrounded by the evidence of Sinister's paranoia and planning.

  Some of Jay's hatred cooled.

  Not much.

  Just enough to think clearly.

  "We need to go," he said.

  They teleported back to their Savage Land base. The familiar sensation of darkforce travel, then the warm humid air of the prehistoric jungle. The waterfall's roar was soothing after the sterile silence of Sinister's lab.

  Their base looked exactly as they'd left it. Clean, organised and safe.

  "Home sweet home," Domino said, but her voice was subdued.

  Jay pulled out the remote detonator he'd rigged to Sinister's self-destruct protocols. Every facility this advanced had them. Just in case. He'd hacked the system during his data transfer, linked it to a remote trigger.

  "Ready?" he asked.

  "Blow it up."

  He pressed the button.

  Fifty kilometers away, the cliff face erupted. The explosion was massive, visible even from their base. A mushroom cloud of fire and debris rose into the Savage Land's impossible sky.

  Pterodactyls scattered, screeching in alarm. In the distance, a tyrannosaurus roared in response. The shockwave arrived seconds later, a rumble that shook the ground beneath their feet and sent ripples across the waterfall's pool.

  They watched the facility burn. The flames would destroy everything they'd left behind. The bodies, equipment and clone vats.

  All evidence of Sinister's work in the Savage Land reduced to ash.

  "Feel better?" Domino asked.

  "No." Jay's voice was quiet. "But at least this version of him is gone."

  She took his hand, fingers intertwining with his. They stood there together as the smoke rose, as the Savage Land's jungle slowly returned to its normal chaos.

  "We'll find the others," Domino said. "However many clones he has hidden. We'll find them all."

  "Yeah." Jay squeezed her fingers. "We will."

  But not today.

  Today they'd done enough. Killed enough. Seen enough horror.

  Today they needed to remember they were still human.

  Jay turned away from the burning facility and led Domino back into their base. She followed, not letting go of his hand.

  Inside, the cool air from the waterfall's mist was a relief. Jay collapsed onto their couch, head in his hands.