Blue light flashed and space folded.

  Three people materialized in a Parisian alley. The familiar scent of fresh bread and coffee hit immediately. Warm afternoon sun with the distant sound of traffic and conversation.

  Jay released Betsy's hand. She stumbled slightly, disoriented by the teleporting again for 2nd time in a single day. Domino steadied her with practiced ease.

  "Easy there. First few jumps are always rough."

  Betsy looked around, confusion replacing her earlier desperation. "Wait. Where are we? This isn't London. You said we were going to help my brothers."

  "I've never been to London," Jay said simply, already digging through his pack. "Can't teleport somewhere I haven't been. Paris is close enough for a flight."

  He pulled out three strange disc-shaped devices. Each one fit comfortably in his palm. Smooth metal surfaces with subtle geometric patterns etched into them.

  Domino's eyes lit up. "Oh hell yes. We finally get to use those bad boys."

  "Use what?" Betsy asked, her British accent sharpening with frustration. "What are those? And how exactly is Paris 'close enough' when my brothers are being tortured in England?"

  Jay pressed a button on the first disc. It extended with a mechanical whir, metal unfolding and locking into place. Within seconds, the small disc had transformed into a full-sized hoverboard. Sleek, black, covered in glowing blue circuit patterns.

  "Hoverboards," Jay said, activating the other two. "Courtesy of Sinister. We found them when we raided his base. Silver lining to dealing with that psychopath. He had some genuinely impressive tech."

  The boards floated three feet off the ground, completely silent except for a faint hum.

  Domino stepped onto hers. It wobbled slightly under her weight before stabilizing. "This is gonna be fun."

  Jay mounted his board, the device responding to his weight distribution.

  Betsy stared at her board. Then at Jay and Domino. Then back at the board. Her jaw was tight. Her hands clenched into fists.

  "You're having a laugh. You want me to fly to London on... on a bloody skateboard? While my brothers are imprisoned by one of the most dangerous mutants alive?"

  "It's a hoverboard," Jay corrected. "And yes. Unless you've got a better way to cross the English Channel without attracting attention."

  Betsy's eyes flashed with anger. She looked at the board, then at Jay and Domino already mounted and ready. She thought of Brian, of Jamie, Trapped and suffering.

  She stepped onto the board, her balance off. The board's stabilizers caught her before she could fall.

  "Right then," she muttered. "How hard can it be?"

  "Famous last words," Domino said cheerfully.

  Before Betsy could respond, Jay's board shot forward. Domino's followed immediately. Betsy's board launched after them on autopilot.

  The acceleration was brutal. Betsy's hands locked onto the board's edges. Buildings became streaks of color. The wind tore at her face.

  "Bloody hell," she ground out through clenched teeth, her knuckles white.

  Jay leaned into a turn as the Eiffel Tower passed beneath them. They climbed higher, heading northwest.

  Betsy held on, her jaw set. Every second on this board was a second her brothers suffered. But she'd asked for help. She had to trust Jay knew what he was doing.

  The flight took nearly an hour.

  They landed on the outskirts of London in a quiet park, empty at this hour.

  Betsy's legs trembled as her feet touched solid ground, but she forced herself upright. "Right. We're here. Where now?"

  Domino collapsed the boards back into their compact disc forms. "Now we find out where Selene actually is."

  Jay pocketed the discs. His expression grew serious as he reached out with his powers, light and shadow weaving together to create an illusion. A mirage that would make their appearance ordinary, unremarkable.

  "There. We're disguised now. Should buy us time to move through the city without causing a scene."

  Betsy pointed toward the city center. "The Braddock Estate. That's where Selene attacked us. That's where..."

  "No."

  Jay's voice cut through her words.

  Betsy's head snapped toward him. "What do you mean 'no'? My brothers are there! We need to..."

  "We need to scout first. Figure out what Selene actually wants." Jay took a wooden stick from the ground. "Dom, would you be a dear?"

  Domino took the stick, smiling. She held it loosely and let it fall.

  It clattered to the ground and pointed northwest.

  "Northwest," Domino said. "That's where my luck says we'll find either Selene or information about her plans. Best possible outcome for getting your brothers back safely instead of going back to your mansion and her trap."

  Betsy looked between them like they'd lost their minds. "You're basing our entire rescue operation on... on a STICK? On random chance?"

  "Not random," Jay said. "Domino's probability manipulation. She's literally luck personified. When she uses the stick, it points toward the best possible outcome. The path that gives us the highest chance of success."

  "That's insane."

  "So is charging blindly into a trap set by an immortal witch," Domino countered. "Trust us, this works better than one might think."

  Betsy wanted to argue, to run straight to the Estate and tear the place apart until she found her brothers. Her chest ached with the need to act, to do SOMETHING. But she'd asked for help. And this was Jay, the Powerbroker himself.

  If he said to follow the stick...

  "Fine," she bit out. "But if this is wrong..."

  "It won't be," Jay said with complete confidence.

  They walked, following the direction the stick had pointed. Through quiet streets, past shops closing for the evening.

  Betsy forced herself to breathe. To walk at a normal pace when everything in her screamed to run. Brian's face flashed in her mind, then Jamie's laugh. Were they in pain right now? Were they even still alive?

  She pushed the thoughts down. 'Focus and trust the process.'

  After about twenty or so minutes of walking, they arrived at the British Museum.

  Betsy stopped dead. "Why are we here? This is... this is just some museum. My brothers aren't..."

  "That's not just any museum," Jay said quietly, his voice had gone cold. "That's the biggest display of stolen artifacts in the world. Items taken from their rightful owners and cultures across the globe. Plundered and looted. Put behind glass for two pounds admission."

  Domino squeezed his hand. She knew that tone. Knew what happened when Jay started thinking about injustice on that scale.

  Betsy's face flushed as she remembered the Braddock family history and their legacy of colonisation. All the wealth was built on the backs of conquered peoples.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  "I... I know. My family's legacy is... complicated."

  "Complicated," Jay repeated flatly. "That's one word for it."

  They entered the museum. The evening crowd was thin, mostly tourists finishing their visits before closing time.

  Jay moved through the exhibits. His eyes tracked artifacts he recognized. Asian antiquities section, African sculptures, South American gold, Indian jewellery and Egyptian sarcophagi.

  All of it stolen. Taken by force or coercion and displayed like trophies.

  "Jay," Domino warned softly. "Focus, we're here for a reason."

  Jay took a breath and nodded.

  The disguise held perfectly. People's eyes slid past them without registering their presence.

  That's when Jay heard it.

  A voice, amplified by a microphone, carrying from outside. Though the words hit like acid.

  "...these creatures aren't human! They're abominations! Mistakes of nature that threaten our very way of life!"

  The voice dripped venom.

  "The so-called heroes, these mutants and super-powered freaks, they're a plague! A cancer that needs to be cut out before it destroys everything we've built!"

  Jay moved toward the sound, toward the museum's parking lot visible through the windows.

  A crowd had gathered around the speaker. Maybe fifty or so people. Holding signs and banners with slogans that made Jay do a retake.

  "MUTANTIES GO HOME"

  "HEROES ARE THE REAL VILLAINS! PUT THEM IN CAMPS!"

  "PROTECT NORMAL HUMANS! THEY ARE THE RIGHTFUL INHERITORS OF THE WORLD!"

  Jay was surprised that people like them were still out there, especially after what he and other heroes from all across the world had done to save this planet.

  At the front, speaking into a microphone with the confidence of a demagogue who'd found his audience, stood a man in his fifties. With Grey hair and expensive suit. The kind of face that looked trustworthy on camera.

  Jay focused his enhanced vision, reading the name on the banner behind the speaker.

  MAD JIM JASPERS

  HUMANITY FIRST PARTY

  Jay's blood turned to ice. His comic book knowledge delivered the information like a punch to the gut.

  Mad Jim Jaspers. The unhinged Reality warper himself. One of the most dangerous mutants in Marvel canon. A man whose power could literally rewrite the laws of physics on a whim.

  Who in other universes, other timelines Jay had read about in his previous life, had warped entire realities to match his xenophobic worldview. Who had turned all of Britain into his personal nightmare kingdom, where mutants were hunted and killed.

  Standing right there, spewing hatred and building a following.

  Jay wanted to turn heel and take Domino and teleport back to their base, but he stopped as his danger sense stayed silent.

  Which meant...

  "He doesn't have his powers yet," Jay breathed. "His X-gene hasn't activated. He's still just a bigoted human, though still dangerous, but still human."

  But that would change. Eventually, some trigger would activate his latent abilities. And when that happened, when Mad Jim Jaspers became the reality-warping monster from the comics, he would be one of the single greatest threats Earth had ever faced. Whole universes burned in the wake of his madness.

  Jay's mind raced. This was an opportunity. A golden opportunity, Domino's luck had delivered to him. A chance to prevent a future catastrophe before it could begin, all the while adding this Awesome power to his arsenal.

  He moved forward through the crowd, his disguise holding. Nobody noticed him approaching.

  His hand extended. Fingertips inches from Jaspers' shoulder.

  All he had to do was touch him. Activate the latent X-gene with his 'Power Theft'. Steal the reality-warping power before it could manifest naturally, and Jasper would never be a threat.

  Especially now, after Darwin's adaptation had been integrated into his biology and his body had been exposed to Franklin's reality warping, Jay could handle it. He could control it.

  His fingers were just an inch away.

  But his danger sense screamed.

  THREAT. LETHAL. MOVE NOW.

  Jay threw himself backward on pure instinct.

  A portal tore through space itself where he'd been standing. A rip in reality that made his eyes hurt to look at directly.

  The edges were sharp. Impossibly thin slices of folded space that cut through anything they touched like molecular-thin wire through wet tissue.

  And they did.

  The portal's edge bisected the crowd like a butcher's cleaver through hanging meat. Jim Jaspers stood directly in its path. The cutting edge of folded space sliced through his torso at a diagonal angle, separating his upper body from his lower half.

  For a frozen moment, Jasper's face showed confusion. Then his eyes widened in dawning horror as his brain registered what had happened. His mouth opened in a soundless scream. Then the light died in his eyes as gravity took over, and the two halves of his body fell in different directions. His intestines spilled out like rope, slapping wetly against the pavement. Blood fountained from both halves, arterial spray painting the ground in arterial red.

  The portal's edge didn't stop. It carved through the remaining crowd with surgical precision and indiscriminate brutality.

  A woman holding an "ABOMINATIONS GO HOME" sign was caught mid-shout. The dimensional edge cut diagonally from her left shoulder to her right hip. Her torso slid apart with a wet squelch, ribs and organs exposed before she even realized she was dead. The sign clattered from her severed hand.

  A man in a business suit, maybe forty, was bisected cleanly at the waist. His top half toppled forward while his legs remained standing for a surreal moment before collapsing. His tie dragged through the spreading pool of his own blood.

  A teenage boy, no more than sixteen, had been recording the whole thing on his phone. The portal's edge passed through his neck like it wasn't even there. His head rolled forward off his shoulders, phone still clutched in his hand as his body crumpled. The video kept recording, capturing his own death from the ground.

  An elderly couple, holding hands, were caught together. The portal cleaved through both of them simultaneously. They died still clutching each other.

  Bodies fell. Some in pieces. Some whole but clearly dead from the dimensional energies that had passed through them, cooking their insides even as their skin remained intact.

  Blood sprayed everywhere. Across the pavement in abstract patterns. Up the museum steps in a crimson cascade. Across the protesters' signs, turning their hate-filled slogans into macabre art. The smell hit a moment later. Copper and shit and the meaty stench of exposed organs.

  The screaming started. Primal. Animalistic. The sound of people confronting their own mortality in the most visceral way possible.

  People ran, trampling each other in blind desperation to escape. Some slipped in the blood and viscera coating the ground. Fell. Were crushed underfoot by the panicking mob. Bones snapped. Skulls cracked against pavement. The death toll climbed even as the portal stabilized.

  Jay stood frozen. His hands clenched into fists so tight his nails drew blood from his palms. The hot copper scent of mass death filled his nostrils. Made him want to vomit.

  Dozens upon Dozens of people. Cut apart and killed instantly. Their final moments captured in expressions of shock and agony frozen on severed faces.

  And the power he'd been seconds from acquiring, the reality-warping ability that could have changed everything, was destroyed. Gone. Turned into chunks of meat scattered across the parking lot like discarded trash.

  "Fuck," Jay whispered. His voice cracked. "Fuck. FUCK!"

  The portal stabilized, its edges smoothing from cutting blades into a stable gateway.

  And a woman stepped through.

  Pale skin that seemed to glow with inner light, and dark hair cascading past her shoulders. Beautiful in a way that felt wrong. Like a statue come to life. Perfect but inhuman.

  She wore a black dress that clung to her figure. Ancient jewellery that pulsed with power. Her eyes were pitch black, like staring into the void.

  Her heels clicked against the blood-soaked pavement. She didn't even look down at the carnage she'd created. As if the dozens of corpses were beneath her notice.

  Behind her came... things.

  Creatures that shouldn't exist. Demons pulled from some hell dimensions. All teeth and claws and burning eyes. Their presence made the air smell of sulfur and decay. They began feeding immediately on the fresh corpses, tearing into still-warm flesh with gleeful abandon.

  Selene.

  The Black Queen of the Hellfire Club. An External. One of the oldest mutants alive had arrived.

  Her black eyes swept the parking lot. Found Betsy immediately as Jay's powers wavered. A smile curved her lips. Cold. Predatory.

  "Elizabeth Braddock. How delightful, you've saved me the trouble of hunting you down." Her voice was silk wrapped around steel. Cultured British accent that made Betsy's sound common by comparison. "I was beginning to think you'd gone to ground somewhere I couldn't reach."

  She raised one hand. The demons tensed, ready to attack. Blood dripped from their maws.

  Then she heard it.

  A scream. Raw and filled with rage and grief.

  Her head turned towards the sound.

  Jay stood there, the disguise burned away by his fury. His face fully visible, eyes blazing with barely contained violence.

  "You Bitch!"

  His voice was cold enough to freeze nitrogen.

  Selene's perfect eyebrows rose as recognition dawned. "Oh my. The Power Broker himself. How utterly unexpected." Her smile widened, predatory and amused. "I'd heard you were indisposed after your... exertions during the invasion. Quite the display that was."

  She smiled wider. "And here you are. Standing in my way. How fortuitous. After all this cat and mouse chase all led to you!"

  Jay's hands glowed. Black and white energy crackled between his fingers. His entire body thrummed with barely contained violence.

  "You fucking killed them," Jay snarled. Each word dripping with venom. "Dozens of people. Innocent civilians. Cut them the fuck apart like they were nothing. Like they were fucking MEAT for your goddamn entrance!"

  His eyes blazed brighter. Multiple colors bleeding through. Blue, white, green, red. Every stolen power responding to his rage.

  " And you killed him, you killed my chance. The perfect opportunity my girlfriend gave me so lovingly!"

  Selene laughed. The sound was beautiful and horrible. "Oh dear. Did I interrupt something important? How terribly clumsy of me."

  She tilted her head, genuinely curious now. "What could possibly have been so valuable in this crowd of mundane sheep? They were nought but rabble. Insects screaming their hatred."

  Jay pointed at her. His finger trembled with rage.

  "You are dead! You old hag!"

  The words hung in the air.

  Selene's smile vanished as her black eyes narrowed. Power gathered around her, both Psychic and magical.

  "What did you just call me, boy?"

  The demons howled. Their claws scraped against pavement, ready to tear apart whoever their mistress commanded.

  Domino moved to Jay's side. Her guns were already out. Luck thrummed beneath her skin. "Babe. Deep breath. I know you're pissed, but we need to be smart about this."

  "She killed them," Jay repeated. His voice was shaking now. "Mad Jim Jaspers and those people. Right there. The reality warping I needed is gone. All because that old bitch decided to make a dramatic entrance."

  Betsy stepped forward, her face pale but her voice steady. "Selene. Please. Where are my brothers? What have you done with Brian and Jamie?"

  Selene's attention shifted to Betsy, but her voice was dismissive. Like swatting away an insect. "Your brothers serve their purpose, girl. As will you, once I've dealt with this rude young man."

  She gestured, and the demons charged.

  Jay's eyes blazed with every color of his stolen powers.

  His voice dropped to something cold. Final and lethal.

  "Wrong fucking move, you geriatric whore!"

  The fight was about to begin.

  And Jay was itching for violence.