Magneto stood at the precipice of the melted iron staircase, staring down into the pitch-black abyss of his subterranean vault. He did not immediately descend.
Logan's warning echoed in his mind. Nathaniel Essex had mastered the surgical integration of the X-gene. He was entirely capable of weaving the dampening powers of Leech into a disposable clone. Dropping blindly into an enclosed space was a tactical error Magneto refused to make.
Instead, he closed his eyes. He reached out with his mind, casting an invisible, electromagnetic net down into the dark.
He felt them. Five distinct, beating hearts. He zeroed in on the iron atoms carrying oxygen through their circulatory systems. He gripped the iron, intending to violently rip the blood straight out of their pores.
He met resistance.
Magneto opened his eyes, his expression darkening into a hard, dangerous scowl. The intruders hadn't died. They were projecting localized, artificial magnetic fields inside their own bodies. It was nowhere near his own god-like power level, but it was just strong enough to anchor their hemoglobin and prevent instant exsanguination.
Given a few extra minutes, Magneto could bypass the shields and meticulously dismantle their cellular structures atom by atom. But he didn't have minutes. The enemy was already moving upward.
A sharp, melodic female voice echoed up the metal shaft.
"To me, my Sinister X-Men."
A figure floated up from the darkness, riding a platform of pure telekinetic force. It was Miss Sinister. She wore her signature blood-red evening gown, a diamond glittering at her forehead.
Right behind her rose four grotesque, pale mockeries of Charles Xavier's original students. A winged Angel, a ruby-visored Cyclops, an iced-over Iceman, and a hulking, blue-furred Beast.
"Does this evoke a sense of nostalgia, Erik?" Miss Sinister smiled, tapping her temple.
She wasn't just using Jean Grey's telekinesis to fly. She slammed a psychic spike directly into Magneto's mind.
"You really are far too arrogant," Miss Sinister mocked, pushing harder against his mental defenses. "You didn't even bother to retrieve your helmet!"
Magneto didn't flinch. He simply stared at the pathetic circus floating in his foyer. He felt a dull, stinging pressure behind his eyes, but he easily pushed it back.
"Do you have any concept of how many telepathic assassins I have executed since Genosha was founded?" Magneto asked, his voice echoing with cold, absolute authority. "I do not wear the helmet because I have not required it in years."
Magneto tightened the localized electromagnetic field around his own skull, creating an impenetrable, biological Faraday cage. The psychic attack shattered against it.
He raised his right hand.
The steel walls of the shaft shrieked. A jagged, razor-sharp sheet of metal ripped itself free and shot upward like a guillotine blade. It bisected the Beast clone perfectly at the waist before the creature could even roar. Blue fur and blood rained down into the dark.
Miss Sinister clicked her tongue in annoyance. She immediately retreated downward.
The Cyclops clone stepped forward, throwing its head back. A massive, devastating beam of pure concussive ruby light erupted from its visor.
Magneto didn't dodge. He raised his left hand, generating a localized magnetic force field. The optic blast slammed into the invisible barrier, splashing harmlessly outward in a shower of red sparks.
Magneto curled his fingers. Countless tons of liquid metal defied gravity, climbing rapidly from the bottomless vault. The iron spiraled upward, wrapping around the interior of the palace foyer to form a screaming, silver tornado.
The Iceman clone thrust his hands forward. He desperately tried to drop the ambient temperature to absolute zero, hoping to freeze the liquid metal and halt the hurricane. He failed. The clone lacked Bobby Drake's true Omega-level potential.
Magneto held the optic blast back with one hand. With the other, he molded the liquid metal storm into a massive, shimmering broadsword. He swung his arm. The liquid blade cleaved cleanly through the clone's defensive ice pillars, instantly shattering the fake Iceman into a thousand frozen pieces.
Above the chaos, the Angel clone tucked its feathered wings and dive-bombed. He carried no weapons. He moved with terrifying, suicidal speed.
Magneto instantly recognized the tactic. This specific clone carried Leech's DNA. If the Angel got within a three-yard radius, Magneto's powers would immediately short-circuit.
Magneto snapped his fingers.
The liquid iron surged upward like a crashing wave. It splashed heavily over the Angel's white wings and instantly hardened into solid, cold steel. The sheer, crushing weight overwhelmed the clone's aerodynamics. The Angel dropped out of the sky like a stone, plummeting back down the shaft. His wings snapped backward with a sickening crunch as he disappeared into the dark.
The Cyclops clone was still firing. Magneto casually directed a thin, snaking stream of liquid metal around the red beam. The iron slammed directly into the clone's ruby quartz visor. It flowed through the glass, entirely encasing the creature's eyes in hardening steel. The clone collapsed, instantly brain-dead.
Miss Sinister hovered alone near the bottom of the shaft. She watched her four meat-shields get butchered in less than thirty seconds. She didn't look panicked.
Magneto descended smoothly, stopping exactly at her eye level.
"Where is the gene-editing machine?" Magneto demanded.
Miss Sinister opened her mouth, fully intending to deliver a polite, venomous monologue.
Magneto didn't let her speak. A thick, rusted iron rebar shot horizontally out of the wall. It punched squarely through the center of her forehead and out the back of her skull. Her eyes rolled back. She dropped off her telekinetic platform, tumbling lifelessly to the bottom of the vault.
Magneto drifted down, his boots finally touching the floor of his most secure bunker.
The massive footprint where the gene-editing machine had stood just twenty minutes ago was entirely empty.
A sharp smell of brimstone flooded the sterile air. A thick cloud of red smoke erupted in the center of the empty floor.
Azazel, the demonic teleporter, materialized. Standing directly beside him was the real, original Mister Sinister.
Nathaniel Essex smiled warmly, adjusting the lapels of his immaculate suit. He looked at Magneto floating a few inches off the floor.
"I must admit, Erik, you are vastly more powerful and terrifying than you have ever been," Sinister said smoothly. "But unfortunately for your ego, I do not need to fight you today. You spent the last six years building a nation of mutants. I simply spent my time finding a few highly specific, like-minded individuals."
Magneto remained entirely silent. His hands closed into tight fists.
The entire metallic structure of the vault groaned. A vast, inescapable dome of solid steel collapsed inward, converging on the two intruders from all sides.
Sinister raised a pale hand. He projected his own stolen magnetic field, creating a bubble of resistance against the crushing metal.
The shield held for exactly two seconds.
Magneto's overwhelming, god-like power shattered the barrier. The steel slammed shut, instantly crushing Mister Sinister's clone body into a liquefied, bloody pulp.
But two seconds was all they needed.
In that microscopic window, Azazel snatched the Pym-particle-shrunken gene-editing device off the floor. A second cloud of brimstone exploded, and the red mutant vanished right as the steel crushed the space he had just occupied.
Magneto rose back up the shaft, emerging into the palace foyer. His face was a mask of cold, murderous rage.
He had effortlessly slaughtered Essex's clones in a single sweep. But the madman had achieved his objective. Magneto had seen the shrunken device in Azazel's hands. He knew instantly that only Hank Pym's proprietary sub-atomic particles could achieve that level of compression. He fully intended to ask the Avengers how a global terrorist acquired that technology.
Magneto levitated out of the shattered palace doors, floating high above the Genoshan skyline.
He looked toward the American mainland. He spotted a massive, blinding streak of blue lightning rapidly fleeing across the Atlantic Ocean. Max Dillon.
Magneto's jaw clenched. The tactical reality of the heist became infuriatingly clear.
Azazel's teleportation range was not infinite. Moving across the globe required line-of-sight, sequential jumps. It burned immense physical stamina. Essex had willingly sacrificed highly advanced, expensive clones solely to buy a teleporter a two-second head start.
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