Seven months.
That's how long I'd been stuck in this hell of a research facility, and coincidentally, how long I'd been in this body.
One day I was cramming for my computer science midterms, stressed about rent money and wondering if I'd have enough left over for groceries, and the next I woke up here—same face in the mirror, but with memories that weren't quite mine flooding my head.
Memories of a world where mutants were real.
Where the X-Men existed. Where Wanda Maximoff had just screwed over most of mutant kind with her reality warping powers.
Great timing on the transmigration, universe.
The original Lucien's memories were still strange to navigate sometimes.
Same parents, same accident that killed them, same struggle to survive afterward. But this version had developed mutant abilities—enhanced physique, they called it in his memories.
Faster reflexes, denser muscle tissue, improved healing. Nothing flashy enough to get him recruited by any superhero teams, but apparently enough to ping on Sentinel detection protocols.
I wasn't even a hardcore Marvel fan—just caught some explanation videos on YouTube when I was procrastinating on assignments.
But I knew enough to understand how fucked this world was right now. Most mutants had been depowered overnight, the X-Men were scattered and broken, and the Avengers probably didn't even know places like this existed.
These people had swooped in during the chaos, rounding up a few remaining mutants for "research purposes." Clean, efficient, and completely off the books.
The mutant-suppressing collar around my neck was a constant reminder of my situation.
Heavy, cold, and apparently very good at its job, since I couldn't feel whatever enhanced physique I was supposed to have.
Just the weight of metal against my throat and the quiet hum of electronics designed to keep me human.
"You're thinking too hard again."
I turned toward the voice.
Through the transparent wall separating our cells, I could see Anna—or Rogue, as my memories called her—sitting cross-legged on her cot.
She was about my age, maybe a year younger, with that distinctive white streak in her brown hair that marked her as different.
We'd been captured at the same time by Sentinel robots, thrown into adjacent cells, and somehow became friends over the past seven months.
It helped that she wasn't part of any X-Men drama—just a normal girl from Mississippi who'd been living her life until a sentinel detected her absorption powers and these people brought her here too.
The Sentinels had found us both on the same day, both of us still reeling from the chaos of M-Day.
I'd woken up in this body just as the robots were breaking down the door, the original Lucien's panicked memories mixing with my confusion in a cocktail of pure terror.
"Just wondering what it's like out there now," I said, settling back against my wall. The concrete was always cold, no matter how long you sat against it. "You know, normal life and all that."
Anna tilted her head, that curious expression she got when she was trying to read my mood. "You think about that a lot."
"Don't you?"
"Sometimes." She shifted on her cot, drawing her knees up to her chest. "Hard to imagine going back to normal after... this." She gestured around the sterile facility with its endless white walls and fluorescent lighting. "But I do think about what I'd want to do. Like, really want to do."
"Yeah? What's that?"
Her eyes lit up slightly—the first real spark I'd seen from her today. It was always a good sign when Anna got that look. Meant she was thinking about something other than these walls for a change.
"This might sound weird, but I've been thinking about psychology. Maybe opening a little bakery on the side." She laughed softly, and the sound was like finding something warm in all this cold sterility.
"I know, I know. The girl who can't touch people wants to help them with their problems and feed them cupcakes."
Despite everything, I found myself smiling. Anna had this way of making even the impossible sound reasonable. "That's not weird at all. It sounds pretty great."
"You think so?" She seemed genuinely pleased by my response. "I used to bake with my mama before... before everything went wrong. There's something about making something from nothing, you know? Taking flour and sugar and eggs and turning them into something that makes people happy."
"And the psychology part?"
"Well," Anna leaned back against her wall, "I figure if you can't touch people, you better get real good at understanding them other ways. Reading their expressions, listening to what they don't say. Been doing it my whole life, might as well make it official."
There was something both sad and hopeful in the way she talked about it. Like she'd already accepted her limitations but refused to let them define her completely.
"What about you?" Anna asked, leaning forward with that focused attention she gave when she really wanted to know something. "What do you think you'd do? If you got out, I mean."
The question hit me harder than it should have. I opened my mouth, then closed it, fumbling for words that wouldn't come. How do you explain that you've never really belonged anywhere, not in your original life and definitely not in this one?
"I... I don't know."
Anna's expression softened, and I could see her picking up on something in my voice. "What do you mean you don't know?"
I stared at the ceiling, counting the familiar holes in the acoustic tiles while feeling something tight in my chest. "After my parents died, I was just... trying to make it through each day, you know? Working part-time jobs, scraping together rent money, barely keeping up with classes." I shrugged, but it felt heavy. "I never really had time to dream about anything. Just survive."
The memories were a weird mix of both lives—original me working three part-time jobs to afford a tiny apartment, this world's Lucien doing the same thing but with the added stress of hiding developing mutant abilities.
Both versions of me too busy keeping their heads above water to think about what they actually wanted from life.
"Just survive," Anna repeated quietly, and I could hear the understanding in her voice. She got it—that feeling of being so focused on making it through each day that you forget there might be something beyond just existing.
"Yeah. Just survive."
The silence stretched between us, comfortable but heavy. We'd had conversations like this before, touching on the edges of bigger truths about our lives before this place. Anna had always been good at reading between the lines, at understanding the things I couldn't quite put into words.
Anna pressed her hand against the barrier between our cells, her palm flat against the transparent polymer. "When we get out of here, we'll figure out your dreams too. Both of us."
I looked at her hand against the transparent wall, wanting to believe her words. But we both knew the truth that neither of us wanted to say out loud—escape felt impossible at this point. We were just two kids with suppressed powers in a government facility that didn't officially exist, with no one on the outside even knowing we were here.
The X-Men were broken. The Avengers were dealing with bigger problems. Emma Frost had managed to negotiate protection for the lucky few hundred who'd made it to Xavier's mansion, but that safety net didn't extend to random kids like us who were captured.
The knowledge from my memories won't be of much help either, as I never really read the comics in much detail
Still, I pressed my hand against the barrier too, matching her gesture. Our palms were separated by inches of reinforced material, but it was the closest thing to human contact either of us had experienced in months. "Yeah. Maybe we will."
"I mean it, Lucien." Anna's voice was soft but determined. "Everyone deserves to have something to hope for. Something to work toward."
"Even if we're stuck in here?"
"Especially then." She smiled, and it was one of those smiles that made you believe things might actually be okay someday. "Dreams don't need permission, you know. They just need someone to believe in them."
I felt something unfamiliar stirring in my chest—not quite hope, but maybe the possibility of hope.
"Oh, and about that bakery, that's pure selfishness," Anna admitted with a grin. "I miss good food. Miss the smell of bread baking, the way people's faces light up when you hand them something sweet. If I'm gonna help people work through their problems, might as well feed them something nice while we're at it."
I could picture it—a small bakery with mismatched chairs and the smell of cinnamon in the air, Anna listening to someone's troubles while her hands worked dough. It seemed so normal, so achievable, that for a moment I could almost believe in it.
This little minx... haha.
"You'll make it happen," I said, and I meant it.
"We'll make it happen," Anna corrected. "All of it. Your dreams, too, once we figure out what they are."
I nodded, about to respond, when something flickered in my peripheral vision.
A faint blue glow appeared in the air, distinct against the white walls of my cell. Anna was still talking, but her voice seemed to fade as the glow intensified, forming into a rectangular shape right in front of me.
Text materialized across its surface in crisp, impossible letters:
SHADOW MONARCH SYSTEM ONLINE
........
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