I have a profound nostalgia for Marvel that dates back to my childhood.
________________________________________________________________
A few minutes later, Kaine emerged from what the facility optimistically labeled processing.
The word implied order. Structure. Neutrality.
What it actually meant was cataloguing, stripping, tagging, and assigning a number.
He now wore an orange jumpsuit, the fabric stiff and utilitarian, designed less for comfort and more for visibility. A white tag stitched over his chest read 343-A, the lettering bold and impersonal. Not a name. Not even a designation with history. Just an entry in a system.
The irony didn't escape him.
Beneath the jumpsuit, his Spider-Man suit remained perfectly intact.
Inspired by the Mark-51—an innovation Kaine had privately resented for years—his suit existed in a state of adaptive concealment. Nano-layered, phase-responsive, and keyed to his bio-signature alone. It didn't merely hide from scanners; it lied to them. Thermal readings, magical detection, even Asgardian enchantments slid off it like water off glass. If gods couldn't see it, the technology of this world never stood a chance.
To every sensor in the facility, Kaine Parker was exactly what the jumpsuit declared him to be: an unarmed, baseline mutant detainee.
His black hair now brushed his shoulders, unrestrained, falling into his face in loose, uneven strands. The jumpsuit clung just enough to outline the dense musculature beneath—shoulders too broad, arms too defined. Paired with his youthful features, the lingering softness of his face, he almost looked like an athlete who had taken a wrong turn in life.
Almost.
The soldiers escorting him didn't touch him.
Not once.
They kept their distance, rifles angled downward but ready, expressions hidden behind visors that betrayed nothing except unease. The stigma was palpable. Mutants were dangerous. Mutants were contaminated. Physical contact was avoided unless absolutely necessary.
Which meant Kaine was fully armed.
Fully protected.
And significantly more dangerous than anyone here realized.
He glanced down at his left arm, where a white armband had been secured snugly around his sleeve. A single purple letter was emblazoned on it.
F.
He rolled the fabric between his fingers, absorbing the implication.
"Floor leader," he murmured internally. Or foreman. Or facilitator. A controlled hierarchy—give one prisoner authority over others to reduce resistance and centralize blame. An old tactic. Inefficient long-term, but effective in the short term.
Interesting that they'd assigned it to him immediately.
Either Frost was confident… or curious.
The gate ahead slid open with a hydraulic hiss, and Kaine was shoved forward with the barrel of a rifle pressing briefly between his shoulder blades.
He stepped through.
The prison yard opened up before him in stark daylight.
Concrete stretched wide, cracked and weathered, surrounded by towering fences layered with energy fields that shimmered faintly when the wind shifted just right. A basketball court sat off to one side, its paint faded, hoops reinforced against superhuman strength. Workout equipment—thick steel bars, weighted platforms bolted directly into the ground—occupied another section.
And everywhere—
Mutants.
Dozens of them.
Hundreds, perhaps, when accounting for those beyond immediate view.
Some were subtle: oddly colored hair, glowing eyes, skin patterned like marble or bark. Others were impossible to ignore—people with horns curling from their skulls, scaled limbs, tails flicking irritably behind them. One figure towered near the far fence, easily eight feet tall, muscles layered atop muscles like a living siege engine. Another floated inches above the ground, legs crossed, eyes closed in forced meditation.
Genetic variance in its rawest form.
Kaine stopped.
For the first time since arriving in this world, his mask of indifference cracked—not outwardly, but internally. His mind raced, spiraling into possibility after possibility. Mutations like these weren't random noise. They were data. Evolutionary branches. Natural experiments unfolding in real time.
Phenotypic expression without artificial enhancement… stable cellular replication… adaptive traits…
His thoughts accelerated, stacking hypotheses atop one another. What growth could this genetic chaos bring if properly guided? Properly refined? With the right stimuli, the right corrections—
He could already envision it. Controlled breeding programs. Targeted gene therapy. A population optimized not for dominance or aesthetics, but for stability. For reduced violence. For sustainable empathy.
All he needed was a lab.
And time.
And—
"Um… you're drooling."
The voice was gentle. Awkward. Human.
Kaine blinked.
He became aware of the faint warmth at the corner of his mouth. Annoyed, he wiped it away with the back of his hand. A bad habit. One he'd never bothered correcting. It only happened when his focus narrowed too completely, when the world reduced itself to a problem begging to be solved.
He turned toward the speaker.
A young man stood a few feet away, posture relaxed but cautious. Nineteen, perhaps. Brown hair cut short, practical. A distinctive tuft of white hair at the front caught the light, stark against the rest. His eyes were clear, observant, and—most importantly—not afraid.
That alone set him apart.
"Apologies," Kaine said evenly. "I'm a tad new here and was just… in shock at all this."
The young man smiled, small and genuine, as if relieved by the normalcy of the exchange.
"No worries," he said. "It's… quite a lot. Took me a while to stop staring too."
He extended a hand without thinking, then hesitated—glancing briefly at Kaine's armband—before committing to the gesture anyway.
"I'm Nate Gray. Nice to meet you."
Kaine looked at the offered hand for half a second, then took it. The grip was firm, confident. No tremor. No hesitation.
He logged the name instantly.
Nate Gray.
The surname carried weight. Genetic resonance. Psionic potential, if this world followed even a fraction of known patterns.
"Kaine Parker," he replied. "Pleased to meet you, Gray."
Their hands parted.
Around them, the yard continued to move—mutants lifting weights, arguing, laughing, glaring. Guards watched from towers above, weapons tracking invisible lines of threat.
Kaine's red eyes swept the space once more, calmer now, sharper.
This wasn't just a prison.
It was a reservoir.
And for the first time since his Cure had been denied, Kaine felt something dangerously close to anticipation.
This world, he thought, might actually be fixable.
________________________________________________________________
[Auther: I don't upload on weekdays, because praise God, I'd hate to see how you'd do without him. But I will be uploading normally this week.]