"Doctor, we have the analysis for Subject 757."
"How strong?"
"Level Two."
"So even at full potential he'd manage only shallow telepathy and magnetic manipulation barely strong enough to lift fifty kilos."
"That matches everything we've documented so far, Doctor."
The man studying the report exhaled, weary."Splicing the genetic signatures of Professor Xavier and Magneto. We hoped it would produce the ultimate engineered mutant. Instead we get a footnote. End the project. Redirect everything to X-24. He's the weapon we can actually rely on."
"And Subject 757? Should we dispose of him like the failed batches?"
"Not yet. Put him in with the other trainees. Even a flawed fusion of Xavier and Magneto is still useful with enough conditioning."
"Yes, Doctor."
The order echoed across the training hall, followed by a roar of frustration.
"757, commit to your strike! No hesitation. Aim for my vitals. Again!"
A thick-built instructor lunged with a combat knife, forcing a teenage boy to block clumsily. The knife trembled in the air, held back by the boy's limited control over magnetism. He tried to counterpunch but read the timing wrong, earning another barked reprimand.
Rowan Mercer, seventeen, wasn't born here. Three months earlier he'd woken up inside this lab-grown body with memories from another life.His mutant gifts: surface-level mindreading and painfully weak magnetic control.
His telepathy worked only when someone left their guard wide open. He could skim emotions, not memories.And his magnetism? If Magneto could lift stadiums, Rowan could barely tug a toolbox.
Against normal humans he'd do fine. Against powerhouses like Colossus or Emma Frost, he might as well throw paper cranes.
Escape was the only goal worth holding onto.
A harsh bell rang. A technician in a lab coat walked in, clipped a metallic collar around Rowan's neck, and shut the training session down.
"Subject 757. Dinner."
"Yes."
Rowan answered with the stiff obedience expected of him. The collar hummed faintly. It was a mutant suppressor. With it on, every spark of his abilities disappeared. Except during combat drills, he was required to wear it at all times.
He joined a line of children being herded through a sterile hallway. Most were younger than he was—twelve, maybe thirteen—eyes dim, movements trained and calculated.
Marvel. A world where extinction-level events showed up like seasonal storms.
Rowan didn't know the comics by heart, but he knew enough. Multiverses. Worlds collapsing. Thanos wiping populations like dust on a windowsill. No timeline stayed peaceful for long.
But if he was stuck here, he intended to live. Preferably for a very long time.
They reached the dining hall. Rowan kept his expression lifeless, ate without speaking, then returned to his cell-like room. Cameras hid in every corner. Any spark of personality could be a death sentence.
He pretended to be weaker than he was, slowing his control when manipulating metal objects. Too promising, and the scientists might dissect him. Too useless, and they'd simply discard him. There was a narrow band of survival, and he walked it carefully.
Later that night, pain erupted behind his eyes. A tearing sensation, sharp as broken glass dragged across the soul. It vanished in the next heartbeat.
Then something impossible happened.
His vision split.
Two viewpoints. One from his bed in the mutant facility. The other from a cramped, filthy cubicle he'd never seen before.
He felt a second body. Smaller. Younger. But fully responsive to his will.
He lay still in his original body, letting his awareness pour into the other one.
Memories surged, flickering like an old projector. An orphan named Dola. A hidden black wizard in Knockturn Alley who'd adopted him not from kindness but convenience. Dola had been a test subject for illegal magic and potion experiments.A tool.
He'd endured years of cruelty, waiting for his Hogwarts letter to save him. And it did arrive—but the wizard forbade him from attending. Pure-blood families had options. They could choose other schools or teach their children themselves. No rule forced them to send a child to Hogwarts.
So Dola had no protection.
He'd broken under the despair and drank a potion meant to end it all.
And somehow Rowan's split soul had taken root in the dying body.
"What a brutal life…" Rowan whispered through Dola's lips.
His throat was painfully dry. Instinctively he reached toward a metal cup across the room. It snapped into his palm.
He froze.
"I used my power… through this body?"
Magnetism. His mutant gift. Working in a world governed by wands and spellwork.
He switched perspective back to his original self in the Marvel lab. A new sensation stirred within him there as well. A reservoir of energy Dola's memories recognized instantly:
Magic.
"If abilities can flow between my bodies," Rowan breathed, "then this changes everything."
Two worlds. Two bodies. Two systems of power feeding into one another.
And with that realization, the shape of a plan began to form, bright and merciless.