Lucius finished his morning sales and returned from the banks with a canvas bag that looked far too ordinary for what it contained. Out of more than fifty sales, only three had been handled through a transfer. He insisted on cash. It was slower, it was annoying, and it meant smiling at tellers who looked at him as if he were laundering the GDP of a small country, but it also meant the money stayed real.
He trusted banks the way he trusted strangers who smiled too wide. The IRS radar was not a theory. It was a matter of time, paperwork, and some bored analyst wondering why a twenty-five-year-old chemical engineering graduate had started pulling out bricks of cash like a retired cartel accountant. He was pretty sure they were already on him.
He parked a street over from his house and walked the last stretch, not because he feared a mugging, but because he liked watching who watched him. Cars idled, curtains twitched, and the neighbourhood had gained a strange number of new residents who all looked like they owned the same two suits.
He entered his house, locked the door, and leaned his forehead against it for a moment.
He needed to find a new location. The warehouse was compromised in the most humiliating way possible, which meant it would be crawled over by bored cops and bored insurers until someone eventually stumbled across something that did not fit. His home was already treated like a public museum.
He wanted a space that was his.
Bob rested in his inventory like a black weight against his ribs, and the new array he had unlocked in the past days refused to leave his thoughts.
Array of Convergence.
The name sounded like something a cult would chant in a basement while wearing matching robes. The function, however, was salvation. It promised to merge everything he carried, magic, genetics, stolen talents, and all the strange mechanics that sat behind them, into his soul. No more fear of being found and collared. No more powers sitting like accessories. No more sniffers or Cerebro catching him by scent or signature and pointing excitedly like trained dogs.
It would make him a single thing.
He had not yet decided whether to conduct it.
He was looking for a strong telepath first. The problem was that most telepaths worth stealing were too high profile.
He had already taken Hellion. That was not a low-profile decision.
He pushed the thought aside and turned on the television while stripping off his coat.
Fox News filled the screen.
He grinned.
Brit Hume sat at the desk, composed and smooth, the sort of man who could read a report about the end of the world and still look mildly annoyed that it had inconvenienced traffic.
Behind him, a graphic flashed in bold capitals.
PREDATORY PRODUCE PANIC
Lucius choked on a laugh.
Hume's mouth twitched once, a professional man recognising he had been handed nonsense and required to deliver it like policy.
"Good evening," Hume began, calm as ever. "Last week, New York police responded to an unusual 911 call involving claims of, and I am reading this exactly as it was reported, an airborne banana emitting green light."
Lucius settled deeper into his chair, smug. Even when the world wanted to take him seriously, it failed.
The camera cut to a recorded audio clip. The call played. The dog walker's voice rang through studio speakers, righteous and offended.
"Woman, it is not about my crack. There is a fricking alien banana here opening holes all over the walls of this warehouse."
The studio returned to Hume, who kept his face still with visible effort.
"We should note," he continued, "that police found structural damage at the location, but no evidence of an alien fruit."
A second graphic popped up.
HOW TO SPOT A PERVERTED VEGETABLE
Lucius wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.
Hume introduced a so-called expert, a security consultant with a background in behavioural profiling, who looked like he had never held a weapon heavier than a remote control.
"Brit," the consultant said, voice confident, "we cannot rule out that hostile entities may disguise themselves as everyday items to bypass human suspicion."
Hume nodded as if that was a normal sentence.
"So, you are suggesting," Hume replied evenly, "that citizens should be wary of bananas."
"Bananas, cucumbers, courgettes," the man listed, leaning into the madness. "Anything with an elongated profile. Anything that could be used to… compromise a victim."
Lucius laughed more.
A second guest appeared, introduced as a former paramedic. The man looked exhausted and irritated.
"What did you see?" Hume asked.
"The paramedics reported seeing the alleged aggressor, an alien banana, attempting to assault a man who, for unknown reasons, was without his trousers," the former paramedic recounted with all the enthusiasm of a tax audit. "The officers confirmed the incident, noting in particular that the banana refused to follow commands. While the alien resisted arrest, it also endangered the ...chastity of both paramedics and officers. The strangest part, however, was the officer's observation of the dog's judgmental stare."
Hume nodded again.
"The caller was unavailable for comment," he said, "but sources tell us he is considering moving."
Lucius leaned back, satisfied.
Fox News was a godsend. If he had to live under surveillance, he might as well enjoy the entertainment.
At night, his entertainment shifted.
He remembered Mister Sinister from the comics, Nathaniel Essex, the geneticist with a god complex and a hobby of turning people into experiments. Sinister's reputation was built on cloning, manipulation, and a quiet obsession with the Summers line and Jean Grey. His laboratories were often hidden under abandoned facilities, stitched into the dark spaces of Manhattan, close enough to tunnels and sewers that the Morlocks could be blamed for anything that went wrong.
Lucius needed to find those facilities if he wanted Jean Grey level Telepathy, and he was quite sure any of the facilites will have a couple of Jean Grey's clones.
Every night, Lucius teleported through Manhattan's forgotten corners, slipping into basements that smelled of rust and damp. He looked for signs of fresh ventilation, security cameras and doors with clean hinges in buildings that otherwise looked ready to fall into the street.
So far, he had found nothing that screamed Essex. He kept looking.
-
Westchester
Professor Charles Xavier sat in his study with a headache that felt like punishment.
He was not alone.
Emma Frost stood by the window, arms folded, jaw set. The rest of the team moved through the mansion in tense, clipped routines, searching rooms they had already searched and asking questions that led nowhere.
Julian Keller was gone.
Not missing in the normal sense. Not run away. Not sulking in a corner.
Truly, in every essence of the word, he was gone. Cerebro found nothing. No trail, flicker or familiar psychic signature.
They had watched the news together, unable to avoid it. The reports said a fruit moving with a telekinetic profile that was uncomfortably familiar. The absurdity of it did not soften the implication.
Xavier pressed his fingers against his temple and forced himself to breathe slowly.
He reached for an old contact and used it, because pride was useless when students vanished.
Eric, he tried to reach his old frenemy and failed to do so.
Next, he rolled to his desk and called the number Fury gave him years ago.
The absence of an answer was its own message.
Emma's voice cut through the room, sharp and contained.
"Someone took him, Charles." She stated. "This is not a prank or a tantrum. Someone took him from within the mansion without alerting you or the Grey."
Xavier did not contradict her.
He had spent his life building a sanctuary, and now the sanctuary had been violated like a cheap lock.
He wondered, not for the first time, whether the world was finally catching up to his failures.
-
Queens
As January approached its end, Lucius returned to the hospitals.
Not out of kindness.
A positive image was armour. A good story was camouflage. Every vial he donated bought him room to manoeuvre and made it harder for agencies to paint him as a threat without looking like monsters.
He chose his targets carefully.
NYC Health and Hospitals Elmhurst was close enough to be convenient and busy enough that no one would ask why a young man arrived with a practised smile. He walked in with twenty vials of LHP and ten vials of LSP and watched the receptionist's eyes widen.
Recognition arrived fast.
"Mr Noctis," a nurse breathed, as if she had been waiting for a saint to step out of the lift.
Lucius adjusted his expression into something pleasant and restrained.
A doctor appeared, older, tired, and trying not to look hopeful.
"Are those," the doctor began.
"They are," Lucius replied, and he made the word sound like generosity.
They moved him through corridors where posters tried to convince families that everything would be fine. He followed without rushing, noting faces, noting who watched him too intently.
Paediatrics hit him differently, not emotionally, but tactically. Children drew attention. Children made headlines. Children also produced the kind of gratitude that turned into lifelong loyalty.
He entered a ward where a little boy lay thin and pale, an IV line taped to his hand. The child's mother stood beside the bed with swollen eyes, and she looked up as if she expected security to escort Lucius out.
Lucius held up a vial.
"It tastes like an apple," he informed the kid and the mother."
The boy's fingers trembled as he took the vial, and Lucius watched carefully as the child drank. Not because he cared, but because he wanted the optics. He wanted the timing. He wanted the visible improvement.
Colour returned first. A faint blush, then steadier breathing.
The mother covered her mouth, shoulders shaking. Lucius let the moment land. He did not interrupt it. He stepped back and addressed the doctor.
Lucius left Elmhurst after distributing his vials and moved on to NewYork Presbyterian Queens, where paediatric services were organised with cleaner corridors and a slightly better smell. He repeated the process with less theatre. Staff recognised him again. People whispered his name.
Every whisper was a shield.
Every grateful face was a hostage to his reputation.
By the time he returned to his car, his inventory was lighter and his public image heavier.
He drove home with the radio on low. The world could hunt him if it wanted. He would make sure it looked bad while doing it.