The ocean at night had a way of erasing context.
It stripped the world down to wind, steel, and the steady percussion of waves hitting a hull. On the black surface of the Atlantic, light existed only where someone chose to force it into being—deck lamps, cigarette embers, the occasional sweep of a searchlight from the distant yacht-docking area. Everything else belonged to darkness.
The Caspartina drifted slowly through that darkness like a private kingdom—sleek, expensive, and arrogant. Its deck was calm in the way predators were calm: not because danger was absent, but because they believed themselves to be the danger.
Sebastian Shaw sat as if he owned not just the ship, but the night around it.
He was dressed sharply despite the salt air, posture relaxed, expression amused by nothing in particular. He didn't lounge like a man seeking comfort—he sat like a man at court, receiving the world as tribute. Beside him, Emma Frost watched the horizon with the stillness of a blade resting on velvet, her pale hair barely stirring in the wind. Riptide lounged nearby with careless confidence, as if he couldn't decide whether he was bored or merely waiting for an excuse not to be.
Glasses clinked softly. Low voices murmured. The ship breathed through its engines and the sea answered back.
Then the air changed.
Not with a sound, but with a shift in pressure—something primitive, like the moment a storm decided to exist. Emma's eyes narrowed a fraction, her attention turning away from the ocean and toward the dark edge of the deck.
A figure stepped into the light.
He moved without hesitation, boots making almost no noise on the planks. His clothes were damp, as though he'd come swimming from the shore to the ship. Water gleamed on his sleeves. His face held no fear—only fury, held so tightly it had become still.
Erik Lensherr.
For a moment, no one spoke. The ocean kept breathing. The Caspartina kept cutting through it.
Shaw's mouth curved in something that wasn't quite a smile.
The silence wasn't empty. It was loaded—years of distance, years of watching from shadows, years of a boy's hatred ripening into a man's intent.
Erik stopped just far enough away to make it clear he hadn't come to bargain.
He addressed Shaw in a voice stripped of ceremony.
"Herr Doktor."
Shaw's eyes gleamed with recognition. Not surprise—recognition, like a man finding an old instrument he once enjoyed playing.
"Little Erik Lensherr," Shaw replied, almost fondly, as if greeting an old student.
Emma's gaze snapped sharper. The next words came with the certainty of someone reading a book whose ending she didn't like.
"He's here to kill you."
Erik didn't deny it.
He didn't flinch.
He just kept walking, as though nothing on this ship deserved to slow him down.
Emma reached first—not physically, but with her mind.
It hit Erik like a vice tightening around the inside of his skull. A sudden invasive pressure. A headache so violent it tried to become blindness. The deck tilted beneath him, and for an instant the world went too bright, too loud, too wrong. His knees buckled—one step, just one—and he dropped into a crouch, one hand pressed hard against the side of his head.
His jaw clenched. His breathing went harsh. Sweat beaded at his temples—not from fear, but from resisting a force that wanted to fold him inward.
Shaw leaned forward slightly, curiosity sharpening.
"What kind of a greeting is that…" Shaw said, voice smooth as expensive whiskey, "…after all these years?"
Erik's eyes lifted, and in them was something that had been kept alive through cages and cold floors and years of survival: a refusal to bow.
He adjusted.
Not by overpowering Emma—he couldn't—not yet. He adjusted the way rage always taught him to adjust.
He turned pain into motion.
His hand moved.
A knife flashed.
The throw was clean, direct—driven by muscle memory and hatred refined into precision. It cut through the night air like a promise.
Emma reacted instantly.
Her skin turned to diamond mid-motion, hardening with a crystalline shimmer that caught the deck lights. The blade struck her palm and stopped.
Metal met diamond.
The impact rang sharp—a small humiliating bell of failure.
Erik lunged anyway.
He moved with the violence of a man who had waited too long to be patient. He aimed for Shaw because Shaw was the center of everything that had ever been taken from him. But Emma was between them now, a glittering barrier that didn't bleed, didn't hesitate, didn't pity.
Her counter wasn't graceful.
It was efficient.
A kick—heavy, brutal, diamond-strength—caught Erik squarely and launched him off the deck like a discarded object. For a split second he was airborne, framed against black sky—
—and then the ocean swallowed him.
A splash. A violent churn of water. Darkness closed over a man who refused to drown.
Emma stepped back and let her diamond form dissolve. The gleam faded. Flesh returned. She shook her hand once, as if the knife had been an annoyance rather than an attempt on her leader's life.
Shaw watched the spot where Erik had gone under. His expression barely changed. If anything, he looked mildly entertained, like a teacher watching a student fail a test in a predictable way.
"Emma," Shaw said calmly—almost ceremonially—"we don't harm our own kind."
The words hung in the salt air like a principle.
And yet he had allowed harm all the same.
Because "harm" was always a matter of definition to men like Shaw.
The sea rolled.
For a few heartbeats, the deck returned to its calm.
Then—far off—lights approached.
A low mechanical thrum grew louder: engines pushing a larger vessel toward them with purposeful speed. Searchlights began to sweep the surface of the water, cutting bright white cones through the black.
Riptide moved forward, interest finally replacing boredom.
Shaw turned slowly, buttoning his coat as if preparing for a meeting rather than a confrontation.
Emma's eyes narrowed—not at the ship itself, but at something riding on it.
A mind.
Bright.
Uninvited.
"They have a telepath," she said quietly.
The U.S. Navy vessel came into view—steel, authority, floodlights. Its searchlights pinned the Caspartina in harsh white beams, turning night into a stage. A loudspeaker crackled, then boomed across the water.
"This is the U.S. Coast Guard. Do not attempt to move your vessel. Stay where you are."
Shaw's smile widened just enough to show teeth.
"Now it's a party," he murmured.
On the Navy ship, men in uniforms and agents in suits clustered along the railings and deck. Rifles rose. Orders layered over each other. The night filled with the disciplined noise of people who believed guns could solve any problem if pointed hard enough.
Moira MacTaggert stood near the front—upright, focused, the kind of person who didn't blink at the impossible because she'd already decided what she believed. Beside her was Charles Xavier. He stared across the gap between ships with fascination that was trying very hard not to become fear. He stood like a man walking into history—curious, eager, unaware of how quickly curiosity could become helplessness.
Oliver—CIA sponsor, Division X advocate—hovered close, eyes wide, jaw set in the smug excitement of a man who believed he'd finally been proven right.
And further back, not in the center of the cluster, not making any dramatic moves—two more figures stood apart.
Ryan Hunter and Raven.
They were there in the open, but not truly part of the scene. Ryan's stance was calm, hands relaxed at his sides, gaze steady. Raven watched with eyes that missed nothing. Her posture held a new confidence—quiet, controlled, like a blade still sheathed. She didn't cling to Charles's orbit anymore. She didn't shrink into the background.
She learned.
Ryan didn't speak.
He didn't need to.
He was watching the board and the pieces on it.
Charles closed his eyes for a moment and reached outward with his mind like a hand extending into darkness. He searched for Shaw's presence—and felt it slip.
Something blocked him.
Not steel. Not distance.
A wall.
Not built of force, but of elegance. Telepathic interference that felt cold and smooth, like glass—like diamond—between him and what he wanted.
His eyes opened, startled by his own limitation.
"I've lost Shaw," Charles said, voice tighter now. "I've lost Shaw. There's something blocking me."
Moira turned sharply, reading the edge in him.
"This has never happened to me before," Charles added—quieter, more honest. "I think there's someone like me on that ship."
Oliver's face brightened like he'd been handed a miracle.
"Like you?" he asked, wonder slipping out before caution could catch it.
Charles swallowed and stared across at the Caspartina. "I'm sorry," he said, almost unwilling to admit it aloud, "a telepath."
For a brief second, Charles felt her.
A brush of presence—cool, intimate, invasive.
Emma Frost.
She didn't slam into him like a battering ram. She touched the edge of his mind like a gloved finger testing a fragile object. Charles recoiled instinctively, heartbeat kicking up.
Emma's gaze met his across the water.
She shouldn't have been able to see him clearly at that distance.
But telepaths didn't need eyes for recognition.
Charles forced his breathing steady, but the admission came out anyway—sharp with frustration.
"I'm very sorry," he said to Moira, voice strained, "but I don't think I'm gonna be much help tonight. You're on your own."
It was a sentence that landed heavier than any gun on deck.
Moira's jaw tightened. Oliver looked almost offended, as if reality were failing to follow his script.
Orders were shouted.
Three small boats were lowered into the water, packed with CIA and Navy personnel—rifles, flashlights, helmets, the bravado of men who still thought they were raiding smugglers. Engines whined as they cut across the waves toward the Caspartina.
On Shaw's deck, Riptide stood.
He didn't shout.
He didn't posture.
He just lifted his hands.
In his palms, the air responded—winding into two tight spirals, miniature tornadoes of compressed force. The funnels spun faster, denser, humming like anger made physical.
Then he released them.
The spirals hit the ocean surface and bloomed—two massive water tornadoes erupting upward like pillars. Sea water rose in violent funnels, churning, widening, swallowing the space between ships.
The boats kept coming.
Then the water took them.
The tornadoes slammed into their path and tore it apart. Hulls bucked. Engines screamed. Men shouted as they were thrown like debris. Rifles vanished into the dark. Bodies hit the ocean with heavy splashes. Flashlights spun away like fireflies.
It didn't last long.
It didn't need to.
When the funnels dispersed, the water was littered with wreckage and struggling silhouettes.
On the Navy vessel, panic hit like a delayed explosion.
"Oh, my God!"
"Jesus!"
"Get inside!"
Moira grabbed Oliver's arm and hauled him toward cover, instinct overpowering professionalism. Charles stared, eyes wide, watching men flail in the water while his mind—usually so confident—felt suddenly useless. The deck became chaos: sailors scrambling, agents shouting, searchlights swinging wildly as if light could fix what fear couldn't name.
Ryan remained where he was.
Raven's gaze flicked from the wreckage to Shaw's ship, then back again.
Ryan didn't move.
Because this was not his scene.
Not yet.
Out in the water near the Caspartina, Erik surfaced with a harsh gasp. He clawed at the waves, water streaming down his face, eyes wild. The ocean had tried to claim him.
It failed.
He looked up.
He saw Shaw's ship still lit, still arrogant, still breathing.
Something in him snapped fully.
Metal groaned somewhere beneath the surface—a deep, strained sound that didn't belong to waves. The sea churned. Then—slowly, impossibly—a massive anchor rose from the depths.
It was huge, chained to the ocean floor with links thick as a tree. It emerged dripping black water, suspended in the air as if held by an invisible crane.
Erik held it up with pure will and magnetism.
He swung it.
The anchor slammed into the Caspartina's side with a crash that echoed across open water. Steel buckled. Sparks burst like angry stars. The deck tilted, and for the first time, Shaw's "kingdom" looked like a thing that could drown.
Erik swung again.
And again.
Each impact was a message hammered into steel:
I am not the boy you broke.
I am not the prisoner you laughed at.
I am the consequence you didn't plan for.
On the Navy vessel, Charles stopped moving toward cover.
His attention locked on the anchor's path, on the chain slithering through the air like something alive.
"Stop, stop, stop," he muttered, as if saying it could make it true.
Moira grabbed his shoulder. "Charles! Are you okay?"
Charles didn't answer immediately. He raised a hand slightly, pointing out across the water.
"There's someone else out there," he said, voice hushed with awe and disbelief.
His finger tracked the impossible sight.
"There."
Moira followed his gesture and went still.
Even Oliver—who had been desperate to get inside—paused, staring with a scientist's hunger at the anchor floating like a ghost, smashing a ship as if the ocean itself had learned rage.
On the Caspartina, Shaw's amusement faded into calculation.
This wasn't the moment for a grand speech. It wasn't the moment to reveal too much. The CIA was watching. A telepath was watching. And Erik—untamed, furious—was not a tool Shaw could safely control in the open.
Shaw turned toward the stairwell leading below deck.
"Time to go," he said.
Emma didn't argue.
Riptide didn't hesitate.
Azazel appeared near them like he'd been there the whole time, eyes flicking to the damage with mild annoyance. The air around him felt wrong—like reality didn't quite hold him the way it held everyone else.
They moved quickly down into the ship's interior corridors. Above them, the anchor struck again, and the hull screamed. Lights flickered. The Caspartina began to feel less like a stage and more like a collapsing cage.
Below deck, hidden beneath the ship's belly like a secret, was the submarine.
Shaw descended into it with the calm of a man who'd already decided he would survive. He took the captain's seat as if it belonged to him. His face stayed controlled. His hands steady.
Emma moved to a station, fingers flying over switches. Riptide worked operations with practiced ease. Azazel stood nearby, ready.
Above, Erik's anchor attack continued.
The submarine shuddered as it detached—mechanical locks releasing with heavy thuds that vibrated through the hull. Lights blinked. Metal shifted.
And then it moved.
The submarine slid away from the dying ship like a slick serpent shedding skin.
Erik felt it instantly—felt metal change direction, felt the magnetic presence of something escaping.
He reached for it with everything he had.
The submarine resisted—not because it was stronger than him, but because it was already in motion, driven by engines and momentum and Shaw's refusal to be caught. Erik's power clamped around it like a fist.
The submarine kept pulling.
Erik didn't let go.
Rage made him stubborn.
Grief made him reckless.
The submarine dragged him forward.
Then under.
He vanished beneath the water's surface, pulled into darkness by the very thing he refused to release.
On the Navy vessel, Charles's face went pale.
He saw the anchor stop swinging.
He saw the chain slacken.
He saw the water churn with a pattern that meant something had gone wrong.
And he understood—instantly—what kind of man Erik was.
The kind who would drown before surrendering the thing he wanted.
"You have to let it go!" Charles shouted toward the sea, voice raw. "Let go!"
Moira grabbed his arm. "Charles—!"
He turned to Oliver, urgency snapping through him. "You've got to put someone in the water to help him!"
Oliver stared, stunned, as if his brain had finally caught up to the fact that they were watching superhuman warfare.
Charles didn't wait for permission.
He ran.
He reached the far side of the vessel—where the submarine's wake churned the water into violent foam—and without hesitation, he jumped.
Moira lunged forward too late. Charles hit the ocean hard and vanished beneath it.
For a heartbeat, the deck froze.
Then the water swallowed sound.
Underwater, the world became a nightmare of pressure and roar. The submarine's engines thundered like a beast. Visibility was near nothing—darkness, bubbles, violent pull. Charles forced his body forward, lungs already protesting, mind searching like a beacon.
He found Erik by telepathy more than sight.
Erik's mind was a storm—rage and obsession and pain fused into one burning thread aimed at Shaw. Charles latched onto that thread and followed it through the dark.
He saw Erik's silhouette—arms extended, body rigid, dragged by force and current. Erik's lungs were losing time. His muscles were turning desperate. But his will refused to release.
Charles grabbed him, catching his shoulder, forcing himself into Erik's space like an unwanted lifeline.
Then Charles did what he was born to do.
He reached inside Erik's mind.
Gently.
Urgently.
Let it go.
You have to let it go.
You can't— you'll drown.
The words weren't poetic. They were raw truth, shouted into a storm.
Erik resisted.
Even inside his own skull, he fought.
The lingering ache from Emma's earlier mental restraint still pulsed behind his eyes, but this was different. This was Charles—another mind, another presence—pressing calm into chaos.
I know what this means to you.
But you're going to die.
Please, Erik—calm your mind.
For a moment, Erik's rage flickered.
In that flicker, memories surfaced—sharp flashes: metal gates, cold floors, a mother's scream cut short, Shaw's face watching with interest as a child's suffering became data.
Erik's grip tightened.
Charles pushed harder—not to dominate, but to soothe. To quiet the storm long enough for Erik to hear something besides hatred.
Erik's lungs burned. His body demanded air. His mind demanded revenge.
Charles demanded life.
Erik's hands trembled.
And then—finally—his fingers loosened.
The magnetic grip slipped away from the submarine like a hand releasing a throat.
The machine surged forward, freed, sliding into the black ocean with Shaw and his people inside it, disappearing like a secret the sea agreed to keep.
Erik's body went slack for half a second.
Charles wrapped both arms around him, locked tight, and kicked upward with everything he had left.
They rose.
The surface exploded above them as they broke through, coughing, gasping, clinging to air like it was mercy.
Erik flailed at first, panic mixing with furious humiliation. He shoved at Charles, choking seawater, eyes wild.
"Get off me!" he snarled. "Get off—"
"Calm down!" Charles snapped back, equally breathless, hauling him closer rather than letting him drift. "Just breathe. We're here!"
Erik's eyes locked onto Charles's face, trying to place him through the fog of adrenaline.
"You were in my head," Erik rasped. "How did you do that?"
Charles forced his own breathing steady. "You have your tricks," he said, voice softer now, "I have mine. I'm like you. Just calm your mind."
Erik blinked, water streaming down his face. Something in his expression cracked—not weakness, but shock.
"I thought I was alone."
Charles didn't hesitate.
"You're not alone," he said firmly. "Erik… you're not alone."
On deck, Moira leaned over the railing, face tight with concern, eyes searching for Charles. Oliver hovered behind her, stunned into silence. Around them, men with guns stared at the water as if it had birthed monsters.
Ryan watched.
He had not moved since the chaos began. He had not reached into the fight. He had not tried to bend the scene into something else.
He simply observed—the way a man observes a fuse burning toward a bomb.
Beside him, Raven's gaze stayed fixed on Charles and Erik, her expression intent, as if she understood the gravity: two mutants meeting in the most violent way possible, and still finding a thread of connection in the middle of it.
Below, Charles and Erik struggled to stay afloat. Charles's arms were losing strength. Erik's breathing was still ragged. Waves slapped at them, indifferent.
Moira shouted Charles's name, voice cracking on the wind.
And that—finally—was the moment Ryan chose to act.
Not as a hero.
Not as a savior.
As a man removing two pieces from the water before the board decided to swallow them.
Ryan lifted one hand.
There was no dramatic flare, no spectacle meant for an audience. Just a precise, effortless exertion of telekinesis.
The ocean around Charles and Erik rippled strangely, as if acknowledging an unseen command. Their bodies rose—not dragged, not yanked, but lifted cleanly, as though gravity had been politely told to stop arguing.
Charles gasped as his feet left the water, shock flickering across his face.
Erik's eyes widened, suspicion flaring—because Erik did not trust rescue. Not from strangers. Not from the world.
They floated upward toward the deck, water streaming from their clothes in shimmering trails.
Ryan's control didn't waver.
He set them down on the Navy vessel with measured gentleness—enough to prevent injury, enough to make it feel almost natural.
Charles collapsed to his knees immediately, coughing hard, hands braced on the steel as he sucked in air like it was new.
Erik stumbled, caught himself, then spun—eyes sharp, hunting for the source of the lift.
His gaze found Ryan.
For a beat, Erik simply stared—reading posture, expression, intent. Trying to decide if this man was another Shaw, another handler, another liar.
Ryan gave him nothing.
No threat.
No invitation.
Just calm, watchful presence—like a door that didn't open unless you chose to walk through it.
Raven stood half a step behind Ryan, eyes on Erik now. Curious. Measuring. Quietly aware that this man's rage could shape the future if pointed the wrong way.
Moira rushed forward to Charles, kneeling beside him, hands gripping his shoulders.
"Charles—are you okay?"
Charles raised one hand weakly, still coughing. "I'm fine," he rasped, voice strained. But his eyes lifted to the ocean—toward the direction where Shaw's submarine had vanished.
He looked shaken.
Not by the violence.
By the limitation.
There was someone else like him.
And someone else still—someone like Emma Frost—who could block him, deny him, make him feel small for the first time in his life.
On the horizon, the Caspartina burned in places, its structure ruined by Erik's anchor assault. But Shaw was gone. His people were gone. The sea had closed over them like a conspiracy.
The CIA deck fell into a silence that didn't know how to speak yet.
They had come expecting smugglers.
They had found evolution.
Oliver stared out at the water, earlier excitement drained from his face and replaced by pale comprehension. He looked like a man realizing that being right was the beginning of a much worse story.
Moira's expression hardened, already assembling reports and consequences and damage control in her head.
Charles rose slowly, still dripping, hair plastered to his forehead. He looked from Erik to the horizon and back to the men with guns who didn't know where to point them anymore.
Erik's breathing steadied, but his eyes stayed furious. He stared at the dark line where Shaw had disappeared, jaw clenched so tightly it looked like it might crack.
He had failed.
Shaw had escaped.
But something else had happened too—something Erik didn't yet have language for.
A stranger's voice in his mind had pulled him back from the edge.
He had been told he wasn't alone.
And for a moment, he had believed it.
Ryan lowered his hand. The telekinesis faded as casually as it had appeared. He didn't look proud. He didn't look pleased.
He looked like a man marking a checkbox in his head.
Raven exhaled slowly, gaze following the ocean's dark horizon.
The night wind returned to being just wind.
The waves returned to being just waves.
But the world had shifted.
Somewhere beneath the surface, Shaw moved forward into the future he intended to build.
And up on a Navy deck, the CIA realized—too late—that they were no longer hunting myths.
They were staring at the dawn of a new species.
And they weren't ready.