The garage smelled like old paint and motor oil.
It wasn't much—just a single-car structure attached to the back of May's modest Queens home. The door groaned on its hinges, the inside cluttered with cardboard boxes, spiderwebs, and the long-forgotten guts of a lawnmower.
But to Ash, it might as well have been a bunker beneath Mount Everest. A hidden lab beneath Wakandan earth. His first sanctuary.
He locked the door behind him, checked the window slats for visibility, and then pulled the cord to flick on the hanging lightbulb overhead. It buzzed and flickered but held steady.
This would do.
It had to.
---
Over the past few days, he'd begun scavenging. Nothing major—May didn't notice the missing flashlight batteries, the old digital alarm clock stripped of its microprocessor, the remote control "lost" under the couch with its IR diode now gone. Every component mattered.
The tools were outdated. Primitive, even. No fabrication armatures. No Stark-grade soldering nanos. But Elias "Ash" Mercer didn't need perfection.
He needed a foundation.
He started small: building a power relay from a burned-out microwave transformer and parts from a broken RC car he found in the neighbor's trash. Crude, but effective.
A second project followed: a sensor array—a single-band EM scanner using copper wire, quartz fragments, and an AM radio. It couldn't scan a quinjet, but it could ping energy emissions within a four-block radius.
Which was exactly what he wanted.
Because something out there was humming.
---
He drew diagrams in pencil on the inside flaps of cardboard boxes—circuitry, interface schematics, and early armor templates. The design in his head was too advanced for his tools, so he created a modular plan:
Stage 1: Survival Frame.
Light armor, enhanced mobility, HUD overlay.
Stage 2: Integration.
Core reactor, AI integration, network syncing.
Stage 3: Corp Genesis.
Recruitment protocols. Shared network. Shared evolution.
The Ash Corp.
They wouldn't just wear suits—they'd be extensions of something greater. Each user a unique node. Diverse powers. Shared purpose.
Unity through design.
---
But for now, Ash was alone.
And he had to stay that way.
---
A week after his dream, the sensor pinged something unusual.
A spike in localized ambient energy. Not radioactive. Not electrical.
Biogenic.
Mutant? No—too low. Not Peter either. His change wouldn't come for years. This was different.
Ash stepped into the backyard with the portable module in his jacket. The signal came from down the street—fluctuating, like someone using and suppressing their ability in small bursts.
He hesitated.
Too early. No armor. No backup.
Still… knowledge was worth risk.
He crept out the back gate and followed the ping.
---
Three blocks later, he saw it.
A boy—not much older than himself—standing in a narrow alley between a bodega and a laundromat. He was holding something—a coin? No, a piece of copper pipe. And he was doing something to it with his hands.
It sparked. Then floated. Then—
It collapsed in on itself like a miniature singularity and vanished.
The boy looked frustrated, cursed, and turned to walk away.
Ash pulled back behind a trash bin, heart thudding.
He wasn't alone.
---
Back in the garage, Ash sketched the boy's face from memory. Mixed-race. Short, coiled hair. Fast hands. Power wasn't mutant-grade but showed signs of controlled kinetic-field manipulation. Homemade. Instinctive.
Could be valuable.
Or dangerous.
Ash jotted a name beside the sketch: "Target 01 – Potential Candidate?"
Then, in smaller writing:
Watch. Don't engage.
---
May found him in the garage two nights later.
"Ash?"
He froze.
She stood in the doorway, frowning.
"You shouldn't be in here. It's freezing, and you haven't eaten since lunch."
He thought fast. "I was fixing something."
She raised an eyebrow. "You're eleven. What could you possibly be fixing?"
Ash opened his mouth. Closed it. Then carefully picked up the shell of a handheld fan he'd broken apart earlier.
"…Figured if I made it work again, I could give it to that kid on the corner. The one with the cast."
It wasn't a complete lie.
May softened. "You're a strange one, you know that?"
He smiled. "You say that like it's a bad thing."
She walked over, tousled his hair, and sighed. "Just don't blow yourself up."
"Not yet," he muttered as she left.
---
That night, Ash made a list.
Known Variables:
Timeline divergence is still minor.
Stark is still human-only.
Parker is still untouched.
Energy anomalies increasing.
Unknown Variables:
Entity that sent him?
Watcher intervention—passive or manipulative?
Other reincarnates? Other players?
Assets:
Garage base.
One prototype EM scanner.
Basic trust with May Parker.
Hidden intellect.
Next Objective:
Begin constructing Core Lens Unit (visual + HUD).
Maintain low profile.
Confirm if energy anomalies correlate with specific individuals.
Ash stared at the last bullet point.
The boy in the alley wasn't the first. He wouldn't be the last.
The Marvel world was waking up.
And Ash had no intention of sleeping through it.
---
Unseen, across the street from May's house, a figure lowered a pair of binoculars.
Young. Blonde. Sharp-eyed.
She tapped a small communicator hidden in her sleeve.
> "Target is progressing faster than projected. Should we engage?"
A pause. Then a gravelly voice on the other end:
> "No. Not yet. Let the prodigy build his little empire. When it's ready… we'll take it."
The line went dead.