Back in his dingy motel room, Jay pulled out the manila envelope and stared at fifty thousand dollars—more money than he'd ever owned. His hands still shook slightly from the healing session, but his mind was crystal clear.
The motel's ancient safe looked like it hadn't been updated since the Carter administration, but it would do. Jay counted out five thousand in hundreds, tucked them into his wallet, then locked the rest away.
Downtown Bayville looked like Norman Rockwell, but Marvel-universe technology had pushed even small-town retailers decades ahead. The electronics store clerk barely blinked when Jay asked for their best smartphone.
"Top model," the kid said, sliding a device that looked like it belonged in 2025 across the counter. "Stark Industries licensed their interface tech recently. Touch screen, internet, GPS, video calling—the works."
Jay whistled at the price. "Eight hundred for the phone, what about off-books activation?"
"Extra 200 bucks. After Iron Man, lots of people want privacy."
Fair enough. Jay walked out with a new Stark smartphone and professional clothes that wouldn't scream "scam artist" to wealthy clients.
The apartment hunt led him to a converted warehouse district—a small studio with exposed brick walls, decent security, and a landlord who didn't ask questions.
"Six months up front, cash," Mr. Kowalski said, eyeing Jay's lack of documentation. "And I don't know nothing about nothing."
"Perfectly." Jay peeled off twenty-four hundreds. "And if anyone comes asking about tenants..."
"What tenants? I got a storage unit here."
In his new room after scrubbing the phone of any trackers, Jay dove into the digital rabbit hole. The world he found was a strange mix of the overt and the hidden.
Iron Man was a global celebrity, with SHIELD's fingerprints already visible in the political subtext of Tony Stark's new government contracts. Captain America, in contrast, was a museum piece—a frozen historical icon and nothing more. Bruce Banner was a ghost, a whisper of a green monster haunting blurry footage from South American jungles, a problem the military was failing to contain.
The search for mutants was more chilling. Jay bypassed the modern news, digging into older, declassified archives. There he found it: whispers of a "magnetic anomaly" during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Buried naval reports and redacted eyewitness accounts spoke of a single, powerful mutant who had nearly forced a nuclear exchange between the superpowers. The world didn't know Magneto's name yet, but the highest levels of government had been terrified of him for decades.
The others were all still dormant, their tragedies yet to strike. A blind lawyer in Hell's Kitchen, a decorated Marine just home from deployment, a stunt rider who had vanished off the grid. Of magic, there was nothing but fantasy forums, a comforting silence given his own vulnerabilities.
Jay cleared the history, the picture now chillingly clear. The world thought it was safe, celebrating its first public hero. But the real players were veterans of a long, secret war, and the next generation of combatants was still waiting in the wings.
'Time to start making my own moves,' he thought, patting the envelope of cash in his jacket.
By evening, Jay was down to his last few hundreds but had everything needed for the immediate future. More importantly, he had a plan.
Jay worked through the shelter slowly, handing out sandwiches and coffee. People were suspicious at first—everyone wanted something here—but food talked louder than words.
"Haven't seen you before," said a grizzled man missing most of his teeth.
"Just moved to town." Jay handed him a turkey sandwich. "Figured I'd meet my neighbors."
He learned names while moving through the crowd. Maria with her bad back. Bobby, a vet with shrapnel still working its way out of his leg. Linda, who coughed like she was drowning.
"Mind if I take a look at that cough?" he asked Linda.
She wiped her mouth. "Ain't got insurance. What you gonna do, pray over me?"
"Something like that." Jay sat beside her cot. "Let me know if anything feels weird."
His nursing instincts kicked in automatically. The wet rales, shallow breathing at 24 per minute instead of 16—classic bronchopneumonia. Poor nutrition, exposure, untreated infection that migrated south. In a hospital: chest X-rays, blood cultures, IV antibiotics.
But he wasn't in a hospital anymore.
Instead of healing the infection directly, Jay focused on the inflammation burning through her lungs. He shifted the damaged tissue and immune response from her alveoli to her fingernails, where it would be harmless and simply grow out.
Linda's coughing stopped mid-hack. She took a clean, clear breath, then another, eyes going wide.
"Jesus Christ. I can breathe without drowning."
Word spread fast. Bobby limped over. "She's been hacking for two months. What'd you do?"
"Pressure point techniques," Jay said, feeling the drain. "Your turn. That shrapnel giving you trouble?"
Bobby sat heavily. "Doctors said they got it all, but something's still in there. Hurts like hell when it rains."
Through his power, Jay felt the retained foreign body—pencil eraser-sized, embedded near the femur. Normally this required surgery, fluoroscopy, careful dissection around major vessels. Instead, Jay shifted the fragment through tissue planes to Bobby's big toe, made a small incision with a sanitized knife, extracted it, and healed the wound.
Bobby stood, took experimental steps. No limp, no pain. "Twenty years of that thing grinding my bone, and you just... what the hell are you?"
More gathered. Jay worked through them systematically—Maria's herniated discs shifted to her earlobes, arthritic inflammation moved to harmless toenails, burn scar tissue relocated where hair would cover it. Each healing drained him more until he was shaking against the wall.
"Easy there, doc," Tom said, pressing coffee into his trembling hands.
The crowd had gone quiet. People flexed fingers that hadn't worked in years, breathed clearly, walked without pain.
"How?" Maria touched her pain-free back. "Are you some kind of angel?"
"Just a guy with medical training and a weird hobby," Jay managed.
"Bullshit," Bobby said kindly. "That was a miracle."
"You don't need to thank me," Jay said. "Just keep an eye out. I'm new in town."
"Anything," Bobby said immediately. "We take care of our own."
Jay slipped Bobby a hundred and his phone number. "I need eyes and ears. People with powers are coming out since Iron Man went public. There's a mansion north of town—Xavier's School. Watch for wealthy people leaving angry. And anyone needing medical help they can't get normally."
Bobby's expression sharpened. "You government?"
"Opposite. I help people like us stay off their radar." Jay let green light dance across his fingertips. "How else do you think everyone just got better?"
Bobby nodded. "You got it, Doc."
Back in his apartment, Jay called Henderson's business number.
"Henderson."
"It's Jay."
"Ah, good. Set up already?"
"Phone, apartment, ready for discreet house calls. Have you spoken to your associates?"
"There's interest, but some doubt. How soon could you be available?"
"I'm ready when they are."
"Excellent. I'll be in touch."
Lying on his new bed, Jay felt satisfaction he hadn't experienced in years. Everything was falling into place—workspace, connections, surveillance network, wealthy clients lining up for services money usually couldn't buy.
His power evolved with each use, becoming more sophisticated. But his medical knowledge gave him an edge raw power couldn't—understanding pathophysiology, targeting problems precisely, working with surgical efficiency rather than brute force.
His phone buzzed: Rich lady left mansion this evening. Looked pissed. Driver took her to airport. -Bobby
Jay smiled in the darkness. The network was already working.
Now he waited for Henderson's associates to make their move. In the meantime, he'd keep building, growing, positioning himself exactly where he needed to be.