The air was thick with static. Every system on the Blackbird flickered as if struggling to breathe.
Storm tightened her grip on the controls. "He's jamming us," she said through clenched teeth. "I can't keep the altitude for long something's draining the power directly."
Beside her, Cyclops leaned forward, visor dimly glowing red. "We land hard if we have to. He's expecting us anyway."
From the rear compartment, Xavier's voice carried, it was calm but strained. "He doesn't need to jam us. He's reaching into the machine. I can feel his consciousness pressing against the systems."
Wires hissed and sparked. A sharp bang rocked the cabin.
Storm cursed under her breath. "Hold on!"
The jet dropped through the canyon mist, skimming past jagged rock and settling in a rough, grinding skid along the gravel floor. Steam hissed from the wings.
The engines died. Silence, except for the soft hum of residual power.
Xavier opened his eyes. "We're here."
Exterior – The Canyon Facility
They stepped out into the chill air.
The structure loomed before them — cold, monolithic, like a scar carved into the earth. Towering gates sealed shut, adorned with symbols and markings of unknown origin, blending technology and ritual.
Cyclops adjusted his visor. "No guards?"
Xavier's expression darkened. "They're here. You just can't see them."
Storm looked to the shadows. "He's masking their presence."
A deep metallic clang reverberated across the canyon. The gates opened slowly, revealing a corridor bathed in sterile white light.
"All For One invites us in," Xavier murmured.
Interior – Main Hallway
As they entered, their footsteps echoed unnaturally. The air was too still.
Screens lined the walls, each one flickering between live security feeds of mutants in stasis pods, surgical arms, rows of machines feeding into a vast neural network.
Cyclops frowned. "This isn't experimentation. It's… manufacturing."
Xavier nodded. "He's building something beyond soldiers. He's building obedience."
From hidden speakers, a voice filled the hall. Smooth. Mocking.
"Charles. You brought your children to the future you refused to create."
All For One's voice seemed to come from everywhere at once.
"Do you see what restraint has cost you? How many lives you've wasted chasing peace?"
Xavier didn't slow his wheelchair. "Peace is never wasted."
"No," the voice replied, low and resonant, "but it is always defeated."
Cut to – Observation Deck
All For One watched from above, arms clasped behind his back. The golden hue still faintly shimmered beneath his armor.
The scientist at his side adjusted the readings. "Their entry has triggered the psychic dampeners. Stryker's serum is stabilizing. Subject reaction is nominal."
All For One tilted his head. "Begin phase two."
The scientist hesitated. "That will—"
"Do it."
Below, the chamber housing the mutants began to pulse with rhythmic light.
Xavier stopped. His hand gripped the side of his chair. "He's activating something."
Storm stepped closer. "What is it?"
"Memories," Xavier whispered. "He's weaponizing their dreams."
Interior – Stasis Chamber
The pods began to tremble. Within, mutants once thought lost, a familiar faces twisted by sedation and psionic corruption began to stir.
One opened her eyes first. A young girl, skin marked by faint glowing veins. She looked directly toward the approaching team.
"Help…" she mouthed.
Then her eyes flared gold.
A psychic scream tore through the corridor. Storm stumbled, clutching her head. Cyclops fell to one knee.
Xavier's mind snapped outward, forming a psychic shield, shimmering like glass under pressure.
"Charles!" Storm shouted over the rising noise.
He grimaced. "He's testing us."
Cut to – Observation Deck
All For One smiled.
"Show him what perfection looks like."
He stepped away from the glass, toward a darkened chamber at the edge of the deck.
Inside, a shape waited. Massive. Armored. Breathing slow and deliberate.
The scientist's eyes widened. "You're… deploying it?"
All For One's voice was low. Calm.
"Not it."
He pressed a control panel. The restraints hissed and fell away.
"Her."
Through the fog, a figure stepped forward it was lithe, silent, eyes glowing the same golden hue as his veins. Claws extended with a metallic snikt.
Subject X-23. Rewritten. Enhanced.
Loyal.
Alive.
Interior – Central Chamber
The air thickened. Every light flickered to gold, then white, then darkness again.
Steam hissed from the vents as the reinforced door ahead slid open. Footsteps echoed,
soft, precise, and deliberate.
She emerged.
Laura.
Or what had once been her.
The X-23 clone moved with fluid precision, her body marked with faint golden filaments pulsing beneath her skin it was the same unnatural light that now burned inside All For One. Her eyes, once sharp and defiant, were vacant. Cold. Controlled.
Storm whispered, almost to herself. "Laura…"
Cyclops stepped in front of Xavier, visor glowing. "That's not her anymore."
"No," Xavier said quietly. "Not yet."
Cut to – Observation Deck
All For One watched from above, silent, his mask reflecting the chamber's pale light.
The scientist at his side trembled. "Her vitals are… off the charts. Neural spikes in both hemispheres, she's resisting."
"Good," All For One murmured. "Let her struggle. Let her remember pain."
Interior – Central Chamber
Laura took another step forward. The faint sound of metal scraping the floor echoed as her claws extended. Her voice was a distant
monotone, but laced with something fractured.
"Target: Xavier. Directive: Assimilate or neutralize."
Storm raised her hands, lightning crackling across her fingers. "You'll have to go through me first."
Laura tilted her head like a predator studying prey.
Then she moved.
Faster than sound.
A blur of gold and steel.
Cyclops fired a concussive blast mid-motion, it hit her dead-on, sending her skidding across the floor, tearing through machinery. Sparks rained.
She stood back up.
Her wounds healed instantly, skin knitting together in seconds, glowing briefly before fading to normal flesh again.
Cyclops' eyes widened. "She's healing faster than before. That's"
"the X-Genesis," Xavier finished grimly. "He perfected it… through her."
Cut to – Observation Deck
The scientist adjusted readings. "She's destabilizing! Neural suppression at 64%. Her original programming's fighting to surface!"
All For One turned his head slightly, voice calm but edged with steel.
"Then drown it."
He pressed his hand to the glass psychic tendrils spreading like ink in water, invisible but immense. In the chamber below, Laura screamed.
Interior – Central Chamber
The scream wasn't human. It was psychic, as it felt more than heard.
Xavier winced, his nose bleeding from the feedback. "He's forcing his will through her mind!"
Storm gritted her teeth. "Then stop him!"
Xavier's eyes glowed faintly a soft white light rippling around him. His voice deepened with focus. "I'm trying."
Psychic Plane – The Mindscape
Xavier's consciousness plunged through a storm of gold and black a vast mental battlefield of shattered memories, burning fragments of Laura's life swirling in the void.
He saw flashes of a laboratory, a cage, the faces of people she'd loved, and the shadow that had replaced them all.
All For One's voice thundered through the chaos.
"You think you can save her? You can't even save yourself, old man."
The shadow formed, his mask glowing like a dying sun.
Xavier faced him. "You've twisted her. But she's still fighting you."
"She was fighting," All For One said. "Now she serves."
Their minds collided as waves of psychic energy clashing, echoing through both realities. Sparks of thought, pain, and memory flooded Xavier's senses.
In the real world, his body convulsed. Storm shouted his name, but his consciousness was already too deep.
Inside the Mindscape
Xavier pressed forward through the storm, reaching for Laura's true self, a small figure curled within the chaos, eyes wide, frightened.
He knelt beside her. "Laura. Listen to me. You're stronger than him. You're not a weapon. You're not a number."
She shook her head, trembling. "He's in me… I can't stop him…"
Xavier placed his hand on her shoulder. "Then let me help you remember."
Light erupted as images flooding through: her first mission with Logan, the laughter of the X-Men, the quiet moments at the mansion, her freedom, her name.
Laura.
Not X-23.
Laura Kinney.
Her eyes snapped open now glowing blue instead of gold.
Reality – Central Chamber
The psychic backlash hit like an explosion.
Laura fell to her knees, gasping, claws retracting. Xavier slumped in his chair, drenched in sweat.
Storm caught her breath. "Charles?"
He smiled weakly. "She's free."
Laura looked up in confusion, pain, memory flooding back all at once. "I… remember."
Before anyone could react, a thunderous crack shook the facility.
The walls trembled.
From above, All For One descended through the debris landing heavily on the steel floor, his armor reforming around him like living matter. The golden veins glowed brighter than ever.
He looked at Laura, then at Xavier.
"So the teacher chooses defiance."
His hand rose — the air itself bending around it. Energy coiled and pulsed, a vortex of magnetic and psychic force combined.
"Then let the lesson begin."
Interior – Central Chamber
The steel floor buckled under the weight of the impact. Dust drifted from the ceiling as All For One straightened, armor reforming with a hiss of golden vapor.
Every movement radiated control. Precision. Supremacy.
He looked at Xavier's team: Storm, Cyclops, and Laura then let his gaze rest on the professor.
"You were supposed to be a god among insects, Charles. Yet you chose to crawl among them."
Xavier met his stare, calm even in exhaustion. "And you mistook domination for evolution."
All For One tilted his head, almost amused. "No, Professor. I embraced the only truth your kind feared to face, order requires obedience."
A tremor ran through the facility as his aura intensified. The golden light coursing through his veins spread outward, bending the environment like gravity itself.
Storm stepped forward, lightning gathering around her hands. "Whatever you are, whatever you've become this ends here."
She launched a bolt. It struck All For One dead center blinding white.
When the light faded, he was still standing. Smoke curled from his armor, but his voice was calm.
"Impressive. But electricity is still bound by physics."
He raised a hand and the bolt froze midair, suspended like glass.
Then he reversed it.
The lightning surged back toward her, faster than she could react.
Cyclops dove, tackling Storm aside as the energy slammed into the wall, vaporizing steel.
Cyclops fired back, a concentrated optic blast roaring through the chamber.
All For One extended his arm and the energy bent around him, redirected like light through a prism.
He gestured lazily, and the redirected beam shattered the ceiling above them.
Chunks of debris crashed down but Laura was already moving.
She leapt through the chaos, claws extended, cutting a clean path toward him. Her movements were a blur pure instinct, fury, and speed.
She slashed once, twice as sparks flyed.
All For One caught her wrist mid-strike.
The claws stopped an inch from his mask.
"So the prodigal weapon finds her maker."
Laura snarled, twisting free with feral strength, stabbing for his throat but he caught her again, faster this time.
He slammed her into the floor. The metal cratered.
"You were perfection. A living key to immortality."
She spat blood and hissed through her teeth. "Then maybe you shouldn't have let me remember."
Her claws ignited glowing faintly blue as psychic energy resonating through them.
She sliced across his chestplate, finally drawing blood of molten gold.
All For One staggered a step back, more surprised than hurt.
He looked down at the wound and smiled.
"Yes. That's it. That's what I wanted to see."
Xavier closed his eyes. His voice echoed in their minds.
Everyone. Fall back. He's drawing power from every strike you land.
Storm looked up. "Then what do we do?"
We don't fight him on his terms.
Xavier's aura began to expand it was not bright, but vast. A stillness fell over the room, the silence before a storm.
All For One's expression shifted, subtly. "Ah… now you remember what you were capable of."
"I never forgot," Xavier said quietly. "I only chose restraint."
"Then you chose weakness."
"No," Xavier replied. "I chose mercy."
The air trembled as both minds expanded outward as psychic fields colliding like continents.
Cut to – The Psychic Plane
Reality fractured.
They stood now in a vast space that wasn't space it was a battlefield made of thought, memory, and power. The facility melted away, replaced by an endless void of shifting light.
All For One's form towered as a god of gold and black, veins of light spreading like circuitry across his body.
Xavier appeared as he once had decades ago standing tall, whole, eyes glowing with unbroken resolve.
"You've poisoned them," Xavier said, his voice echoing across the void.
"You've turned evolution into subjugation."
"I've brought purpose," All For One answered. "I've removed the chaos of choice."
"And with it, the essence of life."
Their voices overlapped as every word reshaping the landscape, entire worlds rising and collapsing around them.
Cut to – Reality
The facility quaked violently. Systems overloaded. Mutants in stasis pods began to stir, the psychic resonance awakening their minds.
Storm shielded Cyclops and Laura as psychic shockwaves tore through the chamber.
"Charles can't hold this much longer!" Cyclops shouted.
Laura clenched her fists. "Then we give him a reason to fight!"
She sprinted toward the power conduits feeding the neural dampeners and tore them apart. Sparks and liquid coolant sprayed everywhere.
The entire grid flickered and suddenly, the mental pressure lessened.
Dozens of pods broke open. Mutants gasped for breath, confused, terrified but free.
Storm looked up at the ceiling, whispering, "He did it."
Back in the Psychic Plane
All For One staggered as the connection wavered. "What have you done?"
Xavier's voice grew stronger. "I gave them freedom the one thing you'll never understand."
He raised his hand. Light flared not destructive, but pure.
A wave of consciousness rippled outward, tearing through the golden fog that had filled the void.
All For One screamed not in pain, but in rage.
"You think this ends me? I am evolution incarnate! Even death obeys me!"
Xavier's voice echoed soft, but absolute.
"Then you've already lost."
The light consumed everything.
Reality – Aftermath
Silence.
Smoke curled through the broken chamber. Systems offline.
Cyclops pushed debris aside, coughing. "Charles!"
Storm found him at the center of the room slumped in his chair, breathing weakly, but alive.
Laura knelt beside him. "He's stable. Barely."
Across from them, the armor that had been All For One lay shattered but the mask remained intact, pulsing faintly with residual gold light.
Storm stared. "Is he… gone?"
Xavier's voice was faint but clear.
"No. He's hiding. Waiting. The serum keeps him tethered between life and thought."
Cyclops clenched his fists. "Then we destroy it."
Xavier shook his head. "Not yet. His body may die — but his mind is already spreading."
He looked toward the ceiling where the broken conduits still pulsed faintly with gold.
"He's in the network."
Cut to – Unknown Location
Darkness. The hum of machinery.
A single monitor flickered to life — static resolving into All For One's mask.
"Phase One complete," he whispered.
"Now… let the world evolve."
The monitor shut off.