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The syringes felt heavier than they should.
One filled with the viscous, olive-tinged blood of Toad — a mutant who had survived more beatdowns than any sane person would stick around for. The other held the boy's blood, a cocktail of electrochemical stimuli still buzzing faintly with shock and adrenaline.
Two different samples.
Two different power signatures.
Two different risks.
I stood inside the abandoned maintenance tunnel beneath Midtown — my unofficial hideout. Rusted pipes lined the walls. Water dripped rhythmically from a cracked valve somewhere behind me. The dim yellow light from a flickering overhead bulb cast long shadows across the concrete floor.
My thoughts roared.
This is insane.
Injecting mutant blood directly into my brain wasn't just insane — it was suicidal.
But I'd been evolving from the moment I reincarnated in this world.
My gifts didn't respond to logic. They responded to extremes.
To emotion.
To pain.
To proximity with danger.
Every time I faced a villain, every time I touched the emotional noise of their minds, my own powers sharpened — like steel forged in fire.
So maybe… this was just another forge.
I lifted syringe number one.
Greenish blood sloshed inside.
Toad's blood.
A low, instinctive tremor ran down my spine. Toad wasn't impressive in raw power, but he survived things no one else did — beatdowns, gunshots, fires, mutant battles, metal claws.
And if his healing factor was subdued, subtle, almost dormant…
Maybe that made it compatible.
Something I could handle.
Something my empathic abilities could anchor to.
I exhaled slowly.
"This is for survival," I whispered to myself. "Only survival."
I pressed the needle against my temple.
Cold metal kissed skin.
A moment of hesitation — thin but sharp.
Then I pushed.
The needle slid in with a sickening, pressure-building pop.
My jaw clenched.
Pain burst behind my eyes, stabbing like lightning through my skull.
I emptied the syringe.
The blood burned — molten, acidic, alive — crawling through my neurons like a fever-dream serpent. My vision fractured. The tunnel spun sideways. My knees hit concrete hard enough to bruise.
Then something shifted inside me.
A warm pulse radiated beneath my skin.
Cells woke up.
Knitted themselves.
Repaired a bruise on my knee before it could form.
My heartbeat slowed… then steadied.
Healing factor… awakened.
It wasn't strong — not like Wolverine's. But I felt it: a soft hum beneath the surface, a biological safety net. A slow regenerative rhythm syncing itself to my nerves.
But the second syringe waited.
And that one was different.
That blood wasn't a mutation of the body.
It was a mutation of experience.
A blood sample steeped in raw, helpless agony — the kind that scars the mind but charges the brain like a live wire. The boy's powers weren't physical. They were sensory. His pain tolerance — or lack of it — created an emotional whirlpool I'd absorbed earlier.
And that whirlpool still clung to the sample like static electricity.
The second syringe gleamed under the weak overhead light.
This wasn't healing.
This was the opposite.
This was a crash course in suffering.
I dragged myself upright, breathing hard.
"You can do this," I murmured, though the truth tasted like lies. "You've already survived worse."
Had I?
I wasn't sure.
But I placed the needle against the opposite side of my head.
When I pushed this time, the pain came instantly — a jagged, electric spike that made my vision whiteout. I gritted my teeth so hard I tasted copper. My hand shook violently as I injected the blood.
Then everything exploded.
Not literally.
But inside my mind — yes.
A tidal wave of sensory information erupted outward like a dam bursting. Screams — dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands — ripped through my consciousness. Pain that wasn't mine twisted my muscles, arched my back, made fire crawl beneath my skin.
My own heartbeat felt like a hammer smashing against the walls of my skull.
I collapsed on the floor, clawing at the concrete as the pain tore me apart from the inside out.
But then something else happened.
A new instinct woke.
A predator's instinct.
Pain wasn't tearing me apart — it was fueling me.
Every scream fed me.
Every echo of agony strengthened something ancient inside my spine.
My empathy wasn't just sensing emotion.
It was feeding on it.
This was the evolution I didn't see coming.
My ability had always absorbed emotions — fear, rage, despair.
But this wasn't emotion.
This was raw, unfiltered pain.
And my body treated it like sustenance.
My fingers dug into the concrete harder, leaving cracks. A low, guttural sound escaped my throat — a growl, animalistic and primal.
Then power surged outward.
Black tendrils of energy — invisible but vibrating with agony — pulsed out from my hands. I felt them brush the air, search the environment, looking for something to latch onto.
Pain had become tangible.
Weaponizable.
I forced myself to breathe.
Forced myself to sit up.
Slowly, the agony subsided.
Not disappeared — transformed.
It reshaped itself into something sharp.
Something functional.
Something mine.
Pain Morph.
The words surfaced instinctively.
Like the ability had named itself.
I lifted my right hand.
The air shimmered faintly around it.
I could feel the pain of the city — the ambient suffering of millions — radiating like a web of invisible threads.
I could reach it.
Hold it.
Twist it.
Throw it.
My brain felt like an engine roaring for the first time.
And beneath it all, Toad's healing factor stitched up any damage the process had done — slowly, imperfectly, but enough.
Enough to keep me alive.
Enough to let me stand.
I rose to my feet, energy humming through my bones like a storm waiting to be unleashed. The tunnel around me felt suddenly too small, too fragile, too breakable.
I needed air.
I stumbled out of the maintenance exit, emerging onto a side street near Hell's Kitchen. The evening wind hit my face, cold and fresh. People walked past, unaware that something in the world had just shifted.
I leaned against the alley wall, breathing deeply.
For the first time in months…
I felt powerful.
Not just enhanced.
Not just evolving.
But dangerous.
Pain rippled through my hand again, swirling like smoke, waiting for me to unleash it.
I closed my fist.
It obeyed.
I smiled faintly — tired, cracked, but real.
"I think… I just changed the rules."
But as the wind picked up, carrying the distant wail of sirens, I realized something unsettling:
If I could feel the pain of the city…
Something else could feel me.
A new signature had formed tonight.
A new presence.
And predators — real predators — sensed new threats quickly.
I didn't know it yet, but my evolution had just placed me on the radar of beings who didn't tolerate wildcards.
Not heroes.
Not villains.
Something older.
Something worse.
And they were already watching.
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