The hallway at Midtown Science and Technology High School had that end-of-year electricity that only teenagers and malfunctioning vending machines can generate. Lockers slammed like cymbals in a marching band, somebody was arguing about whether summer homework counted as "homework" if you didn't acknowledge its existence, and the air smelled like sweat, cheap deodorant, and freedom that hadn't technically been approved by the school board yet.
It was the kind of day where even the teachers looked like they'd already mentally boarded a plane to somewhere tropical, and the only thing keeping them in the building was the ancient magic of payroll and regret. Posters about "FINALS WEEK: DO YOUR BEST!" drooped on the walls like they didn't believe in themselves anymore, and the intercom crackled every ten minutes with announcements nobody listened to.
Sean, of course, was thriving.
He walked beside me like a golden retriever in human form, practically vibrating, talking so fast I was pretty sure he was going to accidentally invent time travel out of pure enthusiasm. "So tomorrow's the last day," he said, voice climbing higher with every word, "and then we get two whole months of freedom. Then junior year. Wild, right? Like, who decided we should be planning our entire future before we're even old enough to rent a car?"
I couldn't help smiling, because Sean's energy was honestly contagious in the way an innocent disease is contagious. He had this gift for making life feel normal, even when my version of "normal" involved portals, dimensional breaches, and trying very hard not to think about the fact that I'd helped cook a cultist in a water sphere five months ago.
"You're acting like you're about to be drafted," I told him. "It's just school."
"School is absolutely a draft," Sean insisted, dead serious. "A draft into capitalism."
I snorted, then nodded toward him. "Your dad went to one of those Ivy League places, didn't he?"
Sean's family had that comfortable-money vibe where they complained about traffic while driving cars that cost more than my entire apartment building. Getting into a top-tier university was probably his biggest non-problem.
"Yeah, Columbia," he said, like it was no big deal. Then he shrugged, suddenly thoughtful. "He keeps dropping hints that I could go there too if I want, but honestly? I'm thinking engineering. MIT or CalTech, maybe. Less of the 'legacy student' vibe, you know? If I'm going to suffer, I want it to be for math, not family expectations."
"Healthy choice," I said. "Choose the pain you can respect."
We reached the front gates, where students poured out like a prison break that had been politely scheduled. Sean pointed vaguely down the street, already halfway running. "I gotta go," he said. "Party prep. You coming tomorrow?"
"I'll see," I replied, which was code for: I have no idea what my life is going to look like tomorrow because sometimes my schedule gets interrupted by interdimensional threats.
Sean didn't notice the subtext, because Sean was pure optimism with legs. He waved and vanished into the crowd.
I headed the other way, hands in my pockets, trying to enjoy the sunlight like a normal person. Five months ago, I'd walked out of a Latverian temple smelling like smoke and blood, carrying a new alliance with Kamar-Taj and a fresh awareness that Dormammu's attention felt like a hand on your throat even when he wasn't physically present. Since then, my life had split into two tracks: the public Abel who attended school and did homework, and the private Abel who spent nights working with sorcerers on a magical-medical problem that should not exist in any sane universe.
Tony Stark's palladium poisoning.
The blood poisoning antidote project had eaten the last five months of my free time like a hungry monster. I'd thrown myself into it partly because it mattered—Tony was going to die if he didn't find a better power source for his arc reactor—and partly because I needed something concrete to focus on. Research is comforting when your other option is thinking too hard about cosmic eyes staring through cracks in reality.
We'd finally cracked the substitution problem: how to replace ancient, hard-to-source magical ingredients from Kamar-Taj's stores with materials that actually existed in this world, in this time, in the kind of supply chain that didn't require trekking to the Himalayas with a monk and a prayer. It should've felt like a pure win.
It did feel like a win.
But wins in my life had a way of arriving wrapped in tension.
Mordo had been getting progressively colder toward me over the months, like my existence was personally insulting his worldview. It wasn't loud hostility—Mordo didn't do petty. It was the quiet kind. The clipped nods. The sudden silence when I entered a room. The way he'd find something urgent to do somewhere else whenever I showed up, as if proximity to me might be contagious.
I got it, technically. I learned portal magic in two hours. That kind of thing probably made Kamar-Taj traditionalists feel like reality had broken its own rules, and Mordo loved rules the way fire loves oxygen. Still, the frostiness was getting old.
Daniel was mostly neutral, focused on training and not dying. He was polite, helpful, occasionally awkward in the way people get when they don't know whether you're a friend or a walking anomaly.
Kaecilius, though… Kaecilius had been genuinely good to work with.
That was the part that felt like the universe setting up a joke.
Kaecilius was sharp, methodical, and strangely easy to talk to when we were elbows-deep in experiments. We'd developed this rhythm: argue theories, test them, fail dramatically, then make dry comments while cleaning up the mess. He had this calm intensity that made you feel like if the world ended tomorrow, he'd still be able to make tea and explain why you should've seen it coming.
And every so often, while I was mixing ingredients, my brain would whisper: Pretty sure this guy becomes a villain at some point in the MCU timeline.
Great.
I had a talent for befriending future bad guys. Victor von Doom, Kaecilius… at this rate I was going to end up exchanging Christmas cards with Thanos.
When I got home, I took a quick shower and changed into clean clothes, trying to wash off the smell of school and the weight of my own thoughts. Then I slipped the sling ring onto my finger. The metal felt cool, solid, familiar now in a way it hadn't at first. When I activated it, golden sparks spun in a circle, carving a portal into the air like someone was sketching a doorway with molten light.
Stepping through still gave me that stomach-lurch sensation, but it was manageable now. At the beginning, portal magic had been trial and error—mostly error—with the Ancient One watching like a patient cat while I repeatedly failed to make reality cooperate. Then something in my mind had clicked, like I'd found the right mental grip on the concept, and suddenly it was… not easy, exactly, but intuitive.
I came out into Kamar-Taj's training square, where the air always smelled different. Older. Cleaner. Charged, like the space remembered every spell ever cast within it. Wind moved through prayer flags overhead, fluttering softly, and students practiced in scattered clusters, their sparks and shields flickering like fireflies.
I found Kaecilius in the lab. Of course I did. The man might've lived there at this point. The room was crowded with four other mages and what looked like seventeen different bottles of solutions, powders, and herbs laid out like an alchemist's fever dream. Notes covered the table in neat script, diagrams and formula chains intersecting like someone had tried to draw a map of logic itself.
Kaecilius was in the middle of explaining molecular compatibility—yes, sorcerers in this universe casually talked about molecular compatibility, which still made my Harry Potter-trained brain occasionally short-circuit—when he spotted me.
"Abel," he said, and there was real warmth in his voice. "Perfect timing. We have results."
That single sentence hit me like a shot of caffeine.
For the next few hours, we worked. We mixed solutions, tested reactions, adjusted ratios by fractions so small it felt like we were negotiating with physics. We ran controlled trials against samples designed to mimic the palladium toxicity pattern. We argued over whether a certain stabilizing agent should be bound magically or chemically first, and I caught myself enjoying it despite the stakes.
There was something satisfying about precision. About taking a problem that could kill someone and turning it into steps, measurements, sequences you could actually master. It felt like fighting in a different way—no fireballs, no dimensional cracks—just relentless focus and incremental progress.
By the time the sun was dipping low outside the high windows, the formulas held. The substitutions didn't collapse. The stabilizing chain remained stable under stress. Kaecilius leaned back, stared at the final results, and for the first time all day his control cracked into something like genuine excitement.
"We're ready," he said simply. "If you get the measurements right and follow the sequence, you will have something that works."
My chest loosened in a way I hadn't realized was tight. "That's… yeah. That's great." I was already thinking about Tony, about how to approach him without saying the words magic monks in Nepal helped me. "This could buy him time."
It wouldn't solve his arc reactor problem completely. Tony still needed a cleaner power source—he needed that new element he'd eventually discover. But an antidote could slow the poisoning, reduce the damage, keep him alive long enough to reach the breakthrough.
Kaecilius studied me for a moment, eyes sharp. "You care about him," he said, not as a question.
"I care about people not dying," I replied, which was true, and also easier than unpacking the complicated truth: Tony Stark was a key figure in the future of this world, and letting him die early would be like pulling a load-bearing beam out of a building because you didn't like the decor.
Kaecilius nodded once, as if that answer satisfied him, then returned to cleaning up the workspace with the brisk efficiency of a man who could not relax until every bottle was capped and every note was stacked.
I left Kamar-Taj shortly after, portal-hopping back to New York and stepping into the quieter, warmer world of home. Theresa's place still felt like an anchor—real, domestic, normal in the way that didn't care about cosmic horror. Dinner was already in progress. Theresa was bustling around the kitchen like she was conducting an orchestra of plates and utensils, and Sharon was at the table, looking like the kind of cousin who could show up in any setting and immediately belong there.
I'd spent a while being suspicious of Sharon. For good reason. Months back, she'd tried to search my room—quiet, careful, like she'd done it before. After I caught the attempt without making a scene, she'd stopped. No more probing. No more suspicious hovering.
Either she'd decided I wasn't worth the trouble, or SHIELD had decided pushing further wasn't worth the risk.
Either way, I wasn't complaining.
Dinner was easy. We talked about school, summer plans, and Theresa's work. Sharon chimed in with casual comments, and afterward I watched her step on the bathroom scale with a grimace, then declare dessert worth it anyway.
That was the kind of low-stakes drama I could get behind.
When we finished clearing plates, I stood and stretched. "I'm going to head back to my room," I said. "Got stuff to work on."
Theresa nodded, then paused, as if remembering something. "Oh, wait. A courier came earlier. I left it on your desk. Make sure you check it."
A courier.
I frowned. I wasn't expecting anything. Which meant it was either junk mail pretending to be important, or something that could change my week in a very annoying way. I thanked them and went back to my side of the house.
The package on my desk was thin, like documents or tickets. It didn't scream "danger." It screamed "bureaucracy," which can be just as threatening if you've ever tried to fill out government forms.
I opened it carefully.
Out slid a stack of items—tickets, glossy promotional materials, something that looked like an introduction packet. Stark Industry Expo branding, sleek and expensive, the kind of design that practically whispered: we spent more on this paper than you make in a month.
There was also a single sheet of paper with a phone number on it, written in handwriting that looked deliberately casual, like the writer had practiced being "casual" in a mirror.
My stomach dropped before I even turned it over.
On the back was a sentence:
You didn't give me a phone number, so I can only give you mine — Tony Stark.
I stared at it for a long moment, feeling the weight of that casual line settle onto my life like a new complication.
Tony knew who I was. Or at least, he'd figured out enough to find my address and send me a package. Which meant he'd either done the research himself, or he'd had JARVIS do it in the time it took him to blink.
Not that I could've avoided it forever. There were too many cameras in New York, too many databases, too many people with the kind of resources that made privacy a myth. If someone like Tony Stark wanted to find you, you got found.
The funny thing was, I wasn't even that worried anymore.
Five months ago, I would've been. I would've spiraled into paranoia, planned escape routes, considered moving to the moon. Now? I had control of my magic again. I had a sling ring. I had Kamar-Taj in my corner, at least loosely. I was closer to my old level than I'd been since arriving in this world.
My secrecy had never been about hiding forever.
It had been about buying time.
Time to become strong enough that it wouldn't matter who knew.
I picked up my phone and dialed the number before I could overthink it. The line rang once—only once—then Tony Stark was there, voice smooth and amused, like he'd been waiting with the phone already in his hand.
"Oh man," Tony said, "the speed on that express delivery is really something, isn't it? I feel like Stark Industries could develop better logistics. Anyway, glad you called, Mr. Magician."
I couldn't help smiling. "How did you know it was me?"
The words left my mouth and immediately I regretted them. I sighed out loud. "Actually, never mind. If you found my address, you can find my phone number."
"Exactly," Tony said, and I could hear the grin in his voice. "But calling you directly would've been kind of disrespectful. I mean, if you were a random guy, sure, whatever. But you're not random, are you? And I don't particularly want to wake up cursed or hexed or turned into a frog. Is that on the menu? Frogs?"
"I don't actually know curse magic," I said, letting myself play along. "But if you want me to—"
"Okay, whoa," Tony interrupted quickly, and I heard him cough like he was trying not to laugh. "Let's skip the 'threatening each other with magic' phase and get to the actual point. I've got a business proposal."
Of course he did.
I leaned back in my chair, staring at the Stark Expo tickets on my desk like they were suddenly ticking. "I'm listening."
"Good," Tony said, voice turning just a little more serious without losing the banter edge. "Because I think we might be able to help each other out. You're going to come to the Expo. We'll talk in person. I'll make it worth your time."
A pause, then he added, almost lightly, "Also, I have some questions. About you. About what you can do. About what you did that night."
That last part slid under my skin. Not because I was afraid of Tony, exactly, but because the phrase that night had layers. It wasn't just curiosity. It was a man who'd been attacked in his own home, poisoned slowly by his own technology, realizing there were forces in the world he didn't control.
And Tony Stark did not handle "forces he didn't control" by ignoring them.
My fingers tightened around the phone. Somewhere deep in my chest, my wand—resting on the desk—seemed to hum faintly, like it didn't like where this was going either.
Tony's smile was audible again. "Also check the packet for the details. And Abel?"
"Yeah?"
His tone softened just a fraction, the joking veneer thinning. "If you're in over your head with whatever you've got going on… I'd rather know sooner than later. Because if there's one thing I'm tired of, it's surprises that try to kill me."
I swallowed, eyes drifting to the glossy Expo tickets.
Surprises that try to kill him.
Yeah.
I knew that story.
"Noted," I said. "I'll be there."
"Great," Tony replied, cheerfully reclaiming the mood like it was a suit he could slip back into. "Try not to teleport into traffic or whatever it is you do. See you soon, Mr. Magician."
He hung up.
I sat there for a while, phone still in my hand, staring at the Stark Expo materials spread out on my desk. It wasn't just an invitation. It was a door opening into the part of this world where money, tech, and power collided so hard they rewrote history. Tony Stark didn't casually invite people into his orbit unless he intended to pull them into something.
And the timing was too perfect.
Tomorrow was the last day of school. Summer was about to start. The Expo was about to happen. Tony was about to be more desperate than he let on. And I had an antidote formula in my head that could keep him alive—if I could get it to him safely, without lighting up every radar from SHIELD to whatever cosmic entity might be paying attention.
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