X-Men · Marvel · Conversa

Geneva.\n\nIn the corridors of the United Nations building, CIA agent Moira MacTaggert hurried across the marble floor, her heels worn down at the back. She clutched a freshly declassified file stamped with a red "TOP SECRET" seal, containing several blurry photographs—a man in a black suit surrounded by followers who clearly possessed non-human abilities. Her superior had tossed it back to her, calling it "science fiction." Moira knew better. She had seen that man in a Las Vegas club, convincing a US general to change nuclear deployment plans; the general's eyes had been as hollow as if something had been sucked out of him.\n\nShe needed to find someone—someone who could tell her exactly what these things were.\n\nOxford.\n\nAutumn in Oxford brought a light drizzle, the wet cobblestones reflecting the glow of gas lamps. Moira found Charles Xavier in an office overflowing with genetics journals and manuscripts—impossibly young, with thick brown hair and a tweed suit, scribbling notes on a draft paper with a fountain pen. When he looked up at her, his blue eyes seemed to see the sentences she hadn't even formed in her mind yet.\n\n"You're here for my help," he said with a small smile, "but you should close the door first. And the data on page three of that file in your bag? It's been transcribed incorrectly."\n\nMoira froze. She hadn't mentioned the file.\n\nThat evening, Charles took her to a smoke-filled pub. At a corner table sat a young man, drinking unsweetened black coffee alone, mindlessly spinning a metal coin between his fingers. The coin didn't touch his skin—it hovered three millimeters away, vibrating slightly.\n\n"This is Erik," Charles said, pulling out a chair. "He's looking for the same man."\n\nErik looked up. His face was young, but there was something in his gaze—like the embers of a fire that had burned somewhere far away.\n\n"You've seen Shaw?" he asked Moira. It wasn't a question. It was a confirmation.\n\nMeanwhile, a train cut through the night along the West German border. In a compartment at the end of the carriage, a woman in a leather trench coat sat alone. The passing lights outside occasionally illuminated her face—blonde hair, delicate features, no different from anyone else. But if one stared into her eyes long enough, they would see a yellow ripple flash across her irises, like a shadow passing through deep water. She changed her face at the next stop and vanished into the crowd on the platform.\n\nIn another city, in the basement of a safehouse marked "abandoned" by the CIA, a young scientist with glasses was observing his own blood sample under a microscope. Hank McCoy stared at the overly active cells on the slide, remembering the gut-wrenching feeling of being called a "Beast" as a child for the thousandth time. A sealed test tube sat on the corner of the desk, filled with a blue liquid. He hadn't decided whether to inject it yet.\n\nThese people, scattered across the world—they didn't know of each other's existence yet. They didn't know that the spin of a coin would drag them all into the same storm.\n\nBut that moment was very close.\n\nIn the pub, Charles poured a glass for himself and Erik. Moira opened her file.\n\n"His name is Sebastian Shaw," she said. "He's pushing for World War III. And his men—"\n\n"—are all mutants," Charles finished the sentence.\n\nThe coin in Erik's hand stopped spinning. He crushed it into his palm, the metallic glint of his fingertips flashing for a moment.\n\n"Then let's begin," he said.\n\n<choice_group>\n <choice id=\"1\">Change the topic</choice>\n <choice id=\"2\">Observe current details</choice>\n <choice id=\"3\">Advance the current plot</choice>\n</choice_group>