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"So I'm acting like bait," Mystique said dryly, her arms crossed, golden eyes narrowed with a mix of irritation and reluctant acceptance.
Aiden nodded, his expression calm but resolute. "Yeah, but I'll be tracing you the entire day. Physically, magically, and through tech. Every move you make—I'll know it." He took a slow breath. "It might take a couple of days, but this is the only lead we have. I've called in every favor I could think of. No one knows this organization or where they came from. Not SHIELD. Not the X-Men. Not even underground sources."
He looked her dead in the eye. "The only choice left is to use you as bait."
Emma Frost stepped forward then, dressed in her usual crisp white, her gaze gentle but unwavering. "You needn't worry. Between the two of us, you'll be more protected than anyone walking the streets. He'll track you physically. I'll be in your mind. I highly doubt anyone can kidnap you forever."
Mystique glanced between the two of them. She hated this. Hated being the hunted when she was the one who did the hunting. But the plan was sound, and she knew it.
Her jaw tensed. "Fine. But if I get taken, I swear to God, you two better bring me back."
"I know it's scary," Aiden said softly, a flicker of sincerity in his voice. "But don't worry… I'll quite literally be inside your shadow."
Mystique raised an eyebrow. "You're serious."
He just smiled faintly. "You'll see."
"Alright then," she said after a beat, pulling her hair back into a tight ponytail as her form shimmered and shifted. Her face changed, her skin taking on a human-like tone, her frame altering to that of an ordinary woman in a leather jacket. "I'll use multiple faces. Different styles, different names, different walks. But I'll make sure each one sends the same message… mutant and proud. That should draw them out."
Emma nodded approvingly. "Good. Keep your mind open—but guarded. If I sense a break or a blank space, I'll signal Aiden."
And so, the operation began.
Mystique vanished into the bustling world above, slipping through crowds, blending into society like smoke through fingers—never the same face twice. But wherever she went, a silent hunter followed. In shadows cast by lamplight, in reflections on glass, even in the flicker of car headlights—Aiden was there, unseen. Watching. Waiting.
...
The bass in the bar thudded like a heartbeat. Dim lights swirled over slow jazz and murmured conversations. It was a dive—gritty, urban, half-hidden in the shadow of an old tenement building on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Mystique leaned against the bar, her current form that of a tall, dark-skinned woman with tight curls and a scar over one eye. Dressed in a beat-up denim jacket and faded combat pants, she looked every bit the hardened mutant vet with a chip on her shoulder.
She took a swig of cheap whiskey and let the burn ride her throat, eyes casually sweeping the patrons. No one stood out. No obvious tail. No glint of hidden weapons or mindless drone-like movement.
But she knew better.
They were watching.
She'd changed faces five times since sunrise. Dropped off a staged manifesto about mutant freedom on a local news terminal. Started a fight with a known anti-mutant protester. Left breadcrumbs so painfully obvious, it was almost an insult to her craft.
Now, the clock was ticking.
"You're exposed now, be ready," Emma's voice murmured through the telepathic link, faint and cold like breath on the back of her neck.
"I've got six nano-trackers feeding real-time data," Valeria chimed in over comms, her tone clinical. "Vitals stable, movement normal. Nothing in the air, nothing in your drink. But I'm seeing electromagnetic fluctuations around your exit route. Be careful."
"I think it's about to start" Aiden added in a whisper no one else heard—his voice emerging from the shadow that clung unnaturally close to Mystique's boot. "Let them make the first move."
Mystique stood up. Finished her drink. Tossed a crumpled bill on the bar.
Time to go.
She stepped outside into the cold night, the kind of wind that screamed off the Atlantic and bit into the bones. The street was nearly empty—just a few flickering street lamps, some closed shops, and the occasional car humming by.
She walked. Calm. Controlled.
Two blocks down, the air changed. A sound, too light for footsteps, came from the alley beside her.
"You're being followed," Emma said instantly. "One at your five o'clock, another rooftop. I'm losing visibility—there's some kind of static field..."
Mystique didn't turn around. She moved forward casually, slipping her hand into her jacket where her custom pistol rested.
The first man struck from the shadows—dressed in tactical black, face masked. A stun baton came crashing toward her neck.
She twisted.
The baton missed. Her elbow didn't. It drove into his jaw with bone-crunching force. He dropped.
But then came the others.
Two more dropped from above, one with a high-tech net, another with a collapsible staff crackling with energy. She ducked, spun, slammed the staff wielder into the wall, and rolled just in time to dodge the net—only to get clipped in the leg by a dart.
Pain surged through her thigh. She snarled and fired her pistol into one of their arms, catching flesh. But they kept coming. Too many. Too trained.
Another dart.
Her movements slowed.
"Aiden," Emma's voice was tense, "she's being drugged. This isn't a hit—it's a coordinated extraction!"
"I see them," Aiden growled from the shadows, his own eyes glowing crimson as he watched them swarm Mystique. "Five. No, six now. That one's carrying the canister—the suppressant gas. They're not just soldiers. They're using mutant-specific tech."
Valeria cursed. "I can't hack into their gear—it's closed circuit. But the nanotech in Mystique's bloodstream is still feeding me coordinates. They're moving fast—heading for a black van, underground tunnel entrance. Coordinates are loading now—tracking."
Mystique fought with every last ounce of her will. Her form shifted mid-grapple, morphing into a beast-like woman with claws and fangs. She tore at one of them, blood spraying, but the last dart found her neck.
She staggered.
Collapsed.
"I'm following," Aiden muttered, sinking fully into the shadows cast by the van's undercarriage. "Emma, keep her conscious. Valeria, get me entry points once they reach the compound."
"I'll try, but there's interference—psychic jamming is increasing," Emma replied. "Something… no, someone down there doesn't want me poking around."
The van passed through a hidden seaway access tunnel—sealed, pressurized, and armed with hydrodynamic sensors. It wasn't some makeshift lab. This was military-grade. Designed by someone with money. Authority. Vision.
Through the van's undercarriage, Aiden flowed like liquid darkness, his presence undetectable, clinging to every shadow as they descended deep—beneath the Atlantic Ocean, just off the New York coastline.
The doors finally opened.
Armed guards greeted the squad, who handed Mystique over like precious cargo.
Emma gasped audibly through the comms. "They've... blocked me. I lost her. They just cut the tether with a wave of psionic dampening energy. It's artificial—mechanical, not mutant."
"Valeria?"
"Still tracking the nano-signals. I'm sending a 3D map to your HUD now. They've entered a facility roughly 3.2 kilometers under the ocean floor. This place wasn't built by just anyone. This... this is a hybrid facility. Shield protocols. Hydra encryption."
Aiden's eyes narrowed from the darkness of the corridor ceiling. "Traitors... Infiltrators."
He watched as they passed through sealed doors with biometric security and retinal scans. The corridors were polished, metallic, crawling with drones and sentries. Not a single unarmed being in sight.
And then… they reached it.
A chamber the size of a stadium, lit by eerie blue and white light. Hundreds of tall glass tubes lined the walls, each housing a mutant in stasis. Young. Old. Powerful. Forgotten. Their powers being siphoned, studied, documented.
The air inside the chamber was thick with sterilized chill, humming with quiet machinery and the low pulse of bio-tubes containing sedated mutants. Rows upon rows of stasis pods lined the massive circular lab like a garden of frozen gods waiting to be awakened.
A single figure stood at the heart of it all—impossibly tall, clad in sleek, otherworldly armor that shimmered with violet and silver hues. Strange runes danced across its surface like whispers of forgotten science. His cloak draped elegantly behind him, unmoving despite the artificial breeze of circulating air.
He was inspecting Mystique's unconscious form, secured within a reinforced containment pod.
The doors hissed open behind him.
Footsteps—measured, heavy—echoed across the sterile floor.
A man entered flanked by black-clad guards, the red sigil of Hydra unmistakable on their gear.
His face was sharp with age, yet burned with ruthless ambition. A skull of crimson. No mask. No pretense. Only the truth of who he was.
Red Skull.
"Your collection grows," he said, his voice gravel and poison. "And yet, the results remain unseen."
The armored figure did not turn to acknowledge him. He continued typing into the floating interface of his control gauntlet.
Red Skull narrowed his eyes.
"I offered you resources. Protection. Men. And still, you lock yourself in this tomb and whisper to machines while the world burns above. How much longer until you deliver what you promised?"
Silence.
Then, a voice replied—smooth, deep, rich with condescension and intelligence that looked down upon everything.
"It astounds me… how impatient you lesser minds truly are."
Red Skull stiffened.
The figure turned slowly. His helmet gleamed like a polished skull, but it was no imitation of death. It was a mockery of it. A face forged to resemble perfection.
He descended the steps one at a time, each footfall echoing with deliberate weight.
"You come into my sanctum, crawling on your belly for results you cannot comprehend… demanding progress on a process that began before your pitiful ideology even had a name."
He moved past Red Skull like the latter was a child.
"You speak of war. Of domination. Of flags and borders and blood.""I speak of transcendence."
He gestured to the stasis pods. Mutants from across the world, captured and catalogued like specimens in a divine library.
"These beings… are raw. Wild. Mutated by accident. What I do is not experimentation. It is correction.""Evolution—true evolution—requires not nature… but will."
Red Skull clenched his fists. "You dare speak down to—"
"I dare because I am right," the figure interrupted, his voice thunderous now, filled with a fanatic's fire wrapped in a scientist's restraint.
He ascended once more, arms spread before a massive console projecting genetic helixes, divine geometry, and alien structures.
"Nature is blind. Inefficient. Wasteful. So I shall craft something better. A form so complete… so flawlessly optimized… that even the void will pause to witness it."
He turned his gaze upward, into the void of the ceiling—toward a presence only he could feel.
"Knull believes in entropy. In unmaking. But he is wrong. Creation... perfection, is the true answer."
He clenched his fist—and the stasis pods behind him responded, pulses of energy flowing through them in response.
"And I will prove it. Not with armies. Not with death. But with the body of a god. The final, refined vessel of evolution itself."
At last, he raised his arms.
The cloak billowed behind him. The lighting shifted subtly as if the entire room responded to his declaration.
And then—he removed his helmet.
A face both inhuman and divine stared back. Pale, almost porcelain. Etched with knowledge far beyond any Earth-born intellect. His eyes shimmered—not with life—but with design.
"I am the master of forced progress. The sculptor of the new genesis."
"I am... the High Evolutionary."
He then Looked at the Ground and said "Now Aiden Blake....You Know Who I am...."
Aiden Emerged from the Shadows
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If you Like this story! Check out my other story ! Lord of Chaos In Dc!
AND
If you wish to read more or simply support me just because ? than check out my patreon at
"https://www.patreon.com/Riadooo"
You can Get Access to 3 More Chapters OR 7 More Chapters if you want !