The air in the subterranean conference room was thick with the smell of expensive tobacco and the silent, vibrating tension of men who controlled the world but had just realized they were no longer its apex predators. This wasn't a public hearing or a televised debate. This was the "Inner Circle"—the heads of the families and industries that treated the Presidency like a temporary middle-management position.
"Gentlemen, the floor is open. How do we handle the fact that our 'peacekeeper' has been turned into a pile of ash in front of a live audience?" The President spoke from the center of the mahogany table. He wasn't at the head; in this room, the head of the table was reserved for whoever held the most leverage that day.
"Handling? There is no handling," the Army Chief of Staff growled, his face a shade of purple that matched his ribbons. He slammed a meaty fist onto the table. "We have nukes for a reason. You saw what that woman did. She's a walking extinction event. I say we glass the entire sector in Pennsylvania. Erase the problem before it spreads."
A sharp, condescending laugh cut through the General's bravado. It came from a man sitting near the far end, a representative of a faction based heavily in the Northeast.
"Brilliant strategy, General. Truly. Except for the minor detail that Pennsylvania is basically the backyard of D.C. and New York. If you drop a warhead there, you aren't just killing mutants; you're poisoning the financial heart of the planet. My family's holdings would be glowing in the dark for the next thousand years. Sit down before you say something even stupider."
"He's right," another voice chimed in, sounding bored but lethal. "And that's assuming a nuke even works. Did you see the satellite feed? Jean Grey didn't just fight the X-Men; she rewrote the local laws of physics. If she can decompose a man into his base atoms, what do you think she'll do to a missile? You'll just be giving her raw material to throw back at us."
The Army Chief of Staff glared, his nostrils flaring. "Oh, I forgot. You lot only care about 'human life' when it's your own. Who pays the bill when my mechanized divisions get vaporized? Who explains to the public why we're letting a bunch of freaks build a castle on our soil?"
"Gentlemen, please." The President rubbed his temples. He looked older than he had that morning. "The point isn't who was right or wrong an hour ago. The point is the present. Jean Grey is the Dark Phoenix. Charles is dead. Magneto has an army. Are we seriously entertaining the idea of an autonomous mutant state? Within our borders?"
Mark Sherman, who had remained silent throughout the bickering, finally leaned forward. He was the bridge to the superhuman world, a man who knew things the others only guessed at. All eyes turned to him.
"Mr. Sherman," the General said, his tone shifting to a deceptive politeness. "Your family has... connections. A certain individual who has a habit of solving 'impossible' problems. Can he be persuaded to put this Phoenix down?"
Mark Sherman didn't blink. He knew they were talking about Huang Wen. He also knew that asking Huang Wen to be an assassin for these old vultures was a quick way to get the entire room erased.
"Let's leave outside parties out of this for a moment," Mark said smoothly, his voice like velvet over gravel. "Actually, if you want my honest opinion... we should give them what they want. Let them have their state."
The room erupted in hushed, shocked whispers.
"Are you insane, Mark?"
"Wait," Sherman raised a hand, silencing the dissent. "Think like businessmen, not soldiers. Right now, mutants are everywhere. They're in our schools, our offices, our police forces. They're a decentralized threat. If we fight them now, it's a civil war on every street corner. But if we give them a 'state'? Suddenly, they have a fixed address."
A few of the older men began to nod slowly as the logic set in.
"We give them Pennsylvania," Sherman continued. "We call it 'autonomous.' We even give them law enforcement powers—over their own kind. Think about it. You create a mutant police force to arrest mutant criminals. You've just created a class system. You've turned the 'oppressed' into the 'oppressors' of their own people. Give it a year, and they'll be fighting each other over border rights and political ideology. We won't have to kill them. They'll do it for us."
"And if they step out of line?" the President asked.
"Then we have a single, concentrated target," an ally of the Sherman family added, catching the drift. "It's much easier to contain a cage than a mist. We frame it as a humanitarian gesture. The world will applaud us for our 'tolerance,' while we quietly build a wall around their little paradise."
The President looked around. He saw the shift in the room. The hawks were still grumbling, but the financiers saw the profit in containment.
"Let's put it to a vote," the President said. "Option A: Continued military escalation. Option B: Recognition of the mutant autonomous state under the Sherman framework. All in favor of Option B?"
Hands began to go up. The President's was first, followed quickly by Mark Sherman and the corporate elites. Even some of the military contractors raised their hands, already imagining the surveillance contracts for the "New Mutant Border."
The tally was 70% in favor.
"It's settled then," the President sighed, feeling the weight of a potential war lift from his shoulders. "Mark, since this was your brainchild, your family will handle the initial diplomatic contact. Tell them we're ready to talk. Tell them we want... peace."
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The sound was sharp, urgent, and totally out of place in the secure bunker. Every official in the room felt their encrypted phones buzz simultaneously.
"What now?" the General growled, pulling out his device. His face went pale.
On the main monitor of the room, an emergency feed overrode the maps of Pennsylvania. It was a recorded loop from a classified Air Force base in the Southwest—General Ross's territory.
The footage was chaotic. Screams, the sound of tearing metal, and the staccato rhythm of heavy machine-gun fire. At the center of the frame was a nightmare. It looked like the Hulk, but twisted—covered in bony protrusions, with a spine that looked like a serrated blade and skin the color of a bruised corpse. It was tearing a tank in half like it was made of wet cardboard.
"Ross?" Mark Sherman stood up, his eyes widening. He knew General Ross had been playing with fire, but this looked like a sun going supernova. "That's the Gamma Research Wing. What did he do?"
"Scramble attack helicopters!" someone shouted into a phone. "Find out where that thing is heading!"
While the elites scrambled to deal with a new monster, the clock had already run out at the base.
General Thaddeus Ross stood in the wreckage of his command center, coughing up dust and blood. Just an hour ago, he had been celebrating the news of Charles Xavier's failure, thinking he could use the chaos to justify his own 'super-soldier' projects. He had been wrong.
In the lab below, Emil Blonsky—the man who was supposed to be a corpse, the man they had been harvesting for parts—had decided he wasn't done yet. The combination of Banner's blood, the flawed serum, and the intense Gamma radiation hadn't just healed him. it had rebuilt him into something that hated the world that made it.
The Abomination stood over a pile of researchers, his breath coming in wet, heavy rasps. He looked down at his huge, clawed hands, a jagged grin splitting his face. He felt every needle prick, every scalpel cut, and every cold stare they had given him while he was "dead."
General Ross tried to reach for his sidearm as the beast approached, but the Abomination merely flicked a finger, sending the General flying across the room like a ragdoll. Ross hit the wall with a sickening crack, his ribs shattering instantly.
The Abomination leaned over the dying General, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that sounded like grinding stones.
"You wanted a weapon, Ross... you wanted a soldier who wouldn't die..." The monster leaned in closer, his breath smelling of ozone and rot. "But you forgot one thing. Weapons don't have loyalty. And soldiers... soldiers eventually realize their commanders are just the first targets in a war."
The Abomination looked at the monitors showing the panicked alerts being sent to Washington. He laughed—a sound that shook the very foundations of the base.
"Now, you're the useless ones," he mocked, looking at the broken bodies around him.
With a single leap, the Abomination crashed through the reinforced ceiling, disappearing into the desert night. He wasn't going to Pennsylvania. He didn't care about mutants. He was going to find the one thing that was as strong as he was. He was going to find Bruce Banner.
But for the men in the secret meeting room in D.C., the day had just gone from a political crisis to a literal monster movie. The Sherman family's "containment" plan for mutants was already being overshadowed by a giant, bony fist hitting the American heartland.