"Well, here's home." Noa unlocked the door and pushed it open, but not before tapping the little wood thing on her door frame. A mezuzah? Well, she was wearing a Star of David on her necklace, but it had been a while since I'd seen one. "You gonna stand there all day? Come on in."

I followed her slowly, feeling a bit awkward. Entering a new house is always weird. You can't help your curiosity, but you don't want to be rude. So I wandered in, trying not to look around too closely. Couldn't help it though.

The condo was t-shaped, the entryway with some abstract art on the walls we walked past. Beyond that, the vertical part of the 'T' had a dining room and kitchen, both of which looked well used. Not dirty, but there were scratches and dings in the countertop where someone was too enthusiastic cooking, with care and love put into where the cooking implements were placed.

There were also two knife blocks on either side of the sink. Always notice potential weapons in a new environment.

The head of the condo had the living room. To my left I could see another bedroom. When I glanced at it, I could see a poster on the wall. The periodic table of elements. Under that, on a dresser, was a photo of Spider-Man, signed. Huh.

"Try not to spend too much time peeking in my goddaughter's bedroom," Noa said. "She's twelve."

"Twelve?" I thought about that. Lorna Dane was the likely goddaughter. She was just a baby, man. She had so much ahead of her.

"You know, Kamala and Pete are about that age in my universe," I mumbled, my stomach growling as I followed Noa, who sat on the couch. "I spend a lot of time worrying about them getting pulled into the craziness of my world."

"Mhmm?" She hummed. "And was that your stomach?" She stood up from the couch.

"Uh…"

"Kitchen," she commanded. "Now."

"Ah. Sure thing," I couldn't help the grin on my face. There was something very momlike in the way she said that.

"I don't have much, I just got in from out of town, but we can order carry-out." I followed her into the kitchen, where she pulled out a collection of paper menus from a drawer. "Pick one, go nuts."

"I don't suppose the pandemic of places all calling themselves 'Famous Ray's Pizzeria's' is universal, is it?" I asked while flipping. Mmmm. Chinese.

"… no."

"Well, traditionally I'm supposed to go for shawarma, but Chinese sounds good. I'll take your recommendation on that. Good thing we're both kosher!"

"Halal isn't kosher," Noa said with a smirk as she took the menu I was eyeing. "You have fewer restrictions on food."

"Sure, but it's nice to share something similar. Anywho." As she made the order, I looked more closely. Newspaper clippings. Those had caught my eye from the start. Hung up on the walls were articles, like a hunter's trophies. A lot of Daily Bugle ones actually.

As Noa spoke to the Chinese place, I read one of them. Noa had defended Pyro? That was a major one too. Man, he was a kid accused of assault with superpowers? And Steve had spoken out against it when Allerdyce had been found guilty. Apparently it was pretty clear the trial had been a marsupial kind. And Magneto dropped out of the sky to pick him up.

Erik, Max, Magnus, whatever name he was given or side he was on, he was always a prima-donna. A badass one, but still.

Steve's picture was there, facing Magneto, while one of Noa in the courtroom rested a bit lower. Heh. I couldn't help smiling at the sight of him. He never changed. Kind of.

"Steve is played by Chris Evans in my universe… And no one knows what mutants are yet." I said softly, though I wasn't sure if Noa could still hear it or not.

Funny. This article was technically a loss. Yet she hung it up all the same. More articles with Noa. Some wins. Some small losses. Front page, or little mentions.

And photos of friends and family. I kind of figured this was Noa showing trust in me. She didn't have to bring me here. A home, a well-lived in and loved home, is in many ways, a key to a person. It reveals more of them than they could ever realize.

Noa was proud of her judicial career. But she also was proud of her family and friends. Photos of her standing in front of the Stonewall Inn with someone I didn't recognize, another of an older couple hugging her, a cute one of a green haired girl throwing up a peace sign from between a brunette woman and silver-haired man, an embarrassed looking redhead with a cane at a desk.

I heard the phone getting put down and moved to sit at the couch in the living room again. Noa walked out of the kitchen and walked into another room next to her goddaughter's room, coming back out with pens and paper enough for a small army. She laid them out, a thoughtfulness in her eyes.

Law time, then. "So our first problem is that I'm not technically a citizen, right?"

Noa shook her head and clicked a pen. "No, you're skipping ahead a few steps. The biggie here is nobody knows who you are. If you weren't a US citizen, but, say, Egypt or Jordan has records of you, that would be fine. The problem is that nobody has records of you, and the bigger issue is the why."

"Can't be the first time it's happened though, right? Even disregarding tribal folk who don't interact with the modern world, aliens, time travelers, alternate dimensions, that stuff has been happening for centur-" I cut myself off. "No, this will be one of the few times modern laws deal with the supernatural version I'm guessing."

The Rio Timequake had led to dozens of cases like that. People from all across the timeline, who didn't exist because they were either born in the distant past or the future.

"I'm, like, ninety percent sure it has," Noa hedged. "But not publicly. Or at least, not to the extent that you were plainly visible. We've probably had dimensional fallers tumbling through in the middle of nowhere. But you?" She waved one hand at some of her framed Daily Bugle articles. "Odds are, Jameson is going to have a field day with this, and that's before we worry about any cross-contamination between timelines from anything you brought along. Which raises the problem of, again, how we handle this."

Noa pulled out a piece of paper and scrawled SHIELD up at the top, then drew two branching lines down.

"See, I'm pretty sure now that Fury dragged me into this because he needs an outside perspective," she said as she wrote. "I guarantee SHIELD has procedures in place for this kind of scenario, but nothing that would stand up to the kind of media scrutiny you're likely to get. Which is why he's outsourcing all the hard work to somebody who won't just tell him to do the exact same thing as usual, then just browbeat and suppress the media."

Under one of those two lines, she'd just written a few question marks, and a line from that to a little text bubble she drew in, where she wrote 'business as usual'.

Then she peeked at my Omnitrix, drew in its design under the other arrow, and went further from there.

"Basically, he wants something he can write down on some forms, take it to the President or whoever has authority on him, and be able to say that yes, he knows who they are now, where they came from, and what they want. He wants me to give us a civilian bureaucracy approach to a superhuman issue." Noa sighed. "Wouldn't be the first time I've done this, but that doesn't make it any less annoying."

I thought for a moment about Nick Fury's twisty mind and how he would think things out. "He's having you design a, what do you call it, a precedent for dimensional immigration and deportation?"

That tracked. Nick Fury was a twisty mind. "Man. I wonder if Maria will ever get as bad. She usually just asks for this kind of thing."

"By 'Maria', you don't happen to mean Maria Hill, do you?" Uh-oh. I knew that tone. She was pissed.

"I mean… yeah?" I said, chuckling nervously. "Why do you ask?"

"Because that fucking bitch is the one who dragged me away from my vacation!" Noa yelled, an open hand pounding on the table in front of her. "Not even an apology, either! Just shows up, literally drags me off a pool chair, frog marches me to my room and watches me pack… urgh! Oh, I hate her so much!"

"I guess that's one point for my universe?" I said, trying to keep from being slightly intimidated by the tiny woman. "My Maria is better than the other ones. Can't see her trying to arrest Steve… Speaking of being arrested?"

"Hmm?" Noa asked. "What about? You're not under arrest."

"But I was, so now we have our current problem. Aka, letting me walk around your universe without needing to resort to turning into Godzilla when a helicarrier drops out of the sky," I focused. Enough wisecracking Dial, act like a goddamned professional. "I'm not super familiar with what the process is for normal folk? I mean, the equivalent version. Most of the law stuff I've focused on has been trying to stop a Civil War situation."

That was not going well. People tended to ignore a lot of morals when they were scared.

"As you well should. And the immigration issue is even worse, because… hmm, wait, but… ah. Hmm.. shit." Noa tapped her pen against the papers in front of her, and sighed. "Alright. Mahmoud, I'm going to apologize in advance, but I need to ask you a very uncomfortable question, with an equally uncomfortable answer. Please just give me the benefit of the doubt on this one?"

"Uh… sure? Hit me."

Noa took a deep breath, then sighed. "I'm sorry about this, but… I need you to describe the kind of, well, prejudice and profiling you and your family experienced post-9/11."

"... Well holy shit," I rubbed my face as I tried to process the… well, the everything that followed that question, the memories and emotions it brought out. "G-Give me a second. I was about… Eleven? Yeah, eleven… The FBI visited my house. We were living in Cali at the time. Some people came to our home. They asked for my dad. Just wanted to ask questions. I remember my mom being confused. But my dad was worried. They wanted to see what sort of ties he had to other Muslims. Asked if he had family from Afghanistan. Fucking hell, we were Moroccan, I don't know why they-"

I stopped myself. "Uh, other than that. My mom wore full hijab, the uh, headscarf. Same with my sister. So every once in a while someone would yell at us to go back to our country. Call us terrorists. I think it was like, three months that someone asked me if I hated America? Which, fuck that guy. I was born here, I'm more American than goddamn apple pie."

I was speaking a lot faster. I stopped. "Sorry. I wasn't-" I squeezed my fists, thinking. "I just remember that day, seeing the planes hit on the tv in my dad's room. I wasn't happy to see that shit. I was a kid, man. I was horrified. And then people I thought I knew treated my dad like shit. My dad wasn't perfect. He had his issues. But he was no terrorist. My mom was everything, and she got treated like a threat because of her hijab. W-Why do you need to know this, Noa?"

She didn't answer immediately. I looked at her notes, and saw she'd stopped writing something about halfway through a word and left a blotch on the page where her pen stopped.

"I… I'm sorry about that." Noa set her pen down and reached a hand across the table, resting it atop mine. "I wish I didn't have to ask about that. It's just, I… I may have learned about the Patriot Act, the backroom lawyering and flimsy justifications and wholesale fictions spun to let it happen, but it's been decades without. Decades in a world that, despite all the superheroes and magic and craziness, has felt more sane than the one we left."

Her breathing shook. I could tell she was just as rattled as I was.

"I don't remember what the Patriot Act said. But if… if I know some of what it did, I can work backwards. Reverse engineer what utter bullshit got written to allow its trespasses. And then I can make sure that what we make here becomes a model. So that when – no, if the time comes, they don't get to pull that shit again." She looked up at me with a thin, almost watery smile. "With any luck, what happened to you and your family will never happen here."

"... Thanks, Noa. That means a lot," I smiled, though I think it was just a bit more cracked than I expected. "We kinda worry about uh… not the Patriot Act. But there's some rumblings about a Superhuman Reg Act. And Jen, Matt, they brought up the Patriot Act. How enough fear and… well, it made people give up their freedoms for some fake sense of safety. I don't think I've ever told them how terrifying that is to me."

"It's probably worse for them," Noa said. "They understand the fine details of things. And given their education almost certainly included 9/11, then they can see just how bad things have gone." She tapped her pen against the pad. "They— actually, hold on. This is a long shot, but… you wouldn't happen to have the actual text of whatever this act is on hand, would you?" Noa asked.

I did. I tapped the Omnitrix. Long practice had long taught me how to manipulate the Omnitrix. Ben probably was better with it, but the Omnitrix was really just a mega computer at the end of the day, transformations aside. And one thing I held was a series of useful files.

Including survival manuals. Never again.

A hologram popped up, glowing with that slight green I couldn't remove. I angled the hologram for her to see, flipping open the folder holding the proposed act. "Keep in mind… Jen threw a couch out the window the first time she read this."

Rather than say anything, Noa looked closer and leaned in over the table. She mouthed some of the words as she read, eyes growing wider and wider as they darted back and forth across the document.

"Nope, not trying to hand-write this." She set down her pen, then motioned for me to get up and follow her. "I am going to transcribe this whole damn thing, because this is about as perfect a template of what utter bullshit not to do as I can get, and you're just gonna have to sit there while I type it out."

"...You have a lot in common with Matt and Foggy," Granted, they'd more just desperately asked for the file, but still.

"Well I should hope so," she said with a sniff. "I did help teach those two, here. And paid them, because 'for course credit' is bullshit."

"Ha! Really? That's awesome!" Matt in my universe wasn't as lucky. If it wasn't for me they'd be the poorest lawyers in NYC. Oh right. "Uh, here," I tapped the Omnitrix and opened up a second page. This one, with notations from a host of folks. Jen and Matt, sure, Foggy as well. But also a few others, people I didn't know. "This should help."

"That'll help. Anyway, food should be here in half an hour, and that's more than long enough to get most of this down."

Guess I'd have to bear with this. "Fine. At least put on some music."

"Of course. AC/DC okay with you?" Noa asked.

"You would love my Tony Stark. Hell the fuck yeah."

There was a lot more to do than could be covered by a couple of hours of conversation. Noa typed damn quick, but it still took time to copy down everything I had on the SRA and its gross violation of human rights. She sat down in her den, an old CRT monitor shining on her face as she worked. I sat next to the desk, every once in a while manipulating the Omnitrix to display something else for her.

I was glad I'd been so meticulous in downloading things. X helped, often sending me things he thought I might need.

It was in the middle of that, me nodding my head to 'Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap', that Noa asked me a favor. She was done transcribing. So why not have me help her out while she figured things out.

I agreed. She was helping me out, I was bored, why not?

But then of course, she said the favor. Which was much heavier shit than I expected, even if she did tell me I could just say no. Still. Off I went.

Flying in Astrodactyl form is just so goddamn fun. Even as short as any flights were as my favorite orange pterodactyl, I loved it. The sheer acceleration, my jetpack exploding with fire, the air blowing past. Almost made me forget where I was headed.

GPS on the Omnitrix got me there. Poland was a pretty country. From thousands of feet up, I zipped over picturesque cities, summer giving the countryside a bright green landscape. Any other time, I'd have loved to visit.

I approached my destination. From high up, I could read the words on the gate leading in. Arbeit macht frei. Work sets you free.

God, it took every scrap of discipline I had not to rip that fucking set of words apart out of spite. One blast would have done it.

Auschwitz concentration camps. A complex of over 40 of the things ran in occupied Poland. Including extermination camps.

Noa's godfather, who she hadn't admitted was Magneto but obviously fucking was, had apparently kept up with his Nazi hunting efforts. I think she implied he expanded it to include a few other horrific folks, sex traffickers and the like, but only sort of.

Good.

Point was, he had his suspicions about the place, but couldn't bring himself to go back. Noa had some suspicions as well. There were some mysteries about the place. I'd never looked into it back home. I really should have, based on what Noa said.

'Herr SX' was mentioned in a Hydra journal found by Magneto. He'd been involved in the camp. That was horrifying to hear.

So here I was, flying over the quiet complex. People dotted the place here and there. Tourists, taking photos, speaking softly to each other, staring in horror. It was all very respectful. One day, there would be an epidemic of 'influencers' taking selfies with a host of emojis in the captions, trying to farm tragedy for interaction.

But for now at least, it was respectful.

I dropped behind a building and shifted to human form. Noa's Pietro had left some clothes behind, so I wore a jacket to hide the Omnitrix. It was easy enough to join a tour group. The only one, it looked like. There were tourists, sure, but this late in the day, only one guide, an old man in a button up shirt and jeans. He was bald, wrinkled, and had hair coming out his ears. He looked like a grandfather.

"When I lived in the camp," he was saying as I joined. He had almost no accent. "The things they subjected us to, sometimes, seemed normal. You would be surprised, yes, very surprised at what you can get used to."

He walked us into a building, leading us to a hallway. One with photos on a wall. "When the camps opened, they took photos of each of us. Our names, birthdays, yes." He tapped on one. "See? That is me. Erwin Mintz, political dissident. I am lucky. These men, here?" He tapped each photo. "Dead. Dead. Dead."

With everyone else, I looked at the photos. One woman, shaking, turned away from the lines of photos, walking quickly away, the man who was with her chasing her.

I shuddered. Those photos. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Men, women, children. This was-

The Graveyard had something like this. In computer format. Photos of people who had been dragged in, experimented on, killed. The horror of it had left Fury himself quiet. Hydra could say otherwise. But they never really left their roots, did they?

I glanced at the tour guide. He was smiling at his photo. He looked back at me, smile fading. Turning away, he waved. "Come, come. More to see. To understand."

I wish I could say that my previous experience made it easier. That I was conditioned to horror. But it was harder than I expected. I'd seen a small taste of what these kinds of places were like. When I saw the stone beds where prisoners were forced to lie, I could easily picture those I'd saved in those beds.

Then he led us to the ovens. The nail scratches on the walls inside them from the desperate people trying to escape.

I left, heading out to a grassy hill just outside the camp. I needed a bit. This place was cursed. Not magically. I wish it had been. But this was worse. Soulless, mechanical evil. Efficient death made into an industry. And somehow, still continuing.

The sun fell down in the distance as I waited there. Tourists streamed out of the camp slowly. I thought about calling Noa, but decided to leave it. I couldn't help the shame I felt at just leaving that place. I was a superhero, right? I was supposed to be able to handle this.

Except that Bucky and Steve had liberated camps like this. The looks in their eyes when they mentioned that stuff…

Guess it wasn't shameful to want to leave at the thought. I felt numb for a good long while, watching the camp from the distance.

When darkness fell and the camp had emptied out, I snuck back in. Easy enough to do even in human form. This place wasn't exactly guarded by the elite. Why would it be? It's reputation was enough.

Then I walked around, retracing my steps. I hated it. The whole place just felt off. The darkness didn't help. But I had a favor to fulfill. According to Noa, her godfather had a suspicion that a hidden laboratory was beneath a section of Auschwitz. Inside might be information that could lead him to one of the worst figures of the camp.

I approached one of the buildings he'd pegged as a possible location. With a look around, I whispered under my breath.

"Big Chill."

The bright flash of green illuminated the camp before I floated forward, entering my intangible state. Even in this powerful form, I still felt unnerved. I fought through it.

I imagine I made for quite a sight. A floating ghostly figure, stalking the halls of Auschwitz at night, moving through the walls and diving into the ground. Good thing no one was around.

The first building was clear. Horrifying, but the publicly displayed kind.

The second one was as well. I stopped briefly in a dark room filled with the dozens of items on display that had once belonged to prisoners. Shoes in one room. Briefcases in another.

More horrifying, a room filled with hair, shaved from the prisoners.

I moved on.

It was as I was floating to reach the third location that I saw him.

The tour guide? What was his name again, Erwin Mintz?

He was alone, walking calmly through the camp, a set of keys in hand. He was… whistling?

How used to this place was he? He wasn't skipping or anything, but he was very casual. I floated overhead, following him. His bald head shone in the moonlight, the old man twirling his keys.

We passed the third building I was supposed to search. I hesitated… then I followed. Something in my gut told me to.

He headed into a different building. Building twelve out of the twenty that Magneto had marked. It was a former prison reception center, a L-shaped building with a red roof, ringed with a barbed wire fence. He locked the door behind him, never seeing me floating quietly above him.

This was all too weird. A former camp survivor, walking around it at night and entering one of the buildings I was set to search? Was he looking for the same thing I was?

I doubted he was Magneto. He didn't have that kind of edge to him, and Noa would have told me.

He walked through the hallway, ignoring the various signs documenting the history of the camp. Instead he headed to what looked like a kitchen, stepping into the back through a single wooden door.

I waited a moment. The sound of something grinding filled the air. I hesitated, waiting for the sound to finish, then poked my head in.

He was gone. I stepped in fully, looking around. It was a storage room of some kind, filled with cleaning items. I imagined that it had once been a pantry. The bricks were painted grey, the shelves new and metal. I probably could have studied the room, found the secret lever.

Fuck that. Big Chill let me cheat. I walked through the wall on the other side of the room. It took a bit, but after floating around the perimeter I found a hatch in the floor with a ladder leading down into a tunnel. I followed it, entering another brick hallway. A whistling song echoed off the walls of that hall. I floated into the hall and prowled quietly forward. No plaques, signs, or photos in this hallway. It wasn't meant for the public. There was a door set into the right wall, with a small barred window in the center. I looked in.

A cell. The bed was occupied by a corpse. I stepped fully in, shuddering as I looked around. The cell didn't smell very strongly. Musty, if I had to describe it. The corpse was too old. It looked almost mummified. I kneeled down, studying it with my wings folded around me. Small. Only about four feet tall, less. Prison clothes on it. I looked around. No other furniture inside, just the bed, and no belongings.

I left that cell, floating into another one on the left. The corpse there was taller, but still wearing the same. I entered the hallway again, looking forward.

Dozens of doors. Hundreds. And a set of stairs at the end. If only half of them had bodies inside…

I floated down the hall. On the floor at one point, I saw a set of long scratch marks on the floor. Someone had been dragged along by force.

At the end of the hallway, beside the stairs, was a room, the door open. It was an office, not a cell. I entered and found cabinets, a desk, and a map of the camp on one wall. When I opened the cabinets there were dozens of folders with names on them in alphabetical order. I opened one. A photo of a girl stared at me. She'd been shaved, the photo in black and white. She was so… so young. Younger than Ruby. It was written in German of course, but the Omnitrix translated it.

Leah Abrams, 12. Physically weak, mentally deficient. Injected with a variant of the Erskine Formula. Developed advanced Alzheimer's, arthritis, and cancerous bone growth. However, musculature shows promising advancement.

Subject Destroyed, sibling brought in to attempt again.

Ice exploded from my hand, freezing the papers in my hand then shattering them. I regretted it immediately. That loss of control might have cost a family closure. I focused, opening another folder.

I almost hurled. An experiment with entirely removing blood from one subject and replacing it with blood from someone who had the… the gene. They didn't specify what gene, but they didn't have to.

The subject who got the blood survived unchanged. The other obviously died.

More and more of that, getting worse and worse. Some of it was superpower related. Testing the Erskine Formula, trying to make mutants, testing of wonder drugs meant to increase lifespan. Then there were the worse ones. Injecting them with malaria, hepatitis, syphilis. In children, babies. Transplanting organs. Mutant to human, human to mutant. Just to see what would happen.

It was all clinical. They would use words like inferior sometimes. Impure. But otherwise, they avoided anything that spoke like these were people.

I placed the fifth folder down after reading how they had to dispose of a young boy who had responded… badly to experiments in replacing his mind with a grown man's. It was part of some greater project. If 'Herr SX' was who I thought he was…

All of this horror was in the name of creating the perfect body. Even if they hadn't been disposed of, these children never would have lived normal lives after. They died in pain, broken and mutilated.

I wanted to destroy this place. To find the perpetrators and kill them. I'd only read five folders. There were 8 full cabinets in the office. And I hadn't lived through the horrors.

I left the office, going down the stairs. I heard a sound as I went down. On a hunch, I changed back to human before I got to the bottom.

"Hello?" I asked, faking a scared hesitant voice. "Is anyone there?"

"What!?" Erwin Mintz's slightly accented voice returned. I reached the bottom and saw him there, in a long, wide room. Dozens of beds dotted the place, medical trays from yesteryear next to them. Erwin himself was wearing a labcoat, looking befuddled at me. I stopped, putting every bit of acting skill I had into the next bit.

"Oh thank god!" I said in relief. "I'm so sorry, I was just looking around, and it got dark. I was trying to find the exit and I saw you go in here so I followed, but then I was in that hallway and- There were bodies! Old dead bodies! What is this place!? You're the tour guide, you've got to help me!"

"H-Help you?" Erwin stared at me, shocked. Then, for a flash, calculating. "Oh! Yes, you were in the tour group. American?"

"Y-Yeah dude!" I played it up.

"And you came alone?"

"Uh, yeah. I uh, wanted to try dating Polish chicks."

I could see his eyes narrow slightly as he roamed over, his legs shifting a bit stiffly. He tried to hide that he clearly thought I was a moron. "And you came to… Auschwitz."

"Well there was this girl in the tour group, the blonde? With the uh-" He stopped when I raised my hands towards my chest, looking both amused and calculating.

"I understand. I was young myself," He licked his lips. "So then. You are alone?"

"Yeah. Please man, you gotta get me out, is the exit around here?"

"The exit… yes," he looked me up and down. My skin crawled. "Well, right this way. I suppose I should continue the tour, yes?"

"Uh, sure? I mean, I didn't really come for a tour though-"

"Nonsense! History is important, young man!" He placed a hand on my shoulder. A very bony hand, gripping tighter than needed. "Come, come."

Walking forward, I made a show of looking around nervously. There were ovens at the edges of the room. Some old glass tanks with tubes coming out of them. And cages. Dotting the room, some beside the beds and medical trays, were some very small, rusted cages.

"Yo man, what the hell? This place a torture dungeon?"

Erwin chuckled. "Oh, yes, I am sure it was, to some. But where many saw horror, brilliant men saw innovation. Are you familiar, my dear American, with Unit 731?"

My skin crawled. I pursed my lips, pretending to think. "Uh… is that a math thing? No, that's a movie right?"

"... ah, to share your ignorance. Unit 731 was a Japanese research unit. The men there did terrible things. Horrific. And yet, their experiments led to innovations that to this day continue to save lives," Erwin waved a single hand outwards. As he did, he pulled me closer.

At my back, I felt something metal brush my spine.

"This room," Erwin monologued. "Was where even greater triumphs emerged. The men here weren't simply curing diseases. We were attempting to make Gods."

"Like Thor?"

"Ha!" He led me to the back of the room, where a set of doors like. "A paltry Asgardian? No, my dear American. Far greater than that," Erwin sighed sadly. "Shamefully, they were forced to stop. Who knows, however, how many lives could have been saved had they continued?"

"I mean… wasn't that good?" I asked dumbly. "They rescued you, didn't they? You were on that wall."

Erwin stopped. I turned, facing him fully. With stiff but calm movements, he reached under his lab coat. The gun he pointed at me was a Mauser C69. An older gun. Famously used by the Germans in World War 1. And 2.

"Yes… I was on that wall," Erwin seemed more amused than ever. "It wasn't hard, you know? When we realized the Allies were on their way, my friends panicked. Tried to destroy what they could above, locking away our good work here. Only I was smart enough to hide in the city. After that, I only had to wait. I was a scientist, you see. No prisoner recognized me, because any that would, well, they came here!"

Erwin, if that was really his name, laughed, gesturing for me to move. I raised my hands up, doing my best to seem scared. "Whoa, whoa, what the hell man!? What are you doing!?"

"Taking advantage of an opportunity, my dear simpleton," Erwin forced me into a door in the back of the room. Another office. A clean, well-maintained, office, more cabinets on the back wall. More surprising was the modern fucking computer on a desk. And another bed, with much more up-to-date medical supplies. "Tie yourself down to that bed."

I eyed his gun. He cocked it. "No. Do not be stupid, American. This is not your Hollywood movies. I will kill you before you can try the slightest thing."

"Why are you doing this?" I don't think he noticed I'd calmed down. Man was feeling himself.

"For the future. I have been working for years, decades, scraping together what I could from our work," the gun shook with his excitement. "I am close. Immortality. Youth. But I need to test. And you are a very healthy specimen."

"Never thought I would regret working out," I said, lowering my hands and sitting casually on the bed.

He laughed. "Do not worry. If I succeed, you will be the first of a perfect race. If not, then I can promise you. The pain will not last. The ovens are still quite efficient."

"... How many people?"

"What?"

"After the camp closed. Down here. How many did you test on?"

He scoffed. "Really? Why care? Tie yourself down."

"Listen, Erwin-"

He fired the gun, a bullet flying past my ear. It was horrendously loud, in this small space.

I made a show of rubbing my ear with a wince while he glared at me. "My name. Is Heinrich. Now tie yourself down. I won't ask again. I can work with a corpse if need be."

"Heinrich, really?" I mumbled. I hopped off the bed.

"I said-"

My hands flashed out. Grab the wrist, twist away so the barrel isn't aimed at me, then rip the grip out of his hand, toss the weapon behind me.

Just like Nat taught me.

The gun was on the bed. He stared at me, mouth agape. I still had his wrist in hand as I sighed, cracking my neck. "So. A fake survivor. Still experimenting on people. After all these years. I know someone who is going to be very happy to meet you."

"W-Who are y-"

I pulled him into my arms and wrapped a hand around his throat. Knocking out an old man is tough. Without killing them I mean. Gotta be gentle.

"Urgh! Ugh! Unnnn!" He struggled briefly, and even tried to bite me. But finally he was out, going limp.

I moved quickly, tying him to the bed. Ignoring the old spot of blood under the pillow as much as I could. Then I moved over to the computer once he was secure. As I sat at it, I opened the Omnitrix comms, calling the latest number. Once it answered I spoke fast.

"Noa. I've got something."

"Oh god," I heard her say on the other end. "I, I almost don't want to know…"

"I wish I didn't. But I think maybe I'll be meeting your godfather faster than I thought," I opened up the computer. No password. Why would there be? "There's a lot. And he's gonna want to know about it- Huh?"

Among the files I was flipping through was basically a dossier. Names and photos, scans of ID's and other documents. All the same man, but at least a dozen different identities.

"Looks like Heinrich had an obsession," I mumbled. "Noa, I think I've got your guy? Can you start writing down these names in case these files self-destruct? I've got uh, Nathaniel Essex, of course, Nate Xavier, ironically, Brian Banson, Dr. Nathan Wilbury, Dr. Michael Wilbury, Robert Windsor—"

"Stop, stop, wait, slow down, stop, stop, Mahmoud, stop, STOP!" Noa yelled through the Omnitrix's phone line. "Mahmoud, s-slow down. Can, c-can you say t-that again? S-slower?"

Ah… Shit. She sounded real goddamn worried. "Okay. Uh. Robert Windsor was the last. Before that was Dr. Michael Wilbury, Dr. Nathan Wilbury—"

"That." I didn't like the sound of her voice. "Oh, God. Oh, oh fuck. I, I, I-I… oh, God, I'm—"

I heard the sound of her landline clattering to whatever surface she had it on, followed by the faint sound of retching. Then gagging. And minutes later, crying.

I didn't speak, just kept the phone line open. I grabbed the files as fast as I could, shifting them into the Omnitrix. No need to worry about viruses. Anything that could beat the Omnitrix's protection deserved to hack it. Dozens of files. Some much too recent.

"... h-he was i-i-in my, my—" Noa said finally, a few minutes later. "I s-spoke with him. I, I, I shook his fucking hand! With a, a, a—!"

"Noa!" I cut in, finishing up. "Call your godfather. Now. Tell him to meet me here, or at least send someone he knows. Then call someone you love and trust. Talk to them. I'll grab everything here. Essex isn't the only name here. And I've got a prisoner who needs speaking to."

I got up, looking around. "Please, call someone who you can speak to. Promise me you will?"

"I…" She sniffled on the other end. "I-I'll try, I… s-sorry. I'll t-tell him."

The phone line clicked. I stood for a moment. Then I walked over to one of the file cabinets, opening it briefly. Had to wait around. Might as well get this shit upstairs.

"Fasttrack."

The second I was in my blue furred form, I got to work.

Considering my speed, it didn't take long. I ran in and out of that secret lab, lifting cabinets and placing them outside, pulling out folders from desk drawers. I 'gently' brought Heinrich out, still unconscious and tied up to the bed, and placed him out there.

I left the bodies. There were a lot. And some were… Heinrich had probably not experimented often. But he had been free for a long time. I did at least count them to give an accurate number to whoever showed up.

And cover them with sheets. The dead deserved that much.

They arrived not long after I was done. Which didn't surprise me. To most they would have been a blur, but I saw one jog almost casually towards me while carrying another. They came to a stop and stared.

"Whoa," the Pietro Maximoff of another universe said, staring at me as he put his 'passenger' down from a fireman's carry. "Fuzzy."

"That I am," I said with a grin. Pietro was wearing jeans, running shoes, a Metallica t-shirt, and a leather jacket. He looked like a rocker boy, rather than the track athlete of my universe. His hair was a brighter shade of silver too.

Still built as hell. Not as much as his passenger.

He stood tall once Pietro put him down. He was dressed casually, much like Pietro, but his clothes were of a much older style. A simple brown suit with a button up shirt, no tie. And he had enough muscle to win Mr. Olympia without even trying.

But his smile was the same. He looked me over curiously.

"So you're our visitor?" he asked. "The one Fury's complaining about, I presume?"

"I mean, probably. I got the impression Fury complains about a lot of things," I tapped the Omnitrix, returning to human form and stepping forward. I held out my hand. "This is funny, but back home, my Steve Rogers and I are pretty close. Hope we get along too."

Same hand shake. Captain America smiled just a bit more.

"Would that we had met under better circumstances." And at that, his smile faded. "What do you have for us?"

My own smile fell as well. I turned, looking behind me. "A fake survivor. And files on people who were experimented on, both paper and digital. It's a lot. He was continuing the experiments. Nowhere near at the level they once did, but you combine the amount of time he was free to work?"

I glanced at Pietro. "Noa all right? I didn't tell her everything, but…"

"She is not alone." His tone was clipped, almost angry. I could tell it wasn't with me, though. Not with where he was looking.

"Good. Good. So," I waved a hand out. "I don't know for sure who will deal with this. But it's all yours, guys. And uh, Cap?"

"Yes?" he asked, a look of expectation on his face."

Something had occurred to me, while I'd been at work. And I had the perfect person to mention it to. "Back home, Steve, uh, my Steve, and Nat, we all found something similar to this."

"In your Auschwitz?" Pietro asked.

"No. Though I'll have to check now. No, we found a Hydra base under Camp Lehigh." Best to rip the bandaid off.

I saw the change come over Captain America's face instantly. The way he set his jaw and squared his shoulders, how his chin lowered and his brow furrowed.

"I see." His voice was tight. "You have my thanks."

I sighed. "No problem… Just, I really hope-" I stopped, not knowing what to say next. Finally I shrugged. "You know, in the comics, meeting alternate versions of friends is fun. I'd get to tell people who they're dating. Or who their sister is dating."

Pietro smirked, but didn't take his eyes off Heinrich. Cap only flickered his eyes at the display before him, then finally turned to me.

"I suppose we'll need to leave that for another time. For now, it might be best for you to head back. We'll call the right people to pick this all up."

"Okay… Okay, yeah." I mumbled. "Fasttrack."

Back in my blue form, I glanced at Pietro. When I spoke again, it was in super-speed. "You ever need someone to talk to. I'll be around for a bit, okay?"

Then I sped off. Half a mile away, I shifted into Astrodactyl form, blasting towards the ocean.

This had been a lot. I would have preferred monsters. Robots, some aliens. Something crazy, but silly.

Instead, I'd found an old man and enough horror to fill my nightmares for days to come. It had been important. I felt good about ending it, if much too late. Still. Hopefully my next few days here would be more fun.