Anna stepped into the room and stopped, taking in the four faces looking right at her. Realizing her discomfort, Dante offered her a warm, friendly smile to ease the tension, while silently running a quick Biokinesis scan across her body. The results surprised him. On the surface, everything was pristine and orderly like a healthy young adult should be.

But digging deeper showed some anomalies. She had cell divisions far beyond what a young woman should have undergone. It didn’t make any sense from his understanding of the human body.

Another disturbing fact was how her cells behaved. Normally, cells constantly accumulated micro-damage and repaired DNAs. This was a continuous process. A process known as gradual aging, and that process was entirely absent from her body.

It wasn’t done by any mutant power since an X-Gene remained dormant in her DNA.

Anna gave him a polite nod before turning to Silvija. “How can I help you, boss?”

“Anna,” Silvija said gently. “Did you remember anything?”

Anna scratched her cheek with a faintly embarrassed tilt of her head. "I must've knocked my head somewhere along the way. Everything before a few years back is… hazy." She gave a self-deprecating laugh. "I can't even remember my university."

He nudged Jean, who was sitting quietly beside him on the bed. “Is she lying?”

He could read faces well enough to reach his own conclusion that Anna wasn’t lying, but Jean's telepathy might prove him wrong.

The redhead furrowed her brows. “No. She really doesn’t remember anything before her job here. I believe a telepath sealed her memories.”

Only a handful of telepaths had the skill for that kind of precise, surgical work. Mister Sinister, coincidentally, was one of them.

“Can you break the seal?”

She turned to him with a helpless look. “Sorry. I can’t. It's too risky.”

Her hesitation was understandable. The seal had been placed by an expert. Meanwhile, Jean had no experience in this. One small mishap and Anna might forever lose those precious memories. There was another way to know her identity by forcibly awakening her X-Gene. He might recognize her by her mutant powers. But it was a risky move. Even his Biokinesis couldn't read what powers would emerge from an X-Gene. With how insane some mutant powers were, there was a small chance she awakened some absurd reality-bending ability.

He might as well wait for Emma’s return. She had plenty of experience with memory seals. He was also going to start a Telepath’s Resonance Link tonight. Three of them should be enough for the task.

Noticing Jean’s downcast expression, Dante gave her shoulder a reassuring pat. “Don’t beat yourself up. When Emma gets back, you two can work on it together.”

Jean’s face brightened a little. “Got it.”

Anna frowned, glancing between all of them with growing discomfort. “Boss, if you don’t trust me, just say it and kick me out. There’s no need to stand me here like I’m on trial.”

“Follow me,” he whispered to Jean and got up from the bed. Taking Anna’s hand, he led her out of the room. They walked down the hallway toward the elevator. “Anna, don’t take any of this to heart. We’re just worried someone messed with your head. That’s all.”

Even if she turned out to be an enemy down the line, the current Anna hadn’t done anything wrong. If anything, she’d been nothing but supportive to Silvija.

She pulled her hand out of his grip decisively. “I don’t know about that.”

Her tone was friendly and her smile polite, both of which were utterly fake. She had retreated behind her “professional” mask to hide her feelings.

She kept her eyes forward. A silence that was politely but unmistakably a cold shoulder.

‘I have to try.’

He gestured for Jean to come closer and take his hand. She did it after some hesitation, mostly because of confusion. He put a hand on Anna’s back and teleported them.

The observation deck of the Empire State Building materialized around them, and with it came the cold air that would make any normal person shiver. Dante and Anna stood on the edge, and Jean just a step behind him. The city sprawled under them in every direction beneath a pale winter sky. A long drop below them of over four hundred meters.

Anna gasped, but to her credit, she didn’t scream or scramble away in panic. She just stared down at the tiny streets and cars far below as wind whipped through her hair. For a receptionist, she was exceptionally calm. “What is the meaning of this?”

He casually slid an arm around her shoulders. “Angel, isn’t the scenery wonderful?”

She stared at him. “Did you hit your head or something?”

He ignored the sarcasm and glanced at Jean, who was giving him a clear “what the hell are you doing?” look. He smiled and pushed Anna gently off the edge.

“Danteeeeeeee.”

Anna’s scream grew distant.

“No time for questions,” he said calmly. “Keep up with me and don’t stop reading Anna’s mind.”

The Skullfire form appeared thanks to Death’s intervention. He connected to Hyperion’s Resonance and let the solar radiation accelerate his fall, allowing him to catch up with Anna. She was falling with her arms out, not an ounce of panic. His eyes never left her back as he made spellcasting gestures. Jean was right behind him, her coat and red hair snapping in the wind, surrounded by her pink psionic aura as always.

The distance collapsed fast.

Two hundred meters… one hundred… Right as Anna hit the ten-meter mark, a swirling portal ripped open beneath her and swallowed her whole. Dante and Jean dove through, and the portal just above the busy street disappeared like it was never then.

The calm, crisp air of Asgard greeted them on the other side. They emerged high above one of the realm’s beautiful mountain forests. The lush forests, the fresh wind, and the distant waterfalls made Asgard’s forests one of the best places to relax. Only he was enjoying the scenery, though. Anna was still flailing wildly in freefall.

He sped up and caught her securely in his arms. She latched on to him instantly and tried to move their positions to make him take the fall. He didn’t believe it was an intentional decision on her part. She looked too out of sorts to be making this type of selfish move.

‘She is a survivor.’

He tilted the trajectory of their slow descent into a long curve. The human body was fragile. Just the whiplash from suddenly killing momentum could snap bones or worse. A certain blonde’s neck-breaking fall in the clock-tower had taught him that lesson long before he came to this world.

He set her down gently near the mouth of the cave. The same cave he had taken shelter in with Natasha not long ago.

Anna's legs gave out on contact with the ground. She sank to her knees and touched the ground for support. Her breathing was a mess.

Jean stopped beside him, revealing a look of surprise. “I saw a new memory in her mind. A face and a name to be exact. It was Anna.”

“Her?”

“Anna Marie,” she corrected quickly, faintly blushing at her mistake. “The girl triggered a storm of emotions in her. I’m guessing a close relative. Maybe a sibling?”

Jean went on to describe how Anna Marie looked. Unsurprisingly, Anna Marie was a young woman with thick, wavy deep-brown hair, which had a bold white strip on the front section. The same iconic hair as Rogue.

While this confirmed his suspicion, he still found it hard to believe the usually friendly woman was Raven Darkholme—codenamed Mystique—in disguise. The blue-skinned shapeshifter was famous for her ruthless efficiency and ever-changing appearances.

But why was she working under Silvija? And more importantly, what had happened last night to leave her with no memories about her real self and a dormant X-Gene?

‘Is Mister Sinister behind this? But why would he do this?’

Jean shook his shoulder, pulling him out of his thoughts. “How did you know this will work?”

The redhead had every right to know after aiding him without any hesitation. He explained to her in very simple words. Often, life-threatening situations make the body release a surge of stress hormones, which heightens alertness to increase the chances of survival. These situations also temporarily improved access to some emotional or deeply encoded memories. This was not the same as recovering lost memory, just fragmented parts formed purely by raw feeling. Jean had been perfectly positioned to catch that brief window in Anna’s mind.

He hadn’t stopped using his Biokinesis on Anna in case the heightened stress awakened her powers.

‘She isn’t getting her powers back until I know everything.’

Those powers would make her very hard to find. It would be better to let her stay as Anna until she recovered her memories.

He kneeled down before Raven and touched her shoulder. She wasn’t acting lost because she feared death. Rather, the emotions had left her a confused mess. “Anna.”

She slowly lifted her head. Her eyes carried a look of pain that he was quite familiar with. “Dante, I saw someone. She was Anna Marie…”

She was too distracted in her own mind to pay attention to his conversation with Jean.

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know…” Raven trailed off in a shaking voice. Her hand moved to her chest, right over her heart. “I don’t know why it hurts so much. It’s like… how people describe a break-up but worse.”

She couldn’t describe her emotions, not because she was inarticulate. The memories that shaped much of a person were missing. Her intense emotions made him reconsider everything. From what he knew from his previous world, Raven didn’t care much about Rogue as her adopted daughter. Even if she did, she was incapable of showing it.

Maybe things were different here.

“I think…” Raven whispered. “I think something terrible happened to her… I can’t remember it.”

She clutched her head with a pained expression, trying to recall anything. The actual events had been wiped from her mind, but the emotions attached to them remained like deep bruises. She had definitely witnessed something tragic or heartbreaking.

He pulled her into a hug and rubbed her back. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. You’ll get your memories back.”

Anna clung to him tightly, still overwhelmed. She might be Raven Darkholme. But without her memories, she was just Anna Keller. The friendly, reliable receptionist at the NYC branch of Silver Sable International. The woman who had been quietly supporting Silvija. Also, his angel.

Whatever game she had been playing before the memories were sealed could wait. He wasn’t going to treat her like a suspect or a threat while she was this vulnerable. When she finally recovered everything, then they could talk about why she had been working for Silvija in the first place.