The laboratory fell silent for a few seconds.
Everyone's eyes turned in unison toward the two sisters.
Sara Grey held her younger sister tightly in her arms, her back pressed against the wall, her body trembling uncontrollably.
Jean Grey bit her lower lip, both hands clutching the hem of her sister's mud-covered coarse-cloth clothes. Beneath her dark red hair, her eyes surveyed their surroundings in terror.
High-tech metal consoles, strange sparks like a portal, and a group of men and women standing nearby whose presence was suffocatingly powerful.
Pietro reached up to scratch the back of his head, ruffling his silver hair into a mess.
"Mutants?"
Pietro stared at the two deathly pale faces near the floor, then looked at Lucian in bewilderment. "Boss, what kind of new species is that? Aliens like the Skrulls?"
Lucian stood where he was, his arms folded across his chest.
At Pietro's question, several thoughts passed through Lucian's mind.
In this world that had been mashed together into a complete mess, even he wasn't quite sure whether Mutants originated from the Celestials tampering with their genetic code millions of years ago or from the natural evolution of the human gene pool in response to the environment.
"They're not aliens," Lucian said succinctly. "You can simply think of them as humans born with special superpowers."
Pietro froze on the spot at those words.
The silver-haired young man widened his eyes, looked down at his hands, then pointed at his own nose.
"Humans with special superpowers?"
Pietro sucked in a sharp breath, his voice suddenly rising. "Isn't that me? Boss, does that mean Wanda and I are Mutants too? So we're all one big family?"
Wanda's hand paused around her coffee, and she shot her older brother an exasperated look.
Lucian curled his fingers and tapped