Yes.
Right beneath the cliff under his feet, fused into the mountain.
Hawk could sense it—and he was certain.
Because…
He saw it.
The rock below had been completely hollowed out into a vast domed cavern, roughly a hundred meters high.
Platforms and catwalks crisscrossed like a spiderweb, stitching one section to the next.
No windows. No natural light. Only the chill glare of artificial lamps washed over everything.
There wasn't even ordinary noise—only the sound of breathing and footsteps.
One after another, lab-coated staffers hugged tablets to their chests. They didn't speak. They didn't even trade glances. Each stared at the incubation pods in front of them and recorded like automatons.
Inside those incubation pods?
Hawk.
Rows and rows of Hawk.
Every age group—Hawk as a boy, a youth, a man.
His Sixth Sense swept the place without ripples. He felt no anger—only an absurdity rising from the gut.
The next second—
He didn't hesitate.
Boom!
Heat-lanced Phoenix rays punched down from his gaze. A neat round hole opened underfoot, the beam drilling inward through the strata.
Hawk dropped after it—fast—until the blast cracked the laboratory's great dome with a resounding thud. He descended through the breach, hovering in midair inside the mountain's cavernous lab as the Phoenix fire poured down like a sun-lance behind him.
Sirens shrieked, knives in the air.
Below, one by one, expressionless techs looked up, reacting purely on reflex. When they saw him hovering over their heads, they… smiled. Then, as if under one will, they turned back to their consoles and pressed the self-destruct on the pods.
In the next instant—
A harsh orange glare bloomed behind the translucent casings. Fire, no longer contained, howled out.
Explosions rolled in sequence—boom, boom, boom, boom—
Tongues of orange-red flame, perfectly timed, chewed through pods and swallowed the staffers who stood their ground without a flicker of fear. Bursts linked across the room, merging into a single, ravenous front that crashed through the cloning floor.
In a blink, the entire bay was flooded with fire. Then it found the new vent—Hawk's entry hole—and roared upward like a living thing, belching into the open air.
On the Wailau ridgeline, the blaze burned like a torch.
Hawk didn't stop it.
Even if they hadn't hit the self-destruct, he would have. All they did was spare him the handwork.
Besides—
These were small fry. He wasn't in the mood to talk.
Wrapped in the inferno yet untouched by it, Hawk hovered within the flames and cast his gaze toward the blast doors that had slammed down around the cloning wing the moment the alarms triggered. His eyes swept—then locked on one in particular.
"Ocular Burst."
Boom!
The door shattered. The rampaging fire, as if a second throat had opened, found the path and came screaming through the breach into the corridor beyond.
A heartbeat later—
Screams tore out of the passage. Eight security men in full kit, just arriving, met the onrushing fire and turned into staggering, flailing torches. They dropped their weapons with strangled cries and ran.
That corridor led to the memory-imprinting wing.
Rows of clones sat in custom chairs, helmet-rigs nesting over their heads. Their eyes jittered beneath closed lids. Faces twitched.
Like the incubation floor, lab coats tended the room.
Unlike the dead-eyed workers next door, these ones had more… "humanity." They'd heard the alarms and the blasts—but kept chatting, like nothing could touch them.
Until—
Six flaming men stumbled out of the corridor, howling. Panic finally cracked the staffers' calm.
The first man out went to his knees—a burning shape. His right hand, aflame, lifted once, as if pleading. His throat worked. No words came.
Then Hawk arrived.
Foop—
A clean Phoenix lash—and the pleading man became vapor. Hawk—still in a gentleman's suit, not a thread singed—looked over the shocked faces in the imprinting room and smiled.
"Surprise."
His eyes glowed red again. Phoenix heat washed the bright chamber in a crimson veil.
Ten seconds later—
The memory-imprinting bay was pristine. No clones. No techs. No corpses. Only rows of empty chairs and scattered devices to prove the crowd that had been here.
A crowd.
Hawk plucked up one helmet—in essence a big VR visor—arched a brow, and set it on his head.
Instantly—
Slides flickered: a newborn dumped at a church door; a child singing with a choir; a kid in foster care; a boy kneeling amid ruins, roaring his vow to grow strong…
His "memories."
But—
Edited. Familiar-and-wrong. As if someone had studied his past, then fabricated it by hand.
He tugged off the visor and tossed it aside.
Two words for that script:
Moron bait.
A searing red flooded the bay.
Hawk moved, vanishing between heartbeats.
The next second—
Boom!
The room erupted like a volcano; a blossom of force erased the imprinting wing.
"Did it work?"
In the most hidden, silver-walled control room of that spiderweb complex, a wall of monitors showed the memory wing roaring under the flames.
A tall, thin man in glasses and a lab coat—Dr. Merrick—spoke up, fear and hope mixed in his voice.
The tech at the keyboard said nothing. He pulled up feeds from every corner, froze a pair of frames—Hawk in one, empty space in the next—then switched to another view. He finally pointed at the clone dormitory and answered without turning.
"No."
"Where did he go?"
"…The stasis wing."
The main screen filled with the sleeping bay.
Hundreds—thousands—of clones stood in transparent tubes. Naked, displayed like museum pieces. Or like tools awaiting use. Their breathing shallow; their heart rates forced low to keep them barely alive.
And Hawk—Hawk himself—stood in the center aisle.
He ghosted through the ranks, then stopped in the very middle, slowly turning in place, eyes taking in the forest of stasis pods—and all the "him"s asleep inside.
Then—
A sharp hiss.
Hawk looked toward the sound, head tilting.
Merrick's voice boomed through the stasis hall on the PA. "Mr. Hawk Phoenix. I didn't expect you to actually find us."
"…Merrick?"
"It's me."
"Heh."
Hawk laughed softly, glancing toward the speaker. "Not bad. I figured you'd be halfway through a panicked escape by now."
Merrick chuckled. "Why would I run? You may be terrifying, Mr. Phoenix, but I have God's favor. I serve God."
"Do you."
"Yes. How else do you think my cloning succeeded when others failed? I received God's oracle and guidance. The world is defiled. God has come—to evolve it."
"Then you'd better pray that when I lay hands on you, your God shows up to save you."
Hawk finished—and the Phoenix beam shot out again, lancing the wall speaker. He depressed the ray, sweeping a scythe through the room.
Stasis pods sublimated in the heat, along with the barely-maintained clones inside.
A blink later, the warehouse that had been packed to the rafters lay empty—wide enough to gallop a horse through.
"Tch—"
In the Eden Base command room, Merrick sucked air through his teeth as he watched Hawk stand alone in the vacant hall. He made his choice without a pause.
"Activate the HYDRA Captain."
"Yes, doctor!"
"And suit him in the replicated armor."
"Understood."
The HYDRA Captain—their most "successful" Hawk clone to date. Six earlier attempts had detonated on activation—parameters set too low or too high. This model had held.
Every subsequent batch was based on that "perfect" template.
It didn't take long.
Hawk had just cleaned another floor and turned to go when the deck nearby split open. A hidden stasis canister rose on a lift.
Mist boiled out as the lid cracked. Inside, Unit Seven snapped his eyes open.
The next instant—
The floor opened again. A full-scale combat suit unfurled toward Unit Seven like a blooming iron flower.
Hawk stopped, watching as the clone stepped into the frame. The armor sealed; behind the mask, a pair of eyes burned green at him.
Merrick's voice returned—proud. "Mr. Phoenix—meet the HYDRA Captain. My Hawk."
"HYDRA Captain?" Hawk glanced toward the source. "So—you work with your 'God' and with HYDRA?"
Merrick smiled. "I know what you want to say. You people call HYDRA 'evil,' but God doesn't see it that way. This partnership has His sanction."
Hawk's brows lifted. "Oh? And what did God say?"
"He said Earth has been seized by demons—that it must be evolved. He pardons HYDRA's missteps."
"Does he."
"As true as Gospel."
"Then once again—pray your God appears before I reach you."
"You should be praying our HYDRA Captain can defeat you first."
"Heh."
Hawk snorted, eyes sliding to the armored clone. "This? This is what half a year of tinkering gets you? You think this counterfeit can beat me?"
"Once you're dead, the HYDRA Captain will be the original."
"Cute. I don't buy it."
"Show Mr. Phoenix your strength," Merrick said. "HYDRA Captain."
Whummm—
Vibranium energy pulsed across the clone's chestplate.
The HYDRA Captain bent his knees; the metal deck spider-webbed beneath his feet as his armored bulk detonated forward like a shell.
Hawk lifted his right hand.
Shang!
His Sixth Sense cinched—and the charging clone froze midair like a frame paused on a screen.
Hawk flicked his wrist.
The "Captain" blasted backward like a shot, cratering the metal wall.
The next second—
Hawk pinched the air.
Before the clone could fall, he snapped forward on an invisible tether—whistling, yanked up to hover in Hawk's face.
Hawk smiled. He looked toward the ceiling speakers. "I'm sorry—what were you saying?"
In command, the technicians stared at the feed, eyes bulging. One swallowed and turned to Merrick.
"Im… impossible, Doctor."
"Our HYDRA Captain benchmarks at sixty-five percent parity," another babbled. "And he's in the armor."
"By the numbers, the Captain in-suit matches the data we compiled on Mr. Phoenix—out of suit."
"But…"
"This can't be happening!"
Merrick, who had been sure that even if the Captain couldn't win, at least he could make Hawk sweat, could only stare as Unit Seven—his ace—hung helpless in the air.
Hawk studied the masked face, the familiar-yet-strange eyes glowing within.
And then—
Boom.
In the time it took Merrick to blink, his prized HYDRA Captain—and the custom-matched armor—whiffed into white vapor.
"Any other cards, Dr. Merrick?"
"If you do, I'll give you the chance to play them."
"I gave you half a year to make something that would actually surprise me."
"But if that was your trump—trash like that—"
"Once again."
"Now would be a good time to start praying. Ask your God to come save you."
Hands sliding back into his pockets, Hawk lifted his chin toward the control room and offered the calm suggestion.
"This is impossible!" Merrick's voice cracked, raw. "The numbers don't lie! Without your Cloth, you shouldn't be able to beat my HYDRA Captain!"
Hawk snorted. The break in Merrick's tone told him everything.
No more cards. Or rather—the only card was the one he'd just snuffed between two fingers.
Numbers?
You can number my foot.
Obviously—
Merrick had matched raw physical metrics.
But—
Hawk's strength didn't come from muscle—or even from his Cloth. It came from his Small Cosmos.
The stronger his cosmos, the stronger he was.
So—
He didn't bother answering. He just smiled, a sliver of mockery on his mouth. "Start praying, Dr. Merrick. I'll give you the time. Make it quick, though—I'm on a schedule."
He vanished.
An eyeblink—
And on the wall of monitors, Merrick and the HYDRA operators watched Hawk appear in the armor R&D wing. One blink—and that section's personnel sublimated into nothing. A flicker—and he was in another bay.
A massacre without blood spread through the base like frost on glass.
Command fell silent except for the staccato of keys and the ragged breathing of men trying not to panic.
A HYDRA trooper at the back lowered his eyes, thumbed a quick message into his phone, then quietly eased the door open and slid out.
The latch clicked.
That small sound jolted the room.
In the next instant, every HYDRA man bolted for the exit as one.
Would God come?
They didn't know. They knew this:
If they didn't run now, when the Demon King reached command, there wouldn't be enough left of them for an urn.
But—
Too late.
…
(End of Chapter)
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