When the second HYDRA trooper fumbled the door open to bolt down the emergency egress…
He froze the instant the door swung wide. Hawk was already there. The trooper's pupils dilated visibly.
Hawk smiled—polite as ever. "Hi there. I'm looking for Dr. Merrick."
"Mr. Phoe—"
Foop.
The HYDRA trooper sublimated on the spot.
Everyone stacked up behind him—half-turning, half-panicking, wondering why the line wasn't moving—saw a sheet of searing crimson bloom. One by one, every man choking the doorway flashed to white vapor and was gone.
In a blink, the jam vanished.
Pristine. As if no crowd had ever been there.
But Dr. Merrick was already running.
While most HYDRA personnel swarmed the main exit, he and his core aides dropped by hidden lift to the lowest level.
The "rock face" doors parted.
A small cove opened ahead—an underground tidal basin. A speedboat floated there, tethered.
Merrick and his aide stepped out in a rush.
"Eli, cast off the lines."
"Yes, Doctor."
Eli—sprung from a S.H.I.E.L.D. prison alongside Merrick—sprinted to unlash the mooring.
Merrick went straight for the water with a graceless splash, clawed onto the boat, and scrambled aboard.
At a time like this, dignity was a luxury.
Between looks and a life, he knew which to pick.
He also knew another truth: when you run, be fast, be clean—take no dead weight.
"Doctor, lines are—"
Crack.
Eli's eyes went wide. He clutched his chest, staring at the spreading red through his shirt, then looked up at the pistol leveled his way—from Dr. Merrick.
"Doc—"
"Sorry." Bang.
Thud.
Eli took a second bullet between the eyes and toppled backward.
Merrick said nothing more. He punched the ignition; the motor snarled. The boat leapt forward, knifing out of the sea cave. As the prow cleared daylight, Merrick yanked a trigger from his pocket and slammed his thumb down.
Boom.
The tunnel mouth erupted.
Not just the tunnel—
The mountain itself shuddered like a living thing caught by a sudden chill.
Then—detonation.
Boom!
The first blast tore the surface skin free in a volcano-like spasm—no lava, just timber and rock spewing upward like an inverted downpour.
Boom!
A second, heavier concussion followed. The internal base collapsed; the outer structure sheared and reconfigured. A ring-shaped shock front rolled outward, and gray wind ripped across the water.
Merrick never looked back.
He pushed his glasses up with the back of a knuckle—very much the "men don't look at explosions" pose.
Truth was simpler.
He didn't dare look. He was terrified of seeing Hawk—untouched—coming for him across the sky.
So he didn't look. He only thought one thought:
Faster. Faster.
He wrung every knot he could from the engine, the speedboat bolting like a loosed stallion across the endless Pacific.
Past sunset. Past the horizon swallowing Moloka'i. Until the last jerrycan ran dry and the engine coughed into silence, leaving only the chop and the moon.
Exhausted, Merrick collapsed to the deck with a graceless thud.
He peered back toward the dark horizon. No Moloka'i. No Hawk.
He exhaled in a long, ragged gust.
Then he slammed a fist into the deck, once, twice, three times—venting.
"Fuck!"
"Fuck!"
"Fuck—my models don't fail!"
He couldn't square it. Six rounds of calibration. A "perfect" clone template. The HYDRA Captain—his seventh unit—shouldn't have gone down without even throwing a punch.
It made no sense.
Before London, HYDRA's file on Hawk had been meticulous. After London… not so much. HYDRA's link to him—Anna Pierce—had vanished.
Still, they'd recovered enough to draw a conclusion from post-London combat footage of the "Cloth."
Hawk's combat output split in two states: out of Cloth vs. in Cloth.
HYDRA's data backed it up.
Out of Cloth, Hawk's physical metrics capped around a Captain America (Steve Rogers) profile.
In the Cloth, his output spiked off the chart—several recorded strikes were made in-armor; the energy was explosive.
Conclusion—
The Cloth was the key.
They'd replicated it—more or less. Vibranium plus meteoric alloy, forged under a gamma bath, produced a strange coupling. Not equal to their earlier projections for Hawk's true Cloth, but with vibranium power-tech (liberated from Wakanda), their exo-suit could stand in the same arena.
The clones, though… the clones were the problem.
Five prior units had detonated the moment the armor's vibranium power came online. Their bodies couldn't act as the sink. Every time the suit spooled up, the wearer burst like a fruit.
So Merrick pivoted.
Super Soldier Serum.
They didn't have Erskine's original formula—but thanks to General Thaddeus "Thunderbolt" Ross and his years of obsession, they had workable variants.
After one more failure, they built a clone whose musculature and skeleton—augmented by serum—benchmarked at roughly 60% of Hawk's physical metrics.
They named him the HYDRA Captain.
Still far from the original, yes. But add their suit. Even if the clone could only channel half the armor's peak output, the vibrational amplitude, plus vibranium blades and a HYDRA vibranium shield—sim showed clean wins over Hawk, again and again.
Dreams were sweet. Reality was savage.
Hawk had proven a basic fact:
Bootlegs are still bootlegs.
If the real Hawk was 4K native, the HYDRA Captain was a 270p camrip recorded from the back row.
Merrick couldn't accept it.
Hawk—standing at the stern rail, Reality Stone having neatly edited Merrick's perception so he couldn't notice the man behind him—watched the director rave, then sulk, then pound the deck, then cackle, then curse.
He'd watched long enough to be sure this was the real Dr. Merrick.
He hadn't announced himself for one reason: to see whether any "angel" would show.
The "fight" hadn't even warmed him up. It was over too fast.
As for the HYDRA Captain—
Strip the gear and talk flesh? The clone hadn't even reached one percent of Hawk's current out-of-Cosmos strength.
A Saint who has awakened the Sixth Sense—Silver Small Cosmos—can uproot mountains and split seas.
Literally.
That clone? Without the HYDRA tin can, he'd struggle to punch through a wall of C140 concrete.
So—
Hawk still had adrenaline to spare. He wanted to see whether the "God" who supposedly favored Merrick would answer a prayer. If an angel appeared, great—one more head for the pile. If fortune really smiled—perhaps even Yahweh, for a proper feast.
Yes, he'd grown up in a church. Yes, he'd sung in a choir. Yes, he and Gwen did charity at the local parish.
None of that meant "God" could throw rocks at him without consequence.
As he'd told Gwen: why grind a lifetime to test into Heaven when you can kill Yahweh and break in? Gwen wanted a Heaven. Mephisto wanted Yahweh's head. Perfect alignment. So Hawk had shadowed Merrick to see if "God" would bite.
Now—Hawk watched the man on the deck swing between laughter and tears and "this is impossible," and he was almost tempted to pop up and suggest, gently, that prayer time had begun.
He was getting impatient.
Just as he was about to speak, Merrick jolted upright like a man struck by lightning. He patted himself down, frantic, face blanching as his hands found nothing.
"My bag—my bag—"
He dropped to his knees, feeling over the deck planks with shaking hands.
Hawk glanced at a backpack by his foot, arched a brow, bent, and held it out. "Here."
"Oh—God. Thank you."
Merrick took the bag automatically, glanced at Hawk, muttered thanks—and unzipped it. He pulled out an ordinary-looking red apple, glossy and… bitten. He set the pack down, cradled the apple in both hands, and exhaled in a long shiver.
"Thank Heaven…"
His words trailed. He stiffened. His head turned mechanically, eyes widening like a wind-up doll's.
Hawk beamed at him. "Hello."
Then plucked the bitten red apple from Merrick's hands.
Merrick froze.
Then he snapped—lunging like a rabid dog, trying to rip the apple back. "Give—"
Click.
Hawk flicked a thought. Telekinetic lock. Merrick froze mid-pounce, frozen in the air.
Hawk rolled the apple in his palm.
He hadn't noticed the backpack earlier.
But now—
He felt something in the fruit. Not an Infinity Stone—but… akin to the flavor of god-stuff.
A divine object.
He looked from the apple to Merrick. A thought tugged. His brows went up. "This wouldn't be that apple, would it? The one Adam and Eve bit in Eden?"
The old story—Adam and Eve in the Garden. Naked, carefree. A snake's whisper. A bite from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Shame. Expulsion.
Which would make this—
The Fruit of Knowledge?
He didn't wait for Merrick to answer; he didn't need to hear the man's version. Hawk poured his Sixth Sense into the apple.
A soft hum—like a membrane popping.
Hawk's mind slipped into a round space with a missing wedge.
And saw—
Crowds.
Not bodies—souls.
Packed wall to wall. Not the restless, gnashing shades of the Hell Dimension—these souls were clean. Paper-white. As if factory-reset.
New-made, unmarked souls.
Hawk blinked out of the space and eyed Merrick again. "So that's why your clones 'worked.' You fed them souls from this place—gave the bodies a soul kernel to hang a self on."
Like the parable—
Not shame, but selfhood. Not "good and evil," but spirit. Bite the apple; receive a soul. With a soul comes 'I.' With 'I' comes everything that follows.
So—
"Not a knowledge apple," he said softly. "A soul apple."
He didn't hesitate. His cosmos flared; he flicked the apple into his Netherworld.
Spoils of war.
Thank you kindly, "God." With this? Even if he hadn't struck a bargain with Mephisto, even if he never cracked open "Heaven," once he manifested his cosmos into reality, he'd have seed-stock for first life in his universe.
Hawk smiled and released Merrick from the telekinetic lock.
Thud—
Still mid-lunge, Merrick pitched forward and smashed his forehead on the deck.
He still went for the apple, face bloody, stumbling toward Hawk in a raw panic. "Give it back—that was God's—"
Whack.
Hawk ghosted. Merrick flailed through the afterimage, smashed into the gunwale, and flipped headfirst over the rail.
Splash.
He surfaced sputtering, kicking frantically. The salt stung his new cuts; it sobered him. He stared up at Hawk, who stood easy on the deck.
"Hawk—"
"You may pray now, Dr. Merrick. I will grant you the hope of intercession."
Hands in his pockets, Hawk smiled down at the man in the black water. "Five minutes. Enough time for your God to show up—or to dispatch an angel to fish you out."
Night had fallen; the ocean had gone cold.
Merrick trembled, teeth chattering. "Mr… no—Mr. Phoenix, I was wrong. HYDRA forced me. They made me clone you. I'm sorry. Please—mercy."
Hawk's smile brightened. "I asked you to pray to your God, Dr. Merrick. Not to me. I am not your God. The clock is running. Pray."
He looked away, down at the sweep second hand ticking across his watch face.
Five minutes meant five minutes.
That was all he'd give "God"—either show up and explain, or Hawk would go up to Heaven and ask in person.
…
(End of Chapter)
[Check Out My P@treon For +20 Extra Chapters On All My Fanfics!!][[email protected]/euridome]
[Thank You For Your Support!]