The next morning, Hawk was a ghost. He walked to the front desk of the cheap motel, his face an unreadable mask, and placed thirty dollars on the counter.
"Another day," he said, sliding his room key forward.
The clerk, barely looking up from his newspaper, took the money and the key, made a note in his ledger, and slid the key back. Hawk took it, gave a polite nod, and walked out into the crisp Virginia morning.
A short while later, he was just another anonymous figure on the mountain road that bordered the Quantico base, lost in a small crowd of local residents and off-duty soldiers getting in their morning run. Dressed in generic workout clothes and a baseball cap pulled low, he was utterly invisible. But while the others were focused on their breathing and their pace, Hawk's senses were fully engaged, his mind a supercomputer processing a torrent of data. He wasn't jogging; he was performing reconnaissance, his Cosmo-enhanced senses mapping the terrain, noting the patrol patterns, and feeling the subtle vibrations of vehicles moving within the base.
He waited for the perfect moment—a sharp turn in the road, a gap between the joggers ahead and the ones lagging behind. Without a hint of hesitation, he accelerated, veering off the path and vanishing into the dense forest. A whisper of rustling leaves was the only sign he had ever been there.
By the time he re-emerged from the woods and returned to his motel room, it was late afternoon. He sat on the edge of the stiff bed and pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket. Unfolding it revealed a meticulously hand-drawn topographical map of the Quantico Military Base's interior. Every key location was marked with symbols only he could understand: barracks, office buildings, the tank depot, the airfield. And there, on the outskirts, circled and marked with a star: the abandoned laboratory. He had spent the morning confirming its location and the afternoon moving like a phantom through the forest along the base's perimeter, identifying and sketching out three viable escape routes.
He stared at the map, memorizing every line, every notation. Then, with a methodical calmness, he tore the paper into tiny, indecipherable fragments and dropped them into the trash can. The map was no longer needed; it was now perfectly imprinted upon his memory.
As the sun began to dip below the horizon, painting the sky in fiery colors, Hawk went back to the front desk, returned the key, and completed his check-out. The clerk, having seen far stranger things in a transient town like this, didn't bat an eye at a guest leaving just a day after extending their stay.
Hawk walked to a nearby pizza place and ordered a large pepperoni. He sat by the window, eating slowly and deliberately. He could not, he reasoned, go into battle on an empty stomach. The thought of running out of energy halfway through a fight, or being too weak to escape, was a tragic absurdity he had no intention of experiencing. He was fueling the engine for his Cosmo.
When night had completely fallen, he was ready.
He moved through the dense forest under the cover of a moonless sky, a black-clad specter of impossible speed. The hooded jumpsuit he wore, a fortunate find from the trunk of the stolen taxi, concealed his form and blended with the shadows. He reached the edge of the base, stopping before a high-voltage protective fence that hummed with lethal energy.
He didn't rush in. He looked up, his gaze fixed on the towering sentinel tower, where a powerful searchlight cut a brilliant white swathe through the darkness, scanning its predetermined area with mechanical indifference. He waited, hidden behind a large tree, his breathing slow and steady. The moment the light swept past his position, he moved.
He didn't climb. He didn't cut the wire. He bent his knees, his Cosmo flaring for a split second as he coiled his power. The ground beneath his feet depressed under the immense strain. Then, he launched himself into the air. He sailed silently over the fence, a human roc soaring through the night, landing on the other side without so much as a whisper.
He was in. The rest would be easy. Find the lab. Dig for the Gammanian. Escape.
He flowed through the dark edges of the base, a blur moving from one patch of shadow to the next, his internal map guiding him flawlessly. A minute later, his destination came into view: the abandoned laboratory, a dilapidated structure surrounded by a high fence of corrugated iron, with a single guarded entrance.
He took cover behind a large shipping container a kilometer away, his eyes fixed on the two soldiers standing guard. They were relaxed, chatting, their rifles held loosely. They had no idea that a force beyond their comprehension was watching them from the darkness.
Hawk closed his eyes, exhaling a final, steadying breath. Time to go.
BOOM!
The grass beneath his feet was blasted away as he exploded from his hiding spot. A sonic boom ripped through the night's tranquility as he crossed the kilometer in the blink of an eye, a living cannonball of focused intent.
The two soldiers, their conversation cut short by a sudden, terrifying pressure wave, didn't even have time to turn their heads.
Thump! Thump!
Two precise, non-lethal strikes to the back of their necks, and they crumpled to the ground, unconscious. They hadn't fired a shot. They could live.
Hawk slipped through the gap in the corrugated iron fence and stopped dead.
"Shit," he muttered, his eyes narrowing. In front of the old, explosion-scarred lab building stood two more soldiers. His daytime recon couldn't see past the outer fence. The security was layered.
His sudden appearance in the "secure" area shocked the two inner guards out of their complacency.
"Who is it!?"
"Enemy attack! Sound the alarm!"
One of the soldiers reached for an alarm button while the other raised his rifle and, without hesitation, pulled the trigger, a burst of automatic fire tearing through the night.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
A piercing, base-wide alarm suddenly screamed to life, shattering the night's tranquility.
But the bullets found only empty air.
The moment they fired, Hawk vanished. In the next instant, he reappeared directly in front of them, his face an expressionless mask, his eyes as cold as the void.
The two soldiers outside hadn't pulled the trigger. They were allowed to keep their lives.
These two… they had made a fatal mistake.
Hawk's right hand lashed out, a blur of motion in the flashing red light of the now-active alarm system, striking the two soldiers whose faces were frozen in a mask of pure shock.