Brooklyn. Midnight.
You stood on a rooftop overlooking an abandoned construction site—steel frames twisting into the night sky. Below, floodlights flickered. Metal groaned. And something was breathing, heavy and unstable.
Pulse adjusted the comms in his ear beside you. "Echo says we're close. He's down there."
You nodded, fingers flexing. The familiar buzz of electricity crawled under your skin, waiting to be used. But there was a different tension tonight. The mission felt... wrong. The air vibrated with something primal.
"Name's Samson Creed," Pulse said. "Was a radiation tech at a Banner-adjacent blacksite. Got caught in a meltdown."
"And now?"
"Now, he melts everything."
You dropped down first, landing on cracked concrete. The heat struck you immediately—wavy, humid air rising from warped ground. Burn marks stretched across support beams and scaffolding. Half-melted safety gear lay scattered like broken bones.
Then you heard it.
A low, guttural growl—like something caught between man and beast.
You moved forward cautiously.
And then he stepped out.
Samson was over seven feet tall. His skin glowed faint green beneath patches of cracked, dry muscle. His eyes glimmered, not with anger—but confusion. Every breath he took steamed the air.
"Who..." he growled, voice heavy and fractured. "Why... follow me?"
"We're not here to hurt you," you said, hands raised. "You need help."
He tilted his head. "You... feel like me. Different... but same."
Pulse dropped behind you. "He can sense your power. That's not good."
Before you could speak again, Samson's back arched—gamma radiation flaring across his arms. The steel beneath him melted. He screamed—not in rage, but in pain.
"IT WON'T STOP!" he roared.
He lunged.
You dodged, barely, and felt the heat whip past your face. He was faster than expected, slamming into a concrete pillar that exploded in shrapnel.
You flipped backward, sparks igniting across your fingers. You fired electricity from your palms, blasting his side.
He staggered—but didn't fall.
Instead... he absorbed it.
Your eyes widened. "No..."
Samson's hands crackled with your lightning now—unstable, wild. He looked at them with childlike confusion.
"Y-You... gave it to me?" he muttered.
Pulse shouted, "He's copying you! You're feeding him!"
Samson's body began twitching, limbs jerking erratically. The copied energy didn't settle—it spiked, warping with the gamma that already ravaged his system.
"HURTS—!" he bellowed, and threw his arms out in a wild arc.
The energy exploded.
You were thrown into a scaffold, ribs cracking on impact.
"Y/N!" Pulse yelled, rushing in and shielding you with a pulse blast of his own.
Samson collapsed briefly, twitching. You could see it now: he wasn't trying to kill you.
He was just trying to survive.
But the storm in his body was going to kill everyone—himself included