Somewhere, inside an unnamed laboratory.
This time, the difference between Henry and his infant self after crossing over was that he already possessed an invulnerable, steel-like body.
That meant the white coats who wanted to draw his blood, dissect him, or conduct similar procedures first had to find a way to break through his copper skin and iron bones.
If Henry were still an alien, these humans would naturally be helpless.
Unfortunately, he was currently a mutant. Once a power-suppression collar was fastened around his neck, he became a helpless test subject once more.
But no one should assume that humans would lose interest in Henry's abilities just because they had found a way to suppress them.
They could still think up countless experiments and perform them on this mutant one by one.
For example, they could suspend him over a fire and hold a human barbecue to see how much heat an invulnerable mutant could withstand.
Or they could use electricity to test how much voltage and current a human body could endure.
Noise tolerance, length of time before suffocation, resistance to corrosive or poisonous gases…
And so on.
With enough people putting their heads together, they could come up with entire sets of torturous experiments that did not even require cutting him open.
Furthermore, if they wanted to maximize the depletion of a person's ability to resist, one thing was inevitable:
Hunger.
In this illusionary world, Henry did not possess the Kryptonian physique. Naturally, he could not survive simply by basking in sunlight without eating.
The laboratory provided only a tiny amount of food, and the brutal treatment meant that Henry often had to lie flat on the floor and fight with the rats in the cells for his own meal.
To be honest, the treatment at the Red Empire's Siberian alien research facility had been much better than this.
There, aliens were assets.
Here, mutants were expendable supplies.
Henry was not the only mutant brought to this laboratory, either.
Many familiar faces he had seen in the mutant battalion had become the white coats' laboratory mice in the neighboring beds.
Quite a few of them had already been seriously wounded. Without receiving proper medical care, they were turned into experimental subjects beneath the white coats' microscopes.
After enduring only a few rounds of torment, they died.
Their final fate was neither burial nor cremation.
Instead, they were dismembered and taken apart.
Their organs and body parts were arranged and displayed one by one. Some were submerged in formalin, while others were turned into specimens.
One had to admit that the people of the Red Empire had been much more humane.
Henry had never enjoyed the treatment reserved for the Red Sons, the children of Stalin, but at least they had allowed him to grow to sixteen or seventeen with all his limbs intact before subjecting him to any particularly brutal treatment.
The purpose of this laboratory was to consume a living mutant completely.
Even the bone marrow had to be extracted, with every drop examined under a microscope.
And in the end, the mutant's fate was not to be swept into a garbage heap.
He would become a specimen.
Even in death, he was expected to provide value.
So what was the person controlling this illusionary world trying to accomplish by making Henry experience this "pleasant" life all over again?
Did they want to see Homelander, or perhaps the Batman Who Laughs?
Actually, Homelander's public image was still quite good. After all, Vought International's public-relations department was there to maintain it.
He had not yet reached the point of doing whatever he pleased. At most, he fit the definition of "hypocritical."
As for the Batman Who Laughs…
That thing, which lowered one's sanity just by thinking about it and had never even appeared in the comics, was something Henry did not know how to define.
In the middle of the night, curled up on his bed with hunger twisting his body, Henry thought about all this.
Perhaps I should just give them what they want…
He uncomfortably scratched at the mutant power-suppression collar around his neck and stared at a cockroach in the corner of the room.
Come to think of it, his diet had already expanded to include raw rats.
Should he now advance into the insect kingdom and begin exploring the order Blattodea?
An unusually violent explosion and tremor suddenly shattered the silence of the night.
Normally, at this hour, the only sounds would have been the moans of mutants whose injuries had not yet healed, waking in pain.
Explosions were highly unusual.
But Henry, who was so hungry that he did not even have the strength to curse, could not be bothered to care about the damned explosion.
An explosion is art. The people making art cannot afford to eat. Therefore, explosions are useless.
A perfect three-step syllogism.
It was not until the disturbance spread into their section, and people in the nearby cells began shaking their iron doors until they clanged loudly, that Henry finally lifted his eyelids slightly.
He had just begun to close his eyes again when a sound of someone smashing through a door rang out right beside him.
It was clearly his own cell door.
Henry had only just adjusted the angle of his head when he saw the iron door being violently smashed to the ground.
Chunks of concrete were still attached to it. Evidently, the door, its frame, and part of the concrete wall had all been destroyed together.
Standing in the doorway were none other than Magneto, Mystique, Sabretooth, and Toad.
There seemed to be more people behind them, but the hole left by the demolished doorway was not large enough to reveal anyone else.
Mystique entered Henry's cell first.
It was as though she did not recognize him. She spoke in a seductive voice while walking with the coquettish gait of a cat.
"Have all the young people today forgotten what the U.S. military did in Vietnam? You think they're cruel, but they're merely repeating things they've already done before.
"First, they get a bunch of fools to volunteer for military service. Then they find all kinds of excuses and use military law to strip them of their human rights, throwing mutants into laboratories.
"After that, they can conduct all kinds of experiments and use mutants as raw materials.
"If you ask me, these idiots should simply be left to fend for themselves. Even if we rescue them, given their intelligence, I doubt they'll be of much use."
Magneto, however, was not as calculating as Mystique.
He, too, acted as though he did not recognize Henry, but he spoke with his distinctive, forceful charisma.
"As long as they are our people, they are worth saving. Child, do you have the strength to walk out on your own?"
The last sentence was naturally directed at Henry.
Even though he was so hungry that his chest nearly touched his back, his instinct for survival—or perhaps simply the thought of finding something to eat—drove his weak and trembling legs.
Henry rose from the deeply uncomfortable bed and staggered out.
"Good boy," the older Magneto praised as he watched the scene unfold.
The struggle for survival was always worthy of respect.
Especially when he witnessed it in one of his own kind, it made him feel that saving the person was worthwhile.
In Magneto's eyes, there were no good people or bad people.
At most, there were comrades and obstacles.
Everything he did was simply an effort to lead the mutant race toward survival.
That was why he understood such struggles so well and recognized their value.
As soon as Henry approached the group, Magneto used his powers to dismantle the suppression collar around his neck.
Other comrades immediately stepped forward to support him.
The people led by Magneto, who had spearheaded the assault, naturally had no intention of helping anyone personally. They did not even seem to possess such a thought.
The ones supporting Henry were his comrades from the mutant battalion—people who had been imprisoned here alongside him.
Henry looked rather miserable.
Although the suppression collar had been removed, the wounds he had suffered while wearing it did not immediately heal.
After all, Henry's ability was merely imperviousness to blades and bullets.
He did not possess superhuman regeneration.
Together, the group left the mutant laboratory, where casualties were scattered everywhere.
No one spared a glance at the losses Magneto had inflicted upon the white coats and guards.
Even though blood covered the floor and bodies lay piled atop one another, they simply walked away.
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