Henry was knocked unconscious and hospitalized, but he left after just one day.
Most people regarded the incident as a sudden medical emergency. Probably the only person who vaguely suspected that something else was going on behind the scenes was John Wick.
However, unless Henry took the initiative to contact the Continental, there was nothing anyone else could do, even if they wanted to offer their help for free and earn a favor in return.
As for John Wick, Henry's decision wasn't particularly difficult to understand. After all, an Elder of the High Table was living in his house...
Oh, no. She was renting a room from him.
With an Elder backing him, wouldn't any problem be easily resolved?
Truly resolved with a blade!
If Henry knew what John Wick was thinking, he could only say that this black-market assassin's perspective extended only this far. There was no point demanding that he understand matters on a higher level.
Henry had never intended to expose the truth or broaden the legendary assassin's horizons.
Helping him out in the future and dealing with the ever-growing troubles that accumulated like a snowball wouldn't be a problem. But as for whether he should drag John into the troubles Henry himself might become involved in, Henry had no such intention.
Not everyone was obligated to save the world.
Henry's approach was simply to find a way to eliminate trouble before it became entangled with him.
In short, everything appeared to have returned to normal.
Only those who could enter the secret base knew just how abnormal things actually were.
The awakened Kryptonian looked as though he had gone completely berserk. Every time he arrived at the secret base, he did nothing but investigate the movements of one particular person.
He had even set up a clue board, constantly cutting and pasting information onto it.
Whenever he had some spare time, he stayed in the Mountain Boar armor's section, tinkering away.
The armor's completion level had been quite low when it was first deployed against the Green Goblin. To some extent, it had been hastily thrown together.
After going through an actual battle—and with Spider-Man serving as his opponent—those combat experiences naturally became the basis for further improvements and upgrades.
The person Henry needed to deal with now was even more troublesome: a U.S. military special forces unit that weaponized mutants.
Based on the clues from the movies, he already knew about the Master of Illusion and Deathstrike.
But Henry wouldn't dare guarantee that more mutants wouldn't appear.
After all, based on his previous experiences, related incidents always seemed to drag more mutants into the mess. They weren't necessarily stronger, but the diversity of their abilities alone was enough to create more variables.
Only two or three minor characters appeared in the movie because of limitations involving the budget and runtime.
Reality didn't have those constraints.
Just consider the number assigned to the Master of Illusion under William Stryker.
He was Mutant No. 143.
Wolverine's number in the Weapon X program was No. 10, which meant there had been another 133 mutants modified between the two numbers.
Assuming a ten-percent success rate for weaponization and perfect control, that meant at least thirteen people could potentially become problems.
Even if the success rate fell to one in twenty, there would still be six or seven.
To deal with an army like that, Henry naturally needed to make more preparations.
Relying on his own abilities to simply crush everyone would be a stupid approach. It was no different from allowing himself to be used to assassinate the president of the United States.
Either way, he would expose himself to the public and leave himself with no way out.
The solution Henry wanted had always been one that allowed him to retreat unscathed and preserve his normal life.
Unless absolutely necessary, he wasn't going to take the final step.
Unfortunately, Henry's current obsession had frightened the few others who also frequented the secret base.
Gilgamesh ate one of the large pizzas Henry had made sure to keep stocked over the past few days and asked,
"Need any help? You look like you've got quite a grudge."
"No. This is a personal matter. I don't want to drag you guys into it. Besides..."
Henry casually stuffed another piece of pizza into his mouth and smiled.
"If I don't handle something like this myself, it won't be nearly as satisfying."
Standing in front of the information wall, Cassandra examined someone's photograph.
"Looks like this guy really pissed you off. Are you sure it's him? This William Stryker."
While adjusting the way Isu energy technology was being utilized in the Mountain Boar armor, Henry explained,
"You saw the surveillance footage from outside Hepburn's house. The day I collapsed, that group was standing at the door."
"The Stryker father and son, along with a group of soldiers. But the surveillance footage doesn't show what they actually did. Can that really be considered evidence?"
"As legal evidence, of course not. But it's more than enough for me to determine who was causing me trouble and what they were."
"How so?" Cassandra asked curiously.
"Jason Stryker was once a student at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. That's the most obvious piece of evidence."
"A student at a school?" Cassandra was puzzled.
"The headmaster of that school is Charles Xavier, also known as Professor X. The school is actually the headquarters of the X-Men, and they only accept one kind of student."
"Mutants, right?"
"Hey, you're pretty smart. Got it in one."
"Don't be sarcastic. I can tell."
Cassandra casually flipped through the personal files pinned to the wall.
"But there isn't any information here about Jason Stryker's mutant ability. Didn't you hack into that school's servers?"
"I'd love to, but quite a lot of their records are still kept as traditional paper documents. No matter how good my hacking skills are, there's nothing I can do about that. What caught my attention, though, was that guy's mother—William Stryker's wife."
"What about her? Hmm... According to the records, she died. Cause of death... suicide. Is there a problem with that?"
Henry explained,
"The militaries of various countries place great importance on the stability of their personnel. Although it isn't an explicit regulation, the families of military personnel are also an important factor in evaluations, particularly for senior officers.
"If someone can't maintain a stable family, or is constantly dragging family disputes into court—or even into the military—from a certain perspective, that can be regarded as evidence of insufficient ability. It can potentially make promotion more difficult.
"Under those unspoken conditions, if the wife of a senior military officer committed suicide, then logically speaking, William Stryker shouldn't even have had the opportunity to rise to the rank of colonel.
"Yet he remained stuck at that position for a very long time without ever being promoted to general.
"That suggests his family had once met the requirements, but something went wrong later. Given that their child was able to attend a school for mutants, I don't believe they were the sort of parents who would be ashamed of having a mutant child.
"For a mother like that to commit suicide, I'd be more inclined to believe it was the result of the mutant ability. Of course, I can't rule out the possibility that it was concealed through administrative paperwork.
"Combined with what happened to me, I suspect Jason Stryker is a mutant with some form of mental-control ability.
"There is another piece of evidence supporting that theory.
"Regarding the day I collapsed, everyone from the building's security guards to our neighbors said that no one else had visited the Hepburn residence that day.
"That could very well mean their memories were altered by a psychic ability.
"Unfortunately for the people who did it, they may be able to alter human memories, but they can't alter machine records.
"The surveillance cameras outside the Hepburn residence and in the stairwell were installed privately by me. No one knows about them."
Keep polishing the chapter
Make the clue-board scene more vivid
Sharpen Henry's deduction
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