Buildings were collapsing.
Inside the Quantico military base, as streaks of black light pierced through one side of buildings and out the other, structures began to crumble one after another.
People were screaming.
In the chaos of the base—especially in the family housing area—countless men and women, faces stricken with panic, screamed as they evacuated.
Even the sky seemed to weep.
All across the base, pillars of fire shot upward, painting the air a fiery red.
The earth trembled.
As the collapsing buildings crashed to the ground with thunderous roars, the immense impact split the ground with cracks.
From the moment Hawke entered to now, barely half an hour had passed, and this military base—set in the heartland of the Federation—already looked more like a battlefield than Afghanistan.
Armored vehicles priced in the millions lay scattered, burning and twisted into scrap.
Tanks priced in the tens of millions had their barrels snapped; they too burned and died where they stood.
Even fighter jets priced in the hundreds of millions of dollars…
Uh.
There were no fighters left at the base; every jet that had taken off ended up the same as the armor and the tanks—exploded and reduced to scrap.
Obviously:
when violence speaks, money falls silent.
"Ah—God!"
"Fire, fir—"
"Boom!"
Expressionless, Hawke slapped a terrified, shouting soldier who was firing at him and sent him flying. He glanced down at the chalky marks the bullets had left on his skin, then looked up at the rest of the troops facing him.
To be precise: at the soldiers who were tossing down their weapons and turning to run.
Hawke cast them a sidelong glance, felt the rounds striking his back, and in the instant he turned, his figure vanished from where he stood.
"Ah!"
"Shut up."
Hawke spread the fingers of his right hand and squeezed lightly, expressionless, bursting a soldier's head. Ignoring the blood spattering his body, his eyes remained flat as he watched yet another group fling away their guns and bolt.
He didn't chase them.
He might have been on a killing tear—conservatively, the base's economic losses in this half hour were already in the billions of dollars—
But…
Hawke could say in good conscience that he was still holding to his line.
He killed only those who tried to kill him.
After half an hour of contact, the base's troops had clearly figured that out. So once the APCs were aflame, the tanks were exploding, and the fighters were done for—when it came their turn, aside from a few who'd lost their heads and fired at Hawke, most only shouldered their rifles without even flipping the safeties.
Thus, when Hawke appeared before them, they gratefully took the out: drop the weapon, scream, turn and run.
In a word:
surrender and you won't die.
And in fact, Hawke made no move against those who threw down their arms and fled.
He didn't want to rack up needless kills.
This worked.
Everyone understood without saying.
He had come to Quantico today to do three things.
Thaddeus Ross.
Abomination.
And…
to flaunt his might.
And now?
After Hawke cut down another dozen soldiers who had actually fired on him, the gunfire around the base faded for good. Everywhere he looked, all he saw were the backs of soldiers who had dropped their weapons and were scattering in all directions.
Clearly,
the show of force was sufficient. Two tasks remained.
So Hawke thought as he tore a bloody uniform off a fallen soldier and used it to wipe the blood from his face. Expressionless, he strolled—almost leisurely—toward the base's command center that sat within his line of sight, through a landscape of fires and ruins.
By now, almost no building in the base was intact.
Only the command center still stood.
A fighter jet had even been on course to crash into it; seeing that both jet and building were about to be lost, Hawke had kicked the aircraft aside.
That wasn't mercy.
It was because—
as anyone who's eaten a proper meal knows—your main dish comes out last, and you eat it last.
The people inside weren't fools. When they saw Hawke boot that jet away, they realized he planned to save them for last.
They didn't sit and wait for death.
They tried to run.
Too bad they couldn't.
With all five senses opened to the limit, Hawke gave the VIPs in the command center no chance to escape. The APCs and tanks that died less than fifty meters from the building's front steps were proof enough.
Even so, the command center wasn't an island.
Far from it.
In front of the building, dozens of soldiers formed a human wall, leveling the "equalizer of all men" at Hawke.
Tap.
Tap.
Amid the base's noisy silence, Hawke wiped the blood from his face as he walked toward them, each step ringing clear. Every time his foot fell, it left a bloody print.
Prints from far to near, until the footsteps ceased.
He stopped before the command center's doors, finished wiping his forearms clean, then casually dropped the bloody uniform at his feet and set his right boot down on the star-spangled patch.
The thud of the uniform hitting the ground made the door guards flinch.
Seeing Hawke's boot on the stars-and-stripes emblem broke their nerve entirely.
They kept their equalizers trained on the bare-chested man before them—hands in pockets, muscles like iron—
But they didn't dare fire, no matter how the VIPs screamed in their earpieces.
They weren't stupid.
If they hadn't been slow and ordered to "protect" those big shots, they'd already have run with the rest.
Besides, they'd seen it with their own eyes: drop your gun and the man wouldn't touch you.
So—
Fire?
Are you crazy? Who risks his life for a monthly paycheck?
They were soldiers for capital, not soldiers of faith.
They just hadn't found their chance to—
Right then,
Hawke eyed the human wall blocking his way—guns so "in sync" they didn't even have the safeties off—and let out a soft chuckle.
"Heh."
Clatter!
"Ah!"
"Oh God!"
"Help!"
As if rehearsed, the human wall broke the instant he chuckled: the soldiers dropped their weapons in perfect unison, then shrieking and howling, they scattered like smoke on the wind.
A faint breeze passed.
The command center's door stood open.
The VIPs inside were dumbstruck.
Hawke laughed.
Unabashed, delighted.
"Hahaha!"
"…"
Watching the feed on the big screen—Hawke standing below, laughing with his back to the carcasses of APCs, tanks, and men—the faces inside went from ashen to trembling.
Not with rage.
With fear.
They had realized that to Hawke, their lives were no more precious than those of the soldiers outside, and certainly not more precious than the millions spent on APCs, the tens of millions on tanks, or the hundreds of millions on jets.
At least, not in his eyes.
As they shook under his laughter, Hawke stopped grinning on the screen. His gaze went glacial as he stared at the command center camera—like he could see them through it.
The next second,
his voice, stripped of all emotion, entered their ears:
"Either you hand over Thaddeus Ross,
"or I go in there and kill you.
"You have one minute."
"Sixty.
"Fifty-nine…"
Hawke didn't give them time to react. He began the sixty-second countdown at once.
Killing isn't the point.
He would kill—and also break their will.
Most of all, he would convince himself.
When the minute ended, if they hadn't delivered Ross, he could tell himself they were shielding him—and then their deaths would be on them.
It didn't matter what others thought, so long as he was at peace with himself.
Mm.
Gwen had said it: be someone who can face your own heart.
So Hawke thought.
Soon,
as he stood hands-in-pockets blocking the command center doors and hit the last twenty seconds of his count, shouting, sobbing, cursing, and scuffling broke out inside.
Hawke arched a brow.
The corner of his mouth lifted into something very close to a sneer.
He didn't stop counting—but when he reached eight, he chose to halt.
Not because he'd decided anything, but because the big shots had decided for him.
Thud!
The once high-and-mighty Thaddeus Ross—who looked every bit the upright man, the same man who had turned Manhattan into a battlefield in his hunt for the Hulk—was shoved out by other "upright" men just like him.
The gray-haired Ross misstepped, fell on the stairs, and tumbled down with an involuntary scream, coming to a stop at Hawke's feet.
Ross struggled to rise.
At that moment—
Thud!
"Argh!"
Hawke lifted his right foot from the uniform and set it on Ross's head. With a slight press, he pinned him face-down again.
Hawke bent at the waist a little, eyes narrowed, looking at the gray-haired man under his boot.
"Thaddeus Ross."
"Argh!"
Ross's pallid face flushed crimson as he roared, palms braced on the ground, trying to wrench himself free from under Hawke's foot.
Unfortunately…
it was futile.
(End of chapter)
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