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General Ross kept his expression stone-cold, but inside his mind was racing.
The reports from his scientists had just confirmed his deepest suspicions. An image coalesced in his mind.
Captain America. Steve Rogers.
To this day, the only successful recipient of the Super Soldier Serum. The peak of human potential.
The military had never given up on recreating the serum.
But ever since Dr. Abraham Erskine was assassinated, the true formula had been lost to history.
One thing, however, was certain.
The real Super Soldier Serum required gamma radiation.
That was the root cause of the Hulk's creation. Bruce Banner had been a military scientist, working on that very project, when the accident happened.
And that accident had given General Ross hope. Even if the Hulk was uncontrollable.
But now—
A human, with no discernible non-human characteristics.
Inhuman reaction time.
Superhuman strength and agility.
And the complete absorption of all gamma radiation.
Ross was now certain. The intruder had come for one thing: the gamma.
And when he put the pieces together, the conclusion was inescapable.
This was the Super Soldier he had been searching for.
"Find him."
"At any cost."
Ross's right hand clenched into a fist. He stared at the ruins of the gamma lab, not with anger, but with a terrifying, all-consuming excitement.
...
Hawk had no idea he had just become the new obsession of General Ross, the man who had once chased Bruce Banner across the globe.
But even if he knew, he wouldn't care.
Because Hawk was already gone. He wasn't just out of Quantico, he wasn't even in the D.C area anymore.
Right now, Hawk was at the bottom of a waterfall.
ROOOOAR!
The water thundered down, a relentless, liquid avalanche. It crashed onto the figure of Hawk, who was sitting cross-legged in the churning pool, wearing only a pair of shorts, his eyes closed.
But as the water, heavy as falling rock, slammed into his body, it seemed to vaporize on impact, shrouding him in a cloud of white mist.
He was in Cunningham Falls State Park, deep in the mountains of Maryland.
It was a place few people ever ventured.
Hawk had been here for over twenty days.
And for twenty days, he had been doing only one thing.
Burning his Cosmo.
Within his inner universe, the star chart of the Phoenix constellation now blazed with a brilliant light, the phantom image of a fiery bird shimmering within it.
He wasn't in a rush to return to New York.
For one thing, the school's summer session hadn't started yet. For another, he wanted to let the dust settle.
Hawk was curious to see if the military, after the mess he'd made at Quantico, could actually find him here.
If they couldn't, he would head back to New York.
And if they could? He wasn't worried.
He had chosen this spot for a reason. Five miles in any direction was nothing but dense forest.
It was the perfect place for a battle. The perfect place to kill.
Some people only respect force. You can't reason with them, you can only beat them into submission. You have to break them, instill a fear so deep that obedience becomes their only option.
You know what they say.
When the U.S. military accuses you of having weapons of mass destruction, you damn well better have them.
Why??
Because if you truly have them, no one will risk laying a hand on you.
But if you're just bluffing, well, then they're going to come at you with everything they've got.
So—
Hawk had deliberately chosen this remote location as his potential battlefield. If the military found him, the war would start here. He would break them, crush their will to fight, and then casually head back to New York.
But twenty days had passed.
He hadn't seen a single soldier. He hadn't seen a single person at all.
It didn't matter.
His primary reason for being here wasn't to wait for the military.
It was the waterfall itself.
Hawk was using the relentless, crushing force of the water to push himself past his limits, to finally and completely ignite the Phoenix star chart within his Cosmo.
For the past twenty days, his routine had been simple.
During the day, he would throw his ten thousand punches against the crushing resistance of the waterfall. At night, he would shut down his five senses, sit cross-legged in the pool, and let the 24/7 torrent of water hammer against his body, while he reached inward, searching for the door to the Sixth Sense.
Technically, a Bronze Saint wasn't considered a true Saint.
The legendary five were the exception, of course.
Only a Saint who had awakened and mastered the Sixth Sense was worthy of the title.
Hawk wasn't expecting to master it now.
That was unrealistic. But he had time. And if he was lucky, he might just brush against the edges of it.
The Sixth Sense was a game-changer!
A Saint with the Sixth Sense and a Saint without it were on completely different levels of existence.
It was the gateway to True power.
With it, a Saint could manipulate the elements, see the future, move objects with their mind, fly, create illusions... the possibilities were endless.
But alas.
Forget awakening it. He hadn't even found the doorknob.
Hawk slowly opened his eyes. He rose from the water, his body as immovable as a mountain, the crushing weight of the waterfall having no effect on him.
His blood was boiling, a furnace of heat radiating from his skin, turning the surrounding water into a cloud of steam.
And within that cloud, the fiery, spectral image of a phoenix shimmered into existence behind him.
Yes.
The Phoenix.
In the twenty-plus days he had been here, the military hadn't come, and he hadn't found the gateway to the Sixth Sense.
But he had accomplished his main objective.
Hawk had successfully ignited his first constellation.
One of the forty-eight Bronze constellations.
The Phoenix!
The next second, Hawk looked at the curtain of falling water before him and threw his first punch of the day.
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