Machine Head never intended Mark Grayson to leave his tower alive, he viewed him as a greater threat than normal heroes .
The ambush unfolded with the same brutal efficiency as Canon mercenaries flooding the penthouse, villains positioned like pressure points, Killcannon's artillery thundering through reinforced walls. But this Mark was not the uncertain young hero of another timeline. He moved with Viltrumite precision, blows placed to disable spines, shatter joints, rupture lungs without wasting motion.
He was winning, easily and surgically.
Then space folded.
Derrick stepped out between heartbeats, reality creasing like fabric around his silhouette.
Before Mark could turn, Derrick's arm split not outward, but inward compressing mass into a reinforced blade that bit.
A chunk of Mark's side vanished, flesh and blood torn free in absolute silence.
Mark screamed, once and reacted on instinct, fist detonating forward.
Derrick took the punch and went through three walls, concrete vaporizing in a tunnel of force.
Mark didn't pursue.
He pivoted, ruthless, dismantling villains with surgical violence, bones broken, weapons crushed, throats collapsed..
This Mark did not hesitate.
Then Battle Beast arrived.
The impact flattened the room.
Mark hit the floor like a discarded doll, ribs caving, blood spraying across marble. Battle Beast laughed, delighted, each blow an education in pain. When Mark stopped moving, sprawled broken like a fallen statue, Battle Beast raised his mace and licked the blood on it.
And then Derrick was there quick using his speed.
Mark never saw him coming back.
Consumption was instant.
flesh first then identity followed . Viltrumite biology fought, violently, but Derrick's mass swallowed it whole. Every memory, every instinct, every gene-pattern that made Mark Grayson, Mark was overwritten, cataloged, an further enhanced.
.. Seconds later...
Battle Beast paused, then laughed harder.
He spat at Derrick's feet. "You are not prey," he snarled. "You are a thief."
Then he left, uninterested.
Nolan Grayson felt his son's return like relief.
He did not notice the difference.
The posture was correct. The presence familiar. Derrick wore Mark perfectly, voice, expression, even the subtle gravitational distortion of Viltrumite mass. Inside, Derrick's own density had surpassed one million tons his density increases defenses coupled with the viltrumites physiology, folded into a vessel built to deceive a god.
Nolan's mass dwarfed him like a child infont of a mountain, hundreds of millions of tons, momentum-fed power that turned velocity into annihilation.
Derrick adjusted.
Momentum was data as he planned on studying how to move like an experienced viltrumite...
They moved together.
The attack on the Guardians of the Globe unfolded almost exactly as the comic remembered shock, disbelief, then slaughter. Derrick mirrored Mark's rage, his hesitation, his brutality. Guardians fell in blood and ruin, their defenses meaningless against Viltrumite strength paired with Blacklight precision.
Infrastructure followed.
Power grids collapsed. Military bases imploded. Derrick tore through government facilities, dismantling command structures with frightening accuracy.
When he reached the GDA, Reanimen swarmed him enhanced corpses striking in perfect formation.
Derrick killed them efficiently not daring to consume them, just incase Nolan was watching.
Then he threw their remains into orbit.
Nolan arrived seconds later, crashing into the facility with continental force. The GDA triggered an orbital strike energy lancing down like divine judgment. Nolan ignored it, walking through fire and debris
Unaware.
A single Blacklight spore, microscopic, had already slipped into his system. Dormant. Observing. Learning how a pure Viltrumite held together.
Derrick stood beside him, wearing his son's face.
And the lie held perfectly
For now.
End of the chapter