General Ross's face stayed stone cold.
But inside—waves roared.
The scientists' reports confirmed his suspicion, and a single figure rose in his mind.
Captain America. Steve Rogers.
The first and only true Super Soldier, created by Abraham Erskine's lost formula. Since then, the military had never stopped trying to recreate it. But the formula died with Erskine.
Still, one fact remained: the serum required gamma radiation. That was how Hulk had been born—Bruce Banner's accident during gamma research.
Now… a man with no monstrous features. Inhuman reflexes. Unnatural strength and leaping ability. An entire cache of gamma energy gone without a trace.
Ross's lips curled. This wasn't an intruder. This was what he'd been hunting. The next Super Soldier.
"Find him," Ross ordered, fist clenching, eyes burning with feverish ambition. "At any cost."
…
Hawk knew none of this. And even if he did, he wouldn't have cared.
He was long gone from Quantico, outside the reach of Washington.
Now he sat half-naked beneath a waterfall in Maryland's Cunningham Falls State Park, water thundering down like rolling thunder. It crashed onto his body with enough force to crush boulders—yet every drop that struck him hissed into steam. White mist rose in sheets, shrouding him in a halo of vapor.
For over twenty days, he had remained here.
Day after day, he trained. By daylight he threw his fists against the torrent, punching through the water's crushing pressure. By night he sat cross-legged in the stream, closing his five senses, letting the endless waterfall temper both body and cosmos as he reached for something higher.
In his inner cosmos, the constellation of Phoenix glowed brilliantly, a fiery bird stretching its wings.
He wasn't in a hurry to return to New York. School wasn't starting yet, and besides—he wanted to see if the military could find him. If they couldn't, he'd go back when he pleased. If they did… well, this forest was vast, desolate, and perfect for killing.
To Hawk, the rules of survival were simple. The military, like the lowlifes he had crushed before, wouldn't yield to morality. Only fear.
As he once thought: when America accuses you of having weapons of mass destruction, you'd better truly have them. Only then will they hesitate to strike.
So he had chosen this place deliberately—as both sanctuary and battlefield.
But twenty days had passed, and no soldiers had come. Not a single trace of pursuit.
That was fine. He wasn't wasting his time. His true goal lay in the waterfall itself.
To ignite his cosmos fully. To awaken his constellation.
Only when a Saint broke past the limits of the five senses and touched the sixth could they be called true Saints. Masters of elements, of foresight, of telekinesis, of illusions. Powers unthinkable to ordinary men.
Hawk wasn't naïve—he knew he couldn't grasp the sixth sense yet. But he could prepare. Reach for its edges. And more importantly, he could light his first constellation.
The Phoenix.
Slowly, beneath the roar of the falls, he rose from the water. His skin flushed crimson, steam coiling upward in thick clouds. Behind him, flickering faint but undeniable, blazed the fiery wings of a phoenix.
He had done it.
The first of the forty-eight Bronze constellations was his.
Phoenix Cloth—awakened!
Hawk raised his fist toward the falling torrent, lips curving in a rare smile.
Then he struck.
One punch.
Day one of ten thousand.
…
(End of Chapter)
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