New York City. Greenwich Village.
May 2010.
The bell above the door chimed. Ding.
It was a soft, brass sound—antique, expensive, and polite. It perfectly matched the smell of the room: old leather, vanilla parchment, and freshly ground Ethiopian coffee.
"The Archives" was not a normal bookstore. It didn't sell bestsellers. It didn't have a 'Self-Help' section. It was a fortress of rare knowledge, housed in a three-story brownstone that cost twelve million dollars—paid in cash.
Ren sat behind the mahogany counter.
Two years had passed since the cave.
At twenty-three, the roughness of the desert was gone. He wore a charcoal turtleneck that fit his frame like a second skin, highlighting the deceptive leanness of his build. He wore thin, silver-rimmed glasses—not because he needed them (his vision could track a fly's wings at fifty meters), but because they acted as a barrier. A filter between him and the boring world.
He was reading a first-edition copy of Principia Mathematica.
"Excuse me?"
A voice floated across the counter.
Ren didn't look up immediately. He finished the paragraph, calculating the gravitational force equation in his head, correcting a minor error Newton had made three centuries ago. Then, he looked up.
Standing there was a young woman. NYU student. Blonde, pretty, nervous. She was holding a book she clearly didn't care about.
"Yes?" Ren asked. His voice was calm, low, and completely indifferent.
"I... uh..." The girl blushed. She tapped her credit card on the counter. "I wanted to buy this. And maybe... ask if you needed help? With the shop? I'm looking for a job."
Ren scanned her.
[ANALYSIS]
> Heart Rate: 110 bpm (Elevated).
> Pheromones: Attraction markers detected.
> Utility: Zero.
"I don't have employees," Ren said, taking the book. He scanned it, swiped her card, and slid it back. The movement was fluid, efficient, robotic.
"Oh," she said, deflated. She lingered. "Well, if you ever change your mind... or want to get coffee..."
"There is a Starbucks on 4th Street," Ren said, returning his eyes to his book. "Have a nice day."
The rejection was so polite and so absolute that the girl didn't know how to respond. She stood there for a second, mesmerized by his indifference, before turning and leaving.
Ding.
Ren didn't watch her go. He didn't care.
He checked his wrist. It was 4:00 PM.
He closed the book and stood up. He walked to the window, looking out at the busy New York street. Taxis honked, people shouted, the city pulsed with chaotic energy.
To Ren, it looked like a slow-motion film.
He focused on a pigeon flying past the window. He could see the individual feathers ruffling in the wind. He could see the reflection of the street in its black eye.
[STATUS]
> USER: Ren (23)
> TIER: 1.8 (High Super-Soldier)
> ENERGY: ∞
[ATTRIBUTES]
> MUSCLE DENSITY: [||||||||||||||||....] 82%
> BONE HARDNESS: [||||||||||||||...] 70%
> REACTION SPEED: 0.02s
He was close.
Tier 2—the Asgardian Standard—was within reach.
For the last two years, he had lived a double life.
By day, he was the mysterious owner of The Archives, playing the stock market with his future knowledge. He had bought Stark Industries stock when it tanked after Tony announced: "We don't make weapons anymore." He had sold it when the Arc Reactor went public. He was now silent partners in tech firms across the globe.
By night, he was something else entirely.
Ding.
The bell chimed again.
Ren's senses flared.
This time, the footstep was different. It wasn't the clumsy shuffle of a student or the heavy stomp of a tourist.
It was silent.
The heel touched the ground, rolled to the toe, and lifted without making a sound on the hardwood floor. It was a predator's walk.
Ren didn't look up from the window.
"We're closing," he said.
"I just need a minute," a woman's voice replied. It was smooth, husky, with a very faint, practiced American accent covering something harsher underneath.
Ren turned around.
Standing in the aisle, framed by shelves of dusty history books, was a redhead. She wore a fitted beige trench coat, a scarf, and boots. She looked like a high-end art dealer.
But Ren saw the truth.
[DATABASE MATCH]
> Subject: Natalia Alianovna Romanova.
> Alias: Natasha Romanoff / Black Widow.
> Affiliation: SHIELD (Level 7).
> Threat Level: Moderate (Armed).
She was here.
Ren's internal heartbeat didn't skip. He had expected this. You don't wipe out a terrorist base in Afghanistan with a rock and stay off Nick Fury's radar forever. They hadn't found Ren—the ghost who killed the terrorists—but they had found Ren—the anomaly with no birth certificate who suddenly bought a twelve-million-dollar building.
They were fishing.
Ren walked behind the counter, leaning back against the shelves. He crossed his arms. The fabric of his turtleneck pulled tight against his chest.
"You don't look like a reader," Ren said.
Natasha smiled. It was a perfect, disarming smile. The kind that made men drop their guard. "I judge books by their covers. It's a bad habit."
She walked closer, her eyes scanning the shop. Ren knew she wasn't looking at the books. She was checking for cameras, exits, and weapons. She was profiling him.
"I'm looking for a specific text," she said, stopping at the counter. She leaned in slightly. "Something on... ancient history. Origins. People who come from nowhere."
The subtext was loud. Who are you?
Ren took off his glasses. He polished them slowly with a microfiber cloth.
"Origins are overrated," Ren said softly. "Most people are just a collection of accidents."
"And you?" Natasha asked, her eyes locking onto his. "Are you an accident, Ren? Or are you a plan?"
She dropped the smile. The air in the shop grew heavy.
Ren put his glasses back on. He looked at her—really looked at her. He didn't use his X-ray vision; he just used his Knowledge. He saw the Red Room. He saw the ledger dripping with red. He saw the guilt she carried like a loaded rucksack.
"I'm a bookseller, Ms. Rushman," Ren said, using one of her cover names from Iron Man 2.
Natasha's pupil dilated. Micro-reaction. Shock. She hadn't used that name in this operation yet.
"That's a very specific name," she said, her voice dropping an octave. Her hand drifted imperceptibly toward her pocket. A taser. Or a Glock 26.
"I read a lot," Ren said, his voice bored. "You have a distinctive walk. Ballet training, but you suppress the turnout of your feet. Russian origin, likely Ural region based on the bone structure. You carry tension in your right shoulder—old injury?"
He was dissecting her. Peeling back the layers of the world's greatest spy like she was an amateur.
Natasha froze. She realized, in that second, that she wasn't the hunter. She was inside the cage.
"Who are you?" she whispered, the pretense gone.
Ren walked around the counter. He moved past her toward the door. As he passed her, the air pressure seemed to shift. Natasha felt a primal instinct to flinch, to strike, to run. Her body screamed that she was standing next to a apex predator.
But he didn't touch her. He just opened the door.
"I'm a private citizen who pays his taxes," Ren said, holding the door open. "And I'm closing the shop. Goodnight, Agent."
Natasha stood there for a moment. She looked at his hands—relaxed, manicured, devoid of calluses. Yet her instincts told her those hands could tear a tank apart.
She nodded slowly. "SHIELD will be watching."
"They can watch," Ren replied. "Just don't touch the books. They're expensive."
Natasha walked out into the cool New York evening. She walked a block away before exhaling. Her hands were trembling slightly. She tapped her earpiece.
"Fury."
"Report," Nick Fury's voice crackled.
"He made me," Natasha said, her voice tight. "Instantly. He knew the cover. He analyzed my biometrics in seconds."
"Is he the one?" Fury asked. "The one from the cave?"
Natasha looked back at the brownstone. The lights in the shop flickered off.
"I don't know," she admitted. "But Director? If he is the one... we don't have a cage that can hold him."
Hell's Kitchen. The Docks.
11:00 PM.
The sophistication of Greenwich Village was gone. Here, the air smelled of salt, rust, and rotting fish.
Ren stood on top of a shipping container. He was dressed in his "night work" gear: black tactical cargo pants, heavy combat boots, and a simple black hoodie with the hood pulled low. A black cloth mask covered the lower half of his face.
Below him, inside the warehouse, the Russian Mob was moving product.
He wasn't here for justice. He wasn't Daredevil.
He was here for Density.
[TRAINING OBJECTIVE]
> Target: Impact Resistance (Tier 1.8 -> 1.9).
> Method: High-velocity ballistic trauma.
He needed to get shot.
Ideally, he needed to get hit by something heavier than a pistol, but lighter than a tank shell. The Russians had illegally imported military-grade assault rifles. Perfect.
Ren dropped.
THUD.
He landed in the center of the warehouse floor, right between two crates of vodka. The concrete cracked under his boots.
Twenty mobsters froze. They looked at the figure in black who had just fallen from the ceiling.
"Kto ty?!" (Who are you?!) the leader shouted, pulling a Skorpion submachine gun.
Ren didn't speak. He just cracked his neck. CRACK.
The sound echoed like a gunshot.
"Fire!" the leader screamed.
Twenty guns opened up.
RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT-TAT.
The noise was deafening. Muzzle flashes lit up the warehouse like a strobe light. Hundreds of bullets swarmed toward Ren.
Ren didn't dodge.
He raised his arms to cover his face, locking his muscles into a rigid shield.
PING. PING. THWACK. ZIP.
The bullets hit him.
To a normal human, this would be death by shredding.
To Ren, it felt like being stung by angry bees.
The bullets tore through his hoodie. They impacted his skin. The kinetic energy rippled through his tissue, trying to tear the muscle fibers apart.
But his fibers were denser than Kevlar.
The bullets flattened against his skin, bruising him, burning him with friction heat, but failing to penetrate deep enough to hit organs.
[DAMAGE REPORT]
> Skin: Lacerated.
> Subcutaneous Tissue: Bruised.
> Bone Integrity: 100%.
> ADAPTATION TRIGGERED.
Ren felt the familiar heat. The Golden Warmth. It flooded his chest and arms, consuming the kinetic energy of the bullets and using it to weld his cells tighter together.
The firing stopped. Click. Click. Dry magazines.
Smoke swirled around Ren. The mobsters stared, terrified. The man was still standing. His clothes were in shreds, revealing skin that looked angry and red, but he wasn't bleeding out. He was... steaming.
Ren lowered his arms. He took a deep breath. The steam rising from his body swirled around his mask.
"My turn," Ren whispered.
He vanished.
WHOOSH.
He appeared in front of the leader. The Russian didn't even have time to scream.
Ren didn't punch him. He simply walked through him. He shoulder-checked the man with the force of a speeding sedan.
CRUNCH.
The leader's ribcage disintegrated. He flew thirty feet, smashing into a crate of vodka. SMASH. Glass and alcohol rained down.
Ren kept moving. It was a massacre of efficiency.
He grabbed a shotgun barrel as the trigger was pulled. BOOM. The shot hit his palm. It stung.
Ren crushed the barrel with one hand—SCREECH—and backhanded the shooter. SNAP.
A mobster swung a crowbar at his head. Ren caught it. He didn't just catch it; his grip was so strong that his fingers indented the steel. He twisted the bar into a pretzel and dropped it.
"Monster!" one of them screamed, scrambling backward.
Ren stopped. The warehouse was silent again, save for the groans of the broken men.
He looked at his arm. There was a bullet lodged just under the skin of his forearm. It hadn't gone deep enough to hit the bone.
Ren gripped the bullet with his other hand. He squeezed.
Pop.
The bullet popped out. The wound closed instantly, the heat sealing it shut, leaving behind skin that was slightly greyer, slightly harder.
[STATUS UPDATE]
> TIER 1.9 (NEAR-ASGARDIAN)
> SKIN DENSITY: SMALL ARMS PROOF.
> NEXT MILESTONE: EXPLOSIVE RESISTANCE.
Ren sighed. The XP from thugs was diminishing. He was outgrowing human enemies. He needed something stronger.
He needed Aliens. Or Super Soldiers. Or Gods.
"Soon," he muttered to the empty room.
He walked toward the exit, stepping over the unconscious bodies. He needed to get back to the Village. He had to open the shop at 9:00 AM, and he wanted to finish that book on Newtonian physics.
The Next Morning.
Stark Industries Expo, Queens.
Tony Stark stood on the main stage, arms wide, soaking in the applause. The Ironettes were dancing. The crowd was screaming. He was the king of the world.
"I have successfully privatized world peace!" Tony announced, flashing his winning smile.
Backstage, watching on a monitor, stood a man with grease under his fingernails and hatred in his eyes. Ivan Vanko. He held a blueprint in his hands—a blueprint for an Arc Reactor.
And in the VIP box, high above the crowd, Ren sat quietly, sipping champagne.
He wasn't looking at Tony. He was looking at Vanko on the screen.
He knew what was coming. The race track in Monaco. The whips. The drones.
Ren adjusted his glasses.
"Hammer Industries will create the War Machine," Ren thought, analyzing the timeline variables. "Vanko will create the drone army."
His eyes narrowed behind the lenses.
Drone Army.
Hundreds of automated combat droids armed with heavy chainguns and missiles.
Ren smiled. A cold, predatory smile.
He had found his next gym.
Why fight gangsters in dark alleys when he could fight an army of killer robots on live television?
He pulled out his phone. He dialed a number that didn't exist in any phone book—a direct line to a specific broker in Monaco.
"I need a ticket to the Grand Prix," Ren said. "Front row."
The game was entering Level 2.
End of Chapter 3