How many seconds does it take for a building to collapse?
At Quantico, the answer was five.
A deep, subterranean BOOM, far more powerful than any conventional explosive, ripped through the earth. The ground heaved. Cracks raced up the walls of the old Gamma Lab like lightning. Then, with a deafening groan of tortured steel and screaming concrete, the entire three-story structure imploded, collapsing in on itself in a monstrous, billowing cloud of dust and debris.
The soldiers of the Emergency Response Team, who had been seconds away from breaching the building, were thrown back by the shockwave. They scrambled to their feet, their ears ringing, and stared in stunned silence at the mountain of rubble where the lab had stood just moments before.
A collective, shuddering breath of relief passed through the squad. If they had been just a few seconds faster, they would have been buried alive, entombed in that concrete grave. After the initial shock, the soldiers all turned to their captain, their faces asking the same silent question.
"Number 1, what are our orders?"
The ERT Captain stared at the wreckage, then let out a long, helpless sigh. "How the hell should I know? Fall back. The target is neutralized."
He had expected a tough, bloody firefight. He had not expected the problem to so thoroughly… solve itself. The whole affair was deeply, unsatisfyingly anticlimactic.
Just then, a jeep screeched to a halt nearby, and the Lieutenant Colonel who had called General Ross scrambled out. His eyes widened as he took in the scene of total devastation. "What happened?"
The ERT Captain walked over, his assault rifle held loosely. "Frankly, sir, I'm not entirely clear. But I can confirm what the scientists said. There was only one intruder." He quickly recounted the terrifying testimony of the survivors, and how the entire building had collapsed just as they were preparing to make entry.
The Lieutenant Colonel's face went pale. "Are you sure? Just one?"
"Yes, sir."
"Motherf…" the Colonel cursed, his mind struggling to comprehend the sheer, insane absurdity of it all. "Just one person? How did he even dare?" Quantico had faced intrusion attempts before, but they were always teams, squads of foreign operatives, and they were almost always neutralized before they even got close. To attempt a solo raid on this base wasn't just suicidal; it was a fundamental misunderstanding of reality.
The ERT Captain looked at the still-smoking ruins. "Maybe that was the point, sir. It had to be a suicide mission. The target was the building itself. They never intended to get out alive."
The Colonel considered this. It was the only explanation that fit into any logical military framework. He nodded slowly. "That's the only thing that makes sense." He then paled further as another, more terrible thought occurred to him. "Damn it! I already notified General Ross!"
He felt a wave of cold dread. He had frantically called the famously hot-tempered General, escalating the situation to the highest level, only for the threat to have already self-destructed. Now he had to make another call, the one every subordinate officer dreads: the one where you tell your furious superior that the crisis is, in fact, already over. With a deep, internal sigh, he instructed his deputy to have the base-wide alarm deactivated and once again dialed General Ross.
"Report!" Ross's voice barked from the other end.
"General Ross, the situation is resolved. The intruder is dead."
"Dead?" Ross sounded stunned. "What happened?"
"Identity is unknown, but it was a solo operative, sir. The Gamma Building has collapsed. We currently presume it was a suicide mission…"
BOOOOM!
A second, even more violent explosion erupted from the heart of the ruins. The Lieutenant Colonel was thrown off his feet, the phone flying from his hand.
"Holy shit!" he screamed.
From the center of the wreckage, a geyser of rubble and brilliant, golden light blasted into the night sky. And rising from the crater, wreathed in a shimmering aura of pure power, was a figure.
The soldiers stared, their minds refusing to process what their eyes were seeing. In the harsh glare of the searchlights, they saw him: a lone man, standing unharmed amidst the devastation, radiating an energy that made the air itself hum.
The ERT Captain was the first to break from the spell, his training overriding his terror. "ENEMY CONTACT!" he roared. "FIRE! LIGHT HIM UP! FIRE!"
BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG-BANG!
The night exploded with gunfire. A hailstorm of bullets from dozens of assault rifles converged on the figure in the ruins. At the same time, the base-wide alarm, which had been silent for less than a minute, once again shrieked to life, signaling to the entire base that the crisis was not over; it had just begun.
Soldiers who had just been stood down scrambled back to their posts in a state of confused panic. Jeeps roared to life. Tanks began to rumble out of their depots. The deep thump-thump-thump of attack helicopter blades began to spin up. The entire might of Quantico was now converging on a single, impossible target.
But the target was untouchable.
Hawk stood calmly amidst the storm of lead, a phantom weaving through the incoming fire. Bullets passed through the space where he had been a microsecond before, kicking up sparks and dust from the rubble behind him. As he moved, he felt the last, final wisp of Gammanian energy being drawn from the earth beneath him and into his soul. The absorption was complete.
He took a moment to assess the situation. More soldiers were swarming his position. Tanks were rolling into view. Helicopters were ascending into the night sky. He had kicked the hornet's nest, and the entire swarm was now coming for him.
A cold, satisfied smile touched his lips. My business here is done. It was time to leave.
He looked at the dissipating smoke around him, then bent his knees, the reinforced concrete beneath his feet cracking and splintering under the strain. He coiled his power, and then he launched.
Like a cannonball, he shot into the air, a golden streak against the night sky. He soared in a single, graceful, impossibly long parabola, up and over the heads of the stunned soldiers, through the intersecting beams of the searchlights, and landed with a soft thud hundreds of meters away in the darkness of the forest line.
And then, he was gone.
The mission was complete. The wind was high. Time to vanish.