General Ross stood amidst the ruins of the Gamma Lab, his face an expressionless granite mask. But behind his eyes, a storm was raging. As the forensics team confirmed his worst fears—that every trace of the solidified gamma radiation had been utterly and completely erased from the site—a single, impossible, and electrifying idea began to form in his mind.
A figure took shape in his memory: Captain America, Steve Rogers. The perfect soldier. The one and only true success of the program that had consumed Ross's entire career. For decades, the United States military had tried and failed to replicate Dr. Abraham Erskine's original Super Soldier Serum, the formula for which had died with its creator.
But Ross knew the one, critical, missing ingredient that Erskine had just begun to experiment with: gamma radiation.
It was the pursuit of that very theory that had led to the birth of the Hulk. Bruce Banner, a brilliant scientist working under Ross's own command, had been trying to crack Erskine's code when the lab accident turned him into a monster of uncontrollable rage. For years, Ross had seen the Hulk as a failed success, a tantalizing glimpse of the power he sought, trapped within a prison of pure, mindless id.
But this… this was different.
He replayed the events in his mind. A lone human operative, exhibiting none of the grotesque physical mutations of the Hulk or Abomination. Inhuman reaction speed. Superhuman strength and leaping ability. And a clear, singular objective: the gamma stones.
The intruder hadn't been mutated by the energy. He had consumed it.
The pieces clicked into place with the force of a tectonic shift. This was not another monster. This was the culmination of his life's work. This was the stable, controlled, perfect super-soldier he had been searching for.
"Find him," Ross whispered to himself, his voice a low, obsessive growl. He clenched his fists, the anger he had felt at the security breach completely gone, replaced by the endless, exhilarating excitement of a hunter who has just found the trail of a legendary beast. "Find him at all costs."
Hawk had no idea that he had just become the new life's obsession of the man who had once chased Bruce Banner across the globe. And even if he had known, he wouldn't have cared. He was a universe away, not just from Quantico, but from the entire world of men.
He was at the bottom of a waterfall.
RUMBLE!
The water cascaded down with the sound of continuous thunder, crashing onto the figure seated cross-legged in the center of the churning pool below. Hawk was naked except for a pair of shorts, his eyes closed in deep meditation, a statue of impossible stillness amidst the violent chaos of nature. But as the tons of water, each drop hitting like a stone, slammed onto his body, they did not splash. They vaporized. A thick, endless cloud of white mist boiled off his skin, a visible manifestation of the raging, internal furnace of his burning Cosmo.
This was the deepest, most remote part of Cunningham Falls State Park in Maryland. A place rarely touched by human feet. He had been here for over twenty days. And for twenty days, he had been doing only one thing: forging himself in fire and water.
He was not in a hurry to return to New York. The summer semester was still weeks away, and more importantly, he needed to let the storm he had created at Quantico blow over. He was testing them. If they could find him here, in this primordial wilderness, then he would know the true reach of their power.
And if they found him, he was ready. He had chosen this place not just as a sanctuary, but as a battlefield. The five-kilometer radius of dense, untracked forest was a perfect killing ground. He had learned a hard lesson in his life: predators and powerful institutions do not respect virtue; they only respect a greater power. As the old cynical saying went, When the United States military accuses you of having weapons of mass destruction, you had better actually have them. He had no intention of being a bug they could squash. If they came for him, he would break them so completely that they would never dare to hunt him again.
But after twenty days, there had been nothing. Not a single soldier. Not even a passing hiker.
It didn't matter. Waiting for the military was not his primary objective. He was here for the waterfall itself. He was using its immense, relentless power as a whetstone to sharpen his own, to help him break through and achieve his first great goal.
During the day, he would stand against the current, throwing his ten thousand punches against the crushing resistance of the falling water. At night, he would sit, as he was now, and seal his five senses—sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch—forcing his consciousness inward, using the ceaseless, twenty-four-hour-a-day battery of the waterfall to temper his soul while he reached for something more.
The Sixth Sense.
A Bronze Saint was, in the grand cosmic scheme, a novice. Only by awakening the Sixth Sense, the true essence of the Cosmo that lay beyond the physical, could one be called a true Saint. It was the key that unlocked infinite possibilities: the manipulation of elements, the prediction of the future, psychokinesis, illusions, even flight. He knew it was unrealistic to expect to master it now, but he was idle. He was patient. He would use this time to search for the door.
A pity. After twenty days of searching, he had not yet found even the keyhole.
Hawk's eyes slowly opened, the deep blue of his irises as clear and turbulent as the water around him. He rose to his feet, a mountain of solid flesh against the crushing force of the waterfall. His blood and qi were boiling, and the white mist that enshrouded him thickened. Within that boiling vapor, a phantom image, visible only to his inner eye, flickered into existence behind him: a magnificent, fiery red bird, its wings spread wide in a silent, triumphant cry.
His search for the Sixth Sense had failed, for now.
But his main goal was complete. The Gammanian was fully absorbed. The final two stars were forged.
He had successfully lit his first constellation. One of the forty-eight Bronze Constellations.
Phoenix.
He looked at the cascading wall of water before him, no longer an obstacle, but a training partner. He took his stance, and threw his first punch of a new day, his fist meeting the thunderous downpour with an explosive crack of its own.