The Global Defense Agency did not panic.
It cataloged.
The moment Derrick tore free of the hidden facility, every classified sensor across the planet spiked simultaneously.
Seismic anomalies without fixed epicenter.
. Atmospheric displacement with no storm systems. Gravitational noise that behaved like a thought rather than a force.
The data did not match any known Viltrumite, not even close.
Cecil Stedman watched the feeds in silence, one hand resting against his mouth.
"Say it again," he said calmly.
A technician swallowed. "Sir… the anomaly didn't escape containment. It redefined it.
The tech didn't fail—it was overwritten."
Cecil exhaled slowly. "Great. Another one."
Within minutes, the GDA shifted to Black Protocol Continuum. Satellites realigned.
Cloaked drones, older than most governments, slid into position across continents.
Quantum probability engines began backtracking Derrick's path, reconstructing movement not from where he had been, but from where space itself had briefly behaved incorrectly.
They saw the scars first.
Cities where gravity stuttered for microseconds. Wildlife migration patterns warped. A mountain range in Eastern Europe that had sunk by centimeters overnight. This thing didn't move often—but when it did it moved fast and heavily, as a result reality remembered.
"It's intelligent," one analyst said. "Strategic. It avoided population centers after the escape."
"For now," Cecil replied. "That's not restraint. That's assessment."
Other organizations stirred.
The Pentagon's Meta-Human Oversight Division (MHOD), reopened dormant files. Europe's Aegis Directorate activated their dimensional containment vaults. Russia's secret Red Sun Initiative mobilized psychic arrays, probing for minds that weren't anchored to this universe's rules.
None of them detected Derrick directly.
They detected absence.
Places where data should exist but didn't. People who remembered conversations with someone whose face they could no longer recall.
Surveillance footage with perfectly intact frames, except for a human-shaped gap where compression artifacts clustered unnaturally.
Cecil leaned back in his chair.
"It eats information," he muttered. "Or worse becomes it."
The plan was capture.
Not confrontation.
They deployed layered trap they had long prepared for for the viltrumites...
Such as gravity wells tuned to Viltrumite tolerances levels , adaptive nanite clouds designed to map regenerative responses and stall them for as long as possible , temporal delay fields meant to force a being to exist slightly out of sync with itself very good against energy manipulation types....
.
The goal on the gda directors mind was simply Not to hold him forever,
Just long enough to ask questions and of aquire DNA sample for study and possible replication under controlled oversight...
1 week later.....
Derrick noticed the changes immediately.
A drone lingered too long above a forest canopy he was about to pass through so He controlled his bio density thanks to the refined and fused hardening and intangibility quirks subtly, letting it pass through him without collision.
Another drone vanished moments later, consumed, physically converted to blacklight mattar, Its last transmission arrived garbled, recursive, screaming with equations that made no sense.
"Clever," Derrick murmured.
The GDA escalated as this was not a shock to the them.
4 weeks later...
They baited him with manufactured crises, false reports of anomalous entities, deliberately leaked data about experimental tech too dangerous to ignore.
Derrick followed one such trail to an abandoned desert facility thinking he'll get some new ability to further his growth.. .
The trap closed perfectly.
Fields snapped into place. Space thickened. Derrick slowed not stopped, but he was sluggish. For the first time in this universe, something pressed back against him with practiced and calculated intent.
Cecil watched through ten redundant feeds.
"Hello their ," he said quietly, as if Derrick could hear him. "Let's talk."
Derrick tilted his head towards the sound.
The fields strained as a result .
Blacklight adaptive intelligence analyzed everything at once, the harmonics, the intent, the architecture of containment that assumed a universe with rules Derrick had resisted and already eaten elsewhere.
He did not break free immediately.
He waited.
Just long enough for them to believe they were winning.
Then the fields inverted as he removed the natural gravity field surrounding his body as he acted like a singularity.
Containment became compression. Nanites dissolved into biomass. Time delay snapped backward, vomiting Derrick out of the trap in a burst of warped air that shattered half the facility.
He vanished before the Viltrumites could be dispatched.
Cecil closed his eyes briefly.
"Alright," he said. "No more questions."
Across the world, other adjacent secret organizations updated their threat models. Derrick was no longer classified as an anomaly, or even an common villain .
He was labeled Rogue Apex Entity with Multiversal Origins.
And somewhere above the planet, unseen, Derrick drifted in space, absorbing the last scraps of information the GDA had dared to show him.
"They're thorough," he admitted.
Not daring to underestimate their experience with threats his caliber
His shadow stretched long across the curvature of the Earth.
"Good," he said softly. "That makes this interesting."
...
End of the chapter