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Chapter 4: Miss Fortune Fell For Me?
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He trailed off, the words [Information] remaining a silent, powerful secret in the vault of his mind. "…I've had my lucky breaks."
He walked closer, leaning down so his face was inches from Pryce's. "Thank you for the clarity. And I promise, I will find you soon enough. It's a shame I don't have more time to play with you now. But the afterlife is long. We'll have an eternity for… deeper discussions."
He turned and walked calmly out of the office, leaving an utterly bewildered Dr. Pryce alive and screaming after him.
"You're choosing death! This path leads only to a grave! A shallow, unmarked grave in this godforsaken jungle!"
Adam paused at the doorway, his back to the doctor. He didn't turn around. He simply let a single, dismissive phrase hang in the air.
"Nah. I'd live."
[Yup, he's Aura farming]
[Dude, he's farming sympathy, pity, and all in between; this is a farming show]
He kept the rest of the phrase in his mind... Or die trying to reach a level so high he can never experience that same misery ever again.
There is no in between in his mind.
He had seemingly engraved in his mind a vow that he could only succeed, and that he'd choose suicide every time instead of capture.
The vow seemed to have twisted his mind in some strange ways. He felt as if he had lost all hesitation.
The scene outside was one of controlled pandemonium. Researchers in white coats shoved past guards, desperate faces illuminated by the flashing red emergency lights.
Adam moved away from them.
He didn't join the exodus to the main exits. Instead, he slipped into an armory that had been hastily abandoned.
The signs of chaos were evident; lockers hung open, a spilled box of ammunition glittered on the floor.
He took only what he needed: a compact 9mm pistol, two extra magazines, and a wicked, serrated combat knife.
Then a few other interesting weapons that won't slow him down.
Pryce, left alone in the blaring silence of his office, felt a cold dread seep into his bones that had nothing to do with the self-destruct sequence.
In fact, it had nothing to do with the self-destruct sequence, as it still had plenty of time left.
It was a bad premonition, the kind that whispered of layers within layers. His scientific mind raced, trying to untangle Adam's final, cryptic words.
His answer came with the arrival of the Hydra Rapid Response Team.
The door to his office was blown off its hinges with a controlled charge.
Four figures in advanced, black tactical armor swept in, weapons scanning the room.
"Area clear! We have Dr. Pryce!" One of them barked into his comms.
Pryce felt no relief as realization dawned on him, sinking horror settling in. "No… no, get out! It's a trap!"
He yelled, but his warning was cut off.
The blaring evacuation warning suddenly ceased. For one heartbeat, there was absolute, deafening silence.
Then, the robotic voice returned, calm and final. "Self-destruct sequence: Detonation."
The lead soldier's eyes widened in utter horror behind his visor.
There was supposed to be more than ten minutes left... So why the fuck did it suddenly become zero?
It was zero to annihilation.
Dr. Pryce's face, in the last microsecond of his life, did not contort in fear. It was a mask of pure, unadulterated fascination.
How? How had Adam achieved this?
He must have been miles away by now, yet he had seen this moment, had timed this cataclysm with the precision of a god, triggering it the instant the rescue team confirmed his location.
It was a level of foresight and control that was… beautiful... No, maybe he was watching me right now in my last moments.
His final thought was one of profound, scientific awe before the world turned to white-hot fire.
The facility, and about a square kilometer of ancient Australian rainforest around it, were not just destroyed; they were unmade.
The independent nature of Hydra's branches meant there was no time for a coordinated countermeasure.
They could only watch on satellites as the asset and an entire research outpost were wiped from the face of the earth.
Miles away, standing on a rocky outcrop overlooking the dense, deadly jungle, Adam heard the deep-throated whump of the explosion.
The sound seemed to have been absorbed by the vast, living tapestry of the rainforest.
He didn't turn to look. His attention was entirely on the task at hand.
His shirt was off, and he was contorted in an awkward position, his left arm reaching over his right shoulder.
In his hand was the combat knife, its tip buried a half-inch into the flesh of his back, just below his scapula.
His face was set in a deep frown of concentration, the only outward sign of the agony of performing self-surgery.
He had no mirror. His vision was irrelevant. It didn't matter if he scraped a little more flesh while digging for his target.
Luckily, he can faintly sense the tiny, foreign object embedded deep in his muscle tissue through Cyberpathy, the third and final subcutaneous tracker.
The other two had been planted as distractions; one thrown down downstream, the other fixed to a large cassowary he'd encountered, sending Hydra on a wild goose chase.
This was the one that mattered.
With a final, not so precise twist, he hooked the tiny device and flicked it out.
It landed on the rock, a minuscule bead of silicon and metal. He crushed it under his heel.
Three parts of his body were a mess. He was no surgeon, and he didn't have much time.
Fortunately, Hydra numbed him to pain. Torture was regular, especially at the start, when they interrogated him about the workings of his powers.
"Thanks, I guess?" Adam muttered. He feels like such pain tolerance would serve him well in the future, if he survives today.
He was just wiping the blood from his knife when a new sound cut through the jungle's chorus.
It started as a low hum, growing rapidly into a powerful, deafening roar.
He looked up, squinting against the sun, as a shape descended through the clouds.
It must've been plane, impossibly fast, but as it slowed, its outline shimmered and it simply… appeared.
One second, there was empty sky; the next, a massive, black bird of death was hovering before him.
The Blackbird. A jolt of recognition, half from his past-life memories, half from Hydra's files, shot through him. The X-Men?
Hope was a dangerous, unfamiliar sensation.
It was far more likely this was another Hydra unit, one with even more advanced technology.
He had promised himself: escape or die. Never again.
As the hatch of the Blackbird began to open with a hydraulic hiss, Adam calmly raised the pistol in his hand.
But he didn't aim it at the ship.
With a steadiness that spoke of a resolve forged in twelve years of hell, he pressed the cold barrel firmly against his own temple.
His finger rested on the trigger... Just in case.
His eyes, calm, without a shred of hesitation, watched the opening hatch, waiting to see which enemy would emerge.
He would either escape this planet or he would leave it. There were no other options.
[Damn, that's a tragic backstory]
[He's definitely not sane]
[Dunno, his thought process seems rather pragmatic]
[You above, u stupid? Twelve years of hell and you think he'd stay sane?]
[Yo! Shut the fuck up. There are comic characters that experienced worse things and kept sane through sheer will!]
[You think he's fucking Batman? Dumbass]
[Well, actually, there are many theories about Batman being insane]
[Aghh, actual nerd festival in here. Why is this TV Show always broadcast live anyway? With chat sections on top of that.]
[Hey, it's a novel idea, and it seems successful so far]
The scene that greeted the X-Men was one of profound and unsettling distress.
They had expected a fleeing victim, a desperate mutant, perhaps even a cornered animal ready to fight.
They had not expected the young man to be his own executioner.
He stood poised on the rocky outcrop, silhouetted against the vast, green expanse of the rainforest, a pistol held with unnerving steadiness to his own temple.
His eyes, dead and hollow, were fixed on them, weighing their souls in a single, silent moment.
"Don't."
The word was soft, yet it carried a psychic weight that cut through the roar of the Blackbird's engines.
It was Jean Grey, her voice a lifeline thrown across a chasm of hopelessness.
Her empathy brushed against the edges of his consciousness, offering a palpable sense of calm and concern.
Jean's telepathy also brushed past him, ready to forcefully stop him from ending his existence if he so much as pushed against that trigger.
Adam blinked. The resolve in his eyes didn't waver, but the target of it shifted.
He slowly, deliberately, lowered the gun, his finger sliding off the trigger.
He let out a long, shuddering breath, a sigh that seemed to carry the weight of twelve years of torment.
He wouldn't have hesitated for even a microsecond had they been Hydra.
Death was a cleaner, kinder fate than a return to the white room. Never again. At any cost.
It seemed, however, that the fickle bitch Lady Luck had decided to change faces.