The forest was quiet.
Not the clean, peaceful kind of quiet from movies, but the real kind. The kind that still had sound in it. Wind brushing against leaves. Insects moving through grass. Distant birds that stopped calling when something unfamiliar passed through.
Cain Silas moved through it without slowing.
His bare feet touched the ground softly, finding firm earth and roots without thought. He did not rush, but he did not wander either. Each step had purpose, even if he was not fully aware of it. His body simply knew how to move.
Trees passed by him, tall and thin. Their branches formed uneven shadows across his skin as moonlight filtered through. His breathing was slow and steady. Not heavy. Not strained.
Anyone watching would have thought he belonged there.
After several minutes, Cain let out a quiet sigh.
It was not tiredness. His body did not feel heavy at all. If anything, it felt too light, too ready, like it was waiting for something that had not arrived yet.
"So easy," he muttered to himself.
The words slipped out before he meant to say them.
He shook his head slightly and kept walking.
The missile silo was far behind him now. Deep underground, buried in steel and concrete. Men had died there believing walls, depth, and machines could hold him.
They never understood.
He had climbed out the same way he always did.
Up.
Cain reached a small rise in the ground and stopped. From there, he could see more of the forest stretching ahead. He stood still for a moment, listening, then lowered himself onto a fallen log.
He rested his elbows on his knees and looked at his hands.
They were large. Scarred. Fingers thick and strong, veins faintly visible beneath the skin. These hands had crushed bone, torn metal, and climbed smooth walls with nothing but friction and grip.
Once, they had held a game controller.
The thought came suddenly.
Cain blinked.
"…Right," he said softly.
A long time ago, he had been normal.
He closed his eyes, and the memory came easily.
He had been just a guy. Nothing special. No power. No strength worth mentioning. He lived a quiet life, watched anime, movies, wasted time online. He remembered staying up late, watching fights that were impossible, characters doing things no human could ever do.
He remembered laughing.
Spec. Sikorsky. Dorian.
Back then, they were just characters. Dangerous, cruel, but interesting. Monsters on a screen.
He had never thought he would understand them.
His death had been stupid.
Cain frowned as the memory sharpened.
It was not heroic. Not tragic in a meaningful way. Just bad luck mixed with bad timing. A normal day that ended wrong. An accident so pointless that even now it felt embarrassing to remember.
One moment, he was alive.
The next, he was gone.
Then he woke up screaming.
The memory shifted.
Heat. Smoke. Noise.
Cain opened his eyes in the forest, but his mind was somewhere else now.
He had been a child.
Small. Thin. Barely strong enough to stand for long. He remembered dust in the air, the sound of distant gunfire, people shouting in a language he did not understand yet.
Afghanistan.
He had not known the name at first. Only that the ground was dry, the sun was harsh, and fear was everywhere.
A normal child would have died there.
He should have died there.
But his body had not been normal.
Even as a child, he remembered looking down at his hands and feeling something was wrong. Or maybe right. His fingers felt tight, coiled, like they could close around anything and never let go.
The first time he realized it, he had been playing with a coin.
A simple thing. Old. Worn.
He had squeezed it without thinking.
The metal bent.
Cain opened his eyes in the present and flexed his fingers once.
The memory of that moment stayed with him.
He had stared at the coin for a long time back then, confused. Afraid. He had tried again, slower this time.
The coin bent again.
Not cracked. Not broken.
Bent.
He remembered being hurt soon after. A cut on his arm from rubble. He had expected pain. Real pain. Something sharp and burning.
Instead, there was only awareness.
He knew he was injured. He knew it mattered.
But it did not hurt.
Pain was not a warning. It was just information.
Cain touched his forearm now, where old scars rested under the skin.
"That never changed," he said quietly.
As he grew, things only became clearer.
Sometimes, knowledge came to him without reason.
Not memories of a past life exactly. Not visions.
More like instincts that arrived fully formed.
He would throw a punch and know, somehow, how to place his shoulder, how to turn his hips, how to strike without wasting motion. He would grab stone and understand how to use his fingers, not just his palm.
And then one day, it clicked.
Spec.
The name came to him while he watched a man drown another in a shallow ditch. Cain had been hiding, watching, learning how people killed.
He had recognized the feeling.
That calm joy in violence. That strange humor.
Spec was not just strength. He was endurance. Movement without pause. Attacking without breathing.
Cain remembered, as a child, holding his breath underwater longer than anyone else. Minutes passed. His chest burned, but he did not stop.
Apnea.
Later came Sikorsky.
Cain smiled faintly at that memory.
Climbing had come naturally to him. Too naturally. Walls that others could not scale felt rough under his fingers, full of invisible holds. He could hang from ledges with two fingers, sometimes one, feeling his grip sink into stone.
Once, he climbed the side of a broken building just to see if he could.
He could.
And then there was Dorian.
That one had taken longer to understand.
Dorian was not just skill. He was deception. Calm. The idea that a fight did not need to be fair to be real.
Cain had learned early that war did not reward honor. It rewarded survival.
He learned how to hide tools. How to pretend weakness. How to cry if needed.
How to strike when no one expected it.
The memories from the three did not come with their full personalities. Not completely. Cain was still himself.
But pieces remained.
The hunger.
The curiosity.
The need to know what real defeat felt like.
Cain exhaled slowly and stood up from the log.
He resumed walking through the forest.
As a child, he had not wanted power.
He had just wanted to live.
But war forced growth. Forced choices.
By the time he was twelve, people knew his name.
Not everywhere. Just enough.
There was an area where fighting stopped. Where patrols avoided. Where groups did not clash.
Cain lived there.
Alone.
He had no soldiers. No army. No flag.
Yet no war touched that place.
Anyone who entered learned quickly.
The terrain became his weapon. Narrow paths. High ground. Loose rock. Darkness.
Assassination was not dramatic. It was quiet. Fast.
After a while, enemies stopped coming.
Cain did not feel proud of it.
He just felt bored.
The fights became easy.
Too easy.
Even with only fragments of Spec, Sikorsky, and Dorian inside him, their influence was there. A low pull toward cruelty. Toward efficiency without mercy.
Cain never lost himself completely.
But he became colder.
Clear-headed, yes.
Kind, no.
By fifteen, he had learned enough about the world to realize something was strange.
Names appeared.
Organizations.
Stark Industries.
Cain stopped walking.
That one had caught his attention when he first heard it. Not because of power. But because of memory.
Tony Stark.
Back when Cain was normal, that name meant something else. A hero. A man in armor.
Here, Tony Stark was just a genius businessman. No suit. No Iron Man.
Yet.
Cain looked up at the sky through the trees.
"So this is that world," he murmured.
The realization had not scared him.
It had grounded him.
This world followed rules. A timeline. Cause and effect.
Which meant his actions mattered.
Cain continued forward, deeper into the forest, leaving faint marks behind that no one would notice unless they knew how to look.
He did not know what he wanted yet.
Only that strength without challenge felt empty.