Marvel: A Lazy-Ass Superman

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At first, Alexei kept pace easily enough.

But the man running ahead seemed to have eyes in the back of his head. His speed steadily increased, and only when Alexei began breathing hard and felt himself on the verge of falling behind would the pace slow again.

The probing was subtle.

And it made the super-soldier realize that this man’s physical abilities exceeded his own. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to maintain that kind of control over the pace.

Thinking back to the chaos he had engineered earlier—and how he had quietly eliminated two people in the middle of it—Alexei understood that this man was far more dangerous than he appeared.

The solitary confinement block was still inside the prison grounds.

To escape, they would need to cross a considerable amount of open terrain.

If it were up to Alexei, someone with the ability to phase through walls should simply run in a straight line until they were outside the prison perimeter.

Henry, however, did no such thing.

Instead, he zigzagged constantly, choosing routes with no foot traffic or blind spots in the surveillance coverage.

The reason he had chosen to act during daylight, while the yard was still brightly lit, rather than waiting for nightfall and using the darkness as cover, was simple:

Most of the prison guards were still occupied dealing with the aftermath of the recreation-yard riot.

Henry, the instigator, and Alexei, a super-soldier with abnormal physical abilities, were both considered troublesome inmates.

As a result, they had been thrown into solitary confinement immediately.

That gave Henry a window of opportunity—time to smuggle a living person out before the guards finished handling everything else.

Night might have made hiding easier.

But temperatures would drop, and the guards would have more free manpower available for pursuit.

That would actually make escaping more difficult.

Besides, Henry wasn’t entirely sure how resistant a super-soldier was to extreme cold.

To be safe, he treated Alexei like an ordinary person and chose to move while there was still sunlight.

---

Although they twisted through the prison grounds in an effort to avoid all contact and exposure, they occasionally reached dead ends where there was no path forward.

Whenever that happened, Henry simply grabbed Alexei and phased through another wall.

Honestly, if not for the extra baggage, he would have flown away long ago.

By now he could have been reclining comfortably at home with a beer in hand, watching television.

---

The final barrier was the outer wall.

A full meter thick.

Solid reinforced concrete.

Even artillery shells would struggle to penetrate it unless they were of sufficient caliber.

Watchtowers stood on both sides.

Fortunately, only one tower was currently manned by an armed guard.

The other sat empty.

Even better, the guard was facing inward toward the prison itself.

As long as they avoided attracting attention, they could pass through the wall without immediately being chased by gunfire.

Henry reached for Alexei again.

Before the super-soldier could react, Henry had already grabbed him by the back of the neck and dragged him through the wall.

The process lasted less than the blink of an eye.

Yet the sensation of molecules slipping through one another’s spaces was profoundly unnatural for ordinary people.

It wasn’t like walking through a tunnel.

It felt more like something had squeezed into your body while you simultaneously squeezed out through it.

People with sharper senses could even perceive characteristics of the material they were passing through.

The chill of metal.

The graininess of sand.

And so on.

Whenever Henry phased through solid matter with someone else, he deliberately accelerated the process to minimize exposure.

But Alexei Shostakov was a super-soldier.

His senses were far sharper than normal.

That only made the experience more unpleasant.

---

As the thickest wall in the entire prison, the outer perimeter proved too much.

The moment they emerged outside, Alexei finally succumbed to the nausea.

Shaking off Henry’s grip, he failed to resume running immediately.

Instead, he doubled over beside the wall and began dry-heaving.

The sound drew attention.

The armed guard in the watchtower turned toward the outer perimeter to investigate.

Henry’s eyesight might currently be terrible, but without visual limitations, his hearing covered a broad area with remarkable clarity.

The instant the guard moved, Henry reacted.

He shoved Alexei flat against the wall and pressed himself there as well, positioning them both inside a blind spot beneath the tower’s field of view.

The tower had been designed primarily to monitor the prison interior.

Its external visibility naturally contained gaps.

Henry had intentionally chosen one of those gaps.

That was why simply standing against the wall in open terrain was enough to avoid detection.

If the second tower had also been occupied, their position might have been visible from there.

Fortunately, the guards were still busy elsewhere.

Alexei might have hated the sensation of phasing through walls, but his instincts as an intelligence operative remained sharp.

He immediately understood what Henry was doing.

No matter how miserable he felt, he clamped his mouth shut and suppressed every sound.

---

After a short while, the guard concluded that nothing was wrong.

Unwilling to remain exposed to the cold Siberian wind, he retreated into the sheltered observation booth.

From inside, he could still monitor the surroundings.

The view was narrower, but there was a chair and protection from the weather.

Comfort won easily.

Once Henry confirmed the danger had passed, he cautiously leaned out and pretended to inspect the tower.

In reality, with his current nearsighted vision and no glasses, he couldn’t actually make out much of anything.

The gesture was simply an ingrained habit.

Even so, the act helped Alexei relax slightly instead of maintaining full combat-level tension.

Henry pointed in a particular direction.

The two exchanged a glance.

Then, one after the other, they fled the prison and disappeared into the Siberian wilderness.

---

As he sprinted across the frozen landscape, Alexei Shostakov found the experience almost unbelievable.

He had already resigned himself to spending the rest of his life in that prison.

Growing old there.

Dying there.

Yet somehow...

He had escaped.

They had not yet returned to civilization.

Nor had they left Russian territory.

Their flight was far from over.

But the Red Guardian—whose loyalty still belonged to a nation that no longer existed—did not pester the man beside him with endless questions.

The two simply ran.

And ran.

And ran.

Eventually, excitement overtook Alexei.

As if releasing years of pent-up frustration, he threw back his head and roared at the sky.

People often said madness was contagious.

Before transmigrating, Henry himself had once been the kind of teenager who shouted nonsense at mountains and valleys simply because he felt like it.

After arriving in this world, however, he had never done anything similar.

Perhaps he had convinced himself he was older now.

More mature.

Less childish.

Or perhaps the absurd unreality of suddenly finding himself in this bizarre universe had become a lid sealing away those emotions.

Now, hearing someone beside him lose his mind in pure exhilaration...

That lid finally cracked open.

Henry tilted back his head and unleashed a long howl of his own.

Startled, Alexei stared at the equally insane man beside him.

Then the two looked at each other and burst out laughing.

Neither bothered analyzing why.

It was simply youthful competitiveness.

The kind that needed no explanation.

Without another word, they took turns raising their arms toward the setting sun.

Sometimes one led.

Sometimes the other.

And amid ridiculous shouting and laughter, the two men ran wildly across the Siberian wilderness.

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