Marvel: The Awakened One

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Let one thing be clear: Hawk had no love for Charles Xavier, but he did not hate the man either.

Xavier simply belonged to a problem Hawk never planned to fix.

The same went for the war between humans and mutants. If this world wanted to destroy itself over politics, fear, and evolution, Hawk was fine watching from the sidelines.

He was here to find his daughter, not to save anyone. The rest was up to fate.

That had been the plan...

But things didn’t go as planned!!

Sentinel Services hadn’t come to the mutant underground to make arrests—they came to wipe everyone out.

Bodies already filled the sewers, and angry screams resounded from the emergency exit as the mutant guards fell one by one. If the agents finished off the guards and broke into the shelter, they wouldn’t just let Hawk and Wanda walk away.

Not a chance.

So it was time to hit back.

Whoever blinked first was the bitch.

Hawk disappeared from the shelter doors and sped across the cavern. He hit the wall next to the emergency corridor without slowing, and the reinforced concrete broke apart like wet cardboard.

A moment later, the tunnel filled with gunfire, screeching metal, and screams.

This time, the screams did not belong to the mutant guards.

They belonged to the Sentinel agents pushing through the breach.

Just minutes before, those agents had moved like emotionless machines, killing mutants with the calculating precision of men who thought they were just doing pest control.

Now, they were the ones being hunted.

The surviving mutant guards stopped firing and stared in shock as a shirtless man tore into the Sentinel formation with his bare hands, moving through the trained killers like a ghost through smoke.

In the blink of an eye, the entire breach team was gone.

Hawk looked up the stairwell. A heavy iron door led to the surface, barricaded from the outside.

He launched himself upward.

The iron door exploded off its hinges. On the street above, two Sentinel agents stood guard with their rifles trained on the exit. They heard the blast, saw the massive slab of iron hurtling toward them, and had just enough time for their pupils to contract.

Then the door hit.

The impact flattened both men against the pavement, reducing them to a smear of blood and shattered bone.

Hawk stepped out of the stairwell bare-chested, covered in Sentinel blood, still in slacks and dress shoes. He didn’t land on the asphalt. He hovered above it, his eyes cold as he looked down at the street, judging his prey.

Two unmarked armored transports sat nearby. A perimeter had been established, and more than thirty heavily armed Sentinel agents were preparing to descend into the sewers.

Hawk’s cosmic energy still didn’t work. Maybe this universe was a trap. Maybe its frequency was too low for him to use his Cosmo.

Either way, it didn’t matter. The universe could block his energy, but it couldn’t change his body.

Saints trained both body and spirit. Hawk’s body was already at the Celestial level, and he was close to unlocking the Eighth Sense of Life to become a true god.

So what if he couldn’t use his energy blasts?

He was still a god.

Flight was barely a reflex.

The Sentinel agents looked up and saw him floating, covered in blood and unaffected by the suppressors. Panic spread through their ranks.

”SUPPRESSORS DOWN?”

”NEGATIVE! SUPPRESSORS ARE ACTIVE!”

”THEN WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING?”

”Open fire!”

”Ratatatatatatata”

Automatic gunfire filled the air. Bullets hit Hawk’s chest and face. Sparks flew from the impacts. Flattened bullets fell from his skin and scattered across the street like metal rain.

Hawk did not react.

He looked down at the bullets on the asphalt, then back at the terrified men still firing. The corner of his mouth lifted.

Then he disappeared from the sky.

He reappeared in the center of the squad, and the slaughter began.

Suppressors did nothing. Rifles were useless. Hawk walked through the gunfire and took down the agents with ease. Their discipline broke quickly. One agent dropped his weapon and ran, then another, then a third.

”Running now?”

Hawk laughed as a headless corpse folded beside him.

”Too late!!”

He vanished again.

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New York City.

Sentinel Services Headquarters.

An agent shoved open the door to the director’s office and looked at the middle-aged man behind the desk. The man wore wire-rimmed glasses, and his eyes were cold, sharp, and calculating.

”Sir. Bravo Team hit a snag. We have a suspected mutant immune to the suppressors.”

The man looked up.

Wherever mutants suffered, he was never far away.

William Stryker.

Ten years earlier, the government had officially shut down Bolivar Trask’s Sentinel program. Trask himself had gone to prison after trying to sell his designs to the Soviets.

Publicly, the matter had ended there.

Privately, the government had never stopped fearing mutants.

The persecution simply moved into the shadows.

Stryker had received a blank check to build Sentinel Services.

For ten years, he hunted mutants, partnered with dark money, operated black-site laboratories, and worked tirelessly to crack open the X-Gene and bend it into a weapon humans could control.

Now one of his teams had found something new.

Stryker followed the agent into the command center. The main screen displayed a live feed from the street above the Queens underground.

Broken bodies covered the pavement. Blood ran in dark streams between the vehicles. In the middle of it all stood Hawk, shirtless and covered in blood, looking terrifying.

Down on the street, Hawk sensed the surveillance drone. He tilted his head back and looked directly into the camera.

Through the screen, his eyes met Stryker’s.

Stryker narrowed his gaze. ”Who is that?”

”Running facial recognition now.”

A technician moved quickly through the databases.

”Nothing in federal records. Nothing in Interpol. Sir, there’s no match.”

Stryker frowned. ”ETA on the gunships?”

”Ten seconds.”

On the screen, two attack helicopters swept into frame, bearing down on Hawk’s position.

Hawk saw them coming and scoffed.

The asphalt cracked under him as he shot into the sky. Before the helicopters could fire, he ripped through the lead gunship. It exploded in a huge fireball, and the burning wreckage spun down, smashed into an apartment building, and crashed onto the street.

The command center recoiled in shock.

”Holy shit!”

”Jesus Christ!”

Dread spread through the neighborhood.

Luckily, this was Queens. If two gunships had crashed in Manhattan, the number of casualties would have been much higher.

Stryker watched the burning wreckage on the screen. Then he replayed the image of Hawk ripping through armored plating with his bare hands.

He did not feel fear.

He did not feel shock.

He felt greed...

This mutant is better than Professor X!!

’I want him.’ Stryker took a slow breath, his eyes fixed on Hawk as the man landed softly back on the blood-soaked asphalt.

”Contact Washington. Request deployment of the Strategic Support Unit.”

”Yes, sir.”

The technician scrambled to secure the line.

Stryker did not blink. Hawk stood among the carnage and continued staring into the camera, as if he knew exactly who was watching.

Immune to suppressors.

Indestructible flesh.

Flight.

”I don’t care who you are...” Stryker whispered. ”I will catch you.”

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