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Under the disbelieving eyes of the world, Ethan Mercer started running.
Not jogging. Not sprinting in the way a normal human sprints. Running with a fluidity and acceleration that didn't belong in a body that had just fallen ten stories.
In the live broadcast, the Valorian audience lost its collective mind.
"Is he a GOD?"
"Thirty meters. He fell THIRTY METERS and he's RUNNING?"
"The serum is the most terrifying thing he's ever built!"
In the stuck elevator, Callister watched the figure shrink below him and felt the greed hit before the rational thought could catch up. Then his phone rang.
"Hello, Mr. President."
President Wolfe's voice was ragged with adrenaline.
"Andrew, I don't care what it costs. You will capture Mercer ALIVE."
"Battle armor PLUS this serum? Our global position would be unassailable for a century!"
Callister guaranteed results, hung up, and grabbed his communicator.
"All units pursuing Mercer: switch to tranquilizer rounds ONLY. I repeat: non-lethal munitions only. Bring him back alive. Anyone who kills him answers to the President personally."
Over a hundred agents mobilized from the building, piling into pursuit vehicles that peeled out of the parking structure with enough urgency to leave rubber on the concrete.
Callister, watching the chase begin from his elevated cage, finally exhaled.
Too many reversals today. Time to end this.
On the streets of the Aurelian Republic's eastern seaboard, Ethan ran.
The serum was still new. He'd injected it less than forty-eight hours ago, and this was the first time he'd pushed his body at full capacity in an open environment. The power was there, enormous and unfamiliar, like driving a car with an engine ten times larger than anything you'd practiced with.
His legs found a rhythm. His breathing stabilized. His muscles, restructured at the cellular level, responded to commands with a speed and precision that made his old body feel like it had been running in sand.
The control came fast. Faster than he'd expected. The serum hadn't just upgraded his body. It had upgraded his ability to learn how to use it.
In the live broadcast, a viewer noticed something.
"Is it my imagination, or have the cars around him slowed down?"
"Someone stopping to give him a ride?"
"In the middle of a government pursuit? Nobody's that brave."
"Then explain what I'm seeing!"
The Signal Bee's camera pulled back.
And the truth became visible.
The cars hadn't slowed down.
Ethan had sped up.
The vehicles on the road were moving at standard urban speeds. Fifty kilometers per hour at minimum, given the traffic flow. And the figure running between them was keeping pace. Matching their velocity. Exceeding it.
A human being was running at fifty kilometers per hour on a public road, and the number was still climbing.
"FIFTY KM/H?!"
"That's faster than the world sprint record by a MASSIVE margin!"
"Even ANIMALS don't run like this! He's matching CARS!"
"The serum didn't 'slightly enhance' anything. It rebuilt him from the ground up!"
At the Hargrove residence, the cup in Marcus's hand hit the floor. He didn't notice.
Jumping from the tenth floor. Now sprinting at speeds that exceeded every recorded human performance by an order of magnitude.
He didn't need calculations to understand what this meant. The serum was, pound for pound, potentially more revolutionary than the armor. The armor could be taken away. The serum was permanent. Irreversible. A biological upgrade that turned a single human into something the military would need to reclassify.
His father had called Ethan's biology project "a waste of talent." Marcus himself had assumed the kid was being impulsive.
The real fool was me. Again.
Ahead, the transport truck carrying the Mark Two was doing its best to create distance. The driver, a veteran who'd spent years hauling classified equipment under pressure, prided himself on his nerves of steel.
Those nerves were currently failing.
In his rearview mirror, a teenager was chasing his truck. On foot. At highway speed.
He'd survived ambushes. He'd outrun pursuit vehicles. He'd transported warheads through hostile territory without blinking.
But nothing in his career had prepared him for the sight of a kid running down a moving truck like it was standing still.
Am I dreaming, or is God dreaming?
The agents guarding the truck's cargo bed didn't have time for existential questions. They saw the figure closing and opened fire.
Tranquilizer darts. Dozens of them. A wall of needles trailing their targets through the air.
But the road was crowded. Civilian vehicles provided cover. And the moment the agents raised their weapons, Ethan ducked behind a car moving in the adjacent lane, using it as a rolling shield.
The darts pinged off metal and asphalt. Not a single one hit.
The agents were trained for this. They'd fire, reload, fire again. Standard suppression protocol against a moving target.
But Ethan had already identified the gap.
The reload.
The moment the lead agent ejected his spent magazine, Ethan burst from behind the car. Full speed. Closing the distance to the truck with an acceleration that made the previous pace look casual.
But first, he needed something to throw.
His hand closed on the driver's side mirror of the car he'd been hiding behind. One pull. The mounting bracket snapped like a breadstick. The mirror came free in his hand, a roughly one-kilogram piece of glass and plastic.
A rearview mirror. Not exactly a regulation weapon.
He weighed it for a fraction of a second, calculated the angle, the windage, the truck's speed relative to his own.
Then he threw.
The mirror left his hand like a shell from a cannon. It crossed the gap between Ethan and the truck in less time than the agent had to register that something was incoming.
The glass-and-plastic projectile hit the agent center mass with the kinetic energy of a car crash.
The agent didn't just fall. He was launched off the truck bed, taking the tailgate door with him, tumbling across the asphalt in a heap of limbs and body armor and absolute incomprehension.
The driver, who'd been watching in the mirror, nearly put the truck into a ditch.
What did I just see?
The agent fired a hundred rounds. Kid was fine.
Kid threw a REARVIEW MIRROR. Agent is gone. So is the door.
I need to quit this job. TODAY. Go find a construction site. Carry bricks. Something NORMAL.
In the live broadcast, watching Ethan tear through the streets of the Aurelian Republic's own capital like a one-man army, the Valorian audience reached a state of euphoria that transcended normal fandom.
"PROFESSOR MERCER IS THE GREATEST HUMAN BEING ALIVE!"
"Chasing down Aurelian agents on AURELIAN SOIL! On THEIR streets! In THEIR city!"
"Some countries have movie action heroes. We have the real thing!"
"I hereby nominate Professor Mercer for the title: THE REARVIEW MIRROR WAR GOD!"
"SECONDED!"
"THIRDED!"
"PROFESSOR MERCER IS THE GOAT!"
Ethan, running at sixty kilometers per hour down a foreign highway with the wind in his face and a transport truck getting closer with every stride, couldn't hear the comments.
But if he could, he would have appreciated the nickname.
The truck was twenty meters ahead. Fifteen. Ten.
He was gaining.