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Callister listened to the truck driver's trembling report and felt his jaw lock.
The serum wasn't just an enhancement. It was an evolution. Based on the data streaming in from the pursuit — the speed, the strength, the thrown objects that hit like artillery — this kid was fully deserving of a title that Callister's rational mind didn't want to accept but couldn't deny: the strongest living thing on the surface of the planet.
Bare-handed. No armor. No weapons. Just biology that had been rewritten by a genius who'd been told he couldn't do biology.
If this serum were mass-produced across a military...
Callister killed that thought before it could finish and started giving orders.
"Contact the transportation authority. I want the entire street cleared. Every civilian vehicle off the road. NOW."
His staff scrambled.
"And get me St. John's Hospital. I need their helicopter. Pilot on the pad, rotors spinning, ready for immediate departure."
The hospital administrator on the other end of the line heard the Defense Secretary's voice and didn't ask questions. Within minutes, a helicopter was being prepped.
Callister called the truck driver one more time.
"Change of destination. St. John's Hospital. Full speed. A helicopter will be waiting. Get the armor on that chopper and off the ground."
He set the phone down and watched the Signal Bee's feed. The red dot that was Ethan Mercer, running at sixty kilometers per hour through the streets of his own capital.
A cold smile.
Little rat. Once the armor is airborne, your options drop to zero.
Unless your serum lets you fly.
And I don't think it does.
Ethan noticed the traffic thinning and understood immediately.
Callister had cleared the road. No more civilian vehicles meant no more rolling cover, no more rearview mirrors to rip off, no more obstacles between the truck and open highway.
Without traffic, the truck could accelerate to full speed. And sixty kilometers per hour, impressive as it was for a human being, wasn't enough to catch a truck running flat out.
He needed to act before the road emptied completely.
Two cars still remained within reach, their drivers frozen in confusion at the rapidly developing situation around them. Ethan sprinted alongside one, tore off both side mirrors in two quick motions, and threw.
Both mirrors hit the truck's rear tires.
The enhanced precision turned automotive accessories into anti-vehicle weapons. Both tires blew simultaneously. The truck lurched, fishtailed, and its speed dropped from highway pace to a wounded crawl.
Ethan surged forward.
He was ten meters behind. Five. Three.
Then the pursuit vehicles arrived.
Six cars, carrying over twenty agents, roared up from behind and fanned out between Ethan and the crippled truck. Windows dropped. Tranquilizer guns appeared.
Callister's voice screamed through their communicators:
"DO NOT let that truck stop! Keep the kid back! Suppress his movement!"
The darts started flying.
Ethan's enhanced visual processing tracked each one. The projectiles were slower than bullets, couldn't fire in sustained bursts, and couldn't create an effective suppression pattern. Dodging them individually wasn't hard.
But dodging them while sprinting at top speed, with no cover, against twenty shooters working in coordinated volleys? That was a different problem. His speed dropped. He could maintain pursuit, staying behind the truck, but he couldn't close the gap.
Stalemate.
The truck limped forward on two blown tires. Ethan ran behind it. The pursuit vehicles flanked him, firing continuously, keeping him at arm's length.
Callister watched the stalemate with satisfaction.
Stalemate was exactly what he wanted. The truck didn't need to outrun the kid. It just needed to reach the hospital helipad. The helicopter would do the rest.
In Valoria, Graves watched the same feed with the opposite emotion.
Kid, I don't know what they're planning, but a stalemate is the worst outcome for you.
You need to break through. Now. Before whatever they've arranged catches up.
The minutes crawled.
Then the truck turned into St. John's Hospital's parking complex, and the helipad came into view.
A helicopter sat on the pad, rotors already turning, the pilot visible through the canopy. Two ground crew stood beside it, ready to load.
The truck stopped in front of the pad. The driver, who had survived the most traumatic day of his professional life, threw the vehicle into park and collapsed against his steering wheel.
The pursuit vehicles screeched to a halt behind Ethan, forming a wall between him and the helipad. Over twenty agents piled out and assumed a blocking formation, weapons raised, faces set.
Callister's voice crackled through every communicator:
"Everyone, you hold that line until the armor is loaded onto the helicopter. Whatever it takes. Whatever it costs. Even if it costs your LIVES. Do you understand?"
Twenty agents took a collective breath and set their jaws. They'd been trained for this. Sacrifice for the mission. Hold the line until the objective was complete.
Ethan looked past the wall of agents at the helicopter. Its rotors were accelerating. Ground crew was already opening the truck's remaining cargo door.
He understood Callister's plan now. Get the armor airborne. Once it was in the sky, Ethan had no way to follow. No armor. No flight capability. A super soldier who couldn't fly was just a very dangerous man standing on the ground.
He needed to get through twenty agents, reach the helicopter, and secure the armor before it took off.
His eyes found a metal signpost at the edge of the hospital parking lot. Thick steel post, bolted into concrete.
He grabbed it with both hands and bent it.
The metal screamed. The concrete base cracked. The post came free, trailing chunks of foundation, and in Ethan's hands it became something between a staff and a battering ram.
The iron scraped against the asphalt as he dragged it into a fighting stance. The sound was sharp enough to make the closest agents flinch.
Ethan's eyes went cold.
"Alright. Let's see who's faster."
His legs fired.
The acceleration was so explosive that, for the agents watching, he seemed to vanish and reappear three meters closer. Then five. Then at their line.
"FIRE! DON'T SAVE AMMUNITION!"
"IF YOU WANT TO LIVE, SUPPRESS HIM!"
"HOLD ON! REINFORCEMENTS ARE—"
The signpost hit the lead agent across the chest like a baseball bat connecting with a fastball.
The man went airborne. Not stumbled, not staggered, not knocked back. Launched. He flew ten meters sideways and cratered the hood of a parked car with enough force to deploy its airbags.
The remaining agents stared at the bent car hood and the motionless body draped across it.
Ethan showed his teeth. Not a smile. Something closer to what the agents' ancestors would have recognized from encounters with predators that outclassed them completely.
"If we're going to fight, let's fight. Why all the talking?"
He hefted the signpost.
"Who's next?"