Inside the heavily fortified base, Noah Vale walked forward at an unhurried pace.
All around him, soldiers flooded the corridors like a swarm, weapons raised, voices shouting over blaring alarms.
It didn't matter.
"Too slow," Noah muttered. "All of it."
He didn't need to try. He didn't even need to focus. These soldiers—trained, armed, disciplined—were still just human.
To him, they might as well have been standing still.
A fraction of his strength was enough to cut them down.
For a brief moment, he felt… underwhelmed.
Did I overestimate them?
Everything humanity had built—every weapon, every tactic—was designed with other humans in mind. Not something like him.
Even now, Stryker probably didn't fully understand what he was dealing with.
Noah scratched the back of his head, almost embarrassed.
Was I preparing for a war that doesn't even exist?
If even standard mutants could break in and out of places like this, then for him…
This wasn't a battle.
It was cleanup.
—
Then—
A sharp pop echoed through the corridor.
Five bursts of blue-gray smoke detonated around him, sealing off every direction—front, back, left, right, and above.
Noah's eyes narrowed.
The smoke compressed inward—
And figures emerged.
Five of them.
Each over two meters tall, their bodies sleek and metallic, dark gray with a faint sheen. Their right arms shifted and reformed, morphing into razor-edged blades.
They moved as one.
Five strikes, perfectly synchronized—aimed at his throat, temples, spine.
The blades passed through him.
No resistance.
Instead, they collided with each other, ringing out with the sound of steel striking steel.
Noah had already phased out of reality.
He stepped back, reappearing just beyond their reach, studying them.
Sentinels?
That alone would've been strange enough.
But these weren't standard models.
And then—
Something else happened.
Inside the phased space—his space—
A ripple.
A gray mist appeared.
Noah blinked.
"You can follow me in here?"
A blade shot toward his eye.
He caught it between two fingers, stopping it cold.
Strength… around a hundred tons. Speed—three hundred meters per second.
His gaze sharpened.
And teleportation?
"Since when do Sentinels do that?"
More of them flickered into existence around him, phasing in through space like they belonged there.
Noah tightened his grip on one unit's arm and squeezed.
Force surged through his fingers—hundreds of tons of pressure.
The metal didn't even dent.
"…Adamantium."
That explained it.
He twisted the arm, trying to rip it free—
It didn't budge past a certain point.
The structure held.
Noah exhaled slowly.
"Alright. What else have you got?"
As if answering him, one of the Sentinels' faceless heads began to glow.
A bright, concentrated light built behind its smooth surface.
Noah's eyes flicked toward it.
Energy projection?
Before the attack fired, he grabbed one Sentinel and hurled it sideways, smashing it into the others.
Then he raised it in front of himself—
A shield.
The beam fired.
A searing column of energy erupted, lighting up the dark space.
At the same instant—
The attacking Sentinel vanished.
Reappearing behind him.
The beam cut across his extended arm.
There was no resistance.
For a fraction of a second, everything went white.
Then—
His arm was gone.
Severed cleanly at the shoulder.
The detached limb fell, still gripping the Sentinel it had been holding.
Noah looked down at the stump.
"…Interesting."
No panic. No anger.
Just curiosity.
His body was already responding. Flesh shifted, muscle and bone rebuilding at an unnatural speed. Within seconds, a new arm would form.
He didn't wait.
With a subtle pull, the severed arm lifted off the ground and snapped back into place, reconnecting seamlessly.
He flexed his fingers once.
Good as new.
"Teleportation," he said, almost thoughtfully. "Adamantium structure. Optic blasts."
His gaze swept across the five units as they regrouped.
"And they can stack abilities."
This wasn't a normal Sentinel design.
It reminded him of something else entirely—weaponized, hybridized, engineered for versatility.
Stryker had outdone himself.
Noah rolled his neck slowly, the tension finally returning to his expression.
"Alright," he said.
A faint smile tugged at his lips.
"Now this is more like it."
His eyes gleamed.
"I've been meaning to get my hands on some adamantium anyway."
The air around him shifted.
"Let's see how much I can take off you."
—
Deep within the base—
From the moment Noah breached the facility to now, less than three minutes had passed.
Stryker stood over a terminal, watching as the last of the data uploaded.
Then—
Delete.
Files vanished one by one.
For a split second, a symbol flickered across the screen—something resembling a skull entwined with serpentine shapes—before disappearing entirely.
"Sentinels won't hold him for long," Stryker said sharply. "We leave. Now."
The lead engineer didn't argue.
They rushed out of the room, sealing the reinforced blast door behind them.
A second later—
The room exploded.
Fire and pressure consumed everything inside, reducing physical records to ash.
Stryker didn't slow down.
He was already planning his exit.
Then—
A voice.
Calm. Amused.
"Running already? Bit early for that."
Stryker froze.
So did the engineer.
Slowly, they turned.
A man stood behind them.
His body was marked with damage—burns, cuts, torn flesh. One eye was clouded, the other sharp and focused.
And yet—
He was smiling.
Under normal circumstances, it would've been an ordinary expression.
Now?
It looked monstrous.