"How is he this strong?"
Inside the White House, President Matthew Ellis stared at the live feed, disbelief written all over his face.
On-screen, Noah Vale tore through Sentinels and leveled entire structures like they were made of paper.
"I saw him fight that lizard creature not long ago—he wasn't anywhere near this level."
Ellis couldn't make sense of it. The data they had on Noah was barely a month old, and already it felt obsolete. It was like trying to fight a completely different person.
How did someone grow this much in under two months?
He clenched his jaw.
"It doesn't matter," he said, more to himself than anyone else. "A nuclear strike ends this."
And the moment Noah reached the incoming warhead—
Ellis pressed the button.
The bomb detonated instantly.
For a split second, the world turned white.
The flash was so intense it lit up half the planet. Across North America, people saw the sky flare like a second sun. Some weren't fast enough to look away.
Then came the fire.
A massive sphere of incandescent plasma bloomed in the sky, expanding outward at terrifying speed. It stretched for miles, swallowing everything in its path.
Moments later, the mushroom cloud rose—towering, monstrous, climbing far beyond the height of Everest.
Compared to this, the Sentinels' earlier explosion had been nothing.
The blast radius erased everything within dozens of miles. The shockwave rolled outward, slamming into New York's outer districts. Buildings shuddered. Glass shattered. Entire neighborhoods were thrown into chaos.
Had this gone off in the heart of Manhattan…
There wouldn't have been a city left.
At ground zero—
Noah's body vanished.
The outer layers of his flesh were instantly vaporized, stripped away by temperatures that reached unimaginable extremes. Several centimeters of his body simply ceased to exist in the first instant.
Then came the force.
The blast hurled what remained of him through the inferno, tearing him apart further with every passing fraction of a second.
By then, there was barely anything left.
A charred mass. Fragments. Less than twenty kilograms of what had once been a human body.
If anyone could have seen it, they would have called it instantly.
Dead.
Beyond saving.
But Noah knew better.
Not even close.
He wasn't gone.
Even now—missing limbs, half his torso reduced to carbon, his brain cooked by heat that could vaporize steel—he was still alive.
Because as long as something remained, he could come back.
His regeneration had crossed a threshold. All he needed was a fragment—a cluster of living cells no bigger than a marble—and he could rebuild himself entirely within minutes.
And just to be safe…
He'd prepared for this.
Before the detonation, he had phased a critical portion of his core out of sync with reality—insurance against pushing himself too far.
As it turned out, he hadn't needed it.
The nuke wasn't enough.
Three seconds after the explosion, what remained of Noah had shrunk to the size of a fist.
By then, the worst of the blast had passed.
The destruction weakened.
And his regeneration surged.
Cells divided at an insane rate, rebuilding tissue, forming structure, restoring function. The process devoured energy at an absurd pace—each second of recovery costing what would normally be years of lifespan.
But something strange was happening.
As his body rebuilt itself…
It improved.
Destruction wasn't just damage—it was pressure. And under that pressure, his body adapted.
Stronger.
Denser.
More efficient.
The energy cost of healing was nothing compared to what he was gaining in return.
Seven seconds in, equilibrium tipped.
Regeneration overtook destruction completely.
The charred mass cracked open.
Inside, fresh tissue expanded rapidly, glowing faintly as it consumed and restructured itself. The mass doubled, then doubled again—growing with explosive speed.
A small humanoid shape emerged.
Infant-sized.
Then larger.
A child.
A teenager.
And then—
In the blink of an eye, it was over.
Noah Vale stood whole again, suspended in the heart of the fading fireball.
His long black hair whipped wildly around him. His eyes burned with intensity, sharp and alive. A grin stretched across his face—unrestrained, exhilarated.
He looked… stronger.
Not just recovered.
Upgraded.
Far away, inside S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters, silence filled the room.
"Did… did it work?" someone asked.
Maria Hill watched the feed, her voice tight. "It should have. That yield was—"
Nick Fury didn't respond.
He was staring at the screen.
Then—
A streak tore out of the fireball.
A figure punched straight through the remaining flames, the shockwave from his movement blowing away everything within hundreds of meters.
Fury's expression darkened.
"…He's alive," he said flatly. "And not just alive."
Stronger.
The word hung in the air, unspoken but undeniable.
Around him, the room fell into quiet despair.
What do you do against something like that?
Noah drifted in the sky, arms folded, completely at ease.
The flames behind him slowly died out.
He didn't move.
Didn't chase.
Didn't attack.
He just waited.
There were still fifteen minutes left.
He was curious what they'd try next.
Fury finally broke the silence.
"What about Plan B?" he asked, glancing at Coulson.
Coulson snapped out of his daze and quickly checked the reports.
His face went pale.
"…Failed," he said quietly. "Every team assigned to target people connected to Noah—completely unresponsive. We've lost contact with all of them."