Leander shot into the sky, a faint golden light enveloping his body like a protective shroud as he carved through the high-altitude air. The wind roared against his ears, but he barely felt the friction.
Mid-flight, his pocket vibrated. He pulled out the sleek Stark Phone, and Tony's face appeared on the screen, looking significantly more impressed with himself than usual.
"Leander, pay attention. This phone has a feature I've been perfecting in my spare time. Think of it as a graduation gift. The activation button is hidden at the base—give it a press."
Leander flipped the phone over, finding a microscopic, recessed button near the charging port. He clicked it.
The device didn't just vibrate; it began to hum with mechanical precision. The golden-yellow casing split down the middle, dozens of micro-joints unfolding in a synchronized dance of engineering. The glass screen divided into two crystalline lenses, and the entire chassis stretched, thinning out as it wrapped around the back of Leander's head. Within twenty seconds, the phone had transformed into a high-tech pair of tactical glasses, snapping firmly but comfortably over his ears and resting on the bridge of his nose.
Tony's holographic figure reappeared in the corner of Leander's vision, leaning back in his workshop chair with a glass of red wine. He looked like a man who had just won a bet against physics.
"Wow, Mr. Stark," Leander muttered, feeling the HUD (Heads-Up Display) calibrate to his pupils. "This thing is actually incredible. I take back everything I said about you being a dinosaur."
"Careful, kid. I'm an eccentric genius, not a fossil," Tony said, though he couldn't hide his smirk. "There are only two of these units in existence. One is on your face, and the other is currently being used as a paperweight by a very confused general. Don't go smashing this one into a skyscraper, okay? Vibranium-silicate glass doesn't grow on trees."
Tony tapped a key on his end. "I've uploaded the tactical map to your HUD. But I have to ask... are you really ready for this? This isn't a street brawl with Hammer drones. Blonsky is a different breed of ugly."
A semi-transparent map flickered into existence in Leander's right eye, highlighting a red pulsing dot in the Javier Desert. The system calculated his current speed and estimated an arrival time of less than four minutes.
"I'm ready, Tony," Leander said, his voice hardening as the desert floor began to rush toward him. "I've spent every day since Harlem getting stronger. I'm not the same kid who got tossed through a brick wall."
"Good. Because I'm watching your vitals, and I'd hate to have to tell Jenny her nephew got turned into a pancake. Happy New Year, kid. Go give him hell."
Tony's image vanished, leaving Leander alone with the data.
In the Malibu villa, Tony watched the live feed from Leander's glasses. The landscape was blurring into a smear of brown and orange.
"Jarvis, run a diagnostic on his current velocity," Tony commanded, his casual demeanor slipping into professional intensity.
"Sir, based on satellite triangulation and the internal accelerometers in the glasses, Mr. Hayes is currently traveling at approximately Mach 10."
Tony nearly choked on his wine. "Mach ten? That's over seven thousand miles per hour. Most missiles on the planet can't even lock onto a signature moving that fast, let alone intercept it. And he's doing it without a propulsion system..."
A flicker of genuine concern crossed Tony's face. He respected Leander, but the sheer power the boy was displaying was becoming frightening. If Leander ever decided the world wasn't worth saving, there wasn't a defense system on Earth that could stop him.
"Jarvis," Tony said quietly. "Keep a lock on him. If his vitals spike or if he takes a hit he can't recover from, I want the Mark VI prepped for remote deployment. And record every second of this fight. I need to see how he interacts with organic targets."
Leander was still pushing through the atmosphere when a new voice piped up in his ear.
"Mr. Hayes, Jarvis is now online via your tactical sub-system. I will be assisting with environmental scanning and communication relay."
"Good to have you, Jarvis," Leander said. "Can you scan for life signs at the coordinates?"
"Scanning... wait. Mr. Hayes, an urgent priority call is overriding the system. Director Nick Fury is on the line. I have verified the encryption; it is a secure channel."
"Put him through."
Nick Fury's eye-patched face filled the lens. He was sitting in his darkened office, looking as though he hadn't slept since the 90s.
"Leander. I assume Tony gave you the tour," Fury said, his voice a gravelly rumble.
"He gave me the map, Director. What's the situation on the ground?"
"Grim. My intel says there are still two geneticists alive in that bunker. But the satellite feed is picking up something disturbing. Blonsky isn't just sitting there; he's experimenting. The suits in D.C. are losing their patience. They want to drop a thermobaric payload on that base within the hour."
Fury leaned forward. "I told them I had a solution. I wanted Tony to go, to show the Council that we can handle our own mess. But Tony says you're already in the air. This is your chance to prove that you're an asset, not a liability."
"I'm not doing this for the Council, Fury," Leander said, seeing the distant outline of the military base through the desert haze. "I'm doing this to finish what started in New York. Blonsky stays there. Permanently."
"Then do it fast. The clock is ticking, and the Air Force doesn't like being told to stand down. Good luck, Leander."
Inside the Javier base, the air was a nightmare of heat and chemical fumes.
Emil Blonsky's body was in the midst of a horrific transition. After hours of forcing the scientists to work, he had undergone a temporary regression. His body had shrunk to a dense, 2.5-meter-tall frame—not quite human, but more compact and coiled than the four-meter titan he had been.
His skin was a sickly, jaundiced yellow, pulled tight over bone-hard muscle. His spine was a jagged ridge of protruding vertebrae, and his legs had elongated, adding a third joint that looked like the hind leg of a predatory beast. He was a humanoid monster, a perverted fusion of soldier and apex predator.
The two researchers were shaking as they approached him with oversized, reinforced syringes. The needles were made of specialized titanium alloys, designed to pierce his hide.
"Sir... I have to warn you," the lead scientist stammered, his eyes wide with terror. "This concoction... it's a cocktail. We've mixed the concentrate from three different variant strains—bone density, muscle fiber density, and neural reaction speed. It's never been tested in combination. The rejection rate is likely ninety-nine percent."
Blonsky turned his head, his yellow eyes glowing with a manic, obsessive light. "I don't care about your percentages. I felt the Hulk's strength. I felt the boy's metal. I am weak. I need to be more."
This was no longer about a mission for General Ross. This was Blonsky's descent into madness—a man who had traded his soul for the chance to be the ultimate weapon.
"Inject it," Blonsky commanded.
The scientists exchanged a look of pure despair. They had no choice. With the help of a mechanical press, they drove the specialized needles into Blonsky's massive traps. The turbid, glowing fluid hissed as it entered his bloodstream.
For a second, there was silence.
Then, Blonsky's entire body went rigid. A sound like snapping timber filled the room as his bones began to fracture and reform in real-time. His muscles began to ripple uncontrollably, bulging and snapping against his skin. The spike-man variant, watching from the corner, backed away in horror, his own heavy arms dragging through the blood on the floor.
The two technicians saw their chance. They turned to run, hoping to reach the heavy blast doors before the monster recovered.
Blonsky's eyes flew open. They weren't just yellow now; they were blood-red, the capillaries bursting from the internal pressure of the serum. The pain was beyond anything he had ever felt, and that pain turned instantly into a blind, murderous rage.
He saw the scientists fleeing. With a roar that shook the very foundations of the bunker, he reached out with a hand that had grown talons. He snatched the lead scientist out of the air.
Before the man could even scream, Blonsky's jaw unhinged with a sickening crack. In a display of pure, animalistic brutality, he didn't just kill the man—he began to vent his rage on the very people who had made him.