Silence…
With the naked man's appearance, everyone near the New York Stock Exchange in Manhattan fell into tense silence all at once.
That silence lasted more than twenty seconds, until Heisenberg finally struggled and moved a little, and only then was it broken.
Heisenberg raised a hand stiffly, like a walking corpse.
In an instant, more than seventy rifles and twelve grenade launchers were aimed at him.
Iron Man pointed both hand cannons at Heisenberg as the light in his palms continued to gather.
Black Widow's right glove crackled with dazzling arcs of electricity, dangerous yet strangely beautiful.
As for Coulson…
He glanced at the pistol he was holding up to aim, then curled his lip slightly.
Why did it always feel like his pose was kind of useless?
Ahem.
Coulson shook his head, tossed away the stray thoughts, then cautiously asked, "Can you understand me? Who are you, where did you come from, and what do you want?"
As his words fell, Heisenberg frowned. Wasn't this basically the three questions of life?
Who am I, where do I come from, where am I going?
"I'm Heisenberg, Krypton's sixty-fourth Supreme Elder of the Elder Council, I…" Before he could finish, his entire body was abruptly cut off by unbearable pain. "Nngh, ughhh, AAAAAAH!!!"
Noise, violently agitated noise, crashed straight into his mind!
It felt like tens of thousands of huskies were roaring right beside his ears.
Like hundreds of thousands of women chattering nonstop inside his skull.
Even more like a thousand nuclear bombs exploding in his mouth and nose.
Air, every wisp of air felt as sharp as a bayonet. Every breath took all his strength, yet no matter how much he inhaled, his lungs only felt painfully dry.
And most importantly!
Radiation!
Heisenberg knew it was the Sun's radiation, Earth's unique yellow sun, naturally beginning to strengthen Kryptonian cells.
But this strengthening was not gentle at all. His cells were like a riverbed dried for hundreds of years, while the solar radiation was a surging, overflowing river.
The instant that river of radiation "watered" his body, it turned into a raging mudslide, rampaging through every corner of him!
"I… nngh, ugh, damn it, damn it, AAAAAAH!!!"
He could no longer speak. With a loud thud, he collapsed onto the ground, face pressed to the asphalt, his whole body convulsing like a giant prawn being boiled alive.
And that display of pain instantly erased S.H.I.E.L.D.'s hostility.
Coulson lunged to Heisenberg's side.
"Damn it, an elder from some alien planet seems to have landed on Earth with some kind of illness. I really don't want him dying here!"
As he spoke, Coulson issued orders to everyone around him. "Evacuate Manhattan completely. Target is suspected of carrying a lethal illness. Infectious risk cannot be ruled out. Anyone with kids at home, and all field agents under twenty-five, stay away. Everyone else, send a few people with me to bring him back to the branch!"
"Yes!"
"Copy!"
"I'm in!"
Three or four people immediately stepped forward. In the blink of an eye, Heisenberg was lifted into a Hummer and settled inside.
The Hummer convoy roared away, leaving Iron Man alone, staring wide-eyed through his helmet.
Watching the vehicles disappear, Tony Stark felt helpless.
"Efficient, aren't they. Fine. JARVIS, notify Pepper. Have two units of the virus testing equipment prototypes Stark Industries developed two years ago, the ones already discontinued, delivered here. Also make it very clear to Pepper that she absolutely cannot approach the Stock Exchange by even one step."
After thinking for a moment, Tony added, "Oh right. While you're at it, acquire two hundred thousand hazmat suits and one million masks. Stock up for New Yorkers first."
"Understood, Mr. Stark," JARVIS replied.
After that, Tony looked at the patch of ground where Heisenberg had fallen. He seemed to notice something.
He walked over, bent down, and examined the road.
"This… was there already a pit in the road here?"
It turned out that right where Heisenberg had collapsed, an oddly shaped dent sat in the middle of the street.
The dent looked like it had three parts, two shallower dents clustered around a deeper one…
Tony reached out, confused, and lightly felt along the edge.
"This is Manhattan's main road. There's no way it would have damage this obvious. So what exactly is this pit…"
Tony could not help replaying Heisenberg's fall in his mind, and immediately after, Tony's expression turned awful.
He sprang upright and retreated more than ten steps in disgust.
He glanced down at his own crotch with a strange look, then looked back at the pit on the ground.
"This is a damn miracle. An absolute miracle. It's too envy-inducing, damn it…!!!"
After saying that, he flew off without looking back.
He needed a new suit. This Mark II had to be thrown away. He was not about to wear armor that had indirectly touched that thing on a man.
That would be completely un-Tony.
…
About forty minutes later.
S.H.I.E.L.D. New York Branch.
Behind the one-way bulletproof glass in the wall, Nick Fury kept studying Heisenberg inside the room.
Beside the bed Heisenberg lay on, more than a dozen medical experts were discussing heatedly.
"Damn it, our current scanning equipment can't penetrate his skin to examine his organs. His muscles are denser than the thickest metal!"
"This is unbelievable. The best scalpel I have can't cut even a single strand of his hair!"
"Not just hair. I even tried taking a sample from his eyeball with a laser blade for testing, but our laser can't even damage his lens!"
"What kind of lifeform is this? Even Thor, the one who came to Earth last time, wasn't this physically strong!"
"I suspect he can survive in space on his own. Absolutely!"
"Watch what you say. He's awake, he just seems to be suffering in pain. Even if he might not understand our language, don't leak too much information. After all, he is…"
"After all, I'm an alien, right?"
Heisenberg, who looked like he was asleep, suddenly spoke, and at the same time, he opened his eyes.
Just now, S.H.I.E.L.D. had strapped his body straight onto an examination table. If he were not Kryptonian, he would have been reduced to scattered organs by now.
He was not happy.
When he opened his eyes, his vision was still blurry. The first thing Heisenberg saw was not humans, but more than a dozen human skeletons.
His powerful eyesight let him see through all the doctors' disguises instantly.
So he stared a bit longer at one doctor's rear.
After all, the butt plug tucked back there was just far too eye-catching…
The doctors did not notice his gaze.
On the contrary, they were shocked by his fluent English.
In the few seconds of their stunned silence, Nick Fury outside the room shouted into his earpiece, "Ask about his condition, now. What is that illness, is it contagious, ask!"
"Pah!"
The moment Fury finished, Heisenberg sat up decisively.
"Don't insult me with talk of infectious diseases!"
As he cursed, Heisenberg raised an arm.
The special ropes used to bind him to the bed snapped instantly. When those metal-blended ropes broke, the sound made several doctors clamp their hands over their ears.
Heisenberg stared at the layers of blades and lasers prepared for him all around. He wanted to kill someone.
But in the end, he avoided the doctors and casually jumped off the bed to the floor.
The moment he landed, his legs seemed a bit weak. He staggered and quickly reached out to grab the testing machine beside him.
Crash!
The machine was crushed inward, leaving a dent more than ten centimeters deep. Inside that dent, sparks flickered for a few seconds before the machine went completely dark.
Heisenberg showed not the slightest apology. He yanked a bedsheet off the bed and covered everything below his waist.
Then he looked straight through what should have been an opaque mirror and walked directly toward Nick Fury outside the one-way glass.
Nick Fury's brows were tightly knit, a sheen of sweat quietly forming at the edge of his forehead.
Luckily, Heisenberg stopped in front of the glass.
"You are… fine, you don't have a business card, but I think I heard someone mention your name from more than seven hundred meters away. You're the director of S.H.I.E.L.D., Nick Fury, right?"
"I can't believe it!" Fury said in astonishment.
"There's a lot more you won't be able to believe. For example, you can't do anything to me." Heisenberg's tone was calm. "Also, I don't really like talking to you in a quarantine room like this. It makes me feel like some rare creature on display."
As he spoke, Heisenberg kept walking forward.
As Heisenberg drew closer, Fury and Hill immediately backed away in tense alarm.
When Heisenberg's forehead was about to touch the glass, he suddenly stopped.
"You still haven't backed up enough. Back up twenty more steps. Go to that corner."
He "kindly" reminded them. Fury thought for a moment, then did exactly as Heisenberg said.
Twenty steps away, Fury and Hill stood by the corner, staring nervously at Heisenberg's fairly handsome, intensely masculine face.
Heisenberg continued to walk forward lightly.
He didn't make any obvious exertion, yet he passed through the glass and the wall.
The reinforced blast-proof glass that was forced open shattered instantly. The violent reaction swept glass fragments across everything within a twenty-meter radius.
Heisenberg stood in the ruins, gripping the bedsheet that had nearly been crushed, and raised a hand at Nick Fury.
"You look like you have a lot you want to say, but get me some clothes first. A black trench coat like yours will do. Hurry!"
"I can meet your request, but please don't act rashly," Fury said cautiously. "Please come to my office. The clothes will be prepared there."
"Mm." Heisenberg nodded, then followed behind Fury all the way to his office.
Halfway there, Hill split off from them.
And when Heisenberg entered the office with Fury, Hill was already waiting inside with a full set of black clothing.
Heisenberg took the clothes, inspected them, and nodded.
"Your taste isn't bad. Better than my planet's. I've been sick of our uniforms that never change for over a hundred thousand years!"
As he spoke, he put on the clothes in a single instant.
He moved so fast he even kicked up a small storm inside the office.
The wind forced Fury to squint. When he looked again, Heisenberg was already fully dressed and sitting on the sofa that should have belonged to Fury.
"Sit. I haven't felt what it's like to sit down in a long time. Ask whatever you want."
Heisenberg's attitude made Fury's heart sink.
Dominant. That was the feeling Heisenberg gave him. And the terrifying strength Heisenberg had displayed added endless confidence to that dominance.
So Nick Fury quietly sat opposite him, like a subordinate facing a superior.
After a brief silence, Fury glanced at Hill and instructed, "Please get some alcohol for me and this gentleman. The best we have."
"Yes." Hill nodded and immediately left. She understood what Fury meant.
To guard against Heisenberg in the office, S.H.I.E.L.D. needed to bring out the strongest thing they could currently bring out.
The Hulk, far away in India.
And just as Hill contacted Coulson and Black Widow, issuing the order to recruit the Hulk, Fury asked quietly in the office, "Before the drinks arrive, please allow me to be rude and ask, what exactly is your identity?"
"Ha." Heisenberg laughed.
Who am I?
Was he still the ordinary man he used to be, that powerless nobody whose only skill was nodding and bowing?
Now, with Kryptonian strength, he had no reason to pretend, especially not in front of some so-called S.H.I.E.L.D.!
So he spoke calmly.
"Who am I?
I am the sixty-fourth Chief Elder of Krypton's Elder Council, the only leader in Kryptonian history the people ever defined as a traitor.
I am also a so-called criminal sealed in spacetime material and buried for more than eighteen thousand years.
A withered bone in a grave that still has to crawl up, even after missing the era.
Hatred, resentment, you think my heart is filled with those boring emotions?
Relax.
I can feel your wariness.
But in truth, after stripping away everything I once had and then lost, the me of today…
is just an ordinary Kryptonian."
/-\
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