Fenris reached out and gave a light tug. The steel rebar pinning Stryker in place peeled apart as easily as noodles in his hands.
"You..."
Stryker opened his mouth, but no words came out.
He knew better than anyone how much strength it took to do something like that so casually. The moment he realized those same hands were now clamped around his throat, cold sweat began pouring down his body uncontrollably, and his legs started trembling on their own.
Just as Fenris was about to give Stryker's command room a thorough search, Magneto, who had already walked out, suddenly came back at some point without anyone noticing. His voice drifted in from the doorway.
"Child, are you here to stop us?"
Magneto watched Fenris in silence.
He knew Fenris's power all too well. Even for him, dealing with Fenris would be no easy task. Worse, there was a real chance that a fight would completely destroy the Cerebro machine.
That was the last thing he wanted.
Clang, clang.
Under Magneto's control, the metal around them slowly began to rise into the air, their sharpened tips pointing straight at Fenris.
"Move aside, Magneto. All I want right now is Stryker. I do not have time to play games with you."
Fenris paid no attention at all to Magneto's show of force. That kind of thing might scare ordinary people, but using it against him was not nearly enough.
"You are not here to stop Magneto?"
Emma Frost, the White Queen, who was standing behind him, suddenly stepped forward. She glanced at Fenris with open curiosity. "Aren't you one of the X-Men? Don't you think Erik's plan is a little too insane?"
"Emma, what are you doing?"
Magneto frowned at once and pulled her back. "The plan is about to succeed. Do you want everything we have done to go to waste?"
"I was only making conversation."
Emma gave an indifferent smile, turned, and stepped back without saying another word.
Watching the exchange, Fenris shifted his gaze between Magneto and the White Queen, then suddenly understood. "Magneto, so your people are not exactly united after all."
"That is none of your concern."
Seeing there was not going to be a fight after all, Magneto let out a cold snort and turned to leave.
"No timing, no position, no support, and you still think you can pull this off. Hah..."
Fenris curled his lip in disdain. After casually tossing Stryker to the floor, he started rummaging through the command room.
He had not forgotten his deal with Nick Fury. Proof that Stryker had orchestrated the mutant-controlled assassination attempt on the president was worth several reactors.
"All of Stryker's files are in the safe over there. The password is eight zeroes."
Emma did not leave immediately with Magneto. Instead, she watched Fenris's movements thoughtfully for a moment before suddenly speaking up.
"Hm?"
Fenris froze, then turned back in surprise, just in time to see Emma smiling at him.
"Thanks."
"You're welcome."
"You are not really going to help Magneto, are you?" Fenris suddenly asked.
"I just do not want to be an executioner."
With that, Emma spun away in one smooth, graceful turn and left without looking back.
...
With the White Queen's tip, Fenris easily got the files he wanted. He casually opened a dimensional portal and tossed them back to the school, then turned his attention once more to Stryker, who was crawling away and trying to sneak off.
"You still think you can run?"
Fenris's face turned cold. His body blurred, and in an instant he appeared behind Stryker, driving a vicious kick into the back of his head.
Bang!
Even holding back, the force still smashed Stryker's head into the ground with a loud crack.
The sudden blow dropped him flat. Sparks burst across his vision, and he lay there for a long time, unable to get back up.
"You..."
"Fenris Etherreal... I never thought..."
"I never thought that after escaping the base for just a few days, you would already have this kind of power..."
It took Stryker a long while to recover enough to push himself upright. He turned around, staring at Fenris in terror while gasping for breath.
"One correction. I did not escape. I killed my way out."
Fenris stepped forward, grabbed Stryker by the throat, and lifted him effortlessly into the air.
"You know me because I got out of one of your bases. But I know you because every single day and night I spent inside that place, I heard your name from the mouths of those animals."
"Today, I am going to make you feel what I once..."
As he spoke, another dimensional portal opened, this one leading back to the research base.
Just as Fenris was about to step through it, a faint slicing sound suddenly reached his ears.
His steps stopped. Acting on instinct, he drew back, and a woman in a black leather suit with long silver claws extending from all ten fingers flashed past where he had been standing.
"Yuriko!"
The instant he saw her, Stryker's pupils contracted sharply. A blazing hope flared in his eyes, like a drowning man suddenly grabbing onto his only lifeline. He began struggling wildly in Fenris's grip, screaming hoarsely, "Quick! Save me!"
"Get me away from him! Now!"
"Why did Magneto leave you behind?" Fenris frowned.
This Yuriko, Lady Deathstrike, had the same healing factor as Logan. Her entire body had also been infused with adamantium, and she had ten extendable claws.
She was not overwhelmingly strong, but she was incredibly troublesome. Killing her would not be easy.
"Kill!"
As Lady Deathstrike lunged at him again, Fenris twisted aside and snapped out a roundhouse kick without the slightest hesitation.
Bang!
Fenris was far faster than she was. His overwhelming strength erupted instantly and smashed her straight into the wall.
"Go play in space for a while."
Fenris had no interest in getting tangled up with a woman whose whole body was coated in adamantium. With a wave of his hand, he opened a dimensional portal leading into outer space.
He glanced down at the shivering Stryker, who was still clinging to Lady Deathstrike as his savior. The next second, Fenris vanished like a phantom.
Lady Deathstrike did not even have time to blink before a fierce gust struck her. Her whole body flew like a kite with its string cut, and she was kicked straight through the portal.
Whoooosh.
The dimensional portal remained open for only a few seconds, but the enormous command room was already reduced to chaos under the crushing air pressure. Stryker, an ordinary man, could barely breathe under the terrifying pressure. It was a long while before he finally started gasping desperately for air.
"That was... a space portal?"
"You actually exiled Yuriko into space?"
By the time Stryker finally processed what had happened, all he could do was stare blankly at the now-empty command room. In just a few seconds, the Lady Deathstrike he had pinned all his hopes on had become a brand-new adamantium meteor drifting through space.
"Do not bother looking. You are not getting a death that quick."
Fenris gave a cold snort, stepped forward, and dragged Stryker into the place he knew best: that mutant research base.
"Stryker, right here, in this very base you built, I endured the cruelest punishments in the world."
"Freezing experiments. Dehydration experiments. Poison gas experiments..."
Fenris dragged Stryker up through the main building and into a laboratory that was still mostly intact.
"In those days, I learned a lot from Sarah. I learned where to cut if you want to cause the most pain. I learned what the true limit of an ordinary human really is..."
Stryker's lips were shaking violently from terror. All he could manage were broken, choked whimpers. His eyes were full of pleading and fear, but Fenris showed no reaction at all. He casually threw him onto an operating table and strapped him down.
"You spent your whole life studying mutants, putting countless mutants on this table. But for you, this should be the first time you have ever lain on it yourself."
"Stryker, I wonder... did you ever imagine that one day, you would end up here too?"
(End of Chapter)
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