Leon slept deeply this time.
Maybe it was because he’d stayed up half the night before getting that Walkman working, or maybe it was because in this pure white sterile room the concept of time always blurred easily.
When he opened his eyes in a daze, he found the spare thin blanket draped over him.
And Little John was still in the same position as before he’d fallen asleep, sitting cross-legged beside him.
Only now there was something extra in his hands.
The Rubik’s cube that had been twisted into a total mess was now lying quietly in his palm, six faces, six colors, fitted together flawlessly.
Leon rubbed his slightly sore eyes, sat up sharply, and stared at the cube.
“You solved it?” Leon was a little surprised.
He remembered that before he’d fallen asleep, the kid hadn’t even gotten the cross on the second face lined up.
“Mm.” John handed the cube to Leon, a flash of smugness in his deep blue eyes.
“I watched the pattern of how the colors changed every time it turned.
It’s really just a fixed formula.
As long as you calculate all the steps ahead of time in your head, you won’t make a mistake.”
Leon took the cube and gave it a couple of turns, and found that it really had been turned into place, not torn apart by force and stuck back together.
A six-year-old, not only with the power to level the heavens and destroy the earth, but a supercomputer brain whose calculating ability was a monster too.
“You’re a genius, John.”
Leon didn’t spare his praise, ruffling the boy’s blond hair.
“You’ve got patience, and you’re smart.
A fool with power only causes destruction, but a hero with wisdom is the one who can make the rules.”
The praise tugged the corners of John’s mouth up slightly, but he quickly reined it in, forcing himself into a serious “this is no big deal” expression.
In the middle of this warm, picture-perfect father-and-son moment, the communicator in the corner of the sterile room suddenly buzzed.
But what came through wasn’t Supervisor Madelyn’s cold female voice.
It was a low, steady male voice, carrying the air of a man at the top that you couldn’t refuse.
“A very impressive interaction, Mr.
Leon.”
The smile on Leon’s face froze instantly.
He whipped his head around toward that pane of one-way bulletproof glass.
From the inside it was only a mirror, but Leon knew that whoever was standing on the other side of it right now was definitely not Mike doing his usual patrol, and not one of the timid researchers either.
This was Stan Edgar’s voice.
Vought’s current acting vice president, the cold-blooded capitalist who treated superheroes as assembly-line products and political bargaining chips.
“Bring your little hero, Mr.
Leon.”
Edgar’s voice continued out of the speaker.
“Go to Combined Test Range Four in Block C.
I’d like to see for myself whether the results of your education these past few months are as excellent as Madelyn reported.”
The communicator cut off from the other end.
Leon’s heartbeat skipped half a beat.
That was not the place where John usually played with blocks or had his grip strength tested.
That was the sealed fortress built specifically to test the real combat destructive power of superhumans, the walls packed with half-meter-thick radiation-shielding lead plates and high-strength alloy.
What was the old fox up to?
A live combat test?
“Leon, who was talking?”
John keenly picked up on the change in Leon’s mood.
He stood up, his little fist clenching slightly, watching the speaker overhead warily.
“Is he a bad guy?
His voice makes people uncomfortable.”
“No, he…
he’s the company’s big boss, and he’s the one who provides us with burgers and the Walkman.”
Leon drew in a deep breath, working to make his voice sound steady.
“John, listen.
We’re going to a new place now.
We might run into some unexpected situations, but you have to remember what I taught you.
Justice, rules, and patience.”
John looked at Leon’s serious expression and nodded earnestly.
“I’ve got it.
Facing bad guys, break their legs, teach them the rules.”
Leon gave a bitter smile and took John’s small hand.
“Let’s go.
Time to meet the big boss.”
The airlock door slid open slowly.
Outside, four fully armed security personnel holding specially made large-caliber rifles were already waiting.
The way they looked at John was like looking at a nuclear bomb that might go off at any second, the hands holding their guns trembling slightly.
“Lead the way.” Leon kept John close to his side, his tone calm.
This was the first time in John’s six years that he’d walked out of the isolation corridor of Block B.
The whole way, every researcher they passed pressed against the wall like they were avoiding the plague, not daring to so much as breathe.
That kind of instinctive fear and rejection was like an invisible wall.
John keenly caught all these stares.
He wasn’t afraid, only bored.
In his eyes, these people in white coats were like fragile insects.
If he wanted to, he wouldn’t even need to use heat vision.
A single shout would be enough to shatter all their eardrums.
But he didn’t do it, because Leon’s hand was warm, holding his tightly.
After passing through three heavy alloy blast doors, they arrived at Block C’s Test Range Four.
It was a huge space the size of a soccer field, the floor and walls covered in scorched black marks and massive craters left by all kinds of weapons testing.
In the bulletproof observation room on the test range’s second floor, Stan Edgar, in a crisp suit, stood with his hands clasped behind his back, looking down from above at Leon and John in the center of the floor.
Madelyn stood timidly behind and to the side of him. This story is hosted at g.com.
“Boss, the test subject has been brought in.” Madelyn spoke into the microphone.
Edgar nodded slightly and pressed a red button.
An iron door at the far end of the test range slowly rose.
Along with a stretch of heavy panting and the sound of chains dragging across the ground, a man stepped out, extremely burly, his muscles knotted to the point of deformity.
His eyes were bloodshot, his skin showing an abnormal dark red, and a beast-like low growl kept coming from his mouth.
The handcuffs on his wrists had already been forcibly wrenched out of shape.
“Mr.
Leon, this is a street gang boss who lost control from overdosing on low-grade Compound V.”
Edgar’s voice echoed through the empty test range.
“Yesterday he robbed an armored cash truck in Queens and tore three police officers apart with his bare hands.
The PR department spent a great deal of effort to bury the news.”
Leon’s heart dropped, and he instinctively shifted John a little further behind him.
The thing he feared most had happened after all.
Vought didn’t care in the slightest whether John’s moral compass was normal.
All they needed to confirm was whether this weapon could kill, whether it would dare to kill.
“You want to teach him to become a hero.
That’s good.”
Edgar’s tone was even, yet it carried a chill that cut to the bone.
“But the essence of a hero is cleaning up garbage.
Now, send that boy to clean up the garbage in front of him.
If he can’t do it, or if he gets hurt, then it means your method of education is a failure, and Vought has no need for failed employees.”
This was an open threat.
If John acted like a weak, normal little kid today, then Leon’s most likely fate was being stuffed into a black trash bag and thrown into the Hudson River.
He might not even rate a trash bag of his own.
That dark red muscle monster seemed to sense something too.
He frantically flung off the deformed cuffs on his wrists, his red eyes fixed on the white-coated Leon in the center of the floor, and the frail-looking little blond behind him.
“Roar…!!”
The monster bellowed, and like a runaway heavy truck, it crushed the hard alloy floor underfoot and came charging at Leon.
The gust of wind it kicked up stung Leon’s cheeks.
Leon’s palms were soaked with cold sweat, but he didn’t step back.
“John.” Leon didn’t look up at the observation room.
Instead he looked down at the boy beside him, his voice more serious than ever.
“He’s breaking the rules.”
John’s deep blue eyes were locked on the monster charging at them, a suffocating pressure radiating from his small body.
“Yes, he’s a murderer, a bad guy through and through.”
Leon let go of John’s hand and took a step back.
“Go on, use your way to make him stop.”