When I woke that morning, I was treated to another meal of grey slop and a meagre cup of water, before being informed of the impending experiments to be performed on me today.
They would likely begin testing my strength, and if Dr. Stasis and Dr. Alba had their way, I'd be trapped in an adamantium cell by the weekend.
This meant I had the option of taking the risk to plan a more thought-out escape, or simply blow this popsicle stand without a care in the world.
I did not wish to test a Viltrumite's strength against adamantium, after all. It was considered the strongest metal in Marvel for a reason.
Especially since they had learned that enough electricity could knock me out for a time. Though I wondered how my smart-atoms were beginning to adapt to such a thing. Canonically, each time Mark Grayson was beaten down to the brink, he regenerated stronger.
Thragg himself was trained this way, constantly beaten within an inch of his life from childhood, only to be healed and shaped into the strongest warrior of the Viltrumite race.
With all the life-threatening situations I had been in over the past sixteen years, I was definitely stronger than the average Viltrumite. Not on the level of heavy hitters like Thragg, Nolan, or Conquest, but perhaps somewhere around where Mark had been at the end of season three.
Seeing as he had defeated Conquest at that point, and I knew from the comics that Conquest had been held under four hundred tons of metal and broke out with ease, I liked my chances of escaping this place.
I let them think me complacent throughout the day as they moved me from lab to lab, instructing me to lift items of increasing weight, each heavier than the last, yet all feeling like paper clips to me.
I saw my opportunity mid-day, when one of the guards got careless and left my right hand unstrapped. Sure, I could have broken out at any time, but I wanted to give the doctor a sense of security before I ripped his head off.
Normally, I'd be against killing needlessly unless absolutely necessary. From the little fanfiction I'd read about similar situations, the hero is usually some edgelord who kills anything in sight and gets praised for it.
Sure, some people need to be eliminated for good. The Joker, Red Skull, Thanos, Reverse Flash. Villains like them deserved to have their heads separated from their bodies.
In this case, Dr. Stasis was one of those people. Dr. Alba wasn't as bad, but I wouldn't bat an eye if she didn't manage to crawl out from under four hundred tons of rubble.
Even the grunts in this lab were sadistic, taking pleasure in watching a little boy get tortured every day simply for existing. No, I wouldn't feel bad if they died indirectly.
So when Dr. Stasis approached the right side of the table with a malicious gleam in his black eyes, holding two super-chargers crackling with two hundred million volts each, I took my chance.
Less than the blink of an eye, that's how fast my arm moved. The signature Viltrumite slash removed the sadistic doctor's head from his body, the severed limb hitting the ground with a sickening squelch.
Those in the room stood stock-still, unable to believe what they were witnessing. The silence broke when Dr. Alba screamed and rushed out of the room, two guards trailing in her wake, while the remaining eight guards raised their energy weapons as they began to charge, signaling impending fire.
I didn't give them the chance. Within seconds, the metal harness was crushed and I was already blitzing toward the nearest guard.
I tried to hold back the strength of the jab I sent into his stomach, but I underestimated myself, my arm punched straight through his body and out the other side.
Using the corpse as a shield, the armor absorbed the barrage of energy blasts from his comrades. What followed would have been a slaughter if I hadn't held back even more.
Within ten seconds, the remaining seven guards were subdued, broken bones, missing limbs, and in one case, a missing head that exploded when his own weapon discharged into it instead of me.
I hovered off the ground for a moment, surveying the damage I had caused in less than a minute. It truly sank in then, I was a Viltrumite, a full-blown superhuman who could likely slaughter planets on my own.
The alarms began to blare in my ears, my enhanced hearing making me wince slightly at the frequency before I dashed straight through the wall, ignoring the open door to the hallway entirely.
A squad of twenty more soldiers stood in my way, all sporting shields, heavy armor, and energy weapons. Some even held electric staffs crackling with power, ready for combat.
I narrowed my eyes, my enhanced vision picking up the tremors of nervousness running through their bodies, my hearing catching the rapid beating of their hearts and the faint drip of sweat against their skin.
"I'll give you one chance. Move."
Some of them looked ready to take the offer, but one of the more devoted soldiers fired a blast of energy at my chest, setting off a chain reaction as the rest of the squad followed suit.
The smoke cleared, revealing me hovering a few inches off the ground, my hospital gown riddled with holes that exposed completely unmarked skin.
"My turn."
I blitzed down the hallway, delivering a jab to the nearest grunt that took his head clean off, slashing my arm out to sever another's limb, dodging a thrust from an energy baton before snapping the attacker's arm in two.
The hallway filled with the sounds of blaster fire and the screams of injured, soon to be dead, men.
After a minute, the smoke cleared once more, revealing me hovering above the carnage, unmarred, staring down at the scene with little emotion.
Holy shit… I just had a Darth Vader hallway scene. Awesome.
This continued on, more and more battalions sent my way, each one dispatched faster than the last as I grew accustomed to my powers and the ways I could use them.
As I made my way toward the exit, I paused in front of a door more sophisticated than the others. My memory told me this was the doctor's personal office.
It made me curious, just who was behind this mission? Dr. Stasis had mentioned contacts. Did that mean more people knew of my existence and approved of it?
The room was filled with several computers and monitors, each displaying what I assumed were my vitals, information on my body, and records of the tests they had conducted on me.
I searched the desk and found a flash drive. Thinking quickly, I began downloading everything I could, anything that might help me understand what they had learned about me, before destroying the rest.
It would do me no good to let this kind of information fall into the hands of people who might want to harm me. My first contact with humans on this planet had already shown me that not everyone would take my existence well.
Searching further, I found the doctor's personal quarters. There wasn't much, just sparse clothing and very little in the way of anything sentimental.
A passport, driver's license, and other forms of identification that were clearly forged, along with three neatly bound stacks of cash, each held together with two-thousand-dollar bands.
Well… that was convenient. It wasn't much, but considering I had nothing, it would be more than enough to get me on my feet.
I cleared out the rest of the underground facility rather easily after that. As I was partway up the stairs to the next level, the alarms began to blare in earnest, and a voice sounded through the loudspeaker.
"Self-destruct sequence initiated. Please evacuate the building," a robotic, feminine voice announced over the speakers.
Shit.
I quickly dashed through the hallways and stairwells, moving floor by floor in seconds.
"Five."
Twentieth floor.
"Four."
Fifteenth.
"Three."
Tenth.
"Two."
Five, oh fuck it, I'm going straight up.
"One."
I blasted through several tons of metal, concrete, and rock before finally breaking the surface just as a massive explosion tore through the ground beneath me.
Hovering in the air, I basked in the feeling of sunlight touching this body's skin for the first time in sixteen years.
Taking in my surroundings, I found myself in some kind of desert, though I wasn't sure exactly where.
A massive crater stretched out below me, growing larger by the second as the facility continued to collapse in on itself.
Closing my eyes, I let myself enjoy the silence of nature, soaking in the warmth of the sun against my still almost sickly pale skin.
I definitely needed a tan.
As I floated there, I couldn't help but notice a faint ringing noise. I opened my eyes, frowning as I tried to pinpoint where it was coming from.
It wasn't from the lab, and it definitely wasn't from the desert. It sounded distant—far off.
Flying toward it, the sound remained faint, but I could tell it was getting stronger the closer I got.
Deciding to use this as an opportunity to test my powers, I manipulated the gravity around me and launched myself into the sky toward the source of the noise, a sonic boom cracking through the air in my wake as I reached speeds no normal human ever could.
The landscape beneath me shifted rapidly, from endless desert to vast stretches of green. I passed fields of farmland, a towering range of snow-capped mountains that looked like the Colorado Rockies, and a massive river that resembled the Mississippi.
With each landmark I passed, the ringing grew louder. A few minutes later, I found myself flying over a familiar city, its skyline beautiful from this height.
I paused for a moment, uncaring that I was hovering naked in the air, and took in the sight of New York City as the sun dipped toward the horizon.
Maybe being a Viltrumite wouldn't be so bad if it came with views like this.
Refocusing, I pinpointed the source of the sound somewhere in Upstate New York and quickly shot off in that direction, making sure not to create another sonic boom over one of the most populated cities in America.
The ringing climbed to a near-deafening pitch as I entered a heavily forested region surrounded by mountains. Narrowing it down, the source seemed to be coming from the tallest peak.
Then I caught a glimpse of silver that hadn't been there before and immediately darted toward it.
I frowned when I landed atop the flat mountain peak to find nothing there, but the ringing had stopped. Still, my senses told me something was there, just out of reach.
I walked forward slowly, hand raised, until I bumped into something solid and unseen. Startled, I pressed my palm against the invisible surface.
"Recognized. Edward, son of Thula and Tobias."
The voice was feminine, robotic, yet eerily natural. Before I could react, the air around me shimmered and warped, revealing a sleek, futuristic aircraft that hadn't been there moments ago.
[Insert Image of Spaceship Here]
A landing ramp extended from the side of the craft, steam hissing out as it opened to reveal a polished, futuristic interior.
I paused, the weight of the past day and a half crashing down on me all at once.
I had died.
I had died and been reborn into some strange fusion of the Marvel and Invincible universes.
I had died and been reborn in the body of an alien.
And now I was standing in front of an actual spaceship, one likely capable of crossing the stars.
Just what the fuck had I gotten myself into.
A lot of people are going to be pissed that our MC didn't just kill everyone in sight. Like I stated through his inner thoughts, I don't want him to be the typical edge lord who kills everyone and has the entire world simply roll over onto their bellies and say nothing about it.
He's going to be a hero, not an anti-hero. He will kill occasionally, and rarely at that. Those kills will be other alien species or monsters half the time, and he will only stoop to killing another human or mutant if they do something abominable.
He's going to be this worlds Superman, if a bit offbrand and without the powerset.