Two days passed.
Dante had drifted into a small, half-forgotten town nestled at the edge of the forest. The kind of place where time seemed to slow, where the streetlights flickered, and no one asked too many questions. Clothes came easily, lifted from a thrift donation bin behind a church. A faded gray hoodie, a pair of worn jeans, and scuffed sneakers a size too big—enough to blend in.
He slept in hollowed-out barns and tool sheds with broken locks, his bed made of hay or mouldy tarps. Food was scavenged—vending machines robbed of quarters, half-eaten leftovers abandoned at outdoor tables, and whatever could be coaxed from dumpsters behind grocery stores.
But survival wasn't the only thing changing.
Something inside him was evolving.
The more time Dante spent exposed to the world, the more acutely aware he became of it. The wind told stories before it arrived. He could sense the tension in the atmosphere when a car approached minutes before it came into view. Footsteps on concrete had their rhythms, and his ears adjusted without effort. A bird sang once, and he sang it back perfectly, pitch, tone, and timing. A mimicry so flawless it startled the bird into silence.
Then came the library.
He sat for hours beneath buzzing fluorescent lights, turning pages faster than the clock hands could track. A physics textbook—complex, dense—was consumed in less than two hours. Not just read, but absorbed. Understood. Internalized. His mind parsed formulas like language, grasping friction, momentum, mass, and motion as though he'd always known them.
It wasn't just knowledge.
It was a transformation.
His brain wasn't merely recording anymore—it was replicating. Learning faster and deeper, with intention. Rules. Patterns. Applications. His body adjusted accordingly, syncing with new stimuli, refining movements, and improving reflexes. Copying wasn't enough. He adapted, refined, and improved.
And Dante knew it in his bones: he wasn't human anymore.
He was something else.
It didn't take long before someone noticed.
It was past midnight when he wandered into a faded diner just off the main road, drawn more by the warmth than the scent of stale coffee and fryer grease. A TV buzzed above the counter, playing a muted newsreel about missing persons and strange power outages on the East Coast.
But he didn't care about the news.
His focus was locked on the man in the corner booth.
Military-cut hair. Steel-toe boots. A thick scar slashed above his left eyebrow, bisecting it cleanly. He hadn't touched his coffee, though the cup steamed faintly beside him. His posture was relaxed—too relaxed. Like a predator conserving energy.
He was watching Dante.
And he wasn't alone.
Two others sat by the exit, pretending to read menus. A third was across the street, half-hidden behind the blinds of a pawn shop window, barely visible but very much there.
Trained. Organised. Familiar.
The agency had found him.
Dante's hand dipped into his hoodie pocket, fingers closing around the only thing he had—a dull butter knife taken from the diner's counter. Useless to most.
But his body didn't care.
His mind had already calculated the distance between him and the soldier. The man's weight distribution. His stance. His breathing rhythm. Dante's muscle memory echoed the combat form of the prison guard he'd watched fight two days ago. A broken rib, a chokehold, an escape route—already mapped.
The soldier stood, calm and deliberate, and made his way to Dante's table.
"You're a hard man to find," he said, his voice even and unthreatening.
Dante didn't answer.
"We're not with the ones who made you," the man continued, stopping just short of the booth. "I work with a group that monitors individuals like you. Enhanced."
Dante's eyes narrowed. "S.H.I.E.L.D.?"
That made the man pause. Just for a beat.
"No. They're gone. I'm with what's left."
From his coat, he pulled a slim, rectangular device and tapped the screen. A soft blue light shimmered between them, projecting a 3D hologram. Dante's face—captured from the lab's security feed. Then, overlays of biometric data, vitals, and finally, a chilling label:
Project Repeater: Objective—Weaponised Adaptation.
"They want you back," he said. "But we're offering you a choice. Come with us. Learn to control it. Or keep running—until someone less friendly catches up."
Dante stared at the projection. The image flickered. The title Repeater stared back at him, bold and damning.
His voice came low, cold. "Why should I trust you?"
The man gave a tired smile, one that didn't quite reach his eyes. "You don't have to. But you want answers—and we have a few."
Dante's gaze swept the diner again. The other agents were still seated. No weapons drawn. No sudden movements.
Yet.
He gave a slow nod. "Fine. But if you try anything—"
The man raised a hand. "If we try anything, you'll copy our every move, adapt faster than we can blink, and vanish. Yeah. We figured. That's why I didn't bring tranqs."
He reached into his coat again—no sudden motion, just measured calm—and tossed Dante something small.
A badge.
Black metal, shaped like a shield, with an eagle motif scorched by fire. From the ashes, a phoenix spread its wings.
Not S.H.I.E.L.D.
Not HYDRA.
Something new.
Something reborn.
Something that had been watching him for a long, long time.