Chapter 823: Confirming the Target

Chapter 823: Chapter 823: Confirming the Target

Having made up his mind, Henry first needed to confirm two things.

First, William Stryker had already entered a secret military base somewhere in Canada. Second, Jason Stryker—Mastermind—was there as well.

Taking out both targets in one go was the key to his operation. Letting either one escape would count as a failure.

Carefully controlling one of the Sparrow spy drones, Henry sent it inside the dam base to record everything it saw along the way. The other two acted as positioning beacons and scanners, conducting surveillance and scans from outside.

The U.S. military, having just raided the X-Men’s base, was transporting the components they had stolen into a large room.

That was the space they had prepared for constructing a second, improved brainwave amplifier.

Henry also spotted the captured mutant students. They had simply been locked up, with no inhumane experiments being performed on them.

Clearly, researching mutants was no longer the military’s highest priority.

Most of the soldiers were busy with their tasks, and Colonel William Stryker, as the commander, was even busier.

People were constantly bringing him documents, giving him verbal reports, and waiting for orders.

Even when no one came to him, William Stryker was constantly inspecting the base’s restoration work, checking whether the supplies being brought in were complete.

Henry suppressed the urge to attack immediately and carefully controlled the Sparrow drone as it moved through the base.

The gravity-manipulating levitation system allowed the small machine to float around without making much noise, while its optical camouflage made it very difficult to detect with the naked eye or ordinary surveillance cameras.

But if it moved too quickly indoors, it might collide with something and attract the soldiers’ attention.

Or the immature optical camouflage might reveal a flaw and give it away.

So Henry could only have the Sparrow drone move slowly as it searched for the targets he wanted.

Not everyone moving around the base was a soldier in uniform or a researcher in a white coat.

There were also some people in ordinary clothes who looked completely undisciplined.

These people were probably the most troublesome group in the entire base.

They should be mutants controlled by William Stryker, just like Lady Deathstrike.

The reason Henry considered them troublesome was that he had absolutely no way of telling what their mutant abilities were just by looking at them.

During his first unpleasant encounter with the X-Men, he had been able to defeat them relatively easily because he had known the abilities of every member beforehand.

Moreover, he could easily identify who was who by their appearance, preventing him from making a mistaken judgment.

But aside from Lady Deathstrike, who could essentially be treated as another Wolverine, Henry had no idea what abilities the other mutants controlled by William Stryker possessed.

Under these circumstances, who knew whether one of them possessed an ability as bizarre as Mastermind’s—something capable of making even a Kryptonian stumble?

Henry didn’t have the ability to see the future, so there was no way he could predict it.

If he encountered one, he would simply have to strike first and strike fast, and fight it out head-on.

The Sparrow drone passed two rooms that looked like a cross between medical wards and prison cells.

Although it didn’t enter, it scanned the interiors from outside.

The human silhouettes allowed Henry to identify two familiar faces: the bald Professor X and Cyclops.

Professor X looked almost like a dementia patient.

An IV drip containing some unknown drug was connected to him as he sat quietly in his wheelchair in the center of the room.

If his remotely observed heart rate and breathing hadn’t been normal, Henry would have thought Professor X was already dead.

Cyclops, meanwhile, was bound tightly and secured facedown on a hospital bed.

Only his face had been raised slightly so he could breathe.

But judging from the fact that he wasn’t moving at all, he might have been unconscious.

The strangest part was the IV line attached to the back of his neck, injecting something into him.

It wasn’t quite like an ordinary intravenous injection.

Was William Stryker trying to control Cyclops using his usual methods?

Henry remembered that in the movie, the mutant-hating colonel had injected some kind of drug into a mutant’s spinal area through the back of the neck in order to control them.

But judging from the fact that he hadn’t used the same method on Professor X, the technique clearly had its flaws.

Henry wasn’t in a hurry to investigate that right now.

There was no extra equipment on Cyclops’s face.

It seemed his visor had been removed again.

Normally, since he was in enemy territory and everyone within his field of vision was an enemy, the best thing he could do would be to forget about the visor and simply walk out with his eyes open.

Henry didn’t know whether the soldiers had told Cyclops that they were inside the dam.

Perhaps they had warned him that if he destroyed everything he saw, he would ultimately drown here along with everyone else.

Or perhaps Professor X, who had also been captured, had become leverage against him.

Whatever the reason, this man—perhaps the most destructive member of the X-Men—could only hold himself back for now, even if he was awake.

Until someone brought him his visor.

Or until some particularly reckless researcher in a white coat became bold enough to start cutting and inserting needles into him without first rendering Cyclops completely unconscious, forcing him to resist lest he be carved up alive.

At last, Henry found a second wheelchair inside the dam base.

The person sitting in it wasn’t being held inside a sealed room, but there was no one attending to him either.

Fortunately, his treatment was only more extreme than Professor X’s, not less.

Strange tubes and instruments were connected directly to his spine, continuously injecting some kind of drug while simultaneously extracting cerebrospinal fluid.

And because the room wasn’t sealed off, Henry could confirm the man’s identity through an ordinary camera.

The thin, hunched man wearing a patient’s gown was none other than Mastermind, Jason Stryker—the man who had appeared at the entrance of the Hepburn residence and made Henry fall victim to his ability.

"Found you."

Henry revealed a cold smile that he had never shown anyone before.

He released control of the Sparrow drones, allowing them to explore the dam base autonomously and record any valuable targets.

Then Henry came to the Minotaur armor and began suiting up.

Noticing what Henry was doing, the three people watching their show on the sofa simultaneously raised their heads.

Gilgamesh spoke on behalf of the three.

"Henry, did you find the target you were looking for?"

"Yeah. Took me long enough."

As he spoke, Henry continued putting on the armor while performing a system check.

The modified Minotaur armor was even more complicated and sophisticated than the version he had used against the Green Goblin.

That also meant a higher failure rate.

So Henry had no choice but to perform a full self-check, temporarily repair any functions that hadn’t passed inspection, or simply shut them down altogether.

Perhaps because he knew this armor might be discarded at any time, Henry had been much bolder in its design and construction, incorporating numerous experimental functions.

For a suit of armor to become truly practical, the most important thing was balance.

The Minotaur armor had absolutely none.

Henry had never intended to simply alter its appearance slightly and extend the lifespan of this disposable identity.

Some fundamental designs, such as the frame structure, were difficult to modify.

Rather than leave clues for others to discover, he might as well scrap the entire design.

"Need any help?"

Cassandra also turned her head toward him.

"No. This is a personal grudge."

Henry stuck to the same stance as before.

Then he launched himself from the deployment tunnel into the sky and flew toward his destination.

The three people sitting on the sofa exchanged glances.

In perfect unison, they rolled off the sofa, excitedly made their way to the armor area, and began putting on their respective suits of armor.

"I didn’t really get a good chance to test my armor last time. I only went out for a little stroll. What about you two? Why do you want to go?"

Cassandra asked the two old friends beside her.

"Passing by."

"Just happened to be in the area."

The two Eternal big shots wore expressions that practically screamed that they were there to watch the fun.

After all, Henry hadn’t told them not to go.

And even if he had, would they really have listened?

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