Escape

From the looks of his residence, General Simon Gilson's retirement life had been quite comfortable. His home stood on a small hill in the suburbs, an elegantly designed duplex villa surrounded by a snow-white fence that enclosed a little paradise of birdsong and flowers. Lush trees filled the grounds, and flowers of every variety bloomed everywhere. It seemed this retired general was quite the refined old fellow.

Jay stood before the villa's dark red security door and rang the bell. He waited for quite a while, but there was no response. Muttering an apology to himself, he scanned the house with X-Sight and confirmed that the old man, wrapped in a pale gold silk robe, was tending to his potted plants by the living room window. At this distance, there was no way he had not heard the bell. He was simply refusing to answer.

So Jay displayed his relentless spirit and kept pressing the doorbell for over a minute.

When the shrill, grating chime finally exceeded the old man's limit of patience, he appeared at the door at last. He yanked it open roughly, seemingly ready to find any excuse to drive away the persistent visitor outside. But the instant he saw Jay's face, he froze in place, his expression solidifying as though it had been iced over.

The man's strange reaction made Jay swallow the greeting he had prepared. He merely asked tentatively, "Uh, General Gilson? Are you all right? Because you look a little... pale."

"It's you." General Simon Gilson looked him over several times. "There's no mistake. It's you. But... but how is this possible? I thought—we all thought—you were dead."

"Who, me?" Jay pointed at himself in surprise. "You know me?"

General Gilson studied him for a long while with a complicated expression.

"So, you don't remember anything?"

Jay shook his head. "If you mean my own past, then I really don't remember even the slightest bit. My earliest memories are from when Apocalypse Invasion ended. I have no memories from before that. It sounds like you know where I came from?"

He could see the old man's breathing become irregular, his weak heart begin beating faster, and several barely noticeable beads of cold sweat appear on his forehead. His gaze shifted several times before he asked, "If you don't remember anything, why did you come here?"

"S.D.E. Project," Jay said. "One of my friends nearly died because of it. It led me here—you're the only person from the project who's still alive. I want to know what it is."

General Gilson was silent for a long moment. Then, with dry, cracked lips, he said, "You know this is top secret."

"I have to know," Jay said firmly.

General Gilson involuntarily took half a step back, seeming to fall into an internal struggle. Jay actually had no confidence in this. He had not yet figured out what to do if the old man stubbornly refused to reveal classified information. He did not want to get rough with such a frail old man, and he did not seem like a bad person. But what Jay did not know was that merely standing there and looking the man in the eye gave off an enormous, invisible pressure. Not everyone had the courage to meet a Kryptonian's gaze, much less refuse a request.

General Gilson sighed softly, seemingly deciding to yield at last. "All right. In any case, I'm the only old man left who participated in that project."

He paused slightly, then said solemnly, "You want to know what the S.D.E. Project is? The answer is simple—it's you, kid."

Jay froze.

"Me?" He pointed at himself in confusion. "What does this have to do with me?"

General Gilson shifted aside and opened up the doorway. "Come in. I'll get you something to drink, and we can talk slowly."

Helena was becoming increasingly aware of just how significant the secret she had touched was. She had merely tried to crack the password for the project called "S.D.E. Project," yet all of a sudden, she had become a wanted criminal in the base. More and more agents rushed into the narrow stairwell to stop her. To break out of the encirclement, she had no choice but to force her way through. After kicking three unfortunate men down the stairs and breaking seven or eight bones, she finally made it down another floor—only to see a flash of silver from a military knife whirl in from the corner of her vision at a speed that was nearly impossible to follow.

Helena was startled and made a small leap aside. Several strands of flying black hair were cut through the air by the sharp silver gleam. The other party immediately followed with a flying kick that swept in with a howling gust. Helena had no time to dodge and could only raise her arm to block it. That leg struck her arm like a heavy wooden post, nearly dislocating her shoulder. She staggered back two steps, and by the time she barely steadied herself, her heel was already at the edge of the stair behind her.

Before her stood a burly man with a thick beard covering his chin, built like a brown bear. He skillfully toyed with the gleaming military knife in his hand, the cold light reflected from its blade enough to raise goosebumps.

Helena remembered this guy. Ivan Walkerly, one of Victor's direct agents. He was not particularly bright, but his fighting ability was first-rate, and he had once won the championship in the agency's internal combat tournament—though Helena had not participated, because she had considered that sort of event dull and meaningless.

But compared to his fighting ability, what made this big idiot most troublesome for Helena right now was his monstrous brute strength. She had barely blocked one kick from him, and now she could almost no longer feel her left arm.

Ivan let out a low roar, and his military knife slashed down in a flashing arc. His blade flickered again and again, every swing producing a sharp hiss as it cut through the air. Helena dodged two strikes in a row and used a small redirection technique to deflect a third, but the staircase behind her limited her movement. Finally, when the fourth strike came down, she slipped up and was cut in the leg. A long bloody gash opened across the pale skin of her inner thigh.

Helena grimaced slightly. Pressing both hands against the stair railing, she vaulted into the air, avoiding his follow-up thrust and landing lightly behind him. She drove her knee hard into Ivan's knife-wielding wrist, seized it precisely the instant his wrist lifted, then viciously kicked the back of his knee with her right foot, forcing him down onto one knee while she gripped his wrist and suddenly wrenched it in the opposite direction.

Her strength could not compare to that of this powerhouse, but she possessed first-rate fighting skills and abundant experience. Ivan's elbow snapped with a crisp crack, and he could not stop a muffled howl of pain. Helena took advantage of the opening to seize his head and smash it viciously into the stair railing. But he was simply too sturdy. She had to slam his head into it three times before knocking him unconscious, even smashing a huge gap into the wooden railing.

She had wasted quite a bit of time, but she had dealt with him at last. Helena tossed the man aside and had barely poked half her head downstairs when she was greeted by another barrage of gunfire. She had no choice but to duck back. Agents had already occupied both the upper and lower stairwells, and they were now closing in on Helena's position, blocking all her routes.

Or rather, almost all of them.

Helena rapidly analyzed and assessed her situation, then took a deep breath. She tossed a flashbang into the central stairwell. The brief blindness it caused should buy her a little time. Then she fired a rope and secured it above, threw a smoke grenade down to the bottom of the stairwell, and, as thick smoke spiraled out from the grenade's tail, leaped down after the swirling cloud toward the bottom floor.

Gunfire erupted again. Several bullets tore through the layers of smoke and shot past her body, but she had no time to care. After an instant of free fall, she finally landed safely on the ground. She rolled nimbly out of the area the guns above could cover, then sprang to her feet and sprinted away. Within moments, her figure vanished through the exit.