"Gentlemen, we meet again." Dr. Nicole forced a friendly smile as she looked at the three men secured to their wheelchairs.
"So what exactly are you after?" David was weak and utterly exhausted, but he still did his best to ask the question.
Hiss-
Jets of water washed over David.
The terrifying memory of falling into the water as a child resurfaced in David's mind.
He had no idea how these people had learned about his weakness.
Having nearly drowned as a child, he had retained a fear of lakes even into adulthood, but it had never been this severe. Now, simply being immersed in water left his entire body weak and his head spinning.
By David's reckoning, it was most likely a side effect of acquiring supernatural abilities.
"I understand that most people find it difficult to accept that they have a mental illness," Dr. Nicole said gently.
Dr. Nicole returned to her desk and opened a drawer, leafing through file after file as though she were reviewing records.
"Here they are." Nicole made a show of pulling out three files.
"I suggest you let me go!" Billy threatened, seemingly calm. "Otherwise, once my Beast personality comes out, you'll all die!"
Nicole took out Billy's file first. "You say you can stop bullets? No, you only stopped damp ammunition fired from an old-fashioned musket. You say you can tear apart iron bars? That was nothing more than shoddy construction. As for your Beast personality, it merely produces more adrenaline, making you a little stronger."
Nicole dismissed Billy as utterly worthless.
Billy was different from David. David's abilities had only awakened recently, whereas Billy had been abandoned after showing abnormalities as a child and had never received an education.
Her words easily left Billy feeling hurt and dejected.
He even seemed to be starting to believe the doctor.
"There are no people with superpowers in this world."
Dr. Nicole turned her gaze to David. "You think you've awakened superpowers. But do you remember the train incident a month ago?"
David seemed to recall something.
Dr. Nicole pressed her advantage. "You suffered a brain injury during that incident. That's what caused your delusion that you have superpowers."
"And you." Nicole looked at the last man, a Black man named Zuer. "You simply suffer from delusions."
Zuer sat silently in his wheelchair.
After all, he was almost paralyzed.
Outside the ward.
An orb with three stars inside it gleamed.
On a reef somewhere in the ocean near America, three eyes suddenly opened, as though their owner had sensed something.
Krillin, who was sitting beside Stark's workshop and stuffing himself with food and drink, looked surprised.
Tien Shinhan raced along the coast toward Al Psychiatric Hospital.
He made no attempt to hide.
S.H.I.E.L.D.
"Director, we've detected an anomaly."
The communications officer brought up the satellite surveillance feed monitoring the coastline.
Although S.H.I.E.L.D. had limited jurisdiction on American soil and usually operated under the FBI's name, it was hardly without any authority at all.
Limited access to satellites was one of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s major privileges.
"Is that a person?"
"Running on the sea?"
Just then, another liaison officer pushed open the door and entered.
"Director, this intelligence came from Agent Coulson."
Nick Fury took the encrypted report: Tony Stark had left Stark Industries with Krillin.
"Motherfucker..."
Nick Fury couldn't help cursing inwardly. What kind of trouble was that playboy going to stir up now?
Nick Fury ordered Coulson, who was secretly tailing Tony Stark, to take Victor and follow them.
He wanted to see what Tony was up to.
Al Psychiatric Hospital.
Zuer listened to the orderly in front of him drone on, endlessly preaching his belief that superpowers did not exist.
Aside from a twitch at the corner of his mouth, Zuer showed no reaction.
After night fell, the situation changed.
There were few attendants on the floor where the three of them were confined.
The staff had complete confidence in the sedatives.
One man was paralyzed, and the other two had been injected with three times the normal adult dose of sedatives.
The Four-Leaf Clover Organization, which paid little attention to knowledge of the supernatural, barely spared the three men a thought.
Sure enough, Zuer began to act once the orderly grew tired.
Whoosh-
Zuer flung out a shard of glass he had hidden earlier by manipulating the orderly.
It sliced cleanly across the orderly's neck, showing none of the weakness of a paralyzed man.
The orderly clutched his neck in agony and stared at Zuer in disbelief.
With an equally pained expression, Zuer rose from his wheelchair and slowly pushed it toward the records room.
Toward the records room that could give him answers.
Although Zuer was not paralyzed, the problems afflicting his body were scarcely any better than paralysis.
When he discovered how quickly his brain worked, he also found that he could sometimes influence people's thoughts through speech.
But along with it came a condition that weakened his bones.
Zuer's bones were extremely fragile. A single bump could fracture them.
"Just as I thought." Zuer looked bitterly at the experimental reports before him.
Bloody, gruesome photographs met his eyes.
Zuer was hardly a good person. He had grown up lonely, and his bones had begun weakening when he was barely in his teens.
All of it had tormented Zuer.
If he hadn't had a good mother, he would have long since used his superpowers to do whatever he pleased.
His hand tightened around the photographs.
He silently made up his mind.
After browsing some of the material, he used his evolved brain to work out roughly where the records had come from and where they were going.
He understood that he could not rely on the military or the government, let alone agencies such as the FBI.
"The public deserves to know the truth. Perhaps only the people at large have a chance of changing these cruel organizations."
Clang-
From the surveillance room, Zuer promptly unlocked Billy's door and switched off the bright lights inside his room.
"I'll let you out, but you have to stay in your Beast personality."
"All right."
Unlike Zuer and David, Billy had no family to raise him with kindness, no relatives to support and guide him.
He behaved more like a wild animal.
To him, robbery and kidnapping were perfectly normal.
They were simply ways to obtain things.
He, too, had once longed for an education and a stable life.
But after saving enough money to enroll in a community school, he was soon expelled over suspected mental problems.
That was how his teacher personality had been born.
When he found a third-rate painter to teach him painting, he was tricked into working for free for half a year.
That was how his artist personality had been born.
Just like that, a succession of miserable experiences had given rise to six additional personalities, with Beast being the strongest fighter among them.
Perhaps multiple personalities were the price he paid.
Having suffered abuse, Billy had a deeply ingrained fear of bright lights.
Whenever bright light shone on him, he would switch personalities.
"Roar-"
Whoosh-whoosh-
Two guards on patrol noticed something wrong in the surveillance room. The moment they entered, they spotted Zuer, only for Billy to send them to meet God.
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