Hearing a familiar language, the man sitting nearby asked warily in Russian,
"Russian?"
"Ukrainian," Henry replied casually in Russian.
As if suddenly remembering something, his eyes lit up and he turned toward the target.
"Comrade, got a light?"
Having once been part of the Soviet bloc and having spent long periods under Russian rule during the Tsarist era, Ukraine still had no shortage of Russian speakers. Meeting someone like that wasn't unusual.
Among smokers, offering cigarettes was common courtesy. Lending a light was even more ordinary.
The man thought nothing of it and pulled a lighter from his pocket.
It was an expensive model, perhaps even a collectible with some history behind it.
He held it firmly, with no intention of handing it over. Wearing a faintly smug expression, he moved to light Henry's cigarette himself.
Normally, proper etiquette was to hand over the lighter and let the other person light up on their own. Lighting another person's cigarette carried subtle implications of status.
But many smokers had a habit of absentmindedly pocketing lighters—including ones that weren't theirs.
If someone worried about losing an expensive lighter, lighting another person's cigarette personally was perfectly reasonable.
So Henry bent forward to receive the flame, raising a hand to shield it from the wind.
Then he heard the man murmur quietly:
"Have we met somewhere before?"
The suspicion in his voice was unmistakable.
With the cigarette hanging from his lips, Henry mumbled vaguely around it:
"Ennu Nuo Odin sends his regards."
Before the man could react, Henry's hand passed through his chest using molecular phasing.
Because Henry was bent forward while lighting the cigarette, his body blocked the view of everyone else.
No one noticed what happened.
Unlike the method he had used back in the Siberian prison, where he directly destroyed the heart, this time Henry pinched off a branch of the left coronary artery, causing an infarction in the blood vessels feeding the front wall of the heart.
Then, as a finishing touch, he simply stopped the man's heartbeat.
To outside observers, all they saw was Henry puffing away at his cigarette.
Once it was finally lit, Henry held it between two fingers while guiding the target's hand—still holding the lighter—back into the man's own pocket.
Then he even patted the man's jacket and switched back to English.
"Beautiful lighter."
The entire interaction flowed as naturally as an ordinary exchange between strangers.
By now, the target was already suffering cardiac arrest and a massive heart attack.
His head drooped forward as he slumped in his seat within the smoking compartment.
But no one noticed.
He looked no different from any other passenger dozing off during a long train ride.
Henry, meanwhile, simply turned and joined another conversation.
The men in the smoking area had little interest in the state of Ukraine, but mention the year's financial crisis and everyone suddenly came alive.
Listening to them, one would think they themselves had been among the investors who profited from George Soros's Quantum Fund and the wave of international capital harvesting wealth from Asia.
People boasted endlessly—where billions had been made, where fortunes had been won.
Fundamentally, the smoking compartment was much like a bar.
A place where men gathered to brag.
With his superhuman intellect, Henry played the role of the perfect audience, encouraging others to talk and constantly directing attention away from himself.
As a result, nobody paid much notice to him.
And nobody paid any attention at all to the man slumped in his seat.
After finishing one cigarette, Henry passed around another round from his pack.
Most accepted immediately and lit up.
A few tucked the cigarettes behind their ears for later.
Male friendships could sometimes be remarkably simple.
You didn't need to know a man's name.
If he listened to your stories, he was already a good buddy.
Henry didn't offer a second round.
There weren't enough cigarettes left in the pack for everyone.
He shook the box twice, glanced at the remaining contents, then closed it and slipped it back into his pocket.
The veteran smokers understood instantly.
Nobody would pressure someone into giving away his last cigarettes.
Henry waved to the group.
"Heading back to my seat. Maybe we'll chat again."
Some nodded.
Others raised a hand in farewell.
One enthusiastic fellow even shouted:
"Ura!"
Though whether that was an appropriate occasion for it was another question entirely.
After leaving the smoking compartment, Henry stopped in the passageway one car away and leaned beside the train door, listening carefully to what was happening behind him.
The man whose heart he had stopped—disguised as a heart attack—had long passed the six-minute golden window for resuscitation.
Yet no one had noticed anything wrong.
Only after two or three shifts of passengers cycled through the smoking compartment did the situation finally change.
Someone tried to sit beside the apparently sleeping man and accidentally bumped him.
The body tilted sideways and collapsed to the floor in an unnatural posture.
Only then did the commotion begin.
The young conductor who arrived looked completely flustered.
He hurried through the train asking whether any passengers had medical training.
Several people stepped forward.
But after seeing the man's discolored lips, most concluded there was no saving him.
One young nurse wanted to attempt CPR, only to be stopped by a doctor nearby.
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation was not a miracle cure.
Once the critical rescue window had passed, no amount of chest compressions would bring someone back.
By the time everything settled down and another item was crossed off the list, Henry stood leaning against a train door.
Using molecular phasing, he slipped through it and shot into the sky.
Moments later, he was back at his apartment in Los Angeles.
As expected, petting a cat was a good way to improve one's mood.
Even for a Kryptonian.
Katie, however, struggled with obvious annoyance.
The tiger twisted its head repeatedly, trying to escape those troublesome hands.
But after noticing the ominous red glow flickering in Henry's eyes, it immediately became much more cooperative.
Granted, the glow flickered erratically, like a faulty electrical connection causing a light bulb to blink on and off unpredictably.
Still, just because the Kryptonian's eyes weren't currently firing lasers didn't mean the rest of the Kryptonian was malfunctioning.
So Katie wisely chose to tolerate it.
What other choice did she have?
Overcome by laziness, Henry collapsed into a sofa chair and began issuing orders nonstop.
"BB, play some music. Simon & Garfunkel. El Cóndor Pasa."
"BB, order delivery. Mexican jalapeño pizza. Large cola."
"BB, power up the computer. Open the tracking map. Project it onto the screen."
The core robot busied itself around the apartment, rolling from room to room.
After numerous upgrades, BB was no longer so easily caught or destroyed by Katie.
Completely predicting Katie's behavior and creating perfect evasive routines remained impossible.
Every strategy had a counter.
Whenever Henry designed a new avoidance algorithm, BB might evade Katie for a day or two before finding itself pinned beneath tiger paws again.
Fortunately, BB's shell materials had undergone multiple generations of improvement.
Its shock-absorption systems and joints had also been reinforced.
Katie could no longer casually destroy it even if she tried.
Nowadays, BB still spent much of its time sitting on a charging dock.
But its power system had been upgraded dramatically.
Using Kree technology—the same class of battery used in the little duck unit Henry gave Alexei—it could operate at full power continuously for over a month.
When those batteries were first manufactured, they had required charging at Henry's underwater methane power plant for two full months before reaching maximum capacity.
That alone spoke volumes about their energy storage capability.
As for charging from a normal household outlet, the energy gained was practically a drop in the ocean.
Still, every little bit helped.
It was enough to significantly delay battery depletion and keep the system running for over a year without issue.
The selection of interchangeable robotic arms had also expanded considerably, allowing BB to perform more and more tasks.
When a Kryptonian was feeling particularly lazy and had no desire to move whatsoever, having a BB around truly felt like salvation.
Henry silently praised the wonders of technology.
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