He didn't return to the hotel.
Instead, he stepped into an old public phone booth, the cold receiver pressed against his ear.
Dropping a few coins in, he dialed the hotel's number and, in the briefest possible terms, informed the front desk that an emergency required him to check out early. Any personal belongings left in the room could be discarded.
The crisp click when the call ended marked his farewell to a short-lived comfort. He didn't look back, walking straight toward the other end of the city—toward an unknown hideout.
He needed a new nest. One that was more inconspicuous, harder to trace.
This time, hotels—temporary shelters by nature—were no longer an option.
Flipping through the dense rental listings in the newspaper, his gaze finally settled on an old industrial district—chaotic, crowded, and with a high population turnover.
There, he found an apartment for rent. The landlord was a greasy, pot-bellied middle-aged man whose eyes held nothing but greed for money. He showed zero interest in his tenant's background, which was exactly what Levi needed.
Levi presented his brand-new identity—Anthony Chen. He signed a one-year lease under that name and paid six months' rent upfront in cash. The almost ostentatious ease of payment made the landlord grin from ear to ear. Afraid the "fat sheep" might escape, he shoved the keys into Levi's hand without asking a single extra question.
The apartment was small, a standard one-bedroom unit. The furniture looked like relics from a bygone era, the wallpaper peeling to reveal blotchy stains beneath. But it was clean enough, and more importantly, the windows overlooked a noisy, chaotic alley with more than one quick escape route. To Levi, this hidden, shadowy layout brought far more peace of mind than any luxury five-star suite.
The first thing he did after settling in was spend money.
The cash he'd "borrowed" from the casino had to be laundered as soon as possible—converted into tools he could actually use.
He went to a large electronics store and, using his new credit card, bought what counted as top-tier personal computer equipment in the 1990s, along with a printer. Back in the apartment, he drew the curtains shut, cutting off all outside scrutiny. Inside this new, absolutely secure nest, he began the true first step of his plan in this era.
Opening a brokerage account.
In the 1990s, online brokerages were still a fledgling novelty, something most people had never even heard of. Armed with decades-advanced financial knowledge, Levi easily found a newly founded online securities firm—one destined to become an industry giant. Using all of Anthony Chen's legitimate credentials, he meticulously filled out the maddeningly tedious application forms online.
Throughout the process, his nerves were taut as a drawn bow.
He had no idea how far S.H.I.E.L.D.'s surveillance network extended, nor whether every keystroke and data packet might silently leave a cold digital trace on some secret server. It felt like dancing on the edge of a cliff—every step fraught with unseen danger.
Three days later, an envelope bearing the brokerage's logo lay quietly in his mailbox.
Inside was confirmation: the account had been successfully opened.
Levi didn't hesitate. He immediately transferred the remaining fifty-thousand-plus dollars from his bank account into the brokerage account. Only when the screen displayed Transfer Successful did he finally exhale, the tension draining from his body.
The money had completed its metamorphosis.
From traceable cash, to bank deposits, to a string of numbers in a securities account. After these two critical transformations, the difficulty of tracing it increased exponentially. Even for S.H.I.E.L.D., linking this money to the mysterious Asian man who vanished from the "Queen of Spades" casino would be nearly impossible.
For now, he was safe.
---
At the same time, a black Chevrolet sedan cruised smoothly through the city streets.
Phil Coulson handed a file to Nick Fury in the back seat, frustration clear in his voice.
"Sir, we lost him. The Asian man who caused the incident at the 'Queen of Spades' just vanished. We reviewed all nearby surveillance footage—nothing."
Fury didn't respond immediately. He took the file and flipped through it page by page with his sharp, unblinking eye. The silence weighed heavily in the car.
"What about the bank?" he asked at last, his tone unreadable.
"Checked," Coulson replied at once. "There was indeed a single large cash deposit that day—fifty-five thousand three hundred dollars. Depositor's name: Anthony Chen. We pulled his full profile."
Coulson paused, then continued carefully.
"His background is unusually clean. Chinese-American orphan, born in San Francisco. Complete Social Security records, solid credit history. Community college graduate. No criminal record. We even contacted California to verify the birth certificate—everything matches. He's an utterly ordinary American citizen. So ordinary he'd vanish the moment you threw him into a crowd."
"An ordinary citizen?" Fury let out a cold chuckle, tossing the file onto the seat beside him.
"Would an ordinary community college graduate instantly detect our surveillance the moment he walked out of the bank?"
Coulson fell silent.
He, too, felt something was deeply off. Through binoculars that day, he had clearly seen it—the moment Anthony Chen stepped out of the bank, there was a minuscule pause, almost imperceptible, followed by an immediate turn back inside. That kind of animal-like reflex and situational awareness was not something an ordinary man possessed.
"This 'Anthony Chen' is too perfect," Fury said, tapping the window rhythmically with his finger, eyes fixed on the passing cityscape.
"So perfect it feels manufactured. And yet, we can't find a single trace of forgery. That leaves only two possibilities. Either our luck is catastrophically bad, and he's just a highly capable man who happened to have a large amount of cash… or—"
He paused, a glint of icy suspicion flashing in his eye.
"What do we do now? Twenty-four-hour surveillance?" Coulson asked.
"Useless," Fury shook his head.
"He's already alert—like a startled deer. Push any further and we'll only drive him deeper into hiding. Besides, we have more important, more dangerous problems to deal with."
He turned to Coulson, his tone turning grave.
"The energy residue analysis from the Pegasus facility—is it done?"
"Yes, sir," Coulson replied sharply.
"According to the readings, besides the energy signature from the Kree light-speed engine explosion, we detected a third anomalous source. Its nature is identical to the energy within the archived 'Frozen Man'—Chu Hang. But its intensity and activity level exceed our records by several orders of magnitude."
Fury's pupil contracted sharply.
"You're saying… Chu Hang was at the explosion site?"
"Uncertain," Coulson said cautiously.
"But one thing is clear: the explosion either involved him directly—or created another entity like him. Possibly something even stronger. Sir, we may have opened Pandora's box."
Aliens. Mysterious energy beings. Untraceable ghosts.
The world was becoming more dangerous—and more unfamiliar—by the day.
"List Anthony Chen as a potential threat. Yellow-level clearance. Suspend all active investigation—switch to passive observation," Fury ordered decisively.
"Focus all resources on locating the missing Air Force pilot, Carol Danvers, and the 'Frozen Man,' Chu Hang. I want to know exactly what happened at Pegasus."
"Yes, sir!"
---
Fury's decision inadvertently granted Levi a precious window of breathing room.
Over the following months, Levi lived an almost ascetic routine. He isolated himself completely, absorbing the era like a sponge.
Every morning, without fail, he spent two hours reviewing financial news and industry reports, analyzing market trends and future economic patterns. Yahoo's IPO date had been announced—it was a ticking countdown. All he had to do was fire every bullet at precisely the right moment.
Then came an hour of physical maintenance training. Though the super-soldier serum had already pushed his body to human limits, sustained, targeted training helped him better master this powerful, unfamiliar physique.
All remaining time went into training control over the vast, mysterious spatial energy within him.
His progress was astonishing.
From barely moving small objects, he advanced to making a coin silently orbit the room, to twisting open a soda bottle cap from several meters away using sheer force of will. He even began experimenting with higher-level techniques—distorting light around his body. While far from true invisibility, he could already blur his figure on security cameras, appearing as a wavering, distorted phantom.
This growing mastery gave him unprecedented peace of mind.
This was his true foundation in a dangerous world.
While waiting for Yahoo's IPO, Levi began thinking further ahead.
He couldn't stay passive forever, drifting with the current. He needed to act—to seek out "resources" that would make him stronger.
Though the system remained dormant, the core function of the Ability Copier hadn't vanished. He was certain that once it awakened, he would again be able to copy coveted powers. Until then, he needed to locate powerful ability users and prepare in advance.
He booted up his computer, connected to the agonizingly slow dial-up internet, the shrill tones sounding like echoes from another age. He began searching through the vast early web.
His keywords were strange and seemingly unrelated:
"genetic mutation," "superpowers," "unexplainable phenomena," "rapid regeneration"…
Most results were urban legends, hoaxes, and baseless rumors. But with the enhanced memory and analytical ability granted by the super-soldier serum, Levi filtered the noise with ruthless efficiency.
One was an obscure medical paper describing an extremely rare case—a girl born with the ability to phase through walls, who later developed severe complications due to lack of control.
Kitty Pryde.
Another was a small local news piece about a private school in Westchester County, New York:
Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, advertising enrollment for children with "special talents."
Levi's lips curved into a faint smile.
Professor X. He'd found him.
Then he changed direction, searching for clues tied to a distant, half-buried memory.
"Canada."
"Bar fight."
"Brawl."
"Bone claws."
At last, buried among irrelevant results, he found it—a forgotten news brief from a remote Canadian town years ago.
Headline: Bar Brawl Escalates—Mysterious Man Flips Truck Barehanded
The article described a drunken dispute between a truck driver and a local logger that erupted into chaos. The logger, beaten by multiple men and even shot with a hunting rifle, refused to go down. Instead, bone claws extended from his fists, and he demolished the bar before flipping an eighteen-wheeler in front of witnesses—then vanished into the forest.
Attached was a grainy black-and-white photo.
A man in a plaid shirt, cigar clenched between his teeth, turning back to glare at the camera.
Even across fifty years and blurred pixels, Levi recognized him instantly.
Logan.
Levi leaned back in his chair, staring at the screen, emotions swirling.
He remembered the muddy trenches of World War II. Fighting side by side. Playing dead together under gunfire. A foul-mouthed bastard who always cursed—but always took the bullet meant for your back.
Should he go see him?
His fingers tapped softly against the desk.
Tell him they were comrades? Tell him about the fifty years of ice?
No.
Levi dismissed the impulse. From the article alone, he could tell Logan had likely already endured the horrors of the Weapon X program and lost much of his memory. Showing up now would only make him another enemy—another ghost from Stryker's past.
But the lead was too valuable to abandon.
Levi saved the article's URL and the address of Xavier's School into a heavily encrypted file.
His treasure map.
He shut down the computer and went to the window, cracking it open to let the cool air seep in. He gazed at the gray sky, the city below like a vast anthill.
A new world was unfurling before him—magnificent, perilous.
And he, Anthony Chen, would no longer be a passive observer hiding in the shadows.
He would become a hunter.
A hunter of superpowers.
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