Marvel: The Enlightened One#221+222: Hawk in the Training Chamber! Copy-Paste Clones

The black Audi A8 pulled over to the side of the road.

Gwen unbuckled her seatbelt, pushed open the passenger door, and stepped out. She looked across at Hawk, who was already emerging from the driver's side.

"I'll head to the airport on my own tomorrow."

"Hm?"

"Just pick me up after you finish dealing with this."

Gwen spoke quickly, then leaned in to kiss him. She patted his chest and met his eyes. "Get this handled fast. I really don't want to see multiple versions of you running around."

Hawk raised an eyebrow, held her gaze, and nodded.

The next second, Hawk vanished.

A sonic boom echoed from high above. A beautiful vapor cone blossomed against the night sky, marking his passage through the sound barrier.

Gwen watched for a moment, then climbed back into the car and drove toward Bleecker Street.

....

Meanwhile—

Australia. Alice Springs.

A small desert city in central Australia, surrounded by endless red sands and low, rolling hills. The dried-up bed of the Todd River cut through the town, its exposed stone forming a strange landmark in an otherwise arid wasteland.

And somewhere in that vast, unremarkable expanse of red desert, a battle was unfolding.

WHOOSH!

A rocket streaked through the air, trailing fire. It slammed into a desert vehicle and detonated in a roaring fireball. The shockwave hurled four nearby SHIELD agents through the air before they even had time to react.

RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!

Gun barrels protruding from beneath the sand spat streams of bullets, sparks flying as they laid down a dense web of suppressing fire that kept the SHIELD aircraft circling overhead from getting any closer.

The pilot wanted nothing more than to press the button and drop a bunker-buster straight down.

But—

He couldn't.

This was suspected to be HYDRA's cloning facility. Command had ordered them to capture it intact, not reduce it to rubble.

The problem was that out here in the open desert, HYDRA had cover. SHIELD didn't.

"Natasha."

"Go ahead."

"Hawk's on his way."

"How long until—"

"He's here."

Hawk materialized silently behind Natasha, his voice cutting through the chaos. His Sixth Sense expanded instantly, sweeping across the battlefield and plunging deep underground, mapping everything within his perception.

He saw it—a HYDRA base hidden beneath the desert, shaped like a honeycomb of interlocking chambers.

He saw the HYDRA operatives inside, their expressions tense and anxious as they paced back and forth in the narrow corridors.

He saw a man in a white lab coat, wearing glasses, looking scholarly and mild-mannered—but with something unsettling beneath the surface. A familiar stranger.

Dr. Merrick.

And Hawk saw something else.

In the hidden HYDRA facility beneath the sand, he saw containers that looked disturbingly like the cloning chambers from countless sci-fi movies.

Don't ask how he knew these were cloning chambers.

Because inside several of them, he saw himself. Sleeping. Suspended in fluid. Multiple versions of himself.

"..."

"Found you."

Hawk's mouth curved upward. He pulled his gaze back and looked at Natasha. "No undercover agents inside this base, right?"

Natasha, seeing Hawk's arrival, immediately understood what he was planning.

She shook her head.

"None."

"Good."

Hawk's psychic power flared. Behind him, the projection of a burning phoenix unfurled its wings.

Suddenly—

The scene that had played out at SHIELD's Triskelion headquarters repeated itself here.

One by one, the HYDRA operatives cowering in their underground bunker—thinking themselves safe—were teleported to the surface by Hawk's Sixth Sense: Psychic Transmission.

Lined up in neat rows.

Before any of them could even register the change in their surroundings, a blazing phoenix beam was already bearing down on them.

The Phoenix Ray swept across the desert. In the blink of an eye, over two hundred HYDRA operatives vaporized on the spot, leaving no trace behind.

"Done."

"I'm heading down."

Hawk's eyes returned to normal. He spoke to Natasha, then took a single step forward and vanished—Sixth Sense: Instant Movement—reappearing inside the training chamber deep beneath the desert.

His gaze locked onto a massive containment pod filled with glowing blue liquid.

Inside the pod, curled up in a fetal position like a sleeping infant, was a figure that looked exactly his age.

Another Hawk.

The next moment, Hawk tore his gaze away and turned toward a man in a white lab coat whom he'd yanked telekinetically from the command center.

Dr. Merrick had realized who was standing in front of him the moment he'd been pulled into the room. He kept his head down like an ostrich, barely daring to breathe.

Hawk raised an eyebrow.

"Dr. Merrick?"

"Y-yes, sir."

Dr. Merrick's voice trembled. Then, as if suddenly remembering something, he looked up at Hawk. "Mr. Phoenix, this isn't my fault! I was forced! HYDRA made me do it! If I didn't follow their orders, they would've tortured me!"

Hawk smiled faintly.

If his Sixth Sense hadn't already shown him Dr. Merrick barking orders like a commanding officer in the control room moments ago, he might have believed that lie.

But—

He wasn't here to listen to Dr. Merrick's excuses. Whether the man had been willing or coerced didn't matter.

Hawk's thoughts remained cold as he pulled his gaze away from Dr. Merrick—who was desperately trying to shift all blame onto HYDRA—and looked once more at the cloning chamber in front of him. His expression turned curious.

"So is this a success or a failure?"

On one hand, yes—HYDRA had successfully cloned him.

But Hawk couldn't detect even a trace of life energy from the body in the chamber.

To put it bluntly:

The clone in front of him wasn't really a clone at all. It was more like a corpse that happened to look like Hawk, floating in preservation fluid.

He hadn't found any other training chambers in the base, which left him wondering: was this project finished, or had it failed?

Hawk spoke the question aloud, then turned his gaze back to Dr. Merrick.

Dr. Merrick met Hawk's eyes, and his heart sank.

His scientific instincts told him that his answer to this question would determine whether he lived or died.

So, Dr. Merrick swallowed hard, his throat bobbing. When he spoke, his voice was dry and hoarse. "There were successes. And there were failures."

Hawk's eyebrows shot up.

"Where are the successful ones?"

"Destroyed."

"Destroyed?"

"Yes."

Dr. Merrick swallowed again. "There were five successful clones. But after they woke up, their consciousness became chaotic and collapsed almost immediately. We had no choice but to... dispose of them."

Hawk absorbed this, nodding thoughtfully. Then he turned back to the chambers holding the sleeping versions of himself. "And these?"

Since Dr. Merrick had already started talking to save his own life, there was no point holding anything back now.

"These five were scheduled to have consciousness implanted today. But before we could begin the procedure, you found us."

The discovery of this base had been, frankly, absurdly coincidental.

Everyone knew the base was built in the middle of a desert.

Deserts are dry. They lack everything. And with over two hundred HYDRA operatives stationed here, securing supplies had always been a challenge. Back when HYDRA was still in hiding, acquiring provisions had been relatively easy.

But after HYDRA's exposure—and especially after Maria Hill's rapid consolidation of SHIELD—the crackdown on HYDRA remnants had intensified dramatically.

The surviving HYDRA cells were growing increasingly paranoid, terrified that SHIELD would drop in at any moment and haul them away.

Some operatives were starting to waver. That included the HYDRA agents running a factory in Alice Springs that supplied this base with provisions.

One of them—a relatively new recruit who'd only been with HYDRA for three years—decided his future was too bright to waste dying with the organization. So he reached out to SHIELD through an obscure online forum, hoping to turn informant.

If Dr. Zola were still around, his network monitoring would have flagged the communication instantly, and the traitor would have been eliminated.

But Zola was gone. And with him, HYDRA's advantage in cyberspace had vanished.

Natasha's team had moved quickly, dismantling the Alice Springs facility.

Most of the HYDRA operatives in Alice Springs who knew about the cloning base were loyal veterans—and they'd all been killed during the assault.

Under normal circumstances, the cloning facility would have remained hidden.

Except...

Natasha's raid had coincided almost perfectly with the monthly supply run to the hidden base.

When Natasha found a warehouse full of provisions—far more than the factory itself needed—she immediately realized there had to be a secret facility nearby. She ordered her team to clean up the battle site, brought in the HYDRA defector, and had him help set a trap.

When the supply shipment didn't arrive on schedule, the cloning base sent someone to investigate.

And that operative just happened to know the defector personally.

He was captured.

And just like that, the cloning base was exposed.

Hawk caught the note of regret in Dr. Merrick's voice when he mentioned not having time to implant consciousness into the clones.

But—

Hawk looked at the five training chambers holding versions of himself, then turned back to Dr. Merrick, who seemed genuinely disappointed his work hadn't been completed.

Hawk's mouth curved into a smile.

"I'll give you a chance to live."

"Activate them."

<><><><><><><><>

"I'll give you one chance. Activate them."

"..."

Dr. Merrick's head snapped up instinctively, staring at Hawk.

Hawk stood with his hands in his pockets, smiling pleasantly at the stunned scientist as he repeated himself. "Activate them. Do that, and I won't kill you."

Merrick stared back at Hawk. That vacant, frozen look in his eyes gradually flickered with something else—a glimmer of hope. The kind that came from the desperate Will to survive.

Soon enough—

Dr. Merrick led Hawk back to the control room and began working alone at the console, preparing to wake the remaining five clones.

Hawk stood off to the side, quietly watching the training chamber feeds displayed on the screens in front of him.

Natasha arrived shortly after with a squad of SHIELD agents in tow.

The agents fanned out, following their standing orders to search and collect every scrap of data from the cloning facility.

Natasha, meanwhile, made her way to the control room. She glanced at the monitor feeds showing five clones curled in fetal positions, floating in training tanks filled with pale blue liquid. Then she looked at Dr. Merrick, who was too busy and too terrified to even wipe the sweat dripping down his face. Finally, she turned to Hawk.

"You want to see what happens when these clones wake up?"

"Yeah."

Hawk glanced away from the screens and met Natasha's gaze. "Aren't you curious?"

Natasha thought about it seriously for a moment, then shrugged. "Alright, I'll admit I'm pretty curious."

Hawk smiled faintly.

"Then let's watch together."

"Alright."

Natasha nodded, crossed her arms, and stood beside Hawk as they both observed Dr. Merrick working frantically at the console.

The person in question was right here. If he wasn't worried, why should she be?

More importantly—

She was genuinely curious whether a clone of Hawk would have any gap in power compared to the real thing.

After all, seeing was believing.

Dr. Merrick, now under the watchful eyes of not one but two supervisors, felt the weight of their stares pressing down on his back. His anxiety spiked so high he was on the verge of passing out.

But he didn't dare.

After all, Hawk had promised him that as long as he behaved, he wouldn't have to die.

Four hours later—

Dr. Merrick wiped the sweat from his forehead, sat down at the main console, and opened the system he'd spent the last few hours fine-tuning through trial and error. He'd named it the "Soul Imprinting System." After double-checking that all parameters were correct, he took a deep breath and turned to look at Hawk.

Hawk caught the signal and glanced at Natasha. "Stay here and watch him. If anything looks wrong, kill him."

Initially, Hawk had planned to find Dr. Merrick and have him clone a body for his sister Anya so he could bring her back to life.

He still wanted that. But compared to the desperate, all-consuming urgency he'd felt at the beginning—when he would have done anything to find Merrick as quickly as possible—his sense of urgency had faded considerably.

Even without Dr. Merrick, resurrecting his sister was only a matter of time.

And he could see her whenever he wanted now.

Anya was living comfortably in the Elysian Fields of his Underworld. And she'd made it clear she didn't care whether she was resurrected or not.

As long as she could see her brother, that was all that mattered to her.

So, Hawk still wanted to bring his sister back to life. But it wasn't urgent anymore. Which naturally meant Dr. Merrick's importance had dropped significantly.

Soon, After giving Natasha her instructions, Hawk's form vanished from the control room and reappeared in the training chamber visible on the monitor feeds.

Natasha turned to Dr. Merrick.

Merrick nodded, wiped his forehead again, and pressed the button to activate the Soul Imprinting System.

Instantly, The consciousness transfer system came online. The pale blue liquid inside the five training tanks began to churn violently, bubbling and boiling.

At the same time, Alongside the turbulent liquid, fragmented images began flashing across the interior surfaces of the tanks. And the five clones floating inside—whose eyes had been peacefully closed—suddenly began to twitch and flutter rapidly beneath their eyelids.

It looked exactly like someone experiencing REM sleep, their eyelids flickering in response to vivid dreams.

Hawk watched the changes in the tanks with keen interest.

Back in the control room, Natasha was equally curious.

"What's this device for?"

"Soul imprinting... It's something I invented specifically to solve the problem of clones lacking consciousness."

As Dr. Merrick said this, a hint of pride crept into his voice. "The reason other cloning specialists have repeatedly failed is because they couldn't overcome the issue of clones not having souls. But I solved it."

Cloning animals wasn't difficult. Scientists had cracked that problem ages ago.

But cloning humans had remained an unsolved challenge. And the main reason wasn't ethical concerns.

In the eyes of scientists, ethics didn't exist.

Everything was for science.

For truth!

So even though the Big Five publicly banned all human cloning experiments, countless geneticists had secretly continued pursuing the goal of human cloning.

Many of them had reached the same level Dr. Merrick had. They could successfully clone human bodies.

But that was as far as they got.

What they created couldn't really be called clones. They were more like human-shaped corpses.

Because they couldn't solve the problem of the human soul.

But Dr. Merrick had solved it.

"My Soul Imprinting System can convert pre-programmed memories into specific neural electrical signals and implant them directly into the clone's brain."

"With memory comes consciousness. And with consciousness comes a soul."

"So..."

"That's right."

"I CAN CREATE SOULS!!"

As Dr. Merrick spoke about his greatest invention, his eyes gleamed with fanatical intensity as he stared at the screens. The liquid in the tanks continued to boil, images continued to flash, and the clones inside continued to tremble.

Natasha, listening to Dr. Merrick's declaration, felt a wave of discomfort.

After all, if souls could be created—

What did that make them?

Just then, Hawk, standing in the training chamber, seemed to have overheard Dr. Merrick's self-proclaimed comparison to God. He glanced up at the surveillance camera. "Don't listen to his nonsense. Creating souls? He wishes... If he could actually do that, Mephisto—who claims dominion over souls—would have dragged him to Hell ages ago."

Dr. Merrick, hearing someone dismiss his life's work, bristled with indignation.

Even if that person could easily kill him, he couldn't let it slide.

"Mr. Phoenix, I can create souls. Once the imprinting process finishes, you'll see I'm not lying."

"Make him shut up, Natasha."

"Ah!"

A scream echoed through the intercom.

Hawk shook his head and refocused his attention on the five clones still boiling in their tanks.

Soon—

The churning liquid began to settle. At the same time, the red indicator lights on the training chambers turned green.

The liquid inside the tanks began draining at a visible rate, accompanied by mechanical hissing sounds.

As the liquid disappeared, one of the clones' expression twisted into something that looked intensely painful. His hands instinctively grabbed at the breathing apparatus covering his nose and mouth. The moment he ripped it off, the chamber door slid open. The clone stumbled out, collapsed onto the floor, and began gasping for air.

"Holy hell."

Natasha's voice came through the intercom, shocked. "It worked??"

Hawk didn't respond. He raised his right hand slightly. Telekinesis wrapped around the clone—who had Hawk's face—and lifted him into the air.

His Sixth Sense swept through the clone's body, inside and out.

"Name."

"A... Al... Allen!"

The clone, floating in midair, freshly awakened from sleep and suddenly finding himself restrained, looked at Hawk and answered almost reflexively.

His voice was hoarse and childlike, like someone speaking for the very first time.

Natasha blinked, then turned to Dr. Merrick.

"Allen?"

"The memories of an agent. We couldn't extract Hawk's memories, so we had to extract an agent's instead. We wrote them into the system, then converted them into neural electrical signals and transferred them to the clone."

"That's your method of creating souls?"

Natasha listened to Dr. Merrick's explanation, frowning. She didn't fully understand it, but something felt off.

"This isn't a soul."

"This is a program."

"Think about Zola. The only difference between these clones and that digital ghost is that they have physical bodies."

Hawk's voice cut through the intercom.

Natasha heard Hawk's explanation and suddenly realized why something had felt wrong.

Hawk looked at the clone floating in front of him and let out a quiet laugh.

"Merrick."

"Let me guess why your first five clones failed."

"You tried to program my memories into them. But you couldn't form a coherent memory sequence. That's why the clones collapsed shortly after activation. Am I right?"

"..."

Natasha's gaze shifted to Dr. Merrick.

Merrick's expression stiffened.

He swallowed hard.

"Yes."

"See? It's exactly like a computer program. If the code is complete, the program runs fine. But if there are gaps in the code, the program crashes immediately."

Hawk said this calmly. Then, without hesitation, he looked at the clone suspended in front of him. His eyes flashed crimson. He grabbed the clone with one hand and incinerated it on the spot.

The other four clones, still lying on the ground after stumbling out of their tanks, met the same fate.

Vaporized instantly.

The next second, Hawk reappeared in the control room and continued speaking to Natasha. "All he did was create a memory program. And he didn't even create it—he copied it from someone else. He's not creating anything. He's just copying and pasting."

That's right.

Dr. Merrick's so-called "human cloning" was exactly that.

He treated the clone body like a server. All he did was copy a complete set of memories from one person, paste it into the server, and boot it up.

And he called that creation?

What a joke.

...