Marvel: The Enlightened One#49+50: Hawk Blood Analysis, Dr. Connors Gives Up on Being Human

"What did you just say?"

"Uh, I don't know?"

"No, you just said the experiment succeeded with what?"

"A mouse with a severed tail. Didn't I tell you about that last time?" Hawk frowned, looking at Gwen's stunned expression. "What's wrong?"

Gwen didn't answer. Her brow was furrowed in thought.

A successful experiment.

A mouse with a severed tail.

For some reason, an image flashed in Gwen's mind: two months ago, after the lab accident, a small white mouse had escaped its cage and licked up the drops of blood Hawk had left on the floor.

If her memory served her correctly...

That mouse was missing its tail!

Hiss.

Gwen drew in a sharp breath. She glanced at Hawk, then pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed a number.

Sitting across from her, Hawk's eyebrows shot up.

A moment later, the call connected.

"Hello, Elsa."

"Gwen? Are you calling to ask what happened? I'm sorry, the company made us all sign NDAs."

"No, that's not it, Elsa. I wanted to ask... the Doctor's successful experiment, was it on a mouse with a severed tail?"

"Uh... yeah, it was."

Elsa, who was still at Oscorp having just signed her non-disclosure agreement, nodded on the other end of the line. "But you can't really call it a success. It only worked that one time. We've been trying to replicate it ever since, but we keep failing."

Gwen pressed on, her voice urgent.

"Was it the mouse that escaped its cage that day?"

"Yeah, that's the one."

I knew it.

Gwen thought to herself. She exchanged a few more pleasantries with Elsa and then hung up.

Hawk watched her, his curiosity piqued. "Was there something special about that mouse?"

Gwen put her phone away and looked at Hawk.

She considered her words carefully.

"Do you remember the accident in the lab?"

"Yeah, I remember."

"Your hand was injured. You were bleeding, right?"

"No."

Hawk shook his head without hesitation.

Gwen said nothing. She just stared at him.

Hawk met her gaze, held it for a moment, and then sighed. "Okay, fine. Let's say I was bleeding. Go on."

Gwen's stare was intense.

"The drops of blood you left on the floor... that mouse licked them up."

"..." Hawk's brow furrowed as he looked at Gwen.

Gwen looked right back at him.

Their eyes locked.

Hawk broke the gaze first, drawing in a slow breath. "You think the successful test subject... was the same mouse you saw that day?"

Gwen shrugged. "It's the only variable. Otherwise, why would the Doctor run so many animal trials, with only that one mouse surviving?"

She didn't understand the connection, not really.

But—

In her mind's eye, she saw it again: the image of a waterfall in the deep Maryland woods, raging in reverse, defying gravity.

And Hawk, standing at the center of it all, the cause of the impossible.

Hawk remained silent. He quietly set down the large soda cup he'd been holding and folded his hands on the table, leaning forward slightly.

He thought about what Peter had told him on the rooftop last night.

The Lizard has your scent...

At the time, Hawk had assumed it was just because Gwen had been near Dr. Connors.

But now, it seemed he was wrong.

The lab accident... he'd bled.

The escaped mouse with the severed tail had ingested his blood and become the sole survivor of an experiment that had killed every other subject.

Dr. Connors had then used that mouse to create a new serum.

And then...

Dr. Connors became the Lizard.

Hawk frowned, staring at Gwen, who was watching him with an unblinking gaze. He opened his mouth to speak, then just shook his head, a look of disbelief on his face.

"My blood can't be that special, can it?"

"There's one way to find out."

"What?"

"The School's Stark Hall has a blood analyzer. We could get the results in half an hour."

"..."

Stark Hall was the nickname for the School's Building Three, the experimental science wing donated by Howard Stark. Most of the equipment inside was state-of-the-art, also donated by Stark Industries.

That included the fully automated, rapid blood analysis machine—a device that looked like it cost a hundred thousand dollars but was actually worth over a million, complete with a gleaming Stark logo.

Hawk stuck his finger in his mouth. When he pulled it out, the small pinprick had already healed over.

Gwen had already booted up the machine.

It whirred to life.

As they waited, Gwen turned to him, her curiosity finally getting the better of her. "Are you... a mutate? Like Dr. Banner?"

She had wanted to ask for a long time. But she'd never had the chance.

Hawk met her curious gaze and let out a short, incredulous laugh. He shook his head. "I can guarantee you, I am one hundred percent, pure human."

He had just awakened his Cosmo...

That's all.

A mutate? He would never admit to that.

Mutation was a crutch for the weak.

He was strong because he had made himself strong. He had earned his power through a thousand days of relentless, back-breaking effort.

The sweat from a thousand days of ten thousand punches had finally watered the flower of his potential.

Hawk paused for a moment, then looked at Gwen and added, "I'm definitely not a mutate like the Spider-freak. And don't lump me in with Bruce Banner."

"..."

Gwen's eyes lit up, seizing on the key part of his statement. "The Spider-freak... you mean Spider-Man? He's a mutate, too?"

Hawk just blinked, then raised a hand to his mouth and mimed zipping his lips.

"My lips are sealed, Gwen."

"Fine, don't tell me. I'll figure it out myself."

Gwen rolled her eyes.

Just then.

Beep, beep, beep!

The half-hour analysis was complete. The machine chimed, signaling it was finished.

Gwen hurried over and took the printout from the machine.

Hawk leaned over her shoulder to look.

He saw it immediately.

Red blood cell count, white blood cell count, platelet count... every value was completely off the charts.

Hawk blinked.

The results... were about what he'd expected. The path of the Saint was the path of perfecting the self.

Gwen scanned the report, then took a deep breath and looked up at him. "Hawk... do you have any idea what would happen if the outside world ever found out about this?"

Hawk just smiled.

He looked her straight in the eye.

"Gwen."

"No one else is going to get a sample of my blood that easily."

"..."

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

Why had Hawk worked so hard to become this strong?

Wasn't it for this? The power to control his own destiny.

And now, some random person thinks they can just take his blood?

Heh. In their dreams...

That had been Gwen. If it had been anyone else, Hawk would have blasted their head clean off their shoulders the instant the needle came near.

But Gwen ignored Hawk's quip. Her eyes were glued to the analysis report that had just printed out.

Others might not have been able to make sense of it, but she could.

And because she could, she drew in a sharp, astonished breath.

Hawk's blood work was completely off the charts.

His white blood cell count was maxed out on the machine's display, which meant the real number was probably even higher.

And that meant one thing: Hawk's immune system was terrifyingly powerful and efficient. It could likely identify and eradicate any foreign invader—viruses, bacteria, parasites—almost instantly.

It also explained his incredible Healing Factor.

Gwen thought back to the day of the lab accident, how she had seen Hawk's hand bleeding, only for the wound to vanish moments later.

And the other metrics...

To put it simply:

If Gwen hadn't drawn the blood from Hawk's finger herself, she would have assumed the data was fabricated.

These were not the numbers of a human being!

"I saw Captain America's blood analysis once, leaked online." she said, her voice barely a whisper.

"Hawk..."

"Your numbers are even more insane than his. Did you... did you take the Super Soldier Serum?"

Gwen looked up at him. Having ruled out mutation, it was the only other logical explanation.

But, unfortunately for her theory...

Hawk just shrugged.

"Nope."

"Okay then." Gwen didn't press. She decisively took the report, tore it into tiny pieces, and then began to methodically wipe down the entire machine, inside and out. She rinsed the test vial under running water three times, then took the soaking, pulpy shreds of paper and buried them at the bottom of the trash can.

She was making absolutely sure that no trace of the report or the blood sample could ever be found.

Hawk watched her work, a small smile playing on his lips.

"A little paranoid, aren't we, Gwen?"

"Not paranoid enough."

Gwen's expression was dead serious. "If anyone ever saw these numbers, Hawk, I have no doubt that they would put you on a dissection table."

Hawk's eyebrow arched. "That's assuming they could catch me."

They were welcome to try.

Because Hawk wouldn't mind turning their "try" into a "die."

He had already crossed that line.

Killing wasn't a question of 'if' for him anymore. It was only a question of 'how many'.

But Hawk's confidence didn't seem to reassure Gwen. Her expression remained grave. "Hawk..."

"Yeah?"

"Never, ever let anyone else get a sample of your blood."

"...Alright." Seeing the genuine fear and concern in her eyes, Hawk relented and nodded.

The stern look on Gwen's face softened slightly. As they started walking out of the lab, she changed the subject.

"So, what now?"

"About what?"

"About Dr. Connors."

"Not our problem."

Hawk shrugged. "We didn't cause him to turn into a giant lizard. For all we know, he's already halfway to Mexico by now."

Gwen considered it, then nodded.

"That's possible."

"Let's drop it. What class do you have this afternoon?"

"French. You?"

"Geography."

The two of them walked out of the Stark Industries research building, chatting about their schedules.

...

And just like that, three days passed.

The media frenzy over the "Lizard Monster" had started to die down.

After that one appearance on the Williamsburg Bridge, the creature hadn't been seen again.

The general consensus was that it had either been secretly captured by the military or had fled the city.

New York's friendly neighborhood Spider-Man thought so, too.

But In reality, the Lizard had never left.

At this very moment, he was holed up in a maintenance tunnel just five blocks from Midtown Tech.

The New York City sewer system had service platforms at regular intervals.

The Lizard had made one of them his temporary lair.

But right now, he was no longer the Lizard. He was just Dr. Connors again.

Yet, after experiencing what it was like to be whole, to be immensely powerful—a hulking, monstrous beast—how could he be content to revert to a frail, crippled man once the dose wore off?

Maybe, at first, his only intention had been to stop the board of directors from experimenting on those poor, wounded soldiers.

But now, Dr. Connors had seen the light.

Being human was fine. But being the Lizard... being stronger, faster, and more powerful than any human... that was true freedom.

And so, Dr. Connors made a decision.

He wasn't going to be a man anymore. He was going to be the Lizard. Permanently.

To do that, he first needed to figure out why that one mouse had been a success.

For three days, he had been re-watching the security footage from his lab.

And finally...

As the hypnotic, low-frequency hum of the sewer's power conduits buzzed in his ears, Dr. Connors, covered in sweat and grime, saw it. His eyes widened as he froze the frame on his laptop screen.

On the screen was the mouse, licking a drop of blood from the floor.

Connors frantically rewound the footage. He found the moment. It was right after Hawk had pulled his hand away from Gwen.

"HAWK!"

"IT WAS HIM!"

A tremor ran through Dr. Connors's body—not of fear, but of manic excitement.

He had been on good terms with the boy. He had given him a letter of recommendation. Surely, if he just called and asked, Hawk would give him a small sample of his blood for research.

That was his first thought. That was what he would do.

But just as he reached for his phone, a voice... a voice that was both inside his head and echoing in the darkness around him—hissed into his thoughts.

"No. He will never give it to you. A man with blood that powerful would never share it."

"..." Dr. Connors's eyes glazed over as the whisper slithered through his mind. "Yes... he'll never give it to me... he would never... what do I do?"

"Gwen—"

"Take the girl. She is his weakness. Take the girl, and force him to give you the blood!"

"You're right, take Gwen, force him!" Dr. Connors's eyes now completely vacant, He muttered the words to himself as his hand closed around the three remaining vials of the regeneration serum.