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Tony Stark making a trip to Los Angeles naturally didn’t mean he had come only to inspect Stark Pictures.

Being diligent about work was never part of his persona.

So unsurprisingly, the guy had once again gone to throw a party at his private Malibu beach house.

With his wealth, this kind of pastime could be repeated every day until the day he croaked, and he still wouldn’t run out of money. So as an employee, Henry saw no reason to worry about his boss’s finances.

Henry drove his Cadillac, taking Jack Reacher on his way out.

Along the road, the former military police captain was even quieter than expected, making the atmosphere inside the car slightly awkward. Henry had no choice but to start the conversation.

"Do you have plans for getting back? Or I could send you on a private jet. You’d be back on the East Coast within three minutes."

Reacher replied, "No, thanks. I can roughly imagine your method. But I’m on an official assignment this trip, and I need to continue investigating in the Midwest.

"The West Coast matter took one day less than I expected, so I’ve got plenty of time now. Just drop me off at a bus station."

Henry had actually wanted to use a normal living human to test the Duck-Leopard Armor’s hyper-acceleration launch system. Since Reacher refused, it wouldn’t be proper to tie him onto Kitty’s back by force.

So that idea was dropped.

Then Reacher suddenly asked, "That armor for the tiger... was it made by Stark Industries?"

"No. I designed and built it myself. It has nothing to do with Stark Industries." Henry looked curious and asked back, "Why would you think it did?"

"I just don’t want to see something like that on a battlefield. If it wasn’t developed by a genius arms dealer, that’s a relief. But why make something like that in the first place?"

"You were military police, right? You weren’t supposed to be on battlefields anyway..." Henry quipped before answering.

"You saw that guy on the news. And there are mutants everywhere. This world is too dangerous. I need some means of self-defense."

Reacher grumbled, "Military police don’t go to the front lines, but how serious do you think military weapon leakage is?

"I don’t want to be out in the field investigating something one day and have somebody unleash one of those metal monsters on me. The only opponents I’m confident dealing with are humans.

"But do you really need something like that for protection? According to what I’ve read, you’re one of the mutants too. Your ability is that handgun rounds can’t injure you."

Henry said, "My skin is thicker than average, sure. But that doesn’t mean I can outrun everyone. There’s an old joke, right? Two people are being chased by a lion on the savannah. They don’t need to outrun the lion—just the other guy."

Speechless, Reacher finally squeezed out one sentence.

"So in the end, you don’t trust the Sentry."

"Only an idiot entrusts their safety to the kindness of a superman. Maybe the comic one is an alien, while our Sentry is from Earth—but do you really think those concerns are unreasonable?"

"You planning to play Lex Luthor?" Reacher saw Henry’s expression of disbelief and naturally added, "I had a childhood worshipping Superman too, you know. Is it that surprising I know the character?"

Returning to a normal expression while driving, Henry said flatly:

"I have no interest in becoming the Sentry’s arch-enemy. If that guy causes trouble, I’ll run as far away as possible.

"The media praising him as a savior and messiah, and the people behind promoting all of it—they’re the ones who should clean up the mess if something happens. Though they’ll probably also be the first to get warned and the first to run."

Reacher wanted to say something, but his mouth opened and closed several times before nothing came out.

As far as he knew, the reason the military and government were so indulgent toward the Sentry was simple:

They lacked any force capable of opposing him.

So they had settled for the next-best option—trying to control him through flattery.

Meanwhile, rumor had it that unauthorized human experiments with Sentry Serum had already begun.

But Canada’s Department K was badly managed, and too many random civilian subcontractor labs were involved. No one even knew which specific serum dose had successfully created the Sentry.

Even the military, after intervening, still hadn’t found the formula that had produced the first Sentry—let alone create a second one.

Suddenly, the pink cartoon electronic watch on Henry’s wrist began to ring.

Reacher noticed it wasn’t the top of the hour, nor was it exactly one hour after he had gotten in the car. So he asked directly:

"Got something else you need to handle?"

"Looks that way. I was actually thinking I could still take you farther, no matter where you were headed."

"No, thanks. I’m firm on this. I’ll take the bus."

The tough guy remembered those two earlier trips that had been anything but comfortable, and rejected the offer with determination.

"Alright, alright. Bus station’s here."

Henry pulled into the passenger drop-off area.

Carrying the backpack that held his military uniform, Reacher stepped out and raised his wrist, showing the watch Henry had given him—the one equipped with a tracker.

"I’m keeping this. Just like you said, there are too many crises in this world that manpower alone can’t resist."

Henry smiled. "Next rescue will definitely be on time. But I still hope you never have to use it."

"Can anyone besides you track the signal?"

"Pull the crown beside the watch face out two clicks, manually set it to six-thirty, then activate it—that disables the active signal. Unless you press the distress button, the watch stays silent.

"To turn it back on, use the same method and set it to twelve o’clock."

Reacher glanced at the watch on his wrist.

"Thanks."

With that simple word, he turned and walked away.

Only after this very traditional American tough guy had gone some distance did Henry drive over to a nearby parking spot.

The cartoon watch alarm was also a distress signal. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

The caller was Blade or Abraham Whistler.

The location: their hideout in the abandoned steel mill.

But it wasn’t a direct emergency call.

Black Super had helped build their alarm system. Only when certain conditions were met would it automatically transmit a distress signal to Henry.

Otherwise, if those two vampire hunters triggered alarms over every little inconvenience, Henry would never get to live a normal life.

If they needed help with an emergency evacuation, Abraham Whistler would contact him personally.

But this time, the signal had been sent automatically.

Which probably meant their secret base had already fallen.

Seeing the sun high in the sky, Henry wasn’t surprised.

Because vampires feared sunlight, vampire hunters usually used daytime hours for investigations or personal business. Very few expected a vampire attack in broad daylight.

But vampires had developed sunblock long ago, allowing them to move briefly under sunlight.

Not to mention the humans serving them—those people were the real daytime operatives.

Traditionally, vampires simply didn’t act during the day.

But recently, the loudest troublemakers were the younger radical faction among them.

If such a group of vampires and human collaborators launched a surprise attack—and Blade had been lured away—then that old man with one bad leg had no chance of defeating the invaders.

He might not even have been able to escape.

In truth, that was why Henry was moving so slowly and calmly.

The cartoon watch alarm was less a rescue signal—

And more a notice for him to come clean up the aftermath.

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