Marvel: A Lazy-Ass Superman

Chapter 581 581: Manufacturing an “Accident”

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Accurate intelligence was always one of the key factors in improving the success rate of any operation.

To gather information, Henry spent the next several days disguised as he made a trip to the South District, where he purchased a batch of miniature surveillance equipment through some Black-market contacts.

Naturally, he didn't ask where the goods came from. As long as they had the merchandise and wouldn't remember who he was, that was enough.

Then, using his own handiwork skills, he modified the devices. He couldn't shrink them down to the size of pinhole cameras, but he did upgrade the data transmission methods to route through more secure relay servers and improved the battery life.

Afterward, he planted them at the regular hangout spots of the twenty-two remaining names on his to-do list—everywhere except their offices.

As for the one employed at Oscorp, Henry left him untouched for the time being.

Norman Osborn, who currently controlled the company, might not be on Tony Stark's level, and Oscorp's business model differed greatly from Stark Industries, but to Henry, he was still someone who required careful handling.

If he wanted to target one of Norman Osborn's employees, he would need a far more meticulous approach. Besides, there were still twenty-two other targets waiting in line, so there was no rush to deal with the one under Osborn.

The reason for avoiding offices was simple: too many eyes.

And in that kind of environment, "accidents" were much harder to arrange.

Furthermore, Cybertek—being both a research center and white-glove collaborator for one of HYDRA's leaders, John Garrett—naturally had excellent counterintelligence measures in place. Henry had no intention of testing how observant Garrett might be. After all, Garrett himself wasn't the target.

Nor could John Garrett realistically babysit every detail of his subordinates' private lives twenty-four hours a day.

That was where Henry's opportunity lay.

Very quickly, he found his second chance.

The target was a man who frequently drank before driving, another lonely expatriate living in America alone, and someone who practically visited strip clubs every single night.

The truly terrifying thing about drunk drivers wasn't merely that alcohol dulled their reactions.

It was that alcohol emboldened them to do things they normally wouldn't dare to do.

Simply put, take road rage and amplify it tenfold—that was more or less the mentality of someone driving drunk.

Normal people saw someone in front of their car and instinctively hit the brakes, knowing they'd otherwise bear legal and financial responsibility.

People with road rage invented flimsy excuses to justify hitting someone.

But drunk people?

Under the influence of alcohol, if they wanted to hit someone, they simply did it.

No excuses necessary.

People always said alcohol gave courage.

Unfortunately, the things people did after gaining that courage were rarely good.

A man who habitually drank and drove could already be said to be courting death.

Add in his wildly reckless driving habits, and Henry decided to help accelerate the process—before the man became a ticking time bomb for innocent people.

The method was simple.

The guy often left empty liquor bottles rolling around inside his car. So while he was inside the club enjoying himself, Henry secretly tampered with the vehicle.

Using the area around the pedals, he set up a trap.

At the moment the man floored the accelerator—making the engine roar as he showed off the car's zero-to-one-hundred acceleration—the previously wedged bottle would roll beneath the brake pedal.

If that had been the only trap, there was a chance innocent bystanders could have been harmed by the speeding vehicle.

So on the very day he made his move, Henry deliberately waited along the stretch of road where the man habitually raced, then suddenly rushed out from a blind corner.

Putting himself directly into the game.

Whether the other man swerved or simply barreled straight ahead, Henry's reflexes were more than enough to protect himself at the final moment.

And sure enough, the coarse lab-coated brute who had once overseen Henry's transport during earlier operations proved exactly as cruel as expected.

A human figure suddenly appeared in the road, and instead of swerving, the man accelerated directly toward him.

Although being hit by a speeding car meant little to a Kryptonian, Henry still dodged at the final instant. He didn't want the vehicle left with any suspicious collision marks.

And directly behind Henry stood a rock wall.

For a drunk driver who saw a person and still chose to hit the gas, there was no avoiding that wall.

Especially once the prepared bottle rolled perfectly into place beneath the brake pedal, jamming it completely.

Now, even if the driver desperately stomped the brakes, it was useless.

At nearly one hundred kilometers per hour, the car slammed violently into the rock face, conducting a very literal human crash experiment.

The suburban road home became the site of his death.

The impact was so severe that the front of the car crumpled inward. The airbags exploded open, and the twisted driver's seat trapped the man in place.

The smoking engine began throwing sparks.

Moments later, the entire car burst into flames.

Unable to escape, the man could only watch helplessly as he was swallowed by the inferno.

When Henry walked over to the driver's side, the man slumped against the airbag could only produce incoherent cries through his mouth.

It sounded like a plea for help.

Or perhaps he had recognized Henry and was begging for mercy.

But the Kryptonian who had grown up in Siberia merely watched in silence.

Even as the stench of burning human fat filled the air, even as the man's one free arm stretched weakly out the window in an attempt to grasp him, Henry's resolve did not waver.

This road leading into the suburbs rarely saw much traffic, especially at night.

Tonight was no exception.

No conveniently heroic driver appeared to rescue him from the wreck.

So Henry simply watched as the man inside the flames gradually lost the ability to move.

Amid the crackling roar of the fire, the human heartbeat finally ceased.

By then, even dragging him out would only leave behind a charred corpse.

That lingering sense of routine still refused to fade.

Who exactly was it that said revenge felt satisfying?

If someone truly felt pleasure from revenge, then they must have spent every waking moment dwelling on hatred—allowing vengeance to consume their life.

But if you had stopped caring from the very beginning, then all that remained afterward was emptiness.

Other than crossing another item off the list, Henry couldn't tell what was different between today and tomorrow.

The sound of another vehicle engine reached his ears.

The Kryptonian, who had remained floating ghostlike above the ground the entire time, quietly departed the scene.

He still needed to visit this target's home first to retrieve his surveillance devices before heading back.

Those things might arouse police suspicion, so naturally he couldn't leave them behind.

After cleaning everything up, Henry left Ontario, Canada, and returned to Los Angeles.

The Canadian police, arriving several steps too late, quickly dispatched firefighters who managed to contain the burning wreck before it triggered a larger forest fire.

Based on the subsequent investigations by fire investigators and traffic accident specialists, the report was finalized quickly.

Drunk driving. A bottle jamming the brake pedal. High-speed collision.

Any one of those factors alone could have caused a fatal accident, let alone all three occurring together.

The ruling of accidental death was issued without delay.

No professional investigator believed there had been any third-party involvement.

Cars of this era weren't all equipped with dashcams, either.

Naturally, no one knew that a person had appeared on the road just before the crash.

Remaining to-do list items: 22.