You want someone to perform a job with precision? Without making an error? You want a surgeon. A doctor. 
Appearing in 1st story
Featured Characters:
- Squadron Supreme
- Hyperion (Mark Milton)
- Amphibian (First appearance)
- Kyle Richmond (First appearance)
- Joseph Ledger (First appearance)
- Zarda (First appearance) (Behind the scenes)
- Blur
Supporting Characters:
- Dr. Bill Steadman
- General Casey (First appearance)
- Titus Richmond (First appearance; dies)
- Rosalie Richmond (First appearance; dies)
Antagonists:
Other Characters:
- Phil (First appearance)
- Debbie (First appearance; dies)
- U.S. Army (First appearance)
Locations:
Items:
Vehicles:
Synopsis for 1st story
Mark Milton is now an adolescent. While being taught by his home-school teacher, Mark burns away the textbook that his teacher is carrying and scaring her away. His foster father checks on him which Mark tells him that he is not "all right". A scene later, Mark and his father talk outside on a hill where Mark sees across the distance of other children like him which he desires to be outside and be with other kids; to attend school, which he asserts that he has control over his powers and wouldn't pose a risk to people.
Mark's handlers at Project Hyperion had expect for this to happen in which Bill Adams suggest of exposing Mark to a control environment where he will be brought to a school and its teachers controlled by the government, and the students being the sires, nephews, nieces, and grandchildren of the generals.
Meanwhile, at a psychiatric institution, a doctor sees a quiet patient named Phil who has been institutionalized for fourteen years. The scene flashes to fourteen years ago when Phil and his pregnant wife Debbie sees a "shooting star" (actually Mark's pod) which flies over them and dropping some little debris. Sometime later, Debbie is in labor after her and her husband's car has broken down near the ocean. Debbie gives birth to their baby, but the appearance of the baby (unseen) deeply shocks the couple, in which Phil went insane and Debbie bringing the baby into the ocean which she then apparently drowns. In the present, Phil remembers the previous events and hysterically tells his doctor that he didn't killed his wife or the baby, as he tells him that the baby "didn't look anything like him".
Somewhere, a African-American family are taking a walk down a road where they hear a bird. The father, Titus Richmond, tells his wife Rosalie and son Kyle that is the sound of a nighthawk and regales them about the raptor, pointing out its unique habit to hunt at night which its prey would never see it coming. Suddenly, a truck driven by bigoted rednecks drives by and kills Titus and Rosalie as their son watches in horror.
In Guatemala, black ops soldier Joseph Ledger, who is also known as The Doctor because of the precision with which he performed his secret "operations", is recruited to Project Hyperion. Upon arriving in the U.S., Ledger is brief of his reason for the project as he is a perfect candidate to use the crystal that came from Hyperion's pod, whose focused mind can allow him to control it. Ledger test the crystal on a shooting range where he is able to concentrate its power despite feeling immense pain from using it. The crystal, without warning, merges into Ledger's right hand and the man lapses into a coma.
Somewhere in Italy, two children are bringing food as a offering to a tomb enshrining a "Princess" who has been sleeping for hundreds of years. As the children leave, one of them hears a voice and swears it says "Something is stirring in the world outside." A emancipated hand stretches out the tomb's small opening and grabs the offered food.
On the next day, Mark is taken to school. But the students alienates him as they were previously foretold by their relatives at the project about Mark, which he already then realizes from the "students". Mark dejectedly returns home where he tells his foster parents that he doesn't want to go back to school as he doesn't fit in.