During the experiment, a prisoner named Billy Bob, who held a grudge against Carl, broke into the laboratory intending to sabotage him.
Instead, he accidentally accelerated the chemical process inside Carl's body.
The result was catastrophic.
Every cell in Carl's body mutated violently, granting him immense physical strength and skin tough enough to resist bullets and blades.
After escaping prison with his newfound abilities, Carl returned to New York and decided to use his powers to make money while helping people at the same time.
That was when Carl Lucas became Luke Cage.
Unfortunately for him, Drex Valen had already set his sights on him.
Luke Cage's muscle tissue and bone density had both been dramatically enhanced, granting him enormous strength. Initially, he could lift around twenty-five tons, though further development would eventually push that number beyond fifty.
He could punch through four-inch steel plating with his bare fists.
Compared to Spider-Man, his raw strength wasn't especially outrageous.
But Spider-Man was a monster by superhero standards. In a city overflowing with thousands of costumed vigilantes, Peter Parker still ranked near the top tier.
Which meant Luke Cage was already terrifyingly powerful by normal standards.
His skin was nearly indestructible.
Only specialized medical lasers could reliably cut through it.
He could withstand impacts from one-ton objects, survive knives and blunt force trauma with ease, tank close-range handgun fire, and even endure explosions equivalent to one hundred and fifty pounds of TNT.
On top of that, his healing factor operated roughly three times faster than a normal human's.
And now he was hiding in Hell's Kitchen.
The neighborhood's reputation had become practically legendary.
Poverty and violence defined the place.
If Manhattan real estate weren't so absurdly valuable, the federal government probably would've abandoned the district entirely.
People there survived however they could.
And when survival became miserable enough, chaos started looking entertaining.
Residents of Hell's Kitchen generally shared three traits:
Bold.
Broke.
And addicted to trouble.
Which explained why people still wandered the streets late at night despite the crime rate.
Luke Cage himself had once been just another street thug.
As he got older and lost family members, he tried to turn his life around.
Then life rewarded him by throwing him into prison.
Inside that prison, everything changed.
In exchange for a chance at early release, Luke volunteered for an experimental recreation of the Super Soldier Program. Through sheer accident, the process transformed him into a bulletproof powerhouse.
After escaping confinement, he settled in Hell's Kitchen under a new identity, planning to make money while acting as a street-level hero.
Unfortunately, reality had other plans.
At that moment, Luke stared at the monstrous creatures surrounding him from all directions and genuinely wondered if he'd wandered into another dimension.
"Four Beast Soldiers," Drex said with visible interest. "He should be able to handle that, right?"
Beside him stood Emil Blonsky, posture rigid and expression cold.
Blonsky barely even acknowledged Luke's existence.
Even after Drex mentioned the possibility of modifying Luke later, Blonsky remained indifferent.
After all, he was Super Abomination.
Why would he care about someone at Luke Cage's level?
Still, Drex ended up mildly surprised.
Luke actually defeated all four Beast Soldiers.
Granted, it wasn't entirely unexpected.
Luke Cage's abilities were practically designed for endurance combat. Beyond his immense strength, his enhanced muscles and reinforced skeleton granted extraordinary resistance to nearly every conventional form of damage.
Blades barely mattered.
Gunfire barely mattered.
Blunt force trauma barely mattered.
Combined with accelerated healing and impressive stamina, Luke could absorb punishment all day long.
Breathing heavily after the fight, Luke prepared to leave.
Then his body froze.
A terrifying pressure flooded the alleyway.
Pure killing intent.
A man wearing a black leather coat stepped forward slowly, staring at Luke like he was already dead.
Blonsky looked deeply dissatisfied with the Beast Soldiers.
Four of them.
Each possessing physical abilities roughly comparable to Luke Cage, maybe even superior.
And they still lost?
Embarrassing.
Especially in front of the boss.
What if Drex thought he wasn't training them properly?
Clearly they all needed harsher combat drills once this was over.
Luke had never experienced anything like this before.
He didn't even know if the sensation could truly be called killing intent.
It felt heavier than that.
More primal.
Blonsky didn't waste words.
He had studied countless recordings from underground death tournaments to refine his combat methods. Even without transforming, taking down Luke Cage wasn't particularly difficult for him.
The fight ended in moments.
Luke's durability impressed Blonsky slightly, but only enough to qualify as a warm-up.
Soon afterward, Luke Cage was unconscious, restrained, and transported directly to Drex's laboratory.
The first thing Drex did was implant a psychic suggestion deep into Luke's mind, along with a hidden mental trigger.
Then the modifications began.
Unlike Bucky Barnes or the future Crossbones, Brock Rumlow, Luke wasn't considered worthy of the Red Hulk Serum or Abomination Serum.
Those formulas possessed terrifying upper limits.
Drex reserved them for high-level executives only.
Lately, he had also begun losing interest in Beast Soldiers altogether.
Their growth ceiling was simply too visible.
The idea of creating Beast Lords had already been postponed indefinitely due to missing breakthroughs in biotechnology.
Instead of mass-producing disposable soldiers, Drex preferred building elite monsters capable of crushing entire armies alone.
One-man catastrophes.
Luke sank into unconsciousness as Drex began transplanting mutant genes into his body.
Recently, Drex had acquired several valuable genetic samples, and his increasingly refined control over electromagnetic manipulation allowed him to reduce rejection reactions to almost nothing.
Besides, Luke Cage himself was already an anomaly by scientific standards.
Someone with that level of physical enhancement should not have possessed perfectly ordinary human genetics.
Yet somehow, he did.
With electromagnetic force guiding the process at the cellular level, the mutation completed rapidly.
Luke Cage officially became a mutant.
When he opened his eyes again, the psychic suggestion implanted earlier had already reshaped parts of his memory.
He now believed he had been born into World Serpent, the child of two organization members, and that Drex Valen had personally selected him for enhancement after recognizing his potential.
"Boss."
Luke sounded genuinely excited.
The transformation had succeeded.
Drex nodded calmly.
"It's complete. I added several interesting genetic traits."
The modifications were impressive even by Drex's standards.
The first mutant gene originally only allowed arm regeneration. After Drex's adjustments, however, it evolved into something much closer to Wolverine or Sabretooth-level regeneration.
Not true immortality.
Luke would still age naturally.
But short of dying from old age, even decapitation wouldn't stop him permanently.
The second mutation was even more useful.
By touching physical substances, Luke could transform his own body into the same material composition.
To complement that ability, Drex handed him a vibranium ring.
With it, Luke could instantly transform himself into living vibranium whenever necessary.
At that point, harming him would become extraordinarily difficult.
There were limitations, however.
Luke could only imitate solid matter.
Energy-based transformations remained impossible.
No turning into fire.
No becoming lightning.
Nothing like that.
Still...
For a frontline combatant, it was already absurd.