This begins a rift between the two that extends into Mitch's adulthood. Later becoming a lawyer himself, Mitch works with organized crime and helps bring legitimacy to the businesses of crime lords, partially as an act of defiance to his father. Later deciding he no longer wishes to be involved with criminals, Shelley gathers evidence to give to the FBI in exchange for entering the witness protection program. His wife Paula and his business partner Richard Bessly, secretly lovers, decide to take over Shelley's business and continue working for organized crime. As a show of good faith, they hire corrupt police detective Keach to kill Mitch Shelley. A gas main explosion destroys Shelley's office while he is inside. Miraculously, Mitch survives, brain-damaged and amnesiac, wandering the streets as a homeless man. Months later, he is kidnapped by a clandestine organization simply called "the Lab". Along with many other homeless people, Shelley is forced to be a test subject of Hooker, director of the Lab. Suffering from an inoperable brain tumor, Hooker is determined to achieve immortality through a form of nano-technology called "tektites", sub-atomic robots that can heal and rebuild the body, defeating death. All of the test subjects are injected with tektites and then killed, but only Shelley ("sample 268") actually resurrects. Unable to determine what makes Shelley special, a desperate Director Hooker takes a sample of Mitch's blood and injects it into himself. Rather than duplicating Shelley's full resurrection, Hooker becomes invincible to death but is unable to heal from wounds, losing his sanity in the process. In a rage, he attacks the Lab personnel, causing enough chaos that Shelley escapes. Once again living on the streets, a confused and still amnesiac Shelley discovers he can fly. Meanwhile, Hooker escapes, in pursuit of Shelley, able to sense him due to the tektites in their respective bloodstreams. His subordinates "Mr. Fancy" and Cliff DeWitt take over the tektite experiments. They send the Body Doubles to retrieve Shelley, wishing to know why he gained a resurrection ability not seen in any other test subject, and also hoping to understand why he gained super-powers, as the Lab's tektite technology should not have been able to grant superhuman abilities. Two years later after surviving the gas main explosion, Shelley is killed while trying to protect people from criminals. He resurrects and discovers his flight has been replaced with a new power. The