Chapter 19: The Whole World Erupts! This is the Real Superhero!
JFK Airport. Six in the morning.
The alarm in the control tower wailed like a rooster with its neck caught.
The red dot on the radar screen was terrifyingly large.
Fire trucks and ambulances lined both sides of the runway. The red and blue strobe lights bleached the grass white.
Dozens of media news vans were crowded on the perimeter. Reporters shouldered their cameras and lenses, rubbing their hands to keep warm.
The loudspeakers blared instructions to clear the runway on a loop. The air was thick with the strange smell of jet fuel and de-icing fluid.
Everyone looked up, staring at the eastern sky as it began to pale.
A large hole tore through the clouds. There was no roar of engines, only the dull whistle of air being forced aside by a massive object.
The missing Boeing 747 appeared. It hadn't lowered its landing gear. The engine pods under the two wings were charred black and still emitting wisps of smoke.
This steel behemoth, weighing hundreds of tons, descended slowly, at an impossibly sluggish speed, within everyone's line of sight.
The nose of the plane tilted slightly upward, like a falling leaf caught by a gentle breeze.
A ground crew worker holding a walkie-talkie gaped in shock. His hand loosened, and the device smashed onto the asphalt, its battery flying out. He didn't even look down.
The plane was thirty meters from the ground. Twenty meters. Ten meters.
Finally, the fuselage came to a stop, grazing the grass at the edge of the runway. No sparks. No screeching of metal tearing. Even the soil on the ground hadn't been churned up much.
The hundreds-of-tons airliner just lay there on the grass, quiet and still. The morning breeze blew away the dust kicked up from under the belly of the plane.
The man in the red and blue suit released his grip. He walked out from under the plane's belly, stepping onto the dew-covered grass. The red cape behind him fluttered gently in the wind.
The scene was deathly silent. Even the sound of camera shutters had stopped. Hundreds of people stood as if frozen, staring blankly at the man who had descended from the sky.
Bang. The emergency exit of the cabin was kicked open from the inside. The yellow inflatable slide popped out with a hiss, breaking the frozen silence.
Passengers scrambled to slide down. Some fell onto the grass halfway down, scrambling to crawl and run forward. Others knelt in the mud, clutching the weeds with both hands, sobbing loudly.
The air was immediately filled with the stench of urine and the sour smell of vomit. It was the scent of people losing control after terror. They hugged each other, tears and snot smearing all over one another. The relief of surviving the disaster caused this group of people to completely lose their composure.
Lois Lane was the fifth person to slide down. She lost her footing and slammed her knee hard against the concrete curb. Her stockings tore, and skin was scraped off. She didn't even care about the blood on her knee.
She was still clutching the kraft paper bag containing the hard drive to her chest. Her trench coat was covered in dried coffee stains, and her hair was a mess. She took a deep breath, her lungs stinging.
Nearby, a local news cameraman was shivering while shouldering his camera, the microphone hanging by his leg. The lens was pointed aimlessly at the grass.
Lois Lane rushed over. She snatched the microphone with the station's logo and dragged the cameraman forward.
"Film! Turn it on! Point it at him!" Her voice was hoarse, sounding like two pieces of sandpaper rubbing together.
The cameraman was dragged to the front. The red light on the camera turned on. The live broadcast signal instantly cut into the global public network.
Clark was preparing to take off and leave. He didn't want to deal with the media. Just as he bent his knees, he heard a flurry of hurried footsteps.
"Hey! Wait, wait a second!" Lois Lane ran, panting. She stopped less than two meters away from Clark. She held the black microphone up with both hands, her hands shaking violently.
The sun had just jumped over the horizon. Golden morning light spilled unreservedly onto the runway, illuminating Clark. The inverted triangular logo on his chest reflected the sunlight.
"Who... who are you?" Lois Lane swallowed hard, staring intently into the man's eyes. She was panting heavily, her chest heaving. "Why did you save us?"
Clark looked down at the disheveled reporter. His gaze swept over her bleeding knee and trembling shoulders. The coldness on his face slowly faded. The corners of his mouth twitched, revealing a somewhat helpless yet gentle smile.
He hadn't prepared any PR speech. He didn't strike a condescending, messianic pose for the camera either. He just looked at the crowd calmly. His voice was deep, carrying a sense of security that slowed one's heartbeat.
"My name is Superman." Clark paused, his tone very serious. "I am here to protect you."
That was enough. No extra nonsense. Clark turned around and bent his knees slightly. The shockwave blew off LoisLane's baseball cap. He turned into a red meteor, instantly disappearing into the rising morning sun.
This scene, through that trembling camera lens, followed submarine fiber-optic cables and satellite signals to reach every corner of the Earth.
In a roadside diner in Texas, a stubbled truck driver forgot to chew the burger in his mouth. The patty fell onto his plate. He stared at the old television on the wall, his eyes slowly turning red. He wiped his eyes with the back of his rough hand.
In a London subway station, the crowded commuters all stopped in their tracks. Hundreds of people looked up at the big screen, the platform so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Then, a deafening cheer erupted.
In the emergency room of a Manhattan hospital, the nurse on duty covered her mouth, tears streaming down uncontrollably. She watched the airliner being cradled on the grass on the screen, and for the first time, she felt a sense of security.
No one cared how loud the sonic boom was when he flew away. All that remained in everyone's mind was that simple sentence: "I am here to protect you."
That was the compassion only a true deity would possess. No arrogance. No treating mortals like blades of grass to be trampled at will. He possessed the strength to crush steel, yet was willing to slow down during the landing for fear of hurting the passengers inside.
The contrast was too stark. Unconsciously, the image of Homelander's face surfaced in the public's minds. That man who always faked a smile in front of the camera. That perfect product who always emphasized the values of Vought Corporation.
Usually, when Homelander saved someone, he couldn't wait to shove the camera into the victim's face. Every tear was a calculated rating. Compared to the figure flying away into the morning sun today, Vought Corporation's heroes were like cheap plastic dolls in a circus.
The seeds of anger sprouted in the silence, then grew into a raging wildfire.
In New York Times Square, a young man in a hoodie picked up a half-brick. He smashed it hard against the Homelander advertisement playing on the giant electronic screen. The screen shattered with a crash, sparks flying everywhere.
"Screw Vought Corporation!" the young man roared at the top of his lungs. This sentence was like the fuse of a powder keg. The streets erupted in total riot.
Those large posters featuring The Seven were torn down forcibly. Shredded paper flew wildly in the street. A mother pushing a stroller took off her high heels and smashed the exquisite standees of Starlight and Queen Maeve in the shop window.
Passersby cheered one after another. A few rowdy drunks lit the newspapers in their hands and threw them at the giant inflatable Homelander model on the street corner. The fire instantly engulfed the Stars and Stripes cape on the model.
The pungent black smoke from the burning plastic shot straight into the sky, emitting a foul stench. Angry protest marches gathered in every district. They held up placards reading "We want the truth," stepping on the scattered, broken Vought Corporation merchandise, and marched in the same direction.
Vought Tower. This skyscraper, once a symbol of absolute power and the elite class, now looked like an isolated tomb. The explosion-proof glass walls on the ground floor had been pelted with rotten eggs and paint by the public. Red paint dripped down the company logo, as if it were bleeding.
The internal phone lines of the company were completely paralyzed. Alarms blared on every floor. Those super-powered individuals, usually so high and mighty, didn't dare to step out of the company doors at this moment. This hypocritical empire, built on capital and lies, faced an unprecedented catastrophe.
Chapter 20: Vought Corporation's PR Department Paralyzed, the Entire Internet Boycotting the Hypocritical The Seven
The 80th floor of Vought Tower.
The red alarm lights in the PR department hall were flashing dizzyingly.
Hundreds of office phones were ringing incessantly at the same time.
The ringing sounds blended together, like a hornet's nest that had been poked.
Ashley gripped her hair tightly with both hands.
A sharp pain radiated from her scalp.
She gave a hard tug, and a large clump of golden hair with bloodstains appeared between her fingers.
She couldn't feel the pain at all and carelessly flicked the hair onto the carpet, which was covered in waste paper.
"Listen to me! The engine failure on the plane was just..." Ashley shouted into the phone receiver.
Her throat felt as dry as if she had swallowed razor blades.
Beep, beep, beep.
The person on the other end hung up.
Furious, she slammed the receiver down hard onto the desk.
A piece of the plastic casing shattered.
"Fuck! Fuck! These bloodsuckers!"
An intern wearing thick-rimmed glasses ran over.
Running too fast, he bumped his knee against the corner of the table.
He hissed in pain, holding up a data report in his hand.
"Di-Director... the fast-food sponsor called."
The intern swallowed hard, "They are demanding the immediate removal of all burger packaging printed with Homelander's face."
Ashley whipped her head around.
Her eyes were bloodshot.
"Remove them? What about the tens of millions in inventory! Tell them that Vought Corporation will absolutely hold them accountable for the breach of contract!"
"It's useless."
The data supervisor at the adjacent workstation stood up, drenched in sweat.
He took off his tie, his shirt collar completely soaked.
"News just came in from the merchandising department."
The supervisor pointed to the computer screen, "Every toy store across the country is facing a wave of returns. Starlight's light-up figurines and Queen Maeve's costume replicas have all been thrown onto the streets and stomped to pieces."
On the giant electronic display screen in the center of the hall, the green curve representing Vought Corporation's stock price was plummeting like someone falling off a cliff.
The entire hall was filled with an air of desperate death.
The cold air from the air conditioner made people shiver.
Ashley felt like she couldn't breathe.
She opened a drawer, pulled out a crumpled brown paper bag, and held it tightly over her nose and mouth, gasping for air.
The paper bag expanded and contracted violently with her breathing.
The red confidential hotline on the desk rang.
This was the phone line directly connected to The Pentagon.
Ashley threw away the paper bag and, with trembling hands, pressed the speakerphone button.
"I am the assistant to the Secretary of Defense."
An emotionless, bureaucratic tone came through the phone.
"In light of the current public opinion crisis, the bill to incorporate superheroes into the military is indefinitely shelved."
Ashley's legs went weak, and she collapsed onto the floor.
"Wait! Sir, this is just a temporary PR crisis, we can clean this up..."
"Clean it up?"
The voice on the other end carried a hint of undisguised disgust.
"All of Washington saw the live broadcast of that Red Cape holding up the plane."
"The military doesn't need lab rats that use Heat Vision to burn down passenger plane engines. That is all."
A busy signal sounded.
Ashley looked at the stock price, which had plummeted by thirty percent on the screen.
Her brain was buzzing.
The business empire that Vought Corporation had built over decades had been smashed to pieces in just one hour by that Red Cape, who hadn't even registered his name.
At the same time, in the CEO's office on the top floor of the building.
The thick soundproof glass blocked out the clamor outside.
But the slight vibration from the floorboards could still be felt.
Stan Edgar stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window, hands behind his back.
His fingertips touched the cold glass surface.
Eighty stories below, crowds as dense as ants packed the streets, holding protest signs and burning Vought Corporation's promotional posters.
Thick black plastic smoke drifted up along the exterior wall of the building.
Madelyn sat on the sofa.
She held a glass of whiskey, the ice cubes clinking crisply in the glass.
A few drops of the liquor spilled out, landing on her expensive business suit.
"We need to hold a press conference."
Madelyn muttered incoherently.
"Make Homelander cry on camera, say that the engine had already exploded by the time he rushed to save them... Yes, blame the terrorists."
She took a sharp gulp of the liquor and choked, coughing repeatedly.
Stan Edgar didn't turn around.
He watched the angry flames below.
There was no panic in his eyes, only absolute coldness and rationality.
"Don't waste your efforts, Madelyn."
Stan Edgar turned around, his leather shoes making no sound on the carpet.
"Lies can only deceive those who have never seen the truth."
"Now that they have seen a true god, those plastic toys of yours are worthless."
He walked to the desk, pushed aside an oil painting, revealing a metal safe in the wall.
He entered the password.
The heavy lead safe door popped open.
There were no documents or cash inside, only an old black briefcase.
Stan Edgar took the case out and placed it on the desk.
With two clicks, he unlocked the latches.
Inside lay a heavy military satellite phone.
This model had long been discontinued.
The antenna was long, and the casing was slightly yellowed.
Stan Edgar picked up the receiver and pressed a few irregular numeric keys.
The buzzing sound of the line connecting was exceptionally clear in the quiet office.
Madelyn stopped drinking and stared at him blankly.
The call connected.
There was no speaking on the other end, only heavy breathing.
"Hello? It's me."
Stan Edgar's voice was very low.
"Yes, initiate that plan."
He turned his head to look at the black smoke rising outside the window.
"Go to Russia."
"Dig that old thing out."
The breathing on the other end of the phone paused for a moment.
A hoarse Russian reply came through.
Stan Edgar ignored the other party's hesitation, his tone brooking no refusal.
"Vought Corporation has encountered a problem."
"A problem that must be physically eliminated."
Click.
The receiver was hung up.
Stan Edgar closed the briefcase.
Conventional PR cleanup could no longer save Vought Corporation.
Since the current god couldn't beat that Red Cape, then he would drag the previous generation's god out of the grave.
The scene cut back to the other end of downtown New York.
The office hall of the Daily Planet was still noisy.
The sound of typing and ringing phones blended together.
The surge in newspaper sales made everyone here act like they were pumped full of adrenaline.
Clark sat at his workstation.
He held a cup of instant coffee that had long gone cold.
He looked down at a line of typos he had just typed on the computer screen.
His fingers tapped heavily on the backspace key twice.
This damn old keyboard, the space bar always got stuck.
A faint scent of vanilla drifted through the air, mixed with the smell of nervous sweat.
Clark's Super Hearing caught a rapid heartbeat approaching his workstation.
The heart rate was fast, as if being chased by a beast.
He looked up.
A person wearing a loose gray hoodie stood in front of the desk.
The hood was pulled very low, and they were wearing a pair of oversized black-rimmed sunglasses.
They were clutching a canvas tote bag.
This attire looked somewhat out of place in the office full of professional wear.
The person seemed very uneasy.
While walking forward, their side accidentally bumped into Clark's metal filing cabinet, making a dull clanging sound.
"S-sorry."
A young woman's voice came from under the hoodie.
Her voice was trembling, with a distinct nasal tone.
It was Starlight, Annie.
Clark pretended not to recognize anything.
He put down his cold coffee and pushed up the glasses on the bridge of his nose.
"It's okay. Who are you looking for?"
He put on that classic rookie reporter expression, looking at the other person with some confusion.
Annie didn't take off her sunglasses.
She nervously glanced left and right.
The surrounding colleagues were all busy rushing to finish their drafts, and no one noticed this corner.
She took a deep breath.
Her hand reached into the canvas bag and fumbled for a few seconds.
She pulled out a piece of white paper folded into a small square.
Her fingers trembling, she pressed the note under Clark's keyboard.
Her fingertips accidentally touched the back of Clark's hand.
Her hand was ice-cold, covered in cold sweat.
Annie, through her sunglasses, stared fixedly at Clark's eyes.
Her lips moved slightly.
She said nothing.
She turned around, head bowed, and walked quickly toward the glass revolving door of the newspaper office.
Her steps were so hurried that she almost bumped into a water delivery worker.
Clark watched her back disappear at the doorway.
He lowered his head.
His index and middle fingers pinched the edge of the note and gently pulled it out.
The note was a bit damp.
It was the sweat from Annie's palm that had soaked through the back of the paper.
He slowly unfolded the small square, which was not folded very neatly.
In the center of the white paper, a few words were written with a black marker, pressing deeply into the paper.
The strokes were somewhat crooked because of the owner's trembling hand.
"I know who you are."
Chapter 21: Starlight Discovers a Blind Spot: Clark Takes Off His Glasses, and It's Him?!
Clark's fingers were still pinching that piece of white paper folded into a square.
A small patch of the paper's edge was dampened by the cold sweat from his palm.
The black marker handwriting on it was slightly smudged.
He looked up.
His gaze drifted past several rows of desks piled high with clutter.
Annie was walking toward the newspaper office's entrance with her head down, her steps hurried.
She was walking too fast.
Her shoulder slammed heavily against the aluminum frame of the glass revolving door.
Making a dull thud.
But she didn't even stop to rub it, pushing open the glass door and rushing out into the street.
The back of her gray hoodie exuded a panic that couldn't be hidden.
It was as if a beast were chasing her from behind.
Clark sat on that creaking, worn-out chair.
He stuffed the slip of paper in his hand into the pocket of his khaki jacket.
He didn't get up to chase after her immediately.
Instead, he closed his eyes slightly.
Within half a second, his hearing penetrated the load-bearing wall of the newspaper office facing the street.
Filtering out the noise of car tires rubbing against the asphalt on the main road outside.
Filtering out the chatter of passersby on their phones.
He precisely captured Annie's heartbeat.
That heart was beating in her chest like an engine out of control.
Exceeding one hundred and forty beats per minute.
Accompanied by rapid, completely rhythm-less panting.
She had hidden in a narrow alley on the side of the newspaper building.
Clark opened his eyes.
The X-ray grid in the depths of his retina activated instantly.
His vision penetrated the reinforced concrete.
He saw the outline of the human skeleton representing Annie.
She was leaning against a pile of rusty trash cans deep in the alley.
With her hands hugging her knees, she slowly slid down the damp brick wall onto the ground.
Her stomach was contracting violently, clearly from nervousness.
Clark sighed.
He stood up and picked up the chipped mug on his desk.
Slowly walking toward the gender-neutral restroom at the end of the hallway.
The restroom was empty.
The mop sink emitted the sour smell of cheap disinfectant.
Clark pushed open the door of the innermost stall.
He went inside and locked it.
Almost at the exact moment the latch clicked into place.
A whirlwind invisible to the naked eye swept through the narrow stall.
The air was violently compressed, producing a dull boom.
The loose plaid shirt and khaki jacket lost their support, falling limply onto the toilet lid.
The red and blue afterimage crashed directly through the ventilation duct above the restroom.
And vanished on the spot.
The dark alley on the side of the newspaper office.
Sunlight couldn't shine into this kind of gap that rarely saw the light of day.
A layer of oil slick floated on the puddles on the ground.
Annie buried her face in her arms.
Gasping deeply for the cold air.
The sour stench in the alley made her feel nauseous, but she couldn't care less about that.
She felt she had just done something incredibly stupid.
To provoke a monster who could pin Homelander to the ground and rub him in the dirt?
As long as he wanted, he could crush her into a pulp with a single finger.
Cold sweat poured down her forehead, splashing into the muddy water.
Suddenly.
The wind blowing in from the alley entrance stopped.
The already dim light was completely blocked by a tall figure.
Annie shuddered all over.
She abruptly raised her head.
The back of her head bumped against the red brick behind her, making her gasp in pain.
Less than two meters away from her.
Clark was hovering half an inch off the ground.
The Red Cape hung by his legs, and the inverted triangular emblem on the chest of his suit gleamed coldly in the shadows.
The powerful Bio-field pushed away the surrounding dirty air.
Annie scrambled backward on all fours.
Until her back pressed hard against the base of the wall, with nowhere left to retreat.
She swallowed hard, her throat painfully dry.
"You shouldn't just run into an alley like this."
Clark looked down at her from above.
His voice was deep and resonant, with a slight echo.
"The public safety in New York isn't that good yet."
Annie opened her mouth.
But the sound was completely stuck in her throat.
She looked at his face.
And realized that because this god had changed his clothes too quickly just now, he still had those old-fashioned black-framed glasses resting on the bridge of his nose.
This minor mistake actually diluted the oppressive aura by a fraction.
"I... I didn't mean to investigate you."
Annie finally found her voice.
Her hands gripped the hem of her hoodie tightly, her knuckles turning white.
"I just... just happened to find out."
Clark slowly lowered his altitude.
His combat boots stepped into the puddle without splashing a single drop of water.
He didn't speak, waiting for the girl to continue.
Annie took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down.
"That day in Vought's conference room."
She looked up at Clark's jawline.
"When you smashed The Deep into the wall, you were only a few steps away from me. I smelled ink."
Annie pointed her finger at the collar of Clark's suit.
"At that time, the collar edge of your Red Cape was smudged with a very faint bit of blue ink."
"That kind of color can only come from cheap ballpoint pens that cost a dollar for ten."
"In Vought Corporation, even the janitors use Parker fountain pens."
Clark subconsciously glanced down at his collar.
It was clean now.
But he knew that he had indeed written an article with a leaking pen this morning.
"Just based on a drop of ink?"
Clark found it somewhat amusing.
This girl's observation skills were actually sharper than those of veteran reporters.
"More than that."
Annie bit her lip, the expression on her face slowly turning resolute.
"Today at the newspaper office, I secretly observed you for half an hour."
"When you write, you habitually bite the pen barrel."
Annie stared at Clark's face.
"The plastic casing of that cheap blue ballpoint pen was cracked."
"The ink leaked onto the side of your right index finger. When you took my note just now, the crevices of your fingernails were completely blue."
Clark raised his right hand.
Sure enough, there was an unwashable blue stain around the edge of his index fingernail.
He had grabbed this lousy pen from the supermarket checkout counter yesterday.
Its quality was outrageously terrible.
"And your jaw."
Annie gestured toward the lower half of her own face.
"Those black-framed glasses indeed change the visual center of gravity of a person's facial contours. But when you looked down at the note, the lines of your jaw angle didn't change at all."
The alley fell silent.
The siren of an ambulance on a distant street echoed faintly.
A stray cat jumped down from the top of a trash can and scurried quickly into the sewer.
Clark looked at the girl in front of him, who was trembling with tension yet remained logically clear.
He sighed helplessly.
A single slip in a hundred calculations.
He was flawless on a physical level, yet he was defeated by a cheap, leaking ballpoint pen.
"You win."
Clark raised his ink-stained hand.
Pinching those hard plastic, black-framed glasses resting on the bridge of his nose, which he had forgotten to take off in his haste.
He gave a gentle tug with his fingers.
The glasses left his face.
The moment those glasses were removed.
The air in the alley seemed to be clenched by an invisible giant hand.
Clark straightened his back.
His shoulders, which had been deliberately slouched to match his identity as a newspaper rookie, opened up completely.
His entire stature seemed to rise by a few inches out of thin air.
That subservient, clumsy, and slow temperament of an ordinary person...
...vanished completely like smoke dispersed by the wind.
Replacing it was the pure, awe-inspiring pressure of a god.
His deep facial features revealed an inviolable coldness in the shadows of the alley.
No trace of mortal cowardice could be seen in his blue eyes.
The surrounding temperature seemed to drop a few degrees because of his aura.
Annie stared blankly at Clark, who had completed his transformation.
She thought she would be afraid.
That she would be so terrified her stomach would cramp and she wouldn't even dare to speak, just like when facing Homelander.
But she wasn't.
Looking at this face, she didn't feel that condescending contempt and cruelty.
Instead, in the presence of this absolute power, she felt an unprecedented sense of peace.
It was a sense of security she had never experienced inside the Vought Tower.
A sudden sourness rushed up her nose.
Annie's eyes instantly welled up.
Tears welled uncontrollably in her eyes, blurring her vision.
She had struggled in this rotten world for so long.
This was the first time she had seen true light.
Annie raised the back of her hand and wiped her eyes hard.
Forcing her tears back.
Supporting herself against the damp brick wall, she slowly stood up straight.
She raised her head, meeting Clark's calm gaze.
Her chest heaved as she took a deep breath of the cold air.
"I want to help you destroy Vought."
Annie's voice trembled slightly, but she enunciated every single word with heavy emphasis.
Clark looked at her, not interrupting.
"I know you don't need help from mortals."
Annie clenched her fists, her fingernails digging into her palms.
"But they have many shady conspiracies that you can't break from the outside."
She took a deep breath.
"Tonight, I will infiltrate the confidential servers on the twelfth floor of Vought Tower."
"I can steal all the secret transport routes of compound vacross the United States."
Annie gritted her teeth, a look of do-or-die determination in her eyes.
"But I need you to help me lure someone away."
Chapter 22: Starlight Secretly Defects; Being an Undercover Agent for a True God Is Way Better Than Staying at Vought
Annie clenched her whitening fingers, staring intently at Clark.
She was waiting for an answer.
The cold wind blew the collar of her hoodie, flapping it against her neck with a slight sting.
Clark looked at this desperate girl who was putting everything on the line.
He folded up his old black-rimmed glasses and casually stuffed them into his jacket pocket.
"Go ahead."
He nodded, his voice fading into the draft blowing through the alleyway. "I will be where you cannot see me."
11:00 PM, Vought Tower.
The entire skyscraper was brightly lit, looking like a giant candle planted in the heart of Manhattan.
Annie had changed into her revealing Starlight suit.
The collar of the suit was tight, making her collarbones ache.
She took a deep breath and stepped out of the elevator.
The inside of the tower was currently in complete chaos.
The global live broadcast of the passenger plane's emergency landing earlier today had stripped away the dignity of Vought's executives and dragged it through the mud.
PR department employees were running all over the corridors clutching folders.
Several executives in suits stood at the door of the meeting room, shouting at the top of their lungs, passing the buck, and swearing.
Coffee spilled onto the expensive Persian rug, and no one even bothered to clean it up.
The security guards, who usually liked to whistle at female employees, were all completely deflated today.
Everyone's attention was focused on dealing with the plummeting stock price and the endless media onslaught.
Annie kept her head down, her blonde hair falling to cover the side of her face.
She crept along the base of the walls, avoiding the blind spots of the security cameras, all the way to the twelfth floor.
This was Vought's core confidential data center.
Usually, not even a fly could get in here.
But today, because most of the security had been redeployed to deal with the protesters, the checkpoint at the stairwell was miraculously empty.
Annie walked up to the heavy blast-resistant isolation door.
Her heart was beating so fast it felt like it was about to leap out of her throat.
She pulled a stolen black keycard from a hidden pocket in her suit.
The card reader lit up green.
With a soft electronic beep, the metal door slid heavily open to both sides.
The server room was as cold as a morgue.
Hundreds of black server cabinets were lined up neatly like tombstones.
Thousands of indicator lights flashed frantically in the darkness, casting an eerie blue glow.
The massive cooling fans emitted a monotonous, piercing hum.
Annie quickly walked over to the main console.
Her fingers were somewhat stiff from extreme nervousness.
Trembling, she slid out the keyboard tray and plugged a high-capacity USB drive into the computer's port.
The screen lit up.
Biting her lip, she quickly typed in a decryption code she had long since memorized.
A blue progress bar popped up on the screen.
It showed that it was copying the 'compound v National Distribution Node List'.
"Hurry up... just a bit faster."
Annie prayed in a whisper, her eyes locked onto the slowly crawling numbers.
Thirty percent.
Fifty percent.
Seventy percent.
The low temperature in the server room gave her goosebumps on her arms.
But her back was drenched in cold sweat.
The low-quality fabric of her suit clung to her skin, making her feel suffocated.
She felt as if time was being infinitely stretched.
Every second felt like being tortured over the coals of hell.
Her fingers unconsciously clawed at the desk, the edges of her nails aching slightly.
Eighty-five percent.
Ninety percent.
Right at that moment,
a sudden mess of footsteps came from the corridor outside.
Hard-soled combat boots stomped on the marble floor, making heavy thudding sounds.
Judging by the sound, there were at least two or three large men.
"Why is the feed on the twelfth floor down? Go in and check!"
The security captain's hoarse voice came through the walkie-talkie, dripping with irritation.
The footsteps headed straight for the server room door.
Annie gasped.
The progress bar on the screen was stuck at ninety-nine percent.
It was just a tiny bit away.
She whipped around.
Her feet spread apart as she assumed a defensive stance.
Dazzling yellow energy orbs began to gather in her palms.
She was ready to fight for her life.
Even if she had to level this half of the floor, she had to get this evidence out.
The footsteps outside had already stopped in front of the blast door.
The bright beam of a tactical flashlight swept in through the gap in the door.
Someone was racking the bolt of an assault rifle.
The metallic click of a round chambering was exceptionally clear in the dead silence of the server room.
Annie raised her hands, her teeth biting through her lip, the taste of blood spreading in her mouth.
She held her breath, staring intently at the door.
Just as the lock was about to be swiped open,
a gentle breeze swept through the server room without warning.
The breeze was extremely light.
It didn't even ruffle the blonde hair at Annie's temples.
But the atmospheric pressure in the air was violently compressed in an instant.
A faint smell of ozone was left behind in the space.
It smelled like the air right after a summer thunderstorm had passed.
The metallic clatter outside stopped abruptly.
Immediately following were two dull thuds of bodies hitting the ground.
Thud. Thud.
It sounded as if two sandbags filled with wet sand had been slammed onto the corridor's marble floor.
There were no screams, and no gunshots.
Outside, there was absolute silence.
Annie stood frozen in place.
The superpower orbs in her palms flickered twice and slowly went out.
She swallowed hard, realizing what had just happened.
That man had kept his promise.
Without even showing his face, he had eliminated the deadly threat at a speed beyond human comprehension.
This kind of power, so fast it transcended the laws of physics, brought a strange sense of security alongside the dread.
Ding.
A crisp electronic chime sounded behind her.
On the main console screen, the blue progress bar finally reached the end.
It showed one hundred percent download complete.
Annie let out a long sigh of relief.
Her tense nerves relaxed slightly, and her legs felt so weak she almost knelt on the floor.
She turned around, quickly unplugged the hot USB drive,
clenched it tightly in her hand, and turned to leave this godforsaken place.
Boom!
The ten-centimeter-thick blast-resistant metal door of the server room suddenly exploded with a deafening crash.
The entire door panel flew inward like a piece of flimsy cardboard,
brushing past Annie's shoulder and crashing into the server cabinets behind her,
bursting into a shower of blinding electrical sparks and choking black smoke.
The shockwave pushed Annie back several steps.
She slammed heavily against a metal cabinet.
A sharp pain flared in her shoulder blades.
The dim yellow light from the corridor shone through the shattered doorway into the dark server room.
A tall figure stepped onto the collapsed metal door and slowly walked inside.
It was Queen Maeve.
She was wearing her dark red heavy metal armor,
holding a polished, gleaming alloy broadsword in her hand.
Her leather boots crushed the metal debris underfoot, making a crunching sound.
Maeve didn't look at the two security guards knocked unconscious on the floor by the shockwave.
She stood at the doorway, her nose wrinkling slightly.
She took a deep breath of the cold air in the server room, which hadn't fully cleared yet.
She smelled that subtle scent of ozone.
She was all too familiar with this scent; only when an object frictionally interacted with the air at hypersonic speeds would this kind of burnt smell be produced.
Maeve tightened her grip on her broadsword.
The tip of the sword pointed diagonally at the ground, reflecting the eerie blue glimmer of the servers.
She raised her head, her gaze piercing through the swirling dust,
staring intently at Annie, who was hiding behind the main console, still clutching the USB drive in her hand.
Chapter 23: Queen Maeve's Eyes Turn Red: It Turns Out There Really Is Light in the World
Queen Maeve turned her wrist.
The tip of her longsword stopped steadily in front of Annie's throat.
It was less than half an inch from her skin.
The blade reflected the blinking blue light of the server cabinets.
Annie's entire body tensed up instantly.
She tightly clutched the USB drive containing Vought's fatal weakness in her left hand, its plastic casing digging painfully into her palm.
Her hands suddenly snapped up.
Two blazing spheres of yellow energy suddenly erupted in Annie's palms.
The intense heat instantly caused the cold air in the server room to crackle softly.
She gritted her teeth, her heels dug firmly into the floor tiles, ready to fight for her life.
"Put it down, Annie."
Maeve's voice was somewhat raspy.
She let out a boozy hiccup, her breath heavy with the sharp scent of vodka.
She took a step forward, pressing in.
Her heavy metal combat boots crunched loudly against the shattered glass on the floor.
"You have no idea what kind of trouble you're getting into... Just hand over that piece of junk."
Maeve brandished her sword slightly, her brow furrowed as if she had a splitting headache.
In this tense, deadlocked standoff.
From the shadows of the towering rows of servers deep in the room, a soft sigh suddenly echoed.
Footsteps approached.
It wasn't the heavy clatter of combat boots, but the soft, gentle scuffing of canvas sneakers against the floor.
Leisurely and unhurried.
Maeve's nerves suddenly spiked.
Her instincts as a warrior who had spent years on the edge of life and death made the hairs on her body stand on end.
That draft mixed with the smell of ozone had appeared again.
She didn't even stop to think.
Her muscle memory reacted first.
Maeve twisted her waist violently, her armor plating letting out a harsh, scraping screech.
The alloy longsword in her hand swung in a wide arc, tearing through the air with a terrifying, steel-cleaving whoosh as she slashed directly at the figure emerging from the shadows.
Her target was precisely the person's neck.
The longsword struck something solid.
But there was no spray of blood, nor the dull thud of a sharp blade slicing through flesh.
Clang!
A crisp, explosive metallic ring shattered the silence of the server room.
The shockwave made Annie instinctively cover her ears.
Maeve felt a tearing, agonizing pain in the webs of her thumbs.
A massive recoil surged up the hilt and slammed into her wrists.
Her arms went completely numb, and the nails of two of her fingers split on the spot, oozing blood.
The longsword, forged with high-strength titanium alloy,
the moment it struck Clark's neck,
snapped cleanly into two halves right down the middle.
The broken half spun through the air and hit a distant metal server cabinet with a loud clatter.
Clark stood right where he was.
He hadn't even tilted his head.
His red cape fluttered gently in the draft from the server room's exhaust fan.
There wasn't even a white mark left on the skin of his neck.
He looked at Maeve quietly.
He didn't counterattack, nor did he adopt a defensive stance.
Maeve staggered back two steps.
Her high-heeled combat boots stepped onto a broken door panel, nearly twisting her ankle.
All she had left in her hand was a bare hilt.
"You... you're the one..."
Maeve gasped for air, her throat feeling as though it were stuffed with dry cotton.
She could clearly see his face now.
This was the man who had beaten the insufferably arrogant Homelander into a pile of mush.
"You've been drinking tonight."
Clark's voice was very calm.
There was no anger, nor any patronizing mockery.
"At least half a bottle of high-proof vodka. Your stomach is still cramping."
Maeve froze.
She gripped the hilt of the broken sword tightly, her knuckles turning white.
"None of your business! Don't think just because you beat John, you can boss me around here!"
She shrieked at the top of her lungs.
But her voice lacked strength, and the trail of her words trembled.
"You're afraid of being sober."
Clark took a small step forward.
His blue eyes looked at Maeve's heavily made-up face, which still failed to hide her exhaustion.
"Because the moment you sober up, you realize just how disgusting your life in this company is."
"Shut up!"
Maeve's hands began to tremble.
"You hate Homelander, and you hate those staged scripts."
Clark's tone remained steady, as if he were merely stating the simplest of facts.
"Your heart rate doesn't lie. Every time you walk into this building, your heart rate spikes out of sheer disgust."
"You once wanted to be a real hero too, shielding civilians behind your back."
"But you're afraid of death, and you're afraid of Vought's capital, so you chose to compromise."
Clark stopped walking.
He looked down at the broken half of the alloy blade on the floor.
"But now, the false god who weighed heavily upon your heads has been dragged down."
He looked back up, meeting Maeve's eyes.
"You once wanted to be a true hero. It's not too late."
A deathly silence filled the server room.
Only the hum of the server cooling fans remained.
Maeve stood there blankly.
Clark's calm words were like a blunt, edgeless knife.
They pried open the rotting, foul iron plate at the bottom of her heart by sheer force.
They dragged out all the grievances, disgust, cowardice, and resentment she had harbored for over a decade.
She looked at the man before her.
A true god who possessed absolute power, yet refused to harm mortals on a whim.
Compared to that psychopathic giant baby who would burn through people's heads with his Heat Vision at the slightest provocation,
this was exactly what the hero she had dreamed of as a child was supposed to look like.
Maeve's breathing grew erratic.
Her chest heaved violently.
Her eyes quickly filled with blood, turning bright red.
A bitter, stinging moisture welled up and spun frantically in her eyes.
She bit her lower lip hard.
Her teeth punctured the skin, and the metallic taste of blood seeped into her mouth.
She tried her best to hold back her tears, unwilling to look too pathetic in front of this newcomer and outsider.
Pat.
A single tear escaped and splashed against her metal breastplate.
Maeve's shoulders slumped.
The fierce shell she had been desperately maintaining shattered completely.
She loosened her numb fingers.
The bare hilt dropped onto the floor tiles, clattering sharply.
She raised the back of her blood-stained hand.
She wiped her face roughly, smudging her exquisite eye makeup into a complete mess.
She took a deep breath of the dusty air.
Maeve turned around, her back to Clark.
She looked at Annie, who was hiding by the cabinets.
She reached toward her waist.
And pulled hard.
She ripped off the red metal keycard with maximum clearance that hung from her armor's belt.
Maeve raised her hand.
And tossed the keycard at Annie's feet.
The card slid half a meter across the floor.
"Take it. You can use this card to go through the underground cargo passage; there's no surveillance."
Maeve's voice was thick with a nasal quality. With her back to them, her shoulders were still trembling slightly.
"Get the hell out."
"If anyone asks, I'll say I didn't see a thing."
Annie was stunned for a moment.
She looked down at the red keycard by her feet, then at Maeve's somewhat lonely back.
A flicker of gratitude flashed in her eyes.
She bent down and picked up the keycard.
She gave Clark a firm nod.
She stuffed the crucial USB drive into the deepest pocket of her suit.
She turned and bolted out of the server room.
Annie didn't take the elevator.
She rushed all the way down the stairwell.
A full twelve floors.
She ran until she was drenched in sweat, her thigh muscles aching as if filled with lead.
Her lungs felt as if they were on fire, and her breath tasted of blood.
She pushed open the iron door of the underground cargo passage.
The cold night air rushed at her, drying the sweat on her forehead.
Annie rushed out of Vought Tower.
She slipped into a secluded alleyway without any streetlights.
She didn't dare stop.
According to the meeting point she had previously agreed upon with The Boys on the dark web,
she had to deliver this list as quickly as possible.
Brooklyn.
An abandoned factory residential compound slated for demolition.
The streetlights here had long been smashed by street thugs, leaving shattered glass and household waste scattered everywhere.
The air was thick with the pungent stench of dead rats.
Annie walked inward, her steps uneven as she trod on the fallen leaves covering the ground.
She found the old, two-story brick house with its outer walls covered in dead vines.
The red paint on the wooden door had long peeled off, exposing the rotting wood grain underneath.
She walked up to the door.
She gasped for breath, trying to calm her heart, which felt like it was about to leap out of her throat.
A faint yellow glow lit up in her palms once more to provide light.
She reached out her right hand and placed it on the rusty iron doorknob.
She pressed down hard.
The door was unlocked. With a harsh, grating creak, it slowly swung inward.
It was pitch black inside, so dark that she couldn't see her own hand in front of her face.
A strong, musty odor rushed out at her.
Just as Annie stepped her left foot over the threshold,
in the darkness,
a cold, hard metal tube
suddenly poked out from the shadows behind the door.
It pressed heavily against Annie's sweat-drenched forehead.
The chill of the metal instantly pierced her skin.
Annie froze, even her breathing coming to a halt.
It was the barrel of a double-barreled shotgun.
The strong smell of cheap tobacco flooded Annie's nostrils.
Butcher, wearing his filthy black trench coat, slowly stepped out from the darkness behind the door.
His rough finger was clamped tightly on the trigger.
He had half an unlit cigarette clamped between his teeth.
His wolf-like eyes gleamed with a chilling, terrifying ferocity in the dark.
Chapter 24: The Boys Are Completely Convinced, Following Superman Is the Only Way to Have a Future
The metal barrel of a shotgun pressed hard against Annie's forehead.
The circular muzzle left a red mark on her fair skin.
The smell of gunpowder residue mixed with the acrid scent of anti-rust oil, rushing straight to her head.
Butcher had an unlit cigarette stub clamped in his mouth.
The cigarette paper was a bit damp, hanging limply from the corner of his mouth.
His breathing was heavy, blowing onto Annie's face with the sour stench of overnight whiskey.
"Don't move."
With a click, Butcher's rough thumb disengaged the hammer safety on the shotgun.
"I know who you are. Starlight, the new poster girl for Vought Corporation."
He grinned, revealing a murderous sneer, "You spandex-wearing scum are getting bolder, daring to sneak into my territory all by yourself."
Annie's body went rigid.
The yellow light in her palms flickered wildly, ready to strike.
But she suppressed the urge, not smashing the ball of light into the madman's face.
"I'm not here to fight."
Annie swallowed, her throat dry and aching, "I brought what you wanted."
"Bullshit!"
Butcher pressed his finger down on the trigger, his knuckles turning white from the pressure.
"I only believe in dead superhumans."
Just then, a rush of hurried footsteps came from the depths of the room.
"Wait! Butcher, don't shoot!"
Hughie, wearing that wrinkled T-shirt, stumbled out from the inner room.
Because he was running too fast, his left foot tripped over a broken wooden crate in the hallway.
He lunged forward.
His knees slammed hard against the concrete floor with a dull thud.
Hughie gasped in pain, not bothering to rub his leg.
He scrambled over and grabbed Butcher's gun-wielding arm.
"She's here to help! I... we saw her outside the Vought Corporation building!"
Hughie stammered, shouting, a layer of cold sweat breaking out on his forehead.
Butcher impatiently shook off Hughie's hand.
"What do you know, you idiot?"
He stared at Annie, his eyes cutting like knives, "Vought Corporation's bitches are experts at acting; she's just using you as bait to wipe us all out."
He pressed the muzzle hard against Annie's forehead again, his finger beginning to squeeze the trigger slowly.
Annie closed her eyes.
Despair welled up in her heart; there was no reasoning with this madman.
Just as the trigger was about to be pulled all the way.
A strange sizzling sound suddenly came from the ceiling above.
The wooden floorboards turned bright red without any warning.
It was as if a large basin of charcoal fire had been lit underneath.
The smell of burning filled the entire abandoned house within half a second.
Drip.
A few drops of melted tar dripped from the cracks in the ceiling, hitting the floor tiles near Butcher's feet and emitting a puff of black smoke.
Butcher froze.
Before he could even look up.
The glowing red wooden board above his head vaporized instantly.
A figure descended from the sky, accompanied by a whistling rush of air.
There was no deafening crash.
Clark's boots landed steadily in the open space between Annie and Butcher, not even kicking up a speck of dust.
The air pressure in the room instantly became thick.
Butcher felt as if someone had stuffed a heavy block of lead into his chest, making it difficult even to breathe.
He instinctively retreated half a step, his gun barrel subconsciously trying to turn to aim at this suddenly appeared Red Cape.
But he had no chance at all.
Clark calmly extended his right hand.
His index and middle fingers joined, looking effortless.
He rested them gently on the shotgun's barrel.
The metal emitted a teeth-grinding screech.
That steel barrel, capable of withstanding the high-pressure explosion of gunpowder, felt like soft modeling clay between Clark's two fingers.
It was instantly crushed into a flat lump of scrap metal.
Butcher trembled all over.
The half-cigarette dangling from his mouth dropped onto his collar, burning him, but he didn't dare reach out to brush it off.
The fear dominated by C4 explosives a few days ago flooded over him again like a tide.
That day in the apartment, he had watched this man roast his hands in the sea of fire from the explosion just like this.
Cold sweat trickled down Butcher's temples, sliding into his collar.
He stiffly released his hands, and the ruined shotgun clattered to the floor.
"She is someone I brought."
Clark withdrew his hand and glanced at the shaken Annie.
His voice carried an unquestionable weight in this dilapidated house.
Butcher swallowed hard.
He didn't dare to retort, just silently backed away, clearing the path.
Hughie climbed up from the floor, looking at Clark with a face full of surprise.
Annie let out a long breath.
She reached into the depths of her suit and pulled out the USB drive, still warm from her body heat.
She walked to the broken wooden table in the center of the room and slapped it onto the surface with a thud.
"This is Vought Corporation's compound v secret transport route across the US, along with the coordinates of all their secret laboratories."
Annie turned to look at Butcher and added snappishly.
"I almost died inside getting this."
The curtain to the inner room was lifted.
Frenchie and Mother's Milk walked out.
Frenchie's eyes lit up when he saw the USB drive on the table.
He grabbed the USB drive and quickly sat down in front of the old laptop in the corner.
He plugged the USB drive into the port.
The computer's cooling fan immediately let out a strained, whirring sound.
"It's password encrypted, but that won't stop me."
Frenchie's fingers tapped on the keyboard, creating afterimages, while he muttered a string of French profanities that no one could understand.
In less than two minutes.
A green decryption successful prompt popped up on the screen.
A list of thousands of files popped up instantly.
Not only were there transport route maps.
But also detailed reports on Vought Corporation's illegal genetic experiments using infants, as well as countless ledgers of illicit financial transactions.
Each file was enough to bring this capital empire to ruin.
Mother's Milk stood behind Frenchie, leaning in to stare at the screen.
He was a man with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder, but at this moment, he didn't even bother to straighten the crooked ashtray on the table.
"Fuck... this is all real."
Mother's Milk's voice was trembling, and the veins on his thick arms were bulging with excitement.
"We've been looking for this for three whole years! These animals finally can't hide anymore!"
Hughie walked over to take a look and immediately covered his mouth.
Tears welled up in his eyes.
He suddenly turned around and hugged Mother's Milk, laughing and crying in excitement.
"We did it... we can really take them down!"
The atmosphere in the room had completely changed.
Butcher stood in the corner, touching the empty cigarette pack in his pocket.
He watched his cheering teammates, then looked up at Clark, who was standing to the side, remaining calm throughout.
He suddenly felt like a sewer rat for the past few years.
Thinking every day about how to kidnap, how to assassinate, how to shove explosives up someone's ass.
Living so tired and stifled, without even scratching Vought Corporation's surface.
Until this man in the Red Cape appeared.
No need for conspiracies, no need for mutual destruction.
Just smashing through the front door, using unreasonable power to crush those false gods, and then laying the evidence on the table.
This is a true strike from a higher dimension.
Butcher was convinced.
The unruliness in his bones completely fell apart in the face of absolute power and light.
Following this true god was ten thousand times better than them mortals fumbling around blindly.
"Good job, Frenchie, back all this up."
Butcher walked over and patted Frenchie on the shoulder.
Frenchie didn't look back.
He was clicking on a document that was individually encrypted in a red folder.
The sound of the mouse clicking echoed twice in the room.
Suddenly, Frenchie's movements froze.
The fingers he had on the keyboard began to tremble uncontrollably.
His elbow accidentally knocked over the half-cup of overnight coffee on the edge of the table.
The brown liquid flowed down the edge of the table and dripped onto his pant leg, but he didn't seem to notice.
"What's wrong?" Hughie sensed something was wrong and let go of Mother's Milk.
Frenchie's face turned pale, visible to the naked eye.
He stared fixedly at the operation order that had just been decrypted on the screen, which bore the electronic signature of the Vought Corporation CEO.
"My God..."
Frenchie's voice trembled violently, even his thick accent changing its tone.
"Vought Corporation is transferring a batch of confidential witnesses tonight... those doctors responsible for creating compound v infants."
He turned his head and looked at everyone in the room.
"They have dispatched that pervert who can start fires—Lamplighter."
"The list shows he has already taken military incendiary bombs to the scene!"
Chapter 25: Lamplighter Wants to Burn Someone but Gets Blown Directly into a Snowman by Freeze Breath
On the screen of Frenchie's old laptop, a faint blue light shone on Lamplighter's digital photo.
The light and shadow flickered twice.
The screen cut off abruptly.
The 80th floor of Vought Tower, Public Relations Department, Manhattan, New York.
The same light, the same photo.
Except this photo was printed on a top-secret operational order, laid flat on Ashley's mahogany desk.
Ashley's eyes were bloodshot like a spiderweb.
She gasped heavily, her hands clawing desperately at her own scalp.
Her ten finely manicured fingers were now dug deep into her flesh.
Scratching out several bloody welts.
She gave a sudden, violent yank.
The last small tuft of blonde hair on her head, along with a few bloody bits of scalp, was ripped out by her own hands.
This yank was incredibly brutal.
Her once well-maintained head was now completely bald in patches, looking like a braised egg covered in sores.
But she couldn't feel the pain at all.
Compared to the mess in front of her, this physical pain was absolutely nothing.
She was going crazy.
On the giant data monitoring screen across from her desk.
The video of that Red Cape carrying a Boeing 747 with one hand and landing it against the morning sun was looping across countless windows.
In the bottom-left corner, the global real-time views had already surpassed three billion.
The number was still skyrocketing at a rate of hundreds of thousands per second.
Beside it, the K-line stock chart of Vought Corporation was a sickeningly steep drop.
That cliff-like plummeting curve had directly triggered three trading halts.
Within just a few hours, the entire company's market value had plummeted to the point where it was nothing but a pile of worthless paper.
The ringing phones throughout the PR department's lobby sounded like a death knell.
Hundreds of landlines were ringing wildly at the same time.
Absolutely no one dared to answer.
Because the operators had already been driven to a breakdown by the verbal abuse of major global media outlets and investors; two interns were even hiding in the pantry, throwing up stomach acid.
Sponsors were lining up to call and terminate their contracts.
Major supermarket chains demanded the immediate removal of all merchandise printed with the faces of The Seven.
Queen Maeve's face masks, Starlight's glowing figurines, Homelander's energy drinks.
All of them were being thrown into garbage trucks by the boxful.
Ashley looked at the man on the screen, whose face wasn't even fully visible.
Waves of nausea washed over her stomach.
She grabbed the half-cup of black coffee on her desk that had gone cold long ago and gulped it down, trying to suppress the urge to vomit.
How could they handle the PR?
Who could tell her how on earth to manage the PR for a god?
He didn't care for money, didn't want power, and didn't even have a single piece of tabloid gossip.
Vought Corporation's familiar routine of spreading rumors, hiring internet trolls, and throwing mud felt like punching cotton when used against this man.
Boom!
The expensive frosted explosion-proof glass door of the office was kicked to pieces by a massive force.
Large shards of tempered glass rained in.
Making a harsh scraping sound against the desk.
Homelander swept in like a frenzied tornado.
His usually immaculate star-spangled suit was now covered in ugly creases.
His blonde hair was plastered messily to his forehead, soaked with sweat.
The muscles on his face contorted.
He looked exactly like a madman throwing a tantrum because his toy had been stolen.
He kicked over the expensive leather sofa nearby.
The sofa slammed into the wall with a dull thud, shattering the framed honorary awards hanging on the wall all over the floor.
"Write! Write me a press release!"
Homelander rushed to the desk, slamming both hands heavily onto its surface.
The solid wood desktop cracked open on the spot with a thick, gaping split running right through it.
Wood splinters pierced one of Ashley's top-secret documents.
Ashley trembled all over in fright.
She scrambled and slid down from her leather swivel chair.
Holding her head in her hands, she huddled tightly in the gap under the desk.
She held her breath, terrified that this irrational madman would slice her in half with his Heat Vision in the next second.
"Do you hear me?! Go tell those idiot media outlets!"
Homelander roared at the space under the desk, his spit spraying onto the keyboard.
His voice carried a distinct tremor and crack.
Fear and humiliation forced him to use this fury to mask his own weakness.
"He is an alien terrorist! He was the one who attacked that plane!"
Homelander paced back and forth in the office, speaking incoherently.
His combat boots crunched loudly on the glass shards.
"It was me... I was the one who drove him away at the critical moment! Yes! That's it!"
"Release a statement! Buy up prime time on all TV channels and throw all the mud at him!"
He stomped on a tablet on the carpet, crushing it.
The lithium battery exploded, emitting a pungent cloud of white chemical smoke as a burnt smell filled the room.
At the ruined doorway of the office.
The steady crunching sound of leather shoes stepping on broken glass echoed.
The footsteps were not hurried or chaotic at all.
Stan Edgar, wearing a dark gray bespoke suit, pushed aside the sofa wreckage blocking his path and walked in.
He looked coldly at Homelander, who was throwing a tantrum like a clown.
There was no warmth of an elder in his eyes.
Only the disgust of looking at a piece of industrial defect about to be scrapped.
"Shut up, John."
Edgar's voice wasn't loud, yet it sounded exceptionally clear in the noisy office.
It carried the cold, imposing authority of someone who had long held a high position.
Homelander froze in his tracks.
He turned his head, gasping for breath, the veins on his neck throbbing violently.
"I can make them believe it! As long as we run brainwashing ads on a loop across all channels..."
"No one will believe a coward who fled from battle."
Edgar cut him off mercilessly.
These words were like a rusty, blunt knife, stabbing precisely into Homelander's lungs and twisting violently twice.
Homelander's chest heaved violently, his fists clenched so hard his knuckles cracked.
But as he looked into Edgar's bottomless dark eyes.
The instinctive fear of his creator deep inside him still suppressed his anger.
Gritting his teeth, he kicked away a piece of wooden debris by his foot, turning around to sulk in the corner.
Edgar paid no more attention to this giant baby.
He walked to the cracked desk.
He looked down at Ashley, who was shivering under the desk.
Her bald head, covered in bloodstains and torn skin, looked exceptionally comical and pathetic.
"Get up, Ashley. Vought doesn't pay you a multi-million dollar salary to hide under a desk."
Edgar curled his finger and tapped the desk.
Ashley crawled out, trembling.
Her legs were as weak as noodles, and she only managed to stand by gripping the edge of the desk tightly with both hands.
She swallowed hard, a gulping sound coming from her throat.
"C-CEO... I really don't know how to spin this anymore."
Edgar raised his hand, adjusting his suit's solid gold cufflinks.
"You don't need to spin lies about that Red Cape."
He picked up the instruction sheet with Lamplighter's photo printed on it from the desk and glanced at it.
"Go prepare a press release for an urgent breaking news story."
Edgar's tone was flat, as if he were planning what to eat for tomorrow's breakfast.
"Say that a CIA safehouse on the outskirts of the city unfortunately suffered an explosion due to severely aged underground gas pipes."
"A massive fire broke out at the scene, and heavy casualties are expected. Vought Corporation expresses its deepest condolences and is willing to provide humanitarian aid."
Ashley froze for a moment.
Her overheated brain worked rapidly, instantly catching the thick scent of blood behind those words.
A gas pipe explosion?
That was the perfect cover for a raging fire.
The confidential witnesses locked in the safehouse, the corrupt doctors who manufactured Metahuman babies, and the lab researchers...
Not a single one of them would survive tonight.
Edgar was laying the groundwork in public opinion ahead of Lamplighter's silencing operation.
Edgar turned around.
With his hands clasped behind his back.
He stepped over the glass shards covering the floor and walked to the completely shattered French window.
The night wind blew in from outside, lifting the hem of his suit jacket.
The bustling night view of New York flickered in his eyes, yet it could not illuminate his cold pupils.
"As long as all the witnesses are dead."
Edgar looked out at the deep night sky, his voice cold enough to freeze.
"No one can stand in court, and no one can sue Vought."
The camera cut away instantly.
The scene shifted to the outskirts of New York, dozens of kilometers away.
Deep in an uninhabited forest.
A two-story wooden safehouse stood isolated in the dark.
There were no streetlights around, only a few summer insects chirping monotonously in the grass.
There was not even a breath of wind, and the air was so muggy it made one sweat.
A dim, yellow light filtered through the windows of the house, and figures could be seen moving indistinctly inside.
In the shadow of a thick oak tree less than twenty meters away from the wooden house.
A man was standing there.
He wore a hooded suit made of fireproof material.
The hood was pulled down low, hiding most of his face in shadow.
Lamplighter stared at the safehouse not far away, his face entirely numb.
His eyes were hollow.
Like a walking corpse with its soul drained, leaving only the instinct to execute orders.
His rough thumb rubbed back and forth against his palm.
He was idly playing with a custom solid copper lighter.
Click.
The lighter's cap flipped open, revealing a small spark wheel.
Then, with a snap, it closed.
The crisp clinking of metal was exceptionally clear in the dead of the night.