Transfusion 5.8
I didn't know what to do with myself when I saw Soldier Boy in the flesh, not a day older than he'd ever looked. Clearly exhausted — the heavy eyes and the bags under them gave that much away — but still radiating raw power. And what my ability was telling me about him was something else entirely. A whole new level.
The world's first superhero was a genuine anomaly. His heart beat with such force that even I would have had a hard time stopping it. The supe's blood bore a strong resemblance to the electric mistress's scarlet fluid, carrying an almost impossibly pure version of the Compound V formula.
But the strangest part was the data I was pulling as I analyzed his cells. It felt like he was constantly burning and cooling inside, throwing off enormous volumes of energy in every direction. Like a walking nuclear bomb one breath away from detonation.
Thoughts about how any of that was even possible started crowding into my head, but I'd learned a long time ago to just push them aside and accept the near-limitless potential of superpowers. They were completely random and could be anything — so the only thing worth doing was thinking about practical applications, not sitting around theorizing.
Still, I was equally certain that in his decades of hero work, Soldier Boy had never once shown any ability beyond basic physical strength and durability. That baseline was more or less the same for everyone, which made the hidden power I was reading off the world's most famous hero all the more baffling.
While I was turning all of this over in my head, Soldier Boy shifted his gaze to me and walked over until he was practically in my face. He looked me up and down slowly. Only then did it hit me that in all the chaos, I'd never changed out of the green suit into something normal.
"Nice little costume," he said. "Still looks better on me, though."
He glanced over at Annie after that — dressed in her Crimson Countess outfit — gave a short huff at something, and then walked right past me toward the interior of the building. It was only now that I noticed Annie had frozen in place, eyes wide as saucers, staring at the walking legend.
"That's… What… How is that even possible? He died forty years ago…" she murmured, barely audible, watching the retreating hero's back.
Butcher jumped in immediately, still riding whatever wave of good cheer had him going.
"He never died, sweetheart. The whole story about his heroic death at some nuclear reactor — complete bullshit, start to finish." Billy smirked, still watching the man's back. "The Russians just grabbed him during the Nicaragua War in '84. Pumped him full of some drug cocktail and spent years running experiments on him. Then after the Soviet Union fell apart, they just forgot about him — left him in a cell with one hell of a mix in his bloodstream, so he slept like Snow White."
I listened to Butcher with open skepticism. Not that he was lying — he believed every word he was saying. But his story had holes in it you could drive a truck through. And even setting aside the obvious point that a state without superhumans would do absolutely anything to get its hands on one, there were other problems.
Soldier Boy was different from most heroes in that he'd been fighting in wars from the very moment he got his powers. When he first appeared, the laws regulating and restricting supes' involvement in armed conflict didn't exist yet, so he'd gone from fighting the Third Reich straight to the Korean War, Afghanistan, and everywhere else in between.
Sure, one man — even one who wasn't Homelander — couldn't fundamentally change the outcome of a battlefield, and Soldier Boy had worked more as a banner, a symbol to inspire the troops. But that didn't make him any less of a target. I had no doubt that at the height of the Cold War, enormous resources had been poured into capturing him.
But in 1984? When the whole world had bigger problems? And it was hard to believe the secret to taking him down was just drugs. Every supe had some resistance to them, and the toughest one of all, especially so.
"And how exactly did you find out he was with them?" I asked, frowning as I pressed for more.
"Our old girl sent me sniffing around a lead tied to some Russian secret weapon. Even intelligence agencies can't keep their dirty laundry buried for decades." Butcher snorted. "And our 'hero'" — he put every ounce of sarcasm he had into that word — "wasn't valuable enough as a resource for them to spend serious money hiding him. I found him at some black site in Siberia. Nothing in there but him and garbage."
Again — complete nonsense. Even if they'd failed to crack the Compound V formula or turn Soldier Boy into an asset for a hostile state, he would've still been useful. As genetic material, for one thing. Give it a couple of decades and you might raise a small army of supes without needing any serum at all.
Yes, children born to ordinary supes never inherit the powers — but Soldier Boy clearly ran on something cleaner, more refined. Maybe it would've worked with him. Cloning, at the very least. Weapons development based on his enhanced biology. There were so many experiments you could run on a man like that, and it made absolutely no sense to leave him collecting dust somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
"And speaking of business." Butcher's good mood hadn't lasted long. He'd cycled back to his default mode — aggression aimed at everything and everyone in a ten-foot radius. "Who the fuck is this? I get it, the boy's grown up and wants to bring girls home, but—"
I had zero interest in going back and forth with him, so I just rolled my eyes and gave the bearded bastard a smack on the back of the head. Judging by the murderous look he shot me — though he did shut up — the conditioning was holding.
"Annie, don't pay any attention to this racist idiot who can't go thirty seconds without whining about something." I turned to the subject of his commentary. "Problems came from somewhere we weren't watching. Turns out there are a lot more places where supes are being held against their will than any of us wanted to think…"
She still looked stunned, but our little exchange with Butcher had at least broken some of the tension. Which was a relief, because I had a feeling I'd be working with Meatman again far more than I'd like. On the bright side — it would be one hell of a stress test for everything I'd been working on.
And I really needed to change out of this suit.
***
Homelander stood at the window of the Seven's tower, his gaze aimed somewhere between the burning lights of the city below. His cape wasn't billowing. The famous blinding white smile was nowhere on his face. He looked more like a statue than a man. But his aura of power and dominance was felt even without the grand speeches and heroic stances.
He often liked to stand in this exact spot and stare into the distance — his superhuman eyes could see through walls and metal alike, letting him see anyone and everyone. As though he were an omniscient god, standing above every last pitiful, ordinary, mortal soul below.
"…You know, Christianity achieved so much of its success because the Bible acknowledged the existence of other 'false' religions." A Black woman in her early thirties, with thick dark hair and round orange glasses, was reading from a small, worn book, occasionally casting curious glances at the other women in the room. "They taught that all pagan gods, entire pantheons, were Nephilim — children of angels and mortal women who had developed a taste for heavenly beauty. They were born true giants, carrying a fragment of divine power, but without God's morality. And so they used that power for evil."
The company assembled was genuinely interesting.
Beside her sat Senator Victoria Neuman — the future president of the United States, in Sage's estimation. And Sage was never wrong in her calculations. The two of them had been exchanging occasional words, discussing future policy, already growing quite interested in one another.
The most intelligent woman on Earth and the woman who would hold the greatest power — a very compelling combination. What the two of them might be capable of together… The possibilities were genuinely limitless.
And it was precisely for that that the Black woman had agreed to attach herself to a group consisting of a childhood-trauma-riddled sociopath, a genuine Nazi, and a flat-out psychopath with a god complex. Sage didn't care what idiots she had to work with, as long as they listened to her.
Off by herself, removed from the others, sat a different woman. Hairless, with a burned-out eye and sickly pale skin — she had once been called Liberty, though few would recognize the old heroine now. Clara Risinger was not aging by a single day. She was making a show of being comfortable in this company, and she'd been good at that kind of performance once; she'd learned to hide her true feelings from ordinary people decades ago.
But in her opinion, this company had far too many people of color to be considered ordinary. Sage observed the old racist with an air of mild curiosity. Victoria kept the smile of a career politician fixed perfectly in place. Homelander didn't even acknowledge her existence — and that, more than anything else, drove Clara absolutely mad.
"I want to thank my rescuer once again, for pulling me from the hands of those filthy—"
Clara tried to change the subject, to draw the blond man's attention as she had tried multiple times already, but he cut her off without even turning around.
"Thank Sage, not me. She's the one who pinpointed your location. I just provided the muscle and dealt with a few guards. None of it would've happened without her."
The Black woman smirked, watching the former Liberty without bothering to hide her enjoyment of the woman's current pathetic circumstances. Clara reined herself in, but with every passing second it grew harder not to simply stand up and snap the neck of that damned n—
"Now, now, my dears — it was a team effort," the Black woman said pleasantly, setting her book aside and looking directly at Clara. "After all, we're one team with one goal and one dream. Isn't that right, sister?"
But before Clara could get so much as a syllable out, Homelander reclaimed the floor:
"Enough bickering. We still have a great deal to take care of." He turned toward the senator. "Victoria — bring us up to speed. Tell us what's happening in Congress and how the stock market has responded. I'm sure everyone will find it interesting."
"After my latest bill passes, every supe in the country will be under surveillance that would make any prison jealous. Vought's stock is falling at a staggering rate, and the board of directors is more restless than they've ever been. One more push — just one — and my father will be removed for good. He has fewer and fewer allies lately. And after his closest friend was caught up in that illegal methamphetamine trafficking operation…"
Victoria let the sentence die on its own and simply winked at Sage, whose smile widened just slightly. Neither of them had ever had friends before, but what they had now came about as close as either had ever gotten.
Homelander gave a satisfied nod. Then he turned — just slightly — and looked at his newest recruit. She needed no prompt and knew exactly what was wanted from her.
"In the last couple of hours, I managed to compile blackmail material and build psychological profiles on several more of his allies. I breached the Godolkin servers and had a bit of fun in there — found a few things worth noting. But more importantly, I've finally finished work on locating the woman you asked about. Vought hid her well, but their methods are so…" She paused and adjusted her glasses. "Primitive. They pour millions into cybersecurity and consistently forget about the human factor."
Homelander turned to face them fully, nodded once more, and this time looked at Clara. She had already figured out how things worked in this room — but she couldn't begin to guess what was being asked of her.
"If you're interested in the Compound V formula, I have several dozen quality serums that—"
Homelander simply raised one finger and shook his head.
"What interests me are all of Vought's side projects related to altering the formula. I stood on the sidelines for too long and let idiots run the corporation. Far too long — long enough that they nearly sank it entirely." He raised his chin, moving slowly toward them. "But not to worry. This time, professionals will be at the helm. True heroes, worthy of governing the ordinary masses." He paused. "But to sort through all of it properly — we need to know every secret Vought has ever kept. So please, don't be difficult. Share them with us. We're very eager to hear."
Clara kept the smile on her face even as the most powerful man in the world stood over her and looked down at her with hard, measuring eyes.
Well. She'd never had trouble switching to the winning side before. And she'd certainly endured worse company than this.
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