*Beat It*
The Deep racked his brain, combing through every piece of internal data he knew.
He had sneaked a look at Vought’s Security Department supe database more than once.
There were only a handful of registered files for shapeshifting abilities.
Doppelganger’s ability was ranked dead-first in a class of its own due to its longevity.
The remaining few shapeshifters were either dead or had abused their powers and been locked up in Red River.
So no one else could pull off something like this—maintaining a transformation for more than ten minutes.
Then who was this?
The Deep stared fixedly at that face.
The moment he crossed the final name off his mental list, his knees began to sink uncontrollably, cold sweat quickly soaking the back of his shirt.
So this was…
the real Boss?
The problem was that after clocking off, he had personally said goodbye to the Boss before leaving Seven Tower—and that was less than an hour ago.
Fuck…
Could this be some terrorist organization’s plot?
But why come after me?!
“Who the fuck are you?”
The Deep tried his best to make his voice sound tough, though his pitch rose more than an octave higher than usual.
“This is a Seven member’s private residence.
You’re trespassing.
Whoever you are, the Boss won’t let you get away with this.
You know who I am, right?
I’m The Deep, Lord of the Seven Seas.
If you leave right now, we can pretend this never happened.”
John looked at The Deep as if looking at a total idiot, leaning back against the wall with his hands shoved in his pockets.
“Kevin,” John finally spoke after a moment of silence, his tone flat.
“Did Homelander ever tell you that the flight’s black box should be kept in a safer place?”
The Deep froze.
That plane…
that black box.
When he fished that thing off the ocean floor, it was three in the morning.
Not even Ambrosia knew.
He had hidden it beneath the keel of a shipwreck in a Pacific trench, bypassing sonars and commercial vessels every time he went to check on it, all for a single purpose: leverage.
A secret bargaining chip to keep himself safe if he was ever threatened.
And there was only one person in the entire world who knew about it: himself.
Yet the man standing in front of him had just blurted out his deepest, darkest secret like it was nothing.
How…
how was this possible?!
Where had things gone wrong…?
If Homelander ever found out, he wouldn’t live to see tomorrow’s sun.
No…
could the guy in front of him really be the Boss?
Had he come to settle the score?
Then what about that excessively young face…?
Fuck!
Who knew!
The drugs Vought injected into Homelander were at a level beyond his clearance; he was never allowed anywhere near those top-secret serum files.
Maybe at its absolute limit, Compound V could reverse cellular division.
Maybe Homelander had long been using some unknown method to adjust his biological age.
Right.
He was here because the black box had been exposed.
He was here to purge him.
*Thump—*
In that instant, The Deep’s knees gave out.
His kneecaps smashed onto the wooden floorboards with a dull, dry thud.
“No, it’s not like that!
That black box…
if it fell into the wrong hands, the consequences would be catastrophic!
Think about it!
What if an undercurrent pushed it offshore, and some fisherman pulled it up and sold it to the media?
Translucent just went missing, so The Seven is already under insane PR pressure.
If the cockpit recording leaked on top of that, big-nosed Ashley would never be able to cover it up.”
As he spoke, The Deep lifted his right hand from the floor and pressed it against his chest.
“So I dredged it up and hid it in a trench.
That trench isn’t on any commercial shipping lanes—sonar can’t scan it, and satellites can’t spot it.
Even Vought Security’s deep-sea surveillance network doesn’t cover that area.
I didn’t do it for any other reason than to stop the recording from leaking!
If someone ever tries to screw you over, I can pull out the original and destroy it right away—or turn around and use it to counterattack!
I was worried about you, Sir!”
“Oh…
well said, Kevin.”
John uttered the words with a half-smile after listening to The Deep’s self-serving defense.
“But you got one thing wrong.
I’m not Homelander.
Or to be precise, not the Homelander you know.”
Half-kneeling in front of the coffee table, The Deep was just about to feel smug about his air-tight excuse when John’s cold remark caught him totally off guard.
Wait…
He wasn’t Homelander?
Then what the fuck was he?
It had to be said that although The Deep was sometimes as dense as a dumbass, his ability to overthink and jump to conclusions was top-tier.
He suddenly thought of someone—a person he passed by every single day in the corridors of Vought Tower, but never gave a second look.
Black Noir.
That bastard was like a mute robot, always wearing a full-face mask, never speaking, never showing his face.
No one had ever seen what he actually looked like.
In all his years at Vought, he had never known who was behind Black Noir’s mask.
He was just a shadow executing orders—never making a mistake, never questioning, never betraying.
He was Vought’s ultimate insurance policy and Edgar’s most trusted killing tool.
The only thing The Deep knew was that Black Noir had been around for a long time.
If Vought could make one Black Noir, they could make a second.
If Vought could create a supe that obeyed orders completely and never showed his face, why couldn’t they create something younger, stronger, and easier to control?
For instance…
a clone of Homelander.
Vought never did anything without a purpose.
If Vought had created a younger Homelander, his purpose would only be more covert and lethal than Black Noir’s.
As for who he was built to deal with…
Perhaps there was only one answer.
Homelander himself.
Vought needed a failsafe to keep Homelander in check if he ever went out of control—a version with the same abilities, but far more obedient.
Yet for some unknown reason, this backup had been activated early and had appeared right before The Deep.
Had Vought’s frustration with Homelander reached a breaking point?
Or was the information held by The Deep already enough to threaten Vought’s dominion?
Fuck, why did I have to hide that stupid thing?!
Damn it!
*Deep, you fucking pig-brained idiot!*
At this thought, The Deep, a master in the art of self-preservation, immediately came to the ultimate conclusion:
Run!
Right fucking now!
Maybe this “clone” only had a fake face and didn’t possess the same powers?
Maybe he was just a knockoff built for show?
Without another word, The Deep grabbed the car keys off the coffee table, turned, and bolted for the door.
He could use the rooftop to leap across to the neighboring building’s fire escape, take the emergency stairs all the way down, and slip into the sewers.
Then navigate the drainage pipes, swim along the underground waterways straight into the Atlantic, and hide underwater for the rest of his life if necessary.
Idealism was grand, but reality was harsh.
*Swoosh—*
The next second, a dark red beam grazed his calf and instantly exploded against the doorframe.
As smoke billowed out, the beam blasted a charred trench along the edge of the doorframe, splitting the wood from the hinges all the way down to the bottom of the threshold.
Glowing embers from charred wood splinters splattered onto his bare ankle, burning him so badly he recoiled back a step.
“Hss!”
The air filled with the pungent smell of burnt wood mixed with singed flesh, forcing its way up The Deep’s nose.
“Did I say you could leave?”
A demonic voice floated over from behind him—flat and quiet, yet dense with an extreme underlying threat.
John had pushed himself off the wall. This chapter is updated first at g.com.
With his hands still in his pockets, his unhurried footsteps were virtually silent on the wooden floor.
Yet The Deep could feel the terrifying, suffocating pressure closing in on him.
Those blue eyes had transformed into pools of molten crimson.
The dark red aura around his irises glowed blindingly bright in the dim living room.
The Deep could even feel the skin on his face burning just from the weight of that gaze.
Within a few breaths, John stood directly in front of him.
Standing half a head taller than The Deep, he looked down at him with glowing red eyes.
Something roiled deep within his pupils, like magma—like the dark red glow seeping from tectonic fissures right before a volcanic eruption.
Shit…
Without even thinking, The Deep’s knees buckled once more.
True to his cowardly nature, he collapsed prostrate onto the wooden floorboards, prostrating himself completely.
Then he raised his hands above his head, palms pressed together, ten fingers trembling violently.
“Don’t kill me!
Please don’t kill me!
I was wrong, I shouldn’t have run—”
“Fascinating.
Wouldn’t it have been better if you’d just sat down and talked from the start?”
John pulled out a chair beside the dining table, sat down, crossed his legs, and rested his clasped hands on his knee.
The red glow in his eyes had faded, leaving only a faint ember of dark red around the edges of his irises.
Hearing John’s words, The Deep remained pressed against the cold wooden floor, hands raised overhead, fingers still quivering.
He didn’t dare look up or lower his hands, terrified that the moment he raised his head, a blast of Heat Vision would vaporize him instantly.
“Quiet.
I don’t like repeating myself.”
John’s voice carried over from the dining table.
“Get up and sit down.”
The Deep suffered an intense internal struggle before finally scrambling up from the floor.
Hunched over, he crept to the dining table, pulled out the chair opposite John, and sat on the very edge—scarcely filling a third of the seat—his back drawn taut as a fully flexed bow.
Just like a model student sitting in class.
“I’m not interested in you, and I don’t want your black box.
You can keep it.
But you’re going to do something for me.”
“I…
Yes!
I’ll get it done for sure, Sir!”
“I want you to dig through Vought’s archives for all sealed supe experiment records from the last century.
Not the batch files for the mass-produced Compound V they use now—I mean around World War II, when Vought was just starting out.
The original injection records for Soldier Boy, clinical trial data for the first-generation Compound V, and any documents related to the V1 formula.
Those files have likely been scrubbed from Vought’s standard directories, but hard copies should still remain in R&D’s cold storage or the underground vault.
Your clearance is high enough to access those places.”
Hearing John’s demand, The Deep swallowed hard.
V1.
In all his years at Vought, he had only heard that term a few times.
It was a serum far more primitive than Compound V—the origin of all supes.
And Vought’s deepest-kept secret.
Soldier Boy was created using it.
After World War II, Vought had sealed those archives for decades.
Every record touching upon V1 was classified at the absolute highest level.
Some contents were beyond even a member of The Seven’s clearance.
He opened his mouth, wanting to say that this was ten thousand times more dangerous than the black box.
But seeing the “benevolent” look in John’s eyes—which clearly left zero room for negotiation—he choked the words right back down.
“Also, give me a list of every veteran researcher you know who’s worked in R&D for over thirty years.
Right, the old geezers who’ve been at Vought since the seventies or eighties, lived through Soldier Boy’s era, or might have been sidelined or retired.
Find them, and get them to tell you where the original V1 formula is hidden.”
“I’ll make sure it’s done, Sir.
I know a few old-timers in R&D, I’ve seen the paper backups in the underground archives before, and I have the access codes for cold storage.
As long as those V1 files are still in the building, I can dig them out.”
“Mm.”
John stared at The Deep, silent for a few seconds.
Although this fish-reeking dumbass was usually unreliable and timid as a mouse, in a sense, that cowardice was its own form of loyalty.
Having wielded the stick, it was time for the carrot.
“By the way…
are you interested in becoming the second-in-command of The Seven?”