A few minutes later, I was already gone from Stillwell’s house, and Doppelganger’s body had been reduced to ash by my heat vision.
There was no point even trying to imagine what this power was truly capable of.
So far, I hadn’t found a single material that could withstand those lasers.
I gave a quiet snort as I looked down at the ashes beneath my feet.
The wind was already scattering them.
A heavy sigh escaped me when I thought about what I had just done.
Morally speaking, this definitely qualified as a very bad deed.
It wasn’t as though I had acted on impulse, either.
I had spent more than ten minutes thinking about it while everyone else was still inside the house.
There had been plenty of alternatives to killing him.
Intimidation, for example.
Or money.
The first option would only work for so long, though.
Eventually, fear would wear off.
The second option was much more reliable, but I wasn’t King Midas.
I couldn’t just keep handing people absurd amounts of money whenever I wanted.
Vought, on the other hand, certainly could.
Especially for information this valuable.
Doppelganger knew that better than anyone.
The corporation was extremely generous when it came to loyal employees.
But what ultimately sealed his fate was the blatant lie that had come out of that fat super’s mouth.
That was what decided his fate.
I could have found a super capable of erasing memories, just like what had happened with Multipler.
The problem was that there were very few supers with such abilities.
And the ones who did possess them weren’t exactly left unsupervised or without funding.
Of all the supers I knew about, there was only one who could genuinely pull something like that off.
Mindstorm.
But as far as I knew, Mindstorm hated being around any living creature that possessed intelligence.
There was no chance I was going anywhere near that unstable telepath.
So, in the end, killing him had been the only reasonable option.
I couldn’t risk the lives of the people close to me.
They were already under constant threat.
I exhaled, closed my eyes, and shot straight into the sky.
The flight didn’t take long.
Soon, I landed beside the hangar where Butcher’s captured associates were being held.
I walked inside and headed straight toward the prisoners under the confused gazes of the guards.
Nobody tried to stop me.
Quite the opposite, they stepped aside and let me pass as if this were exactly how things were supposed to be.
Well, why wouldn’t it be?
That was exactly how things were supposed to be.
The prisoners looked far from their best.
All three were sitting inside a cell, watching me cautiously.
Their hands were cuffed, although there was enough room inside for them to walk around comfortably.
There were no signs of beatings on their bodies, and all three appeared to be in decent physical condition.
Their mood, however, was another matter.
Bleak would have been an understatement.
“Please leave us alone,” I told the guards.
They immediately followed my instructions without asking any questions.
What can I say?
I like obedient employees.
These were old acquaintances of mine.
Hughie Campbell, the skinny guy, and Marvin T.
Milk, the big guy who had been with Butcher at the hospital.
As for the third man, I had never seen him before.
As far as I knew, he had simply been with the others.
Unlike the other three, he hadn’t appeared on any cameras before.
The sheer number of passports and fake identities he’d accumulated, however, made it pretty obvious that he belonged with them.
Meanwhile, the large Black man rose from the floor and looked at me questioningly.
“Things are bad?” he asked.
His companions looked at him in confusion.
“Not exactly,” I replied, studying them thoughtfully.
“You’ll be released. Today.” Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
“Why?” Hughie cut into the conversation, getting up from the floor with a shocked expression.
His facial expressions were rather amusing, in my opinion.
“Because I said so.”
I smiled at them, enjoying the perfectly justified shock on their faces.
Really, why would I go out of my way to help them?
“There’s a catch, isn’t there?” Marvin asked.
His distrust was understandable.
“No catch, big guy. Your leader and I reached an agreement. I’m obligated to release you and stop pursuing you.”
I paused for a moment.
“Of course, that’s assuming you don’t provoke me yourselves.”
“Just like that? They’ll actually listen to you?” Hughie asked reasonably.
“Where exactly are they going to go?”
I snorted before giving him a serious look.
“But even I can’t completely ignore the law. And as you’ve probably figured out by now, that applies specifically to you.”
“They’re going to arrest Frenchie?” Hughie asked anxiously.
He looked even more worried than the person we were actually talking about.
“So that’s what you call him? Rather ordinary nickname for a man with dozens of fake identities.”
“I’m Serge.”
The Frenchman finally introduced himself as he stood up from the floor.
“Homelander.”
I frowned, not particularly thrilled about meeting someone like him.
“You’ll have one day. After that…”
I paused.
“The hunt begins. That’s all I can do for you. Don’t expect anything more.”
“Merci.”
He nodded at me.
“Now you’ll let us out?” Hughie asked hopefully.
“There’s one more thing. After that, you can go wherever you want.”
I muttered under my breath and looked over all three of them carefully.
“Where’s the Asian girl?”
“She just…”
“I let her go.”
Serge admitted it before Hughie could finish speaking.
He said it with such an expression that you’d think I was about to tear him apart.
“I see.”
I nodded thoughtfully, considering what to do next.
“Men, open the cell and remove their handcuffs.”
“But, sir…”
I snapped my gaze toward the guard who had spoken, narrowing my eyes.
“Did you think that was a request?”
The guard froze.
“Open the cell and remove their handcuffs.”
“Yes, sir.”
The mercenary immediately obeyed.
Vought loved hiring mercenaries almost as much as the United States military did.
“You can go.”
I looked at the three of them.
“I hope we don’t have to meet under circumstances like this again.”
My voice was grim as I escorted my former prisoners toward the exit.
Once they were gone, I took off toward Vought Tower.
There was no time to waste.
A few minutes later, my feet touched down on the balcony.
Seconds later, I hurried out of the apartment and into the hallway.
I took the elevator down to the fifty-third floor and stepped into the analytics department.
They had access to two satellites that monitored the city around the clock from above.
That wasn’t even counting all the city cameras they could access.
I immediately walked over to an attractive woman wearing glasses.
She was sitting at a computer.
“Hello, Homelander.”
The woman was clearly nervous about my presence.
I smiled at her.
“What’s your name?”
“A-Anika.”
“Pretty name.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“So, Anika, I need your help. And I need it urgently.”
I spoke gently while looking at her seriously.
“Uh… what do you need?”
“We need to find a girl. Asian, black hair, short, around five feet tall.”
I listed her approximate physical characteristics.
“Focus on the eastern districts. I need everything from today.”
“That could take a long time,” Anika replied uncertainly.
“Then bring your colleagues in.”
I looked around the department.
“Finding this girl is your highest priority right now. If you succeed, everyone involved gets a twenty-thousand-dollar bonus.”
I nodded toward their computers.
“Get started.”
I calmly sat down in a chair and watched as everyone immediately sprang into action, searching for the Asian girl.
I exhaled, closed my eyes, and relaxed while I waited for the results.
I had a feeling that pretty soon, everyone in the analytics department would have an extra twenty thousand dollars in their wallets.
Still, I didn’t mind.
With billions at my disposal, this was hardly going to make a difference.
The first results came in after about twenty minutes.
They quickly identified the girl after she had thrown her heavy restraints onto the ground and run away.
Her face had already been captured by the cameras, and locating her afterward took barely another ten minutes.
The moment they found her, I flew out after her.
I didn’t even bother with the elevator, simply climbing through a window on the floor.
I reached the location and landed beside an unfinished five-story building.
“Is anyone here?” I shouted as I made my way up to the second floor, where the girl was supposed to be.
When I reached the second floor, I looked around and whistled in surprise.
Blood covered the floor.
Bodies were scattered everywhere, their insides ripped apart as if someone had been butchering chickens.
At least five people had died fighting the tiny Asian girl.
Judging by the smell of the blood, they were probably drug addicts.
The syringes scattered across the floor certainly supported that conclusion.
Still, I’d grown accustomed to trusting my exceptionally sharp sense of smell.
I gave a quiet snort before turning my attention toward the girl.
She had frozen in place, watching me warily.
She stood in the corner with her body slightly hunched, as if preparing to attack at any moment.
It reminded me a lot of Becka’s ability and her instincts.
Except the girl standing in front of me seemed far more feral.
Her hair was disheveled, her clothes were filthy, and she was covered in blood.
She wasn’t even wearing shoes.
Honestly, considering her animalistic behavior, her current appearance seemed rather fitting.
I didn’t even have time to say a word.
She lunged at me.
Her powerful hands grabbed my head and tried to snap my neck.
It didn’t work.
Next came an attempt to claw my face apart, followed by an effort to gouge out my eyes.
None of it worked.
Eventually, the hostility disappeared from her expression entirely.
All that remained was curiosity.
She seemed genuinely fascinated by the fact that she couldn’t hurt me.
Things went so far that she actually broke her own fingers against me.
The girl stared at them in complete shock.
Her wounds healed incredibly quickly, but the simple fact that she had managed to injure herself seemed to leave her completely stunned.
And throughout the entire ordeal, she hadn’t made a single sound.
“First time?”
I smiled at her, showing off my perfectly white teeth.
“You’ll get used to it.”
I extended the introduction.
“My name is John. Nice to meet you, quiet girl.”