Having escaped from the jaws of danger, The Deep let out a sigh of relief.
Maeve, however, didn’t plan on letting him off easy.
As she saw him out, she leaned in with a sweet smile and blew gently into his ear canal.
“Baby.
Hurry back.
I can’t wait to give you your reward.”
Her suggestive tone sent shockwaves through Ashley’s mind, setting her inner gossip lover ablaze.
*When on earth did these two get together?*
*Isn’t Maeve supposed to be Homelander’s personal property?*
*And then there’s The Deep and Starlight…
Don’t tell me all four of them are…*
*OMG!* Ashley’s imagination was running wilder by the second.
Lacking mind-reading abilities, The Deep simply asked, “Ashley, what does Madelyn want with me?”
“I don’t know either.
You’ll find out once you see Ms.
Madelyn.”
Madelyn, the Senior Vice President, had her office on the 99th floor of Vought Tower, on the same floor as The Seven.
Before long, they arrived outside her door.
Ashley knocked cautiously on the door.
“Senior Vice President, The Deep is here.”
“Come in.”
The two walked into Madelyn’s office.
Madelyn waved her hand dismissively at Ashley.
“Ashley, leave us.
I need to speak with The Deep in private.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Ashley replied respectfully and pulled the office door shut behind them.
The Deep casually scanned Madelyn’s office.
For a Vought Vice President, it could hardly be called ostentatious, featuring only a massive phoebe nanmu desk.
Hanging behind her was a portrait of the warrior-emperor of America—Roosevelt.
“Sit.”
Madelyn pointed toward the guest couch nearby.
The Deep sat down, and Madelyn took a seat beside him, crossing her legs.
She was wearing nude stockings today, looking both sexy and elegant.
Her perfume was the classic Chanel No.
5, rich with floral-aldehyde notes.
They weren’t sitting too close, nor too far apart.
The moment Madelyn laid eyes on The Deep, she visibly froze, her red lips parting slightly.
Whatever she was about to say stuck in her throat.
Dazed, she murmured, “Why did you shave your beard?”
*Why does every woman care so much about my face?
I just don’t like having a beard, that’s all.*
The Deep replied crossly, “Fine, I’ll grow it right back.”
“No!” Madelyn immediately objected.
“My sweet boy, that face of yours is a blessing from God.
Why didn’t I notice this side of you before?
This is your new look from now on.
It’s time to win back all those trashy little bitches seduced away by K-pop.”
Cupping his face with both hands, Madelyn said in pleasant surprise, “My God.
You are sexier than Brad Pitt.
Even if you slept with Mike Tyson’s wife, Tyson would probably think his wife got the better deal.”
“A fellow connoisseur?”
Madelyn paused, then burst out laughing, pinching his cheek.
“The Deep, you really are a little rascal.”
She got up to pour him a cup of coffee.
Originally, she wouldn’t have bothered, but a face like his was worth a cup of coffee.
Afterward, Madelyn got down to business.
“The Deep, the Mayor of Baltimore’s private jet crashed into the Atlantic Ocean.
I need you to dive down and investigate the cause of the crash for me.”
*So it’s about this.*
The Deep crossed his legs and took a sip of coffee.
The crash of the Baltimore Mayor’s private plane was obviously no accident.
The real culprit was Homelander.
Who told the mayor of Maryland’s largest city to use Compound V to blackmail Madelyn?
It was like carrying a lantern into a latrine—looking for shit, seeking his own death.
The incident began when Madelyn tried to sell Vought’s superheroes to the Mayor of Baltimore for crime-fighting purposes.
After all, Baltimore was dubbed the Capital of Crime, boasting a crime rate that topped the nation in America.
Superheroes and a crime city went together like Batman and Gotham—a match made in heaven.
The problem lay in the price.
Madelyn quoted $300 million, which included selling the operating rights of the superhero Nubian Prince to the Baltimore government.
However, the mayor felt it was too expensive and counteroffered $200 million.
Madelyn refused, so the Mayor of Baltimore brought out the secret of Compound V as leverage in negotiations.
Compound V was Vought’s top-secret trade secret.
Those supes weren’t blessings from God as Vought advertised; they were mass-produced products created using Compound V.
Furthermore, it was injected during infancy—the younger the baby, the lower the mortality rate and the higher the probability of awakening superpowers.
If this secret were exposed, the massive commercial empire of Vought would crumble in an instant.
Honestly, things were still fine up to that point.
Haggling was normal in business, and Madelyn and the mayor eventually reached an agreement, both stepping back to settle on $230 million.
It was a win-win deal.
The fatal mistake was that someone outside Madelyn’s office had been voyeuristically spying on her.
Armed with X-ray vision and super hearing, he had witnessed the entire process of the mayor blackmailing Madelyn.
Homelander’s obsession with Madelyn was beyond doubt.
When a being possessing supreme power felt protective of someone, anyone who threatened her had only one fate awaiting them.
The Deep accepted the task without the slightest hesitation.
Not that he had the right to refuse anyway.
“Go on, baby.
The helicopter is waiting for you on the roof of Vought Tower,” Madelyn said with a smile.
The Deep flashed an OK sign.
When he stood up, Madelyn moved to see him out to the door—a luxury he had never received before.
*Slap!*
A crisp sound echoed.
The Deep turned back with the baffled expression of the “confused old man on the subway” meme.
Madelyn licked her lips and smiled.
“Cute butt.
When you get back, I have something I want to discuss with you.”
*Fuck!*
Getting bullied by Homelander was bad enough, but now he was getting sexually harassed by his female boss.
How was anyone supposed to survive this damn life?
…
Taking a Vought helicopter, The Deep arrived at the coordinates over the Atlantic Ocean.
The cabin door opened.
Facing the howling gales, The Deep opened his arms with his back to the sea and dove backward into the water.
Only after he jumped did the helicopter pilot curse under his breath, “Show-off pretender.”
*Splash!*
A massive spray of water shot into the air.
Difficulty: 10/10.
Execution: 0/10.
The moment he entered the ocean, The Deep felt as though he had returned home.
The water, freezing cold to ordinary humans, was infinitely soothing to him.
The gills on either side of his ribcage flared open as seawater rushed in.
Like a fish, he absorbed oxygen from the water straight into his bloodstream before expelling carbon dioxide along with the water.
As his gills puffed in and out, his aquatic respiratory cycle was fully activated.
Moreover, The Deep discovered that the oxygen drawn in through his gills acted like pure oxygen, multiplying his physical attributes several times over as it swept through his system.
Especially his speed—after a brief period of adaptation and running his gills at full capacity, his swimming speed in the ocean could reach Mach 0.5, roughly 500 kilometers per hour.
The ocean was his ultimate sanctuary.
Once in the water, this was entirely his domain.
School after school of fish swam over to greet him.
This was the power of Heart of the Ocean, and the primary reason he was selected for The Seven.
The ability to converse with aquatic life, paired with an innate, overwhelming affinity for them.
Through his conversation with the sea life, The Deep learned the location of the plane wreckage: three thousand meters below his feet on the seafloor.
He slowly dived deeper.
He could reach depths of ten thousand meters, but he couldn’t dive too quickly, or the pressure differential would crush his body into paste.
Even an A-tier physique couldn’t withstand the immense pressure of the ocean floor without adjusting.
The reason he could dive so deep was that, like deep-sea fish, he could gradually equalize his internal and external pressure until equilibrium was reached.
At three thousand meters down, it was indistinguishable from eternal night.
The surroundings were dead silent, as if engulfed in total chaos.
Resting quietly on the seabed was the wreckage of an airplane.
The Deep summoned a school of anglerfish to light the way.
By their specks of light, he saw the plane snapped into two sections.
It wasn’t engine failure.
The severed fuselage possessed an unnaturally clean cut, as though cleaved in two by a blade, yet the sliced edges bore melted welds formed by intense, high-temperature heat.
It was glaringly obvious: Homelander’s heat vision.
Inside the cabin lay more than a dozen corpses.
However, after being picked over by several waves of sea creatures, most of the bodies had already been consumed.
A few fish were still pecking at the leftovers.
Intestines pulled from corpses swayed loosely in the seawater, drifting like ribbons floating through the air.
Where the fish had gnawed away the flesh, no blood remained—only waterlogged, bloated white skin.
Among these dozen-plus bodies, one corpse stood out with heart-wrenching clarity.
Small and fragile, it was just a child.
Clutched tightly in the child’s palm was a toy—an action figure of Homelander.