Homelander didn’t listen to the end; his eyes glowed red and his heat vision made the clerk’s head explode in front of him.
The man’s head burst like a watermelon.
However, after blowing the young man’s head off, Homelander finally realized what he had done.
Suppressing the urge to massacre everything, he took a deep breath, his eyes still glowing red, and turned to impatiently leave the records center.
He didn’t understand.
A superhero, clearly the hero of the entire nation, clearly his idol, and yet they wouldn’t even give him the chance to ask for an answer.
The security personnel on both sides of the corridor stepped back in unison, their eyes filled with fear, and no one dared to stand directly in front of him.
No one wanted to die; for a salary of a few thousand a month, who would be willing to risk their life?
The moment the elevator doors closed.
Homelander looked at his reflection on the metal panel of the door, which acted like a mirror, and saw his face, still stained with the young man’s blood.
His expression was ugly.
It wasn’t anger.
The heavy weight in his chest was more uncomfortable than anger.
It was frustration.
This word had been unknown to him in the past.
From the day he opened his eyes in the laboratory incubation tank, the word “frustration” had never existed in his vocabulary.
He was Homelander.
He was the most powerful being on this planet; he could get whatever he wanted, and no one could stop him from doing whatever he wanted.
But today…
He had been stopped four times.
And what stopped him wasn’t any more powerful Super.
But a wall built of rules and regulations, confidentiality agreements, and bureaucratic smiles.
Invisible, untouchable, and you wouldn’t even hear a sound if you hit it.
The file doesn’t exist.
Top Secret.
Joint authorization required.
These words were like small pebbles that precisely struck the most sensitive part of his heart.
Soldier Boy, suspected to be his father, the veteran he had seen countless times in childhood recordings, the man carrying a shield charging onto the beaches of Normandy in black-and-white films, the only existence he could call “one of his own” in terms of lineage and power…
The only one as powerful as him.
He believed he was dead.
Everyone said he was dead.
Sacrificed in some top-secret mission, his body couldn’t be recovered, and only an old military uniform was buried under the tombstone.
Homelander had even visited the cemetery; he stood there for a long time, unable to describe what he felt, just melancholy.
Now this person had returned alive.
He appeared in Brooklyn, alive and kicking, carrying a bucket of lubricant, then sent A-Train to the infirmary, and his smile was exactly the same as in his photos.
He even told him he was his biological son, though not in the traditional sense.
However, he wasn’t even allowed to take a look at Soldier Boy’s file.
Madelyn Stillwell even ordered him to kill the person suspected to be his father.
Homelander clenched his fists, anger and frustration intertwining constantly in his chest.
The elevator rose, and the floor numbers jumped one by one.
He closed his eyes, suppressing the emotion about to burst in his chest and storing it deep within.
He was going to see Benjamin in person.
…
Benjamin sat on a rickety folding chair he had picked up from downstairs, holding a can of cold beer in his hand, with a sandwich bought from a convenience store at his feet.
He was waiting for someone; if everything went well, that person would come looking for him.
Of course, it was also possible that a large group of people would come to cause him trouble.
He took a bite of the sandwich, chewed twice, and was about to reach for the second can of beer when he suddenly felt a gust of wind at his back.
Benjamin didn’t turn around.
He swallowed the sandwich in his mouth, took a sip of beer unhurriedly, and then put the can down at his feet.
“I was wondering how many laps you’d take down the stairs before coming up.”
His voice was as calm as if he were chatting with a neighbor about the weather.
“Three laps, Homelander.”
The shadow behind him didn’t move.
Then, a voice came from behind.
“They said you’re Soldier Boy.”
Then Benjamin slowly turned around.
The sunlight illuminated his face, and also Homelander’s.
The two men stared at each other across the distance separating them on the rooftop, one sitting in a broken chair, the other suspended in the air, but between them seemed to span an entire era.
Benjamin stood up, holding the beer can, and his gaze settled on Homelander’s young, perfect face.
High brow arches, straight nose bridge, and a slightly upturned chin.
It was a face that appeared on posters all over America, printed on t-shirts, and projected on the giant screens of Times Square.
Benjamin’s eyes flickered slightly.
He seemed to have perceived the unease and nervousness in Homelander’s expression.
The most powerful superhero in the world stood before him, like a high school student who didn’t know where to put his hands.
Benjamin slowly stood up.
He put the beer can down on the ground and cracked his right-hand knuckles.
Then, with all his strength, he threw a punch with all his might at Homelander’s face, worth ten million dollars.
The force of that punch was astonishing.
A dull thud echoed across the rooftop.
Homelander’s body tilted backward, his feet left the ground, and he crashed violently into the concrete railing on the other side of the roof.
The railing shattered, and Homelander fell off the building.
Benjamin followed and jumped off the building.
Homelander lay among the rubble, dazed, clutching his left cheek.
Because his left cheek conveyed a sensation he had almost forgotten: pain.
Real pain.
This reminded Homelander of scenes from his childhood.
Those experimenters, dressed in cold lab coats, used various methods to torture him.
That incinerator that would vaporize his tears…
He pulled his hand away from his face and looked at his palm.
A blotch of blood slowly spread across the lines of his palm.
He was bleeding.
Homelander stared at the blood on his hand, and at that moment his pupils dilated to more than double their normal size.
When was the last time he bled?
Maybe ten years ago, maybe in the lab.
His skin should be indestructible.
His body should be invulnerable; neither laser cannons, missiles, nor even meteor impacts had left a mark on him.
Suddenly, he looked up and stared at Benjamin, who had jumped from the building.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
Benjamin stood still, shaking his right hand.
The punch was really strong; he felt a slight numbness in his finger bones, but there was no strange expression on his face.
To be honest, at that moment, Homelander’s overall strength was still greater than his, but because of his powerful chest cannon, coupled with his knowledge of Homelander, Benjamin still made his move.
He looked down at Homelander, who lay among the rubble, with cold eyes.
“I’m disciplining my disobedient son.”
Hearing this.
Homelander’s expression froze at that moment.
His anger solidified midway, replaced by something akin to bewilderment.
He had never received discipline from his father.
Benjamin didn’t give him time to react and continued: “Stan Edgar and my former teammates packaged me up and sold me to those Russians.
They tortured me for forty years, not forty days, not forty months, but forty full years.”
“Every day, every hour, every minute.”
He continued,
“They tested my tolerance limits to Compound V on me, electrocuted me, burned me with fire, froze my internal organs with ultra-low temperature gas and watched them slowly heal, shot me in the mouth with an AK-47, and on top of that, they did that damn radiation experiment on me.”
“I spent forty full years of experiments; if you grew up in a lab since childhood, you should know what it feels like, it was forty full years.”
He continued coldly,
“Then, finally, I managed to crawl out of that damn lab.”
“I traveled halfway around the world back to the United States, turned on the TV, and guess what I saw?”
He reached out and pointed at the bright red stars-and-stripes emblem on Homelander’s chest.
“I saw my son wearing Vought’s uniform, flashing a standard eight-tooth smile at the camera, playing guardian for Stan Edgar, that bastard who sold his father.”
“You and Black Noir go in and out together, carry out missions side by side, and even pat him on the shoulder and call him ‘good partner’ at press conferences.”
“Black Noir.”
“He was the one who personally led the others in Payback back then to drug me.
Tell me, should I hit you?”
“Spineless coward who has disappointed me greatly!”
Homelander covered his face, opened his mouth to say something, but felt as if his throat was blocked.
He wanted to retort, but the wound on his face still hurt.
And Homelander couldn’t find a reason to retort.
He couldn’t find a single word.
Finally, Homelander spoke, his tone carrying a hint of resentment.
“I couldn’t access the files.”
He said,
“I went to Vought’s records center, then to the data room, and then to the board secretary’s office.
They told me the files didn’t exist.
They told me to get lost.
I was stopped four times.”