The roar of fifty thousand people inside the Vought Convention Center sounded like a jet engine.
Massive golden crosses hung from the rafters, flanked by sixty-foot holographic banners of The Seven.
The Believe Expo was an absolute masterclass in corporate hypocrisy—a billion-dollar machine designed to package superheroes as literal angels sent by God.
I stood in the VIP staging area, wearing my pristine white and gold suit.
I had just spent an hour healing the sick—or rather, posing for photos with chronically ill children while Ezekiel laid hands on them and prayed.
Now, offstage, the atmosphere was entirely different.
“She’s scheduled for five minutes!
Stick to the teleprompter!” Ashley Barrett was practically hyperventilating, pacing behind the main stage curtain.
Annie stood nearby, staring blankly at the floor.
She was wearing her revealing, Vought-mandated Starlight uniform.
She looked hollowed out.
The relentless pressure of the PR machine, combined with the horrifying reality of what Vought actually was, had pushed her right to the edge of a psychological cliff.
“You talk about purity, Annie,” Ashley snapped, pointing a clipboard at her.
“You talk about how God chose you.
Then you wave, and you walk off.
Go!” The announcer’s voice boomed over the arena speakers.
“Give it up for the light of our lives…
Starlight!” Annie didn’t say a word.
She took a deep breath, pasted on a terrifyingly fake smile, and walked out into the blinding spotlights.
I stood near the curtain, crossing my arms.
Homelander was a few yards away, his arms also crossed, watching the monitor.
His jaw was tight, his eyes burning with the paranoid intensity that had consumed him since the vault heist.
He was dissecting every face in the crowd, looking for threats.
But Homelander’s hearing, while superhuman, had its limits.
In an enclosed arena with fifty thousand screaming fans and a massive concert-grade sound system blasting gospel music, the ambient noise was deafening.
My Viltrumite hearing, however, operated on a completely different frequency.
I tuned out the stadium speakers.
I tuned out the crowd.
I extended my senses deep into the restricted VIP corridors, searching for the specific, methodical heartbeat of Billy Butcher.
I found him in the VIP restrooms.
“Sit down,” Butcher’s voice was a low, lethal whisper, perfectly masked from Homelander by the thumping bass of the arena speakers vibrating the walls.
“Look, man, I don’t have any cash on me!” Ezekiel stammered, his rubbery limbs trembling against the bathroom tiles.
“I don’t want your money,” Butcher sneered.
I heard the unmistakable rustle of a glossy photograph being slapped against a porcelain sink.
“My mate Hughie did a little digging into your private life.
Those are pictures of you at a very exclusive, very male club in Chelsea.
What do you think your fifty thousand Christian fans out there would say if these hit the six o’clock news?” Ezekiel’s heartbeat spiked into a frantic, terrified flutter.
“What do you want?” “Your charities,” Butcher growled softly.
“Vought is using them as a front to move Compound V.
I want the shipping routes.
I want the destination.
Give me the name of the clinic, or I destroy your entire life.” I smiled faintly, keeping my eyes on the backstage monitor.
Butcher didn’t need to wave a gun around like an amateur.
He was a professional.
He had found Ezekiel’s leverage and squeezed him where it hurt the most.
Suddenly, the deafening roar of the crowd outside fell completely silent.
Homelander stiffened, his head snapping toward the stage monitor.
On stage, Annie had stopped reading the teleprompter.
She was staring out at the sea of people, her hands gripping the podium tightly.
The fake smile was gone.
“I…
I can’t do this anymore,” Annie’s voice echoed through the massive arena, trembling but fiercely defiant.
“I’m not an angel.
I’m not a virgin.
I’m just a person.
And this whole thing…
this whole company…
it’s a lie.” Ashley Barrett dropped her clipboard, her jaw unhinging in absolute horror.
“Cut the mic!
Cut the feed!
Get her off the stage!” Homelander stared at the monitor, his face twisting into an expression of pure, unadulterated fury.
The perceived disrespect, the public rebellion—it struck the exact core of his fragile ego.
He wasn’t thinking about security breaches anymore; he was staring at a PR disaster happening on live television.
He stormed past me without a word, heading straight for the stage to salvage his precious image.
I stayed exactly where I was, listening to the bathroom at the back of the arena.
“The hospitals!” Ezekiel sobbed, completely broken by Butcher’s blackmail.
“The shipments go to the Samaritan Hospital Network!
We put it in the incubators!
We dose the premature babies!
That’s it!
That’s all I know!” “Good boy,” Butcher grunted.
“If you tell Vought we were here, I release the photos anyway.
Keep your mouth shut.” I listened to Butcher’s heavy boots moving swiftly down the back fire escape, disappearing into the chaotic streets of New York with Hughie trailing right behind him.
A rigid, translucent blue interface materialized in front of me.
[CANON EVENT CHANGED: The Extortion of Ezekiel.] [Reward: +15,000 System Points.] [Current Balance: 117,500 System Points.] I dismissed the screen as the crowd outside began to murmur in shock and confusion over Starlight’s speech.
The plot was accelerating flawlessly.
I hadn’t interfered, and I hadn’t treated Homelander like a fool.
I simply stood in the shadows and let the canon events play out exactly as they were meant to.
Butcher finally had his physical location.
Vought’s darkest secret was sitting in a hospital in Queens.
The intelligence-gathering phase was officially over.
Now, the real war was going to begin.
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