Vought Protects You

"Too fast."

Lin Mo patiently explained again. Even as he spoke, he was struck by how childish he sounded. When had he become such an expert at looking after kids?

Granted, Joanna really was an adorable little blonde girl, but... No, no. He couldn't think like that. Lin Mo hurriedly slapped himself a few times in his mind.

He was thinking about this world's future. Without him, it would end up with a Homelander who killed without a second thought. People ought to thank him.

Coming back to himself, Lin Mo pressed a finger against the cracked shell.

"But it still works."

"Go slower next time."

Joanna took the damaged toy car and tried to control her strength for the third time.

This time, its wheels rolled steadily forward.

It was still much faster than Lin Mo's car, but it didn't hit the wall.

"You won," Lin Mo said suddenly.

Joanna looked at the car stopped near the finish line, her expression puzzled.

"Won?"

"That means you were faster than me."

Lin Mo picked up his red car.

"But I might win next time."

Joanna didn't seem to understand what was fun about winning or losing, but she reacted noticeably to "next time."

"We'll play again?"

"Sure."

"You'll come back?" Joanna pressed, sounding uneasy.

"I'll come back."

Only after hearing his answer did she lower her gaze to the car again.

Lin Mo breathed a sigh of relief. If only entertaining a kid were always this easy. The game itself had a loophole, and things could have gotten tricky if Joanna had questioned it. But she accepted whatever he said. She was so much easier to deal with than the little terrors from his previous life.

At their later meetings, Lin Mo began introducing her to more games.

Building blocks, puzzles, matching cards.

They even drew crooked lines on paper with crayons.

Joanna showed more interest in these things than the researchers had expected.

Perhaps she wasn't especially drawn to the toys themselves. What truly attracted her was having another person there.

Blocks weren't for testing grip strength; they were for building a house together. And if a toy car broke, that didn't mean all play had to stop.

Every game meant more time with Lin Mo. During those brief visits, he gradually taught her the basics of controlling her strength.

"When you pick something up, use as little strength as you can at first. If you can't lift it, increase it slowly."

"Before you touch someone, think about whether it might hurt them."

"When someone says stop, you should stop first."

"You can say you're angry, but you can't hit someone first."

These lessons weren't complicated. An ordinary child might learn them naturally at home.

But Joanna had no family, and she was unusual herself. She could only guess at the rules of the world through repeated experiments and punishments.

Vought had tried to teach her through commands and had even brought in psychological experts to brainwash her. Researchers stood behind the observation window and repeated the same instructions over the speaker:

Control your strength. Follow instructions. Stay quiet. Do not attack.

Those words meant nothing concrete to Joanna. She didn't know why she should obey or what controlling her strength was even for.

But Lin Mo taught her differently. When she controlled her strength, he kept holding her hand.

When she pushed the car too fast, the toy broke. When she eased off, the two of them could keep racing.

At first, Joanna would only listen to Lin Mo. If researchers told her over the speaker to put something down, she didn't react at all.

She did it only when Lin Mo repeated the instruction.

When a nurse asked her to sit in the examination chair, she remained on guard. Only when Lin Mo told her they could keep playing after the examination did she agree to go near it.

The change quickly caught the researchers' attention. A new assessment report contained a bold conclusion.

**Lin Mo may now be Joanna's only stable emotional anchor.**

Vogelbaum smiled as he read the report. Everything was progressing as he had hoped.

Lin Mo could influence her emotions, guide her behavior, and even persuade her to accept examinations she had once fiercely resisted.

That made him an immensely valuable means of control.

If Joanna obeyed only Lin Mo and not Vought, then the company had gained a new control system for an otherwise uncontrollable test subject.

What came next was simple. Vogelbaum set down the report and spoke to an assistant beside him.

"Expand Lin Mo's ideological education."

The assistant made a note. "In what areas?"

"Obedience, responsibility, and loyalty to the company."

"Make him understand that Vought provides their housing, food, medical care, and education," Vogelbaum said. "Make him believe the company is protecting them."

"Then have him pass those ideas on to Joanna."

The assistant understood at once. Joanna refused to listen to the researchers, but she listened to Lin Mo. If Vought could shape Lin Mo's thinking, it could shape Joanna's indirectly.

They had found a more reliable means of control than anesthetic gas or sonic weapons. Besides, Lin Mo looked far easier to control than Joanna, physically and mentally.

Vogelbaum looked at Lin Mo's file. Lin Mo, you're smart. You'll know what to do.

Lin Mo soon noticed that his lessons had changed. Previously, Vought had mainly taught him basic language, number recognition, and simple general knowledge.

His teaching materials were carefully screened. They contained no real news about society, no complete maps, and little mention of life outside the underground facility.

The researchers wanted him capable enough to cooperate with experiments.

But they didn't want him growing too curious about the outside world. Once his meetings with Joanna became more frequent, however, new material began appearing in his lessons.

"Who provides your food?"

A female teacher sat across from Lin Mo and asked him gently.

Lin Mo looked at the picture cards on the table. One bore the blue-and-white logo of Vought Corporation; another showed the usual picture of the overgrown babies in The Seven.

"Vought."

"Who protects you from harm?"

"Vought."

"Who helps you learn?"

"Vought."

"Very good."

The teacher placed another card on the table. It showed a child in a white hospital gown undergoing an examination, with a smiling researcher standing nearby.

"Why should you cooperate with examinations?"

Lin Mo deliberately took a moment to think before answering.

"Because they need to know if I'm sick."

"And what else?"

"To see if my abilities have changed."

"Excellent."

The teacher gave him an encouraging smile.

"Examinations protect you and help the company understand your abilities."

"So when researchers ask you to do something, what should you do?"

Lin Mo looked at her and gave the answer she wanted.

"Obey."

"That's right."

She put a checkmark on her form. Lin Mo saw it all. A faint sneer touched his face, then vanished just as quickly.

"Following reasonable instructions is a responsibility."

"Vought takes care of you, so you should help Vought, too."

Lin Mo nodded earnestly, though inwardly he had plenty to say. Good thing his Super Brain was still pulling its weight. Otherwise, memorizing this stuff might really have made him sick.

Vought was teaching him all this for one reason: to control Joanna through him. The researchers had discovered that Joanna didn't care about company orders or instructions over the speakers.

But she watched Lin Mo, listened to him, and copied his behavior. So Vought intensified its efforts to instill its beliefs in him.

First, they would make him trust the company. Then they would have him pass those beliefs on to Joanna.

The whole process seemed gentle, with no threats or force. But it gave him no choice, either.

Just picture card after picture card, praise after praise, and simple logic a child could understand.

Vought gives you food. Vought gives you a room. Vought protects you.

Therefore, you should obey Vought and think of it as your home. If Lin Mo really had been a child raised in an underground laboratory since infancy, those lessons might have worked.

He would never have seen the outside world or known what a family was. He wouldn't know that normal children weren't subjected to daily impacts, punctures, and drug trials.

As long as Vought called experiments "examinations," confinement "protection," and obedience "responsibility," he would struggle to develop any other way of judging things.

The foundations of a person's moral framework were laid in childhood. Even if he learned as an adult that Vought was rotten, he might be powerless to do anything about it—and might not even care.

There were worse outcomes, too. Homelander, for example, hadn't destroyed Vought when he grew up. Instead, he became the product it wanted. Only later did he gradually break away and try to take control of Vought himself.

But in reality, that still meant being in league with Vought.