The Blonde Girl

Lin Mo's heart sank.

Other children.

In three years, Vought had never arranged for him to meet another test subject. Even when he occasionally heard other children crying during transfers, they were quickly kept apart.

Vought did not want its test subjects influencing one another without supervision.

Yet now they were preparing to let him meet another child. There was no way they were doing it because they worried he was lonely.

The air seemed to grow still as the elevator began to descend.

A caregiver gently held his hand and said in a soothing voice, "Don't be nervous."

"The company just wants to find you a companion."

Lin Mo looked up at the changing floor numbers, his face wearing a child's bewilderment.

His mind, however, raced to a conclusion. Vought never arranged companions for its test subjects without a reason. Whoever they were bringing to him was no ordinary child. He only hoped they did not expect him to serve as a shield.

The elevator finally stopped on the seventh basement level.

It was nothing like the experimental floor where Lin Mo had lived.

The walls were a dull gray-white, and there was research equipment, but nothing meant for children.

There was no obvious smell of disinfectant. If one ignored the hidden cameras everywhere, the reinforced alloy doors, and the armed guards posted every ten meters, it would have been easy to let one's guard down.

Seeing it up close, Lin Mo only found it ironic.

Vought excelled at dressing up prisons as homes and disguising experiments as education.

The caregiver led him through two identity checkpoints to an observation room. Vogelbaum was already waiting inside.

Three years had passed, but the scientist in charge of his project had changed little.

Well, he seemed to have even less hair than before, and the exhaustion beneath his eyes was more pronounced. He might go bald any day now.

But when Vogelbaum looked at Lin Mo, his gaze was warm. It felt less like he was looking at a child and more like he was examining a research project that stubbornly refused to yield results. Either way, Lin Mo found it deeply uncomfortable.

Lin Mo's real age was not much younger than Vogelbaum's, and having a grown man stare at him like that...

"Good morning, Lin Mo."

Lin Mo slowly raised his head. At the greeting, he had no choice but to answer.

"Good morning, Doctor."

Vogelbaum crouched so that his eyes were level with Lin Mo's.

"Do you know what a friend is?"

Lin Mo deliberately took a few seconds to think before answering.

"Someone you play with on TV?"

"More or less."

Vogelbaum smiled again.

"Friends play together, eat together, and sometimes learn together."

"Would you like a friend?"

Lin Mo did not answer at once. He glanced at the caregiver, then at Vogelbaum, putting on a look of unfamiliar curiosity.

"Really? Does he live here too?"

"She."

Vogelbaum corrected Lin Mo.

"She's a girl about your age."

A girl.

Several possibilities flashed through Lin Mo's mind.

Over the past three years, he could not have been the only child test subject Vought had raised in its underground facility.

Some came from families that had volunteered for the project. Others might have been born in the laboratory. Still others were probably like him: abandoned babies who likely did not even have legal identities.

The company might be bringing test subjects of the same age together to observe how they would behave socially. But it could also be testing how people with powers reacted to one another in a confrontation.

The most dangerous possibility was that they planned to use another child to spur the growth of his abilities.

"What's her name?"

Lin Mo followed up.

Still smiling, Vogelbaum pointed to the metal door across from them.

"You can try asking her when you meet her."

He stood and nodded to someone outside the observation room.

The metal panel covering the glass ahead slowly rose, revealing a huge one-way observation window.

Beyond the glass was an empty white room.

There was no bed, no table, nothing at all—not even the toys Vought usually used to test children's reactions. That piqued Lin Mo's curiosity, and his gaze moved toward the center.

Only one girl sat in the middle of the room.

She looked about Lin Mo's age. She wore a loose white lab gown, her bare feet resting on the cold floor. Soft blond hair fell to her shoulders, somewhat tangled from going untended for so long.

She clutched a blue blanket tightly to her chest. It seemed to be the only thing in the room that belonged to her.

The girl did not cry, nor did she wander around the unfamiliar room as an ordinary child might.

She merely sat motionless with her head lowered and half her face buried in the blanket, far too quiet for a three-year-old.

Lin Mo could not tell which character from the original story she was. His mind raced. A blond girl... It could not be Annie, could it? The age did not seem right.

He studied the room more closely. The blue blanket...

Wait. A blue blanket? Wasn't that... A possibility struck Lin Mo. Thinking back to the system's earlier hint, he wondered: Could she be Homelander?

The walls around the girl's area had clearly been reinforced a second time. Concealed nozzles were installed in the room's four corners, a miniature sonic device sat above the doorframe, and a separate line in the ceiling could deliver anesthetic gas.

That equipment could not have been meant for an ordinary test subject. Besides, six fully armed guards stood in the observation room alongside Vogelbaum and several researchers.

Two of them carried not ordinary firearms, but high-frequency sonic devices Vought had designed specifically to restrain people with powers.

All that preparation just to let two children meet.

What had the girl behind the glass done?

A researcher handed Vogelbaum a file.

He made no effort to keep it from Lin Mo. Or rather, none of them believed a three-year-old could understand the technical contents of the file.

Standing nearby, Lin Mo swiftly scanned the open page from the corner of his eye.

[Test Subject ID: HL-01.]

[Development method: Artificial embryo cultivation.]

[Genetic sample source: Classified at the highest clearance level.]

[Compound V compatibility: Extremely high.]

[Observed abilities: Enhanced strength, physical durability, enhanced senses.]

[Potential abilities: High-speed movement, aerial mobility, thermal energy emission.]

[Psychological assessment: Highly guarded, refuses contact, attachment formation failed.]

[Incident record: Multiple caregivers injured.]

HL-01.

Lin Mo's expression darkened slightly when he saw the designation, but he immediately concealed it.

There was no mistaking it. The answer was clear.

Three years ago, he had seen that designation in the embryo cultivation area.

The HL Project used Soldier Boy's genetic material, introduced Compound V at the embryonic stage, and was personally overseen by Vogelbaum. Its full name could only be one thing.

The Odessa Project. In other words, Homelander.

Lin Mo looked again at the blond girl behind the glass. Even after three years, he could match her features to the baby in the Incubation Chamber.

She was the test subject who would become Homelander.

But unlike the original story Lin Mo remembered, Homelander in this world was not a man. She was a blond girl.