First Meeting

"And Lin Mo happened to be able to meet that emotional need. Whether it works or not, why not try someone she's close to?"

"At worst, we treat Lin Mo a little better from now on and let him go aboveground more often." Vogelbaum spoke last, settling the matter.

"But..." Barbara parted her lips, then chose silence. She rose and left the laboratory.

"I hope I haven't made the wrong choice. Otherwise, Joanna may..." Vogelbaum watched Barbara leave and muttered to himself.

The meeting was scheduled for two days later.

The researchers did not let the children meet right away. Before the experiment began, they put Lin Mo through several additional examinations.

Physical endurance, bone strength, and most importantly, an emotional assessment and psychological conditioning.

That told Lin Mo at once that the Vought researchers did not simply want him to meet Homelander. They probably intended to use him to control and guide her indirectly.

Sure enough, they had even brought in a psychologist.

Lin Mo watched the psychological researcher in front of him preach American supremacy. A practiced smile appeared on his face. Unfortunately for them, he had awakened his Super Brain a year earlier. It was still at a rudimentary stage, but fooling this researcher was easy enough.

Previously, the researchers had made no attempt to brainwash him. They had more or less left him to develop on his own.

Now they were even asking whether he was afraid of the blond girl.

Lin Mo showed the hesitation expected of a three-year-old. In short, he played innocent.

He did not immediately say he was not afraid. That would have made him seem too mature. He lowered his head and fiddled with the toy car in his hands for a while before asking softly:

"Will she hit me?"

The psychological researcher questioning him reassured him:

"She might just have trouble controlling her strength."

"Will it hurt?"

"It might."

Lin Mo made a show of touching his arm.

The researcher by the door wrote a line on the record sheet.

[SOL-0 understands the potential risk but has shown no strong aversion.]

Then she said to Lin Mo:

"If you can, tell her we're her family..."

Lin Mo found that rather ironic, but he obediently agreed on the surface.

As he watched the pen move across the page, a few thoughts stirred in his mind.

Vought wanted him to act brave, but not so brave that he stopped seeming like a child. They wanted him to be willing to meet HL-01.

They also needed to confirm that his willingness came from the company's guidance, not from independent thought on the test subject's part. Here, even a word or an expression would be dissected and analyzed.

When the day of the meeting arrived, Lin Mo was taken into a reinforced room.

The room was large, with a soft, colorful carpet covering the floor. Children's tables and chairs, picture-book shelves, and blocks of different shapes stood along the walls.

On the surface, it looked like an ordinary Game Room.

The reality was entirely different.

Every piece of furniture was made from high-strength composite materials. Metal frames ran through the tables and chairs, and the picture-book pages had been treated to resist tearing. Lin Mo glanced through them. They were mostly albums about Vought's heroes. Very American.

Beneath the carpet lay a shock-absorbing layer. Lin Mo could even hear the low hum of equipment inside the walls.

The anesthetic gas supply was connected, and the sonic weapons were on standby.

At least six or seven people stood behind the Observation Window.

Most were researchers. Security personnel would be no match for Homelander, even as a child, so there were fewer guards than usual.

Vogelbaum and two Vought management representatives were there as well. All this preparation was just to put two three-year-olds in the same room.

Lin Mo was seated in the center of the Game Room. Having entered first, he immediately acted as though the toys had caught his attention.

A staff member placed several boxes of blocks in front of him.

"You can play for a while."

Lin Mo did not refuse. He was a child, after all. He would have preferred an online game, but that was out of the question. Mobile phones had only just come out. He picked a few blocks from a box and slowly built a crooked little house.

Just as he did when playing in his own room, he put a red block on top.

Then he looked up at the closed metal door on the far side of the room. He could hear breathing beyond it. As expected, Homelander was there.

He looked away and went back to his blocks.

Behind the Observation Window, Vogelbaum confirmed that all the equipment was ready.

"Open HL-01's isolation door."

Barbara hesitated before asking:

"Aren't we sending a caregiver in with her?"

"There's no need."

Vogelbaum watched the monitor.

"A caregiver in the room would only add another stimulus."

To put it more plainly, nobody wanted to bring her in personally.

Over the past year, several groups of staff assigned to care for HL-01 had been replaced. They could hardly be called caregivers, since Vought had ordered that Homelander not be allowed contact with anyone else. Even so, when they collected data or delivered nutrients,

some had been scratched by her, and others had suffered broken bones after she pushed them over. One staff member had tried to take away her blue blanket by force. She had flung them against a wall without a second thought, and they were still in rehabilitation.

She had not meant to kill anyone. But to a superhuman child who did not understand her own strength, ordinary people were terribly fragile.

Children never knew their own strength, and she had no one to teach her.

The metal door clicked softly, and the isolation passage slowly opened.

Lin Mo did not turn around at once. He kept playing with the blocks in front of him.

No footsteps came from the passage. If Lin Mo had not been on the verge of awakening his Super Hearing, he might not have heard her approach at all.

The girl stepped onto the floor barefoot, moving lightly.

She paused behind the door for a moment, apparently studying the room.

Only then did Lin Mo look up. His eyes widened as he took a careful look at the wild card in this world.

After a moment, he reached a verdict: a picture-perfect porcelain doll. No, a Western doll described her better.

The blond girl stood at the entrance, still wearing the white lab coat, but the blue blanket was no longer in her arms.

Clearly, Vought did not want a familiar object influencing the experiment's results.

Without the blanket, she kept both hands clenched around the hem of her coat. Her stance was guarded.

She did not cry or make a fuss. Perhaps she thought she was being taken for another experiment. In the past, whenever they took her blanket away, they put her through painful tests.

She did not ask where she was, nor did the toys scattered around the room draw her attention as they would an ordinary child's. She had never played with them before.

She glanced at the Observation Window, then fixed her gaze on Lin Mo.

Everyone in the Observation Room grew tense.

"HL-01's heart rate is rising," someone warned at once.

"Keep the sedation system on standby."

"Don't activate the sonic weapons early."

Vogelbaum stared at the screen and swallowed.

"Let's see what she chooses to do."

The blond girl stood in the doorway, watching Lin Mo for a long time.

Lin Mo made no move toward her. He still could not tell what she thought he was.

A stranger, a new caregiver, or a toy brought in to test her.

She might take any sudden movement as a threat.

They watched each other from opposite sides of the room.

In the end, the blond girl moved first.

She did not hide in a corner, head for the shelves full of toys, or attack the equipment in the room.

She walked straight toward Lin Mo. Her bare feet crossed the soft carpet, making almost no sound.

She was not moving quickly, but she still made the people in the Observation Room hold their breath.

The researchers in the Observation Room began recording their observations.

"HL-01 approached of her own accord."

"No signs of aversion."

"Gaze remains fixed on SOL-0."

The girl stopped in front of Lin Mo and looked down at the block house he had built.

More precisely, she was looking at the red block on top.

After a moment of silence, Lin Mo reached out, took the red block off the house, and spoke to her for the first time.

"Want it?"

The girl raised her eyes to him but did not answer.

Lin Mo held out the block. She still did not take it.