Black Noir finally reached the pen and paper.
He felt Homelander's fingers on the verge of crushing his heart, so he had to hurry.
Otherwise, John would never see his apology in this lifetime. At the same time, a sliver of hope lingered in his heart.
Maybe Homelander would forgive him?
The Deep was frightened even more witless, curled into a ball, praying only that Homelander wouldn't go crazy and kill him too.
Translucent fared slightly better, messaging Madelyn to tell her that Homelander was about to kill Black Noir.
Just then.
Somewhat heavy footsteps came from outside the door.
"Something terrible's happened!" Ashley Barrett burst through the door.
"There's been an incident at the research center!"
The next second, she saw the scene inside.
"Fuck."
Ashley Barrett took a step back, feeling she had come at the wrong time, caught between staying and leaving.
Homelander had heard Ashley Barrett's footsteps long ago and simply hadn't wanted to acknowledge her, but at the words "research center," his hand stopped.
"What did you say?" He turned his head and asked seriously.
Ashley Barrett's heart pounded, but her legendary reputation for handling pressure wasn't for nothing.
"Redwell Biological Research Center has been breached. The intruder is Soldier Boy."
She walked toward Homelander and held out the tablet in her hand.
Homelander took the tablet, his eyes fixed on the screen, his entire attention focused on it.
Redwell Biological Research Center.
Soldier Boy.
One was the place where he had grown up; the other was the father who had just appeared.
Either one alone could strike precisely at what mattered most to Homelander.
Now they had appeared together.
In his immense shock, he unwittingly released Black Noir.
Black Noir collapsed to the floor, blood gushing from his chest, yet he held the pen and painstakingly wrote on the paper: Sorry.
Ashley Barrett stared at Black Noir, then glanced at Homelander, under immense pressure, an urge to rip out her hair welling up inside her.
The rapid clicking of high heels approached.
It was Madelyn.
First, she had stood in the basement, staring silently for a while at the enormous hole in the ceiling that pierced nearly a hundred floors, then sought out Edgar to ask the questions on her mind.
Then she had received Translucent's message, along with the alert that Redwell Biological Research Center had been breached.
On Edgar's instructions, she had been sent to soothe Homelander.
And to prevent Homelander from learning that Soldier Boy had invaded Redwell Biological Research Center.
But she hadn't expected to be a step too late.
She looked at Ashley Barrett and asked through practically gritted teeth, "Ashley, why are you here?"
Ashley Barrett's face turned deathly pale, and she stammered, "It's Soldier Boy. He..."
Madelyn's glare stopped her halfway through.
Ashley Barrett finally couldn't take it anymore and tore out a handful of hair.
What the hell was all this? By the time she had finished buying cigarettes for Soldier Boy, her feet had been a bloody mess.
She had only given her wounds some basic treatment before returning to report to Vought International, then immediately received news of the breach at the research center.
She had hoped that telling Homelander promptly would make up for her mistakes, but it looked as though she had walked straight into trouble again.
"John, are you all right?" Madelyn forced herself to remain calm.
Homelander ignored her, not even bothering to tell her to shut up, his eyes locked on the screen.
The footage showed the live surveillance feed from Redwell Biological Research Center.
Outside the laboratory building, dozens of security personnel lay sprawled in every direction.
They kept screaming in agony, unable to move but in no danger of dying, while shattered bullets covered the ground.
Clearly, a fierce battle had just taken place here.
Homelander switched through the other camera feeds, finally stopping at a familiar place.
The Superhero Breeding Room.
The place where he had grown up. Everything in the footage was so familiar.
The all-white observation room, cameras everywhere, almost no furniture.
The confinement room, which Homelander preferred to call by the somewhat childish name of the "bad room."
The ability-testing area, including the incinerator and high-pressure chamber.
And the psychology room.
The corners of Homelander's mouth trembled involuntarily. His childhood experiences seemed to be right before his eyes, making him profoundly uncomfortable.
His psychological systems, emotional stability, and even neural structure had all been enhanced by Compound V.
His capacity to endure was extraordinarily broad, yet even so, he experienced post-traumatic stress disorder at that moment.
"Hah-" Homelander gasped for breath, wanting to keep switching camera feeds to find Soldier Boy.
His finger had just touched the screen when the elevator doors in the Superhero Breeding Room opened.
A tall figure emerged from the elevator.
Soldier Boy!
Many people stood inside the laboratory. They had received the alarm long ago, and every one of them cowered like a frightened quail.
A young researcher's face was deathly pale:
"S-Soldier Boy?!"
"Good evening, you bastards!" Soldier Boy shouted.
His usual flippant expression was gone as he surveyed everyone sternly.
The superhero who had fought in World War II unleashed his full presence, leaving everyone struggling to breathe under the pressure.
The hall was terrifyingly silent. The laboratory researchers were well informed.
They had long since learned that Soldier Boy had reappeared on the streets of New York and even fought Homelander.
But none of them had imagined that Soldier Boy would appear here as an intruder.
What was he going to do?
Soldier Boy stood in the center of the hall, slowly rolling his neck.
Crack, crack.
The sound of his neck joints moving was particularly unnerving.
"You know, I'm in a real bad mood tonight."
He slowly raised his head, not a trace of amusement left in those blue eyes.
"I just got out of that fucking secret base in Russia, and what do I hear? What you spineless piles of human shit have been doing."
"Sir, might there be some misunderstanding?" Marty summoned his courage and asked.
"Fuck, listen up, you bald old buzzard," Soldier Boy growled angrily.
"Homelander, that pussy who dresses like a sissy, is my son."
"I'm the only one who gets to teach him a lesson. Not you. His old man's here to stand up for him today."
Watching the video, Homelander was completely stunned, his mind utterly blank.
He had considered many possible reasons for Soldier Boy going to the research center, but never that he had gone to stand up for him.
In his understanding of the world, someone standing up for him simply didn't exist. No one had ever stood between him and malice.
As for Soldier Boy's insults, Homelander hadn't taken in a word.
Inside the laboratory, the researchers were even more bewildered than Homelander.
Some began hallucinating, seeing a figure with a scythe flickering beside them.
Soldier Boy had no patience to wait for them to react and strode up to an elderly researcher.
He seized the elderly researcher's neck with one hand and lifted him bodily into the air.
The old man struggled in pain, and stifled cries rang through the laboratory.
Only when the old man seemed a little dead did Soldier Boy put him down.
Having narrowly escaped death, the elderly researcher stared at Soldier Boy in terror, tears and snot streaming down his face.
Soldier Boy stared at him. "You answer whatever I ask. Understand?"
The old man's pupils contracted sharply, and he nodded like a chicken pecking grain.
"Did you participate in the experiments on Homelander?"
The old man hesitated. The pain in his neck hadn't faded, and he couldn't speak, so he could only nod.
Soldier Boy narrowed his eyes.
"Good. I'll kill you last. Now tell me who hurt Homelander the most. Point them out."
At those words, the old man trembled all over in terror, but he still yielded under the threat.
He pointed out Marty and Frank in turn.
Watching the video, Homelander breathed heavily.
These two often starred in Homelander's nightmares.
Soldier Boy looked at the pair, then slowly approached Frank first.
In the original show, this was the man who had always been responsible for testing Homelander's endurance.
While Homelander suffered temperatures of over a thousand degrees, Frank had been tossing balls of paper into a trash can.
"What did you do?" Soldier Boy asked, despite knowing the answer.
Frank spoke with difficulty. "Sir, I was just... I was just doing my job."
"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."
Soldier Boy sneered. "If it was your job, what are you apologizing for?"
"Tell me. What did you do?" His patience gone, he grabbed Frank by the collar.
Frank was already too terrified to speak.
Soldier Boy frowned and looked at the others.
"Sir, I know!" A young man ran out from a corner of the laboratory.
"Frank put Homelander in the incinerator and roasted him!" The young man summoned his courage. "Can I leave now?"
He was quick-witted, selling out his colleague at the first opportunity. Better someone else dead than him.
Soldier Boy nodded in satisfaction. "No."
The young man's eyes widened in terror. "I-I joined long after Homelander had left."
"Relax, pussy. I need you to identify more people. I'll let you go." He was utterly unconcerned.
He looked at Frank. "Let's give you a taste of what that dumbass kid felt back then."
With that, Frank was tossed into the high-temperature test chamber like a chick.
As Homelander watched from beyond the screen, his face having completely lost all ability to manage its expressions, the lever was pulled.
Frank went to a better place without even letting out a scream.
Homelander's fantasy in the elevator had become reality in a different way.
Without pausing, Soldier Boy looked at the young man. "What did Marty do?"
Marty kept backing away, looking pleadingly at the two of them.
The young man didn't dare meet Marty's eyes and stammered:
"He... he exposed Homelander when he was doing certain things during puberty, and gave him the nickname Airplane Boy."
Marty's heart sank completely.
Fortunately, he still held himself together fairly well. "Sir, I never physically harmed Homelander the way Frank did."
"Take off your pants," Soldier Boy ordered in a tone that brooked no argument.
"Sir, I-I..." Marty stammered, deeply embarrassed.
"Heh." Soldier Boy gave a cold chuckle. "So you do know what embarrassment feels like."
He stepped forward and kicked Marty in the crotch.
The sound of testicles bursting.
Marty's scream no longer sounded human.
Soldier Boy didn't kill him. He thought an operation like that, cutting off Marty's descendants, was enough.
Stepping over Marty, he swept his gaze across the others.
"Who else?!!"
Homelander breathed rapidly, his pupils trembling violently.
Just then, Queen Maeve returned too, greeted upon entering by an explosive scene of utter chaos.
Madelyn frowned deeply, holding a tablet as well. "Damn it, what is Soldier Boy doing?"
"John, I want you to take the others and stop him. We can't let him keep destroying Vought's property."
Homelander kept his head lowered, then suddenly laughed.
"Ha."
Then came a fit of laughter that lasted dozens of seconds, growing stranger and stranger.
From suppressed to unrestrained.
The Deep and the others instinctively moved to obey Madelyn's order.
"Nobody moves." Homelander's eyes lit up. Red.
Before you continue