"Beat it."
The Deep went through every piece of internal information in his head.
He had sneaked looks at the Vought Security Department's superhuman ability database more than once. There were only a handful of registered shapeshifting profiles.
Thanks to how long his transformations lasted, Shapeshifter's ability had been ranked first by an overwhelming margin.
The other shapeshifters were either dead or had been locked up in Red River for abusing their powers.
So no one else could do this, maintaining a transformation for over ten minutes.
Then who was this?
The Deep stared fixedly at that face.
Once he crossed the last name off his mental list, his knees began sinking uncontrollably, and cold sweat quickly soaked the back of his shirt.
So this was the real... boss?
The problem was, he had said goodbye to the boss before leaving Seven Tower after work. It had not even been an hour since then.
Fuck...
Was this some terrorist organization's plot?
But why come after me?!
"Who the fuck are you?"
The Deep tried to make his voice sound tougher, pitching it considerably higher than usual.
"This is a member of The Seven's private residence. You're trespassing.
"Whoever you are, the boss won't let you get away with this.
"You know who I am, right? I'm The Deep, Lord of the Seven Seas. If you leave now, we can pretend this never happened."
John looked at The Deep as though he were an idiot, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets.
"Kevin."
After a moment of silence, John finally spoke, his tone level.
"Did Homelander ever tell you that the plane's black box should be kept somewhere safer?"
The Deep froze.
That plane... that black box.
(For those unfamiliar with the plot, here's a little context: Homelander and Queen Maeve accidentally destroyed the controls during a plane rescue.
But he couldn't save everyone aboard, so to keep his reputation and approval ratings from suffering once the incident came to light, he decided to simply let the plane crash, then deliberately framed it as a failure by the authorities to act.)
It had been three in the morning when he retrieved that thing from the seabed. Even Ambrosius knew nothing about it.
He had hidden it beneath the keel of a sunken ship in a trench somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. Every time he checked on it, he had to avoid sonar and merchant ships, all for a piece of "leverage."
A secret piece of "leverage" he could use when threatened.
And only one person in the entire world knew about this: himself.
Yet the man before him had casually spoken the greatest secret buried in his heart.
H-how was this possible?!
Where exactly had things gone wrong...?
If Homelander found out, he would never see the next sunrise.
No... could the man before him really be the boss?
Had he come to settle accounts?
Then that excessively young face...
Fuck! Who knew?!
Whatever drugs Vought gave Homelander were far beyond his access. They never let him touch those serum files with the highest security clearance.
Maybe Compound V could make cells divide in reverse once pushed to its limits. Maybe Homelander had long been adjusting his biological age through some method he knew nothing about.
Right. He was here because the black box had been exposed.
He was here to settle accounts.
Smack-
The Deep's knees gave out at that instant. His kneecaps struck the wooden floor with a dry thud.
"No, that's not it. That black box... if it fell into someone else's hands, the consequences would be unthinkable."
"Think about it. What if an undercurrent swept it into coastal waters, some fisherman hauled it up, and sold it to the media? Imagine how excited those vultures would get.
"Translucent just went missing. The Seven already has enough PR pressure to deal with. If the cockpit recording got out too, that big-nosed bitch Ashley would never be able to contain it."
As he spoke, The Deep lifted his right hand off the floor and pressed it to his chest.
"So I brought it up and hid it in a trench.
"That trench isn't on any commercial shipping route. Sonar can't reach it, and satellites can't photograph it.
"Even the Vought Security Department's deep-sea surveillance network doesn't cover that area.
"I didn't do this for any other reason. I just wanted to keep the recording from leaking.
"If someone ever tries to come after you, I can retrieve the original immediately and destroy it, or turn it around and use it against them.
"I'm looking out for you, sir!"
"Oh... very nicely put, Kevin."
After listening to The Deep's self-indulgent defense, John delivered that line with the hint of a smile.
"But you've got one thing wrong. I'm not Homelander. More precisely, I'm not the Homelander you know."
Half-kneeling in front of the coffee table, The Deep had just been about to congratulate himself on his watertight excuse when John's unexpected remark reached him.
Not...
He wasn't Homelander? Then what the fuck was he?
It had to be said that although The Deep could sometimes be as stupid as a fucking idiot, his ability to invent scenarios in his head was first-rate.
He suddenly thought of someone, a man he passed in Vought Tower's corridors every day without ever sparing him another glance.
Black Noir. That bastard was like a mute robot, always wearing a fully enclosed mask, never speaking, never showing his face. No one had ever seen what he really looked like.
In all his years at Vought, The Deep had never known who was beneath Black Noir's mask.
He was merely a shadow that carried out orders, never making mistakes, never questioning, never betraying.
He was Vought's ultimate insurance policy and Edgar's most trusted instrument of murder.
All The Deep knew was that Black Noir had been around for a long time. If Vought could create one Black Noir, they could create a second.
If Vought could manufacture a superhuman who obeyed every order and never showed his face, why couldn't they manufacture something younger, stronger, and easier to control?
A clone of a certain Homelander, for instance.
(This is a tribute to the comics. If you don't like it, I can change it.)
Vought never did anything without a purpose.
If Vought had created a younger Homelander, his purpose could only be more covert and more lethal than Black Noir's.
As for whom he was meant to deal with...
Perhaps there was only one answer.
Homelander himself.
Vought needed something that could keep Homelander in check if he lost control, a version with the same powers but greater obedience.
But for some reason, this backup had now been activated ahead of schedule and appeared before The Deep.
Had Vought's dissatisfaction with Homelander already reached some critical threshold?
Or had the information he possessed become enough to threaten Vought's rule?
Fuck, why did I have to hide that thing? Goddammit!
The Deep, you fucking pig-brained idiot!
At that thought, The Deep, well versed in the art of staying alive, immediately arrived at the ultimate insight-
Run right now!
Maybe this "clone" only had a counterfeit face, not the matching powers?
Maybe he was just a cheap fake brought in for show?
Without wasting more words, The Deep snatched the car keys off the coffee table, turned, and charged for the door.
He could use the rooftop terrace to jump onto the neighboring building's fire escape, then head down the emergency stairs and slip into the sewers.
Then he could pass through the drainage pipes and swim along an underground river into the Atlantic Ocean. If possible, he could even hide underwater for the rest of his life.
But ideals were plump, while reality was skin and bones.
Whoosh-
The next second, a dark-red beam grazed his calf and blasted into the doorframe.
As the smoke dispersed, the beam burned a charred groove along the edge of the frame, splitting it from the hinges all the way down to the threshold.
Charred wood chips, still trailing sparks, splashed onto his bare ankles. The heat made him spring back a step.
"Hiss!"
The smell of scorched flesh mingled with an acrid, burned odor in the air, forcing its way into The Deep's nose.
"Did I let you leave?"
A devil-like voice came from behind him, flat and mild, yet its underlying threat had already reached the utmost intensity.
John had straightened away from the wall, his hands still in his pockets. He walked at an unhurried pace, his soles making almost no sound against the wooden floor.
But The Deep could feel that terrifying pressure closing in on him.
Those blue eyes had now turned into pools of searing crimson.
The dark-red halos around his irises shone with particular intensity in the dim living room.
The Deep could even feel the burning heat on his skin as those eyes watched his face.
Within just a few breaths, John was standing before him.
He was half a head taller than The Deep, and those blazing-red eyes were now looking down at him.
Something churned deep within his pupils, like magma, like the dark red shining through cracks in the earth just before a volcano erupted.
Shit...
Before his brain even caught up, The Deep's knees gave out again. He followed his heart without hesitation and dropped to the wooden floor, prostrating himself.
Then he pressed his palms together and raised them above his head, all ten fingers trembling violently.
"Don't kill me! Please don't kill me! I was wrong! I shouldn't have run-"
"How amusing. Wouldn't it have been easier to sit down and talk from the start?"
John pulled out a chair beside the dining table and sat, crossing his legs and resting his clasped hands on his knee.
The red glow in his eyes had faded until only a faint ring of dark-red embers remained around his irises.
Even after hearing John's words, The Deep remained pressed against the cold wooden floor, his palms together above his head, all ten fingers still trembling.
He dared not look up or lower his hands, terrified that the moment he raised his head, a blast of Heat Vision would instantly finish him off.
"Noisy. I don't like saying the same thing twice."
John's voice came from the dining table.
"Stand up. Sit down."
After a long battle between heaven and man within his heart, The Deep finally climbed off the floor.
Then he hunched over and walked to the dining table, pulled out the chair opposite John, and perched on only the front third of the seat, his back as taut as a fully drawn bow.
He looked just like a model student.
"I'm not interested in you, and I don't want your black box. Keep it. But you need to do something for me."
"I... yes. I'll make sure it gets done, sir!"
"I want you to look into all the sealed superhuman experiment records from the last century in Vought's archives.
"Not the batch records for today's mass-produced Compound V. I mean the period around World War II, when Vought was just getting started.
"Soldier Boy's original injection records, clinical trial data for Original Compound V, any documents related to the V1 formula.
"Vought has probably deleted these files from its regular catalogs, but there should still be paper backups in R&D's cold storage or the underground archives.
"Your clearance is enough to get into those places."
Hearing John's words, The Deep swallowed.
V1.
He had only heard that term a handful of times in all his years at Vought. It was a more primitive drug than Compound V, the source of all superhumans.
It was also Vought's most deeply buried secret.
Soldier Boy had been created with it.
After World War II, Vought had kept those files sealed for decades.
Every record with any connection to V1 had been marked with the highest security classification. Even members of The Seven might not have sufficient clearance for some of it.
He opened his mouth, wanting to say this was ten thousand times more dangerous than the black box.
But looking at the "nuclear kindness" in John's eyes, it was obvious there was no room for negotiation, so he could only swallow those words.
"Also, make me a list of every old researcher you know who's worked in R&D for more than thirty years.
"Yes, the old men who've been working at Vought since the seventies or eighties, who lived through Soldier Boy's era, and might even have been sidelined or retired by now.
"Find them for me and ask exactly where the original V1 formula is hidden."
"I'll get it done, sir."
"I know a few old guys in R&D. I've seen the paper backups in the underground archives too, and I have the access code for cold storage.
"As long as the V1 files are still in this building, I can dig them out."
"Mm."
[Current World Distortion Level: 12%]
John raised an eyebrow at The Deep and remained silent for a few seconds.
Although this fish-reeking idiot was usually unreliable and as timid as a mouse,
in a certain sense, that was also a form of loyalty.
Having wielded the stick, it was time to offer a sweet date.
"By the way, are you interested in being The Seven's second-in-command?"