"Things You Said"
At six in the evening, Cate, who had just changed into a clean pair of pants, sat forlornly in the farthest corner of the cafeteria.
A plate of cold spaghetti sat in front of her.
She twirled a few strands around her fork and chewed for a long time before swallowing.
There weren't many people in the cafeteria. A few freshmen were still crowded around the vending machine, fighting over the last can of Coke.
"Damn it, what the hell should I do..."
Cate pushed the cold spaghetti aside and opened the email Shetty had just sent.
It was bed B-12. Gabriel, one of the "volunteers," was showing signs of losing control.
Shetty needed her to administer "psychological" treatment.
She stared silently at that line for a long while.
Just last week, she had used mind control on Gabriel. His heart rate had been steady, his muscles relaxed, and she had even been able to joke around with him.
But in just a few days, that stability had spiraled out of control?
Although Cate really didn't want to follow John's psychological suggestion and rethink past events.
Once suspicion took root, however, many things became complicated.
Frustrated, Cate closed the email, finished her orange juice, crushed the paper cup, and threw it in the trash.
Whatever happened, she had to find evidence first.
Six in the evening.
When Cate pushed open the door, Headmistress Shetty was standing beside Gabriel's bed, holding her ever-present cup of English black tea and looking at her with a warm smile.
"Cate, you're here."
Shetty's voice was as friendly as ever.
"Gabri's emotional fluctuations have been fairly severe today. You may need to spend a little more time on him.
The same method as always. Just help stabilize his consciousness frequency and pull him back from the brink of losing control."
"Okay."
Cate said nothing more. She walked to the bedside and set her canvas bag by her feet.
Gabriel was lying on a metal bed, an IV line inserted into his wrist, pumping pale blue liquid into him.
The numbers on the heart rate monitor swung wildly between one hundred thirty and one hundred fifty.
His eyes were open, his pupils contracting and dilating violently beneath the fluorescent lights, as though something invisible were repeatedly terrifying him.
His lips moved soundlessly, their movements disjointed, unable to form complete words.
Cate took off her gloves.
"Phew-"
She exhaled deeply and gently pressed the fingertips of her right hand against Gabriel's temple.
The instant their skin touched, Gabri's body instinctively stiffened, then slowly relaxed beneath her fingertips.
She could feel his consciousness like a tangled ball of yarn, all its defenses unraveling at her touch.
But this time, instead of pressing that loosened consciousness back into place as usual, she probed inward through the cracks. She was reading backward through his memories.
This was actually Cate's first time doing something like this.
When she had first started working for Shetty, she had considered reading backward through these "volunteers'" memories.
But strangely, she had discovered that these people were rarely lucid.
Most of the time, drugs steeped them in a murky fog. Occasionally, they surfaced for a breath, only to be pushed under again the next second.
Their memories were nothing but fragments, like a book with most of its pages torn out, the remaining pages seemingly smeared with ink and impossible to make out clearly.
Forcibly reading a consciousness like this and assembling a workable chain of logic was therefore an extremely mentally taxing task.
But now Cate was desperate to find the truth. She couldn't concern herself with all that.
Her consciousness began to intrude.
For efficiency, and to avoid letting Shetty notice anything unusual, Cate endured the stabbing pain of mental exertion and took a shortcut.
She only needed to find Shetty's face, find white coats, find syringes, and she could piece together the "fragments" of what Gabri had experienced.
The images began flowing backward from the most recent point in time.
First came a few hours earlier. Gabriel lay in bed as someone in a white coat injected a new drug into his IV line.
The drug was an extremely pale blue. The instant it entered him, his heart rate began skyrocketing, his muscles convulsed violently, and hoarse howls escaped his mouth.
The person in the white coat stood beside the bed, watching expressionlessly as the numbers on the monitor climbed, made a few marks on a clipboard, then turned and left.
Then came a few days earlier.
The same white coat, the same syringe, a different drug.
This time was even worse.
Within seconds of the injection, Gabri's skin began ulcerating outward from the needle hole.
Gray-blue patches spread along his blood vessels like mold, veins bulging from his arms all the way to his neck.
Then he began convulsing, the muscles throughout his body twisting in different directions. White foam poured from the corners of his mouth, running down his chin onto the pillow.
Was this treatment? Was this an attempt to stabilize him?
Watching this scene, Cate's heart raced.
No amount of explanation or concealment held any weight once the truth came into view.
But the little evidence she had found was nowhere near enough to verify her suspicions.
She needed more.
Before long, Cate's fingertips trembled slightly against Gabriel's temple.
She withdrew her fingers with a steady movement, stood up as usual, picked up the clipboard from the table, and signed it.
On the screen beside her, Gabri's heart rate had now dropped into the eighties. His muscles were relaxed, his breathing steady.
Shetty walked over in her high heels, glanced at the numbers on the monitor, and nodded in satisfaction.
"Very good. I knew you could do it. His fluctuations are much greater than last week, so he needs more observation. Go back and get some rest."
"Okay."
Cate put the clipboard back on the table, picked up her canvas bag, and pushed through the laboratory door.
But she chose not to leave.
Shetty's laboratory was on the third basement level. Whenever Cate finished the mind control and left, Shetty would signal the nearby security guard to authorize access to the elevator, then head down to the third basement level.
Cate clearly didn't have that clearance, so she had never been there and didn't know what secrets were hidden inside.
But today, she was determined to see just what this so-called truth was.
Inside the room, the conversation continued.
"The data for tonight's batch of samples has already been uploaded. Gabriel in bed B-12 was just treated, and his heart rate has come down.
When you take him back to basement level three, remember to adjust the infusion pump settings. The tolerance test for the new formula requires a higher initial dose."
Shetty handed him the clipboard.
"Also, the girl in bed C-07 cried for a long time today. Give her another shot of sedative."
The guard took the clipboard and nodded. Shetty turned toward the elevator, then went down to level three.
Seeing that his boss had left, the guard headed toward the end where Cate had just "left," the clipboard tucked under his arm.
Cate nervously pressed herself against the wall. She wrapped the canvas bag's strap around her hand once to keep it from swinging and making noise.
Then she peeked halfway around the corner again.
The guard was walking toward her, one hand absently fiddling with the channel dial on the radio at his waist.
He was still about thirty or forty meters away.
He hadn't seen her yet, but his route would inevitably take him past the corner where she was hiding, and this corridor had no branches or alcoves.
So she could only make it quick when he reached the corner.
Shetty must have already briefed the guard on the rest of tonight's procedures.
But if he saw a student who should have returned to her dorm still standing in the level-three corridor at this hour, his first response wouldn't be to ask questions.
It would be to call Shetty directly.
Then not only would tonight's plan go up in smoke, but she would be in danger too.
He was still about a dozen meters away.
Cate could even hear the rhythm of his breathing through his nose.
Five meters. Four.
Her fingers brushed the fabric of her gloves inside the canvas bag.
She gently drew the gloves out, took a deep breath, pressed her shoulder against the wall, bent her knees slightly, and lowered her center of gravity.
He was here.
Now!
Cate's heel made a faint scraping sound against the concrete floor.
The next instant, a long-haired figure glided into view in front of the guard.
Startled, the guard jerked his head up. His half-drooping eyelids flew wide, his mouth opened, and his hand instinctively reached for the radio at his waist.
But Cate gave him no chance to react.
The fingertips of her right hand slipped against his temple like a nimble snake.
The instant their skin touched, the guard's body froze.
"You didn't see anything."
Cate spoke close to his ear, keeping her voice as low as possible.
"Now keep walking, finish adjusting Gabriel's infusion pump settings, give bed C-07 another shot of sedative, then authorize the elevator to level three for me.
You won't mention tonight to anyone.
When you hand over your shift tomorrow morning, you won't remember seeing anyone. You just worked an ordinary night shift."
The blank-faced guard began carrying out Cate's instructions.
He bent down, picked up the radio and clipboard, secured the scattered papers, turned, returned to where he had been, and opened the elevator.
"Phew-"
Cate breathed a sigh of relief, then clenched her fists and turned toward the fire stairs.
Basement level three.
The corridor here was dark and cold, and even filled with a foul smell that mingled formalin, rotting flesh, and blood.
One of the fluorescent tubes was still flickering, casting alternating light and shadow over the rusty pipes and valves.
Cate pulled her coat tighter, switched on her phone's flashlight, and approached a door.
The door was marked "Specimen Room." Fighting the nauseating smell, Cate covered her mouth and nose with her sleeve and walked inside.
The glass cubicles on both sides of the corridor were fully equipped with metal beds and IV stands, and the heart rate monitors were still pulsing.
Cate's gaze quickly focused on the people lying in the beds.
Some were still breathing, IV lines inserted into their wrists, their lips moving soundlessly.
Some seemed to have already died. Their skin had taken on the gray-blue color characteristic of failed Compound V metabolism, their eyes open and their pupils shrunk to tiny black dots.
The flashlight's beam kept jumping across the glass. Her hand had begun to shake.
Inside was cubicle three.
She recognized the bald man lying in the bed.
A few weeks ago, Shetty had said he was being transferred to a rehabilitation center in Chicago. Before leaving, the man had even thanked her and said he would buy her pizza once he recovered.
But now he lay on a metal bed, his hair shaved off, several extremely fine holes drilled into the top of his head, electrodes connected to a machine that was still running.
In cubicle seven beside him, a young girl who had already lost consciousness lay curled up, her head drooping against a chair. Both her hands were strapped to the edge of the bed, all her fingernails peeled back.
She wasn't dead yet. She was breathing only faintly.
Beneath her was a large puddle of liquid and filth.
"Urgh-"
At the sight of this horrific scene, nausea surged through Cate. She bent over and dry-heaved toward the floor, tears mingling with snot as they dripped onto the concrete.
Once the wave of nausea passed, she braced one hand on her knee, slid down the wall, and collapsed on the floor.
Her other hand pressed tightly over her mouth, all her sobs trapped in her throat as she shuddered in waves.
Tears seeped through her fingers as though they cost nothing, dripping down her chin onto the canvas bag and soaking it into a small, dark patch.
"How could she... how could I..."
Her voice broke in fits and starts. She didn't dare look at the glass cubicles, but she didn't dare close her eyes either.
Those images only became clearer when she closed her eyes.
Gabriel's ulcerated skin, the girl's peeled-back fingernails, the electrodes drilled into the bald man's head.
All the unfortunate people she had "treated" on those record sheets were now lying mere steps away from her, their lives or deaths unknown.
So... what he said was true.
I... hurt them.
Cate sat there for a long time.
The flashlight's beam shone on the opposite wall, while the heart rate monitors in the glass cubicles kept beeping away.
Listening to those sounds, she numbly took her phone from her pocket, found the number she had just added, and typed a line:
"I'm in."
[Current World Distortion Level: 58%]
Stan Edgar sat before the floor-to-ceiling windows of his top-floor office in Vought Tower.
The black coffee in his hand had long since gone completely cold, a ring of brown residue clinging to the cup.
Outside the window lay New York's predawn skyline, the signal lights atop several buildings blinking constantly in the darkness.
The camera returned to the office.
It froze on the tablet screen.
"Connection failed."
Displayed there was the last communication log Black Noir had sent back, its timestamp fixed at the early hours of that morning.
The message contained only a single line, written in marker on a memo board, photographed, and sent over:
Target location confirmed. Multiple people.
After that came silence. No matter how many encrypted communication requests the security department sent, Black Noir's terminal gave no response.
And this was the first time Black Noir had gone dark since joining Vought.
Edgar took off his rimless glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger.
As the man at Vought's helm, he disliked the feeling of losing control.
Ever since the Mangrove resettlement site had been breached, he had deployed all of Vought's intelligence resources to track the intruder, only to come up empty-handed.
The surveillance system there had long since been hacked. When the footage was exported after the database was repaired, it was still endlessly looping surveillance footage from one particular night.
The security department had discovered suspected Heat Vision energy residue on a doorframe at the scene. The cut was clean, the energy beam's diameter extremely narrow, and its termination point precise.
That was not something ordinary demolition or cutting methods could produce.
Yet Edgar had not forwarded that report to anyone, merely keeping it locked away in his own terminal.
Homelander, the prime suspect, had been on the top floor of Vought Tower that night, with a complete record of his movements in the patrol log.
Organized. Premeditated.
But their identity was unknown, their intentions unknown.
Faced with a problem like this, even Edgar, a man of deep schemes who never let joy or anger show on his face, found it somewhat thorny.
After a moment of silence, he took off his suit jacket, laid it on his office chair, and pressed the intercom button.
"Send Madelyn in."
(Some readers may find this a slow burn and skip through some chapters, but I want to fully polish the arcs of all the major characters in the world of The Boys.
After all, this is the first world, and most readers clicked in because of The Boys, so I'll put more care into writing this first world.)
(Also, regarding parts involving Firecracker, Father, and the like, I may not necessarily get around to writing them. If anyone wants them, I can write a side story.)