"Attention"
Godolkin University had an electronic wall.
It displayed a live ranking of every student's abilities, with the name at the top updated once an hour.
So every hour, students in navy uniforms would walk past in twos and threes, stopping before the board to check the live rankings.
Of course, the rankings were also synced to their phones.
For the students here, The Seven were their lifelong goal.
It wasn't just about honor. There was money, fame, and, with any luck, all kinds of beautiful women and handsome men to sweep into their arms.
So the graduating students mostly discussed how generously the practical combat instructors graded, and whether they could squeeze into the outer ranks at Vought headquarters after graduation.
Even carrying bags and working as an assistant for The Seven would be enough to earn them a half-hour motivational speech at their old high school.
Because that was a gilded seal of prestige.
But no one knew that beneath this campus, with its vibrant atmosphere, lay an entirely different scene.
The incandescent lights on the second basement level were particularly bright.
Chilled air laden with the smells of disinfectant and rust enveloped the entire underground area. The metal instruments had been polished to a shine by the cleaners, and equipment filled the space.
In the office farthest inside, a tall, straight-backed figure stood with his hands behind his back, studying the isolation glass before him with interest, along with the woman inside who was undergoing blood tests.
He did not disclose his name to the public. He went only by "The Emissary."
He had brooding features, a small patch of beard on his chin, permed curls, and an impeccably tailored suit.
He looked cultured and refined, a man of roughly thirty.
But no one knew that this outward disguise of a body housed another, foreign soul.
Thomas Godolkin.
A psychic superhuman who had lived for 122 years, and the founder of this school.
Over the past century, he had changed hosts many times, infiltrating every walk of life.
Once those hosts had completed "their" missions, Godolkin would generously close out their accounts, keeping the repercussions to a minimum.
And ten years ago, he had selected a young scholar named Elias as his vessel.
The instant his consciousness forcefully invaded, the body's original personality had been suppressed, driven into a corner by Godolkin's consciousness.
The man standing in the laboratory now was actually Godolkin himself.
"The Emissary" was merely an identity he wore on the outside.
He habitually wore neatly pressed bespoke suits and kept his hair tidy. His light brown eyes behind thin-framed glasses always held a gentle hint of a smile.
To the outside world, the students all thought their new principal, Mr. Emissary, spoke with cultured gentleness and was hundreds of times more approachable than their former principal, Shetty.
But to the assistants collecting data in the underground laboratory, those smiling eyes concealed a viciousness more terrifying than a venomous snake.
"-Whew."
The Emissary was whistling as he stood outside the isolation chamber with his hands behind his back, pinching a piece of lens cloth between his fingers and leisurely polishing his glasses.
One wipe, then he put the glasses on and glanced up at the person inside.
Before him, Marie Moreau leaned against the chamber's glass wall, her black skin showing an unusual pallor.
Her left arm was secured to a medical support, with two sensors piercing her skin.
The isolation chamber was divided into inner and outer sections.
On the miniature lab bench before her lay a bare, nude laboratory mouse.
Its limbs were bound with thin leather straps, and its belly had been shaved clean, exposing thin pink skin.
Beside it, a glass dish held just under half a dish of dark red mouse blood, still warm and clearly freshly drawn from its jugular vein.
"Group seven. Repair test through reinfusion of extracted blood."
"Control all the blood and return it, repairing the puncture in the carotid artery while you're at it. If you can do it, we're done for today.
If you can't, keep going until organ failure."
At the Emissary's words, the assistant beside him paused with the stylus in hand. Their fingertips trembled slightly, but they still pressed the chamber's air valve.
Marie took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Her ability was blood manipulation, but she normally controlled her own blood or stirred an enemy's blood at close range.
Controlling unfamiliar blood outside a body like this, guiding it precisely back into a blood vessel through a puncture finer than a strand of hair, then repairing the damaged vessel wall...
The precision required was as sickening as threading a needle with an ant's antenna.
A moment later, a faint red glow gradually spread from her fingertips.
Then the blood in the glass dish moved.
Fine ripples spread across its surface. Then the entire dishful slowly rose, gathering into an irregular ball of blood that hung in midair.
My head hurts so much.
Marie's brows slowly drew together, and fine beads of cold sweat began seeping from her temples.
There was no "bond" with this extracted blood. Controlling it took ten times the effort of controlling her own, and she had to grip every trickle tightly with her mental power. It was unbearably taxing.
Then the ball of blood slowly stretched, drawing out a thread as fine as a hair that trembled as it aimed at the puncture in the side of the mouse's neck.
It missed.
The thread struck its fur, leaving a small wet patch.
Marie bit her lower lip and tightened her mental focus again. The thread grew a little finer and realigned with the wound.
This time, things went more smoothly. The thread slowly entered the vessel, like red silk passing through the eye of a needle. The assistant watched the monitor and reported quietly:
"Reinfusion at 12%... the inner vessel wall shows slight signs of healing..."
The Emissary said nothing.
He took half a step forward and lightly rested his fingertips against the cold tempered glass.
His gaze settled on that fine thread of blood, his eyes calm.
Still too crude.
His brows drew together almost imperceptibly.
What the Odyssey Project cultivated was repair at the cellular level.
Even if a body suffered grievous injury or death, blood-based repair was supposed to heal it, or even bring it back to life.
But right now, Marie couldn't even properly repair a mouse's blood vessel.
Ultimately, Marie, a poor student, was only a backup candidate.
If he hadn't been unable to find a more suitable prospect, he wouldn't have needed to spend an entire year on one student.
And Marie inside the chamber had clearly reached her limit.
Her fingertips trembled, her lips turned blue, and the thread of blood suspended in midair began wavering, alternately thickening and thinning.
Hold on...
She gritted her teeth, encouraging herself inwardly.
Just a little longer...
The thread was still slowly feeding into the vessel, and the reinfusion progress on the screen had jumped to 47%.
But just then, the mouse's foot suddenly twitched.
The animal's stress response made its blood vessels abruptly contract, and the already tiny puncture suddenly tightened.
This time, Marie's mental power failed to keep up, and the blood thread she was watching instantly spun out of control.
Pfft-
There was an extremely faint, muffled sound.
The mouse's entire abdominal cavity instantly swelled like an inflated balloon, then burst open.
A gift package of warm plasma, shredded flesh, and broken bone fragments spattered noisily against the transparent chamber walls, smearing them with dark red stains.
Drained of strength, Marie leaned against the support, gasping for breath, her chest heaving violently.
The splashing plasma coated half her face, a warm glob reeking strongly of blood.
She looked at the scraps of flesh on the chamber wall, her stomach churning like an overturned sea, but clenched her teeth and held back her vomit.
Another failure.
It was the seventh time today.
In the previous six attempts, either the blood had clotted or the vessels had become blocked. In the worst case, a clot had burst a vessel in the mouse's brain.
But this was the first fucking time one had exploded straight into a puddle of blood.
The Emissary, however, wasn't angry.
He didn't even frown, merely withdrawing the fingertips resting against the glass.
Then he took the neatly folded white handkerchief from his suit pocket and slowly wiped his fingertips.
"Your control over force is still inadequate."
His tone was flat.
"Your mental power is too scattered. You managed to blow up even a mouse like this. You fail this exam."
Marie lowered her head, not daring to answer.
"Add another set."
The Emissary turned and walked back to the console, casually leafing through the experiment logs.
"Rest for ten minutes first, then switch to the second batch of specimens.
And don't use mice next time. Use live rabbits.
Cut open the carotid artery and have her control the blood to stop the bleeding and repair it. She passes when she can do it without spilling a single drop."
Just then, someone suddenly knocked on the laboratory's heavy alloy door.
Three heavy knocks, two light.
It was security's special emergency signal.
The Emissary frowned slightly.
"Come in."
The door slid open to either side, and the security captain rushed in, his face taut with anxiety:
"Mr. Emissary! Something's wrong! Homelander... Mr. Homelander is at the administration building! He's in the principal's office, demanding to see whoever's in charge of the school!"
Homelander?
Why would he suddenly come here?
Could it be... something went wrong on Shetty's end?
Of course, he wasn't panicking.
He, Godolkin, had lived for 122 years. What hadn't he seen?
A brat raised in a laboratory, however powerful, was still nothing more than an immature child in his eyes.
Even if this body died, he had other bodies he could use.
That was his assurance.
"What's there to panic about?"
His tone was calm, without the slightest ripple.
"If he's arrived uninvited, he's either investigating something or looking for someone. Let's go see first."
As he spoke, he turned and headed for the door. After two steps, he stopped and looked back to give an order:
"Lower the isolation chamber to the third basement level and seal it away. Not a trace of anything he shouldn't see can be exposed. If anything goes wrong, you know the consequences."
"Yes!"
The rapid tapping of console keys sounded behind him as the Emissary walked into the corridor with steady steps.
As he walked, he began weighing the causes and consequences in his mind.
Had Homelander suddenly come because of the underground laboratory? Or Storm's virus?
No. Storm guarded that virus more closely than her own life. Even Shetty couldn't access the core strain. There was no reason for information to have leaked to Homelander through her.
Then what was he here for?
Surely not student recruitment.
He gave a derisive chuckle and pressed the elevator's up button.
The principal's office was on the top floor of the administration building.
Its floor-to-ceiling windows faced an entire grove of plane trees. September sunlight poured in, warming the mahogany desk.
A bronze statue of Godolkin stood at the corner of the desk, the old man leaning on a cane and gazing toward the school gates.
But no one knew that the model for that statue was standing in the office right now, wearing another face.
At that moment, Homelander, dressed in his stars-and-stripes uniform, stood beside the statue with his hands behind his back.
"Good morning... Mr. Homelander."
The Emissary approached with a smile and offered his hand, his tone a precisely measured blend of warmth and flattery.
"What a rare guest. I'm the principal, the Emissary. Principal Shetty is away attending an academic conference, so I'm handling school affairs for the time being.
Why didn't you let us know before coming? We could have arranged a reception."
Homelander turned, his blue eyes sweeping over the offered hand. He didn't shake it, merely giving a slight nod.
His gaze was direct, carrying an innate arrogance, as though he were examining an inconsequential object.
"Don't bother."
He showed little enthusiasm.
"I just have a few questions. I'll leave once I'm done."
"Please, go ahead."
The Emissary naturally withdrew his hand and placed it behind his back, adopting a deferential posture without sacrificing his dignity.
"I won't withhold anything I know."
"First."
Homelander took half a step forward, looking down at him as an oppressive presence washed over him.
"Are there any students at this school with search abilities? I have a use for them."
"Second."
His fingertips lightly tapped the edge of the desk.
"Has anyone suspicious and secretive shown up recently? Any supes, for example?"
Before setting out, Homelander had noticed that Godolkin University was very close to Mangrove, so his first thought had been to come here and look into things.
As for supes who could conduct searches, he had just killed Madelyn. Edgar would catch wind of it sooner or later, and then he would no longer be able to use the internal search department.
That was why he had thought of coming here to see if there were any convenient "tools" available.
The Emissary now had a clear idea of the situation.
Since he had not come for the virus, he would be easy enough to handle.
A suitably measured hint of confusion appeared on his face, and his brows furrowed slightly, as though he were thinking back carefully:
"Unfamiliar supes... There are always fans staking out the area around campus, as well as students visiting from neighboring schools.
"As for the secretive, suspicious people you mentioned, I haven't received any reports from security. Shall I have someone pull up the surveillance footage from the past week and go through it carefully?"
He paused, then added:
"As for people with search abilities, we have plenty here. It depends on which one catches your eye, Mr. Homelander... I'll get them up in a moment."
The Emissary's response covered every angle, watertight. He had both cleared himself of any involvement and given Homelander nothing to fault.
Homelander stared at him.
His blue eyes were bright and scrutinizing.
Like an eagle circling overhead, looking down at a rabbit raised for meat, he missed not even the slightest twitch of muscle on the Emissary's face.
The Emissary met his gaze openly, his eyes sincere and utterly unguarded.
At the same time, an extremely faint, utterly concealed strand of psychic power drifted out from between the Emissary's brows.
Like mist on an autumn morning, it floated lightly, imperceptibly.
The Emissary had lived for over a century. He would make no claims about his other talents, but when it came to honing psychic power, he believed no one could match him.
Over the years, countless unruly supes had had their memories silently altered and their intentions snuffed out by this method of his, as quiet as rain nourishing the earth.
In the end, they had obediently become his "new identities."
Homelander suddenly frowned.
He felt a little dizzy, like the low blood sugar he had experienced from hunger in the laboratory as a child. It passed in an instant.
So quickly it could have been his imagination.
He shook his head, assuming his recent troubles had left his nerves stretched taut, and thought nothing of it.
After all, no one in this world dared play tricks right under his nose.
Though that was putting it a little too strongly.
The last person who had dared try had already been burned to ash by his Heat Vision, then smeared inside the toilet at the far end of the laboratory.
As the mistlike psychic power seeped deeper and deeper.
The Emissary slowed his breathing further.
He "saw" it.
First came a dazzling expanse of white.
An endless white laboratory. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all a bone-chilling white.
A cylindrical cultivation chamber stood in its center.
It was filled with nutrient fluid, and a small boy lay curled up inside, his eyes closed, tubes of varying thicknesses covering his body.
People in white coats moved back and forth around it. No one spoke, no one smiled. There was only the beeping of instruments, monotonous as a heartbeat.
When the boy was awake, he would sometimes cling to the chamber wall and look outside.
His eyes were large and empty, like those of a young beast trapped under glass.
He watched the people walking back and forth outside, watched the lights on the ceiling, watched his own reflection in the nutrient fluid.
No one held him.
No one spoke to him.
No one told him who he was or why he was here.
His entire childhood consisted of this small enclosure of cold glass and endless tests of his physical fitness and abilities.
The Emissary's heart instantly quickened half a beat.
So that was it.
He probed deeper.
He saw Madelyn.
The woman's face, contorted with terror. The dull sound of Heat Vision piercing her skull. Scorched blood splattering across the white wall, smearing a whole patch of it.
A crack.
Such a huge crack.
His mind... wasn't normal. There was an enormous fracture in it.
This was...
He had stumbled upon a treasure.
Just then, Homelander suddenly raised his eyes.
A flicker of wariness flashed through his blue eyes, as though he had caught a scent.
"What did you just do to me?"
The Emissary's heart immediately tightened.
What keen instincts.
It had only been a surface-level probe, yet he had still sensed something amiss.
But his face betrayed nothing. Instead, he moved half a step closer, his brows knitting more tightly, his voice filled with genuine concern:
"What's wrong, Mr. Homelander? You look a little pale. Have you been too busy lately to get enough rest? Why don't you sit down for a while? Shall I have someone bring you a glass of warm water?"
As he spoke, he silently withdrew his psychic power.
He couldn't rush this.
On their first encounter, he absolutely couldn't rustle the grass and startle the snake.
He had to take it slowly.
Boil the frog in warm water, nibbling away at his mental defenses bit by bit.
That would be best.
"..."
Homelander silently stared at him for a long while.
The man before him had an open gaze and a sincere tone. He looked like an ordinary man who went about his academic work properly.
Moreover, there was not the slightest fluctuation of superhuman energy coming from him. He did not seem capable of playing tricks.
So he gave a cold snort, averted his gaze, and looked back out at the grove of plane trees beyond the window.
"Nothing."
His voice was cold, with a touch of impatience.
"It had better be my imagination."
The Emissary breathed a sigh of relief and stepped aside with an appeasing smile.
Just then, three soft knocks sounded at the office door.
"Come in," The Emissary said.
The door opened, and a young man in a black hoodie walked in.
He was not tall, with a pale complexion, deep-set eyes, and dark brown pupils like those of a bird of prey.
He was Crow, the second supe Godolkin controlled.
His ability was to turn into ravens and fly through every nook and cranny of New York. No movement was too slight, no corner too hidden to escape his eyes.
However, Godolkin had left a far greater share of his psychic power in the Emissary than in Crow.
Thus, in Crow's case, Godolkin's control extended only to his brainwashed "loyalty."
But that was already enough.
Crow first darted a glance at Homelander, then quickly lowered his head and bowed slightly to the Emissary:
"Sir, I've come to pass on some intel from Brooklyn."
"Speak."
The Emissary picked up the glass of water on the desk and took a sip.
"There have indeed been suspicious people hanging around the school recently. One of our freshmen went off with a group of people late at night."
"Suspicious people?"
"Yes. A few ravens followed them the whole way, but the trail ended at an abandoned parking lot."