The Boys: Ultimate Multiversal Lifeform

After a full five minutes of silence, Frenchie finally told them what really happened back then.

Eight years ago he and his two best friends, Shirley and Jay, were just street punks who spent their days robbing and stealing.

They never got caught. Then five years ago one robbery went wrong and all three of them got arrested.

Right before they were about to get locked up, Mallory found him.

"She said my brain was too sharp to keep wasting it on that shit. She wanted me for her secret anti-supe team. She promised that if I said yes she'd get my friends out and wipe every criminal record clean. In the end… I said yes."

Frenchie squeezed his eyes shut.

"Later I got the order to tail you. Everything was going smooth until Shirley called. She told me Jay had overdosed and was dying, needed help right away." Frenchie held his head. "On one side my best friend's life was hanging by a thread. On the other was the job Mallory gave me."

"I figured once you walked into that club you weren't coming out for a while, so I ran back to the place and did everything I could to keep Jay from dying. When I finally got him stable and made it back to the club, half an hour had already passed. I lost you. I tore the whole city apart and still couldn't find you…"

Once the words were out, Frenchie looked a little lighter.

"What about Jay? How come you never mentioned him after that?" Billy asked.

"Dead." Frenchie gave a bitter little laugh. "A few months later he overdosed again. We couldn't bring him back."

"Why the hell didn't you tell us this sooner?"

Mother's Milk looked confused.

"It already happened. Explaining it doesn't change a goddamn thing. At the end of the day those kids still died because of my fuck-up."

Frenchie turned and glared at Lamplighter, pure rage in his eyes. "You piece-of-shit animal. Those were little kids and you still burned them. You should be rotting in hell getting tortured by every demon in existence."

The second the words left his mouth Lamplighter snapped right back. "You think I wanted that? The one I was trying to kill was your boss."

From him they got the other side of the story.

Put the two stories together and the real truth behind the Mallory case finally clicked into place.

Back then Lamplighter was still one of the Seven, famous for being mysterious and powerful. Somehow Mallory got her hands on a video of him cutting loose in a nightclub. If that video ever leaked, the image Vought had spent years building for him would go up in smoke.

His popularity would tank. Worst case they'd kick him out of the Seven and he'd lose everything he had.

Mallory used the video to blackmail him into digging up dirt on Vought, Compound V, and their crimes.

"I wasn't about to stay under her thumb, so I snuck into Mallory's place at night. The plan was to kill her and get the video back. But… I never expected…"

"You never expected that when you set fire to Mallory's bedroom she wasn't even home. The only ones in the bed were a few little kids waiting for their grandma to come back and tell them a story. So when you heard them screaming you panicked. By the time the fire trucks showed up the whole place was already ash." Billy's face was ice-cold as he filled in the rest.

"All these years I've felt like shit about it, so I asked to leave the Seven myself and fade out of the public eye. After that Vought stuck me at Sage Grove. My job was managing and disposing of the supes who wouldn't follow orders. Until you people, I never told another living soul."

"What's Stormfront's connection to Sage Grove?" Billy asked.

"She's the one who runs the place. Always has been. She was already there before I ever showed up."

Lamplighter answered whatever they threw at him.

"Has she been to the mental hospital lately?"

"No. That actually weirded me out. Normally she shows up at least every other day. But the last five days straight I never saw her once."

Billy thought it over, locked eyes with Mother's Milk, and gave the tiniest nod.

"So what the hell is Sage Grove really? Where did all those patients in the wards come from? Is Vought experimenting on them? What's the endgame, cooking up an adult version of Compound V?" Billy kept pressing.

Lamplighter answered every question one by one.

"The Sage Grove you saw is one of Vought's secret research facilities. Places like that probably only exist in one location, because you need a serious heavy-hitter to keep those freaks in line.

As for where they come from, yeah, the mental hospitals send them over. Vought claims they can cure the psychological problems and locks them in the wards. But from what I watched, some of those patients weren't crazy at all. They had clear heads, talked and acted just like regular people."

"I found out later some of them got sent to Sage Grove on purpose because of alcohol, violence, or hard drugs."

"Classic Vought. Never does anything decent. I bet that place is pure chaos right now. Those escapees are definitely going to tear Vought a new one." Billy grinned, enjoying the idea.

"By the way, there's a bald woman in there who's seriously strong. I think she could even give Homelander a real fight."

"You mean Cindy? Her powers are no joke. She's also the patient Stormfront cares about the most. High IQ. She got arrested for killing her entire family plus six classmates, then stayed on the run for a long time. In court she produced proof she was mentally ill, so they shipped her to Sage Grove."

Just saying Cindy's name put a flicker of fear in Lamplighter's eyes. He'd watched her crush a man's head from a distance with nothing but a thought. Her body was tough as hell too. Even Stormfront's lightning only left her numb for a while. Never did any real damage.

"You people guessed right. Those patients are test subjects. Vought's trying to invent a stable Compound V."

"You're saying the current Compound V isn't stable?"

Hughie asked, curious.

"Right now Compound V only works reliably on babies. Inject an adult and you get three possible outcomes: they become a superhero, they explode like a watermelon, or they turn into a freak. Like Elephant Man. That guy's dick is ten times bigger than a normal person's."

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Read 12 Advance Chapters—P@t- Captain69