Chapter 128: Edgar’s Backup Plan
"Move!"
Mallory reacted faster than anyone.
She grabbed Sameer, who was still standing there in a daze, and dragged him toward the warehouse’s back door.
The security personnel followed right behind them, filing out through the back door one after another.
Adana kept his hand raised, holding that controlling posture until the last member of The Boys disappeared into the night outside. Only then did he abruptly let go.
A moment later, The Deep dropped from midair and hit the floor, then awkwardly pushed himself up.
But the warehouse was already empty. It was just him, alone, surrounded by spent shell casings scattered across the floor.
Adana was gone too.
The Deep was completely fucking lost.
Wasn’t Adana supposed to be a regular guy?
He slowly got to his feet, brushed the dust off his uniform, and looked down at the empty syringe on the floor.
The Deep frowned hard, curiosity written all over his face.
"Is this V5? No... doesn’t look like V5. Wrong color..."
But one thing was certain.
Just now, Adana had used Superpowers.
An ordinary person had gained Superpowers strong enough to suppress him in a matter of seconds through some kind of injection he didn’t recognize.
The Deep still hadn’t fully figured out how Adana had done it.
But he knew he had to take this back to Vought.
...
The night was black as ink. Several unmarked black sedans tore down a highway on the outskirts of Washington, their headlights cutting through the thick darkness as they headed toward a prearranged safe house.
Inside the car, no one said a word. The silence was suffocating.
Everything that had just happened in the warehouse was still circling through everyone’s head.
The Deep’s arrival. The image of bullets clanging uselessly off his body. The way the entire situation had flipped the instant Adana injected that strange liquid.
Mallory sat in the back seat of the middle car, hands folded over her knees, back straight, her expression cold and severe.
Her eyes bored past the back of the front passenger seat, fixed squarely on Adana.
The silence in the car lasted a full three minutes.
Then Mallory spoke.
"What the hell was that, Adana? Since when can you use those damn Superpowers?"
Adana leaned back against the seat and let out a long breath.
The streetlights flashing past the window threw his face in and out of shadow. The corner of his mouth was still swollen with a purplish bruise, a little gift from The Deep’s punch.
If The Deep hadn’t pulled that punch, it would have blown his head apart.
But there was no panic on Adana’s face, no terror from surviving by the skin of his teeth. Instead, he looked calm.
"Heh."
A low chuckle rumbled in his throat. He raised a hand to touch the bruise at the corner of his mouth and hissed from the pain, but the smile stayed right where it was.
"This is the backup plan Edgar left me. His people gave me V24."
"What is V24?"
Mallory’s brows drew together, her voice carrying clear confusion and irritation.
She had spent decades in the intelligence world.
She wouldn’t claim to know every last thing about Vought, but she knew a hell of a lot.
And yet she had never seen the code name "V24" in a single intelligence file.
Sameer, sitting in the front passenger seat, turned his head as well, his eyes filled with the same confusion.
He had once been a core member of Vought’s biological research division and had even taken part in deep development work on Compound V, but the code name "V24" was just as unfamiliar to him.
He looked like he wanted to say something, but in the end, he stayed quiet.
Sameer knew exactly where he stood inside Vought.
Yes, he was a top biological expert.
He had been involved in many projects, but his clearance at Vought had never been high enough to access every secret.
Edgar valued him, but only because he was useful, not because he was trusted.
Even being Neuman’s husband hadn’t given him access to more core classified information.
Edgar had never truly treated him as one of his own.
In that old fox’s eyes, Sameer was nothing more than a tool that fit nicely in the hand.
Sure, tools needed maintenance. But who the hell tells their secrets to a wrench?
Adana turned his head and looked at the complicated expression on Sameer’s face. He seemed to understand the embarrassment Sameer was feeling, but he didn’t comment on it.
He simply explained.
"V24 is a temporary form of Compound V. It can generate Superpowers in the human body that last for 24 hours, and in terms of stability and safety, it’s far superior to traditional Compound V."
"You should all know that injecting an ordinary adult directly with Compound V is basically a death sentence. The success rate is so low it might as well not exist. That’s why Vought starts injections in infancy, letting the body gradually adapt to the changes caused by Compound V as it develops."
"But V24 is different. It doesn’t require a long adaptation period."
"An adult who’s never been injected with Compound V can use V24 directly and gain stable Superpowers in a short period of time. Once the duration ends, the abilities fade on their own without causing irreversible damage to the body."
"At least, that’s what the report says."
What Adana didn’t know was that Edgar’s people had never told him that after using multiple doses of V24, the brain turned into goddamn mush, and then horrible things started growing out of it.
The car fell into another brief silence.
Mallory’s first reaction wasn’t condemnation.
The real issue was the concept of temporary Superpowers, and what it implied was far too significant. It meant Superpowers were no longer the exclusive privilege of a chosen few, but a weapon any ordinary person could acquire at any time.
Could Butcher get them too?
Mother’s Milk as well, and Frenchie...
Even if it was only temporary.
"After Edgar was killed by that vicious bastard Soldier Boy, he had to have left something behind."
Adana’s voice broke the silence, now edged with cold mockery. The smile at the corner of his mouth grew more pointed.
"And I’m Edgar’s backup plan. He’d already arranged all of this before he died. Looks like Edgar trusted me quite a bit."
"His people found me, handed me some V24, and told me that if Vought ever completely spun out of control, if Soldier Boy and Homelander dragged the world into the abyss, then that would be my cue to use this stuff and hit back. Help him get revenge while I was at it."
"Of course, thanks to that goddamn Soldier Boy, I can’t keep my Church of the Collective running anymore. And sure, from the looks of things right now, Soldier Boy and Homelander haven’t exactly gone that far... but that doesn’t stop me from using it. Heh..."
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