Chapter 129: A Lesson
Mallory said nothing.
Her gaze lingered on Adana’s face for a few seconds, as though she were weighing him all over again.
She had never fully trusted Adana, just as she had never trusted anyone tied to Supes who had ever ended up on her side.
In her eyes, the Church of the Collective was nothing more than a tool, and Adana himself was just a channel with access to Vought’s dirty secrets.
But now it seemed Edgar had placed far more trust in this man before his death than she had realized.
"How many vials do you have right now?" Mallory asked bluntly.
She wasn’t the kind of person who wasted time on feelings or reflection.
What she needed were clear numbers and resources she could actually use.
"Just a few." Adana spread his hands, giving no exact number.
"You already saw what the one back there could do. I’m planning to save the rest for a more critical moment."
Adana did not tell Mallory that besides V24, the Church of the Collective also had plenty of V5, and that they were still smuggling it, and still making money from it.
Adana paused, then added, "However, I have a mole inside Vought."
"After Edgar’s death, Vought sealed away its entire stockpile of V5 and V24. That was Soldier Boy’s order. He didn’t want this stuff circulating anymore."
"But sealed away doesn’t mean destroyed. It’s still there, and my mole just happens to have clearance to access those sealed stockpiles."
"As long as the conditions are right, he can help me get a decent amount of V5 and V24 out. When that happens, our bargaining chips won’t be limited to just these few vials of V24."
Mallory nodded and asked no further questions.
She leaned back in her seat and looked out the window at the shadows flashing past, her expression settling once more into that unreadable calm.
Truth be told, she didn’t like superpowers.
From the battlefields of Nicaragua to the offices of the CIA, from The Boys’ first operation to today, she had spent her entire life dealing with Supes, and she had never liked a single damn thing about them.
They were uncontrollable, unstable, and too easily inflated by their own power. The moment they gained strength beyond ordinary people, they quickly rotted into monsters.
Even Soldier Boy, the most normal Supe she had ever seen, had done terrible things in the end.
And now, one of her most capable allies had become a Supe too.
Even if it was temporary. Even if it only lasted twenty-four hours.
But what could she say? Adana had saved them.
Adana had used that damn temporary superpower to freeze The Deep in place, buying all of them the time they needed to escape.
Without that vial of V24, they might already have had their limbs broken and been dragged in front of Soldier Boy and Homelander by now.
Mallory’s principles never bent to reality.
But she knew when to acknowledge a fact.
Tonight, superpowers had saved their lives.
Mallory’s eyes shifted slightly, her thoughts unreadable.
The convoy slipped silently into the night on the outskirts of Washington, its red taillights gradually swallowed by the dark.
...
Early the next morning.
Benjamin listened with a blank expression as The Deep stood in front of his desk and delivered his long, breathless report.
The Deep was acting a little different today.
He talked with his hands flying everywhere, speaking fast, charged with the excitement of someone desperate to claim credit, along with a few traces of pissed-off resentment at having been played.
He recounted every detail of what had happened in the abandoned warehouse the night before.
How he, The Deep, Lord of the Seven Seas, had precisely located The Boys’ hideout.
How he had kicked open the iron door like a total badass.
How, at the critical moment, he had seen through Adana’s threat and knocked him flying with one punch.
Then The Deep’s tone took a sharp turn as he described how Adana had injected himself with an unknown green liquid and instantly gained some kind of psychic power that could freeze him in place.
"That was definitely not a normal compound, sir."
The Deep planted both hands on the edge of Benjamin’s desk and leaned forward slightly, his tone carrying an almost pleading certainty.
"The color was wrong. It was green, not blue."
Benjamin fell into brief thought.
V24. Wasn’t that the drug Butcher used in the original series?
That stuff was only supposed to show up in Season 3 of the original series.
Then again, maybe it had appeared earlier.
After Edgar died, he had passed that stuff to Adana.
One Edgar was dead, and now there was another Adana.
That old bastard Edgar. Even dead, he still had to reach up from underground and fuck with the board.
Damn it.
Today, he was going to find that old man’s daughter and give her a proper lesson.
Benjamin thought this angrily.
To be honest, Benjamin did not rate Adana poorly.
In the original series, Adana, as the head of the Church of the Collective, had possessed countless pieces of dirt on Vought, enough to ruin almost any superhero.
He had even been able to interfere with the selection of The Seven.
An ordinary man using information and intelligence to pry into the very core of Vought’s power structure. Not just anyone had that kind of skill.
Of course, he also had Vought’s support. The cult itself had been working with Vought from the start.
And the exposure of the Stormfront scandal had also been closely tied to this man.
Because he was the one who controlled those dirty, hidden files on Stormfront.
That idiot A-Train, desperate to claw his way back into The Seven, had taken the risk of stealing that file and making it public.
The original series never made it clear, but Adana might have known about the whole thing from beginning to end. Or maybe A-Train really had stolen it on his own.
Or maybe it had been a trap Edgar and Adana set together, aimed specifically at Stormfront, to bring that racist down.
No matter how you looked at it, Adana had been a key figure in that storm, one who could not be ignored.
And now, a man like that had gotten his hands on an unknown amount of V24. He had smuggled V5 before, and he had clearly sided with The Boys.
Things had definitely gotten more interesting.
Benjamin pulled his gaze away from the Vought logo and looked back at The Deep.
The Deep might be an idiot, but at least when it came to reporting this matter, he had been timely and accurate enough.
Even though he had let everyone get away in the end, his logic had been clear, and his judgment had basically been correct.
For someone whose IQ had been missing in action for years, this was already a hell of a performance.
"Good job," Benjamin said, looking at The Deep.
"Thank you for the praise, sir."
The Deep was thrilled by Soldier Boy’s praise.
...
An hour later, Benjamin arrived at Neuman’s current villa.
He walked steadily along the carefully trimmed stone path leading up to the front door.
The motion-sensor light on the porch came on automatically the moment he approached, but before he could even raise his hand to ring the doorbell, the door opened from the inside.
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