Sepsis 6.4
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Indira came to slowly, blinking hard and turning her head from side to side with a dazed frown. That was just what happened when my power knocked someone out. I was pretty sure her skull was splitting right now.
"What… What happened? Where's Kate?!" She started in a weak whisper, then quickly raised her voice to a shout—only to stop herself when I waved a hand toward the girl sleeping on the couch.
"Don't worry. She's completely fine. If anything, she's probably closer to normal right now than she's ever been." I answered calmly, turning the red vial over in my fingers. Indira noticed it immediately, though it was obvious she had no idea how it had ended up in my hands.
My adoptive mother looked back and forth between me and the girl, uncomprehending, but some measure of calm settled into her eyes. She seemed to simply trust my word that I hadn't done anything to hurt her.
"I never wanted it to end like this. Kate… she was only supposed to nudge you a little. Just enough to convince you to leave the company and go somewhere safe. Paul and Lily must have already flown to London by now, to some people we know there. It's safe there. Everything would have been fine…"
I exhaled slowly and said nothing. Her motives were genuine—her body couldn't lie to me—but good intentions didn't make bad actions any less bad.
"Just tell me everything," I said at last, looking away. "From the beginning. Even before the beginning. Everything you know, from the moment they found me and brought me to Red River. The examinations, the psychologists who were messing with children's heads, the family that was found suspiciously fast. I want to know all of it."
Indira only looked at me sadly. She let out a slow breath, pressed her lips together, and began to speak in a voice thick with grief and regret.
"You appeared on their radar the moment you… manifested your powers. Cases where a child kills a parent with their abilities—they happen far too often, unfortunately. But your particular powers…" She hesitated, glancing away, but after a moment she pressed on. "Vought always paid close attention to children whose abilities set them apart from the ordinary strongmen and brawlers. Those types make decent enough heroes, sure, but their powers can't be used for anything truly large-scale. So from the moment you arrived at Red River, you were being watched."
She turned her head and looked directly into my eyes. The grief and regret in her gaze were impossible to miss.
"At first they gave you time for rehabilitation and psychological evaluation. They needed to understand whether your parents' deaths had left you with any serious psychological trauma. Vought hadn't always bothered with that—they used to be perfectly willing to raise particularly powerful supers in labs if it came to that—but… I don't know the details, only that it led to some very bad outcomes. So they assigned Linda. She truly was a gifted professional… or at least she used to be."
Indira stopped abruptly, her fingers tightening around the hem of her dress.
"*Used to be?*" I said, raising an eyebrow. "And if that's the case, they didn't exactly pick the best specialist. Telepaths don't put much stock in the mental wellbeing of the people they work on."
"I didn't know she had powers. Not then, at least. Reports at the required clearance level only became accessible to me very recently, and it was through those that I learned what Vought was actually doing—using her to pre-condition potential supers who had no parents, no family, nothing but the corporation to hold onto. Those children could have become their most loyal, most obedient agents." She paused, and a sad smile crossed her face. "But it didn't work out that way. She became a candidate for gaining powers as an adult. Vought was testing some kind of experimental compound designed to grant temporary superhuman abilities. But the formula was too underdeveloped—nearly all the test subjects simply died. She was the only one who survived, and her powers ended up being permanent."
"Temporary superpowers?" I asked, frowning.
"Vought has many secret projects like that. And you were one of them." The smile vanished from her face. "You are the second superhuman in history with the ability to alter another person's biology. I know nothing about the first—all records were deleted—but that is precisely why they placed such enormous emphasis on you. Nearly all of Vought's upper leadership is made up of a collection of old men who want to live longer and finally take real power into their own hands. They wanted to use your abilities to modify human biology somehow, or the compound itself. And apparently, they weren't entirely wrong to think it was possible."
Her eyes drifted to the vial in my hands. I slipped it into the compartment where I kept the rest of my kit. Working in the field as often as I did, I'd gotten used to always carrying something like it.
"But for some reason they didn't just turn me into their personal lab rat?" I asked.
"They had high hopes for Linda. They believed she could use her powers to reprogram you—turn you into their obedient dog. But she couldn't do it, and in her reports she described only that your mind was somehow profoundly different from a normal human's. An MRI confirmed it—certain parts of your brain function in ways they shouldn't. It's difficult to detect, but it's as though your brain is performing additional, unknown functions. They had observed something similar in telekinetics, but on a completely different scale."
I could only let out a quiet hm at that. Something new. My abilities let me work with the human body on an extraordinarily fine level, but the brain was still a complicated thing.
*If I had a tumor, I'd have caught it immediately. Unusual activity in certain regions, though… She might be right about that. It's just not my specialty.*
"They tried bringing Steven in to handle it as well, but that didn't work either." She shook her head slightly. "That's just the nature of telepaths. They don't tolerate constraints, and they fight for their independence at any cost. Linda had already been a fully formed person when she gained her powers, but even she was touched by that same impulse. In the end she turned against Vought, and she was one step away from exposing their entire operation… but she didn't manage to finish what she started."
Indira lowered her eyes. Her heartbeat and blood pressure told me she was genuinely grieving the death of her old friend from university. And honestly, with every word she spoke, it became harder for me to stay angry at her. I could feel that she was telling the truth—every word of it, from start to finish.
"After Linda's failure, leadership decided to change their approach. They turned to a method that had already been tried and proven…" Indira practically spat the next word. "*Taming.* Paul and I had only recently married and joined the organization, so we were ideal candidates as adoptive parents. And though we didn't fully understand what was happening at first, I can say with complete sincerity that it was the best thing that ever came from our involvement with Vought. We didn't regret a single day. We were grateful for the chance to help you grow into someone… worthy."
She exhaled, clasping her hands together. I noticed tears gathering at the corners of her eyes.
"Vought has an entire manual for it, actually. A step-by-step guide on how to raise a child so they grow up into a completely loyal, thoughtless little soldier. We were supposed to encourage your… inclinations, so that you'd mature into someone hungry for money, fame, and quick gratification. Vought had confirmed through practice that those make for a far more effective leash than anything any telepath can throw on." She paused to draw a breath, then continued. "I'll be honest—I despise that kind of hero with everything I have. I could always see straight through the performance, and I simply couldn't stomach it. I thought that by working at Godolkin, I could fix them—untangle whatever demons were eating them alive and put them on a better path… but that turned out to be beyond my reach. At least I had some part in raising one good person. That's enough for me."
Despite the tears, she was smiling when she looked at me.
"So I was even glad when Vought's secrets came out and the whole thing came crashing down. That's all they ever deserved, frankly. Then Lily was born, and it started to feel like life was turning into something out of a fairy tale. But the recent change in power within the corporation…" She made an effort to wipe her eyes and looked at me as steadily as she could. "Something terrible is coming, Mark. The board of directors is in a fury—they want to scrap every super-related project and throw it all in the trash. The supers themselves aren't taking that well, and every day the Patriot's coalition grows stronger. He wants full control of the company for himself. At the same time, something has been stirring in the research division—very dangerous projects involving the control of superhumans are being pulled back to the surface. And the people behind those projects will sacrifice anything and anyone to finish them as quickly as—"
My phone cut her off. I almost let it go, but I picked up—the person calling wouldn't be reaching out over nothing.
"Hello… Yeah, Annie, I'm fine… More than fine… What about you all… Hold on, he decided to do *what?!*"
I was on my feet before I knew it, not quite believing what I was hearing. I started pacing back and forth. Indira watched me with growing unease, catching fragments of the conversation.
"…And you can't stop him? No, I understand who he is, but still… Alright, damn it! I'll be there soon and I'll try to calm him down myself… For now, don't engage—just keep eyes on where he's headed… There's no telling what he might do in this state."
I hung up and nearly crushed the phone in my fist from sheer irritation. I managed to rein it in just in time, catching Indira's worried expression.
"Seems like there really are too many disasters happening at once lately. Nothing we can't handle, though." I muttered, mostly thinking out loud. "Listen—this place is protected, right? There's an old man who's started causing trouble, and I need a super who can calm him down. Stay here for now, keep an eye on Kate, and I'll call in some people from the government I know. They can arrange protection for you and whatever help you need. And if Vought is really preparing something serious, you'd be better off sharing what you know with them. They're only marginally better than the corporate types, but they won't be organizing mass executions of superhumans. As for everything that happened… we'll talk about it later."
Not waiting for a response, I left the house at a run, firing off a message to Grace. Right now there was a bigger and more immediate problem—one that went by the name of *Soldier Boy on a rampage.*
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The drive took some time, but I spotted my target long before I arrived. Dressed in a black hoodie, jeans, and a large plaid shirt, Soldier Boy was moving down the street like nothing on earth could stop him.
And honestly, if you thought about it… he wasn't wrong. Aside from Patriot, how many people were actually capable of stopping the oldest superhuman in the world?
What made it worse was where he was headed. As Annie had told me on the phone, one of the most powerful supers on the planet was walking straight toward a theme park dedicated to his old team. Because that was where Crimson Countess was—and for whatever reason, he wanted her dead.
Annie hadn't gone into detail. She'd only told me over the phone that he was completely serious about killing her, and that nothing was going to stop him. Apparently she had betrayed him somehow and was the reason behind his long imprisonment.
Wild information, obviously. But casually trusting a man who'd been tortured for years and held captive for decades wasn't something I was prepared to do. No matter how much I respected him, anyone's mental state could take severe damage after that kind of imprisonment.
"…Get out of my way, kid. I'm not in the mood right now, but since you're not a piece of trash, I won't hit you first. Just let me do what should have been done thirty years ago."
I let out a short laugh, looking up at the gate with its cartoon-style paintings of Soldier Boy and the Countess. Every branch of the CIA had been trying to reach the former hero, but so far nothing had come of it. Though honestly, you couldn't really blame a sixty-year-old woman for not being glued to her phone.
"Remember what you said in *The Soldier Boy Story?* 'Heroes don't retreat. Never, not for anything.'" I smiled and shook my head. "Love that movie. Real shame they got robbed at the Oscars that year. So how about you start by telling me what she actually did to you? Sometimes it helps to say it out loud, get it off your chest…"
Soldier Boy just exhaled, walked slowly up to me, and put a hand on my shoulder. I didn't move to stop him. In fact, I was glad he was stretching this out. The man had been an actor for nearly forty years—the need to perform had to be baked into him by now.
"Kid, for the love of everything, just shut up and step aside. Otherwise I can't promise you'll be walking out of here on your own two feet." The hero answered with a genuinely sorrowful expression. I could sense that he didn't actually care either way—but his performance was something else.
My smile only widened.
"Any other time, your threats might actually have gotten to me…" I said. "But sorry, friend—you just spent too long on the monologue. So don't take it personally if I put you under one more time, alright?"
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