Chapter 37: Edgar’s Last Resort
Stan Edgar sat in his private conference room, a brief ssage blinking on the tablet screen in front of him.
Soldier Boy has left Vought Tower, traveling alone.
He read the ssage three tis. Then he put down the tablet and picked up the encrypted phone on the desk that never connected to any network.
"He’s on the move," Edgar’s voice was completely flat, devoid of any inflection. "This is our last shot. If he makes it back alive this ti, all of you—including , including Vought International—are completely finished. There is no second round, and no fallback plan. Today, he dies in Pennsylvania."
The line fell into a prolonged silence. Then, a woman’s raspy voice crackled through: "Do you have any goddamn idea what it cost us to get rid of him last ti?"
"We don’t need to ship him off this ti. If we can execute him outright..."
"He can’t be killed. We couldn’t kill him, and the Soviets couldn’t kill him either..."
"The Novichok is ready," Edgar said. "The nerve agent the Russians engineered back then was tailored specifically for Soldier Boy. Just one dose will put him under. I’ve already had it delivered to your hands."
Another silence descended. Then the woman spoke again: "Who else is coming?"
"Aside from you, the TNT Twins—Tommy and Tessa—and Mindstorm," Edgar rattled off the nas one by one, like auditing bad debts on an overdue account. "And so extra Supes I hired. Both dostic and overseas, all highly capable. You don’t know them, and you don’t need to. They’re my people, paid to do a job, and they won’t ask questions. You only need to do one thing—cooperate. You put him in a Russian cage back then; you can put him back in one today."
The call disconnected.
Edgar placed the encrypted phone on the desk and picked up the whiskey glass at his elbow. The ice in the glass had already lted, diluting the amber liquor into a murky, pale yellow. He glanced at it, then set it back down without drinking. Edgar was sowhat tense, even though he still appeared perfectly calm on the surface.
But from the day Benjamin set foot inside Vought Tower, he had been preparing for this very mont. He had contacted every mber of Payback in advance. He had long since secured a pipeline for the Novichok. And the other Supes either owed him a favor or a debt, or were entirely his own assets... so possessing strength on par with Queen Maeve. He held these people in his hands like a deck of moldy playing cards, waiting for the day to flip them over. Today was the final card. If he couldn’t play it, the ga was over.
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Deep in the suburbs of Pennsylvania, Crimson Countess’s residence was tucked away inside an abandoned holiday resort enveloped by a dense maple forest.
She used to be Vought’s reigning female Supe, boasting a custom ruby-accented suit and a weekly feature profile in People magazine. Now, she scraped by hosting e-comrce livestreams, hawking expired costics and old autographed headshots of herself—nineteen ninety-nine a pop, buy three for free shipping. She even took on illicit, private one-on-one video feeds.
When Benjamin shoved open the door, the room was completely deserted. A cup of coffee on the desk was still steaming, and a half-smoked cigarette rested unextinguished in the ashtray. A stray slipper poked out from beneath the bed, abandoned in a frantic rush. He glanced down at the mug, brushing the back of his hand against it—it was still burning hot. She had just left. Or rather... she had just bolted.
"Ran off fast, fuck," he muttered under his breath. If he had unlocked Super Speed Lv5, he might have intercepted her.
Then he picked up the approaching footsteps outside... nurous sets of boots closing in from different vectors of the maple forest, their strides producing a dense, crunching rustle against the dead leaves. Soone snapped a dry branch; others conversed in hushed whispers. Soone clicked off a weapon’s safety.
Benjamin’s expression didn’t flicker as he pulled out his phone and opened an app. Turning around, he strode out of the trailer, unmounting the shield from his left arm to hold it across his chest. He tucked the phone into his suit, its cara lens aid squarely outward.
At the periter of the maple forest, figures were erging from the shadows of the trees. Payback, alongside a dozen faces he had never seen before.
Crimson Countess stood at the very front. Having not seen her in forty years, she had aged considerably; her blonde wig failed to conceal the heavy wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, and the curve of her lips—which he had once complinted as beautiful—now held nothing but bitterness. She wore a cheap red dress matching her moniker, though several sequins had already fallen from the hem. When Crimson Countess saw Benjamin step out of the trailer, her pupils instinctively contracted anyway.
To her right stood a brother and sister, holding hands, a microscopic spark of electricity crackling within their palms like a crushed star barely clinging to life. Tommy and Tessa—the TNT Twins. Without holding hands, they were just two ordinary middle-aged people who couldn’t even blow up a cockroach.
Behind them stood a balding man wearing a faded plaid shirt, his hands buried deep in his pockets—Mindstorm. He was the most inconspicuous-looking entity of the bunch, yet he was the crucial key that brought Benjamin down back then. He could burrow into your brain to exhu your worst goddamn fears, knocking you out cold for a stretch of ti. Granted, he might be able to restrain Benjamin, but it wouldn’t last more than a few seconds; managing to hold him for even half a second now would be a miracle. As for Gunpowder, he hadn’t shown up.
Beyond them, there were at least a dozen other Supes Benjamin had never laid eyes on. So wore tactical combat gear, others were in civilian clothes, and a few bore unmistakable Supe traits—one woman’s hands threw off a heavy tallic sheen under the afternoon sun, slightly resembling Starlight, while a short man swirled a glob of shifting, color-changing liquid energy at his fingertips. The Supes hired by Edgar. Benjamin didn’t know them, and he didn’t care to. Dead n didn’t need introductions.
"Benjamin," Crimson Countess spoke, her voice raspier than he rembered. "You shouldn’t have co back alive."
"I didn’t plan on coming back alive either," Benjamin brought his shield level across his chest, his tone entirely flat. "Before I blew those fucking Ruskies sky-high, I never thought I’d walk out of that lab alive. But I did, and then I rembered you. You pieces of shit who betrayed ... I’m going to blow every single one of you to hell."
His gaze swept across every face along the edge of the forest. Crimson Countess, his ex-girlfriend, stood directly opposite him, her fingers trembling slightly at her side. The TNT Twins, the sparks still flickering in their palms. Mindstorm, hands still buried in his pockets, evaluating him with his eyes. The ones still breathing were more than enough for him to butcher today.
However, more footsteps echoed from behind. Not from the maple forest, but from the abandoned main road of the resort. Benjamin glanced sideways; another dozen figures were filing out from behind the crumbling walls of an abandoned motel.
"Vought and Edgar sent all these pieces of trash to deal with , huh?" Benjamin kept his shield raised across his chest, his voice carrying clearly, every word crashing heavily into the silence of the forest edge. "Fuck, I fought for this goddamn country, I bled for Vought, and I gave everything to this nation and this company... And what did I get? I got sold out, gift-wrapped by you bastards and handed over to those fucking Ruskies. The Russian labs tortured for forty goddamn years—shoving AK barrels down my throat and firing, jamming blades into my eyeballs and corneas, burning my skin with blowtorches, pumping full of radiation experints... Then I crawl out of that hell, get back to Arica, and before my ass can even warm up the seat, goddamn Vought wants to liquidate again. Huh? Why? Fuck you!"
The edge of the maple forest fell into a brief hush. The wind rustled through the maple leaves, kicking up a few withered fragnts to swirl in the air.
"Because we hate you," Crimson Countess’s voice turned screechy, the curve of her mouth that he had once praised as beautiful now overflowing with pure venom. "You know damn well how you treated everyone back then. You thought just because you were powerful, you could order everyone around like dogs? You thought being strong made you everyone’s fucking father."
"Soldier Boy," one of the hired Supes standing behind her spoke up, his tone laced with unvarnished mockery as he slowly clapped his hands twice. "I have to admit, you really are a powerhouse. Normandy, the Ardennes, Nicaragua—your operational file in the Vought archives is a foot and a half thick. But let’s be real—you’re uncontrollable. That’s the core issue. Vought doesn’t need an uncontrollable hero, no matter how many dals he has or how powerful he is. If we can’t control you, we liquidate you. It’s just business, nothing personal."
He spread his hands and chuckled. "Though for us, it actually is a bit personal. You beat the crap out of too many of us, and you stood in too many people’s way. Besides, no matter how powerful you are, we represent Vought’s core assets, combined with Payback. Today, you aren’t leaving alive."
"So, Payback, along with every single Supe Edgar dispatched... have you all thought this through?" A freezing smirk curved on Benjamin’s lips. "You’re going to ambush a national hero right under the watch of the Arican public and my son, Holander?"
He raised his hand, pointing his thumb toward his chest. Inside the chest pocket of his suit, a smartphone cara was aid straight at the crowd. The livestream on the screen was ticking up, the live viewer count surging at an exponential rate.
Benjamin pulled out the phone. The crowd along the edge of the maple forest froze in unison. Crimson Countess’s red dress swayed in the wind. She stared dead into the dark cara lens, unable to utter a single goddamn word.
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A/N: 450 Power Stones = 1 bonus Chapter!
And if you want to read ahead and find out what happens next right away, you can get up to 20 Chapters ahead on my p@tr~on:
/ForgottenDaoist (@ = a, link is in my profile).
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