The air inside the archive was cold and still, preserved like a tomb. Rows of antique servers hummed with a low, persistent power, their blinking lights the only sign of life in decades. Towering shelves held cardboard boxes labeled in a precise, old-fashioned script: PROJECT: CHIMERA. SUBJECT ZERO. GENESIS TRIALS.
This was it. The cradle of the plague.
"Fan out," I commanded, my voice echoing in the cavernous space. "Wraith, scan the servers for any active data corruption or external links. Noir, perimeter sweep. I'll assess the physical records."
It was a flimsy excuse for separation, but it was all I had. Noir gave me a long, unreadable look before melting into the shadows between the shelves. The memory I'd accidentally brushed against—his memory—hung between us like a shroud. He knew I had trespassed.
Wraith, eager to please, went to work at a terminal, his fingers flying across the dusty keyboard. "Firewalls are... ancient. But there's a ghost in the machine. A passive data stream. It's not transmitting, but it's listening."
My blood ran cold. "Can you trace it?"
"Trying... It's sophisticated. Military-grade encryption layered over Vought's proprietary... wait." He frowned. "It's not coming from outside. The signal is internal. It's a heartbeat monitor."
A surveillance system. Of course. Edgar wouldn't leave this place completely unattended. He was watching his family jewels, waiting to see who came to steal them.
I moved to the shelves labeled SUBJECT ZERO. My hands, crackling with barely suppressed energy, trembled as I pulled a heavy binder from the shelf. The cover was stamped with a single, chilling word: NOIR.
I opened it.
The first page was a grainy photograph of a young boy, maybe seven years old, with dark, haunted eyes. He was strapped to a gurney. The next page was a DNA helix chart, marked with frantic red annotations. Instability. Aggression. Psychic Fragmentation.
Page after page documented a horror show. The initial Compound V wasn't a formula for creating heroes; it was a attempt to create the perfect, compliant soldier. A living weapon. The test subjects—all children—were pushed beyond human limits. Most died. Their autopsy reports were filed with cold, clinical detachment.
Then, I found the video logs. A dusty Betamax tape labeled PROTOCOL: MINDSCAPE. A player sat on a nearby cart, as if waiting for me.
I slid the tape in. The screen flickered to life.
A younger, sharper Stan Edgar stood beside a gurney holding the boy from the photograph. He was flanked by Frederick Vought himself, a man with a fanatic's gleam in his eye.
"The subject exhibits unprecedented physical resilience," Edgar said, his voice crisp even through the tape's hiss. "But the psychological degradation is accelerating. He's experiencing violent fugue states."
"Then we initiate the final protocol," Vought replied, his tone brimming with a mad scientist's excitement. "We don't suppress the personality. We shatter it. We build a new one from the ground up. A perfect, silent weapon. We'll call him... Black Noir."
The screen showed the boy being injected with a shimmering silver serum. His body convulsed. Then, he began to scream. It wasn't a sound of pain, but of something being erased. The light in his eyes didn't just dim; it was systematically extinguished, replaced by a terrifying, vacant calm.
The tape ended.
I stood there, frozen. Black Noir wasn't just a Supe. He was the first. A victim of the most profound psychological torture imaginable. His mind had been shattered and reassembled as a weapon. The silent, loyal enforcer was a prison for the screaming child he once was.
And I had absorbed a sliver of that child's pain.
The echo in my mind wasn't just a random memory anymore. It was a plea. A ghost in two machines—my head and Noir's.
"Sir?" Wraith's voice cut through my horror. "I've found the motherlode. The Genesis Files. The complete, un-redacted research. It's all here."
He held up a solid-state drive. The key to everything.
At that moment, the archive's lights flickered and died, plunging us into absolute darkness. The hum of the servers cut off, leaving a silence so profound it was deafening.
Red emergency lights snapped on, casting the room in a bloody glow.
"Security breach," Noir's voice came through my earpiece, flat as ever. But I could hear the subtle tension in it now. The programmed response of the weapon. "The external doors have sealed. We are locked in."
This wasn't part of the plan. This was a trap, but not for me. Or not just for me.
A new voice, smooth and venomous, crackled over the comms. Homelander.
"Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in. Having a little history lesson, Mazahs? I hope you're taking notes. Because your test isn't over. It's time for the final exam."
A screen on the wall flickered to life, showing a live feed from outside the mountain. Homelander hovered there, a cruel smile on his face, his hand resting on the main power conduit for the entire facility.
"See, Stan thought he could play his little games," Homelander purred. "Pit you against me. But I don't play games. I win."
He clenched his fist. The conduit crumpled like a soda can.
Deep within the mountain, I heard a massive groan of straining metal. Then, the sound of explosions, marching closer. He wasn't just locking us in.
He was burying us alive.