Over at Vought, Madelyn Stillwell, Vice President of Hero Management and her assistant, Ashley Barret, were losing their collective minds at how hard it was to pin down a boy who could be seen from space.
They were in the Crime Analytics Department breathing down the neck of the nerds there. A-Train, due to his fuckup became eager to please, so sending him to the location Dustin took so long to send for the security tapes barely took any convincing.
There was a wealth of blackmail that would’ve made Madelyn salivate any other day, but tonight, they were focused on one thing and one person.
“Anything from the video?” She asked Anika, the girl they’d tasked to find exactly what Mason was looking for.
“No ma’am.” The girl with messy, tied up black hair and glasses looked up at her boss. “He copied the entire day's log, so it's impossible to narrow down who or what he’s after.”
“What about the cameras? We’ve confirmed his biometrics right?”
Comparing footage from his escape with the one recorded by the club’s cameras confirmed that the person Dustin spotted was indeed Mason.
“Uhm yes, but we’ve got no hits so far. If he’s really in the city, he’s somehow avoiding the cameras. Or every one we have access to.”
“Addresses? Known associates?”
Anika shook her head.
“Maybe he has… invisibility?” Ashley put forward her thoughts.
“No. He wouldn’t have let himself get seen otherwise.”
The seconds ticked by into minutes, keyboards clacking and mouses clicking yet producing no results. Madelyn found it maddening.
‘We need to find him before he says anything.’
Being on the receiving end of her boss’ direct pressure, Anika crafted a response carefully before she spoke. “I’m sorry ma’am, but unless he reveals himself or A-Train finds something, there’s nothing we can do.”
Madelyn shut her eyes and heaved a long sigh. As if that fuckup could do something right. He couldn’t even run properly, and it was his one thing. She mumbled under obscenities under her breath, wondering about many things.
How did Mason get to Manhattan all the way from Pennsylvania so quickly? How did he know the supe club existed, and what did he want by going there?
At the top of all these questions was the most important one: what exactly was he trying to achieve by coming directly to the one place that was most dangerous to him?
“We have to put ourselves in his shoes. What would you do if you were him?”
“You mean…” said Ashley.
“Ever since the news of him went out, he’s only been spotted once. Before this club.”
“The thrift shop in Mifflinburg,” added Anika.
“Yes,” said Madelyn. “I would’ve gone on the run. Somewhere Homelander can never find me.”
“Maybe… by coming here he’s doing that. No one would’ve thought to look for him here.” Ashley offered, bracing herself for an earful.
Madelyn considered it for a moment, biting the tip of her glasses. “That would make sense, but it still doesn’t explain why he risked himself at the club. Apart from blackmail, I don’t see how any of the footage is useful.”
“We went through the list of people in the recording to see if he was connected to any of them,” said Anika. “None stood out.”
“It doesn’t matter. We need to keep an eye on them. Monitor everyone on that list.”
“Ma’am?”
“He obviously wants something, and he thinks one of them can give it to him. So keep an eye on them. Calls, texts, the usual.”
“I will get on it right away.”
“Hm. Keep me informed.”
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Mason had it in mind to visit the graves of his family once he resolved the frame up. Mainly to confirm if his fabricated history went deeper than mere papers.
He’d gotten his answer sooner than expected.
The intel he extracted from Ezekiel proved to be the goldmine he expected it to be. It not only answered most of his questions but directly confirmed his hunch about Vought’s distribution of the V.
He’d been right to suspect that the corporation wouldn’t let non-supes handle the top level stuff of the pipeline.
According to Ezekiel, Vought approached working class families and gave them money and incentives in exchange for letting their babies become experiments for the V.
When enough infants in a large city or sometimes state had been signed over, Vought would grant them premium healthcare at a top class hospital. When the babies were all present, a package of the V would be prepared and shipped.
Ezekiel handled this part, overseeing the packaging, its secure delivery, and the installment of protection along every step of the way, from delivery all the way to when the administration of the V was complete.
Thankful for trusting his instinct to record the interrogation, Mason initially could not wait to reach the location of the latest shipment, despite it being in Huntsville, Alabama.
To cross the close to 900 mile distance in the quickest time possible, he incorporated what he learned from the research he’d done on altitudes, effects of high velocities, and sonic booms into his latest flight.
By ascending to a height of thirty kilometers, his improved Mach 3 speed didn’t rip his clothes to shreds and barely produced any noticeable effects on the ground below.
However, the process of planning the route led to some changes. Spotting Louisiana on the map while he calculated the flight time to Huntsville led to some last minute adjustments.
These adjustments added at most fifteen minutes to the journey, and that price was more than enough to pay considering his family was buried where he intended to take the detour. The question of if he had to halt the journey just so he could see them didn’t even get asked.
It was a few hours from midnight when he arrived, but the darkness had deepened enough that he needed a flashlight to see the gravestones properly.
One by one, he slowly moved the phone from left to right, taking in the information on each headstone. He only paused when saw the last one. Maya’s. Not only was her own a completely new sight, the year of death matched that of the accident that took his parents.
An exhale carrying many complicated emotions left him, and his impressive stature visibly deflated. There were so many things he wanted to say, but he struggled to mouth the words.
Mainly because the person he wished to hear them most wouldn’t. There was no point. So rather than speak to a piece of stone, he decided then and there to let her words guide and influence his actions. She would be with him always if he did this.
The same way his grandad’s words and teachings lived on whenever he threw a punch or stopped himself from uttering a curse, Maya wouldn’t truly be gone if he became who she thought he could be.
“Hey!”
He ignored the tired shout as the tears rolling down his face boiled against his skin and turned to steam. Blue flames lit up around the five gravestones simultaneously, eating up the overgrown weeds that had no business crowding around his family.
Through the heat radar, he sensed the groundskeeper stop at the sight of the flames. Against the curtain of the night, the blue was really eye-catching, so was the light of his phone.
His welcome long overstayed, he turned off the light, stored the phone, and launched himself upward with a jump. Replicating the move he used back in Pennsylvania, he summoned the flame jets at the apex and quickly disappeared into the dark sky.
Contrary to his prior expectations, the time it took him to arrive at the hospital was shorter by two minutes. Instead of the thirteen to fourteen minutes, his flight had taken less than twelve.
He sensed nothing different on the way here, be it in the environment or with his flames. This necessitated a period of introspection, but not now. He shelved it for later and tucked the phone away, replacing his battered jacket with a new one.
Three times the speed of sound even at an altitude where the air was extremely thin proved to be hard on regular old fashion. If he really intended to make these long distance flights a regular thing(who would wanna stop?), enhancing his entire wardrobe would have to become a priority.
This was easier said than done however. To successfully replicate Edna’s knowledge and recreate her wonders, he needed huge amounts of capital. Especially if he wanted clothes that didn’t burn up no matter how hot his flames got or how fast he flew.
‘Hmm…’ An idea struck him while he walked the quiet and well lit halls of the hospital with his head down. ‘What if I sue them?’
All he cared about was clearing the Sloan name so he could move about and live freely. However, directly suing the people responsible for his wanted and infamous status was not his style. But it was Maya’s.
Despite his earlier declaration, he found himself hesitating.
‘Later,’ he placated himself and continued the search for the hospital’s NICU.
Anytime Vought created a fresh batch of supes, they used these units to house the babies till the V had been fully administered. With the help of his heat sense, locating a large congregation of tiny bundles of warmth didn’t take very long.
Unfortunately, the hard part came next; finding the exact room that held what he needed.
There were multiple rooms in the unit, and most held sleeping babies. The rest were empty. He also had to avoid the nurses that were coming and going. Thankfully, having an extended view of things let him evade them quite well.
Every room hid behind a door protected by an electronic lock that only opened to the swipe of a keycard. To overcome this hurdle, he went straight to every door, burned a hole at eye level and looked through it for any sign of blue.
Between dodging the dutiful nurses, walking up to the doors and creating peepholes, his nerves were being worked to their limits. That didn’t mean he’d reached them yet. Far from it.
While standing before the last but one room, he contemplated forcing himself in since there were just two left. He dismissed that idea and repeated the song and dance, controlling a tiny flame on his finger tip to slice a small peephole at eye level.
Keeping simultaneous focus on the nearby heat signatures, he leaned forward and looked through the hole with a single eye. A line of vibrant blue similar to the one he was dosed with caught his attention immediately.
Without hesitation, he leaned back and threw his shoulder into the door. An alarm began to ring throughout the building when the door gave way, but he paid it no heed and hurried inside.
Blocking the door would only slow down his escape so he didn’t bother with it and rather pulled up his mask.
Near the long tube he spotted, he observed a baby lying in the incubator, sleeping beneath an IV bag filled with the blue compound being pumped into it.
What he was about to do would be messy, but necessary. He first held up the bag, removed the tube connecting it to the baby, and then sealed it completely. The V in the tube spilled on the ground, but the baby was unharmed and he’d gotten a bag full of what he came for.
Three heat signatures closed in on this location, more of them on their heels.
He should’ve already dashed out after storing the IV bag, but the sight of so many babies being dosed generated a giant light bulb in his brain.
His phone came out and he moved about the room, camera light flashing again and again. By the time he’d gotten enough photos and stored the phone, the three signatures were a few feet from the door.
Utilizing the same trick he used to infiltrate the club, he sprang up to the ceiling and watched the suits armed with submachine guns rush into the room.
Why they’d endanger literal infants this way, he didn’t waste his brain power trying to figure it out. He rather took out the phone, disabled the flash and took more photos of the scene.
The phone still made clicks, and this caught the attention of the nearest guard, a woman. She looked up to a large palm engulfing her face. She raised her gun to let loose, but the gentle palm strike knocked her out and launched her into an incubator.
A split second glance confirmed that the baby was okay, so he wasted no time and sprinted out of the room and the entire NICU. Right as he emerged from the door into the common area, he entered the gazes of a dozen frightened nurses.
Some yelped at the sight of him, but he was already moving before their collective brains processed the whole thing and urged them to scream.
With the impossible agility conferred by his many abilities, he ascended the stairs at a breakneck speed, taking huge leaps off the walls and pushing off the rails with impressive strength.
He arrived at the top of the building in moments, and his escape became assured at that moment.
The locked door between him and the roof posed no obstacle. He took to the sky as soon as he stepped out, long before the first set of people walked through the open roof door.
By then, he was more than a hundred miles away.
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In a bid to be realistic, Mason took quite a long beat so he could map out the possible results of revealing Compound V through the methods he had in mind.
Of the two, mailing a sample of the V along with the evidence he’d collated to a journalist at NNC would be the most obvious next step for most if they found themselves in his shoes.
He wasn’t most people.
After playing out events that would ensue from that path in his head, he came to the conclusion that while Vought would indeed land in the societal, legal, and business equivalent of boiling hot water, his status as a suspect might not change.
He planned to credit himself as the source of the reveal and even wanted to have a sit down with the journalist he had in mind so he could go on record.
That however, brought with it its own set of problems, such as finding her address, breaking into her home, and convincing her he was not the crazy pyromaniac the news touted him to be.
‘Too many steps for too little a reward.’
Because not even that could guarantee his freedom. The only thing that would help the reveal of Compound V clear his name completely would be footage from the Sage Grove Center.
Vought had to have retrieved it before setting fire to the building’s supports, judging by the image they showed of him in the cell. If he obtained that entire footage, it would speak for him and also against them.
Which meant there existed no chance in hell he’d get his hands on it. The higher ups at Vought might have already scrubbed everything if they were as prudent and cautious they'd shown they were.
Overall, this meant his efforts over the past five days had been partly an exercise in futility.
On his way to this conclusion, it did strike him that he may be overthinking the situation. If all he wanted was his name cleared, turning himself in was probably the best choice.
With a good lawyer and a closer look at the facts present, he’d be out as quickly as he got cuffed. So long as there wasn’t any video of him actually shooting flames at anyone or anything, the claim that he burned down the place and killed those people would be hearsay.
However, he rejected this path without hesitation.