The Vought R&D lab was a sterile, silent place, all gleaming white surfaces and humming machinery that smelled of ozone and antiseptic. It felt less like a place of innovation and more like a morgue for failed ideas. The lead technician, a Dr. Aris, was a nervous man whose eyes darted everywhere but mine, as if I were a bomb that might detonate if he looked at me directly.
"The Neuro-Inhibitor works on a feedback-loop principle," he explained, his voice trembling slightly as he held up the device. It was a sleek, black band of a carbon-polymer composite, deceptively simple in design. "It monitors your psionic and metaphysical energy output. Any surge beyond a predetermined threshold triggers an immediate dampening field, effectively capping your abilities at a safe, manageable level."
Manageable. The word was a slap in the face. The echoes in my head recoiled from the device, sensing its purpose like a vampire senses a cross. Graviton calculated the field strength and found it… substantial. It wouldn't just cap me; it would feel like trying to run a marathon with weights chained to every limb.
"And the threshold?" I asked, keeping my voice neutral, playing the part of the cooperative asset.
"Set by a committee, approved by Mr. Edgar," Dr. Aris said, finally meeting my eyes for a fraction of a second. "It's calibrated to the upper limits of a standard high-tier Supe. A-Train's velocity, Queen Maeve's durability. That sort of thing."
He was lying. Or at least, not telling the whole truth. I could see it in the micro-expressions his face, in the way his pulse jumped. The threshold was set lower. Much lower. They weren't just trying to manage me; they were trying to hobble me. To make sure that if Homelander came for me, I would be too slow, too weak to fight back effectively.
"This is a mistake," the Hypnotist's voice whispered in the confines of my mind. He is afraid. His mind is a open book. A simple push, and he will set the parameters as we wish. He will never even know.
The temptation was immense. It would be so easy. A flicker of compulsion, and the cage would be of my own design.
I clenched my jaw, resisting. That was the path they expected. The path of the monster. If I was to survive, I had to be smarter. I had to play the long game, even if it meant accepting short-term humiliation.
"Proceed," I said.
Dr. Aris flinched, as if he expected me to refuse. He moved forward, the collar in his hands. As he brought it toward my neck, I saw the sheen of sweat on his forehead. The black polymer felt cold against my skin. There was a soft click, a magnetic seal engaging, and then…
Silence.
It was the most profound silence I had experienced since my awakening. The constant, low-level hum of my powers was gone. The crackle of energy at my fingertips was absent. The psychic pressure of the twelve echoes in my head didn't vanish, but they became distant, muffled, like voices shouting from the other side of a thick glass wall. I felt… small. Diminished. Human.
I took a step, and my body felt heavy, leaden. My senses, once capable of tracking a fly in a crowded room, were dulled to a merely exceptional level. I was still stronger, faster, tougher than any normal human, but the god-like power I had grown accustomed to was locked away, suppressed by the cold, unfeeling technology around my neck.
"How do you feel?" Dr. Aris asked, his voice tentative.
I flexed my hand, feeling the ordinary strain of muscle and tendon. "I feel… manageable," I replied, the word tasting like ash.
Back in my apartment, the true psychological weight of the collar settled in. It was a constant, physical reminder of my subjugation. Every time I instinctively reached for my power to float a coffee cup or scan the building for threats, I was met with nothing but a dull, psychic thud. The collar pushed back.
The echoes were furious, but their rage was muted, a distant thunderstorm.
This is an abomination! Compound King roared, his voice strained. Tear it off! Show them your strength!
They have caged the lightning, Ember seethed, but her fire was banked, smothered. We must be patient. Even the hottest fire can be rekindled.
It was Graviton, the cold logician, who offered the most useful analysis. The device has a power source. It requires a continuous energy flow to maintain the dampening field. It is not invulnerable. It is a machine. And all machines can be broken, or overloaded.
I stood before the mirror, looking at the stark black band against my throat. It was a mark of shame, a brand. But as I stared at my own reflection, at the man trapped inside the demigod, I realized something. The collar wasn't just suppressing the echoes.
It was suppressing me.
The real Alex Morrison, the man who had woken up in that alley, had been drowning in the tidal wave of power and the personalities that came with it. Now, with the volume turned down, I could finally hear my own thoughts. The fear, the doubt, the moral revulsion—it was all still there. It had just been shouted down by my parasitic passengers.
This leash, this humiliation, was also an opportunity. A chance to recenter myself. To remember who I was and what I was fighting for, without the addictive roar of absolute power in my ears.
A soft knock came at my door. It wasn't Mallory's sharp rap. I opened it to find Queen Maeve standing there, a bottle of expensive whiskey in her hand. She looked at the collar around my neck, and her face, for once, wasn't masked in stoic indifference. It was etched with a deep, familiar bitterness.
"Welcome to the club," she said, her voice rough. She held up the bottle. "The 'How to Survive Homelander' support group is now in session."
She walked in, and for the first time, I felt a flicker of something other than dread. I wasn't alone in this cage. There were others. And if we could find a way to work together, perhaps the bars weren't as unbreakable as they seemed.
The collar was on. The game had changed. I was no longer a rogue god learning control. I was a prisoner planning a jailbreak. And the first step was to understand every single weakness of my new cage.