The "mandatory therapeutic session" was held in a room so aggressively neutral it felt like an assault. Beige walls, a single potted fern, two uncomfortably plush chairs facing each other. My therapist, a Dr. Renshaw, had the calm, placid demeanor of someone who had seen too many broken toys and was no longer surprised by the ways they could shatter.
"The collar," Dr. Renshaw began, her voice a soft, practiced monotone. "How are you adjusting to the sensory dampening?"
"It's an adjustment," I replied, giving her the bland, cooperative answer she wanted. I was playing my part, the contrite asset. But my mind was elsewhere, running on two parallel tracks. One track engaged in the inane therapy-speak. The other was an archaeological dig, sifting through the strata of memories and psychic impressions I had absorbed.
I was looking for a weapon.
The collar chafes, the Hypnotist murmured, his voice faint but clear through the muffling field. A distraction. Focus. We must look deeper. Past the rage of the others. Past the pain. Look for the silence. The empty spaces.
He was right. Homelander's origin was a gaping void in the psychic landscape of Vought. I had files on every major Supe, but his were sanitized, a PR-approved fairy tale. But I had absorbed the memories of those who had been there at the beginning, who had brushed up against the truth.
I closed my eyes in the therapy session, pretending to concentrate on my "feelings." Instead, I dove inward.
I sifted through Compound King's memories of corporate galas, of Homelander's perfectly crafted public appearances. Nothing. I pushed through Ember's fragmented recollections of Vought training facilities, of whispered rumors among the lower-tier Supes. Gossip and fear, but no substance.
Then, I focused on the oldest, most buried echo I possessed: the memory-shard of Black Noir. The one from The Aerie. The pain of his creation was a landmark, a fixed point in the darkness. I used it as a compass.
I pushed past the screaming child, past the shattering of his mind. I went deeper, into the psychic residue of the lab itself, the impressions left on the very walls by the people who worked there. I saw flashes of lab coats, heard snippets of conversation filtered through Noir's traumatized perception.
...subject is exceeding all parameters... physical development is unprecedented... but the attachment behaviors are problematic...
...Vought insists on accelerated socialization... the media timeline is set...
...we need a catalyst... a definitive break from any... maternal archetype...
The words were ghosts, but they pointed to a truth. Homelander hadn't been raised in a void. There had been a plan. A process.
"Alex?" Dr. Renshaw's voice cut through my trance. "You seem distant. Are the intrusive thoughts resurfacing?"
Intrusive thoughts. If only she knew.
"No, Doctor," I said, opening my eyes and offering a placid smile. "Just... appreciating the quiet."
The session ended. I was released back into the gilded prison of the tower with a homework assignment to "journal my emotional state." As I walked the corridors, the collar felt heavier than ever, but my mind was racing.
The key wasn't in Homelander's strength; it was in his origin. His creation wasn't just scientific; it was psychological. They had engineered a god, and in doing so, they had to engineer his psyche. And all engineered things have a blueprint. A flaw in the design.
I needed to find the architect.
Back in my apartment, I accessed the Vought internal network, my permissions now heavily restricted by the collar's monitoring. I couldn't search for anything directly related to Homelander. But I could look for other things.
I started cross-referencing. I pulled personnel files for all senior Vought scientists and psychologists from thirty-five years ago. I looked for transfers, sudden retirements, unexplained deaths. I looked for projects that were abruptly defunded or classified beyond even Seven-level clearance.
Most leads were dead ends. But one name kept appearing at the periphery of the most sensitive projects, a ghost in the machine: Dr. Emilia Brandt. A pioneering behavioral psychologist who had worked on "early subject development and conditioning." Her file ended twenty-eight years ago with a single, cryptic note: "Project concluded. Subject transitioned to autonomous phase. Dr. Brandt reassigned."
Reassigned to where? There was no record. No pension. No death certificate. It was as if she had vanished from the face of the earth.
But Stan Edgar didn't waste resources. He contained them. Or he eliminated them.
I had a name. Emilia Brandt. The woman who had likely helped build Homelander's mind. If she was alive, she was the one person who might know where the cracks were.
Finding her, with the collar on and Homelander watching my every digital move, seemed impossible. But I had an ally now. One with her own resources and her own burning need for vengeance.
I drafted a message to Maeve, using a dead-drop protocol she had outlined, a series of seemingly innocuous comments on a pre-agreed, public sports forum. The message was simple, just a name: Dr. Emilia Brandt.
The hunt was on. I was digging into the foundations of Homelander's world, with a collar around my neck and a god's wrath hanging over my head. One wrong move, one flicker of power beyond the collar's threshold, and it would all be over.
But for the first time since putting on the leash, I felt a flicker of hope. I wasn't just fighting for survival anymore.
I was fighting to win.