The acquisition of Kimiko Miyashiro had fundamentally altered the board. Her presence was a constant reminder of the true nature of Vought's business. She was a weapon forged in the fires of Compound V, and I knew she was not the only one. If I recall correctly, they're currently conducting a lot of illegal human research at the Sage Grove Center. This psychiatric hospital in rural Pennsylvania is Vought's dumping ground for failed experiments and unstable Supes.
More importantly, it was a laboratory. A place where Vought was actively trying to stabilize Compound V for use in adults, a process that often had horrifying results. It was a powder keg filled with dangerous people, and I knew that sooner or later, it was going to blow. The canon timeline dictated that Lamplighter would eventually cause a breach that would lead The Boys straight to its doorstep. It's the next major nexus of Vought's depravity.
This was also an opportunity to plunder new powers and to gather undeniable evidence of Vought's most heinous crimes.
From the command center of my penthouse, I began to peel back the layers of Sage Grove's digital security. It was a Vought owned facility, but it wasn't connected to their main corporate servers. It was an off the books operation with its own encrypted network.
[Ooh, a spooky asylum full of crazy Supes,] the System commented, its voice cheerful. [This looks like a great place to do some… 'aggressive recycling'. It's practically a warehouse of walking experience points!]
"This isn't a smash-and-grab," I murmured, my fingers a blur across the keyboard as I wrote a custom decryption algorithm on the fly. "We hit a place like this, we do it once, and we do it perfectly."
I hacked the facility's primary food and medical supplier, a Vought subsidiary in Harrisburg. I sifted through their delivery manifests, purchase orders, and employee records. I found anomalies: massive orders for sedatives, restraints, and specialized medical equipment that were far beyond what a normal psychiatric hospital would require. I also found the names of the delivery drivers.
I targeted one of the drivers, a man named Frank. Hacking his personal life was laughably easy. I cloned his phone, read his emails, and sifted through his social media. He was a disgruntled employee, constantly complaining about the "creepy" deliveries to the middle of nowhere. On a local trucking forum, he had even posted a half-joking comment about the "spooks" at Sage Grove.
Using my Shapeshifting ability, I created a new persona: "Dave," a disgruntled former employee of the same supply company. I created a fake social media profile for Dave, backdating it by several years. I had "Dave" send Frank a friend request, which he accepted without a second thought. Over the next few days, I engaged him in conversation, bonding over our mutual hatred for our fictional boss.
I sent him a message: "Hey man, you still doing the Sage Grove run? I left a personal item in the break room there, a family heirloom. Any chance you could grab it for me next time you're there? There's five hundred bucks in it for you."
Frank agreed immediately. The "heirloom" was an innocuous-looking power brick for a phone charger. It was also a state of the art Spencer Industries Wi-Fi sniffer and network intrusion device.
The next day, Frank made his delivery. I watched via satellite as his truck pulled up to the facility. He went inside, and a few minutes later, he came out. My device was now inside their network.
From my penthouse, hundreds of miles away, I had a digital beachhead inside one of Vought's most secure black sites. The firewall protecting their internal network was formidable, but now I was on the inside. I unleashed my algorithm, and after two hours of digital warfare, I heard the sweet sound of a notification.
Access granted. The data was a goldmine. I downloaded everything: patient files, medical records, experimental logs, and hours upon hours of black-and-white security footage. The patient files were a horror show. Supes with uncontrollable powers, their bodies and minds twisted by unstable doses of Compound V. A man who vomited acid. A patient who could phase through walls but couldn't control it, sometimes getting stuck halfway. A young woman whose eyes glowed with a terrifying energy she couldn't turn off.
These were victims, lab rats in Vought's cruel experiment.
But the most valuable piece of information was the name of the head of the project, the person overseeing this entire nightmare: Stormfront.
Her name was all over the experimental logs. She was the driving force behind the push to stabilize Compound V. Her involvement explained the ruthlessness of the operation. This was a top-priority initiative.
[So, the super-Nazi is running a secret human experiment lab. Shocker,] the System deadpanned. [What's next, you gonna tell me water is wet?]
"I'm not looking for surprises, I'm looking for an opening," I replied. "And these labs are where Vought hides their most expensive mistakes."
I used my Spencer Industries resources to procure a fleet of five micro drones. They were the size of dragonflies, with silent electric motors and high resolution cameras. They were coated in a radar-absorbent material that made them virtually invisible to most detection systems.
Over the next week, I conducted a meticulous physical survey of the Sage Grove Center from a distance. I flew the drones in sweeping patterns, mapping the facility's layout, the guard patrols, the delivery schedules. I identified the blind spots in their camera coverage, the weak points in their perimeter fence, and the patterns of the staff.
I learned that Stormfront visited the facility twice a week, always arriving and departing in an unmarked Vought helicopter. Her presence meant security was at its absolute peak. Any move I made would have to be when she was gone.
My drones also identified a familiar chain smoking orderly: Lamplighter.
[So, what's the plan?] the System asked. [Are we going to bust in there, guns blazing? Or are we going to do your usual spooky ghost routine?]
"Neither," I thought, my eyes scanning the live drone feed on my main monitor. "Not yet. For now, this is purely an intelligence gathering operation. I'm mapping the facility, learning its routines, and cataloging every Supe inside. When the time is right, I will hit this place, and I will be prepared to neutralize every single threat in one clean operation. This will be my next big harvest."
I spent the following days in a state of patient readiness. My power arsenal was formidable, but I continued to practice, honing my control over Cryokinesis and Shapeshifting, pushing the limits of my upgraded Size Alteration. I had a Tier 1 power, but I was still a novice in its use. I needed mastery if I was going to take down an entire facility of unstable Supes.