As Locke's unequivocal "NO" echoed through the secret chamber, the madness and pleading vanished from Cyfer's face without a trace.
What remained was, ostensibly, the most ordinary expression imaginable: brows and eyes uncreased, lips unmoved, not even the usual faint sense of detachment had faded—yet it was precisely this that sent a chill down the spine.
His eyes were like murky, stagnant water, devoid of focus or emotion—no anger, no panic, nor even a glance at the man before him. It was as if he saw through everything and nothing at once.
He showed no sign of panic, as if he had anticipated this outcome all along. He produced a pack of sterile gauze and powdered thrombin from his coat pocket and tossed them to the deputy behind him to tend to the wound.
"You have no idea what you're losing."
"Oh, I know exactly what I'm losing. I'm losing the chance to save you. You deserve death, but your life isn't worth mentioning to me."
"Really? In fact, I agree. Your life is far more valuable than mine. If my life could be exchanged for yours, I'd consider that a good deal."
The gash on his wrist was hastily treated. Cyfer, no longer willing to engage with Locke, turned and exited the secret chamber with his deputy.
"Leaving already? Not staying longer?" Locke's voice came from behind, laced with a teasing provocation. "Maybe if you stay, you'll get to see my new form with your own eyes."
Cyfer had no intention of looking back. His stride was resolute, with no trace of the pleading he had displayed moments before.
"No need. I have other matters to attend to. Since you insist on refusing to cooperate, there's naturally no point in continuing to study your abilities. Even if you were to conjure flowers, it would be meaningless."
As they reached the end of the corridor, Cyfer suddenly stopped. With his back to Locke, he paused for a few seconds, his voice cold as ice:
"Enjoy your final days. Goodnight, Locke."
With those final words, he and his assistant turned and stepped into the elevator.
Almost simultaneously, the walls on either side of the corridor slowly split into fine cracks, from which a dense gas erupted, instantly filling the entire passageway.
The elevator doors slid shut, sealing off everything behind them.
The soporific gas rapidly saturated the space. Locke's bloodshot eyes caught one last glimpse of the faint shimmer beyond the secret chamber before his consciousness was consumed by an overwhelming drowsiness. His body went limp, and he sank into a deep slumber.
Inside the elevator, the deputy, recalling what he had heard, could no longer contain himself:
"Mr. Cyfer, does the Group really intend to dispose of 0165?"
Cyfer looked at his deputy as if appraising a tool.
The hairs on the deputy's neck stood on end, and he immediately regretted his loquaciousness. But before he could apologize, Cyfer averted his gaze and turned to answer the question.
"Yes and no. Edgar has a plan to get rid of 0165, but I decided to take a risk."
"What kind of risk?"
"To see if he could once again hold on in the face of death. Think about it: you've been imprisoned for a year, subjected to inhumane experiments, unable to move, unable to see, unable even to eat normal food. Now, an opportunity presents itself to change everything. What would you do?"
"I wouldn't hesitate to grasp that lifeline."
"Exactly. That's what an ordinary person would think. But that was Locke six months ago. Now, he has already died once. Only anger and resentment sustain him."
As he spoke, the elevator doors opened. Heavily armed guards and researchers in biochemical suits stood waiting with equipment. They allowed the two men to exit before entering, ready to descend and clean up the mess.
Cyfer extended his bloodied right hand to the medical staff as if he felt no pain. He refused anesthesia, turning his head to continue the conversation with his deputy.
"I wanted to break his will, but I underestimated him. Everything I did didn't break him—it made him an even bigger problem."
As he spoke, the deputy's mind involuntarily drifted back six months, to the day he first met Locke.
At that time, the Elmira Adult Rehabilitation Center was experiencing the most tragic riot in its history. The instigator had been 0165, who had become a clown. With exaggerated green hair and a face painted in grotesque greasepaint, he appeared to possess no superpowers at all—yet he made the entire rehabilitation center pay a bloody price.
His predecessor, who had been in charge of 0165, had removed his restraints to cooperate with an experiment for three days. In the end, the former had been charmed by the clown and, along with other security personnel, secretly freed nearly half of the test subjects, plunging all of Elmira into a mad sea of fire.
It had been the closest 0165 had ever come to freedom. If not for Homelander's emergency arrival to suppress the riot and Locke's timely reversion to his primary personality, he might have escaped completely with the group of test subjects.
Afterward, the official assessment classified 0165's clown form as possessing "mind-control abilities." But anyone who had seen the live footage knew this was pure self-deception.
That clown had no superpowers at all—yet he was more terrifying than any superpower. He was simply an absolute devil!
In an instant, the deputy recalled those frenzied eyes. He shuddered involuntarily, swallowed the lump in his throat, and said to Cyfer with lingering fear:
"Sir, then... do we really have any way to control him?"
Cyfer naturally knew that the "way to control" ultimately meant whether they could completely kill Locke. He shook his head without hesitation, his voice as straightforward as could be:
"No."
A grim silence fell between them.
The wound on Cyfer's wrist was properly treated. He raised his bandaged right hand to confirm there were no issues, then stood and walked off, as if he weren't the one who had been injured and had just lost a significant amount of blood, continuing as he walked:
"Every time we try to inflict lethal damage on him, he awakens a new form we've never seen before. At first, we didn't understand the pattern, and we kept stimulating him. As a result, his forms became increasingly frightening, and his abilities more terrifying. In the end, it completely spiraled out of our control."
As he spoke, Cyfer's steps halted. A flicker of undisguised fear crossed his eyes, and his expression grew several degrees more serious than usual.
"Although we later figured out the pattern and discovered that the stronger his form, the less time he can maintain the transformation, it was already too late. Now, his abilities are beyond our control. We don't dare to take risks, and we can't be sure that if he were lethally wounded twice in a row, he would die or transform into a new, even more powerful form."
With that, Cyfer suddenly turned his head, his eyes cold as he glared at the deputy.
There was no warmth in that gaze—only a bone-chilling coldness, as if he were looking not at the subordinate before him, but at his own foolish past self, the foolish shadow that had dragged him into this predicament.
"If he were to die completely while in his transformed state—even in its lowest form, awakened by lethal injury—we would have to be prepared to face Homelanders. That is why we stopped the experiments altogether."
Before he finished speaking, Cyfer suddenly reached out and grabbed the deputy by both ears, staring into his shocked and bewildered eyes. He pressed his face close, almost touching foreheads, and screamed in near-hysteria:
"He is getting stronger!" Do you understand? We won't be able to control this much longer!
If we can't figure out why his innate superpower can distort reality and defy the laws of physics, what are we going to tell Walter?!
As he roared, the wound on Cyfer's wrist burst open from his increasingly violent movements. The coagulant had completely failed, and blood gushed uncontrollably like a fountain, spraying directly onto the deputy's face and neck. The warm liquid streamed down his cheeks, blurring his vision.
"Now, it's not him who is cornered—it's us! We're the ones cornered! You want to kill him? Then tell me, how many Homelanders will it cost to put him down?!"
Through the deputy's blurred vision, Cyfer looked terrifying, like a madman. Veins bulged on his forehead, his eyes were bloodshot, his neatly combed hair was disheveled, and splatters of blood clung to his cheeks, filling the air with the stench of gunpowder and iron.
"If that day truly comes, who will clean up this mess? Who will explain to the group of insatiable vampires that their money was wasted? You? Or me?!"
——————————————————————————————————————
Meanwhile, in an old office building in New York, hidden in the cracks of the market, the air was thick with dust and the sour smell of cheap coffee. The scattered members of the Boys had finally gathered around a computer desk with worn edges. A suffocating atmosphere hung over them like a damp cloth, pressing down on everyone's hearts.
Butcher leaned in the corner, his fingertips holding an unlit cigarette, his knuckles white from the pressure. Mother's Milk, Frenchie, and Kimiko sat separately around the table, frowning, their expressions serious as they stared at the computer screen, listening intently to Hughie's account of the news from Starlight.
"Uh... this, this," Hughie began, with his characteristic slight tremor—perhaps because he had been away from these old companions for too long, or perhaps due to the excitement of landing a big catch.
"This is confidential information that Annie risked stealing from Vought. It contains financial reports from nearly a year ago."
As he spoke, he opened the financial report data on the computer screen and continued:
"We analyzed it extensively and found that over the past year, Stan Edgar, the president of Vought International, has invested nearly fifty percent of the company's profits into a project codenamed 'Hope.'"
"Fifty percent?"
Butcher straightened up sharply, the cigarette frozen between his fingers, his voice filled with incredulous disbelief.
A business giant like the Vought Group—fifty percent of its profits. They would never spend that kind of money on something trivial.
"That's right. So I asked a friend to help trace the source, and we finally tracked the final destination of several large sums of money over the past six months."
As the words left his mouth, Hughie's fingers tapped quickly and somewhat stiffly on the keyboard—a small subconscious habit when he was nervous.
The image on the screen instantly changed, revealing a massive building with pristine white, cold, and sharp lines. A metal sign in front of the building was particularly striking under the virtual light, its large black characters piercing the eye:
ELMIRA ADULT REHABILITATION CENTER