The Vought International sub-base sat in the West Virginia hills, a concrete blister hidden under thirty years of kudzu. No signage. No road. Just a dirt track that dead-ended at a chain-link fence. The fence was rusted. The gate was open.
" Hey, mister this is private property, forbidden to enter!! please go back.. otherwise I have to shoot you. "
Black robe moved his hand and stepped over a dead guard.
Whole face of guards blasted like water splash.
He walked deeper.
The corridor lights flickered. Old fluorescent tubes. Some had died. Some hadn't. The walls were lined with filing cabinets, water-stained, sagging.
A woman in a lab coat scrambled backward into a corner when she saw him. Clipboard clattering to the floor.
He didn't speak. Just tilted his vessel's head. The woman had grey hair. Bad dye job. Her hands were shaking so hard the wedding ring on her finger clicked against the floor tile.
"Records," he said. "Soldier Boy. Where."
"I—I don't—please—"
He reached down. Touched her forehead with one finger. The demon inside him pushed, just slightly. Her eyes rolled white. Blood trickled from her nose.
"The basement. Red door. The old project files. Please don't kill me."
He walked past her. She lived. He didn't care either way.
---
The red door was steel. Heavy. Someone had tried to weld it shut decades ago. The weld had cracked. Black robe pushed it open with one hand.
Inside, the air was dry. Climate-controlled. Someone had maintained this room long after the base was abandoned. Filing cabinets in neat rows. A projector. A screen. Old film reels in metal canisters.
He opened the first cabinet.
SOLDIER BOY — PROJECT ORIGIN — 1944
Photographs. Typewritten reports. A man in military uniform, chest out, jaw square. Captured by Nazi scientists. Experimented on. The Nazis had been playing with things they didn't understand — things older than Germany. They'd found something in a monastery outside Prague. A text. A summoning ritual. They'd tried to breed a super-soldier by binding demon essence to human flesh.
It worked. Partially.
Soldier Boy was the result. Strong. Unaging. Violent. Unstable.
Black robe turned another page. His vessel's lips curled. Not quite a smile.
COMPOUND V — PRIMARY SOURCE MATERIAL
The Americans took the Nazi research. Refined it. The scientists at Vought made a deal. Not with the government.
With something else. A demon, that is blood of Lucifer demon amry soldier.
A minor duke of hell whose name had been redacted but whose bargain was clear: blood for blood.
The demon would provide essence — black smoke, and scientists used distilled into liquid, mixed with human genetic material. The resulting compound could rewrite human DNA. Create soldiers. Create weapons. Create a new race.
This race which was freed from angel or demon hymns, a new race that was evolution of humanity body.
Most subjects exploded. The demon essence burned through them like acid through paper. But some survived. A few. Very few.
And the source material — the original demon blood, the undiluted essence — was kept. Stored. Reduced in potency over decades. Used sparingly.
On one subject.
Black robe found the file at the bottom of the cabinet. Photograph clipped to the cover. A baby. Blonde. Eyes too blue.
HOMELANDER — GENERATION TWO — PRIMARY SUBJECT
The source material had been injected in utero. The child survived. The child thrived. The child became the strongest thing on the planet.
Black robe laughed. The sound was wet and wrong in his vessel's throat.
He pulled out a chair. Sat before the old projector. Loaded a reel. The film crackled to life.
A television broadcast. Old. Grainy. A handsome man in a cape stood before a crowd. HOMELANDER LAUNCHES — VOUGHT INTERNATIONAL HEROES — AMERICA'S NEW GUARDIANS.
The crowd cheered. Homelander smiled. His cape billowed in manufactured wind.
Black robe watched. The blue light flickered across his vessel's borrowed face.
"So much power," he said to the empty room. "And you don't even know where it comes from."
He stood. Rolled the film back into its canister. Tucked it into his robe.
---
Wayne Manor. East wing. The meditation room was bare except for a mat on the floor and a small wooden box.
Bruce sat cross-legged. He was thinking about his previous life memories, he needed new power like mutant spider bite, or Cosmo spark, which can help him.
" Infinity stone! That power can even erase reality, if I can get one infinity stone z that would be really helpfull.
So first Target was infinity stone, that is in
shields headquarters
Second Target is vibranium
Third Target is brilliant mind "