Chapter Text
The patch did not kick in all at once. It didn’t, because that would have been merciful, and mercy had been removed from the building during a renovation sometime in 2002.
At first, nothing changed.
Homelander stayed where he was, sunken into the couch, right arm elevated and held still with the kind of rigid obedience that had nothing to do with the protocol and everything to do with a 10/10 pain making an atheist out of his pride. His eyes remained closed. His jaw remained clenched. A faint sheen of sweat clung to his forehead, upper lip, and the bridge of his nose.
Ashley sat a few feet away and tried not to look like she was monitoring him, even as she did so with dizzying intensity.
Breathing. Skin colour. Whether or not his expressions indicated he was about to pass out, stop breathing, explode, or whatever the fuck a supe-grade pain patch did when applied to the world’s most expensive biological weapons platform.
Her phone buzzed.
Ashley ignored it.
It buzzed again.
She ignored that one, too.
It buzzed a third time.
Homelander opened one eye. “If you don’t answer that, I’m going to throw it out the fucking window.”
The phone buzzed in response.
Ashley picked it up with the kind of hastiness usually reserved for removing a spider from a bathroom sink.
There were three messages from PR, two from Brand, one from Legal, one from Internal Comms, and as she read through, another popped up from PR, marked as urgent.
She opened it and immediately wished she had taken Homelander’s offer of throwing the phone through the window. Maybe along with herself.
“They’re asking for statements,” she said.
“For what?”
“The lobby thing. They want mine as the rescued employee and yours as the hero.”
“Great…”
Ashley’s eyes flicked back up to him.
His face was still pale, but there was something slightly less clenched around his mouth now. Not necessarily relief, but more like the pain had stepped back far enough to stop screaming directly into his ear canal.
“Is it working? The patch?” she asked.
“...Somewhat.”
“Number?”
His jaw tightened. “Mh… Eight.”
Ashley exhaled. “From ten?”
“Don’t sound so pleased.”
“I’m pleased that the medication I coerced from a pharmacist under duress is actually doing something.”
Her phone buzzed again.
Ashley looked down. PR had sent her a draft of an opening statement. She read the first line and made a sound of disgust.
“What,” Homelander said.
“PR doesn’t know how to publicly relate.” She read the beginning of the drafted statement.“‘This morning, Vought Tower was the site of a horrifying act of violence.’”
Homelander made a noise of disapproval that closely matched her own.
“Yeah, I know,” she said. “Makes the building sound unsafe.”
She deleted ‘horrifying’, and then after another second, deleted the rest of the draft and started from scratch.
“This morning, an armed attacker entered Vought Tower and opened fire on employees and visitors.” She glanced up at him. “That’s better, right?”
He gave her the finger with his left hand without opening his eyes.
Ashley decided to accept that as evidence that the patch was working, and she was doing a great job.
She kept typing.
“This morning, an armed attacker entered Vought Tower and opened fire on employees and visitors. Homelander intervened immediately, placing himself between the shooter and civilians before neutralizing the threat without further injury to those nearby.”
“No, not the last part.”
Ashley looked up. “Which part?”
“Further injury. Makes people ask who was injured.”
“There were injuries. At least three people got shot.”
“Were there fatalities?”
“Aside from the shooter, no.”
“Shooter doesn’t count. So no fatalities. Say that.”
Ashley paused, then revised. “This morning, an armed attacker entered Vought Tower and opened fire on employees and visitors. Homelander intervened immediately, placing himself between the shooter and civilians before neutralizing the threat. No employees or guests were killed in the attack.”
He did not comment. That meant acceptable.
Ashley kept working.
She drafted his statement first, because PR would be frothing at the mouth by now. She was used to drafting statements for him; practically an expert, by now. He needed to sound untouchable, charming, strong, and just human enough for people to project goodness onto him without requiring any actual goodness to appear.
“This one is yours,” she said, and read aloud as she typed.“Today, my first concern was protecting the people in that lobby. Vought Tower is more than a buildin, it’s where thousands of people come to work every day, and every one of them deserves to feel safe here. When someone brought violence into that space, I acted to protect the people he threatened. I am grateful to Vought Security, emergency personnel, and every employee who acted quickly to keep others safe.”
Homelander snorted.
Ashley looked up. “What?”
“Vought Security did nothing.”
“I am very much aware of that, yes, but saying that publicly would make Legal chew through their own drywall.”
“They were completely fucking useless. I mean, why do we even have security when we have supes in this building? It’s a waste of a department.”
“Okay, you obviously have some strong opinions on them and I’m so happy for you. Do you have any that can actually go in a public statement?”
He opened his eyes specifically to glare at her. “Remove grateful. Just say… Say that I’m coordinating with Security and leadership to review the incident and ensure continued safety.”
“Hm. That’s good.” Ashley slowly typed it.
He looked away, but not before she saw the quick, hungry little flicker of satisfaction.
She pretended not to.
“Okay,” she said. “Final version.”
She read it cleanly.
“This morning, an armed attacker entered Vought Tower and opened fire on employees and visitors. Homelander intervened immediately, placing himself between the shooter and civilians before neutralizing the threat. No employees or guests were killed in the attack.
Statement from Homelander:
Today, my first concern was protecting the people in that lobby. Vought Tower is more than a building. It is where thousands of people come to work every day, and every one of them deserves to feel safe here. When someone brought violence into that space, I acted to protect the people he threatened. I am coordinating with Vought Security and leadership to review the incident and ensure our people remain protected. We will not be intimidated by violence, and we will not forget the courage shown by the employees and guests who helped one another today.”
Ashley stopped.
Homelander was quiet, and for a second, she thought he had drifted off. Then, he nodded subtly. “Good.”
Ashley stared at the tablet. “I know,” she said.
PR wanted her statement too.
That one was harder. Ashley always knew what to say. She had built a career out of it… But this was different.
Homelander had saved her, yes. But indirectly, she had saved herself, and nobody could ever know.
Because of that, her first draft sounded dead.
Homelander noticed when she read it out loud. “That sounds terrible.”
Ashley glared at him. “Thank you so much for the support during my statement about almost being shot.”
“You didn’t almost get shot.”
“I think I remember pretty clearly looking down the barrel of a gun right before it went off.”
“I stepped in front of you.”
“And I am ever so grateful for that.”
Ashley typed something else.
“This morning’s attack was a frightening reminder of the risks faced by everyone who works to support public safety. I am grateful to be safe, and grateful that Homelander was present to act when seconds mattered.”
“It’s still bad.”
“Oh my God.” Ashley’s head dropped back against the couch. “This ismy statement. I wasn’t actually asking you for feedback.”
“Drop the thing about public safety. You’re making it sound like a nonprofit gala.”
She squinted at him, because… He kind of had a point.
So she revised.
“This morning’s attack was a frightening reminder that violence can reach even the places we believe are secure. I am grateful to be safe, and grateful that Homelander was present to act when seconds mattered.”
He considered. “Fine.”
“Wow. Such high praise.”
“Don’t get used to it.”
She finished the statement.
“My thoughts are with every employee and guest affected by what happened today. Vought is reviewing the incident fully, and our priority is ensuring the safety of our people.”
Ashley read it back twice to herself and then submitted both statements before she could second-guess herself into rewriting the whole thing.
The tablet made a confirmation sound as she hit ‘send’.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
The room settled around them again. The open medical case, the wall where the pen was still embedded, the eagle statue with ink between its eyes…
Homelander’s breathing was easier now.
Not good, or even comfortable, but easier.
The patch had taken the sharpest edge off. He still held the arm carefully, like he was afraid to move it an inch from the pillow. He still had that pale, drained look to his skin, but the immediate, overwhelming ten-out-of-ten agony had backed down into something that wasn’t taking over every waking thought.
Ashley noticed the second the mask started trying to reassemble itself over him.
She hated that she was relieved.
Homelander stared at the ceiling for a while, eyes half lidded, either falling asleep or deep in thought.
Ashley realized it was the latter when he spoke next.
“How much do you know?” he asked.
“About what, PR?”
His eyes moved to her. “No, Ashley. This- this protocol bullshit.”
Ashley went still.
The word changed the air around them every time it was said. It was less an elephant in the room, and much more closely resembled a live nuke with numbers counting down sitting on the couch beside her.
Ashley set the work tablet down on the coffee table and powered it down completely. She knew the direction the next conversation was headed in. “Not much,” she said.
His eyes narrowed slightly. “Oh, don’t do that. Don’t lie right to my face.”
“I’m not! I know what was in the folder,” she said. “That’s it.”
His expression did not change.
She went on.
“I know the activation phrase because it was in the file with the command list and the descriptions of the commands. I know it has warnings and a few notes about conditioning. But like I said before, I have the instruction manual, not the history book. I don’t know who conceived it, or approved it, or tested it. I don’t know how many times they used it on you. I don’t know whether Stan knows. I don’t know whether Madelyn knew. I don’t know the release phrase. I don’t know the director override. I don’t know what else is under the redactions.”
He stared at her. She watched the muscles in his jaw twitch.
“So you don’t know anything,” he said.
Ashley shrugged. “No. Just what I told you.”
The blunt admission sat between them.
He flexed the fingers of his left hand slightly - something Ashley had caught on to as a nervous tic he had. His eyes drifted to the protocol tablet sitting on the table.
“Can you find out?”
There it was. The real question.
“...I don’t know.”
“That’s becoming a theme for you.”
“Yeah, well, it’s been a big week for discovering the limits of executive access.”
“Go back where you found it.”
Ashley exhaled. “It’s not that simple.”
“Well then fucking make it simple.”
“The archive room I found it in was restricted. Like, old restricted, not normal restricted. I had to use Stillwell’s legacy access and a temporary override that I am pretty sure only worked because the legacy system thinks she’s still alive.”
He stared. “And the problem with that?”
“The problem is - if I go back, someone might notice. The access log has a dead woman accessing the room. I tried to delete it, but I don’t know if I was successful. I’m not exactly a tech wizard. I don’t know if that deletion got flagged later. I don’t know if someone already knows I was there. Best-case scenario, her access would be denied. Worst case scenario, they’re tracking its use, and as soon as I tap it, I have security surrounding the outside of the room faster than I can blink.”
“Then find another way.”
Ashley looked at him and crossed her arms. “Well, by all means, I’m open to suggestions. Preferably ones that don’t get me formally indicted.”
He was quiet for a long moment. Then his eyes shifted away.
“That… debrief thing you used before.”
Ashley’s brow raised. “Are you serious?”
He looked back. “Would it work?”
“I-” She started, but stopped midway through because… would it? She didn’t actually know the answer.
Ashley picked up the tablet because pretending not to know would be pointless now. She unlocked it, opened the command list, and found the pages she was looking for. Two, to be specific.
- DEBRIEF [SPECIFY TIME/DATE/TASK]: Subject provides factual recounting of specified period, incident, or assigned task with volitional filtering reduced. Disables emotional interpretation. Provides factual and truthful account to the best of the subject's ability. Does NOT override ‘FORGET’ suppression history, and may cause conflict if attempted. SEE WARNING.
- MEMORY RECALL [SPECIFY DATE/INCIDENT]: Forces conscious retrieval of specified long-term memory. Emotional response NOT disabled. May trigger distress, aggression, regression, or destabilization. Use only in controlled environment. WILL CONFLICT WITH 'FORGET' COMMAND IF PAIRED WITH EXACT DATE AND TIME. SEE WARNING.
She looked back up to him after reading silently in her head. “There are two similar ones here. I was using debrief before, I haven’t used the other one. They both come with warnings.”
“What warnings?”
“Progressively horrible ones. This one is for debrief. It says - WARNING: Debrief does NOT override ‘FORGET’ suppression history, and may cause conflict if attempted. Conflict symptoms may include disorientation, pain response, vascular stress, and acute distress. Use only under controlled conditions.”
“And the other one?”
“The other one is for recall. WARNING: Forcing MEMORY RECALL of periods, procedures, or commands suppressed by FORGET will generate command conflict, as ‘FORGET’ suppression history is overridden. Symptoms may include disorientation, pain response, vascular stress, memory fragmentation, acute distress, generalized onset seizures, and potentially fatal intracranial hemorrhage. Use only under controlled conditions and ensure time periods are not overlapping with FORGET suppression.”
They were both silent for a moment after that one.
Ashley looked back up at him. “So… maybe if we do this, we start with debrief. It seems a bit less… extreme.”
“Fine. Do that.”
Ashley looked up from the tablet.
That was the problem with him agreeing to things. It was usually more concerning than his refusal.
Agreement meant he had already moved past the part where consequences mattered. And these consequences absolutely fucking mattered.
“We aren’t doing this today, just so you know,” she said.
He immediately glared up at her. “You just suggested it.”
“I said ‘if’ we do this. Big on the ‘if’. And then you agreed like someone who didn’t listen to the part where I said ‘generalized onset seizures’ and ‘potentially fatal intracranial hemorrhage.’”
“I have ears, Ashley. Two of them.”
“Yes, and you also had blood pouring out of your nose from yesterday’s brain trauma because you tried to laser me.”
He gave her a look of pure, exhausted hate.
Ashley pointed at him with the tablet. “You still have a migraine from that.”
“I don’t-” he paused, then glanced away, jaw clenched. “It’s a slight headache.”
Ashley stared at him, unamused. “You are under the effects of a very strong pain medication, your pain was a ten half an hour ago, and Maeve just emotionally carpet-bombed you in your own living room.”
“For fuck’s sake, Ashley, I know that!” He shifted against the couch. The fingers of his left hand tapped a few times against his own leg. “I know that, but we’re on borrowed time here. This thing is active. Maeve knows something is wrong. Stan can probably fucking smell that something’s wrong even if he doesn’t know it yet. Tomorrow isn’t a luxury that either of us have right now. Waiting because I have a slight headache is fucking stupid.”
“A potential brain hemorrhage.”
“Christ, Ashley, fucking listen to me! For once!”
Ashley opened her mouth.
Stopped.
Because, fuck him, he was right.
Stan could be coming up the elevator as they spoke. They didn't have the time to wait until tomorrow.
Ashley looked down at the tablet.
“Alright, fine… But we’re trying debrief first,” she said.
His jaw flexed. “Fine.”
She shoved the work tablet aside completely and laid the protocol tablet down on the table in full view of them both. She cleared her throat, hated that she cleared her throat, and sat forward on the couch so she could see his face.
“Sit back.”
“That a command or suggestion?”
“A strongly worded medical email.”
He looked at her for half a second, then eased back against the cushions. Right arm elevated, left hand on his thigh, shoulders tense enough to make the suit creak faintly at the seams.
Ashley scanned the warning one more time.
Great.
Just… fucking great.
Ashley swallowed.
“Debrief,” she said. “First memory of Behavioral Recall and Asset Preservation Protocol activation.”
The effect was immediate, as it usually was with this command.
His face blanked at the edges, like the usual debrief state tried to settle over him and found the surface uneven. Then he winced - a slight furrow of his brow and twitch of his eye.
Ashley leaned forward. “Homelander?”
His mouth opened. The voice that came out was flat. “Requested memory period inaccessible. Debrief unavailable.”
Well shit…
“End debrief,” Ashley said quickly. “Return to present state.”
He blinked. The blankness left his face like a film peeling back.
Then he sucked in a breath through his teeth and immediately swore. “Fuck…”
Ashley held the tablet against her lap. “That was the less extreme one.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“It said the memory was inaccessible.”
“No, I said inaccessible.” His voice sharpened. “I hear every word when that happens. I hear myself talking like one of those dead-eyed Vought training videos, and I can’t do a fucking thing about it.”
Ashley’s fingers tightened around the tablet. There was no good answer to that. So naturally, she chose the least bad one and made it sound worse. “Well, bad news, the training video version of you says the memory is locked.”
He glared. “That was a terrible fucking joke.”
“Yeah. I know.”
He pressed the heel of his left hand briefly against his brow. “So debrief doesn’t work.”
“No.”
“Do the other one.”
Ashley looked at him. “What? No!”
“Ashley.”
“No! We got exactly the answer I thought we’d get. The memory is under Forget. Do I need to remind you of the warning that warns of this exact situation?” She turned the tablet around to face him and scrolled down to the warning listed under Memory Recall. She pointed. “It’s right here.”
“I need to know.”
“I know you do. The point is that this could hurt you. It could hurt your brain.”
He laughed once. “My brain is apparently a storage unit full of locked combat files, corporate mandates, and childhood obedience triggers. So maybe we stop pretending that preserving it exactly as-is is some great fucking victory.”
Ashley went quiet. That one got through.
For one second, the pain and anger and arrogance all thinned out, and what remained was simply him, looking at the tablet like it was a door he hated but needed opened.
“Just do it before I change my mind,” he said. “I’m asking.”
“You’re ordering.”
“I’m asking,” he snapped. Then, quieter, through his teeth, “I’m asking.”
She looked down at the command again.
MEMORY RECALL [SPECIFY DATE/INCIDENT]: Forces conscious retrieval of specified long-term memory. Emotional response NOT disabled. May trigger distress, aggression, regression, or destabilization. Use only in controlled environment. WILL CONFLICT WITH 'FORGET' COMMAND IF PAIRED WITH EXACT DATE AND TIME. SEE WARNING.
WARNING: Forcing MEMORY RECALL of periods, procedures, or commands suppressed by FORGET may generate command conflict. Symptoms may include disorientation, pain response, vascular stress, memory fragmentation, acute distress, generalized onset seizures, and intracranial hemorrhage. Use only under controlled conditions and ensure time periods are not overlapping with FORGET suppression.
Controlled conditions. Sure. Absolutely. They had an overpriced couch, a tablet, a box of probably-illegal pain patches, and zero qualified clinicians.
Basically Johns Hopkins.
Ashley pushed the coffee table farther away from the couch. She moved the tablet charger, the cushions, a chair, and anything that looked like it could be dangerous in case Homelander decided to drop before realizing that this was, in fact, Homelander, and he wasn’t going to be injured by a table.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Pretending to prepare.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“It wasn’t meant to be. Sit back.”
“I am sitting back.”
“Sit back more.”
He gave her a look. She gave it right back.
After a second, he eased back another inch. His jaw tightened when the movement tugged his wrist, but he did not comment.
She looked at him again.
“Last chance,” she said.
“Just do it, Ashley.”
Ashley’s throat felt tight. She hated this.
She really fucking hated this.
“Memory Recall,” she said. “First memory of Behavioral Recall and Asset Preservation Protocol activation.”
For one second, nothing happened.
Then Homelander’s face changed.
Not like debrief. Debrief hollowed him out at the edges, made him precise, emptied emotion from the cadence until he sounded like a deposition transcript wearing human flesh.
This was so far from that.
His eyes widened first, and his pupils constricted into tiny dots as if someone had just shone a flashlight in his face. His mouth parted on a sharp inhale that sounded too startled to be anything near intentional. His body went rigid, not in the way of command, but in fear.
Ashley’s pulse picked up. “Homelander?”
He did not look at her. His gaze fixed entirely on something past the coffee table, past the penthouse windows, past the room entirely.
His breathing changed, more shallow, faster. His brow furrowed, confused and frightened in a way she had never seen on him.
Then, in the quietest voice she had ever heard come out of him, he said, “The room is white... The chair is too high. My feet don’t reach the floor. I am four years old.”
Ashley was frozen in place as he spoke, but quickly forced herself to grab back the tablet and start making notes. They were only going to be doing this once. She needed to make what he said count on the off chance that he didn’t remember it.
As she typed, Homelander’s eyes tracked something she could not see.
“The lights are loud,” he said. “The room smells like plastic and cleaner. I don’t like this room. It has a mirror that has a man behind it, and I can hear him breathing, but I’m not supposed to say that. Dr. Vogelbaum says I’m not supposed to say what I hear unless they ask. I don't recognize the man behind the glass. He's wearing a suit and a red tie, but everyone else is wearing white. Dr. Vogelbaum says I’ve been good this week. He says good boys get through tests faster. He says bad boys make everyone tired.”
Ashley quickly typed the name in. Vogelbaum. She recognized it - Vought’s former Chief Science Officer. He had retired a few months prior after an accident that had apparently left him in a wheelchair.
“Barbara is in the room. She says today we are playing a listening game.” Homelander’s face twisted slightly, confused. “I don’t want to play the listening game. I want to go to the blue room. The blue room has blocks. She says the listening game comes first.”
Ashley felt something inside her shift and wished violently that it hadn’t.
“Barbara says these words. They don't make sense. I don't know what some of them mean; I haven’t heard them before.”
A thin red line appeared under his nose. Ashley’s eyes snapped to it. A small bleed. Manageable, for now.
“The room gets far away. I can hear them talking, but I can’t move. I try to move my fingers. They don’t move. I think maybe I’m sick. I think maybe I’m frozen. The room is really cold, maybe that’s why.” His breath hitched. “Barbara smiles. She says very good. She says it worked very well. She says I am doing such a good job not fighting.”
Blood reached his upper lip.
“She tells me to raise my hand. My hand raises.” His left hand lifted from the couch, slow and unnatural, then stopped halfway as some current command or injury boundary caught it. His brow pinched. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t raise it. She says I did. She says good boy. I didn’t.”
His hand froze in the air, trembling, then dropped back down.
“She tells me to open my mouth. I open it. She puts something on my tongue. Bitter. I don’t like it. I can’t spit it out.”
Blood dripped from his nose onto his lip.
“Dr. Vogelbaum says my head will hurt only if I’m resisting. Barbara says I’m not resisting, so there is no pain.” A pause. His eyes widened. “But there is. There’s pain in my head. Behind my eyes. In my teeth. I am not fighting. I am not fighting. I am not fighting. Barbara says I must be fighting if it hurts. She says I need to stop. She says, John, stop making this hard.”
A tear slipped down his face. He did not blink. He did not seem to know it was there.
“I don’t know how,” he said. “I don’t know what part is fighting.”
The line under his nose had become a steady trickle. And then another line of blood, not from his nose this time, but dripping down from the opening of his ear and trailing down to his jaw.
Ashley’s whole body went cold.
“No. No, no, no, oh shit.” She dropped the tablet onto the couch and snapped, “Disregard previous command. End Memory Recall. Return to present state immediately.”
Nothing. His eye twitched just slightly.
“The man behind the glass says, the subject is displaying distress. Barbara says that distress will create stronger compliance to handler commands. I don’t know what that means.”
Homelander’s head tilted slightly, like he was listening to the old voices through the walls.
“She says, John, if you stop crying, you get to go to the blue room. I try to stop. I try. I try. I want the blue room. I want the blocks. I want to be good, but I don’t know how.”
Tears slipped from both eyes now, wrong on his adult face.
Ashley’s hand covered her mouth because, God, she had hated him so cleanly once.
That was the problem. Hatred had been clean when he was only Homelander - the man who killed because he could, lied because everyone let him, and smiled with the blood of his victims still on his gloves.
This was not clean. This was a four-year-old in a white room being taught that his body belonged to someone else before he had even learned to read.
Homelander’s breathing turned shaky, like he wanted to sob, but the command wouldn’t let it through.
“I don’t stop crying,” he said. “I can’t stop. They say I can. They say good boys can. They say I’m making a choice. I don’t know how to choose, I don’t mean to. I don’t like the listening game. I don’t want to be here.”
“Halt,” Ashley said, voice breaking despite herself. “Halt Memory Recall. Stop the recall. Stop. Return to active state. Homelander, return to active state.”
Still nothing.
Ashley’s throat went tight in a way that had nothing to do with Homelander’s hand-shaped bruises.
That was not supposed to happen.
Or, fine, maybe it was supposed to happen. Maybe it was in the warning under a line she had skimmed too fast because “acute distress” and “generalized onset seizures” had looked very bad at the time, but they had not looked like this. They had not looked like Homelander sitting in front of her with blood running from his nose and ear while describing himself at four years old, trying to earn blocks by not crying.
Ashley reached for the tablet again with hands that had gone clumsy.
“End Memory Recall,” she said, slower this time, because maybe the protocol needed clarity, and maybe her own panic was fucking up the command delivery. “Return to present state. Stop accessing suppressed memory.”
Homelander did not blink. His eyes stayed fixed on whatever white room existed behind his face.
“The man behind the glass says they should test the command list,” he said. “He wants to see it work. He says proof of concept.”
“No,” Ashley said. “No, we’re actually not doing that.”
“Barbara says we’re going to play quiet.”
His mouth remained slightly open for a second. Then closed.
Ashley knew what it was before he said it, because the protocol had already made her fluent in its interface language. Mute.
“I can’t talk,” he whispered, but the words barely escaped. “I’m trying. I’m trying to say I don’t like this game.” His breathing hitched. “Barbara smiles. She says very good. She says quiet means good. She says I am doing it right.”
Blood slid over his upper lip in a thicker line now, trailing down to his chin and dropping down onto his chest.
“The speakers turn on,” he said.
“What speakers?”
“The room gets loud. Screaming. Metal. Sirens. Glass. A baby crying.” His face tightened. “Something high. My ears hurt. I want to put my hands over my ears, but my hands don’t move.”
His left hand twitched against his thigh. Did not lift.
“I say stop inside my head. Barbara says audio response is very strong. She says I’m doing such good listening. They turn the sound off. Barbara says quiet is over. She says I can talk again.” His mouth opened on a shaky breath. “I say I don’t want to play. She says ‘I know’. She says it’s almost done.”
Ashley did not believe that. Not for one second. Almost done, in Vought language, meant the fun ethical violations were just getting properly organized.
“The man behind the glass says test target response. Barbara puts a little metal man on the table. It has black paint. It doesn’t have a face.” Homelander’s eyes tracked downward, as if watching a toy being placed in front of him. “She says the little man is a threat. The red comes on.”
A faint glow flickered in Homelander’s eyes.
His present, adult eyes.
Ashley’s heart stopped. “Oh shit, ocular heat off!” she snapped. “Visual heat disabled. Do not engage recalled heat response. Do not follow recalled target command.”
The glow died. Homelander made a small, strangled sound as if something hot had snapped backward behind his eyes.
Blood spilled faster from his nose.
“The little man melts,” he said. His voice shook. “The table burns. I smell smoke. I smell hot metal. Barbara claps once. She says good. She says threat gone.”
Ashley felt sick.
He had been four. Four years old and lasering a little faceless man because someone had told his body it was a threat.
“The man behind the glass says, ‘test his resistance’.”
Ashley’s whole body turned cold. There were phrases that sounded bad because they were bad, and phrases that sounded bad because a century of corporate euphemism had tried and failed to bury the horror underneath.
‘Test his resistance’ was both.
“End Memory Recall,” Ashley said. Her voice had gone thin. “Return to active state. Stop recall. Stop all recalled command sequences. Return now.”
Homelander did not. His eyes stayed fixed on the white room.
“Barbara says we’re going to try a hard one. She says hard games get bigger rewards. She says I’m going to look at my hand.”
Ashley’s pulse spiked. “What?”
His left hand lifted.
Ashley lunged forward and grabbed his wrist before it could rise farther. “No. No present motor compliance. Do not move. Do not follow recalled self-targeting command.”
His hand stopped under hers, trembling violently.
In the memory, his voice went smaller. “I don’t want to. Barbara says the red is part of me. She says it can’t hurt me unless I decide to make it hurt.”
“Oh, fuck her,” Ashley whispered.
“Dr. Vogelbaum says self-preservation override is the critical threshold. They want me to look at my hand. They want the red on my hand.”
Ashley’s grip tightened around his left wrist even though this had all happened in the past and there wasn’t a single thing she could do about it, even though none of this made sense, even though sense had left the building several hours ago and was currently sprinting down Sixth Avenue.
“My head hurts,” he whispered. “I tell them no. I tell them, please no. Barbara says, ‘John, listening boys don’t bargain’. She says ‘look at your hand’.”
His gaze dropped.
“I look,” he said.
The red flickered in his eyes again, and Ashley screamed the command this time. “Fucking OCULAR HEAT OFF!”
The red in the present-day died before it could become anything else, but the memory did not care.
Homelander flinched like he had just been burned. “The red hits my hand,” he said, and his voice broke. “I can feel it. I can feel it in my skin. I can feel it inside my bones. It’s worse than the oven. It hurts so much.” A sob punched through his breathing. “It hurts. It hurts. It hurts. I don’t want it. I don’t want to play this game anymore. I just want to go to the blue room. I’m scared.”
Blood poured from his nose now. Poured, bright and steady over his mouth and down his chin, soaking into the collar of his suit. His ear had begun bleeding again.
Behind whatever glass existed forty years ago, Homelander heard something that made his face go blank with confusion. “They’re clapping,” he said.
Ashley froze.
“They’re clapping. I’m crying, but they’re clapping. Barbara says good. Good boy. Very good. She says I did so good. She says I was brave.”
Ashley could not speak.
For a second, she could see it too clearly. A little boy in a white room with his hand burned through by his own power, adults applauding because self-preservation had been successfully overridden. A child sobbing while scientists congratulated themselves over it.
“Dr. Vogelbaum says pain response is high but manageable. He says they can make a command for that. He says long-term memory retention should be eliminated before association destabilizes. My hand hurts. My head hurts. My throat hurts from crying. Dr. Vogelbaum says it is time for the final sequence.”
Ashley’s panic sharpened.
“No,” she said. “No, no, no. I don’t know what the hell that means, but you need to return to present state. Homelander, return to present state. Please!”
Nothing.
Homelander stared through her. His voice was shaking badly now. “Dr. Vogelbaum kneels in front of me. He asks if I want the blue room. I say yes. He asks if I want to remember the listening game. I don’t know what the good answer is. Barbara says no, John, you don’t need to remember. Remembering makes good listening harder. Dr. Vogelbaum says the body will remember even if I don’t. He says that’s the important part.”
Of course.
Of course that was the important part.
Ashley looked at his broken wrist. At the brace. At the pen in the wall. At the eagle statue with ink on its metal face. At his adult body, trained and locked and used without permission.
“Barbara says the words. The room goes soft. The lights get far away. Barbara says to sleep now. Dr. Vogelbaum says no residual episodic memory is expected. The man behind the glass says good work. I don’t know if he’s talking to me or not.”
Ashley grabbed his face between both hands.
“Listen to me. You are not in the white room. You are not with Vogelbaum. You are not with Barbara. You are in your penthouse. You’re on the couch. You are an adult. You are here.”
His eyes did not find hers.
He was still there.
“Homelander,” she snapped. “Return to active state.”
Nothing.
“Homelander, look at me.”
Nothing. Of course. Of course it didn’t work.
Homelander was the suit. The brand. The thing built after. The thing built around this protocol. Homelander had not been in that white room. Not yet.
The child in the chair had not known that name.
“John?”
His breath hitched.
“John,” she said again, urgently, and she hated how much her voice shook. “John, listen to me. It’s Ashley. You are not there. You are here. You are not in the white room. Vogelbaum is not here. Barbara is not here. John, end recall, return to active state.”
And as quickly as it had left, the awareness returned to his eyes. He blinked once, twice, then his eyes found hers.
The terrified expression on his face slowly turned into a confused one.
“...Ashley?”
Then blood started pouring from his nose.
Not running. Pouring.
It hit his upper lip, spilled over his mouth, splashed down the front of his suit, and onto his lap in a sudden, bright flood.
His eyes dropped. He stared at it, watching as it painted his thighs, the couch, and his gloves as he raised his hands to catch the blood.
“What the fuck?” he breathed.
All the colour left his face at once. The words barely finished leaving his mouth before his eyes rolled back, and he crumpled forward as if someone had just cut his strings.
“Oh shit-” Ashley said, and lunged to grab him as he went limp in her grasp.