The Boys: I Became The Soldier Boy

Chapter 52: Chapter 52: Do It, John

Chapter 52: Do It, John

Inside the dim room, Benjamin and Homelander stood looking down at Vogelbaum as he slumped on the floor. This former chief scientist, who once called the shots at Vought International and single-handedly engineered countless Supes, now had eyes clouded with absolute remorse. He had just admitted his mistakes.

Yet, looking at Vogelbaum putting on this display, Benjamin chuckled.

"Vogelbaum, look into my eyes." Benjamin slowly squatted down, his rugged face closing in on the old scientist, his voice dropping low. "You don’t know you’re wrong. In your heart, maybe in your subconscious, you never once felt that locking an infant in a freezing laboratory and torturing him was an atrocity. The only reason you’re admitting fault now is simply because you feel you ran an utterly failed experiment..."

Benjamin’s gaze was freezing cold as he said slowly, "From your words just now, you still think my son, John, is just a failed asset. You’re terrified... you think he’ll become just like me in the future, breaking free from Vought’s control and turning into a destructive monster, aren’t you?"

These words stripped Vogelbaum’s inner thoughts completely bare. That was indeed exactly what he was worried about. He wasn’t apologizing because of what he had done to Homelander as a child. He was admitting fault because the experiment had failed and Homelander had become uncontrollable. If Homelander were a normal superhero right now, would Vogelbaum be apologizing? Not a chance. ƒгeewebnovёl.com

Edgar and Madelyn were dead, and Vought’s top brass had been completely massacred. Vought was now entirely under the thumb of this company’s new rulers—this father and son. Vogelbaum only hoped that the monster he had engineered with his own hands could, under Benjamin’s restraint, cling to... at least a sliver of humanity.

The old scientist’s lips trembled slightly as he tried to defend himself, but he couldn’t force out a single sound.

The smirk on Benjamin’s face turned even more freezing. "So you’re afraid. Maybe you aren’t terrified of us snapping your neck outright—after all, your goddamn old bones have had a long enough run—but..."

Benjamin paused briefly, a cruel glint flashing across his eyes. "You’re terrified we’ll go after your family. Like, right in front of your face, tearing your wife, your kids, your grandkids... one by one, alive, completely apart with our bare hands."

Vogelbaum’s face turned deathly pale, entirely drained of color as he whimpered, "No... No! You can’t do that! They’re innocent! Please, Benjamin, you can’t..."

"Of course I wouldn’t fucking do that!" Benjamin violently kicked Vogelbaum away, letting out a cold sneer. "Family is off-limits. I’m not that goddamn underhanded."

Benjamin was merely terrifying Vogelbaum; as for actually slaughtering his family, he wouldn’t lower himself to Butcher’s pathetic level.

"But you must pay the price for everything you’ve done." Benjamin stopped looking at the goddamn old bastard and turned around, casting his gaze over to Homelander.

And right then, Homelander understood exactly what Benjamin meant.

Hummm—!

It was an almost instinctive reaction. Homelander’s eyes instantly flared with a blinding light. With just a slight tilt of his head, those two crimson beams of Heat Vision, capable of slicing through solid steel, could instantly pop the old man’s head like a watermelon.

But... a split second before that lethal heat could erupt, the crimson glow in Homelander’s eyes flickered imperceptibly as a memory of a cold, sealed laboratory flashed through his mind.

Little John, clad in a thin hospital gown, curled up on the freezing metal floor, his body tangled in tubes, having just endured an excruciating stress test that pushed him to his absolute limits.

Right when he was at his most helpless and in the worst pain, a figure surfaced outside the thick bulletproof glass door of the lab. It was a younger Vogelbaum. Standing outside, peering through the glass at the battered little John within, a warm, almost gentle smile spread across his face. frёewebηovel.cѳm

"Good job, John. You are my most perfect masterpiece."

In his memory, that faint voice cut through the glass. To the little John of that era—who grew up without parents, without hugs, and without a single goddamn toy—that smile through the glass was the solitary ray of sunlight in his freezing world.

He had naively looked at that man in the white lab coat as his own father. Even if that smile masked nothing but cold data, and that so-called fatherly love was a sickening, repulsive lie from start to finish.

"Hoo... Hoo..."

Homelander’s chest heaved with heavy, ragged breaths. He stared dead at Vogelbaum on the floor, the red glow in his eyes flaring and dimming erratically.

Homelander’s entire life had been a frantic hunt for a phantom "father." There was Vogelbaum, who gave him life but treated him like a lab rat; Stan Edgar, who held him in a death grip with corporate interests and leverage, looking at him like a mere piece of product; and now, this biological father who truly shared his bloodline, whose raw power commanded his absolute awe and a deep sense of yearning—Soldier Boy, Benjamin. This was the father who actually loved him. Vogelbaum and Edgar were never real fathers.

The muscles across Homelander’s face twitched as he struggled to unleash his power. However, at this point in time, he hadn’t reached that dark threshold of the show’s later seasons. The Homelander standing here hadn’t been completely consumed by absolute power and delusion. He hadn’t entirely discarded that final, lingering shred of vulnerable human weakness. Naturally, he couldn’t bring himself to execute a brutal massacre of every scientist in a laboratory like his later self would.

Besides, even in the alternative reality where he completely lost his mind and cast off his humanity, hadn’t he hesitated when facing Barbara—the woman he viewed as a mother figure? He had only welded the laboratory doors shut with his lasers, leaving her to rot in isolation and despair. Why didn’t he just slice her in half with his Heat Vision? Was it truly out of a sadistic desire to make her suffer the slow agony of waiting for death? Or was it because... deep down, those eyes simply couldn’t bear to pull the trigger on a woman who had given him a faint shred of artificial maternal care, unable to execute her to her face?

Benjamin furrowed his brow slightly; it looked like the trauma of the laboratory still held a suffocating psychological grip on Homelander. Was it pure hatred, a faint trace of affection, or a twisted mix of both? He’d likely have to find an opportunity to take Homelander back to a lab down the line. Only by confronting the source could he systematically fix Homelander’s deep-seated psychological damage.

The room descended into a deathly silence, broken only by the heavy rasp of Homelander’s breathing. Sprawled out on the floor, Vogelbaum seemed to pick up on the shift. The old scientist slowly lifted his head. He cast a glance at Benjamin’s cold, unyielding face before turning his head toward Homelander, whose eyes were bloodshot as his features contorted in an agonizing internal struggle.

Seeing that Homelander couldn’t bring himself to strike, a look of quiet understanding surfaced within Vogelbaum’s cloudy eyes, quickly giving way to a deep, bitter self-mockery. It was as if the old scientist had been completely drained of all physical strength in a single instant.

Slowly closing his eyes, he said in a quiet cadence, "Do it, John."

"This is what I owe you."

"It’s time... to end this wretched life of mine."

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A/N: Want to know what happens next? You can read up to 20 Chapters ahead on my p@tr~on:

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