Free Web NovelChapter 4: Chapter 4: Notifying Homelander
Chapter 4: Notifying Homelander
After tormenting A-Train for a while, Benjamin knocked him unconscious twice, then beat him awake again. A-Train had finally gotten a real taste of what the old Black Noir and the rest of Payback had once gone through.
Benjamin had been about to leave when something suddenly occurred to him.
His cold eyes lowered to A-Train, who was lying on the ground.
As a transmigrator who knew the plot inside and out, Benjamin understood his current situation very well.
He had just saved Robin, who was supposed to be splattered by A-Train, and while he was at it, he had beaten the crap out of this junkie drunk on Compound V.
But this was New York, Vought International’s territory.
The cameras on the street corners, maybe even the satellites overhead, had probably already recorded everything that had just happened.
With Vought International’s intelligence network, especially under that unfathomably calculating CEO, Stan Edgar, finding out that he was "Soldier Boy" was only a matter of time.
That could bring trouble. Edgar might send a large number of Supes after him, set a trap, drug him unconscious, and have him frozen again before he even managed to make contact with Homelander.
And Benjamin had no way of knowing whether he would actually wake up again after being frozen.
Butcher might wake him up eventually, but Benjamin had no interest in getting involved with that cuckolded bastard.
Since he could not avoid it, he might as well flip the table now.
As long as Homelander learned right now that Benjamin was his "biological father," then with Homelander’s twisted craving for family and his extremely unstable mental state, Vought’s higher-ups would never dare act rashly.
This was his best way to break the deadlock.
Benjamin searched A-Train’s body.
He completely ignored A-Train’s furious yet fearful stare, bent down, and calmly pulled out a phone.
"You... cough, cough... who the hell are you?!"
A-Train clutched his broken ribs, coughing up blood as he tried to threaten him, using Vought’s name to scare him off.
"You touch me, and Vought International won’t let you get away with it! Homelander... Homelander will tear you apart!"
"Shut up, you coward. The only thing you know how to do is run through women. If you’ve got the balls, try running through me."
Benjamin gave him a cold glance. The anger in his eyes instantly made A-Train feel as if he had been thrown into an ice pit, forcing him to swallow the rest of his threat.
A-Train did not dare speak, much less charge into Benjamin. With this man’s physical toughness, A-Train was the one who would end up hurt, maybe even dead.
Benjamin casually swiped at the phone screen. When facial recognition failed, he shoved the screen right in front of A-Train’s sweat-covered face.
With a click, the phone unlocked.
"Listen carefully, you woman-splattering coward."
Benjamin crouched, grabbed A-Train by the collar, and half-lifted him off the ground.
"Find Homelander’s number in your contacts and call him. Now."
A-Train’s face twisted in pain, but under Benjamin’s unquestionable death stare, he raised a trembling finger and tapped the number he would normally never dare call so casually.
The call went through. Benjamin snatched the phone and put it on speaker.
"Beep... beep..."
After a few rings, an arrogant, magnetic male voice came through, laced with irritation.
"A-Train? This had better be important. I’m shooting some damn promo videos with PR right now."
Benjamin straightened. Facing the phone, he spoke slowly in an old-fashioned, steady voice.
"John."
The breathing on the other end clearly stopped for a moment.
In this world, very few people dared to call Homelander by his real name.
Much less in that condescending tone, almost like an elder speaking down to him.
"I’m Benjamin. Though you probably know me better by my other name, Soldier Boy."
The moment he said that, the air around them seemed to freeze.
At the edge of the street, Hughie’s brain nearly shut down. He was an ordinary person, but he had grown up reading superhero comics.
"Soldier Boy"? The legendary hero who sacrificed himself in the eighties to save a nuclear power plant?!
A-Train, still on the ground, was completely stunned.
Enduring the pain, he raised his head and stared hard at the man in front of him, a massive figure in a retro green jacket, built like a mountain.
In his memory, the old posters on the lower floors of Vought Tower began to overlap perfectly with the sharp, cold, rebellious face before him.
That face, like that of the vast majority of readers, was flawless.
Holy shit...
He was Soldier Boy?!
The legendary first-generation superhero?!
But what Benjamin said next was what truly detonated the nuclear bomb.
"In the fall of 1980," Benjamin said calmly, as if he were talking about some insignificant memory, "I was called to Vought International. To that old bastard Vogelbaum’s lab. It was a top-secret genetic experiment."
The other end of the line went deathly silent. Only faint breathing could be heard.
"Then I jerked off... into a cheap little cup."
Benjamin continued, "That madman Vogelbaum used that material to create a child. In the spring of 1981, that child was born. A boy."
"And that boy was you, John."
Silence.
Suffocating silence.
On the top floor of Vought Tower, Homelander stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling window. frёeωebɳovel.com
His pupils trembled violently, and for an instant, his mind went completely blank.
Homelander did not want to believe it. Yet his sixth sense told him that everything he had just heard was true.
"Father," "origin," "test-tube baby"...
Benjamin ignored Homelander’s near-collapse.
As for this bargain-bin son of his, he had no intention of having some heartwarming "loving father, filial son" conversation right now.
Because his goal had already been achieved.
In the show, Soldier Boy had said the same thing.
And Homelander had naturally believed him, though after Soldier Boy said it, he had gone on to search through certain classified files.
What annoyed Benjamin was that the current timeline was still Season One. Homelander was still being controlled by Madelyn and did not yet have that ability.
But it did not matter. Planting the seed of doubt was enough.
Besides, Benjamin was too lazy to wait until Season Three, when Homelander took power.
He completely ignored Hughie and Robin’s horrified, ghost-struck expressions.
He also ignored A-Train on the ground, who had gone utterly stupid from what he had heard and seemed to be questioning his entire life.
Benjamin spoke coldly into the phone.
"Pass my words on to Vought. And to that damn Stan Edgar, who thinks he can control everything."
"I’m back."
Click.
Benjamin hung up and prepared to leave.
"Soldier Boy..."
Hughie called out to him.
Benjamin turned back and sized up the protagonist of The Boys.
"What?"
"Thank you. For saving Robin."
"Next time, stay away from the damn curb. A-Train isn’t the only Supe with super speed."
