The lab reeked of ethanol and burnt flesh. Alarms wailed as a gurney rattled past, the man on it already gone. Chris Reeves shut his notebook with a snap, fury etched across his face. At seventeen, he was the youngest in the room, but also the only one who treated the men on those tables as human beings.
Dr. Frederick Vought scribbled on his clipboard, indifferent. "Stability lasted two minutes, fifty-eight seconds. Strength output peaked at threefold human capacity before collapse."
Chris stepped forward, voice sharp. "Collapse? He's dead. You're burning through men like scrap metal."
Vought didn't even look up. "Science is written in blood, Mr. Reeves. These men volunteered to become something greater."
Chris's knuckles whitened around his chalk-stained notes. "Progress without ethics isn't progress. It's butchery."
The lab door swung open. Cecil Steadman, in uniform, cigarette between his lips, strode in and glanced at the sheeted corpse. "Hell of a way to earn a paycheck," he muttered, before tossing Chris a canteen. "Drink. You look like you've been awake three days."
Chris smirked faintly, adjusting his glasses. "Define awake."
Cecil chuckled. "Anywhere Vought's in charge is awake and miserable."
The uneasy friendship began there: the soldier and the genius, both disgusted by the waste around them, yet tethered to the project by duty.
Weeks blurred into months. Chris refused to quit. He rewrote formulas, refined doses, recalculated molecular bindings late into the night. Vought pushed subjects through the serum with cold efficiency, while Chris clawed for stability, for life beyond the burnouts.
At last, the breakthrough came. A subject survived. His muscles hardened, his reflexes sharpened, and his body didn't collapse into ash. He was alive — something new.
The brass roared their approval, cigars and whiskey filling the lab. America had its first true super soldier. They named him Soldier Boy.
Chris expected to see him sent straight to the front. Instead, Soldier Boy vanished into a different war.
"America salutes its greatest defender!" the radio boomed weeks later. "Soldier Boy, our shining champion, standing tall on the front lines of freedom!"
Chris scowled as he tuned the dial, hearing the announcer's voice play over scenes of staged heroics. Soldier Boy punching actors dressed as Nazis. Soldier Boy kissing actresses for the cameras. Soldier Boy smiling for war bond posters.
Cecil spat into a tray beside him. "Front lines, my ass. That guy's never even fired a shot in anger."
Chris rubbed his eyes. "That's the point. They don't need him to fight. They need him to sell the fight."
Soon, Soldier Boy was joined by others. Payback — handsome, glamorous, brimming with arrogance — a team built for photo ops and morale rallies. Their faces plastered on posters, painted on the sides of trains, printed on cereal boxes. Soldiers in the trenches whispered bitterly about the "parade heroes" who stole glory from the men doing the dying.
Chris kept to his lab, refining Compound V, ensuring fewer bodies burned out. Cecil kept watch, always circling back to Chris with the same warning.
"Funny thing about poster boys," Cecil said one night, holding up a Payback comic book. "Sooner or later, someone asks them to actually fight."
Chris looked at the golden ink on the cover, Soldier Boy's grin frozen in triumph. He had a sinking feeling Cecil was right.