The first report came in at 6:17 a.m. It was from a frantic 911 call made by a local volunteer firefighter in rural Pennsylvania. He was reporting an uncontrolled blaze at the site of the "psychiatric facility." By the time the first fire trucks arrived, the main building was already a lost cause, an inferno burning with a terrifying intensity.
By 7:30 a.m., the incident was on Mr. Graves's desk. The words "Sage Grove" on the report sent a jolt of ice through his veins. He made a single call and within minutes Vought's corporate machine roared to life. A fleet of unmarked helicopters lifted off from Vought Tower, their rotors churning the morning air. They were carrying Vought's elite Risk Assessment and Recovery teams, the same people who had handled the 'Supe Party' massacre.
The scene that greeted them upon arrival was one of absolute devastation. The local fire department had been ordered to stand down and form a perimeter, their hoses useless against the thermite-fueled blaze that was still hot enough to melt steel. The main asylum building was a skeletal ruin, its roof collapsed, its walls blackened and crumbling. An acrid plume of smoke billowed into the morning sky, a funeral pyre for one of Vought's darkest secrets.
Graves stepped out of his helicopter, the heat of the dying fire a physical wave against his face. His expression was grim.
"Get me a perimeter," he commanded, his voice sharp over the roar of the helicopter. "No one in or out. Lock this entire area down. I want our people on the ground now."
The Vought teams moved in. Their initial findings were a catalogue of horrors. The fire had been impossibly hot, but it hadn't been uniform. It seemed to have originated from a single point in the sub-level, the location of Dr. Cardosa's laboratory.
"Sir," Dr. Evans reported, her voice tinny over the comms. "We're finding bodies. Or what's left of them. The fire was so intense, most were just… fused carbon. Dental records will be impossible. We'll have to rely on DNA fragments, if we can even find any that aren't completely denatured."
They found the remains of the security staff in the control room, their bodies burned beyond recognition, slumped in the melted plastic of their chairs. They found the charred outlines of the nurses and orderlies at their stations.
But it was in the patient wings that the true nature of the scene began to reveal itself.
"Graves, you need to see this," Dr. Evans's voice crackled.
He found her in the east wing, standing over a body that was miraculously intact. It was encased in a semi-translucent block of ice that had somehow survived the inferno. The intense heat of the thermite fire had melted the outer layers, but the core remained frozen solid. Inside the icy tomb, the dead face of Lamplighter was clearly visible.
"He was frozen solid before the fire," Evans said, her voice a mixture of awe and horror. "The ice acted as an insulator. It saved the body from the worst of the blaze."
The discoveries continued. In a reinforced solitary cell, they found the shattered remains of another block of ice, and within it, the half-burned corpse of Cindy. In another wing, they found what was left of Sam Riordan's padded cell. The walls were scorched, but the floor was a mess of melted and refrozen ice. And in the center of the room, they found him.
Sam Riordan's body was a grotesque sculpture of fire and ice. He had been flash-frozen, but the subsequent inferno had melted parts of him, creating a horrifying corpse.
"It's the same," Graves murmured, a sickening sense of déjà vu washing over him. "It's the same as the 'Supe Party'."
The parallels were undeniable. A mass-casualty event, a sophisticated method of incapacitation and an unknown perpetrator or group with a terrifyingly diverse and powerful set of abilities. The microscopic puncture wounds at the hotel, the flash-freezing here were methods of a silent killer.
The final reports from the other teams were the nails in the coffin. The sub-level lab had been systematically looted. Every vial of Compound V was gone. Every piece of expensive research equipment had vanished. And the central server? Its hard drives had been physically melted by the thermite charge, leaving nothing but a slag heap of useless metal.
———-
The emergency meeting was held in a place few people even knew existed. At Stan Edgar's private office on the 99th floor, a cavernous space with a massive window that looked down on the entire city.
Stan Edgar sat behind his desk, a quiet point in the center of the storm. He was a man who radiated an aura of absolute control. He listened as Graves delivered his report. Madelyn Stillwell sat in one of the chairs opposite his desk, her arms crossed tightly. Homelander stood near the massive window, his back to the room, staring out at the city below. His expression was a mixture of boredom and simmering rage.
"...the evidence is conclusive," Graves finished, his voice steady despite the gravity of his words. He felt the weight of every eye in the room. Edgar's calculating stare, Stillwell's impatient glare, and the burning reflection of Homelander's gaze in the window.
"The attack on Sage Grove was perpetrated by the same organization responsible for what my team is now calling the 'Vortex Ascendant.' The methodologies are a direct signature, a calling card left for us to find."
He gestured to the large monitor on the wall, which split to show two sets of images. On one side, the bloodless bodies from the hotel party. On the other, the frozen remains from the asylum.
"First, the methodology of the kills. At the 'Supe Party', the cause of death was a microscopic puncture wound to the brain stem. Instantaneous and requiring a level of precision that is frankly unheard of. At Sage Grove, the primary cause of death for most victims was a catastrophic drop in core body temperature, essentially being flash-frozen from the inside. Again, an instantaneous method that leaves little external evidence. Both methods are designed for absolute silence and efficiency."
"Second, the infiltration and evasion," Graves continued, his tone becoming grimmer. "At the 'Supe Party', our digital forensics team found that the security camera footage for the entire floor was put on a five-minute loop for the duration of the attack. There was no forced entry on any of the doors. At Sage Grove, the entire server farm for the security system was physically melted. In both instances, the perpetrators moved through a secure facility like ghosts, leaving no digital or physical trace of their entry or exit."
"And finally, the most disturbing element: the method of mass incapacitation. At both locations, a large number of Supes were rendered completely unconscious simultaneously and without a struggle. And at both locations, our most advanced chemical and biological sensors have found absolutely nothing. No gas, no toxin, no airborne agent. This suggests a level of technology or a type of superhuman ability that, as I stated in my initial 'Supe Party' report, we cannot currently explain. It is either an unregistered telepath, or a form of traceless sonic or radiological weapon we have never encountered."
"The two events are linked beyond any doubt. This is a highly sophisticated and powerful organization. And they have now hit us twice."
He let that sink in before continuing, his voice dropping slightly as he delivered the most alarming new detail.