Sepsis 6.6
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"Oh, hey, Mark!" Brink said with a smile, though he quickly frowned when he noticed my bandaged hands. "Hmm. Did something serious happen? Is there anything I can do to help?"
"Nothing serious, Professor. Just a training session that went a little too far. But yes, actually, there is something you can help me with. I'd like to know a few things." I answered calmly, making my way through what was the most prominent office in all of Godolkin while keeping my expression as relaxed as possible.
"In that case, ask me anything you like. For you, I'm an open book." He chuckled with the easy warmth of an old man and folded his hands over his chest.
"In that case—tell me what you know about Projects 'Forest,' 'Virus,' and 'V24.'" I asked with the same calm, settling into the chair across from the professor. His face didn't change. Not visibly. "Though you don't have to say anything, Professor. Your heart already gave you away. You might be excellent at hiding what you feel, but everyone has their limits. I'll be honest with you—I'm genuinely disappointed that you turned out to be this kind of person. It seems you really shouldn't meet your heroes."
Brink stared at me the way you'd look at some strange creature you couldn't quite place. Just from his eyes, you could watch it dawn on him, slowly, exactly what was happening.
"Mark, I honestly don't know what you're talking about." The old man's brow furrowed slightly and he spread his hands in a gesture of confusion.
I just shook my head and watched the performance. What a remarkable actor he could have been. It was almost a tragedy that a talent like that had been spent on things like this.
"Director, you know perfectly well how my ability works. Stop playing games. And there's no need to press the button under your desk to call security, either. Extra stress isn't good for your heart—you remember that, don't you?"
"Mark, don't do something you'll regret…" the old man said, his voice carrying genuine unease. Real fear had appeared in his eyes—and not without reason. The hand he had started moving toward something beneath the desk froze abruptly and began to tremble slightly.
I wasn't certain there was actually a button there, since I couldn't see it from my angle, but given how his muscles had tensed and how often his eyes kept drifting toward that spot under the desk, the theory held up. His quickening pulse confirmed it.
"Don't worry. No one intends to hurt you," I said, cutting him off. "If anything, you're probably the most informed person among those responsible for these experiments, which makes you extraordinarily valuable to the investigation. Even the fact that I came here in person is really just a formality. I needed to verify some information and locate your hidden laboratory. Three meters of lead—no, four—that's serious, I'll give you that. If I hadn't known where to look, I never would have found it. But now it's time to put an end to it, once and for all."
With each word I spoke, the old man's face shifted. The longer I talked, the more clearly he understood that he'd been caught in a way he couldn't wriggle out of. He still had a few cards left to play, but I was ready for all of them.
No matter how intelligent and experienced the old man was, a strike that came out of nowhere like this was hard to dodge.
"Mark, you simply don't understand what's happening here. You're not seeing the full picture! What we were doing was the only way to create real heroes. Heroes who could inspire the next generation and finally level the playing field for all of humanity. If we had succeeded, every person on earth would have had a chance to gain abilities!"
"*If,*" I said quietly.
I exhaled, and stood up. Brink stopped speaking mid-sentence. Silence settled over the room—not because he chose to stop, but because with one act of will from me, he sank back against the spine of his chair as though he had fallen asleep.
I crossed quickly to his desk, moved the old man aside, and pulled out my phone. I relayed a short message to the gray-haired woman personally overseeing the operation.
"Brink is unconscious, but the suspicions are confirmed. I've also located their hidden prison. Indira's information checks out. I think you can begin the takeover. I'll come down in five minutes."
I lowered the phone and exhaled, looking at Brink's personal computer. Looking at it, and then at the black flash drive in my other hand. What to do with it was something I'd been turning over in my mind for the past several days. It was not a simple question.
On one hand, Patriot and Sage's words had stayed with me. At their core, their ideas weren't wrong—there wasn't much to argue with. The position of superhumans was getting worse with each passing year and month, and more and more shackles were appearing around us.
The Newman Act had already cracked something in society. It had eased the fears of ordinary people a little, but it hadn't taken those fears away. For superhumans, it had become a very serious constraint. Being under practically total government surveillance was not an enviable fate, no matter how you looked at it.
And because heroes were local celebrities and legends—people that millions practically worshipped—the situation was critical. The mood among those people was churning with such intensity that predicting the future was almost impossible. It felt like anything could happen tomorrow.
Vought was losing control of their heroes more with every passing day, and when it came out that they had been kidnapping people and running experiments on them in order to build a perfect weapon against superhumans… it wasn't hard to guess that the reaction wouldn't be positive.
It was entirely possible that Patriot and his group would use that opening to seize control of the company for themselves. I could imagine them going even further—taking more dangerous grabs at power. I didn't have enough information to say anything with certainty.
And that was the core of the problem. I didn't know specifically what Patriot and Sage actually wanted. They clearly had some kind of plan, but without knowing what it was, it was difficult to decide whether to join them or hand them over to the government instead.
The two of them had given me very beautiful words and nothing concrete. Simple talk about being for everything good and against everything bad wasn't going to cut it for me—but arguing with those two wasn't exactly a smart play, either.
There was also the matter of looking at things objectively. I was a very powerful super. One of the most powerful on earth, by my own modest assessment. And if my main project could be realized, I had the potential to surpass even the greatest of them. But it was still too early for that.
If some kind of superhuman inner circle was taking shape—one that would influence the world—it was only logical to invite me. And if I completed this trial assignment, they might bring me into that circle and reveal something of substance.
I turned the flash drive over in my fingers, then pushed it into the computer's port and headed for the exit. I hoped Sage's bragging hadn't been empty air and that she'd actually be able to find something useful on it. If any particularly dark secrets of Vought were still out there, this was probably the best way to reach them.
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***
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The day dozens of armed CIA agents and a wave of additional specialists stormed Godolkin was not one anyone would forget quickly. The quiet, relaxed atmosphere that typically settled over the institute where the next generation of heroes was raised simply died that day.
Students and faculty alike had no idea what was happening, but the presence of government authority made them reluctant to interfere. Most of the supers here could have killed ordinary people without much effort, but Vought had worked hard enough that fear of authority was baked into all of them at a fundamental level.
And when everyone saw the unconscious Brink being dragged outside—the reaction was vivid. Shock was the dominant note. People refused to accept what they were seeing. For many, he was the face of Godolkin itself, and even of the superhero world in a broader sense. He had, after all, personally raised half the current roster of the Seven.
Annie had agreed to help with the transition, and stood in the main campus square trying to explain to anyone who would listen that what was happening wasn't a catastrophe—only an investigation. She ranked high enough among the local heroes that people at least partially paid attention to her.
I had no opportunity to say a word, because during all of this I was occupied with something else.
Vought was a hard and deeply serious organization that guarded its secrets with ferocious dedication.
But decades of calm and uninterrupted success had made the corporation too large and too slow to respond quickly to threats. The best way to beat them was to hit fast and hit directly at the throat—before they could recover.
"…You do not have authorization to access this section of the university! I don't care what badges you're showing me—Director Brink's orders—"
The heavily armed guard who was shouting at me and the CIA agents didn't even glance at the warrant authorizing inspection of the underground premises. From the way his grip had tightened on his rifle, he was ready to resolve the situation in a very definitive way.
"…I'm counting to three, after which I cannot be held responsible for my actions! Please—just step back—"
I had no interest in harming an ordinary person doing the job he'd been hired to do. He was helping very bad people, but judging him wasn't my job. So I simply stepped forward and tried to calmly talk him into lowering his weapon.
"You have a metal plate in your skull, and three toes on your right foot are missing—replaced with implants. Given the elevated cholesterol in your blood and the significant strain on your liver, you've had a hard life. You're in excellent physical condition despite a pretty poor diet—I'd guess you're a veteran. So I'll keep it simple. Trust us. I have no interest in making things worse on behalf of the wealthy people responsible for everything that happened in this place. All I'm asking is for you to let us through." I paused. "In exchange, I'll tell you to see an endocrinologist. Your thyroid is clearly giving you trouble."
The guard looked at me in surprise, then at the people behind me, then turned around. Dozens of other security personnel were now running toward us, only just grasping the scale of the problem bearing down on them.
He let out a heavy sigh, lowered his weapon, stepped aside, and waved us through.
I stopped where I stood and sent another message on my phone, then turned in the opposite direction from the laboratories. Despite the underground prison being buried deep beneath the earth, at this proximity I could sense dozens of supers inside—in very poor condition, but alive, and not in immediate need of emergency care.
What caught my attention far more sharply was someone else I'd picked up on. A man around forty, currently moving at speed away from the university grounds, taking something very interesting with him.
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***
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A pale-skinned man in his forties, wearing thick glasses and a white dress shirt, was running toward his car while awkwardly hauling a silver briefcase. One look was all it took to see that he was panicking, badly—his hands were shaking, sweat was running down his skin, and his heart was pounding as though he believed he was seconds away from death.
The panic escalated sharply when his limbs suddenly became impossibly heavy, as though a mountain had been placed on his shoulders. He couldn't move at all. He could only stand there and watch as I closed the distance.
"It's not as bad as all that. Please stop and put down what you're holding." I said when I finally reached him. Even moving faster than any ordinary person, I'd still had to run some distance. And I had arrived at exactly the right moment—my help was going to be needed.
"No, no, you're not getting away from me that easily," I said, frowning at the man.
A second before, he had been standing there staring at me with terror in his eyes. The moment I spoke, he simply clutched his chest and dropped.
I moved to the body immediately and placed my hands on his chest.
*What was he thinking?* His blood had a dangerously high concentration of caffeine, and his entire body showed the unmistakable signs of prolonged exhaustion.
Judging by the degree of vascular development in his brain, he was someone who worked primarily with his mind. Most likely one of the chief research doctors from Project Forest—and whatever was in that briefcase was significant.
His heart had actually stopped. Every second counted now. I knew how to deliver a precordial strike without breaking ribs, but my hands were not exactly well-suited for that at the moment.
Though, honestly, my hands weren't really necessary for this.
I had a more effective method for restarting a heart.
"One… two… three."
I exhaled, closed my eyes, and cleared my mind. I had never done anything like this before, but technically, it was straightforward. Blood and the heart were directly connected—all I needed was one good push.
A moment later, the man's body jerked sharply. He began breathing—heavy, deep pulls of air. Pupils dilated, eyes full of nothing but shock. The important thing was that he was alive.
"I hope this experience will serve as the foundation for a mutually beneficial partnership and open communication going forward," I said. "There's no guarantee I'll be able to pull that off a second time."
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