"You think I'm joking? This is our only chance."
Locke's expression was serious, his eyes full of gravity.
"Do it. Kill me. That's how I trigger my powers."
The moment those words were spoken, Butcher let out a breath, but still didn't dare act. Locke was their only hope now—he had to be careful.
What if this bastard, locked up for so long, really didn't want to live anymore? Or what if he was just stupid? If he died, wouldn't he and Hughie both be done for?
Just then, the noise outside the door abruptly stopped, replaced by the sound of metal twisting from within.
Locke instinctively remembered his last escape attempt—the bald telekinetic among the guards. His time was running out.
After all, the one-and-a-half-meter-thick hydraulic alloy door was secure, but it only served to buy time.
If they hadn't used up the sevoflurane reserve earlier, they would have been dealt with before today's replenishment even arrived.
All of Vought and Cyfer's preparations had been made to contain Locke. They never imagined anyone would dare to raid the prison, leaving them short on countermeasures.
Earlier, Locke had tried to kill himself by biting his tongue to trigger a transformation, but that method was extremely painful and slow.
Because biting your tongue doesn't kill you by severing it—you die from the severed part blocking your airway and suffocating.
Under the current circumstances, having Butcher blast him with his gaze would be far quicker and even less painful.
But the more urgent the situation, the more Butcher hesitated. He glanced at Hughie, and Locke immediately understood what this dog was planning.
He wanted to stall for time with Locke so that Hughie might have a chance to teleport out.
After all, they had gone through considerable trouble just to open Locke's helmet. Freeing him completely was next to impossible, and given their distrust of him, Butcher would rather try to get Hughie to safety.
If they could put some distance between themselves and Elmira's jamming field, maybe Hughie could teleport long distances and actually escape.
The problem was, that would leave Locke with no chance of escape whatsoever. And he would never allow that.
"Billy Butcher! Your brother was killed by you! You keep saying Becca is your beloved, but you couldn't even protect her! If you still think you can take on her and Homelander, you're a walking disaster! Everyone connected to you ends up dead! Now you're dragging Hughie into the grave with you! What else can you do except stew in your hatred?!"
"What the fuck did you say?!"
Butcher, his sore spot struck, erupted in fury. His eyes blazed gold as he glared at Locke.
"Am I wrong? You're dead now. Homelander will find everyone around you, tear them apart, take his bastard seed back, and raise him as the next Homelander. And you—"
"I can't do anything!!"
The telekinetic force continued to tighten. The powerful magnetic field twisted the secret chamber, the lights flickering erratically, plunging the space into a strobe of deathly silence.
The chains rattled violently under the magnetic pull, their sharp clinking like a countdown.
The suffocating pressure bore down on them, pushing Hughie closer to the edge of losing control every second. The shadow of death wrapped around his roar, and the thin thread of sanity in Hughie's heart snapped.
Crack!
The sharp sound of breaking bones cut through the air. Butcher's pupils shrank as he saw Hughie, expression fierce, slam his forehead directly into Locke's face. Blood and flesh splattered across his features.
As Hughie numbly raised a hand to wipe the sticky mess from his face, he suddenly came to his senses.
His lips trembled as he managed to utter a single sound:
"Fuck... Fuck."
The next second, a gust of wind howled as the heavy alloy door was ripped open, revealing a bald man with blood streaming from his seven orifices, along with the menacing Viking.
"Motherfucker!"
——————————————————————————————————————————————————
Meanwhile, Locke, once again within his dream, suddenly jolted awake. He quickly opened his system panel, preparing to return to reality immediately.
[Extreme situation detected]
[In accordance with the Host Protection Clause, emergency character cards are now available]
[Please select a suitable character card from the following options]
[Eric Lensherr]
[Witch-Queen of the Mask]
[Metatron / Enoch]
Seeing the three choices, Locke realized he had little option—he didn't recognize the last two. So he could only pick the old man.
Just as he prayed that his remaining popularity points would hold out for a few more seconds and give him a chance to escape, he was stunned to discover that there were other people inside his dream.
A child. A medieval-looking rogue. A modern man in ordinary clothes. Three completely different individuals, yet each exuded a familiar aura as they confidently entered his dream.
Locke felt like his head was about to explode. He hazarded a guess, ready to confirm it:
"You all... you're me?"
Before he could finish, the medieval rogue across from him couldn't wait any longer. He reached out, his eyes filled with the grievance of an abandoned widow, as if he wanted to strangle Locke on the spot.
"Enough with the nonsense! You've been wasting popularity points like crazy, haven't you! Just take it!!"
The moment they touched, a tremor ran through them, and they understood everything.
Then their expressions simultaneously grew strange. After Locke from the pirate world learned of the tragic experiences of the Locke in the black robe, any thoughts of complaining about their shared predicament vanished without a trace, leaving only a deep melancholy in his heart.
"Ah... brother, it's okay now."
"I didn't expect this. Being stuck together like this... the system is clearly supposed to be two happy things, so why can't I feel any joy at all..."
"Who knows? This thing is tied to the soul, and this piece of our soul is what broke the system."
No wonder the system that had worked with him for twenty years was glitching—turns out the system was corrupted because the problem was the system itself. It was a miracle it had functioned at all.
However, since their souls were the same person, combined with the system bug, they were now considered a single host. That meant all of them shared the same popularity points.
Emergency character cards also required a minimum popularity threshold to use, which led to the Locke in the black robe constantly using the emergency feature over the past six months, successfully leaving all the Lockes deep in debt.
Realizing that the Locke in the black robe was still in the middle of an escape attempt, the pirate Locke said nothing more. He patted his shoulder and, incidentally, helped him exploit the bug.
[Popularity Points Updated]
[-2569 → 100]
[System Repair Complete]
[Basic Functions Unlocked]
"?!"
"Don't just stand there. Go."
The black-robed Locke gave a thumbs-up to his counterpart:
"We want blood to flow like rivers."
Seeing this, the black-robed Locke felt a whirlwind of emotions. Tears unconsciously streamed down his face—he had waited so long, and finally, the day had come.
[Emergency Character Card Selected]
[Eric Lensherr]
——————————————————————————————————————
After a bloody skirmish, Hughie had been captured in an instant by the battle-hardened Viking. Butcher had been pinned down like a rat, his arms broken by the Viking's hammer, and he was now savagely pinned to the ground.
The Viking, one of Vought's enforcers, spat a mouthful of bloody saliva and shook his head with a contemptuous sneer:
"Two fools who got played by the Seven. You risk your lives just to kill this poor bastard?"
At that moment, Butcher had nothing left to say. He knew his impulsiveness had doomed them both.
For an instant, regret filled his heart. Locke's words from earlier cut into him like a knife, stabbing again and again.
If only he had known... he should have gone with Mother's Milk and the others to find that weapon to kill Soldier Boy. He had thought breaking into Vought's most secure superpower prison with temporary Compound V would be a dream.
Just as regret washed over him, he heard it—the sound of metal twisting in the distance. It was the same sound the bald telekinetic had made when twisting the door.
But this sound was smoother, more fluid. As if the bald man had been cutting stale bread before, and now the knife was hot enough to slice through butter.
"What the...!"
At the Viking's exclamation—a mix of shock and fear—Butcher felt a flash of light behind him, followed by the sound of heavy objects hitting the floor.
He looked up and saw all the superpowered guards pinned against the wall, impaled by torn pieces of alloy restraints. Their eyes still held unconcealed shock.
"You really are a complete bastard, Billy."
When Butcher turned his head, the alloy-armored figure had been replaced by a Caucasian man in an unfamiliar uniform.
"But you're lucky. Today is my happiest day, so I've decided not to hold it against you."
With that, the mysterious man spread his arms wide, embracing the world like a god.
In the next instant, the magnetic field across the entire area fell under the control of an invisible giant hand, becoming a deadly weapon at his command.
The violent distortion of the magnetic field was like a stone cast into a calm lake, sending uncontrollable ripples through the ecosystem within a ten-thousand-meter radius. Animals that relied on the geomagnetic field for navigation and perception were instantly thrown into collective panic and chaos.
In the air, sparrows and herons went berserk, blood spraying from their feathers.
On the ground, ants scattered and bit each other; voles and hares dashed about, crashing into death without regard for life.
In the forest, deer rampaged; squirrels fell from trees, gnawing at bark.
In the water, fish and shrimp leaped out, devouring one another; eels and frogs crawled ashore, drying out and convulsing.
Swarming bees drifted like clouds of madness; dragonflies hovered then plummeted; bats emerged from their caves in broad daylight, exposing themselves to the sun; owls fell from their roosts.
As people panicked at these strange visions, the Elmira Adult Rehabilitation Center suddenly rose from the ground, hovering in midair, drawing screams from the crowd below.
The massive structure disintegrated, sending countless researchers and security personnel wailing as they fell, crashing into the ground and turning into pulpy masses.
The bewildered superpowered prisoners stood on floating metal plates, but their gazes were drawn to the man standing at the center of the sky like a god.
At that moment, Butcher and Hughie finally understood why Vought had poured so much money into a project codenamed "Hope."
Locke, savoring the return of his freedom, had a thousand thoughts swirling in his heart. But in the end, they condensed into a single sentence:
"From today on, let Vought feel the pain."