Chapter 182: A Phone Call Starts Something
"So this is Umbrella Corporation, huh. I've only ever seen it from outside before. Takes some getting used to."
Pietro was muttering this to himself as he followed Magneto in.
Wanda and Polaris, walking behind him, exchanged a look at this display of someone seeing the big leagues for the first time, and simultaneously pulled the same unimpressed expression.
Both of them privately understood that a little wonder on a first visit was natural. Saying it out loud, in public, in front of actual employees, was a different matter.
While they were silently cataloging their brother's embarrassing behavior, the elevator doors at the far end of the lobby opened.
A short-haired woman stepped out, dressed in a black fitted skirt and a white T-shirt, and walked directly toward them.
"Mr. Eisenhardt, I assume?" Ada confirmed.
"Correct."
"I'm handling your onboarding. You can call me Ada Wong."
The two shook hands.
With introductions out of the way, Ada turned her attention to the three behind Magneto. "And these are?"
Magneto answered without hurrying. "My children. Also mutants."
"Mr. Lawrence and I had an arrangement. He was explicit that if I agreed to join, my family could come on board with me as well. I assume that's still..." He let the sentence trail deliberately.
Ada nodded and picked up the thread. "I'm well aware. That was just a formality on my end."
"In that case, if you'll all follow me." She led the group toward HR.
Formal onboarding meant a formal process, and even Ada wasn't going to skip steps on this one.
They went through HR, filled out the standard paperwork, had it filed, and the onboarding was, technically, complete. With Ada personally guiding it, the whole thing moved faster than it usually would.
"Mr. Eisenhardt. Miss Dane. Mr. Maximoff. Miss Maximoff. These are your company uniforms. Five sets each."
"If anything's damaged or there's a quality issue, take it to logistics. From here on, this is what you'll be wearing on shift."
Ada handed out the suits, each one clearly expensive just from the construction.
Wanda looked at the women's suit in her hands — the fabric, the tailoring, the cut, all absurdly good — and her eyes lit up. "Miss Wong, can we go change right now?"
She pointed specifically at herself and Polaris, deliberately leaving her brother out of the invitation.
Ada smiled and nodded. "Of course. I'll take Mr. Eisenhardt and Mr. Maximoff to the lounge up front and wait there. Come find us once you're changed."
"Great! Thanks, Ada!"
With Ada's approval, Wanda offered a quick thanks, grabbed Polaris by the arm, and headed for the changing room.
The lounge.
The three of them settled in.
"What can I get you?" Ada asked, looking at Magneto and Pietro.
"Cola," Pietro called out before anyone else could answer.
"Tea is fine for me," Magneto said.
Once the drinks and a small spread of pastries arrived, Ada was about to get into the details of what Magneto's role would actually involve when the phone in Pietro's pocket went off.
His ringtone. The one he'd picked himself.
It had a good beat. It was also, at this particular moment, in the middle of an actual business conversation, spectacularly poorly timed.
Magneto, in his capacity as a father, gave his son a look that fell somewhere short of pleased.
"Pietro. I told all three of you, more than once, before we left the house, to put your phones on silent. Did you not do that?"
"..."
Faced with the kind of look that suggested a belt might be involved if he didn't have a good answer, Pietro blinked twice with theatrical innocence. "I'm fairly sure I did put it on silent."
"This has to be Wanda. She's the only one who would mess with my volume settings behind my back to set me up."
"That's definitely what happened." He didn't bother checking who was calling. He just declined the call.
Magneto, satisfied with the appropriate level of contrition, returned to his normal expression and offered Ada a brief apology. "Sorry about that, Miss Wong. Let's continue."
"Of course," Ada said, nodding.
"Mr. Eisenhardt, you—"
The ringtone went off again, cutting her off a second time.
Magneto: "..."
"Maybe you should just take it, Mr. Maximoff. In case it's something urgent," Ada said, her smile unbothered.
Pietro looked at his father. His father nodded permission. He pulled the phone out and answered.
The voice on the other end was a woman.
"Mr. Pietro Django Maximoff."
"I hope this isn't intrusive, but you didn't show up for the second round of Seven tryouts today. Is everything all right?"
The volume was calibrated to be heard clearly by everyone in the room without being obviously loud. Every word landed.
Ada's eyebrow went up slightly, a flicker of genuine surprise crossing her expression.
The Seven's recent recruitment push had been all over the news; she'd been aware of it in passing. What she hadn't expected was that the man sitting across from her had been in the running for it.
There was also the obvious tension: hadn't Eisenhardt been openly suspicious that Vought was running experiments on mutants? Why would he let his own son walk straight into that?
She glanced at Magneto without making it obvious, caught the particular expression on his face, and understood immediately.
Right. This father had no idea what his son had been doing behind his back.
Pietro listened to every word land in real time and felt the situation deteriorating.
A quick check of his father's face out of the corner of his eye confirmed it was worse than he thought.
This was bad.
"Sorry, I'm not sure what you're talking about," he said, going for plausible deniability.
The woman wasn't ready to let it go. "Mr. Pietro Django Maximoff, you attended Vought's open casting for the Seven yesterday and successfully cleared the first round into the second."
"We're aware of your family situation. This is an exceptional opportunity for someone in your position. The kind of social standing and financial outcome most people never get access to."
"I need to ask directly, because I don't want you to miss this window. Is something holding you back? Is there anything Vought can help resolve?"
"No," Pietro said, flat and final.
"I haven't run into any problem. I've already accepted a position at a different company, so I won't be able to follow through with yours." His delivery was clean, no hedging.
"A different company?" The woman on the other end clearly hadn't expected that particular reason.
"...Mr. Maximoff, I'd urge you to reconsider."
"There are very few companies on Earth that come close to what Vought offers. And we specialize specifically in superhero development."
"What we provide, no other company can match."
She kept going, laying out Vought's advantages in detail.
Pietro listened to the whole pitch and decided there was no point keeping up the act.
"You're right about all of that."
"Unfortunately, the company I've already signed with is Umbrella. Which, as it happens, beats Vought in basically every category that matters. Plus they recruited me directly through leadership."
"If there's nothing else, I'm going to go. We've got more important things to talk about over here. Bye."
Click.
He ended the call.
Elsewhere.
Vought International.
Emily looked at the phone that had just been hung up on her, then risked a careful glance toward Homelander.
At Homelander's feet was a man lying in a spreading pool of blood, ears bleeding, completely still.
This had been another candidate who'd just cleared the open casting round.
His ability was enhanced hearing, precise enough to track obstacles and incoming weapons by sound alone — a profile comparable to Daredevil's.
Unfortunately, clearing the company's screening process hadn't meant clearing Homelander's personal evaluation. This was the result.
This was also exactly why Emily had pushed so hard to keep Pietro on the line.
With the Deep, Lamplighter, and A-Train all gone from the roster in succession, the Seven had become a name without a team behind it. Homelander needed the Seven relevant again, urgently.
And Pietro — a speedster who, unlike A-Train, was actually faster than A-Train at his peak — was exactly the asset that could make that happen.
A short distance away, Homelander stood over the body, expression dark.
He and Emily weren't standing close together, but his hearing didn't need proximity. Every word of that phone call had reached him in full.
Which meant he now knew exactly which company had just taken his preferred recruit. Umbrella. His direct rival.
"Emily." The word came without warning.
She flinched at the sudden address. "Yes — yes, sir!"
"I have a question for you."
"What exactly were you thinking, letting someone with this little going for him through the open casting? Is anyone in this building actually doing their job?"
He stepped out of the pool of blood slowly. His pale blue eyes held the particular flatness of someone who valued other people's lives at zero and saw the people working under him as instruments to be used.
This was the actual Homelander. Not the version in the press releases.
A being powerful enough to do whatever he wanted, with an appetite for control that had no natural ceiling.
Not the manufactured hero from the brand materials.
Listening to him lay out blame one clause at a time, Emily's knuckles went white around her phone.
Whether or not it was actually her fault didn't matter. She apologized immediately. "I'm sorry, sir. Initial screening is run through a third-party vendor. I should have monitored it more closely. That's on me, letting something this useless slip through."
"That's enough." Homelander cut her off with a wave, his tone as flat as someone discussing a roach he'd just stepped on.
"Letting trash through isn't your fault."
He stepped closer, and his tone shifted, suddenly heavier. "But."
"That call. The one with the Pietro-something."
"His speed type matches A-Train's profile, except he's faster than A-Train ever was at peak. He's the perfect replacement. So why did he end up in the second round and somehow walk away from it?"
"Did I or did I not tell you we're not just rebuilding the Seven this time, we're also working an angle on legacy and nostalgia? Anyone with a comparable ability to a former Seven member gets flagged to me directly."
"Did I say that to you, or not?" He closed the distance and put a hand on her shoulder. Heavy.
The pressure on her shoulder felt like it was trying to drive her straight into the floor. Emily swallowed hard. "I'm sorry, sir. This is on me."
"I promise. From now on, I'll personally monitor every single candidate."
"No. You don't need to personally monitor anything." Homelander cut her off again.
"What you need to do right now is get someone to clean up this body."
"But that man—"
"I'll handle that man myself." Homelander's tone stayed flat, but something red flickered behind his eyes.
In his read of the situation, Pietro signing with Umbrella wasn't a coincidence. It was a deliberate provocation.
And that provocation existed because he'd let the Translucent situation slide without comment. Letting it go quietly had apparently signaled that he was someone who could be pushed around.
He could admit, privately, that after discovering Matthew's actual capability level was comparable to his own, he'd decided the smart move was to avoid escalating. To let it go.
That calculation had since changed.
Vought's leadership, in their push to get the Seven back in the public eye and rebuild their standing, had recently administered Homelander a specially modified version of Compound V.
The enhancement had pushed every one of his capabilities up another tier.
Which was exactly why this time, he had no intention of continuing to ignore Umbrella's blatant poaching of his recruit. He was going to act.
Acting, in his case, did not mean flying straight at Umbrella's front door.
What he wanted was something closer to a public execution of someone's dignity.
He still remembered, in precise detail, how Matthew Lawrence had made him stand in front of an audience and personally admit that Translucent's death had been deserved, after killing him.
That hadn't just been a kill. It had been a slap delivered in front of everyone he answered to.
It was time to take that back. With interest.
He walked out of the Vought training facility, swung one arm, and shot upward into the sky as a streak of light.
He had largely stayed out of public view since footage surfaced of the Chitauri swarming and overwhelming him during the Battle of New York. Someone with no interest in letting a good disaster go unrecorded had made sure it got posted online.
The battle had clearly left something behind that hadn't fully healed.
But now, freshly reinforced and rebuilt, it was time to come back into public view and reclaim the standing that belonged to him.
Accelerating further through the cloud layer, he became a reverse meteor cutting hard across the sky.
He swore it to himself. Whatever he'd lost, he was taking back today. Personally.