Marcus's safehouse was a nest of exposed wiring, stolen equipment, and the faint, metallic scent of fear. It was tucked behind a false wall in a condemned textile mill, a place that hummed with the ghost of industry, a stark contrast to Vought's sterile, soaring towers. He watched me with a wary, bird-like intensity as I lowered myself onto a crate, my body still protesting the repairs it had undergone.
"So," he began, lighting a cigarette with a flick of his thumb, a minor pyrokinetic trick he'd probably never admit to Vought. "You're building an army. In a broom closet. Against a guy who can punch through the International Space Station. Forgive me if I'm not drafting my victory speech just yet."
"The size of the room doesn't matter," I said, my voice calm despite the pain. "It's the quality of the signal we send from it. You're not just a recruit, Marcus. You're a test case."
He blew out a stream of smoke. "For what?"
"For a new kind of Supe. One that isn't owned." I leaned forward, the crate groaning under the shifted weight of my purpose. "Vought's power is a pyramid scheme. Homelander at the top, everyone else scrabbling for scraps beneath him, terrified of being replaced. It's a system built on isolation and fear. We break that by building something different. A network."
He snorted. "A Supe union? Yeah, that'll scare him."
"It's not about scaring him with numbers. It's about making his power irrelevant." I tapped my temple. "His strength is absolute, but it's a blunt instrument. He rules through terror and spectacle. We will rule through trust and information."
I laid out the vision, the strategy crystallizing as I spoke. It wasn't a plan for a frontal assault; that was suicide. It was a plan for a revolution.
"Phase one isn't recruitment. It's revelation," I explained. "We find the others like you. The C-listers, the disgruntled, the ones Vought has discarded or exploited. But we don't ask them to fight. Not yet. We offer them something more valuable: leverage."
Marcus's cynical smirk faded, replaced by genuine curiosity. "Leverage?"
"Every Supe has secrets. Incriminating ones. The crimes Vought covered up, the NDAs they signed, the side effects of their own powers they're forced to hide. We become the repository for those secrets. A digital Fort Knox of blackmail. We don't threaten to expose them; we offer to protect them. We become the one place where they can be safe from Vought's retribution, because if Vought moves against any one of us, the secrets of a dozen others get released to the world."
His eyes widened as he grasped the sheer, audacious scale of it. "You're talking about… mutual assured destruction. But for Supes."
"A defensive pact," I corrected. "A Supe Witness Protection Program. We give them a community, a purpose beyond being a corporate brand or a pariah. We give them back their agency."
"And in return?" Marcus asked, his voice hushed.
"In return, they become our eyes and ears. They feed us information from inside Vought's world. They create distractions. They provide safe houses. They become a hidden nervous system, operating right under Homelander's nose. He can't laser a ghost. He can't intimidate a secret."
I could see the idea taking root in him, transforming his fear into a cold, sharp purpose. This wasn't about being a hero; it was about being smart. It was about survival.
"And what's my part in this grand design?" he asked, stubbing out his cigarette.
"You're my first apostle," I said, a grim smile touching my lips. "You know this world—the grifters, the has-beens, the never-weres. You know who's angry, who's desperate, who's just waiting for a sign. You vet them. You make the first contact. You are the living proof that there is another way."
I stood up, my body protesting but my will iron-clad. "I'm not asking you to throw a punch at Homelander. I'm asking you to talk. To listen. To build."
He was silent for a long moment, staring at the grimy floor. Then, he looked up, and the defiance in his eyes had been refined into resolve. "Alright. I'm in. But on one condition."
"Name it."
"No more 'Shatterstar.' That name was Vought's idea. A focus-grouped piece of crap." He stuck out his hand. "The name's Marcus. And I'm not your soldier. I'm your partner."
I took his hand. The grip was firm. It was the first real alliance I'd forged from scratch, not born of shared trauma like with Butcher, or desperate convenience like with Maeve. This was a choice. A commitment.
"Welcome to the resistance, partner."
As I left the mill, slipping back into the shadows of the city, I felt a shift in the very fabric of my being. The Sibyl Code was a weapon of last resort, a dagger aimed at a god's heart. But this… this network Marcus would help me build… this was something else. It was a vaccine. It was the slow, methodical introduction of a new idea into the body of a sick world, an idea that would teach the host to reject the disease of Vought on its own.
Homelander believed the coming war would be fought with heat vision and shattered concrete. He was preparing for an apocalypse.
I was preparing for a cure. And the first dose had just been administered.