The decision crystallized not from the chorus of echoes, but from a place of silent, cold resolve deep within myself. I was not their chairman. I was their crucible. I would use their power, but the will would be my own.
I found Marcus not in the shadows, but in the open, on the roof of the very textile mill where our partnership began. The city sprawled around us, a sea of lights waiting for a signal.
"Homelander's given me an ultimatum," I told him, the wind whipping at our clothes. "Bring you in. Or else."
Marcus didn't flinch. He'd been expecting it. "So, what's the play? Do I disappear?"
"No," I said, my voice firm, a new authority in it that made him look at me sharply. "Disappearing is what they expect. It confirms you're a fugitive. We're done hiding. You're going to become a symbol."
I laid out the plan. It was audacious, reckless, and perfect. We would use the one thing Vought could never truly control: the truth, delivered not as a whisper, but a shout.
Two nights later, at the peak of the prime-time news hour, every major broadcast and streaming service in the city was hijacked. The screens flickered, then showed Marcus, not as Shatterstar, but as himself, wearing a simple dark shirt. He stood in a nondescript, brightly lit room—one of the network's safe houses, its location scrubbed and encrypted.
"My name is Marcus Jones," he began, his voice steady, his eyes burning with a conviction that couldn't be faked. "Vought International told you I was a hero named Shatterstar. Then they told you I was a threat. They lied. I was never a hero. I was a product. And when I asked too many questions, I became a liability."
For three uninterrupted minutes, he spoke. He didn't rant. He didn't accuse Homelander. He did something far more damaging: he detailed the mundane, soul-crushing corruption of Vought. The forced NDAs, the cover-ups of petty crimes, the psychological manipulation, the way they pitted Supes against each other in a vicious, hidden hierarchy. He spoke of Kala, not by name, but as "a woman whose only crime was knowing the truth about a locket." He spoke of Aegis, "a hero left to rot after taking a bullet for a executive's vanity."
It was a testimony, not a manifesto. The confession of a cog in the machine. And at the end, he looked directly into the camera, his face a mask of defiant peace.
"They'll call this a lie. They'll say I'm unstable. They'll send someone to silence me. And maybe they will. But I'd rather be a silenced truth than a living lie. The system is broken. And I'm not the only one who knows it."
The broadcast cut out.
The effect was electric. It wasn't the explosive spectacle of my battles; it was a slow-acting poison in the public consciousness. #IAmMarcusJones began trending globally within minutes. He had given a voice to the quiet doubts of millions.
As predicted, the response was swift and brutal. Homelander himself descended on the safe house location an hour later, reducing it to a smoldering crater. But Marcus was long gone, relocated by a frantic, perfectly executed operation of the ghost network. Aegis had provided a shield for his transport; Deep Dive had created a fog bank to cover their escape. The network had acted as one, proving its worth.
Homelander stood in the ruins, live on camera, his face a thundercloud. He had been outmaneuvered. He had destroyed a building, but Marcus's words were already replicating across the internet, unstoppable.
Back in my apartment, I felt a shift. The public narrative was no longer solely under Vought's control. We had created a crack. But as I watched Homelander's fury, I knew the calculus had changed. He would no longer see me as a troublesome asset or a rival. I was the architect of his humiliation.
My comms unit buzzed with a priority alert, not from Mallory or Homelander, but from a encrypted, unknown frequency. The message was simple, and it chilled me to the core.
The storm you have awakened is but a breeze. The true tempest approaches from the shadows. Your war with the false god has drawn the attention of those who see this world as a harvest. We will be in touch.
- The Shepherd
A new player. An enemy not of Vought, nor of my making. The message carried an aura of ancient, predatory patience that made Homelander's rage seem childish. My war had just gotten exponentially more complicated.