The following week was a maelstrom. The "Marcus Broadcast" had ignited a firestorm. Protests sprung up outside Vought Tower. Whistleblowers, emboldened, began leaking minor but embarrassing documents. The stock price was volatile. Homelander was uncharacteristically quiet, a silence more threatening than any tantrum.
Stan Edgar summoned me. His office was the same, but the air was different. The pressure had intensified.
"You've been busy," he stated, steepling his fingers. "Creating leverage. A dangerous game."
"I'm playing the only game you left me," I replied, standing before his desk. I no longer felt like a supplicant. I felt like a visiting dignitary from a rival nation.
"Your 'ghost network,'" he said, the term landing between us like a grenade. My blood ran cold. He knew. Not the details, but the concept. "A fascinating, if crude, strategy. It has… utility. But it has also attracted flies."
He turned a monitor toward me. It showed a series of crime scene photos from across the globe. A bio-research facility in Switzerland, emptied out, the staff… vaporized. A tech CEO in Singapore, his company pioneering advanced robotics, found dead in his secure penthouse, his body displaying strange, crystalline growths. A military airfield in Nevada, where three next-generation stealth fighters simply vanished from their hangars without a trace.
"These are not Butcher's work. They are not the work of any known state actor or terrorist group," Edgar said, his voice devoid of emotion. "The pattern is… extraction. They are harvesting technology, intellect, and genetic material. They call themselves 'The Chimeric Legion.' And their leader, this 'Shepherd,' has just declared you a person of interest."
The scale of it dwarfed my conflict with Homelander. This was a global threat.
"Why me?"
"Because you are an anomaly," a new, smooth voice said from the doorway.
I turned. A man stood there, dressed in an impeccably tailored grey suit. He was of indeterminate age, with sharp, intelligent features and eyes that held a terrifying, ancient calm. He hadn't used the door; he had simply appeared.
"My name is Silas," he said, gliding into the room. "I am an associate of The Shepherd. We have been watching your world for a long time. A petri dish of fascinating, if reckless, genetic experimentation. Homelander was the pinnacle of Vought's crude art. But you…" His eyes scanned me, and I felt laid bare, as if he were reading the very code of the souls I had absorbed. "You are something new. A forced evolution. A nexus of stolen potential. The Shepherd believes you could be the key to stabilizing the Chimera."
I felt the echoes within me stir, not in rage, but in something I had never felt from them before: primal fear.
"You're not from this world," I said, the realization dawning.
Silas smiled, a thin, bloodless expression. "Perceptive. We are… collectors. Curators of the finite resources of the multiverse. Your planet's unique blend of Compound V and human fallibility has created a uniquely volatile genetic stock. It is ripe for harvest and refinement. Homelander is a flawed, final product. You are a promising, if messy, prototype."
He looked at Edgar. "The Shepherd offers you a choice, Stan. Stand aside. Let us cull the herd and take what we need. In return, your corporation may continue to exist, under new management."
Edgar's face was a mask of stone. "I don't respond to threats."
"Then you will be swept away with the rest of the chaff," Silas said mildly. He turned back to me. "As for you, Alex… The Shepherd extends a personal invitation. Join us. Your power to absorb and synthesize is of immense value. You could become a Warden of the Legion, a shepherd of worlds, rather than a sheep in this doomed pen."
The offer hung in the air, seductive and horrifying. Power on a cosmic scale. An escape from the petty war with Homelander.
But it was a lie. I could feel it. The Hypnotist in me recoiled at the layers of manipulation in Silas's words. They didn't want me to be a Warden. They wanted to dissect me, to understand the Mazahs phenomenon and replicate it.
I looked from Silas's ancient eyes to Edgar's cold calculation. I was trapped between a corporate devil and a cosmic predator. My war for Earth's soul had just become a battle for its very existence.
I felt a surge of power, but this time it was purely my own. A refusal born not from the echoes, but from the man who had been forged in their fire.
"I'm not joining your Legion," I said, my voice ringing with a finality that made the air hum. "And I'm not letting you harvest my world."
Silas's smile didn't falter. "A pity. The Shepherd does so hate waste." He nodded politely to Edgar. "Stan." Then, he looked at me. "We will meet again, Nexus. When we do, it will not be an invitation. It will be a collection."
He vanished as silently as he had arrived.
The room was silent. The stakes had been redrawn on a galactic scale. Homelander was now just the tyrant of a village that was about to be overrun by a plague from the stars.
I had sought to free myself from being a puppet. Now, I had to become the general in a war for reality itself. And my first, unthinkable move was clear. I had to warn Homelander.