The silence that followed the initial purge was a heavy blanket draped over the facility. My gaze then settled upon the ten Tier 5 Supes, individuals whose abilities had always been deemed either too insignificant or too peculiar to warrant genuine concern. They were the forgotten horrific designs. I recalled their files: a man who conversed with houseplants, a woman whose power resided in the ephemeral shift of her fingernail color. Their existence had been as quiet as their end would be. With a swift extension of my Cryokinesis, their breaths simply ceased. Their passing was as unnoticed as their lives had ever been, another muted note in the asylum's grim symphony.
Only a formidable target now remained. The files had marked him as the strongest patient within the entire facility, a name that resonated with an almost mythic power within these walls: Sam Riordan.
My steps led me down a corridor, its very architecture hinting at the immense force it contained. At its end stood his cell, a testament to his perceived threat. The door was a massive slab of solid steel. Inside, the room itself was a padded cube, designed to absorb impact, to contain the uncontrollable.
The potent CX-9 I had unleashed had indeed touched him, yet his extraordinary durability had fiercely fought against its worst effects. He was on his knees in the room's center, but his eyes were open. As I stepped into his space, his head lifted slowly. His eyes were bloodshot, seething with a potent rage.
"You…" he growled, his voice a low rumble that vibrated through the padded walls. "You did this."
With an explosive surge, he launched himself to his feet. He was a mountain of muscle, radiating pure fury.
[Uh oh. Boss, this one's a raid boss,] the System's voice cut through my thoughts, a tense whisper in my mind.
Sam moved with a terrifying velocity, far swifter than a man of his colossal size should ever be. The padded floor tore under the sheer force of his charge, fibers ripping with a harsh sound.
To meet such a brute force head-on would have been a fool's errand, an act of suicide even for me, despite my own augmented strength. I sidestepped, letting his overwhelming momentum carry him past my position. As he thundered by, my hand touched the floor.
In that instant, the entire padded surface of his cell flash-froze, the soft material hardening into a treacherous sheet of unforgiving ice. Sam lost his footing while caught in his own unstoppable charge. His massive feet slid out from under him, betraying his weight. He crashed heavily onto his back, his head striking the ice-covered wall with a sickening thud. It was a blow that would have instantly killed any normal human. He merely grunted, his powerful body absorbing the impact.
He struggled, his massive hands scrabbling for purchase on the slick surface. As he attempted to rise, I extended both my hands, and from my fingertips, a torrent of absolute zero energy poured forth. Ice exploded upwards from the floor, coiling around him, pinning his struggling form to the ground. He roared in raw fury, his muscles straining against the icy bonds. Cracks began to spiderweb across the ice, a testament to his phenomenal strength.
I walked calmly towards the struggling giant. His focus was entirely consumed by the desperate effort to shatter the ice that encased his limbs. He didn't perceive my presence as I knelt beside his head.
"It's over," I stated, my voice devoid of emotion.
His head snapped towards me, his eyes burning with pure hatred. He opened his mouth preparing to unleash another roar.
I plunged my hand into his open mouth. My Cryokinesis now channeled itself into a single point of intense cold. I flash-froze him from the inside out.
The roar died in his throat, replaced by a gurgling sound. A visible wave of frost spread across his skin, turning it a deathly blue. In less than three seconds the most powerful inmate in Sage Grove, was a frozen statue, his struggle abruptly ended.
With Sam Riordan now an icy monument, the asylum was completely pacified. Every Supe, from the weakest with their bizarre talents to the most formidable was now a silent part of the facility's grim history.
My next destination was the sub-level laboratory because it was the true heart of the facility. I found what I sought within a series of gleaming cryo-storage units. These units held rack after rack of glowing blue vials containing Vought's carefully stabilized Compound V. This was their entire supply and the lifeblood of their horrific experiments.
I opened my inventory and began my work. Each storage container was systematically emptied. Hundreds of vials worth a fortune beyond any terrestrial measure vanished into a single expanding grid within my System's inventory. These vials represented a strategic asset of unimaginable value.
This lab was a treasure trove of multi-million dollar machinery. Centrifuges spun quietly while gene sequencers hummed with dormant power and chemical analyzers stood sentinel. All of it was proprietary Vought R&D that stood as a testament to their relentless pursuit of power. Leaving it behind would offer them the chance to rebuild their research and reignite their sinister fires. That was unacceptable. I moved through the lab with my hands becoming a blur of practiced motion. The expensive instruments of their horrific science disappeared into my inventory one by one. In under five minutes, I stripped the once bustling lab bare until it was nothing but a stark collection of empty steel tables and useless power outlets.
I plugged a Spencer Industries data-spike into their central server. As it began its silent work of copying every piece of research, every experimental log, and every hidden file onto an encrypted drive, I initiated a secondary protocol: a military-grade data wipe. Even as my spike copied the last of their files, it simultaneously overwrote the originals with layers of meaningless code, corrupting them beyond any conceivable hope of recovery.
When the download was finally complete, a small indicator light flashing green, I removed the spike. The server was now nothing more than a hollowed-out shell.
I retrieved my CX-9 canister from the ventilation hub, ensuring that no trace of the gas dispersal system remained. I meticulously confirmed that every victim was accounted for, their bodies undisturbed. The scene was perfectly set: a mass death event, a tragic incident. Vought would arrive to find their valuable assets dead, their labs stripped bare, and their servers wiped clean. They would have no answers, only a torrent of maddening questions.
I walked back to the central security office. The guards remained slumped in their chairs, a silent fixture of my handiwork. I sat down at their console and initiated the final cleanup. With a few precise commands, I triggered a deep-level format of the entire security system's hard drives, systematically erasing every byte of recorded data, every fleeting shadow of my presence.
My last act was to ensure Vought would have nothing left to analyze, not even molecular residue. I returned to the now-empty sub-level laboratory. In the precise center of the sterile room, I carefully placed a Spencer Industries grade incendiary charge. It was a thermite device, engineered to burn at an unimaginable intensity, over 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
I set the timer for thirty minutes, more than enough time for me to be miles away.
With the data secured and the charges meticulously set, I made my exit. I shrank down to the size of a fly, a tiny speck, and slipped out of the facility through a cracked window pane, leaving the doomed asylum behind me.
I returned to my car as the first faint hints of dawn began to paint the horizon, an ethereal glow. I was already a few miles down the highway, heading east towards New York, when I glanced in my rearview mirror. There an angry orange glow bloomed. The fire would be a ferocious inferno warp concrete into grotesque shapes, and reduce any microscopic trace of my presence to ash.
The drive back to New York was a peaceful journey. My mind felt like a calm sea after the storm, the turbulent currents of my mission now settled into a tranquil stillness.
PS: Sam Riordan was previously held here at the Sage Grove Center. After the facility was eventually destroyed by the inmates, he was transferred to The Woods.