Frostbloom

Chapter 5

Homelander felt surprise that he enjoyed having Ashley in his arms during the flight back to Vought Tower. He didn't fly quickly enough to generate sonic booms, since the less attention drawn to them the better, but he still maintained a quick pace. She seemed to be dealing with it well, looking at the landscape below with interest. She squirmed around until her mouth was next to his ear and said, "I've never flown outside a plane before."

"You'll get the flight soon, I'm sure." If she hadn't already; the fact that she'd been asleep when he arrived at her beach house hadn't escaped his notice. He figured either the flight or the laser vision would manifest next.

Her lips compressed and she changed the subject. He smiled. "What kind of evidence do they have about what happened at the house?"

"The fire truck had a video camera on the dashboard but was too far away to get an image of your license plate when you left. There were a couple of Ring cameras on nearby houses, but you were lucky enough to park at an angle where they couldn't get a plate number either, and your face wasn't clear when you got out of the car. One of them got a picture of you with that towel over your head when you came back but didn't get your face. The teenager didn't admit anything but the mother cracked after the cops questioned her for a while. The crotchgoblin didn't know enough to make a difference."

"Shit."

"It's still better than it could be. Nobody knows the CEO of Vought has superpowers; at least, nobody outside the company." Ashley didn't reply, just leaned her head against his chest and remained silent until they arrived at Vought Tower.

Dr. Clay was still pretty pissed off at her for leaving the Tower, but Homelander didn't give a shit about the doctor's emotional condition. He had more pressing issues on his mind; namely, that his corporate puppet had decided to go play superhero games on her own. She didn't even know how to control most of her powers. Didn't she understand she was risking her life? He knew she didn't give a shit about how much difficulty she would cause him if she got her stupid self killed and he had to find a new CEO. He should probably start looking for a backup. Maureen might do, or Also Ashley. He ignored the soft side of himself that felt annoyance at his line of thought, the side of him that had screamed at him to get her to safety during the accident in the lab, that made him brush her hair. He needed to get the weak side of himself under control, but that was a project for later.

Maureen had decided to camp out at her office in the Tower until the situation was resolved, and so she was still here when Homelander arrived with Ashley. "Have you been advised of what's gone on with Dr. Rennie and the lab assistant?"

"Just that they'd regained consciousness." Ashley clearly decided not to mention her little venture into superheroing, and he didn't care enough about keeping the Board of Directors and Dr. Clay informed to tell them himself.

"Dr. Rennie's still conscious. Mr. Miller lost consciousness again a few seconds afterward. But it's what happened with him that I'm finding more significant."

"What's that?" asked Ashley. They stepped into the elevator for the trip to Subbasement B and he took the opportunity to put his hand on the small of her back. He felt a little shiver go through her and it caused him to smile.

"Miller regained consciousness for about five seconds or so. He looked at one of the nurses who was attempting to treat him and she lost consciousness. When they attempted to treat her, they couldn't get her to come to. Eventually they did an MRI and discovered that the nurse was in an active dreaming state."

Homelander hadn't heard this. It must have occurred after he'd gone to Montauk to fetch Ashley. "Mindstorm? He wasn't a member of the Seven."

"No," said Ashley, "but he was a member of Payback and Payback was under the Vought umbrella. So what you're telling me, Maureen, is that the DNA wasn't just from past and current members of the Seven. It was from every supe that's ever been associated with Vought. Correct?"

"Right. Plus everyone who was ever on American Hero." Seeing both of them looking at her, shocked, she felt the need to ask, "Didn't Mr. Edgar advise you of that?"

"No, I didn't know that. It makes sense, though, since anyone who'd been vetted for the show was a suitable candidate for inclusion in the Seven."

"I'm not sure if you're aware, Ms. Barrett, but the DNA from the current crop of American Hero was also taken because no other instructions had been given and it was SOP at that point."

She sighed, and he felt her lean against him, probably not aware she was doing it. A little flicker of triumph warmed him. She was starting to trust him, she was seeking support from him—maybe this was what he should have done right from the start, not terrorizing her but cosseting her, making her depend on him. He thought he could keep her under control much more easily that way. Hell, he probably should have fucked her back then. You could remedy that mistake, said the other side of him.

"Then I know where the cold powers come from."

Homelander gave her a surprised look, but her eyes were closed and she was pinching the bridge of her nose. "Icebreaker?"

"Yes. I don't know why he was the one that took hold in addition to you, but he's the only possibility I can come up with."

Icebreaker was the frontrunner for a slot on the Seven on the current season of American Hero. He was tall, muscular, and good-looking in a Nordic way that Homelander didn't like, as it echoed his own looks too closely, but if he got on the team they could change his appearance at will. Vought was trying to keep the previous male-female balance, so if Icebreaker made it onto the team, he'd be the only new male.

Ashley had moved on from the subject of the Seven candidate. "What steps have we taken in regard to Mr. Miller waking up in the future?"

"Dr. Clay told me that he's been blindfolded, with a sleep mask on top of that. His arms have also been restrained so he can't remove them. That should keep the medical people safe."

"Good." Something seemed to strike her, and she smiled. "You know who would have been perfect to deal with Mr. Miller?"

"No," said Maureen.

Ashley's smile broadened. "Blindspot. He's really the only one who would have been immune to that power. Shame he never got a slot on the Seven, isn't it?"

Homelander felt a flare of anger warming him, and he had to restrain himself from showing irritation with her. His corporate puppet had gotten a little bit cocky since she got dosed with his DNA. Might be a good idea to take her down a peg or two, teach her who was still in charge around here.

"I don't know who that is," Maureen told her.

"It's not important now. What about Dr. Rennie? Homelander said she was conscious too."

The other woman stopped to compose her reply. "She's still conscious. And at least we're pretty sure whose DNA she was affected by."

"What do you mean?"

"She's…grown gills."

Homelander rolled his eyes. "How long had she and the Deep been fucking?"

Maureen looked embarrassed. "She hasn't admitted to that. But Dr. Clay is working on the theory that the people with the heaviest exposure to the supe DNA are the ones who survived."

"I only shook hands with Icebreaker," Ashley said. "And I certainly wasn't—I mean, I'd only had a meeting with Homelander, not…" She trailed off.

"It's a safe assumption, considering that we're talking about the Deep here," he told Maureen. He couldn't help but feel a little annoyed that Ashley had been so quick to assume that their being—well, them fucking—was so impossible. Maybe he needed to give her some hope, some encouragement.

She spoke up again. "Is Lamplighter the only supe with fire powers who was under Vought's umbrella?"

Maureen shook her head. "He was the only one who made it into the Seven. There were a couple of candidates who didn't make the cut."

"Were any of them women?"

"Yes. There was a supe called Firewhirl in the first American Hero competition. You know, the one Supersonic won. She didn't get very far."

"She works out of Las Vegas, right?" asked Homelander. He had a dim memory of her: short brunette in an orange and black costume that mimicked fire. No tits but a nice ass. Shame he was a tit man. "Didn't she also have flight?"

"Yes."

Ashley said, "From what I remember, she got cut because she'd had a lot of very brief relationships with men that Mr. Edgar didn't think could be kept quiet if she made the team. He didn't think she would be a proper representative of Vought or the Seven."

"A lot of words to call her a slut," he said.

She looked annoyed. "That was Mr. Edgar's opinion, not mine. I think she would have worked better for the Seven than Supersonic did. He should have been disqualified from consideration due to his previous relationship with Starlight. That just wasn't fair."

"Things would have turned out better for him if he had." Supersonic had proved weak enough to let his former girlfriend manipulate him into spying for her and Billy Butcher, so really he'd gotten what he had coming to him. Why had he looked so surprised when Homelander had ripped into him like a buzzsaw? Some mistakes are forever, he remembered thinking as he regarded the younger man's carcass. Hope that second chance at her pussy was worth dying for. He didn't believe that himself; even when she'd kissed him for the cameras, Starlight left him cold physically. All he'd felt was amusement at her transparent maneuvering, and a little irritation that Ashley seemed so happy about it. He knew she'd had a crush on him for years, before that day in the training room. Wasn't she even a little bit jealous about #homelight? Or maybe she just liked the optics of the pairing and knew it wasn't real, nothing that would threaten the relationship that they had. Getting his mind back on track, he asked, "What did her name even mean?"

"A fire whirl is another name for a fire tornado. Sometimes fires create winds and the fire gets sucked up into them. If I remember correctly," she said. "I think there's a chance that Dr. Harriman got his power so strongly through…"

"Sexual contact," Maureen said when the other woman seemed reluctant to finish her thought.

"Right. Do we have anyone at Analytics tracking his movements in the days before the accident?"

"Homelander approved a dedicated Analytics person for each of the people in the lab. That doesn't explain the lab assistant's survival since I'm sure he never made the beast with two backs with Mindstorm since he's dead."

Ashley laughed. "Very Shakespearean of you, Maureen. Maybe that's why he hasn't really regained consciousness since the accident. There's no fresher DNA for it to piggyback on."

He felt disturbed at the idea that she would still be in a coma, or dead, if they hadn't had their meeting, if she hadn't shaken hands with Icebreaker. Could he really lose his corporate figurehead that easily? Humans were so very, very fragile.

But she isn't fragile now, he told himself. She's more like me, with my strength and my skin and my vision. She's less human, more supe with every moment she sleeps. How long until she has all my powers, until she's pure supe?

It would be good to have someone around who knew firsthand what it was like. He'd thought he'd found that before, with Queen Maeve and then with Stormfront, but both of them had failed him. Ashley had always done what he instructed; even if he got annoyed with her frequently, he never doubted her loyalty to him, her devotion to doing her job. The softer side of him nudged: maybe she could be with us, be ours? Maybe she would want that?

Maureen and Ashley had continued walking and talking while he was lost in thought. "We'd have to confirm no supe contact for the people who died, to support the theory."

"Analytics is on it," said Maureen. "We'll find out what's going on. And, speaking of what's going on, could you tell me why you decided to use your powers to save some people in a house fire?" She stopped and her mouth dropped open. "Oh please. I have a Google Alert set on my phone for supe activity. I know you have a beach house in Montauk and a Mercedes and cold powers. Who the hell else could it be?"

"I couldn't just drive past. They needed help."

"And that's why I'm going to suggest what I'm about to suggest. You should be a member of the Seven."

"What the fuck!" Ashley screamed. "No!"

"Listen to me. Don't just give me a knee-jerk refusal. You could be on the Seven and still run the company as Ashley Barrett. Black Noir had a full-face mask. You could actually have a secret identity, and you know enough about how things work at Vought that you wouldn't embarrass the company. We could call you Frostflower and you could have a red costume with white snowflakes, like that towel you had over your head."

"Oh, shit." Ashley pinched the bridge of her nose. "Anyway, Frostflower's a little girly."

"We can work on it, focus-group it."

"I wouldn't be able to run the company and also be in the Seven. It would be too much to split my attention between the team and standard corporate business."

"I don't think—"

"Can we wait to discuss this whole issue until the crisis of Dr. Harriman and Dr. Rennie and Mr. Miller is over? I think any ideas about me being a public supe should be tabled until then." It wasn't an outright no, so Maureen gave in.

That gave Homelander something new to think about. He hadn't considered the possibility of Ashley being in the Seven, but having someone who was loyal to him couldn't be anything but a plus. That would be dangerous for her, though. It was something he'd need to spend some time debating with himself.

Dr. Clay glanced up as they entered his office. "Ms. Barrett. I trust that Ms. Lasko has advised you on what's happened since you left?" A sour note in his voice indicated what he'd thought of her leaving.

She nodded. "You should know that I've gotten some of my abilities under control. Somewhat. The X-ray vision and the cold."

He perked up, interested. "How do you control the cold?"

"Screaming and swearing, mostly." Homelander couldn't hold back a laugh. Clay's face fell. "I've actually field-tested it and it does work."

"I suppose that's something. Have you manifested any new powers since yesterday?"

"Not that I'm aware of." He noted that she didn't tell the good doctor that she'd slept in the meantime.

"In the seconds that Miller was awake, we didn't have a chance to test him for strength, although he doesn't have the impenetrable skin that you and Dr. Rennie have. We didn't have a chance to check Dr. Harriman either before he took his leave, but I suspect he would have gotten the skin and strength as well."

"Seems reasonable," she said. "Are you still operating under the hypothesis that the people who survived had fresher supe DNA on them than the ones who died?"

"That seems to be the only difference between the ones who lived and the ones who died."

"I'm waiting on Analytics to give me information about everyone's movements for the last few days, but I think you may be right."

"Do you have the flight yet?" Clay asked. She shook her head. "The laser vision?" Another head shake. "How about the hearing?"

"Oh God, I forgot about that. I hope I don't get that at all. It would drive me crazy in under a day, I think. All that noise."

"It has its benefits," said Homelander. She ignored it, but maybe the idea of eavesdropping didn't hold much appeal for her.

Clay seemed about to get into more depths about her powers when Maureen's cell phone went off. She didn't bother stepping outside to take the call, since she knew he could hear her anyway. When she hung up, she said, "We need to go to Analytics. They have some information about Dr. Harriman."

"Before you go, I'd like you to promise that you won't leave the building again," Dr. Clay said to Ashley. "We still don't know if there's a possibility of secondary infection."

She sighed. "I think I already told you what I think about being kept prisoner."

He paused for a second or two before he spoke, but Homelander had enough time to see fear in the man's eyes. This was run-of-the-mill for him when he dealt with people who wanted him to do something he didn't like, but he'd never seen that emotion in anyone's eyes when they spoke to Ashley. He wondered if she had seen it too, if she had the capacity to enjoy making people afraid. She could learn, just like he had.

"You're not being held prisoner here, Ms. Barrett. I'm just requesting—"

"I'll stay in my apartment. Homelander can fly me there so I won't see anyone else. That's as far as I'm willing to bend."

Dr. Clay didn't have much of a choice, so he nodded in agreement. She's learning already, he thought. "Do you want to speak to Dr. Rennie?"

"After we get the information from Analytics." Clay opened his mouth to say something else, but she was already walking into the corridor.

When they reached Analytics, a woman whom Homelander vaguely remembered was named Anika pulled up footage on her screen. "All the security cameras on Dr. Harriman's path out of the building were destroyed, but we managed to get some images off a security camera at the park across the street and a few traffic light cameras."

The park security camera was quite a distance away, but it did reveal the two figures coming out a side door, the man tall and thin and wearing a hospital johnny, the woman dark-haired and small and wearing a black duster. They got into a nondescript Kia Rio and took off down the street. Homelander said, "Three guesses as to who that is, and the first two don't count."

"Firewhirl?" asked Ashley.

He nodded. "I didn't get to know her well, but I recognize her. What I'd like to know is why she was so close, able to get Dr. Harriman out of the building after the accident."

"Maybe she and Harriman set up the accident? Don't ask me why, but that would explain it."

"Maybe she wanted him to be her equal. If that was the case, I don't know why he didn't just get hold of some Compound V."

"It's not exactly safe to use on adults. The results are better when it takes with an adult, but that's pretty rare. You know that."

He shrugged. "True. But he had no guarantee that his lab accident wouldn't kill everyone, including him. Didn't somebody say that he was ready to go to human trials with it?"

Ashley nodded. "That was what he told me."

"Well, maybe the people in the lab were his first human trial. He had his control group, the people with no supe DNA on them, and the group who did."

"And that fucker decided to involve me?" Did he see just a hint of red glowing in her eyes? He felt a tightening in his chest as he anticipated.

Maureen interrupted his observations by telling her, "It makes perfect sense. If there was anyone in this building that he could count on to have supe DNA on them, it would be you. You deal with supes all day every day. You can't avoid it."

The red he'd thought he saw vanished, and he felt a little disappointed. "So we're entertaining the idea that Firewhirl put him up to it and he didn't have the balls to stand up to her? Why would she have done that?"

"A grudge against Vought," said Homelander. "She got eliminated from American Hero based on her lack of chastity and the ex-fuck of one of the judges won. That would be enough to leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth."

Ashley nodded, putting a hand over her eyes. Did she feel the anger that would trigger the laser vision? If so, it didn't make itself visible to him again. "Let's go talk to Dr. Rennie."

When they got back to the ward, Dr. Clay took great satisfaction in telling them that Dr. Rennie was unconscious again. "If you stay in the Tower, you'll be able to get here more quickly when she wakes up."

"Thank you, doctor, I'll take it under advisement." She turned to Homelander. "Let's go up to the roof."

"Are you still going back to your apartment?" asked Dr. Clay. "I have serious medical issues—"

"No, but you will have if you don't whining about holding me prisoner here. I've made my decision and you are going to shut the fuck up about it if you don't want to wind up in one of the detention cells a couple of floors down. Do you have the picture now or do I need to break it down even more for you?"

It happened. Ashley's eyes flared red and Homelander managed to push her to one side enough so the laserblast didn't cut the doctor in two. He was current with the situation—they didn't need to break in a new doctor just yet. Her vision sliced through cabinets on the other side of the room, the wall, the foundation of the building, and presumably turned the earth beyond it into glass. He heard her scream in panic when she realized what she'd done and turned her enough to see her eyes were their normal blue again, filled with fear and awareness. "You have the laser vision now. I knew it was just a matter of time." Neither of them paid any attention to Dr. Clay, supporting himself with one arm as he leaned on the counter, gasping, shaking.

"I want to go back to my apartment. I want to go up to the roof."

"Sure, Ashley. No problem." He put an arm around her shoulders and escorted her out into the corridor, registering Maureen's white face as they passed, but she wasn't important. Only Ashley was important. Less and less human, more and more supe…

He noticed she kept her eyes closed for their trip to the elevator and the ride up to the roof. "It's not random," he told her. "It only triggers when you're angry. You can open your eyes. You should know that."

"Yeah, I noticed it with you. I just didn't think I would get it."

"Part of the DNA package with me. The hearing and the flight are the last things left." Or, at least, the last things she knew about. He wondered if she would tell him about any additional powers that manifested themselves.

They emerged onto the roof. Since no helicopter had landed, no Facilities people were there to receive any flights, and Homelander and Ashley were alone. She tilted her head back and looked up into the black sky. In Manhattan the stars were invisible. "It scares me," she told him. "I can almost feel myself changing. I'm so afraid to go to sleep."

"There's nothing you can do about it. You're a supe now. You just have to accept it."

"It would have been easier if I'd gotten the shots when I was a baby. I wouldn't know anything else."

"The way I did?" He took a minute to consider it. "Yeah, probably, but this is what happened. You can deal with it. You're strong. And don't you want to help people like those women at Montauk and the little crotchgoblin? You can help them if you accept what's happened to you."

She let out a little laugh. "I can't believe you want to focus-group a supe name for me too."

"I'm not into focus groups. Stan Edgar did all that shit for me. I say just pick something you like and go with it. You don't like Frostflower?"

"Like I said, it's girly."

"You'd want Frost in it, since that's how it first manifested. Nothing with Ice, since it looks like Icebreaker's going to get the open slot for the male in the Seven and that would cause confusion."

"And the women will be all three hair colors, so men will have someone to jerk off over no matter what their preference is."

"You'll be our redhead," he told her, in spite of the fact that he still didn't know what he thought about Ashley being a member of the Seven. But he'd get to tell her what to do, and that thought birthed a little glow in his chest.

"I'm not Queen Maeve."

"No, you're not drunk most of the time," he said. "Which is a good thing."

She gave him a smile with a little bit of sultriness in it. "Thank you."

"You're welcome." Then Homelander threw Ashley off the roof of Vought Tower.