The lights flared on and off again, almost pulsing their own rhythm. He could hear it as the shadows washed over him, like a beat.
Boy.
Off.
Boy.
On.
Boy.
Off.
John stared up at the ceiling, as he did every night, able to see the stars through metal and tons of earth if he concentrated. Right now, though, he didn't have the energy to use his powers, not after a long day that felt like it had lasted forever. His arms still itched from the force of the explosion, his skin prickling from the heat. Distantly, laughter reached him. Now the night staff were in, it would be mostly silent until morning. He could still hear them, laughing and filling themselves up with coffee and energy drinks, the burnt bean smell vaguely discernible to him, even through reinforced steel. He'd never sampled any of it himself, of course. His diet was strictly controlled and monitored.
In times like this, he was more or less alone, if you ignored the camera in the corner of the room, but judging by the voices, nobody was watching him right now.
And so he'd indulge himself.
Perhaps because he was so used to the same surroundings, but any new stimulus and he latched onto it like a barnacle, memorising it until he could picture it clearly in his mind, play back certain memories as if he were right there, reliving it again.
But instead of physical surroundings, instead his mind went instead to his favourite fantasy.
There would be a boom, he thought to himself as he made himself comfortable as best he could on his army cot, a rattling thud that would have the staff spooked, lifting their heads like startled prey. The wall, a forbidding barrier, would come crumbling down in a rain of dust and plaster. A figure would step into the room, backlit by the sun. He'd know that silhouette anywhere. The angular shoulders. The iconic shield held in one hand.
Soldier Boy.
He would extend a hand out to John, who would be blinking in the light, shocked but overjoyed at the sight. And Soldier Boy would say;
"Come with me."
Since Vogelbaum had allowed him to watch that movie, a reward for good behaviour, John was obsessed. The first hero. The leader of Payback. The man who stormed the shores of Normandy. The ultimate soldier. He'd sit in front of the screen, leaning forward, like he could simply sink into the story by touching the screen if he wanted to.
And oh, did he want to.
"You see, John?" Vogelbaum would say to him, nodding at the screen. "This is what a superhero is. What you need to be."
He scratched his jaw in thought, eyes roving restlessly over Soldier Boy in that way he had, when he was thinking deeply about something, analysing it.
"Well, perhaps not so rough around the edges…"
But John loved the rough edges – this, he thought – was a real man. He was surrounded by scientists and Vought drones who cared more about numbers and statistics. The sort of men who didn't understand what it was to be out there on the front lines, up in the action like he was expected to be. Soldier Boy did, he understood the way of things, of how to be decisive and take action. The kind of man that people listened to.
John had only been out of the lab a few times, to 'get him used to outside stimulus', but he'd noticed how the authority of the scientists had greatly vanished when not in their own domain. It had occurred to him for the first time in his life that perhaps there were things out there even they were afraid of. He fed off that feeling, incorporated it into his fantasies sometimes, enacting a little divine punishment.
And it was in his head – they couldn't take that from him.
Soldier Boy. Soldier Boy. Soldier Boy.
The words strummed in his head over and over, and John lightly hit his head against the thin mattress.
They said Soldier Boy vanished sometime in the 1980s, no body was found, but his team had remained vague about what happened. Too traumatised, it was said. The public mourned the loss of their hero, the greatest Supe to ever live.
That was the void he would fill one day. Someday, he'd be the most well-known Supe in the world.
But this time, something was off. Despite the hundreds of scenarios his mind could conjure, had conjured, he found to his intense frustration…John was getting bored of them. It was chewing food until it lost all texture and flavour, leaving a tasteless pulp stuck between the teeth. His jaw clenched and he opened his eyes to see nothing but cold metal and indifferent lights to greet him.
He could bend a car in half like an accordion. He could see through these walls into the earth packed either side of him. He could fly.
But no matter how hard he wished for it, sometimes squeezing his eyes shut so tight he felt like something in his head would burst, he could not will his fantasies to come to life. Vogelbaum was not his father, he'd told him that in no uncertain terms many times in his cold, clipped accent. But it didn't stop John, the boy who bore the man's surname, wondering what it might be like, to have someone to look up to. A family, even.
If Soldier Boy knew a boy who admired him knew he screamed as he burned, who lay in a cold cell every night, wishing someone would come and gather John up into his arms…wouldn't he come? Wasn't that what a hero would do?
"Don't be foolish, boy." Vogelbaum snapped at him, when John proposed one day that perhaps Soldier Boy was alive somewhere. "Do you think if there was a chance he could be recovered, Vought would not have tracked him down by now? Enough, we have work to do…"
Daydreaming of Soldier Boy, his hero, coming to save him had kept him company on the worst nights, when he lay curled up on his side, crying because he'd hugged someone a little too hard and snapped their spine, or forced to withstand it as a machine gun fired at him over and over again, to see if he was bulletproof. His skin was, but that night his mind had been so fogged by the sound of gunfire his ears rang for hours. He'd imagine Soldier Boy praising him, telling him how tough he was, how strong, but that he didn't need to be. For once.
"I've got you, kid. I've got you…"
But John was getting older now. Soon, he'd be a man, not the boy in the lab. Vought were already discussing options for his brand, using their computers and collecting data about what America wanted. What it needed, and who he needed to be. What demands to be met. He'd have his name picked out for him too, the ones everyday citizens he was supposed to save would call him.
Something writhed in the pit of his stomach. His teeth gritted and his gaze turned from melancholic to angry as he looked through the ceiling, feeling a strain in his head that threatened to blossom into a headache with continued use, but at that moment, he didn't care. It almost felt good, in a strange way.
Soldier Boy was gone. He wasn't coming to save him.
Nobody was.
Because a hero wasn't a real thing. It was a figure on a movie screen or in a comic book. Sure, he'd do it one day, but it was more like his job. Nobody asked him if he wanted it. "You have these powers for a reason, John. So you can be the world's greatest superhero."
What a crock of shit.
John's eyes filled with red, from pupil to iris to whites, the tears hissing as they fizzled out in the corners, and in a blast of light that sent the sirens ringing and night staff scrambling. He blasted a gaping hole in the metal ceiling and dirt came raining down on him. Detritus from the earth. He'd pay for that later, but at that moment, he was too cocooned in his rage to care. It felt good to take his white-hot rage and concentrate it until it burst out of him and scorched whatever was foolish enough to lie in front of him.
It felt good to destroy.
The lights went on, and he was plunged into darkness.