Chapter 95: Chapter 95: Stan Edgar (1)
[Perspective: Aryan’s Clone]
The townhouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan was a fortress of silent security
Stan Edgar’s private residence, a multi story townhouse clad in classical brownstone, was the epicenter of that fortress.
The security apparatus protecting the CEO of Vought International was absolute.
Seismic sensors beneath the sidewalks, biometric locks on reinforced steel doors, thermal scanners sweeping the alleyways and a dedicated team of Vought’s elite private military contractors sitting in a hardened command center down the street.
To a supe, to a squad of highly trained Special Forces or even to the majority of The Seven, this house was impenetrable without triggering a silent alarm that would summon a corporate army in less than two minutes.
I stood on the rooftop of a neighboring building, looking across the narrow gap at Edgar’s slate roof.
Size Alteration (Tier 1).
I compressed my mass, pushing the boundaries of my own atomic structure, shrinking down to the absolute limit.
One micrometer.
The laser grids were canyon wide gaps of red light above me.
The thermal sensors could not distinguish my infinitesimally small heat signature from the ambient friction of the air molecules.
I locked onto the spatial coordinates of the master bedroom on the third floor of the townhouse.
Teleportation (Tier 1).
Snap.
I materialized in the air, drifting downward like a single particle of dust, landing softly on the thick fibers of an imported wool rug.
The room was pitch black, the heavy blackout curtains drawn tightly against the city lights. The only sound was the steady breathing of the man in the king sized bed.
I released my hold on the Size Alteration.
I grew in total silence, the air molecules parting seamlessly around my expanding form until I stood at my full height at the foot of the bed.
Stan Edgar slept on his back. His hands were resting neatly on his stomach, resting over the pristine white duvet. Even in sleep, the man looked like he was calculating quarterly margins.
He was the architect of Vought’s absolute dominance, a man who viewed Homelander as a volatile financial asset to be managed.
I walked to the side of the bed. My footsteps made no sound.
I raised my right hand and gently placed my palm flat against his forehead.
Telepathy (Tier 1).
I kicked the door to his mind open and stepped inside.The sheer volume of information was staggering.
Stan Edgar’s mind was a meticulously organized labyrinth of corporate secrets, geopolitical blackmail and decades of ruthless strategy.
I absorbed the passwords to the offshore accounts in the Caymans. I took the access codes to the deepest sub levels of Vought Tower.
I watched his memories of Jonah Vogelbaum, of the original Compound V formula, of the exact location and refinement process of the proprietary catalyst that made the serum stable.
I watched his conversations with Homelander, feeling the precise mixture of clinical detachment and underlying fear he harbored for the golden god. I absorbed his cadence, his vocabulary, the specific way he steepled his fingers when he lied, the exact measure of his stride.
Edgar groaned softly in his sleep, a slight frown creasing his forehead as his subconscious registered the invasive trauma of the psychic extraction. His eyes fluttered beneath their lids.
He was beginning to wake up.
I moved my left hand, hovering it an inch directly over the center of his chest.
Cryokinesis (Tier 1).
The biological processes of his body locked into permanent stillness in a fraction of a microsecond.
His blood crystallized into solid veins of red ice. His heart froze mid beat, cracking into brittle shards within his chest cavity.
The flesh of his face turned a translucent white, a spiderweb of frozen capillaries blooming just beneath the surface. An eerie crackle echoed in the silent room as the moisture in the air around him froze and fell like diamond dust onto the duvet.
I placed my hand on his frozen shoulder. I accessed the dimensional inventory I shared with my original host.
Pop.
The frozen corpse of Stan Edgar vanished, leaving a perfectly smooth depression in the expensive mattress.
I closed my eyes and focused on the vast reservoir of genetic data and memory I had just acquired.
Shapeshifting (Tier 1).
My bones snapped and cracked, dissolving into a fluid state before rapidly reforming. My spine compressed, shedding an inch of height. The melanin in my skin shifted, darkening, aging, weathering under the invisible weight of decades of stress.
My hair receded, thinning and turning a distinguished salt and pepper gray. My vocal cords tightened, reshaping themselves to match the resonant, gravelly baritone of the man I had just erased.
The transition was agonizingly precise, rewriting my very DNA to match his.
I opened my eyes. I walked over to the full length mirror standing in the corner of the room.
Stan Edgar looked back at me. The posture was impeccable. The expression was a mask of cold superiority.
I lifted a hand and adjusted the collar of the silk pajamas I had manifested to match the ones the corpse had been wearing.
"Vought," I whispered, the voice rolling out of my throat with perfect accuracy, "is mine."
I walked back to the bed. I pulled the duvet back, slid between the cool sheets, folded my hands neatly over my stomach and closed my eyes to sleep.
[Vought Tower, CEO’s Office, The Next Morning]
The view from the ninety ninth floor of Vought Tower was spectacular.
I sat behind the massive mahogany desk, dressed in one of Edgar’s bespoke charcoal suits.
I had spent the morning seamlessly navigating Edgar’s routine. I had greeted his driver with the exact ratio of aloofness and professionalism he expected. I had bypassed the executive assistants with a curt nod.
I was currently reviewing the morning stock reports.
Just as Edgar had predicted in the bunker, the stock had skyrocketed. The narrative of The Seven’s heroic sacrifice had captured the national zeitgeist. Vought was more profitable today than it had been a week ago.
Three rhythmic knocks echoed against my office door.
"Enter," I called out, my voice the perfect embodiment of Stan Edgar.
The door opened and Graves walked in. The Director of Intelligence looked haggard. The stress of managing the cover up of the Appalachian massacre and the sudden appearance of three new public Supes was clearly taking its toll.
He closed the door securely behind him and stood at attention in front of the desk.
"Good morning, Mr. Edgar," Graves said, approaching the desk.
"Sir, we have had our entire analytics division tearing through every database on the planet," Graves said, opening a tablet. "Facial recognition, biometric tracking, financial records, birth certificates. Their public aliases are Julian, Felix and Elias. But beyond that... nothing."
"Nothing?" I asked, raising an eyebrow exactly as Edgar would.
"Their backgrounds are completely clean, sir," Graves said, a hint of genuine panic bleeding into his voice. "It’s as if they popped into existence yesterday morning. We have zero record of them ever being injected with Compound V. And they aren’t in any of our registries."
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