Chapter 46: Compound V

Chapter 46: Compound V

"This guy has a tracking chip on him. We absolutely have to get away from New York. Trust me, I can handle him just fine."

After that, Billy drove all night, crossing a state to find Frenchie, who handled used weapons repair and refurbishment in the Black Market.

"Well, this is a surprise. Good to see you." Frenchie, bare-chested, pointed a gun at Billy.

"Good to see you too, pal."

Billy greeted Frenchie warmly.

"Meaning you brought the 40,000 you owe me?"

"I brought something better, something that can double your money."

After some back and forth, Frenchie wanted to see what Billy had brought him. They went to the Car Trunk, and Billy yanked it open, revealing Translucent's corpse inside.

"Oh, shit, it's Translucent. Translucent's corpse is in your Car Trunk." Frenchie covered his head in despair, wanting nothing more than to kill Billy right now. This guy was truly a pain in the ass; he should have just shot him earlier.

"Nothing gets past your eyes, pal," Billy said, turning around.

An enraged Frenchie pulled out his pistol and pressed it against Billy's jaw, saying fiercely, "Get out. Get this damn thing out of here."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, calm down."

"Don't you know he has a tracker on him? Homelander might be on his way here," Frenchie said agitatedly.

"You brought him to my doorstep? This has nothing to do with me."

"Too bad you've already seen his corpse. Do you think Homelander will believe you?" Seeing Frenchie calm down a bit, Billy continued, "I need your help now. I'm not leaving, even if The Seven show up, I'm not leaving."

Now that the deed was done, Frenchie knew he had been screwed over by this son of a bitch again.

So they had no choice but to go to a secluded Street in Jersey City. Frenchie found an Abandoned Diner that had been closed for years. At Billy's suggestion, they lined the Kitchen Cold Storage with tin foil to block the tracking signal.

Currently, they had to figure out how to dispose of Translucent's corpse.

According to Billy's original plan, if Translucent hadn't died, they might have been able to learn some of A-Train's secrets from him. Unfortunately, the guy was dead and couldn't answer their questions at all. "Now we can only start investigating the people around A-Train, like his friends or girlfriend. Maybe they know the real reason A-Train lost control."

"So what do we do with this corpse?" Frenchie asked.

Billy looked at the corpse before him, his expression cold. "First, chop him up and find the tracking chip inside. Then tie the tracking chip to a dog or some other animal to create the illusion that Translucent is still alive, buying us time for our next actions."

Saying this, he picked up a dagger from the side and handed it to Hughie.

Hughie looked bewildered. He pointed a finger at himself. "Me? Shit, are you crazy?"

"No time for you to think now." Billy shoved the dagger into Hughie's hand, then left the kitchen with Frenchie.

"You seem to think highly of that kid."

Frenchie could tell at a glance that Billy was deliberately trying to train Hughie.

Hughie stood before the corpse, holding the dagger, his body trembling uncontrollably. He pursed his pale lips, hesitant to make the first cut. ...

"Good morning, supervisor."

"You look good today too." After greeting the Asian security guard at the entrance, Xia Shang walked straight into Vought Tower. Last night, he had experimented with the Carbon Superlattice ability at home. Although the fusion progress was slow, it could already cover one finger.

"I wonder if Compound V can speed up the fusion progress." Xia Shang planned to get a sample of Compound V to try. After all, superpowers were catalyzed by Compound V, so it was quite reasonable that it could also accelerate the fusion of superpowers.

However, Xia Shang remembered that in the source material, Compound V had a derivative product, Temporary Compound V, which had severe aftereffects, especially for adults.

After injection, adults would develop physical lesions. The more they injected, the more severe the lesions would become, eventually leading to cancer in the body and even damaging the brain.

In the source material, after Hughie received three or four injections of Temporary Compound V, his brain matter started leaking out.

But from A-Train, it could be seen that the stronger one's physical quality, the stronger their resistance capacity to Compound V. Furthermore, based on Xia Shang's guess, as long as one's self-healing ability was strong enough, they could reverse the physical lesions. Then, using Compound V wouldn't require worrying about aftereffects.

However, as the number of Compound V injections increased, the required self-healing ability would need to continuously strengthen.

If A-Train had possessed a self-healing superpower, his heart should have been gradually repaired, unless he continued to use Compound V without restriction. In that case, the speed of repair wouldn't keep up with the speed of physical lesions, and the final outcome would definitely be tragic.

Besides, Compound V only had side effects for humans. Xia Shang's cells had undergone multiple modifications. Fundamentally speaking, he could no longer be considered a traditional human. Just like Homelander, he could be completely called a Supe, and his evolution was even more perfect.

Xia Shang returned to his workstation.

To be honest, unless there were major events, his workload wasn't much.

Moreover, he could even offload some of the work to Blitz.

He saw him this morning, and he seemed to be in a good mood.

"Hey pal, did you hear? The Vice President seems to want Superheroes to join the Ministry of Defense. After all, how much money can you really make from hero merchandise and renting heroes for security? If you ask me, war is the real money-maker." The speaker was Ha Yan Baluk, the deputy manager of the Vought Group Diplomatic Department. Usually, a department has one supervisor and several deputy managers.

And Baluk was idle because he didn't have any new missions recently.

Since he wasn't very into racial discrimination, his relationship with Xia Shang was quite good.

"Why do you have time to drop by my office today?" Xia Shang had his subordinate get Baluk a cup of coffee.

"I heard the Baltimore Mayor's plane crash happened. Don't you need to handle the diplomatic relations?"

Baluk pulled up a chair from the side and sat down. Taking a sip of coffee, he said, "Who knows? They say this matter is being handled by the Public Relations Department. You know, the Public Relations Department's authority has been growing bigger and bigger these past few years. They manage everything."

"Better complain less, lest someone overhear."

Although Homelander's attention was focused on that blonde woman Madelyn Stillwell, he might occasionally listen in on conversations between their employees.

"Don't worry, I only vent to people within the Group. I'm not that stupid to announce company secrets to the world."

"Damn, why do I feel like the coffee in your office tastes better than mine?" Ha Yan Baluk got up and poured himself another cup of coffee.

(End of Chapter)