Chapter Text
Chapter 1
1997, South Dakota, USA — the Black Hills
There was nothing out here but badlands and bottomless conifer forests.
After hours of driving, Billy Butcher finally pulled his off-road vehicle to a stop at the coordinates his contact had sent him.
On the gravelly ground ahead lay an unremarkable trapezoidal mound, poured from concrete—clearly not natural. Even without looking closely, he could see a metal panel set into it, its colour slightly different from the surrounding stone. The faint outline suggested a hatch that could be opened from the inside.
He lit a cigarette and waited for the friends across the Atlantic to open the hatch.
South Dakota: rocks, wind, and trees as hard as bloody stone. Butcher took off his sunglasses and scanned the endless plain, bored out of his skull. He’d been staring at the same scenery for hours.
That, and the usual Cold War leftovers—military facilities and missile silos.
Those words that had once been second nature to him were flowing back into his mind, just as he could tell from a distance that an underground military installation was concealed here.
Habit. Instinct.
Didn’t matter whether he still wore the SAS badge or not.
There was movement beneath the hatch. Butcher crushed his cigarette under his boot.
“Sergeant William Butcher?”
“It’s just Billy.”
His reply was cold, muffled through steel.
The hatch opened.
Not special forces—private contractors. Mercenaries, by the look of their kit.
He followed one of them down. More armed men stood guard at the entrance below.
Better equipped than me, he thought dryly.
All he had was a SIG tucked into his waistband. These days he wasn’t even a professional mercenary—just an unemployed bastard with too much time and too many bad habits.
The project was commissioned by a military contractor called Vought. No soldiers involved directly, but their shadow shareholders were thick with Pentagon and federal connections.
They descended into a narrow corridor, oppressive and spotless—white walls, pale grey floors. Doors lined both sides, each hiding some unknown purpose. The air reeked faintly of disinfectant.
It felt less like a base than a laboratory.
Which made sense.
Experiments. Test subjects.
That was why he was here.
The deeper they went, the heavier the doors became—reinforced metal, some with a dozen locks. At the far end, an entire wall was metal, the door shaped like something off a submarine.
He glimpsed darkness beyond, dim blue shapes moving fast.
“So what’s in there?” he asked casually. “Rabid supes? Lizard men? Aliens?”
He’d read the file, of course. His job was simple enough: guard and supervise a superhuman.
Since arriving in the States, he’d met some of so-called supes—people who ran a bit faster, had skin a bit tougher, or possessed some useless party-trick power they couldn’t even control.
None of them would last five minutes on a real battlefield.
He remembered the file stuffed into his jacket pocket.
Subject 07. No name.
Born 1981. Exact date unknown. Sixteen years old.
Male. (That’s something for sure)
And then the abilities.
Strength enough to tear tanks apart bare-handed.
Near-absolute physical invulnerability.
Flight—top speed unknown.
Enhanced hearing and vision.
And worst of all: the ability to emit plasma beams at temperatures between 1,500 and 3,000 degrees Celsius.
According to the notes, it is called the “heat vision”.
If that was true, he wasn’t human.
Butcher had seen laser-eyed supes before. All show. Useless in combat. Couldn’t even mount her bloody head on a rifle barrel.
He didn’t buy the file.
He’d thought about the super heroes in WWII, who were portrayed as some gods from ancient myths.
He believed in bullet holes, not myths.
If caped actors were really like gods, would wars last for years? Why would propaganda still look like cheap studio footage?
No answers to these questions.
Neither did the guard speak.
As Butcher’s mind was floating, they reached the lowest level.
The pressure of being underground—or something else—made his skin itch. He blamed it on staying too long away from combat and too close to comfortable living.
A thick lead door stood before them.
The guard swallowed as if something really horrible was behind it.
It opened.
A strong smell of disinfectant flooded out.
Butcher, in his creased dark jacket, reached for his cigarettes again. But this time he merely held the cigarette between his teeth—he wasn't allowed to light up in a laboratory.
Inside was a vast chamber, packed with equipment. Researchers spotted him and quickly withdrew.
Another room sat inside it—an observation cell with thick glass.
But he saw it as a transparent coffin.
On the other side was not a monster, but a boy.
Blond. Human.
He looked even younger than sixteen. Thin. Fragile.
Grey sweatshirt. Bare feet. Beautiful but delicate ankles like they’d snap in a strong wind.
Skin pale enough to see the veins.
His left hand twisted a Rubik’s cube, fingers moving faster than the eye could track.
Three men observed him from outside.
One was Stan Edgar. The vice president of Vought Corporation.
Lean. Calculating. One can easily tell that he was a Washington elite with cold eyes.
But now the Washington elite, usually so polished and pampered, looked thoroughly displeased. He wore a sour expression as he spoke to the person beside him.
“This decision is final, Doctor.”
The man known as the Doctor was a middle-aged figure in a white lab coat. His face was expressionless, severe like a medieval monk’s, and his greying hair and receding hairline made his forehead shine.
He shook his head firmly. “You’ve seen how unstable he is.”
Then he pointed to a scorched crater in the metal floor.
Edgar spread his hands.
“I’ve certainly seen it. That’s exactly why he needs this training. I can’t let him appear in public like this. That’s on you and your methods. You know what people want to see—”
“To see a man walking on water? Turning water into wine? That kid can fly, and we still don’t even know the limits of his speed. Doesn’t that sound even better?”
“Bullshit,” Edgar rudely cut off the Doctor’s blasphemous words. “He needs to look human, who would laugh, cry and have empathy. Not this—Not an autistic lab rat with anger management issues.”
“Watch your mouth.”
Edgar waved a detonator-like device. Butcher guessed that pressing that button would only make the test subject suffer.
Butcher leaned against the wall, watching.
He could more or less guess what they were arguing about. Edgar, the one giving the orders, was running into resistance from the scientist in charge.
And Edgar wanted him to socialise the weapon and make it—him—follow orders.
Edgar had even named it.
Project Oracle. A grand, flamboyant name.
And it stuck before it began.
At that moment, another man present spoke up. He was of medium height, wearing a grey trench coat.
“I think everyone should meet Billy first.”
Butcher thought, so this is finally my cue.
He fixed his gaze on that all-too-familiar figure. If it hadn’t been for this man pulling the strings, he’d still be rotting in some shithole of a pub, drinking himself senseless.
This was his contact.
Z.
An agent from MI6.
Though at this point, calling him a “contact” no longer felt quite accurate.
They were no longer in any kind of chain of command, nor was it a matter of employment anymore. William Butcher had been completely kicked out of the SAS.
And this old acquaintance knew exactly how cornered he was. He knew that, apart from shooting, fighting, killing, and the harshest forms of interrogation, Butcher was good for nothing. He wasn’t fit for any other kind of work.
“So, that is the tank-ripping monster you talked about, sir?”
“That isn’t how I put it. I never used such aggressive wording.”
Agent Z caught the deliberately stressed “sir”, but his attention was already fixed on the boy inside the glass enclosure. Almost unconsciously, he leaned back a little.
Butcher could sense his tension. The Doctor, too, was clearly far from at ease. He was doing everything he could to oppose a decision that the board had already approved.
“He is the company’s most important asset, Mr Butcher.”
He turned and offered Butcher his hand. “Oh, where have my manners gone. I’m Dr. Vogelbaum, the head of this project.”
“Doctor. You already know who I am. Just call me Billy.”
“Of course, Mr Butcher—no, Billy. As you can see, the subject is extremely unstable. He has never been outside the laboratory environment. Bringing him out so suddenly would be far too much stimulation for him.”
The Doctor’s brow was tightly furrowed.
Before Butcher could respond, Edgar pressed on, “Which is exactly why Project Oracle needs to start as soon as possible. For God’s sake, he’s already sixteen and still doesn’t know how to communicate normally, let alone handle a press conference. Just look at him. He’s never had a day of sunlight in his life. He looks like a vampire.”
The boy paid no attention to the disparaging remarks.
Instead, the Doctor straightened, hands in his pockets, and said coldly and protectively,
“He is cutting-edge technology. He is my masterpiece. He is meant for the front lines of future warfare, not to be a poor actor in your advertisements.”
“But he still has to learn how to take orders and carry out missions,” Edgar replied, “instead of splitting buildings in half when he loses his temper, or burning holes through two-foot-thick steel plates. In any case, Project Oracle must go forward, or the entire programme will be put at risk.”
The Doctor considered this for a long moment. Finally, he nodded slowly and stepped aside, saying with resignation,
“I truly don’t understand how you and the board operate. If Dr. Vought were still alive, he would never have agreed to this—certainly not to a name like this.”
“So why ‘Oracle’?”
For once, Butcher found himself in rare agreement with the scientist, despite being a man who usually trusted guns and fists more than brains.
This was Edgar’s moment to give his speech.
“The Delphic Oracle was established after Apollo drove away the evils. The most famous words are the three inscriptions carved before the Temple of Apollo: ‘Know thyself,’ ‘Nothing in excess,’ and ‘Make no rash vows, for disaster follows.’ Those are exactly the disciplines our golden boy needs. And as for Apollo—”
“I know who Apollo is,” Butcher cut in, glancing at the boy behind the glass and adding dryly,
“But right now he looks like a scrawny school kid who’d drop a rugby ball the second it touched his hands.”
“He could take your bones apart one by one and put them back together,” Dr. Vogelbaum corrected calmly.
The boy did not look up. He finished fiddling with the metal cube in his hands, then suddenly squeezed. With a dull, muted crunch, the cube collapsed into a small metal ball, its colours crushed and blended together until nothing of the original shape remained.
The strength alone was enough to be unsettling.
He did not even bother to turn his head towards Butcher. He simply spoke, his voice cold and flat, without the slightest rise or fall:
“Billy Butcher. Your heart rate is seventy-two beats per minute. You smell of cheap tobacco, gunpowder, and sweat… mixed with something like rotting leather. You are louder than the last guard. Your breathing sounds like a broken bellows.”
So the super-sensors were real after all.
“Got a bloody sharp tongue on you, kid,” Butcher said. He knew how difficult teenagers could be these days, but at worst they were just foul-mouthed. This one was different—he didn’t use a single swear word, yet somehow managed to be far more insulting.