Chương 19

Homelander stared at Adam in the air. For one second, he did not move. Then his face twisted with anger.

"So you finally brought yourself in front of me," Homelander shouted. Queen Maeve looked from Homelander to the masked man in front of the plane. Her face tightened as she stared. A man had flown up from below and caught the nose of Flight 37 with both hands. The plane had not stopped. It was still pushing forward with its full weight, and Adam's body shook in the air as he used every bit of flight power he had. His hands had already sunk into the front of the plane.

The metal kept bending around his fingers as the plane tried to drag him with it. Adam clenched his teeth under the copper mask.

'If this was land, I could force it down slowly.' But below him was the ocean. Adam did not know how much speed he could remove before the plane touched the water. If he failed, the impact could still tear the plane apart. If he pushed wrong, his own hands could break deeper through the nose and make everything worse. He could not take that risk. He could not let the nose drop anymore. So he held the nose and forced his body forward, trying to slow the fall little by little instead of stopping it all at once.

Homelander's eyes turned red. Maeve saw it. Her head snapped toward him.

"Wait," she shouted.

"He's trying to save them!" Homelander did not even look at her.

"If any of them survive, it is bad for us." The red light in his eyes burst out. His heat vision shot toward the plane. Adam saw it coming from the corner of his eye. His arms were still locked into the nose, and the plane was still dragging him through the sky. He could feel the strain in his shoulders, but the sight of Homelander attacking the passengers made his anger rise faster than the pain. Those people were still alive inside. Homelander was not only leaving them to die. He was trying to kill them himself.

Adam turned his head toward him. Red light appeared in Adam's eyes, and he fired. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. The beams tore through the two holes in the copper mask. The edges of the holes broke wider as the heat vision shot out and crossed the distance between them. Adam's attack struck Homelander's heat vision before it could reach the plane. The two attacks crashed together in the air. Homelander's beam stopped. Adam pushed harder.

The clash began moving back toward Homelander. Homelander gritted his teeth and forced more power into his eyes. His beam grew brighter. It still could not move forward. Maeve stared at the masked man. He was holding Flight 37 and fighting Homelander at the same time. The power was not just strength or flight. That man had heat vision too. Adam's beam grew stronger as his anger rose. The red light pressed against Homelander's attack and pushed it closer to his face. Homelander felt the heat bite against his skin.

The heat did not cut through him. It still hurt. That pain broke his certainty. Until now, Homelander had told himself that the masked man was not truly on his level. The punch from before had been a surprise. The mask had hidden him. The speed had caught Homelander off guard. That was all. That had to be all. But now the man was holding an entire plane while pushing back his heat vision.

'No, this cannot be real.' Homelander's jaw tightened as the thought hit him.

'I will crush him.' He tried to push forward again. Adam's beam came closer. For the first time, Homelander moved back. He kept firing while flying backward through the air. Maeve was still in his arm, and she felt his whole body shift away from the clash. Her eyes widened. She had never seen Homelander retreat. She had never even imagined that someone could force him to give ground. Adam could not follow him. The plane dropped lower while his attention was split.

The nose pressed harder into his hands, and his body was dragged downward with it. He felt the pull change and knew the plane had lost more height. If he kept fighting Homelander, the passengers would die before the clash ended. Adam could feel the plane slipping into a steeper fall, so he forced his anger down and chose the plane first. Adam stopped his heat vision. The moment Homelander saw Adam stop, he stopped firing too. He moved farther back and stared at the masked man. Doubt filled his face.

Adam was still falling with the plane. His arms stayed buried in the nose, and the ocean below was getting closer with every second. Maeve turned toward Homelander to speak. Before she could say anything, he looked at her. Red light still burned inside his eyes and waited there like a threat.

"Not one more word," he said. Maeve froze. Homelander pulled her away from the falling plane and flew back toward the sky.

"He'll probably die with that plane," Homelander said. But that was not why he was leaving. He wanted to believe the masked man would die there. He wanted to believe the ocean would finish what he could not finish in front of Maeve. Still, the heat vision clash had made one thing clear. The man had powers like his own. That thought turned Homelander's fear into rage. Vought. Only Vought could be behind this. No one like that could grow in the dark without Vought knowing.

No one could hold his kind of power unless someone had made it happen. If there was another person like him, then Vought had hidden it from him. Homelander's grip on Maeve tightened as he flew away. He was going to confront Madelyn and get his answers from her mouth. As he left Flight 37 behind, his mouth twisted with rage.

"I will not let Vought get away with this."