The years between 1983 and 1987 were the hardest Thomas had ever endured, worse than the cold, hungry nights of his childhood. Those years had been difficult but pure; these were prosperous but utterly corrupting. He lived a double life that cracked his soul in two: publicly, he was the Vought Crusader, an unwavering, titanium-polished symbol of faith and American virtue; privately, he was a ghost, a mole haunted by the Lightning Bolt incident, existing only to gather the evidence for the holy war he knew would require his own annihilation. His body lived in the sterile, high-rise apartment and the endless cycle of PR events the Altar of the Asphalt while his soul resided in the cold, digital quiet of Vought's secured servers.
The Accountant of Sin
The core of his new, secret existence was the documentary operation, a task he approached with the fevered piety of a monk illuminating a sacred text. Using his elevated security clearance the very privilege he had bought with his moral purity he worked exclusively at night, accessing and cross-referencing files marked "Containment Event," "Asset Management," and "Legal Override." He avoided Vought's primary network, instead transferring data to a heavily encrypted, physically isolated terminal purchased with his first major Vought bonus. Every night was a descent into the inferno.
He didn't just collect data; he performed a ritual of accountability. He saw himself as God's appointed Accountant of Sin, recording every rape, every murdered witness, every police payoff, and every fabricated media narrative into his private document, which he formally titled Against the Idols of Steel: An Accounting. He cataloged the crimes not by date, but by sin: Heresy of Power (lying about Compound V), Covetousness (financial exploitation), and, the most frequent entry, Slaughter of the Innocents.
The data confirmed his worst fears, revealing a moral plague far more extensive than he imagined. He discovered the true death toll from the Lightning Bolt incident was not two, but five three additional janitors and witnesses who had been quietly eliminated after the initial crime. He also found chilling internal memos detailing how the entire roster of a minor Supe team, The Crusaders of Justice, were deliberately kept addicted to controlled substances to manage their volatile powers and ensure compliance. Each documented atrocity added a layer of righteous, self-flagellating rage. The sheer volume of Vought's corruption, stretching back decades, offered a perverse, cold comfort: his vengeance was not personal; it was necessary.
His physical security measures for the archive were extreme. The isolated laptop held nothing. The evidence the ledger of damnation was manually transferred to a dedicated external hard drive, which was then sealed within a steel military ammo box. This box was bolted inside a small fire-sale security safe, and the bottom of the safe was filled with quick-setting concrete, making extraction a physically destructive, noisy, and time-consuming act. He had to be sure no one, not even Vought's highly capable digital forensics team, could access the secrets before he was ready to unleash them.
The Accounting grew into a grotesque, digitized reliquary. Beyond the murders and cover-ups, he found evidence of systemic financial manipulation: shell companies used to launder drug profits from Compound V distribution rings managed by rogue Supes, and detailed blackmail files on Congressmen, judges, and foreign officials. The scale of the organization's villainy transcended simple greed; it was an attempt at creating a perfect, self-sustaining Kingdom of Lies. Thomas discovered a quarterly briefing where Vought executives debated whether to simply dissolve a smaller country whose economy was collapsing, as it was costing more in "protection fees" than it generated in local licensing revenue. The casualness of the evil was more chilling than any single act of violence. The ritual of documentation, the silent tapping of keys in the dark, was the only thing that kept the rising bile of shame from overwhelming him entirely.
He spent the subsequent year perfecting the distribution mechanism. It was an elaborate, decentralized system he dubbed Operation Gideon's Trumpet. It utilized a complex chain of timed cryptographic releases and redundant physical packages. He addressed these packages to over a dozen disparate news outlets, watchdog groups, and Congressional staffers he had researched, all with a zero-contact policy. The digital release was timed via a dead man's switch tied to a series of escalating security alerts if Vought noticed any unauthorized access pattern, the digital files would decrypt and disseminate simultaneously across the dark web and to pre-loaded, geographically separated servers. The entire system was designed to ensure that no single corporate entity could possibly suppress the flood of evidence. The ultimate goal was no longer merely exposure; it was collapse the complete and immediate annihilation of the Vought infrastructure.
The Contrast and Competition
During the daylight, Crusader was the perfect asset, compliant and tireless. His zeal was now a practiced mask, a chilling composure that Vought mistook for unwavering stability. He gave speeches at megachurches and appeared on talk shows, always managing to weave in vague warnings about "false prophets" and "the fleeting nature of earthly gold" without explicitly violating his contract. He spoke of accountability, knowing the true meaning of the word was sealed in concrete beneath his apartment floor.
This phase also brought him into close, abrasive contact with the Soldier Boy Generation. These were the hard-bitten, cynical heroes of the Cold War older Supes like Crimson Countess, Mind-Droid, and occasionally Soldier Boy himself. They represented the raw, undisciplined, and morally loose origins of Vought's empire. Their decadence, ironically, allowed Thomas to feel superior to the very people he hated.
Vought strategically promoted Crusader as the "next-generation patriot" sober, focused, and morally superior leveraging his pious discipline against the older heroes' hard-drinking, womanizing decadence. Crusader, despite his hatred for Vought, secretly embraced this distinction. He saw their decay as proof of his own spiritual superiority; he was the future, a self-controlled weapon, while they were merely fading, sloppy rock stars serving the flesh.
The friction with his peers was constant. Crimson Countess, in particular, despised his moralizing tone. At a joint appearance in Atlanta, she publicly mocked his new, shiny shield, calling it a "prop from a bad Medieval Faire." Crusader maintained a chilling calm, his face betraying nothing. "We are all merely vessels, Countess," he responded, his voice dangerously low. "Some choose to serve the spirit; others choose to serve the flesh. The difference will be evident in the accounting." His cold fury, packaged as unshakeable faith, only further solidified his brand as the unmoving moral anchor Vought wanted.
The competitive tension peaked during a Vought-mandated charity boxing match. Mind-Droid, a Supe whose mental powers had begun to fail him due to years of substance abuse, became enraged when Crusader, sticking to his scripted persona, politely refused a drink. During the final round, Mind-Droid launched a desperate psychic attack, whispering a powerful suggestion into Crusader's mind: Kill the civilian referee, prove you're real. Crusader felt the dark, foreign suggestion a moment of true psychological terror but his years of Discipline of the Stillness kicked in. He deflected the thought with a silent, internal recitation of the Lord's Prayer, standing perfectly motionless until Mind-Droid, sweating and desperate, collapsed into a psychic seizure. Vought spun the incident as "Crusader's Unwavering Faith Triumphs Over Villainous Weakness," deepening his contempt for his peers and confirming for Ingrid that he was the most stable asset they had ever created. After the event, Ingrid personally informed him that Mind-Droid had been "retired to a long-term care facility," a euphemism Thomas instantly recognized as Vought-enforced disappearance. The finality of Mind-Droid's erasure terrified him it was a chilling preview of his own fate yet it also validated his plan: Vought was not only rotten, but ruthlessly efficient.
The Price of the Golden Cage
The new, polished titanium shield was his constant, agonizing reminder of his shame. It reflected too much light and felt too light, a symbol of the superficiality he was forced to embrace. Every night, Crusader would haul his original, heavy, scarred steel shield the one with the hand-forged cross into his private, soundproofed high-rise apartment. He would perform his "Stillness" exercises, not in meditation, but in violent exertion. He would slam the heavy shield against the concrete walls, absorbing the kinetic shock, using the blunt, physical trauma to test his spiritual focus. This wasn't training; it was self-flagellation. He needed the physical pain, the reminder of the real weight of iron and faith, to counterbalance the daily soul-death of his corporate life. The internal silence achieved during these exercises was the only place he felt truly present.
He realized the true horror of his situation: his invulnerability was now a spiritual prison. He could withstand a tactical missile, but he couldn't deflect the quiet, insidious shame of knowing his parents were safe only because he had allowed monsters like Lightning Bolt to be protected. The fear his father had instilled the Family's Fear had morphed into Crusader's Corporate Terror, the absolute certainty that if he stopped performing, Vought would not only ruin him but actively harm his family. His communication with his parents was reduced to infrequent, carefully scripted payphone calls, always lying about his happiness, never mentioning the darkness. He had to construct elaborate falsehoods about his mission work and the "blessings" of his corporate success. His isolation was absolute. He had no friends, no confidantes, only a silent pact with the digital archive hidden beneath the cement.
His documentation became the sole sanctuary for his sanity. He didn't just record crimes; he knew the leak would be traced back to him instantly. He knew the cost would be his own death or permanent capture, but the weight of the sin he had witnessed demanded a sacrifice. He no longer sought simple justice or reform; he sought atonement through annihilation. He was prepared to be the fuel for the pyre. He was a man waiting for his own execution, but he had to ensure his death achieved a transcendent purpose. He just needed Vought to make one final, devastating mistake a mistake that would remove all doubt, silence any flicker of self-preservation, and justify the launch of his private holy war. The final move would not be an act of heroism, but a necessary spiritual cleansing for his broken soul.
This chapter sets the stage for Crusader's final break. He is armed, isolated, and waiting for the external event that will trigger his plan