The Capitol on Fire and the Iron Fist of the OSM
The fire that consumed Vought International did not stop at its foundations; it raged directly through the halls of Congress, incinerating decades of compromised political agreements. The sheer volume and damning nature of the Compound V Ledger within Gideon's Trumpet rendered all plausible deniability moot. High-ranking officials, corporate lobbyists, and military leaders were instantly implicated in bribery, cover-ups, and the systematic abuse of enhanced individuals. The scale of the scandal was unprecedented, a true extinction-level event for the Washington establishment. Televised hearings quickly descended into public shaming sessions, with dozens of lawmakers and executives led away in handcuffs, their faces pale with shock as their carefully constructed careers dissolved into dust. Federal investigators moved quickly to seize all private jets, offshore accounts, and mansions linked to the indicted Vought executives, showcasing an unprecedented but necessary display of governmental force to placate the enraged public.
In the ensuing political vacuum, the President, operating under emergency powers, moved with ruthless speed and precision. The immediate, necessary response was the passing of the Superhuman Accountability Act (SAA) legislation rushed through a terrified and desperate Congress in under seventy-two hours. This act was the bureaucratic mechanism that formalized the nationalization of Vought, seizing all assets, intellectual property, and remaining personnel. The SAA immediately designated all Supes as Classified National Assets, transferring their oversight from civilian contracts and loose federal guidelines to a single, monolithic, and militarized entity: the Office of Supe Management (OSM).
The OSM was essentially the military's shadow operation brought into the harsh, immediate light. It was led by General Thaddeus Rourke, a stern, unyielding man with a known disdain for Vought's flamboyant, corporate approach to power. Rourke viewed Supes not as heroes or celebrities, but as volatile, expensive munitions that had been handled carelessly. His office now occupying the renovated top floors of the former Vought Tower, which he pointedly referred to only as "OSM Headquarters" became the nerve center of a new, absolute state power. Rourke's command staff was composed entirely of career military intelligence officers and counter-terrorism specialists, utterly devoid of any background in public relations or celebrity management.
Rourke's first directive was simple: discipline and control. The era of the celebrity Supe was violently over. Any enhanced individual, from the minor speedster doing security for a mall to the major league flier who once held endorsement deals, was now under military jurisdiction, subject to mandatory registration, testing, and deployment. The OSM instituted biometric monitoring for all registered Supes, requiring subcutaneous chips that tracked their location, monitored their adrenaline levels, and possessed a remote kill switch for emergencies. This chip was justified to the media as a "necessary safety measure," though the chilling implications of instant governmental termination were lost on no one. Furthermore, every Supe was subjected to a grueling regimen of power-dampening training, designed to instill obedience and limit uncontrolled outbursts. This included mandatory "re-education" sessions focused on compliance and the complete suppression of ego. The freedom Thomas had sought to restore by exposing the truth was instantly replaced by a mandatory, state-enforced servitude a perfect, ironic twist of the knife. The government had used Thomas's truth as a tool to impose a control far more rigid than Vought's ever was, establishing rigid Zone Restrictions that limited where enhanced individuals could live and travel, effectively isolating them from the general population. The message was clear: the government would manage the fire Thomas started by becoming an even more powerful furnace.
The Global Panic and the Dawn of the New Cold War
The reaction from the international community was not one of relief, but of profound alarm, bordering on outright panic. The United States now held a global monopoly on Compound V, its associated technology, and a substantial portion of the world's most powerful Supes. The international community saw this as a massive, unparalleled power shift, fearing the specter of a Superhuman Deterrence doctrine enforced by the Pentagon.
For years, the major world powers China, the European Union (now operating as a unified defense collective), and the resurging Russian Federation had tolerated Vought's private contracts because the company, for all its immorality, was ultimately neutral and commercial. It was a problem of corruption, not geopolitics. Now, the world was faced with a stark reality: the greatest geopolitical threat was no longer a rogue corporation, but a U.S. government that controlled a legion of super-weapons, backed by the largest conventional military in history. This effectively rendered conventional military parity obsolete.
The New Cold War began not with a shot, but with a frantic flurry of diplomatic cables, clandestine meetings, and resource raids. Intelligence agencies across the globe mobilized to find any trace of Compound V outside the U.S. or to develop effective countermeasures against enhanced individuals. Nations that had once relied on Vought contracts for protection suddenly found themselves dangerously vulnerable. European defense consortiums, heavily invested in anti-Supe technology, saw their budgets triple overnight, immediately launching a highly classified program codenamed Project: Nullifier a desperate attempt to synthesize an airborne agent capable of temporarily neutralizing V-enhanced powers. They also simultaneously began developing specialized sonic cannons capable of replicating the disabling effects Thomas had used on his former allies.
Meanwhile, the scramble for Vought's former international infrastructure led to border skirmishes and intense espionage. Chinese and Russian agents were reportedly fighting proxy wars in South American countries to seize former Vought manufacturing plants and raw Compound V precursor materials. In Beijing, the Politburo ordered a full-scale, emergency mobilization of their bio-engineering research, viewing the SAA as an existential military threat and accelerating their own, previously lagging, Supe program. Their primary focus was on developing Supe Delivery Systems methods to effectively deploy enhanced combatants without reliance on Vought's now-compromised technologies.
The UN Security Council convened a tumultuous emergency session. Brazil and India led the condemnation, arguing that the SAA and the US government's control of V-technology constituted an act of global military escalation that shattered the concept of mutually assured deterrence. The session quickly descended into acrimony, resulting in the walkout of the majority of non-aligned nations and the formation of a rival body: the Global Supe Oversight Council (GSOC), dedicated to internationalizing the control of enhanced technology and preventing "Supe proliferation." General Rourke, speaking remotely from the new OSM headquarters with the chilling calm of a man who held all the cards, simply responded with a terse statement confirming that the United States would prioritize its own security and that any interference would be treated as an act of war. Within days, the U.S. Navy began highly publicized naval maneuvers featuring newly registered, OSM-controlled hydrokinetic Supes patrolling international waters. This exchange effectively cemented the new global order: The American Supe had become a state weapon, and the rules of engagement for the world had been rewritten by a single, terrifying truth. The world was now polarized between those who had the V-advantage and those desperately seeking a countermeasure.
The Gospel on the Streets: The Rise of The Harvesters
While global politics fractured, the Gospel of Thomas resonated in the concrete canyons and forgotten corners of the world. The image of the solitary figure, falling from the heights of capitalist power, shield in hand, became the symbol of a sprawling, leaderless resistance movement. The sheer moral clarity of his act, amplified by the data leak, sparked an inferno of grassroots activism.
Thomas's scarred cross-shield became the unofficial logo for dozens of decentralized protest groups a symbol of sacred rage. Graffiti artists painted the cracked shield on bridges and factory walls; digital activists used the symbol, often rendered in stark black and white, as their calling card when they hacked corporate and government sites to expose local corruption. These movements weren't unified, but they shared a common, powerful thread: a demand for Consequence that the SAA failed to deliver. They wanted the politicians, the financiers, and the military generals who had benefited from Vought's lies to face the same uncompromising justice Thomas had delivered to himself. Underground media distributed old, digitized audio recordings of his father's firebrand sermons a mix of biblical zeal and righteous indignation transforming Thomas from a simple hero into a figure of modern religious martyrdom and resistance.
This uprising wasn't just among the normal citizens. Thomas's sacrifice resonated deeply with the Forgotten Supes the thousands of low-level V-enhanced individuals Vought had created, used for minor jobs, and then discarded. These were the people who knew, better than anyone, the bitter truth of the Compound V Ledger: they were disposable property, not people, and the OSM's new mandatory regulations and biometric chips would only formalize their mandatory servitude. They had nothing left to lose.
One such figure was a low-level telekinetic named Anya Petrova, a former Vought temp worker with an economics degree who could lift about fifty pounds with her mind. Her power was subtle, but her intellect was sharp. She had spent years working in Vought's archival department, seeing the abuses firsthand but remaining silent for fear of losing her meager benefits. Now, fueled by Thomas's defiance and the immediate threat of Rourke's chips, she saw a path for organized resistance. Anya quickly became a central figure in a loose collective of abandoned Supes. They didn't have the raw power of the former Seven, but they had numbers, desperation, and an intimate knowledge of the systems Vought had put in place. They called themselves The Harvesters, operating out of abandoned subway tunnels beneath Queens, their recruitment relying on word-of-mouth and encrypted dark web channels. They prioritized recruiting Supes with technical, medical, and infiltration skills over sheer firepower.
Their first major objective was not symbolic, but strategic: the planned seizure of the last operational Compound V synthesis lab in New Jersey before the OSM could secure its full inventory. This lab wasn't just a place to synthesize V; it housed the only known operational V-Stabilization Matrix the technology required to create Compound V that didn't have the 80% failure rate exposed in the Ledger. Anya argued that true freedom meant controlling the means of their own power and eliminating the vulnerability that made them disposable. The Harvesters were interested in tangible disruption, aiming to sow chaos among the newly formed OSM and retrieve whatever essential scraps of Vought's tech they could salvage before General Rourke could lock it all down and weaponize it further.
The unintended harvest of Thomas's martyrdom was now growing a chaotic, multi-faceted opposition where idealistic citizens, panicked world leaders, and vengeful, discarded Supes all scrambled to define their place in the brutal new order. The quiet Zealot in The Vault may have been silenced, but his actions had finally given the world something real to fight for, and something even more real to fight against.