Wolverine in The Boys

(Logan POV)

We made it back just after nightfall.

Maggie was already waiting on the porch when we pulled up, her hands stuffed into her jacket, eyes sharp and unmoving. The others filed out of the second van behind her, Butcher, MM, Grace. No one said a word. Just stood there watching us as we climbed out, soot and ash still clinging to our clothes from the fire we lit back in Vermont.

Kimiko handed Grace the sealed film reel. Frenchie followed with the file case. I brought the blueprint.

We didn't go inside right away.

Everyone knew the air was about to change.

When we finally stepped into the living room, Grace cleared the table with one swipe of her arm, scattering files and coffee mugs across the floor. Frenchie laid the contents out like we were planning a hit, notes, Polaroids, test labels, redacted documents aged yellow at the edges.

And at the center, the blueprint. Grace stared at it for a long time. Her jaw clenched. Her fingers twitched.

"Where'd you find this?" she finally asked.

"Basement vault. Last room. Sealed and cold," I said. "Like it'd been waiting."

She leaned in, scanning the stamped label at the bottom of the paper. 'Der rote Tod'. Her eyes flicked up to me, and she didn't bother pretending not to know what it meant.

"You told me that was just a story," she said.

"I said it was old," I muttered. "Didn't say it wasn't true."

Butcher stepped forward, arms crossed. "What the fuck are we looking at?"

Grace didn't speak. She just pointed at the corner of the blueprint, where the Vought logo was printed above a smaller emblem no one recognized.

A black cross overlaying a red circle.

Frenchie squinted. "That's not Vought standard."

"It's Krüger's mark," Grace said quietly. "His personal stamp. Anything with that symbol wasn't just research, it was experimentation."

Maggie stepped closer. "On Logan?"

"On the idea of him," Grace said. "Krüger was obsessed. He'd seen Logan in action, Germany, Poland, France. He was the first enhanced subject the Nazis ever encountered that couldn't be killed. That wasn't just strong or fast. He was unnatural."

"Regeneration," Frenchie said.

"Immortality," Butcher added.

"He called Logan the 'red death' in some of his journals. Der rote Tod. Said he was a force of nature, not a man. Krüger believed if he could replicate that, build something that could rival it, Germany would never fall again."

"Too late for that," MM muttered.

"But it wasn't about Germany anymore," Grace continued. "When the Reich crumbled, Krüger vanished. CIA thought he defected east. Now I know he did."

"To the Russians," I said, voice low.

She nodded.

"That blueprint you found?" she said. "It wasn't just a cage. It was a chamber. A stasis rig. Designed to contain regenerative subjects."

"Why would the Russians want a cage for something like me?" I asked, though I already knew.

"They didn't," she said, meeting my eyes. "They wanted a weapon to fight you."

We all went quiet.

Frenchie finally whispered, "Soldier Boy."

My eyes widened as I remembered the mission with Grace all those years ago where they took Solider Boy.

Grace nodded slowly. "That's who it was built for. Not as he was, but what they turned him into."

"You're saying Krüger's the reason Soldier Boy ended up in that Russian lab?" MM asked, stepping forward.

"Krüger didn't just help them catch him," Grace said. "He gave them the tools to rewire him."

"Fuck," Butcher muttered. "They didn't just keep him on ice. They upgraded him."

Grace nodded again. "Pain tolerance. Radiation resilience. Bio-energy absorption. They weren't just torturing him, they were testing weapon systems. Building something new off his foundation."

"And Homelander?" Hughie asked from the hallway, stepping in slow.

"That's the real reason Krüger came back into the picture," Grace said. "Once Soldier Boy was too unstable to control, they pivoted. Lazarus wasn't about reviving the past anymore. It became about preparing for the future. For him."

"You mean creating something that could kill Homelander," I said.

Grace looked me dead in the eye. "Or control him."

Annie sat down hard on the couch, eyes wide. "Why haven't we heard any of this before? None of this was in the CIA briefings. Not even the black site reports."

"Why the Fuck do you? We just learned about it now,," Grace says while guestering to the files we found. "It seems that Krüger operated under eight different aliases. Used private labs. Hired merc scientists. He never worked out of Vought Tower. He never left a trail. And anyone who tried to surface the truth disappeared."

"Which means we've got a ticking time bomb on our hands," Butcher said. "Whatever Lazarus was, they've either built it, or they're close."

"And if Krüger's still alive?" I asked.

"Then he's ten steps ahead of us," Grace said.

Kimiko signed quickly. Frenchie translated.

"She says if they're still experimenting, they're going to need test subjects."

"She's right," Maggie added. "We've seen them snatch people off the street before. Vought's run black bags out of hospitals, clinics, even morgues."

Frenchie laid out a few more photos from the Vermont facility, scans of the storage logs, temperature readings, and partial names burned into medical packaging.

One stuck out immediately.

"SB-07," I said.

"Soldier Boy," MM confirmed. "Seventh attempt."

"Then there were six before him," I said.

"Or more," Grace corrected. "The others just didn't survive."

Maggie picked up another slip of paper from the pile. "This one says '0A-Lupus.'"

I nodded. "Saw it in the back hall. Didn't make sense at the time."

"It does now," Grace said. "Lupus wasn't an animal designation. It was a type, a reference to enhanced aggression, regenerative instability, and rage conditioning."

"Wait," Hughie said, stepping closer. "Are you saying there might be another subject like Logan out there?"

Grace didn't answer.

She didn't have to.

"Where's the next site?" I asked, eyes narrowing.

Grace pulled a map from her coat. Marked it with a red X in the mountains of northern Canada.

"It's a cold storage site. Military contractor. Been empty since the late '90s, on paper. But recent heat signatures, freight drones, and buried cabling say otherwise."

"Krüger?" Butcher asked.

"Or someone continuing his work," Grace said.

I grabbed my jacket, already walking toward the door. "We move in the morning."

"No," she said. "You move now. If they're transferring assets, they'll do it overnight. You'll need time to scout and intercept."

Kimiko stood along side Maggie, Frenchie slid a fresh clip into his sidearm and flashed me a grin. "Shall we visit the ghosts of Vought past?"

"Load up," I said, heading for the garage. Whatever Lazarus was, whoever they had locked away, it was tied to both ends of my past.

Frenchie flipped through one of the documents again and muttered something in French before snapping it shut. "They were dosing Soldier Boy with radiation and unknown compounds every week. It wasn't about keeping him under. They were trying to push him past what the serum already gave him."

"Turn him into a bomb," Butcher said. "Literally." We all went quiet as that information settled in.