No, he had a choice. That was the miracle of the whole thing, wasn't it? He'd chosen to run away from Cadmus, he'd chosen to come back to make sure they didn't create others like him. If it had gotten bad, he'd have chosen to run again. In the end, though he couldn't remember it, they'd left him rather than the other way around, but still, that was the miracle of the thing.

He chose. That's what the Newsboy Legion had given him, a chance to leave when he could still choose to.

"Well yeah! It was a secret government project. Probably like a bazillion taxpayer dollars went into making me."