Chapter 17
His legs took him to the spot.
Pretty much his only choice, without risking an uber.
The Honda was a no-go at this point, as much as he missed the car. The old thing just couldn't fit him right anymore, seat bent back in a way he couldn't really fix at this point. He wasn't gonna complain, his own fault for folding himself into it every damn morning. Besides, walking wasn't bad; it made it plenty clear on its own about how far his territory had shrunk without nobody having to say it to his face.
The streets cleared as he made his way through, some of the crowd pressed flat against the storefronts. It was nothing like the old weaker espect he'd known for the longest, no quick nods or the hurried qué lo que. Nah, this was more the kind you gave a downed power line sparking bright in the gutter, people keeping wide in case a wire jumped.
It was a short walk through the Bronx that took him where he needed to go, the heavy door of the warehouse already propped open. The boys at the door were quick to open it the rest of the way for him, their eyes turned away from his as he made his way in.
Black fingertips pulled open the second door inside, a faint smudge of ash left behind on painted metal as he stepped into a packed floor. Huh… Orange eyes narrowed as Tito looked around the space. Bigger crowd.
Definitely bigger than he expected for a random Tuesday afternoon; soldiers, suppliers, and runners all packing the spot with a couple lieutenants scattered around. A couple of twitchy lab types were huddled off in the far corner not touching a damn thing, while some younger supes showed off half-stable powers just to kill time.
One kid in the back shivered on a folding chair, skin pale white and flaking off him exactly like old drywall. Nobody bothered to check if he was still breathing right, another Rojo failure by the looks of him. Bad blood. Honestly, he was one of the luckier ones, considering some of the rest came to a quicker and messier end. Manny was there too, his own cousin running around with a clipboard for the old man like Tito hadn't tried to put him on himself two years back.
The boss worked the room, the whole of the warehouse getting his attention as that cane tapped around. El Martillo was the sort of leader that was as patient as a priest and as attentive as a doctor — a hand on a shoulder here, a warning dressed up as small talk there, it was the same as always.
"There he is."
When he finally made his way over to TIto, his voice came warm.
Genuine, even.
"El Diablo himself."
Close enough that Tito could even believe it.
"My man…" Martillo's voice rolled out as slow and unhurried as it always did, the man raising a hand full of gold rings as he kept on waving Tito forward. "My man who don't die."
Laughter rippled through the floor below as Tito stepped toward the boss with a smile cracking his face, the first real one he'd let himself have in weeks.
"Listen to me." A hand full of gold settled on his shoulder, heat off Tito's skin not even getting a raised eyebrow from the gold man. Made sense, especially with a palm that leather-thick from years of this shit. "Been doing good work, mijo. Better than good."
That hand stayed on his shoulder as the old man walked him up onto the raised stage in the back, velvet rope for a VIP of one. With a grunt, the boss lowered himself into a high-backed leather chair that made him look smaller than Tito remembered. He sat there in a beige linen suit, panama hat resting on the little table, both hands folded over the polished gold head of his cane.
Tito stayed on his feet, knowing good and well the folded chair set up for him would start to give the second his overcooked ass touched it. He didn't do well with metal anymore, not when it came to long contact.
He was pretty sure the old man knew that too.
Either way, he didn't take the seat and Martillo didn't seem to notice or care.
"Like, I was saying, boss…" Tito crossed his arms. "The rate we're moving, Brooklyn is ours in no time at all. We can push the Russians clean out Queens by Christmas even. Vought's bleeding right now, with all that shit yesterday…" The pyro shook his head as a rough laugh escaped him. "They distracted as hell right now. No better time to take what's ours."
"This is not wisdom." Martillo let a breath out slow through his nose, the old man's patience only spiking the fire in Tito's chest. "You need to take your eyes off the street and look towards the board, mijo. Vought is having the black suit sweep Staten Island right now, as we speak. Heat is too high here."
"I am the heat." A thumb jabbed into Tito's chest as he rasped out the words. "Point me at the black suit, I turn him to slag."
"You are strong, mijo." Martillo's voice went quieter, forcing Tito to lean in over the noise noise still bleeding up off the floor. "But you are a loud one. Very loud. Good for clearing the rabble, but bad — very bad when you trying to hide the house."
Hide the house. Something cold cut through the furnace sitting behind Tito's ribs, like ice dropped down his collar. "What… what are you saying?"
"I am saying you earned something." Martillo kept on rolling, one hand opened toward Tito in something like a handshake even as the man didn't reach out yet. "Miami needs a heavy like you, Tito. Ports are a mess down there, and the Colombians… they're getting bold again. I need my best man handling that pipeline south. Besides…" Gold teeth flashed at the pyro. "Sun, beaches. A kingdom all your own, my sonb."
Miami.
Fuckin' Florida?
The word bounced around inside Tito's skull, louder and uglier every time it hit bone. Lke he'd have anything without me. His own blood was the whole foundation of this operation, the whole first batch was all him; at least a hundred some junkies out there right now running around with a little piece of Tito swimming inside 'em. All he did for him, and now the old man wanted to ship him off to play with boats down south while somebody else ran his territory.
"Tito?" Martillo was still smiling in his face, the old man still easy. "You with me, mijo?"
"You trying to move me." It didn't come out a question, chest heaving and temperature spiking a good ten degrees. "To Miami."
"I am trying to elevate you, Tito." Martillo's tone held steady even as his eyes went hard underneath the calm. "This is a war, Tito. Something you're good at. I need a general down there."
"Don't play me like a puto!" The words came out loud enough the music down on the floor cut dead all at once, every head down below swinging back their way.
"You lower your voice, boy." Martillo's grip went white on his cane, knuckles tight on the gold handle. "You forget who you speaking to. "
"I ain't…" Tito pulled in a breath, fog steaming out of his mouth. "I ain't forget shit! I remember who bled for this!" A step forward had the wood beneath his feet blacken, curling up with smoke already lifting off the old boards. "You think I'm a weapon or something? You see a dog you send off to whatever fuckin' yard you want?"
"Right now, I see a man losing control. A man who clearly is not seeing the opportunity in front of him. You go to Miami, Tito. Or you go nowhere at all." Two guards stepped up around the old man as he snapped his fingers quick, skin thick and grey like poured concrete as they stared down at the smoking man.
"You think…" Tito's own voice came out harder, a demon's rasp riding under his own. "You think you can put out the sun, viejo?"
"Enough of this. Take him down." The order left Martillo, hard as iron, as both guards lunged.
Tito didn't even lift his hands, a wave of raw heat rolling out the man as he roared out, "Take who down?"
The one on the left caught the most of it from Tito's mouth, skin heating cherry-red as fire hit him dead in the face. The second managed to land a whole punch clean on Tito's jaw, the man's fist lighting up before pain even had time to reach him.
He went down screaming, arm burning like a torch.
Tito didn't look at either of them rolling around on the ground, bright-orange eyes locked on the old man as he scrambled back in that leather chair, screaming for all he was worth. "Tito! Listen! Listen to me!" Martillo raised the cane high, plastic tip aimed at him like it could do a single goddamn thing against El Diablo. "Mijo! Stop!"
"I ain't your fuckin' mijo."
He reached out with one hand, a claw of orange fire closing around Martillo's face.
No time left for a scream, flesh flashed and bone turned brittle in less than a second as El Martillo simply stopped being a person at all, expensive chair behind him burning up along with the old man.
Panic tore through the warehouse, a hundred bodies screaming and fighting to fit through one door at once. A handful of Rojo recruits tried something stupid — thrown furniture, a couple cheap pistols firing wild into the smoke.
Bullets melted before they ever reached him, furniture turning to kindling mid-air.
The blood was screaming in his veins now, wanting more. Burn it. Burn all of it.
He threw his head back, a roar tearing loose from somewhere past his throat, flame striking the metal roof hard enough steel beams groaned and warped right over his head.
Heat wafted off him, muscle tearing itself apart and rebuilding bigger, denser; his body running off rage.
Clothes went first, vaporized clean off him. Skin blackened, cracked open along rivers of raw magma underneath.
Manny's clipboard was still in his hand when Tito's foot came down where he used to be standing. The sick kid in back never even got a chance to run.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, whatever thought had still been organizing itself behind Tito's eyes went to static. And underneath all of it, buried but steady, the one grudge that never stopped burning for the last few months.
A-Train.
A falling I-beam caught him across the shoulder, metal going to glowing taffy under his fingers before he hurled the whole thing clean through the front wall, tearing a hole wide enough to drive a truck through.
Diablo stepped out into the wet Bronx afternoon, towering and coal-black; his body shot through with veins of raw orange. Smoke poured off him thick enough to darken the sky, the street outside dead still as cars slammed to a stop. People froze mid-step, all of them staring at the fire — at El Diablo — as he burned brighter.
But through the roar of it, one thought stayed lit; a single building lit up brighter and taller than anything else around it, glass throwing back every scrap of city light there was as Diablo stood tall in the wreck of everything else.
Vought.
A burning head turned east, past the rooftops, past the elevated train tracks, out toward the river — and the skyline answered him back.
He had a target, something like a compass needle inside him pointing him where he needed to go.
El Diablo started walking.
Asphalt liquefied instantly under each footstep, black tar bubbling up behind him.
He took another step.
Chapter 18
How It's Made was the type of show that you watched when there was nothing else on, the sort of edutainment people put on when they wanted to learn things that would never be useful in their lives ever.
It was like TikTok but longform, with the added benefit of dropping actual facts into your brain and also not nuking your attention span down to goldfish levels so…
Well, actually, maybe it wasn't like Tiktok at all, then… huh.
Either way, Hughie had watched his fair share of it, the show having filled many a free hour at the store when customers were especially slow to make their way into a small-box audio-visual location.
Which was often, considering it had been 2019.
Besides that, Hughie knew exactly how many things were made; hotdogs, especially.
Even the 'higher-quality' stuff was still a mess of mash formed into the shape of a tube and it was only because he had already been good at compartmentalizing that he could ever hope to eat one again.
But now, with the smell of processed pork and artificial yellow mustard wafting his way downwind from Billy Butcher in a weaponized cloud, Hughie was beginning to wish he would never even see a hotdog again.
"I mean, how can you even eat that, Butcher?" Hughie blurted out the question into the late autumn air as he watched Butcher go through his fourth hotdog of the day. Dirt crunched loud under his sneakers as he stared at the half-eaten bun in the other man's hand, stomach rolling over slow like a geriatric stunt pilot. "You got those at a gas station."
What didn't need to be said was that gas station had been a whole hour ago, almost a good fifteen miles down the road back in the Palisades.
A low scoff pulled itself out of Butcher's nose, his mouth too full as he leaned back against the car like everybody else; all of them waiting by the dirt pull-off in front of the tall treess. "I ain't quite getting your point."
"That's basically just room temperature nitrates now." A hand waved its way at the mangled piece of pork byproducts and probably brains. "A cold sweaty tube of red dye 40, man. You're eating a bio-hazard."
"Well, lad, y'see, it's quite simple." Butcher didn't bother to stop chewing, jaw working the stale bun like it was something gourmet to savor. "When you've had the distinct pleasure of dining on military rations that expired sometime during the first Gulf War, a slightly chilled seventy-nine-cent frankfurter is a bloody culinary triumph, ain't it?"
"...I…" Hughie blinked. "I guess."
"Preservatives, Hughie." The man grinned like he didn't have mustard in his beard, swallowing another bite hard. "Good for the constitution, mate."
"Okay, but …" A hand scrubbed its way down Hughie's face, fingernails trailing over the patch of fuzz he hadn't had the chance to scrape off. "Did we really have to steal Reggie's Escalade for this?" The sheer insanity of his life, crimes and all, was settling hard on his shoulders; same as it did most mornings over the last year honestly. "Like, the guy gives us a roof over our heads and — and you just snatch his hundred-thousand-dollar SUV for a joyride in the woods? To eat a hotdog?"
"Borrowin', son." Butcher jabbed the last bit of mustard-splattered bun his way, before tossing it back into his mouth. "Borrowin'. And he wasn't usin' it, was he? I'm just keepin' the engine in use and runnin' smooth-like"
"He runs at, like, Mach whatever, Butcher!" Hughie threw his hands up with a sigh. "You don't just borrow a custom Escalade from a supe, man! He's going to notice it's gone!"
"He might." Butcher shrugged with a sound closer to a Muppet than a human. "And it ain't a joyride."
"Then what is it?" Mother's Milk rumble came from Hughie's left, the big man standing with his arms folded over his black 'RUN DMC' shirt. "Cause I been wonderin' that shit for too long myself."
"Now, that's the question." Butcher nodded the same way he had the last few times Mother's Milk had tossed the question out, smile gone as the other big man pretended at a seriousness Hughie knew well enough was bullshit. "Y'see, the th-"
The iPhone in Hughie's pocket chose that moment to start ringing loud, a familiar theme that had him wince. Forgot to put that on silent.
"Really?" He looked up to see Mother's Milk eyeing him, one eyebrow raised and annoyed question for Butcher forgotten. "Green Hill Zone?"
"W-well, you both call me Urkel and he also played Sonic, so I figured…" The eyebrow went higher and Hughie found the explanation going nowhere. With a sigh, he simply pulled the phone from his pocket, thumb swiping across the glass immediately.
"My Escalade?" Reggie's voice snapped through the speaker, completely in disbelief. "Really?"
"...h-hey, Reggie?"
"Hughie, explain to me right now why I'm getting a call from OnStar right now asking me if my vehicle is stolen."
"Well, see…" He licked his lips, eyes on Butcher as the man suddenly found the birds in the trees positively interesting. "The thing is…"
"Hughie…" Reggie repeated his name and didn't stop there. "Explain right now why I'm getting a call from Onstar about my stolen Escalade. The one with the custom rims, Hughie? You took my rims?"
"...Butcher." One word was all he had and, honestly, it was all he needed.
"Who else could it fucking be?" For what sounded like a serious second, the sound of grunting and screaming came from the other end of the call before Reggie spoke again. "Not an explanation, man."
"A-are you busy right now?"
"I'm a superhero and it's noon on a weekday." Reggie grunted again, traffic blaring over the speakers. "Of course I am, Hughie. Now, what are you doing with my car in Harriman fucking State Park?"
"I… I didn't know you drove."
"...Hugh Campbell Jr, do not piss me off right now."
Hughie swallowed, the use of his full name enough to reset the laughter already bubbling in his throat. "S-sorry." He coughed out loud, fist in front of his mouth. "Look, Butcher just found the fob and the rest of us were basically abducted for a mission or whatever."
"Oh, well that makes it so much better!" Reggie's laugh came out with nothing funny riding underneath it at all. "'Hey Reggie, thanks for the free room and board, by the way, the British psychopath just Grand Theft Auto'd your hundred-thousand-dollar SUV to go look at pine cones or some shit.'"
A sigh sounded out into his ear. "I swear to God y'all are the worst roommates in the history of fucking ever, man."
"...sorry?" Hughie winced as the word left him, holding the phone just slightly further from his ear.
"You tell that limey bastard if he puts one single scratch on the paint." Reggie huffed. "I'm throwing his ass into Long Island Sound. From Manhattan."
Hughie's eyes slid over to where Frenchie, Kimiko, and her little brother were sitting on the hood of the SUV, the heels of their shoes kicking back against the grill. "...uhhhh."
"You hear me, Hughie?"
"I… I hear you."
"Uh-huh." The call went silent as Reggie ended it.
A short laugh holding about as much humor in it as a funeral left Hughie as he shoved the phone back into his front pocket, gaze sliding back to Butcher. "He's pissed, by the way."
"I bet."
"Like, royally."
"The cunt'll live." Butcher wiped a smear of mustard off his thumb straight onto his jeans. "It's what money's for. He's got plenty of that."
"I'm asking you for the fifth time, Butcher." Mother's Milk forced attention back onto him, the man still standing up against the car with his arms crossed. "Why. We. Here?"
"Patience, MM. It's a virtue, ain't it?" The Brit scoffed as he wiped his beard again. "Though I s'pose they don't teach much of that in the Marines, just how to polish your boots and say 'yes sir' to tossers in tailored suits."
"You're dodgin', man. I know when you're dodgin'."
"MM…"
"Seriously, Butch…" MM leaned forward across from Hughie to stare dead-on at William Butcher with hard eyes. "This a mission? A dead drop from Mallory? Just tell me what this is. We been out here since before noon just starin' at trees, man."
The big black man just shook his head slow to where Kimiko sat in between Kenji and the resident Frenchman, quiet as usual. "Little Miss Lethal over there looks about two minutes from chopping down a tree with her bare hands, she's that bored. Be better off if there was trouble for her to deal with"
"Ain't gotta worry about trouble, MM." "The Brit nodded back. "Lil Boy over there can just crunch 'em up with his mind, can't ya, son?"
"Jesus, Butcher." Hughie actually flinched, not expecting a sudden reference to Hiroshima. "You can't call him that, man."
"Call him what? Lil Boy?" Butcher's brow went up, dragging his drawl lazy over each word. I"t's a term of endearment, Hughie. Shows we're a proper little unit, doesn't it?"
"He doesn't understand English!" Hughie threw his hands up again.
"Bet he'd like it either way." A rasp of a chuckle scraped its way out of Butcher's throat, the Brit tilting his head. "Look at him. Grinnin' on the inside, I reckon."
"You might as well be calling him Hiroshima!"
"...same difference, innit?"
Kenji chose that moment to stand up from the hood, sliding down onto the road as he made his way over to the three of them standing by the side of the car. Sharp eyes darted between Hughie and Butcher, a string of Japanese spilling out fast enough that Hughie's brain was almost smoking trying to track it in real-time.
He just squinted back, staring at the fully-healed telekinetic — bruises gone and broken hands back in place — trying to piece together meaning from the last few weeks of panic-cramming Duolingo lessons in the mansion. "Uh… w-wait, okay… he said teki, that's enemy. And Vought too, so…"
Okay, wait. It only took a few seconds more of backtracking before the lightbulb went over Hughie's head and the soft raspy string of syllables started making sense. "He's saying he gets it now. That he's on our side and that the real bad guy here is Vought."
Footsteps crunched on gravel and dirt as Frenchie stepped out from around the other side of the Escalade, half-lit hand-rolled cigarette hanging off his lip. Ash flicked down from his paint-splattered graphic tee and down into the dirt as he rattled something back at Kenji.
Kenji turned with a smile, whole body loosening at once as he stared at Frenchie and nodded firmly back at the other three.
Hughie froze, mouth open in a small dumb 'O' of simple shock as he stared at Frenchie. "Wait. You…" That hadn't just been passable, it had been downright smooth; the words fast, clean and confident.
Just actual fluent Japanese with barely the slightest bit of hesitation.
"You speak Japanese?"
"I've always been good with languages, Petit Hughie. It is… how do you say… a gift. " A little smile stretched the corners of his mouth as he took a slow drag of his cigarette, the tip glowing bright orange. "Just need the right motivation sometimes."
Hughie's eyes slid over to Kimiko on instinct, the supe watching Frenchie with something soft in her eyes. Ah, yeah…
Motivation.
Right.
Well, it wasn't like that didn't track.
Frenchie had been trying to talk to Kimiko for a year now. The crazy pill-popping and producing engineer must have been grinding out Japanese in every spare moment this last month to get that good with it which…
Well, it wasn't all that surprising now that Hughie thought about it. What better motivation to communicate with her than the second-best thing, right?
"I don't give a damn who speaks what, man!" Mother's Milk had an undeniable pair of lungs on him, the way his shout echoed out into the trees. With a grunt, the big man pushed his weight off the glossy black siding of the Escalade, Hughie instinctively shrinking back to give him space he didn't need. Even with that, all MM took was a single step closer to their fearless leader, finally uncrossing his arms. "Why the hell are we out here, Butcher? We been waitin' for over an hour and for what?"
"Patience, MM." Butcher's eyes slid down to his wristwatch, the man almost taking his time to do it. "Just a spot of patience."
"I ain't playin' games today, man."
"Well…" Butcher finally looked up, bloodshot eyes tracking something high in the sky. "The game's all over, so no need to worry."
Marvin Milk could only blink at Butcher's sudden change, the Brit wearing a sudden genuine smile across his battered face. It was something lighter than Hughie had ever seen the man wear in all their time together.
It was light, cheerful even.
Almost downright… giddy.
Which made it terrifying to look at.
"No more waitin', then."
Hughie turned his head, following Butcher's gaze high in the sky as he stepped out of the shadow of the SUV with his head tilted back. At first, all he saw was an empty sky; a vast unbroken expanse of pale blue and wispy white clouds.
It didn't take all that long for his breath to catch in his throat, eyes going wide enough to hurt as a shape broke through the clouds. The fuck?
A speck at first, growing larger and aimed straight down toward the dirt clearing ahead of the parked Escalade. A figure, smaller than it had any right to be, and dressed in… a polo shirt and neatly pressed khakis?
As it dropped all the way down, a pair of small bright sneakers touched the dirt with barely a sound, kicking up a tiny puff of dry dust as all of them found themselves staring at a kid. Just a blond boy, maybe eight or nine years old, eyes glowing a familiar red that faded the moment his soles fully found themselves on solid ground.
If that wasn't weird enough, in his arms — held awkwardly but securely — was a woman. A pretty woman with wind-whipped brown hair and in an oversized cardigan over a simple blue t-shirt, but absolutely one-hundred-percent a woman.
The moment the kid let go and her feet hit dirt, her eyes locked dead onto Butcher like he was the only real thing in front of her.
"Billy!"
She hit him at a full run, face buried deep into his chest as thin arms wrapped around the man tight enough that Hughie could see her straining into the hug.
Butcher's eyes actually squeezed shut as his arms came up around her slow, face pressing down into her hair. For a second, Billy Butcher actually looked at peace.
Then the man opened his eyes again, pulling back just enough to keep one arm locked tight around her waist, as that smirk came creeping back onto his face.
Still, somehow softer than Hughie had ever seen it sit there before.
"Boys, meet my wife."
Chapter 19 1
The Escalade was described as seating seven — eight if you counted the optional second row bench seat, which Hughie did — but for the last hour or so since they left Harriman Park long behind, Hughie Campbell was forced to accept that the original advertising was undeniably accurate.
When the manufacturers said seven, they meant seven.
At the very least, they hadn't included a six foot tall overbuilt former Marine in that number.
As much as Hughie wanted to complain, he kept his mouth shut and his knees jammed up against Butcher's seat in front of him, shoulder wedged against the door. It wasn't the most comfortable setup, but somewhere around the George Washington Bridge he'd stopped his hunt for a position that didn't hurt and just let that ache fade into the background like passing traffic.
"Do you like geography, Mr. Hughie?"
Hughie bit down on a grunt at the question, knee knocking hard into the center console as he turned toward the speaker to find a pair of trusting blue eyes waiting on him.
"Do I…"
Ryan Butcher.
Homelander's actual literal kid sat there, taking up near a solid third of the legroom Hughie needed for himself — the only buffer between him and Mother's Milk on the little bench. Those bright eyes slid past Hughie, already distracted as he stared right out the window at the skyline sliding by like he'd never seen a city before, which…
Yeah… Honestly, somewhere around Exit 4, Hughie had started to figure that was pretty much the actual truth here. "Uh, I mean, yeah. Sure." Another unintended laugh left his lips, the sound way too loud in the quiet SUV. "Y'know, geography's… it's great. Albany. Tallahassee. All the… the classics."
Jesus, Hughie. He almost shut his eyes with a wince. The classics?
"Mom said we're going on a really long trip. I've never been on a trip before." The kid blinked for a moment. "Or an airplane either. Have you?"
"...no, actually." The reality of how he hadn't been all that far from his neighborhood before getting involved with Butcher and the Boys was a hard realization all of a sudden. "Have you ever been to New York before?"
"No." Ryan didn't look away from the window, eyes trailing over each passing building. "But I know all the states. Do you want me to say them?"
"I—" Hughie glanced up front on instinct, eyes on the back of Becca's head as the woman suddenly went still in the passenger seat. His gaze slid to Mother's Milk, the big man nodding slow. "Sure, yeah, Ryan, buddy. Go for it."
The kid was quick with his knowledge, already rattling through at least a dozen states before he ran out of steam. Not because he didn't know the rest, but more just the general kind of distraction that pulled momentum from any kid below single digits showing a party trick.
All kids were alike that way.
Even the ones with superpowers.
Hughie found himself nodding along like this was the most normal car ride in the world; just five fugitives, one terrorist, a superpowered kid and his mom-back-from-the-dead riding into the city like it was nothing. "So… how's…"
He racked his brain for whatever small-talk topics he could find for a kid, forcing himself to fight the cringe as he fell back to old reliable. "How's school?"
"Mom teaches me math." A small huff left the kid as he finally looked back at Hughie. "I don't like math."
"Yeah, nobody likes math." Hughie's laugh came out easy, the first one in a while that didn't feel like it was riding a manic edge like Frenchie on a bender. "Math's the worst."
"D… Homelander says I don't need it." The kid pursed his lips as the words left him plain. "He says I'm gonna be strong like him, so it doesn't matter."
Hughie's mouth went a little dry.
Up front, Becca's hand tightened on the door handle — just barely — before the woman turned around and reached over from the passenger seat, a careful hand hovering just above Ryan's knee. "Sweetheart, let's not bother Mr. Campbell right now, okay?"
"Oh, no, it's fine," Hughie hedged, waving a hand. "I… I could use the conversation. So, uh, do you watch a lot of movies?"
"He likes the Blind Side." Becca answered for the kid, the mom's response sudden and confusing enough to make Hughie blink as he tried to process… that.
"The Blind Side?"
"Yeah, it's my favorite!"
If you'd asked Hughie two hours ago whether that movie was any eight-year-old's favorite, he'd have said no, obviously not, but — "That's, uh... wow, that's a great movie."
"That Sandra B can act, I tell you what." Mother's Milk stare on Hughie had him keep his mouth shut, fighting down the obvious question. Like he hadn't just been shooting warning glares, the big man was smiling down at Ryan the next second. "Good choice, kid."
"Yeah! I don't really get to watch a lot of movies, though." Ryan said that with the same sort of kid-honesty as before, no complaint in it at all. "Mom usually lets me pick one movie a week if I do good at homeschool."
"Right. Homeschool. That's — yeah..." Hughie caught himself nodding way too much and made himself stop. "You got friends out there? Any other kids you talk to?"
"Not really." Ryan's brow furrowed like the question itself didn't make sense. "It's just me and Mom mostly. And sometimes people come to check on us."
Check on us. Hughie filed that one away somewhere, next to about a dozen other small sentences this kid had dropped in the last half-hour. A bunch of them had even sounded normal enough on their own, but added up with everything else… well, it was all making way too much sense. "Cool. That's real cool."
Not cool. Nothing about that sounded cool, actually.
Realistically, though, what else was Hughie supposed to say to an eight-year-old kid about his own social development? Especially, given the mountain of really really good reasons for the total lack of it. "Not as cool as your flying, though, right?"
He almost dropped his head in his hands as the question left him. Man, Youth Pastor Kenneth made this look so much easier growing up.
"Yeah!" The yell left Ryan as bright as his eyes, like he'd been holding it in the whole ride. "I taught myself."
"That's…" Hughie blinked. "That's amazing, Ryan."
"Yeah." A small proud smile broke across Ryan's face, the first real one Hughie had seen out of him the whole drive, only to immediately fall apart into something more complicated. "I watched… I watched Homelander do it and I figured out how."
"Oh, you saw him fly and tried to copy it?" Hughie leaned in a little despite himself, the old supe-nerd part of his brain that never fully died perking up at the mechanics of it.
"A little bit, I guess." Ryan nodded. "Only took me a week after the first time he pushed me off the roof, yeah."
"...oh."
The entire Escalade seemed to lose cabin pressure around the sentence.
Hughie looked up front again, blinking as Becca's jaw went tight.
A muscle worked there in the woman's face, twitching for a bit more than a second before she turned to look out the window. Her whole face angled away from the rearview, as if she could physically dodge whatever expression was sitting on Hughie's face.
Even if she could pretend it didn't exist, Hughie knew he couldn't and it took another half-minute to fix the look he was wearing until it went away. Okay. Yeah. Not gonna touch that one, Hughie turned his own attention back out the window as a completely unbothered Ryan kept right on going — the conversation taking a quick turn into something Lego-related as Hughie just nodded along and let the kid talk.
Queens came up slow through the windshield, brick and bodega signs and a community center with a hand-painted banner strung across the front — some kind of festival, folding tables sagging under foil trays, a boombox somewhere blasting cumbia loud enough Hughie felt it in his sternum before they'd even found a spot to park.
"Ah." Frenchie's head popped up from the way back, Kimiko rising beside him like a mating pair of meerkats. "We are here."
"And where's here, exactly?"
Frenchie just grinned around an unlit cigarette.
Chapter 19 2
"Pasito a pasito, suave suavecito…"
A speaker zip-tied to the leg of a folding table was doing its absolute best with a song clearly in need of a much bigger sound system, the bass rattling tinny against the community center's cinderblock walls.
"Nos vamos pegando poquito a poquito…"
Regardless, it still did its best to capture the attention of the eight-year-old among them, Ryan clearly enjoying the chance to put his limited Spanish lessons to work as he deciphered the lyrics as best he could to a patiently listening Becca. Hughie stepped through the door behind Frenchie, Ryan and his mother at his side.
All at once, he felt the weight of at least a hundred sets of eyes clock all seven of them, the twenty-eight-year old blinking back at them as the noise kept going. Wow, it's more packed than the outside.
That much at least made sense, considering the crowd outside was still setting up. In here, the party was already going. The banner over the entrance was soft and sun-bleached from what looked like at least several autumn events of exactly this — some sort of neighborhood gathering repeated enough that it had become a tradition. Folding tables lined the far wall in army-worthy numbers, sagging dangerously under the weight of massive foil trays steaming with enough food to feed said army; the heavy smell of several fried, roasted and well-seasoned meats wafting over Hughie. A stack of massive blue Igloo coolers sat sweating onto the floor near the edge of the basketball court as a half-dozen little kids ran in shrieking circles over by a half-inflated bounce house.
Through it all, a boombox and an actual bluetooth speaker were locked in some kind of unspoken volume war neither one was really winning.
"Pasito a pasito, suave suavecito…"
Either way, the bass bounced off the scuffed hardwood of the community center, vibration humming a backbeat against the soles of Hughie's sneakers as he stood there with six other people around them. As different as they were, every single one of them wore roughly the exact same expression.
Simply put, the deeply uncomfortable and highly alert look of people who very, very much did not belong in a particular room.
"Right, so..."
Mother's Milk sounded off past the blaring music, voice rolling over Hughie's shoulder as Butcher finally caught up to them from where he'd parked the car — turning their group of seven into eight. "Frenchie, your people meetin' us here?"
"Oui, oui." That unlit cigarette was still hanging off his lip off pure habit, hands loose in his pockets like the four of them weren't America's Most Wanted right now. "My contact, she does ze paperwork. Very good work. Very fast."
Paperwork. He knew what that meant.
At the very least, he knew what it was for.
"Buck up, lad." Hughie turned to face a still beaming Butcher as a hand clamped tight onto his shoulder, the man wearing more open happiness on his sleeve than he thought possible. "Ain't a thing to have the shakes about."
"Just…" Hughie shrugged his way out of the man's grip. "Just worried about adding one more illegal thing to the day's itinerary."
"Aye, that…" The other man laughed as he leaned in close, smile going a bit darker to something closer to normal. "Not like we're the most illegal thing in this place anyway."
Hughie couldn't even be shocked at Butcher's humor at this point, a sigh leaving him as Butcher cackled. "Yeah, I get that much. I'm just saying, you think no one here is gonna— " A single hand gestured to the whole of them, all eight of their number who looked distinctly out of place at a Hispanic block party "—notice us? Like, at all? Because I feel like we're maybe not blending as hard as you think we are, man."
"And what, bring the fuzz down on their heads?" Another cackle left Butcher as the man walked off.
"You know, Petit Hughie…" Frenchie tilted his head as the tall young man sighed again. "He's not wrong. In here, who's gonna run to the police to investigate a strange face?"
"...I think too much, y'know." The admittance was far from hard, a truth the rest of the Boys already knew as much as Hughie did. "Just worried about staying in public too long."
"You leave zat to me, mon ami." Frenchie was already moving before Hughie could get out a follow-up, the shorter man weaving between folding chairs with easy confidence.
"Dile que tú eres mía, mía…"
As much as Hughie hated to admit it, Butcher wasn't wrong.
Sure, everybody noticed them the second they cleared the tables, but nobody said a single word about it, which was somehow weirder than the opposite. An older woman in an apron just handed Hughie a paper plate loaded with rice and something that smelled incredible before he'd even gotten his mouth open or hands up to wave her off.
"Thank you." He paused, head bobbing on instinct. "Um — gracias."
She just nodded and moved on to the next tray like feeding a bunch of sketchy strangers of varying ethnicity and age was just another Tuesday.
Frenchie had already peeled off toward the back of the building and vanished through a door marked STAFF ONLY, most likely to where his contact was supposed to be, while MM had Kimiko (and that meant Kenji too) close by the wall already; all three of them eyeing the exits on pure reflex.
Butcher had Becca tucked into a corner as Ryan sat a few feet away working through a plate of rice and chicken at a pace only seen in children and competitive eaters. "Can't take you back to where we were." The Brit didn't need to bother speaking all that low, not with the music blaring and so many voices around them. "Not with Vought's eyes crawlin' the place. Bring Homelander's kid through that front door, might as well paint a bloody target on the whole street."
"I know." Becca's voice came out tight, fingers clenched tight at her side. "I know, Billy. I'm not asking you to."
"Get papers sorted. Get you both south by tomorrow, no problem. Mexico, maybe." Butcher's jaw worked. "Somewhere he can't just walk in and take him."
"He could-" Becca's hand pressed tight against her own mouth, the woman looking like she'd caught the lie before it fully left her.
"He would." For once, there was no cruelty in Butcher, the man speaking facts with as much kindness as he had in him. "You know he would, love. That's why you called."
She didn't argue that one, and didn't even look like she wanted to as her eyes drifted toward Ryan again.
Hughie drifted closer with his plate, pretty sure he wasn't supposed to be hearing any of that. A short sigh left him as he ended up dropping into the seat across from Ryan instead, because at least there he had a job.
Granted, that was apparently distraction duty but still.
"So, Legos, huh?" Safe topics, Hughie.
"Yeah!" Ryan lit up again immediately, looking up from his mostly-emptied plate. "I'm working on the whole Blind Side movie, remember?"
"Yeah, that's a big one. Respect." As much as Hughie didn't understand the appeal, he still meant it, actually. The small normal-kid enthusiasm was an honest relief, even if it was going towards a stop-motion version of Sandra Bullock Oscar bait.
"¿Y dónde está mi gente?"
The TV bolted up near the gym ceiling cut through the music for a second as somebody found the remote, volume climbing over a chyron scrolling red: BLUSHIFT SIGHTED AGAIN?
"Oh, hey." Hughie pointed a finger high without really thinking about it. "I actually know that guy. Blushift. We're friends."
Ryan's whole face turned up toward the screen. "That's cool."
"Yeah, he's a good guy." Hughie nodded slow as he said those words out loud. "Actually a really good guy."
"I wish my dad was a good guy." The kid frowned all of a sudden. "But he's… weird."
Weird. Hughie sat with that word a second, turning it over and around in his head, because "weird" was definitely a word for whatever Hughie personally knew Homelander actually was.
Just not the one he'd personally use.
"Weird how?"
"I don't know. Just weird." A small shrug came with the answer, the eight-year-old already looking back toward his plate. "He gets mad about stuff that doesn't matter. And he doesn't really listen when I talk."
"That's… yeah. That sounds weird."
"Last time he visited…" The kid added, voice a little quieter than before "He came with the lightning lady."
Hughie's head came up fast, eyes cutting toward Becca before he could stop himself.
"Stormfront." Becca didn't even look at Hughie as she answered the question on his face. "The day before everything happened at the Senate. He brought her to meet Ryan."
"That's…" Hughie's stomach roiled in a way that had nothing to do with the beans on the plate in front of him. "Why would he…"
"I don't know." Becca's hand found Butcher's in a tight grip. "I don't know what he wanted her to see. I just knew I couldn't wait to find out."
"That's when she called me." Butcher nodded to himself, a smile on his face. "Kept the burner like I told her."
The feed up near the ceiling cut from Blushift footage to a studio shot and MM's voice sliced clean through the gym floor noise, someone actually turning to look as he spoke up. "Turn that up."
That same someone was quick to find the remote, the TV volume climbing just loud enough to be heard over the music. "—onfirming reports, Stormfront has evaded custody following last night's incident. Vought International CEO Stan Edgar made his first address to the press just moments ago."
The feed cut to the familiar unbothered face of Stan Edgar at a podium, the head of Vought wearing a calm smile like the whole building behind him wasn't currently on fire in every metaphorical sense. "Vought takes the safety of the public with the utmost seriousness and it is for that reason that Homelander, along with the remaining members of the Seven, are currently conducting an active search for the secretive villain known as Stormfront and whatever affiliates she may have within Vought, intent on ousting this shadow organization."
"Wait." It cracked out of Hughie before he could stop it. "She actually escaped? How do you even…"
He swallowed slow. "How does anybody escape from Homelander?"
Nobody answered that. MM's jaw was tight like Butcher's as both their eyes refused to move an inch from the screen above them.
"Homelander is currently searching the entire country. And rest assured, there is no one that can escape from the greatest hero the world has ever seen. With that in mind…"
Edgar nodded slow.
"We ask the public to remain calm."
Chapter 20
"—ive from the Vought Town Hall, where Stormfront, one of the newest and most popular members of the Seven—"
The anchor's voice was reedy.
High-pitched and absolutely pathetic, it practically vibrated from the television mounted in the corner of the room, the woman on-screen sick with the too-real hysteria she knew for a fact was a career-making broadcast.
"—has been outed as what appears to be a Nazi and has fled the location!"
Appears to be. A scoff filled the space. Pathetic as ever.
Even now, with all the footage in high-definition looping on every screen across the country, not a single word of them could manage what was just a word.
A plain word.
They needed that little hedge, a linguistic life raft; true fear at seeing the real thing with power they thought it would never have again too much otherwise. It was a deserving fear, a healthy thing for a people so desperate to cling to the plastic reality the juden had spoon-fed to them like overstuffed infants.
They'd called her Vought's Eternal Ghost once.
At least one person had, some motormouthed handler who'd stumbled too close to a secret till she sent him stumbling out of a window.
Eternal Ghost she may have been but, underneath it all, she was still Klara.
Before Vought, she was always just Klara.
Right now, Klara sat still, palms pressed flat against the cold surface of the scarred table, cold enough it was almost uncomfortable — even to her.
That was good.
It was a good feeling, a real feeling.
Real as the over-thick walls in this tomb of a safehouse. Those same walls held its damp the way it always had, poured concrete sweating in the corners of one of a dozen or so holes she'd seeded into this country. Most of them had been built back when the idea of satellites and cell phones were still something out of a serial.
She hadn't changed out of the suit even after she found her way here. Even as the armor sat wrong against her ribs, the cape dragging at the chair's legs, it occurred to her that the whole ensemble had gone from costume to lie somewhere in the last four hours without her quite noticing the crossover point.
Four hours. It almost felt like a lifetime but no, it had only been mere hours since she'd fled the town hall. All the work she'd done to hide her path, to vanish into the darkness immediately after; it was all pointless. No one had chased after her, not even John.
Her ubermensch had stared like the rest, as if she hadn't told him first; shock at the reality of being associated with her all that kept him from taking her hand as he should have.
And his Ryan…
Young Ryan. Klara shut her eyes, a smile on her face at the thought of another perfect addition to her family; a perfect natural-born young soldier to be paired with her little Tatjana.
Her dream was not yet dead, though.
Even after they did this.
Dropped me. Her fists clenched tight atop the table. Airing everything to the pigs.
Decade after decade — an entire lifetime — she'd dealt with this nonsense, swallowing it all like the bitter medicine it was; all of it for a simple purpose.
A glorious purpose. Her eyes opened as the news kept blaring, ears silent to all but the six breathing bodies behind her.
All to keep the dream of her darling husband alive; perfect smile practiced year after year for cameras run by handlers who kept getting younger every news cycle and so many notes she'd nodded at from focus groups until she could predict their insulting little points to the letter.
Gone — all of it, the entire architecture of artifice — the moment Stan Edgar decided her shelf life had a date stamped on it after all.
All of it, tossed aside like garbage.
By a heartless negro and his scrambling desire for control over a legacy he could never truly understand.
Edgar. She clicked her tongue. "Ach, of course."
Of course it was Stan.
Who else had the access, the cold bloodless competence, the sheer will required to torch Vought's darkest asset — along with the brightest, simply by mere association — just to keep the latter tied to the leash a little longer?
It was honestly impressive.
A man like Edgar was rarely seen and even the Fuhrer would have said as much. If only he wasn't a Neger… Klara shook her head, wiping the thought away.
She'd seen this exact day in the mirror from the very moment they handed Frederick's organization to Edgar. Not even for being one of his kind, but simply for how material and cold-blooded the man was; those unflinching eyes that were never impressed by Compound Vought, seeing only a simple patent rather than the divine gift it was.
He'd have priced all of this in already before he even did it. The dip.
The outrage cycle running its predictable half-life as he twisted events into the perfect path to market it to a gullible audience with some new biddable face already rehearsing lines in a green room, ready to be installed in the Seven the moment ratings stabilized.
It was Stan Edgar, after all.
A credit to his people, but a demon wrapped in flesh if there ever was one.
Her phone lay in front of her, face-down and silent. She'd turned it off the second she reached the air, simply to avoid being tracked. Klara had no need to turn it over to know what was happening on the other end of that black mirror — numbers cratering in real time across Twitter, Instagram, TikTok; a decade of curated adoration hollowing at a rate of hundreds of followers each second.
All of it garbage.
A love she had always known as rented, never owned.
"So, what do we do, Oma?"
Dark eyes trailed up and softened at once, the jagged anger in her chest smoothing for all the length of a breath at the sight of each one of them standing tall and proud in the low light of her bunker.
Not Vought's collection of leased faces cycling in and out of a costume department.
These were hers; generation over careful generation, Frederick's inheritance walking around in bodies she'd chosen herself.
Her own Seven.
"Vikor, mein Großer." The heavy cape swept behind her as she rose, eyes lighting up in a smile as she met nearly seven feet of her own blood staring back at her; that same barrel-chested earnestness and uncomplicated smile still there from when he was small enough to fit in her arms. "What we do is remind them they need us."
"The Neger believes Vought is anything without me…" She paced toward them, a century-old certainty returning exactly where it belonged. "When they have always needed my hands to do their dirty work."
"Say the word, Oma." His laugh came up out of somewhere deep in that giant chest, the sound almost enough to shudder the walls as his shoulders shook. "I bring you Edgar's head on my hammer."
"Not yet, mein Bär." Fondness, genuine and pure, threaded her words as Klara breathed the damp air in slow. "These vermin running around with the corruption of your grandfather's gift rotting their blood. Given enough time, they will outnumber the pure."
She shook her head. "Even Edgar knows that arithmetic, whether he says it aloud or not."
"Whatever you need us to do, Großmutter." Norska lowered her head, pale blonde braid swinging forward the moment a fist met her chest in a crisp salute. "We will."
"I know you will, meine treue Enkelin."
Klara's legs carried her over to the taller woman, a smile still present as her hands rose. Those same hands cupped the girl's sharp cheeks between them, Klara almost cooing at the striking beauty that had barely faded across two decades. "That is why I chose you, and only you, for my Vikor."
The blonde valkyrie leaned in, eyes closed under Klara's touch. "Perfect. In every way."
Her gaze slid past to Skandia, the girl barely old enough to drink as she shined faintly under her own armor beside her husband. "Perfect."
Her great-grandaughter beamed her way under the compliment aimed at her, the luminous glow of a new mother adding to the light of her power. "In every single way."
Klara pretended to not hear the sigh of disappointment from her grandson's bride as she let go of Norska's face, her steps carrying her across the line of gathered super-soldiers standing at attention.
Klara turned to take in all of them at once, dark cape settling behind her like a shroud. "Are you all ready for what comes next?"
"Yes." The chorus filled the empty space of the bunker, no hesitation riding beneath it.
"Ready to be hated by the filth that has spent the better part of a century tainting this country?"
"Yes, Großmutter."
"Ready and willing to stand above, to take the place that was always yours and yours alone?"
"Yes, Großmutter!" Vikor boomed loudest of all, grip tightening on the haft of his oversized hammer.
"Good." One nod was all any of them needed from her. "The plan is simple, because good plans always are. There is a problem. A virus, spreading itself across this country's streets, breeding in basements and warehouses with nothing to check it. And Vought has power enough to matter, but not the skill, not the stomach, to use it properly."
"But ve—" She spread her hands, violet static stuttering across her own knuckles as Vikor raised the hammer in answer before she'd even finished speaking.
"Ve have the power."
Galdar's mirrored mask tilted a fraction, ball bearings drifting lazy above his open palm.
"Ve have the skill."
Her attention found Norska last, the first to have joined this family without a drop of Klara's own blood running through her, and no less devoted for the lack of it.
"Ve have the training."
Lightning cracked violent and sudden across both her fists now, throwing the whole bunker into flickering white-violet relief, every scarred concrete inch of it lit and shadowed at once.
"Combined, ve eliminate the problem, and veforce Vought to stand vith us. They vill have no other choice left to them."
"Yes, Großmutter Stormfront!"
– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –
The morning air over Queens carried smog and cheap fry oil in about equal measure, and beneath her, spilling out through open double doors, that same relentless, joyful noise kept climbing — brass and drum and hundreds of voices layered over it.
Each one laughing, dancing, utterly unbothered by the fact that forty million households had spent the previous night watching the ground open up under her feet on live television.
Fine.
Let them watch this too.
She hovered over a hundred feet up above the community center under the autum sun, lightning already waiting in her open palm.
Deny this, Edgar.