Chapter 7 — Ledger Fever
The café pretended it wasn't in D.C. Edison bulbs, quiet jazz, a barista who poured swans into foam like the Senate was a rumor. Victoria Neuman chose the back booth under a framed map of nowhere and set her phone on the table facedown, the universal sign for I'm listening, but I'll kill this meeting if you waste me.
Cian sat opposite with the posture of a man who could leave in any direction without standing up. Hoodie, ball cap, a face you would forget between blinks; the only memorable thing about him was the low, pleasant hum that made loose spoons on nearby saucers tremble.
"You brought me a nursery," she said, skipping pleasantries.
"I brought you receipts," he said. "Nursery was a bonus level."
She hooked a finger at the plain black thumb drive between them. "What's on it?"
"Cold-room inventory. Vendor codes. Dosing card with cartoons. Video of you don't put telemetry belts on NICU babies." He smiled like he had personally insulted a deity and enjoyed it. "Your staff will love the chain-of-custody metadata."
"Any faces?"
"Redacted," he said. "The babies stay people, not exhibits."
"Good," she said, and meant it. She tapped the drive with a nail. "What's the price?"
"Three conditions." He ticked them off like switches. "One: this stays a public health scandal, not a capes-and-cowls circus. Talk procurement, fraud, falsified filings. Two: nobody says my name on record; ideally, nobody knows it. Invent a vendor whistleblower if you need a story. Three: when you get to subpoena time, pull on charity-front logistics. It leads to a warehouse with a smiling mural and a shadow ledger. I'll send you the numbers after I steal them."
"You're admitting a crime to a member of Congress," she said dryly.
"I'm admitting a hobby," he said. "Crime is what the rich hire experts to rename."
Victoria's mouth did a quick, private thing that could be a smile's loaded chamber. "You texted me: bring a lie you're ready to kill. Here it is—I can't afford to alienate donors from the children's hospital lobby."
He waited. The spoon on the saucer vibrated like a cricket waiting for its cue.
She continued, voice smooth. "The truth is, I can't afford not to. Kill the lie, harvest small-dollar donors, build a moral cudgel I can swing at appropriations." She slid the drive into her blazer. "I like cudgels."
"Then we're friends," he said, and stood without moving. "You'll get a ledger. Try not to look surprised when it hurts."
"Anything else?" she asked.
He paused. "If a hearing comes, don't ask me to testify. Make the paper talk."
"Paper is braver than people," she said. "Go steal me a book."
He was gone between the café's second and third heartbeat. The spoon settled. Victoria picked up her phone, opened a new contact, typed STORM—PLUMBING, and smiled at her own joke before she locked the drive in her bag and went to go discuss ethics with a whip count.
---
The Vought logistics annex lived like all guilty things—two stops past respectable, behind a lobby that smelled like copier heat and patience. Mother's Milk walked in a step ahead, pressed a smile to the receptionist and a Joint Vendor Audit letter to the counter. Butcher rolled a battered Pelican case like a man bringing a present to a housewarming he planned to ruin. Frenchie wore a hi-vis vest and the confidence of a locksmith who never met a lock, while Hughie clutched a barcode scanner he'd married to a very illegal camera.
Overhead, Cian traced power lines with his palm and fed the building a yawn.
"Level three," MM said. "Records."
"Records are in the cloud," the receptionist said, reciting. "Green-friendly."
"Very," MM agreed. "Green like money. Take us up."
The elevator considered the letterhead, decided it had seen it somewhere, and complied. On three: a maze of compact shelving, rails gleaming, the hum of servers pretending they were just very ambitious filing cabinets.
"Right," Butcher said, coat shrugging off dust. "We're here for Bill of Lading E-Transit Mirrors and Philanthropy Schedules. Fancy words for 'where the bodies move' and 'who pays for the hymn.'"
Frenchie produced a flat black wedge and kissed it to the badge reader. The shelf motor warbled into obedience. "Behold, the Accordion of Secrets."
Hughie slid into the aisle, scanner up. The red line crawled across cartons and folders as if he were measuring guilt in lumens. "R. Cole," he murmured, fingers dancing. "Found him. Route C—St. Brigid Aux / PhysioPlus / Community Pantry West."
"Follow the pantry," MM said. "That's where they hide sins they can eat."
Cian lightened the cameras into naps and peeled three seconds off the clock for the only risky turn: a supervisor with a clipboard, punctual and bored, mouth shaped around Can I help—. He walked past because the lights flickered exactly like old fluorescents at the end of their lease and human brains forgive that kind of fault by habit.
Butcher reached a labeled banker's box, the blandest object on earth, and opened a gun on paper. Philanthropy Schedules: speaking fees, naming-rights grants, Vought "matching" flowing through three shell charities to five hospitals, two church consortia, and a youth sports endowment that smelled like speed. He lifted the top schedule page with two fingers like it might snap at him. "Ledger," he said, reverent as a heretic. "C'mon, darling. Let's make you sing."
Frenchie unfolded a scanner mat the size of a placemat. "You have thirty seconds before the server logs notice the copier is copying without the copier." He winked at Hughie. "Do not sneeze."
Hughie did not sneeze. He set the sheet on the mat. The mat hummed a hymn for thieves. Lines crawled; data drank itself into the encrypted belly of a drive labeled HASHES—DEAD DROP. MM flipped pages in rhythm—feed, flip, feed, flip—until the box had the decency to be empty and the mat sighed full.
"Footsteps," Cian whispered from the building's bones. Two. Keys. Keys are smug. He slid a soft EMP sneeze through the corridor; key fobs forgot who they were for just long enough to cool executive tempers.
"Exit," MM said.
They re-racked the shelf, shut their faces, smiled at the camera that had decided to daydream, and wheeled the Pelican back into sunlight like professional men with boring jobs. The receptionist waved because her day had not become unusual yet.
On the corner, Butcher thumped the case. "We got your book," he said to the city. "Now watch us read it out loud."
Cian stood three rooftops over with the wind in his teeth and felt Homelander's attention skate the island like a fingernail scratching paint. He dimmed and let the god drift toward a school assembly he could bless with a smile.
"Stay myth," Cian said. "We're writing minutes."
---
The boardroom was white, expensive, and bored. Stan Edgar watched the NICU memo tree sprout leaves on a wall of glass: ANOMALOUS AUDIT ACTIVITY—ANNEX, SWEEP TEAM DISPATCHED, INFLUENCER OUTREACH—PRE-DRAFT. Ashley Barrett nodded so hard her headset squeaked.
Homelander lounged at the end of the table until lounging felt like a threat. "So," he said brightly, "babies."
"Public health," Edgar said mildly. "We'll appear surprised. We'll sacrifice a vice president with an unsuccessful smile."
"Or a contractor," Ashley suggested, eager. "'Bad apple.' I already have three headshots that look… apologetic."
"And the storm?" Homelander asked, a hair too casual.
Edgar clicked the remote. On a side screen: not a face, not really—just a smear of a man-shaped rumor on a rooftop, lightning a soft halo around edges that refused to be owned. Better than before. Clear enough to be threatening; fuzzy enough to be unfindable.
"We do love a mystery," Edgar said. "It keeps you interesting."
Homelander's smile showed too many teeth. "I'm already interesting."
"Mmm," Edgar said, and the syllable was a scalpel.
Ashley tried to breathe quieter than ambition.
---
Grace Mallory met Butcher under a highway overpass where the city keeps its angry shade.
"You used your lifelines," she said, not hugging him.
"I never had any," he said, not arguing.
She took the envelope—labels, schedules, the dosing card with cartoons that would make donors hate themselves. She didn't thank him. Grace believed gratitude belonged to after.
"You keep your dog on a leash?" she asked without looking up.
Butcher chewed nothing. "He's not my dog. He's the weather."
"Then stop trying to leash the sky," she said. "Just don't fly kites in a lightning storm."
He grinned like a cut that had learned to like salt. "We're past kites. We're onto church bells."
"Billy," she warned.
"I didn't touch a NICU cord," he said. "I even smiled at a nurse."
"That must have hurt," she said, and left with the ledger like forgiveness disguised as homework.
---
The workshop breathed solvent and relief. Kimiko sat on the cot with her knees up and her eyes on the door like it owed her money. Hughie hovered a respectful distance away with two plastic spoons and one cup of noodles hot enough to be a plot point.
He set the cup on the table near her and tapped the lid twice, unsure if tap meant anything in any language she loved. Kimiko watched the steam curl like a dragon she could tolerate. She peeled the lid with surgical care, broke the chopsticks, and took one bite like a queen tasting a treaty.
"Good?" Hughie asked, then wished he hadn't asked, then liked that he had anyway.
Kimiko's mouth twitched. She scratched a quick shape on the table with her fingernail: — — — — a little zigzag that could be lightning or laughter.
Up in the rafters, Cian lay along a beam and made a tiny fish out of a blue spark. It swam in the air, flitting between his fingers. When he let it go, it swam down, bobbed beside Kimiko's shoulder, and disappeared when she reached for it with a small, delighted snort.
She looked up into the dark where he wasn't, eyes amused, and signed something quick and simple with one hand: storm / friend.
He returned a sign he'd learned for home and got it wrong. She corrected him with the grace of a woman who had no patience for cages and infinite patience for effort.
The TV in the corner ran B-roll of smiling superheroes giving blankets to people who didn't ask for blankets. A crawl read CONGRESSWOMAN TO LAUNCH INQUIRY INTO HOSPITAL PROCUREMENT PRACTICES. No capes in the headline. Paper first.
Butcher came in wind-bitten, slapped the Pelican with the reverence of a priest who found a new testament, and pointed at the screen. "There's our microphone."
Mother's Milk nodded, tired and satisfied. "There's our kitchen."
Frenchie raised a plastic spoon in a toast toward Kimiko's noodles. "We burn it after dessert."
Hughie exhaled something he'd been holding since the annex. He looked like a man who could start believing in afterward.
Cian's phone buzzed on the beam. NEUMAN: Committee staff wants the shipping codes. You stealing tonight or tomorrow?
CIAN: Tonight. Send a courier who smells like lilac. He'll feel at home.
He pocketed the hum and let his bones vibrate with the city's current. Outside, rain decided it liked the river more than the streets. Above, Homelander drew a heart in the sky with a jet because someone asked nicely with a camera.
"Stay myth," Cian told the ceiling, and rolled to his feet.
He had a ledger to rob and a hearing to rig and four idiots to keep almost lucky. Also, a woman who thrived in silence was learning the shape of his jokes, and a congresswoman was sharpening a cudgel into policy.
The storm kept its manners. The paper sharpened its teeth. The rumor laced his shoes.
He ran.
The Vought East River Dispatch Node pretended to be a paper company. Beige walls. A lobby plant that had died bravely. A receptionist badge-clipped to ennui.
Cian didn't use the lobby. He arrived in the building's bones: cable trays, maintenance crawl, the thin spine of conduit that hummed like secrets on a metronome. He pressed his palm to a junction box until the lights decided to yawn in polite rotation—never enough to scream, just enough to make cameras blink longer than necessary.
Records—Freight IMS lived behind a door labeled BREAK ROOM because liars love jokes. A janitor with Crepe-soled shoes and a podcast paused at the threshold, frowned at the flicker, and chalked it up to God and union wages. Cian slipped past as a draft.
Rows of handheld scanners sleeping in chargers. A countertop printer with a personality disorder. A steel cabinet with a keypad, the universal sign for steal me. He breathed a kiss of charge into the keypad. It remembered the code six keys ago and confessed it to the room.
Inside: a bar-cold laptop, a barcode pistol with administrator privileges, and a binder labeled E-TRANSIT MIRRORS like it was a church hymnal. He didn't take the binder. He fed a wedge of plastic the size of a communion wafer into the laptop's USB and let it mirror the mirrors—routing tables, courier IDs, route cadence, the shadow R. COLE schedule that ferried charity boxes and blue glass under the same prayer.
A soft ding down the hall—night courier, late, confident. The air brought lilac with him.
Perfect.
Cian palmed the pistol scanner and walked out as a man who belonged here because the lights agreed. The courier wore white sneakers too new to have a history and a jacket that wanted to be expensive when it grew up. He waved his badge at the gate like a magic trick and failed. The reader coughed.
"Again?" the courier grumbled. He smelled like a laundromat that believed in spring.
Cian held up the pistol, friendly tech-guy smile. "Backend hiccup. You're R. Cole?"
"Yeah," the courier said, already bored.
"Quick resync." Cian tapped two keys like a drummer counting off. The pistol cloned the badge handshake, blinked green, and fed him a soft stream of yesterday and tomorrow: PT—> St. Brigid—> Community Pantry West. He set the pistol on its dock, the dock on its lies, and handed the man back his lilac-scented permission. "You're good."
"Bless," Cole said, and rolled the pallet into a future Neuman could subpoena.
Cian left with the wafer full of numbers under his tongue like a host. On the roof, the wind peeled at his cap; the city below pretended to be hard to read. He texted Neuman's staff contact: LEDGER—ROUTE MAP. S-DROP BOX 9 MIN.
STAFFER: Courier en route.
CIAN: Make him smell like lilac. Found religion.
He jogged the river's edge, palming relay cases, tuning the grid to average. On an empty pier, a bike messenger in a thrift-store blazer scooted into a cone of lamplight, dropped a Kraft mac & cheese box on the bench, and pedaled off. Cian opened it, slipped the wafer in, took the one already inside—Neuman's reply packet—and left the box for a raccoon with taste.
NEUMAN: Got it. Subpoenas 0900. You will not exist in my remarks.
CIAN: Music to my litigation.
He turned to go and felt the air thin.
No sound. No cape. Just a compression on the night like the city remembered to be afraid. Black Noir stood where there hadn't been a person—half a silhouette, all edges, a violin case by his knee like a punchline.
Even wind has tells. Noir didn't.
They looked at each other across a puddle that reflected neither. Cian kept his hands in his pockets. The pier lights behind Noir layered gold along his armor; the man swallowed it and stayed shadow.
"You'll hate me in bright light," Cian said conversationally. "I have pores."
Noir cocked his head, curious crow. The violin case clicked open an inch. The smell of oiled strings and something unkind slipped out.
Cian let time loosen three seconds, not to freeze so much as to breathe between frames. Noir's outline fuzzed in the syrup. Still fast. Still there. Good. He wanted to see the baseline.
"Another night," Cian offered, and stepped past him in the thin seam between seconds and manners. Noir's head turned a degree too late. The violin case never opened wider.
On the far side of the pier, Cian left a tiny static fish to flop for one heartbeat, a joke for a man who doesn't laugh. Noir watched it die. Neither moved to help.
"Stay myth," Cian murmured, and the river ate the words.
---
Morning put on its courtroom tie.
Victoria Neuman's office looked like sunlight had an attorney. Staffers stacked subpoena packets in neat violence: St. Brigid Aux, PhysioPlus, Community Pantry West, East River Dispatch, Patients First Logistics LLC (the shell that had the gall to register as a B-corp). She slid the E-TRANSIT printouts into the top folder, the dosing card beneath, and the telemetry images last, because outrage works best after process.
A senior counsel cleared her throat. "We can't say 'Vought' in the letter."
"We can say 'prime contractor,'" Neuman said. "We can say 'charitable front' and 'misallocated funds.' We can say 'fraud.'" She capped her pen. "We can say it loud."
Aide: "TV?
Neuman: "Paper first."
She signed. The packets went into courier bags that did not smell like lilac.
She texted. Storm—Plumbing: You get me into pantry west?
CIAN: I'll get you out. In with paper. Out with luck.
---
Ashley Barrett tried to wring Annie January into a hashtag.
"So, babe, just a few soft resets after last night's… honesty," Ashley said, smile like Saran Wrap. "We do Pastor Joel's podcast, we do two radio hits with women who love you, and we do a TikTok where you try on three different modest hemlines and—"
"No," Annie said gently, a scalpel with bedside manner. "I did my reset onstage."
Ashley twitched. "Totally. Love that journey for you. Just, let's not make it about trauma. America thinks trauma is a downer."
"It is," Annie said. "That's why it matters."
Homelander materialized in the doorway like he was painted there. "Aren't we chipper."
"Coffee," Annie said, because she'd learned a trick: be polite like you're armed.
He drifted closer, eyes bright like a salesman's gun. "Just remember, Starlight—we sell hope. Not truth."
"They're not mutually exclusive," she said.
"Everything is," he said, and left before he ran out of reasonable.
Ashley whispered, "We do love a tightrope," and vanished in the opposite direction to go write a memo that said authenticity fifteen times.
Annie exhaled. For one microsecond—just one—she felt the air hum, saw a truss shadow ripple like someone passing through. She smiled at nothing without knowing why.
---
The Boys' loft looked like a workshop had slept rough. Butcher tossed the Pelican onto the table. "Ledger sings at nine," he said. "Committee's about to relearn English."
Mother's Milk rubbed a hand over his face. "We should be there when the subpoenas land. PhysioPlus will torch their logs."
Frenchie tied his hair back with something that used to be a zip tie. "Then we ask very polite questions with impolite answers." He glanced at Kimiko; she met his eyes, then Hughie's, then the door—her triangle of trust.
Hughie held up a clean shirt like an apology. "You, uh, want to come or… lay low?"
Kimiko tapped two fingers to her own chest—me—then drew a line across the air—out—and nodded once. Later, her hand added with the smallest flick.
Cian dropped from the rafters without fanfare, a shadow unclipping from a beam. Butcher didn't flinch—he'd developed a superstition that flinching fed the creature.
"You nicked us a book," Butcher said. "Hallelujah."
"Try amen after they answer," Cian said. He placed a folded sheet on the table: Community Pantry West — Loading Plan / Friday. Three pallets, one freezer lane, one mystery tote with a barcode that didn't resolve in any public database. "Your pantry has a pantry."
MM whistled low. "False-bottom charity."
"Cute," Butcher said. "We'll un-cute it."
Cian checked his phone: NEUMAN: Pantry first after service-of-process. Doors at 1100.
CIAN: I'll make their badge readers introspective.
He turned to Hughie. "You're with me on eyes and ears."
Hughie blinked. "Me?"
"You see people," Cian said. "They make worse decisions around you."
"That's not— Is that a compliment?"
"Unfortunately, yes."
---
Community Pantry West held worship at 10:00: folding chairs, a devotion about abundance, a volunteer sign-up sheet stapled with sincerity. At 11:00, when the volunteers left to sort cans, Vought's ghost shift rolled its pallets down the alley to the bay door painted with a mural of a smiling carrot.
A U.S. Marshal's sedan and two OIG blazers waited a block away, asleep until Neuman's signal.
Inside, Cian damped the badge readers to a thoughtful cough and tuned the security DVR to want a cigarette. A warehouse foreman with too-clean boots smacked the reader, swore at it, swiped again. Nothing. He called a number labeled R. COLE. Voicemail. He tried DISPATCH. On hold. He tried prayer. The carrot kept smiling.
Hughie, in a volunteer apron and brave face, pushed a dolly of canned peaches past the bay and counted badges. One legit pantry, two contractor, one private with a sticker strip that didn't match any vendor. The private badge holder—mid-30s, fitter than a foreman, eyes too calm—wore white sneakers and lilac like a tell. Not Cole. But Cole's cousin.
"Got him," Hughie murmured, chin at the sneakers.
"Copy," Cian said, and let the mystery tote ping his magnet like an eager dog.
Neuman's text hit: Serve now. The Marshals unfolded like paperwork turned into men. Blazers flashed subpoena with the joy of professional ruin. The bay door made a noise like repentance as the reader finally beeped green—too late, and in front of witnesses.
"Federal subpoenas," a Marshal said. "Stand aside. No one touches the pallets."
White Sneakers smiled the way men smile when they learned in college to bluff their tells. "We're a pantry."
"You're a crime scene," the Marshal said pleasantly.
MM came in from the street with a dolly and a clipboard and the immovable calm of a man who wrestles refrigerators for fun. "Make it easy, lads."
Frenchie slid to the tote with a lazy drawl and a box cutter he could have used to paint the Sistine Chapel. He slipped the blade; the tote's false lip popped—plastic insert over a hollow. Inside: cooler bags nested like sins. Vials in foam. Labels that read Community Wellness in a font that owed someone money.
The foreman's face discovered three new shades of pale.
"Camera?" MM asked, and Hughie had it—clean, steady, gaining every angle. He lingered on the outsized freezer lane and the mural placard that read FAMILIES FIRST—A Vought Partner Initiative.
"Bless," Butcher said under his breath.
Neuman stepped into frame because she knows when to be a prop. "Good morning," she told the local news that had materialized like pigeons. "We're here on a routine procurement inquiry."
"Routine?" White Sneakers said, lilac curdling.
Neuman smiled with the exact number of teeth the polling crosstabs recommend. "Routine like justice."
Cian kept the grid humming even. He padded a drone overhead into battery anxiety so Homelander's curiosity would pace somewhere else. He glanced at the end of the alley, where a shape stood too still to be any decent thing.
Black Noir watched the entire tableau and moved exactly not at all.
Cian did not wave. He did change the breeze just enough to push the lilac toward him. Noir's mask tilted a degree, like a hunting dog filing a scent. Then he was just gone, as if the alley had been misdrawn and someone fixed it.
The Marshals sealed the tote and two pallets, logged chain of custody with neat block letters, and wheeled it toward a van that did not advertise itself. The pantry volunteers whispered oh my God in lowercase. The carrot mural smiled like it had been paid to.
"Paper first," Neuman said to camera, and left the alley smelling like lilac and fear.
Butcher clapped Hughie's shoulder. "Look at you," he said. "Sinner becomes parishioner becomes usher."
Hughie snorted, shoulders finally dropping a notch. "I'm just a guy in an apron."
"Today," Butcher said. "Tomorrow you're useful."
"Stop saying that," Hughie said, but he smiled when he said it.
Cian stayed behind just long enough to tuck a lightning sigil under the bay door lip—another private joke for buildings that meant well and failed—and then he walked the roofline until the city looked bored again.
His phone buzzed. NEUMAN: Hearing in 72 hours. I'll need a line about 'telemetry belts' that a grandmother can understand.
CIAN: 'They strapped fitness trackers on newborns and mailed the data to a hedge fund.'
NEUMAN: Dark.
CIAN: True.
He pocketed the hum and listened. Far off, a crowd cheered for a man who could fly. Closer in, a baby cried for no reason and every reason, and a nurse picked him up like the world hadn't burned down before and wouldn't again.
Cian smiled into the wind, tired and satisfied. "Alright," he told the storm. "Turn the page."
The storm, polite and complicit, did.