Chapter 11 — Brand Halo
Friday came in with a pressed shirt and a hangover.
At 6:07 a.m., Ganymede Capital pretended to be a gym for money—glass, ferns, and a receptionist who could deadlift a merger with her smile. The Wellness Analytics floor wore frosted doors and a plaque about impact. Inside, a deck waited on a conference table like a confession that knew PowerPoint.
Cian arrived the way rumors clock in: between frames, along the seam where seconds misbutton themselves. He pressed two fingers to the back of a telemetry router, watched a heartbeat of green become a mirror, and let the feed bloom on his phone.
Slides. He skimmed:
HALO-7 Q3: Pediatric Goodwill ROI.
Hero Engagement Uplift Curves (Seven brand silhouettes without faces—Prime, Guardian, Believer—we all know who wears which cape you're not saying out loud).
"β-Complex" Cohort Outcomes vs. Control—a lie wearing decimals.
Brand Halo Allocation: "Community Pantry West," "St. Brigid Aux," "Pastor Joel Activation."
Event ROI: Hospital Photo-Op (Teddy Asset, Tier 1) — uplift graph rising like a sin forgiven.
He photographed two pages, hashed them, tucked them into a dead drop labeled NEUMAN—EXHIBIT M (HALO), and taught the printer to get a case of paper asthma precisely at 8:12.
He left a static fish in the corner of the glass—a smirk only storms and hard drives understand—and folded himself out through a maintenance stair that loved him for no good reason.
"Follow the halo," he told the morning. The morning answered with sirens that weren't for him.
---
The loft smelled like burned coffee and victory deferred.
"Game plan," Mother's Milk said, tapping a whiteboard where he'd drawn three boxes—DATA → MONEY → MOUTHS—and a circle around MOUTHS big enough to include Congress and the press and one raccoon with a PDF habit.
"Paper guillotine drops at nine," Butcher grinned. "In the meantime, I fancy a stroll to Ganymede with a clipboard and an accent."
"Tempting," MM said. "Don't get us on the evening news for the wrong reasons."
Frenchie packed a pouch with an ESD strap, a lock rake, and a candy bar labeled compliance because he liked jokes that tasted like chocolate. Kimiko chalked a new sigil on the concrete—three strokes and a dot, the storm in shorthand. She signed to Cian without looking: ready / later.
Hughie adjusted a tie like he was negotiating with it. "Public," he said softly, rehearsing the treaty.
"Public," Cian echoed, and flicked him a transit plan in a text—take 3rd, not 1st; camera on 1st is nosy at 8:30. He checked his phone. NEUMAN: We tie money to heroes without saying 'heroes.' Paper, not capes.
CIAN: I brought a halo.
"Stay boring," MM told them all.
Butcher smirked. "We're allergic."
---
8:31 a.m., Rayburn breathed like a courthouse and a TV studio had a child.
Staffers staged folders, counsel staged faces, microphones rehearsed honesty. The nurse sat with her hands folded, courage freshly pressed. Salas, the WellSpring engineer whose blazer still looked borrowed, mouthed the word match key like it was a spell she'd decided to reverse.
In a wing corridor, Ashley Barrett tried to bully a chyron over text: PROCUREMENT NOT SUPERHEROES and then, in a burst of optimism, HERO BRINGS TEDDY TO SICK KIDS. Somewhere across town, a hospital PR flack set out a stuffed bear with an NDA.
Cian ghosted the wall panel and taught the building to prefer bored. House cut? Broadcast hums. Private cell repeater? Mild headache. Defibs, fire alarms, babies and God—whitelisted, as always. He tucked a fresh fish into the truss camera. In the doorway shadow, Black Noir arrived like punctuation—silent, inevitable.
"Not on marble," Cian murmured. The helmet didn't nod, but attention tilted: we understand the carpet budget.
Eight floors below, a badge reader coughed itself into faith because Cian patted it. Outside, a cluster of moms with strollers and fury rehearsed being constituents. Inside, Grace Mallory counted witnesses like a general counts bridges.
Cian's phone buzzed. NEUMAN STAFF: Got your Exhibit M. It hums.
CIAN: Play it loud without saying 'cape.'
---
9:00 a.m., gavel.
"I'll skip the preamble," Victoria Neuman said, sleeves rolled once, jaw set to clean edges. "Today is money."
Patients First tried a smile. WellSpring tried sincerity. St. Brigid tried "isolated incident" one more time like a man testing a dead car battery.
Neuman lifted Exhibit M. "This is Ganymede's Brand Halo deck. No faces. Just silhouettes labeled Prime, Guardian, Believer. We will not say those names. We don't have to." The screen behind her lit with a graph: Hospital Photo-Op (Teddy Asset, Tier 1) vs Donation Lift vs Retail SKU Uptick. The line rose like a sermon you shouldn't enjoy.
"Does 'Wellness Insights—Neonatal' feed these ROI curves?" she asked Kwan from WellSpring.
Kwan tried to arrange remorse into her mouth. "Our insights inform partners—"
"Yes or no."
Kwan's eyes flicked to counsel, to the clock, to the idea of afterward. "Yes."
"And the telemetry came from belts you strapped to newborns without hospital inventory or parental consent," Neuman said, voice a saw with velvet teeth. "We call that surveillance, not health."
In the rafters, Cian stroked the soundboard. Someone in a control truck tapped MUTE because habit is strong; the STREAMING light glowed anyway, stubborn as sunrise. Paper sharpened; he kept the mics honest.
Neuman didn't stop. "Patients First routed β-Complex through Cardinal Blend because 'toddlers test well in Q3.' Cardinal recalled 'voluntarily' when its own instruments learned to tell the truth. That recall is now federal. We will not discuss super—" She smoothed the word like a wrinkle. "We will not discuss brands. We will discuss invoices, contracts, and fraud."
A murmur washed the room. It wasn't applause. It was hunger.
Ashley texted TINY TEDDY LIVE and hit send with the kind of hope that buys yoga pants. In a hospital atrium across town, Homelander lifted a stuffed bear with both hands and smiled into cameras like grace learned marketing. The hospital's feed hiccuped, buffered, resumed with a lower-third: MATERNAL OUTCOMES STUDY ANNOUNCED. The momentum didn't stick. The halo looked store-bought.
Cian let that video slip one frame out of sync with itself on three major affiliate streams—a half-second uncanny that makes viewers distrust their own eyes. He didn't kill it. He salted it. Paper had the stage.
"Ms. Salas," Neuman said, turning to the junior engineer. "In plain English, please."
Salas gripped the mic like a rung. "We took baby monitors that aren't monitors and told the money how to feel about a hero showing up with a toy."
Neuman didn't smile. "Thank you."
She flipped to a new page. "Exhibit N—Prime Contractor Community Engagement. Payments to 'Youth Sports Endowment,' 'Pastor Joel Activation,' and 'Community Pantry West logistics,' all booked as Public Health. Mr. Voss, did you approve those disbursements?"
A muscle in Voss's jaw finally admitted a pulse. "Per guidance from Prime." He didn't say Vought. He didn't have to.
Neuman capped her pen. "Per guidance from Prime," she repeated, for the stenographer, for the gods. "We'll see the emails by close of business."
Cian tasted nickels—that metallic tug again—south corridor. A badge reader decided to love everyone and the elevator skipped a floor it was told not to. He slipped down the wall like a rumor with errands.
Two contractors in new blues; White Sneakers from the pantry alley wore a staff lanyard that didn't earn its keep and a fragrance aisle worth of lilac. He carried a messenger bag that was too heavy for paper and too light for innocence.
"No marble," Cian warned the air.
White Sneakers reached into the bag, fingers grazing a pen that wasn't a pen. A needle kissed the light.
Time loosened just enough to ask questions. Cian ghosted the distance, pinched the pen between forefinger and thumb, and redirected a life. He did it so gently that the pen believed it had debuted in a trash can all its life. The needle dropped point-first into a mop bucket. It sighed into harmlessness.
White Sneakers didn't process loss. He went to Plan B: a camera on his chest, blinking red behind a button. Cian breathed static into it—sleep, friend—and the light forgot what light is.
From the doorway shadow, Noir watched the geometry resolve itself. He did not intervene. He adjusted a cuff, which is how he applauds.
Capitol Police drifted with curious boredom. Cian laid a palm on the recycle bin; it burped up an EMP puck no one had put there, which is how magic works when you practice. He handed it to a cop like a man returning a wallet. "This fell," he said.
"Thanks," the officer said, hero of a tiny story he'll tell badly.
Cian turned before lilac could find a shape for regret and slid back into the wall, the hum, the seam.
Upstairs, Neuman drew the blade higher. "We have Brand Halo memos, telemetry invoices, and contractor directives. We will refer criminal and civil matters. We will also propose legislation that calls 'data wellness' by its true name: medical surveillance. If you monetize breath, you can come explain why to a jury."
Kwan stared at a middle distance where careers go to jog. Voss loosened his tie like it might grant absolution. St. Brigid's counsel found a hole in his notes and tried to fall in.
The house audio dipped. The broadcast did not. Somewhere, a control tech finally gave up and leaned back to watch the craft behave better than the brand.
Grace slid a peppermint across the table to the nurse. "For the shake," she said. The nurse's hands steadied, witness box turning back into a chair.
Cian reclaimed the rafters. Noir looked up. Cian drew a tiny fish with a fingertip's buzz in the truss metal and flicked it away. Noir didn't follow it with his eyes. That was respect, in his language.
Neuman tapped her gavel once. "Recess. Twenty minutes. Do not destroy documents. The shredders in this building are very loud."
She stood. Staff swarmed. Paper breathed. Outside, the halo campaign stumbled over its own brightness and landed wrong on a sidewalk full of mothers who had Googled "telemetry belt consent."
Cian checked the south corridor cameras—sleeping, for now—and the hospital stream—half a beat untrustworthy. He felt the city's altitude twitch lazily toward the Hill and tugged a cloud over the river like a curtain that knows its cue.
"Stay myth," he told the sky. The sky pretended to.
Then the vent whispered a new name: Soldier Boy—not here, not now, but awake in the algorithms like a song cleared for radio.
Cian's smile thinned. He looked down at paper, at people, at a myth behaving itself on marble—and listened to the past clear its throat.
Recess turned the hallway into a bloodstream.
Reporters eddied. Counsel pretended to be weather. The moms with strollers figured out where the cameras were and stood there like a church that tithes in questions.
Cian moved through the seam where the building keeps its second thoughts. The vent kept whispering the same name like a nursery rhyme for the damned: Soldier Boy.
He texted Grace one word: awake?
Her reply came back a knife: In memos. Not in meat. Don't say Nicaragua in a hallway.
He didn't. He said it to the cinderblock under his breath anyway, and the paint flinched.
---
Vought did damage control like a wedding planner.
Ashley Barrett parked herself in a side office, hurricane headset on. "Tighten the halo. We're pivoting to legacy. I want heroism through the decades. No—don't say his name. Say 'our first icon.' Give me the sepia. Give me the brass band."
A junior flack whispered, "But… he's… you know…"
Ashley didn't blink. "He's assets under management until told otherwise."
A second monitor ran Ganymede's deck again—HALO-7 curves, Teddy Asset glide—now with a new tab opening like a bad idea remembered: Legacy Activation—Veteran Goodwill. The silhouette wasn't labeled. It didn't need to be.
Stan Edgar ghosted past without touching air. "We will sell a museum," he said. "We will sell a scholarship. We will not sell a man."
"God, I love boundaries," Ashley breathed.
"Good," Edgar said. "Keep one."
He didn't look at Black Noir in the corner because it never helped. Noir's stillness changed by a degree you could measure in old scars.
---
Upstairs, Neuman brought the room back to heel with a single tap of gavel.
"We're back," she said. "An observation for the record: when you launder brand through charity, it still stains." She raised Exhibit M again, let the Brand Halo slide hang for exactly three beats, then set it down like a prayer answered in paperwork. "Now—money trails to influencer clergy. Mr. Voss— 'Pastor Joel Activation.' How much?"
The number crawled into the mic like a confession that had been drinking. The room found new oxygen.
"Thank you," Neuman said, voice dry enough to keep. "We'll sort the tax treatment later."
She pivoted to Salas. "When did you realize anonymization was a lie?"
The junior engineer stared at the water pitcher and told the truth to it. "When I saw the match key. We said it was for QA. It was for retargeting. I wrote it. I don't… I won't anymore."
"On behalf of anyone who can't yet hold a pen," Neuman said, "good."
Cian stroked the board. The STREAMING light purred obedient. The house cut made one last lazy grab for dignity; the broadcast ignored it like a veteran ignores a new boss.
He watched Noir watch Neuman. The myth's attention held steady on the line she'd drawn around paper and marble. Respect, in a language with knives.
Then the building breathed nickels again.
Lilac had found religion. White Sneakers reappeared at the edge of the south corridor with a different lanyard and the same problem: a bag that was too heavy for innocence. He didn't get two steps before a Capitol Police officer who'd once lost a dog and knew what desperation looks like said, "Sir?" in a tone that means drop it or I learn your story the hard way.
The man dropped it. The bag thudded with the dull honesty of not paper. The officer lifted the flap, found a teddy bear with a camera for a liver and a transmitter stitched into its heart. He held it up, brow knitting.
Cian did the building a favor and cut the feed at the repeater with a little pat. The bear's eye went from record to toy. Somewhere, Ashley screamed into a headset at a universe that had the gall to be live.
Neuman didn't miss a beat. "Let's talk bears," she said into the mic without looking. "Because charities don't need cameras. They need honesty. Exhibit N, continued."
The room learned to laugh with its teeth.
---
Ganymede Capital, 10:42 a.m.: the Legacy Activation deck printed three pages before the color laser decided it had asthma. A junior analyst banged the side of it like the machine owed him back pay. When he leaned down to peer at the tray, a black-and-white fish was drawn in the dust on the shelf above—smirking into corporate.
He did not mention the fish to anyone. He wanted to keep his job.
Cian slid the three pages into an inner pocket anyway as he walked through the stairwell shadows: Veteran Goodwill, Museum of American Heroism mockups, "First Icon Weekend" run-of-show. In one corner, small and redacted badly: Contact—Y-71.
He texted Grace a picture of the corner.
GRACE: Yankee-71. He's a room, not a man.
CIAN: Rooms open. Men walk out.
GRACE: Not today.
He didn't say we don't get to choose "today." He just asked the substation under his hand to hum a little lower and kept moving.
---
Back at the hearing, Neuman knocked the last nails.
"Summary," she said, reading the eulogy for a business model. "Telemetry devices applied to newborns without inventory or consent. Data sold as Wellness to Ganymede. Routing of β-Complex through Cardinal Blend, recalled under USDA authority. Brand Halo spend booked as public health. We will refer crimes. We will hold follow-ups. We will legislate so that when you say wellness, you mean care."
She didn't look triumphant. She looked employed.
Gavel. "Adjourned until Monday at nine. Do not destroy documents. The shredders in this building are very loud."
This time, even the stenographer smiled.
---
The hallway became river again. The nurse let herself breathe like an apprentice learning lungs. Salas cried once, a small, private thing; Grace handed her a peppermint and a burner.
Black Noir stood at the end of the corridor, perfectly in the way and not at all in the way. Kimiko slid into his eyeline like a dare with dimples. He didn't draw. She didn't bow. That counted for more than either of them would admit.
Cian leaned against the wall near the EXIT sign and waited. Noir's helmet turned toward him like a compass grown tired.
"That name," Cian said, just loud enough for the shadow, "sticks in the pipes."
Noir didn't move. If stillness could flinch, this did.
Cian put both hands in his pockets. "I'm not your enemy today."
Noir looked past him, through him, toward a year no one says out loud. Then he disappeared, not by walking—by editing the scene.
"Stay myth," Cian told the empty doorway. "Please."
---
The loft was soft with noon.
Butcher poured two fingers of bad whisky and set the glass where raccoon Sam would never see it. "Paper cut 'em," he said, satisfied like a man who likes sawdust.
"Paper's got teeth now," Mother's Milk said, already marking up a FOIA like it owed him rent.
Frenchie lit incense against the demon of overconfidence, which smells suspiciously like rosemary. Kimiko took his lighter, flipped it shut, and pocketed it with a look that said don't push your luck.
Hughie stood at the window, phone facedown, content in the privacy of being seen. He texted Robin: Lunch? After?
ROBIN: After. Bring napkins.
He smiled like a man learning domestic courage.
Cian set the Legacy Activation pages on the table. Butcher leaned over them like a wolf reading a menu. "First Icon Weekend," he read. "Museum mockups. Yankee… seventy-one."
"Vault or room," MM said quietly. "Not a man."
Grace called. They put her on speaker. "You do not go looking for Y-71," she said, no preamble. "You do not say his Christian name in a room with cameras. You let me and mine sniff the perimeter."
Butcher looked at Cian. "And if the door opens?"
"Then we make the weather disagree," Cian said.
Grace paused. "Billy, keep your idiot alive."
"I prefer bastard," Butcher said cheerfully.
"Both can be true," she said, and hung up.
Kimiko tapped her boot toe twice: ready / later. Cian answered with the sign he kept trying to get right for home. She corrected him, smile tucked away for the apocalypse.
On the TV, a hospital feed tried to dress brand as mercy. Homelander hugged his teddy bear for eight separate cameras. The stream slipped a half-beat and wouldn't line back up. Viewers at home felt seasick without knowing why. Somewhere in a comments section, a woman typed: Why does this feel weird?
Good question.
Cian stepped away from the table and put his palm to the wall, listening to the city's nerves. The storm in his bones hummed ready, not hungry. Outside, clouds stacked like a jury that had read the brief.
The vent whispered the name one more time—Soldier Boy—and then, as if embarrassed, tried to sound like air again.
"Alright," Cian told the universe. "You can clear your throat. But we pick the song."
The storm, polite as ever, kept its manners.
For now.