The days following the Translucent incident were a period of quiet anticipation. My primary focus remained on the chaotic little band of Supe-hunters led by Billy Butcher. Having a member of The Seven turn into a human confetti bomb in their basement was a ticking time bomb. It would force them to get reckless. They needed tangible dirt on Vought, and I knew exactly which desperate soul they would turn to first.
My web of microscopic eyes and ears, spread across their digital and physical lives, was now trained on a singular purpose: waiting for the inevitable pivot to Popclaw. She was their canonical link to the Compound V supply chain, and I just had to wait for the show to catch up.
I saw Butcher and Hughie, in their laughably unconvincing technician jumpsuits, bluff their way into Popclaw's apartment. I saw the teddy bear camera go live, its glassy eye becoming my own personal window into her pathetic life. I watched as A-Train's public betrayal on national television, his casual dismissal of their relationship in a post-race interview, shattered her world. It was the final push she needed to self-destruct.
The dominoes were falling, right on schedule.
The confrontation, when it came, was a grimly satisfying piece of theater. Butcher, a predator in his natural habitat, masterfully cornered the terrified Popclaw. My audio feeds picked up every sob, every lie, every desperate plea. I listened as he broke her down, peeling away her defenses with a practiced efficiency until he got what he came for.
"...I heard him on the phone once," she shrieked, her voice cracking under the pressure. "He was angry... yelling at someone about a shipment being late. He mentioned a place... a front. A church. Some 'Shining Light' charity group. That's all I know, I swear!"
Butcher's crew now had their lead. While Butcher was busy planning his holy crusade, I was getting to work.
[So, they're going to play cops and robbers at a church while you go straight for the prize?] the System's voice quipped in my head. [It's like having the cheat codes to a video game. I approve.]
"It's about efficiency," I thought, pulling up a satellite map of the city. The location was already marked in my memory: Peking Szechuan Noodle, a nondescript restaurant in a part of town that tourists never visited.
This mission was different from my previous hunts. This was an acquisition. A high-value asset was waiting in that basement, and I intended to claim her before Butcher's sledgehammer crew could turn her into just another blunt instrument for their crusade. I needed to be fast.
I donned my ghost attire. The functional clothing, the gloves, and the simple black mask that hid my face.
As Butcher's team set up their pointless stakeout across from the Shining Light Center, their van a beacon of amateur surveillance, I drove my untraceable sedan and parked it in a shadowed alley several blocks away from the noodle shop. The sun was beginning to set, painting the undersides of the clouds in shades of orange and purple.
Infiltration was trivial. I shrank down to the size of a rat in the quiet solitude of the car. The world outside the window expanded into a vast cityscape. I slipped out through a door seal, an almost invisible speck on the grimy pavement. The journey to the restaurant was a perilous one. I dodged the lumbering feet of pedestrians, which descended like meteors from the sky. I navigated the treacherous canyons of cracks in the pavement and finally reached the back of the building.
I found a grimy ventilation grate and slipped through its bars. The kitchen was a chaotic symphony of smells and sounds. Garlic, ginger, boiling oil, shouting cooks, clattering woks. I navigated the hazardous landscape, a tiny shadow moving beneath the massive stainless-steel tables. I scurried past bubbling fryers and hissing grills, finally finding my way to the storage closet at the back, a small island of relative quiet in the maelstrom.
I returned to my full size in the cramped space, the sounds of the restaurant muffled behind the door. A quick scan confirmed my memories were accurate. A reinforced trapdoor, cleverly hidden beneath a stack of soy sauce crates, led down to the sub-basement. The electronic lock was a commercial-grade model, but to my Hacking Mastery, it was a child's puzzle. I bypassed it with a few taps on a burner phone, and the heavy door unlocked with a soft hiss.
I descended the concrete staircase into the cold darkness. The lab was exactly as I expected: a clandestine operation with beakers, centrifuges, and several vials of the glowing blue Compound V laid out on a steel table. Three Triad members were on guard duty. One was monitoring a small bank of security cameras, his eyes glazed with boredom. The other two were playing cards at a small table, their conversation a low murmur in Mandarin. They were alert, but they were only human, and they were expecting a threat to come from the outside world, not from the shadows already in the room with them.
[Three bad guys in a basement. Classic,] the System commented. [Gonna do a cool one-liner? Something like, 'Looks like your luck has run out'?]
"No," I thought, my focus absolute as I melted into the deep shadows at the bottom of the stairs. "I'm going to be silent."
The man at the card table, the one facing away from me, was my first target. I covered the distance in two utterly silent steps. Before he could even register a change in the air, my arm was around his throat, one hand clamped over his mouth to stifle any sound, the other applying a brutal pressure to his neck. There was a sharp crack that was audible only to me, and his body went limp. I lowered him to the ground as gently as a sleeping child.
His partner looked up from his cards, a questioning look on his face. "Hey, you good?" he asked, his words lazy with boredom.
He never got an answer. I was already on him. I slammed his face into the steel table with controlled force. The impact was a sickening crunch of bone and cartilage. He collapsed sideways before he could make another sound.