Butcher never liked taking orders.
Part of it was his father, a man who spoke in consequences instead of explanations. The rest came from years operating in spaces where rules were corrupt, absent, or enforced by things that could throw a truck. You either made your own rules or died by someone else's. Butcher learned early. He got good at it. He'd look sideways at anyone who suggested otherwise.
Except this time.
Jude is a bastard.
The thought settled into the quiet of the workshop. Butcher used the word like a surveyor's level—precise, factual. The world was full of bastards. Vought. The politicians. Frenchie and M.M. were bastards, which was why he trusted them. He knew what he was getting.
Operating against Vought meant understanding a simple mechanical principle: Butcher could do what they couldn't, so he made the calls. He had the guts and the nothing-left-to-lose edge.
Then Jude showed up.
Butcher had expected another asset. Another bastard to slot in beneath him.
Instead, he got a man who walked into a Vought-run asylum and walked out with intel. A man who dropped seventeen armed guards in the dark and called it logistics. A man who stood in a Chinatown shootout looking mildly inconvenienced, all without abandoning his conscience.
That took a while to land.
Butcher had made peace with the cost of fighting Vought. He surrendered his bottom lines because the alternative was losing. The CIA told him the same thing. Everyone did.
He does it without the price. Butcher didn't say it out loud. The thought irritated him anyway. He makes the right call and nobody loses anything. Which means I was either wrong about the price, or he's something I haven't figured out yet.
Either answer annoyed him.
Jude didn't say it, but his actions made it clear: he wouldn't force them to choose between their conscience and practical reality. He made the call. They followed.
It meant Butcher and the others could keep their hands clean without having to defend the choice.
No choice, Butcher thought. The absurdity of it wasn't lost on him. It was a relief.
The workshop door opened. M.M. walked in carrying a stack of printed brochures. He handed them out.
"Samaritan's Embrace Foundation has an event scheduled for tomorrow morning," M.M. said. "Public gathering. We can leave early and be there when it opens."
He walked across the room, tossed a set of car keys to Jude, and stopped. "You were driving a Chevrolet. What's the Toyota outside?"
"The Chevrolet was in a gunfight on a public street in broad daylight." Jude set the brochure down. "Eventually, someone reviewing phone footage finds the plate. Toyota SUVs are invisible here. Our model accounts for one in twelve vehicles on these blocks. It made sense to switch."
"When you said you were dealing with the car, I assumed you meant washing it."
"Washing is for evidence still attached to the vehicle. This required removing the vehicle entirely."
"And you just bought a Toyota."
"I bought a nearly new used Toyota. Vought gave us a hundred thousand dollars to stop investigating them. I put it to use." Jude looked at the keys. "The original Chevrolet is retired. Don't worry about it surfacing."
Butcher spoke from across the room. "Make sure you aren't just reselling it. Last thing we need is a trace."
"I'm not reselling it. I've been doing this longer than ten minutes."
Butcher let it go.
Jude offered no further explanation. The Chevrolet wasn't sold, scrapped, or hidden. Satsuki had simply shifted forms. The moment she changed makes and models, the Chevrolet ceased to exist.
The room settled into a quiet lull. Butcher dropped his brochure and picked up his phone, mapping out his evidence contacts. M.M. stood on the far side of the shop and called his wife. His voice stayed low, shifting from an opening explanation to a steady stream of apologies. He hadn't come home last night, and he was managing the fallout.
In the far corner, the girl sat with her knees drawn against her chest.
Cleaned up and dressed in fresh clothes, the details masked by the basement dirt were clear. She was around twenty. Her face was sharp, her eyes tracking every movement in the room.
That morning, she had made a break for the door. She moved at a dead sprint. Jude caught her in the doorway.
He held her by the wrist.
"You are in New York City," he said. His tone stayed flat. "Japan is eleven thousand kilometers away. A commercial flight takes ten to fifteen hours. You have no legal documentation. You cannot purchase a ticket. That is before factoring in your arrival through a Vought research program. Your name is in their system."
She yanked her arm.
Jude held firm.
"Your priority is not finding Japan. Your priority is deciding if you want to go home directly, which requires money and forged documents. Or if you want to do something here first. Something involving the people who kept you in that room. Operating alone with no communication and no support is a limitation."
She yanked harder.
Jude remembered the dented concrete in the basement. He didn't adjust his grip.
"You need help. We can provide it." He waited for her to stop pulling. "Staying here while we sort this out is the correct decision. Do you understand?"
She stared at him.
"Do you understand?"
Her wrist went still. She gave a single, rigid nod.
Jude let go.
She retreated to the corner and slid down the wall. Her eyes stayed locked on the exits.
Across the room, Frenchie watched her. He stood up and raised his hands, tracing loose shapes in the air as he tried to construct a phrase in sign language.
Jude walked past him.
He carried a book and his phone. He crouched in front of the girl and held out the book, tilting the cover toward her.
It was a hiragana and katakana chart. Standard elementary school issue. Rounded strokes, careful spacing, and small animal illustrations anchoring the margins.
"These are the Japanese syllabaries," Jude said. "Hiragana and katakana. Have you studied them?"
He watched her face.
"Nod if you have."
She reached out and took the book.
She gripped the edges with both hands. She stared at the grid of characters and the cartoon animals beside them. The illustrations hadn't changed in decades.
Tears spilled over her lower lashes and dropped onto the page.