Were Butcher's promises reliable? Marvin T. Milk sat across the table, studying the man's eyes for thirty seconds before deciding.
Not usually. But he was serious right now.
"I've believed you before," Marvin said. "More than once. The reason I left last time was because I wanted to do something with my own hands. Something concrete. Something I could see results from the same day I did it."
"Like working with juvenile offenders."
"Like helping kids who went wrong find a different direction." He held Butcher's gaze. "Don't do what you did before. I mean it."
"I hear you."
"I don't want you to hear me. I want you to mean it."
A pause.
"This time is different," Butcher said. "You have my word."
Quiet settled over the institutional meeting room, the place where the juvenile detention center kept its uncomfortable conversations. Marvin turned it over in his head one more time.
"I haven't seen or heard from Frenchie in years," Butcher added. "Don't know where he ended up. It's just me and a couple of new guys. You're the only one I actually trust."
When has Butcher ever actually trusted anyone? Marvin thought.
"Right." He pushed his chair back and stood up. "Since it's Vought you're going after, I'll go with you."
Butcher let out a slow breath, the tension dropping from his shoulders.
Fifteen minutes later, Frenchie's factory.
Marvin walked through the door, stopped short, and moved before he even processed what he was doing.
Frenchie had three seconds to spot him and pull a knife. It wasn't enough time to use it. Marvin's hand locked into his collar, hoisting him up as his other fist drew back.
"Are you kidding me!" Marvin's free hand caught Frenchie's knife arm at the wrist, wrenching it to a halt. "You knew! You knew he was going to be here!"
Frenchie hung half off the floor, keeping a tight grip on the handle. "I'm more American than you are, you racist—"
"Put the knife down—"
"Let go of my—"
Butcher shoved his way between them. He grabbed a fistful of each man's shirt and forced them apart, digging his boots into the concrete. The knife disappeared. Marvin lowered his fist. Nobody walked out.
"Are you both finished?"
Neither man answered, but they stopped pushing.
Jude set a test tube down on the workbench. "You said you were bringing an old friend," he said to Butcher. "This doesn't look like a reunion."
"It's a long story. Old grievances." Butcher scrubbed a hand over his face. "Jude, this is Marvin. I'll explain the history later. Marvin, this is Jude. He's the one who found Lamplighter."
The name hit Marvin just as hard as it had hit Frenchie. His fingers opened, dropping Frenchie's shirt completely. He turned toward Jude.
"Before anything else," Jude said, extending a hand. "I'm Jude. One of your new teammates."
Marvin looked at the hand, then at Jude's face. His jaw tight, he took the hand and shook it.
"Mother's Milk," Butcher added. "You can call him M.M."
Jude and Yomogi stared at Marvin in silence.
"...Mother's Milk," Jude repeated.
"My mother named me." Marvin met his gaze without blinking. "You got a problem with it?"
"I don't have a problem with it."
"Good."
"I have a problem with it," Yomogi said. Well meowed to the other that don't understand her.
"The cat has thoughts," Jude told M.M., "that I'm choosing not to translate."
Marvin let out a long breath, pulled up a stool, and sat heavily. "Fine. Tell me what you found."
Jude gave them the condensed version. Yesterday in Pennsylvania. A Vought subsidiary operating as a mental health facility. Inside, a group of people with Compound V-derived abilities were imprisoned in conditions that were clearly not medical care.
He listed them. The teleporter practicing repetitive jumps in a tiny cell. The man generating shockwaves he couldn't control. The woman dissolving stainless steel with stomach acid—multiple subjects exhibiting that exact power in the same room, confirming it was batch testing. The man who had charged the door with exposed bone on his hands, healing as he fell. The tiny man hiding in the gap between a mattress and a wall.
"And one other case that I am not describing in any detail until after we've all eaten."
M.M. frowned. "Why not?"
"Because some information needs a waiting period. Trust me on this one."
"Who runs it?"
"Stormfront has operational oversight and a direct line to Vought. Lamplighter manages the day-to-day. Keeps the experimental logs, runs the inspection rounds. He's been there long enough that his hair is going white. He isn't there voluntarily, at least not in any meaningful sense."
"You actually saw him." M.M. leaned forward. "You were in that building, and you actually saw him."
"Standing three meters from me. He didn't notice."
"Where in Pennsylvania? What's the facility called?"
"I have the address, the documentation, the surveillance layout, and photographs of the experimental records." Jude set his phone on the workbench, the files open on the screen. "That's my half. Now, why does his name do what it just did to both of you?"
The room went completely silent.
Frenchie and M.M. exchanged a look, then turned to Butcher. A silent agreement passed between the three of them.
Butcher spoke up. "Years ago, we had a team."
He kept his voice flat.
"Colonel Grace Mallory put it together. She spent a long time watching Vought, realizing normal channels wouldn't be enough. She assembled a small group for covert investigation, intelligence gathering, and long-game operations. She trained most of us herself. Shooting, infiltration, how to collect evidence that holds up in court. How to handle yourself when your target can throw a car."
Butcher nodded. "We were doing well. We accumulated enough dirt on Lamplighter to use as leverage. Enough that if any of it went public, his career was over, and his freedom probably ended with it. So we squeezed him. We pressured him into feeding us intelligence on Vought's internal operations. It worked. He talked."
"A supe's weakness is always the same," Butcher continued. "It's not their bodies. It's their public image. Nobody wants to go from the most beloved hero in the country to something you'd scrape off your shoe. He cooperated because the alternative was worse."
"And then we pushed too hard." He stared down at his boots.
"Mallory warned us explicitly. You push someone past their limit, they stop calculating consequences and just react. We thought we could control him. We didn't listen."
Frenchie leaned forward on his stool. "We didn't listen." He kept his eyes fixed on the floor.
"To stop him from doing something that couldn't be undone," Butcher said, "Mallory assigned someone to tail him. Keep eyes on him. Make sure that if he went rogue, we'd know before it happened." Butcher swallowed hard. "She sent Frenchie."
No one moved.
"And that bastard went dark for half an hour." M.M. finished the sentence. His voice was low. The sudden anger he had carried through the door had vanished, replaced by a cold, hardened ache.
"Half an hour," M.M. repeated, staring at Frenchie's bowed head.
"In that half hour," M.M. said, "Colonel Mallory's grandchildren were burned to death in their beds."