The ripple effect was faster and more violent than I anticipated. Forty-eight hours after my performance, news broke of a "catastrophic gas main explosion" that leveled a secluded, fortified estate in the Swiss Alps. There were no survivors. The world saw a tragedy. I saw Homelander's signature. Vogelbaum's sanctuary had been found and erased.
The message to Butcher had been sent in the only way I could: by making Vogelbaum's name a point of public, violent interest. Butcher, with his web of underworld contacts, would have heard the name and connected it to the explosion instantly. He would know it was a Vought cleanup. He would know it was important.
His response was not a message. It was an invoice.
I was being escorted back to my apartment after another farcical therapy session when the Vought Tower fire alarm blared, a deafening, panicked shriek. Red lights strobed. My escort, Evans, flinched, his hand going to his sidearm.
"This is not a drill," a calm automated voice announced. "Proceed to the nearest emergency exit."
But the voice was wrong. This was a drill. A very specific, very violent drill orchestrated by Billy Butcher.
The power cut out, plunging the corridor into emergency lighting. From the stairwell ahead, we heard screams and the unmistakable sound of a suppressed firearm—phut, phut, phut.
"Get back!" Evans yelled, shoving me toward a side corridor. His mind, already primed by my subtle suggestions over the past days, was a tinderbox of fear and protocol. Protect the asset. Neutralize the threat.
He never saw the second threat coming from behind.
A figure clad in black tactical gear, face obscured, dropped from the ventilation shaft above. Before Evans could turn, the figure jabbed a high-voltage taser into his neck. Evans convulsed and dropped, unconscious.
The figure stood over him, then looked at me. He pulled off his balaclava. It was Butcher. His eyes were hard, glinting in the red light.
"Miss me, you bloody wanker?" he growled.
"What have you done, Butcher?" I hissed, my senses on high alert. The collar felt like a noose. "This is a suicide run."
"Call it a feasibility study," he said, kneeling and quickly patting down Evans. He found the man's keycard and comms earpiece. "Wanted to see if the puppy was still on his leash. And to deliver this." He tossed a small, sealed plastic capsule at my feet. "Intel. On Vogelbaum. What was left of him, anyway. Seems your boyfriend got to him first."
I stared at the capsule. This was the invoice. Butcher had risked a direct assault on the most secure building on the planet to make a point and hand-deliver a message. The sheer, audacious insanity of it was breathtaking.
"We have to go. Now," I said, my mind racing. "They'll lock down the entire tower."
"Already is," Butcher said with a feral grin. "Frenchie's got their security doing the hokey-pokey. But we've got about ninety seconds before they realize it's a digital ghost and switch to manual override."
He looked at the collar around my neck, his grin widening. "Fancy necklace. Doesn't suit you."
A squad of Vought's internal security—not rent-a-cops, but hardened, paramilitary guards—rounded the far corner. Their rifles were up, targeting lasers painting Butcher's chest.
"Freeze! Down on the ground!"
Butcher didn't freeze. He moved.
The fight was a brutal, close-quarters ballet of violence. Butcher was no Supe, but he was a force of nature. He used the environment—ricocheting a shot off a steel doorframe to take a guard in the leg, shoving a fire extinguisher into another's face before triggering it, filling the corridor with blinding, choking foam.
I was a spectator, and it was agony. Every instinct screamed at me to act. Ember's fire begged to be unleashed. Graviton's power itched to crush the guards into the floor. But the collar held me fast, a concrete block chained to my will.
I could only use the crack. As a guard took aim at Butcher's exposed back, I focused. The 0.0003-second window. A needle of thought.
Your target is to your left. Your left.
The guard's aim twitched, his shot going wide, punching a hole in the wall beside Butcher's head. Butcher didn't question his luck; he spun and disarmed the man with a vicious blow to the wrist.
But it wasn't enough. More guards were coming. We were being cornered.
Then, an explosion rocked the floor above us. Dust rained from the ceiling. The guards hesitated, their comms chattering with new reports of a "secondary breach."
Maeve. She was creating a diversion.
"Time's up!" Butcher yelled, grabbing the data capsule and shoving it into my hand. He then tossed a small, disc-shaped object onto Evans's unconscious body. "A present for the wankers who find him. A little something to scramble their signals."
He gave me one last, piercing look. "Stop playing house, mate. The world's burning down outside. We need the bloody fire truck."
He slammed a button on his wrist. A shaped charge on the exterior window detonated, blowing the reinforced glass inward. Before the guards could recover, Butcher was gone, rappelling down the side of the tower into the chaos of the city below.
I stood alone in the wrecked corridor, the data capsule burning in my hand, the unconscious guards at my feet. Alarms wailed. The collar was a brand of my impotence.
Butcher's message was received. The invoice had been paid. He had shown me the limits of my cage and the price of my inaction.
I looked down at the capsule. Inside was not just intel on a dead man. It was the next piece of the puzzle. And as Vought security finally swarmed the corridor, their weapons trained on me, I knew one thing for certain.
The time for playing prisoner was over. It was time to break the leash.