The negotiations went faster than anyone expected.
Butcher came through the door, hung his coat, and sat at the table in forty seconds flat. As he pulled his chair out, Jude walked out of the kitchen carrying a Dutch oven of red wine braised beef. He set it in the center of the table next to the tempura, fried rice, and winter melon soup.
"How did it go?" Jude asked.
Butcher's face remained entirely still. Jude had learned to read that as a positive. When things went wrong, Butcher carried it in his shoulders.
"Well enough," Butcher said. "High salary for everyone, full investigation expenses, a private floor, security detail, compensation clauses, full legal protection." He picked up the serving spoon. "She agreed to everything on the list."
"She," Jude said. "CIA or FBI?"
"CIA." Butcher looked across the table. "Deputy Director Susan Rainer. We have prior connections."
"I figured." Jude ladled winter melon soup into a bowl and slid it to Kimiko. She sat beside him, her phone face-up on the table. "Running an operation of this scale for years, it makes sense you'd have a few friends through private channels."
Frenchie narrowed his eyes slightly. "You always use a board game as the metaphor. Every single time."
"I'm being considerate," Jude said. He glanced at Kimiko. "We have company."
Kimiko tracked the exchange. Her face remained blank, absorbing the parts of the conversation she understood and ignoring the rest.
"Anyway." Butcher dropped the spoon back into the pot. "The list was the easy part. The real condition was mine. I want Homelander charged to the fullest extent permitted by law. Formal indictment. On the record."
The table went quiet.
"Very reasonable," Jude said.
"Also very difficult," Butcher said. "I told her that, too. She told me she was scared. Not diplomatic-scared. Actually scared. Homelander has the capability to walk into New York City and kill tens of thousands of people. The CIA has zero operational options for stopping him."
That's not wrong, Jude thought. That's just accurate threat assessment.
He set the bowl of soup in front of Kimiko. Her bowl of white rice sat next to it, the exact order she requested yesterday. Jude poured a serving of soup for himself. The braised beef sat untouched in the center of the table.
"Normally, a negotiation ends there," Jude said. "But you found a way past it. Otherwise you'd be angrier."
A muscle ticked along Butcher's jaw. "I told her we had a partner who could keep Homelander in check."
"And she said?"
"She said with someone like that, the CIA could realistically move against every Vought hero in the country. All of them. Every single one sent to prison in an organized operation that doesn't end with their own people being vaporized. But she wants to verify. She's not committing to anything until she's spoken with Superman directly. Which means she needs a go-between. Which means she needs me. Which means I need you."
The table fell silent.
"You've spent twenty years fighting supes," Jude said, keeping his voice neutral, "and now you need one to make it count."
Butcher stared at him.
"Food's getting cold," Jude said. He picked up his chopsticks and took a bite.
The rest of the table stayed frozen.
"Why are you all looking at me?" Jude asked, keeping his eyes on his bowl. "Did you think I wasn't going to help?"
Shoulders dropped around the table. People reached for their forks and chopsticks. The beef was worth the wait.
"The only advice I'll offer," Jude said between bites, "is to have principles. Asking for help isn't shameful. This is uncomfortable for you because of your own inflexibility. I say that without judgment. Just have principles. The rest follows."
Butcher kept eating. He chewed slowly, his eyes locked on his plate.
M.M. set down his spoon. "The CIA contact is progress. But even with that, the evidence base is still thin. Tomorrow's Samaritan's Embrace event should give us more. As long as we do it right, Madelyn and Homelander end up in court."
"That's broadly the trajectory," Jude said.
"There's something else." Frenchie hadn't touched his stew. He stared at the phone Kimiko had set face-down on the table. "While we were talking, before dinner. She told me something."
The clatter of silverware stopped.
"Her parents were Japanese," Frenchie said. "They raised her in Japanese. That's the language she knows. But she wasn't born in Japan. She grew up in a coastal village. Seaside, palm trees. The Philippines."
Jude looked up from his bowl. "Filipino of Japanese descent. If the family didn't have Japanese documentation, she would register as Filipino."
"They didn't stay long. The village was massacred. Neither of her parents survived."
M.M. lowered his fork.
"She and her brother were abducted afterward by the Shining Light Liberation Army," Frenchie said. His voice stayed level. "A Filipino militant organization. They were taken in and forced to stay. She and her brother grew up inside the group. Eventually, she was taken away. Handed to Vought as a test subject. Her brother is still in the organization. Current status unknown."
"Why would Vought be connected to a foreign terrorist organization?" M.M. asked slowly. "Why would they be providing Compound V to the Shining Light?"
"And those guards in the Chinatown basement." Sherry crossed her arms. "Were they not just random Vought muscle? Were they actually Shining Light?"
"It's endless." Jude leaned back and looked at the ceiling. "Every layer of this thing has another layer under it." He looked back down at the table. "If Vought is running Compound V through the Shining Light as a distribution network or a research pipeline, that's not just domestic. That's international. That's a different order of problem."
"I want to help her find her brother," Frenchie said. "Then help them both go home."
Sherry scoffed quietly but said nothing.
"You know," Jude said. He rubbed the back of his neck. "I had the feeling at the start that this was a main quest with a few attached missions. Straightforward structure. And here we are." He stared into his bowl. "Every time you close one thread, two more open."
He set his chopsticks down.
"Here's the time problem. Vought is going to investigate what happened in that Chinatown basement. When they find it—guards sedated, Compound V missing, Kimiko gone—they will clean it up. That means those guards, whoever they are and whatever they know about where Kimiko's brother is, will be dead or disappeared inside of a few days." He scanned the group. "I should go back tonight and look for them before they become unreachable."
"By yourself," M.M. said.
"You'd draw attention. I won't. You know this."
"And Samaritan's Embrace?" Frenchie asked.
"Oh." Jude reached for his bowl again. "We already have leverage on Ezekiel. Everything we need about that foundation and what it's connected to, we can get by just asking him. With the right context."
"You mean blackmail him," Frenchie said.
"I mean asking," Jude said. "With appropriate supporting documentation."