"Here. Have some candy."
Jude approached Aquino with an easy smile, holding out a curry-colored candy. Kimiko and Frenchie watched him, silent.
Kimiko's initial fury at being stopped from killing the man had settled into a hard knot in her chest. The years of confinement and torture left her certain that men like Aquino deserved everything she wanted to do to them. Even after Homelander spared them, she planned to finish the job herself. Aquino, the smugglers who shipped her to New York, the entire organization.
But listening to Jude deliver a horrific sentence in the pleasant cadence of a host offering a mint, then forcing the candy past Aquino's lips, her anger dissolved into a cold dread.
Jude noticed their expressions and raised his hands. "Don't look at me like that. I pulled his teeth so he couldn't bite through his tongue and kill himself. A safety measure. For him."
Frenchie's mouth twitched. "And the food?"
"I can't feed a prisoner too well. Build his strength back up, and he gets ideas about walking out of here. It pains me to ration him, but what choice do I have?"
"The bug-flour bread. The fruit gummies," Jude continued. "A carefully engineered nutritional package. Doesn't need teeth to process, and it covers half his actual energy needs. It won't win taste awards, but it's better than standard prison food, and this isn't a resort."
He delivered the explanation with steady logic. Beside him, Aquino gagged and convulsed on the floor, his back arching as his body rejected the intake.
"Right. One more thing." Jude sighed. He pulled on a pair of gloves, crouched back down, and clamped his hands over Aquino's mouth.
"Stop throwing that up. Stop it. You want to starve to death? Take some responsibility for your health. I don't care how bad prison food tastes, you don't spit it out. That's wasteful. Have some shame."
Aquino thrashed against the concrete. Stomach acid and half-dissolved candy surged up his throat, only for Jude to force it back down. The texture resembled undercooked egg yolk.
Three minutes later, Aquino stopped fighting. Jude let go. The man's body dropped flat against the concrete.
When Aquino pushed himself up a moment later, the starvation had vanished from his frame. His muscles filled out. Color flooded back into his skin. He looked entirely, disturbingly healthy.
"See? You feel amazing right now, don't you." Jude beamed. "Strength back, no hunger pains, perfectly healthy. This is what going above and beyond looks like."
Aquino glared up at him, muscles trembling against the ropes. He couldn't break the restraints, but he had his teeth back. He could still bite.
"Moving on to the next part. Turns out this stuff has one minor side effect. It works a little too well." Jude pried Aquino's jaw open and peered inside. He inspected the full, healthy set of teeth and nodded.
"Same logic as before, though. I can't have you biting your tongue off, or biting me. So, teeth are coming back out."
The color drained from Aquino's face. He tried to beg, but with his jaw pinned open, only ragged, wordless noises scraped out of his throat.
Jude adjusted his grip. "Don't stress about it. Your body can take a lot now. Next meal's in three days, which means the next extraction is in three days too."
"So really, this only happens every three days, not every day. Silver lining, right?"
A garbled scream ripped from Aquino's throat.
The teeth hit the concrete with small, distinct clinks. Frenchie and Kimiko turned their heads away. Aquino's ragged screaming filled the room.
"You doing okay?" Frenchie asked her quietly. "Want to take a couple swings at him yourself? Get it out of your system?"
Kimiko typed into her phone. Frenchie read the screen. I've had a revelation. Hate isn't everything. I don't think I hate him quite as much anymore.
The screaming cut off. Aquino slumped sideways, passed out from the pain.
"If you can't handle a tooth extraction, what were you doing signing up to be a terrorist?" Jude sighed. He tossed the bloody gloves and the loose teeth into the trash bin.
Frenchie and Kimiko looked at Aquino's unconscious body. The same thought crossed both their minds.
"Look," Frenchie said. "Why don't you just kill him?"
Over open water, Homelander tore through a bank of clouds. A shriek of displaced air trailed behind him. He pushed Mach 3, tracking the distance to the Philippines.
He focused his vision through the cloud layer, cutting down to the black water below. No wind. No cresting waves. Thin moonlight reflected on the surface. He watched the shadows of fish tearing each other apart in the deep.
Since going public with Vought, he had noticed the obsession kids had with the ocean. They recited the same handful of bedtime stories to him at every appearance. He never understood the appeal.
Crossing the Pacific, looking straight down into the cold dark where animals ate each other alive, he understood. They were just stories. Distractions adults told kids to keep them quiet.
Nobody ever told me any of those.
John. The name surfaced in his memory. Dr. Vogelbaum's voice, spoken before he had the vocabulary to know what a childhood was supposed to be. The only man who called him that, instead of the title he became. Not that Vogelbaum ever showed him affection.
He clamped down on the thought. That's how you end up soft. Mortal.
A scattering of lights appeared in the distance. A commercial flight on a route from New York to the Philippines. Homelander adjusted his trajectory on instinct.
He slowed as he closed the distance. His eyes swept through the metal hull, scanning the cabin. Strangers. Nobody on the wanted list.
He checked the cargo hold out of habit. No stowaways. He spotted an oversized suitcase with an odd pink wallpaper print packed among the bags.
He filed it away and kept moving, a streak of light vanishing into the dark, his mind already fixed on the coastline waiting on the other side.
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