"So that's it? He just walks back in like nothing happened?"
"More investigation time is never wasted." Jude sat on the crate. "We have two active leads on Vought: A-Train's girlfriend and the fund-flow anomaly. If you want to include Lamplighter, that makes three."
Butcher drew on his cigarette and said nothing.
"Fine." Jude spread his hands. "It doesn't matter. Everything tied to Vought's shadow operations gets exposed eventually. With or without your cooperation on that particular thread."
He leaned forward.
"The financial anomaly points to a mental hospital in Pennsylvania. On paper, it looks like a quiet side project—an independent subsidiary run by a manager with no ties to Vought's senior staff, and a minor supe named Storm attached to it, who is obscure enough that most people don't even know the name. Every low-profile Vought hero has side income, so a mental facility doesn't look unusual at first glance."
He paused.
"Except the facility hasn't made a profit in years. It operates at a loss, but Vought keeps funneling capital into it. A corporation that demands a return on every investment doesn't keep an unprofitable operation running this long without a reason—and that reason isn't showing up on the balance sheet."
The basement was dim. Butcher took another drag, the cherry of his cigarette casting a faint, erratic red glow against the concrete. He held the smoke in his lungs for a few seconds before exhaling slowly.
He smiled.
It was different from his usual expressions. It wasn't the aggressive grin he wore before starting a fight, nor the dark amusement he reserved for people he despised. It was something older.
"I've been going after Vought for years," Butcher said. "Today is the first time it actually feels real."
That evening, the main hall of the Vought building had been transformed into a display of what power looks like when it dresses up for dinner.
Crystal chandeliers hung from the vaulted gold ceiling, casting a light designed to make the room feel important before a single guest had even arrived. A formal band stood in the corner, instruments ready, under strict orders to remain available without actually playing. The guests tonight were too significant to require entertainment, but too significant to not have it offered. The band would be paid either way.
Servers moved through the space with the smooth, practiced choreography of people who had been doing this long enough to make it look effortless. The guests were mostly older. The room skewed heavily toward people whose careers were cemented, people for whom the word influential was a fact rather than a goal. The few guests in their forties projected energetic ambition, a stark contrast to the older majority.
Madelyn drifted through the crowd in a white gown, entirely in her element. Her social smile was deployed with precision. It wasn't tired or rehearsed; it was calibrated for each interaction—slightly warmer for those who needed it, slightly more measured for those who demanded to be taken seriously. She was the room's center of gravity.
On the far wall, a large screen cycled through Vought promotional videos. The current segment highlighted an aid initiative in Africa, shot in the typical corporate style designed to make charity feel personal. A spokesperson smiled brightly at the camera, listing what Vought had provided to children in need: beds, laptops, and a television subscription, framing the corporate product as an act of philanthropy.
No one in the room was watching.
Clark was watching.
The child on the screen looked presentable. Well-dressed and clearly chosen for his appearance. There were no visible signs of the hardship that supposedly prompted the charity in the first place.
The spokesperson gestured warmly toward him.
The child didn't smile. He stood exactly where he had been placed, staring at the camera with an expression completely devoid of happiness.
"I am sick of your face."
Homelander had stepped up next to Clark, smoothly maintaining his public persona while delivering a private threat. He smiled at the room. His tone did not match.
"Every time you make that expression," he said, not looking at Clark, "it's like watching someone announce they are better than the rest of us. You saved a few people. Congratulations. The people you saved act like no one ever protected them before you came along."
"But now, at an event where you are explicitly required to look the part," Homelander nodded slightly toward the screen, "you're doing it while watching a charity ad."
"Stop performing. You work for Vought International. Act like it."
Clark looked at him for a second.
"You don't usually say things that directly," Clark said. "Are you sympathizing with that child?"
The silence between them was brief.
"What does one African child have to do with me?" Homelander's voice stayed perfectly flat. "There are millions of kids on that continent. You can't sympathize with all of them."
He balled his hands into fists, turned, and walked back into the crowd.
There were people Homelander could talk to.
He could talk to his teammates about royalties, revenue splits, and his weekly save count. He could talk to Madelyn about his frustrations with the executive floor, and she would listen with a specific kind of attention that made him feel heard without actually challenging him. He could talk to the public—the fans, the crowds, the carefully curated version of his life that lived in the space between the act he put on and the myth they wanted to believe.
With Clark, none of those conversations worked. When Homelander spoke to Superman, the money, the politics, and the PR simply didn't register as things Clark cared about. Clark didn't dismiss them directly; he didn't lecture or correct. He just operated entirely outside the framework, acting as if the whole system was optional.
That meant every conversation with Clark ended up feeling like a heart-to-heart, whether Homelander wanted it to or not. Clark said exactly what he thought—about people, right and wrong, and what actually mattered. And what he thought was exactly what Homelander had spent thirty years being told was naive, impractical, or just another type of performance. Principles, care, and the belief that normal people had value beyond what they could offer.
When Clark said those things, Homelander had no response.
He could have used his fists. Physically, there was no rule saying they had to talk. But he never threw the punch. Something always stopped him, and he still hadn't figured out what that something was.
What he did know was that everyone at Vought catered to him exactly where Clark didn't, and ignored him completely in the areas Clark engaged. The company gave him everything he needed to play the part. They had never shown any interest in the person beneath the suit.
Homelander hated looking in the mirror. He loved how the crowds looked at him—the absolute certainty in their eyes, the near-religious devotion. He hated the mirror because it didn't look back at him that way.
The face in the mirror was just Homelander. Only Homelander. Nothing else.
As he moved through the room, he caught sight of the screen on the wall again.
The child was still on screen. Fresh clothes, perfect lighting, the whole shot framed to prove that Vought was helping. Vought couldn't use the wrong kind of child—the gaunt, dirty, starving kind who actually needed the aid. That would ruin the tone of the ad. So they picked the right kind.
But his eyes were wrong. The boy stood where he was told, staring at the lens with a still mouth and dead eyes. The empty stare of a person who has been placed in a box and knows it.
He looks exactly like I did.
A prop. A test subject. Positioned for a purpose he never chose.
Then he remember….
"Time to eat, Homelander."
The food tray slid through the slot in the heavy door—white stainless steel, efficient, and cold.
The ten-year-old sat on the floor on his side of the door, holding the tray, listening to the voices on the other side.
"His muscle density has increased again. We'll need new scalpel blades before the next procedure. The current grade will snap."
"The high-alloy containment chamber—is construction finished?"
A pause.
"It's finished."