"I don't know chemistry, but I know someone who does." Butcher watched Jude photograph the glass vials. "Why?"
"We are going to see him."
Jude put his phone away and placed the vials back in the safe exactly as he had found them. He locked it and stood up.
"Let's leave now. Before the timing gets complicated."
Butcher was unhappy with the decision, but he had memorized the combination while Jude turned the dial. He had already decided what he would do when Jude wasn't around. He followed Jude out without mentioning it.
The apartment was quiet as they crossed back to the car.
They had been driving for twenty minutes when Butcher finally spoke.
"That thing you fed Translucent," Butcher said, keeping his eyes on the road. "Was it actually a bomb?"
"It's a cold remedy."
"Right." Butcher's voice was flat, carrying the weary tone of someone whose worst suspicion had just been confirmed. "Aren't you worried he'll figure that out?"
"He doesn't dare try." Jude looked out the window. "Not yet. I sent him two addresses."
"Two." A brief pause. "He has a son."
"I know." Jude's voice didn't change. "I didn't include his address."
The road rolled by for a few seconds.
"If you push someone past the edge, they stop calculating. I needed him functional and compliant, not backed into a corner. He cares about his son, which means he understands exactly what those two addresses imply without me saying a word. It makes the threat more effective." He paused. "And I have no intention of touching the boy. I mean that."
Butcher glanced at him. It was a calculating look.
"You won't touch anyone."
Jude didn't argue.
"There is a second reason," Jude said. "By the time the capsule was in his stomach, he had already told us more than I expected. The broken bones before that—the pain amplified the fear, and the fear made him talk. A lot. About the upper echelons, about what various people have done, about information Vought considers highly sensitive." He watched the passing buildings. "If Vought ever found out Translucent had been building an intelligence file on their own senior executives, they would remove him. Quietly. He knows this."
"It would save everyone a lot of time," Butcher said, "if you just killed him now."
"Vought really did a number on you, didn't they?"
Butcher didn't respond, which was an answer in itself.
The factory district crept up on them—the blocks growing quieter, the buildings older, the maintenance clearly abandoned. Butcher pulled into an alley behind a defunct warehouse and pocketed the keys.
Jude looked at the building.
I was hoping for a proper laboratory, he thought. Something with exhaust hoods and proper ventilation. Obviously, that was optimistic.
"This chemist friend of yours."
"French. They call him Frenchie." Butcher got out of the car. "Sells a bit of everything. Weapons. Drugs."
"If we walk in there and he is cooking anything illegal, I am going to break his arm."
Butcher looked at him over the roof of the car. "You hate him that much? You haven't even met him."
"I dislike drugs," Jude said, as casually as commenting on the weather. "Not him specifically. Just the product."
They knocked on the back door.
The woman who opened it had dark hair, vivid blue eyes, and cheekbones that heavy makeup couldn't hide. She had the look of someone who had been living on late nights for a long time. She took off her sunglasses and offered Butcher a polite, distant smile—the kind you give an acquaintance when you have no intention of inviting them inside.
She didn't step back. She didn't answer Butcher's unasked question about Frenchie.
Instead, her eyes locked onto Jude. She studied his face carefully.
"No disguise," she said. "No makeup."
Jude pulled briefly at his own cheek—a quick gesture to prove his face was real. "Butcher brought me. If something goes wrong, blame him."
She offered a different smile, this one warmer, and turned back into the building.
From somewhere below, the crisp, metallic click of a firearm being stripped and reassembled echoed up the stairs.
Butcher exhaled quietly. Frenchie was working on a gun, not cooking drugs. Whatever line Jude had drawn, it hadn't been crossed yet.
The basement smelled of gun oil and damp concrete. A man sat at a workbench, the disassembled pieces of a military-grade rifle spread out in front of him. He looked up as Butcher reached the bottom of the stairs.
"Butcher." Frenchie's voice held the warmth of an old friend mixed with the tension of an unpaid debt. "Don't tell me—you brought the forty thousand."
"I brought you a deal worth more than forty thousand."
"This is what he says every time." Frenchie looked at Jude. "Are you paying?"
Jude sat down across from him.
"Butcher is a terrible person," Jude said mildly. "Rotten down to the foundation. He brought me here to settle his debts."
"You only just figured that out?"
"I learn fast." Jude looked at him. "Truthfully, I don't want to pay his debt for him."
"Then—"
Jude reached into his jacket and held something out across the table.
It was small, round, and gold—shaped like a pumpkin. The gold was heavy and old, worn smooth by time. It wasn't particularly beautiful, but it was immediately, obviously valuable.
Frenchie dove for it before his brain even processed the action. He hit the floor, arms outstretched, and caught the object inches from the concrete. He lay there for a second, clutching it to his chest, relieved he hadn't dropped something so precious.
He stood up slowly, never taking his eyes off the pumpkin.
"This settles the debt," Jude said. "In exchange, I need you to create a counterfeit of a specific compound. A visual match only—it doesn't need to actually work. I need it in two days."
"No problem." Frenchie was still staring at the gold pumpkin. "Not a problem at all."
Jude slid his phone across the table, displaying the photo of the two sky-blue vials.
He turned to Butcher. "You owe me forty."
Butcher looked like a man who had just been completely outplayed by someone half his age and was still calculating the damage.
The woman standing in the doorway wore the same expression. Neither of them had expected Jude to be carrying that kind of portable wealth.
Five minutes later, Frenchie held the gold pumpkin differently. He wasn't cradling it anymore; he held it like something he was about to give back.
"No." He placed it on the table between them. "Absolutely not. This is Vought material. A secret that involves every active supe." He pushed the pumpkin toward Jude. "You'll earn the money, but you won't live to spend it."
"Superman is working with us."
Frenchie hesitated for half a second.
"Translucent is also with us. Running inside Vought as an asset."
A longer pause.
"How did you—"
"Yes or no. That's all I need."
Jude pulled a second golden pumpkin from his jacket.
It hit the workbench with a heavy thud, instantly ending the negotiation.
"Damn it. Yes. Obviously yes."
Vought tower
Inside the Vought tower, Clark found Annie in a hallway and handed her a cup of hot cocoa.
"I hate how this feels," she said, holding the cup but not drinking from it. "Vought handed me a mission list. I'm assigned to work with The Deep. Cameras on us the whole time, filming every move." She stared at the wall. "I wanted to be a superhero. Not a piece of content."
"I understand." Clark sat down next to her. "But if you are actually helping people, the cameras are just a secondary problem."
"Last night I couldn't walk away," she said, the cocoa shifting slightly in her cup. "Two men were attacking a girl. I stopped them."
She paused.
"Ashley called me this morning. They can't find the victim. The two men filed a police report claiming I attacked them unprovoked. They are calling it heroic violence." She shook her head. "A lawyer already contacted the network."
Clark stayed quiet.
He knew the tactic. Lex Luthor had used variations of it against him for years. The victim disappears, the attackers become the victims, and the paperwork flips the narrative cleanly and quickly. It was a reliable way to make the person who helped look like the criminal.
"Do you regret it?" Clark asked.
She looked at him.
"Helping that girl?"
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