"Anyone know Queen Maeve?"
"I know who she is. Why?"
"Something come up with Maeve?"
"Did Superman send you something?"
"Nothing."
Jude pulled the headset mic away from his mouth and took a mouthful of noodles. The sesame sauce at this restaurant was wrong. He identified eleven specific ways it differed from what he remembered from Popclaw's apartment—the sourness was in the wrong place, the sesame paste was too diluted, and the base oil had a residue that told him it had been reheated too many times. It wasn't bad, just inauthentic in the way that most adapted cuisine ends up being; someone had looked at the dish, decided what the essential notes were, and reproduced them in a medium that had never touched the source. He ate two more mouthfuls because he had paid for them.
"The taste is wrong," he said into the headset. "The sesame noodles I smelled at Popclaw's apartment didn't come from this restaurant."
A pause from M.M.'s end—the sound of someone stirring a bowl. He was apparently having the same lunch. "They taste identical to me."
"They're not."
Butcher had finished. Jude could hear it in his voice—the absence of the distracted rhythm of someone eating. "Set aside the noodle analysis. Why did you ask about Maeve?"
"Wanted a general read on her before I mentioned something." Jude left the right amount of money on the table and walked out. The east side of the map was cleared. He flagged a cab heading toward M.M.'s position. "You all know Clark is inside The Eight, so I'll be direct. He told me yesterday that Maeve might become someone who can actively help us against Homelander when the time comes."
"An ally." M.M.'s voice was steady.
"An ally inside the Eight, at that." Frenchie's voice had the cadence of someone doing quick math.
"What?" Butcher's tone went flat. "We need a supe to get the job done now? None of us can manage without running to one of them?"
Is it the powers you hate, Jude thought, or what they've been used for?
He said it aloud. "If you hate supes simply for having abilities, what separates that from Homelander hating everyone who doesn't? He disregards anyone beneath his tier. You disregard anyone above it. Where's the difference?"
The pause that came back through the headset wasn't the hesitation of someone searching for an answer. It was the pause of someone who had an answer and didn't like that it wasn't a good one.
"Go to hell," Butcher said. "Don't you ever compare me to that—"
"I'm not comparing your goals. I'm comparing the logic."
"Jude." The anger in Butcher's voice had crossed from irritation into heat. "If you say that again—"
"Can you two schedule a fight for literally any other time?" Frenchie put down his fork. "We're not at the restaurant to argue about Homelander."
A pause.
"Let me talk about Maeve." M.M.'s voice was deliberately even—the tone of someone who had managed Butcher's temper before. "I've had a read on her since before this operation. The earliest I tracked was when she was a teenager. Vought ran a story on her—it made national news."
"Tell me," Jude said.
"School bus. Full of students—minors, ordinary kids, no powers. Bus was at the edge of a bridge, seconds from going over into the water. If it went in, they were all dead—no emergency response in time, no getting them out." M.M.'s voice was steady, the delivery of someone who had memorized the details. "Maeve was sixteen, maybe seventeen. Her strength was still developing—not what it is now. She can lift an overloaded truck with one hand today. Back then she was still finding out what she was capable of."
"She pushed the bus back from the edge."
"At the cost of every bone in her right hand."
Jude filed that away. He didn't say anything for a moment. The same hand. Clark had mentioned what happened during the thirty-first-floor call-out. Homelander's grip on Maeve's right hand, what it had cost her to hold position. The hand she broke as a teenager saving a school bus full of kids was the hand Vought's hero nearly destroyed yesterday when she tried to stop Vought's hero from executing a surrendered criminal.
"Ha." Butcher's voice came back through the channel, the specific laugh of someone who had a practiced response ready. "Vought's false heroics. I've followed their media output for years. If one in ten of those stories were real, you'd need to call in a higher power."
"You believe in God all of a sudden?" Frenchie asked.
"I don't. That's why I said you'd need a miracle. Which means it didn't happen."
"Maeve wouldn't break her own hand for a news story," M.M. said.
"How do you verify the fracture?" Butcher's response was immediate. "X-ray in the file? Doctor's note Vought didn't produce? Or just the press release?"
A short silence.
"The point stands," M.M. said. "She was there. Kids were accounted for. She appeared at the hospital afterward and did individual follow-up with every child who'd been on the bus. Psychological support, one on one. Vought films a lot of things. They didn't film that."
"Aren't they just putting the same playbook on screen right now?" Butcher's voice shifted—the sound of someone looking at something else. "Channel over to Vought's feed. The restaurant here has it on."
A beat.
M.M. must have pulled out his phone. His voice changed when he spoke again. "I've got it."
The footage was Vought's current public service rotation. Translucent was crouched beside a hospital bed, one hand resting on the rail with the practiced ease of someone who had learned the right gesture for the shot. In the bed, a girl of maybe fourteen or fifteen, no hair, no eyebrows—the specific absence of them that comes from the treatment, not the illness. She was looking at him with the kind of attention that comes from knowing you might not have much of it left to give.
The audio was low through the phone, but clear enough.
"Mr. Translucent, thank you. I've always wanted to talk to you in person. Before—"
"Don't say that. People recover from this. Have faith in what's ahead of you."
Butcher's voice came back through the channel with his particular brand of enjoyment. "Lovely performance. He's already got the evening's destination lined up—my guess is somewhere with a dim stairwell and inadequate bathroom lighting. But Maeve wouldn't snap every bone in her hand for the cameras. I'll give you that. I'm not saying she's a saint. I'm saying she might be a person."
"That's the most generous thing I've heard you say about a supe since we started," Frenchie said.
"Don't get used to it."
Jude walked into M.M.'s restaurant fourteen minutes later, found him at a corner table with the remains of his bowl, and sat down. He breathed in.
Sesame paste, cooking oil, the specific mineral note of this neighborhood's water filtered through a kitchen that had been operational for at least twelve years.
Not the right restaurant.
He made a small wave at M.M.—we're done here—and stood up.
"That was fast," M.M. said, pushing back his chair.
"I drive faster than traffic suggests I should. This one's also not it. We need to get to Butcher's position—it's the last one."
They headed for the car.
"You smelled it the second you sat down?" M.M. looked at him sideways as they pushed through the door.
"Approximately."
"Are you a supes or not?"
Jude pulled the car keys. "Could be." He tossed them to M.M. "You drive. Fast as you reasonably can."
"Why?" M.M. caught them, scanning Jude's expression. He didn't find anything useful in it, so he got in. "The surveillance feed from Popclaw's building has been clean for two days. Since her supply should have run out, A-Train should have delivered by now. We've been watching and nothing."
"That's unfortunate for him." Jude's phone was in his hand, the camera feed from Popclaw's apartment entrance open. He looked at it, and then tilted it so M.M. could see the screen from the driver's seat.
A-Train was entering the building. He had a small bag under one arm
"Drive," Jude said.