To consume or not to consume.
That was the only thought in my mind as I looked at the electric cage. I had thought Translucent was an easy meal, a perfect step in the snowball effect. I was wrong. He has a major weakness: electricity.
It is a resource humans have in abundance.
If I commit to the consumption, I am accepting the cage. By taking his DNA, I am inheriting his flaw. I am making myself a prisoner to the very wires that surround him. I would be trading my freedom for a skin that can be paralyzed by a common wall socket.
I would be placing myself in his position, just as easily trapped, just as easily broken.
Is the diamond skin and the gift of invisibility worth the electrical chain?
But if I let it go, I lose my momentum. The Deep's power, born from only a few drops of blood will last two more days at most. After that, I am back to nothing.
I can fly, but Butcher warns me to stay grounded or be captured by Vought. If I do not fly, how am I supposed to learn the sky?
My wings are chained. Every time I take two steps forward, this planet pushes me three steps back. It is as if Earth itself is conscious. Is it defending its own? Are the Supes its natural creation?, and I am the infection it is trying to purge?
Aldrich ignored Translucent's attempts at a deal. He didn't have time for the invisible man's desperation.
Suddenly, a massive surge of pity slammed into him from the other side of the door. It was high-intensity fuel, reigniting his neural fibers and killing the nausea in his throat.
On the other side of the lock, Hughie, Frenchie, and Butcher faced a dilemma.
Frenchie stared at the monitor. He had checked the kid for a tracker and found nothing; Butcher really had found a supe stray. But the scans showed something worse.
"Mon Dieu," Frenchie whispered.
He traced the obsidian shadow on the screen. To a human eye, it was a catastrophe. The dense mass of the second stomach looked like a colossal, aggressive tumor.
"It's stage-four," Frenchie said. "His heart and lungs are being crushed by this growth. his body is eating itself to keep his powers alive. He's a dead boy walking."
Hughie made no sound sound. The grief of Robin's death mixed with the sight of the dying kid. He was a fountain of pity and grief so thick Aldrich could taste it through the door.
Hughie and Frenchie turned on Butcher, their faces twisted with a mix of revulsion and disbelief. They were staring at Butcher as if he were the one who had put the black hole in the kid's chest, silently accusing him of trying to turn a terminal cancer patient into a pawn for his vendetta.
"What? Don't look at me like I'm the one holding the bloody needle," Butcher growled. "How the fuck was I supposed to know the runt was this far gone? I'm not a sodding oncologist, am I?"
He jerked a thumb toward the monitor.
"I saw a Supe that could tank a hit and keep his mouth shut. I didn't know he was a walking hospice case with a tumor the size of a fucking grapefruit. So stow the bleeding-heart routine, Hughie. It's a tragedy, right? A real tear-jerker. But the kid's still breathing, and we've still got a diamond-skinned cunt in a box downstairs who needs a permanent solution. Unless you've got a magic wand in your back pocket, the clock's ticking for everyone."
Frenchie looked around, unsure. They had tried everything and still couldn't penetrate Translucent's skin, and the Seven could be on them soon. At this moment, a documentary on turtles was playing on a screen. Frenchie stared at it for a long while, then he got an idea and grabbed the cattle prod.
"What are you doing?" Butcher asked, curious.
"Shocking our invisible friend. I need him unconscious," Frenchie said. He walked into the storage room where they kept Translucent and the kid.
"Now what the fuck do you want?" Translucent barked. "When I get out AHHHHHH"
Frenchie jammed the prod in, shocking Translucent for a good while until he was out cold. "Go," Frenchie said, gesturing toward the stairs. "Leave for now, petit. It is not going to be pretty."
Hughie stepped forward, He reached for Aldrich's shoulder. He was a fountain of high-intensity pity, his protective instincts flaring up to shield the "dying" boy from the violence to come.
"Come on," Hughie whispered. "Let's go upstairs. You don't need to see this."
We went upstairs and sat at the table. Hughie stared at me, He wanted a connection to make sense of the horror. I offered him nothing. I sat in the silence. When the quiet became a weight he couldn't carry, he finally broke.
"So... you're a Supe?" he finally blurted out.
"Yeah."
Silence.
"You can fly?."
"I have the ability to fly, but I still haven't learned how to."
"That... that must be amazing, right? Seeing everything from up there?"
"I wouldn't know," I said, my voice as flat as the table. "I just told you I haven't learned how."
"Do you have any parents?"
"Yes. But I don't know where they are. During their divorce, my father tore me away from my mother and dumped me here. That was seven years ago."
"Your companion died?"
Hughie's face went pale. "My companion? Yeah. Robin. She... she died."
"Died? Or was she killed?"
He stammered, his hands twisting together. "Well, uh... it was actually an accident. But you see, it's... it's complicated."
"What is complicated about it?" I leaned in, my eyes fixed on his. "It was either an accident, or it was done with intention. There is no middle ground in a death."
Hughie looked at me and was silent for a good long while and in the end he choose to say nothing
"You're unsure? That means she was killed. So, what are you going to do about it?"
"I'm doing something," Hughie voice rose. "That's why I'm here with Butcher and Frenchie. I'm going to get justice for Robin."
"How do you define justice?" I asked
"I'll find out the truth," he stammered, his hands shaking as he gripped the edge of the table. "I'll find out what A-Train was actually doing when he... when he ran through her."
"And then?" I pressed. I needed to see the end of his actions. "Does his blood become yours?"
"Then... then I don't know!" Hughie stood up, his chair clattering back. He looked at me with genuine revulsion, his confusion finally boiling over. "Why are you like this? Why are you so weird? You're a kid, but you talk like... like you're insane."
You're right, to you, I am insane. But to me, you're the one who has lost his mind. If my companion were killed, accident or otherwise, I would take my justice."
Hughie let out a harsh laugh, his eyes bright with frustration. "Oh yeah? Must be easy to say. A-Train is a speedster, you idiot. Good luck even seeing him, let alone trying to kill him."
"It is quite easy on paper," I said. I didn't blink. I let the logic of the kill settle in the air between us. "I would take him up. Then I would let go. Gravity does not care about speed."
Hughie stared at me, his mouth hanging open. The sheer, cold simplicity of the murder seemed to stun him. He shook his head, his pity turning into a sharp, bitter resentment.
"Easy for you to say," he spat. "You're a Supe. Try being an average person for five minutes."
"You overestimate yourself, Hughie," I whispered. "You aren't average. You're far below it."