6 Chapters Ahead
Patreon-Beyblade245
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Translucent had gone quiet. The shimmer in the cage seemed to freeze, to hold its breath. You could feel him in there, thinking, calculating, the way a rat in a trap goes still not because it's given up but because it's waiting for the moment your hand gets close enough to bite.
Butcher looked at the cage. His eye was cold, flat, the kind of cold that came from a place where nothing warm had lived for a very long time. He didn't blink. He just stood there, arms crossed, the tendons in his jaw working like he was chewing on something that deserved to be chewed. "Then get it ready."
Frenchie stood up, dusting off his knees. "I will need to go out. I do not have the materials here." He spoke fast, already running through the list in his head, his hands moving like he was assembling the bomb in the air. "I know a place, a man, he will have what we need. A small charge, something we can insert, something we can detonate from a safe distance." He was already moving toward the door, already pulling on his jacket, his fingers finding the sleeves like they'd done this a hundred times before. "A few hours, maybe less. I will be quick."
Butcher nodded once. The movement was small,the kind of nod that didn't waste an inch of energy. "Make it quick." His voice dropped, lower. "I don't want this cunt in my sight for one more minute than necessary."
Frenchie was out the door, his footsteps echoing down the hallway, a fast rhythm that faded to nothing, leaving Butcher and Hughie alone with the cage. The silence that followed was heavy, thick, the kind of silence that sat on your chest and made it hard to breathe.
Hughie pushed himself off the wall. "Butcher," he said, his voice a croak. He cleared his throat, tried again. "Butcher, we can't— I mean, that's— we're going to blow up a man's— I mean, up his—"
"Asshole," Butcher said without looking at him. He was still staring at the cage, that one blue eye fixed on the shimmer. "You can say it, Hughie. Arsehole. Ass. Bunghole. Rectum. Shitpipe. Whatever the fuck you want to call it. We're going to shove a bomb up it and watch him pop. That's the whole fucking plan. You got a better one, you let me know. Otherwise, shut your mouth and let the adults work."
"That's insane!" Hughie's voice cracked, went high. He could hear it, could hear how pathetic he sounded, but he couldn't stop it. "That's— that's— you can't just—"
"Can't I?" Butcher turned to look at him then, and the weight of that look made Hughie's words die in his throat. It wasn't anger. Anger would have been easier. It was something older, something that had calcified over years, over a wife taken, over a life stolen, over all the moments where someone should have done something and nobody did. "You saw what he did. What they all do." He took a step closer, and Hughie took a step back without meaning to, his spine hitting the cold concrete wall again. "They walk around like they own the place, like we're ants under their boots, and when they step on us, when they turn your girlfriends into fucking jam on the pavement, they don't even look down. They don't even fucking look." He took another step. His face was close now, close enough that Hughie could smell the whiskey on his breath. "So tell me, Hughie. Tell me why I shouldn't shove a bomb up this one's arse. Give me one good reason. One reason that isn't 'it's wrong' or 'he's a person' or any of that soft shit you've been chewing on since you walked in here."
Hughie opened his mouth. Nothing came out. His brain was a white noise machine, static and fear and the image of Robin's body coming apart, the wet sound he'd never stop hearing.
"That's what I thought." Butcher stepped back, gave him room, but the space between them felt heavier now, not lighter.
From the cage, Translucent found his voice again."You think this is going to end well for you? You think you can do this and just walk away?" His voice echoed in the cage, bounced off the metal, came back distorted. "Homelander will find you. He has X-ray vision, you stupid cunts. He can see through walls. He can see through the fucking planet if he wants to. He'll find this place very soon and he will turn you into paste. All of you. The French bastard, and you, Butcher. Especially you." He was building momentum now, the fear turning into something uglier, something that sounded like a man trying to convince himself. "He's going to make you suffer. He's going to take his time. I've seen what he does to people who cross him. I've seen him pull a man's arms off, one at a time, and then hold them up so the cunt could see his own hands before he bled out. He's going to—"
"Shut your fucking mouth," Butcher said. His voice was low and calm, the kind of calm that sits on top of a volcano. "Or I'll find something to stick in there before Frenchie gets back. I've got a rat problem in this building. Big ones. The kind that live in the drains and eat garbage. I'll catch one, shove it down your throat, and let it eat its way out through your arse. That way I don't even need the bomb."
Translucent shut up.
For a moment, there was peace. The kind of peace that comes after a storm, when the air is clean and your ears are ringing and you don't know if the worst is over or just getting started. Hughie closed his eyes, tried to slow his breathing. It was going to happen. It was really going to happen. They were going to kill a supe. And they were going to shove a bomb up his ass and detonate it.
He thought about Robin again. He thought about the apartment they were supposed to rent, the one with the big window that looked out over the park, the one they'd put a deposit on three days before A-Train ran through her. He thought about the way she'd laughed when he said he'd have to ask his dad for help with the first month's rent, the way she'd kissed his forehead and said, We'll figure it out, Hughie.
They hadn't figured it out. She was gone. The apartment was gone. Everything was gone except this warehouse, this cage, this man made of light who would kill him without a second thought if he got the chance.
His eyes opened. His hands stopped shaking.
"Good," Butcher said, watching him. His face was unreadable, but there was something in his voice that might have been respect, or might have been recognition. "Now you're getting it."
Hughie opened his mouth to say something—he didn't know what, maybe something brave, maybe something stupid, maybe just a question about what came next—when Frenchie's voice came through the earpiece, sharp and sudden, cutting through the silence like a knife.
"Merde. We have a problem."
Butcher grabbed the earpiece, pressed it hard against his ear. "What kind of problem?"
There was a pause. When Frenchie spoke again, his voice was different. The easy confidence was gone. The playful accent was gone. What was left was something cold, something careful, something that made Hughie's stomach drop into his shoes like a stone dropped into deep water.
"I was just checking the surveillance. I do it every few minutes, you know, because I am not a stupid man. And I saw something. Something I did not expect to see."
"What did you see, Frenchie?" Butcher's voice was still calm, but there was a new tension in it, a wire pulled tight.
Another pause. Hughie could hear Frenchie breathing on the other end, fast and shallow, like he'd been running. "Homelander. He is in the air. I saw him t, maybe two kilometers away, coming in this direction. He is moving fast, Butcher. Very fast. Not in a straight line—he is circling, like he is looking for something. Like he knows something is here but he does not know exactly where."
The world stopped.
Hughie felt it happen. The air in the room changed. The light changed. Everything that had been solid and real and stable suddenly became thin, became fragile, became something that could shatter at any moment. His hands went cold. His heart stopped hammering and started doing something else, something worse, a slow, sick thud that he could feel in his throat, in his temples, behind his eyes.
"He's coming here," Hughie whispered. His voice didn't sound like his own. It sounded like a child's voice, small and scared and very, very far away, like it was coming from the bottom of a well. "He's coming here. He knows.He knows where we are. He knows everything." His chest was heaving now, his lungs grabbing at air that wasn't there. "Butcher. He will—he'll—we're going to—"
"Stop." Butcher's voice was hard, a slap across the face. He grabbed Hughie by the shoulders, fingers digging in hard enough to bruise. "Breathe, you fucking twat. Breathe. Right now. One breath. One. You hear me?"
But Hughie couldn't breathe. His chest was tight, his lungs wouldn't expand, his hands were clawing at his own shirt like he could tear open his ribcage and let the air in. "We're going to die. We're all going to die. He's going to come through that door and he's going to look at us and we're going to be nothing, we're going to be—"
Butcher grabbed him by the shoulders, spun him around, slammed him against the wall. The impact knocked the air out of Hughie's lungs, but it was the wrong kind of air, the kind that came out as a gasp, a sob, a sound that made him hate himself. The back of his head hit the concrete, a bright flash of pain that cut through the panic for half a second, just long enough for Butcher to lean in, to get his face right in Hughie's face.
"Listen to me," Butcher said, his voice low and fierce."Listen to me, you stupid little cunt. You are not going to die. Not today. Not here. Do you hear me? I am going to get you out of this. I am going to get all of us out of this. But you have to stop fucking screaming and let me work. You have to shut that fucking mouth and stand there and let me do what I do. Do you understand?"
Hughie nodded. His head was ringing, his vision blurry at the edges, but he nodded. He didn't know if he understood. He didn't know anything anymore. But he nodded because nodding was the only thing his body remembered how to do.
Butcher let him go, stepped back, turned away. His hand went to the earpiece. "Frenchie. You still there?"
"I am here." Frenchie's voice was steady now, the panic pushed down, replaced by something that sounded like a man preparing to do something very stupid. "I am watching him. He is moving fast, Butcher. Very fast. He will be here in—maybe five minutes. Maybe less."
"Then we don't have five minutes." Butcher's voice was calm. That was the thing about him. When everything went to shit, when the world was ending, when there was no way out and no hope and nothing left but the screaming in your head, Butcher got calm. He got the kind of quiet that came before something very bad happened to someone else. "We need to distract him. Pull him away from this place."
"Distract him." Frenchie repeated the words like he was tasting them, trying to figure out what they meant. "Distract Homelander. With what, Butcher? With what do you distract the most powerful man on earth? A shiny thing? A pretty song? A fucking dance? I am good, Butcher, I am very good, but I cannot distract a man who can fly and shoot lasers from his eyes and hear a mouse fart from three kilometers away."
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