6 Chapters Ahead
Patreon-Beyblade245
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"You have that girl. Cherie." Butcher's voice was flat, matter-of-fact. "You use her. You make noise. You make him look the other way."
There was a long pause on the other end. When Frenchie spoke again, his voice was tired. Not scared. Tired. Like a man who had been asked to do one impossible thing. "You want me to put her in danger. You want me to use her as bait. You want me to make noise, to draw his attention, to give time to—what, Butcher? To run? To hide? To shove a bomb up a man's arse?"
"I want you to give me five minutes." Butcher's voice didn't change. It was still calm, still flat, still the voice of a man who had already made peace with whatever came next. "Just five minutes. Can you do that?"
Another pause. Hughie could hear Frenchie breathing, could hear him thinking, could hear the weight of the decision settling on his shoulders. Then: "I can try."
"Good man." Butcher clipped the earpiece. He looked at Hughie, then at the cage, then back at Hughie. His face was stone. "You stay here. You understand me?."
"What—what are you going to do?" Hughie's voice was still shaking, still small, but there was something underneath it now, something that wasn't quite fear.
"I'm going to go help Frenchie make some noise." Butcher was already moving toward the door, his coat flapping behind him, his boots loud on the concrete floor, each step a countdown. "We draw him off, circle him around, buy you enough time to sit tight and keep that cunt in the cage quiet. That's your job now.And if he starts screaming, if he starts making noise, if he does anything to bring that bastard down on us, you fry his fucking brain with that remote. You fry him until he stops twitching. You got that?"
"What? What do I do? I don't have—I can't—" Hughie was pushing off the wall, stumbling after Butcher, his legs still half water, half something else. "Butcher, I can't do this. I can't stay here alone with him. What if he gets out? What if Homelander finds this place anyway? What if—"
Butcher stopped at the door. He looked back. His face was hard, his jaw set, his eye fixed on Hughie with an intensity that made Hughie's stomach clench. For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Butcher said, slow and deliberate, each word a hammer blow: "Just do what I said.And I will handle everything else. Got it?"
Hughie nodded. His mouth was dry. His hands were shaking. But he nodded.
Butcher was gone. The door slammed behind him. The sound echoed through the empty warehouse, through the empty rooms, through the hollow spaces where hope used to live, bouncing off walls and rafters and the high ceiling until it faded into nothing, leaving only silence.
Hughie was alone.
He stood there for a long moment, his hands pressed flat against the cold concrete. He could feel the dust on his palms, the grit, the years of neglect that had settled into every crack. He counted his breaths. One. Two. Three. Four. He counted until the numbers stopped meaning anything, until breathing was just something his body did without his permission.
The cage sat in the middle of the floor. The shimmer inside was still, but he could feel Translucent in there, could feel him listening, waiting, calculating. Maybe he was already imagining what Homelander would do when he got here. Maybe he was already tasting the victory, already planning the revenge, already picking out which parts of Hughie's body he'd break first. Maybe he was just sitting there, invisible and silent, laughing at the pathetic little man who thought he could hold a supe.
Hughie closed his eyes. He thought about his father, sitting in that house, watching the news, waiting for his son to come home. He didn't know. He didn't know any of this. He thought Hughie was at work, or at a friend's, or anywhere but here. He thought his son was safe. He thought his son was normal. He thought his son was the kind of boy who got married and had children and died old in a bed with clean sheets.
He thought ran back to Robin again.
That was two days before A-Train ran through her.
He opened his eyes. He pushed off the wall. He walked to the cage, slowly, carefully.Each step was a decision. Each step was a choice.
The cage was dark. The shimmer inside was still, but he knew Translucent was in there, folded into himself, invisible and watching. He crouched down, got level with the bars, stared into the darkness where Translucent was hiding.
"Hey," Hughie said. His voice was a whisper. "Hey. You in there."
No answer.
"I know you can hear me." He leaned closer, his forehead almost touching the bars. "I know you think you're smart. I know you think you're going to get out of this. I know you think Homelander is going to come through that door and kill us all and you're going to walk away like nothing happened. Like nothing ever happened." He paused. His voice was steadier now. Not strong, but steady. "You want to know something? You're probably right. He's probably going to come. He's probably going to kill us. And you're probably going to walk out of here and go back to your life and forget this ever happened. Because that's what you people do. You forget. You step on us and you walk away and you never even look down to see what you've done."
The shimmer moved. A voice came out of the darkness, low and cold, the voice of a man who had never in his life been afraid of anything that didn't wear a cape. "You're smarter than you look, skinny."
"I'm not smart," Hughie said. "I'm just tired. I'm so fucking tired of being scared. Of watching you people do whatever you want, take whatever you want, kill whoever you want, and nobody does anything. Nobody stops you. Nobody even tries." His hands were gripping the bars now, his knuckles white. "My girlfriend. She was just standing there. She was just standing on the sidewalk, holding my hand, talking about what we were going to have for dinner. And A-Train ran through her. He didn't stop. He didn't even slow down. He just kept running, and she was gone, and I was standing there holding a piece of her arm, and the only thing I could think was she was just talking about dinner. That's all she was doing. And you want to know the worst part?"
He didn't wait for an answer.
"The worst part is that nobody gave a shit. Nobody. Not the cops, not the news, not Vought. They put out a statement. They said tragic accident. They said our thoughts are with the family. And then they went back to counting their money. And I had to go to her funeral, and I had to stand there with a box full of ashes that used to be the only person who ever looked at me like I mattered. And do you know what A-Train did? He ran a race the next day. He won. And everybody cheered."
His voice was cracking now, but he didn't stop. He couldn't stop. The words were coming out like vomit, like blood, like everything he'd been holding inside since that day on the sidewalk.
"Because you can't stop us," Translucent said. His voice was harder now, stronger, the fear from before replaced by something older, something deeper. "We're better than you. Faster, stronger, smarter, better in every way. You're like ants. And you don't get to complain when ants get stepped on. That's the deal. We have the power. You have the privilege of not being dead yet. So don't sit there and give me your sob story about your dead girlfriend. She was an ant. You're an ant. And when Homelander gets here, he's going to step on you so hard they'll be scraping you off the walls for a week. And you know what? I'm going to watch. I'm going to enjoy it. I'm going to—"
Hughie nodded slowly. He looked down at his hands. They were still shaking. But it was different now. It wasn't fear anymore. It was something else. Something that felt a lot like anger, but deeper, older, the kind of anger that lives in your bones and waits for the day you stop running from it.
"You know what I think?" Hughie said quietly. He lifted his head. His eyes were dry. "I think you're full of shit. I think you're not better than us. I think you're worse. I think you're the worst kind of coward. The kind that hides behind skin that can't be broken, behind a team of monsters, behind a company that tells you you're a hero while you walk past the bodies you leave behind. You're not a hero. You're not even a person.You are a fucking product.And one day, somebody's going to realize that, and they're going to stop buying you, and you're going to be nothing. You're going to be less than nothing"
The shimmer in the cage was still. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Then Translucent laughed. It was a low, ugly sound, the laugh of a man who had heard it all before. "You done? You got that out of your system? Good. Because none of that matters. You can talk all you want, skinny. You can sit there and tell yourself you're not an ant. But when the boot comes down, you're going to find out exactly what you are."
Hughie opened his mouth to answer—he didn't know what, maybe something brave, maybe something stupid, maybe just the sound of his own voice telling this invisible cunt to go fuck himself—when he heard it.
The door at the far end of the warehouse creaked.
Hughie's head snapped up. His heart seized. His hand went to the remote in his pocket, fingers closing around the cold plastic. Butcher was gone. Frenchie was gone. He was alone. And someone was coming through the door.
Translucent heard it too. The shimmer in the cage shifted, pressed against the bars.
The door opened. A figure stepped through.
But it wasn't Homelander.
The light from outside caught him, framed him, showed him in silhouette. He was young. Maybe nineteen. Tall, with the kind of build that looked lean until you looked closer, until you saw the muscle underneath, the power coiled in every line like a spring waiting to snap. His face was the kind of face that stopped traffic, the kind that belonged on magazine covers, the kind that made people stare without knowing why. His hair was dark, wind-tossed, like he'd been standing in a storm that only existed around him.
He stepped into the warehouse. The door swung shut behind him. The light faded, cutting off the outside world, sealing them all in together. And the sky outside, Hughie noticed through the yellow window in the ceiling for the first time, was beginning to darken. Clouds were gathering, thick and black, rolling in from nowhere, blocking out the sun, turning the afternoon into something that looked like the end of the world.
The young man stood in the middle of the floor. He looked at Hughie. He looked at the cage. And he smiled.
It was the smile of a man who had found what he was looking for. A hunter who had finally cornered his prey.
"So," the young man said, his voice carrying across the empty space, low and clear and cold as a blade. "I am finally here."
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