Godolkin University.
The residential building.
Homelander’s response to Rufus’s appeal for help was to smile even more warmly and spread his hands.
“Someone like you?
Killing you is fine by me.”
“I’m sorry?” Rufus’s heart seized.
He was sure he had misheard.
Right.
That had to be a hallucination.
That was the greatest superhero who had ever lived standing in front of him.
The warmhearted savior of the world.
Homelander looked down at Rufus kneeling on the floor with something approaching amusement.
“You said no one in this school would dare kill you, didn’t you?”
He pointed one finger at himself and asked: “You think I wouldn’t dare?”
“Sir, you’re joking, right.”
Rufus managed a strained smile.
His whole body felt like it had dropped into ice water.
The fear came up from somewhere deep and wouldn’t stop.
“I never joke.”
The warmth left Homelander’s face in an instant.
His gaze flicked once.
Two beams of bright, searing heat vision swept across the dorm room.
Los watched Rufus die, the heat vision cutting him open where he knelt.
Like stepping on an insect.
Homelander clasped his hands behind his back and took in the room around him with casual interest.
The smile returned.
“I never went to college.
This is kind of interesting.”
Los kept his composure and asked directly: “Were you looking for me, Homelander?”
“I was just passing by overhead.”
Homelander pointed at the ceiling.
He looked at Los and gestured with one hand.
“You’ve seen today’s news, right?
Sixty media outlets around the world ran the cover image you described to me on that plane: me holding up the aircraft as it came down over New York.”
Los smiled.
“That’s great, isn’t it?
That plane created a god among men.”
Homelander was glowing inside, though he had no way of knowing that the god among men Los was referring to wasn’t him.
Homelander stepped forward and clapped a hand on Los’s shoulder.
“Los, name your reward.
Whatever you want.
If you want to be dean of this school, I can make that happen.”
Something clicked in Los’s mind. Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
He knew Homelander wasn’t joking.
The man genuinely had the power to do it.
But if he actually made that request, Homelander might grant it and turn on him in the same breath.
That was exactly how Homelander operated: not a smiling predator with a hidden agenda, but an overgrown child who acted purely on impulse and whim, in any direction his mood took him.
Los held out his pen.
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather have your autograph.”
Homelander blinked, then remembered Los had said he was a fan.
He smiled, ignored the dried blood on the pen without comment, and signed his name across the front of Los’s shirt.
When he was done, Homelander’s tone shifted.
“You’re probably aware that one of The Seven, Translucent, has gone missing.”
Los nodded.
“I’ve turned most of New York upside down,” Homelander continued.
“Vought has people looking everywhere.
Nobody can find him.
So tell me: where do you think Translucent is right now?”
Los went quiet for a moment.
Was this a casual question or a test?
He thought through it briefly.
“With your X-ray vision, there’s nowhere in New York that Translucent could hide, whether he’s alive or dead.”
He paused, then continued: “Unless someone found a way to block your X-ray vision.”
“Block X-ray vision?”
Something lit up behind Homelander’s eyes.
He closed his fist sharply.
“Zinc.
The only material I can’t see through is zinc.”
“So it might be worth looking into any large-scale zinc structures or containers in New York.”
Before Los could finish the sentence, Homelander started applauding.
He laughed out loud, punched straight through the dorm window, and was gone before the glass finished falling, leaving one last line behind him.
“If this leads me to Translucent, I’ll make the reward worth your while.”
Los watched him go, a streak of sound punching through the sky above the school before silence returned.
Whatever came next, Homelander was paying too much attention to him right now.
For someone who needed time to build toward the power to stand against Homelander, that was a problem.
He needed Homelander looking somewhere else.
“I’m counting on you, Boys.
Keep him busy.”
Los sent up a quiet prayer for a group of resistance fighters he had never met.
Shortly after.
Midday.
Off the coast of New York, under a harsh sun.
The Deep, one of The Seven, cut through the surface breaking waves, dragging a zinc box from the ocean floor up onto the shore.
That afternoon, Los and Jordan were in the middle of lunch in the dining hall when a live broadcast on the wall screen brought the noise of the entire room to a dead stop.
“The body of Translucent, a member of The Seven missing for several days, has been recovered.
He was murdered and sealed inside a zinc container that was sunk in the ocean.” Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
“The prime suspect at this time is former operative Billy Butcher, known as The Butcher.”
The moment the broadcast ended, the dining hall erupted.
“Translucent, an actual member of The Seven, and someone actually killed him.”
“A regular person couldn’t do that on their own, whoever’s behind this must be representing some kind of terrorist organization.”
“The cops and Vought are going to figure that out whether you say it or not.”
“An open spot in The Seven means better odds of getting in, doesn’t it?”
“If anyone’s filling that spot, it’s me, not you.”
Jordan set her fork down and looked across the table at Los, who was still calmly working through his food without looking up.
Like nothing on earth was more interesting than lunch.
“A terrorist organization murdering a superhero,” Jordan said.
“This is going to go down in American history.
The fallout could go further than 9/11.
The whole balance of things might shift.”
In reality, Los had already known.
He had played a hand in making it happen.
The Seven with Homelander at the top.
The Boys with Billy Butcher at the front.
Two forces now moving against each other, and the chaos between them was exactly the environment he needed.
He could keep building underneath the surface of that storm, accumulating the kind of power that could genuinely change everything.
“Los, we just finished eating.
Why are you packing a second lunch to go?”
Back in the campus hallway, Jordan watched Los carrying a takeout box with a puzzled expression.
She wasn’t worried about the money, purely curious.
“You’ll see in a bit.”
Back at the residential building, Jordan used her key and pushed the door open.
She stopped.
In the bed that was supposed to be Los’s, currently occupied by a very noticeable presence: a figure under the covers, and spread across the pillow like a gold rose in full bloom, the unmistakable waterfall of bright, smooth blonde hair.
A pair of thigh-high boots sat on the floor beside the bed.
At the sound of the door, the girl, the kind who could have stepped off a movie poster, pulled the blanket around herself and sat up slowly.
The blonde hair fell loose around her shoulders.
“Cate?”
Jordan’s eyes went wide.
“What are you doing here?”
“Your lunch.”
Los walked straight into the room and set the takeout box on the desk.
“Thank you.” Cate looked at him with genuine gratitude.
Jordan looked at Cate in the bed.
Then at Los.
Then back at Cate.
Her brain stopped working.
Son of a bitch.
Her roommate with the below-average ability, on his second day at this school, had somehow ended up with the most stunning girl on campus asleep in his bed?
If the top ten ranked students found out about this, forget the top ten, the entire school was going to lose its mind.