One week after Los went back-to-back at Godolkin.
One week after his name became something the whole school knew.
New York.
Vought International headquarters.
The top floor of a skyscraper in the heart of the central business district, every square foot of it worth more than most people saw in a year.
A conference room that took up most of the floor, modern and immaculate, built to tell you exactly who owned the building.
The bright lighting caught the stars and stripes.
Homelander took his seat at the head of the table first.
One by one, the five heroes filled the seats down either side of the enormous conference table.
Queen Maeve.
The Deep.
A-Train.
Black Noir.
And the newest member, recently selected through a national search: Starlight.
One chair at the table was empty.
Translucent’s.
“Regarding Translucent’s murder, the confirmed suspect at this time is Billy Butcher,” Ashley said, keeping her professional composure in place.
“Former CIA Black Ops, codename ‘The Butcher.’ He appears to be running an organization with intelligence-gathering and weapons-supply capability.
We still have limited information on the group itself.”
She glanced briefly at the head of the table, then kept going.
At the head of the table, Homelander was looking over the file on Butcher.
His eyes stopped at the entry for Butcher’s wife.
He had a pretty good idea why Butcher had come after The Seven.
Butcher’s wife.
Right.
She was something.
Knew every move.
And she’d done him quite a favor on top of it all.
His mind drifted for a moment.
Then he settled his expression and said: “Don’t leave this to the police or anyone outside this room.
Everyone here keeps their eyes open.
I want results.”
All five members nodded without argument.
Nobody in The Seven pushed back against their leader.
“Now, regarding a replacement for Translucent.”
She didn’t get any further.
Homelander’s face had already gone cold.
“Ashley.
I told you, I decide the membership.
Didn’t I make that clear?”
He had already made up his mind.
The student called Los was the one he wanted in that seat.
“It wasn’t my decision.” Ashley looked pained.
“The recommendation came from corporate.
I’ll walk you through it after the meeting.”
“Fine.” Homelander waved his hand.
“We’re done here.”
He wasn’t particularly worried about Butcher, if he was being honest. The source of this chapter is g.com.
Against absolute power and absolute resources, every threat eventually ran out of room.
The rats in the sewers could come out whenever they wanted.
One look from him and they’d be ash.
Somewhere else in New York.
Far from the glass towers of Midtown.
A sealed basement room with no windows and no daylight.
The kind of space that didn’t show up on anyone’s maps.
Billy Butcher sat in the dark in a heavy black coat, thick beard, a face that could have been carved from stone, eyes that caught whatever light there was and held it.
He was surrounded by four men and one woman, and they had just finished watching the surveillance footage from inside The Seven’s conference room, right up to the moment Homelander called the meeting.
“Not bad, right?”
Mother’s Milk closed the laptop and waited for Butcher’s reaction, the satisfaction on his face genuine.
“Not bad at all.” Butcher’s voice was level.
“The question is how you got your hands on surveillance footage from inside The Seven’s conference room, Marvin.”
He was direct about it.
Butcher knew exactly what Vought International was.
The biggest corporation on earth, with the security infrastructure to match.
Even Mother’s Milk, the sharpest and most methodical person on the team, shouldn’t have been able to crack through a firewall protecting The Seven’s HQ.
“I’ve been on the dark web.
Met a top-tier hacker called ‘Iron Man’ a few days back.” Mother’s Milk leaned forward, genuinely energized.
“The guy found out I’d been pulling together intel on The Seven.
He found my information and reached out, told me he’d help us take them down from the network side.”
“Marvin.” Frenchie frowned from the other side of the room.
“You trust an outside contact that easily?”
He wasn’t letting it go.
“We are running an operation against Vought, The Seven, and Homelander.
One mistake and we’re finished.
All of us.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Mother’s Milk waved him off.
“If Iron Man was backing Homelander’s side, he would have already turned us in.
Why go to the trouble of helping us instead?”
“And yet.”
Frenchie was sitting next to Kimiko and still wasn’t satisfied.
Fighting someone at Homelander’s level left absolutely no room for gaps.
The newest addition to the team, Hughie, watched the argument building between two professionals who knew far more than he did, and kept his mouth shut.
“Enough.”
Butcher’s voice settled it.
He considered for a moment, then looked at Mother’s Milk.
“Keep digging on this Iron Man.
Find out who he actually is in the real world if you can.”
“Done.” Mother’s Milk didn’t hesitate.
He was convinced that with Iron Man’s technical capability behind them, the Boys would be in a significantly stronger position.
“Two directions, going forward.”
Butcher held up two fingers.
“One.
We keep running at A-Train as our way in.
Whatever Compound V he’s been taking, I want to know what it is.”
As he said it, Butcher watched Hughie.
The boy’s face had gone tight, his jaw set, his hands balled hard against his thighs.
Hughie still hadn’t climbed out from under what A-Train had done to his girlfriend.
Good.
In a fight against supes, with nothing but ordinary people on your side, anger and hatred were the best fuel going.
You didn’t waste that.
He raised the second finger.
“Two.
Find out who’s doing the thinking for Homelander.
That’s just as important.”
The hijacked plane rescue had become a PR campaign that was still running.
The supes-in-military bill was gaining momentum.
It might actually pass.
Butcher felt a twinge of something close to regret.
If Homelander had just done what he normally would have done, destroyed that cockpit himself and let a hundred-plus innocent people go down with the plane, that alone would have been enough to finish him.
The evidence would have written itself.
Whether those passengers lived or died wasn’t Butcher’s concern.
Every casualty was worth it to put Homelander in the ground.
But the plane had been saved.
“Patriotic Strength, On Par With God” was now embedded in the public consciousness at a level that was going to be difficult to work against.
And Translucent’s body had been found faster than expected, pulled from the bottom of the ocean inside a zinc container, which had kicked the official story into motion ahead of schedule.
The Seven were at their highest point in years.
The Boys were on the back foot, and had been since this started.
None of that squared with the Homelander Butcher knew.
The man didn’t think that far ahead.
There was someone behind the scenes doing it for him, and that someone was the real problem.
“Marvin.
Give your hacker contact something to work with.
Have Iron Man see what he can find out about whoever’s been running strategy for Homelander behind the scenes.
Call it a test.
If the information is real, we’ll know he’s worth trusting.”
“On it.” Mother’s Milk was already thinking through it.
The Boys were in a hard spot, and any edge was worth taking.
Shortly after.
Godolkin University.
Student dormitory.
Los pulled up his dark web account under the handle “Iron Man” and found a new message from the user calling themselves “Mother’s Milk.”
He read it.
His expression became, briefly, something close to amused.
Investigate the mastermind behind Homelander?
You want me to investigate myself?
He touched his chin and considered it.
The Seven were at full strength right now and needed to be kept occupied.
The Boys were the sharpest tool available for slowing Vought’s grip on the country.
After helping Homelander, helping the Boys was a natural next step.
Keep the water in New York stirred up.
Keep both sides spending energy on each other.
Buy himself the time he needed to build.