The next morning, Lynn woke up before his alarm.
6:23 AM.
A sliver of gray morning light trickled through the gap in the curtains.
Mornings in Queens lacked Manhattan’s cold glamour reflected off glass curtain walls; they were filled instead with the rough, unvarnished sounds of daily life.
Downstairs, a garbage truck backed up with a sharp warning beep.
Next door, someone turned on a faucet.
A car horn blared in the distance.
And a neighbor’s dog was barking at a relentless, determined frequency, declaring to the world that it was alive.
Lynn lay in bed, not getting up right away.
His shoulder still hurt.
The spot where he’d been pinned down felt as if a dull nail had been driven into it.
He reached up to touch it, feeling the ache spread through the muscle.
The scenes from last night resurfaced.
Dim, yellow lighting.
A black folder.
Daniel’s smirk.
The broad palm of the man in the baseball cap.
The tall, lanky man reaching under the table.
And that line: “You really think you’re walking out of here?” Lynn stared up at the ceiling, his eyes wide open.
The fear was still there.
But it was no longer as sharp as it had been last night.
It had settled into something colder, more functional.
Like a pen.
Something he could use to mark off risks.
He got up, washed his face, and changed his clothes.
The man in the mirror still looked mild-mannered, with faint dark circles under his eyes.
That was good.
Exhaustion was one of the best disguises.
A tired employee in Vought’s archives department didn’t look like a dangerous person.
He looked like an ordinary New York commuter being slowly pickled in rent, debt, and terrible coffee.
He brewed himself a cup of coffee.
Cheap instant powder.
Hot water.
No sugar.
No milk.
It tasted like a hopeless performance evaluation.
Lynn carried his mug over to his desk, leaving his computer off.
He picked up his phone and checked only two things.
First, his bank balance.
Terrible.
Second, Daniel’s text messages.
Worse.
Daniel’s final texts from last night were still resting on the screen.
“You’ll come back crawling to me.” “If you don’t sign by Monday, the collection agency is going to find out a lot more.” “And so will Vought.” Lynn stared at them for a few seconds, then placed the phone face-down on the desk.
The threat was explicit.
But it also exposed Daniel’s weakness.
He was still trying to use the collection agency and Vought to pressure Lynn.
That meant he didn’t want to turn this into flat-out violence—at least not yet.
That was enough.
At seven-thirty, Lynn left his apartment.
The subway was as packed as ever.
In the car, someone was scrolling through a video of Starlight’s debut from yesterday.
She stood beside Homelander, her smile bright and clear, her eyes still filled with an earnest hope that hadn’t yet been crushed out of her.
The comment section rolled endlessly: “She’s gorgeous.” “Finally, a genuinely pure hero.” “Vought killed it with this casting.” “The way Homelander looks at her is like a father looking at his daughter.
So heartwarming.” Reading the last comment, Lynn almost choked on his coffee.
Heartwarming?
If Homelander’s look counted as heartwarming, then a nuclear reactor could probably be marketed as a cozy family fireplace.
He averted his gaze.
The train rolled into Manhattan.
The pace of the crowd sharpened.
Suits, trench coats, laptop bags, paper coffee cups.
Everyone moved as if propelled forward by an invisible gear work.
When Vought headquarters appeared at the street corner, Lynn glanced up.
On the building’s giant exterior display, Starlight’s promotional video had already been updated to a new version.
Yesterday it was “Officially Joined.” Today it read: “Starlight: Protecting Tomorrow Together.” Vought was always fast.
Especially when it came to turning a person into a product.
Before stepping into the employee entrance, Lynn wiped all emotion from his face.
Swipe card.
Security check.
Elevator.
Archives.
Business as usual.
That was precisely what he needed right now.
Business as usual.
At 8:56 AM, Lynn took his seat at his desk.
The air in the Archives department still smelled of paper, toner, stale coffee, and a mild whiff of desperation.
Kevin had arrived earlier than usual today.
That was unusual for him.
He was hunched over his computer, seemingly trying to reclaim the dignity he’d lost yesterday when he was publicly humiliated by the formatting templates.
Passing by Lynn’s cubicle, Amy dropped a document on his desk.
“Here’s the old template cross-reference you asked for yesterday.
Martha told me to pass it along.” “Thanks.” Amy glanced at his shoulder.
“Are you hurt?” Lynn’s hands didn’t pause.
“Subway was packed.
Someone bumped into me.” Amy raised an eyebrow.
“The NYC subway: a legal combat training simulator.” “And free of charge.” “Are you sure?
They charge tuition.” Lynn looked at her, and they both shared a brief laugh.
Not too much.
Just enough to sound like typical coworkers.
After Amy left, Lynn logged into the work system.
No personal documents.
No unusual queries.
He began by processing two routine archiving tasks.
One was a commercial endorsement dispute involving a local supe.
The other was an incident summary concerning a C-tier supe who had accidentally torched half a tree while rescuing a cat on a live stream.
Vought’s official remediation note was phrased delicately: “Emphasize the hero’s heart for animals; downplay municipal greenery damage.” Lynn paused for two seconds when he read that.
Then he continued filing.
At 9:47 AM.
The Archives shared inbox received an email from Public Relations.
Sender: Evan Lambert.
Senior PR Specialist.
Subject: [Assistance Request: Starlight Week 1 Media Talking Points Archiving & Risk Annotation] Lynn clicked it open.
The email was strictly boilerplate.
Evan requested Archives to assist in reviewing Starlight’s past public interviews, church speeches, and rescue records for potential follow-up questions from the media—specifically sections touching on religion, gender, youth hero training, and local rescue mishaps.
Among the CCs, one name stood out prominently: Ashley Barrett.
Director of Public Relations.
Lynn stared at those two names, his eyes lingering for a moment.
This was the other side of Vought.
The Seven played gods in front of the camera.
PR wiped off their sweat, touched up their makeup, altered their scripts, and scrubbed unfavorable comments behind it.
If Archives was responsible for putting the past into boxes, PR was responsible for slapping pretty new labels on them.
He didn’t linger long, simply accepting the task per standard procedure.
An email like this couldn’t be ignored.
Nor could it be given undue attention.
Right now, he was just an Archives employee.
A competent, quiet, efficient worker.
That was sturdier than any disguise.
By noon, Lynn had finished processing a portion of Starlight’s files.
Her past transcriptions were extensive.
Church events.
Youth competitions.
Local news interviews.
Charity fundraisers.
Among them was an interview clip from when she was seventeen.
On screen, Annie still looked naive and unpolished.
The interviewer asked: “Why do you want to be a superhero?” The teenage Annie gave a serious response: “Because if you have the power to help people and choose not to, then that power is just another form of selfishness.” Lynn stared at the phrase.
His finger rested still on the mouse.
If those words were directed at him right now, they would be a slap in the face.
He knew Robin was going to die.
Yet he wouldn’t rush out recklessly to save her.
It wasn’t that he didn’t care.
It was that he couldn’t.
He had no presence at the scene, no means, no credible avenue, and no capacity to bear the fallout of exposing himself.
It wasn’t a question of *wanting to*.
It was a question of *being able to*.
More accurately, it was a cold calculation: *Is saving one uncertain individual worth sacrificing the possibility of saving far more people in the future?* Lynn hated this kind of math.
But he was doing it anyway.
He wasn’t Starlight.
He couldn’t just rush out on the strength of a high-minded phrase like “doing the right thing.” If he charged out right now, he would likely end up as just another file in Vought’s archives.
Maybe under a nice, neat title: “Follow-Up Management Record for Employee Anomalous Behavior.” He closed the file.
He flagged Annie’s interview segment as “Positive Value Content—Usable for PR” per instructions.
Then he kept working.
At 12:30 PM.
Lynn bypassed the employee cafeteria.
Holding a sandwich, he headed to a lounge on the side of the building.
Few people came here.
Out the window, he could see the Manhattan streets below and a gray, overcast patch of sky in the distance.
As he ate, he pulled out his phone.
On screen was his plain notes app.
Shopping list: Detergent Bills Transit Eggs Behind “Eggs,” there was now a single digit: 3.
It wasn’t a quantity.
It represented three groups of people: The collection agency.
The black-market associates.
External investigators.
Right now, Daniel was like a puppet hanging by a few thin threads.
Lynn didn’t need to cut his neck personally.
He only needed to pluck a few of those strings.
And let the people pulling them do the heavy lifting.
The first thread: the collection agency.
Daniel thought the collection agency was a blade he could hold to Lynn’s throat.
But debt collectors weren’t Daniel’s friends.
They cared about one thing: getting paid.
If Lynn could convince them that Daniel hadn’t truly gone off the grid and actually possessed a higher potential recovery value, the agency’s focus would shift.
The second thread: Daniel’s accomplices.
The two men from last night weren’t bodyguards.
At least not just bodyguards.
There was no respect in the way they looked at Daniel, only the strained patience of business partners.
That meant they weren’t Daniel’s subordinates; they were using each other.
And relationships like that were fragile when seeds of doubt were planted.
The third thread: external investigators.
Not necessarily the police.
Police procedures were slow, and they risked tracing back to Lynn.
Someone far better suited would be a person sensitive to financial fraud, insurance disputes, or debt scams.
A lawyer.
An investigative journalist.
An insurance claims examiner.
Any of them would do.
What Lynn lacked right now wasn’t justice.
It was someone who could turn Daniel’s problem from a private debt into a public liability.
He took a bite of his sandwich.
The lettuce was wilted.
The slice of ham was so thin it looked like a written apology.
But he chewed thoughtfully.
When he finished eating, he didn’t make any sudden moves.
He simply opened a public business registry website.
No personal login.
No flagged search terms.
He only searched for the corporate names Daniel had registered in the past.
The public records were sparse.
But enough to confirm a few key details: The dates of dissolution.
The virtual office registration addresses.
Two past small-claims lawsuits.
A history of frequently changed contact numbers.
One of those old numbers reappeared in the corporate filings for a brand-new company.
Lynn didn’t take screenshots.
He read through them once.
Committed them to memory.
Then he closed the page.
At 1:17 PM.
He returned to his desk.
And resumed working on Starlight’s files.
Across the office, Kevin was in a heated argument with Amy over whether getting food poisoning from lunch qualified as a workplace injury.