The clearance keycard for Floor 72 arrived on his desk at 9:00 AM the next morning, enclosed in a standard interoffice envelope.
The card was the same thickness as his previous Class-B clearance card, but a hand-written floor number had been added to the top right corner.
Luke tucked it under the base of his desk lamp, then turned to open another letter.
The envelope had no sender, and the paper was standard A4 printer paper folded in a common tri-fold.
However, the crease orientation was inverted—the first fold went from right to left, a folding habit typical of a left-handed person.
He unfolded the letter, read two lines, folded it back up, and placed it in the bottom drawer.
The resolution to reassign The Deep had come down in executive brief last night.
His destination was the Ohio branch, with his duties reassigned to local security coordination on a six-month contract, subject to review upon expiration.
The executive brief was phrased in smooth, diplomatic corporate language, but stripped down, the meaning was simple: *We’re putting you on ice for now.* At 9:52 AM, someone knocked twice on his office door.
It wasn’t Homelander’s knock; it was slow and forceful, with overly long pauses between knocks—the rhythm of someone who couldn’t quite control his strength yet was desperately trying to appear calm.
“Come in.” The Deep pushed the door open.
He wasn’t wearing his costume today, but rather Vought’s internal grey lounge wear—two sizes too big, with the collar hanging loosely over his collarbones.
His hair was unstyled, flattened to the right side, retaining the messy shape of having slept on it.
He stood before the chair for a second before sitting down.
His legs weren’t open; his knees were pressed together, hands rested flat on his thighs, making him look nearly a third smaller than usual.
“You know,” Luke said.
“Madelyn talked to me last night,” The Deep said, his voice squeezing up from the bottom of his throat with a raspy tightness, as if something were lodging there.
“Said the company needs to show public accountability for the incident, so I need to be temporarily reassigned away from the core team.” “That’s how she put it?” “Word for word.
I’ve been running it through my head all night, and it always comes back to those exact words.” The Deep looked up.
The rims of his eyes were faint red from crying last night, though no tears remained—just the raw, drained texture of having cried himself dry.
“Luke…
I’m being thrown out, aren’t I?” “The position at the Ohio branch is real.” “What good is that?!” His voice suddenly flared up, the chair legs scraping sharply against the floor.
“Ohio!
I’m a member of The Seven!
I’m the Lord of the Seven Seas!
Sending me to Ohio for local security is like demoting a chief surgeon to a high school nurse’s office!” Luke set his pen down on the desk without uncapping it.
“These are the consequences of your own actions.” The Deep opened his mouth, then closed it.
He stared at the record player on the desk and fell silent for a while.
His rapid breathing gradually leveled off, like a curve pulled up high before settling back onto the water’s surface.
“I know,” he said, his voice shrinking.
“I know it’s my own fault.” Luke said nothing, waiting for him.
“But I don’t have anywhere else to go.” He shoved his fingers into the pockets of his fleece top, stretching the fabric into irregular bulges.
“I’ve been in The Seven for six years.
I thought this was all I had, and now…” He didn’t finish.
The room fell quiet for a moment.
The air conditioning circulated the faint smell of old paper around the room.
“You still have a chance to prove yourself.” The Deep looked back up at Luke, his expression exhausted yet unwilling to surrender.
“How?” “Ohio isn’t just cornfields,” Luke said, resting his fingers on the edge of the desk at a deliberate pace.
“Vought has three experimental projects in the Midwest.
Their resource allocation and staffing run on independent budgets, bypassing standard approval at corporate headquarters in New York.
A lot of things headquarters executives don’t want to stamp directly get operated out there.” Something shifted in The Deep’s eyes.
“You mean…” “I mean that someone posted out there, if they’re paying attention, will see things you’d never see in New York.” Luke pulled a business card from the side compartment of his drawer, laid it on the desk, and slid it forward.
It wasn’t a standard Vought card, but a plain white card with nothing on it except a single handwritten phone number.
“A private contact.
Off the grid.” The Deep stared at the card.
His hand hovered over the desk for a second before he picked it up.
“If you see anything out there that doesn’t feel right, you know what to do.” “Will you help me get back?” Luke picked up his pen and wrote a few words on a blank memo pad on the side of his desk.
Once finished, he slid the pad aside without showing it to him.
“I will remember your name.” The Deep clutched the card tightly in his palm, bowing his head.
His shoulders quivered twice—the strained restraint of someone trying desperately to hold it together.
Thirty seconds later, he stood up, the scrape of the chair muted and soft.
“The Ohio convoy leaves the day after tomorrow in the morning,” he said at the door, his voice steadying.
“Once I’m there, I’ll send updates regularly.” “Mm.” The door closed.
Luke looked down at the memo pad.
The words he had written were: *Peripheral Node.* He tore the note into four pieces and fed them into the paper shredder beside his desk.
Two days later, he stood in a windowed corridor on Floor 20, watching the exit of the underground parking garage below.
Three black SUVs emerged and pulled up along the curb near the building’s side entrance.
The Deep walked out behind two Vought staff members, carrying a duffel bag stuffed unevenly, as if packed in a hurry.
He climbed into the middle vehicle.
Its windows were tinted pitch black with solar film, preventing Luke from seeing inside.
The convoy turned onto the westbound avenue, disappearing into the gap between two skyscrapers.
Luke took his phone out of his pocket, opened his notes app, and typed a few words under a new entry: *Peripheral intelligence node, Ohio, deployed.* He locked the screen and put the phone back in his pocket.
Someone passed through the corridor pushing a document cart, the wheels rumbling softly against the smooth floor.
Luke took two steps back and stopped at the corner of the hallway.
Serena Thorne stood fifteen meters ahead of him, a stack of files tucked under her arm, examining the new quarterly organization chart posted on the corridor bulletin board.
She didn’t turn around, but she spoke.
“The weather in Ohio is terrible.
He won’t last long.” Luke remained standing where he was, unmoving.
“You think I don’t know what you were just watching?” Serena shifted the folder to her left hand and slowly turned around, her eyes locking onto his.
“How long are you planning to leave your pawn, The Deep, out in the cold?”