Zack Vance’s Glock pointed steadily forward.
The cold metallic touch of the gun’s body seeped through his palm, barely keeping his accelerating heartbeat in check.
Facing Billy Butcher was a completely different concept than facing Joanne.
Joanne was an emotionally unstable god who craved validation.
As long as you coaxed her by her soft spots, you could steer clear of danger.
But the Butcher before him was a rabid, lone wolf who had lost his mind—a madman who would use anyone as a bargaining chip for his revenge.
At this distance, if Butcher suddenly lunged, Zack’s ordinary human body, completely lacking any superpowers, would stand absolutely no chance.
“Your nose is indeed sharp,” Zack said, his eyes locked onto the muscles of Butcher’s shoulders, bracing for any sudden movements.
“But your judgment is clearly flawed.
If the monster you’re talking about were really in this room right now, you wouldn’t have the chance to stand here sniffing the air.
You would have been turned into wall art a second ago.”
The sneer on Butcher’s face froze for half a second.
His sinister eyes sized Zack up, scanning back and forth between the dark muzzle of the gun and Zack’s completely unbothered face.
A twenty-year-old ordinary college student, whose door had been picked and who was being threatened, not only didn’t have trembling hands but could also calmly dismantle his logic.
This in itself was highly anomalous.
“Brave kid,” Butcher let out a low, gravelly laugh.
He raised both hands, palms facing outward in an utterly insincere gesture of surrender, and slowly backed away.
“I’m just a concerned neighborhood watchman checking in on the new neighbor.” Butcher backed up to the security door, reached out to grab the handle, and his eyes turned cold as steel again.
“But here’s a friendly word of advice—playing house with that flag-wearing psycho is a one-way ticket straight to hell.
Good luck.”
With a soft click of metal, the security door shut once more.
The hallway fell completely silent.
Zack stood in place with his gun raised, waiting a full five seconds before quickly stepping to the door and checking the peephole to confirm that the hallway was empty.
He locked the door, threw the deadbolt, and his tense shoulders finally sagged.
A thin sheet of cold sweat had broken out on his back, clinging to his knit sweater with a chilly dampness.
Butcher’s nose was far sharper than he had anticipated.
To lock onto Joanne’s trail using only the residual scent in the air…
The Boys were already in the game, and Vought International’s movements would only be faster.
The window of time left for him to grow and deploy his plans was being forcibly compressed.
Zack put the gun back into the hidden compartment under the coffee table and walked over to the dining table.
The aroma of the hot and sour shredded potatoes had been mostly dissipated by the tense standoff.
Having lost his appetite, he turned to pick up his laptop from the sofa and continued writing his unfinished offshore fund transfer programs.
At the same time, on the ninety-ninth floor of Vought Tower in Midtown Manhattan.
The thick soundproof glass completely shut out the clamor of New York City.
Madelyn Stillwell sat behind her wide black desk, holding a cup of cold brew coffee that had already gone completely cold.
Ashley stood across from the desk, holding an encrypted tablet.
“The tech department cross-referenced the atmospheric disturbance data over the past half-month,” Ashley swallowed, her voice trembling slightly in the cavernous office.
“Since her suit’s tracking signal was jammed, they utilized meteorological satellites.
Ms.
Joanne generates specific thermal wakes and aerodynamic anomalies when flying at high speeds.
We overlaid these anomalous data points onto the map.”
Ashley stepped forward and placed the tablet on Madelyn’s desk.
The screen displayed a 3D map of New York City.
Above an ordinary residential complex in Queens, dozens of high-contrast red trajectories crisscrossed, all converging on the exact location of a single high-rise apartment building.
“She goes here almost every single night,” Ashley said, fine sweat beads forming on her forehead as she kept her eyes lowered, not daring to look at Madelyn.
“Her stay ranges from an hour to the entire night.”
Madelyn set her coffee cup down.
She didn’t fly into a rage; her face showed absolutely no emotional fluctuation.
She merely extended a slender finger and swiped lightly across the tablet screen.
The map zoomed in, locking onto the specific floor of that apartment building, before popping up a tenant’s identity file.
A slightly youthful Asian face appeared on the screen.
“Zack Vance.
Twenty years old.
An exchange student at Godolkin University,” Ashley reported hastily, looking at the desperately thin file.
“Both parents are deceased; he inherited a small estate.
No criminal record, no history of attending any Supe-rights rallies, and his blood samples show no trace of Compound V.
He is just…
an ordinary civilian with zero background.”
Madelyn stared at the calm-eyed Asian youth in the photo, her lips curving into a cold arc.
A superheroine with the power to destroy the world, packaged by Vought as a perfect goddess, was jamming her own signal every night to sneak off to a shabby apartment in Queens just to see an ordinary male college student.
It sounded like a terrible rom-com.
But Madelyn never believed in comedies.
In Vought’s world, any variable that deviated from the script was a lethal poison.
Joanne’s recent anomalously stable emotions, along with the faint sense of detachment she showed when facing her, had finally found their source.
This ordinary human named Zack Vance was somehow replacing Vought in Joanne’s heart.
“Zero background?” Madelyn chuckled softly, a sound like fingernails scraping against glass.
“A mouse that sneaks into a vault is still a mouse, no matter how ordinary it is.”
She reached out and pressed a hidden button beneath her desk.
The air in the office fell dead silent.
About thirty seconds later, the heavy double mahogany doors slid open soundlessly.
A tall, slender figure glided into the room like a specter.
He was clad entirely in pitch-black tactical armor, his face completely concealed by a black mesh mask, leaving not a single inch of skin exposed.
He made no sound as he walked, and even his breathing was suppressed to the absolute limit, as if he were a living extension of the office’s shadows.
Black Noir, member of The Seven, the silent assassin.
Seeing Black Noir enter, Ashley instinctively shrank back, her eyes betraying unhideable terror.
Madelyn turned the tablet around and slid it to the edge of the desk, the screen facing Black Noir.
“Queens, 42nd block, that high-rise apartment building.
Remember this face.”
Madelyn’s voice returned to its usual elegant, controlling coldness.
She stared at Black Noir’s expressionless black mask and delivered her order.
“I want to know what the hell he’s up to.
Find out his background, his motives, and exactly what methods he used to bewitch our prime asset.”
Black Noir stood silently in place, without nodding or making a sound, his eyes merely lingering on the photo on the screen for two seconds.
“Don’t alert Joanne,” Madelyn raised her coffee cup, concealing the murderous intent in her eyes.
“Once you’ve cleared up the situation, if this mouse really has some ulterior motive or poses any threat to Vought…”
She set the coffee cup down with a heavy thud.
“Clean it up.
I don’t want to see any negative press about this apartment in tomorrow morning’s news.”
Black Noir tilted his head slightly—a gesture of acknowledgement.
Then, just as he had come, he dissolved silently back into the shadows of the hallway.