Coherent Electronics. TV section. A wall of screens all running the same footage.
Billy Butcher stood in front of them, arms folded, watching it loop again—red beams, Deep hitting the ground, chaos breaking clean and fast.
"Bleedin’ hell," he muttered, eyes still on the screen. "This cunt’s got range."
Behind the counter, Hughie wasn’t watching anything. His hands rested near the register, but his focus wasn’t there. Not on the customers, not on the noise, not even on the footage playing five feet away. Just... gone.
Butcher let the clip run again.
Then he glanced sideways at Hughie.
That was the real reason he was here.
The guy had watched his girlfriend get erased in front of him. One second she’d been talking, the next there was nothing left to hold onto. A-Train hadn’t even slowed down.
Vought cleaned it up before anyone could process what they’d seen—lawyers, statements, the usual machinery. No consequences. No accountability. Just the quiet expectation that people like Hughie would swallow it and keep moving.
Butcher knew that look. The hollowed-out kind of shock that didn’t fade, just settled deeper. He knew what it turned into when it didn’t have somewhere to go.
Useful, if you pointed it right.
Get Hughie into Vought Tower. Plant the bug. Simple job on paper. All it needed was a push in the right direction.
Butcher looked back at the screens.
Same footage. Clean hits. No hesitation. Gone before it could turn messy. Homelander showing up after.
A faint curve touched his mouth.
Then the door opened.
Mark stepped inside, pulling in a breath of cool air without thinking. This had become a habit—escaping the heat by stepping into any store just to stand in the AC for a while.
He made it two steps in.
Then he saw them.
Butcher. Hughie.
His body reacted before the thought finished forming.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Butcher’s attention shifted, quick and deliberate. He looked Mark over once, head to toe, taking in details without bothering to hide it.
Nope. Not dealing with that.
Mark met his eyes for a second, just enough not to look suspicious, then broke it.
He turned and walked straight back out.
Butcher wasn’t someone you got involved with and walked away from clean. Starts with a goal, a line in the sand—then the line moves, and keeps moving, until people stop being people and start being tools.
Not worth it.
He’d find another place with AC. He still had ten dollars—enough for a hot dog and a drink—and spend some time under shade instead of staying in this place.
***
Mark got half a block away before the feeling hit him.
He glanced back.
Butcher. On the sidewalk. Same pace. Same direction. Not rushing, not hiding it either.
Is this guy following me.
Mark turned back around and picked up his pace. Then faster.
Then he was running, cutting through a side street, taking a left, a right, doubling back, weaving through foot traffic for a solid ten minutes before ducking into an alley and pressing his back against the wall, hands on his knees, breathing hard.
He waited.
Nothing.
"Good," he muttered between breaths. "Lost him."
"Oi."
Mark’s head snapped up.
Butcher was standing at the entrance of the alley, hands in his jacket pockets, completely unbothered. The alley backed directly onto the side of the electronics store. Mark had run a wide circle and come back to exactly where he started.
Butcher looked at him with a quiet smile.
"Ran halfway round the bleedin’ city," he said, "and ended up right back where ya started, didn’t ya, mate."
Mark’s mouth twitched.
"Why the hell are you following me?" he asked.
Butcher didn’t answer. He just pulled out his phone, pointed it at Mark, and took a photo.
Mark stared at him. "What are you—"
"Need your help, mate," Butcher said, pocketing the phone. "And if you don’t feel like it, that photo goes everywhere."
"I’m a beggar," Mark said flatly. "Why would anyone on social media care about me?"
Butcher looked at him for a moment. Then his eyes dropped, doing that same top to bottom assessment from the shop, slower this time.
"Can’t fool me like you do them normal cunts out there," he said. "That bullet hole in your chest area—you washed the blood off but the tear in the fabric’s still there. And your trousers." He tilted his head slightly. "Missed a blood mark. Still got it stuck in the crease."
Mark didn’t move.
"Or shall I keep going," Butcher said, "and get to the part where you’re the one who put The Deep on the ground this morning."
Mark stood there in silence.
This guy found all of that from one look. One look in a shop and ten seconds in an alley.
Mark’s eyes brightened.
Butcher didn’t flinch. Didn’t step back. Just raised one finger.
"Ah ah ah," he said. "Already sent your image to my mate. I don’t come back, or something happens to me—" he tilted his head, "—it goes everywhere. Every outlet. Every feed. You’ll have every supe in the city on your arse before dinner, mate."
Mark’s eyes dimmed slowly.
He stood there, jaw tight, staring at Butcher, running through the options and finding all of them bad.
Butcher smiled slightly.
"Now then," he said, rolling his shoulders, completely relaxed. "Way I see it, you’ve got a bone to pick with The Seven. I’ve got a bone to pick with The Seven." He spread his hands. "Enemy of my enemy and all that. So whaddya say. Why can’t we be mates?"
Mark looked at him for a long moment.
"What if I don’t care?" he said, bluffing, even though he absolutely, very much, completely cared about his identity leaking.
Butcher looked at him.
"If you didn’t care about your identity you wouldn’t have worn the mask this morning," he said. "Can’t fool me, mate."
*****
A/N: Advanced Chapters are available on Patreon.
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