“I need help.”
“Don’t tell Vought.”
Lynn looked at the two brief encrypted messages on his phone screen, his expression remaining entirely unreadable.
This was practically an inevitable outcome.
Ever since Queen Maeve said, “Don’t let her turn into the next me,” Lynn knew that the stubborn blonde girl would come looking for him before long.
He didn’t reply right away.
Inside Vought Tower, any impulsive, unconsidered reaction could lead to total ruin.
First, he switched his phone to airplane mode, severing all network connections.
Then he closed his eyes, concentrated, and pushed his newly enhanced Super Hearing to its absolute limit.
Outside his office, the steady footsteps and heartbeats of the security personnel in the hallway.
In the ceiling’s ventilation ducts, the faint rush of airflow.
On the other side of the wall, Ashley in her office, muttering curses under her breath because the new season’s merchandise sales hadn’t met projections.
No unusual bugging devices.
No deliberately suppressed breathing.
Once he confirmed the surface-level safety of his immediate environment, he switched his phone back on and sent two words in reply:
“Location.”
Before long, a set of coordinates came back.
The Seven Tower, Forty-Seventh Floor, Old Chapel.
A clever choice, and a deeply ironic one.
It had originally been a set built by Vought International to shoot a religious film titled *Children of God*.
After the movie flopped at the box office, the location was completely abandoned.
A forgotten place symbolizing false faith had, ironically, become the least monitored corner in the entire building.
Lynn deleted all communication records, stepped out of his office as he usually did, and took the elevator up to the forty-seventh floor.
Pushing open the dust-covered oak doors, a wave of stale air hit his face.
The chapel was deserted.
On a massive stained-glass window was a depiction of Homelander spreading his arms, descending like a god.
Sunlight filtered through the glass, casting a mottled, bizarre mosaic of light and shadow across the floor.
Starlight stood right in that patch of light.
She had swapped her revealing uniform for civilian clothes, looking like an ordinary, somewhat anxious girl next door.
“You came.” Seeing Lynn, she visibly breathed a sigh of relief.
“You’d better have a good reason,” Lynn said calmly.
“Otherwise, this little private rendezvous will end up as an ‘Anomalous Contact Report’ sitting on Ashley’s desk before long.”
Starlight was startled by his directness, but she gathered her courage to explain her predicament anyway.
Lynn nodded.
“I figured as much. After you turned down the crude ads they lined up, they need a way to reshape you into an obedient, wholesome role model that fits their brand.”
“It’s worse than that.” Starlight clenched her fists, her voice trembling with a hint of humiliation.
“They… they’re having The Deep attend too.”
Lynn’s eyes didn’t flicker.
“They want us to put on a show of ‘team reconciliation’ in front of the press.” Starlight’s lips turned pale with anger.
“They want everyone to see that I’ve forgiven him—that we’re still a happy, united team.”
“To me, that’s an insult.”
She raised her head, her bright eyes filled with conflict and a final flicker of hope.
“Dr. Lynn, I know you hold sway over Homelander. You must have a way to help me refuse, right? I can’t accept this setup. I just can’t!”
She was clinging to Lynn as her last lifeline.
Yet Lynn’s response was like a bucket of ice water, dousing every last spark of her hope.
“You can’t refuse.”
Starlight froze, unable to believe what she was hearing.
“Who do you think you are?” Lynn’s tone was calm to the point of cruelty.
“You’re just a rookie who signed her life away. In the face of Vought’s legal and PR machinery, your little rebellion is nothing more than a joke.”
“If you adamantly refuse today, they have a hundred ways to shut you down. They’ll trigger the breach-of-contract clauses in your agreement and crush you under astronomical debt. They’ll leak smear stories to turn you from a rising star into an ungrateful, diva lunatic. They could even make you ‘accidentally’ disappear from the face of the Earth, then roll out the next, far more compliant ‘Starlight’.”
“So, you can’t refuse.”
Starlight’s face drained of color.
She took a step back, her eyes brimming with disappointment and a trace of betrayed fury.
“So… you’re with them,” she muttered softly.
“You’re just teaching me to compromise too. Teaching me to be like Maeve, using alcohol and numbness to trick myself.”
“No.” Lynn shook his head.
“I’m not teaching you to compromise.”
“I’m teaching you how to fight.”
He took a step forward, stepping directly into the shadow cast by Homelander’s glass likeness, and met Starlight’s gaze.
“You’re looking at this all wrong. Your enemy isn’t this disgusting promo event. Your enemy is Vought International—the system that created it. Throwing yourself directly against them is the stupidest thing you could do.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?” Starlight’s voice cracked, tears brimming.
“Don’t turn down the event.” A cold curve tugged at the corner of Lynn’s mouth.
“Accept it. And perform it even more ‘perfectly’ than they expect.”
“In front of the media, play the lost lamb who was saved by Vought and is genuinely repentant. Thank Vought, thank The Seven, and even thank The Deep—thank him for helping you ‘grow’.”
Starlight stared in sheer disbelief, wondering if Lynn had lost his mind.
“And then?” Lynn lowered his voice, carrying a subtle thread of persuasion.
“When everyone believes you’ve been thoroughly broken, that you’ve turned into the exact eye-candy mouthpiece they wanted… that’s when you take the thing they least want the world to see and smash it right in front of their faces.” Visit novelping(.)com for the full chapter.
“That is a real counterattack. Striking a fatal blow on the grandest stage they built for you.”
Starlight fell silent.
She hated the idea.
It was full of scheming and deceit, violating every lesson about heroism she had been taught since childhood.
Yet her reason told her Lynn was right.
It was the only path that offered a chance of success.
“I… I still don’t get it,” Starlight said softly.
“Whose side are you actually on?”
Lynn looked into her eyes, which flickered between light and darkness, and offered his answer:
“I’m on the side that stays alive long enough to strike back.”
Those words silenced Starlight completely.
After a long pause, as if finally reaching a decision, she nodded.
“How can I trust you?”
“You don’t need to trust me,” Lynn said.
“You only need to trust that we share a common enemy.”
Before leaving the chapel, Starlight hesitated for a moment before dropping a name.
“Recently, a guy named Hughie reached out to me. He said he could help me, that he’s fighting Vought too.”
Lynn’s heart stirred.
The Boys’ storyline had officially begun.
“Stay away from him,” Lynn said sternly.
“Don’t blindly trust any ‘good guy’ who suddenly pops up out of nowhere.”
“Why?”
“Because in this world,” Lynn said, looking straight at her, word by word, “sometimes the ‘good guys’ can drag you into hell faster than the bad guys.”
***
After seeing Starlight off, Lynn stood alone in the empty chapel for a long time.
It wasn’t until the phone in his pocket vibrated again that he snapped out of his thoughts.
He pulled out his phone.
A new message illuminated the screen.
Still from an unlisted, encrypted number.
Still written in that suffocatingly familiar tone.
It was Homelander.
“You talked to her for a long time just now.”
“Does she need you… more than I do?”