At lunchtime, a figure sat down across from him.
Miles raised his head, his chopsticks pausing in mid-air.
Starlight.
Not the radiant Starlight in her super-suit on TV.
She wore a plain white T-shirt and jeans, her hair casually tied back in a ponytail, without a drop of makeup.
She looked just like an ordinary girl next door—if the girl next door happened to be a member of The Seven.
Carrying a salad tray, she set it on the table and sat down across from him.
“Mind if I join you?”
Miles glanced around.
The cafeteria was packed, but no one was paying attention to them.
Vought employees were long accustomed to heroes walking around.
“Not at all.”
Starlight picked up her fork and stabbed a piece of lettuce, but didn’t eat it.
She kept her head down, remaining silent for a few seconds.
Then she said, “You went to New Jersey yesterday.”
Miles’s heart tightened violently.
But his expression didn’t change.
“…How do you know that?”
“Vought’s internal system logged your location. When you requested time off, you used the company portal, and the backend tracked your GPS.”
Miles’s chopsticks hovered in mid-air.
His mind turned rapidly—Batman’s analytical abilities automatically kicked in.
Starlight could see his location logs, which meant she had administrative system access.
It wasn’t surprising for a member of The Seven to have access, but what was strange was that she came to tell him herself.
Starlight raised her head and looked at him.
“Don’t be nervous. I deleted it for you.”
Miles stared at her without speaking.
“I checked the logs this morning. Your name is on Internal Affairs’ surveillance list,” Starlight said, her voice dropped very low.
“I don’t know what you went to New Jersey for, but I do know—if you’re being targeted by Internal Affairs, you’d better not give them anything to hold against you.”
“Why are you helping me?”
Starlight set her fork down and looked out the window.
Afternoon sunlight streamed through the glass curtain wall, casting shadows across her face.
Her eyelashes fluttered slightly in the light.
“Because I can tell you’re different from them.”
Miles didn’t answer.
He looked down at the food in his bowl.
The rice grains were distinct, gleaming white under the fluorescent lights.
He remembered Marcus’s burn scar on the back of his hand in the auto repair shop in New Jersey yesterday.
He remembered the yellowed letter Mrs.
He remembered Homelander’s empty, vacant eyes.
He picked up a piece of braised pork, put it in his mouth, and chewed twice.
The meat was a little cold, the fat congealing on his tongue with a sickening richness.
“Before I joined The Seven, I thought I was here to be a hero.” The corner of Starlight’s mouth twitched—not a smile, but self-derision.
“You know… I wanted to be a hero ever since I was little. My mom told me super powers were a gift from God to protect others.”
She turned her head and looked at Miles.
“When I was twelve, I discovered I could emit light for the first time. My mom was thrilled. She held me and cried for a long time. She said, ‘Annie, you can help so many people from now on.'”
Miles listened without interrupting.
“Later, Vought’s people found me. They said I was a natural, that I’d become a member of The Seven, that I’d be respected like Maeve.” Starlight’s eyes fell back to the tabletop, her voice dropping lower and lower.
“I believed them. I moved to New York, signed the contract, took the promotional photos.”
She picked up her fork and stabbed another piece of lettuce, still not eating it.
“Only after I arrived did I realize… I was just a mascot used to make money. Shooting commercials, attending events, endorsing Vought products. When people actually needed me, they wouldn’t let me go. They were afraid I’d get hurt, afraid it’d ruin my image, afraid it’d affect ratings.”
Miles listened in silence.
Someone in the cafeteria was laughing, and the clatter of trays echoed from a distance.
Everything seemed so normal, so very normal.
He stared down at the rice in his bowl.
The sauce from the braised pork had congealed into a thin film over the surface.
He poked it with his chopsticks, breaking the film, letting the sauce soak into the rice.
He suddenly felt a surge of nausea.
Not because of the food, but because of this place.
Every single person in this building was laughing, pretending everything was fine.
But under the table, everyone’s hands were stained—The Deep’s hand resting on a female intern’s waist, A-Train’s hand gripping his monitoring bracelet, Homelander’s hand wrapped around everyone’s throat.
“I have to do whatever Homelander tells me to do,” Starlight’s voice dropped even lower, almost imperceptible.
“Otherwise he’ll…”
She didn’t finish.
But Miles knew what that unfinished sentence was.
He had seen Homelander’s eyes.
He knew what that “otherwise” meant.
He remembered A-Train’s white-knuckled grip on his monitoring bracelet when he was publicly humiliated during the morning meeting.
He remembered the yellowed letter in Mrs.
Park’s tin box—”Don’t trust Vought.” He remembered the burn scar on Marcus’s hand.
He set down his chopsticks.
“What if I could help you?”
Starlight froze.
“…What?”
Starlight looked at him.
There was light in those eyes—not stage lights, but real light.
Like a drowning person suddenly catching sight of a rope.
“How could you help?”
Miles said, “I have my ways.”
Starlight stared at him for a long time.
So long that Miles thought he had said something wrong.
So long that the noises in the cafeteria grew blurred, as if filtered through water.
Then she lowered her head and resumed eating her salad.
“Okay.”
Just one word.
But that word carried a kind of—Miles couldn’t quite describe it—something like trust.
As if she had just placed a part of herself into the hands of an intern she had known for less than a month.
The two finished their lunch in silence.
Miles scooped the last bite of rice into his mouth and chewed slowly.
He wondered whether he could actually keep the promise he had just made.
Starlight stood up and picked up her tray.
“By the way.”
Miles raised his head.
“I cleared your location records. But Internal Affairs won’t just check location logs. Be careful.”
“Thanks.”
Starlight gave him a look, turned, and walked away.
After a few steps, she looked back over her shoulder.
That look—it wasn’t the way a hero looked at a civilian, nor the way a member of The Seven looked at an intern.
It was the way one human looked at another.
In it, there was hope.
Miles lowered his head and continued eating.
The corner of his mouth curled up slightly.
He remembered what Starlight had just said—”Every single person in this building is laughing, but under the table, everyone’s hands are stained.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Except the stains on his hands were different from theirs.
He reached up and touched his ear—the rice-grain-sized bug was still inside his ear canal.
Butcher’s voice came through the earpiece.
“Did you plant the bug?”
In a voice only he could hear, Miles said, “It’s planted.”
“Don’t get too close to Starlight.”
Miles picked up a piece of braised pork, popped it into his mouth, and chewed twice.
“Too late!”