As Homelander became a shrinking dot on the horizon, a different kind of energy coursed through my broken body. The pain was a distant signal, the damage merely data. The echoes in my head, usually a chaotic chorus, were now a single, focused hum of purpose. We had survived the dragon's wrath. Now, we plundered its hoard.
Back in the city, the scene was one of controlled pandemonium. Homelander had vaporized Butcher's missile miles from Vought Tower, but the spectacle—a "foreign attack" thwarted by their hero—had sent the media into a frenzy and locked down security protocols across the city. It was the perfect smokescreen.
Inside Vought Tower, Maeve moved. Dressed in the uniform of Noir's security detail, her face obscured by a helmet, she was just another cog in the machine. She rode the private elevator to the penthouse antechamber, her heart a steady, controlled drumbeat. In her palm was a device no bigger than a thumb-drive, a marvel of Frenchie's ingenuity. It contained the stolen biometric data: a high-resolution image of Homelander's retina captured from a hundred different media sources stitched together by an AI, a palm-print lifted from a wine glass he'd used at a charity gala and preserved in Vought's own evidence lockup (courtesy of Mallory's cold pragmatism), and a crystal-clear audio clip of him saying "I am home," extracted from the security footage of his last entrance.
She pressed the device against the scanner. A laser mapped the fabricated retina. A micro-emitter recreated the unique electrical conductivity of his palm. A speaker played the passphrase.
For a heart-stopping second, nothing happened. Then, with a soft, hydraulic hiss, the three-foot-thick tungsten-alloy door slid open.
The clock started. Five minutes.
Maeve slipped inside, the door sealing behind her. She was in the dragon's lair.