The signal came not as a word, but as a scream.
It was a psychic shriek, raw and unfiltered, that lanced through the careful mental firewall I'd constructed around the ghost network. It was Kala. And the signal wasn't "Echo." It was a blast of pure, undiluted terror, carrying with it the strobing image of a Vought security badge and the cold, sterile scent of a medical bay.
They know.
The thought was a ice pick in my brain. I was in my apartment, the pre-dawn city a tapestry of muted lights below. The calm shattered in an instant. Graviton's cold analysis instantly mapped the fastest route to her last known location—her small apartment in a nondescript mid-town building. Ember's rage was a volcano demanding eruption. But it was the Hypnotist's voice that cut through the chaos with chilling clarity.
This is not a retrieval. It is a test. They have taken the weakest member of the herd to see if the predator will reveal itself. We must be a ghost, not a savior.
He was right. Charging in was what they expected. It would confirm the network's existence and paint a target on every other member. But I couldn't leave her. The very foundation of our pact was protection. To abandon her was to murder the network myself.
I had to be smarter than Homelander. I had to be more ruthless than Stan Edgar.
I closed my eyes, becoming a conduit. I didn't reach for Kala; her mind was a storm of panic, impossible to reason with. Instead, I pulsed a single, urgent command through the network, a general alert to the other five members. Containment breach. Initiate Protocol Silence. No signals. No movement.
Then, I focused on Marcus. His mind was a gritty, determined buzz in a shitty bar he used as an office.
They have Kala, I sent, the thought sharp and clean.
I felt his jolt of fear, followed by a surge of grim resolve. Where?
*Vought Medical, sub-level 2, interrogation suite 4. They're using her to get to us. We can't go in.*
So we let them break her? His mental voice was thick with disgust.
No, I replied, a dangerous, cold plan forming. We give them a different monster to hunt.
I showed him the plan in a flash of shared thought. It was a bluff of astronomical proportions, a piece of theatrical misdirection that relied on Vought's own paranoia.
Thirty minutes later, a different kind of alarm blared through Vought Tower. This one wasn't for a rogue Supe. It was a financial and data security alert. A complex, multi-vector cyber-attack was simultaneously targeting the offshore accounts of three high-level Vought executives and attempting to breach the personnel files of Homelander's personal security detail.
The attack was a ghost, a masterpiece of Frenchie's coding, launched through a series of anonymized servers Butcher had provided. It was all noise, no substance—a brilliant, distracting fireworks display. But to the paranoid minds in Vought security, it looked like a coordinated strike aimed at their money and their secrets. It looked like Butcher.
While the digital sirens wailed, I moved. Not toward Medical, but toward the heart of the beast: Stan Edgar's office. I didn't request an audience. I simply appeared at his door, my expression one of cold fury.
"Edgar," I said, my voice cutting through the calm of his anteroom. "We need to talk. Now."
His assistant sputtered, but Edgar's voice, flat and unimpressed, came through the intercom. "Let him in."
I entered. Edgar was at his desk, his posture unchanged, but his eyes were sharp, taking in my demeanor.
"I assume this is about the cyber-attack," he said.
"The attack is a feint," I stated, planting my hands on his desk. "Butcher's signature is a red herring. This is about the mole."
His eyebrow twitched almost imperceptibly. "Mole?"
"The one you've been hunting. The one who's been feeding information to my… detractors." I let the lie hang in the air, layered with just enough psychic suggestion to feel plausible. "They've gotten sloppy. The attack is a cover to exfiltrate the mole. They've compromised a low-level asset in Medical to make it look like an interrogation, a distraction while they get their real prize out."
I was reframing the narrative. Kala wasn't a target; she was disposable camouflage. The real threat was a high-level traitor escaping in the chaos.
Edgar's gaze was a scalpel. He didn't believe me, not entirely. But he couldn't afford to disbelieve me either. The cost of ignoring a potential mole in his inner circle was far greater than the cost of investigating a broken psychic.
He picked up his phone. "Security. The situation in Medical sub-level 2. Stand down. Isolate the subject, but cease all interrogation. I want a full audit of all level-7 personnel movements for the last 48 hours. Now."
He hung up and looked at me. "This is a fascinating theory. If you're wrong, you've wasted significant resources. If you're right…" He didn't finish the sentence. The threat was clear.
"I'm not wrong," I said, and turned to leave, my heart hammering. The bluff was called. Now, we waited.
An hour later, Marcus's mental signal came, faint with relief. They've put her in isolation. No more questions. Just… holding her.
It was a stay of execution, not a pardon. But it was enough. Kala was safe for now. The network had held. We had faced our first test and, through lies and misdirection, we had won.
But as I returned to my apartment, the taste of victory was ash in my mouth. I had saved Kala by inventing a more tempting target for Vought's paranoia. I had used the very tools of manipulation I was fighting against.
The Hypnotist's voice was a smug whisper in the silence. You see? Truth is a clumsy weapon. A well-placed lie is a scalpel. You are learning.
I had protected my people. But I had also taken another step down the path of becoming the kind of monster that could look Stan Edgar in the eye and sell him a beautifully crafted lie without flinching.
The network was safe. But its architect was becoming something he no longer recognized.