Slipping Away

Her clothes slipped down, exposing an arm that had not been washed in a long time.

It was a little disgusting.

Her arm was a bloody mess. The earlier gunfire seemed to have injured her.

The wound was slowly closing, but the girl apparently thought it was healing too slowly. Unconcerned about infection, she reached into it.

She pulled a bullet out of her flesh.

With nothing left to impede her regeneration, new tissue grew across the wound until it gradually returned to normal.

Not even a scar remained.

Ryan watched. It really was a healing ability.

Healing abilities had always been linked to immortality. The girl before him undoubtedly had enormous research value.

She was a fortune in human form.

Frenchie had told Ryan earlier that the girl had been kept behind bars. Now that he had seen her...

Vought International had locked her up here. Clearly, they had recognized her value too.

In the basement, the girl was still digging out bullets.

She pulled them out one by one and tossed them onto the floor.

The action kept repeating, but it served another purpose.

Just as praying was not the only thing a nun did on her knees, healing was not the only reason the girl was digging out bullets.

She kept an eye on Ryan, waiting for the bullets rolling across the floor to catch his attention.

Then she sprang up and abruptly broke into a run.

Unfortunately, she had barely stepped forward with her left foot when someone tripped her right.

With a cry, the girl landed face-first.

She lay there without moving.

Ryan withdrew his foot and nudged the girl playing dead on the floor until she rolled over.

She began gesturing again.

She drew circles, then raised her middle finger. Who knew what she was trying to say?

Unable to communicate with her, Ryan stayed silent.

Time passed in silence.

Before long, Frenchie and Hughie had turned the basement upside down.

They returned to Ryan empty-handed.

"All we found were empty tubes of Compound V. There's some residue inside."

Ryan had known that from the start. With his X-Ray Vision, he could see what was in the basement at a glance.

He had not needed to search to know there was no Compound V.

Now the girl was the problem for all three of them.

She had killed the three men in the basement. Vought International would never let her go.

Frenchie was the first to suggest a solution.

"I'll look after her. Since she was here, she probably knows something."

Hughie had no objection. He turned to Ryan, who was frowning.

Ryan was furious.

A-Train had only just introduced him to this place, and now the girl had wiped it out. Where was he supposed to get his Compound V?

Without Compound V, how was he supposed to strengthen his powers?

The more he thought about it, the angrier he got, so Ryan stopped thinking about it altogether.

He knew that even if he let the matter drop, A-Train would not spare the girl once he learned what had happened here.

A-Train, who always wore those goggles, would show no mercy once he made his move.

The way he had run into Hughie's girlfriend without a shred of guilt showed that he did not care about other people's lives.

Against A-Train, the girl's healing ability would only mean she got smashed to pieces a few more times.

Ryan no longer cared about any of that. He only wanted to find A-Train again and ask where else he could get Compound V.

As for Frenchie's offer, he gave it no response.

Ryan headed out of the basement without answering Frenchie. Seeing that Ryan had not objected, Frenchie did not press him.

He hurried over to the girl, doing his best to appear gentle.

"Let's go. I won't hurt you."

Gentleness often worked. The girl nodded hesitantly, then glanced at Ryan's retreating back.

She got up from the floor and straightened her hair.

Her face was smudged with dirt. Frenchie watched her every move.

And the longer he watched, the more he realized it.

If she cleaned up, she would be the kind of woman people turned for a second look at.

Hoping his gentle manner might soften her icy expression, he held out a hand.

"You still look weak. Need a hand?"

Hughie stood off to the side, stunned. Frenchie was fawning over her like a completely different person.

When Hughie and Frenchie were together, their conversations were usually full of gutter-level insults.

Now Frenchie was as gentle as could be.

Thinking that love really was blind, Hughie looked at the girl.

She seemed moved by Frenchie's kindness too. After a moment's hesitation, she reached out.

And sent Frenchie flying with one blow.

Then she charged for the exit.

Clearly, she still intended to escape.

Hughie stared blankly as it happened. He walked over to the wall and helped Frenchie up.

"You okay?"

"I feel empty inside."

"..."

At the basement exit, the girl sprinted eagerly. It had been a long time since she had seen sunlight.

She missed the warmth of the sun terribly.

The thought quickened her steps. Her legs moved with speed and agility.

Before long, she reached the alley outside the basement.

Compared with the stale air below,

even the air out here, with its whiff of dead rats, smelled fresher.

She kept running toward the end of the alley.

Then something tripped her.

She cried out.

Her face hit the ground first. Rubbing her aching cheek, she pushed her upper body up as if doing a push-up.

There was the man she had met earlier, looking down at her helplessly.

He was muttering to himself.

"Was Frenchie supposed to watch her or help her escape?"

That baffled man was Ryan. He had stopped when he heard the commotion behind him.

And there was the girl, fleeing.

He had no choice but to trip her again, leaving her sprawled on the ground kissing concrete.

In the shadowed alley, Ryan considered what to do with her.

She had killed two people without blinking. She was extremely dangerous.

If he let someone like her loose on the streets, innocent people might get hurt.

He had wanted to take the easy way out and leave her in Frenchie's care.

Now it was clear Frenchie could not keep her under control.

He would have to treat her like pickled cabbage: put her away somewhere for safekeeping.

The sky darkened, leaving little light in the alley.

The girl watched in terror as Ryan approached, step by step.

In the end, no red liquid stained the alley walls.

Ryan took off from the alley carrying the girl.

As the ground dropped farther away, she covered her eyes in fear.

The two of them climbed higher and higher.

Ryan had decided what to do with her. Long ago, Madelyn had arranged a villa for him outside the city.

He could keep the girl there for now. To stop her from running off, he could first try talking to her.

Language was the only obstacle. Ryan figured he could make do with a translation app.

High in the sky, the girl opened her eyes.

Clouds drifted across the overcast sky. It looked ready to rain at any moment.

She had never seen a view like this from the air. Being carried was uncomfortable, but the unfamiliar perspective made her curious.

She was also afraid Ryan might let her slip from his grasp, so she stayed exceptionally quiet.

Ryan noticed. Seeing that she had stopped talking and gesturing, he shook her a little to check whether she was dead.

The moment he did, she jolted like a sardine in a shaken tin and tried to cling to him like a magnet.

Perhaps she felt safer that way.

Unfortunately for her, Ryan found her filthy and held her well away from himself.

After being shaken, the girl lost all interest in the view.

She looked down. The ground was so far away that she felt afraid of heights.

She looked straight ahead. A cold wind blew into her face from the distance.

She felt as if she might freeze to death. She desperately wanted to get down.

The girl wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.

Their flight ended at a small villa outside the city.

In this area, vagrants often occupied houses that had stood empty for too long, making things difficult for their owners.

Ryan landed and used his X-Ray Vision to inspect the villa's interior.

The place was just as empty as it had been when he first came here.

Once on the ground, Ryan set the girl down to one side and motioned for her to follow.

She looked at her legs, then up at the sky.

She figured she could not outrun someone who could fly.

So she followed obediently.

Inside, Ryan ran hot water so she could bathe, then found a couple of shirts in the house.

When the girl came out of the bathroom, she found a clean shirt waiting beside the door.

She put it on and saw Ryan fiddling with his phone.

His expression said, Finally, it's downloaded.

Ryan looked at his phone. He had been trying to download a translation app.

The connection here was terrible, creeping along at one kilobyte at a time.

With no other choice, he had flipped through a dictionary and relied on his extraordinary Supe memory.

He had forced himself to memorize some of the girl's words. Comparing them with the dictionary, he thought she was speaking a dialect from Cambodia.

With the dictionary, he could just about communicate with her.

"Sit there."

Ryan pointed to the sofa beside him and looked at the freshly bathed girl in a white shirt.

The words seemed to work. The girl sat down on the sofa, looking dazed.

At last, she spoke.

"Asshole."

It was not exactly friendly, but Ryan did not mind.

He asked a few simple questions about who she was and where she came from, and learned that Vought International had been behind it all.

The girl said her name was Kimiko. War had ravaged her home, and she had been forced to become a soldier.

After being driven from place to place, she had been captured by Vought International and put in the basement.

Vought International had a plan, and Kimiko told him everything.

She cleared her throat and began.

Where there were people, there was justice. But just as light cast a shadow, evil was the other side of justice.

Vought International's Supes had grown too powerful. Many people around the world no longer saw them as heroes, but as threats.

So Vought International had begun creating supervillains.

The two sides would keep each other in check.

The world would never know that the heroes and villains fighting to the death in the name of peace all answered to Vought International.

Kimiko had been given Compound V in the basement, turning her from an ordinary person into a Supe.

After listening to Kimiko's account, Ryan understood what Vought International had been up to.

Supervillains.

If creating a Supe meant building a record of glorious deeds, then creating a supervillain meant building a record of ugly ones.

Vought International, which made money by selling justice and heroism, now seemed to want to profit from evil as well.

Justice was money. Evil was money, too.

On the sofa, Kimiko sat hugging her knees, her toes exposed.

"I miss home. I want to go back there."

"That's why you kept trying to escape."

Ryan asked her about it, but Kimiko only gave a vague answer about searching for her missing family.

As they talked, Ryan's phone rang. He motioned for Kimiko to be quiet before answering.

A-Train's furious voice came from the other end.

"The basement was attacked. Someone important escaped, and the Compound V you wanted is also..."

From the sound of it, A-Train had already discovered what had happened in the basement.

He was looking for someone now.

But Ryan only cared about the Compound V. He asked A-Train over the phone where else he could get it, and received a nervous reply.

"Homelander. If you want it, you'll have to ask him."