Russia.
Inside an abandoned safe house.
As Pero, Homelander, and Soldier Boy left one after another, the suffocating pressure, like gods clashing, finally dissipated.
The remaining members of The Boys exchanged looks, unsure how to react for a moment.
"Fuck!" Billy Butcher was the first to break the silence, kicking over a nearby table that had survived.
He let out an angry roar. "Our target... just disappeared like that?!"
"What else can we do? We can't exactly chase after them, can we?" Hughie lowered the phone he had just used to call Starlight and looked around the wrecked room.
His face was filled with lingering fear and helplessness. "Those two guys... especially the one in the black robe, they're not remotely people we can handle."
"Kimiko!" Frenchie didn't join their discussion. He rushed straight to Kimiko's side.
Looking at her pale face and faint breathing, he tenderly wiped the blood off her face. "She's badly hurt! Her wounds haven't healed at all, and she's still bleeding!"
"Her healing ability... seems to be gone!"
"Tch."
Butcher clicked his tongue in irritation, pulled his phone from his pocket, and called Mallory.
"I need somewhere safe and clean that can treat serious injuries, in Russia. Now!"
After getting an address from Mallory, Butcher wasted no more words and quickly led the others away from the scene of trouble.
A battered van stopped outside an unremarkable-looking hospital in a small town.
Kimiko was rushed into the operating room.
Butcher stood in the hospital corridor, watching people in hospital gowns come and go, his brow furrowing ever deeper.
Although these people looked like patients, every one of them had physical abilities far beyond an ordinary person's.
He even saw a guy with one arm in a cast lift an oxygen cylinder weighing several hundred