"Lucy!!!"
When Lucian jumped out of the helicopter, this was the scene he saw.
The Deep lay sprawled over Lucy, both hands clutching the edges of the enormous wound the ship's bow had torn open.
Lucy had stopped moving.
"She... she's still breathing..." The Deep pressed his face against the whale's skin, trembling all over. "She's alive, she's still..."
Homelander landed on the beach. Suppressing his impatience, he walked over to The Deep and patted his shoulder.
"Pull yourself together. Tell me, where did they go?"
The Deep looked up, his face smeared with tears and snot. "Homelander, you're here. Lucy, she..."
Homelander fought down the urge to burn this useless idiot and that stupid whale to ashes with his heat vision and asked again.
The Deep finally raised his head between sobs and pointed somewhere along the shore. "The sewer... they went into the storm drain..."
Homelander looked in the direction he pointed. Ignoring The Deep, he led Lucian and the others into the storm drain.
Lucian followed the group, glancing at The Deep out of the corner of his eye. He was still draped over the whale's corpse, bawling his eyes out as though his wife had died.
To fit in with the others, Lucian had taken his coat off back at his apartment in Vought Tower. He was now wearing his close-fitting black-and-gold suit.
Annie walked beside Lucian, and the two exchanged a very brief glance.
Black Noir brought up the rear, like a wound-up humanoid weapon.
A tangled network of tunnels stretched out before them. The main tunnel was over three meters in diameter, with branches leading off in different directions every fifty meters.
"I suggest we split up. It'll be more efficient," Lucian said calmly, breaking the silence.
Homelander glanced over the maze of tunnels