The next day, during the Crime Fighting Department's morning class.
The lecture hall was sparsely filled, the white fluorescent tubes illuminating everyone's weary faces with perfect clarity.
At the lectern, the specialist professor they had invited was explaining tracking and countertracking techniques, spittle flying.
"...Remember, the first thing an excellent tracker must learn is how to become part of the environment. You aren't tracking a person. You're tracking an area, a system. Your target is merely a moving variable within that system..."
Lucian sat in the front row, his back straight, typing rapidly on his laptop as he recorded the key points.
Within Godolkin University's curriculum, this knowledge might only have been intended to give future superheroes more talking points when facing the media.
But to him, these were practical survival skills.
How to hide himself, how to spot someone watching him, how to use an urban environment to create blind spots.
Every one of them might save his life at some point in the future.
He listened intently, while in a corner at the back of the classroom, a gaze barely left his back.
Cate rested her chin on one hand, her fingertips unconsciously stroking the smooth surface of her glove.
She paid little attention to the lecture.
Her thoughts were still caught on yesterday.
That sudden kiss, the oppressive air in the warehouse, Luke's twisted face, and that aura about Lucian that made her heart tremble, a mixture of destruction and stillness.
They had become accomplices.
Rather than frightening her, that realization gave her a strange sense of security.
Someone who could share her darkest secrets.
She watched Lucian's focused profile, watched his fingers, steady and strong.
He seemed different from everyone else.
When she came back to herself and saw her reflection in the window, she realized the corners of her lips had unconsciously curved upward.
She glanced at the empty seat.
Luke hadn't come today.
She could practically picture it: Godolkin's "Golden Boy" waking up in some unfamiliar room and finding himself stark naked, all because he couldn't control his own powers. The shock, shame, and fury on his face would surely be quite a sight.
At that thought, she couldn't hold back a quiet laugh.
The bell rang.
Lucian packed his things unhurriedly.
A pair of feet in combat boots stopped beside his desk.
He looked up. It was Cate.
"It's noon." Lucian zipped up his backpack and stood. "Want to grab lunch together?"
He didn't mention yesterday, or Luke.
It was as though none of it had happened.
Just an ordinary classmate, on an ordinary day, extending an ordinary invitation to lunch.
Cate paused, then nodded.
"Sure."
She liked this feeling.
Easy. Normal.
They found a restaurant not far from campus.
It was noisy, filled with the aroma of food and the sound of voices.
This time, Lucian didn't steer the conversation toward any heavy subjects.
They chatted about amusing things around campus, complained about the professor's never-changing teaching style, and even speculated with interest about what excuse Luke would use to explain things.
"I bet he'll say he single-handedly took down an underground crime ring last night, and the fighting was so intense that all his clothes burned off." Cate cut the steak on her plate, delivering her analysis with an air of seriousness.
Lucian took a sip of water.
"He'll stress that it was a 'secret mission,' so there's no footage."
His deadpan addition made Cate laugh, her shoulders trembling slightly.
"Yes, exactly! Then Andre will be the first to jump up and believe him, and he'll post on the campus network singing Golden Boy's praises for his fearless bravery."
Lucian watched the pure smile on her face. Trust often began with these inconsequential everyday moments.
Halfway through their meal, the television hanging in the corner of the restaurant abruptly cut away from the raucous talk show it had been playing.
The glaring red words "Breaking news" filled the screen.
A female anchor with a grave expression appeared.
"We have just received an urgent report that Transoceanic Airlines Flight 37, traveling from Paris to Chicago, has lost contact over the central Atlantic Ocean. According to unconfirmed sources, the flight may have been hijacked by terrorists."
The noise in the restaurant instantly subsided.
Everyone looked up at the screen.
"There are currently 123 passengers and eight crew members aboard. The military has dispatched F-16s to assist in the rescue. We'll be following this closely."
Lucian set down his fork.
Here it was.
His movement was slight, but Cate, sitting opposite him, still noticed his instantaneous change.
It was the way... a beast's muscles tensed the instant it caught the scent of blood.
Flight 37.
The Atlantic Ocean.
A hijacking.
These keywords instantly assembled into a complete puzzle in his mind.
This was the rescue operation Homelander and Queen Maeve had botched.
To Lucian, that meant one thing: the opportunity he had been waiting for had arrived.
To respond to the hijacking over the Atlantic Ocean, Vought had dispatched its two top combatants, Homelander and Maeve.
With them gone, the remaining Supes who could fight couldn't fly, and those who could fly couldn't fight as well as he could.
For the next few hours, the entire city would be more "undefended" against him than ever before.
And he happened to know a place: Mercy Hospital. Sponsored by Samaritan's Embrace, it secretly injected infants with Compound V transported in packaging for polio vaccines.
"Lucian?" Cate's voice pulled him from his thoughts. "What's wrong?"
Lucian raised his head, his expression already calm again.
"Nothing. I just feel a little sorry for those passengers."
He pulled out a napkin, wiped his mouth, and stood.
"I'm done. I've got something to do this afternoon, so I need to head out first."
Cate looked at him and opened her mouth, wanting to ask what he had to do, but swallowed the words before they left her lips.
She sensed an intense distance from him, as though the boy who had just been laughing and chatting with her had merely been an illusion.
The person before her was already consumed by some greater, more urgent objective.
"...Okay." In the end, she said only that one word.
Lucian nodded to her in farewell, then turned and strode out of the restaurant.
The wind chimes on the door jingled.
Cate sat alone, watching his retreating figure disappear into the crowd, an inexplicable emptiness settling in her heart.
Lucian didn't look back.
He crossed two streets, then slipped into a deserted back alley.
He leaned against the wall and confirmed there were no surveillance cameras or prying eyes around.
Then he took a dark gray hoodie from his backpack and changed into it, pulled an utterly ordinary blue surgical mask from his pocket, and put it on.
With the hood pulled low and the mask covering the lower half of his face, only his eyes remained visible.
It was the simplest disguise, but also the most effective. In a city now covered in surveillance cameras, people dressed like this were everywhere and wouldn't attract any particular attention.
He was ready.
He took a few running steps, pushed off hard, and sprang lightly into the air.
At the apex of his leap, the Thermonuclear Engine inside him roared to life.
He shot into the sky at a speed far beyond an ordinary person's imagination.
He climbed to the highest altitude he could reach and swept over New York's steel jungle.
A little over ten minutes later, Mercy Hospital's buildings appeared below him.
The hospital parking lot was full of cars, and people streamed through the main entrance. Everything looked no different from any ordinary city hospital.
He landed on the rooftop of an apartment building across from the hospital and suppressed every fluctuation of energy. Then he headed toward the hospital.
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