Lucian lay on his single dorm bed, staring at the familiar ceiling.
A pitch-black credit card flipped back and forth between his fingers. The card itself had no weight, but the authority it represented was immensely heavy.
Tonight's test results were within his expectations, but the process completely shattered the sense of security he had always held.
In the original series, Vought Executives and those glamorous superheroes appeared extremely arrogant and stupid. The few ordinary people of The Boys Team could stir up trouble right under Vought's nose with a little cleverness, and even infiltrate the highest-level research facility.
This God's-eye perspective cognition had given him a hidden sense of superiority.
Tonight, reality shattered that superiority.
From making his distress call to arriving at the gates of Godolkin University, only a short few dozen minutes passed.
Brink had already mobilized the highest-specification underground testing center, assembled top-tier research teams, and secretly checked all his archival data from childhood to the present.
A massive empire constructed by capital and absolute power, as long as it operated in earnest, had terrifyingly huge efficiency and energy.
What The Boys Team had faced in the past were all "products" pushed to the front stage. The gaze of the giant beast Vought had never looked straight at them.
Being able to pass smoothly this time relied entirely on the camouflage trait of the system's Copy ability, which catered to Brink's wild ambition for a "second Homelander."
Riding on the capitalist's greed, he barely managed to stabilize the situation.
Future actions required putting away that aloof contempt. Any tiny mistake would bring the ruthless crushing of this capital machine.
Lucian put the black card away into his inner pocket.
He closed his eyes, forcing himself into a deep sleep.
Manhattan, New York.
Inside a high-end, highly modern apartment, expensive hanging paintings were torn, and crystal chandeliers were shattered all over the floor.
The Female's cold corpse lay on the messy big bed in the bedroom, a bloody thin blanket casually draped over her body.
A-Train stood beside the bed, his hands frantically scratching at his scalp. The heavy breathing was exceptionally piercing in the quiet room.
His heart became a broken drum, bashing randomly in his chest cavity.
The pressure exerted by Homelander left him breathless.
If he failed to find those scumbags who killed Translucent within the specified time, his position in The Seven would be completely gone.
The few words The Female spat out before dying swirled in his mind.
Brit, white guy, Frenchie, black big guy.
Finding people in New York based on these few traits was no different from finding a specific grain of sand on a beach.
He had to get more substantial clues.
With red-rimmed eyes, A-Train began to ransack the apartment. Sofa cushions were torn open, wardrobes were smashed, and even the floorboards were violently ripped up.
He irritably kicked aside the shattered glass on the ground, his gaze sweeping over the bedside table.
A brown plush teddy bear sat quietly there, its glass eyeballs reflecting the neon lights outside the window.
That was a gift he had given The Female a few weeks ago, and also a nail he had specially planted to monitor this woman.
A-Train lunged forward in a single bound, hooked his hands around the teddy bear's head, and pulled hard!
Amidst flying cotton, a fingernail-sized miniature camera dropped out.
He plucked out the SD card inside and inserted it into an encrypted computer.
He played it at fast forward.
The progress bar dragged to a few hours ago. The screen went black, then shook violently, and the side profile of a thin, decadent man with a crew cut flashed across the lens in front of the camera.
A-Train smashed the keyboard hard, took a screenshot of this frame, and sent it directly to the dedicated line of Vought Security.
"Get me on this! Use highest authority!"
Twelve minutes later, Vought's massive data processing center gave feedback.
[Target: Serge, code name Frenchie.]
The attachment listed all his social network connections, as well as three hiding spots with extremely high probabilities.
Ranked first was an abandoned slaughterhouse on the edge of Brooklyn.
A-Train looked at the address on the screen, pulled a cruel arc, and immediately dialed Homelander's private line.
Less than a minute after the report ended, a stealth helicopter painted in pure black took off from the top floor of Vought Tower.
Black Noir sat inside the cabin.
Edge of Brooklyn.
The underground cold storage of the abandoned slaughterhouse.
The thick ventilation ducts overhead issued intermittent, near-death gasps. The air was filled with a year-round, unshakeable stench, mixed with pungent ammonia.
A few rock-hard half-carcasses of pork hung on rusted iron hooks, swaying slightly with the air current.
Frenchie was wrapped in an oil-stained military heavy coat, sitting on an overturned plastic crate.
He held a few pieces of cardboard in his hand, on which bananas, apples, and a car were drawn crookedly with a marker.
"B-A-N-A-N-A."
He pointed to the picture of a banana and repeated it slowly.
Kimiko crouched in a corner a few meters away, her arms wrapped around her knees. Her eyes were full of animal-like wariness as she stared at him.
The old flip phone on the table suddenly began to vibrate.
Frenchie glanced at the caller ID.
His girlfriend, Sherry.
The instant he answered, Sherry's piercing voice stabbed at his eardrums.
"Run! Now! Black Noir was just outside my apartment. He must know where you are!"
Frenchie's blood ran cold.
He hung up and immediately dialed Butcher's number.
"Butcher, our location's compromised. Black Noir is here! What about the girl?"
Only a brief crackle came through the receiver. Then Butcher's voice sounded, devoid of any emotion.
"Leave the dead weight behind. Survive."
The line went dead.
Frenchie gripped the phone tightly. He was a rotten person. He had sold illegal weapons and done all manner of dirty work.
But now, looking at the girl in the corner who couldn't even speak, all he could think about was the sight of her locked in a cage and treated like an animal.
"To hell with making the right choice."
Frenchie swore and strode over to Kimiko, pulling out a ring of keys.
With a metallic clatter, the heavy chains locked around the girl's wrists and ankles crashed to the floor.
"Run."
Frenchie pointed to a spare ventilation passage deep inside the cold-storage room.
"Don't look back. Just keep running!"
Kimiko stood up, glanced at him, then turned and darted into the darkness.
Frenchie let out a breath of relief, grabbed the backpack from the table, and sprinted in the opposite direction from the main entrance to the cold-storage room.
He pushed open the thick insulated door, and a narrow concrete passage appeared before him.
At the end of the passage stood a man.
There were no footsteps, no sound of breathing. The newcomer's presence had been deliberately reduced to the bare minimum.
A pure black combat suit, black armor, even the goggles on his mask were deep and unfathomable.
Black Noir.
Frenchie's throat went dry, and his legs backed away against his will.
Black Noir tilted his head slightly and raised his right foot.
From the shadows on the right, a small figure suddenly sprang out!
Kimiko hadn't run away.
She turned herself into a cannonball and slammed her shoulder hard into Black Noir's side.
The tremendous force sent them both tumbling into the center of the cold-storage room.
The iron hooks swung violently, and the frozen pork carcasses struck one another. Seizing his chance, Frenchie scrambled behind a heap of discarded refrigeration compressors and clamped a hand over his mouth.
In the middle of the cold-storage room,
Black Noir braced one hand against the floor, powered through his waist, and sprang upright.
Kimiko planted both feet against the wall and launched herself at him, her fist cutting through the air with a shrill whistle as she aimed straight for his face.
Black Noir neither dodged nor flinched. His left hand shot out like lightning, caught her wrist precisely, and pressed it down in one smooth motion.
His right knee jerked up and slammed into Kimiko's abdomen.
The dull impact echoed through the empty cold-storage room. Kimiko groaned in pain, her body doubling over like a shrimp.
Black Noir let go and whipped a vicious high kick into the side of her face.
The girl's slender body spun twice in the air before crashing into a large refrigeration unit behind her.
Thick pipes burst apart with a deafening crash.
High-pressure refrigerant gushed out, instantly filling the cold-storage room with dense white fog.
The temperature plummeted, and the puddles on the floor began to freeze. All visibility was lost.
Hiding behind the iron shelving, Frenchie trembled from head to toe. All he could hear were the horrifying sounds of blows landing again and again in the dense fog.
Kimiko picked herself up from the broken ice over and over, charging again and again at the black shadow she couldn't defeat.
Black Noir's movements held no unnecessary flourishes. Every strike was a battle-tested military killing technique: dislocating joints, striking vital points, breaking bones.
A one-sided, overwhelming beatdown.
In the thick fog.
Black Noir gripped Kimiko by the throat with one hand and lifted her high into the air.
The young woman's legs dangled as she frantically clawed at the iron-hard arm with all ten fingers, even breaking her nails.
Black Noir glanced up.
His right leg bent slightly, and the muscles around his waist and hips erupted with terrifying force in an instant.
His arm suddenly hurled her upward!
Boom!
Kimiko's body was used like a battering ram and smashed viciously into the reinforced-concrete ceiling!
The ten-centimeter-thick prefabricated slab shattered instantly. Stones, rebar, and dust rained down.
It wasn't over!
Amid a continuous series of crashes, that slender body smashed straight through the second and third floors! It punched a passage all the way from the slaughterhouse to the roof!
Above the three-story hole, a few strands of pale moonlight showed through.
A few seconds later, accompanied by the shrill sound of rushing air, Kimiko fell from above and crashed hard into the rubble on the cold-storage floor.
Blood stained the frost around her red.
Black Noir walked over.
He stepped on a large, rust-covered reinforcing bar protruding from the rubble and snapped it with a forceful stomp.
He gripped the two-meter-long rebar in one hand and walked over to Kimiko.
Most of the young woman's bones had been shattered, but she was still twitching faintly on the ground.
Black Noir reversed his grip on the rebar, aimed it at her heart, and stabbed down without the slightest hesitation.
The dull sound of flesh being brutally pierced rang through the cold storage.
The rebar pierced her body and sank deep into the hard concrete floor below, pinning her firmly in place.
Black Noir let go and flicked the blood from his glove.
Without even looking at the person on the ground, he turned and headed for the ventilation passage.
The shadow soon melted into the darkness.
Behind the refrigeration compressor.
Frenchie didn't dare move his stiff legs until he was sure there wasn't another sound outside.
He stumbled toward the middle of the rubble.
The rusty iron bar was stuck in the ground at an angle, with Kimiko pinned beneath it and a horrifying hole in her abdomen.
Frenchie's knees gave way, and he fell to his knees amid the ice chips.
Suddenly, an extremely faint sound of bones rubbing together came from somewhere.
Frenchie jerked his head up.
Kimiko's fingers, hanging at her side, twitched almost imperceptibly.
At the edges of the wound, countless buds of flesh writhed and interwove at a speed visible to the naked eye.
A weak but steady breathing slowly returned in the cold air.
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