"Let me make sure I understand the offer correctly," Jude said. "Superman joins Vought International, and as a result, he's free to say that A-Train nearly killed someone yesterday."
Douglas kept his face perfectly still. "The terms are written clearly in the documents."
"So A-Train is the price of the recruitment." Jude looked at Clark. "That's what they're selling."
Clark kept his voice even. "What Vought Corporation did today isn't an admission of wrongdoing. It's a transaction. You don't regret what happened. You're just managing it. I'm not interested in being part of that arrangement."
"I should add," Clark said, turning back to Douglas, "I don't like your philosophy. Treating heroism as a commercial proposition is something I find—"
"Accept!" Jude said. "Tell him yes."
Clark stopped. He looked at Jude, his brow lowering.
"You just implied the opposite," he murmured.
"That was three seconds ago," Jude said. "Circumstances change."
He stared at a floating panel invisible to Douglas. His eyes tracked the text, his posture locking down.
SYSTEM: Incoming transmission — new assignment available.
SYSTEM: [INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL COOPERATION]
SYSTEM: Mission briefing: Vought International is one of the world's preeminent corporate organisms — a company that turned a wartime windfall into permanent structural power, and has spent the intervening decades perfecting the art of narrative control. How it rose so rapidly during World War II remains, publicly, a mystery. What it has done with that rise is not. The company has suppressed, threatened, and eliminated obstacles with a thoroughness that most governments could only envy.
SYSTEM: The supes under its umbrella have done terrible things for it. Some of them are about to do worse.
SYSTEM: The only people who have ever seriously challenged Vought International are a small group of morally flexible, largely ungovernable, and brave bastards — and their story ends badly.
SYSTEM: This assignment originates from two future-timeline requests.
SYSTEM: Request One — from a hero who became something he wasn't: "If I could do it over, I would want to be a real hero."
SYSTEM: Request Two — from a bastard who had a point: "I know what we are. I know what I am. But the other bastards are worse, and my family has nothing to do with any of this. That's on me. Not them."
SYSTEM: The first wants someone inside Vought to redirect what's already broken. The second wants someone to reach the Boys before the worst of it happens — and pull at least some of them back from the edge.
SYSTEM: Note appended to both requests: "The world runs on black and white. From now on, white is your greatest asset, and black is mine."
SYSTEM: Assignment status: Pending — 0%
SYSTEM: Advance reward upon acceptance: Particle accelerator latent ability — perfected and activated.
SYSTEM: Settlement reward upon completion: Personal storage space, one cubic metre.
Jude read the settlement reward line twice.
He sat very still for four seconds, his mouth pressing into a thin line.
One cubic metre of personal space, he thought. An inventory. A storage dimension. The single most universal accessory in the entire history of transmigration fiction. The cheat code that every protagonist in every infinite-flow novel gets in the first three chapters while I have been managing physical luggage across multiple universes for—
He took a breath.
"Tell him yes," he said again, lowering his voice as he composed himself.
Clark watched him, his head tilting. "You're going to explain this to me."
"At length. After he leaves." Jude turned back to Douglas. "We need to review the terms of the agreement, and we'll need time to do that. But here's what I want you to communicate to Vought International on our way out. We will not help cover up the A-Train incident. Whatever else we discuss, that's not on the table. Robin deserves a real apology and real compensation, not a number calibrated to what Vought thinks she'll accept. If that doesn't happen, Superman and I will pursue this publicly, and we'll be comfortable doing so."
Douglas stared at him. "That," he said, "is an impractical position."
"Nevertheless."
Douglas gathered his folder, snapped his briefcase shut, and stood. He smoothed his lapels, his expression settling into polite dismissal.
"We'll be in touch," he said, and walked out.
The Vought International legal team had approximately the same reaction upon receiving Douglas's summary.
Impractical. Naive. Leverage misunderstood. The consensus, assembled quickly and without particular concern, held that Superman was a newcomer. He boasted significant first-day numbers and a strong public response, but lacked institutional standing. He had no history and no comparative weight against a brand built over a decade. Against Vought's legal infrastructure specifically, the gap was not even close.
Ashley in talent management passed the summary to Madeline Stillwell, VP of Superhero Management. Stillwell read it, her eyes scanning the text rapidly, discarding the noise to isolate the variables.
Her assessment was brief.
"A-Train's approval rating takes a hit if Superman joins and doesn't stay quiet about the incident. Fine." She turned a page. "The technical department puts his capability level in Homelander's range, which means we could use him to counterbalance the problem we already have. A deformed giant baby with a persecution complex and no off switch makes everyone nervous, including us. Superman is stable, photogenic, and after one public appearance he already has a following. His demands are an apology from A-Train and financial compensation from Vought, which is nothing. Logistically nothing. We give him the apology, we give him the settlement, and we get what we actually want."
She dropped the file onto her desk.
"The fact that they'd say that to us across a negotiating table suggests they don't fully understand what they're dealing with." She offered a thin, pitying smile. "Which should make the next phase considerably easier."
She signed the internal memo and sent it upward.
What Madeline Stillwell did not know, and what Douglas had not thought to report, was that Jude had reached a nearly identical conclusion about Vought International.
"Simply put," Jude explained, sitting back in the hotel room with the door locked. "Vought believes it's recruiting a useful asset. We believe we're gaining access to an institution we need to look inside." He flipped the bank card over his knuckles. "They get a Superman. We get the inside of Vought International. Both sides think they're outmaneuvering the other."
Clark was quiet. "And which side is actually right?"
"That depends entirely on execution." Jude set the card on the table. "You go in. You build relationships with the supes who can still be reached. You lead them toward something more than what Vought has trained them to be. Meanwhile, the access tells us what Vought is actually doing. The darker operational layers. The things that don't show up in the entertainment filings."
"And Robin?"
"The apology and compensation are non-negotiable. We hold that line until they deliver, and the system's recording of Douglas confirming Vought's liability this morning is available if we need it." He met Clark's eyes. "They're going to give it to us. Madeline Stillwell will have already decided it costs less than the alternative."
Clark absorbed this, taking the time to process the logistics entirely.
"You had this whole picture in your head," he said, "in roughly four seconds."
"I had a head start." Jude shrugged. "The system provided some useful context."
"What did it offer you?"
Jude paused. "My powers," he said. "Apparently the particle accelerator gave me something that hasn't activated yet. And," he paused for a fraction of a second, "a storage space."
Clark looked at him. "You seem more affected by the second thing."
"You have no idea," Jude said, deadpan, "how much this means to me practically."
He stood up, adjusted his jacket, and looked out the window at the city blocks below.
"They want to use us," he said. "We'll let them, while we do the same in the other direction. They think they're the ones running the long game."
He glanced back at Clark. "In the trade, this is called a counter-strategy."