"We don't need to over-complicate it," Clark said. "If what he did was wrong—and it was—then we were right not to agree."
Annie looked at him. "But if he was telling the truth about the consequences, about my membership, then what was I supposed to do?" Her voice cracked slightly. "Give up everything I've worked toward? Walk away from the only thing I've ever wanted? What would all of it have been for?"
Clark watched her, his brow furrowing slightly as he considered the question.
"If you want to be a hero," he said, "you can be one anywhere. You don't need Vought for that. Anyone can be one."
She stared at him. He delivered the statement simply, without edge or lecture, letting it hang in the air between them.
"Being a hero is easy," he continued. "You just do the right thing. And being a hero is hard, because very few people can do that consistently, through everything that works against it." He paused. "The question worth asking isn't whether you can be a hero here. It's why you want to be one."
He left it there. No follow-up, no lecture. He offered the question and waited.
Annie held his gaze for a few seconds. Her shoulders dropped. She turned and pushed through the bathroom door.
Cold water. She needed cold water.
Queen Maeve had been walking the halls, looking for the new arrivals.
Only three members of The Seven had paid any actual attention to the day's additions: A-Train, Homelander, and Maeve. They each carried different reasons and different levels of urgency. Maeve's interest had sparked during the street incident two days ago, and she had finally cleared enough of her schedule to act on it.
She pushed open the bathroom door. A young woman stood at the sink, pressing cold water against her eyes, her mascara completely ruined.
Maeve recognized the white uniform. She recognized the smeared makeup and the stiff, careful posture of a person fighting to hold themselves together.
She reached into her jacket, pulled out a folded tissue, and held it out.
"Here." She waited until Annie took it. "Get yourself together before you go back out there. You're a female hero in a building full of people looking for reasons to write you off as a pretty face. Don't give them an easy one."
Annie took the tissue. She looked down at it, then up at Maeve's reflection in the mirror.
Maeve was already turning toward the door.
"Translucent," she said, her voice completely flat, "is a fucking pervert."
The door swung shut behind her.
In the corridor outside, Clark stood with his hand closed tightly around empty air.
He had been walking back from placing the extra chair in the Hall of Heroes. Operating on the ingrained habit of a man used to tracking movement through walls in Metropolis, his X-ray vision had flared. He had seen a figure, rendered only as the faint outline of internal anatomy, creeping toward the women's bathroom.
He moved quickly. He got there first.
"Mr. Translucent," Clark said, his voice even and patient, "I saw you preparing to follow someone into the women's restroom."
"Let go of me!" The voice spat from the empty space exactly where Clark's hand clamped shut. "You have no right. I am one of The Seven. Let go—"
"I know you're one of The Seven. Mr. Deep is also one of The Seven. What he did this afternoon made me angry and disgusted." Clark did not loosen his grip. "I should also mention: X-ray vision is one of my abilities. I can see your organs, your blood vessels, and your musculature through your skin, regardless of what your skin is doing. I'm aware you were present in the Hall of Heroes earlier when Mr. Deep and Starlight were arguing."
The air where Translucent's face should be went dead silent.
"You chose not to intervene," Clark continued. "That's a separate conversation. What's happening right now is what concerns me immediately. Will you give me your word that you won't do this again?"
"I am telling you to let. Me. Go."
"I will, once you've given me your word." Clark's expression remained perfectly still. "I don't require much in the way of food and water, so I am perfectly comfortable staying here."
"Even Homelander wouldn't put up with this kind of—"
"Can you give me your word?"
A long, seething pause stretched between them.
"Fine. Yes. Whatever. I won't. Now—"
"Thank you." Clark opened his hand. "Please go and get dressed. My X-ray vision covers a fairly wide radius, and I'd like to think the promise means something."
"You absolute—"
Translucent flickered into visibility from the chest up. His face was mottled red, his jaw tight. He stopped mid-sentence.
Maeve had just stepped out of the bathroom. She stood three feet away, staring at him. Her eyes were dark and hard.
"I figured you were going after the new recruits," she said. "But it was me you were after? If Superman hadn't been here... were you going to bring a camera for that one?"
"That's not—"
She didn't wait. She drove her fist into his midsection. The punch was short and decisive, slamming him into the wall behind him. The impact dented the drywall with the heavy crunch of a car collision. He slid to the floor, clutching his stomach and hacking for air.
"You disgusting piece of—" She looked down at him. "I couldn't aim precisely. Invisible target." She did not raise her voice. "Next time I'll get my bearings first."
"You're all absolute lunatics," Translucent gasped. He dragged himself upright, wiping a smear of blood from his mouth. He looked at both of them, his posture defensive. He backed away, recognizing he was entirely outmatched.
He turned and walked quickly down the hall.
Clark had taken a half-step forward when Maeve swung, but stopped. As the punch landed, his eyes tracked the impact. Translucent's skin, even while transparent, did not absorb force like human tissue. It distributed it across a surface structure significantly harder than it appeared. If Maeve had hit an ordinary person with that kind of force, the damage would have been catastrophic.
He filed the observation away.
"This," Clark said slowly, watching the empty corridor where Translucent had vanished, "does not look very much like a heroic organization."
"No," Maeve said.
"Even Lex Luthor, in my experience, mostly limits himself to property crimes and the occasional attempted murder. He's never—" Clark gestured toward the dent in the wall. "This particular arrangement of problems."
Maeve turned to look at him. She studied his face, her eyes narrowing slightly as she gave him her full attention.
"Sorry your first day was this." She looked him over slowly. "But for what it's worth. With you in the building, they'll be more careful."
"You knew Translucent had this habit," Clark said. "Why didn't you stop him before?"
The corner of Maeve's mouth twitched upward, settling into a hard, cynical line.
"How clean do you think I am?"
She delivered the question without flinching. It was the most honest thing anyone at Vought had said to him all day. Before he could respond, she pushed past it. "The Deep went after the new girl again. I thought she'd been crying because she was overwhelmed. I didn't realize." She shook her head. "She should have come out angrier."
"I'm seriously considering whether to involve the police," Clark said. "What both of them did today meets the legal definition of assault and criminal harassment. It should be on record."
Maeve looked at him. Her expression settled into a mix of tired admiration and quiet pity.
"You're not wrong," she said. "And Vought will dismantle any case before it sees a courtroom. They won't allow stains on their heroes. The legal team alone is enough, and that's before you account for their media relationships." She tilted her head. "You want to actually change something here? Take those two down?"
She held his gaze, her eyes cold and steady.
"Then you'll have to deal with Vought first."