Maeve's posture remained loose, entirely unbothered.
"Relax," she said. She read something in Clark's stance he had not meant to reveal. "That was mostly venting. What else are we going to do about Vought? Put up a strongly-worded notice in the break room? Without the company, none of us has a paycheck." She shrugged. "Besides me, most of the others think Vought is wonderful. The ones who don't, complain and stay anyway."
Clark swept his gaze down the corridor. No active surveillance equipment within range. He let out a quiet breath.
Maeve noticed. "You're more careful than you look."
I have to be, he thought. He had come to map the layers beneath the official structure, to document what Vought did beneath the shareholder presentations and approval ratings. If Maeve flagged this conversation to leadership, his plan required immediate revision. But Maeve was no loyalist. She had found a livable arrangement with an institution she did not respect, and she stayed because the alternatives were worse.
Not a true threat. Not yet.
"You should know," she added, "that Vought stopped caring about hero discontent approximately fifteen years ago. As long as the benefits are good enough, everyone obeys. That's the whole system."
"Since you don't like what Deep and Translucent did," Clark said, "why not stop them yourself? You clearly could."
Maeve looked at him, her eyes hard.
"Six pieces of trash on this team," she said. "And Homelander. Now, if I decide to manage all the trash, and one of the idiots decides to make it a fight—maybe two of them decide to—that's a public incident. Vought's image takes damage. Their stock takes damage." She let that settle. "And then Homelander has to step in."
She shifted her weight, turning her body slightly away as she said the name. It was the tell: the small, involuntary tightening along the spine, the setting of the jaw.
Clark watched her.
They're all afraid of him, he thought. Every one of them. A-Train on the street, The Deep in the hall, and now Maeve in a corridor she chose specifically because it lacked surveillance. Homelander's power was not just capability; it was a climate. The entire organization moved around him, arranging itself like a room built around a heat source too intense to approach.
He thought of what his own strength meant. What it was supposed to mean. That people could ask for help without fearing the consequences of not receiving it. That the power existed for them, not over them.
What has this country made, he thought, looking at the walls around him, out of people like that?
The bathroom door opened. Annie stepped out, her composure restored, her eyes clear.
She looked at the two of them standing in the corridor in heavy silence.
"What are you talking about?"
"Nothing consequential," Maeve said. "You start officially tomorrow. Get some rest tonight." She raised a hand in a casual wave and walked down the corridor.
Annie watched her go, then turned to Clark. Her brow lowered. She knew she was not getting the full story.
"She's right," Clark said. "Sleep. You need it."
He walked with her to the elevator.
"You'll probably have another conversation with The Deep tomorrow," he said. "That's unavoidable. But you have more options now than you did this morning."
"What about you?"
"I have a conversation with A-Train." He paused. "He and I have some unfinished business from the other day."
Annie looked at him. "A-Train? Why—"
The elevator doors chimed and slid open. Clark smiled at her.
"Get some rest," he said.
She stepped inside, her expression bewildered. It was not ideal, Clark reflected, but it was better than the alternative he had prevented that afternoon.
That night, Jude was not at the hotel.
He rode through the quieter parts of the city, moving at a speed that matched the cool air and the light traffic after ten. The motorcycle under him handled with a precision no commercial bike could replicate, because the motorcycle was Satsuki, and Satsuki had opinions about velocity that she generally kept to herself except on nights like this.
"No food truck," she said. Her voice carried a looser, more present quality. The open road agreed with her in a way a stationary cart did not.
"No food truck," Jude confirmed. "Different operation, different setup. The system's skills need asset points to function here. The agenda is different from an internal universe. Which means we still need to find ways to generate income, and the hundred thousand from Vought doesn't count as compensation for actual work unless I file it as a recruitment bonus."
He was working through the logistics when the communication channel opened.
"LORD, HELP, I'M GOING TO DIE, MEOW—"
Yomogi's voice blasted through at maximum lung capacity, an impressive feat for a creature the size of a domestic cat.
Jude opened the system panel.
Inside the training space—an arena he had paid two hundred thousand asset points to configure—Yomogi ran on all four legs across a rocky terrain that had been rearranged by heavy combat. She carried a small incense burner in her left hand, trailing thin smoke. In her right hand, she gripped a flute of an unsettling design. A shield roughly the size of a wardrobe door bounced against her back.
Behind her, a gorilla closed the distance with the unstressed efficiency of a mildly inconvenienced predator.
It stood over two meters tall. Its brown fur carried patterns that suggested significant age or a highly unusual diet. It bore the horns of a bull, the mane of a lion, and a pair of fangs that suggested it had never found a reason to be smaller. Its arms generated shockwaves that cracked the air with every movement.
It was currently very irritated.
"Lord! I'm going to get killed by the Golden Lion, meow!"
"You won't get killed," Jude said. "Train for another hour."
"MEOW—"
"You've been with me through an entire arc without fighting anything," Jude said patiently. "Your HP-lock build needs the honey bug interaction at maximum proficiency. Your taunt shield scarecrow routine needs at least two hundred more combat reps. That flute has been sitting at forty percent efficiency since I gave it to you." He watched Yomogi attempt a defensive maneuver that was functionally sound but poorly timed. "Two hundred thousand asset points. That's what this arena cost. I need to see a return."
"I would like to go back to the food cart, meow—"
"The food cart is closed for this arc."
The gorilla's fist collided with the general area of the deployed shield. The shockwave threw Yomogi sideways into a rock outcropping. She bounced off and landed on her feet—proof that her reflexes were developing.
"Why," Yomogi demanded from the dirt, panting, "is this horned gorilla called the Golden Lion?!"
"Because that's what it is," Jude said. "Specifically, a Golden Lion that hasn't eaten a unicorn horn. The ones that have eaten unicorn horns are too high a combat rating for where you're at right now. They also shoot lasers from their mouths, which would be counterproductive for your training phase." He paused. "You can also call it a gorilla-lion if that's more intuitive."
"That," Yomogi said, "does not help, meow."
Jude closed the panel.
Satsuki said nothing.
He turned his attention back to the road, the night air, and the distant city lights. The mission had started. Clark was inside Vought. The second half of the work waited out here. He had planning to do, contacts to develop, and a hundred threads to pull.
He took a bite of the cream puff he held in his free hand.
Lenient with himself, a reasonable observer might say. Strict with others.
Jude would not disagree.