"The one thing I haven't quite worked out," Jude said, "is why this particular incident is worth killing someone over. Near-accidents happen. A-Train is reckless. This isn't novel information." He held Butcher's gaze over the rim of his glass. "Killing isn't casual even for someone like you — otherwise you'd have a very different kind of problem by now. So why this one specifically?"
"None of your business," Butcher said.
"Fair." Jude turned his glass on the table. "Hughie knows roughly what I know. You'll get the same information from him that I've already given you. Less, actually, because I have the first-hand account and he doesn't." He stopped turning the glass. "I can tell from the set of your jaw that what I've said so far hasn't satisfied you. It's satisfied me, which is why I'm still here."
"Why should I believe you? You took Vought's money."
"What would I actually gain by lying to you?" Jude said. "I'm not trying to recruit you, I'm not trying to protect Vought, and if I wanted to hand you over to them I had multiple opportunities in that alley." He opened his palms. "What is the lie you're worried I'm telling?"
Butcher stared at him in silence.
This was the structural problem, Jude thought, watching him. Butcher's personality did not operate on rational cost-benefit analysis. He was capable of it, but the capability routed around a deeper instinct. He hated being controlled. He hated being in a position where someone else held the leverage. Even when the leverage vanished, the memory of it lingered, and his response was to push back against everything connected to it. Even useful information. Even his own conclusions.
It was why he had charged at Jude with a crowbar after having his gun exploded. Not because it made strategic sense, but because standing there without options was intolerable.
He only trusted results he obtained himself, under his own terms. That was the whole problem.
The Villain Affinity was doing its quiet work. Jude watched the tight line of Butcher's shoulders drop a fraction of an inch. His weight shifted back, his feet planting less aggressively. Butcher's internal calculation was moving: this man can observe things, fight, shoot, think, and talk. That is not a Vought profile. People with institutional money and superpowers at their disposal do not bother developing the skills ordinary people use to get things done.
Close. Almost there.
"Even if you didn't start out working for them," Butcher said, "you took their money. That means your relationship with them isn't bad. Which means I can't trust you."
Jude stood up.
"I've met a lot of people," he said, his voice level. "You might be the most comprehensively stubborn one. Not because you can't think — you can think fine. You just refuse to think with anything except your gut, and your gut only trusts what it's earned under its own terms." He pushed in his chair. "Since you're that confident in your method, go ahead and use it. Good luck with Campbell."
He walked out.
Butcher did not follow.
Outside, Jude walked a full block before letting his stride slow, exhaling a long breath into the night air.
He's not a lost cause. He's a delayed one. The approach had been too direct. Force a door with Butcher, and he braces against it. Leave the door open and wait long enough, and he will eventually walk through it on his own terms.
Wait for the right moment. Let him think he found me.
A few blocks away, Clark stepped out of the Vought building and looked up at the night sky. He pressed his lips together, a heavy exhale leaving his chest.
He wanted to talk to Jude. Not just for the intelligence exchange, though that mattered. He needed a conversation with someone he trusted. The things he had seen today sat heavy in his throat, a quiet pressure pushing against his ribs.
He took out his phone.
The following morning, Vought International held a press conference.
"A-Train, one of The Eight, was in active pursuit of a criminal group several days ago when he came close to striking a pedestrian. Vought International has additional information on the incident. A-Train—"
A-Train leaned into the microphone, his posture loose under the stage lights.
"Look, I'm a Black man. I'm not going to deliberately run into another Black woman on the street." He spread his hands, palms up and perfectly angled toward the cameras. "I was chasing down some real bad people that day — you've seen the arrests, you know what I'm talking about. I was moving fast, faster than usual, and I'll be honest with you, I felt like I had it under control. Maybe I did, maybe I didn't — but the point is, Superman showed up, and whatever margin I had or didn't have, he made sure nothing bad happened."
He paused. The silence stretched across the room.
"If I'm the locomotive, Superman is the braking system." His mouth curved into a tight, practiced smile. "With him on the team, everyone in this city is safer. This kind of thing won't happen again. I want to apologise — to the city, and to that girl. And I want to say: trust us. Trust Vought."
The cameras flashed.
Behind him, a poster covered the back of the stage. All eight heroes stood arrayed together, Superman placed directly next to A-Train. Partners. A team. The kind of image designed to stay on the front pages.
In one of the Vought building's conference rooms, Clark sat with the television on, his hands folded on the table.
He could not technically call it a lie. "I felt like I had it under control" was a subjective statement. It described A-Train's inner experience, avoiding any objective claim about capability. It could not be falsified. The rest of the speech was constructed the same way: careful, defensible, strategically incomplete.
Clark knew what deception looked like when it dressed itself in accurate statements.
He turned the television off.
A-Train came through the conference room door a few minutes later. His steps were quick, his shoulders lifted.
"Hey, buddy — you're here early." He smiled, his teeth flashing under the fluorescent lights. "Thought I'd be the second one in."
"You were," Clark said.
Queen Maeve walked in from the corridor holding a paper cup of coffee. Her face was flat, her gaze fixed entirely forward.
"Homelander isn't here yet," she observed. "That's unusual."
"Maybe he's got something on today." A-Train shrugged.
Clark looked at him.
"A-Train," he said. "Do you remember the name of the girl you almost hit?"