8 Chapters Ahead
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The slow, deliberate footsteps echoed through the warehouse like a countdown. Each step was measured, unhurried, the kind of walk a man takes when he knows exactly where he's going and there's not a single thing in the world that can stop him. The sound bounced off the concrete walls, off the rusted ceiling beams, off the empty spaces where hope used to live. It was the only sound in the room. Even the rats in the walls had gone quiet.
Hughie heard those footsteps and felt his bowels turn to water. His hands were already moving before his brain caught up, reaching for the table beside him where Butcher had left the backup piece. A Glock. Nine millimeters of cold steel and hollow-point lies. His fingers closed around the grip, the weight familiar now in a way it had never been before Robin, in a way that made him hate himself every time he thought about it.
He raised the gun. Both hands. Arms straight. Just like he'd practiced in front of the mirror a hundred times, pretending he was someone else, someone brave, someone who could pull a trigger without his soul coming apart at the seams.
"Who are you?" His voice cracked on the words.He tried again, forced the volume up, forced the fear down. "Stop right there. I said stop!"
The figure didn't stop. He kept walking, those slow, patient footsteps carrying him closer, closer, closer. His eyes weren't even on Hughie. They were fixed on the cage. On the invisible man who was suddenly very, very still.
Hughie's finger tightened on the trigger. His whole body was shaking now, the tremor running through his arms, his chest, his legs. He could feel the sweat running down his back, cold and sticky, soaking into the fabric of his shirt.
"Stop or I'll shoot! I'm warning you! I'll fucking shoot!"
The figure kept walking.
Hughie squeezed.
The gunshot was a thunderclap in the enclosed space, a hammer blow that made his ears ring and his vision white out for half a second. The recoil kicked his hands up, his wrists screaming, the gun nearly flying out of his grip. He saw the bullet hit—saw it punch through the man's jacket, right in the chest, saw the fabric tear, saw the impact push him back half a step.
Half a step.
The man looked down at the hole in his jacket. Then he looked back up at Hughie. There was no pain in his face. No surprise. No anger. Just the mild irritation of someone who had been interrupted while doing something important.
The gun dropped from Hughie's hands. It hit the concrete with a clatter that sounded like the end of the world. His legs gave out. He would have fallen if the wall hadn't been there to catch him, cold and solid against his back, the only thing in the world that felt real anymore.
"You're a Supe," he whispered. The words came out like a confession. Like an accusation.
The man really looked at him. His face was young—impossibly young for the power that he had—But his eyes were something else. They were the eyes of someone who had lived two lives at once, who had seen things that shouldn't fit inside a nineteen-year-old mind.For a moment, just a moment, something flickered in those eyes. Recognition. Or maybe pity. Or maybe nothing at all.
He shook his head slowly, a small motion, like a teacher disappointed by a student who should have known better.
"I'm not in the mood to play, Hughie."
The words didn't make sense. They didn't have time to make sense. One second the man was ten feet away. The next he was right there, right in front of Hughie's face, moving faster than anything had any right to move. There was no blur. No streak. No warning. Just the space between them collapsing.
Hughie saw the fist coming. Saw it in that frozen instant between one heartbeat and the next, saw the knuckles and the tendons and the raw, coiled power behind them, saw the way the air itself seemed to bend around it like water around a stone. And in that instant, in that single, endless moment, he understood, finally, what it meant to be prey.
The punch landed like a freight train.
Hughie felt his teeth rattle. Felt his jaw crack, his cheekbone splinter, his whole face rearrange itself around the point of impact. Blood exploded from his mouth, spraying the wall behind him. His body left the ground, lifted by the force of the blow like a leaf in a hurricane, and then the wall was there, hard and unyielding, catching him in the middle of his back and driving the air out of his lungs in a single, agonizing rush.
He slid down the wall. His legs wouldn't work. His arms wouldn't work. Nothing worked except the pain, and that was working just fine, spreading through his skull, his chest, his spine, settling into every nerve like a tenant who had no intention of ever leaving.
He groaned. The sound came from somewhere deep in his chest, a wounded animal sound that he would have been ashamed of if he'd had any shame left. Blood dripped from his mouth onto the concrete, a small red puddle that grew with each slow, labored breath.
Jack turned away from him. Just turned, like Hughie was nothing, like he was less than nothing, like he was a piece of furniture that had been in the way and was now, conveniently, out of it. His eyes found the cage again. Found the shimmer inside it. A smile touched his lips, and there was nothing warm in it.
Translucent had been watching. Of course he'd been watching. His skin was invisible—had been invisible since the moment this stranger walked through the door—but his eyes weren't. They were there, somewhere in that shimmer, two points of cold calculation that tracked Jack's every movement. He'd seen the bullet hit. Seen the lack of damage. Seen the speed, the strength, the casual brutality of the punch that had sent the skinny kid flying.
He'd seen enough to know that this wasn't some random Supe looking for a fight. This was something else.
"What do you want?" Translucent's voice came from the shimmer, steady now, the fear from earlier buried under layers of practiced bravado. He was good at this. He'd had years of practice. When you were invisible, when no one could see you, you learned to make your voice do the work. To make it hard. To make it cold. To make it sound like you were the one in control, even when you were locked in a cage with a bomb waiting to be shoved up in your ass.
Jack squatted down in front of the cage. His face was level with the shimmer now, close enough that Translucent could see the fine lines around his eyes.
"What do I want?" Jack tilted his head, considering the question. His voice was soft. Almost gentle. The kind of voice you used to tell bedtime stories, or to comfort a dying man, or to make a promise you had every intention of keeping. "Hmm. What do I want?"
He laughed. His head tilted further, his eyes never leaving the shimmer, and the laugh grew, filling the warehouse, bouncing off the walls, climbing toward something that wasn't quite sane. His head was almost sideways now, his grin wide and white and absolutely fucking terrifying.
"Your life," he said. The laugh stopped. The grin stayed. "I want your miserable, worthless, piece-of-shit life."
The words hung in the air between them, sharp as glass.
Translucent's body flickered into view. Maybe it was a choice. Maybe it was shock. Maybe it was something else, some animal instinct that said make yourself seen, make yourself real, don't let this man look at empty space and imagine what he's going to do to it. His skin was smooth, seamless, that strange silvery sheen that caught the dim light and bent it into rainbows. His face was a little handsome, in the way that all Vought-approved faces were handsome. His eyes were narrow, calculating, watching Jack with the careful attention of a man who had spent his whole life being the most dangerous thing in any room and had just realized, for the first time, that he might be wrong.
"You think that's funny?" Translucent's voice was hard now, the bravado solidifying into something that might have been courage or might have been the last spasm of a dying ego. "You think you're the first cunt to come in here and make threats? I've had better men than you piss themselves trying to scare me. I've had—"
His body flickered again, faded to nothing, became just that faint shimmer that could have been heat haze or could have been a man trying to disappear from a world that had suddenly become very dangerous. When his voice came again, it was from somewhere else, somewhere to the left of where he'd been sitting.
"Don't forget what I am, you fucking amateur. I'm a Supe. I'm one of the Seven. I'm the one they call when they need something done that nobody's supposed to see. I've killed more people than you've jerked off to, and I've done it with a smile on my face. So don't you stand there with your pretty-boy face and your cheap party tricks and think you're going to—"
"Don't worry," Jack cut him off. He was still squatting, still calm, still smiling that terrible smile. He made a gesture with his hand, a little wave, like he was brushing away a fly. "I'm going to make you feel it. Every inch. Every second. Every little piece of you that thinks it's untouchable. I'm going to peel back that skin of yours, that pretty diamond skin that's kept you safe your whole life, and I'm going to show you what's underneath. I'm going to show you what you really are. Not a Supe. Not one of the Seven. Not a fucking hero. Just meat. Just blood and bone and fear. Just a man who thought he was something more and found out too late that he was nothing. I'm going to watch your face when you understand. I'm going to hold that moment in my hands and I'm going to squeeze it until it pops. Do you understand? Do you fucking understand what I'm going to do to you?"
The shimmer was still for a long moment. When Translucent spoke again, there was something different in his voice. Not fear. Not yet. But something close to it. Something that sounded like a man trying to solve a puzzle that didn't make sense.
"What the fuck is your problem, asshole?" The words came out fast, sharp, a blade trying to cut through something it didn't understand. "Did I fuck your girlfriend? Is that it? You find out your lady spread her legs for a real man and now you're out here looking for payback? Because I've had that before. I've had jealous husbands, jealous boyfriends, jealous little bitches who couldn't handle that their woman wanted something they couldn't give. And you know what? They all ended up the same way. On their knees. Begging. Crying into the carpet while I stood over them and—"
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