Chapter 20: THE MESSAGE
Two hours of staring at a single letter.
The DM sat on my phone, unchanged: saw you handle that kid in the Bronx. we should meet. come alone. — F
I knew who "F" was. I'd known the moment I read the message, the same way I'd known the V-kid on 48th Street was about to burn out, the same way I'd known Ashley Barrett's stress tells before she showed them. Meta-knowledge—the cheat code that kept me alive in a world full of people who could kill me without trying.
Frenchie.
The platform matched—a secure messaging app the show had depicted him using twice, once in season two when contacting Butcher and once in season three when arranging a weapons buy. The phrasing matched too: direct, slightly theatrical, no wasted words. The signature was exactly what someone who went by Frenchie would use for anonymous contact.
But knowing who didn't tell me why.
I mapped the possibilities while pacing my apartment.
Option A: Frenchie made contact independently. Most likely. He monitored conspiracy forums and fringe media as part of his intelligence gathering—the "Mythmaker" phenomenon would have pinged his radar weeks ago. The Tyler talk-down in Hunts Point would have confirmed that the Mythmaker was more than viral hype: someone with apparent V-knowledge who wasn't on Vought's payroll.
Option B: Butcher ordered it. Possible. Butcher collected assets the way other people collected grudges, and a popular anti-Vought figure with mysterious capabilities would fit his recruitment pattern. The "come alone" instruction suggested caution about revealing The Boys' location to an unknown quantity.
Option C: Vought trap. Unlikely but not impossible. If Vought had compromised The Boys' communications, they might use the contact to expose the Mythmaker to danger. But that didn't fit Ashley's détente—she'd bought herself time by reporting me as "manageable from a distance." Killing me would invalidate her solution.
My thumb hovered over the reply field.
"Meeting 'alone' means no backup," I thought. "No audience. No Performance Amplification. Baseline-human vulnerability in front of people who routinely handle Supes."
The Boys had killed more powered individuals than anyone on Earth. If they decided I was a threat, I'd be dead before I could explain.
But if they decided I was an asset...
"The most valuable alliance in this world," I reminded myself. "And they came to me. That means something."
I typed the reply before I could second-guess the punctuation.
@mythmaker_official: When and where.
Three words. No hedging, no questions, no attempt to establish terms. Either I trusted the meeting enough to show up, or I didn't. Asking for details before committing would read as weakness.
The response came back in thirty seconds.
@anonymous_F: Red Hook. 443 Van Brunt. Midnight tomorrow. Alone means alone.
I memorized the address. Deleted the thread. Opened my laptop and searched the location.
An abandoned warehouse in an industrial zone—minimal foot traffic, multiple exit points, no active surveillance within three blocks. The kind of place The Boys would choose for exactly those reasons.
"Tomorrow at midnight," I thought. "Alone means alone."
The gym session from earlier felt very far away now. The flexing hand, the improved metrics, the Mythmaker brand growing in my absence—all of it irrelevant against the simple fact that I'd just agreed to meet people who could kill me without breaking a sweat.
[LOCATION ANALYZED: 443 VAN BRUNT ST, RED HOOK]
[SURVEILLANCE: MINIMAL | EXIT ROUTES: 3 | KNOWN HAZARDS: NONE]
[NOTE: NO AUDIENCE = NO BELIEF GENERATION = NO SYSTEM SUPPORT]
The system couldn't help me in that warehouse. Whatever happened tomorrow would happen to baseline Harley Vaughn—no powers, no backup, nothing but meta-knowledge and a pulse.
"Don't reveal foreknowledge," I told myself. "Don't volunteer information about the system. Let them think you're what you appear to be: a capable civilian who got caught in something strange."
I closed the laptop and started planning what to wear to a midnight meeting with wanted fugitives.
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