Chapter 4 — The Female Escapes
The warehouse didn't want to be noticed. It hunkered behind a chain-link fence with a padlock that had never been asked a difficult question, its windows painted with the same gray as secrets. The sign on the loading bay door said SPARE PARTS in a font that had never told the truth.
Cian stood on the roof and listened.
Buildings tell you exactly who they are if you shut up long enough. This one hummed like a refrigerator hiding a heart. Four generators—one honest, three dirty. Camera grid on a charity budget, spliced with something newer that tasted like Vought. Voices in Cantonese, Russian, one American vowel stretched thin with overtime. A woman's heartbeat, small and furious, steady like a counting song you teach yourself to remember you're alive.
He closed his eyes. There you are.
He texted Mallory a single emoji—🪟—and a dot on a map. She would route it where it needed to go without his name on it. Butcher would get a tip he'd pretend wasn't a gift. Everyone gets to lie once.
"Three seconds," he told the air. "Spend them like money."
He stepped off the roof and into the fast layer.
Time laid down like a dog that loved him. Air thickened into syrup. Raindrops that weren't falling yet agreed to wait. Cian walked across the razor wire like a tourist on a boardwalk, dropped into shadow, and slid along the building's skin until he found the electrical panel that had dreams of being better than it was. He breathed a little charge into it. Nothing dramatic—no fireworks, no blackout. Just a gentle suggestion that the cameras would blink longer than usual, the badge readers would develop a thoughtful cough, and the hallway lights would forget to be harsh.
He palmed the side door, slipped inside with the night, and let the seconds stand up again.
Two guards. One scrolling his phone. One not. Cian plucked the phone out of the scroll-man's hand and put it back pointed at a different app so the future would be kinder. He placed his hand on the other guard's shoulder, fed the man a whisper of electricity—nap—and caught him before the floor remembered gravity. He leaned the sleeper against the wall like a jacket no one would claim. The phone-man blinked, blinked again, wondered why his app had crashed, and never looked left.
Cian eased down the corridor. The lab announced itself by smell—bleach, metal, and the sweetness of sedation. He ghosted through a set of double doors and into a room where stainless steel dreamed of being pure. Two techs in disposable gowns stood at a terminal clicking boxes that turned people into inventory. A doctor with a heart murmur pretended not to hear it.
Beyond the glass, she sat.
Bare feet. Shackles like bad jewelry. Hair hacked with impatience. Eyes open, not because wakefulness was rewarded here, but because closing them was surrender and she had decided years ago never to give the world that.
Cian stood very still and let the tiny hairs on his arms rise with the lab's air. He tapped two fingers against the glass at knee level, a rhythm that wasn't a rhythm at all—three taps, pause, two. A little lightning danced between his knuckles like a fish remembering water.
Her eyes flicked. Not startled. Interested. He drew a quick line of static on the glass—a sketched door. She tilted her head. He erased it with his palm and drew a clock: a circle, three ticks. Then he pointed at the locks, the IV line, the camera in the corner pretending to be a smoke detector.
She watched his hands the way wolves watch weather.
"Okay," he whispered. "Let's make a terrible hallway."
He rolled his shoulders and slid into the seconds.
Three was plenty if you'd already done the math.
He was through the door before the air finished disagreeing. IV out, tidy. The sedative bag tasted bitter on his tongue when he touched the tubing; he bled it dry into the sink so the monitors would see numbers they liked. Shackles—cheap, smug—came apart under a tiny buzz of charge. He dropped a foam earplug into the heart monitor leads so they would hum alive without needing her to suffer. He cupped her chin with careful fingers. Her skin was cool and fierce.
"Don't hit me yet," he said into a world that could not hear. "Wait until we have an audience."
He used the last crumb of the freeze to be elsewhere.
Time stood up and swore.
The techs flinched at nothing. One frowned at a monitor that had decided to be aspirational. The doctor looked up and rubbed his sternum like the murmur had said his name. In the cell beyond the glass, the girl was no longer attached. The girl was standing.
And then the glass screamed.
It didn't shatter so much as remember that it was sand and long for the beach. Cian didn't break it with force; he broke it with kindness—little vibrations, precise, coaxing the bonds to give up. It sagged inward like a tired thought, and when it fell it fell in chunks that wouldn't cut bare feet.
The first guard into the room had a taser and the swagger of a man who'd never lost a fair fight because he'd never been in one. He saw a small woman and tried to teach her a lesson.
She taught him physics instead.
Cian didn't touch her. He watched her. The way the power in her body arranged itself, coiled in her calves, ran up her spine. The way her silence moved ahead of her like a shadow. She caught the man's wrist, turned it, and the taser proclaimed a different allegiance. He folded like a junk drawer.
Two more. One with a baton, one with a gun he'd been told never to fire indoors. Cian palmed the gun's slide as he went past, unseated it, and set the piece in the doctor's coat pocket because someone should feel the weight of their complicity. The baton met Kimiko's forearm, and the baton learned about regret.
She looked at Cian once—just the flick of a glance that says I see you—and showed him her teeth in a way that wasn't a smile and wasn't not. He lifted his hands, palms out, a mime for I'm not here. She nodded like a queen who had no subjects left to disappoint.
Alarms finally remembered their verb. Red light tried to be important. Down the hall, men argued with keys. Cian drifted to the terminal and fed the system a meal of nonsense: entries swapped, serials divorced from cages, names replaced with punctuation. If you must erase, erase by drowning in true things that lead nowhere.
"Asset K-3," the doctor managed, voice wobbling. "Stand down—!"
Kimiko took one step, and the doctor's courage went somewhere to smoke and never came back.
"Exit," Cian said softly, because if he said please the universe would think he'd gone soft. He pointed left, right, made a tiny twirling motion with a fingertip, and the corridor camera blinked itself into a little daydream.
She put a hand to his chest—quick, testing. Her fingers buzzed where his lightning lived. It made a sound like a kiss in a bad movie. She snorted once, small and delighted despite the room, then went left.
Two guards turned the corner just in time to learn about how ankles fail. Cian took the baton from the floor and set it upright in the corner, a polite "mind the step" for whoever came next. He moved just ahead of her, never in her way, taking bullets out of chambers before men could remember they were brave.
At the second door he slowed, held up one finger—wait—and slipped three seconds off the clock. A fire door that had refused to unlatch for ten years decided it believed in miracles. He propped it with his foot and gave time back its bad habits.
They were in a stairwell. Footsteps above. Shouting below. He pointed down. She shook her head. Up, then. She moved like she'd memorized the sound of pursuit. Third landing. Narrow corridor that smelled like forgotten disinfectant and cheap hope. The loading dock was ahead, yawning like a throat.
A man in a suit that didn't belong to this building stepped into the corridor, alone, exactly the wrong kind of calm. Not Triad. Not a doctor. Vought, but not a uniform—an idea of Vought in a necktie.
He saw Kimiko. He saw Cian. His face did that thing where it wrote three reports at once.
Cian raised a finger and made a tiny rolling motion with his wrist. The suit's earpiece fizzled. The suit frowned because information had betrayed him. He reached for a weapon he wasn't trained to use. Kimiko reached him first and taught him the opposite of policy.
Cian touched the suit's lapel with a negligible spark and whispered to the RFID tag there. It forgot who it was. Later, when someone tried to scan it to make sense of today, the system would shrug and return a picture of a stapler.
They hit the loading dock. Night had cracked open and poured humidity all over the concrete. Beyond the chain-link, the street sat pretending it wasn't waiting for a chase scene. Somewhere six blocks out, tires hissed on wet asphalt in a rhythm Cian knew: van, then heavier vehicle, then Butcher's appetite for trouble showing up exactly on time.
"Left," Cian said, and pointed to a stack of pallets. "Hide for one minute. Then fight."
She tilted her head, feral mathematics doing sums he trusted. He held up both hands, showed her his empty, then the tiny blue spark that meant yes, I helped. She nodded once—an accord between storms—and slid into shadow.
He texted Mallory one word: DONE. Then he crouched and traced a lightning sigil the size of a coin on the underside of the dock lip, a little breadcrumb for the part of him that liked leaving jokes in rooms. If anyone ever found it, it would be because they were already on his side.
The sound arrived first: a van that had no reason to be brave pretending to be. It nosed into the alley, killed its lights, and coughed to a stop with theatrical modesty. Frenchie's grin arrived a half second before the rest of him. Mother's Milk unfolded from the passenger side like a moral argument. Butcher stepped out last, coat catching the dock light, jaw set to ruin.
Cian stayed in the rafters, a rumor with his hands in his pockets. He gave the dock's camera a small, indulgent yawn. He let the motion sensors believe in stillness. He took a breath he didn't need and tasted the city getting ready to do what it always does when entrails meet gears.
He didn't call out. He didn't wave. Rumors don't. He just watched the last bead roll to the edge of the table and waited for gravity to do the rest.
Butcher whispered, "On my mark."
Kimiko slid from behind the pallets like a knife, all silence and consequence.
Cian smiled into his sleeve like a sinner at church. "Showtime," he told the unblinking night, and let the seconds run on their own legs.
Frenchie lifted both hands like a man approaching a cathedral. "Bonjour, ma chérie," he whispered to the knife that was a girl. "We are the idiots who open the wrong doors for the right reasons."
Kimiko looked past him—measured, animal-calm. Mother's Milk eased left to cut an angle; Butcher stayed center, weight on the balls of his feet, a grin he didn't believe in pinned to his face.
"Easy," MM said, voice built of oak. "No one's here to put you back."
A shout rose inside the warehouse. The first wave of guards hit the loading dock—guns up, courage rented by the hour.
Cian pinched two seconds off the clock.
Bullets met humidity and misremembered their aim. A light strip hiccuped into darkness, the camera yawned another long, innocent yawn, and a padlock forgot it was locked. Time stood back up with its hair mussed.
"Move!" Butcher snapped.
Kimiko did. Through them—not at them. She flowed under MM's guard, climbed Butcher's coat like a ladder, and landed in Frenchie's personal space with a stillness that felt like a dare. He didn't flinch. He gave her a smile built for strays and saints.
"Taxi?" he asked.
She blinked once. Consent, or curiosity dressed like it.
Behind her, the first guard cleared the doorway, muzzle flashing. MM's shoulder took a splinter off the crate, and his patience curdled. He returned one clean shot into concrete near the guard's boot—discipline, not murder. The guard reconsidered his commitment to payroll.
Cian flicked his wrist and the dock's steel roll-up door groaned downward like a stage curtain, buying them a sentence of quiet.
Butcher thrust the van's side door open. "In, love. Or don't. But if you come, we keep you out of cages."
Kimiko's eyes flicked to the alley—open, mean, full of coin-flip futures. She put one foot in the van like a queen deigning to test the sedan chair. Frenchie exhaled without letting it look like relief and offered a hand he fully expected to lose. She ignored it and climbed on her own terms.
MM piled in after her. Butcher slid the door; it slammed home with the authority of a promise.
"Drive," he told Frenchie.
Frenchie: "Always."
Tires whispered on wet pavement. The van swallowed the corner with more enthusiasm than power.
On the roofline, Cian jogged the block into obedience—two intersecting greens, a delivery truck that decided it loved its brake pedal, a drone that discovered a sudden battery anxiety and landed in a birdbath. He laughed under his breath, could not help it, and then tasted blue at the back of his tongue.
Altitude. That antiseptic, PR-sanitized pressure.
Homelander.
Cian didn't freeze time. He hid a city. He ran a loop around three blocks, palming transformer skins and kissing relays, lulling every sensor into the deep, even hum of average. He teased a thunderhead into grumbling over the East River so god's ears would have somewhere else to listen. The van slid through the net as something too boring to sell.
Up high, Homelander hovered in place like a bad idea waiting for an invitation. He scanned; the neighborhood burped harmless static. He smiled at his reflection in the glass of a mid-rise and let himself drift toward a TV camera he could wave at. The city sighed like a hostage given a smoke break.
"Good lad," Cian told the sky, and followed the van.
---
Frenchie's workshop received them like a recidivist uncle—messy, warm, trouble by design. The door clanged shut. MM posted at the window, heartbeat steady, rifle low. Butcher did a perimeter on muscle memory.
Kimiko stood in the center of the room like a lightning rod no one had planted on purpose. Her eyes counted exits. Her hands remembered locks.
Frenchie took two slow steps, palms open. "No needles," he said softly. "No cages. Only bad coffee and worse décor."
She sniffed the air—solvent, solder, exhaustion, mint tea. She found the cots, the barrels, the workbench cluttered with inventions that could be kindness or cruelty depending on the hour. She looked at the bathroom door like it was a mountain. She didn't move.
Butcher tossed MM a roll of gauze. "Patch, tidy, tea, not in that order."
"Copy." MM set a mug in front of Hughie because kindness is a habit. "Sip."
Hughie sipped. His hands shook and then remembered themselves. He looked at Kimiko like she was a star fallen through the wrong ceiling. He tried a smile that didn't demand anything.
"Hi," he said, because he was built that way.
Kimiko glanced at him, then at Frenchie, then at the door again. She took two steps toward the door and stopped—choice, not fear. Slowly, she lowered herself to a crouch, back to the wall, so no one could get behind her without asking the room's permission.
Frenchie knelt too, a polite mirror at a distance that wouldn't get him killed. He produced a chocolate square from a pocket no sane man would store chocolate in. He set it between them and slid it forward with one finger like an offering to a feral god.
She stared. Sniffed. Took it. Ate it like a secret.
Frenchie's smile was a prayer he'd never admit to saying.
"Right," Butcher said, clapping once as if to frighten the gods. "The world's going to notice we stole a person. Vought'll spin, the Triad will spit, and our favorite blond weather pattern will want a stroll."
"Let him stroll," MM said, tape in his teeth as he wrapped a nick on his arm. "We'll be inside."
Butcher's phone buzzed—unknown number, punctuation-only preview. He frowned and read: NICE LIFT. KEEP HER OUT OF SIGHT 48. No signature. Lightning bolt as the icon. He didn't show it. He didn't need the room to know a rumor loved them today.
"Plan?" Hughie asked, voice almost back from wherever it had been.
"Same as ever," Butcher said. "Find the leak. Break the pipe. Make the mess someone else's problem."
Frenchie peered at Kimiko's wrists—bruises like bracelets. He angled the first-aid kit in her sight line and raised an eyebrow. Yes? She curled her fingers into fists, then uncurled them. She slid forward, let him dab antiseptic, didn't flinch when it stung. She didn't thank him with her mouth. She thanked him by not killing him.
"Good," he whispered, and taped gauze like it was origami.
Hughie took the stool nearest her and sat—hands visible, posture small. "We're the good guys," he said, catching himself, grimacing. "We're the… guys trying not to be the worst guys."
Kimiko's mouth did a fast, microscopic thing that could have been a smile's ghost or a tic. She flicked her eyes to his, then away. She took another chocolate square from Frenchie's palm without looking like she needed it. She did.
Cian leaned on the rafter rail and let the room's new shape settle into his bones. He'd done enough. More than enough. The Speed Force purred in him, eager to make him showy. He told it no like a stern parent who secretly wants to laugh with the child later.
His phone buzzed. COFFEE LATER?—from a number that believed in legislative oversight and flirting. He typed: BRING RECEIPTS. BRING A LIE YOU'RE READY TO KILL. He didn't send it. He typed: Maybe. He sent that. Progress is sometimes cowardice in a good suit.
The window glass brightened as an ambulance sang past two streets over. The TV in the corner rolled silent footage of the dock, already scrubbed by Vought. A chyron guessed. An anchor lied politely. The city pretended to be surprised.
Butcher's shoulders dropped one notch. "Forty-eight hours," he said to the room. "We hold that line."
MM nodded. "I'll make a list."
Frenchie stood, wiped his hands, and looked at Kimiko like a craftsman admiring a cathedral that had decided not to need scaffolding. "You are safe here," he said.
Kimiko tilted her head. Safe was a big word. She let it sit on the table next to the chocolate wrapper and gave it a look that promised to revisit it later.
Hughie looked from her to the door to his ridiculous life. He swallowed. "I'm Hughie," he said, because names turn strangers into problems you're willing to have.
She said nothing. She tapped her chest once—me—then made the smallest flick of her fingers: later.
Cian smiled into his sleeve. "Good," he told the ceiling. "Let later earn its keep."
He slipped out through the hot seam of air over the window and let the building exhale behind him.
Above the island, clouds piled up like bad decisions. Somewhere a plane took off into a future no one had the budget to fix. Cian put two fingers to the city's pulse and felt it trip over a headline that hadn't happened yet. He didn't run to it. Not yet.
He ran the perimeter instead—small circles around the people he'd accidentally chosen—leaving little static prayers in locks and lines, painting the neighborhood with boredom, the most powerful camouflage in the world.
The storm grumbled its approval. The city clicked to the next notch. The rumor kept to the rafters.
For now.