7 Chapters Ahead
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Jack stood up. The motion was unhurried, like a wave rising before it breaks. He reached out and touched the cage.
The electricity hit him immediately—that was the point of the cage, that was the beauty of it, the constant current that ran through the bars, enough to drop a normal man, enough to make most Supes think twice, enough to fry a person's nervous system into scrambled eggs. It crackled and snapped, blue-white arcs dancing across Jack's fingers, across his palm, up his wrist. The light of it lit up the warehouse, threw shadows against the walls, made the dust in the air glitter like falling stars.
And Jack just stood there. Letting it flow into him. Letting it feed him.
His eyes never left the shimmer. The electricity danced across his skin like it was coming home, like it had been looking for him for a very long time and had finally, finally found what it was looking for.
"Do you remember," Jack said, his voice soft, almost dreamy, "a month ago? Near the park? The one with the old oak trees and the fountain that doesn't work anymore?"
Translucent was quiet.
"There was a mission. Something about a potential threat, something about a guy with a bomb, something that turned out to be nothing. Just another false alarm. Just another day in the life of your precious fucking Seven." Jack's hand was still on the cage, the electricity still flowing, lighting him from within like a lantern made of flesh and bone. "You and Homelander. You went together. Because why not? Because it was an easy day. Because you could show up, wave your dicks around, go home in time for dinner."
He paused. The electricity crackled. The warehouse hummed with it.
"Homelander killed a kid. Accidentally. A bystander. A teenager who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And two people saw it. Two people who looked at your precious leader and didn't see a hero. Didn't see a savior. Didn't see the god you all pretend he is. They saw a murderer. They saw the truth."
Jack's voice was changing now. The softness was bleeding away, replaced by something harder, something colder, something that had been frozen for a very long time and was only now beginning to thaw.
"So he killed them. Homelander. He looked at my parents—my mother and my father, who had never hurt anyone, who had never done anything wrong except be in the wrong place at the wrong time—and he burned them alive. With his eyes. Just… looked at them. And they were gone. Ashes. Smoke. Nothing."
The electricity around Jack's hand surged. Not a trickle now, not a gentle flow. A torrent. The bars of the cage glowed red, then white, then began to sag.
"I was there," Jack said. His voice was quiet again, but it was the quiet of a blade being drawn from its sheath. The quiet of a storm that has been building for a very long time and is about to break. "I was behind the dumpster. I had gone to get us drinks. My mother wanted lemonade. My father wanted iced tea. I wanted to get away from the crowd, from the noise. So I went to the vendor on the corner, and I bought the drinks, and I was walking back when I heard the scream.Then I saw my parents turning to dust. Homelander's smile when he does it. And you." His eyes locked onto the shimmer, and for the first time, there was something there beyond the calm. There was fire. There was fury. There was a hatred so pure and so old that it felt like a living thing.
"I didn't see you," Jack continued. "You were invisible. You were always invisible. But I heard you. I heard you laugh when Homelander made his joke. I heard you say 'clean up on aisle five' like it was nothing, like they were nothing, like the lives of two people who had never done anything to anyone were just a mess that needed to be swept away. I heard your voice. And I remembered it."
He pulled. The cage came apart in his hands like it was made of paper. The bars twisted, groaned, snapped. Electricity arced and sparked, a fireworks display of dying current, and Jack stood in the middle of it, untouched, unharmed, a god standing in the ruins of the thing that was supposed to contain him.
He threw the wreckage aside. It crashed against the far wall, a heap of twisted metal and shattered electronics, and the warehouse was suddenly very quiet. No hum. No crackle. Just the sound of Jack breathing, and Hughie's ragged gasps from the floor, and the very soft, very careful sound of Translucent trying to get to his feet.
Translucent was fast. He'd been fast his whole life—fast enough to dodge bullets, fast enough to disappear before anyone could blink, fast enough to be the one they sent when they needed someone to be everywhere and nowhere at once. He was on his feet now, his invisible body moving, his invisible hands reaching for something, anything, a weapon, a plan, a way out.
He never got the chance.
Jack moved. One moment he was standing in the wreckage of the cage. The next he was there, right there, his hand closing around Translucent's throat. His fingers found the invisible neck beneath the invisible skin, found the trachea, the carotid, the pulse that was suddenly hammering against his grip like a trapped bird.
He lifted. Translucent's feet left the ground. His body flickered into visibility as the pressure on his throat forced his concentration to break, forced the power to falter, forced him to be seen. His face was red now, his eyes wide, his mouth open, his hands clawing at Jack's wrist with the desperate, useless strength of a drowning man.
Jack held him there. His arm was straight, his hand steady, his face calm. The hatred of the original owner in his chest was roaring now, a furnace that had been banked for a month and was finally, finally allowed to burn. He could feel the original owner in that fire, could feel the grief and the guilt and the terrible, crushing weight of having lived when his parents had died. He could feel that presence, that ghost, that price of admission, and he could feel it feeding the flames, making them hotter, making them brighter, making them something that would not be satisfied until it had consumed everything.
"You thought you were safe," Jack said. His voice was soft. Almost gentle. The voice of a man who had waited a very long time to say something and was not going to rush now that the moment had finally come. "You thought that because you couldn't be seen, you couldn't be touched. You thought that because you were one of them, smiled for the cameras and let them call you a hero, that you were above the consequences. That you could watch two people burn to ash and it wouldn't matter. That you could laugh about it, make jokes about it, go home and sleep like a baby and never think about it again."
He pulled Translucent closer. Their faces were inches apart now. Jack could see the fear in Translucent's eyes, see it blooming behind the rage, behind the confusion, behind the desperate, animal need to survive. He could see the moment that Translucent realized that this was real, that this was happening, that there was no Homelander coming to save him, no Vought lawyers, no PR team, no invisible escape route. Just a man. Just a god. Just the weight of everything he had done, finally, finally, coming home to roost.
"But I remembered," Jack whispered. " And I've been carrying that memory. Carrying it every day. Every night. Every moment. Waiting for this."
He squeezed. Translucent's face went from red to purple, his eyes bulging, his mouth working soundlessly, his hands beating against Jack's arm with the rhythmic, useless desperation of a man who was already dead and just hadn't stopped moving yet.
Hughie watched from the floor. His face was bloody, his jaw hanging loose, his eyes wide with a terror that had nothing to do with his own pain.He watched the young man hold Translucent in the air, watched the invisible become visible,and he knew, with a certainty that went deeper than thought, that he was watching a man become something else. Something that the world was not ready for.
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