7 Chapters Ahead
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The sound of Translucent's body hitting the wall was wet and meaty, a sound that didn't belong in any world where people were supposed to be safe. His spine cracked against the concrete with enough force to leave a dent, and when he slid down, his mouth was already filling with blood, the dark red spilling over his lower lip, dripping down his chin.
He tried to breathe. The air came in rasps, in gasps, in the kind of desperate, ragged pulls that men make when they're drowning on dry land. His ribs were broken—he could feel them grinding against each other with every breath, sharp edges of bone scraping against soft tissue, against lungs that were struggling to expand. His jaw was hanging loose, unhinged, the joint shattered by the first punch, by the impact of his own face against the wall. Blood was running from his nose, his ears, the corners of his eyes, a mask of red that made his handsome features look like something from a nightmare.
He pushed himself up. His hands found the wall, fingers scrabbling against the concrete, nails cracking, breaking, leaving little crescents of blood and keratin on the surface. His legs were shaking, his knees buckling, his whole body screaming at him to stop, to lie down, to let go. But he was a Supe. He was one of the Seven. He didn't stop. He didn't let go. He didn't—
A hand closed around the back of his head.
Jack grabbed him by the hair, his fingers twisting into the sweat-soaked strands, and slammed him forward. Translucent's face hit the ground first—nose first, mouth first, that pretty Vought-approved face that had smiled for a million cameras, that had laughed at a million jokes, that had watched a many people die without ever once looking away. The concrete cratered under the impact, a spiderweb of cracks spreading out from the point of contact like the world's ugliest halo.
Jack didn't let go. He was on top of him now, straddling his back, his knees pinning Translucent's arms to the floor, his weight a mountain that couldn't be moved. His fist pulled back, and when it came down, it came down like a hammer of God.
The first punch landed on the side of Translucent's face. Bone crunched. Teeth flew. Blood sprayed across the floor in a fan, bright red against grey concrete.
"Did you feel that?" Jack's voice was a snarl, an animal sound torn from somewhere deep in his chest. His fist was already pulling back again. "Did you fucking feel that?"
The second punch hit the same spot. The orbital bone shattered. The eye socket collapsed. Translucent screamed, a wet, gurgling sound that was half blood and half something that might have been words.
"Did it hurt?" Punch. "Did it hurt like my mother hurt when Homelander looked at her?" Punch. "Did it hurt like my father hurt when he realized he was dying, when he realized that his life, his whole fucking life, was ending because some cunt in a cape decided it should?" Punch. Punch. Punch.
Translucent's voice came out of the wreckage of his face, a whisper, a prayer, a curse. "You won't... live either..." The words were barely recognizable, his lips split, his tongue broken, his jaw hanging at an angle that made speech a miracle. "Homelander... will come... for you..."
Jack's fist stopped in mid-air. It hung there, the knuckles raw and bloody, the tendons standing out like cords. For a moment, the warehouse was silent except for the sound of Translucent's breathing, that wet, ragged sound that was slowly, inexorably, becoming less and less.
Then Jack laughed.
It was a quiet laugh at first, a small sound that seemed to surprise him as much as it surprised Hughie. But it grew, spilling out of his mouth in waves that echoed off the walls and climbed toward the dark ceiling. His head tilted back, his bloody face turned toward the shadows above, and he laughed like a man who had finally, finally stopped pretending.
"You don't have to worry about that, you stupid cunt." His voice was low now, intimate, the voice of a lover or a killer or something that was both and neither. "If he doesn't come for me, I'll go for him. I'll go for that psycho, and I'll tear his fucking head off, and I'll piss down his throat while his dead eyes stare at nothing. That's a promise. That's the only thing in this whole shitty world that I'm absolutely fucking sure of."
His fist came down.
This time, he put everything into it. Not just strength. Not just speed. Everything. The hatred of the original owner, the grief of a son who had watched his parents turn to ash.It all flowed through his arm, through his fist, through the point of impact where his knuckles met Translucent's skull.
The sound was unlike anything Hughie had ever heard. It wasn't a crack. It wasn't a crunch. It was a wet, percussive pop, a sound like a melon dropped from a great height, like a pumpkin hit by a sledgehammer, like something that had once been solid and whole and full of life being reduced, in a single instant, to fragments.
Translucent's head didn't break. It exploded.
Blood sprayed in a wide arc, painting the floor, the walls, Jack's face, Jack's chest, Jack's arms. Pieces of bone, of brain, of skin that had once been invisible and now was just meat, scattered across the warehouse like the aftermath of a bomb. The body beneath Jack went limp, the arms that had been trying to push him off falling still, the legs that had been kicking going quiet, the whole thing becoming nothing more than a collection of parts that used to be a man.
Jack sat there for a moment, breathing hard, his chest heaving, his hands covered in blood up to the elbows. He could feel it on his face, warm and sticky, dripping from his chin, running into his eyes, making him look like something that had crawled out of a grave. He looked down at what was left of Translucent—at the ruin of a face, at the empty space where a head used to be, at the blood that was pooling beneath the body and spreading across the floor like a dark, slow tide—and he felt something inside him shift.
The hatred. The burning, all-consuming hatred that had been there since the moment he woke up in this body. It was quieter now. Not gone—not completely—but... less. Half of it, maybe. A burden lifted, a weight taken off a chest that had been struggling to breathe for a very long time.
He sighed. The sound came out of him like air leaving a bellows, long and slow and tired. He looked up at the dark ceiling, at the shadows that clung to the rafters, at the faint flicker of lightning that was still dancing across the clouds outside. The storm was still there, waiting, patient, ready to answer when he called.
One down, he thought. One to go.
He stood up. His legs were steady, his hands were steady, everything about him was steady in a way it hadn't been before. He nudged Translucent's headless body with his foot, pushing it away from him, a little gesture of disgust that was almost instinct. The body rolled, arms flopping, legs splaying, blood smearing across the floor in a wide, dark arc.
For a moment, standing there in the middle of the carnage, with blood dripping from his face and the corpse of one of the Seven at his feet, Jack felt something rise in his throat. His stomach turned. His gorge rose. The smell of blood—hot, copper-sweet, overwhelmingly human—filled his nostrils, filled his lungs, filled his whole head until he thought he might be sick.
He swallowed it down. He forced it back. He closed his eyes for a moment, breathed through his mouth, let the cold air fill his lungs and push the nausea away. When he opened his eyes again, he was calm. He was steady. He was the god of thunder now, and gods did not vomit at the sight of blood. They did not flinch. They did not look away.
This is right, he told himself. This is what he deserved. This is what they all deserve.
He turned.
Hughie was standing by the wall where Jack had left him. He was on his feet now—barely, his legs shaking, his hands pressed flat against the concrete behind him like he needed the support to keep from falling. His face was a mess of blood and swelling, his jaw hanging at an angle that was wrong, his left eye already closing, a bruise blooming across his cheek like a dark flower. But it wasn't the pain that had frozen him. It wasn't the blood running down his chin or the loose teeth he could feel with his tongue.
It was the body.
Hughie was staring at Translucent's corpse with the kind of wide, unblinking stare that belongs to men who have seen something their brains are not equipped to process. His mouth was open, his chest was rising and falling in short, shallow gasps, and his eyes—his eyes were the eyes of a man who has looked into the abyss and discovered that the abyss is looking back.
Jack walked toward him. His footsteps were slow, deliberate, each one leaving a bloody print on the concrete floor. The blood on his face was drying now, cracking, flaking, making him look like something carved out of red clay. He smiled when he saw Hughie's expression, and on his bloody face.
"Did you like it, Hughie?" His voice was soft, almost gentle, the voice of a man asking about the traffic or some other inconsequential thing. "Did you enjoy the show?"
Hughie's mouth worked. His lips moved, his tongue moved, his throat tried to form words. Nothing came out. Just a sound, a small, strangled sound that might have been a whimper or might have been the beginning of a scream.
Jack stopped in front of him. He was close enough now that Hughie could see the individual drops of blood in his hair, the way it was matted and dark, the way it clung to his forehead in wet strands. Close enough that Hughie could smell the blood on him, that thick, metallic smell that was already starting to turn sour.
"That's one," Jack said. He held up a finger, the nail still red, the skin still wet. "One down. One to go. And..." He let the sentence hang, unfinished, and the smile on his face grew just a little wider.
He reached out and touched Hughie's face. Not hard. Not violent. Just a touch, his bloody fingers against Hughie's cheek, leaving a red smear on the pale skin. Hughie flinched. He tried to pull away, but there was nowhere to go, no escape from the hand that was suddenly, impossibly gentle.
"You understand, don't you?" Jack's voice was quiet now, almost a whisper. "You understand why I did it. You understand what it's like to watch someone die and know that the person who killed them is going to walk away without a scratch. Without a care. Without ever once thinking about what they did."
Hughie's eyes filled with tears. They spilled down his cheeks, cutting tracks through the blood, through the dirt, through the last remnants of the boy he had been before Robin died.
"Yes," he whispered. The word came out like a confession. Like a wound. Like the first real thing he had said in weeks. "Yes, I understand."
Jack's smile softened. For a moment, just a moment, the mask slipped, and Hughie saw something underneath the blood and the fury.He saw a boy.A boy who had been given power he didn't ask for and was trying, in the only way he knew how, to make the world make sense again.
"Good," Jack said. He pulled his hand away, leaving a red handprint on Hughie's face. "Then we're not so different, you and me. We're just two men who've seen what the heroes really are. And we're doing something about it."
He turned away, leaving Hughie standing there, trembling, bleeding, trying to hold himself together with hands that wouldn't stop shaking. He walked back toward the corpse, stepping over the pool of blood that was spreading across the floor, and looked down at what was left of Translucent. The body was still. The blood was still flowing, a slow, thick tide that was already beginning to congeal at the edges. The head was... gone. Just gone. A ruin. A mess. A thing that had once been a man and was now nothing but meat.
Jack nudged it with his foot again, rolling it onto its back. The face—what was left of it—was turned toward the ceiling, toward the darkness, toward the storm that was still rumbling overhead. The eyes were open. One of them was still intact, staring at nothing, seeing nothing, the last thing it had seen the fist that had ended its existence.
"Rest in pieces, you invisible cunt," Jack said. His voice was flat, the voice of a man who had said everything he needed to say. "Give my regards to whatever hell you're burning in."
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