Almost bowing his head low like an actual servant, the man with the accent that made Mason dislike the French language less ushered he and Mallory in.
The lady of course went in first and he followed, ducking beneath the top of the doorway.
Hughie took in everything with the eyes of a skittish, startled animal. Butcher couldn't bear to look at him for some reason. Serge was too occupied with whatever happened between him and Mallory, and the woman herself was greeting another member of this group.
“Marvin.” She kept her hands in her pockets and acknowledged.
“Colonel.” The tall, dark skinned man nodded and shifted his gaze from Mallory to him.
He made eye contact before breaking it off to look around. He was picking up so many strange vibes from the place and the people he didn't know whom to focus on.
“Boys. You all know who this is—”
“Well well well.” Butcher interrupted and sauntered closer, swaying with the exaggerated swagger of a nonchalant Englishman. “If it ain’t the giant, flaming cunt.”
Hughie shut his eyes and dropped his head, shaking it subtly. Marvin spread his arms and gave Butcher a “really?” look, while Mallory rolled her eyes.
Serge threw the towel onto his neck and stepped forward with an open hand. “Monsieur Macon, it is an honor to meet the one who gave Vought the ass fucking of the century.”
Distracted from Butcher’s warm welcome, Mason shook the offered hand and smiled. “Didn’t do it hard enough. Serge, right?”
“Oui. That is the name my papa gave me, but my friends call me Frenchie.”
‘Umm, calling the French guy Frenchie? I’m not even gonna ask why?’
“Frenchie. Good to meet you.”
“The pleasure is all mine.”
“Alright.” Marvin stepped forward and waved Frenchie away. “Put your dick back in your pants.”
“Why don’t you let go of it then?”
Oh…
“You heard my name was Marvin.” He and Mason shook hands. “My friends call me Mother’s Milk.”
‘Nope. Not touching that at all.’
“Mother’s Milk.” Mason repeated, schooling his facial muscles.
“MM for short.”
Much better.
“MM.” He shouldn’t have sounded so relieved. “MM is good. Nice to meet you brother.”
“After what you did to Vought, the pleasure is all mine, brother.” He ended by patting Mason on the shoulder.
Next in line was Hughie. “Hi. Um. I’m—”
“Hugh Campbell Junior. I know you.”
Everyone froze, giving him the stage to offer an explanation.
“When I was gathering evidence against Vought, I hid outside the tower to see if I could get anything. Lo and behold, Translucent walks out of the building, buck ass naked and starts to follow you and mister cunt there,” He motioned to Butcher.
“Wait? You could see him?”
“No, I sensed a ball of heat walking around where there were no people and there’s only one Vought affiliated hero with invisibility who also happens to be a serial yet socially accepted pervert. So I followed him and you guys and I watched you take him down. I would’ve helped, but you guys managed it in the end.”
“Wow.” That was all Hughie had to say, but Mason wasn't through.
He placed a hand on the shorter but older man’s shoulder. “I know it won’t help, but I’m sorry for your loss. My condolences.”
“Uh… how do you know about that?”
“The news. And Facebook.” He took his hand off the guy’s shoulder.
“Oh.” The answer seemed to pacify him. “Thank you for saying that. It also felt nice… to hear that you survived the,” he pointed at his own head, ”the head popping thing.”
“Mason. You stay here and get acquainted. I’ll be back soon.”
Mallory went for the door right after receiving a nod of agreement.
Mason focused back on Hughie.
“As the one who's still breathing, let me tell you no one is more relieved than me.”
“How did you survive that by the way?” MM crossed his arms.
“I would like to know as well.” Frenchie chimed in with nervous laughter. “If you have no problem telling us of course.”
Mason looked past them and at Butcher, who had busied himself with a crate of guns yet positioned himself to hear things clearly.
“My powers saved me.”
“So the phoenix thing is true?” Hughie seemed amazed. “Can your flames heal?”
“No. Well, I’ve never used them on anyone, or myself so I can’t tell for sure. But, it wasn’t the fire that saved me. My main power is staying alive no matter what.”
Confused and unimpressed stares were shared across the room. Butcher let out a scoff.
“I’m confused.” MM took the leap. “You’re saying—”
“My power keeps me alive and kicking no matter what. It’s not regeneration, it’s more... adaptability. Or survivability, if you want to drill down to the bottom.”
Frenchie hurried over and circled him, boring into his head with wide eyes. “C’est impossible.”
MM shook his head at his teammate's antics.
“So you’re saying, when your head blew up, your powers kept you alive, somehow, long enough for the damage to heal.”
“Correct.”
Frenchie did another pass and stopped, sharing a look with MM before focusing on Mason. “Phoenix may not be entirely wrong Monsieur Macon.”
“Yeah,” said Hughie, himself finding it hard not to look at the head that somehow survived getting turned into a watermelon at a shooting range.
“Alright. Come of it you lot.” Butcher stopped feigning disinterest and squared up with Mason. “Mallory brought this bloke here for a reason. And I’d like to know why.”
“This blo—” Mason stopped at the clink of chains and looked beyond Butcher. At the farthest end of the room, a face and hair streaked with grease peeked out of the empty doorway .
“What the…” He frowned and looked at everyone’s faces before brushing past them.
“Hey!”
Frenchie ran past and tried to slow him down. “I promise it's not what you think.”
What the hell was he supposed to think of this?
“Hey kid!”
Mason tuned their words out and rounded the corner of the doorway, only to get jumped by a tiny Asian woman playing catch the spider.
Fortunately, he was no slouch. He reached out with an arm and caught her by the neck, holding her at arms length while she bit and scratched his arms and clothes when her fingers failed to reach his face.
Footsteps rang out from behind as he surveyed the room. There was a mattress on the floor, a couple of knick-knacks and the chains locked around one of her ankles, the other end bolted to the floor.
They were the reason for his decisive actions, however seeing the woman’s reaction explained things just a little bit.
“Why is she here?” He asked and threw her onto the mattress before stepping back out of her reach. “You guys know how this looks right? A chained up woman with four men in the middle of nowhere.”
“Now that... you say.... that… yeah.” Hughie spoke up. “It does sound crazy. How did I miss that?”
He sounded genuinely perplexed.
Frenchie picked things up from there. “We found her like this.”
“Followed a lead on A-Train and Compound V to her.” MM continued. “They had her locked up.”
“Doesn’t explain why she’s chained up though.”
Her behavior obviously explained things a bit, but he wanted to hear it from them. There had to be more to it. Sadly, someone had grown tired of him and his line of questioning.
“She’s a feral supe that’s why. Attacks anything that fucking moves. Aren’t you supposed to be smart or something?”
The familiar whine of the large metal door stopped everything in its tracks. They returned to the main area with Butcher in the lead.
“What’s going on?” Mallory had a suitcase now.
Butcher brushed her query aside and jabbed a thumb in Mason’s direction. “Fuck is he doing here?”
“He’s one of you now.”
“The fuck he—”
“If he leaves, the funding goes with him.”
That took the wind out of everyone’s sails.
“Now.” Capitalizing on the quiet she’d bought, Mallory set the case down and opened it.
“He has a lead on the head popper. Are you in or are you out?”
.
.
.
The hoops Mason would have had to jump through to get close to Neuman were all bypassed with the contributions of the C.I.A. and The Boys.
Be it locating and isolating the congresswoman, sedating and then transferring her to a safe location for questioning, and doing all this without setting off alarms, the inclusion of the aforementioned groups had expedited and facilitated things.
Right now he sat in the backseat of Neuman’s car, obscured by the tint of the passenger side windows, the shadows within the vehicle, and those of the underground parking lot. It also helped that he stayed low while he waited.
This was Neuman’s last meeting of the day and despite the time of day being when most would be kicking back and relaxing in the comfort of their homes, she would return to her office for at least another hour before calling the day quits.
Her work ethic would have been something he could respect if she hadn’t sold out to Vought.
Once again fielding a lot of internal questions as to why she would do this, Mason cleared his mind of these distractions and focused. They had nothing concrete, hence this hasty operation.
Situated semi-comfortably in the cramped space behind the driver’s seat and the one behind it, he checked the time on his watch. MM’s prompt coincided with that moment, his voice coming through the comms.
“It’s time. Eyes up, kid.”
Through the already deployed heat sense, Mason evaluated the somewhat empty lot, shifting his focus from the nondescript van hiding Butcher and the rest to the portion of the lot where the elevator was located.
His patience endured the test of time as he waited and waited. Finally, after a long fifty one seconds, two individuals entered the radius of his perception and he quickly determined that they were women.
To get as much as he could out of this unique perception, he hadn’t stopped training with it. Whatever chance he got to deploy it, he did not hesitate.
He’d also done a lot of reading on heat and the temperature of the human body , and while men and women really weren’t that different, the way the heat in their bodies was distributed is what he zeroed his training on.
Now after hours of playing back all the times he’d used heat sense and examining people in real time, he could reliably differentiate between men and women. It wasn’t totally reliable though.
Things like weather, illnesses and even choice of clothing all had a say, but for today, Mason was certain the two people closing in on him were not just women but Neuman and her assistant.
There was no need to ready himself. The right pieces had already been moved into the right places more than an hour ago. Neuman was the only one left. Her assistant muddied things up a bit, but it was nothing that couldn’t be maneuvered.
Two voices engaged in conversation reached within earshot.
“I hear them.”
“We see them. They’ll land in three, two, one.”
The place brightened up for a split second when the car unlocked. The doors opened and the entire thing shook, barely, as two more weights added their own to the load.
Doors slammed shut and Mason pressed the device waiting under his thumb. Courtesy of Frenchie, it usurped control of the vehicle, essentially kicking Neuman's key off the controls and handing it to him.
Four simultaneous clicks echoed through the car and sent the women into a panic. To worsen the case, a canister lodged between the handbrake and Neuman’s seat began to spew white smoke.
The assistant screamed and began to hit the door and the glass. Neuman didn’t let out a peep but mirrored her subordinate’s actions as the gas occupied every visible space in the car.
Mere seconds after their struggle began, the ladies, still obscured by the cloud of stubborn gas that had nowhere to go, lost all strength and sagged in their seats.
Sitting up behind them, Mason resisted the urge to take off his mask and gloves and reached into the front, grabbing Neuman’s keys from her loose grip. He then unlocked the car with Frenchie’s device, waving away the halothane as he alighted.
Four pairs of eyes stared at him with a mix of alarm, shock, and confusion, the owners lowering their guns when they noticed it was him. Butcher kept his gun up and waved it at Mason and the car.
“How are you not down under like them cunts?”
Mason rolled his eyes and opened the driver’s side door. He stared at the sleeping Neuman and grabbed her hand, removing a fresh syringe from his pocket.
He found a vein and looked at the guys behind him, now closer than before.
“Moment of truth.”
Their goal here wasn’t just to bag Neuman, it was also to determine if she was a supe, hence the drawing of blood. A test for Compound V would answer a lot of their questions.
Who knew they didn’t need to go that far?
Startling everyone present, the needle Mason pushed against the obvious blood vessel bent against the unconscious woman’s fair and smooth skin like a straw against a wall.
“Holy shit.” Hughie looked at the crooked needle as Mason raised it up high.
“No need for that test now.” Butcher grabbed it from him to examine it himself, his lips curling into a grin as he finally settled on the sleeping Neuman. “Fucking diabolical.”
“Butcher.” MM sounded almost reproachful of how much his friend was enjoying this.
“Alright, alright. MM, Hughie… get her to the van. Frenchie, you get her phone. And you,” he pointed at Mason. “Get the assistant.”
Before they set off to do this, Mallory had slipped him a warning about how things usually ended for supes that entered this team’s crosshairs. She’d made him promise to ensure no one died, no matter what happened.
Even if Neuman turned out to be the head popper. Vengeance or not, killing Neuman could cause a whole other host of problems. This bummed him out a bit, especially when she played dirty by bringing up the woman's daughter.
Without that little girl, he very well would’ve tossed her warning to the wayside and broken his promise—only after they confirmed that Neuman was the head popper.
Still, that didn’t mean he had suddenly lost his desire for revenge. No. In fact, he found himself rationalizing it now as saving Neuman’s daughter from having a terrible mother like her.
The depths the human mind can sink to…
Anyway, tamping down his distaste for Butcher and the incessant calls for his attempted killer’s blood, he circled the vehicle and grabbed the assistant, cradling her in a gentle bridal carry instead of a shoulder one.
She didn’t deserve this, but the job was the job. Even if it would leave her with trauma that would take years or never to overcome.
‘I understand why granddad hated this.’