The underground bunker beneath the abandoned warehouse complex was a cold, sensory-deprived tomb.

It smelled persistently of rusted iron pipes, damp concrete, and the lingering, aggressive essence of Billy Butcher’s cigarette smoke.

Butcher and his crew had cleared out hours ago on a high-stakes hunt through the neon-lit veins of the city, leaving behind strict orders.

That left Ben—Soldier Boy—playing the part of a heavily guarded secret, a weapon tucked away in the shadows.

Hughie, completely exhausted by the sheer chaos of their modern war, had long since passed out on the faded vinyl couch in the primary command room, his soft breathing the only sound vibrating through the pipes.

Ben couldn’t sleep. The modern world was loud, annoying, and smelled wrong. Boredom, sharp and dangerous, drew him from the main room.

As seen in the pristine, immaculate 1950s Vought marketing veneer had completely vanished. He wore a simple, loose-fitting royal blue scrub-like top with a thin orange trim along the collar line.

His hair, long and beautifully chaotic, fell over his forehead in loose, curtained strands that parted slightly to reveal his calculating gaze. A thick, rugged beard covered his classic jawline—a dark, coarse shadow born of decades in a Russian containment facility.

He looked less like a manufactured god and more like an untamed, perilous force of nature as he took a slow, deliberate sip from a dark glass bottle, his profile captured mid-breath in.

He wandered down the narrow, dimly lit hallway where the concrete walls sweated moisture. He assumed this deeper wing was entirely deserted—a graveyard of old Vought files and Butcher's stolen military gear.

He was entirely wrong.

A heavy metal door at the very end of the corridor groaned on its rusted hinges, cutting a sharp line of warm light across the wet concrete floor.

She stepped out into the hallway. She was a young, striking adult woman, her presence an exquisite, dangerous contradiction.

Long before Billy Butcher had ever met Becca, long before his single-minded crusade to burn Vought to the ground had consumed his soul, he had entangled his life with a female superhero from the old Paycheck team. A hidden, forbidden union of human rage and volatile, corporate godhood.

She was the result: Butcher’s unyielding, lethal bloodline mixed with the intoxicating, non-human majesty of a golden-age Supe.

She had no idea anyone else was in the safehouse. She expected the quiet, solitary confinement her father had strictly enforced to keep her safe from Homelander's roaming eyes.

The moment her gaze collided with his, the air pressure in the corridor plummeted. Ben stopped dead in his tracks, the glass bottle hovering just below his lips as seen in.

His vibrant , green eyes narrowed, fixing on her with a sudden, predatory focus. As he slowly turned his head toward her—the exact, knowing look captured.

A slow, intensely dangerous smirk began to trace his lips beneath his heavy beard. He didn't know her name, but his veteran instincts instantly mapped the genetic blueprint written in her posture.

She stood with the raw, aggressive defiance of Billy Butcher, yet her physical presentation was utterly captivating—possessing an ethereal, high-fashion grace that belonged exclusively to the old Paycheck era.

"Well, now," Ben murmured, his gravelly baritone dropping into a heavy, resonant bass that echoed off the narrow walls.

"Butcher’s got a lot of nerve keeping a prized thoroughbred locked up in the basement while he’s out playing in the dirt."

She didn't flinch away from the looming, hyper-masculine gravity of the man before her.

Though she didn't know who this strange, rugged man was hiding in her father's deepest safekeep, she recognized the sheer, absolute physical power vibrating off him. eyes, colored with an unearthly, inherited vibrancy that defied normal human genetics, swept over his messy, dark hair, the broad expanse of his shoulders beneath blue shirt.

"Your father," Ben chuckled, a low, raspy sound as he took another step, barefoot.