There were footsteps just outside.

Lady Marvel grabbed the flash drive and ran into the hallway. Juggernaut had already passed by, but he glanced over his shoulder when he heard her behind him. She stared at him, and he turned all the way around to face her, growing mildly alarmed by her wide-eyed silence.

"You didn't fly into that windmill by accident," she said. "You flew into it out of spite. When you were a child."

The alarm turned into shock. Juggernaut went still, eyes widening slowly. Then he turned to glare at Emika, who stood there with a hand over her mouth.

"We didn't tell her!" she exclaimed.

"Somebody did," he said coldly.

"Nobody told me." Lady Marvel held up the flash drive and tossed it. "That was sent to my private mailbox. We've got a security leak."

Emika caught it and looked between the two of them, conflicted. She mumbled something under her breath that sounded like an apology and left, probably heading for Fox or Michael, but taking care of the security leak was the last thing on Lady Marvel's mind, and she didn't go with her.

Juggernaut was shaking his head at the floor. He looked at her, sighed, and gestured down the hallway. Come on. So Lady Marvel followed him to the Marvels' meeting room, gathering the door handles on her way in and pulling them closed. She stayed there for a moment, facing the wood and rethinking what she'd just done.

"Listen," she said softly. "You...don't have to tell me anything."

"Yes, I do," he snapped, "because if I don't, you're never going to look me in the eye again."

Lady Marvel suddenly heard the laugh. Vengeful and bloody. There would be no forgetting that.

They turned their chairs to face the window, slightly angled toward each other. Juggernaut watched the city, sparkling in the nighttime, and Lady Marvel watched him. She could recall a thousand moments exactly like this, when they'd sat here silently looking out the window, but this was the only time they felt like strangers.

"When I was a kid," he said finally, "supers weren't a thing. There were no resources like ASPA to help parents, so when your six-year-old son accidentally lasers the car in half, you go a little crazy. My mom was convinced I was some sort of demon spawn. She pushed me off the roof, and I was fine. Then she pushed me off a cliff, and I was fine. Somehow this small, unknown company got word of me, and they came around and bought me from her."

"How do you know that?" She didn't doubt the roof, or even the cliff, but the word bought twisted her stomach. "You were only a kid."

"Goodman told me later."

"And you believed him?"

"Of course not," he laughed. "So I looked into it myself, and it turned out, they were telling the truth. She sold me off and disappeared. I was raised in a top-secret facility in upstate New York and trained to be a perfect superhero, and when everything was ready, they faked the lab explosion and put out the story. And here we are."

"Why the elaborate lie about the lab?" Lady Marvel asked.

"To take credit. It was their amazing technology, their loyal intern, that created the world's first and foremost superhero. And it worked out for them, didn't it?" He gestured to the window, to Celestro's view, towering God-like over the city. "Look how far they've gotten."

All those burns, the switchboards, the monstrous machine. A story, not history. Lady Marvel leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, staring at the floor. "So, my procedure..."

"That was a completely new advancement that had absolutely nothing to do with me or the so-called lab."

"And the safety reassurances?" She raised her head. "They promised I wouldn't be harmed by the process, or were they lying about that, too?"

"No. Those weren't lies."

"If they were, and you knew about it, would you have warned me?"

"Yes."

Lady Marvel closed her eyes. She'd suspected a lot of things about Celestro's unparalleled rise to power, but never something of this scale. The foundation for fifteen years of heroism, and the inspiration she felt, the inspiration that compelled her to sign that dotted line and become a hero herself, was all a carefully, cruelly constructed story.

She was the only Alter on the team, she realized, a little amused by that fact. If the New Humans knew Juggernaut was actually a natural-born super, they would worship him—at least until he refused to join them, and then he would be as hated as he was now.

"Did they hurt you?" she asked.

Juggernaut blinked. "They were too scared to look me in the eye," he said, "let alone hurt me."

"Why don't you tell the truth? Expose them?"

"And undo all the good they have done? No. I'm not interested in causing any chaos."

Chaos...that was what would happen. Take away the foundation, and the rest crumbles. Celestro shaped the world into what it was today; to weaken them would be to weaken all of heroism, the good parts, too, and a lot of bad people would gain dangerous confidence.

Lady Marvel shook her head, frustrated. Did I? She'd convinced herself that she'd misheard him at the barn, but she knew now that she hadn't, and it wasn't right that they were getting away with taking over someone's life.

"Why don't you leave?" she asked quietly. "Why have you stayed all this time?"

"Because despite what it may look like sometimes, I do actually like my job. And..." Juggernaut stood up, walking around the room with a shrug. "Celestro taught me twenty-seven languages. They taught me world history, international socioeconomic politics, and enough math and science to work for NASA. They taught me how to be charismatic, how to win over a crowd—they taught me everything except how to be a normally functioning human being." He spread his hands at the room with its table and its screens and the logo on the floor. "I was made for this and only this, so why would I leave?"

Lady Marvel had nothing to say to that. She only watched him make his way back to his chair and sit down, leaning back and placing the bottom of one boot against the window. The tiniest little push, and he could shatter the glass.

"And besides," he said quietly. "I spent fourteen years in an underground compound with no one but anxious scientists for company. I could've died down there, and no one would've noticed, no one would've cared. It was like I didn't exist. Then the story broke, and suddenly the entire world knew who I was, but..." He paused and shook his head. "The truth is, I still don't exist outside of this job."

In the silence that followed, Lady Marvel stared at the floor. She'd always trusted him completely because there was no reason not to. Because, regardless of his motivations or his morals, he had chosen to be on the good side and stay on it, too. But now, knowing that he was forced into it, that he had several reasons to just snap and go off the rails...the trust was starting to feel unjustified. He was a mega-powerful superhuman who was, rightfully, full of spite.

A disaster waiting to happen.

"For the record," he said suddenly, stone-faced, "I know exactly what you're thinking right now."

Of course, she thought with a twinge of guilt.

Lady Marvel studied his face for a long time, neither of them speaking, and she realized that he wasn't angry, not entirely. He looked kind of sad. She shouldn't care—she should be wary. He had every reason to just disappear or go on a killing spree out of revenge or destroy a city in anger, and there wasn't a single person who could stop him...

But he wasn't doing any of that.

He was here, talking to her, sad and genuinely believing that he was nothing outside of what Celestro had decided he would be. But did that change the fact that he was a danger to the world? He was her best friend of eight years—she'd loved him that long and still did, but she had no idea what to think, what to do.

There was a knock on the doors, and receiving no answer, Emika opened it anyway and poked her head in. "It's time to meet with the police."

"You two go ahead," Juggernaut said. "I need to talk to Michael first."

Right, the security leak. Lady Marvel stayed seated as he left, pressing her hands against her face and exhaling slowly. It took almost an entire minute for her to be able to finally stand and leave with Emika, and even then, she glanced over her shoulder to look at their two chairs, empty and facing the window, still angled toward each other.

____________

As if Lady Marvel weren't already starting to truly despise him, now there was this.

Juggernaut made his way down to intelligence, annoyed. Fox had once suggested that he tell Lady Marvel the truth, since she was trustworthy and growing a bit suspicious, and it was better to be honest than to wait for something catastrophic to happen, but he'd said no. He knew exactly what Lady Marvel would think—what anyone would think, really—and that was why he never told her. He valued her friendship.

But sometimes life gives you a special lemon with fuck you carved into its skin.

He walked into intelligence and scanned the room. Almost everyone was here, and those who weren't would get the message promptly. Michael got to his feet, the flash drive in his hand. Juggernaut stood at the back, and everyone noticed him and fell silent.

"There's been a security leak," Juggernaut said tonelessly. "And the only way that could've happened is if someone here aided and or abetted."

He was met with a few dozen blank stares.

"And to find out who's responsible," he continued, "I will personally be interrogating each and every one of you, even if I have to do it on the day of the banquet."

The blank stares turned frightful, which was unfortunate. He'd been hoping to pinpoint one or two guilty faces, but that was hard to do when everyone was intimidated by him. Oh, well.

Whoever it was, he'd find them.