I have taken great pride over the years in my cleverness. Hell, I took tremendous fucking pride in my intelligence in getting one over on Homelander right before my little trip to the women's clinic to take care of his invader spawn. That's why having this nugget of horrifying reality slip through my fingertips, my brain matter, and my very marrow so fucking difficult to process.

I'd been in their clutches this entire time. Right in the lap of their power, where they could have crushed me, but thinking on it, that wouldn't do. Mallory had stood in this room, or the room I'd first been treated in and warned, no threatened the lot of them with the importance of my health, hadn't she? They couldn't have taken a chance, not the scientists (not that I believed any of them had the authority to make that decision), and Edgar was trying to rehabilitate the image of Vought International. If they didn't want to harm me, then-

My eyes shut, tight against the steady beeping that belied the upheaval inside of me, as I swallowed down another round of harsh truths. Everyone knew how Billy felt about supes now, it wasn't as though he wouldn't tell anyone who asked, so someone in this twisted company probably hoped that my fear would bear fruit. If Billy Butcher killed me, then not only would it ruin him, proving once and for all that he was just as dangerous as believed, but the Office would be shuttered as a failure. The contingency, since a backup plan is always needed where humans are concerned, would be to utilize the free reign that comes when staffing becomes run thinner. I'd never fully staffed, it hadn't seemed necessary. I managed to cover more tasks than most, Billy aided several areas, and so on and so forth. Knock me out, even with the bit that I was doing from 'home', and a wiggle space was created for someone or someones to dig in and push forward. Surveillance. Or monitoring in person.

I made a truly rookie mistake. Cockiness, a belief in my own superior intelligence and abilities, and it got us here. Now how to fix it?

The first on my list of things to accomplish toward the goal of getting things back on track with Billy and me in the pilot and copilot seats would be to have a confidential sit down with him, alone and unobserved. Paranoia thy name is Dr. Veronica Taylor.

"Ronnie?" Billy was staring at me like he thought I might bolt, and I was considering it, honestly. "Love, you alright?" I nodded, picking up my fork and absently eating while trying to think of where we could go off to, how I could find a way to let him know what I'd realized.

"I'm fine," I smiled, or at least I tried to. From the look that Billy was giving me, I had doubts that it was convincing. "Just can't wait to get out of here and have you all to myself." Truer words. Just not in the sense that he might think. "In fact, Mr. Butcher, spring me from this joint, and maybe I'll show you a preview." His smirk grew to a full blown smile and I felt my heart speed up in response, the entire building becoming privy to how this man made me feel.

"Let me see what I can do, Veronica." A soft kiss and he rushed off, leaving me to my own rushing thoughts of how to find a way to tell him just how fucked up the entire situation really was.

First of all, I knew that Vought could and did implant chips into certain supes (recall Starlight's removal of hers). If they had the capabilities to GPS their supes, what else could they chip them for? Could they implant audio/video chips? I racked my brain for any CIA tech knowledge of gadgets and gizmos that might have crossed my desk recently, but then again, I was out of the office for an extended period of time now.

Even if they ONLY implanted a GPS tracker ON ME, that didn't mean they couldn't use it to access the surveillance video of nearby equipment. Look, paranoia comes from knowledge, and I work for the CIA. We're not called the Central INTELLIGENCE Agency for nothing, people.

I was worried about the antidote, too. What if it wasn't actually a cure? What if it was another fucking variant? Or hell, what if it was just regular fucking Compound V, forcing my fucking body into regular old fucking supe soup? Damn it, I fucking was in KNOTS.

Billy came back after work, after a day filled with more tests, more questions about how I felt. More "are you feeling warm"? More "is your abdomen tender"? And more times for me to actually feel like a fucking spy than any other time in my entire fucking existence.

"There you are," his voice, the only fucking voice I fucking cared to hear finally. "Good news, love," I looked up from the book I'd been hiding behind for what seemed like fucking hours. "Not only can I spring you for the day tomorrow, but the entire weekend-"

I tossed the book and would have jumped into his arms, but I was still wearing my catheter. Fuck. "Back to our house?" I was excited, but then I stopped myself. Vought had had over a month to gain access to our house. Freedom to install whatever they wanted inside our home in order to keep track of me, Billy, our private lives and our progress at work and- I was still missing something, but what?! I felt like screaming, but instead I smiled.

"Actually, I thought I'd spoil my girl with a weekend away," I let him pull me into his chest, snuggling into the warmth of him, his broadness, his strength. "Away from doctors and needles, and beeping, and noise and questions." Was I imagining the undertone in his voice? The undercurrent of suspicion, that paranoia that I knew existed within him. Maybe the old Billy Butcher wasn't completely scrubbed clean after all. "Gonna surprise you, Ronnie," he pulled back, eyes twinkling, and with a wink and a swat on my behind, he told me to grab only my purse, since he had a bag ready for me in the car.

He meant a different car from his or mine. Completely different. Not even a company car. And that meant I was right, because we left Vought in HIS car, met Frenchie and Kimiko in this unmarked blah of a car, and then drove off in the opposite direction from where we'd gone to see the house we wanted to buy.

I was still afraid to speak, even with my purse left behind in his car. Billy's hand reached for mine, and I sighed when our skin touched. "It's safe, Ronnie."

"How can you be sure?" I muttered, jaw tense. Unsure, so damn unsure that I wasn't a ticking time bomb. For all I knew, we knew, the cleanser I was told to use on the catheter was a fucking solution to keep the kaboom at bay. "How can we be sure I'm not fucking bugged, or chipped, or fucking-"

"Trust me?" I glanced at him to see that he was darting looks my way. Nodding to let him know that I most certainly did trust him, he smirked. "I'm taking you to some people that Mallory found to have a peek see. She's had some doubts for awhile now, but it takes time, Ronnie." I sighed, still tense. "Told you, I won't lose you."

"How far are we going?" I wanted to know how long I had to sit on pins and needles.

He kept his eyes on the road, but his hand stayed with mine. "Not far, ever been to Mallory's house?" I shook my head and he took note out of the corner of his eye. "She don't give out many invites, so that don't surprise me. This is one of her hideaways. She don't count it as her home, so she deemed it a safe spot. Don't think it's in her name even. She'll meet us there, not even Frenchie or the others know where it is, just in case."

In case I was chipped, I thought, so the collateral damage was minimal. "What if-"

"The clean up crew is on standby." His voice was clipped, and I knew he hoped that if push came to shove, that the clean up crew was going to be used simply to clean up HIS mess, not Vought's.

The "house" we went to was glass and concrete. Reminded me more of our office complex tucked into a shale hillside than it did a home or even a safe house. Not that it really mattered since I was simply there for the damn doctors and science nerds to poke and prod at me to see if I was fucked up or fucked over.

I was happy that Mallory didn't treat me like an invalid, that was a saving grace. She didn't tisk at me, or cluck her tongue and tell me how sorry she was that this was happening. Instead she asked what I thought the plan of attack could be. We discussed things as though my body were merely a secondary object, even as I was worked over.

One scientist/doctor took the cleansing fluid for a sample, another took a sample from the catheter itself. Bloodwork, because of course, was taken. My vitals, because what day would be completely without me hearing my heartbeat in surround sound along with internal and external temperatures. On and on, but no one asked me the usual questions, or the ones that Vought asked, so I started to puzzle out those questions.

Why would they focus on those particular questions?

First, how was I feeling today? OK that one was standard regardless of where someone was a patient. Skip that one. Second, was I feeling warm? That one was slightly more focused. Given the fact that my first NOTICEABLE symptom of my pregnancy was the steaming skin, and my temperature rising when Billy was anywhere near me, or when I was pissed off. OK, but once the tiny intruder was yanked and scraped out of me, the regulation it afforded me left as well, causing that symptom to go off the rails. When they asked that in the early days, it made sense, if I was feeling warmer it would mean that the blood cleansing wasn't working and holy shit balls clear the room, right? But once I was doing better with the 'antidote'? Why was it so fucking shocking then? If it's a fix, even if it's a trial period, they were asking more fucking often-

"Hey, doctors?" Everyone stopped what they were doing and stared down at me because I was prone AGAIN. "What are my internal and external temperatures?" They noted them and they were both normal. "Take them again, please." I waited, and considered how my nerves felt and how I wasn't just anxious but irritated. They told me it had risen ten degrees and I groaned. Fuck. "Yeah, not a fucking antidote." Shit. "Rush the test on the cleanser, would you?" I heard the movement and the muttering."

"Ronnie?" It was Mallory, and I felt Billy's hand on my cheek. "What's going on, precisely?"

"They always ask the same questions." I kept my eyes closed. Trying to gather my wits, and calm myself, since I was now my best fucking regulator. "First question is a throwaway, probably habit or hell for all I know it's meant to make me think as much. Second one is ALWAYS about how warm I feel. Always. Even after-"

"They gave you the 'cure'." Billy's voice was a hiss. "Those fucking cunts."

"Are there other questions?" Mallory sounded sick, and I understood because I felt sick.

I nodded, feeling like the bile was rushing up. "Just one more. 'Do I feel any tenderness in my abdomen?'" I could FEEL both of them staring at the catheter embedded in my abdomen. "I thought it was because that's where I-"

"Where you hemorrhaged," Billy whispered, his hand touching mine gently. "I signed for them to put that in you," his voice sounded tortured and for a beat I had to hand it to Vought, they did something that even Homelander hadn't managed to do. They'd hit Billy lower than even that caped fucker.

The cleanser solution, what I'd taken as a benign solution to flush out a catheter whose redundancy would soon be made obsolete, had a tiny added substance that seemed to have a bit of my least favorite supe included. Yes, you read that right, I'd been flushing my catheter out with a wee bit of Homelander swimmers. I don't even want to try to understand the genetic logic of that, and I nearly threw up when they attempted to explain it.

Billy punched a fucking wall. I envied him that, since I couldn't actually get fucking pissed enough to do that, or I'd probably blow up and kill us all.

The antidote was clearly an antidon't. It didn't have Compound V, from what the doctors could see, what the determined was that with the TINY bit of Homelander leavings that they were adding into the solution to clean the catheter, they hoped to delay the inevitable, which was basically my body shutting down rather than going POP. Yes, Vought fully expected me to die, but they seemed intent on me dying in their clinic as a terrible side effect of a horrible mistake gone wrong. Sort of bandaid a bullet wound situation.

Another wall got a rather forceful introduction to Billy's fist and once again, I was envious, but resigned.

Luckily, the doctor who seemed far more relaxed and confident assured me that he was fairly sure that I wasn't as doomed as Vought hoped. In fact, he offered if he could have more time to study me he felt convinced he could not only remove the problematic substance, but return me to my normal human self.

I caught Mallory's eye, hoping she would give me a sign that somehow she hadn't accidentally pulled a fucking psycho from the pile. She smiled and shook her head, so I asked him how precisely were we going to manage this extended visit, since I was pretty fucking sure that Vought had me bagged and tagged to the hilt.

"Simple," his smile grew as my heart sank. "We remove any chipped bit that might be within your body."