I was on the phone when Billy returned with lunch and he raised an eyebrow when he heard my tone. "What do you mean you don't know if that chip has been neutralized?" I was ready to chew a steel nail in two after the research I was dealing with. "I'm telling you, there's OUR chip, another chip that seems to be of an UNKNOWN origin, and then there's a VOUGHT chip. So why the fuck hasn't anyone neutralied at least the unknown one if not both the unknown and the Vought?" I listened as Raynor's replacement squawked about the tone and my use of the word 'fuck' and rolled my eyes, blood boiling in an entirely normal way. "Let me explain something to you, I'M in charge of THIS office and at the end of the day ANY and ALL supes come under MY jurisdiction. Didn't YOU read the fucking handbook and bylaws? So when I ask why something wasn't done from YOUR end, I don't want a lecture on HOW I asked it, I want to know the ANSWER to the fucking question. Do you understand?" I waited, listening to a noise that sounded like teeth grinding and then assurances that she'd find out something for me. "Good, I'll expect it by the end of the day." Another grinding noise, and a reminder of the time of day and I sighed. "Fine, the end of tomorrow then."

I hung up and smiled up at Billy. "What's for lunch?"

"Throwing your weight around a bit are you?" He leaned down to kiss me, then put the bags bearing the name of our favorite Chinese take-out place on his desk. "Since your desk looks like you're preparing to invade suburbia, let's eat over here."

Opening cartons and sighing happily at the scents of my favorite dishes, I told Billy what I wasn't learning about Ryan's situation. "No one seems to know shit about shit, Billy." I stabbed a piece of sweet and sour chicken with enough force to make his eyes widen and glared at it. "The neighborhood? It's been bought and sold through so many corporations and our government programs that who the fuck can tell who owns it now?" Even Joseph was having issues wading through the piles of bullshit that I'd found online and in our own resources. "The tutors and his guardians? Let's see," I reached behind me and grabbed a sheaf of papers near the edge. "Blue Eyes is actually Regina Davos, she's been with the agency for roughly three years, this is her first major duty, before that? The fuck does anyone know? Literally, it's like she never existed. The male? I can't find shit about him. Not a boo peep. No facial recognition, nothing. One part of me is thinking, alright, so our government went fully dark with this particular rotation, but Ryan is under ten, he's a child who does have superpowers, but aside from Homelander and Vought, he has no known enemies." I bit into my crumpling chicken and chewed. It didn't make any fucking sense.

Billy was eating as he digested what I told him, or ranted at him as the case may be. "What you're saying is that Ryan's being guarded by two people that have no known background, in a place that has no known owners, surrounded by no neighbors, and being taught by people who I assume fall under the same shit?" I nodded, in a fucking nutshell. "And the CIA ain't got a single solitary fucking clue about the chips?"

I sighed. "I sent the information the gizmo application that Frenchie set up for me to him and he's the one who told me there are THREE chips. Vought's, ours, and this third one that he can't tell who implanted, since the gizmo only shows the devices, not who put them there. We're guessing about theirs, ours, and the other." Billy nodded as he ate his noodles and I went on. "I call Raynor's replacement, useless dull witted cunt," he snorted so hard I thought he was going to blow a noodle out of his nose so I waited until I knew he was safe from death by noodle in the nostril. "And she's utterly baffled by the entire idea of Ryan. The fact that he has chips inside of him is absurd, much less three." I rolled my eyes and stabbed another bite of chicken. "How does this happen, Billy?"

Taking a deep breath, Billy pushed his carton of noodles away and sat back in his chair. I watched him as he processed what I'd gone on about and I ate more of my chicken and even managed to choke down some rice.

"Mallory made the arrangements, at least that's what she told me." I shook my head, that's not what the paperwork was showing. While Grace had an early hand in getting shit started, she'd been cut out of the decisions early on. "She said he'd be taken care of, that he'd be protected, Ronnie." He looked as worried as I felt, which fucking sucked, but I needed a partner in this and who better than the man I love?

"I've put in an order that I'll be monitoring this weekly," I sent it up the flagpole, I hadn't only thrown my proverbial weight to Raynor's replacement, I'd gone full power mad bitch from Hell while he'd been gone. "Sundays are now Ryan's 'therapy' days." He nodded, biting his lip. "I think that you're going to have to do more than sit outside, Billy." I hated to do it, force him inside, force him to confront how he felt about Ryan full on, but I didn't trust that house or those guardians.

"Wasn't planning on it if you went back anyway," he wasn't looking at me, but I knew from the way he was staring off into thin air that he was planning for something that even I wouldn't contemplate. "There's not a hint of cover in that entire fucking neighborhood, I know, I walked it, rode it, hell I did everything but climb a house." His eyes finally met mine. "Drone."

Frenchie and Kimiko were in the office the next day when my former supervisor called in with her 'update'. Billy and Frenchie were looking over the plans I'd managed to find for the neighborhood that Ryan was living in, while Kimiko listened to them and pointed out things that I'm sure neither noticed.

"You're saying that no one has ANY idea who placed this third chip in a child?" I was fast becoming beyond irritated and had to thank God and the doctor who figured out the cure to what had nearly killed me because I'd definitely be filling my fucking office with steam if I was still under the influence of that shit. "That while WE definitely thought it was reasonable to CHIP a child like a fucking RESCUE DOG, and VOUGHT also chipped him, we haven't a FUCKING CLUE who else tagged him?" Frenchie's eyes widened at my voice being raised, but Billy tapped his shoulder to get him back on task. "How is this possible? We took custody of this minor to protect him and NO ONE considered, I don't know, deactivating the ONE chip we ACTUALLY fucking knew about?" I was pissed off, Ryan had NO ONE, no real advocate and this shit was getting tiresome. "Now that we know about the SECOND chip, is anyone going to, I don't know, neutralize it?" I listened to her make noises that were vaguely apologetic but also offered no real answer. "Great, you're still as useful as ever."

Hanging up, I sat back in my chair and stared out the window at the view that Anthony had laughingly called the best view in the building when I first arrived. Sure, best view if I wanted to stare at the back of the building and an alley and I guess the skylight that showed - fuck.

"Have we found out anything about the next member of The Seven?" They were down two, last count. Translucent and Black Noir, no, wait three, The Deep was still landlocked in Ohio or some shithole. "Billy?"

"Soldier Twat was being considered," he'd gone to his desk and was flipping through the files. "Aside from that, I know they were in talks to rehabilitate Fishy again, but that's all I heard."

"Herogasm is over, the escorts are either being paid off or scraped off the surfaces of where they were fucked into oblivion," I sighed, considering all the shit that we could be being handed. "MM is still working on the other possible Sage Groves, and I think I figured out who chipped Ryan."

I wasn't looking at the others, my eyes still on the building in the distance. The one that Anthony or any supe loving freak might think would add to the fucking view. The Seven's building, rising like a phallus of bullshit, and in it was Ryan's dad, who fucked a Nazi willing to do anything to build what her hateful asshole past wanted most of all. And who better to be the REAL poster child for that cause than a little boy born of an actual SUPE - and not ANY supe, but THE SUPE. Stormfront, that fucking bitch. While she and Homelander had taken Ryan on their little kidnapped 'reality' run, she'd found a chance to embed her own little homing beacon in him and I'd been running my ass ragged trying to figure it out. Bitch. I truly hoped that she was roasting in a Hell that was hotter than anything her tits being lasered by Homelander could have prepared her for.

Turning back to the room, I shook my head and shuffled the pile of papers nearest me. One fucking puzzle down, around a million more to deal with, and probably a trillion more lining up behind those. One at a time, I told myself, as Billy came over and rubbed my shoulders. One at a time, because that was going to be the only way to manage this entire mess.