Before Billy and I could reintegrate with the world we had to do a few things. Like more PT for me, which I fully enjoyed to the max now that I had NO extra hoses or beeping bullshit to hold me back. And Mallory and the doctors and lab rats no longer tried to keep us from hitting as hard as we wanted to, which was pretty extreme foreplay, but what's better than working up a good sweat and letting the winner pick the laurels?

I had Billy on his back and my knees on his shoulders when Mallory called it for me and told us to pack it in. I was grinning and so was he when I popped to my feet, feeling like I could take on anyone, including that cape wearing asshole who started this entire mess. Giving my hand to Billy, knowing he needed my help like a dog needed a fleas, but loving that he took it anyway we joined the elder woman on the sidelines where towels and water waited.

"You look much better," Mallory offered as Billy wiped my face down with a towel in deference to my win, taking a moment to kiss my newly dried nose before turning the towel on himself. "Do you think you're ready to start preparing for a return to duties?"

I grinned at Billy as he shook his head and rolled his eyes. I'd been chomping at the bit, knowing that we had work to do before I was ready for the next steps, but now I had Mallory on my side. Ha. "What do we have to do?"

First things first, from Billy's standpoint, was getting our old house packed up under my parents' and our friends' guidance. Since I knew he was counting MM, Frenchie, and Kimiko in the friends category, he didn't have to spell out that they weren't just overseeing the movers. He did explain their needs to Mallory, since she needed to make sure they had access to the equipment they would need. Debugging or de-surveling our house was paramount before moving, but they would work both ends, since Vought knew about the new house they'd have to do a sweep of the property and the house.

"I swear to God, if they ruined ANYTHING with their bullshit," I was muttering, as Billy's arms wrapped around me and tucked me into his own frame. "I hate that any of them were there, were in either of our homes, Billy."

"I'm not exactly singing their praises, Ronnie," he breathed against my temple. "Let's let our crew deal with it for us, and we can focus on our part."

Our part, Mallory offered, handing me another USB stick was to get up to date with what Vought was up to since we were underground. Go through the files they'd been forced to relinquish along with some that my agency helped to come to light, find out if we could nail a lid on any of them for what they'd done to me, or if I could find proof that this was something that they had done before or would utilize again.

Simple, right? Except, as I sat with Billy going over files, his computer and mine working in tandem since we both seemed to work well that way, it hit me. What I felt like I'd missed, what made my mind tingle and my skin crawl. What hadn't made sense to me when I'd first learned about it, and what didn't have a thing to do with what happened to me at all, but somehow seemed important.

"Billy?" He grunted, his eyes scanning the scroll of words as they went in front of his eyes. "Sage Grove Center." I swallowed down the thought that had come to me, but he still was barely listening to me. "Billy, SAGE GROVE CENTER." His eyes left his computer screen and focused on me.

"What about it?" He was a flash away from shrugging I knew it. "Nuthouse where Vought played God with crazies, so?"

"Why do we assume it's the only one?" Suddenly his interest was completely on me. "Stormfront, Klara Risinger Vought was a member of Hilter's inner circle, wasn't she?" He nodded. "Operation Paperclip, the entire point of bringing Nazi scientists here, to give them refuge after the atrocities was so they could share their fucking knowledge. Knowledge they learned in concentration camps. Plural, Billy. They didn't simply test subjects at ONE camp, they tested at multiple. Why would she stop here?"

His eyes snapped shut and I knew that he finally got it. "Bloody hell." He breathed, and I sunk into my chair further. "They could be anywhere, they got legitimate labs all over."

I nodded. "Yeah, which means that our anonymous head popper might have friends." Shit.

Once that niggling little weird thought finally wormed its way to the surface and could be shared, I could get back to work. Well, once we told Mallory who looked as freaked out as we felt about it. We couldn't stop and go hunting, not when we still had to get updated so we could actually leave the zinc lined hidey hole we'd been ensconced in for MONTHS. Back to the grindstone we went, and as we read and took notes, all I could think was that Vought and Homelander had better fucking hope that we wouldn't figure the entire puzzle out, because if we did, if we could hammer every nail, then they were done. In the worst way possible.