Jealousy Isn't A Good Look On You

chapter 87

I quickly made my way back to my apartment and ate some of the things in my fridge. There was plenty, after all. Just not hot chocolate.
After "breakfast," I boxed up my belongings and started moving into John's apartment. It took a while, but it took even longer to set everything up again.

"Moved in with Homelander." I texted Ashely after finishing up.

She typed a while but ultimately just liked my text.

I got ready for the meeting and headed down. I opened the door after making sure I wasn't interrupting anything important. Since I was a member of the seven and Homelander's partner, I decided that I didn't need to knock anymore and headed in.

"Hey." I said and walked over to my chair.

"Hey, Red." Deep smiled and saluted. Noir just waved (assuming) happily.

"Shall we start then?" John asked.

"If we're ready. Why not." I said, mentally acknowledging that neither Starlight or Maeve nor A-Train were with us.

"It seems that being on time is hard for some of us." He said loudly, just as A-Train sat down.

"Won't happen again, sir." He said quickly.

"Good." He said and lay back in his chair. "Deep. What have you got?" He shot out.

"Crime. While numbers are generally going down, there have been spikes in black market activity." He said, only taking glipses at his notes every now and then.

"And what activity would that be?" I asked.

"Illegal activity..." he answered, confused.

"Yeah, I know *that* I wanna know which black market. There are thousands of different things that could mean. There's not just one illegal market. Or have you guys color coded and I didn't get the memo?" I asked, and John let out a laugh.

"Color coding would be a good idea." Deep said and scribbled on his paper. "Well, the one I'm referring to is organ and meat related." He finally ellaborated.

"Animal or Human?" A-Train asked, annoyed.

"Humans are mammals. You should have been clearer." Deep shot back.

"You should've just gotten to the point like yesterday, man." A-Train let out angrily.

"Human okay. There's been a spike on human flesh and organ sales. People are vanishing, only a couple here and there, but they are disappearing." He clarified angrily.

"Alright. Any idea who could be operating that?" Homelander asked.

"There's a recently rented storage unit. What makes it suspicious is that the same unit is rented out every time someone is reported missing, but under a different name." Deep explained.

"So we get the names, trace them, and are lead to the alias' of the seller?" I asked.

"Almost. See, I already tried that, but it seems that none of the aliases are connected. It seems like it really is a different person each time the unit is rented out.

"Good work, Deep." Homelander praised and striked a thinking pose.
"We'll observe the unit. And as soon as it's rented out, A-Train will run there and onserve what is going on there." He added, and A-Train nodded.

"If anything sketchy comes up, you come back or call one of us to back you up." I said, and he looked at me like I insulted him.

"That's a good plan. That way, they can't get away." Deep smiled.

"And what's more important is that we can capture them and interrogate them. That way, we can get the whole process to freeze." I added, and noir nodded.

"That is a fantastic addition. Good thinking, Red Canary." Homelander praised and clapped.
"It is settled then. Deep, you keep an eye on that unit. Once anything happens, A-Train observes and, if needed, calls one of us for backup." He recounted.