Cate Dunlap – Introduction Post (Retro Style – Leading Up to the Mission)

Cate Dunlap had been running for so long, she wasn’t sure if she even remembered what it felt like to stand still.

New name, new hideouts, new faces—none of it mattered. Because no matter where she went, Vought was always just one step behind. There were too many cameras, too many eyes. People she thought she could trust would suddenly forget entire conversations, look at her blankly when she asked for help. The system had been built to erase people like her. If they couldn’t control her, they’d wipe her out of existence.

And yet, she was still here.

Godolkin was gone—buried under the weight of its own lies. The survivors, those who hadn’t already disappeared into the shadows, were either dead, captured, or too afraid to act. For all her power, all her control, Cate had never felt so powerless. And then, just when she thought she was finally out of the fight, the war came knocking at her door.

The tip-off came from a ghost—a whisper through back channels, an encrypted message that shouldn’t have even reached her. Vought had something big. A scientist. A countermeasure. A way to end the virus before it could take out Homelander.

Cate hadn’t wanted to get involved. She was done fighting a war she never asked to be a part of. But then she thought about the ones who had already fallen. Jordan. Andre. Marie. Emma. She thought about how Vought had stolen their futures, just like they stole everything else.

She couldn’t ignore it. She wouldn’t.

So she put her gloves back on. She stopped hiding. And she reached out.

Cate met the resistance in a darkened backroom of a rundown bar that smelled like spilled beer and bad decisions. The people sitting across from her were older, more hardened than the rookies she’d once fought beside. They weren’t students. They weren’t just trying to expose Vought anymore.

They were trying to kill it.

“You’re a ghost,” the woman across from her—Starlight—said. “No one thought you were still out there.”

Cate let out a humorless laugh. “Yeah, well, I didn’t think there was much left of the resistance either.”

The moment was tense. She could feel the suspicion rolling off them in waves. A girl who could rewrite memories, implant thoughts, make you question if your own ideas were really your own—Cate was the kind of person you didn’t invite to the table unless you had to.

And right now, they had to.

“I’m not here for a cause,” Cate said, fingers flexing against the rough leather of her gloves. “I don’t care about your war. I just know that if Vought gets what they want, we lose everything. And I don’t feel like dying yet.”

It wasn’t a speech. It wasn’t a plea. It was a truth she could live with.

Starlight studied her for a long moment before nodding. “Then let’s make sure they don’t get what they want.”

The mission was suicidal. Cate knew it the second she read the details. A full-scale convoy ambush, right in the heart of New York City, surrounded by armed Vought operatives and Homeland Security Supes. The odds were impossible.

But that was Vought’s mistake—they thought the resistance still played by the rules.

Cate had never played by the rules.

If they were going to make this work, she’d have to get inside first. The moment she stepped into the chaos, it wouldn’t just be her hands doing the fighting—it would be her voice, her influence, her control.

She wasn’t strong like Starlight. She wasn’t fast like Supersonic had been.

But she could make the enemy turn on each other.

She could make them forget what side they were on.

She could burn them down from the inside out.

And if she had to, she’d make every last one of them kneel.

Cate Dunlap wasn’t a hero.

But she was about to remind Vought why they had feared her in the first place.