Having escaped the park, he found himself standing at the edge of an empty road, the night-time city silent around him.
His pockets held only a set of keys. He dredged up a street name from the depths of his borrowed memory, Tyler Street, but he had no clue where he was or which way to go.
Knocking on a stranger's door in the middle of the night seemed like a great way to get shot, so he picked a random direction and started walking.
He moved at a clip that a normal person would call a dead sprint. After half an hour of aimless wandering, he slowed down, cocking his head.
His hearing, now supernaturally sharp, picked up the hum of an engine. A car was coming. He sped up, rounding a corner just in time to nearly run into a vehicle carrying two young people.
A well-built, dark-haired guy was behind the wheel, his nice clothes looking like they'd been thrown on in a hurry.
In the passenger seat was a stunning Black woman with auburn hair, her incredible figure barely hidden by a long black sweater.
"Hey," he said, stepping up to the car and startling the couple.
"I know you! You're The Deep!" the guy exclaimed, his eyes wide. The girl, meanwhile, was staring at him with an intensity that made him uncomfortable.
"Yeah, I'm... The Deep," he managed, the name feeling foreign on his tongue. He was a public figure now. Shit.
"I, uh, decided to do a little patrol of the city, but I stupidly left my map and phone at home." He flashed what he hoped was a friendly, heroic smile. "Could you point me toward Tyler Street?"
The teens looked stunned. "Yeah, sure. You're on Taylor Street right now," the guy explained, ignoring the dirty look his girlfriend shot him. "Go to the end of the block, turn right, and stay on the left side of the road. The fifth turn will be Tyler Street."
"Thanks," Kevin said, genuinely grateful. He was about to head off when the guy called out.
"Wait! Can I get a picture with you?" he asked, already pulling out his phone.
Kevin hesitated for a second. "Of course." He waited as the guy scrambled out of the car and fumbled with his phone's camera settings for a night shot.
"Thank you!" the teen said excitedly after snapping a selfie, hopping back into the car.
"No problem," Kevin replied, feeling a little awkward as they drove away. As the car pulled down the street, his enhanced hearing caught their conversation.
"Why the hell did you have to get a picture with that asshole?" the girl hissed, her voice dripping with contempt.
"What? He's The Deep! He's in The Seven!" the guy said, clearly confused by her anger.
"He's a goddamn rapist! Do you not care what he did to Starlight?!" she shot back, her voice rising.
"But he apologized," the guy mumbled, his confidence wavering.
"So if he raped me and then said sorry, you'd just shake his hand and ask for another selfie?!" she demanded, her eyes blazing with fury.
"What? No, of course not!" the guy yelped, nearly swerving the car.
Kevin couldn't hear the rest, but he didn't need to. The memory came flooding back, ugly and sharp, the real reason The Deep had been exiled to this forgotten town.
He had no idea if the show had ever fixed this PR nightmare. He'd never gotten around to watching the second season, and the third was a complete mystery.
He remembered bits and pieces from trailers and friends' rants. A new supe was joining The Seven, Stormfront.
In the comics he'd read, Stormfront was a man, a literal Nazi from World War II and one of the first successful V-Compound subjects.
He was basically a Homelander with a racist streak instead of a mommy-complex. This new Stormfront was a woman, but Kevin doubted she'd be another Starlight.
Then another memory surfaced: Soldier Boy was supposed to show up in season three, played by Jensen Ackles.
In the comics, Soldier Boy was part of Stormfront's old team. He wondered if the show would connect them. But a more interesting thought struck him.
In the comics, Stormfront was Homelander's... father.
With the gender swap, was Vought bringing in Stormfront as Homelander's mother? To stabilize him after Stillwell's death? Homelander's Oedipal issues were a running theme in the first season.
Meeting his long-lost mother could smooth things over after Vought's lies about Ryan were exposed.
But if she was his mother, she'd need a damn good excuse for being absent all this time.
Lost in thought, Kevin didn't realize he'd made it home. He climbed the stairs to his second-floor apartment, unlocked the door, he'd been in such a rush he'd left the lights on, and wiped his muddy boots on the welcome mat, grimacing at the very American habit of wearing shoes inside.
He found a new pair of slippers in the closet, kicked off the filthy boots, and flopped onto the couch. He found himself staring at a bizarre, avant-garde painting of a guitarist.
In his old life, he'd never been a fan of art, especially the kind that distorted reality to fit the artist's "vision." Paintings of people staring directly at the viewer always unnerved him.
Just as the original Kevin had been bothered by people staring at his gills, the new Kevin couldn't relax with this "wrong" guitarist watching him. He got up, walked over to the painting, and turned it to face the wall.
"Much better," he said to the blank canvas, and started to take stock of his new situation.
He picked up his nearly dead phone from the table and, after a moment of concentration, entered the password that the ghost of Kevin's memory supplied.
He opened the banking app and stared in disbelief.
For a member of The Seven, one of the top five most popular supes in the world, he had a measly sixty-seven thousand dollars to his name.
The news was a shock. He squeezed his eyes shut, forcing his new brain to tell him why the King of the Seven Seas was practically broke.
A flood of memories, raw and painful, washed over him. He felt a sliver of the horror The Deep had endured.
He'd been at the scene of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill; he'd seen the infamous garbage patches firsthand.
In his past life, seeing pictures of oil slicks and polluted oceans had been horrifying, but the feeling would fade.
For Kevin, there was no escape. He had literally been in hell.
For days, he had listened to the agonized screams of the dying marine life, his own powers proving woefully inadequate in the face of such a disaster.
Every voice crying out for help, suffocating. Every old scream fading, only to be replaced by a thousand new ones.
He couldn't imagine how the original Kevin had lasted three days. He would have fled with the Vought film crew on day one.