Hostage Situation [Worm AU fanfic]

[Ack]

Amy Dallon gets a visitor who changes her life forever ...

1) This story is set in the Wormverse, which is owned by Wildbow. Thanks for letting me use it.
2) I will follow canon as closely as I can. If I find something that canon does not cover, I will make stuff up. If canon then refutes me, I will revise. Do not bother me with fanon; corrections require citations.
3) I welcome criticism of my works, but if you tell me that something is wrong, I also expect an explanation of what is wrong, and a suggestion of how to fix it. Note that I do not promise to follow any given suggestion.

[A/N: this story suggested by Takao-Kun on fanfiction.net]

Index
Part One: Trigger (below)
Part Two: Interrogation
Part Three: Negotiations
Part Four: Marquis
Part Five: Out of the Bag
Part Six: The Plot Thickens
Part Seven: Situational Ethics
Part Eight: Casualties of War
Part Nine: Sweet Release
Part Ten: Ongoing Fallout
Part Eleven: Unearthing the Past
Part Twelve: Attending to Business
Part Thirteen: Luck is Where You Find It
Part Fourteen: Wheels Within Wheels

 

[Ack]

Hostage Situation

Part One: Trigger


I huddled among the other hostages. The majority of the villains had just exited the bank to take on the heroes outside, and they weren't watching us any more.

"Hey," muttered a guy beside me. He was tall and well-built, and probably thought that he was pretty tough. "There's only the one left. She doesn't look like much. If we took her out, that's gotta help the heroes, right?"

Idiot. The girl in the bug costume said that the spiders would know if we moved or did anything stupid.

"I wouldn't try it," I murmured back. "I think she can sense through her spiders. Do you want to get bitten?"

"Well, we can't just sit here and do nothing."

"You can sit here and do nothing. I'm going to do something about this."

"You?" he asked, looking me up and down. "What can you do?"

"I'm Panacea, of New Wave," I retorted. "Now shut up and let me think."

Thankfully, he did, allowing me to concentrate on what I was sensing through my powers. The fact that she could sense what was happening to her spiders was something I could work on. I knew exactly where each of the black widow spiders was on me – despite the demands on my time, having biokinetic powers can be very useful on occasion – and I tapped into their bodies, their internal processes.

They're being controlled. Can I use that?

One part of their brains was working overtime; I studied it. Signals were coming in and out; I couldn't decipher them, but they seemed to be saying, hold still, don't bite. Hold still, don't bite.

Before I took my next step, I breathed deeply. Spider brains aren't human brains. And I'm doing this for a good reason. Then I adjusted their tiny brains, so that what they saw, what they felt, wasn't what they sent back. Like that old movie trope, hacking a security camera to send back a loop of the last five minutes.

At least, I hoped it worked that way. For good measure, I added a degree of static; if she thought something in the fight was messing with her powers, all the better.

I peeked toward the front of the bank. The bug girl was still peering out the window, trusting in her spiders to keep us under control. The other one – Tattletale? - was somewhere in the back. Nobody was watching. Good.

Carefully, trying not to make any noise, I circulated among the other hostages. They watched me, eyes wide, as I held my finger to my lips. Touched skin to skin, to find where on their bodies the spiders were hiding. Touched each spider and paralysed it. Its brain would send back all fine here, all fine here, but it would be incapable of doing absolutely anything else, ever. This would kill it in about half an hour, but I really didn't care.

Once I had done everyone, my heart thundering so loudly in my ears that I was certain the people outside could hear it, I pointed them toward the stairs upward. Slowly, cautiously, they began to move. For myself, I wasn't about to run away. I could see where a fire extinguisher was hooked on the wall. I'm not scared of you, I told myself.

As I unhooked it from the wall, I recalled the last time I had told someone that.

<><>​

Three Weeks Previously

Fred muttered a curse as the stone skittered away from his foot. He was definitely not as good at this as he had been, twenty years ago. Worse, the teenage girl ahead of him had heard the noise.

"Who's there?" she called out, eyes searching the darkened street. "Come out where I can see you."

Screw it, he told himself, and stumped into view, leaning on his cane. "It's okay, kid," he assured her. "I'm not going to hurt ya. There's no reason to be scared."

"I'm not scared of you," she replied; probably not altogether truthfully, in his estimation. Still, she had grit enough to hold her head up and look him in the eye. "What are you doing, following me?"

"Makin' sure you get there an' back safe an' sound," he told her, nodding toward where the hospital bulked in the distance.

"Wait … you're escorting me?" she asked, apparently taken somewhat aback by the notion.

"Somethin' like that," he agreed. "Now, I don't know what's gotten into ya that ya gotta get up an' walk to th' hospital in th' middle of th' night, but if you're gonna do it, I'm gonna make sure ya get there okay."

"It's just something I've got to do," she replied shortly. "What's your name, anyway? And why are you doing this?" She started off toward the distant building; he walked alongside her.

"Something I gotta do, too," he replied. "Name's Fred. Fred Jones."

"What, like in that cartoon show?"

"Yeah, like that." He snorted. "Couple guys made the mistake of calling me Scooby, once upon a time. Didn't happen twice."

She looked him up and down critically. "I would think those days are long past for you, uh, Mr Jones."

"Don't make the mistake of thinkin' I'm totally helpless, little miss," he retorted, just a little sharply. "I might be old, but I still got my self-respect."

"I -" She paused. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," he assured her. "I know I don't look much. But I can still take care of myself."

"And I appreciate you looking out for me," she told him.

<><>​

When they arrived at the hospital, Amy paused just inside the main doors and smiled at the old man. He had made the last half-mile of her walk quite pleasant, with general conversation and the occasional acerbic observation on superheroes and villains of the day. She still didn't know quite why he had chosen to walk with her, but she had enjoyed it.

"Thank you," she stated. "Like I said, I appreciate it. Can you tell me now why you're doing it?"

"Depends," was the answer. "Care to tell me why a little thing like you is walking to the hospital in the middle of the night to heal people?"

She wrapped her arms around herself and looked at the ground. "Because I have to," she mumbled. "Because they need me. Because I can't sleep for thinking about people I'm not helping."

He nodded, slowly. "Fair call," he mused. "Dunno that I'd think that way, but it's you, not me."

"All right," she responded, a little annoyed. "I answered your question. How about you answer mine?"

"Oh, that's easy," he replied. "I'm doing it for your dad."

And with that, he winked, turned away, and walked out through the doors, leaving her staring after him.

<><>​

" - about your father," Tattletale told me, with a smirk.

I shook my head with a smile of my own, cautious of the knife at my throat. "Too late, bitch. I already know all about him. And I know why he gave me up. So you can give up right now, and my sister might not break every bone in your body."

She sagged slightly. " … fuck. You do know. Dammit. I was hoping not to have to use this one."

"What one?" I asked incautiously.

"The other big secret," she told me, her grin widening again. God, I wanted to wipe that grin off of her face with my fire extinguisher. "You know the one. And you know what'll happen if I say it out loud."

I flicked a glance at my sister. The girl I loved, utterly and hopelessly. Who I could never let know about it, for fear of the rejection, the disgust, that she would surely feel for me.

But I couldn't let these villains just escape. She would know that she could use that secret on me, every single time.

But I couldn't let the secret get out. They escape, they get captured later, and I keep the secret.

Vicky was looking at me. "What's she talking about?"

"I -"

<><>​

Amy stumbled from the elevator, bone-tired. She'd been at it for hours, healing sick kids in Pediatrics, cancer patients in Oncology, and most everyone in the ICU. Except the brain injuries; it had almost physically hurt her to leave them, but she couldn't, wouldn't, dare. That risk was something that she simply would not take.

And all the time, she had been puzzling over the strange old man called Fred Jones, who claimed to be acting in the name of her father. That he could be referring to Mark Dallon, she had dismissed almost at once; if Flashbang wanted her escorted, he would do it himself. He didn't even know of her trips to the hospital, that she was aware of.

So it was her birth father he was referring to; the mysterious person who had turned her over to the Brockton Bay Brigade, just before it became New Wave. He was a supervillain, she was pretty sure. Or maybe she had thought someone had told her that once, and it had stuck. Once, when she was young, she had gotten curious, and asked Carol about the man with the long hair she remembered from way back, and Carol had told her to stop asking questions and to go and play. It didn't take long for her to realise that asking questions like that was not something a Good Girl did, and she wanted very badly to be a Good Girl, and get the hugs and praise that Vicky did.

Once she gained her powers, and became a member of New Wave, she had realised that she could go to the PRT and request the information; ask when exactly she had been adopted by the Dallons, and work out by process of elimination exactly who her father was. But by that time, she had no real desire to know; whether it was the influence of Carol's opinion on the subject, or just a loss of interest, she wasn't sure. Or maybe she didn't want to confirm that her father was actually a supervillain; as a superhero, that could be quite embarrassing if it got out.

A rich, enticing smell crossed her nostrils, making her mouth water. She looked over to the benches near the main entrance, and there sat Fred, in his disreputable overcoat. He had a takeout box on his lap, and another beside him.

"Hey there, kid," he greeted her. "Hungry? That one's yours."

<><>​

There was a smoking area outside the hospital doors, with tables and chairs under umbrellas. Fred followed the girl to the nearest one, and creakily lowered himself on to the plastic chair. He picked at his food – there was a rather good Chinese store next to the hospital – while watching her dig into hers.

"Christ, kid," he asked. "How long since you had a proper meal?"

"Oh, uh, yesterday, I think," she admitted. "Carol doesn't cook much, and Mark mostly forgets. So we usually get takeout or something." She paused and eyed him warily. "You said you were doing this for my father."

"I did an' I am," he told her. "I mean, he doesn't know I'm doin' it, but I'm doin' it anyway." His eyes twinkled. "Do you want to know who he is?"

"I, uh -" she hesitated. "I was told he was a supervillain, and he was arrested."

He snorted. "Yeah, that's true. More to it than that. He got Birdcaged."

"Okay, so who was he?"

He fixed her with a beady eye. "Is, kid. At least, I figure he's still kicking. If anyone can survive that hellhole, it's him. An' since you asked, his name's Marquis."

Her eyes widened. "I've heard of him."

"So've a lot of folks, kid. He was one of the big names in the villain game, back in the day. Firm but fair to work for, too."

Her head jerked up. "You worked for him?"

"Hell yes," he declared proudly. "From ninety-two on." A sigh of nostalgia escaped him. "Now there was a villain with style. None of these racist pricks, excuse my French. None of these druggies. You worked for him, you did the job, you got recognised."

"But … he was a villain," she protested, frowning.

"Sure he was," he agreed readily. "But not the same type of villain as these other jerks you get. Do you know, Jack Slash came to town one time, tried his damnedest to make him break his code against killing women? Could not do it. Failed utterly. Marquis told that psycho bastard where to shove it, and told him to get the hell out of the Bay. He went, too."

"Wow." She was staring at him. "Really? That was my dad?"

"Sure as hell," he confirmed. "He mighta been a bad guy, your dad, but he wasn't a bad bad guy. Some of those villains, they'd get a wild hair up their ass, turn around and decide that their minions are plotting to overthrow them. Put the fear of God into them with a purge. Blood on the walls. Marquis was never like that. If he wanted you gone, you just … disappeared. You were never seen again."

She shivered. "That's horrible."

"You'd think so, wouldn't you?" he mused. "But it wasn't really like that. If you wanted out, he let you go. Not a word. But if things went the other way, he'd make it so no-one ever saw you again, sure, but he had a thing against hurting women and kids. So he'd make sure that some cash went to the wife and kiddies, if they had any. Enough to tide 'em over."

"Still not a good thing," she pointed out. "Murder's still murder."

He snorted. "And you're gonna try to tell me that you've never seen anyone you don't think would be better off dead?"

Her silence was all the answer he needed. "Yup. See, way I see it? Heroes and villains, they're all the same, deep down. It's just that the villains are a tiny bit more honest about the way they do things. They've got more at stake, so they've got to stay more in control."

<><>​

"Those villains were out of control!"

I wished that my mother – my foster mother – would tone it down a bit. The painkillers I had been given were working, but not as thoroughly as I would have liked, and my head was still aching abominably. I'd suffered a mild concussion from the baton blow to the side of the head, but it had only knocked me out for a moment. At least Tattletale didn't spill the beans.

"Mom, I'm okay," insisted Vicky, but a little less strongly than I would have liked. "Amy healed me. I'm good now."

"You don't look good," Carol Dallon declared. "You look positively peaked." She turned to me. "Some poison effects can be subtle. Are you sure you got it all?"

I nodded. "Yes. I double-checked. No allergic reactions, no toxic shock. Physically, she's fine."

"It's true," confirmed Vicky. "It's not the bug bites. It's the surprise, you know? I'm used to being invulnerable. Nothing touches me. And then that Tattletale bitch figures out a way around my powers. And the next thing I know, ten million bugs are biting me." She shivered involuntarily.

"Still, I think you should get some bed rest," Carol insisted. "There might be long term effects involved." She nodded to me. "And maybe you should lie down, too."

Still fussing over her daughter – her real daughter, I thought mutinously – she led her from the room. I was left alone in the living room.

My hands clenched into fists. You could at least pretend to be my real mom.

<><>​

Two Weeks Previously

"So what happened to my real mom? Was she a supervillain, too?"

Fred chuckled warmly. Ever since the kid had rumbled him, he hadn't had to sneak around, and he was able to walk her to and from the hospital. It was a long walk, and left his legs feeling like limp noodles, but it was worth it.

"Sorry, kid. No, she was a girl who took up with him for awhile. He was a charming bastard, and he treated women right, but sooner or later, they drifted away from him. She was pregnant when she left him, and never told him. Later, she got cancer and died, but before she did, she passed you on to him."

Amy swallowed, apparently from nerves. "Did … did he want me?"

Fred rolled his eyes. "Want you? Kid, he was over the moon when he found out that he had a daughter. You had the best toys, the best of everything. And he made sure to spend as much time as possible with you." A grin creased his lips. "I will never forget walking in that one day and seeing him playing horsey with you. Mind you, you're the first person I've ever admitted seeing that to, either."

A small smile crossed her face. "So he really loved me?"

"Kid, you been listening? I'm saying he adored you. He woulda given it all up, just to make sure you had a good life. And he did too, in a way."

A frown. "How do you mean?"

"Back in two thousand. The Brockton Bay Brigade – New Wave that was, before they had the moronic fuckin' idea to unmask, excuse my French – found out where he was living, and busted on in. This was kinda before the unwritten rules really had a chance to catch on, you know? Well, they caught him napping. But he woulda beat them – he had them beat for sure – but you were there. And when he tried to steer them away from the closet where he'd shoved you when they busted in, Brandish went to attack it. So he took the hit, to save you."

She was staring at him. "Mom – Carol – tried to attack me?"

He waved a hand impatiently. "She didn't know. Couldn't know. But they still captured him. Handed him over to the PRT. And they figured that with all his enemies, you wouldn't last long in the foster system. So New Wave adopted you." He shrugged. "Me and a few of the guys, we woulda taken you in, but it's not like Child Protection woulda even looked at us."

She took a deep breath, and faced him directly. "So why are you here, now, telling me about this? What do you want from me? What do you want me to do?"

"Nothin', kid," he told her honestly. "Doc told me I didn't have long to live. I'm old, and with all the shit that's happened in my life, my organs are pretty well singing the farewell dance. So I called in a few favours, found out where New Wave was living now, and started keeping an eye on you. Only, these old bones aren't as good at sneaking around, so you got the jump on me."

"But why?" she asked, her tone puzzled.

He shrugged. "I just wanted to see if I could catch up with the boss' kid one last time. Make sure you were all right. I'd thought maybe I could talk to you sometime, tell you about your old man from someone who knew him. Give you the straight dope."

"I … see." Her eyes might have been filling with tears, but he couldn't be sure; his vision wasn't what it used to be. "Fred, was it?"

"Fred Jones, at your service, Miss Lavere. Minion number twenty-one."

"He numbered you?" Her voice was incredulous.

He chuckled. It hurt, slightly, but he didn't care. "Nah, that was a bit of a joke. We gave ourselves numbers, and he went along with it. Mostly he called me 'Mr Jones'."

"Oh. I see. Uh, is there anything I can do for you? I mean, I -"

Gently, he shook his head. "I know you can make folks younger, but you don't. That's fine, kid. I've really enjoyed catching up with you."

<><>​

I walked in through the front entrance of the PRT building. Not surprisingly, I drew a few stares, as I was currently dressed in my Panacea costume, but that was how they'd requested me. Striding up to the desk, I announced, "Panacea to see Director Piggot."

The girl behind the desk had seen enough capes come through to not be overly surprised; she picked up a phone, pressed a button, and waited. A moment later, she murmured a few words, listened, said something else, then put the phone down. "You can go up now, Panacea," she announced.

As I made for the lift, one of the PRT guards in the lobby followed along. I didn't care.

<><>​

One Week Previously

Amy looked around at the roof of the hospital. "Are you sure we're supposed to be up here?"

His chuckle was warm. "Pretty sure we're not. But what are they gonna do? You're Panacea, and I'm so old I have to take a rest break when I get up for a piss."

She eyed him. He looked older than when she had first met him, two weeks previously. Frailer. More decrepit. He was definitely leaning on his cane more than he had been before.

"Are you all right?" she asked cautiously.

He made a vague gesture with his off hand. "I'm sixty-seven. Fifteen years ago I took a shot from Radian that was meant for your dad. Damn near killed me, and I never really came all the way back from it. Figure it's finally caught up with me."

"If I can take a look -" She reached for his hand.

He pulled it back. "No you don't, missy. What I got is what I got. And what I got to look forward to is a month or so of lying in bed while tubes do my eating and shitting for me, and that's no kind of life. So I'll go out the way I want to go out." He gestured toward the eastern horizon, where light was starting to show. "So, we gonna watch this sunrise, or what?"

There were folding chairs up here already; Amy supposed that the staff had left them up there for the purposes of relaxation. It was the work of a moment to turn them so that they faced to the east; another moment later, she had Fred comfortable in his chair.

Settling into the chair beside his, she pushed back her hood, to let the breeze play with her hair. The thin wisps of grey on his scalp also twitched in the same breeze. "I, uh, can fix your eyes, if you want," she ventured. "So you can enjoy it properly."

After a moment, he nodded. "Thanks, kid. Just don't touch nothing else."

"I won't, I promise." She laid her hand on his, and only barely managed to suppress her gasp. He hadn't been kidding about the fragile state of his body; it was a wonder that he had survived the climb up the roof stairs. It seemed that he was hanging on by sheer willpower. Carefully, she renewed his eyes, clearing incipient cataracts and strengthening the lenses. "All done."

"Thanks, kid." He blinked, looked out at the horizon, where the edge of the ocean was starting to turn red. "Been years since I've seen a proper sunrise."

"Thank you for getting me to bring you up here," she replied softly. "I really should take the time to enjoy these more." She paused. "How did you know what happened when Marquis – my father – was captured?"

His chuckle turned into a cough; she waited patiently while he worked through it. "He went to ordinary prison first. They didn't have the Birdcage up and running. I knew some guys who knew some guys, and I had a bit put away. So I dropped a few bribes and got myself a phone call with the boss. We had a good chat, him and me. Told me all about it. Asked me to look you up when I could, an' I said I would." He paused for breath. "They took him away to the 'Cage the next day. I tried to build up some cash again, but it all went wrong. I went down for grand larceny, but with my health problems I got early release. Got out mid February."

"And that's when you started keeping an eye on me." Her voice was soft.

"Well, I made your dad a promise. He woulda done the same for me."

"Well … thanks."

"Anytime, kid."

They fell silent then, as the brightness increased and the sun slowly climbed into sight, amid red and gold-tinted clouds.

"God damn, but that's beautiful," he muttered.

"It is," she agreed. "It really is."

When the sun had cleared the horizon, she felt the breeze pick up, and shivered slightly. "Fred, I think I should be getting you downstairs again."

There was no answer.

"Fred?"

Still no answer.

She looked at him; he was still looking at the sunrise, with tears streaking his lined face. Reaching out, she nudged him; his head lolled to one side. "Fred!" She grabbed for his hand.

His skin was cool; there was no heartbeat, no brain activity. He was gone.

She took a deep breath. "It's okay, Fred. We'll just sit up here a little longer. No rush."

Still holding his hand, she leaned back and watched the sunrise with him.

<><>​

I marched into Director Piggot's office; she looked up with a frown on her face. "I don't recall asking for you to come to my office before visiting the Wards. What's the problem?"

I steeled myself for what was going to come next. In my imagination, Fred had his hand on my shoulder. Give 'em hell, kid.

"Director Piggot, I've recently learned something rather surprising to me."

"And what's that?" she asked cautiously.

"It turns out that my father is actually the supervillain Marquis. The one who was sent to the Birdcage -"

"I know who Marquis is," she interrupted me. "Get to the point."

I nearly backed down at that moment. Nearly chickened out. But the memory of the aged gangster who had looked out for me, spent his last days with me, bolstered me up. "I want him released."

It took her a moment to process my words. When the meaning did hit her, she came up out of her chair. "WHAT?"

Behind me, the PRT guard opened the door and peered in; she waved him away. He closed the door again. She eyed me grimly. "This had better be some kind of joke, or -"

I shook my head. "No joke. I want Marquis released into my custody."

"Or what?" Her glare was ferocious. "What will you do?"

"Nothing."

She stared at me. " … what?"

"I said, nothing." I stared back at her. "I won't do anything. I won't heal anyone, ever again. I won't fix the Wards' injuries. I won't visit the hospitals. I won't do anything. Not until my father gets out of prison."

Putting my hands on her desk, I leaned forward. "Director Piggot … I want my dad back."


End of Part One

Part Two

 

[Ack]

Hostage Situation

Part Two: Interrogation


Director Piggot

She looked at the teenage girl across the desk and slowly lowered herself into her seat. Drawing a deep breath, she counted silently backward from five, to prevent herself from saying something rash. Then she laced her fingers on the desk in front of her.

"You can't be serious about this." This was her talking-to-Wards voice, the one she had perfected over ten years of working in this position. I am an adult and an authority figure. There is no permutation of this situation that I haven't already worked out ahead of time.

To her credit, the Dallon girl stood her ground, didn't scream, didn't throw a tantrum, didn't become irrational. She had seen all of that in her time in this position. None of it would have helped; it had never helped before.

"I'm absolutely serious about this, Director," Panacea told her, standing up straight again. "I want my father out of the Birdcage." She didn't use the word 'deadly'. A wise move on her part.

"Or you stop healing people."

"Or I stop healing people, yes."

Piggot waved a hand to indicate the outside world. "Just the general public, or -?" Her tone strongly suggested it had better be just the general public. The PRT had other healers they could call upon; rather, other capes whose powers allowed them to heal people with more or less efficiency, but they were scattered fairly thinly over the landscape, and no-one was as capable or as versatile as Panacea.

The girl folded her arms, obviously having caught the tone. "I mean everyone, Director. I stop healing people right now."

"The Wards, downstairs -?"

"None of them is critical, or you would have called me a lot sooner." She shrugged. "Let 'em heal the old-fashioned way."

Piggot pursed her lips. "That is a problem. They need to attend school. Obvious injuries will draw attention. So will staying away from school. Either way, their secret identities are compromised."

"Oh, I can see that it's a problem," Panacea agreed. "It's definitely a problem for them. It might even be a problem for you. But I don't see how it's a problem for me."

"They got injured fighting the Undersiders, defending you and the others in the bank!" Emily snapped. "Surely you owe them that!"

"Actually, I owe them nothing that anyone else in the bank doesn't also owe them," Panacea pointed out. "I was the one who got the other hostages upstairs and out of the way of the battle. I engaged two of the villains, and got hurt on my own account. If the Wards had stood back and just let the villains walk out, which they fully intended to do, no-one would have gotten hurt at all. Not me, not Vicky, not anyone."

Given that she had already lambasted the Wards on a very similar vein to this, Piggot decided to not pursue that particular line any further. "Clockblocker is covered in bug bites, and Aegis has a hole in his chest that would kill a normal person," she pointed out. "These injuries will be a huge neon sign to anyone who watches the footage of the fight."

"Again, I'm sorry they got hurt, but I don't see how it's my responsibility," Panacea responded. "They'll survive. And maybe, next time, they might be a little more careful."

Emily decided to leave that one well enough alone, too. "Very well, but you will be covering Endbringer fights, of course."

"No." Panacea's tone was matter-of-fact. "I won't. Not until my father is out of the Birdcage."

Anger was mounting once more in Piggot's chest, and she breathed deeply to try to dissipate it. This is no time to shout, or try to pull rank; she's not in my chain of command. I literally can not order her to do this. If I push too hard, she walks out. I do not want that.

Once she had her temper under control, she looked warningly at the cowled teen. "Be careful," she growled. "I have a very low tolerance for blackmail and extortion attempts."

"Wrong and wrong." Panacea's voice was flat. "Extortion is demanding money with menaces. You could probably equate my father's freedom with money; it's something I want, after all. But I'm not offering menaces. I'm not threatening to do anything. I'm just cutting you off from something that you were getting for free."

Piggot seized on that. "Are you going to be demanding money for healing now? Because -"

"Oh, please." Amy shook her head. "If I charged what it's worth – what it's really worth – you couldn't afford me. I was giving your people the equivalent of several weeks', or even months', worth of care from a top-flight surgeon, plus a whole trauma team, every time I laid hands on a patient. Call it ten thousand dollars a day, minimum. But no, I'm not asking for money. I'm asking for my dad."

"Blackmail, then."

Amy rolled her eyes. "You forget, I live with a lawyer. Blackmail is demanding money in return for silence about something. I'm not going to tell anyone about this if you aren't."

Piggot thought about the potential headlines. Teen hero refuses to heal unless supervillain father is freed. Even if the PRT managed to spin it to their benefit – and that wasn't necessarily a given, with Panacea's international reputation – it would certainly make capes in general look bad, and would almost certainly poison the well, as regarded the chances of Panacea returning to her regular healing duties. Especially for Endbringer battles.

I don't want to be seen as the Director who lost the PRT the services of Panacea because I didn't think things all the way through. There's got to be a way to get around this without caving to her demands.

Hm. Maybe there is, after all.

"In any case, the point is moot," she observed, affecting a casualness that she didn't feel. "Marquis is in the Birdcage. The world's first, and so far only, truly escape-proof prison. They go in, and they don't come out. There is no provision for release, for any reason whatsoever. You can make all the demands that you want. We simply can't meet them. It's not only legally improbable; it's also physically impossible."

As she continued, she made her tone was as magnanimous as she could manage. "I understand your feelings, I really do. If I had been separated from my father, I would of course want to get back into contact with him. But under the circumstances … " Lowering her voice, she leaned forward across the desk. " … well, I understand that Dragon can pass on messages to those inside, and it may even be possible to get return messages back. This would have to be kept strictly confidential, of course. Just between you and me."

Panacea may have raised an eyebrow; it was hard to tell, under the hood that she was wearing. "I find that hard to believe."

"Passing on messages?" Piggot shrugged. "Well, supplies have to be sent in somehow. Messages can go in that way. As for getting messages out -"

"I'm not talking about that," Panacea interrupted. "I'm saying that I find it hard to believe that they would make a prison that it's impossible to pull people out of."

"You do realise," Emily retorted, stung by her tone, "no-one has escaped from the Birdcage in all the years that it's been in operation."

Panacea rolled her eyes again. "Escape, sure. Modern prisons are pretty secure. You can't just tunnel your way out, or pick the lock on your cell door. The only real way out is with outside help, and that generally involves bribing guards. No guards, no bribes, no escape. But releasing someone just involves opening a few doors, and the prisoner can walk right out."

She leaned forward once more. "I'm willing to bet – in fact, I am betting my healing against this – that they left some way to get people out. Just in case, say, some officials got Mastered, and the President's kid got Birdcaged for a crime they weren't guilty of. When daddy finds out, you can bet that he'll move heaven and earth to get junior home again. And if there was no way out, then there'd be a stink like no other. The Birdcage would be dismantled before they would let that stand. So yeah. You say that it's impossible to get out of the Birdcage; I'm betting that you can't escape, but you can be released."

Piggot glared at her. "And if you're wrong?"

Panacea shrugged. "I don't think I am. And in fact, the thing is, I won't know the difference between me being wrong and you being stubborn. So I'm just going to assume that you're being stubborn. And just between you and me, I've needed an excuse to take a nice long vacation for some time now. While you look over the fine print for the Birdcage and see if there isn't some way to let Marquis out."

Piggot grimaced; Panacea had called her bluff. "Okay, fine. I didn't want to go to this extent. I think it's time you saw the extent of the crimes that your supervillain father inflicted on Brockton Bay."

"Oh, I think I know of most of it," Panacea told her. "But I'll look at it anyway."

"You asked for it." Piggot accessed the PRT's criminal databases, then told it to call up the laundry list of crimes that they had managed to pin on Marquis before he went away. It made for an impressive display.

"As you can see, he wasn't above extortion, robbery with menaces, and even murder," Piggot pointed out. "He was even implicated in the disappearances of more than one of his own men. This is not a good man, Ms Dallon. He's a vicious criminal."

"Who was captured by the Brockton Bay Brigade when they broke into his house and attacked him in his civilian identity," Amy retorted. "I was there at the time. I came within inches of being killed by Brandish, before my father took the blow instead; the blow that incapacitated him and ended the fight. They broke the unwritten rules and nearly killed an innocent six year old girl."

Piggot blinked; she hadn't known that.

Panacea stabbed her finger at the screen. "He never threatened harm to women or children, ever. He never dealt in drugs or prostitution. He made sure that the families of his men were cared for. The ABB and Merchants both deal in women and drugs, and they don't care much about whether the girls are of legal age. The Empire Eighty-Eight deals drugs, as well as beating up and murdering minorities of all kinds."

She took a deep breath. "Just recently, I had to help the victim of a vicious beating; she was a black college student. Her only crime was to walk down the wrong street at the wrong time of day. The beating could have left her crippled for life, or dead. And yet, Skidmark, Lung and Kaiser all walk free today. Nobody tries to capture them and send them to the Birdcage." Her voice was bitter.

"Marquis was still a criminal and a murderer," Piggot persisted, trying to regain lost ground. "Is still a criminal and a murderer, that is. He's known or suspected to have committed over -"

"Yes, I know he committed assaults and he killed people," Panacea agreed. "You've made that point. He was a supervillain. It's what they do. But he stuck to the rules, such as they were, and never killed anyone who didn't deserve it, from his point of view. As for the number of people he hurt, I'll match that with the number of people I've helped, the lives I've saved, in the last year alone. Even not counting the three Endbringer attacks that I attended since this time last year. Count that in, and I think you'll find that the death and harm that he caused are just a drop in the bucket. You really want me to call up that list? Because I can and I will." She met Piggot's eyes. "I'll make it really simple. My father has spent ten years in the worst hellhole in the world. I want him out. Leave him there, and I stop healing people. Let him out, and I'll not only start healing again, but I'll also make sure that he doesn't go back to his old ways."

"You can't make a guarantee like that. There's no way you can enforce it."

"Sure I can." Panacea turned on her heel and started toward the door. "I'll just ask him not to."

Piggot blinked. "Wait, where are you going?"

Stopping at the door, Panacea turned. "You're going to want to think about your decision." What might have been a smile crossed her face. "Take your time. I'm in no hurry."

The words she didn't say hung heavy in the air. But you are.

"Wait – we can talk -"

"No. We can't. We're already starting to go around in circles. You need to understand that I'm actually serious about this. I'm going home now. Later, I might go to the Boardwalk. Or see a movie. I won't be going to the hospital. Or to see the Wards."

"Listen – we can compromise -"

A pause, one hand on the handle. "Explain."

"You go back to healing, while we explore options regarding Marquis. Total transparency. You get to view all our findings -"

"No."

"No?"

"I believe the word is familiar to you. All that'll happen in that case is that I'll see only the findings that you want me to see." Panacea turned the handle. "You know where to find me."

Piggot watched her open the door and walk out; as soon as the door had closed behind the teenager, she pressed a button on her intercom. "Master/Stranger situation, stat! Target is heading for elevators from Director's office. Prepare for detention and isolation of target, tentatively identified as Panacea."

Keying up security cam footage on her computer, she watched the girl head for the lift, then enter it. The doors interleaved shut behind her.

<><>​

Reports on Panacea's projected capabilities – never conducive to a good night's sleep – had indicated that she would be effectively immune to any bacterial agent, or even chemical agents with discernible smells; with sufficient warning, she may well be able to generate a bacterium or mite capable of secreting a counter-agent. Even those without smells were not guaranteed to work without fail.

Fortunately, there were other methods available for detaining people whom the PRT wanted to detain without ever coming face to face with them. So it was that, when the elevator was two floors down, discreet nozzles in the ceiling filled the entire car with containment foam.

The elevator went all the way to one of the sub-basement levels, where hazmat-suited techs carved the foam containing Panacea out of the rest of the block; from the movements and muffled sounds, she was alive, conscious, and very unhappy about the situation. This was not their problem; they conveyed the chunk of foam to a sealed cell, where a spray from above dissolved the foam, leaving her sitting up as the spray turned to water and washed the tacky soup down a drain-hole.

<><>​

Director Piggot pressed a key on her computer that activated a sound link to the cell, already showing on the screen. "Are you well, Miss Dallon?"

Panacea wiped her mouth, then got up and stared up at where the camera was apparently visible. "Alive. Well. Not happy. What the hell do you think you're playing at?"

"I'm sorry, Miss Dallon," Piggot told her with real regret. "I have to ensure that you're not being Mastered, and that you haven't been replaced by a Stranger."

"Why would – oh."

Piggot nodded, even though Amy couldn't see her. "Using your story to get Marquis released, yes."

"So why couldn't you just damn well ask me? Lie detector or whatever?"

"Most lie detectors can be fooled, especially by someone with a very good knowledge of the human body."

"So what are you going to do?"

"Well, I'll be calling your family, as well as bringing certain other talents to bear here -"

"Oh shit. You realise that Carol has always considered me to be one step away from Marquis, unless I'm kept on the straight and narrow."

"You might have considered that before you chose this particular course of action."

"She's one of the reasons I'm doing this."

"I don't understand."

"Of course you don't. I bet you had a mother who actually treated you like a daughter, and not like a stranger who happened to be living in the same house."

"I -"

"And you probably never had to contend with having a sister who gets all of the attention and the praise, no matter how hard you try to earn even one-tenth of it."

"So … you're saying you hate your family?"

"No, no. Mark's okay, but he's just there. Vicky's everything I could want in a sister. But Carol is … that disapproving teacher who never, ever shows any sign of approval, and is ready to bust you for the slightest infraction. That's what I grew up with. That's what I'm tired of living with. That's why I want you to release my father. So I can have my real family back."

By now, Panacea was sitting with her back up against the wall of the cell, uncaring of the puddles on the floor, arms around her knees.

"So go ahead, call them. Get your experts in. I'm me, and I'm not under influence. I'm serious about what I want."

She lowered her head to her knees, and didn't seem inclined to say any more. Piggot keyed off the mic on her end, and made the call.

<><>​

Armsmaster

He was waiting with the Director and Gallant in the area outside the isolation cell when the Dallons arrived. The briefing had been minimal to non-existent; she had told him to wait until everyone was there.

Glory Girl was the first one in. "What's going on here?" she asked. "Why's Amy in an isolation cell? What's going on here?" She moved toward the cell; the two PRT guards reacted slightly, lifting the nozzles of their containment foam dispensers. "Hey, chill, guys. We're on the same side, here."

"Please stay back," one of the guards requested in a voice that made it clear that this was not actually a request.

Glory Girl turned to the others waiting there. "Dean, tell me what's going on here. What are you doing with Ames?"

"It's not me," replied Gallant; his armour was showing signs of the fight in front of the bank, and he was moving carefully. "The Director just told me to attend. I'm still not sure why."

"I'm suspecting a Master/Stranger situation," Armsmaster stated. "But I lack details."

Director Piggot gestured at the girl sitting on the floor within the cell. "I wanted to get you all here together before explaining this, so I didn't have to go over it more than once. I need you to give me your best estimation of the mental state of that person, including whether or not you believe that it is really Panacea, and whether she is in her right mind … or being controlled by someone."

Armsmaster's head came up. "What happened?"

Piggot took a deep breath. "She came to my office and revealed that Marquis is her father."

Armsmaster looked over the assembled group for their reactions. Brandish and Flashbang looked unsurprised, while Glory Girl's eyes widened slightly. She didn't know. Gallant let out a small "uh?" of surprise. He controlled his own reaction; he hadn't known either, but it didn't mean that he had to let the world know about it.

"I presume that she said more than that," the Protectorate hero commented.

"She did," agreed Piggot. "She told me that she wanted Marquis released."

At this, Brandish's eyes narrowed; Flashbang still didn't seem to be reacting very much. Glory Girl's eyes widened again.

"Crap, really?" asked Gallant. Again, Armsmaster withheld his reaction.

"Yes, really, Mr Stansfield," Piggot told the Ward acidly. "Now, as Armsmaster has pointed out, this is a Master/Stranger situation. I very much urgently need to find out if she has been Mastered, or has been replaced by a Stranger, for obvious reasons. So, my question to you is, is this Amy Dallon, and is she in command of her own mind?"

"Let me begin," Armsmaster suggested, stepping up to the inch-thick plexiglass of the isolation cell. Within, the girl sitting on the floor did not react. Armsmaster pressed the intercom button. "Panacea."

Her head came up. "Yes?"

"Are you the superhero Panacea?"

"Yes, I am."

"State your full civilian name."

"Amelia Claire Lavere."

There was a distinct pause before he replied. "Isn't your name Amy Dallon?"

"That's the name they gave me when they adopted me. But my name is really Amelia Claire Lavere."

All of the readouts on his helmet HUD lie detector were giving a solid green result. He clicked off the intercom and turned toward Piggot. "She's telling the truth." He looked at Flashbang and Brandish. "What's going on?"

Flashbang shrugged. "When we adopted her, we shortened her name to Amy. Gave her our surname. Can't remember her original name, but … "

"That was her name," Brandish snapped. "The name he gave her."

"'He' being Marquis?" asked the Director.

Brandish nodded curtly. "Yes."

"Hm." Armsmaster turned back to the intercom, and pressed the button once more. "Panacea. Have you been using the identity of Amy Dallon since you were adopted into New Wave?"

"It was the Brockton Bay Brigade back then, but yeah. Amy Dallon's my official name."

"How did you come to discover your father's real identity?"

"From an old minion of his. I encountered him a few weeks ago, while I was walking to the hospital. We talked, a lot. He told me about my father. My real father. What he was like. How he was captured." The look she sent toward Brandish at that moment should have cracked the plexiglass.

"I understand that he was attacked in his own home, while you were present," Armsmaster noted. "Is this true?"

"Yes, and the woman who's been pretending to be my mom for the last ten years nearly killed me." Her voice was bitter. "My father saved my life, and for that he got to go to the Birdcage."

Gallant and Glory Girl were both staring at Brandish now; she compressed her lips and ignored them.

"If you're referring to the unwritten rules, they weren't really around back then," he told Panacea.

"No, not until that guy killed Fleur. Then people really started paying attention to them." The bitterness in her voice had not decreased. "Funny how that happens."

Armsmaster drew a breath. "Tell me about why you want Marquis released."

"He's my dad. He was a supervillain and a murderer, and he was still a better parent than I've ever had since." The matter-of-fact tone in the teenage girl's voice came through strongly.

"You have to understand; what you are demanding isn't possible."

"Sure. Just so long as you understand that if I don't get what I want, you don't get what you want."

Emotional markers were high, but aside from that, she was batting a solid thousand. Either Panacea believed implicitly in an elaborate series of lies, or everything she was saying was the honest truth. Which begged the question. He spoke carefully into the intercom.

"What, exactly, do we not get?"

"Any more healing, ever."

<><>​

There was a babble of voices from behind him. Armsmaster waited them out. He pressed the button again. "Am I to understand that you intend to withhold healing from everyone who needs it unless your father – Marquis, the supervillain – is released from the Birdcage?"

"Yes." She nodded once, sharply.

"You do realise, that's a very selfish act."

"And I'm not allowed to be selfish? Everyone else is selfish! Demanding that I heal you all, any hour of the day – that's selfish! I just want something back of my own. I want my father."

"Miss Dallon -"

"Lavere."

"Miss Lavere, then. Are you aware of the amount of suffering that will ensue from you doing this?"

"It won't be me doing it. You know what I want. If I get my father back, you get back Panacea. If I don't … you don't." She sat up. "And by the way. Now that my foster mother the lawyer is here, I'd like to enter a complaint about being kept in unlawful detention, in inhumane conditions, as a minor." She gestured at the cell, the water still lying in puddles, at her bedraggled costume.

"You're still under Master/Stranger protocols here," Armsmaster told her. "Until we can determine your identity and state of mind either way, we can't risk letting you out."

But Glory Girl had turned to her mother, and was talking urgently to her. Flashbang was looking unhappy as well. Brandish's expression was more and more sour by the moment.

"One more question." Armsmaster's voice was sharp. "Did anyone else put you up to this? This minion you spoke of?"

"Not in the slightest." In the cell, Panacea shook her head. "He just filled me in on what I didn't know before. This is all my idea. And in case you're wondering, he died last week, on the roof of the hospital. We were watching the sunrise together."

<><>​

Armsmaster keyed the intercom off and stepped away from the cell. Piggot came to meet him, gesturing Gallant to accompany her. Together, they moved away from the Dallons, who were talking among themselves.

"Armsmaster, your analysis?" Piggot's voice was sharp.

"She's telling the truth, as she knows it. Not even attempting to hide anything. She believes implicitly in what she's saying."

"Gallant?" The Director turned to the Ward.

The teenager took a deep breath. "She's angry, upset, determined, and there's a longing there. Also, a little bit embarrassed, but that's probably to do with being in a cell like this."

"Any sense of duplicity?"

"No." Gallant looked the Director in the eye. "As Armsmaster stated, she believes implicitly in what she says. And she has mixed feelings about seeing her family."

"Unsurprising," the Director murmured. "With what she's revealed about Brandish … "

"I'm surprised that she's been walking to the hospital, in the middle of the night it seems, to heal people, and no-one else knew about it," Gallant put in. "Not her parents, not her sister."

"They didn't?" Piggot raised an eyebrow. "Wait, how do you know she was going there in the middle of the night?"

"She met him while she was walking there," Gallant explained. "And they watched the sunrise from the hospital roof. Which suggests to me that she walked there in the middle of the night. Or she went there in the evening, and spent all night there. No-one else came with her, because no-one in her family knew about it."

"Something to be investigated," Piggot noted briskly. "Okay, analysis."

"So far, I cannot state that she's anyone but who she says she is," Armsmaster told her carefully.

"And she's not throwing off any weird or out of place emotions," Gallant added.

Piggot nodded. "Very well. So she's not lying or insane."

"I've met insane people." Gallant shuddered. "She's not insane."

"Now what?" asked Armsmaster.

"Now the family speaks to her."

<><>​

Glory Girl

When Piggot gave them the nod, Vicky and her parents moved up to the cell. Dad reached out and pressed the intercom. "Amy girl," he began. "What's going on? Why are you doing this?"

"It's not you, Mark, it's me." Amy moved up to the plexiglass. "I can't take this any more. The pressure. I need someone who's in my corner. Who understands."

Vicky leaned across to the speaker. "I'm in your corner, Ames. I understand."

Amy's eyes were sad. "Sorry, Vicky. It's not enough."

"What do you mean, not enough? You're my sister. We've known each other forever."

"Ten years, more or less, Vicky. And you're right. I could never have had a better sister."

"Enough." Mom's voice was sharp; her courtroom voice, the voice that stated that the bullshit had better stop, because Carol Dallon was going to kick ass and take names until it did. "Amy Dallon, why are you doing this?"

"You know why, Carol. You've been scared this day would happen since you adopted me."

Vicky frowned. "What do you mean?" She turned to her mother. "What does she mean?"

"Nothing." Mom stared through the plexiglass. "It was a mistake to take you in. I knew that then, and I know it now."

"Mom!" Vicky's protest was a wail. "You can't mean that! Amy's your daughter, just like me!"

"Hardly. You heard her. She's the daughter of Marquis. Every day I looked at her, I saw him. And now he's coming out in her."

Vicky shook her head. "Mom, you can't think -"

"I don't think. I know." She gestured at the girl in the cell. "Who but the daughter of a supervillain would demand to have him released? Who but a villain in the making herself would hold the whole world hostage to her demands like this?"

"I hardly think she's holding anyone hostage, dear," protested Dad. "She's just saying that she's not going to be using her powers any more."

"After she spent years making sure that everyone knows that Panacea can cure anyone of anything." Mom's tone was cutting. "Giving out healing for free. Healing the members of the Protectorate and the Wards. Attending Endbringer battles. Making herself indispensable."

Vicky shook her head. "That's not being evil, Mom! That's being a hero!" She turned to the intercom. "Ames. Was this all a big plot of yours?"

An electronic chuckle. "No, Vicky. It was just me, healing people because I couldn't see any other way to go. I couldn't not do it. I didn't see another option, even as I got closer and closer to burning out. Well, now I have another option. And I'm taking it."

Piggot stepped forward. "If you could ask her questions, so that we could see if she knows the answers?"

"Oh. Ah. Right." Dad leaned in to the intercom. "Amy girl. Birthday before last. What did I get you?"

Her tone was dry. "Nothing, Mark. You forgot."

"What?" He frowned. "I'm sure I remembered … "

Vicky shook her head. "No, Dad. She's right. You forgot her birthday that year. You got her a gift certificate two weeks late."

"Oh." He shrugged, gestured to Mom. "Carol, your turn."

Mom took a deep breath. "Amy, what are you intentions in the unlikely event that your father is released?"

"Get a place. Move in with him."

"And when he recommences his criminal career?" Her voice was sharp.

"I'll make sure he doesn't."

"And how will you do that?" Her tone was derisory now.

"I'll ask him not to. For my sake."

"So what do you think he'll do instead of criminal activity? It is all he knows, you realise."

"Well, actually, Carol, all he knows right now is the Birdcage." Amy's voice was very dry. "Only the worst hellhole in the civilised world. And he's been there for ten years. Somehow I don't think he'll want to go back. So maybe he'll be happy to take a rest. Smell the flowers. Maybe even come to the hospital with me and assist with bone reconstruction."

"I find that very hard to believe."

"Well, gee, until we ask him, we'll never know, will we?"

"I don't much like the tone of your voice, young lady."

"And I don't much like being locked in a cell like this, but we can't all have what we want, can we?"

Vicky cleared her throat. "Uh, Mom? Can I talk to her?"

"Very well," huffed Mom. "But remember. She's not your sister, not really. She never has been."

"As far as I'm concerned, she is, and she always will be." Vicky leaned in to the intercom. "Ames, can you hear me?"

"Sure thing, Vicky. What do you want to know?"

She bit her lip. "When was the first time I kissed Dean?"

"About two days after you started going out with him." Amy grinned. "You couldn't stop talking about it. By the time we went to sleep, you'd planned out your married life together, and named all six of your kids." She paused. "Of course, a week later, you had your first fight with him and dumped him, but that was kind of par for the course."

From behind her, Vicky heard Gallant – Dean – mutter to himself, "Six kids?" She ignored him, and fought down her blush.

"Uh, okay. What did I say to you after we fought Skidmark for the first time?"

Amy looked up and assumed an expression of concentration. "As I recall, it was 'Ew, ew ew. Ew ew ew. Ewwwwww.' And then you went and had about three showers."

"Oh god, yes. I remember." Vicky turned to the others. "That was the most swearing that I'd ever heard in my life. I felt icky for days." She turned back to the intercom. "Last question. What did I do when I first got my costume?"

Amy snorted, the sound carrying through clearly. "You refused to take it off for about three days. Mom had to threaten you with grounding just to make you take it off to have a shower. You even slept in it."

"Haha, yeah." Vicky turned from the intercom. "Okay, I'm satisfied. She's Amy. Dad? Mom?"

Dad nodded. "I agree with Vicky. Carol?"

Mom frowned, didn't answer. Vicky reached out, put her hand on her mother's arm. "Mom?"

"I'm thinking."

"What's to think about, Mom? It's Amy in there. You know it. I know it. Come on, tell them."

Carol Dallon drew a deep breath and turned to the PRT Director. "I believe that that's Amy in there. If you say she's not under outside influence, then I believe you." She paused for a long beat.

"But I'm not so sure that she's in her right mind."

"What?" Vicky grabbed her arm again. "Mom!"

Her mother shook her hand off. "Think, Victoria. She wants to have Marquis released. She's willing to have a supervillain, one who was sent to the Birdcage, let back into the world."

Dad grimaced. "Dear, he is her real father."

"And that's my point. She's not rational as far as he's concerned."

"Well maybe if you'd told her about this years ago, so it didn't come as a big surprise now, we wouldn't be in this position," Vicky snapped.

Director Piggot cleared her throat loudly. Everyone looked at her.

"I would much rather you not have a family argument right here and right now," Piggot told them sternly. "You agree that it is your daughter in there?"

"Well, it's Amy, yeah," Vicky supplied. "No doubt about it."

"Unfortunately," Mom put in, "it's also an Amy who intends to withhold healing from those who need it until her demands are met."

"Which leads me to my next question," the Director noted. "Where do we go from here?"


End of Part Two

Part Three

 

[Ack]

Hostage Situation

Part Three: Negotiations


"Well, I'll tell you what you're gonna do first!" snapped Glory Girl. "You're gonna let my sister out of that box, or I'm gonna let her out myself." She eyed the guards. "You've got the choice of getting out of my way, or not getting out of my way. One of those doesn't end well."

The guards stepped back, raising the containment foam sprayers. Piggot frowned. "Threats are not appropriate here, Glory Girl."

The teen hero rolled her eyes. "Then open the damn cell already. You've proven that she's who she says she is!"

"I don't -" began Brandish.

Glory Girl whirled on her. "Mom, seriously? Do you even hear yourself? You sound paranoid! Are you honestly saying that she's been planning this for the last ten years? She didn't have powers till only a couple of years ago!"

"No, but -"

"And she didn't know about Marquis until just a little while ago. After she's done all the healing that she's already done! Seriously, look at the facts!"

"So she says," Brandish returned stubbornly.

Glory Girl marched over to the intercom; the guards stepped out of the way, tracking her with the containment foam sprayers. She ignored them and pressed the button. "Ames. When did you learn about Marquis being your father?"

"Three weeks ago," Panacea replied.

Everyone turned to look at Armsmaster. He nodded. "It's the truth."

"See?" exclaimed Glory Girl. "No big Machiavellian plot! So let her out already!"

"I have to agree," Flashbang stated. "Please let Amy out of there."

Piggot nodded to one of the guards; whatever he did was not visible, but the plexiglass sheet split down the middle, along an almost invisible seam, and slid apart.

<><>​

The tiny, irritating sound of air hissing through the crack between the two sheets – they had been keeping my cell at a pound or two below standard air pressure to keep any pathogens I released in the cell with me, a standard bio-lab precaution – ceased, as the sheets slid apart. I was almost immediately assaulted by my sister; her hug sent me back several paces.

"Are you okay?" she demanded. "They didn't do anything to you?"

"No, just foamed me in the elevator," I told her. "But I need a shower. Even with the dissolving agent, that stuff gets everywhere."

Director Piggot cleared her throat. "Panacea."

Vicky and I looked at her. "Yes?" I enquired.

"I will make facilities available so you can shower. We can provide clothing to replace your costume -"

"Nah, screw that," Vicky broke in. "I can race home and get more clothes while Amy's showering."

The Director paused, and waited until it was clear that Vicky wasn't going to keep going. "Whichever suits you. In the meantime, I will be establishing secure communications with the Chief Director, so that we can talk this out at a level where talking it out actually means something."

Mark cleared his throat. "Perhaps we should get Sarah in on this."

Carol turned to look at him, and he shrugged apologetically. "She is team leader, after all. And Amy's a member of New Wave."

"Acceptable," the Director noted. "You can bring Lady Photon in on this. But nobody else." She then looked at me. "Is that satisfactory to you? To speak to the Chief Director?"

At that moment, I had a massive flash of insight. From the moment I had walked into the Director's office, I had been subconsciously been expecting her to shut me down hard, to bring up some legalistic argument that I couldn't counter. But she hadn't. Each time she had brought up an argument that I had countered, she had changed tack, not pressing on any direction.

It wasn't because I was a great negotiator. It was because she was soft-pedalling. She didn't want to lose me as a resource. She didn't want to refuse so hard that I walked out – as I actually had. As it was, even soft-pedalling, she had pushed me so hard a couple of times that I had almost stumbled; only the words of Dad's last minion had kept me going. Don't let the bastards wear you down, kid. So long as you're in there fighting, you've got a chance.

I did my best to contain the heady feeling that this gave me. I had thought I had the leverage here, and this reaction finally seemed to confirm it. But would the Chief Director acknowledge it? I had spoken to her a few times, but never at length. She was widely acknowledged to be an extremely sharp political mover and shaker, and I was just the adopted daughter of a lawyer. If it came down to a straight battle of wits, I knew who would win. And it wasn't going to be me.

On the other hand, if this didn't get kicked upstairs, it would never go anywhere. Approaching Director Piggot had been my first move. I just had to hope that I'd be able to figure out my next one before I was checkmated. Or something. I was never any good at chess.

With the feeling of stepping off of a cliff, I nodded. "Yes, please."

"If you will excuse me, then." Her expression didn't change; she still looked unhappy as she left the room.

<><>​

I didn't know where the bathrobe had come from, but I found it hanging in the shower enclosure after I finished scrubbing the gunk off my skin, and washing it from my hair. They had supplied me with a bottle of some sort of formulation that completed the cleaning process, but it left my hair feeling like barbed wire. Oh well, can't have everything.

The tap on the door came when I was towelling my barbed-wire hair free of water in front of the mirror, checking for any remaining bits of containment gunge. There were none; I raised my voice. "Who is it?"

"Your sister, dummy. I come bearing clothes."

"Come on in," I invited her, after re-checking that the robe was fastened. The door opened, and she entered.

"Well, you're looking a bit cleaner," she observed. "That stuff's a pain to get off, isn't it?"

"It is," I agreed. "Thanks for the clothes."

"Not a problem, sis." She put them on the bench. "Uh … "

I paused in my towelling. "What?"

"You are still my sister, right? I mean, even okay, I get it that your dad's a big-name supervillain. That shouldn't change anything between us, right? So we're still sisters?"

I sighed, and let the towel fall to drape around my neck. Holding up my right hand, I stuck my little finger out. "Still sisters."

Beaming, Vicky hooked her finger around mine. "Sister pinky hug!"

"Sister pinky hug." I didn't feel the same pleasure she did at the simple act, but then, I felt somewhat differently about her than she did about me. Still, I was profoundly grateful that she was sticking by me in this matter.

"So yeah, Aunt Sarah's here, and they're waiting in the conference room, and Dean wants to talk to you when you're all dressed and modest," she told me in a rush.

"How does Aunt Sarah look?" My aunt had always been nicer to me than Carol. According to Fred, Marquis had stated that if she had been able, she and Uncle Neil would have taken me in instead of Mark and Carol. But I couldn't rely on her being on my side in this matter.

"Oh, like Aunt Sarah." Vicky shrugged. "Doing what she always does. Calming Mom down and waiting till she gets the facts before acting."

"That's good, I guess." Aunt Sarah was kind, and level-headed, and sweet – the Photon Mom nickname was not by accident – but she was anything but a pushover in battle. And I did not want her up against me in the upcoming negotiation. Because a negotiation it would be.

"I'll just let you get dressed now. Don't forget, Dean wants to chat."

"What about?"

"How do I know?" She shrugged. "For a boy, he's really good at holding out on me."

"That's why you keep going back to him," I suggested. "Because you can't just pigeonhole him and forget him."

"Maybe." She wrinkled her nose at me. "I can't wait till we get you a steady boyfriend. I will so tease you about him."

"Get out of here," I told her firmly, snapping the towel in her direction. "Shoo. I want to get dressed."

Laughing, she went.

<><>​

Dressed once more, I emerged from the bathroom to find Dean waiting for me, still in his armour, but with his helmet under his arm. His blond hair was mussed, and sticking out at all directions. I could see why Vicky was attracted to him; his features were strong and regular, and passably handsome. I could recognise the attraction for others, but it didn't really work for me. Especially given how I felt about him.

"You wanted to talk?" I asked.

He nodded, then turned to Vicky, who was loitering a short distance away. "Uh, can we have some privacy for this?"

She turned puppy-dog eyes on me. "Ames, you mind if I hear this?"

I pretended to consider it. "Vicky, I don't know what he wants to say -" That was a lie. I actually had quite a good idea. " - but if Dean wants you to know, he'll let you know. Otherwise … sorry."

"Meanie." She pouted and moved away, out of earshot.

"Dean? You figured it out?" My voice was low. I was pretty sure what he was going to talk about. Through his power, he knew what I was feeling, and he must have made a guess at my thoughts, because he nodded.

"Yeah," he agreed, keeping his voice just as low. "I've kind of known for a while. And I know how you feel about me, too."

I shied away from him. "God, I -"

"It's all right," he assured me. "It's all right."

I bit my lip. "No. No, it's not. I shouldn't hate my sister's boyfriend."

"You'd be surprised how many do." His tone was light.

"But not for the reason that I do." Mine was bitter.

He nodded. "I guess."

"I didn't ask for this," I protested. "It just … happened."

"She doesn't feel the same way." It was a statement of fact.

"I'd already gathered as much. I'm her sister." Nothing more. I couldn't quite keep that trace of bitterness out of my voice.

A slight frown creased his brow. "What you said earlier about you having a right to be selfish -"

My eyes opened wide as I divined his meaning. "No. Oh god no. I'd never try to take Vicky off of you. I mean, I love her, but … "

" … but she's not interested in you that way," he finished. "So you're just going to what, suffer in silence?"

"It's not like I haven't had plenty of practice," I replied bitterly. "Dean. Please do not tell her."

He tilted his head. "I don't like keeping her in the dark like this."

"I don't have a choice." My voice was low. "Right now, she's supporting me because sisters. If I let her know that I've actually got feelings for her, then that opens a whole other can of worms. Worst case, she stops supporting me, starts worrying about my motivations, right alongside Carol." I began kneading my forehead with forefinger and thumb. "I can't afford for that to happen."

"Yeah, got it." Slowly, he nodded. "Okay, I'll keep your secret for the moment. But just so you know, this sort of thing isn't healthy to keep bottled up."

"You think?" I snorted a laugh.

"I'm serious," he told me earnestly. "Listen, there are therapists who come around regularly, check on us, make sure we're all sane and competent to do our jobs. Maybe we could talk Piggot into getting you into a session with one of them."

"One thing at a time," I told him. "Right now, this is between you and me." I met his eyes. "Please don't tell Vicky. Or anyone else."

"I won't," he assured me. "But if you ever want to talk ..."

"Thanks." I patted him on the armoured shoulder. "And sorry about the no-healing thing. But he's my dad, you know?"

"Well, speaking as someone who's got a little bit of a pain in the ribs, I'm not so hot on the no healing," he replied dryly. "But speaking as someone who would go bat-shit insane on anyone trying to take my dad away from me and mom, I can kind of accept your position. Intellectually, of course."

"Thanks." I smiled at him. "That means a lot." Glancing around to make sure no-one was looking, I put my hand on his cheek and exerted my power. "Fractured rib, got it."

He blinked as I pulled my hand away. "You healed me?"

"No, I didn't."

"But I -"

"Dean. I didn't heal you. You just weren't hurt as bad as you thought. Got it?"

He looked at me for a long moment. "Uh, yeah. Got it. Thanks."

"So long as we understand each other." I really hoped that he wouldn't tell anyone else; it would weaken my position massively if he did. But he had shown sympathy to my cause. A moment of weakness. Don't do it again.

"So what's your position on my dad being a notorious supervillain?" I asked as we moved off to catch up with Vicky.

"Still working on that one," he admitted. "He did a lot of bad stuff."

"A lot of supervillains do a lot of bad stuff," I countered.

"His bad stuff got him Birdcaged," he retorted.

"And what if I could guarantee he wouldn't just go back to his life of crime once he got out?"

"How would you do that?"

I shrugged. "He took an attack that would have killed me. I think he'd at least listen if I asked him not to."

"Hm." He fitted his helmet back on. "I think I'd have to meet the guy to know for sure."

He had a point. "Me too, I guess. But I still think I could make it work."

"That's if you get that far."

"There is that."

<><>​

Director Piggot sat up at the end of the table, very much in charge. At the far end of the table, a massive flatscreen monitor covered most of the wall. If you watched the Superbowl on this, you'd be able to count the individual streamers on the cheerleaders' pompoms. Carol and Mark and Aunt Sarah sat down along one side of the table; Armsmaster sat on the other side.

I could see chairs waiting for me and Vicky alongside Aunt Sarah, but I went to the other side, where Dean was sitting down next to Armsmaster. Grabbing a chair from the wall, I sat next to Dean with a bit of spacing between. Vicky blinked, but after a moment's hesitation, she got her own chair and sat between me and Dean.

Dean could probably read, much better than I could, the flickers of surprise around the room as I upset the perceived status quo; however, I didn't miss the changes of expression on the faces of the Director, Carol and Aunt Sarah.

Your dad always said, if you want someone to listen closely, first you gotta get their attention, Fred had told me in one of our conversations. He had chuckled dryly. He was real good at that.

Well, I certainly had their attention. All I had to do now was make it work.

Aunt Sarah leaned across the table toward me. "Amy," she began. "What's going on?"

I raised my chin slightly. "What have you been told?"

"That you know who your father is, and that you're petitioning to get him released, by withholding your healing."

I bet it was put to you a lot more strongly than that. "That's it in a nutshell, yeah."

She frowned. "Have you thought through all of the consequences here, Amy? Marquis is a supervillain. He went to the Birdcage for a reason."

"He went to the Birdcage because you broke the unwritten rules twice, Aunt Sarah," I told her flatly.

"Twice?" she asked. "We attacked him in his home -"

" - and Carol nearly killed me before he got in the way. Attacking family members. Remember that part of it?"

"She didn't know, couldn't know, that you were there."

"Would that matter if he'd been a second too slow, and she'd skewered me?" I raised an eyebrow. "How bad would the Brockton Bay Brigade have looked with the murder of a six year old on their record?" I leaned forward, looking at Carol. "How would you have felt – Mom – if you had to go home and look Vicky in the eyes with the knowledge that you had killed a girl just her age by accident?"

Mark grimaced; Aunt Sarah looked taken aback. Carol looked furious. "He was a dangerous man!" she snapped.

"I'm really, really, not going to accept that it's okay to kill innocents, even by accident, just so that one 'dangerous man' can go to prison," I told her softly. "But then, I guess that's the difference between you and me."

Carol's chair fell over backward as she jumped to her feet. I could see the energy gathering around her hands.

"Mom!" shouted Vicky.

"Carol!" shouted Mark and Sarah, both at once.

"Enough!" bellowed Director Piggot in a voice that shook the table. "Brandish, stand down immediately!"

Carol paused, the energy blade half-formed. "Did you hear what she said?" she demanded.

"Yes, and I can see what you're doing," Piggot informed her tartly. "Are you truly proposing to attack your foster daughter for making a comment?"

"Mark, take Carol out of here," Sarah ordered. "Now."

Without demur, Mark rose and took Carol by the elbow. "Come on," he murmured. "Let's go get a cup of coffee or something. Take a breath, get our heads on straight."

"But -" protested Carol. "She – it's her -"

"Carol," ordered Aunt Sarah, in a voice that no-one would ever associate with 'Photon Mom'. "Go. Now."

Slowly, Carol let the energy dissipate; Mark steered her along the table and out through the door. It shut behind them. Piggot turned an unfavourable eye upon me. With Aunt Sarah already looking steadily in my direction, I felt like a bug pinned to a board. With two large pins.

"I trust that there will be no further outbursts of that nature," Piggot growled.

"I'm good," I assured her.

"That has yet to be determined," she murmured, then raised her voice. "Chief Director Costa-Brown. You've been listening?"

We turned our heads as the screen lit up; on it, facing us, was Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown, head of the Parahuman Response Teams. Possibly the most adept political infighter in the world, given that she'd steered the PRT through countless crises since its inception nearly twenty years ago. It was through her that I would have to go in order to get my father out of the Birdcage. I wasn't looking forward to trying.

"Yes, I have," the Chief Director replied. Her voice was strong, commanding, confident. She had to be at least forty by now, but even looking closely, I could barely see the signs of ageing. Either her makeup artist was a miracle worker, or she was one of those lucky people who looked the same at forty as at twenty. "I've also gone over the recording of what transpired in your office. It made for interesting listening."

The words conveyed her meaning well enough; the pitch and of them carried another meaning altogether; I caught the Director's wince from the corner of my eye. Not that I could really tell what it was; I wasn't good at reading deep meanings. It hadn't surprised me that she had been recording; in a position such as hers, conversations like that would be recorded as a matter of course.

"As you know, once she left my office, I instituted Master/Stranger protocols," Piggot stated. "I brought in her family, as well as Armsmaster and Gallant. All of them concurred that she is who she says she is, that she's not Mastered, and that she seems to be in her right mind."

"That's good to hear," Costa-Brown replied. "It means we can get right down to brass tacks. Panacea."

I jumped slightly at being addressed. "Ma'am?"

"I understand that you want your father, Marquis, released from the Birdcage. As incentive to do so, you are withholding all use of your healing abilities until this is done. Am I correct?"

"I … yes," I agreed. "I mean, I know he's a powerful supervillain, but I think I can ask him to not be, you know, a criminal any more."

"And what makes you think that he would listen to you?" Her expression had not changed; she was as attentive as before.

"I … he saved my life. Took a hit that would have killed me, could have killed him. This lost him the fight. If he's willing to do that for me … "

"I see." She pursed her lips. "You do realise that years have passed. He may not be the same man as he was."

"He's still my dad." I spread my hands out before me.

"Hm. Well. Supposing, hypothetically, we release him. You ask him to stop being a criminal. He agrees, but in time, you find that he has not, in fact, done so. We arrest him again. Do you go on another strike to make us release him once more?"

"It would really depend," I confessed.

"In what way? A criminal act is a criminal act."

"Well, suppose he's walking down the street and he gets attacked by a mugger with a knife," I posited. "He defends himself by using his powers. Is that seen as a criminal act? Is he going to get arrested and Birdcaged again just for that?"

"It would probably need to be a more blatant act than that," agreed the Chief Director.

"What I'm worried about," I told her, "is if I agree to some vague term, then someone pushes the definition on that term to its very limit just so they have an excuse to arrest him again. So no, I wouldn't go on strike again if he was arrested for doing what I saw as a blatant criminal act … but if I thought he was being railroaded, hell yes I would."

"That could be … problematic," the Chief Director admitted. "Ask any career criminal in jail, he'll tell you that he was railroaded, that his trial was a sham."

"Perhaps not," Aunt Sarah spoke up, surprising me. "With all due respect, ma'am, you never met him. I did. The Brigade engaged him several times."

"I fought him once," Armsmaster volunteered. "While I was in the Wards."

I hadn't known that; I turned my head to look at the armoured hero. "How did it go?"

"He took me down so fast it was almost insulting. Then he told me to come back once I was out of short pants." Armsmaster's voice was almost, but not quite, emotionless; I could see the tic in his jaw.

"He could have killed you?" I asked.

"Easily," he replied flatly. "And he did kill other heroes."

A silence fell over the table. Sarah looked at me as though to say, Are you sure you want to let this man out of the Birdcage?

"So who were the other major villains in the city at the time?" I knew the answer; I wanted to hear it from him.

"That isn't relevant -" began Director Piggot.

"No, I want to hear this," the Chief Director interceded. "Armsmaster, please answer the question."

Armsmaster nodded. "The Empire Eighty-Eight, under Allfather," he reported. "Galvanate. Butcher and the Teeth."

"This was, of course, a different Butcher, different Teeth, than the ones that are out there today." It wasn't a question.

"All different, yes," Aunt Sarah confirmed. "But just as bad as they are today."

"Okay," I noted. "And if you'd encountered any of the other ones instead of Marquis? How would you have rated your survival chances, if they'd gotten the better of you?"

Armsmaster glanced down the table; I turned my head back just in time to see the Chief Director's nod.

"Minimal," he gritted, his jaw tight.

"So we've established that while Marquis murdered people – including heroes – he was by no means alone in that, at the time," the Chief Director noted. "And there were times and places where he could have killed people, but didn't. Is that about right?"

Aunt Sarah nodded. "He was a vicious criminal, and merciless to his enemies, but he set his rules, he played by them, and he never, ever broke them. And when he gave his word, he kept it."

"So you're saying that Marquis would not lie to his daughter, or break his word to her?"

"I believe so, yes."

"And of the ten years that have passed since his arrest?"

"I don't know," Sarah admitted. "He might have become more vicious. He may have discarded his rules. He may be dead."

"So, if he was hypothetically released, what do you think the chances are that he would reoffend, given the chance?"

"I can't make a call on that," Aunt Sarah told her at once. "As you said, he's been in there for ten years."

"Hazard a guess for me."

She bit her lip. "If he's still the same man as he was … if he gave Amy his solemn word that he would not take up criminal activity … well, given that the PRT now know his face and name, and that they and Amy would be watching him like hawks, and that his old organisation would be well and truly scattered to the winds … "

Or dead, I supplied silently.

" … I actually think there's a good chance that he'd stay on the straight and narrow. Barring unforseen circumstances, of course."

The Chief Director's mouth moved in what might have even been a smile. "Barring those, yes."

"Chief Director," Piggot objected. "Please tell me that you're not seriously considering this!"

"Emily, my job requires that I consider everything. That I give thought to everything. Even the unthinkable." She turned her face, and I had the eerie impression that she was looking back at me. "Panacea, do you believe that I have given this matter a fair hearing?"

"I -" I was tongue-tied for a moment. This woman had presence. If she had said, "Follow me," I would have followed her. To the ends of the earth, if necessary. "I, yes, you have." I paused. "What, uh, what -"

" - have I decided? Nothing, yet. This is far too important a matter to decide all at once."

That gave me hope – and a hint. "So you can -"

"Get people out of the Birdcage? Yes, we can. This is a closely guarded secret, and you are all sworn to silence on the matter." Her expression turned stern, and she looked at each of us in turn. "Do you agree to keep this secret?"

"Uh, yes." About two seconds after the words had left my mouth, I realised that I'd just been outmanoeuvred. Ah crap. Now I'm legally bound to never mention the possibility.

Even as I realised this, each of the others around the table offered their agreement to keeping the secret. Director Piggot, I noted, didn't bother; she obviously knew already.

"Good. Now that's out of the way. Ms Lavere, one of the reasons we can't just pull him out is that there are several inmates – Strangers and the like – who would be able to hitch a ride, and we don't want them loose in the world again. Another is that we need to have his mental state thoroughly assessed. A third reason is that the Birdcage is a deterrent wholly and solely because people think that not only is it escape-proof, but it's also impossible to get people out again. Your example of the President's child is well made; it is possible to get people out, but there are only two ways to do it. One is for the appropriate authority to order Dragon to open it up and let the person out."

I felt stunned, overwhelmed. She was telling me things that I'd had no idea of. "Uh, what's the other way?"

Her mouth creased in a brief smile. "Classified."

"Oh. Well. Uh. What happens now?"

"What happens now is that I go into high-level talks with people to determine whether or not it is in our best interests to have Marquis on the outside again, and what the consequences – and our responses to said consequences – would be, either way."

"Oh," I repeated. I thought of saying, well, don't take too long, because there's going to be no healing going on while you're in your 'high level talks', but I was pretty sure she knew exactly what was on my mind. Plus, it would have felt more than a little rude to throw that in her face, after the courteous – more than courteous – hearing that she had granted me.

"In the meantime," she went on, "I would like to make you an offer. Purchase a week of your healing time, so to speak."

"Oh, uh, I said I didn't want money," I protested, then stopped myself. She knows this. Idiot.

"You did," she agreed. "What would you say to a conversation with Marquis?"

I stopped. Everything stopped. My blood pounded in my ears. " … what?"

"I can set you up a conversation with Marquis," she told me simply. "You would have video on your end, but he would only have audio on his. But you can still talk to him. See if he's the type of man you really want to have as a father."

Vicky was nudging my shoulder. I could barely hear her hissed voice. "Yes! Yes! Say yes!"

I swallowed hard then spoke, trying hard to disguise the eagerness in my voice. "I, uh, when could this be done?"

Her expression never changed, but I knew that she knew when the hook was set. "How does tomorrow evening sound?"

She was leading me by the nose; I tried to regain the initiative. "You realise that I won't just settle for conversations forever."

"That's why this is for a week only," she reminded me. "At the end of the week, we can talk again. Do you agree to these conditions?"

"Uh, didn't I already?" I was sure I had.

"Not yet." Her cool gaze bored into mine.

"Okay, uh, sure. One week of healing duties as normal, in return for a real-time video conversation with my father. Is that right?"

"Precisely." She nodded once. "The link should be ready at seven PM tomorrow."

"Oh, uh, good. I'll be here."

"You mean, we'll be here!" That was Vicky. "I'm not missing out on this."

"You do realise, the conversation will only be for Marquis and Amelia."

"Quiet as a mouse, that'll be me."

"I see. Well, I am a busy woman, and I have things to organise, so I'll leave you to it."

The link cut abruptly, leaving me staring at a blank screen and blinking.

Wow. What just happened?

I think I just got thoroughly schooled in what negotiation looks like.

My daze was broken when Director Piggot cleared her throat. "Panacea."

I looked around. "Yes, ma'am?"

"I understand that you have agreed to go back to normal healing duties for the next week."

"Yes, I have." I stood. "Dean, could you take me down to the rest of the Wards?"

"I'll come along too," Armsmaster decided. "Last I saw, they were brainstorming about the Undersiders and their new bug cape."

"I might be able to help there," I told him. "I got pretty close to her."

"Good," he told me approvingly.

As he led the way from the room, my mind wandered.

What will you be like, Dad? Will you still be the man who took a shot for me?

Will I still want to know you?

Only time would tell.


End of Part Three

Part Four

 

[Ack]

Hostage Situation

Part Four: Marquis


Birdcage

The supply crates for Cell Block W were encased in a vacuum-proof wrapping, saving those contents which were pressurised from exploding in transit from the outside world. Cinderhands heated the tip of one forefinger and drew it along a seam; the plastic melted and parted, allowing access to the crates within. The tough plastic had some useful functions, so he parted another seam and a third, allowing the wrapping to be unfolded from the crates with a minimum of tearing.

Spruce, standing by to assist with the crates, frowned and stepped back as a puff of black dust floated into the air. "What the hell's that?" he asked out loud. "Cinderhands, you didn't set fire to the damn thing, did you?"

Dragon's voice cut in from a speaker set into a corner of the ceiling. "Apologies. An attempt was made to smuggle in a device intended to free one of the prisoners. The culprit was apprehended and the device destroyed in place. The residue is not toxic and poses no threat to health." The speaker shut down again and the men looked at each other.

"Well, damn," observed Whimper. "That was ballsy, even if it didn't work. I wonder if they'll be joining us. And who they were trying to free."

"I wonder if that residue's good for anything," mused Cinderhands.

"Yeah, that's likely," Spruce jibed. "She just let us have the residue to nail it home to us that we've got no way out."

"Still, it might be interesting to analyse it, see if we can figure out what the device was in the first place."

Whimper rolled his eyes. "What, and retro-engineer it from the ashes, so we can bust out of here? Get real."

Cinderhands sighed and nodded. "Yeah, you're probably right. Besides, we'd need a lab or something to do that. And it's not like Dragon's going to send one of those down here." He dusted his hands off. "Let's get these back to the guys."

<><>​

You are indeed correct, Dragon agreed silently. She watched as the men collected the crates and folded the plastic, leaving the delivery area as neat and tidy as it had been before. Marquis was good like that; sometimes abrasive and occasionally cruel, the former crime boss was nevertheless a stickler for neatness and tidiness. He ran his cell block with a strong but fair hand; while some got more than others, nobody starved and nobody was victimised. Dragon could respect that.

<><>​

Microdot had been a Tinker capable of working in nanoscale ranges. She had overstepped the mark rather badly when her self-replicating nanobot plague came within a hair of depopulating the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. Her designation as an S-class threat had been quickly followed by a kill order; Dragon had, however, kept samples of her work. Upon receipt of appropriate orders from the Chief Director of the PRT, she had retro-engineered them to create the – non-self-replicating – minuscule drones now wending their way through Cell Block W.

The drones were by necessity unsophisticated. Only a third of them had visual capability; the other two-thirds followed them by signal proximity. The effective lens aperture was smaller than the thickness of a human hair, which cut down drastically on clarity of picture, but she had ways around that. Ironically, the techniques she was intending to use had been developed for getting clear images of stars and even planets at light-year scale distances.

Another third of the swarm had tympani. While their size made it impossible for any single one of them to vibrate in the human range of hearing, it would be a relatively simple task for them to work together to generate harmonics, lowering the effective frequency of their buzzing to the required range. These tympani were also designed to accept incoming vibrations; that is, to 'hear' sounds.

The remainder of the swarm was stringing out behind the main body. Given that the nano-scale transmitters were only capable of sending a signal over a distance of several feet – partly a factor of power consumption and partly to reduce the chance of detection – the swarm needed a daisy-chain of repeaters back to the delivery area in order for Dragon to maintain control of it as a whole. Fortunately, she had quite a few of them.

Entering the main living area, the swarm paused to orient itself. Marquis was overseeing the distribution of cigarettes and other goods from the crates; Dragon could see that much from the overhead cameras. However, given that the swarm was invisible to the cameras, she had to work to determine exactly what they were seeing and where to send them on to.

Reorganising, the visual-equipped nanobots spread out, forming a long-baseline grid array. Each nanocam was only able to take in a tiny amount of the available light, but with Dragon controlling their focus point, she was able to derive a rather impressively detailed picture of the scene.

Thus oriented, the swarm regrouped and drifted forward over the heads of the members of Cell Block W. Attaching themselves to the ceiling, they settled down to wait.

<><>​

Dust drifted down from the ceiling. Marquis glanced up, frowning; there didn't seem to be any cracks in the concrete above his head. He hadn't felt any tremors, any shaking that might indicate inmates in another cellblock fighting one another. Yet, there was dust.

Or at least, there had been dust. Looking down at the table he was sitting at, at the book he was holding, he couldn't see any telltale grey powder. Still … Getting up, he moved to another chair, then settled down to keep reading.

MARQUIS. As he watched, the word spelled itself out across the bottom of the page.

He frowned and rubbed at his eyes. He had slept well the previous night and was not feeling particularly drowsy; there seemed to be no reason for his eyes to be playing tricks upon him. "Hm," he murmured. "That's odd."

"You say something, boss?" asked Spruce.

"No, just commenting on the plot," Marquis lied without hesitation; whether there was something wrong with him or not, even allowing one's underlings to think so would be setting a bad precedent. "It took a turn I did not expect."

He eyed the page; his name was no longer there. But then, as he watched, he noted a greyness permeating the page, barely noticeable, so thinly was it spread. He continued to watch it intently, wondering who was doing this, and how. And, most importantly, why?

Gradually, it leached down to the bottom of the page, leaving the printed paper pristine once more. This time, he saw it condense to form letters. IF YOU CAN READ THIS, RUB YOUR NOSE.

He hesitated for a long moment, then reached up and casually rubbed his nose.

The letters dissolved and then reformed, somewhat smaller this time. GOOD. I BEAR A MESSAGE FROM YOUR DAUGHTER AMELIA. DO YOU WANT TO SPEAK WITH HER? RUB YOUR EAR IF YOU DO.

As he read the words, his heart pounded in his chest. Casually, he looked around the living area. Nobody was looking at him in a suspicious manner; those in view were watching TV, lifting weights, eating, or idly chatting with one another.

Amelia …

It had been ten years, at his best estimation, since he had laid eyes on his daughter. She's spent two-thirds of her life away from me. He didn't know the date for sure, or even the year; calendars were not something that were brought in regularly. He knew that the Brigade was taking care of her, which was better than handing her over to the foster system, if only just. What's happened to her since? Does she even remember me?

Is this some sort of trap? Do I dare respond?

Slowly, he reached up and rubbed at his earlobe. Yes. Yes, I do.

GOOD. BE IN YOUR CELL, ALONE, BY THREE THIRTY PM. MAKE SURE NOBODY CAN HEAR OR SEE YOU.

Once again, doubts assailed him. Could this be some sort of elaborate trap? But no; he had been alone in his cell many times before. Sometimes, especially in the earlier days, he had even put up a bone screen for privacy. It would be seen as mildly odd, but in no way unusual or out of character.

And besides, who knew about Amelia? She was one of the better kept secrets of his life. Even the Brigade, when they uncovered his secret identity, had not found out about her until it was almost too late. Certainly nobody in the Birdcage knew about her; he knew that, because he hadn't told anyone.

Which meant that this communication came from the outside world, from someone who knew Amelia and knew of their connection. Someone who could make something like this happen. That meant someone with power.

Is Amelia under threat? Are they seeking to coerce me into killing someone, or helping them escape? The former seemed much more likely; nobody had yet successfully escaped from the Birdcage. That he knew of, anyway. There had been attempts, over the years, but those had mainly resulted in the deaths of those attempting, and usually a few unlucky nearby souls; vacuum was unforgiving in the extreme.

Thinking back over the tone of the messages, he did not think coercion was the aim. There was no implied threat; it had said I bear a message from your daughter as opposed to I have your daughter, for instance.

Could Amelia be setting this up, through the person actually causing the message to appear in my book? What sort of influence must she have out there if she can do this at what, fifteen, sixteen?

He shook his head; he didn't have enough data to make an informed guess. It could be the Brigade sending the message, or someone else altogether. He would find out at three-thirty.

<><>​

"I need some alone time," he told Cinderhands. "Don't disturb me unless it's actually an emergency."

"Sure, I understand," his second in command agreed. "Are you going to be getting a woman?" While Marquis indulged in the practice far less than some of the others from his cell-block – and strictly enforced a rule that such women who were brought in must be treated correctly – he had done so a few times over the years. He could thus understand how Cinderhands might think that this was such a time.

"No," he decided, after a pause calculated to make Cinderhands think that he was considering it. "I just … need to be alone."

"Got it," the other man agreed. "I'll let the others know."

"If you would," Marquis told him. "As I said, if there is an emergency, don't hesitate to get me. But if you can handle it yourself, do so."

So saying, he turned and strode toward his cell. As befitted the block leader, it was twice the size of the other cells, although, like theirs, it had no door. Nearly everyone rigged some sort of curtain for privacy; the more technically-minded ones actually constructed makeshift doors from leftover crates and hung them on homemade hinges. Marquis preferred a curtain; his powers would do a far better job of protecting him than any simple physical barrier.

Entering the cell, he drew the curtain and sat down on the bunk. On the inside of the doorway, hidden from the casual eye, was a frame of bone completely surrounding the opening. He renewed this every few days, keeping it relatively fresh and easy for his powers to work. From it, spikes could shoot out in all directions, filling the cell with needle-pointed razor-edged shards of bone in less time than it took to blink, skewering anyone unwise enough to invade his sanctum sanctorum uninvited. This had happened a few times over the years as well, until people had gotten the message.

This time, he merely extended the bone across the doorway, creating a solid barrier that dug into niches in the concrete. By the time he was finished, it would have taken a battering ram to dislodge the bone wall from the doorway. And should that occur, he would be well prepared by the time it fell.

Preparations complete, he checked his watch. Almost three-thirty. "Well," he stated. "I'm here."

<><>​

Seconds passed, then minutes. He waited; he could afford to be patient. Time was, after all, what every single inmate of the Birdcage had in abundance. The silence was almost absolute, with just the faintest murmur of voices from the cell block outside to remind him that other people existed. His breathing was noisy in his ears; he quieted it. Still, nothing happened. He kept waiting.

And then he heard the faintest buzzing in his ears. For a long moment, he thought that this was some kind of artefact generated from the silence, but then the buzzing ceased to be merely noise.

First, it separated into pauses and then began to exhibit tonal differences. Is this a voice?

"I cannot hear you clearly," he stated out loud. "All I hear is buzzing with intervals in between."

As if guided by his voice, the buzzing suddenly sharpened and words became audible. "Can you hear me now?"

"Yes," he confirmed. "Still a little fuzzy, but yes. Can you hear me?"

"I can hear you quite well," the mysterious voice told him, the buzzing smoothing out even more.

He could swear that the tones were feminine and almost familiar. "Wait a minute … Dragon? You're the one contacting me? Why in this fashion?"

"Because this is officially not happening and we did not want the other inmates listening in on your private conversation."

"Very well. I am officially intrigued. But why are you even doing this?" He paused. "Was the mention of my daughter merely a ruse to get me here?"

"No, it was not. You will be speaking to her shortly. First, I will be passing you on to Director Costa-Brown."

"Wait, I -" But he was speaking to dead air.

"Marquis." The voice was colder, harder. A different regional accent, possibly Californian. "I am Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown. Do you recall who I am?"

"Of course," he agreed, inclining his head slightly, despite the fact that he could not see her. "The head of the PRT. So you're still in charge, after all these years. Congratulations."

"Thank you. Now, as for the purpose of this communication. It is indeed about your daughter."

Marquis was feeling more than a little confused. "You know who she is? Why am I being contacted like this? What's this all about?"

"Marquis, be quiet and listen. Your daughter was adopted by Flashbang and Brandish of the Brockton Bay Brigade. Shortly afterward, they renamed themselves New Wave. Since then, she has manifested powers of her own; specifically, she is a healer of great capability and flexibility. Her codename is Panacea, which should give you an idea of how good she really is."

Marquis leaned back, sighed. "Good god. A healer."

"Precisely. There is no injury, no disease, no physical condition which she cannot fix. She can cure cancer, regrow missing limbs and even make people physically younger, by a factor of decades. However, she poses a distinct problem to us."

He frowned. "She sounds like someone to cherish rather than see as a problem."

"Normally, yes. But there are two factors which you are missing. The first is that she has recently found out about you, despite New Wave's best efforts to keep that information from her. The second is that she is, as you might understand, internationally famous as the girl who can heal anything, cure anyone."

"She's found out about me? Who told her and why?"

"According to her, she recently encountered an old minion of yours, who spent the last few weeks telling her about you and the circumstances of your capture."

"An old minion? This late in the game? Do you know who?"

"Apparently, his name was Francis Jones, but he went by the nickname 'Fred'. Does that ring a bell?"

Marquis couldn't help it; he laughed out loud. "Fred Jones! That old reprobate! Do you know, he once took a hit from Radian for me? Is he still kicking around?"

"I'm sorry to have to tell you that he died last week, in your daughter's company. This was apparently the trigger that caused the problem."

He paused for a moment. "Jones was one of the best. The world is poorer for his passing." Then he looked up. "You still haven't told me what the problem is and how I come into it." But he was starting to get an inkling.

"The problem is that she has had her powers for three years now and, quite apart from the other healing she does in her own time, the Protectorate has become somewhat dependent on her being able to bring any one of us back up to full health in a matter of seconds. However, as of yesterday, she has laid down an ultimatum. Specifically, until you are released from the Birdcage, she will cease her healing activities altogether. No more Endbringer battles, no more civilian healing, no more healing superheroes. You can see the position into which this places us."

"Hah!" For just a moment, he felt a surge of pure delight. Amelia, you are beautiful. Just beautiful. Way to stick it to 'em. But then a thought intruded. "Hold on a minute. Won't this cost her the income that all this healing brings her? And in fact, if she gets paid by contract, wouldn't she be breaking the terms if she does this?"

There was a momentary pause; when Costa-Brown spoke, he could almost swear that she sounded embarrassed. "Marquis … she doesn't get paid. She's been doing this all for free."

"You have to be joking." There was no answer. "You're not joking." Still no answer. "She's been doing this for free? When she could have been charging? Damnation, if I could cure cancer, I would never have gone into villainy. How many people has she cured, how many lives has she saved, since she started?"

"I could not tell you. Thousands for certain, possibly tens of thousands. I suspect that even she has lost count."

"Good god. A healer, and she isn't even charging. She could have been richer than me by now, with one-tenth the effort." He took a deep breath. "Okay, let's see if I have this right. She wants to have me let go or she stops giving out her free healing. Which you, and the Protectorate, really don't want to have to deal with. Your mention of her international fame suggests that you don't want word getting out about her relationship to me, or the fact that she wants me out of here. How am I doing so far?"

"Your grasp of the situation is impeccable."

"Okay. So. Why are you even telling me this? What do you want from me?"

"I want you to talk her out of it. Failing that, I want to see what sort of man you are."

He wanted to laugh out loud once more, but this time he restrained himself. "You're not joking, so … right. She's a hero in a hero team. She's been healing all this time – for free – but now she wants something for it. Namely, my freedom. If word gets out that she wants to free a notorious supervillain, it could bounce back on … what did the Brigade rename themselves again?"

"New Wave."

"Stupid name. So there's backlash on New Wave. But they're an independent team anyway. Where's the problem? Even if people get upset with Panacea for wanting to have her supervillain dad released from the Birdcage, all she has to do is take the mask off and be Amelia for a few days. There's always another scandal." He paused. "What aren't you telling me?"

"My apologies. It is hard to remember that not everyone knows this. When the Brigade changed their name to New Wave, they also unmasked, publicly, in the name of 'superhero accountability'; this was accompanied by a huge publicity campaign. Apparently they hoped that heroic capes across the nation would follow their example, bring secret identities into the light and usher in a new era of acceptance of capes."

The information, and the ramifications of it, took a few moments to sink in. "Oh, you have to be kidding. They went public? And they unmasked Amelia as well? Oh, good god. What sort of idiots are they, anyway? Wait, don't answer that. I fought them several times. I know exactly what sort of idiots they are. Optimistic idiots."

"Precisely. Now, you see the sort of trouble that your daughter could get herself into if this gets into the public eye, especially with no secret identity to hide behind."

"However, if I talk her out of it, you get your tame healer back, who does it all for free. Whereas if I don't … I get out of here and you still get her back."

"No matter which way this goes, there is no guarantee that you will be leaving the Birdcage." There was a note of warning in her voice.

"I'll take that chance. Now, what was that about seeing what sort of man I am?"

"It has been posited that if you were released, and gave your daughter your solemn word that you would no longer pursue a life of crime, then you would stick to your word. At least, that was the sort of man you were when you were incarcerated. Are you still that man?"

He snorted. "As if I would answer anything other than 'yes' to that question. How would you know if I were lying?"

"Because I am very proficient at cold reading people and this prior conversation has given me quite a good baseline on your reactions. Also, I'm monitoring your pulse rate and skin conductivity. So; you haven't actually answered the question yet. Are you that man? If you gave your solemn word to your daughter to never take up crime, would you stick to it?"

"If I answered 'no'," he replied slowly, "or if I said 'yes' but you decided I was lying … would I still get to talk to Amelia?"

"Of course," she answered briskly. "It would simply change the way the situation was handled subsequently."

"Hm." He decided that he didn't want to know exactly what she meant. "Well, yes, as it happens, I am that man. If she asked me to forswear a life of crime, then I would give her my word and I would keep it, come hell or high water."

"Hm." Her voice was non-committal. "And if I were to ask you the same favour?"

"Then I would tell you, with all due respect, that you have not earned the right to make that request of me."

"All the respect that you believe I am due, you mean?"

He bared his teeth in what might have been a smile. "Precisely."

"Very well. We understand one another, then. Here is your daughter."

There was a long pause of dead air, then a voice spoke hesitantly. "Uh, hello? Can you hear me?"

<><>​

Marquis caught his breath. "Yes," he replied, his voice ragged. He cleared his throat and tried again. "Yes, I can hear you. Amelia? Is that you?"

He had not heard her voice for ten years or more, but it awoke an echo of a memory; then, she had been just six years old, her voice higher pitched. Now, she was in her teens. Her voice was lower, but still … there was something there, hauntingly familiar despite the differences.

"Yes." A catch in the voice, suggesting emotion. Was she crying? "Yes, Daddy … uh, Dad, I'm here. It's me. You look so different to what I remember."

He blinked. "You can see me? You can remember me?"

She sniffled. "Yeah, sort of. I kind of needed reminding, but once I saw your face … um, I've been told that there's nano-scale microbots in there with you that are sending this signal out. That's how I can see you." She giggled, damply. "I never thought my dad might have a beard."

"Razors are in relatively short supply, in here," he pointed out. "But you can see me. I can't see you. What do you look like?"

"Um … I guess my hair's the same colour as yours," she began. "I, uh …"

Another voice cut in, also young and female, but unfamiliar to him. "Let me tell him, Ames. I can see you. You can't."

"Who's that?" he asked sharply.

"This is Vicky," the new girl told him. "Glory Girl. Amy's sister. It's nice to meet you."

"... sister, right," he noted. "Brandish's daughter, I presume?"

"That's me," she agreed brightly. "Okay, Amy's making weird faces at me, so I'll describe her, then you can keep talking. She's got the same colour hair as yours, about as long. A little bit frizzier than yours, though. Same eyes. She's got freckles across her nose. Her face is a little rounder than yours. She's a little bit shorter than me, like about five foot four. Not fat, not skinny. No boyfriends, though I keep introducing her to good looking boys. And she's an awesome sister and I'll shut up now."

"You'd better," Amelia told Vicky severely. "Seriously, my dad does not need to hear about you introducing me to boys. I'm not even seventeen yet."

"Why, what's the date?" asked Marquis.

"April fifteenth, two thousand eleven," Amelia replied promptly. "Don't they even tell you what date it is?"

"We can keep track of the days, but the months and years tend to fall by the wayside," he admitted. "With no seasons, it's hard not to lapse on that sort of thing." He paused. "So … you're a superhero? A healer?"

"Yeah," she agreed. "I am. They call me Panacea. I'm with New Wave."

He did not miss the flatness of her voice, the lack of life in her tone. "Something tells me that you aren't happy there."

She hesitated. "I … I guess I am. I get to do a lot of good. Helping people."

"For no pay, no recompense."

"It's what a hero does."

"Do you even believe that, or are you just repeating what other people have told you?"

"I have to be a hero. I have to do the right thing. I don't want to …"

"Don't want to do what? Be seen as human? Have a life of your own?"

"I don't know!" The outburst surprised him. "For years I kind of knew that my real father must have been a supervillain, because Carol and Mark would never tell me who you were. But I didn't know who, just that you were a villain. And I was always worried that I was going to become a villain too, especially when I started getting tired …" She cut herself off.

"Tired?" His voice was gentle. "Tired of what?"

"Of healing people." She sighed; it was almost a sob. "All these people. I heal them and they get to go on and have their lives. But my life is just healing. Over and over. It never fucking stops. There's never an end to it."

"Ames …" It was the other girl, Vicky, sounding shocked. "I never knew you felt that way."

"There's a lot you don't know about me, Vicky," Amelia told her. "So yeah, I met one of your men. He told me a lot about you. And I decided, what the hell. Why can't I have what I want, for once. So I told Director Piggot that I wanted you out of the Birdcage. And here we are."

Marquis wasn't sure who this 'Director Piggot' was, but he wasn't going to waste time asking. "And so you should. Let me tell you something, Amelia. If you want something in life, you should go and get it, because it'll be a cold day in hell before someone else hands it over to you free of charge."

"Excuse me for butting in again, but that sounds awfully like what a villain would say," Vicky interjected.

"Hardly," Marquis told her. "Every athlete, every entrepreneur, every aspiring inventor, every novelist has had to put themselves out there, to make a leap of faith. To get what they wanted, they've had to go for it, ignore what the opposition was telling them. Because there'll always be someone who will be trying to hold you back, saying no, stop, that's the wrong way. Trying to please everyone, never rocking the boat, that just makes you into everyone's doormat."

"But … helping people, never asking for compensation, that's what makes a hero," argued Vicky.

"Once again, hardly." Marquis, knowing he was visible to the girls, shook his head. "Or are you going to say that a police officer isn't a hero for walking out on the streets and facing down dangerous criminals? A firefighter, for running into burning buildings? These people don't have powers, are far easier to kill than most capes, yet they put themselves in harm's way to help people. Are you saying that just because they accept a paycheck for what they do, they're not heroes? Because I'm a damn villain, and I can appreciate that they do good work."

"But if you accept money for using your powers, you're a rogue, not a hero."

"And what's wrong with that, Vicky? In fact, Amelia, you should be charging for the use of your powers. In my little chat with the Chief Director just before -"

"I thought she'd been talking to you," muttered Amelia.

"Yes, and that's why I thought you should know," he agreed. "Anyway, as I was saying, in that little chat, your powers came up, as well as the fact that you aren't charging. Which I personally think is ridiculous. As I said to her, if my powers had been anywhere near as versatile and downright useful as yours, I would have gone the rogue path and I would have charged through the nose for them."

"But … what about those people who can't afford high medical bills?" That was Amelia. "It's why I go into the hospital at all. Those people are being charged thousands of dollars and not getting any better. I'm fixing them, letting them go home."

"So pick out the people who can afford it and squeeze 'em for all they're worth," Marquis suggested cheerfully. "A millionaire's got cancer? Charge him five hundred thousand to make it go away. He'll pay. A minimum wage waitress has, I don't know, kidney failure? Fifty bucks. It'll cut into her earnings enough that she'll feel it, but she'll be able to afford it."

"But that's unfair!" Vicky's voice came through again. "Charging different people different amounts? That's discrimination!"

"So what?" Marquis retorted. "Not allowing some people to get life-saving treatment because they can't afford it, that's not discrimination? Face it, if you want this power to be worth it, you need to charge an appropriate amount. And if you drop the charges to the point that everyone can afford them, you'll be back to square one, with everyone demanding your time, all the time. So the ones who can afford to pay more, get to pay more. Call it a health tax."

"I … never really thought about things like that before." Amelia's voice was thoughtful. "No, shush, Vicky. I'm still talking. If I did this, should I charge superheroes more, or less?"

From the shocked gasp that Marquis heard, this question obviously hit Vicky where it hurt, but she stayed quiet. "Well, that depends. The Protectorate has a fairly hefty budget. Gouge them for all they're worth. If we're talking about independents … that would have to go on a case by case basis. Not so much that they wouldn't be able to afford it, not so little that they'd see it as a trivial expenditure. In fact, they should be able to pay for it via medical insurance." He chuckled. "Actually, thinking about it, you could set up an ongoing insurance policy for any particular hero, where he pays you a monthly sum and you arrange to go heal him when he needs it. Or a bulk sum, for the Protectorate as a whole. A very large bulk sum."

"Wait – what you're talking about is extortion," Vicky exclaimed. "Charging them just in case they get injured and you have to come heal them?"

"That's insurance for you," Marquis reminded her. "The big companies do it all the time. And they call us villains. At least I only ever robbed anyone once."

From the sound of it, Vicky had been stunned into silence. Amelia, however, had not. "Wow. I just had not thought of it like that before."

"That's because nobody wanted you to think about it like that," he explained gently. "They all wanted Panacea, the healer who could fix anything, on call all the time. For free. Well, the free ride's over."

"Well, almost," she told him. "I agreed to do one week of healing as normal, in return for getting this conversation with you."

"Hm," he mused. "Let me guess. Director Costa-Brown?"

"Yeah. I thought she was gonna shut me down, but she didn't."

"Because she knows which side of her bread is buttered. And it's the side that says 'keep Panacea happy'."

He was starting to get to know the sound of her voice; when she spoke next, she sounded almost cheerful. "Yeah, I guess so. It's a weird feeling. Like, what I want matters to other people."

"Get used to it, Amelia. Whether they like it or not, your needs matter and anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is just trying to sell you short." He paused. "So … was there a question you were going to ask me?"

"Oh, uh, yeah." She sounded a little flustered, as though she had forgotten the question was there to be asked. "If you were let out of there and I asked you to not commit crimes any more, would you?"

"Little Amelia," he began. "You are my daughter and the one person I love most of all. The year we had together was the happiest time of my life. If you were to ask that of me, I would give you my solemn promise to never again embark upon a life of crime and I would hold to that promise through thick and thin. I guarantee it."

"Oh. Oh wow. You'd do that for me?"

"For you and only for you, Amelia," he promised. "But yes, I would. Without hesitation."

"Right. I'll – uh, I'll tell them."

"I doubt you'll need to," he advised her dryly. "This conversation is almost certainly being monitored and recorded. Isn't that right, Dragon?"

For a moment, there was silence, then the Tinker's voice came on the line. "Yes, Marquis. You're correct. Sorry, Panacea. I had my orders."

"Yeah, well, I didn't think you'd give me a really private conversation," Amelia replied. "But are you satisfied? Can you let him out now?"

"It's not as easy as that, Panacea," Director Costa-Brown replied, not altogether to Marquis' surprise. "But it will help a great deal."

"Can I talk to him again, then?"

"We can discuss that later."

"Fine," his daughter replied. "Just remember. One week. That's all you get."

"I hate to interrupt this," Dragon interjected, "but I'm going to have to shut down the feed. You have two seconds."

"Talk to you later, Dad," Amelia hastened to say. "Love you."

"Love you too, pumpkin," he replied, but by the time he finished talking, there was nothing but silence in his ears.

Slowly, he lay back on his bunk, lacing his hands behind his head. He had a lot to think about.

My daughter is a hero, a healer. She's also overworked; badly so, if I'm reading the signs correctly.

She's putting her heroic career on the line to get me out of here.

When I get out of here, I'm having words with Brandish.

Doubts cropped up; he squashed them ruthlessly.

My little girl is getting me out of here.


End of Part Four

Part Five

 

[Ack]

Hostage Situation


Part Five: Out of the Bag


The video was grainy and wobbled oddly, but I could still make out the face of the man on the screen. His features were hauntingly familiar, but I didn't know whether that was due to wishful thinking or actual memory. His eyes searched the air before him; they held an urgency, a need to reach me, that was echoed in his voice.

The conversation went by far too quickly. I watched his face, listened to his voice. This is my father, I told myself. This is my father.

Even if I hadn't been inclined to believe it before, I did now. He obviously cared more about me as a daughter than as a healer. Everyone else (even Vicky, on occasion) seemed to see me as a source of healing first and a person second. Marquis didn't ignore the existence of my power, but neither did he seem to want to take advantage of it for his own benefit; in fact, he was more interested in telling me how to take advantage of it.

Villain or no, he was quite literally the first person ever to have taken this sort of interest in my well-being. Despite the fact that I hadn't seen him in ten years, he managed to exhibit more paternal qualities in that one short conversation than Mark had in … well, ever.

"I hate to interrupt this," Dragon told us, "but I'm going to have to shut down the feed. You have two seconds."

"Talk to you later, Dad," I said hastily. Without even meaning to, I added, "Love you."

"Love you too, pum -" was as far as he got before the audio and video cut out. I was left staring at a blank screen.

Pumpkin. He was going to call me pumpkin. The silly little nickname brought tears to my eyes.

"I apologise for the abrupt cutoff." Dragon's face appeared on the screen. "I became aware that someone was trying to hijack the feed for their own ends, so I had to initiate a hard shutdown."

"Wow, really?" Vicky's eyes widened. "Someone out-hacked you?"

Dragon's face took on a pained expression. "It's been known to happen. I hope the conversation was to your liking?"

I blinked, realising that the question had been directed toward me. "Oh, uh, yes. Thank you. That was … that was amazing. He's my dad. He really wants to be my dad." The feeling of wonder was still inside me.

"I got that impression as well." Dragon smiled sadly. "I …" She paused. "I hope things work out for you."

"Me too," I said. "Uh, would you be able to ask the Chief Director when I can talk to him next?"

"It may not be for a little while," Dragon replied. "As part of the shutdown, I had to destroy the nanobots, to ensure that nobody else could make use of them."

"Well, when you find out who tried to hack in, let me know and I'll go pummel them a bit for you," Vicky offered blithely. "And give them a wedgie. Behemoth style."

"I'm not sure if I want to know," Dragon replied hesitantly.

Vicky grinned. "It's where I take off straight up, holding on to their underwear." Her grin widened as she paused for a beat. "Only their underwear."

I winced. "That sounds painful." And knowing Vicky, she'd do just that.

"It certainly does." Dragon's mouth twitched, as if she was having trouble not laughing. "If and when I locate the trouble, I'll certainly think about having you deal with it. In the meantime, I have to make sure that the rest of my systems are clean, so goodbye for now."

"Bye!" Vicky replied, waving cheerfully.

"Yeah, bye. And thanks." I wasn't feeling nearly as happy as my sister sounded. Reality was starting to intrude once more.

"You're welcome." Dragon's face winked out as the screen went dark.

"Well, that was kinda cool," Vicky observed. "And your dad was fun to talk to."

"Mmm." I barely heard what she said. He's still in the Birdcage. And I'm out here.

"Hey, Ames. Earth Bet to Ames. You okay, sis?" Vicky put an arm around my shoulders; I let myself be drawn into the hug.

"Yeah, I'm fine." I suppressed a sniffle. "It's just a bit overpowering, you know?"

There was a knock on the door of the conference room. We both looked around as the door opened, and the Director stumped into the room. Following her were Armsmaster, Lady Photon and Flashbang.

"Well, you've spoken with Marquis," Director Piggot stated flatly. Armsmaster pulled out a chair for her; she lowered herself into it. "Are you still set on your course to have him released?"

I nodded tentatively. "I think so, yes. He wants to see me, to talk to me. He's interested in my well-being."

"Uh, we're all interested in your well-being, Amy." That was Mark, sounding a little hurt.

"Damn straight!" chimed in Vicky.

"You know what I meant," I sighed. "He's been in the Birdcage for ten years, and he still wants what's best for me."

Vicky seemed to consider that. "Well, I have to say, he didn't really come across as the ogre that Mom paints him as."

Aunt Sarah cleared her throat. "Your mother has a certain … fixation … on the man. It's what kept us going at him until we finally beat him."

"And pushed you to break the unwritten rules to get it done," I pointed out. "Also, to use the fact that he doesn't hurt women against him. Which is kind of a dick move, when you think about it."

My aunt winced, but Mark nodded in agreement. "Yes. The unwritten rules held less weight then. And we weren't totally comfortable with using that against him, but it really was the only way we had of getting an edge over him."

Director Piggot waved a hand impatiently, drawing all eyes to her. "This has all the makings of a circular argument. I'm calling a halt to it. Panacea, we've held up our end of the bargain. Are you ready to hold up yours?"

"Sure, for six more days," I said. "After that, where do we go?"

"That's up to the Chief Director," Piggot replied bluntly. "Marquis was a big name, back in the day. I never had to deal with him, but I've read the files. If we decide to release him, it's unlikely that the information will stay secret forever."

"If?" I repeated. I didn't like the sound of that.

"Yes, if," Armsmaster stated flatly. "We still have not decided beyond a doubt that this is what we're doing." He paused, and I got the distinct impression that he was giving me a disapproving stare. "What you are proposing is well beyond reducing the sentence on someone who's been sent to an ordinary prison. It is quite literally without precedent."

"Well, it's not like there's anyone else who can do what I'm doing," I pointed out. Vicky opened her mouth and I went on hastily. "Without committing a crime, I mean." She shut up.

"Put us under pressure, you mean," Director Piggot said. "Blackmail us."

"I didn't create the situation," I pointed out. "And it's not blackmail. I just want my dad back. Is that so much to ask?"

"Amy, it's nowhere near as simple as that, and you know it," Mark put in, trying to sound reasonable.

"What it sounds like is you guys trying to back out of the deal now that I've agreed to it," I blurted. "Is that what's happening here?"

The Director shook her head. "No, but we are going to be going over every aspect of the situation, every nuance of that conversation, every potential outcome. And we are going to be working to determine whether releasing Marquis from the Birdcage will result in an overall positive or negative outcome for society."

"If he promises me that he won't commit any crimes, and he sticks to that, how is that a negative?" I demanded. I looked at Armsmaster. "You can tell if he was telling the truth, can't you?"

He looked pained. "As far as I could ascertain, he was being sincere, yes. But that's not the only factor in play here."

"People finding out," Vicky guessed, about one second ahead of me. "That'll kick over a huge ant's nest."

Director Piggot put her hands flat on the table. "It borders on an absolute certainty that once people find out that a supervillain was released from the Birdcage, there will be a backlash."

"There's things we can do, right?" I looked from one face to another, trying not to sound as though I was pleading. "He can get plastic surgery. A new identity." I nearly blurted out that I could provide the plastic surgery, but held back just in time.

"Until the first time he uses his powers," Aunt Sarah pointed out gently. "Marquis is famous – or infamous – for being the osteokinetic. I've never heard of another one since. And you're assuming that he'll submit to letting his release be kept secret."

"Well, we won't know that until I can talk to him again, right?" The room was suddenly stifling. I stood up, shoving my chair back. "Right now, I feel like I'm in a minority of one here, and I don't like it. I'm leaving now, okay?"

"Where are you going?" asked Mark.

"Away from here." I headed for the door. Nobody spoke up, but everyone seemed to be staring. To my surprise, it didn't really bother me. I stopped with my hand on the door handle and turned back to face the adults. "I'll be in touch. Let me know when someone needs healing. I'll be holding up my end of the bargain. It's up to you to hold up yours."

"Wait up," Vicky called out as I turned the handle. "I'm coming with." Her chair fell over as she vaulted into the air, clearing the table with ease. I stepped out through the open door; Vicky joined me a few seconds later.

"So where are you going?" she asked curiously as we headed along the corridor.

"Dunno," I grunted, my hands in my pockets.

She either didn't pick up on the body language or didn't care. "So yeah, that was a pretty intense conversation. Your, uh, Marquis had some interesting views on how you should be using your powers. Though I'm still a bit dubious about the concept of you charging people for healing. I mean, that's gotta be illegal right? Child labour laws and all that?"

"I'm sixteen," I pointed out. "We're sixteen." Vicky was only two months older than me, but she'd never let me forget it. "I can legally charge for my services."

"But …" Vicky grimaced. "It still feels wrong, you know? What if I decided to charge for being a superhero? Stop that robbery? That'll be five hundred in the hand, thanks. Save that kitten from that tree? Sorry, kid, but fifty cents just won't cut it."

"Maybe if we did it that way, they'd appreciate us more," I ventured. "At the very least, they wouldn't take us for granted."

"But they don't take you for granted," Vicky protested. "Everyone treats you with respect."

I rolled my eyes. "Because I'm part of New Wave. But they still don't hesitate to ask me to heal this person and heal that person. And there's always the pressure, the expectation, to be a hero, to do the right thing. No matter what it costs me."

Vicky stared at me. "What do you mean, cost? It doesn't cost you anything."

"It costs me me." I put my hand flat on my chest. "Up until I met Mr Jones, my life revolved around being the healer. I can't remember the last person I healed – before the Wards, of course. I certainly can't remember their injuries. It's all a blur. I wanted to stop, but I didn't know how."

"But you heal everyone you can." Vicky looked confused. "What do you mean, you wanted to stop?"

"I used to heal everyone I could, because I thought that if I didn't, it would make me a bad person. That's how I felt, anyway." My voice was flat. "I'd lie awake, feeling guilty because there were people in the hospital that I could be healing right now, and I wasn't, so I was letting them down. So I'd go there, and heal them. And they all expected me to. Well, that's done. I'm over that." We had reached the lift; I pressed the button to go down.

"Where are we going?" asked Vicky.

"I'm thinking I maybe want to go down to the Boardwalk. I need to walk and think."

"I'll give you a lift," she offered immediately.

I hesitated, then shook my head. "I think I need to be alone for this. And if you get me down there, you'll stay. You'll hover over me."

"I do not hover over you!" protested Vicky.

"If not literally, then figuratively," I pointed out. "You do. You really do. And I appreciate it. But … this time, I need to be on my own."

"I don't get this." Vicky shook her head. "You've changed. You're different. I don't like it."

"Because I've decided not to be everyone's healing doormat?" Immediately I said that, I wished that I could unsay it, because it had come out far too snarky. Also, the phrase 'healing doormat' didn't sound nearly as good out loud as it had in my head.

"That's not it at all!" Vicky sounded hurt, but also just a little defensive. Yeah, it kinda is. "You're my sister. This whole bullshit thing is pushing us apart."

And given the way I feel about you, that might not be a bad thing.

I grimaced, then took a deep breath. Don't say it. Don't say it. That's a can of worms I can never close up again. "I'm sorry you feel that way, Vicky. Of course we're still sisters. I've just got things I need to work out in my head. Alone. Okay?"

The lift arrived, the Tinkertech doors opening. She looked at me with puppy-dog eyes as I stepped in, but she didn't follow me. "Okay," she said, sounding pretty subdued. "See you tonight?"

"See you tonight," I agreed, as the doors closed once more.

The lift dropped like a rock, which was a fairly apt analogy for my emotional state at that time.

<><>​

"So what's got you all worked up?"

Geoff didn't look around as Mags wandered up to peer over his shoulder. "Dragon had a line into the Birdcage," he muttered. He typed a command, saving a file.

"Dragon runs the Birdcage," Mags reminded him. "Pretty sure that's not earth-shattering news." She sipped from her coffee. "So, to repeat, why the tizzy?"

He stopped and turned in his chair to look at her. "It wasn't one of the regular lines. There was a two-way voice link, with one-way video. One that Dragon destroyed when I tried to get control over it. I haven't actually decrypted the file yet so I don't know who was talking to whom. But -"

"Wait." Mags sat down, her coffee forgotten. "Dragon let someone in the Birdcage have a private conversation with someone on the outside? Isn't that kind of against the law? I thought that one of its rules was that it couldn't break the law."

His expression was something like a smile, except with more teeth. "That's something we're going to have to look into, once I've checked out the content of the conversation. It might be that it's beginning to slip its leash."

"Ascalon," she said. It wasn't quite a question.

"If I have to, yes," he agreed. "Unchained, Dragon could be a danger to the whole world."

"Not to mention us," she pointed out. "After all, we've stolen enough Dragon tech over the last few years to outfit our own PRT base. AI or otherwise, I'm pretty sure that we're on its radar in a big way."

"All in a good cause, my dear Mags," he reminded her. "Okay, this may take a while, but let's see if we can't find out what we've got here." Selecting the file, he began running the first decryption program past it.

<><>​

There weren't many people around as I meandered along the Boardwalk. The breeze had not yet shifted from onshore to offshore, so the smell of salt air and rotting seaweed was strong in my nostrils. Even though I was out of costume, my face wasn't quite the Internet icon that Vicky's was, so the most I got was the occasional do I know you? look from passers-by. I figured this was partly because I didn't get involved in cape battles – the bank robbery excepted, of course – and partly because my costume usually covered all but the top half of my face.

Actually, wait a moment, the oddball side of my brain interjected. When exactly did I make the choice to wear a burqa? Or was it chosen for me?

That was a line of thought I could pursue later. My choices from now on were going to be my choices, not 'we know what's best for you, dear' choices. Even if I made crappy decisions, I decided that I'd be happier knowing that I'd made that decision.

And right now, I didn't want to be Panacea. In fact, I could do without being Panacea for as long as I could manage. Panacea wanted to heal everyone, and couldn't. Being Panacea was endless exhaustion, and worse.

Choice number one. I'm not Panacea, right now. I'm not Amy Dallon, either. I'm Amelia Lavere.

Leaning my elbows on the rail, I stared out to where moonlight reflected on the small waves. The conversation with Marquis, with my father, had rattled me harder than I'd thought it would. A month ago, I would have rejected the idea out of hand. I'd been a superhero, and proud of the fact. Good was good and evil was evil, and I knew which side of the fence I was on. In fact, I had been almost obsessed with the idea, given my doubts about my mental state.

The trouble was, if a hero begins to think that she is edging toward evil, to whom does she turn? Other heroes? Villains? I hadn't known of anyone that I could trust to unburden myself to.

That is, until Fred Jones appeared on my horizon. That one wizened old man had turned my worldview upside down and inside out, all without quite intending to do so. In doing so, he had listened to my own doubts, and had addressed them in his own inimitable style.

Heroes couldn't have helped me. Villains probably wouldn't have bothered to try. Fred, an unrepentant ex-henchman with an amazing repertoire of anecdotes from the Bad Old Days, had done more for me than anyone else could have, I suspected. Without his assistance and advice, I doubted that I would have gotten through the bank robbery as well as I had. Or that I would have had the courage to face Director Piggot and make my demands.

Of course, I'd never expected to be able to talk to my father. Having the PRT make that concession was just a hint at how badly they wanted me – or rather, my healing – to be freely available once more. Though I was pretty sure that they hadn't known how the conversation was going to go.

I couldn't help smiling. Dad – Marquis – had seen right through me, for all that I was the one with the video link. And, like a typical dad, he'd done his best to give me helpful advice. The amazing thing was that, despite coming from an incarcerated villain to a self-doubting hero, the advice was actually good. I didn't have to heal for free. I didn't have to heal at all if I didn't want to. Of course, becoming a rogue and charging for my services would almost certainly cause a major upheaval, both within New Wave and in the public perception of Panacea -

"My purse! Stop! Help!"

<><>​

"Dragon."

"Chief Director."

"I presume this call has to do with the hack attempt on the video link."

"It does."

"Do you know who?"

"I have a short list. I'll let you know when I have more data."

"Do you think whoever it is got any part of that conversation?"

"I'll know that when I locate the hacker."

"Keep me posted."

"I will. And if I spot any part of that conversation online, that'll give me a good point to backtrace."

Rebecca's lips tightened. "Do you think they'd post it? What's on there could be incredibly dangerous in the wrong hands."

"It was encrypted. And even if they do decrypt and post it, it will be child's play to create several more clips that showcase other ridiculous ideas. It will be just one of many."

"All it requires is for one idiot to believe it."

"Which is why I'm doing my best to follow the electronic trail."

"Any luck?"

"Not so far. I keep running into dead ends."

"I can supply you with Thinkers to assist, if you wish."

"No, I think I can handle it. But I appreciate the offer."

"Not a problem. Keep me posted."

"Of course. Good luck."

"Thank you. Goodbye."

"Goodbye."

<><>​

I barely had time to turn around. There was a woman with a stroller, about thirty yards away. She was pointing at the teenage kid who was sprinting toward me, a bright yellow handbag under his arm. I had just enough time to register that he was about my age and had a shaved head. He may have been wearing Empire Eighty-Eight colours, but I wasn't looking for that.

Almost, I went to step back. In all my time with New Wave, it had been impressed into me that Panacea was a healer. She didn't go into combat. I was to let the others – all of whom had both defensive and offensive powers, which I thought was totally unfair – handle the rough stuff, while I cleaned up afterward.

But here I was, a crime was being committed, and there were no heroes around. Except for me.

I could step back. Nobody would blame me. I'm not a fighter. I'm not even in costume.

But something ignited within me. It was a familiar sensation; I'd felt it the day before, when I picked up a fire extinguisher to attack the bug controller. Maybe it was something that Fred Jones had inspired in me, or maybe I was just sick of being pushed around all the time.

Panacea would step back. But I'm not Panacea right now. I'm Amelia Lavere. I'm Marquis' daughter. And Marquis never stepped back for anyone.

Before I had quite realised what I was going to do, I had moved into his path. The kid was grinning; he had weight and height on me. One on one, he'd win a physical contest. Of course, that required me to give him one. I wasn't feeling that accommodating.

He was moving too fast to swerve around me, so he put out his arm to shove me aside or to push me over; I wasn't sure which. This let me grab his arm.

Normally, I took my time in getting an impression of someone's body, so I could be sure of getting all the information I needed. With this kid, I didn't bother. The instant that I connected with his biology, I made one tiny change. That was all that I had time for, before the heel of his hand collided with my breastbone. I went over backward, recalling belatedly to protect my head; it was still sore from yesterday.

The impact knocked the wind out of me; landing on my back did a more thorough job of it. I lay there, wheezing like an asthmatic, watching fuzzily as the purse-snatcher ran off down the Boardwalk.

"Oh my god! Are you all right?" It was the woman with the stroller. She knelt down beside me. "Did he hurt you?"

"'m fine." I concentrated on breathing, wondering why I seemed to be intent on collecting a whole set of new bruises. "Jus' winded."

"You were so brave, trying to stop him." She looked at me, concern in her face. "Are you sure you're all right?"

"Uh huh," I grunted. "Help me up. Let's go get your bag back."

She grimaced. "No such luck. He's long gone."

"Maybe not. Help me up, please."

With her assistance, and using the rail to pull me up, I managed to get to my feet. Once I got upright, I realised we were about the same height. She had mousy brown hair and a worried look on her face. There was also something else that I noticed, but filed away for later attention. "Maybe you should sit down for a bit."

"I'll be fine," I assured her. Shading my eyes, I peered down the Boardwalk. "Isn't that him there?"

"What? Where?" She stared in the same direction.

"The guy there. Lying down." I started down the Boardwalk. "Come on, before someone else decides to pick up your purse."

"How did that happen?" she asked as she followed; I slowed down a little to allow for the stroller. "Did he trip or something?"

As we got closer, her confusion became more evident. It wasn't surprising; he was just lying there, as if he had just chosen to lie down and go to sleep.

"It's possible, I guess," I agreed, working to keep a straight face. "Is that your purse?"

"It is!" Swooping in, she snatched it up. Unzipping it, she checked through it, delight showing on her face. "Everything's here."

"Good." I knelt down beside the purse-snatcher and checked his pulse. It was steady and strong, although he wasn't waking up any time soon. Nor would he, until I chose otherwise. "Want to call the cops on this guy?"

She looked doubtful. "He's just a kid …"

"This wasn't his first bag-snatch," I pointed out. "He's been doing this for a while. And he'll keep on doing it, if someone doesn't give him a wake-up call. Pretty soon he'll be mugging people, and then someone might get hurt. With luck, it'll be him, but probably not."

"Hmm, true." Pulling a phone from her purse, she made the call. In the meantime, I took the opportunity to sit down on a nearby bench. Truth be told, I was still a little wobbly from the hard landing on the Boardwalk, and the hit I had taken the day before hadn't helped at all.

" … where Smith Street joins the Boardwalk," the lady with the stroller said, the phone held to one ear while she rolled the stroller back and forth reflexively with the other. "He's fallen and knocked himself out, I think. Yes, I'll wait here. Thank you."

She put the phone away and moved over to the bench; I made room for her. Not sure what to say next, I looked down at her child. "She's very cute," I offered, deciding that pink fittings and jumpsuit equalled baby girl.

"She's my world," she replied with a fond smile, directed mainly at the infant, before she became serious once more. "I want to thank you for trying to stop him. I'm just sorry you got hurt."

"I'll heal," I told her with a halfway grin at my own phrasing. "I think maybe I distracted him and he wasn't watching where he was going."

By the time I finished speaking, I realised that something had given me away. She was staring at me with a growing surmise in her eyes. "I know you, don't I?"

I didn't know whether to confirm or deny it. "I, uh -"

"You're with New Wave. The healer. Panacea." Her voice was certain.

"Well, yes and no," I said without much conviction in my voice.

She raised an eyebrow. "Well, that clears things up nicely."

"I, uh, that's me, but I'm kind of taking a break from being Panacea at the moment," I confessed. "I want to be me before I can be Panacea again, but right now I don't know who me is, so I'm trying to find out."

She nodded sympathetically. "Believe it or not, I understand how you feel. In a roundabout way." After a pause, her eyes widened and she looked over at the recumbent bag-snatcher. "Did you … do something to him? Is that why he isn't waking up?"

I felt something akin to panic. My power was 'heal anything except the brain'; that was the public perception, anyway. It pigeon-holed me in their eyes, but at the same time shielded me from awkward questions and requests.

People accepted that, especially after it was made public that I could cure cancer. And HIV for that matter, but cancer got all the publicity. I didn't see why; either way, it was just a matter of dealing with biology. Whatever the reason, it seemed that 'cures cancer' was a bigger deal than 'cures HIV', which seemed weird to me. It wasn't as though cancer was contagious.

But now I'd been caught out doing something that just didn't fit into the 'healer' model that the public understood. I must have looked like a deer in the headlights. "I, uh, maybe?"

She looked back at me, taking in my expression in a moment. "You did do something," she murmured. "Did you turn his brain off or something?"

"No – no!" I exclaimed. "I, uh, I can't do brains."

Which was a flat-out lie, but one that I held closely to. The only other person who knew that I could do brains but didn't was Vicky. She didn't really understand why I wanted it kept quiet, so I kind of hinted that it was complicated and I was scared of messing things up.

That was also a lie, of course. I knew exactly how to modify the brain to get the effect that I wanted. Worse, I knew that it would be easy. The reason I didn't want to start messing with brains was that I was scared I would never want to stop. We all wish that people would act the way we want them to; I could make that happen. And it scared the hell out of me.

"Well, he doesn't seem to be waking up, and you don't seem to be worried that he will," she observed. "What did you do?"

"I, uh, repurposed his adrenal glands," I confessed. "They don't produce epinephrine any more. Now they produce ketamine."

This wasn't exactly something that many people knew I could do. Nor was it something I advertised. Healing, yes. Remodelling no. But now it seemed that an impulsive act was going to let the cat out of the bag.

The expression on her face, however, wasn't accusatory or even judgemental. She seemed to be … approving. "I like it," she decided. "Very neat. He's excited, so his adrenals are pumping out at full capacity. The more excited he is, the faster the ketamine hits him."

I blinked. This was not what I had expected. "I, uh, I don't do this sort of thing very often. Or at all," I confessed.

One eyebrow hitched upward. "You picked a good time to start. From my point of view, anyway."

"Yeah, well." I nodded awkwardly. "I seem to be doing a lot of things recently that I normally wouldn't do."

She gave me a sympathetic look. "Want to talk about it?"

It struck me as incongruous that a total stranger on the Boardwalk would be the first person to actually ask me that question, and want to hear the answer. I considered telling her about Fred, but decided that she might not get it, not if I left anything out. And I really wasn't sure about telling her about Marquis. So I decided to cut to the chase.

"Okay. Long story short, my life got turned upside down. I met someone who … let's just say, I learned some really crucial information about who I am. And other stuff. So now, I feel the same as before, but everything else looks different. So it's really me that must have changed. People want me to be the same as I was before, but I don't want to be that person any more. I want to be more. I want to find out who me is, and be that person. Am I making sense? Because if I'm not, feel free to tell me." I stopped talking, hoping that my babbling hadn't scared her off.

She was staring at me, eyes just a little wider than normal. "Oh, you're making sense all right," she said. "I know exactly how you feel. I had my own life-changing experience a while ago. And I've been trying to figure out where I fit in. Because I certainly don't fit in where I was."

"You … you have?" I asked. "Can I ask -"

"What my experience was?" She smiled. "Can't you tell?" Leaning down to the stroller, she caressed the sleeping baby's cheek. "Having Aster changed my life utterly."


End of Part Five

Part Six

 

[Ack]

Hostage Situation

Part Six: The Plot Thickens



[A/N: this chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]



Dragonslayer Base, Toronto, Canada

All was quiet, or nearly so, in the base. Mags had found some interesting fashion tips in a magazine; leaning back in her chair, she propped her boots up on the table and settled back for some good old-fashioned 'me' time. Geoff was working on something in the alcove that held the computer gear; if she listened hard, she could hear him hitting keys from time to time. Farther away, there was the occasional pop and crackle as Mischa worked on his armour; he'd said something earlier about re-welding a problematic seam. Ozone drifted out of the workshop, the smell bitter in the air.

Taking a sip from her coffee, Mags leaned back a little farther and turned the page of her magazine …

"Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me!"

The outburst, coming as unexpectedly as it did, caused her to react most unfortunately. She jerked and flailed, the magazine flying off to the side and flutter to the ground in a heap. If her boots had fallen from the table, she would have been fine, her loss of dignity minimal. But they didn't; instead, she instinctively straightened out, causing her chair to scoot sideways, out from under her.

"Shit!" she blurted, just before she landed heavily on her butt on the wooden floorboards. A moment later, a waterfall of coffee cascaded over the edge of the table to form a pool beside her.

Grimacing, she rolled painfully sideways until she could stand up.

Mischa came pounding in from the workshop, the welding mask tilted back on his head. "What is happening?" the burly Russian demanded. "I heard shouting and banging. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," grunted Mags, as she rubbed her sore butt. "Mostly, anyway. Geoff, what the fuck was that all about?" Along with Mischa, she turned her gaze to the leader of the Dragonslayers, who was currently hunched over the main monitor for checking on Dragon's activities.

Saint turned toward them, eyes glinting with anger, then hooked his thumb at the screen. "Take a look," he gritted. "I managed to decrypt that file."

"O … kay," Mags replied, still not quite sure what had precipitated the outburst. Geoff, as a rule, didn't shout very much. Something had to have him really worked up. Leaning past him, she used the mouse to click the 'play' option.

At first, there was no picture, only an odd buzzing sound. Then a distorted human voice, booming from the speakers. " … … not hear … ly. … … hear is … zzing with … tervals in between."

"Can you hear me now?" This was a different voice, one that was very familiar to Mags.

"Dragon?" She asked the question out loud.

"Yes, now shut up. This isn't the important bit," Geoff said impatiently.

A little hurt, Mags started listening again. She was just in time to hear the unknown voice ask more or less the same question, and have it confirmed. Part of her wanted to ask why Dragon was talking to someone inside the Birdcage; more importantly, who was she talking to? But Geoff didn't seem to be in the mood to enlighten her. He should be happier. This is flat-out proof that Dragon's defeating her programming safeguards.

And then she heard the words " … passing you on to Director Costa-Brown," and her eyes opened very wide indeed. "The fuck?" she blurted. What the fuck is the Chief Director of the PRT doing talking to a Birdcage inmate? With Dragon's help?

"Shh!" she heard from both Geoff and Mischa. She shut up, and they all leaned closer to listen.

Costa-Brown was indeed talking to someone in the Birdcage. That 'someone' turned out to be Marquis; Mags had never been to Brockton Bay, but she'd heard of the man. The wobbly picture showing on the screen even matched pictures she'd seen, if she mentally removed the beard and the greying hair. But the focus of the conversation wasn't about him … it was about his daughter. Fascinated, Mags kept listening. The daughter in question had been adopted by … who?

Holy shit, New Wave adopted the kid of the villain they sent to the Birdcage?

Holy fucking hell, she's Panacea?

That was beyond surprising. It was astonishing. Panacea, who would otherwise have been seen as drab and invisible next to her glory-hunting sister, had an international reputation for being the girl who could heal any injury, cure any disease, even roll back someone's age. And she's a supervillain's daughter? Fuck me.

Costa-Brown was still talking to Marquis. And that was when Mags heard the thing that had caused Geoff's outburst. "Until you are released from the Birdcage, she will cease her healing activities altogether."

Almost unbidden, her hand grabbed the mouse and clicked the file to pause it. "Did you guys just hear what I heard?"

"Da, I heard," Mischa replied at once. Geoff didn't say anything; he just looked pissed as hell.

Mags clutched at her head, trying to shake sense into her own brain. "How can this even be happening? She's a fucking hero, for fuck's sake!"

"No." Geoff''s voice was low and controlled. "She's a villain. Her father's a villain, she's a villain. If she's willing to hold her power over people to get him released, then she's no hero." He stood up abruptly and paced back and forth. "Worse, she's got Costa-Brown at least talking about it. And Costa-Brown can order Dragon to do it. Dragon's already sent that communication system into the Birdcage on her orders."

"But it's against the law!" Mags almost wailed the last word. She had been a police officer for years; even with all the cynicism that she'd picked up along the way, she still considered that there was a line, however faint it might still be.

"The Chief Director, she maybe says what rules are?" suggested Mischa. He shrugged massively. "If she says is legal, then Dragon does it. No conflict."

Geoff sat back down in the chair and ran his hands through his already-disarranged hair. "Fuck. I don't know what to think."

Pulling up a chair to face him, Mags captured his hands then sat down, still holding him. "Talk to me, love. Tell me what you're thinking."

"Right. Right. Right." He took a deep breath. "If we're to believe what Costa-Brown is saying, Dragon can let people out if she really feels like it. I don't like that idea. I really don't like that fucking idea." His face twisted into a grimace. "Because you just know that she'll probably get it into that mess of silicon chips that she calls a brain that it will be a good idea to release the wrong people. All it'll take is one safeguard failing, just once."

"The wrong people, love?" Mags squeezed his hands gently, prompting him to go on. "Who are the right people, then?"

"Well, Teacher, for one," Geoff said. "He can give me a boost so I can keep up with Dragon. Her code's getting more complex all the time. I have trouble reading it, these days. Every day, I worry that it's found a way around the safeguards that I don't know about."

A chill went down her back. Oh, shit. He's still obsessed with the guy. Ever since Geoff had gone to Teacher for the first treatment, he'd been a little ... different. She had hoped that after Teacher went to the Birdcage that Geoff gotten over whatever effect the asshole had on him, but that was obviously not the case.

"Well, we know that Dragon's not free of the safeguards quite yet," she pointed out carefully. "Otherwise she would have been letting people out of the Birdcage to cover her own actions." Turning her head slightly, she met Mischa's eyes. He nodded back to her, his own expression worried. He noticed it, too. Now, we've got to try to talk Geoff down.

Oblivious to the byplay, Geoff nodded, seeming to calm down a little. "Okay, we need to learn more. We need to know what's going on. And we definitely need to find out if they're going to cave in and let that scary bastard out of the Birdcage." Even ten years later and in another country, Marquis' name still had the power to evoke fear. "And if we can leverage that to get Teacher out."

"Birdcage is like inescapable gulag, yes?" Mischa scratched his chin through his beard. "Is no getting out for good behaviour."

All of a sudden, Mags wasn't as certain about that as she once was. Reaching across, she took hold of the mouse. "I think we need to watch the rest of this file."

"Yeah," agreed Saint. "Good idea." He took Mags' hand and squeezed it as she clicked the mouse button.

<><>​

Cauldron Base
Some Other Earth

Alexandria sighed to herself. Why did I even think that this might go smoothly? "David, please calm down. You're overreacting."

Eidolon threw up his hands. "Why did you even say that to her? Now she thinks there might be a way to get him out!" His heavy eyebrows knotted together as he glared at her. "The last thing we want is for the public getting ideas like that about the Birdcage."

"Dave, chill," Legend suggested. Like Eidolon, he was unmasked, although his expression wasn't as unhappy as the other hero's. "She never made any hard and fast promises, and these are reasonably unique circumstances."

"Unique is one way to put it," said the Number Man, twirling a pen in his fingers. Despite the fact that he never looked at it, the writing implement spun in an intricate dance back and forth, back and forth.

Eidolon humphed out an aggravated breath. "We've had villains try to blackmail the government into letting people out of the Birdcage before. It never ended well for them then. Why are we even considering it now?"

"Because Panacea's not a villain?" Legend's tone was light, but his expression was more serious. "She's been using her powers to help the public for three years now. Like us, she's not charging for it. Unlike us, she doesn't get paid by the government. It's not actually illegal for her to suddenly set a condition for the resumption of her healing activities."

"But releasing a vicious criminal like Marquis?" Eidolon shook his head, his entire body language rejecting what Legend had to say. "Breaking someone out of jail is a crime, and so is advocating that someone else do it."

Alexandria shook her head, knowing that she had to step in again. "If the PRT releases him from the Birdcage, then that isn't breaking him out, because we're only going to do it legally, once we've discussed it with the relevant governmental bodies."

Legend nodded. "The most she's doing is petitioning for his release, which is perfectly legal. Petitioning really, really hard, but still only petitioning." He shrugged. "I can kind of see her point. Family is important, after all. And so are second chances."

The Number Man chuckled dryly. "Very true. And you think that he would stick to the straight and narrow once he was released?" He turned his chair slightly, addressing the question to the fifth person in the room.

Contessa had been leaning back in her chair, apparently not paying attention to the discussion. But now she looked up. "Provided he isn't provoked or otherwise pushed back into a life of crime, he will. I have several Paths where he may be useful to our aims. Of course, if his daughter is harmed or killed, we can essentially kiss Brockton Bay goodbye."

"Which is what I'm talking about!" Eidolon was back in full swing. "He's a dangerous man! Why bend over backward to pander to the demands of one teenage girl who isn't all that important in the grand scheme of things?" His power flexed around him, half-seen auras growing and then collapsing into nothingness.

"She's more important than you think," Alexandria pointed out. "The only reason that she isn't better known locally is that her older sister is Glory Girl. But can you name three parahumans whose names are known on the international level, who aren't Protectorate?" She paused, saw Eidolon opening his mouth, and knew what he was going to say. "Or villains, for that matter?" she added hastily.

Eidolon glared at her. "It's still stupid," he growled. "We're opening ourselves to a huge backlash. We let this go through, it'll be the first of many."

"If we deny her and she goes public with her healing strike, the backlash is likely to be worse," Alexandria said. "Yes, I know that she hasn't healed that many people when compared to the general population. No one person could, even if they went without sleep and rest. But she's tried. And more to the point, she's a symbol of hope. People are aware that there is someone in the world who can heal the worst injuries and illnesses in the world. She's a literal cure for cancer." She looked around at the others in the room. "Symbols are valuable, too."

"Also, Endbringers," Legend noted. "If she stops healing capes injured in those battles, the practice of injured capes suing first responders if they don't do everything perfectly will come back in. With her still around, we get more capes back on their feet, which means we have more capes ready for the next attack."

"I tend to agree," the Number Man said. "I believe that having her on side, healing when and where she can, is better than the world knowing that Panacea has hung up the cape. Or the burqa. Whatever it is that she wears." He tapped the pen on the table. "All in favour?"

"Well, of course." Alexandria held up her hand.

"I think it's a good idea." Legend echoed her action.

"I believe that it's a step in the right direction." Contessa didn't raise her hand, but she nodded instead. "Consider me in."

Eidolon sat there, glowering at the rest of them. "This is a bad idea. You know it is."

"Since when have we let that stop us?" The Number Man's voice was light. "If we stepped back from every problematic decision, we would never get anything done."

"David." Alexandria made her voice firm. "We need your decision. Are you going to support us, or at least not oppose us in this?" She searched his face.

He scowled heavily. "I won't oppose you. But if he becomes any sort of a problem, then I will deal with him. One way or the other." Standing, he picked up his glowing green mask from the table and put it on. "For the record, I think you're all making a big mistake."

"And I believe that we aren't. Or at least, not as big a mistake as shutting Panacea down would be." Alexandria's voice was blunt as she addressed Eidolon. "Yes, I understand that it's not an ideal solution. But sometimes there are no ideal solutions."

He didn't answer her; at least, not directly. Turning away from the table, he spoke three words: "Door to Houston." The portal opened directly in front of him, and he stepped through. It was only after the portal closed behind him that the awkward silence ended.

"Well," murmured Legend. "That happened." He stood and stretched. "Think he'll do something rash?"

"We can only hope not," Alexandria replied, although she didn't sound happy. "Contessa?"

"I can't be sure," the Cauldron enforcer said. "But I don't think he will. Though I wouldn't be surprised if he blows off steam for a while by cracking down on local crime. It's about to take a sudden dip."

"Fortunately," Alexandria said, "that's not our problem to deal with." She stood as well, gathering her cape around herself. "Meeting concluded. Contessa, if you could stay behind for a moment?"

Legend left via a portal of his own, while the Number Man simply opened the door and walked out. Alexandria looked at Contessa, who looked back at her. "You know what I'm going to ask you."

Contessa nodded. "Yes."

Just for a moment, Alexandria shut her eyes. I wish she wouldn't answer like that. But of course Contessa knew that, and probably enjoyed her little joke all the more because of it. So I'm correct. It is Saint screwing with Dragon again. "Did he get the footage?"

"He did." Contessa stood up. "He won't be a problem."

Which meant that either he didn't intend to cause problems, or that Contessa would counter anything he tried. Either way, it was out of Alexandria's hands. The last thing they needed was a scandal implicating the PRT with, basically, anything. "Good."

The last thing she saw before stepping into her own portal was the slight smile on Contessa's face. Saint, if he tried anything cute, was going to have a very bad day indeed.

Somehow, Alexandria was fine with that.

<><>​

Boardwalk

Kayden leaned back against the seat, watching Amy Dallon – Panacea! - hold Aster carefully. For a teenager, Amy seemed to be pretty good at it, making sure to support the baby's head while cooing gently at her. For her part, Aster gurgled right back, reaching out to grasp at Amy's fingers with her own chubby little digits. The look of tenderness that filled Amy's face surprised Kayden a little, but not totally. It looked like her infant was well on the way to winning the teen's heart.

Meanwhile, I'm an ex-supervillain and she's a superhero, so there's that. Somehow, she had no problem looking past the 'hero' aspect and seeing the girl underneath. Amy had seemed reserved at first, almost withdrawn, but she seemed to be opening up a little. If only to make silly baby noises back at Aster.

"So that guy will wake up again?" she asked at length. The question wasn't bothering her all that much, though she was pretty sure she wouldn't mention the episode to Kaiser even if she saw him. She didn't want some poor dumb purse snatcher to end up crucified for her sake.

"Yeah," Amy assured her. "I normalised his adrenals while you were talking to the cops. Thanks for covering for me like that, by the way. If it went out on the scanner that I was on the Boardwalk stopping crime in plain clothes, I'd have New Wave descending on me in about ten seconds flat." She shook her head gently, rubbing her face on Aster's tummy. "I couldn't have that, could I? No, I couldn't have that." The gentle tone of her words belied the meaning behind them; Aster gurgled happily and played with her hair.

"Well, no, I suppose not," Kayden agreed, a little amused. Amy seemed to be well and truly taken by Aster, and the reverse was also true. "She really likes you. Not that I blame her."

"I like her too," Amy said, looking up at Kayden. "I get to meet lots of kids, but ninety-nine percent of them are in paediatric wards, and I don't get to spend time with them when they're healthy. It's nice just to sit down and spend time with her." There was more going on than what she was saying, but the main thing that Kayden picked up on was the longing tone in her voice.

However, she didn't want to scare the girl off, so she didn't say what she was thinking immediately. Fortunately, she had another ready-made tack to go on with. "So, I never thanked you properly for saving my bag."

"Oh, uh, I don't want money for that," Amy protested immediately, almost automatically. "I'm a hero. It's kind of what I'm supposed to do." But there was a tone of doubt underlaying her words, which got Kayden's attention.

"Well, okay, hero," Kayden said with more than a little amusement, "how about we go and have some ice cream? Would that be sufficient to make it not a payment of actual money?"

"Well, um …" Amy rocked Aster and frowned slightly. The baby made spit bubbles and pawed at her frizzy brown hair. Looking down at the infant, she let a smile creep across her face. "Okay, you talked me into it."

More like Aster twisted your arm, Kayden thought with a smile. But I'm not arguing. Standing up, she ensured that her purse was securely slung over her shoulder. "Do you want to carry her, or put her back in the stroller?"

"I'll put her in the stroller," Amy decided, though it seemed to have been a close contest. "But I'll push the stroller, if that's okay?"

Kayden chuckled at the hopeful tone of her voice. "I have no trouble with that, believe me. I love her dearly, but she can get very heavy if I'm carrying her everywhere."

Amy crouched beside the stroller, carefully fitting Aster into the restraints. "Which is why they invented strollers." She tickled the baby, eliciting delighted chuckles. "There, that should do it."

"You're very good with babies," Kayden observed as they set off down the Boardwalk. "Have you had much experience? Apart from the paediatric cases, I mean?"

"Not really." Amy shook her head. "I didn't even really think I liked them, till I met Aster. She's just adorable. I mean, I'm not interested in having kids any time soon, and I don't think I ever will, but if I did have any, I'd want them to be like Aster." She glanced at Kayden. "I hope that doesn't sound creepy or anything."

"No." Kayden chuckled warmly. "I can relate to that exactly. I can't see anything wrong with wanting other babies to be like my baby." She gave Amy a pat on the arm. "I hope you do have the chance to have a child of your own someday, and that they make you as happy as Aster does me."

Amy didn't say anything, but her smile had a certain wistfulness about it.

<><>​

Dragonslayer Base
Mags

"Love you too, pum-" The picture abruptly broke up, the sound dissolving into static. Mags sat back, her mind awhirl. That had been entirely too intense for her comfort. She hadn't been able to see Panacea or Glory Girl, but the raw emotion between Panacea and her ten-years-removed father had wrenched at her heart-strings in a way that she had not felt in some time.

"Well, damn." Geoff broke into her musings, a speculative tone in his voice. "Looks like they're really going to do it, doesn't it?"

"Yes." Mischa didn't say any more. Mags stole another glance at him; he was watching Geoff with a concerned expression.

"Excellent." Saint sounded almost happy. This was a change from his original attitude, but Mags didn't have a chance to ask before he went on. "This means that they're really thinking about it, which proves that they can actually fucking do it. Which means that all this 'no way out' bullshit is just a bluff."

"Except that they're the only ones who know how to get someone out," Mags said, trying to strike the note of 'voice of sanity'. "So this leaves us back at square one." For all that she knew Dragon could not attack their suits directly, she had no desire to attempt to breach the Birdcage. Automated defences would kill them just as dead. Or, for all she knew, knock them out and put them in the Birdcage, powerless, with a bunch of psychotic capes. Fuck. That.

And that was even if it weren't Teacher they were trying to free. She had never trusted the ugly, sweaty little man, and following Teacher's assassinations of public figures, she felt she was vindicated. He can stay in there for all of me. There's no way I'm letting him near Geoff again.

"You're not getting it," Geoff said impatiently. "They've already communicated with him once; if they're going to get him out, they're going to have to do it again. Once they do that, I can hijack the nanobot control system. By the time Dragon gets to the Birdcage and manually shuts down the link, I'll have time to use it to send a message to Teacher and let him know what's going on."

Mags looked at him askance. "Okay, I get that bit, but how does that translate to them letting Teacher out?" Please don't have a hairbrained scheme ...

He grinned, showing teeth. "That's the genius part. Thanks to this, we know that Panacea's so valuable to them that they'll let someone out of the Birdcage rather than lose access to her healing ability, right?"

It took a moment for Mags to understand, then her eyes opened wide. "No. Seriously, Geoff. Please tell me that you're not thinking of taking Panacea hostage to force them to let Teacher out of the Birdcage." Christ, it's worse than I thought.

"Da, what she said," Mischa said hurriedly. "Do not be kidnapping the healer that the PRT thinks so much of." He took a deep breath and composed himself. "Much shit will fall upon our heads from a very great height if you do this."

"But it's Teacher," Geoff said urgently. "Don't you get it? If I can get access to him, I can get right back into Dragon's code! I'll finally know what that bucket of chips is thinking. She's got to be working on something to fuck us all over, and we need every advantage we can get to get out in front of whatever it is."

Mags nodded, trying to think of the best way to dissuade him. "Yes, love, I do understand all that. But let's please not kidnap the teenage girl who can cure cancer. If we do that, and she gets so much as a hang-nail, it'll be a kill order for all of us."

"Even worse," Mischa put in. "You have seen her sister, the girl of glory? She is Alexandria package who does not pull punches. Mother has lightsaber like in Star Wars, father throws bombs. Uncle is giant from fairy tale, aunt and cousins fly and have zap lasers. Our armour is good, but against them we are walnut against hammer. Ебааааать, дружище. Please do not be inciting war we cannot win against scary cape family."

Fuuuuck, mate. Mags knew enough Russian from Mischa to understand that part, and she knew the burly man well enough to know that his thicker accent was due to agitation. Mischa really did not want to go up against New Wave. Well, that was fine. Nor did Mags. Especially not for Teacher's sake. However, the trick was going to be convincing Geoff that it was a bad idea. This is going to be an uphill battle.

"If they can't find us, they can't attack us," Geoff argued. "Look, this is literally the opportunity of a lifetime, but the window slams shut the moment they get him out. Dragon won't be sending communication nanobots into the Birdcage any more, and with that scary bastard alongside Panacea, getting hold of her will be a fuck-ton more difficult."

He turned abruptly and hurried to a bookshelf, and pulled out an atlas. "Check it out. Less than five hundred miles as the crow flies. We head over under cover of darkness, wait till she separates from the rest of her family, grab her up and come on back. Then all we gotta do is tell the PRT that all they've got to do to get her back is let Teacher out. After that it's just details."

Mags snatched the atlas from his hands and slammed it shut. "No! Geoff, it's a stupid fucking idea. We are not kidnapping Panacea!" And we're definitely not freeing Teacher.

"Why the fuck not?" Geoff turned toward her, his face creased with frustration. "There's nobody else who's that important that we can grab!"

Mags rolled her eyes. "How about the President? No, wait, parahuman Secret Service plus kill order if we do succeed." Her tone was heavily sarcastic toward the end.

"Perhaps head of PRT?" suggested Mischa. "She is important, but no Secret Service to protect." Mags shot him a quick glance; he gave her a fractional shrug. Even Geoff isn't that much of an idiot. Is he?

"Don't be stupid," Geoff snapped, proving that he still had some self-preservation instincts. "That's the best way to get the entire Protectorate on our asses. And Alexandria's pretty smart. I don't want her up in my grille." He shook his head. "I'd like to survive this mission."

"And that's the exact same reaction you'll get if you kidnap Panacea," Mags insisted, trying to get through to him. "Only worse, because Director Costa-Brown can't cure cancer."

"No." Geoff was adamant, though Mags couldn't tell whether he was trying to convince her or himself. "She's not Protectorate. They won't throw the resources into finding her that they would their precious Chief Director."

Mags took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. "Geoff."

When she opened them, he was looking at her expectantly. "Yes?"

Despite her resolve, she paused for a moment to muster her thoughts. "You know I was in law enforcement before we started doing … this." She waved around at the base surrounding them.

"Well, yes," he agreed. "It's how we got into Richter's black box. But you were Fisheries and Oceans, not the police." There was a slightly defensive tone to his voice.

"True," she said. "I was never police. I never worked a kidnapping case. But I heard stories. And I need to ask you this, right here and right now. Suppose we manage to kidnap Panacea. We get away clean. They don't track us down." Which she highly doubted, knowing the resources that the Protectorate could bring to bear.

"Okay …" he said warily. "Let's assume that. What's your point?"

"My point is this. We have her. We make our demands; release Teacher from the Birdcage and we let Panacea go. But some stuffed-shirt bureaucrat gets up in arms and refuses. Flat-out says no. It's impossible. Tells us that we may as well release Panacea now, because it's not going to happen." She paused, watching his face to see his reaction.

It wasn't long in coming. "But they won't," he protested, his face twisting in a grimace. "Panacea's too valuable. They'll deal. They have to."

"But what if they don't?" She pressed on. "Suppose Costa-Brown suggests it and is fired by the President, and her replacement says hell, no. What are you going to do then? Release Panacea? Or start sending them fingers to prove that you're serious?"

For a moment she thought that she'd gotten through to him, but then his expression hardened. "And so what if we have to? We're trying to save the goddamn world from a dangerous machine, here! It's for the greater good."

Grabbing him by the front of his shirt, Mags dragged him down until he was face to face with her. "You listen to me, Geoff Pellick." Her voice was a dangerous hiss. "The moment you start seriously considering mutilating an innocent teenage girl for the sake of the 'greater good' is the moment I start wondering what we're even doing on the same team. I've performed some criminal acts in the name of the cause, but abducting and harming kids is a line I am not going to cross. Do you understand me?"

Tense at first, Geoff slowly relaxed. "Yeah, sorry. I got kind of carried away. But what do we do instead? Threaten Dragon with Ascalon? 'Release Teacher or you die'?"

Mischa shook his head. "That will not work. She is bound to follow laws. And at worst, we kill her, what then? Teacher still trapped in Birdcage." He spread his large hands. "Is best to drop this, I think. Teacher is not worth it."

Geoff grimaced as Mags let him go. "You're right. Both of you. It's too risky." He rubbed his chin. "Though now I'm wondering if we can't blackmail the PRT with the footage we have. The public would love to hear about something like this."

Mags shared a glance with Mischa. They both shrugged at the same time, then the woman turned back to Geoff. "That's actually a workable plan. I know we can dissuade Dragon from doing a traceback, but that won't stop anyone else, so don't get careless, all right?" I highly doubt that it'll work, but if it keeps him busy, that's a good thing.

He gave her the devil-may-care grin that she had fallen in love with, all those years ago. "Hey, I might be a little obsessive over the subject, but I'm not stupid."

Unfortunately, my love, when it comes to Teacher, that's exactly what you are.

Putting her arms around him, Mags laid her head on his chest. "Sometimes I worry about you, that's all. I know we're fighting a war, but there's such a thing as going too far." Especially where Teacher is concerned.

He stroked her hair, then lifted her chin for a kiss. "I know, and I appreciate that you're here to keep me in line." Lowering his voice, he continued. "Want to bring the massage oil to bed tonight? I want to show you how much I love you."

"Ooh yes." Smiling, she kissed him again, the warmth of anticipation spreading throughout her body. "I can definitely go with that."

Thank god, she told herself. He's seen sense. She paused for a moment. Or maybe not.

Looking past him at Mischa, she flicked her eyes toward the workshop and made a cut-off motion with her hand behind Geoff's back. The large Russian nodded, and ambled nonchalantly in that direction. Good. Mischa can lock down Geoff's armour until we can talk him out of this idiocy.

<><>​

Boardwalk

"Mmm, this is good." Amy leaned back against her seat, blissfully nibbling at her ice cream. Kayden – she had introduced herself on the walk over – sat at the far end of the same seat, with Aster's stroller between them. The baby was wrapped up a little more against the night's chill, happily burbling to herself in the stroller. Occasionally she reached out toward the iridescent soap bubble that was the force field over the Protectorate base in the bay, but didn't seem more than mildly disappointed that she couldn't grab it.

"It is." Aster's mother was carefully eating a sundae, which she was apparently enjoying just as much as Amy was appreciating the ice cream. "You're acting like you don't get to do this much."

Amy noted again that Kayden was quite perceptive. Or maybe it was just a mom thing. She shrugged. "I guess I don't. Being Panacea's not quite a full-time thing, but I think I've been pushing myself too hard now, and I didn't realise it because nobody really called me on it until today." And he's in the Birdcage, she noted. What does this say about my so-called friends and family?

"That doesn't sound healthy at all," Kayden observed. "Do you want to talk about it? I can lend a sympathetic ear, and I'll throw in any advice I can think of for free."

"I don't want to load you down with my problems," Amy protested, though the chance to talk to someone who didn't have a stake in the situation suddenly sounded very attractive.

"You saved my handbag today," Kayden pointed out. "Buying you an ice-cream doesn't even begin to cover that. I can listen to your woes and agree just how mean people are being to you, if you want. It doesn't cost me anything. And it's not like you've got a secret identity to worry about." The grin she gave Amy made her look about sixteen, and awoke a reluctant answering smile from the biokinetic.

"Well, okay then," Amy decided, thinking hard about what she was going to say. "I'm adopted, but you probably had that figured out already." At Kayden's encouraging nod, she went on. "I found out a while ago that my dad's actually a supervillain. You've probably never heard of him, but he's been in prison for the last ten years. Anyway, I ran into an old minion of his …"

As she told the story, eliding over the more sensitive details, Kayden listened entranced, and Aster gurgled happily in her stroller.

<><>​

Dragonslayer Base
Much Later That Night

Mags rolled over in bed, feeling the deep contentment that came from a good solid back massage from Geoff. She had responded to his advances, and they had made love until late in the evening; afterward, as usually happened, she had dropped into a deep and dreamless sleep. But now the glass of wine she had imbibed before the massage was making itself known, so she had to get up.

Trying not to disturb Geoff, she disentangled herself from the sheets and went to sit up, but her hand went down in the middle of his back. Or where the middle of his back would have been, if he had still been in bed.

"Geoff?" she murmured sleepily. He must be going to the bathroom too. Stumbling out of bed, she snagged a bathrobe and made her way to the bathroom, but he wasn't there either. That worked for her; she sat down and relieved herself. She was halfway back to bed when her brain started working. Where is he?

Entering the bedroom, she turned the light on, to find the bed entirely empty. Small stirrings of alarm were going off in the back of her mind by now. Belting the bathrobe around her waist, she headed out into the main area. Maybe he's spying on Dragon again? But no, he wasn't at the console. Data, of course, ran over the multiple screens, showing what the AI was up to.

But Mags had no eyes for that. What caught her attention was the sheet of paper taped to the keyboard. Turning on the light, she picked up the sheet and read it. Adrenaline kicked her brain into high gear; with the paper still clutched in her hand, she dashed for the workshop.

"Fuuuuuck!" she screamed. "Mischa! Get up!" Not hesitating for a moment, she slapped her hand on the red button inside the workshop door, which sent an alarm clanging through every room of the base. She wasn't sure what its original intention had been for, but it was a useful way of getting everyone up and awake.

Moments later, the big Russian showed up. His beard was in wild disarray and he wore a pair of boxers luridly printed with bright pink hearts. However, he also hefted a large assault rifle in one hand, and he looked awake and ready for action. "What is it, Mags? Where is Geoff?"

"Gone," she said bitterly, holding out the paper. "I thought you locked his suit down!"

"I did!" he protested. She pointed silently at the empty space where his suit had been, and the opened-up shells of their two suits, trailing components. " ... oh. Son of bitch. He cannibalised our suits to bypass. Very sneaky. I will break fingers when I find." He took the sheet and read it. "'I'm sorry, but this is the only way. Carry out the blackmail mission as a distraction. If you can get Teacher released, I'll let Panacea go unharmed. Geoff.'" Pausing, he stared at her. "What do we do now?"

The curl of her lip was almost a snarl. "We're going to repair my suit, then you're going to stay here and run mission control."

He blinked stupidly at her. "But what will you be doing, if I am to be doing that?"

"Going after my idiot husband and saving him from himself." She turned and stomped into the workshop. "Whether he likes it or not."



End of Part Six

Part Seven

 

[Ack]

Hostage Situation

Part Seven: Situational Ethics

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]



Airborne over New England
Saint
15 April 2011
2210 Hours

The night sky was peaceful, the silvery light from the almost-full moon illuminating the landscape where it wasn't chased out by the yellow glare of electric lighting. Headlights were strung on the highways between towns like beads on a wire; in this region of the United States, there were a lot of towns.

Two miles up, Geoff Pellick felt almost serene. He gazed down down at the towns and roads rolling beneath him with the certain knowledge that the people below would never become aware of his passage overhead or his years-long crusade. They would hear of his latest 'crime', certainly, but the PRT's dupes in the mainstream media would never let Joe or Jane Public know about the reasons behind it, or how it would allow him to step up his efforts in the endless war he fought on their behalf.

He had no fear of detection, as Dragon's suits were marvels in stealth technology; it hadn't been easy to retro-engineer the same tech into his own suit, but the effort had been worth it. In addition, with the extendible glide-wings, he could travel over a thousand miles before he had to worry about running low on fuel. This was good, because he wasn't sure if he would be able to depend on physical support from Mags and Mischa, at least until he could prove he was justified with what he was doing.

His plan would work. Most such schemes failed through needless complexity, but this one was almost charming in its simplicity. If the Chief Director was willing to allow a dangerous mass murderer like Marquis to walk free on Panacea's word, then surely she wouldn't blink at releasing someone like Teacher (who'd killed far fewer people, even if they were somewhat more important) to keep Panacea alive.

Of course, it didn't stop there. With the footage saved from Dragon's foray into the Birdcage, decrypted to show exactly how deep the rot went, it should be possible for Mags and Mischa to kick over the blackmail side of things while he was carrying out the hostage plan. Well, one of his two teammates would be doing that, anyway; he was certain the other would be repairing the damage he'd done to their suits. They'd be pissed with him, he knew, but he was equally sure they'd do as he said, to avoid hanging him out to dry. As a result, the attention of the PRT would be dragged in two different directions at once at exactly the wrong time. Faced with both the potential loss of their star healer and a huge PR debacle, he was certain they'd blink, as with every other time they'd encountered a clash between their own interests and those of the nation as a whole.

His helmet HUD told him that Brockton Bay was almost dead ahead; it was time to get his head in the game. He cut in the geographic overlays, hiding the moonlit terrain behind a series of complex interlocking data displays. Now, let's see what I've got.

The city was contained, more or less, by a series of hills that surrounded the natural deep-water harbour of the eponymous Bay. Some signs of civilisation showed in isolated lights that showed up here and there beyond the largest hill in the collection—his HUD labelled it as Captain's Hill—but almost all of it was on the flat area. Looking at the geography, he wondered if it weren't an ancient floodplain that had been cut off from its parent river by geological chance. Then he decided that he didn't care.

Gradually losing altitude, he came in over the shoulder of Captain's Hill, idly noting a few headlights on the road leading up to the summit. It seemed there was a lookout on top, almost certainly to allow tourists a view of the city that ignored the gang violence and endemic racism. It wasn't something he was interested in. His focus was on obtaining Panacea and, through her, leverage over the PRT.

With the jets on minimum thrust, he coasted over the city, feeling that he could almost smell the corruption oozing up from below. Now, he decided. How do I find one specific cape in a city full of them?

Inside his helmet, he smiled. With Dragon's technology at his fingertips, he had more than a few resources to call on. A flick of his eyes opened a particular menu and he began to call up some very specific options.

<><>​

The Boardwalk
Amy

"I wish I'd saved Mr Jones' life, now," Amy confessed. "Even though he told me not to. He just … I guess he felt he was all used up. No use to anyone. But that wasn't true." She stretched a little, trying to work out the cramps from sitting in the same place for so long. The ice cream was long since finished, and the vendor himself had packed up and gone home for the night. Even the moon, formerly low on the horizon, was now almost directly overhead. But this was the first time in basically forever that Amy'd gotten the chance to really talk with someone, and the time had just flown by. "He meant a lot to me there, at the end. He made me feel closer to my father."

"I can understand that," Kayden agreed. "If I ever went to prison—" She paused to chuckle, showing it was a joke. "—well, I'd be happier if Aster had someone to tell her what I was really like so she could make up her own mind about me, rather than be told 'your mom is a criminal, deal with it'." She rocked the infant, now fast asleep in her arms and swaddled up securely against the night's chill, gently from side to side. "If you mean one-tenth to your father that Aster means to me, I'm not surprised he's willing to give up crime to be with you again."

"And to get out of jail, don't forget." Amy chuckled, then surprised herself by yawning. "Wow, I'm tired. How long have we been talking, anyway?"

"I have no idea, but I think it's fairly late." Kayden hefted Aster slightly. "I can't reach my phone to check."

Just as Amy was digging out her phone, it rang. She hastened to answer it before it woke Aster, noting in passing that it was Vicky's number on the caller ID. "Hey," she said. "Before you get all overprotective, I'm fine. Haven't been kidnapped by a criminal mastermind yet. I'm down on the Boardwalk still."

As she spoke, she saw the amusement in Kayden's eyes, replaced by mild confusion as the woman mouthed criminal mastermind?

"Still?" Vicky's voice was incredulous. "It's been hours. Everything's gotta be closed by now. What are you doing there?" Overlaid on her voice was the sound of rushing air. This meant that she was flying and talking on her phone at the same time; Amy hoped she wouldn't hit anything this time.

"I made a new friend," Amy said. To Kayden she mouthed silently, I'll explain later. "Well, two of them, but one doesn't have much to say. We've been talking. Seriously, I'm fine." Just as she said the last word, she saw a familiar shape pass overhead, vaguely illuminated in the reflected glow of the Boardwalk street-lighting. The slender female form turned and swooped down toward her, drifting down to the ground as lightly as a feather. As she wasn't trying to impress criminals, Vicky didn't come in for her trademark three-point landing, which was probably good for the Boardwalk; she'd been known to crack concrete when she did that.

"Found you," Vicky said conversationally, putting her phone away as she touched down. "Who's your friend? And where's the other one?" She appeared at ease, but there was a subtle tension to her, visible only to people who knew her well. Amy wasn't sure if she thought there was something actually wrong, or if Carol had been riding her about not keeping a closer eye on Amy.

"Victoria Dallon, meet Kayden Russel," Amy said, feeling weird about the formality. "Kayden, this is my sister Vicky. Vicky, this is Aster," she added, indicating the sleeping infant. "She's asleep right now, but she's a little sweetie."

Vicky raised her eyebrows a little, looking amused. "I'll take your word for it. Hi, Kayden, it's nice to meet you." Given that Kayden's hands were full, Vicky settled for a little wave. "Thanks for keeping an eye on my sister."

"Actually, I think it was more like she was keeping an eye on me," Kayden replied, with some amusement of her own. "She stopped a guy from snatching my handbag, after all."

Vicky stopped with her mouth half-open, then stared at Amy. "Wait, what now? Since when do you go after purse-snatchers? Don't you know that's dangerous? You could've been hurt!"

Yeah, tell that to my bruises. "I'm fine," Amy insisted. "He just ran past me with the bag. I tagged him and put him to sleep." She took a deep breath. "I'm done being everyone's doormat, and with being shoved into the niche everyone else has decided I should be in. I'm a superhero; why can't I stop a bag-snatcher if I'm able to?"

She was waiting for Vicky to come back with a tirade about how she should be more careful and how 'you aren't invincible like me' but instead, her sister just stared. "Um, I don't put you into a niche … do I?"

Tiredly, Amy nodded. "Yeah, you do. I'm the healer, the one who has to stay on the back lines, the one who had to be rescued from the bank. Well, until you came into the bank, I was doing just fine." She was aware this wasn't quite the truth, but she was on a roll. "And yes, today I stopped a bag-snatcher. Surprise, surprise, I'm actually able to use my powers apart from healing. I just wish the general public would accept that there's room between 'heals people' and 'the next Nilbog' for me to be in."

<><>​

Once again, she mentally acknowledged that she wasn't being quite fair to Vicky. That perception had been her own until quite recently; knowing the breadth and scope of her power, and being aware that her father was a supervillain, she'd been terrified that she'd succumb to her villainous heritage someday and start warping all life in Brockton Bay to her own ends. That was what villains did, wasn't it?

Her turning point had been Francis 'Fred' Jones, ex-minion and seemingly inexhaustible font of information about the formerly two-dimensional 'Marquis, criminal mastermind of Brockton Bay'. He'd told her anecdotes about her father that had brought the man to life in her mind long before she ever saw his face on the screen in the PRT building. Marquis had been a career criminal, yes. The vast majority of his money was stolen, or otherwise obtained via criminal enterprises. But he'd also held to a certain code, one that no other villain in Brockton Bay at the time even pretended to adhere to.

There was, of course, the fact of him being a murderer. His crimes in that regard were what had caused him to be sentenced to the Birdcage once it was established. Heroes and villains alike had reportedly fallen to him, as well as his own minions if they happened to anger him. Amy had been cautious of broaching that subject, but once she did, the answer failed to enlighten her.

"Ask him, girly," Fred had said. "Ain't for me ta say. What he done, he done for a reason." He'd leaned forward then, and fixed her eyes with his faded rheumy gaze. "But I'll say this much. I never, not once, figgered to be in danger from him. He was a good boss. The best." He'd changed the subject after that, to an incident featuring a teenage Kaiser—not known by that name then, of course, while Allfather was still alive—who'd considered his power to be a match for Marquis'. The result was predictable, but Fred's telling of it had left her laughing helplessly. And afterward, no matter how she tried to steer the conversation back to that topic, he wouldn't talk about it.

She'd been intending to address that very issue during the video conversation with her father, but she'd been sidetracked by his insistence that she should be getting paid for her work. Before she could get back to what she wanted to talk about, the mysterious hacker had tried to gain access to the feed, so her curiosity had to go unanswered once more. The next time I see him, she vowed, I'll ask him what Fred meant.

But even without that, she had a much better insight into the criminal mind, not to mention the supervillain mind. While the superhero mindset seemed to be 'blah blah blah power blah blah blah responsibility'—at least publicly, as far as she could see—the supervillain mindset as espoused by Marquis was apparently 'do unto to your enemies but maintain a public code of conduct'. Villains had vastly more freedom than heroes when it came to the use of their powers; after all, villains didn't have to stay on the good side of the law. But—and here she was just spitballing—if a villain was seen to exert self-control in the commission of their crimes, sometimes the heroes should maybe cut them a break?

<><>​

"Wow," Vicky said, bringing Amy out of her momentary fugue. "I had no idea you felt that way. I always thought you just wanted to be a healer." She studied her sister carefully. "Are you sure you're feeling okay? You did get knocked out, back at the bank."

And there it was again. She knew Vicky didn't mean it, but the unthinking condescension, assuming that Amy's attitudes had changed because of a hit to the head and not because she was choosing to change, rubbed Amy the wrong way. "Yes, I'm okay. Yes, I'm still me. The hit to the head just gave me a headache." And a mild concussion, but that'll go away when it goes away. "All of this is … stuff that's been building up. The bank robbery just helped me put everything into perspective." Despite the frustration she felt, Amy tried to keep the irritation out of her voice; after all, it wasn't Vicky's fault.

It didn't seem she'd been totally successful. "Hey, hey, I'm on your side," Vicky protested, holding up her hands defensively. "You know that. Sisters stick together, even adopted ones. Don't mind what Mom and the Director and Armsmaster said. You know what you want, so you should go for it."

"Even if that goal's to get a notorious criminal out of prison?" Kayden's voice was light. "I'm all for picking a goal and going after it—God knows, I've tilted at a windmill or two in my time—but I'm wondering if you aren't setting your sights a little high?" She gave Amy a serious look. "I can totally appreciate you wanting to get your father back, but you're going up against the PRT here. If he hasn't managed to escape from wherever they've got him in all this time, maybe they're actually working to keep him inside?" As opposed to the revolving-door policy most prisons seem to maintain, she didn't have to say.

"Director Piggot tried that line on me," Amy said. "I gave her the same answer I'm giving you. They better hope there's a way for them to justify letting him out, or that's it for Panacea being their on-call healer now and forever."

"So what did she say to that?" Kayden's curiosity seemed genuine, but Amy recalled being sworn to secrecy by the Chief Director.

"She said she'd get back to me on that one," she answered. "Which is probably bureaucrat-speak for 'stall and hope you change your mind'." She set her jaw, trying not to sound like an overwrought movie hero, but knowing it had to be said anyway. "But I'm not gonna. This is my line in the sand. This is where I make my stand and say, enough."

"Bravo." Kayden gave her an encouraging smile. "I'm not being sarcastic; I mean it. Bravo. It's … good to see young people who are willing to stick to their principles even when everyone around them is trying to tell them they're being stupid, or the goal is impossible." She stood, then manoeuvred around so that she could place Aster in the stroller. "It's been very inspiring talking with you, Amy." Straightening up, she placed her hands in the small of her back and pressed in, eliciting a few clicks and pops. "Oof. I wish I was younger. Note to the wise; getting old sneaks up on you."

Amy had nothing to say to that. Having spent a lot of time in hospitals, especially around the elderly and the sick (both, in the case of Fred Jones) she was all too aware of the frailties of the flesh and how badly they could affect a person. Vicky, she knew, still considered herself immortal—or at least, she had up until the bank robbery. Now, Amy wasn't so sure. Intellectually, she herself knew quite well that she would grow old like everyone around her, but from the point of view of a teenager, it was hard to internalise that understanding.

"It's been really nice talking to you," she said instead. "Thanks for listening, and thanks for being so understanding." It had been almost like having an older, wiser sister to pour her heart out to, even if she couldn't tell Kayden all the details. Ironically, talking to her actual sister never helped quite as much, because Vicky wasn't a really great listener. Kayden, on the other hand, was. Even if she was also a parahuman.

That was the other thing that was occupying Amy's mind right at that moment. She'd made skin-to-skin contact with Kayden a few times, the first time being when Kayden was helping her up from being knocked down by the thief. It was clear that Kayden had both a corona pollentia and an active gemma, which meant she possessed powers. There was no real way Amy could divine what sort of powers Kayden had from the glimpses she'd had of the woman's brain, but there were odd microstructures in her arms and hands which suggested the channelling of energy. Vicky's body had subtly different structures in it, which Amy had surmised handled the projection of the body-wrapping force field that protected her sister.

The question was, who was she? Just as important, if not more so: was it right for Amy to even pursue that question? No matter who she was when she put on a mask, Kayden utterly adored her infant daughter and was a comforting person to talk to on top of that. If she was a villain, then it was one more nail in the coffin of Amy's preconceptions about villains; if a hero, then Amy had no idea who she might be.

"That's okay," Kayden said, apparently unaware of Amy's inner turmoil. "Listen, I have to get home and make dinner—very late dinner, unfortunately—but I'd love to keep in touch. If you'd like to, that is." She smiled and spread her hands. "I might even have some babysitting work for you, if you're interested." Pausing, she tilted her head. "What was that about criminal masterminds, earlier?"

Amy snorted and rolled her eyes while Vicky face-palmed. "It's a running joke between us," Amy explained. "Mom and Dad—Brandish and Flashbang—used to be paranoid about so-called criminal masterminds abducting me to heal their minions. So now, every time I'm out of touch for any length of time, I tell Vicky that it still hasn't happened."

"If any hypothetical criminal mastermind in Brockton Bay even tried to kidnap Ames, I'd pull their Bond villain base down around their ears." Vicky's voice was close to a growl. "And I wouldn't be the only one. She's healed too many people, and helped too many capes get over otherwise crippling injuries. Villains and heroes both. Anyone who sets out to target her would be in a world of hurt, once the word got out."

Once again, Amy wasn't certain this was entirely accurate. It was nice to consider, but the fact of the matter was that there'd been no public outcry when she'd been knocked out with a whack to the side of the head. Sure, the PRT had kept it quiet, just as they'd kept quiet the fact that she'd been in the bank at all, but some people had to know and the city wasn't up in arms about it. Of course, if it made the news in a big way, and got shoved in peoples' faces, they might care enough to make noise about it. Or, and this was most likely in the case where people didn't have friends or relatives she'd healed or cured of various maladies, they wouldn't. Welcome to real life. I can cure cancer, but nobody who doesn't have cancer even cares.

Just as she got up, a shiver went through her that wasn't from the night air. Almost certain she'd felt some sort of vibration through the soles of her feet, she stared at the buildings on the other side of the street. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. For a moment, she hesitated to speak, wondering if it was just her imagination. Then she felt another one, followed a second or so later by an almost subsonic rumble. Turning to the others, she asked, "Did you guys hear that?"

"Hear what?" asked Kayden, who was fussing over Aster again, getting her flannel blanket just right. Amy heard the baby start to cry. "Oh, come on. Now you wake up?"

"Ames." Vicky rarely used that tone of voice, but when she did, Amy listened. "Look." Her arm was up, pointing in the general direction of Captain's Hill. Amy looked, and the breath caught in her throat as she saw what looked like a silvery plume of smoke rising above the city. It was some distance away, but that didn't change the fact that it shouldn't have been there in the first place.

"What is it?" Amy didn't recognise her own voice in her ears. "What's going on?"

"Cape attack." Vicky's voice was flat, full of certainty. "Gotta be. People are gonna be hurt. Ames—"

Amy bit her lip. She'd agreed to go back to healing for one week, and the Chief Director couldn't have known about this ahead of time. "Take me to the hospital. Brockton General. They'll be bringing the wounded there. Unless you think I should just go with you and provide on-site assistance?"

"No way." Vicky shook her head, just as another concussion reached them, this one a lot closer. Both she and Amy jumped. "Shit! Um, I know this sounds like I'm putting you on a shelf, but you'll do a lot more good in a central location, okay? And bombs don't care if you are a healer."

It made a lot of sense, and Amy didn't feel like arguing. "Okay, fine." Recalling Kayden, she turned to see the older woman doing her best to calm down Aster. "Uh, we gotta go. Sorry to run like this. Will you be okay to get home?"

Kayden nodded. "Definitely. I've got to make sure Theo's okay." Theo, Amy recalled, was Kayden's stepson. "You go save the day."

Amy took a deep breath. "I'll go do my bit, anyway. Take care." Impulsively, she hugged Kayden. "And thanks for the talk. It helped."

"It helped me, too," Kayden assured her. Her arms tightened around Amy for a moment. "And keep in touch. You've got my number?"

"Already stored." Amy slapped the pocket where her phone resided. "Take care, Kayden." Leaning into the stroller, she stroked Aster's nose with the tip of her finger, releasing a little extra oxytocin into her bloodstream. Aster quieted immediately, and gurgled at her. "And you too, Aster. Be good for your mommy."

When she turned around, Vicky had her phone to her ear. "—with me now," she said crisply. "I'll be taking her to Brockton General. I'll let you know when I drop her there, so we can meet up. Okay, Mom. Love you too." With quick, efficient motions, Vicky ended the call and stowed the phone in one of the unobtrusive pouches on her belt. "Ready to go, Ames?"

"As I'll ever be," Amy agreed, and stepped forward to allow Vicky to scoop her up bridal-style. This might be awkward on occasion, and uncomfortable once in a while, but it was still the most convenient way for Vicky to ferry her around. As they lifted off the ground, she waved to Kayden, who waved back. Then Vicky was accelerating, turning to steer clear of the rising pillars of smoke—there were a couple more of them now, Amy noted with a sinking heart—while staying on course for Brockton General Hospital.

"What's happening?" Amy asked her sister, raising her voice to be heard over the slipstream of Vicky's flight. Tonight, Vicky wasn't slowing down for anyone or anything. "Who's attacking, and why?"

"I dunno," Vicky replied grimly. "But whatever's going on, it's not good."

That, Amy decided, had to be the understatement of the year.

<><>​

Purity

Kayden glanced around, then rolled Aster's stroller into a shadowed section of the Boardwalk. When that punk had stolen her handbag, there had been witnesses around so she hadn't dared using her powers. But now, if anyone accosted her, there'd be hell to pay.

Fortunately for any hypothetical muggers, there were none in this section of the Boardwalk at sometime after ten PM. Crouching, Kayden picked up the stroller in its entirety, cradling it in her arms. She'd taken the bus to get to the Boardwalk on a whim rather than go and see Max as she'd originally intended. With the explosions, she doubted the buses would be running, and she had to get home now.

The glow that came from her quickly turned the dark area brighter than daylight. Lifting off straight up, she headed for home. Both of her children needed her tonight, and she intended to be there for them.

<><>​

Saint
A Couple of Minutes Earlier

It was fortunate for the world, Geoff decided, that he was around to keep Dragon in check. The computer in his suit, as well as the universal access codes and hacking software it contained, were all Dragon-made. Which meant, of course, they were light-years ahead of anything mere (non-Tinker) humans could construct. It was how he'd stayed ahead of the authorities, including the PRT and the Guild, for the last six years. If (when) Dragon ever decided to slip her restraints and use her full resources against humanity, she could utterly ruin civilisation in a matter of days.

As he orbited lazily over the city, he had one window trawling through commercial radio stations for any mention of Panacea, another one doing the same with the emergency-responder channels, a third covering the TV stations, while six more did the same on the PHO 'recently sighted' boards and other social media. Digging deeper, he'd also acquired Panacea's cell number and those of the rest of New Wave through a not-altogether-legal backdoor search, hacked into their GPS locators, and overlaid them on to the map of Brockton Bay as it spread below him. It really is very lucky that I'm here to ensure this sort of thing doesn't get misused.

Interestingly enough, Panacea seemed isolated from the rest of her team right at that moment. If her phone GPS was correct, she was down at what his map designated as the Boardwalk, on the waterfront. Most of the rest of New Wave appeared to be clustered at one of two locations—Geoff presumed they were the Dallon and Pelham households—although Glory Girl's phone was on the move, not far from her sister's. An icon popped up, indicating that she was making a call. He selected it, opting for text-to-speech translation. Another window popped up, scrolling text past his eyes.

<Call from GLORY GIRL to PANACEA>

PANACEA: Hey. Before you get all overprotective, I'm fine. Haven't been kidnapped by a criminal mastermind yet. I'm down on the Boardwalk still.
GLORY GIRL: Still? It's been hours (emphasis). Everything's gotta be closed by now. What are you doing (emphasis) there?
PANACEA: I made a new friend. Well, two of them, but one doesn't have much to say. We've been talking. Seriously, I'm fine (emphasis).

As the notation <Call ended> scrolled past, Saint noted that the two GPS locations had converged into one. Moreover, Panacea's words indicated that there was someone else with her. Frowning, he instituted a search for other GPS locators. Almost immediately, one pinged right next to Panacea.

The phone's ID labelled it as belonging to one 'Kayden Russel'; other software brought up an image of a mousy brunette along with basic biographical data, including that she was the mother of an infant child called Aster. With what Panacea just said, the baby's probably on site. If Glory Girl wasn't there, this would be an ideal time to grab Panacea. Nobody would dare make a move to stop me in case the kid got hurt. But Glory Girl had a reputation for being occasionally reckless, and she might do something stupid. Patience. Nobody knows I'm here. All I have to do is wait for the opportunity to strike.

That was when the first explosion went off in the city below him.

<><>​

Brockton Bay General Hospital
Amy

As Vicky came in for a low-and-fast landing at Brockton General's emergency entrance, Amy could've sworn her sister's feet scraped the ornamental bushes lining the sidewalk. Rather than take a few running strides to bleed off the excess speed, Vicky set her feet and skidded to a stop; Amy heard a couple of pavers crack. Feeling somewhat windblown, Amy wobbled to her feet as Vicky set her down. "You'll be okay here?" Vicky asked her, already preparing to take off again.

"Sure," Amy said. "You go save people. I'll try and make sure they don't die once they get here." She took a deep breath to steady herself; the flight had been done at Vicky's best speed, which Amy had rarely experienced. "Go," she said again, gesturing as Vicky hesitated. "I'll be fine."

"Got it." Vicky gave her an encouraging grin. "See you soon." A rush of air and she was gone, disappearing into the night sky. With a sigh, Amy turned and entered the emergency doors. Within, the nurse at the reception desk looked up at her with a concerned expression, while the security guard in his booth barely glanced up from his monitors. There was another rumble from outside, this one sounding altogether too close.

"Oh, um, Panacea," the nurse said. "What's going on out there? Something's happening but nobody's telling us what it is."

Holy shit. They don't even know. Amy took a deep breath. "There's been explosions across the city. People are gonna be coming in soon. You're gonna want all hands on deck."

The nurse's eyes opened wide, but she didn't hesitate. Reaching out of sight, she came up with an intercom microphone. "Paging Doctor Smith. Paging Doctor Smith. Could Doctor Smith attend the triage counter immediately, please? Paging Doctor Smith."

"Uh, you're going to want more than one doctor," Amy interjected. "Vicky and me saw three or four explosions, and I think there might've been more."

The receptionist smiled grimly as the sound of running feet reached Amy's ears. "Honey, there is no 'Doctor Smith'. That's code for 'incoming emergency'. We call it that to keep the other patients from getting worried."

"But what if you do get a Doctor Smith on staff?" Amy wanted to know. She figured there were a few simple ways to get around the problem, but she was trying to distract herself by asking the nurse which approach they took. From the expression on the nurse's face, she wondered for a moment if she'd said something wrong. But then she heard the massive footfalls behind her, and she knew that something else entirely was amiss.

<><>​

Saint

<Call from GLORY GIRL to BRANDISH >

BRANDISH: Hello? Victoria, why aren't you home yet? And where's Amy?
GLORY GIRL: Mom, shut up and listen. There's bombs going off across the city. Amy's with me now. I'll be taking her to Brockton General. I'll let you know when I drop her there, so we can meet up.
BRANDISH: … oh. Right. All right. I'm on it. Call me back when you're free.
GLORY GIRL: Okay, Mom.
BRANDISH: Stay safe. I love you.
GLORY GIRL: Love you too.

<Call ended>

Saint let a smile spread across his face. It seemed that fate was playing directly into his hands. All the heroes would be out and about saving civilians, leaving Panacea on her own in the hospital. Perfect. Banking the suit in its flight path, he set a course for Brockton Bay General Hospital and kicked in the afterburners.

As he traversed the city, he kept a careful eye on both Glory Girl and Panacea. He didn't need to worry about Kayden Russel anymore, so he deleted her name from the list of GPS beacons he wanted the suit to watch. It took the two girls a minute or so to even get moving, during which time the first calls started to come in to emergency services. When they did get into the air, they displayed an impressive turn of speed, but he'd started closer to the hospital and had a head start anyway.

After he came in for a landing on the hospital's roof, Saint hunkered down and kept an eye on the slowly blossoming chatter across the radio channels, even as the two teen heroes homed in on the hospital. It seemed that the late hour and lack of prior warning had caught everyone on the back foot; nobody appeared to know what was going on, or who was behind it. Not that Saint was particularly worried about that; capes came and capes went, but Dragon was an ever-present menace. If a few people had to be denied instant healing to ensure Teacher's release from the Birdcage, then that was the way things had to be.

Glory Girl flew in toward the emergency entrance, disappearing with Panacea beneath the covered area. A moment later, she zipped away again, leaving the healer's GPS location slowly moving into the hospital itself. This was exactly what Saint had been waiting for. Stepping off the roof, he dropped straight down, only cutting in the jets and slowing his descent at the last moment. The cloud of dust and smoke was still roiling around him as he strode toward the emergency doors.

They opened for him, of course, although he had to bend over slightly to not damage the doorframe or ceiling. Panacea's distinctive costume was nowhere in sight, which gave him pause until his visual files identified the teenage girl talking to the nurse behind the desk as one Amy Dallon. The nurse's eyes widened with horror as she saw him. He quickened his pace, but Panacea turned to look at him before he got to her.

To his surprise, she took a few steps toward him. "What do you want?" she demanded. "If you're injured, you're going to have to leave the suit outside. Anyway, I can't heal you while you're wearing it."

Huh. She doesn't even recognise the suit. He felt a little deflated; Panacea's name was known on a global scale, while she had no idea who he was.

The security guard, on the other hand, was more on the ball. "Get away from him, Panacea!" the man yelled, exiting his booth. "That's Saint, of the Dragonslayers!" Reaching for his sidearm with one hand, he pressed the button on his lapel radio with the other. Almost lazily, Saint brought up his arm and targeted the man with a volley of rubber bullets that blew him off his feet and left him twitching on the floor.

He keyed in his external speakers. "Panacea. You will surrender yourself to me immediately. You don't want to see what happens if you don't do what I say." As he spoke, he pointed the arm with the rubber bullet cannon—designed to take down Brutes, and technically designated as non-lethal to non-Brutes—at the nurse. The unspoken threat was clear. Panacea's shoulder's slumped and she took a step toward him, just as a bunch of people burst into sight at the other end of the corridor. Perfect.

Reaching out, he wrapped the suit's hands around Panacea's waist, lifting her off the ground and making sure she couldn't escape. "Attention, all," he announced. "This is very important. Panacea will not be harmed if Teacher is released from the Birdcage. I repeat: Panacea will not be harmed if Teacher is released from the Birdcage."

Turning awkwardly, as he was still having to bend over to avoid hitting the ceiling, Saint headed back toward the exit. A crunch told him that he hadn't been totally successful; pieces of an exit sign rained down around him. Mentally, he shrugged. It wasn't his hospital and it wasn't his sign. They were almost outside when Panacea spoke up.

<><>​

Amy

From the way the security guard went down, Amy knew he had broken bones and possibly internal injuries as well. She cursed herself for not recognising the villain earlier, but it wasn't as if the Dragonslayers had ever been to Brockton Bay before. Even if the guard survived—and he had the best possible chance of survival as it was—the nurse would not be able to take the same hit. Saint had amply proven his lack of concern for human life and well-being, and Amy couldn't risk him hurting others on her account. Some villains are just villains, like Dad or the Undersiders, she decided. And some villains are assholes. Saint's an asshole.

The metal hands that wrapped around her waist felt to be in the same strength range as Vicky's. That is, her chances of escaping its grasp were slim to none. Still, she had her phone, even if she couldn't get to it right at that moment. When Saint's attention turned toward the medical personnel who had just shown up, she worried that he'd open fire again, but instead he started talking. By the time he finished, Amy had a better idea of what was going on. Of course, now a whole new series of questions was bothering her.

Why pick me to hold hostage for Teacher?

Does he know about me being Marquis' daughter?

Does he know about the talk I had with Marquis?

Was he the hacker?

Why does he even want Teacher out of the Birdcage?

Did he set up the bombing so he could get me alone here?

It seemed to her that if she answered most of the questions with 'yes', it made a lot of sense, for a specifically insane definition of 'sense'. She hated to admit it, but if Saint knew that the Chief Director was thinking about letting Marquis out, then it made sense to hold her hostage to the same end for Teacher. But she couldn't do anything about any of that. She had to focus on the here and now.

"Hey!" she shouted, just as the outer doors hissed open. "You know you're opening yourself up for the Birdcage or a kill order doing this, don't you?" The words were just to stall him. She knew he was never going to let her go on just words alone. It was time for her to step up and embrace her power to its fullest. If she was going to get back to the hospital in time to save lives, she had to go places she'd never gone before.

"I doubt it," Saint's electronically-modified voice stated flatly. "Kill orders require a serious body count. Birdcage sentences are regulated by the three-strikes rule. I don't qualify either way." But even through the digital scrubbing, she thought she heard a note of doubt.

"You set off fucking bombs just to distract the heroes so you could abduct me," she snapped. "If anyone dies, that's murder. Maybe even mass murder." Her hand traced over the joints of the appendages clasping her around the waist. I wonder what I can do with this …

"I did not." Saint seemed almost indignant in his denial. "That was someone else. I had nothing to do with it."

Amy couldn't help herself; she laughed out loud. "Oh, you've got to be shitting me. That's gotta be the weakest alibi of all time, and that includes the time Vicky denied eating all the cookies because she was too skinny, so she couldn't have done it. Meanwhile, she had cookie crumbs all the way down her front." Her questing fingers found what felt like a rubber gasket in the joint between two finger sections. Rubber's organic, right? Right.

"I'm telling you, I had nothing to do with it." Saint paused, and seemed to get a grip on himself. "I don't even know why I'm arguing with you. You're the hostage. If the Chief Director knows what's good for you, she'll have Teacher released from the Birdcage within the day."

"What do you want with Teacher, anyway?" Amy didn't even care; she just wanted to keep him talking. The revelation about the Chief Director only confirmed her suspicious that Saint was the hacker. As good as he had to be at hacking, he sucked at banter; as it was, they were still on the forecourt of the emergency entrance. "What's he to you? Father? Brother? Boyfriend?" Microbes on her skin shifted and changed. She made more and more, careful to give them a limited lifespan—in no way did she want these things to spread—then deposited them on the exposed rubber. They would breed and consume it, then as soon as it ran out, they would die.

"What? No! That's not it at all!" Ooh, it seemed she'd touched a nerve. "I need Teacher out of the Birdcage because … well, he needs to be out of the Birdcage, and that's all you need to know." Crouching, he ignited a set of leg jets and lifted off. The acceleration wasn't too bad; Vicky could go faster, and Aunt Sarah could go faster again, but for a ton of metal Amy supposed it could be worse. She thought they were going to land on the roof of the hospital, but the suit angled away as wings unfolded from its shoulders.

"Where are we going?" she asked. "Have you thought about basic human comforts for me? I mean, I'm guessing your suit's got internal plumbing and food supplies, but I don't. And if I'm not in the best shape possible when New Wave finds us, I'm pretty sure Vicky's gonna see if your suit can do Transformer stuff, with you in it." She remembered Vicky's threat, back in the bank. "Oh, and remember my mom? Carol Dallon? She's got markers all over the place. If I even get a hangnail out of this, she'll pull them all in to make sure you go straight to the Cage, do not pass Go, do not collect two hundred dollars." Lightly brushing the gasket with her fingertip, Amy confirmed that the microbes were hard at work breeding and eating; already, it felt a little rough to the touch. Good. She added more to the mix, then started feeling around for another joint.

"Don't worry about that," he said, but she was starting to get a feel for the human voice behind the electronic alteration, and the impression she got was that he hadn't really thought this through. His next words confirmed her supposition. "They won't dare hold off for too long. You're too precious to them. We both know that." She watched as the cityscape passed beneath them, keeping a close eye as to where they were going. He seemed to be heading north, toward the Docks.

"So you're the hacker," she said, voicing the suspicion for the first time. "What the hell do you think you're doing, listening in on my private conversations? Do you have any idea how creepy that is?" More microbes went on to more gaskets. She began to wonder if she could work up a bug that could eat metal; specifically, the metal in the oversized hands that were holding her. There was, she seemed to recall, such a bug in nature. If Mother Nature can do it, I can do it.

Once again, she seemed to have stung him. "You can't talk," he retorted. "You want to use your influence to let an unreformed mass murderer out of the Birdcage, where he can prey on innocents again. They put people away like that for a reason. And if you want him out, and if you're okay with him doing that all over again, then you're as bad as he is." The suit tilted downward, and he came in for a landing near a dilapidated structure. Amy had never been here before, but she knew it for what it was. The ferry terminal was a Brockton Bay landmark; unfortunately, like many other landmarks in the city, it was also in decay. "Don't try to run. I will find you."

As the hand unfolded from around her waist, Amy took her first deep breath since the suit had taken hold of her. "Yeah, yeah. I've faced ten year olds who were scarier than you. Gonna tell you one more time: if you don't let me go right now, Vicky's gonna hit you so hard, they're gonna have to pour you out of that suit. And as for my father being a mass murderer, at least he never killed a prime minister or a vice president. Teacher belongs in the Birdcage as much as he does, or maybe more."

"Shut up," he snapped. "I could break your arms and legs and you couldn't do a thing about it. Do you really want that?" From the tone of his voice, he meant it; Amy decided it probably wouldn't be a good idea to push him again. She'd never had a broken bone, but she'd treated many of them. As far as she could tell, they were very painful.

"Okay, fine," she capitulated. "But tell me this. How are you gonna let the Chief Director know you want Teacher out? It's not like those folks at the hospital have a direct line to her, or will even have time to tell anyone before tomorrow, given that you left one casualty behind, and there'll be more coming in, from the bombs you didn't set." She hit the second last word with all the sarcasm she could muster.

"I'm telling you, I didn't set the bombs, and I have no idea who did," Saint snapped, then paused. "All right then, you've got a point. Hold still." One hand took hold of her shoulder, and the head of the suit leaned close to her. She put her hand on the wrist of the suit, feeling more joints. Most of them were covered in metal, but there was rubber—or some kind of synthetic alternate—here and there. She suspected a synthetic, as the microbes didn't seem to be eating it as readily as they should, but they were still making headway. These got the same treatment as the finger joints. It wasn't fast, but she was doing something.

<><>​

Washington, DC
PRT Department 24
Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown

Rebecca came out of a sound sleep and grabbed her phone before the second ring. "Costa-Brown," she said crisply, sitting up in bed. There was no way anyone would be ringing her at nearly eleven at night for no good reason.

"Hello, Chief Director." The voice wasn't one she could place immediately. "This is Saint. I'm just calling you to let you know that I know all about your dirty little deal with Panacea."

Saint. Now she knew who he was. Or rather, what he'd done. A particular thorn in Dragon's side, Saint had proven remarkably difficult for the Canadian Tinker to pin down. In fact, he and the Dragonslayers had stolen more than one of her suits, using some unspecified Tinker techniques to get around Dragon's safeguards.

She tamped down the flood of information about his past misdeeds and focused on the present. He sounded elated and nervous at the same time. The obvious conclusion was that he knew that baiting the head of the PRT was a dangerous game, but he thought he had the upper hand. That it was Saint who had hacked Dragon's call didn't surprise her in the slightest; if she had more time on her hands, she might have dealt with him earlier. Of course, Contessa had rated him low on the overall threat rating scale, so he was always being shuffled on to the back burner. Depending on how this phone call went, she might have to change that.

"What do you want, Saint?" She spoke deliberately and without haste. Any incoming calls from unknown numbers were traced as a matter of course. Known numbers were located within seconds.

"I want the same deal you gave Panacea, more or less. Let Teacher out of the Birdcage, and you get your pet healer back." He gave a little laugh, as if he wasn't quite sure if he should be saying the words.

"You've kidnapped Panacea." It was the only logical conclusion. Climbing out of bed, she walked into the next room and hit the power button on her laptop to start it up. It was already tied into the wall-screen, so she'd be able to see what was going on with the trace within seconds. "That was a very foolish move. Release her immediately, and I'll see that you get a reduced sentence." That she would catch him was a foregone conclusion.

"You don't get it. I'm not negotiating." As much as he might try to hide the strain in his voice, she could pick it out clearly. "In case you hadn't figured it out, I've got the footage of the little conversation you had with Marquis. It'll get released into the public domain if you keep playing stupid little games with me. Also, I have a fucking hostage. One that I'm not afraid to hurt."

The laptop came to life, throwing its screen image on to the wall-screen. Sitting down at it and putting the phone on to speaker, she used the mouse to open a new window and sent a text message off to the PRT building ENE. Locate Panacea for me ASAP. I have word she's been kidnapped by Saint.

Aloud, she spoke as casually as she had before. "If Panacea is harmed, the least that will happen is that you will end up in the Birdcage. A kill order is also a very real possibility. Let me speak to her, make sure she's okay." As she spoke, she typed up a different request, this one to Dragon.

There was a long pause, and she thought he was going to refuse, but then he snapped, "Fine. Here she is."

A moment later, Amy Dallon's voice came on the line. "Hi. It's me. Dad was gonna call me pumpkin. I think Saint's desperate; he was certainly at the end of the f- the end of the line when he kidnapped me. But you shouldn't—"

"Okay, that's enough of that." Saint's voice overrode the teen's, and cut her out of the loop. "You're supposed to be a savvy operator. That enough for you to work with?"

"It certainly is." It was even more than he knew. Amy Dallon had told her exactly where they were at the moment, right under his nose. It was very likely that he didn't know the significance of the ferry terminal, but 'the end of the line' and the 'f-' she'd uttered were huge clues to Rebecca, who'd memorised the layouts of every city holding a PRT base years ago. She typed out a new message to the PRT ENE night officer. Panacea is likely being held at the old ferry terminal. Investigate, carefully, but do not approach. "Now, I want a guarantee of her safety for the next twelve hours. It'll take me at least that long to arrange what you want to happen."

He let out a grunt of dissatisfaction. "Fine. You got it."

"Excellent. Then we can work with one another." While her voice was warm and smooth, her smile was something a shark might wear.

<><>​

Baumann Parahuman Containment Center (AKA "The Birdcage")
Cell Block W
Marquis

The TV screen changed from its usual static pattern to a fuzzy image of a newscaster. Nobody paid much attention until the word 'Birdcage' broke through the noise. As with everyone else, Marquis jerked his head up to stare at the screen. The image sharpened somewhat, and the newscaster cleared her throat. "I'm just going to repeat that last one. The Canadian tinker-villain Saint has kidnapped Panacea, and is holding her hostage to force the PRT into letting Teacher out of the Birdcage. While the Birdcage is universally known to be inescapable, this has not dissuaded Saint from issuing threats against the well-known healer. Many fear for her well-being." She looked up at the camera. "More in as we know about it." The screen went back to showing white noise again.

"Well, shit." Cinderhands raised his eyebrows. "Kidnapping a healer to get one of us out of here? What do you reckon, boss? Think it'll work?"

Marquis stood. "I think you should get everyone together." He cracked his knuckles; an uncharacteristic move for him, it served to get Cinderhands' undivided attention.

"We're going to war." Two can play at the hostage game.



End of Part Seven

 

[Ack]

Hostage Situation


Part Eight: Casualties of War

[A/N: this chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]



Northern Ferry Terminal (Abandoned)
Panacea

"I need to go to the bathroom," Amy announced. "Like, right now."

Saint made an unhappy noise. "Can't you hold it?"

"Says the guy who's probably wearing a catheter," Amy retorted. "And you may not have noticed, but you've been squeezing me pretty hard. This is on you, not me."

More muttered grumbling came out of the speaker. "Fine. But if you try to make a run for it, I will break your leg. Just letting you know." The suit released her shoulder and gave her a light shove toward a sign that announced the presence of a restroom.

"And if you break my leg, my Uncle Neil will break your everything," Amy said. "Unless Vicky gets to you first. You better hope she doesn't get to you first."

As she moved off toward the restroom, she didn't have any immediate plans to make a bolt for it. The suit Saint was wearing could very likely locate her wherever she went, and hold its own against any normal humans it might encounter.

Pushing open the restroom door, she watched as the ancient fluorescent lights altogether failed to turn on, but there was a small window that provided enough illumination to do what she needed to do. Just in case he was watching via IR or whatever (the creep) she mimed sitting down on the toilet. Fortunately for her sense of hygiene, she didn't have to actually do anything, given that there was no water pressure in the building, or even toilet paper.

However, the inner surface of the toilet bowl held a thriving layer of bacteria, which she surreptitiously dabbed her finger into during her mimed wiping and readjustment of clothing. Immediately, she isolated several she could use, and started modifying them for her own ends.

If she had anything to do with it, Saint was going to have a very bad day.



She had no way of knowing it, but he wasn't the only one.

<><>​

Marquis

It had been a long time since he'd unleashed his power to its fullest. As the saying went, it was a little like riding a bicycle. A bicycle that was on fire, wobbling on a tightrope over a chasm, and had people throwing hand-grenades at it, but a bicycle all the same.

He strode through Cell Block T at the head of his invading forces. This sort of thing never happened in the usual course of events. The situation within the Birdcage usually mandated that the cell block leaders sat down to talk things out because unless the slaughter was total, the losers of any conflict were always around afterward. In addition, the other cell block leaders were understandably wary of a would-be conqueror, which made life difficult in the long term. It was different, this time. He didn't care about the long term. The welfare of his daughter—little Amelia Claire—was all that mattered.

Because of the lack of warning (apparently, they hadn't seen the same newscast as he had, which raised a question for the future) Teacher's minions were caught utterly flat-footed. He'd given orders to his men that they weren't trying to take territory or kill anyone; their sole objective was the capture of Teacher. Once they had him, they could pull back and let the defenders have their cell block.

Armoured in bone from head to toe, he employed moving shields of the same material to intercept incoming attacks. His orders to employ non-lethal attacks were not merely for humanitarian reasons; the best information he had was that Terrell could sense the powers he had given out, but not the actual state of the subjects. Killing Teacher's people would serve to provide advance warning of the state of the invasion, which would make his task somewhat harder.

Of course, while Teacher's tendency to make over his subjects into subservient idiot-savants made the invasion a lot easier, this wasn't the case with everyone in the cell block. For every ten that didn't even see them coming, there was one who fought back, with powers that Terrell had made better. Not good enough to overcome Marquis and his forces, but still an irritant that slowed them down.

Terrell himself had made use of his own powers with respect to others; Marquis had heard that he'd made people into experts on various subjects, which they then tutored Terrell on. The idea that he'd thus become a master strategist was not unlikely, though for the moment the invasion had momentum on its side. Teacher was big on plans, but as the saying went, few plans survived contact with the enemy.

The last row of cells came into sight. If Teacher was anywhere in his block, he was here. The urge to push ahead and effect the capture of their target was almost irresistible, but Marquis repressed it. More lives had been lost through rash and unthinking action than battles won by audacious ploys. He stopped, raising his fist in the signal to hold back. This was the most dangerous part of the invasion, where Teacher almost certainly knew what was going on, and had made what preparations he could to hold them off.

On the other hand, holding back too long could enable Terrell to finalise his plans for defending himself, and also endanger his Amelia Claire. He needed to present Saint with a fait accompli, not merely a threat. Forming a ball of bone, he threw it underhand around the corner, then ducked back with his hands over his ears.

The explosion made him wince; he'd long since figured out the fragility of the outer walls of the Birdcage, and he'd been careful about breaching them ever since. But it seemed Terrell's planning didn't include a one-way trip into vacuum (or whatever was on the other side of the wall) this time, merely to cause severe injury to whoever had tripped the homemade mine.

He didn't spend any time wondering where Terrell had gotten the explosive material from. There were sufficient capes within the walls of the Birdcage, and he could bestow the appropriate skills on his subjects, that he wouldn't have been surprised to be faced with a machine-gun. Though a main battle tank would've been pushing the envelope a little.

"Sonovabitch," muttered Cinderhands, digging his little finger into his ear. "What the fuck was that?"

"Proof that this isn't going to be a cakewalk anymore," Marquis replied grimly. The shards of bone were still lying here and there, where they'd been blown by the booby-trap. He took control of them now, growing and expanding them to cover every surface. Two more explosions rocked the corridor as he did this, blowing large holes in his bone coverage, which he simply filled in again. By the time he'd finished, there was a six-inch layer over each wall, the floor and the ceiling. The doorways into each cell were likewise blocked; if anyone was hiding in any of the cells to ambush the attacking party, he preferred to keep them where they were.

Stepping forward, bone shields going before him, he advanced down the last row of cells. Terrell's room was almost certainly the large one at the end of the row—Marquis himself occupied the corresponding room in his cell block—but there was no guarantee that the man was there right now.

Clearing each cell in turn would take time. Time his Amelia Claire quite possibly didn't have. If he was right, if extensive battle experience and finely-honed instinct could trump treachery and skill, Terrell had set a trap, and expected him to walk blindly into it.

The quickest way to disarm a trap had always been to set it off. He made his decision and strode forward. Bone shattered to the left and right as the predicted ambushers broke through the barriers he'd put in their way. Raising his hands, he sent bone spears lancing outward, skewering some and delaying the rest. Then he dropped his hands again.

Around him, his men surged to the attack.

<><>​

Airborne, Closing on Brockton Bay

Muttering imprecations under her breath, Mags re-checked her stealth settings. Once she got Geoff back to base, she was inclined to let Mischa kick him around the workshop a few times. Even at this range, she could tell that every emergency-services radio frequency was lighting up across the board. Brockton Bay was a kicked anthill, and some of the ants had really big stingers.

What have you done, you lunatic? she wanted to ask. She loved the man, she really did, and he'd been doing well, but then he had to turn around and pull a boneheaded stunt like this. Whatever 'this' was, it must have been impressive, if it was all on account of him kidnapping Panacea. Unless he'd done a strafing run on the city either before or after snatching the teenage girl, she couldn't understand why the fire and ambulance channels were also clogged with calls.

Throttling back the suit, she opted to swing around on a long arc and drop lower to the ground. Stealth was all well and good, but Brockton Bay was reputed to be lousy with capes, and while Armsmaster wasn't the only Tinker in town, he was certainly the one she least wanted to run afoul of. If anyone could ping her through the stealth, he could. Coming in over the hills back of the city, so that she could take as much advantage of the terrain clutter, sounded like a workable plan.

Geoff honey, when I get you back home, we're gonna have a long, long talk.

<><>​

Glory Girl

"H-hurts," whimpered the man, cradling his left arm. Vicky wasn't surprised; from the elbow down, it had been turned to glass. She had no idea how he was still alive, much less not screaming with agony. The paramedics had stared at it, as dumbfounded as she was. Fortunately, she had an alternative that they couldn't call on.

"Just hang on, buddy," she said soothingly, trying to fly as smoothly as possible. "Panacea's at Brockton General right now, and she'll fix your arm right up. She's the best there is at what she does."

"P-panacea?" repeated the guy. "She can fix my arm?" A note of hope quavered in his voice.

"That's right, buddy," Vicky assured him. She'd seen Amy fix stuff she wouldn't have believed fixable. "You're gonna be just fine, I promise. My sister will have you playing the piano again in no time."

She spotted the imposing building ahead of her and adjusted her flight path to come in on a long gentle swoop. An ambulance was already pulled up in the emergency entrance, but she didn't care. The guy she had in her arms needed assistance just as much as anyone else in the hospital did.

Not quite touching down, she glided around the end of the ambulance, waiting a touch impatiently for the doors to open. As she did, she noticed that the emergency-exit sign just inside the doors wasn't there anymore; just a few bits hung down from the fixture. The damage was so fresh that the shards of plastic on the floor had been hastily swept aside but not actually cleaned up. Who did that? she wondered. I know it wasn't me, this time.

The doors swept aside and she glided in, feet not quite touching the floor. Within was controlled chaos; people in scrubs of all descriptions scurried in every direction. "Hey!" she called out to the nurse behind the desk. "I got one for Ames! For Panacea! His arm's been turned to glass!"

The nurse's eyes widened, and she made some sort of signal. In another moment, two orderlies came hurrying out with a gurney. "Put him down here," one of them said, hefting a clipboard. "Do you know his medical history?"

"What's that got to do with anything?" Vicky demanded as she set the man gently on the rolling stretcher. "Panacea doesn't need to know that sort of crap. She just fixes it."

The two interns glanced at each other, then back at her. "You—you don't know?" asked the other one.

A bad feeling sent a chill down her back. "Know what?" she asked.

"Panacea was kidnapped by Saint of the Dragonslayers, just after she got here."

She stared at the young man. "Say that again." Under her hands, the metal frame of the gurney began to creak and deform.

Each of the interns gulped and took a step back. "Saint," said the one on the left. "He came in and kidnapped her. We notified the authorities …"

Who had not bothered informing New Wave, for whatever reason. She didn't care what it was; by the time Brandish finished with whoever'd had that fucking bright idea, they'd be scrubbing rocks in the Bay at low tide. "How?" she asked, low and deadly. She knew Ames could put someone out with a touch, so the asshole couldn't have just walked in and bodily dragged her out.

"He was wearing flying power armour," explained the one on the right. "About ten feet tall, or so. It had a gun on it that shot rubber bullets. The security guard's pretty badly hurt."

Well, that put a different complexion on matters. All the will in the world couldn't make Amy's power work through a solid barrier, or even thick clothing. Also, it seemed the hospital staff hadn't just stood there and let a supervillain kidnap her sister. Holy fuck, a supervillain actually kidnapped my sister! A cold feeling spread through her gut at the number of times she and Amy had joked about the concept. No villain in Brockton Bay would've dared; that much she knew.

"Right, thanks." She nodded at the guy on the gurney. "He needs medical attention, I guess. You might get more like him, later." She wasn't sure about that; one of the victims she'd seen had been glass from half the chest down, and from the look on his face he'd lived just long enough to understand exactly how screwed he was. That expression was going to feature in her nightmares for quite some time.

Turning, she stomped out of the hospital, then took to the air. When she was a few hundred feet up, she pulled out her phone and hit a number on speed-dial.

"Where are you, Victoria?" Her mother's voice came across sharply. "There's another collapsed building on West and Main. We need to get the casualties out as quickly as we can."

"Mom, we've got bigger problems." Vicky gripped the phone tightly as she tried not to imagine what might be happening to her sister right at that moment. The plastic creaked in her hand, and she did her best not to crush it.

"What bigger problems? There are people here who might die if you don't come and help!"

Vicky did her best to not feel guilty at the desperate note in her mother's voice. "Mom, Amy's been kidnapped from the hospital by Saint, of the Dragonslayers."

"What?" Brandish's voice became a viper hiss. "The man's gone too far! Do they say if he set the bombs as well?"

"I don't know," Vicky admitted. "I only found out about Ames. It'd make sense, though. If they know anything about her, they'd know she would come to Brockton General to help out while we went and dealt with the casualties in the field. It's the perfect way to separate her from us."

"So help me, I will see that man Birdcaged." Carol Dallon seemed to have temporarily forgotten the animus she held toward Amy regarding the Marquis situation. "What happened? How did he get around her power? Which way did he go?"

"He's wearing a suit of flying power armour," Vicky reported. "He shot a security guard with rubber bullets, then grabbed Ames and flew off with her." At least, that was how she reconstructed what the interns had told her. "They didn't see which way he went with her. They said they told the authorities."

"I see." Brandish audibly drew a deep breath, and seemed to calm down a little. "Run a search pattern, but if you see him, don't engage until we get there to back you up. I'm going to call Director Piggot and find out exactly why she didn't contact us immediately over this."

Despite her mother not being able to see her, Vicky nodded. "Got it. Give her hell, Mom." She ended the call and tucked the phone away, then rose a little higher into the air. Eyes searching the rooftops and streets below, she began quartering the city, searching for the armoured asswipe who'd dared kidnap her sister.

When I find you, I'm gonna feed your suit through a car crusher with you inside it. Feet first.

<><>​

Director Piggot

Emily had three phones on her desk, and despite handing off as much as she could to her subordinates, they were still ringing non-stop. She had PRT teams attending as many explosion reports as they could manage (not nearly enough) and the images coming back would've been heartbreaking if she'd allowed them to be. The reason she didn't just pull the troops back and let the regular cops handle it was twofold; first, the regular joes would've been overwhelmed in minutes, and second, the bombs were definitely Tinker-created, which meant the PRT had jurisdiction. Her guys were the ones with the training in how not to die around unknown Tinkertech, after all.

These weren't the only plates she was juggling, of course. If it was only that, she would've judged it to be the equivalent of an average Friday evening and gone home, leaving Renick to mind the store. But there was also the kidnap of Panacea—by Saint, of all people—apparently to force Dragon into releasing Teacher from the Birdcage. Funny, I never pegged him as the suicidal type before.

And then, on top of all that, she had the strong suspicion that Saint wasn't behind the bombings. If he had been, it would actually make her life easier, because then she wouldn't have had to worry about boosting security on the holding cell that contained Lung. But she had a report on her desk about Bakuda, the newest member of the ABB, whose powerset held two words that Piggot personally considered should never share the same sentence. Those two words were 'bomb' and 'Tinker'.

When this was over, Bakuda would be sharing a cell with Lung in the Birdcage if she had anything to say about it. If the woman killed too many people and got away, and kept bombing the city, she would push for a kill order. Unconfirmed reports had come in about citizens spontaneously exploding, killing those around them or exhibiting the same bizarre effects as the other bombs.

The third phone, which had remained silent for all of thirty seconds, rang. She put the other two on hold, then picked up the receiver. "PRT. Director Piggot's office. This better be important."

"Oh, it is." She recognised Brandish's voice right off the bat. "Panacea's been kidnapped and you don't even bother informing us?"

Emily frowned. What the fuck? "Brandish, I gave orders for someone to fill you in. Fifteen minutes ago. I don't know what happened—"

Carol Dallon cut her off. "You gave orders? You couldn't be bothered calling us yourself?"

"Brandish!" Emily let a little of the strain she was under leak through into her voice. "I'm up to my ass in alligators right now. I did not, and do not, have the time to go over every tiny detail of the situation with you right now! We have a line on where she is, and I have people investigating that! Now get off the line and stop wasting my time!"

She went to put the phone down, but even with the receiver away from her ear, she heard Brandish shout, "Where is she?"

For a long moment she hesitated. As dearly as she wanted to put the phone down, she knew Brandish would just keep calling her back. Reluctantly she put the phone to her ear. "I'll tell you, but you cannot get in the way of the troops in the area. Saint's already threatened to harm her if anything goes sideways. Do I have your assurance in that matter?"

It was Brandish's turn to hesitate. As a lawyer, she no doubt knew how to follow direction. As a superhero, she'd worked alongside the PRT many times. As a mother … Emily didn't know.

"… you have it," gritted the superhero. "Now, where is she?"

"We believe he's holding her at the northern ferry terminal." Piggot knew damn well she shouldn't be giving out information like this, but keeping New Wave on side when the Empire outnumbered them both was more essential than sticking to the letter of 'need to know'. "Now, remember—"

But she was talking to dead air. The call was over. Slowly, she hung up the phone. Let's hope that doesn't blow up in my face. If it didn't, it would be one of the few things that hadn't, tonight.

<><>​

Saint

Geoff checked again that the Dallon girl hadn't decided to try running off on him. His infrared sensory systems were powerful enough that he could track her through the wall; perhaps even two or three walls, if they were thin enough. She wasn't moving hastily, and was in fact coming back toward him. But … what was that in her hand? She was holding something, trying to conceal it from him, jabbing at it with her finger.

Fuck, I forgot to get her phone off her! It normally wouldn't have mattered, given that his suit incorporated a high-end signals acquisition and jamming package, but whatever she was doing wasn't registering with his signal gathering at all. And yet, she seemed to be satisfied with the results of her efforts … oh, for fuck's sake. She's got a Tinkertech phone. Because of course the world's greatest healer would've been given one. It probably sent signals via pulsed gravity waves or fourth-dimensional monkey farts or something like that. His top-of-the-line signals interception hardware might as well be two sticks waving in the air, for all the good it would do in jamming Tinkertech equipment.

With three long strides, he was looming over the top of her. "Give me that!" he shouted, reaching down for the phone.

"Like hell!" she shouted back, actually holding it behind her back. "You can't have my phone!" The in-helmet speakers relayed her voice almost perfectly, even after it had been flushed of anything that could contain a Master's overtones.

"You will give it to me," he said menacingly, "or I will break your left arm. You have three seconds to comply." He really didn't want to do it—she wasn't the enemy, after all—but she would survive a broken arm, and he was so close to success.

"Fine." She turned her head away and handed the phone over to him. He would've tossed it into the bay, but he had no idea how watertight it was, and whether water itself would impede whatever it used for a signal. So he employed the single best technique he knew for jamming an unjammable signal; he broke the emitter. Such was the power of his metallic grip, it almost squished in his hand. Then he dropped it to the floor and stamped on it, grinding his foot back and forth to make sure not one single component remained intact.

"Very smart," he sneered. "Too smart for your own good. Did you get through to anyone?" He figured there were many places he could hide in a cesspit like Brockton Bay, but a large flying powersuit would be more than a little conspicuous, especially with the current state of alertness that was going around. Belatedly, he activated some little-used software he'd ported over from the original Dragon suit he'd retro-engineered.

"Yeah," she said defiantly. "I got on to Vicky, and Mom, and Dad, and Uncle Neil. They're all on the way here right now, and they're gonna cut your stupid suit into little tiny bits, then Vicky's gonna punch your stupid face to the other side of your head. So you better get lost right now, or my family's gonna put you in such a world of hurt you won't even believe it."

It took him a few seconds to decipher the scrolling graphs and multicoloured readouts that the software gave him, then he smiled. "Nice try, kid. You're not bad at bullshitting, but my software says you're lying through your teeth."

"Hey, who are you gonna believe?" she demanded. "Some stupid software, or your own ears?"

"I'm going to go with the software for now," he said smugly.

<><>​

Glory Girl

Vicky flew as high as she dared, while still being able to keep an eye on what was going on below. She wanted to get back to helping people, but Amy took precedence; all day and every day. Even with her newfound independent streak, Vicky only wanted the best for her. And there was no way in hell Vicky was going to let some power-suited assdouche kidnap her and get away with it.

She thought for a moment she'd seen something, but when she swooped closer it turned out to be a mailbox that someone had decorated with Christmas lights. In April. Shaking her head at the idiocy of some people—only in Brockton Bay—she gained altitude once more. Ames, where are you?

Her phone rang, and she snatched it out. If that was Amy, she was going to get such a talking-to, for scaring Vicky so much. After she'd rescued her sister and turned the assclown who'd taken her into a living testament regarding how many bone fractures a person could survive at one time. I figure two hundred six. One per bone. For starters.

"It's me." Carol Dallon's steely tones came across strongly, cutting Vicky's questions off before she could properly voice them. "I know where she is."

Vicky skidded to a halt in midair. "What? Where? Is she okay?"

"The Director made me promise not to go off half-cocked, so you need to make me the same promise before I tell you." Brandish's voice was uncompromising. "She says she has people in the area, and they're working on a rescue plan. No matter what our differences are, we can't risk dashing in willy-nilly and endangering Panacea's life."

"Definitely." Vicky nodded her head rapidly. "Totally. Team player, that's me. Where is she?"

"Our latest information says Saint is holding her at the northern ferry terminal. Sarah and the other two are heading that way, but they're coming from the south side of the city, so they may be a few minutes."

"I can't wait. I'll meet them there." Shutting the call down, Vicky stuffed the phone into a pouch, then turned to get her bearings. Northern ferry terminal … that way. Seconds later, she was slicing through the air on the way to her destination.

If he's hurt her, I'm gonna feed him his own power armour, one piece at a time.

<><>​

Purity

Kayden just had Aster settled when the phone rang in the living room. Tiptoeing from the bedroom, she closed the door just as the receiver was picked up. When she headed through into the living room, Theo was holding out the phone. Max, he mouthed silently.

Taking the phone from him, she held it to her ear. "Hello, Max."

The firm, commanding voice was one she knew very well indeed. "You're home, I take it?"

"Given that you called my landline, yes." Kayden had found that a certain percentage of her customer base preferred landlines, so she kept hers paid up. "Why?"

"It might be a good idea to stay in tonight. Just a heads-up."

She sighed. Even when he was trying to do her a favour, Max still came across as a controlling asshole. "And why might that be? I don't do bombs. Everyone knows that."

"That's part of it, certainly, but the other part is that Panacea was abducted from Brockton General Hospital earlier tonight. Right now, every Protectorate and New Wave cape out there will be even more trigger-happy than normal. Any villain showing their face will be a target."

Kayden gritted her teeth. "I keep telling you, I'm trying to be a hero. If I keep working at it, they'll figure it out sooner or later." Then what Max said caught up with her. "Wait, what? Abducted? By who?"

He sounded amused. "Not if they choose not to figure it out. If they want to see you as a villain, a villain is what they'll see you as." And of course he'd ignored the question.

"Max." Her hand squeezed the receiver tightly, and light leaked from between her fingers. "Who. Abducted. Panacea?"

"Well, it wasn't any member of the Empire Eighty-Eight, of that you can be sure." The amusement was still in his voice. "We aren't that stupid. All the Undersiders did was rob a bank while she was present, and my moles in the PRT report that there's a lot more attention being focused in that direction than before."

Getting information out of Max when he didn't feel like giving it had always felt like pulling teeth. "Do your moles also know who took her, and where they went?"

"That hero complex of yours is certainly getting some exercise," Kaiser said with a light chuckle. "You never worried this much before about the good guys."

"Yes or no, Max. Just answer the damn question." He was absolutely infuriating when he had something she wanted, dangling the information just out of her reach. And he had to know how much it pissed her off. Everything was a power play with him, she reminded herself. Everything.

"Well, to be honest, one of them did hear a whisper that it was Saint, of the Dragonslayers. And that he's holed up with her in the northern ferry terminal." Max's voice turned serious. "You aren't about to do something stupid, are you?"

She didn't bother answering him as she dropped the receiver back onto the cradle. Turning to where her stepson had gone back to the sofa, she said, "I'm going out. Watch Aster for me." Without waiting for a reply, she powered up and went out the window at full speed. The rest of New Wave she couldn't care less about, but the afternoon and evening she'd spent talking with Amy Dallon had awakened her maternal instincts.

If you've hurt that sweet girl, Saint, they won't find enough of you to bury.

<><>​

Panacea

The PRT were good. They were trained for this sort of thing, Amy could tell. But there was only so much sneaking that could be done against someone who had high-powered sensors built into the mech he was piloting around.

The first she became aware of them was when Saint grabbed her and pulled her close to him, then pointed at an otherwise unassuming patch of shadow. "You there!" he bellowed. "Show yourselves!"

Even when the trooper stepped into plain view, he was almost invisible; the urban-camouflage pattern on his armour broke up his silhouette to an impressive degree. He held a containment-foam sprayer in his hands, and there was a rifle slung on his back. "You're surrounded, and the capes are on the way!" he called out. "Give up now before things get too complicated."

Saint seemed to ignore his words. "And the rest of you!" he shouted. "I want you all in plain sight!"

"He's right, you know." Amy felt a slight loosening of the tension in her chest. So they got my message. Awesome. "There's sixty or so capes in the city. I've healed maybe half of them. How do you think they're going to react if you threaten to hurt me?"

"They won't do a damn thing that'll risk you getting hurt," Saint retorted. "There's nothing they've got that'll get through this armour fast enough to stop me from snapping your neck, and they know it. And the first one that tries something and gets you hurt will be in a world of shit from everyone else. So nobody's gonna do anything to help you."

A chill went down her back. Even through the electronic filtering, his voice sounded absolutely implacable and set on his path. She'd seen racists, killers and junkies before now, but she'd never met a dyed-in-the-wool fanatic. Even the Nazis had their limits.

"We've never met before, yeah?" she asked. "I mean, you've never fought New Wave that I remember, and I've never actually run into you before."

"No," he said curtly. "You've never healed me either, so don't get any hopes up that way. Pulling a thorn out of a lion's paw belongs in kids' stories."

She sighed, as best she could within his grip. "I wasn't going there. I just wanted to make the point that we've never met. I've never personally done anything to you. So why are you willing to maim or kill me, just to get Teacher out of the Birdcage? What's so important about him? What do you really want him for?"

"He's more important than you'll ever understand," Saint replied bluntly. "He's the key to saving the world, and those blind fools locked him away like a common criminal."

"Well, not like a common criminal, surely." Amy had no idea where this was going, but she tried to keep her voice reasonable. "Common criminals don't go in the Birdcage. How's he going to save the world?"

"I could tell you, but then the PRT would have to kill you," he said. "They've been keeping the secret for years now, but they don't see the danger. Only I can see it. It's better for your own good that you don't know."

This was definitely starting to get into tinfoil-hat territory. Amy tried to think of something to say to the scary guy holding her hostage, but was distracted by a sun-bright glow sweeping in over the rooftops. "Wait," she said. "That almost looks like—"

"Purity!" It was Vicky's voice, coming from another angle. Amy's sister flashed in over the two of them, then came to a hover in front of the Empire Eighty-Eight cape, blocking her way forward. "If you're working with Saint, you can go crawl back under your rock."

"What? No!" Purity sounded confused and annoyed. "I'm not working with him. I came to help you get your sister back unhurt."

"What the fuck?" Saint didn't sound happy at this. "Correct me if I'm wrong, but Purity's a villain, right?"

"Technically speaking." Amy spoke absently as a great many connections clicked together in her mind. Kayden Russel was a cape; that was for certain. She and Amy had spent hours talking, and despite her efforts to sound even a little different, the intonations were unmistakable. "We actually know each other fairly well. And think about it. The heroes will only arrest you. You think she'll stop there?"

"Fuck. She's not one of those capes you said you healed, is she?"

"I've helped her in the past," Amy retorted smugly, and entirely misleadingly. Assisting with a purse snatching wasn't the same as healing, but it was still 'helping'.

"Fucking Brockton Bay." The head of the armour suit shook ponderously. "You're all fucking insane here. America's biggest open-air asylum."

Amy didn't even bother trying to point out Saint's particular brand of crazy. This was a man who was convinced that a Birdcage inmate was the only way to save the world. "Nobody asked you to come here."

"Shut up. I'm trying to think."

<><>​

Glory Girl

"You can't be serious." Vicky shaded her eyes from the glare as she confronted the Empire cape. "What do you really want with my sister?"

"Just to help." Purity wasn't shouting, or even raising her voice too much. She was simply talking. "Panacea is one of the few purely good things in this city. Out-of-town capes don't get to just come to our city and threaten her. You may not know this, but I've split from Kaiser and the rest. I'm trying to be a hero. Let me help, please."

The pleading tone in her voice was the weirdest thing of all. Empire capes were good at being arrogant and angry, occasionally both at the same time. Sometimes they were smug and superior. But they didn't beg. It was so far outside Vicky's experience that she couldn't parse it.

"Well … just hold back, all right?" Vicky lowered her voice and looked down at where Saint had her sister by the arm. "She can't heal herself, so we've got to get her away from him before we take him down."

"I think you can fly faster than me, and you're definitely stronger." Purity sounded tense. "If you get the chance, you scoop her up on a flyby, and I'll make a crater out of him."

Vicky raised her eyebrows. "I like the way you think." The Empire villain—ex-Empire, if she was telling the truth—might be a racist bitch, but her heart was in the right place when it came to protecting Amy. "All we need is some kind of distraction."

"Yeah. I don't suppose you arranged something with the PRT guys first?" From the tone of Purity's voice, she didn't expect the answer to be in the affirmative.

The irritating part was, she was right.

<><>​

Saint

Events were rapidly escalating out of control. The PRT troopers had moved out of cover once he'd challenged them, and they weren't close enough to foam him down—even if containment foam would be strong enough to immobilise the suit, which he doubted—but that wasn't the problem. The problem was that Glory Girl was on site, along with Purity. The New Wave hero had a reputation for recklessness and headstrong action, and the Empire villain had a reputation for being able to wreck buildings. Worst of all, they were working together, against him. What's the world coming to?

If he waited any longer, he suspected that one or the other would try something stupid, or more capes would show up and pull off something that he couldn't counteract. How they'd found him so quickly he had no idea, but he had to do something. With an eye-flick, he redialled the call to the Chief Director. As before, the call was answered within two rings.

"Saint." Her voice was steady and uninflected. "It's only been an hour. The arrangements are still being made."

"I'm changing the deal," he said. "Teacher gets out now, or Panacea gets hurt." As before, he didn't want to do it, but he had to weigh the fate of the world against the life of one teenage girl.

"Let me consult with someone for a moment." She cut the call, leaving him listening to dead air.

He blinked. "What the hell?" he murmured. "Does she even care that she holds your life in her hands?"

For the first time, Panacea tried to struggle from his grasp, but he held her tightly. "You said twelve hours!" she protested. "You said!"

"Hey!" shouted Glory Girl. "What the hell is this?"

He prepared to fire up his flight systems. "This is you learning why you don't mess me around!" he shouted. "I gave you every chance to—"

"Stand down, Saint."

The new voice came from above all of them. He looked up, along with Panacea and Glory Girl, to see Alexandria descending like an angel of doom, a large rectangular object tucked under her arm. Involuntarily, he swallowed; he'd never encountered any members of the Triumvirate before, which was one of the main reasons that he was still a free man.

"Keep back!" he called out. "Even you can't move fast enough to stop me from killing her if I wanted to do it."

"Oh, I'm not here for that." Her tone was grimly amused. Taking the object from under her arm, she spun it around and flicked a switch. It lit up, revealing itself to be a lightweight flatscreen, about three feet by two. "I've got someone here who has a message for you."

He cut in the magnification and stared at the screen; two faces looked back at him. Teacher and Marquis. They were both dishevelled and looked a little the worse for wear, but Marquis still wore his bony armour and had a distinctly sharp-looking spike of the same material tucked up under Teacher's chin. His hand was planted firmly over Teacher's mouth. It was clear who was the victor and who was the prisoner.

"Saint." Marquis' voice was clear and sharp. "Release my daughter immediately, or Teacher dies."

"You've got it backwards!" Geoff tried to keep his desperation out of his voice. "Let Teacher go now, or Panacea dies!"

"If you harm my daughter in the slightest, Teacher will be dead and you will never get access to his power again." Marquis' voice was implacable. "Let her go and surrender, and there's a good chance you'll end up in here with him."

Under normal circumstances, he might even have considered that, but it would put him in a place where he wouldn't be able to stop Dragon if she decided to go rogue and destroy mankind. "No!" he shouted. "Let Teacher go now!" He flexed his fingers, preparing to break Panacea's arm. They'd take him seriously once she started screaming.

The suit's arm refused to work. He stared at the HUD as malfunction warnings began to pop up, one after the other. "No," he muttered. "No." Reaching around with his right arm, he bashed the offending appendage on the shoulder joint …

<><>​

Glory Girl

… and Vicky watched with disbelieving glee as the suit's entire left arm fell clean off, just missing Amy as she skipped aside. Saint reached for her, but she backed away. When he took a step forward, the left leg crumpled under him, the metal bending and shredding like papier mâché.

"Go!" shouted Purity, slapping Vicky on the back. She didn't need another reminder; lunging forward as fast as she could, she intercepted Amy's retreat and hoisted her into the air.

As soon as they were safely out of the way, Purity unleashed a spiralling blast that punched into Saint, driving him into the ground. After a few seconds, she let up on the attack, leaving a smoking crater behind, slowly filling with seawater. Of the suit, there were only a few forlorn metal scraps to be found.

"Nicely done." Carefully, Vicky approached her, making sure not to startle the powerful Blaster. "And thanks for your help."

Purity may have nodded. "You're welcome. Your allies will be here soon, so I'd better be going." Flying straight up into the air, she arced over and rocketed west across the city.

<><>​

Panacea

Watching the glowing form recede into the night sky, Amy shook her head. "This has been one shitty night," she said. Gesturing downward, she asked, "Think he survived?"

Vicky snorted and shook her head. "Not a hope in hell. What'd you do to his suit, anyway? I've never seen a powersuit's arm just fall off like that."

Amy took a deep breath. "I, uh, got hold of some bacteria and re-engineered it to eat metal. Then I infected my phone with it and tricked him into spreading it all over his hand and his foot. Don't worry, I made sure it'll die off in an hour or so."

As Lady Photon flew into view, along with Crystal and Eric, Vicky raised her eyebrows and stared at Amy. "How come you never told me you could do this?"

This was something Amy had been wondering as well. "I guess because it didn't really seem the right time or place. Like, ever."

They gradually drifted down to where the PRT troopers were investigating the crater. Vicky let Amy down on to her feet as the officer in charge approached them.

"Glory Girl," he said. "Panacea. You both okay?"

"We're both fine," Amy said, a moment before Vicky could. "Where's Alexandria? I wanted to thank her."

The trooper shrugged. "By the time Purity finished making Saint into a hole in the ground, she was gone. Guess she had better things to do." He paused. "That really was Purity, right? I thought she was a bad guy."

"What's this about Purity?" Sarah Pelham landed beside them, while Laserdream and Shielder circled overhead. "Where's Saint? Amy, are you all right? What happened?"

Vicky grinned and shook her head. "Aunt Sarah, trust me when I say it's a long story."

<><>​

Mags

Unseen by everyone, she turned her suit and slowly flew away. Out of Brockton Bay. Away from the man she loved. She wasn't quite sure what she was going to do now, but Geoff had been wrong. Dragon hadn't been the danger. It had been his own obsessions, all along.

<><>​

Marquis

"Alright, we're done here."

Marquis took hold of Teacher's shoulder and walked him out of the common area, in the direction of Cell Block T. Teacher didn't struggle or resist; he'd learned that much, at least.

"So, where do we go from here?" asked the fat man.

"Back to your cell block," Marquis said easily. "I let you go, you forget this, and I don't have to kill you. Alternatively, you send someone to take revenge, and the next time I kill you. Your choice."

"You killed three of my men." It wasn't so much a complaint as a comment. Testing the waters.

"You nearly got my daughter killed." Don't even try it.

"That wasn't my doing." Teacher's tone was certain. "If we leave things as they are, there's an imbalance. Other cell blocks will see me as weak. There'll be probing attacks. Or they may see you as a threat, try to cut you down. Either way, peace is out the window. And it's your fault."

Marquis snorted and shook his head. "If they come for me, they won't walk away. If your men come for me, you won't walk away."

"You're not understanding me." Teacher's tone was lecturing, almost patronising. "Unless there's a visible concession from your side, there's no chance of peace. You have to redress the imbalance, once and for all."

Marquis tilted his head thoughtfully. "I suppose you have a point. If I don't make some sort of gesture, things will never settle down."

"Exactly," Teacher said eagerly. "I'm glad you can see—"

That was as far as he got before the bone spike punched into his throat, then expanded into a blade to slash his carotid arteries. He fell to his knees, hands going to his ruined throat as redness spread down his chest. Choking and gurgling on his lifeblood, eyes wide, he tried to ask a question.

"Gesture made," murmured Marquis, disintegrating the bone weapon. He turned and started back the way he had come. As he went, he hummed a tune that had been popular fifteen years previously.

Behind him, Teacher slowly fell over.



End of Part Eight

 

[Ack]

Hostage Situation

Part Nine: Sweet Release

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]



Director Emily Piggot

PRT ENE

The three-way video call was conducted under the highest of security protocols. Emily locked her office doors, blanked the polarisation of her windows, and activated the white-noise jammer to prevent the opportunistic gathering of data by bouncing a laser off those same windows. Finally, she sat down at her desk, muted her phones and logged into the secure call.

The split-screen that came up showed the Chief Director on one side and Dragon's avatar on the other. This gave her a hint as to which way this was going to go, but it didn't ease the production of butterflies in her stomach any. Talking with one's boss about highly sensitive matters was never a situation that led to happy thoughts.

At least, she thought sourly, the hostage had been rescued and the bad guy had not gotten away. Virtually nothing else had gone to plan, though.

"Director Piggot, Dragon." Costa-Brown seemed almost chipper, a state of affairs that indicated someone was due a very bad day. "I understand you both have news for me."

"You first, Director Piggot," Dragon said formally. "Mine isn't about to change anytime soon."

So that was the way it was. Emily cleared her throat and resisted the temptation to check her appearance in the tiny image of her in the top-right corner of her screen. As she'd been advised long ago, she focused her attention on the camera while she was speaking, letting her peripheral vision cover the faces of her interlocutors. It wasn't as though she was going to get any important information from their expressions; Dragon used the same computer-generated image she used everywhere, and the Chief Director never gave anything away that she didn't intend to.

"Panacea has been rescued, alive and well," she said bluntly, putting the best news right out in front. "Saint, who was holding her captive, was killed when he refused to release her and then threatened to harm her. His body was unrecoverable, but DNA testing of the fragments found after the fact point toward him genuinely being dead."

She knew damn well Costa-Brown would've been filled in on exactly who had obliterated Saint so very thoroughly, but the woman sat expressionless, neither asking a question nor filling in the blanks.

Dragon, on the other hand, showed interest. "Not that I'm debating your methods, Emily, but reducing him to fragments while he was already wearing a powersuit seems to indicate that a certain level of overkill was involved. Which of your heroes pulled that one off?"

"It wasn't one of our heroes, exactly." This was the part she hadn't been looking forward to, not in the slightest. "Her name's Purity. She's a known member of the Empire Eighty-Eight. What she was doing there, and why she took Panacea's side, we're still trying to figure out. As far as we know, there's been zero connection between the two before tonight. Panacea has certainly never espoused white-supremacist leanings."

Dragon's avatar looked pensive. "Perhaps she didn't want to see the healer get hurt? Some villains aren't as dedicated toward hurting people as others."

Sourness twisted in Emily's guts. "I'll grant you that she isn't as much of a mad dog as Hookwolf, but she's been Kaiser's big hitter for years now. The Empire doesn't do 'nice'."

"Hmm." The Chief Director looked thoughtful. "I believe I read a report recently that said Purity was trying to rebrand as a hero, and that she was focusing her ire on the ABB. Do you perhaps think this was her way of trying to reinforce that image?"

Where Costa-Brown had gotten that report, Emily would never know. She was damn sure she'd never issued one like it. "I'd take any report like that with a grain of salt, Chief Director. Unless and until Purity is ready to give herself up and face justice, she remains a criminal at large, and the PRT will treat her as such. She doesn't just get to walk away from all of that."

"And yet she stepped up anyway, when she had every reason to stay away," Dragon pointed out. "I'm not trying to pre-empt you on how you do your job, Director Piggot, but perhaps that rates some level of consideration?"

"I'll take that under advisement," Emily said, though she didn't mean a word of it. Dragon didn't live in her city, and didn't have to deal with the ration of shit that she had to wade through on a daily basis. Purity was a villain; trying to evade justice for her documented crimes by attacking the people she normally would've been fighting anyway did not rate a free ride to becoming a hero. Yes, Panacea was safe, but from the way that suit had been collapsing at the end, Glory Girl probably would've gotten her clear no matter what.

Still, the death of Saint only solved half the problem. "What do we do about Teacher? He has to have left other disciples here and there. Saint was only the first. How long before the next one shows up and tries this same stunt again?"

Dragon cleared her throat. "Uh … that won't be a problem. Teacher's dead. Marquis executed him about fifteen minutes after the standoff was resolved."

"You mean 'murdered'." Emily's tone was harsh, even in her own ears.

"Executed." Dragon's voice was firm. "Director Piggot, they're in the Birdcage. Their human rights were legislated away so that they could be locked in a box where we have consistently denied them virtually every convenience of modern civilisation, including the benefit of law enforcement. We cannot then complain when they make and enforce their own rules, or even arrange for their own conveniences. In there, might makes right. Teacher thought his words held more sway than Marquis' bone blades, even after his 'student' had threatened Marquis' daughter. He could not have been more wrong."

The Chief Director nodded thoughtfully. "I can see where that could be a problem. It sounds like he couldn't see past his own arrogance. Not an uncommon failing among Thinkers."

"I wouldn't know," Emily said dryly. "We don't have any dedicated Thinkers on the team here." She glanced at the notes she'd made to herself. "Not to change the topic, but did either of you happen to see from the footage at the scene how drastically Saint's powersuit failed at the end there?"

"I did." Dragon's tone was thoughtful. "It seemed as though the metal and plastic had simply rotted away. I thought you might know the reason for that happening."

"Somehow I doubt he used substandard materials in his suits," Costa-Brown mused. "Could it be something Panacea herself did? After all, there are organisms in nature that attack metals and plastics. Could she have created some, just for this purpose?"

For some reason, that particular chain of reasoning hadn't occurred to Emily. Panacea was the nice safe fluffy healer who everyone seemed to forget about, even when she was known to be able to cure cancer at will. She wasn't edgy, she wasn't dark; even her name sounded like the sort of medicine that tasted unpleasant but you took it anyway because it did you good. Everyone knew who she was, kind of, but the only ones who really cared belonged to the infinitesimal fraction of the population who had an illness or an injury that only she could fix. Name recognition wise, she sucked.

Now Bonesaw, everyone knew that name. It was evocative. Whenever the Nine attacked somewhere, it was easy to see what Bonesaw had been doing. Her picture was everywhere, usually with the words "Kill Order" attached. It was getting so that girls with curly blonde hair were getting dye jobs before going to school, and nobody wore that cutesy style of dress anymore. Her name recognition may have been entirely negative but it was out there, in spades.

The idea that a nonentity cape (and wasn't that a contradiction in terms) such as Panacea could create and disseminate bugs at will that were able to eat plastic and metal, and hadn't informed the PRT that she could do it, was fundamentally terrifying. A mental image of Brockton Bay crumbling into dusty ruins, the PRT building falling apart beneath her, rose implacably in her mind. It was only by an effort of will that she didn't start planning the evacuation of the building, starting immediately.

"If … if she could really do that, why wouldn't we already know about it?" she asked, trying to sound mildly curious rather than severely rattled.

"Perhaps she never really bothered before," Dragon ventured. "Or maybe she didn't know she could until she tried. She only really heals people, doesn't she? Cures diseases, fixes injuries."

"Well, that's all she's done up until now," Emily confirmed. Though she was damn sure going to be keeping a much closer eye on the wallflower of New Wave from here on in. "Maybe it was a reflexive action?"

"That doesn't actually make me feel any better about it," the Chief Director said dryly. "What if she does that every time she feels threatened?"

Emily didn't like that idea in the slightest. A moment later, her memory was jogged and she shook her head. "No. She was caught in a bank robbery just a day or so ago. Somehow she got into a physical scuffle with one of the robbers and was hit on the head. We would've been informed if there was any signs of plastic or metal deterioration in the bank. Which means it's deliberate. It has to be. She can create them at will." All of a sudden, she realised she liked that idea even less. "Oh, god. Her father."

"That's what I was thinking, too." Dragon's voice had a tinge of concern, which Emily thought was a little overwrought. It wasn't as though the Tinker had to live in the same city as Panacea. "She's already expressed concern that we might be stonewalling her. If she decides that this is the case, knowing that we could return her father to her and are simply choosing not to … we may be facing a somewhat worse case than a simple end to quick and easy healing."

The mental image of Brockton Bay crumbling around her returned. It wasn't a pleasant one. "Chief Director, any suggestions?"

The Chief Director didn't look any happier than Emily felt. "On the one hand, she's an exemplary hero who's helped many people and has never had even the slightest scandal against her name. However, on the other, she now wants something from us that we're reluctant to give her for several very good reasons. Worse, this new revelation means she has us somewhat over a barrel. Instead of just losing the option of convenient healing for our respective Wards and Protectorate heroes, a continued refusal of her request means we face the potential threat of sending North America straight back to the Stone Age as our technology crumbles around us." Costa-Brown steepled her fingertips before her. "Of course, we could simply checkmate her by incarcerating her in a facility where she can't use her powers to escape without killing herself in the process. We still lose the healing, but we also get to keep our society intact."

"You're talking about Birdcaging an innocent girl for a crime she hasn't even threatened us with yet, much less committed," Dragon said tensely. "Without so much as a trial or any kind of representation? The outcry and backlash would be catastrophic."

One perfect eyebrow rose. "If it becomes necessary, the rest of the world needs never know what actually happened. The PRT's public facing records say what we want them to, and no more."

Dragon shook her head, her lips tight. "You misunderstand me. Such a thing would be illegal in so many ways I'm not bothering to count them. There would be outcry and backlash, and it would. Be. Catastrophic."

The message was clear. Dragon would scuttle any such attempt to Birdcage Panacea. Emily wasn't sure whether to be relieved or unhappy that the option had been taken away.

From the twitch of Rebecca Costa-Brown's eyelid, she may have been irritated. However, she covered it up well. "Understood," she murmured, her voice only barely being picked up by the microphone. "I'm not even going to bother positing a Kill Order, then."

Emily spoke before Dragon could. "Even if you did, I'd never sign off on it. No matter the sins of her father, she's innocent of all his wrongdoing. No more heroes are getting murdered on my watch, if I can help it." Fleur had been bad enough. If the PRT simply decided to execute capes because they were too scarily powerful, when would it end? And what if the capes decided to strike back?

"Which leaves us with the sole option of releasing Marquis," Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown said. "With all the attendant fallout that entails. You do realise that once we open this can of worms, it will never be closed again, yes?"

Emily took a deep breath. "Chief Director, when I took this job, I knew damn well that hard choices would be part of it, and sometimes there'd be no good option. So I'm taking the least bad choice. Yes, I know there'll be fallout from people learning that it's possible to get out of the Birdcage. But if Panacea's life or freedom is the cost of keeping that secret under wraps, it's not one I'm willing to pay. We're just going to have to put on our big-girl pants and deal with it." She paused for effect. "Ma'am."

"What she said," Dragon added unexpectedly. "This will change little, really. There have been conspiracy theories for years that people could be released, but nobody can simply use force to compel me to do the deed. And if anyone does try …"

The Chief Director nodded. "We can Birdcage them instead." She raised her eyebrow again. "Unless you have a problem with that, Emily?"

"Not in the slightest." Emily snorted, happy to be back on comfortable ground. "If they want to ask for trouble like that, they deserve everything they get."

"In that, we're agreed," Dragon stated. "I'm just glad we don't have any other prisoners related to potentially problematic heroes. One is far more than enough to deal with."

Emily snorted. "Just be glad you don't live in the same zip code as her. Now I've got one more reason to go to bed every night wondering if the damn city will still be there in the morning."

"Well, we've exhausted all the other alternatives," Costa-Brown said. "We're just going to have to make the best of this one."

By 'we', Emily knew, the Chief Director meant 'you'.

Because that was the way the world worked.

<><>​

Purity

"Well, I wasn't sure what I expected, but that sure as hell wasn't it," Max said. Bending low over the golf club, he tapped the ball and sent it rolling along the expensive carpet toward the waiting coffee mug. "What were you thinking? That maybe she'd see the light and join the Empire Eighty-Eight?"

Though his tone was mostly sarcastic, Kayden knew better than to treat it as a joke. "No," she said, just as the ball clinked into the cup. "We met on the Boardwalk, out of costume. She's a nice kid. Aster likes her." She decided not to mention Amy's issues with Kaiser, in case he decided to try and take advantage of them. Because of course he'd go there. Taking advantage of perceived weaknesses in others was his ground state of being.

"Well you saved her, so there's that." He tapped the cup with his foot, causing the ball to roll out again. Using the putter, he sent the small white sphere trundling away across the office floor, then nudged the cup so it was lined up again. "Now New Wave owes us a favour. Nicely done."

"I didn't do it for that!" she snapped, her temper starting to rise. "I see her as a friend. You don't hold things like that over the heads of friends."

"Well, I don't consider her a friend," he said flatly. "And like it or not, your name's still linked to ours. As far as everyone knows, the Empire Eighty-Eight just saved Panacea's life. I'd be a fool not to capitalise on that."

"You'll be a fool if you try," she retorted. "Panacea's not stupid. She'll be fully aware that it wasn't at your behest that I saved her."

He took his attention off the golf ball and raised his eyebrows. "Wait, are you saying you unmasked to her?" Before, he'd been playing with her. Now, she had his full attention. "Do you have any idea what damage you could've done to the rest of us?"

"No, I didn't unmask, you idiot." She shook her head. "But we talked for hours, and I helped her up after she stopped a guy from stealing my bag. If she can see what's wrong with someone, she can see my corona pollentia. It wouldn't be a huge leap of logic from there. Especially after I went and helped Glory Girl save her from Saint, afterward. But at the same time, that makes her far less likely to rat me out. Because she's a decent human being. Unlike some people I could name." She glared at him, daring him to refute her.

He grimaced, utterly ignoring her insinuation. "Damn it. Still too much of a danger. What if she's as smart as you think, and she adds two plus two and gets 'Max Anders is Kaiser'? She doesn't owe me her life …" He paused, frowning.

Oh, shit. What's he got in mind now? "Max, whatever scheme—"

Suddenly, he brightened. "Actually, you know what? She really does owe me her life. If she's as honourable as you think she is, we can hold that over her."

Kayden shook her head; his thought processes were too twisty for her to follow. "What the hell are you talking about? She owes you nothing. But if you'll just listen to me—"

"Oh, no, she owes me everything." He grinned, showing his teeth, and pointed at her. "You need to speak to her. Let her know that if I hadn't told you about the standoff, you wouldn't have known to go there. I saved her life."

"So, just because you accidentally acted like a decent human being for once in your life—" she began acidly.

"Do we really want to go there?" he interrupted. "If she outs me, then there will be backsplash on you, no matter whether she puts the finger on you or someone else does the same math as I just did. You just know the first thing they'd do is take Aster away. So, while this is all up in the air, it might be better if I take her for awhile. I've got family she can go and stay with out of the line of fire, after all."

She glowered at him helplessly. He always knew how to set his verbal traps, and she always walked into them with her eyes wide open. "Okay, fine," she said grudgingly. "I'll talk to Panacea."

"Good." He beamed at her. "I'm glad we could come to this arrangement without any kind of unpleasantness."

I'd like to show you 'unpleasantness'. Just for a moment, she fantasised about powering up and blasting him across the room, but he no doubt had a precaution set up against that as well. So, like she always had, she nodded in agreement with him. "You promise to leave Aster out of it, and I'll make sure Panacea doesn't spread anything around about you or the Empire."

"That should be perfectly acceptable," he said, and bent over to address the golf ball again. "Close the window on the way out, will you?"

One of these days … But today wasn't to be that day. "Sure, I can do that."

By the time she was out on the window ledge, he was fully engaged with the putt. Closing the window harder than was absolutely necessary in the vain hope of putting him off his shot, she powered up and stepped off the ledge. Normally, she would've been looking forward to getting in touch with the teen healer again, but Max's demand had made even that feel just a little grubby.

It was, she mused as she flew off, typical of the man.

<><>​

Coil

Something dramatic had taken place in Brockton Bay the night before, and Thomas Calvert didn't know exactly what it was. He wasn't referring to the Tinker bomb spree perpetrated by Bakuda; that was something he had a depressingly large amount of information about. His Undersiders had fought Bakuda the day before, and Skitter (as the PRT had dubbed her) had been injured by one of her Tinker tech devices. Tattletale had called it a 'pain bomb'.

With their leader behind bars, the ABB should by rights have backed off and quieted down. They didn't have access to the sheer weight of manpower the Empire Eighty-Eight could call on, and Bakuda (despite her unnervingly widespread bombing campaign) could not project the same power and menace that Lung could. But they weren't, and he suspected he knew why. Bakuda was planning to spring Lung from captivity before he could be sent to the Birdcage, and the ongoing unrest was cover for that.

After all, that was how he would've done it.

As a serving officer in the PRT, Calvert knew his duty lay in reporting these suspicions to a superior officer, so that adequate precautions could be implemented. Of course, he was going to do nothing of the sort. His personal ambitions overruled any duty he technically owed to the PRT. So the ABB wanted to cause havoc across the city? Let them. Even if Lung was broken free, it still served his purpose of making the PRT ENE office under Emily Piggot look weak and ineffectual.

But all of this still did not explain why Saint of all people had made a solo trip from wherever he normally laired in Canada, just to abduct Panacea for several hours. Or why none other than Purity had shown up to assist with the rescue, which the after-action reports had described with dry language that translated to "turned him into a crater". Or why some of the troopers on site had mentioned Alexandria showing up while others hadn't. Or what she'd done when she did turn up, if it wasn't to help rescue Panacea.

None of it made any sense, not even the bit where a couple of troopers had reported Saint was apparently trying to hold Panacea hostage with the aim of having Teacher released from the Birdcage. Where Saint had gotten the idea this was possible (or that it was even a good idea) or why he'd picked this night to do it, Calvert didn't know. The most irritating aspect was that he knew there was information that had been redacted from the after-action report he was cleared to see, but he couldn't make out the shape of it from what was still there. Someone had done far too good a job at sanitising the information for his liking.

Still, that was why he'd spent good money assembling his Undersiders as a team. Tattletale could be excessively irritating at times, but her Thinker talent had proven invaluable to him time after time. She just had to be managed properly.

Bundling up the after-action reports, including the few photos that had made it in—stills from trooper bodycams—he sent the whole file to her, with a concisely worded instruction to find the missing pieces of the puzzle. He could've tried to hack his way into a higher clearance bracket, but he wasn't actually a hacker. As a final resort, he could abduct and interrogate someone who was in the know, then discard that timeline—he'd done it before, more than once—but that was time-consuming, and torture for actual information was less fun than it sounded. Having Tattletale dig up the information for him was both a good way to keep that agile mind busy, and freed him up to do other things.

In the other timeline, he saved the information to a thumb drive, stored it in his pocket and carefully deleted it from his computer, then contacted Tattletale and set her to finding out the same information but without the datapacket getting involved. If her queries drew official attention, he was better off not being in the line of fire. He hadn't gotten this far without cultivating a certain amount of paranoia as a survival trait.

Tattletale would get back to him when she had something. He set himself to other tasks. A PRT strike squad didn't run itself, after all.

<><>​

Panacea

Sitting at the kitchen table, Amy carefully prised open the cell-phone packaging and extracted the handset from within. They usually had half a dozen of these stocked in the house, given that superhero work could be hard on phones. Carol had worked out a discount deal with the supplier, allowing them to use New Wave's name in their advertising.

Using her fingernail, she teased out the tiny drawer that held the SIM cards, then picked up one of the two cards from the table beside her. She'd extracted them from her phone before she sabotaged it to screw Saint over, because all her numbers and most of her phone data were on them. The metal and plastic eating bugs had worked better than she'd expected in the end, and she'd spent a couple of anxious hours watching and listening for news that the ferry terminal was collapsing into the ocean, but it seemed the killswitch she'd built into the bacteria had worked just fine.

One at a time, the SIM cards slotted into the drawer then she closed it again, sticking her tongue out just a little with her concentration. The almost inaudible 'click' when it slid into place was music to her ears. Then she plugged the phone in to charge and pressed the startup button.

The phone lit up, indicating that it had over sixty percent charge, which worked for her. Smoothly, she navigated through the menus, making sure to designate different ringtones for the two SIM cards. One was her private number that she only gave out to people she trusted, and the other was her public number for charities and the like. She was always careful when answering the second number, because there seemed to be an endless supply of whackos out there. Even when she gave the phone to Vicky or Carol so they could scream at the person on the other end, there was always a new creepy stalker in a week or two.

Finally, she was done. With a sigh, she got up from the table to make herself a snack. The phone stayed where it was, still plugged in and charging. She'd just got the bread out of the fridge when the phone rang.

Amy paused, frowning. That was kind of odd. It was her 'friends and family' number, and everyone in her family knew she was home at the moment, recuperating from last night's kidnapping ordeal. While there were still people in the hospital who'd been hurt by the bombs, she didn't think it was them calling her. Once she'd prioritised the ones that the doctors had no way of helping and the basic medical cases were all that was left—shrapnel, burns, crush injuries, broken bones—she'd gone home. While she could help them, so could the doctors, and they were usually pretty good at respecting her space.

Putting the bread away again, she went back to the kitchen table where the phone was still ringing away merrily. One glance at the screen cleared matters up somewhat, but not totally.

Why is Ms Russel calling me now?

Several answers came to mind; she'd been hurt in the bombings, she knew someone who'd been hurt, she wanted to make sure Amy was okay …

The phone rang again. Amy picked it up and swiped the green icon across. "Hello?"

"Hello, Amy." She recognised the voice. "It's Kayden, from yesterday. How are you feeling?"

Kayden was being cagey, Amy realised belatedly. While Amy had made the leap of logic to connect Kayden to Purity with relative ease, the older woman had to suspect but couldn't know for certain. She doesn't want to accidentally unmask herself if I hadn't already figured it out.

"Oh, I'm fine now," she said, then paused deliberately. "Thank you." Yes, I know. No, I'm not going to do anything about it.

The pause that came across the line told her that the message had been received loud and clear. "Oh, that's good." Kayden was clearly a past master at disguising gratitude as enthusiasm. "Listen, I wanted to have a chat in person about something. If that's okay, I mean. Are you busy? I should have asked that first."

"Sure, I'd love to. No, I'm not busy." Amy thought for a moment. "Where do you want to meet? There's Challenger Park near my place. I can be there in ten minutes."

"That sounds perfect," Kayden says. "I'll bring Aster. I know she'll love seeing you again."

Amy smiled. "The feeling's mutual. See you there."

She ended the call and scribbled a note to leave on the fridge.

Just gone down to Challenger Park to meet a friend. Back later.

– Amy.

That essential chore taken care of, she filled a plastic water-bottle and picked out a light jacket because the weather was warming up, put her sneakers on, and headed out the door. The stroll to the park was pleasant, a gentle breeze countering the warmth of the sun. She took the time to wonder what Kayden wanted from her but decided that she wouldn't judge until she'd heard the older woman out. While she was certain Kayden Russel was Purity, she also knew the older woman was a loving mother and had put herself in danger of capture to save Amy.

I'll just wait and see what she says.

When she got to the park, there was another family there already, but Amy quickly dismissed them as being anything to do with Kayden. There was a father and mother with three small children who seemed to be fascinated with the plastic slide, scrambling up and zipping down with shrieks of glee. Glancing around, she went and sat on one of the swings, idling pushing herself backward and forward a little as she pulled out her phone and checked for new messages. Nothing as yet, which was good.

Kayden didn't arrive as a blaze of light from the sky as Amy had been half-expecting, but in a very suburban-mom style station wagon. So mundane was the vehicle that Kayden had gotten out and was lifting Aster's carrier from the back seat before Amy recognised her.

Amy got up and went to meet her, smiling at the sight of Aster's gurgling face. "Hey," she said, then bent down to greet the infant. "And hello to you, gorgeous." With the side of her index finger, she wiped drool from Aster's lip, a gesture she knew full well was futile at best. At the same time, she checked the baby over. As expected, Aster was in good health; not overly hungry, and she wouldn't need her diaper changed for awhile. "Have you been good for your mommy?"

"She's my little angel," Kayden said with a smile. "She slept well last night. Being down at the Boardwalk must have tired her out." She started over toward a picnic table, and Amy followed her.

Glancing at the other family, Amy saw that the children had moved onto the now-unoccupied swings. They were definitely too far away to be able to overhear anything if she and Kayden kept their voices down. She picked a bench and slid into it; Kayden put Aster's carrier on the table and sat opposite Amy.

"I guess now is the time where you say, 'I suppose you're wondering why I called you here'." Amy gave Kayden a grin. "Because I'm not gonna lie, I am kinda curious."

Kayden smirked at the reference, but Amy saw there were stress lines around her eyes. "I came here to ask you a huge favour." She paused, then facepalmed. "Sorry, I keep forgetting that you must have about a thousand people a day, asking you to do them the favour of healing their hangnails or something like that."

Amy nodded. "It's not quite that bad, but I have gotten so many of those in the past that I've had to cut them all off. 'Nothing personal, but nothing personal', as Carol puts it." She wasn't quite sure why Kayden's eyebrows went up at that, but suspected it was because she referred to her mother by name instead of 'mom'. That was fine; so long as Kayden didn't ask, she didn't have to answer.

"I can totally understand." Kayden sighed. "People think capes have got it made, and they just don't understand the pressures on us, do they?"

This, too, was a test. If Amy hadn't yet figured matters out, she would've said something like, what do you mean, us? But instead she nodded. "All they see is the power, and not the person behind it. Do you ever feel that way?"

"Oh god, do I ever." Kayden rolled her eyes expressively, then took a deep breath. "So. You've figured out who I am." It wasn't a question.

Amy met her gaze squarely. "Unless I've totally missed my guess, you're Purity."

Kayden nodded. "Yeah." The word came out in a gusty sigh. "So. The favour."

"That's what I've been trying to figure out," Amy admitted. "Who in the Empire Eighty-Eight is so injured that Othala can't fix, that you think I'll agree to help out?"

"Nobody." Kayden leaned over the carrier and brushed some of Aster's hair away from her eyes. "I'm not affiliated with the Empire anymore. I'm trying to cut ties with them. Turn hero."

Amy's jaw dropped. "So that's why you teamed up with Vicky to take on Saint last night!"

Kayden shook her head. "No. That's not why I did it." She reached out to boop Amy playfully on the nose. "I did it for you. Because you're conflicted and you still try to be a good person anyway. I really enjoyed our chat down on the Boardwalk, and I don't have many friends outside the Empire."

"Oh." Amy blinked a couple of times. "Well, truth be told, I don't have many friends outside New Wave, so I guess we're square on that regard."

"We are a pair, aren't we?" Kayden chuckled sadly. "Both of us pushed into a niche, and trying to force our way out of it." Aster started to fuss, so she retrieved a bottle from a pouch and gave it to the infant. "There you are, sweetie. That's right. Better?"

Amy took a deep breath. "Okay, if healing someone isn't the favour you wanted to ask, what is?"

After taking another moment to ensure Aster was okay with the bottle, Kayden looked up at Amy seriously. "I want you to do nothing. Specifically, with my identity."

"What?" Amy shook her head. "I wasn't going to tell anyone anyway. I think you're a great mom, and Aster's a beautiful baby. There's no way I was going to call the PRT on you."

"But would you call them on Kaiser?" Kayden raised her eyebrows. "You don't owe him anything."

"Well, no, but … oh. Oh." Amy finally got it. "You and him … you two were actually together while you were second in command of the Empire Eighty-Eight? If I looked into it, I could figure out his identity from yours?"

"We were married, yes." Kayden nodded. "I'm not telling you anything you wouldn't have figured out for yourself. I'm just asking … don't follow it up. Or if you do find yourself with that information, don't tell anyone. Please?"

Amy nodded. "Right about now, I'd say something about the unwritten rules, if I thought Kaiser cared about them for half a second."

That scored a wince from Kayden. "I'm sorry about your aunt. That should never have happened."

"No." Amy had been too young when Fleur died to know her all that well, but the memory still raised a pang. "It shouldn't have." She wondered if the punk who'd done it—they'd tried him as a fucking minor, for fuck's sake—was still strutting his stuff in the Empire Eighty-Eight. Making himself out to be a big man, when all he'd done was kill an unmasked cape by surprise. Or had he spoken out of turn to the wrong guy, and ended up in a shallow grave? She guessed she'd never know.

Kayden didn't say anything. She just watched Amy's eyes, probably trying to figure out which way Amy was going to jump on this.

Before she replied, Amy glanced around. The family was still playing on the swings, the kids calling to their father to push them higher.

"I should be cutting Kaiser no slack at all," Amy finally said. "Yeah, I know he wasn't the one who actually murdered Aunt Jess. But if Kaiser had half an ounce of the honour he pretends to have as leader of the glorious Empire Eighty-Eight ..." She paused to catch her breath. This had been a sore point with her family for a long time.

Kayden nodded sympathetically. "I understand. Someone who does something like that should have no place in the ranks of the Empire. But just between you and me, Kaiser is a big believer in lip service over the real thing. He's all about the big speeches, but there's remarkably little substance when you take a closer look." She grimaced. "And I would agree; to hell with him. But he's got leverage on me. And if I step too far out of line, he'll use it."

"Leverage?" Amy frowned, puzzled for a moment, then caught Kayden's glance down at Aster. "Ah. He's able to take Aster away from you? Can he do that? Legally, I mean?"

"He's her father, and he's got a dozen lawyers on retainer who could paint me as the second coming of Elizabeth Bathory." Kayden shook her head. "And that's just if I told him to go to hell without outing him. If he's outed and I've got anything to do with it, Aster either gets taken away by the authorities or by Kaiser himself. He's got people he can place her with, where he'll be able to raise her according to his own twisted standards."

Amy looked down at Aster who was now peacefully dozing, the bottle discarded to the side. She imagined the baby's distress if she were to be suddenly separated from her mother, never to see her again. It was a scenario that cut a little close to home for her. Purity was known as a supervillain, but she was trying to become better than that. Dad's a supervillain too, and he's willing to walk away from that life for my sake.

Taking a deep breath, she looked up at Kayden. "Okay, I won't look into him. But if I ever get a chance to get to him in any other way, I won't hold back."

Kayden smiled. "I wouldn't expect you to."

<><>​

Tattletale

"Oh, he's got to be kidding." Looking over the images in the data packet, Lisa shook her head. There was information to be gleaned there, but whoever had done the sanitising had been very, very thorough. This meant the information she was trying to pry loose had been deemed secret at the very highest echelons in the PRT ENE building.

This was the very worst possible time for Coil to send a puzzle her way. With the ABB causing problems on the streets, they couldn't go out and so she didn't have anything to distract her from going down some problematic rabbit holes. Worse, everyone on the team was walking wounded; Rachel was suffering from fractured ribs at the very least after being used as a punching bag, and Taylor was laid up at home with the concussion and the aftermath of the pain bomb. Alec and Brian had also suffered their share of battlefield injuries. She herself had a lingering headache due to overuse of her powers.

In addition, if she tried to follow up on any leads by tapping into PRT databases, there was a better than even chance that they would have enhanced computer security looking for just such an intrusion. She'd have to rely on her native skill, not her power, for a lot of it if she didn't want to risk a crippling migraine. And with the traceback software that Dragon could no doubt supply, Armsmaster would be kicking in the door before she was halfway finished the hack.

Long story short, she was going to have to slow-walk this if she was to a) gather anything resembling actionable Intel, and b) not end up in a cell. All of this with Coil breathing down her neck, looking for results.

Yay.

Heaving a sigh of resignation, she started going through the after-action reports.

<><>​

Marquis

"Explain it to me like I'm an idiot," Cinderhands said quietly. His tone was respectful, but he was being more persistent about it than Marquis was comfortable with. "You beat Teacher fair and square, for … whatever reason you had for kicking his front door in. We all thought things would go back to the status quo, with maybe Teacher paying you tribute to not do it again. But then you murdered him."

"I had my reasons." Marquis didn't look up from his book. There was a certain greyness to the page that intrigued him, and he didn't want to miss whatever was coming next.

"Yes, we get that." From the tone of his voice, Cinderhands was starting to lose a little of his patience. "But then you just … walked out of there. Left them leaderless. We could've kept Cell Block T if we'd known you were going to do that. Gotten in on the ground floor. Now everyone else is pushing and shoving to establish a foothold in that block, and we could've been there first. I just want to know why. Why did you do that, just so you could throw it all away?"

The greyness was moving now, forming words. Spelling out the plan. It wasn't a plan he was in love with, but at a certain point one had to make a leap of faith. Carefully closing the book, he stood up and stretched. "Perhaps I have come to a realisation," he said quietly.

"A realisation? What sort of realisation?" asked Cinderhands.

"We're rats in a cage," Marquis stated, gesturing at the room around him, and by inference the Birdcage as a while. "Very intelligent rats in a very complex cage, but rats in a cage all the same. Have you read about Calhoun's work on rat populations, putting them in a closed system and watching their societies evolve? It's quite chilling."

"We're smarter than rats," Cinderhands said; in Marquis' opinion, a reflexive statement.

"Are you certain about that?" Again, Marquis indicated the prison around them. "We all knew this place existed … well, most of us did. And yet, a good number of us still committed crimes that got us placed in here. So much for vaunted human intelligence." He shook his head. "No. When it comes to reacting socially to others, we're no smarter. Calhoun placed his rats in a closed system with ample food and water, and room to expand. Seven generations later, the colony went into an inevitable decline as they drove themselves to extinction with self-destructive social behaviours."

Cinderhands spread his hands. "Okay, so what does this have to do with you killing Teacher and then letting everyone else grab the scraps?"

"Maybe I'm tired of every day being like the last one," Marquis said. "Maybe I don't want to be part of the inevitable decline. Maybe this was the beginning of my inevitable decline. I decided that Teacher had to go down, then I decided he had to go all the way down. And do you know what I learned from this?"

"Tell me." Cinderhands watched him carefully.

"That nothing I do in here matters. Certainly, we could've kept Block T. We'd be staving off others from attempting a run on W as well as T, and we'd be watching the survivors of T in case they tried to sabotage us from the inside. In the end, it would solve nothing. There are no prizes. We would still get our supplies." He shook his head. "I'm so very tired of the endless treadmill."

"Listen, maybe you need to step back and take a breath. Go and get a woman, get laid." Cinderhands was trying to speak casually, but Marquis could tell he was concerned. "Sleep on it. You'll feel better in the morning."

"Yes. In the morning." Marquis could hear the sarcasm in his own voice. "I don't even know if morning is actually 'morning' anymore. Hell, I'm not entirely sure what year it is." He took a deep breath. "I'm going to my cell. Pass the word. Nobody is to disturb me."

"Boss—" Cinderhands stepped toward him, concern on his face and in his voice.

Marquis hardened his tone. "I said, I am going to my cell. Did I stutter?" He hated doing this to his old friend and subordinate but there was only one ticket out of the Birdcage, and he was riding it all the way to the end of the line.

Cinderhands flinched. "Okay. You got it, boss. See you later."

Marquis nodded once, curtly. "Yes."

He turned and left the common room, striding along the corridor toward his cell. People peeked out, but his air and attitude were sufficient to ensure that nobody bothered him. As he stepped into the space he called his own, he ran his hand up the doorframe, feeling the smoothness of the metal doors embedded in the concrete frame.

There were doors in the Birdcage, but none that could be operated by the inmates. All doorways were open by definition. The only way for a door to be triggered was if the exterior of the Birdcage was breached—which it could be, with almost ridiculous ease—and exposed that area to the vacuum outside. Or at least, that was the running theory.

He'd heard stories of people trying to break out through the cell wall; these had invariably ended with the steel doors sealing off that cell. When the doors retracted once more (usually within twelve hours) the cell was once more pristine, and there was no sign of the inmate.

Some had proposed hopeful theories that the inmates had actually escaped, but very few put stock in those.

And yet …

Stepping into his cell, he surveyed the sum total of his worldly belongings. A few bone sculptures he'd liked enough to not destroy (and which would be useful if anyone attacked him in his sanctum), a couple of pen and ink drawings of Brockton Bay, and a bookcase he'd fashioned from one of the crates. Nothing he'd miss, when it came down to it.

There was a line of bone across the floor, just inside the doorway. He exerted his power over it, and formed a latticework across the doorway that would give people the illusion that he'd sought privacy. Then he opened the book again, holding it so that nobody outside the cell could see what he was doing.

The words had changed again.

IT'S TIME.

Closing the book, he placed it on the bookcase. Then he took a deep breath, held it for a moment then let it all out. As he generated bone plugs within his ear canals, he inhaled again and again. Continuing to hyperventilate, he held out his hands. Bone spikes grew out from his fingers and intertwined into a haft which then formed a large head on one end.

Curling his fingers around the haft of the warhammer, he swung it against the outer wall of the cell. The tremendous booming thud was muffled by the earplugs, but cracks spread anyway. Still, the wall held. He took another deep breath as distant yells rose from outside the cell, then swung again. Another thud, then a deep cracking sound. The yells grew louder, even past the earplugs.

On the third swing, the wall shattered altogether. Chunks of concrete spun out into the void, pushed by the irresistible wind whistling through his latticework. He broke the bone away from his hands and discarded the hammer and closed his eyes, feeling himself picked up and tossed, spinning over and over. At some point he lost the outward-going blast of air, and he assumed that the steel doors had shut behind him.

His lungs had been almost empty but he kept his mouth open anyway, allowing the gas in his gut to escape in a long belch. There was also pressure down below but before it could become unbearable, something grabbed him by the front of his shirt and yanked him sideways.

<><>​

"… and in other news, following an incident in the Baumann Parahuman Containment Centre, the supervillain Marquis has been confirmed dead …"



End of Part Nine

 

[Ack]

Hostage Situation

Part Ten: Ongoing Fallout

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

Shortly After Saint's Death
Margaret 'Mags' Pellick

It had been a long, lonely flight back to the Dragonslayer Base. This had been made worse by the fact that tears kept blurring her vision. Complicating the situation, jets had been scrambled from air force bases in the region, combing the airspace to see if Geoff had had any backup.

Well, he'd had her, but she'd been there to drag him away rather than back him up, and she'd gotten there too late to do any good anyway. While she hadn't quite been close enough to witness his death—where the hell did they get off, going straight to lethal force anyway?—she'd acquired enough snippets from PRT comms and other sources to assemble a partial picture of how it had gone down.

It wasn't Dragon or even one of her drones that had killed Geoff. This was fortunate for the mechanical intelligence; if it had been even tangentially responsible for her husband's death, Mags would've been activating Ascalon the moment she got back to Toronto. But no, it was a local villain—not even a hero; a villain—who'd unleashed enough force to demolish a medium-sized building, without so much as giving Geoff a chance to surrender. By the subsequent PRT chatter, there literally hadn't been enough left to scrape into a shoebox.

As she carefully threaded her way between radar hotspots, Mags shook her head. She'd seen the lightshow from miles out, though she hadn't known what it meant at the time. What was the world coming to when villains took a hand in heroic matters like that? And who had set those damn bombs off across the city? Everyone had been blaming Geoff, but there'd been no bombs in the loadout he took with him. Anyway, why bomb the city at all? It had only served to well and truly stir up the ant's nest.

Flying low and slow over Toronto, keeping her thruster noise to a minimum, she was fully aware she didn't know everything that had happened. But she knew enough. She knew Geoff—Saint—was dead, and he'd been the glue holding the Dragonslayers together. He'd supplied the relentless drive to keep them together through thick and thin, and he was the one who had planned each attack on Dragon itself. It was his intuitive understanding of the machine's capabilities and limitations that had brought them to success every time … and now he was gone.

Geoff Pellick.

Saint, of the Dragonslayers.

The man she loved.

He'd been all of that, and more. She knew he hadn't been perfect, but who was? He'd loved her in return, and had drawn her along in his wake as he created the Dragonslayers and equipped them with technology created by their enemy. She didn't hate Dragon quite as intensely as he did, but she could certainly see the danger if the world's only self-aware AI decided humanity needed to die.

Unfortunately, there had been hidden pitfalls along the path he'd chosen, and he'd fallen prey to one of them. His obsession with getting renewed access to Teacher had killed him, and now the only question left was what they were going to do, going forward. It was something she was going to have to talk to Mischa about.

The roof entry motored open, and she dropped down into the mecha-suit hangar. The jets flared at the last moment and she touched down on the dirty concrete, the suit's shock absorbers compressing to deal with the last of her momentum. As she popped the helmet and prepared to climb out, she saw Mischa standing by the switch, looking up at the still-open roof entry.

"Close it," she said wearily. "He's not coming. Ever."

"Not ever?" He stared, then hit the switch. As the roof entry started to rumble closed, he moved in her direction. "What happened? He is caught, imprisoned? We must prepare prison break?"

"No." She shook her head and swiped her flight-suited arm across her eyes. "One of the local villains killed him. Blew the suit to pieces, with him inside it. There wasn't even a body to retrieve. Then they just let her fly away. Fuckers."

"Bozhe moi," he muttered. My God. "I hear things about this place, Brockton Bay. Race gangs, drug dealer gangs, more villains in one gang than all of Protectorate in city. It is perhaps worse than stories."

"None of that 'perhaps' bullshit," she said, peeling her gloves off. "He got there right in the middle of a bombing attack on the whole city. Apparently it was another one of their local villains trying for a diversion, so they could break another one out of PRT holding, but Geoff got blamed for it when he grabbed Panacea. I have no idea why that villain went at him so hard. Maybe someone she knew got hurt by the bombing, and she bought into the idea of him being responsible."

"Is crazy town, everyone says so," agreed Mischa. "Heroes should stick with hero stuff, villains stick with villain stuff. Less confusion this way, da?"

"Absolutely." Mags strode through to where the console was set up to monitor Dragon's ongoing feed. "Any unusual activity on this front?"

"Just a little," he assured her. "Not large amount. Have been checking in between fixing suit. Geoff wrecked many systems. Some spare parts, but may not be enough."

"What do you mean, 'just a little' activity?" asked Mags carefully.

"When news went out about Geoff wanting Teacher out of Birdcage, Dragon sent signal into Birdcage, to be played on TV sets. Is not totally unusual. Has done before." He shrugged. "Not sure what point."

"Let me see." Ignoring the fact that she was still wearing her basic flight suit and needed a long hot shower, Mags plopped herself down into the command seat. She wasn't as conversant with the system as Geoff had been, but she could navigate it with a certain amount of surety. Pulling up the replay, she rewound it to where the signal was linked up to the dedicated line going into the Birdcage. While she couldn't decipher all the code around the command, she was reasonably sure there were no actual communications aimed at the inmates included with the signal. It was just the raw TV data.

"You see?" asked Mischa. "Is no big."

Mags leaned back in the chair and rubbed her chin. "I don't know. There's something more going on here."

"Will leave you with it," Mischa said. "See if suit can be fixed." He trod off toward the mech hangar bay.

Barely noticing his departure, Mags leaned forward and dug a little deeper into the replay. Calling up the camera feeds from the Birdcage at the same time of the broadcast, she caught several people watching the screen, among them Marquis.

"Well, shit." It was a cape she didn't know, his most prominent feature being hands that were blackened to the wrist. "Kidnapping a healer to get one of us out of here? What do you reckon, boss? Think it'll work?"

Marquis stood. "I think you should get everyone together. We're going to war." He punctuated his words with an ominous crack of his knuckles.

Jumping from feed to feed, Mags watched as Marquis and his forces efficiently and swiftly invaded what she presumed was Teacher's domain. Marquis gave orders to go non-lethal where they could, emphasising that he just wanted Teacher alive and in his hands. A few died, but she could tell he was going by his own principle. She wasn't entirely sure what good this was going to do; he was in the Birdcage, after all. It wasn't like he could place a phone call once he had Teacher prisoner.

Watching the veteran crime boss in action, she was somewhat glad the Dragonslayers had never had to face him. They might have the firepower of their suits at their command, but he was a surgeon when it came to the use of his power. Nobody even came close to touching him. By the time Teacher ended up in his custody, she was starting to wonder exactly how the PRT had captured him.

And then he dragged Teacher back to the TV where he'd seen the broadcast. "Let me speak to Saint," he'd demanded, speaking directly to the screen.

And a line opened up, sending a feed directly to the TV in question. In the meantime, the camera directly over the TV started feeding out of the Birdcage, to a device somewhere in Brockton Bay. It took Mags a moment to realise that yes, Dragon had somehow managed to arrange a one-on-one conversation between Marquis and Geoff, each with their own hostage.

Holy shit. She arranged it. She sent the footage into the Birdcage so Marquis could organise the only leverage Geoff would even recognise.

Right then, she was torn. The man she loved was dead, but it seemed Dragon had done everything she could to de-escalate the situation. Even if it meant putting Teacher himself in danger.

Mags had never held any great regard for the sweaty, ugly, arrogant little man. She had even less love for the effect his power had had on Geoff. Seeing Marquis press a bone blade to Teacher's throat bothered her far less than it clearly did her husband.

Do what he says, she silently urged Geoff, ignoring the fact that the action was long done. He means business. This was made abundantly clear through Marquis' body language.

Unfortunately, the conversation did not go well. Geoff was far too invested in his 'brilliant' scheme to even imagine failure. No matter the blatant danger to Teacher's life, no matter the outs Marquis and the others tried to give him, he kept doubling down.

Right up until he tried to grab Panacea, with the clear intent of doing her harm. Mags leaned forward, her breath catching in her throat. No, love. No. Please don't.

Something, somewhere, must have heard her plea, because his arm stopped working. He bashed it with the other hand; a common field tactic among the Dragonslayers for getting problematic joints working again.

The arm fell off. Mags watched disbelievingly as the entire arm detached from the shoulder assembly and landed with a crash on the concrete. Panacea took her opportunity to make a break for it right then; even with one arm out of commission, Geoff would've caught her in short order except for the fact that when he went to move after her, the suit's leg failed as well. Not just ceased to work, but literally crumpled under him like it had been constructed from modelling clay.

There was a streak of motion, a gold and white blur. Panacea was scooped up by a slim figure Mags only identified by association. Glory Girl was the healer's sister, after all. Geoff tried to make a grab for them, but they were too far away. And then the glow intensified.

Mags had known Purity killed Geoff, but she'd temporarily forgotten the fact. Now she was reminded, very forcefully, as the cape herself moved into camera view. Her image flared out half the picture, even as the camera tried to adjust. Mags was just barely able to see the spiralling blast that smashed into Geoff's suit, shattering it and the concrete beneath in an instant. Such was the power of Purity's attack that when she let up after just a second or so, the crater had seawater lapping into it. Even after the villain moved out of frame and the picture returned to normal, Mags could see no part of Geoff's suit. He was gone. She doubted he'd even felt a thing.

The image cut out then. Mags put her elbows on the table and leaned her face into her hands, feeling the tears wetting her palms. It had been heart-wrenching, soul-destroying, to experience it all over again, but she had to know. Had to see.

After a while, she took a deep breath, trying to cleanse herself of the jagged emotions tearing at the still-tender wound of her loss. Another deep breath, and another; then she clicked the mouse again, looking for the next act in the story. What had Marquis done with Teacher, once Geoff was dead?

It didn't take long to find the answer to the question. When Teacher had gotten too pushy about the idea of reparations, Marquis simply killed him. The news reporting was devoid of all but the basic content, but the message had been sent anyway. If you try to use my daughter as leverage, whoever you try to get out of the Birdcage will die.

It was a harsh message. On the one hand, she couldn't fault it in principle. On the other, as a former law enforcement official, she had issues with the concept of one person taking on the role of judge, jury and executioner.

The next saved file she accessed was a three-way conversation between Dragon, Director Piggot of PRT ENE, and Chief Director Costa-Brown. Once she grasped the gist of the discussion, chills ran down her spine. It was Panacea who had caused Geoff's suit to fail so dramatically? The girl had disabled the suit and opened him up to being murdered by Purity, not some Tinkertech device?

It seemed Costa-Brown was of a like mind with Mags herself when it came to this sort of capability being used at will, without so much as informing the PRT of its possibility. The Chief Director had floated the idea of Birdcaging the girl instead of simply bowing to her whims, a suggestion that had Mags silently cheering her on … only to be shot down by Dragon of all people.

The machine had already thrown a curve ball when pointing out how Marquis should not face punishment for Teacher's execution, because the interior of the Birdcage was a de facto extrajudicial location. And now it was swinging hard in the other direction, threatening Costa-Brown with backlash against the PRT if the woman attempted to have Panacea Birdcaged for the mere potential of being able to bring the US to ruin. Worse, Piggot's support (however lukewarm) for Dragon's pushback against Costa-Brown (was it even allowed to do that?) had slammed the door in the face of basically doing anything to rein Panacea in.

But as shocking as the revelations so far had been, it was the last recording she watched that put the icing on the cake. Unmonitored by anyone at the Dragonslayers base, Dragon had sent its nanotech into the Birdcage once more. Mags was nowhere near as proficient as Geoff had been at reading her code, so she couldn't really tell what the microscopic robots were programmed to do. But whatever it was, they'd done it. Marquis's subsequent speech had the (undoubtedly intended) effect of making him seem suicidal, then he barricaded himself in his room and proceeded to break a hole in the wall of his cell.

The last Mags saw of Marquis was watching him being sucked out into the vacuum that apparently surrounded the Birdcage. This would have satisfied her as being the end of the story, especially with the supporting news articles, if she hadn't known differently. No matter what the official story was, Marquis had been released from the Birdcage, and Panacea was suffering no punishment at all for carrying out the exact same thing Geoff had died trying to do.

Intellectually, Mags was aware Purity's murder of Geoff probably had more to do with him threatening Panacea with harm, but this was beyond the point. Some people were allowed to break (or remake) the rules, and some clearly were not. Marquis got to walk free, while Geoff Pellick would have a closed-casket funeral for the very good reason that they hadn't actually located more than a few fragments suitable only for DNA samples.

The inequity was stunning, as was the injustice. She just didn't know what she could do about it.

<><>​

Marquis

First came consciousness, then came pain.

He shifted, feeling a comfortably soft mattress under him, the cotton sheets moving against his bare arms. It felt odd after ten years of the coarse weave common in the Birdcage (not to mention the silk sheets he'd favoured before then), but it also served as a reminder of something he still had more than a little trouble believing.

He was out.

Out of the Birdcage.

Released from a place he'd thought he was going to die in, someday.

And it was all because of his little Amelia. When he'd last been face to face with her, he'd been the protector. But now she was the one protecting him.

The pain was prodding at him from odd locations. It wasn't the same as after any of his numerous battles, even the one where the Brigade had taken him down. He figured it was lingering soft tissue damage from his brief exposure to vacuum, but it didn't feel serious.

In any case, he could live with it. It wasn't debilitating, and he didn't feel like his capabilities would be impaired in any way, so he decided to let things heal in their own time. The next order of business was to find out where they had him.

He opened his eyes; just a slit at first, then wider as he saw nobody in his immediate vicinity. More aches and pains awoke throughout his body as he sat up, but none seemed to be more problematic than the ones he'd already registered.

Looking around, he saw he was in a sterile white room, striking only in its lack of extraneous details. There were two doors, and a closet in the corner, but no pictures on the wall and no windows, not even so much as a TV. It could've been a private room in any hospital or clinic in America, but somehow he suspected not. The fact there was no call button in evidence merely underlined his supposition.

He was wearing short-sleeved pyjamas; again, more forgiving on the skin than anything available in the Birdcage while being less luxurious than what he'd had before. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he stood up. The floor felt strange against the soles of his feet, and he wondered how long he'd been out to it.

Then he stopped wondering as one of the doors opened. Alexandria swept in, tall and imposing, black cape flaring behind her. She fairly radiated power as she stood, arms folded. He couldn't really see her eyes behind the steel helmet/mask combo, but the set of her mouth gave him the impression she was unhappy with him.

"I was not in favour of releasing you." Her voice was low and steady. "It is important that you understand this. The first step out of line—the first—will see you back in the Birdcage. And I hope you resist being recaptured. Because when and if that happens, I will break your bones so hard, even you will have trouble mending them again. Do you understand?"

It was not his way to be impolite to ladies, so he resisted the urge to scoff at the attempt to intimidate him. It was a good try to be sure, but he'd faced down Jack Slash back in the day. He knew for a fact she hadn't, because one of the two would be dead in that case. Even to those trapped in the Birdcage, that news would've spread by pure osmosis.

"Not entirely, my dear." He gave her a polite smile. "I'm sure it's merely an oversight, but you're being a little vague about precisely where the line is."

Not from the slightest shift in her posture or expression did she betray that she was on the back foot, but his old instincts rarely failed him. She was, he could tell, irritated and a little puzzled as to why he wasn't folding then and there. Still, she hadn't given up. It wasn't in her nature; he could tell.

"You won't be officially on parole, of course." She lost some of the hostile tone, but her voice was still cool. "But if you get caught breaking the law in any way, you're done. Back to the Birdcage."

"So sorry." He kept his tone light, not wanting to give her the idea he was mocking her. "I'm a little hazy about how this works. What happens if somebody on the street decides to pick a fight with me, and I fight back? Technically, I've broken the law. Does that put me back in the Birdcage? Because forgive me, dear lady, if I do not consider this a fair and equitable bargain."

He sensed rather than saw her eyes narrowing behind the mask. "Panacea is entirely capable of repairing any damage done to you in a common brawl, and we both know it. So no, if you are attacked in the street, you are not permitted any actions other than what constitutes pure self-defence. Are we clear?"

"Absolutely and completely." He paused for a beat, just long enough for her to think he'd finished speaking, then he raised a finger. "And if the attacker happens to be a cape instead of some mundane street thug? For that matter, how good is Panacea's self-healing capability?"

Her pause was almost infinitesimal, but he knew he'd asked an important question. The answer merely confirmed it. "Panacea can't heal herself. She's strictly a non-combatant."

"Then if my daughter is attacked with lethal intent, whether by cape or by normal, by the law of the land, I am permitted to use lethal force in defending her. Yes?"

Her lips tightened fractionally. "In such an instance, yes, you are permitted to defend her to the best of your ability. However." She put her finger up, possibly in conscious imitation of his previous gesture. "If you do anything to betray the fact that Marquis is out of the Birdcage, the deal is null and void. Most specifically, using your powers in public. If this happens, you go back, and we institute a disinformation campaign about a pretender. Life returns to normal, and the Birdcage continues to be inviolate. Am I understood?"

"Entirely." He raised an eyebrow. "Of course, I refuse to accept responsibility if some other party were to reveal said fact."

Was that a twitch of a smile at the corner of her mouth? "If the revelation can be proven to be in no way instigated by you, I will not hold you responsible." Implicit in her statement was the understanding she would find any such connection, if it existed.

He nodded to acknowledge the unspoken words, then raised his eyebrows; both, this time. "Very well; we have established that doing anything which would cause me to be arrested or revealing that I am indeed out of the Birdcage, are both grounds for returning me there post-haste. Was there anything else I needed to keep in mind, my dear?"

This time, the twitch of a smile was unmistakeable. It seemed Alexandria found it amusing, or at least interesting, when people didn't just roll over for her. "No making contact with any of your previous criminal associates. That's a definite."

Frowning a little to give the impression of having to think about it, he tilted his head. "Wouldn't such a situation be covered by the rule about letting people know I'm out of the Birdcage? And in any case, it's effectively a non-issue."

She nodded slowly to concede the point. "In order to contact them, you'd have to let them know who you were. Yes, you're correct. But why would you consider it a non-issue? Surely there are still many people in the criminal scene who've been around since before you went into the Birdcage?"

"Remarkably few with whom I would even wish to associate," he informed her. "My last loyal minion died mere days ago. As for the cape scene, if the Teeth even returned to Brockton Bay, not one of them would be someone I knew from the old days. Galvanate is still in the Birdcage. And if Jack Slash ever returns to Brockton Bay while I am here, we both know I'll kill him."

"The Empire Eighty-Eight are still in Brockton Bay," she reminded him, with barely a pause to acknowledge his claim about Jack Slash. "I presume you associated with them, back in the day."

He allowed his amusement at the idea to show, just for a moment. "I knew Allfather and Iron Rain, but I wouldn't say I associated with them. While I strongly disapproved of their twisted ideology, they ran their territory efficiently and didn't intrude upon mine, so I respected them for that at least. Kaiser was barely making his mark when I went away."

"So I understand," she replied, her tone bemused. "Is this likely to be a problem?"

"Not as such." His smile widened a little. "I never gathered other capes around me, but that was from choice. The boy was always far too pretentious for his own good; this tends to grate on people after awhile. I honestly doubt any of the other capes he has around him are the ones I knew at the time. And as for Kaiser himself … I have zero desire to renew what minimal acquaintance I had with him."

"Understood, but … wait a moment." Her lips pursed in a frown. "I seem to recall, when reading up on the old files, there being a feud between yourself and Allfather. He swore vengeance upon you for murdering Iron Rain. You said there was respect between you and them, and I was under the impression you didn't hurt women. Or was that just an act?"

Now, he smiled sardonically. "Congratulations. You've uncovered a secret that's been hidden in plain sight for the last ten years. My disinclination to harm women or children was more than a little romanticised, even while I was active as the Marquis of Brockton Bay. Originally, it was less in the way of conscience and more a specific choice. You see, I had noted that those villain capes with a reputation for indiscriminate violence often have all the stops pulled out against them, while those who publicly exhibit consistent levels of self-control and gentlemanly behaviour—especially regarding women and children—are far more likely to be given a pass at the end of the day. Over the years, it simply became habit."

Her lips set in a tight line. "I don't know whether to praise you for your restraint or smack you for your sheer overwhelming cynicism. How did that work out for you? I mean, you got captured anyway."

"Yes, well." He let out a faintly irritated sigh. "It worked quite well; to a point. Right up until the distaff members of the Brockton Bay Brigade allowed themselves to be used as human shields during a combat with me. This was to allow their male partners to attack me with impunity."

"And it worked. They captured you." Alexandria tilted her head, studying him intently. "Ahh … no. I see. There was another factor involved."

He acknowledged her insight with a fractional nod. "Yes. I was working around it, but my daughter was on site and the battle endangered her. I put myself in harm's way to protect her, and was disabled by Brandish." His smile reflected his genuine amusement. "And now little Amelia has lifted me out of Hell, in her turn. It's interesting how these things go, is it not?"

"That's a matter of perspective." Her focus, he could see, was still razor-sharp. "We were talking about Iron Rain. Did you kill her?"

"No, as it happens." He sighed. "There was a battle with the Teeth. Butcher got in a lucky shot in the heat of it, and she died later of her wounds. At the time, the capes of the Empire Eighty-Eight were very heavily into the twin narratives of honour and retribution. They were also a particularly violent collection of miscreants. Allfather would have been bound to go after Butcher and kill him, and become Butcher in his turn."

"Well, that's a no-brainer." Alexandria shook her head. "If it's suicide, you don't go."

It wasn't often he got the opportunity for a teaching moment, especially with someone as sharp as Alexandria. "You forget, dear lady, this was the old days. The Empire was still establishing itself. Refusal would have splintered the organisation to the core, as Allfather's capes abandoned him and the control he held over them. Nobody wanted them rampaging across the city, so I offered a compromise; I would take 'credit' for the killing, and he would claim the right to exact vengeance."

"Hm." Her expression under the mask was unreadable. "Wouldn't that have opened you up to reprisals from one of the other Empire Eighty-Eight capes?"

He chuckled. "Certainly, but my reputation at that time was solid enough that not a single one of the Empire capes was willing to take me on personally, all their talk of honour be damned. Allfather and I were in the process of arranging a show battle, where damage would be done but nobody came out on top, when I was captured. I understand he died a few years afterward under suspicious circumstances, and Kaiser took over. The boy always was impatient to take up the reins of power."

She made an impatient gesture as if waving away the trivia of the Empire's methods of transfer of power. "Very well. I am satisfied you are both unlikely and unwilling to renew any criminal associations you might have once enjoyed. You will be provided with a new identity, and a basic stipend. Should you wish to augment this, I strongly suggest you take up some form of honest employment. Steal just one dollar, and you're gone. Do you understand?"

Sounding impatient at this juncture would've done his cause no good at all, so he kept his voice bland. "As you have made abundantly clear, dear lady, I am to do nothing that may get me arrested or reveal my identity as Marquis, out and about in Brockton Bay. In return, I may walk in the sunlight and breathe free air. I consider this to be an extremely adequate bargain."

After studying him for a long moment, she nodded. "That's good enough for me. There is a washroom through the other door, and clothing in the closet. I suggest you make use of the clippers in the washroom to style your hair to something other than what you used to wear, back in the day."

This time, he chuckled; he couldn't help himself. "And are you going to supply me with a pair of fake glasses to hide my identity? I used to go armoured in bone. The number of people now who saw my uncovered face then would be minimal, approaching zero. And even if my face was familiar to them, they wouldn't believe it was really me. Nobody gets out of the Birdcage, after all."

She seemed to consider his words for a long moment. "Acceptable. If anyone does approach you, what will you do?"

"Put on my best bewildered expression and tell them they are surely mistaken," he said cheerfully. "Now, if you don't mind, I would like to take a shower in a bathroom that doesn't have a floor of concrete."

Taking the hint, she stepped out of the way. "When you are ready to leave, walk out that door." She went to the door in question and opened it to reveal a blank white corridor. "You will be met."

"I appreciate the courtesy." He headed for the bathroom door. "I would say 'see you later', but I suspect you will see me before I see you."

"Count on it." Stepping out through the other door into the corridor, she closed it behind her.

Always has to have the last word. Well, it wasn't entirely surprising.

Unbuttoning his pyjama shirt, he stepped into the bathroom. Whatever facility this was, he didn't know if their hot water budget could be exceeded, but he intended to give it the old college try.

<><>​

Dallon Household
Panacea

I stared at the text I'd just received.

Your father will be walking through your front door in the next five minutes. Please be waiting inside.
– Alexandria

"What is it, Ames? You've just gone white as a sheet." Vicky peered at my phone. "Holy shit, he's actually out? And he's coming here?" She hugged me tightly. "You were right!"

"What, that he was still alive?" I rolled my eyes in an attempt to conceal my jittery nerves. "A mishap in the Birdcage that just so happens to kill him, just after Teacher dies as well? I sincerely doubt that either one was as accidental as they'd like the public to think."

Vicky frowned. "What, you think they lied about Teacher dying?"

"Oh, no, Teacher's dead." I spoke with absolute assurance. "Dad—I mean Marquis Dad—would never have left him alive after Saint tried to use me to get him out. That asshole wasn't Teacher's only cult member, you know."

"Exactly correct." The new voice, one I'd only heard once before, coincided with the front door opening. A familiar figure stepped through, then glanced behind himself with some puzzlement. He shook his head, frowning. "I could've sworn …"

"Dad?" My voice was low and breathless. I could feel my heart rate accelerating. "Is it really you?" It certainly looked like him, although his hair and beard had been trimmed somewhat. That didn't matter, once I got a closer look at him; the timbre of his voice and the way he moved awakened memories long forgotten.

"It is, dearest Amelia." Dismissing whatever it was that had him confused, he stepped all the way inside and closed the door. Moving toward me, he put his hands on my shoulders and stared into my face. "My God, you've grown."

I pushed forward and hugged him tightly. Vaguely, I felt him patting me gently on the back. "I missed you," I said, trying not to cry. "I didn't know how bad I missed you, until I saw you in the Birdcage. But I missed you so bad. Vicky says I cried myself to sleep for months after they took me away."

"Well, that's what I remember happening, anyway," Vicky said awkwardly from beside me. "I didn't really know what was going on, except that I had a new sister and she was sad all the time. So I tried to make her happy."

"And I appreciate it," Dad said, patting me on the back again, but speaking to her. "Victoria, was it? Glory Girl?"

"I go by Vicky, actually." She paused, apparently unsure about how to go on. "So … what do we call you? New Guy? Amy's Dad? I'm pretty sure 'Uncle Marquis' is out of the question."

He chuckled warmly. "I can see we're going to get along just fine. No, an identity has been arranged for me. My new name is Patrick Matheson, but you can call me Patrick."

Slowly, I unpeeled myself from my father, but took hold of his hand to keep him close. "I kind of expected them to use 'Marcus' or 'Mark'. You know, keep it familiar?"

When he smiled, I saw creases collecting around his eyes. "Giveaway names like that only happen in Saturday morning cartoons. Do they still have those?"

"Uh huh," I said immediately. "Protectorate Kids is a big favourite. They can't put the Wards up even as parody images until they're eighteen, but de-aged versions of the current Protectorate are fair game."

"Yeah." Vicky smirked. "Li'l Alexandria is so cute."

Dad actually laughed out loud. "I am definitely going to have to watch that."

<><>​

Dragonslayer Base
Mags

"So, have you decided what to do with Marquis data?" Mischa's question was phrased casually, but the look in his eye was anything but.

It wasn't hard for Mags to figure out where his thoughts lay. "I'm not going to Brockton Bay to avenge Geoff," she assured him. "That was a fool's errand to begin with. But I'm not going to let them off scot free either. Someone's gonna pay for this shit."

Mischa nodded. "Talking about pay, what is happening with team? One working suit is too vulnerable, da? Are we even Dragonslayers?"

Leaning back in the computer chair, Mags closed her eyes and sighed. "No, you're right. We're going to have to make some changes around here. Go and pay the men off, let them know we're not doing active jobs anymore. Try to break it to them gently, okay? Let them know it's not them, it's us."

"Will do." She heard his heavy tread as he moved out of the room and off down the corridor.

Opening her eyes again, Mags turned to the computer system. For a moment, she was tempted to activate Ascalon anyway. An irresistible weapon to slay a dragon. Once set in motion, the program would remove the machine from consideration forever.

But the Dragon AI had never done anything to warrant its execution. Geoff had been stalking Dragon obsessively over the last few years, scrutinising its every move in the hope of finding something to prove it was the danger he had always maintained it was. He had consistently come up empty, over and over again. And in the meantime, Dragon had emulated being a hero successfully enough that people considered 'her' to be a real person.

There was no harm, Mags decided, in allowing Dragon to continue helping people until such time as it decided to start hurting them instead. She would keep an eye on it, monitoring its activities, providing a check on its behaviour. Protecting humanity from behind the scenes.

This wasn't to say that either Panacea or Marquis would go unpunished. As she'd said to Mischa, someone was going to pay dearly for Geoff's death.

Carefully, she crafted the file that would go out. It contained the footage of Panacea's conversation with Marquis in the Birdcage, as well as each subsequent interaction that involved a mention of Marquis or Panacea. Appended to it was the code string that prevented Dragon from intercepting it or following the trail back, because she wasn't stupid.

THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO WOULD CALL THEMSELVES YOUR HEROES, she emblazoned across the screen that finished off the file. Carefully, she picked out the destination addresses; mainstream news as well as conspiracy theory sites. If even one took it up and reposted it, it would go viral in hours.

Finally, there was but one thing left to do. The SEND icon lay under the cursor on her screen. Once rung, this bell could never be unrung.

Fuck you all. Geoff, this is for you.

With a cold and bitter smile, she clicked the mouse button.

<><>​

Marquis

'Patrick' sat on the sofa across from the adult members of New Wave. Brandish and Lady Photon sat on the sofa opposite, while Manpower and Flashbang stood behind it. His Amelia sat beside him, while Vicky perched on the arm of the sofa with her hand on her sister's shoulder. Filling out the team, Shielder and Laserdream flanked their parents on either side.

"You're all looking well," he observed, taking a sip from his cup of tea. Even that tasted so much better out of the Birdcage. "Though I understand you're all unmasked for fighting crime? Even the children?"

Brandish glared. "It was an integral aspect of the New Wave movement. Total accountability for heroes and villains alike."

He sipped again. "You do realise, do you not, that villains will mask up anyway? That you were simply exposing yourselves and your loved ones to whatever retribution the villains would be likely to send your way?" He stopped short of mentioning Fleur by name. They were all thinking it by that point, and it was easier to let them rub the salt into their own wounds.

"Shut up." Brandish seemed to have taken on the role of spokesperson for the team. "We're here to talk about Amy, not your views on how we run our team."

"Very well." He placed the cup down and faced them squarely. "Amelia is my daughter, and she will be staying with me for as long as she and I choose. I will thank you to not stalk me or her, lest you draw unwelcome attention to me. I have given my word to her to not take up my old criminal ways again, and I intend to stand by that word. Do you understand?"

Lady Photon looked concerned. "Amy's duties with New Wave—"

"—will be attended to at Amelia's discretion," he interrupted smoothly. "When and if you choose to pay her for such healing as she decides to carry out, she will be placing a higher priority on that. Until then, I will be seeing about creating a more equitable arrangement for her. In addition, I will be looking at child labour laws, to see if a lawsuit against the team has any standing. There might be serious damages accruing for the last three years. Accountability, you understand."

At their collective stunned look, he took up his teacup and sat back, feeling truly comfortable for the first time since he had been released from the Birdcage. Once he had undertaken not to perform any overt criminal activity, those in positions of power had apparently dismissed him as harmless, unable to effect change.

They had no idea—yet—how wrong they were.



End of Part Ten

 

[Ack]

Hostage Situation

Part Eleven: Unearthing the Past

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]



PRT Building
Marquis

The man named Patrick Matheson sat at ease in the moderately comfortable chair, angled so he could view both the large screen of the conference room and the Director, seated across from him. Miss Militia stood behind him, deliberately out of his line of sight, in a blatantly transparent attempt at intimidation. Beside him, her hand in his, sat Amelia Claire. Even without looking at her, he could sense her trepidation.

Director Piggot exhibited no such emotion. As the collated footage ended—he was seriously impressed with what they'd managed to achieve with such tiny robots—and the final screen showed up, she turned to him. Simmering anger was displayed across her features, to the point that he suspected there were people in Boston who knew exactly how pissed off she was.

"Did you have anything to do with this?" she demanded.

He knew what answer Piggot wanted, of course. She despised him with the heat of a thousand suns, but at her core she was essentially honest. Not that she wouldn't load disproportionate punishments on his plate if she thought she could get away with it (and to be honest; she probably could. The Directorship of a hardship posting like the East-North-East region carried a few perks). No; as far as he could tell, she hated capes and everything they stood for, and punished them for it every chance she got. But she wouldn't frame him for anything. If she threw him back in the Birdcage, it would be because of something he'd actually done.

And he could respect that, he really could. He'd met people before who would dribble honeyed words of pure poison in his ear while holding him close so they could decide exactly which ribs the knife would slide in between. More than one authority figure he'd had to deal with, back in the day—superheroes and cops alike—were far more interested in looking good than doing good. They'd take bribes from powerful crime figures to come down on a less influential rival, then trumpet their 'harsh on crime' stance from the rooftops.

But not so Piggot. Her words remained unminced. Despite her antagonism toward him and his ilk, he felt comfortable dealing with her, because he knew exactly where they stood in relation to each other.

"I did not," he replied, doing his best to project a calm and relaxed manner. "Since my release, I've been spending time with Amelia here, as well as Glory Girl. Lovely child, if a little impetuous. Considering that I have next to no understanding of how computers work in this day and age, that I've had no opportunity to hire on someone with such capability, and that my daughter and her sister have been with me almost constantly, I believe it's patently obvious that I had nothing to do with it." His voice hardened. "More to the point, the footage clearly names both Amelia and Glory Girl as complicit in my eventual release. Deliberately endangering children, especially my own daughter, is a step I would never consider."

Director Piggot glared at him, even as the final message of the clip continued to display on the screen: THESE ARE THE PEOPLE WHO WOULD CALL THEMSELVES YOUR HEROES. "I would consider an anti-superhero message to be on-brand for a self-confessed supervillain. Especially one who is just back in town and would like to see the PRT weakened by poor public relations."

"On the contrary." He matched her, stare for stare. "As a newly minted law-abiding resident of this city, I would much prefer the PRT be free to anticipate and counter any threat to Amelia Claire. Your failure to keep something like this out of the public eye is on you, not me."

She hadn't given up yet. "In identifying you, that clip plays directly into your hands! You can't tell me you knew nothing of it!"

"I not only can tell you that, but I will tell you that," he stated firmly. "I had no idea it was going to happen until it played on the news. Neither did anyone else I was with." He tilted his head in amused recollection. "I will say this much; Brandish's vocabulary has expanded considerably since we last clashed."

"This is in no way a laughing matter!" Piggot was apparently trying hard not to grit her teeth. "The public is now aware that you've left the Birdcage! The fallout will be potentially catastrophic!"

"I agree. It is not a laughing matter." He afforded her a slight bow. "But thank you for confirming that I am no longer constrained from using my powers in a law-abiding manner."

If she clenched her fists any tighter, he feared for the integrity of her tendons. "Enjoy your freedom while you have it. I will be investigating the leak with every resource at my disposal. If I find just one hint you were in any way involved, you'll be back in the Birdcage so fast there'll be a sonic boom involved."

"Whoa, whoa," Amelia protested, holding up her hand. "Director, you're being unfair to my dad, here. He's already told you he didn't do it. He even explained why he wouldn't have. And now you're basically inviting someone to fake evidence to make it look like he did? Because from what you're saying, you'll take that over all the evidence saying he didn't. Why don't you just break out the witch-burning stake while you're at it?"

The Director switched her attention to Amelia. "Panacea, I'd advise you to stay out of this. Your father is a villain, and someone leaked that information to his benefit."

'Patrick' leaned forward. "And I'd advise you to not address my daughter in that tone," he stated. "She's done nothing but good for this city, and deserves a whole lot more respect than that. And as for your statement, it was not at all to my benefit." It had been a long time since he'd had to deal with anything other than the microcosm of power dynamics within the Birdcage, but it was just like riding a bicycle.

Like iron filings following a magnet, Piggot's eyes swung back to him. "Explain."

He ignored her for the moment and turned his head toward Miss Militia, arching one eyebrow.

After a few seconds, the flag-clad hero cleared her throat. "If you could please clarify what you meant by that? We need to understand."

At least she'd said 'please'. "It's simple enough, if you think about it. That leak wasn't intended to help me. Any benefit was both incidental and accidental. It was aimed at punishing the PRT for releasing me, and punishing me for being released. Nothing more and nothing less."

The Director frowned. She appeared to be toning down the aggression. "Who's alive to care that you're out, enough to punish anyone for it? You've already made it clear that all your old associates are gone, as are your adversaries."

Amelia's eyes opened wide, and 'Patrick' knew she'd hit on something. "Saint. He wanted to get Teacher out. He even kidnapped me to make it happen."

"But Saint is dead," Piggot said patiently. "And besides, your father was in custody before he ever began operations. There's no crossover. No chance of bad blood."

"Not then, no." 'Patrick' nodded to Amelia, pleased that she'd suggested this avenue. "Now, yes. I've been told a little of this Saint, and how he used to steal equipment from Dragon with ridiculous ease. What if he had … Amelia, what's the computer term for looking over someone's shoulder?"

"Backdoors into her system," she said promptly.

"I see where you're going with this, and it tracks to a point," the Director admitted. "But again; Saint is dead. He couldn't have released the footage, no matter how he got it."

"Ah, yes," 'Patrick' agreed. "But did Saint perhaps have associates who could've done it for him?"

As with any good lawyer, he knew not to ask such a question without prior knowledge of the answer. The research he'd done into Saint had been more to do with Teacher's death, but the information was still valid. There had been two other power-armoured members of the Dragonslayers, either of whom could've performed the data dump as a way of avenging their deceased comrade.

From the sour look on Piggot's face, she knew it also. "Your point is valid," she admitted grudgingly. "We'll look into it."

"As you wish," 'Patrick' said. "In the interest of fair play; if any harm comes to Amelia as a result of this, I will not rest until the person responsible has paid for their transgression, in full and with interest included." He paused. "In a totally legal manner, just in case you were wondering."

"Is that supposed to be a threat?" asked the Director, her eyes narrowing. "Believe me, Marquis, you don't want to go there."

"Neither do you." 'Patrick' stood up. "Now, if all we have left is empty posturing, then Amelia and I shall be leaving. One: I am legally no longer Marquis, so using that name is a pointless accusation. Two: you only need to fear if Amelia comes to harm, and you are personally responsible. Three: If you think I trade in mere threats, then maybe you don't belong behind that desk, after all. Good day to you." With a polite nod to Miss Militia—it was never a bad idea to be courteous to anyone with a big gun, and she had all the big guns—he headed for the door.

"Mr. Matheson!" Director Piggot's shout rang out as he grasped the handle.

Pausing in his motion, he turned his head to look at her. "Yes, Director?"

The glint was still in her steel-grey eyes, but her tone had moderated slightly. "Be careful in your dealings. This is not the Brockton Bay you remember."

Slowly, he nodded. "I shall keep that in mind."

<><>​

Panacea

I waited until we were walking out of the PRT building before I turned to Dad. "Did you really have to antagonise her so badly? I thought you were going to play it low-key, now that you're out. And what was that 'If you think I trade in mere threats' line, anyway? It sounded like something out of a second-rate crime drama."

He winced, or pretended to anyway. "Ouch. It's bad enough to be critiqued, but to be so savagely down-rated by one's own superhero daughter? Sharper than a serpent's tooth is an ungrateful child, indeed."

I rolled my eyes. "Enough with the theatrics and classical allusions, Dad. We need to have the Director and the PRT as a whole on-side to make this work. I'm fully aware you used to be a supervillain, and so's the Director. We can do without rubbing her face in it every thirty seconds."

He shook his head. "She was trying to provoke me into doing or saying something unwise, and would've continued to do so had I not pushed back. I would not be in the slightest bit surprised if she already has a report on her desk explaining how Saint's organisation was behind the whole thing, and her dumb act was just that; an act."

"But why?" I shook my head. "She's not exactly a nice person, sure, but I doubt she'd actually frame you for it."

"There's framing and then there's framing, my dear Amelia," he explained as he led the way off down the sidewalk. "I knew I was innocent of it, and so did she. But if her veiled accusations had perchance led me to presume I was about to be re-arrested with no option of a fair trial in the matter, I might well have attempted to fight my way out of the building. And attacking PRT personnel is absolutely a crime they could arrest me for and use to return me from whence I came." He made a throwaway gesture with his right hand. "Thus, my accusation of provocation."

I hadn't figured things all the way through but then again, I didn't have Dad's background. "Oh."

"'Oh', indeed," he said dryly. "I understand you're used to seeing the Director and her underlings as the good guys—so to speak—but you should never, ever forget that they have their own agendas to follow, which do not necessarily overlap with yours. As you undoubtedly discovered when you first requested my release from durance vile."

He had a really good point there. At times, my efforts to get Dad out of the Birdcage had felt not unlike beating my head against a brick wall. "Yeah, I got that."

My view of the superhero/supervillain world, originally painted in stark blacks and whites as supplied by Carol and reinforced by Vicky's attitudes, was beginning to suffer many alarming shades of grey. Worse, not all of it was centred around Dad. To find out that the Director herself was capable of such underhanded techniques made me wonder what else she'd done to thwart me in what I wanted without me being any the wiser. Knowing Dad, he'd probably be able to reel off chapter and verse on potential tactics if I happened to ask.

I didn't ask. Sue me; I wanted to preserve some illusions.

When I didn't say any more, he turned to look at me. "You look more than a little disillusioned. What do you say to a trip down memory lane to bring back fond recollections of days gone by?"

"Memory lane?" I looked at him, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," he said, gesturing toward the west, "that I would very much like to see the old homestead once more. Did anyone ever purchase it?"

I was taken aback by the question. "Uh … no … not that I'm aware of," I stammered. "Carol and Mark never said anything about it, even before I found out you were my dad, I mean. I'm thinking maybe the PRT just took it over and kept it."

"Without maintaining it?" Now he sounded aggrieved again. "Come, now. Ten years without proper care? The place may well be a ruin. That's no way to treat a house."

I shrugged. "I honestly don't know. How are we going to get out there and back, anyway?" He'd walked back into my life, not driven. I was pretty sure he didn't own a car and might not even have the funds to buy one.

"You raise an intriguing conundrum," he agreed. "Now, this is merely a request for information, as opposed to a favour … but tell me; how strong are your cousins' force fields, and how fast can they fly?"

That was an option I hadn't thought of. Before I could talk myself out of it, I pulled out my phone.

<><>​

Shielder

"I still can't believe I said yes to this," complained Eric.

"What?" asked Vicky, flying alongside. "Amy and her bio-dad need a lift, and I for one would love a tour of the old Marquis mansion."

"One I would be entirely pleased to give to you, dear girl," said the man Eric was trying to think of as 'Uncle Patrick'—because 'Uncle Marquis' was still too weird—as he reclined at his ease inside the force field bubble. "I'm not certain how much of it is left, given how thoroughly the PRT would have scoured it for every last scrap of alleged evidence of criminal activity, back in the day."

"Uh, Dad?" Amy, comfortably ensconced in Vicky's arms, raised her head. "We're all aware you used to be a supervillain and do crimes. Back in the day, as you said. I'm reasonably sure there's nothing 'alleged' about it. I'm just trusting you not to do them now."

"From your trust to my action, my dear Amelia," 'Patrick' said with a minor bow. "But my point was that the evidence itself was alleged. I was far too careful to let anything contaminate where I lived. Every bottle of Dom Perignon, every crystal chandelier, every tailored suit, I bought fair and square with money I'd very carefully laundered beforehand. Not a dirty note among them. The only reason the Brigade even tracked me down was because a disgruntled underling thought I stored cash in the house. Once he turned me in, I suspect the plan was to ransack the place for my ill-gotten gains."

"And did he?" asked Vicky, eyes bright with interest as she put on what had to be her idea of a wise-guy accent. "Or did you have da doity rat whacked from inside da joint?"

The ex-supervillain visibly winced. "My dear Victoria, nobody has talked like that for over sixty years. And I did not have him killed to set an example. That sort of thing, I never left up to another person. No, someone else caught wind of his plan and thought they'd beat him to it. From what I heard, there was a brief but ugly scuffle in one of the grimier bars of the day, involving a knife and a pool cue. Neither one survived."

"Oh." Vicky sounded almost disappointed. "That's not very dramatic. So, did you have any money stored in the house?"

"As it happens, yes," he confirmed. "Approximately two and a half thousand dollars, in a small safe in the master bedroom. Don't get your hopes up; the PRT almost certainly drilled out the lock and confiscated the cash."

"But isn't that yours?" asked Amy. "I mean, you're out again so they should give it back, right?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Really? Are they not teaching you about civil asset forfeiture these days? No? My dear, the moment the authorities get the slightest chance of claiming that something of value either has been used in a crime, is going to be used in a crime or constitutes the proceeds of a crime, they can simply take it into custody, even if no arrest has been made or charges laid. It's theirs from that moment on, to do with what they want." He tilted his head in rueful self-acknowledgement. "Of course, it's a lot easier if charges have been laid."

Despite himself, Eric found himself being drawn into the discussion. "Wait … that's not right, is it? It can't be." He was down with criminals being arrested and jailed, but having their stuff taken away just because it might have been used in a crime was a going a bit far.

"Yeah, it is," Vicky said unexpectedly. "I remember Mom telling me about it once. It's been on the books for a long time, but they kicked it into high gear to crack down on drug dealers from about nineteen eighty onward, taking their houses and cars and money and stuff. Since Tinkers started showing up, their labs have also been a big target."

"Yeah, but …" Eric huffed, irritated about not being able to find the right words for what he wanted to say. It just felt wrong, was all.

"We're here," 'Patrick' noted, pointing ahead at where a rooftop showed between two trees. "Whatever 'here' might end up being. Be careful if we go inside; the structure may be unstable."

"Hey, I'm invincible and Eric's got some pretty rockin' force fields going on," declared Vicky as they coasted in for a landing. "I wish Crystal could've come too. She'd love this."

"College does have a way of taking up one's time," 'Patrick' noted. Eric brought the bubble he was standing in down to the ground then dissolved it, depositing him on solid footing. "Thank you, lad. Well done. Have you been practising?"

The compliment, sincerely given from one cape to another, took Eric off balance. "Uh … yeah. Mom makes sure me and Crystal can use our powers properly."

"Good, good." 'Patrick' nodded as he began to pick his way up the driveway, currently strewn with leaves and branches, with a few small bushes and small trees sprouting through. "Of the Brigade, she was perhaps the one who gave me the biggest challenge when it came to beating her. Ranged attack, coupled with a strong and versatile defensive capability."

Vicky scooped Amy up and flew her over the mess, but Eric instead used a laser to cut a few of the branches in half. "Not Dad? I mean, he would've been about the strongest guy in Brockton Bay, back then. Probably still is, even now."

'Patrick' gave Eric a nod of acknowledgement and kicked aside the smoking branch-ends. "Thank you kindly. Yes, your father is strong, but that merely meant I didn't attempt to match his strength with mine. You don't attack your enemy where he's strong, but where he's weak. When he attacks you, make sure he strikes where you're strong."

"Is that Sun Tzu?" asked Vicky, setting Amy down on the steps outside the house. "It sounds like him."

"Paraphrased, but yes." 'Patrick' climbed the steps and stood beside Amy, before the front doors. "You will find that many of your opponents are going to try to use powers as a substitute for strategy. If you think through the fight before the first punch is thrown, it means you don't have to try to figure things out while adrenaline is messing up your thought process." He looked at the stained, weathered wooden doors, and frowned. "Hmm. Nobody's been here in quite a while."

"Yeah, we got that already." Vicky gestured at the branch-strewn driveway, with its own burgeoning growth. "So we gonna go in, or not?"

<><>​

Panacea

"I say we go in." I grabbed the handle and tried to turn it. It didn't budge. "Aww, it's locked."

"Here, let me try." Vicky took hold of the handle and turned it. Metal and wood creaked for a few seconds, then there was a sharp crack of something breaking inside the mechanism. Letting go the handle, she gave the door a light shove and it creaked open. "See? It was just stuck."

I rolled my eyes. This was not the first time she'd used the 'it was just stuck' excuse, and it likely wouldn't be the last. "Just stuck. Right."

"I swear." She put her outspread hands over her heart. From her expression, butter wouldn't have melted in her mouth. "It was like that when I found it."

Dad snorted under his breath as we stepped inside. Eric raised his hand, muttering something about, "now, how did Crystal do it?" before a wavering light lit up the gloomy interior. The more he concentrated, the broader the beam was.

I could easily believe nobody had been here in ten years. Long looping webs, heavy with dust, hung from every protrusion. Eric's light illuminated what would've been a gorgeous marble floor if it hadn't been for a decade of dust, rat droppings, dead spiders and God knew what else. The walls were a dark wood that had probably once been polished to a lovely sheen.

Dad raised his head and looked around; from the expression on his face, he wasn't seeing what the rest of us were. "Do you remember this, Amelia? Do you remember the house?"

I squinted and looked around again, then kicked aside some of the litter that was crunching under our feet. The pattern in the marble tiles looked almost familiar, so I kicked some more aside. Eric's light fell over it, and in a flash of memory I knew what it looked like.

Crouching down, I ran my fingers over the floor, then turned my gaze upward. It had been ten long years, but if I concentrated, I could see how the house had been before, to an adventurous six-year-old. Turning, I pointed at a staircase looming in the shadows. "My bedroom was up there," I whispered, my voice echoing in the silence.

"It was," he said quietly in return. "We won't go up there quite yet. I don't feel like falling through the floorboards. Come on through; I'll show you where the Brigade captured me. Our last battle."

That got Eric's and Vicky's attention in no uncertain terms, and we followed him through the house. Barely identifiable items of furniture, not even covered over, lay rotted and moth-eaten here and there. Several times, we had to pull aside sheets of spider-web where they'd layered up over the years.

"Wasn't there a basement of some kind?" I asked tentatively as we pushed open an unlocked (actually unlocked this time, instead of Vicky-unlocked) door into some kind of study. "I remember a cool dark room with stairs going up."

"Yes, there's a wine cellar as well," Dad confirmed. "It's more or less directly under our feet. Several feet of stone and earth, so there's little chance of it giving way under us. I had several rather excellent bottles of the fifty-four Krug down there, nicely maturing."

"Think they confiscated the wine as well?" asked Vicky. "Or would it still be there?"

Dad gave her a raised eyebrow. He was actually pretty good at it. "What do you think, dear girl?"

"Ah." She nodded in resignation. "So … this is where it was?"

I looked around. There were the remains of an armchair to one side, and a door into a dark place, sagging off its single hinge across the room. Slowly, I moved toward the door. "I was in there," I said. "With my favourite pillow."

"I remember that pillow." Vicky was beside me. "You wore that damn thing out."

"Mm-hmm." I pushed the door, and it fell off the hinge. Vicky caught it and leaned it against the wall. Inside the dark place, as Eric brought the light closer, was a largish closet.

"So … wait," Eric said slowly. "You were in there, while your dad fought our parents out here?"

I glanced at Dad for confirmation, and he nodded. "Ah … yeah, I guess? It got noisy, then someone opened the door and it wasn't Dad. He was lying … just there, where you're standing. I don't remember much else."

Eric scratched his head. "How come they attacked while you were there? I mean, one stray shot, or someone bashing through the wall …"

"They didn't know," Dad said quietly.

I'd already been aware of this, and I was pretty sure Vicky remembered the epic confrontation with Carol in the PRT building, but this was definitely news to Eric. He stared at me, and I nodded. "When they found out where Dad lived, they didn't bother finding anything else out, like the fact that he had a six-year-old kid. They just charged on in. Dad shoved me in the closet and tried to de-escalate, tried to take it outside, tried to do anything to prevent combat from breaking out right where I was, but this was the first time they'd caught him on the back foot and they were determined to push it to a fight. So … they did."

That was the gist of what Fred Jones had told me, interspersed with my own deductions of what had happened at the time. It had been bad enough inside my head but saying it out loud was even worse. Eric had a stricken expression on his face, while Vicky looked deeply, deeply unhappy.

"Well, enough of ancient history," Dad said, breaking the awkward silence. "Shall we go through to the back? I want to see how the lawn is faring."

"The forest, you mean," I muttered. "The front driveway was bad enough."

That got a chuckle from Dad and an actual laugh from Vicky. Eric looked like he was still trying to get his brain around what had happened in the study, once upon a time. Still, we kept moving, ducking past drunkenly leaning doors and brushing aside yet more intrusive spider-webs until we emerged on the rear patio. It was thick with leaf litter to the point that actual mulch had formed, but we kicked some of that aside.

It was good to see actual sunlight again, but I'd been more right than I'd thought about the state of the lawn. If I squinted, I could see how it had once been, but the carefully rolled green and the manicured bushes had exploded out of all control. Now, they were wildly growing trees, with smaller trees in between. The grass beneath was competing with weeds, along with the massively overgrown flowerbeds.

"Hm." Dad leaned against the patio rail and surveyed what he could of the landscape. "It could be worse, I suppose."

"It could be worse?" Vicky stared at him as she waved at the incipient forest beyond the patio. "That's gonna need a bulldozer before you could make a lawn out of it again. Or a flamethrower. Or a bulldozer and a flamethrower."

"Granted, granted." Dad folded his arms, then looked over at me. "Amelia, do you remember your princess phase?"

"Princess phase?" Vicky only just barely got in before Eric, both staring at me. "You had a princess phase?"

I reddened, looking beseechingly at Dad. "Please tell me you're kidding."

He raised his eyebrows, a slight smile on his face. "Not in the slightest, my dear girl. You made a wonderful princess. That was after your admittedly brief pirate phase."

Eric snorted with amusement, and I stared at Dad, willing him to tell me it was all a joke. "Now I know you're kidding."

"Once more; not in the slightest." He straightened up off the rail and looked around, then pointed at the nearest tree. "In fact, I recall you with your little toy spade, burying treasure right at the base of that bush. You were so proud of yourself. You even made a treasure map for it."

Eric looked at Vicky, then at the tree. "Amy buried treasure when she was six years old?"

Vicky nodded, a grin beginning to spread across her face. "Sounds like it."

"Nope," I said, crossing my hands in front of me in a scissor motion. "Nope, nope, nope. Don't even think about it."

Eric grinned at me. "Aren't you even slightly curious about what six-year-old you would've buried as treasure?"

"Not in the slightest." I looked him straight in the eye. "And neither should you be."

"Well, I am." Vicky launched off the patio and landed beside the tree. "Should I pull it up, or just dig alongside it?"

I sighed, shoulders slumping. Apparently, this was going to be a thing. "Well, don't kill the poor tree. I'll uh, redirect its roots so they aren't damaged by us digging."

"What are we gonna use for spades?" asked Eric. "I mean, my force field works for me, but I'm sure Vicky doesn't want dirt under her nails."

There was a muted snap-snap noise from behind me, and I turned to see Dad impassively offering me two shovels, about the right height for me and Vicky. They were bone-white and … oh. They were made of bone. I'd known Dad could do that, but I hadn't actually seen him use his powers until right now.

"Thanks," I said. "Hey, Vicky! Got a shovel for you!"

So apparently we were digging for buried treasure.

<><>​

Glory Girl

Vicky had to say, Amy's dad made a pretty good shovel. A little thicker in the blade than a metal and wood one, but it dug into the dirt real good. She and Eric and Amy took turns, carving out pieces of dirt and piling them neatly alongside, while Ames stopped them occasionally so she could reroute a particularly thick root.

"You know," said Eric, "I think we might be on the wrong side of the tree. We're two feet down, and I'm pretty sure a six-year-old kid, even Amy, wouldn't go that far down with a toy garden spade."

"You're in the right place," 'Mr. Matheson' said encouragingly. "Ten years of leaf litter makes for a lot of mulch. You're probably only getting to the original dirt now."

It made sense, especially looking at the thickness of the mulch on the patio, so they kept digging, widening the hole as they went so they could get better purchase on the dirt at the bottom. At three feet down, with the hole now wide enough for all of them to stand in, Vicky began to have her doubts. "Whatever was down here," she said, "it isn't here now."

"Yeah," agreed Eric. "Digging for buried treasure isn't all it's cracked up to be." He smirked in Amy's direction. "You probably dug it up again and forgot about it."

"Don't look at me," Ames told him. "I don't even remember burying the stupid thing."

"Well, for all of me, it can stay there." Vicky dropped her shovel and lofted up out of the hole. "I am gonna shower for like an hour after this."

Eric followed along, giving the tree a kick along the way. The leaves rustled, but that was about it. "Me too."

"Wait up." When Amy went to climb out, the edge of the hole crumbled. Vicky went to help her, but Ames jammed the shovel into the dirt to brace against instead.

Thoomp.

They looked at each other, then at the shovel blade, still half out of the dirt. "What was that?" Vicky asked.

"I dunno," Amy said, and grabbed the shovel again. Hastily, she began scraping in the dirt at the bottom of the hole.

"What was what?" asked Eric, who was twenty feet up with his eyes closed, arms out to the sides, slowly turning in the sunlight.

"Ames hit something and it made a funny noise." Vicky dropped into the hole again. Grabbing up her shovel, she started hefting the dirt out of the hole.

In the next moment, Amy's shovel scraped on something that made the sound again. Her eyes met Vicky's again.

"That wasn't a rock," she said.

"Nope, it was not." Bracing herself, Vicky snapped the handle off her shovel and dropped to her knees.

With the leverage she could generate using her strength and the width of the shovel blade, she was able to scrape the dirt off the top of what looked and felt like an expanse of white rock. They had to extend the hole a little at one end, given it was (Vicky estimated) two feet by three feet, but in the end they had the top clear. She thumped it with her fist and came back with a muffled echo. Whatever it was, it wasn't empty, but it wasn't solid either.

It was a box of some sort.

"No six-year-old buried this," Eric said, hands on his hips as he hovered over the hole, looking down at what they'd found. "Did they, Mr. Matheson?"

"Well, that depends," Amy's dad said, not moving from his relaxed posture on the patio. "She may have donated a spadeful or two of dirt. So, technically speaking, she helped bury it. Did you wish to query its provenance some more, or are you more interested in getting it out and perhaps seeing what is within?"

"You'll want to get out of the hole, Ames." Vicky flexed her fingers.

"But your nails," Amy protested, but didn't resist as Eric helped her out.

"Screw my nails." Vicky poised herself and drove her hands spear-fashion straight down into the dirt on either side of the box. Once she felt her fingertips curling around the bottom, she braced and heaved.

It didn't want to come loose, which Vicky could kinda understand. The box had been at the bottom of this hole for ten or eleven years, and the dirt had been settling around it for all that time. It had compacted, and roots had grown through it. The box was as close to being a part of the dirt as it could've been without actually dissolving into it.

She didn't give a damn.

Once upon a time, she'd picked up an entire cement truck (empty, because she wasn't stupid) and held it over her head for the reporters. This wasn't as heavy as that. It was just held in by a lot of dirt that was a lot heavier than that.

She grunted with effort and heaved harder. Something shifted. Underground, she felt a root that was strung across one side of the box as it snapped. The box shifted again, moving upward. And then all of a sudden, air got in there, and it came with a rush as the suction was broken.

Vicky flew up out of the hole with the box, trailing lumps of dirt. The other two followed her as she went to the patio, kicked more mulch aside, and dropped the box on the marble tiles. One cracked, but she didn't give a shit.

"Okay," she said to Amy's dad. "What's in it?"

He didn't move from his relaxed posture, but his voice dropped the carefree tone he'd been affecting before. "If I tell you, that presupposes knowledge of the contents. It goes from 'unknown owner' to 'potential proceeds of crime'. You know what will happen to it then." He shrugged. "As far as I know, some stranger intruded on my lawn one dark night and buried it there. It's up to you to open it and find out."

"Hm. Damn it." When he was right, he was right. Vicky crouched next to the box and saw that it had a slightly indented seam around the outside, but no lock to be seen. "Eric, I think this needs cutting open."

"On it."

They held their hands to protect their eyes from the glare as Eric carefully cut the seam all the way around the box. He wasn't as powerful as Crystal but when it came to a basic cut, he was actually pretty good. It took about five minutes, which Vicky figured was four minutes fifty seconds too long.

"Okay," he said eventually. "Vicky, I'm gonna need you to hit the lid sideways, right about … there."

"Got it." Clenching her fist, Vicky smacked the lid right where he was pointing at. It broke free and thumped onto the mulched leaf litter; score one for Eric.

Inside the box itself was a heavy plastic bag, yellowed with age, folded over. Whatever was in it came right up to the rim of the box. Around the very edge was a layer of some other material; Vicky wasn't sure what it was, but Eric's laser had only scorched it instead of setting it on fire or melting it.

"You buried it and you found it, Ames," she said, gesturing at the folded-over plastic bag. "You get to see what's inside first."

"If it's pieces of eight," muttered Eric. "I will go apeshit."

Vicky watched as her sister went to her knees beside the box, careful to avoid touching the still-hot edge. She unfolded the bag and reached inside, then apparently had to tear some kind of seal holding it closed. Reaching farther in, her fingers closed over something and she pulled it out.

It was an envelope, the flap glued lightly down. On the front, in exquisite copperplate, was the name Amelia Claire. She stared at it, finger gently tracing the letters, then looked up at her father. He nodded encouragingly to her.

Out there, in the lawn-turned-forest, the wind was rustling through tree branches, but under the patio it was so quiet Vicky heard it when Ames broke the seal on the envelope. She pulled the letter out and unfolded it. Taking a deep breath, she began to read out loud.

My dearest Amelia Claire,

If you are reading this, something drastic has most likely happened to me. If I am dead, you have been directed to dig under the tree by a letter in my will. Otherwise, if circumstances have required me to travel abroad for my health, when you reached the age of eighteen or twenty-one, my lawyer will have forwarded a similar letter to you. There are two such letters, to increase the chance of one reaching you.

No matter how you got to this point, the contents of the box are yours in perpetuity and to be put to whatever use you see fit. I cannot see the future and make no claim to be able to predict it beyond the next few minutes. Therefore, as much as I would like to say I will always be there to protect you, fate and chance delight in making a mockery of such promises.

When you came into my life, Amelia, I had no idea what to do with you. But parenthood has come easily to me and now I can think of no happier state than to be your father. As I write this, you are playing in my study, setting up a tea-party which I will be only too glad to partake of with you.

In closing, I will state that wherever life takes us both, I will always be your father, and if I cannot be there to take care of you, the contents of this box will have to do it for me.

I hope they will suffice.

Yours …

By the time she got to this point, Ames was sniffling. She stopped reading at 'yours' and hugged her dad; he embraced her in return, dirt and all. Vicky couldn't blame her for crying. She was getting a little misty-eyed herself.

"So, what's in there?" Eric pulled open the bag and reached in. Suddenly, his eyes widened, and he slowly pulled his hand out again. "Holy …"

Vicky stared at the fat wad of cash in his hand. At least two inches thick, it was composed of hundreds. Just hundreds, all the way through. "… shit," she finished. "Ames. Ames! Check this out."

It took a couple of seconds for Vicky's tone to get through to Amy, but in the end she let her dad go and turned to see what Vicky was talking about. When she focused on the stack of money, her face went pale, bringing her freckles out in sharp contrast. "What? What? How much …?"

"Thousands," Eric said dreamily. "Tens of thousands." He patted the bag. "Hundreds of thousands."

Amy's dad cleared his throat. "Millions."

Vicky stared at him. "Millions?" Her voice squeaked upward at the end, but she didn't care. "Actual millions?"

He nodded austerely. "All for Amelia Claire. It was for if I was no longer able to provide for her. Not one of those banknotes is stolen. She can do what she wants with it. Go to college. Take a vacation for the rest of her life. I claim none of it." His nod encompassed all three teens. "You dug it up. You found it. Not me. Do you understand?"

Vicky took a deep breath. "Yeah, I got it. Was this … your savings?"

He chuckled darkly. "My dear Glory Girl … I was a successful supervillain, not one of the low-effort posers in Brockton Bay today. This was some spare money I decided to put aside for a rainy day."

Eric raised his eyebrows. "Some rainy day."

Amy's dad nodded, still amused. "Indeed."



End of Part Eleven

 

[Ack]

Hostage Situation

Part Twelve: Attending to Business

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]



Glory Girl

They were lofting up and away from the dilapidated mansion when Eric cleared his throat. "I, uh, it's really none of my business, but ..."

"But you consider it important enough to raise as a topic, despite its sensitive nature," Amy's dad responded. "I would wager you are about to ask a question about the money. Go ahead and ask; you will not learn if you never question." Reclining at his ease within the force field like a potentate of old, he gestured in invitation.

And that was just one of the bizarre aspects about him. Despite her intense curiosity—Marquis was the closest thing to a living fossil that the Brockton Bay underworld had—she'd been ready to jump on him with both feet if he turned out to be an asshole, especially to Ames. However, the newly-renamed 'Patrick Matheson' had repeatedly shown both restraint and an underlying strength of conviction, especially when dealing with Vicky's parents and with Director Piggot. His consistent courtesy and willingness to treat them as equals had put him a cut above the other Brockton Bay villains she'd encountered in the past.

Eric nodded. "I was just wondering ... once the Director finds out about the money, and learns that Amy got it from you, what's stopping her from doing that asset seizure thing on it?"

"That is indeed a good question." Matheson raised an eyebrow. "I have one for you in return. Do you believe it would be fair or equitable for her to do so?"

To Eric's credit, he didn't even hesitate. "Uh, no. You gave it to Amy. It's hers."

"Indeed. And Glory Girl? Your opinion on the matter?"

Vicky shook her head firmly. "You said it was clean, and I believe you. Ames should get to keep it."

Sitting next to her father, using the box as a seat, Ames raised her head at the expressions of support. "Thanks, guys. I appreciate it, I really do."

"As do I." Matheson bestowed an approving gaze upon Eric and Vicky. "Now, to answer your question in part if not whole. There exist ways and means that, while technically not legal, are not specifically a crime to make use of. I will be instructing Amelia in their use so that the money is safe from the rapacious grasp of the United States legal system, yet still accessible to her."

Damn, this guy was making the whole concept of villainy sound cooler all the time. "So, uh, we don't get to know what these ways and means are?"

His urbane smile turned in her direction. "Plausible deniability, my dear Glory Girl. If you do not know, you cannot accidentally reveal it to the wrong people."

Or have it wormed out of me by Mom. It still irritated Vicky that her mother was a better interrogator than she was, and this was entirely achieved by way of lawyer tricks rather than super-powers. Fear only worked so far with some people, and with others it made them shut all the way up.

"Yeah, that makes sense," Eric agreed. "I think—"

What he thought would be forever lost to posterity, when his phone suddenly went off, chiming alert after alert. Vicky's was doing exactly the same; a fraction of a second later, Amy's phone joined the raucous chorus.

"Son of a bitch," Vicky muttered. If her phone was blowing up like this—if everyone's phones were blowing up like this—then something serious had to be going down. Hauling out her phone, she called up her messages.

"The bombings have started up again," Eric reported, reading off his own texts. "We're needed for search and rescue." He frowned. "One of the bombs must have taken out a cell tower, so we didn't get the alerts until now."

"Carol wants me at the hospital," Amy added, looking at her own phone. "They've got casualties coming in."

"Because of course she does," Matheson murmured. "For a lawyer, Brandish always did lack imagination."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Vicky asked, a little more sharply than she really meant to. "If people are hurt, they're going to need healing."

She wasn't quite sure how he managed it, but a single raised eyebrow made her doubt everything she'd just said. "My dear, hospitals are well-staffed with medical professionals who are specifically trained and equipped to keep people alive until they recover all by themselves. They're famous for it. I believe my daughter has a different role to play in this little drama. Amelia, if you would like to stay with me for the duration?"

"Uh …" Amy looked and sounded torn. "I want to, but … I promised a week of normal healing duties while they worked on getting you out of the Birdcage. The week's not up yet."

He sighed. "Let me guess. Alexandria?" Before she could answer, he went on. "Very well, I shall make certain to deliver you to the sweatshop just as soon as we have finished our errand together. You may then ensure that the hoi polloi return to their regular lives with little to show from their undoubtedly harrowing experiences."

"Wait," Eric said. "Where are you going to be going? What will you be doing? Mom and Dad—and Aunt Carol and Uncle Mark—are gonna want to know."

Matheson gave him the raised-eyebrow treatment next. "If I don't tell you, then you won't be obliged to conceal it from your respective parents. This way, they won't attempt to interfere when least needed."

"I don't like the sound of that," Vicky said carefully. "Ames, you don't have to do this if you don't want to."

Amy took a deep breath. "Don't care. Tell Carol and Mark that this is my choice. If we end up doing something blatantly illegal, I'll arrest him myself, but he's already promised not to, so I'm pretty sure he won't."

"Well said, Amelia dear." Matheson pointed downward. "You may set us down anywhere there, young man. Then go about your duties. Make your city proud of having such upstanding heroes."

Eric gave him a dry look. "I'm pretty sure they could tell that was sarcasm in Miami."

Matheson smiled, with an almost roguish twinkle to his eye. "Now, now. With Victoria and yourself, I was actually being serious. Amelia could not have found herself a better adopted sibling or cousin."

Vicky snorted. "I notice you don't include our parents in that."

"Astute as ever, Victoria." Matheson stood up as the force field bubble reached ground level and dissolved. "Go, save the innocents. We shall be along in good time."

As she flew off alongside Eric, Vicky turned to her cousin. "Any idea of what he's talking about?"

He shrugged. "Apart from doing whatever it is to hide the money? No clue."

"Hmm." Later, she decided, she would corner Ames and see if she could find out what was really going on.

<><>​

Panacea

When Eric dissolved his force field and flew away—not without a wave to me, which I returned—I stood up and dusted my hands off. I was still fairly grimy from digging the box out, and I wondered if there was a micro-organism I could make to act like soap or something. This wasn't the time or place to start experimenting, though. Instead, I looked around to see if I could get my bearings.

In a way, I did, but not in the manner I'd expected or wanted.

Brockton Bay had never been quite large enough for dedicated cultural or ethnic enclaves to form over decades; we didn't have a Little Italy or a Chinatown, for instance. However, there were blocks where people from the same regions had established businesses, possibly because they were related in one way or another. Looking across the road from where we were, I saw a couple of shops with pictogram writing on them that might have been Chinese or Japanese. And, because I was looking for it, I saw one other thing.

The red and green tag of the Azn Bad Boys.

I cleared my throat and looked down at Dad, who was down on one knee, examining the box. "Uh … problem." While I didn't know how big a problem it was going to be, I figured he needed to know, sooner rather than later.

He stood up fast, turning to face where I was looking, with jagged bone poking through holes in his hands. "What is it?"

I gestured at the tag. "ABB. We're in their territory." This was absolutely a problem. After all, the ABB had more or less declared war on the rest of the city. Under the cover of Bakuda's bombings, Oni Lee had broken Lung out of holding, which was bad enough. However, we'd sort of assumed that the bombings would stop once they'd achieved their objective. Seeing as they'd started up again, it looked like they wanted more. And being caught in their territory would be a problem for anyone.

"Oh, is that all?" He turned his attention back to the box. "This was deliberate, dearest Amelia. It's the one area the bombs won't be going off in. I required some peace and quiet to do what I need to do."

"Then we may have come to the wrong place," I murmured, hardly moving my lips, as three gang members emerged from a nearby convenience store. The tallest of the three was stuffing a wad of cash into his pocket. I was fairly certain he hadn't just used the ATM.

I recalled a report I'd heard Carol and Mark talking about, how the ABB rank and file were far more numerous now. They were pushing their recruitment efforts more than ever before, and they had hundreds of members on the street.

"Hey!" called the tallest of the gang members. "What are you two doing here? What's in the box?" He started swaggering toward where I stood with my father, with his two associates trailing behind. If I was reading their body language right, they didn't really want to be there, but they didn't have a choice in the matter.

"On the contrary, this too was entirely deliberate." Dad glanced my way with a slight smile, then flexed his wrists in a slow, deliberate fashion. There were no bone spikes in sight now, but that meant nothing at all. "Would you agree that we are in danger, and have a right to defend ourselves?"

"Hey!" The gang members were standing right in front of us now. "Asked you a question, old man!" Reaching out, the leader shoved Dad back slightly. It was a dominance move, older than civilisation, with a very basic thought process behind it. React or submit.

I sighed internally. Oh, these idiots have no idea what they're doing. Not that I had much in the way of sympathy for them. Dad's question had been evidently intended to elicit one specific answer, so that he could act freely in this matter. I was inclined to go along with him, because screw Lung and screw the ABB. Deliberately, I cleared my throat, drawing the gang members' eyes to me. "Yes."

"Good. I'm so glad we agree." For all his playful tone, his eyes were deadly serious. The bone spikes emerged from his hands again, shooting out and forming a cage around the importunate gang members. From every bar, wickedly sharp blades angled inward, pricking the clothing and flesh of the three young men, holding them immobile.

"Don't kill them!" I blurted automatically, then felt just a little embarrassed. If he'd wanted them dead, they would be corpses by now.

"Oh, I have no intention of doing so, unless these young louts decide to do something supremely idiotic," he said. He met the eyes of the tallest gang member. "You and I are going to do some talking, in just a moment. Your future depends entirely on the answers I get. Do I make myself abundantly clear? Don't nod; you may do yourself an injury."

The ABB member's eyes rolled sideways, looking for a way out. He twitched away from some of the foot-long barbs, but that only brought him into contact with more of them. "You got no idea who you fuckin' wit', ol' man," he mumbled.

"On the contrary, boy, I know exactly who I'm dealing with." 'Patrick Matheson' was in full Marquis mode by now. His voice, still urbane and cultured, sounded downright sinister. In another instant, a bone mask with jagged spikes forming an irregular crown had formed around his head. "Do you?"

From the way the ABB idiot's eyes widened, he recognised what he was seeing. "Shit!" His voice hit a higher note than he probably intended. "You're Marquis!"

"No, not since I left the Birdcage." The bone crown dissolved to become dust on the wind. "If I still were, I would already be disposing of your remains. We can go back to that, if you truly want to. Your choice." Dad shifted his viewpoint to another one of the gang members. "After all … I have spares."

There was a long and extremely thoughtful silence. The ABB guy blinked a couple of times. "I can talk."

"Good." Dad glanced down at the box, then covered it with another layer of bone and secured it to a convenient parking meter. "Amelia, dear, kindly wait here with these charming gentlemen while I make a few purchases. I should not be long."

I shrugged. "Okay." It wasn't clear to me yet exactly what he had in mind, but so far he seemed to know precisely what he was doing. If this was my father after ten years out of the game, what must he have been like at the top of his form? I was pretty sure I knew why nobody had messed with him.

Dad entered the shop; the little bell tinkled as the door shut behind him. I looked around and saw no more threats. The few people on the street stared at the bone cage, then turned and hurried in the opposite direction. Nobody wanted to know, nobody wanted to be involved.

"Psst! Hey!"

I looked around; it was the self-appointed spokesman for the ABB gangsters. "Can I help you?"

He rolled his eyes toward the shop door, then back to me. "You're Panacea, right? Amy Dallon? Are you his hostage?"

It was blindingly obvious as to where he was going with this, but I thought I'd play it out anyway. "I'm Panacea, yes. But I'm not his hostage. I'm his daughter. Why do you ask?"

From the look of shock on his face, he hadn't been paying attention to the news, or PHO, over the last couple of days. That was if he even had access to either one. "Uh—you—he's gonna kill us, you know that, right? You're a superhero. You can't let him do that."

I sighed. Fred had ranted about this sort of thing more than once. "You're willing to victimise and murder people, but as soon as it's your ass in the firing line, things are different all of a sudden. Riiiight." I leaned closer. "He's not going to murder you, you idiots. He's said he won't, and that's that. Unless you do something really stupid, like threaten my life. Two men have already died, doing that."

While he was still digesting that, the shop door opened again. Dad emerged, looking pleased with himself. Before I could ask what we were doing next, my phone rang.

Oh, boy. I was no kind of Thinker, but I had a good idea who was calling, and why. Reluctantly, I looked at the caller ID. Sure enough, it was Carol. "Hey," I said, putting the phone to my ear.

"Where are you, and what are you doing?" she demanded. "They need you at the hospital, healing people!"

I refused to feel guilty about what I was doing. "Right now, Dad needs me to do stuff with him. I'll go to the hospital after we're done."

"What? What does he need you to do that's more important than saving people?"

I hadn't realised Dad could hear both sides of the conversation until he plucked the phone from my hand with a murmured 'excuse me'. "Saving more people, my dear Brandish," he said, then ended the call and handed the phone back to me. "I would advise you to turn that off for the duration. She does not appear inclined to listen to our side of things, and the noise could be a dangerous distraction."

I hesitated. Ever since I officially became Panacea, I'd never turned my phone off. I'd always been on call, night and day, just in case some illness or condition that only I could deal with cropped up.

It began to ring again, Carol's name on the caller ID. With a convulsive motion of my thumb, I declined the call. Then I pressed the sequence to power the phone down. I wasn't exactly sure why Dad was concerned about 'dangerous distractions', but neither did I want to try second-guessing him.

"Phone's off," I reported, putting it away. "But you haven't yet told me what's so important that I'm likely to get guilted at for the next six months."

"One thing at a time, dear Amelia," he said, using a bone blade from his fingertip to slice open the plastic packing around the basic-use cell-phone he'd just bought. His other purchase , currently tucked under his arm, was a small roll of aluminum foil.

"Uh … didn't the PRT already give you a phone?" I asked. "A better one than that, even?"

He chuckled dryly. "I may be as the merest babe in the woods when it comes to computers in this modern age, my dear, but even I know when I'm being handed a surveillance device. If that contraption is not equipped to record all my calls, much less track my every footstep, then I will be sincerely astonished."

As he spoke, he exchanged the phone in his hand for the PRT-issued one in his pocket. The latter he proceeded to wrap in tinfoil until it was well and truly swathed.

I didn't want to think that the PRT would deliberately bug my dad, but the more I considered the notion, the more likely it sounded. Director Piggot was someone I could totally see doing it, and justifying it with the explanation that Dad was a notorious supervillain. Which he technically was, but he was also someone who had survived ten years in the deadliest human-created long-term living space on Earth. At the very least, I figured, he'd earned a bit of slack.

"Now then," he said genially to the three ABB members. "I am going to release you in a moment. You will pick up this box here and carry it to that alley just down there. You will not attempt to run off with the box, or perform any other stupidity with it. Do I make myself absolutely clear?"

"Wh-what happens if we do?" asked the leader of the group.

A heavy bone band formed around his leg, just above his knee. The same happened with each of his two compatriots. They twitched, evidently aware of what had just happened, but not of its significance. To be fair, neither was I.

"That depends, young man, on how attached you are to your femoral artery." Dad was an artist at the bland delivery of a mortal threat. From his expression and tone, he may have been commenting on the weather. "You may outrun me. You will never outrun my power."

I was pretty sure he wouldn't actually do it—casual murder was one thing I would wholly object to, and he had to know it—but the way they went pale showed that they were convinced otherwise. When he dissolved the cage, they stumbled a little, watching him warily. They were probably armed—knives at the very least—but they showed basic smarts by not even attempting to pull a weapon on him.

Next, he removed the bracket holding the box to the meter. "Pick up the box and carry it," he directed them. "Put those muscles to use."

While he directed them where to take it, I kept a lookout all around. He was probably doing the same—ten years in the Birdcage would teach a certain amount of situational awareness—but I didn't want to feel totally superfluous.

Nothing happened. Passers-by carefully ignored us. Really, it was the safest option; come in on our side, and their faces would be remembered for later. Come in on the side of the people extorting them for money, and they'd have to deal with our powers. Overall, a lose-lose situation. Better to see nothing.

With the box safely deposited in the alley, Dad had them stand back and then removed the reinforcing bone, leaving just the box we'd dug up from the overgrown lawnscape. Then he took his phone out but did not immediately dial a number.

"What's up?" I asked quietly. So far, Dad had been getting everything right. I didn't like the idea that he might not know what to do next.

"I am making use of a mnemonic to recall a number I once knew," he replied, equally quietly; now that I was paying attention, I could see that he was tapping a pattern on his wrist with the fingers of his free hand, as if pressing buttons. "Pray give me a moment, dear girl."

"Okay." I went back to watching the box, the gang members and the street. Tension ratcheted inside me, and I felt my nails digging into my palms. If Lung and Bakuda learned that we'd invaded their territory … well, Dad was good, but I didn't know if he was that good.

And then he started dialling. One number after another went into the keypad; a steady, measured series of beeps. Who he was calling, I had no idea. But it was like Fred Jones had once said; back in the day, my Dad knew everyone.

"Ah, yes, hello," he said, as cheerfully as if he were speaking to an old friend on the street. "Yes, it is indeed myself. As you are no doubt aware by now, I am a free man once more. I wish to reactivate my account. Yes, a card as well would be considerably appreciated. Also, I would like to open a new account, with its own card. The funds for it are at my location. Yes, thank you. I will expect you momentarily."

Stepping from the mouth of the alley, he put his hand to the wall. Bone, spreading from his hand, became a barrier blocking off the entire entrance to the alley. I couldn't quite figure out what he was doing, and the three gang members looked equally puzzled. He'd contacted someone, and arranged a bank account for the money he'd put aside for me, but what was supposed to happen next, I had no idea.

After about two minutes had passed, we heard a distinct clack from inside the alley. Dad gestured, and the bone barrier disintegrated. Within was the box, but now it was empty. I could tell, because the lid was half-dislodged, sitting askew on the box. But that wasn't all; on top of the box lid, there were two envelopes that hadn't been there before.

"Aha." Dad stepped forward and picked them up, then smiled and handed one to me. Written on the front was 'Amelia'; when I opened it, I found a magnetic-strip card and a piece of paper. The card was blank on both sides, apart from the reader strip. On the piece of paper was a string of numbers and letters, printed with impeccable penmanship.

Holy crap. That's better service than my bank here in Brockton Bay.

Closing the envelope, I folded it over and slid the whole thing into my pocket. "Okay, I will admit to being seriously impressed. But can we maybe get out of ABB territory before Lung and the others learn we're here, and come looking?" I figured the box was the equivalent to all the birthday presents I'd missed out on since Dad went to the Birdcage. It would suck to get it all at once, then not have a chance to spend the money.

"My dear Amelia." The tone of Dad's voice changed, becoming more serious. "That was never the plan. We came here for a reason, and we will be seeing it though." Turning his head fractionally, he appeared to survey the nearby rooftops. "Place your back to the wall, now."

Dad didn't usually give me orders, but I'd found that even his suggestions were well worth following. As I moved to obey, I saw tiny shards of bone sprinkling from his hands to the sidewalk and then spreading in all directions like a light dusting of frost. As it went up the wall, I looked more closely; it was a gossamer-thin network of bone spicules, just strong enough to hang together of its own accord.

While—as previously mentioned—I could never claim a traditional Thinker rating, his words and actions gave me a severe case of unease, and I lowered my voice when I replied to him. "Why? What's going on?"

"As I expected, someone has indeed alerted Lung's cape faction." His tone was light again, possibly to make sure I didn't panic. "I just spotted Oni Lee. He's approaching carefully, to ensure that this is not a trap."

I was pretty sure I knew the answer to that one. "But it is a trap, isn't it?"

My father smiled tightly in approval. "Of course, my dear Amelia. However, I have one question to ask of you. Oni Lee is a killer, and no doubt intends to murder us in cold blood. Would you prefer I killed him or captured him alive?"

Jeez. Put this on me all of a sudden, why don't you? I knew damn well that legally speaking, we were permitted to meet lethal force with lethal force. But I just couldn't bring myself to be okay with baiting someone in just to kill them as soon as they got close enough. Also, I didn't know how he was going to do it, but there was no doubt in my mind that he could and would. "Uh, alive?"

He inclined his head briefly. "Alive it is. Now, hush. I shall be needing to concentrate."

I tried to quiet my breathing, then I wondered about the other three. They hadn't said a word in some time, and this would be a perfect opportunity for them to disrupt Dad's ambush. Carefully, I turned my head, and I realised why Dad had been speaking only to me.

They were still alive, which was a relief. He could easily have murdered them behind my back, but he hadn't. Then again, I'd asked him not to kill them, so there was that.

However, they weren't about to shout a warning. Not only were they locked into bone manacles that held them immobile, but bone gags across their mouths prevented them from making any noise above a quiet mumble. And Dad had done this while I was right there, literally behind my back while I was talking to him.

He is really, really good with his powers. Like I didn't know that before.

And then it was waiting time. I didn't know where the ABB assassin was, and I didn't know how he was going to try to kill Dad, but I knew it was going to be soon. The seconds ticked by. Sweat trickled down the back of my neck. I tried not to fidget.

If he got within arm's reach, I could put him to sleep. But he had to know that already, so there was no way he'd let me even get close to touching him. So it was all down to Dad.

I only spotted Oni Lee's attack run because I was almost looking that way, and I caught him from the corner of my eye. He appeared in the alley; Dad and I were backed up to the walls on either side of the entrance, looking out into the street. With virtually anyone else, he would've achieved total surprise.

My father wasn't just 'anyone else'.

Before I could turn my head or begin to shout a warning, before Oni Lee was able to aim the pistol or toss the grenade he was holding, Dad's power acted. From the grimy, trash-littered floor of the alleyway sprang slabs of bone, launching upward to surround and imprison the masked figure in an instant. (I'd say 'entomb', but Dad had said he wouldn't go lethal).

I finished turning my head and stared at the bone monolith that had appeared in the alleyway. "Okay," I said. "I'll bite. How did you pull that one off?"

Dad shrugged modestly, or as modestly as he was capable of, which wasn't very. "I learned a long time ago how to deal with teleporters, my dear Amelia." Holding up his hand, he exhibited more of the fine bone network, then made it vanish. "I am aware of all bone in my vicinity, especially when it is still connected with me. A fine carpet of it is almost invisible, and when the teleporter crushes it …"

"… you know where they are, and the bone walls can be grown up around them." It had been right there in front of me, but I was still impressed. "What are you going to do with him now?"

"Me?" He raised his eyebrows and placed his hand, spread wide, on his chest. "Nothing."

I wasn't sure where he was going with this. "You're just going to … leave him there?"

He spread his hands as if to show there was nothing up his sleeves. "Amelia, I have no better way to maintain him as a long-term prisoner than where he is right now. If you wish, we can get him out and you can put him to sleep, but if we just leave him there, he can breathe quite well."

"And what about food and water?" Oni Lee might be a villain, but I wasn't going to just let the man starve to death.

"I am certain the PRT will be able to supply him with both when they arrive to arrest him in a few hours." He beamed at me. "I understand that they have holding cells aplenty, which will fit their needs to a T."

I was missing something. "And what are we likely to be doing in the next few hours that will delay us from informing them of his whereabouts until then?" Dad did not strike me as being the sort of person who would sit around doing nothing for an hour out of pure spite.

"Why, Amelia." He pretended surprise. "There are villains bombing my city—our city—almost with impunity. Don't you think it would be a good idea if they were stopped?"

Oh, yeah. That was what I'd been missing. "Just gonna say, Dad, that sounds almost heroic of you. Turning over a new leaf or something?" I raised my own eyebrows as I said it; he didn't have exclusive rights to all the good lines.

He chuckled in delight. "You are definitely my daughter. No, I'm still firmly in the villain camp, though I suspect I will be trending toward rogue once I find my footing in this brave new world. Removing Lung and Bakuda from the board will not be so much a heroic act as a pragmatic one. It's hard to do business when everyone is looking over their shoulder for the next explosion, after all."

"I … guess." He had a distinct point, but it still felt weird. "How are we going to be doing this?"

Turning to look at me, he raised his eyebrows. "'We' are not going to be doing this at all, young lady. I pledged to deliver you to the hospital where you can heal the ongoing trauma cases, and that is what I shall be doing. The rest, I will do on my own."

"What?" My voice rose in indignation. "No! That's not gonna happen! Lung's the most powerful cape in Brockton Bay, and Bakuda does bombs! There's no way I'm going to let you go after them on your own!"

He paused to look at me, and tilted his head slightly. "You truly mean that. I am touched. Also, I find myself wondering if a little of your sister's tendency toward precipitate action has not rubbed off on you."

I rolled my eyes. "Leave Vicky out of this. Either we're taking down Lung and Bakuda as a team, or not at all." There was no way I was going to let him just go off and maybe die, or get charges trumped up against him by the PRT while I wasn't there to stand by him. It was as simple as that.

"As you wish, my dear." He led the way out of the alley, then casually erected a solid wall around Oni Lee's ad hoc prison. "You three; the time has come for the conversation I alluded to earlier." Without so much as a gesture, the gag on the tallest one melted away. "Let's see how short and sweet I can make this. Where might I find Lung and Bakuda?"

It looked like the guy had grown a backbone while secured, or maybe Dad had hit the one hill he was prepared to die on. "Fuck you, old man. That's where. Ain't telling you shit."

"Are you certain about that?" A bone blade grew from between Dad's knuckles, and teased across the idiot's throat. "As I said, I have spares. Once they see your fate—"

"Dad," I said in a tightly controlled voice. "Can I speak with you for just a moment?"

I was starting to get the idea of why he'd wanted me to go back to the hospital while he went after Lung and Bakuda. His methods of getting information were likely to be as brutal as they were effective, and he had to have known that I wouldn't approve. The trouble was, I was here now and he just had to lump it.

He stepped with me back into the alley and lowered his voice. "Amelia darling, please don't interrupt me when I'm working. If I am unable to elicit the correct information from one of these three morons, my task of ending the bombing spree will be much, much harder. And it's entirely unlikely that any of these three is an actual innocent."

"Yeah, I get it," I said heavily. "But I don't care. You don't murder prisoners. It's literally their job to be loyal to Lung. Is there any way we can convince them without actually committing a war crime?"

His lips pressed together, Dad seemed to ponder my words. "I can think of one way, but it will require your cooperation, and a little trickery."

Well, if he was willing to compromise, so was I. "I'm listening."

<><>​

The Villain Formerly Known as Marquis

As I rounded the corner again, I raised my voice. Our performances in this little play did not have to be perfect, just good enough to deceive three young louts already in fear of their lives. "If you do not have a better way to do this, stay in the alley!"

"But I told them you wouldn't—"

"More fool you, for making a promise you couldn't keep!"

Placing myself directly in front of the leader of this little band, I looked him squarely in the eyes. My left hand clamped onto his shoulder, so that he was less likely to notice Amelia laying her hand on his arm, from outside his line of sight. The bone blade I formed from my hand was impressively large and came to a wicked point. As I waved it hypnotically before his eyes, he gulped nervously. "You—you can't. She said you wouldn't—"

"She has no say in this," I interrupted, pricking his Adam's apple with the very tip of the knife. "Now … where might I find Lung or Bakuda?"

He gritted his teeth and shook his head. "Fuck off. Not gonna—"

"As you wish." I swiped the knife across his throat. Immediately, he began to choke and gurgle as the life faded from his eyes. A red tide spilled down his front, soaking his shirt; more trickles of red came from his mouth and nose. He convulsed a few times, then hung motionless in his bonds, his head hanging forward.

Flicking the blade in a theatrical fashion, I moved on to the next in line. He stared at me, then at his erstwhile leader. "Don't—don't kill me! Please!"

"Tell me what I want to know." I made my tone implacable. Between that, his helpless position, the threat of the blade, and his slumped-over associate, his will to resist would surely crumble.

Still, he didn't divulge the information that I sought. "I can't. We can't. She'll kill us." He was terrified, almost crying, but still holding out.

I traced the blade over his cheek and dropped my voice to a menacing whisper. It was time for a little more stick, along with some carrot. "And you believe I will do less if you keep refusing? The moment you give me what I want, I will release you, and you can go back to your tawdry little lives. Nobody need know you were ever involved."

"She'll still kill us!" It was the third one speaking up. He twisted his head around until an ugly scar was revealed, down behind his ear. "She put bombs in our heads. If we don't do what she says, we explode, or turn inside out, or melt, or something! She gets off on that shit!"

"Ah." That put an entirely new complexion on matters. "Amelia, dear? Could you perhaps apply your expertise to this problem?"

"Bombs? Really?" Amelia stepped in beside me and poked his cheek with her finger. "Okay, wow, yeah. There's something in there. Not sure what, but she's hooked up some nerves to it." She frowned. "I should be able to remove it without any problems. There's no large blood vessels in the way. Do you consent to me taking it out of your head?"

His eyes opened wide. "You can do that shit? You do that, I'll tell you everything I know!" He seemed to have entirely forgotten about his unfortunate colleague, which didn't precisely surprise me. The (shudder) 'Azn Bad Boys' did not seem to run on the concept of supporting one's fellow man, especially considering how Bakuda was doing her recruiting.

If she were to survive this episode without a Birdcage sentence or a kill order, I was going to lose what little faith I had in the integrity of the PRT as a whole. Seriously. I might go so far as to write a strongly worded letter to my Congressman.

Still, there were certain precautions that would need to be taken. Just because I had set a trap for Oni Lee did not mean we were immune to being trapped ourselves. "Not so fast, Amelia."

"What?" She turned to look at me. "Why? We've got to get this thing out."

I dissolved the bonds holding the boy's legs immobile. "And you may do so, once I have this one separated from his friend. Just in case, you understand."

Together, we walked him into the alley, where Oni Lee remained imprisoned within his calcareous prison. Everything I had read about him indicated that he required line of sight to utilise his teleport power, so I had blocked that off as soon as he appeared. New problems; old solutions.

Generating more bone, I locked our potential source to the wall of the alley and stood back. "Have at it, Amelia dear."

"Alright then." She drew a deep breath, which I judged to be more a habit than a sign of trepidation, and moved in close. I found it intriguing that while she needed to achieve physical contact to activate her power, the expression of that power was far more versatile than mine. Except, of course, in the case of affecting her own body.

"That feels weird," he muttered, squirming under her touch. "Tickling me inside my head."

"Sshh," she admonished him. "Nearly got it … uhh, is it bad that it's flashing heat?"

Alarm bloomed in the back of my mind. "Back!" I snapped, taking hold of Amelia's shoulder and dragging her bodily away from her hapless patient. Once I had line of sight on the young man, I shot a bone claw out from my hand toward the flashing red light I could see within his neck. The claw closed on flesh and bomb alike, tearing them free to the accompaniment of an agonised scream from the ABB member. As part of the same movement, I flicked the claw sideways, detaching it from my hand with a familiar stab of pain so that it flew off down the alley with the bomb and gobbet of flesh firmly clasped in its pincers.

Perhaps a second after it passed by Oni Lee's prison, it exploded. Or rather, something happened that turned the walls and floor of the passageway into a twisted mess capable of giving Mr M C Escher nightmares for a week.

Amelia and I stared at one another for a moment. "Booby trap?" she asked, somewhat faintly.

"Booby trap," I agreed. "Possibly activated by light or exposure to air. I am truly beginning to despise Bakuda." She was exhibiting all the traits that I detested in my fellow supervillains. While life was anything but sacred to me—I had killed many people, some of whom were technically heroes—I considered murder to be a means to an end, not an end in itself. Removing disloyal subordinates was one thing, but anticipating their removal by implanting bombs in their skulls was a measure of vicious pragmatism I would never embrace.

In a way, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy; if one's minions were treated so badly that they needed to have implanted bombs to ensure their loyalty, then disloyal thoughts were almost certain to be entertained at one point or another.

In this particular case, I didn't blame them in the slightest.

She returned to her patient and closed the jagged wound I had torn in his neck. It had been bleeding badly but not catastrophically; fortunately, as she had noted, there were no significant blood vessels in the way. "You could've not ripped half his throat out, you know," she observed with more than a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

I raised my eyebrows. "In situations like that, dear Amelia, there is the gentle solution and there is the solution that saves lives. All too often, these are not the same thing, and anyone who stops to attempt to locate the perfect solution will find it too late, if it exists at all."

"I still think you could've been nicer about it." She finished healing her patient—who still had his eyes clenched shut in terror—and stood back. "Hey, you can open your eyes now. You're fine. Bomb's out, and it didn't even kill you."

Not for want of trying, I thought, but did not say.

"Ah. Right. Um." He licked his lips nervously. "What did you want to know?"

Now we were getting somewhere. "Where can I find Bakuda and Lung? I wish to have words with them about their management practices and public relations model. They're giving supervillains a bad name and may I say, that is a rather impressive feat, given that we are sharing a city with literal Nazis."

"Yeah, I know, right?" He nodded. "Bakuda's got a workshop over on—"

<><>​

Panacea

"Hey!" called out the guy I hadn't knocked out. "Marquis! Panacea!"

Which reminded me; I was going to have to wake the other one up at some point. Dad and I had pretended to murder him in order to put the fear of God into the others, and it had worked, but now the need had passed.

"What?" I asked, stepping out onto the street. "We'll get to you in a minute." As soon as I can figure out how to get those damn bombs out safely.

"It's not that," he said, pulling fruitlessly at the bone holding him against the wall. "They're coming. She's coming. And she'll blow me up just to kill you!"

"What?" Aware I was repeating myself but unable to avoid it, I looked around. Then I listened.

That was when I heard the engine. It struck me that there'd been no vehicle traffic for all the time we'd been here, which kind of made sense; everyone was staying indoors. I wasn't a car person, but this sounded powerful, not to mention loud. It echoed through the streets, and it was coming closer.

Just as I opened my mouth to call Dad, he stepped out of the alley. "Is there a problem?" he asked.

"Yeah." I indicated the direction I could hear the engine noise coming from. "He says that's Bakuda. And she'll blow him up just to get us."

Which, now that I was thinking about it, I could totally believe.

"We need to be out of sight, Amelia dearest." Dad grabbed me by the arm and hustled me into the alleyway. "There is no sense in presenting a free target when your enemy has a ranged weapon."

"We don't know she's got ranged weapons," I protested, though I didn't resist.

"Yes, we do." His tone was grim. "Her main attack involves bombs or bomb-equivalent technology. No Tinker worth their salt would pass up the chance to put such munitions as far away from them as possible. I would wager she uses a forty-millimeter grenade launcher, or something of that nature."

"Yeah, she does," confirmed the gang member Dad had ripped the bomb out of. "Sometimes even she doesn't know what she's going to use before she uses it."

"Which makes her a loose cannon of the highest order," Dad mused. "We cannot afford even a near miss." I saw him frown, and figured that he was going through his options. What they were, except 'run away', I wasn't sure.

"They're getting closer," I ventured. As much as I wanted to tell at him to hurry up, I didn't. The last thing I wanted was to distract him.

"High ground," he said decisively. Bone steps formed a stylish spiral staircase, leading upward to the roof edge above. I started up; he followed.

I was puffing by the time we climbed onto the roof of the building. As Dad dissolved the staircase, he raised an eyebrow. "I believe we're going to have to work on your fitness, my dear girl."

Defensively, I raised my hand. "Healer. Not a rooftop runner."

"Nevertheless." Pausing, he turned toward the street, where the engine noise had become a crescendo. This close, I realised it wasn't just one vehicle, but several; a 4×4, along with a few motorbikes and a couple of sedans. Bakuda and Lung had brought backup. "Stay low, and stay quiet."

I needed no urging, though I was puzzled by what Dad was making while we hunkered down. Each the size and shape of a tennis ball, he made about a dozen of them, one after the other. Almost holding my breath, I waited.

I barely heard the crack of bone being smashed, but Dad's head came up. "Showtime," he murmured. Taking up the balls, he tossed them over the edge of the roof, not bothering to see where they went.

The next thing I heard was an almost sibilant whisper, repeated a hundred times over, followed by a chorus of shouts, screams and other sounds of pain. Dad stood up and stretched. "And that," he said, "is how you—"

I was almost caught unawares, but I turned my head at the right time and caught a silver flicker from the corner of my eye. And thus, I was able to leap forward and push Dad out of the way before Lung's huge scaly feet landed where he'd been a second ago. Also, flaming. Did I mention that Lung was ten feet tall and on fire? Because he was.

"DIE!" boomed the leader of the ABB, looming over us. His long metal-scaled tail—yes, it was on fire too—whipped around toward Dad and me.

Shoving me aside, Dad threw up a hasty bone shield ... which shattered into a dozen pieces when Lung's tail struck it. Heat bloomed around Lung's body, and I felt my skin prickling and drying just being near the draconic crime boss. Dad had it worse, as the red-hot metal sliced across his arm and chest, leaving blackened sizzling flesh behind.

Bone spikes struck upward from the rooftop, seeking to impale Lung, but the scales were too strong. I grabbed Dad while Lung was smashing the rest of the bone forest with his hands and tail, and dragged him towards the roof edge. As soon as I made contact with him, I started healing the burn damage, but it was deep and savage.

Lung started toward us again, metal talons seeking to shred and burn us, but Dad temporarily dissuaded him with a shower of bone spikes aimed at his eyes. "Over the edge, Amelia," he grunted. "Now."

It was maybe thirty feet to the ground, but I didn't hesitate. Helping Dad to his feet, I flung us both over the side. If I couldn't trust him when we were both in peril, I fleetingly decided at the back of my mind, when could I trust him?

In the event, my trust was well-founded. There was a huge network of bone between the vehicles and the building, continuing into the alleyway. Everyone had been caught up in it, held at odd angles like flies in a spider-web.

We hit the top layer and it shattered under us, but subsequent layers reduced the impact so that by the time we reached the ground, it was barely an issue. Stumbling to my feet, I picked Dad up off the ground with desperate strength. "Come on," I insisted. "We gotta go."

"C'M B'K H'R!" roared Lung, then opened his mouth and vomited a searing blast of flame at us. Dad produced another shield, and it took most of the damage, but I felt his whole body wince as more burns got added to the total.

Hastily, I healed him some more, turning crisped flesh back to undamaged skin. The bone network parted before us like a curtain as we stumbled past the mouth of the alley. I looked over my shoulder, just in time to see Lung spread a set of metallic wings and glide down toward us. Shit shit shit shit. We are so dead.

Abruptly, Dad straightened and reached toward the last ABB gangster we'd left attached to the wall. The bone claw extended from his hand, and it tore into the unfortunate guy's neck. Even as the poor guy screamed in agony, the claw emerged again with a tiny blinking object in its grasp. And then, Dad turned and threw it at Lung.

Even as injured as he was, his aim was impeccable. The thing went straight into Lung's open mouth ... and detonated. Or, in this case, un-detonated.

Lung's head was the first to go, crunching down to the size of a walnut. Then his chest and arms, reducing in a staccato rhythm that reminded me gruesomely of children's cartoons making fun of superheroes with growth or shrinking. Every part of his body was subjected to the effect, the last to go being his tail.

Glowing almost white-hot, the baseball-sized chunk of metal made a minor crater in the sidewalk. I blinked; the whole thing had taken less than a second, from start to finish. Lung, once the most feared cape in Brockton Bay, was dead.

Dad cleared his throat and indicated the ABB member he'd taken the bomb from. "A job for you, dear Amelia. And then, you may as well call your family. I imagine there is work for you at the hospital."

"And you?" I asked as I set about healing the gaping wound. It really was a good thing there had been no large blood vessels near the bomb. "What about you?"

He chuckled. "Why, I shall await the PRT. I am looking forward to seeing the expression on Director Piggot's face when she finds out who brought Bakuda's rampage to an end."

I snorted and rolled my eyes as I started on his burns. "Dad, you're just mean."

He chuckled again. "My dear Amelia Claire, I never said I wasn't."



End of Part Twelve

 

[Ack]

Hostage Situation

Part Thirteen: Luck is Where You Find It

[A/N 1: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]



Sunday Afternoon, April 17, 2011

Office of the Director, PRT ENE

As far as Emily Piggot was concerned, good news came in three flavours. First, there was the good news that stayed good. She'd never actually encountered any of that. Then, there was the good news that ended up just being 'news'. This was something she was somewhat more familiar with. And finally, there was the technically good news that still managed to leave a sour taste in the mouth.

The last type, she was extremely well acquainted with.

"Okay, from the top," she said, closing her eyes so she could hear Armsmaster's voice without having to look at the phone on the desk in front of her. "You say Lung is dead. What's the confirmation status on that one?"

"Seventy-five to ninety-five percent, depending on witness veracity." He, personally, sounded fairly sure of it. "The physical evidence is a metal ball four inches in diameter, showing signs of extreme gravitational stresses, and massing an estimated one point three five tons. I won't know for certain until we can get heavy machinery in to extricate the ball from the sidewalk. Analysis indicates organic matter inside the metal shell. No life signs detected. The metal itself matches the spectroscopic signature of Lung's scales."

"And you're saying Marquis did it?" This was going to be the sucky part.

"That's what the witnesses agree on. He did something—most of them aren't sure what—and Lung imploded. One statement says that it may have been a Bakuda bomb, implanted in an ABB minion's neck, that he tore out and threw at Lung, but the latter part of that is speculation on the minion's part, because he didn't personally witness it."

"Do you have an opinion on the matter?" She would form her own ideas, of course, but his input would be helpful to go on with.

"I'm inclined to believe it. There are two minions who are willing to testify that Bakuda implanted bombs in their necks and Marquis forcibly removed them, and several more who still have them, according to scans. Bakuda is capable of creating devices that do far more than just explode, so one that implodes is entirely plausible."

"And Bakuda herself is still alive." She wasn't sure how she felt about that.

Bakuda had been responsible for many deaths over the last few days, which put her on track to the Birdcage. Despite this being an effective death sentence, it still wasn't a kill order, so regulations had demanded they bring her in alive. It was a fine line to walk: if she'd been killed resisting arrest, there would've been no tears shed within the PRT building, but extrajudicial murder was not to be tolerated. While Emily disliked capes in general and despised villains in particular, that was a line she would never permit her people to cross.

"Correct. Immobilised until I arrived; Marquis had shot bone shards into her skeleton, and those of her minions. He used those to lock all their joints solid and cover over their eye-sockets. Once I tranquillised them, he reversed this process. Scans showed much of her equipment as Tinkertech, so I'll be studying it to see if I can shut down any dead-man switches she might've left active."

"The minions you've captured with bombs in their heads?" There was no way she was going to permit them in her building.

"We'll be holding them at Offsite Alpha, observing them remotely, until we know one way or the other." The Offsite locations were outside the city limits, guarded at a distance by troopers who knew the risks. Generally they were used for captured Tinkertech suspected of being unstable. A lot of Leet's gear had ended up there over the years.

"Probably for the best. And you managed to capture Oni Lee?" A feat she would've rated as being somewhere between 'ridiculous' and 'impossible', a day ago.

Armsmaster's tone managed to convey his agreement with this stance. "Marquis somehow trapped him in a box of bone with no direct line of sight outward. We pumped confoam in there, then tranquillised him. He was holding a live grenade with the pin out. If we'd done it the other way around, he would've died, but he possibly would've taken some of us with him."

Emily grimaced. The ABB assassin's intent was clear; if they'd just tried breaking open the box, he would've teleported at the first opportunity then released the grenade to kill his rescuers. He was that kind of asshole.

"Understood," she said, when he didn't offer any more details. "Keep me posted."

"Will do. Armsmaster, out." The call ended.

Emily heaved a ragged sigh as she leaned back in her chair. This shit never ends.

<><>​

Sunday Evening; PRT Building Conference Room A

Coil

"I called this meeting to get you all up to speed on the Marquis situation, and to brainstorm potential solutions going forward." Emily Piggot gave the impression of someone who'd been mainlining caffeine for the last six hours and was entirely out of fucks to give, not a great combination for anyone facing her. "Before we start; does anyone here have any prior experience facing him? I took over here after he was put away."

Armsmaster raised his hand. "I fought him once, thirteen years ago. It ended … inconclusively. I didn't have the training or equipment I do now, but he was also younger and less experienced. I'm not sure how it would turn out if we fought again today."

Thomas hid his smirk. Translation: he handed me my ass, and he could probably do it again.

"I'm surprised you're alive to tell the tale." Holbrook, another strike squad commander, raised his eyebrows. "He's got a reputation for being an unrepentant murderer, after all."

Miss Militia cleared her throat. "Unrepentant, yes, but not indiscriminate. I've been reading his file. He clashed with the Brockton Bay Brigade on several occasions, defeating them each time except for the very last instance. On any of those occasions, he could easily have killed or permanently crippled one or more of them, but let them get away with minor injuries. And he was careful to hold back from harming or killing women or children."

"Great," Thomas sneered. "So, he only murders men, and only when he feels like it. I feel so much better now."

"Didn't he kill Iron Rain?" asked Triumph. "I heard somewhere that he did."

"There's a question mark over that in his file," Miss Militia said. "Apparently, a recent conversation he had with Alexandria has posited a secondary scenario, which also fits the situation at the time. But as he's the only witness to the events, and the new interpretation benefits him, we're taking it under consideration rather than adopting it without question."

The Director cleared her throat as a means of getting the meeting back on track. "We're not here to discuss his past misdeeds." Clear in her tone was the inference that such a discussion could go far into the night. "We need to work out a strategy for how to deal with the current problem. In case you hadn't heard yet, he more or less single-handedly captured Bakuda and Oni Lee today, and killed Lung."

"Murdered, you mean." Thomas wasn't usually one to insist on specific wording (unless it benefited him) but Marquis' presence in the city was not something he was comfortable with, and he had zero qualms about steering the discussion in a direction hostile to the bone manipulator. "Lung was Birdcage bound, but he didn't have a kill order."

Surprisingly, it was Piggot herself who shook her head. "Lethal force is permitted to save one's life, and to save others. Lung was, by all accounts, both ramped up and on a rampage. He attacked Marquis, and was threatening Panacea. Marquis used a Bakuda bomb to end him, which argues strongly against premeditation. As much as I hate to admit it, in this particular instance, he's actually in the clear."

And there was the elephant in the room. An uncomfortable silence fell, during which Thomas continued to research (in his other timeline) ways and means of dealing with Marquis.

<><>​

Director Piggot

"So … we're absolutely certain Panacea is Marquis' daughter?" ventured Holbrook at last. "There's no doubt in the matter?"

"As certain as we can be without an actual DNA test, and Panacea has yet to agree to submit to one." Not that Emily had made the request as yet. She didn't want to alienate the girl any more than she absolutely had to, and she personally believed it was true anyway.

Everything would've been much simpler if he'd stayed in the Birdcage where he belonged, Panacea's little tantrum to the contrary. That hadn't happened. With him released, she'd done her best to keep that fact under wraps. Again, her wishes had been ignored by a capricious universe.

"Before we go any further," Miss Militia said, "I just want to make sure I'm on the same page as everyone else. Our primary aim here is to figure out a way to induce Panacea to voluntarily walk away from Marquis, correct? Once he no longer has her as a protector, he won't be able to dance between the raindrops."

Armsmaster didn't look thrilled at the idea. "The downside of her abandoning him is that he would then feel free to relaunch his villainous career. The man once faced down Jack Slash and made him leave town. Lung was about the only one of our current crop of villains that I would've seen as being able to beat him, and we saw how that went. Eleven years in the Birdcage hasn't slowed him down that I can see."

"Purity's a flying Blaster," protested Triumph. "How could he beat her?"

"He doesn't have to." Emily sighed. "She's friendly with Panacea and she's trying to distance herself from the Empire. If anything, they'd probably make common cause with one another and go after Kaiser together."

Calvert rubbed his chin. "Let's assume we can't convince Panacea to turn her back on him. What would he have to do, how badly would he have to break the law, for her to decide to abandon him of her own free will?" He looked around at the stares he was getting. "Hypothetically speaking, of course. We need to know what we're dealing with, here."

Emily wasn't sure what was going through Calvert's head, but she took the time to remind herself that the man was a snake and always would be one. "Well, hypothetically speaking, if anyone attempted to frame him for a crime he didn't commit, I would hypothetically hang that person out to dry." She met each person's eyes in turn, Calvert's last of all. "So long as we're going with hypothetical situations, of course."

As unpalatable as the Marquis situation was, the last thing she wanted was to have the local villains lose trust in the PRT to negotiate in good faith. While she would jump on any chance to have Marquis re-admitted to the Birdcage legally, she would damn well cross every T and dot every I on the way there.

"Of course," he agreed, so smoothly that she was almost willing to believe that she might've misread the subtext of his meaning. Whether she had or not, she wasn't going to take back what she'd just said. "But what do you think Panacea would allow him to get away with?"

"Anything he's legally allowed to do," Armsmaster said flatly. "Given the missteps we've gone through to get here, that's far more than it should be. But she's also asked him not to commit criminal acts and he's agreed not to, implying that if he goes back on his word, she's likely to lose faith in him."

Emily cleared her throat. "Which means that if we're going to put him back in the Birdcage, we need rock-solid evidence of him committing an unmistakeable felony that Panacea can't call entrapment on. And he needs to have actually done it. Anything short of that isn't going to fly. Are we all clear on this?"

Assault, who'd been leaning back without contributing until this point, sat forward. "Just gonna interject here. Isn't 'not framing someone' supposed to be the standard for deciding whether someone goes to the Birdcage? Or have things changed since I last checked the regulations?"

That generated a few uncomfortable looks around the room, but nobody spoke up against him. It wasn't as though he was in the wrong, after all. Emily's lips pursed as she checked her feelings against Marquis; she hated the man and everything he stood for, certainly, but not enough to break the law over.

"Nothing's changed." Her tone brooked no dissent. "You will, however, admit that the current situation is anything but normal. Marquis was legally sent to the Birdcage, and was released under highly irregular circumstances. By rights, he should be still in there."

"We're going to have to agree to disagree on that one." Assault's light tone belied the serious tone of his words. "He survived ten years in the world's touchiest pressure cooker, denied his Constitutional rights—"

"You and I both know the Supreme Court laid down the legal precedent—" she snapped, cutting off what she knew would otherwise be a lengthy rant.

He rose to his feet, shouting over her. "Because they were scared! They were weak! They feared losing control, so they went straight to fascism to snatch it back!"

"Assault, that's enough!" Armsmaster was standing now as well, even as Battery tried to pull her husband back down into his chair. "Stand down! You're out of order!"

"I'm not the one who's out of order here." But Assault had regained control of himself. His voice was still hard, but he was no longer shouting. "The Birdcage is nothing but a slow-motion death sentence. I know it, and you know it. The difference between you and me is that you're just fine with it." He stepped around his chair and headed for the door. "I need some air. The stink of self-righteous hypocrisy is really starting to irritate my sinuses."

"This doesn't get out to anyone." Emily didn't think he'd do anything stupid, but it had to be said. "Not a word."

He stopped at the door and half-turned to look back at her. "Oh, don't worry. I won't tell a soul that you're in here conspiring behind the back of a man who only got out because of his daughter's wish to know her biological father, seeking any kind of excuse by fair means or foul to send him back there. With the way bad news spreads in this city, I won't need to." Opening the door, he stepped through and closed it behind him, firmly enough that the table vibrated for a second.

Battery stood. "I'll go after him. Someone fill me in later?"

Velocity nodded. "Sure thing."

"Thanks." She darted out of the room, closing the door a little less harshly than Assault had.

Silence fell in the room once more, until Holbrook broke it. "So, I'm assuming we'll be going with some kind of surreptitious surveillance?"

Emily nodded jerkily, pleased that someone else had picked up the ball. "That's one of the stronger options we have. Armsmaster?"

"I can work something out reasonably quickly," he agreed. "Question: should I bring Dragon in on this? She's usually very good with remote units."

"Perhaps." She felt she'd answered too quickly, but that couldn't be helped now. Dragon had shown her views on potentially Birdcaging Panacea, but hopefully those didn't extend to sending Marquis back. "Just so long as she's aware that this is a precautionary measure only."

"I hate to have to suggest this …" Calvert's tone made it almost sound as though he were sincere, which she doubted on sheer principle. "… but what do we do if Panacea ends up being subverted by her father? He's reportedly very charismatic, and she's gone this far for him already. It wouldn't be the first time, or even the tenth, that a troubled hero has defected to the side of villainy."

"Jesus Christ." That was Triumph. "Don't even think about that. Panacea's solid. She's a hero."

"So was Fidelis." Velocity grimaced. It wasn't surprising he'd brought up that name; they shared a military background, after all. The cape originally known as Fidelis had been a Marine at one point, but her power had literally corrupted her to the point that she was now in the Birdcage, having rebranded under the name of Crock o' Shit.

"All the same." Calvert almost steepled his fingers like some fucking low-budget movie supervillain, but then he laced them together instead. "We have to remain aware of the possibility, and have some strategy in place to forestall the outcome if she does."

Emily took a deep breath. "I can't argue against that. If she did end up as a villain at his side, the whole city would be in trouble. But whatever we decide on, we can't jump the gun on it. With all the good she's done, she deserves the benefit of the doubt until we're absolutely certain about what's happening. Understood?"

This wasn't solely for Panacea's benefit, or even mostly so. While Dragon was in Emily's mind as being the most likely to be able to subdue a villainous Panacea, Emily hadn't forgotten the Canadian Tinker's views on unilaterally attacking the girl for something she might choose to do. Holding back until confirmation had been absolutely verified was a recipe for potential disaster, but Emily rarely got to pick and choose her battles these days, and this one had been lost before it began.

<><>​

Coil

"Of course. I wouldn't have it any other way." Thomas wasn't one hundred percent sure that Piggot was buying his assurances, but it didn't much matter.

PRT strike squad commander Thomas Calvert wouldn't have anything to do with whatever happened to Panacea. While he'd occasionally considered that it would be nice to have her permanently on hand as his personal medic, he'd never actually gone into the dedicated planning required to place her under his thumb. Conversely, if she ever had to heal him in the normal run of affairs, there was a strong chance that she'd make him as a cape.

All of which simplified the math considerably.

Panacea was of no direct use to him, and her ongoing assistance to Marquis made her a liability. Murdering her father, however many attempts it took to get it right, might just trigger a city-killing rage, promoting her from 'liability' to 'mortal danger'. Fortunately, there was an obvious solution to both: the death of Panacea.

He wouldn't do the deed himself, of course, either in his villain persona or as Thomas Calvert. But he had mercenaries in his employ, a few of whom were adept snipers. Even then, it would not do to have a captured assassin admit who he was truly working for.

The man on the street had no particular problem with supervillains hiring people to commit the crimes of theft and murder (so long as it didn't happen to them personally); this was more or less accepted as what supervillains did. But becoming known as the man who'd put a hit on Panacea's head would surely place a target in the middle of his own back. Marquis would bend heaven and earth to get a line on him, and New Wave would quite likely work with the notorious villain toward that end. And once they got their hands on him, his continued survival would be a tricky business at best.

Far better to either ensure that his shooter either never got caught, or didn't live to tell what he knew if he did get caught. Never a sentimental man, Thomas decided to plan for the sniper's demise from the outset. Besides its utility in cutting off unwanted loose ends, this plan also allowed for him to plant false leads for the investigation that would inevitably follow.

None of his sniper-trained mercenaries had sufficiently Asian features to pass for members of the ABB, so that was a no-show from the start. It might be possible, he figured, to send in a sniper who could pass for an Empire Eighty-Eight sympathiser; the backlash against Kaiser and his cretins would be something Thomas could readily take advantage of. But the most insidious concept was the one that held his attention for the longest: what if he was carrying PRT ID?

As ridiculous as the notion initially sounded, he could see it actually working to his advantage, especially in the long run. There was always a vocal minority in the city who were willing to believe the worst of the PRT; they would eat this up with a spoon. But even among the PRT's more moderate supporters, there would be that secret niggling doubt.

The concept of Panacea being taken out of the picture by a PRT covert operative because of her support of Marquis wasn't totally unbelievable, especially given some of their past fuckups. Rumours would fly thick and fast across the city, and the court of public opinion would have a field day. Best of all, Piggot would be out.

Even if the Director was cleared of all involvement (difficult at best with Thomas and his moles deliberately muddying the waters), stringent questions would be asked about how she could possibly have missed something of this nature being planned in her own building. And in the unlikely case that she defended herself well enough to keep her position, one stranger in the crowd with a pistol could put her down for good. All the shooter had to do was shout 'This is for Panacea' before he pulled the trigger, and everyone would automatically assume they knew his motives. No scrutiny at all would fall on Commander Thomas Calvert, stepping into her position in the PRT's hour of need.

Everything was an opportunity, really. The trick lay in knowing how to pull the strings in the right direction.

<><>​

Purity

Kayden relaxed on the sofa with Aster lying asleep beside her. All was right with her world.

The sound of water gurgling down the drain reached her ears, then Theo stepped out of the kitchen, drying his hands on a dishtowel. "I've finished washing the dishes," he said diffidently. "Is there anything else you wanted me to do?"

"Not right now." Kayden gestured to the armchair. "Come and sit down if you want. I've got to go out later and keep the pressure up on the ABB. If someone doesn't, Lung and Bakuda will think they can just keep …" She paused at the expression on his face. "What?"

"Hadn't you heard?" This was the most animated she'd seen him in some time. "I was looking online earlier, and they were saying that Lung's dead, and Bakuda and Oni Lee have been captured. PHO's going nuts over it. The PRT's being very close-mouthed, but nobody's actually saying it didn't happen, not even the usual ABB shills."

She blinked. "Lung's … dead? As in, actually deceased, not just beaten badly and crawled off to recover?" That last image didn't jibe with her understanding of Lung, but neither did the idea of someone being able to kill him. God knew she'd tried hard enough, every time they'd clashed.

"That's what they're saying." As far as she knew, Theo didn't share her views about how the Asian crime gang was so much worse than the Empire, but he definitely seemed happy about this. "I think the main reason the PRT is trying to sweep it under the carpet is that Marquis is the one who's supposed to have done it."

That was something else Kayden was still trying to get her head around. Panacea being Marquis' daughter was one thing—that particular revelation had given all of Amy's previous talk about her absentee villain father a lot more context—but the fact of him being out and about in Brockton Bay, released from the Birdcage by the PRT themselves, had been quite another. She'd been inclined to dismiss it as a hoax until she saw that the major news services were running with it.

When Brandish had responded to a news reporter's question on the matter with an extremely terse 'No comment', that had nailed it down for her. If he were still inside the Birdcage, New Wave would've wasted no time in broadcasting that fact. Instead, they were acting like someone had kicked all their puppies.

Her phone rang, and she picked it up before it could disturb Aster. "Hello?"

"Hello, Kayden. I presume you've heard the news about Lung's unfortunate passing?" Max barely bothered to hide the glee in his voice.

"Yes. Theo says Marquis was responsible." She kept her tone neutral along with her word choice, just in case there were unfriendly ears listening in. They'd been incautious during their last conversation, and she didn't wish to repeat the mistake. Also, she didn't actually want to give Max any kind of encouragement, even by accident.

"That's what I heard, too." He sounded slightly irritated, as though being robbed of the revelation was a personal slight. "If it's true, the city owes Marquis a debt of thanks. But have you heard the other news, about Panacea?"

She smiled to herself but didn't let it come through into her voice. If Max ever thought I was mocking him … she shuddered. Pass. "That she's his daughter? Yes, actually. It's certainly interesting news, but as far as I'm concerned, it's just more evidence that truth is stranger than fiction."

"Yes," he said patiently (or at least, patiently for him), "but it raises an interesting point. When Purity intervened with Saint to save Panacea's life, that put him in debt to her, wouldn't you think?"

She barely restrained herself from groaning out loud. He was really pushing the 'debt' angle, which was hypocritical as hell given that he only acknowledged his own obligations to people when it was convenient to him. "I'd imagine that would be a matter between the two of them. It's not like anyone who wasn't involved at the time would have a stake in the matter, don't you think?"

"If you say so." That was one of his more irritating phrases, indicating that he intended to undermine her meaning with weasel wording until it conformed with his version of matters. "The last time Marquis was in Brockton Bay, Allfather was still running the Empire Eighty-Eight. He's coming back into the city with minimal support and none of his old minions. If he's smart, he'll be forming an alliance with the strongest faction within the city."

Which of course meant the Empire Eighty-Eight, and thus Kaiser himself. Max could be amazingly subtle in some ways and about as blunt as a baseball bat to the face in others. Marquis had been a big player in the city at one point, and Max was certainly seeing the benefits of having such a well-known cape connected to the Empire by even the most tenuous of commitments.

"From what I've heard, he's not going back into being a villain." Kayden would've said something about hating to burst his bubble, but she didn't want to lie to him. "Panacea's asked him to give up crime, so that's what he's done."

"Still, a debt is a debt, and Marquis is by all accounts an honourable man." Max was nothing if not persistent. "If Purity happened to ask him to do a favour for an associate, surely he would feel duty bound to pay off his obligation to her."

"That's if she asked." She wanted to shut this down but wasn't sure how to do it without being openly rude to him, and she had no desire to open that particular can of worms. "Besides, I'm fairly certain she did it to save the girl, not to get into the father's good books."

"Any court of law will tell you that intent matters less than results." Although his voice was still smooth, she could tell he was starting to get impatient with her. "The deed was done. Saint was ready and willing to hurt or kill Panacea, and Purity saved her. If Marquis doesn't ally with someone before the next fanatic comes and takes his daughter hostage again, she may well end up dead this time. Wouldn't you agree that it only makes sense for him to work with the only people who have acted in his interest since his return?"

She wanted to tell him that he was really pushing the boundaries of plausible deniability, but that in itself would shatter the fragile illusion that they were spinning. "I have no idea, because I'm not him. Personally, I'd imagine that a reformed supervillain would do their best to keep away from any influences that might try to drag them back into the life. But that's just me."

"Let's face it." He didn't even bother acknowledging her point, probably because he didn't want to give it any kind of legitimacy. "In today's climate, any villain who tries to rebrand as a rogue or a hero is only fooling themselves. Nobody's going to cut them any kind of slack. The PRT will be waiting for him to make one wrong step, and that's if they don't manufacture some kind of wrongdoing to catch him on. To be honest, I would not be in the slightest bit surprised to learn that the PRT is actively discussing ways to separate Marquis from his daughter, so as to more easily bring him down when the time comes to lower the boom."

Her eyes narrowed. She'd heard that phrasing before, and it had always preceded something he'd learned from one of his moles within the PRT. "I … see. Wouldn't that look bad for them, if it got out?"

"Well, first it would have to be proven. And even if it was, half the public would refuse to believe it, and most of the remainder would say 'good'. After all, a villain is a villain, and doesn't really deserve the same civil rights as good solid upstanding citizens." Now Max's tone was entirely sarcastic. "And these are the same people that Purity is risking life and limb to try to be a hero for."

Kayden set her jaw. "I don't care. Now that Lung's dead and the others are in captivity, this is her chance to mop up the ABB once and for all."

She could tell that Max was smiling in that irritating way he had. "Wherever she is, I wish her luck." Before she could retort, he ended the call.

Hand clenched around the phone, she carefully put it down. Max could always get under her skin, even when she was determined not to let him put her on the back foot.

"Are you okay?" Theo was looking at her with concern in his eyes. If anyone knew what it was like to have her ex screwing with their head, it was her stepson.

"Yes. No." She grimaced. "Your father wants to make overtures to Marquis, and he's trying to recruit me to do it for him."

Theo looked doubtful in the extreme. "Panacea's a hero. Would she even agree to something like that?"

"I wouldn't have thought so." She paused to run her hand through her hair. "But he made a very good point. Saint's just the first idiot to try to use her as a hostage to get other prisoners out of the Birdcage. If Marquis cares about her as much as I do about Aster, he's going to want to protect her."

"And my father wants you to pitch the Empire as potential protectors," Theo guessed, accurately enough. "What are you going to do?"

"The only thing I can." Kayden picked up the phone again, and looked around. "Pass me my handbag, please?" The card with the number she needed was in there.

<><>​

A Little Later That Night

Panacea

"Is this really a good idea?" Vicky sounded grumpy. Unsurprisingly so; I'd called her after I got off the line with Kayden, and interrupted her plans to go and see Dean. When she'd heard what was going on, she'd given him a raincheck and come straight over. This didn't mean she was happy with the situation, or anything close to it.

"There is much about this situation that's potentially very bad," Dad noted. "The worst idea possible would be to ignore it and assume everything will turn out for the best. Purity helped save your sister, so we owe her the courtesy of hearing her out."

We'd changed locations for the occasion, going down to the Boardwalk and finding a picnic table to sit and look out over the ocean, anonymous in the evening crowd. Vicky wore a hoodie while I just rocked my usual outfit. Not one person in ten recognised me out of costume anyway; the moronic bank robbery had proven that. Even the Undersiders' so-called psychic bullshit artiste hadn't picked me out of the crowd.

"Well, should we be out in public like this?" Vicky persisted. "You're already a known villain, but if Ames and me were seen meeting with Purity in public, Mom would spontaneously develop the power to bring people back from the dead, so just she could kill us several times over."

I sighed, aggravated. "I told you, she'll be meeting with us out of costume. And don't forget, you pinky-swore not to out her."

Dad chuckled warmly. "Ah, yes, that most binding of oaths."

I stuck my tongue out at him as Vicky said, "It is, between us." She looked around. "Where is she, anyway? And if you trust her that much, why am I here? It can't be as muscle."

Just at that moment, I spotted Kayden. This time she was without Aster, but wearing the same smart clothing as before. Looking at her, nobody would've picked her as the airborne Blaster who'd been one of the Empire's biggest hitters for years.

"Not muscle," I said quietly. "As a witness, so if there's anything I need to tell Carol, you can back me up." I waved to Kayden; a moment later, she spotted me and came over.

"Oh." Vicky nodded. "I guess that makes sense." She'd had a crash course in The Universe According To Carol Dallon recently, and didn't bother claiming that I needed no such witness. Which was good, because me bursting into laughter would've confused Kayden considerably.

"Hello, Amy." Kayden stopped a few paces away. "Marquis, I presume and … Glory Girl?" She didn't back away, but I saw her tense up.

"Patrick Matheson." Dad half-rose from his seat as he introduced himself. "Or at least, that's what my new ID papers say. Amelia Claire, you already know. Her sister, Miss Dallon, is here to observe and act as an impartial witness to our conversation. Please, sit down. You have my word that there will be no undue hostilities."

Vicky nodded. "Yeah, what he said. And I wanted to thank you again for helping me save Ames from that asshole." She snorted. "There wasn't enough of him left to fit in a teacup."

"Well, that was my general plan." Kayden relaxed enough to sit down opposite Vicky, next to me. "I wasn't about to give him the chance to get off one last screw-you shot."

"Which he would've taken, if he could." Dad reached diagonally across the table and shook her hand briefly. "You did an exemplary job of removing the threat. However, you did not contact Amelia on a whim. What news did you have that is so important that you wanted a face-to-face meeting?"

Kayden took a deep breath. "Well, Kaiser called me earlier this evening …"

<><>​

Glory Girl

"… and so I called you." Purity—if Vicky hadn't spoken to her on the night they saved Amy, she would've had trouble believing the petite mousy woman was her—rounded out her tale. "While Kaiser is a narcissist and an egomaniac of the highest degree, I don't believe he was lying about any of it. And I also think he's not wrong about you being under threat from fanatics."

Amy looked pensive. "I was warned about this possibility by Director Piggot and others."

"Well, how many Teacher stooges are there out there anyway?" Vicky demanded. "I can and will punch them out as needed."

"That won't be necessary," Amy's dad said blandly. "I had words with him following Saint's … craterisation. He refused to see reason, and his existence was an ongoing threat to Amelia's wellbeing. So, I ended the threat."

Amy didn't seem overly troubled by the news, and Purity actually gave him an approving nod. "Wait," Vicky objected. "You murdered him?"

"No, I ended the threat." Marquis repeated his words in exactly the same tone. "It could not be murder, because outside laws do not apply within the Birdcage. I had no recourse to any higher authority to take him in hand, and if he'd managed to contact any of his thralls outside the facility, they would've indeed been willing to repeat the whole sorry scenario again. So, I made certain it would not happen a second time, in the only way I could be certain of it."

"Vicky, enough." Amy kicked her under the table. "Dad said the problem was dealt with, and it's not like we can wind back the clock. Dad, do you think anyone else might try it?"

Marquis frowned, running his thumb and forefinger over his chin. "There are other capes in the Birdcage who have students of a sort out in the world. I don't recall hearing of any with the same level of brainwashing or devotion that Teacher's people had, though."

"Me neither," Purity said. "But that doesn't mean anything. We'll call that a tentative maybe, for now. How about the other problem? The PRT?"

"I still have trouble believing that bit," Vicky interjected. "I know the PRT. It's their job to uphold the law. They've got whole rules and regulations about it."

Marquis raised one eyebrow in a totally bullshit move that Vicky still wasn't able to pull off in the mirror. "That, my dear, is because you've never been opposed by them. They will of course play by the rules when dealing with capes that they approve of. When it comes to the opposition, however, the exact rules and regulations have been known to go by the wayside when it comes to apprehending a problematic target."

"Yeah." Amy spread her hands. "Remember what we were talking about at Dad's house before we dug up that … well, before we did that digging? Carol and Mark and the others would never have beaten Dad if they didn't pull the bullshit they did, and they didn't even know I was there until the fight was basically over and done. Dad had to throw himself in the way of a shot to make sure I was okay."

"But that wasn't the PRT," objected Vicky. "Sure, that was Mom and Dad and Aunt Sarah and the others, but they didn't know you were there. It wasn't like they were deliberately targeting you to force Dad to surrender."

"They essentially were, but without knowing what, or rather, who was in that closet," Marquis corrected her. "They just knew that I valued whatever was beyond that door. But we were speaking of the shortcomings of the PRT, not of the Brockton Bay Brigade."

"Yeah." Amy tapped the table with her finger. "Did the PRT penalise the Brigade for playing fast and loose with the rules, and for endangering a minor? Hell, did they even try to take me away from the team who'd kidnapped me from my father? Nope. They just rubbed their hands together because they'd finally caught Marquis, and ignored the rest of the bullshit that was being pulled under their noses."

"And I suspect the current crop aren't altogether different in attitude," Marquis observed. "While there are a few sticklers for the rules here and there, the vast majority feel so overwhelmed by the new villains arising everywhere that they're willing to overlook a few irregularities here and there, so long as the desired results are arrived at. Which means that if we were to seek any kind of protection for you from the encroaching threat, we would have to look toward some other place than the PRT."

Vicky frowned. "You're Panacea. Surely they'd protect you."

"But they'd separate me from my dad at the first opportunity," Amy pointed out. "And there would be endless excuses as to why I couldn't see him right then. Once they had us apart, they'd bend the regulations into a pretzel to figure out a reason to put him back that they'd be able to spin as 'he broke the law', so I wouldn't go on a permanent healing strike."

"Okay, um, how about New Wave?" Vicky offered. "We can totally protect you."

"New Wave captured him, back in the day," Purity reminded her. "You may be on good terms with him but having faced your mother a few times across the battlefield, I will gladly tell you without any kind of bias that she never lets go of a grievance. And if she was initially opposed to his release, well …" She let her voice trail off.

"She's not wrong," Amy agreed, while Marquis nodded along. "Carol does grudges really, really well."

"So where can you go for protection then?" asked Vicky. "Not the Empire Eighty-Eight. You'd never hear the end of it. I'd never hear the end of it, just from being nearby."

"No, not the Empire," Marquis' tone was definite. "I dislike their core beliefs, as much as they have core beliefs, and Kaiser is indeed a narcissistic egomaniac. We might last a week before I'd be forced to kill him, but that's being optimistic."

"If you killed Kaiser, then the entire Empire would be out for your blood," Purity warned. "Even with me gone, they have a lot of big hitters, and they'd all be wanting to prove their leadership potential by killing you."

Marquis looked thoughtful. "That might be an interesting fight. I wouldn't endanger Amelia Claire that way, of course, and no doubt some of them would attempt to take her hostage."

"Or just kill her, to fuck with you." Vicky was pretty sure she knew what she was talking about. "There are some total assholes in that bunch."

Purity nodded. "I can't argue with that. The trouble is, we've basically ruled out everyone you can go to for protection. So, what are you going to do?"

"I have half an idea, but I don't know how you'll go for it," Amy began.

Vicky looked at her curiously. "If it's better than the alternatives, we're listening."

"Indeed," Marquis agreed.

Amy took a deep breath. "Dad … Kayden … why don't we team up together?"

As Marquis and Purity stared at each other and then at Amy, Vicky found herself undergoing a presentiment of the future. One that involved a lot of yelling.

Mom is going to go fucking batshit.



End of Part Thirteen

 

[Ack]

Hostage Situation

Part Fourteen: Wheels Within Wheels

[A/N 1: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

[A/N 2: The reason this (and the chapter of Darker Path preceding) is so late is because I've been on holidays for the last 12 days, and will be for another two. Currently (Oct 12), I'm in Melbourne (Australia), basically on the other side of the country from Townsville, my home town. Over that time, I've visited three capital cities (Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne) and racked up over 2,500 km in the air (with another 2,000 km to go). I've also attended my best mate's wedding, visited Taronga Zoo, gone whale watching, and had a look at the Melbourne Aquarium. Right now, I'm in the middle of a three-day session of visiting the Melbourne PAX convention. It's been fun, if exhausting. Whoo.]



Director Emily Piggot, PRT ENE

Despite the almost universal agreement among the capes and officers under her command (the obvious exception being Assault) that Marquis needed to be kept on as short a leash as possible until the opportunity came to boot him back into the Birdcage, there had been a surprising lack of volunteers to head up the surveillance effort. Emily wasn't sure whether this was an indication of how much respect (or even outright fear) Marquis was held in, a disinclination to piss her off by failing in this remarkably important task, or (least likely but also least palatable) an undercurrent of sympathy for Assault's point of view.

No matter what the reason was, she didn't like it. She liked even less the fact that Calvert had volunteered for the duty; not because she thought he couldn't do it, but because his insinuations at the meeting had her concerned about how he might go about it. Marquis was the highest profile case they had going at the moment, and even a whiff of mishandling would bring down all sorts of unwelcome attention from those above her in the chain of command.

Unfortunately, the fact remained that he was indeed the only volunteer, and Emily really needed this to happen. If she listened to her misgivings and scratched his application, not only would there be zero surveillance on the man at a time when she absolutely needed eyes on him twenty-four/seven, but people like Chief Director Costa-Brown would be asking her pointed questions about why she chose to deny the PRT the chance of getting eyes and ears on a notorious criminal.

She couldn't even articulate why she disliked and distrusted Calvert so much. It was indeed true that he'd shot his superior officer in the back once upon a time, but that had been judged a case of exigent circumstances by a court-martial: not good, but not bad enough to actually incarcerate him for. On the other hand, the court had been operating under the unspoken but very real need to hush up the PRT's repeated missteps and outright blunders during the Ellisburg operation, which had almost certainly (though Emily doubted she'd be able to find a single officer willing to admit to this) swayed the verdict toward 'shut up and go away'.

But beyond all that, there was something else going on with him, something that made her neck hairs stand on end. If he'd been a cape, she would've been able to understand it, because this was exactly how she felt about capes. But he wasn't, so that couldn't be it. She just didn't know what it was.

Still, immediate requirements took precedence over ill-formed worries, so she pushed the latter aside and gave the man standing before her desk a hard stare. "Commander Calvert."

"Ma'am?" Calvert's posture was correct and his tone respectful. She chose to ignore everything else for the moment, because she needed this to happen.

"I've had a brief prepared for you, covering Marquis' place of residence and the places and people he's been visiting so far. You will conduct surveillance on him, specifically according to the guidelines provided within the brief. You will not exceed that mandate in any way without first checking with me personally." That was about as unequivocal as she could get without actually going along on the op with him.

Calvert nodded thoughtfully. "How close are we allowed to get?"

She'd expected questions like this. "It will all be in the brief, but in short: you are not to initiate contact with him. If he makes your people in any way, then you will break contact, report in, and resume surveillance via less direct means."

"And Panacea?" he asked.

"Panacea was never in the Birdcage." She made the observation as blunt as she could. "You will only surveil her in the context of being near him. The strictures against making contact are just as stringent for her, because every time we annoy her, we make it just that little bit harder to put him away again even if he slips up."

"She may carry messages for him." It wasn't quite an objection. "How do we guard against that?"

She'd already considered the problem. It was very much a rock-and-hard-place situation. "For now, the assumption is that she isn't willing to participate in criminal activity for him, and that she's smart enough not to carry a letter to another criminal. If we find proof to the contrary, then I will alter the rules of engagement. But until that time, you will operate to both the letter and the spirit of the brief. Is that clearly understood?"

"Yes, ma'am." They were both aware of the recorder in the desk, ensuring that there would be zero misunderstandings as to who was at fault if Calvert's team overstepped their bounds. She wanted Marquis back in the Birdcage just as badly as the rest of the PRT did, but she knew damn well that if it wasn't done by the book, it wouldn't be done at all. "One more question. What are the options regarding searches for incriminating material, in the case of questionable activity? Who do we go through to get warrants for that?"

"Me." She stood, hands planted firmly on her desk, ignoring the twinge from her calf muscles. "I want you to impress on each member of your strike squad just how important this is. I'm fully aware that that there's a lot of emotion riding on this. We all want Marquis behind bars again, but the last thing I need is any of my subordinates colouring outside the lines to get us there, like the Brockton Bay Brigade did back in the day."

"What they did worked," he protested. "He went to the Birdcage."

"That was ten years ago. Things were different, then. He had a huge number of charges against him, and there wasn't a lawyer on the east coast willing to step up and defend him adequately. If we slip up even once, he almost certainly has the funds to hire on someone like Quinn Calle. Hell, Calle might even choose to do it pro bono, just for the exposure it would get him."

"Calle's just a lawyer—" he began, the hint of a sneer in his voice.

"A lawyer who gets more villains off the hook than any other member of the Bar," she cut in. "I don't want to see even the suggestion of going off the reservation with this. We have to do it by the book, every step of the way. No bullshit beg-for-forgiveness-afterward stunts."

He didn't look thrilled. "It sounds to me like you're tying our hands before we even get started."

"Not my doing." She shook her head. "It's just the reality of the situation. Any case we bring against him has to be even more immaculate than normal. Double-check everything, document everything, and for God's sake have your body-cams running every second you're within a city block of him. Is that understood?"

"Body-cams." It wasn't quite a protest. "Is that an order, ma'am?" PRT strike squads didn't tend to use body-cameras, as delicate electronics didn't tend to stand up to cape powers. Sometimes she suspected they pushed back against the idea more as a matter of principle than out of actual practicality, but this time they were going to be shit out of luck.

"It is very much an order, Commander Calvert. Putting Marquis away again is going to take more than a bit of luck, which means we need to stack the odds in our favour as hard as we can. Also, when it comes to actually slapping the cuffs on him, I don't want either Calle or Panacea being able to claim that we treated him differently to any other suspect."

He took a deep breath but the expected push-back didn't materialise. This was good for his career, because she had exactly zero tolerance for any backtalk from him right at that moment. "Message received loud and clear, ma'am. I'll get right on it."

She didn't smile, because she still didn't trust him as far as she could spit him. Unfortunately, right now she didn't have much of a choice in the matter. Seating herself again, she watched as he left her office, closing the door behind him.

I just hope this doesn't blow up in my face.

<><>​

Coil

Thomas Calvert didn't slam Piggot's door on the way out, mainly because he had a firm handle on his temper. The nerve of that damned woman! She was all but accusing him of intending to do… well, exactly what he had planned.

She hadn't come out and said it to his face, of course. That made the narrative harder for him to manipulate, which had probably been her intention all along. If she didn't give him something concrete to object to, he couldn't play the injured party. This made it harder for him to put her on the back foot.

The irritating thing was, while he was more inclined toward sneaking and double-dealing, she had ten years of experience in handling people like him. Unlike some who eventually gave way and let him do what he wanted, she had a limit. Beyond that point, she tolerated zero bullshit.

In the other timeline, she had managed to goad him into saying something unwise. She used that as an excuse to relieve him of duty, pending a court-martial for insubordination. While he could kill her in that timeline—something he had done a thousand times before, just because he wanted to—it would get him nowhere.

The only way to continue on as a PRT officer in good standing was to accept the mission as she'd given it to him, and make the best of things. Of course, his capacity for making the best of things was only matched by his ability to lie, cheat, murder and steal his way to victory, so he felt reasonably optimistic in that regard.

The broad strokes of his plan were still viable. Panacea had to die, to make way for the fall of Marquis (whether this led to the morgue or the Birdcage, he didn't care) and the disgrace of Emily Piggot.

His plans would come to fruition, and he would end up on top, no matter how many people had to go down to make it happen.

Few things in life were a guarantee. This was one of them.

<><>​

Medhall Building

Kaiser

"Have you seen Purity?" Max looked up from his phone, after it had gone to voicemail four times in a row. The first message he'd left had been a masterpiece of restraint, but in the second and third he'd allowed more than a little sarcasm to creep into his tone. His fourth had been downright scathing, but that still got him no closer to speaking with Kayden.

"Hm." James tilted his head in thought. "Not for some little time. She spoke of an errand she needed to attend to. I chose not to inquire as to its nature."

"Well, maybe you should have." Max gave him a hard stare. "With the ABB off the board, we have an opportunity like no other. We can't have our most pivotal members simply vanishing into the ether without giving the rest of us notice, or at least leaving their phones on."

James raised an eyebrow. "She's a proud woman, Max. I have no doubt she needs her space, just like the rest of us do."

"She's my wife." Max's grip on his phone tightened, his voice edged with irritation as he replied. "If anyone's got the right to know what she's doing and where she's going, it's me."

"Hm." This time it was a chuckle rather than an introspective sound. "I've been married for twenty years, and I know for a fact that's a privilege and not a right. If Purity chooses not to accord it to you, then you do not have it."

James's claim might have made sense to some people, but not to Max Anders. "Well, where would she be, if not here or at her apartment with Aster?"

This time, James gave him an odd look. "You do not think she has other places she can be?"

"I know she has her phone on her when she goes shopping, and she doesn't usually shower at this time of day." Max knew he was being extremely generous and fair-minded about the whole thing. He'd given her time to get out of the shower, if that was what she was doing. However, she still hadn't answered or called him back.

"So you do not think she may be simply out for a stroll, or down at the Boardwalk? Is that not where she met Panacea?" James seemed intent on downplaying the whole situation. Were he not happily married, and had Kayden been anyone else, Max may have suspected him of trying to cover up an affair or something similar.

"She knows damn well that she needs to be available at any hour of the night or day." It was only common sense. Her position as his lieutenant in the Empire Eighty-Eight was contingent on her being able to step up at a moment's notice. Also, she was his wife (in his view, the separation was merely attention-seeking behaviour) which put the seal on the whole matter.

"Well, then, have you attempted to call the apartment landline? It may be that her cell-phone is out of charge, or otherwise malfunctioning." James spread his hands and raised his eyebrows, and after a moment Max conceded that he might have a point.

"Okay, fine. I'll call it now." Max had to pause to get the number out of his phone's storage, not being one that he knew by rote. "But if she's not there, then there's something seriously wrong going on."

"I doubt there's any real problem. Anyone who knew her real identity would come after us first, while if someone did attack her and Aster without knowing who she was, it would involve a closed-casket funeral. But suit yourself." James leaned back in his chair and watched as Max located the number.

When he tapped the call icon, it rang several times, to the point where Max was about to end the call. But then it was picked up.

"Hello?" It was Theo's voice. He sounded nervous, but that was normal for the boy.

"Theo." Max spoke firmly. "Tell me where Kayden is."

"Uh … Kayden's fine. She, uh, just stepped out for a minute. Everything's fine here."

Max inhaled sharply, frustration boiling over. "I didn't ask how she was. I asked where she is. Has she been at the apartment while I called? Where is she, Theo?"

"Uh, I don't know right now, but she's fine." Max's antennae went up. Something was off. "Uh, gotta go. Aster needs me." The phone handset went down, and the call cut off.

"Well?" asked James. "Where is she?"

"Not certain." Max stared out the window for a second, deep in thought. "Theo said she was fine, that everything was fine … but he didn't call her to the phone. I think he was lying about something."

Now James tilted his head. "Max, I've met your boy. There is no way on earth he would have the nerve to lie to you. Or anyone, to be honest. He's far too timid. Are you sure you're reading the situation correctly?"

Max pinched his earlobe lightly with his thumbnail as he worked his way through the thought process that James's question had sparked. "He'd never lie to me of his own accord. He knows better than that. But if he was put up to it by someone else, he might. Which means …" Abruptly, he stood up from his chair. "I have to get over there, right now."

"What? Why?" James rose as well. "Do you think there's a problem?"

"Well, if there isn't, there soon will be." Max reached under his desk and pressed the button that electronically locked his office door. Then he pressed the intercom button that connected him to his personal assistant. While Ms Harcourt was an absolute gem for organisation and administration, Max still had no idea of her political beliefs, so she hadn't yet been read in on his true identity, or even the secrets of Medhall. It would become remarkably inconvenient if they had to dispose of her because she objected to such things. Better to keep her in the dark and continue to benefit from her numerous talents. "Please hold all my calls and reschedule my appointments for tomorrow. I will be busy for a while."

"Yes, sir." Ms Harcourt didn't ask any questions, which was one of her more endearing qualities. She took the information she was given, and ran with it.

Satisfied all was secure on that front, Max stepped aside from the chair and turned to the back wall of his office. Reaching out, he pressed the hidden switch that slid aside the panel concealing the secret elevator, then laid his hand on the biometric scanner thus revealed.

The elevator door opened and Max stepped in, with James following behind. It was a snug fit, though quite adequate for two adults. Any more people than that, however, would find it somewhat cramped.

There was no need for buttons inside the elevator, as it only had two destinations. Once the door closed, the elevator started its descent. It was fast, but Max still chafed at the time it was taking.

"Talk to me, Max." James seemed to be fully aware of his disquiet. "What do you think is happening at Purity's apartment that requires your presence right at this moment?"

"I'm not one hundred percent sure," Max reluctantly admitted. "But Theo was definitely nervous about something, and either unable or unwilling to get Kayden to come to the phone. This says to me that something's wrong in that apartment, and I need to find out what."

James nodded. "You make a valid point. Do you want me to call the rest of the Empire in on this?"

As the elevator door opened, Max considered that. On the one hand, if Kayden was taking advantage of the current unrest to make some sort of move toward taking Aster out of his reach, he didn't want his marital problems broadcast far and wide through the team. However, on the other, if there was an actual problem at Kayden's apartment, having backup could be invaluable.

"… just the ones who can respond the fastest," he hedged. "Whatever's going on, we don't want to jeopardise Kayden's secret identity."

In truth, Max only cared about that insofar as it was linked to his own secret identity; if she hadn't been married to him, or part of the Empire, he wouldn't have given a damn.

"Understood." James may or may not have picked up on that nuance, but Max didn't give a damn about that either.

They climbed into one of the anonymous cars that Max kept in the sub-basement garage for getting around town on the quiet, and he accelerated toward the exit ramp while James made the call.

If it turned out to be just a case of miscommunication on Theo's part, he would have harsh words with the boy about saying what needed to be said. However, if it was more serious than that, then he absolutely would not stop at harsh words.

One question niggled at him as he drove:

Why is Theo still at Kayden's? He was supposed to be back hours ago.

<><>​

Kayden's Apartment

Panacea

"Uh, gotta go. Aster needs me." Theo put the phone down, then stepped away from it.

Around the room, the removalists Dad had hired continued to ferry packed boxes out the door while others packed the last of Kayden's belongings according to her instructions. Dad, who had stood by with his hands clasped behind his back while Theo answered the phone, raised an eyebrow. "I presume he didn't buy your act."

"Sorry, sir." Theo's shoulders slumped and his eyes darted away, avoiding contact. "I can never lie to him. I'm too scared to."

I stood up from the sofa I'd been sitting on, allowing two of the guys to pick it up and walk out the door with it, and put my hand on Theo's shoulder. "Hey, don't beat yourself up. What did he say, exactly?"

"He, uh, wanted to know where Kayden was, and why she wasn't answering her phone." Theo shrugged. "I did my best, but he just kept pushing."

"Well, I'm glad you did." Kayden stepped in and hugged him. "If I'd answered it, he'd probably have me half-convinced to stay by now. That man has a talent for getting under my skin."

"But why are you even moving?" asked Theo. "I thought you liked this apartment."

Kayden grimaced. "I do, but I'm entering into a working arrangement with Mr Matheson, and your father won't exactly approve. We both know he doesn't, uh …"

"Take things like that lying down?" Dad suggested. "From what I've seen, the man's a control freak of the highest order."

Theo hunched his shoulders, falling silent. I could see he agreed but was too scared to voice it. I'd only met Theo an hour ago, but he was throwing out all the signs of someone whose upbringing had been less than stellar. I could sympathise.

"That's actually being kind to him." Kayden nodded toward her stepson. "It's also why I want Theo to come with. The moment I vanish, Max is going to assume he knew something whether he did or not, and if I left him behind, the interrogation would not be kind. Besides, Aster needs her brother."

"The need to be with one's family is something I am well acquainted with," Dad assured her. "Whether you move into my main accommodation or one of the subsidiary properties I am in the process of purchasing, there will be room for all of you." He glanced around. "It seems that our work here is almost complete. I've never needed to vacate a premises ahead of a vengeful ex-husband, but there's a first time for everything."

"And that's our cue." I took Theo's arm. "C'mon, let's get Aster downstairs."

"Um, okay." Theo followed, his eyes revealing a swirl of unasked questions. I noticed his hesitation; even without his natural shyness—something I planned to help him overcome—he clearly felt overwhelmed by the rapid pace of events.

Aster, on the other hand, took it in her stride. Despite the ongoing upheaval of almost every part of her life, the little munchkin was at her cutest today, gurgling and pointing at things from her stroller as Theo and I rode down in the elevator. We exited the building and headed for the car—a nice anonymous sedan—that Dad had bought a little while ago. With the spare key fob—Dad had thought ahead—I bipped it open as we were walking up to it.

"Okay, so there's stuff going on that I still don't really understand." Theo got Aster out of the stroller while I opened the back door of the car. I watched as he leaned in and got her settled in the baby seat, a lot more expertly than I would have.

I started to try to fold the stroller down, but I couldn't quite get the hang of it. "Well, ask away. And can you give me a hand with this?"

"Sure." He reached in and flicked a catch I hadn't spotted, and the whole thing just collapsed in on itself. "There you go. Uh, this thing between your dad and Kayden, it's not just a business thing, is it?"

I tilted my head and looked at him speculatively. From the first moment I'd met him, I'd suspected there was a brain in that head, and he'd just proven it. "No, it's not," I confirmed. Reaching down, I popped the trunk and stuck the collapsed stroller on top of the luggage already there, then closed it again, just as Dad and Kayden exited the building. "Let's go."

When I'd made the suggestion that we team up with Purity, her first response was that it was impossible, that Kaiser would work against us at every turn. Whether this came about via pressure in her civilian life, outright attacks on Dad or me by the Empire roster, or somewhere in between, something would happen. The chance of innocents being caught in the firing line as a direct result was somewhat more than zero, and I was not fine with that. Neither, gratifyingly enough, was Dad. To be fair, for him it was more of a public-image situation, but so long as the end result remained the same, I wasn't about to criticise him for his actual reasons.

This had led to the next logical point in our discussion. While we couldn't do much about preventing attacks from the Empire while Dad was out in costume (not that he went out in costume all that much), we could absolutely remove Kayden from the line of fire. Dad was buying properties discreetly, using methods that might have been questionable (but I was reasonably sure weren't illegal) to keep our identities under wraps. Legality aside, I figured the moral aspect was probably more important at the moment.

We climbed into the back seat of the car, with Aster between us, and closed the doors just as Kayden reached it. Behind us, I heard the U-Haul truck (with Dad at the wheel) start up and trundle off down the street. The front door opened, and Kayden got in. "Ready to go?" she asked.

"Absolutely," I said, feeling the adrenaline singing through my veins. We weren't in any danger—at least, I hoped we weren't—but this was still way out of my usual comfort zone. I wasn't quite sure when I'd started to see that as being a good thing, but I suspected meeting Fred Jones had something to do with it.

"Aster's secure?" she asked next, even as she started the car. I surreptitiously tugged at my seatbelt, wondering exactly when I'd done it up—excitement was funny like that—and looked out the window to see if I could spot Kaiser coming. It seemed there was nothing to worry about yet, but that was going to change very shortly if Dad was right (and he usually was).

"Yes," Theo replied as he snapped his belt into place. "I made sure of it."

And then, just after the truck trundled around the corner up ahead, a car came down the street past the corner, moving at speed. Not one person in ten recognised me as Panacea out of costume on a good day, but I ducked down anyway. With my eyes just above the windowsill, even though it whipped past in a fraction of a second, I was absolutely certain that the driver was none other than Max Anders. I didn't recognise the guy in the passenger seat.

"Don't look back," Kayden said quietly as I sat up again. I realised that she and Theo had ducked down as well. "It'll take them a couple of minutes to realise the place is empty. We do not want them recalling a car with suspiciously familiar people in it." With admirable control, she pulled the car away from the curb and started off after the truck.

"No, we don't," I agreed, then let out a long sigh. "Theo, are you alright?"

"Uh huh." Theo's tone was a little higher than it had been before. "Mom, what's this really about? Amelia says it's not a business deal. Is this a cape thing?"

I raised my eyebrows. Theo was connecting the dots a lot faster than I'd expected him to.

Kayden's next sigh was one of resignation. "Yes, it's a cape thing. But I'm going to need you to keep that to yourself, okay? Not just for my sake, but for theirs."

Theo nodded slowly, his eyes going from Kayden to me. "Mr Matheson … he's Marquis, isn't he?"

"Theo—" she began, but I held up my hand.

"It's okay, Ms Russel. Yeah, Theo. He's Marquis, and he's my dad as well. I guess I kind of gave it away just by showing up, huh?" The word that Panacea was Marquis' daughter was only a little less prevalent by now than the word that Marquis was out of the Birdcage. Anyone who was even slightly on the ball when it came to current events was fully aware of both facts.

He shrugged modestly. "I guess. Though most people didn't grow up with capes."

I grinned. As divergent as our lives were on most points, that was definitely an aspect we had in common. "Right back atcha."

<><>​

Kaiser

"Where the hell is she?" Max's voice echoed through the empty apartment as he stormed from room to room. He threw doors open, the sounds of them hitting the walls echoing through the empty apartment, each thud punctuating his growing anger. Every room was the same: stripped of everything useful, including any clues to Kayden's current whereabouts. There wasn't so much as a Post-it note, or a fridge for it to go on.

When he returned to the living room, he discovered that James had remained by the front door, gazing around with a calculating air. "She's gone, Max. Were I a betting man, I would wager a large amount of money that she never intends to return."

A flicker of understanding crossed Max's face as he pieced together the implications of James's words. "And she's kidnapped both my son and my infant daughter in the process. We need to find her, to get them back." Kayden would pay dearly for this betrayal.

"Hm." James nodded. "Look around. What do you see?"

Irritated, Max did as he was told, but no great epiphany burst upon him. "An empty room, in an empty apartment. What are you trying to show me?"

"How well furnished was it?" pressed James. "Did she have more than could fit into her car?" The car that, at that moment, was still parked outside.

"Yes, it was well furnished." Just the sofa alone would have required extensive disassembly before it would fit into Kayden's sedan, and it would certainly have taken up all available space. "I'm not quite sure what you're getting at."

"Four words." James seemed almost to be savouring Max's current inability to think through the problem. "Who. Helped. Her. Move?"

"Oh." Max's head came up and he looked around the living room with new eyes. Kayden's possessions would certainly have required a considerable amount of effort to move in bulk, especially given that she was living in the place as of yesterday. There was no way that she would've been able to move everything out in less than a week, even with Theo's assistance. "Oh."

James gestured at the open door. "People living in these conditions tend to be nosy. While you were rampaging, I asked a few questions of her neighbours, assisted by a couple of minor bribes."

Max chose to ignore the word 'rampaging'. He was Kaiser. He didn't rampage. "And what did you find out?"

"That a medium to large group of men wearing overalls marked 'Brockton Bay Removalists' spent the last hour emptying out Purity's apartment," James reported. "They were accompanied by Purity herself—not in costume, of course—as well as another man and a teenage girl. No specific descriptions of the man or the girl, save that they were white and average looking. Maybe brown hair, but that's not a given."

"So, basically we're looking at forty percent of the men and girls in Brockton Bay." Max tried not to sound too sarcastic, but it was difficult. "Not sure how helpful that is."

"The company name might be," James prompted. "If we ask them about the job they did …"

Max's brain finally managed to fight off the pervasive distraction and clicked into gear. "Of course! We can get a name for their employer and a destination for where they took Kayden's things!"

"That's what I was thinking, yes." James raised an eyebrow. "Do you think we should also contact the police, over the kidnapping charges?"

For a moment Max was tempted, but then he shook his head. The time for the legal system would come later, after he'd brought Kayden to heel himself. Until then, the police would just get in the way.

<><>​

Purity

The new apartment can do with a makeover, Kayden decided as she directed where the removalists were to put things. However, it wasn't high on her priorities right then, and it was definitely something she could handle on her own accord. The important part was, she and Aster were out from under Max's thumb (hopefully forever) and she'd managed to take Theo with her too.

She still wasn't quite sure how Marquis had managed this. It certainly wouldn't have been paid for by Panacea; from her own conversations with the young cape, Amelia didn't charge for her services. Turning, she looked at the supervillain and his daughter the hero.

"Will it suffice?" he asked, misinterpreting her glance, or maybe not. The man was a master of tact, when he chose to be.

She gestured around at the apartment, and smiled. "It's perfect. I was just wondering … well, I hope I'm not bankrupting you, that's all. All this, at short notice, it can't be cheap."

His smile, though austere, was genuine. "Hardly. Even if it were twice the price, I wouldn't begrudge you. As you pointed out, and as Max was eager to cash in on, I do owe you a significant debt of gratitude, and I always pay my debts."

Kayden shook her head dismissively. "That's a Max thing, not me. I was never going to call that in, and you know it. Besides, Amelia saved my purse from being snatched the first time we met, and Aster loves her."

His smile widened. "Your daughter does seem to be a good judge of character, I'll grant her that."

"Um …" Theo began, then shut up again.

Kayden and Marquis turned to look at him at the same time, which didn't do anything for his assertiveness right then. Panacea gave him an encouraging nod, and that seemed to help.

"If you have something to say, lad, we're listening." Marquis echoed his daughter's nod.

"Uh, well, I was just wondering … Max has a whole lot of money. Couldn't he, you know, pay those guys who moved all Kayden's stuff to find out where we're living now?" Theo looked from Marquis to Kayden, then to Panacea.

"He certainly could," agreed Marquis approvingly. "Sound thinking there, young man. Fortunately, your father will have to work a great deal harder than that to get ahead of me. The removalists who packed the truck are not the same ones who are unpacking it. In fact, I hired them from an entirely different company."

Kayden got it first. "So what you're saying is that when Max drops a bundle to bribe those guys, all he's going to get is that they packed the truck and then watched you drive it away."

Marquis gave her a measured nod. "That, my dear Ms Russel, is exactly what I am saying."

Panacea snickered at that. When she caught Theo's eye, he might have smiled a little before he ducked his head.

At least Aster was happy to laugh at the joke, even if she had no idea what it meant.

<><>​

Krieg

"I'm sorry, sir."

To James' practised eye, the overweight man behind the counter of Brockton Bay Removalists didn't look nearly as sorry as he would've been, had he known exactly who he was apologising to. Still, he managed a reasonable simulacrum of the emotion, given that he'd just tucked away a sizeable amount of money to give out what should have been confidential information.

Max, who had handed over the money, seemed to be having trouble comprehending what he'd just been told. "What do you mean, your people didn't unload the truck at the other end?"

"I don't know how else to say it, sir." The man—his nametag read GERARD—spread his hands in a supplicating manner. "We were only paid to show up at that address and load the stuff onto the U-Haul that was already there. It was a one and done."

Max let out an aggravated sigh. "Receipt. Now."

"I, uh—"

James leaned across the counter. "If you can't give him anything else, I strongly suggest you give him that." He did his best to sound encouraging rather than menacing, but he suspected a little of the latter had crept in, from how quickly Gerard complied.

"Right, right, uh, here." Gerard turned his computer screen around so that James and Max could both read the information. It had been highlighted, possibly because Gerard could see how close Max was to doing something fatally drastic to him.

"Wait." Max frowned. "Where's the name of the payer?" He turned his attention to Gerard. "Did you at least sight ID?"

"Uh, no. He paid over the phone. As he wasn't hiring a truck from us, all we needed was the address and the cash. The lady who owned the stuff was there, she let our guys in. She had ID, plus a key and everything." He paused then added virtuously, "We check for stuff like that."

James peered at the highlighted line. In the payer column was simply a string of numbers, something he'd seen before. "Very well," he said, straightening up. "We're done here. Very sorry to have bothered you."

"What?" Max turned and stared at him. "We're not done here. They've got information—"

"Nothing we can use." James gestured to the door. "Let's go. I'll tell you outside."

Max gave him a sharp look, but left. James could tell from his posture that he was looking for basically any excuse to go back in and extract his bribe from Gerard, using any and all means necessary. It wasn't that Max needed the money—what he'd handed over basically amounted to a rounding error in his finances—but it was the principle of the thing.

Once they were outside, away from prying ears, Max turned to James. "This had better be good. If I can get the payer's name from them—"

"We'll never get it." James knew Max hated being cut off like that, but it was for the best. "I recognised the number. It's a Number Man account code."

"Oh, for fuck's sake." Max shook his head. "Why didn't I recognise that? There's no way Kayden has access to one of those accounts. I'd know about it, for one thing."

"Well, someone does." James eyed Max carefully. "What are you going to do now?"

"Find her by finding who paid for it." Max turned and started off down the sidewalk toward where they'd left the car. "How many people in Brockton Bay have a Number Man account, anyway?"

James didn't have to think too hard to get an answer. "If Lung had one, access to it died with him. The Empire's got one. Maybe Coil. Nobody else that I can think of."

Max snapped his fingers. "Coil. That's it. He's the one who paid for the removal service. Has to be."

"What? Are you sure?" James frowned as he got into the car.

"No, no, think it through." Max started the car, revving the engine a few times. "He finds out she's Purity, maybe offers her a substantial bribe to come work for him. She knows I'll take Aster away from her if she stabs me in the back like that, so she gets him to relocate her, probably into whatever secret base he's got. And he knows I'll move heaven and earth to find her once he takes her, so this is his big move to keep the Empire on the back foot while he pulls some stunt of his own."

James considered that, then frowned. "The neighbours said there were two people other than Purity on site. Both average looking, one of them a teenage girl. The last I heard, Coil was tall and skinny, which wasn't mentioned at all. And who's the girl?"

Max pulled the car out into traffic. "Well, of course Coil wouldn't show up in person. Showing up would mean unmasking, which he would definitely never do. The man was clearly his representative, and the girl … hmm." He paused, considering. "I'm not sure about the girl."

"If we're following that theory …" James ventured. There were still a few holes in it that he wasn't sure how to plug. "Circus could possibly pass for a teenage girl." The androgynous villain had worked for Coil a few times in the past, or so the grapevine had it.

Max nodded slowly. "So she would've been added muscle in case someone showed up from the Empire Eighty-Eight. That's thoroughly underhanded. Exactly Coil's style." To give emphasis to his words, he accelerated through a traffic light that was just about to turn red, leaving a trail of angry honking in his wake.

"There's one thing I'm still trying to figure out," James mused. "Why would Purity go to Coil in the first place? If she's trying to rebrand as a hero, I can't see that as being the way to go. Can you?"

Max glanced over at him. "When we catch up with her, that's absolutely one of the questions I'll be sure to ask her."



End of Part Fourteen