Recoil (a Worm fanfic)

[seeing_octarine]

That falls into the category of "What are people likely to do in response to a stimulus from me?" To which Lisa's power goes, "Weeble weeble weeble."

Click to shrink...

Ah, there's the poor-communication-kills Worm theme we all know and love. My view of Taylor Snow is now shifting from the proverbial boring invincible hero to a more tragic figure with a blindspot that may or may not be her undoing. Interesting as watching her plans unfold already was, this should be even better.

 

[Ack]

Ah, there's the poor-communication-kills Worm theme we all know and love. My view of Taylor Snow is now shifting from the proverbial boring invincible hero to a more tragic figure with a blindspot that may or may not be her undoing. Interesting as watching her plans unfold already was, this should be even better.

Click to shrink...

Fortunately, Lisa is able to model where they're going to be, and her own earned skills in criminal psychology will help with any approaches. But she doesn't have an I WIN button

 

[Ack]

Recoil
Part 6-2: Touching Base​

[A/N: this chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]



Thursday, 11 July, 1994
Two Weeks Before the Meeting on the Highway
Cauldron Base

The conference room was dominated by a table that been carved from a giant redwood. On the far end of the room was a huge screen, currently dark. Three people were seated around the table—Doctor Mother, Contessa and Alexandria—the last of whom was currently tapping her fingernail on the tabletop with enough force to dent it.

A Doorway opened, and Eidolon stepped through into the room. The portal closed unheeded behind him as he found a chair and settled into it. Alexandria looked over at him, letting her irritation show. "You're late. Where are the other two?"

"They're busy. As was I, up until thirty seconds ago." Eidolon pushed his hood back and dropped his glowing green mask on to the table, revealing a weary expression. "What's this about?"

"Hm." Alexandria restrained herself from any further outbursts. "I wanted to make sure that everyone's on the same page regarding a certain rising star in the PRT. A Captain Taylor Snow. I'd prefer everyone be here, but if it's just us, it's just us."

Eidolon frowned. "I don't know the name. Who is that?" A moment later, something clicked behind his eyes. "Wait, isn't that the one who …"

"She predicted the Behemoth's attack on New York, yes," Alexandria said. "I understand that she's working on the time and place of the next attack. She's also behind the protocols that have finally secured the PRT against the parahuman infiltrators that were making off with secure information in droves." The description was slightly exaggerated, but not by much. The information leakages from the PRT had been very irritating. "Not to mention, she was right in the middle of that incident with the Brotherhood of the Fallen."

She picked up a remote and clicked a button; three large images filled the wallscreen, all of the same slender young dark-haired woman. One in fatigues, one in standard PRT uniform, and one in full dress while having a medal pinned to her tunic. Rectangular-framed glasses and a quietly determined expression were the common features of each image. "She also came to me two days ago and made some extremely insightful and forward-thinking proposals about how the PRT should treat rogue capes. I've run them past my DC think-tank and gotten largely positive responses, so I'm going to have them implemented."

"If she's such a prodigy, why isn't she working directly for us?" asked Eidolon. "We could pay her whatever she wanted." He waved a hand. "It's not like we can't afford it."

"I would tend to agree," Doctor Mother said carefully. She studied the picture on the screen. "We could even offer her a formula. With Thinker abilities, she could really focus her insights."

"If we offered, I think she'd say no," Alexandria mused. "I've already offered her a place on the think-tank, three times. And three times she turned me down." She grimaced, recalling each incident. "I can't get a handle on her. Trying to establish leverage is like punching fog."

"Well, that's easily fixed," Eidolon said, rolling his eyes. "Contessa, what approach would work best to get her on board?"

Contessa shook her head. "I don't think she would work well with Cauldron. Among other things, she's an idealist." She gestured downward; Alexandria knew quite well that she was indicating the many Case 53 prisoners in the base.

"Crap. Well, there goes that idea." Eidolon stood up and put his mask on before pulling his hood back up. "I've got to go. Things I have to take care of. But I think I need face time with this Captain Snow, sometime in the near future."

"Don't frighten her off," warned Alexandria. "If she predicted the Behemoth once, she can do it again. That makes her an extremely valuable resource. If staying in the PRT is what makes her happy, then we'll let her stay in the PRT." She stood up as well. "I mean it."

Eidolon gestured reassuringly. "I'll be diplomatic. I promise. Doorway." The portal opened in mid-air and he stepped through.

Alexandria watched as the hole in space closed behind him. That's what I'm afraid of.

-ooo-​

Thursday, 25 July, 1994
A Small Town in Texas

Kari looked up as Leanne jittered her foot against the coffee shop table leg. "Where is she? She said she'd be here." The slender Mover apparently had an inexhaustible supply of nervous energy, most probably because she wasn't able to run properly yet. So far she'd made six trips to the counter for more coffee; Kari wondered if and when the girl ever peed.

Dana put her hand on Leanne's shoulder. "It'll be fine. She assured me that she'd be here today. Even repeated back the address to this place." She brushed her long dark brown hair out of her eyes, then went back to fiddling with the device she was working on. It looked like a bizarre fusion between a Rubik's cube and a wind-up toy spider. With flashing LEDs.

Joanne leaned in, a full head taller than everyone else. Her hair, a few shades lighter than Dana's, was tied back in an efficient ponytail. She wore blue jeans and a man's work shirt; as far as Kari could see, this was more because she couldn't find anything in her size than for any kind of fashion statement. "She said she'd be here. She'll be here."

Kari nodded, setting her blonde hair to swaying around her head. "It's true. She said she'd be here. After all, she went in and got us out, right?" She glanced around at the others. Tori was managing to keep herself mostly visible these days, though sometimes she forgot and faded into the background. Of course, when she was concentrating on disappearing, especially in strong light, she just vanished altogether.

On the other hand, what had been done to Vanessa and Brianna had given them problems seeing things. Brianna's eyes could shoot something similar to a laser, and so she'd been blinded by the Brotherhood of the Fallen to prevent her from using her powers. They hadn't known that using her power actually damaged her eyes, requiring a rest period between uses. This also meant that her eyes had been growing back, albeit slowly. Given the lack of nutrition in the Compound, this had been slower than normal, until she'd been released. She was able to see properly now, and even make use of her Blaster ability, although she usually needed glasses for close vision, especially just after she'd been using her powers.

Vanessa had likewise been blinded, because her powers also worked through her eyes. However, she was a Thinker rather than a Blaster, with odd visual capabilities. Or rather, she had been; her eyes lacked Brianna's regeneration capability. To cover up what had been done to her, and what Dana had done to fix it, she wore oversized sunglasses nearly everywhere.

Kari glanced up as the coffee shop door dinged musically, but it was only a customer walking in off the street. A woman, certainly, but she was wearing a brightly-coloured sundress and a broad-brimmed hat rather than the PRT uniform they were watching out for.

Leanne stared out the window, shading her eyes against the afternoon glare. "Where is she?" Suddenly, she leaned forward. "Hey. Isn't that the big guy, the sergeant?"

Kari looked around, along with the rest of them. The guy that Leanne was indicating stood on the sidewalk, his back to the window. She thought back to the burly sergeant who'd been carrying Captain Snow when they first met her. This guy was definitely big and fit enough, and even though he wasn't in uniform, he was standing in a military kind of stance. She just wished she could see his face to make sure, one way or the other.

"If that's him," Joanne said uncertainly, "then where's she?" She turned her head, looking up and down the street. Kari did the same, but saw nobody out of the ordinary. In fact, the only tall woman she'd seen was …

"Excuse me?" The familiar voice came from behind them. "Is this seat taken?"

-ooo-​

I'd left the cane in the car because I honestly didn't need it any more. While I'd probably get twinges in that leg for the rest of my life, I could walk on it perfectly well. As such, there was nothing to draw attention to me when I entered the coffee shop and headed for the counter. I observed them out of the corner of my eye as I made my order; they were too busy talking among themselves to look too closely at me. I might have to give them some tutorials in basic tradecraft so they don't get caught unawares by hostiles.

By the time I'd finished my order, they were looking out the window at Kinsey. As per my orders, he was keeping watch in a way that drew attention; that way, anyone looking for me would have to look twice or three times to actually spot me. We were both armed, of course; this being Texas, I suspected it was illegal not to be carrying some sort of weapon. He had his hand-cannon in a shoulder rig, while my little Glock rode in the handbag slung over my shoulder.

When I spoke, everyone looked at me. Brianna—I'd refreshed myself on their faces and names—opened her mouth, possibly to say it was taken. But then Kari jumped in. "Captain Snow!" she whispered excitedly. "It's you! You came!" The commingled relief and good cheer in her voice made me smile.

Pulling out the chair, I sat down with my handbag on my lap, then removed my hat and sunglasses. With my face and hair now visible, I could literally watch the recognition dawning on each of their faces. Proof positive that the uniform makes it easier to recognise me, not harder. "I did indeed. It's good to see you all. How are you?"

"We're doing a lot better than we were," Joanne allowed. "You seem to be doing well, too. Walking and all, I mean." She nodded toward me. "Was it deliberate, coming in like that so nobody recognised you?" The tone of her voice sounded more intrigued than angry.

"That was the idea," I said. "It's something that's good to practice. Once PASS really gets going, you are going to make enemies. It'll be a good idea to make sure they don't know where you are at all times. Also, don't go anywhere alone."

I saw them glance at each other. They were, at least, cognizant of the dangers of being kidnapped for a second time. With some of them, the glances were apprehensive. Joanne, on the other hand, hardened her jaw. "I'll make sure of that," she promised. "Is there anything you can teach us? Show us how to be safer?"

"Yes." I let that one word sink in before I continued. "There are several strategies. Not being recognised means they can't zero in on you. But at some point, you're almost certainly going to need to either dissuade or evade an attacker. Some of you have a head start on that. And you have three big advantages that you didn't have before."

Vanessa tilted her head. I couldn't see her eyes behind her heavy sunglasses. "What's that?"

I smiled, very slightly. "You know they're coming, this time. You'll have time to prepare. And you have each other. Teamwork, properly applied, can overcome virtually any disorganised enemy." Gladys and I had proven that over and over in JROTC and ROTC, to the dismay of our opposition. All the people at this table needed was training. Which had given rise to a suggestion I was going to make; I didn't know if they'd take it, but I was hoping they would.

"Damn right." Joanne nodded. She, I was sure, would take up my suggestion. Some of the others, I wasn't so certain about. That would remain to be seen. "So what can you show us?"

"Nothing, right at this second," I said. "That needs to happen later. This isn't the time or place for that sort of thing. But we will get back to it." I nodded across the table to Dana. "Right now, I need to look over the contract the PRT gave you. You haven't signed it yet?"

"Oh, uh, no," she said, setting down the device she'd been fiddling with. It folded into itself and seemed to go to sleep. "I mean, it looks good, but after what you said, I thought I'd hang on to it so you could look it over." Reaching down beside the chair, she produced a zippered document folder and slid it over to me.

I nodded. "That's exactly what I meant. The PRT as a whole means well, but they are a government organisation, and any bureaucracy anywhere will pick up dirty tricks." My mouth twisted in a wry grin. "I try to stay away from that side of things."

Footsteps sounded from behind me, and I turned to watch the waitress as she brought my order over to the table. One cup of tea, along with sugar and milk. I nodded in thanks, then poured in milk and sugar and stirred both into the beverage. Once I'd taken my first sip, I unzipped the folder and pulled out the contract.

I was cheating as I skimmed through it, of course. While I knew enough to decipher the language, Lisa had already filled me in on what to look for. So, with a pen in my right hand, I traced my way through the paragraphs and clauses, humming tunelessly as I went. Six times, I stopped to put a line through a particular clause, then I went back to the beginning and checked it through again. Just for show, of course.

"There you go," I said, putting the contract on the folder and skating it back over toward Dana. "Tell 'em that's what you want to go with. They'll scream just a little, but they won't be able to object too strenuously." I looked around at the expressions of disbelief. "What?"

"That took about one minute!" burst out Joanne. "I looked through the damn thing for an hour last night! What did you find, and how did you find it?"

"Have a look," I invited her, tilting my head toward the contract. "One clause sets up a particular expectation of conduct. Another one refers to the first one; if it's violated, it nullifies all other agreements and locks Dana into an exclusive contract with the PRT. Yet another one gives the PRT control over setting prices for her tech. And so forth. Each one's more or less innocuous on its own, but taken as a whole, it'll lock her down legally if she so much as offers her tech to anyone who even gets suspected of committing a crime at any time in the future."

"Holy shit." Dana ran her hand through her hair. "And I was getting ready to sign it, too. What about the bonuses for signing, early completion of projects and all that?"

"All walked back as soon as you violate that one clause," I said. "Don't worry; I've disarmed that landmine. Taken as a whole, the contract is what you need. You just didn't need that bit." I smiled and sipped at my tea.

"But … you're PRT," Brianna said with a frown. "Aren't you kind of going against your own people, showing us how to beat the system?" Beside her, Tori nodded in agreement.

I chuckled and shook my head. "I learned quite early on never to trust that any bureaucracy had my best interests at heart. But it's rarely if ever personal. It's just what they've evolved over time to gain the greatest benefit from dealing with others. The trick is to never sign a damn thing unless you agree with every word in the contract."

"Right." Joanne seemed to be taking control of this meeting. "So what else can you talk to us about, today?" Beside her, Dana was paging through the contract, re-reading what I'd crossed out, and shaking her head.

"I spoke to the Chief Director." That got everyone's attention again. "She's aware of PASS, and the potential for going into other countries and causing problems there." Silence greeted my statement; I looked from face to face. Most, including Joanne's, were grim. Vanessa and Kari looked a little apprehensive. "Currently, she's willing to de-prioritise any incident that you cause, so long as you don't make it too loud. No direct attacks on the government or military of any sovereign nation." I leaned forward. "More specifically, if you can be back on American soil before things get fraught, with whoever you were going in there to rescue, there'll be far less fallout."

"How the hell did you swing that?" demanded Leanne. "Is she your mom or something?" She spread her hands as the others turned to look at her. "What? I admit there isn't much resemblance, but they're both badass as fuck."

I coughed to hide my smile. "Trust me, you have no idea how badass she can be. No, she's no relation. But she seems to value my opinion as an analyst, so when I pointed out woman-to-woman that prosecuting people for rescuing the victims of sex slavery could be seen as a bad PR move, she took me at my word."

"It took an analyst to point that out to her?" Joanne shook her head. "Is she that stupid, or is she just made of stone?" The hurt and anger were clear in her voice.

I'd thought something similar of the woman myself, once upon a time. Since then, of course, my eyes had been opened to the realities of the situation. "Politics muddies everything," I noted mildly. "And sometimes when your job is to see the big picture, it's hard to focus on individuals. It's quite literally my job to cut through the bullshit and red tape to tell her what she needs to know. Myself and half a hundred other people." I drew a deep breath. "But you do have another PRT-related problem, and it's not the Chief Director."

"That sounds ominous," Brianna said. Her gaze was peculiarly intent. Behind her glasses, her irises seemed to be fluorescing slightly. It made for an almost hypnotic effect. "If it's not her, what is it?"

I sighed and pulled a notepad from my handbag. "Remember how I said earlier that the problems that bureaucracy throws your way are rarely personal? Well, this is a personal problem. There's a guy—I know him better than he knows me—who's taken it on himself to have all your phones wiretapped. This isn't an official operation, or even an officially unofficial one. He wants to be right there when you break the law, so he can come down hard on you."

"The fuck he does!" snapped Joanne. "Why aren't you arresting the asshole?" Her expression showed the same outrage that she expressed in her voice.

"I wish I could." I told the lie as firmly as I knew how. As much as I hated it, I needed Calvert in the PRT for a few more years. "The trouble is, he's good at separating himself from potential trouble. Pinning this on him will be almost impossible. However." As I spoke, I wrote on the top page of the pad, then tore it off. "This is the direct line for the Director of the local branch of the PRT." Folding it once, I handed it over to Joanne. "Call him—not on any of your phones, but a separate line—and tell him that Captain Snow would like the wiretaps removed from your lines post-haste. He will, of course, deny that any such wiretaps exist. But your phones will be clear from then on. Especially if you say that I told you I'd be checking."

Joanne unfolded the paper and looked at the number written inside. "And why's he gonna do what you say? I mean, he outranks you, right?"

I shrugged modestly. "What can I say? The man owes me a favour." Grantham owed me more than that. I'd amplified the PRT's reputation during the Compound incident, and some of that had reflected back on him and his station. "And our friend will keep. Sooner or later he'll put a foot wrong and he'll get what he deserves."

"Was he one of the assholes stopping people from coming in to get us out?" asked Kari. "Because if that's the case, I wanna be there when you take him down." She clenched her fist, and I saw a streamer of metal slide out of her sleeve and wrap around her wrist.

Ah. So she still carries metal on her. Somehow, not surprised. "No, he's not," I told her truthfully. "But he'll get what's coming to him. People I knew got hurt by him, once upon a time. I will be taking him down." Laying my pen on the table, I clasped my hands on the table in front of me. "Next item of business. As I said earlier, once PASS gets up and running, you'll be at risk from people—non-capes and capes alike—who don't like what you're doing and what you stand for. These will range from those who merely feel threatened by women standing up for themselves all the way down the line to men who want to hurt women and see you as an obstacle. You're going to be attacked socially, politically and possibly even personally, just for daring to stand up and make a difference."

"Fuckin' let 'em." Joanne's fists were clenched on the table in front of her. "I did not go through that shit to sit back now and let it happen to others when we could be doing something."

I sipped at my tea as a murmur of agreement swept around the table, then nodded in acknowledgement. "Well, you're dedicated. That's good. You're going to need that. And I'm going to help you prepare for it. Because all the dedication in the world doesn't help if you don't know what you're doing."

Brianna frowned. "How are you going to help us prepare? What you said, earlier, about evading and dissuading attackers?" Her irises were fluorescing again.

"There's a lot you need to learn," I told her. "All of you. More than I can teach in an hour, or even a day." I looked around the table, meeting each set of eyes in turn. With Vanessa, I just looked at her sunglasses. "Those of you whose powers don't lend themselves to physical confrontation need to learn how to handle themselves in a fight. And even those who do can stand to fight more effectively. Also, tradecraft; going unnoticed, getting information, passing messages unseen, communicating in public. If you're going to do this, you need to do it right."

"You're talking about making us into spies," Dana said, looking a little concerned. "I don't want to do that. I just want to help other women."

"This is about helping them," I told her. "It's about intelligence gathering. Accurate intel can be the difference between a successful op and a clusterfuck. Intel gathering is how I knew you were in the Compound. How I knew where you were in the Compound." I was bullshitting here just a little; Lisa had given me all of that, from her inexhaustible stockpile of knowledge, but the principle was sound.

"Right." Joanne nodded firmly. "I hear what you're saying." Her eyes met mine, and I heard the challenge in her voice. She knew that what I was proposing wasn't going to be easy. Meanwhile, her entire attitude said: Bring it.

"Excellent," I said. Taking up the pen, I wrote a number. "Once you've cleared your phones, call this number. It will connect you with people who can train you in what you need to know. It won't be easy and it won't be fun, but it will give you skills that might just save your lives, or the lives of the people next to you. Understood?"

"Wait, you're not going to be training us?" That was Leanne. "I thought you were going to be training us."

I shook my head slightly. "I would if I could. Unfortunately, duty calls. The best I can do is make these arrangements and let you follow through." Andrea's mercenaries, I knew, could train them better than I ever could, merely by virtue of having more man-hours available to do the training with. I tore off the page with the number on it and passed it over to Joanne. Then I took a deep breath. This was going to be unpleasant. "One more thing I wanted to talk about. Something that concerns everyone but Kari and Joanne."

From the looks that they shared, I surmised that most of them knew immediately what I was talking about. Unsurprisingly, the only ones who didn't were the two I'd named. Joanne stared at me. "What the hell are you talking about?"

I wanted to look down at the table, but they'd earned my honesty and directness. "Joanne … every girl who came out of the Compound, except you and Kari, is pregnant."

"Oh," said Kari in tones of enlightenment. "Right." She looked around at the others. "Oh, shit. Everyone?"

Dana wrapped her arms around Leanne, who had begun to cry silently into her hands. She looked over at me. "So, you got a miracle fix for this, too?" I was pretty sure that she didn't mean the cutting tone. But even if she did, she'd kind of earned it.

I shook my head. "No. Not a miracle fix. But you've got two main options. Each of you. You can carry the baby to term, or you can end the pregnancy." I patted my own toned stomach. "I've never been where you are, so I don't have the right to tell you what to do. It's your body, your womb. But either way, I can arrange finance for what you want to do. If you want to have the baby, raise it as your own or give it up for adoption, I can arrange that. If you want to have it aborted, and I can understand your reasons, I can arrange that instead. I promise you, I will. Not. Judge."

Dana, one arm around Leanne, with the other around her own stomach, stared at me through teary eyes. "How could anyone want to keep a child of those … those monsters?"

I kept my tone as flat and unemotional as I could. "Yes, they were monsters. Any babies you choose to have won't be. The only thing you get from the fathers would be their DNA. Who they were, what they were, it's gone by the wayside."

"What about their powers?" Vanessa had her arm around Brianna's shoulders. "Won't their children have their powers, too? I read something about that once." She shuddered. "I don't want anything that reminds me of them."

"No." I shook my head. "Powers aren't genetic. If they get powers from anyone, it'll be from their mothers. The monsters are dead; not even their powers will live on." I put my hands flat on the table. "Now, I know of one case where a woman took in the daughter of a villain. He hadn't fathered the girl on her, but she didn't have much of a choice in the matter. She raised the girl, but she could never forget who the father was, and the girl ended up having a nervous breakdown. With powers. You can imagine how badly that went."

Joanne's eyes widened. "Shit. What happened? Did many people die?"

I grimaced. "No, but her foster sister spent the rest of her life in care. The girl herself went into supermax. Voluntarily. The point of what I'm saying is that you shouldn't force yourself to keep the baby to raise for yourself if you really don't think you can. Giving them up for adoption is a very real option. As is abortion, if you want to take that path instead. It's your choice. Each and every one of you."

Tori shook her head. She'd been silent up till now, but I could see the pain in her eyes. "I got no choice," she said softly. "Ma'd have a fit. An' I'm seventeen. She'll never say yes to an abortion. Ain't gonna happen."

Reaching out, I took her hand. "You had no choice in what they did to you, but you've got a choice about what happens now. I can arrange for discreet transport to a reputable hospital in Seattle where you can talk to a counsellor and decide for yourself what you want to do. No pressure, no judgement. What do you say?" I lifted my eyes and looked around the table at the other girls. "That goes for all of you, of course."

"Um … shit." Brianna bit her lip. "I'm pretty sure I want to have the baby, but it couldn't hurt to just go along and talk to someone, yeah?" She shrugged. "I'm pretty young to be making this kinda life decision on my own."

"Getting a second opinion is never a bad idea," I agreed. "Also, talking to your parents might help, too, to understand your options. Who's already told them?"

Joanne coughed into her hand. "Uh, we all got tested. Or at least, I did. It was kinda common knowledge what they were doing to us in the Compound. My folks got told that I was fine. I'm guessing the others got the bad news at the same time."

That made sense. Should've checked with Lisa. "Ah. Right. Well, the point of going to Seattle is that parental consent isn't a requirement there. If any of you don't want to carry the baby to term, that is. I can arrange the transport. What happens when you get there is up to you."

Dana nodded slowly. "Um, do we have to make up our minds straight away? This is kinda sudden. Knowing we got a choice and all, I mean."

"No, you don't." I scribbled yet another number on the notepad. "This is the number for my boss in Chicago. His name's Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton. Just ask him to pass on a message to contact you. He'll do the rest." I passed that one to Joanne as well; I trusted her to hold on to it for the others. "Just make up your minds in the next week or two, okay?"

-ooo-​

Joanne and Kari followed me outside as I left the cafe to rejoin Kinsey. Inside, the rest of the girls were lost in conversation over what I'd said to them, and the offer I'd made. It wouldn't be a huge deal for me, given that I had Andrea to call on, but it would lift a huge burden from their collective shoulders. Whether they kept the babies or didn't, the point was that they now had a choice.

"That … what you said inside, that was amazing." Joanne put her hand on my shoulder. "Thank you. For helping us. For helping them." She bit her lip. "When you started talking about PASS, I was ready to jump down your throat if you told us we couldn't do it. I misjudged you. I'm sorry."

I shook my head. "No apology necessary. I told you before that the idea of PASS is amazing, and I meant it. I'd support it more openly if I didn't have a lot of other irons in the fire. But I've got places to go, jobs to do and people to kill. Not necessarily in that order. To quote Robert Frost, I've got miles to go before I sleep."

Neither Kari nor Joanne reacted visibly to my reference to killing. Thanks to Lisa's effective omniscience, I knew the full details of Hadrian Lange's death, and I had no problem at all with it. I'd also learned more about the man than I really wanted to know; if they hadn't killed him, I certainly would have. Mad dogs had to be put down.

"Yeah, somehow that doesn't surprise me," Kari said with a smile. "You and the rules don't always get along, do you?"

"The correct term, Ms Schultz, is 'initiative'," Kinsey said from behind her. Ignoring her yelp and start, he continued blandly. "The Captain happens to possess a healthy dose of it."

I blinked; this was the closest I'd heard Kinsey come to saying that he'd have my back even if I took the regulations and broke them over my knee. But before I could react, Kari wrapped me in a hug. I returned it, noting that her control over the metal she was undoubtedly wearing was getting better all the time. "Thank you," she whispered, before she let go.

"What for, this time?" I murmured, though I suspected I knew.

She rolled her eyes. "The scholarship, duh." There was a giddy grin on her face. "I just know it was you."

I'd been right. At my behest, Andrea had funnelled cash through several cut-outs to endow the Amanda King Memorial Medical Scholarship. Oddly enough, the first recipient for this scholarship happened to be one Kari Schultz. There was enough money there for her mother to be taken care of while she attended her schooling. In addition, this would take place at a college close enough that she could see her mother on weekends. While I'd done my best to hide my tracks, Kari had apparently connected two and two to make four.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." I put on my best poker face.

"Uh huh." Her grin flashed in the sunlight. "Sure."

Internally, I sighed; while I could apparently fool veteran superheroes, teenage girls could still see right through me. "So had you thought about a cape name, if you're not going to go with Metal Storm?"

She nodded. "I'm going to go with Suture."

Which was, I decided, entirely appropriate. "I like it."

She beamed, and hugged me again.

-ooo-​

Saturday, 27 July, 1994
Cauldron Base

"Doorway to Cauldron." Contessa was feeling less than thrilled as she said the words. The summons had come when she was in the middle of a Path toward preventing the nuclear annihilation of Detroit, and the number of steps to complete it was increasing steadily. Normally, this would not be a problem; her power allowed her to take such things in her stride. But the summons had come from Eidolon, which threw everything off kilter. Four extra steps.

The Doorway opened into a large conference room; the same room, she gathered, where Alexandria had held the previous meeting, sixteen days ago. This gave her some hint as to what Eidolon wanted. She stepped through and looked around to find that everyone was in attendance, this time. Doctor Mother and the Number Man were there from the uncostumed side, and all four members of the core Protectorate from the costumed side. All were unmasked. Six extra steps.

"Ah, good. You're here." Legend gestured at a seat. "Please, sit down. Eidolon apparently has some remarkable news for us."

She sat, wanting to make a sharp comment, but not wanting to draw out these proceedings any more than she had to. Nine extra steps.

Eidolon stood, looking more animated than he had in … months. Years? His hair was awry and there was a glint in his eye that she hadn't seen in a while. "Legend, Hero, you were told about the meeting we had a couple of weeks ago?"

Legend nodded. "We were informed of it. I was unable to attend, but I got the run-down off of Alexandria." He spread his hands. "Crises happen."

"Yeah," Hero agreed. "There's a Tinkerbot thing happening in Tennessee. I've got it shut it down for the moment, but it took me most of the day. Sorry about that. What's this about, anyway?"

"I spoke to Taylor Snow," Eidolon stated. He looked around as Alexandria covered her eyes with her hand. "What?"

Fifteen extra steps.

"I told you not to frighten her off," Alexandria snapped. "So what did you do? You went and spoke with her!" Her tone was cutting. "Why did you do that, and how many people saw you?"

"For the record, I waited till she left DC," Eidolon retorted. "She was on the highway out in Texas somewhere. The only other person who saw us talking was that big sergeant that goes around with her. She sent him out of earshot." He threw up his hands. "But you're right. She knows what she's talking about. Holy Christ, does she know what she's talking about."

Silence fell over the room for a moment. Contessa wanted to cut to the end of the meeting, but she didn't know what Eidolon was going to say. Seventeen extra steps.

This time, it was Legend who spoke. "I think you should tell us what you mean by that."

"Okay, to cover the bullet points," Eidolon said, ticking off his fingers one at a time. "She's making progress on the Behemoth's next appearance, she knows that Scion's not what he seems to be -"

Exclamations burst from the throats of the others, but Contessa took it in her stride. While Doctor Goldstein and Captain Snow had originated from the same year, Ruth had no idea about Scion while it appeared Taylor … did. That'd be right. She had no way of telling how the PRT captain knew about Scion; any time she tried to apply a Path to the irritating woman, the version of Taylor Snow modelled in that Path did something different.

"How can she know that?" demanded Alexandria. The costumed woman turned and pointed at Contessa. "You don't look surprised. What's going on? What do you know?"

"No more than you do," Contessa said, almost truthfully. "Captain Snow has ceased to surprise me, that's all." She wasn't sure why she hadn't told anyone that she couldn't predict Taylor Snow's behaviour. Knowing that both Captain Snow and Doctor Goldstein were time travellers was one thing; hiding that fact from the rest of Cauldron was quite another. She would have been willing to chalk the unpredictability up to being a time traveller, except that Doctor Ruth Goldstein was eminently predictable. Also, amazingly useful when Contessa needed high-powered backup from time to time. It was very impressive how a white-hot jet of molten steel made so many problems go away.

"I don't know for sure how she knows it, but I have an idea," Eidolon said. "Bear with me, here." He continued ticking off points. "She also said that there's something like a seventy-five percent chance that there's more out there like the Behemoth, and that they might show up in one to four years -"

Again, the uproar at the table excluded Contessa. This one is definitely up to time travel. Ruth was the one who told me about the Behemoth, and she also knew about the one called Leviathan and Simurgh. It stood to reason that Taylor also knew.

"And she couldn't tell us this before?" demanded Doctor Mother. She looked at Alexandria. "Did she even hint at this when she was talking to you?"

This was taking forever. Contessa leaned back in her chair. Twenty extra steps.

"No." Alexandria's face was set like stone. "She didn't."

"Which tells me that her little guessing games could put us at the risk of missing out on crucial information until it's too late." Doctor Mother looked around at each of the other people in the room. "We can slip her a formula designed to boost her mental capability, then question her -"

"No." Eidolon's voice brooked no argument. "I think it would be a bad idea to give her a formula."

"Well, yes." Legend didn't look or sound pleased. "I'm pretty sure that grabbing a serving PRT officer and force-feeding her a formula falls into the 'villainous acts' category, even without the interrogation. We need to find another way."

"I'm not talking about that." Eidolon's voice was impatient. "If she gets powers, she loses the talent."

Alexandria blinked. Contessa was impressed; it took a lot to faze Rebecca. "How can you even know that?" demanded the caped woman.

Eidolon sighed, and rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. "It's one of the things we talked about. She can only work these things out because she doesn't have powers. Our powers are blocking us, actively or passively or both, from noticing these patterns she sees and coming to the right conclusions. So trying to apply a Thinker power to the problem would be worse than useless."

"That's the stupidest thing I ever heard!" snapped Doctor Mother hotly. "Thinker powers enhance intellect! They don't -"

Contessa really hated to interrupt her, but this diatribe was likely to go on for far too long. Twenty-three extra steps. "Actually, I think he's right. About powers being useless. For this, I mean."

Doctor Mother turned to her with a look of betrayal on her face. "What do you mean? Surely you of all people can see how ridiculous that sounds."

"No." Contessa shook her head. "I'm sorry, but we both know that I can't make Paths involving Scion or the Behemoth, even if they were right there in front of me." Also Eidolon, but that probably isn't relevant to this situation. "My agent was deliberately limited. If other agents have also been limited in that way, that would make a lot of sense. So, as counter-intuitive as it might seem, only humans without agents are likely to be able to figure this sort of thing out." And time travellers, of course.

She knew that what she was doing was technically a betrayal of Cauldron, but it was in a good cause. If Taylor Snow can save the world where I can't, then it's my job to help her do it. No matter how many lies I have to tell. "I think … we should take what this Captain Snow says seriously." Twenty-five extra steps.

Legend nodded seriously. "I think you're correct. Eidolon, I'm going to need you to write up a report on what you spoke about with her." He looked up at the pictures of the PRT captain on the screen. "And if she's as prone to danger as she seems, she might need some extra protection. Contessa?"

Contessa nodded. "I'm on it." Not really expecting any sort of positive result, she essayed a Path toward protecting Taylor Snow from death. To her surprise, it went through without a hitch. What the hell? Can she no-sell my Paths selectively?

"Good, then." Legend stood up. "I assume that we're done here?"

"Sure." Hero rose to his feet and stretched. "I've got to get back to making sure those Tinkerbots haven't managed to re-engineer themselves. We might have to evacuate Eagleton if this keeps up." He slapped Eidolon on the shoulder. "Good work, Dave. Make sure you forward me a copy of that report."

Alexandria picked up her visor and put it on. "I'll definitely want a copy too. Captain Snow's been an enigma since she finished boot camp. If she's been working off insights that we don't have access to, it will explain a great deal."

"It will indeed." Contessa smiled. Finally! Only twenty-seven extra steps to go! "Doorway."

Once I've saved Detroit, then I can go back to trying to figure out how she's pulling that shit.

-ooo-​

Seattle, WA
Monday, August 8, 1994

"Not that I don't like Seattle, ma'am, but why are we here?" As he asked the question, Kinsey climbed out of the car and rotated his torso to pop his spine back into place. I did much the same on my side of the car; I'd spent far too much time sitting down over the last few days.

"Two reasons, Kinsey," I said. "Major Goldstein's got some leave to visit family and friends, and I wanted to catch up. Also, I need to make sure that the Seattle PRT base is compliant with the computer protocols."

He snorted at that last bit, and I didn't disagree. Over the last two weeks and change, it seemed that we'd been doing nothing but go from one PRT building to the next, and fix things that were going wrong. Of course, I had a third reason. According to Lisa, Crawler had been living in Seattle before he triggered. Given what he triggered into, we figured it was best to kill him before he gained his powers and began to evolve into the nigh-unstoppable monster from my time.

Besides, it would be nice to see Ruth again, and have some R&R before we set out for New England. I had an appointment in Brockton Bay I didn't want to miss.

-ooo-​

We'd left Austin at first light and pushed hard to get to Tucson, reaching it just as the sun was dipping on to the horizon. The sunset was gorgeous, but neither I nor Kinsey had been looking forward to driving into that glare. We signed in with the PRT duty officer, were given temporary room assignments, and I collapsed into my bunk.

After a brief spar the next morning to loosen our muscles—I managed to put Kinsey on the mat two falls out of four—I set to work tightening up the computer systems. It wasn't actually all that hard; they didn't have as many problems as I'd anticipated. As it was, we were out of there by midday, on the road to Phoenix. Between the Phoenix base and the ancillary Mesa building, I was busy until well after dark, but I did find and plug a back door that'd seen use more than once. The security chief went very quiet when he saw the printouts, and I wondered if he'd keep his job after this.

The next leg of the trip took us to San Diego; we hit the city limits around midday. I had the computer systems sorted out by three, and we were in LA by six.

For the next twelve days, we zig-zagged up the west coast, one PRT building blurring into the next. I'd dealt with the eleventh one—in Sacramento—by mid-morning on the seventh, and we'd pushed hard to get to Portland by sunset. It still managed to irritate me slightly that in all this time, Kinsey still refused to let me drive while he was in the car.

With Portland secured, we made one last effort, pulling into Seattle just after midday. However, I decided that enough was enough. I wanted to associate with people wearing something other than PRT uniforms, at least for a few hours.

-ooo-​

Ruth Goldstein

"Comfy, honey?"

Ruth smiled up at her father as she stretched her bare feet out and wriggled her toes. Now in his late sixties, Phil Goldstein was almost completely bald and somewhat stouter than he had been during his patrolman days. Thanks to Taylor, she now knew who her genetic parents were, which made her more grateful than ever that this man had chosen to be her father. Likewise, Deborah had provided all the maternal care and attention that Ruth could have wanted while growing up.

"Yes thanks, Dad," she said warmly. "Totally comfortable. You know, you didn't have to give me your armchair." Old and battered, the leather-covered reclining armchair had been a fixture in the living room for as long as Ruth could remember—which, in practice, had been since Phil first brought her home to Deborah. As a child, she'd tried to claim it many times, only to be ousted when her father wanted to relax and read the paper. Now she was actually being invited to sit in it.

"Just a temporary loan, Ruthie," he said with a chuckle. Carefully, he let himself down on to the sofa. "It's been so long since we saw you. You've grown up so much. I figure if we show you what you've been missing, you'll come home more often."

"I'm not quite sure it works exactly like that," she said dubiously. Truth be told, she was feeling more than a little guilty at having stayed away for so long. But now she was back. Looking around the living room, she saw the same old things with new eyes, understanding more about her parents' lives than she had before she left. Though there were two new pictures hanging over the menorah; the first was the picture of her graduation from medical school, and the second … "You never told me you got a photo of my PRT graduation ceremony!" She'd notified them, of course, but they hadn't been able to attend.

"What's that?" Deborah emerged from the kitchen, bearing a tray of cookies. "Oh, we asked that dear friend of yours, Nina. She took extra photos for us." She carried the tray over to where Ruth reclined in the armchair. "So, have you met any nice Jewish boys in uniform yet?"

Ruth rolled her eyes, but took two cookies anyway. "Mom, you do realise that the PRT is a paramilitary organisation. We aren't there for the purpose of finding dates for Saturday night."

"Oh, well." Deborah carried the tray over to her husband. "You aren't getting any younger, you know. Whatever happened to that doctor you were seeing in Los Angeles? I thought he was very handsome, from the photo you sent us."

"Now, Debbie, leave the girl alone," Phil said gruffly. "You know very well he broke her heart. If I'd been twenty years younger, I would've gone and broken his jaw." As she turned away, he looked at Ruth and revolved his finger beside his ear.

"I saw that, Mr Goldstein!" she snapped. "And I hadn't forgotten. But I remember when Manny Casewitz cheated on my sister Mary. Papa went over there and had a word with him, and they've been happily married for forty years now." She put the tray on the table and came back to Ruth. "Men are born idiots who don't know what's good for them. Sometimes they just need to learn before they can become good husbands." Her tone was acerbic as she looked at Phil. "And some, of course, take longer than others."

Ruth grinned at her father's derisive snort. She looked up at her mother and shook her head. "That one wouldn't ever learn, Mom. I'm well rid of him." She reached up and took her mother's hand. "But I do appreciate the advice."

The knocking on the front door resounded through the house. Deborah looked over at Phil. "Were we expecting anyone, dear?"

"Not that I know of, sweetheart." With a grunt, he levered himself to his feet. "You just stay right there, Ruth. I'll see who it is." Muttering something under his breath about 'visitors who don't call ahead', he stumped from the living room into the entrance hall. Ruth, whose curiosity was piqued, pushed her heels down on the foot-rest, to bring herself up to a seated position.

"Well, hello," she heard him say. "Do I know you folks?" There was a muted reply, then he said, "You don't say. Come in, come in." The front door closed. "Ruthie!" he called out. "Visitors for you."

Visitors? For me? Ruth stood up, sharing a puzzled glance with her mother. The rugs were warm on her bare feet as she went toward the entrance hall. Her father was the first to emerge, followed by …

"Taylor?" she said, disbelief warring with happiness. "What are you doing here?" Behind Taylor—Captain Snow, here and now—bulked the form of Sergeant Kinsey. Both of them, she noted, were in civilian attire.

"Oh, you know how it is," Taylor said with just the hint of a grin. "We were in the neighbourhood and decided to drop in. I hope that's all right?"

-ooo-​

Taylor

The Goldstein family home was old. Probably older than the one I'd grown up in, back in Brockton Bay. Dark wooden walls with brightly-coloured rugs underfoot gave an ambiance of warmth and cosiness. Following the bespectacled older man, Kinsey and I emerged into a living room that was warmly lit by electric standing lamps, more so than by the weak sunlight that struggled through the day's overcast.

More rugs decorated the floor here, though they were kept a careful distance from the brick fireplace set into the far wall. In deference to the fact that it was technically summer, the fireplace wasn't currently in use.

On the mantlepiece over the fireplace, I saw a menorah flanked by two rows of framed photos. Above it, hanging on the wall, were two larger ones in pride of place. Not very much to my surprise, I recognised one as a somewhat-younger Aster graduating from college, and the other showing her dressed in a PRT uniform. Most of the photos on the mantlepiece proper were of people unknown to me, although there was a black and white wedding photo that I guessed was of her parents. Another showed Phil wearing the uniform of a police officer. There was one difference between the two rows of photos; each one to the right of the menorah had a small black ribbon folded over one corner of the frame. Each of the latter was in black and white, not to mention rather faded.

If Kaiser could see this, I mused, he'd have an absolute fit. Not because he was such a rabid racist—he wasn't, not really—but because his only daughter had been raised by a Jewish police officer, and was now a productive member of the PRT. I couldn't help grinning at the idea as I came face to face with Aster—Ruth, here and now—herself.

"Taylor? What are you doing here?" She sounded like she couldn't believe that I was standing in her family home. To my relief, a smile was spreading across her face. Oh, good.

"Oh, you know how it is." I couldn't hold back the remnants of the grin. "We were in the neighbourhood and decided to drop in. I hope that's all right?"

She didn't hesitate at all. "Of course it's all right. I just didn't expect you to show up on my doorstep in Seattle, of all places. As I recall, you're from Brockton Bay." As she spoke, she gestured toward a battered old sofa. "Come in, sit down. Mom, Dad, this is Captain Taylor Snow and Sergeant James Kinsey. They're also in the PRT."

"My goodness, hello!" A grey-haired lady, on the short side but somewhat plump, offered us a tray of cookies. "Any friend of Ruthie's is welcome in our home. Have a cookie. They're fresh baked." They smelled like it too; the combination of apple and cinnamon beat hell out of the PRT rations we'd been living on.

I took a cookie; Kinsey followed suit. "Thank you, ma'am," I said politely as we sat down. Taking a bite from the cookie, I widened my eyes in appreciation; she'd added a dusting of sugar which went down amazingly well. "This is very good," I added after swallowing the bite.

The man who'd answered the door, whom I knew to be Aster's adoptive father Phil, eyed us speculatively. He didn't seem suspicious of any wrongdoing, just curious. However, I was fully aware that he'd been a police officer for more than forty years. Some instincts just never went away. "Are you based in Seattle, or just on leave too?"

I shook my head. "Well, actually, sir, neither. Sergeant Kinsey and I are on an extended trouble-shooting mission. I've decided that we're off-duty at this particular point in time. As I said, we were in the city and I recalled that Major Goldstein lived here. She saved my life not so long ago, so I thought I'd drop by and show her how well I'm mending."

At that moment, Aster cleared her throat, looking meaningfully at me. "Ma'am?" I asked, coming to a seated variety of attention on the sofa; once again, Kinsey followed my lead.

"Taylor, neither one of us is in uniform," she said quietly. "I'm currently off-duty and on leave. I don't particularly mind if you call me 'ma'am', as I'm certain Sergeant Kinsey will. But I will request that you do not refer to my rank at the moment."

"Of course, ma'am," I agreed. I watched her eyes for any sign of anger, but only came away with an impression of weariness. I wonder when she last took leave. "If you don't mind me asking, is everything okay?"

"I'm still working that one out," she said. "It seems that more and more villains show up every year, and more and more of our troopers end up wounded and dead because of them. To be honest, this is the first time I've been home in six years." She gave a little half-shrug, as if to make light of the situation.

But I'd heard that tune before, and there was no way I was going to let it play out this time. "No."

She stared at me, possibly just as much for the implacable tone of my voice as for the word itself. "I beg your pardon?"

"I said no, ma'am." I paused, trying to figure out how to say what I needed to without sounding stupid or giving away important details. Finally, I came to a decision, and stood up. "Ma'am, I need to speak to you in private."

Her eyes narrowed, and she stood up slowly. "Is it not something that you can say here in front of everyone?"

I could feel the pressure of everyone looking at me. "Ma'am, it's classified." Turning to Kinsey as he began to stand up as well, I shook my head. "Sergeant, I'm going to need you to stay here. Maj- the maj- Doctor Goldstein and I are just going out on to the porch."

He gradually subsided on to the sofa once more. "Yes, ma'am."

Mrs Goldstein was staring at us. "Ruthie, what's going on?" The tray of cookies, unheeded, was still in her hands.

"Military secrets." Her husband's voice was gruff as he looked me over. "Military intelligence, right?"

"PRT intelligence division, yes, sir," I confirmed. "And what I'm about to tell your daughter is very much between her and me, but it's something she needs to know."

His grunt could've meant anything. "Go on then, ladies. Your Sergeant Kinsey can keep us honest."

I led the way out through the entrance hall on to the front porch. After Aster joined me, I closed the door and moved to the side. A cool breeze blew down the street, sending a wind-chime tinkling. Raising my head, I inhaled the fresh air, enjoying the scent of oncoming autumn.

"Is this something from before?" asked Aster. She leaned up against the rail beside me; I saw that her eyes were closed. "Some sort of object lesson from your dark future?"

"You came from there, too," I pointed out. "Just as much as I did."

She turned her face to look at me. "I never took over a city. Or killed a superhero." Some sort of shock must have registered on my face, because she nodded fractionally. "I saw a lot of TV. Never knew what it meant till I triggered. I also remember Jack Slash invading our home, once. My brother was there. He was very scared, but he still stood up to him."

I was impressed. Go, Theo. I'd have to ask Lisa about that one, later. "What I've got to tell you about is Panacea. Amy Dallon. Do you remember much about her?"

She raised her eyes to look at the city skyline. "She was a healer. A member of the unmasked group New Wave. There was something about her not being able to heal brains. Then she dropped out of sight, not long before it all went to hell." Her gaze swept back to me. "I suspect that you're going to be drawing a parallel here. One that I'm not going to like."

"That's the general idea, yes." I wrapped my fingers around the top rail of the porch. "You see, Amy used to hold unreasonably high expectations of herself. To the point that she'd walk to the hospital in the middle of the night just so she could heal a few more people. All because she was the daughter of a villain, and her hero stepmother never really trusted or liked her, so she used to push herself to be more 'heroic'." It struck me that I was using Amy as an object lesson quite a bit, these days.

"I see what you're saying," she said. I sensed a 'but'. Those five words rarely showed up without a 'but' in tow. "But … who's to say she wasn't right? She could cure cancer. Who else could do that?"

"Nobody," I said bluntly. "Well, maybe one or two others. But my point is that she used to go there just to heal normal crap. For free. Stuff that doctors could probably take care of themselves, given time. And in the meantime, you're a good surgeon, but you're not the only surgeon in the PRT, or even the very best one." She shot me a wounded glance, and I shrugged. "Law of statistics. The chance of every single other surgeon employed by the PRT not being up to your standard? Pretty low. So when they let you go on leave, it was with the full knowledge that they could pull someone in to sub for you, and not suffer in the process."

"Hm." She frowned. "I suppose you're correct. Brutal, but correct." Grimly, she chuckled. "Which is kind of your thing, I guess." Turning to face me, she raised her eyebrows. "What happened to Panacea after she vanished?"

"Nervous breakdown," I said. "Turned Glory Girl into a living puddle of flesh. Last I heard, she was in the Birdcage of her own accord." I decided to leave out the fact that Amy had been in love with Victoria. It was probably one detail too many.

Aster nodded slowly. "Message received and understood, Captain Snow." She shot me a sharp glance. "And no, that's not permission to call me 'Major'." She moved toward the front door, a thoughtful expression on her face.

"Understood, ma'am." I followed her back inside.

Deborah met us as we emerged from the entrance hall. "Captain Snow, I blame you for this," she said severely, looking at me.

I blinked. Oh, shit. What's happened? Nothing seemed to be going wrong. The only thing that was different was that Phil was sitting on the sofa alongside Kinsey, and they were talking nineteen to the dozen. In fact, this was the most engaged I'd seen Kinsey for a long time.

"Ah." I hid a smile. "I may have neglected to mention that Kinsey used to be a military policeman." It seemed that he'd found common ground with Phil Goldstein remarkably quickly. From their hand motions, they were discussing techniques of taking down perps.

Aster's mother sighed in a long-suffering fashion. "I have enough trouble when Philip starts talking with his ex-colleagues about the old days. Now he's got someone with a fresh point of view. Next they'll start trading stories about their glory days."

"It'll be more than he ever talks about with me," I mused. "Then again, I don't think I've ever asked." Which was kind of my fault. Of course, I'd never been truly interested in police procedure. But seeing the animation in Kinsey's face as he absent-mindedly took a cookie from the tray next to them, I could tell that he hadn't just discarded that part of himself. I'm going to have to be more perceptive in the future. If Kinsey needs someone to talk to about this, I should be listening.

Deborah's eyes twinkled. "Somehow, I think the problem will be getting them to shut up." She guided me to a chair. "Sit down and tell me about yourself. Ruth, dear, you too. I'm sure you both have fascinating stories to tell."

Oh, boy. 'Fascinating' wasn't exactly the word I would've used. Where do I start?

"Uh, Mom?" Aster hadn't taken her seat yet. "I think I need to lie down for a while. Think about some things. I'll be down in a while."

Deborah nodded. "That's all right, dear. Just remember, Rosh Chodesh Elul begins at sunset." She patted her daughter's hand. "Have a nice rest."

Aster gave her mother a smile, then leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. "I hadn't forgotten, Mom. It's why I opted to take leave at this time, after all. I'll be down before then." She turned and left the room; moments later, I heard her footsteps going upstairs.

"I'm sorry, I don't know what that is," I said politely. From the name, I figured it was something to do with their religion, but I had no idea what it actually meant. Personally, I'd never paid much attention to the Christian faith, much less Judaism.

"It marks the beginning of the month of Elul in the Jewish calendar," Deborah explained. "It's a time of introspection and looking inward. Figuring out where you've been going wrong and what to do about it." She shot me a beaming smile. "But enough about that. You mentioned that our Ruthie saved your life. I would be delighted to hear all about it."

I hesitated. "Uh … it's kind of gory." Not many details about the events in the Compound were actually classified, but I wasn't sure about inflicting them on a sweet old lady like Deborah. To be honest, something like that belonged in my time, not hers.

She snorted and shook her head. "My dear, I was born in Munich in nineteen thirty-two." She pulled up her sleeve and I saw a row of six digits, faded and distorted from age, imprinted on the inside of her wrist. Beneath the row was a small triangle. "Whatever you've got to say, I've endured worse."

My eyes widened, and I realised just how wrong I'd been about her. Holy shit. She survived Auschwitz. This sweet old lady had been through horrors that I could only begin to imagine. A number of things went through my head at this point, but I voiced none of them. For Deborah to have lived through what she had, her words had to be the simple truth. She had endured worse. My respect for her went up dramatically.

I took a deep breath. "It started when an apocalypse cult in Texas began kidnapping female parahumans for use as breeding stock …"

-ooo-​

Ruth

Her parents hadn't changed anything about her bedroom since she went away to medical school. Lying back on her bed, Ruth looked up at the mobile that she and her dad had spent hours constructing and painting. In the wind gusts that came in through the open window, the models of the lunar lander and the command module revolved and spun past the globes of the Earth and Moon. She closed her eyes, recalling once more the black and white image of Neil Armstrong stepping on to the lunar surface, his immortal words crackling out of the speaker. "That's one small step …"

Equally vividly, she remembered sitting next to her father at the living room table, carefully cutting out and painting each piece of the mobile, then gluing the dry pieces into place. She'd known she was someone special even back then—how could she not?—but she'd also had a sense of wonder about the larger world. An awareness that things were bigger and more amazing than she could possibly guess.

If she'd had any doubt about this, Taylor's arrival would've proven that to her once and for all. Meeting Taylor and being able to talk to her face-to-face had done so once again. Gaps in her knowledge had been filled in … but at a price. Not all of what she'd learned was wonderful. Some of it had been downright disturbing.

Have I been pushing myself, punishing myself like Amy Dallon, because my father was a villain too? That particular parallel with Panacea wasn't something she'd thought about, but now it was out in the open, her mind kept circling back to it. She loved her mother and father dearly, and the knowledge that they weren't her biological parents made that love none the less intense. As for Kaiser …

He and Purity gave life to me. Purity loved me dearly; all of her actions spell that out. She even gave me up to Miss Militia, knowing she would die, so that I would live.

Kaiser's most heroic act had been to die in battle with Leviathan. Apart from that, he'd run a neo-Nazi organisation which specialised in beating up minorities and running dog-fighting rings. He'd been handsome and charismatic, but Purity had left him after Ruth had been born. If I met him face to face, I doubt that either one of us would approve of the other.

She took a deep breath, trying to clear her mind. It seemed Taylor's instincts were correct. She was pushing herself to be better than she was, trying to exorcise the ghost of the father who had yet to grow up and commit his racist crimes. I need to talk to someone. Get some perspective on this.

Rolling over, she reached for the phone on the bedside table. It was another addition to the room that her parents hadn't changed. When she'd been on call at the hospital—before she met Friedrich—she'd needed to be able to come out of a sound sleep and take the call to come in, night or day. Nina's number was fresh in her mind, just as everyone else's number was; the benefit of a perfect memory. If anyone can understand what I'm going through, she will.

Just as her hand touched the receiver, the phone rang. Reflexively, she snatched it up and put it to her ear. "Hello?"

The voice that came over the line was as familiar as it was welcome, even if it wasn't Nina Veder. "Mrs Goldstein? It's Darlene Hobbs here. Dunno if you 'member me, but I'm head nurse at the hospital your daughter Ruth useta work at. I really hate ta bother you like this, but would I be able ta speak to your husband, please?"

Ruth blinked. What in the world was Darlene ringing her home for? "Uh, hi, Darlene," she said. "It's not Mom, it's me. Ruth. What do you need Dad for?"

There was dead silence on the line for so long Ruth thought the call might've been cut off. But then Darlene spoke again. "Ruth honey," she exclaimed. "That really you? I ain't heard from you in forever."

Ruth smiled. "It hasn't been that long, Darlene. I ring you when I can." Hearing the older woman's voice always made her feel better. "Is everything okay?"

"Well, the truth is, no it ain't." Darlene's voice held relief. "I need help an' the cops ain't doin' shit."

"Wait, what now?" Ruth frowned. "Cops? Help with what? What's going on?"

Darlene audibly took a deep breath. "It started a few weeks back. Some guy started harassin' some o' my girls what live in one of the bad neighbourhoods." By 'girls', Ruth knew Darlene meant nurses. Darlene had always been fiercely protective of her charges.

"Shit." Ruth grimaced; she hadn't meant for the expletive to slip out. "Are they okay?"

"Couple of 'em got beat up. He done took their purses. I tole 'em an' tole 'em ta go in groups. Or let someone drive 'em home. But just the other day, one never made it home. Her name was Patricia Weller." Darlene's voice showed the strain she was under. "I figure he either killed her an' dumped the body or took her someplace. But I can't prove it. Can't even find a body. Cops keep brushin' me off."

Ruth clenched her hand on the receiver. Goddamn it. She knew that if she met the mugger, she could easily overcome him. Of course, finding him was the trick. "So how can I help?" she asked carefully.

"Now you know I ain't never asked for no favour before," Darlene said severely. "An' I wouldn't be askin' now, except that lives is on the line. If you could talk to your pa, mebbe git him to tell his old buddies to get their heads outta their asses, I'd be right appreciative."

Ruth opened her mouth to agree, then paused as an epiphany unfolded behind her eyes. If the Seattle PD weren't getting anywhere, it was because they simply weren't able. She didn't hold it against them; even with all the will in the world, if they couldn't lay hands on the man responsible, they couldn't make an arrest.

On the other hand, Taylor was right here. Even not counting the Behemoth prediction—cheating via time travel knowledge was still cheating—she'd still managed to pull off half a dozen other feats of sheer brilliance in the course of her PRT career to date. If anyone could locate poor Patricia—dead or alive—it would be her.

Back in her time, she took over a city, killed Alexandria, and impressed the Protectorate so much that they hired her on rather than send her to the Birdcage. This sort of thing should be right up her alley.

"You know," she said. "I think I might just have a better idea."

End of Part 6-2

Part 6-3​

 

[Gaemnomut]

Whoooooo, Recoil is back! XD
I love this story.
Imho, this and Trump card are some of your finest works, and I have been reading them since long before I even joined QQ.

Anyway, It'll be interesting if they can actually find Crawler, and maybe turn him.
He was pretty insane in canon, but that was after Jack had years to work on him and I'm pretty sure that working with/for Taylor could get him in enough situations that test his power to it's limits
Andrea's mercs could probably use some parahuman muscles in the wars to come, and his addiction to pain and his obseession with finding something that would hurt him would proabably lend themselves equaly well to heroic work as they did to rampaging around with the 9.

 

[Ack]

Recoil

Part 6-3: Two for the Price of One​

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]



Monday, August 8, 1994

1815 Hours

Ruth leaned forward to address Kinsey. "Pull over there, Sergeant." Sitting back in the car seat, she caught my eye and pointed at one of the houses on the street. "That's her house there. And in case I forgot to tell you before, I really, really appreciate this." I could tell that she meant it, which didn't surprise me in the slightest. My superior officer she might be, but as Ruth Goldstein she had none of the arrogance she would've learned at the knee of Max Anders.

Her parents had been a little surprised when she announced she was going out with Kinsey and myself, but they hadn't raised a fuss. I suspected Phil had an idea there was something going on, but the older man had said nothing that might make Deborah worry. Of course, he probably thought it was PRT-related, which it most certainly was not, but neither I nor Ruth wanted to make him worry, so we hadn't corrected that misapprehension.

I looked the house over as Kinsey pulled the car to a halt at the side of the road. We were in a slightly less affluent neighbourhood than the one Ruth had grown up in, but the lawn was well-kept and the picket fence looked freshly painted. Opening the car door, I climbed out. I'd been comfortable in the back seat but I was still a little cramped, so I discreetly stretched to work the kinks out of my spine. As I closed the door again, a black kid exited the house we'd pulled up in front of, and stood at the top of the steps staring at us.

"Aunt Ruth?" he called out, then leaned back in through the front door. "Gramma! Aunt Ruth's here, with some other folks!" He then went back into the house, and the door closed behind him.

"I guess this is the right place," I said dryly. "Aunt Ruth, huh?"

A nostalgic smile crossed her face as she spoke. "Darlene took me under her wing while I was working with her. I got to meet her family, and we took to each other. I recall a lot of very noisy birthday parties. I'd wondered if they'd still remember me. Apparently they do."

She led the way through the white-painted gate and up the front path. Kinsey let me go second, while he brought up the rear. Neither one of us was openly armed, but we kept an eye out anyway; through bitter experience, we knew that the unexpected was not only a thing that could happen, but would happen. Of course, he had no idea of Ruth's capabilities; I did, but I wasn't going to count on her to get us out of trouble if it happened.

The door opened again, and a heavy-set black woman stepped out. This, I presumed, was 'Gramma', as her hair was more grey than black and her face showed years of careworn wrinkles. "Ruth, honey!" she said, a warm smile splitting her face. Crossing the porch, she came down the steps and engulfed Ruth in a capacious hug, momentarily lifting the younger woman off her feet. From the remains of her accent, I figured she was originally from California. "It's good ta see you again, swee'pea. How long ya in town for? And who's your friends?" As she set Ruth down, she gave Kinsey and me a searching look. Her eyes narrowed, making me wonder how much she'd seen. "These'd be the PRT folks, then." Well, that answered that. I'd changed from the sundress into jeans and a light jacket, given that it was likely to get cold later, but she didn't sound the slightest bit unsure about her conclusion.

On second thought, the deduction that we were PRT wasn't hard to make; even in civvies, Kinsey was constitutionally incapable of being anything but a military NCO. "We are indeed, Mrs Hobbs," I said politely. "Doctor Goldstein has told us about your problem. I'm Captain Taylor Snow, and this is Sergeant James Kinsey." I held out my hand to shake.

She did so, her firm grip encompassing mine. "I've heard some about you already, Cap'n Snow, an' it's a real pleasure to make your acquaintance." Letting my hand go, she shook Kinsey's as well. "An' you too, Sergeant. C'mon in, I'll tell ya what I know." Turning, she led the way up the steps again. Ruth and I followed, with Kinsey bringing up the rear. Darlene's comment about having heard of me already had piqued my interest, but I made a bet with myself that I knew where she was going with it.

The interior of the house was neat and tidy, though still disarranged enough to be homely. I spotted the black kid from before, peering at us from a doorway on the far side of the living room. A moment later, a woman about ten years older than me brushed past him and placed a plate of cookies on the coffee-table in the middle of the living room. She bore a familial resemblance to both Mrs Hobbs and the boy, such that I decided they had to be closely related. "Been a while, Ruth," she said, then looked askance at Kinsey and myself. "I'd known you were bringin' company, I would'a put somethin' on to cook." Dusting her hand off on her apron, she held it out. "Mamie Fraser. That little scamp back there is my oldest, Sammy. Any friend of Ruth's is a friend of mine."

Kinsey and I went through the ritual of shaking hands once more. "Taylor Snow," I said this time, not sure if Darlene wanted it known who we really were. "This is James Kinsey. Doctor Goldstein saved my life once upon a time." 'Once upon a time' had been two months previously, but she didn't need to know that.

She raised one eyebrow. "Oh? Don't surprise me at all. Momma always used to brag on her, so I figure she's good at what she does." She gave Ruth a flashing smile. "You movin' back to Seattle?"

"Sorry, no," Ruth said as we settled ourselves on the slightly dilapidated sofa. "It's just a temporary visit to recharge my batteries. Good to see you again though, Mamie. How's Daryl and the others?"

"Oh, so-so," Darlene's daughter replied, waggling her hand from side to side. "You know how it goes. You work, you sleep, you eat, an' you gotta go to work again."

"Gramma, can I have a cookie?" piped up Sammy from the doorway, eyeing the plate in the middle of the coffee-table.

"Sure you can, honeybunch. Take three," Darlene told him indulgently, then her tone became more serious. "Mamie, can you take him off somewhere? I got things to discuss with Ruth's friends." By which she meant, I want to talk to them in private, without prying young ears. Semantically speaking, it was identical to the military phrase, Give us the room.

Mamie was definitely sharp enough to catch the subtext, though I wasn't sure if she'd pinged Kinsey and myself as PRT yet. "Sure thing, Momma," she agreed, scooping up some cookies from the plate. "Come on, Sammy. Let's go check over your school supplies."

"But school don't start for 'nother whole month!" protested Sammy, but he followed his mother from the room. Her answer was indistinct, but I got the gist of 'better now than too late', with which I totally agreed.

Ignoring the cookies, Ruth sat forward on the sofa, her eyes intent. "Captain Snow and Sergeant Kinsey are in the Intelligence branch of the PRT. There's nobody better at what they do. If anyone can find Patricia, they can. If anyone can find out what happened to her, and who did it, they can."

"Right." Darlene looked me over once more, as if trying to see what Ruth saw in me. "Until Ruth told me who you were, I was wonderin' how much you could help. But I've heard some o' what you done, especially down in Texas for them young girls. They been talkin' you up a storm."

Mentally, I paid out on the bet. I'd consulted with Ruth on the best hospital to refer the girls to in Seattle, and it seemed she'd directed me to the one where her old friend still worked. Which, to be honest, wasn't a huge surprise. Nor was it astonishing that they'd been talking about me. What I'd done for them wasn't extraordinary, at least to me, but it was more than anyone else had been doing for them. I nodded to acknowledge her words, neither downplaying what I'd done nor making a big deal of it. "They're strong. I've got faith in them to get through it together, but sometimes faith needs a helping hand."

"And ain't that the living truth." Her shrewd gaze raked over me again. "Normally I'd say you're a bit young to be a captain, but some folks are just born old." I didn't answer, at least not in words, but she nodded anyway. "Yeah, thought so. I seen that look before. You been at the sharp end more'n once. Okay, so this is all I know."

It was a familiar story. Patricia Weller couldn't quite afford a car, and the bus timetables weren't convenient for where she lived. To save on cab fares, she and some other nurses had been walking together as far as they could, but on Sunday night she'd gotten out late and decided to go it alone. Unfortunately, she never made it home.

I already had an idea of who the culprit was. Lisa had been keeping tabs on one Ned Hollows, resident of Seattle. Even at the tender age of seventeen, the scrawny young man was an opportunistic thief with little in the way of finer feelings. Morally speaking, he had no problem in hurting someone if they didn't hand over their belongings. Physically speaking, he was not an imposing specimen, which was why he picked on women walking alone at night.

In time, Ned would trigger with the power of adaptive regeneration and eventually become the Slaugherhouse Nine member known as Crawler. Not unlike Dauntless (before Leviathan, that is) his power level would gradually build up with use; by my time he was an obsidian-black inhuman juggernaut, unkillable by any normal means. Ironically, they'd both been killed (Dauntless technically so) by Bakuda's captured bombs, put to (mis)use by the PRT.

It was my intention to cut Crawler off at the pass, so to speak. This was part of an ongoing plan I had to starve the Nine of 'unstoppable' members, so when the time came, they could be removed from the board more easily. While it might've been possible to take them out this early in the game (though Grey Boy was a real problem) they had their roles to play, as did Calvert. I'd get to them when I needed to.

Belatedly, it occurred to me that having someone like Crawler on my side would be a massive game changer. Ruth was a powerful force in her own right, but unlike me she wasn't exactly subtle in what she could do. In addition, she had duties and obligations within the PRT, and I didn't want to make the mistake of assuming she would always be there to help.

Left alone, Crawler would end up being responsible for hundreds if not thousands of deaths. He'd spent decades getting as fearsome as he was, of course; according to Lisa, this was why he joined the Nine. Only in their company could he find the ultimate challenges, capes willing to throw their very worst at him. For my part, I didn't intend to challenge him; challenges carried the implicit assumption that it was possible to win. If I got the chance, I'd give him the choice to either join the side of goodness and light or die. The former was preferable, but I'd settle for the latter if I had to. Success in recruiting him meant that Lisa and I gained a powerful ally, while failure still deprived the Nine of one of their more horrifically powerful members.

However, doing either one did mean I'd have to get out there and find him. While Mrs Hobbs had given me as much information as she knew, and Ruth's knowledge of the surrounding area would be very useful, it still wouldn't have been very helpful to the average investigator. Of course, I wasn't the average investigator.

"Is there anything more you can remember?" I asked Mrs Hobbs. I kept my tone professional, not wanting her to think I was belittling her contribution.

"Sorry, no," she said. "Can ya help? Cops ain't been able to do jack." Her eyes searched my face, looking for something; I wasn't sure what.

I nodded firmly. "I believe I can try. You've been very helpful." Leaning forward, I asked one last question. "What time did these girls, especially Patricia, leave the hospital?"

Darlene caught the significance of the query almost immediately. "Two in the mornin', near enough," she said with enough certainty that I felt I could rely on it. "I tol' 'em and I tol' 'em, go with someone." She settled back in her seat with the unhappy expression of someone who doesn't want to be proven right.

"I know," I replied gently. "And you did exactly the right thing, coming to Doctor Goldstein about this. We'll find out what's happened to her, and we'll put a stop to whoever's doing it." In my mind, I already had a culprit lined up, but I intended to check with Lisa before making any rash moves. Standing up, I brushed my hands off on my jeans. "We'll let you know as soon as we've got something."

Following my lead, Kinsey and Ruth both stood up from the sofa. Neither one gave me so much as a sideways glance to indicate doubts as to my capability to find what had happened to the young woman. Their faith in me was somewhat daunting; while Kinsey had seen me pull some pretty impossible rabbits out of the hat before now, Ruth had no such experience. Unless she'd read my jacket. Which of course she would've, the parts she had clearance for anyway.

I shook hands with Mrs Hobbs once more, watching as her expression edged between cautious hope and faint disbelief. "You sure you can find out what's happened?" she asked. "An' is there any chance she's alive?"

"I've broken tougher cases with less to go on," I said, telling both the absolute truth and lying through my teeth at the same time. "I can't guarantee any miracles about Patricia's well-being, but we will find the guy and make sure he doesn't hurt anyone else."

My tone was mild, but Darlene was nobody's fool. She heard what I wasn't saying, and gave me a brief nod of acknowledgement. "I just wanna know, one way or the other," she said quietly.

"I'll let you know, first thing," Ruth replied for me. She gave her friend a hug, then led the way out of the house. Nobody spoke as we descended the steps from the front porch and headed out to where the car was parked at the side of the road.

Kinsey unlocked the car and opened the door for us. I got in first, followed by Ruth. It was only when Kinsey had the car going that he half-turned toward where we were sitting in the back seat. "Where to, Major?" he asked.

"Just a moment, Sergeant," Ruth said. "Taylor, I know you're good, but I expected a little more for us to go on with. Are you sure you can find Patricia and catch the guy who did it, or were you just putting on a show back there? Because if it's the latter …"

Ah. She just didn't want to show any doubts while Darlene was there. I was forcibly reminded of the fact that Ruth, though she knew of my background, thought I was unpowered here in the past. Or rather, that I didn't have any parahuman assistance to draw on. This wasn't true, of course. Neither one knew about Lisa's involvement in the situation, or about how closely entwined her life had become with mine. Or, for that matter, about her capabilities. Even if I told Ruth any details, she'd still recall Lisa as only being a smartass Thinker in a low-end villain gang.

"Not a show," I assured her. "I've already figured some things out, but we're not going to do anything right now. Or rather, right now we're going to put the investigation on hold. Kinsey's going to be dropping you off at home before sunset so you can observe Elul with your parents. Then we're going to get motel rooms before checking in with the local PRT Director; what's his name again?" I'd gone over the list in the last few days, but we'd been through so many bases the names were starting to blur together in my head.

"Her name is Dyson, ma'am," Kinsey informed me blandly from the front seat. "Director Kathryn Dyson. Her deputy's name is Samuel Kelly."

"Thank you, Kinsey," I replied without missing a beat. "I'll sign in with Director Dyson or probably just Kelly, depending on how busy Dyson is, and set about seeing exactly how much work is needed on their computer systems. I haven't heard of any major information leaks in this area, so maybe we'll get lucky. After that, I'll make a few calls, pull some strings, and see what information I can shake loose from the bushes." I shrugged. "It's amazing what's just lying around sometimes, waiting to be added up into a picture." Once more, I was mixing truth with falsehood. Information gathering, yes. Via phone call, no. After all, Lisa didn't have a mobile number I could ring.

"Why a motel room?" asked Ruth. "You know you can get on-base housing, right?"

"I can," I agreed. "But on-base housing means we've got to sign in and out. And I'd rather not have anyone notice us walking out the door at a quarter after one. Motels are wonderfully anonymous, that way."

"Make it one o'clock," Ruth said. "That way, you've got time to come pick me up." She must have noticed my startled look and the way Kinsey's shoulders stiffened slightly, because she shook her head in annoyance. "Really?" she asked. "You were going to try to leave me out of it? That's not going to happen." The tone of her voice pointed out that she held the rank of Major, and she wasn't afraid to use it.

Not that I had any particular worries for her safety even if she did come along. If what Lisa had since told me about her powers was accurate (even if the all-knowing roommate sharing my head was irritatingly silent about certain details) there were very few villainous capes in this day and age who could go toe to toe with her and hope to survive, let alone win. In the future, some would arise; I intended to keep that number as low as possible. I was quite aware that this could be considered, broadly speaking, cheating. Whether or not I cared was an entirely different matter.

Kinsey glanced around at us, then put his attention back on the road. "Permission to speak frankly, Major Goldstein, ma'am?" Once again, my attention was firmly drawn to the odd relationship between Kinsey and myself. While outwardly it was little different from that between any officer and an NCO, such a request from him to me would merely be a formality. Kinsey knew that I wanted him to speak frankly and openly at all times and places it was important to do so. Not all officers were like that, and though he knew Ruth was my friend, he didn't know why.

"Granted, Sergeant," Ruth acknowledged. At the same time, her eyes sought mine. I wasn't sure what the query in them meant, but I guessed she was trying to figure out if Kinsey knew of her true origins, or any of the other secrets I held about her. I kept my face as still as possible, so as not to send a potentially misleading message.

That in itself seemed to convey some meaning to her, because she nodded fractionally as Kinsey spoke up. "Ma'am, I do not know the Captain's plans, but we've worked together before. If I were to hazard a guess, she intends to place herself on the street as bait, and trap the perp that way. Meaning no disrespect, ma'am, but you're a medic, not a grunt. Medics aren't supposed to go into the line of fire."

Which, despite the careful wording and the extremely respectful tone of voice, boiled down to sorry, boss, but you don't get to play with us cool kids. This led me to a problem; I knew Ruth could take care of herself, but Kinsey didn't. How was I supposed to turn his viewpoint around without outing Ruth to him? Me, he was personally loyal to. Her, he barely knew from Adam.

"Sergeant," Ruth stated firmly. "I understand your intent and I appreciate that you want to keep me safe. However, this is not your call. I believe I am sufficiently well equipped and skilled to be able to handle any problems that might come my way, especially from some jumped-up little street thug who likes to attack nurses." Her professional detachment slipped a little here, and I was reminded that she was a doctor first and foremost. The best doctors, after all, took great care of their nurses. "And last but not least, if you intend to continue to protest, I will remind you that I outrank the both of you, and I can simply order you to include me in this operation."

I did my best to conceal my wince. Kinsey had proven himself to be quite an adept barracks-room lawyer from time to time. If Ruth had given me any hint that she intended to go down this path, I would've advised her against it. Unfortunately, it was too late. She'd thrown down the gauntlet, and Kinsey just as readily picked it up.

"That is true, ma'am, and I'm not disputing it." His voice was a steady rumble. "That said, what we're doing now is most definitely off the books, so we're by definition off-duty for it. As such, rank doesn't apply. If it does, ma'am, I'll be requiring a written copy of that order so I can file it with the local PRT base in the event that later adjudication becomes necessary."

Ruth's reply showed the steel in her spine. "Very well, then. None of us want this to be officially recognised. However, I am taking a hand in this, Sergeant, even if I have to walk to the hospital and wait all night for you to show up."

Hastily, I cleared my throat. "Kinsey, stand down. Major, how much combat training and experience do you have?"

There was silence in the car for a moment, broken only by the humming of tyres on asphalt. I awaited her reply, hoping against hope she'd respond in a way that would allow us to both get out of the situation gracefully.

"Captain, I've got more combat experience than my file indicates," she said flatly, confirming a few suspicions of mine. There was a side to Aster Anders that was hidden even from me, one that Lisa refused to enlighten me on. While I couldn't know the exact details, it seemed I was not the only PRT officer moonlighting with unusual abilities. "The details are classified, but I have been in combat before."

"That's not a total surprise to me," I admitted, eliciting a flicker of surprise from her. I wonder what she's been up to? "And it's definitely good to hear. But I've sparred with Kinsey enough times to know how he operates, and vice versa. With all due respect, ma'am, neither of us knows how you are in a fight. Also, do you have a pistol?"

"I don't own a firearm, and I'm no more than an adequate shot," she said. "But I'm better than average in unarmed combat, and that I've done my fair share of." She looked from Kinsey to me. "I hope we've dispensed with this 'leaving me behind' nonsense. You're the investigators and I'll follow your lead on that aspect, but I will be attending. I owe it to Darlene to get justice for Patricia."

I let a faint smile cross my face. "I don't suppose we can keep you away, ma'am. Will you be needing a pistol?" I was pretty sure she'd say no to that, but it had to be asked.

"If you supply one, I'll carry it, but don't expect me to do more than menace people with it," she said pragmatically, surprising me just a little. "You can do the shooting; I've seen your range scores. But I can watch your six, and make sure nobody gets the drop on you. As the Sergeant pointed out, this operation is most assuredly off the books, and we can't afford to not be on the same page. At the same time, I believe I'm beginning to understand why you two are given so much leeway in your dealings. You're quite adept at explaining matters so that whatever option suits your requirements is also the one you put the most favourable emphasis on. That must be very irritating to some of your superiors."

I gave her my best bland look, copied from studying Kinsey's expressions. He did it better, but I gave it my best shot. "I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about, ma'am."

With a chuckle, she leaned back in her seat. "Of course not. Home, Sergeant, and don't spare the horses. I'll be getting some rest, and seeing you later tonight."

Only my long association with Kinsey allowed me to spot the subtle relaxation in his shoulders as he applied a little more acceleration to the car. "Yes, ma'am."

-ooo-​

Next Morning

0134 Hours

I racked the slide on the oversized shotgun as Lisa and I rolled up to the big double doors. This is a bad idea.

Her eye-roll was just visible behind the armoured visor she was wearing. "You've been working too hard. And not the 'shoot some asshole in the face' type of work, either. Trust me, you need to unwind, let out some stress. This is just what you need." Her serious tone was spoiled by the grin she threw me.

Yeah, but roller demolition derby? I hefted the shotgun I was carrying. It was a double-barrel model, with dual magazines fed by a classic pump-action mechanism. I had no doubt that it would kick like an angry mule, which gave me cause for concern, as I was currently on roller-skates. Technically roller-skates. Far more durable and forgiving of rough terrain than standard skates, these were attached to my feet and let me roll from place to place, so I figured they counted as roller-skates.

"Hey, you said let's do something in a post-apocalyptic setting." Lisa's grin was even wider now. "This is post-apocalyptic as fuck." In contrast with my pump-action monstrosity, she had a modified AA-12; fully automatic, with a belt feeding into the side of the breech from a box underneath. Hefting the weapon, she hammered its butt against the doors. In response, they opened. "Now's not the time to chicken out."

Who's chickening out? I just said it was a bad idea. Kicking off, I launched myself down into the huge shallow pit thus revealed to us. There were bowls, half-pipes, walls and full-pipes, all designed to keep the competitors moving and afford a little cover from time to time. From other doors around the arena spilled the aforementioned competitors; to a man (or woman) they were extensively tattooed, clad in piecemeal armour, and sported outlandish haircuts. Besides, you do know I'm probably about to go into a fight anyway.

"Yeah, but this way you get to have a bit of fun before you get to the main action." Lisa rolled up a half-pipe and did a mid-air somersault to avoid a heavy crossbow bolt, then replied with a burst of fire that knocked the other guy off his feet. The AA-12 had a slightly lower rate of fire than most full-auto weapons I'd used, but the noise of firing was like a gut-punch. Being hit by it was apparently even worse.

I guess. A big guy with an oversized gut who'd decided to go with a breastplate and a jockstrap came screaming at me with a spiky club in one hand and a skull-decorated axe in the other. I didn't feel like encountering either one up close and personal, so I hit him in the breastplate with two rounds from my shotgun. The report of the double shot was enormous, as was the explosion when the slugs hit. I was caught off-balance as the massive recoil literally flipped me over backward; fortunately, I landed on my feet again. A glance showed my erstwhile opponent lying on his back, out cold, his breastplate sporting a tremendous dent in the middle. Holy crap. You did not say I was carrying explosive rounds.

"Didn't I? Must've slipped my mind." She didn't even try to make it sound convincing. "Pretty effective, huh?" She triggered the nitrous mode on her skates, and went airborne off of a ramp with a triple flip and spin that made the audience roar with appreciation. On the way, she let off another burst that nailed three more of the opposition, sending them sprawling against the armoured-glass barrier surrounding the arena, in various stages of disrepair.

Slipped your mind, hah. Nothing ever slips your mind. My next opponent ducked into a full-pipe, hiding him from my view. Of course, this hid me from him as well, so I leaned forward and triggered my own nitrous. If I was reading this right, he'd come out the other end and try to nail me with the triple-barrelled assault rifle he was sporting. Building up speed, I launched myself off the top of the pipe, shotgun tracking toward the end of the pipe. Just as I'd predicted, he skated into view, assault rifle swinging around to where he thought I'd be. Unfortunately for him, I wasn't there.

Even more unfortunately, he was exactly where I expected him to be. I pulled the trigger and both barrels belched flame, blowing his rifle into small metal fragments and sending him sprawling to the floor. I was still airborne at this point, and the recoil sent me spinning end over end. Which turned out to be fortuitous, as there was one more that we hadn't accounted for. I targeted him just before he would've reached Lisa with a revving chainsaw, and fired. The chainsaw exploded dramatically, putting him out of the fight. This had the useful effect of giving me the extra impetus to get my feet under me just before I hit the floor.

As the audience went nuts, Lisa rolled across to end up beside me. "Nice one," she said. "I liked the double airborne shot." She brandished the AA-12 to more applause, then started over toward where we were supposed to collect our winnings. "So, I guess you want to know about Crawler?"

If you don't mind, I replied with a grin, slinging the shotgun. This was about as authentic a post-apocalyptic experience as your average dude ranch is of the Wild West. But she was right; it had been fun. Now, though, the fun was over and it was time to get down to business. What will I be getting into?

"Well, for a start, the girl's dead." She looked apologetic. "Sorry. Crawler's not the one who did it. That was someone else. But he's gonna upgrade to serious harm then murder if he's left alone. And he's not overly careful, so when he does get caught, this one'll be lumped in with the ones he'll be actually guilty of. The DA'll go for the death penalty and he'll have a bad time on death row. Killing women, you see. By the time they actually go to execute him, he'll be primed to trigger."

That made a certain kind of horrible sense to me. Which is about the last thing we want. So if we track him down now and kill him before he's expecting it …

She favoured me with a beaming smile. "Precisely. And the other one's still in the area, so once you've dealt with Crawler, we can kill two birds with one stone." She pulled a tablet out of a pocket of her cargo pants and handed it to me.

So to speak, I agreed, tucking it into one of my pockets. The thought I'd had before crossed my mind again, and I voiced it. If he's just been mugging people up till now and hasn't actually crossed that line yet, is there a chance we could rehabilitate him? Get him on our side? I wasn't just asking idly; nor did my distaste for taking human life—as attenuated as it had become—have much to do with the question. It was simple pragmatism; guided by less destructive motives, he'd make for a potent ally against the forces that would be arrayed to combat my efforts to make a better world.

Lisa didn't answer as she collected our winnings; for some odd reason, these turned out to be brightly-coloured bottlecaps. Then, as we skated away across the arena, she turned to me, her expression serious. "I don't know for sure," she confessed. "He's had a shitty life, and he's been fucked over at almost every turn."

So have I, I pointed out. And I turned out okay, didn't I? After all, even after everything I'd gone through, I was doing my best to save the world. Well, saving my friends came first. The world could be saved as a side benefit, though I was definitely going to be putting my all into it. As Lisa had once said, it was where I kept my stuff.

"Pfft, yeah, I guess." Lisa let out an indelicate snort and rolled her eyes. "Joined a villain gang at fifteen, robbed a bank, assaulted heroes, took over the city, gouged a man's eyes out, shot your ex-boss right in the head, choked a superhero to death on bugs … oh yeah, you're a real role model."

I had to hand it to her; taken out of context, that list of charges was pretty impressive. Which of course was her point. Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. I turned myself around. Can we do the same with him?

"I won't know until we make the effort," she pointed out. "It would depend on whether it's even possible, and on what approach you use. I won't lie; his life's been shittier than yours by a large degree. His habits may be simply too ingrained. His mother left when he was a kid, mainly because his father was an abusive asshole. He went without a lot of meals when he was growing up, and he got beaten and locked in a closet for no reason." She grimaced. "There was also, um, other abuse. He's pretty fucked in the head already. Triggering is likely to make it even worse."

Well, I owe it to him to try. I knew what it was like to be pre-judged and cut off from any sort of appeal before I'd really done anything.

"Well, it's always worth a try. At least you have those special loads from Andrea's pet Tinker, if and when you need to use them." Lisa's tone was light, but she meant every word. She was just as dedicated to my plans as I was, having spent thousands of virtual hours helping me hash them out. I had no idea what I would've done without her. "Oh, and you're nearly at the hospital. Kiss before you go?" Reaching up, she took off her visor.

Her lips tasted of dust and blood and cordite. Gunsmoke stung my eyes, and I blinked.

-ooo-​

"I'm awake." As I spoke, I sat up and opened my eyes. Ruth had been leaning over to shake me awake as Kinsey brought the car to a halt, but sat back again when I spoke. For the purpose of this outing, she'd changed from her earlier clothing into a dark sweater and slacks, along with a wool cap she'd bundled her blonde hair up into. Over it all she wore a light coat, dark blue in colour. Curling up out of her collar and plugging into her ear was a dark-coloured earpiece, the other end of the cord leading to the radio on her belt. Kinsey and I wore identical ones; he'd acquired them while I was doing my work at the base.

"As a surgeon, I've got to be able to sleep anytime, anywhere," she observed as she unbuckled her seatbelt. "I'd heard much the same about you field-operations types, but I'd never actually seen it in action before. I have to say, I'm impressed."

Although Kinsey knew about my self-hypnosis techniques, he said nothing. I hid a smile as I undid my own seatbelt; while Ruth was definitely an ally as far as we were both concerned, there was still a certain amount of departmental pride to be taken into account. If he admitted I was unusual in that regard, it would then follow that not all field-ops people could pull it off as well as I could.

"An acquired habit," I said, neither confirming nor denying Kinsey's implied assertion. "As I said, it helps me regroup my thoughts." Which, for a certain definition of 'true', was actually the truth.

Ruth nodded, as if this was no surprise. To be honest, it probably wasn't. I didn't know exactly how much detail went into the reports that found their way into my file, but the self-hypnosis thing was probably featured here and there. I'd hardly made a secret of it, after all. "Did it help in this situation?"

I made a mental note to read my file sometime, just for my own peace of mind. "It certainly did," I said as I got out of the car. "I also got the chance to look over a map. That, combined with some police reports and old arrest records, has given me quite a bit to work with." The hospital complex loomed in the distance, and I made a show of slowly turning around. "She came this way, didn't she?" I pointed toward the intersection. "Down that way, then if she was taking the shortest direction home, she crossed the road and turned right."

I was cheating, of course. All the pertinent facts had been slipped to me in the tablet Lisa had given to me while I was still in the hypnotic state. I knew exactly where she'd been attacked, and by whom; a cape calling himself Night Terror, who manipulated darkness like a living thing. Unlike Brian's darkness control, Night Terror could use his powers to physically attack others as well as cause an emotional shift toward, well, terror. He fed off the fear and horror his ability caused in others.

Patricia Weller had died alone, in both physical and emotional agony. I could kind of relate; I'd been there more than once. Night Terror, I decided, wasn't going to take even one more victim. It didn't matter if his crimes were ever enumerated and pinned on him, or if they resided in the 'unsolved' files for the rest of eternity. Or, as in this case, added to Crawler's list of sins.

Whatever we did, we were going to have to deal with Crawler as well. The biggest trick here was going to be convincing Kinsey that I knew what I was doing in taking down two different people in relation to the same crime. Mentally, I revised that; the biggest trick was going to be keeping Kinsey unaware of Ruth's capabilities—she could out herself to him, of course, but that was her decision to make and not mine—while simultaneously not giving away to Ruth that I had a Thinker residing in my head.

"I don't know about turning right," Ruth said after a moment of thought. "It's entirely plausible, given where she lives." She gestured at the car. "Are we going to be walking or driving?"

"I need to walk the route," I said. "Figure out what happened on the way. And, as Kinsey said earlier, I'll be seeing if I can draw him out." Kinsey and I had already discussed how we were going to be doing this, but I said it out loud anyway. "Kinsey, bring the car, but hang way back. Doctor Goldstein and I will walk. That way, we won't have to walk all the way back to the car once we're done."

"A suggestion, ma'am?" At my nod, he continued. "Perhaps the Major would prefer to ride in the car as well?" We'd also talked about this; I'd stated it was her choice. He was a little puzzled, I could tell, about why I was giving in to her so much, but it wasn't in his nature to question my decisions. His faith in me overrode his doubts, which I greatly appreciated.

"The Major would not," Ruth replied austerely. "I appreciate the sentiment, but I'll walk." So saying, she turned on her heel and strode off down the sidewalk.

What was done was done. I nodded to Kinsey and started off in pursuit of Ruth. She wasn't walking quickly, so I caught up in about thirty seconds and fell into step with her. The night breeze made her coat flap a little, but not so much that it revealed the shoulder holster she was wearing. This currently contained Kinsey's hand-cannon, on the off-chance that she might need it. Of course, I was also armed; the jacket was a size or two larger than absolutely necessary to fit me, which left plenty of room for my shoulder rig.

I knew quite well that the pistol was more window-dressing than anything else for her. If we were attacked by incidental muggers, she would be far more dangerous to them without the pistol than with, which was why I intended to take point in any such encounter. Neither she nor I wished to reveal her capabilities unless it was utterly necessary.

As we proceeded along the sidewalk at a slow march, it struck me that I was keeping more secrets from my allies than I'd kept from my enemies, back in the day. There wasn't much I could do about that right at the moment, so I chose not to angst over it. Behind us, I heard the car engine start up. As we walked away, it sat there, engine turning over at a slow idle. Kinsey, of course, needed to keep his distance in order to effectively shadow us without tipping his hand.

The sound of the car engine had faded into the distance by the time Ruth turned to me. "So how are you going to do this?" she asked curiously. "I know you're very good at what you do, but there are limits to what observation and deduction can achieve. To be honest, I kind of expected you to demand all the files the PRT had about basically everything, and spend a day or two building a picture that way."

"I could've done it that way," I admitted then casually glanced around, fixing a picture in my mind of what the surroundings looked like. I wouldn't remember everything, but if something seemed out of place the next time I looked, I'd have a good chance at noticing it. "But that would've taken too long, and I'm on a tight schedule as it is. So I'm going to let you in on a little secret."

Ruth's expression barely wavered. "Is this to do with something only you know about?" Which was code for: Is this a future knowledge thing? She didn't bother assuring me she'd keep any secret I passed on to her; we both knew that was a given.

"In a way," I said carefully. Lisa had impressed upon me that the one thing I couldn't tell Ruth about was her. Even hinting about her existence was not a good idea. I wasn't sure why Lisa was being so cautious about Ruth, but I figured she had her reasons. "There's a cape and a normal involved. I came here to kill the normal before he could trigger, and he's the one who's been stalking the girls, but the cape's the one who killed Patricia." I stopped, suddenly aware that I'd said too much.

To Ruth's credit, she took the revelations in her stride. "So she's dead," she observed flatly. "Goddamn it." For a moment she looked away, then she turned her head and eyed me sternly. "When were you going to tell me about this? Before or after we were attacked by a murderous cape? And what's so special about the guy's trigger, anyway?"

"It's not what, it's who," I corrected her. "You might recall news stories about a guy called Crawler, back in the day?" I didn't need to say any more; the look of revelation that spread across her face was answer enough.

"I know he was a member of the Nine and that he was killed somehow, but I don't know the details," she said thoughtfully. "It happened after Leviathan, when TV coverage was spotty. He was supposed to be almost unstoppable, wasn't he? Like the Siberian, but different?"

"Yes and yes," I said. "The PRT dropped one of Bakuda's bombs on him. It turned his entire body to glass. There was basically nothing else that could hurt him by then, I guess. I once saw him survive a power that literally teleported chunks of his body—including bits of his brain—into another dimension. He grew them back faster than they could be teleported away."

Ruth shuddered. "If I'd required you to convince me he needs to be killed before he gets too powerful, that would've done it." She gave me a searching glance. "Are these two—Crawler and the other cape—working together? Because if so, it's going to make our job a lot harder."

"Not to the best of my knowledge," I assured her. "It's mildly ironic, actually. They've never even met. Crawler—Ned—gets arrested for the murder of Patricia Weller, when it's actually the other guy—Night Terror—who did it. Night Terror's due to leave town in a few days to escape the heat, but ends up with a reputation for committing atrocities anyway. The DA pushes for the death penalty in Ned's case, and he spends the next five years on death row. His trigger event happens when they actually try to execute him. He escapes, killing a few people in the process, and earns a reputation as a crazy guy who can't be killed. When he eventually runs into the Nine, he competes with Night Terror to get on to the team and ends up killing the guy, without ever knowing it was Night Terror who got him arrested for murder in the first place."

That earned me a snort of dark amusement from Ruth. "The world is a strange, strange place. And I'm not even referring to how we got to where we are today." She looked around at the sleeping city. "Do you ever stop and ask yourself when life got so strange that this, here, is considered normal?"

I let a grin tug at the corner of my mouth. "When I got powers would be a strong favourite, though to be honest, things didn't start to get really weird until I came back here." Then I recalled the thought I'd had earlier, and cleared my throat. "On a more serious note, I was thinking that instead of killing Ned, we might try to recruit him. It gets him out of the way as a future problem, and if and when he triggers, we'll have another cape on our side."

"I … that's an interesting idea," she said slowly. "I can see the benefits, but there's also downsides to consider. Do you think he'd be willing? Or even loyal, once he joined our side?" Her expression was serious; it was clear she wasn't rejecting the idea out of hand, but nor was she going to blindly accept it.

"He's a street thief and mugger," I said bluntly. "Every instinct I have says he's motivated by greed and anger at the system that failed him. If he's offered a substantial paycheck to work for me, I'm pretty sure he'd grab it with both hands. So long as nobody came along with a better offer, he'd be loyal. Of course, I wouldn't trust him with any sensitive information, but as a front-line grunt—once he triggers, of course—he'd definitely be worth the expenditure. And better on our side than Jack Slash's."

After a moment, Ruth nodded. "That's very concise, and I find I agree with your conclusions. It's worth the effort to try. Though where are you going to find the money? We don't pay our Intelligence officers that well." A wary expression crossed her face. "Or is this something I'm better off not knowing?"

I could imagine where her mind was going to. "Relax. I'm not embezzling money, or defrauding the PRT in any way. In fact, with what I'm planning to do, they should really be paying me more." The look on her face made me chuckle. "Joke. It was a joke." Though it wasn't, not really. "No, I have … shall we say, access to an external revenue stream, one that's not legally connected to me. We can definitely afford to pay him whatever it takes to keep him coming back for more."

"Understood. I'm not going to ask any more questions, because I'm reasonably certain I wouldn't like the answers." She had a bemused look on her face by now, almost a twin to the one I'd seen on Hamilton's face from time to time. I suspected it meant something along the lines of: I'm not sure what she's up to, but I'm glad she's on my side.

"There's a lot of questions around these days that I would've been a lot happier not knowing the answers to," I agreed. "The trouble is, once I know the answers, I'm pretty well obliged to doing something about them, if I possibly can. Thus, here and now."

"Thus, here and now," she echoed. "Actually, talking about that. Do you have any more details about Night Terror? Powers and capabilities, for instance?"

"Well, yes," I admitted. "He's a darkness controller. He works better with access to actual darkness, but he can create shadows in the daytime as well. Really bright light gives him problems. The darkness he makes can dull sound and stop ordinary light …" I paused, trying not to feel homesick. His powers are not the same as Brian's, dammit!

"There's more to them though, isn't there?" Her tone was crisply professional. "Otherwise, anyone with a flashlight could deal with him."

"Well, not a flashlight unless it's a really bright one but yes, there is," I said. "His shadow's basically a telekinetic field that can form hooks and blades, and attack anyone inside it. Also, if the shadow touches your skin, he can make you feel fear and hopelessness and despair." I reached across and tapped where the pistol was, under my jacket. "I don't plan to let him get close enough to use it on me. And there's no indication that the shadows are bulletproof."

"I see." She nodded slowly. "And does your insight extend to what happened to Patricia?" I could tell from her voice and face that she didn't want to ask the question but knew she had to anyway.

"He's a sadist. Definitely not someone we're interested in recruiting." I kept my tone flat. "He wrapped his shadows around her and herded her into the park that's up thataway." I pointed in a vague east-north-east direction. "Then he took his time with her. Afterward, he dumped the body in the lake." The lake in question was to the north of us, not altogether far away. "In the normal course of events, they find the body in a few days, after Ned's arrested for attacking a couple of woman walking at night. They fight back, and he hurts them fairly badly; one of them dies in hospital a day later. He's charged with attempted murder and two cases of actual murder and while he tells them he's not responsible for Patricia, nobody believes him, not even the public defender assigned to his case."

"I see." She looked vaguely nauseous. "So what do you think—"

With a gesture, I cut her off. "Shh! Without turning your head, look to your left." I did as I was telling her to do, swivelling my eyes to the left to get a better view of the figure now approaching us.

My left hand drifted to the radio that was mostly concealed under my jacket, and pressed the send button. "Alpha two to alpha three, you copy?" I murmured. "Got a hit."

"Alpha three copies," he replied at once. "Inbound." Over the radio, I heard the car engine revving; I turned my attention back to Ned.

Not exactly imposing, he stood maybe five-six, with a scrawny build. In the street-light, I could see he had the hood of his jacket pulled up over his head, putting his face into shadow. One hand was almost casually held behind his back. His approach to us could be best described as a wary sidle.

"Good evening, ladies," he greeted us in an ingratiating whine. "Either of you got the time?"

I couldn't believe he was actually using that line.

"No, but—" I began. The rest of my recruitment pitch went by the wayside as the breeze momentarily kicked up. My jacket flapped open, and Ned's eyes widened at the sight of my shoulder holster.

"Shit!" he yelped. With an admirable show of reflexes, he turned in that same instant and bolted off down the street like a startled rabbit. There was some sort of hassle with the direction he was going, but I couldn't recall it right at that second; all I knew was if he got away, there'd be a very real problem, either then or later.

"Come on!" I snapped to Ruth, and took off running after him. Immediately, I became aware of an inconvenient fact. Specifically, that although I'd mostly recovered from the damage done to me in the Compound, 'mostly' didn't mean 'totally'. My leg reminded me of this with some minor twinges, which normally wouldn't have mattered, but my lung also chimed in with a deep ache as it tried to pull in a lot more oxygen all of a sudden.

Even with all of that, I would've caught up in short order, but he had an unexpected turn of speed, probably fuelled by terror-inspired adrenaline. Still, I wasn't all that far behind when he turned a corner and disappeared from my sight. A quick glance over my shoulder confirmed that Ruth was pounding along doggedly in my wake. Seeing me start to slow down, she gave me an urgent 'keep moving' gesture. I picked up the pace again and swung out wide to circumvent any opportunistic ambush he might be setting.

With my pistol in my hand, I came around the corner fast … and stopped dead. Shadows hung heavy over the street, shifting here and there in a highly unnatural fashion. Standing in the middle of them was a guy who was most definitely not Ned. In fact, Ned was slumped untidily at the guy's feet, lying in a spreading pool of something that gleamed black in what little light there was; from context, I guessed it was blood. I couldn't see any details of the guy's face or costume, as he was clad from head to toe in shadows. But I knew who he was, and I recalled why it had been a bad idea to chase Ned in this direction. Lisa told me where he was going to be. I just forgot.

And then, just because Murphy loves to make a bad situation worse, Ruth staggered and went to one knee just as she caught up with me. I felt a wave of dizziness pass through me as well, but I managed to keep my feet. Almost instinctively, I knew what had happened. Trigger event. Ruth took the full effect, but I only felt it through Lisa.

At Night Terror's feet, Ned groaned and started to get up again. With the distance and lack of light, I couldn't see him properly from where I was, but his skin looked … rougher. Worse, his eyes and hands were glowing.

Ruth and I spoke at the same time. "Ooooooh crap."

End of Part 6-3

Part 6-4​

 

[Ack]

Recoil


Part 6-4: Resolving Fallout​

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]​

The moment of horrified realisation passed, and I knew what I had to do. My pistol came up, braced two-handed. "PRT!" I shouted. "Ned Hollows, stand down! Night Terror, you're under arrest!"

If I'd been an unprepared civilian, or even an ordinary cop, I would've died about two seconds later. The threat of a gun had historically made people more likely to obey a cop's orders, so even with the advent of capes, police officers were used to throwing out the challenge and having people do what they were told. Only ten years had passed since Scion's appearance, and even then the first capes had proven themselves all too vulnerable to violence. Institutional reflex had yet to reprogram itself to the new reality, so cops facing capes with fast-acting Blaster powers tended to die without even knowing why.

Civilians would normally freeze, which could be fatal. If they had guns, they lacked even the training that cops got.

I was neither a cop nor a civilian. I'd been a villain in one of the most conflict-torn cities in the continental US, then I'd been a hero. And then … I'd been thrown in the deep end, and spent six years building up the skills I needed to save the world. In the process, the PRT had trained me on how to deal with this sort of situation.

I knew just how deadly, just how dangerous a cape could be if he decided to go all out. I'd faced more than one in my absurdly short career. Despite the fact that I was still only in my twenties, I was perhaps the most ludicrously prepared non-powered person on the face of the Earth when it came to dealing with capes.

Still, with all of that, my training didn't tell me how to win. Just how to not immediately die.

A tentacle made of gleaming darkness, edged with what may have been razor-edged claws (I could only see them in profile) lashed clumsily out at me. I'd already shifted my balance to dive and roll aside (see above about training) so the dark appendage hummed over my head. A distant part of my mind analysed this and decided that his powers were definitely unrelated to Brian's, especially considering that Grue's darkness had no texture and no definable 'surface' whereas Night Terror's 'shadow' was more like a projected shape that light could reflect from.

Not that this made me any more likely to let it hit me.

I'd already had my pistol lined up on what I figured to be Night Terror's centre mass, so I started firing as I went into the dive, then sent three more shots downrange after I came up on one knee.

Ned had Triggered, that was clear. Exactly what he'd Triggered into was less certain. His near-death experience at the hands of Night Terror had obviously afforded him a different powerset than the one he would've gotten at the hands of the Department of Corrections. I just had to hope that he'd do what he was told, and not get into the fight. Or if he had to get into the fight, for it not to be against us.

In the meantime, I had Night Terror to focus on. The light wasn't great, and the swirling shadows didn't give me much to work with, but he didn't seem to be going down from the shots I'd put into him.

Maybe his shadows are bulletproof. He still seemed to be a bit loopy over Ned's trigger event—I got the impression that the shadow-tentacle attack had been purely by reflex—but that wasn't actually helping me.

"Taylor." That was Ruth. She was swaying on her feet, but getting steadier by the second. The pistol she'd borrowed from Kinsey was pointed at the ground instead of the hostile parahuman. "What should I do?" The subtext was clear; she was asking me if she should unleash her power.

I'd never personally seen it in action, though Lisa had shown me several virtual movies on the subject. She was still being annoyingly vague as to where Ruth was getting all this experience with her power, though.

What I did know was that streams of molten metal and plasma had no place on a suburban city street. In fact, I shouldn't really have been firing my pistol; even one missed shot could go straight through a wall and kill an innocent. Not only could Ruth potentially set fire to basically everything, but lights were starting to come on. People would be looking out windows.

While mobile phone cameras were still not really a thing yet, the last thing we needed was for that one idiot with an actual camera to snap a picture of a PRT Major outing herself as a parahuman. I gave her a quick head-shake. There were times and places where that sort of power needed to be unleashed. This wasn't it.

"Missed me." Night Terror's voice was deep enough to shake my bones, but I suspected it was a power effect rather than his normal vocalisation.

I lifted my pistol, aiming at where I thought his head might be. Ruth began to raise her weapon as well, but she had it pointed at a totally different part of the shifting black shadowy mass. Oh, wait. Lisa said something about how Ruth's power lets her see into the infra-red. She can see his body heat in all that.

This was entirely the wrong place for a cape battle to happen in, especially with Blaster and Shaker powers involved. While super-powers had been around for a little while, the civilian population was unused to the idea (just as the police were) that a cape battle could be dangerous to them. Endbringers and other S-class threats were a lot less regular than they were in my time, so it was all just a big show to most of them.

Which meant we had to end this fast. Night Terror didn't have a kill order on him yet, but I didn't have time for that sort of bureaucratic nonsense. He was a clear and present danger to me, as well as an unspecified number of his future victims. Not to mention his previous victims. Just like with the idiot in that gas station in Batavia once upon a time, my best option was an immediate and lethal response.

To tell the truth, I had already been planning on this. Only with Crawler in mind.

Switching my aim, I lined up on a slightly more solid-looking silhouette within the forest of undulating shadows. Three times I fired, going for centre mass rather than head height. If the 'shadows' were as solid as they looked (even if he wasn't where I was shooting at) hopefully they would provide an adequate backstop for my bullets. Sometimes a hard decision had to be made, and not shooting the murderous cape was (in this instance) what I considered to be the wrong one. A pouch on my belt held a magazine with one specific round on top of the stack, but I wasn't going to even consider using it until I had a clear shot.

Something jerked and recoiled within the mass of shifting darkness, and I heard a wordless cry of pain, once more so deep that I felt it as much as heard it. Didn't miss that time, asshole. But he was still up, still active. I dropped my left hand away from the pistol, preparing to go for the second magazine. If there was any time when I'd have that clear shot, this was it.

More tentacles exploded from the central mass, scything through the night air. I ducked under one, but a second clipped me and knocked me off balance, and a third wrapped around my legs, just below the knee. I felt blades slicing through the cloth into my legs as I was dragged off my feet, but that wasn't the worst bit. The worst bit was the overwhelming feeling of utter terror and loss that flooded through my guts, the instant his shadow came into contact with me.

I'd felt fear before. Loss was something I was no stranger to. A good deal of my life had been taken up with one or another of these emotions. But this terror and this loss were unnatural, imposed from outside. I couldn't think my way around them, and I no longer had my bugs to push them aside into. This didn't stop me from trying all the same, and in fact I felt as though the horrific pressure had lessened somewhat. Inch by inch, my left hand crept to my waist.

Beside me, I heard Ruth crying, even as she curled into a ball. I tried not to listen too hard to what she was saying, though to be honest it was easy to ignore her, as images of Mom and Dad and all my friends were crowding into my mind. I'd lost everything before I was sent back from New Delhi, even Lisa …

Anger flared hot inside me, burning away at the waves of desolation that tried to drown me under, to choke my resistance down to nothing. I had not lost Lisa! She was right here with me! My fingers grasped the magazine and pulled it from its holder. Fear still flooded my mind—going up against Night Terror was the last thing I wanted to do—but I hadn't gotten to where I was by letting fear of the unknown (or even the known) stop me. I had faced Glory Girl, Valefor, Leviathan, even Behemoth. A second-rate emotion-manipulator was not going to get the better of me.

Tears filled my eyes, shudders wracked my body and I wanted to throw up, but I concentrated on two things. One, to keep hold of my pistol. Two, to get the second magazine into place. If anything could kill Night Terror, it was the special round contained in that one. Inch by inch, fighting the seizures that made my arms want to lock up into total uselessness, I brought the two together. One magazine dropped out, clattering on the asphalt. The other slotted into place, only made possible by the fact that I'd performed this one action so many times that it was beyond second nature. Blinking tears from my eyes, I brought the pistol to bear, and fired.

To no effect.

I tried to fire again, but I'd lost my sight picture. My brain yammered at me: that round was already in the breech; this is the magic bullet! SHOOT!

"You've got to be shitting me."

Night Terror stared at me—or at least, that was what I interpreted his expression as. He drew back his arm, then a spear of blackness launched itself in my general direction. I had no time. If I fired now, with no target, I'd throw away the opportunity.

Lights flared up, blindingly bright. An engine roared as the pedal slammed to metal. Night Terror screamed as the tentacles and shadowy barriers on that side sublimed away to fog, a split second before the car would've ploughed into them. I felt the grip around my legs vanish. The spear took another half-second to dissolve, but it lashed out past my feet, as I was already falling. The emotional grip on my mind abruptly vanished, and I was clear-headed once more. And falling. Falling was also an aspect there.

Fortunately, he hadn't been holding me too high off the ground. I saw it coming, got my arms in the way, and rolled with the landing. It was neither easy nor fun, and I lost some skin and picked up some bruises, but nothing broke this time. Small mercies.

Rolling on to my side, I looked around, trying to orient myself. The car had slewed around, its headlights—on high beam, thank you Kinsey—throwing their glare over a man lying hunched on the ground. It didn't immediately match what I'd seen of what Ned had looked like after his premature Trigger event, so I had to guess it was Night Terror, bereft of his shadow tentacles.

And then someone else stepped into the light. As I levered myself painfully to my feet—I was going to need medical attention for the cuts on my legs, just not immediately—I recognised them as Ruth. She dropped to one knee beside Night Terror and put her hand over his mouth.

This had all the signs of trouble. Still clutching the pistol—if he started to get up, he was going to get the bullet in centre mass—I hobbled in her direction. Son of a bitch, but those cuts hurt. I was just glad he hadn't sliced a tendon in the process.

As I drew closer, Kinsey came hurrying over to me. "Ma'am, are you all right?" he asked. "Your legs …"

"We can deal with my legs in a minute," I assured him. "Secure the perimeter. There'll be a guy around here somewhere. Obvious parahuman. His name's Ned. Don't provoke him but tell him to stick around. I want to talk to him."

"Understood." Kinsey moved off with purpose. If Ned had been shaken anywhere near as much as I had by the experience, he wouldn't have gone far. Besides, we'd just saved his life. If he was still human enough to feel gratitude for that, then I could definitely use him. Otherwise, he'd go on the list.

"How dare you," hissed Ruth as I came up to her and Night Terror. "How dare you reach into my head and pull out all that shit? You had no right. You deserve this."

With a shock, I realised that tears were still running down her face. Her fingers were digging into his skin so hard, I wouldn't have been at all surprised if they'd left bruises. "Major," I said. She paid me no attention. I tried again. "Ma'am?"

"Go away, Taylor," she replied without looking up. "This piece of shit is going to die, and he's going to know why before he does." I didn't know what I was more surprised at; the genuine venom in her voice, or the casual obscenity. Whatever Night Terror's power had dredged up in her mind, it had hurt her badly.

"Not a good idea, ma'am," I said carefully. My pistol was at my side, but I searched for a good shot. Not to hit Ruth, but to take out Night Terror before he revived and started making trouble again.

She whipped her head around to face me, and I saw the glow of red in her eyes. There was molten metal under her skin, trying its best to get free. "You do not give me orders, Captain!" she snapped.

"Ma'am, this isn't an order." I took a few steps closer, keeping my voice down. "This is advice. Parahumans can't hold rank in the PRT. If he's found dead from an obviously parahuman ability …"

For a long moment, I thought she was going to ignore me and (at my best guess) fill his body full of molten steel. Or perhaps bury him under it. The hand over his mouth twitched and flexed, and I thought I saw bright spots moving under the skin.

I had some little idea of what Ruth had just been through, having undergone my own version of it. My advantage lay in the fact that a good portion of my life had consisted of being shat on from varying heights, so I was kind of used to it. For me, suffering had been a way of life. For her, it was a new experience, and it was hitting her all the harder because of that.

Slowly, her shoulders lost their rigid tension. Almost imperceptibly, she slumped. The grip of her hand over his mouth loosened. "You're right—" she began.

His eyes flickered, so quickly I almost missed it. But in the shadow she cast, I saw more tentacles unfurling, lashing toward her leg. "Major!" I shouted, pointing.

I could only assume, later, that she acted from pure instinct. Her hand glowed red for just a moment, then clamped down again. He let out a horrible gurgling scream, or tried to; barely any of it was audible past her muffling grasp. Even from where I was, I smelled burning meat. "Major, out of the way!" I shouted, stepping forward. With my left hand, I worked the slide of my pistol and caught the round that popped out. Letting the slide snap forward, I moved up alongside Ruth. She was already moving aside, giving me room. I fired, straight down into his lower jaw so that the bullet would leave a definitive channel as it blasted through flesh and bone. It wouldn't exit the back of his head, because there was a cooling mass of metal in the way. Even as I fired the shot, Night Terror was dead. A mouth and throat full of molten steel tended to have that effect.

"Captain, is everything all right?" That was Kinsey, somewhere outside my line of sight.

Hastily, I answered; it wouldn't do to have him come over and find out Ruth's little secret. "Everything's all right here, Kinsey. The perp's … deceased." I stepped out of the glare of the headlights and reached into the car to turn the headlights off. "Yourself?"

"We're fine out here, ma'am," he replied. "Excuse me." I wondered why he'd said that, but learned the reason a few seconds later when he raised his voice to a moderate bellow. "Everyone! Please stay inside! This is a Parahuman Response Teams operation!"

My legs were still working as I made my way back to where Ruth waited alongside Night Terror's corpse, though I was pretty sure I could feel blood running down my calves. "How are your legs?" I asked quietly.

"Lacerated, but I'll survive," she replied, equally softly. "Why did you shoot him?"

"Cover," I told her. "How much metal did you put down his throat anyway? And can you get it out?"

"Enough to kill him," she murmured grimly. "I can get it out, but how's that going to help? There'll still be metal particles in there. I won't be able to get it all."

"Trust me," I said. "I have a plan. Also, I have a first aid kit in the back of the car. If you could get it, please?" Leaning against the side of the car, I slid down until I was sitting on the ground. "I'm not sure if I can walk any more."

" … right," she said. To my relief, she leaned down and reached into Night Terror's open mouth. I did need first aid, but I also needed to keep Ruth's powers a secret. At least for a while longer.

-ooo-​

I was seated on the passenger seat of the car, while Ruth applied dressings to my legs, when Kinsey got back to us. Behind him, doing his best to keep to the shadows, was the man who would once have become Crawler. Now, his skin looked harder and rougher than was normal for a human being, and his eyes smouldered a deep, sullen red. The palms and fingertips of both hands also glowed the same colour. But on his face was an uncertain expression; it was clear he had no idea what had happened, or what to do now.

"Ma'am, you never said you were injured!" Kinsey may have been my subordinate as far as rank went, and he knew I was no dummy when it came to making tactical decisions, but that didn't mean he was slavishly deferential in other ways. Or at all, really.

Our relationship had been honed and shaped over the last year (had it really been just one year? It had felt more like ten) that we'd been working together. He knew that he could say whatever he damn well liked to me, and I'd take it all on board. Unfortunately, that meant he could and did say whatever he damn well liked to me. Up to and including tearing me a new one for pulling idiotic stunts like this.

"It wasn't really important, Kinsey," I said, trying to head the problem off at the pass. "Major Goldstein is an accomplished medic, who can deal with any such problems. I was more concerned with ensuring that Night Terror was put down." Focusing past him, I fixed my eye on the newly triggered parahuman. "Mr Hollows, I presume." In the corner of my vision, I saw Kinsey subside, but I didn't think for a moment that he'd given up on lecturing me. He was stubborn like that. It was one of the reasons we got along so well.

Ned Hollows looked startled at being so addressed. "Uh, yeah, uh, sorry about—"

"Never mind all that," I advised him. "Mistakes were made. You nearly died. How are you feeling now?"

"Oh, uh …" He held out his hands, palm up. They bore silent testament that he was never going to be the same again. Mercifully, although his new powers had caused him to fill out somewhat (and gain six inches of height) his clothing was still mostly intact. Not that anything short of a set of full-body armour was going to do anything toward concealing his identity, right now.

"I understand." I tried to aim for reassuring and impersonal, all at the same time. While I wanted Ned Hollows on side, my plans didn't include having him imprint on me like a baby duck. "Things are going to be very strange for a while. You may change back to normal once the crisis is over, or you may not." Based on what he'd been like before, I was betting on 'not'. "However, I have a place you can go, and people you can stay with, if you're interested." The lack of comprehension in his expression reminded me of whom I was talking to. "Regular food, a warm bed. Also, a job. Well-paying, for as long as you want it." Even if his powers were initially useless, I was sure Lisa could tell me what they were actually good for. And if they turned out as powerful as they were in my time, a little guidance in how to develop them would a very good idea. While Andrea's mercenaries would probably appreciate parahuman backup, it would be best if said backup were human-shaped, not Crawler-shaped.

"What do I gotta do?" The interest in his tone matched his expression. Bingo.

I gave him a dry smile. "Whatever you're capable of doing. You'll get paid, no matter what that is." It wouldn't be exactly hard to get him to exert his powers. With parahumans, it never was. The money was just an incentive for him not to wander off and try to go into business for himself. However, it was time for a touch of reverse psychology. "I mean, you're not locked into this. You're free to go if you want. It's your choice."

"N-no!" He blurted the word out almost desperately as he reached for the lifeline I was teasing him with. "I'll stay. What do you want me to do?"

I smiled. It seemed he could take instruction after all.

-ooo-​

The police got there ten minutes later.

They were understandably upset about the dead body in the middle of the road (we hadn't moved him) but Ruth and I brandished our PRT IDs flagrantly and talked fast to keep them from pulling anything drastic until the PRT officially showed up. Kinsey loomed in the background like the quintessential sergeant that he was, and Ned sat quietly in the back seat of the car.

It had taken no effort at all to convince Ned not to talk to the police. In fact, 'not talking to the authorities' was probably his default state. He'd been a little dubious when I told him not to talk to the PRT either, given that Kinsey, Ruth and I were manifestly part of that organisation, but he caught on quickly to the idea of institutional secrets.

When the PRT arrived, they were just as unhappy with us, but managed to hide it in the name of 'us against them'. A trooper was detailed to drive the rental back to the PRT base, while the four of us were escorted there in the back of a van. Given the state of my legs, I had to be helped up into the vehicle. Ruth was in better shape, but she let them think she also needed assistance.

I gathered that our status wasn't quite 'under arrest', but it certainly wasn't 'free to go', either. Someone higher up the chain of command was almost certainly pissed as fuck that they'd been woken up to deal with this, and I was pretty sure I'd find out who in short order.

Of the four of us, Ned looked the most nervous. We were sharing the back of the van with six fully-armoured troopers, and containment foam hadn't been invented yet so they had tasers and live ammo. Whatever we said and did was being recorded for posterity (I knew the schematics of these vans quite well) so I didn't do anything as obvious as strike up a conversation. But I caught his eye and held it until he started paying attention, then lifted one eyebrow slightly as if to ask 'is this all they got?'.

He seemed to calm down a little then, so I turned my attention to Ruth. From what Lisa had told me, her PRT career had been utterly without blemish up until now. She was used to cruising under the radar and not drawing official attention. In fact, she had the type of career—in terms of obscurity, not achievements—that I could only wish that I had. I'd ruined that … or rather, her determination to not be left out of the action had done it for me. Of course, her presence just may have saved my life. I hoped her military career wouldn't be placed in too much jeopardy.

She was sitting beside me in the swaying van, so I nudged her elbow with mine. Her eyes slid sideways toward me, and I lifted the corner of my mouth in a slight grin. I'd been in this sort of position before. While I didn't overly enjoy official attention, I liked public attention far less, and the PRT had shown up before the news crews had arrived. And yes, having a strip torn off by the powers that be was never pleasant, but at least it would come to an end.

I felt her relax slightly, so I let my eyes rest on Kinsey. He was the one I was least worried about, and I felt a smile crease my lips as I noted that my faith in him was justified. Leaning back in his seat, eyes closed and hands clasped in front of him, Kinsey was either asleep or doing a damn good impression of it. Only Kinsey.

-ooo-​

"Shots fired on a suburban street at two AM! A dead man with his throat burned out! Undercover ops in my city without asking my permission, or even goddamn informing me! I want to know exactly what the hell you were thinking, and why I shouldn't court-martial the lot of you!"

The only thing missing from the tirade was a fist smashed on the desk, but Director Dyson didn't seem to be the fist-smashing type. She didn't need it; her anger came through just fine without requiring overt physical expression.

Director Kathryn Dyson was sixty-one years old, with short-cut blonde hair that showed more than a few silver highlights. She was slender, almost as skinny as I recalled Blackwell being back in the day, but she carried it—and the responsibilities of command—far better. And I'd been right; she was pissed as fuck.


I sat at attention before her desk, along with Ruth. This was in no way any kind of favouritism; word had gone ahead about our injuries, and two wheelchairs had been scrounged from somewhere to accommodate us. Kinsey had wheeled Ruth in, while I'd handled my own transport. It wasn't as though I was unused to being in a wheelchair, after all. Now he stood alongside us, while our pistols lay on Dyson's desk. None of us were in uniform; nor was Ned (obviously) as he stood behind us, flanked on either side by a PRT trooper. Ruth and I had vouched for him as a new Trigger (which just barely meant he didn't get arrested on suspicion of anything), and Director Dyson hadn't bothered to have him removed from her office before she began to read us the riot act. It struck me that this might be deliberate; perhaps she'd decided to ensure that he knew exactly what to expect if he fucked up this badly in her city.

Not that I intended to let her have it all her own way. Still at attention with my eyes fixed on the wall six inches over her head, I cleared my throat. "Permission to speak, ma'am?"

She ground to a halt. I could feel her simmering anger as an almost physical force. Maybe I was channelling Lisa just a little, but I felt I could track the slight shift in emotion that let Dyson choose to pay attention to what I was saying. Still angry, just redirecting it. Waiting for me to say one thing out of place so she can hammer me for it.

"Permission granted." I'd been right. She didn't sound any more forgiving. The words make it good would've been superfluous.

I took a deep breath, sifting through possibilities. My cold-reading skills were pretty good, but I didn't have a long baseline to work with; so far, all my impressions of Director Dyson involved annoyance shading through to cold fury. I just had to see if I could reach the person behind the anger.

"Ma'am, I know this was a screwup," I said firmly. "I was working with minimal data, but I've done more with less before. There was a killer out there who was preying on nurses, and I didn't want to let him claim even one more victim."

"Nurses." If Dyson's attention had been focused on me up till now, it was now laser-intense. "You didn't mention nurses before."

I nodded to acknowledge her point. "I apologise for that. It was a detail that didn't seem important at the time." I refrained from hammering home the point that we'd actually stopped the killer. Very terminally so.

"Well, it's important now." Dyson eyed me caustically. "There are obviously details of this operation that I am not yet acquainted with. I suggest you fill me in. Immediately."

"Yes, ma'am," I said. "I don't know if you were aware of this, but Major Goldstein helped save my life a couple of months ago. I'd heard she was on leave and I was in the area on my duties, so I dropped in to say hello. It turns out that an old friend of hers is the head nurse in a local hospital, and her nurses were being harassed when they left work. One never made it home. She knew I was with Intelligence, so she asked me if I could look into it." I paused to let her parse this.

It took her less than two seconds. "And you agreed. Without passing any of this on to us." 'Us' meaning the PRT, I figured. "Or even the regular authorities."

"With all due respect to the regular authorities, ma'am," I said, the tiniest hint of scorn I'd added deliberately overturning the 'all due respect' phrasing, "it would've been twenty-four to forty-eight hours before they started taking me seriously. By then, two more nurses would potentially have been dead. I wasn't about to allow that."

It was easy for her to agree with me, which was why I'd phrased things the way I had. Of course, I still wasn't out of the woods. "And you didn't pass any of this on to the PRT, why, exactly?" This was a trap; there was no way I could use the same excuse again. Even if it was essentially accurate (and it kind of was), institutional pride would make it impossible for her to accept it. I wanted to get out of trouble, not farther into it. Fortunately, I had another way out.

"I wasn't aware, then, that the killer was a parahuman," I said. This was the first outright lie I'd given her, and I tried to make the transition as smooth as possible. "As far as I knew, this was an opportunistic thug who liked to stalk women. That sort of thing simply isn't in the PRT's wheelhouse. I was aiming for a citizen's arrest. We had Kinsey for backup, but there was no way our guy would come at us with him in the vicinity."

Dyson's gaze switched from me to Kinsey. "Is this true, Sergeant?"

I didn't sigh with relief, and I didn't relax, although I wanted to do both. Drawing Dyson's attention to Kinsey was a dirty trick on my part, but I didn't want her looking too closely at Ruth. Kinsey had a competent poker face, but he wouldn't need to use it, given that what I'd just said matched what he considered to be the truth. I'd told Ruth that I knew there was a parahuman involved, but I'd just said something entirely different to Director Dyson, and I wanted to give Ruth a chance to gather her thoughts in case Dyson started interrogating her over it.

One of these days, I decided, I wouldn't have any more secrets to keep. On that day, my life would become immeasurably easier. And, of course, my mission would probably be over.

"Ma'am, yes, ma'am," Kinsey replied, precisely on cue. "That's exactly what happened."

Director Dyson gave a tiny nod, though I wasn't far enough into her head to be certain what she'd just confirmed. "Very well, Captain. At what point did you discover that he was indeed a parahuman? And when did this person come into it?" She indicated past me, to Ned. "And who is he?"

I took a deep breath. "To answer your last question first, ma'am, we're going with the working codename Redeye. He was a random passer-by who happened to run into Night Terror before we did." Which had the virtue of being almost true. "Night Terror nearly killed him, but he underwent a Trigger event first. We heard it happening and attended the scene. Night Terror attacked us, just before Kinsey showed up and rammed him with the car." I nodded toward my legs, and the bandages thereon. "If I'd known who he was then, I certainly would have called on PRT assistance to take him down."

"Night Terror." Director Dyson rolled the name around her mouth like it had a bad taste. "That's the dead man's name?"

"The one and only," I confirmed. "Up till now, he's been a small-time creep flying under the radar, but he's always gotten off on the fear and pain he caused people. This was basically inevitable."

Her lips twisted in a harsh grimace. This sort of behaviour, unfortunately, wasn't unknown to either of us. Parahumans were renowned for taking the bad habits of humanity and escalating them to the next level. The good too, but the bad generally had more of a knock-on effect over time. "Our officers found flattened slugs around his body, and a shallow wound in his left shoulder. But you didn't kill him with a normal bullet."

"No, his shadows were solid projections," I agreed. "They gave him visual cover as well as actual. This made it virtually impossible to get a kill-shot on him until Kinsey rammed him. That gave me the chance to put him down for good."

Dyson's eyebrows drew down. "There was no kill order on him. If he was helpless, shooting him in cold blood was murder. Why didn't you call on him to surrender? And what did you do to him?"

I indicated my pistol with a nod. "Thermite round. I had two. You'll find particles of metal in his throat. The other round should be in the breech." I knew it would be, having replaced it in the gun while waiting for the PRT to arrive. "He wasn't helpless. I shot him just before he would've attacked us again. His tentacles were already forming, and I wasn't about to go for a second round with him."

Reaching across the desk, Dyson took up the Glock. Exhibiting admirable firearm safety awareness, she pointed it at neither one of us, even as she popped out the magazine and worked the slide to eject the round in question. The shiny red bullet dropped into her hand, and she held it up to the light to inspect it. "Thermite round," she said carefully. "Where, exactly, did you get thermite rounds from? I know for a fact that the PRT doesn't issue these, even to hotshot Intelligence officers. In fact, we don't even have them."

"They're not PRT issue, ma'am," I conceded. "Intelligence officers are expected to make contacts out in the field; it's a significant part of how we do what we do. There's a neutral Tinker out there who can basically create any substance that's physically possible, as well as a way to contain it and release it when needed. Thermite rounds are just one of the things he creates. I got a couple of them through a mutual contact a while ago. He'll be pleased to know how effective they are." I waited for her to query the word 'neutral', but it seemed that she'd gotten the memo about how 'rogues' were now 'neutrals'.

"You're talking about how you killed a man, Captain," she said tartly. "That's hardly a cause for celebration." However, her anger had abated considerably, and she was listening rather than accusing.

"A murderer who was perfectly willing to kill again, ma'am." I changed up my body language to be more assertive. "He might not have earned an official kill order so far, but every indication I had tells me he would've gotten there sooner rather than later." I very carefully didn't shrug. "At that moment, he was getting up again. I didn't have time for gentle measures, so I made the call."

"So you burned him to death with a mouthful of thermite." She shook her head, looking suddenly weary. "That wasn't a question, Captain. It doesn't sound as though you had any real options there."

"I do not believe I did," I agreed. "Parahumans have a way of removing the easy options, and that's not even taking crazies like Jack Slash into account."

"Isn't that the truth." For the first time, she gave me a wry smile. "I suppose the city owes you a debt of gratitude. Not that anyone will ever really find out what happened. And as this was an entirely unsanctioned mission, it's not like the PRT can actually reward you for it without sending the wrong message altogether."

"Well, to be honest, ma'am, fame is the very last thing I want." I was pleased to be able to circle back around to the truth. "I just want to do my job and get it right."

"Don't we all," she sighed. Just for a moment, I saw the tired human being looking out from behind her eyes. Then she re-engaged Director mode. "And you, Redeye. Is what she said accurate?"

This was it. If Ned wanted to fuck me over, now was his perfect opportunity. Or even if he forgot his lines. He wasn't the sharpest spoon in the drawer, and Director Dyson had a certain intensity about her.

"Uh, sure," he said. "It happened just that way. I thought that asshole was gonna kill me for sure. He tried real hard, anyway."

Again, she nodded. "I'm sure it was an unpleasant experience. What are you going to do with yourself now? I can put you in touch with the Protectorate, if you're interested in joining."

My hands ached with the effort of not tensing them. White knuckles would've been a dead giveaway, so I kept them clasped in my lap. What if he decided that the Protectorate offer was better than mine?

His hesitation didn't help in the slightest. The silence in the room stretched out, broken only by the soft ticking of the clock on the wall. I wanted to shout at Ned to say something.

"Yeah, no," Ned said at last. "Too many people know me here. Figure I might move someplace else. Start fresh."

My overly rapid heart-rate put the lie to my poker face. I'd primed him on what to say, but right up until that moment I hadn't been certain he'd remember his lines, or even if he'd still be interested in my offer. It seemed I'd picked the right strategy in appealing to his cupidity, or maybe it was just that I had an unfair advantage in knowing more about the man than Dyson did.

Not that I'd ever had any moral objection against making use of an unfair advantage.

-ooo-​

0500 Hours

A Small Airfield Outside of Seattle

A chill breeze blew across the airstrip. Landing lights shone lonely in the pre-dawn darkness. I sat in the passenger seat of the car with the door open, with Kinsey in the driver's seat. Ned paced up and down outside the car, rubbing his hands together for warmth but apparently unwilling to seek refuge in the car again.

"Are you sure they'll be okay with me lookin' like this?"

In accordance with my personal prediction, he still hadn't reverted away from his altered form. Every now and again, he would remind himself of that fact, which caused another round of insecurity. It made me wonder if his initial upgrades as Crawler had been because he was trying to kill himself rather than power himself up. Or even the later ones, for that matter.

He hadn't shown any abilities out of the ordinary (if I ignored the rough skin and glowing eyes and hands) but I made a mental note to ask Lisa about it, the next chance I got. However, I did know that every cape had the potential to cause conflict somehow, and I was sure I could leverage that once I knew the details of his personal curse.

In the meantime, of course, I just had to keep him from talking himself out of our agreement. "They'll be fine with it," I assured him, again. "These are guys who respect toughness. You're a cape." I leaned closer and lowered my voice conspiratorially. "And if they do have a problem with it, I'll come and kick their asses for being idiots."

He chuckled at that. "Yeah, I guess you just might, at that." He paced away again and looked eastward, to where the morning glow was outlining the Cascades. "I just ain't never been someone people ever looked up to, you know?"

"I actually know the feeling," I said. "But it's not something you're ever going to have to worry about ever again." I tilted my head as the breeze brought a welcome sound to my ears. "And I believe I hear your ride."

"What? Where?" He looked around, then up into the air as he finally registered the sound of the helicopter. "Where'm I goin'?"

"I'm not at liberty to say," I told him. Which sounded better than you'll find out when you get there.

"Yeah, well, thanks for stickin' your neck out for me." He came back over to the car and awkwardly held his hand out. "Nobody ever done that before."

I took it, the rough skin almost abrasive against my palm, and shook. "You've got a second chance. Don't screw it up." The chopper was a lot louder now, and I could see the blinking lights on its fuselage. "Headlights," I said to Kinsey. Obediently, he turned on the high-beams, illuminating a swathe of runway.

"I won't," Ned assured me. "I done some stupid things, but I ain't that stupid."

"Good." I leaned forward and lowered my voice. The chopper was almost overhead now, flaring its rotors to begin its descent. "One more thing. Anyone asks you about anyone you met here? You never heard any names. You don't know nothin' about nobody."

That was when he smiled, for the first time since I'd met him. At that point, I figured he thought he was seeing the actions of a kindred spirit. This, at least, was familiar to him. Comfortable. He knew what he was dealing with, or so he thought.

"I never saw your faces, I never heard your names," he confirmed. So long as I didn't screw him over, the unspoken agreement continued, he wouldn't screw me over. Not that I intended to screw him over. In that (as well as a few other particulars) I was different from most of his previous criminal associates. If he held up his end of the deal, Andrea and I would hold up mine.

"Good!" I shouted. "Go!" I'd had to raise my voice because the helicopter was less than ten feet from the cracked concrete by now, ground effect causing clouds of dust and grit to billow everywhere. I closed my door to keep the irritating particulates from stinging my face.

As the skids of the military surplus chopper fleetingly touched down, the side door slid open. Ned ran across and scrambled inside, assisted by crewmen with helmet visors pulled down to make them anonymous. Barely had he vanished inside before the side door slid shut behind him and the helicopter increased power again.

I watched as it lifted off and turned south. The glow in the east was stronger now, presaging the sunrise soon to come. When I rolled my window down, the sound of the rotors was almost inaudible once more.

Well, that's done. Letting out a sigh to release the tension I hadn't known I'd been feeling, I leaned back in my seat. "Back to the motel, Kinsey," I ordered. "Time we caught some shuteye." We were certainly long overdue for it.

"Ma'am," he agreed, starting the car. We were rolling along the road away from the airstrip when he spoke up again. "Permission to ask a question."

I was starting to doze off, or I had been until he said those words. Kinsey knew me very well, to the point that he was fully aware that he always had permission to speak his mind. Asking for permission was his way of warning me that I might not like the question. "Granted."

"Ma'am, there were things you said to Director Dyson and to me that don't match up with the facts that I've since observed," he said carefully. "Are these things I'm going to have to worry about, or am I just not cleared for them?"

That was definitely a question. I considered the answer for about half a mile, then spoke.

"Kinsey, you're almost certainly aware by now that there are interests that I'm working with, separate from the PRT. I'm not working against the PRT in any significant fashion, but in order to do my job right, there are resources I have—and need—that the PRT simply can't supply. I'd prefer to keep you separate from all this, so that you can plausibly deny anything if someone asks. Or, if all this makes you uncomfortable, let me know and I'll expedite paperwork to transfer you to whichever PRT base you wish."

There. That was the gauntlet thrown down in no uncertain fashion. I'd broached the subject once before, in a roundabout fashion. He'd replied in a satisfactory manner then, but it remained to be seen if he was still of the same mind.

When he replied, his voice was almost reproving. "Ma'am, all you needed to say was that I'm not cleared. If I asked for a transfer, you'd have to break in another orderly, and I don't wish to inflict that on anyone. You or the orderly."

He fell silent then, gradually increasing speed to bring the car up the ramp on to the freeway back into Seattle. As I pondered his words, I had to work to keep a smile off of my face. That was him saying as bluntly as possible that he didn't care about my extracurricular activities, even the ones that involved shipping freshly-triggered parahumans away on mysterious helicopters at oh-dark-thirty.

The glow to the east suddenly broke above the mountain ridge, sending spikes of intolerably bright light through the car. I pulled on my oversized sun-glasses and slid down in my seat to avoid it. "Wake me when we get to the motel," I said, and closed my eyes.

"Yes, ma'am."

-ooo-​

Later That Day

Outside Darlene Hobbs' House

Kinsey got out of the car and opened my door for me. It was a struggle for me to get out, but Kinsey had thoughtfully produced my walking-stick from somewhere, and that made all the difference. "Will you be needing assistance, ma'am?" he asked anyway.

"Thank you Kinsey, but I'll be fine." I had attended the PRT clinic once Kinsey and I'd had a solid six hours of sleep. This was in no way a slur against Ruth; she was an exemplary physician, but her tools hadn't been the best at the time. The attending physician had asked a few leading questions, to which I'd given him non-informative answers which boiled down to 'ask Director Dyson'. After that, he'd reined in his curiosity and stitched a few of the deeper cuts, then dealt with the road-rash on my hands and arms. With that and the sleep behind me, I was actually feeling in reasonable shape for the situation, if I ignored the bruising that I'd sustained.

Come to think of it, this applied to the aftermath of most of my misadventures.

Using the cane and the hand-rail, I made it up the stairs by myself. Ruth, waiting at the top of the steps, offered her arm for me to use in lieu of the hand-rail. "How are you feeling, Taylor?"

I accepted her assistance, and tried not to lean too obviously on her as we made our way into the house. The last thing I wanted to do was pull a stitch. "I've had worse. At least it's not a broken leg, this time." Along with the other life-threatening conditions I'd been suffering from after the Compound firefight. I wasn't going to say I was suffering from PTSD, but I'd been almighty glad I wasn't going on that chopper with Ned. Some memories were best left unvisited.

"There is that." She helped me sit down on the same sofa I'd used before, and I relaxed into the comfort. Kinsey took up his position beside me.

Mrs Hobbs bustled into the room with yet another tray of cookies—I was pretty sure the previous day's effort wouldn't have survived young Sammy—and eyed me with concern. "Girl," she declared. "You look like death warmed over. You sure you don't wanna lie down awhile?"

Lying down for a while didn't actually sound too bad, but I had a very rough schedule I wanted to keep to, and I could always recline the seat back in the car. "I'll be fine," I assured her. "It's not as bad as it looks."

"Captain Snow would say that if she had a two-foot length of metal sticking out of her stomach," Ruth said dryly from her chair as she took a cookie. "In fact, I believe she did something similar, once upon a time. But in this case, she's correct. So long as she doesn't get into any other scrapes until those cuts heal, of course." She punctuated her statement with a severe look at me, then took a bite out of the cookie.

"I've got no plans to do anything of the sort," I assured her, almost meekly (for me, anyway). "Kinsey's made it clear that he does the driving, which leaves me clear to sit back and relax."

"Well, good." Darlene's look of concern hadn't changed when she focused her attention me again. "Ruthie says you done got the asshole that killed lil' Pattie?"

I shot a glance at Ruth, and she nodded. "Police dragged the lake this morning, per the tip-off you gave me. They found her body."

"Oh, good." It wasn't good that she was dead, but now at least her friends and loved ones had closure. I turned back to Darlene. "Yes. I shot him right in the head. He won't be hurting your nurses ever again." Neither would Ned be stalking and harassing them, but she didn't need to know that little complicating factor. Some narratives were best kept simple.

"Thank you." She got up and came over to me, and took my hands in hers. "Cap'n Snow, you done a good thing last night, an' there ain't no way I can repay you."

Standing up was an effort, but not too much of one. "Mrs Hobbs … Darlene … I'd do it again, in a heartbeat. And call me Taylor." Disengaging my hands from hers, I gave her a hug. Her strong arms enfolded me in return, reinforcing my conviction that this had been the right thing to do.

Even absent the Crawler aspect, I hadn't been lying about being willing to do it again. While I was absolutely set on my path to save the world, I had to make sure that my sights didn't raise so high that I ended up ignoring the individual people who also needed help.

To paraphrase an old saying, what use was saving the world if I lost my humanity in the process?

End of Part 6-4​

 

[Malcanthet]

Yea like she did in canon ... Poor Taylor's humanity.

 

[Starfox5]

She can learn!

Nice fight and aftermath there. Kinsey's a treat.

 

[Ack]

She can learn!

Nice fight and aftermath there. Kinsey's a treat.

Click to shrink...

Taylor is much more fun to write with Kinsey around.

 

[Prince Charon]

Taylor is much more fun to write with Kinsey around.

Click to shrink...

I wonder if he'd still be alive and in the PRT by 2011 in something like the canon timeline (obviously if he was, they've have a totally different relationship, though).

 

[Ack]

I wonder if he'd still be alive an in the PRT by 2011 in something like the canon timeline (obviously if he was, they've have a totally different relationship, though).

Click to shrink...

In the canon timeline, he was arrested after Nice Guy left and they found the dead guy in the security office, along with evidence that files had been copied. They eventually decided he'd been Mastered, but he was considered unreliable after that and discharged from the service. He fell into a depressive cycle and committed suicide within a year.

 

[Gaemnomut]

Recoil updates are always a treat. Great chapter, I like how Ned was handled. It would be cool if we could see more of him (and maybe some of Andrea's other projects) eventually.

 

[Prince Charon]

In the canon timeline, he was arrested after Nice Guy left and they found the dead guy in the security office, along with evidence that files had been copied. They eventually decided he'd been Mastered, but he was considered unreliable after that and discharged from the service. He fell into a depressive cycle and committed suicide within a year.

Click to shrink...

Ouch! Not surprising, but ouch!

 

[Ack]

Ouch! Not surprising, but ouch!

Click to shrink...

Yeah, Taylor made all the difference there.

He hasn't quite worked his way through all the connotations of what may have happened, but deep down he knows he would've eaten a bullet if he couldn't do what he loved doing.

 

[Flareonflare]

Fuck me three times from sunday this is one of the best stories I HAVE EVER READ IN MY LIFE
Its better than the original Worm series that is for sure

my one skill is reading quickly and comprehending all of it, its the one thing i can be proud of, so trust me when i say this series is bloody amazing
i dont actually like most of your other work so this cant be famboyism because fuck me this story is good

fanfiction that goes pretty far into orginal work territory is always awesome to see rather than just another rewrite of the original, all the orginal characters are brilliant, and this lisa is the most lisa lisa ive ever seen done in fanfiction

Its so damn good it makes me want to offer myself as a virgin sacrifice to the great old one

 

[Ack]

Recoil



Part 7-0: Queen of Escalation​

[A/N 1: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

[A/N 2: When I started writing this fic, Ward had not yet begun, so I was unaware of the existence of Mama Mathers. However, she is a character who was around at the time so here's my take, nineteen years earlier.]

[A/N 3: Don't get too attached to her.]



Tuesday, August 9, 1994
A Motel Room in Chicago, Illinois
Christine Mathers

"Tell me; who is Taylor Snow, and what makes her tick?"

Christine perched on the edge of the bed, staring at the man in the armchair in front of her. She held one of his hands in hers, delicate fingertips probing and pushing at the tendons and bones beneath the skin. It wasn't really necessary—once they made tactile contact, that was it—but she wanted to make absolutely certain she could inflict hell and damnation on the guy if and when he needed it.

This was not the first time she'd asked this question, but hopefully it would be the last. It had been two months since she'd found out about the collapse of the Brotherhood of the Fallen and the death of her child's father (calling him her lover would be making too much of the relationship). Unable to trigger with powers herself but unwilling to merely be a brood mare for the Brotherhood, she'd made a deal with the devil—or rather, Cauldron—to get some anyway. The aftermath had been amusing; they'd thought they had her over a barrel, until they discovered that her powers would neatly circumvent any attempt to force her to adhere to the deal.

But that was less than nothing to her. With abilities of her own to complement those of four-year-old Elijah, who was sitting obediently on the bed beside her, she'd been ready to join the Brotherhood as a power in her own right. Only to find out that they'd been demolished, rendered inert, by an assault on their compound. The unfairness was staggering. All that, for nothing. Digging farther had given her a name; the one person who'd set all this in motion and provided the information that had brought down the Brotherhood.

Captain Taylor Snow, PRT Intelligence Division.

This was the person who had effectively destroyed her world. She was obviously very competent at what she did, which meant that Christine wanted to lay hands on her, to either co-opt her for her own ends or just make her die screaming. Either one was good. The rumour she'd heard—vague, but substantiated by people in the know—that Snow had been the one to predict the Behemoth's attack on New York only firmed her determination to get to Snow by one means or another.

Adding to her aggravation was the fact that by the time she got this information, Snow was out of the hospital once more. So Christine had gone to the PRT itself for information. While she herself could only find out things second-hand, Elijah's presence meant she could interrogate people directly and leave them unable to talk about the experience.

Or at least, so she'd thought. A couple of close calls had taught her one additional lesson: even normals could out-think Thinkers, if they had enough time and effort to work at it. Apparently the PRT had a thing called the Snow Protocols (that damned Captain Snow again!) which outlined ways and means to defeat attempted infiltration by Masters and Strangers, and they were really, irritatingly, effective.

Worse, even in those instances where the Snow Protocols weren't being followed to the letter, it seemed computer security was being tightened up right across the PRT, making it much harder for a Mastered minion to access information they weren't cleared for. The last straw came when she was informed that Captain Snow (again!) was behind this push for security as well. Did that damn woman keep her nose out of anything?

So she had to work very, very carefully. Each step she took had to be double and triple checked. Where normally she would've been able to catch up with Snow in a matter of days (having a superior officer simply order her to report to him would have been the easiest thing in the world, except that the goddamn fucking Snow Protocols actually had a section about that, too!) she needed to track the woman down step by step. It also didn't help that some of her previous sources of information, while still under Elijah's influence, had noticed the effects of her ability on them and voluntarily handed themselves in as per the Protocols. So from here on in she would have to order people to ignore that aspect as well. So. Very. Irritating.

Which was why she was now in Chicago, Snow's home base. Not in the PRT building itself; that would've been too risky. Fortunately for her aims, there was one person in the local Intelligence division who apparently considered himself too smart to need to follow the Snow Protocols exactly. A Lieutenant Robert Gordon, to be precise. This was apparently because he disliked Snow almost as much as she did, which was an interesting data point, though probably nothing she could make further use of. It was possible that she wouldn't even have needed Elijah to tell him to 'do what Mama says', but her way was much more secure. Luring Gordon to her motel room had been just the start; the information he could potentially give her was invaluable.

Well, once she winnowed out the chaff.

"She's a know-it-all bitch," Gordon said venomously. "She's got no respect for seniority, and in my personal experience, she's been promoted far beyond her capabilities. I can't prove it but in my expert opinion, there's been an unconscionable level of undue influence from above. She even got me reduced by a pay grade on a nothing charge. I was lucky not to be cashiered altogether." His tone and expression showed the level of unhappiness he felt about this.

"That's nice." Christine rolled her eyes. Gordon's prejudices were showing; if Captain Snow's efforts were merely the result of luck and sleeping with the boss, she was Alexandria in disguise. "What does she do that's different, and where can I find her?"

"Okay, then." He began to tick points off on his fingers. "Hamilton gave her a stand-alone computer that's set up to link in with the PRT intranet anywhere in the country. What she's using it for, I have no idea, except maybe to rub our noses in the fact that the boss likes her better than he likes the rest of us. Apparently it's some bullshit project that's so high-level that I wasn't cleared for it even when I was a captain and she was a shitty little lieutenant. Also, there's that fucking sergeant who follows her everywhere. She gets him as an orderly for no fucking reason I can understand. The man was Mastered by a member of the Slaughterhouse Nine, so he's clearly compromised. In my opinion, he should've been let go as soon as that little shit-show was over." He took a deep breath. "At the moment? She's travelling around the country on some kind of grand tour. Not under anyone's direct orders, just going where she wants, because Hamilton said so. What kind of a way is that to run the fucking PRT? If I was in charge, let me tell you …."

"Stop." Christine's voice was mild, but Gordon shut up. "Where. Is. She. Right. Now?"

He brightened. "I can actually tell you that. We got this memo awhile ago, which we're not supposed to share around, but all it really says is that until the entire PRT net is absolutely secure, we can't share top-secret sensitive data with some departments. The memo gets updated every time a department gets its secure rating improved. Snow's supposedly doing all this work on them, but I can't see it. She's probably just flicking a few switches and telling them it's magically become secure or something." He paused for thought.

Christine's opinion of Gordon was going down all the time. Some PRT departments had been laughably easy for her minions to gain access to, while others did a good impression of a stone wall. If the man couldn't see the effect that Captain Snow was having on the overall system, he wasn't nearly as smart as he thought he was. But then, it had been a snap to get him under Elijah's influence, so he definitely wasn't that smart.

"Got it." Gordon looked smug. "Yesterday, Department Twenty reported in that they'd been given the green light by Snow. Everywhere south of that is already secure, so she'll probably be heading east again."

"Where is Department Twenty, and what's east of that?" Christine reflected that dealing with nerds was always the same. They might think they'd answered questions fully, but sometimes crucial details were lacking.

"Oh, Twenty covers the Seattle-Tacoma area," Gordon replied easily. "The nearest one east of that is … hmm. That'll be Department Forty-One. Omaha, Nebraska."

"Omaha?" That didn't sound close to Seattle. "Are they driving all that way?" Geography wasn't her strong suit, but Nebraska had to be nearly halfway across the country from Washington.

Gordon made a rude noise with his lips. "Pfft, as if. If I know her—" He really didn't, she reflected. "—she'll be calling on her Daddy Warbucks to pay for a plane ticket. First class, hot and cold running stewardesses."

"I see. And what's the next closest PRT department? After that, I mean? And which ones of these aren't on the secure list?" Would Snow be visiting them, she meant.

"The next closest would be Department Forty-Six. Minneapolis. Either way, it's a four-hour flight or a two-day drive. And no, nothing between here and Seattle is on the secure list."

"And after Minneapolis, Chicago?" She thought she had things right.

He frowned. "No, actually. Milwaukee has Department Thirty-One. Then it's Chicago."

"Is it likely that she'll skip Chicago if she's in the area?" she asked. At last, she was nearing the endgame. And the best thing was, she didn't even have to lure her prey into her clutches. Snow would come to her instead of yanking her all over the map!

He actually thought about that instead of coming up with a knee-jerk response. "Probably not." Then of course he had to ruin it. "She needs to flatter Hamilton's ego before she moves on. I bet she'll be on her knees under his desk before—"

"Stop." She didn't need to listen to his juvenile imaginings. "So, you figure she'll be coming here, to the PRT building, in the next two to four days?"

Again, he paused for thought. "Assume two to three days for a car driving from Seattle to Omaha. Then another two to four days to get here via Omaha, Minneapolis and Milwaukee. So a minimum of two days if she's flying from Seattle, to a week at the outside if she's driving."

"Hmm." He seemed to be able to work that sort of thing out well enough. "I can stand to stay here for a week. You won't tell anyone about me, of course." It was tempting to try to get her hooks into Hamilton himself; from Gordon's words, the man knew more about Snow than anyone except perhaps her orderly. But as lax as Gordon had been about the Snow Protocols, his boss was apparently a stickler for them. The building itself, if it was anything like the other PRT departments that the Protocols had been enacted on, would be locked up tighter than a bull's ass in fly season, with multiple layers of both human and mechanical security. It was technically possible for her to get in, but she would almost certainly leave traces. She decided to not risk burning her bridges until she had her prize in sight. Gordon would deliver Snow to her, and then all bets would be off.

Gordon nodded, as eager as a terrier going walkies. "Sure thing."

<><>​

Eppley Airfield
Omaha, Nebraska
Captain Taylor Snow
1730 Central Daylight Time

"Fine," I grumbled, but not loudly enough for anyone around us to hear over the rumbling and clanking of the baggage carousel. "You were right. That was a lot easier than driving halfway across the country." Business class was better than economy by a long shot, especially since neither Kinsey nor I was on the short side. As Andrea had joked once upon a time, if he flexed they had to sell him a second seat. "I'm just glad Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton okayed a seat upgrade."

"Director Dyson would no doubt have passed on details of your injuries, ma'am," Kinsey pointed out. "Also, that a dangerous parahuman was taken off the streets of Seattle, mainly due to your efforts."

"And of course, she'll be officially backdating the paperwork to make it into a sanctioned PRT operation," I agreed. It was no skin off my nose; they could take all the glory they wanted from that. I didn't need yet another medal for my collection. Every one so far had been earned with blood and sweat and tears; some more than others.

"Which lets you off the hook for acting outside PRT purview." Kinsey picked up his baggage, which completed the set. The last of mine had already trundled through a minute or so earlier.

Leaning on the walking stick—Kinsey had acquired it for the aftermath of the Battle of the Compound, but it was showing its utility once more—I watched as he stacked the cases on the luggage trolley. There were more than a few of them, but he managed it. I would have offered to carry something, but he would have pulled rank on me; specifically, the unwritten regulation stating that a healthy sergeant outranked an injured captain when it came to carrying heavy loads.

He was right, of course. Director Dyson could've made trouble for me for going off the reservation with Kinsey and Ruth, but she'd chosen to let the PRT look good instead. I didn't blame her; I would've made the same choice. After ripping a strip off my subordinate in private, which she'd also done. After all, one could not allow the lower ranks to think they could get away with everything.

I straightened my jacket as I followed Kinsey through the crowd, the luggage-trolley doing a reasonable impression of an icebreaker in the Arctic. He'd chosen to store his hand-cannon in the checked luggage, mainly for comfort's sake, while I'd kept mine on me. While we were travelling in civvies, we were still both serving members of the PRT, which counted as a law-enforcement agency. I'd spoken privately to the airline security staff and handed over my federal concealed-carry pass for official examination; I suspected some of them had never even seen one before. At some point, I had no doubt, someone had placed a call to Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton or even Director Rankine. Whichever one it was had clearly agreed that I was responsible enough to go armed on board.

Nothing had eventuated over the course of the flight, which was as to be expected. That didn't bother me; it was better to have a firearm and not need it than vice versa. In my line of work, I'd been through far too many close calls to be entirely comfortable when I was unable to get my hands on an effective means of making the other guy dead. The average Joe Public was a different story; without my level of training and discipline, ready access to firearms was often a tragedy waiting to happen.

We got to the row of rental-car desks without incident, and I went up to the Avis counter. I found them a little pretentious and self-important, but the PRT went with them more often than not. As I'd expected, the arrangements had already been made, and I walked away with a map and a set of keys. The keys went to Kinsey and I kept the map; they'd tried to give me a packet of informational pamphlets about hiring cars as well, but I dropped them back on the desk. I'd read them all before, anyway.

We located the car with little effort, and Kinsey went through his usual routine of checking it for unauthorised explosive devices before we got in. I wasn't the only one for whom paranoia had become a way of life; or rather, a way of staying alive. The longer we kept at our job of making the inner workings of the PRT inaccessible to those with no business being there, the more likely somebody was to attempt to put an end to it, and us.

Before we went anywhere, Kinsey opened his case and extracted the locked box containing his pistol. The seals we'd both attached to it were still intact, and he broke them and unlocked the case. We both felt a little easier when he had the weapon on him; the more firepower we could throw downrange at an unexpected attacker, the better. And he was getting back up to scratch on the firing range, as was I. Practise, after all, made perfect.

The essentials dealt with, we drove out of Eppley Field and headed southwest into the city proper. I propped my walking stick against my knee, and made myself useful with the map. Neither of us had been to Omaha before, but it wasn't hard to locate the PRT building and then direct Kinsey toward it. Kinsey took his time, as the traffic was a little on the heavy side. In between giving directions, I fiddled with the radio (turned low) to find a local station we both liked.

Our arrival at the regional PRT building for Omaha was anticlimactic. I was pleased to note that they were taking the Snow Protocols seriously (though I wished they could have chosen any other name for it) even as they passed us through into the building. We were met by Director Janssen; a shortish man, running to weight with a noticeable comb-over. From his manner, I gathered that he was another political appointee. An administrator, not a soldier.

Also from his manner, it seemed that he either wasn't in the loop concerning everything I'd done or he hadn't done his homework. "Good afternoon, Captain Snow," he said, his attitude slightly puzzled. "I was told to expect you, but not this soon." His eyes took in my walking stick. "Are you injured?"

"Nothing to speak of," I said, my right hand drifting slightly closer to my open jacket. Had he not been informed about how I got hurt, or was this really him? "I've been injured worse playing hockey."

Alongside me, Kinsey went to full alert. The phrase 'nothing to speak of' indicated a potential Master/Stranger situation, and 'hockey' said that it was the person I was talking to who was under suspicion. If anyone around us made a hostile move, we could have our guns out and ready in under a second.

"Hockey—?" Janssen blinked, then the penny dropped. "Oh, shit. No, we're good. I've been busy, and I haven't been fully keeping up with what's going on in Dyson's neck of the woods."

'Neck of the woods' was an all-clear code. I relaxed, fractionally. "Oh. Good. Yes, I've got minor lacerations to my legs. They've been treated. All I've got to do is change the dressings regularly. A run-in with a nasty piece of work in Seattle, in between my other duties." I hadn't relaxed totally yet—that could've been a legitimate slip, but it may not have.

He winced. "I think I heard something about that. Night Terror, right? You were involved in that operation? I didn't know you were combat ops."

Kinsey and I both breathed a little easier. He knows, but not all the details. It's probably him. "I'm not," I confirmed. "But I've got combat experience, especially with small-unit tactics. More importantly, I'm a woman. Night Terror was targeting nurses."

"Ah." Janssen nodded. "Got it." He grimaced. "Going out as a decoy, with no armour, has to be unpleasant. You have my profound admiration. I don't know that I could ever do it."

I shrugged with one shoulder. "I've been in worse situations. It was over pretty quickly, and I had good backup. The bad guy died, and the good guys lived. Trust me, it could've gone a lot worse."

"And thus, the PRT motto in a nutshell. 'It could've gone a lot worse.'" He gave me a lopsided grin. "I'll get someone to show you to the quarters you'll be staying in. When will you want to have a look at our systems?"

"First thing tomorrow," I decided. The twentieth was still over a week and a half away, and the itinerary I'd roughed out had about a day of wiggle room built in. I could still get to Brockton Bay on time. "It's going to take me a few hours, and I'd prefer to be fresh when I start."

"Certainly," he said with a nod. "I'll be happy once we're back in the green. It was unpleasant to find out that all sorts of lowlives could've been rifling through our systems without us being any the wiser."

"They may well still be," I said as Kinsey took up the bulk of our cases once more. Another guard carried the remainder. "But as of tomorrow, that's done with."

<><>​

Wednesday, August 10
PRT Department 41
Omaha, Nebraska
1505 Hours

"Well, that's that," I decided, entering the command to clear the cache in my computer. "Your system is as secure as it's going to get, at least until the next upgrade. I've left instructions on how to keep it that way. Have you got a dedicated systems admin yet?"

"Not yet, but we'll be getting one," admitted Janssen. He shook his head admiringly. "I'm not bad with computers, but I can't fathom half what you were doing there. How did you get so good?"

"I started young," I told him truthfully but unhelpfully. "It's a talent. Maybe it goes hand in hand with intel work in general." Which it really did, but not in the way he probably thought I meant.

He nodded wisely. "I suppose that makes sense. I'm not good at that side of matters, either. I prefer to just send out directives and let the experts figure out how to make it happen."

Leaning on my cane, I got to my feet, then hit the button to power down my computer altogether. "If you have any problems, leave a message with Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton in Chicago. I touch base with him regularly. In fact, I'll be passing through there in the next couple of days."

"Ah, yes, Brian." Janssen smiled. "We've chatted from time to time. He was the one who told me in no uncertain terms to stand back and let you work your magic."

"I wouldn't call it magic, sir." Leaning the cane against the desk, in easy range if I needed to grab it and steady myself, I started to pull the various cords preparatory for packing the computer up for travel. "I have my skillsets and you have yours. They say magic just consists of knowing that one extra fact."

"Well, Captain Snow, if it makes my life easier, I'm willing to call it whatever you want." He tilted his head. "Is it true you once knocked out that formidable sergeant of yours?"

I snorted. It seemed Director Janssen had been reading up on my jacket. "That's a little bit of an exaggeration. He was under a Master effect, but it was weakened because the Master was in another room and distracted. I engaged him and he fought back, but I was able to get the drop on him. Mainly because he was pushing back against the Master influence. I stunned Kinsey long enough to get cuffs on him, but I wouldn't say I knocked him out. And ever since then, I've been training regularly with him. I don't win our spars all that often. When I do, I know I've earned it. And I've never taken him down as easily as that first time."

"I see." Leaning close, he lowered his voice. "My security chief went ballistic at me when he reviewed the footage of you coming in last night. Tell me; how close did I come to being shot?"

I looked him in the eye. "You weren't armed, so not close at all. If you'd ordered the guards to do something stupid, I would've gone for non-lethal wounds. But you gave me the all-clear signal, so Kinsey and I stood down." I didn't mention what we both knew; specifically, 'non-lethal' was a dubious concept when dealing with firearms. Even a leg or arm shot could turn bad.

He shook his head. "Captain Snow, you give me hope for the future of the PRT. And, I say this with the greatest of respect, you also scare the living bejeezus out of me. I think I'll be giving the Protocols another brush-up tonight." He headed for the door, then paused and turned. "Safe travels, Captain Snow."

"Thank you, sir." I continued to pack up my equipment. One more day; one more computer system.

<><>​

The trip from Omaha to Des Moines via I-80 East took two hours; we stopped over to stretch our legs and get something to eat. The sun was nearly down to the horizon when we left again, heading north on I-35. As the tyres rumbled over the asphalt, it finally set and dusk spread over the vast Iowa sky. Kinsey flicked the lights on and we drove on through the gathering darkness.

We rolled into Minneapolis at about half past seven. Part of the reason for the stop in Des Moines had been to get a map for Minneapolis; we'd gotten adept at this on our extended road trip around the country. Interesting fact: it's almost always possible to buy maps for the next city over. I personally would've found smartphones easier to use, but they were still years away, and the map option years more.

Director McKinley was pleased to see us; there were no almost-alarms as in Omaha. We got our gear squared away, utilised the gym for a light spar to work out the kinks, then had a shower and a meal before falling into bed. I rose early the next morning, and spent half an hour in the shooting range while Kinsey got my computer set up. He knew what went where, and how to check for tampering, but he freely confessed that he had no idea how to use the thing. That was fine; I wasn't keeping him around for his leet hacking skillz. Having someone at my back, willing and able to perform extreme mayhem at need, was good enough for me.

Following the shooting practice (I was still improving, thank you very much) I showered and breakfasted, then sat down at my terminal. Hitting the power button, I booted it up and connected to the local system … and, very quietly, began to swear. The more I looked around, the more the computer system looked as though it had been hit with a bomb. Electronically, of course, which was perhaps worse. This wasn't the work of a casual vandal. Someone had come back repeatedly to screw this system up as hard as they could. At least three viruses had been through here, maybe more.

No wonder McKinley had seemed pleased to see me. I didn't know whether he knew how bad it was, or just thought it was some random glitch. Metaphorically rolling up my sleeves, I set to work. This was going to take some time.

First, I prepared to close off the system from all outside access. If it wasn't in the building, it wasn't getting in. Before I did, though, I sent off a quick message to the general intranet, telling the PRT as a whole that Department 46 was going offline. It wasn't a request; it was just a general courtesy call. But then, as I was about to enter the correct command, a message popped up on my screen, ordering me to cease and desist.

My eyebrows tracked upward. Really? I sent back a terse message to the effect that 46 was going offline. No ifs or buts.

DO NOT TAKE DEPT 46 OFFLINE. BY ORDER OF CHIEF DIRECTOR.

I snorted at that, and reached across to turn the printer on. Then I typed in a command to send the dialogue so far, and any farther dialogue, to come out as hardcopy. Then I picked up the phone beside the computer and entered the number for Rebecca Costa-Brown's office phone.

NICE TO CHAT WITH YOU AGAIN, CHIEF DIRECTOR, I typed. IS THAT OFFER STILL OPEN? One corner of my mouth quirked in a grin. I wondered what they'd think of that.

The phone rang, then it was picked up. "Who is this?" It was definitely Director Costa-Brown's voice. Unless she had a body double who could do her voice as well. To be honest, I would not have put it past her.

"Sorry to disturb you, ma'am. This is Captain Snow."

"Captain Snow, good morning. You're in Minneapolis, I see. What can I do for you?"

"I have someone within this system claiming to be you. I presume it isn't?"

There was a brief pause, which I interpreted as her taking time out to bang her head on the desk. "No, it certainly is not. Hunt the rodent down. Email me with the details. Carry on." She hung up, and I put the phone down as well.

I hadn't thought it was her, but it was always good to check. Another notation popped up on my screen.

OFFER WILL BE RESCINDED IF YOU DISOBEY ORDERS. CEASE AND DESIST IMMEDIATELY.

At the same time, a window opened, and I saw the virus they were trying to infect my computer with. I clicked on one of the options that came up in response, and one of the several antivirus programs Lisa had helped me write went to work. It savaged the virus, tore it to shreds, then went through the remains for any useful information. Such as where the attacker was coming from.

NAUGHTY, NAUGHTY, I typed. MY TURN. The location information was coded into a virus of my own, which I cheerfully launched in return. Once that was away, I swiftly closed off every outside port. This took three tries, as someone had coded in a backdoor that forced two ports to remain open even while pretending to be closed. I killed the code and shut the ports. Neither was I worried about infecting Minneapolis with an unstoppable virus; for one thing, 1994 Minneapolis was far less computerised than the same city in 2011. Secondly, the virus had a 'bee-sting' limiter built in; if it tried to jump to a second system, it would gut itself and crash.

Methodically, I began to go through the system, repairing file structures where I could and deleting trash and junk data where it got in the way. Another virus tried to go active as I disturbed it, but my system identified it and squashed it before I even needed to react. I hummed to myself as I worked; the humming gradually settled into the rhythms of the music I'd once used for my self-hypnosis.

<><>​

"Okay, that was hilarious." Lisa smirked as she strapped on the hang-glider. "The look on that guy's face when his system went down in flames? Classic as fuck." She pulled one of her ever-present tablets from a pocket and showed me the footage. He was in his mid-twenties, unshaven with his hair pulled back in a ponytail. I could tell the exact moment when he realised things were going badly wrong, as his eyes widened and his jaw dropped. Just as he leaped toward the wall to bodily pull the power plug, Lisa's voice blared from the speakers: "So long, sucker!" That was when smoke started coiling up from the computer case. The footage ended with the guy standing there, plug in hand, staring at his trashed computer.

I rolled my eyes even while I checked my own straps. They were all secure, as was the heavy shotgun dangling from my shoulder. You just had to put that in, didn't you?

She slid the tablet back into the thigh pocket. "Well, wouldn't you?"

I couldn't deny it. You could've at least put in a quote from a movie, like Stallone in The Terminator. 'Hasta la vista, baby.'

Carefully, she checked on each of her straps, as I had done. "Nah. I'd have him say something like 'Hasta la virus'. Just to fuck with the guy."

I burst out laughing. Okay, yeah. That would suit so much better. Then I looked around. We stood on a familiar cliff-top, with stone towers reaching up through the jungle here and there. In the sky before us, angular-winged shapes wheeled and dived. Back to the extreme hang-gliding, I see.

"Well, you haven't been yet," she pointed out logically. "You can't knock it 'til you've tried it."

There are many things I don't need to try to know they'll probably turn out badly for me, I countered. Smoking. Alcoholism. Hard drugs. Skydiving without a parachute. Kayaking across the Atlantic. Arm-wrestling Lung. The list goes on.

"Well, you more or less tried that last one, as I recall," she said, her eyes twinkling with amusement. "You survived, didn't you?"

Only because you guys turned up, and Rachel's dogs wrecked his shit. I glanced over my shoulder, then grabbed for my shotgun. We have company.

Lisa looked around as well, to see the half-dozen raptors, brightly-coloured feathers flared widely, running toward us in a staggered formation. Their jaws were open wide and their claws were extended. "Oh, hey. Don't worry about them. I'm ready to go."

Okay, then. Releasing my shotgun, I grabbed the frame of my hang-glider. Side by side, we ran for the cliff edge, then leaped over the side.

Behind us, I heard screeching and turned my head to look as my gliding surfaces caught the air. Two of the raptors had managed to stop in time; the other four had run right off the edge in their eagerness to catch us, and were now plummeting toward the jungle canopy far below. They were frantically flapping their feathered arms. It wasn't doing any good.

I straightened out into level flight, then caught an updraft. Alongside me, not thirty feet away, Lisa was laughing her head off. Lifting my legs, I slotted them into the sling that was waiting there for them.

"Did you see that?" she called out, her tone still mirthful. "That was amazing!"

I notice they still haven't evolved flight, I pointed out, though it had been kind of funny, in a slapstick way.

"They'll probably get to it sooner or later," she agreed, then jerked her head up to indicate something in front of us. "Now this is something we do have to deal with."

I looked as well, to see a pair of pteranodons dropping out of the sky toward us. One was heading for me and the other for Lisa. Even at this distance, I could see the razor-sharp claws and the long, wicked beak. Again, I reached for the shotgun, and worked the slide. The meaty k-chak as a round fed into the chamber was comforting to hear. Beanbag rounds?

"Nope!" Lisa began to bank away slightly. "Double-ought buck!"

Well, that was definitely playing with the big boys. I dived a little to get some speed, then pulled the nose up just as my attacker came within reasonable shotgun range. Taking both hands off the frame for a moment, I snuggled the shotgun into my cheek, lined up the firearm, and waited for him to enter my sight picture. He did; I squeezed the trigger. The shotgun boomed, kicking at my shoulder, and the prehistoric reptile's head exploded into gore. Half a second later, Lisa also fired. I worked the slide on my weapon, then released it to straighten my line of flight. Looking over, I saw her target going down in a tangle of wings. Nice shot.

"You too!" Her eyes were bright, her lips parted with excitement. Raising her hand, she pointed. Four more were incoming. "Now it gets interesting!"

You and I are going to have a chat on the exact meaning of that word. I measured angles by eye, then banked slightly toward Lisa. Drop down a bit. I want to get behind and above you.

"Sure thing." She lost a little altitude, allowing me to slot in just above her. This made us a smaller target, forcing the pteranodons to come in closer to one another if they all wanted to attack us at the same time.

The tactic seemed to be working. Two of them came in line astern; one was probably going for Lisa and the other one for me, but the point of the maneuver was that they were both in range of Lisa's weapon. In the meantime, the other two were sheering off and banking around. I had no doubt that they were going to come in from behind.

Lisa's shotgun blasted the first one out of the sky, but when she fired again, the second one jinked aside and she only ripped a chunk out of its wing. Staggering in the air, it screeched and lunged at her with its long beak, right up until I blew its head off. But the danger wasn't over; not by a long shot. Break right now now now! At the same time, I hauled my glider around to the left, banking as hard as I dared.

She did as I said, instants before the last two came plummeting through our airspace, claws reaching out to rend and tear. I had one hand on the glider and the other on the shotgun; the instant my guy was no longer in front of Lisa, I fired one-handed. The recoil jolted all the way up my arm, but I blew a fist-sized chunk out of his torso, and he lost all further interest in the proceedings.

Then I looked over at how Lisa was doing, and swore. The last pteranodon had anticipated the move and managed to hit her glider, tearing part of one wing. She was spiralling down, fighting to maintain control while still trying to keep an eye out for the massive predator, which was swooping around for a second attempt at her. Pulling hard into the opposite bank, I angled toward them, and dived.

The pteranodon was going to get there first, coming on on Lisa's six. I cupped my hands and yelled against the wind-rush, Behind you! Then I grabbed the frame again and pushed myself into a steeper dive.

For a long moment, it seemed that she hadn't heard me, then at the last second she rolled sideways. As the pteranodon went past with a frustrated screech, she blew it out of the sky. The trouble was, that maneuver destroyed the last of her equilibrium and she started to go as well.

As her death-dive began, I caught up with her. Angling my wing over, I came down next to her. She was already slashing her straps with a wicked-looking survival knife. The last strap came free, and she swung loose, hanging on to her glider's control frame. Dropping the knife, she held her arm out. Her wrist slapped into my hand, and I locked my grip on to it. We let her stricken glider go; our main concern now was getting down to the ground safely. For a given definition of 'safely'.

I pulled the nose up, converting every bit of the speed I'd built up back into lift. The jungle canopy loomed up at us, and the airframe creaked under the unexpected weight, but we turned the dive into a long swoop. Treetop leaves brushed Lisa's boots, and then we were flying over a river. It was wide, and there were large crocodilians swimming back and forth, but on the far side there was some clear ground to land on.

With Lisa acting as both weight and drag on my glider, and me unable to make proper course corrections due to holding her, we were very wobbly crossing the river. Our speed dropped away, getting perilously close to the stall point. A huge toothy maw burst out of the water and snapped shut inches below Lisa's dangling feet; she eeped and pulled her knees up to her chest.

And then we were over dry land once more. Lisa touched down first, and I let her go. I landed next, running to a stop. Turning, I unstrapped myself from the glider and walked back to where Lisa was lying on her back in the soft grass, laughing her head off.

"That was amazing!" she cackled. "We've got to do that again, sometime!"

Leaning down, I helped her to her feet. I really think you're becoming an adrenaline junkie.

Still giggling, she brushed herself off. "Well, duh. Wouldn't you be?"

She had a point. Well, I should probably be getting back.

"True." She smiled up at me. "Oh, and just by the way? He lives in his parents' basement, and they won't be back 'til eight thirty."

"Really." That opened all sorts of options for me.

"Uh huh. Kiss before you go?"

Her lips tasted of dust and blood. A tiny insect brushed my eyelashes and I blinked.

<><>​

Leaning back in my chair, I took a deep breath and stretched. Vertebrae in my back cracked and popped, and I frowned. Glancing at the clock, I did a double-take. "Holy crap, seven in the evening?" No wonder I felt cramped. Getting up out of the chair, I steadied myself on the desk as I worked my spine one way and then the other.

"Yes, ma'am." Kinsey's voice came from behind me. I turned to look at him, and he indicated an MRE and a bottle of water beside me. "From the way you were swearing, I suspected this one was worse than most."

"You can definitely say that again," I grumbled. "There was a guy in the system while I was there. He wasn't even a black-hat hacker. Just a vandal who wanted to cause damage and stick it to the Man." There was a folded piece of paper on the desk. Picking it up, I read it. It was my handwriting, giving a name—Troy—as well as an address, and quite a bit more. As I recalled what Lisa had told me, I smiled slowly.

"Sergeant, how do you feel about helping me go put the put the fear of God into someone?"

His return look was utterly deadpan. "Ma'am, it would be my genuine pleasure."

<><>​

My watch showed three minutes before eight as Kinsey pulled the car to a halt. We were parked on a suburban street, between two street-lights. The house we wanted was down the block and around the corner. I turned to Kinsey. "Last chance to step back," I said. "I'm about to do something not entirely legal, but if you stay here, you don't have to be a part of it."

By way of reply, Kinsey opened his car door and got out. He rounded the car and opened my door for me while I was still getting my walking stick sorted. "Ma'am," he said firmly, "if you say this person needs to be roughed up, then I will accept your judgement on the matter."

I nodded. "Understood." With his assistance, I climbed out of the car. The long period of sitting hadn't done my legs any favours, but I was getting better. Though I was feeling much more energetic from the food and water that Kinsey had insisted I have before we came out.

We started off down the sidewalk, moving at a casual pace. Both of us were in casual clothes with light jackets; it was a little breezy, but without any of the chill that winter would bring. We were also wearing gloves, for obvious reasons. Walking helped me firm my stride, even without the stick. I just had to make sure I didn't move too fast and pull my stitches. That would probably get me yelled at by the sickbay attendant.

The house was a typical suburban model; two floors, with (as Lisa had intimated) a basement, where our target lived. We moved up to the front door, and I pointed at the peep-hole. I knocked and stood waiting, holding my head so my face was partially shaded from the porch light. Kinsey stood off to the side.

It took a few minutes for Troy to reach the door; the almost imperceptible dot of light coming through from inside was blocked as he presumably looked out at me. I could imagine his confusion. What was a woman doing on his doorstep at eight in the evening? But he was a nerd, and a guy, so curiosity overcame his natural caution and I heard the door lock disengage. Slowly, it creaked open, and I saw him peeking out at me. He looked exactly as I'd seen in Lisa's video, only slightly more frazzled.

"Uh, hello?" he asked more than said. "Look, whoever you are, I'm kinda busy right now—"

For all that he was a big guy, Kinsey could move very fast when he had to. He came around from the side, shoving the door open and latching his hand around Troy's neck. Moving with unstoppable force, he advanced into the house. I left the walking stick propped against the door frame and followed them in, pushing the door shut behind me.

When I caught up with them, Troy was in an armchair, kept there by Kinsey's grip on his neck. "Hi," I said, almost casually. "Troy, yes?" When he nodded almost involuntarily, I smiled. "Oh, good. We've got the right person. So, I want you to listen very carefully."

"Who are you?" rasped Troy. "What are you doing in my home?"

"Delivering a message," I replied. "Message is as follows: don't mess with the PRT. Because we know your name, we know your face, and we know where you live. I also know that you have a totally trashed computer in the basement right next to your collection of Star Wars action figures—still missing Boba Fett, by the way—and that you'll be getting a replacement from your friend Peter, who also goes by the hacker name Total Anarchy One Zero One. Also, that you keep your weed stash in the cargo bay of your scale model of the Millennium Falcon. When you smoke up, you call it 'using the Force'."

His had eyes widened farther and farther as I spoke, until white was showing all the way around the irises. "How—how do you know all that?" he croaked.

I showed my teeth. "I'm PRT Intelligence. We know more about you than you know about yourself. If you ever try this stunt again, I will know, and I will come back. And I'll know exactly where to find you, just like this time." I pulled my pistol and placed the muzzle to the middle of his forehead. His eyes tracked up toward it, and he stopped breathing. "And next time, it won't be just your computer that ends up non-functional. One more time: don't mess with the PRT." Leaning very close, I whispered, "Do you understand me?"

A whimper escaped his throat, and I caught the scent of urine in the air. Glancing down, I saw a spreading dark stain on his crotch. "Oh, good," I said. "It looks like you do understand me." Turning to Kinsey, I nodded, then stepped back as I put my pistol away. "We're done here."

Returning the nod, Kinsey released Troy's throat, then hooked his foot under the front edge of the armchair and heaved upward. The entire chair went over backward, spilling the unfortunate Troy on the floor beyond. We turned and left the house; considerately, I closed the door behind us. Taking up my walking stick, I led the way back to the car at a rather more rapid pace than we'd approached the house. Wasting no time, we got in the car and drove away; Kinsey kept to the speed limit all the way.

"Well, that was interesting," he observed in a noncommittal way. "Masterfully done, if I do say so myself, ma'am. I'm not even going to ask how you learned those details about him."

"It's like I said," I replied lightly. "I'm PRT Intelligence. We work in mysterious ways." I paused for a moment. Lisa hadn't been able to give me a definitive reading on how Troy would react to the intimidation, but she'd posited a high probability that he'd do everything to distance himself from any PRT hacking events from then on. However, it was always good to get a second opinion. "Think he'll call the cops or the local PRT on us?"

Kinsey snorted. "You already know the answer to that one, ma'am. We didn't leave any traces in the house, and he knows you're aware of his hacker contacts and his drug use. He's already not inclined to speak to the authorities and if the cops do get involved, you have more on him than he does on you. And he probably thinks this was a sanctioned op by the PRT, which means he's going to do everything he can to avoid attracting our attention from now on."

"Which works for me, and no doubt works for Director McKinley," I agreed. "Is the car packed? Despite the fact that you're probably right about him, it's almost certainly a good idea to leave town tonight."

He smiled. "Way ahead of you, ma'am. I took care of that while you were briefing Director McKinley on what needed to be done to get the computer system up to scratch again."

I nodded. It was good to know that Kinsey and I were still on the same wavelength. "He was pleased to know he could use it again. Another satisfied customer, I guess. Next stop Milwaukee?"

"Next stop Milwaukee," agreed the burly sergeant.

<><>​

Thursday, August 11
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
PRT Department 31
0903 Hours Central Daylight Time

"You'd be Captain Snow, am I correct?"

Looking around from the computer terminal, I pushed myself carefully to my feet. "Yes, ma'am. Director Leland?"

"Correct." Connie Leland was ethnically Asian and about as stocky as Emily Piggot, but her accent was pure Wisconsin. She held out her hand to shake. "I'm pleased to meet you. Director McKinley messaged me this morning to tell me how much better his computer system's been working since you dealt with it."

I shook her hand. "I'm not altogether surprised. There were signs that a semi-professional hacker had been making regular forays into the system. Every time they tried to fix it, he broke it again. I locked the doors and put all the furniture back in place." Fortunately, a fair number of files had been 'lost' when the system lost the ability to refer to them, but not actually overwritten. Lisa, working through me, had been able to locate them and integrate them back into the overall file structure. Some were still missing, but nothing essential to the operation of the system.

"Oh, my." She grimaced. "I hope our system isn't so badly damaged?"

"Hardly." I sat down again and waved at the screen. "It looks like one or two people may have snooped, but they were locked out in the last upgrade and they haven't been able to sneak back in. I'm just going to do my usual top-to-bottom, to make sure everything's working as normal. It's amazing what gets left switched to the wrong setting if people aren't paying attention."

She nodded. "I've seen that myself. Well, I just wanted to check in and see how you were doing. How do you like Milwaukee so far?"

I had to chuckle at that. "I'm not laughing at you, ma'am. Nearly everyone asks me that, and I barely get to see their cities. I'm always either just leaving or just arriving. I don't even know Chicago that well, and I'm based there."

"Oh?" She tilted her head. "Where are you from, then?"

"Brockton Bay." I leaned back in my chair. "It doesn't have a PRT department assigned to it—" Yet. "—or I would've opted for there instead."

"I've heard of that place." She raised her eyebrows. "Is it as strange as they say?"

"We have a few gangs, yes," I admitted. "But it's all small-time crime; everyone keeps their heads down, even the Teeth. Local heroes plus a few visiting Protectorate capes from Boston keep everyone honest. Nobody wants to get the attention of the big dogs, after all." In my time, this had changed once Lung and Kaiser hit the scene; they'd been powerful enough to push back against multiple heroes and win. But for now, the gangs weren't quite troublesome enough to root out.

I didn't intend to let it get that far out of control, this time around. Not on my watch.

<><>​

We left Milwaukee while it was still daylight, the mid-afternoon sun flooding in through my window instead of Kinsey's for a change. Chicago was less than a hundred miles down the coast of Lake Michigan, and I figured we'd make it in under two hours. Before sundown, even.

"I'm presuming there were no problems like they were having in Minneapolis, ma'am?" Kinsey spoke casually, his hands relaxed on the wheel.

"Nothing that I could see, no." I leaned back in my seat and sighed. "I am going to be so glad by the time we get the last system up and running properly. And no, I'm not looking forward to flying out to Honolulu to see what sort of mess they've made of it out there."

Kinsey made a noise of mild amusement. "That's the price of being the resident expert, ma'am. I'm guessing you've tried training others to do what you can do?"

My sigh was all aggravation, this time. "Yes. It's all there, in black and white. But finding PRT personnel who are cleared to look through those systems, who have the background just to be able to learn what I've got to teach them, and to do it inside of two months, seems to be virtually impossible. It'll actually be easier and quicker for me to do all the checkups myself. Maintaining the systems after I get them into working order, that's the easy part." I glanced over at him. "You've been training recruits in CQC for years now. How long would it take you to teach someone to be as good as you, not just adequate?"

He was silent for a time. "Years," he admitted. "Getting someone to be good, that's not hard. Training someone to be as good as you are, that's not easy. Though you're a very apt pupil, ma'am," he hastened to say. "But training someone to be able to do everything I can do, as well as I can do it? Years."

"Mmm-hmm," I agreed. "And that's the problem."

Silence fell; I turned up the radio. We rolled south down I-94.

<><>​

Chicago, Illinois
PRT Department 4
Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton's Office
1705 Hours

I rapped on the door and waited. For this occasion, I'd changed into regular undress blues, which Kinsey had somehow kept ironed with a razor crease, despite all our travels. The man, I decided, was capable of minor miracles.

"Enter!" I heard from within.

Opening the door, I stepped inside. Coming to attention, I saluted. "Captain Snow reporting, sir."

Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton looked up at me with a broadening smile, and lazily returned the salute. "Good to see you, Snow. Close the door and come in."

"Sir." I pushed the door all the way shut and moved over to the desk, where I assumed parade rest. "It's good to see you too, sir." And it was. If his hairline was a little more receding (in his case, it was in full retreat, down the back of his scalp) and his moustache a little bushier, that was to be understood. Behind his glasses, his gaze was as sharp as ever. "How have things been here?"

"Controlled chaos, as per normal." He made a back and forth movement with his hand. "There's been a rash of hits with your Protocols; personnel noticing odd things influencing their behaviour and handing themselves in to custody voluntarily. Your improved computer systems have also caught a few would-be hackers, and we've passed their details on to the FBI. I understand you had an incident of that sort in Minneapolis?"

"Yes, sir. The system had been pretty well trashed, and I was preparing to secure it, and there was a hacker in there at the time. He attempted to pass himself off as the Chief Director. I ascertained that he wasn't, booted him from the system, and locked the door behind him."

Hamilton's eyes twinkled from behind his glasses. "I received word that you'd called the Chief Director on her office line and asked her that very question. Do I need to know how you got that number?"

"She gave it to me, the last time she attempted to recruit me for her Washington group." I shrugged. "It didn't seem important at the time."

He waved a hand genially. "Perfectly understandable. Was there anything else?"

I hesitated for a moment, then forged ahead. "Sir, this isn't just a social call. I have a favour to ask. A really big one."

"And now we come to the crux of this meeting." He sat up in his chair. "How big a favour are you speaking of?"

This was going to be the fun bit. "I need to chair a meeting of the core Protectorate heroes by late October. Alexandria, Legend, Eidolon, Hero. Just those four. It's about the matter we've been keeping under the table. About where it comes from and how it might possibly be sent back there, for good."

Absolute silence fell over the office. A fly buzzed briefly, then shut up and slunk away silently. Hamilton's eyes bored into me like diamond drills. I stood there and bore his scrutiny, trying not to feel so shitty. Hamilton was a good man, and he'd gone to bat for me more often than I could count. He didn't deserve to be lied to like this.

The trouble was, as dedicated as I knew him to be toward the cause of good and right, I worried that he might consider some prices too high to pay. More pragmatically, with him all unknowing about what I had planned, it would be much easier to keep the secret. I just hoped his career would survive the way I eventually intended to leave the PRT. When all my lies were exposed, I hoped he wouldn't hate me.

But even if I knew that was going to be the case, I'd still have to go ahead with it. I had sacrificed many other things for my goals, and I would sacrifice many more things. The benevolent regard of Lieutenant-Colonel Brian Hamilton was just one more regret along the way.

"I'm not going to ask if you are serious, Snow." His voice was low and controlled. "You don't joke about things like that. I will ask, however, why late October? Chief Director Costa-Brown already holds you in somewhat exasperated high esteem. If I presented that request to her, the Protectorate would be assembled for your meeting so fast there would be sonic booms involved."

And now for the lie. "I have the framework for what I want to say, sir. I can see the outline. I want to spend the intervening time solidifying my data so that at the time I don't look like a total crackpot."

He snorted. "After New York, nobody at that level is going to consider you a crackpot. But I see your point. The more information, the better." A concerned expression crossed his face. "You don't think it will strike again before then?"

I shook my head. "No, sir. All my data so far tells me that it'll be in the first week of November. Possibly the thirty-first of October, but no earlier than that. Southern hemisphere, eastern hemisphere. Nowhere near the continental United States, this time."

He looked relieved, then vaguely guilty; possibly at feeling relieved. "That's good for us … but bad of course, for whoever does get hit."

"Yes, sir." I grimaced. "I wish I had more to give you. But anything more would be real guesswork, rather than educated guesswork. What I've got so far covers half of Africa, most of India, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, half of Antarctica, and about a thousand islands of various sizes. I need to narrow that down."

"At least we don't have to worry about Antarctica," he noted with wry humour. "There's not enough people there for it to bother with."

"I'm not ruling it out, sir." My voice was serious; I had to make him think I was considering the idea. "What if it decided to melt part of the ice-cap? How much conflict would a six-foot rise in the overall sea level cause in the world at large?"

His look of sudden realisation would have been funny, if we hadn't been talking about the potential deaths of millions of people. "God damn it, Snow," he growled. "Surely it's not that powerful?"

I looked him straight in the eye. "I don't know for a fact that it's not. For all we know, it might just be flexing. Playing. Sandbagging." Which was basically the truth.

He shook his head. "I don't know what would be worse; having you tell me about this sort of thing, or living in blissful ignorance and finding out too late."

"Well, with luck it won't be too late to do something about it," I reminded him. "If I can get the information I need, we might just have the key for ending it once and for all."

Standing up from behind the desk, he came around and placed his hands on my shoulders. "And if you can pull that off, Snow, I'm going to damn well nominate you for a Medal of Honor. And you will stand there, and smile for the cameras, and accept it."

I ducked my head away. "Sir, you know I prefer to do my work from the background."

He nodded with an aggravated sigh. Letting me go, he folded his arms and leaned back against his desk. "I know, and you're my best analyst by far because of it. Nobody else could have pulled off what you've done."

"I do what I can, sir." I raised my eyebrows. "So you can arrange that meeting?"

He snorted and went back around his desk. "I believe there's a saying about bears and woods that you might be familiar with. Get me the date that you're most comfortable with, and I'll make sure it gets arranged." He nodded to me with an avuncular smile. "If there's nothing more, Snow?"

"No, sir, nothing that I can think of."

"Very well. Dismissed."

"Sir, yes, sir."

I came to attention and saluted, then turned and left his office. Kinsey had been waiting in the ready room down the corridor; I gathered him in by eye and we kept going. The plan was to collect the car from the parking lot and move it to on-base housing, where we would stay for the night. In the morning, of course, we would head south to Louisville, in Kentucky. With any luck, I would be able to avoid running into anyone I knew, if only so I didn't have to answer awkward questions as to why I was using a walking stick.

So of course, who else would we meet in the lobby but the one man I wanted to avoid most of all. Robbie Gordon himself. As we stepped out of the elevator, the person he was talking to at the desk actually pointed in our direction, and he turned and smiled. A little to my surprise, he'd grown a beard in the meantime; it filled out his face and added a few years to his apparent age, but I was willing to bet he was still the same asshole underneath.

"Captain Snow!" he greeted me, all full of good humour and cheer. "It's so nice to see you again!"

"Hello …" I paused, checking his rank insignia, just in case he'd somehow managed to hit Major in the time I'd been away. My eyebrows rose as I saw what was actually there. " … Lieutenant Gordon?" Well, shit. Looks like that anonymous call did the trick.

"Sadly, yes," he sighed. "But these things happen. Easy come, easy go." He paused, and I fully expected him to continue with a barb at my expense. "So, how have you been?" His eyes travelled down the length of my body, then flicked to the walking stick. "What happened there?"

I was immediately on guard. Robbie Gordon had been nothing but nice almost the whole time I'd known him; at least, on the surface. But I'd found out afterward that the friendliness had all been a sham intended to lure me into his bed, which made sense of a few things that had been puzzling me, and almost caused me to go back and beat the crap out of him. Now that I was back, the faux bonhomie and good cheer made me wonder if he thought he could start where he'd left off and succeed this time. If so, you're out of luck in a big way.

"I assisted the PRT in Seattle with a stakeout," I said, giving the cover story. "The parahuman we were after got a hit in on me before we took it down. He'd already killed several women."

"Well, damn." He whistled softly. "Listen, I was just on the way out. I have a friend waiting for me. Did you want to come and say hello? I'm sure she'd be absolutely thrilled to meet you." He leaned closer and lowered his voice conspiratorially. "She's a big fan."

I glanced at Kinsey, and got a blank stare back. He had no more idea of what Robbie had planned than I did. Could it be that he'd actually learned from his experiences and moved on? After all, the bullshit story about me being involved with Hamilton had been handed to the ATF two months ago. "You've … met someone?" I asked hesitantly.

"Oh, yes." He nodded enthusiastically. "Christine's wonderful. And she's got a baby son, Elijah. He's a real bossy-boots." His face broke into a fond smile. "I'm sure you'll get along great with both of them. I've told Christine all about you … well, the unclassified bits, anyway. Like I said, she's a real fan."

I had no idea how to handle this. He wasn't making a play for me at all. This was too weird. He actually had a girlfriend? I supposed it was possible; he was good looking, after all. Maybe getting hammered for the contraband had caused him to re-evaluate his life choices. And with enough of a run-up and a strong tailwind, pigs might fly too. In my personal experience, people only changed for the better when they had absolutely no choice otherwise.

On the other hand, Kinsey and I were going out to the parking lot to get our car anyway. I figured we could say hello to this Christine, admire her child, then go on our way. It wasn't as though Robbie could follow us to on-base housing. And even if it turned into a shit-show, such as if Robbie's new girlfriend actually wanted to abuse us for being so mean to him, we could always just walk away.

"Sure," I said. "Let's go."

As we started from the lobby, Kinsey interrogated me by eye, with a flick toward the hire car. I shook my head. I preferred to keep him with me for the moment, just in case I needed a witness for whatever transpired between myself, Robbie, and Christine. With a very brief nod, he moved up alongside me, matching my pace. We followed Robbie toward a sedan; the late afternoon sun showed a person sitting in it. No … two people. A woman and a child. Well, at least he was telling the truth about that part.

As we approached, Christine got out. She looked maybe eighteen or nineteen, but on the skinny side. Not naturally skinny, like me, but as though she'd missed more than a few meals. Her hair bore that out; cut long, it had the pale wispy look common to people who had undergone severe illness or malnutrition when young. Her son looked about three or four, but he already appeared to be more robust than her.

Letting go his mother's hand, the kid headed straight for Kinsey, which surprised me a little. The bulk and size of the man tended to put people off him. Even grown men kept their distance. But the child, and now his mother, seemed to have no fear of him. Probably because he's wearing the same uniform as Robbie.

When the kid got close, Kinsey crouched down to get closer to his eye level. Half a pace behind him, I was keeping an eye on Robbie, just in case he wanted to pull some bullshit play after all. "Hello, Elijah," Kinsey said, in as close to a gentle tone as he could manage. Trust him to remember the kid's name. "I'm James."

"Hello," piped Elijah. "You gotta do what Mama says."

I snorted with amusement. Robbie had said he was a bossy-boots.

"Hello, James," Christine said. "You take care of my boy for a moment. I need to speak to Taylor."

That was taking things a step too far. "Ma'am," I said to the woman, "no. With all due respect—"

"Yes, ma'am," Kinsey replied, straightening up with Elijah in his arms.

What in the living fuck? Kinsey had never gone directly against my wishes, ever. Not in a situation like this. "Kinsey!" I shouted, my hand diving into my jacket for my pistol. The shoulder holster wasn't regulation wear for undress blues, but I liked having a firearm on hand, so to speak. "Put that—"

For the second time in a row, I was interrupted as Robbie cannoned into my side, grabbing my gun arm. "Not this time, Snow," he grunted. "You're—"

Turning on the spot, I rammed the head of my walking stick up under his jaw, then twirled it in midair and drove the hardened tip into his throat. He gagged and let go, stumbling backward. I caught my balance, then brought the pistol up and around. The woman was a Master; it was the only explanation. She was clear of Kinsey, and I had a round in the chamber.

The world dissolved into chaos. There were a dozen Kinseys, two dozen Christines, and a howling in my ears that drowned out everything. Then all I could see was her face, the pale skin and eyes, the wispy hair, as she sneered at me. "You're mine," she said, and her voice shook my world. "You killed my people. I'm going to kill you. One scream at a time."

I fell to my knees on the rough asphalt, then recalled the pistol still in my hand. I couldn't shoot, because I didn't know where Kinsey was, but I could raise the alarm. Pointing the Glock straight up, I only got one shot away before a smashing blow struck me in the solar plexus. Gagging, I fell back, trying not to vomit. I tried to sweep the stick around, to find my assaillant, but a slim hand caught me by the wrist. That was a good start; if I could find out where the rest of her body was, I could put bullets into her.

Releasing the stick, I twisted my wrist to grab hers, then swung my legs around to try for a sweep. Blind and deaf I might be, but I'd been in worse situations. This bitch was going to learn—

Fire consumed my hand, flaring up my arm. My fingers could no longer grasp anything; I didn't even know if I was still holding the Glock. Pain, more intense than almost anything I'd ever felt, blasted through my consciousness. Almost. Bakuda's pain bomb had been worse. I gambled on her wrist still being in my hand, and for her being right-handed, and I threw all my effort into a lunge forward. At best, I would head-butt her; at worst, I might slow her down a little.

I must have done something, because the worst of the pain dropped away, and I heard more than a solid roar in my ears. "—fucking cow. You will fucking regret that. When I order this oaf of yours to dislocate your arms, then rip them clean off, you're going to feel every last—"

BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM

My ears were ringing now, but at least I could see and hear again. The pain receded from my nerve endings, and I saw the woman lying next to me like a broken doll. Several large exit wounds, including one in the side of her head, explained why she was no longer in control of my sensorium. Kinsey, still holding the child, had his pistol held straight-armed toward where Christine had been standing; spent brass littered the asphalt nearby, and smoke curled from the muzzle.

I took a deep shuddering breath. "Kinsey," I began. "Put—"

The kid stared at his mother's corpse, then at Kinsey. "You killed Mama!" he shrieked. "I hate you! You should die!"

And Kinsey's gun muzzle began to move up to his own head. That was when I realised one more fact.

The kid's a Master, too.

Through sheer fluke, my own pistol was still in my hand. I was in a bad shooting position, and my nerves were still shaking from the agony that Christine had just put me through. But my training had drilled into me over and over: it didn't matter. A good soldier got up and kept going. Soldier, shut up and soldier. So I flung out my arm and fired, three shots as fast as I could squeeze the trigger.

The first one missed. The second one clipped the kid's ear. The third one … dead centre. In every sense of the word.

Kinsey hesitated, the heavy pistol now jammed up under his chin. I fired twice more. By the time the last shot died away, there wasn't a target there to be serviced any more.

Slowly, Kinsey's arms fell to his sides. The pistol clattered to the asphalt, as the child fell bonelessly to his other side. He dropped to his knees.

Over the ringing in my ears, I gradually became aware of the sounds of sirens and running boots. Looking around, I saw armoured vans and armed men pouring out on to the parking lot. There were a whole lot of rifles, and they were all pointed in our direction. Mainly my direction, as it happened, as I was the only one still holding a weapon.

Carefully, I laid the Glock down on the asphalt and shuffled away from it on my knees. My recent wounds protested, but I told them to suck it up. A little pain later on was totally worth not being shot right now. Lacing my fingers behind my head, I waited for them to come take me into custody. A side-glance told me that Robbie still wasn't moving. Was he even breathing? I couldn't tell.

As the PRT troopers surrounded me, all I could think was that I should've listened more closely to my instincts. I was right. It did turn into a shit-show.

End of Part 7-0​

[A/N: There is a reason why Kinsey pulled that off. It will be explained next chapter. Mwahaha.]

 

[Simonbob]

As for why Kinsey could shoot her, well, the only order given was "Hello, James," Christine said. "You take care of my boy for a moment. I need to speak to Taylor.".


She never said "Don't hurt me" or anything like it.


Mind control has it's limits.

 

[SamueLewis]

Great chapter, it's always nice to see Recoil in alerts feed.

So, to summarize the situation: catatonic (?) Kinsey, dead/unconscious Gordon, two shot up civilians (woman and a kid) and Captain Snow in the middle with a smoking gun... First responders were probably unprepared for Taylor's usual Thursday.

 

[Starfox5]

Mama Mather and Valefor? Nice double-kill! Good riddance to those scumbags.

 

[macdjord]

I wasn't keeping him around for his leet hacking skillz.

Click to shrink...

I'm quite certain Kinsey is perfectly capable of hacking L33t into as many pieces as the good captain should desire.

"Now it gets interesting!"

You and I are going to have a chat on the exact meaning of that word.

Click to shrink...

" 'Oh god, oh god, we're all going to die'?"

Drop down a bit. I want to get behind and above you.

Click to shrink...

That's what he said.

Mama Mather and Valefor? Nice double-kill! Good riddance to those scumbags.

Click to shrink...

One scumbag, and one four-year-old who would have, in another life, grown up into a scumbag.

 

[Ack]

I'm quite certain Kinsey is perfectly capable of hacking L33t into as many pieces as the good captain should desire.

Click to shrink...

Meh, one good punch to the face would do just as well.

" 'Oh god, oh god, we're all going to die'?"

Click to shrink...

Nice Firefly reference. Very apropos.

That's what he said.

Click to shrink...

Somewhere, Andrea Campbell felt a vast disturbance in the Force as the opportunity for making the perfect dirty joke was left undone.

One scumbag, and one four-year-old who would have, in another life, grown up into a scumbag.

Click to shrink...

Yeah. Hard choices. Taylor makes them.

 

[Impartial Panic]

Well that's going to be a bitch load of paperwork.

 

[SlickRCBD]

I'm more curious why Taylor did that intimidation thing with the hacker instead of having him arrested properly.
She had all she needed to get a warrant and to get him arrested. Why take the risk intimidating him?

 

[Ack]

I'm more curious why Taylor did that intimidation thing with the hacker instead of having him arrested properly.
She had all she needed to get a warrant and to get him arrested. Why take the risk intimidating him?

Click to shrink...

Because arrests are relatively low-key and get exactly one person (also, sending the virus to destroy his computer both broke a few laws and destroyed the evidence that he'd actually done it).

Putting the word into the hacker community that PRT Intelligence will melt your computer, kick your door in (not literally, but that's what he'll say) and put a gun in your face, while quoting facts from your life that nobody else knows? That shit will spread like wildfire.

Appropriate conclusion? PRT Intelligence has Thinkers who will track you down, Tinkers who will fry your rig, and very scary people who are willing to shoot you in the face, in your own living room.

Result? "Fuck that shit, I'm out."

It'll be worth a hundred arrests.

 

[SlickRCBD]

Because arrests are relatively low-key and get exactly one person (also, sending the virus to destroy his computer both broke a few laws and destroyed the evidence that he'd actually done it).

Putting the word into the hacker community that PRT Intelligence will melt your computer, kick your door in (not literally, but that's what he'll say) and put a gun in your face, while quoting facts from your life that nobody else knows? That shit will spread like wildfire.

Appropriate conclusion? PRT Intelligence has Thinkers who will track you down, Tinkers who will fry your rig, and very scary people who are willing to shoot you in the face, in your own living room.

Result? "Fuck that shit, I'm out."

It'll be worth a hundred arrests.

Click to shrink...

Thank you for the clarification.
I should have mentioned the virus frying the computer part as well, as I meant to include that with the knocking on the door intimidation part.
There seemed to be no need for illegal activities there, they could have arrested him completely above board, and I did not understand why she took the path she did.
With just about everything else in the story, there were good reasons.

 

[Ack]

Thank you for the clarification.
I should have mentioned the virus frying the computer part as well, as I meant to include that with the knocking on the door intimidation part.
There seemed to be no need for illegal activities there, they could have arrested him completely above board, and I did not understand why she took the path she did.
With just about everything else in the story, there were good reasons.

Click to shrink...

Well, like I said, if they'd just blocked him out and quietly arrested him, the rest of the hacker community would've shrugged and kept pecking away at the PRT.

This way? He's free and clear, but he's going to spread the word. And it will only grow in the telling.

 

[macdjord]

Well, like I said, if they'd just blocked him out and quietly arrested him, the rest of the hacker community would've shrugged and kept pecking away at the PRT.

This way? He's free and clear, but he's going to spread the word. And it will only grow in the telling.

Click to shrink...

Though to really sell it, she'll have to do something at least one, better yet two, more times. There will be people who hear the story and think he's full of shit and they can do better; if they all come back saying 'Yeah, I took a run at the PRT. Didn't get in, place's locked up tighter than a [crude phrase of choice], but there's no magic Intel spook banging down the door.' then the original guy will end up just being a lame crank. It needs to be reinforced - it needn't be as dramatic as this one; a noisy, public arrest, preferably by SWAT, would do - in order to become accepted fact.

Once that's done, it ought to be self-sustaining, so long as the PRT does maintain good overall security with few successful penetrations; ordinary enforcement will keep it going, with every routine attempt at backtracking becoming, in the cracker's mind, a narrow and desperate escape, and every black hat caught and prosecuted by ordinary police being 'Well, of course; the idiot's just lucky PRT Intel didn't think it worthwhile to handle it personally - I hear that's why Crash Override dropped off the net last month, you know?'.

 

[Ack]

Though to really sell it, she'll have to do something at least one, better yet two, more times. There will be people who hear the story and think he's full of shit and they can do better; if they all come back saying 'Yeah, I took a run at the PRT. Didn't get in, place's locked up tighter than a [crude phrase of choice], but there's no magic Intel spook banging down the door.' then the original guy will end up just being a lame crank. It needs to be reinforced - it needn't be as dramatic as this one; a noisy, public arrest, preferably by SWAT, would do - in order to become accepted fact.

Once that's done, it ought to be self-sustaining, so long as the PRT does maintain good overall security with few successful penetrations; ordinary enforcement will keep it going, with every routine attempt at backtracking becoming, in the cracker's mind, a narrow and desperate escape, and every black hat caught and prosecuted by ordinary police being 'Well, of course; the idiot's just lucky PRT Intel didn't think it worthwhile to handle it personally - I hear that's why Crash Override dropped off the net last month, you know?'.

Click to shrink...

You have a good point. Taylor might have to make a point of doing that again.

 

[SlickRCBD]

You have a good point. Taylor might have to make a point of doing that again.

Click to shrink...

True. Although that Hackers reference was Zero Cool.
It doesn't have to be Taylor, just a few big, public take-downs or somebody else doing something similar a few times.


Also, the frying thing should not have worked. There should be no way to fry a PC's hardware with a virus.
You can erase the boot sector on the hard drive, scramble all the data, and possibly erase/overwrite the BIOS, but no way to cause the hardware to smoke like that.
Tinkers might be able to do it, but tinkers are bullshit. Thinkers could just erase everything on the computer.

 

[macdjord]

Also, the frying thing should not have worked. There should be no way to fry a PC's hardware with a virus.
You can erase the boot sector on the hard drive, scramble all the data, and possibly erase/overwrite the BIOS, but no way to cause the hardware to smoke like that.

Click to shrink...

Usually.