Chapter 1: The Group Project

"You can't, you know, bullshit it?" asked Sophia. "What are nerds even good for?"

I shot her a harsh glare that only seemed to amuse her. What did she expect from me? Magic? Madison, the other member of our cursed group, tapped her pencil idly against the sheet of notebook paper upon our shared desk, on which she had written a copy of all three relevant paragraphs any of us had managed to scrape from PHO.

Calm. I was calm. No need to murder Sophia if I was calm, right? My costume would be ready in a week or two, and then all of this would seem so petty and pointless. I'd be fighting actual crime. Maybe I could even make a difference, and forget about Sophia and Madison and this stupid "cross-functional" class of Gladly's. Given his seeming delight in teaching it, the class had almost certainly been his idea. Still, it could be worse: Emma could be in our group, instead of one group over.

Another calming breath, along with a quick glare at Gladly for good measure—he didn't notice—and I gathered myself for a reply to Sophia, my second-least favorite person in the world.

"These three paragraphs?" I said, pointing at the sheet of paper and interrupting Madison's incessant tapping. "It's all we've found on PHO. We have to fill fifteen pages. Have you ever written a fifteen page paper? Because I haven't, and as you put it, I'm a 'nerd.' So no, Sophia, I can't 'bullshit.' Can't make something from nothing."

"Clearly you can't," said Emma from her team's table, twisting in her chair to make a show of glancing me up and down. At least her group had been assigned a well-known cape. There was plenty to be found on Miss Militia, from PHO to newspaper articles to television segments; the TV segments would be particularly useful for the presentation we'd have to give when the assignment was complete.

Our team's topic should have been nearly as easy. Given our villain's reputation—hadn't everyone heard of her?—I had hoped we'd find plenty. Unfortunately, we were not so lucky. Lustrum was, somehow, unknown.

"I thought you were supposed to be smart, Taylor," Emma continued. Why did she bother with bothering me? Didn't she have her own project to focus on? "What would your moth—"

"Emma," said Madison, "Don't you have your own group?"

I never thought I'd think this, but… thanks, Madison. I guess group projects counted for something, and in this case, the project counted for a full third of our class grades. Madison and Sophia were stuck with me, and I was stuck with them. I wasn't sure how I'd stop myself from sending black widows after them.

Madison turned back to Sophia and I, and the small desk we were seated around. All Winslow classrooms were cramped, but this one was more so, with its chairs gathered in clusters of three or four to a desk. It was an uncomfortable arrangement, with no room beneath the desk for us to put our legs without knocking our knees against each others'. Sophia's knees seemed particularly sharp, but at least she didn't seem to enjoy ramming them into mine; I supposed it must hurt her, too.

Thankfully, this class hadn't started until mid-semester. I couldn't imagine walking in, first week back from the hospital, to find I'd been partnered with two of the very people who had put me there.

"And this is all you found?" I asked them. "Just what's on PHO?"

I wasn't really surprised. I'd not found much else, either. Sophia shrugged and leaned back in her chair, wincing as her knees again rammed into mine. Her hands fiddled with the eraser of a mechanical pencil. A piece of the eraser broke off. She looked down at it, nonplussed.

"I asked around on the forums," said Madison, defensively. "But nobody said anything, except for how nobody was saying anything. So unless we want to write that it was a Simurgh plot…"

In spite of myself, I snorted.

The broken piece of eraser hit me in the face. I shot Sophia a quick glare. Another piece of eraser was already on the table. Her index finger prepared to flick it— But Madison's hand slammed down over hers and stopped her.

"I don't think 'it was a Simurgh plot' would fill fifteen pages," I said. "And it wouldn't make a very good presentation, either, unless we just made the whole thing a bunch of pictures of the Simurgh."

This time Madison snorted.

"We'd have to censor it," she said.

Sophia extricated her hand from under Madison's. She left the eraser on the table, and began fiddling with her mechanical pencil instead.

"We could check the newspapers," said Sophia, twisting the bit of lead jutting from the pencil's tip. "There has to be something."

Like I hadn't tried that. I was a 'nerd,' after all, wasn't I? I'd done a search, both with the library's online search, and a few newspapers' own search tools.

"Nothing," I said. "Not in The Brockton World, not in The Paraporter, not in The Boston Globe. And if any of them did have anything on her, a normal search engine should have picked it up, shouldn't it have?"

"Really?" asked Sophia, leaning forward, suddenly interested. "Nothing?"

I shook my head, and Madison quirked her head in that annoying way she often did, with that stupid little smile.

"That's wrong," said Sophia.

"Wrong?" What did she mean, 'Wrong?' I knew how to search—

"Capes usually get lots of coverage," she said, a little smirk of a smile that didn't really make sense pulling at her lips. "Even the smaller ones. Shadow Stalker's not so huge, but even she's had at least one front-pager, and a handful of articles."

"Really?" I asked. A moment later, I realized that Madison had asked the question with me.

"Lustrum shouldn't be any different," said Sophia. "She was strong. Strong enough they had to cage her. Better still, she was scandalous. They'd salivate."

She tapped the sheet of notebook paper lying on the desk. I glanced at it, and frowned slightly at Madison's neat handwriting with the hearts over the 'i's instead of dots.

"I checked," I released. "Nothing."

"Really," said Sophia, more of a skeptical statement than a question. "You searched through—" she glanced down at the paper "—ten years of newspapers, all since Tuesday?"

For a long moment, I stared at her. Did she think you had to search newspapers by hand?

"Newspapers have search tools," I said.

"So you didn't go through one by one?" she asked.

"I'm not going to search through decades of newspapers on my own," I said, indignant. "Not for you."

"Articles can be pulled," she said. "Must have been. Can't trust digital. Should be able to tell if they pulled print copies, though. Issues will be missing."

"Why?" I asked, feeling uncomfortable at the idea of such censorship. "Why would they pull issues?"

"National security," said Sophia, simply. She leaned back in her chair again, as if self-satisfied. Madison's eyebrows raised and her stupid little smile grew bigger, as if she were fascinated by this new development.

"And how would you know?" I asked.

"I know people," said Sophia, blasé.

Madison and I both looked at her expectantly, but she did not elaborate, preferring instead to sit there with that infuriating, faux-effortless smirk of hers. She was bullshitting, wasn't she?

Finally, Madison broke the silence.

"Would they know anything about Lustrum?" she asked. "These people you know? Do they work for the PRT? Do they know heroes? Could we meet with heroes? I want to meet Armsmaster, or Dauntless, or Clockblocker. Or Dauntless and Clockblocker."

Calm down, Madison. And I thought I was a cape geek. Sophia rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, maybe," she said, shrugging. Yeah, she was bullshitting. "I'll see. Should still look at the newspapers. Got to. Lustrum's big time. If there's nothing, something's wrong."

She was still leaning back in her chair, that easy, insouciant smirk as infuriating as it ever was. More infuriatingly still, she wasn't wrong. Why was there so little on Lustrum?

I made myself stop biting my lip.

"I'm not reading through thousands of newspapers," I said. Much as I might want to know why Lustrum was such an enigma, I wasn't about to search through decades of newspapers on Sophia's conspiratorial hunches. If they'd pulled articles—whoever 'they' were—why wouldn't they just pull issues, too?

"Shouldn't be thousands if we're smart about it," said Sophia. "Don't have to do it alone, anyway."

She was playing with the mechanical pencil again, and didn't bother look up to catch my quizzical expression.

"With you?" I said, not quite containing a dismissive laugh.

"Sure," she said, her voice straining to sound nonchalant. She flicked a bit of mechanical pencil lead at me, but it was so small I wouldn't have noticed it had hit me if I hadn't seen it.

"Really."

"Why not?" asked Sophia. "Group project, right?"

She glanced at Madison, who shrugged. How was I supposed to respond to that? She and her friends had caused me to be hospitalized for a week, and still hadn't let up their harassment campaign, and now she wanted to work with me?

"Fuck you."

"I don't fuck weaklings."

"Is this really—" Madison tried to interject, but Emma beat her to it, once more twisting around in her chair just to needle me.

"Drama again, Taylor?" she asked. I could tell she hadn't really been listening; her words sounded like a caricature of her normal self. "What's got her going this time? This should be an easy project. We've found plenty on Miss Militia already."

"Emma," said Madison, slowly. "Stop. And none of us have found anything, so it's obviously not an easy project."

Emma glanced at Sophia for backup, but Sophia, still slumped carelessly in her seat, merely raised an eyebrow.

The bell rang, and not a moment too soon. I wanted to punch someone. At least it was the last class of the day. Maybe I wouldn't wait to finish my spider-silk costume before making my debut… Maybe I'd go out tonight. Then again, wasn't that the sort of mistake all the starting independent capes made?

I sprung to my feet and grabbed my bag. I didn't bother laying the strap across my shoulder: I wanted to get away from Sophia and Madison as quickly as I could. Why had Gladly put the three of us together? He couldn't not know at least some of what they'd done to me. Then again, maybe he thought they'd need to let go of some of their animosity if they had to work with me, at least until the project was done. If I thought I had luck to begin with, I'd count myself lucky he hadn't put Emma in the group. Maybe he'd realized the only thing she'd ever let go was our friendship.

Still, maybe it would help. Sophia hadn't been as antagonistic, even if she'd not been nice, and Madison—

"Where do we find old newspapers?" asked Madison. How had she caught up with me? Didn't she have her own rather heavy bag? I wasn't sure how she managed to match my pace while also bouncing on her feet.

"Library, idiot," said Sophia. Great. She'd caught up, too. "They have copies of newspapers. Don't they?"

"Maybe?" I said, unable to believe I was agreeing with Sophia. I tried to walk faster, but Sophia kept up easily. I turned the corner, into the main hall. I could see the light streaming in between the doors at the end as student after student pushed them open, never really allowing them to close.

"I've never seen newspapers there," said Madison. She, at least, was a bit out-of-breath. "Our library is kind of small."

"Not the school library," I said. Now even my own voice was becoming out out-of-breath. Had all my morning runs been for nothing? I let myself slow, if only a bit. The crowd was becoming too thick to walk so quickly, anyway.

"One of the bigger ones," I continued. "Like Central Library downtown. I think they'll have copies?"

"Knows the fucking libraries," Sophia muttered.

I aimed myself through the heart of the crowd of students squeezing themselves out the doors. I knew I wouldn't lose Sophia and Madison in the crowd, but it was worth a shot—

"Hey!"

I glanced behind me. Sophia had shoved someone out of the way and they'd fallen. She didn't bother glancing back at them. I wanted to say something, or at least help the fallen student—was his name Steven? Stewart? Something with an 'S'?—but I decided against it in favor of escaping through the doors.

I shivered as I stepped outside. As poor as the heating in Winslow High was, it was still heating. It was still above freezing out, if the puddle I had to step around was any indication, but only just. My jacket was not heavy enough for the cold, but I wasn't about to put anything in my locker, so I couldn't really bring a heavy coat to school. I'd lucked out so far: we hadn't had snow since the new year. Unfortunately, that would change next week, assuming the meteorologists' predictions held up. I wasn't sure how I'd manage, but I supposed I'd have to.

The crowd of students was much less dense outside. Unfortunately, that meant Sophia and Madison found me easily. I sighed, and resigned myself to spending the afternoon with them, as I doubted they'd leave me alone.

"We've driven by Central Library before," said Madison. "It's a neat building. All those big windows."

"New," I said, feeling rather grumpy, but I felt my grumpiness had a pretty good excuse. "Opened two years ago."

"They'll have old papers?" asked Madison, she and Sophia following me as I turned us away from the school buses and towards the street, where the normal city buses stopped. It was a sad little bus stop, with a little patch of gray grass off to its side.

"New location," I clarified. "Old library."

"Don't tell me you're a nerd, too, Mads," said Sophia. "Capes are one thing, but libraries—"

She shuddered theatrically.

"I'm not 'Mads,' and don't be rude," said Madison. She turned to me. "If we stop being rude to you, will you pitch in on this project?"

"Rude?" I asked, the word coming out with a snarl as we reached the curb. "You were a bit more than 'rude' to me."

Madison looked ever-so-slightly remorseful, though it was probably just for show. Sophia only shrugged, unapologetic.

"You never fought back," she said.

I blinked at her, and again. Never fought back? Bullshit. Anytime I tried, it had only been met with worse consequences, whether from the girls or the school itself. I couldn't—

"How are we getting there, anyway?" asked Sophia. "Or are we going to stand on the curb all day? Don't tell me you have a car, Hebert. I'd be your friend if you had a car."

Lacking any words, I pointed at the sign for the bus stop. Madison flashed Sophia that annoying little smile, and Sophia seemed a bit embarrassed at not having caught on. She covered it up with a scowl.

At least Madison and Sophia had money for the bus. I wasn't about to pay for them.

Some liked to say that Brockton Bay was a city on the decline, and in many ways, it was. The city had one of the largest quantities of villains of any city, and higher still per capita, and as a result, the crime rate was quite high. But downtown Brockton Bay might as well be its own city. Only those with means lived there, and those without rarely even visited, unable to afford the high-end shops and restaurants. Dad only ever made it up for meetings, and I only for the library.

Central Library sat in the heart of downtown. A four-story glass building, it sat on a plaza accompanied by more, taller glass buildings. It had the sort of modern architecture that was trying too hard, with too many lines and swooping details, but it was nice enough inside. During the day, natural light always filled it, casting dramatic shadows across the polished concrete that I supposed was supposed to look modern. At night, the shimmering lights of the tall neighboring buildings made its way in, looking almost magical.

The downside of the giant windows, though, was that even the heroic attempts of the building's heating could not keep the freezing weather at bay.

"Wouldn't it be a lot of newspapers, though?" asked Madison. "How could they keep it all? What if there was a fire?"

She asked too many questions.

"Would warm up the place," said Sophia. How was she cold? She was still wearing her fluffy-looking parka, and that was over a knitted sweater. Madison, too, was bundled up, but didn't seem to mind the cold as much.

I was surprised when they let Madison and Sophia in. While Sophia had a library card, Madison did not. But apparently you didn't need one to enter; only to check a book out. I supposed I never showed mine when I entered, either. I'd just never really thought about it. I'd just assumed you needed one to use the library.

As soon as we were in, I found one of my favorite librarians.

"Hi, uh," I started, as I always did, trying to ignore Sophia making faces at me behind the librarian. I still wasn't sure on her name. Clara? Chloe? Claire? She was always helpful when I wanted to find something. "We were looking for old newspapers. Late nineteen nineties to early two thousands. How do we, uh…"

It turned out that the old papers were not stored as actual newspapers, but instead on microfiche, which could be read with specialized readers over in the corner of the third floor. It also turned out we needed to narrow our range a bit.

Madison pulled out the sheet of paper containing everything we knew about Lustrum, and scanned it for dates.

"Maybe April 2005? And a month before and after?" she suggested. "There's not a lot to go on. We're looking for Lustrum."

"Lustrum?" asked the librarian. "Didn't she, uh… you know…? To men, I mean, I—"

I'd never seen her so flustered before. Madison nodded for the three of us. Yes, that Lustrum.

"You looked on our site?" asked the librarian, collecting herself. She seemed to know to direct the question at me. I nodded. Of course I had.

She smiled and shook her head a bit; I must have looked a bit more indignant than I'd meant to. Madison was paying rapt attention, apparently finding the entire concept of libraries and librarians fascinating, but Sophia seemed bored, preferring to message someone on her phone. Probably Emma. She shook her head at something amusing, and her fingers tapped across the keyboard in a fast burst of a reply. Definitely Emma.

"Strange," said the librarian. "She wasn't a Master, was she? They've had us pull things about Masters, before, when their influence spread by written word. I could ask around, but we're not really supposed to talk about it. Newspapers aren't a bad route, though. May I?"

She held out her hand, and Madison quickly handed over the sheet of notebook paper. It didn't say much, other than Lustrum's approximate age, when she was active, when she was convicted, and that it had been alleged that her group was violently misandrist and had eventually escalated to castrating men.

But it also had a note on her powers. She was a Breaker, not a Master. Why would anything about her be pulled? Had she worked with a Master?

"Didn't even find what she was convicted of?" asked the librarian. "Still, April 2005's not a bad starting point, if that's when she was arrested."

We choose the same three newspapers I'd searched online—one local, one national, and one cape—and we each took a microfiche reader. They were bulky machines that looked almost like old CRT monitors, but instead worked using light projected through small translucent pieces of film, upon which the newspapers were reproduced in miniature.

I shivered again as I scanned an April 8th issue of The Brockton World. Warm air was supposed to rise, but it was even colder up on the third floor than it had been on the first. Then again, we were very near the windows.

"She was local, wasn't she?" I asked, as I made a note of the missing issues for the 9th and 10th, and began to skim yet another article about yet another skirmish between the Merchants and Empire Eighty-Eight. "You'd think there would be a bit more, even if Sophia's conspiracy theories were right."

"Was she?" asked Madison. "PHO didn't say."

"I thought she was," I said, a bit uncertain. "I think my mom mentioned her, once."

Sophia began to say something, but changed her mind. It was probably something about my mom. The thought of the imaginary words somehow still stung— but then, maybe just thinking about my mother stung.

"Who's Nesistor?" asked Sophia. "He got sentenced to the Birdcage on… ugh, I've barely even reached April yet. Sentenced under Three Strikes Protection Act."

"Three strikes?" I asked.

"Birdcage for capes who escape prison three times," said Sophia.

"Actually," said Madison, "it's for capes who've been convicted three times for anything cape-related. Passed in 1997, I think?"

Sophia grunted. She probably didn't care about the distinction. I somehow wasn't surprised that Madison knew.

"Found her!" exclaimed Madison. Sophia and I scooted our chairs over to the machine. It would have been much easier if they were rolling chairs. Instead, the metal chair legs screeched across the floors. Sophia's tangled with mine, and there were several more harsh squeaks as we extricated them from each other.

"April 29th, 2005," Madison read, "Lustrum, accused of charges ranging from drug theft in 1998 to kidnapping and assault just this month, has been convicted of all charges in the swiftest Parahuman trial we've yet seen. Most members of her gang remain at large, with rumors of a bio-tinker unconfirmed. She will arrive at the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center within the week, where she will be held indefinitely. She will not be able to appeal the sentence, as people cannot be removed from the prison for any reason. The Paraporter remains opposed to the Birdcage, as it is a violation of fundamental rights belonging to all humans regardless of their abilities."

Sophia snorted.

"Anyone strong enough to be sent to the Birdcage wouldn't have gotten caught," she said. It didn't make much sense, and I wasn't sure if it was an argument in favor of the prison or against. "Is that it? Nothing else? Should be something about the kidnapping, right? What issues were you missing?"

Madison shrugged. Glanced over at her notes again, but she didn't seem to really need to read them.

"We're all missing an issue or two around the tenth, aren't we?" said Madison. "I think you're onto something, Sophia."

If it had just been me missing issues, it could have been coincidence. But all three of us?

"A bio-tinker, like Bonesaw?" asked Madison.

"Dead, or never existed, or we'd have heard of them," said Sophia. "Or haven't you noticed? Capes can't keep quiet. Well, at least now we know a date to look for, Hebert. Nothing on the arrest, but may have something on the conviction."

Sophia's copies of The Boston Globe had nothing on the trial, but mine of The Brockton World did.

"Lustrum convicted," I skimmed. "Caught by Armsmaster, Miss Militia, and Dauntless— Dauntless was around in 2005? Once had thousands to her cause… sentenced to Birdcage for drugs, assault, kidnapping, bombing a hospital… Not that much more than Madison found."

"Yeah, Dauntless has been around for awhile," said Madison. "1990's, I think? He became less active once or twice, though, for a bit. Mid-90's and mid-2000's? A bit after this, maybe, or a bit before. They say 'cause he broke his Arclance and had to build it up again, but I think it's because he had another kid."

"A kid?" I asked.

"Another?" asked Sophia.

"There's tons of speculation. All the ones you just mentioned— well, definitely Armsmaster. Just up and disappearing, and much cheerier when he came back."

Sophia looked skeptical at the idea of a cheery Armsmaster.

"Maybe Miss Militia, too," Madison continued. "People aren't so sure about Dauntless, but Clockblocker's right there, and I mean—"

"Clockblocker?" said Sophia. "You cannot be serious."

"His power's kind of bullshit," said Madison. "Practically screams second-generation cape. And it's a Striker power. Isn't Dauntless a Striker? Powers run in families, you know."

Sophia shook her head and laughed. The sound of it was a bit too loud for the library. I hushed her, and mercifully, she lowered her voice.

"No," she said. "Just… no."

I shook my head, not sure what to make of Madison's conspiracy theories, but I wasn't sure I cared. I looked back to the screen and read through it again. The Brockton World's blurb was barely longer than The Paraporter's. Why was there so little on her? It didn't make any sense.

"But Lustrum wasn't a Master, was she?" I asked, not caring that neither of my classmates had context for my outburst. They were still arguing about Clockblocker, anyway. "She was a Breaker, right? Energy sapping, big glowing body, right? They had rumors she worked with a Tinker, but nothing about a Master. Why is there nothing…"

I read through the article a third time, trying to find any hint why it said so little, and why so little at all about Lustrum could be found. But there was nothing. No hints, no clues, no—

"Is that her?"

I jumped. Sophia was leaning over my shoulder, scrutinizing the tiny picture next to the even tinier article. I could feel her breath on my ear, too warm and humid and icky and—

Deep breath, Taylor. Stay calm. Don't kill her, don't call the swarm, don't—

Breathe.

"I'm trying very hard not to maim you," I forced out, firmly shoving Sophia out from my personal space. "It would destroy my chances at a semi-decent future. So if you would, please just stop."

Sophia looked at me with that smug, amused grin of hers, and again I found myself wanting to punch someone.

"Whatever," said Sophia as she again peered closely at the screen, although this time she kept her distance a bit better. "That her? Lustrum?"

I looked back to the screen, and to the picture of the cape being projected onto it.

"It's her article," I said, leaning back in my seat and away from Sophia.

She mirrored me, sitting back in her seat, the hard plastic of her chair creaking as she did. Her eyes drifted downwards as she seemed to consider for a moment whether to say anything. Her hand fiddled with her phone for a moment, but it wasn't actually on.

After a moment, she looked up. She tried to shrug off her indecision, but still, she looked a bit uncomfortable.

"I've think I've seen her before."