ELF


Forty-six casualties.

Fourteen dead.

My hands had started trembling shortly after I got over the embarrassment of unknowingly talking to Armsmaster. I sat on the bed, head against the wall as I struggled to breathe through quick, shallow gasps that sometimes strangled in my throat. Forty-six. I killed at least forty-six people. Armsmaster may not believe it was my fault, but still, it was my powers. I wouldn't forget that vision of a hurricane over Brockton Bay any time soon, and neither would anyone else.

Media shit storm.

Forty-six casualties.

Fourteen dead.

Fuck me.

I forced myself to take a deep breath and let it out slowly as I blinked stubborn tears away. I would not break down now. I refused to. I started hiccuping then. It was a stupid, minor annoyance, but it was such a normal problem in the face of everything else that I started laughing through my hiccups. Kurt, a family friend told me once that humor solved everything. It really didn't, it wasn't enough to fix all of this, but the nauseating mix of emotion no longer threatened to overwhelm me.

I ate the rest of my salad and picked up the orange slices. Biting into the first one surprised me. I didn't exactly have super taste so much as a super sweet tooth. If I didn't want super cavities, I was going to have to watch that. I finished it quickly, then washed my face and hands of any juicy leftovers. I had no interest in eating the tacos, and not just because of the artificial smell. Apparently, I didn't need to eat much despite going five days without. I poked the straw into the Capri Sun and sipped at it. It tasted like chemicals.

Think more, feel less. Easier said than done, but as mercurial as my moods were, some control was better than none. I was going to be okay.

Later, I heard my escort come down the short flight of stairs, two people wearing body armor before the intercom crackled to life. "Taylor, as circumstances have prevented you from submitting the form, I must ask you several questions concerning safety."

It was Armsmaster again. I smiled weakly and tried not to think about how, ironically, I was not wearing underwear under my gym pants. I quickly stuffed myself into my Aegis hoodie. "Ask away."

"Earlier, we discussed your power usage, and that it coincided with anger. Are you currently under significant emotional distress?"

Was that a serious que – no, what am I saying, it was and if he had asked it five minutes ago the answer definitely would have been yes. As it was? "Had better days, but I'll be fine."

"Do you feel you have control over your abilities?"

I was tempted to lie, but he'd been nothing but honest with me so far.

"I don't even know what all of my powers are." On the surface, there was nothing similar about the storm, the laptop, what happened to the agents, what happened to me in the van. There was only one common factor: me. "But I will do my best not to hurt anyone." Else.

He approved of my answer even if he didn't respond right away. "Accurate self-assessment is a good skill to nurture. We know the risks but in light of your cooperation," the door buzzed as the electronic lock opened. "I believe you."

Behind the door were two agents. One had his head bowed, hand to his right ear as he nodded while the other smiled at me. The blonde agent with the slight limp. A handler, I guessed. Someone familiar that I would feel comfortable with. It was probably one of the oldest tricks in the book, but it worked. She wasn't putting on much an act, just a genuinely nice person that wanted to help. I smiled back.

"What happened to your leg?" As her eyebrows inched up, my smile shifted to a smirk and I pointed at my ear. "Could hear it."

She shook her head in exasperation. "Powers." Not offended, or even that bothered. Her partner was less comfortable. I don't know if it's the way he stood with his back ramrod straight or the way that he stared like he knew he shouldn't take his eye off me that tipped me off, but I didn't like it. The woman beckoned me with a hand. "I'll tell you on the way."

"Names?" I asked as I stuffed my hands in my hoodie's front pocket.

"Annabelle." After a moment, she elbowed her partner.

He grunted. "Miller."

Annabelle was the only one to give me a first name so far.

"Nice to meet you both." I fell into step beside them. Pulling back the length of my stride was a bit awkward, but I got the hang of it. "So?"

"Right." Annabelle laughed. "It was in college, oh, twenty years back and over Christmas break I took a trip to the Alps with friends."

"Skiing?"

"Snowboarding! If you asked me anything, I would swear myself blue in the face that I knew what I was doing. And I did!" She laughed again. "Turns out the mountain knew better."

We got into the elevator where Miller silently pressed the button. We were on the first sub level and heading up to the second floor.

"It was a mild winter over there, Italy I mean, so up on the slopes it was half ice, half fresh snow which is really not a good combination." The doors closed with a ding as she chattered. The deluge was reminding me of better days in middle school. "We'd been up there all day, but I wanted just one more run even though it was getting dark and my friends wanted to go back to the hotel. I took the black diamond path, hardest course that went all the way to the base of the mountain. Never got there! Wiped on ice, broke three teeth, busted a lip, concussion and broke my ankle."

I winced as a sympathetic twinge ran down my right leg. "Never healed right?"

She shook her head. "Was up there for hours before my friends noticed I was taking too long. Had frostbite."

"Wow." We reached our destination with the usual stomach lurching stop. "That's – " The doors opened and my Dad was right there in the foyer. "Dad!"

"Taylor?" His head jerked away from the agent he'd been talking to. He looked terrible, like he dressed himself in the dark and then slept in it. Hair uncombed, bags under his eyes and he looked at me like he wasn't entirely sure where his daughter's voice had come from. My heart clenched painfully.

Yeah, that's what I'd been afraid of.

Annabelle gently pushed me out of the elevator with a hand on my back. "She's been through a lot, Mr. Hebert. Please."

"Taylor?" He repeated, his eyes tearing up. "I – "

I rushed forward and he met me with a giant hug that for once, I couldn't get enough of. I burst into tears in his shirt because I don't know if it was just because he was family that made me sensitive or that we were hugging but under my fingers I could feel my Dad bleeding grief like someone had just run him through with a rusty spike. It boiled over, chilling and burning me to the bone, and droplets were falling like ripples on a pond.

"It's me, Dad." I don't know who I was trying to convince. "It's me."

He just hugged me tighter.


"You have a delicate situation on your hands, Emily."

Emily Piggot, Director of the East-North-East branch of the Parahuman Response Team, snorted around her coffee mug. There really was nothing like caffeine, clusterfucks and understatements at half past eleven at night. Rebecca Costa-Brown didn't look any better, with hair gone fuzzy in the cool humidity of California in winter and creased floral dress shirt. The bags under her eyes were almost artful in how they emphasized just how much of a long week Costa-Brown had.

Emily had no sympathy. Brockton Bay was in fine fucking form lately. Spread the joy around.

"I don't want her in my Wards." Costa-Brown's eyebrows inched up in a wordless question. "We don't have the facilities, the budget or the personnel for a case like this. Not just – " she waved her mug at her office. "But the response. High level Shaker, at least."

"I'd advise keeping the Master Stranger rating quiet, for now."

That was a nice cherry on top of the shit sundae. "If I didn't, this whole city would go to hell in a hand basket."

"She'll scare the villains." Brown filled that sentence with so much derision, Emily could almost hear the words bounce off her floor.

It would be as if Legend made a habit of stopping by. The E88, ABB, the Merchants, etc. were so used to the balance of power and having run of the city that any threat to that would be like taking a toy from a spoiled child. Temper tantrums to prove that nothing had changed, that they weren't cowed or weak or whatever justifications deluded minds dreamed up. Give an inch, and they would take a mile. Push, and they would push back harder.

"She scares everybody."

"But she is cooperating, correct?"

"For now." That had been this week's highlight; that the media's darling 'Maelstrom' was not someone that needed to be hunted down and arrested. For now. She wasn't going to get her hopes up. That situation could turn on a polished dime.

"This is not someone we can just let loose. You know how much is riding on this, Emily. She must be in the Wards."

Except this wasn't Legend, but a teenage girl fresh off a trigger. Unstable, confused. Vulnerable.

"I know." Emily took another bitter sip of straight black coffee. "Can I count on assistance with the DA?" Because talking to lawyers never got any easier, especially when they were trying very hard to be absolutely fucking stupid on the government's behalf.

"I'm taking it out of your hands." Thank God. "I've taken the liberty of hiring representation for Hebert for all current and ongoing criminal cases. Trust your PR?"

"They do good work."

"I will leave that to you then. Do you mind if I speak to her and her father for a few minutes?"

Yes, she minded but she could also tell that wasn't a request. She hoisted herself from her seat with a stifled groan and straightened the bottom of her blouse and suit jacket. "By all means."

She walked out of her small office and knocked on her Deputy's door. "Room 24B is all set," he called back with the half muted volume that told her he was on the phone. At this time of night, it was probably his family.

"Thank you."

Time to get this fucking show on the road.

She arrived before they did, as planned. Making them wait was reserved for disciplinary action, letting the perp stew in imagined scenarios. The last thing she wanted was to increase anxiety levels here.

The girl's father was the tall, lanky type with a good eye for clothes he wasn't swimming in, sharp gunmetal grey glasses and thinning dark hair. He also looked about as tired as Emily felt with clothes so creased she suspected he slept in them and a protective hand on his daughter's shoulder. Taylor herself provoked a rare sympathetic twinge. Case 53s, often coined as 'monstrous' parahumans were those whose powers changed them to something profoundly inhuman. They had no memories, just a bowl or C shaped tattoo hinted at an origin.

From descriptions, Taylor Hebert had been tall and skinny like her father. That was all that stayed the same. She had the enviable hourglass figure, except her waist was a circumference Emily was certain would kill the average human being with hips that were similarly crushed together. Her dark eyes had been replaced with her father's green, in an alien cat eyed shape. Her proportions were too thin, too long, too sharp. If someone had told her the girl was missing memories and had a strange tattoo, she wouldn't have batted an eye. Not monstrous, but unsettling.

In a way, that she wasn't a Case53 was a shame. You can't miss what you can't remember.

Emily gestured towards the seats around the table with a refilled coffee mug. It was unremarkable as far as meeting rooms go, just a large rectangular room with a large rectangular table in the center and coffee machine in the back. The projector on the ceiling was on, but the screen behind her was mostly blank with just a smallish square in the bottom right corner occupied by Rebecca Costa-Brown's face.

"The Chief Director had a few things to say to both of you."

Taylor's vivid green eyes shifted between the faces before looking down with a bit of a chagrined expression. "Made a mess?"

"That's one way to put it," Costa-Brown said. "I'll be frank. Five days ago has been the worst setback of public opinion about parahumans for the past ten years."

Aggressive opening. Not that it wasn't true if a bit overstated, but aggressive. Emily leaned back in her chair, surreptitiously kicking off her shoes.

Danny Hebert got defensive, as she expected. His face reddened. "I find that hard to believe, with groups like the Nine around."

Countering one extreme statement with another rarely worked out well.

"Dad." Rather than being pleading or submissive like one would expect from a child addressing their angry parent, there was a tinge of command there that Danny responded to. He took in a breath with the look of someone counting, slowly, to ten.

"It is hard to believe," the Chief Director continued as if there had been no interruption. "But how often are the Nine on your mind in your day to day activities? How often do you consider your windows, or a bug going around?" Ah. Emily saw where she was going with this. As ironic as it sounded, the public was almost comfortable with villains like the Nine. Jack Slash was a crafty son of a bitch, and knew how to lay low and disappear.

Danny had figured it out too judging by his severe frown. Taylor was placid.

"The perception of control has always been a delicate balance. Five days ago, that shattered. The public now has evidence that all it takes is a prank gone wrong on the right person – " With impeccable theatrical timing, the larger screen was filled with a scene of the unnatural hurricane above Brockton Bay. "And we just lost a city."

The terror once reserved for Endbringers expanded to every potential trigger event was a fail condition for the PRT. They were far off from that yet. It was likely the knee jerk reactions would peter out and die when the media frenzy did, but in the meanwhile, it was a pain in the ass.

"The DA is considering pressing charges, and likely will."

Danny nearly leapt out of his chair. "They can't blame her for this!"

"I agree." Costa-Brown flashed Taylor a reassuring smile. "Unfortunately, it would not be about culpability, but about making an example of her. The storm lasted two days, and Taylor was interned for five. That is unusual for a trigger event by any standards and while we often excuse trigger event collateral due to trauma." She shrugged. "No one is happy with the idea of excusing a city's worth of collateral."

Technically speaking. Ellisburg was the aftermath of a protracted trigger event, Emily recalled. No, no one was happy with that idea at all.

Danny opened his mouth, but Taylor smoothly slipped in before he could speak. "How can I make this easier for you?"

Join the Wards, Emily thought, as much as she hated the idea. She did not need one more powder keg on the fire but if she had to. Well, considering how invested the Chief Director was in this, she might be able to swing some concessions and the additional resources to make this work.

"Join the Wards." Rebecca gave Emily a nod. "It is the purpose of the PRT to guide and train parahumans in responsible, legal use of their abilities. It would be an excellent first step in soothing fears."

Emily restrained herself from nodding vigorously. What she said, listen to her, couldn't have put it better myself, yadda yadda, etc., etc. Don't make this difficult for me.

Instead, Taylor frowned.

"Something…" She trailed off. A power at work, Emily assumed. Jesus H. Christ, how many abilities did the girl have? "Something about what you just said is not true."

The Directors looked at each other in mild confusion. "But it is?" Emily Piggot spoke up to Costa-Brown's defense. "New powers are frequently confusing until the particulars are figured out."

Taylor stared at her like she was a particularly clever dog that had just showed off a new trick she hadn't been expecting, and then there was a ripple of realization widening her eyes and shifting her gaze to Rebecca. "You know something she doesn't. About the PRT."

Costa-Brown took that accusation about as well as one would expect. "Emily is a director – "

"I see…vials?" Taylor's distracted murmur brutally shut the Chief Director down. "Vials with labels. Aegis. Deus. Pyla – "

Rebecca Costa-Brown vanished, replaced by a blue screen and the obnoxious warble of a dropped connection.

In the silence that followed, Emily glared over the table at Danny who looked confused and Taylor, whose eyes were closed and her face pale. She brought up her own hand and pinched the bridge of her nose.

It was too late to toss the girl out and pretend this never happened, wasn't it?

Damn.


My chair screeched across the linoleum as I stood up. My two table mates, my Dad and Annabelle, both turned their attention from the paperwork strewn across the plastic surface. Miller started paying attention again from his post by the cafeteria doors. Even people without powers had a vague sense when someone was watching them, and a yearlong bullying campaign had particularly honed mine. I could feel when his eyes snapped to that spot on the back of my head like a tense rubber band.

"Everything okay?" Annabelle asked first. She had no idea what had happened during the short-lived meeting, aside from Director Piggot calling a break and locking herself in her office. No one was any closer to figuring out what to do with me, thanks to yours truly. My handler had taken one look at my face and that ended with us in the cafeteria with hot chocolate going over the standard employment pitch for the Wards.

Teenage government sponsored superheroes. The very group I might have just completely torpedoed my chance of getting into. With nuclear warheads.

Tinkertech antimatter warheads.

"Yes," I managed to say evenly. "Just need to go to the bathroom."

Dad bobbed his head over his steaming mug, his hand squeezing mine under the table before letting go. I knew he was concerned about what had happened, less about my abilities and more what they meant for me but he didn't bring it up. It sounded bad, but we've had a lot of experience in just not talking about things we probably needed to. He didn't consciously make the decision, but he was going to stew silently in the implications to avoid worrying me.

My father and I were cut from the same cloth.

"Oh, right. I mean, right down the hall." Annabelle pointed, like she expected me to be able to see through walls. Maybe I could, but just hadn't found the switch yet. Who fucking knows at this point? "Should be able to follow the sign then."

"Thank you."

I walked out of the cafeteria with Miller behind me. I kept a tight hold of Dad's presence, for lack of a better word.

It would not be a good way to keep physical tabs on him. I realized that by the time I passed the vending machines and water fountain. The particulars were not the easiest thing to put into words. It was like trying to explain sight to someone blind from birth. How do you describe the color blue? Was this how every parahuman with a sensing power felt? Like English just didn't have the words?

My power, whatever it was exactly, it was subtle. My Dad made me notice it, but that didn't mean he was the only one I could feel once I knew what I looking for. Ripples, except they were also threads, flare guns and unorganized manila folders stuffed to bursting with papers all at once which really didn't make any sense at all, but that's how it felt.

Ugh, this is what I mean about not having the words.

To make what was probably a very poor art analogy, the world was a cardboard cutout painted white. Positive space. The sense I had was like trying to parse the negative space into a coherent picture. I don't think there even was a coherent picture, but I was saying that after having only having maybe an hour of looking. As for why it took so long to realize I even had this power?

Replace the cardboard cutout with the sun. That was me. Drowning everything else out. Dad was like the shadow of a shadow that never moved from where I 'spotted' him. Either my power didn't really work off physical distance, or distance didn't mean much.

Far as I knew, Rebecca Costa-Brown's office in the main PRT HQ was clear across the country in California. For just a little while, back in the room? I could feel her just like I could feel Dad, like she was sitting right across from me. Wariness, a lot of it but tempered with something that rang like – like brittle iron? Tired and, ruthless? Not quite. Everything about her just screamed 'intent to deceive' at me. Not lying, exactly, just not true.

Blegh. Words. I don't have them.

The Restroom sign with the little green arrow beneath the letters pointing the way was by the elevators. There was no getting out that way. On this floor at least, you needed a key card and the windows were a ticket to a nice twenty-foot drop. Even if I wanted to make a break for it, I'd be buried in agents before I reached the sidewalk.

I slipped into the bathroom without a backward glance at my shadow, Miller. Once again, I found myself standing before the mirror.

Bathrooms were kind of a safe place for me. Out of necessity, I found myself in a stall lunch period after lunch period just so I could eat in relative peace. At least with the lock on the door, and most kids out with their own friends I could avoid the bottom feeders, hanger-ons and everyone else in the mood for kicking someone when they were down to make themselves feel better. It didn't work all the time, but it was better than being out in the open at the cafeteria where I would find all kinds of junk in my hair or down my shirt. Bathrooms were safer than the classrooms where my homework would be stolen, or destroyed. Juice in my seat. Safer than the hallways.

Safer than my locker, I guess.

Absently I closed the drain and turned on the cold water. I watched the ripples flow outwards, and then bounce back from the sides muddling what had initially been a clear pattern. I glanced up at my reflection.

"So I fucked up." I hated being lied to, and something so important like the purpose of the PRT and by extension, the Protectorate superheroes? From the mouth of Rebecca Costa-Brown herself? How could I let that go? I couldn't, but that didn't mean I went about it the right way either. How could I salvage this? They hadn't locked me up again, but how much should I read into that?

I stared into the water.

No matter what happened, I had to make sure Dad was safe. Brockton Bay was full of villains and criminals. Anyone interested in Taylor Hebert, the parahuman, my Dad would be a prime target for them. If I couldn't protect him myself, the PRT was my best bet for options. Getting a secret identity somehow, relocating or just watching the house when I wasn't there.

Next priority? I wanted to be a hero. I had powers. They needed to be used making people safer. I owed that. I would not accept anything else.

If I had those, was anything else really important? My bullies were facing criminal charges. If I was in the Wards, I could go to Arcadia, a completely different school. Even if that didn't work out, Winslow couldn't be as bad as before. I could crush a laptop into the size and shape of a baseball with my mind. If the Chief Director had secrets, let her keep them. For now.

I'll work around her if I had to, when I had more control over my powers and more leverage than a few vague images.

Feeling a lot better about myself, I dragged a finger through the water and watched as my disruption create bigger ripples that almost drowned the others out. Then the inertia faded and it was like it had never happened. I unplugged the drain before the sink overflowed. The water drained quickly. I paused on turning the faucet off. Biting my lip, I took a step backwards until my back collided with a stall.

Ripples.

Descriptions, they were going to be a real pain in the ass, I could tell. I don't know how to describe my moment of insight, just that the comparison to water felt right. I lived in Brockton Bay on the Atlantic. The Boardwalk on the water was a raised platform for the seagulls as much as it was for the tourists. The concept of high tide, low tide was not unfamiliar.

Push and pull.

I had pulled on the Chief Director. As gently as I could, barely feeling like I was doing anything at all, I pushed at the space only I could feel.

The bathroom wall exploded.

I was left standing there with a broken pipe spewing cold water in my face, my finger raised like the pulled pin on a grenade as a man on the other side of the wall screamed from the urinal, yellow stream spiking, shattered glass and pieces of ceramic skittering across the floor. Miller burst through the door, pistol out.

I lowered my hand.

"I can explain everything."


Director Emily Piggot was nearly a half foot shorter than me, and she still managed to make me feel like I was three feet tall. Dad was sitting on a couch, hiding behind a Sports Illustrated magazine but I knew he was snickering at my expense, the traitor and so was Annabelle but she hid it marginally better. She got me new clothes, including underwear, and I changed out of my wet ones at another bathroom on the other side of the building. Marginally. She handed me the shoes, Velocity sneakers, and told me not to break anything.

The man I scared the piss out of was in a Dauntless hoodie made to resemble hoplite armor and gratefully sipping at hot chocolate.

Piggot raised an imperious eyebrow. "I see you've met Deputy Director Renick."

Fuck.

Dad ripped a page turning it.

"Hello, sir." I said. He smiled awkwardly. Oh, right, getting caught in the men's bathroom by a teenage girl would be awkward, wouldn't it? And here I was feeling worse about almost hitting him with the sink while his pants were dow – don't think about it, don't think about it!

I met Piggot's eyebrow with my own.

She pinched the bridge of her nose again. "I don't get paid enough for this."

I had the distinct feeling that it was a good thing I wasn't in the Wards yet.

"No unauthorized power testing." She jabbed a meaty finger in my face.

"Yes, ma'am."

She didn't say anything else on that topic. As far as I was concerned, she didn't need to. I, Taylor Hebert, can be a bit of a dumbass. This is known.

"After your other stunt, the Chief Director was forced to observe opsec protocol however, for reasons," she sneered. I could feel Piggot. Resentful, paranoid. "She wishes to speak with you. You'll be using the conference room this time."

I'll be using the conference room? Alone? "I'm…very sorry for – "

Piggot held up her hand, palm out. "Just. Go."

I went.

The conference room looked exactly as I would have expected. A gorgeous cherry wood donut table surrounded by plushy office chairs dominated the center of the room. Small terminals were imbedded in the table in front of each seat and a large see through computer screen was held in the center. Costa-Brown was on it with the camera zoomed out further than it had been during the other call. I could see her hands clasped on her desk in front of her this time, papers with handwriting and the edge of a window. She peered at me intently, calculating.

"Hello again, Taylor," she said without a trace of anger or fear. "Please, have a seat."

The door finished closing behind me with a tiny click and the majority of all the little sounds I'd gotten used to with my improved hearing muffled into a dull drone. Soundproofing, and good soundproofing at that which was an interesting choice for a conference room on the second floor of the Parahuman Response Team building. Everyone knew the PRT was part of the federal government's Alphabet Soup in the same vein as the NSA, FBI, CIA. Their PR machine on the other hand made them cops with magical nerf guns.

They had a protocol for agents compromised by parahuman powers. Considering the various forms of thinking or sensing powers, including seeing into the future, I shouldn't be surprised that the PRT had classified information. If 'Need to know' had an interior design, I was looking at it. And yet, I was the one standing here and not Director Emily Piggot.

I sat down in a chair I could see the door from and mimicked the Chief Director's posture. I clutched my hands maybe a little too hard. The line between 'feeling strongly' and 'overwhelmed' was far too thin for my taste and I was anxious. About what The Chief Director had decided about me, about what she wanted to talk to me for, about everything.

"What do you know about Thinker powers?" Costa-Brown started with. Aside from the obvious 'powers that deal with thinking,' I couldn't say I knew much at all. I browsed the Parahumans Online forums once in a while, but no real research.

What was the point? Getting powers, becoming a hero; those were the kind of pipe dreams that it didn't matter how hard you tried, it was out of your reach. Like being an astronaut. You couldn't earn powers.

"Define 'thinker.'"

"That is the classification for any and all powers that allow the parahuman to obtain information or skills with greater accuracy, speed, range and or breadth than the unassisted human norm." Costa-Brown then smiled with a wry quirk of her lips. "Legal definition. We have to be thorough."

"Like the Library of Alexandria." Rebecca Costa-Brown's face froze. "Eidetic memory, can think faster and, something about expressions?" Hadn't I read that somewhere? My head dipped contritely. "Sorry, I don't know really know my heroes, but Alexandria's been my favorite since I was little."

Legend was 'Pew Pew Lasers' in a costume and Eidolon's power was 'Yes.' Brockton Bay didn't have any Thinker heroes, so I named the only one I knew that fit.

Her eyes made a slight movement to the side of the screen and then back. "Exactly. The PRT rates parahuman powers on a threat scale of one to twelve, although very few parahumans reach ten and above." I frowned at the words 'threat scale' and she picked up on it. "The criteria rubric was first created as policy for the PRT in parahuman confrontations, nothing more. I wish every parahuman was at least law abiding." Truth. "But that is not always the case."

"One is?"

"Slightly more capable than the average human."

"And twelve?"

Now it was Costa-Brown's turn to frown. "Beyond the PRT's paygrade."

Wait a minute.

"Even Thinkers?" I stressed. I really couldn't see how having a really good memory or being able to tell what people were feeling as being that dangerous.

"Yes," she said, deadly serious.

Oh, ouch.

"An ability to obtain sensitive information from someone roughly twenty-eight hundred miles away through a phone call is a concern, to put it lightly."

I winced. Hearing it put like that gave me a new, anxious appreciation for the 'government branch' part of the PRT. "I'm sorry, it's just, the PRT is important and – "

"You didn't like the idea of it not being what it seemed." She cut off what was threatening to be a babble. "I understand, however purposely attempting to reveal said sensitive information will have severe consequences. Understood?"

A prickle went down my spine and I reflexively glanced towards the door.

I didn't even understand the sensitive information. Nothing about it seemed relevant to the PRT in anyway but at the same time I couldn't shake the feeling that it must be. I saw what I saw but I didn't have context for it yet. What is the purpose of the PRT? The temptation to just pull more information out curled in my head with an unfamiliar twisting heat. I kept my eyes locked on hers and sifted through the ripples pressing deep into my head.

She was farther.

"Could have had Director Piggot tell me that," I observed to mask my surprise. I didn't think my power even recognized distance but I could definitely feel it now. It wasn't in a lateral direction but more, underneath? Like the ripples of her presence were emanating from another layer, one that was extremely thin. Where was she? Maybe here to California was a soft limit on my range? "Why do you want to talk to me?"

"Because unless it's absolutely necessary, security breaches are not solved by bringing others in."

She unclasped her hands, bringing one up to rest her chin on. Costa-Brown wore small square bifocal glasses and a crisp navy blue suit with golden buttons. It was the look of someone comfortable in a boardroom or on a hearing floor, but I could feel a small shiver of unease from her.

"If you would describe what you saw in detail?"

Recalling the, vision I guess would be the word for it, was easy. "A woman giving vials to people."

"Describe her," Costa-Brown cut in.

"Dark skin, long black hair and wears business casual." I searched through the memory. "Prefers to wear light colors, white, blue, yellow, sometimes with a white lab coat and clipboard."

"The vials?"

"The vials have labels. Not on them physically, but I just," I pulled my hands apart and laid them flat on the table just behind the keypad of the embedded terminal. Between my fingers ran the dark waxy lines of the wood grain.

"I just know." I'm not interrupted this time. "I see a person receive one and drink, sometimes after signing papers, other times after just talking, and then I see the next person. The vision has…threads," I involuntarily grimace at that description. Paths would have been better. "I think I can follow them."

"Don't."

There was a bit of an intent to conceal there. It was not actively malicious, I thought, but that could always change. There were things she didn't want me to know, but she was attempting to be honest. Within limits.

"Don't ask questions, get no lies?" I made sure to pitch my voice soft and non-threatening. Rebecca Costa-Brown was playing gatekeeper. Find out what I know, then silence me. I had a…feeling she had more options for silence than making me sign a Nondisclosure Agreement. There was a reason she wasn't using it. Something about my powers?

"Classified?" I said, more as a statement than as a question.

The Chief Director smiled but it didn't reach her eyes. "The important question here is what to do with you?" Her gaze shifted the tiniest bit to the side again, and I caught a strange reflection off one of her eyes, like the light hadn't hit it right. "As much as it is a concern, thinker powers are a strategic asset. If you are willing, I want to test your limitations."

I barely needed my powers to read into that. She wanted to know if there was a way around my powers. If I was in her shoes, I'd be wondering that too but, between blowing up the bathroom and now, I hadn't gotten any more eloquent in describing how my powers work so this was going to be interesting.

"I'm…just figuring this out as I go along. I have no idea what I can do, until I do it."

"From my understanding, most parahumans have at least, a vague awareness of their powers if not the details."

It took being slapped with Dad's emotional clue-by-four to even notice I had a passive power. "Guess I'm not most parahumans."

"Hm," was the only verbal response she gave to that. I could feel a glimmer of curiosity though. "Did terminating the call abort your vision?"

I shook my head. "The sound did. I got distracted and lost sight of the ripples you made."

"Ripples?"

I paused a moment to put the words together in a way that didn't make me sound like an idiot. "My power seems to based off an extra sense. You know the concept of positive versus negative space?" She nodded. "Imagine everything physical is positive space. Even the air. But then, between, is negative space. I can feel people interacting with that space, making ripples. When I touch those ripples, I get a sense of what you feel."

"Can you feel me now?"

"Yes. I didn't feel any kind of distance before but, you are a bit farther now, I think."

Costa-Brown's lips pursed with a little irritation. "And this is how you perceive someone lying?"

"I didn't say lying, did I?" I asked, lifting my eyes from the table to look at her straight on. "I said not true."

A few seconds passed with neither of us saying anything.

"I could feel you," I continued softly. "There were many minor falsehoods in your words and you were dripping with intent to deceive." That twisting heat in my head was back. I kept it contained this time. A repeat performance now was really not a good idea. "I do not care about the rest. Hyperbole, a little twisting of the facts," I shrugged and dropped my eyes. "Everyone does that."

The quiet that followed wasn't awkward, but tense. This was a tipping point. I could almost feel a strand stretch between us, close to snapping. She was either going to cut me off here, or reveal just a bit more of what was behind the curtain. I clenched my hands into small fists on the table and kept my eyes down, tracing the grains. I let the heat in my head curl out, just a little. Enough to bleed into the shifting currents around me. I wanted to know.

"The Parahuman Response Team," she began slowly and I snapped my eyes up. "It's part of an eight step plan to integrate parahumans into society."

Truth, but the intent to conceal was still there. That made me relax, slightly. She probably came to the decision on her own, then, since she didn't make a complete one eighty and feel like blurting everything out. I hadn't really done anything, right?

"We haven't reached the end stages of the plan." I hazarded a guess.

"We've stalled at step five." She admitted easily. "What do you know of the Endbringers?"

"Behemoth. Leviathan. The Simurgh."

Three horrific creatures that attacked roughly every three months and nearly every time, they left behind a destroyed city. Behemoth was known for its abilities over energy, heat, electricity, radiation and the one with the most parahuman deaths to its name. Leviathan was a classic sea monster, attacking coastlines and islands with control over water. The Simurgh deserved 'The' in front of its name. It looked like an angel. It caused the least amount of property damage. It didn't even kill that often.

But if it descended on a city, that city was effectively gone. Simurgh victims were time bombs. A newspaper boy one day could get the urge to build a homemade bomb vest and head to the nearest subway station. Multiply that by every person in the city. Who's rigged to blow? No way of knowing.

Closest thing to an answer we had was to lock up the city, and throw away the key.

"I know what everyone knows. Anything in particular?"

"Five days ago, precognition around the world started experiencing, glitches, for lack of a better word." She continued over the sound of the bottom of my stomach dropping out. "We didn't realize they were glitches at first. Most thinker powers are target specific and relatively short range. Powers that don't have a distance limit are rare. Range and coherency are rarer. Target specific powers were mostly unaffected. Those who were included the majority of our WEDGDG division." She waved off the unspoken question. "I will cover that later."

She reached towards the touch screen on her desk and her face was replaced by a high altitude image of an angel with six wings, looking down at the world below.

"This image was taken approximately four hours after the Brockton Bay storm began."

It was an almost artistic picture. I could see a blue expanse partially covered in wispy white clouds in the background. The curvature of the Earth was rimmed with the silver of reflected sunlight and the white angel with six wings hung motionless, looking at something just beyond the picture frame.

"The Simurgh, like the rest of the Endbringers, are difficult to predict, but – "

My heart lurched in my chest. "I can feel her."

I could feel her. If my father was a shadow of a shadow, a sunspot on the surface of a star, then the Endbringer was deep, dark hole. She was the source of hundreds of small waves in the ocean that bent, curved and twisted around the currents and ripples of others. Threads of influenced touched thousands more creating a tangled, impossible weave that revealed more connections the more I looked. I was afraid to tug on anything around, half-convinced she'd be able to feel it, feel me.

Rebecca Costa-Brown's emotions spiked, hard, and full of everything. The picture on the screen instantly changed to one closer to Earth. A man of gold in a stained spandex suit and cape hovered above a forest being consumed by a wildfire, distracted, with his head turned.

Scion.

He was far, muted. I willed myself to look for him, the strongest man in the world and the first parahuman, in the shifting space. I had to reach a little, maybe he was on the other side of the world? But once I spotted him, I was able to feel what he was feeling. And what he was feeling nearly bowled me over.

Crushed.

He was grieving. So intensely my eyes welled up with sympathetic tears as I felt an echo of his pain. He was purposeless, without direction and just moving to be moving. A pit of apathy lay just underneath it; as if the world itself was pointless and insignificant. I tugged, gently, just to see if there was a way to help him or at least see what he was grieving for.

I saw an expanse of stars, and two large creatures slowly traversing it. They started to bleed pieces of themselves, shedding. I got a feeling that chilled me down to the very bone.

Dangerous.

"Yes, he is." Costa-Brown startled me out of the vision and I was suddenly aware that I had been staring at the eastern wall of the conference room, trembling. I've been talking out loud? The Chief Director's face was back on the screen. She held her glasses in one hand as she gazed intently at me.

Her eyes were different, I realized. Only the left one was real. "I am putting in a recommendation to test your ability to contribute to the PRT's Watchdog think tank. You're a minor, but I'm sure I can work something out with Emily." Wait, what? " You and your father will have to sign NDAs, but the local PRT can handle the necessary details. Do you mind if I ask you one last question?"

I blinked slowly, feeling wrung out and tired. "Depends."

"I borrowed a colleague's office. Know anything about it?"

I knew what she was asking.

So I pulled, gently, trying to focus on just the information I wanted. All I got was an image of a perfectly normal blond man in a perfectly normal button up shirt and thin-rimmed glasses pacing before a perfectly normal desk. I saw a large print of the Phi decimal in gold against black paper. Math person? On the other side of it was a morbid picture of a man crucified on a fourth dimensional cross. The only other thing of note was that the desk was in a different place in front of a floor to ceiling window looking out at a landscape I didn't recognize.

"I see a blond man pacing. The touch screen is facing the other way and there's no chairs. There's posters on the wall, one of the Golden Mean and the other one of a crucifixion. One wall has been replaced by a large window."

She nodded. "What shirt is he wearing?"

Odd question. "White button up, black stripes on the shoulders and a black and silver tie."

Her eyes shifted again and this time I was sure of it. Someone was in the room with her. Consultant? "That will do."

"I have a question of my own." Her eyebrow quirked questioningly. I smiled. "How'd you lose your eye?"

The Chief Director laughed as she stood up, slipping her amber rimmed glasses back on her face. I felt amusement and an older pain. "Later, maybe. I'll keep in touch."

Truth.

The screen went blank.