Flashing red lights illuminated the neighborhood.

The PRT had been called to what was believed to be a Cape fight. Instead they found a drug stashhouse where multiple men were unconscious. Some had obviously been tased while others had strange bruises.

It would have been business as usual if it hadn't been for the stories the men who were finally awakening told.

Hannah stared at the man standing before him. He smelled and was clearly high on something, but he was one of the most lucid of the people there.

"What happened?"

"I was just passing by, you know," the man said. He scowled, showing yellowed teeth. "I had nothing to do with whatever those guys were doing in that house."

"I'm sure," Hannah said dryly.

"Just didn't want you to think I was involved or nothin..." the man said. He trailed off and started staring into space.

"So what happened?"

"The lights started going out, two at a time. It was freaky how it was all in order, one after another. Usually you just get power outages when everything goes out at once, but this was different."

"Different?"

"Deliberate...like something was coming toward us." The junkie shuddered. "There was this scraping sound, and then this music. I'm sure I heard it before, but I don't know where."

"Music?" Hannah had learned that part of the interview process was to avoid questions that could be answered with yes or no. That tended to make the subject close up. Open ended questions worked better, and you didn't even have to talk much if the subject was talkative.

He hummed the tune, swaying on his feet.

The tune didn't sound familiar to her, but she hadn't been in the country until twenty years ago, so it might have been before her time. She'd have dragon look it up for her, as she was recording these interviews.

"Then we saw it...floating in the air, made of darkness, skull face glowing. We...I mean the other guys kept shooting and shooting at it, but it just kept coming as though it wasn't even there."

"It threw these little metal balls at us, and they started flying around and hitting people. I've got a bruise on my arm the size of your fist!"

The man shuddered. "The balls hit people's guns hard enough to break them...I could hear guys' fingers snapping...and then it was on us. It started throwing people through the air and when people tried to hit it their fists passed right through it. I saw a guy get a solid hit in and it looked like he almost broke his fist."

Looking around, Hannah could believe it. Six people were being hospitalized while ten more were going to jail.

"I got hit by a fu..I mean, by a taser, and that's the last thing I remember."

His statement matched the other five she'd already taken. No one knew whether the mystery cape was male or female, but they'd broken in, beaten everyone and apparently taken whatever cash was on site before calling on a victim's phone.

Colin said that voice analysis of the call indicated a ninety five percent match on whoever attacked the two merchant muggers the other day, including the skull mask, although their costume this time seemed to be much more extensive. He believed it was the voice of a female, young, possibly Wards age.

No one would tell them how much the Cape had gotten away with. Every one of them were claiming they had been just passing by and that someone else owned the house.

They were all being charged with a variety of crimes, including gun possession, possession of drug paraphernalia and drug possession charges. Some of them would possibly walk, a hazard of being caught by a vigilante who wouldn't be there to testify, but Hannah suspected that a lot of the charges would stick. There had been numerous complaints about this house, and there would undoubtedly be neighbors willing to testify.

No one had been killed, and this attack was less brutal than the Cape's last attack had been.

"What do you think?" Hannah asked Colin as the last of the men were being loaded into PRT vans. "Do you think this is our girl?"

There had been a girl's hoodie found at the scene of Rune's attack. It had brown hairs and analysis ruled out anyone of African American or Asian decent. Had the hair been torn from the person's skull with some of the root intact they'd have been able to determine more, like gender. The only other thing they'd been able to determine was the person who'd owned the hoodie hadn't been using any kind of drugs.

"I'm not sure," he said. "I've got infrared scopes in my visors; they are helpful when I have to deal with sudden darkness and some Strangers are only invisible to visible wavelengths. I caught a glimpse of, whoever it was that attacked Rune."

Hannah had seen the video. Colin's scanner wasn't detailed enough to see facial figures, but the figure had been tall and thin. It had been an exceptional leap as well, one Hannah wasn't sure she herself could have made.

"Some kind of brute to have jumped as high as she did and to do what she did to these men here," Hannah said.

"A Stranger if the video from the hospital is any indication. Given the time that passed before she was delivered I'd have to say some kind of Mover."

"A telekinetic?" Hannah asked.

"It could have been tinkertech...most of it could have been tinkertech," Colin said. "There's no evidence of anything being maneuvered except these two balls, whatever they are."

"Some kind of exoskeleton then?" Hannah stared out at the house and shook her head. Colin liked to ascribe every Cape as a possible Tinker, but this possibly could be. Brutes with Stranger ratings were fairly rare, given that the types of trigger events that created them seemed to be quite different.

"It could be someone working with a Tinker," Colin admitted. "Some of the powers being theirs and using Tinkertech to make it look like they are more powerful than they are."

"We'll know more when we talk to Rune," Hannah said. "The doctors think it'll be safe to take her out of the medically induced coma in a couple of weeks."

"Who knows what else our suspect would have done by then," Colin said. He looked around. "At least she's escalating in numbers instead of in violence."

She'd intentionally shattered Rune's leg, which spoke to her violence in Hannah's mind. The girl was fourteen years old after all and built like a twig, even if she was a Nazi. There was some hope in rehabilitating the girl once she was out of her coma and rebranding her in another city as a Ward. Her choice would be that or prison.

Hannah could only hope that worked better than it had with Shadow Stalker.

"Is there any progress with Stalker?" she asked.

Armsmaster shook his head. "Nothing so far. She still has her gemma...it just doesn't seem to be connected to anything. All the tests they've done haven't come up with any possible way it could have been done."

He looked as concerned as she was. If the enemy had found a way to neutralize Capes it would be a game changer. They were already outnumbered two to one. If an enemy Tinker could depower them one after the other, the villains would have free reign to take over anything.

"It's part of the reason that I think they might be working with a Tinker," Armsmaster said. "What are the odds that multiple Tinkers show up in town at the same time as our mystery Cape?"

"We've got no proof that it's her," Hannah asked.

Colin snorted. "We've got no proof that she isn't. We've got to treat her like a threat until we learn otherwise."

It was just as possible that whoever had raided this drug house had been a villain as a vigilante, although Hannah would have expected a villain to take the drugs as well as the money.

"If she's a Stranger she could be here watching us right now," Hannah said.

"I've got sensors on everywhere," he said. "You can go crazy with the what ifs when dealing with Strangers. It's better to take some things on faith."

She stared at him, and he shrugged. "It's more efficient."

Relaxing, she nodded. At least she wasn't going to have him subjected to Master Stranger protocols.

"The music is from a pre-Scion movie. Time After time 1979, starring Roddy McDowell," Dragon said. It hadn't taken her long to find the music. She played the music, something that sounded like it came from a music box. "It was based on Chants d'Auvergne, "The Spinner".

"Does it have any significance?" Hannah asked.

"In the movie, Jack the Ripper borrows a time machine from H.G. Wells to come to 1979 to continue his murder spree. Every time he killed a woman he would play that tune from a pocket watch."

Hannah felt a chill.

"Is she trying to tell us something? Send a message with the music?" Hannah said. "the last thing we need is a parahuman serial killer, especially one that takes Jack the Ripper as a role model."

"I've checked the death reports in Brockton Bay for the last year and haven't found any anomalies."

Hannah frowned. There had been over six hundred murders in Brockton Bay last year, more than New York and Los Angeles combined and only a little behind Chicago, even though Chicago had eight times the population.

"What about patterns of missing persons, especially known prostitutes?"

"I've already checked," Dragon said. "They are all within normal variances."

"So it's a challenge?" Hannah asked. "Find me before I start killing? If she plans on going after woman, why target the Merchants? Why go after the Empire Eighty Eight?"

"Most new Capes attack gang members either for reasons of ideology or because they are seeking resources."

"Whoever launched the attack on Shadow Stalker was already well funded," Hannah said. "This isn't the work of somebody building tools out of a microwave and a blender. We don't even know when the attack was launched. It could have been an airborne virus, one that had already left the body by the time we were able to check."

"Have you considered Panacea?" Dragon asked. "I've been suspicious about her abilities given that every other power seems to be geared for conflict. If anyone could have done something like this, she could have."

"Stalker hadn't seen Panacea in two months," Hannah said. She shook her head. "Not until we had her check to see if what was wrong."

Panacea hadn't been any more helpful than the lab tests they had done. According to her, Sophia Hess's gemma had regressed to the same condition as someone who had never had a power. It meant that she could trigger again, but it was just as possible that she might not.

Not everyone with the brain abnormality triggered after all. Some people simply lived through their personal version of hell and got through it, or they died.

There were clues everywhere, and Hannah had a strong feeling that they were missing the one piece that would bring it all together.

The investigation was young; it had been less than a week since the new Cape had come onto the scene and experience told her that Capes didn't just vanish into obscurity. They were drawn to conflict like moths to a flame. Sooner or later the new Cape would make a mistake and then they'd have them.

"We didn't get much from the Merchants in the first attack, did we?" she asked.

"They refused to talk, claiming that some Cape in a skull mask had attacked them. There was some memory loss from the head injuries they'd sustained, but the attack was considered unusually brutal for a Cape, unless it's one who didn't know her own strength yet."

"Even experienced Capes have that problem sometimes," Hannah muttered.

The Glory Girl case was troublesome. She wasn't being charged, given that multiple witnesses had said he'd taken her first blow without any problem. However, from all reports she was taking the death extremely hard. She hadn't been seen at school for the past three days and all reports said she hadn't come out of her room at home during the same time.

There had been overtures toward Carol Dallon about getting her training with the Wards, but the woman had been angry and defensive.

The public relations hit New Wave was taking was much worse. There had been rumors about excessive force from Glory girl for years, although it had never been proven. Now people were calling her a loose canon and she was being crucified online.

Some people online were calling for her to be criminally charged while other people were calling her a hero.

"We have a new data point," Dragon said suddenly.

"Yes?" Hannah asked.

"Someone saw our suspect heading north from Lord's Market. Crews today discovered that someone had taken down the walls Mr. Dalton created blocking both ends of the street."

Neither of the surviving attackers had been able to tell them anything. They'd both claimed to have Amnesia, and Colin had recently completed a lie detector that led him to believe them. Neither of them were Case 53's, but they both had the same kind of brain changes that had been seen in Case 53s before.

They'd claimed that their companion had gotten stronger through fear. The working theory now was that Glory Girl's presence had decreased the fear level enough that he'd been vulnerable. Hannah doubted that because there had been reports of people screaming and fleeing.

Often in these kinds of investigations there was a single eureka moment when the connection between previous leads suddenly made sense. Afterwards it was often hard to understand why you hadn't made the connection before.

Clockblocker's voice suddenly interrupted her train of thought.

"Um...Miss Militia?"

"Yes?"

"Armsmaster is requesting your presence at Brockton Bay General. Apparently Rune has been murdered."

"She's mocking us," Colin said scowling.

The hospital room was a nightmarish horror show. The corpse of the girl that had been Rune hadn't been moved, and blood soaked the bed and dripped onto the floor.

The top of her head had been removed. It was obvious that her brain had been completely removed from her skull.

"The cut is too fine to have been done by anything other than a laser or a monomolecular blade," Colin said dispassionately. "Or through a power, of course."

As many powers as had been documented, there were always new ones popping up to swurpisd

"I thought we left a protective division here for her, along with not advertising her location to the media?"

There had always been a small risk of one of the other gangs targeting Rune, even though it really wasn't Lung's style and the Merchants were unlikely to care enough to bother. Had it been someone from the other gangs they'd have left a member of the Protectorate to guard her, since the Empire 88 would be more likely to retaliate.

"There were ten men set to guard her," Colin said. "We found organic residue matching the DNA of three of them. Four more are simply gone."

"And the other two?"

Colin grimaced. He pulled out his PRT phone and flipped through it. "We removed the bodies to avoid alerting the hospital staff."

"What is this?"

She recognized the two men in the picture. Both were frozen, ice covering their corpses with expressions of horror on their faces.

He flipped to another picture showing red tinged chunks of ice.

"This one was frozen as well, but his body was shattered."

"And no one saw anything?" Hannah asked.

"None of the staff members saw anything, and the only people caught on camera were the ones supposed to be here."

"This many powers," Hannah said. "Either teleportation or invisibility to get here, freezing, disintegration...it's pretty unlikely that even a grab bag cape would have this many powers. Either we're looking at the work of multiple people or some kind of a Tinker."

Colin nodded grimly. Normally he was proud to think that a new cape was a Tinker, but having one be a murderer with this level of depravity had to be upsetting for him, although he never would have admitted it.

"So you think it's our mystery cape," Hannah said. "Have we come up with a name for her yet?"

"We are calling her Charon, presumably for the skull imagery."

"If she wants something better I suppose she'll have to come forward," Hannah said.

She was silent for a long moment. "What I don't understand is why she'd go to all the effort to bring the girl here for treatment if she was planning to do this to her? Why not simply kill her and dispose of the body?"

"That would have been the efficient thing to do," Colin agreed. "And would have allowed her to continue attacking people from the shadows for a while before she was discovered. I believe that she is taunting us. This body is a message."

"What kind of message?"

"I can attack any of you with impunity," he said. "This is meant to terrify and disorganize us. It may actually turn the Empire 88 against us if they are somehow led to believe that we are somehow complicit in this murder."

"There's always a fringe community that will believe any kind of conspiracy," Hannah admitted.

There were even people who believed that the Protectorate was ruled by some kind of secret cabal that controlled everything, running the underworld in the same way they ran the government. In Hannah's experience fanatics and conspiracy nuts couldn't be reasoned with.

"Acting like this is likely to get her a kill order," Colin said. "A well deserved one."

Hannah shook her head. "We still don't have any proof that it was her. Should this be the work of someone else we'd be doing a grave injustice to attack a new Cape on supposition."

"The new Cape is playing Jack the Ripper's theme song," Colin said. "Even Jack Slash doesn't do that."

"If she should turn out to be the Cape who did this," Miss Militia said. "I will be happy to be the one to put a bullet between her eyes."