January, 2014

Contessa dreamt. The Simurgh featured prominently, as did a crushing sense of despair and the hellish sights and smells of freshly, perfectly baked bread, fluffy white and crispy golden and soul-meltingly horrific.

The dreams seemed to be vignettes, each one ending in a terrible bread-related death. In one, Contessa was walking down a street when she came upon a bakery. Her dream self decided to buy some bread. No sooner was she inside than the building collapsed on her. In another, she tried her hand at baking bread without the assistance of an infernal machine and the oven electrocuted her.

When she woke up, blinking away visions of the Simurgh impaling her with rebar, she stayed still so as not to disturb Number Man.

Path: never dream about the Simurgh again.

Fog, of course.

Path: never dream about bread again.

Fog.

Path: no more dreams.

Fog.

Which confirmed her suspicions: the Simurgh had definitely left something behind. Maybe the dreams were what they seemed to be on the surface: insurance that she'd never try to bake (or do anything, really) without her power again. But maybe the nightmares would happen every time she slept, and she'd start to postpone or avoid sleep and end up breaking her implants and having an aneurysm at the worst possible time. Maybe it would get worse and she'd lose her mind. Maybe . . .

She noticed that she was spooning a pillow, not Number Man, and grumbled at it for a little while before tossing it aside and reaching over to turn on the bedside lamp.

The beam illuminated not only a handful of drawings Number Man had pinned up around the room, but Number Man himself, who was standing near the doorway. He had a machine gun trained on her.

It took her a split second to analyze the situation. He was standing close enough to her that he wouldn't miss, and standing far enough away she wouldn't be able to reach him before he'd gotten off several rounds. Knowing him, he had probably wiped each round down before loading it to reduce the possibility of jamming. Also—she checked with her power and confirmed that, yes, he'd taken her knife.

If he decided to pull the trigger, she wouldn't survive.

He wouldn't, either, now that she'd processed him as a threat, but he'd likely already realized that. Was that the Simurgh's plan, to have them kill each other?

"Sorry," he said. He sounded genuinely apologetic, but he didn't lower the weapon. "I thought I'd be able to choose before you woke up."

"Oh, then I'll just pretend to still be asleep." She pulled the blankets back up and flipped onto her side, exposing her back to him.

"Thank you. That does help."

She ignored him.

"I don't know what to do," he said after several minutes had passed. "Whatever choice I make will be wrong."

"Don't ask me for advice," she retorted. "I'm asleep."

"Stop sulking. You'd be thinking the same thing in my place."

Her power judged it was safe to reply. "I am thinking the same thing," she admitted. "Suicide is the obvious way out of a Simurgh trap, though of course maybe having me dead is her plan."

The door opened and the clairvoyant stepped inside. He frowned and directed them to stop it.

Number Man hastily turned and tried to hide the machine gun behind his back.

"We're fine, Raj. Stomach still hurts?" she asked.

Raj nodded.

"Good," she said. "Hope it teaches you a lesson about eating Tinkertech."

He flipped her off.

"Thanks for what you did, though," she said to Raj. "You always have my back."

Are you ok?

"Yes." She got out of bed. "We're both okay. There's some medicine in the men's bathroom two floors down that will help your stomachache. Take one of the pills from the blue bottle and then go to bed."

No sooner had he turned to go than she propelled herself into Number Man's back, sending both of them to the ground. She rolled away from him with the machine gun and unloaded it, threw the barrel magazine aside, and pulled the bolt out.

"Ow," he said. "What happened to you being suicidal?"

"Talking with that psychologist you foisted on me reminded me of the Irregulars. The bitch already tried to kill me once and failed, thanks in large part to you. I see no need to make it easier on her the second time around."

He fixed his glasses, which the tackle had knocked askew. "I doubt outright killing you was her plan this time around. She could have done it at any point while you were gone."

"It's true I think it's more likely I've been wired to make an immense amount of trouble at some point down the line. I will say, though, the impression I got from her before she released me that she found me annoying at the end of it all, like I'd wasted her time."

"Maybe it didn't have anything to do with you," he said. "The conventional wisdom is that Thinkers, or at least precognitives, can interfere with her power. But Tattletale speculated that perception powers enhanced hers. Maybe she just wanted access to your power and used your unfortunate lack of baking skills as a pretext."

Contessa frowned. "I don't think she'd need to borrow my power. She's more powerful than I am, if you judge by results. I built a lot of things over the years, and she devoted a good deal of effort to undoing or destroying all of that."

"Then perhaps the conventional wisdom is true. Precognitives do interfere with her, and you interfere with her more than most. Then she decided it was worth spending time to pick you apart."

It was a sobering thought.

And not one entirely based in reality.

"I need to tell you something," she said slowly. "There's a part of me that wasn't with the Simurgh."

"How?" he asked.

She sighed. He was going to find this extremely upsetting.

She told him anyway.

"Sleeper?!" he yelped.

March, 2014

Contessa stepped through the portal onto clean white sand and looked around.

The scene reminded her of the generic beach photos that came preloaded as a desktop background or screensaver onto the computers Cauldron had used. The waves she saw were not unruly, the water was clear, and the temperature and wind were just right.

Except for the sound of the surf, it was silent. There was no evidence of human habitation in sight—no tourist traps or cramped buildings built next to each other in an effort to maximize the number of folk who could lay claim to owning "beachfront property" were present. There were no gulls picking at the trash for the simple reason there was no trash, either on the sand or in the sea.

In short, it was nothing like an actual beach.

Sleeper was there, sitting on a lawn chair and sunning himself.

As she got closer, she saw that he was clad in a rose-colored speedo and reading Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes.

"That's disgusting," she said.

"I'm not sure I can take the sartorial judgment of a woman who wears a tie and trilby seriously," he replied.

She removed her hat and held it at an angle that blocked her view of the speedo and all it failed to cover. "I was in a Simurgh attack," she said.

"You were wearing the suit long before the Simurgh existed," Sleeper said. "Don't blame her for—that."

"I was in a Simurgh attack recently."

"I hope she inspired you to get different clothes," he said acidly.

"Even worse," Contessa said shortly. "She made me bake her over a thousand loaves of bread."

He glared at her. "You normally make your lies more credible."

"Look through my mind if you don't believe me. Beginning about six days after I saw you last."

After a moment, his eyebrows rose and he shut his book. "My word. How interesting." He smiled thinly. "You don't come out looking at all well in this. I didn't know your tear ducts were operational."

"The Simurgh could make anyone cry, and I was with her by myself for seventy-eight hours. Keep it all if you want. I'm sure you'll get more pleasure out of it than I will."

"You'd offer me something this delectable gratis? What are you up to?"

Contessa shrugged. "It's sort of an apology. I can't take part in the bakeoff anymore. Whatever part of me thought that I could reclaim my childhood self by making food has been replaced by a barren, landmined hellscape surrounded by electrified barbed wire. If I think about going down that path again, it hurts. Metaphorically. I think. The point is that the Simurgh turned food preparation into the psychic equivalent of touching a hot stove."

"You're reneging on our deal? You forfeit?"

"My power is a lot more extensive than I initially led you to believe. My initial plan was to fake turning it off and win that way." Technically that was a lie; her original plan had been to ignore the situation entirely and hope someone else would take care of him. "There wasn't a way you were ever going to win fairly," she went on. "This way, you at least get something out of it and I don't have to risk drawing her attention again."

Outrage flashed across his face. "Very well, I will relieve you of your burden. However, I think your honesty deserves some reward. Perhaps I should give Fortuna back to you. Maybe it will give you a better sense of what the Simurgh has prevented you from 'reclaiming,' as you put it."

"Uh, that's kind of you, but that's not necessary," Contessa said, letting her power shift her body away from him. "Really, it's not. Thank you for the offer, though."

"I insist," he said, and all the emotions and details he'd wiped from her earlier slammed into her psyche.

Now, Contessa thought. A small portal opened inches above his head, and a white-gloved hand reached through and touched him.

Sleeper froze. In the same moment, Contessa stepped backwards through the door that opened behind her. Number Man was waiting there, standing on an uninhabited plain along with Valkyrie and an older, red-headed teenager wearing a white bodysuit.

"He'll be stopped in time for a little over three minutes," Contessa told Valkyrie. "That should be enough time."

Valkyrie nodded and had Doormaker's shade open another portal to Zayin. She stepped through and sealed it behind her.

"You recovered your memories?" Number Man asked.

"And got rid of the ones from my stay with Ziz," she said. She couldn't assume that would remove every effect, but she thought it would go a long way to settling her recent emotional turbulence.

Valkyrie came back less than two minutes later. "Sleeper is dead," she informed them. "I believe the resulting destruction rendered much of the Eurasian continent on Zayin uninhabitable. I trust this was worth it."

"We wouldn't have asked for your time otherwise," Number Man said.

When the Wardens had gone, he turned to Contessa. "What are you going to do now?"

"Copy my older self into something that the Simurgh hasn't touched," she said without hesitation. "Can you go to Marquis and ask him to have tea with us? Include his daughter, but make it seem like inviting her is a polite afterthought."

June, 2014

Jessica touched her palm to her forehead.

"What?" Contessa asked.

"Contessa—Contessa, cloning yourself and then taking care of the clone is not what I meant when I said you need to practice self-care."

"Why not?"

"At this point, I'm not sure I could explain it in a way that would get through," Jessica said wearily. "We'll come back to that later, when we discuss homework for the upcoming week. So Legend told me you have a second clone—"

"There are five, actually," Contessa replied. "Four of them have the memories that the Simurgh couldn't touch. The fifth is more of a blank slate, programmed with a set of skills and a worldview grounded in deontological ethics, and I sent her to bug Le—ehhm, help the Wardens."

Jessica pinched the bridge of her nose. "Okay. Can we talk more about Legend?"

Contessa narrowed her eyes. "Why?"

"He came to see me about you."

"And?"

"He told me about the clone you sent to him. Says she won't leave and keeps asking him what she should do."

"That's what I did to the Doctor at the same age. She coped. So will he."

"Did you also blow up her house and trigger her son?"

"What? No." She thought for a little bit and realized that these things had in fact happened, contrary to her expectation. "And it was Legend who did those things, not her."

"In response to what he perceived as a threat to his family."

"If the idea was to kill them, they'd already be dead and it would look like someone else did it. He'd realize this if he thought about it for more than the split second it takes for him to get an emotion. He was supposed to be irritated, not attempt to kill a child because she looked like me."

"You miscalculated."

Apparently, but how? She set the question aside for later. "Doesn't matter. He was still irritated, anyway, so mission accomplished."

"Why?" Jessica asked.

"Why what?"

"Why do you want to irritate Legend?"

Contessa folded her arms. "Because."

Jessica leaned back in her seat. "I'll give you time to put your thoughts into words."

She drew her knees up and turned into the couch, angling her body so she couldn't see Jessica's face. "Legend wasn't involved in Cauldron at all, other than to keep quiet about our existence and Alexandria's double life. That was it, shut up and zap bad guys. But if you went by the way he carries on about it, you'd think he was the one who had to enforce Cauldron's contracts or had to contain or clean up after the experiments or primed them for brainwashing or—" Contessa hazarded a glance at her therapist, who was writing quite a bit down onto her pad. "He's presumptuous," she said finally. "Trying to carry a burden that isn't his."

"You feel he's intruding on your territory?" Jessica asked.

"I don't want to talk about this anymore."

"We don't have to, but I want you to think about why you've resorted to gleeful sadism as a coping mechanism for—"

Contessa held up a finger, silencing Jessica, and looked over at the potted plant Number Man had put in the room as part of his continuing efforts to spruce the place up.

The plant seemed to sneeze.

"Fortuna," Contessa said.

A pale, serious-faced girl peeked out from behind the pot. "Are you going to die?" she asked Contessa, sounding more curious than anything else.

"In thirty years or so, yes," Contessa said. When Fortuna fixed Jessica with a suspicious stare, she added, "I'm not sick. Think of her as a priest, not a doctor."

Fortuna seemed to accept that. She came out from behind the plant and came over to where Contessa was sitting. "You look like Mother," she said.

"I suppose I do. It's past time for you to be in bed." Contessa rose from the couch and picked her clone up. After a moment's hesitation, Fortuna settled into the hug. "Sorry," Contessa said to Jessica. "I have to take care of this."

"I'll come with you, if you don't mind?"

Contessa frowned a little, but nodded. "Their dorm is this way."

Two of her clones were already asleep, having squeezed themselves into one bed. Siberian stood between them and the door, presumably watching for danger. The other was sitting in an overstuffed armchair with Doctor Manton's clone. He appeared to be reading from a large book of fairy tales.

She transferred the remaining clone into Siberian's arms. "Good night," she said.

Siberian nodded and Contessa shut the door.

"Well, okay," Jessica said. "I probably should have seen that one coming."

"I actually didn't," Contessa said. "The original Manton wasn't a very attentive father and I didn't take him into account when I initially planned for my siblings. He's much better at foster parenting than the Doctor was, anyway. He was upset when I peeled off the one to send to Legend, but I talked him down."

"What—" Jessica said. "I'm sorry, give me a moment to process this."

Contessa briefly accessed her power, and was surprised at what was behind her therapist's expression. "You think I'm a worse monster than Eidolon? As in dull-mopey-egotistical-completely-useless-against-Scion-even-though-that-was-the-only-reason-we-tolerated-him-to-begin-with-and-oh-by-the-way-subconsciously-created-the-Endbringers-to-make-himself-feel-better Eidolon?"

"Fleeting thought. Please stop reading my mind."

"Sorry," Contessa said again.

"Let's talk about your reaction, though. You didn't like Eidolon?"

"He's-my power didn't work on him, so I couldn't predict him. We'd be sitting there conducting business as usual, thinking about how to shore up the Protectorate or whom to target as clients and suddenly he would storm in and ask these stupid questions, like why we were kidnapping dying people or why hadn't we killed the Siberian yet."

"Did you find those questions unreasonable?"

"Er, no?" Contessa offered.

"Try again," Jessica suggested, "with more honesty."

"Yes! He just wanted to know why he wasn't in on it! 'If I'm such an important element in your plan, then why are you keeping secrets from me? Don't you know I'm powerful and my powerful power tells me things?' So we'd explain it, and he'd accept it in the end, but with this stupid martyr complex attitude, like sometimes admitting he didn't need to know or control everything made him this noble, long-suffering soldier. Then-he's useless when it counts. I could have stuffed eight hundred teenagers into dirty lockers with all the time I wasted on him."

Jessica raised an eyebrow. "It's what we talked about before, the fundamental issue that's at stake for you, here. You don't have a sense of self. It was something of a breakthrough, ranting about Eidolon. You were expressing a strong personal preference. Then you reverted to saving the world through evil."

"Um, and I wouldn't do that, because bullying is wrong," Contessa added. "And ineffective. In this case."

"That's . . . progress," Jessica said with a sigh. She reached into her briefcase and withdrew a folder. "Here. It's the first week of a program I'm starting you on. Fill out the chart this week. You identify a stimulus, describe what it makes you think or feel, list the resulting choice, and detail the consequences. Including emotional consequences."

Contessa flipped through the packet. There were twenty-eight pages in total. "I don't have this many feelings in a month, let alone a week."

"The last time we tried a worksheet, you refused to start because I didn't make copies and you were worried you'd run out of room. Or so you said."

"Fine, Jessica. I will do your worksheet."

Later, after the therapist had returned to Bet, Contessa suppressed her instinct to ask her power to end her ill temper. She could allow herself to have moods now, even if they weren't pleasant to feel (and she had to record them on a stupid chart). She could try something else.

How would someone normal cheer herself up?

She got her answer.

I guess I want to do that.

Following the directions her power spelled out for her, she stole a chest freezer from a manufacturer on Earth Aleph and installed it in one of their kitchens. Then she spent about half an hour on a transdimensional trip to collect fifty-six pints of ice cream. She was just getting started on sampling them all when Number Man came into the kitchen, gripping his tablet. He appeared to be slightly agitated, which meant he was deeply upset.

She thought of things that would cheer him up. "Would you help me make a spreadsheet?" she asked hopefully.

"Contessa," he said, apparently not hearing her question. "You need to find someone who will tell you not to do things like release five other Contessas into the wild."

"They aren't Contessas," Contessa said patiently. "They're Fortunas. And this is a secret complex sealed in an artificially created interdimensional void, not the wild."

"We have functionally infinite teleportation! They can go anywhere, including the wild! I—" He stopped as he took in the assortment of bowls and spoons surrounding her. "What are you doing here? You'd better not be baking again."

"I'm not, not that you could do anything about it if I were," she said, annoyed that he'd brought up something she was doing her best to forget entirely. "I wanted to taste each of these ice cream flavors and organize my feelings about them with a spreadsheet."

Some expression or other slithered across his face, but she couldn't quite catch its meaning. He brandished his tablet at her. "Well, I need you to look at this."

She took the computer from him and looked down at the screen. It was his search history.

pretty boys

pretty boys yellow hair

pretty boys yellow hair no shirts

The list concluded with an obviously power-influenced

shirtless blond man

Ah, so he was scandalized. Contessa called on her power to keep her face straight. "I will tell them to remember to cover their tracks," she said solemnly.

"Perhaps you could tell them not to search for that kind of thing at their age."

The suggestion sounded silly in light of the mayhem they'd gotten up to as children, but she took it at face value. "They could overcome any restrictions I put on the device and they'd see right through my attempts to dissuade them from those lines of thought. I'm also not certain I want to discourage any curiosity they might show."

"Excuses," he said.

"It's true my heart wouldn't be in it. They have good taste." She reached out to touch the back of his head, letting her fingernails graze his scalp in a way she knew would derail his train of thought and make him stop talking about her clones' behavior.

She broke off as horrified realization dawned. "Oh, no. The Harbingers. It's not a problem now, but in a year or two, things will get out of hand."

"You could tell them not to go after my clones," he suggested.

She rolled her eyes. "Try telling an adolescent who's not nigh-omnipotent that she's not allowed to have the boy she wants. Perhaps we could clone you again, only this time without the evil."

"You can't solve all your problems with clones, Contessa. Just use your power to make them be sensible."

"I'm not sure I can," she said, thinking of what her psychologist had told her about what had happened to Legend's house. "I've discovered my power doesn't account for at least some of their choices. I can't guarantee I could Fortuna-proof the Harbingers."

"Contessa. You're telling me that you created five children with your personality and your power and you have no way of controlling them?" His voice crescendoed as he spoke, and it was a near shriek at the end.

"I trust them—"

"I don't!" His composure finally cracked. "I don't care what's going on in your head, look at this from the outside! You're exposed to the Simurgh for longer than any human in history, and the first thing you do is run off and make five S-class blindspots!"

She opened her mouth, but Number Man shouted over her. "No! No talking! And no touching! Don't come near me until you get us a new boss!" He yanked the tablet out of her hand and jogged off.

Like a little bit of running could stop her if she wanted to catch him.

She didn't.

The door slammed behind him.

"Well, then," she said to her ice cream collection. "I guess I'll just find the most responsible person left alive and make them tell me what to do."

It sounded less stupid spoken aloud than she thought it would. She decided that she would, in fact, go and do just that.

. . .

. . . After she finished this bowl of mint chocolate chip.