Chapter Ten: Contessa Gets A Job

Contessa did not immediately act on her resolution.

Impulse, she decided, would not serve her well. A lot was riding on her decision, and she needed to ask her question very, very carefully. She would not just latch on to the first person she ran into, not this time.

She was writing down all her criteria in a notebook, thoroughly considering each to make sure that she would reach best possible outcome. So far, she had:

1. Not the Simurgh

2.

Her reverie was interrupted by barking set off by the clairvoyant climbing into one of the dog pens that surrounded the complex they were visiting. She looked up and saw he was trying to get closer to a group of terriers he'd been following around since they'd arrived at Bitch's headquarters in Gimel. She was there to do a few favors for Tattletale in exchange for Number Man's help in securing her release post-Simurgh.

She checked with herself to make sure Raj would be safe and wouldn't offend their hosts, then dismissed him from consideration. She turned instead to Manton, who was sitting across the picnic table from her, reading a book on parenting girls about to enter middle school.

He caught her looking at him and smiled sheepishly. "Sorry," he said. "It's just that Bonesaw wasn't exactly thorough when she created us. All I remember is that I lost a daughter and that it was bad, but I don't have anything about what goes into parenting. And I'm only a year old, so it's not as though I have any life experience to make up for it. What if they have questions?"

"They'll likely ask themselves," she said.

"Oh, thank God," he said. "They're starting to wrap up, by the way."

"Thank you," she replied and stood up to go find Tattletale.

She glanced back at him as she knocked on the door to the room Tattletale was using as an office, and saw he hadn't put the book down.

Tattletale was sitting on the floor, back against a couch occupied by all four of her clones. She was just closing her laptop when the Siberian let Contessa into the room. Her clones were clustered on the couch, and she directed them to retrieve the clairvoyant. The Siberian followed them out.

"That's creepy," Tattletale said.

"How did they do?" Contessa asked.

"Perfectly, of course, even thought of some things I hadn't. I now possess effective leverage over every major gangleader in thirteen different New Yorks, and I think I can keep it entirely under the radar. I guess I have to say your debt to me is settled."

"Good. Anything else?"

"They're really cuddly," Tattletale remarked. "Not how I'd have pictured them."

"I will talk to them about professionalism," Contessa said.

Tattletale rolled her eyes. "Completely humorless, too, which is exactly what I'd have expected. What the hell did your parents do to you when you were little?"

"They died," Contessa said icily. She realized she was feeling an emotion, and pulled one of the sheets Jessica had given her out of her notebook before filling out one of the lines on the chart.

"What's that?" Tattletale asked, though the tone of her voice revealed she already knew.

"A functional analysis worksheet," she said as, under response, she wrote fuck with Tattletale.

Then she started to sift through her options to find the most satisfying way of de-grinning Tattletale.

But then she visualized Jessica's disappointed and frustrated reaction. She frowned.

"Doesn't seem like you want to be doing a functional analysis worksheet," the younger woman said, still smirking.

"Well," Contessa said as she started another line to detail her choice not to fuck with Tattletale, "it's keeping me from devastating your psyche with a few words, so maybe don't complain so much. Or at all."

"I'm not too worried. You need me to tend to certain affairs."

"Meh," Contessa said lightly, finally using her power to tamp her fury down. "I can take care of her."

Tattletale raised her hands in surrender. "All right, point taken. Sorry for the crack about your p-"

"One other thing," Contessa said. "Can you tell Faultline Sleeper's dead? I think she'll want to know, and I think you'll enjoy being the one to tell her."

"Sure," Tattletale said. "I guess this is goodbye?"

"Yes," Contessa said.

Once she made her way out to the dog pen, she discovered that, far from reclaiming the clairvoyant, her clones had joined him. Bitch was there as well, leaning on the fence and watching a cattledog herd them up and down the enclosure.

"They're good with dogs," Bitch said when she arrived.

"I grew up with sheep," Contessa said. "We had dogs to help out with them."

She would have continued, but her clones had registered her presence and converged on her, each holding a puppy. Four identical faces stared up at her with four identical pleading looks.

Contessa sighed. "If we get Miss Lindt's permission, we can get one," she said sternly. "For Raj. And if you are very good and if he says yes, you maybe can play with it sometimes."

As one, her clones rounded on Bitch and started speaking in unison, each of them evidently unwilling to entrust path: get puppy to the others. Bitch took a step back.

Contessa stuck her thumb and forefinger in her mouth and whistled, holding the note until her clones settled down.

"Sorry about that," Contessa said.

Bitch looked at the clones doubtfully. "They can take care of a dog?"

"They can. And I'll thrash them if they slack."

"Get with Cassie," Bitch said, shooting the four Fortunas a wary look before striding off.

"All right," she said to her clones. "One. Make sure it's one that will work for him."

Her clones held a hasty conference. At length one of them ran off to collect the blue merle that had been chasing them earlier and present it to Raj.

Simon, he announced.

Contessa gave the dog a second look. "What about Simone?" she asked.

He shook his head.

"Simon it is, then," she said. "We'll find Cassie to make sure everything's okay before we leave."

Panacea and Number Man were in the room they teleported into, Panacea reading a book and Number Man heating popcorn in the microwave.

Contessa made a show out of only greeting Panacea (because she was respecting Number Man's boundaries and not because she was being petulant, really), who seemed more interested in the dog than Contessa's (genuinely, really) friendly overtures.

"Who's this?" Panacea asked, reaching down to say hello.

"That is Simon," Contessa said.

Panacea ran her hands over Simon's coat and her eyebrows quirked up. "Well, uh, Simon is pregnant. You're going to have four puppies on your hands in a few weeks."

Contessa wheeled on her clones, who were already starting to run away. She seized the hindmost by the collar and let the rest escape.

"You picked the pregnant dog so you would each get a puppy," she said. "After I told you all only Raj was going to get one."

"Er," Fortuna said. "We didn't know?"

Number Man had retrieved his popcorn from the microwave and was watching the proceedings. "You look approximately the same when you lie without your power," he said. Then he added, unnecessarily and uncharitably: "Though I must say the little shrug and feet shuffle routine is exponentially more ridiculous coming from a middle-aged woman."

Contessa acted as though she hadn't heard him; how else was she supposed to respect his request to be left alone? She shifted her grip from Fortuna's collar to her ear—her mother's go-to signal for we're going to see your father and you're going to tell him what you did—and marched her down the hall to their room. Number Man followed them and Contessa wondered whether he was trying to annoy her.

When she arrived she discovered the other three had locked themselves in, apparently having decided that the one Contessa held was a lost cause.

"Open up," she called.

"No!" they chorused.

"And why not?"

There was a pause during which only the sound of Number Man rooting around in his popcorn bag could be heard.

"We're sleeping," one of them said.

"That's not even plausible!" Contessa shouted. She tried the door and found she couldn't even budge it; her power told her the Siberian was on the other side, bracing it against her. "William, don't make me get the remote control."

"They already have it," Manton replied. "My hands are tied, though I'd help them in any case. Pardon me for saying so, but you seem out of sorts."

It was time to ask for backup, she thought, and her eye fell on Number Man. "Can you see if you can talk them into opening up?"

"Why would I?" Number Man asked, leaning back a little to keep a newly arrived Raj's hand out of his popcorn. "I'm not the idiot who xeroxed you without taking any precautions. You deserve every second of this."

"I can make you help me," she suggested.

"Stop it," he said, speaking to the clairvoyant. "This is mine. Make your own."

"Please?" Contessa asked.

He relented and stepped up to the door, clearing his throat. "Children," he intoned, "Please cease and desist . . . whatever it is you're doing."

"Never mind," Contessa said.

"I'm not sure what you expected," he complained. "I've never been able to stop you from making poor choices."

This had to stop, she thought, casting about for ideas on how to bring things back under control. In that moment, the perfect question to ask occurred to her.

Contessa released her clone. "All right, you win," she said. "But if I find that any of you have neglected anything because of the dogs, or have neglected the dogs because you get too busy or bored to tend to them, I will flay you all and turn your skins into a suit."

Number Man interrupted. "No, please, I don't need to see that."

"I didn't say I'd wear it, Pip, and shut up, I'm making a threat," she said. She refocused on Fortuna. "Did you get that? If you fail to fulfill your duties, I will turn you into an ugly suit nobody will wear. Is that understood?"

Nod.

"Get one of your sisters and meet me at the teleporter. There's something else we need to do before you go to bed."

As she turned to leave, she just so happened to bump into Number Man, causing him to spill popcorn all over himself.

Twenty minutes later, Contessa was kneeling in a few centimeters of snow, unzipping a soft gun

case. She removed a child-sized bolt action rifle and performed a function check. Satisfied it was in working order, she looked at the two clones she'd brought with her. They were staring solemnly down at her, both dressed for the cold in padded jackets, winter boots, and beanies.

"Do you understand what this is?" she asked.

Nods.

"Weapons kill. Never use one without your power." She handed the rifle to the nearest one. "You have your earplugs?"

Another nod.

She reached back into the rifle case for a loaded magazine before closing it. "Open fire at exactly 1:32. Five rounds. One each for four security cameras and one for the communications relay they're watching. A man will come looking for you. Let him find you—safely, for the both of you—and give him the letter. Answer all his questions and bring him here."

"Okay," Fortuna said as she pocketed the magazine.

Contessa stood up, brushing snow off her trench coat, and moved the case behind a rock for inconspicuous safekeeping. She checked the time and attempted to start a conversation with her other self.

"How are you doing?" she asked.

"We're—"

"Not all of you," Contessa interrupted. "Just you."

"Aren't we the same?"

"Would you say Ettore and Vico were the same?" she asked, referring to the pair of twins that had lived near her family.

"They didn't have the same name."

"True. I thought it would be better if you started out from the same baseline. That doesn't mean you have to stay the same. I'll train and protect you until you grow up, but what you do in the long run, who you choose to be, is up to you."

Fortuna seemed to consider the point, or maybe she was just staring into the valley, waiting for their target. It was difficult to tell and Contessa had no desire to push her. Instead she adjusted her coat so she could sit down on the rock and wait.

At length a woman wearing a coat and long skirt came into view.

"There she is," Fortuna said. "I'll go get her."

"Thank you," Contessa said. She checked her watch. 1:32 exactly.

Contessa watched her make her way into the valley and approach the woman.

Fortuna tugged on the woman's sleeve.

After a brief conversation, they started to head her way.

Contessa used the eight minutes they needed to finish their journey to check and recheck the conversation she intended to have. It wasn't that she was nervous, of course, it was that her traumatic foray into baking had left her with a healthy amount of caution.

She pushed her prudent concerns aside once she was able to hear Fortuna chattering about how her dog was going to have puppies and settled into following the steps her power laid out for her. She stopped talking once they reached the clearing.

The woman Fortuna had collected stopped dead when she saw Contessa and any residual good cheer she'd had from encountering a charming child in the woods vanished. Fortuna released her hand and ran over to stand by Contessa.

"Hello, Dragon," Contessa said.

Dragon's eyes narrowed. "You look like you should be skulking in alleys trying to get teenagers to buy drugs."

"I never skulk," Contessa said.

"You used your daughter as bait? Did Teacher send you to finish me off?" Another, darker look crossed her face. "Or does he want you to bring me back? I'm not subject to his modifications anymore. I will fight."

"She's not my daughter. Twin, sort of. There are five altogether. Legend adopted one. Another is distracting your partner so we have time to talk."

"You can be dangerous when you talk."

"I'm always dangerous. The question is to whom. Teacher and Saint are dead, by the way. I killed them by accident."

"I think it's more likely you're lying than you did anything by accident."

"I was trying to do some things without the help of my power," she said. "It turns out I can't. Or at least I can't without lots of unintended consequences, a surprisingly high amount of negligent homicide among them."

"I still don't believe you," Dragon said. "Though I recognize there is no way I ever could believe you because of your capacity for and willingness to resort to deception."

"Then I'd like to set the question of proof aside for now," Contessa said. She'd considered bringing a cooler with Teacher's head in it, but had decided that would be too much. "You remember how my power works?"

"I remember Las Vegas," Dragon said. "Taylor briefed me after New Delhi."

"Then you know—"

Something heavy and wet hit her in the back of her head and knocked her hat off.

She ran a hand through her hair and discovered clumped snow.

A snowball?

She turned. Her clone was there, staring defiantly back at her.

Either she wanted to provoke Contessa into dunking her headfirst into a snowdrift or there was something upsetting her.

Contessa looked over to Dragon. "I'm sorry for the distraction, but could you give me a minute?"

Dragon nodded, not bothering to keep the amusement off her face.

She made her way over to Fortuna and knelt so their eyes were on the same level. She tried to rest a hand on her shoulder. The child flinched, shied away from the touch. She let her hand drop. "What's the matter?"

"You're a killer," Fortuna said.

"I am," she agreed.

"You didn't say."

"I should have made things more clear. Part of protecting you is making sure you don't have to do anything ugly before you're ready to face that choice." She was conscious of Dragon's eyes on her and Defiant's imminent approach. This was important, but keeping to the schedule her power laid out for her took precedence. "You and I can talk about this now, or we can talk about it once we're all together. The others will share your concerns."

"I'll wait. Because of them, not because you want me to."

"That works," Contessa said. Fortuna tromped off to the side of the clearing furthest away from Contessa and sat beneath a tree to stare morosely at her boots.

Dragon's expression was unreadable when Contessa returned to resume their conversation. "Fortuna? Is that your real name?"

"There was someone my parents called that, but she died not long after they did," Contessa said.

Dragon raised an eyebrow.

"What," Contessa said, irritated, "Did you think I sprang fully formed from the Doctor's forehead?"

"I was too busy managing your occasional attacks on my code to consider the results of long-term exposure to the Doctor's particular way of thinking."

"It was more the other way around. She did what I needed her to do. Play a role, make the decisions that needed to be made. Maybe not for the best, especially not after Hero died, but she did what she could."

"If you think that excuses-"

"Not excuses. I need you to understand the relationship we had. She didn't control me absolutely, nor was I secretly the power behind the throne. It was more mutual, more-"

"The blind leading the blind?"

"Or the confused and terrified leading the terrified and confused."

"I don't think the basic tenets of morality are that confusing, even without the programming telling me what they are."

". . . Okay," Contessa said, realizing she should probably get used to not arguing with Dragon if she wanted to make this work. "I don't disagree. Or at least, I didn't always disagree. Things got less clear when I was in the middle of it."

She heard the crunch of snow being stepped on. Defiant entered the clearing, carrying a Fortuna on his back. "Dragon, I found an unsupervised child with a rifle," he announced. "Would you like to adopt it? The child, I mean, not the rifle, which I already took away because I'm not completely irresponsible."

Contessa cleared her throat. "It would be more accurate to say she let you take it away."

Defiant rounded on her, and Fortuna slid off his back and went to sit by her sister. "What did you do?"

"Sit on a rock and get hit by a snowball?" Contessa said innocently.

"I meant how did you make clones. We destroyed Blasto's equipment, and you're not a Tinker—"

"Panacea," Contessa said. "All she needs is biomass and access to a brain with the characteristics she's trying to imbue. And me, to talk her into it."

Dragon spoke up. "I think she's working her way around to asking me to join her team."

"What? Is she crazy?" Defiant asked. He frowned. "I truly hope not. One Simurgh is enough."

"I'm not insane," Contessa snapped. "I'm just less focused. Unmoored, really."

"Why?" he asked suspiciously.

"Ever since I triggered, I've had to rely on other people to help me choose the questions I ask. I relied on the Doctor the most. Alexandria and the Number Man, to a lesser extent. I thought I could work without that guidance, but I failed, and not in small ways. So I asked myself how to find the person who could help me ask the best questions."

Dragon's eyebrows rose. "It led you to me."

Contessa nodded. "I'm not asking you to join my team, Dragon. I'm asking you to lead it."

The AI stood quietly, not showing a reaction. It was Defiant who replied.

"Dragon is a good woman."

"I know," Contessa said. "I asked my question very carefully. I specifically asked for a guide who would let me regain some self-respect before I die. There are any number of intelligent people with an agenda I could get behind. There are fewer smart people who are good, and almost none of those people have any power. Your partner is the exception."

"Jesus," Defiant said at length. "She wants you to redeem her."

One corner of Dragon's mouth twitched up. "Perhaps you were a test case, Colin."

There was a long, long silence. Contessa knew they were talking to each other, arguing on digital channels she couldn't access—mostly, she knew, about Panacea and babies. It would just take a few more minutes, and a few more sentences spoken at the right time.

She looked over at her clones. The one she'd shocked noticed her looking and took the other to one side, whispering something in her ear. The latter's eyes widened for a moment and then they gave her twin glowers of condemnation.

Yeesh.

Contessa rubbed her forehead, trying to figure out the best approach to take. Had she really been that judgmental—morally stalwart, whatever—or had the memories Panacea copied been retroactively tainted with self-recrimination over the years? She decided that, after her talk with them, she'd haul Number Man off somewhere and use him to work out every last ounce of her frustration.

"We helped Weaver," Dragon said aloud.

"Yes, and where did that lead? 'Oh pretty please, fly me to the sky so I can make friends with the fucking Simurgh.' Which, yes, it worked out, but there's no compelling reason to listen to this one, no risk that's more dangerous than working with a monster. We don't need her."

The glare he gave Contessa conveyed a secondary, unspoken message. He was replying to her letter, which detailed the ways in which she could help remove restrictions on Dragon's code and restore functions his tinkering had destroyed, saying he didn't want an outsider's help with something so delicate.

He'd change his mind eventually.

"That's true," Dragon was saying, agreeing with the surface message. "But I think she needs us."

"I'm losing this, aren't I," Defiant growled. "Remember when you told me about Cauldron? The censorship, the murder, the human experimentation for profit?"

"I did do all that," Contessa interrupted. "That's part of the problem I'm trying to address—my mistakes have earth-shattering implications. So do my successes. The PRT, the neutralization of dozens of Class S threats you've never heard of, society's acceptance of parahumans—I had as much of a hand in those as I did in creating the Deviants or, ah, Eidolon's familial issues. That's my power, to build worlds."

Defiant shook his head. "Your power is winning arguments."

Contessa manufactured a rueful grin-and-shrug.

"So I'm interested," Dragon said. "Where do you want to go from here?"

"I want you to visit my base. You're settled here, and that's good, but I want you to see for yourselves what I am currently handling. Number Man will want to talk to you about something I can't talk about, and you'll want to hear his concerns before anything else." She could guess how they'd react to hearing about the visitation of the Simurgh, but she didn't want to broach the subject herself.

"You have Number Man with you?"

"Of course, and, between you and me, I think he's bored. The clairvoyant is also with us by his request and we have Harbingers and a Siberian as well. Then I can give you all of Accord's plans and what's left from what Teacher was doing, see if there's anything you want to focus on. I also have a lot of data I took from Tattletale earlier today about the state of the Wardens—the new version of the Protectorate—and the earths in general. Then there is the question of what to do about the three hundred or so Students I have left."

"Students? Teacher's slaves?"

"Yes. I was able to release about half of them, put them into communities where their powers would be useful, but some of them don't want to go or can't go. Either he took too much away from them, or there wasn't anything there when he used his power on them, or they're unwilling to face their old selves. I'm not really sure what to do with them. I considered getting Panacea to make another Teacher and get Riley to see if she could alter the emotional effects of his power, but—"

"No," Dragon said.

"—I thought you might say that." Contessa reached behind her rock to get the other object she'd brought with her, a Tinkertech disc the size of a garbage can. She tossed it onto the ground between them.

"What's that?" Defiant asked.

"One of Teacher's teleportation devices," Contessa said. "We can use it to set up a portal between my base and here. I'll secure it later. For now, I'd like to get going before Number Man has to bring Panacea back to her father and these two"—she beckoned to her clones—"have to go to sleep."

The disc activated with a bang. Her clones were the first through the portal, and they were already wriggling out of their jackets before Defiant followed, scouting the room (a kitchen, which Contessa would have considered harmless until a few months ago) before ushering Dragon through.

Contessa conducted a final sweep of the area to make sure there weren't any threats before following. They were safe, barring a resurgence of Simurgh antics. From here it would be a matter of a few conversations—some negotiation, establishment of ground rules, a little more persuasion, and then she'd have her new guide.

And that, she supposed, would be Step One.