4.2 HFC

I didn't get much sleep that night. It wasn't the first or even the second time that someone tried to kill me like that, but it ran through my mind. Without my ability I would be dead. And if I wasn't clever enough to use my ability as a pseudo-forcefield I would also be dead.

Taylor didn't have people coming out of the woodwork to kill her like I did. She gave the illusion of overwhelming power and invulnerability. No one even tried. But I was trying to play up the fact I was just a little girl.

Somehow people still wanted to kill a little girl.

When it was clear I wasn't going to get much sleep I got up and made myself breakfast. My parents had already gone off to work and my brother to school so it was just me. It was a weekday but I had nowhere to be. There was no point in attending Winslow or Arcadia.

After cooking some eggs I sat down on the couch and turned on the TV. There was a report of someone being killed down by the beaches. That was still Undersider territory but the report didn't look relevant. Without anything else to watch I occupied my time with it.

At some point I fell asleep. As soon as I'd stop trying I actually napped.

I woke up to the sound of the phone ringing sometime later. "Clements residence," I said sleepily.

"It's Faultline. I'm looking over this shipping manifest and I had some questions."

It took me a minute to get my bearings. "Which one?"

"The one going out today. A bunch of Bakuda's stuff. Let me read you out what my questions are on."

I switched which hand my phone was in and listened to Faultline rattle off some of the more suspect items we were shipping out. We were an independent contractor, which was a fancy way of saying mercenaries. The PRT had "hired" all of its heroes back, though we held onto Bakuda and Squealer. I wanted to keep Kid Win too but wasn't able to negotiate for it.

We had taken to selling tinker merchandise on the side. If Toy Box could do it so could we, though there were all these guidelines Bakuda absolutely hated like "no nuclear bombs" and such. I had no problems with that one.

The doorbell rang and I sighed. Everything always happened at once. "Hold on Faultline, someone's at my door. Also, yes, Bakuda made ten more of those round things the other day so we added them in."

"She called them Roly Polies."

"Pretty sure it was someone else who named it," I said. I held my phone in my left hand and opened the door with my right. A father and daughter were there with a cart full of girl scout cookies.

"Go ahead," said the dad.

The girl looked fairly young. Probably older than Dinah though. "Umm, hi, I'm selling cookies." She said. "Wanna buy some?"

I looked in the basket. "Sure. Do you have Thin Mints?"

The girl nodded. "Uh huh! Four dollars."

"Alright, let me go get the money." I wandered back into the kitchen where we kept the cash. "Sorry Faultline, girl scouts are at the door."

"Wow, is it that time of the year already? Buy me some."

"Get your own. Hold on a minute, I'm putting down the phone." I grabbed the four dollars and left the phone in the kitchen. Faultline would have to survive without me. "Here you are," I said handing the girl the four dollars. She took a green box out of her cart and handed it to me.

"Thank you," she exclaimed. "You're really nice."

"Uh, thanks." Apparently little girls have a thing for me. "You're nice too. What grade are you in?"

"I'm in fifth grade."

"Isn't it Wednesday? Taking the day off school?"

The girl pouted. "No, school let out. I'm a good student!"

"What?" I spun around and stretched my neck to see the clock. "Crap, it's already three-thirty?" That nap was a lot longer than I thought it was. It felt like half an hour, tops.

"Hey, no swearing!"

My face went red. "Ah, sorry," I said. "Thanks for the cookies. Have a nice day."

"Thanks!"

I closed the door as they left. I tossed the box of cookies onto the fridge to eat later and grabbed the phone. "I'm back," I said. "How is it already three-thirty?"

"The Earth's rotation. Did you buy me anything?"

"I already told you to buy them yourself. Should I bother coming to the office?" I usually kept a typical schedule from nine to five, though there was no one to fire me if I didn't show.

"You could. Taylor's still here for some reason so it would be nice to have a meeting."

I shouldn't have said anything. A meeting. Just kill me now.

I hung up the phone and headed towards the HFC office. There was no reason to hide from the public anymore so I teleported openly along the sidewalk. Even though it was a fifteen minute car ride from my house to HFC, with my ability I could be there in five.

Faultline was waiting for me in the garage. "Fast as always."

"Yeah. Is this the shipment?" I pointed to the truck. A few thralls were loading boxes into it. Faultline nodded and handed me the manifest to check it over. While I looked it over Charlotte stepped out of the truck and carefully wheeled a dolly behind her.

When she saw me she gave a wave and a smile. There were fangs in those teeth.

"Isn't Taylor exercising her ability a little liberally?" I asked Faultline. She had taken out a cigarette while I finished inspecting the cargo. "I thought she would turn Charlotte away."

Faultline frowned. She wasn't wearing her mask—revealing herself as Melanie Fitts made it unnecessary—but she felt more like a "Faultline" than a Melanie. "Unfortunately she's getting used to it. I think Panacea's little reveal did more harm than good."

"What do you mean?"

"Think about it yourself. In any case, thanks for your hard work. Taylor's upstairs in her office if you want to see her." She took a drag on her cigarette. "Let's meet in the conference room in half an hour."

I left the warehouse with only Faultline's cryptic words as a parting gift. Despite my ability it was necessary to walk around in the HFC building. I worked off line-of-sight which meant corners and doors were my biggest enemies.

More harm than good, huh.

Considering the alternative was everyone on the planet being mastered, Faullint was probably just being dramatic. Yet she did seem to think there was a downside. Panacea told Taylor that mastering didn't cure her withdrawal symptoms. Drinking blood did.

Why is this knowledge correlated with Taylor being more liberal with her abilities?

Before Panacea's reveal Taylor was of the mindset that she had to use her master ability. There was no alternative. After her reveal Taylor did not have to use it. She could live her life without ever mastering someone again.

So why is Taylor still mastering people?

I stopped by the break room to grab a soda from the fridge.

Why didn't she stop?

During the original negotiations we set a quota of five people per month. That was the limit. And there were a lot of rules the PRT dragged us through like how we couldn't pick random people up off the street and have them mastered. It had to be an enemy-combatant-type-thing or to save someone's life.

I had argued for the quota because the PRT was giving us an inch and I planned on taking a hundred thousand miles. But Taylor, even going by my lead, had not wanted to use her ability. The quota was almost a formality. I had been confident Taylor would have no problem keeping to it.

Now I'm not so sure.

But she definitely didn't want to use her ability before Panacea revealed the truth.

"...right?" I asked aloud, opening the door to the stairwell. I was lost in my thoughts. I'm confused.

Which meant I was wrong about something. The truth has a nasty habit of making perfect and utter sense once you know it. My confusion meant I was wrong about some detail. I needed to kill my assumptions, start over and only believe things if I could justify them.

Instead of walking down the hall, I leaned up against the wall and opened my soda. The crack of the can opening echoed a little bit.

It begins in April when Taylor first masters Emma. At some point Taylor came under the mistaken impression she and her thralls had to master someone every month. So over the next few months she prepares for the Red Sky incident, the purpose of which is to capture Panacea. That way she can remove the requirement that she and her thralls must master someone every month.

I took a sip of my drink.

At the very least this implies Taylor does not want herself and her thralls to be forced to master someone every month. But why not?

The answer to that one was immediate. The end of the world, of course. Anyone in that position would come to the same conclusion. It was an exponential growth problem.

Duh. Taylor didn't use her ability because using it is how the world would end. She had to use it, but she used it as little as possible to delay the end of the world. She used her ability exactly as much as was necessary and nothing more. Because the world would end if she didn't.

And with that restriction gone so is the restriction on her ability.

I glanced towards Taylor's door at the end of the hall. It was really straightforward. That was a really straightforward explanation. It even felt right.

But it implied that Taylor had no moral qualms about mastering people. That was the danger Faultline saw in her and warned me about. The double-edged sword of Panacea's words. Because of Panacea, Taylor no longer feared her own ability.

And so she used it.

I continued onwards and knocked on the door to Taylor's office. While it was important to keep my brain's copy of Taylor up to date, ultimately it didn't matter if she mastered people or not. Nor if she liked it or not. In fact it's probably better this way.

"Good afternoon," I said as I opened the door.

Taylor's office was the largest in the building by a factor of three. A giant mural of Brockton Bay's sunny beach was painted on the left wall, with a large couch along the right. Taylor sat down on it next to Bakuda. She tinkered with something in her lap while Taylor watched.

"Hi Madison," Taylor said. "Watch Bakuda make stuff with me. I can't follow it at all."

"That's a tinker thing isn't it?" I asked. "No one else can understand their work. That thing you had me put in the PRT building had Dragon completely stumped."

Taylor shrugged and leaned on Bakuda's shoulder. A pleasant smile came over Bakuda's face as she attacked her device with her screwdriver. I wandered over and sat down on Taylor's opposite side.

That's the other thing. This place was an echo chamber. Any thrall is going to tell Taylor they're happy and to make more and the only person who might not tell her that—and whose opinion Taylor actually cared about—would be her dad. And I have no idea what their relationship is like.

"Taylor, would you save my life?" I asked.

She turned away from Bakuda and gave me a blank stare.

"If I was dying or dead, would you save me like you saved Spitfire?"

"Yes."

So fast! That was too fast, Taylor. She didn't even think about it. And the look she gave—as if I was an idiot for even thinking something else might happen. I'm confident I have her trust not to bite me in the neck while I sleep, maybe. But that's as far as it goes. I don't know why but I had thought—

—I had thought she didn't like controlling people.

"...I'm an idiot."

When I had the exact thought, phrased exactly like that, it was obviously false. My brain had somehow sorted Taylor into the category of "good" people. The type of person who doesn't want to rule the world and is fine living their daily life. Someone who will uphold justice and never kill.

But nothing Taylor has done actually fits that image of her. I'm an idiot for sorting her into that category. It must have happened years ago when we were still in school and I never bothered looking into it.

"I'm still angry you know," Taylor said. There was a stab to it.

"You are?"

"I thought it would fade away. Especially with us allied like this and Emma as my thrall. I thought I would get over it. But sometimes I still remember that day. When you threw me into the locker sneering and laughing and you didn't have the slightest care of how you were torturing me. I could have died and you wouldn't even care. I still get angry about that, Madison. At you, Sophia and Emma."

Bakuda looked up, concerned. Taylor wrapped her arm around her. I might have to keep an eye on what Bakuda has been tinkering with.

"I can hurt Emma all I want, but it doesn't do me any good. She just takes it, apologizes and begs me to hit her even more. It doesn't exactly feel like revenge."

That was not a hypothetical, I realized. My heart beat faster in my chest.

"Attacking Sophia, on the other hand, would cause issues with the PRT. So I can't go after her."

Which leaves—

"If I'm being honest, Madison? I really want to hurt you. I want to beat you until you beg me to stop, and then I want to see you cry when I don't. Because you never stopped when I begged. I want to carve everything you did into me back into you."

Fuck. I put my hands in my lap and stared at them. "I've done nothing but obey," I said quietly.

"Yeah." Taylor took her left arm and draped it over my shoulders, pulling me close. Her wings shifted and trapped me in her embrace. I stared at the sunny mural on the opposite wall, ready to teleport if necessary.

'Sorry' wouldn't cut it. Even if I actually meant it, too much has happened. Taylor wouldn't believe it. She wanted to hurt me. Of course she did, we weren't friends or buddy-buddy. There was no way I could sit on this couch and just hang out.

"If you bite me, I'll be just like Emma." I said, unsure of whether it would be the right move.

"I know," Taylor said. She squeezed me tighter. "But it's not as simple as knocking you around. Even if you're right here next to me, you're basically untouchable. You're too useful to antagonize. Every day I wonder whether I should get it over with and just do it."

I knew it before we started any of this. Joining Taylor's side wouldn't make me safe from her, it would just change the game. In the flavor of keeping our enemies close, or something like that. Taylor likely had similar thoughts about me.

There had to be a way to turn this around. Something.

"I heard a quote once about taking responsibility," I said. "It said to take responsibility means to take the pain unto yourself. To bear more pain than what others felt because of your mistakes. To repay ruined silverware with gold."

The room was silent.

"If I did something like that, would you forgive me?"

Taylor frowned. "I don't know. You and the others tortured me for a year and a half and nearly killed me. How could you take responsibility for a year and a half of torture?"

I didn't answer. I didn't have an answer. But an "I don't know" is better than just a "no." I needed to make Taylor not hate me. I needed to take responsibility. I must do that, I have to do that.

Taylor already knew who I was. Lying would acomplish nothing.

"I hate myself for this," I said. "But I still can't apologize. The only lesson I learned from torturing you is not to antagonize people who might become parahumans one day. I'm the sort of broken person who can only think like that. All I can do is take responsibility like I said. I am unable to feel sorry for it."

Taylor didn't give me much of a response. Just a slight nod as if to say she already knew that. I couldn't think of any more words, but I couldn't leave. Taylor had me in her literal grasp, and teleporting away would be an act of disobedience.

She had to believe she still had control. For three months I'd managed to keep the status quo. I had to maintain it for a while longer, while I worked on Taylor's forgiveness.

I wanted to punch something. I should be better than this. There had to be something I could do to take responsibility and get in Taylor's good graces.

"By the way," I said. "Faultline wants to meet in about twenty minutes."

"Why?"

"A meeting."

Taylor groaned. I almost smiled. Taylor and I would never be friends, but anything I could do to be friendly could only help me. For twenty minutes we sat there, watching Bakuda tinker. Taylor absentmindedly played with my hair.

Faultline's meeting started before I could come up with a way to take responsibility. Taylor and I entered together, leaving Bakuda behind. Besides the two of us, Faultline's whole crew was there along with Parian and some thralls whose names I didn't know.

We sat around a table as Faultline addressed us from the front of the room. Behind her she had pinned up a map of the city.

Oh god, I know what this is—

"So I think we should start having regular state-of-the-company meetings, or something along those lines." Faultline said. "Maybe once a week or once every two weeks. Just to keep us all on the same page and so we know what everyone is working on."

I groaned. "I thought I got away from this sort of thing when I leftthe Wards."

Faultline grinned a sadistic smile. "Now now, what did you expect miss director-of-HFC? You should be the one running these meetings anyways."

"Ugh."

"Any more objections?" No one responded. Out of fear, probably. "Good. Now then, we'll start with the map behind me and lay out territories and whatnot of our friendly neighborhood villains."

Unlike the PRT we did not have a big fancy television screen with cool graphics. Faultline was using nothing more than a large map, post-it-notes, thumb tacks and colored sharpies.

"The area I'm highlighting in blue here isn't anyone's territory. A cynical way of looking at it is it's the PRT's territory." Faultline circled in blue a large portion of downtown and the suburbs, stretching even a little into the trainyard. "The area in red is essentially our territory." Faultline proceeded to color in the docks and most of the trainyard red. "Technically we don't have territory, but I estimate HFC's sphere-of-influence stretches around here. In any case there's no gang activity."

So far most of the city had already been taken up. Which left the beaches area.

"The southern districts are still held by the Undersiders," Faultline said. "The Travelers have obeyed their namesake and left town. The Merchants are disbanded, the Empire is disbanded and the ABB is disbanded. Some of the old capes from those organizations are still around but they're not organized. The only real villain threat is the Undersiders."

"They've been in control of that area for months," Emily said. "I don't think the heroes are even trying."

Faultline shrugged. "The Undersiders aren't terrible. It's not worth it to go after them until they do something incredibly stupid."

"Not to mention," I said loudly, "they're controlling the shitty part of town."

"Can't say that in the Wards," Faultline joked. "Without Tattletale they aren't as effective as they once were. They haven't tried anything major in months but I'd rather not poke the bear. Just in case it really is still a bear."

"I wonder if they might not want to be villains anymore," Taylor said. It was an offhand remark but it gave the room pause. It was—no, I'm not going to call it her type of solution. But it was an interesting thought.

"Do you think we could buy them out?" I asked.

Taylor shrugged. "I'm curious why they're still holding out as the last villains. I don't know much about them, but if it was about vengeance wouldn't they have done it by now? It's worth thinking about. I can imagine a situation where someone like the Teeth come in and try to overtake them. It would cause us loads of problems down the line."

I tapped my finger on the desk. "Wait," I said. "I'm sorry, this is completely unnecessary."

Faultline raised a brow. "Trying to get out of the meeting?"

I shook my head. "No, I mean talking about the Undersiders and whether or not the Teeth move in or someone else. It doesn't really matter, we all know what's going to happen in two months. It literally does not matter as long as we can sustain the status quo."

"Ah," Taylor said. "Assuming we don't stop that from happening."

"Are we trying to stop it?" I asked. "We've known about it for awhile now and aren't a hair closer to figuring out what's going to happen. Even if we all agreed to stop it there isn't anything to do about it."

"If a way presents itself to stop it from happening, I'll do it." Taylor said. "But you're right. I'm completely clueless on what will actually happen."

Personally I'm going to assume the nine-in-ten chance will actually happen and large swaths of parahumans will be suddenly unpowered.

Faultline sighed. "I hate to say my investigation into it and its related matters are still at a standstill. Shamrock is pretty insistent it's a bad idea to go up to the PRT and ask them point-blank about any of it."

"Do you really think they know something?" I asked. "Calvert hasn't given me any indication he actually knows what's going on. Though he's pretty good."

"That's not... quite what I meant. I actually meant the Protectorate. Sorry. I think Legend might know something. But the point is we have little progress."

Faultline was speaking about something I wasn't privy to, because a lot of people acted like they understood way more than they should have. I'll have to press them on that at some point.

"Moving on to less critical matters," Fautline continued, "Alexandria is still hanging over the city. I just want to remind us all of that because it might upset our precious status quo when she's free." She cut me a glance at that line. "In other news, the boat graveyard is around eighty-percent cleared out. And our deal went through for the warehouse around the corner."

A couple nods around the table.

Officially, Melanie Fitts was the CFO of the company. I didn't know the exact numbers for how much income and expenses we had but I knew HFC was turning a large profit. A typical Ward was given a 50,000 dollar stipend per year put into a trust and was also paid minimum wage. Which put a value of around 65,000 dollars on each Ward. A full Protectorate member on the other hand was worth around 80,000.

We would bring in about two million annually from that. And since they were thralls they didn't actually need a salary. Just living expenses. On paper they were nothing more than volunteers and no lawyer was going to fight us on that.

That was just the thralls we loaned out to the heroes. We still held onto Bakuda and Squealer and sold both of their creations to the PRT (or whoever else would buy them). That brought in just as much money if not more.

All of that would go up in smoke though the instant everyone lost their powers. It's hard to imagine whether or not the PRT would even exist.

"Should we adjourn?" Faultline asked.

"No," I said. "I want to plan for what happens after everyone loses their powers, should that happen. Dinah said Taylor keeps hers, which I assume means the thralls stay... thrally. But the entire world might change. Parahumans might be a thing of the past. The PRT is preparing for that eventuality. We need to as well."

Taylor stood up. "What do you mean, the PRT is preparing for that?"

"It's Calvert," I said. "He somehow wormed his way into Costa-Brown's seat and he's using the Red Sky incident as a reason to take the PRT in a different direction. There's new training, regulations and protocols he's putting into place. I've looked over some of them, not that they're public, but they're fairly frightening. He's completely intending that the Protectorate breaks down and the PRT has to stand on its own as—well, frankly, as what it was originally designed to be. Non-capes equipped and trained to take down capes."

"You say that like he knows what's going to happen."

"He does know what's going to happen. He knew before any of us did."

"What?" Exclaimed more than one person in the room. Taylor was the one who followed up. "How long have you known that?"

"Since the negotiations."

"And you waited until now to tell us?"

I gave Taylor my best glare and it was enough to give her pause. The entire room quieted down. All eyes were on me. The next words I leveled at her had to be precise.

"I'm still waiting for you to tell me what was on that flash drive," I said.

The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees. There was a noticeable pause as someone tried to formulate a response. I earnestly had no idea what the importance was, but I'd noticed how they tiptoed around it. There was something substantial they were keeping me out of.

"It's not important," Faultline said.

"Come on," I said. "It's obviously important. We're all keeping secrets, don't blame me like I'm the bad guy in this. That Calvert knows what's going on isn't even the juiciest one in my arsenal."

Taylor slouched in her chair. "We didn't tell you because it's none of your business."

"I'm making it my business."

Faultline and Taylor gave each other looks, then held up a finger towards me while they went and huddled in a corner obviously discussing what to do. I rolled my eyes at their little sidebar and watched everyone else in the room. Most of them looked uncomfortable—except Shamrock, as always, who was way too amused at what had happened. It looked like she was itching to say something.

It was her flash drive after all. If the sidebar doesn't resolve I can bother her about it.

"Fine," Faultline finally said. "You tell us what you know, and we'll tell you what we know."