People went crazy. I had a hard time understanding it. The explosion hadn't amounted to more than one or two tons of TNT, less than a ten thousands of the bombs used in Hiroshima. Radiation effects only spread in a three block radius in all directions.
Sylar's body was still too hot to handle, but government thinkers figured out that whatever was causing his radiation had a half life of one day. The autopsy was set for nine days from now, at which time the radiation would be one five hundredth of what it was now, decreased to a safe level. In the meantime he was in a PRT freezer. The autopsies of the others were already being performed with the aid of spider bots I graciously provided. The fact that the spider bots also sent a copy of what happened in the autopsies to my personal computer was something the PRT didn't need to know.
The legion of PRT agents surrounding the area wearing Hazmat suits and waving Geiger counters around was enough to alert even the most drugged out citizen that something was terribly wrong. I could have told them with both Bonesaw and Mannequin's knowledge that the explosion had likely been very clean and that it would be limited in scope.
To the uninformed public that didn't make any sense at all. Any kind of nuclear explosion was terrifying. People began to leave the city in droves, and while the PRT could have tried to calm the public, they didn't.
Leviathan was due in three days, after all, and a city with fewer people was a city that was easier to defend.
Mannequin had knowledge of how to clean up radioactive spills from his days as Sphere. As Sphere he'd had the knowledge to build space habitats and spacecraft. I now had inherited that knowledge and I planned to use it to help everyone.
Unfortunately some in the PRT seemed to blame me for the debacle. I tried to explain that I'd been a simple bystander but Tagg wouldn't have it. He would allow only PRT approved tinkertech solutions, even when I reasonably protested that the Protectorate didn't have any capes as good as I was.
I contemplated building a bomb that would absorb radiation instead of emit it.I wasn't sure however how people would react to the sound of a second explosion in the same area.
Men in dark suits appeared on the evening of the second day. They were government anti-terrorism experts in to investigate. Their department wasn't all that big in the scheme of things; Terrorism had never been as popular here as it had been on Earth Aleph, possibly because people were too worried about Endbringer attacks to worry about killing their fellow humans.
Would that change if I destroyed the Endbringers?
The one thing I was learning about the world was that there were unintended consequences for everything. Part of the reason the PRT was so controlling with inventions was for just that reason. They were convinced that the next thing a tinker invented was always going to be a gray goo that was going to devour the planet.
Fortunately, with the exception of Squealer all the Tinkers I'd stolen powers from were the tops of their field. I created a plan for the radiation cleanup, drafted it and sent it to the PRT. Hopefully they would listen. If they didn't I'd take care of it in the middle of the night.
I had Uber and Leet gather the materials for the antiradiation bomb. It was difficult as they were busy preparing the ship to be seaworthy. With Leviathan coming it was an almost certainty that the ships in the Bay would be wrecked. Losing the lab was unacceptable, so the plan was for Uber and Leet to take a trip down south to Florida for a couple of weeks until everything calmed down.
The outside of the ship still looked like a wreck, but I built spider bots that would work on the exterior while they were in transit. By the time they reached Miami they'd look like any other ship.
In the meantime the spiderbots helped repair the interior of the ship in an effort to make it seaworthy.
"I had nothing to do with the explosion," I said for the seventh time. "It was an effect generated by the man known as Sylar."
"And did you push him into taking this move, out of desperation perhaps?" the man asked.
I shook my head. "He did it right after I got there. The Siberian was about to kill him and it was a last resort, I think."
"Yet it was your spike that killed him," the man in black said.
He was eager to make an arrest, I sensed. Life in a post terrorism world wasn't kind to members of the terrorism task force, especially since most terrorism was perpetrated by parahumans and so was the purview of the PRT.
"I attacked him when he was wounded," I said. "He was too dangerous to live."
"There wasn't an official kill order," the man said. "And you attacked him from behind."
"The PRT has already cleared me," I said. "He faced a group of twelve Protectorate heroes along with PRT agents and myself and he barely broke a sweat. Did you want me to call him out and attack from twenty paces?"
I leaned forward. "Even if you think I did something wrong, what are you going to do about it? The PRT has cleared me. I think you are out of your jurisdiction."
The FBI couldn't do anything to me without Protectorate assistance, other than maybe garnishing my Slaughterhouse Nine winnings.
It had been a pleasure to realize that I was now fifty million dollars richer, counting the money from previous Slaughterhouse members but not the Tattletale money.
"People like you think they are above the law," the man muttered. "And you get away with it."
"Will you be out there facing Leviathan or the Simurgh? I will," I said coldly. "While you're huddling in a shelter hoping that people like me will keep you safe."
At the meeting Chief Director Costa Brown had told me that the PRT had been founded to keep more people from having attitudes like this man. It was there to calm people's fears and to make them think of parahumans as heroes instead of monsters who planned to take over the world.
Unfortunately many parahumans were exactly that kind of monster, and an incident like this was only likely to inflame resentments, even though the area had been deserted and there hadn't been any actual casualties, although there had been two homeless people who'd gotten radiation poisoning.
"The actual damage was only about four million dollars," I said. "I'd tell you to bill me, but I didn't do any of it. If you try to bill me I'll see you in court."
"This was a nuclear explosion on American soil," he said. "It's unprecedented. The United States has a right to protect itself."
"There have been other explosions," I said. "In Nevada and New Mexico. People used to watch the explosions from Las Vegas."
The man seemed frustrated that I couldn't see his point of view. I had to admit that my attitudes were changing since I'd gotten Bonesaw's powers. There had been a time what I'd have been horrified at the idea of tearing my own face off. Now it seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do to avoid brain cancer.
Not that I couldn't fix that of course. It's just that not having brain caner seemed a lot more convenient.
"Nevertheless people are terrified and someone has to pay," he said.
I stared at him incredulously. He seemed to have an outsized view of his importance; apparently things were done differently in Washington DC. I'd heard that there weren't nearly as many Capes there as here.
Well, more Capes here before Sylar and I got involved.
He wasn't used to dealing with Capes; obviously he was more used to interrogating normal human subjects, browbeating and intimidating them into confessions.
"How much have you been told about my abilities?" I asked him.
"You steal powers," he said, staring at me.
"Right now I have the powers of twenty seven different Capes. Just one of the Capes whose power I have was able to keep the local PRT and every other gang in town at bay for years simply through the fear of his power. I have the powers of an entire city full of Capes, which means that I'm a little difficult to intimidate."
"You aren't more powerful than the United States government!" he said.
"I'm not fighting with the United States government. The PRT has cleared me of any responsibility for this. I'm doing this interview as a favor to you, when by all rights I should have representation because I am a minor. In point of fact, because I don't you can't actually use anything I say here against me."
What surprised me was that the PRT had allowed this ass to speak to me instead of a more seasoned investigator. My suspicion was that they were trying to make themselves look better by comparison. It was a classic con; show something entirely unacceptable and the next best thing would look much better by comparison.
The fact that I was wanting to gut him like a fish probably hadn't been part of their calculations.
"In point of fact," I said, "This is a waste of my time. I'm helping with Endbringer preparations and this is just taking time away from that."
"Preparations?"
"I have the skills of multiple Tinkers," I said. "The best in their fields. This is the first time that we've had concrete evidence of where and when an Endbringer is going to attack in advance and we're going to make the best use of it."
His face drained of color. "Here?"
"Tomorrow most likely," I said. "Although it could be as long as three days from now. Enjoy your stay in an Endbringer shelter. You'd better hope that someone like me is waiting when Leviathan comes knocking at the door."
Apparently all the Feds weren't talking to each other. I was wondering why so many FBI men were willing to come to a city on the eve of an Endbringer attack.
I rose to my feet. "This interview is over. Good luck with your life."
With that I skipped to the mirror world then stepped out of the room. I returned to the real world and then headed down to the labs. Armsmaster had graciously allowed me to use his secondary lab with Kid Win as an assistant since Uber and Leet were heading out of state.
They didn't know that, of course, but I'd told them that I was temporarily relocating my labs.
I'd even built a hologram generator to make it look like the ship was still in it's place, generated from a buoy. If Leviathan attacked in the way I thought he might it would doubtlessly be destroyed, but it was cheap and easy to make. In the aftermath of the destruction anyone would assume a missing ship was at the bottom of the bay.
Building bombs to save lives instead of taking them probably would have made Bakuda's head explode, but this was my chance to make a difference.
With four hours left until Leviathan was most likely to appear, people began to gather in the PRT headquarters. Gathering in the Rig would have been a bad idea considering that it sat in the Bay and might be one of Leviathan's first targets.
I was surprised and stunned to see Glory Girl and Panacea show up. It had been weeks since I'd seen them, and they looked much better than they had the last time I'd seen them. Both of them had picked up a tan, which seemed surprising in the wintertime Canadian wilderness.
Panacea had lost that hunted, depressed look. Instead she seemed to glow with health. Bonesaw's power whispered in my ear that gaining her power would make what we did incredibly easy. It felt like a craving, but I ignored it.
Their eyes widened as they saw me.
Glory Girl rushed over, smiling. She looked as though she was going to grab my hand before she caught herself. I could understand why she might not want to touch a power thief. I was having to actively suppress Hatchetface's powers, something I'd have to do during the battle. I had little doubt that Leviathan was immune and suppressing the powers of the other Capes would be a death sentence.
"I hear you got him!" she said. "The man who killed Mom and Crystal and everybody."
Panacea followed at a more sedate pace, but she actually looked glad to see me for once.
"I stabbed him in the head through the brain," I said. "He's down in the morgue."
"Thank you," Panacea said. "We couldn't have come back as long as he was here."
"Dragon arranged it," Glory Girl said. "They'll need Amy, although from what I hear you aren't any slouch at healing yourself."
"You'll have to tell me how you managed it," Amy said. "I'll have to admit I'm a little jealous. Just touching hundreds of people one after the other and then being done with it...it sounds like a dream."
"I've got a power that can enhance my other powers during certain times," I said. I'd been a little cagey in talking about my fear power since the PRT knew about most of my others. "I probably couldn't do it most of the time."
That was a qualified understatement. Any situation where there were hundreds of injured probably had plenty of fear to go around. At the same time I wouldn't be able to heal even three people at a time if we were isolated and alone. It was the one bad thing about the exodus from the city; with fewer people the enhancement I got from the fear they generated would be less.
At the same time I would have to protect fewer people, so I wasn't sure how it would pan out. Lung had fought Leviathan before in Asia; he hadn't won but he'd survived. The fact that I was now much more powerful than Lung could only play well in my favor.
At the same time I had little doubt that I was going to be at the center of the offensive, which meant that I was going to be at greater risk than anyone else. I was going toe to toe with the monster than was the nightmare of billions of people and all I could hope was that I did well.
"I heard you pretty much took the whole city," Glory Girl said. "Hookwolf and Kaiser and all of them. It's going to be hard to imagine the city without the Empire and the ABB."
"There's some new guy running things," I said. "Some cape I haven't heard of before. He's their only Cape though, so they won't be nearly as much of a threat as they were in the past."
I'd heard that the Empire had been gobbling up the old territories of the Merchants and the ABB. The new Empire had actually assimilated some of the ABB into themselves, with the rationalization that Hitler had allied with the Japanese.
It apparently hadn't been a seamless transition, and there were reports of fights and actual murders in the ranks.
Once this was all over, assuming the Bay was still standing I'd take care of the gangs once and for all. They were a weed that needed pruning and I was the one to do it.
"I want in!" Glory Girl said.
I realized that I must have said some of that out loud. I needed to watch how distracted I was getting. The constant tinkering over the last three days had reduced some of my stress, but it had made some of it worse. I hoped that my additions changed the usually horrible death rate of Endbringer fights.
"You guys didn't have to come," I said. "To this, I mean."
"I've got a lot of friends in Arcadia," Glory Girl said. "People with homes and families and as much as I've enjoyed staying with Dragon, this is my home."
"I'd be happy living anywhere," Panacea piped in. "But I don't want people to die here if I could have saved them."
"I've made some things that might help you have to do less work," I said.
More Capes were filtering into the room. I'd been told that during most Endbringer attacks most of the defenders were locals. That was usually because there usually wasn't enough warning to ship more than a limited number of people to the city being attacked before everyone was too busy.
But now most of the defenders were going to be foreigners. That was in part because between me and Sylar there were only a dozen other Capes in the Bay at all...fourteen now that Glory Girl and Panacea were back.
Many of them were looking at me with suspicion, and I noticed that our part of the room was given a wide berth by everyone else. Apparently no one else wanted to take even the slightest risk that I might accidentally steal their powers.
Or it might be that they didn't trust me. I was going to have to call Tattletale and see what rumors were going around about me. Hopefully nothing that I'd have to deal with. The last thing I needed was to be labeled as the girl who'd set off a nuclear explosion.
"I need to change," I said.
Before they could say anything I jumped into the mirror universe and began to switch into my Vengeance outfit. If I felt only five percent more confident as Vengeance as I did as Gamble it could make the kind of difference that would save lives.
As I returned I noticed that the crowd had suddenly grown much larger while I was gone and there now wasn't much of a space around anyone.
The entire room murmured with conversations. A wave of silence spread across the room as three more people entered the room.
Alexandria, Legend and Eidolon entered the room, and suddenly it was quiet enough to hear a pin drop.
