Lisa swallowed a chunk of turkey sandwich and blinked at me.
"You sure you don't want me to help set her house on fire?" she said. "We'll be very discreet. We can even make sure nobody's home before we toss the lighter."
That got a quiet laugh out of me. Laughs at what I'd been through at Emma's hands still didn't come easily, but having someone to talk to who genuinely heard me made all the difference in the world. I considered my own hulking roast beef sandwich before replying. Some subtle yet persistent prompting from Lisa had encouraged me to finally spill my guts on the whole sordid story of myself, Emma, Sophia, and Madison, but the words still came only in fits and starts, like I had to wrench them out of some rusted-over vault in my memories.
"Believe me, I've thought about it," I said, "but taking revenge like that would just be a win for her in the end. I'd rather leave those memories behind and slam the door on them. Never seeing her again would still be a few eons too soon."
"I can respect that," Lisa said. She dropped her sandwich back onto its plate. "Still, if you ever change your mind, say the word, and fwoosh." She mimed an explosion with a great deal of enthusiasm.
I set my own sandwich plate down on Lisa's kitchen table. We'd made our way back to her apartment, as she was adamant that intercession at the clinic would not be required until much later.
Expensive stainless steel appliances gleamed under the warm light of an ornate standing lamp tucked away in the corner of the kitchen. In my visits to Lisa's apartment, I had learned that her claim to have a considerable amount of funds to draw upon had been no idle boast. High-end furnishings were the rule anywhere the eye looked. It was the kind of apartment you'd associate with a high-powered lawyer or executive, not a teenaged dropout, but superpowers had a way of confounding your expectations.
I often wondered why Lisa had chosen to live in Brockton Bay, rather than somewhere more glamorous. As far as major cities went, my crumbling, crime-ridden, white supremacist hometown wouldn't have topped my list of places to set up shop. Maybe New York, or San Francisco, but Brockton? I decided to ask her.
Lisa scratched her head.
"I don't know if I could tell you myself," she said. "After I got my powers, I drifted around for a bit before I washed up here in Brockton. Leaving seemed like more trouble than it'd be worth."
She seemed to gather herself for a moment.
"Plus, I needed a backwater to cool my heels in for a while," she said. "The A-list cities get you too much attention. As humble and conflict-averse as I am,"-we both chuckled at that-"my power is potent enough and broadly applicable enough that there's no way I could avoid getting snapped up by a team. The heroes might do it more politely than the villains, but either way I'm still somebody's Thinker on a leash at the end of the day, right?" She shrugged. "I want to be my own boss. Here in Brockton, the heroes aren't established enough to waste time strong-arming me, and the villains are either useless burnouts or organized around purity tests that I won't pass. That gives me space to operate on the fringes."
The explanation was entirely rational, without a single logical flaw to pick at, but it still left me with the feeling of someone reading a presentation off of a notecard. Still, if this was a sore spot, I had no desire to push further. Especially not when there was no winning a bout of verbal jousting with this girl.
"I can't argue with your logic, but you picked a major dumpster fire of a city to live in," I said.
"Anything to keep the cases coming through my door," Lisa said. "A girl's got to earn a living."
"I thought you said you didn't need the money?" I asked, a joking tone in my voice. I was in the mood to rib her a bit.
"You've got me, officer!" Lisa said. "Take me away!" She thrust her hands forward, squeezed together, as though ready for a pair of handcuffs. We both laughed.
As our laughter subsided, Lisa glanced over at a digital clock set upon an extremely tasteful lamp stand.
"Time for us to suit up and get back," she said. "It'd be terrible manners to be late for our guest. We wouldn't want that, would we?"
"I'd hate to disappoint," I said. The amount of time I spent around Lisa necessitated that the rust be scraped off my long-inert ability to bat a bit of banter back and forth. You could call it being friendly, or you could call it a survival tactic. If I ended up working with Lisa long-term, I half-expected to sound like the impossibly witty lead of a televised teen drama by the end of the year.
Well, I could think of worse fates. I'd lived worse fates, in fact.
Lisa and I covered the few blocks to our office at a brisk walk, before sneaking in the back entrance Lisa had prepared in order to avoid detection. Once inside, we tugged on our suits, hers being a bit more of a literal suit than mine. I still hadn't asked her who her tailor was, but they were good.
As I ran a hand through my hair to disentangle the snarl created by tugging my mask over my head, Lisa slid her stun gun into a coat pocket, fastened her fedora tight atop her crown, and settled her thin black mask on the bridge of her nose. We now looked every bit the part of capes, even if I still didn't quite feel it yet.
Lisa looked over at me with a smile. "Let's go prevent arson. Gee, that doesn't sound nearly as fun as committing it. Don't you feel like we're missing out?"
"You seem to have fire on the mind today," I said. "Should I be taking out insurance?"
"Where's the fun in arson if you do it to your friends? All that gets you is months of listening to whining about smoke inhalation and repair bills."
"I'm very glad you're on my side."
"You know, we could use your bugs. Douse a bunch in gasoline, send a few in with an open flame. Totally undetectable. We could make the front page, maybe even issue a manifesto. Think of the brand-recognition potential! Then we save the city from ourselves, but for a reasonable fee, of course."
"Well, I can't say people wouldn't be talking about us. How did we end up on this topic, again?"
"A wandering mind is the key to a worldly intellect."
"I'll take your word for it," I said. "Ready to go?"
Lisa demurred, touching the brim of her fedora. "After you," she said.
Some well-known actors could learn a thing or two from her commitment to that role.
Shamus and I made good time across town to the clinic. We walked, but didn't draw too much attention, despite wearing our costumes. Well, Lisa's fell just on the civilian side of eccentric, so mostly my costume would be the one drawing attention. My bugs, Lisa's intuition, the wise disinclination of Brockton citizens to be out after dark, and the disrepair of many of the city's streetlights combined to render skulking towards our objective a practical enough course of action. We arrived shortly after ten o'clock.
The clinic had been closed for the night, and its interior sat mutely in a darkness absolutely devoid of people. The streetlight which fell through the clinic's large-paneled front windows provided a sort of half-light, under which stark white counters and freshly-scrubbed tile could be seen through the dark. The whole effect suggested the kind of horror movie that leaves you queasy about setting foot in a hospital for months. I pushed the unease back down into its hidden burrow in the pit of my stomach. I had superpowers, dammmit. Gross, creepy superpowers, but superpowers nonetheless. Some pop culture tableau wouldn't scare me.
Shamus sized up the exterior of the building. "No metal shutters? These guys really are hopeless do-gooders. They're practically asking to get robbed."
"Maybe they figure it'd send the wrong kind of message," I said. "It's a charity clinic, right? They probably want it to seem open."
"But they don't want to be burned down, so: problem."
I shrugged.
"It's a bit hopelessly optimistic, but I get it," I said.
"And that's why you're the conscience of this operation," Shamus said. "Now, time to let ourselves in." She produced her Tinkertech key with a flourish. "This gadget was worth every penny."
"It certainly takes the breaking out of breaking and entering," I said.
Shamus sighed. "I know, right? But a girl's got to make some sacrifices to stay in the PRT's good graces."
"You seem to be in a felonious mood today," I said. "Should I be worried?"
Shamus placed a hand over her heart and affected her usual mock-wounded tone.
"I thought we were on the same page!" she said. "This partnership was founded upon illegal trespass and electrocuting a Ward, after all."
"Self-preservation on both counts."
"I return to my point about the conscience of the operation." She jammed the Tinkertech key into the lock. With the way the key flowed, it might almost be more accurate to say that she jammed it through the lock. One twist, and we were in.
"What do you do if they're electronic?" I asked, as we stepped into the lobby. Brockton Bay could be counted upon for a certain degree of security procedures befitting a backwater third-tier city, but surely some institutions would've adopted the latest and greatest measures.
"What, like a keypad?" she asked. "With a keycode? Where if you know the code, you punch it into the lock, and it opens the door?"
Oh. Right.
"Anyways, this thing does keycard-based ones too," she said, waving the Tinkertech key about. "Like I said, worth every penny." She looked about in the dark of the entryway, then reached for her pocket. "Flashlights."
I reached for a loop around my belt and retrieved the heavy-duty flashlight she'd given me. Removing the extra weight from my leg was a relief. You wouldn't find this flashlight on the shelf at your local convenience store. It sported a solid metal body, and enough of a haft to crack somebody over the head so hard that they'd be lucky to get back up at all, if you put enough muscle into the swing.
Brilliant white light spilled forth in front of me, casting the bureaucratic mundanities of the clinic's furnishing into stark relief as I clicked the flashlight on. Shamus swept her own flashlight over, and her beam welled together with mine. Under the twin glares of our lights, the room no longer exuded the unsettling aura of some hospital slasher film. No, now it felt more like some kind of sci-fi horror one. Maybe a zombie movie. I very much so regretted letting Shamus talk me into watching that last one recently. She'd done nothing but pick apart plot holes and predict twists the entire time.
Shamus's own flashlight was of the pencil variety, far less imposing than my own. That said, it did still throw off an appreciable amount of light.
"Comparing sizes?" Shamus said with a snicker. "You know, I always hear that it's how you use it that counts. Then again, somebody with a small flashlight would say that, wouldn't they?"
"I'm not sure how to take that," I said. I pushed out with my bugs, sweeping the entire clinic to reassure myself that we were well and truly alone. There would be no repeats of the rooftop incident.
"Aw, you're no fun. Anyways, you get the big one because you're the muscle," she said. "Image is key. That, and carrying around one that heavy would be hell on my suit pockets." She smoothed out a wrinkle in the silk of one trouser with careful attention. "You do not want to know how much this cost me."
We carefully picked our way further into the clinic. Our flashlight beams flicked down hallways and into rooms to reveal nothing more than stark white walls and stark white tile. Whoever scrubbed the floors here took real pride in their work.
Shamus ducked into a supply closet as we passed it and came out with a fire extinguisher in each hand. "Just in case," she said, pressing one onto me. They were on the small side for extinguishers, which let me hold both my flashlight and the extinguisher without much difficulty.
"Would Circus really burn down a building?" I asked. "That seems a bit extreme, doesn't it?"
"In the best-case scenario, she won't get the chance," Shamus said. "Naturally, we'll pull off the best-case scenario. But, in the event that forces beyond my control conspire to sabotage my carefully-laid and sagacious plans, we may need to not get burned alive. So, extinguishers."
"When you put it that way, I'll hold on to this one."
"That's my girl," Shamus said. "Now, we need to find a room with at least two exits to meet her in. That way, she can't just burn the door down on us. She's also got some kind of power based around throwing knives with enough accuracy to pin one of your bugs to the wall. That's not an exaggeration, by the way. She can literally do that. So, if we give her the chance to plant a knife in a non-vital area and get away-well, let's not give her that chance. I like all my blood inside my body, you know?"
"No clear lines of fire," I said. "Got it. If she's so versatile, how can we stop her?"
"That's where you come in," Shamus said. "She may be a grab-bag with powers that make her hell for human mooks, but she's still human herself. No extra toughness factor. You'll be able to trip her up or sting the crap out of her just like anybody else. Couldn't be easier."
"I'm glad one of us thinks so," I said. Anticipating that the moment of conflict loomed, given Shamus's penchant for dramatic timing, I began gathering the swarms of bugs I'd marshaled on our walk over from the office. I had kept the insectoid masses out of view in deference to public sentiment about teeming hordes of cockroaches swarming down streets, and still did so now, though the black pools of shadow throughout the building now filled up with onyx and brown carapaces of every description. The smallest bugs strung themselves out on every possible entrance to the clinic, front door, window, sewer, or otherwise, to serve as a living tripwire.
No, there would be no surprises this time.
I followed Shamus into a secondary waiting room. The waiting room sat at the T-junction of three separate hallways. The decor here appeared to be no exception to the clinic's two preferred traits: white and antiseptic.
"No movement yet," I said. "I've got bugs over every square inch of the building. When she moves, we'll know."
"What would I do without you?" Shamus said. She tapped her chin. "Hey, what about Tripwire? That's a pretty cool name for a cape. Has a nice hard-edged, don't-fuck-with-me ring to it."
I considered it for a moment. I did need to choose a name, after all. My window to select one myself instead of the local PRT selecting one for me could probably be measured in weeks, tops, if Shamus's predictions on that point held true.
"Sorry, but that doesn't feel quite right. I don't think I want to give the impression that I'm just a glorified alarm system. Maybe something a little more inspirational."
"Ah, but misleading names are perfect for luring the bad guys into mistakes," Shamus said. "Trust me, an ill-advised assumption can be every bit as lethal as a crossbow bolt to the face." She furrowed her brow. "Still, word would get out that you're a bug cape pretty quickly. Damn. Never fear, we'll come up with something for you before the bureaucrats do."
A group of gnats I'd stationed in the upper ducts of the clinic's central heating and cooling system tugged at my attention. An unknown force had displaced them and passed further in. A shiver of adrenaline coursed through my veins.
"She's here," I said.