Chapter 16

The first part of Taylor's plan was the hardest and it was the one she immediately enacted when the unmarked PRT car brought her home. Telling her father about being an Independent Hero that was just ambushed by the Empire. And telling him about Hookwolf.

It was a difficult conversation, but it went much better than expected, he supported her and was enthusiastic about her joining the Wards as soon as possible.

Things turning out better than she thought was the running theme of the evening, the PRT had been good as their word, two unmarked cars were stationed close to her house. Although they would probably be horrified if they knew Taylor had so easily identified them, they were trying their best to be inconspicuous.

Not nearly as horrified as the PRT director would be though. Taylor had stuck an invisible camera drone to her window and it was able to pick up enough vibrations to reconstruct sounds. If Piggot learned any unfortunate details about Lord Doom, Taylor wouldn't be blindsided.

Director Piggot was a very unpleasant looking woman, but she had a razor focus and Taylor was gradually warming up to her. "What's the status of the Myriad situation?"

"Nothing but good news," Miss Militia said. "Likely no permanent injuries and she wants to join the Wards as soon as possible. She and her guardian are coming in on Saturday, I've got the overtime forms ready."

"Have you told her about Hookwolf yet? We can't sit on that forever."

"No." Only Miss Militia's eyes were visible above her bandana and they looked very sad. "I wanted to give her a little time to recover first."

"We've still got 40 hours before we have to charge Empire members and we're holding them incommunicado. Make sure you tell her before then. Ideally Myriad is a sworn-in member before they can tell the rest of the Empire anything. Between you and me, their lawyers are getting a surprise master/stranger screening on the way out to stretch the timeline a little bit. "

"There could be members outside that know her face as well. Or her name in the worst case."

Director Piggot looked like she had bitten into a lemon. "I know. It's not ideal. If we're lucky they don't have any pictures and without Hookwolf's death inciting them they won't do anything. If Crapshoot was predicting anything worse than snake-eyes I'd have them both in a safe house."

The interesting parts of their conversation stopped there. Next was a 20 minute discussion about the overtime forms and which budget it could be billed to. And after that Piggot spent ten minutes on a conference call, apparently the Nevada Wards Team charged a frankly absurd fee for Crapshoot's services and Piggot was trying to make the central PRT organization partially cover it.

Luckily, Taylor had other camera drones that needed her attention.

Taylor was exhausted when it was time to become a Ward; her excuse was that she hadn't been sleeping well. And it was mostly true, between being unable to lie on her back or left side and memories she'd rather not revisit she had not slept that well.

The PRT officers who had come to her house to take her statement and tell her about Hookwolf's death had been very kind and they confirmed the blindingly obvious, that they weren't charging her with anything, that it was an open and shut case of self-defence. But revisiting the event still made her uneasy and unable to concentrate on the work that desperately needed doing.

And that was the main reason she hadn't slept much, she had been working constantly from home: Tinkering what needed to be built, stripping the intelligence out of her armed drones to make them safe again, moving her exposed Lab to a different building before the Empire robbed it and a hundred other things that needed doing.

And scouting. So much scouting and research. She had already identified many of the core Empire meeting places and with her drones following key people around, hacking their phones and computers, using facial recognition algorithms, and much more she had done it.

She'd mapped out every nook and cranny of the Empire's operations, including quite a few cape identities.

And she knew how far her personal information had spread. A number of Empire members on the absolute bottom rung, their drug addiction meaning they could never rise in the ranks, had acted as scouts where they squatted and they'd seen Taylor's face.

But they had taken no photographs and their description was unusably vague. Essentially they had just pointed out, to their dealer no less, the tall girl that regularly took the bus to the lab with the same hair as Myriad.

The rest of the Empire was now preparing for Lord Doom's inevitable counter-attack, and they were doing a pretty decent job. If Taylor hadn't been aware of every move they made it might have briefly inconvenienced her plans.

Taylor jerked her attention back to the world immediately around her in alarm that she had been ambushed again. But no, her camera drone hadn't pinged her, it was just time to shake the PRT man's hand and start the meeting.

He introduced himself as Simon, handling legal matters for the PRT, and Lily, the mandatory youth guard representative attending the meeting.

Taylor shook their hands and went back to her visor's screens. She had told the PRT she didn't feel safe without her armour and it was only partially a lie.

"Let's get started," Simon said with a smile. "I assume you've read the contract, so let's go over any questions you have."

"I just want to clarify one thing to start with," Danny said. "The hours are worryingly vague. My daughter is still recovering, but even after that, neither of us want the rest of her free time to be consumed by this cape thing. I don't want her out in the city at all hours of the night."

"Don't worry," Lily immediately cut in. "Patrols are strictly optional. Some training sessions and PR events are mandatory, but your daughter is well within her rights to refuse any and all patrols or other dangerous activities."

Simon grimaced, just a bit, in a way that a human without super-vision probably wouldn't have noticed. It was true though, according to PHO the PRT would cheerfully pay any junior parahuman minimum wage to do absolutely nothing. They considered that a million times better than them wreaking havoc on the street as independents, although they used nicer words in their official policy statements.

"Good," Danny smiled. "That was the only dealbreaker for us. But let's move on to the Tinkertech budget and my daughter's rights to the stuff she makes."

And it was at this point that Taylor briefly pitied the fools who had willingly seated themselves at the negotiating table across from Daniel Hebert.

But not for long. Myriad had an ironclad alibi and it was showtime.

Taylor had managed to stuff a Lord Doom into the ventilation ducts at Medhall, which was quite an achievement because they were remarkably smaller than the movies made them look. She navigated the drones and the heavy cloak through the cramped metal pipes slowly, aware that the slightest bit of noise would echo out through the building and ruin the surprise.

But she succeeded and they were now in position. She took a final deep breath and the grating of the air vent on the wall in the Medhall boardroom fell down with a clang. Taylor had timed it for a board meeting and they were all in attendance, turning sharply at the noise.

She waited a beat for the best effect, giving them time to turn their heads and look. Just when they started relaxing and assuming the cover had fallen by itself Taylor gave another command.

Lord Doom's one hand stuck out the hole in the wall and grabbed at the edge, two burning eyes coming into focus as he dragged himself outwards, his empty body contorting in ways no human could do. The cloak expanded to billow out to its full size as it came free.

The screaming started then. Some members of the Medhall board privately expressed sympathies for the Empire, but Max Anders was the only villain there that wore a costume and the rest were utterly terrified at finding themselves under parahuman attack.

Kaiser stood up and stepped back smartly, putting space as well as the table between him and Lord Doom. No emotion on his face but a slightly sardonic smile, utterly in control of the situation. Of course he privately triggered his silent alarm, but Taylor had long since seized control of that.

Lord Doom landed noiselessly on the floor and swooped forward. Taylor made him grab a chair and throw it at the massive window with its view of the city. The heavy padded chair flew like a missile, shattering the tough glass with an echoing crack and raining shards down the twenty story drop.

The rest of the board were finding that the door to the boardroom had been mysteriously locked from the outside, which was doing remarkably little to assuage their panic.

"Your intrusion is most unwelcome," Max Anders said cooly. "I don't know what you expect to steal here, but rest assured the police have been called."

Lord Doom moved and grabbed Max Anders around the neck, tight enough that he couldn't speak, and hoisting him up from the floor with inhuman strength. Lord Doom slowly moved forwards. Every 'step' brought him and Max Anders closer towards the now empty window frame, still holding jagged shards of glass at the edge.

"WHEN YOU STRIKE AT A KING YOU MUST KILL HIM." Lord Doom was holding Kaiser sideways, so that he could see the approaching lethal drop with the corner of his eyes. "THIS IS LORD DOOM STRIKING AT YOU, KAISER."

Taylor had carefully chosen those words, a subtle warning to those in the know about her dual-identities. Kaiser certainly understood her meaning, that this was payback, but to the rest of the world Lord Doom was merely threatening Kaiser.

There was real fear in Kaiser's eyes but he still didn't react, which was annoying. Taylor had a tight schedule. She kept Lord Doom moving towards the window. "DID YOU TRULY BELIEVE YOU COULD BREAK THE UNWRITTEN RULES AND ESCAPE THE CONSEQUENCES? WE VILLAINS POLICE OUR OWN."

Finally, when Kaiser was right next to it, face to face with the long drop, he broke. Jagged spikes of metal flew out from the floor to stab at Lord Doom, twisted bars crawled their across the window frame to block it. Max Anders had revealed himself as Kaiser in front of the entire Medhall board.

Not to mention the newly restored and currently streaming Snitch, floating just outside the window.

Taylor had gotten what she wanted.

She made Lord Doom rip away the bars and throw Kaiser out the window regardless.

Taylor was coordinating a second Lord Doom to catch Kaiser, holding him high up in the empty air was the best way to contain him after all. Originally she had meant to give him the chair she had thrown out of the window, but he insisted on using it as a surface to grow metal from, so she took it away again, leaving him hanging in a Lord Doom's grasp.

She also had other concerns, like stealing Medhall's server hard drives as Lord Doom. That particular Lord Doom would end up getting cornered by the PRT and then self-destructing. Which meant that the contents of the drives could be entered into evidence immediately, without needing a warrant to search Medhall's premises.

But the thing taking most of her attention was what she liked to think of as the main event. She did the final checks, flipping between her cameras to visually confirm everything. Danny and Simon were still haggling about intellectual property rights, entirely content to ignore her. Good.

Everything was in place. With no small amount of trepidation she selected the script in her visor using her eyes. The extra-large prompt hung in her vision, obscuring the meeting she was in.

She activated the button.