I was sitting with Frenchie, Kimiko was going over the footage from the drones with Billy, helping him edit it with more precision and a better eye than most people would think to give her credit to have, and I was explaining the issue that I had after my chat with Grace about the chips.

"So what you're saying," he was squinting at me, but I could tell he wasn't seeing ME. "Is that Ryan has trios chips, but Mallory doesn't believe that they were placed there to track him?" I nodded, still not quite sure he was paying attention to my image. "What would be l' objet then?" His eyes narrowed, as though it would help him grasp the answer to the same problem I had issues finding the solution for. "Chips, they are used to track, to listen, to -" his eyes widened, and then he refocused on me. "Is there someone here, in the building," he clarified, "that knows more about tech?"

"Yes," I'd looked up our in-house technology guru, wanting to know their name, just in case I had to tap their shoulder next. "Carrie Stavos." I grabbed my desk phone and hit the extension I'd memorized that morning. "Stavos? Yes, this is Dr. Taylor, could you come to my office? Of course, finish that up and come up after." I signed off with the young sounding woman and hung up. "She has to finish up with -" It was my turn to squint. "I'm sure you'd understand what she'd explained," my lips quirked and Frenchie smirked in answer. "She'll be here when she finishes up, in about ten minutes." I checked my watch. "That gives me a chance to go through some emails, and you can check on those two -" I nodded toward Billy's desk where he and Kimiko were working in almost complete silence, but their heads were close and they were both taking turns clicking and moving the mouse.

While Frenchie slid over to Billy's side, I clicked through emails, finding one from an unknown source with a video file included. Great, fabulous, just what my day needed, more shit. First I put the email through the handy dandy backward trace, thinking that my new fan would need to learn quickly who they were dealing with and what type of fun resources I had at my fingertips. The video I sent to the security systems, they could look to see where it originated, who saved it, and then hopefully who forwarded it to me.

While those systems were running, I answered the more mundane of my correspondences. The yeses and the nos, the requests, and the denials. I had to imagine that I wouldn't have the answers to my mystery email by the end of the day, normally anonymous emails took anywhere from forty-eight hours upward to backtrack, so I was shocked when I got the telltale ping that signaled they'd run it through the available programs and they had my answers.

Clicking open the report, I sat back as I read it. The email had originated from our office, from one of the mailroom email accounts. This account is utilized by anyone who can access the mailroom, which means literally anyone who can gain entrance into the building. The mailroom computer isn't secure. It holds nothing classified, so needs no password to log on. Great, that's fun.

The video, I read on, was also from our building. My office, it went on to be more precise, on the date of my hemmorage. When I nearly went nuclear and wiped out EVERYTHING. It was time stamped from the moment I swiped in that morning until an hour after I'd been rushed to the undisclosed clinic. The security person who had backtracked the feed and written this piece of the report said that only our people should have access to the feed, and only the people with security clearance of those in the video storage and above should be able to clip, edit, and share it through our systems. The clearance numbers used, however, match nothing they could find.

I sighed and sat back, somewhat surprised that Billy didn't hightail it to my desk, but he was muttering with Frenchie about something in their footage. Why this video, I wondered? Why now?

Putting the headset on that I kept on hand, just in case I needed it for something as tasteless as this, I took a deep breath to fortify myself and clicked play.

Have you ever watched yourself nearly die? I don't mean figuratively, but literally see a video of you come within inches of death? There are films, entire movie series that have that trope. Escaping death, only for it to continue to come for you, wanting nothing more than to make sure the balance is kept even.

As I watched the video of the day I walked into our office, so full of certainty that I'd fixed it, I'd fixed the massive fucking disaster of a personal invasion that Homelander forced on me I felt bile start to rise in my throat because of the surreal quality of it. Hearing my voice say the words that I barely recalled saying to Billy come out of my mouth. Seeing me do things that I still take for granted, the mundane day to day shit, things that I knew within moments would become things I'd pray I could do again.

Seeing Billy go for our lunch, the rolling in my stomach grew, a pain reminiscent of what I'd felt before. I knew what was coming, but to see it from THIS angle? It was as if I HAD died, and this would have been my view - what I would have seen while people rushed inside. Wait- How had they rushed in?

I clicked back, the rush of the blood down my legs my starting point. I hadn't made a sound, but Billy mentioned that my temperature had gotten so high that I'd set off an alarm, which alerted security. Why didn't I hear it on the video? The alarm didn't start until the first three people came in, faces I didn't recognize, and none of whom should have been able to enter, since only Billy, Mallory, and I had access aside from Security override. None of this trio had security markers on, and they didn't look all that rushed. I couldn't hear their conversation, another redflag, since I heard every other sound, and after a gesture, the alarm FINALLY sounded and then things moved the way they should have.

"Billy?" Calm, that's how I sounded, which would have shocked me, but by this point nothing was all that surprising. "Could you take a look at something for me?"

Getting Billy calmed down after HE watched the video wasn't as simple. Frenchie's eyes were wide enough to see every divot on the moon, and I was contemplating cancelling everything for the rest of the day to distract him the best way I knew how.

"Those three fuckin' -" how his nostrils could either get so thin that NO air could possibly pass through or so wide that he could inhale ALL of the air in the free world was beyond me, but the true power was how he could do either and make me want to climb him like Mount Everest and - Damn it, Ronnie, get your head in the game. "You coulda died, and they were doin' fuck all."

"Actually, they were wasting time," Frenchie offered, and I could tell he wished he hadn't. "I meant they were possibly looking for a way to -"

"See how long it would actually take for my self destruct button to engage," I nodded, why bother fucking lying? "Who are they?" Important question, since clearly that mattered most. "I couldn't really see their faces, but they don't look familiar."

"Knew where the cameras were," Billy grunted, pulling me onto his lap as he sat in his own chair. "Knew where they were and kept their heads down. Not amateurs. Knew they'd have to raise the alarm too, cause sooner or later, your temperature would and no one could cover that mess up."

We were considering this newest blip in our nest of blips when the knock came to the door. Kimiko raised her eyebrow at me in question, but I just sighed. "That would be Stavos. The techie guru we asked to consult." Pulling free of Billy, but not before giving in to a steadying kiss, just to remind one another that at least ONE part of our world was steadfast, I walked to the door to let in what I could only imagine would be MORE bad fucking news.

Carrie Stavos didn't look like I thought she would. I had a thought that she'd be spiky haired and edgy. Instead she looked more librarian with a hint of a kindergarten teacher tossed in for fun. Glasses perched on her nose, she took in her surroundings with the ease of someone who was used to blending in with the wallpaper. Unfortunately for Carrie, I needed her to be the center of attention.

Once I had her situated in my chair, my laptop out of sight out of mind, I started with the soft balls. First with the types of chips that might be implanted in people, then on to the reasons for the chips. From there we went to more nefarious reasons for chipping people, superbeings for instance.

"Superbeings?" Her eyes widened. "You want to chip supes?"

I shook my head emphatically. "No, I most certainly do NOT want to chip supes." Couldn't be further from the truth. "I'm simply asking, if I found out that a particular supe was, in fact, chipped multiple times, what would the purpose aside from GPS be for those chips?"

From wide to narrow slits, thinking hard, I could tell, Carrie was working out the question I'd posed her. "I know that the Seven are chipped, for location, of course." A tilt of confirmation and understanding on my part kept her going. "If you found that other supes were chipped, and if they had more than one?" Another tilt, and she sighed, her head shaking. "I can only think of one reason and it's terrible."

"Terrible?" It was Billy, leaning forward and eager, because while Ryan was his responsibility if something was terrible for a supe, he would like to hear about it.

"Yes, terrible." Carrie looked a little green around the gills. "I've heard of a type of chip, I thought they were like Urban Legends, but maybe not." A tiny sigh escaped ever as she blanched a bit. "Inhibitors."

Now my eyes turned to slits as I tried to process this reality. That a chip could be implanted to - no, they wouldn't have, would they? "Inhibitor?"

"If there's more than one?" I nodded, barely seeing Carrie as I ran through the list of Ryan's powers like a scroll. "Each chip could be specific for ONE power, in place to stop that one, hold it at bay. Inhibit the supe from accessing it." Not training him to use his powers responsibly or control them, but to literally neuter him. I felt like throwing up. "Terrible." She whispered and I had to concur.