Thursday, February 24, 2011

Sitting up in bed very early in the morning, well before her parents were likely to get up, Dinah stared at the notebook in her hand, a pencil in the other one and a thoughtful expression on her face. She was wearing her pajamas and leaning on a very large stuffed dragon that she'd had since she was five, the poor thing looking somewhat bedraggled and tired now, but still going. It had been a gift from her Uncle Roy and she valued it very highly.

Her mother had sewn one of the wings and the tail back on at least twice, it was on its third set of eyes, and the red felt tongue tended to fall out, but it was still her nighttime protector.

Shifting around a little to make herself more comfortable, the cloth head resting on hers, she pondered her project. Ever since the time a while ago that Uncle Roy had asked her some questions about Kaiju, she'd been fascinated by the way that anything to do with the Family caused her power to hiccup and give her what for all the world was an error message. Dinah was starting to seriously wonder if she was somehow connected to a computer or something. It had that sort of feel to it.

A computer that got very confused and more than a little worried about being asked questions about the Family. Sometimes she got the definite impression that her power was actually scared of them.

Smiling a little at the thought of how people would look at her if she mentioned that idea, she shook her head, crossing another question off the long list she had on the page. Yet another failure.

So far, she couldn't find out anything at all when she tried putting questions to herself about any Family member directly. Those always failed. A question that skirted around the issue was more likely to work, the less direct the better. So, if she asked 'What are the chances that Saurial will catch a mugger today' she'd get the error along with a vague sensation of puzzlement. If she asked, 'What are the chances that a mugger will be caught by someone with a tail', she got the answer 77.45%. A lot of practice had let her refine the process to allow a certain level of prediction of common events surrounding the reptiles.

Even so, most of their actions she couldn't predict to any degree of accuracy. It was something that she'd started taking as a challenge, her natural curiosity feeding on the sheer weirdness of the entire thing.

Some careful experimentation of her own, added to that which the PRT scientists had done, had given her a pretty good idea of the limitations of her own abilities. She couldn't predict the movements of Scion, which had surprised no one, as precogs of any type didn't seem to be able to do it either. But in that case, her power didn't give an error, it simply didn't give anything, almost as if it had been blocked. With the Family it was more like it just couldn't work it out.

In her own mind, it was the difference between a website returning an 'unauthorized' message and a 'not found' message. She knew it wasn't really like that, but it made the whole thing easier to think about.

The Endbringers were difficult as well. Yet again, they didn't seem to be predictable by her powers. She couldn't produce an answer to a question like 'chances that Leviathan will attack New York tomorrow', but a question such as 'chances that there will be an Endbringer attack within six months' produced a result.

Oddly enough, it was 63.11%, which she found strange. The things were supposed to attack every three months or so, which meant as far as she could see that the answer should have been 100%. The PRT people who had asked the questions had been confused as well, but after much consideration had decided that it was probably her power giving an erratic answer, since the Endbringers were known to cause severe problems to all precogs.

Dinah wasn't as certain, but didn't dispute the point. They were supposed to be the experts and if that's what they thought, perhaps they were right. And if not, the chances of her persuading them otherwise without evidence was pretty low.

About 18.23% as it happened.

The other thing she'd worked out was that she could, if she was careful, come up with questions and write them down without being forced to answer them. It was a matter of fooling herself into believing that she wasn't asking the question, merely considering the wording. If someone asked a suitable question around her she had no choice but to answer, which was really irritating, but she seemed to have a little more leeway in the privacy of her own head.

That little mental trick had allowed her to make quite a list of questions, then deliberately put them to her power in the right order to try to work out the answers to things she couldn't directly access. The results were puzzling to put it mildly.

Writing a few more lines as she thought of them, she scanned the list. She could only do six or seven before her head started to hurt, which took several hours to go away even with painkillers. As a result she'd taken to waking up at four in the morning to spend an hour or so on her new hobby, which allowed her to sleep off the mild pain left from her careful experimentation before she had to get up for school. So far it seemed to be working out.

"OK," she mumbled out loud, picking a question from the list. "Chances that the DWU or anyone associated with them will hurt the city in the next year," she asked herself deliberately. The wording was something she'd arrived at after a lot of experiments, giving something vague enough to not instantly error out, but specific enough it probably included the Family in it. She wrote down the answer of 0.73% next to the question. This agreed with her previous methodical attempts. Similar questions involving the major gangs, or even the PRT, were always much higher. The Merchants gave an answer of 24.22%, above anyone else. Oddly enough, the E88 were very low, around 2.5%. The PRT itself came out above them at 7.71%.

"Chances that something serious will happen in the city in the next week." This was 23.33%. She wrote it down, frowning a little.

"Chances that anyone in my family will be hurt in the next week." Relaxing when the answer was 2.31%, she wrote it down as well. Based on past experience with the question, it was no higher than it ever got, just indicating the hazards of life.

"Chances that the DWU or anyone associated with them will be involved in anything serious in the city in the next week." She shook her head a little at the answer of 87.94%. The Family was almost always involved somehow. It was nearly a waste of a question, she decided. Even so, she wrote the answer down.

Having given herself a limit of five questions in this session to prevent any major pain, she scanned the list looking for a good one. Eventually she smiled to herself. It was worth a try. "Chances that I'll meet one of the Family in the next… two weeks." The question was edging towards being too specific, but since it was centered on her not them she thought it might work.

Dinah grinned when she got an answer. "Yes! Great. 89.12%." Writing it down, she closed the notebook, leaning over to slip it down between the bedside bookcase and the wall, her hiding place. The pencil she put on top of the low bookcase. Rolling over, feeling a small headache developing but practice letting her ignore it, she reached out and turned off the lights.

'I wonder which one of them I'll meet and how?' she thought, closing her eyes sleepily.

Max read the report he had in front of him with interest, worry, and growing disbelief. When he finished, he muttered, "That explains a few things, and raises even more questions," shaking his head in rather terrified wonder. He looked up at Victor, who was sitting in a chair on the other side of his desk. "How sure are you of all this?"

"Completely. The PRT agent we got this from had sufficient clearance to pull it from the server. It was a major ask, though. He was extremely worried about being caught. I was forced to hand over all the blackmail material, and promise we won't call on him again. That was the last man we had inside the PRT, Miss Militia and her team of investigators are going through the place like attack dogs right now and they've flushed out several double agents and weak spots. Most of which had nothing to do with us, interestingly." He shrugged a little. "But as far as that threat assessment goes, it's real and current."

Max nodded thoughtfully, swinging his chair around to look out the window through the light rain towards the distant DWU facility and the docks. "Two things come to mind. One is that the Family is even more dangerous than I thought. We stay completely out of their business."

Victor nodded. "I can certainly agree with that. Krieg won't be happy, though."

"Tough. He can be as unhappy as he wants, it's better than being eaten." Both men shivered a little at the comment.

"Very true. And the other?"

"Who is Danny Hebert?" Max swung back, meeting his subordinates eyes. Victor looked somewhat puzzled. "I mean, I know who he is, obviously, but why does his name keep coming up in all this? He's not a Parahuman, yet he's somehow mixed up in the affairs of and apparently has the respect of the most terrifying group I've ever heard of. How? Why?"

"No idea. Right place, right time, maybe?"

"Possibly." Max tapped his fingers on the desk, thinking. "Possibly. It happens. But I've heard things in the past. The man is a normal but he's not a normal normal. There's a good reason his group of crazy dockworkers respect him. There have been… incidents… going right back to when he first started there. Nothing that ever made any official reports, but… he's not someone you want to get on the wrong side of. One hell of a temper if you manage to rouse it, I've heard. Not the sort of temper that makes a man weak, one that makes him stronger and more dangerous. Cold and vicious. His wife had some interesting stories associated with her as well."

"That matches what I've been told," Victor agreed. "I looked into him, there isn't that much that stands out, but he's got respect. Well-earned respect at that. From what I've learned his father was also respected. He worked the docks back when the ships were coming and going every day, but no one seems to know exactly what he did. The stories are that he was someone you called if you needed help." The man shook his head. "None of the old timers would tell me more than that. They just clammed up."

"Interesting." Max considered it. "Very interesting." He looked at the report again. "Francisci. That name rings a vague bell. I wonder..."

Turning to his computer, he started composing an email, wording it very carefully and respectfully. Victor watched with interest. "Who are you contacting?"

"Someone who might know some answers, although whether he'll tell me, I'm not sure," Max muttered, still typing. He read the email, changed a few words, deleted a sentence, and added two more. Eventually satisfied, he sent it. Looking up at Victor, he added, "Someone you talk to respectfully and ask polite questions of. Most of the time, you'll get information that's useful. But you never push. He's old-school and has a very long memory, and is fairly neutral."

"One of us?"

"No." Max shook his head. "His organization isn't connected to us at all. But it's one that's been around for a long time and is still going. They have friends all over the place, or at least, people who owe them favors, and they owe favors as well. This is going to cost me but I have to know. I'm not his favorite person but that probably won't matter."

Victor look puzzled and intrigued. He didn't say anything, though, just waited silently. Max leaned back and picked up the report, leafing through it again, stopping on one or other detail. Eventually, about ten minutes later, his computer made the incoming email noise, causing him to put the report down and grab the mouse. He clicked on the new email, reading it with interest. His eyes widened slightly.

"Oh. Now that, I would not have expected," he mumbled, staring at the screen. "But it also explains a few things."

Thinking for a moment, he did a number of web searches, ending up with some biographic information on a man long dead. He looked at it with raised eyebrows. "I thought that name was familiar," he sighed, turning the monitor around to where his companion could see it. Victor leaned forward to read the web page. "This is Mr Hebert's grandfather on his father's side. Father was an illegitimate child as a result of a short affair, apparently. Left Corsica when that became known locally, moved to the US. Mr Hebert Senior wasn't involved in the family business from what my source says, but they kept an eye on them anyway. Family is family to those people."

"So I've heard," Victor muttered, reading the data with an expression of mild amazement. "Christ. I guess even if he's completely legit, there are some attitudes that stick."

"Never fuck with a Corsican's family, my own father used to tell me," Max agreed. "They never forget and they seldom forgive." He looked back to his email. "His wife had a similar background, oddly enough, although from Sicily. Again, she was legit, more or less, although she got involved with something when she was at university that he got her out of. With prejudice, he says. No details, though."

"Probably doesn't matter, the woman is dead."

"True enough." Max thought, then chuckled.

"What?"

"I was just thinking… I wonder what his daughter is like? With that history on both sides of the family…" He chuckled again. "Probably not the sort of girl you want to piss off."

Victor grinned, sitting back in his chair. "I suspect not. And I guarantee her father wouldn't like it. I heard one story about what happened when some drunk threatened her with a baseball bat after a minor car accident..."

"I'm familiar with that one," Max smiled. "It was inspirational." His smile faded as he turned the monitor back and looked at the page, then closed it. "I see why the Family and the Hebert man get on so well, though. Very similar attitudes."

"So, definitely both on the 'do not fuck with' list?" Victor half-joked.

"Right at the top." Max looked seriously at the other man. "We're going to have to re-evaluate our operations here in Brockton. The DWU is into almost everything one way or the other, the Family is linked to them, so..." He sighed slightly. "This is going to make business very difficult."

"Medhall is doing well," Victor noted wryly. "Maybe we should just stick to legal pharmaceuticals? Lots of profit there after all."

Nodding absently, Max went back to looking out over the city, wondering what all these changes would mean in the longer term.

Life was so much simpler two months ago, he reflected, frowning slightly.

Sitting in English class, Taylor finished writing down her notes from the board, then closed her notebook and sat back to listen to the teacher as she explained the next assignment. She surreptitiously checked the flyer she'd picked up from a pile of them in home room a couple of hours earlier, listening with one ear while double-checking the times and dates on it.

The various after-school clubs were kicking into action soon, for some reason Arcadia didn't start them up until six weeks after the start of the semester, and she was still interested in taking the first aid one, mainly so she could get an actual certificate in the subject. Amy had taught her a certain amount of basic medical knowledge, but since her power basically entirely bypassed normal requirements for that sort of thing, she didn't actually know a lot of it from the traditional viewpoint. It was something that both of them found ironically amusing.

Amy was reading medical textbooks as a way to relate what she did to what normal medicine did, feeling it would come in useful sooner or later, but there was quite a gap between her knowledge and Taylor's which both of them felt would best be filled by an external expert. So, she was going to sign up for the club, as was Lucy, who had expressed an interest in it right back when they'd first met.

Slipping the flyer into her notebook as the teacher turned towards her, she folded her hands on the desk and looked innocent. "You have two weeks to write this essay, people. Please don't leave it until the last moment, your work slips when you do that. And don't rush it either, that doesn't do you any favors. Think it through, write a synopsis like you've learned, expand it, then write the essay. I'll want to see your work." The teacher looked around. "Any questions?"

"How long should we make it?" Mandy asked from next to her.

"No less than three typed pages, no more than six. If you can't fit it into less than that, you're being too detailed. Less and you've probably missed the point. If you have any questions, see me after school."

"Thanks," her friend said, making some notes of her own.

The bell rang, causing everyone to look at the clock, then start to stand up. "Please read the next two chapters of the textbook for tomorrow, remember," the teacher said quickly over the noise of twenty-two students moving around. "I'll see you then."

She sat down at her desk, watching as they packed up, then headed out of the room. Mandy caught up with Lucy and Taylor who hadn't had as much on their desks. The other girl tended to unpack everything she was carrying like she was moving in, and always took a while to put it all away each time. "We still OK for tomorrow?" she asked.

"Should be fine," Taylor smiled. "I'm going to get some more snacks in on the way home, so there'll be plenty to eat."

"Great. I'm looking forward to it," her friend grinned. "Just that one time helped my math more than a month of classes here. You have a knack for explaining some of the things I just didn't get."

"Nice to know," Taylor replied, feeling pleased. "It was a lot of fun."

Spotting Amy and Vicky just ahead, coming out of their classroom, she waved. "Hi, Dallon-type sisters," she called, smiling.

"Ah. The Hebert. Nice to see you." Vicky grinned while her sister, Lucy, and Mandy all giggled.

"The Hebert?" Taylor stopped and though about it for a moment. "No. Doesn't work nearly as well as The Amy."

"The Taylor?"

"That makes me sound like someone who makes suits. Not ideal."

"Hebert the Great?" Lucy suggested.

They considered the idea as the other students moved past them in the hallway.

"No." There was a mass shaking of heads.

"The Tallest?" Mandy put in, making everyone look oddly at her. "Well, she's four inches taller than I am, and two inches more than even Vicky," the girl added. "So, technically, she is the tallest."

"Still pretty silly, though. I can't quite see anyone trembling in fear before the might of… 'The Tallest'," Amy snickered, making little finger quotes and putting on a weird squeaky voice for the last two words.

"I guess not," Mandy laughed.

"Math Girl. She slaps you down with a quick integration, then finishes you off with a double derivative to the back of the neck," Lucy said with a giggle.

"That fits," Vicky nodded.

"Why are we working out my superhero name again?" Taylor asked, amused. Amy was looking at her with hidden glee in her eyes. "Why would I ever even need one?"

"You never know," Vicky told her. "One day you might be able to do this." She lifted an inch off the floor.

"Miss Dallon," a teacher, who appeared as if from nowhere, said in a meaningful tone of voice, looking at her then her feet. Flushing a little pink she made contact with the floor again. "Thank you." He moved on, while they all smirked at her.

"One day I could make the teachers glare me into submission?" Taylor asked curiously. "That sounds… not quite ideal, in some ways."

"Shut up. You know what I meant," Vicky sniffed, tossing her hair with a hand. "Flying is great."

"I have to admit it's something I'm incredibly envious of," Mandy sighed. "I'd love to be able to fly."

"It's pretty cool," Vicky agreed. Looking up, she spotted one of the hall clocks. "Oops. Bell soon, need books from locker. Bye, everyone." She dashed off, her sister and the others turning to watch.

"Ow!"

"Damn it, Vicky, watch where you're going!"

A chorus of complaints followed her down the hallway, making them all grin.

"She doesn't so much go around people as through them when she's in a hurry, doesn't she?" Mandy asked.

Amy sighed a little. "That's far too true. I'll see you guys later." With a lifted hand and a quick smile she headed in the other direction.

The brunette had made it about ten feet when a loud wailing sound from outside made her freeze.

Every person in the entire hallway stopped dead.

Taylor met Amy's eyes as the other girl looked back. They both knew that sound.

Everyone knew that sound.

The Endbringer sirens were going off.

Danny's head snapped up, then he met Lisa's eyes across his desk. They'd been going over her latest Family product ideas and discussing the current state of the redevelopment plan, her insight showing where more effort was needed to make things work smoothly.

The distant but loud rising and falling wailing in the pattern that indicated a non-local attack was clearly audible above the sounds of the yard, the activity out there quickly halting as well.

"Oh, fuck," he sighed.

"It was bound to happen sooner or later. If anything, it's a little late," she noted, closing her pad and standing up. "I'd better get ready."

"Be careful, Lisa. Very, very careful. And good luck." He got up and came around the desk, quickly embracing her. "I don't want to lose any of you."

"We'll be fine, Danny," she smiled, hugging him back, then stepping away. Despite her words, he could see worry in her green eyes. "And we'll be back."

He watched as she left the room, not quite running, but moving fast. Turning to look out the window he could see movement in the yard had stopped, groups of DWU people standing and talking.

"Please be careful, Taylor," he mumbled. "And take care of your friends."

Going to his computer he brought up the live Endbringer attack website, trying to find out what was happening, where the attack was, and which one it was doing it.

"What's happening, people?" Emily demanded as she arrived in the PRT operations room at a dead run, inwardly thanking Amy Dallon for fixing her even if she'd never say it to the girl. "Who, where, and when?"

"The Simurgh, ma'am," the operations console operator reported, not looking away from the screens in front of him. "Dragon's tracking program detected her deorbiting over the Southern Indian Ocean. Initial indications are she's heading for Canberra." He poked keys, then frowned, as she stopped beside him, also watching the screen. Around them, other technicians were working rapidly but competently on a whole series of computers, a murmur of voices into headsets filling the room with a low level background sound.

"That's weird," the man said softly, leaning forward and looking intently at one of the scrolling windows on his display.

"What's weird?" she asked sharply.

"The speed. It's way too low. Normally when the Simurgh attacks, she heads for the target zone at something over mach eight, only slowing when she's a few miles away at most. But right now, she's moving barely above mach three. Reentry in ten minutes, but it'll take her another forty-five at least to get to Canberra, assuming that's her target."

"How sure are you?" she asked. "About the target."

"Fairly," he replied a little doubtfully, indicating the monitor on the right. "The trajectory terminates right above it and her course is completely consistent."

She nodded, then turned to one of the other operators. "Get me Armsmaster and Dragon on the Rig."

"They're just coming on line now, Director," the woman immediately said. Emily turned to face the largest screen in the room, which blinked over from an enlarged version of the Endbringer tracker to three familiar faces set against the background she recognized as Armsmaster's lab. The Tinker himself was fully armored and his mouth was set in a grim line. Legend, beside him, was looking off to the side, apparently watching a display of his own, an expression of slight puzzlement on his face.

Dragon was as usual impossible to read directly, but the way she was looking down and apparently typing on a keyboard at high speed made it clear she was hard at work.

"Director." Armsmaster's voice was flat.

"What's happening?" she asked. "Why is the Simurgh deviating from normal practice?"

"We don't know. Dragon is checking to make sure the tracker hasn't been compromised and is operating normally..."

"Which it hasn't, and is," the other Tinker cut in, not looking up.

"...and there appears to be no fault," Armsmaster continued without a pause. "The track and target would seem to be real. Australian Parahuman teams are deploying in Brisbane, Perth, and Melbourne as staging posts for the defenders. Teleporters are bringing in volunteers from all over the world."

"Are we ready to deploy our own volunteers using your new toy?" she asked. He nodded.

"We're already in contact with Metis, she called just now and is activating the facility. I'm waiting for contact with other Family members to be established. All local Protectorate members have volunteered for duty."

"Ma'am, Lady Photon of New Wave just called and said her team is standing by, they can be ready to go at any time required."

Emily nodded absently, thinking hard. "No signs of any threats to Brockton Bay directly?"

"None. No villain activity, the other two Endbringers are quiescent," Colin replied immediately. "We have no signal at all on Behemoth and Leviathan is still in a holding pattern in the south Indian Ocean, as he has been for weeks. No change to his movements."

"Scion?"

"Putting out a forest fire in Peru, the last we heard," the man said.

"Turn the sirens off," she directed. "No sense worrying people any more about it. Everyone knows the attack is somewhere else. I'll prepare a statement for release to the local TV stations, and..."

"Hold on," Dragon suddenly said as the faint sound of the sirens outside the building ceased.

"What?" she snapped, worried about the curiously puzzled tone in the Canadian's voice.

"She stopped."

"Stopped?" Emily looked at the screen, and the cape who was now looking back, directly into the camera. "What do you mean, stopped?"

"Exactly what I said. The Simurgh has stopped dead, she's at an altitude of one hundred and three miles directly over the location of Leviathan on the sea floor."

Feeling a sudden horrible fear, Emily asked, "What does that mean?"

"I have no idea." Dragon looked away, examining an unseen screen. "There's no sign of motion, even Leviathan has stopped moving. They're both just sitting there."

"I don't like the sound of that," she said.

"Neither do I." Everyone waited for close to three minutes, in silence. "That's… very strange. She's turned around and is boosting for a high orbit again, very fast. Accelerating at over thirty G." Dragon looked back to the camera. "As far as I can see she aborted the attack. Leviathan is moving again, orbiting the center of his holding pattern, faster than before. Still no sign of Behemoth, though."

"What the fuck is going on?" she asked the world at large.

"I can't tell you, Director," Dragon replied. She glanced at the other two with her. Armsmaster was looking to the side, while Legend was rubbing his chin, deep in thought. "This has never happened before."

After another few seconds, Emily sighed heavily. "I know, I just know, that somehow this has something to do with the fucking Family."

Dragon shrugged. "I'm sorry, Director, I can't offer any more information."

"What's happening in Australia?" she asked.

Looking up, Armsmaster replied, "There is considerable confusion. The influx of volunteers has stopped, but the gathered Parahumans are waiting in case this is a trick. This is the Simurgh, after all."

"I don't think it's a trick," Dragon said slowly. "She's established a high polar orbit and has gone completely dormant. No signs of movement at all from what I can tell. Leviathan has slowed down again. It was almost like he was worked up about something, but has calmed down now."

"You know, if I didn't know better, I'd say she was scared and ran," Legend mused. "Very weird indeed. I need to consult with Alexandria and Eidolon." Nodding to the camera, he turned and left the room without another word.

More than a little puzzled, feeling that the world had once again stopped making the small amount of sense it normally did, Emily looked around, to see every PRT operative in the room watching her for orders. Eventually, she said, "Stand down. Apparently we're not going to have an attack today. Cancel the alarms, all personnel back to normal alert level."

She sighed. "I still have to make a statement, but now it's about something that didn't happen. Which is better, true, but harder to explain to the public."

"We'll keep monitoring the situation, Director," Colin told her. "Metis is aware of the situation. She'll stay on alert for another hour, just in case this is a trick, but I concur with Dragon in thinking that it isn't."

"Fine. Let me know what you come up with."

"Ma'am." He nodded politely. "Rig out." The screen went black, then blinked to the PRT logo.

Sighing, her heart-rate still faster than normal, but slowing down, Emily turned on her heel and left the operations room. As she walked she was mentally writing a suitable statement to release to the population of Brockton Bay and the local area, explaining why the sirens had gone off for an attack that hadn't happened.