Vicky rejoined their group, a very puzzled expression on her face and her phone in her hand. She'd come haring past them towards the front doors seconds after the sirens went off. While she was gone the sounds had stopped, as was expected for a non-local attack. Taylor was just in the process of working out how to slip away, and could see Amy was thinking the same thing from the look in her eyes, when the blonde returned.
"What's going on, Vicky?" Mandy asked urgently.
"I… have no idea," the other girl said, staring at her phone then putting it away. "It was the Simurgh on an attack run on Canberra, apparently. Aunt Sarah was talking to the PRT control center when they detected that the damn thing stopped over the Indian Ocean, then turned around and fucked off again. Everyone's trying to work out what''s happening, whether it's a real attack, some sort of weird plot, or whether the Simurgh really did abort her attack."
"That would be a first," Amy commented, her eyes wide.
"Sure would," her sister agreed. "Anyway, mom said to be ready, just in case it's a trick, but other than that, get on with the day. Ames, if we do have to go, I'll take you, OK? You'll have to leave your truck here."
"All right," the other girl said. She looked around, seeing that quite a number of students and two teachers were listening to them, looking both puzzled and relieved as well.
The PA system clicked on, the voice of the Vice Principal coming to them. "Attention all students and staff. We have been informed that the Endbringer attack was apparently aimed at Canberra in Australia, but for unknown reasons was aborted before it started. The Simurgh has retreated and is now dormant again. The PRT has issued a statement that there is no immediate danger. Please return to your normal schedules as quickly as possible. A ten minute recess has been called to allow everyone to collect themselves after the brief drama." The deliberately calm voice stopped, the PA clicking again as it switched off.
"Well, she's pretty collected under pressure," Lucy smiled.
"The woman has nerves of steel," Mandy nodded. "She'd need them around here. Well, I for one am going to go to class, sit down, and tremble for a few minutes to let the adrenaline wear off." She held out a hand which was shaking a little. "Look at that. Those fucking sirens always do it to me. I wish they'd come up with a better way of telling the capes they need to work out whether to commit suicide or not." Her smile was somewhat uncertain.
Taylor put an arm around her friend's shoulders. "Calm down, Mandy, nothing's happening. Not even in Australia. Let's go to class."
The other girl nodded nervously with a short jerky motion of her head. "Sorry. It all kicked in at once."
"No shame in that, I nearly crapped myself," Amy said quietly. "And I've been to nine attacks now."
"I've only been to one and that was after it was all over," Vicky added, also sounding more thoughtful than normal. "Doing search and rescue. It was… bad." She sighed a little regretfully. "I used to get annoyed with mom not wanting me to go. Right up to that point."
The little group stood silent for a few seconds, the crowd slowly dispersing as the students headed off, talking in a subdued manner. Taylor saw Dean and Carlos walk past, the former glancing at her with a look of profound relief in his eyes. She nodded very slightly to him, getting a nod back, then he and his fellow Ward moved on.
"OK, then. Where was I? Oh, right, books. Locker. See you guys later." Vicky left them, moving much more slowly this time.
Amy watched her go, then turned to Taylor and the other two. "See you at lunch," she said, before heading off in the other direction.
"Come on, guys, let's go and allow Math to wash away the shock," Taylor smiled.
"Easy for you to say," Mandy, who had calmed noticeably, replied with a small giggle. "Math likes you. Me, it shocks all over again."
"Math Girl, save us from the equations!" Lucy cried, hugging both of them.
All three started laughing, then began walking through the hallways to the next class. Inwardly, Taylor was wondering what the hell had happened.
"What the hell happened?" Paul said as he stepped through the portal, looking around. Doctor Mother was waving a scanning device over David, who seemed pale. Rebecca and Contessa were watching.
Rebecca, who was in her Alexandria costume minus the helmet, turned to him and shrugged. "No idea. He had some sort of episode, we think. His heart rate went through the roof and he became very agitated."
"Like with Kaiju?" Paul asked thoughtfully, watching as the woman working on his old friend frowned at the results she was getting, then performed the scan again.
"A little, yes, I think," Rebecca said slowly, also looking thoughtful. "But it came on out of the blue, just after the Endbringer alert. Stress, perhaps?"
Paul didn't reply, busy as he was with thinking things through. The timing was more than a little suspicious in his view, and he wasn't quite sure how to bring the entire subject up. If David really was somehow linked to the Endbringer attacks, he couldn't yet see how. That said the circumstantial evidence was steadily growing that there was a connection of some sort.
"When did it happen, exactly?" he asked after a moment. Both Rebecca and Contessa looked at him, the latter then checking the clock on the wall of the room.
"Six minutes, fourteen seconds ago," she replied.
"Thanks," he said, working out times in his head. 'That's within seconds of the time the Simurgh stopped,' he thought. 'I wonder if it was before... or after?' Resolving to find out on his return to Brockton Bay, he asked out loud, "How is he?"
"Physically, in good working order," Doctor Mother said as she stepped back and regarded the man who was sitting in a chair with his hood down. "Significant stress hormones being present, along with high adrenaline levels, would tend to suggest he was just in or just about to be in a serious fight. Yet no such fight occurred."
"Perhaps it was anticipation of the Simurgh attack?" Paul suggested.
She looked somewhat dubious. "It is… possible, I suppose. Although none of my previous medical examinations have shown results quite like these either before or after an Endbringer attack." The woman tipped her head to the side, inspecting the man from another angle. "Curious. I need some more extensive blood samples. David, please come with me."
"I'm fine," the man sighed. "And again, everyone's talking about me like I wasn't here."
"Shut up and go with her," Rebecca ordered. "That's the second time in a week that you've acted weirdly. We need to find out why. If it's something to do with your powers fading, we really need to find out why. For everyone's sake."
"Oh, hell," he grumbled, standing up and following the woman out of the room. She was already making notes into a hand-held dictation machine on tests she needed to run. Paul felt a certain amount of sympathy as the pair disappeared, it sounded like they wouldn't see him for a while and he'd be a pint or two low when he came back.
"This is becoming more than a little worrying," Rebecca sighed, sitting down. Paul took the chair next to her, nodding.
"I'm not happy about it. We've never seen any of the Endbringers act like that before. On the other hand, if this counts as the three-monthly attack, which I very much hope it does, we've had the first one with no casualties at all."
"Or it's just another plot by the damn thing and we'll have an attack with no warning when we least expect it," Rebecca pointed out. He couldn't deny the possibility, unfortunately.
"No way to really know," he replied after a while. "No precogs work well enough on them to do much better than guessing." He glanced at Contessa, who shrugged.
"I can't help there, I'm afraid."
"All we can do is wait and see, in that case." Turning to Rebecca again, he asked curiously, "Any idea why she might have targeted Canberra? Is there anything important happening there today?"
"There is some sort of deal being signed between the Australian government and the UK government, they've been working on it for a while now, but I haven't looked into the details because of all the rest of the chaos recently," Rebecca replied. "David was following it." She picked up one of the tablet computers on the desk and poked around on it for a while. "Yes, here we are, the British contingent represented by Lord Walston was meeting his counterpart in the Australian government to sign a technology exchange program. Mainly reverse-engineered Tinker tech, or at least, technology inspired by Tinker tech."
"Anything particularly interesting?"
She flipped through the various pages of documentation, speed-reading them. "Energy systems, some system for cleaning pollution from seawater without killing the plankton and what have you, a coating for ship hulls to increase their efficiency in the water, an improved guidance system for missiles… nothing stands out as exceptional, although all together it's quite a package. They're taking it fairly seriously, they sent a detachment of the King's Men as bodyguards." Putting the tablet back down, she shrugged. "Nothing I can see that would attract the Simurgh, aside from the high-level aspect of the talks. Although that damn thing is just as likely to go after a totally random target just to screw with us."
"I suppose so," he remarked a little dubiously. "It would probably still be worth checking into it carefully. It could just be a coincidence that this political aspect is today, there might be something else going on in Canberra that she was after."
Rebecca looked at him for a moment, then back to the tablet. She sighed slightly. "You're right, of course. I'll get the research department to go over this in detail, and also collate any reports and other data we have on Canberra and the surrounding area."
Turning back to him, she added, "Although, if there really was something she wanted, why did she abort then run away?"
"I'm not sure," he said truthfully. What he didn't say was that he had some interesting theories about that. For some reason, he felt it was important to keep them to himself, and the two Tinkers back in Brockton Bay, at least for now. He couldn't explain why, though. Standing, he went on, "I'm still in the middle of something. Let me know if you find any reason for David's funny turn, please. It worries me."
"You're not the only one," she frowned. "Twice in a week is getting beyond a joke. At least this time he didn't poke some enormous scaly thing in some bizarre attempt to spark a fight. I still don't know what that was about."
"Did he seem… over-eager, I suppose… to fight the Simurgh this time?" Paul asked slowly. She inspected him, then shook her head equally slowly.
"No. Well, no more than usual. You know what he's like."
"I do."
"Why do you ask?"
Paul shrugged a little. "I'm not entirely sure. But remember what he was like with Kaiju. Much more aggressive than normal and not thinking clearly. But he couldn't work out why afterwards. Maybe this is a different variant on the same thing, whatever that is."
She nodded thoughtfully. "That sounds like it actually might be his Agent doing something unusual. Which is a terrifying thought in its own right. We're still not sure just how much free will they have," she mused. After a moment or two, she shook her head again. "We're going to have to keep an even closer eye on him than normal. If this happens the next time an Endbringer attacks… It could signify an entire new approach for the damn things. Perhaps they've worked out how to disable him, or attack him, or something. God knows what. I'll have Doctor Mother run all the tests she can think of. Again."
"He's not going to thank you for that," Paul smiled.
She smirked a little darkly. "He was walking a little funny for a few hours after the last time." Both of them shared a look, then snickered.
"I'll see you later." Calling for a portal back to a position well out of range of Brockton Bay's PRT scanning systems, he stepped through it, then headed back to the Rig fairly slowly, mulling over the latest information.
Lisa fiddled with the tracking system, studying the image of the drifting Endbringer in orbit via some extremely impressive telescopes. Even with the work of Dragon behind them, the image was getting a little thin on detail, since the creature was a long way out.
The Simurgh was, as far as she could make out, entirely dormant at this point in time, her wings wrapped around her in a shell. She'd boosted for space at an incredible acceleration, ending up going so fast she'd actually had to decelerate quite hard to achieve the orbit she was now in. Her power was drawing some odd conclusions from this. A lot of the Endbringer's activities and motivations weren't predictable by any form of Thinker, she was well aware of that, but even so, she was trying to come up with useful data. Lisa suspected that Amy's modifications had boosted her power more than she'd realized, considering that it was actually giving her some suggestions even if there was a definite air of uncertainty about them.
Simurgh reluctant to attack
That one made sense, in a way, and no sense at all in most other ways. The way she'd been approaching at much lower speed than the system showed her was normal, and her overall approach to the attack run, did tend to suggest a certain amount of caution on the part of the thing.
Simurgh deliberately moving as slowly as allowed
That made her eye ridges go up. Allowed? Allowed by who? Or what? It implied that the creature was somehow being ordered to attack, which was… both very strange and very worrying.
Simurgh possibly afraid?
Of what? What could the Simurgh of all things in creation possibly be afraid of? Lisa thought very hard, feeling extremely puzzled. Her power felt more than a little confused as well.
All Endbringers cautious and wary
Aberrant behavior due to uncertainty
Again, what on earth did that mean? Lisa shook her head a little, feeling somewhat out of her depth. A thought struck her, making her freeze, then think very hard indeed. Eventually, she started poking around on the computer, looking for more data on Endbringer movements, which she found was available at the default security level the system had. Not wanting to betray the trust Dragon had shown in letting them have access to her system, she refrained from digging too deeply, which meant that some of the data wasn't available as it appeared to have been redacted, but she found quite a lot even so.
'Behemoth, no data available since the second week in January,' she mused as she looked over the tracking records. He'd gone totally silent somewhere around the seventh of the previous month, the deeply buried Endbringer apparently dropping off the grid roughly on the other side of the planet from the US. 'Very weird. And Leviathan has been sitting on the bottom of the Indian Ocean since the same time, pretty much. Just wandering around in circles.'
She scratched her head, thinking, then checked the previous tracking data for the Simurgh again, to make sure she had her timeline right. 'And the orbiting menace moved into a higher orbit at the same time as well. All of this over about twelve hours, just over seven weeks ago. Why?'
Scenario changed without warning
Endbringers wary of non-quantifiable subject arriving
Endbringers can detect presence of non-quantifiable subject
Endbringers cannot model non-quantifiable subject
Non-quantifiable subject aligned contrary to Endbringer mission
Non-quantifiable subject possibly able to destroy Endbringers
Non-quantifiable subject possibly able to terminate mission
Unbidden her own ability dumped a number of conclusions into her mind, sounding oddly sure of itself. She blinked a couple of times. 'Non-quantifiable subject? What the fuck does that mean?'
Non-quantifiable subject is non-quantifiable
"Well, thanks for that," Lisa mumbled, both irritated and amused. "Very helpful."
The date that the Endbringers seemed to have radically altered their behavior was bothering her. She tried to work out why. When she did, her eyes widened.
'Shit. Two days after Taylor met Varga.' It seemed an interesting coincidence. Could the Varga be the non-quantifiable subject? She knew very well that her own ability gave up entirely when she tried to get anything more than tiny details about the Varga or Taylor. She'd stopped trying which if anything had made her power feel somewhat relieved.
Her power didn't give any answer, just the usual feeling of confusion, so she clearly wasn't going to get any Parahuman help on the situation.
Leaving that for the moment to allow her subconscious to stew over it, she reviewed the logs of the recent aborted attack, looking for anything that jumped out at her. She'd dashed into the BBFO office, shot out the back door as Metis in record time having grabbed the keys for the wormhole facility on the way, then had the computers up and running in under three minutes from arrival. The Simurgh had aborted about four minutes later.
Struck by the timing, she checked the logs, then stared. After a long few seconds she turned to look at the controls for the wormhole generator, which had the activation key in and turned, and the singularity activation button lit. It was one switch away from opening a wormhole to the coordinates on the targeting computer.
Looking back at the logs, she cross-referenced the time the system noted as the point the singularity had reached operating speed, and the time that the Simurgh had stopped dead in space.
They were exactly the same.
She was still staring at the monitor when an alarm sounded, making her twitch, then look around. It was the communications link indicating someone was calling her. Reaching out she tapped the control to accept the call with one talon-tip, another monitor switching to an image of Armsmaster's lab, with him and Legend looking at her, Dragon in the background working on a computer.
"Hello, Metis," Legend said. "I was just calling to check on the situation there."
"Hi, Legend," she replied. "Everything is nominal, I've been tracking the Simurgh and as far as I can tell she's entirely dormant and doesn't look likely to restart an attack. However, the data I have suggests that this could always be some form of deliberate diversion, so..." She shrugged slightly.
He nodded, sighing. "Understood. We've come to the same conclusions. I don't think there's anything else you can really do there so you may as well stand down. Thank you for the rapid response, though."
"Of course. It was no problem, believe me, I was very close. These Endbringers are a concern for us."
"As they are for us." He looked over his shoulder at Dragon, then back to the camera. "One question. Can you confirm the exact time the wormhole generator was brought online?"
"Fifteen fifty-seven and nineteen seconds, UTC," she replied promptly, glancing to the screen with the logs on.
The man nodded thoughtfully. "Thank you."
She studied him closely. There was something he knew or suspected that was bothering him.
Suspects timing of wormhole generator activation linked to another event
Is worried about implications of timing correlation
"Is something wrong?" she asked after a moment.
He shook his head quickly. "No, nothing is wrong, other than the general oddity of the entire thing," he replied. She was certain he was being less than truthful, something her power confirmed. She didn't have enough data to draw any useful conclusions, though, and there was little point on calling him on it at the moment. He might, after all, have a good reason not to say anything. But she was very curious.
"It certainly appears to be a unique occurrence," she nodded. "But I would have to say it's probably better to avoid a fight entirely wherever possible. Hopefully this is the end of the matter for at least another three months."
"Hopefully. But where the Simurgh is involved, we've learned never to make assumptions," he sighed. "The hard way. She is terrifyingly dangerous and extremely sneaky." He shook his head. "But there's nothing we can do except wait and see what happens. We're as ready as we're going to get, I think."
"I suppose so. I'll shut the facility down and get back to what I was doing. You know where to find us if you need us."
"Thank you, Metis," he replied, smiling. "Legend out." The screen went blank, Lisa staring at it for a few seconds in thought, before reaching out and shutting down the wormhole generator. The deep hum whined down to silence, broken only by faint sounds from the power system and a few fans.
Checking the tracking data, just in case, she saw that the Simurgh hadn't reacted. Eventually, she shut the entire WCC down, locked up, and headed back to the BBFO office, thinking hard.
Dragon checked the remote logs from the wormhole facility, seeing the searches Metis had run and the data she'd looked at. The lizard was clearly as curious as she was about what was going on. She wondered what conclusions the other had reached.
It was very apparent to her that Metis was extremely intelligent and had more than enough wit to work out that something odd was going on with the Endbringers.
The data that they'd come up with surrounding the possible, and indeed likely, link between Eidolon and the things was at a much higher security level than the standard Endbringer tracking data which the facility could access. For a brief moment she wondered if she should let Metis look at it. Perhaps the reptile could gain insight into the entire situation that they so far couldn't. It didn't take long to reject that. There was simply too much risk right now, since they didn't have any actual proof that Eidolon was more than either the victim of some weird plot of the Simurgh, or possibly just coincidence.
She personally felt it wasn't likely that the entire thing was a coincidence, though. There was simply too much circumstantial evidence. But what the connection really was she couldn't work out despite having spent a lot of processing cycles on it recently. She was also certain that the Family was in some way involved, that much there was no doubt about. Leviathan was at the least very wary of and quite likely shit-scared of Kaiju, by all appearances.
And now this. She'd checked the logs herself, seeing that Metis had done the same. The timing of the wormhole singularity stabilizing and the Simurgh stopping dead were precisely aligned. Dragon couldn't see any other explanation than that the Endbringer had for some reason decided this was enough to abort the attack immediately without ever landing. While it was about the best possible outcome one could imagine, the implications were… puzzling and worrying.
Had her precognition warned her of the availability of 'Athena'? Did that in turn mean the ridiculously over-sized weapon would actually kill or seriously injure her? Or was it a double bluff, intended to make them think that?
The problem was with the Simurgh involved you never knew if you were being too paranoid or not paranoid enough. It was entirely possible, in fact, that one simply couldn't be sufficiently paranoid. The problem was that such an attitude could end up paralyzing you from indecision, second-, third-, and fourth-guessing your every move.
With an internally emulated sigh, she pushed that though process away. It inevitably led her in circles. Looking over to Legend, she saw he was staring at the live Endbringer tracking display running on one of the dozen or so monitors in the lab, his expression showing he was deep in thought. And not enjoying those thoughts.
Moving over to stand beside him, she looked down at the human man. "You look pensive," she noted.
He glanced up the eight inches or so difference between her and him, then went back to the display. After a moment he nodded. "I am. I'm desperately trying to work out what happened. We've never seen this behavior before. Yet again. The Endbringers are all acting out of character. Eidolon is acting out of character. And it all, somehow, seems to keep coming back to involving the Family. What's the connection?"
"I don't know," she admitted. "I can't see it either, although I agree. Those three people or groups are connected somehow, that much I'm sure of, but how and why..." She shrugged a little. "Too little data so far."
He turned to her, regarding her for a few seconds, then looked past her at Colin who was listening while working on his computer, not saying anything. Eventually the man sighed. "Here's another data point, then. Eidolon had a… medical anomaly, let's call it, at fifteen fifty-seven and twenty-nine seconds, as closely as I can find out."
She looked at him, then at Colin, who had stopped working and was simply watching them with an expression of deep thought. "Which is exactly ten seconds after the Simurgh stopped."
"Yes."
"What sort of medical anomaly?"
"Very high heart rate, raised blood pressure, adrenaline release, elevated cortisol levels..."
"Fight or flight reflex, in other words."
"Again, yes. Out of nowhere, I'm told."
"Is he all right?"
"He's undergoing medical tests but the doctor couldn't find any immediate issues."
Dragon considered his words, adding the data to what they already had. It led her to some rather unpleasant ideas. Eventually, she said, "We know that when Eidolon became agitated, for no clear reason that we can work out at the moment, during his interaction with Kaiju, Leviathan started heading directly here. Once he was distracted, or disabled, the Endbringer either stopped, or in the second case, immediately retreated." Both the men nodded slowly.
"When we were hopping around the place testing the wormhole facility, Leviathan moved faster than we've ever seen him go, heading directly away from Raptaur. This, in conjunction with the other data we already noticed, suggests that he is extremely unwilling to get any closer to her or any other Family member than he absolutely has to."
They nodded again. "Which also adds to the slowness of his approach to say that he was moving unwillingly," Colin noted. "As we suspected at the time."
"It certainly suggests that very strongly," Dragon agreed. "Now we have the Simurgh's strange behavior, again associated with an odd reaction in Eidolon. Although, this time his reaction was after the odd behavior, rather than before it."
"Which all means… what?" Legend asked seriously, moving to sit down where he could see both of the others.
She shook her head. "I'm not completely sure yet. But a few ideas come to mind. One is that it very strongly implies that the Endbringers do not want to meet any of the Family. Which in turn implies that the Family can in some way either seriously harm or even kill them. The Simurgh's precog may have shown her what would happen as soon as the wormhole spun up, or at least at that point the probabilities became too high to risk an encounter. That might well mean that Athena really can cause serious damage. Which is good, I suppose, looked at in one way."
"Or it might just have been the ability of the Family to suddenly encounter her that she was worried about, the gun being irrelevant in favor of some other ability they have we know nothing about," Colin put in.
"Well, yes, that's certainly true. But as we don't know about any such ability, it's probably more useful to consider the things we do know about."
He nodded thoughtfully.
She hesitated, then went on to the more worrying part of her thoughts. "The other thing that this all suggests to me is that Eidolon and the Endbringers are fairly closely connected. We suspected this might be the case, but in light of this new evidence… perhaps the connection is closer than we thought."
Legend didn't look as surprised as he might have done, although he did look depressed. "It crossed my mind, yes," he sighed. "Which way do you think the connection goes?"
"I think it's probably both ways," she remarked. "Look at it like this. When he met Kaiju, he became… aggressive, confused, argumentative. Would that be a fair assessment?"
The man nodded without saying anything.
"OK. So, we know he's always a little too keen to fight a serious opponent. He has something to prove, correct?"
Once again, Legend nodded, sighing a little. "That's what I think. He won't come right out and say it, but… I think he needs to know he's the most powerful one around. Aside from the Endbringers and Scion, obviously. Kaiju was a shock. Especially if she's someone the damn Endbringers are scared of."
"All right, then. He needs to be the most powerful, or think he is. That would go some way towards explaining his attitude to Kaiju. He was obviously trying to goad her into a fight, which she realized and didn't play along with. He got more and more frustrated by this. When he hit a certain level, Leviathan started coming here, even reluctantly. Was he, somehow… calling him… maybe to add enough pressure to start the fight he wanted?" She looked at Colin and Legend, the former frowning deeply as he mulled it over, the latter looking upset. "I have no idea how that could work, and I'm not saying it's in any way deliberate. But it sort of fits the data in my view."
"I can't find enough holes in that to say you're entirely wrong, as much as I'd like to," Legend finally replied in heavy tones. "We've been working our way towards that for a while now. Yes, I agree, it is certainly one interpretation of the data that seems to hold together. If we posit some mechanism by which the Endbringers can be controlled by Eidolon. Some Master effect, possibly."
"Possibly. We still don't know the limitations of Parahuman abilities. We don't even know what the Endbringers are. Parahumans who went all the way? Something else? Aliens, even?" She shrugged yet again, spreading her hands out. "I have no idea at the moment."
"Neither do I," he admitted. "Based on that hypothesis, how do you fit the Simurgh into it? She attacked and he reacted, not the other way around as you suggest was the case with Leviathan."
Dragon looked at him for several seconds. "Are you sure about that?" she finally asked.
"What… do you mean?" he replied, very cautiously.
"This is only a guess right now. But consider this thought… Say that Eidolon, probably without knowing it, is able to control or at least loosely direct the movements of the Endbringers. How doesn't matter right now."
Legend looked at Colin, then back to her, nodding a little.
"OK. What happens, under that scenario, if he directs the Simurgh to attack Canberra, and half-way there she suddenly resists? Because, for example, she suddenly sees what's going to happen when an eighty foot sea monster shoots her in the face with a nuclear shotgun?" She looked at each of them. "What happens to the Master when the Mastered suddenly pushes back?"
"It… might mean, depending on how the link works, that the Master would have a significant adverse reaction..." Colin replied thoughtfully after nearly thirty seconds.
"Such as a very high stress, fight or flight, physiological reaction, perhaps?" Dragon asked.
They all stared at each other for some time. Eventually Legend sagged, sighing and putting his hands over his face. "Oh, fuck it. That's all too horribly plausible."
"If Eidolon is somehow picking the targets for the Endbringers, how is that happening?" Colin asked. He looked worried, glancing at his old mentor with concern. "And is it something that happens every time, or just occasionally? Or even only these last two times?"
"I can't answer any of those questions," Dragon replied quietly. "I can't actually prove any of this, I'm merely putting it out there as a possibility that fits, one way or the other, all the observations we've made. For all I know, this is simply some horrendously complicated plot by the Simurgh to make us all believe this. But… can we afford to ignore it out of paranoia?"
"No," Legend replied, lowering his hands. "We can't. But I don't know how to prove it, or what to do about it even if we can. And I do know that we can't let the public find out about it, unless and possibly especially if we can prove it. Trust in Parahumans is always tricky at best, and if people start to think that one of the Triumvirate is somehow involved in the deaths of millions of people…" He stopped as he seemed to run out of words to say.
"I think all we can do is to continue to collect as much data as possible. If we can establish some form of timeline, correlating specific actions on the part of the Endbringers to actions that Eidolon has taken, or not taken, perhaps we can either prove or disprove this possible link. We only have two data sets so far, after all."
Dragon leaned against the workbench behind her. "I can't prove it, but I have a sneaking suspicion that we haven't seen the last of the Simurgh this time around. If she really was being sent in by something Eidolon did, and really did kick back and escape whatever that control is… perhaps it will try again."
"If so, do you think that the same thing will happen?" Legend asked.
"I have no idea. All we can do is wait and see. Whatever happens, it's more data."
He studied her, then sighed again. "I suppose you're right. Damn it all."
Colin cleared his throat, making them look at him. "Do we notify the Family about any of this?"
"Not yet," Legend replied immediately. "We don't have enough evidence and I don't want to risk it getting out."
"I do not think that Raptaur or her sisters or cousins would be a security risk," the Tinker said.
"Perhaps not. I tend to agree, even. But, the more people that know, the more people who can let something slip, inadvertently or otherwise."
"True. As you wish." Colin nodded once.
"I have a feeling that even if we don't say anything, they may well work some of it out for themselves," Dragon put in. Both her companions turned to her. "Metis is very far from stupid, like the rest of them, and she was already comparing times even before I did. I don't know what conclusions she's drawn, but she is some form of Thinker, so it would be foolish to assume that she can't work things out. At least enough to know something odd is happening. And she'll tell the others. When they start comparing data..." She made a motion with one hand. "We probably can't stop them coming to their own conclusions. And possibly running some experiments to see what happens."
The other two were silent for a while. "You're probably right. Even so, for now, please don't tell them anything. I'll see what I can find out about Eidolon's activities preceding and during the last few Endbringer attacks, Perhaps we can draw some other conclusions from it."
"OK. With any luck we can find something. But we may have to wait until the next attack and watch very carefully."
"If we do find some direct evidence linking them to him, what do we do about it?" Colin asked thoughtfully.
They considered the question for a while. "Knock him out just before the attack and see if that throws them off?" she suggested semi-facetiously. Legend smiled a little.
"I hardly think I can punch him in the head every time there's an imminent attack," he chuckled.
"If it works… It's better than the normal approach," she replied. "Not for him, of course, but..."
"That would be a rather ignominious fate for one of the greatest heroes in the world," Colin noted calmly. "Although if it did work it would be an efficient method to stop the attacks."
She and Legend both snickered. "All right," the latter said when he stopped grinning. "We wait and watch. It's two times now. Three, and I think we can be sure there's a link. But what we do if we get that far, I'm not sure. We'll fight that battle when we get there."
The other two nodded. He was right, Dragon thought.
"OK. On an entirely different subject, how are we doing on unpicking the mess Coil made of the PRT systems? I really want to grab that fool as soon as possible, but I don't want to risk anything going wrong in the process. We might only get one chance at it."
"We've been working on that, sir," Colin replied with a small vicious smile. "If you'll direct your attention to the monitor over there, I'll walk you through our current ideas..."
A considerable distance away, on the other side of a portal spanning parallel worlds in fact, a smart but cold woman nodded approvingly, holding up yet another sample vial.
"Christ, leave some in me, will you, you mad woman?" an aggrieved voice said faintly. "I want to be able to stand up after this."
"You may want to lie still, David," she replied, picking up another instrument and pulling the trigger with a sharp 'click', inspecting the two inch glistening needle that shot out of the end of the device with interest. "This may sting a little..."
"Get that thing away from me!"
The howl of pain echoed around the lab, but it didn't stop her.