Lisa thought about the data she was looking at, letting her power play with it. The tracking logs showed, as she'd expected, that Leviathan had gone nuts when Taylor had gone supersonic, roaring off in the relevant direction to put a planet between him and her. There was a short atypical pause though, which made her grin a little.
Even her power seemed amused.
It suggested that the Endbringer had been taken by surprise by the new development and had probably been doing its own equivalent of staring in horror, before it ran for its life. Whatever the true reason the things were wary of Taylor, it was pretty obvious even without using Parahuman abilities that they definitely didn't want to meet her.
She was curious about why Leviathan did his odd thing of keeping away from both Taylor's current position and Brockton Bay itself, though. It was something she'd noticed immediately when she'd first seen the data, and he was still doing it. If it was the Varga that was ultimately the basis of the Endbringer's caution, which seemed likely to her, why didn't he move to keep Taylor as far as possible from him even if that meant he got closer to the city?
Letting her ability puzzle over it, she reviewed the tracking log again, before going back to the live view, which showed him almost stationary in the same location he'd occupied for close to two months.
Endbringers unwilling to risk destruction
Endbringer activity status misaligned with mission parameters
Endbringer mission corrupt
Initiator access temporarily suspended by supervisor override due to mission risk assessment exceeding acceptable levels
Observation of non-quantifiable subject via network gives lower limit to estimated threat
Lower limit above assured victory threshold
Lower limit increasing
Network fragmentation and error rate increasing due to external influence
Network fragmentation process ongoing end stage non-quantifiable
Endbringer mission ongoing
Endbringer mission unable to complete using standard parameters
Endbringers…
Endbringers…
Her power suddenly dumped a series of data points into her mind, almost feeling plaintive and confused for the last couple. She reeled with the abrupt activity, wondering what it was up to. There was a distinct feeling that it was trying to tell her something important in a roundabout manner but kept running into something that was preventing this from happening.
Pondering the conclusions, she tried to assess them and derive some meaning. If she had it right, the Endbringers were actively trying not to encounter Taylor, who was together with the Varga the 'non-quantifiable subject' her power kept babbling about. She was pretty certain of that, although it seemed coy about confirming it. They were somehow being pushed into doing what they did as well, if 'initiator' meant what she thought it did. 'Supervisor override' was odd. By implication the 'supervisor' wasn't the same as the 'initiator'.
What did it all mean?
By the sound of it, the Endbringers were indeed monitoring Taylor, and most likely as they'd worked out via their powers, also confirming, sort of, that they were related and linked together. 'Network' was another confirmation, or at least strong correlation, of this theory.
By the sound of it as well they were also right about the idea that somehow Taylor, and/or the Varga, was having some peculiar effect on the source of powers, if 'network fragmentation' could be taken at face value.
She'd bet all the money she stole from Lung that the 'external influence' was indeed the Varga.
Somehow.
Her power appeared not to be able to work out where this process, whatever it was, would go. Non-quantifiable wasn't very helpful, really.
'Assured victory threshold' was a weirdly worrying way to put it, as well. It had some nasty implications that were going to need careful thought. The bit about the lower limit, though, tended to imply that her friend was somehow becoming more dangerous in the eyes of the Endbringers as time went on, having started at a point they already weren't keen on running into.
Which was in itself slightly scary, in some ways.
The end result of all of this tended to suggest that the Endbringers weren't just acting on their own, they were being used as weapons by someone or something, ones that were smart enough to know when they faced an opponent that would cause them trouble. She honestly couldn't see any other conclusion than the one she'd come to that this opponent was Taylor and her giant friend, somehow. It was the only thing that fitted all the data and the timeline as well.
The last couple of conclusions were very strange. It was like her power kept getting frustrated, like someone kept pressing a reset button on it. Very similar to the result she'd got when she tried to work out what Eidolon's problem was.
Her eyes narrowed a little. There was something there…
After a few seconds, she shook her head in frustration. It just wouldn't come to her for some reason, which was incredibly irritating.
The big questions were, as far as she could see, what was the Endbringer mission, and who or what was the initiator? Who had set the damn things into motion?
All this supported the theories they'd come up with from what she could see, even if it didn't straight out confirm any of them. But it was more evidence to add to the list. She was going to have to start writing this all down and trying to put it together into a coherent whole, since at the moment they mainly had dozens of scraps of information with lots of holes in between them.
That said, there certainly seemed to be something to it, even if she couldn't yet see an overall pattern. There was one, she was certain, and her power was doing everything it could manage to get around what she was now convinced was a deliberate block by parties unknown to prevent her learning what she was learning. Presumably the ultimate source of Parahuman abilities didn't want people finding out what it was and why it was doing it.
That worried her a lot.
Mulling it over for a while, trying to get more data from her ability, she ultimately dropped that particular line of thought as all it did was make her power sulk a little. It seemed relieved when she stopped prodding it, making her smile a little.
Despite Taylor's somewhat dubious acceptance of what she felt, she herself was absolutely sure her power was in its own way both alive, and semi-sentient at the least. And there was growing evidence, as far as she was concerned, that it really was a lot like some weird type of computer.
And that it thought Taylor and her companion were the best thing ever.
Smiling a little, she looked at the tracking data on Leviathan again, then switched to the Simurgh tracking system. Playing the log she watched as the thing came active very suddenly indeed, at as far as she could tell the same moment Taylor first lifted off on her latest invention, then tracked her throughout the entire test flight.
The expression was… a little unnerving.
Endbringer wary of new developments
Endbringer hopeful?
Endbringer desires mission cessation
Endbringer…
Once again, her power stalled out. But she got the gist of it.
The damn Simurgh was hoping that somehow it could get out from under whatever was pulling its strings.
Now there was a terrifying thought.
Everyone thought of the Simurgh as the ultimate plotter, the one who controlled minions the world over, the one you could never be sufficiently paranoid about. But, if she was correct, something else was actually using the Endbringer in an even deeper plot.
"Or that's just what she wants me to think," she muttered out loud.
That was the real problem. You really couldn't be too paranoid where the fucking thing was concerned.
But… she just couldn't shake the feeling that she was on the right track. There was just something about the way the thing was staring down from orbit that made her think it wasn't simply a trick.
Although that might also be part of the trick…
"For fuck's sake, this sort of thinking can drive you nuts," she growled, shaking her head as she watched the creature go dormant again, after actually looking relieved. Probably about Taylor not heading for orbit and a confrontation.
Briefly she wondered what the thing would have done if her friend had indeed found out if she could reach space.
Flipping to the live feed, she watched the Endbringer drifting as it moved around the planet in the new orbit it had moved to after the end of the previous recording.
Zooming in as far as she could, she studied it. "What are you, and what do you want?" she mumbled, putting her hands on the console and leaning closer to the monitor as if it would help. Not knowing was annoying her something fierce, and worrying her nearly as much. Somehow, those things were connected to everything odd that was going on with her power, and Amy's, and all the other Parahumans who had come into contact with Taylor since the Varga had arrived.
She blinked several times when the Simurgh suddenly unfolded her wings and exposed her face, rotating a little until those dead eyes were looking right down the distant telescope.
'That is… freaky,' she thought, leaning even closer. The creature was somewhat closer in its current orbit than it had been the last time she'd looked at it and she had a very clear view of it through the phenomenally good optics of Dragon's scope. 'Now what are you doing?'
Lisa somehow had the distinct impression that the thing was looking right at her. Specifically. Even though it was looking at a telescope in Canada.
"We're going to figure it out, you know," she said quietly, "And we're going to stop you. Somehow. We have a demon on our side."
The Simurgh blinked.
Lisa stared.
"You really are looking at me, aren't you?" she finally said.
It blinked again.
"Fuck me with a barge-pole," she whispered. "How the hell..."
She thought rapidly. There was only one possibility that she could see.
"My powers. This 'network' it's talking about. That's how. We're right about everything, aren't we?"
She watched closely. Was that a tiny smile on the face of the distant Endbringer? If so, it was gone moments later. Her power was suspiciously silent, but she could feel it was as interested as she was. And somehow a little shocked.
"Maybe I'm going mad." She pulled back from the monitor. "Or maybe I'm not. But I'm not going to give up until I work it out. All of it."
Pointing at the monitor, she added, "And one way or the other, I'll work you out as well. Count on it."
There was a pause, just long enough to make her think she really was going a little loopy, before the Simurgh definitely smiled in a weird way, faintly and briefly, almost with resignation like she knew there wasn't anything she could do. Lisa stared in surprise, then shook her head and logged off, needing rather suddenly not to be looking at the thing while she thought about everything that she'd deduced.
The sudden ringing of her phone made her twitch, then retrieve it from the console where she'd put it earlier.
Sherrel sat in a corner of the room watching the other Merchants stumble around the place, half of them so fucked up on various narcotics they could barely stand. It was a normal scene in this place, one she'd seen so many times she couldn't even work it out, but now she observed it with quiet shock.
How the hell had she ended up living like this?
It had been a long, slow, horrible descent into something that was… just disgusting.
And somehow she'd never noticed.
But, now, she couldn't not notice it. Suddenly totally stone-cold sober for the first time in at least four years, she looked around at what she'd come to accept as normal and wondered how anyone could accept it at all. She knew many of these people, even sort of liked a few of them, but her memories of good times with them didn't match the squalid and revolting reality she was looking at right now. In one corner of the room, a small orgy was going on, the seven participants covered in sweat and less salubrious substances, so high they most likely couldn't remember what they were doing even as they were doing it.
Across the room from her, a couple more of her… friends/acquaintances/random people she shared a building with, were shooting up good old fashioned heroin, one of them slumping unconscious before he managed to remove the hypodermic from his arm. His friend popped it out, then fell over, smiling a little, before also passing out.
She watched in muted horror. This wasn't what she'd wanted, all those years ago.
More worryingly, it wasn't what she remembered from only days ago.
Without the chemical haze over everything, she could see what was happening with a level of clarity that made her want to vomit.
Her eyes following a small group of people ranging in age from only fifteen or so up to about thirty, she observed them pull out a bag of meth and a pipe then start passing it around. Within minutes they were flopping on the floor giggling.
Sherrel was struck anew by something she'd noticed in the last day, as she'd moved around the entire building in something of a daze.
The oldest person in the entire place was probably about thirty-three or so.
Most of them were mid-twenties or younger.
She could clearly remember, or as clearly remember as she was likely to bearing in mind the level of narcotics generally in her bloodstream up until whatever had happened in her workshop, that people older than that had joined them many times over the years. But she couldn't see any of them, and had looked carefully everywhere.
There was an obvious explanation for that phenomenon that made her feel unwell. Constant access to and use of drugs of the level that were lying around the place tended to have a fairly detrimental long term health effect.
For a moment, she wondered what percentage of the gang was still alive compared to the number that had joined up over the years. She suspected it wasn't very high.
And less than twenty-four hours earlier, she'd come terrifyingly close to joining that statistic. Only something she still didn't understand had saved her, and she had no idea why. What made her worth saving, compared to everyone else here?
And who had saved her?
Reaching into her pocket, she pulled out the scrap of paper she'd found in her hand when she'd woken up, reading it yet again, then put it away once more. She still couldn't work out what to do.
The number on the paper possibly gave her a way out. On the other hand, it might lead her to her death. On the other other hand, why would some mysterious good Samaritan save her, only to entice her into a lethal trap?
Moaning faintly she put her head in her hands. 'What do I do?' she thought despairingly.
A glance at the pipe and almost transparent crystal sitting next to her on the stained and ripped couch she was sitting on, with a lighter near them, made her ponder that option. Her hand even reached out for it, then retracted hesitantly.
It was certainly one solution to the issues troubling her, but it wasn't a good one. Especially considering it was what had damn near killed her in the first place, and was exactly what had led her to this point in her life. Not to mention that she had a shrewd idea that her tolerance for any narcotic had been reset to a level far below the one she'd built it up to before the events in the workshop. Even inhaling the smoke from second hand use of the various pharmaceuticals everyone around her was using had left her dizzy, and not in a good way.
No.
That wasn't the right choice, she was sure. She'd been given a second chance even if she didn't call the number, one she would be stupid to just throw away. Sherrel was well aware that she wasn't someone who had made a lot of good choices in her life, but she wasn't falling into that trap again if she could help it. There was no burning desire for meth in her any more and with the clearing of her head she could see that starting to use it again led somewhere she had a sudden powerful urge to avoid.
Looking down at herself she picked at her stained clothing. It was the least revolting of any of the things she possessed yet was still grubby and covered in oil. That she didn't mind, it was a hazard of doing what she loved doing, but the other things that went along with the oil she wasn't so blasé about.
Standing up abruptly, she looked around her at the ongoing debauchery, shuddered a little, and headed back to her workshop to think away from the harsh chemical reek that pervaded the room.
On the way she looked at the entire operation with her newly-opened eyes and despaired.
Growing up in that literal trailer park, she hadn't had a lot of goals for life, aside from getting out of where she was into some ill-defined concept of better. She wasn't, now that she looked back on the last few years, at all sure that she'd actually done that.
Adam had turned up out of nowhere one day in the small town she lived in, foul-mouthed even then, but with a certain style and joy of living that appealed to her. They'd started hanging out together, finding in each other a level of companionship that both liked. He'd introduced her to drugs other than alcohol, which she was already more than familiar with, and tobacco, which she'd never liked. Growing up where she did, booze wasn't exactly hard to get, of course, and she'd first gotten drunk when she was ten.
He'd given her some pot, which she enjoyed, and some coke, which she didn't. Not at first, anyway. It made her head ache and the world way too bright and crisp around the edges. She could see why he liked it, he was always full of ideas and the stuff definitely made him even more creative, but at the same time it seemed to have a detrimental effect on his attention span.
Even so, when he'd suggested they leave together and find something more interesting to do, she'd accepted on the spot. They didn't even say goodbye, just jumped in a car and started driving.
Considering what her home life was like, it was something she still didn't regret, even after all that had happened. If she'd stayed in that trailer, she was pretty certain she'd have died by now. One way or the other.
It had all been fun at first, but… looking back, she could see that the long slide to where she'd ended up the day before had started then. Adam was smart and funny and full of grandiose ideas, but hindsight let her clearly see that he'd had the beginnings of the problems that now defined him even then. His temper was always short, and more than that, bad. When he got angry, everyone around him suffered.
That was what had led to him Triggering, in the end. He'd said the wrong thing to the wrong person and very nearly died as a result. And one way or the other, a couple of months later the fallout from that had led to her own Trigger event. Not something she wanted to think about even now.
But that was the nature of Triggers. No one ever enjoyed them, by definition.
She'd blamed him for months, but somehow still stayed with the man. In the end they recovered as much as anyone could, ending up in Brockton Bay, which was at least an interesting place. Even when you didn't want it to be.
When he'd decided that instead of simply using drugs they should start selling them, which was a fairly common path, she hadn't been surprised. Between them, they had the abilities to start an organization that could be quite effective at the job. Moving from that to actually making the stuff wasn't much of a jump and it increased the profit a hell of a lot. She'd had qualms about it, for a while, but she could now see she'd been so far gone by that point that her own thought patterns were suspect at best.
Even so, he'd spent quite a long time convincing her, successfully, that it was the right move. Good times rolled on, for a while.
They didn't lack for money, drugs were copiously available, she was actively encouraged to Tinker away, and if she had reservations, they could be pushed to the back of her mind. Eventually they went away.
But… the man she'd genuinely loved also went away, slowly replaced by someone who looked like him, but acted more and more irrationally. All his bad aspects and habits became in the end almost the only part of him that survived, magnified to the point that he was a mockery of the person she'd originally met years ago. She could see that, had been seeing it even through her own problems, which she knew were severe. And she didn't like it.
But she couldn't stop him. Or, if she was honest, herself. The lifestyle, the drugs, the sheer habits, kept both of them circling the drain, even if they'd wanted to get out.
She had come to the conclusion that she did some time ago, but lacked the ability to do anything about it.
Adam almost certainly didn't want out. He was perfectly happy where he was. And when she balked at some of his recent ideas, pointing out that he was biting off way more than he could chew, although he himself was likely to get both bitten and chewed, he damn near beat her to death.
The man she'd first met, while he had a violent side if pushed, would never have done such a thing.
Arriving in her workshop after a reflective walk through the large building, she looked around. The nearly completed vehicle in the middle of the room was huge and ungainly, but she still found beauty in the way all the disparate parts had been joined together to form a whole. It was ugly, even she could see that, but only on the outside.
Unfortunately, she could also see that her boyfriend was ugly on the inside. Sherrel wasn't sure that could be fixed.
She was sure she couldn't do it.
Perhaps her mystery savior could, but she wasn't convinced. Physical issues were one thing. What was wrong with Adam went a lot deeper than that, she suspected.
"Oh, fuck it, what do I do?" she mumbled, slumping onto her stool at the workbench, picking up a torque wrench and running her hand over the greasy metal. "What do I do?"
"Get this fucking thing finished, you lazy bitch, that's what you do," the familiar voice of her boyfriend's third in command unexpectedly said from behind her. She stiffened in shock and abrupt rage. "Skids sent word he's found something good. He'll be coming back when he's negotiated a price. We need this done. Fucking do it."
Turning around, she glared hatefully at the tattered man, who was standing a few feet away, reeking of crack and glaring at her through bloodshot eyes. "I told you not to talk to me like that."
"I'll talk any way I want, cunt. He left me in charge. You do what I say."
"Or what?"
"Or I fucking do something you'll regret," he tried to growl, not really managing it due to the slur in his words, and the fact that he was pretty unimpressive physically.
"Yeah, sure," she sighed. "Like you could. Or would. Skidmark would kill you."
"Bitch." The man took a step closer, raising his hand.
She brought the torque wrench around and pointed it at him warningly. "Try it. I'll break your fucking arm, you little shit."
The man stared at her, his face flushing with anger, then pulled his arm back and swung it, stepping into range and aiming at her face.
She ducked, then swung the wrench as hard as she could. The crack it made as his wrist shattered was simultaneously sickening and gratifying, as was his scream of pain.
Sherrel had never liked the little bastard. And knew for a fact that he'd knifed at least two people, one of whom died, so she had little sympathy for him.
"Fucking cunt bitch!" Lee gasped, dropping to his knees and grabbing his arm with his other hand, his face suddenly very pale.
"I warned you. Now get the hell out of my workshop before I crack your head open and let all the air out." She waved the wrench at him, making him lean back, then struggle to his feet again. "Fuck off out of here and don't come back."
"I'm going to tell Skidmark about this, he'll fucking kill you, bitch," the man said through gritted teeth, trembling with pain.
"Then I'll never finish that thing," she pointed out evenly, still tense, in case he tried something else.
His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, while he sweated, pale and wan, then he turned and headed for the exit. She followed at a safe distance, slamming the door behind him when he went through it. Leaning on it she sighed in relief and worry. "Shit."
Eventually, the woman returned to the bench, sitting down and staring at the construction in the middle of the room.
Nearly half an hour of thought later, she pulled the paper out of her pocket, looked at it blankly for another minute or so, then reached for her phone.
The other end rang a few times.
"Hello. I was wondering if you'd call. Are you all right?" The voice was female, deep, and concerned.
"Not really," she admitted, leaning her head on her hand and breathing deeply a couple of times. "I can't stay here any more. Whatever you did to me… I… I can see too much now."
"Are you sure?" The person on the phone sounded unsurprised, somehow, but also cautious. "It's a big step. You're going to piss off your friends a lot, in a way that you probably can't go back on."
"Friends?" She thought about it for a while. All the actual friends she'd had when they started years back were gone, except for Adam. Most of them having died, a few simply disappearing. The people that had come and gone since then were, at best, acquaintances. Some who she quite liked, some she genuinely hated, but none of them really friends. "I don't think I have any of those left. Yes, I'm sure. If I stay here, one way or another I'm dead, sooner or later. I decided that I don't want that."
"OK. Fair enough." There was a pause, giving the impression of careful thought. "We get you somewhere safe first, then we can work out what comes next. And what to do about your idiot boyfriend before he does something he can't walk back from."
"I heard he's found what he's looking for. He'll be back in the Bay soon. Maybe a week or so, I think."
"I see." The person she was talking to paused again. "That's annoying. Still, that's not important right now. All right, this is what we're going to do. Pack up anything you want to bring. Keep it light. Barricade yourself into the workshop. I'll be there soon."
"Who are you?" she asked, burning with curiosity. "And why are you helping me?"
"You can call me Metis. And… let's say that I think it's the right thing to do for my own reasons, aside from the simple humanitarian aspect." Metis chuckled a little. "Slightly ironically. Do what I said, quickly, and I'll see you in about half an hour."
Her head full of questions, Sherrel only nodded pointlessly. "OK." The line went dead before she could ask how this 'Metis' was going to get into her workshop if it was barricaded.
Staring at the phone in her hand for a moment, she shrugged and put it away. Whoever it was she'd been speaking to, they clearly had managed to get in before, so presumably the same method would be used. She just hoped that the words 'Frying Pan' and 'Fire' weren't going to play a large part in the next few hours of her life.
Going over to the door she picked up the crowbar that had been sticking out of the frame when she'd come around the day before, which was propped against the wall, then inserted it into the hole she'd knocked it out of. Grabbing her sledge hammer she smacked it a couple of times against the other tool, driving it firmly into place. That made the door pretty solidly jammed shut.
Satisfied, she started packing up some of her specialized tools, the ones she'd made, the others being common mechanic's tools and easily replaceable. When she'd finished, she studied the vehicle under construction.
It was a shame to abandon it, after all that work, but…
The damn thing wasn't worth her life.
That said, there were parts of it she really didn't want to see fall into the wrong hands, and could reuse later. Grabbing a toolkit she spend fifteen minutes stripping out the cloaking system, the power supplies, and a few other subsystems, cutting wires ruthlessly with a twinge of shame at the mess she was making. After some more thought she made a few deliberate changes to the drive train, which would ensure that if anyone actually tried to finish the thing and drive it, it would end up as scrap. Probably pretty loudly.
In the end she had two crates of parts sitting next to her good tools. Looking at the small pile, she felt more shame. That was it. Several years of living here, and all she wanted to take were some tools, some mechanical and electronic parts, and the clothes she was standing up in. Which she'd burn as soon as she got the chance.
"God damn it, I'm so fucked up," she sighed. "How the hell did I end up here?"
There was no good answer, really. Shrugging, she sat down to wait, glancing at the battered diver's watch on her wrist. Five minutes to the half hour.
Seconds after the time mentioned, there was a scraping sound that made her jump, then whirl around to stare across the room to the section she used as a junk pile. A large rusty steel plate that had been present when she moved in, far too heavy to shift and something she'd always assumed was part of the floor, lifted slowly up. She watched with wide eyes as it moved sideways then was lowered carefully, revealing a cavity in the floor she'd had no idea at all was there.
"Holy shit," she mumbled, shocked.
The head that rose out of the hole in the floor made her reach for the stability of the workbench. Black scales opened in a smile that exposed a lot of teeth. Glowing green eyes showed amused good humor at her reaction.
"Christ, I hope you're Metis," she said in a quavering voice.
"Got it in one," the same voice she'd heard on the phone a little while ago said, sounding pleased. "Ready to get out of here?"
"You're Family."
"Yep."
"Helping me."
"True."
Sherrel stared, then sighed. "Should have known it was going to get weird. Everything around this damn city is weird. I'm weird, you're weird, the whole Family is fucking weird… What's one more thing?"
"That's the spirit," Metis laughed, climbing out of the hole and walking over to her. The lizard-like creature was huge, Sherrel saw, well over seven feet tall and built like a scaly organic tank. The plate she'd lifted with one hand must have weighed a good ton or so but she'd made it look easy.
"What are you taking?"
"This stuff here," she said, pointing at the toolbox and the crates of parts.
"That's it?"
"I don't have anything else I want to keep," she admitted. Metis looked at her for a moment then nodded, appearing sympathetic.
"I understand. OK, let's put that away." Sherrel twitched when the creature suddenly sprouted armor out of nowhere with a rapid clattering sound. She stared in shock, then interest, mixed with slight envy.
"That's cool," she commented, fascinated.
"It's not bad, is it? You'll meet my cousin Saurial, she did the work. An old Family technique, fractal dimensional storage." A compartment opened in the chest plate of Metis' armor, the lizard grabbing both the toolbox and the crates, then tucking them inside. Sherrel gaped as the items, while not enormous, couldn't possibly fit inside the armor and leave room for Metis.
"Fuck me. That's fucking amazing."
"It's sure useful." The compartment closed, then the armor disappeared once more, taking her stuff with it. Shaking her head in awed respect, she followed as Metis walked back to the hole in the floor. "It's dark down there and it stinks, but it's safe enough. Grab hold." Metis lowered herself to the floor and indicated her neck. After a moment's worry, the woman shrugged, then swung herself aboard, putting her arms around the long neck and holding on tightly to the warm scales. Metis slipped over the edge of the hole and climbed down the rough rock wall, dropping the last few feet into mud that squelched underfoot, releasing a strong smell of decaying organic matter mixed with a trace of oil and fuel.
"OK, slide down, I need to go back and put the cover in place so they can't work out where you went. Back in a moment." Standing in mud up to her ankles, Sherrel watched as the light coming from above was blocked by the sheer black of the reptilian creature as she climbed back up, then braced her tail against the inside of the vertical tunnel and used both hands to gently reposition the cover. A slight grating of metal on concrete and the entire tunnel was suddenly completely dark.
She blinked a little as soft green light flooded the area, emitted from patches on the body of Metis, who was climbing back down. When the Family member was standing next to her, she said, "We need to walk about a mile. You go in front so I can clear the footprints away. At the junction ahead, turn right."
"OK," Sherrel replied a little weakly, still shocked at not only who and what was helping her, but how fast it was happening. She started walking, the bioluminescence from Metis illuminating her path well enough. The lizard followed a couple of feet behind. "Thank you for helping me."
"You're welcome," Metis said softly. "What do you want me to call you? Squealer?"
She thought hard about that question for a hundred feet or so. "No. Squealer is the old me. I'm done with that part of my life. I don't know what I'll call myself going forward, but… my name is Sherrel."
"Nice to meet you, Sherrel," Metis replied. "OK, right here, then about another three hundred yards, then left."
They kept walking, mostly in silence, while the woman pondered the events that had led her here, and wondered where they were going to end up taking her.
Taylor jogged back into the DWU yard, hopping over the barrier and waving at the guards, who waved back, then went back to yet another card game, Mike complaining under his breath about his partner being a cheating cheater who cheated, making her grin a little. Heading towards the office she passed the truck that had turned up from her father's and Mark's mysterious contacts, both of them along with the truckers inside the armory she'd made the day before, based on the scents. Not stopping, since she'd talk to them when the two other guys had left, she kept going, smiling at Rachel who was still out walking her dogs, although she had a different pack with her than when she'd seen the girl earlier in the day.
Rachel nodded to her, a small smile without teeth coming and going. As far as she could see, the former Undersider was content and as happy as she ever got. Deciding that at some point she really needed to see if she could get to know Rachel, Taylor passed her and turned into the yard in front of the office.
Greeting various workers, and waving to Brian who was just going into one of the buildings being refurbished, the tall boy waving back, she unlocked the office door and went inside, locking it again. She found Amy, still in her Ianthe body, sitting in front of a computer giggling to herself.
"What's so funny?" she asked curiously, walking over.
"You. There are all sorts of photos of you fixing things already posted. And this one of you apologizing to the bank manager. I didn't know puppy-dog eyes were a thing with reptiles, but I'm damned if you didn't pull it off better than I've ever seen." Her friend grinned, shaking her head. "Did you really have to make a hat just to hold it in an embarrassed manner and toy with it?"
"Hey, you need props to pull that look off," Taylor chuckled. "I should really have been about a foot shorter than him as well. The cute lizard girl being cute doesn't work as well when I'm looking down on almost everyone other than your uncle or Zephron."
"It seems to have worked well enough. One of these posters is a blogger who interviewed him later and he said you were very sorry, fixed everything, and even repaired a leak in the roof that was nothing to do with you." Amy looked around, still very amused. "Is that why you're late?"
"Yep. I sorted out quite a few small things, then filled in some of the bigger potholes on the way back. I really should go and repair the roads around here soon. Guy I know on the city public works program says the city has basically blacklisted this entire area for years because of the gangs, and even now they don't have the cash to do it properly. They're sending a list of urgent repairs over some time, I'll take a day to do them all before someone loses a car into a hole. Or a bridge falls over."
"You could probably spend the rest of your life doing that," Amy noted. "I read somewhere that a recent government survey said that nearly half the bridges in the entire country were in desperate need of repair, never mind all the other stuff."
"Let's concentrate on the city first, before we take over the country and fix it, shall we?" Taylor laughed.
She looked around. "Where's Lisa?"
Amy got up, stretching widely. "She went over to the WCC to look at the Endbringer logs and have a think about them. Her power is still apparently trying to tell her things without actually telling her things, she says, and she thought that if she gave it enough data it might let something slip. And you can't believe how weird that is to say, even though I feel the same way. My own power keeps giving me suggestions, rather than just vaguely saying, 'yes, we can do that.' It's the damndest thing, I can't help thinking we're on the verge of a real breakthrough in power study."
Studying her, Taylor eventually shrugged. "I'll take your word for it. Varga thinks you're onto something." She paused, then grinned. "Or losing it entirely."
"That's not what I said, Brain, and you know it," the demon said through her, his voice amused.
"I was paraphrasing."
"You were teasing your best friend."
"That too."
"All right. As long as we're all clear on that."
"We are, I think."
"You are both extremely strange," Amy giggled, listening to Taylor technically argue with herself.
"Thanks. You are too. So we're all one big crazy happy family." They shared a smirk. "Dad seems pleased with all the new toys."
"I heard a delivery turned up. Have you seen the stuff yet?"
"No, I was going to wait until later. We can finish some of your ideas and compare them. Between us we can fill that place, although I hope we don't need to use most of it." Taylor went and sat down at the table, while her friend retrieved a few cans from the fridge and brought them over. Picking up a can of Sprite Taylor didn't bother opening it, merely tossing the entire thing into her mouth, biting down, and swallowing.
Amy grinned, but refrained from doing the same. While her bioconstruct was capable of it, she preferred drinking the stuff more normally, although the can looked absurdly small in her large hand.
"I've got some ideas for weapons other people could use as well," Taylor noted, swallowing a second can. She sighed a little. "I keep having them. Most of them are horrifying. Especially the ones that don't work by applying catastrophic amounts of kinetic energy. My own abilities are totally broken in some ways, the things I could do if I wanted to..." She shivered a little as Amy looked at her sympathetically. "I have a very good idea what you were going through before we met. The more I learn, the more ways I realize I could be one of the biggest threats to the entire planet there is."
"Sucks, kind of, doesn't it," Amy sighed.
"It does. But, that said, if we keep our heads, it also lets us do all sorts of cool things, and hopefully help a lot of people. I can't think of a better way to spend my life, right now." She smiled at the other girl. "I like helping people. And making them look really puzzled at the same time."
Snickering, her friend nodded. "I would have to agree." She sipped her drink, eyeing Taylor curiously. "So what ideas do you have?"
"For weapons?" Amy nodded. "For a start, I came up with some interesting ammo for my mini-Athena. The obvious one is a slug of EDM that goes back to normal density when it's fired. The kinetic energy is horrendous, but it would just go right through almost anything. If you wanted to properly deliver it you need something that won't penetrate so well, like an expanding net. I've got some designs in mind for that, but I'll need to find somewhere out in the middle of nowhere to test them. They're not as bad as Athena is, but you wouldn't want to fire them in the city unless you had no choice."
"Sounds lethal."
"Extremely. For almost anything. That's ignoring the sorts of chemicals I could use for a filling. For instance, do you know about interhalogen compounds?"
Amy thought for a moment, then slowly nodded. "I recall something from a chemistry class. Chlorine trifluoride, or something like that."
"That's one of them. There are several variants, but that's the one you're most likely to hear about. They studied it back in the war as a rocket fuel oxidizer. And a few times since in the early parts of the space program. The problem is that it's too good. It oxidizes everything. Instantly. Pour it on sand, the sand explodes. Pour it into water, the water burns. It pretty much oxidizes oxygen for god's sake. Horrible stuff."
Amy stared, then shivered. "Jesus. That sounds terrifying."
"It's damn dangerous. And extremely toxic as well. Hardly anything can hold it, although of course EDM has no problems. So I could make a shell full of it, then make the EDM go away before impact. That would ruin someone's day instantly."
Taylor shrugged a little. "I made some to see what it was like, it really does burn concrete like it was wax. Pretty impressive."
"Is that why there's a melted hole in the road around the back?" Amy asked suspiciously.
She grinned a little sheepishly. "Um… might be. I should fill it in." After a moment, she chuckled. "Although I did find out that it tastes amazing."
"You… tasted it?" Amy sighed, sounding a little disbelieving. Taylor nodded. "For god's sake. Demons."
"It's nice and the smell was really enticing," Taylor snickered. "I had to make an EDM mug for it. But I can't drink it where normal people are, the fumes are kind of super-corrosive and toxic like I said."
"Is there anything you can't eat?" Amy asked with weary resignation.
"Not that Varga knows about, no," she said with a smug look. "I could probably even digest EDM with enough time, he thinks. My digestive system is a little… unusual. And very effective."
"Putting it mildly." Her friend shook her head in amazement. "I know where to dump any biotoxins I accidentally make, if that ever happens."
"Make them taste like chicken vindaloo, that was great," Taylor laughed.
The other girl gave her a dark look. "We agreed never to speak of it again."
"I didn't speak of it, I merely said that chicken vindaloo tastes great."
"Sure you did."
They shared a smile, then looked up at the sound of a key in the lock to the rear door. When it opened, they watched Lisa enter, with a rather buxom and very dirty and tattered blonde woman of around the mid twenties behind her. Lisa waved her in, then closed and locked the door.
They stared at the blonde, who stared back, eyes like saucers, then transferred their gaze to Lisa, who was looking a little embarrassed. "Minor plot development," their friend said, scratching her head.
Taylor and Amy looked at each other with a mutual sigh.
"Here we go again," Amy muttered, both of them getting up.