Linda looked upon her creation and deemed it cool.
"Cool," a voice rumbled from beside her.
"Exactly what I was thinking," she grinned.
Metis chuckled. "How much more work to make it go?"
"Not that much. I've finished the mechanics, Saurial's parts all fitted together perfectly, and most of the drive electronics are in and working. Replacing the hydraulics I was originally thinking about with linear motors made it much lighter and more powerful, not to mention faster. But without that superconductor material it wouldn't have been feasible. I never thought I'd be able to get it made." She glanced at the black and scarlet reptile, who was curiously studying the machine in the middle of the room.
"On the other hand, I never expected to meet someone who could just wave their hand and magic up a custom exotic material from nothing."
"Her branch of the Family has some very useful abilities," Metis agreed with a grin.
"I'll say. I'm more envious of that single talent than anything I've ever heard of," she mumbled, turning back to her drawings on the whiteboard. A very large CAD plotter was on order which would allow her to design this sort of thing and print it out for reference, but that wouldn't turn up until early next week. A similar computer system to the BBFO one was also ordered, along with a suitable relay to allow phone and radio comms to work inside the now heavily-shielded building. They were planning on running cables between the BBFO office and her workshop to link her place to the internet at high speed, which wouldn't take long when the computers turned up.
There were a lot of benefits to working at the main industrial center of the city, even if the city didn't seem to really recognize what it had here.
Checking her notes, she nodded. "I need to install the power supply next, it's running off the main grid right now which isn't very useful in the long term." Walking over to one of the shelving units, she rummaged around and came back with one of the crates of stuff she'd brought with her from the Merchant base. "Good thing I pulled these from that stupid tank I was making. I can reuse it on something a lot more helpful and interesting," she said as she opened the bag and removed one of the three power units she'd salvaged. "I can reuse the command and control system I yanked as well, although I'll want to upgrade that when I know everything works."
Metis examined it with interest. "Is that enough output for this thing?" she asked curiously.
"More than enough, but I'm going to need to make some larger ones for the next model," Linda confirmed, putting the unit on a workbench and carefully checking it over. She connected a couple of test meters and began running functional tests, smiling to herself when it fired up with a low pitched hum at the flick of a switch. Both meters rapidly rose in reading and stabilized at the correct voltage. "Good, no damage," she muttered, adjusting it a little, then turning it off.
"Fascinating." Metis was watching her run the tests, appearing impressed. "I'd suggest that it would be worth talking to Dragon about this thing. She's already signed a deal to commercialize some of Kevin's technology, and seems interested in other things he's invented. It's possible, if this could be duplicated too, that she'd want to do a similar deal with you. It could be quite lucrative for everyone. Not to mention that you might be able to trade for some of her processing tech, which is better than more or less anyone's."
Linda glanced at her, then back at the power unit. "Huh. OK, that's certainly something to think about. If she can work out how to make these things in quantity and make them reliable enough, that'd certainly be pretty handy. I'm going to want to talk to Saurial about remaking it with her skills, and maybe Kevin as well to see if he has any insights. Despite being a crazy man, he knows his stuff." She grinned at the big lizard, who chuckled, then picked the now-inert power unit up and headed for the new construction. Shortly she was half-buried in it as Metis obligingly held several tons of exotic materials a couple of feet off the floor, installing the thing while whistling happily, her tail swaying back and forth contentedly.
Yes, all things considered, she liked it here very much.
Returning to his lab, Colin sat down and pulled a keyboard towards himself, flexing his fingers before starting to enter command after command. He still preferred typing for this sort of thing, even with all the other methods he had invented, or Dragon had, to interact with computers.
Watching the text scrolling past in several different windows on the monitor array in front of him, he nodded with satisfaction. The Rig duplicate computer network was now ninety-six percent complete, almost fully finished copying the critical data across, and guaranteed free of any backdoors or data taps. Another three hours and it would be totally functional.
It would take the tech crews a good two and a half hours minimum to transfer full control of the old system across to the new one, starting just before the raid on Coil's base started. They'd have to shut everything down, simultaneously across the entire Rig, PRT building, and outlying systems, both to prevent any missed traps going off and to preserve the data for later study. That required bypassing a significant number of control systems for things as diverse as the air conditioning and snack food dispensers, which was going to be tedious in the extreme. However, he had faith that his people were up to the job.
Once that was done, moving all the connectivity over to the new network and rebooting the entire thing was a faster yet still awkward job. Assuming no problems came to light half-way through, the replacement system would be running by mid-afternoon on Sunday, although critical infrastructure would be up sooner than that. Certain systems were too important to stay down for more than the minimum amount of time they could arrange. Unfortunately, due to the scale of the threat they faced it simply wasn't possible to leave those systems out of the upgrade.
It was massively inconvenient, and made him want to test his latest taser round on Coil, preferably repeatedly, but there was no helping it. At least this meant they'd end up with a system that was some two hundred and fifteen percent faster, with nearly four times the storage capacity, and enough redundancy to make future upgrades far easier. And, no little surprises from rogue elements buried inside it to cause problems…
He sighed a little, shaking his head. All this due to one man's desire to be a Bond villain or something. Coil's motivation was something of a mystery to him and frankly he had little interest in what drove the man beyond wishing to stop him in his tracks, mixed with a fair degree of exasperation at the betrayal. Emily felt far more strongly about that part of it and it was probably going to bite Calvert pretty hard in the ass.
Assuming Saurial didn't literally do that.
The thought almost made him smile, which caused him to stop and make a note. Then he went back to work.
Finishing half an hour later, he felt pleased. Everything was going well so far. Turning to the left he used a different screen to check on the remote gas analyzer sitting in Calvert's base's air exhaust, seeing with a certain degree of pleasure that it was now reading normal nitrogen levels. That meant that all the RDX in the base was now converted to inert materials, rendering the worst-case scenario they'd all lost sleep over impotent. It was a great weight off his mind, he'd had nightmare visions of an eighteen story building gently tipping over and crushing a large part of the center of the city.
All in all it was probably good that the ground under Brockton Bay wasn't really suitable for building really tall structures, being too porous to take the weight without vast expense on foundations. The twenty-six story Medhall building was the tallest one in the city, but it was dwarfed by even Boston construction, never mind New York. He didn't like to even imagine what could happen if something a hundred stories high went over.
Quickly sending a secure message to Dragon, Emily, and Hannah that Ianthe's bioagent had done its work without any issues, he got up and left again to help finish the remaining work, wanting to get the Rig done before he went over to help his friend complete the larger work at the PRT building.
As he got out of his car Danny looked at Amy's truck parked next to him on the driveway, then heard faint laughter from inside his house. He smiled a little, closing and locking the vehicle, before regarding it with slightly rueful annoyance. Yet again things seemed to have got ahead of them, pushing off the day that he could replace it to hopefully next week. That was becoming mildly irritating as it had happened several times now, but life seemed surprisingly busy these days.
Turning away from the rather battered but still perfectly functional car he headed into the house, opening the door and going inside. As soon as he did the laughter became much louder, the sound of a number of teenagers clearly having fun bringing a private and much wider smile to his face. God, Annette would have been so happy to hear that sort of thing…
With faint regret, he put his briefcase down and took his coat off, hanging it up next to several others. He recognized Amy's, being one that Taylor had made for her, and another one he thought was probably Vicky's as it looked vaguely familiar. The rest he couldn't place but he assumed they belonged to Taylor's friend Mandy and the others.
Poking his head into the living room he looked around, somewhat taken aback to find Taylor present as both herself and Saurial. Apparently she hadn't been joking when she'd said she was going to bring her lizard-girl persona to the get-together. He wondered how the rest of her friends had reacted when they'd found out.
Lucy, he guessed just from watching her, had probably been overjoyed. The girl had a serious liking for reptiles.
"Hello, many young people filling my living room," he said as he stepped into the room. "You seem to be enjoying yourselves. How are you all?"
"Fine, thanks, Danny," Amy assured him, smiling back. Her sister was sitting next to her scowling at a notebook with the tip of her tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, tapping the page with a pen, but looked up and nodded with a small smile of her own before going back to her work.
"We're doing really well, Mr Hebert," Mandy assured him, looking very pleased with things. She was sharing the sofa with Rich and Eric, one on either side of her, and all three of them were grinning like he'd just missed a good joke. Glancing at the TV he saw it was connected to Taylor's laptop and was displaying the PHO forum for Brockton Bay, which probably meant they'd been laughing at one of the more swivel-eyed weirdos who tended to infest the place.
'Saurial' was propped up on her tail next to them. Lucy was lying on the carpet near her, her head on her hands and her elbows on the floor, watching as the reptilian girl did something odd to the universe in the form of one of her weird little constructs. His daughter's more human-appearing aspect was in the corner with another boy, approximately her age, who Danny didn't recognize. He assumed this was Chris Jacobs, the lad who had the mathematical disability she'd promised to try to help with. The boy was intently studying a Japanese soroban, hard enough that he hadn't apparently even noticed when Danny had come in. Taylor looked over at him and gave him a pleased look.
"Hi, Dad," this Taylor said. "How was Mike?"
"Fine, thanks. He said to pass on his best wishes to you, and that he hoped to see you again some time. Sorry I'm late, I know I said I'd be back a couple of hours ago, but time got away from us." Danny shrugged. "You know how it goes."
"I do," she nodded. "It's been going really well here too. This is Chris, by the way." The boy jolted a little at the sound of his name, looked up at her, then followed her eyes to see Danny in the doorway. "Chris, this is my dad."
"Hello, Chris," Danny said pleasantly. "I hope Taylor's been able to help you in some way?"
"She has, Mr Hebert," the boy said with what looked like massively relieved happiness. "More than I ever expected. More than anyone else has, definitely."
"Excellent," he replied, giving her a quizzical look. "Have you discovered a new talent, dear?"
"Just some lateral thought and a lot of luck, I think," she responded with a small shrug. "I don't know if it would have worked for anyone else, but it seems to be working for Chris. It turns out that his dyscalculia is weak against the abacus."
"The abacus knows all, the abacus conquers all," her other aspect intoned with a weird voice and a wide grin. Taylor looked at herself, smirking from two faces at the same time. Danny sighed very slightly. If she started that double-act again he might have to go back and take Mike up on his offer of another drink…
"And dare I ask why you are here, Saurial?" he said wryly, going along with the whole insane thing with an internal shrug. "Instead of out upsetting our fine upstanding muggers or something?"
"You know me, Danny, I like to relax with friends sometimes," she replied, still grinning. "Kick back, put my feet up and have a drink and a meal, that sort of thing."
"I know you all too well, my dear girl," he chuckled. "All too well indeed. Carry on. Try not to break the universe too much, at least indoors." She saluted him with a flick of her hand, looking amused. Sniffing, he asked, "Is that Annette's pasta thing with tuna and chilies I smell?"
"Yep," Taylor nodded. "I put some in the fridge for you. There's some jalapeno poppers there as well, and some sandwiches too, not to mention enough snacks to choke Kaiju."
"Thanks, some of that would go down very well right now," he told her happily. "I'll leave you all to it, I have a little work to do, some emails to catch up on, then a book Mike gave me to read. If you want me, I'll be in my study."
"OK, Dad," she replied. He looked around at the happy young people again, musing how odd it was that two of them were his daughter, then withdrew, heading for the kitchen and a dish he hadn't tasted in over a year.
It was an odd sort of gathering, he thought, but he felt it was good for them all. And if she'd genuinely managed to help that boy, he was very proud of her indeed. As her mother would have been too.
"Ah, there you are, you annoying little bastard," Vicky mumbled under her breath, suddenly spotting the missing term in the equation that had been befuddling her for the last fifteen minutes. Danny coming in had distracted her, and when she went back to the notebook the brief interruption proved to be sufficient to allow her brain to see where it had been going wrong. Making a few corrections, she recalculated her answer, wrote it down, then handed it to her sister who was snickering at something inane that one of Dennis's alter-egos had just posted on PHO.
Amy took the notebook from her without looking, still reading the TV screen, grinned, shook her head, then looked down. After a moment she nodded. "Yes, that's correct," she said, handing it back.
Vicky sighed in relief, closing the book and slumping in her seat. "Finally. I was starting to think I was going mad. It just wouldn't integrate."
She glared at her sister. "And you wouldn't tell me the answer."
Amy met her eyes evenly, looking a little superior. "If I keep giving you the answer you'll never learn, will you?"
"As your sister, you're supposed to be on my side," Vicky grumped, folding her arms. The other girl grinned at her.
"I am," she replied, patting Vicky's knee. "Which is why I let you learn by doing, rather than taking the easy route. I have your best interests at heart."
"Yeah, so you say. Do I look like I believe you?"
"You look like you need another doughnut."
They giggled at each other, before Amy handed her the box of pastries. Vicky rewarded herself with a nice pink-glazed one and bit into it. "These are so good," she moaned through the mouthful of sweet dough. "Where did you get them?"
"That place downtown that opened up last year," Amy replied, taking one for herself. "Saurial said Cloak recommended it. She goes there, apparently."
"Only Brockton Bay would have the favorite pastry shop of a piece of haunted clothing," Mandy laughed from across the room, making them both look over and grin. "We seem to live in a very strange place, but it's a lot of fun these days."
"Certainly got both safer and weirder over the last few months," Rich agreed. "Hey, Amy, any of those left?"
"Two," the brunette replied, handing the box to Lucy who handed it to Saurial who handed it to Rich. By which point it was empty.
"Hey!" he grumbled, watching with mild irritation as both of the intermediaries ate their doughnuts. Saurial winked at him, causing him to sigh gently and reach for a new bag of chips. "Thanks. That helped."
"Glad to be of service," Lucy laughed, rolling over onto her back and crossing her arms behind her head. "This is a lot of fun. Thanks again, Taylor."
"No problem," the Hebert girl replied. "I like having you guys over, and it's been really interesting helping Chris."
"It's been amazing being helped," that boy stated, looking up from the abacus he'd been manipulating for close to three hours now, with a huge grin on his face. "Did you know that fifteen thousand six hundred and eighteen times one thousand two hundred and thirty one is..."
"Nineteen million two hundred and twenty five thousand seven hundred and fifty eight?" both Taylor and Saurial chorused instantly without even looking at each other. "Yes, we did," the latter added, smirking. "And so did you, right?"
He nodded. "Yes. Which I still can't believe. How could the solution be so simple?"
"It's not a perfect solution, yet, Chris," Taylor cautioned him. Vicky, who was smiling happily, seeing how joyful her Ward friend was, listened and watched. "Yes, it's helped a huge amount, and we got really lucky that it's worked out so well, but it's going to take a lot of practice to really become good at using a soroban. And you also need to concentrate on visualizing how it works, because I'm pretty sure that with enough time you'll be able to do it without using the actual device, in your head."
"I know, you said that before," he nodded, still smiling. "But even if I never learned to do that, this alone would make it all worth while as far as I'm concerned. I don't know how to thank you."
"You just did," she laughed. "You're welcome. Keep the soroban, Saurial made it for me so it's yours. I can recommend a good book on more advanced uses of it, I've got the ISBN and title here. And if you want more help, just ask me any time and I'll see what I can do."
He looked incredibly pleased, staring at the tall girl then the little device in his hand. "Thank you," he said again.
"No problem, honestly. I'm just glad I could help."
"I'm really impressed, actually," Mandy put in, watching them both. "You're an amazing teacher, Taylor. Or should it be… 'Math Girl!'"
"The Amy declares it to be so," Amy said, waving a hand grandly. "The Amy is pleased that her minion Math Girl has helped the lowly commoner. Now, The Amy wishes her minion to fetch more sandwiches."
"At once, mistress," Taylor cried, leaping to her feet then performing a wonderfully elaborate sweeping bow. "As The Amy commands." She straightened up, turned on the spot, and marched off into the kitchen, leaving a room full of snickering teenagers behind her. Vicky shook her head in amusement, thinking that whatever else she was, Taylor Hebert definitely had a flair for the dramatic.
Lucy rolled to her feet and went after her to help, the others moving around and finding new positions, with Eric going through the DVDs again and Mandy poking around on PHO. Vicky watched her friends with a sense of relaxed idleness now that her math studying had at least temporarily come to a halt. As she did, she went back to going over her theories about Saurial and Taylor. She hadn't missed the familiar manner that Danny had with the lizard girl, or she with him, which was definitely more than that of mere acquaintances. They were certainly more than just friends as well, in her private opinion.
The older Hebert had looked at Saurial with a sort of fond acceptance and slightly weary acknowledgment that her sense of humor was irrepressible and very well understood. It spoke of long and close interaction, undoubtedly more than the two and a bit months that the Family had been known about by everyone else. Much more, she suspected.
'He looked at her in the same way that he looked at Taylor,' she thought, glancing at the reptilian teenager who was now juggling little spheres that had far more corners than spheres should really have. She was actually rather good at it, keeping half a dozen in the air at once without showing any sign of effort, and chatting to Mandy at the same time. It was made more impressive by the way the things weren't forming a normal parabola but more of an inverted W shape, something she gaped at for some seconds before putting it down as yet another example of the Family's ability to play fast and loose with the rules of the universe.
She was fairly sure the universe had given up and was hoping they'd just go away, and was planning on ignoring them until this happened…
Vicky had again considered the idea she'd had that perhaps Danny himself, and Taylor too, were disguised Family members. That, though, as usual led her overactive imagination down the same path that ultimately ended up with most if not all of the DWU as hidden lizards, and who knew how many other people. With a suppressed shudder she'd aborted that line of thought yet again. It was very unlikely, horrifying if even slightly true, and not something she really wanted to think too hard about. The last time she'd done that she hadn't slept for nearly thirty hours.
No, it was, hopefully, unlikely that there were that many Family reptiles sneaking around the city. She liked them, but there were places she didn't want her mind going. Even so, it was slowly driving her around the bend trying to figure it all out. The unnervingly close parallels between some very weird stories on the internet, and some genuinely terrifying stories written nearly a hundred years ago, still made Vicky pale a little when she really started to think about them. Not to mention some of the comments the others had made over the time they'd been around.
Did Ianthe really remember this area covered in ice, for example?
And Danny's jacket… flying reptile skin… no, it was ridiculous. She must still be misinterpreting what she'd been told.
When she got home she was going to have to do some more research. She'd learned, observed, and deduced quite a number of new data points this afternoon and it was going to take her a while to put them into order in her head.
Ultimately, of course, in many ways the best solution would simply be to ask Saurial about it. But that was a clear breach of the Rules, which they all took pretty seriously from what she could tell. Even leaving that aside, she was more than a little nervous about what the reaction would be if the reptilian cape came to the conclusion her family or friends were under threat. She was a friend, yet would that be enough to save her if she said the wrong thing?
Lost in her thoughts, she jumped a little when Amy poked her. "Hmm? What?" she yelped, looking up from her own knees, to see that Taylor and Lucy had come back bearing a couple of plates of sandwiches, and her sister was offering her a couple of ham ones. "Oh. Sorry. Miles away."
"Deep thoughts?" Saurial asked, still juggling her artifacts, now in something approaching a square, which looked utterly bizarre. Lucy was watching with incredulity and growing delight.
"Um… sort of. Not important, just something I've been puzzling over for a while, since I read a book a couple of weeks ago." The blonde took the sandwiches her sister was holding out and stuffed one into her mouth so she would have an excuse to stop babbling.
Amy stared at her, glanced at Saurial, then Taylor, before shrugging and sitting down. "Let's watch 'Clash of the Titans'" Eric said, holding up the DVD in question, apparently oblivious to Vicky's peculiar actions. Everyone looked at him, then agreed. Shortly they were watching Perseus run around having a hard time, enjoying the movie.
Vicky nibbled her second sandwich and tried to stop puzzling over a problem that had no immediate solution. She was only partly successful in this.
"We're as done as we're going to be, until we shut the system down," Dragon announced, looking around the secure conference room. "We've parallel-installed all the new equipment, done all the cross-linking we can before the switchover, copied all critical data across, located and where possible isolated every compromised node… There isn't much more we can do until the morning."
"How many compromised nodes did you actually find?" Craig asked curiously.
"Far too many," Colin grumbled, pulling a tablet in front of him. "Nineteen optical fiber taps, twenty-three cross-wired networks, four extremely well hidden processing node exploits of a type neither of us have ever seen before, eleven software backdoors of significant complexity, and two entirely subverted servers. And this is after the first sweeps we did weeks ago, which found another couple of dozen exploits, most of which I now feel were left for us to find quite deliberately."
"Shit." The man looked appalled.
"Exactly. Calvert has had literally years to set all this up, god knows how many attempts, or simulations, and complete access to the entirety of our systems right up to the point he retired three years ago. Considering he was also consulting on certain activities for another eighteen months, he could undoubtedly have still accessed a number of systems. We've been compromised for possibly a decade or more and never would have realized it without Tattletale and the Family, possibly until the next major systems upgrade which was scheduled for two and a half year's time." Colin dropped the tablet onto the table with a clatter and rubbed his eyes. "It is very frustrating, and more than a little embarrassing that we all missed it. Myself included. I can only apologize for neglecting my duties."
"While I very much wish it hadn't happened, I don't hold you responsible, Colin," Emily said, sounding nearly as frustrated as he did. "As you said, the fucking man had top level security access to absolutely everything. His security profile was immaculate. If we're right about his power-set, he's probably been anticipating every possibility of detecting him right from the beginning. Without those mad lizards turning up and playing havoc with precog powers for whatever reason they do I doubt we'd be any closer to finding out. But now we know, so all we can do, what we must do, is catch the bastard."
"That I have no doubt we will achieve," Colin replied. "With the Family's aid, and the amount of time and effort we've put into planning this operation and vetting the staff, I'm confident we're capable of apprehending Calvert and taking his base. Although I can't guarantee it will be a bloodless victory."
Emily nodded. "I want Calvert alive if at all possible," she told them all, looking around the table with a scowl on her face. "I want to know who else is in on this, I very much doubt he acted entirely alone. But… if it's a choice between him getting away and him getting dead, make sure he gets dead."
"Official PRT policy?" Ethan joked. She fixed him with a hard look, actually making him swallow slightly.
"Official Piggot policy," the woman grated. "He's much too dangerous to allow him to get away. Even with him locked out of our system, the amount of data he has on our operations is enough to compromise hundreds of people at a minimum. We can be damn close to certain, for example, that he knows the civilian IDs of every person at this table, the Wards, and probably every other parahuman in the PRT database."
Ethan paled.
"Fuck." He swallowed again. "I didn't think about that."
"I did. And I do not want that data getting out. I doubt any of us does." She looked around again, meeting grim expressions from everyone there. "He could easily cause something close to a civil war in the city at the absolute minimum, and possibly the entire fucking country, if he decided to get clever. Or simply said fuck it and went out with a bang, so to speak. So, his only two options in this operation are in a prisoner transport van or in the coroner's one, is that clear?"
Everyone nodded.
"I'll take full responsibility for it if anyone is worried, and if necessary, but I have the authority to do so. I doubt there will be any fallout once this operation is complete and the full story comes out." She sighed a little. "Understand that I'd much prefer him alive and talking very fast, so a kill shot is a last resort. Still, it needs to be said."
They were all silent for a while, until Dragon stirred. "I suggest that we contact the Family and the DWU and confirm the times and places of the operation," she said quietly. "We know that the base self-destruct is now inert, so the most worrying aspect is dealt with. We can't do any more until tomorrow morning. It would be a good idea to get some sleep before what's going to be a very long and difficult day."
"Agreed." Emily looked at her for a moment. "I'll call Metis, she left a message that she was the only one at the DWU at the moment, but could get word to the others. Everyone make sure they have the new comms units Dragon supplied with them at all times, we will coordinate through those only. Dismissed."
The assembled people collected their various documents and equipment and got up, heading for the door. Dragon turned back when Emily stopped next to her. They waited until everyone else had gone, Colin pausing to look enquiringly back into the room. She waved him out, the Tinker nodding and leaving.
"I just wanted to express my thanks for your help in this whole sorry affair," Emily said in a very faintly irritated voice, the irritation, to Dragon, appearing to be due to general frustration and tension. "You've spent much more time here that we had any right to expect, considering your responsibilities in Canada and to the Guild. Not to mention all the new equipment."
"I don't mind, Director," she replied, putting a warm smile in her voice. "I enjoy working with friends, meeting and working with the Family has been a thoroughly enjoyable if somewhat confusing pastime, and the threat facing you is one that would affect the Guild as well. It's time well spent."
"Still, I am genuinely grateful," her companion said. She shrugged a little. "And I'll admit I'm not good at saying that, especially to a Parahuman, so you know I mean it." The blonde woman actually cracked a tiny smile when Dragon chuckled.
"I understand, Emily, and I appreciate it."
"Good. Now, I need to make a number of phone calls, then try to get some sleep, so if you'll excuse me..." The director nodded to her, before leaving the room. Dragon watched her go, inwardly amused at the way the woman was definitely mellowing. Exposure to the Family didn't seem to leave anyone unaffected, she mused. Even if the effect was different in each case.
Leaving the room, she headed to the roof helipad for the short flight to her room on the Rig, and a few hours of downtime during which she could catch up on her factory, and possibly check on the situation with the Endbringers. She was curious to see what they were doing now.
Ten minutes later she was examining the logs with her virtual eyes wide open, trying to figure out what the hell had the damn things so worked up this time...
Miranda Jacobs watched as her son walked out of the Hebert house, a slender and very tall young woman with long curly dark brown hair behind him. In the porch light over the door she could see his lips moving as he pointed at her car, although she couldn't hear what he said. The girl nodded, smiling. She assumed this was Taylor Hebert, although she was surprised at her height considering she was only around fifteen or so. The girl looked relaxed and content with life, grinning at her son. She said something to him, holding out her hand, which he shook.
She looked a little startled when he suddenly hugged her for a moment, but appeared to laugh and hug him back. Releasing her he stepped back, grinned, waved, then trotted down the path to the car. Opening the door he jumped in, tossing his backpack into the rear seat before closing the door again and buckling his seat belt.
Miranda looked at him, then the girl who was watching them. Another, shorter brunette was standing next to her now, one she recognized after a moment as Amy Dallon. Starting the car she put it in drive and pulled off, the girls waving before going back inside.
"I take it that you had fun, then?" she asked dryly after she'd gone a block. Chris was leaning his head on the headrest, his fingers moving slightly like he was counting something under them, his eyes shut. Without opening them, he slowly smiled.
"I did, thanks, mom," he replied happily.
"And did you learn anything useful?" she pressed.
"Oh… more than a little, yes," he grinned, turning his head to her and opening his eyes. "More than a little."
Pleased, she smiled, keeping her eyes on the road.
"I have so many new ideas as well..." he murmured, sounding happier than he had done for some time. She glanced at him, then went back to driving, wondering what exactly the Hebert girl had managed to do.
"That went well," Taylor smiled, as she sat down at the kitchen table, holding a mug of tea. Her other aspect was back in the small dragon form, sitting on her shoulder, the Varga driving it at the moment.
"I'd say so," Amy laughed, putting the kettle back on the counter and picking up her own mug. "Although Vicky was a little out of it. I'm going to have to find out what's bothering her soon. Other than that everyone had a lot of fun."
Taylor's father looked at all three of them, while stirring his tea, then put the spoon down. "You think you actually managed to help him?" he asked, sipping the drink.
"Chris certainly thought so," Taylor replied. "He was ecstatic about it. Hopefully he'll be able to keep progressing with the concept and overcome most if not all of his difficulties." She took a drink of her own. Lowering the mug, she added, "I suspect he'll want more help sooner or later, but I don't mind. He's a nice guy and it must be incredibly annoying to get stuck on something like simple math. Chris is smart, good at engineering, but without that particular skill is always going to feel he's missing something." She shrugged. "I'm happy to help him."
"Well, you definitely made a friend there," Amy snickered.
"He did indeed appear very grateful," the Varga added, smiling with tiny teeth. "The young man has promise, I thought. And I was most impressed with your solution to that particular issue, not to mention the test regime you came up with. Very well done."
"Thanks," she said.
"That phone call just now was from Director Piggot," her father mentioned after they'd sat in companionable silence for a couple of minutes. "The operation is on, everything seems in order from their point of view. I stopped in at the Yard on the way back from Mike's and talked to Mark, we have a hundred and twelve volunteers who are on standby for crowd control. I'll call him in a minute and update him. It's going to be an early start tomorrow."
"Good," Taylor nodded. "I've been looking forward to this for a while."
"I think we all have, Brain," the Varga snickered. "Except, possibly, a number of people in a hole in the ground. They may well not enjoy the experience they're shortly going to have."
"Tough," Amy grinned. She glanced at her watch. "I'll have to go and get some sleep soon. But I'll be at the Yard nice and early, ready to heal up anyone who gets hurt in this secret PRT operation..."
They shared a look, and a laugh. "God, the amount of sneaking around..." Taylor's father shook his head. He finished his tea, got up, and put his hand on Taylor's shoulder. "Take care of yourself and your friends, dear," he added. "I'll make the call, then I'm off to bed. I expect you'll be gone by the time I get up."
"Probably. Good night, Dad," she replied.
"Night." He smiled at both of them and headed to the doorway. "And make sure that man has reason to be afraid of the dark, will you? The more I hear about him, the less I like him," he said as he left, making them look at each other and smirk.
"I think we can oblige," Taylor said quietly, meeting her friend's eyes over her mug.
Amy smiled darkly at her.
"Definitely," she chuckled.
"Very definitely," the Varga snickered, sounding like he was anticipating something rather amusing in the near future.
Thomas woke from yet another nightmare, sitting bolt upright in his bed and sweating. He couldn't remember exactly what it had been about, aside from there being the overwhelming concept of 'teeth.'
Puzzling nervously over this occupied him for over an hour, until he finally fell asleep again, exhausted and worried about how none of his plans seemed to do other than end badly.
Hopefully tomorrow he could try again, and with luck, finally work out how to deal with whatever the fuck was going on…