Emily scanned the array of screens in front of her, listening to the various audio channels. Around her, PRT specialists were guiding groups of combat personnel around the base, rounding up the mercenaries. So far they'd only had half a dozen casualties, none particularly serious, mostly from shrapnel bouncing off the walls. Firefights in enclosed spaces were a bastard for that sort of thing.
Three mercs had been injured as well, one by friendly fire from his own side when he didn't duck fast enough, one from splashback from his own grenade, and one that had fallen down a stairwell in the dark. Again, none of the injuries were life-threatening but they'd taken all the men out of the game.
Interestingly, at least half the mercenaries they'd so far captured had almost seemed grateful for it, throwing down their weapons when they knew they had no chance and complying with their orders without any issue. One squad of six men had looked distinctly relieved at the sight of the PRT people and immediately surrendered, making her wonder what they'd seen before her people got there. The rest were fighting like lunatics.
"Got two in a side room up ahead," a voice crackled over the comm channel, the HUD on the relevant video feed popping up an annunciator graphic to show who was speaking. "They've got us pinned down, can't get an angle on the door to get the foam inside."
"On it," Assault's voice came back immediately. She checked the 3D graphical map which showed the positions of all the people in the wire-frame rendering that had been built from Raptaur's and Saurial's scouting of the base. The green icon that showed a friendly Parahuman was rapidly approaching from the other direction from the blue icons which were her troopers, bouncing from wall to wall.
Going back to the live view from the squad leader, she saw Assault appear in view just outside the door in question and flip two containment foam grenades into the room on the fly, before diving sideways out of the range of the return fire from the mercs holed up inside. Even over the gunfire she heard two closely separated pops, very familiar to her as the sound of the grenades going off. The firing immediately stopped and was replaced by shouting, then silence.
"Thanks, Assault," the PRT man said, as his camera view raised and moved to the door, where he peered in. The helmet-mounted camera showed a large mass of the off-white foam bubbling and moving slightly, with a couple of limbs sticking out, along with half a gun. Moments later it stilled as the foam finished setting. There was a considerable amount of muffled and vicious swearing coming from the stuff but no threat. "Targets neutralized, Command. Two down, no injuries."
"Confirmed, Blue-seven. Move to next target," Emily said into her throat mike, very pleased at the performance of her people. The training drills were paying off.
Considering the amount of practice they got on the streets, she'd put her troops up against pretty much any PRT division in the country. Although she was sure that the Family support actions had softened the target up a lot, since this entire operation would most likely have had a completely different outcome if they'd gone in cold. Probably resulting in a very large explosion and a lot of dead people on both sides.
The confirmation that Calvert had set his self-destruct system and run for it made her more coldly furious than she'd ever been. She found the sheer callousness of the action hard to believe, even considering who it was. Without all the help and good luck so far, his death toll would have been unbelievable. In the middle of a working day, he could easily have killed upwards of a thousand people or more. Not to mention what could have happened at his backup sites with the gatling cannon if they'd opened up when the streets were full of people.
It certainly removed any qualms she might have had about doing anything required to learn absolutely everything that he knew or had done, right back to kindergarten. Not that she'd really felt all that different before, of course, but now she had a really good reason for it.
A reason that should hopefully mean that none of her superiors got awkward about the entire sorry affair either, something she wasn't looking forward to explaining. In all reality there was very little that could have been done earlier, it was only the chance meeting between some very strange reptiles and a local minor villain that had made things end up here, and without that set of circumstances she had no doubt the fucking man would have kept going until he achieved whatever his aim ultimately was. She didn't know the end goal, but by god she was going to find out.
It would be a lot better if she could tell the Chief Director about all this and hand over a large amount of extra data at the same time to show that they had the situation in hand, but right now that was a fairly long way down her immediate priority list. The woman had dumped this entire city in her lap and more or less washed her hands of it, all because of the Family, and as long as that was the case, she was going to make sure she did the job right. Even though sometimes she regretted getting out of bed in the morning…
Although today was working out to be rather a good one from her point of view. As long as they got Calvert in the end, of course. Speaking of which…
"Any sign of Calvert?" she broadcast over the general communications channel.
"No, Director," Hannah replied immediately. "We've breached what looks like his section of the base, and found his quarters, but aside from a lot of bullet holes in the walls there's no sign of him. Lots of evidence that he left in a hurry though."
"Find him," she snapped.
A few seconds later, another familiar voice spoke. "Don't worry, Director, we have him." Saurial sounded pleased. "He's not going anywhere, I can guarantee it. He tried escaping down that last tunnel to the shore. We had someone waiting for him at the other end."
There was something in her voice that made Emily's eyes narrow. Even for her, the lizard-girl sounded a little smug.
"Oh, by the way, no one should try to enter that tunnel, it's trapped like you wouldn't believe," the reptilian cape added in a more serious tone of voice. "We'll go in and clear it out, but all the traps are currently activated. It's extremely dangerous for most people, including a lot of capes, as the traps are obviously built with knowledge of your vulnerabilities. I've sealed the base end for now and I'll deal with it later."
"All right, thank you, Saurial," she said. "I'll want some of my people to go with you to document everything."
"Of course, Director."
"Where is Calvert, in that case?"
"Waiting for you, actually. I'm on my way out now, I'll be there in couple of minutes and I can guide you for pickup. He's unconscious, we should probably leave him like that until you have him in a very secure cell."
"Agreed. Thank you." She turned to check on the status of the troops on the surface, picking out the group she wanted. "Anderson, load your team into a transport and stand by," she ordered.
"Ma'am," the reply came back immediately.
Standing up, she added, "Armsmaster, if you're free I'd like you and Dragon to come with me."
"Yes, Director," the Tinker said, faint sounds of battle coming over the open channel. She checked and saw he was just dealing with three more mercenaries in the company of Battery and four PRT people. "Please wait for a moment, we're nearly done here." There was a pause of a few seconds, then he came back online. "All three opponents foamed and unconscious. Minor injuries, plus Corporal Nichols has a bullet wound to her left ankle. I'm bringing her out with me for medical attention."
Looking at the screens, she watched as the last four mercs were taken down. Five minutes later it was all over. Tapping her headset, she said, "Prisoner transports and medical support stand by. Get the collection teams in there and dig the prisoners out. Take any of them without injuries back to the cells immediately. Keep any injured prisoners back. Metis, Ianthe, will you provide healing services?"
"Happily, Director," the voice of the purple lizard replied. "We're heading out as well. Metis is just helping Triumph, he got caught in a foam grenade and stuck to the wall." She sounded amused, while Emily shook her head with a faint smile. "She'll be out as soon as she's peeled him loose."
"Thank you, Ianthe. All forensics teams, as soon as the prisoners are clear, I want the entire base swept inch by inch. Bag everything. Clean the place out completely. Concentrate on data storage, files, and any information sources, but don't restrict yourselves to that. All seized data is classified Top Secret from this point. Standard protocols apply."
There were a number of affirmative replies, and she could see the blue and green icons moving with purpose on the display. All the red ones were stationary, scattered around the middle section of the base, with a few outliers off to one side. Satisfied, she nodded to the lieutenant next to her. "You're in charge now. I'll be collecting our special guest star."
"Yes, Ma'am," he said with a grin, taking her place.
Leaving the command post, she went down the short flight of stairs to the ground and looked around for a moment, then headed for Anderson's vehicle, which was idling off to one side. As she walked, Saurial approached and met her at the truck. Glancing over at where the hidden door had been she saw Colin and Dragon come out, the former carrying the injured female trooper. He took her over to the triage area and put her down carefully then said something to her, which made her nod, before turning and heading towards Emily.
When all four of them were gathered at the back of the large vehicle, which had the doors open and the five-man team inside watching and listening, Saurial turned to her. She was definitely looking like she'd had something interesting happen based on the grin. "They're waiting for us down at the shore about a mile and a half away towards the docks," the reptile said, sounding amused. "Raptaur is still poking around to see if there are any more booby traps, she'll join us later. Shall we go and collect your old friend?"
"Very little would give me more satisfaction," Emily said with a smirk of her own. "I take it that you… confused the issue somewhat?"
"Oh, Thomas and I had lots of fun," Saurial snickered. "Well, I did. Some of the time he was screaming too loudly to be entirely sure what he was saying. There was a lot of shooting involved too. Man's a little tightly wound. I think you'll find the video interesting."
"I can imagine," she said, not entirely sure she was being totally truthful. But in a very real way she didn't care. As long as he'd had an extremely hard time, all was good. "Let's go."
All of them climbed into the vehicle, Saurial and Emily making their way to the front. Emily sat in the passenger seat while Anderson took the driver's position with Saurial leaning into the cabin from the rear section. "Head towards the bay and take the second right," the reptilian girl said.
"OK," Anderson nodded, putting the vehicle in drive and starting off. The six-wheeled transport rumbled into life with a slight jerk and moved onto the main road, then accelerated to about thirty miles an hour. Half a mile further on the trooper turned right.
"Another three quarters of a mile, then left, then right," Saurial instructed, watching the scenery go past. "Then just follow the road to the shoreline, there's a sort of wharf thing that's mostly collapsed into the bay."
"I know the place," the driver replied. "If I remember right there's a fairly large open area there where a small factory burned down about ten years ago."
"That's it." Saurial smiled. "Our friend Thomas will be there for us."
"If I might ask, Saurial," Colin said from the rear, where he'd been listening quietly, "who is with him? Kaiju?"
She looked over her shoulder and grinned at him. "No," she chuckled. "Someone else who happened to be in the area." Glancing back to the front as the vehicle turned again, she nodded. "Yep, just down here. I'd park it up on the top of the beach, it gets really muddy and sticky nearer the water and you'll get bogged down."
Anderson nodded back, slowing as she approached the point where the road ended just past a couple of closed-down businesses, the remains of the wooden wharf visible sticking out of the water for fifty yards or so. Stopping next to what had once been a fairly large building but was now mostly an empty lot with some charred timbers at one side, she did a three point turn then backed it towards the shoreline, looking at the screen that gave a rearward view from a camera on the roof. "That's as far as I want to take it, Ma'am," she commented, stopping the transport and putting it in park.
"That will do, Anderson," Emily replied, sticking her head out the passenger window and looking around. "Saurial's right, it's going to get stuck if you go any further." She opened the door and jumped out, while the others exited as well through the rear door which Dragon opened. All of them gathered around the back of the transport, the five troopers holding their foam projectors ready and Emily with her pistol in one hand, just in case.
Colin, who was still looking thoughtful since his question to Saurial, which Emily realized hadn't really been answered, peered around, then turned to the lizard, who was watching him with a small smirk. Everyone else did the same after also checking the area, which was entirely free of people at the moment.
"There's no one here," he noted cautiously.
Saurial chuckled, sounding very amused by something.
"Oh, there is. Look behind you."
They all turned to stare out at the bay.
Emily literally felt her heart skip a beat or two. Beside her, Dragon made a weird electronically-generated noise that sounded like a DVD player skipping, while she could hear Colin's teeth snap together hard enough to crack enamel, the question he was just on the verge of asking vanishing without trace. Anderson yipped in a small-dog sort of way, freezing motionless, while the other PRT personnel made various tiny sounds of horror.
One of the troopers slowly fell over, but no one looked at him.
They were all far too busy staring in stunned shock at the fucking huge sea serpent that had somehow snuck up on them, a good hundred feet of body visible behind the enormous head, even larger than Kaiju's, which was less than twenty feet away. After several long seconds during which Emily's vision went a slightly funny gray color, she noticed that where the thing disappeared into the water she could make out a dark shadow and some odd ripples which made it obvious that there was at least as much again of the body still immersed.
She recognized the head, of course. Anyone who had been at that initial briefing would. Not to mention it was on a disturbingly realistic poster on the wall of the BBFO office. But the actuality of the Family member known as Umihebi was vastly more impressive than posters, or short video clips, especially when she was staring at her almost close enough to touch. Even over the omnipresent stink of the thioacetone Emily could smell a scent of deep sea mud drifting over them, giving the impression along with the glistening dark scales that this creature came from a very long way down and far away. The huge glowing yellow eyes, which were definitely showing a level of amusement at their reaction, added to the sheer aberrant nature of the entire thing.
She felt weak at the knees despite herself. There was something entirely disconcerting about suddenly being confronted with such vivid proof of just how alien the Family really was under the facade of what in hindsight was slightly strange pseudo-normality that they managed to generate most of the time. Even having seen the figures, projections and suppositions that the PRT had come up with since that first encounter deep off the coast of Canada, being faced with this impossibly huge creature at such short range was hard to believe. Emily would never have thought she would see anything that would make Kaiju look fairly petite but she was staring at it right now, her eyes beginning to burn from not blinking for so long.
Colin was breathing heavily a few feet away, sounding like he was doing his very best to stand his ground.
"How did it manage to get there without anyone hearing it?" she heard Anderson whisper in horror, the woman sounding very much like someone who was never going to go for a swim ever again.
Emily sympathized. A lot.
"I believe you know about my sister Umihebi?" Saurial chirped, sounding very pleased as she walked over and stood next to the appallingly large reptilian face. The lips of the thing curved up in what seemed to be meant as a welcoming smile, but considering it exposed the tips of an entire forest of teeth long enough to impale a grizzly bear from stem to stern, it wasn't quite as relaxing as it was probably intended to be. Especially since they were all very, very aware that those same teeth could shred something as tough as one of Dragon's underwater probes like it was made of cheese.
Seeing Umihebi in real life, Emily had no difficulty whatsoever accepting this as fact. The fucking thing looked like it wouldn't have much more trouble eating the entire Rig, and washing it down with any ships that were insane enough to be out on the water at the time.
Briefly, she was very glad that the entire area was empty, since she couldn't begin to imagine what the public would make of this.
Less than thirty seconds had passed, but Emily felt that her entire world-view had undergone a fundamental change.
And that she was suddenly very aware that they had vastly underestimated the Family. By implication, the DWU as well, since Colin had reported that Danny Hebert was aware of Umihebi and might even have met her, possibly more than once.
'If he has, he's got the biggest balls of anyone I've ever met,' she thought numbly. 'How anyone could ever go back to something like normal life after seeing this...'
"We wanted to make it very clear to Mr Calvert that we weren't happy about him, and that he should be as cooperative to you guys as he could possibly be," Saurial went on after a second or two. "I managed to worry him a lot, I think, but in the end we decided it might stick better if we pointed out that there was nowhere for him to run." The lizard-girl smiled faintly in a rather bloodthirsty manner. Beside her, Umihebi chuckled, the sound like distant thunder. "I have a good idea that he now understands this. I doubt you'll have too much trouble with him now."
"Where..." Emily swallowed hard. "Where is he?"
Umihebi said something in the Family language, the voice so deep it was more felt than heard. Everyone, even Dragon, took a simultaneous step back. The sub-bass voice sounded like it was suppressing another laugh, something she registered but tried not to think about. Saurial replied in the same language. Umihebi made a sort of shrug, not easy with something that looked like an unholy cross between a lizard on a scale almost impossible to register and a gigantic eel, then opened her mouth.
Another trooper fell over, while the remaining conscious people stepped back again. No one, though, even thought of reaching for a weapon, since it was so blatantly clear nothing they could possibly do would help if the vast creature decided to do something unpleasant.
What she actually did was stick out her tongue, the forked ends of the thirty-foot-long appendage wrapped around…
Emily gaped again as the tongue unwrapped and dropped the unconscious form of her old colleague Thomas Calvert on the muddy beach, then retracted. He was covered in sea serpent saliva, which was a viscous transparent goo, and curled up in a pathetic little ball.
'Oh, fuck me, how can I possibly be feeling sorry for the bastard?' she sighed mentally. Emily finally realized that wanting the Family to give someone a hard time might just take that to a level that was… difficult to match. 'Oops.' After a moment's thought, though, she shrugged. 'Can't say he didn't deserve it. I just hope he's not catatonic, we need to question him.'
"Sorry, she sort of slimed him," Saurial grinned, poking the limp man with one foot and watching him twitch a little. "It'll wash off."
Umihebi said something else, which caused the reptilian girl to snicker, then shake her head. "She said he tastes terrible. But if you want her to get rid of him for you, she's willing to help."
"No, I think we'll take him," Emily replied carefully, nodding very respectfully to the hideously large sea creature, which was now resting its head on two enormous hands, each large enough to pick the transport up and crush it like an egg. The effect was weirdly similar to a teenage girl watching TV, a thought that made her wince and try to forget it immediately. "Um… Thank you, Umihebi. It was nice to finally meet you."
Saurial said something, presumably translating her words. The sea serpent nodded, and replied, Saurial looking back at them and saying, "She says you're more than welcome. None of us like people who hurt innocents. She was glad to help out."
Poking Calvert again with one toe claw, the smallest Family member squatted down as he stirred a little. "Hi, Thomas. Back with us again?"
They all watched as he blinked up at the sky, then focused on her face. He paled to the point that Emily wondered if he was going to pass out. She smirked at him, bending closer. "Your ride is here."
"Oh, Jesus," he muttered faintly, staring at her with dark eyes in a pallid face.
"No, just me. Same as always. Now be good for Director Piggot and tell her everything she wants to know, or I'll come and play with you some more. It was a lot of fun." She grinned evilly as the man went even whiter. Umihebi moved a little, causing him to look past Saurial's shoulder and fixate on the much, much, much larger reptile watching him with interest.
His complexion ebbed to a pale green as they watched. Umihebi rumbled something that made Saurial snicker. "My sister says that you should stay out of the water from now on, as well. She's got your taste and while it's unpleasant, she isn't going to forget it any time soon."
Calvert passed out again.
In all honesty Emily couldn't blame him.
Saurial reached out and rolled him over, forming some EDM cuffs around his arms, then manacles on his ankles as well, before standing up and heaving him over her shoulder. "Where do you want him, Director?" she asked.
Taking a deep breath and trying to forget about the way a two hundred plus foot long sea serpent was watching them all, Emily nodded towards the troop transport. "In the back, please."
"No problem." Saurial carried the prisoner over to the truck and gently placed him on his back on the floor. She handed Emily, who had accompanied her, a complex key. "This unlocks the restraints, they'll time out in about a month otherwise. That should make sure he doesn't go anywhere."
"Thank you, Saurial," Emily said, feeling satisfied, terrified, confused, and relieved all at the same time. "If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to make a report of what you found in his base and get some idea of what you and your sister did to him and his men. The ones we've pulled out so far were more than a little shaky on the entire event. It would help with the documentation if you could go into a little more detail." She wasn't sure they'd get anything useful, but it was worth a try. Behind her, Anderson and the two conscious troopers were determinedly watching them rather than Umihebi, but Dragon and Colin were still staring fixedly at the creature, she noticed when she looked over her shoulder.
"Sure, I can do that," Saurial agreed. "We can come over to the PRT building later this afternoon or evening if you want. I need to go through that tunnel and take care of the traps first, though. Raptaur will help, that'll speed it up. We can download the video and pull out the main highlights for you as well, Metis will do that back at the office. A lot of might be a little useless since it was dark enough for the cameras not to work very well some of the time." She looked thoughtful for a moment. "I really need to find some cameras that can handle very low light conditions better. I'll have to talk to Dragon about it when we have a free moment." Looking at the Canadian Tinker for a second she smiled. "Not now, though, she seems to have other things on her mind."
"Apparently so." Emily nodded. Glancing at her watch, she added, "This stench is going to go away soon, I believe?"
Saurial glanced at her timepiece as well. "Yes, should be about another forty minutes," she confirmed.
"Thank god for that, I've really had enough of it," she sighed. "Roy is going to be impossible about this, it's much worse than I thought it would be."
"It sure carries," the lizard-girl smiled. "It surprised me too, how overpowering it was considering how small an amount we used. Hopefully all this will help make the public get over it."
She turned around and walked over to Colin, prodding him on his armored shoulder. "Hey, Armsmaster, you all right? Only you haven't said a word for the last five minutes or so."
There was a pause, then he turned his head to look at her, as did Dragon. After inspecting her smiling face, he looked again at Umihebi, who waved at him with a smile of her own, shuddered, and turned around to walk over to the transport. Dragon kept looking between Saurial and her gigantic sister for several seconds before joining him. Neither Tinker said anything.
Saurial rejoined them, appearing slightly puzzled at their silence. "That should do it here, then." She tapped her earpiece. "Metis says they're healing your guys who got hurt, then they'll do the prisoners. I'll head back now, find Raptaur, and we'll start having a look at that tunnel if you want. We'll wait for your technical team before we go in, though." She turned to Colin, looking curiously at him. "Do you know how your system upgrade is coming along?"
His mouth opened, then closed, then he cleared his throat. "Yes," he finally replied, his voice a little hoarse to start with. "It's somewhat delayed due to the power failure at the PRT building, but they've nearly finished running a power bypass. There was a small but intense fire in one of the power distribution substations as a result of the momentary overload but that was extinguished quickly. It did force an evacuation of part of the building though, which added to the problems. We expect to be back on track shortly, about two and a half hours behind schedule."
"So you'll have your systems back in the early evening, then?" she asked, seeming thoughtful. He nodded.
"Yes, we believe so. The delay is irritating but not a major issue, we had a certain amount of flexibility built into the plan as we assumed there would be some form of last-minute problem. Not this specific one, but it seemed likely that something would go amiss, as it usually does one way or another."
"No plan survives contact with the enemy," she smiled, nodding her understanding.
"Essentially," he responded.
"OK," she said after a moment. "In that case, I'll meet you all back at Calvert's base." She looked around at them all. "It was nice introducing you to another member of my family. She liked meeting you."
Emily turned to look at Umihebi, then stared. Colin and Dragon turned as well, Anderson and her two troopers doing the same seconds later.
The giant creature was gone, as silently and mysteriously as she'd appeared. The only thing left was a wide drag mark on the beach that looked like a fairly substantial ship had run aground, and one enormous handprint which the rising tide was steadily washing away.
"That… is horrifying," Dragon said in a very low voice.
"She can be pretty stealthy when she wants to be," Saurial agreed, looking proud. "Oh, while I think about it, this might come in handy when you interrogate Calvert." She was suddenly holding a cardboard box about eighteen inches on a side, which she put in the back of the transport next to the prisoner. "Anyway, I'm off, call me if you need me." She waved casually at them, then jogged away, her long legs quickly carrying her out of sight into the built-up areas. Left behind on the beach, the humans all stared at each other. Eventually, Anderson prodded her two awake troopers to go and revive the other two who had embarrassed themselves and were lying in an untidy manner on the mud and gravel.
Emily glanced in the direction that Saurial had gone, looked down at the comatose and bound form of her old colleague, then up at Colin and his friend.
"I really can't work out sometimes whether that damn lizard does this on purpose, or just doesn't notice," she commented somewhat sourly. "Christ on a crutch. How the hell does something as big as a nuclear submarine just sneak up on you like that?"
"It would appear that she does indeed possess a somewhat formidable stealth ability, which would seem to work just as well above the water as below it," Dragon remarked, sounding fairly shaken even now. Emily couldn't remember the armored woman ever being quite that hesitant before, since normally she was very confident and good humored.
"That's putting it mildly," Emily replied, shaking her head. "Yet another change to their threat assessment. Why don't we simply replace the entire thing with 'Yes' in every category and just call it a day?" She rubbed her forehead tiredly. "I really need a holiday after all this."
The two somewhat embarrassed yet still worried looking troopers now being conscious, all of them piled back into the transport, Anderson starting it and pulling away with the air of someone who really wants to be somewhere else. No one said anything about it, since it was a fairly widespread feeling among them. Emily was wondering if she would ever be able to smell the scent of the sea again without looking around nervously.
Half-way back to the base, Dragon prodded the box that was on the floor with one foot. "I wonder what this is?" she asked. Emily looked over her shoulder and watched as Colin, rather unwillingly, picked it up and opened it. He looked inside and flinched a little, then reached in and removed…
"What the fuck is that?" Emily asked in revulsion.
"It appears to be a very disturbing-looking rubber effigy of some life form I have never encountered, and very much hope isn't real," the Tinker finally said, having examined the mass of tentacles and eyestalks at arms length. Dragon was watching as he turned it over in his hands. "Highly detailed, to a level that suggests it's patterned on a living creature. As worrying as that is."
He handed the horrible thing to Dragon, who inspected it as well. Emily and everyone else other than Anderson were staring at it, feeling somewhat ill. The driver was glancing in the mirror every now and then, then making a face which suggested that she wished she hadn't.
When Dragon experimentally squeezed the rubbery mass, they all jumped at the horrifyingly bizarre sound it made.
Tekeli-li!
On the floor, Calvert's eyes snapped open, then he began to scream.
Erwin leaned on the wall that separated the bay from the road running towards the docks, watching as the enormous reptilian eel-like creature glanced in his direction, seemed to wink, then slid backwards into the water and disappeared. Puffing on his pipe he considered the sight with care, peering after the PRT vehicle that drove off a few minutes later.
"Don't see that sort of thing every day," he commented wisely. "Even around these parts."
"No," the large tattooed man who was also leaning on the wall next to him, smoking a cigarette, agreed. "Times are definitely changing. I am unsure whether to be pleased or not."
"Not a lot we can do about it, right?" Erwin shrugged. "They mean well, I think. And the fish are starting to come back already."
"Are they?" His companion looked at him for a moment, then finished his cigarette and flicked the butt into the water. "I suppose that's good."
"It is from my point of view," the old seafarer grinned. Clapping the other man on the shoulder, he added, "Come on, it's my round."
"I have no idea how you can drink anything with this stench everywhere," the other man said irritably, following him back into Pat's pub, where they along with a few other die-hards had been lurking since sun-up.
"Ah, smelled worse," Erwin chuckled. "Did I ever tell you about that time we cut open a huge shark and found half a cow inside it?"
"Yes," his companion sighed. "Several times."
Shaking his head in amusement, Erwin told him again, even so. Some stories were good enough to be worth repeating.
Dragon watched as the last of the prisoner transports drove off, then turned to look at the progress of the forensic recovery teams. Close to sixty people were carrying huge amounts of equipment, weaponry, and other evidence out of Coil's base and loading it into more vehicles, having spent the last few hours documenting everything in sight. This was the fourth load, and hopefully the last. Calvert himself was currently in the most secure room in the PRT building, five levels down, behind two feet of alloyed steel armor plate at the end of a corridor full of more security checks than anywhere outside an NSA facility. The last time she'd seen him he was conscious but looking everywhere like he expected Saurial to jump out at him at any moment, his eyes never stopping flicking about.
It was more than a little disconcerting. She wondered what on earth the lizard-girl had done before she'd arranged to have her enormous-beyond-belief sister carry him off in her mouth…
Even to her, that was terrifying.
And why did he literally piss himself when he spotted that weird rubber toy she'd left behind? Dragon was pretty certain it was meant to be a shoggoth straight out of Lovecraft, but that only raised more questions than it answered. Questions she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to ask.
With a virtual shrug, she dismissed that line of thought, since right now it wasn't important. She looked around at the scene, which was still busy, even if the frantic activity of that morning had died down a lot. All four Family members had left a while ago, as had half the Protectorate capes, who were now out patrolling with New Wave. Legend had accompanied Director Piggot and her star prisoner back to the PRT building. And to everyone's enormous relief, the thioacetone Saurial had made had timed out on schedule, the smell vanishing abruptly as a result. There had been a mass cheer the moment that happened. In another couple of hours or so the BBPD would be able to lift the cordon and allow the public back into this area.
Walking over to where Colin was discussing with a pair of troopers the results of the operation Saurial and a team of techs had carried out to make Calvert's escape tunnel safe, which had taken some time and a number of impressive explosions, she waited for him to finish. When he was done, the PRT technical lieutenant saluted him, took back the clipboard her friend had been leafing through, and left them alone.
"I believe we're finished here for now," he stated, turning to her. "The remainder of the operation is well in hand. We should get back and ensure that the switchover occurs as fast as possible. We've been offline for longer than I like."
"They're very close to having everything ready," she agreed as they walked to where his bike was parked. "It shouldn't be more than an hour now. Let's check the progress at the PRT building then you can go back to the Rig while I supervise operations there."
"Agreed," he nodded, swinging his leg over the seat and settling on the machine. "Luckily there has been very little in the way of problems so far, New Wave and their PRT squads have easily dealt with it, but we can't assume that will continue indefinitely."
"I'll meet you there," she said, preparing to take off. He nodded again, then paused, a startled expression crossing the visible part of his face.
"Please repeat that?" he said into his helmet communication system. She waited, wondering what he'd heard, the broadcast apparently aimed only at him. There was a long pause, during which his mouth became a thin-lipped straight line which she was well aware meant he was very angry.
"Take everyone who is currently available and search again," he snapped. "I'll be there in five minutes. Armsmaster out." He started the bike, flipping the kickstand up with a practiced motion of one foot.
"What's the problem?" Dragon asked, worried.
He turned his head to look at her.
"Shadow Stalker has disappeared."