"I take it things went well?" Danny asked as he closed the door to the office. "And can I just add, thank fuck that horrible smell has finally gone away." Taylor, who was currently Saurial, started giggling. The Varga, running her other aspect, turned away from the coffee machine where he'd filled a mug several times the size of a human scale one by making and pouring in a number of normal cups of coffee. His face wore a wide grin.
"If by 'went well', you mean were we successful in capturing Coil and his men and providing backup to the PRT, Danny," he said with vast amusement, "then yes, things went exceptionally well. I fear Mr Calvert may hold a different opinion. For him, things went remarkably badly. It was extremely funny."
"God, it was hilarious," Taylor laughed, leaning on the table and shaking her head. "I kept on coming up with other ideas to try, but we didn't have enough time to do more. No point really dragging it out too much after all. I was actually getting a little worried that he'd have some sort of psychological issue, to be honest."
"I expect that he did, but probably not to the point that Director Piggot can't extract the information she wants from him," the demon pointed out, sipping his outsize coffee cup with enjoyment. "Most likely he'll cooperate very thoroughly. I think he believed you when you told him you'd come back if he didn't. The man wasn't too keen on that happening. And I very much doubt he will ever be comfortable in the dark or underground again. Or near the sea, for that matter."
Danny looked from one to the other, then turned to Amy and Lisa, who were still in their bioconstructs and were listening with enjoyment. "Why do I feel like I should almost be sorry for the bastard?"
"Because you're a much better man than he is," 'Ianthe' chuckled. "Don't worry, based on all the stuff that's already been discovered down there, he deserved worse. The fucker had a literal torture chamber, which was definitely used to kill at least a dozen people as far as we could tell just from the scent of the blood they hadn't managed to clean away. There was way too much of it for most of the contributors to have lived through it." She had gone from amused to coldly furious as she spoke. Beside her, 'Metis' was opening and closing her clawed hands as if she was imagining wrapping them around someone's neck.
Danny had a fairly shrewd idea of who that someone would be.
"God. You're certain?"
"Definitely," the purple lizard nodded somberly. "The PRT technicians came to the same conclusion with only the preliminary scans. There's DNA from a minimum dozen individuals practically everywhere in the room. Not to mention on the… tools." Her voice was full of distaste. "We're pretty sure that the doctor Taylor found in the medbay was directly involved as well, his scent was all over the room and the equipment. They think some of the mercs must have been in on it too, but it might not be all of them. Quite a few seemed just to be hired guns who were there for muscle and tech support."
"I found a number of them to be quite interesting people, as it happens," the Varga said thoughtfully. "Very similar in many ways to a number of your own union members, Danny. Military backgrounds in every case we could determine, mostly from the US, and anywhere from perhaps mid twenties up to about fifty. I would imagine that they were faced with the same sort of problems and choices that people like, for example, Mark was, but happened to choose something less legitimate." He shrugged. "If they'd gone to work for someone less sociopathic than Calvert they might well have stayed on the right side of the law, or at least well enough to have avoided their current fate. I would expect the PRT is going to be quite harsh with them."
Danny nodded with a sigh, sitting at the table. Taylor got him a coffee, then sat next to him.
"I've known a few people who ended up going that route myself," he said as he picked the cup up and looked at it for a moment. "Some from here, in fact, when times got really hard. Minion work can come with some good perks. Your friends Über and Leet have hired some of our guys in the past for a few of their jobs, mainly just as background characters. I've always discouraged it, but in the end if you're desperate for money, you might not have a choice. At least with those two, by and large nothing horrendous ever happened. The worst I can remember is a couple of weeks in lockup and a fine, but..." He sipped his drink then put the cup down. "It would be easy to end up too deep to get out if you picked the wrong villain to work for."
"Or the right one, if you were that type," Lisa added. He looked at her, then nodded reflectively.
"True. Some people are pretty much scum, no matter how you slice it."
"I hope that the PRT is able to distinguish between the truly evil ones and the men who were more or less stuck with it," the demon commented, finishing his coffee then glancing thoughtfully at the machine for a moment. "I feel that a number of them could be recovered with time. Sergeant Owens, for example, seemed to be intelligent and not at all someone who followed Calvert's philosophy. There were a number like that. Their captain, on the other hand, appeared to be a very unpleasant if competent leader if what we overheard was accurate."
"We need to go and talk to the Director a little later, we should mention names and suggest they deal fairly with them," Taylor suggested. He looked at her, nodding.
"A decent idea. But ultimately they're in the hands of the authorities and they will do what they will do. We have no direct say in what happens to the mercenaries now we have let the PRT take custody of them. And there's no denying they were heavily involved with someone who has committed, and shown a distinct willingness to commit, some extremely serious crimes."
"He actually activated his self-destruct system," Lisa said with disgust, making Danny stare at her. "The fucker was quite prepared to kill what could have been thousands of people just to cover his own ass. If things hadn't gone the way they did..." She shook her head, scowling ferociously. "He deserves anything they can throw at him. The only reason I'm happy he's alive still and that Taylor didn't actually eat the bastard is that I can't wait to watch Piggot crucify him, and I wouldn't want one of my best friends to risk poisoning herself."
Amy patted her 'cousin' on the shoulder in a comforting manner.
"It makes your own little disagreement with him look almost friendly, doesn't it?" the healer smiled.
"Well, I wouldn't go that far," Lisa replied, smirking. "I'd still have liked to put a bullet between his eyes on general principles, even though I would like to think of myself as better than that. But from what I can tell almost everyone who's ever met him feels the same."
"The director sure does," Taylor snickered. "She was very happy to see him. Although more than a little worried about how he was delivered."
Looking hard at his daughter's grin, Danny asked, "That is another thing that makes me think you've got something to tell me."
She nodded happily. "They finally met Umihebi properly."
He gaped, then slowly started laughing, until he was almost roaring with hilarity. When he finally ran down, he wiped tears of amusement from his eyes. "Oh, dear. That must have been something of a shock."
"They seemed a little taken aback," the Varga said in dry tones. "I expect there is going to be a very rapid updating of the Family threat assessments in the near future."
All five of them exchanged looks, most of them grins. "Come on, let's download the video from the cameras and edit together something for Director Piggot," Lisa said after a moment. "We can do a full cut for ourselves. I bet Über and Leet will practically piss themselves laughing."
"They're going to be incredibly envious about it, you know," Amy giggled.
"Oh, I'm counting on it," the black lizard grinned as she headed for the computers. "Based on just what Taylor told us so far, we could probably make a feature film from the footage and make Hollywood look pathetic. Probably best not to, though, it gives away a lot more than we want to."
Shortly all of them were gathered around the computers as the four cameras were connected and the stored video downloaded to the server. While Lisa started competently editing clips together into a full sequence that didn't show anything too difficult to explain but covered most of the useful things from an evidence standpoint, Taylor played her and the Varga's raw footage while explaining it to the others.
Even just ten minutes in, Danny was watching with both awed horror and respect for what his daughter and her demonic friend could really do with a bit of thought. And also thinking it was almost unfair to pit a mere Parahuman against them…
Not that this thought made what he was watching any less funny, of course.
And… It was Coil, after all.
"Everything checks out, we're up and running," Dragon said, looking at Director Piggot as she spoke.
"Confirmed," Colin replied. "The Rig systems are fully operational as well, and undergoing a final integration test. Nothing untoward appears to have happened. Teams are dismantling the old system and moving it into storage for further analysis later, so we can finish installing the new equipment into the final locations. Which will be a relief, everyone keeps tripping over cables no matter how many warnings they're given."
He sounded somewhat peeved about this, but then he'd been in a bad mood ever since Shadow Stalker's absconding had been detected late that afternoon.
"When will you be free, Armsmaster?" Emily said into her own headset. "We have quite a lot to talk about. I have been in contact with Saurial, she and her sister will be here in an hour and a half and I'd like to go over some things before they arrive."
"Understood," he said. There was a pause of a couple of seconds. "I estimate I can complete the work I am required for on site in just over fifteen minutes, so I will be there in thirty at the outside."
"Good. In that case I'm going to be talking to New Wave. Piggot out." She tapped her earpiece twice, then shook her head. "He's definitely more snappish than normal," she commented to Dragon, who nodded as she typed another command into the main system console.
"I know. He takes her escape as a personal failure. He's going to be pretty moody for a while until he figures out exactly what happened and how to stop it happening again."
Emily sighed slightly. "Damn it. That girl is way more trouble than she's worth," the woman muttered under her breath. Looking up at the Tinker, she shrugged. "As I told Colin, I'll be in conference with New Wave if you need me."
"All right, Director. We're nearly finished here as well, although the power room is still being repaired. But we have full functionality as of twenty minutes ago. It will take most of the night to remove all the old equipment and get the new gear into place, though."
"Can't be helped. As long as we're up and running, we can live with wires everywhere for a few more hours," the blonde woman replied. Nodding to Dragon, she turned and left, still faintly scowling. Dragon watched her go then turned back to her task. The Director was taking this Shadow Stalker thing as badly as Colin was, which slightly puzzled her. She didn't know the full story behind why the girl had been under house arrest for the last two months but was getting curious.
When she finished reconfiguring the unit she was working on, she stepped back, then looked around the server room. A couple of dozen technicians were busy carefully marking then unplugging hundreds of cables, before unscrewing rack mounted server units and boxing them up. Everything was being photographed, labeled, measured, and generally documented for evidence. It had been a massive undertaking in only a couple of days and she was definitely satisfied with how well it had worked out, even taking into consideration Calvert's last little booby-trap.
The damage had been fairly severe from the sudden huge overload, completely destroying a significant amount of power distribution equipment and causing a very nasty fire, which although quite contained had been very hot and destructive. That particular substation was a total loss, the entire room and two access tunnels would need to be completely gutted and rebuilt. Luckily, there were spares on hand to bypass it and enough room in one of the other substations to move all the functions over to it, so it hadn't been a long-term problem.
The PRT would be fixing the damage and tidying up for a couple of weeks, and the smoke from the fire had caused alarms to go off throughout the building while causing a number of problems in it's own right, but on the whole it could have been much worse. If the new system hadn't been operational at the time the entire PRT comms and data systems throughout the city would have been thrown into total chaos for hours, perhaps days.
Content that her current job was now done, she talked to the lead techs for a while, checking that everyone knew what was needed, then headed off to wait for Colin to arrive, while wondering why one Ward was so much trouble.
Sarah turned as she heard the door to the conference room open, Lieutenant Gibson doing the same. He saluted smartly as Emily Piggot came in and looked around, the door closing behind her. She returned it, then came over. Sarah's sister joined them, although the rest of her extended family stayed at the table where they were comparing stories.
"Hello, Director," Sarah said. "You look annoyed." Which wasn't, to be honest, all that unusual, but she didn't add that.
Director Piggot sighed. "An internal matter of some irritation. Nothing we can do about it right now though." She took the folder that the lieutenant handed her, flipping quickly through it, then handed it back with a nod. "It appears that you definitely earned your pay today, all of you," she said, making an apparent deliberate attempt to cheer up slightly. Moving to the head of the table she waited for both sisters and the PRT lieutenant to sit, then did the same. "On behalf of the ENE PRT, and myself personally, I'd like to thank you. Glory Girl, Shielder, from the initial reports from both your squads it's apparent that you performed admirably and quite likely saved lives." The cousins looked at each other, then grinned.
"Thank you, Director," Vicky said, sounding happy.
"You're welcome. Shielder, Sergeant Adler put a note in her report that she'd be quite prepared to work with you again, she says you thought ahead, followed orders perfectly, and more than pulled your weight. Glory Girl, Sergeant Kogut said something very similar." Sarah and Carol both looked at their respective offspring with pride. "I have no idea if we'll be in a position where we need similar arrangements in the future, but I'm very pleased how well it worked and would have little hesitation doing the same thing again if required." The PRT director actually smiled. Eric was beaming, while his sister was looking at him with amusement.
"From the reports, it seems that the rest of you also had a certain amount of excitement." Piggot looked again at the folder the lieutenant slid across to her when she motioned for it. "One attempted bank robbery in the evacuated area, stopped by Manpower and his squad. Three instances of looting, including one where someone ram-raided a jewelry shop. Two of them handled by Laserdream and her team, one by Brandish and hers. A number of minor crimes, car theft, vandalism, nine muggings, and three armed robberies, spread across the rest of you. All of you provided effective backup to the PRT personnel without any problems of note." She closed the folder and folded her hands on it.
"You all did a very good job, and I think raised the profile of your group quite considerably in the city. I will make sure to mention this to the Mayor when I meet with him. It might help calm him down after the..." She made a face. "Slightly overeffective decoy operation."
"It smelled fucking awful," Eric muttered. "How I didn't puke I have no idea, even through those respirators it was terrible."
The blonde nodded, looking like she entirely agreed, as did everyone else. Sarah couldn't even find it in her to give him a warning look about his language. That stench really had been almost unbearable. What it must have been like for anyone without the dubious protection of the PRT respirators she didn't like to consider.
"Thank you for the compliments, Director," Sarah said after a moment. She looked around at her family. "I think I speak for all of us when I say we found it an interesting if somewhat long and odoriferous day." They all nodded.
"It was definitely not the sort of thing we normally do," Mark said quietly, "But I have to admit I quite enjoyed it. I'd be happy enough to do the same thing again if needed."
"Me too," Vicky added, smiling a little. "Although I could really do without the smell."
"I am very much hoping that we never have to use that satanic stuff again," Director Piggot sighed. "Explaining what happened is going to be a PR nightmare. I hope Roy's people have some idea how to handle it. We're going to have to kiss ass something terrible to keep the public from shouting for days."
"But you successfully got Coil," Crystal pointed out. "That should help. I mean, he was prepared to bring down a huge building in the middle of the city, which would have killed hundreds of people. At least. I think when that gets out a lot of people will be OK with what everyone had to do."
"Hopefully," the director nodded, not looking entirely confident about this. "It's not public information yet, though. We have to finish all our interrogations and build our case before we can be open about any of this. Remember the NDAs you all signed this morning, please. Coil may still have people out there and the longer we can avoid letting them know he's finished the better. I want to find them before they run."
She looked around at each of them, one by one. All seven members of New Wave nodded their agreement, Vicky miming zipping her lips, which made Crystal smile and Carol frown a little.
"Would he have used his explosives, do you think?" Neil asked curiously. The blonde woman turned to him, scowling.
"He tried to, as it happens. If we hadn't had the Family to disable the charges, god alone knows how bad it might have been."
"Holy shit, he actually did it?" Eric gasped.
"He did. Dragon aborted the countdown a few minutes before it would actually have gone off if it hadn't been disarmed, but that was only possible because Saurial and her relatives not only found out about the explosives in the first place, but softened the base up for us as well. If we'd gone in blind who the fuck knows what would have happened, but I can guarantee it wouldn't have been good." Emily shrugged. "Mind you, without those reptiles we wouldn't even have known about it in the first place."
"We owe them a lot of thanks too," Lieutenant Gibson put in, making her nod slightly.
"We definitely do. Mad creatures though they are they're pretty damn effective. Terrifyingly so, actually." She seemed to be thinking about something disconcerting, Sarah thought, based on the slightly pale face she got for a moment. Shaking her head, she seemed to dismiss whatever it was seconds later.
"I've spoken to Saurial and told her that we're entirely satisfied with the results of today. She's got your payment ready, Panacea has checks for all of you. We'll be paying BBFO tomorrow, so I think the financial side of things is done." She opened the folder again, pulling out a number of forms. "The last item is, as always, the paperwork. I'd like you to fill out these reports, please, to add to the ones we already have from your squad members. Lieutenant Gibson will help you where needed, he has all the other information required. It shouldn't take more than about twenty minutes or so." She glanced at her watch as the lieutenant got up and distributed the sets of half a dozen pages to each of them.
"I have another meeting in five minutes, so I'll leave you to it. Once again, thank you all for the help, it's very much appreciated." She got up, watching as her subordinate handed out pens. Sarah looked through the form, finding it was a fairly straightforward one for 'Affiliated Parahuman Activities in Support of a PRT Operation' according to the title on the first page, along with an internal PRT code.
"This looks simple enough, Director," she commented.
"It's a standard form, although we don't use it much here in Brockton," Director Piggot nodded. "You shouldn't have any problems, Lady Photon, but if you do have questions, the lieutenant can answer them." She looked around one last time, appearing satisfied, then left the room. Shortly all of them were bent over the papers, the scratching of pens the only sound. Rather to Sarah's surprise, even Vicky was concentrating on the form, the tip of her tongue sticking out the side of her mouth a little.
Feeling that things had gone very well, but also very much looking forward to dinner and bed, Sarah kept filling in the relevant boxes and writing answers to specific questions.
Hannah looked around the people at the conference table. Colin was scowling at a tablet he was holding, Dragon seemed to be thinking about something as far as she could make out from the attitude of the reptilian-themed power armor's head, Ethan and his wife were talking quietly to each other, and the various others were either looking over their own notes or just waiting. Legend was reading one of the preliminary reports on the base operation at the far end of the table. Moments later, Emily came in, closing the door and taking her seat. Hannah flicked the switch that sealed the door and engaged the security, including the new systems Dragon had installed as part of the upgrade.
Casting her eyes around the table, the PRT Director was silent for a few second, as everyone stopped what they were doing and gave her their attention. Eventually she opened the notebook she had with her and looked at it.
"OK, we have a number of things to get through before the Saurial and her sister get here. I expect we'll have to talk again after they leave as well. First, what's the current status with the prisoners?"
Hannah cleared her throat. "Thomas Calvert is currently unconscious in his cell. He became hysterical when we took him to the basement and we were forced to sedate him. He was screaming about 'them' coming out of the walls to get him, something about a lake where there shouldn't be one, and some sort of underground city full of monsters." Everyone exchanged glances. "He was fairly loud about it," she added with a shrug. "Whatever Saurial did to him, it stuck. The man's a mess. On the up side, he was talking so fast we had difficulty taking notes. We're probably going to have to keep him tranquilized for a while but I doubt we're going to have to push very hard to get him to tell us anything we want."
"Does anyone else sort of wonder what actually happened in there this morning?" Rory asked slowly. "Then wonder if it might be a good idea not to find out?"
Several of them nodded. Colin wasn't really listening, as far as she could tell, at least half his attention was still on the tablet, but he absently said, "The Family matter creation ability coupled with their exceptionally acute senses and unusual sense of humor lends itself to some very effective psyops scenarios, especially if they utilized the apparent spatial manipulation techniques Saurial and Raptaur have demonstrated in the construction of a number of devices. I expect they could convince most people of almost anything you care to name with some effort. Calvert most likely found this out the hard way."
Everyone stared at him, but he kept scrolling through some sort of complex schematic on his tablet and ignored them.
"Yes. Well." Emily seemed a little puzzled. "I expect we can ask more about that when they turn up, assuming they'll tell us. And his mercenaries?"
"None of them are as badly affected by whatever happened," Hannah said, "but all of them are as shaken up as if they'd been in a serious battle for hours. Any injuries sustained appear to have happened during our entrance and the subsequent fighting, from what I can so far tell neither Saurial or her sister caused any damage to them at all. Physically, at any rate." She shook her head slightly. "The preliminary questioning has thrown up a number of very weird stories, quite a few of which would seem to be both contradictory and physically impossible, although with powers who can really say? Definitely unusual even in those terms."
"Some of those guys really looked like they wanted us to arrest them," Robin said thoughtfully.
"I noticed the same thing," Battery nodded. "Did you see how they were all helpfully labeled as well? Each of them had their name, rank, and the words 'Mercenary for Hire' written on the backs of their clothing. The strange thing is that none of them realized it until we turned up."
"Coil's body armor had 'Annoying Supervillain' on the back," Emily sighed. "Those damn lizards never miss a chance to screw with us and everyone else, do they?"
"Apparently not," Dragon chuckled. "I'm still trying to work out the significance of the squeaky shoggoth. Calvert goes a very unhealthy color when he sees it, and if he hears it..."
"What the hell is a shoggoth?" Craig asked curiously.
The Canadian woman looked at him. "A mythical creature from the works of the author H P Lovecraft," she replied. "At least, I very much hope it's mythical."
"Lovecraft again," Battery said with a frown. "I have to confess I'm getting a little worried about that theme. It seems to be a lot more… consistent… than a simple joke would warrant."
They all shared a look again, aside from Colin, who was now tapping on the screen of his tablet, looking pensive.
"They like fucking with us, that much is certain," Emily grumbled. "Even if they are more or less on our side. They're nearly as bad as the damn Simurgh, it's almost impossible to work out how much of what they do is because they think it's funny and how much is real." She sighed heavily. "Or how much is a double or triple bluff, just because they can."
Legend shrugged a little. "We may never be entirely certain, considering their origins. Or even be entirely certain what those origins truly are. Whatever, they're friendly and effective and today they definitely averted a massive disaster, so I suggest we give them the benefit of the doubt."
The director didn't look completely convinced, and Hannah definitely wasn't, since she was still very, very puzzled about the weird reptiles. Not to mention more than a little wary of them. However, he had a point, now wasn't the right time to get distracted by that specific rabbit-hole.
"All right. We'll table the question of what and how Saurial and Raptaur did to demoralize nearly fifty experienced military-trained people until a better time," Emily said, making a note on her pad. "We'll definitely be revising their threat assessment as soon as we're finished with Coil and his men, though, since I can guarantee it's wrong. Not to mention we need to update Ianthe's and Metis's data, we have very little on them yet."
"I think that Umihebi is the one we should concentrate on," Dragon suggested. She sounded a little worried. Hannah watched as Colin froze, his fingers stilling on the tablet for several seconds, then resumed work more slowly. At the head of the table, Emily looked momentarily more than a little upset.
"I am currently attempting to forget about Umihebi for now, Dragon," the blonde said through her teeth. "That is also something to be left for later. Mostly to allow the memory to fade a little."
"You met Umihebi?" Ethan asked, looking startled, as did everyone who hadn't been on the beach. Hannah had felt a cold shudder go through her at the name, thinking back to the images from that first contact in the deep ocean. "She was actually in the bay? That fucking huge thing?" His voice had gone a little shrill.
"She was," Emily said after a couple of second, during which she swallowed visibly. "Let's just say that we have confirmation of an unnervingly powerful Stranger effect of some form, along with the fact that our estimates of size were… understated."
"What was she doing?" Legend asked, appearing apprehensive.
"She captured and delivered Calvert to us," Dragon said.
Everyone looked at her.
"In her mouth," she added reluctantly.
"Oh, fuck me..." Robin breathed. "No wonder the bastard is practically catatonic!"
"That would definitely do it," Battery said, her face pale.
Hannah was trying, unsuccessfully, not to think about it.
Eventually, Emily broke the horrified silence that had fallen in the room. "As I said, I would prefer to discuss that later, when the memory of what I saw is slightly less… vivid. Moving on." She turned the page in her notebook while the others tried to concentrate. "The new system."
"Is finished, tested, fully integrated, and entirely functional," Colin said, finally looking up from his tablet, which he pushed to one side. "Both here and on the Rig. All communications are back to full operation, with a significant boost to bandwidth and range. The old comms units have been completely deactivated, we're recalling all previously issued hardware for secure destruction. New units are being issued to anyone who doesn't already have them. All the vehicles in the motor pool will be completely upgraded to the new specification by the second shift tomorrow. Documentation on operation of the new functions now available can be accessed through the secure server, I have issued new credentials to everyone here, and IT is rolling them out to all staff."
"So we're back in business without any backdoors or traps, basically," Craig noted with relief. Colin nodded.
"Correct. We expect there will be minor errors and issues for a day or two until the remaining low-priority data is replaced, but all major functionality is present. Please report anything out of place that you notice."
"What about the power room?" Robin asked. "It was a hell of a mess down there when I looked earlier."
"That is in hand as well," the Tinker replied. "The damaged systems are bypassed now, and the rebuilding of the destroyed equipment will be complete within twelve to fourteen days. We'll add spare capacity at the same time so if anything of this nature happens again, we'll be able to absorb it more easily."
"Hopefully it won't," Battery said, making him nod agreement.
They spend some considerable time going over the details of the system upgrade and the new capabilities of it, Colin and Dragon between them fielding a number of questions, until everyone was up to date. Eventually, after a check of the time, Director Piggot turned another page. "All right, we can leave most of the rest until later. The final thing we need to discuss right now is Shadow Stalker. Colin, what the hell happened?"
The man frowned at his tablet, as if it had personally insulted him. "An unlikely sequence of events, essentially. We found the shock bracelet on the floor of her quarters, completely discharged of power. There was no sign of the girl. No one has seen her since last night, but the tracker in the bracelet puts her in that room up until the point of the power surge. After that we have no way to know where she went or what she did."
He sighed, rubbing his forehead. "As far as I can determine from the logs, the power surge that knocked out the building also scrambled the telemetry system that was controlling the bracelet. As it lost power it sent a number of corrupted messages to the device, which appears to have been interpreted as a command to increase the shock power to the maximum and discharge it continuously. I have no idea quite how this happened, there are a number of checks on that sort of thing as it could well be lethal under some circumstances. In any case, it completely discharged the capacitors into Shadow Stalker, which would at a minimum have knocked her unconscious. Very painfully, actually." He reached out and flicked through a couple of pages on the tablet.
"She must have regained consciousness some time later, found out that the bracelet was at least temporarily inactive, and simply phased out of it. The device is recharged by a combination of broadcast energy from repeaters in the floor, as in a wireless phone charger, and a kinetic energy recovery system in the bracelet itself which harvests power from any motion, such as walking or moving it. But with the power to the entire building out, and her passed out on the floor..." He shrugged. "It didn't have time to recharge before she managed to escape. Given twenty minutes of her moving around it would have had enough energy to shock her into giving up, but she presumably tried to escape immediately and got lucky."
"A perfect storm of both good and bad luck," Legend said with a sigh.
"Yes. I suspect she has a fairly unpleasant burn on her wrist from the discharge, and may be suffering some probably temporary neurological issues as well, but that clearly didn't stop her. The girl is arrogant and sociopathic, as well as being intellectually lazy, but she is also very persistent." Colin pushed his tablet away once more. "She had at least four hours lead time before anyone noticed she had disappeared. She could easily have left the city in that time. No vehicles are reported missing, but that doesn't necessarily prove anything."
"God damn it," Emily growled. "That damn girl is a fucking liability." She looked at Colin, then around at the others. "Would she cut and run? Or stick around and make a nuisance of herself?"
Colin looked at her, then Hannah. "Unknown. Her most logical move would be to get as far away from here as possible as quickly as possible and attempt to hide, but it's difficult to predict exactly what she'd do. She's not the most logical person I have ever met, and she holds a grudge to a level that's appalling."
"What is the story behind Shadow Stalker?" Dragon asked curiously, causing everyone to look at her now. "I know she was under house arrest, but I'm not sure why she's so important. You clearly have some worries beyond the immediate loss of the girl."
Emily studied her, then glanced at Hannah and Colin before looking around at the rest of the room. Eventually she sighed. "All right. Some of you know this, but not all of you. Shadow Stalker is… a very disturbed young woman. Some months ago, she was complicit in an attack, an extremely unpleasant one, on the daughter of someone many of you have met and all of you have heard of. Danny Hebert."
Dragon tilted her head in a way that suggested surprise. "His daughter. Taylor Hebert?"
"Yes." The director scowled blackly, then explained the entire event to them all. When she finished, Ethan raised a hand and an eyebrow.
"What?" Emily snapped.
"Shadow Stalker mentally and physically tortured the fifteen year old daughter of one of the potentially most politically powerful men in the city, someone who is known to be extremely protective of his family, and perfectly willing to hospitalize someone who threatens her, and is best friends with the fucking Family? The same daughter who can take down a man twice her size in about three seconds with a baton, and is also best friends with the Family, has been personally trained by Saurial, and is on top of that apparently Panacea's best friend too, not to mention very close to Glory Girl? That daughter?"
"Correct," the blonde said when he finished.
"Bitch is dead meat," he commented after a few seconds, shaking his head. "She better run. If she sticks around here, she's gonna get eaten."
"That's what I'm worried about," Emily said with disgust. "We have a major problem. Do we call Danny Hebert and tell him we've been sitting on one of the people who fucked with his daughter for close to two years, and now we've lost her? Do we pretend nothing has changed and hope the fucking girl runs and keeps running? And what do we tell Saurial and her relatives? I can absolutely guarantee that they know all about it, based on what we know of the Hebert's relations with them. And I'm almost certain Panacea is also aware, she and the Hebert girl are as thick as thieves from what we know. Which might well mean that New Wave knows as well. Not to mention the entire DWU, and god knows who else."
"Would he have told anyone at the DWU?" Legend asked thoughtfully.
Emily shrugged angrily. "Who knows? Possibly, possibly not. He's certainly got the recording he made of the damn girl and her co-conspirators admitting to the bullying campaign, not to mention all the other evidence he has. There are other witnesses as well from Winslow. If he wanted to he could bury us with that. I don't think that he will, now, since we seem to have developed a good working relationship with him in the last month, but I sure as hell don't want to push him into deciding we've screwed him and his daughter over. And I really do not want the Family on the warpath. So what do we do? I'm open to suggestions."
"We have to tell the Heberts about it," Battery said after looking around at her colleagues. "Provide them with protection, if they'll accept it. If nothing else that would show we're not trying to hide anything. If the girl decides to go after Taylor or her dad, presumably she'd do it pretty quickly. She's not a patient person."
"You think she'd make an attempt on them?" Hannah asked. Battery nodded.
"I wouldn't put it past her, I'm afraid. The girl is one of the angriest people I've ever met. From what you said she blames the Hebert girl for her being caught, never mind it was her and her friends who instigated the entire thing. She may well want to deal with what she thinks of as unfinished business."
Hannah thought it over and couldn't deny the other woman had a very valid point. Which was more than a little worrying, all things considered.
"I would have to concur," Colin sighed. "It would fit her personality. Unfortunately, her powerset is ideally suited for an assassination attempt, she's very difficult to track, can move rapidly, and it's hard to restrict her motion without some fairly specific precautions. If she does intend to go after the Heberts, it could be problematic to stop her."
"Fuck." Piggot glared at her notebook. "This is going to be bad, I can damn well feel it."
Pulling out her phone as it vibrated, Hannah looked at the message on the screen, then turned to the older woman.
"Well, whatever we're going to tell them, we need to work it out fast," she said with a sigh. "Saurial and Raptaur are downstairs."
Everyone exchanged worried glances as she got up and headed for the door.