"She got into a car about a mile away from the PRT building," Taylor sighed as she accepted a mug of coffee from Amy. She was back in her base form, the Varga in the small dragon one sitting on her shoulder, with her friends and her father sitting around the table. Both Amy and Lisa were out of their bioconstructs by this point, and had been discussing new things to make using her talents and Amy's when she arrived.

Her father had not taken the news that Sophia had run very well.

He'd gone pale, his heartbeat rising considerable, and his hands clenched into fists. Visibly controlling his temper, he'd asked in an eerily calm voice for full details of their meeting with Director Piggot and the others, then listened without a word being said until she finished. She was a little worried, she hadn't seen him get that angry for a long time. It was worse than when he'd found out about Sophia in the first place.

However, somehow, he'd managed to calm down, and was now back more or less to normal although there was a certain coldness to his expression that suggested to her he'd be quite prepared to deal with the girl himself if she was stupid enough to pop up anytime soon. The Varga had commented on it, saying it was a righteous rage of a warrior finding his people threatened. He found it impressive and justified.

This had, rather to her surprise, made her father laugh and calm down a little more.

"More accurately, we think she stole a car, by the looks of it," Taylor continued after a sip of coffee. "I guess she knows how to hot-wire one. It was around the back of one of the smaller shops, must have been being stored there or something. We tried tracking it but even Varga senses have limits, and she'd been gone for hours."

"We tracked her from the vicinity of the PRT facility across the rooftops of quite a few buildings," the Varga put in. "She backtracked several times, presumably in an attempt to make it difficult to do exactly what we were doing. The total distance covered was several miles, in fact, so she put quite a lot of effort into it. It was actually surprisingly hard to follow her, since it looks like in her shadow state she doesn't have much if any scent and she moves quite fast like that. I'm not particularly surprised about that although it was annoying."

"We always managed to find her trail again, though," Taylor added. "There were two places she stopped, we think to collect something. Probably some weapons she'd left behind, maybe money, that sort of thing. We could smell oil and plastic at one place, fresh, which might have been another crossbow. The other one smelled of money and electronics. Perhaps a phone, something like that."

"The girl thought ahead," her father noted.

"Like I said, she's cunning." Taylor ran a hand through her hair, then dropped it to her lap. "Not the smartest person I've ever met, but not stupid, and with a kind of built-in survival instinct. Maybe from her powers? I don't know because I never met her before she got them. Not that I'm too upset about that."

"So she's probably armed, probably has enough money to live on for a while, is mobile, might have contacts she can use to hide her or get more equipment, and we have no idea where she is or what she'll do..." Lisa shook her head. "Nearly as bad as Skidmark."

"She's smarter than he is, which is both good and bad," Taylor replied, glancing at her. "But she's at least as vicious. And I doubt that being locked up in the PRT building for a couple of months made her any easier to live with. I'm sure she blames me for it, too."

"Probably," her father muttered. "It was her own damn fault that she got caught, she confessed right to your face, but that type never accepts that their actions have repercussions. It's always someone else's fault."

Taylor nodded. "The thing I'm worried about is that she'll go after one of you. Dad, if I'm on her list, I can guarantee you are too. Probably right under me. We both got her kicked out of Winslow and she knows it. And it wouldn't take her long to work out that Amy is my best friend, we've been all over PHO after that Merchant thing the other day. And everyone knows that Amy and the Family are close, and that the Family and the Heberts are close, and so on. I have no idea how much of that she knows already but it wouldn't take her very long to find out."

"If we wanted to put the effort in I'm sure we could find her in the end, no matter where she goes, but it could take a while," the Varga said. "I don't know if it's a sensible use of resources and time. If the girl turns up again, which based on Taylor's knowledge of her seems more than likely, we'll be able to catch her, and if she doesn't, it's probably a better outcome to simply let her go. So far she hasn't done anything to warrant a serious response from us aside from the initial problems which ended up with me coming here, and Taylor has already decided to let that lie in the past."

The diminutive dragon looked at his host, who was smiling gently at him. "I almost feel I should thank Sophia, in some ways. In other ways I would like to have some time alone with her to express my own displeasure." He shrugged, grinning briefly. "But I'm bigger than that."

Everyone stared at him, before Taylor snickered, Amy started laughing, and Lisa and Taylor's father shared a look.

"He's as bad as you are sometimes," the blonde said with a smile.

"Some of my puns are much worse than that," the man replied with a contented look. "It runs in the family, I think, and I'm quite happy to see that even the newest member can hold his own."

The Varga seemed satisfied by the comment.

"But going back to the problem of Sophia and leaving my linguistic humor out of it for the moment," the demon said, "I think that the most likely targets are you, Danny, obviously Taylor, and Amy. Sophia might hesitate to go after a member of New Wave, and someone as high profile and valued as Panacea into the bargain, but we can't rely on that. She's definitely someone who has a quite different outlook on life than most, and her risk versus reward calculations are probably very suspect."

"What about people like Mandy, Lucy, and my other friends at school?" Taylor asked, feeling worried.

He shook his head a little. "I can't be sure. I doubt any of them are on her list of revenge, which she most assuredly has, but they might be targeted by association. Most probably for information on you. Assuming that Director Piggot assigns the people she claimed she would, they should hopefully be a low risk. I would expect that Sophia would be careful and surveil her target first, and would pick up on the escort quite quickly. That would probably be enough to make her rethink any plan she had since they'd be low priority targets at best."

"She might try something here," Lisa said thoughtfully, "for a similar reason, to find information. Danny is normally either here or at home, so it would be the logical place to attack him if she was going to. Following him around somewhere else would be a lot more work and risk exposure and capture, especially since the entire PRT and Protectorate will be alerted to look out for her now. She'll have to realize that."

They thought about it for a while. "I'd have to go along with all that," Amy said in the end. "School might be a place that she'd try something, since Taylor and I will both be there a lot of the day so we're easy to find. On the other hand, there are way too many witnesses. Assuming she's willing to ignore the Rules, home would be a good place to go after me, and since she doesn't know about Taylor, home would also be a good place to go after her and Danny. Here would be a good choice for Danny, and maybe Taylor, since people know she's around sometimes."

"For everyone else that might be a target, she could try almost anywhere at any time," Lisa added. "But my power is also telling me that you two are way up at the top of her plans, before anyone else. Director Piggot is also someone who should look out, but I'm sure she already knows that very well. The woman is extremely competent and I suspect that if Sophia tries for her, it's going to end very badly and very quickly. I bet she's already arranged to have her apartment Sophia-proofed and has checked out the right sort of weapons to deal with her."

"And considering the entire purpose of the PRT in the first place, they probably have plans for dealing with one of their own that went bad," Taylor's father said musingly.

"Oh, definitely," Lisa nodded. "I've even read some of them. When I was… employed… by Coil. I've seen most of the contents of their secure system by now." She grinned at them. "The director would be very annoyed about what I know, I'm sure, but I'm also sure I'm not going to tell her." As the others smiled, she looked thoughtful, then got up and headed for the computers. Taylor and the rest watched as she started typing.

"What are you doing?" Amy asked curiously.

"Checking to see how far Family access to PRT systems gets me where Sophia is concerned," Lisa replied, hooking a chair with a foot and pulling it into position, then sitting, without stopping working on the keyboard. "Huh. Surprisingly far. Here we go… 'Bulletin EP/SECBT/1022-07-00017694-03/06/2011, Class 4 rogue Parahuman arrest request, for distribution to all PRT stations, Law Enforcement Organizations in United States and Canada, and affiliated Parahuman groups.' Some stuff about age, physical description, that sort of thing, which is obviously Hess although it doesn't give a name, civilian or otherwise. 'Subject is considered armed and dangerous. See Threat Assessment Report EP/MM/THRPT/1022-03-00002786-17/11/2010(redacted), additional information, for full details of power set and suggested countermeasures.'"

Lisa clicked on another link, then read quickly. "It's a modified standard threat report. I've read the original, this one has all personal information removed, and most of the internal PRT references to her Wards work."

"It wouldn't take a very smart cop to work out who it was referring to," Amy said, coming over and reading the screen over her shoulder.

"No, but it covers them politically under the Rules and provides at least minimal cover for her family," Lisa replied, going back to the bulletin.

"What's class 4?" Taylor asked curiously. Lisa glanced back at her, smiling a little.

"You haven't finished reading that PRT documentation we were given with the ID cards, have you?"

She shrugged. "Not completely, no. I got distracted about two thirds of the way through."

"It lists the various threat classes in an appendix at the end. People break it down into letters on PHO, but it's really a numbered system for the most part. Higher number is higher threat, or importance, or both." Lisa turned back to the screen. "Class 4 is known to be violent if provoked, aggressive, with a high likelihood of resorting to lethal force. The lower three warrant non-lethal responses except in extraordinary circumstances, class 4 is the first one where a lethal response is automatically authorized if there is no other reasonable option. Director Piggot isn't taking any chances and seems to have entirely lost her sense of humor about this."

"It's not a kill order, though, right?" Taylor's father asked with concern.

"No, nowhere near that level," Lisa assured him, still reading the bulletin. "Those are extremely rare. You have to kill a lot of people in cold blood or otherwise do something horrible to warrant one of those, like Crawler, for example. This is more like what the FBI would distribute when warning about a violent bank robber or something like that. Someone known to have a weapon and not be too worried about using it on civilians." She shrugged. "Which seems pretty accurate to me."

"The rumor on PHO was that Shadow Stalker, before she became a Ward, used hunting bolts on more than a few people she went after, and nearly killed at least one of them," Amy put in. Lisa turned her head and looked at the healer.

"It's not a rumor, believe me. She shot Brian with one of those things. A couple of inches higher and she'd have killed him on the spot. As it was, he was pretty badly hurt, and really isn't fond of her at all now."

Everyone stared at her. "You never mentioned that before," Taylor stated.

Lisa shrugged again. "It wasn't relevant, and isn't really my story. She went after Brian, not me. As far as I could work out, her power and his don't get along at all well, he counters her flat, and she doesn't like that."

"Useful information," the Varga said slowly. "And possibly worth following up on. I expect Director Piggot would be very interested in that, for both the reason it is another charge to levy against the young woman, and because he might help in apprehending her."

"If we have to, I'll ask him," Lisa replied a little reluctantly. "I don't want to bring it up if we don't have to, though. He doesn't need to be reminded of how close he came to dying for a start. And I can't really see quite where his power would be needed where Taylor and you can't do a better job. That said, if she does turn up here, that's a good defense if you guys are somewhere else." The blonde sighed faintly. "I'll have to talk to him about it. Please let me do it, though."

"Of course, Lisa," Taylor assured her. "He probably deserves to know anyway, just in case she does come here. If she hates him that much, he's probably on her hit-list anyway, and he needs to be aware of the problem."

Logging out of the PRT system, Lisa swiveled her chair around and regarded the others. "Looks like the PRT is already doing what they said they'd do. My power agrees that they'll take it very seriously and have a lot of motivation to keep us happy, so I don't think there's much else we can do about that part right now. We'll need to keep a lookout for that damn girl, but my best estimate is that she's not going to turn up for a few days at the minimum. She herself may well not know what she's planning on doing yet, of course. Which will make the PRT's precogs have to work at it as well."

"That's a point, I wonder if Dinah could give us some idea of what's going to happen?" Amy said.

"Once Sophia decides on a path, almost certainly," Lisa nodded. "but if she's just making it up as she goes along, that's going to be a much more difficult thing to predict. I'm sure that the Director is already arranging to ask her, if she hasn't already. We'll get told if they get anything, and since we don't officially know about 'Prospect' yet, we can't really make inquiries of our own without disclosing things neither we or Dinah want to."

"OK, I can agree with that," the healer nodded.

There was silence for a little while, everyone busy with their own thoughts, until the Varga looked at Amy. "I believe it would be a good idea for you to think of some form of anti-Shadow Stalker defenses for yourself."

"And Dad," Taylor put in firmly. Her father put his hand on hers and squeezed it lightly, smiling at her.

"I've already come up with at least two things that should do the job," Amy replied quietly. "I'm just trying to see if there are any more that can be done quickly. I've got a whole list of things that would help a lot but most of them are pretty involved, and I'm not quite ready to start on them yet. But..."

She sighed gently. "We're going to have to push up some of our plans. What with her out there, Skidmark still bumbling around and bound to turn up sooner or later, and all the other potential threats, I'm starting to get worried that if I wait too long, I'm going to kick myself about wasting time. It's the same problem as the symbiotes and healing people in general, only more immediate. And this is something I can do something about."

"Like what?" Taylor asked curiously, not liking the scent of tired sadness she was getting from her friend. She could see that Lisa had also picked up on it.

"One thing is I'm going to make a crapload of one-shots tonight, and tomorrow. A couple of thousand at least, I've worked out a way to speed up making them which will help," Amy replied firmly. "And all of us are going to carry some. I want them issued to every single DWU worker, at least fifty in every medical kit on the entire site, the same at home for all of us, and more in the infirmary. It's not just in case of Sophia turning up, it's also a general precaution against Skidmark or any other asshole who starts trouble. Or just industrial accidents, this place has a very good safety record but things can still go wrong, it's a dangerous environment."

"I can go along with that, Amy," Taylor's father said, nodding slowly. "No one will mind, and the PRT doesn't need to know anyway. We know they work and are safe."

"When we get Linda power-tested, 'Ianthe' is going to give the PRT some samples of them as well for testing," Amy added, a thoughtful expression on her face. "The bioagent got them started in thinking about Family bioengineering, they should be more accepting of the one-shots now." She looked at Lisa, who thought for a moment as well, then nodded.

"It should work," she said. "We don't need to mention that the DWU has them already, especially if they don't ask."

"The next thing is that I'm going to upgrade myself, and you, and Danny, with something that should neutralize Sophia's power, at least as far as phased weapons goes," the healer went on with determination. "Her power is disrupted by electricity, right?"

"That's what my power says, and the threat report I read, yes," Lisa confirmed. "She can't go through walls that have power cables in them, for example. I don't know about what voltage is required, or current, but anything close to mains power is more than enough. AC or DC is irrelevant as far as I can tell."

"OK. That means that what I was thinking of should work fine." Amy smiled grimly. "And if she tries actually phasing through our bodies, she's going to be in for a hell of a surprise."

"What did you have in mind, Amy?" Taylor's father asked, not looking nearly as worried about the prospect of being tinkered with as most people would be. Taylor herself was quite amused by the matter-of-fact way he was taking the entire thing, actually, and shared a glance with her draconic demon, who seemed to be enjoying himself at the moment.

"It's a variation on the electrocyte system I designed for Metis," she replied. "They're basically modified muscle cells optimized for the maximum electrical potential across them. Electric fish stack a large number of them to produce an organic battery that can produce hundreds to thousands of volts, at a pretty significant current. My version is much more powerful, eight or nine times the voltage and current, and for a lot longer. I'm going to put a layer of them across our entire musculature, enough to produce maybe a kilovolt or so at a few hundred milliamps. They'll be set up to generate a continuous electrical field that will be confined under the subcutenous fat layer, which should disrupt her phasing power before it can penetrate more than maybe a quarter of an inch."

Taylor and her father exchanged a look, he raising his eyebrows a little. Lisa was nodding, thinking it over. "So if she fired a phased bolt at you, it would revert to normal on impact, before it had penetrated very far?"

"That's the idea."

"But it's still a crossbow bolt," Taylor's father pointed out. "Moving pretty fast. Just because it's no longer immaterial doesn't mean it won't keep going, it just won't go as deep."

"True. That's what the other modifications are for," Amy nodded. "I was thinking about a subcutaneous EDM mesh, which would stop more or less anything, but there are a lot of problems with that. It wouldn't work if only because of putting on or losing weight, since it won't stretch. Sure, Taylor and Varga could probably work out a way to make that work to some extent, but it's too much effort for this sort of problem. A better solution is something that can be biologically produced."

"Your organometallic material," Taylor said. Amy nodded again.

"Yes. I want to reinforce the bones with it, and use a modified version subcutaneously. I'll wrap more around vulnerable organs too. I designed that a while back, I used something very similar on Linda when I made her new body." She tapped a finger on the table, contemplating something in her head. "I'll have to upgrade her as well, this is an improved version. She's already got the bones, and the organ wraps, but the skin layers need modification and she doesn't have the electrocytes."

"Does that mean we'll get the electrical generation ability as well?" Lisa asked, looking quite pleased at the thought.

Amy shrugged. "I can add it. This was mainly intended as a defense against that particular power, but it's easy enough to bring it out to a set of contacts in the hands like with Metis. It means some more work making a more human body resistant to electrical charge, but I need to do that anyway to some level, so… yes, if you want to be able to zap people by shaking hands, I can do that."

Lisa grinned evilly.

"She wants it," the Varga said dryly.

"So I can see," Amy laughed.

"That sounds like a fairly major upgrade, Amy," Taylor's father said. "How long is it going to take?"

"All night, I'm afraid," the brunette said, looking at him. "We'll need to put you in one of the bioconstructs for a few hours to do some of the modifications. I can set both Ianthe and Metis to upgrade Lisa and me the next time we get inside, that's one of their main functions, but you'll need some work first, mostly the neural amplifier system. I'll add the other boosts I gave Über and Leet too. Plus you'll get compatibility with a bioconstruct out of the deal. I should have done most of this weeks ago."

It was Taylor's turn to put her hand on his and squeeze it, as he now looked rather apprehensive. "Welcome to the Family, Dad," she giggled.

"Um..."

"Igor! The Table!"

Taylor jumped to her feet, saluting clumsily. "At oneth, Mithtreth," she lisped, limping to a clear spot in the middle of the room. "As the Mithtreth commandth."

"Oh, dear lord," her father sighed, putting his head in his hands.

The Varga rolled his small dragon body around on the table, laughing his ass off, as Amy gently pulled the now-worried-looking man to his feet.

"Trust me, I'm a professional," she said in a calm voice as she led him to the table.

"A professional what?" he asked in aggrieved tones, shaking his head.

The Varga only laughed harder, joined by Lisa who was grinning like an idiot.

"Make some screens around the table and go away," Amy commanded her helper, who was hunching around the table she was making, dragging a foot behind her. "His daughter doesn't need to see this."

"Mithtreth is too kind." Taylor nodded humbly, tugging a forelock, before following instructions. Shortly she, the demon, and the smug blonde were sitting next to each other at the main table sipping coffee and listening with amusement.

"Gahh! Your hands are cold!"

"Quiet, you big baby."

"Technically, as a prospective new DWU member you should be more polite to the man at the top, you know."

"Yes, Boss. Now roll over. Boss."

"Oh god, why me?"

Taylor grinned to herself, happy that they were doing everything they could to protect the people she valued.

Sophia was going to regret it if and when she popped up again.

A hundred and forty miles south of Albany, New York, having so far stolen three more cars and switched the plates around with abandon, Sophia thought dark thoughts of revenge. Every time she turned the wheel she winced. The bandages around the severe burn on her left wrist tugged with the motion, as did the blistered and raw skin under them. That was one more count against fucking Armsmaster. She was going to make his death hurt.

She'd had about seven seconds warning of something weird happening when the lights in her quarters went out following a deep thud that shook the entire building. Recognizing it as an explosion, a pretty large one, she'd abruptly sat up, wondering if they were under attack and rubbing sleep from her eyes. "What the fuck is that smell..." she'd exclaimed in disgust, before her bracelet had suddenly begun beeping wildly with a couple of lights blinking furiously. Before she could react in any useful way, a massive shock had gone through her, making every muscle in her body seize and almost causing her to crack a tooth as her mouth snapped shut.

Her scream of agony was muffled by her own tongue, as she fell to the floor and writhed around. The pain just kept going and going and going…

It was a distinct relief when she finally passed out.

Waking some indeterminate time later, she'd lain on the floor staring at the ceiling, her thoughts as muddled as if she'd been recovering from an anesthetic, for several minutes. Sitting up eventually, she'd looked around in a daze, then down at her left arm, which was oddly numb. The bracelet was apparently inert at the moment and her attempt at phasing through it was sheer reflex, since if she'd been thinking clearly she'd have remembered that trying such a thing resulted in pain.

This time, though… She'd wasted a good two minutes looking at the bracelet lying on the floor before she'd finally worked out what it meant.

She was free.

Staggering to her feet, twitching intermittently and having difficulty walking straight, she'd headed for the bathroom, where she'd splashed cold water on her face. Looking at her reflection in the mirror she slapped her own face as hard as she could, twice. Then again.

"Fuck me, that hurt," she'd finally mumbled, more awake and aware now. Feeling was beginning to come back into her body, unfortunately. Almost every muscle she had was protesting, bone deep aches across her entire body making her wince as she moved. Her lower left arm was still numb and her left hand didn't really want to work, while the ring of seared flesh around it stood out against the dark skin either side of the burn. She looked at it, lifting her arm to her face, smelling burnt pork past the other horrible stench and grimacing.

"Ow."

Running it under the cold tap for a couple of minutes to clean it, she'd fumbled one-handed for the first aid kit every Ward quarters had, ripping it open and quickly bandaging the wound while reluctantly thanking the mandatory first aid training. When she'd managed to get it wrapped up, she'd quickly moved around the room, packing everything she could think of that might be useful into a backpack, which she slung over her good shoulder.

It had only taken another ten minutes to get out of the PRT building unseen. The fact that the power was still completely dead helped immensely, since she could simply phase through walls without worry. She'd first headed to the infirmary, grabbing a field medic's kit and sticking it in her backpack as well, then to the armory, where she'd stolen a handgun and some foam grenades from a locked cabinet by just sticking her hand through and grabbing them. Looking around, she decided that anything heavier was too much effort at the moment, and she didn't have time to pick and choose. A couple of loaded magazines went into the pack as well, then she sank through the floor.

Another fifteen minutes of moving randomly across rooftops and through empty buildings, confused but pleased that the entire area was apparently abandoned, and she headed for a couple of her backup caches. All the time she was wondering what the ungodly stench was about, it made it hard to breath, but didn't deter her.

Well hidden in otherwise inaccessible places her power let her gain access to, she found the caches untouched since she'd set them up. One gave up two and a half thousand dollars in small bills, 'confiscated' from some of the muggers she'd dealt with before joining the Wards, and another small handgun, a thirty-two caliber revolver. There were also four unused burner phones and a charger.

The other one had a hand crossbow, twin to the ones she normally carried, along with a much larger hunting weapon, each with a dozen broad-head bolts, and a tactical vest she'd stolen from the PRT three months ago. Some careful rejiggering of her load left her with a full pack, weapons in the vest, and the big crossbow slung over her pack. It was awkward but usable.

Within a few minutes she'd located a vehicle old enough that it was amenable to simple theft, which she'd quickly enacted. As soon as it started, she headed towards the docks and the freeway, going away from the main areas of the city.

It was only when she was thirty miles outside the city that she allowed herself to relax. She was finally clear of that horrible smell, which was, according to the radio, the result of some sort of fuckup at a local lab downtown. No one seemed to be following her, at least so far, and the news program she was listening to made no mention of her at all, concentrating on the spill in the city.

With any luck, by the time they got their shit together and noticed she was gone, she'd be two states away.

In the succeeding hours, she'd engaged in wholesale car theft, switching vehicles every hundred miles or so. So far there was still no sign of pursuit.

Half an hour ago she'd stopped to change the bandages on her wrist, doing a much neater job this time, and eat some of the food she'd broken into a closed convenience store in a small town to steal. Her powers made that sort of thing ridiculously simple. She didn't yet have any idea of where she was headed, more or less just going south and inland, since she was playing it by ear. Sooner or later she'd need to stop for some sleep but she was wired on four cans of energy drink and could keep going for hours yet.

After that… Sophia didn't know quite what the future held. Heal up, that much was required. She was still occasionally twitching from the aftereffects of that fucking bracelet that had nearly killed her. Get some more money, that was easy. Weapons, also easy.

Then…

She shrugged. One way or the other, she was going to meet her prey, and exact her revenge. Only then would she be worthy to approach the most impressive predators she'd ever seen and beg to be taught what she needed, deserved, to know.

Flipping through the stations she found a music program and began listening to it, a small dark smile on her lips. 'Soon, Taylor. Very soon, we'll see just how good you are. Play me for a fool?' She shook her head. 'Can't let that go, bitch. You, and your dad, and Piggot, and...'

Mulling over all the people who had wronged her and how she would pay them back, Sophia Hess hummed along to the music and drove on into the night.