Pulling up at the traffic lights, Danny looked to the right, spotting his destination a couple of doors down the side street. It didn't look like much from outside although if you knew what you were looking for, there were signs that the business might not be quite what it appeared as. Oh, it was what it looked like as well, definitely, he knew that for a fact, but it was also… more.
And something of a stereotype, one that Antonio found very funny, which was why he'd done it.
Flicking the indicators, he turned when the truck in front moved off, driving slowly past and looking through the windows of the traditional Italian restaurant. A number of people were inside, scattered around the dozen or so tables, a surprisingly large percentage of them men in nice suits and looking like they weren't people you wanted to get on the wrong side of. Mixed in with them were more normal patrons, all of whom seemed to be enjoying themselves.
'Jesus, Tony, could you get more clichéd?' he thought with a slight sigh and a small smile. The place looked even more like something from a fifties mafia movie now than it did the last time he'd seen it fourteen and a half years ago. Glancing up, he counted floors, seeing that there was another apparent dining area on the next one up, then two that were from what he could recall office space, and above them all the penthouse which was the entire top floor. That was the old man's personal area, one you would have one hell of a time getting to without authorization or a lot of help.
You'd have even more trouble getting out again…
Antonio took his privacy very seriously.
From what he'd been told in the last email, the man himself was out on business until the early evening, but he'd be back around half past six. Danny was going to stay in a hotel he used on his occasional business trips to New York, since he hadn't felt he was quite at the point of accepting Antonio's offer of a room here. For numerous reasons.
After a moment's thought, he indicated again and turned left, into the alley that led back to the parking lot behind the restaurant. This far from New York proper the buildings were a lot smaller and more spread out, although it was still pretty busy compared to back home. Only when you got into the commercial district in Brockton did you tend to see so many people. Parking the car he got out and locked it, walking back to the road and around to the main entrance. With a deep breath, he opened the door and went inside.
Benny glanced up at the sound of the bell over the door tinkling and froze. Opposite him, Rudy looked at his face, then over his own shoulder. He also froze, then swallowed a little. Their wives looked at them, before exchanging glances of mild worry.
"What's wrong, Benny?" his wife Clara asked in a low voice.
He didn't reply, engaged as he was in tracking the progress of a man he recognized instantly, one he'd thought he was safely several hundred miles from. Rudy was doing the same. Around them, a number of Antonio's senior people had gone quiet, exchanging looks before Gino, the old man's head leg-breaker and security chief, wiped his mouth with his napkin and got up.
The guy who almost everyone who knew him thought of with a definite amount of caution and a hell of a lot of respect met Boss Hebert near the till at the back. The tall skinny man stopped, as did the one who outweighed him by about three times, all of it muscle and scar tissue.
"Been a while, Mr Hebert," the enforcer finally said after they'd simply looked at each other for a few seconds. All conversation in the restaurant, even from the few civilians who were in for a late lunch, had stopped by now, so Benny could hear every word.
"It has. How have you been, Gino?" the new arrival said in calm, polite tones. "Business going well?"
"Can't complain," the very large, very dangerous man replied, equally calmly and politely. "And yourself? I hear things have become… interesting… in Brockton Bay recently."
Boss Hebert smiled thinly. "Yes, you could put it like that. We've certainly seen some unusual things happen even for us. But on balance it's working out well."
"How's the daughter?" Gino asked, not looking away. "Taylor, was it? I haven't seen her for a long time."
"She's doing very well," the Hebert man said, sounding fairly contented about it. "Thank you for asking."
"We were sorry to hear about your wife, by the way." Gino genuinely sounded like he meant it. Boss Hebert looked down for a moment, sighing regretfully.
When he raised his eyes once more he nodded. "Thank you. It was hard for both of us, but we're slowly healing."
"Good. I'm glad to hear that, Mr Hebert. I'm afraid Mr Castiglione is out at the moment."
"I'm aware of that, I'm only stopping in to make a reservation for later. Around seven, I think."
Gino nodded, turning around and reaching behind the counter, while the young lady who ran the till stepped back, her eyes somewhat wider than normal. Benny, Rudy, and the rest of the patrons and staff watched with some shock as one of the most feared heavies on the East Coast personally wrote the details into the reservation book. "I'll let him know you dropped in, Mr Hebert," he said as he finishing writing in an oddly elegant hand.
"Thanks, Gino. I'll see you later, I expect."
"Probably." The enforcer put the book back and held out his hand. Boss Hebert looked at it for a moment then shook it. "Welcome back."
The man nodded again without saying anything, then turned and started to leave, Gino and his colleagues watching impassively. As he passed Benny and Rudy's table, he stopped and looked at them.
"Benny, right?"
Benny licked his lips, then nodded.
"And Rudy?"
"Yes, sir, Mr Hebert," Rudy said with the faintest catch in his voice.
"Glad to see you made it back OK." The Hebert man, one of the scariest men Benny had ever met, largely because he simply didn't look as dangerous as both of them knew beyond doubt he was, smiled at them. "Thank you for helping out like that."
"No problem, Mr Hebert, it was our pleasure." Benny glanced at his friend who was paler than normal. Both their wives looked confused, but were wisely saying nothing. The Brockton Bay Boss nodded politely to them, then resumed walking, leaving the restaurant and turning left. When he was out of sight, Benny relaxed so suddenly he nearly dropped his chin into his risotto. Gino went past on his way back to his table where several of Antonio's men were talking together very quietly, slowing to give them an evaluating look. Benny smiled weakly at him.
Looking thoughtful the enforcer kept going, sitting down with his colleagues. The sound level slowly resumed its previous characteristics.
"Christ," Rudy whispered, sounding shaky. "He remembered us."
"People like that always remember you," Benny mumbled, trying not to think about it. "Always."
"Who is he?" Clara asked in a very quiet and subdued voice.
"Best not to ask, love," Benny replied, just as quietly, with a glance at Gino who he noticed uneasily was watching them. "No one we want to get involved with."
It was certainly more evidence, if it had been needed, of how well connected the man was. Gino obviously knew and respected him, his attitude was proof of that. Benny had never seen the guy act in that way to anyone other than Antonio. Even to people like Benny's boss he was polite, but in a way that made it clear he knew full well he worked for someone who outranked practically everyone else by a large amount, if only in seniority. And Benny would never consider the man he directly worked for as someone you could think of as a low level guy, mainly because he wasn't. Not at all. But he also wasn't Antonio.
Benny was definitely regretting coming here for a meal. The food was excellent and he knew a lot of the people who frequented the place, and also knew it was very unlikely to have anything untoward happen anywhere near it. Antonio made sure of that. But…
If Boss Hebert was in town, perhaps they needed to find somewhere else to eat for a while.
Just to be on the safe side. After all, if he was around, it was always possible someone… scalier… might also be. Someone like Boss Hebert would have protection, and bearing in mind what he'd seen on that memorable trip a while back, it wasn't protection he wanted to bump into down a dark alley. Or in full daylight, for that matter.
Suppressing a shiver he resumed eating as quickly as propriety would allow, almost sure he could feel something looking at him. The feeling was even more unnerving than Gino's eyes.
Setting his bag down on his bed, Danny quickly checked out the room, used the facilities with a sigh of relief, washed his face and hands, and sat down in the single chair at the desk next to the window. He had just over five hours to kill, which wasn't enough time to get into Manhattan for any shopping or wandering around, but more than he wanted to spend sitting around doing nothing. Pulling out his phone he sent Taylor a text to say he'd arrived safely, knowing she wouldn't be able to receive a phone call due to Arcadia's phone-blocking system.
Dialing another number from memory, he waited as it rang. "Hi, Kurt," he said when the line was picked up.
"Danny! You made it to New York, I guess?" his old friend's voice said.
"Yes, just checked in to the hotel. I'm going to see Tony this evening, so I think I'll go out and look for something to do in the meantime. Have a light meal, maybe. How are things going back home?"
"Everything's fine, no problems to report. Über and Leet have moved in, the trucks just came back from loading up all their stuff. Lisa and Metis are working on that, with Zephron along to supervise."
Danny chuckled. "Who's supervising him?"
Kurt sounded slightly weary. "God, I know, don't remind me. The man is nuts. But there are enough people around to make sure nothing too excessive happens. I hope..."
"OK. Let me know if anything serious crops up, I'll leave my phone on, but if you can avoid calling after about half past six that would probably be best. I want to give Tony and this situation my full attention."
"Fair enough. Say hi to the old man when you see him from me."
"Will do. I'll be in touch."
"Bye, Danny." He flicked the call end icon and put the phone down on the desk, leaning back and stretching, then relaxing. Briefly considering a short nap, he dismissed the thought since he wasn't nearly as tired as he'd expected. Since Amy's symbiote he'd had the energy of a twenty-year-old anyway, and after all the boosts he felt better than he had in his life. He was also pretty sure that his hair had stopped receding and was gradually coming back, something that she could easily have done on the spot but suspected had arranged to happen slowly. Most likely to avoid it looking too suspicious.
The overnight change to not needing glasses had been easy to explain to the few people who hadn't worked it out. Knowing Amy Dallon was a friend of his daughter's and fixed both of them to have perfect eyesight was entirely plausible, and in his case essentially true even if it was glossing over a lot of details.
'I seem to remember driving past a bowling alley a couple of blocks away,' he thought as he put his coat on again. 'I haven't been bowling in at least four years. Wonder if I still have it?' Deciding that it was a good way to kill some time, following a little to eat in the restaurant attached to the hotel, he made sure he had his key card in his wallet then left the room.
Just under an hour later he was hefting bowling balls experimentally, deciding on the best weight. Not even the heaviest one posed any difficulty, of course, but he wanted to look more or less normal doing this.
When his first ball was a perfect strike, he smiled to himself. Apparently his upgrades hadn't thrown him off too much at all.
Danny happily lost himself in the mechanics of bowling, the rumble of the balls and the crash of pins falling a background to his ruminations on what he was going to say to Antonio. Hopefully things would go smoothly.
"Come on, Colin, we need to be at the PRT building in forty minutes," Dragon said with good-natured exasperation, watching her best friend test, yet again, his latest modification to his weapon of choice. The other Tinker nodded absently, watching the readings on half a dozen different pieces of test equipment which were connected via fine wires to many places on the three-dimensional set of electronics on the bench. He tweaked a couple of settings very slightly on one device, then tapped on the keyboard of the computer with was also plugged into the entire setup.
Finally, apparently satisfied, he straightened up and smiled a little. "Excellent. A zero point three seven percent decrease in power consumption. Very gratifying indeed."
"Zero point three seven percent?" she asked. "So that'll give you… approximately four seconds more output on a charge on that particular system?"
"Three point nine one seconds, yes."
"So you'll get just under four seconds more use, out of the more than seventeen and a half minutes possible you already had power for, on a weapon that will overheat in fifteen seconds and takes two minutes to cool down." She gazed at him. "And it only took you how many hours of work to manage this?"
"Approximately..." He looked at his screen. "Twenty one."
She paused, before synthesizing a sigh. "You do realize that your drive for efficiency might be getting just a little out of hand, Colin?"
He looked back, appearing mildly puzzled. After a moment, he turned to his bench and quickly disconnected all the test gear, then reassembled his halberd, sliding the guts of it into the outer casing. Once the last screw was tightened to the correct torque with the relevant tool, he collapsed it and stowed it on the back of his armor, standing up at the same time. Reaching for his helmet he said, sounding just a little defensive, "There is nothing wrong with striving for optimal efficiency."
"Oh, Colin," she said with fond exasperation. "At some point we need to talk. Now, though, we need to leave." She picked up the case she'd brought in and put it on the nearest bench, opening it. "Although before we do, I have something for you."
Colin turned to look at her, then at the thing she'd taken out of the case. "Leet's tricorder?" he asked curiously.
His eyes widened slightly when she pulled out another, identical one. Internally she smiled, her humor subroutines finding his abruptly eager expression quite funny. "You managed to duplicate it!" he stated, sounding both pleased and slightly shocked.
"I did indeed," she replied with pleasure. "It wasn't easy, and I'm still having some trouble with the audio inducer which is a lot more complex than you'd expect, but I had a breakthrough yesterday morning with this design. Leet is very, very talented at producing incredibly clean and elegant devices. Why he can't duplicate them is a mystery to me, and I'm very sorry for him, it must be unbelievably frustrating."
She handed him the duplicated tricorder. "Studying this taught me some extremely interesting new concepts I can see a large number of derivative applications for. Without the experience in copying the wormhole generator it would have taken a lot longer, though. It's conceivable I wouldn't have been able to do it at all. But with the data I got from that task, this was… not easy, it was actually extremely hard, but possible. And I can now make as many as we require." She turned the case around to show him it had a dozen of the devices neatly stowed inside in a foam insert. "These are the first off the production line. I want to field test them, then tweak the design if necessary to optimize them. I'd love your input into that process, I've sent all the documentation on it to you."
"I am genuinely impressed, yet again, Dragon," he said softly as he turned the instrument over in his hands, then opened it. It made a small sound and lit up a number of displays. Examining the thing, he smiled a little. "More than impressed. Of course I'd be honored to assist in optimizing this design. I will study the files as soon as I have spare time."
"Thanks. Keep that one. I've got his original here, I need to get it back to him, along with some of the new ones. We'll need to decide who to let have the others for testing purposes. I also have nearly finished the manual, it's a very complex device to use properly, but remarkably versatile. Even more so than the TV series that inspired it showed."
"This may be useful for our assessment of Vectura," he noted as he put the tricorder into a storage space in his armor, then grabbed his helmet again, having put it down to take the device from her. Putting it on and connected it to the rest of his suit, he picked up an equipment case he'd prepared, and followed as she headed to the door. Shortly they were both making their way via different methods to the PRT facility.
Emily read the very sketchy information they had on the DWU Tinker, code name 'Vectura,' then closed the report folder with a snort of annoyance. "Hardly anything useful. We know nothing about where she came from, much about her abilities other than she can make appallingly effective walking mechs straight from an SF movie, or anything else other than she's part cat."
"I've still had no luck finding any documented encounters with a feline-human Tinker anywhere," Hannah said with a shrug. "It strongly implies she Triggered fairly recently."
"Or was very careful to stay out of sight," Emily suggested.
"Or that. There are a number of possibilities as to how she could have done it, if she did. Where and when the DWU or more likely the Family got in contact with her, though, I have no idea. Or why for that matter. But they do seem to be collecting Parahumans fairly quickly at the moment."
"Oh, god," Emily sighed, rubbing her temples again. "I can just feel that this is going to get strange again. At least she's not another goddam lizard. I might be able to deal with a cat-woman Tinker, and I never thought I'd say that."
Hannah smiled a little, retrieving the report. "They'll be here in an hour. I'll go and observe after Colin, Dragon, and the technical team have had a chance for an initial evaluation. Perhaps I can find out more about her."
"Worth a try. Keep me informed."
"Of course, Director," the military cape said as she stood up. "I'm going for lunch now, first."
"I've got to finish some of this work before I can do that," Emily muttered, looking at the pile of reports that needed signing off on. "Calvert's little operation has generated enough extra paperwork to make me tempted to ask the Family if Umihebi wants a chew toy for a while."
Hannah laughed a little uneasily, then nodded and left. Mumbling to herself about how someone should have shot Thomas Calvert at birth and saved everyone a lot of trouble, she picked the first report off the stack at her right elbow and started reading it, making notes in the margins with a red pen.
"Hello, we have an appointment," Lisa said to the PRT receptionist, who was looking up at her with slightly widened eyes. It wasn't the same one she'd met the first time she came in to talk to the Director, but the look was very similar. Like that time, the various members of the public that were in the lobby and the gift shop had all stopped to stare, many of them taking photos or video recordings. Linda was deliberately ignoring them, but she could smell the woman's nervousness.
Taylor's Saurial aspect put a hand on the Tinker's shoulder for a moment, which made her look at the lizard girl, then relax a little.
After a second or two, the woman at the desk looked down at her computer screen and moved the mouse, clicking a couple of times. "Yes, I've got it here, um, Metis." Lisa smiled very carefully at her, which seemed to help a little. "Armsmaster is on his way, in fact, you're a couple of minutes early."
"All right, thank you. We'll just wait over there, then," she replied. All three of them walked over to the waiting area, Linda sitting down in one of the free chairs. Lisa and 'Saurial' stood next to her. The half dozen people who had already been there stared at them fixedly, one of them with a cup of coffee half-way to his mouth.
"Hi," Linda said, after thirty seconds of silence. The rest of the lobby had more or less gone back to normal, although several of the PRT troopers were watching them closely, out of interest more than anything else. These days they seemed to take the Family in their stride, by and large. The Coil takedown and the Merchant operation had done wonders toward making them accepted as normal.
Some of the public, though, when suddenly confronted by two large lizards and an armored cat-woman… They looked a little shocked even now.
"Who are you?" one of the people opposite them asked curiously. She was a teenager, probably about fourteen or so, and had been typing rapidly on her phone when they walked in, while blowing bubbles with her gum. Lisa had noticed she was one of the ones who had immediately started recording them, and even now her phone was being held in a way that she probably thought was surreptitious, pointing at all three new arrivals.
"I'm Vectura," Linda introduced herself, smiling through her faceplate. Only the bottom part of her face was visible, the top half of the visor reflecting the rest of the room. The girl nodded, studying her, while the guy with the coffee resumed drinking it. "I'm with the DWU."
"Cool. Why does your helmet have those cat ear things on top?"
"That's where my ears go," Linda replied. "If they weren't there this thing would hurt." Going by scent she was relaxing a lot as she spoke which Lisa found interesting and helpful.
"Huh?" The girl looked mildly puzzled, then enlightened. "Oh! You, like, have cat ears?"
Linda nodded, smiling.
"O. M. G." The young woman said each letter slowly and clearly, staring at the Tinker. "And you have a tail too!" She seemed fascinated. "That's so cool!"
"I like it," Linda replied, still smiling.
Smelling a familiar scent, Lisa looked away from the now very excited young lady who was asking a lot of questions over towards the bank of elevators, where one had opened to disgorge Armsmaster and Dragon, along with a couple of PRT people in the classic white lab-coat. She glanced at Taylor's aspect who looked back with a small nod.
"Hey, Vectura, they're ready for us," she said, cutting into the conversation the girl was having with her friend.
"Oh, right." Linda followed their eyes as she stood. "Sorry, I have to go."
"It was cool to meet you," the girl said, lifting her phone and snapping a photo of them all. She watched as they all headed across the lobby to meet the two Tinkers. Lisa could hear her phone making little clicking sounds as she kept taking photos.
"She says cool a lot, doesn't she?" Taylor said under her breath, grinning. Both the others snickered.
"Some people have favorite words," Lisa replied in a whisper. Nodding discreetly at Armsmaster, who was waiting for them, she added, "His is probably 'efficient.'"
Her friends suppressed laughter as they approached the people waiting for them. "Hello, Armsmaster, Dragon," 'Saurial' said politely. She indicated their own Tinker, who was smelling nervous again. "This is Vectura, as you may know."
"Pleased to meet you, Vectura," Dragon replied, stepping forward and holding out one armored gauntlet, which Linda took and shook. Armsmaster did the same.
"It's an honor to meet both of you," Linda replied, sounding sincere. "Your work is very impressive."
"Thank you," the Canadian said, emoting a definite smile even through her armor, which was a good trick. "We're looking forward to seeing your own work."
"I am definitely intrigued by the limited information we so far have," Armsmaster added. He looked past them at the people all watching them. "However, here is not the place to continue the discussion. Follow me, please, we're going to testing room two." He led the way back into the largest elevator, both technical people, who hadn't said anything yet, stepping aside to let them all follow him then bringing up the rear. Once the doors closed and the elevator started moving down completely silently, Armsmaster turned to them again.
"This is Doctor Wilson, he's an expert on Tinker research, and Doctor Ikari, who is a powers specialist." The former was a tall thin man with graying hair pulled back into a ponytail, and a face that looked like it was familiar with smiling a lot, as it was doing at the moment. The latter man was nearly a foot shorter, at least ten years younger, and combined short dark hair with piercing black eyes which were examining them all curiously. "There are other specialists we will call in if required but they are the ones we will mainly be using today, in addition to Dragon and myself."
Doctor Wilson stuck out his hand, which Linda took. "I'm very interested in seeing what you can do, Vectura," he said in jovial tones, his voice much deeper than they expected. "A new Tinker is always fascinating. I understand your specialty is transportation?"
"Yes," Linda replied, releasing his hand and nodding. "As far as I can work out." The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. Armsmaster led them all out into a wide corridor that Lisa's power told her confidently was ninety-seven point three feet below the parking area under the PRT building. As they walked along it, the woman continued, "There are a lot of other things I can do too, but they all seem to relate to transportation in some way, at least a little."
"Interesting," Doctor Ikari commented, pulling out a notebook and flipping through it, then jotting a few words down in quick shorthand. "Is this transportation expertise limited to such things as cars, motorcycles, and similar vehicles? Or is it more extensive?"
Linda glanced at Taylor's aspect, then Lisa. "More extensive. Much more extensive."
"I see." He made some more notes. "So, in some ways a superset of what the deceased Merchant Tinker Squealer was capable of," he added under his breath, scribbling away. "Most intriguing."
"Squealer was a talented hack in my opinion," Linda sighed. Lisa exchanged a glance with Taylor, who was keeping silent and just listening. "I can do a hell of a lot more than she ever dreamed of. And I have no intention of making anything that butt-ugly either."
"I'm very relieved to hear that," Armsmaster said with a dry tone, coming about as close to humor as Lisa had ever heard from him. "While she was talented in her own way her aesthetic sense left much to be desired, as did her judgment."
They reached the end of the corridor, having gone past a dozen or so doors, from behind some of which interesting sounds were coming. One of them had been labeled as a firing range, while some of the others were obviously other testing facilities or equipment storage. The double doors facing them were enormous, filling the fifteen foot by twenty foot corridor completely, and heavily reinforced. The Tinker reached out and put his hand on a sensor pad on the wall next to him, which beeped a couple of times.
"Armsmaster, authorization code alpha nine two slash five eight charlie," he said in a calm and even voice. The panel beeped again, a light going green, then the doors slid open with a hiss of hydraulics. "It's a rolling code that changes every six hours," he added to them, in a sort of general informational manner, before leading the way inside. Lisa wasn't entirely sure if it was just out of a wish to explain, or a subtle warning that the code would be different next time. Her power suggested it could be both.
The room on the other side of the door made them stop and look around with amazement. "Wow," Taylor said quietly. "This place is huge."
"Three hundred feet by two hundred by forty, the walls are ten feet of a Tinker-designed ultra-hard ceramic with a melting point of over three thousand degrees centigrade, and they're reinforced with a similar force-field to the one on the Rig," Dragon said. She went over to a control console on the wall and tapped a couple of icons. The doors closed and the walls flickered a pearlescent blue for a moment. "I've turned them on. Standard procedure in case of accidents. Which happen more often than you'd think." Her voice was knowing and slightly amused.
"We have a number of storerooms here full of almost anything you might require," Doctor Wilson said, waving at a door on one side which was much less solidly made than the main entrance. On the other side of the large double doors was a long window that stretched about fifty feet along the wall. "Over there," he went on, pointing at this, "is the viewing and control room. The window is nearly as tough as the walls, it's a hideously expensive laminated polymer and super-glass material, it would take a depleted uranium tank shell at point blank range in conjunction with the force field. If anything dangerous is done in here, we observe from in there, and we can record everything too. Not to mention analyze the results of our tests."
"What's the procedure you want to use?" 'Saurial' asked, looking around again, then at a set of half a dozen tables covered with various items that were set up in front of the window to the control room. "How do you actually test a Tinker?"
"The procedure varies greatly depending on the type of Tinker, the specialty if they have one, their limitations, and other such constraints," Doctor Ikari replied, writing something else in his notebook then slipping it back into his pocket and turning his full attention to them. "We have a selection of both normal technology and Tinker technology over here, along with a series of standard test approaches that we can use once we have some idea of what type of Tinker the testee is. Obviously with many new Parahumans that come to us, they themselves may not know much about their own abilities, and some of these exercises are designed to derive information about them."
"Since you already would appear to know a lot about your own powers, Vectura, we can skip some of the tests entirely. It would be helpful to try some of the remaining ones even so to give us a better concept of what you can do. But having seen the recordings of that extraordinary walking mech unit you built at the DWU, I suspect that there is probably little we can tell you about how your powers work." Doctor Wilson looked like he was more than a little dazzled by the memory. "I'd certainly like to see it for myself at some point, the machine is remarkable."
"I'd like to see it as well," Dragon said, sounding interested. "As would Armsmaster. The reports from the PRT troopers you let try it were very complimentary."
"We thought you might say that," Linda commented with a deliberately calm voice. "It's easy enough to arrange." She was already reaching into the pocket that held the fractally compressed machine. Pulling out the small sphere, which both Parahumans and scientists looked at curiously, she pressed it in the right places with one hand then casually tossed it past them. The sphere landed on the floor with a faint metallic clink and rolled about twenty feet, everyone watching it.
Lisa found their reactions when it suddenly unfolded into the blue and orange machine with the typical sound of stressed reality very satisfactory.
Still feeling somewhat shaky, Benny watched the streets go past as Rudy drove his car back towards home. Their wives, in the back seat, were talking in low voices to each other. They appeared to find their husband's reaction to seeing Mr Hebert somewhat peculiar but had stopped asking them about it after they'd made it clear they didn't want to reply.
"I was hoping for a nice relaxing afternoon out after the last job for the boss," he said after they'd driven a few miles away from Antonio's restaurant and were safely out of his territory. "Some good food in a quiet place, you know?"
Rudy nodded silently, watching the road ahead.
"Then he walks in. And Gino Corbi of all people greets him like a friend he hasn't seen in years. And Gino personally makes a reservation in Antonio's restaurant for him, just like that. No questions, he just does it."
"The man is definitely connected," Rudy agreed quietly. He sounded to Benny like he was doing his best not to think about the fact that the man had greeted them each by name on the way out the door. Benny himself was trying and failing to do the same thing.
"Fucking right he is," Benny said vehemently. "To places I don't want to think about. And he's managed to make everyone think he's just some harmless accountant or something. I mean, look at him! Skinny guy like that, he looks like Gino could break him in half." He shivered. "Right up to when you look in his eyes."
"He seemed nice enough to me," Clara said, both women having fallen silent and listening to the people in the front.
"You didn't see the things we saw, Clara," he replied, remembering, then trying to forget again. "Brockton Bay is fucking insane. And he's the man who runs it. The people he has wandering around there..."
"And the things," Rudy put in.
"Which may or may not also be people," Benny nodded. "You could feel you were being watched the entire time. God knows who or what by. Trust me, love, that guy is seriously dangerous and seriously high up in the organization. So high no one knows how high!"
Rudy's wife Ella said, "Are you sure you're not imagining things, you two? I've never heard of a family connection to Brockton Bay before. The Family, sure, you can't miss them, but not..."
Rudy shook his head sharply. "Benny's right. That trip was…" He swallowed. "Not fun."
They were all quiet for another few blocks. Eventually Clara said, in an apparent effort to change the subject, "Well, I still want a nice afternoon out. You ran out of there so fast I barely had time to finish eating."
Benny sighed very softly. "OK, what do you want to do now?"
She looked out the side windows, then pointed. "How about bowling? That's fun and we haven't been for a while."
Benny glanced at Rudy, who shrugged, indicated, slowed, and turned right, driving into the parking lot of the bowling alley she'd seen. "Why not?" he said. "I could go for some bowling and they serve good nachos here."
"That's the spirit," Ella giggled. Slapping him on the back of the head, quite gently, she added, "Come on, let's go have fun and forget about your worries."
"Yeah," Clara smiled as she got out, waiting for the others to exit the car. "It'll be great."
Also getting out, Benny looked over the car roof at his friend and partner, both of them rolling their eyes a little, but they followed as the two women headed into the establishment. She was probably right, he thought, this would take his mind off running into Boss Hebert. He enjoyed bowling.