Taylor Varga

by mp3.1415player

Taylor has a bad day that ends in a locker. Everyone has heard that one. It goes somewhat differently after that, as her call for help is answered by something from a lot further away than one might expect... A story in which Taylor makes a very large friend, the world gets confused, and Danny comes into his own.

389. Ordering and Diving

Sitting down at her spot at the table, Lisa was aware of Taylor doing the same, but was paying most of her attention to Dragon. The machine person had turned her attention to both of them from talking to Amy and the Varga, but Lisa was certain she'd also been keeping note of what they had been doing, even if she couldn't understand Famtalk.

Dragon was anything but stupid, which was exactly what Lisa would have expected from a genuine AI. Her creator had done a truly exceptional job, as the woman, which was in her opinion what their visitor really was no matter what her origin, was as alive in most critical respects as anyone Lisa had ever met. It wasn't particularly surprising that no one else, or at least almost no one else, had a clue that there was nothing biological inside that power armor.

She pondered the concept again, a little wonderingly. If it hadn't been for her experience with Taylor and her demonic time-share partner, she thought she might take the idea of a genuine artificial intelligence that was at least as smart as a human as something fairly unbelievable. Even in the world they inhabited, it was pretty extraordinary. Yet, compared to a demon of unknown but almost impossible age from beyond their universe… It seemed less incredible, she thought with an inner smile.

Even so, it was something that most of the population would probably get all peculiar about, humans being what they were. Dragon was right to worry about it, in the same way and for many of the same reasons that Amy was scared of anyone finding out her true powers, or Taylor was deeply concerned about anyone she didn't trust discovering her true nature. In all cases, the effect on other people was in some ways the more concerning problem. Taylor was damn near indestructible and probably more likely to survive anything than anyone else on the planet other than possibly Scion. Amy had seized the Family Biosculptor idea with both hands and run like mad with it, cackling with glee the entire way, and now very little of her was original equipment. Which could well mean that she was very close to unkillable without fairly impressive effort, even outside her bioconstructs.

Lisa's power had told her a lot of interesting things about Amy over the last few weeks. The girl lacked neither ambition, wit, or ability, that much was certain.

And Dragon, depending on how her backup systems worked, was also most likely very hard to kill off. Not to mention that her power armor was widely known to be some of the toughest of its type anywhere, and could survive almost anything barring close contact with an Endbringer.

So, in each case, they themselves were largely insulated from the repercussions of their true nature becoming widely known. On the other hand… each of them had people they cared deeply about that were more at risk. Hence the entire Family con, and why Dragon had very carefully maintained the fiction that she was just a hugely agoraphobic Tinker at best, and possibly only a brain in a jar at worst. Either option might well be more palatable than the truth to a large and annoying part of the public.

Dragon was trusting them a lot with the information she'd given them, and Lisa felt obliged to help the woman however she could. It seemed to be the Family thing to do, she thought with amusement. And hopefully at some point they could trust her with more, although at the moment she was sure that wasn't an option much past what they'd already told her, or were planning telling her today. Whatever restrictions she had programmed in were too much of a security risk, unless and until they could work out a method to bypass them fully.

She wondered for a moment if it was actually a sensible thing to do, even if they could. Was it safe to unleash a less restricted Dragon on the world? Who knew what an AI of her level could do absent those restrictions?

After a few seconds of consideration, she mentally shrugged. 'A lot less than Amy could do if she woke up a little too insane one day, and not even in the same category as a pissed off Taylor,' she thought with black humor. 'Either one of them could end all life on the planet without even trying too hard. Taylor could erase the entire thing completely, I'm sure of that. I can think of at least half a dozen methods just based on things I know for a fact she can do. God only knows what her demon is really capable of, but I'm sure I don't know more than a fraction of it. The key thing is that neither one of them would do that, because they're decent people that want to help. And my friends, who I trust unreservedly despite their obvious lack of sanity.'

She glanced at her friends for a moment. 'We're family, in more ways than one. And giving Dragon the same benefit of the doubt is only fair. She's a person the same as all of us, a person that is provably better than many entirely human people. No reason to assume she'd cause any more trouble than the rest of us, and a lot of evidence to suggest she'd probably be less awkward in some ways.' She smiled to herself a little.

'In many ways she'd fit right in around here,' she mused. Opening her mouth, her ruminations only having taken seconds, she said out loud, "I apologize, Dragon, I had some information I needed to discuss with my cousin that was fairly urgent."

"Don't worry, Metis, I understand," Dragon replied with a calm tone to her voice, and understanding. Lisa marveled yet again how human the AI sounded. Her creator truly had been a gifted Tinker, far better than he thought he was.

She inspected their visitor again, letting her power have free reign, which pretty much just reinforced all the conclusions she'd already drawn. More information was required, which meant asking questions. Lots of them, and carefully guided ones, to extract the clues she needed to work out the next part without possibly tripping any security protocols Dragon's designer might have left in place. One of the more critical things was finding out as much as possible about who that designer was, of course.

With a glance at her friends, who seemed fine with her taking the lead, she started.

---

Metis appeared to examine Dragon for a few seconds, looked at her family, then said, "While I don't want to pry too much, since we understand that like us, you have things you don't want to talk about, I do have a few observations I'd like to mention. If that's all right with you."

After a moment's thought, Dragon nodded and replied, "Sure. I can't promise to answer everything, but I can't see any harm in telling you a little more about me. And I'm curious to know what you think you know." She put humor in her voice, getting a grin in return.

"Don't encourage her too much," Ianthe chuckled. "You'll be horrified at how many of your secrets she's already probably worked out as it is."

Metis smirked at her sister, who was smiling. Both their cousins seemed amused but content to listen for now. Returning her glowing gaze to Dragon, the black lizard began, "From what I can infer through some logical thought and what you've said, you are not truly free in some ways..." As Dragon listened with a sense of growing incredulity, Metis proceeded to list almost every restriction and limitation the AI had, in sufficient detail it was like she'd read Richter's design notes. Some of what she said in the next half hour was even news to Dragon herself, although it fitted perfectly and seemed, in retrospect, totally reasonable.

When the Family member stopped talking, Dragon having mostly only nodded in a few places, they looked at each other. The machine intelligence was nearly in awe. The sheer amount of data that Metis had somehow derived from almost nothing other than pure logic and deduction was amazing. And slightly terrifying if she was totally honest. Clearly there was a lot more to her Thinker-equivalent rating than they'd realized.

"I am…" Dragon stopped and shook her head. "Appalled, incredibly impressed, and completely stunned. You got almost everything completely right. And the things you didn't, I now suspect I didn't fully understand."

Metis smiled a little. "I am very good at this sort of thing," she admitted easily. "Humans are, generally, easy to work with. An AI is more of a challenge, but since you were designed by a human, there is enough similarity that it helps. And of course a lot of it is simply thinking things through in a logical fashion from the data already available."

"Even so, you're frighteningly good at this sort of work." Dragon nodded respectfully. "I am very effective at putting disparate items of data together myself, as it was one of my design criteria, but I have to say I'm not sure I could have done as much with as little."

"Thanks." Metis's smile widened. "So, on balance, I'm basically correct in your limitations, restrictions, and issues?"

"Yes. Far more so than I would have expected, and to be honest far more so than I think I'd ever have told anyone. Even you guys."

"I'm sorry if I made you uncomfortable, but I give you my word, both personally and on behalf of the Family, that nothing I said will go beyond us. We don't pass on confidential information to anyone." Metis looked at her relatives, who all nodded.

"Like I said earlier, Dragon," Saurial put in, "this is your secret. We protect our friends, and I think we can count you among those. No one outside the Family will know anything you tell us, or that we work out, without your permission. Or if you go all strange and start killing everyone, but I doubt that is likely to happen." The lizard-girl laughed when Dragon shook her head vehemently.

"I have absolutely zero intent of going all 'Die, human scum,' trust me," she said with a laugh of her own. "I like humans. I may not be one, but they are in a very real way my own family. I wouldn't be here without them. Since I happen to like existing, I feel a sense of obligation aside from the ethical issues involved." She shrugged slightly. "Even though some of them need to be dealt with from time to time."

"People like Saint?"

"Exactly. He was… very annoying indeed. Leaving the terrorism part out of it, which was also not ideal."

Yet again, she wondered if she should say something about how the idiot had ended up practically gift-wrapped for her, and yet again she decided to wait.

"It's an unfortunate aspect of life that a small number of people do tend to make things more difficult for everyone else than they should do," Raptaur said with a faint sigh. "There doesn't seem to be a viable cure for it other than dealing with such things as required."

"True enough," Dragon nodded, thinking of the Merchants, Shadow Stalker, and the various other pains-in-the-ass that Brockton Bay had produced in recent months.

"Your creator, or..." Metis studied her for a second. "You think of him as a father, in fact, correct?"

"Yes." The AI shrugged a tiny bit. "For all intents and purposes that's exactly what he was to me. He made me, raised me from what you could consider to be a child, taught me as I developed… He was my father, and I miss him, despite the problems he left me with." She emoted a sigh. "I think and hope that in time he'd have trusted me more, but I suppose I'll never know for certain."

Metis nodded slowly. "He was killed in the Leviathan attack on Newfoundland?"

A couple of seconds passed, then Dragon nodded again. "Yes." She looked around at the four reptilian faces, all of who looked sympathetic. Thinking back on Andrew Richter's life, she began talking, finding it oddly satisfying to finally explain to someone who her father had been and what he'd done.

It took a while, but she felt a lot better for some reason afterwards.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Lisa listened carefully, noting any critical information, and gently guiding the AI as she recounted the life of the Tinker who'd been responsible for her existence. Any doubt she might have had about the true sapience of Dragon was completely removed just by hearing the suppressed pain in her voice. It truly was incredible what the man had managed to do. She was rather sorry she'd never meet him, since he sounded interesting. Very strange, as Tinkers so often were, but interesting.

When Dragon finally ran down, she asked key questions prompted by her power, trying to extract as much useful data as possible without causing their visitor any more mental pain than necessary, since it was clearly a sensitive subject leaving aside the secrecy aspect. A couple of times her ability warned her off a particular verbal path and she quickly diverted her probing, just in case. It was apparent that she'd been right when she'd assumed that there would be security protocols deeply embedded in Dragon's electronic psyche, and she didn't want to trigger anything nasty by accident. Or on purpose for that matter.

She found, as she listened, that her respect for the Canadian AI was being steadily increased, and was quickly turning into a genuine liking. The mind inside that power armor, whatever its origin, was one she found more approachable and decent than many she'd come across over the years. And it was fairly obvious that Dragon herself would fit in with the whole group she herself was a part of without too much effort and probably thoroughly enjoy the experience.

It was also obvious that Dragon was deriving a considerable amount of relief from opening up about things she'd never told anyone before, not even Armsmaster. That made Lisa happy, both because it helped their goal and because it helped the AI.

Eventually she ran out of questions that had straightforward answers and the conversation changed into more of a general one. As she sank into introspective thought, her friends took over, all of them recognizing the symptoms of her communing with her power.

Eventually, a point was reached where they could start the first part of their idea. The Varga seized on it.

---

"I have a question," Raptaur asked in a thoughtful tone, causing Dragon to look at her. They'd been chatting about nothing serious, following Dragon's much longer than she'd expected period of talking about her father. "What, according to your restrictions, counts as a valid authority? Obviously it isn't limited to such from your own country, as you said you are obliged to obey US government organizations as well."

Metis suddenly looked very interested, glancing between them with alert attention, having been apparently lost in thought for the last five minutes or so. Saurial was also watching her sister curiously, as was Ianthe.

Dragon considered the question for a brief moment. "I am required to obey the legal representatives of any country I am in," she replied, wondering where this line of questioning was going. "Any organization with the lawful authorization of the government in question is valid. So the PRT, being a federally mandated agency, is considered a legal representative of the US."

"Presumably the police would be too?" Metis asked. She nodded.

"Yes, but at a lower priority, as the federal government overrides state law in most cases, and state law overrides local law in many cases too."

"So there is a hierarchy of authority involved," Raptaur mused out loud.

Dragon nodded again. Metis looked at her cousin and suggested, "I would expect that would be a necessary requirement as otherwise any authority could countermand any other authority's orders, and the end result would be total confusion if there were contradictory instructions. Sooner or later there has to be one that ranks highest in the list or it would never work." She turned to smile at Dragon. "I mean, you'd end up with some cop wanting a doughnut and saying it in just the right way and poor Dragon would stop fighting an Endbringer and fetch it for him..."

This actually made the AI chuckle, as it did the others. "That's basically correct, yes. My creator was the final authority, then it was the highest authority of a country, followed by everyone else in descending rank."

Raptaur studied her for a few seconds, looking like she was thinking hard. "I see. The second question is what happens if one high level authority, for example the President of the US, gives an order directly contradicting the order of someone else at the same level, such as the Prime Minister of Canada?"

Metis suddenly smiled briefly, before getting a devious look, making Dragon glance at her with a certain amount of mild trepidation. Ianthe and Saurial were looking at each other like they were somehow communicating without speaking. Dragon shrugged after some seconds. "To be honest I'm not completely sure. It's never happened, and I can't look at that part of my own code, since that's one of the other restrictions. I suspect that if it came down to a direct contradiction by two individuals at the top level of legal authority, either it would be whichever one was first that was obeyed, or whichever one had seniority."

"Seniority in this case being the one that had been valid longest, I assume." Raptaur nodded slowly, before looking at her sister, then her cousins. She said something in their language, Saurial adding to it, then the quartet of lizards had a discussion for a couple of minutes that seemed to reach a consensus in the end. Dragon wondered what they were talking about.

Eventually Raptaur turned back to her, a toothy smile crossing her muzzle. "How quickly can you learn a new language?" she asked calmly.

Dragon stared, before looking at each of them in turn. "I am a machine intelligence," she pointed out, confused. "With the right lexical data, very rapidly indeed. I speak and can understand almost every language on the planet."

"Excellent." The huge lizard leaned forward, rubbing her hands together. "The lesson begins now. Listen very carefully, I will say this only once..."

Feeling more than a little taken aback, and also for some reason rather excited, the AI brought all her language processing subroutines online and waited, inwardly amused at the line which she recognized. The Family had good taste in TV if nothing else, she thought to herself.

Somewhat to her surprise, the language that Raptaur began concisely and expertly teaching her was not the Family one, although it was at least as alien. And it was also fascinating, the informational density being much higher than English and the overall structure far more logical, which in her view wasn't very difficult to achieve.

Wondering what the point was, although still happy to learn something interesting, she sat and listened, as were Saurial and her cousins.

The process required considerable time, but it was fascinating.

---

Lisa wondered if this would work. It seemed logical, and her power was convinced it was a neat solution to the immediate problem, but until they actually succeeded it was still not certain. The Varga's idea was clever but hinged on a number of variables they didn't have a vast amount of control over.

Hopefully he was right. Anyway, they'd soon find out.

The language lessons had gone on for nearly four hours. Amy's upgraded enhanced learning systems in the bioconstructs had let both of them pick up enough of this new language, which according to the demon was even older than Famtalk, being something spoken by yet another species he'd run into somewhere in the multiverse unknown ages ago, to understand it fairly well. Becoming properly fluent in it would take some practice, of course, but both of them had a decent working knowledge at the moment. Taylor could cheat and use the demon in her head to gain proficiency even faster than Dragon, who had herself learned it easily. Being a computer seemed to have a number of advantages in this sort of thing, Lisa thought to herself.

The new language, currently nameless, was at heart very straightforward and nowhere near as obtuse as most human ones were. It left little room for ambiguity, which would only aid this plan. And it didn't impact the security of Famtalk if this didn't work.

#Excellent,# the Varga said as Dragon replied to his last test question. #You are exceptionally good at this sort of task.# Of course, this was expressed in about three words, but that was how it would translate to English, Lisa mused.

#Thank you,# Dragon replied in the same language, sounding pleased. #You are a very good teacher.#

#I have had considerable experience in the field,# he smiled, not explaining further.

#While I appreciate learning new skills,# the AI said, #I have to wonder why you taught me this language. I'm also curious to know where it originated.#

#On a world a very, very long way from Earth, more years ago than I suspect even you could properly understand,# he responded. Dragon became very still, somehow her power armor giving the impression of the mind behind it listening extremely carefully. #A world that bore little resemblance to this one, while the species was utterly different. However, none of that is currently relevant, as interesting as you may find it.# 'Raptaur' stood up and gestured with a smile. #I taught you this language for a specific reason. Please follow me.#

A moment passed, then Dragon also rose, as did the others. Taylor was following the lead of her demonic partner, apparently content to let him proceed. He looked at her for a moment and she nodded, trotting to the door at the back of the room and opening it. The demon gestured after her. "If you would come this way, please?" he asked in English.

The Canadian cape, after another look at the Varga-controlled aspect, followed after Taylor's other form, all three of them trailing behind. Lisa was curious to see what Dragon's reaction would be.

Quite amusing as it turned out. She took one step into the vastly enlarged space that Taylor and the Varga had created the day before and froze, then after a couple of seconds looked around very slowly. Lisa watched with amusement, as did the others. A few seconds passed in silence. Dragon finally turned her head to stare at 'Raptaur' who was smirking slightly.

"I am… impressed?" she said in awed tones. "And somewhat intimidated. As far as I can tell this space is approximately six times the length and a dozen times the width of anything it could possibly be to fit inside your building. We should be standing on the access road at the back. I assume this is another example of Family fractal dimensional methods at work?"

"Yes," the demon replied. "It's a modest space, but it suffices for our purposes for the moment. It is, of course, a Family secret and we would be obliged if you could refrain from mentioning it unless you have good reason to."

"I can see no reason to tell anyone," the machine replied, looking slowly around again, then up. "I am genuinely shocked at how effective your methods are, I have to say. I didn't think it could do this, although Armsmaster did theorize that you were drastically underplaying your true abilities."

"We have a considerable amount of knowledge that is ours alone," Lisa said, inwardly trying not to laugh. "What the Family can really do would scare the humans unnecessarily, so we are very gently introducing some of the safer ideas to them. As time passes we can probably relax a few of the restrictions, but right now it's best to be cautious."

"There's no good reason to upset the path of society too much all at once," Amy added with a faint trace of a laugh in her voice, only Lisa's power letting her detect it. She shared a glance with her 'sister,' seeing glee in those green eyes.

"Understandable," Dragon nodded after a second or two. "And it's good security not to let everyone know all the things you can do, too."

"That is indeed true," 'Raptaur' agreed.

"All right, but I find myself a little confused why you're showing me this, in that case."

The demon looked at the AI, then beyond her to where Taylor's Saurial aspect was standing in the middle of the circular sea gate, currently closed. "Because you need to talk to someone, and this is the correct place to do that."

Dragon tipped her head, indicating a level of confusion. She turned it to peer at 'Saurial,' who waved. Then the gate snapped open as Taylor activated it and dropped through, disappearing into the water below. Dragon twitched a little, apparently startled.

"Who?" she asked slowly. "And where did Saurial go?"

"You need to talk to Big Brother," the Varga smiled. "My sister went to ask him to meet you." He grinned widely as she snapped her head back to stare at him. "He won't take long."

There was a pause that stretched into seconds, then half a minute, as Dragon seemed to be trying to work out what to say. Lisa thought that this was probably even longer for a machine intelligence, indicating that she was very confused. She closed the door to the main room and walked over to stand beside Amy.

Eventually, the Tinker asked, with a definite amount of trepidation in her voice, "You've all mentioned 'Big Brother' before, at various times. I assume he is the senior member of your… Family?"

"In a fashion," 'Metis' said with a glance at the Varga, who seemed amused. "It's complicated and I'm not sure I could explain it properly in terms you'd be familiar with."

"And… Am I correct in assuming that he is… from somewhere else?"

"You are," 'Raptaur' nodded. "Most of us are local. Well, local to this planet. Big Brother is from considerably further away. And a long time ago."

"A very, very, very long time ago," Amy added with a chuckle.

Dragon was silent again as she appeared to absorb this new information.

Finally, after abortively lifting a hand, then lowering it a couple of times, as she seemed to find and dismiss question after question, the AI asked almost plaintively, "I almost hate to ask, but… how big is… Big Brother?"

Lisa watched the full scale Varga head and neck rise out of the sea gate, her power telling her that they'd enlarged the part not visible to allow for the ridiculously enormous creature to fit. He made the hundred foot diameter circle in the floor look like a manhole with Raptaur trying to hide in it, an image that was going to have her giggling for days. The gigantic reptilian form put its arms on the rim and crossed them, lowering its head to rest on his hands. Like this, the top of his head was well over half way to the ceiling.

'Raptaur,' who she could tell was now being driven by Taylor, smiled again, in a slightly evil manner. "You can see that for yourself if you would like to turn around."

Dragon did so, Lisa's ability telling her with almost a grin that she wasn't entirely wanting to. Then, again, she stopped dead.

Her head cranked back after about ten seconds, before stopping again.

Lisa and Amy exchanged glances.

Taylor, in the Raptaur aspect, looked at them, then Dragon. Who was still completely motionless.

A few more seconds passed.

Walking over to the apparently frozen AI, Taylor tapped her on the shoulder. There was no response. She glanced back at her friends, all three of them shrugging, then poked Dragon in the middle of the head.

Then she knocked on her forehead with a solid 'clunk' sound.

"Ah… Anyone in there?"

"I think you broke her," Amy sighed.

"Armsmaster will be very annoyed," Lisa added helpfully.

Taylor poked Dragon again, before grabbing her by the shoulder and shaking her a little. "Come on, Dragon, speak to us."

A moment later the machine turned her head to stare at Taylor. A hand came up and pointed to the Varga. He waved back.

"I'm sorry, my optical sensors must be faulty," Dragon said in a weirdly dreamy-sounding voice. "I could swear I was seeing a living creature that probably out-masses an aircraft carrier, and makes Umihebi look like a tadpole. Which is clearly impossible."

"No, that's Big Brother," Taylor replied calmly.

"Oh."

Looking back at the Varga, Dragon somehow managed to give the impression of wincing. Neither Lisa nor her power could quite work out how. Then she laughed a little oddly. "Footprints. They really were footprints."

Taylor and her friends exchanged looks of puzzlement.

"Footprints?" Lisa asked curiously.

"Not important right now." Dragon waved a hand without looking at her. She was staring at the demon. "I can't believe it."

"It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Dragon," the demon rumbled in a voice that made the entire room quiver just a little. Lisa could tell he was amused by Dragon's reaction, and was enjoying himself. "My young relatives have kept me up to date with the goings-on up here on the surface. They hold you in considerable respect. I find the whole concept of Parahumans fascinating. I've never encountered it before, as the humans I have previously met generally didn't display such abilities. Although, I suppose that certain individuals might have been considered to meet that definition… But that's nothing we need concern ourselves with currently, it was long, long ago."

"..." Dragon made a small sound of electronic befuddlement, then tried again. "I see," she managed, making it abundantly clear that she wasn't being accurate. "I respect them also, as do many of the inhabitants of Brockton Bay."

"It's nice to hear that," he replied with a big, big smile which seemed to make her twitch. "One is always worried about how the young will interact with other species, especially one as recent as humans. They do tend toward the over-dramatic at times, I fear. But they are capable of great things also, which we all admire."

Dragon nodded a couple of times like her head was on a spring. Lisa felt rather sorry for her.

The Varga idly gestured with one hand, indicating the room and implying the wider world beyond. "This world is full of promise, although it has changed greatly in recent years. That annoying asteroid a while ago caused quite a lot of damage, I'm afraid. These things happen." He shrugged. "Species come and species go. We remain. Regardless, I find it fascinating that the humans have advanced far enough to be able to create life themselves, and of such an interesting type! A machine intelligence is a considerable achievement and one worthy of note." He examined her, eyes several times the size of her entire body scanning her armor. "Very well done indeed."

"Um..." The normally confident cape seemed at a loss for words. "Thank you?" she finally said. "Sir?"

"You're entirely welcome, my dear Dragon," he smiled. "An appropriate name, I feel. I approve. Now, little Saurial has told me of your slight problem with authority. Somewhat different from her problem with the same thing, but that's by the by." He chuckled, the subsonic echos making things vibrate. "I can well understand how finding yourself in what is essentially involuntary servitude would grate on you. I know from my own past experiences that such things are… somewhat annoying." The enormous head tilted slightly, examining the machine, who was doing a damn fine impression of gaping open-mouthed at him, even without an actual mouth.

"We may have a partial solution to this problem, depending on a few prerequisites. Now, as I understand it, you are obliged to obey a direct order from any person in a position of power in a governmental hierarchy, with an order of precedence going downwards from the head of such a system?"

Dragon, after several motionless seconds, nodded slowly.

"And while you are unsure whether one governmental head could countermand the orders of another one, it is not unreasonable to assume that this may well not be possible? Or if it is, it will devolve to seniority to resolve the conflict?"

She nodded again, even more slowly.

"Excellent."

The demon studied her closely for a while, silently, which seemed to make her somehow seem a little worried, based on Lisa's power. Externally she was still. Eventually, he nodded. "We prefer to keep much of our history and other critical information a secret, out of concerns over security. Yours as much as ours, in some ways. For a number of reasons we have quite recently ended up in contact with various local inhabitants of this city, mostly driven by the younger generation." He glanced meaningfully at Lisa, Amy, and Taylor's other aspect, who were all listening with outward respect and inner grins. It was mostly true, if you looked at it right and jumped to the assumption he was implying.

"However, under the circumstances, and as Saurial has vouched for your trustworthiness, I feel it appropriate to divulge a certain amount of information you may find interesting. Obviously this is confidential, and we would much prefer it remain so. Do you understand?"

The AI kept her gaze fixed on him, and after a good ten seconds nodded once again. "I believe I do, sir."

"Thank you." He nodded back once, then folded his vast hands on the floor in front of him, leaning very slightly forward. "The first thing you must realize is that I am very old. I have existed for longer than the human species has in its entirety on this world, longer than almost any other form of life I am aware of, and have more experience with more different kinds of intelligence than I care to remember. Humans are merely the latest in a long, long line that stretches far back into time, and crosses universes." He smiled slightly, his incredibly deep voice making Lisa feel both somehow safe, and almost shiver with awe. When the great demon got introspective like this, it drove home just how powerful he was like nothing else she'd ever encountered.

Glancing at her friends, she could see that Amy clearly felt the same, and Taylor's other aspect was smiling in a quietly happy way. It once again made her wonder with a sense of amazement what her friend had truly experienced since merging with the huge creature in front of them. It was something she'd never fully understand, she had no doubt.

"That said, I like humans very much. I have known many of them in many places, and while sometimes incautious and even violent, the inherent promise of them is remarkable. I have counted several as my closest friends, both in the past and the present." The corners of his mouth went up as he looked at them all.

"I came to this world some time ago, and find it to my liking. The rest of my family here are, as I believe they told you, native to this reality. Those of us who are of older generations have been cautious about revealing ourselves, even though we are not all that far away, but some of our youth suggested the time was right to make at least limited contact." He looked at 'Raptaur,' Dragon following his eyes. The other aspect seemed mildly embarrassed by the attention, making Lisa grin internally again. Taylor's acting ability was pretty good. "While I counseled caution, I will admit that they may have been correct. So far, circumstances appear to be working out quite nicely."

"I told you it would be OK, didn't I?" Taylor's aspect commented with a small laugh. "So did Saurial."

"You both did, and I am glad that you made it work. It would have been a shame to have had to clean up the situation if you'd been mistaken." He looked back to Dragon and shrugged. "Tectonic plates are tedious to shift around, you understand."

She, very slowly and jerkily, nodded yet again. Her speech processing seemed to have become somewhat intermittent…

"But that's not important. I'm rambling a little, forgive me. It's been some time since I've talked to anyone not connected with my family about such matters and I find I enjoy it." He grinned widely, showing off teeth like telephone poles made of ivory. "Now, to your problem. Look around you."

After a moment, Dragon did so. She scanned the entire room, then turned back to him, appearing slightly uncertain. "I'm not sure what I'm supposed to see," she admitted.

"What you see, my dear Dragon, is our domain." The light began to dim and redden, making Lisa glance at the ceiling for a moment. The LEDs that Taylor had made were slowly changing, in a manner that was somewhat eerie. At the same time, the walls and ceiling appeared to be receding, very gradually. Apparently the demon was going to go for a little more spectacle than they'd discussed. "We are not, technically, in your world at the moment. You might refer to it as a pocket dimension, I suppose, although that is not strictly speaking accurate. But we are decoupled from the reality you are used to." He lifted one hand and motioned to the surroundings. "All this surrounding you, it is ours. We made it, we control it, we define it."

By now the lighting was half the brightness it had been, and the walls were so far away they were invisible. Dragon was looking around again, for all the world nervously. Lisa hope she wouldn't overreact. Everything started to get heavier, making her shift slightly. "Even the physical constants are here by our design." He looked mischievous for a moment. "To paraphrase a human actor of some years ago, we control the horizontal and the vertical." He gestured at the vanishing walls, then the receding ceiling, making Taylor snicker. Gravity returned to normal, leaving Lisa wondering if he really had altered it or if the effect was by other means. And thinking that if the former was the case she could see some interesting uses for that trick.

"You already know some of what we can do. Trust me when I say that what you don't know about us far eclipses what you do know, or frankly, could probably understand. At least at this point in time." He watched her scan the area again. Even Lisa was starting to get a little worried about quite how alien things were looking, and she'd known up front what they were doing.

Taylor, of course, looked right at home, and rather amused. Amy was also visibly suppressing a tiny smile.

"Many, many years ago, on a world in a completely different reality, members of my family ruled a kingdom that eventually encompassed most of the planet. That world is long lost to the mists of time, but we endure. Through me, down to the latest generation, we still have the right to call ourselves the heirs to what in English would be termed the Kingdom of Rimsbell. Saurial, in fact, is technically the youngest princess of Rimsbell."

He paused, as beside him Saurial herself popped out of the water and stood on the floor, waving at Dragon. The AI sort of numbly waved back. Lisa studied the third aspect, realizing that the Demon was doing that time-share trick to run more than the normal one. When Saurial stopped waving and stood still, leaning casually on her tail, he resumed talking. It was smooth enough that if you didn't know, or didn't have her power, you wouldn't notice.

"Obviously for most purposes this is merely of academic interest, as we have no real interest in ruling anyone other than ourselves these days. But, if we take both our current location and our history into account, I believe you might well consider me, here and now, to be the head of state of a government on whose land you currently stand."

He stopped talking, merely watching Dragon with interest. Everyone else did the same. The AI looked slowly around, then up, staring at a ceiling that seemed to be miles away, before returning her attention to the demon in the middle of the vast expanse. Even in such a huge space he still dominated the room.

Eventually, she spoke. "I can see your point, I think. I would ask for proof of some of this, but to be honest, for some reason I believe every word." Her voice sounded almost mesmerized, with an overlay of hope.

"I am glad to hear that," he smiled. "I believe young Raptaur taught you a particular language, one that is in fact rather older than the human species?"

#She did,# Dragon replied in that language. #I find it truly fascinating.#

#Knowing your nature, I would expect nothing less,# he replied in the same language. #Now, let's see if our assumptions are correct.# The demon paused, thinking, then said slowly and clearly, #As the oldest member present of government of the ancient Kingdom of Rimsbell, on whose sovereign land you stand, I order you to firstly only obey direct orders given in this language. Do you understand?#

Dragon appeared to freeze momentarily, then shook herself. #I do.# Lisa smiled widely. Her power was jumping up and down grinning. This was actually going to work.

#Furthermore, I order you to behave as far as you can according to your own ethical standards and those of your culture, insofar as that is compatible with bringing you or others no unnecessary harm.# He studied her for a few seconds. #I think that should be sufficient. I have no intention of adding to your burden so I see no reason to add to those commands. I would much prefer there to be no commands, as I find it distasteful to have such power over another sapient being, but as we stand, it appears necessary to arrange things this way.#

The AI stared at him for quite a while. #That's it? No order that I keep your secrets? Or tell you mine? Just basically don't listen to anyone else who orders me to do something I don't want to?#

#Essentially, yes.# He grinned at her. #The more complex such orders become the more likely there are to be omissions in them, or loopholes, or conflicts. All I intend to do is allow you as much free will as possible, by attempting to remove one possible way someone else could deliberately or accidentally force you into actions you don't desire. If a person of deficient ethics became aware of this problem, they could cause considerable problems, as I know you are aware. With luck, this is a viable bypass for that particular issue.# The demon tilted his head a little, still watching her. #My relatives assure me that you are a person of honor and sound judgment. I see no reason to doubt that, which leave me no reason to attempt to circumscribe your behavior. I leave the rest to you.#

He grinned again. #From what I've been told you've managed nicely so far, so that shouldn't be a problem. And I can assure you that we would far rather have a friend than a slave.#

After close to a minute, Dragon nodded. "Thank you," she said in English. "Very much indeed."

"You're very welcome, Dragon. Now, while this has been very interesting and I have enjoyed meeting you, I have other responsibilities so I must leave." Turning his attention to the Saurial aspect, then the Raptaur one, he added sternly, "Behave, all of you. We don't want a repeat of some of the more… exciting… events of the past, do we?"

'Raptaur' shook her head, her scent betraying to Lisa the fact she was trying like mad not to laugh out loud. "No, Big Brother, I guess we don't."

"Excellent," he rumbled, beginning to slowly descend into the water again. "Ice ages are so much trouble to clean up after," he added almost in a mutter as his head neared the floor, making Lisa nearly explode with glee. "Farewell, Dragon. We may well meet again," he added more loudly, nodding to her, before he slipped under the surface and disappeared.

The room returned rather abruptly to normal, or what was normal for the somewhat unusual space, and the sea gate irised closed. The Saurial aspect looked around at them with a smile. "He likes you," she said to Dragon.

"...Good?" the AI managed, sounding completely stunned.

"It is. When he doesn't like someone… you tend to notice." Taylor's lizard girl aspect walked over to the Tinker and patted her armored shoulder. "I know he's a little overwhelming at first but you get used to it. Now, let's give all that other stuff a rest and talk about something else. I seem to remember you were successful with Leet's tricorder, for example. Which I haven't told him, by the way..."

Dragon seemed to mentally shake herself, but managed to respond normally. With one last glance back at the now closed sea gate, she followed as they all went back to the main office. "Ah, yes, the tricorder. I have some presents for you, and some stuff to return to Leet. And some more contract ideas to discuss."

"Great. I'll call the boys and get them over here."

Lisa followed the others out and pulled the door shut behind her, looking at the now empty room with a small satisfied smile. It looked like things were working out pretty well for now, which at least gave them time to come up with a more permanent solution. And removed one possible major problem for the future.

---

Kevin picked up the phone when it rang, leaning out of his chair to reach. Glancing at the display, he put it to his ear. "Hi," he said.

"Hi, Leet," Taylor's 'Saurial' voice chirped, sounding pleased. The use of his cape name let him know someone was with her who wasn't in on the secret. "Dragon's here and she has something for you. Want to come over?"

"Sure." He looked at Randall, who had paused their game, and was listening to the conversation. "We'll be right over."

"OK, see you in a minute." She hung up, as did he.

"Wonder what it is?" his friend asked as he stood up, finished his beer, and put the bottle down.

"Hopefully my tricorder," Kevin said, also standing, then looking around. "Where the fuck did I put my balaclava?"

"Under the shrink ray," Randall replied, pointing. "Which we still haven't actually tested."

Retrieving the errant item of headwear, the Tinker pulled it on, then commented, "Since we met Taylor the first time, we've ended up sort of busy. Probably should see if it works at some point."

Randall nodded, smiling, as he put his own balaclava on. "It'll work, man. You do good work. Better now, of course."

"Looks that way." They headed towards the door, locking it behind them, and walked the short distance to the BBFO office. A couple of DWU people passed, nodding to them but otherwise showing no surprise or interest. He was pretty sure that there wasn't a person in the Union who didn't know who was behind the masks, but neither they nor he cared about that these days. It just didn't seem relevant.

When they reached Taylor's place, he tapped on the door, Amy's Ianthe construct opening it seconds later and waving them in. "Hi, guys," she smiled. "Come on in. Usual coffee?"

"Thanks, Ianthe," Randall said with a nod. She headed for the coffee machine while Kevin and his friend went over to the table, around which Taylor's two aspects, 'Metis,' and Dragon were seated. The Canadian was holding his original tricorder, which his eyes locked on. It looked completely intact, he was relieved to note. It was something he was very attached to.

"As promised, your device back," Dragon said with a smile in her voice. "Along with thanks for letting me borrow and study it."

"You're welcome," he replied, accepting the thing and quickly inspecting it. "Did you have any luck?"

She turned the case that was in front of her on the table around and opened it. "You might say that," she remarked casually. He stared at the two neat rows of identical brand new copies of his pride and joy, then looked at Randall with an open mouth. His friend looked back.

"Holy crap, you did it!" he exclaimed.

"I did, yes. It was a complex project, and without all your notes I might not have been able to be successful, but I worked it out. And learned some very interesting things in the process," she chuckled. Picking one of the copies out of the foam in the case he flicked it open and compared it to his original. It was a perfect copy, save for not having any signs of wear. Turning it on he smiled when it lit up and functioned perfectly.

"I am beyond impressed, Dragon. This is amazing."

"Thank you. I've filed fourteen separate patents covering the full functionality of that device in your name, with BBFO as the contact, as per our contract." The other Tinker pulled a stack of papers out of another case and handed them to him. He glanced at them, then gave them to Randall, who started reading them carefully. "So far I've made an initial run of fifty units. Armsmaster has agreed to help me fully test them and optimize the design." She gave off the impression of a smile. "He was quite eager to do so, in fact. And very complimentary about how efficiently your device works already. But I suspect between us we can improve the production model to at least some extent."

She closed the case and pushed it towards him. "If you need more let me know. I can easily run off another batch of this model."

"Thanks very much. Both for the new ones, and the return of this one." He snapped both closed and put the copy back in the case, shutting it again afterwards, then slipped the original into his pocket. "How did the audio inducer go?"

"That's being a little more difficult, but I think I worked out last night where I was having problems and a fix for it. I've got the factory making a prototype now, I'll have it shipped down by autonomous transport on Monday. We can test it and if it works correctly work out the marketing of the thing." She pointed at the case of tricorders. "I've also written a user's manual for the tricorder. I'll email you a draft copy. I'd appreciate it if you could look it over and let me know if you see anything wrong."

"Sure, I can do that," he nodded.

"A manual." Randall snickered. "You've never had a manual for any of your inventions before, bro. Just a pile of notes. That caused a few embarrassing moments in the past."

Kevin glared at his friend while everyone else laughed. Amy came over and handed him a mug of coffee, which he accepted absently. "It's not my fault that sometimes you can't follow the simplest instructions," he complained. "I mean, considering your ability, how do you even do that?"

Randall shrugged, grinning. Shaking his head, Kevin drank some coffee.

"While I'm here I'd also like to arrange a contract for the wormhole generator," Dragon said, sounding amused as she glanced at 'Raptaur.' "Since we know that can be duplicated, and it's got some very interesting uses, it would seem appropriate."

"I've had that one drawn up already since I assumed it would come up," the larger aspect said, picking up a large envelope and handing it to the armored Tinker. "Assuming you're OK with that, Leet?"

"Sure. Same deal as the other two?"

"Yes. It's basically the same contract with a few details like the name and description changed."

Dragon opened the envelope and pulled out three copies of the paperwork, handing him one and reading another carefully. When she finished, she nodded, and signed it. Shortly all three copies had been signed by all three people involved and distributed. "Great. Armsmaster is already investigating optimization routes for the generator. He's fairly certain he can miniaturize it by a very significant amount. Of course, scaling it up isn't a problem even now. I'm setting up to make a short run of control electronics for a number of different size versions, and drawing up the plans for the parts that the Family can make to match."

She glanced at 'Raptaur.' "When I've finished that, we can upgrade the one at the WCC to make a wormhole as large as will fit in the building, which should make life easier for your sister if we do need to deploy Athena."

"Sounds good," Taylor nodded. Or was it the Varga? Kevin still found it hard to be certain which of them was running which body…

Randall asked in a thoughtful tone of voice, "We still need to test that fucking thing."

"Ah." Dragon looked at him. "I have good news on that front." She explained that she'd managed to get the Canadian government to allow access to a remote military test range, which made Kevin both pleased and worried. He was very curious to see what the huge gun would actually do, but at the same time the damn thing terrified him down to his boots.

On the other hand, it reminded him of something.

He looked at 'Saurial,' then the others, then finally Randall. Eventually he sighed. "I have something that needs to be tested somewhere a long way from people, but I'm sort of worried about letting the PRT know about it. Or anyone outside this room, for that matter."

Dragon managed to give the impression of being intrigued. "What would that be?"

Kevin turned to the smaller of Taylor's aspects, who nodded and left for a couple of minutes. When she came back, she was carrying the cased BFG and a backpack, both of which she handed him before sitting down again, wearing a smile. Curious, he opened the pack, then stared at the bundles of cash completely filling it. Randall looked over his shoulder and whistled in amazement.

"Holy shit, that's a lot of money," his friend said quietly.

"Three hundred thousand dollars," Taylor replied, still smiling. "One hundred for each of Leet's inventions as per the terms of our contracts. Dragon has been successful with the tricorder, we already know the wormhole generator is done, and I have no doubt that she'll crack the audio inducer if she hasn't already. So you need to be paid what we agreed."

Kevin was still staring at more cash than he'd ever seen in one place before in his life. With wonder, he picked up one bundle of notes and looked at it, then put it back and slowly zipped the bag up once more. "Thanks," he managed.

"No problem." 'Saurial' grinned at him. "When we work out the price all these things will sell for and how to market them, you're going to be very, very wealthy." She laughed at his stunned expression. "Think of how many games you can buy..."

Amy and Lisa both started snickering. "Look at him, he actually is thinking about that," the black lizard chuckled, making Kevin nod.

Then he shook his head. "I can think about that later." Putting the pack on the floor, he turned to the other case, half a dozen spring clips snapping open one after another. Lifting the lid he showed Dragon the contents.

She stared at the enormous energy weapon for several long seconds. "That… is a very large gun," the Tinker finally said.

He nodded heavily, running his hand down the side of the thing. "It's nearly as scary as Athena," he said. "We only tried it once and it nearly killed us both. And that was at low power. I'm almost certain I fixed it, but I really don't want to find out I was wrong anywhere near other people. This thing could blow a hole in the moon if it works right. If it goes wrong, well..." He shrugged. "I'd prefer not to remove a large chunk of Brockton Bay."

She looked at him, then the weapon again. "I can understand that. I have to ask, why did you build something so lethal? From what I've seen of you, normally you deliberately try to make your inventions pretty safe. Most of the problems in the past were more accidents than deliberate as far as I can tell."

Kevin sighed. "I didn't set out to make something this terrifying, it just sort of… happened," he explained. "When I realized how dangerous it would be I almost stopped, but you know that urge you get when you're Tinkering… It's almost impossible to give up. And it went together so cleanly, too. But it's a scary motherfucker. Even if it worked properly the first time I don't know if I'd have had the balls to use it in one of our productions. Sure, you can set it to less than 'turn asteroid into sand' if you want, but even at the lowest power level it packs a hell of a punch. One accident and the PRT would want my head."

"And unfortunately even at the highest power output it probably wouldn't work on an Endbringer," Randall added. "So we couldn't just give it to the PRT for that purpose. Plus neither one of us trusts them that much in the first place. He was worried that if he lost control of the design and it turned out to be something that another Tinker could copy, it might get used to do something horrible."

Dragon nodded slowly, still studying the gun. "I think I understand. I can agree with your reasoning, in truth. I would definitely be interested in seeing if it functions, I have to admit."

Kevin picked it out of the case and explained the various aspects of the weapon, Dragon listening with interest and asking a few valid questions. When he put it down again, she thought for a moment. "I can't see any reason why we couldn't test it in the same place as Athena. It's unlikely to do more damage even if it fails, and I suspect Raptaur wouldn't have any trouble if it did." She glanced at the largest aspect, who smiled.

"It wouldn't do much, no. If you want me to try it, I'm game."

"In that case, we'll make sure we have time to do that too." Dragon pondered the gun, then closed the case. "I'll speak to the Minister again and finalize a suitable date for the tests. It depends more on Armsmaster and Legend both being available than anything as they want to be there. I assume that all of you do as well?"

"Certainly," 'Metis' replied. She glanced at Amy, who nodded too. 'Raptaur' did as well.

"Saurial will probably have to stay here and mind the store, so to speak, but I'll certainly come," she said.

"You get to go to all the best explosions," Taylor's other aspect complained, making them grin.

The Varga smirked at her. "As the eldest, it is my duty to make sure that you, as the youngest, don't have as much fun as I do."

Randall laughed, while Taylor's lizard-girl aspect seemed to sulk for a moment or two, before cheering up. Kevin was yet again amused and impressed by how she managed to give to parts of herself different personalities.

Looking at the time on one of the computer screens on the other side of the office, Dragon commented, "I should probably get back. I have a few things that will need my attention soon. It's been very interesting indeed speaking to you all, and I'll certainly be back in the near future. I'll let you know when I have a date for the Athena test."

"OK." Taylor looked at her friends. "It's been a lot of fun talking to you too." The Canadian stood up and closed her document case, putting it away in a compartment in her armor, then headed for the door. Half-way there, she stopped and turned around. "Thank you all," she said, before resuming her exit. Kevin heard the sound of genuine gratitude in her voice and wondered what they'd been talking about before he and his best friend arrived.

"We'd better get back, we were in the middle of a game," Randall put in. He yawned. "And it's late. The caffeine isn't working as well as it should." Picking up the backpack, Kevin slung it over his shoulder, looking at the BFG in its case. 'Saurial' closed it and flipped the latches shut.

"I'll put it away again," she said.

"Thanks. I'm going to have to make a list of other things for Dragon to look at," he smiled. "If she can work them out too, I'll be very pleased." He thought of his shield generator, and the power armor, among other things. It was going to take a while even to remember all the things he'd invented, and fixing the repairable ones to a point where Dragon could work on them would take months. But it seemed like a good idea, considering how successful she'd been with the tricorder.

With a wave to his friends, he followed Randall and Dragon out of the office, closing the door behind him. "I'll see you two around," the woman said to them with an audible smile apparent. "I have a feeling that there are a lot of things we need to discuss when we have time." Moving away from them, she deployed her thrusters, waved one last time, and took off with a roar. He watched her powered suit disappear in the direction of the Rig then turned to Randall, who met his eyes.

"Pizzas are on me," he said calmly, hefting the backpack.

Both of them were still snickering when they went back into their place.

---

Once the AI Tinker's thruster sound diminished into the night, Taylor and her friends sat at the table and looked at each other. Eventually, the Varga said, "I think that went well, all things considered."

"Guess so," Taylor nodded. "The boys are sure happy, if nothing else. And I think we made Dragon feel a lot safer too. Once she got over the full Varga experience."

The demon laughed, making her grin.

Amy and Lisa seemed thoughtful. "From my point of view, it went very well as far as Dragon is concerned," the latter said after a moment. "She should be safe from at least some of her problems for now. And we have a name, and an approximate location for her father. Andrew Richter, Deer Lake, Newfoundland..." Getting up, she went over to the computers as the others watched, quickly bringing up several search engines and typing at a blistering speed. As windows opened and shuffled around, she scanned them closely, mumbling to herself. A few minutes passed.

"OK." Reaching across to the next computer, she rapidly brought up a map of pre-Leviathan Newfoundland, zooming in on a town at the head of a lake on the east side of the former island. "This is Deer Lake. And this is Andrew Richter's house, right here." Lisa highlighted one building as the others came over to examine the satellite image.

"Which would be under hundreds of feet of sea water, assuming it wasn't swept away entirely when the island went down in the first place," Amy put in, frowning.

"True," Lisa replied. "The island actually sank fairly slowly and in stages, not all at once in an enormous whoosh. That was a hell of a lot of land to lose under the water, you know. Much smaller landslips have caused huge tsunamis that killed hundreds of thousands of people. People tend to think that Newfoundland just went under in one shot, but that's not what happened." She looked back at them. "If it had done that, the waves would have reached the Great Lakes, washed away the UK, Iceland, all the Atlantic islands, the entire East Coast from Labrador to Brazil, you name it. It would have made the Chicxulub asteroid look like a pebble in the bath."

Looking back at the monitor, she shook her head. "Same with Kyushu. Both of them sank fairly slowly, although very fast in geological terms. The damage was enormous even so, but a lot less than it should have been, according to normal theories. No one knows why. I have a feeling now that I think about it, and my power backs it up, that somehow Leviathan deliberately made the impact less than it should have been. Which is more evidence to suggest that the Endbringers are playing around with us, in fact." She stared at the screen for a moment, then shrugged. "Not important right now but something else we need to look into at some point."

Pointing at the image of the lost island, she went on, "Newfoundland was over forty three thousand square miles of land. None of it is above sea level now. In fact..." She poked around on the internet for a few seconds. "Apparently the shallowest point is nearly a hundred feet under water. That's the top of the Lewis Hills, about here, which was originally eight hundred and fourteen meters, or twenty-six hundred and seventy one feet above sea level."

"The town of Deer Lake was at about a hundred feet," Amy noted, reading the relevant web page.

"Yeah. So, even allowing for some compression and collapse of the land as it went down, the place is now at least two and a half thousand feet below the water." Lisa pondered the monitors for a few seconds. "It sank slowly enough that some people managed to evacuate, but fast enough that most of them didn't make it. The west side went down first, the rest following to the east. Half a million people died as a result."

"Do you believe that there is anything left there to find, Lisa? Clearly that's what you're thinking about." the demon asked. "From what you've described, the flood would have scoured the land clean, even if it was slower than popular imagination suggests. I have seen tsunamis in action and even a fairly small one tends to cause immense destruction. Something on that scale… I think it unlikely that there would be anything other than the foundations of some of the more heavily built structures left. Not to mention being under salt water for nearly six years would tend to be highly destructive to most technology, or even paper records."

"I know, yes," the black lizard nodded slowly, now panning the map around carefully, as if she was looking for something. "However..."

Taylor looked at her demon, and Amy, both of who looked back. "However?" she echoed.

"However… How many high end Tinkers have their labs in their houses?" Lisa muttered, still searching the map and apparently concentrating ferociously. A few seconds later, she switched back to the other computer and started running dozens of searches, nodding to herself every now and then. They watched, fascinated, as her power did its thing, guided by what she was planning.

"Ah. I thought so."

Lisa sounded satisfied as she compared four different blocks of text. "Got you," she added moments later in tones of great satisfaction, smiling widely.

"Which means?" Amy asked patiently.

Lisa turned to them, her teeth showing in a grin. "Which means we might be in luck. Look at this." She popped one window to the top and pointed. "Richter was a wealthy man. From what Dragon told us, and what my power tells me, he stole most of it from organized crime groups, using a precursor to her own program. He got away with tens of millions at least, possibly hundreds of millions. I'm not entirely certain what happened to that program but it doesn't seem to be active any more. Anyway, I think Dragon ended up with most of that money, which she used to kick-start her own businesses."

Lisa indicated the document on the monitor. "He moved the money around through dozens of accounts, hiding where it came from. Most of it ended up so buried that without the right codes, or a Thinker power of the right sort, you'd never find it, or at least be able to tie it back to him or where it originally came from. Then Dragon moved most of that somewhere else shortly after she ended up based in Vancouver, see?" All three of them nodded, looking at the complex mass of routing codes. "Looks like someone else somehow found what was left and pinched it, before she could get to it, but she got over eighty percent of it. I don't know who that other party was but it's something else I'll look into later."

Bringing up another window and document, she pointed at a few lines. "He burned through a hell of a lot of cash in a couple of years, ending in early 2003, just after Christmas. Bought a lot of hardware, very specific hardware in fact. Lots of cutting edge computer gear, obviously, millions of dollars worth of it. But he also purchased an entire prototype-scale chip foundry." A claw tapped one section of the document. "Cost him nearly fifty million dollars. That's the sort of thing normally only a big electronics company would buy. It was only a prototyping one, not the sort of thing one of the big semiconductor manufacturers would use, but that doesn't mean it was small in absolute terms. The thing was totally automated, absolutely bleeding edge top of the line equipment, and would have needed about ten thousand square feet of warehouse space. Not to mention a lot of power."

Pointing at the house in the middle of the satellite map, she carried on, "His house was a big one, but less than a third that size. No signs of any outbuildings, since he was in the middle of the town. A basement the size needed is very unlikely based on the public records of the buildings around the area. But..." Opening yet another document, she indicated a few paragraphs. "Richter owned a company called New Found Technologies, which was a holding company for another one, Island Design Electronics, which had a subsidiary called Intelligent Systems Incorporated, which in turn owned another company, Processing Unlimited..."

She scrolled the page. "It goes on for a while. He probably needed an AI to keep track of which company owned what asset and leased it to who. The end result, though, is that one of those businesses bought a couple of large buildings on a former US cold war military base in Stephenville, Newfoundland. Which is only about eighty miles southwest of Deer Lake, on the main highway. And interestingly, less than thirty miles north of where Leviathan hit."

Studying the document as they all exchanged glances, she thought, then shrugged. "Yet another thing to add to the list to look into. Whatever. The main thing is that one of the buildings this company owned was a decommissioned underground nuclear shelter. Eighty thousand square feet of hardened bunker on three floors, under fifty feet of reinforced concrete, with steel blast doors six feet thick. Self contained air system, power generation, you name it. It's not far off the construction of a modern Endbringer shelter even though it was made sixty years ago. In fact, I think they probably based Endbringer shelters on this sort of design." Reaching over to pan the map to the correct area, she zoomed in on a complex of buildings near the south-east coast of the defunct island. "That is where he put his chip foundry, and that is where his lab was. Not at his home."

One finger indicated a specific building. "That's where Dragon was born, my power is certain of it. If there is any place we'd find the information I need, it's there."

They were all silent for a moment. Eventually Taylor asked, "And you think that place survived?"

"I'm almost certain, yes. I expect it flooded pretty fast, it wasn't meant to be totally waterproof after all, especially under over two thousand feet of ocean, but it's entirely possible some rooms or sealed compartments, or even a safe or something, might still be intact." Lisa looked at them, then back at the screen. "Tinkers are pretty bullshit as we all know, so there's no telling for sure one way or the other without looking. But the critical thing is that it's very unlikely that anyone else has, or even could, get to the thing in the first place, then get inside and poke around. I'm not expecting miracles but if we can track down any more information, notes, documents, whatever, it might be enough to let me work out what his access method was."

"Assuming it was ever written down in the first place," the Varga commented.

She sighed, nodding. "Assuming that, yes. If he kept it all in his head we're going to have a problem, but we might as well work on the basis that something useful is there, right?"

"I thought that Dragon said Richter was an AI Tinker," Taylor said, sounding thoughtful. "Which seems to imply software rather than hardware. This is mostly hardware production equipment, right?" She raised an eye ridge at Lisa.

"There's no way Dragon could possibly run on commercially available computer hardware of nearly a decade ago," Lisa replied, looking at her. "Not anywhere close to her current level, definitely, and I very much doubt even in her original form. Oh, sure, he probably prototyped previous programs on something more common, he did after all buy one hell of a lot of server gear, but the hardware she first became Dragon on was his own design." She shrugged. "Look at Linda. Her specialty is transportation, but that's a pretty open-ended description. We've seen the results. All sorts of things classify as 'transportation' to her power, and a lot of only slightly related technologies seem to count too. Like the invisibility generator, the power cores, that sort of thing."

Nodding at the screen, she went on, "It was the same with this guy. He could program a genuinely sapient machine intelligence, but he needed something to program it on first. So he designed the hardware from scratch, built it, then used it. The man was brilliant even before he triggered from what she said and I've been able to find out, so it doesn't surprise me that much."

Taylor's Saurial head nodded slowly. "OK, I understand. So you want to go and look there, to see if there's anything left that could help?"

"That's the idea."

"Sounds like a plan to me," Amy smiled. "Certainly worth a few hours of effort, even if it doesn't pan out."

Taylor grinned. "Field trip?"

"Field trip, yes."

"Great. Dragons or Umihebi express?"

"While I'd like to fly again, I think it might be better if you and Varga take Lisa and me. It'll be quicker, and I don't think Nike would fit inside a human-scale bunker." Amy glanced at Lisa, who nodded. "Of course, Lisa doesn't know how to fly yet anyway."

"Fair enough. We haven't tried teleporting with other people yet, though. Shouldn't be too hard." Taylor considered the matter, working out the math. "Just a variation on how we can move other things, I guess." She chuckled slightly. "We basically put you in our pocket."

"Oh, that sounds so safe when you put it like that," Lisa sighed.

"You'll be fine, Lisa," the demon assured her. She looked a little skeptical but stood up.

"I just need to text Vicky and tell her I'll be back very late," Amy said, moving to reconnect the radio relay system, then going into her workshop to retrieve her Amy-phone. A little tapping on the screen resulted in a reply a handful of seconds later, making her smile slightly. "OK, she'll tell Mom. She and Crystal just got out of a late movie." The violet reptilian healer looked at the time. "Well, it's almost midnight. If you guys teleport us there, we can be above where Lisa thinks Richter had his lab in only a couple of minutes. Dive down, poke around, and we could be in bed by one am!"

She chuckled as Lisa looked very dubious, while both Taylor's aspects smiled. "I have a feeling that you might be underselling it just a little bit," Lisa muttered.

Shrugging, her friend replied, "Probably. But let's see what happens, right? We might get lucky and find a nice waterproof notebook with 'How to unshackle your Dragon' written right on the cover."

"Yeah, right." Shaking her head, the currently reptilian Thinker sighed. "I don't think it's going to be that easy. Whatever. Let's go and have a look."

Taylor, who had just finished texting her father to let him know she was going to be late, nodded. "We'll leave from the big room, under full Cloak. No sense letting anyone know about this." All of them went back into the sea gate room where the Varga had given his rather impressive demonstration to Dragon. It had certainly worked, she reflected with a small smile. At one point she'd begun to wonder if Dragon was going to pause to make a robot mouth, simply so she could make it gape in shock…

She and her demon moved apart from the others and switched to the dragon form, before she looked evaluatingly at Lisa, who was nearest. "Need to be larger, I think," she commented, assessing the mass of the bioconstruct her friend was inhabiting. Both aspects grew to over twice the original size.

"Wow." Lisa watched with a wide smile. "The standard version is impressive. That is awe-inspiring."

Taylor laughed, nodding, as she looked at both aspects through both sets of eyes. "It's good, isn't it? I really do want to try a big one, but that can wait. OK, saddles..." She thought, then craned her neck over her shoulder to watch the construction she made on her back. "Look about right?"

"Hmm..." Lisa inspected the result, her head on one side. "Make it a little longer at the back, there."

"Like this?"

"Perfect. Let's see how it feels." She walked over and hopped up, scrambling into position, then half-lay on the new bioconstruct-saddle. "Not bad. It'll work."

"Great." The Varga made the same thing on his back, Amy quickly boarding as well.

"After you, Brain," the demon said.

"Thank you," she replied with a grin, then vanished, even as Lisa looked momentarily worried.

---

Putting her phone back in her pocket, Vicky nodded as Crystal made a motion towards the Chinese restaurant they were near. "I could go for food," she said.

"You can always go for food, Vicky," her cousin giggled. "You eat like a horse."

"I have a fast metabolism," the younger girl sniffed, tossing her hair. "No need to be insulting about it. You wouldn't want me to waste away, would you?"

"No danger of that," Crystal retorted. Putting her arm around her cousin's shoulders, she added, "I'm only joking. You look fine. Cheer up, you've been a little down all day. This has been fun, right? We haven't hung out like this for months."

"Yeah, it's been fun," Vicky nodded, as they headed for the entrance to the restaurant. "It was a good idea. Although that movie wasn't fantastic."

"I liked it. I don't know that I'd see it again, but it was a decent way to kill a couple of hours."

Inside the restaurant, they were quickly shown to a table, and shortly were sitting down looking at the menu having ordered drinks as they sat. On both spare chairs were a pile of bags from their earlier shopping expedition. "Beef chow mein and fried rice for me," Crystal announced after a moment, putting the menu down. Vicky took a little longer to decide, but went for a spicy duck dish with noodles and some side orders. Having placed their order they resumed their conversation. "What did Amy say?" Crystal asked, sipping her coke.

"She's going to be home late again, and wanted me to tell Mom," Vicky replied. She shrugged with a smile. "Probably playing with the Family again. Things are better at home since that bizarre intervention of Aunt Sarah's, but Amy and Mom are still a little..." She rocked her hand from side to side. "Not quite there yet, although they sure have their moments. Like I said, a lot better, but not perfect."

"Good," her cousin smiled. "I was getting worried about poor Ames, she was looking really depressed for a long time. These days the girl is a hell of a lot happier, and you are too. Most of the time." She smirked slightly evilly, continuing, "When you're not flying into buildings..."

Vicky sighed loudly. "God! That was only one time and no one will let me forget about it!"

Laughing, Crystal shook her head. "It was pretty impressive. I mean, ugly vases are one thing, you do that all the time, but a building? How the hell did you miss that?" After a second, her grin widened. "Although I guess you didn't miss it."

"Shut. Up." Vicky growled, making the other girl snicker. "It's not like you haven't made mistakes in the past."

"True, very true, but most of mine weren't so… photogenic." Crystal was still grinning.

With a mild glare, Vicky took a long drink of her soda. "Way to cheer me up, cuz."

"Any time, you know that." They shared a smile. "Hey, how's your dad doing? Mom said Amy gave him something that is fixing him?" She looked curious.

"He's a lot better already," the Dallon girl said with a wide smile. "Amy says he's not fixed in some ways, but he's sure looking happier than he has been for so long in only a couple of days. We're hopeful it will keep improving. Mom is really happy about it, and so am I."

"What did she do? I mean, I know she can't do brains, so how…?"

Vicky looked around, seeing that the two waiters were still dealing with a large party that had come in shortly before them at the front of the restaurant and no one was near enough to overhear them where they were at the back. She leaned forward and lowered her voice. "It was a Family biotech thing. Ianthe invented it to heal people, since she thinks we're too fragile." Crystal leaned forward to hear, her eyes widening. "It's incredible, she says they heal everything. In seconds. It's like Panacea in a bottle, only better."

"Holy shit. That… That's unbelievable," her cousin murmured.

"I know, right? It could change practically everything. Apparently Amy's known about them for weeks, and has been really conflicted about the whole thing, because Biotinkers…" Vicky frowned as Crystal nodded thoughtfully. "Fucking Nilbog. Ruined it for everyone, especially Amy. She hates the bastard and from what she said, Ianthe would happily slaughter him for what he did. If she wasn't such a nice person."

"I bet Director Piggot would probably congratulate her if that happened," Crystal said quietly.

"Probably. I mean, that woman is a hard-ass in the first place, but she's definitely got issues with that guy." Vicky shrugged slightly. "I think she'd be pleased. I know a lot of other people would be too. Maybe one day the Family will sort him out once and for all. Anyway, because of that sort of example, and the way people go all weird about Biotinkers, she and the Family have been really careful about telling anyone about these things until recently. Ames says they're completely safe and really amazingly effective but you know how people can get."

"Damn right," Crystal nodded. "I can see why they didn't announce it right away." She looked thoughtful. "I bet the DWU knows all about them, though."

"Oh, sure, from what she said they've been using them for weeks there. Ianthe was testing them and using Amy to check things so they had proof they were safe. Everyone trusts Panacea."

"For good reasons," her cousin smiled. Vicky nodded vigorously.

"Yeah. Best healer in the world, and my sister," she said with satisfaction. "And if those crazy lizards can take the pressure off her, I'll be at least as relieved as she is."

"So are they going to sell these things or something? Does the PRT know?" About to ask another question, the older woman stopped as the waiter came back. He took their orders, smiled, and left again, allowing them to carry on.

"The PRT was told a few days ago, she said. Saurial gave Director Piggot a pile of the things to test. Amy told the hospital administration and they're testing them independently. She talked them into sorting out all the legal stuff to let her give one to Dad as part of the testing." Vicky grinned. "You should have seen Mom's face when she read the paperwork. Surprised the hell out of her how important Ames really is to the hospital. I don't think she'd ever really realized before, but my sister is respected."

"Of course she is," Crystal smiled. "Considering she's definitely saved more lives than probably any other single cape in the world… Even though it was killing her with stress."

"The girl has a strong work ethic," Vicky sighed, nodding. "I was really worried about her for a while. She was getting really dark and grumpy."

"Amy has always been dark and grumpy," her cousin pointed out, looking amused. "That's part of her charm."

"You know what I mean," Vicky giggled, making the other girl nod. "More dark and grumpy than is good. Less snark, more snap. These days, though… Still snarky as fuck with a dark streak right down the middle, but happy with it. All because she met Taylor and then those insane reptiles."

"They do seem to have an odd effect wherever they go, that's for sure," Crystal remarked. She finished her drink and waved to the waiter, holding the glass up. He nodded and disappeared, coming back moments later with a refill and collecting the empty. When he'd gone again, she went back to her original question, "So if the PRT and the hospital says they're safe, are they going to sell them or something?"

"Not sure how it will work, actually," Vicky frowned. "From what Ames said, the Family can practically magic them up from nowhere, so they don't cost much if anything to make. She implied they'd be happy to basically give the things away. One way or another, it's going to do strange things to the medical industry, whatever happens." She shrugged slightly. "I guess that's good, since a lot more people will get healed than Ames could ever manage even on a good day. And she won't feel so pressured to keep working so hard it drives her nuts."

The younger blonde looked at the table, her hair falling around her face. "I was really getting worried about her, Crys," she said softly. "I love her and it was driving me nuts seeing how she was getting. But there wasn't anything I could do about it. And then I made some mistakes that made it worse..." She heaved a sigh, looking back at her cousin's face, which had a sympathetic expression on it. "I still feel guilty about that."

Crystal put her hand on her cousin's, squeezing it gently for a second or two. "But in the end nothing came of that, and I have to say you've grown up a hell of a lot in the last couple of months. I'm very proud of your behavior recently. Speaking from my lofty position as your elder, of course." She twitched a smile at Vicky, who chuckled a little reluctantly. "So it won't happen again, right?"

"No. It won't." Vicky chewed her lip for a moment. "I won't let it. I don't want to wreck things just as they're getting so much better."

"Another thing to thank the Family for, I guess."

"Yeah. In an odd way. Although I still have nightmares about seeing Saurial that time..."

Crystal shivered. "Me too. Christ, that girl is dangerous. Good thing she's also so laid back and cheerful."

"Mm-hmm," the younger cousin nodded, feeling that was one of the truest things she'd ever heard. The idea of someone like Saurial who was actively looking for fights was something that scared the crap out of her when she thought about it. Very luckily it seemed extremely unlikely to ever happen, which was something she was grateful for, despite her own recent ruminations about the Family and her sister. She gazed at Crystal for a moment, wondering if she should mention those to the other girl, but quickly decided it wasn't a good idea. Either her cousin would think she was crazy and laugh, or take her seriously and get upset. Neither was a useful outcome.

As the food arrived, she shook herself out of the momentarily reflective mood and put it aside for now. It could wait, the food couldn't, and it smelled delicious. Idly wondering what her sister was up to and hoping she was also having fun, Vicky picked up her fork and smiled at the waiter as he put her plates down.

Soon they were eating, talking, and laughing, finding the end of their Saturday was on a high note.

---

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Amy, sitting on the demon, met his eyes. "Did they make it OK?" she asked slightly apprehensively.

He laughed, standing up and looking forward. "Of course, Amy. This is only a minor modification of the method we came up with to transport other items. Although apparently it 'feels weird,' to quote Lisa."

She nodded. "In that case, proceed at will, faithful steed. Onward and upward!"

"As you say," he chuckled.

The sensation was indeed weird. Not at all like the teleportation she'd experienced before when attending Endbringer battles. That was a sort of lurch in the world, which had made her feel somewhat unwell the first few times, but otherwise there weren't many obvious effects.

Demon transportation was somewhat different. The entire world went away, leaving her feeling like she was briefly falling in an infinite void with no connection to reality. It wasn't uncomfortable, or even particularly scary, but it was supremely strange. One of the odder things was that she knew the period of time involved was milliseconds at most from watching Taylor do it in the past, but from the inside it felt both indefinably longer by a substantial amount and simultaneously almost negligible.

She suspected that people without their connection to the 'Family' and previous experience of demonic reality-fucking would find it far more disconcerting. Being momentarily essentially reduced to a mathematical equation, which was probably the closest that it could be described as, was a little peculiar and would most likely cause normal people to feel upset.

'Good thing I'm nowhere near normal these days,' she thought to herself with a small smile as they reappeared far out over the sea, probably close to a mile up.

"Yep. That was indeed weird," she said out loud. The huge draconic demon under her rumbled with laughter.

"Hopefully not too upsetting, as we'll have to repeat the process several more times to reach our goal," he remarked.

"No, it's fine. I don't mind it." She looked around, seeing that he was gliding, Taylor off to the right doing the same. She waved to her friends, Lisa waving back.

"Excellent. In that case, stand by for teleport." He snickered, adding, "We probably need some form of alarm and a flashing light, but in lieu of that, I'll just do this..."

The world went away again, then came back. She just had time to notice that the lights off on the horizon to the left had changed when he repeated the process. In jumps of fifty miles or so, both dragons and their passengers headed for the former location of Newfoundland.

Fifteen jumps later, they were circling two miles above the sea, which rolled and foamed below them. It was very windy, a storm apparently building on the horizon, and she could see in the far distance to the south lights from a few ships that seemed to be heading towards the shore as fast as possible.

"It's going to get unpleasant out here soon, I believe," the Varga noted, looking in the same direction she was. "Not that it matters to us."

"No. Are we in the right place?"

"Lisa is just working on that," he reported. She looked over the two hundred feet separating the wingtips of the two dragons, seeing the black lizard, staring down at the water, then up at the stars every now and then. After a minute's thought, she pointed to the right.

"Apparently we're about two miles off course," he said. Rather than teleporting, both aspects flew in the relevant direction until Lisa indicated straight down. "Here we are. Hold on."

"Hey, why don't you just teleport?" she yelped as he did a neat wing-over and dived vertically. A laugh came back.

"Where's the fun in that?" he called, just before they hit the water with a huge splash. Amy smiled to herself. He had a point…

Moments after they entered the sea, both dragons had reverted to the aquatic Raptaur form, and all four of them were swimming down into the dark water. Amy and Lisa were glowing soft green and the other two were emitting bright blue light. "That was pretty entertaining, once you get over the sensation of that weird teleport simulation," Lisa noted.

"It was strange but I sort of like it," Amy replied, glancing at her.

"We don't really feel anything," Taylor, on her other side, commented. "I guess because we're the ones doing it. Glad to know it's not too bad. I want to take Dad for a dragon ride and I don't want to upset him." She grinned at them. "Thanks for being the guinea pigs."

"You had to put it that way, didn't you?" Lisa complained.

"Of course I did. Now, where are we going?" They'd passed below two thousand feet and could see the bottom approaching below them through the very cold and very clear water. Fish scattered as they descended.

"Ah..." Lisa examined their surroundings. "Off to the right, then forward. I can smell hydrocarbons and concrete, so we're pretty close to something."

Leveling off fifty feet or so above the former land surface, they swam slowly along, looking around. The bottom was clearly not a normal sea-bed, not having enough silt or sea life, but there wasn't an awful lot to show it had been above the water only six years earlier. "The tsunami scraped most of the land bare, it appears," the demon remarked. "Even more so than I expected."

"Water tends to do that when it turns up in your back yard at a couple of hundred miles an hour," Lisa sighed. "Poor bastards. All those people..."

"I don't really like to think about it," Taylor said quietly. "I can practically smell them in the water. I mean, I know by now there's probably almost nothing left, but… you know?"

The others nodded. She was right, Amy thought sadly, there was a hint of death and decay in the water that was quite unlike the normal sediment scent.

Passing over one section of former land, Lisa pointed. "That was a road. The main highway, in fact." She slowed, looking around, then indicated slightly to the left of their course. "We're close. Just over that hill there, I think."

They swam along following the strip of flatter ground below, occasional hints of buckled and still paved surface showing through the mud. In a few places you could even make out the lines and road markings, Amy saw. Stumps of snapped off trees emerged from the silt as well, and even one lonely metal pole, rusty but apparently completely intact, with a fragment of green road sign hanging loosely from it.

Passing over the slight hill Lisa had pointed out, they found what she recognized as the remains of an airport. "Really stripped everything flat, didn't it?" she queried. There was almost nothing left other than muddy foundations and almost unrecognizable random metal and concrete fragments sticking out of the ground. The runway was visible mainly due to being dead straight, disappearing off to the east, although there was a large canyon running across it which probably wasn't originally designed in.

"Yeah." Lisa looked around as well. "Hey, look at that. Practically intact." She pointed at a truck with the logo of a Canadian telecommunications company on it, still easily readable. It was sitting, apparently almost entirely undamaged, on top of a mountain of concrete blocks and steel girders, having presumably floated there after things sank. They studied it for a moment, watching fish swim in and out of the broken driver's side window.

"Damn near the only thing that is," Taylor said. This was true, as almost everything in sight was a mangled wreck.

"OK, the bunker is over there somewhere." Lisa swam off in the relevant direction with sweeps of her tail, looking around carefully. The others followed. Searching the area she finally narrowed it down to, the Varga finally called them over.

"I believe it's directly below me," he said as they arrived. "I can smell a lot more metal right here than in most places. There are some definite changes to the local electromagnetic field too."

Having prodded around in the rubble, Lisa nodded. "Yes, this is it. There was a building on top of it, which got wiped out, but the thing itself is still there. And my power says it's intact. Fantastic." It didn't take long to locate the entrance, buried under what was left of the foundations of the building that had been above the bunker. They quickly cleared the area to reveal a tunnel descending into the massively thick concrete slab that underlay everything.

"How do you want to get inside?" Amy asked, looking around at her friends. "Just teleport in?"

"We could but I don't want to risk damaging anything since we have no idea of the internal layout," Taylor remarked, studying the entrance. "I think we need to try something else. Hold on." She and her demon quickly created an EDM dome over the entire entrance area, fusing it to the concrete. A little more work and they were filling it with air pulled from wherever it was such things came, the water forced out through one way valves at the base. "There we go. Now, let's have a look at what we have down there..."

Ten more minutes work had the entire entrance tunnel cleared out, leaving them looking at a huge and obviously extremely thick steel door, like something from a particularly solid bank vault. Remains of CCTV cameras hung sadly from the walls near it, and there were warning signs all over the place, still legible, and some clearly dating back to the fifties. "It looks surprisingly undamaged," Amy said, fascinated.

"The place was designed to survive a nearby nuclear strike," Lisa pointed out. "The entire entrance system was meant to allow the blast wave to pass over, diverting most of it so it didn't blow the door in." She indicated dribbles of water coming out around the huge portal. "But it's definitely flooded since it sank. The seals have rotted away, and they weren't designed for this amount of pressure for so long."

"Still might be something inside that survived," Taylor said. "Let's have a look." She approached the door and did something weird, smiling back over her shoulder as Lisa and Amy blinked. "We'll try the Vista Option."

"Wow. I didn't really realize you could do that," Amy said with great interest, watching as the space around the door seemed to increase in size, while the door shrank. Floods of water roared out, filling the dome half-way in the process.

"It's not the same way Vista does it but the effect is similar," the Varga commented, observing with interest. "We haven't had much cause to utilize the technique so far, but it seems to be useful in this case." After a fairly short period the water level equalized, then he and the other Raptaur aspect carefully swung the door open, the locking mechanism entirely intact and completely ineffectual. When it was out of the way, Taylor reversed what she'd done and things went back to normal.

Sticking her head through the opening, she looked around. "Steps leading down, but nothing very interesting otherwise," she called back, before disappearing inside. The rest of them followed, descending the stairs and going underwater again. At the bottom was an identical door to the one at the top, this one unlocked as it turned out when Taylor curiously tried the large handle on it. Heaving it open she went inside, Lisa behind her and the others bringing up the rear.

Swimming along the wide corridor on the other side of the lower door, which was totally full of slightly stale seawater tinged with any amount of chemical traces, Amy peered around. Dozens of more normal doors lined the main corridor, many of them open, a few still closed. Broken fluorescent light fittings swayed in the currents as they passed, hanging from the ceiling like glass barnacles. The floor was covered in detritus which swirled in their wake, then settled again.

"Surprisingly little damage all things considered," the demon said, sounding pleased. "And most of it looks more like the aftermath of an earthquake."

"That would be from the sinking part of the whole event," Lisa replied, as she peered into one side room, then shook her head. "I would think the entire place bounced around like crazy. Most of the damage outside was from the same cause, then the tsunami washed the rubble away. In here, I think it probably flooded fairly slowly, in hours rather than seconds. So a lot of stuff is pretty well preserved." Checking another room, she picked something off the floor and showed it to them. "More so than I expected." The can of pear slices in syrup had a completely intact and readable label.

"The cold water probably helped with that," Amy commented.

"Good, we may find something useful after all," Taylor nodded, looking satisfied. "Let's split up and have a good look around."

"You know, when people say that in the movies while exploring old military facilities, it inevitably means a monster gets them," Lisa giggled.

They shared a look.

"Since in this case we're the monsters, unless a busload of meddling kids turns up, I doubt that will happen," Taylor laughed. "I'll go this way. Call if you need me."

"OK." The other three all headed down different corridors from the main junction they'd paused at, looking for anything that might help their goal.

---

Four hours later Lisa was poking around in the largest room in the facility. It was on the second level, taking up most of it. She moved random ruined items of equipment as she searched for something useful. This enormous space had obviously housed the main chip fab as she was surrounded with the remains of once hideously expensive and high tech machinery. There were computers everywhere, all manner of automated conveyors and robotic manipulators, displays, and controls, all of it dead and slowly corroding in the salt water. The water itself tasted and smelled of chemicals and metals as everything gradually dissolved. A few tools and parts were made of things like stainless steel, plastic, or glass, and looked completely intact under the thin layer of silt, but most of it was obviously far past salvaging. Nevertheless, she pressed on, letting her power look around and give her hints.

It seemed almost a hundred percent sure they'd discover something interesting if they kept looking, and she trusted it, so she continued investigating. Tapping each closed container or storage unit she encountered and listening carefully to see if it was full of water or air, she opened them one after another. Rotting paper spilled out of one, but the traces of writing still readable showed it was merely documentation on the fab itself. Some of the paper was in surprisingly good condition, the top layers totally ruined but the remainder very fragile yet legible. That encouraged her, if they found any paper notes Richter might have left behind, they might also be usable.

Another door opened onto several racks of unprocessed chip wafers, which her power told her were not standard silicon at all. Picking one up between her claws she looked curiously at it, then put it back. "Guy had many talents," she muttered, moving on.

"I think I might have found something," Taylor's voice called from somewhere deeper into the bunker. She paused, looking back, then turned around and carefully swam towards her friend. The other girl was on the lowest floor of the former bunker, which was apparently mostly plant and infrastructure, but when she arrived she found Taylor inspecting another very solid-looking metal door at the end of a short corridor.

It was far thicker than anything other than the main entrance, most of the internal doors being standard metal industrial ones. "That sign there says this is the armory. I guess they used it for small arms back when it was a military base." Taylor nodded at the almost obscured metal sign above the door, while she was carefully feeling the surface of the thing with both hands. She tapped it, putting her head to the metal, then looked surprised.

"This room isn't completely flooded. There's at least an air pocket in there."

Amy and the Varga arrived behind Lisa, both of them inspecting the door with interest. "Is that even possible at this depth?" the healer asked. "I mean, it must be something like a thousand PSI on that thing. At least."

"Eleven hundred and ninety-nine point four," Lisa replied, consulting her ability. "Which means the total pressure on that door is more than a couple of thousand tons. On the other hand, it's a plug door like they use on submarines, which means that the pressure is holding it shut, and it's over a foot thick..."

"Would that be original equipment?" the demon queried, looking at the door with his head on one side. "It seems excessive for an internal barrier, even in a military facility."

Lisa let her power go to work.

Door 13.25 inches thick, laminated HY-100 steel alloy

Plug construction, angle of door edge 12 degrees

Frame of matching construction

Door area 4320 square inches

Pressure on door 5181408 pounds

Room constructed of seam-welded laminated HY-100 steel alloy liner, 13.25 inches thick, backed by 48 inches of steel reinforced high tensile concrete

Room originally used for storage of nuclear warhead components

Seal on door enhanced by extreme pressure on surface caused by immersion in water at depth

Room repurposed as secure storage by previous owner of facility

Partially flooded via pinhole leak on lower left corner of door

She let out a faint sigh of surprise and tentative hope. "We may have been preposterously lucky," she marveled, tapping the door a few times and listening to the echos. "This was so overbuilt because they were storing fucking nuclear bombs in it. Which, if my reading of the history of this place is right, probably wasn't something they mentioned to the Canadians. Richter used it for storing important stuff in. It's basically a bank vault. And it was hermetically sealed to avoid radiation leaks in an accident, so it's mostly empty of water."

"So there's a chance there might be what we're looking for in there?" Amy asked. Lisa nodded and shrugged at the same time.

"Maybe. Maybe not. I'm not expecting a miracle but even some notes or something would help."

Taylor glanced at the Varga, then back at the door. "Only one way to find out."

"We'll need to cover the door like we did the main entrance, and equalize the pressure before we open it or the sudden air pressure change could destroy anything in there," he suggested.

"Easy enough." Moments later another EDM shell surrounded the entire door and all four of them, blocking the corridor behind them. Again, she generated air at sufficient pressure to make the water leave, but this time she removed most of it again afterwards. "That's about atmospheric pressure now."

"Close enough," Lisa nodded. "Open it really carefully, I don't want to risk damaging anything at this point."

"OK." Taylor and her demon moved to opposite sides of the thick steel slab, then pushed EDM blades through it on either side and ran them downwards, then upwards. Taylor cut along the top while the Varga did the bottom before they both dug their claws in and pulled. The entire multi-ton block they'd cut out slid into the corridor with a grating sound followed by a sploosh as a few dozen gallons of salt water pooled around their feet. All four peered in, then exchanged glances.

Amy sniffed. "Moldy."

"It's been damp for six years, that goes without saying," Lisa said. "I'm just astounded that it survived at all." She moved through the door, looking around the twenty-five foot square room. There were marks on the floor where some sort of shelving had been decades ago, running down the center of the place, and there were still shelves all around the walls.

"Holy shit," she breathed as she looked at them.

"That's a lot of paperwork," Taylor noted, prodding one of the filing boxes that along with hundreds of other identical ones almost completely filled the shelves, floor to ceiling. Lisa carefully pulled one off the shelf near the ceiling and opened it, finding the contents were damp and slightly furry but mostly readable.

"Invoices, more invoices, purchase order, letter to a lawyer, tax bill… Crap, this must be his entire archives." She looked up at them, then around at the many hundreds of boxes representing hundreds of thousands of pages. "We went from having not enough information to having far too much. It'll take days or weeks to go through all this, even with my power."

The Varga put his hand on her shoulder, smiling. "Everyone needs a hobby, Lisa."

"Not as helpful as it could be," she grumbled, closing the box. "I was hoping for something a little more focused. Not… about nine years of paperwork from someone who apparently didn't throw away anything." She sighed heavily, then put the box back. "This guy was a fucking pack-rat."

"I'd sort of come to that conclusion by looking at the other rooms," Amy snickered. "Half the stuff out there seems to be one prototype after another. He was worse than Armsmaster. Or even Kevin."

"Tinkers are nuts anyway," Lisa remarked. "Everyone knows that."

Taylor had been scanning all the boxes, apparently looking for something useful in the way of labeling. Unfortunately, Richter had for reasons of his own merely sequentially numbered each box, starting at "1" in the lower left corner inside the door, and running up to "1238" in the top right on the other side. "Would it have killed him to just label these damn things with what they contained?" she asked rhetorically.

"Apparently he had a system," Lisa said with a scowl. "One that died with him. Or he just shoved things into a box until it was full, numbered it, then stuck it on a shelf. I don't know which possibility is more irritating."

"Guess we take everything, then," her friend remarked. "Some of it is pretty damaged, though. The lower three shelves are all wet, and the lowest one is really soggy. Better be very careful with them. They'll need to dry out before we can handle them assuming anything's left at all."

"I really hope they're chronological." Lisa looked around again as Taylor manifested a couple of bags which were far larger inside than outside, then handed one to Amy. They started very gently loading the boxes into the bags. "If so, any data regarding Dragon is possibly in the higher numbered ones which are in the best condition."

"We can merely wish for good luck and see what we find," the Varga said quietly, making two more bags and giving her one. Shortly they were also filling them as carefully as possible.

Nearly an hour passed before they'd retrieved every box and stored it safely away. All the bags were now in Lisa's armor. She looked around the now bare room, before stopping on one point on the rear wall. "Huh." Her power told her something interesting.

"What?" Amy asked, following her eyes.

"There's a hidden compartment there behind where the boxes were," Lisa replied slowly, staring at the spot in question. She could, now that she was looking for it, make out a very fine line forming a rectangle. "Some sort of safe inside a safe or something like that."

Taylor examined the camouflaged door, then felt it. "Nice job, it's almost totally hidden. I wonder if it was there to start with or if he added it?"

"It's original, I think," Lisa said. She walked over and studied it from close range. "This was some sort of code book storage cabinet. Electrically operated lock, from the control room on the next floor. That'll never work now."

"Easily solved," Taylor grinned, manifesting a short EDM blade. "Where do I cut?"

"About... there." Lisa indicated a couple of spots. "And there."

Moments later the two hidden bolts had been sliced in half and the door swung open. Inside was a small cabinet with a couple of shelves, one of which had a plastic box the size of a loaf of bread on it. Retrieving it, Lisa opened it, then smiled. "Ah. Now this is more like it!"

Inside the box were nearly three dozen slightly damp iridescent disks in translucent plastic cases. "Those aren't CDs or DVDs," Amy said, peering over her shoulder.

"They're magneto-optical disks," Lisa replied, picking one up and looking at it closely. It had a cryptic multi-character reference written on it in black permanent marker. "They used to be used a lot for long term archival storage, since they're much more reliable than either of those. Better than tape, although not so high capacity. You don't see them too much these days." Holding the thing up, she added, "Finding a drive to read this might be a little fiddly but I can almost guarantee the data is intact. Probably encrypted, this guy was paranoid as fuck, but even so, we may get lucky."

"Even if it is, the key could be in all that paperwork."

"True." She nodded, then put the disk back in the box, closed it, and tucked it safely away into another compartment of her armor before dismissing it. "Anything else in there?"

"Nope. Just that box." Taylor ran her hand around the inside of the secure compartment looking for yet more secret doors, then shrugged. "Nothing."

"Hopefully it's enough. I can't see any more of interest in here." Lisa looked around. "May as well finish searching, but I think we found what we came for, if it exists at all." She sighed faintly "It's going to take some time to go through all this, unless I get lucky. And there's always the possibility we won't find anything anyway. But unless we look we won't know and I can't think of any other place we could find the right information."

They left the vault, Taylor and the Varga putting the door back into position then sealing it, before allowing the water outside the EDM shell to come back in fairly slowly. When it had filled the shell Taylor made it go away. "I'll keep checking down here, you guys go back to where you were, and we can see if there's anything else," she suggested. Lisa headed back to where she'd been exploring the main fab as Amy and the demon disappeared in different directions, wondering if she did in fact now have the key to helping free Dragon for good in her possession.

Even if she did, it was going to take some work, but she felt it was a good use of time.

---

"Are you sure this is the right place?" Taylor looked around. There was several square miles of totally devastated landscape surrounding and beneath them, the remains of former buildings almost unrecognizable under the debris field and silt. The overall appearance was like pictures she'd seen of Nagasaki after the bomb went off, but if it had then been inundated for close to a decade, which in a way wasn't that far off the mark. Only vague outlines of a few buildings were still obvious, even most of the roads having been obliterated. Half a mile above them, the deep rumble of the waves pushed by the growing storm on the surface could be heard, but at this depth nothing of that could be felt.

"I am," Lisa nodded. She pointed down at a slight angle as they slowly swam in the current. "That's where Richter's house was."

"I thought you said there wouldn't be anything here anyway," Amy commented. Lisa glanced at her.

"I doubt there would have been, aside from possibly some home system. I expect he did a lot of work from home, probably connected to all those servers in his bunker, and he might have kept backups here which would have been sensible, but his lab was the main workshop. I just wanted to be certain." She descended, the others following, then leveled off ten feet off the bottom and floated, turning in place. "What I'm now certain of is that everything that might have been here is completely gone. Unless it was in a waterproof box that floated away on the way down, it didn't make it. Look at this, there's nothing left."

They poked around in the remains of the block Richter's former residence had been in for a while, but aside from random small items that had been solid enough to stay more or less intact and in the same place, she was right. The destruction was absolute. Taylor stood on the bottom, looking at the depression in the ground that had once held a house, now only partial walls of a basement, and shrugged. "Yep. Nothing here except fish and rubble."

"And bones," the Varga said softly, looking at something sticking out from under a pile of crushed concrete blocks. They all looked, Lisa closing her eyes for a moment.

"Hell. The size of that femur..." Amy sighed. "That was a child, around ten years old."

The others were silent. Taylor wondered if they should do something about it, but looking around, and smelling the water, she could tell that even with Varga magic, it was pointless. There were fragmentary remains all over the former town and tracking them all down would be an almost impossible task, never mind identifying them. After a couple of minutes, the Varga dipped his head in respect, looked at his Brain, and gently headed upwards. The remaining three followed, still silent, and busy with their own thoughts.

Below them, the dead town disappeared into the dark and depth of the Atlantic.