I'm HALPING!


Part Thirteen: Luck is for Amateurs


[A/N: This chapter was commissioned by Fizzfaldt and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]


Eidolon


David looked up as a Doorway opened in midair beside him. Alexandria hovered on the other side of it, looking as serious as she ever did. "Eidolon," she said bluntly. "We need to go to Brockton Bay soon and do what Hebert 'requested' us to do."

His mouth twisted with distaste over the idea of going back and being confronted once more by his 'son'. It didn't matter that he was older and far more experienced; the Endbringer calling itself 'Zachary' had a way of putting him on the back foot with insulting ease. And that was not even counting the faux teenager's sheer physical capability.

"I'm going to assume you have what you consider a good reason," he riposted. She probably did, knowing her, but he wasn't going to give in without a fight.

"Yes." She paused for precisely timed effect. "The Teeth hit Brockton Bay and engaged Zachary thirty minutes ago. As of twenty-nine minutes ago, they have ceased to exist as a team."

David's eyes flew wide open as his mind surged in horror. "Butcher! If Zachary killed Butcher, the Butcher mind would've gone to that girl, what's-her-name—"

"Taylor. Taylor Hebert." Her voice had a strong 'try to keep up' tone to it. "And no; apparently, Butcher isn't dead. She's just not Butcher anymore. Taylor and Zachary dropped them off at PRT ENE about five minutes ago, somewhat the worse for wear. All alive, not the slightest hint of powers between the lot of them."

"What." David blinked, horror of a different type making itself known. "That ... that thing can … remove powers?"

"Apparently so." Rebecca Costa-Brown, David mused, had mastered the art of the dry comeback. "Given his propensity toward Trump activity, I suspect he 'borrowed' the ability from Animos, then used it to permanently nullify Animos'—and everyone else's—powers."

David set his jaw."It's not a 'he' or 'him'. It's an Endbringer. It's a monster masquerading in human form, just waiting for its moment to lash out and destroy the city."

Alexandria's eyebrows were hidden under her helmet, but he was sure she'd just raised them anyway. "I think you're wrong. He's had plenty of opportunity to go on a rampage, and the absolute most he's done so far is destroy a van. While, it has to be said—"

"Yes, yes, I know, I know, it eliminated the Nine," David said impatiently, waving his hand to dismiss her words. "But that's my point. It pretends to be human, and uses a Stranger effect to make this work even when people know what it's done. You yourself said you had trouble recalling its capabilities, and you have perfect recall!"

"I'm waiting for your point." Alexandria didn't frown or fold her arms, but the subtle tone in her voice made David pause in his rant.

"Um, sorry," he said, trying to sound sincere. While it had been more or less an accident and he didn't think she'd hold it against him, he had just kind of cut off the woman who could make his life very difficult in her position as the head of the PRT. And just because she'd never tried to push her authority in that arena before, there was no guarantee that she wouldn't do just that if she felt like it. "What I'm saying is that it's lulling us all into a sense of security. Pretending to be harmless, pretending that its really scary powers aren't so scary. Making it so even when we get that feeling there's something wrong, we'll suppress it because we think we know why we're getting the feeling and that we know better." He spat out the last word.

"And yet, he's never done anything overtly malicious," she reminded him. "Everything he's done has been specifically aimed at protecting … well, people." She paused, as if choosing what to say next. Which was odd, because Alexandria was never lost for words. "Only the guilty have suffered. No fatalities, even. Well, except for the ones who had Kill Orders against their names."

"And yet, it's stirred up more chaos in just a few days than most capes do in their first year." He tried to keep the snark out of his voice but it wasn't easy. "Would the Teeth have even come to Brockton Bay if Zachary hadn't stirred up the waters, smacked Lung around, captured Hookwolf and Cricket, and killed the damn Slaughterhouse Nine all in the same day?"

"Let's not lose sight of the fact that he has actually captured several supervillains and eliminated two separate S-class threats." Alexandria seemed almost amused at his discomfiture. "For a sinister looming threat, he's doing a damn good job at being a hero."

"And on the other hand, it's on first-name terms with the other Endbringers, and can call on them more or less any time it wants, if that little tête-à-tête with the Simurgh was anything to go by." He studied her expression, hoping to sway her to his side, but for that he'd just fired the best shot in his locker, it didn't have the impact that he'd hoped.

"On the other other hand, he seems to be able to ask them to play nice when they drop in." It was confirmed; she was actually amused at the situation. "And it may well be that he's able to ask them to keep playing nice."

"Why would it do that?" He had no idea why she was even considering the concept of trusting an Endbringer. "For that matter, why would they? All they do—all they want to do—is murder people and destroy lives. Destroy civilisation."

"Maybe so. And then again, maybe not." She took a deep breath. "We've never had an Endbringer who identifies with humanity before. He's a totally new factor. After thirty years of endlessly striving to figure out how to create even the most tenuous of defences against Scion and the other Endbringers, with the odds against us mounting up inexorably year by year, he's a light in the darkness. Seriously, David, he may be our turning point if we play our cards right."

"And if it's not?" He shook his head, unconvinced. "What then? What if it decides to nullify your powers next? Or mine? Renders us all helpless so the Simurgh can show up and drive us insane?"

"He could've done that the last time we showed up in town," she pointed out with annoying accuracy. "In fact, he could have chosen to leave us all in the dark about his true origins. He did neither."

"It could be playing the long game." He gestured, willing her to see his point of view. "The Simurgh does that all the time. One tiny pebble here, six months later a million people die half a continent away."

"True, she does." Alexandria nodded to underscore her agreement with his point. "But you've met Zach. The boy may be many things, including an undercover Endbringer, but 'subtle' is not in his playbook. However, I'm not in the slightest bit eager to find out how he would react if we stalled too long on carrying out the favour that Danny Hebert asked for. Right now, we seem to be on his 'friends' list … well, you're apparently on there as 'family', which amounts to the same thing." She either didn't see his dirty look, or managed to ignore it altogether. "Given what he's done to his enemies so far, I don't want to end up on that list without a really good reason."

He folded his arms. "So you want to go back to Brockton Bay and clean a few derelict ships out of the harbour? Will it even boost the local economy all that much?"

The smirk she gave him was either due to the question indicating that he wasn't saying no, or something else that he didn't know about at the moment. She'd always been three steps ahead of him, that way. "It's likely to, even if it's just a morale thing." She shrugged. "Apparently, the rest of the Empire Eighty-Eight voluntarily gave themselves up to the PRT ENE around the same time as Zachary and Taylor …" She paused and facepalmed, hard enough to make her helmet ring slightly. "Oh, son of a bitch."

"What? What's the problem?" David wasn't sure what was going on, but Alexandria hadn't sounded happy.

She shook her head. "Zachary Taylor. Twelfth president of the US. That's got to be deliberate, somehow. Maybe the Simurgh did it, just to fuck with us." Clearing her throat, she seemed to get a grip on herself. When she spoke next, her tone was much less aggrieved. "Anyway. The Empire gave themselves up. When asked why, they said that Zachary told them to. Also, the Azn Bad Boyz and the Merchants have been rolled up already. While there's still parahuman criminals in the city, they are very much the third- and fourth-raters. If the local Chamber of Commerce can get the port open again—and Danny Hebert seemed willing to push very hard to make that happen—the criminal underworld will be too busy piecing itself back together to demand a slice of the pie."

"Mundane criminals have been doing that since long before powers came along." David felt a sour satisfaction in reminding her of this fact. "And little fish have a strong propensity to become big fish once the prior big fish are removed from the pond."

Again, David got the impression of raised eyebrows. "And how long do you think they'd last in that town once they decided to threaten the happiness and welfare of Taylor and her father?"

The question was clearly rhetorical. David had personally attended the site of Jack Slash's demise. The threat the Nine had posed toward Taylor was far more theoretical than real, but Zachary had destroyed them with utter ruthlessness all the same.

"You have a point, I suppose," he admitted, albeit grudgingly. "So, you think we should go back and clear out their collection of derelict shipping so as to not give it an excuse to turn against us?"

"That's one way to put it, yes." She tilted her head. "Another way might be to note that he's just cleaned up Butcher and the Teeth. Do we really want him getting bored while thinking that we've just been stringing him along?"

David tried to imagine what a bored Endbringer might decide to do. Bored capes were bad enough. He didn't want to see what "it seemed like a good idea at the time" looked like when an Endbringer was involved.

"Fine," he huffed. "Let's bring Legend into it and get this over and done with."

Alexandria smiled.


Boat Graveyard
Brockton Bay
Alexandria


They stepped out of the Doorway onto the foreshore facing the expanse of water, within which forty or fifty ships had been confined for the last fifteen years. Some still floated, while others had gradually settled onto the bottom. At one point there had been mooring buoys, but time and natural degradation had taken its toll, so very few of the ships were in any sort of good order. None were small, while some were hundreds of feet long, including at least one container ship.

"Man," Legend said, lifting into the air about twenty feet and shading his eyes to look over the rusted-out conglomeration of decrepit floating tonnage. "What a …" He trailed off, lacking words.

"Shithole?" offered a voice from directly behind Rebecca and Eidolon. Both turned fast, while Legend spun around in midair, looking as startled as he ever did. Taylor Hebert and Zachary stood there, both wearing yellow hard hats and reflector vests over jackets, jeans and work boots. The girl gave Rebecca a cheeky little fingertip wave. "Hi."

"Don't do that," snapped Eidolon, energy glowing around his clenched fists. "I could've—"

"You would not have attacked Taylor Hebert by accident, Father." Zachary's tone was definitive. "And if you had attacked, I am capable of diverting the attack. In any case, Taylor was talking when you interrupted her."

Rebecca tended to agree with Eidolon, at least where it came to not startling powerful capes. She was never going to admit that she had been startled, though it had come as a considerable surprise to find the pair standing right behind where she and the others had emerged from the Doorway. "Zachary, how did you know where and when to be there?" She thought she knew the answer, but she posed the question anyway.

"Oh, my sister told me you were coming." Zachary's smile was purely good cheer. "That gave us enough time to acquire safety equipment, and to get here before you arrived."

So of course the Simurgh tipped them off. Rebecca restrained herself from giving the sky above a dirty look. I bet she fully intended for us to get the jump scare just now, too.

"Anyway, as I was saying, there's many words and phrases we can use to describe the Boat Graveyard," Taylor went on blithely. "Hot mess, dumpster fire, unfortunate metaphor for today's world, colossal ratfuck, asshole of Brockton Bay, the place where dreams come to die …" She let her voice trail off, then shrugged. "Take your pick."

"Not to, uh, criticise your phrasing, young lady, but that seems to be a rather bleak worldview," Legend began carefully, drifting back down to ground level.

Rebecca had briefed him on the situation in Brockton Bay. Now, she began to wonder if she'd briefed him enough.

Taylor snorted bitterly. "Have you even been to Brockton Bay? Or is it one of those places you big heroes fly over on the way to someplace more important?"

"We are making the city safer, Taylor!" announced Zachary. "One villain at a time!" He turned to Legend. "Hello, Legend! My brothers and sister told me to say hello. You are a fun and interesting opponent."

From the look on Legend's face, some of the briefing had taken awhile to sink in; namely, that Zachary was an Endbringer, and that his 'brothers and sister' were also Endbringers. Or perhaps it was the fact that they were praising him for giving them interesting battles. Either way, it would be a distinctly unsettling thing to have to take on board all at once. He seemed to be handling it so far, which was good.

Legend nodded. "Right. I see." He glanced around. "They won't … be joining us today, will they?"

"Oh, no," Zach said with a disarming smile. "They did offer, but Father and Chief Director Costa-Brown decided that they would not be needed." He gave a shrug, as if to say, what can you do?

"Well, I think we should be able to handle it for today," Legend declared. He put out his hand. "It is very interesting to meet the pair of you."

Taylor took his hand first. "It's pretty cool to meet you, too. You're about my second or third favourite hero."

"That's good to hear," Legend said gravely as they shook hands. "Everyone needs a goal to strive toward." He opened his mouth to say something else. Rebecca knew for a fact that he was going to ask Taylor who her favourite hero was, and she cleared her throat firmly. She's going to say Zachary, and it'll get awkward.

Fortunately, Legend picked up on the signal and closed his mouth again. His handshake with Zachary was a little more protracted, and Rebecca figured he was using all of his senses to try to detect the supposed teenage boy's underlying nature. Nothing untoward happened, and the handshake ended.

"Well, then." Legend dusted his hands off in a businesslike manner. "Do we have a plan of action, or should we just dispose of one ship at a time until they're all gone?"

Taylor cleared her throat, then waited until all three heroes had turned to her. "Dad did mention that he'd like as many of these ships refloated as possible. They're abandoned, which means whatever salvage we can get out of them is pure profit. And if they can be eventually reconditioned, even better."

Rebecca did her best not to compress her lips in irritation. Simply hauling the rusting hulks out to sea and sinking them in deep water had been her plan since she first saw the Graveyard, but apparently it wasn't going to be that easy. "Some of these ships are surely beyond salvage," she said, mainly to test the waters. Helping out was one thing, but refloating every single ship, even the ones that were mostly submerged, would be an immense task.

Fortunately for her state of mind, Taylor nodded. "Oh, I get that. I was passing on what Dad said. Let's just do what we can."

"Good idea." Legend took to the air and pointed at the container ship that seemed to be blocking in several other ships. From the angle it lay, it was sitting on the bottom, some of its deck awash even at low tide. "Let's start with that one and see what we can do."

"I will help!" declared Zachary. "Come on, Taylor!"

Taylor grinned. "Okay, Zach. You want to jump or teleport?"

Rebecca glanced sharply at Eidolon. Up until now, her best information on Zachary was that he had a high Mover rating, which involved either extreme speed (which she had witnessed herself) or physics-defying leaping. Nowhere had teleportation been mentioned.

David met her gaze and shrugged minutely. Your guess is as good as mine.

"I would like to teleport," Zachary replied happily. "I have never teleported before. This will be fun!"

"Okay, let's do this then." Taylor held Zachary's arm next to her side … and they both vanished in a burst of flame. More or less at the same instant, far out over the bay, a tiny flicker of light signalled their arrival on the container ship.

"That wasn't in the briefing you gave me." Legend's voice was neutral. "Did you know he could do that?"

"I did not." Eidolon sounded like he was frowning. "I don't like it. That's the profile of the teleportation Butcher had."

Rebecca tilted her head slightly, running the conversation through her memory. "Are you sure it was his power and not hers they were using? From context, she was asking him if he was alright with her teleporting him out there."

"Endbringers can't be teleported!" protested Eidolon. "I should know. I've tried enough times."

"Maybe they can't be teleported unless they choose to let themselves be teleported," Legend suggested. "I thought you told me she had no powers."

"She doesn't," Eidolon said, though he sounded less certain. "Or she didn't." He looked unhappy. "Could he have given her Butcher's powers?"

"There's one very simple way to do that," Rebecca reminded them both. "And it doesn't involve an irritatingly upbeat Endbringer. If Taylor Hebert had landed the killing blow, she would now be the new Butcher. But I don't believe she did. And I don't believe she is."

"She's far too collected," Legend agreed. "Not like someone who's struggling with literal inner demons. But I agree; the connotations of what she said indicate that she's the one with the teleport power."

"Okay, let's just assume for now that its bullshit powerset includes the ability to bestow powers to Taylor Hebert, and worry later about whether they're permanent, temporary or need maintaining." Eidolon pointed at the container ship in the distance. "They've beaten us out there and here we are, standing on the shore arguing about how they did it."

"You've never spoken a truer word." Legend lifted off the ground and accelerated toward the container ship. Rebecca followed suit, and in another moment Eidolon was flying alongside them.

They arrived at the ship in short order; slowing down, they made an orbit of the massive vessel to figure out what to do with it first. It was down by the bow, the wavelets off the ocean currently lapping over about a third of its length. The containers which had been its cargo lay strewn on her deck, with some overboard. Huge hatchways gaped open, the covers long since gone, with water clearly visible just a few feet down through each opening.

Rebecca knew that she would be of little to no help in actually removing the water from the ship. Towing it, certainly. Lifting it, maybe, but not with the thousands of tons of water still in the hold. She angled over toward where the bridge superstructure rose out of the deck and landed near the rear hold opening. Legend alighted next to her a moment later, while Eidolon hovered over the farthest hatchway, one edge awash with the incoming tide. Rebecca couldn't see his expression, but his body language was one large frown.

"What are you thinking?" she asked. "Freeze the water in stasis and lift it out in chunks?"

Legend waggled his hand from side to side as if to vaguely agree with her. "That could be doable, I suppose. I was thinking of just vaporising it. There has to be a way to do it without seriously damaging the hull of the ship."

"And while you're doing that, I could get under and lift the whole thing onto some sort of support." Rebecca considered the idea. It wasn't a bad plan, all told.

There was the sound of something dragging and bumping and thumping over the deckplates, and they both turned to see Zachary and Taylor. The pair had located a large hose, over four inches in diameter and twenty feet long, and Zachary was proudly dragging it behind him with a large section of it looped over his shoulders.

"I can help get the water out!" Zachary announced helpfully. "Then it will be easier to repair the ship. It was deliberately sunk, you know."

Rebecca tilted her head slightly. "No, I didn't know. How are you going to get the water out with that? Using it as a siphon will take far too long."

Zachary beamed at her question. "Oh, no, Chief Director! I will blow it out! Watch this!" He heaved the hose one last time, and one end fell into the hatchway, splashing down into the dark, dank water. More and more slithered over the edge and down into the water, until he held just the other end.

Taylor nudged him and pointed at where Eidolon still hovered over the ship.

"Oh, yes, Taylor. You are right." Zach cupped one hand around his mouth, the other still occupied in holding the hose. "Father!"

This time, Eidolon turned entirely away from the group at the hatchway, clearly deep in thought. Taylor and Zachary looked at each other and shrugged.

"I've been meaning to ask," murmured Legend. "What's the 'Father' thing about?"

"Tell you later," replied Rebecca, just as quietly. She raised her voice somewhat and addressed Zachary. "How do you mean, 'blow' the water out of the boat?"

"Like this, Chief Director!" Zach took a deep breath. Taylor wet her finger, tested the wind, then took a step back and to the left. Holding the end of the hose firmly, Zach put it to his mouth … and blew.

Every hatchway along the length of the ship erupted in a solid square pillar of dirty brown water that reached over a hundred feet in the air, arched over to the right, and crashed into the ocean beyond. The noise was tremendous, like standing next to Niagara Falls for hours on end, and it just went on and on and on. Worse, the smell was horrific; she figured there had been some things rotting down in the hold for the last fifteen years, and now they were out in the open.

The sheer impossibility of what Zach was doing, she decided to shelve for the moment.

The waterspouts petered out, then stopped altogether. The ship moved, its hull grating across the bottom, then began to rise upward as buoyancy reasserted itself. Down below, within the hull, Rebecca heard water running and knew that the ship would sink again without assistance, but she knew that between them they would be up to the job.

"You!" The voice was that of a man pushed to his limits and somewhat beyond. "You did that on purpose!"

Rebecca recognised the voice. Looking up, she saw Eidolon, still hovering there. Directly above one of the hatchways. He had clearly been caught in the mephitic fountain; his costume was soaked and stained, while rotting seaweed was draped artfully over his helmet and one shoulder. Reaching up and over his shoulder, he removed a live flopping fish from the back of his neck and tossed it out into the ocean, where it disappeared from view.

"I tried to warn you, Father." Zachary did not sound particularly apologetic, while Taylor seemed to be on the verge of rupturing herself, trying not to laugh. "You ignored me."

"That's right." Legend sounded unusually tight-lipped as well; glancing at him, Rebecca saw the signs that he was also attempting to hold in laughter. Not that she blamed either him or Taylor. It was rather amusing. "He called out to you. You turned away."

"Graaahhh!" Eidolon flickered with light for a moment, then with a flash he was clean once more. Rebecca immediately began to wonder exactly how many people were watching from shore with telescopic lenses. She made a mental note to check social media sites over the next few days.

"On the upside," she offered. "The hold is empty of water. We can repair it much more easily now."

"Yes." Eidolon seemed to be suffering an undue amount of stress, from the deep breathing he was doing. "We can. And we will. Just the three of us." He pointed at Zachary. "You will stay far away from us. Understand?"

"Yes, Father." Zachary beamed happily. "I understand. Taylor and I will work over there while you work over here."

Taylor grabbed Zachary's hand. "Bye," she managed, her eyes sparkling with unexpressed mirth. With a burst of flame, they were gone. Seconds later, Rebecca was almost certain she could hear laughter echoing across the Boat Graveyard. But that wasn't her problem. Her problem was the ship she was standing on, which was gradually filling with water again.

"Okay," she said. "Let's get to it."

I'll find a private place later, she promised herself. And laugh my head off.

Because that was freaking hilarious.


Taylor


The moment we arrived on the target ship, I leaned up against Zach and began laughing helplessly. I wasn't able to stop for three or four minutes, until I was red in the face and tears were streaming down my cheeks. Zachary was smiling, but I still found it a lot funnier than he did.

"Oh, man, if I could've seen his face …"

Dad would probably have said not to laugh at others for their misfortunes, but Eidolon had kinda brought it on himself. And I knew he would've laughed too.

"I did not do it on purpose, Taylor." Zach answered my unasked question. "But I did not do everything I could to ensure it did not happen. Perhaps next time he will pay more attention to me?"

I snorted. "Yeah, maybe. You definitely got his attention this time, that's for sure."

"That is good, Taylor. Father needs to spend more time looking outward at the world around him than inward at his powers." Zach looked around. "We can not help the Triumvirate to fix that ship, so we will fix this one."

I took a deep breath and wiped the tears from my eyes. Zach was right; we were here to do a job. Then I had a good look at the ship we'd ended up on.

It was one of the mid-sized ones, maybe two hundred feet long. Though it was still afloat, it had that feeling that it had taken on water in the past. The upperworks were covered in rust and salt scale, and I wondered how much good metal was left behind after a decade and a half of neglect.

"Okay, I'll bite," I said. "How are we going to fix it?"

Zachary raised one hand and rapped on the nearest bit of superstructure, eliciting a ringing sound. "Tell me, Taylor. When your father has a piece of metal covered in rust, how does he get it off?"

I got the impression he was looking for a specific answer. "Hits it with a hammer …?"

He smiled. It was clearly the right response. "Then the first thing we will do is knock the rust off."

Lifting his foot, he stomped down on the deck. I half-expected it to go straight through—he was strong enough to do that by accident, let alone on purpose—but it didn't. Instead, the entire ship rang like a gong, rust and crusted-on salt showering off in all directions as he hit the precise harmonic note.

I yelped and covered my head with my arms, preparing to spit out bits of salt and rusted metal, but none had even gotten in my hair. In fact, not a bit of it had come within a few feet of me. I looked down and saw that even the rusted deck plates were a lot cleaner except for a circle around our feet.

Zach looked at me innocently. "Are you alright, Taylor?" Or rather, his tone was innocent, and butter wouldn't have melted in his mouth, but deep in his eyes I saw the flicker of amusement.

"You did that on purpose," I accused him, elbowing him in the ribs.

"Yes, I did," he said at once. "I was testing out the idea of physical humour. Setting up an expectation and then subverting it. Did it work?"

I paused, thinking about that. Well, I had taught him about jokes. That one was on me, I supposed. "Yeah, it worked. Still a dirty trick, though."

He smiled. "It was a very clean trick. But I will not be doing it to you again. You did not know I could or would do it, so it was unfair of me to do it to you without warning." He moved to the side. "Come over here, please, so that I can finish clearing the rust off of the deck."

I stepped off the circle of still-rusted metal and moved over to where he was standing. "I'll forgive you this time. And it was kind of funny. But that's the kind of joke that's only funny once."

"So I had surmised, Taylor." Zach tapped the deck with his toe and the rusted patch shivered; the rust jumped in the air and dissipated. Putting his hands on his hips, he gave the ship a critical once-over. "Even with the rust gone, it still does not look very pretty, does it?"

"Well, no." The general air of decay and neglect had lifted a little, but the ship still had a slight list and I wouldn't have trusted my life to the wooden railings that I could see. "They're going to have to tear this thing all the way down to fix it up properly."

"We shall see, Taylor." His voice was bright. "Let me try again." He lifted his foot again, and stomped on the deck. This time, the ringing sound was somehow different. The whole ship juddered, somehow out of focus for a few seconds; when it became still again, the once-pitted decking was smooth and whole. The railings were no longer old and rotted. In fact, everything looked as though it had been freshly manufactured and constructed.

"Whoa, Zach." I stared at him. "Did you just do what I thought you just did?"

"I do not know, Taylor." He grinned at me in a way that showed he knew exactly what I meant. "Let me try again."

This time, as his foot sent vibrations throughout the vessel, I was entirely unsurprised to feel the ship lurching back to an upright position while there was the sound of rushing water from somewhere out of sight. Somehow, using his smartass Zachary capabilities, he had emptied the water from inside the ship with a simple stamp of his foot.

I could only wonder what this looked like from onshore as Zach lifted his foot once more. Down it came, and the boat vibrated in perfect harmony. When I could see straight again, the wooden railings gleamed with varnish while the deck and upperworks were freshly painted. There was even a lifeboat, heretofore missing, hanging from nearby davits.

Wonderingly, I ran my hand over a metal hatchway. The paintwork was clean, dry and smooth. The entire ship looked as though it had just emerged from a complete makeover from stem to stern … which, in a way, it had.

"Wow," I said feelingly. "Just wow. That's amazing, Zach."

Zachary smiled at the praise, and knocked his heel against the deck. The ship didn't judder this time, but I heard the unmistakeable sound of an anchor chain running out. The anchor splashed into the water, then Zach did it again. The chain stopped; through my feet, I felt the anchor bite into the harbour bottom, stopping our sideways drift.

I grinned at Zach, and he returned it. "Dad is gonna be so thrilled," I told him. "With all these ships up and running, we're gonna have port trade before we know it."

"We have yet to refurbish the Lord's Port facilities," he said seriously. "But that can be done also."

"And without the gangs to cause problems, the city can really get up and go again." I shook my head. "And all because of you."

"Not all gangs have been eliminated from Brockton Bay," Zach noted. "But those who are left are minor in both scope and ambition. Coil may have attempted to become a problem, but he has long since left the city."

"Coil?" I frowned. "I'm not sure if I ever heard of him."

Zach smiled. "He was never as good as he thought he was."


Somewhere Across America
Coil


Thomas Calvert pulled himself out of a troubled slumber. His dreams had been shot through with images of a teenage boy that had something much older and much more terrifying looking out through his eyes. And when Zachary wasn't haunting him, Creep in his body bag was there to wreck his sleep.

He tensed, looking around, but there was no body bag, no body. He wasn't sharing the bed with anything that shouldn't have been there. Peeking over the side of the bed revealed that it wasn't on the floor, either.

Letting out the long-held shuddering breath, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. Have I outrun it at last? Am I beyond its reach? He didn't dare to hope, but it seemed that way.

He'd learned over the last few days to keep everything within easy grabbing range, so he took up his toiletry bag and stumbled into the tiny bathroom, rubbing sleep from his eyes. His nerves were so frazzled …

And then, as he was brushing his teeth, letting his mind drift in the semi-hypnotic mode that tedious but important tasks can inflict, the shower started up behind him.

He froze, almost biting the toothbrush in half.

Slowly, in no way wanting to, he turned toward the shower cubicle.

His hand inched out, touched the sliding screen. Pushed it aside.

A tiny whimper escaped from his throat, via his sinuses.

Standing in the shower, rivulets of water running down the rubberized outer surface of the body bag, was Creep. He appeared to be washing his hair. The dead man turned toward Calvert, giving him a good view of the blood trickling out of the fresh bullet hole in the middle of his forehead, and reached out to pull the sliding screen shut again.

Thirty seconds after that, Calvert was in his vehicle, peeling out of the parking lot.

Later, the maid would be quite irritated at the large amount of toothpaste she had to clean off the shower screen.


Legend


"And that should do it," Eidolon declared, dusting his hands off. The container ship, seacocks closed off, was floating properly now. Between him and Alexandria, the containers themselves had been retrieved from the bottom of the harbour and restacked on the deck in something approximating their original order.

Of course, the ship still needed a total refurbishment and the engines would probably require being replaced altogether. He wasn't sure about the propeller shafts either; resting on the bottom couldn't have done them any good at all. But, due to all their efforts, the ship was now floating free and could be towed into position—by Alexandria, naturally—so they could start work on another one.

Then he turned to look at the rest of the Boat Graveyard, zooming in to see which one they should focus on next. After a moment, he blinked, wiped his eyes, and tried again.

"What … the fuck?" That was Eidolon, hovering beside him. "Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"

The question was almost certainly rhetorical. Somehow, over the half-hour that they'd spent making sure that the container ship simply wouldn't sink again and retrieving all the sunken containers, the entire remainder of the Boat Graveyard had been returned to pristine condition. Paintwork gleaming, the ships rode at anchor, each one a decorous distance from the next. Even the water surrounding them was clean and unpolluted, sparkling in the afternoon sunlight.

"I see it," Alexandria said as she came up to their level, the anchor chain still slung over her shoulder. "I'm not sure if I believe it, but I see it."

"Zachary." Eidolon made the name into a swear-word. "I don't know how he did it, but it has to be him."

Alexandria glanced down at the grime on her costume, then at the flawless ships before her. "Maybe we should have asked him for help … dad?"

Eidolon gave her an extremely dirty look.


End of Part Thirteen