Chapter 6

Then, I saw a rocket roaring towards my head, launched by what looked like a steam-powered giant with a potato canon.

I panicked. I had the cable in hand, the shipping container suspended half-way between the ship and the pier. If I let go to dodge, the load would crash down, possible crushing the men beneath it. I tried to sidestep while keeping hold of the cable. That only meant the rocket hit my left shoulder rather than my head.

It exploded, shredding the cable and sending me flying backwards. I hit a wall of containers and bounced to the pavement. My shoulder was agony. I reached over with my right hand and felt blood and raw meat. I couldn't move my left arm.

After a few seconds, I became aware of my surroundings. The dockworkers were running for cover. The container was still hanging from the gantry. The pulley system must have some sort of emergency breaking mechanism, I thought.

"Shaped charges, beyatch!" the man in the steam-powered battle suit yelled. "Rips through armor and Brutes. Guess you're not so tough, huh? Not when I'm prepared for you. You're in the wrong place at the wrong time, kid. Take my advice and run."

I groaned, recognizing him from the PRT files I had been forced to study as Trainwreck. He was supposed to be a lone Tinker that worked out of the Trainyards. Tinkers in general were a bad match for me. My negation field had little effect on their gear. In his normal battle suit this guy was supposed to be one of the physically strongest, if least sophisticated, of the Brockton Bay Tinkers. Which meant I might not have my normal strength advantage either. He'd already shown he could injure me. The PRT suspected that Trainwreck worked as a mercenary, so someone probably paid him for this attack.

As I pushed myself to my feet, I heard a whistling wheeze and a mechanical "CHUNK!" as Trainwreck fired another rocket from his steam cannon. This one impacted the pulley system, obliterating it and sending the dangling container plummeting. I saw Kurt pushing another man out from under it and launched myself towards him, the concrete cracking under my feet.

Wrapping my right arm around my Dad's friend, I managed to push him out of the way just as the metal container slammed to the ground with a reverberating clang. The edge of the metal crate caught my dangling left arm, snapping it below the elbow. I cried out in pain, my rolling stop jarring my wounds further.

"Fuck," Kurt groaned, his arms wrapping around his chest, where I had caught him. Broken ribs, I guessed. Better than dead.

"Help him out of here," I yelled to a couple of the longshoremen. "Everyone get to cover."

"Did that hurt?" Trainwreck yelled. "It looked like it hurt. How about this?" He held out his arm where he had a large cylinder feeding a sideways catapult. It cycled a half dozen times, each with a loud, metallic "Clik-Whump!" Six flattened hubcaps shot towards me. I ripped open the door from the fallen container and put it in front of Kurt and me. The sharpened metal discs sliced halfway through the barrier. One caught my right arm, leaving a shallow cut to begin bleeding.

"Fuck." I muttered. This guy wasn't playing around. Those would have sliced completely through a regular person.

"You like that? I've got more." Trainwreck was pulling out another clip of hubcaps to load into the shooter. While he was distracted, I leapt towards him. Even without my jump boots I could get a running leap of almost a hundred yards. Three quick steps and I pushed off, trying to keep my trajectory flat. By the time the Tinker looked up, I was closing in on him.

The armored villain tried to lift his oversized gauntlet to fire more discs at me, but for some reason it wouldn't move. It was almost like his suit was out of power. "No!" he cried.

Just before I could grab him, two long metal shafts with tires at the ends dropped from the backs of his legs. All along the shafts were car batteries. They sparked and the tires spun, gripping the pavement to pull him backwards out of my negation field.

"Can't get me that easy," he crowed.

"Get back here," I said as I ran after him. He bent and swiveled his knees, slaloming like a skier, and keeping far enough away from me that he stayed out of my field.

"Can't catch me, but I got something for you," he called then pulled his potato cannon off his shoulder. With another a mechanical "CHUNK!" he fired a rocket at me. I dodged low to the left and the missile flew over my damaged shoulder. Instinctively I turned to watch as it flew past me and impacted the bottom container in a stack. The weapon exploded, tearing into the metal shell. Melted shrapnel sprayed across two men sheltering near the stack.

"No!" I cried out as I saw them fall. I had to remember that there were people around that I had to protect. I couldn't trade their lives for mine.

Our maneuvering around the docks had brought us close to where I had first been attacked. I spotted the shorn cable on the ground and grabbed it. Flicking it like a whip, I managed to wrap the thick metal line around Trainwreck's armored middle. I stomped on the loose end of the cable and started pulling with my one hand, winding it around my arm to take up the slack.

"What do you think you're doing?" Trainwreck demanded, as he struggled to free himself. "Let go of me!"

I was reeling him in like a fish. He fired a hubcap at me, but I batted it aside with my cable covered arm. A few more feet and the Tinker was inside my field. His armor locked up, except for the extended tires, which were leaving black rubber all over the concrete.

"That's not gonna stop me," he said as I approached. Suddenly metal blisters all over his chest and backplate exploded. A hail of metal fragments flew towards me. My grip on the cable kept me from being thrown back. I saw him drop several grenades, which also exploded in a wash of force and heat. Again, I painfully weathered the conflagration.

"I guess that's why he told me to use shaped charges, t'fucker," he muttered quietly enough I wasn't sure I heard him, especially through the ringing in my ears. "Looks like it's time for Plan B."

I could see fleshy tentacles moving around in the chest of the armor. Trainwreck's plump face seemed to sag against the metal. A tentacle moved and the whole chest and backplates sprang open enough to expose a pod inside which carried the inhuman form of the Case 53. Before I could react, the pod ejected from the battle suit, launching into the sky, rockets igniting.

I started to leap after it, but the battle suit exploded, sending me flying to crash against the crane scaffold. It crumpled around me. My eyes closed and I felt pain all over my body. My ears were barely working, my shoulder was fiery agony, and I my lungs hurt. I didn't know lungs could hurt, not like this.

Sometime later, I heard Kurt calling my name. It sounded like he was a mile away and underwater, but when I opened my eyes, he was looking up at me from about three feet below where I was cradled in the deformed metal.

"Taylor! Are you ok?" he yelled. He looked like he had been through a hell of a fight himself – his face blackened and bloody, his arm clutching at his ribs. I moved my right hand until he could see it then waggled back and forth.

"So, so?" he asked. I held up a thumb. "Ok, help's on the way. I'm not gonna try to move you 'til the ambulance or maybe the PRT gets here. It may take a welding rig to cut you out anyway."

I held up the thumb again, then closed my eyes.

Sometime later I heard Kurt's raised voice again.

"Look, I'm sorry, but there's no fuckin' way we can offload the rest of your cargo. This whole pier's fucked at least until they replace the crane and the gantry. You need to move to another pier, and we'll get you offloaded there." Kurt sounded pissed. I opened my eyes and saw him arguing with some guy off the ship.

"You don't understand, if I'm not at pier 72, empty and ready to load at exactly 1800 today, I'm going to lose my whole contract. That's millions." The older African American man yelled, slapping a clipboard.

"So, you're a little late, what's the big deal?" Kurt tried.

"It's the client. He's crazy. On time, every time, or we lose the contract. That's why my agreement with you guys is so strict. And don't doubt for a minute that I'm not coming after the DWA for the cost of this. Now we're both fucked," the older man shook his head and walked off. Kurt clearly wanted to argue, but just wasn't up to it.

I heard sirens approaching and saw Velocity stop half a block away. He started asking the dockworkers what had happened. I knew he wouldn't get any closer to me unless he had to. He was one of the heroes that reacted worst to having his powers negated. For whatever reason it really bugged him. Up the street I could see Miss Militia approaching on a motorcycle.

Yay, the heroes were here. They'll take care of it, I hoped. I'd certainly screwed it up. Got my ass handed to me by a c-lister in steam-powered armor. Beck was never going to let me live this down.

I spent the next three days in the PRT infirmary. They didn't want to put me in the hospital because they didn't want me to accidentally de-power Panacea when she was in the middle of saving someone's life. She could have avoided whatever hospital I was in, but that meant she couldn't save anyone there. Also Dr. Uravic, the PRT power specialist who did my power testing, wanted to study my enhanced healing in detail.

It was not a fun time. Not only was I recovering from the equivalent of a nasty gunshot to the shoulder, I was effectively locked down so couldn't avoid Dad's recriminations and self- flagellation. I'm not sure why, but he seemed to blame himself for my getting hurt.

"Dad, we don't know if Trainwreck came specifically for me or if there was something else he wanted," I argued. "If he was after me, then I'm not hard to find. I go to public school, so he knows where I am from seven to noon every weekday. That might have saved some of the dockworkers, but would have put the students at risk."

"Maybe he was worried about the other Wards," Dad suggested. "I put you out on the dock without any backup."

"I don't have backup anywhere except on missions. This wasn't a mission. Besides, he might not have been there for me at all. He might have been after something on the ship or in the cargo or something else on the pier. I might have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time."

"Maybe, but I put you there."

"And if I wasn't there, more of the guys might have gotten hurt or killed. At least I stopped him from killing anyone." I sighed, "Even if that's all I did."

While I was in the infirmary Hollis visited to check up on me. Beck didn't, but I didn't expect her to. I got along with most of the agents, but the sniper really didn't want to be on the "kids team" and though that if she complained enough and made herself unpleasant enough she could get kicked off and go back to her old team. I thought she was the one being childish.

"I thought you might like to know how the hunt for Trainwreck was going," my team lead said.

"I'm more interested in knowing why he attacked," I replied. "From what he said I don't think he was after me, though he knew I was there. He was working with someone who had helped him prepare to fight me, but I didn't think tinkers could whip stuff up in the two hours I was there."

"Some can, some can't," Hollis replied waggling her hand. "The current favorite theory is that someone was prepping Trainwreck for a run at you, so he had created countermeasures to your known abilities. From what you reported he said, it sounds like he was attacking the ship or the dockworkers – they figure the ship was more likely – and when he heard you were there he brought along his new toys, including the escape pod. There's no record of that being used before either."

"Are they having any luck finding him?" I asked. "I just figured he'd gone back to the Trainyard."

"That was the first place we looked, but he was gone," the older agent replied. "We found his workshop, if you can call it that. Piggot's had both the PRT and the Protectorate looking all over town for him, but the dude has vanished. They figure whoever his client was has either moved him or we'll be finding his body at some point. The Thinkers are looking into the ship and it's clients and cargos, just in case."

"But enough of that. Unless the steampunk reject comes after you again, you don't need to worry about him. There's something more important." Hollis' tone was like a kid that knew a secret they really wanted to share.

"What?" I replied.

"Scuttlebutt is that Deputy Director Renick is going to hand over operational control of the team to one of the PRT commanders," she said.

"Why? I thought Team Nemesis was his idea."

"Yeah, but DDs don't normally directly manage teams – task forces maybe, but not permanent teams. Putting us under a commander puts us in the proper the chain of command. I think it's a good thing. It means we're not considered a trial anymore, or at least not as much of one."

"But I'm still the odd one out, not permanent PRT, because powers, and not a Ward because I don't fit into the 'team dynamic'." I made air quotes around the last two words.

"So, no change for you, but it's good for the rest of us," Hollis admitted reluctantly.

"I suppose," I mentally shrugged. "Any idea of which commander? Not that I know anything about them except maybe their names."

"Could be anyone. Of course, there are only five of them in ENE."

"I guess we'll find out when they make it official," I replied.

I was back on my feet by the second week of February, when I was faced with the most terrifying assignment yet – a Wards publicity event.

PRT Leadership had decided that the Wards would split up to make appearances at the three major Brockton Bay malls and do walkarounds followed by a Q&A and photo signing. For whatever reason they split us into gender mixed pairs, with Gallant not participating.

Since it was Valentine's Day weekend the PHO shippers were so excited about the potential pairings. I figured there was only one Ward that could stand to be around me for any length of time, and sure enough I was assigned to work with Chris. I thought it had the potential to be ok. I liked spending time with him. We all met up at PRT HQ on Saturday at noon, suited up, and split into three PRT vans.

"Hey Taylor," Chris said when I climbed into the van, the door shutting automatically behind me. We were both in our armor. He reached out to plug a cable into a port under my pauldron. He opened a touch screen on his gauntlet and started tapping buttons. "The armor seems to be in good shape. Any issues?"

I sighed. He did this every time we were both geared up. I called it a tinker handshake – somewhat intrusive, but not meant to be offensive. And he had built most of the gear, so no one else could really maintain it. "No problems. Of course, I wasn't wearing it in the fight last week."

"Do you think it would have made a difference?" Chris asked. "I mean the pauldron might have ablated some of the shaped charge, but it probably wouldn't have tanked it."

"It would have been nice to have a ranged weapon. Trainwreck managed to keep out of reach for most of the fight. I couldn't touch him." I thought for a minute, looking at the power modules surrounding my wrists. "The gauntlets store and release kinetic energy?"

"Right."

"And it gets the stored energy by absorbing it from my punches, when I need them to be softer? So, in my last fight they wouldn't have had any energy to shoot, as I hadn't punched anything?"

"You can basically charge them up before a fight by just punching a bag or slamming your fist together a few times." Chris shrugged at my dubious look then admitted, "I couldn't figure out how to hook them to an external power supply and have them absorb energy too." He took out his laser pistol. "Maybe I can make you one of these."

"Maybe," I looked at it, but didn't think an actual gun was something I'd be comfortable with. Social programming, I guessed. Punching through steel was ok, but guns were bad. Made no sense.

When we go to the mall, I saw there were several people, all adults, marching in a line and carrying signs saying "Free the Wards", "No Child Soldiers", and "Save our Children". I looked at Chris.

"We see this sometimes. Think of them as Youth Guard's even sillier cousins."

"Just ignore them and keep walking," ordered Agent Mansfield, our PRT escort. He was a big blond man wearing PRT fatigues. "Mall security will keep them out of the building."

"Ready?" Chris asked, his hand on his door, the closer one to the mall entrance.

I nodded. "Sure. I mean, how bad could it be?" I asked ironically.

"Tell me you didn't just say that." Chris facepalmed with a clack of metal against metal. Still shaking his head, he exited the van.

I smiled and followed.

Our PR team was waiting for us inside the mall.

"Kid Win, Nemesis, right, good." Jamie Grecco, the event organizer from the PR department looked from us to his tablet and back. He was a tall, gangly guy in his mid-twenties with short sandy blond hair and round glasses. "Um, the theme for the day is… regular kids. So, um, you're gonna wander the mall just shopping and hanging out and stuff. We'll have some people with you to keep the crowds away, and a couple of photographers documenting the day. Then we go to the east courtyard where we have tables and chairs set up for a public Q&A. Finally, you'll stay at the table for an autograph session. Right?"

"If that's what it says," Chris replied. He shot me a look then rolled his eyes.

"Yeah. It's right here," Jessie pointed to his tablet.

We started our tour of the mall, just two normal teens shopping – in armor, with a crowd following us and everyone staring and recording. I was too nervous, self-conscious really, to say anything. It was like those dreams where your find yourself walking through school, only to discover you don't have any clothes on and people were pointing.

Chris tried to spark some conversation with lame jokes, but I couldn't get into it. Finally, I notice a group of our followers where wearing t-shirts say "No Child Soldiers" with the Wards logo crossed out – the same as the protestors outside. I nodded towards them, drawing Chris' attention.

"How do you answer that?" I asked. "I think I get the whole 'child soldier' accusation bandied about on PHO more than the rest of you, because my missions have me working next to the agents with guns. It looks more military."

"I fucking hate that shit," Chris muttered, keeping his voice low enough not to be heard by the crowd. "We're neither soldiers nor children. We're heroes – protecting the people of the city from threats they can't face on their own."

"We may not be children, but we aren't adults yet either." I was playing devil's advocate as this was a debate I had seen several times online. Before I triggered, I probably agreed at least some with the 'Wards equals child soldiers' side.

"Maybe not, though the whole concept of the age of majority varies from place to place and culture to culture. The bar mitzvah ceremony, to take one example, is supposed to be an acknowledgement of adulthood, and you do that at thirteen." Chris shook his head. "But the main thing is that we're not normal humans, we're parahumans. Triggers change us. Would I be comfortable with most of my classmates being given guns and being told to go out and stop the Empire goons? No. But you and I and Vista and Clock all have powers that allow us to do more. And I don't think not using them is really an option. I've never heard of any parahuman simply ignoring their powers. Even the rogues use their powers, just not the same way."

"So, since we're going to use them, it's better to use them to help people?" I asked. "I mean I agree, but what about those people that say to wait until we're eighteen, or just train until then, or anything but directly fighting villains."

"They don't know what their talking about," Chris said harshly. "All that is required for evil to win is for good men to do nothing, or however that goes. If we sat around and did nothing when we could be stopping bad guys and helping people, we'd be helping the bad guys. Those that can, do!"

"And those that can't?" I prompted.

"Join Youth Guard," he answered quietly.

We laughed. It wasn't the most well thought out or compelling argument, but I could understand it better now that I had powers. I didn't think of myself as a soldier. I was a hero. Fighting bad guys and protecting people was what heroes did. And in Brockton Bay in particular, even if you didn't go out looking for villains, sometimes they found you.

The Q&A was embarrassing. Chris and I got several questions on if we were dating. Jamie usually cut off that question with something like, "The Wards personal lives are off limits. Whether or not they are dating, is between them. Please move on to the next question."

I think he was trying to hint we were to build public interest or something. I wondered if that was his idea or if it came from higher up.

At the end of the autograph session, I heard a voice I had hoped to never hear again.

"Taylor."

I turned to see Emma Barnes. She looked the same – tall and pretty, with long red hair. To my surprise, she was alone. I hadn't seen her without either her minions or her parents in I don't know how long. She was staring at me with an unidentifiable gleam in her eye. It was different from the contempt or revulsion which she had heaped upon me since before high school.

"What do you want, Emma? You're not supposed to be here," I said. That got Chris and Jamie's attention.

"I know. I won't be here long." She paused then smiled. "I just wanted to tell you how proud I am of you. Of what you've become."

"What do you mean?" I was all astonishment, as my mom used to say.

"You finally did it. I've been prodding you since the… for years. Pushing you to grow. You were always so weak. So very much prey. Now you're not. Not prey at all anymore. You finally let go, let loose. Now you're strong. It's even in your new name – Nemesis, the ultimate predator."

"What are you talking about?" I demanded. "You've been doing what? You've been harassing me, bullying me, making my life hell."

"And it worked!" Emma beamed and threw up her hands like she'd made a goal in soccer.

"What the hell?" I barked, stepping back. I looked around to make sure there wasn't another attack coming. I didn't see Sophia or Madison, or any of her little pack of lapdogs. All I could see was several people around us watching and listening. Jamie was calling someone, and Agent Mansfield was closing in from where he had been observing a the edge of the crowd.

"Don't you see, you've won. We won, finally." Emma sounded happy. "You're out of Winslow. You got Sophia run out of town. I'm at fucking Immaculata – training to be a nun, if my Dad has his way. My family may go broke paying off the settlement. My lawyer tells me I'm going to have to plead to Harassment. Even if all I get is community service, it'll still go on my record. I even lost my modelling job. You finally stood up to us and you destroyed us. I knew you could do it."

The crazy girl actually reached out to hug me. I jumped back as Jamie got between us.

"You can't be here, Miss Barnes," the event coordinator said firmly. "You know there is a restraining order. The police are already on their way. Nemesis and Kid Win are leaving anyway." He nodded to Agent Mansfield, who motioned for us to follow him towards the exit.

I looked back at the girl that was once my best friend. She was smiling and when she saw me looking, she raised a fist in a salute. I shook my head and turned away.

"What the hell was she talking about?" Chris looked at me like it was my fault.

"I have no idea," I said softly. "No idea."