Zoe put the bowl of cereal in front of an extremely subdued and very frightened looking Emma, the girl faintly muttering thanks before starting to eat. Watching her for a few moments, Zoe then looked across the table at her eldest daughter, who was staring at her sister with a blank expression through which her mother could make out extreme stress.
That didn't surprise her one iota. When Anne had arrived home from college about two hours after Danny and Michelle left, Zoe had been sitting in the living room looking sadly at a photo album of their family, and the Heberts, in happier times. The girl had walked in and stopped, before slowly approaching having obviously picked up on her mood. At first Anne had had the horrible feeling that something happened to Alan, but Zoe quickly set her straight, and spent a long time very carefully explaining the whole situation to the young woman.
Anne had not taken it well.
By the time Zoe was talked out Anne was curled against her side softly crying like she was ten, and the older woman wasn't much better off. They'd comforted each other for some time, before both had finally gone to bed. Even so, Zoe had gotten up three times in the middle of the night to check on Emma, and twice had discovered Anne sitting next to her bed watching her sister sleep with a sad expression on her face.
Neither one had a very good night. And by the looks of it, although Emma had slept until nearly nine, she had woken up feeling dreadful. It wasn't surprising, as even leaving the mental stress out of it, the sheer exhaustion the girl had shown after her meltdown would take quite a while to pass.
Pouring some coffee out for both Anne and herself, she pushed one cup across the table to her eldest daughter, who after some seconds stirred and looked first at it, then her, before picking it up with a silent nod of acknowledgment. Zoe and Anne sipped coffee while Emma slowly and absently ate her cereal, not really paying attention to either of them. In an attempt to break the silence, Zoe glanced out the window into the back yard then said, "Looks like the snow finally stopped. Hopefully that's it for a while, and they can get the streets properly cleared."
Anne nodded without replying while Emma ignored her entirely, focusing only on the bowl and her mechanically moving spoon. Zoe suppressed a tiny sigh, knowing that it was pointless ascribing any blame to anyone since they were all essentially in shock of one form or another.
"I've called work and told them I won't be in for a few days," she said after another minute or so. Zoe's job was only four days a week at a local accountancy firm where she did database management, and the rest of the department could easily cover for her for a while. She was quite senior in the company and no one had really questioned her when she'd told them she had a medical emergency at home. Again, Anne nodded and Emma ignored everything. Reaching out she gently put a hand on the latter's back, causing a hitch in her breathing and a pause in the movement of the spoon, both of which went back to how they had been a moment later. Raising her eyes she met Anne's, the older girl looking silently distressed.
Stroking Emma's back a couple of times, she indicated the hallways with a small motion of her head, Anne nodded once more and standing up. She did as well, both of them leaving the room and going into the living room to a position far enough from the kitchen that Emma was unlikely to hear them but was still just visible. The girl didn't react to them going at all.
"What the hell are we going to do, Mom?" Anne asked very quietly in a helpless and terrified voice. "How do we help Emma? How do we help Taylor for that matter? We need to put this right."
Zoe hugged her daughter. "I know, Anne, I know," she almost whispered into the girl's ear. "But we have to face the fact that we might not be able to fix it. All we can do is find someone who knows their stuff to help Emma. I can't do it, you can't do it, your father can't do it. It's out of our control, we don't have the expertise we need. But I'll find someone who does, trust me."
"What about Taylor?" Anne asked quietly.
Zoe sighed. "Danny is helping there. We need to concentrate on Emma for now. But don't worry, I'm not forgetting about Taylor, or Danny either. Our family did their family a horrible injury and somehow we'll put it to rights." She let go of the girl and held her shoulders, looking at her from arm's length. "Taylor is a strong, strong girl and she will come through this. Better than Emma has, I'm afraid. I spoke to Danny early this morning and Taylor has agreed to the idea that both of us join the suit against the school and everyone else we can show should have stepped in. That proves to me at least that she's mature enough to handle things for now. And I'm very grateful that she doesn't seem to hold it against us, although that doesn't make my guilt any the less."
Anne nodded slowly, her eyes damp. "I should have tried to find out why Taylor stopped coming around," she said in a desolate voice. "It was so unlike her. Emma's known her since they were babies, and then she just… stopped? Why didn't we notice?"
"I don't know, dear," Zoe replied sadly. "Emma went through a strange phase, and I though that was what it was, just a phase. Finding a new friend, going to a new school… I just assumed things would work out. And then life carried on and we were busy with our own things and before you know it, we're eighteen months later and all this shit has happened. I should have questioned it, it was my job to find out why my daughter was acting strangely, but… I screwed up."
"I did too," Anne whispered, rubbing her eyes. "But I was so busy with college, and…" She trailed off with a sigh.
They stood there for a while, silently, before Zoe said, "I'm going to need your help, Anne. I can't do this myself. We can't leave Emma alone, we don't know what… I'm worried she might…" She couldn't get the words out but her daughter obviously caught the gist and looked horrified.
"She wouldn't!"
Zoe shrugged helplessly. "I hope not, but I'm not going to take it on faith. That's what got us here. One or the other of us has to keep an eye on her until we can get her to someone who knows how to deal with this sort of mental thing. I'm going to make a lot of phone calls today, and will probably need to go out to talk to a couple of people I know later. Can you take the day off and stay here?"
"I already decided to stay home, Mom," Anne replied.
"Thank you." Zoe hugged the girl again. "I'm so sorry all this is happening."
"What about Dad? When does he get back?"
Zoe thought for a moment, working out times. "In about two hours, around half past eleven, assuming the traffic from the airport isn't too bad. The weather's improved a little so hopefully he won't have too much trouble." She frowned. "I am going to have words with that man. If he'd been honest about what happened to Emma and him that time we could have avoided all of this. And that damned girl wouldn't have ended up messing with Emma's mind like she did. Both of them could have gotten help when they needed it. Well, whether he likes it or not, he's going to get help now."
Anne looked worried, and thoughtful. "Do you think he'll push back on that?"
"I don't give a crap if he pushes back or not, he's going to do it or he's going to regret what happens," Zoe snapped, still very quietly, with a look past her older daughter to the younger one, who was now just staring at the empty bowl in front of her. "If I have to ask Danny to round up a couple of huge dock workers to physically pick the idiot up and carry him to a therapist, I will. And he'd do it."
The young woman almost grinned for a moment. "I remember some of those guys…" she said with a small laugh, although the humor vanished a moment later. "God, I hate this."
"So do I, Anne. So do I."
After a moment, they went back to the kitchen, where Zoe gently took Emma's bowl and spoon away and put it in the dishwasher.
"What have we discovered so far about what Sophia has been getting up to?" Emily asked, looking around at the other occupants of the conference room. Present were Triumph as the leader of the Wards, all the Protectorate ENE members other than Dauntless and Velocity who were on patrol, and a number of PRT personnel including her deputy.
It was the last of these who cleared his throat. "She is still being rather recalcitrant in cooperating with our investigation, but a few more facts have come to light. Inquiries at Winslow have proved beyond doubt that she and her two main co-conspirators have spent nearly a year and a half causing chaos throughout the whole facility, with either active cooperation from the staff in the case of the Principal and some of the administration who put in quite a lot of work covering for her, or simple passive negligence on the part of many of the rest. My own opinion is that the lot of them should be fired and blackballed from ever working in the teaching field again, but that's out of my remit." He looked disgusted.
"Our own staffing problem is more serious. Welton, the handler, is in it up to her eyeballs. We can prove she's been covering up Sophia's messes since about a week after we got the girl, and the motive seems to mostly be financial. She's certainly split a substantial amount of the money that should have been going to Winslow to cover various budgetary issues surrounding having a Ward present with at least two other people, Principal Blackwell being one and the other still unknown. At least seventy percent of the funds were diverted to their personal accounts through a whole series of financial maneuvering which will take days to untangle. So we can get Blackwell for misuse of federal funds without any problem, and likely a whole series of other charges."
He looked down at the document he was holding, while everyone listened in various states of anger. Turning a page, he went on, "Various informants, including some people both Assault and Miss Militia know, have suggested that Sophia has also been running off the books patrols from at most a month after we took her off the streets."
"That much we suspected," Emily commented.
"Yes, but we didn't have proof of anything other than her being prone to going off-route when on a legitimate patrol," he replied. "Triumph, you, Vista, and Aegis have all filed reports complaining about that in the last month, correct?"
The young man nodded slowly. "Yeah. She tends to either rush on ahead and turn up later, or disappear half-way through a patrol then wander back a little after a while. Never even apologizes for it either. Vista absolutely hates it. And her, if I'm honest."
"That fits the reports, but it's only the tip of the iceberg," the deputy director sighed. "We've got pretty solid information that she's spent quite a lot of her time off duty doing patrols of her own, through E88 and ABB territory more than a few times, and sometimes deep into the docks. Presumably going after the Merchants, I would assume."
"Stupid little bitch," Emily growled.
"Worse than that." He tapped his document. "At least three different informants have claimed that more than one criminal has ended up with a crossbow bolt in them. Not a tranq one either, a broadhead. We have one person prepared to swear that he saw the aftermath of one of these shootings, which the target did not survive. And several BBPD reports of casualties of gang activity involving serious injuries and another death, on reexamination, suggest strongly that a crossbow might well have been the weapon used. At the time they were put down to knife wounds but that may not be correct."
There was silence for a while as they all digested that.
"She's been killing people?" Battery finally asked in an appalled tone. He shrugged tiredly.
"So our information would suggest, yes. We can't yet prove it beyond doubt, and I'm waiting on Thinker analysis of some of our conclusions, but it seems highly likely."
"Where is she getting the bolts from?" Triumph asked. "A condition of her parole is that she turned all that sort of thing over."
"Where did she get them from in the first place?" Assault said, looking at him. "It's not like crossbows or bolts are difficult to lay hands on. And I'd be shocked if she didn't have one or more caches hidden around the place, probably since before we caught her, full of anything she might need. With her power, she could easily hide that sort of thing almost anywhere. Even in her quarters at the PRT building."
"Damn it. We're going to have to search the entire place, her home, any other likely spot we can think of," Emily grumbled. "The school too, although she'd be even stupider than I thought she was if she risked hiding lethal weapons there."
"Our people have searched all the accessible places she might have had access to already, but they didn't have any scanning equipment suitable for deep penetration scans," Renick said. "We should rectify that and have them check again just in case."
"I will arrange a suitable set of scanning gear by the end of the day," Armsmaster commented, looking very annoyed. "I can provide enough to outfit several teams so we can check all the likely places at the same time. However, as she has quite a high Mover rating, she could feasibly have accessed almost anywhere in the city, and if she thought ahead enough she would have realized that finding a discreet location well off the normal routes she is known to take would be the best approach."
"On the other hand, this is Sophia Hess we're speaking about, so…" Assault shrugged.
"A valid point," the Tinker allowed. "I suspect that however low our expectations for Miss Hess were, she will have failed them."
"That's certainly a trend," Miss Militia put in with a sigh. "Damn it. I really hoped we'd gotten through to her."
"Some people don't want to be helped, and you just have to live with it," Emily said, shaking her head. "Stupid girl. All right, get some teams out scanning everywhere as soon as possible. I doubt any evidence is likely to walk away with Hess in the cells, so there's no tearing hurry. We have more important things to concentrate on right now. But even so, I want any information we can dig up on what she's been up to as soon as feasible."
Mike Renick made some notes, as did several other people.
"And make certain we've got Welton singing her guts out. I want to know everyone who was involved in this… clusterfuck," Emily added with a snarl.
"We're not going to let up on her until we know everything she does, if not more," Renick replied with a grim smile. "One thing that has come to light is a very strong suspicion of there being more moles in the organization than we thought there were. We knew about two, we isolated them and have been feeding them carefully curated garbage for months now, but while we were looking through Welton's activities we ran across traces the techs say show someone we don't know about has been accessing far more of our systems than I'm even remotely happy about. I've got two teams working on that right now, very carefully to avoid tipping off whoever is behind it."
There were a number of dismayed glances between various participants of the meeting. Armsmaster nodded. "When Deputy Director Renick informed me of his findings, I ran my own tests and can confirm that someone has definitely accessed our systems a minimum of five times in the last three months. Someone with very high access rights, who knows what they're doing, but isn't quite as good as they think they are. Good enough to be missed in a level one diagnostic, but a level three check shows logs having been altered, data rerouting, several anomalous items of network hardware that should not be present… This is not the work of a novice, it's quite certainly something that required both physical access to secure locations and a large amount of inside information."
Emily listened, looking at him with complete concentration, and feeling absolutely furious beyond even what Sophia had managed to provoke. "Someone in my command has been interfering with secure data?" she grated.
"So it would seem, yes, Director," the Tinker replied, his mouth fixed in a line of disapproval. "My preliminary scans cleared everyone present in this room along with the teams the Deputy Director has working on the problem, but I cannot at this time vouch for anyone else. I strongly suggest we make certain that no information is allowed to leak about this matter, or the perpetrator may well hear about it before we can identify them. It needs to be completely siloed to only those present and kept out of computer records."
"Make certain that happens." Emily glared around the table, meeting every person's eyes. "No one is to speak a word of what we just heard outside this room, or I will personally shoot them in the knee, you understand me?"
Everyone nodded. No one seemed to want to find out if she was bluffing or not, and she honestly wasn't certain herself. Already in a foul mood over the Stalker affair this was just adding insult to injury.
"Is Welton involved?" she asked as the obvious thought struck her. Renick shrugged slightly.
"I can't say one way or the other with any degree of confidence right now, Emily, but I suspect not. Or at least not directly, as in it's possible whoever is behind this intrusion may be using her without her knowledge. And possibly Sophia too. Or it might just have been a coincidence. We'll know more when we finish the data scans, which will take at least three days."
"I can't believe that any of the other Wards would be involved," Miss Militia commented, looking worried over her scarf.
He glanced at her. "I think it's unlikely if only due to their age, and on the whole they're good kids. On the other hand they are kids and it's not out of the question that someone managed to trick one or other of them into giving away something they shouldn't. Probably not Vista, she's got more instinct for opsec than some of my own people do, but the others…?" He shrugged again. "Unlikely but not impossible. So we'll keep them out of the loop until we know who can be trusted and who can't." The woman nodded her understanding, not looking happy but living with his argument which was perfectly valid in Emily's opinion.
She looked sternly at Triumph. "That means you don't even hint there's anything at all going on, you got me?"
"Understood, Ma'am," he replied immediately. "They're distracted by the revelations about Sophia anyway, so I doubt anyone will even notice."
"Make sure it stays that way." Casting her gaze around the table, she finally leaned back with a grunt and rubbed her eyes. "God damn it. If it's not one thing, it's a dozen others. I hate to think what the next insanity will be." No one said much as she thought for a bit, then looked around again. "Fine. Keep on doing what you're doing on that matter. Moving on, do we have any new information on the mystery of the vanishing container ship and warehouses?"
After a few seconds, Armsmaster shook his head. "None from my direction, although I've spent considerable effort trying to work out what could have done the damage we saw. I've considered Leet's tech, some unknown Biotinker's creations, any known cape associated with either the ABB or the Empire, or any of their backers in the latter case, and a whole series of other possibilities. Dragon has also suggested a number of avenues of investigation, none of which panned out. At this point in time I have no new ideas that are more than supposition at best. All I do have is fairly good data on a large number of causes that are not correct. My feelings at the moment are that either it was a previously unknown new Trigger, who has managed to keep completely out of the public eye, or more likely a Tinker from well outside our area who picked the city as a suitable test ground to throw off suspicion from wherever they're actually based."
She gave him a look. "I don't like any of those suggestions."
"Neither do I, but they're all I so far can offer."
"I asked around here and there, talked to a few people I know, and no one is saying anything even if they do have any idea what happened," Assault put in when the Tinker fell silent. Emily switched her gaze to him. "No one saw anything, no one heard anything, no one knows anything. They very vehemently don't know anything, in fact. The further into the Docks you go the less they know." He shook his head, almost smiling for a second or two, but not quite managing it. "I can tell you that people in those parts really aren't impressed with us. And not too keen on the cops in a few cases, although they have more respect for the BBPD than the PRT. Which is kind of depressing. But I honestly couldn't tell you if they do know and are keeping their mouths shut, or genuinely don't know. Either way, I had zero luck getting anything useful."
"That mirrors my own findings, Director," Miss Militia commented. "I asked several informants I've used in the past, even a few people who are connected with the ABB and the Merchants, and no one had any useful information to give me. A number of them seemed very confused, and probably really don't have any idea what happened, while a couple were like Assault said. It's kind of strange, but then we've always found that whole section of the city less than completely cooperative a lot of the time."
"God, it never gets easier, does it?" Emily sighed rhetorically. "All right. Keep looking, but at the moment we'll mark that one up as a low priority problem until and unless something else happens. So far no real damage has been done and there's no obvious threat to the city, so we'll let it slide for now. We've got much more urgent issues to get on with." She pointed to the document in front of her.
The meeting ran for another hour, and by the end of it she was almost looking forward to her dialysis session.
The sound of her phone ringing made Taylor look up from her work. She put down the modified gnurr resonator crystal she'd been examining through her eyepiece, gently resting it on a piece of soft cloth, picked the phone up from the end of her desk, and answered it.
"Hi, Dad. What's up?"
"Hi, Taylor. Michelle and I will be swinging past the house in about fifteen minutes to collect you."
"Um… Collect me? For what?" The girl frowned slightly.
"To go to Winslow to get you permanently removed. Michelle thinks we should make certain that nothing is left in your locker at the same time as we do the paperwork."
Taylor opened her mouth to tell her dad she knew damn well the locker was empty but suddenly got the subtext. "OK," was what she said instead. "Probably best to be sure because I don't ever want to go back there after this."
"I can't blame you," he chuckled. "See you shortly."
"I'll be ready." Putting the phone down as she tipped her chair back, she smiled a little grimly. "Well, Sophia, let's see how you explain this…"
A quarter of an hour later, she opened the front door when she heard a car horn outside, waved to her father, pulled the door shut and locked it, then ran through the snow and climbed into the back seat. "Hi, Michelle," she said to the woman in the front passenger seat as she closed the door and put her seat belt on, shoving the backpack she'd brought to one side.
"Hello, Taylor." The lawyer looked back at her with a smile. The car moved off as Taylor's father rejoined the street, after a glance at her in the rear view mirror.
"I'm guessing there's more going on than what you said on the phone?" Taylor asked.
"Correct," Michelle responded. "I checked with some contacts I have in the BBPD, and a couple of other places I can't mention. Apparently the PRT did search the school but they didn't have any equipment to perform the sort of scan that might have revealed Sophia's hiding place behind her locker. I would be completely shocked if they didn't come back to do that, though, probably sometime today. So we have a brief window of opportunity to return the dear girl's property which I felt it would be remiss of us to pass over." Her grin was bloodthirsty.
Taylor matched it. "That sounds like a good idea to me," she replied mildly, although she was still smirking.
"I thought you'd like it."
"I came up with an even better one," her dad put in, looking at her in the mirror again, and seeming rather pleased with himself.
"Oh?" she said, interested.
"Called a friend in the BBPD, said that it occurred to me that the Hess girl probably had more drugs hidden somewhere if she was dealing, and had they got around to checking her locker yet?" He looked amused as she snorted with hilarity. "Apparently in all the excitement no one seems to have done that. Very odd, it's almost like someone interfered with the whole process. Anyway, Earl seemed open to mentioning it to the drugs people, who are going to send someone along to have a quick look just in case. You never know, maybe she left a pile of pills on top of the locker or something where no one could see it…"
Laughing, Taylor shook her head. "Let me guess, they might well turn up just about when we're there?"
"Not impossible, I suppose," he replied, indicating left and looking both ways, then turning. "You never know, you might see them working."
"That might be fun." Taylor settled back in the seat feeling quite amused. Her dad was a sneaky bastard when the mood struck him…
A few minutes later they arrived at the school, and all three got out. A number of students watched as they walked towards the building, as it was roughly lunch time, and Taylor didn't bother lowering her head or hunching over like she was so used to. Instead she walked next to her dad and felt nothing but anticipation for the imminent final dealings with this place until they could bring the whole thing crashing down.
Inside the school, she pointed. "Office is that way."
"Great, let's go," her dad said, barely breaking step. She and Michelle followed as he stalked through the school to the administration offices, pushed the door open, and stopped in front of the school secretary's desk. The woman looked somewhat startled at the sudden appearance of a tall thin man with a glower and froze for a moment.
Her dad held out his hand and Michelle put an envelope in it without a word. Slapping it on the desk, he stated, "The withdrawal papers for my daughter, Taylor Hebert, effective immediately. Please tell Principal Blackwell we need them signed now."
"You can't just walk in here and…" the secretary began protesting.
"I can and I just did," he replied, overriding her as he raised his voice just a bit. "The principal is required by law to sign this documentation so I may withdraw my daughter from this excrescence of a school. Please tell her right now."
"I hardly think…"
"That much is obvious. Get on with it."
Taylor held in the wild laughter that threatened to boil up as the woman went a faint mauve color, clearly about to explode. Her father was clearly enjoying himself, Michelle was quietly watching with a tiny smirk, and overall it was hilarious.
"Mr Hebert! You must make an appointment for things like… where are you going?" Jumping to her feet the secretary hurried around her desk even as Taylor's dad turned and walked over to the door to the inner office.
"Principal Blackwell is in here, right?" he asked, not stopping for an answer as he opened the door. "Ah. Hello, Principal Blackwell. Danny Hebert. You may remember my daughter Taylor, the one your pet psychopath and apparent drug dealer Sophia accused yesterday? I'm withdrawing her from your poor imitation of an educational establishment, both because I don't trust the quality of teaching here and because you clearly can't control the students." He was leaning on the door frame looking into the office, his hands in his pockets.
"Mr Hebert! You must…"
"Please be quiet, you're very annoying," he said in an aside to the secretary. "I'm talking to your boss right now."
Taylor couldn't see into the office but she had a perfect view of the secretary graduating from mauve to purple, visible fuming, but equally visibly not knowing what to do next. In the end the woman slunk back to her desk and sat once more, glaring at all of them silently. Blackwell's voice came from inside the other room, getting closer as she apparently headed their way.
"I can see where Taylor gets her trouble-making nature from, Mr Hebert, if this is characteristic of your attitude," the Principal snarled.
"Oh, believe me when I say I can make far more trouble than this if you really want," her father said pleasantly. "But I suspect neither of us has the time for it right now. Especially considering the number of law enforcement people you seem to be having visit the school at the moment." The blonde woman he was talking to appeared in the door, causing him to step back. He glanced out the window as he did, then carried on, "Oh, look, there are some more right now. What are the odds?"
Everyone followed his eyes to see a police car and a van with the BBPD logo on the side drive into the school parking lot and stop, several people immediately getting out and heading towards the entrance.
Taylor was pretty sure she could hear the grinding of teeth clear on the other side of the office.
"Oh, for god's…" Blackwell snarled under her breath. "Fine. We're better off without the girl anyway." She rapidly moved to the desk, picked up the envelope her secretary wordlessly pushed towards her, opened it, and ripped out the documents inside. Quickly looking through them she held out her hand for a pen, snapping her fingers irritably when the secretary didn't instantly comply. Michelle calmly handed her one.
Bending over the desk the principal signed both copies, handed one to Taylor's dad, and folded the remaining pages up. Those she gave to the secretary. Turning to them, she stiffly said, "It's done. Please vacate the premises immediately. We hardly need your sort here," as she handed Michelle's pen back.
"We'll stop at my daughter's locker on the way out to make sure she's got everything from it then we'll be on our way, don't worry about that."
"You have ten minutes."
Taylor's dad nodded with a smile. "Thank you. Please have a nice day." Taylor followed as he headed towards the exit, Michelle bringing up the rear, trying very hard not to laugh out loud. She was rather impressed with her dad and proud too. This was much more as she remembered him being before her mom had died, and she liked the change.
Looking back she waved to Blackwell, who glared at her before pulling out her phone and prodding buttons like she had a grudge against it. Feeling that while it had been rather petty, she'd thoroughly enjoyed seeing the woman she really had no respect at all for lose her calm like that, she moved up next to her dad. "We need to go up the stairs there, then left at the top," she said.
"All right. Hold on a moment though," he replied as they neared the entrance, through which the various cops came seconds later. "Hey, Earl," he said to the lead cop.
"Hey, Danny. Didn't expect you here."
"Just getting the documents signed to pull Taylor out of school. I don't have any faith in their abilities any more for some reason."
The cop, Earl, grinned. "Can't say as I blame you. Oh, while you're here…" He looked at Taylor. "Would you happen to know where Sophia Hess's locker is?"
"Sure. It's only just down from mine, we were going there right now in fact."
"Great. We'll follow you then."
Nodding, Taylor led the entire procession up the stairs and past classrooms to the corridor her locker was situated on, walking past it to Sophia's one. In her pocket one hand made a small motion. "It's this one," she said, indicating the door with her other hand.
"Thanks," the cop said. He turned to one of the others. "Get the lock open, let's have a look."
The man addressed nodded and pulled out a ring of keys, squinting at the lock for a moment then flipping through them to find the right master key. Before he had a chance to insert it into the lock, Blackwell came around the corner behind them, power-walking towards them in a foul mood. "Stop right there," she called as she approached. "What's going on?"
Another cop intercepted her, holding up a folded paper. "Warrant to search the locker assigned to one Sophia Hess for any illegal substances or anything else suspicious," he stated calmly, handing it to her. She unfolded it and stared at it, before sighing loudly.
"This looks in order. Proceed, but don't cause any damage." She stepped away a few paces, pulling out her phone again and turning away, very quickly talking in a low voice that sounded angry.
The cop with the keys, now that the excitement had died down, quickly pushed the key in and turned it, then opened the door. Everyone saw it had a few books in, which had clearly been looked through, Taylor assumed by the PRT, and little else. Still, the technicians carefully extracted everything having taken photos, then went through the entire pile. While they were doing that, she and her father and Michelle merely watched from a safe distance, staying out of the way.
After a few minutes they'd gone through the contents of the locker, all the books ending up in evidence bags. One of the techs was spreading a silvery powder all over the inside of the locker, then brushing it away, revealing fingerprints he took photos of. Another one had deployed a short ladder and set it up, then climbed it to look at the top of the locker bank. He leaned over the seven foot tall metal structure and peered at it very closely with a flashlight, turning it on the wall as well. "Nothing obvious up here," he said as he climbed down. "Mostly dust."
Earl glanced at Taylor, then her father. "I remember my school days. Some of the lockers had a space underneath them," he said.
The technician nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah, something this old, there's all sorts of possible hidden spaces," he commented as he knelt down and tapped the base of the locker, which rattled. "Aha." Pulling out a tool he inserted it under the floor plate and levered on it, making the thing pop loose and lift. "Welds have rusted out," he muttered as he moved the plate. "And… nothing." Everyone could see all that was under the locker floor was about fifty years of dust bunnies and a mouse skeleton.
"Worth a shot," the fingerprinting tech said, as he brushed powder on the back of the locker. He frowned at the strange print it left. "Huh. That's weird…"
Taylor could see the image wasn't really a fingerprint, instead looking more like a handprint, but half cut off as if the fingers hadn't been present. The technician took a photo, then reached out and prodded the metal with a gloved finger. After a moment, he looked thoughtful and knocked on the same place with a knuckle, before doing the same lower down. "There's a hollow space back there," he said, carefully tapping the back of the locker repeatedly.
"Is there now?" Earl said, peering at it from beside him. "Any way into it?"
"Can't see anything but there's definitely a void," the other man replied, indicating an area with a finger. "About a foot by six inches."
Stepping back, he looked at the bank of lockers, then down at the floor where the plate had been removed. "They're freestanding, not bolted in place. I bet they can be moved without too much trouble."
"Better check," one of the other cops commented. He walked five lockers along and pointed. "This whole section is one piece. Um… twelve of them, looks like. Someone give me a hand."
"Hey, what do you think you're doing?" Blackwell shouted when two more cops and the first one started grabbing the end locker by sticking their fingers into the louvers on the door and lifting. There was a metallic screech as the entire bank shifted outwards into the corridor, causing the woman to look furious.
"Our jobs, Mrs Blackwell," Earl said, stepping back out of the way.
"You're supposed to search Miss Hess's locker, not remodel the school!" she yelled, even as several classroom doors opened further down and heads appeared as curious staff and students investigated the noise.
"We searched the front of it, and now we're searching the back of it," Earl replied, glancing at her, then looking back to the technician who'd noticed the hollow spot who had climbed the ladder to peer down behind the lockers now there was a two foot gap, shining a flashlight down into it. "Anything?"
"Got a hole here with something black, like cloth, in it," the man replied, climbing back down. "Move it some more so I can get behind it."
"You got it, Jeff." The three cops heaved and the bank of lockers shifted another few feet outwards, until he could slip behind it. Moments later he reappeared holding the cloth roll of arrows and other evidence in his glove.
"Feels like a knife and some other stuff," he reported, coming back to them. Everyone gathered around, even Blackwell, as he carefully unrolled it. "Huh. There's a thing."
"Looks like crossbow bolts to me," Earl remarked. The man pulled one out and held it up as one of his colleagues took photos.
"Yeah. And this one has blood on it, I'm almost certain." Putting it back where it came from, he dropped the entire roll into an evidence bag someone held out then sealed it and signed the label. "Be interesting to see what turns up when we run it through CODIS."
Taylor peeked at Blackwell, who had gone quiet and a funny color. She didn't look happy at all.
"Well, we can't hang around all day getting in the way, Taylor," her father said, turning to her. "Let's make sure your own locker is empty then we can be on our way."
"Fine by me," she replied, moving to the relevant locker and opening it. Reaching inside she removed the textbooks that she'd put back when they arrived, slipped them into her pack, and turned around not bothering to close the door. "That's all I had in there."
"Great. Let's get out of here and leave Earl and his guys to their work. Later, Earl."
"Later, Danny." Earl waved at them, before turning back to his colleagues.
Walking past the principal who was staring at the cops, appearing rather stunned, Taylor said, "Good bye, Mrs Blackwell."
She didn't get a reply, and didn't care.
When they were safely back in the car, all three of them started laughing. "That was hilarious, Dad," Taylor giggled.
"Slightly immature but very amusing," Michelle added.
Taylor's dad grinned. "To be honest it felt better than it should have done. And I think Earl and his friends will have fun too." Starting the car he chuckled. "That should cause a few problems in certain places."
As they drove off, he glanced back at Taylor. "We'll see about the next stage for you on Monday, but I think we can allow a few days off before then."
"Sounds good to me, Dad," she replied, pleased with how things were going and wondering what would happen when the lawsuits landed.
At least she was finally and permanently done with Winslow. Which was a massive relief.
Hurrying into the house, Alan Barnes stomped his feet to get the snow off while removing his coat, which he hung up. "Zoe! I'm back, what's going on?"
His wife didn't answer, but as he went through the house he found his elder daughter somewhat unexpectedly popping out of the living room to intercept him. She stood blocking his way with her arms crossed, giving him an intense look that was quite out of character. "Anne? Why are you home now? And where is your mother?"
"Mom left about ten minutes ago to go and speak to someone at the hospital," Anne replied, not sounding happy.
"What's wrong with her?" he asked in alarm.
"Nothing. She's looking for someone to help Emma," the young woman said harshly. "And you."
Wordlessly staring at her, wondering what the hell was going on, Alan's mouth opened and closed a couple of times. Eventually he found some words. "Me? What do you mean?"
"I mean that you and Emma got attacked by the ABB, and nearly killed, until fucking Sophia Hess jumped in and made things worse," Anne said, leaning closer and keeping her voice low but in a way that made it abundantly clear she'd have preferred to shout. "All right, I'll admit she saved you two, but any gratitude I could feel for her is completely fucking gone considering what she did to my sister. And what she made Emma do to Taylor." Poking him in the chest with a finger and making him take a step backwards in surprise and growing worry, she went on, "Emma needed help, so much help, and all she got was a crazy bitch who totally fucked her mind up with her bizarre social Darwinism outlook on life. And then both of them and some other little bitches tried to make Taylor kill herself or something. I have no idea how that poor girl stood up to the abuse without snapping and killing them all."
He was gaping at his daughter at this point, trying to work out what she was talking about. Some of it almost made sense, much didn't. "Taylor? What's she got to do with this?" he asked, raising a hand as she started to poke him again. "Stop, slow down, and tell me what's going on."
Taking a deep breath, Anne nodded, then pointed to the living room. "You'll want to be sitting for this."
Not happy, and very confused, while doing his best to understand exactly what on earth had happened while he was away, Alan went into the living room and took a seat. Anne followed him in and did the same opposite him. "Where's Emma?" he asked, looking around.
"In her room, asleep," Anne replied. "I'll have to check on her soon, I can't risk leaving her alone for too long even if she's sleeping."
Which made no sense at all to him.
"OK, tell me what's got you so worked up, Anne," he remarked. She took a breath, visibly calming herself, then began explaining. In under a minute he was very angry, very worried, scared half to death for his younger daughter, and regretting many things in his life.
And absolutely dreading what his wife would say when she got back if this was what he was getting from his daughter…
Waving at the car driving away, Taylor turned and went inside, feeling that the last hour had been well worth it. She was still snickering every time she pictured Blackwell's face, at several points during their visit to the school. And now she was finally free of that accursed place. That alone was enough to leave her in an extremely buoyant mood.
They'd even stopped for burgers on the way back to celebrate, and she had two entire meals stored away, piping hot, for later. Little Anton came through again.
And sometime later today, Michelle would file the paperwork for the lawsuits against Winslow, the Brockton Bay School Board, and the PRT. Which was undoubtedly going to cause complete chaos especially in the latter case, even though that suit would have to be done through special channels reserved for such things. By the time the PRT found out, they'd probably also have found out what her dad's friend in the police had been doing, and it seemed likely that they'd have a lot of work to do to cover it up if that's what they planned on doing. Too many people were now aware of what had happened to make it simply go away. The entire Barnes family knew about Sophia's cape ID, she was pretty damn sure the cops knew full well too but were being careful not to make it too obvious this was true, and of course she and her father knew as well. Not to mention Blackwell had to know, and it seemed likely that several of the teachers were in on the secret.
Really, the whole secret ID thing wasn't very well handled, if this was what they routinely did. If she got into Arcadia she was slightly curious to see how long it took her to work out the IDs of the rest of the Wards, not that she planned on telling anyone if she did. While the entire process was in some ways rather silly, she could see the reasons for it and had no intention to cause trouble.
All she really wanted was the chance to have people leave her alone while she got on with learning. After the hell of Winslow, she could do without all the teenage garbage and status fights. Possibly this was another sign of what her dad would say was growing up. Or possibly it was just being burned out from the whole damn routine repeating itself over and over and over for a year and a half. It might well be both of course.
In any case, Taylor was done with being victimized, and if someone tried again she was going to push back hard. She'd tried keeping her head down and it obviously didn't work.
Hopefully none of that would happen and she was just overthinking it, but she wasn't going to forget the lessons she'd learned the hard way.
Now, though, she had several days entirely to herself before she needed to think about school again, and she planned on using them working on her own projects. There were many, many ideas percolating around in her mind, some being Papa's concepts and some her own inspired by what she'd taught herself from his journals.
Some of them seemed like they could be really cool, too…
So a while later she was sitting at her desk writing in her notebook and running calculations, occasionally referring to either Papa's notes or some of her math textbooks. Taylor knew she was still going to need to learn a lot of more conventional information, in fact in discovering her knack for Papa's bizarre take on science had proven to her that she would need to learn far more than school was likely to teach her. But she was determined to keep on with it because it was not only enormous fun albeit at times slightly terrifying, but also seemed like it could help people.
By the time her father came home from work with some Chinese food she'd half filled another notebook, eaten both cheeseburgers, modified two more gnurr resonator crystals, and got half-way through sketching out a potential design for a crystal growing device with some modifications of her own.
Mike looked at the USB stick he'd been handed, then read the document that had accompanied it. His face paling as he scanned the words, he finally shook his head in dismay. "Oh, god, this is bad," he muttered, quickly leaving his office and heading a couple of doors down. Knocking perfunctorily, he entered and stopped in front of Emily's desk. "We have a serious problem," he said without preamble as the Director looked up from her keyboard.
"No surprise there, all our problems are serious ones," she sighed, leaning back and motioning to the chair in front of her. "What's this one?"
"The BBPD beat us to it," he started, making her look puzzled. "At Winslow," he clarified. Her puzzled look turned into a scowl. "They sent a crime scene team out to look for more drugs, and in the process happened to find a cache of weapons directly behind Sophia's locker, in a hole in the wall. A hole that you can only reach either by moving about two hundred and fifty pounds of locker, or by being able to poke your hand right through the back of the thing."
"Oh, for god's sake," she snarled. "And of course they are completely aware that the second of those is the right one."
"Almost certainly," he agreed uneasily. "The fingerprint tech found a whole series of latent prints all over the inside of Hess's locker, including ones that are strange looking and almost solid proof that she used her power on the back wall of it. And it gets worse. The Hebert girl was there at the time, her dad was removing her from Winslow permanently, and she left her locker open having cleaned it out. One of the cops there saw it and used more initiative than most people would have. They fingerprinted the inside of that locker too, since it was open and they didn't need a warrant."
"And of fucking course they found that goddamned girl's prints all over Hebert's locker as well as her own," Emily said with a look of enormous fury, putting her hand over her eyes.
"Yeah." He shrugged. "The only conclusion anyone could come to is that Hess was repeatedly getting into Hebert's locker somehow. Which is after all what the girl reported and was ignored, quite a few times. A master key or Parahuman abilities are the two most likely possibilities under the circumstances, and since they've got some pretty good evidence that the second one is in play, this only adds to it."
"Damn it." Emily looked ready to shoot someone. "Can this get worse?"
"Um…" He swallowed as she fixed her gaze on him like a rattlesnake about to strike. "Yeah, it can." He held up the USB stick, which she peered at. "This was sent over by our BBPD liaison. It's about six weeks of audio recordings from Winslow."
"Audio recordings?" she repeated, looking puzzled again.
He sighed. "Taylor Hebert has been wearing a very high quality and very small audio recorder all day, every day, in Winslow for over a month. And she had a badge around her neck telling everyone that she was doing it. Since it was Winslow, not one person actually believed it and so they just kept on doing the same shit. According to the letter that came with this, there's enough evidence on it to bury almost the entire staff at Winslow, Sophia and her cronies, a dozen other students…" His voice faded away in the face of Emily's growing look of murderous anger.
"How the hell did the BBPD get it?" she asked very carefully.
"Hebert Senior gave it to them. Because our people gave his daughter one of our standard cards with the undercover ID details on, and since he's apparently a paranoid bastard much too smart for his own good, he called a friend of his in the PD to check on whether it was legit. As far as I know the cops didn't tell him it was a PRT cutout, but I wouldn't put it past some bastard to have implied it in a way we can never prove. Or maybe he just guessed. Anyway, he decided that the best thing to do was to give it to his friend to pass on to the right people."
"And of course the cops copied it and listened to it first," she growled.
"Of course. They're not actually stupid, and they really don't like us that much. Grabbing Hess from them, even though we did it by the book, undoubtedly pretty much just told them she was a Parahuman and it wouldn't take a genius to work out which one. All the subsequent evidence just confirms it. They're probably pissed about not being able to pin anything on her without stepping on our toes and this is a way for them to let us know that they know and aren't happy about it." He held up the letter in his other hand. "Trust me, whoever actually wrote this is a master of subtle sarcasm."
"Fuck." Emily massaged her forehead, looking like she wanted a drink, which Mike sympathized with very much. "Do you think the Heberts know about Hess being Stalker?"
"I wouldn't want to put money on them not knowing," he admitted. "But if they don't, trying to find out what they do know will only leak information we don't want leaked."
"Jesus Christ. This just gets better and better. I really should just shoot that little shit and get her out of our hair and everyone else's for good."
"Probably best not to, Emily," he advised a touch nervously, not entirely sure she was joking.
"If this gets out it's going to be a bigger PR nightmare than I expected," she went on after a few angry seconds of silence. "Hess could have opened us up to god knows how many avenues of attack."
"Unfortunately true, I agree. I'm not sure how we deal with it."
They were sitting there discussing how to handle the entire horrific situation when Emily's computer beeped, making her reach out and tap a key. "Piggot," she snapped. "What is it?"
"This is Lee Sommers in Legal, Director. We've just received some information you need to know immediately."
"Which is?" She didn't look pleased about being interrupted.
"I should probably tell you in person, Director."
"Fine. Get up here."
"I'll be there in three minutes."
Tapping the key again, Emily turned to Mike. "Now what?" she asked rhetorically in tones of deep irritation. He shrugged, not having a clue.
"Sommers? Is he on the safe list?" she asked a moment later. Pulling out a notebook, Renick flipped through it, then nodded.
"Yes, he's been checked out."
"There's that at least," she sighed. A short while later there was a tap at the door. "Enter," she called. It opened to reveal a shortish man with brown hair and glasses wearing a nice suit, carrying a file folder under his arm. He came in and closed the door, before walking over to the desk and putting the folder in front of her. She looked at it, him, then back at the paperwork. Reaching out she flipped it open and started reading the first page, Mike craning his neck to try the same thing upside down.
Only seconds later she went pale, then red, then pale again in a rather fascinating sequence. Fixing the lawyer with a sharp look, she asked, "When did this come in?"
"About fifteen minutes ago, Director," the man replied. "We got a copy of it when the original was filed with the federal and state courts, under the relevant security measures for a lawsuit against the PRT. And it's cross referenced to similar suits covering Winslow school collectively, almost every staff member individually, the Brockton Bay school board, and the parents of several students."
She flipped through the pages, scanning the document, before slumping back into her chair, pushing the thing towards Mike. He turned it around and began reading. "Oh, hell," he muttered.
"They definitely know about Hess," Piggot grumbled.
"Oh, most certainly," the lawyer agreed. "They have enough evidence just in the initial filing to cause serious problems for absolutely everyone involved. With a decent legal representation I very much doubt they can lose. You'll also note that it's a joint case with both the Heberts and the Barnes' listed as plaintiffs." He actually looked somewhat impressed, which didn't make her any happier.
"And they've followed the rules exactly, looking at this," Mike said, feeling his heart sink. "What the hell are we going to do about it?"
All three of them exchanged worried looks, but no one had an immediate answer.
Zoe sat down in the living room, looking at her husband steadily. He swallowed.
"Anne, thank you for looking after Emma," she said, turning her head to her older daughter. "Can you go and check on her, and close the door on the way out?"
"Sure, Mom," the young woman replied softly, getting up and leaving. The sound of the door closing was quite loud in the silence. Going back to examining Alan for a bit, Zoe finally sighed.
"You're such a fucking idiot sometimes, Alan. How you got to where you did is a mystery to me."
"Hey!"
"No, it's gone way past 'hey'," she snapped. "We all have made horrible mistakes in the last couple of years, but they all start with you." She pointed at him. "We are going to talk about things we should have talked about years ago, and you will not leave out a single detail, you understand me?"
Alan put his head in his hands. "I understand. I'm sorry, I fucked up."
"Yes, you did. So help me try to unfuck it. Tomorrow you're taking time off work to see Doctor Clarke. I had to ask a lot of favors to get her to see you, and Emma, as an emergency case, so don't try me on this. You will talk to her and you will do anything she says you have to."
He nodded, not looking up.
"And you will not under any circumstances interfere with the legal case Danny and his people are handling. It's not your field, you'll just get in the way. Leave it to the people who actually understand that area of law."
Her husband nodded again, finally looking at her, with shame on his face. "I'm so sorry, Zoe," he whispered.
Getting up she moved to sit beside him and put her arm around him, leaning her head on his shoulder and peering into his eyes. "I know you are, dear. And like I said it's my fault too, and Anne's, and Emma's. None of us took the time to just talk to each other. If we had, maybe this could have been avoided. We'll never know. All we can do is deal with it as well as we can. And at some point soon we're going to have to apologize to Taylor, who has had a really shitty time through no fault of her own."
He sighed heavily, nodding once more, before dropping his head back on the sofa and closing his eyes. "I took the wrong turn because I was in a hurry..." he began after a while. She listened carefully and sympathetically, while wishing things had been different.
Hopefully it wasn't too late to try to repair their family.
Sophia glared at the wall, trying to think of how to get out of this situation.
Without any luck so far but she wasn't going to give up.
That sort of thing is what prey did.
"See?" Taylor watched as her dad concentrated, smiling when the pen on his desk vanished. "Just stop half way, like that. Now try putting it back."
He grinned when the pen appeared on the desk again. "Fantastic," he said exultantly. "That's amazing."
"It takes quite a lot of practice to do it further away, and you need to practice looking beneath too, they go together. But that's great progress. At least we got the pen back this time." She giggled at his expression.
"I wonder where the other things went?" he commented slightly worriedly.
Taylor shrugged a little. "Somewhere at right angles to reality, as far as I can figure out. At least that's what Papa's journals suggest, if I'm understanding them properly. Probably doesn't really matter one way or the other."
"No, I suppose not," he agreed. "Oh well. This could be useful, I have to admit, and it's very cool."
"Isn't it?" She grinned as well. "The more I play with it the more things I come up with to use it for. Hey, want to watch a movie? I could do with some relaxation after everything."
"That sounds like an excellent idea," he smiled, nodding. "You pick one out, I'll make some popcorn."
When Taylor went to bed that night, she was smiling.