"...to Winslow High School unexpectedly closing for period of time that is currently unknown but hopefully will be short. The School Board has stated that the investigation into possible asbestos contamination will continue. Any areas found to be containing the dangerous substance will have to be thoroughly decontaminated, a process that requires specialist knowledge and equipment. Kelly Givens, the spokeswoman for the School Board, has said that while the process will be expensive and time consuming, no price is too high to protect the children who attend Winslow. She also stated that they are still hoping that the contamination is restricted to the single area that was initially implicated after a routine repair job discovered old asbestos insulation which had not been removed in the last remodeling twenty years ago. Assuming that this indeed turns out to be correct, our information suggests that the school could reopen within two weeks. Unfortunately in the worst case, the work could take up to two and a half months, delaying the reopening of Winslow until possibly the end of February."

"Should this latter event come to pass, the School Board is currently working towards temporarily transferring affected students to other schools in the city, notably Clarendon and Arcadia High Schools, along with establishing short term facilities to cover the required period of time. We are told that extra teaching staff are being put in place even now just in case they are required, and Miss Givens assured our reporter that no student would miss out on their schooling for more than a couple of weeks. We imagine that few of the students from Winslow will complain about an unexpected two extra weeks of Christmas holiday, although their parents might!"

"Mayor Christner, when he was asked what he thought about the entire situation, stated that he had full confidence in the ability of the School Board to deal with the problem and pledged the support of City Hall to provide any required backing. He went on to say that previous administrations would have to shoulder the majority of the blame for not having ensured that something as dangerous as asbestos had been adequately removed from public buildings and promised that his own administration would immediately act to survey any such facility. If asbestos was found it would be dealt with promptly and efficiently. He apologized on behalf of the city that this had not been done in the past, leading to the current state of affairs. We are told that the Dock Worker's Association is being approached for the required expertise in removing dangerous materials safely, as they have a long history of such work on ships and buildings in the Docks area of the city."

"We will keep our listeners updated with this story as we learn more. This is Jenny Hall, WNQB News, your local station for local people. Next, it's going to be another chilly and snowy day with bright…"

Flicking the radio off, Taylor shook her head, feeling both exasperated and amused. An asbestos contamination scare? That was what they were going with?

Presumably it was less embarrassing than admitting in public that almost your entire staff was currently embroiled in a lawsuit, along with the School Board itself and a number of other people or organizations.

She hadn't quite expected this much chaos, at least not so quickly, but she couldn't with a straight face claim it wasn't both funny and very gratifying. See how they liked having shit dropped on them from a great height for once. Taylor did feel somewhat sorry for the students who were affected by all this through no fault of their own, since there were some who she had no beef at all with, but considering how many people had joined in with the three main instigators of the bullying her sympathy was limited. As the reporter had said, they were at a minimum getting a two week head start on the Christmas holiday period, which for a lot of them probably meant getting back to taking drugs and doing gang things…

The bit she found hilarious was that her dad had told her that the Mayor genuinely had ordered a full inspection done of public buildings for asbestos, and as a result they'd actually found it in several places already. It seemed that he was right when he'd claimed that previous administrations had dropped the ball on that subject, since from what her dad said there had apparently been a similar inspection done nearly eighteen years ago that hadn't found anything. Presumably the people involved having not bothered to actually do the work and merely pocketing the money. That was fairly typical for Brockton, really.

She hadn't met him, but Mayor Christner seemed like he was at least trying to do the right thing, which put him quite a long way ahead of most politicians she'd heard of.

In any case, none of this was really anything to concern her, not yet anyway. Michelle had been working on the whole lawsuit thing and apparently enjoying herself quite a lot in the process, and Taylor's part in it was largely done until and unless she needed to be a witness. That might be months away, and indeed might never happen if the various defendants settled out of court, which the lawyer had said might well be the case. Especially with the PRT, who were undoubtedly tearing their hair out right about now and bitterly regretting ever having met Sophia Hess.

From what she'd heard, that organization hadn't responded yet to the suit past the most basic level, simply acknowledging its existence then going completely silent, but she had a vivid mental image of quite a lot of PRT lawyers running around looking very upset. It cheered her up when she thought about it, and she was pretty sure it did the same to her dad. Even Michelle seemed to be wearing a small grin a lot of the time at the moment, especially after certain phone calls. Apparently she found her job quite rewarding on several levels…

Leaning her chair back on two legs, her feet on her bed, Taylor shook her head with a slight smile, then returned her concentration to the drawing she was half-way through making. A large pad of paper was on her legs and she was carefully sketching out the various aspects of her crystal growing machine, making notes on various parts in the margin as she went. When she finished she'd redo it properly in ink but for now pencil did the job, and was easier to correct.

Papa had used crystals of various sorts for all manner of weird purposes, the gnurr resonator in some ways being the least of those. Some of his other inventions were far more worrying, and potentially extremely dangerous, as far as she was concerned. Useful too, under the right circumstances. As crazy as they seemed on first glance, so far everything he'd written about that she'd been able to duplicate did indeed do what he claimed, and she'd even been able to make improvements to some aspects. Such as Little Anton's trick, which she was still coming up with new ideas about.

Putting the pencil down for a moment she retrieved the relevant journal of her ancestors, flipping through the pages with care and examining the drawings. 'He really was a genius,' she thought to herself, turning the book sideways to peer at one particular drawing. 'Mad as a tree full of fish, but in his own way absolutely brilliant.' The man was also, on another level, a bit of a twit as she'd thought many times in the past although that mostly just made her smile. And he'd been much, much too interested in the opposite sex…

Even now she wasn't sure if she'd have liked him if she'd met him, but then that was probably true of anyone from fifty years ago. It was a different era. Although even by those standards he'd been an absolute horndog, as her dad had correctly put it. 'Just look at this stuff,' she mused, still flipping pages. 'Anti gravity. A time machine! Even a dingus for traveling between universes. Not to mention the thing that turns lead into gold…' That was just the highlights, really, he'd done a lot more. And according to his own writings all of them had worked.

She had by now no real doubt he was right. Even if most of his stuff made no sense at all according to any normal science she was aware of. It did make a curiously internally consistent sort of sense if you thought about it in the right way, though, and the more she learned the more she understood it.

The time machine was one invention she'd stopped on as soon as she saw it, having a sudden and very strong thought that perhaps this was something she should build. For only one purpose, the thing that still lurked below the surface in their family, and probably always would.

Could she save her mother?

Obviously she'd think that. And she had. The temptation to drop everything and immediately try to duplicate the work Papa had done so long ago had been immensely powerful, but she'd managed to push herself back mentally and try think it through rationally. It was hellishly hard to distance her thoughts from her wishes but in the last few weeks she'd had a lot of practice with this sort of thing. Presumably this was another part of being mature. Not just rushing in without a plan.

The more Taylor had considered the idea, the more it seemed like something that could easily be horrifically dangerous, though. She'd spent a few days reading up on ideas surrounding time travel, including fictional ones, and finally come to the conclusion that even if it was possible, it was in no way something to be done lightly or without a hell of a lot of care. The repercussions of changing the past were… extremely worrying. Especially if it actually worked.

Would it erase the last few years? End the universe? Make her pop like a soap bubble? Attract some ghastly creature that only looked human to tell her very politely but very worryingly to stop it? Cause some sort of reptilian horror from the depths of the sea to turn up and smirk at her? Make weird things come from the woodwork out, only in a much less cuddly way than the gnurrs did?

No. It was a lovely idea, and one she would keep thinking about, but it was definitely not something to just dive into. Perhaps one day when she knew more about what she was doing. After all, it wasn't like it was something that wouldn't keep. That was kind of the thing with time travel…

So, rather reluctantly but feeling it was the sensible thing, she'd shelved that idea for the foreseeable future, as much as it pained her. She had plenty of other things to work on, both scholastic and Papa-tech. For example, she was certain she had barely scratched the surface of what the gnurr-pfeife could really do, never mind all the various odd applications Anton's method had. So she'd stick to that sort of thing for now, learn more, and in due course she might be in a better position to think of playing with the really weird ideas Papa had produced.

Taylor got back to drawing, annotating the diagram in the process, until she finally finished about two hours later. Flipping the pencil into storage she flexed an aching hand a few times, then dropped her feet to the floor and swiveled the chair around to let her put the pad on the desk under the lamp where she could carefully check it over. Finally satisfied it was correct she spent another twenty minutes working out what she'd need to build the device, which was mostly fairly standard stuff she could easily get from the hardware store. Or even better from one of the stockrooms at the Union, which was full of hundreds of tons of odds and ends dating in some cases back to the war.

They never threw anything away in case it came in handy one day, which it often did.

Nodding to herself, she finished the list, put it away as well as the drawing pad, then picked up her physics textbook and headed downstairs to see about making lunch as she was starving. Soon she was sitting at the table eating some soup while reading the book. At some point she was going to have to get back to actual schooling. Her dad had picked up all the documentation on the requirements for home schooling, most of which looked fairly straightforward, and there were a number of specific tests involved at certain points, so she'd have to do the work to pass them. Hopefully they'd be able to arrange a better school at some point early next year, although she had to admit to herself that she wasn't entirely sure she trusted her fellow teenagers enough to mix with them again. On the other hand her dad seemed to think that she needed to socialize at least a little, rather than spending all her time at home, and although she was somewhat dubious about that Taylor had to admit she might have a slight bias going on there.

It wasn't a priority, though. As Michelle had pointed out, there was no point even considering entering the school system until after the holidays, especially now that there was only about two and a half weeks of semester left. She'd let her dad and the lawyer sort that out while she got on with life. And to be frank she was very much enjoying having some time to herself right now. It was sort of a holiday from the agony of dealing with the past, which came as a distinct relief. One way or another she was entering a new phase of her life, hopefully one that was much less stressful than the previous one had been. Time would tell.

Taylor finished her soup, then started in on the sandwich she'd made, pushing the physics book to the side and eating while watching the squirrels run around in the snow outside with a small smile. She made a mental note to make sure they got more peanuts the next time they went shopping. The furry little rodents seemed happy enough, half a dozen of them charging up and down the tree in between burrowing in the snow for anything edible. The one she'd experimented on didn't look to have suffered any ill effects, assuming she was accurately picking it out from the rest of his family. Which eased her slight guilt at having grabbed him like that, although it had been in the name of science.

Her mind drifted back to something she'd been trying not to think too much about, that being Emma. While she'd agreed to allow the Barnes' to join the lawsuit, and intellectually realized that her dad had been right when he said Emma was in many ways as much a victim of both Sophia and the school's incompetence as she was, emotionally she found it extremely difficult to just push nearly eighteen months of what was basically slow torture to one side. She'd had trouble sleeping for several nights due to dreaming about some of the worst things that had happened, and even more horrible things that hadn't but possibly could have. Sighing, she shook her head, wondering if she'd ever manage to get past that part of her life. The red-head had put so much effort into wrecking years of friendship Taylor honestly wasn't certain at the moment if she could ever look at the other girl without wanting to punch her in the face.

Which her more rational mind was very sad about. She didn't like feeling like that, but it was almost impossible right now not to. Only the thought of Aunt Zoe, Uncle Barnes, and Anne helped her deal with it, because she still thought very fondly of all of them despite what Emma herself had done. None of them had known what had been going on, she knew that, and while Uncle Alan definitely had helped the entire situation to develop to begin with and should have noticed something was wrong, she couldn't really blame him for it. She knew all too well how easy it was to let a small lack of communication between people turn into a yawning chasm of misinformation and denial. Just look at her and her dad. If they'd talked to each other much earlier a lot of this might possibly have been avoided.

Of course, it was also entirely possible it wouldn't have helped, but she'd never know. At least now things were finally getting better, and with any luck even Emma would in time find her mental state improved. Taylor hoped so even as she found herself still angry about the entire sorry situation. On the other hand, she very much hoped that Sophia had a terrible time, which seemed extremely likely. And Madison wasn't really worth thinking about in her opinion. If she never heard of the other girl again she'd be entirely satisfied.

"Ah, well," she finally sighed, having finished the sandwich. "I guess we'll see what happens sooner or later."

Shrugging to herself she got up and quickly washed the plate and bowl she'd used, not bothering with the dishwasher, dried them, and put them away. Refilling her glass with water she took it into the living room and sat down, dropping the physics book next to her, picked up the remote, and turned the TV on. Shortly she was watching a show about Parahuman events and wondering why so many of them seemed to be idiots. Half the things that went wrong could have been easily avoided if everyone involved didn't seem to have the burning desire to do the exact wrong thing as hard as possible, as far as she could tell. It was really peculiar, she mused, trying to come up with another explanation and finding she couldn't.

Eventually tiring of the show she turned the TV off and went back to reading the textbook, making her way slowly through it more out of interest in general than any specific requirement to learn something in particular. About half way through, she paused, frowning at the page as something on it struck a note and caused her to have an idea. Or at least, think of something she hadn't really experimented with yet.

"Huh," she mumbled, rereading the page dealing with momentum and the equations involved. She flipped through the chapter, then pulled a notebook and pen out of storage and went back to the beginning, scribbling down a few calculations and solving them, before nodding to herself. "That is definitely worth looking at," she muttered as she got up and stored everything away, then headed towards the basement door. She'd need a few things for the experiments she'd come up with.

Ten minutes later she was pushing things around in the basement, coughing at the dust which was nearly as bad as it had been in the attic. Thinking that they really needed to do a proper cleaning of both places, she finally got all the random boxes of crap that had been scattered across the floor piled relatively neatly at the far side of the room, which was quite large but also rather full. "What the hell is half this crap?" she wondered out loud, shaking her head. At least a third of the boxes she'd never even looked in before and she abruptly wondered if any more of Papa's tools or whatever were hiding down here. She'd have to investigate, but not right now, she had science to do.

Or what Papa thought was science, which she wasn't entirely sure was the best thing to call it, but it was close enough for now.

Giggling at the thought, she set up her quickly designed experimental apparatus, which consisted of some bits of wood, some string, a stopwatch, and a couple of screw in hooks. Pulling her dad's toolbox out from under the battered workbench under the single window the basement had, a wide but short pane of ancient glass that looked out onto the front garden although right now it was under about three feet of snow, she climbed up onto it and reached up. Luckily her taller than usual height for someone of her age aided her in reaching the beams holding the living room floor up and she quickly screwed the hooks into it, turning them with a screwdriver as a lever, until they were firmly attached in the right places. It didn't take much longer to attach the bits of wood together with some screws, a hinge, and another hook. That little assembly got screwed to the beam too.

Retrieving the tape measure, she carefully measured the exact distance from the floor to the apparatus she'd made, and noted it down. A quick calculation gave her the amount of time it would take for an object to fall from that height to the ground. Satisfied, she hinged the piece of wood up and put the peg she'd tied to the end of the string through the hook on it, and both the other ones she'd attached to the beam, the end result being an improvised quick release for a small platform about three inches by six. Placing a half inch nut from one of the jars of random metalwork that were on the bench on top of the platform, she got down from the toolbox and moved it to the side. With the stopwatch in her hand she pulled the string and clicked the start button at the same time. The peg came out, the platform swung down, and the nut neatly dropped straight down.

As soon as it hit the floor she stopped the timer, looking at the reading and making a note. "OK, near enough exactly eight feet, so it should take zero point seven seconds, rounding off. And it took… zero point seven seconds. Great. Gravity is working properly." She grinned to herself, noting the figure down. "So, let's see what happens if I do this…"

Resetting the device, she moved out of the way, then realized that she needed three hands. Sighing slightly, she spent another ten minutes improvising a foot pedal to pull the string out of a few more pieces of scrap wood and a hinge along with yet another hook. She also set up the old tripod of her fathers she'd pulled out of a box of his camera gear with a stick taped to the top, exactly four feet from the ground, and got it carefully aligned just off to the side of where the nut would drop. Taking her place, she slightly bent down so she was at eye level with the stick, then stepped on the release and clicked the stopwatch again. As the nut fell past the stick she grabbed it and stored it, stopping the timing at the same time.

"Just under half a second, so gravity is still working fine," she mumbled, writing the figure down. Resuming her position she reset the stopwatch, before putting the nut back where she'd pulled it from as closely as she could manage. Again she stopped the watch as soon as the nut hit the floor. Checking the time, she smiled. "Point two of a second. So assuming I hit the button fast enough, that adds up to the same time it would have taken if I hadn't stored the nut away. It conserves momentum. Neat."

Resetting the experiment, she lay on the floor and squinted along it, before pushing the release with her left hand, her right poised. It took her three attempts but she finally managed to snag the nut just before it hit the ground. Getting up again, she got the stopwatch ready and put the nut back at the height the platform was, starting the timing going at the same moment. As she'd expected from the earlier result the nut shot downwards much faster than falling under normal gravity, covering the distance to the floor almost before she could press the button again. "And that took about a third of a second. It was basically a sixteen foot drop from the point of view of the nut so it was already moving at about twenty three feet per second when I let go of it." Taylor nodded to herself in satisfaction.

"The big question is… can I change anything about that?" Scratching her nose, she looked absently up at the hinged piece of wood, then down at the nut. Retrieving the latter from the floor without bending down, she tossed it in her hand thoughtfully while examining it. "I wonder…"

Staring carefully beneath the girl stored the nut as it moved up, then pulled it back, over and over again. After a while she did the same on the downward part of the trajectory. Lost in thought, she didn't really notice the time, she just kept watching exactly what was happening when she made the piece of metal go from existing to not existing as far as normal reality was concerned. After a few dozen iterations, she frowned slightly, tilting her head and concentrating. There was a tiny, tiny difference in something when the nut was moving upwards at the moment she stored it compared to when it was moving downwards.

Tossing it harder, she grabbed it again, put it back, and snagged it out of the air as it went past her hand. The difference was bigger, although still minute. Even in her own mind she had a hard time describing what she was looking at but it was definitely there. Sitting on the stairs, she held the nut between forefinger and thumb and simply gazed at it for a long time, trying to work out exactly what she was trying to do and how to do it, before she finally nodded to herself. Tossing the nut up she stored it once more, then carefully pulled it back out while very cautiously deliberately changing how she did that in a very specific way.

Much to her own surprise, as she hadn't really expected it to work, the nut reappeared traveling downwards, at a rather higher velocity than she'd been ready for. It hit her hand and bounced off as she yelped. "Mother fucker!" she shouted, yanking her hand back and massaging it. "That fucking hurt." Shaking her hand she waited until the tingling stopped. "OK, making a note here, qualified success. Ow." Examining her palm she sighed at the reddened imprint of a hex nut that was clearly visible. "Addendum to self, don't catch the damn thing next time…"

On the positive side, though, it had actually worked. She'd managed to invert the direction of momentum and by the looks of things, and the feel of them, add to it quite a bit. The second part had been unintentional but it proved it was possible. The trick would be to learn how to separate them, and make the whole thing a lot more deliberate. And, of course, not try to catch a lump of metal moving rather quickly…

By the time her dad got home, Taylor had more or less got the hang of her new modification to Anton's skill. Getting good at it would take some practice, but she'd finally figured out which specific change to retrieving something from hammerspace controlled total momentum and which controlled the vector that momentum was acting along. She'd also broken the window and left several substantial dents in both the ceiling and two of the walls, and had managed to fire the original nut so hard at the workbench it went entirely through it. Which had come as a shock and put an end to the experimentation in such a confined space.

The really scary part was that she was completely sure she hadn't been pushing the technique anywhere near the limit. She wasn't entirely sure there was a limit, although it seemed plausible there had to be one. Nor did she know where the extra energy was coming from. On the other hand, she didn't need to know to make the trick work.

As she quickly used a roll of duct tape to make a repair to the window to stop any more snow getting in, she wondered if the same method would work the other way around and absorb momentum. Logically it seemed possible although she'd have to work out an experiment to let her try it. For now, she'd satisfied her curiosity and had another thing to show her father.

Going upstairs she found her dad in the kitchen making coffee. He looked over his shoulder and smiled at her. "Hello, Taylor. Did you have a good day? Why were you in the basement?"

"Yeah, it's been quiet but productive," she replied, returning the smile as she pulled a can of coke out of the fridge and popped the tab. "I finished some drawings, read some of my physics textbook, slightly broke the universe…" Sipping the can she watched with amusement as he stared at her, then sighed heavily.

"You really have to stop doing that, Taylor, you're going to get it upset with you sooner or later," he grumbled, going back to what he was doing. When he had his coffee, he sat down at the table. "What did you do this time?" he queried after a long drink.

"I kind of figured out how to make momentum my bitch," she grinned. He raised an eyebrow, looking a touch worried, so she explained. When she finished he was rubbing his closed eyelids, his glasses on the table.

"Oh, for god's sake. This is getting silly. You're building a Parahuman power out of spare parts."

"Not a Parahuman, dad, this is all Papa's fault." She giggled as he sighed again.

"We can agree on that. Fine, on the weekend you can show me how it works, but for now please try not to break any more windows." She nodded agreeably. "Oh, I stopped off at the lottery people and got this," he added, pulling his wallet out of his own hammerspace and removing a slip of paper from it. She took it and inspected it, her eyes widening slightly at the sight of a check for a hundred thousand dollars made out to her dad.

"Wow." Taylor grinned. "It's more real holding an actual check."

"That's a lot of money," he agreed. "I'll put it in the bank tomorrow, in a new account. We'll have to think about what we want to do with it but worst case that's your college costs sorted out." She gave it back to him, smiling.

"Neat. Thanks, dad."

"It was my pleasure."

After a moment, she asked, somewhat tentatively, "Have you heard any more from the Barnes family?"

He sighed slightly. "Yeah. I've talked to Zoe a couple of times today. And Alan once. She found a therapist, an expert in treating PTSD and trauma, which sounds exactly like what they need. Emma and Alan saw her yesterday for a couple of hours. Zoe said it… didn't go as well as they'd like with Emma, but not as badly as she'd feared it would. The girl is still hardly talking to anyone, she's just completely withdrawn into herself."

Taylor nodded slowly, still feeling mixed about the whole thing. It helped a little if she tried to think of Emma as someone she didn't know, which in the last year or so had nearly become true. "What are they going to do?"

"I'm not completely sure, and neither are they," he replied. "Anne has taken the rest of the semester off on compassionate grounds to stay home and look after Emma when Zoe and Alan are out. They're not leaving her alone for now, just in case something happens." He shrugged. "I'm not saying she'd do something, but the problem is no one knows whether she would or not."

His daughter closed her eyes and bowed her head. Even after what Emma had done, she didn't like to think of anyone being in that state. The thought that she herself had nearly ended up like that was sobering. "I wish this hadn't happened," she whispered.

A hand rested gently on her shoulder. "I know. So do I. But with some luck she'll get better. I know you'll never be able to look at her the same way again, but maybe you can eventually at least talk to her. That might help one day." He released her shoulder as she looked up, her eyes a little damp despite herself. "We'll do what we can for them because it's the right thing to do."

"I guess it is," she agreed quietly. "Fucking Sophia…"

"Girl sure didn't help," he nodded, frowning. "I wonder what will happen to her? Or has already happened?"

"Hopefully she's being hung upside down over a pit of angry fire ants," Taylor mumbled. He grinned for a second.

"Not sure the PRT uses fire ants. Or any insects. They're more into containment foam and rubber bullets."

"Pity."

Shaking his head, he smiled fondly at her. Her black mood slowly lifting, she smiled back. "Michelle is having fun arranging everything to do with the lawsuit," he said. "Still haven't had a real response from the PRT but she says that a couple of contacts told her they're extremely worried about the whole thing. Apparently they're spending a lot of time trying to work out what their best move is. Her opinion is that settling out of court as fast as possible would be in their best interests, but being who they are that might not happen. It depends on what people higher up the chain want. The local Director is pragmatic enough that she'd probably just do that, along with a bunch of legal paperwork making sure no one else hears what happened, but who knows what the people at the top will do? They're all about PR and this has the possibility of being really bad PR if it goes public."

Shrugging, Taylor replied, "I don't really care what they do as long as they get Sophia locked away where she can't hurt anyone else, and apologize for inflicting her on us. And admit they fucked up."

"Oh, that I fully agree with, trust me," he smiled. "Michelle thinks that's basically the minimum we settle for. The PRT, despite what the ENE division does, has deep pockets, so she's pretty sure with a little pressure in the right place we can probably get quite a bit more. And of course the school and the School Board are seriously screwed, with all the evidence we have. That one is going to be complicated to sort out, and cost them quite a bit."

"Good," she said with a vicious grin. "Them, I want to hurt. To stop this happening again."

"I think we can be pretty certain there are some big changes coming," he nodded.

"I was listening to the news about the asbestos thing on the radio," Taylor laughed. He looked amused.

"Yeah, it's sort of taken on a life of its own now. Their cover up story turned out to have enough truth to it that it's actually real, while still being a cover up. Which is unusual but whatever. And it's more work for us, which is helpful. Not to mention it'll probably save lives in the long run. Asbestos is nasty stuff and you really don't want to get asbestosis. I've known a few people who got that, they're all dead now." Her dad shook his head sadly.

Staring off into space, he drank his coffee while she let him think, clearly remembering people he missed. When he finished he put the cup down, then seemed to rejoin her. "Oh well. Life goes on, I suppose. I was thinking that maybe we should go out for Italian again? I've got a hankering for some risotto for some reason."

His daughter nodded with a smile. "I'm always up for Gino's," she agreed happily.

"Great." He checked his watch. "I'll make a reservation for about eight, then. That gives me time to have a shower." Getting up he headed upstairs, dialing a number on his phone on the way, while Taylor tidied the kitchen.

"We've identified another four taps into our systems, Director," Armsmaster stated, looking at his handwritten notes, then at Emily. "Two in the PRT building, one on the Rig, and one in a subsidiary data connection to the main PRT server farm via the underground optical trunk cable routing through Boston. That one appears to have been present for at least six years, although it's hard to be certain as all the relevant records have certainly been altered. Somehow. Whoever did it was definitely working with knowledge they could only have if they were intimately familiar with PRT protocols. Including information restricted to security level seven and above, which limits the possible suspect pool considerably."

"Do we have a prime suspect yet?" the Director demanded.

He flipped pages. "Not as such, although we can rule out a number of names at this point. It would require a combination of technical knowledge, security clearance, experience, and access to successfully enact such a subversion of our systems that eliminates at least sixty percent of our potential suspect pool. Some of the taps and exploits could be carried out without all those factors, but not all by any means. The optical tap is a very high specification piece of equipment that is quite unusual, and while it's not Tinker Tech it's uncommon enough that with some work we can almost certainly locate the original source. That may lead us towards a suspect although considering the level of competence so far exhibited I expect we'll find one or more levels of obfuscation. Whoever is behind this is careful and has been working behind the scenes for some considerable time."

"Which presumably narrows the suspect pool even more," Battery commented. He glanced at her and nodded.

"Indeed. We can be certain that our suspect is a veteran of the PRT, with most likely at least fifteen years experience of protocols and systems. It would require considerable time and practice to become good enough to have arranged all this, and that tap has been there for long enough that they'd have had to start at least a decade and a half ago. However, that doesn't necessarily mean our suspect is still here. They'd have had to be present when all this was set up but by now they could in theory be anywhere in the country, which complicates the problem."

"If we assume whoever it is, is still local, how many potential suspects are we talking about?" Renick queried, leaning forward.

Armsmaster didn't need to check his notes or his armor's systems. "Sixteen, once we eliminate all the possibilities we have positively cleared," he replied. "If we expand that to anyone who has passed through the ENE branch in the likely time period, that expands to two hundred and four."

"Sixteen is a number I prefer," Director Piggot said with a growl. "We'll start with those. Anyone of specific interest on that list?"

He slid his notebook across to her. "Please take a look and tell me your opinion before you hear mine, purely out of interest."

The woman picked the notebook up and scanned the page. He saw her eyes stop on one name, knowing which one it was. She looked up at him.

"Isn't that interesting?" she said with a look of enormous, contained, and furious irritation. "That this specific name would happen to be on this specific list."

"You are referring to Commander Calvert, I assume," he commented. She grinned nastily.

"I am. I think we'll start with him. Just to satisfy my own curiosity…" Sliding the notebook back, she added with a low growl, "And because I fully believe he's the exact sort of slimy shit who would do something like this if he thought he could pull it off."

"Never liked the man, I have to admit," Renick put in. "Although that's not enough to accuse anyone. I don't like quite a few people I've worked with and I can still trust them to do their jobs right."

"Calvert is in a league of his own," Piggot said with disgust. "Trust me, I wouldn't put anything past him. After what he did…" She trailed off, looking highly irritated. "Let's just say that you should never turn your back on him. If he wasn't so effective he wouldn't be here to begin with, but even so he's only here because I couldn't stop them assigning him to me. If it turns out to be him I'm going to laugh in the Chief Director's face and take great pleasure in telling her 'I told you so.' Again, after fucking Shadow Stalker." She didn't look happy.

"I'll move him to the top of the list," Armsmaster said, making some notes, then closing the notebook. "For security reasons we're forced to proceed very slowly and carefully, to avoid divulging the fact that we are proceeding, but we'll keep working on it."

"Good. Keep me in the loop." The Director still didn't look happy, but she nodded. "Next item. Any more usable information from or about Hess?"

"We got the CODIS report from the BBPD, positively identifying the blood on two of the bolts they found in Winslow as coming from two separate fatalities. One occurred nearly two years ago, during the early part of her vigilante career. It was an E88 gang member who was found in an alley with a bloodstained baseball bat which was positively linked to three beatings on that night, two of which resulted in deaths. Minority victims of course. He was shot in the throat and the wound then enlarged with a knife, the blade of which matches one of the ones in the cache of weapons the cops found." Renick looked at his tablet, shaking his head. "At the time it was put down as a stabbing but a second look at the evidence collected shows she deliberately tried to obscure what happened. She's denied it, of course."

"Of course," Emily sighed. "And the other fatality?"

"That one is even more worrying. It was only three months ago, a mugger not associated with any of the gangs. Someone reported hearing a scream, the BBPD investigated, and found him still bleeding out around the back of the strip mall on West Drive. Apparently stabbed in the heart, almost certainly in fact shot with one of the crossbow bolts with the stabbing occurring after the fact. His blood was definitely on the bolt in any case. She apparently didn't bother cleaning them, even though she cleaned the knives. They also found traces of blood soaked into the cloth everything was wrapped in, but the DNA was too degraded to get a good match other than being able to show it probably didn't match either of the arrows."

"So we can assume she shot more than just those two people," Miss Militia said with a sigh, looking upset. He turned to her and nodded slowly.

"That seems to be the case, yes," he agreed. "From the evidence she's been shooting at people with those things for at least two years, and at least up until three months ago. I'd be honestly surprised if two kills was it. There's enough evidence so far to suggest at least five, possibly more. Whether they were deliberately killed or she just fucked up I have no idea and without her confessing we may not be able to prove it one way or the other. But we've got more than enough to lay at least two manslaughter cases at her door."

"Damn it," the woman whispered.

"That's definitely all we need to get her parole completely revoked without any possibility of the Chief Director's office killing the charges," the Director said, sounding both angry and slightly satisfied. "The sooner we can get that girl out of here the better."

"Can't say I disagree," Renick nodded. "I just wish this hadn't happened."

"We all do, but we have to live with the hand we're dealt," she replied. "And deal with the fallout. Like this fucking lawsuit." The woman scowled. "It's going to be a pain in the ass to do that. And I'm going to have to try not to shoot Glenn Fucking Chambers in the face."

"So he's coming personally?" Assault asked.

She sighed. "He is indeed. Tomorrow, which is the first time he could get away. I really, really don't like that man. He's… annoying."

Everyone around the table nodded, as every single one of them had met the PR director and fully agreed. Good at his job as he was, he still tended to leave people with the impression they'd prefer not to meet him again.

"What is the official position on the suit going to be?" Miss Militia queried.

"If it was up to me I'd offer them a couple of million to sign an NDA saying they'd keep their mouths shut about our involvement, promise them I'd personally strangle everyone involved in this total cluster fuck, shove Stalker into the deepest hole we have, and get on with my life, but unfortunately it's not really up to me," Director Piggot sighed. "Not with something this serious. So we're going to have to wait for head office to figure out what they want to do then somehow make sure that doesn't blow back on us and make our jobs even harder, which is the likely outcome based on past performance." She shook her head in disgust. "This is going to go horribly wrong, I can feel it, but there's not a lot I can do to stop it. I suppose we'll see what happens."

"Well, at least she's not out there shooting anyone else, so I suppose it could be worse," Assault said, shrugging, which made everyone glare at him.

"You had to go and jinx it, didn't you?" his wife sighed. They argued quietly for a while then everyone got back to the next item on the agenda, while all privately hoping things didn't actually get any worse.