Chapter XV

Patch Job

The cars were few now, coming at random intervals at a sleepy pace. Headlights crawling across the desert road molded a rider dressed in midnight from the mass of shadows as they passed before abandoning him to the gloom once more. He stood, leaning casually against the black Bel-Air, seemingly at ease as he waited.

And waited.

One car slowed, a VW Van veering off the road and rumbling to a stop. The driver stepped out, using his headlights to cast the motorcyclist in stark relief. The driver did not shut them off. "Hey, car break down?"

The biker tilted his head. "Yes."

The diver whistled, coming around his door, but didn't walk up to the man or the car. "Mighty fine helmet you got there. Well, I can give you a lift if you like."

"A jump start would be better."

"Lucky for you I keep a set of cables!" The driver grinned, and went to the back of the van, opening one of the doors. He heard the biker follow to help drag the cables out. The driver double-checked that his tranquilizer rifle and zip ties were well hidden under a blanket before the biker came to his side. He took one of the darts and held it in his palm, preparing to swing and shove it into his victim's neck. "Yeah, these are pretty heavy, thanks."

"No problem. Oh. By the way…" The biker dangled a little black box in front of the bent driver's face, holding it by its antenna like a rat. "You forgot this."

The driver whirled, dart at the ready-but couldn't follow through. A haze of purple surrounded his hand, shrinking around his fist like a glove and squeezing. Before the driver could even register what was happening, the biker brought his helmeted head down on his temple.

"Wake up asshole!"

Syndrome kicked the driver in his leg, successfully rousing the tracker out of sleep. He was seated on the ground, propped up against his green van, arms bound to his torso with Shadow's old super suit. They were far from the road now, standing in the middle of the desert. There was no sign of life in any direction except for the gathering of people by the Incredibile, pouring over the contents of the van they had pulled out and searched through.

Syndrome and Violet stood before the driver, blocking out the rising sun. The tracker squinted up into their faces and snarled. "I knew it was you, Lazarus!"

Violet stiffened. She knew that voice, especially in the gravely gasping tone he held. The guard that had electrocuted her-the one Syndrome had almost suffocated. The villain stepped forward, folding his arms. "Well, well, well. Martin. Awful to see you again."

"Yeah-well now you see me-" Martin clenched his jaw, clicking his teeth so hard, Violet thought they might crack-in fact, she heard a crack.

Syndrome swore. "Cyanide!"

Violet flung out her hands, mind desperately scrambling for the memory of dissecting a cadaver, the shape, and exact length of the trachea. Martin gagged, legs flailing, kicking at the dirt as her shield blocked his throat, stalling the poison but also cutting off his air. "Mom! Water-now!"

Helen stretched her arm as fast as she could and dropped a water bottle into her hand. Violet slid to her knees, grabbing the tracker's hair and shoving the bottle into his mouth, squeezing to flush out the cyanide from the cavity. It wouldn't keep him from getting sick as the poison absorbed into the flesh of his gums-but they weren't about to lose their only lead. She removed her shield, and the man coughed, splattering spittle across her arm. "Ew."

Syndrome handed her his handkerchief, folded down to the last clean corner. "Thanks." Violet wiped off her arm and pushed Martin back into a sitting position. "Who sent you?"

"Bitch."

"Yup. Who sent you?"

"I'm not telling you a goddamn thing, you little slut." Martin spat at her, but happily missed her face. So did Syndrome's boot when it connected to Martin's nose, knocking his head back against the VW's door with a loud metallic clang.

Violet fell backward, surprised by the sudden spurt of blood that erupted from the tracker's nose. "Hey!"

"Hey, nothing. He tried to spit whatever he had left on you."

"We need answers, and he needs to still be able to use his mouth to do that!"

"Fell should have killed you both," Martin groaned, his voice nasal from the broken nose. "Selfish, you're so goodman selfish. He was doing good work."

Syndrome squatted on his other side. "Did Fell send you directly?"

"Kiss my ass, Lazarus."

"My name isn't Lazurus!" Growling, Syndrome bounded up and paced over to the Incredibile, popping open the trunk. Martin watched him, but Violet grabbed his chin.

"Who told you where we were?"

"Santa," Martin sneered. "I told you I'm not telling you anything. You can shout and grandstand but I'm not impressed. You think you can flash your powers at me and I'll cower? Think again, bitch. Your days are numbered, so read my lips, I'm not saying shit."

"Oh, I think you will." Syndrome was back now, with his fighting baton. With a snap, the baton elongated to its full height. Holding it in the middle, Syndrome twisted his hands, and the baton parted, unsheathing a hidden blade inside. He held the blade right under Martin's nose, the edge oh so close to slicing. The former guard shoved himself up against the van's side, panting and watching the blade with wide terrified eyes. "Because I am going to ask you questions. And for every answer I don't get, I'm cutting a piece off. And believe me-they will be things you will miss. Untie his arm!"

The response was immediate. Martin shrieked, and Helen and Bob lunged forward, shouting at once. "I'm getting my answers," Syndrome said calmly, blade moving from Martins' nose to his ankle. "One way or another. If you don't have the gumption, turn around."

"We are not going to let you torture him," Helen shouted.

"Are you insane?! You're just going to start cutting and think that'll help anything," Bob added.

"I'm going to start there. He tortured your little girl-I'm going to torture him back. You're welcome."

"You're crazy you maniac," Martin snapped. "What do you think that's going to do?! They didn't tell me anything! They don't let any of us know anything, you know that asshole!"

Violet swallowed and glanced back at the only Parr that hadn't objected. Dash looked white as a sheet, and frankly, like he was going to be sick. But he didn't try to stop Syndrome-it seemed hurting his sister was enough for Dash to condone the scene before him, as cruel as it was. Or maybe he was at a crossroads himself, unable to decide.

But she wasn't going to let Syndrome start choosing limbs to slice. She wouldn't participate in violence against a man who couldn't defend himself.

But Martin didn't have to know that.

Violet grabbed his face again, and said in her calmest doctor voice, "Listen. Martin?" She waited until his panicked gaze fell to her again. "I'm tired. I haven't slept in two days, and…" the name stuck on her tongue like rotten peanut butter, "Lazarus here-he's even worse. We're a little shaky, we're a little agitated and he's been dying to beat the hell out of something. Anything. So, I think your best bet is telling me what I want to know."

He stayed silent, and she saw that he was trying to decide what was worse-giving up Fell or never walking again.

"Listen, I don't have time." Violet stood, sighing. "I've got a room and a bed waiting for me. So if you want to speak to him-"

"I want to sleep too; this is pointless." Syndrome took aim.

"I don't know anything," Martin pleaded.

"I don't believe you, Martin," Violet said.

"I don't believe him either," Syndrome agreed, the baton raising and lowering a few times as if he was aiming very, very carefully.

"I don't believe you at all-if you don't know anything how were you able to pick out the Incredibile from all the other black cars on the road?"

"Wait! God just wait!" Matron spat up the blood that had welled in his mouth on the ground. "I...I don't know how they knew. They just-I just-I just-it-"

Violet placed a hand on Syndrome's weapon, the omnimetal cold despite the heat, as she carefully pushed his blade aside, taking away the danger for the moment. "Start from the beginning," she instructed in her best How-did-you-end-up-in-the-ER voice.

"After the lab, I went home, okay! I just went home and laid low and somehow they found me!"

"How?"

"I don't know! They called me, just like they called Fell. Whoever he worked with or got shit from always called on the phone, used a computer voice. They're not trackable, goddamnit I can't tell you who it is!"

"Alright, they called you. To do what?"

"They told me that I'd have a job again if I followed you-"

Violet's lip curled. Heat, sudden and uncontrollable rushed to her face. The lab wasn't a job, a simple nine to five you could clock out from, watching a young woman be trapped and tested and tortured. "Doing what? Housing supers again? So you can watch them get cut up-is that your specialty?!"

But Martin shook his head. "No! it was just a paycheck! I didn't have any money, I didn't exactly get a goddamn resume point from that gig-and no one's really keen on hiring anyone fresh from 'Nam either, you know! They just said job and I took it! And yeah, I wanted to get you back for nearly ripping my throat out, Lazarus, so when they said I'd be the one to get you, I didn't exactly question things."

Syndrome drove the blade of his baton into the ground suddenly, right between Martin's knees. "So how did you find us? Who told you what car to follow and where? How did they know?"

"I-I think-"

Violet bent. "Think. Faster."

Martin squeezed his eyes shut, head falling back against the van hard as he tried to frantically search his memory. It burst out of him like a bubble popping: "Your MAC card! It was used right before you got on the highway, or I think that's what they said." Violet glanced back and saw her parents go white. They had taken money out of an ATM just as they crossed the border into Oklahoma, knowing it'd be safer to deal in cash for the rest of the mission like Mirage said. "I recognized Lazuras at a gas station and followed until I saw the Bel-Air, they said that's what you'd be driving. I put the tracker on back in New Mexico then and it triggered the sabotage I guess."

"And how did you get the tracker," Syndrome snapped.

"I just had it!"

"I'm not playing with you Martin-and I don't give a shit if she jumps on my back I will cut you in half-"

"It's the truth! It came with the van, I'm serious! I just met with their contacts and picked up the van and it was all set just like they told me. I was supposed to get you and come straight to the pickup stop and that's it. That's all I know. No one knew where I was no one else knew anything-even the contact-"

"People gave you this van," Violet snapped. But even as she questioned her mind began to turn-her stomach too. "You said they only ever touched base with you over the phone."

"They told me to go to the lot and pick it up-I guess they planted it…" Martin trailed off, watching Violet launch herself over their captive and into the truck.

Syndrome followed her, peering in through the back. "Uh, princess-kinda in the middle of something. We already searched the van."

But it all started to sound familiar. She tore through the glove box, ripping out the registration and the manual, shoving her hands into the cushions, and laying flat to look under the seats. She cried out, finding what she was looking for. There, next to two discarded cigarette butts and a half-drunk water bottle, a pile of ripped-up cardboard.

Sweeping the pieces into her hand, Violet jumped out of the van, circling to the hood, and laid the pieces flat, sliding them across the metallic paint like a puzzle. "Who were they?!"

"I to-"

"Not your boss, the people who gave you the truck!"

"...I...I dunno, I didn't get their names?" Martin glanced at Syndrome who, lost in the same bewilderment, shrugged.

"Was it a man or a woman?"

"I...Fell's contact told me to talk to the black-haired guy with the teeth-Vinny, but there was a woman too I think? She did the paperwork for-"

"The rental lot." Violet slammed her hands on the hood, staring hard at the picture she had just put together. There, scattered like continents on a mint green sea was the remains of a mirror tag, the kind that hung in car rentals naming the price per day and advertising the lot.

Elliot Family Rentals.

He found supers through their accounts, offering to tune up the Incredible-She'd confirmed their car of use without even knowing it. Stupid, STUPID Parr.

Her fingers dug into the metal of the hood, so hard, her nails scratched the paint in long angry lines through her gloves. She wished she could begin to claw at her very skin, every place that monster had touched her in a show of flirtation-had she once wished to entertain the notion just to feel normal?

Bile rose in her throat. Oh, how tidy that would have been! Echo carefully pulling her from the rest with that damn smile, under the guise of a hopeful suitor only to steal her in the night, back to Fell. Hell-and she would have laughed if she didn't think she was about to throw up-he would have been overjoyed to produce a super baby for his master.

Now the weight of it dropped in her stomach, almost buckling her knees. Here was her answer-the one crack in the pipeline she had been searching for months to patch. It should feel better than this, shouldn't it? It was a victory, another impossible task notched in her belt-another mystery solved.

It was what she had worked towards for six agonizing months. It had kept her from smiling too warmly at anyone, made her always watch her back, kept her from all the happy moments with Robbie, with co-workers, even her own family. Finding the leak, identifying him, should have brought her joy. But the newly created Violet, shaped by this knowledge, just stared at the dismembered smiling cartoon figures of Echo's uncle and his family, she felt nothing but endless, dry despair, like waiting alone on the side of a deserted highway.

She suspected them all, had desperately tried to catch them in the act, and now doing so, Violet wished to be free of the knowing, of the taste of poison in her mouth that nothing could flush away.

Perhaps some small part of her, the part that naively, quietly, and yet persistently had the simple pathetic wish that this whole affair would all be over and she could just go back to her life before, had prayed it wouldn't be any of them. Hoped it hadn't been a friend, that it would turn out to be some nameless faceless stranger she could hate with a purity; not colored with memory or kinship. The possibility of that had been minute-but that secret little flame of hope had sustained on it.

And she knew that flame was damn near a fire in her family-so much so that she tried to stop Dash from coming to her side, from seeing the damning evidence. It pained her to see the knowing spread over his face, the familiar sequence of shock, to despair and finally anger that would plant in his soul and blossom poisonous fruit. And Violet, ever the healer, could not give him anything to help.

"Echo," he hissed. "Echo!"

"What is that Robbie's hero name," Syndrome snorted, stumbling slightly as Bob shoulder-checked him to follow his son.

"No," Mr. Incredible snapped-then his anger broke for a moment. "Thank God it's not him, thank-"

"He was always asking after you Violet," Dash began to rant, fingers fisting by his side. He slammed a gloved fist on the pieces of mirror tag. "Always wanted to know when your shifts ended, where you'd be. I thought he was just trying to ask you out-Oh my God if you had-" Dash seemed to join Violet in his nausea. "He was tracking you."

"He was even spreading rumors about you being together," Helen breathed. She fell back against the Incredibile, white as a sheet. "It was probably how he was going to cover up you being missing."

"But I swear, Violet I never told him," Dash cried. "Ever, not once! I always told him to bug off! I don't know how he knew that night-"

"The cards, the accounts," Violet explained. "I always go to the bank before work. He's good at that, he tracked heroes for years under Dicker. He's the NSA's go-to for forensic accounting. Anytime we use a MAC card he could track it."

"Alright, then how did the little shit know we were going west," Syndrome called with more vitriol than Violet would have expected. "Your father just said he only told his apprentice."

Violet's lip curled in an utterly humorless smile. She works fast. "Robbie's all but married to Echo's cousin. Her father's the one that owns the rentals. She tapped him for information I bet since Echo wasn't exactly welcome in our house. I bet he even had her calling Fell so he couldn't be traced that way-that's why the voice modulator. He's got family in every line of business he told me himself." Dear God, he'd practically identified himself to her face time and time again. "I bet he knew who owned the office we set the sting up in-I'd even guess he told the broker to feed Robbie the bad info."

All the missing supers, his excitement at offering up his family services' to the NSA, the interest in the Syndrome case and Ultra, the way he hung about the office more than an active hero with street duties ought to. Violet had assumed he was simply too stupid to take a hint, too proud to be turned down; that despite his seeming uselessness he was all for Surratt's pony show of a press tour, kept for his winning charm and smile. All the while he had been just like her: smiling in the face of his target, siphoning off information until it he was prepared to strike, all the while making himself the model agent-the perfect new generation of super.

What a waste her mind whispered suddenly, too tired to hold the weight of despair. What a waste of a life. He was a hero to many. Even on this tag, there was an illustration of him, to bring in user recognition for the company with his tell-tale bat-designed suit.

We create who we are-and his makeup is pathetic. She picked up Echo's piece of the family picture and crushed it. Anger was a better-tasting emotion. She had to return to that, she had to cling to it. It made her heart beat faster, her blood rush-it gave her signs of life again. And so long as she lived, she could succeed.

She could win, darling.

Vincent had sold his own kind to a monster to make horrific mockeries of the very genetics he possessed. And for what? For money? For sick pleasure? Violet didn't know. She couldn't hope to understand logic that twisted, that sick. It was about as fruitful as trying to figure out the winding, haunted halls of Fell's mind.

Echo had chosen was just a cog in the machine-a willing turnkey Fell had used to fund his cruelty. Violet didn't fear him-didn't even fear Fell. Her freight came from the harm they could do, that nebulous possibility of disaster. For the men themselves, Violet felt...disgust, almost pity. As if they were rodents laced with rabies: dangerous, yes, but slated to die. Except their fate was brought about by no one but themselves.

Well, she may not be a vet, but she was a doctor. She was trained to free others from disease, and soon enough she would cure them both of their pitiful conditions-one way or another.

Violet rounded the van again. "How many were you told to bring in?"

Martin, who had been happy to be ignored, flinched as her attention returned to him. "They told me there were only supposed to be five of you. All supers and all to be brought in. I only brought six darts in case I missed the speedy little bastard on the first try. I didn't expect a goddamn team, princess-

Syndrome brought the baton sheath down sharply on the top of Martins' head. "Hey-a little respect, douchebag."

Violet held up a hand, signaling for Syndrome to stop. The villain took a step back but looked at the tracker as if they were fermented roadkill. "So they still haven't linked Ultra with us or vice versa."

Syndrome gave her the slightest smirk. "At least that's still covert. I'll see if I can't have Ultra make another hit before we're off the continent."

Dash put a hand on Violet's shoulder. "Should we call Surratt?"

"No," Violet said quickly. "No, if we tip-off anyone without Fell in hand, Echo'll go underground again. We have to get him before we expose the leak. The best course of action is continuing the way we are. But now we know just where the attack is coming from. We can be more alert to it." She could only imagine the damage Echo could wreck if he suspected they were about to uncover his operation, now free of her searching and surveillance, not having to put up the act. He had spread his influence carefully like a spider spinning silk-if they weren't careful their only allies could be caught in the web.

She thought of Robbie, poor Robbie whom she had suspected most of all. He was alone, ignorant, and practically in bed with the enemy if she read his hesitant shyness right. What Echo would do to the honorary Parr if he thought there could be leverage. A sudden image of Robbie, clutching his throbbing head, weak from antidote behind glass walls in some forsaken lab in Russia passed before her eyes and the bile burned again.

Violet glanced up to Syndrome, whose smile had disappeared. He tilted his head and looked something like concerned. "Are you gonna puke?"

She shook her head.

"You good?"

A nod this time.

"Good. Then we should finish up here. Mac?"

The mechanic, who was still leaning against the Incredibile, nodded. From his belt he produced Ultra's Beretta, and pulled back the slide, loading a bullet in the chamber as he advanced on the tracker. Martin immediately began pleading, kicking, trying to press himself back against the van. His sobs sounded choked, practically suffocating on blood and tears and mucus as he flailed. Taking aim, the Scotsman slammed face-first into a wall of purple.

"Bloody hell-!"

Violet jumped between Martin and her shield. "Wait, what do you think you're doing?!"

Syndrome stormed forward. "What do you think you're doing?!"

"He has to die, lass."

Violet jerked back in surprise. "Are you crazy? You're not about the execute him!"

Syndrome, for once choosing a calm tone over his usual snide ordering, took a deep breath. Placing his hands on her arms, he turned her to face him. "Princess, this isn't one of our hypotheticals. This isn't a debate. We can't leave this loose end to run back to Echo, tail between his legs. Besides, if he failed they are probably going to screw him up worse than a bullet to the head and you and I both know there are a lot worse ways to go."

And the worst thing, worse still than seeing the people she was bound to work with almost murder in cold blood, was that Violet saw their point. Martin may have been cowed by their threats, but once the danger was gone and the fear had ebbed, he'd either follow them, armed with knowledge, or give up all he knew hoping that information would grant mercy. It was a loose end that could easily wrap around their necks.

She looked back down at Martin-and could feel an echo of the electrocution he had tortured her with. But she didn't see the intimidating man wearing a visor now-all she saw were the panicked tears running down his cheeks, making the splattered blood from his nose pink where the saltwater cut tracks. He looked like a snot-nosed child rather than a man. Maybe it would be kinder…

"Violet," Dash snapped. When he caught his sister's gaze, his initial anger broke and he looked, of all things, scared. He looked between the coughing, spluttering prisoner and his big sister, terrified at her silence when he expected her immediate protest. "...Vi?" Maybe he did have limits, after all-perhaps she could save him from being as familiar with the hate as her.

I can't flip from pure good to evil, people aren't coins. she thought. But if I let this happen, what kind of person am I making? And can I live with her for the rest of my life? The Violet that would survive this-what kind of hero, what kind of person, did she want to emerge as? The kind of person who could live with shooting a weeping man? The kind of person who could look at her baby brother's fear, and disregard it-let Dashel look at her that way for the rest of her living years? If I let them do this I might as well hold the gun myself. Can I do it? In that, she knew her answer.

"No." Violet shook her head. "We aren't murdering him."

"There's no other way," Syndrome shouted, shaking her. "Where we're going there's gonna be a lot more killing, and you had better get used to it!"

"I'll get to it when I get to it," she shouted back. "But I'm not shooting him in the head like I'm a KGB agent and I'm not letting you do it either!"

But Syndrome wouldn't listen to platitudes like that. The comparisons didn't bother him-he was made of metal, heartless in every way. Name-calling and appeals to ego, or image no longer registered-there was no longer a place on him that a Parr could hurt. It was the only way he had survived Fell, the only reason he stood here now arguing necessity and morality instead of rotting in the basement of some lab, put away like broken toys in an attic.

Violet could understand it, even as she pitied the transformation that was forced upon him, and the way he had to mold himself to live with it. She mourned the Syndrome he had been forced to create. So she took a different tack and pushed him where he could be swayed. His logic.

"If you shoot him, how are you going to dispose of the body," she asked.

Syndrome gave a humorless laugh and gestured to the miles of dirt stretching in every direction.

"Great, a shallow grave-and when a fox digs him up for dinner? And they find him? I'm not talking months, I'm talking days. They'll match that bullet-are you absolutely certain that that gun has no ties to you?"

"It's not registered. That's not a problem-"

"Really? Because the NSA has a fat file on Ultra that says differently. They'll match the ballistics, and there'll be nothing we can do about it halfway across the Pacific, at sea for a month. They'll have a whole team waiting for us the minute we dock in Japan if they don't send the Navy out to grab us first."

"We're not letting him go scot-free!"

"I'm not saying that!"

"Then what do you suggest, dump him at a police station?! Echo will have him bailed out in a flash and be on our tail all the same!"

"I suggest," Violet snapped, shrugging off Syndrome's other hand. "That you're a genius. You can do anything given time, remember? You figure it out. There has to be a solution between do nothing and murder in the first."

Syndrome stalked away, running his hands through his hair and gripping it hard before giving the van a kick hard enough to dent the fender. "I don't believe this! I can't believe this, here we are trying to stop a psychopathic monster and you want to waste time saving shit bags like this asshole! We're wasting time."

But he made no move towards the prisoner, instead walking the length between the Incredibile and the van, hands on his hips. But Violet could almost swear she heard gears crunching as they turned inside his head.

He finally stopped, looking between Violet, Martin, and the van as if piecing together a puzzle. "Murder in the first…" Then he turned towards the horizon where the sun was halfway up, long beams clawing at the earth in the early dawn. "...Foxes," he muttered. He slammed a fist into his palm. "Foxes. Kid-" he turned to Dash, "Run to the next gas station and pick a name off the Missing Person's Board-any name, preferably a girl."

Dash made a face. "A name? What do you need a name for?"

"Because we are going to tie him up with something better than a super-suit and keep him out of the fed's hands for a good long while." He was back in the Incredibile's trunk and pulling out the shotgun, loading it with the telltale red slugs. He racked it one-handed. "Mac-how good of a shot are you with that AR?"

"As good as I have to be," Mac said, just as confused as Dash.

"Excellent. Come with me." Syndrome came up to Martin, but instead of aiming, slammed the butt of the rifle against his temple, knocking him out cold.

"Why?"

"We're going varmint huntin'."