One Bad Day

Part Six: Preconceptions, Deceptions and Preparations

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

[A/N 2: I will be at Gold Coast Supanova on April 13-14, with Karen Buckeridge, author of Ties That Bind at the Words on Paper (Ink) table (#58) in the Alley. We'll be glad to chat with anyone who shows up.]

Thursday, December 23, 2010
Taylor

Dad looked at me, then at the two PRT soldiers on the floor. Almost mechanically, he reached out and shut the back door. "Two more," he said. "There were two more upstairs."

"Yeah, we got 'em," Amy said. She didn't sound happy, but that was to be expected. I got the impression she'd spent a lot of her life making sure she lived by the rules she'd set herself. Over the last twenty-four hours, she'd basically broken them all, and now she was dancing on the pieces.

"Uh huh." Dad looked at me. "All right, you said you had an explanation. I'd be really interested in hearing it—wait a minute." He stared at Amy and Vicky. "Aren't you Panacea and Glory Girl?" His attention switched to Lisa. "And I don't even know who you are."

"It's all part of the explanation," I said. "Honest." Impulsively, I moved in and hugged him. "It's so good to see you again. I didn't think I was ever going to."

His strong hands patted me on the back. "I know," he said. "I thought the same thing myself." He took me by the shoulders and moved me back until he was looking me in the face. "But if we're going to get through this, you need to tell me everything about what's going on. I can't help you if I'm in the dark about important matters."

Abruptly, I found myself tearing up. I'd been prepared for disappointment or anger or even rejection. The fact that he was stepping up and listening to me was more precious than gold or gems to me at that moment. He cares. He really cares. Not that I'd ever thought he didn't, but his behaviour after Mom died had skated pretty close to that line a few times.

I took a deep breath. "Okay, but first, the PRT's likely to be expecting these guys to call in some time soon. Lisa?"

"We've got between fifteen and thirty minutes, and I might be able to stretch that to a few hours," Lisa said. "Long enough to fill your dad in." She held out her hand to him. "I'm Lisa, by the way. Nice to meet you."

"Danny," he said, automatically shaking her hand. "I'm guessing this is going to be some explanation."

"Oh, you ain't heard the half of it!" Aisha piped up, fading into my awareness yet again. I was actually starting to get used to it now—oh hey, that's Aisha—but from the way Dad jumped, it was going to take him a while to come to terms with it. "Hey. I'm Aisha. Nice place you got here. Pity about the decor." She gestured to the PRT soldiers on the floor.

"Gah!" Dad actually did a double-take, shocked out of his numbed compliance. "Where did you come from?"

"Well, you know," Aisha responded cheekily, "when a mommy and a daddy love each other very much—Ow!" She rubbed her ear and gave Lisa a dirty look. "What was that for?"

"If I have to explain it, you'll never understand," Lisa said with a sigh.

"That's what I said!" Aisha retorted gleefully.

Amy shook her head. "Ignore her," she advised Dad. "We all do. You're taking this pretty well, considering."

"Taylor's my daughter," Dad explained succinctly. "I might get mad at her, I might even let her down from time to time, but I'll never turn my back on her." He turned to me, his expression serious. "I might yell at you afterward, but right now I'm here and I'm listening. What's going on?"

I took a deep breath. "Come into the living room. You're gonna need to sit down for this one."

He followed me through and we sat down on the sofa. I wasn't sure what solution Lisa was going to work out for dealing with the PRT guys, but it would probably involve Amy, who would hate it but give in and do what Lisa wanted in the end. It seemed to be the ongoing pattern in their relationship.

"Okay," said Dad. "They say you stabbed someone inside Winslow. And that you've got powers." He left both statements hanging there, waiting for me to address them.

"Both those are true," I said cautiously. "But there's more to it than that. A lot more."

I saw his shoulders slump fractionally at that. I guess some part of him had wanted the PRT to be lying to him. Unless I missed my guess, he would've accepted my word over theirs, even if I'd denied everything. That meant more to me than any number of verbal assurances.

"I'm listening," he said.

"Okay, you've obviously been talking to the PRT," I pointed out. "Did they say anything about the bullying?"

His gaze on me, already intent, sharpened perceptibly. "They said that Emma and her friends may have been victimising you. Is this what was happening?"

I sighed. "Since I started at Winslow. More or less on a daily basis. Pushing and shoving in the halls, stuff stolen out of my locker, my email inbox filled with hate mail, pushing my books and papers off my desk in class …" I trailed off. Dad was staring at me in dawning horror and anger.

"That … I had no idea. None at all," he said flatly. "And I really should have." His lips were set tightly. "I'm going to presume you asked for help from your other friends, or the teachers …" It was his turn to trail off, probably at the expression on my face. "What?"

"Emma turned the whole school against me." It was a relief to finally be able to tell him. I knew full well that just saying those seven words was pulling the pin on a hand grenade that was liable to go off in Emma's dad's face, but I didn't give a shit about that. Not any more. "I had no friends. Emma and her friends made sure of that. And I still can't tell if the teachers were in on the whole Shadow Stalker thing, or they just didn't care. No matter what I said, nothing changed." My voice was bitter by the time I finished.

"Shadow Stalker." For a moment I was confused as to why he'd seized on to that particular element, but then he went on. "I was told she'd been murdered. But not by you."

I blinked. "No, that's wrong. I killed her. I stabbed her and she died from it." Tilting my head, I showed him the bruising on my throat. "She was strangling me at the time."

"But where did you get the knife from?" He was understandably confused. "Did you bring it to school? How long have you been carrying one?"

"I haven't," I hastened to explain. "I didn't. I …" My voice trailed off. "If I tell you where I got it, you can't tell anyone, okay?" The last thing I wanted was to get Aisha into trouble.

"I gave it to her!" declared Aisha, popping up in front of us. "I took it off of some Nazi gangbanger and brung it to school."

"Jeez, Aisha!" I tried to bring my adrenaline-fuelled heart rate back under control. "Don't do that!"

"Sonofabitch!" Dad was less controlled than me. "Listen, I don't mind you being here. If you're friends of Taylor's, you're welcome in my house. But I'm not as young as I used to be, and adding me to your body count by giving me a heart attack is not the way to go!"

"Sorry! Sorry, sorry, sorry." Lisa bustled through from the kitchen and grabbed Aisha by the ear. "Come on, you menace. Let Taylor talk to her dad in peace."

Before I had the chance to wonder why Lisa was holding her hand in midair, she twisted her wrist and Aisha faded back into my conscious awareness with a yip of pain. "Ow, hey!" she complained as Lisa implacably led her away toward the kitchen. "I was only trying to explain why Taylor had a knife!"

"And now he knows. So we're going to leave them alone." Lisa gave us a wave from the kitchen door. "Carry on."

Dad ran his hand over his forehead. "Damn," he muttered. "Is it like this all the time?"

"You get used to it," I assured him. "Anyway, yeah, Sophia had beat me up pretty good and she was strangling me, and the next thing I knew I was holding a knife …"

"So you stabbed her." He patted me on the shoulder. "I would've done exactly the same thing." With his hand on my shoulder, he turned me so I was looking directly in his face. "But you didn't kill her. Not with that stab wound."

I was confused. "But … she's dead, right? I stabbed her and she was coughing blood, and I dropped the knife, and ran away. And I just kept running, until I found Lisa. And Vicky and Amy found us."

"You stabbed her, yes." I couldn't believe how calmly Dad was talking about this. "But she made it out of the bathroom, then someone cut her throat and carved a swastika into her back. You didn't do that, did you?"

I blinked a few times. "Well, no. I didn't." I looked at the kitchen doorway. "Wait, Aisha said she killed Sophia, but I figured that was her taking credit because she gave me the knife or something." I'd already gotten used to the idea that Sophia was dead. The knowledge that Aisha had finished her off didn't actually change things all that much.

Now Dad looked confused. "What did she have against Sophia? Was she bullying her, too?"

"No," I said. "Aisha's brother was a minor supervillain. Sophia murdered him in cold blood as Shadow Stalker."

Dad grimaced and looked at the floor. "This goddamn city," he muttered. "A hero tries to kill you and a villain saves you."

"Shadow Stalker was hardly a hero," I said bitterly. "She helped Emma bully me. It might even have been her idea all along. Her and …" I scrunched up my face as I remembered what I'd done. "And Madison."

"Madison?" Dad had obviously caught my tone. "Who's Madison?"

"Emma's other friend." I turned to look at him, reluctant to meet his eyes but knowing I had to. "She's the one I did accidentally murder. With my powers."

He lifted his arm, then settled it around my shoulders. I leaned into him, feeling a certain amount of remorse that I was able to take comfort from his hug. I should've been wracked with guilt over the fact that I'd ended one person's life and tried to do the same with another, but I wasn't.

"Talk to me," he said softly.

I took a deep breath. "I—I was eating lunch in the bathrooms," I said hesitantly. "Emma, Sophia and Madison trapped me in the stall then they tipped a tampon bin over my head and shoved it down over my shoulders. I thought I was going to die." I shrugged, feeling the weight of his arm over my shoulders. "I don't know how I got it off, but the next thing I knew, I could feel all the bugs in the school. I threw the bin at Sophia and saw her go to shadow. So I told her I was going to take the whole thing to Blackwell. That was when Sophia started beating the shit out of me."

"And you used your powers?" asked Dad.

I nodded miserably. "I wanted the bugs to attack Sophia, but she kept flickering in and out, so they couldn't get a grip on her. Emma got out. Madison … didn't."

He didn't say anything to that. I appreciated his silence. It would've been easy for him to give me some platitude about how Sophia had been trying to kill me, so she deserved what she got. Madison had only been guilty of helping bully me. What she'd done had been pretty bad, but it still wasn't worthy of death.

"She must be the one the Director said was swarmed with a mass of venomous bugs," Dad said unexpectedly. "You know, the PRT's pretty well on top of this. From what Director Piggot told me, they don't even want to arrest you for murder. They already know about the bullying, and they want to talk to you about what happened." He gave me a concerned look. "She also said Emma's already doing her best to paint you as the next candidate for the Slaughterhouse Nine. You really need to get the truth out there before things get out of hand. More out of hand."

"I can't." I wished I could tell him otherwise, but it was true.

"If you don't turn yourself in soon, they're not going to have much of a choice except to issue an arrest warrant," he cautioned me. "And then every cop and every hero's going to be on your case. The longer they have to look for you, the less leeway they'll be willing to give you."

He wasn't trying to convince me to do it. I could tell that right away. He was just warning me what was likely to happen if I didn't play ball with the PRT.

"I get that," I told him. "But no matter what they said about any sort of amnesty, there's a chance that if I turn myself in they'll just arrest me straight up. And even if they're playing it straight with me, any deal's likely to involve me going into the Wards in return for them making this go away."

"That's a good thing, isn't it?" asked Dad. "I mean, I'm not thrilled about the idea of you being press-ganged into the Wards, but at least you'd have backup and training for your powers …" He saw the look on my face and trailed off. "No?"

"No," I said firmly. "My friends need me now. Amy and Vicky. Lisa and Aisha. We're a team. They're my backup and I'm theirs. And if I went into the Wards, I wouldn't be able to help them do what they've got to do."

"What've they got to do that's so important?" he asked quietly.

I shook my head. "I can't tell you that. All I can say is that it's life and death. And if anyone found out exactly what was going on, we'd have so many superheroes hounding us we'd never get it done."

"Is it anything to do with the two superheroes that are hanging around with your little group?" asked Dad. Well, nobody had ever said he was stupid.

I wasn't a good enough bullshitter to pull the wool over Dad's eyes. No matter which way I tried to play it, he was likely to figure out what I was trying not to say. I only had one real choice in the matter: tell the truth.

"Yes, but please don't ask for any details," I said, trying to convey the urgency of what I was saying with my voice and expression. "This is for us to deal with. It's a cape thing, and not something that heroes can help with."

He sighed. "If it was any other situation, I'd beg you to stay home," he said, his entire posture slumping. "If it was just you, or I didn't know you had powers, I'd probably try to make you stay for your own good. But as dangerous as this is likely to be—and don't try to bullshit me, Taylor, I know it's going to be dangerous—you've got friends backing you up. And I know you. You wouldn't say this is urgent unless it was. But there is one thing I'm not going to let you do."

Shit. I tried to ignore the sinking feeling in my gut. "What's that?" I asked, as neutrally as I could. I'd hoped that home, at least, would be a refuge for a while.

"I'm not going to let you leave me to stand on the sidelines," he said firmly. "I don't know what's going on, so I don't know how I can help. But let me help. Please. I've been a shitty father ever since your mom died. Let me make it up to you now." And maybe, once this is all over, you'll come home safe to me, he didn't have to say.

I took a deep breath. "I can't guarantee anything, but I'll speak to Lisa. If there's anything you can do, she'll know." The sinking feeling had vanished, replaced by a floating sensation in my chest. It felt weird. I hadn't experienced hope in a long time.

Coil

Even when he wasn't maximising the chances for his minions to succeed, Calvert found his power to be exceptionally useful. For instance, he could be in the PRT building, being seen and getting paperwork done, while at the same time he could be in his base, checking to make sure everything was running smoothly there. It was amazing how many times he could re-use the same sick day. Flying under the radar made things so much easier.

A notification popped up on one of the screens in his base. A police report, sent his way by one of his moles in the BBPD. He had a standing order that any incidents of an unusual nature be directed toward him. He clicked on it, and leaned forward to peruse it.

The manager of the Dew Drop Inn motel had reported his car stolen. He also said that he'd woken up inside one of his rooms with no idea of how he'd gotten there, and there was a hole smashed in the floor near the door that looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to the concrete. Security footage of the incident showed a person in biker gear—petite, possibly a teenage girl—showing up on a motorcycle and presumably entering the room in question, shortly afterward being followed by the manager. She had been carrying several fast-food bags in her left hand and what looked like a rolled-up piece of paper in the right, but no sledgehammer. A large moth had chosen to land on the lens of the camera a couple of minutes later; by the time it flew off, there was nothing to be seen.

Calvert read the report over again, frowning. The main point of correspondence was the fast food. Apart from that, there was nothing to conclusively nail down this as involving his Tattletale, but he decided to dig farther into it before abandoning it altogether as a possibility. She wasn't the one in the motorcycle helmet—that one was too short to be Tattletale, and zooming in on her uncovered hand showed that she was black—but there were four bags of fast-food from Fugly Bob's, just like last time. Also, while crashing in a motel room without the permission of the manager wasn't something he could see Tattletale doing, it had to be more comfortable than an abandoned shop-front.

Which meant it was the idea of one of the other three or four people that the fast food was meant for. One of whom was likely a Brute (he discounted the 'sledgehammer' theory immediately, and replaced it with 'fist') and another a Master who could induce memory loss. Given the moth in front of the camera lens, he tentatively assigned some sort of animal control powers to a hypothetical third cape. What the fourth one could do, he had no idea. Perhaps he or she was a teleporter or a phaser like Shadow Stalker, which would have helped them get into the room (given that the report had indicated no signs of forced entry).

Reminded of Shadow Stalker, he began to wonder if it wasn't actually her. The girl had been a vigilante before becoming a member of the Wards, and he'd heard rumours that she wasn't fitting in well there. Also, she was black, like the motorcycle girl. There'd been something going around the previous day that he hadn't paid a lot of attention to due to his preoccupation with Tattletale's betrayal of his trust, but Shadow Stalker's name had come up.

He didn't have unlimited access to the PRT servers from within his base, but his office computer within the building did give him the requisite clearance. He tapped in a basic query, and the answer came up. It wasn't the answer he'd been looking for, but it was certainly informative.

Tattletale's fourth companion wasn't Shadow Stalker, on account of Shadow Stalker being dead. More interestingly, her demise had not happened while she was in costume. She'd been stabbed in the bathrooms at Winslow High—not an uncommon phrase to be found in police reports, he imagined—then her throat had been cut and a swastika carved into her back.

Wait a minute. What was that, again?

Thomas Calvert did not believe in coincidence. Shadow Stalker had killed Grue and carved a swastika into his body to throw off suspicion; that was one thing. It was quite another for her to be brutally murdered and the same emblem to be sliced into her back, three weeks later. He forced himself to consider alternative options. After all, the Empire did maintain a strong presence at the school. There was the off-chance that some of them had cornered her and decided to make an example out of her.

Except that there was more to the report. There'd been another victim in the bathrooms. This one hadn't been stabbed; she'd been swarmed to death by bugs. The photo that came up was moderately gruesome, but he could at least determine that she hadn't been black. Even if the Empire had a cape who could call down a literal plague of Egypt, they wouldn't have inflicted it on a white girl.

This added a lot of credence to his supposition that Tattletale was involved in this particular event. The pieces were starting to fall into place. Grue had a younger sister who he wanted kept out of his mother's hands. Calvert had ordered Tattletale not to go after Shadow Stalker directly, but it seemed she'd sought out the sister anyway and given her the information. The sister had worked out Shadow Stalker's secret identity—one Sophia Hess, it seemed—and confronted her at Winslow.

Even then, it would've gone badly for her, except that someone with bug-controlling powers had gotten involved ... hold on just one second.

Trigger events happened at times of stress. Learning of the loss of a beloved older brother sounded like an appropriate stress trigger to him. If she had the bug powers, it all added up. The Laborn girl could have distracted Shadow Stalker with the bug control, then stabbed her. The other girl was probably a friend of Stalker's who tried to intervene.

He looked farther into the reports, searching for anything that might shoot down his theory. The PRT apparently had an idea of who killed Stalker, but their clearance for the names of living capes was slightly higher than that for dead Wards, so he couldn't gain access to that. As such, much of the interview transcript of the culprit's father—he checked and yes, Brian and Aisha Laborn had a living father—had been redacted to remove any hint of his identity. He allowed himself a slight smile for having worked it out without needing the clearance.

So this was it. Tattletale had manoeuvred Aisha Laborn (now with bug control powers) into murdering Shadow Stalker. To follow up her perfidy, Tattletale had later murdered her team leader and defected from the Undersiders to join forces with Aisha and the mysterious Brute and equally mysterious Master. The motorcycle girl could easily be Aisha, but who were the other two? There were no new villains or rogues in Brockton Bay reported to have those powersets, that he knew of anyway.

Leaning back from his computer, he steepled his fingers in thought. Depending on the parameters of Aisha Laborn's bug control, she could be very useful indeed. In fact, if he could acquire all four of them, he could fold the other three into a new and revitalised Undersiders, and let Circus stand down again. Tattletale, of course, would go into a cell and thence into Mr Pitter's care, once the man had accepted the offer of employment.

It was all about grabbing opportunities when they presented themselves.

Danny

Slowly, Danny returned to consciousness. "Oww …" he muttered as his hand automatically went to the pain in the middle of his face, and discovered that his nose was swollen to twice its normal size. Blood was crusted around his nostrils. Exploring his mouth, his tongue found a loose tooth.

"Are you all right, sir?" A hand shook his shoulder and a pair of glasses were pressed into his hands. He put them on, then opened his eyes and looked up at the opaque faceplate of a PRT soldier. "What happened?" asked the trooper.

"I …" He tried to sit up and found himself leaning against the sofa. "Taylor. Taylor was here."

"When you arrived, sir? Taylor was here then? Or did she get here after you got home?" The new speaker was immediately recognisable to him. Miss Militia was very striking, after all.

He put his hand to his nose again. "Ow. The first one. I … I opened the door, and two of your guys went in." He looked around. "Are they all right?"

"They've already regained consciousness, sir." Miss Militia's tone was reassuring. "They've sustained no serious injuries. What happened to them? They can't recall anything after arriving here."

"It all happened so fast." He shook his head, carefully. In the background, he could hear booted feet upstairs, searching every room. He was willing to bet they were even going to search the roof space. And of course they were going to search the basement. They would leave no stone unturned.

"I understand." Miss Militia helped him to his feet so he could sit down on the sofa. "Somebody beat you up pretty good. Do you feel any strong pain anywhere?" Her tone indicated that she couldn't see that happening.

"No." He took a deep breath. "Ribs hurt a bit. Doesn't feel like anything more than bruises anywhere." Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the guard prowl around the room before moving the curtain aside to peer out the window. Pulling it shut once more, he moved past Danny and Miss Militia then turned as if avoiding the empty corner of the room.

"Who beat you up?" asked Miss Militia. "Was it Taylor?"

"Not Taylor, no," Danny said. "She had friends with her. I've never met them before in my life. They knocked your guys out and dragged me into the house. Taylor was pissed that the PRT came here. I tried to tell her that the Wards would be a good idea. She disagreed." He touched his nose tenderly. "One of her friends hits really, really hard. I have no idea how long I was unconscious."

"Damn it," the Protectorate hero muttered. "Do you think she'll be back?"

Danny shrugged. "She stood by while her friends worked me over. Watched the whole thing. Didn't even try to make them stop."

" … okay." Miss Militia stood up. "Can you give us a description of her friends? Any identifying marks? Costumes? Power effects? Anything?"

"They weren't wearing costumes," Danny said slowly. "There were no visible power effects. I wasn't looking too closely at their faces. They were around Taylor's age. A couple of blondes, a couple of brunettes." He gestured at his face. "It was one of the brunettes that did this to me."

"Boys? Girls?" Miss Militia's expression was intent.

"I think they were all girls?" Danny made it into a question. "I know I didn't stand a chance against them. None of your guys did."

Miss Militia grimaced. "Yes. I'm sorry about that. We thought she might come back to the house. We never expected her to bring friends."

"Sure as hell surprised me," Danny noted. "So what happens now?"

"If you want to press charges against Taylor and her friends for this, we can give you a lift to the precinct house so you can fill out the paperwork," she said. "In addition, we're very interested in whatever you can tell us about Taylor's friends. Did they say anything about their plans in your hearing?"

"Um, something about going underground?" he hazarded.

"Well, unless they intend to break into an Endbringer shelter, that's not the best idea in the world," she pointed out. "In fact, that's stillnot a good idea. I'm going to go with the figurative meaning for the time being."

"Yeah," he agreed. Endbringer shelters were massive affairs; he simply couldn't see Taylor gaining access to one, even with Lisa's help.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She reached up and pressed the bluetooth earpiece she wore. "Go for Miss Militia."

While she was thus occupied, Danny leaned back in the sofa. His head turned very slightly, so he could glance at the empty corner that the guard had veered away from. Absolutely nothing inhabited it, apart from a couple of spiderwebs and a small population of dust bunnies.

"All right then," Miss Militia said. "No sign of the Hebert girl or anyone else nearby? Latest information; two blondes, two brunettes, mid teens."

The answer was apparently not to her liking. Her forehead creased in a frown. "Understood. Widen the search. Miss Militia, out." She pressed the earpiece again then turned to Danny. "We've got to go. Do you want us to call you an ambulance?"

Danny shook his head. "I'll be fine." He waved his hand. "Go."

"All right then." She pressed a card into his hand. "If you see or hear from her at all. Don't antagonise her. Just call us as soon as you can."

"Understood." He watched her walk out, along with the PRT troopers. The last one out closed the back door behind him. Moving stiffly, he got up and walked to the back door and locked it with the key. Then he checked the front door and made sure it was secure as well. A rumble of engine noise indicated the PRT transport starting up and driving off. Another thirty seconds passed. The house creaked as it settled slightly.

He heard the twang of the side gate as it closed. Going into the kitchen, he glanced out the window, then unlocked the back door again. It opened and Lisa, her hair a rich auburn, entered the kitchen. She put her finger to her lips and began to tiptoe about the house. Danny relocked the back door then went back into the living room, retrieved the remote, and turned the TV on. Sitting down on the sofa, he pretended to watch the screen, but his attention kept drifting to the empty corner.

After another few minutes, during which Lisa investigated both the basement and the upper floor, she came back into the living room and dusted her hands off. "Okay, place is clear," she announced. "No listening devices, though they've probably got a tap on your phone."

It was like an optical illusion. One moment there was nobody in the corner, and the next they'd faded into view. Danny wasn't sure if it was invisibility or something else, but he knew that while Aisha had her power up, he had a hard time even recalling her existence.

"Fuckin' finally," the dark-skinned teen said, stepping forward and dragging the sheet she'd been holding off the others. "I gotta take a wicked leak." Dropping the sheet, she bolted up the stairs.

"Whoa, Dad, that looks even worse than when Amy first did it," Taylor said, stepping forward to examine his face. "How's that even possible?"

"I set up the bruising to develop while they were here," the biokinetic explained. She put her hand on Danny's arm, and he felt all the 'evidence' of the beating he was supposed to have endured simply fade away. Within minutes, he was back to normal.

"That doesn't look any better," Taylor said critically.

"Surface discolouration only," Amy assured her. "If they see him in the next couple of days and he doesn't look like he's gone ten rounds with Uncle Neil, they might smell a rat. I had to leave sensitivity in so he'd wince like he was supposed to when they examined him. Same reason I put him out before the other guys woke up. Someone who's actually unconscious reacts differently to someone who's faking."

"So, are they coming back?" asked Taylor, getting down to the meat of the matter.

"Not today, and probably not tomorrow," Lisa decided. "I watched the whole thing happen from down the block. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say they bought it."

"I'm guessing they did," Danny allowed. "Miss Militia got a phone call just before. It sounded like they'd found where you dumped their car."

"Wouldn't have been hard," Lisa said as she flopped on to the sofa. "The thing had a tracking beacon in it. The trick was to drive like I didn't know that. And getting a taxi back here while pretending nothing was wrong was a little tricky."

Danny leaned back on the sofa. "Well, we made it. That should buy you a couple of days. You're welcome to stay here as long as you want, of course, but I'm pretty sure the PRT will be circling around again once all their other leads dry up."

Lisa grinned. "A couple of days should be just about perfect."

Director Emily Piggot

"So by the time you got there, she'd been and gone."

Miss Militia, on the far side of the desk, nodded. Emily had made sure her tone wasn't censorious. It wasn't the cape's fault, after all. Unlike some, Miss Militia had an awareness of her duty that matched the flags she wore as part of her costume.

"Yes, ma'am," Miss Militia replied. "Sometime in the last twenty-four hours or so, she's managed to acquire allies, or at least cohorts. Four of them. They subdued the men who went there with Hebert, then she turned on him. Presumably, she thought he'd brought them there willingly. Per his account, they beat him bloody while she watched. Then they stole the vehicle our men went there in. We activated the LoJack as soon as we understood the situation, and located it at the bus depot."

"How many buses had left by the time you got there?" asked Emily, knowing she wasn't going to like the answer.

"Two," Miss Militia replied. "One going north, one going south. We've got passenger lists and we're going over them now, as well as security footage."

Emily sighed. Things could never go smooth. It was a kind of anti-mantra to her. Something she recited to herself when everything seemed to be working out just fine. "Let me know if anything jumps out. Any idea where her associates came from, or why she turned against her father?"

"For the first, I don't know for certain, but there's usually a few capes floating around who haven't gotten our attention yet or found a gang they want to be a part of. She's undeniably powerful. They may have simply encountered one another and decided to form a group of their own. As to why she had her father beaten up …" A movement of the scarf indicated a possible grimace. "… Getting powers is always problematic, psychologically speaking. We both know it can lead to drastic personality shifts, rarely for the good."

Say it like it is. Capes are crazy. But Emily knew she was being unfair. Not all capes suffered from problems. Some did; there were a few that made the rest look positively normal by comparison. The trouble was, these weren't always villains. Shadow Stalker, for example.

"Any indication of her future plans?" Emily didn't want to ask the question, but knew she had to. The choice of becoming a hero, a rogue or a villain would impact enormously on any cape's future career. Taylor's beginnings had not been particularly auspicious, but there were some heroes who had come back from worse. However, being directly involved with the deaths of two people, then having her own father beaten up, did not bode at all well for her prospects. Or her mental state.

"Barely anything." Miss Militia shrugged very slightly. "What little they said in front of Hebert indicated that they intended to fly under the radar for at least a while. Keep their heads down, not make waves." She paused. "His exact phrasing was 'go underground'. I'm pretty sure it's not literal. Unless she intends to take over an Endbringer shelter for her own personal use." To her credit, she managed to say that without sounding ridiculous.

On the face of it, Taylor Hebert going dark wasn't necessarily a bad thing. A cape who was keeping things on the down-low was a cape Emily didn't have to immediately worry about. She did make a mental note to boost security on the Endbringer shelters, just in case. However, it still meant that the girl was out and about, doing God knew what, without adult oversight. With her level of power, that scenario was potentially terrifying. "Understood. Spread the word, though. If she's still in the city, if any unusual events start happening with bugs involved, I want to know soonest. I really don't want to see this girl go into one of the villain gangs; not with the type of power she's capable of calling on."

"Just that she's a bug manipulator, but leaving her identity out of it?"

Miss Militia's question struck to the heart of the matter. The unwritten rules had no legal standing (except where they coincided with actual laws) but there were those who held them in considerable regard. Emily was fully aware that the 'rules' served to keep cape violence at street level to a semi-acceptable level. The more powerful cape gangs paid them lip service, but Emily was fully aware that those same gangs would break the rules in a heartbeat if it suited them to do so.

Sending men back to the house with Danny Hebert had been not quite a breakage of these so-called rules. Taylor had, as Emily had already noted, been instrumental in the deaths of two people, one a Ward. Emily could always state that she'd felt concerned for Hebert's welfare, and point to his subsequent beating as ex post facto justification for her actions. The plainclothes PRT troopers may have precipitated the tantrum that led to the beating, but there was every chance the Hebert girl would've found another reason, even in their absence.

Now, it seemed, she'd cut all ties with her previous life. She was out in the world, with undeniably powerful capabilities and the will to use them. Emily had been willing—was still willing—to cut her a certain amount of slack, given the horrendous manner in which she'd gotten her powers. But there was a limit to her forbearance, and a very definite limit to how far the PRT would allow the Hebert girl to go before issuing an arrest warrant in her name. The moment Taylor Hebert performed a premeditated crime with her powers, the clock would start ticking. And if one more person died of bug bites, the girl would cross the line from 'victim' to 'dangerous criminal'.

"We'll assign her a codename," Emily said at last. "Something that can be applied to a hero or a villain. We don't want to prematurely push her over the edge. I'm thinking 'Swarm'. That name goes out. Her real identity stays under wraps."

Miss Militia nodded. "I'll pass the word on." She turned and left the office, leaving Emily alone with her thoughts.

Christ, I hope this doesn't blow up in our faces.

It was a thought she'd had all too often since taking up the position of Director.

Panacea

Amy studied Lisa carefully. This was the first time she'd ever used her powers in a cosmetic fashion (despite endless wheedling from Vicky), and she still wasn't sure how she felt about it. Though to be fair, she wasn't sure how she felt about a lot of what had happened over the last couple of days. "You sure you don't want me to change your hair colour back?"

"Nah," said Lisa. She tossed her hair carelessly. "I kinda like being a redhead. For one thing, Coil won't ever see me coming like this."

"You have a point," Amy agreed. The hair now framing Lisa's face was a little longer than the teenage supervillain's normally messy blonde locks, and fell naturally into a brushed-back style that was quite unlike Lisa's original hair. "Just let me know if you change your mind."

"Sure thing," Lisa agreed blithely. "You need anything else for your mad science laboratory?"

Amy sighed. She really wished Lisa wouldn't refer to it like that. "I'll be fine. Vicky will be there to help me."

"Yes," said Vicky brightly. "I like to help you, Amy."

The first time her sister had spoken in this childlike fashion, Amy had been horrified. Now, each time she got a reminder of her sister's condition, she died a little more inside. I'll get this done, she promised herself. I'll fix Vicky if it kills me. Nobody, and nothing, was going to stand in her way.

Not Coil, not her own family, not the PRT, not the Triumvirate, not anyone.

With a determined step, she started down the stairs into the basement. Once Lisa had deemed them safe for the moment, they'd moved on to the next stage of planning. The single yellow bulb illuminated the old workbench, which they'd cleared and wiped down. Taylor leaned against one end of the bench, arms folded and not apparently doing very much.

Next to her on the bench were several books, sequestered from an old Encyclopedia Americana that Danny had unearthed from somewhere. Aisha's roll of paper rested on top of the books. Beside the books lay dozens of bugs, separated into 'small', 'medium' and 'oh-god-get-it-away-from-me'. Alongside them were several small birds and a few rats. As Amy watched, another rat scrambled up the leg of the workbench, moved to where its comrades lay, and apparently went to sleep.

"That enough?" asked Taylor. "There's more rats and birds out there if you need them." That she could get more bugs was a given; a few dozen orbited her head as she spoke. Amy knew that Taylor was also keeping watch on all approaches with her feathered minions.

"No, this should be enough for now." Amy picked up the roll of paper and unrolled it, absent-mindedly using a couple of rats for paperweights. Then she opened the first book, which happened to be 'E', and turned toward the back. "E … X … P … L … O … ah ha," she murmured, as she found the section she was looking for. Then she picked up a bird and turned back to the book.

"Okay," she said. "Let's see what we can do with this."

End of Part Six