Interlude - 7.2 Colin

February 8, 2011, Protectorate HQ - Brockton Bay, 8:52 PM

Colin always prided himself on the fact that he was one of the few tinkers with an actual engineering education. Which contributed greatly to his power of improving others' tinkertech.

Most of the times when he observed or scanned other tinkers' work, he'd get at least a basic idea of what it did and how it worked. But this time he was stumped.

He'd gone through his scans of Maker, viewed all the available footage umpteen times, even read through Panacea's reports thrice. But he had no idea how his armour or tech worked or even if there was any tech on him when they met.

All he got was that the armour was made of pure, very dense tungsten and carbon compounds. And the blue glow was almost but not exactly Cherenkov Radiation, but the levels of radioactivity around him weren't significantly above normal at all.

In fact if it weren't for Panacea's report, Colin would be strongly inclined to believe that Maker wasn't a tinker at all. The report mentioned his speciality as dimensional effects, and the few readings he got from that teleportation lightshow was somewhat similar to the readings he'd gotten from one of Toybox's pocket dimension devices operating during one of their expos.

That was the only explanation, if Maker's tech employed some kind of dimensional shielding, then it all made sense. Colin was still disappointed at not getting any ideas but at least the guy wasn't a villain. Though Swarm's speech about rejecting labels didn't sit well with him, it sounded somewhat naïve and idealistic. He could only hope these guys wouldn't cross the line over to the other side.

On that note, he'd assumed by their built and demeanour that they were adults, but it could be otherwise. He would confirm it when they come in for registration tomorrow.

His musings were interrupted by the noise of a throat clearing.

"Ahem."

He distractedly turned to the monitor where Dragon's face was giving him a reproachful look. "Yes Dragon?"

"Your food has gotten cold. Again."

"Ah. Yes, it's fine."

Dragon sighed and shook her head, "Anyway, I have the results from the most powerful scanner I had access to. The structure is completely flawless."

Colin sat up straighter. He'd sent her a sample from the shackles that Maker had put on Lung, he got interested when the PRT couldn't undo it and he had to use his halberd's plasma blade to cut it.

"Completely flawless?"

"Colin, I ran a script to go through the atomic scan and compare lattice distances for each blip. It has already run through more than a quintillion iterations, there's not a single deviation! Previously the best I'd seen was an armour composite from a materials tinker in Australia, it had a lattice perfection rate of 9 sigma, this is way beyond. The toughness of the material is also comparably more. Who made this?"

"A new tinker called Maker."

"The same who's selling pure elements to research labs? I was thinking of getting in touch with him."

Colin blinked, "I didn't know that. I'm sharing his files from yesterday. I can't get a bead on his tech. But if he can fabricate materials of this quality... Do you remember the plans for the graphene processor core that we had to shelve?"

"Because even our best fabricators couldn't achieve precision at that scale... The man calls himself Maker after all, hopefully it's not just out of hubris. If he can make that, it'd help advance a lot of our tech... What would you offer in exchange?"

"I don't know yet. I am meeting him tomorrow. I'd appreciate any input you could offer."

"Of course. Let me go through these videos and reports in depth. I'll also dredge the net and see what I can find out about this guy. I'll get back to you in a bit. And the food better be finished by then."

Colin gave a reluctant nod and picked up the plate containing his optimally balanced meal as the monitor turned off.


February 9, 2011, PHQ, The Rig - Brockton Bay, 9:55 AM

Colin shook his head in an attempt to clear his thoughts. The workout and shower hadn't done much to alleviate his fatigue. He'd stayed up late last night going through Dragon's reports, in hindsight, the fact that so many off-the-norm things had happened since the time Maker and Swarm had shown up should have been spotted by the Think Tank.

The fact that a number of wanted mercenaries had shown up gift-wrapped in relevant precincts, quite a few who were last known to be working for Coil.

The capture of Oni Lee almost simultaneously as that of Lung, that too by the Undersiders. Which is not their MO at all.

The association of Maker and Swarm with the same civilians who were responsible for the unveiling of the Shadow Stalker mess. Civilians who'd left school and gotten their GEDs in short order.

The fact that BPPD has yet made no noise about the brutal takedowns by Maker leaving all the criminals crippled for a good while. The only doctor who raised alarm about it being immediately outed as an E88 informant and sacked for malpractice.

Apart from all of that, Dragon's analysis of the Lung fight mentioning that Maker was apparently too relaxed to be doing anything more than toying with Lung.

He'd sent the report to the Think Tank last night for priority threat assessment. Their reply in the morning was definitely weird. Apparently Maker was absolutely no more threat than a civilian even if he went the villain route. Which was impossible to believe.

Individually each was an interesting tidbit of information, overall they painted a confusing but very mysterious picture. A picture which Colin couldn't make head or tail of.

At least Dragon said Maker would be open to business dealings. Never had Colin been so conflicted about meeting another tinker. He was excited because of all the upgrades that he could make if his and Dragon's assessment of Maker's tech were true. On the other hand, if it indeed were true, Maker was a tinker of a much higher caliber than him, a thought which immediately evoked a wave of envy and resentment. In a way he was secretly relieved that he didn't want to join the Protectorate.

His phone rang, he routed it to his helmet.

"Armsmaster speaking"

"Armsmaster, Maker here, Swarm and I are flying in for the meeting. Instructions for landing?"

"Hold."

Colin thumbed the intercom and called internal security. After a short conversation, he reopened the line to Maker.

"You're cleared to land on Helipad 3. The forcefield will open a wedge when you approach. Troops will escort you from there."

"Acknowledged. Thank you."

"Yes." Was that the correct response? He was too tense to care.

He stood up, picked up the compacted utility halberd from the rack and clamped it to his back, he'd been told that the patrol halberd is too intimidating in noncombat scenarios.

As he cycled through the airlock of his lab, he stretched a few times in an ineffective attempt to get rid of the fatigue and tension. He really didn't like these reminders that he was quite past his physical prime. His last coffee was 20 minutes ago, no help on that front either. Thankfully it was a slow morning and there was nothing significant going on in the city.

On the way to meeting room 3E, he engaged the social interaction program and it labelled the passing personnel, he should have done that when Maker called. He grunted out relevant greetings and nods as prompted by his HUD. He didn't really get how they helped interpersonal communication, but they worked and he wasn't complaining.

As he entered the meeting room, Hannah was already there, her scarf was down as she was finishing some drink. His HUD told him to retract his visor, he did so.

"Colin, you look tired." He appreciated that she didn't waste time on pleasantries with him.

He gave her a nod, "Late night. Are they here yet?"

"The helipad crew spotted them approach when they alerted me, they should have landed by now. Strange to see you early for a meeting."

"Only a minute to Ten. I'm interested in the tinker."

She smiled, "That's nice. They mailed us the completed registration forms a few minutes before they called. Just need the signatures." She pointed to a sheaf of papers in front of the table.

He picked them up and started looking through them. Pretty standard, no civilian ID disclosed, Swarm actually had marked it as 'Not Applicable'. Their response on consent to power testing was also interesting, "We are thoroughly aware of our power's specifics, ask us. If we come to something that we would want your help, we will consider it."

Hannah looked over his shoulder and said, "They don't seem like fresh triggers to me at all."

He nodded, "So they said. After Dragon's report last night I'm convinced they have been involved in much more than we are aware of."

Hannah nodded, the visitor's entrance chimed. She pulled her scarf up. He extended his visor down. They took positions hammered into them by Glenn Chambers.

The door opened and they came in. Maker's armor was glowing much less, his helmet wasn't faceless, the bottom half was open (his footage from the hospital had the same helmet). Swarm was slightly shorter, though she still towered over them. Her shape was more defined and was much less dense than he remembered.

"Swarm, Maker, thank you for meeting us." Hannah's intonation and body language somehow put those two at ease... Or so Colin's HUD told him. He had no idea how to do that.

"The pleasure's all ours Miss Militia, Armsmaster." Maker nodded at them. Colin returned it. The reports said Maker's accent was nondescript, but the social program distinctly recognised it as British.

"It's nice of you to send in the forms, it's all in order, we just need your signatures on it." Hannah pointed at the documents in Colin's hands, he passed it on to Maker.

"Sure." Maker opened the last page and touched it, there was a blue glow and a stylized 'Maker' was printed on the dotted line in shiny bluish letters. Then Swarm put her finger below it and a spider came out of it to write 'Swarm' with intricate bluish green webbing.

Colin took the papers back and immediately scanned the signatures, "You signed with pure Osmium. And what are these proteins on Swarm's signature? And did you pull the metal out of a pocket dimension or create it ex nihilo?"

Miss Militia held out a hand, "I think the best question to ask is what can you tell us about your powers and activities?"

Swarm nodded, "I'll go first. I gained consciousness as a single insect, then two, then three, and so on, my thoughts didn't gain coherence before I was a few thousand insects. I don't have memories before that. Currently I generally am a few million insects spread out in a range varying from a hundred yards to half a mile approximately. I have full control of all the insects that make me. And I can discern shapes and sounds where I have a sufficient concentration of insects. It took me a while to get my bearings. It was a long time before I learned to make this body. I don't remember how I looked before. I've spent quite a few months lurking around the Bay trying to help people unobtrusively. On that note, I must commend you on the swift response to the Winslow assault incident. Miss Hebert was the first person I got in contact with after that."

Miss Militia nodded, "We had a hunch. Some of the students mentioned buzzing insects during their interviews. Also the fact that she's been known to alert the police on your behalf."

Swarm nodded. "It was her idea to make a body and modulate the buzzing to talk. She helped me during my patrols before I teamed up with Maker. So that's me. Any particular questions? Maker will tell you about the coloured spiderweb."

"Not for now." Colin said, the explanation was comprehensive. And he wasn't much interested in her anyway, he turned to Maker.

Maker nodded, "My power is a bit complicated, I've gone into tinker fugue only once when I got my power. I cannibalized two laptops, a gaming console and multiple appliances around the house to create some sort of dimension manipulating BCI helmet. The moment I turned it on, it folded itself into a pocket dimension but the mental link remained.

"I don't know how it works. But it allows me to absorb and retain knowledge at an accelerated rate, allows me to manipulate pocket dimensions, block and mimic dimensional effects and scan things passively or actively in a short range around me. All the additional powers that you must be aware of; flight, energy projection, healing, constructs, and fabrication, are dimensional manipulation techniques I've learned after studying the powers of different capes.

"The blocking also renders me immune to master and stranger effects. I can't use these learned powers instinctively like the capes, I actually have to understand and model or script the dimensional effects to use them.

"All my attempts to recreate or retrieve the helmet have been in vain. My enhanced knowledge gives me an advanced understanding of technology, which I hope will translate to tinkertech too. And Panacea has been giving me lessons in biology which have improved my healing tech and allowed me to make biomods like adding pigmentation proteins to some spidersilk glands.

"And yes, consider the signature sort of an advertisement, I can create and fabricate materials with extreme precision. That's about it, any questions?"

"So you're a biotinker too?" Colin was tense, this was a fresh can of worms.

"If you can call the ability to create things that modern science can but lacks the means to, like neuromuscular augmentation, sure, but ask me to create eldritch abominations with alien biology like Nilbog or Blasto, I'll be stumped. And it goes without saying that I wouldn't even if I could."

"Hmm." It made sense to Colin, but he didn't know how far it would sail with director Piggot.

"Would you be willing to provide some examples of your powers?" Miss Militia changed the subject with one of the standard questions. It played well into Colin's line of enquiry too. "Yes, particularly nanofabrication."

Hannah interjected, "Healing too, if you don't mind, it's always good to have more healers on call, we're grateful that you've taken some load off Panacea in the hospital. We'd also like to not bother her all the time, especially considering she's a minor."

"On that point," Colin took over, "What are your ages?"

"You're not obligated to answer." Hannah hastily added.

Swarm shrugged, "I don't remember, but considering that I easily have a few post graduate degrees worth of knowledge and no teenage angst. I believe I'm an adult." She added with a smile.

"As am I. Anyway, on the subject of healing, sure, I'll help during emergencies whenever I'm available. As for a demonstration, Armsmaster, my passive scans show you're fatigued, I can remove it."

"You wish to apply an undocumented power on me?" Protocol warred against alacrity in Colin's mind.

"Undocumented? It's been verified by Panacea, and quite a few staff at Brockton general who've made use of it. Not to mention hundreds of patients." Maker challenged.

"Colin, don't be a grouch, I'll be monitoring your suit's biosensors." Dragon's message ticked at the bottom of his HUD. Right, she was monitoring the feeds of the meeting. He should get around to programming the new helmet cam feed access for her.

"Okay. Go ahead. I'll be recording my own scans during it." He extended his arm. Maker nodded and took his arm, "Feel free to." There was a blue flash.

He felt like he was 25 again. And he felt CLEAN.

Maker shrugged, "Huh, it seems you had some muscle and bone damage, and some gastrointestinal damage from caffeine abuse. Well, no more."

"That is good. It's been a while since Panacea had treated me." And as he remembered, this was exactly how it felt after being treated by her.

Maker nodded, "yeah, I know the feeling. Anyway, as for fabrication. I'm offering my services for trade. I'll fabricate anything you give me the schematics of. In return I want scans of some of your tech to see if I can understand it."

"Do you intend to replicate my tech?"

Maker shook his head, "I don't think that will be possible, as far as I know, most tinkertech needs regular maintenance from their creators. I wish to understand the principles behind how they work. And if I can reverse engineer something, I'll gladly share the knowledge and pay you in further fabrications to use said principles. We can draw up a contract to that effect."

Colin nodded, "I'll have to get approval for such an arrangement. But for now as a demonstration, I have a schematic for a graphene processor which can improve our infrastructure by orders of magnitude, if you can fabricate a prototype, you can use the design noncommercially and we can talk contracts for multiple fabrications later."

Maker nodded, "Sounds good. Where do we do this?"

Hannah held up her hand again, "Before you get tinkering, I still need to brief you about our affiliate programmes and security and engagement protocols. It will help smooth out future interactions."

Swarm spoke up. "We can do both, I doubt the guys want me bugging them while they geek out. You can brief me and I'll brief Maker later. It would be nice to know proper engagement protocols."

"On engagement, a few more questions." Colin added, "What's your full scope of involvement in the Winslow case? What do you know about Oni Lee's capture? And did you have anything to do with Coil recently? Also, your association with the Heberts and the Indian immigrants may become public knowledge, do they need protection?" At Hannah's glare he added "You may answer at your discretion."

Maker smiled as he spoke, "Astute questions, Armsmaster. I'll answer to the best of my knowledge. In the Winslow case, I alerted Aveek of miss Hess's cape ID and warned him to avoid disclosing it at any cost, Swarm was a passive observer and contacted Taylor later, post that I met Swarm via those kids. We've been in regular contact and we've helped them with their education and training in self defense. They don't need separate protection as they have us on call.

"The Intel we have is that Lung and Oni Lee were leading parallel teams to look for the Undersiders in retaliation to them robbing an ABB casino. Lee found them, but was dealt with by them. Lung found us by mistake."

Swarm added, "Good kids those Undersiders, a bit misguided. They later contacted us to thank us for taking care of Lung. We told them that if they stopped hitting civilian targets and went for criminal assets only, we'd keep an eye out for their protection. They readily agreed. If everything goes well, an upcoming villain team just turned vigilante. We would have informed you about this anyway."

Maker nodded and continued, "As for Coil, he tried to provoke me by harming one of our associates. He paid dearly for it."

"Elaborate." Colin ground out. This was much bigger than he expected.

"We wanted to capture him but he turned out to be quite slippery. He's been run out of the States, his gang disbanded and his businesses legitimised and taken over by us, that bit is all above board. We couldn't inform you ahead because of reasons."

That was big news, Colin wanted more clarification but Hannah put her hand on his arm. "We'll look into it. What can you tell us about Coil?"

Swarm raised an eyebrow, "With or without regard to the unwritten rules?"

"Without." Colin blurted. Coil had always been an Intel black hole, the PRT was desperate for info on him, but this was shaky ground. Hannah came to the rescue again, "Consider all information shared to be in the strictest confidence and shall not be used apart from an S Class event or a 3 strikes violation."

Swarm shrugged, "We don't really care, we only honour the rules because it's polite to do so. A criminal is a criminal whether masked or not. We'll send you a detailed file later, for now, I'll give you a name, Thomas Calvert."

Colin almost broke out in a cold sweat. He remembered the last strategy meeting with Calvert. The man had top level clearance. This just went from bad to worse.

Hannah took a deep breath, her power flickered into multiple lethal armaments before settling back into the knife that it was all this while. "If that is so. You have our thanks, I understand why you couldn't inform us, but now please do share all you have about him. This is very bad news."

Maker nodded, "Definitely, last we know he skipped the continent. Be assured if he steps anywhere near this country you'll find him gift wrapped at your doorstep."

With each piece of revelation, Colin felt more and more uneasy about the amount of power and influence they were casually talking of throwing around, but he couldn't outright fault their actions. Especially if they did get the results they claimed.

He wondered how could these guys get such a clean threat assessment from the think tank? By his assessment they were easily A Class capes. His report would definitely mention the oddity. However, he was more or less satisfied with their attitudes, he doubted these guys would go villain. But he didn't expect them to stick to the law when something needed done either. That could become a problem at some point.

"Are we going for the fabrication test then?" Maker broke him out of his reverie. He realised Hannah was quiet too.

"Yes, follow me." He led Maker out of the room as Miss Militia started talking about protocols.

As they cycled through the airlock into the lab, Maker let out an appreciative whistle, "Nice setup."

Colin allowed himself a moment of pride as he sat on a terminal, hit a few keys and extracted the already prepared schematics into a data stick. "Can you parse standard CAD formats?"

Maker took the stick, "Let me see." The stick flashed blue in his hands, "Got it. Please allow me a few minutes to study this and prepare a fabrication template." He handed the stick back. Colin was impressed at the contactless data interface.

Maker stood still and glowed blue. Colin busied himself with rechecking the plans and the testing algorithms for the chip.

"Strange," Maker had stopped glowing, and he had a tiny black chip on his palm, "my knowledge says this should not work. There are at least two places which don't make sense."

Colin nodded sagely, "That's the standard reaction scientists have with tinkertech." He took the chip and slotted it into the testing port, the diagnostics started running. Red lights lit up the panels. Colin frowned, took it out, gave it a quick scan, everything seemed according to specs, he put it back on the testing slot. One, two, three, four green lights. He smiled, "But they still work. Eighteen petaflops, as predicted."

"Huh... I calculated only twelve. Can I scan it while it's on?"

"Go ahead."

Maker touched the chip on the testing station, the whole contraption glowed blue for a few seconds, more green lights kept flickering on as the chip kept passing more and more complex tests.

"Give me a moment," Maker started glowing blue again. Colin found it interesting that Maker glowed when he was analysing something. His tech was intriguing, but frustratingly inscrutable. He could have claimed to be a space wizard and people would have lapped it up.

In less than a minute, he stopped glowing, "Whoa, you have a variable capacitance, an inductance and a pulse width regulator which are being simulated by dimensional effects! And an overarching effect which increases efficiency by fifty percent. Holy cow! That is how tinkertech is black boxed!"

"And I think I've just lost the title of world's premier tinker." A voice chimed across the speakers as Dragon's monitor blinked on.

Maker spun around to face the monitor, paused, then bowed, "Dragon, I presume. Care to elucidate?"

Dragon smiled back, "It took me years to suss that secret out. The efficiency increasing around Armsmaster is a well documented phenomenon. Though I didn't know they were dimensional effects."

Maker shrugged, "It's my specialty. Can you redesign this with said components incorporated?"

Dragon nodded, smile turning smug, "That is my specialty, check your mail."

Maker glowed for a few seconds, then smiled, "This is why your title holds true." He held out his palm, a blue spark and two chips were resting there. One slightly larger than the previous design, he approached the testing station, "May I?"

Colin nodded, still confused, Maker slotted the smaller chip. Red light. Maker took it out and passed it to Colin, "give it a once over?"

Colin scanned it, it was same as the last one, he inserted it back into the testing slot. Green lights, 18 petaflops.

Maker smiled, pulled it out and slotted the larger chip. Green lights, 12 petaflops. Maker grinned now, "Care to check?"

Colin, still confused, took it and scanned it, three extra components that his power said were redundant. He slotted it back, green lights, 18 petaflops. Dragon was mimicking Maker's grin now. Colin felt another pang of jealousy, he didn't even know why. "What?" He said through clenched teeth.

Dragon replied, "I believe we have a maintenance free design that Maker can mass produce. 12 petaflops, 18 for your projects. Maker, since this design was finished by me, I want to take the marketing rights, and I'll keep a quarter of the profits, another quarter will go to Armsmaster because he came up with the original design. You get half the profits. I'm sending you the contract now. What's your current production capacity?"

Maker waited a few seconds, then nodded, "Signed and sent. I'm currently good for 200 units a day. How will you take them?"

"Received, I'm filing it. Give me a location, I'll send a drone every day for the first week, then one every week. I'm already confirming three weeks' orders in advance for our personal usage. By then I'll have marketing plans in place. We'll get in touch with you for more projects, right Armsmaster?"

Colin nodded dumbly, he was too shocked to reply. He was more than glad at ensuring a supply of ultra high performance processors. But somehow that joy was marred with the realisation that his tech possibly wasn't all real science. And he wished Dragon and Maker would just stop being so friendly.

"Of course." Maker gave Dragon a thumbs up gesture as she nodded and her screen went off.

"Imagine the possibilities Colin, all the miniaturisation that you couldn't previously do because of fabrication constraints. I expedited the contract because the PRT would get stuck in red tape. And don't worry, you're still my #1 collaborator and friend. Maker is just a good contact for fabrication and mass production design. So stop sulking."

Colin had an involuntary smile reading that message from her. It wasn't that he was sulking, he didn't sulk. But anyway, there was a bright blue flash that dragged him out of his musings.

Maker was holding out a small box, "Here's the first two hundred. Anything else?"

"No. The Protectorate may want to get into another contract with you for healing services. And finally, two major gangs in the bay have collapsed. We will probably also call you for a strategy meeting to prevent gang war from breaking out." Colin was still slightly conflicted, but overall it had been a good day.

"That's cool. Though I must mention. For optimal healing, I'll need to scan all the members. With those scans as templates, as long as their brains are undamaged, I can bring them back to full health in a blink."

Colin nodded, given the nature of his tech, that made sense. "I'll mention that. You'll be probably called in once more to scan the other heroes and the wards, contingent on their personal permissions. I assume you already have mine?"

Maker smiled, "Can't heal without scanning."

Colin gave another nod, then used the prompt on his HUD, "Then we are done for the day. Thank you for the good work." He gave his best impression of a grin and held out his hand, Maker shook it and headed for the airlock.

Colin had a stray thought, "Are you not using your teleportation because the rig forcefield interdicts it?"

Maker chuckled, "it's not exactly teleportation, it's movement using pocket dimensions, it still takes real time to reach the destination. And I'm not using it because it's rude to do so in a high security environment like the rig."

Colin nodded and thumbed the intercom to ask for an escort from his lab to the meeting room. He gave Maker another courteous nod as he left the airlock. Then he got to work, there was a report to write, and tons of tech to upgrade with the new processors.


A/N: This chapter completely wrote itself. I wanted more friction... But the characters denied it. I'm hoping director Piggot would be more of an arse and provide the necessary drama. Next up, piggy.