Chapter 4

"Why didn't you snipe him?" Yamada asked, carefully neutral.

"I tried," Velocity said. "Every time, something went wrong. There was a flock of birds or he ducked, or the gun jammed." He tensed, staring at the table. "I was the shooter on the Medhall building. I had him in my sights." He fell silent, retreating into himself.

"And when you fired?" Yamada prompted, before the silence could stretch too far.

"Ms. Militia threw herself in the way." He blinked, the only movement in his frozen face. "If Panacea hadn't been there-"

"But Panacea was. Don't you think Crash's power arranged that?""

"Yeah." He laughed cynically. "In the bad manga, the hero's friend always gets hurt protecting them."

"So why didn't you try a second shot?"

"Because the second time the innocent always dies," Velocity nearly shouted. "You've got to have threats escalating, but you can't hurt the hero so authors hurt the girl, kill the girl, mutilate the next girl, it's a cliché."

"You thought Crash was a bad author?" Yamada kept her voice carefully non-judgemental. Feeding his delusions would complicate later treatment, but she had to be clear.

"I thought he was a young author. I didn't want to kill my teammate."

"Some people would say one team member for Brockton Bay's freedom seems like a reasonable exchange," she ventured, keeping her tone from judging him. With his military background, that should seem reasonable and she wanted to see how he was justifying himself. He didn't even pause, suddenly by the window so fast he didn't seem to have realised he'd used his powers.

"But it wouldn't have been just one. He'd have had them all die at my hands, one at a time, so he could have a glorious last stand where he took me down." It was an excellent self-justification, and she couldn't say it wasn't true.

"So how did Browbeat manage to stab him?"

"Browbeat was new to the Wards. It was possible Crash didn't have time to affect him."

"Crash's effect was instantaneous." It was the only thing all the victims agreed on.

"I gambled," Velocity said, exhausted, "that Crash was only affecting people he knew, or could identify. I pulled all of Browbeat's paperwork."

"Why?"

"Author can't write a character they don't know about." Velocity was obviously aware of how it sounded as he said it and cringed in his seat.

"And yourself?" she said. "How do you think you evaded his control?"

"I think he forgot about me," Velocity said. "I wasn't around when he turned up, and I locked my own records for the PRT so he couldn't find them."

"But surely the others remembered you?"

"Perhaps. But none of them mentioned me to Crash." Or they couldn't. As she had learned herself, going off-script was impossible when you didn't want to, or even know why you should. "Or he just didn't think my power was useful."

"There's a problem with your theory," she said, "I wasn't even supposed to be in Brockton Bay."

"Maybe he got your name from somewhere. He seems to have focused on specific people to the exclusion of all else. Hey, you got cast as super-shrink." She smiled a practiced smile, knowing she would be putting the victims of Crash's super-shrinkery back together for months, if she even could. She shouldn't be treating them at all, a fellow victim, and completely unable to be neutral despite her best efforts. With what Piggot had dropped on her, she hadn't seen her family in weeks...if she was ever going to see them again.

"So Crash was like a child playing with action figures, but using real people?" she asked, trying to cast his beliefs nearer to reality.

"And if a child doesn't own the figure, it leaves them out of the story."

"Well if it's stupid and it works-" Yamada began.

"It's still stupid and I got lucky." He finished for her. "My notes say I was hoping to interfere in the gangfight, push him into a blade or something. The instant Vista told him who I was, that went out the window. It was like I could either accept it, or fight it, but it didn't matter. Regardless, I got to be a puppet."

Yamada nodded. She knew exactly what Velocity meant. Looking out of her own eyes while her mouth parroted nonsense that could only exacerbate a patient's problems, to have the patient declaring they were cured while their body went happily about life and their mind disintegrated inside had been its own form of hell.

"I thought I was going mad, and then everything made sense. I could remember growing up in China, travelling here with Lung, being his undercover agent in the Protectorate. I still can." He put his head in his hands, his gloved fingers tight against his temples. "I was born in Massachussetts! I went into the forces straight from school and I never left the US until after I got my powers." He had begun to shake. "But I remember..." Yamada put a hand on his shoulder, letting him know she was here, and carefully tried to forget what he had just let slip about his identity. This was not the hardest session she would have to deal with: that would be the nightmare of Amy Dallon's plural marriage to partners including her sister. For the next fifteen minutes however, her attention was the tangled problem that was Velocity's tenuous grasp on reality.

#

Yamada walked into Director Piggot's office, holding the paperwork from her session with Velocity, and trying to suppress her headache.

"Velocity will require further treatment." The Director hardly glanced up from the stack of paperwork by the side of her desk.

"Is he stable?" Piggot asked.

"I don't know. I'm not sure whether he believes we are fictional, or if he thinks Crash believed it. The former would be a problem."

"Will it stop him going on patrol?" The question was so unthinkable it did not immediately register. Yamada took a second to collect herself.

"Director, he could be seriously delusional. I can't -"

"Doctor, I can't afford to have him off the streets." Piggot snapped. "He's the current symbol of the Protectorate, and people need to see him."

"He killed a child, and he's still in shock," Yamada rebutted. "He certainly has PTSD and complications."

"That's true of everyone in this city right now, Doctor. I don't need him healed, I need him functional." Piggot's tone set her back up, and she straightened.

"Well, ma'am, I believe there are several members of staff in senior roles who are not functional." There was a glare across the table. Yamada matched it. "One of whom is refusing treatment."

"I don't have time." The Doctor cast her best clinical glance across the table.

"I've had reports that you are working your staff to extremes."

"I'm pushing them no harder than I am myself."

"Director, hyper-competency is a natural reaction to-"

"-to being cast as the incompetent authority figure." Piggot snapped over her. Yamada changed tack, softening her tone.

"Becoming the authority figure that Crash wanted will not help. Have you considered that you may be overcompensating?"

"Then, Doctor consider this." Piggot's tone was venomous. "The Bay has had incompetent management for the last several months. I have requistion and supply paperwork, budgets, patrols, inventory, unpaid wages and personnel issues which all require review because that little idiot mastering people didn't think they were important. Unpicking normal business from his influence will take longer hours and we are paying overtime."

"You don't have to do it all at once."

"Yes Doctor, I do." Piggot's breath hissed between her teeth. "Because the US government is considering whether Brockton Bay should be isolated like other mass-mastery incident cities." With obvious satisfaction she watched Yamada's face turn pale. "If I can't expose and erase all traces of the little bastard, I need to make sure we can be self-sufficient before we get quarantined."