Jim closed his eyes and indulged in a bit of fantasy. He never seemed to be in this office for a good reason, but maybe…
"Jim Lake Junior, for your role in convincing the Slaughterhouse Nine to surrender and take up lives of pacifist gardeners I am hereby awarding…"
Unfortunately, he had to open his eyes. Vicky was there, Amy was there. One looking worried, the other looking sullen. Carol was there, glaring at Director Piggot, which didn't seem to be smart, while her sister Sarah looked like she was caught in a waking nightmare. Merlin leaned against one wall, looking bored, while Armsmaster stood by Director Piggot.
"God exists, and he's a malicious bastard because he sends idiots to make my life more complex." Director Piggot turned around and looked at the group in her office. Behind her, the monitor kept replaying the image of Brandish hauling off and using a blazing hammer to knock Jim across the room. She touched a button, stopping Jim just before he hit the salad bar.
"Jessica Wilson," Director Piggot said. "Fifteen, weight 101 lbs. Not a parahuman. Not a brute. Almost pinned between a three hundred plus pound parahuman and a metal and glass salad bar. On the other hand, I suppose since Panacea was there, you assumed it could be fixed up. Unless you wanted to try for a clean sweep on ways to publicly self-destruct."
"Director Piggot, I believe that Merlin is mastering Amy and that is—"
"What? The reason you decided the proper response to a letter you didn't like was to go storming into the lunchroom at Arcadia and assault one of my Wards?"
"I was attempting to remove Amy from an area where she could have hurt a number of people after she revealed evidence of being mastered and bragged about her ability to biotinker!"
"I didn't brag!" Amy said. "Merlin showed—he convinced me that I should work at it, and that's the only reason Jim is alive."
"See! Right there, she admits it! Merlin knew it, and that's why he convinced her to find out who her father was!" Carol glared at Amy. "This was the reason I took her in. To keep her safe, to keep her from becoming like her father!"
"Mom!" That was from Vicky, a betrayed, frightened tone in her voice. "Amy's my sister."
"She's Marquis' daughter! I—"
"Carol, stop digging!" Sarah shouted. The other woman clenched her hands into a fist and took a deep breath.
"I—"
"Not one more word, not until we have a criminal defense lawyer here for you."
"Oh, there's no need for that," Director Piggot said. "Nothing here will be admitted, or is admissible." She paused. "But…" The video recording ran back, a compilation of the various cell phones that had been filming them. Amy on the table, Carol shouting, Jim getting between them, his hands raised and shaking his head…
And then the flash of light and appearance of a hammer, followed by Jim flying across the room. Somehow, he managed to avoid Jessica, twisting in mid-air as he flew past her.
Huh. I gotta thank Armsmaster. There had been several drills focused on avoiding hurting civilians caught by a brute fight. Evidently, they'd stuck.
"To the lawyer in the room, what does a jury do after seeing that?" Director Piggot went for the kill. "What does the public say about New Wave? You were about accountability, and now, we've got a video of one of you storming into a school, assaulting a Ward, right after Panacea admits to God and all his angels that she's the daughter of Marquis, something that her adoptive parents kept silent, and right now, Legal is digging through that. There wasn't even an attempt to find any other relatives of Marquis or her mother, before she was shuffled off to Carol." Director Piggot tilted her head. "Oh, and of course… the widely heard and spread statement that you defeated Marquis by attacking him in his daughter's bedroom."
"We…" Sarah looked away from others. "We didn't know it was Amy's—"
"Amelia!"
Carol opened her mouth, then closed it at Sarah's glance.
"Regardless. We didn't know why Marquis was defending the cabinet so fanatically. We thought it was a weapon or something he could use against us. It wasn't until we beat him that we realized… Well, he'd been defending Amy—Amelia. He asked us to take care of her. He was afraid of what might happen if she went into the foster system and someone discovered her identity." Sarah sighed. "I… Carol wasn't eager to take her. She told me it was a bad idea." Sarah paused, thinking. "Carol said: That child deserves better than I can offer. She didn't know if she could form a bond. And I couldn't take Amelia, not with two children of my own…"
Amy snorted, looked away from her adoptive mother.
Jim noticed that her eyes looked suspiciously bright. It was bad enough when Mom didn't want to talk to me after the trollhunting stuff, but if she had said that… It'd kill me.
"Lovely." Emily Piggot generally wasn't the cheeriest of individuals, but her look proved that she definitely had no powers, because Carol lived. "Right now, we have the Butcher, the E88, a few dozen unaffiliated parahumans who traveled to the Bay to strike it rich, because of course they would, at least one Asian vigilante who is trying to protect the Asian inhabitants of the Bay, when they can be distracted from beating up old ABB factions, and of course, just this morning, I received news that the Elite faction associated with Bastard Son is confirmed to be in town." She looked up at Carol. "I had assumed that would be the limit of my bad news for the day. How silly of me. Did any of you even consider calling the PRT or Protectorate, because we've had some experience in just this issue. Amelia wouldn't be the first child of a villain who needed to be covertly placed with a new family."
Then she glanced up at Merlin. "Since you were involved in this disaster, for the record, did you master Amelia?"
"Now why would I say yes, if I was?" Merlin replied.
"Some Masters are notably arrogant," Armsmaster said.
"Yes, and if you had any belief I was one, I wouldn't be here, of all places." Merlin shook his head. "No. I do not need to master others. I saw the Little Mouse come in, barely interested in anything other than healing the Trollhunter and leaving… And then she touched him, and ah, the change on her face. Amazement, interest… Joy. But why would she then focus on something that did not bring her joy?
"So it made me curious and I spoke to her, to find out that she's been bound in the chains of a slave, some of her making, some of other's." Merlin tilted his head. "I sought to convince her that she needed to take charge of her own life. Starting with finding out who her father was, although I did not expect such a dramatic story."
"And you destroyed New Wave," Carol said bitterly.
"No, my dear, that was you. Well, evidently, you and your sister. If you do not believe you can do something, then don't let yourself be badgered into it." Merlin paused. "You should thank me. A power such as hers, shackled by fear… Such things rarely turn out well."
"Very well. Last question." Director Piggot looked at Panacea and Jim blinked. She was actually shifting back, coming more to attention then he'd seen her during this entire time, which was saying something. "Panacea, it is known that you can modify human organisms to better heal them. What are your actual limits?"
"If it has an organic biology, I can modify it." Amy looked down. "I can make new organisms if I have living feedstock." She paused. "I've never tried to work on non-carbon based lifeforms—Jim's… his biology is weird."
"Yes, magic does that." Merlin said. Director Piggot shot him a death glare.
"Can these organisms replicate?" Director Piggot asked.
Amy paused.
"Yes. But I haven't made any that can. It would be too dangerous."
"That alone would be worth a rating of 9 or 10 as a biotinker." Armsmaster's voice was grim. "Director Piggot, you know that this mandates…"
"A pre-authorized kill order. I am aware of the protocols involving biotinkers capable of the production of large scale, self-replicating lifeforms, Armsmaster." Director Piggot was glaring at the two adult members of New Wave. "Did either of you know her full powers?"
"No." Carol was glaring at Amy. "She was never honest with me."
Merlin snorted.
"Here is what is going to happen, then," Director Piggot said. "Panacea, I will be speaking to Director Costa-Brown about you. But for now, you are to consider yourself banned from making any organisms capable of self-replication, save at the direct order of the PRT. You will remain here, while we get this utter mess figured out. Glory Girl will not, technically, join the Wards. She will however, be mentored by the Protectorate under the same program Trollhunter and Shadowdancer are participating in, and will deploy at our direction."
"That is—"
Director Piggot cut Carol off. "Less acceptable than a criminal charge of attempted murder with a parahuman power?" she shook her head. "The only reason you're getting off this easily is that Trollhunter kept anyone from being seriously hurt. The city is a powderkeg, and I need all hands on deck to keep it from exploding. Fears of being mastered can be used as a defense, especially as a mother rushing to her beloved daughter's side. Granted, it's more often applied to housewives who have seen too many episodes of Capes of our Lives. Not a… supposedly experienced hero."
Jim winced. Maybe she did have a power. The power of sarcasm.
"Nonetheless, depending on future events, I might be able to convince the PRT to pay any relevant damages and smooth things over with the school."
Convince? Director Piggot is the PRT head in the Bay why is she… oh.
Oh.
Everyone knew that. What she really was saying was that the only hope New Wave had to not be destroyed was to play ball with the PRT…
"Trollhunter, you can take Panacea and Glory Girl to the Wards quarters. I have some other things to say."
"I—okay," Jim got up.
The moment they were out of the office, Glory Girl looked at Panacea. Jim could feel her aura, but where it was normally exultation, anger, or just generally happy, this was…
It was curling in. Jim didn't have a better word for it.
"Sis… I mean, I am your sister right?" Vicky asked. She bit her lip. "You know, I didn't…I'd never… Say what Mom said. It doesn't matter."
"I…" Amy looked down, then up at Vicky. "I know. But I just… I need to think."
"Ames, I'm sorry," Vicky said. "Do you want to be called… Amy or Amelia?"
"I…" Amy took a deep breath. "Carol never wanted me."
Jim winced and Vicky looked like she'd been kicked.
"Maybe Amelia is better."
Vicky didn't say anything for a while and then nodded. "Okay."
They didn't say anything else, and Jim decided to not press his luck.
After the deflated Sarah, amused Merlin, and resentful Carol had left, Sara promising to not let her sister do anything foolish, Emily looked up at Colin.
"And?"
"As near as I can determine, everyone was telling the truth as they saw it." Colin tilted his head. "The ability to determine truth or falsehood becomes more difficult as the truth in question becomes more subjective."
"Christ," Emily shook her head. "A biotinker, a biotinker 10. We knew that she wasn't just a healer, but this…"
"That remains to be—"
"I know the ratings, and unless she was lying through her teeth, which you just said she probably wasn't, it's a 10. Christ. A biotinker 10 here. How many times has she healed the Wards, Armsmaster? If she had been hostile or suffered a breakdown, which she just about had today, what could she have done to them? Even if we knew that she could do more than healing, I never expected to be playing host to someone who could do worse than Bonesaw."
The tinker tensed. "She's at no point shown any of those motivations, though her stress levels were rather high."
Emily snorted. "Yes, I cannot imagine how her adopted mother telling her she was never really wanted would do something like that." Then she shook her head, wincing as if she was suffering a headache. "We are going to have to tell the hospitals at some point. If Panacea can modify biology, on the fly…" God, every person who caught a cold after they saw her may demand compensation… That alone would ruin New Wave.
Which, to be honest, at any other time might not be a bad thing. The PRT offering to fold them into the Protectorate and turning them into actual assets instead of loose cannons that played hero only when they wanted to…
But it was likely that after this, New Wave would be a dead group walking. If it became accepted that they'd beaten Marquis by attacking him with his daughter present... Every other groups would take the gloves off.
A thought for after the current situation was resolved. Thank god they didn't have any young children in their homes. That would have forced Emily's hand.
But the ice was thin as it was.
"Director, what about Merlin?" Armsmaster shifted, his servos whining. "He was instrumental in producing this situation."
"Yes. I wonder if he knew that?"
"He rarely does things without a purpose," Armsmaster said. "But in this case… Director, what if this had come to a head during a major crisis? Now at least we can take actions to mitigate the damage and hopefully ensure that Panacea doesn't become a danger. Perhaps that was Merlin's angle."
Emily hummed. Merlin was almost pathologically allergic to being thanked. It was a good way to get a sarcastic, response. But he'd spent time and effort with Armsmaster to develop a method to destroy the Grey Boy loops.
And his amulet had chosen Jim Lake, and Emily couldn't find any fault in that, save for the fact that Jim wasn't 18 yet.
And Armsmaster was right. If they hadn't known, then if someone, the Elite, the Teeth, or God help them the Slaughterhouse had found out and managed to co-opt Panacea…
"Armsmaster, we will let Merlin work with Panacea for now. I'll be getting in touch with the Costa-Brown and we can figure out what to do." Get her far away from me. But if they could make use of her, the value to the city… Emily shook her head. "Also, I want you to evaluate her formally, because we're going to have to generate a threat and countermeasures report."
"Yes, Director Piggot."
The girl was under her covers, eyes tightly closed.
Her room was clean, her stuffed animals on their shelves. A cat slept at the foot of her bed.
"Dinah? The doctor said you should take this for your headaches." Her mother came in.
"You know, this will make the headaches go away by tomorrow, right?"
Chance that headaches go away by tomorrow: 0.3 percent.
Dinah whimpered as the stabbing pain once again shot through her, but she sat up and took a sip of water with the pills. The headache didn't go away. Her mother sat with her for a few moments, then the phone rang and she left.
Dinah tried not to think, but it was hard to not ask a question.
So she asked the question she'd asked that morning the one that sent her into a panic at school.
Chance that I'll be here by next week?
5.04 percent.
No, no, no! That was worse than ever!
Dinah curled up into a ball, closed her eyes and used one last question.
Chance that the heroes will save me and bring me home by next month?
1.04 percent. And once again her mind shot down along the lines of probability. The pain returned, and everything almost faded out. Some threads ended suddenly. And some threads…
She didn't understand, but it hurt too much to continue.
Dinah hid under the covers like she did when a loud thunderstorm was overhead.
But the covers wouldn't hide her from this.