"Good afternoon, Mr Über."

"Holy fuck! Where the hell did you come from, lady?" Über squawked in shock, falling off his chair as he whipped around to look to the side. He'd been sitting on the roof of the old office building deep in the docks that he and his best friend used as combined home, workshop, and production studio, drinking a beer and watching the sun come up over the bay. It was a beautiful late spring morning and he'd wanted some air. Leet was deeply asleep in his own room after a very long Tinkering stint, where he'd spent quite a lot of it raging at his own power which seemed to be doing its best to kill him. At least, that was what he claimed.

Über wasn't so sure, but then there was a strange tendency of his friend's inventions to get unreliable in odd and sometimes very dangerous ways, many of which were peculiar even in Parahuman terms. He still remembered the teeth…

A floating robot holoprojector wasn't supposed to have teeth. Nor was it supposed to chase both of them for close to four kilometers while singing "Gonna eat you up little fishies," in a horrible crooning voice before exploding into silver fire and vanishing entirely.

Sometimes he had nightmares about that.

Perhaps his friend had a point.

Lying on the tar paper roof, he looked up at the red-headed woman who was watching him from about three meters away, a very tiny hint of a smile on her lips. Her face was sharp and intelligent, as were her eyes, but she was no one he'd ever seen before. And he hadn't had a fucking clue she was there until she'd spoken.

She was obviously a Parahuman of some sort, but she wasn't anyone he'd heard of. The lack of mask was worrying. It implied a lot of things, few of them good.

More worrying was that he himself wasn't masked, and she'd seen his face. And still knew who he was.

After a few seconds, when she didn't make any move towards him, he slowly rolled to his feet, making sure to stay out of reach, and righted the deck chair, then sat down again. Running was probably not useful right at this moment, as he didn't know what abilities she had, but teleportation seemed plausible from the evidence at hand. Looking at her, he was easily able to tell she wasn't a pushover physically. There were tells showing she was probably highly combat trained, his own ability told him that as did quite a lot of experience in martial arts. He wasn't sure he'd necessarily be able to take her without knowing more about who she was and what she could do. Or what backup she had…

So the immediate best response was probably talking. At least long enough to figure out how deep the shit he was in happened to be.

"Do you make a habit of sneaking up on people like that?" he finally asked, managing to suppress most of his worry and annoyance.

"Yes, actually," she replied, definitely smiling a little this time. He couldn't help the snort of laughter her comment provoked. "However, my apologies for startling you quite so much. My intent was merely to talk."

He relaxed ever so slightly. Talking was good. Better than fighting with an unknown Parahuman anyway.

"About what?" he asked. "Or were you just in the area?"

"Oh, no, I was looking for you specifically, Mr Über," she replied calmly, moving to the side and leaning on one of the air conditioning stacks in a manner that he couldn't help but notice didn't leave her any the less able to strike out. She seemed entirely at ease, which again worried him somewhat. "My superiors wished me to give you a message to pass on to your friend Mr Leet, who I believe is currently asleep and therefore unable to talk."

Über stared hard at her. There were many things wrong with that statement.

"Your superiors?" he echoed suspiciously. "The PRT?"

"No, I'm not connected with the PRT in any way," the woman responded.

"Protectorate?"

She shook her head, another smile coming and going. "You are working under a misapprehension, Mr Über, I suspect. I am not a Parahuman. I don't work for the PRT or the Protectorate, nor do I represent any other Parahuman organization or group, heroic or otherwise."

He looked cautiously at her and thought quickly. "How did you sneak up on me like that then?" he asked.

"Training and other, classified, methods," she told him evenly. "I am very good at what I do."

"And what's that?" he asked, even more suspicious.

"Whatever certain agencies of the US federal government order me to do, Mr Über." She looked mildly amused as he gaped. "I am not at liberty to divulge exactly which ones, of course. You are not cleared for that information."

"Of course," he muttered, wondering if he was dreaming. A rather good looking female spook appearing out of nowhere to have a chat wasn't precisely what he'd expected when he got up. Even as he thought it, he realized how bizarre this whole thing was.

A rather unpleasant idea struck him and he tensed. She obviously picked up on that and held up a hand. "Relax, Mr Über. I am not here to cause either you or your colleague harm. If that was the goal you'd never have known it."

Somehow that didn't make him any less worried. Neither did the total confidence in her voice. He couldn't help looking around nervously.

"What are you here for?" he asked slowly after a scan of the area, which showed no one.

"To make an offer to Mr Leet," she replied. "My superiors are prepared to generously compensate him for examples of his work. Both monetarily and in other ways if necessary."

He stared at her again, trying to understand what she'd said. On the face of it the idea was preposterous. "You want to buy Leet's inventions?"

She nodded patiently. "Indeed, that is the goal, yes."

"Which ones?"

"All of them, if he's willing to part with them," she said. "Or failing that anything he wishes to divest himself of."

They looked at each other for some time in silence, the woman apparently willing to let him think, and Über trying to think. The whole offer sounded insane. The US government wanted to buy Leet's tech? Why?

As much as he loved his friend, the little guy's hardware was kind of flaky on a good day. Most people wanted to get as far away from it as possible, not buy it. For fairly sensible reasons.

Eventually he asked, "Why come to us?"

"We require samples of Tinker technology," she immediately replied. "Beyond that you are not cleared to know."

"Yeah, figured as much," he grumbled. "But if you're the US government, you've got the PRT, and they've got a shitload of Tinker stuff. Including a lot of Leet's. Why not get it from them?"

"There are reasons, but once again, I can't tell you," she remarked, in a manner that wasn't unkind. "But they require sources not connected with the PRT. Your colleague is a prolific inventor of anomalous technology, one of the most productive available in fact, and we are aware he has a significant cache of older projects that no longer function correctly. We are willing to take those off his hands."

"For real money."

"For, as you put it, real money," she confirmed. "Considerable amounts of it. Contingent on signing a non disclosure agreement that will be enforced."

Something about how she said it made him think that 'enforced' came with the unspoken words 'or else' attached.

"You're aware that both of us are not precisely on the side of law and order?" he queried, still mightily confused. "The US government doesn't normally buy stuff from villains..."

"You are barely villains, Mr Über," she said, smiling again. He wasn't sure whether to be insulted or not. "The laws you have broken are mostly minor, although impressive in sheer quantity."

"Still, it seems odd," he replied, still feeling that this entire experience was something of a dream. "I'd have thought that the law wouldn't allow the federal government to deal with any villain."

"You'd be surprised quite what the federal government allows itself to do," she said with a raised eyebrow. "But that aside, there is a solution to your worries." Putting a hand into her pocket, she pulled out an envelope and held it up. "Our offer. Please consider with Mr Leet. Contact details are inside. We'll be waiting for your call, one way or the other." The woman tossed him the envelope, which he snagged out of the air. "Needless to say, none of this should be mentioned to any other party than Mr Leet or there will be consequences."

The way she said it left him feeling worried all over again.

"I get the idea," he nodded. "And if Leet decides against it?"

She pushed off from the air-con tower without using her hands, and regarded him with cool eyes. "As long as no one else learns of this, we will accept his decision. His technology is his property after all. But we do hope he will be willing to do business." The red-head nodded to him politely. "Until next time, Mr Über."

With that she walked off around the machinery sticking out of the roof. After a moment, and despite his instincts telling him not to, he got up and cautiously peered around the tower. There was no sign of her anywhere.

After quite a long time of looking around, and a complete lack of success in determining where she'd gone and how, he muttered, "Not a Parahuman my ass," to himself, before holding the envelope up and inspecting it.

He shrugged, then ripped it open and pulled out the paperwork inside. Unfolding it, he read the top page, his eyes widening and widening the further he went.

Weakly, he moved to his chair and collapsed into it, staring at the last two sheets.

He'd never seen a presidential pardon before...


Taylor sat in her chair with it tilted back as far as it would go, her feet on her workbench, as she thought hard with her eyes shut. The background alien words washed over her, more and more of them understandable, but at a volume low enough that it didn't distract her from her cogitations. If anything it helped her get into the right mindset to really think.

What she was thinking about right now was the latest data she'd acquired after considerable effort over the last three weeks. Her newest sensor unit had given her really good high resolution scans of every Parahuman she'd managed to get close enough to, which included all the Wards at school, the Dallon sisters, a girl she was pretty sure was actually Rune but who otherwise seemed fairly pleasant the few times they'd spoken, Armsmaster who she'd happened across during a visit to the cinema with Amy since he'd been talking to a PRT patrol nearby, and four other people she wasn't sure of the Cape names for. One of them might have been Assault, she suspected, but he'd been sitting at a cafe enjoying a muffin and out of uniform so she wasn't certain.

She made a mental note to work out how to classify Parahuman abilities from the sensor data, it might be useful at some point…

In any case, she had gigabytes of scans on an even dozen Parahumans with the new system now, and one of the things that had jumped out at her was that every single one of them showed that exact same sort-of-a-portal in their brains. There were minor differences, which she strongly suspected were down to the phenomenon leading to different destinations in each case, but the overall result was identical.

Combined with all the other data her longer range stuff was measuring and she was almost positive that all Parahumans would exhibit the same thing. That suggested to her that the phenomenon was in turn a direct result of, or possibly reason for, Parahuman abilities. She wasn't sure yet which way it went, or how it linked together, but the correlation was so strong there was definitely some connection, and a deep one at that.

The other interesting thing she'd discovered was that a significant number of definitely non-parahuman individuals read as having a much weaker and not quite identical, but clearly related, subspace variation in or about their person. It was so weak it was hard to pin it down as terminating in any one specific area of their body but she was pretty sure it would turn out to be their brain.

What had struck her after she'd got over the initial surprise of this finding was that approximately twenty percent of people appeared to show such readings, apparently distributed at random as far as she could tell once she tried correcting for everything else she could think of. She'd spent quite a lot of time refining her sensors and software and repeating the scans in an attempt to eliminate any errors, but the readings remained. They were definitely real.

Quite early on in this discovery she'd mused on the data that suggested approximately twenty percent of people in general could gain Parahuman abilities. Or 'trigger' as the common term put it. Amy, when she'd idly commented one day about where Parahuman abilities actually came from, had spent the entire lunch hour discussing everything she knew about it, which included that figure, and the intriguing information that it was arrived at from studies showing roughly twenty percent of the population had a brain structure called the Corona Pollentia, which had been determined to be a marker of a potential Parahuman. Post-'trigger' the newly minted Parahuman also had a second anomalous brain structure, the Gemma, which appeared during whatever process it was that produced powers. The pair were the legally defining characteristics of a Parahuman and were normally found via an MRI scan.

This backed up all the things she'd learned during her own initial study by DARPA, where they'd proven that she had neither structure in her brain and therefore, by definition, wasn't a Parahuman. While she didn't know for sure why she was so much smarter than, well, basically everyone, it wasn't powers doing it.

One day she was going to have to look into the root cause, assuming it wasn't simply a random genetic lottery she'd won like no one else in history had managed. Just to satisfy her own curiosity. But that could wait.

But the point was that the two figures were so close that it seemed improbable that they were unrelated. Adding to that the information that her sensors were completely reliably detecting active Parahuman powers and also apparently had shown that such people had this specific subspace anomaly somewhere in their brains, the logical conclusion was the weaker readings were detecting a potential Parahuman without needing an MRI. It also suggested that whatever was behind a trigger event was, via this subspace linkage, monitoring the person in question somehow and for some reason.

"But why?" she muttered to herself, not opening her eyes. "Why do they have a weak connection until they trigger, then a much stronger one after that point? Presumably the active powers are somehow linked through the micro portal to… something that's actually doing the work? Yeah, that fits. No way could most powers get the energy to do what they do from a human body. It's got to be coming from somewhere else. So something on the far end of the portal is using it to… provide powers as a service, basically." She smiled slightly. "The Parahuman directs the power, the… thing… reads the intent directly from their brain, and then, what, feeds power back down the portal? No, it has to be a targeting system, half the powers I've read about would kill the Parahuman if they went through their bodies."

She frowned as she thought it over. "Yeah. Command and control link, with targeting functions. The power source then directly does whatever it's doing to create the effect. Sensory data goes to the human brain, it reads other information from it… So a direct neural link to something. Something that can work with subspace in a crude manner, and can use that to create the effects powers show. Maybe gravitic manipulation for most of the flight and telekinesis abilities? Vicky does have a tiny reference frame manipulation thing going on when she floats around, so that's plausible. Rune… yeah, that would work too. A lot of the other powers could be down to manipulation of the local quantum structure, in one way or another. Hmm..."

Dropping her feet to the floor Taylor sat up and reached for a pad and a pen, then spent an hour or so scribbling, pausing every now and then to tap the end of the pen on her lips as she thought hard. Finally she put the pen down and flipped back to the start, before reading her work carefully and looking for errors.

"OK," she said when she reached the end again. "Looks internally self consistent at least. Some sort of widget on the other end of a small nearly-a-portal, using it as a high bandwidth connection directly to a human brain. Human gets an upload telling them how their powers work, basically a software patch. Human points and pulls the trigger, widget reads the desired action and target through the link, then it manipulates local physical constants through a very limited form of subspace quantum effects. Presto, magic powers. Cool." She smiled for a moment.

"And the widget is also watching a lot of people for specific conditions, or actions, or something that ultimately results in a trigger event. Nearly a fifth of the population, even though only a small fraction of them end up triggering. Presumably because they never meet the requirements? Yeah, probably something like that. Wonder why it's only monitoring that few people? Resource limitations, or some other reason? Or do they have something in common that makes them suitable targets?" Taylor shook her head after considering this for a while, there wasn't enough data to make a conclusion yet.

"Big question is, what is the widget? And where did it come from? And what powers it? And why does it actually exist? Are there more than one? What's the reason, if any, for humans to become Parahumans? If there is a reason, is there a specific plan or is it random? How does it connect to Scion turning up in eighty two?" She wrote these all down as she mumbled, then looked at the page. "OK, more than one big question," she giggled. "Power is probably the easiest, it might be something like how the GRF works. Quantum foam, maybe. Wonder if I can check that?"

She made a quick sketch of a possible method to prove or disprove her hypothesis, along with some notes, on another page, then flipped back to the previous one. Tapping her pen on the first question, she stared at it. "That is the big one, I think," she said very quietly to the alien chatter in the background. "Everything else is linked to it, but the main thing I want to know is what is on the other end of the micro portals."

Pushing the notebook to the side after a few minutes of looking at it and thinking, she pulled her keyboard closer and started looking through her collected data sets, running a number of programs on them in an attempt to winnow dozens of terabytes of information down to something that might point her in the right direction.

As she worked, she mulled over the other weird thing she'd discovered, something that had been puzzling her since that night a few weeks ago when she'd first found the telltale data that led to her conclusion of tiny portals in Parahumans.

There was definitely something connected to the entire thing lurking around her house.

It wasn't in her. She was certain of that. The DARPA tests had conclusively proven that she had none of the relevant brain structures at the time and her own scans also proved that she hadn't magically sprouted them since. She'd checked very carefully several times. The next obvious candidate was her father, something that had worried her a lot when she'd come to that conclusion, but a discreet and in depth scan showed he was also free of the connection structures.

But she could still measure the phenomenon somewhere in the house. In fact she was measuring it right now, with a separate sensor system she'd set up to keep an eye on it. Glancing at the screen of that machine she noted the readings were incredibly weak but stable, as they'd been the entire time. As far as she could work out, it was like whatever was behind the subspace oddity was generally monitoring her overall location, but for some reason wasn't connecting to her or her father.

On the whole she was very glad about that, as she didn't really want super powers. At least not ones that needed something fiddling with her brain. If anyone was going to fiddle with it, it would be her, and if she wanted super powers she'd damn well build them, not have them thrust on her for unknown reasons. Nor did she want her dad poked around either. From what she'd gleaned from the internet and discussions with her friends trigger events were invariably horrible things to go through, and there was no way she wanted the most important person in her life to experience that sort of thing. It was bad enough knowing that some of her friends had done so.

"I'm going to figure this out, and I will work out what you are and where you are," she said softly, watching the multidimensional graph pulsate in interesting colors showing different aspects of subspace around the immediate vicinity. "And we're going to have words, you and me."

She fancied that the readings wiggled a little more than usual as she spoke, but only smiled faintly at the screen before going back to work. Another hour of this, watch the latest installment of Alien TV, and then bed. Tomorrow was a school day.


Leet picked up a chunk of equipment and looked sadly at it. He wiped a finger across a sooty smudge on the outside of the casing, before sighing heavily and dropping it into the packing crate along with a whole load of other odds and ends. "That took me a month to build," he commented to his friend, who was nailing the lid onto another crate, half a dozen nails in his mouth.

The taller man put the hammer down and spat the nails into his hand, then leaned on the wooden box. "Yeah, man, I sympathize. But look on the bright side; we're cleaning out all the old crap you can't use any more, getting a shitload of money out of the deal, and we've got a clean slate. Once in a lifetime deal, my friend."

"I wish I knew what the feds wanted with all this stuff," Leet muttered as he sorted through a cardboard box full of random old broken stuff, then shrugged and put the entire thing into his crate. He moved to the next item and inspected it. "No, I'm keeping this one," he decided out loud. "It was a bastard to get working and I think I can fix it."

"Assuming it doesn't kill the entire city when you do," Über remarked, smirking at him when he gave the other man a nasty glare.

"Shut up," he grumbled. "Keep nailing."

The sound of hammering resumed as he poked through several years worth of incredibly cool inventions, wishing even a fraction of them still functioned. One device started humming irregularly as he picked it up, making both him and Über freeze, then he very cautiously turned it over and prodded it with a screwdriver. The hum stopped, but he didn't relax until he'd completely removed the power unit and dismantled it. Then he took the hammer from Über's hand and whacked one of the components very hard several times, before handing the tool back and sweeping the remains of a crystalline coil into a small bag, which he put into the box he'd taken the device out of.

"Stupid power," he snarled, while Über sweated a little. "I swear it's got it in for me."

Several hours later they'd finished crating up about a hundred and twenty devices, ranging from a ray gun that should have made anything shot with it freeze in space for twenty seconds but for some reason instead made it smell strongly of bacon, to a full size rocket propelled Mario Cart prop. That had worked perfectly aside from the minor steering issue that eventually developed.

They'd dredged it out of the bay but it had never functioned properly after that and he'd given up in the end before something worse happened…

"Now what?" he asked, regarding the stack of boxes. His friend was just putting the last one into place in their van with a hand cart.

"Call the number and tell them to come pick it up, I guess," Über replied.

Leet looked at the cheap burner phone next to him on the workbench, then picked it up and dialed a number he'd memorized, sighing slightly as he did. After a couple of rings it was answered by a woman who said, "Universal Exports, how may I direct your call?"

"I'd like to order a pizza," he said, almost smiling at being able to do a real life spy skit.

"Understood, sir. Thank you." She hung up.

Taking the battery out of the phone he dropped the latter to the floor and stomped hard on it. "Done."

"Let's get this stuff into the warehouse then get something to eat," Über said as he opened the doors to their loading bay. The arrangement was to drop the crates off in a warehouse nearer to the DWU, the key for which had been in the envelope he'd been given by his unexpected visitor. Then lock the doors and leave. Assuming that the people behind this were on the level, a pretty substantial amount of money would be deposited into an account that a bank card which had turned up after they'd agreed was linked to. Subject to examination of Leet's stuff, another lump sum would be paid two weeks later.

On the whole, neither of them thought this was a scam. It was beyond strange, yes, but it was legit, for a very specific value of 'legit.'

And they couldn't tell anyone about it. Ever.

That was almost a pity since it was a hell of a story, but neither wanted to find out what would happen if they broke the terms of the agreement they'd signed. It probably wouldn't be healthy.

Leet drove the van out and Über locked up, then got in next to him. Shortly they'd driven a couple of kilometers and dropped off their load, and were heading into the city in search of food.

"I wonder what they do want with all my stuff?" Leet commented after a while.

His friend shrugged. "Not a fucking clue, bro. Best not to ask. The bigger question is what name we rebrand ourselves under."

"I'm thinking The GameBoyz," Leet said, smirking as his friend glared at him.

"Idiot."

Bickering good-naturedly, they drove on, no longer villains and richer than they'd ever expected to become.


"Hey, Taylor." Taylor looked around to see Vicky approaching from behind her, Dean next to the blonde. She smiled at both of them.

"Hi, guys. How's it going?"

"Good," Vicky replied, smiling back. Her expression faltered a little, then firmed again. Taylor looked at her closely.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"Nothing! Nothing is wrong!" The other girl was clearly hiding the truth. Dean, next to her, seemed uncomfortable.

Taylor stopped in her tracks, moving to the side of the school corridor they'd been walking down. She peered suspiciously at her friend. "You lie," she hissed dramatically, pointing. Dean's mouth twitched although Vicky seemed taken aback. "I can tell. I have the power."

"The power?"

"The power of… observation!" Taylor looked both ways, then leaned closer. Almost unconsciously both the other teens also leaned in. "I watch things."

Vicky looked at her with an odd expression, before giggling.

"What things?"

"Oh, everything. I watch all of it." Taylor waved a hand airily, pleased that the blonde seemed slightly less stressed. "It's my thing. So. What's the problem with Amy?"

Vicky appeared startled and Dean looked at Taylor with a somewhat impressed expression. "How did… I mean, what?"

"Amy's not here, you're looking worried, Dean's trying to hide it but he's also worried, therefore something's wrong with Amy. Easy."

The other two exchanged glances. "You're good," Dean commented. Taylor bowed a little, smiling.

"I try."

Sighing, Vicky slumped against the wall. "Amy works too hard at the hospital. Last night she came back at about two AM, barely able to stand up. Mom got all… mom.. about it, Amy got mad, and..." She waved her hands. "It got a bit loud. So now Mom's all pissy about Amy and has grounded her, which is totally unfair, and Amy's sulking. And today she also felt exhausted, so I persuaded Mom to let her stay home and Amy to stay in bed. Which took a lot of shouting from me. So now I'm all stressed out and tired too."

Taylor could see the truth of this in her eyes, the other girl did look upset and clearly her makeup was hiding just how much. She stepped forward and hugged her for a moment.

"Cake."

"What?"

"Cake. You and Amy both need some cake. It cheers people up."

"That's sure not a lie," Dean agreed.

Vicky was looking confused. "I don't get it."

"Chocolate cake, with ice cream. After school we go and find some, I know a really good bakery my Mom loved, we take it back to your house, and we stuff enough of into both of you until you're in a good mood." Taylor grinned. "It's my duty as a friend to help. Whether you want it or not."

The blonde gaped at her, until she finally smiled. "You are a very weird girl, Taylor."

"Oddly enough you're not the first person to tell me that," Taylor laughed. "Trust me, there will be cake at the end. But now, we have to go to the Learnatorium and do learning! Onward!" She pointed at the classroom and waved the others to follow, feeling that she'd helped.

Friendship was fun, she once again decided.


Putting the fork down on an empty plate, Taylor licked chocolate icing off her top lip, washed it down with some water, then pushed the plate to the side. There had been enough left for one slice each for her father and her. "Thank you, Taylor," her father said as he also finished.

"No problem, Dad, I know you like that place," she smiled. "Amy loved it too."

"I'll wash up, don't worry about it," he added, standing and picking both plates up. "Then I've got some work to do in the study."

"OK, I'll finish my biology homework, I guess," she replied, also getting up and heading for her room. "Better get it out of the way."

"Probably a good idea," he agreed, watching her go upstairs. She smiled back at him before entering her room. Heading the clinking of dishes in the sink downstairs, she sat in front of her desk and pulled her notebooks and the relevant textbook out of her bag, opening all of them on the desk. Soon she was leaning her head on her hand while thinking about the best way to start the essay.

An hour later she'd finished typing. Proof reading her work, she nodded in satisfaction, then printed it out on the small laser printer under the desk. Pleased with the results she put it into a folder and stuffed everything back into her bag. "That's the obligations of the educational system done," she commented to herself, stretching. "Now for the interesting work..."

Very shortly thereafter she was sitting at her workbench in the basement, staring at the much more powerful computers down there. A week's work had got her closer to an answer but she was still missing something.

Tipping her chair back she put her feet up and closed her eyes. The background audio mumbled to her as she tried to work out what that something was. She couldn't shake the feeling it was right in front of her.

A few minutes later, hearing an entire intelligible phrase in the alien language made her smile. Moments after that she went entirely still, before her eyes slowly opened. Rolling her head to the side she stared at the subspace receiver with a narrow gaze, thinking hard.

Then she sat up quickly. "That's it," she muttered. "I knew there was something I was missing…"

After some work she'd got her original receiver set up again, and checked it was working correctly by tuning into the alien educational broadcast. The signal came in beautifully, making her nod in satisfaction. "Good. OK, let's see..."

Taylor turned to her main computer and brought up her analysis program, then worked with it for some time, making notes as she went. Eventually she looked at the results of her calculations, cross-referencing them with the sensor unit still monitoring whatever it was that was lurking in the undergrowth of subspace around her house.

"Yeah," she said quietly. "I think..."

She put a set of headphones on and began very carefully setting the receiver up to a somewhat different mode of operation, reaching inside to make adjustments to the analog circuitry, then tweaking the subspace converter connected to it which was now housed in a separate box on the side. Referring to both her notes and several of her sensor systems, she adjusted things for twenty minutes or so, listening to the results in her headphones with her head cocked, ignoring anything else as she got lost in the faint audio signals.

Eventually her adjustments slowed and stopped. She opened her eyes from where she'd been listening with great care to peer at the screen of one of the oscilloscopes. Adjusting the timebase, she fiddled with the scan rate until the signal stabilized.

"Nearly..." she mumbled under her breath. Resuming turning the main tuning dial with excruciatingly careful movements, she keep listening intently to the rushing sound her rig was producing. There was a hint of a pattern hiding in the background, she was certain of it.

Eventually she stopped, then very gently tweaked the dial back and forth. "Right… there." Her hand moved to another control, adjusted it, then did the same to two more, going back and forth until she was finally at the sweet spot. "Got it."

The sound now was almost a chord, overlaid onto a sound like a waterfall far in the distance. It was something she recalled briefly hearing once before, when she'd initially been experimenting with the subspace receiver. There had been a whole section of the 'band' for want of a better term that had produced hundreds of signals similar to this one, which she'd initially passed over in favor of the one that had jumped out at her. Now, though…

The girl spent another hour and a half connecting a vast collection of signal analysis equipment into the receiver, then several of her own design of sensors, before turning to her computer and writing some more custom software. It took her until nearly one in the morning, but in the end she was smiling at a graph that was slowly building up on the monitor, telling her all sorts of fascinating things.

"There you are," she said with enormous satisfaction when the results of the program settled down to a consistent display. "Right, then. Let's find out what you are, shall we?"

The sensor display off to one side twitched quite noticeably. She grinned and cracked her knuckles, before starting to type again.

"This won't hurt. Probably."

The display twitched again, but she ignored it and kept working. Science was happening, she'd had cake, cheered up a friend, and a lot of interesting data seemed to be arriving.

It had been a good day in her view.