The first thing Lisa did after bestowing ten million dollars upon Faultline was to bask smugly in the memory of the mercenary's seething visage. Flaunting her superiority was deeply important to her, and well worth the cost.
The second thing she did was finally see Taylor again. Her weekly visits to the sealed dimension where Contessa had stashed Khepri had been interrupted by the advent of the alleged Samantha Stewart and her alleged son, and once Lisa apologized for her prolonged absence, she told her friend all her woes. Taylor didn't say anything back, nor did she actually hear anything Lisa said; but then, she'd never listened to Lisa anyway so that, at least, was the same.
The third thing she did was regret the fact she'd wasted ten million dollars on taunting Faultline. Her regret was precipitated by a series of texts from Legend, each one of which was eager to steer her (and her partner, whom nobody believed was not the Simurgh) away from the Wardens' business.
PewPew McWonderBread: My daughter anwsered the quesrions we had abt ur discovary
PewPew McWonderBread: We got em
PewPew McWonderBread: Thx
PewPew McWonderBread: No need for you to be involved further
PewPew McWonderBread: Thx
"Well," Lisa said to her partner on her return to their office. "That was anticlimactic."
The Simurgh pretended to look up from the children's book she was pretending to read to David, who was not even pretending to pay attention as he flew around the room squealing about how he could fly, see things that hadn't happened yet, and shoot lasers out of his eyes. "What was anticlimactic, Lisa?" she asked.
"The Wardens found the people behind the dognappings."
"Excellent," the Simurgh said, directing her book to set itself on a side table.
"I have to say that I never thought being a detective would be so easy," Tattletale mused. If all she had to do to solve a case was get the attention of Legend's so-called daughter, crime would be eradicated in a week.
The bad kind of crime, of course. Not her kind of crime.
"There is nothing easy about justice, Tattletale."
Lisa couldn't think of anything to say to that. She'd seen too much of the world to believe in justice, easy or otherwise.
"I'm always happy to see criminals put behind bars," the Simurgh continued. "The fact our fledgling organization played a key role in the resolution of this heinous matter is a significant bonus."
"What about a more tangible kind of bonus?" Tattletale said, wistfully thinking of the price she'd had to pay to make Faultline's eyes widen in shock and narrow in fury and close in resignation. "The monetary kind, I mean."
"Most of our first paycheck went to taxes and our operating budget, which should come as no surprise to you."
"Taxes," Lisa said, looking through the hole Eidolon had blown in the door of the refrigerator. "I can't say that I've ever paid those before. Personally." That was something Sierra had taken care of, mostly to keep the Undersiders from falling prey to the same trick that had ended Al Capone's career.
"It's important to pay taxes," the Simurgh said. "I am hoping to instill a sense of civic responsibility in David, and we must both act as good, responsible examples."
Lisa stared into the fridge, unable to see what was in front of her. She finally blinked, and a bottle of orange juice snapped into focus. "Of course," she said. She heard the brittle edge in her own voice.
"I am pleased to report that we each profited eleven cents."
Lisa pulled the orange juice out of the refrigerator without opening the door. "I spent ten million dollars pursuing a lead," she said.
"In that case, we have each lost four million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine dollars and eighty-nine cents."
"Yeah," she said. "Counterpoint: Faultline was upset."
"Sigh," said the Simurgh, being unable to sigh herself due to her lack of lungs. "I do not think that was a prudent choice, Lisa."
"Well, we'll just make sure our next client is rich. Maybe we could steal the ten million dollars from Faultline and then get her to hire us to solve who stole her ten million dollars."
Actually, now that she thought about it, that was an immensely good idea.
"That is an immensely bad idea," the Simurgh said, as though she were reading Lisa's thoughts, which she was. "It betrays our moral obligations to right wrongs and deal with our clients with honesty, sincerity, integrity, fidelity, morality and good conscience."
Lisa finished pouring David a glass of orange juice and replaced the bottle. The precocious little tyke flew over her desk and dumped the juice onto her typewriter.
"Faultline would also instantly deduce you were the culprit and not hire our firm."
Lisa didn't think either part of that statement presented a drawback. It would infuriate Faultline, which was always good, and anything that decreased the number of potential clients for Simurgh and Snitch was also good.
"Besides which," the Simurgh said, pulling David into her arms with her telekinesis, "I have already located a new client."
"You what?"
"She's just outside our door. Our secretary is about to show her in."
"Our secretary?"
"The one you hired half an hour ago."
"I what?"
The door banged open. Aisha barged in, opened her mouth, and goggled at the Simurgh playing coochie coo with Eidolon.
Lisa mentally revised her catalogue of what she'd done that afternoon. Between telling Taylor about her new business venture and hearing from Legend, she must have run into Aisha—likely at Taylor's bedside, since Imp had developed the habit of reading the Western canon to their unresponsive friend. Aisha didn't seem to mind; Taylor had ignored her back when she'd been conscious, too.
"Yes, Aisha?" the Simurgh asked.
"Um, right, sorry," Aisha said.
Lisa blinked. There was something—she probably needed to put in her daily quota for humoring the Simurgh. "How did David do while I was out?" she asked.
"Thank you for asking after David, Lisa. We're finishing up our first chapter book. I selected Little House in the Big Woods, which is a classic tale of self-reliance and being a settler in relatively primitive conditions. I thought it would instill good values and be relevant to the world he will grow up in. When it comes to children, it's good to think ahead."
Lisa opened her desk drawer and began to search for liquor. "No doubt," she said. "No doubt."
"Lisa, I respect your autonomy as an adult and your space as a partner," the Simurgh said. "However, I must politely request you do not drink in front of my son."
Lisa slid the drawer back closed. Eidolon's laser vision had burned through the back of her desk and shattered her bottle, anyway. She was spared from answering only by Aisha's entrance.
Imp was wearing a vintage skirt, blouse, and jacket out of The Maltese Falcon or Double Indemnity. Crowning her head was a platinum blonde wig with immaculately done victory rolls that did nothing to cover her cornrows.
Lisa slid her drawer back open. Maybe she could lick some bourbon off the bottle shards, or perhaps just eat them.
"Hey boss," Imp said in a low alto that was smooth and dangerous as the quality scotch David had wrecked. She leaned over Lisa's desk and looked up at her through her lashes. "Say, there's a bird here to see you. Kinda pushy, but a real looker. Got that real desperate air to her, plus I think she's loaded. Should I show her in or tell her to beat it?"
The Simurgh answered. "Show her in, of course. Can you be a doll and make us some coffee?"
Aisha winked at the Simurgh and sashayed back out into the front room.
"Aisha is our secretary," the Simurgh said. "You hired her about half an hour ago."
Lisa's mind caught up, and she mentally revised her catalogue of what she'd done that afternoon. Between telling Taylor about her new business venture and hearing from Legend, she must have run into Aisha—likely at Taylor's bedside, since Imp had developed the habit of reading the Western canon to their unresponsive friend. Aisha didn't seem to mind; Taylor had ignored her back when she'd been conscious, too.
"Hey there, sweetheart," Aisha called over her shoulder on her way to the kitchen and the coffee pot. "Come on in."
The bemused and bearmored woman who poked her head in through the door was Dragon.
"Are you the Simurgh?" she asked, looking at Lisa.
"What?" Lisa exclaimed. She checked her arms just to make sure they were still fleshy and wingless.
"Of Simurgh and Snitch," she said. "The detail-oriented thinker as opposed to Samantha Stewart, the fast one with the wings? Half of the best parahuman detective agency in all the worlds?"
Et tu, Dragon? Lisa closed her eyes, kept them shut for five seconds, and opened them again. "Yes," she said. "I am the Simurgh."
"Defiant and I found this advertisement posted on LeekNet," she said, unfolding a piece of paper. "I asked Contessa about it, but she keeled over and pretended to be asleep. Then I came here and asked Legend, and he pointed me in your direction."
Lisa took the printout and groaned.
Name: Simurgh and Snitch
Location: NYC/NE | א ,ב ,ג ,ד ,ח ,ס
Services Offered:
- Parahuman detectives for all your sleuthing needs.
- Surveillance, process serving, location of missing persons, due diligence, and more.
- We take the cases that no other cape can solve!
At least they sounded enticing. "And you have a case no other cape can solve?"
"Yes."
"I thought you acquired Contessa."
"Well, yes," Dragon said. "But she refuses to get involved with anything on Bet."
Lisa nodded. "Hence the fainting spell. And the Fortunae?"
"The same, except they contrive to collapse into the arms of the Number Man clones. They are all scared of the Simurgh."
"Which is silly," the Simurgh said. "If the Simurgh had any further interest in Contessa, which I am not saying she does or does not because I am not the Simurgh and am merely extrapolating from publicly accessible facts everybody knows about the Simurgh, then no precaution or attempt to keep a low profile could possibly save her."
"An interesting perspective," Dragon said. "But—"
"And if that weren't enough, the Simurgh could easily override the psychic programming Contessa installed in the clone of hers that lives with Legend. Disdainful sniff."
"Duly noted." Dragon shifted her gaze to Lisa. "I'm also here because we are facing a threat that cannot be addressed via conventional or even Contessional means."
Lisa caught herself leaning forward, interested despite her best intentions. Her favorite part of being a cape was revealing how she'd solved the mystery ahead of everyone else, and even before she'd gotten powers she'd always wanted to be a detective.
Well. Not always. There was a time she'd wanted to be a businessman with her dad, a veterinarian, a lawyer, and, of course, a queen (not a princess). That last was pretty silly, in retrospect; she'd been more of a grand vizier type since birth.
Now she was living out her dream, and not even the knowledge she was being manipulated into it by a delusional eldritch nightmare from beyond the stars could alloy her pleasure. "And?" she asked breathlessly.
"It's not the Simurgh, is it?" asked the Simurgh.
"No," Dragon said. "It's something far more bizarre. An epidemic, one without apparent cause and with symptoms that are—well."
If Lisa had been less accustomed to maintaining savoir faire and sangfroid, she'd be dancing from one foot to another in impatience. Instead she forced herself to slouch back in her chair and wait, settling for a smile as Dragon set up a holographic projector on her desk.
With a press of a button, a map of the United States leapt into the air between them. Judging by the fact chunks of the northeastern seaboard were missing, this was Bet's United States. Huge swathes of the country were colored red for destroyed or otherwise uninhabitable regions. Eastern Tennessee and parts of Appalachia, Michigan's lower peninsula and the northern parts of Ohio and Indiana, upstate New York, and a splotch south of where San Francisco used to be leapt out as the consequences of leaving pre-Scion quarantine zones unattended for the first few months after Gold Morning.
"We believe the first case was in Florida," Dragon said, and a little blue star popped up above Palm Bay. "Four months ago, a woman went wading at the beach, refused to leave for two days, and finally collapsed into a coma."
A second blue star appeared above Oahu. "The next case we can find occurred a week later. Identical series of events: a woman went to the beach, stood in the water for two days, and collapsed into a coma."
"It got worse," Dragon continued as fifteen more blue stars appeared along coastlines from the Florida Keys to Fairbanks, "but communications around Bet are still in shambles. Everyone who witnessed it thought it was isolated, and the only reason we realized it was happening was that it spread to capes. Even then, the Galveston branch of the Wardens didn't have the resources to realize that Hoyden was one of many."
She stopped her briefing to look at Tattletale. "Are you getting anything?" she asked.
As dozens more stars appeared, Lisa's power began to feed her information about how Dragon had made the display. If there was a pattern, her power couldn't figure it out yet. She shook her head.
Dragon frowned. A frown, simulated by a subroutine she wasn't even paying attention to; an emotion expressed because Lisa's was not the answer she'd wanted; not the answer she wanted, but she didn't come here just for that answer; she was here because she wasn't truly human and they thought that might make her immune to the affliction; Dragon was not human, and neither was the Simurgh; she'd come here because she thought the Simurgh might serve as a greater asset than Tattletale.
Lisa's heart began to race, and she felt her lips stretch into a wider smile.
"Narwhal's collapse last Tuesday convinced the Wardens to ask me to look into it, but we didn't realize the full extent of the problem until yesterday afternoon."
Five blue stars appeared over New York, and the map winked out. It was replaced by a video. "Live footage from a drone at Brighton Beach," Dragon explained. "They've been standing there for twenty-eight and a half hours."
Five women stood placidly a few feet from the shore, the surf splashing about their ankles. They stood, smiling vacantly at nothing with blank eyes. Lisa recognized them all: Laserdream, Vista, Victoria Dallon, Citrine, and—
The door flew open. Lisa needed the assistance of her power to realize the Simurgh had opened it telekinetically to prevent the distraught young woman on the other side from breaking it down.
"Sabah's gone crazy," Foil sobbed.