Lisa had ninety-nine problems, and living with the Simurgh was all of them.
As soon as her roommate and Dragon had departed for the unaccountably engrossing beach, she had started to piece together what she could from the files the AI had left behind.
Unfortunately, she had not gotten very far. The store of dark red yarn she kept in her desk, so critical in helping her visualize all the information her power fed her, was now deplenished because Ziz had decided to knit David an ugly sweater.
Not one to be deterred, Lisa went to their supply closet to get more and discovered she had a hundredth problem.
She couldn't get to the rest of her yarn—or her sticky notes, pushpins, pens, spare corkboards, or any of the other necessities of her work—because someone had put cloning vats in her supply closet.
The identity of the culprit wasn't a mystery. Her motivations and methods were.
She pulled out her phone and called her partner. "Sam," she said, before the Simurgh could greet her.
"Hello, Lisa. I am not having a good time at the beach. Don't come. You will not have fun."
"I don't want to go to the beach, I want to know why my supply closet is full of pickled babies."
"They aren't pickled, Lisa."
Lisa stared at the bubbles frothing in one of the cylinders. "I grant you they aren't kosher."
"They're growing, which I believe you will agree is the opposite of being pickled. Precision in language is extremely important, and I don't want this to be misunderstood."
"Why is our supply closet full of growing babies, then? And why did you use my closet to do it?"
"We will have to postpone this discussion. It is not relevant to our case."
"It's in my way. And my closet."
"Also," Aisha said, loudly enough that the phone's mic would pick up her words, "It's, like, super creepy."
"Very well, Lisa. If you insist, I will interrupt critical investigative work in order to be interrogated about my parenting methods."
There was an expectant pause.
"Obviously I insist," Lisa snapped.
"Would you grill me so closely if I were a single father?"
"That's some bullshit."
"Derisive sniff indicating disbelief but ultimate acquiescence of the fact I cannot root out your internalized misogyny in the space of a single phone conversation," the Simurgh said. "Very well, I am concerned about David's social development. He requires playmates his own age, peers he can learn from. It's hard enough having a single mother, and being an only child on top of that can only make things worse."
Lisa's eyes moved from the reedy blond kid on her left to the square-jawed boy on her right.
"Does Legend know about this?"
"Does who know about what?"
So that was a no. "Look," she said. "Sam, I know you worry about David. I know you want to make sure that he's happy and turns out all right. But you need to not stash cloned parahumans in my flat-slash-office."
Her partner's response took far longer than was actually required to type her answers. "Don't look under your bed."
Lisa hung up on the Simurgh.
She slid her hand in between Hero and Legend and yanked a skein of yarn out, then slammed the closet door.
The Number Man was on the other side.
"Jesus!" she yelped.
"Have you tried telling her that clones won't solve all her problems?" he asked.
"Does that work?"
He seemed to think about it. "No."
"What does work?"
"Very little," he said. Then he seemed to think better of it. "Nothing, in my experience. It's best to accept things, even when such things include a horde of unmanageable eight year olds. The extent to which precognition can enable pettiness renders resistance futile."
"How can you live like that?"
"There are perquisites."
"Alexandria is under your bed," Aisha announced.
"That's happened to me," the Number Man said.
"Oh, yeah?" Aisha said. She leaned forward. "Tell me more."
The Number Man smiled; it might, if he had a smaller stick up his ass or more than a quarter of a personality, have had the potential to be a grin. Then he turned from Aisha to the wall. "What have you ascertained?"
"I think it's targeted," Lisa said.
"Easily deduced from the fact that only women have been affected."
"Not what I meant, H-Zero," she said, determined to annoy him as much as he'd annoyed her. It was easy, since he was eight hundred times fussier than she was. "Look at the distribution of attacks."
The Number Man took in her map at a glance. "Every major settlement remaining on the continent, including inland locations. Yet I was informed that the victims were attracted to shorelines."
"In the cases the heroes noticed, yes, but they got stuck on 'beach' and didn't look further. Where there weren't beaches to visit, the targets sought out lakes and rivers. I believe the important element is water, not the setting."
"An incubation period," the Number Man suggested. "As though for an illness?"
"I'm thinking so."
"Potential vectors?" he asked.
"That's what I'm trying to work out. It's not obviously physical. Visual contagion, prior acquaintance, and blood relations are also out."
"What about previous sexual relations?" Aisha asked with an exaggerated leer. Her blonde wig was askance.
Lisa looked at her, weary. "I said prior acquaintance was out."
"Fact," Aisha said. "You don't have to know people to have sex with them. Ask me how I know."
"Go away," Lisa said.
The Number Man looked a little surprised. "I can leave, if you insist," he said. "But I don't believe that's a wise course of action."
Lisa gave him a funny look. "What?"
He furrowed his brow, mirroring her own confusion. "No matter. Do you have a theory?"
"Whatever it is, it's probably able to hit everyone because it's already everywhere. I wonder if Scion made it—something lingering, to go after any survivors."
"That doesn't line up with what Valkyrie told the Wardens about his intentions. He would always have left some of us alive, although we had our doubts about the long-term viability of the species, at least on Bet, in spite of what little restraint he would exercise."
"I have an alternative hypothesis that accounts for that," Lisa said. "Scion was kind of a douche."
He winced at the vulgarity. The little niceties mattered to him—no, her power corrected her. Pretending the little niceties mattered to him was what mattered to him. A rabid wolf wearing a collar with a little bone-shaped nametag saying Accountant, Domesticated on the front and If found, return to Fate on the back.
"Fine, then. He could have still kept some of humanity alive without having to rely on anybody from Bet. There are probably dimensions that he never bothered interfering with, and he could have used them for his backup in continuing the cycle. No reason to rule him out."
But Lisa could tell that he didn't truly believe in Scion as a possibility, and she said as much.
He conceded the point. "Dragon is naturally concerned about the Simurgh's presence here, particularly among so many capes. We all are, although of course there is nothing we can do about it."
"And if by 'the Simurgh' you mean—" Lisa began, but the sound of her corkboard crashing to the floor interrupted her. He jumped back, but not fast enough. The board landed on the toe of one of his shoes.
"Ah. I should have anticipated that." He extricated his foot and winced again, not from pain, but from noticing that the shoe had been scuffed. More pretense that he'd kept up for so long he almost thought it wasn't pretense. "Recall what I said about precognition being an avenue for petty retaliation. One's glasses are not precisely where one left them the previous evening. One finds the shower slightly too cold to be comfortable. One is given a perfect cup of coffee, only to later discover that every restroom within a reasonable distance is occupied when one most needs it."
"Corkboards fall on one's shoes?"
He nodded—then added, a little hastily, "I do not, of course, intend to imply that your human business partner, notable flesh-and-blood woman Samantha Stewart, has precognitive capabilities. I merely make an observation about learning to expect unexpected inconvenience should compliance not be on one's agenda. And speaking of agendas, let's return to ours. The list of people we know about who could have done such a thing is very short, and the Simurgh is at the top of the list."
The pause that followed was fraught.
"But," Lisa said, and waited.
Nothing else fell.
"The Simurgh disappeared," she concluded.
"Yes," the Number Man agreed, "and her current whereabouts are truly a mystery we may never solve."
"I don't think I have any special insight into that particular question," Lisa said carefully. "But if I were to examine her known flight path prior to her inexplicable disappearance and compare it to the map I have…"
"Yes?"
"I would get absolutely nowhere. The Simurgh did fly over every point the infection has manifested since Gold Morning, but she also covered every other inch of the globe. There is no way to say if she did or did not do it based on where she was at a given time."
They thought about this for a minute or so—in silence.
"Who else do you think might have the potential behind it?"
"Riley Davis," Lisa said. "She's with you, isn't she?"
"She is," he conceded. Her power indicated he didn't think Bonesaw had anything to do with the epidemic and, with Contessa in his corner, he was likely right. "The Wardens are unhappy about that."
Lisa reflected that the Wardens were unhappy about whatever they were helpless to control, which was everything. She made a mental note to share the observation with Legend the next time she saw him.
"Amelia Lavere," she went on. "Also with you?"
"We have a loose alliance with her father, but they spend most of their time on Gimel. If she is responsible, she must have initiated the plague before leaving Bet. However, I don't think she would do that."
He was probably right. She had threatened to spread plagues, but it had only ever been a threat. The one widely distributed modification she had made was a counter-plague, a cure.
They went down the remainder of the list, which only had three increasingly unlikely suspects. Lisa was convinced the frustrating lack of results had to mean Scion, but the Number Man didn't seem to want to believe that.
Neither did she, but facts didn't care about their feelings. Or whatever the Number Man had that he claimed passed for feelings.
The Simurgh called and spoke before Lisa could say hello. "We have removed the patients from the beach and transferred them to a secure hospital. Dragon and I will remain in the facility until it is confirmed that we cannot transmit it. Would you be willing to take care of David until then?"
Lisa was not willing to take care of David until then or any other time. "Sure," she said, lest a refusal bring Tara-Tohu back into their apartment. One of them was enough. "What can you tell me so far?"
"We will know more once the results of the blood tests are in, but we've been able to determine it's mechanical rather than biological."
"That expands the suspect pool to every tinker. Helpful."
"Not any tinker," the Number Man interjected. "If I'm following correctly, this is self-maintaining, self-replicating, and self-spreading. That puts it outside the scope of what the majority are capable of."
"You know that Dragon fits those criteria."
"I do," Dragon said.
"You're on speaker, Lisa," the Simurgh said.
Lisa pinched the bridge of her nose. "Thanks for the warning, Sam. I know you couldn't have known I'd be wanting it in advance."
"I do the best I can, considering I do not have precognitive abilities."
"We know," Lisa said. "You don't have to prove it."
"I'm not upset," Dragon interjected, overriding whatever game the Simurgh had been trying to play there. "I'm one of the first people I would suspect, too."
"But you aren't behind this," the Simurgh said. "I'm sure of it."
Despite knowing she shouldn't trust the Simurgh further than she could throw her, Lisa still found herself trusting her assessment on a gut level.
"Could you be—" Lisa said, then thought better of it.
"Hacked," the Simurgh said. "Tattletale was going to ask you if you could be hacked."
"I thought you couldn't tell the future."
"I can form logical connections. Dragon is open to being compromised in a way that flesh and blood humans like you and I are not. It would make sense to ask."
"Yes," Lisa said, "I was going to ask you if you could be hacked but thought it might be insensitive."
"It is," Dragon said. Unlike the Simurgh, her voice program was advanced enough to sound amused.
"I hope you feel terrible for even thinking of asking," the Simurgh said. "It was very unprofessional and reflects negatively on Simurgh and Snitch."
"I will flagellate myself tonight," Lisa promised.
"Ha!" Imp interjected, appearing from nowhere.
"Not funny. So, Dragon, can you be hacked? Does what Saint did count?"
Dragon's tone grew more serious. "He had access to both my father's code and someone who could turn him into a tinker, and Defiant and I both knew about it and fixed it. I think one or both of us would notice whether something was using me to spread a plague."
You didn't know that Saint had access to you before he shut you down, Lisa thought. She also noticed that Dragon had attempted to pin the threat on two people who were now dead—Saint and Teacher—but in doing so she'd confirmed that Defiant could alter her.
She didn't voice that thought and instead chose to ask after the dead megalomaniac. "Could Teacher have installed something that would make you unconsciously kick something like this off in case you broke free?"
"I don't believe so, but I'll ask Colin to look."
The Simurgh assured Lisa that she'd call back when there was more to report and ended the call.
Lisa looked to the Number Man. "Would Contessa know if Dragon had been compromised?"
Instead of answering, he picked up the board that had absolutely not collapsed due to the Simurgh's influence. As he set it back into place, her eye just so happened to fall on Nashville, and went from there to Chattanooga to Knoxville and saw an empty hole. One of her pins had fallen out, and she stooped to pick it up.
She pushed it back in.
Eagleton.
"Oh," she said.
The Number Man followed her gaze with pinpoint precision. "The Machine Army," he said. "Microscopic, self-replicating tinkertech. I suppose some seeds escaped Eagleton during Gold Morning. Perhaps Scion even spread some intentionally."
She dismissed the idea out of hand. "It doesn't explain the water."
"To throw us off the scent." He thought something was funny, but her power didn't give her any hints as to what.
What she knew about the Machine Army was very vague, but she had thought it was largely a semi-sentient string of tiny robots that existed primarily to make more of themselves. If it had escaped Eagleton, it would surely have destroyed everything in its path rather than slowly mimic a virus.
"What the fuck is going on?" she asked.
"Screwfly," Aisha said.
"I think you mean 'shoo,'" Lisa said. "As in shoo, Aisha, I'm trying to figure out—"
"You mean you haven't already? I have. Must mean I'm smarter than you."
"Would you care to enlighten us?" she snapped. Then she regretted the sharpness of her tone, not because snapping wasn't fair to Aisha, but because it further revealed her weakness.
Aisha threw up her hands. "Woah there. I didn't say you were stupid, I said I'm smarter than you, which—because you are very smart—means I'm a goddamned genius."
"At everything but explaining, I take it?" Lisa asked.
Aisha rushed over to the bag she'd brought with her and withdrew an anthology of science fiction stories with a smug flourish. "Toldja," she said. "Certified genius."
"Who's the certifying authority?" Lisa asked, seizing the book that was being thrust in her face. She opened the volume and a piece of parchment paper fell out, but the Number Man caught it and turned it over to Lisa without reading it himself.
Lisa sensed that putting off looking at the contents of the book itself would annoy Aisha, so she slowly examined the paper. It was embossed with a red seal and read, in overdone calligraphy: Certificate of Genius, presented on this 15th day of September in the year of our Lord 2014, to Aisha Laborn.
"There's something on the back," the Number Man said, even though Lisa already knew because she'd seen it when it was falling.
Still, she flipped it over.
"I am. - S."