Signal to Noise
04
Looking up at the house from the outside—entirely too large for one person—I hummed. "I'll take it."
It had been a week since my last… incident with the PRT and I was now a free man.
Woman.
Girl.
Whatever.
I was free, that's what mattered. Emancipated, GED under my belt, and with nothing but time on my hands and lots of money to play with.
"You're sure? You could get something closer," Sarah offered, and I shook my head.
"It's fine. Besides, this is in a good area." The blonde shot me a flat look. "What?"
Sighing, she pulled out her phone and tapped away at it for a moment before passing it over. Looking over it, I found what looked like a mapping app showing our current position, overlaid with large swatches of color—red, yellow, green, orange, blue, even a small circle of purple. We were in the red area, away from all the other colors, but closest to the purple—which itself was surrounded by a sea of red but closely bordered orange. "Okay…?"
A long finger pointed to the map, settling on the purple circle. "This is us. New Wave's territory, as recognized by the gangs. This," she pointed to the arrow denoting our current position, "is outside of our territory. It's Empire territory. Orange here is Coil. He generally doesn't start problems with people living in his territory. The green is ABB, yellow Merchants, Blue Protectorate/PRT."
I sent the blonde a raised eyebrow. "I'm as far away from the other gangs as I can get and not be either in your territory or outside the city. Much as I like hanging out with you guys, I'd rather not rely entirely on you. And if I've got to live somewhere, so I might as well choose the lesser of five evils."
Sarah frowned, then brought her finger up to tap just under my right eye. I blinked. "Oh." I was suddenly reminded of the fact that I had glowing eyes that gave me away to anyone who cared to look. "Shit."
"Mhmm," Sarah nodded. "Now, come on. I think there's a place for sale in our neighborhood. It'll cost more, but it'll be worth it."
"Fine," I grunted and allowed myself to be led back to the car. "So much for online house shopping."
Sarah chuckled quietly as she started the car and got us moving, out of the nice but apparently not-entirely-safe-for-me neighborhood and back towards her own little slice of Brockton Bay. "We should talk." I raised an eyebrow and waited. "About what sort of cape you want to be."
"The kind that Tinkers all the things," I answered, calling up my holographic projection… holographic computer? Holocom. There, I made a word.
I was interrupted from opting out of conversation by a slap at the wrist. "No Tinkering in the car."
"So violent," I grumbled, but shut off the holocom. Instead, I turned my eyes to the scenery passing by outside. Nice houses, lawns covered in a dusting of snow, some places still had Christmas decorations out.
"I meant, are you planning to go out and fight crime? Show up to Endbringer battles? Or are you the 'sit in a lab' type?" Sarah clarified.
Humming, I considered it. "I'd prefer the lab, but… well, if I could do more I wouldn't mind. And going out and breaking my foot off in an ass or two every now and then would be a nice way to work off stress."
"You'll need a costume, then," she pointed out. "And… well, you should consider making a few public appearances with us. Patrols, that sort of thing."
"Basically, a giant neon warning that if someone fucks with me, you get involved?"
Sarah nodded. "Pretty much, yeah. How do you feel about spandex?"
"I'm not an exhibitionist like you," I snarked. "How about power armor?"
"Go for it," she smiled, slowing the car. "Keep a lookout. I know I saw a 'for sale' sign around here somewhere."
I paid half attention to the street as I began thinking over costume designs. 'No, costume second. Name first. What goes good with 'Wavelength?''
I could think of a few things, but there was time for that later. "Found it," I pointed down the street, on the right side.
"Ah ha!" Sarah crowed, pulling up to the house in question and taking out her phone. "Now, let's see if the realtor is available."
As it turned out, she was.
The house was nice. One previous owner, an elderly veteran. One story, three bed, two bath, plus basement. Red brick exterior, warm wood interior glossed to a sheen, fireplace, high ceiling, skylight in the living room. Huge master bedroom with attached oversized bath. It came with furniture and had been cleaned and aired out. The only reason it wasn't selling was, well, Brockton Bay and the fact that the previous owner had passed in his sleep and some idiot left an online review about 'bad spiritual vibes' or some tripe.
I was in love the moment I saw it.
"Knock 25% off the top of whatever you're asking and I'll take it today," I offered, after I'd had the tour.
Apparently, I got ripped off, according to Sarah—I could've asked for half off and they would've gladly taken it. Oh well. Win some, lose some.
A couple of hours spent signing paperwork and talking with the bank to transfer the money later got me a deed locked away in a safety deposit box and the keys in my pocket. Since I was emancipated and of legal age, I convinced Sarah that our next stop should be at the DMV. If we were getting things done today, then I wanted to be able to do the rest myself tomorrow. More time was spent sitting around and waiting for other people, but eventually I was given a written and a driving test, had a picture taken, and was issued a license.
Next stop, new car.
"Ugh. Finally," I groaned , closing the front door of my new home behind me. I was full from one of Sarah's homecooked meals, the Tinker curse was satisfied for the moment, and I just wanted to go to bed.
On the other hand, I hadn't Tinkered all day so I was still fresh, and if I didn't get something done now it would just be time wasted. I had learned the hard way, after getting back to the Pelham's once I'd finished my second involuntary stay with the PRT, that drunk!John had fucked me over again. In order to pay for everything, he'd taken the 'Psychic Nosebleed' drawback. Found that out the first time I went on a good, long Tinkering bender. I eventually developed a migraine that kicked my ass and, when I tried to push through it, sprang a leak and passed out.
Eric heard the clatter as I fell off my chair and got his parents involved, who in turn called for Amy. I was then banned from Tinkering for twenty-four hours and, once she was sure I wouldn't pop a blood vessel in my brain, ordered to no more than eight hours of Tinkering a day—or, failing that, to stop immediately when my head started hurting.
Having the world's most versatile and strongest Tinker power only to have it hamstrung and limited felt like a kick in the dick.
Cunt.
Whatever.
So, I had to find other ways to make my power work for me or to otherwise ease the burden of using it. Luckily, a direct neural interface helped with that some. Once I got the hang of it, it allowed me to work much faster… but at the risk of burning out much faster in a day as well, if I wasn't careful. I'd found that forcing myself to take a two or so hour break every four hours helped, and would buy me about four hours more Tinkering time.
The biggest benefit I'd found to working with my power was that it didn't require much in the way of materials, if I did it right. If I kept attaching waveforms to the carrier wave halo and using captured energy to power it, I really only needed some way to add new waveforms so long as I was planning to work only with energy constructs—which I had, now. But that was for personal use. I couldn't exactly sell that sort of thing. If I wanted salable goods, or pretty much anything physical, I needed actual components and materials. I already had a few ideas for things that I could turn into almost pure profit, but it would require first making the tools to put them together—tools to make the tools again. In this case, fabrication units.
Unfortunately, the more complex a thing I was trying to build, the more the effort and time requirements scaled up. A fabber would help some in that regard, but I still had to put the actual plans to paper—or digital format, close enough—and that was a task in and of itself.
My first true consumer-directed product, for instance, was a Wavelength-based Tinkertech computer. I could already see the thing in my head: a metal cube, two inches to a side, with a single USB port. Four raised dots on any other face would act as contacts for a 'wireless' wall charger/dock that it would sit in—on average, it'd have twenty hours worth of battery life before needing to be recharged. A button in the center of every face except the USB side would function as an on/off switch, camera, and microphone. Fully holographic interface including keyboard, mouse, and touch capability. Full voice recognition. Output capable of generating true to life 3D images, if anyone else ever got around to producing the tech, otherwise it'd just spit out plain 2D. Ridiculous audio output for what it was, but then space whale Tinker magic. Wireless internet, radio, and television receivers.
The problem with that was, it was basically nine or ten projects in one and days worth of my Tinkering time. Some of it, I could copy/paste from what I'd already made for myself which would cut time off of it. Other parts, like the audio output, would be incorporated into my own setup. Still, I was at least a day or two out on being able to call it done… then I needed to build the fabber that would be able to spit them out. Which was days worth of Tinkering…
Considering the task before me, I decided that I really needed a new project to work on—something different. Simple. Easy to make in a single sitting. Something that would do wonders for increasing my sense of safety now that I found myself lying alone, naked, in the dark, in an empty home and wearing an unfamiliar body—well, mostly unfamiliar. I was annoyed to find that I was coming to recognize Claire's face in the mirror as my own. It worried me that I wasn't sure if that was from Claire's memories, exposure, or adapting to the new environment.
"Fuck it. Death ray laser it is," I muttered, yawning and closing my eyes as I dipped into the neural interface and started coding. I already had energy at this point. Not as much as I'd like, and not nearly enough output to deal with high-rated Brutes, rage dragons, or power armor, let alone Endbringers… but that was a problem for another day. It would dissuade mooks or non-Brutes, however—and could be easily scaled to a larger power source—so there was no point in not doing it. And in the end, all that mattered was more dakka—or any dakka at all, really.
I had, frankly, a lot of options for lasers, including the output color—but for the moment, I chose the 'most bang for my buck' option from the 'explodey laser' category, meaning that it would fire immediately and detonate on impact. Lower penetration, but higher damage against unarmored targets. Output color, I set to a bright red. The question of how I wanted to mount it came up—again, with way more options than I really needed.
Why would I need a ship mount when I planned to use it as a personal defense weapon? Sighing quietly, I considered just mounting it to a wrist before deciding against it. Instead, I put in the work to get it to essentially orbit me, waiting for input, and fire at targets based on eye tracking. If I wanted anything else other than either point-and-shoot or eye tracking, I was going to have to code some sort of target detection algorithm, and that would take all night.
'A project for later,' I decided.
Eventually, I finished up and called it a night. I could go test my explodey death ray laser tomorrow.
Something was wrong.
I wrinkled my nose, sitting up with a hacking cough. "Why do I smell gas?"
Opening my eyes, I caught sight of a shadow moving in the dark of my bedroom.
I heard a thump!thwack! that came so close together as to be one sound, and the right side of my chest erupted into agony as it felt like something kicked me back down into the bed. I couldn't draw breath to scream, I could only lay there as a silent sob tore its way out of my throat. Mostly silent—I thought I made out a sort of hiss and popping, like bubbles. My hands came up, curling around the thing protruding from my—Claire's—right breast. I knew it by feel—I'd pulled enough of them out of targets or deer. 'Oh fuck me. That's a fucking crossbow bolt.'
There was only one person in Brockton Bay I knew of who used a crossbow. I had thought, after the last round of trouble with the PRT, that Sophia had been disciplined or put under some sort of watch, but the PRT hadn't really given us much on what her punishment was. I had thought that I'd seen the last of her. Apparently, I was mistaken.
The bedroom light clicked on and I quickly sent the mental command to turn on my halo's recording functions. Standing near the door, gas can at her feet and crossbow in her free hand, was Shadow Stalker's cloaked form. Reaching up, she removed the mask she wore—that of a woman's face—and sneered. "You ruined my life, you nosy cunt. If you had just walked the fuck away in that hallway, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Now? Now I'm on fucking probation for life. I have to join the Protectorate, or I get to sit in a cell for the next twenty years. Those fuckers at the PRT chipped my fucking arm so they'd know where I was!"
She yanked off a glove, exposing a fresh, bloody cut and messy stitching. "You destroyed my life, so I'm doing the same for you. I'm going to burn down you and everything you have. And just to make sure you don't pull some Tinker bullshit to get out of it, well, you're probably going to drown on your own blood in the next few minutes since that was a mechanical broadhead, even if you survive the fire. You shouldn't have fucked with me, bitch."
"Done. Monologuing?" I croaked out, stifling a whimper as the pain spiked and the world blurred.
Sophia snorted, then pulled on her mask. "Yeah. I'm done. Just thought you should know." She fished out a lighter from a pocket and reached down to touch it to the floor. "Burn in hell."
The lighter clicked and fire jumped across the floor and spread to the walls. Sophia walked calmly to my left, towards the exterior wall—likely intending to simply phase through.
I didn't bother with witty retorts—didn't have the time or the breath for it. A blink-wink brought up my targeting display. Focusing on Sophia's head drew a circle around it. A double blink confirmed target. Right index touched right thumb.
Blinding red light filled the room, overwhelming that of the fire and temporarily whiting out my sight—then the beam exploded, the sound like Zeus' own thunderbolt in the space of my bedroom, and I felt something in my ears tear, felt more than heard something fall apart somewhere nearby. When my sight cleared, I found that most of the fire had been put out by the explosion, but what hadn't been put out still had enough fuel to begin spreading. The entire wall Sophia had been standing in front of had been blown out, along with the ceiling above her, floor below her, and large holes knocked into the walls around her. There was no body visible, but I thought I saw a chunk of something that looked like bone and blood on the floor.
Slowly, carefully, I stood on shaky feet and shambled to the hole in the exterior wall. A look outside and I found Sophia's body—or what was left of it. It was gone from the waist up and the rest was a cauterized lump of flesh. Shaking my head, I turned back to the fire. 'I've got no way to put that out. God damnit, and I liked this place.'
Tapping into my neural interface, I slipped on shoes, pulled a blanket off the bed, and carefully made my way outside. As I did, I pulled up my phone interface and dialed Sarah.
"Claire?" she answered on the first ring. "Did you hear that explosion? It sounded like it came—"
"Was. Me." I coughed. "Attacked. Need Amy. 'm shot. House on fire."
"Oh God. Hang on, we'll be right there!"
Sarah hung up. I closed the phone interface and pulled the blanket around me, then sat down. The snow was cold on my ass under the blanket, but the fire behind me was spreading and currently warm enough. 'I wonder if they'll give me a refund? I haven't had this thing a full day and already it's going up in smoke. If not, well, good thing I purchased home insurance with a 'cape damage' clause. …And I'm getting loopy. Shock and/or blood loss. Focus. Stay awake. Don't move too much. Amy will be here soon.'
My interface chimed and I frowned as it alerted me to a signal coming from nearby. Very nearby. Turning on the tracking function, I tilted my head until Sophia's corpse came fully into view and the tracker showed that I was looking at the source of the signal. 'Cell phone? Must be. Can I hack it from here?' I wondered.
I had to do something to keep my mind occupied, keep me awake until Amy—or at least an EMT—could get here. My own first aid skill told me that I was doing all I could at the moment by keeping pressure on the wound, sitting upright, keeping myself from passing out, and leaving the bolt the fuck alone until someone else could try to remove it.
A few mental commands initiated a connection to the phone. A few more put my alien space whale 'Hacking' skill magic to the test, cracking the phone, then I copied its contents over and began perusing it. Texts to Emma and Madison about Taylor—very incriminating. More texts, more recent, about me too—bragging about getting me foamed and M/S'd twice. These went to Madison as well, now that the brunette knew Sophia was Shadow Stalker. Most recent texts bitching about legal issues. Call log showed a call tonight.
I told my interface to spoof Sophia's number and dialed. It picked up on the first ring.
"Calvert."
I growled, which caused me to cough up blood.
"I believe you have the wrong number."
The phone disconnected.
Before I could consider what the hell I was going to do now, a wave of awe washed over me. Looking up, I spotted a head of blonde hair flying in—Vicky, carrying Amy bridal. She paused several yards off the ground as she caught sight of the body, and the awe shifted to dread. Once more, I was two inches tall and my body was moving on its own as I pushed back against the ground, kicking, scooting away. The blanket came off but I barely noticed. The only thing behind me was a burning house, but even that was safer—
Blink-wink, red circle, double blink, thumb to—
"Vicky! Stop!"
The aura cut off, I think. I also think I might have pissed myself, just before passing out or doing something I might regret.
And then I was awake again, coughing and freezing my titties off, the only real warmth that of a warm hand on my chest. "It's okay. You're okay," a quiet voice murmured, and my wild eyes locked on the green eyed form of Amy leaning into my personal space. She turned away. "Blanket," she demanded, and a moment later something rough but warm was thrown over me. She turned back and smiled. "We need to stop meeting like this."
I raised an eyebrow. "Naked and hurt/dying? I'd love to." Closing my eyes for a moment, I took a few breaths before I whispered, "Thanks, Amy. Remind me to make you something nice. Want a new phone? Computer? Death ray lasers? You name it."
"Excuse me," a voice from nearby said, drawing our attention. I looked up and spotted a man dressed like some sort of Roman centurion, with faint arcs of lightning coming off his boots and something at his side. Claire's memories pegged him as Dauntless. "I… really hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but," he sighed, bringing a hand up to scratch at the back of his head. "Is she well enough to travel? We have to bring her in."
I frowned, but before I could say anything, a blonde in a skintight suit stepped up, putting herself between me and Dauntless. I had to say, Carol looked good in pseudo-spandex. That ass looked very tight and firm, and those legs seemed to go on for miles. Sarah had her beat, but not by much. "No. As her legal counsel and as a member of New Wave, I'm assuming custody of her until such time as we can meet with the director and work out what happened here. The last two times Ms. Carnelian was in your custody, she was foamed and subjected to abuse and civil rights violations. We won't be going for round three."
Dauntless winced. "Look Carol, I understand how you feel. I agree, to a point. She's gotten a bad deal all around here since she triggered. But we've got a dead Ward here," he said, gesturing towards where I saw a second ambulance and a small figure loaded in the back and covered in a sheet. "Not just dead, but disintegrated from the waist up. That is beyond the pale for lethal force."
Carol hesitated before shaking her head. "What was Shadow Stalker doing here? In someone else's home—that was on fire? Why did we find Claire with a crossbow bolt in her lung? Glory Girl had to punch it out the other side and it tore a chunk out the size of her fist. We still have it, Dauntless. Stalker wasn't shooting tranqs, she was using a mechanical hunting broadhead."
"We don't know, Brandish. That's the problem. I'll be the first to admit that Stalker violated orders, and her parole, and went off-grid. As for what happened here, that's what we intend to find out. But we can't have a murder suspect running around free. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt, but she's already killed once before," Dauntless argued. "Twice is starting to look like a pattern, to the higher ups."
"Do I get a say in this?" I asked.
"No," Carol immediately denied.
"Yes," Dauntless answered at the same time. He quickly spoke over Carol before she could bull over him. "Look, I'm not the bad guy here. If you can convince me you're not a threat, I'll kick that up the chain to my superiors. Go ahead, please."
Nodding, I tapped into my neural interface. "I have recordings," I said, pulling up the recordings and dumping them into the holographic output for my old haptic interface. A three dimensional image sprang to life between us, taken from just above my point of view. It showed me sitting in the bed, pale and naked but covered from the waist down in a blanket, with a crossbow bolt sticking out of my right tit like the world's worst piercing.
Across from recorded me, standing beside a gas can, Sophia unmasked herself. "You ruined my life, you nosy cunt—"
I let the video play out, pausing it only when Dauntless held up a hand when I blasted her. "Why did you wait for her to turn her back?"
"She can phase. I didn't know how much power the laser had—I just made it tonight, so it's untested. I wanted to make sure it hit and that she couldn't escape, or finish the job. If it had just knocked her out, I'd have called Sarah and had New Wave come pick her up and take her into custody. And in my defense, she tried to assassinate me, admitted it on camera, and left me to die a slow, painful death either by drowning in my own blood or burning. What I did was self-defense—just as surely as pulling a handgun from my night stand and emptying the magazine into her would have been. The only difference here is that if I'd have tried it while she was looking, she'd have just gone shadow, let the bullets pass through her, then put another bolt in me to finish the job."
Dauntless frowned, crossing his arms as he considered it. After a moment, he nodded slowly. "Okay. You've convinced me. Now, I just need to convince—" he paused, bringing a hand up to his ear and turning slightly away. "Dauntless here, Console. Repeat that last transmission."
I shot a look at Carol, who shrugged. Quietly, she said, "I wish you hadn't shot her, but I understand why you did. No more untested, potentially-lethal tech for you, young lady."
"Yes, mom," I sighed, earning a muffled giggle from Amy, who hadn't left my side since she'd healed me. In fact, "Amy?" I asked, looking down. "Why are you fondling me in public?"
Carol turned a sharp look on her adoptive daughter, who had the decency to blush and pull her hand away like it was on fire. "I was monitoring your vitals to make sure you were okay, then Dauntless came and distracted me. That's all!"
Turning an amused look on her, I said, "I think I'll let it pass this time. You did save my life." Thinking on it, I looked around and asked, "Where's Vicky? I think I owe her something nice, too. Not nearly as nice as yours, since this is the second time she's hit me with that damn aura, but still nice."
"Glory Girl went on patrol," Carol answered. "Lady Photon and Shielder are with her." Sighing, she added, "I think, based on what Amy said, she may be feeling a bit guilty about jumping to conclusions."
Dauntless turned back around. "Two things. First, you weren't Stalker's first stop tonight. Emergency services received a call shortly after the explosion about a shooting not too far from here. Shot in the back with a crossbow bolt while he was eating dinner. The head of the Dockworker's Association, apparently. His daughter found him."
Carol clicked her fingers twice, a look of concentration crossing her face. "Don? Dan? Danny?"
"Danny Hebert," I answered. "Father to Taylor Hebert. The girl Hess locked in a locker full of filth and caused to trigger." I suppose that meant she went after Taylor first. If I recalled correctly, she would have still been figuring her powers out and was most likely out of the house.
"Well, shit," Dauntless grunted. "That makes what comes next even harder. HQ still wants you brought in."
"No," Carol denied. "She's in New Wave's custody. Consider her under house arrest—"
The centurion shook his head. "I can't do that, Carol. Please, don't make this any harder than it has to be."
I cut in before the argument could devolve. "If I go willingly, will you guarantee they won't foam me and throw me in isolation again?"
Wincing, Dauntless said, "Well, I can guarantee they won't foam you."
"I sense a 'but' coming," I said, dread seeping in.
"That's because they're worried you're going to try to break out. They know you can somehow Tinker without equipment, so they want to," he ran a hand over his covered face, breathing out a frustrated sigh. "They want to put you in a medically induced coma—"
I didn't hear anything else after that. Just tones and volume. Carol shouting. Dauntless calmly trying to reason with her. Amy's hand stroking my back. I was too busy dipping into my neural interface.
'Flight via gravity redirection. My power siphoning waveform already eats light for fuel and data, expand that and you've got poor man's invisibility—though, how it doesn't just make a big black hole in thin air instead of actual invisibility, I have no idea, beyond 'space whale magic.' Kinetic energy absorption is just a step away from absorbing other forms of energy—'
My vision swam and my head throbbed, a trail of blood sliding from my nose. Amy moved slowly, observing me, her body blocking me from Dauntless' sight. "Claire," she muttered. Her hand touched mine and the headache went away. I smiled in thanks and dug deeper. Faster.
'Energy shields, easy, just a retasking of the hardlight projector for my haptic interface with more power dumped into it. While I'm at it, may as well retask those projectors to make clothes. Target detection and tracking algorithm.'
"Ms. Carnelian?" Dauntless asked, gently pushing Amy to the side. He frowned at the leftover blood trickling from my nose. "I'm going to escort you to the PRT headquarters now. You said you would come along peacefully, right?"
"Who is 'Calvert?'" I asked, instead.
The centurion paused, tilting his head to one side. "A contractor for the PRT, I think. Why?"
"He made the last call to Hess' phone. Sorry, I hacked in and pulled her data. Called the number and he picked up. Listen," I said, playing back the recording. When it was finished, I said, "So you can understand my reticence to go with you. You I trust—you seem like a good guy, even if you're being forced to follow orders you don't like. My problem is, something stinks at PRTHQ, and I'm not sure that if I go with you and allow you to knock me out, that I'll ever wake up again. Or that I won't wake up under a master effect, addicted to drugs, or with a bomb implanted in my head."
Dauntless took a step back, putting a hand to his ear. "Did you catch that, Console?" He waited a moment and asked, "Ms. Militia, what do you mean they still want her brought in? On whose orders?"
I took a look at my halo's power levels and winced—the beam had drained me and I was running on fumes. I didn't have enough juice to fly, but invisibility would charge my batteries, not drain them. As soon as his back was turned, I sent a sad smile to Carol and hit the mental switch to go invisible, then dropped off the gurney I'd been sitting on. Carol held up a splayed hand, then started bringing fingers down—five, four— I patted Amy on the shoulder as I passed, moving as quietly as I could, and slipped under the ambulance.
"Claire?" Carol called. "Where'd you go? Come on, Claire, don't do this."
I saw Dauntles' boots turn around to face the gurney. "Console, suspect has fled. I repeat, suspect has escaped. Please advise." He waited a moment before asking, "What happened? Didn't you see—"
"She went invisible," Amy answered. "I didn't know she could do that. Did you?"
"No," Carol answered.
"Shit," Dauntless grunted, not quite softly enough that we didn't hear. "Okay. PRT is five minutes out. They've been reassigned to hunt for her. Standard sweep of the surrounding two blocks. They'll assign a guard to watch your house and your sister's in case she comes back. If she contacts you—"
"Yeah, yeah," the blonde sighed. "Legally obligated to report it. I know the routine."
I wondered for a moment why he was going over what should be routine, before he spoke up again and answered the question for me. "I'm sure that if she keeps her head down for a few days, this will all blow over and her name will be cleared. Especially if that video finds its way into the public domain. The PRT will have no choice but to stop its search, then."
He was doing this because he suspected that I hadn't gone far—was still within earshot, even. 'Dauntless is getting something nice too, it seems.'
"Well," he said, "I should go join the search with the PRT."
As soon as his boots turned away, I reached out and lightly tapped the back of Carol's leg. She twitched once, then tapped her foot. Slowly, I spelled out my plan. A single tap was my answer, so I took that as a yes. Rolling out from under the ambulance, I poked Amy's hand as I left, pulling the blanket tighter around me.
I picked up the key under the pot and slipped it into the lock. Looking around to make sure no one was watching, I quickly opened the back door and slipped inside.
A fly landed on my hand.
I brushed it off and moved swiftly into the living room.
Another fly. A roach crawled towards my foot and I stepped on it.
Footsteps came down the stairs and, a moment later, a girl stood just inside the living room as a thrumming buzz began to echo through the house. Dark, curly hair framed a face wet with tears and snot, but fixed with a determined look. Her power looked like Amy's—ridiculously strong, compared to most of those around us. Administration. Control. Of everything, if given half a chance.
She looked right at me. Or rather, right at the fly. "I know you're there."
I dropped my invisibility and brushed the fly off again. "Sorry, I didn't know where else to go."