A/N: Chap 6 reviews are in my forums as normal. Thanks for reading.
Chapter Seven: A Tough Nut to Crack
Harold Simmons died four weeks before his 30th birthday.
It wasn't a tragic or heroic death. Quite the opposite, really. He didn't die fighting villains or defending anything from a threat. No, despite the horrid cliché of it, he died of a broken heart.
Harold was never a remarkable man. Pudgy from a sedentary lifestyle and lazy with the ease of a cushy state job, a wife who did most of the work maintaining their home and raising their two kids, and the utter contentment that came from having no aspirations beyond what he already had, Harold considered himself both successful and happy. He never bothered looking past the illusions of his personal security. It wasn't just the state of the world he ignored, but the threats much, much closer to home.
When the state auditors discovered almost three million in appropriations missing, they reached out to Harold's supervisor first. Harold was never consulted; they never asked to see his own meticulous records of the accounting he did for the agency. While he was neither fast nor perfect, Harold was at times distressingly honest.
The siphoning off of payments to a shell company that the state never actually received services from was authorized with Harold's computer credentials. When they finally confronted him, Harold tried to explain that he never made any such purchase orders and couldn't they check from which computer the changes were made?
Evidently not. He was fired, his pension forfeited, and promised that the state would be pressing criminal charges against him.
In a fugue of numb shock, Harold stumbled to his car and simply stared out the window of his sensible sedan, unable to comprehend what just happened. More by habit than will, he started the car and drove home. He needed to tell his wife what was happening, maybe she could give him some ideas as to how his credentials were stolen.
He pulled into an empty driveway, thinking perhaps that Lucy had gone shopping. His hands shook when he unlocked the door and walked into to an empty house.
Standing in the entry way, Harold had a clear view of the living room, dining room and kitchen in their modest, two story home. Nothing. The indentations in the carpet showed where their furniture used to be, but it was gone. The only thing he saw was an envelope on the counter in the kitchen.
He drifted to it like a moth to a bug zapper. It had his name on it. His hands shook when he opened it up to see a Divorce Petition. A little post-it note was attached.
You're stupid, empty and blind. I don't know why I ever married you. I don't know why I stayed as long as I did. Enjoy your life in jail.
The message was in Lucy's handwriting, but he still couldn't believe she would write something like that. He gave her a good life! A nice house, beautiful if somewhat sedentary children and…and…this didn't make sense!
"It has to be a joke," he said aloud. "This can't be…"
The empty house told him otherwise. He just didn't…he couldn't…this wasn't…
"No." He didn't recognize his voice. His throat felt as if someone had coated it in sandpaper. Stumbling out of the kitchen, he repeated himself. "NO."
He ran up the stairs, winded from the brief exertion, and found their bedroom empty save their bed, and his personal toiletries and clothes. He drifted to the kids' rooms, but they were empty. He didn't understand how the entire house could have been emptied so quickly. He left at six that morning, and it wasn't even four yet.
Finally, he reached his office. Everything was as he left it last night. He collapsed into his faux leather office chair and checked the drawers of his desk. In the second drawer was the sheet with all of his passwords and codes for all the various computer systems he had to use—far too many for him to actually memorize.
There were his coin collection books.
There was…
Harold Simmons fell out of his chair.
"NO!"
He screamed the word as a hammer of emotion struck him so hard it ripped the air from his lungs. How could Lucy do this to him? He was a good husband! He was a good father! He was a good man, wasn't he? How could he miss the signs?
Stupid. Empty. Blind.
The world narrowed down into a dark tunnel, at the end of which he saw two…things that belied description. Then even that terrifying vision was gone.
When he woke up, Harold Simmons was dead. He pulled himself up and stared at his desk. The air seemed to shimmer until it coalesced with an echo of a shape he thought he knew—his Lucy. She stood nude and beautiful, bent over his desk and writing down all his passwords and codes. She looked almost like a ghost, translucent and pale, as did the familiar man energetically fucking her in the ass.
Ron Haskell, Harold's supervisor at the agency, also looked like a ghost.
The man who used to be Harold stumbled from the office back into his bedroom. There he saw the ghosts of his wife and her lover again, madly fucking each other all over the room, in countless positions. Somehow, he knew that he was seeing multiple trysts like echoes, over and over again. Dozens, hundreds, going back years.
Where their kids even his?
He drifted back to his to kids' rooms. Tonya and Bette rolled and played, their ghosts different in each incarnation as he viewed their entire lives at once. Harold Junior's room held the same type of ghosts, and the man who once was Harold Senior wept openly at the memories of a family he no longer had.
The former Harold's mind raced with a speed and clarity he'd never imagined possible. He realized with a certainty beyond doubt that he was now a parahuman, and that he was the victim of a crime. He realized that his former life was over; perhaps it had ended long before and he just was too stupid, empty and blind to realize it.
Not anymore. Now, he saw more clearly than he ever dreamed possible. He thought faster than he'd ever conceived. And…and…
He still stood in any empty house, surrounded by the ghosts of what he once had but likely never truly appreciated.
~~Quintessence~~
~~Quintessence~~
Nutcracker smiled at his wife, who looked very much like a giant, bipedal steel rhinoceros balloon in her unique armor. In costume, she went by Snubnose, but out of costume he called her Yukane. She smiled shyly back—her English still wasn't very good. Nor would many call her a beautiful woman, since she was rather stout and short, with pockmarked cheeks that make-up alone couldn't quite hide.
Yet Nutcracker considered himself blessed to have her in his life this last year. Moreover, his heart and power combined to assure him she felt the same.
"Here," the driver called over her shoulder from the cab of the PRT transport.
The two capes left through the back of the van onto the cracked, partially obliterated cement field that once served as a shipping hub in West Seattle. Almost immediately Nutcracker noticed the twisted, crushed mass of steel near the 70-foot ship that likely started its life as a research vessel forty years before.
The PRT and police had already set up tents for triage for the hundred or so shell-shocked kids that had not immediately been transported by ambulance. The now flat top of the boat was awash with forensics teams from both the PRT and Seattle police. Portable light stands illuminated everything in the otherwise dark night, punctuated by a constant stream of flashes from cameras.
Behind the triage tents, Nutcracker could see three lines of black body bags.
From the twisted mass of metal, Nutcracker could see the head of the Seattle Protectorate walking calmly as if it were a sunny day in the park. Beside Gasconade, Fume was speaking and gesticulating wildly with her hands.
"Nutcracker, Snubnose," Gasconade said. He sounded perfectly normal, but his appearance was anything but.
The head of the area Protectorate looked like the picture of an ordinary blond, blue-eyed man. Only like a picture, though.. No matter what angle Nutcracker saw him at, it looked as if he were viewing a three-dimensional photo or even hologram. Gasconade existed in a constant Breaker state, almost impervious, resetting every thirty seconds. In fact, everything he interacted with reset as well. He could pull out one of his Desert Eagles and shoot Nutcracker in the head, and thirty seconds he'd be fine. Traumatized from the memory, but physically fine.
Fume, on the other hand, appeared to be a stick-thin woman whose Greek ancestry was hidden behind her bright yellow Hazmat suit which served as her costume. Only her hands remained bare because of her unique and rather noxious power.
"What do we have?" Nutcracker asked.
"A lot of dead Russians, and just over a hundred kidnapped teens," Gasconade said. Just as he didn't appear bothered by the carnage, he didn't sound bothered by the kidnappings either. "So far we've found sixty dead, but we suspect there are more dead within the collapsed superstructure of the ship. We have three capes in custody and identified another two among the deceased."
"Who?" Nutcracker asked.
"Almost the entire American branch of the Saltykoya Bratva," Fume said excitedly. Her long, pale hands fluttered as she spoke. "We have Virago, Mokosh and Koschei in custody. Tunguska and Saltykovskaya are dead. Get this! Koschei is a vegetable. Whatever happened scrambled his brain. The paramedic said Mokosh probably has a broken spine. Virago's alive but unresponsive."
"Clues?" Nutcracker said.
"The witnesses are not speaking," Gasconade said.
"Traumatized?"
"Obstinate. They've refused to tell us who saved them. Currently theory is the Elite finally arrived and let the children go with threats if they broke silence. We've had evidence they were trying to work their way into Seattle for some time."
"Which is why you requested me," Nutcracker said. He was not technically a part of the Protectorate; he just happened to be able to fulfill his duties with Watchdog from Seattle instead of San Diego. "I'll take a look."
"Your hat," Snubnose reminded him.
Nutcracker smiled at her as he accepted the fedora. "Of course. Thank you."
With his fedora, felt domino mask and great coat in place, Nutcracker walked up the boarding ramp to the surface of the boat. He flagged down the PRT Senior Agent in Charge supervising the site investigation.
"Good evening, Cheryl."
SAC Cheryl Peabody's face was mostly hidden by her helmet, but he could still see her frown. "What're you doing here?"
"Oh, just enjoying the sights," he said lightly. "Mind walking me down to where the kids were?"
Happy or not, Peabody was a professional. With a curt nod she led him down the steep, metal stairs to the bottom hold of the ship, and the long, narrow hall that seemed to run its length. Nutcracker activated his power and let the ghosts show him what happened.
He followed where the ghosts led without hesitation, having become adept at taking full advantage of his power over the past eight years. He knew not to let himself be side tracked by other ghosts—on that path lay a Thinker's headache that could render him useless for a week.
He found his target ghost—a slim teenaged girl—and he followed her up the stairs to the deck. All around him, the PRT and police forensics team continued to take photos around the taped outlines of all the bodies.
Post-cognition, his primary talent was called. A Thinker power that was especially useful in criminal investigations. What his power showed him now was a girl standing on the shattered deck of a broken ship surrounded by the men she killed, staring down with an expression of utter despair.
"Nutcracker?"
He glanced over his shoulder at Snubnose. "You okay? You look sad. Something bad happen?"
The question was a testament to her still failing grasp of the language. Surrounded by dead, of course something bad happened. But he understood what she meant.
"Yes," he told her. "I'm fine. It's just sad."
He would have kissed her cheek if the steel balloon that acted as a magnifier for her gravity-negating power didn't make the act physically impossible. Instead, he followed the ghost back down to the hold, aware of Peabody and Gasconade now watching him as he wandered, seemingly aimless to their eyes, about the ship.
He watched as the ghost used a powerful telekinesis to free all the kids before she stumbled, seriously injured herself, into the room with a petite Asian girl and a seriously wounded Latina girl. He watched, his eyes moist, as the ghost slid down the side of the wall, leaving a trail of blood that remained as a black smear even now.
To his shock, the wounded warrior levitated the Latina closer, and then even as she was about to pass out somehow healed the wounded girl of both bullet wounds. He backed away as more ghosts arrived—that of the petite Asian girl he saw before, and now paramedics.
Though the Latina looked worse, with her recent healing he could see that it was his primary target who was now in worse shape. Nutcracker watched as the paramedics worked to stabilize the lanky cape. Once they did so sufficiently, they moved her onto a gurney and rushed both her and the Latina out of the ship with the Asian girl a step behind.
Nutcracker followed the ghosts back out as they moved the injured to ambulance number 117. The Asian girl tried to climb in, but since she wasn't injured and obviously wasn't related, the paramedic said something and motioned to where all the other terrified kids were being gathered by police.
A female police officer came and wrapped a blanket around the girl's shoulders, speaking soothingly to her with a level of professional competence Nutcracker appreciated. The Asian girl let herself be led away as the Ambulance left the scene.
Something about the battle disturbed him, though. There was a moment where the warrior halted, as if suffering a seizure. It was something he'd seen before.
Turning on his heal, Nutcracker rushed back into the ship and moved back to the cell where the lanky cape collapsed. The body was marked out in tape by the forensics team, but blood remained all over the room. Nutcracker activated his sight again, but this time followed the Asian girl.
He watched as soldiers flooded the prison area of the ship, kicking and beating the teens back into their cages. He watched with his heart breaking as the young Latina girl brandished a large pistol and began firing randomly into the soldiers until they returned fire and wounded her so badly.
Her friend dragged her back into the cell, but of course the soldiers followed to get revenge for their falling comrades. All else after that was lost in white hot bloom of a Trigger event. That petite Asian girl had just become a parahuman.
Nutcracker left the ship again.
"Anything?" Gasconade said from behind him.
Of course, when Nutcracker roused himself from his sight, he stood on the pavement near the ship and the triage tent where the other teens were being processed.
"Quite a bit, actually," he told the rugged cape. "The kids haven't been silenced by fear. They're not saying anything out of loyalty. I need to know where Ambulance 117 took it's patients. It left perhaps twenty minutes ago. I need to borrow Fume's motorcycle to follow it."
Fume, having heard her name, came closer. "What's this about my motorcycle?"
"I'll take good care of it," Nutcracker promised. "But I need to follow the path while I can."
Fume scowled fiercely but tossed him the key. "Not a scratch."
In minutes he was riding after the ghost of the girl. She lay unmoving in the ambulance next to other gunshot victim. Given where they were, it didn't surprise him that both were heading to the ER at Bayview West.
He rolled the bike up next to ambulance entrance; the two victims were already inside. He removed his Protectorate-issue phone and called the PRT.
"Yes, this is Nutcracker. I need a PRT team to Bayview West immediately. There is a potentially hostile parahuman undergoing treatment."
He didn't bother waiting for the response. Instead, he turned off Fume's precious bike and walked resolutely through the doors into the ER. The room was filled with the detritus of lost humans—gun and stab victims, drug overdoses, Diabetics in need of treatment who had no choice but to use the ER. He had more than a few glares—the mask marked him as a cape. The badge he removed and hung from his great coat pocket confirmed he was a hero.
The admitting nurse watched him come with narrowed eyes. Hospitals did not particularly care for the Protectorate in Seattle.
"Good evening," he told her. "Two young gunshot victims were just brought in by ambulance. Can you tell me where they are?"
"Do you have a warrant?"
Before Nutcracker had a chance to answer, the door to the ER opened and a short, rotund woman in coke-bottle glasses and creamy dark skin strode imperiously out into the room. Her eyes immediately lit upon on him.
"She's mine!" Dr. Yvonne White declared vehemently. "A new cape rolls in here with a healing power like that? She's mine, Nutcracker!"
"Yvonne, we need to talk privately," Nutcracker said. He tried not to hiss, but it was hard not to convey how delicate the situation was.
Dr. White, the PRT Chief Medical Officer for Seattle, glared a long moment before she nodded and motioned with her hand to follow her back into the ER.
"Paramedics came in with two gunshot victims. One had two gut shots almost completely healed and said the other was a cape. That means the wounded girl is probably a six or seven on the Stansfield-Manton scale for parahuman healing. That makes her a protected asset and under my purview!"
"Can I see her?" Nutcracker asked. "Please, Yvonne, there's more going on than you realize. I've already called for a PRT squad. If I'm right, my next call will be to Alexandria."
Dr. White stopped mid-step, turned, and stared. "What's going on?"
"Please, it's important."
"She's obviously a minor, and a cape. The rules…"
"If she's who I think, it doesn't matter. Please don't make me go over your head, Yvonne. We could all be in danger. Please."
"Fine. Gown-up."
He gladly removed the gloves of his costume and washed his hands before dawning non-latex surgical gloves and a blue gown. He followed Dr. White into a cramped operating room framed solely by curtains where the doctors were examining a thin, pale girl with messily cropped, short black hair and dark rings under her eyes.
"…still in there," the surgeon was saying. "Prep OR 2 for an extraction. I don't see any broken bones, but we'll want X-rays to be…Dr. White, who's this?"
Nutcracker felt odd, almost detached, as he stepped past the PRT CMO until he stood at the side of the bed. Ignoring the questioning doctor, he reached down and gently lifted one of the girl's eyelids to reveal pure black underneath, from the tear duct to the outer corner.
He let it close and stepped back.
"Dr. White, bring your own people in," he said with calm determination. "Get the civilians out of here. We may need to evacuate the hospital if we can't keep her sedated. To that end, you need to keep this girl under. She could burn through a Tinker-made tranquilizer in under two hours. If you've got anything you use on brutes, use it on her."
Dr. White bit down on whatever else she was going to say. Instead, she turned to the medical staff. "Dr. Arjun, ladies and gentlemen, prep the patient for transport to the secure PRT wing. We have some Brute-rated sedatives from LA in store. We'll get them ready."
Nutcracker was about to reach into his phone to call for additional Protectorate resources as well when he noticed something odd. The ER physician and nurses had cut away Hebert's shirt to expose the bullet wound in the hollow of her shoulder for the examination. As he watched, a stream of blood started to flow out of it, followed immediately by the small, mal-formed bullet itself.
"Get out!" He managed the shout a second before Hebert's black eyes opened. "Everyone out, now!"
With her good hand, itself still coated in caked blood, one of the most dangerous capes in the world removed the oxygen mask from her face as panicked nurses and the doctor rushed out of the room, leaving only Dr. White and Nutcracker.
"Is she okay?"
The question confused Nutcracker. He was expecting threats or violence, not a breathless question.
The girl I healed. Is she okay?
The words burned into the forefront of Nutcracker's consciousness, resounding like an echo of the girl's voice in his head. Beside him, Yvonne gasped.
"Yes!" Dr. White said. Obviously she heard the mental voice as well. She gathered herself visibly. "Yes. You saved her life."
Taylor Hebert, the so-called Winslow Simurgh, sat up, moaning a little as she cradled her arm.
"You're hurt, you need to let us help you," Yvonne said.
The girl turned and stared at her, her black eyes rimmed with red. A single tear ran down her cheek. "Help me to where, the Birdcage? I think I'm better off on my own."
Nutcracker considered reaching for his gun, but then thought better of it after remembering just what this girl did earlier this afternoon. She stood, looking around the cramped room, before she found what she wanted. A filthy, blood-soaked satchel floated up off the floor to her waiting hand. She threw it over her good shoulder.
The whole situation felt surreal to Nutcracker. Based on all reports, he was expecting mindless violence and quick death. The girl he saw, however, appeared far too reasonable to match the damning reports out of New Hampshire.
"If you let me walk out of here, nobody gets hurt," she said softly. "If you make me fight, people will die. I don't want to go to the Birdcage. Like I told Dragon, I'd rather die first. Compared to that, killing you fuckers is easy."
Except, Nutcracker thought quickly, she hadn't yet. He knew of villains who would have rampaged out of the hospital without a second thought to collateral damage. The girl didn't want a fight any more than he did.
Playing on a sudden hunch, Nutcracker raised his hands and moderated his voice to sound calmer than he felt.
"Miss Hebert, your Birdcage Sentence was passed in absentia. It was believed that you were not capable of reason and represented a danger to the public. The fact that we're standing here, talking, shows that may not be the case," Nutcracker pointed out. "If you surrender peacefully, you can have your day in court."
"Day in court?" Her short bark of laughter crackled with despair. "People are fucking terrified of me. They don't care about guilt or innocence, they'd shove me into that hell just because of what I could do. No thank you. You're all liars. You fuckers killed my dad. I won't let you kill me. Now move, or I'll make you move."
While Nutcracker had gone through the same training a police officer went through as part of his Watchdog licensing, he was not rated for combat or field arrests. Even if he were, he doubted he could present much of a threat. Instead, he touched Dr. White's shoulder to let her know what he was doing, and slowly pulled back the OR curtain.
The wounded young villain visibly tensed when she saw the line of police and PRT agents that quickly fell in a hemisphere around the cordoned off area.
In any other circumstance, with a dozen of the PRT's finest on the case, Nutcracker would have given the signal to foam her. But as he stood watching her, and saw the faint flicker of blue energy about her good hand, he knew in that instant that everyone in the room would die if they pushed her too hard.
We can't beat her. More importantly, we can't afford to try.
"Code Zebra, back off!"
The PRT agents' eyes were hidden behind their face masks. Still, he could almost feel those eyes look from the wounded wisp of a girl to Nutcracker in disbelief.
"Code Zebra, my authority, back off," Nutcracker said again. He kept both hands up for Hebert to see and then slowly backed into the hall, opening the way to the door. "We're going to let our young friend her leave in peace."
The girl obviously hurt. He could see it in every step, in every wince and every breath. Though she had a brute rating, he suspected it was for rapid healing rather than general toughness. The fight on that ship took a lot out of her. And yet, he also had no doubt she could kill all of them in a breath. He watched with barely contained tension as she walked away.
It wasn't until his chest began to hurt that Nutcracker realized he was holding his breath. Somehow, he knew something was going to go wrong.
The police and PRT agents fanned out behind him, guns and foam dispensers at the ready. They watched the lone cape limp toward the doors of the hospital.
She limped through a crowded lobby filled with injured gang-bangers. Nutcracker didn't need pre-cognition to know this wasn't going to end well at all. With a room full of young, angry kids facing a line of police officers and PRT agents, many of them naturally jumped to the wrong conclusion.
Some jumped up and ran for the doors; others jumped onto any potential hostages they could find. And one truly idiotic, unfortunate soul reached out and wrapped a muscular arm around Taylor Hebert's neck. The room erupted in angry shouts and frightened screams.
The young man with his arm around Hebert's neck spun her around, a gun to her temple, and started screaming in Japanese. A tense stand-off emerged as the police and PRT agents fanned out further, weapons at the ready. Abruptly, all the screaming cut off as the two sides took an accounting of the other. The only sound was of a breathless laugh.
Within the thug's arm, Taylor Hebert was laughing. To Nutcracker's ears, it wasn't a funny sound at all. The volume increased, as did the manic nature of it. He could hear echoes of the sound in his mind and realized she was somehow broadcasting telepathically.
The other gang bangers in the room must have finally made the connection to the fact that the PRT did not deploy for non-powered individuals. They began backing away from the hysterical girl. The thug holding her shoved the gun against her temple, shouting at her to shut up.
"Taylor, don't…" Nutcracker said.
It was too late.
The thug imploded. Every bone in his body snapped with a horrifying series of cracks, like firecrackers popping in rapid succession. Gangbangers and nurses alike backed away in horror as the unfortunate gang member floated off the ground, screaming as all of his bones broke, until finally he flew against one of the steel columns by the front door with so much speed and power that his body pulped and spread a curtain of blood across the front windows.
Alone again, Taylor fell to her knees. She looked right at Nutcracker, tears running down her cheeks, and screamed.
Men and women—even the chairs—blasted away from her as if she were the heart of a hurricane. They flew against the opposite walls of the lobby and remained where they landed, even if it was ten feet off the floor. That same invisible force sent the officers and agents flying backwards and even hit Nutcracker like a freight train.
Stifling a groan, Nutcracker picked himself up enough to watch as Hebert did the same. She must have used her power, though, because it looked like she momentarily became weightless. Her bag floated once more to her good shoulder. She turned, somehow keeping at least fifty people crammed up against opposite walls, and limped toward the door.
Only when she was outside did all the people fall with startled screams to the floor.
After, when Nutcracker made his way outside, he found the PRT transport van upside down.