Chapter 5
"What do you mean she's missing?"
Catching a very interesting conversation in one of the high-value areas she had deliberately connected to with bugs, which was the office of Emily Piggot, the Director of the East-North-East PRT Branch, she shifted there. She didn't recognize the other guy in the room, but a brief moment had him as the Deputy Director, his office was attached to Piggot's front door, and had various pictures and things that marked him as the occupant. "I mean, Shadow Stalker hasn't shown up to report to her parole officer, nor has she visited the headquarters or informed anyone of a change in her schedule. She isn't answering her phone either, and the GPS isn't tracking her."
Piggot sighed, a hand reaching up to rub her forehead. Taylor had released the videos she'd captured, and to say the public got up in arms was an understatement. It wasn't just to the media and PRT, she'd uploaded them online to several places and linked them to Parahumans Online boards. Since she wasn't breaking any rules they weren't taken down, all she was doing was linking videos that visibly displayed Shadow Stalker breaking the law. If the moderators had taken it down, sure it'd be annoying, but people would be pretty pissed if PHO, which was meant to be a site about capes and sharing information, was censoring evidence that showed Shadow Stalker in a bad light.
The forums were practically on fire, with people picking apart the videos, Shadow Stalker's actions, what that meant for her and for the Wards and Protectorate at large. This was exactly what she wanted. With the public seeing everything, there was absolutely no way Sophia's actions could be hidden away. The fact she disappeared just heightened the suspicion around her and made it harder for her to even try to shift the blame.
Switching focus, she turned her attention to where Sophia was now, which as it happened was travelling across the city unmasked. Her hurried stride and the fact her large duffel bag had her equipment in meant she obviously knew what was going down and wanted to get the hell out of town before she could get caught. It was just a shame that Taylor had no intentions of letting her leave the town.
Taking control, she had Sophia dip into an alley and costume up. She'd been wearing what she could under bulky clothing, but some of her gear was too obstructive to hide under it, which was instead in the bag along with her crossbows and her arrows. No non-lethal, all the bolts were razor-sharp. While she did that, Taylor used her mental control to ask what Sophia was going to do, her lips curling into a grin.
Sophia had a very strong suspicion that Taylor was behind at least some of what was going on, thanks to the media reporting on the bullying campaign orchestrated by her and the other two girls not even half a week before the recordings of her actions came out. Her intent was to go to Taylor's house, get the facts from Taylor, kill her even if it turned out she hadn't done anything noteworthy, then burn the house down and skip town. She knew that there was no way the Protectorate would let her get away with what she'd done, she knew she'd done what she did and that trying to play off the facts wouldn't work, as the Protectorate had Dragon, who would easily verify that the videos hadn't been edited aside from cutting out the travel-time and any evidence of where the drone came and went from.
Unfortunately for Sophia, Taylor had no intention of letting her do any of that. She gave Sophia the command to avoid capture and take a half-hour or so to get to her house, then took control of a civilian and called the PRT through their anonymous tip line. Before the operator could say anything she had the civilian start talking. "Shadow Stalker intends to attack the one she thinks caused her current problems, a 'Taylor Hebert'. From where she is now, I suspect it'll take her about half an hour to reach her destination. Esgal."
The civilian hung up, and she relinquished her control over them. It still felt just the tiniest bit dubious to her to be controlling people so freely, especially for her own ends, but...no, she couldn't really justify it, even to herself. Sure, it was protecting her and keeping the secret, but she was still stripping their free will and using them for what she wanted.
Idly she wondered about whether she could find a way to benefit them, but nothing she could think of sprung out at her. She decided then that she would only control people in specific circumstances, like if she had to either control them or people would die, or if she really needed to tell someone something. As for what she was doing before, she could have just controlled the criminals and had them call the police.
Shrugging, she shifted away upwards, looking over the city and frowning. There was something itching at the back of her mind, like something she needed to do, or something she had forgotten to do. Running through her memories, she tried to think of what it was before remembering that she was still connected to Regent. Shifting over to his location, she found herself floating in what she presumed was the Undersider's base, since Regent had his feet up and was playing a video game of some kind. The fact that Tattletale and Grue were also both there and unmasked wasn't really a surprise to her, she knew all their faces from connecting to them. Releasing Regent from the pseudo-puppetry, she then realized what she had forgotten.
Puppets lose their memories, so anything that had been said to Regent after she puppeted him was now lost. Hopefully they'd just brush it off as him being forgetful or not paying attention, but it might also tip them off that something was amiss. At that, she then made the connection that Shadow Stalker couldn't stay puppeted, not if she didn't want them to question her and have her realize she had a blank spot in her memories. Regent seemed pretty confused at seeing the fact he was halfway through a game and yet didn't remember any of the plot, though luckily he just kept playing.
Shifting back to Shadow Stalker, she guesstimated the distance from her to Taylor's house, then ordered her to increase the distance a little before releasing her control and watching as the girl glanced around, cursed quietly and began travelling towards her house again. It'd definitely take at least twenty minutes for Shadow Stalker to get to her house, so hopefully by then the PRT would have acted on Esgal's intel and sent someone there.
Because if not, things could get dicey.
As it turned out, apparently 'Esgal' was well-known enough now that the PRT had Miss Militia in the area, sat in the back of a disguised PRT truck.
Ciara had promised to stay away for the time being, having things she wanted to catch up on after years in the Birdcage. The reason was simply because having the Faerie Queen in her bedroom was probably something that would make the PRT suspicious considering she was meant to be in the Birdcage, and that just left Body-Taylor alone in the house. Shifting upwards, she watched as the distant figure of Shadow Stalker came closer, using her power to glide across the gaps between buildings.
As she made it to the building opposite her house, she could see her scoping out the building, looking for anything suspicious before she moved down to ground level and rushed across the street. The incognito van that contained Miss Militia went entirely under her notice, right up until the time that the door opened and the woman stepped out, holding what looked like a fancy crossbow. "Stand down Shadow Stalker!"
Sophia turned and began raising the crossbow in her left hand, prompting Miss Militia to fire. Sophia turned intangible, and that was when the bolt that was fired was revealed to be carrying an electric charge. It passed through her at high speed, the electricity shocking Sophia and forcing her back into tangibility, falling to the floor and twitching. Miss Militia moved forwards, changing her weapon to a taser which was levelled at Sophia, whilst the PRT troopers who were also in the van poured out, two of whom were carrying containment foam guns, not that it'd be useful against Sophia.
The girl looked around, then went intangible again, dropping down through the ground and avoiding the prongs that lashed out from Miss Militia's weapon. Miss Militia watched for a moment, her taser flicking to the side as Shadow Stalker emerged from the ground and fired her crossbow, forcing the woman to dodge and sending the taser prongs off target from the twitch. That was all the time Sophia needed to bolt towards her house, turning into her Shadow State and ignoring the bullets that were fired through her as she ghosted through the front door and started sprinting up the stairs.
She had Body-Taylor quickly hide in the closet, feeling a tickle of amusement as Sophia booted open the only closed door, the rest of the rooms being obviously not her room, and entered, sweeping her crossbow around before cursing and moving to the open window. Body-Taylor opened the door again, grabbed her table-lamp and swung it at Sophia, who went intangible and rose her crossbow. As the lamp swung into her though, that was when Sophia realized that it was still connected to the mains, electrocuting her and making her scream in pain.
Body-Taylor followed up by kicking her in the face, the girl having fallen down to her knee, then darting out of the room and across the hall. Shadow Stalker recovered in that time and growled, charging out of the room and right into the waiting prongs of Miss Militia's taser, who saw Body-Taylor cross and predicted what Sophia was going to do. Without prompting, Body-Taylor then slammed the door to the bathroom that she'd run into, sitting down with her back against the door, acting like she should, a scared teenager who just got attacked by someone she assumed was a hero.
That went...pretty much perfectly, actually. With all the witnesses, there wouldn't be even an inkling of doubt about Shadow Stalker attacking her, lending much more credence to the evidence that had been sent in. The only problem was that this was going to tie Esgal to Body-Taylor in an uncomfortable way. How would Esgal know that Sophia was coming after Taylor?
And with that came the issue of the PRT knowing that an unknown master was getting people to make anonymous tips, since any who were questioned would have no idea what happened. It was a bit vexing, knowing that because she hadn't really thought through her plans, but really, did it matter? Shadow Stalker had more than enough evidence piled against her that even if someone called for Master/Stranger protocols, there was no way she'd be able to weasel her way out of the hole she'd dug herself into.
...Right?
Staring at the plain off-white walls surrounding Body-Taylor, Taylor felt a considerable welling of irritation within herself.
She had quite drastically underestimated how seriously the PRT took Master/Stranger protocols, since after being questioned and having Body-Taylor let 'slip' that she had a blank spot in her memories, something she actually could say truthfully thanks to Taylor exercising her control over her inside the house, she was suspected of being under the influence of a Master. Two cells down, which had electricity flowing through the walls in all directions, Sophia was also in the same containment. Drifting through the building let her overhear a lot of sensitive information, but the biggest thing was being able to follow the investigation ongoing surrounding the situation with Shadow Stalker.
And that was where more of her irritation came from. Thanks to the fact that Esgal was defined as an unknown Master level, which was suspected as being higher than a 5, they were going over all of the evidence with a comb so fine it'd probably strip skin away. Their running theories were that Shadow Stalker had been mastered to do what she did, or alternatively, that her actions were true, but that she had at some point ran afoul of Esgal, who sought to expose her actions.
The fact she had some missing sections of memory didn't help, but fortunately enough, she hadn't puppeted her when she killed people, so when she lied and said she didn't remember it at all, Armsmaster apparently detected that with a lie-detector in his suit. Unfortunately, it wasn't something legally admissible, nor did they manage a confession anyway, after Sophia's lie was detected, she clammed up and didn't respond. Sure, not the best defence, but it was better than being caught lying. If she said she hadn't killed anybody, and Armsmaster detected that as a lie, she'd definitely not be getting out of things.
Fortunately, it seemed that Director Piggot was both a hardliner for regulations, and had a major stick up her ass in relation to Parahumans. She gave Shadow Stalker absolutely no leeway, and seemed genuinely pissed that what she had done had been allowed to happen in the first place. Aegis, the leader of the Wards and the one who was meant to be keeping an eye on Shadow Stalker, was given an absolute reaming.
At the same time, Armsmaster got much the same treatment, since he was in turn supposed to be keeping a firm hand on the Wards as the leader of the Protectorate team itself, nominally Aegis' superior. Then there was the probation officer assigned to Sophia, who as it turned out had been colluding with Winslow to cover up Sophia's actions for some reason. All this meant there were plenty of fingers being pointed around, and not very much chance that Sophia could slip out of things, not when so much evidence existed of her actions.
On the other hand, Taylor had needed to give up the undoctored version of evidence regarding Sophia's actions, her name being plastered across the entire thing anyway, being the one subjected to her attacks. She, or rather Body-Taylor, had also had to undergo a fair bit of testing regarding whether or not she was being Mastered. Apparently, they had a battery of tests designed to search for the influence of a Master effect, and some part of what Taylor said or did had tripped an alert. She had no idea what, she still hadn't managed to catch anyone talking about it, but they were holding her while they tried to figure out what the extent of the effect was with seemingly irrelevant tests.
Idly, she wondered what the reaction would be if she was revealed. They would probably fast-track a Kill Order for Body-Taylor to attempt to kill her. That was the most likely response. Others included the Birdcage, press-ganged into the Wards, or, the least likely and most worrying, a mysterious disappearance, probably ending up with Body-Taylor on a surgical table somewhere for vivisection and analysis. There was also the chance that they would just leave her alone, but it was unlikely.
Maybe she could get someone high up in the chain of command to have a solid reason to leave her alone. Maybe...she wondered what would occur if she was to control the Chief Director, have her write down a note in front of herself stating that Taylor Hebert be released immediately, then break the connection...she would probably freak the fuck out and try to have her killed or Birdcaged, as well as subjecting herself to Master/Stranger protocols.
Drifting from side to side, she tried to piece her way out of the situation. Controlling people had potential, yes, and would be amusing, but carried far too much risk, and meant she'd be near-instantly going back on her own promise to herself to not frivolously use her puppetting ability. She wouldn't hesitate to do it if someone came into the room who she thought was suspicious and potentially dangerous, and if she had to do it to get Body-Taylor out of the situation she was in, she would do it, but if she didn't actually have to, she wanted to avoid doing it.
But really, outside of the PRT deciding to release her for some reason, there wasn't really a way for her to make her way out of the cell.
