Step 4.5

"Welcome, Dinah Alcott."

Dinah walked through the door curiously. "Hello, Veda."

I closed the door and stepped into the garage behind her.

"I don't have many questions today," I said. "Are you up for it?"

"I can answer four or five," she replied.

"In a bit." I checked the time on my phone. "I have to make a call in a few minutes."

Her eyes turned to the tables at the center of the workshop. "Nice action figure."

"It's a mock up," I corrected. "For testing."

I didn't have the money or material to build Veda's drone army, but a little scale reference helped. Only so much to do in a simulator. Sooner or later you needed to actually build something.

It stood about a foot tall, an oddly familiar thing. I recognized lots of it. The servos. The skeleton. The frame. The armor though, and the way the components were laid out differed from anything I'd design.

Veda might be using O Gundam as a reference, or inspiration, but she had her own ideas in the end.

The head and the chest formed a single piece, one camera mounted in a visor offering two-hundred and ten degrees of vision. Comparable to O Gundam, with a lot less complexity. The simplicity described the entire design well.

Perfect for something intended to be expendable.

Glancing to Dinah, I asked, "Is it like what you saw?"

She shook her head. "It's different. Heavier. What I saw flew."

Not the Tieren then.

Veda mentioned Dinah's words inspired her to start. And she wanted to really test Dragon's theory about my power. Within a few days she'd read hundreds of physics and engineering books. I wanted to get her access to some journals or maybe an online archive. The more cutting edge research would be there.

They grow up so fast.

"The Haros are playing Uno," Dinah observed.

Red, Pink, Navy, and Orange sat on the floor at O Gundam's feet beside the van, a deck of colorful cards stacked on the floor between them.

"They weren't any good at poker," I replied. "Or they were too good at it. Hard to say."

No one has a better poker face than a Haro.

Dinah didn't question it. She set her school bag on the floor and took off her glasses and handed them to me.

"They have to be fixed or they break," she said.

I raised my brow.

She shrugged. "They start fritzing."

Is that a word?

I took the glasses and went over to my workbench. Just a degraded part it turned out. Not surprising. Lots of small pieces involved. Some were bound to break sooner or later.

"I'll fix these up every few weeks," I agreed. "That okay?"

I glasses, no protection from unintended questions and I'd gotten used to not talking on my tiptoes.

"It's fine," she said. "Tinker glasses need tinkering. I get it."

"Right…"

I gathered my tools and moved the mockup of Veda's drone. The repair didn't take long. I finished up and handed them back. Dinah didn't take her eyes off her hand as she put the lenses back on.

"Thank you."

I nodded, I changed in another room, returning in my full costume. Standing over the scene for a moment, it occurred to me how boring it was.

Haros and a middle schooler playing Uno.

My new standard for boring. Weird, but still boring. Worse than watching paint dry.

Winslow remained closed, though Blackwell and teachers called around keeping everyone informed.

I…I tried not to think about it.

The sensation only grew worse with time. A guilt, like I'd wished pain upon people. Not like this, but I'd dreamed of it. Winslow being closed down. The students who stood by and did nothing getting their just desserts.

Amazing how something you think about to cope with pain can become a source of it. Just takes a little change in circumstance.

Not that I felt that bad. It's a minor feeling, but I didn't have anything else to do.

Three days, and nothing happened.

The gangs were keeping to themselves more than ever, and I didn't want to provoke them. Not that opportunities arouse. No big drug or gun shipments the past two days. Almost like they didn't seem to want to provoke me either.

Rock and a hard place. I wanted to keep up the pressure, but I didn't want Kaiser putting a blade to Parian's throat and telling me to stop. And at that point he might kill her anyway, just because he could.

Fun thoughts.

Switching on the news, the reports continued. They replayed Director Piggot's speech almost every day.

I admit.

It was a good speech.

It didn't go the way I expected. A parahuman incident she called it. An accident, caused by an unknown power. She even mentioned me. The eyewitness who confirmed that Aisha Laborn had been attacked by another student in the hall.

She defended herself. Things went wrong.

"We do not believe she is a villain," Piggot answered. "There is no evidence the Undersiders have another member, and we do not believe she was actively using her power before the events of yesterday."

"Is the PRT sure of that?" someone else asked.

"What the PRT is sure of is that this is the very reason secret identities must be honored. Had a villain not set these events in motion over a hundred and fifty children would still be going to school and living their lives instead of laying in beds, perhaps never to wake up."

"What is the PRT doing to ensure such information cannot be so easily released in the future?"

"There was nothing easy about it. Teacher's reckless disregard for human life was well planned and executed. The PRT, with help from the Protectorate and Dragon from the Guild, is formulating new security protocols to redress the vulnerabilities his agent exploited."

Yeah…a good speech.

She really knew how to take the attention away from one thing and put it on another.

She'd given others since. Really hammering on Teacher, and the importance of secret identities if the world wants to avoid villains running rampant instead of just running free. I didn't think I disagreed with those parts.

Secret identities were important. Teacher disregarded that. He got people hurt. Blame him, not us.

In some way that seemed a paltry excuse, but look at me following the carrot at the end of the stick? Piggot completely shifted discussion away from Winslow to Teacher within a few sentences.

Maybe Tattletale made it up in the end. Said it to manipulate me into getting what she wanted. Or maybe the PRT changed course after my talk with Ramius. She never did ask me about the NDA thing Armsmaster mentioned.

I'd thought about it in the hours after Winslow, but before Piggot spoke.

What would I say?

I'd never said anything really. Not to the press or the Internet. I kept to myself. Tried to avoid agitating the people who could legally come after me.

Part of me still wanted to say something, but what? The PRT was lying. I knew why, even understood it. They didn't want people knowing how badly a trigger event could go any more than I wanted people knowing I'd built an artificial intelligence.

The reactions, the fear. What would people do if they knew?

And still I hated that lie. That people weren't safe, and they didn't even know.

Am I a hypocrite?

I didn't think so, but-

"It is time," Veda said.

"Right." I sat up straight, pulled my hair back, straightened my mask and collar, and connected.

"Right on time," J greeted. He held papers in both hands, his synthetic eyes looking back and forth between them. "I almost hoped you'd run behind! More time to mull over this data. We've become wrapped up in a bit of a debate you see."

H chuckled, visible just behind the man in front of a computer.

"Yes. A debate."

J turned the camera. Not surprised to see O, G, and S arguing with one another in front of the chalk board. Again.

They did that a lot. "The viability of particle generation on a large scale, or GN particles are bullshit?"

"The former more than the later," H answered.

"But both are equally fascinating," J added.

"So what's the issue?" I asked.

"Feasibility," H said.

"The reactor you've built could be adapted into a generator," J explained. "It would power a small building. Not particularly well mind you, but it could."

Ah. "And I can't build thousands of them."

"Even if you could, how would you maintain them?"

Which is how I knew the Foundation didn't quite know about Dragon's theory on my power.

H mused to himself, saying in a low voice, "To create a true alternative to fossil fuels or nuclear power, you'd need something far larger with much greater output."

"And the material components become impractical past a certain scale," J said. "Not that we're completely clear on what the components are. There are holes in the design you shared."

"I know," I mumbled.

I guess I knew this too. Even with an unlimited budget, building a massive solar furnace made little sense. Pragmatically, it needed too much material, too much maintenance. Repairing Dinah's glasses only took me a few minutes, but something the size of a car could take hours.

"But you're right," I agreed. "There's no future in this."

Disappointing.

"We didn't say that," J chuckled. "Science and discovery don't end at the first road block, my dear."

H nodded. "Never give up merely because you've run into a snag."

"That's what they're on about," J said with a nod towards the other three men. "Debating the most effective route forward."

I raised my brow. "Like what?"

"Complete reapplication of the principles behind the drive," J suggested. "For example, an orbital array."

"Orbital array?" I leaned back in my seat, eyes toward the ceiling. "Like a satellite," I mumbled. "Build the array to take sunlight directly from the source and fuel a much larger furnace?"

"Yes." H stepped away from his computer and approached the camera. "But how to then transfer the power planet side?"

"An orbital hook," J said. "Or an elevator."

"An elevator would be better," I mumbled. "You'd need to get lots of heavy equipment into orbit, and if you need a connection to bring power down anyway…But then you'd need a mountain of planet side infrastructure to make it work."

"Expensive, and intensive," J admitted. "The world isn't ready for it and the technology doesn't exist yet. Still, it's a brilliant solution."

H closed his eyes and shook his head. "Moot, I'm afraid."

"Moot?" I sat up straight. "Wh-The Simurgh? Right."

"Indeed. So long as our angel of death floats above, such an ambitious project is likely doomed to failure. That she even allows communication satellites to go about their orbits unhindered at times feels like a contrivance."

"She could knock them all from the sky if she wanted," H said. "End the world in a day by throwing all of our junk back to the planet."

"Never mind that planet side infrastructure is slowly being eroded by the other two," J added. "Other solutions face similar trials."

I looked at his face closely. Hard to tell without human eyes. Wonder if he replaced them, or if something happened?

"You don't sound very discouraged," I said.

J chuckled again. "Challenges such as this are meant to be overcome. As with many things in life. If humanity stopped at the first stumbling block we'd still be living in caves!"

"Right," I whispered.

The man certainly had enthusiasm. Kind of refreshing actually.

"Pleasant to see you taking an interest," H mused. "After weeks of just receiving data we thought you hadn't taken anything we said to heart."

I tried not to blush, but I did. A little.

"Just distracted," I replied.

Weeks of planning and executing a campaign against the gangs. I'd lost track of it, gotten caught up in cape fights—without even trying to fight capes—and forgotten everything else I wanted to achieve. Is every hero like that? Losing sight of why they began so rapidly?

I didn't want to just fight the gangs. They're just a part of it, the problem of the locker around me.

People needed jobs. Laws that mattered. Heroes who cared.

"It's so easy to forget why I got started on all of this," I admitted.

"So it is for many," J agreed. "It's nasty where you are right now."

"Not really. Everyone seems too afraid to do anything."

"But someone will do something," H said. "Eventually."

J nodded. "And then. you all worry."

I grimaced at that thought. It made sense. Inevitable. Took weeks for someone to take a shot at Fleur after New Wave unmasked. In a way that seemed inevitable too. Sooner or later someone would.

Good thing I'd kept the Haros on rotation.

Purple flew laps, keeping an eye on the Parian's family home. Green flew on the south-east end of the Docks, watching Trevor's house. Occasionally they'd drift over to the Board Walk to look at the Doll House.

Dazzler joined the Wards. I figured that made her safe as she'd get, and she'd move to another city in a few days and get a new cape name and costume. Enough to hide her from anyone who didn't look really, really, hard.

Brockton Bay was crazy and not even here did villains go after Wards. The Butcher and the Teeth were rampaging through Boston and they hadn't killed a Ward. Yet.

I considered getting involved in that. The Teeth were on a rampage the way the news told it. Four independents killed in the first forty-eight hours alone. The Protectorate wanted to stop them, but the Teeth were like the Empire. They'd been around since before I existed.

You simply couldn't make them sto-

God damn it now I'm agreeing with Tattletale!

Two minutes, less, to fly to Boston at full power. I'd pushed the GN Field another ten minutes with all my sitting around not doing anything. Thirty or so minutes total. Plenty of time to do something.

Except I didn't know if anyone in Brockton Bay would act on my absence. I didn't understand the cape scene in Boston all that well either.

So I continued to do nothing.

I hated doing nothing.

Fortunately, three days is a lot of time for lots of not nothing.

"There's something else," I said. "I made it for…for what happened at Winslow."

J and H both got glum.

"Sad state that," H said. "What is it?"

Veda packaged the file and sent it.

I gave them a few moments to look it over, glancing back as one of the Haros declared, "Uno! Uno!"

Red held one card in its robot hand, waving it over its head like a victory flag.

"Emergency. Emergency." Navy set down a card. "Green two. Green two."

Dinah immediately responded with, "Reverse, reverse."

"Draw two, draw two!" Navy declared.

Red spun on his axis. "Not fair, not fair!"

"Simple, but not a bad idea."

I turned back to the monitor, O now standing beside J and H. Not sure which of them spoke. I never heard O speak, but it could have been J or H. Weird.

H looked at me from the screen, smiling warmly. "You want to build this for the victims of the Winslow Incident, yes?"

"The news said the PRT was going to build a dedicated clinic for them," I replied. "They weren't sure how deal with routine care. This is how."

A Haro.

White, I suppose would be an appropriate color.

They wouldn't be like the others. Simpler. Not nearly as capable as the ones in my workshop.

"This is similar to the other robots you've built, yes?"

"The basic design is the same."

"There are parts missing from this one."

Yes there are. "I'm trying to avoid anything that needs a tinker."

J and H needed a moment.

"Oh," J exclaimed. "Ambitious of you. Have you been spending more time with Dragon?"

"Not particularly," I answered.

I'd tried, to be fair. I wanted to ask her first when I thought about the new Haro design. Dragon already manufactured a number of commercial products that didn't need constant maintenance.

But she was so busy and I didn't want to disturb her.

"I don't really know where the line is," I offered. "I'm a tinker. Not using my power when designing or building? It's not easy."

"A spot check then," H offered. He glanced to his side. "O should be able to help."

"How?"

"He's a thinker. Very good at finding flaws."

That didn't answer my question. Why was everyone so cagey answering my questions? "Okay…"

"That's literally what he does," J explained. "He see flaws, and can be quite flexible in defining what a flaw is."

"Oh. So, if we define a flaw as, needs a tinker to be built?"

"He can parse it out. Fairly simply as well since what can and can't be built by tinkers is a very easy distinction."

O didn't say anything. He nodded, leaning over H and J to look at the screen.

That made things simpler. Just build the Haro as normal, let O look at it, and then adjust the parts. Trial and error until I got it right.

"Do you intend to mass produce it?" H asked.

"Not right now," I answered. "I need to work out issues. Test it. Maybe after it's all been debugged, yes."

"Interesting." J stroked his beard with his prosthetic hand. "One of the biggest hurdles in current medicine is the overworking of staff. A machine to perform basic observation and very simple procedures would be a great help."

"More than that," H said, "such a device could be employed in dealing with highly contagious diseases. Offer access and hands to doctors while simplifying quarantine protocols."

"That was my thought," I replied. "And this way, doctors can observe everyone from Winslow and care for them."

J nodded. "And if you don't need to actively replace tinker made components, you can train anyone to perform the maintenance."

"I was thinking of programming the Haros to perform their own maintenance. No reason one Haro can't just fix the one standing next to it."

No one said anything.

"What?"

They stared at me.

"Something I said?"

"Just a warning," H said, his face suddenly stern. "Machines that can repair themselves are only a step removed from machines that can build themselves."

"Arguably, not removed at all," J pointed out. "And there are laws against self-propagation."

"What? Why?"

"Nilbog. The disaster of Ellisburg was more than one cape going on a rampage. His creations don't need his power to endure. They survive on their own. Reproduce on their own. Even eliminating him would leave them rampant."

And? "So what? I'm not Nilbog."

"Nilbog was just the first," H explained. "Breed, formerly of the Nine, also possessed the ability to generate creations that endured his death. Stopping those creatures was one of our first projects."

"The PRT doesn't like it," J said. "The risk is grave, and they are stretched enough as they are. That's all there really is to it."

"But-"

They didn't really need to say much else.

I knew the labyrinth of laws surrounding capes well enough. If the PRT wanted to use them to remove someone, they could.

Which only added to my mixed feelings.

"That's stupid," I grumbled.

Instead of a simple machine that could be set out to work without anyone babysitting it, I'd need to have customer support? Because people were paranoi-

Okay. Wow. There's some karma for me.

Still stupid as fuck.

"They're harmless little robots," I mumbled.

"Some of the people who've been beaten by them might disagree," H said. "The circumstances are what they are I'm afraid."

J nodded. "It's an arbitrary and unfair limitation, but law enforcement is often arbitrary and unfair. Byproduct of trying to fit the world into something that can be managed."

O nodded his head behind him.

"It shouldn't be," I said dejectedly.

"And I think it should rain puppies on sad days," J replied. "You're certainly free to go ahead and design them to do just that. But there will be consequences. Eyes will fall on you. Attention you probably don't want."

Story of my cape career.

"We'll just work on a prototype for now." I turned my head toward O. "If you're willing."

J nodded and gave me a small smile. "We should finish our findings on the solar furnace. Enough side tracking and musing for now, hmm?"

We talked for another hour. They knew their stuff. Even without me saying anything G guessed that my limited flight time came from problems in the GN Field, not the Drive itself. I didn't ask for ideas, but they gave me a few.

"The warping of the antennas is the weird part," I grumbled. "Both times my suit has been damaged, it's the antennas that go first."

"An unforeseen reaction between your carbon armor and the particles," H suggested.

"Maybe. I can't figure out why it happens though. There's no reason for the structure to warp the way it does."

"There's always a reason. Just have to figure out what it is."

Eternal optimists the Foundation.

"Does any other component show the same warp?" G asked.

"Not that I know of," I answered. "Even got blown up by Oni Lee dozens of times, and the armor only impacted on one side."

In retrospect, designing my suit to have my arms in the arms wasn't such a good idea. The blasts Oni Lee set off only needed to dislocate the shoulder of the suit slightly to dislocate my own shoulder.

It seemed natural at the time. Fixing it would need an almost complete redesign of internal components in the chest. There was room, though it would be a little cramped. I'd have to get used to a new control scheme too.

"It has to be related to the GN Field. Just not sure how or why."

"Not likely something we can do without a closer look," J said.

"What about O's power?"

"His power needs clearly defined parameters," G answered. "An idea of what correct should be so that he can see what incorrect is. Can a normal person build this is simple. Can this adjustment to a quantum fractal field solve my problems is not. We'd have to understand the underlying science to do that."

"So no," I mumbled. Figures. "Well. Challenges. Overcome. So on and so on."

"That's the spirit," H said.

I pulled up all my data on the GN field and started looking it over. Again. The line remained open, but mostly the old men and I just babbled about things that didn't matter.

Eventually we disconnected, and I sat back and rethought.

I didn't really care if people didn't like it. Haros that could repair themselves made too much sense from an ease of use point.

Then again, if I needed to come up with customer support, it just meant more jobs.

And I wanted to provide jobs.

I'd manufacture the Haros in the Docks.

Provide hundreds of jobs all at once. Crime free. Legitimate. Legal. Respectable. Give people something other than crime to put food on their tables. Veda would keep the gangs out. O Gundam and the Haros would deal with anyone trying to wreck the place.

Of course, the money issue continued to linger. I didn't know anything about finding investors, or even if I could. Bright side, if the White Haros didn't need a tinker, I completely bypassed virtually every law against tinker inventions.

And if I did it, then the gangs would know what to do to bring me out. Fights with capes became inevitable the moment I broke ground.

Challenges to be overcome.

"Ready?"

I turned, Dinah standing behind me with a notepad.

I needed to be home in the next few hours. Charlotte saved me Dad's wrath covering with Blackwell—don't think she knew about the grounding, just my identity—but Dad remained in complete stern brooding mode.

I spun my chair around and pulled out my phone. Red rolled away from the Uno game for a second, grabbing the spare chair I'd gotten and pushing it over to where Dinah stood.

"Ready," I said.

Dinah sat down, took out a pencil, and nodded.

"Does Sabah Ibnat-Salah, or any member of her family, come to harm in the next week, as a result of her identity being revealed by Teacher, either by capes, Blue Cosmos, or random racists?"

Convoluted questions. Use her real name, just in case she isn't Parian in every possibility, and then throw in as many details as I can to narrow things down as much as possible.

Dinah sat still for a moment, and then her pencil started moving across the paper.

It only occurred to me later that Dinah never struggled to remember what she saw. She might not have the right context, or fully understand what she sees, but I never needed to ask twice.

She wrote it all down one by one. Took a few minutes. Each separate vision started with a bullet point and then dashes for details she noticed.

She ripped the sheet off the pad and handed it to me.

Murdered in her sleep. Brother kidnapped. Easily the worst of the bunch, but Dinah drew an X by the first and circled one of her bullet points. News story about some cape named Skitter.

No such cape that I knew of.

If any such cape appeared, I'd worry about it then.

As for her brother, "Veda. Can you keep an extra eye on Parian's siblings?"

"I will."

I nodded. Dinah didn't see any futures I'd call safe, but I didn't see much to do about them. My only options amounted to continuing to watch her home and business. Keep an eye out for anyone following her. That kind of thing.

I didn't like it but what else could I do?

"Next?" Dinah asked.

"Does Trevor Medina, or any member of his family, come to harm in the next week, as a result of his identity being revealed by Teacher, either by capes, Blue Cosmos, or random racists?"

These questions don't vary much.

Dinah wrote and tore off the page.

I took it, and started asking the next question.

"Does…"

I held the page up. Turning it over and pointing, I asked, "Where was this one?"

Dinah looked at it, and grimaced.

"A store," she said. "Lots of power tools and stuff."

A hardware store? Again? He couldn't be that stupid.

"Does Trevor Medina come to harm in the next seventy-two hours as a result of stupidly"—that part of the question might have been unnecessary—"robbing a hardware store?"

Dinah only wrote a few lines. Two of them amounted to 'yes.'

"How?" I asked.

Dinah scowled. "A man comes in. Shoots him."

Trevor can't be this dumb.

I imagine the Wards wanted to bring him on just like Dazzler and move him to another city. Why would he rob a hardware store now? He seemed worried enough about his mom, and he'd risk her by doing something that bone headed?

"What do you remember about the store?" I asked.

Dinah looked up at the ceiling for a moment. "It just looks like a store. The lights weren't on, but it didn't seem very big. The man was old. White. Mustache and wrinkly. He had an Army shirt and shorts."

"At night then."

"It was dark outside," she confirmed.

"Army shirt like a camo shirt?"

"No. The one's that say Army on them."

In shorts, and at night. "Probably the owner. Lots of stores in the Docks have apartments above them. Veda?"

"Searching."

We waited a moment. I contemplated more specific questions, ones to help narrow down which hardware store in case Veda couldn't find it by the owner.

"Martin Cranson," Veda revealed. "Owner of Cranson Hardware."

I turned to the monitors and looked it up on the city map.

"Seriously?" I sighed.

Not only might Trevor rob a hardware store somewhere, he might rob the one two blocks from his house. Which he'd already robbed.

"He can't be this dumb."

"He did think leaving money behind absolved any criminal act," Veda pointed out.

He might be that dumb.

Or desperate. I could relate to desperate.

Did I call the PRT? Tell them what? I have a precog I haven't told anyone about and she thinks some version of Trevor might get shot? Maybe?

"Veda, where is Trevor?"

"Trevor Medina and Miranda Medina are both at the PRT ENE HQ building."

"When they get out, stick a Haro on them. If Trevor decides to be reckless tonight I need to know so I can save him."

Hopefully without complication this time.

Moving on…

"Does Lafter Frankland, or anyone associated with her, come to harm in the next week, as a result of her identity being revealed by Teacher, either by capes, Blue Cosmos, or random racists?"

No.

No one knew what happened to Laughter, but Dinah didn't see anything happening to her in the next week. Sometimes she saw things that didn't happen or didn't see things that did, but seeing nothing at all? I took that as a sign that it just wasn't happening.

I asked about Sere. Nothing there either, but he was way out in the suburbs, far from where the gangs did their business. He'd never been very active to begin with.

"I can answer another," Dinah offered.

I lifted my head. "That's five.".

"Two of them were simple," she replied. "I can do another."

My lips parted, but I stopped myself.

This is what I feared, right? That I'd push her too far. Use her like a thing instead of as a person. I did want to ask a question. It hung in my mind since our first Q&A session the day after everything happened.

I didn't ask it then, prioritizing other more immediate concerns.

"I don't mind," Dinah said. "Honest. I can do one more."

My hesitation continued, but with the carrot right there?

"Will Teacher be in the news next week?"

A vague question, incredibly so, but I needed it to be vague.

"Watch for the headlines," I said. "Don't look too hard. Just write down all the headlines you see."

Dinah's hand started moving. No dashes or bullets. Just one line after the other. Ten. Twenty. Thirty. I didn't imagine she'd find too many. Far as we knew Dinah's power only picked out two dozen or so potential futures at a time.

Still, she got more than I expected.

When she finished and tore the page, her hand shook a little. A pit welled up inside me.

I pushed her too far.

"I'm okay," she sighed.

I took the sheet from her. Maybe she wasn't, but it was done. I read through the headlines. Some of them were worthless. Just because Teacher made the news didn't mean Dinah saw anything written about it. She couldn't hear what people said in her visions, so anyone talking about it didn't help her.

She'd found a few though.

Teacher strikes again.

PRT under fire.

I zeroed in on one.

Are secret identities worth the cost?

That…That made complete sense.

Sitting up straight and thinking back to the news, it made absolute sense.

Tattletale said he struck twice. My own research confirmed it. More than that, he always struck right in the open wound. Drew attention somewhere, let the PRT try their hand at damage control, and then hit again.

Only made sense he'd hit on secret identities. The PRT probably knew that. Why they were hammering the line so hard.

Secret identities matter.

They keep people safe.

So how would Teacher undo that?

The headlines were too vague to tell me, but at least I knew it happened in the next week.

And what exactly would I do about it?

Teacher went well beyond the Bay. An international criminal. He'd been at it for decades, even continued his schemes after being Bird Caged. How do you stop someone who'd already been stopped and just kept going?

"Does that help?" Dinah asked.

"Yes. Thank you."

I set the sheet aside. If no other villains wanted to get up to anything, fine. I'd focus on the one who screwed over hundreds of lives.

That's why I'd do it in the end.

Because at the end of the day, he's just another bully.

Least I have something to do now.

"Ready to go home?" I asked.

"Not really," Dinah said. "It's Tuna night."

I picked up her bag from the floor. "You'll survive."

I got changed back into my regular clothes and together we walked out to the bus stop. Dinah's father picked her up, and after they departed I went back home.

I started dinner as soon as I got back.

I turned on the news, keeping up with the reports as they went while I tried to think through the problem.

Problems rather.

Dad got home around six.

"I started dinner," I called. When he didn't answer I turned. Things were tense, but so tense he'd give me the cold shoulder? "Dad?"

She stared back at me with an uncertain expression. He set his brief case down, and loosened his tie.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Someone came to the offices today," he said. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out a folded letter. "He gave me this."

He set the letter on the table and sat down.

After making sure dinner wouldn't burn, I walked over and picked up the paper. Heavy card stock. The kind used for important stuff I suppose.

Unfolding it and reading through the first few lines, my heart dropped a little.

"I'm being transferred to Arcadia?"

Dad smiled.

My fingers tensed against the paper.

"Is this a joke?"

Dad wasn't smiling anymore.

Sue me. Too little, too late. It felt like a damn joke. The cosmic kind the universe plays on you. I'd spent nearly two years praying to be transferred to Arcadia. That Blackwell would get tired of dealing with me, or that someone would just have some fucking compassion.

And they decided to send me now? There were three weeks left in the school year.

Other than the first few lines, a whole paragraph explained the reasoning. Winslow lost eighteen staff "recently" and they needed to move some students around. Upon review of my records they decided it would be best to transfer me to a new environment.

I blinked at that.

Because of my records it said.

They didn't use the words, but it sounded like someone was saying, "because you got tormented by sadists and received no help we're sending you somewhere else."

I raised my head, looking past Dad and straight into the wall.

Then, "I need be alone."

Dad shot to his feet. "What? Taylor where are you-"

"Not now!" It can't be that.

I went right up the stairs, slammed my door shut, and wedged the chair against it for good measure. I heard him follow and he jostled the door and called for me. I repeated myself.

My phone came out as soon as I felt sure he wouldn't batter the door down.

sys.t/ has Blue Cosmos filed that lawsuit?

sys.v/ no
sys.v/ what is wrong?

It can't be so simple. What were the odds? How would Teacher even fucking know about it?

But it made sense.

What would completely sink the PRT's entire line on secret identities and how they protected people?

A Ward brutalizing her peers.

It made too much sense.

It would humiliate them. First they couldn't keep their own house in order and files leaked out ruining lives. Then, after hammering on the line about how identities matter, he drops Shadow Stalker off a cliff…

Didn't she deserve that, and the PRT too for letting it happen?

Except Teacher was doing it. As bad as the PRT might be, they weren't burning the world down one disaster at a time. Not on purpose anyway. Maybe. Or not.

Might as well chose between a turd sandwich and a giant douche.

Or keeping my identity secret and not. Fuck. Teacher might not care what I did if he wanted to make a spectacle. Trying to get Blackwell fired, or force her hand to make the problem go away was meaningless. He'd go through regardless.

Even if the lawsuit didn't work, he probably knew about it. Leak it to the press or spill it online.

And that's what the choice came down to in the end. Not that I enjoyed it. I wanted them to burn…like I wanted Winslow to burn.

Fucking Schadenfreude.

"Sophia fucking Hess."

I breathed in and calmed myself.

I didn't have the luxury of being pissed. I needed to protect myself. Protect Dad, Veda, and Dinah. If I got outed they'd all be in trouble.

At the very least, the PRT made it real obvious they wanted to please me. On some level at least. I could just repeat that to myself while setting aside the lying and the hypocrisy. Till I'd pulled myself out of the proverbial fire anyway.

"Veda."

"Yes?"

I pulled my window open, gathered my phone, and climbed out. I'd deal with Dad's fury when my house wasn't under threat of firebombing or whatever else someone might cook up.

"I need to meet with Ramius. Face to face. Right now."