Step 9.4
"She's still staring," Lafter whispered behind me.
"Let her," Dinah said. "She'll get tired and build something eventually."
A few seconds passed.
"But-"
"She can hear you."
"Brooding, brooding," Green said, apparently ungrateful for who loaded him into a new body from his backup.
"She can hear you," Dinah reiterated.
"I don't know," Lafter mumbled. "She's been staring for hours and we've been commenting on it, and she still hasn't responded to the obvious goading."
Dinah sighed. "She's probably hoping you won't try this next time so she's suffering in silence as you distract her."
"Did you precog that or…"
"It's obvious."
It was obvious.
I stared at the monitors, trying to get the pieces to fit together.
The PRT might have tried and failed to track Coil for years, but that's just par for the course. I'd been trying to do it with a quantum computing AI's help for six months and still found myself left off nowhere. Coil hid himself well, and he never did any of the obviously dumb crap the Empire and ABB now knew not to do. No social media accounts. No public presence. He worked from the shadows and clearly paid everyone who worked for him handsomely enough to keep their mouths utterly shut.
Even the men captured at the gas station slash armory hadn't said a word.
How the hell did those kids manage to track down one of his armories in a few weeks?
It's not just the Empire.
I poured over the news reports, trying to pick things out. A few of the attacks against suspected Coil fronts were definitely the Empire. Hookwolf showed up, or Stormtiger. Capes. Not guys with swastikas who could quite literally be anyone. So yes, the Empire was definitely at war with Coil.
Dinah probably didn't see the gas station robbery because Coil wasn't dumb enough to report his own armory. Over the past few weeks there were other places. Places that exploded or got broken-into, were found to be vaguely connected to Coil. The PRT and I both attributed them to the Empire, but what if it was the kids? Had they somehow gotten a lead and worked their way up in search of weapons? I didn't imagine they had money for that kind of gear, so spending a couple weeks looking to steal it from someone else made sense.
If I knew how they did it, I could do it too. Right?
Maybe not the primary thing to be worried about. I mean, a bunch of tinker-enhanced kids who could evidently fight capes and not lose were running around the city armed to the teeth. Kind of a minor crisis that, but they'd gotten good at hiding.
After escaping our notice last night we'd seen no sign of them. Brockton Bay more than offered enough places for thirty kids who didn't want to be found to hide. Looking, and failing to find, the Undersiders taught me that.
"She's still doing it," Lafter noted.
"It's been two minutes, Lafter," Dinah pointed out.
"Time is relative," Green said. "Relative."
"That's not what that means."
"How do you know?" Lafter asked.
"Because I go to school."
"Sounds nice."
"You could go to school."
Lafter hummed. "Would there be a point?"
"Would there?"
"That's what I'm asking."
"You need to go to school."
"Make me."
"Stop engaging her, Dinah," I said.
"She speaks!" Lafter exclaimed.
"She's goading you because she's bored," I continued, not responding to her jab.
I went back to my monitors and ignored Lafter's response.
I'd rather be getting my ass kicked by kids.
At least that had progress. Staring at my monitors didn't seem to go anywhere, and I still kept doing it. There's something I wasn't seeing. I knew it, but obviously I didn't know what 'it' was. Something I felt I should be seeing.
"There's something I'm not seeing," I mumbled.
"Correction," Veda replied. "All available data is currently displayed."
Lafter pouted. "Was that a joke?"
"Twenty-five percent funny," Green said, "twenty-five percent funny."
"I mean there's something about all this that I'm not getting." I sighed, realizing I'd fallen into the trap of responding to provocation. "Well played."
"Thank you," Veda said. "It has been several hours."
I checked the time. Several hours indeed, mostly wasted.
"There's something here," I insisted
"It will still be there later," Dinah noted. "Go make a hyper beam accelerating something or other."
"What?" I turned, looking at her as she jotted away in a notebook. "Like a cannon?"
"Yeah sure," Dinah answered. "Do that. Or do this." She set her pencil down and lifted the notebook up. "This is what I saw you using to fight mega ultra chicken." Lafter started snickering. "No. really."
She described the Dragon-suit I fought in one of her visions in such terms. 'Like a big robot chicken' she said, 'with death lasers.' She said she didn't know the Gundam she saw me using, but that she'd draw me a picture of it.
Dinah, it turns out, isn't a bad artist.
I got up and crossed the short distance to her seat. It wasn't quite a work of art, of course. Not a design diagram either. The image held a static pose with straight lines, but I looked at it and recognized a Gundam. The v-shaped head crest was set a little more into the head than Astraea or Queen, and the chest sported a transparent lens.
My power apparently works on doodles too, because I instantly determined the lens' purpose.
A GN condenser based in a crystalline structure.
That's…Brilliant. Carbon conducted GN particles like a superconductor conducted electricity, and one could easily shape carbon into complex crystalline structures. Well, not 'easily' easily, but I could modify my fabricators to produce such structures.
I also recognized two large blade like fins fitted on either side of the suit. Giant functional antennae, something I'd already started playing with in Gundam-03's design after building the shield system used by the Full Armor modules. A GN Field's strength didn't merely hinge on output from the GN drive itself. A wider area of projection helped. I started designing special emitters for projecting exceedingly strong shields after using the method in the Full Armor.
I skimmed over that, though.
It took me a few moments to recognize the structures set at the base of the fins. I stuttered when I did.
"Two GN drives?" I asked.
Dinah nodded.
I frowned. "That's impossible."
"I saw it, so it is possible."
My lips set in a thin line.
It's not though…Right?
There's a reason I needed to synchronize the GN drives when using Queen's and Astraea's to power the Full Armor system. Each Drive produced a slightly different wavelength of GN particle. It's a minuscule difference by any measure, but even a tiny difference was enough to cause complete field collapse. Particles from two different drives simply don't get along for very long. Synchronizing to bring the wavelengths closer together helped, but it took a preposterous amount of calculating power.
The best Veda and I could do was about forty-nine percent and we only managed to maintain it for a few seconds. GN particles were simply too fluid. If I had to guess, it was why Trans-Am messed with Dinah's power. By their very nature, individual GN particles were unpredictable. The whole could be harnessed and manipulated, but trying to get any one particle to do something specific simply didn't work.
It took Veda constantly working to even try and herd those little green cats for a few seconds. To keep that going long enough to power a single Gundam? It shouldn't be possible, though Dinah did have a point. She saw it. If she saw it, then it should be possible, shouldn't it? And I did notice a rise in power that exceeded the output of both GN drives when syncing them together. Not a huge rise, but…
I tore the page and handed the book back to Dinah.
I set the page aside. I'd worry about it later, when I had less on my plate.
"She's doing it again," Lafter whispered.
"We tried," Dinah replied. She opened her notebook. "Want to play tic-tac-toe?"
"As long as I can draw smiley faces instead of circles."
"Go for it."
I still needed to figure out what Cranial's kids wanted an armory of guns for. How they found an armory of guns? That might just be my wounded pride, I admitted. I'd been hunting for Coil with nothing to show for it, and they figured it out in a matter of weeks.
I doubt they planned to do anything appropriate for children their age, not that I was one to talk.
If only Eidolon hadn't blown Cranial apart. She was going to tell Dragon something.
I tried thinking back to what I heard Cranial say, but I only remembered ramblings. Something about 'the source' and a 'network.' It didn't make sense. She'd clearly lost it at some point, which might make whatever the kids intended to do even worse. The gangs operated on personal interest. It made them somewhat predictable. Someone truly and utterly insane? How do you comprehend the intentions of the incomprehensible?
Kind of reflected the whole situation really. A lot of it seemed kind of insane. In the metaphorical sense, not the literal.
The Ex-Merchants told me Trainwreck was the one who brought Cranial into the city. Seemed like a big play for someone who vanished at the Merchants' darkest hour. Maybe he didn't want to be around for the fallout of his own actions?
I sighed. They might have a point.
"Bullshi-crap!" Lafter exclaimed. "How are you—"
"I've already seen every outcome of this game," Dinah said with narrowed eyes.
"That's cheating!"
"You decided to play a game with a precog," she replied. "You walked into it."
"Has point," Green repeated, "has point."
I got up and wandered upstairs.
"Did we say something?" Lafter asked.
The factory floor was empty, for once. Left me free to walk the line on my own, looking it over and inspecting all the components. I didn't doubt Trevor, he'd done a great job assembling the factory and improving on it. He'd gone home last night and hadn't shown up today. Perfectly fine, since we'd finished the line.
"You will decipher the mystery," Veda said in my ear. "You always do."
"Yeah. Just need a break, I guess."
"You have your next class with Professor Katagiri today," she offered.
"I know." That did excite me a little, but I needed to wind down.
I opened some of the panels along the line and poked around. I thought of a few improvements, but they could wait. Probably best to make sure everything worked as is first. It helped a bit, got my mind off the pretzel I'd dedicated myself to trying to unravel.
Not even sure why it bothers me so much.
The kids with all the guns should be my concern, not how they found the guns. I'm not that arrogant, am I? Obsessing over how they managed to do something I'd failed to do made me wonder.
Toying around with the factory line only took so long. Once I'd finished and fitted the last panel back in place, I looked around the quiet building. I'd come so far in such a small amount of time. Once the Helpers started coming off the line, I'd pass another milestone. Another step in my plans completed. It's a surreal thing to think about, and every time I did it only felt more so.
Standing in the dark and not doing much of anything, I decided I didn't want to keep lingering on any of that.
I could drop by the house before the class started. I'd managed to make some progress with Dad, and making progress on something sounded nice at the moment. I checked on Dinah real quick, but she and Lafter both seemed absorbed in Super Smash Bros. with the Haros. I didn't need to worry about that. Veda could get Dinah home when the time came.
I should talk to Dad about finishing up that internship idea.
Dinah could use the excuse for explaining why she might be seen in the Docks.
I worked my way home, changing out of costume when the chance presented itself. Dad was in the kitchen looking over documents when I entered.
"Hey, kiddo." He greeted me with a small smile. "Something up?"
I flinched slightly.
Two simple little words, but they highlighted the distance between us. I'd been trying to spend more time at home, but it still felt like an exception rather than the rule. Something I did when it suited me, rather than the natural thing to do.
"No," I mumbled. "Just coming by."
Just coming by. There I went, reinforcing the whole 'this isn't the normal thing' mood. Go me.
I sat down at the table, and Pink and Orange rolled in from the back door a few minutes later.
"More contract work?" I asked, looking at the papers and desperate for anything to talk about.
Dad glanced down and frowned. "Oh. No. This is from"—his voice got a little gravelly—"Blue Cosmos." He turned the paper in his hands over and handed it to me. "They've compiled all the testimony together and want us to review the overview, I guess. Make sure we're happy with the case they want to present."
"They mailed that?" I asked.
He shook his head. "No, I dropped by and picked up the packet."
I nodded and started looking it over. It mostly just over-viewed the points of fact Charlotte, Mrs. Knott, and I established in the interviews with the lawyers. They'd arranged things into a timeline, collected names and places, and included at the end some questions about whether or not we thought the 'case' was an accurate depiction of events.
They took some clever liberties, of course. Not untrue liberties, but they definitely put effort into throwing everything at the PRT's feet. Blackwell knew such-and-such happened, a teacher witnesses so-and-so do something, Sophia being a Ward was an open secret. They drew all the lines directly to Blackwell and Sophia's handler, and by extension the PRT.
"I guess it's accurate." I couldn't bother to work myself up over their obvious agenda. It's not like the lawsuit would last past the first meeting. One line toward the end caught my eye. "Who is Jane Doe?"
"It's a name people tend to use when hiding an identity," Dad stated.
"I know that. I mean, why does this document refer to testimony from Jane Doe?" I pointed him at the relevant lines, a few toward the end. "See?"
Dad took the page and read it over briefly. "I guess they collected testimony from someone else," he said. "Is there anyone else at the school who might have talked?"
I honestly didn't know.
"Maybe someone? I don't know."
Jane Doe would imply a girl, but no one came to mind. If Blue Cosmos went around and asked people for testimony and only one bothered to offer something…Well, I wasn't surprised.
The sections relating to her mostly referred to Sophia's mentality. A whole bunch of 'survival of the strongest' nonsense, and 'the bullied girls deserved it because they were weak.' Yeah, that sounded like Sophia. I spotted some other names, but only Emma's really mattered. Whoever Jane Doe was, she nailed Emma to the wall. Identified her as a willing participant at every step who egged Sophia on in bullying Charlotte and me. Even described how she pushed others to participate and threatened them if they didn't.
A shame the whole case would get sealed and she'd get to keep on hiding what she did to me. The costs of victory can suck.
"I guess we're almost at the end of this," I whispered.
"Yeah," Dad replied. "Ramius and the PRT are still onboard?"
I nodded. "I've been keeping her updated as Newtype. They'll be more than happy to handle this in a way that keeps it quiet, just like they did with Leet."
"That didn't exactly work out," Dad noted.
"Yeah. I think they were more worried about the truce than anything with that. With this, they're saving their own asses. They'll put some real effort into it."
I could use the money too. The models were supporting me phenomenally well, but once the Helpers started coming off the line I'd need to build a distribution network and that would cost more money.
I set the papers aside, which still left lots of papers on the table.
"Big packet?" I asked.
"Big packet," Dad agreed. "Most of it's just paperwork, permissions, and such. They want to try and get the PRT's records of the Ward program in the opening salvo."
"Good luck," I mumbled. "The PRT has so many legal protections around the Wards even Blue Cosmos can't get that stuff."
"Probably not their identities," Dad replied. "Probably for the best. But they cover that"—he looked through a few pages—"here. Here. This one. They don't expect to get much more than the PRT's standard operating procedures for how the Wards are overseen. If they can prove that those procedures weren't followed"—and that would not be a challenge—"they can probably push for more information about Sophia. She's dead an—Oh. Um."
I raised my brow. "What?"
"Should I have said that?"
"Her name?" I shrugged. "She's dead, right? So what does it matter?"
It didn't matter, right? Her family were 'heroes' in their own way. No one in their right mind went after the families of capes who died in Endbringer fights. Even the people not in the right mind didn't seem to do it. The PRT could probably use the lawsuit to hush up all the documents around Sophia Hess and Shadow Stalker, honestly. Another win for them in an overwrought scheme to blunt Teacher's second punch and keep Taylor Hebert out of the news.
The PRT probably had a whole bunch of incriminating documents on their failure. They kept papers on everyth—
I shot to my feet and started toward the door.
"Taylor?" Dad asked.
I stopped, spinning on my heel and patting him on the shoulder.
"Have to go talk to Ramius you gave me an idea thanks Dad I'll be back later."
"Okay…"
I felt stupid, a consistent feeling for someone with a superpower that makes them smarter.
The PRT kept records of everything.
I got back into my costume and went to the PRT building. The receptionist gave me a weird look. Obviously, I was scheduled to show up later. She asked me to wait for a moment, which I maybe didn't take with grace.
Orange and Red caught up as I tapped my foot impatiently. Orange bumped into my ankle, and he turned to the right. I followed his gaze and saw someone pointing a phone at me…waiting with clear impatience in front of a receptionist just doing her job.
Kati is going to give me crap for this.
Ramius stepped out of the door to the back and nodded to the receptionist.
"Newtype," she greeted. She waved me toward the door and I followed. "Professor Katagiri's class isn't for another four hours. Is something wrong?"
I waited till we got through the doors to say, "I want to look at the PRT's case files."
"PRT case files are confidential. We don't just give them out."
"I figured." And I came anyway.
"What specifically are you looking for?" she asked.
What was I looking for?
It sounded like a stupid question to be asking myself only then, but, "There's something wrong in the city, and I'm not referring to a decade of gangs practically running it. The odds of Cranial's children finding anything relating to Coil in a few weeks when the rest of us have tried and failed for months to years is preposterous."
Ramius narrowed her gaze. "Define preposterous."
"As in they found more on Coil than we have in a few weeks without drawing any of our notice. Going unnoticed by the rest of us, or working their way to finding Coil's stuff on their own isn't that unrealistic, but both? I don't believe it, and I built a mechanized suit powered by exotic energy and kept it a secret for two months. Something is going on in this city and I want to figure it out before whatever is going on happens."
I followed her down a hall toward an elevator. The place seemed pretty active, once I looked around. Lots of troopers and suits in the hall talking and carrying boxes.
"Did I interrupt something?" I asked.
"The victims of a cape who got a kill order are armed with guns, body armor, and no one knows what they want," Ramius listed. "You've picked a great time to offer your assistance."
I raised my brow behind my visor. "Is that what I'm doing?"
"It is if you want access to files we rarely share with independents."
I glanced at a group of men carrying some rather large and long boxes through the halls. The text on the side said 'point toward enemy.' I knew that's what got put on the explosive end of claymores
"You can say it was your idea," I offered.
She smiled. "We'll see if you're so generous after the paperwork."
I didn't trip over myself. "How much paperwork?"
Too much fucking paperwork.
Ramius spent an hour on a phone talking to someone. I didn't know who. Too busy reading through three dozen different forms, half of them in triplicate. Mostly NDAs. I don't know why they wasted anyone's time with it when a simple request not to do anything stupid was the point and about as legally binding.
"Having fun yet?" She set the phone down on her desk.
Her office was a pretty barren place. When your whole job takes you from city to city managing young capes for the PRT, I guess you get accustomed to not decorating much. The chair was comfy at least.
"I hate paperwork." Thinking of which. "Blue Cosmos gave my dad a bunch of files by the way. I think they're getting ready to file."
Ramius nodded. "I'll let legal know. They'll put on a good show." She looked at me with a soft gaze, "You know I won't be there? At any of the meetings, I mean. Too weird, having Newtype's 'personal' liaison sit in where she has no place being."
"I figured." Looking at her face though, "It can't be that bad, can it?"
"When the PRT offers a settlement, they're going to do everything they can to convince you not to take it," Ramius noted. "Blue Cosmos doesn't care about you Taylor, not that I think you need me to tell you that."
"I've already noticed."
"They want their pound of flesh from the PRT, not a successful case where their client gets what's best for them."
"You think they'll be rough?"
"They'll be rough. Not that I think you'll cave to pressure easily. You never have, but I know all of this hits very close for you."
One way of putting it. I'd say the whole thing punches right where I never wanted to be punched. I hated every meeting, and not just because of the context around it. I hated reliving what the Trio did to me. I hated seeing Charlotte give up her own chance at justice to do what helped me. I even felt bad for Mrs. Knott in a way. She had to have figured out something was up, but I knew she'd never say anything. She felt like she owed me, and while I agreed, taking advantage of it felt wrong.
"I'll be okay," I assured. "I've been okay longer than I realized."
That response seemed to surprise her.
If I took anything positive from the last few months though, it was that I could survive what happened to me. I could thrive, even. Maybe not in a normal way, or a way that most people could understand. Maybe that's something only other capes might understand. Miss Militia told me right after the mess with Ali Al-Saachez that I wasn't like Armsmaster or Piggot. I wasn't in it for the job or to be a professional.
I didn't see any other path for my life. I accepted no other possibility, and I had no issues with that.
Ramius simply nodded—though I saw some worry in her eyes—and collected my paperwork.
She tucked all the papers into a large envelope and led me from the office. "Come on."
We went down into a basement or something. I think we went lower than the level with the Wards base on it, which made me wonder how many lower levels the PRT building had.
Maybe I can build another basement under my basement?
I'd already built under and around the sewer system. Then again, the city sat on an aquifer…But an 'underwater' base could be cool. Except for Leviathan existing. Damn.
The elevator opened straight into a room of shelves, boxes, books, and paper. It was well lit, with a few tables scattered about.
"We digitize mostly everything," Ramius noted, "but we keep at least one hard copy of most reports for at least two years and there's a lot less legalese surrounding their access."
"Who was on the phone?" I asked.
"Calvert. I figured we'd skip the part where we ask Piggot, she says no, and we go to Calvert to get around her."
"Good call."
"Someone from the PRT will still need to supervise you, and no records can leave this room," Ramius continued. "So, I might as well help. Where did you want to start?"
"Anything on the last few incidents between Coil and the Empire. There's something weird about them." I glanced around the rows and rows upon rows of shelves. "Would there be anything here about Cranial?"
"Not outside of the operation against her," Ramius answered. "Most PRT divisions will only have sporadic records on her. A complete set in one place would only exist at the central archive in LA, or on the case servers, but we can't get you access to those."
I nodded. It would help if I could figure out what the fuck Cranial wanted. If we could determine her actual goals or what she was doing with the kids, then we might be able to figure what the children might do next.
"Let me see," Ramius mumbled. "The field reports should be over in D, and the investigation summaries should be in I."
I looked at the hanging signs and frowned.
"Why are reports on the same incident on opposite sides of the room."
"Because we file paper records by branch." Ramius smiled weakly. "There's a reason we went digital."
I spent more time than I'd hoped just gathering all the PRT reports on the twenty incidents that made the news, and then a few more minutes getting the papers on the three that didn't. I took that in faith that coming to the PRT, for once, was the totally right call.
Orange climbed onto the table. I'd kind of forgotten about him.
"What specifically are we looking for?" Veda asked.
"Anything weird," I guessed.
Ramius and I arranged the files and some record boxes on the table. Red climbed up to join Orange, and the four sets of hands helped get things done. I started with the incidents that never made the news, and quickly saw why the events never got reported on.
They didn't seem to amount to anything concrete.
One car hijacking and two break-ins. I didn't know how the PRT associated the car with Coil. The investigation summary cited some reports but I didn't feel the need to hunt them down. The two homes were nicer, but not expensive. Both got linked to Coil via mercenaries who were arrested, one from the bank robbery just before the incident with Cranial and another who died in some incident three months ago.
Oddly though, each investigation attributed the incident to the Empire.
"Why would the Empire break into the home of an old Coil merc who got arrested five months ago?" I asked.
"Fishing," Ramius offered as she sorted through the files.
"For what?" I asked. "They kicked things off by hitting another gas station serving as a front for Coil. What would they need to fish for?" I found the field report for the incident. I don't know why the PRT didn't just roll those into the investigation summary. To waste my time, apparently. "No items were taken according to the new tenant."
The PRT, unfortunately, came up with mostly the same issue I'd seen in the news reports. Some incidents obviously involved the Empire, while others seemed merely attributed to them absent concrete evidence. Not something worth questioning until Cranial's kids turned up again, so I guess no one could be blamed for making the obvious assumption.
"Is the PRT looking back into any of these incidents?" I asked.
"No," Ramius answered. "The war between the Empire and Coil has been very low key since it started, so it hasn't taken on any major priorities. There isn't even a body count. It mostly feels like two gangs poking each other without wanting things to escalate."
My brow twitched at that, because something sounded off there too.
Save it for later.
"There is access to the city sewer system near several of these locations," Veda pointed out.
I raised my head.
The sewers? I looked around the papers, searching for one of the field reports. They included pictures taken of the crime scenes, and I think I saw—
"Here." I pulled the picture out of the file and turned it toward Ramius. "That manhole is uncovered. See?"
I pointed in the corner of the picture. The image was taken at the back door of one of the broken into homes. The guy taking the pictures I guess wanted to capture a bunch of cigarette butts on the asphalt, but the back door went right up to the street behind two rows of houses. Just in the corner at the far end, an open manhole sat in the middle of the back alley.
Ramius frowned and took the report.
"I already read it," I said. "There's no mention of the manhole being uncovered and no pictures of it."
Ramius' brow furrowed, and I kept my mouth shut. The picture only caught the corner of the hole, and on it's own it might not mean anything. People could steal manhole covers, though I couldn't fathom why. I also didn't imagine one of Brockton Bay's more upscale neighborhoods wouldn't replace it rapidly.
"StarGazer." I set the file in my hand down. "Arrange these into two piles. Incidents with access to the sewers within say, fifty feet, on the left side and the rest on the right."
Orange and Red rolled across the table and started sorting.
We got pretty even piles.
I'd read through most of the reports already, and surmised, "most of the ones on the right don't have close sewer access…They're also the ones with the most direct evidence that the Empire was behind them."
I went to the pile on the left and took out a few files. In total, twelve of the incidents had close sewer access. Only four had any direct attribution to the Empire, which left seven with nothing but convenience for their attribution.
I spread those files out, and looked over them again.
"These ones were the kids."
Ramius' eyes scanned the papers and waited.
"This would be the first," Veda said. Red rolled over and picked up one file.
"The break-ins," Ramius noted. "The hijacking would be next."
I nodded. The car hijacking. It happened at an old overpass in the city outskirts, and the sewers let out nearby. Easy enough for the kids to slip out and lay in ambush. From the hijacking they worked their way up. A corner store in the Towers, a convenience store a few blocks north of that, and then a warehouse a little more north of that.
"It's a line," I realized. "They literally worked their way from the car to the gas station. Followed some kind of trail to it."
Ramius nodded. "I see it."
How did they go from the break-ins to the hijacking though?
"Who lives in those places exactly?" I asked, pointing at the files at the front of the timeline.
Ramius opened the investigation summaries. Her eyes narrowed. "One family of four, and one man in his seventies with a nurse who visits him on Sundays."
"Ex-military?"
"The old man was a colonel in Desert Storm," Ramius said.
Too old. "And nothing was taken?"
"Nothing."
I tapped my foot on the floor. That didn't make any sense. How did two break-ins where Coil's guys weren't even present anymore lead to the hijacking? Why even break into them?
Wait.
"How long does the PRT think Cranial was in Brockton Bay?" I asked. Wait, I can answer that myself.
I reached for my phone while Ramius said, "We're not sure. She's been known to stay in one place for as much as a year. She left Vancouver in February, I think? It must have taken her at least a week to get here, assuming she came straight to the city. Maybe four months?"
The phone rang, and as soon as it picked up I started talking.
"Stu, Newtype."
"Oh. Hey boss, what's up?"
"Can you tell me something about Cranial?"
"Suppose, I can."
"One of the guys told me Trainwreck brought her in"—Ramius' brow went up at that—"but when did he do that? If you don't know can you get me to someone who would? This is important."
"Um, let me think for a second. I don't know, but Krenshaw might. He was still hanging out with his buddies from the Merchants until you caught Skidmark. I have his number here."
I called Krenshaw and asked him the question.
"Like, at the end of March, I think? I um, wasn't exactly keeping up with my program then. Sorry. It's kind of fuzzy, but I'm pretty sure cause my kid's birthday is on the twenty-fourth and I was hurrying to get home for him when some of the guys said they needed to take care of some cape and her kids. That was Cranial, right?"
I nodded. "Yeah. Thanks. And stick with your program."
"I know. I've got my shit straight after someone started flying around busting in walls."
"Good. Keep it that way."
I hung up and set my phone down and sighed.
"Cranial might have been in the city as early as March. Old information. The kids didn't know those guys had been caught or killed. They probably don't have Internet access in the sewers."
Though, that didn't explain how they knew to go looking there in the first place. The car got hit a few days before the break-ins, but Coil couldn't be wandering around with info on guys who weren't working for him anymore.
The gas station
"Maybe there are other break-ins," I mumbled. "Ones Coil didn't report for the obvious reason that he wouldn't report them and have the PRT poking around. The kids had knowledge of his mercs somehow, and tracked their homes and started working their way up the chain."
That's how they did it. Exactly how I'd do it, how I tracked down the Empire through their phones. But how did they get to square one in the first place? Trainwreck brought Cranial to the city, not Coil.
"Did you say Trainwreck brought Cranial to the city?" Ramius asked.
"That's what some of the Merchants I hired said," I replied. "Wait. I arrested Skidmark months after that. Trainwreck went behind his back?"
"Wait."
Ramius stepped away and disappeared into the stacks. She came back a minute later with a field report.
"When Trainwreck first appeared, he was living in a junkyard in the south of the city," she explained. "The PRT kept him under surveillance." She set the file down and opened it. "Back in December of last year, a man in a suit entered the junkyard and talked to Trainwreck for thirty minutes. The Think Tank issued an analysis and determined it was an attempt at recruitment by Coil."
I stared for a moment.
"But he joined the Merchants, when?" I asked.
Ramius looked through the file. "In January."
"And he brought Cranial to the city two months later."
I glanced down at the files.
"How did no one notice this until now?"
"We produce a dozen new reports a week." Ramius set the file down. "I need to go to the director with this, immediately." She pulled her phone from her pocket and started dialing.
Trainwreck is working for Coil.
Trainwreck brought Cranial to Brockton Bay.
Coil brought Cranial to Brockton Bay.
That smug snake-costumed asshole.
He acted so supportive at the PRT's gathering. Of course, he did. We were taking down the Merchants for him. Did he bring Cranial to the city just to wait for a chance to use her that way? That's convoluted. It's convoluted as fuck. What, did he just plan to wait for Cranial to fuck up, kill some kids or get caught and…Oh god.
Ramius raised her head across the table, phone to her ear, "Director Piggot. I have reason to believe Trainwreck is working for Coil."
My hand went up. "Wait."
Ramius paused. "What?" She glanced back at the phone and frowned. "Newtype, ma'am. We were looking into some records—No. No I asked Deputy Director Calvert. I didn't want to bother—"
"Wait," I snapped. "I need a moment, just a moment."
The pieces were all there. I knew something was off. I felt it, but this isn't what I thought I was looking for. The pieces all just clicked. The little nagging questions that kept me so distracted and bothered.
I looked at Ramius, my face paling.
"Coil killed those kids."
"What kids?" Ramius asked. It dawned on her after she asked. I saw it as the horror came over her face. "The kids Laughter found."
"Trainwreck works for Coil," I pointed out. "Trainwreck brought Cranial to the city. Coil brought her to the city. Coil killed those kids. He took advantage of it. I don't know how he did it." I looked at the files again and started flipping through them. "He brought her to the city and killed those kids…"
I started looking through the files again, more to assure myself I wasn't reaching than anything.
I wasn't. I was right. I knew I was right.
My voice picked up speed as I spoke.
"That's how the children knew where to start looking. They must have seen some of his mercs unmasked, or something. Maybe he moved them and Cranial through his network before handing them off. Trainwreck doesn't have the connections to bring Cranial into the city. It had to have been Coil and slipped her into the Merchants. Maybe he even supplied her with some tech. That would make it easier for him to sabotage things when he was ready. Forcibly draw attention to her presence."
I went through the files so quickly I grabbed one of the Empire ones by mistake. Or maybe by some unconscious memory, because another piece fell into place.
Jenkins?
Jenkins, some PRT trooper.
I'd seen his name in some of the other reports.
I'd read them all. I'd always been a quick study. I couldn't repeat any of the reports word for word, but I remembered their contents fairly well. I'd definitely seen his name before.
I opened another file and double checked.
"Who is Jenkins?" I asked.
"One of Noa's lieutenants," Ramius answered after a moment. "Why?"
I picked up another file.
He identified Cricket as being at a crime scene but no real evidence was found for her presence. And as I looked at the address of the armored car company that got hit. The PRT showed up three minutes after the silent alarm. but delayed entry to wait for backup? Jenkins was in command. Said he saw Cricket, but no one else on the team corroborated it. On its own, it seemed innocent enough, but with the armored car company right in the path the kids traveled…
"Because he's a liar," I snarled.
Veda identified two of the reports as having locations near sewer entrances. More than that, they fit into the line between the car hijacking and the gas station. Piggot admitted herself that there were moles in the PRT. She knew and let them exist, which I thought was stupid then and it seemed even stupider now.
Jenkins lied in his reports to keep anyone from noticing the pattern, using Coil's feud with the Empire as a convenient cover.
"Coil used Cranial to get us to bring down the Merchants." The plan was so preposterous no one would even think anyone was behind it. "Cranial's children are going after him and Jenkins is covering his ass."
I paused, a plan coming together as quick as my smile.
And Jenkins is my means of beating Coil at his own game.
