A Waken 10.2
Three days was plenty of time. I needed to line some ducks up anyway, make some final preparations. Cover a few bases.
Tiny details, really.
I fixed the final fitting in place and closed the panel.
"That should do it."
Trevor nodded. "Let's find out."
I stood up and stepped back as Trevor turned the device on. Veda loaded the appropriate software. After some whirling and clanking, the arms within the refrigerator sized box began to move.
"Calibrating," Veda said. "Shall we attempt a GN compressor first?"
"Sounds good."
Such a large fabricator could produce nearly any part I needed, including large plates of E-Carbon. Leet built a big machine to make smaller tinker-tech. I'd done the same upstairs. Not sure why I didn't think of it sooner.
"Looks good so far," Trevor hoped.
"We have experience with this sort of thing now." And unlike the Helpers, I didn't require Gundams to be mass producible. "The factory pays off early."
Trevor nodded. "If only we could fix the problem with the batteries exploding."
"I'd say they pop rather than explode," I corrected. "You might have been right about the lithium mix. A less robust formula will cut battery life, but will be more manageable."
He nodded. "Yeah. Cutting battery life from eighteen hours to twelve isn't that huge a loss in terms of functionality, anyway."
"Agreed."
Our first two runs of the Helpers had some kinks. I didn't let myself get beaten down by it. I expected such problems. At the moment I wanted to finish off the ABB and the Empire. Establish the city's new 'normal'. With that done, there'd be plenty of time for everything else.
Later.
At the moment, I watched the compressor take shape bit by bit. The full compressor. A complete part. Not bits and pieces I needed to work. Such a simple solution.
My mind raced with possibilities. Maintenance time limited tinkers. I set my limit at four hours a day long ago. But, why maintain tech constantly, when I could just build a new fabricator design?
I could cut my current maintenance down to an hour a day. I'd only have to maintain the fabricators and Veda's processors. Veda and the Haros could handle the rest. Build the fabricator to recycle old parts and I cut down on wasted materials. I'd no longer have an upper limit of four suits. The Tierens would finally be practical.
One step closer.
"Fabrication complete," Veda declared. "Time, sixteen minutes eighteen seconds."
"We can probably cut down on that," Trevor noted.
The door to the fabricator opened. I stepped forward and lifted the compressor out. The new design looked pretty heavy, but felt lighter than the old one.
"Seems alright," I said. "Green. Orange."
The two Haros rolled toward me and popped their ears open.
"Load it into Queen for testing."
I handed the compressor off to them and they carried it away.
Trevor followed after me as I went toward the alcove storing Queen Gundam. The Haros worked together. They removed one compressor from the right leg and fit the new one into place.
We walked past Exia on the way and stopped.
Exia didn't look that different from Astraea. A bit more refined, broader in the shoulders. I used the same basic frame design and salvaged some of the suit's parts. A lot needed to be redesigned though to fit the new compressor and inertia neutralizer designs.
Purple went over the suit with some blue paint to add some color.
To the left, Green and Orange got to work, pulling out one of the compressors in Queen's left leg and fitting the new one in place. It was pretty easy to redesign my third suit for the new components. Queen didn't need neutralizers to keep a pilot from passing out. Left a lot of empty space in the internals. Room to rearrange things.
"Component online," Veda announced. "Beginning tests."
Queen's GN drive spun up, a faint trickle of green flowing into the air.
Trevor pulled up the pad attached to the alcove and watched.
"Seems okay," he mumbled. "Maybe not quite as good as the ones built by hand, but considering the time save?"
"Worth it," I agreed.
"Gives me an idea for the line too. Might go up top and poke around with some spare parts."
Trevor rose, his eyes doing that vacant stare thing he does when he starts thinking.
"The new space working out?" I asked.
"What? Oh, yeah. Nice to have a little area to myself instead of"—he glanced around—"A little area to myself?"
"Good." I hid my relief, adding, "it's about time you got your own shop instead of living in my corner. More room for your own projects."
In the factory above we had entire corners of the building unused. Easy enough to convert one into an 'office' for Trevor. It got him out of the basement workshop.
"We can move the fabricators there if you want," I offered. "The old ones, I mean. The new ones serve my purposes a lot better. Might as well make the upgrade a full thing."
"You sure? You could still use them for the armor plates and basic components."
"It'll be fine."
He watched me curiously. I almost started to worry he'd ask a question I didn't want to answer.
"Okay," he agreed. "If you're sure you don't need them."
I kept myself from showing any relief. Even with him out of the workshop, it would be hard. He'd already started noticing things about Veda. Whatever he thought he kept to himself, thus far. Eventually, he'd probably put together what I was doing.
He wasn't stupid, just…Trevor. I'd need to say something to him when he did ask.
"I'm going to head upstairs," he said. "Check on things."
"We'll make another attempt at the Helpers tomorrow. All the guys are living down the street now. Might as well get things going."
The ex-Merchants seemed settled in decently. As bad as the Docks got, it never got quite as bad as Shanty Town. The number of children surprised me. It's easy to think of criminals and cons as assholes with bats and guns.
Mine had families. Lives. I'd always known that, of course. It's why I picked the path I did. Eventually, the city's criminal underbelly needed to be rehabilitated. There wasn't room to just send them all away and let the courts sort them out.
Seeing is believing, though. Stu's daughters were actually kind of cute.
I checked the time.
"Can you finish the tests, Veda?"
"I can."
"How is Imp doing?"
Green spun in place. "Progress, progress!"
"She has almost finished mapping Kabayan's territory," Veda revealed. I checked over the map. "There is not much ABB left, as we expected."
"Ten captains." Soon to be zero. "She's placing the charges?"
"Yes."
"Good. I'll go Downtown and deal with Piggot. Let Kati know I want to talk to her soon."
I needed to tell her a lot of the same things I told Murrue. Teacher or the Cape Illuminati. Both maybe. If they wanted to come at me, and didn't want to risk Veda's wrath, they'd come at me by defamation and slander. The ex-Merchants, my gaming of legalities around heroism, maybe even Veda herself. That's how they'd strike.
There's time. It'll take a while to set something like that up.
I needed Kati informed.
"Is Dinah ready to be picked up?" I asked.
"Yes."
I walked past Exia and climbed into my old van. I almost closed the door, but held it open long enough for Green to jump in with me.
Veda parked the newer van near the Boardwalk. I'd stashed suits there before. A nice little distraction for what few ABB remained. Navy hovered over the site watching, guiding other Haros to track the men down when they left. Then Aisha went and poked around.
The ABB really didn't have much left. With everyone they lost in the failed attack on my factory, kids seemed to be the only replacements available.
We passed the Blue Cosmos protesters on the way out the main gate. Still only a few of them. The reminder made me wonder. How much control did Teacher have? The fact anyone around me at any time could turn out to be a pet was as unnerving as anything. And again, I couldn't do much about it.
Dinah waited in costume when we picked her up halfway to the PRT building.
"Hey."
I shifted to the back while she took the passenger seat. Fitting my vans to carry Gundams didn't make them great for people. I ended up leaning forward and look out the windows.
"Still got White with you?" I asked
"Yeah." She pulled her bag off her back and popped the top flap.
White waved one hand at me. "Hello, Taylor, hello!"
"Good Haro." Looking back to Dinah, "Any problems hiding him?"
"No. He hides under the bed when I'm at home. Stays still in my bag while I'm out."
I nodded.
Lafter stayed close to home, and her power made it easy to hold her own against most threats. I didn't worry much. Dinah still lived with her parents though. White would be an extra layer of security, just in case.
I nodded as Veda started the van back down the street.
"How's Missy doing?" I asked.
The PRT tried burying the announcement under Labyrinth's Wards debut. That backfired when she basically called attention to the program itself. Everyone noticed the press release announcing Vista's indefinite leave of absence from the Wards. Dinah told me she visited Missy the day it happened.
"Fine," Dinah I answered. "She's working her own stuff out. It's not as bad as I thought it would be."
"How bad did you think it would be?"
"Last Airbender movie bad."
"Last what?"
"You need more bad movies in your life." Pretty sure she was frowning?
"I'm more of a book person."
I didn't ask again. She obviously didn't want to say, and it seemed more like Missy's business than mine.
Medhall's main offices were far from the PRT building, but they had a few others spread around. Blue Cosmos picketed all of them, quite visibly.
"Even the people who hate capes hate Nazis," I pointed out.
"No one cares." Dinah shrugged. "They're Nazis."
Fair enough.
I expected some reaction from Blue Cosmos. Fifty people at a corner holding up crossed out swastikas and the like went a bit over my prediction. If not for some Blue Cosmos logos on the signs, one might mistake them for simple anti-Nazi protesters.
We pulled into the PRT garage. Commander Noa was waiting for us. I glanced around, but I didn't see Murrue. That made me uneasy.
"Newtype. Forecast."
Noa came forward, and I saw a few troopers arranged around the garage. I felt more uneasy. I didn't see anyone with a foam launcher, but they did have grenades. Those would work on Dinah and me.
"I heard you've been talking to my wife."
Huh? "What?"
I turned to look at him. "Mirai. My wife."
"Oh." I cocked my head. "Ms. Yashima? Mrs. Yashima?"
"Either or," he said with a small smile. "She's her own woman. Murrue was running late. She asked me to meet you here and bring you up."
Is that good, or bad?
"Though I should warn you, Piggot is not in her best mood." Noa held his hand out toward the nearby doors. "More than usual."
I raised my brow. Noa had always been cordial. I'd never seen him bad mouth Piggot before. And yay, second-guessing all human interaction. I forgot what this felt like.
It was what it was. I planned for the eventualities. For the time being, I needed to let things play out.
When we got to Piggot's office, Calvert, Armsmaster, Miss Militia, and Weld were all gathered. Piggot sat behind her desk, with Armsmaster and Calvert on either side. Militia and Weld stood off to the side.
"I see we have the whole inquisition gathered," I mumbled.
"We left our unexpectedness at home," Piggot grumbled.
I paused, staring at her for a moment.
Dinah sighed beside me. "You really need to watch more TV."
She walked ahead and pulled a chair from the corner of the room. White and Green rolled past, greeting everyone one at a time. Individually.
"There's a white one now?" Weld asked.
"And a black one," I said.
"We needed to fill our diversity quota," Dinah quipped.
Dinah sat down and seemed completely at ease. I decided to take it as a sign. I got myself a chair. Noa took a position by the door. He started to close it.
"Wait!" Murrue came through in a rush. "Sorry. Steve in accounting decided it was a good day to insist some backlogged paper work get filed."
"He lost your past forms and is trying to make up new copies using the current ones." All heads turned to Dinah. "He doesn't seem very good at his job."
"We'll address that later," Piggot said.
"Right," I pointedly did not look at Armsmaster. Stupid lie detector. "Let's get on with it."
"There is a reason we give secret identities a wide berth," Piggot warned. "I'll be the first to say it's stupid, and we happily ignore the unwritten rules at times, but going straight at villains like this is asking for trouble."
"Sounds like a very risky prospect."
"We are finally at a point where the city is on the rebound," she continued. "It would be very preferable not to have another war in the streets."
"It would be pleasant."
Armsmaster's lip twitched.
"You're avoiding the questions," Calvert stated.
"I'm expressing my displeasure with this circus," I countered. "I have an ultimatum to maintain. I'm not going to throw it into question."
"So you released information under a false name?" Piggot asked.
"I didn't release any information." Veda did it.
Heads looked at Armsmaster. They didn't even try to hide it. I think I found that actually insulting.
"Half true," he said. "You didn't do it, but you know who did."
"Is that legal?" Dinah inquired in a low voice.
"Outside of a courtroom," Murrue answered. "But no laws have been broken. Even the unwritten rules haven't really been broken."
"Do you know who Schwarz Bruder is?" Calvert questioned.
I watched Armsmaster carefully, saying, "I won't violate the unwritten rules."
"True."
"And I resent this insulting exercise."
"True."
"And there are much better uses of our time."
"This is a serious matter."
That one was true and Armsmaster knew it. He did cock his head slightly, at least. He got the message. We still needed to work together for Dragon's sake.
"And I'm giving it the level of seriousness it warrants."
That was true and he knew it.
"I hoped we'd gotten past this point," Calvert lamented. I shifted my focus to him. "We were cooperating. Not perfectly, but we were making progress in coordination between our efforts."
"You left Vista, Labyrinth, and Aisha Laborn to rot." Before Armsmaster could speak, I raised my hand. "Yes, orders. And I don't like those orders."
"You could have been hurt," Murrue said behind me. "We're lucky whatever happened seems to have ended with no harm being done."
I didn't look at her. Did she say that for their benefit, or mine? Both?
"Does Vista agree no harm was done?" I asked. "You're the ones who took responsibility for her, and you left her."
It felt dirty going there, but I didn't buy the coincidence. If I was on a team, I'd be pissed finding out they'd been ordered not to come help me.
"That's unfair," Armsmaster protested. "We d—"
"Again, I get it. You had orders. I assume there was a reason for them, but"—I looked Piggot dead in the eye—"fuck that. Labyrinth bordered on catatonic, Aisha Laborn was in a coma, and Vista is one of yours. You left them. You did nothing."
"You know the situation resolved itself almost as soon as it started," Miss Militia added. "Hero's team didn't even have time to arrive."
Beside her, Weld looked less convinced. He kept his chin high, but his eyes were downcast. Sort of. A bit hard to see an iris in his eyes.
"There's a reason I didn't join the Wards," I pointed out. "That reason was personal for me. There's a reason I took StarGazer, Forecast, and Laughter and started my own team. That reason is not personal."
I watched Piggot and Calvert.
Calvert remained his usual self. Hard to read. Relaxed, but not calm. Intent. Observant. Piggot, on the other hand, seethed. I did feel for her in a way. Vista taking a leave of absence, Labyrinth making her debut an attack, and Bruder all happened in the same forty-eight hour period.
I imagined she took lots of calls from lots of people asking for explanation. In a way, none of those problems were even her fault. She needed to take Labyrinth in, and if I guessed right Labyrinth joined the Wards solely to fuck with the PRT. She was ordered to do nothing when Vista was taken. Bruder hadn't been her doing at all.
"If Bruder wants to run around playing cyber-space robin hood," I quipped, "I'm not going to stop him. It's bullshit that the Empire can hide Medhall behind the unwritten rules in the first place."
"You think we wouldn't go after Medhall if we could?" Piggot asked. "It's too close. The Empire will retaliate with their private lives on the line."
"Let them," I answered. "They have one foot in the grave already. In a week I'll have three Gundams and I won't even need that to end the ABB."
Armsmaster and Piggot both started at the mention of a third suit. Did they think I'd stop at two?
"Your last attempt to end the ABB involved a massive brawl in the streets," Calvert pointed out.
I frowned. Did no one pay attention?
"That was the prelude," I declared.
Even if he owned Shanty Town, Lung couldn't hold it. He didn't have the manpower. What manpower he did have largely consisted of kids. The ABB looked more like an unruly mob of street toughs than a hardened gang.
"Lung is a cape with thugs. Take away his thugs and he's just a cape. One parahuman can't rule the Docks with no one to follow him."
"Lung is Lung," Piggot said. "And he still has Bakuda, or have you forgotten how that encounter went?"
Oh that's just low.
"And how long before Bakuda starts blowing things up with frequency?" I countered. "You'd rather wait till she becomes her own S-class threat? She can copy powers with her bombs."
"A bomb replicating Vista's power is more reason not to regress to your old habits," Armsmaster suggested. "Your primary tactic is to strike the gangs at their money and avoid direct confrontation with capes. Bakuda negates that strategy."
"We've been making progress," Calvert continued. "We should keep coordinating, not go back to keeping secrets."
"Says the group keeping secrets," I replied. "You left Vista. Do you even know why?"
Their faces said no.
They still wanted to 'work together'. They wanted to keep a close eye on me. Both. That's how the PRT would think. Plan for the worst, hope for the best. No one needed to say the words Master/Stranger. Even if the Cape Illuminati didn't point them my way the implication was obvious.
Which means I just need to be my usual charming self.
"Forecast. Headlines for next week, please."
White rolled over and pulled a notepad from Dinah's bag. He held it up to her and she flipped to an empty page.
"The last time we talked about the fate of the city, Piggot, you told me crime would always exist."
"I remember," she said.
"And I said it didn't have to be gang lords running the streets, crushing people under foot, and instilling fear. It's been a while. Which of us do you think was right?"
The woman bristled, her puffy knuckles turning white.
"Do you know how many people are dead because of your stunts?" she asked.
"Eighty-nine civilians have been killed as a result of gang fighting since I became an active cape." Most when Squealer shot the top off Market Tower. "One hundred forty-seven gang members have died. And about three dozen PRT troopers."
Piggot's eyes went a little wide.
"What?" I knew people would get hurt. That's just how it was. "Think I wasn't keeping track?"
"Deaths in Brockton Bay are down seventeen percent relative to this time last year," Veda noted through Green, "despite persistent gang conflict dominating much of the summer."
"We're winning," I declared.
"Though," Veda continued, "we are sympathetic that events have not necessarily improved the image of the city."
"But it is what it is, so let's cut the crap."
Dinah tore the page out and I took it.
"Empire defeated," I read. "Celebration at Forsberg Gallery. ABB undone. Bakuda still at large. Kaiser exposed. Brockton Bay gang free."
The rest were mostly the same.
"Seventeen possibilities. One is maybe a big problem if Kaiser gets outed. The other is just an annoyance. The rest are all the same. No. More. Gangs."
I set the page on the table and glared at Piggot from behind my visor.
"Even if new ones show up, how many months of peace will that buy? How many minor upstarts will get arrested?"
Piggot scowled.
"I think we've drifted from the point," Calvert said. "There's fighting the gangs, and there's running dangerously close—"
"I believe Piggot called it flipping the table over," I interrupted. "And she was right. I am flipping the table over. The game is stupid. People die either way, so why keep it going when I can check?"
The room went silent.
A display of flippant determination and a heavy handed smack down telling them exactly what I thought. Classic Newtype, I thought. I sat and waited for a response. Part of me worried they'd see through the display. Then, I'd need Veda to do things. Those things wouldn't be pretty.
"I believe," Piggot began, "I also warned you back then that Kaiser wouldn't be the one I'd bring to heel."
"Bull," I shot back. Piggot flinched. "You're not going to come after me. Maybe before, when I was still a relative unknown with limited support, but not now."
I crossed my arms over my chest.
"At this point, browbeating me or treating me like a threat is just going to make you look bad."
"It'll make you look bad," Piggot replied.
"Stupid games have stupid prizes," Dinah opined.
Eyes turned to her, as if noticing her for the first time. She visibly turned her masked face left and right, then shrugged.
"I'm twelve and see the future. What would I know?"
"Plenty." I focused on Piggot. "She's right. We gain nothing by bickering over every little thing we do. You don't like me keeping what I know about Bruder to myself, and I don't like children being left to god knows what."
In retrospect, I suspect no matter what Vista, Labyrinth, and Aisha would come out okay. For a definition of okay, anyway. I didn't do anything Over There other than make things easier for Labyrinth.
But Newtype wouldn't react with that level of thoughtfulness, especially if she didn't remember anything. Newtype was idealistic, haughty, and obsessively driven. Arrogant in her assumptions. The Newtype they expected would rub their moral failings in their faces and then condescend about it. I needed things to keep looking that way for now.
"We're both too big to fail now," I admitted. "Not unless you want the city to backslide into gang rule."
Piggot glowered, saying, "One of these days your luck is going to run out, and it won't be just you that suffers for it."
"Maybe," I answered. "But not today. So we can sit here and glower at one another, or we can keep going forward. The table's already flipped over. No unflipping it now."
"She does have a point." Armsmaster turned his eyes down toward Piggot. "What's done is done. Quibbling is not productive."
She shifted her glower to him.
"It is a simple statement of opinion."
I honestly couldn't tell what Piggot disliked more. Me, or the situation around her. She didn't control it anymore. I did. I'd gained too much influence over how things played out in Brockton Bay.
She has to live with me now, no matter what I do.
The meeting dragged on, mostly with Piggot trying to coax information out of me and me refusing to give any. Whole lot of fuss for such a small thing. But also something Newtype wouldn't have shown thoughtfulness over. It was a risk. The Empire might be down but seven capes is still a lot. Seven could cause a lot of damage.
Good thing I had a precog around.
I rose from my seat when we seemed done. Turning to the door I waved to the Haros. White and Green went around the room again, saying goodbye.
Piggot was so busy staring at me she didn't even stop Green from jumping onto her desk and shaking her hand.
"Have a nice day, have a nice day!"
I doubted someone that sour would know a nice day if they had one.
Dinah got up on her own and looked at Calvert. "You should be careful on your drive home."
He tilted his head. "Why?"
"Bad traffic."
She turned and followed me. On my way out, I did pause and look up at Noa.
"I am sorry," I offered. "I didn't want them to get hurt."
He kept his head straight. "Protect and serve. That's the job."
Okay.
I walked out of the room, turning to Murrue as she followed. She didn't say anything in the meeting. No one acted like they were on the defensive about me. I took it as a good sign.
"We should talk," she said in a low voice. "The papers were filed this morning."
"I know. We signed all the paperwork and everything over the weekend."
I glanced back and waved Dinah to follow. Armsmaster and Miss Militia were talking with Weld and Piggot. Calvert and Noa had vanished off somewhere.
Dinah and I followed Murrue through the halls.
In her office, I made sure to close the door. I sent a message to Veda and then looked around the room. I'd seen Murrue's office before but only briefly. Nice, with some personal touches but mostly professional. The window looked right at a building across the street, but all of the windows on the PRT building were heavily tinted.
sys.v/ room secure
"Have you decided?" I asked. "About what I said?"
Murrue sighed and sat down. She glanced at Dinah, who pulled her mask off and set it on the floor. Murrue already saw Dinah's face once. Her backup plan early on, if anything happened to me. I stood between her and the door just in case.
"Dinah Alcott," Murrue said.
"That's my name."
"You know about…" She trailed off, and Dinah nodded. Murrue nodded back.
The woman turned her attention to me, eyes still worried. Following Dinah's lead I pulled my own mask off. If anyone barged through a locked door and interrupted, they'd see mine before Dinah's. The PRT knew who I was anyway.
"We can talk. StarGazer has secured the room."
Murrue nodded. "Is Imp—"
"You remember her, so no. She's out scouting ABB territory. No one can plan to protect from a girl no one ever sees or remembers."
"Cameras?"
"Black is hacking them," I revealed. "Pretty easy to do actually." I pulled my phone out and held it up. "Send the right signal, and you can hack basically anything."
I should have thought of it ages ago. My tech used quantum tunneling to facilitate communication between my network. No delay. No jamming. Real-time communication anywhere, anytime.
And it could be used to hack hardware.
Veda just needed to bombard a target device until she figured it out. Throw the right signals at something and it wasn't that hard to flip a one into a zero. Take that a step further, and you can remotely change the data in a circuit to whatever you wanted.
Most security systems weren't designed to detect direct manipulation of hardware and the PRT building sat in one place and never moved.
It took some special hardware on my end, of course. And it helped that the PRT building was a stationary target. Not sure it would work on anything that moved. Lots of trial and error, but Veda worked fast enough to make it happen. Only Black and White could operate as relays for the moment but eventually every Haro would.
"I have been thinking," Murrue said. "About Master/Stranger."
I nodded. "Kind of surprised you didn't mention it last night."
"I didn't want to think about it."
I felt a small tickle on my back. "And now?"
Murrue nodded, I think to herself. One finger tapped at her desk.
"You could be a danger to yourself and everyone around you." I remained silent. "But if you're right, I'd be handing you over on a silver platter. I'm not sure I want to think about how bad that could get."
Well, at least she was looking out for my safety. Still.
"If we do this," Murrue whispered, turning her eyes to me, "then I need to know where it goes. Say you prove definitively that Teacher has penetrated the PRT to its top levels. You can't wage war against the PRT, Taylor. We'd have to tell someone."
"I know," I agreed.
I pulled up a chair and sat beside Dinah. Green sat by the door, watching the hall outside. White sat by the window doing the same.
"Dragon. There's a complication I need to work out, but I trust Dragon. She'll have ideas about what we can do." As soon as I set her free. "Honestly, maybe Piggot. She's hard, but she's not a complete fool. If we can prove it, I think she will listen."
Murrue nodded. "The Guild is somewhat apart from the PRT and Protectorate. They might be free of any influence."
"The complication," I admitted, "is that it's hard to say who can or can't be trusted. Teacher's influence can go unnoticed until he decides to make it noticed. Dragon's condition isolates her. If she's been compromised"—and I doubted that—"then we're in much deeper shit."
"He would basically be running the country if things went that far," Dinah said. "He wouldn't need to play the games if he had that kind of control."
That was a good point.
"Dragon then," Murrue agreed. "But Taylor, what if we go into this and we find out you're wrong? That you have been manipulated?"
"Same thing I suppose."
I didn't believe that for a moment, but I'd humor her. Murrue needed that kind of security. She needed to know I was willing to be wrong, and to be fair I think I was. I just knew I wasn't.
Wow that makes me sound really egotistical.
"Dragon would do the right thing. She'd make sure I was safe no matter what, and look out for the others."
Murrue nodded again. "What do we do then? I can poke around, but it will be very slow-going if we want to avoid undue attention."
"Actually"—I hesitated—"I plan to spy on the entire building."
Murrue stiffened slightly.
I held a hand up, explaining.
"Think about it. All of this? The data leak. The manipulation of PRT and Protectorate resources. The secret-keeping. There has to be someone here who knows something."
"You think there's still a pet?"
"I think there's something very fishy in all of this," I suggested, "and if I were some shadowy master or group of capes dedicated to hiding the truth, I wouldn't have one mole in the a local PRT branch."
"So you want to spy on everyone?"
She didn't like the idea, and I didn't blame her.
All the more reason to free Dragon from her chains.
"I want to watch the building for anything weird. Anything out of place. I think Teacher is behind the Blue Cosmos lawsuit over what Sophia did. That hasn't changed. But whatever the end goal is, he'll need someone in the PRT to make it work. And whoever this other group might be, I think they'll have set watchers on me. And you."
She inhaled. "That tracks."
"I know it's unfair." Really unfair, actually. Unfair might be underselling it even. "But this is too important. At the very least, we need to see if the local PRT and Protectorate branches can be trusted. If it can, maybe we can bring Piggot and Armsmaster in on things. Make this more official and less shady."
I meant that too. I needed allies, and the more the better.
That said, it already seemed hopeless. Someone or something got to the Chief Director. The entire PRT and Protectorate command structures were corrupted. That seemed an inescapable conclusion.
Which is why I need to establish my own side.
"There is something else. I want to see some files."
"Which ones?"
"Confidential ones. Coil's power testing for one. Psych profiles for some capes."
"That's not going to be easy. I've never tried circumventing the PRT's security protocols before."
She didn't even ask why I wanted them.
"Don't ruin yourself," I asked. "It's not what I want. And I still think you should only do what you think is right."
"She's been very Gandalf lately," Dinah said. "You'll get used to it."
Well, at least I understood that reference. "I'll put in for a hat and some robes." I got up. "There's something else."
"Besides Coil?"
"What happens to a parahuman gang with no parahumans?" I asked. "Assuming the gang persists?"
"That hardly ever happens." Murrue looked at me with surprise. "Usually, some other cape shows up and absorbs them. You did that to the Merchants in a way."
I'd not dealt with the PRT at all since hiring them. Not on their behalf or anything.
"I mean legally. Does the PRT continue tracking them?"
"No. Without parahuman involvement, they're not our jurisdiction. Why?"
"Thinking about what happens after Lung and Kaiser fall. They become something for the regular police to deal with?"
"Basically, but that rarely happens. You plan to do the same thing with the ABB and Empire you did with the Merchants?"
I nodded, though I planned to maybe go a step further. With the Merchants I didn't really trust anyone. Veda picked out those who stuck to their parole and their programs. The men who seemed to want to rebuild their lives.
With what Murrue said, anyone with outstanding charges would become the BBPD's problem the moment Lung and Bakuda went down. I'd have to deal with them to make things go smoothly. I could think of ways to do that. The BBPD would need support after the gangs anyway. We might be in a position to negotiate given local law enforcement's limited resources.
How far can I go with that, and not feel dirty?
"Thank you. We should go, or someone will get suspicious about why we've been in here so long."
Green rolled forward and climbed onto Murrue's desk.
"Take a card, take a card!"
"And then destroy it," I stated. "We'll use that number for things we don't want the PRT to know about."
Murrue took the card and nodded. I felt bad for her. She seemed disappointed, defeated. It was easy to understand, but what needed to be done needed to be done. She understood that.
We left the PRT and returned to the factory. Trevor was off in his own workshop and Lafter returned while I was out. I quickly checked on Aisha while Veda read off her test results.
She'd finished Kabayan's territory. That completed our new map of ABB territory. Good.
"You're going to do it," Dinah stated.
"I am. You think it's a bad idea?"
"I think it's a you idea. Jury is out on bad. My power isn't pointing me any particular way on the question."
Lafter shrugged. "I'm not going to stop you." She seemed to think for a moment. "But, Taylor. Not everyone like me is…like me. Some of us didn't make it out in one piece, you know?"
I thought of the eyes.
When I first saw Lafter, it didn't strike me at all. She seemed unstoppable at times. Everything was an adventure to her, even joining up with me me. I could see it in the way she looked at things. The way she smiled despite the tragedy of her life.
Them? I still didn't know what to make of them.
"We'll see what happens," I decided. "If it doesn't work, I'll just find someone else. This is the most convenient option."
"I agree," Veda said. "The amount of time and resources spent seeking alternative solutions is not a major obstacle, but there is already a proposal in place."
I nodded. Yashima and Turbines both seemed okay with the idea, though I didn't quite trust Naze Turbine. Something sleazy about that man. Mirai talked to him like a friend though, someone she knew well. Commander Noa was such a straight shooter. How bad could his wife be?
Maybe, as someone descended from a ruined nation, she sympathized with wharf rats herself.
Only one way to find out.
I dialed the number and waited for it to pick up. Dinah and Lafter waited as the phone rang. It went for a while, ringing over and over.
Then, "Who is this?"
"Orga Itsuka. Are you alone?"
Silence.
"No. Mika won't talk."
Mika. I think I'd heard the name before. That was the short kid, right? The crazy one.
"Let's have that talk we pretended to have before." I took a shallow breath. "As a start."
More silence.
"Why?" he asked.
I tapped my phone against my thigh.
Even in the best case scenario, we'd likely end up at war with someone. The Cape Illuminati. Teacher and his pets. Chaos would follow either way. The PRT and Protectorate would become involved.
I expected the organization at large would be reliable. My distrust, paranoia, and hang-ups were my own. The world needed the PRT and the Protectorate. Both were necessary to maintaining stability in the world.
Maybe that still held true on some levels. But now? I couldn't rely on them for anything. I couldn't trust the organizations one bit.
Celestial Being needed to grow into something that stood on its own power.
"I don't like the sides," I explained. "I'm making my own."
