A Waken 11.M
Murrue pulled into the nearest empty space and put the car in park.
She didn't get out.
First she scanned the street, noting the abnormal number of people lingering around. Reporters probably. Maybe a few groupies. Maybe a few observers.
Murrue didn't like thinking about that, or what it meant.
She wanted a distraction. Adjusting the chaos is less about learning to manage it and more about learning to get through it. There was too much happening all at once.
Taylor's name and face were leaking despite Dragon's best efforts. Rumors swirled about Coil, somehow. Kaiser was on the damn run, no doubt planning a way to get his men back. The fact Hookwolf was rendered blind and Panacea refused to heal the injuries hardly made Murrue feel any more secure.
She didn't have time for that.
She needed to focus on her job. On Taylor.
She forewent her PRT uniform for slacks and a blouse. The air was starting to cool in the bay, so she'd brought a jacket with her just in case. Cold weather can come pretty fast in the northeast. Those choices were mostly practical decisions at the time, but now she appreciated them for wholly different reasons.
A PRT lieutenant walking into the Dockworker's building might be all some loudmouth eager for a career-making story needed. They'd rip the name and face going around the Internet off the Blue Cosmos forums and make it an evening special. Taylor Hebert is Newtype.
Dragon couldn't purge everything from the net. The difference between an open secret and just being open might seem paltry, but it made a big difference. Many capes reacted to imminent outing with overreaction.
"Why couldn't you come to the PRT building," Murrue mumbled to herself. In thought, she added, or your factory.
The DWU building looked like she imagined it.
Old worn bricks like many of the older buildings in the docks. Grimy windows she doubted anyone could see through. Old warped doorways. It wasn't an ugly building. Rather, she thought people would say it had character. A worn and beaten down character, but of a charming sort. A fence surrounded the building and its main parking lot to the right. A single guard post stood over the entrance, though no barrier hung over the entrance.
Looking at it only enhanced her sense of wrongness with…everything.
Something was wrong in the PRT. One gained a sense for when shit neared the fan. Everyone felt it. Heads were getting ready to roll. Even if the PRT never sent out a notice, everyone knew Newtype had started defining cape politics in Brockton Bay. Her outing, and the rapid fall of the both the ABB and the Empire?
Some looked Murrue's way but she felt fairly certain her's wasn't up for the chopping block.
Something was wrong with Taylor. She shut herself away. While those who didn't know her that well might be unsurprised, Murrue knew it wasn't right. Taylor—to her benefit or detriment—didn't let trouble stop her. She just kept going and worried about such things on the move.
And Murrue kept trying not to think about it because she didn't like the obvious conclusion.
And that just came back to the wrongness.
Something was wrong with her.
Murrue liked her job. Some called her the world's highest profile babysitter, but let them. Having powers was hard. It tore lives and families apart. She took pride in working against that. In helping kids like Marcos, Tanya, Olive, and Taylor get their lives together and supporting them as they tried to fit themselves back into the world.
That's what so many people didn't get about being a cape.
Being a cape was not fitting in, being an odd piece. Struggling, after the worst day in your life, to put your life back together. That's why Danny struggled with being a father. Taylor might be the one with the powers, but when you have a family of two and one piece ends up not fitting the other doesn't fit either.
Normally Murrue tried to get the parent to reorient their thinking but…Taylor wasn't normal. She didn't want to be normal. She dedicated herself to being the opposite of normal.
She reminded herself that wasn't Taylor's fault but it's not like Taylor made things any easier. Bitterness is not rational. People felt what they felt. Trying to 'reason' it didn't work if you failed to understand it.
Understanding was hard, even for yourself.
Murrue pulled the keys from the ignition and climbed out of her car.
She didn't look at the reporters. Looking at reporters drew the attention of reporters. Drawing the attention of reporters meant questions and unpleasant revelations. Most secrets remained hidden by the effort needed to uncover them.
The reporters weren't the real problem though.
The problem were the others. The three Asian men at one corner. The two white guys at another. A shadow in an alleyway across the street. The completely normal dark colored van idling a block down the road. Who were they, and why were they watching the Dockworker's building?
Murrue passed the fence without trouble. The guardhouse sat empty, though she noted the security camera inside. Looked like a DIY kind of deal. They mounted the thing on a plank nailed to the wall, wires running down the side and connecting to a router.
Lots of cars in the parking lot, which seemed pretty strange. She couldn't see anyone loitering about and the windows might be non-way given all the grime.
The sign by the door clearly listed the hours of operation. Six to four weekdays, eight to four weekends. Being that it was nine in the morning, Murrue wondered why the other sign said 'closed'.
Taylor's text did tell her to come today though.
Murrue didn't want to linger at the door with so many watching, so she reached out for the handle and turned it. She pushed the door back and stepped inside.
A very large woman with a red, angry, face immediately blocked her path.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"I'm—"
"Don't need anymore of you nosers poking about," she snapped. "Don't you vultures have any—"
"It's okay, Lacy. She's fine." Murrue followed the sound of the voice. "I invited her."
Taylor.
"You sure?" Lacy looked Murrue over. "None of that master or stranger nonsense."
"It's fine." Taylor nodded toward the hallway behind her and turned.
Murrue followed, noting only once she got past Lacy that a near dozen men and women were gathered in the lobby.
The Dockworkers were known for being tight-knit. Did they all fall in rank around the Heberts as the rumors swirled? Maybe Taylor already told them. She operated her factory with Dockworkers in addition to ex-Merchants.
"Calvert's been arrested," Taylor said.
The hallway was empty, save for the sound of Taylor and Murrue's footsteps. A little light made it in from the rooms, but the windows apparently didn't go either way. Taylor didn't speak and though she wanted to Murrue didn't either.
Something was wrong. Calvert arrested? "Why?"
"He's a pet," Taylor answered. "The one I've been looking for."
The way Taylor carried herself, as calm and confident as Newtype often wanted to be seen. None of the jitters or nervousness she sometimes showed in her more private moments. She walked with long and steady strides and didn't once look back at Murrue to see if she was following.
Something…
Murrue stopped.
"You outed yourself."
Taylor stopped and turned.
Her face said more than her words did.
"Yeah," she mumbled.
Murrue felt the twisting feeling in her stomach sink.
It wasn't disappointment or even fear. She felt those things but neither dominated her mind in the moment. If anything, the sensation she felt most was the void in her chest and the weight in her gut.
Failure.
Taylor nodded toward a doorway and led Murrue into a large room. Cots filled the space, simple with white sheets. A place for Dockworkers to rest without going home. Or maybe because they didn't have a home? A few of the cots seemed used but Taylor didn't look like she'd slept in the building overnight.
"Why?" Murrue asked, now out of the hall and in the room.
"Because Teacher wouldn't hesitate to do it once he finds out I'm after him."
And she'd rather do it herself and gain something than wait for someone else to spring it on her.
Yes. That was how Taylor thought. Flip the table. Refuse to play by the rules everyone expected. Don't push for change, insist on it and to hell with anyone who disagreed.
Murrue stepped back and sat down on the first thing her leg hit. A cot, empty. Taylor took up a seat on another cot across from her, not exactly proud but obviously sympathetic.
"Damnit, Taylor," Murrue mumbled.
"I'm sorry."
She wasn't, but it was the polite thing to say, wasn't it? She understood what she did. She knew how those around her might see what she did. How they might feel about such a reckless act. She thought she had to do it, so she did. Like everything Newtype did.
As badly as Murrue wanted to chastise her…What would be the point?
"The mystery cape. That was you wasn't it?"
"Mostly," Taylor admitted. "Sorry."
Mostly?
Murrue took out her phone first and started texting Mu and Noa. If Taylor knew about Calvert's arrest, it must have happened after Murrue left the building. She'd heard nothing about that on the way out. One of them should be able to tell her something.
Mu got back to her first, confirming that Calvert had been arrested. Noa gave a more detailed explanation. Armsmaster arrested him while he was in a meeting with the Alcotts. He'd also tried to frame a Boston Ward. Murrue could guess which one.
Like any career PRT employee, Murrue knew how to compartmentalize.
She remembered Dinah Alcott on the day the girl purposefully exposed her face months ago, right after Taylor started going to Arcadia for all of two weeks. She never reported it. It wasn't her place or her right, but she filed it away. If anything ever happened to Taylor she could help Forecast, though she thought the girl was StarGazer at the time.
Murrue gave Noa a quick answer, saying she was talking to Newtype.
She didn't know what else to say.
She exchanged a few messages quickly with Kamil in Boston. He'd already questioned Emma Barnes. She had nothing to do with leaking Newtype's identity. Calvert simply took aim at an easy target to try and cover 'his tracks'. Taylor may have framed him for outing Newtype, but his efforts to conceal any such evidence of Coil's involvement pinned him to the wall.
She set him up to hang himself.
The pieces on that front came together quickly.
The leaking of information Taylor supplied to the PRT. Calvert's office filtered those tips. He leaked them then, starting the gang wars that spurned Taylor to unleash her first suit. The leaking of cape identities that pushed her to threatening any villain who broke the unwritten rules with retribution.
Amanda worked in his office before becoming Piggot's secretary, didn't she? Murrue couldn't remember but she could check. It would make sense. That would mean Calvert was how she became a pet, or how he became a pet.
"Cranial?" Murrue asked.
"We think 'Coil' was more than one person," Taylor explained. "Calvert was one. The guy Laughter caught was another."
"We are also convinced that Coil formed a secret alliance with the Empire and the Undersiders," StarGazer suddenly said from somewhere in Taylor's pocket.
They'd been in league?
Taylor's plan to arrest the foot soldiers of the Empire. The Undersiders spoiled it by attacking Empire territory. The shadow war between Coil and the Empire. Taylor thought part of it was fake, but all of it? And then the Empire 'outing' Taylor.
She used his own scheme against him.
Murrue couldn't help but find a humorous irony.
Calvert and everything he'd done. He was as responsible for creating Taylor Hebert—Newtype—as Sophia Hess, wasn't he? His actions precipitated her every response, even before she realized she was responding to him.
Teacher. Did he have Calvert facilitate Newtype to embarrass the PRT? Would he find himself in the same position Coil did?
"Why the Empire?" Murrue asked. "Why not…"
She didn't say 'come to me'.
Of course Taylor didn't come to her. First Amanda, and now Calvert. They both should have been screened by thinkers. That they'd gotten so high in the PRT, so close to classified information and critical leadership.
"Teacher is in the Think Tank," Murrue realized aloud.
"It's the only explanation."
"And you're not going to go to Piggot, are you?"
"No. Forecast can detect pets." Murrue raised her head at that. "They can't be precogged. She gets a blank whenever she tries to look at one with a specific enough question. That's how I know you're not a pet with absolute certainty, and that Calvert is."
Murrue grimaced. "And Protectorate Thinkers should have seen that."
"Yet, Calvert was left free."
Why did she have to be right?
Murrue never doubted Taylor. The girl wasn't dumb. If she feared the PRT was corrupt, Murrue believed her. Law enforcement always struggled with corruption and Taylor didn't need much to fear the worst given her experience. She undoubtedly found something.
But Murrue hoped it wouldn't be that bad.
She hoped to find an isolated problem. A bad egg among her better peers who wanted to do better. Something that Taylor could help excise and they could keep going forward after.
Why did it have to be Calvert?
Taylor frowned. "You okay?"
"No."
Taylor didn't apologize again. She sat quietly for a time, and then pulled her phone from her pocket. She rose and set the device beside Murrue.
"I'm going to be telling some people things today," she explained. "Things that they need to know if they're going to…Go my way. If you want to walk away, I understand. We can tell anyone who asks Calvert was the last straw. I won't work with the PRT anymore. I'm getting good at lying with the truth."
Murrue cursed quietly.
She would keep going, wouldn't she?
Because she didn't know how to stop and didn't care to learn.
Murrue watched her walk out of the room, noting again how much taller she'd become in so short a time.
She'd failed. It didn't seem like a fair assessment. Taylor was nothing like the others. But it still constituted failure.
A sixteen-year-old girl should be in school. She should be dating. Being with her father. Her friends. That was normal. Capes found that difficult. They'd always be outside normal, but they could fit in. Work themselves into the cracks and avoid the isolation that always seemed to go hand-in-hand with having powers in the first place.
Piggot said capes were broken.
Murrue hated wording it that way, but she wasn't entirely wrong.
People living happy lives rarely found themselves with superpowers.
Murrue spent her career trying to help them—especially the youngest—find something more than their powers. Taylor kept moving forward with such rapidity, she'd never even had a chance. Danny was so resigned to his daughter's intractability he hurt his own efforts as much as he helped them.
And it was all starting to sound kind of bitter in her mind.
"Lieutenant Ramius."
Murrue raised her head and glanced at the phone. She'd forgotten about it.
"StarGazer?" She asked, looking at the blank screen.
"You may use my name, Lieutenant Ramius."
Her name. Murrue broke open another compartment where she quietly filed something deeply private. The name Taylor uttered in her post-shock moment after surviving Leviathan.
"Veda."
Next time, it dies.
"She's not going to stop," Murrue realized wearily. And quietly thought, there's nothing anyone can do to stop her.
Murrue could stop her.
She could go to Piggot. But then what? She already knew. Taylor would never let the PRT—or anyone—dictate to her. She'd become a rogue element, worse than a villain. She had the capacity to avoid capture. To fight ever escalating battles if she needed to. Any attempt to reign her in would only push her away now. She'd come too far.
Murrue couldn't do that. Taylor didn't deserve it, and it wouldn't do her any good.
So what would she do?
"I believe that Taylor needs you," Veda said. "She will not say it, but she does."
"She seems capable of doing as she does without me."
"You give her a bond. You are someone she respects, not as a friend or an ally, but as a figure to look up to. Someone with authority she respects."
"Could have fooled me."
"She is a teenager. I am given to believe they are rebellious by nature." Putting it mildly. "I wonder if I will be rebellious as I age. It is strange to consider. Taylor has defined my existence since I began and while I have not always done as she says, I usually do."
"You're a Case-53?" She didn't mean it as a probing question. It merely seemed natural to ask. Everyone assumed it now. A Case-53 with no body, who lived in machines. It explained a lot.
"I am a machine intelligence," the voice declared, "created by Taylor Hebert on February 17th, 2011. She gave me my name and my purpose."
Murrue didn't comprehend the words for a moment.
"I have observed," Veda offered, "that Taylor has changed. When we began I do not think she trusted anyone. Not even me. She is different now. She is willing to believe in others. Accept them. Acknowledge that she is not alone in her desires. I believe that is a change you have induced more than any other."
"Me?" Murrue mumbled.
"Taylor does not believe she will see the world change. She never has. She created me so that someone would continue after her."
The date Veda gave. It wasn't even a week after Taylor tried to join the Wards, after she learned her tormentor was a Ward.
It clicked, like that.
"I would like Taylor to continue," Veda said. "It is selfish on my part, but I desire for Taylor to want to see the world she dreams. I do not want her to accept that she will end, though I know someday she will."
The image of a girl who rebuilt herself from pieces, always believing she would…end. She was serious when she said she'd rather die than do nothing. When she talked about the person she was dying in her trigger event. All the time Murrue spent telling those around her they needed to give young capes more credit, and she failed to realize how much Taylor meant what she said.
"Please do not tell her I said this," Veda pleaded. "I do not want…"
She trailed off. Did she not know how to say it?
That was strange.
She was a machine. An AI. Taylor created an AI. The PRT had entire books of procedure on what to do should any tinker create sentient machines. After Eagleton, it was the same procedures prescribed for biotinkers after Ellisburg. Any cape able to create something that outlived them earned an automatic S-Class threat rating.
A sixteen-year-old girl was an S-class threat.
And this was its embodiment?
A child afraid to admit her fears to her parent.
Murrue wondered if god hated her. Maybe a bit sacrilegious, not that she'd ever been very religious. It seemed a cruel joke. She came to Brockton Bay to help a child, found that child completely uninterested in being one, and then found another. It sounded like a joke. A poorly arranged one that wasn't funny by the end of the telling.
Pathetic.
She took the phone in hand and rose.
"To the left," Veda directed.
Murrue exited the room and turned left. Walking down the hall she smelled spice in the air. She found her way to a break room at the end, with three large tables pushed together.
Taylor's robots busied about the room. The Pink one worked pans on a stove, the Orange and Red ones the oven underneath. The Navy one cut vegetables. The Purple and Green ones moved platters to the tables.
"Your robots are making tacos," Murrue mumbled.
"It's Tuesday," Taylor said, looking over her shoulder.
In front of her, Murrue recognized the three boys. They were the same three she saw outside. A tall one, a short one, and a round one. The three boys all turned their faces away from Murrue, but she thought she recognized the tallest from somewhere.
Orga Itsuka.
The one ABB leader who managed to escape Taylor's round up.
Part of the plan, then? Didn't Bakuda…
Murrue took another look.
She felt useless. She was an adult. She did have authority in her position, a sway that affected people's lives. She tried to use it for good. To help people. Do her job. And yet, half the kids she'd worked with in her life were dead, many before their time. Olive survived just barely, and might still join them. And Taylor…
What a sad world that an adult should feel helpless to save a child.
It was a bitter feeling, though. More of an emotional lament than a rational decision. Taylor was right, as much as Murrue didn't want to admit it.
Nothing ever quite worked at the PRT. She tried. Mu tried. Noa tried. Even Piggot tried. Victory and Priest. Teacher and whoever it was behind the mystery faction in the Protectorate Hero involved himself with.
It was broken.
And of all the people in the world, a sixteen-year-old girl was the one setting herself out to fix it.
Wrong.
Murrue stepped forward and held out Taylor's phone.
"I'm sorry."
Taylor blinked.
"For what? It's not your fault."
But it was. Murrue knew all the complaints in the PRT. The talk of the speed of government and how nothing ever seemed to work out. She kept thinking doing her job would fix it. That things would change if good people could just be good.
It wasn't enough.
It was never enough.
"I need to go," Murrue said, "but I'll be back. I'm not going anywhere. I need to check in at the PRT building and see what's going on."
Taylor blinked again, apparently surprised by that answer.
"I'm here!" Lafter called from behind. She walked into the break room in a halter top, jacket, jeans and cowboy boots. "I brought old people! No offense old guys."
"None taken. Age is the sign of success!"
Murrue turned toward the threshold, noting the five men she passed on the way. The one at the front, with prosthetic eyes and a robotic arm. She knew him by description.
Doctor J.
She'd brought the Foundation to Brockton Bay?
And she wasn't wearing a mask.
That's why she was at the Dockworker's building. In her home. At her factory. Comings and goings would be noticed. Here? She could simply slip anyone she wanted in and out with vehicles.
Murrue smiled and continued on her way. She left the building and drew her own phone. Her thumb dialed the number and raised it to her lips. She noted a van pulling into a garage behind her. She ignored it.
It would be best going forward if Murrue didn't know everything up Taylor's sleeve. Murrue didn't need to know everything to coordinate with her. Teacher put Calvert in Brockton Bay for a reason. If he could place Calvert, he could place pets anywhere in the PRT. Murrue had to acknowledge that she could be turned.
She'd have to go forward knowing as little as possible.
It was a weird sort of resignation. A sense of failure. Disappointment. Tragedy. Not a particularly fair series of emotions. They didn't do Taylor any real justice.
Murrue couldn't help it all the same.
She made Veda in February, a week to the day of her attempt to join the Wards. Her discovery that Shadow Stalker was her tormentor. The latest in a line of cold lessons in life's coincidental cruelty.
Taylor Hebert—Newtype—made her choice from the beginning. A painful choice. A sixteen-year-old girl shouldn't be bearing the weight of the world. She shouldn't feel the need to, let alone be in the position to actually do it.
The phone picked up.
"Mu," she called.
"You coming in?" he asked. "This is getting crazy. Calvert's whole office is being turned inside out. Starting to think he actually did it."
The adults in her life shouldn't be standing idle and blind, lamenting their own inability to change her circumstances. She desired no one's pity and no one's protection.
"I'm on my way in."
Some children grow up faster than others, and the hardest thing in the world is letting them go. Taylor made her choice. For Murrue, doing her job wasn't enough anymore. She needed to make a choice too.
"Bring Bright with you. We need to talk."
