Chapter 10-2

"That bitch is crazy, dammit! She threatened to cut my balls off."

"Can't lose what you don't have, punk. Now get in the van."

I watched the crooks disappear with mixed feelings. There were still too many unknowns for me to feel calm about it all. Who were they? Why were they spying on me? Why did they think I'd broken the unwritten rules? What was going on?

I sighed. Yet another mess for me to deal with.

Sam walked up to me with a strange look on her face. "So…I guess that was pretty funny."

"No, it wasn't. They were spying on me. Out of costume, no less. I can't even…It's fucked up."

"Okay, that was bad, but look at the bright side: at least the PRT wasn't stalking you."

I couldn't help but cringe. I wasn't exactly proud of believing my employers would spy on me. Even if it was perfectly reasonable.

One of the troopers walked over and said: "You two alright?"

"Yeah, we're fine. For now, anyway." I answered back.

"My mom's going to kill you, though." Sam quipped back. "Probably won't work, but, well…"

The trooper remained professional and continued. "The director wants to see you as soon as possible, Miss Hebert. I'm sure you understand why. As for you…"

"I can walk home from here." Sam said. "It's not far."

"I'll have someone drive you home, just in case."

She shrugged and went on her way, waving as she left. As least she was going to be fine. As for me, I was quietly ushered into another van, away from the cameras and the reporters who would no doubt be arriving soon.

When we arrived at PRT HQ, Aegis motioned me to follow him. He let me to an interrogation room, for some reason. Curious, I followed him into the chamber behind the one-way mirror. Then, I saw the guests. One I recognized immediately: Alan Barnes. The second, clutched in his arms was…me. Someone who looked just like me. Same hair, same face, even the same eyes.

What?

Alan Barnes was practically shouting as I came in. "…said the last time, we're not interested."

"Daddy…" The other me tried to interrupt, but her father… Oh. Oh god.

"Shapeshifter." Insight suddenly said, appearing behind me. No, not appearing. She must have been there all along. "She can transform into anyone, simply by focusing on them. Even use that ability to close wounds, to an extent. Think Browbeat minus the telekinesis but with an extra helping of Changer. Downside: she can't turn it off and she can't control it yet. Should have seen the look on Armsmaster's face when she suddenly grew a beard." She snickered, but there was something uncomfortable behind it. Like there was something she didn't want to tell me.

"That's Emma Barnes, isn't it?" I asked. Insight's silence and the downcast look on Aegis' face gave me my answer. "Well, fuck."

Then, Director Renick spoke up. "Mr. Barnes, the Wards program was founded to help people like your daughter."

"Like you helped Miss Hess?" Mr. Barnes snarled back. "That little witch corrupted my daughter, turned her against her best friend and ruined her! She convinced my little girl to lie under oath, dammit! If you'd done your job…"

"Daddy, stop!" Emma suddenly said. Her skin began to darken, the curls in her hair straightened out, and she transformed into Sophia, right before my eyes. "I did that. I hurt Taylor. That was me and I have to make it right. I got powers now and I can fix it and…" The pained look on Mr. Barnes' face actually made me feel sorry for him. I wondered what hurt him more: the admission or seeing his daughter turn into the girl who started all of this to begin with. "Banshee said I needed help, and she was right. I just…You can't help me. Please, I…I need to do this. For Taylor."

Behind me, Insight whispered. "Oh God, she doesn't even realize it's happening."

"Actually," Renick interrupted "I hate to break this to you, but you aren't helping anyone, least of all Miss Hebert. The crooks you've been beating up saw your face, or rather her face. Now, they're thinking that Taylor is a cape and are out for her blood. We had to place her into protective custody."

I turned to Insight and asked: "Please tell me he's exaggerating. About the 'out for blood' part."

"Not…entirely." She answered.

Emma turned into me again. A very pale me. "No…That's…But I…"

"This is why the Wards program exists. Not just to protect you, but to protect others affected by your power whether you realize it or not. You made a lot of mistakes, but you can still make up for them."

"And that's enough, Director." Mr. Barnes snapped back. "I know how you people operate. You will not guilt-trip my little girl into your little band of child-soldiers and I won't allow you to bully me into signing my daughter's rights away. What happened to Miss Hebert is tragic, but that is not Emma's fault. She has suffered enough already. She doesn't need to be thrown into battle against a goddamn zombie horde. Now, unless you're going to arrest my daughter, we're leaving."

My mind went blank. Renick…that crazy lunatic wanted to hire her?! Was he…had he lost his mind?!

Renick and Mr. Barnes stared at each other for a few moments. Eventually, the director broke the silence. "Very well. If that is your choice, then I cannot stop you. However, your daughter will still be placed into custody until the quarantine is lifted. I will not have her spark a gang war while there's an S-class threat running amok in my city. That being said, I would like you to remember that independent parahumans don't last long. They either escalate to the point where we have to arrest them or bite off more than they can chew. In case of the latter, there is nothing we can do. In case of the former… I've learned from my predecessor's mistakes, Mr. Barnes. We are willing to be lenient, especially with fresh triggers, but that leniency has its limits. If she crosses the line, we won't be as easy-going as we were with Shadow Stalker. My offer still stands and it will be the best deal she's going to get. I strongly recommend you consider it." The director knocked on the door and a guard appeared.

Mr. Barnes simply shot him an angry look and left with the guard, Emma (still wearing my face) in tow. They left without another word.

"Pompous bastard." Aegis muttered as Renick entered the room.

"He's protecting his daughter." The director chided. "When your children get hurt, your first thought as a parent is 'how can I keep them safe'. I can sympathize, even if I do not agree with him. Sadly, having a law degree and friends in high places won't save you from a tire-iron to the head. I hope he understands that before it's too late." Almost patronizingly, he added: "Maybe when you have children of your own, you'll understand."

I shook my head and tried to focus on my more immediate concern. "Emma…those goons today, they said I broke the unwritten rules. What the hell did she do?"

"Quite a lot, considering the situation." Renick explained. "Mostly stalking the streets and beating up muggers and drug-dealers while wearing your face as a mask. Nothing that wouldn't have been a problem if it weren't for Outbreak being around. Unfortunately, some of her victims apparently have ties to the gangs and now they're trying to track her down. Since the only picture they had available was yours…"

"They're assuming I'm the cape."

"Yes. Needless to say, this is a problem. By now, whoever hired these men is probably aware that you're a parahuman, which has made things very difficult for us. If they try to 'retaliate', we will have no choice but to go after them in full force. I do not need to tell you how bad a gang war would be for all of us at this juncture. Hiring Emma Barnes is, for all parties involved, the best option: the attacks will stop, we get a Ward, and a teenage girl won't die or join the enemy. Unfortunately, Mr. Barnes has refused my extremely lenient recruitment offer."

"I still can't believe you even want to hire her." Aegis said, sounding understandably unhappy. Hearing it coming from the horse's mouth should be a shock, but I guess this sort of thing didn't surprise me anymore. I still kept my mouth shut, though. I didn't want to do something I'd regret later.

At least Renick had the decency of looking uncomfortable about it. "There are many reasons why I would. In spite of everything, Emma Barnes still wants to be a hero. She also has an extremely photogenic power. She can be a team's media darling, which, if I can be blunt, will allow us to trade her for another, more desirable, cape of our own. Then, of course, there are the standard reasons. We are still badly outnumbered and need all the capes we can get. That, and my department gets more funding with every cape we recruit."

"So we're shanghaiing Shadow Stalker 2.0 then…" As judgmental as Aegis sounded, I couldn't help but agree with his sentiment.

"If Piggot had still been director? Yes, we would. She'd have browbeaten the girl into the Probationary Wards Program and damn the consequences. However, I'm not Emily Piggot." Renick rubbed his brow. "The girl lied under oath about Shadow Stalker, covered up her crimes, and may even be complicit in them. In addition, what she did to Miss Hebert, regardless of her reasons or mental state, is monstrous. However, I've been doing this job long enough to know that triggering changes people. Sometimes for the better. She's done horrible things, yes, but that doesn't mean she won't be able to turn her life around and I'd be a poor director if I denied her that opportunity right out of the gate."

"I don't think we can trust her."

The director's reply was calm and almost fatherly. It sounded practiced to me. "I'm not asking you to. I'm just asking you to give her a second chance. Not a third or a fourth. If she steps out of line, we will come down on her."

"Assuming she doesn't throw someone else into a locker full of shit and leaves them to die in the mean time."

"She won't get the chance, Aegis, and regardless of the risk, not recruiting her is worse. Her power has left her unable to maintain a secret identity and given the trouble she's already stirred up, she probably won't last the week before something bad happens to her. Either she'll die, or she'll be turned by anyone who can give her a sense of purpose. Stockholm Syndrome is a very real possibility for someone with such a fragile sense of self and I can't risk letting someone like her fall into the hands of the Empire."

"Then we send her to prison. God knows she's done enough to deserve it."

Renick let out a drawn-out sigh. "Sadly, our legal options are limited. If we charge her for perjury, we'll have to openly admit that we've covered up having a crazed vigilante in our ranks and failed to notice for months. The bullying angle is even worse: we have very little evidence that can't be dismissed as either hearsay or the exaggerations of a socially isolated, teenage girl." He must have noticed the clenching of my hands. "Legal department's words, not mine. That her victim's working for us now won't help our case either. Jurisdiction is another matter, since neither she nor Miss Hebert were parahumans at the time. Finally, pressing charges for short-if-violent cape career won't stick because we regularly look the other way for such things, so long as it doesn't cross the line. Throwing the book at her can backfire spectacularly, especially if she has a sympathetic judge."

"Emma's very good at crying crocodile tears." I said, venomously. "She can make people believe her."

"At any rate, I would like to keep this out of the courtroom as much as possible. The goodwill of the people is mercurial at the best of times. Even if we win…I don't think it would have been worth it. We send her to prison, we lose her forever. The girl's personality is like a chameleon. I can't risk letting her latch on to the nearest crook and turn villain. Once she figures out how to manage it, her power would make her a terrifying infiltration specialist."

"Then we slap her with the Preservation Act." Aegis argued. "Let Outbreak be good for something for once."

"The what?"

"Preservation Act, Taylor." Insight explained. "It's the Endbringer Truce in legal form. Basically, it gives a whole bunch of rights and freebies to anyone who signs up to fight an S-class threat. They'll keep you from getting sues if say, you got blood all over someone's carpet while wiping out a horde of zombies. It also gives the PRT near-total freedom to do whatever the hell it wants without consequence because, well, 'Murica."

Renick frowned. "On paper it does, but that doesn't mean I will use it. Just because I can set aside the law in times of crisis doesn't mean I should. Ultimately, I still need to be able to justify my actions to the public and using the Preservation Act to send a fifteen year-old to prison just to clean up our own mess will not go over well. I can't risk it. Not for her."

"And of course, letting Miss Psycho go isn't an option either." Aegis said, almost grinding his teeth to powder in the process.

"Not unless we want to see her on the Empire's roster or as a Merchant crack whore. A girl like this is prime recruitment material for the gangs."

I've heard enough. I had to go, before I did something I'd regret later.

"Miss. Hebert." The director called after me. "I have no intention of keeping her here for long. You have my word that even if she does accept my offer, she'll be transferred out of the city as soon as possible."

"But she'll still be a Ward." I hissed back. "In spite of everything, you're going to make her a hero. She's going to be on television and in the spotlight and…and… You're rewarding her. All the shit she pulled and now I'm supposed to treat her like a fucking teammate?!"

"Make no mistake: I don't want her in the Wards any more than you do. Recruiting people like her is the reason we're in this mess in the first place. Believe me, if there was a better option, I'd have taken it."

My hands balled into fists and it took every ounce of my willpower not to punch him. "You haven't learned a thing from Shadow Stalker, have you?"

He simply stared back for a moment, his face grim. "I have, Miss Hebert. I know mistakes were made and I won't repeat them. This girl will be watched like a hawk. She won't have the chance to hurt someone else. Please, look at this objectively…"

A mirthless laugh escaped my throat. "Fine, let's look at this objectively: you're hiring someone capable of torturing another human being to the brink of suicide and you're expecting me to be okay with it. You want to surround her with people who have no reason to trust her, on the off chance that you can somehow help her. I mean, for God's sake, Director, what makes you think she can be fixed at all?"

"Because very few people are beyond help." Insight suddenly added. "I think we can do it. Probably not here in Brockton Bay, she's too toxic an asset for that, but somewhere else… We can fix her."

The director simply nodded in response. That was it, then, I guess. My opinion, however valid, didn't matter. I shook my head and headed to the roof. Just somewhere I could be alone for a while. Somewhere I could break down and cry without anyone there to judge.

The bitch. After everything she's taken from me, she still found a way to ruin this part of my life too. Wasn't the last two years enough?

Footsteps behind me. Lisa, without her helmet. "Hey." She said.

"I really don't want to see you right now."

"That's okay. I understand."

"But you're not leaving." I replied.

"You have questions. Bottling this up is bad. I'm not leaving until you say your piece."

I sighed and lowered my head. "Why?" I eventually asked.

"Why did she make your life a living hell?"

"Among other things."

Lisa looked contemplative for a moment. "It's…hard to explain. Mostly because she's straight-up crazy, so whatever train of logic that led to all this probably won't make any sense to us. Well…I think you matter to her."

"She had a funny way of showing it…"

"You're important, but not you yourself, if that makes any sense. More in what you mean to her. What you represent." She pursed her lips for a moment. "Something bad happened to her, right before you started high-school. Really bad. Not my secret to tell, but I can say our mutual friend Stalker was involved. Psycho bitch saved her bacon and helped her through the worst of the trauma. Anyway, Emma decided that the only way to get past the mess is to reinvent herself as some sort of badass psycho queen-bee bitch. But, there was a problem."

"Me?"

"You. The living embodiment of her past self that she oh so desperately needed to leave behind. She needed to be strong, but she couldn't do that so long as you were around, 'dragging her down'. In short, you had to go. Either you'd break down and go away or you'd become an alpha-bitch like her and then she could let herself be your friend again. In a way, it wasn't really you she was beating on, all that time. You were just a voodoo doll, a way to convince herself she was strong even though she wasn't. In reality, she was trying to fix herself by breaking you. I think a small part of her honestly hated doing it, but she couldn't stop."

I let that sink in for a moment, but for the life of me I couldn't understand it. "That's…"

"Completely fucking nuts? Yeah, well, waddaya guess? Of course, that's just half of the story. The real problems began when you and Stalker disappeared. Suddenly, the two people she needed most in life, and yes, I know how crazy that sounds, had disappeared without a word. Suddenly, she was all alone with nothing but half-baked excuses. One moment she was the queen bitch of the universe, the next, she became an outcast. Kind of what you had been."

"So she goes out pretending to be a cape."

"Girl wants her confidence back and without anyone to tell her what a stupid idea that is, goes for it and, surprise, surprise bites off more than she can chew. Then, history repeats itself: a real cape comes by and saves her life. Except this time, the cape doesn't want to be her friend. In fact, the cape unwittingly takes what's left of her self-confidence and throws it in her face. Result: after a few nights of stewing, she snaps and…well…this happens."

My head shot up. Without realizing it, my power activated and Lisa jerked back. "I did not…"

"Easy, girl. Yeah, it's not your fault she triggered. Emma had it coming. She dug her own grave. Doesn't make the pain any less real."

"Then why? Why are you taking her side?"

Lisa blinked, looking surprised, or even offended. "I'm not taking her side. I'm just trying to make sure she doesn't kill herself over this. Kind off don't want that to happen. I mean, just look at her. She's a fucking mess. If she had been anyone else, you'd be feeling sorry for her too. C'mon, try to say you wouldn't." She nodded thoughtfully when I didn't respond. "Thought so. Believe me, that's a good sign."

"This is still wrong."

"So is hiring a bank robber, but I got a second chance."

I snorted. Was she really comparing herself to fucking Emma? "You're not a bad person."

"Really?" She chuckled, before turning serious. "I've done worse things than she has. Not to you, maybe, but to others? Talking people to death was my specialty, Taylor. I stole people's money, their secrets, and don't even get me started on what Coil made me do. At least Emma's can plead the insanity defense."

I wanted to say she was wrong. About Emma and herself. But…but I wouldn't have convinced her anyway. It didn't matter anyhow. Emma was probably going to join the Wards and I'd just have to live with having two people in the program who were complete psychos.

Go team.

"I have a patrol in a few minutes." I said, before storming off.

"Don't do anything rash, okay?" Lisa called out to me. "You're my friend too, and it's going to get real lonely out here if you're gone."