AN: I know it's ridiculous to be excited about 3 little reviews, but I am. Plus, I'm really enjoying writing this story. So, instead of everything else I am supposed to be doing, here is the next chapter. Please don't get used to this rate of posting. I'm spoiling myself by writing so much.
Chapter Four: Easier Said than Done
February 25, 2011
After school he had to go home for half an hour to watch his sister until her piano lesson, then he headed to the Wards' headquarters. Evidently, half an hour was all the time Contract needed to kick over the mother of all ant-hills. She was standing in the middle of the Wards' entryway / conference room, with her mask and new Ward-issued costume on. They had kept the jeans, white blouse, and jean jacket at her vicious insistence, but it was nearly unrecognizable as the casual wear it had been. The jeans were done with bold white stitching, with the crisscross Inguz rune on both pockets. They had traded white tennis shoes in for white leather boots. Her jacket was similarly embellished with white stitching and white leather accents at the shoulders and elbows.
Clockblocker was sitting at the monitors, costumed except for his mask, but facing the room and ignoring his duties. Triumph and Kid Win were both in full costume, either just headed out to patrol or just coming back. Deputy Director Renick was in one corner with a squad leader Intrepid didn't recognize yet, and an unknown woman in a suit. Sophia Hess was sitting at the conference table, within striking distance of Contract. She was either incredibly brave or the room was blind, because Contract was rapidly approaching the screaming rage that he'd seen on Wednesday.
"Did I stumble into something?" He asked, walking into the tension carefully. He was naturally closest to Contract due to where the elevator exited. He didn't step closer to her, but he didn't step away either.
Triumph sighed, "Actually you might be able to help. What do you know about Taylor Hebert?"
"I know she was hospitalized for a bit. Bullying, or so I heard. I guess she got trapped in her locker?" Jason made it a question. He didn't want to lie, but he also knew Contract didn't want him getting involved, not yet.
"Have you ever met her personally?" Triumph's bluntness threw his subtlety out the window. He'd have to be truthful and hope for the best.
"We ate lunch together today. She talked to Contract and I about the bullying she's been suffering. In our civilian identities."
"What did she say?"
"She said she's being harassed daily, with incidents varying from mild verbal abuse up to the locker incident that hospitalized her. She's had stuff stolen and vandalized."
"Did she name anyone?"
"She said a lot of girls got into it, but three were ring leaders. A Sophia, a Madison, and…. I don't remember the third. She didn't give last names."
"Any proof?"
"She had typed up notes detailing what she'd been through each day."
The woman in a suit cut in. "Did she give any reason why she didn't take her notes to the actual authorities?"
Being a high school student, Jason could easily understand why she hadn't, especially against popular students. But if the adults had to ask, then they wouldn't understand. He tried to guess if Triumph got it, but he was charismatic and good looking and a jock, so he might not really see. Kid Win's visor made it impossible to read him. "We didn't talk about that."
"Unfounded allegations against 'a Sophia' are hardly sufficient reason to invade privacy." The suited woman insisted, now addressing Contract.
Contract growled over the top of her: "Sophia Hess is the only Sophia enrolled at Winslow high school."
"Sophia's name never came up in investigation this January."
"There was no investigation, this January."
Renick cut them both off. "That's an inquiry for the police station." Contract responded by shifting her glare to Renick. "This is over. I am disappointed in you for listening to slander against a teammate. I don't want to hear anything about this again. I do, however, want all three of you to keep an eye on Taylor. This kind of attack on a Ward's reputation, coupled with a psychotic break, is extremely concerning. She could go Carrie."
Jason was stunned. Since arriving in Brockton Bay, he'd regularly felt like he'd been hit with a 2-by-4 of unreality, but this was approaching absurd. Before his common sense had rebooted, his mouth opened. "Sir, all due respect, but Taylor didn't strike me as a liar." He felt Contract's glare turn to him and backpedaled slightly. "I'm not saying that our teammate is definitely bullying her, but somebody is."
"You are in Winslow to attend classes, and keep teenagers out of the ER. Watch Taylor ONLY if it doesn't interfere with those two goals. Whether she is being threatened or is a threat, I don't want to hear another word about this matter in any form until it seems that someone is headed for the ER. Understand?"
"I understand." Given Contract's currently body language, that ER trip might be a lot closer than anyone else realized, but Jason could see he wouldn't make any more progress today.
"Shadow Stalker? You keep an eye on her too, as your schedule and cover permit."
"Yes, sir."
"Contract, you've done enough. You worry about the gangs."
She gave a jerky nod. For a moment, Jason thought Renick would insist on a verbal answer. Instead, he took his fellow suits and left. Sophia went to her bunk, probably to suit up. As she left, she smirked at Contract and jostled her shoulder just slightly. As soon as she was gone, Contract walked around the table to sit in front of her laptop.
"Contract…" Triumph said, stepping towards her.
"I heard him." She said, fingers hitting the keys with more force than necessary. She looked up at him without lessening the pace or ferocity of her typing and her tone chilled significantly. If Jason hadn't heard her yell, scream, and curse, it would have been the scariest thing he'd ever heard. "I get it. Keep my head down, my mouth shut, show up for fights and for PR. Wear the stupid costume. Toe the party line. You won't have any problems out of me, sir." She made the title an expletive by tone alone. Triumph paused, taken aback, then went to his own room. Jason cautiously approached on her other side.
When he reached the chair next to hers, she spoke. She was obviously trying to be more pleasant, but it wasn't really working. "I'm not going to be a very nice person for the next couple hours. I highly advise that you ignore me. I like you. I really, really don't want to lose my temper with you. You're good people. Please, just don't poke me right now."
"Can I sit here and not poke you?" Her hands suddenly stopped and she looked over, honestly surprised. After a moment, she laughed a little huff through her nose and then smiled a very tiny smile. Compared to the magnitude of her rage, it was nothing. But to him, it was something because it was genuine.
"Yeah." She sounded wistful, longing. "Sure. I'd like that." She turned back to her computer and he got out his iPad to do some school reading. Almost immediately, he got a chat invitation.
ClockBoss: How do you do that?
NoFear: Do what?
Lionman: What did he do?
ClockBoss: He calmed the beast. Walked up to her, she said very clearly "do not sit" and he said "you sure" and suddenly she's completely normal again.
The clicking from the monitor console wasn't exactly discrete, and he looked over to Clockblocker to try to mentally signal the need to not piss Contract off by talking behind her back. As he did so, he caught sight of Contract's computer screen. Two-thirds of it was filled with programming code, which she was writing. In one corner, she had a dialog box showing the chat conversation she had certainly not been invited to. She caught his eye, gave a tiny quirk of her lips, and he found a second chat box opening on his pad beside the first.
F: I don't mind. They don't mean it badly. I just don't want to deal with people right now. You can even tell them that. Thanks for checking.
Before he could reply, the chat box vanished, so he turned back to the first conversation.
NoFear: She said she wanted to not be bothered. All I did was ask if sitting would bother her so long as I didn't talk.
NoFear: Fi is pretty honest. She may not be entirely open, but you can take what she does say at face value.
ClockBoss: that's the other thing. How'd you get a name out of her?
NoFear: Fi is just a nickname.
Lionman: She had them add Fiona as her middle name after she told you that. I think it's her real name.
NoFear: I didn't get that impression. I think Fi is short for something else
ClockBoss: Not a lot of options come to mind.
NoFear: Does it matter?
ClockBoss: we have no idea who our teammate is. We're supposed to trust her in the field and she obviously doesn't trust us.
Jason glanced at Contract, but if she was watching the conversation scrolling across the bottom of her screen, her face didn't show it. Somehow, that made him more upset on her behalf.
NoFear: like you trust a murderer?
Lionman: Is that was today was about? Shadow Stalker made a mistake, an accident. That doesn't justify slander.
NoFear: Today was about me being honest when I was put on the spot and interrogated. I had no idea what was going on, and I very politely answered your questions. To be honest, I still have only the slightest idea about what happened. Someone wants to fill me in, I wouldn't object.
There was a bit of a pause.
Lionman: We'll talk later. Clock, back to the screens. I've got to patrol with SS.
Jason switched apps over to his reader and belatedly noticed that Kid Win had settled next to him with his own pad. Almost immediately, a new chat box opened.
BoyHero: I'm not sure you're completely wrong about SS.
NoFear: why didn't you say anything?
BoyHero: It's a big gap between teasing and hospitalization. SS isn't great with Missy and she's mean to me too. She's sarcastic. So she might be taunting Taylor. But there's no way she's locking her up. If anything, SS is too eager to get the bad guys. She has the right motives, she just doesn't know boundaries
Jason shrugged and closed the chat as Triumph came out of his room. It was ironic that Kid Win thought the vigilante without boundaries would stop at verbal abuse. Shadow Stalker joined Triumph as the elevator dinged. For the next hour, Jason did his homework at Standby Alert L2 - he was away from anyone who didn't know he was a Ward, so he wouldn't be missed, but he wasn't in costume. Then Clockblocker and Kid Win went out on patrol, Intrepid suited up and took over monitor duty, and Triumph returned. Shadow Stalker had apparently gone straight home.
Cautiously, Triumph approached Contract who was, as far as Intrepid knew, still working on her computer program. "Can we talk?"
"Sure." Based on the continued typing, Intrepid guessed that she hadn't even looked up. Her tone was more unfriendly than friendly, but it was calm so that was a good sign. An hour of silence seemed to have helped her mood.
"Please? I want to know what I've done to upset you." She kept typing for a moment, then Intrepid heard the laptop click shut. Intrepid focused on the feed he was seeing from cameras around Brockton Bay, but he couldn't help but listen too.
"Why do you think you've upset me?"
"Well, you're not really friendly with anyone besides Jason and I get it, he helped you with Behemoth. But you seem a little… colder… to me than to anyone else."
"I will try to correct that."
"I'm more interested in what I did to deserve it. Did someone say something?"
"You think I'd base my opinion on rumor?" She sounded offended, but a moment later she continued, like she was talking to herself. "Of course you do. You think that's what you saw today so of course you naturally project that back onto my relationship to you." Triumph didn't respond, but she didn't let the silence get awkward. "No one had to tell me, Triumph. You did it yourself."
"What do you mean?"
"You asked me about my trigger event."
There was a long, stretching silence. Intrepid found himself nearly holding his breath. He could see where asking about a trigger event might have upset Contract. He'd hardly want to talk about the worst day of his life, and he was being honest about his family and past. But it didn't seem like it was enough to sour an entire working relationship.
"I don't understand." Triumph finally admitted.
"There are three kinds of capes in the world, and you can tell often tell which are which by how they respond to the mere mention of the phrase 'trigger event'. There are capes like Intrepid and I, who wince on instinct as we recall the worst day of our lives. There are case 53s, who get uncomfortable or bitter because they can't remember, but they know it wasn't good and it probably wasn't natural. And then there is the third group. Which do you think you belong to?" She was being scathing, and Triumph answered her, angry and indignant.
"I triggered when I was 16. I found out I would never make the majors and I felt…"
Contract cut him off. "Save it for someone who cares."
Intrepid found himself facing forward without seeing anything. What was the third option? You were natural or you were a case 53. A second generation cape? But why would Contract hate all second generation capes on principle?
"Contract…" He said, coaxingly, obviously trying to control his temper.
"Look, nothing you say can change the basic facts. I don't trust you. And short of a miracle, I won't trust you. So don't hold your breath."
Triumph evidently decided to cut his losses and run, because he turned and trudged back to his room to change out of his cape. Contract opened her laptop and continued her typing. Intrepid spent the next two hours blankly thankful that the patrol didn't require his help in any capacity.
February 28, 2011
On Monday morning, Fi was ten minutes late getting to the study classroom, and her facial expression kept him from asking where she'd been. She took three deep breathes, then ignored the PRT laptop in favor of her own personal device. She opened a file that looked like the same computer program from Friday program and spent the next two hours furiously typing. At lunch, Jason finally worked up the courage to speak.
"Where should I meet Taylor today?"
"We won't."
"What?" If there was one thing he didn't expect, it was for Fi to give up. She seemed more like the kind to cut off her nose to spite her face or die with her jaw still locked around a bone.
"We were ordered not to take any extraordinary measures to observe her. I was actually ordered to avoid her entirely. So we are going to obey."
"Why?"
"Because there is more than one way to skin a cat."
She suddenly stopped typing with a triumphant look. Jason leaned over. Her computer screen now showed a small sound-bar at the top of the screen, and a blank word document.
"What is this?"
"This is a program I wrote. It records and transcribes conversations." Sure enough, as they spoke the clock on the sound bar suddenly started counting and the curser on the word doc recorded their words.
"What are we going to do with this?"
"We aren't going to do anything. I am going to beta-test this by recording the incoming PRT switchboard overflow lines. Hear what people are saying while they listen to elevator music. PRT includes a disclaimer about recording, and I will turn all records over to their custody, so there won't be any legal trouble."
"How does that help us?"
"I guess we'll just have to hope we get lucky."
She hit a re-set button, and the document opened a "save as" dialog box. She named it "test one". Then she went to her command window, typed "execute: buttdial" and started the recording. There was a moment of ringing, then the automatic voice informed them that all lines were full, would they please hold, and all calls were monitored and recorded for guaranteed satisfaction and legal record. The word document caught it all. There was static for a little bit, then Jason realized he could hear someone talking in the background. Fi helpfully turned up the computer volume.
"No one ever believes a snitch."
"They decided you weren't worth the effort."
"Who would care about you?"
There were a lot of different female voices all talking over the top of each other.
"Even your mom didn't care about you." That came through loud and clear and dialog wrote itself in the command window. It said "89% - Emma Barnes".
"That's not true!" One girl yelled back and the other voices fell quiet for a moment. The command window wrote "93% - Taylor Hebert".
"Of course it's true. If it wasn't, someone would have let you out of that locker. But no one did. No one missed poor Taylor Hebert. So sad." This mocking tone was tagged "91% - Sophia Hess". Jason didn't need the program to tell him so.
There was the sound of laughter and then all the girls were talking all at once again. "Is she crying?" "What a baby!" "Does someone need her mama?" "What mother would love her?"
"Please move." It sounded like Taylor, but it must have been too garbled with the voices of the other girls for the program to recognize.
"No." That was Sophia again, and at her voice, the other girls stopped talking to listen. "You're a rat Taylor, a psychotic little tattletale. We play a couple harmless pranks, and you blow everything out of proportion. That's not very nice." Jason suddenly decided he'd had enough. He got up from the desk, and swept out of the classroom.
He didn't find the girls on the third floor. He didn't find them on the second.
He finally found Taylor sitting alone outside the school, curled up out of sight against a trashcan. Her backpack was missing, and she was crying. He tried to get her to talk, to go to the principle, to come inside. She just looked at him with big eyes and eventually whispered that she was going to go home. He wanted to tell her about the recording, but he knew it wasn't worth it. The girls hadn't admitted anything. It was only a bit of verbal abuse, and no matter what Fi said about it being legal he was pretty sure it wasn't. Eventually he went back to class.
He wasn't scheduled for Ward duty that afternoon, but he went in anyway. Contract wasn't around and Shadow Stalker was on the console. He made up a question to ask Kid Win, supposedly about the replacement tinker tech gun the Ward was planning for Intrepid, and after half an hour of listening to him ramble, Jason went home. All night, he expected to get called in. He didn't sleep.
On Tuesday he counted every minute until second period, and when he arrived in the classroom he found Fi already watching her lecture video for the day.
"What is going on?" He demanded, and she paused the video, pulled out the headphones, and stared at him in slight surprise like she wasn't sure what he meant.
"I don't understand."
"What are we doing to help Taylor?"
She sighed, and closed the laptop lid. "I wrote a program that causes Sophia's civilian phone to call the PRT tip line. I also wrote a virus so that all calls from that number are automatically moved to the back of the call waiting log every 60 seconds, virtually guaranteeing that it won't be answered. But it will be recorded. For good measure, I am also running a beta on my program on the call waiting lines. I got the paperwork to do so approved yesterday. I'm not a tinker, but I went through the same channels. Nobody is super happy, but I had several statements from Protectorate heroes who have mentioned in the past how useful it would be to be able to back up their reports with recordings. So it's tentatively approved, pending testing.
"I am going to keep causing Sophia to seemingly 'butt dial' the PRT at regular intervals. It will look like an over-sensitive screen, not too much trouble. I gave it a virus to randomly call a few other contacts too, and added the PRT switchboard as a contact under the name 'Peggy'. Once I overhear her say something sufficiently incriminating, I will engineer a situation to either have the recordings come to the attention of the PRT monitors, or I will 'randomly' include the appropriate transcripts in my beta testing, or I will have her phone confiscated and raise flags that way. I haven't decided yet."
"That's very elaborate."
"I was hoping to fly under the radar long enough to have the recordings in hand when this got taken to the adults. Unfortunately, Renick happened to be in the room when Sophia invited me to lunch with her. I casually declined and said I had someone else to eat with. Triumph got all team-leader and asked who. I decided to drop Taylor's name as a way to grease the wheels for later. Sophia was… scathing. Things spiraled out of control from there. It was not my finest hour."
"Why is this so important to you?"
"Out of all the corruption in the Protectorate and PRT, Sophia Hess might be the only one not connected to something that will get me assassinated. I have to do something. And I am secretly hoping that this will build me some good PR to cash in later. I know it won't work, but I really want it to."
"Does Triumph have anything to do with that corruption?"
She was quiet for a long time. Jason decided that she wasn't going to answer, and threw away his food wrappers, packing his stuff up to go to the next class.
"Yes. Triumph has benefited directly from the source of the corruption. I have no idea how much he might know, how involved he might be, or if there might be a chance that he's just ignorant. I can't know for sure. And I have to be careful."
"Who else on the team?"
"Possibly Aegis." The second in command.
"Why do you trust me? You never asked about my trigger event."
"You're good people, Jason. I can just tell." The bell rang, and he turned to go to class. As he trudged down three flights of stairs, past a cluster of skin heads glaring menacingly at the stoners across the hall, he had to try to hide the spring in his step. It felt great to have Fi's trust, even if he wasn't sure why he did.