Chapter Twenty-Six: Law 101: Cheating, Blackmail, and Fine Print Details
March 19, 2011
Stepping back into the PRT headquarters was anti-climactic. Jason had been half-expecting the Triumvirate to be standing in the lobby, waiting for them in the classic v-formation from photo-shoots. As soon as he recognized the thought, he knew it was ridiculous, but it still felt odd to walk across the deserted room, into the tinker-tech elevator, and swipe his ID like it was any other day.
They took the elevator down to the Wards' base, where the rest of the team was waiting for them, suited up. Jason guessed that either Dennis had sent a message, or Triumph had warned them before he'd left, that the Triumvirate were in the building and the team wanted to be ready in case the heroes made an appearance.
Taylor, dressed in the completed Beetle armor for the first time, walked directly to Fi and gave her a hug. It didn't look comfortable, with all the plates and armor panels, but Fi just hugged her back.
When Taylor pulled back a long moment later, Missy was there next. "How are you doing?" she asked quietly. Fi shrugged, and this time she was the one to pull away from the hug.
"Coping, for now. I'll probably break down again soon, but for now… I don't know."
Taylor smiled, and reached out to squeeze her shoulder. "We're all here for you."
"Good." Fi nodded decisively. "I want your help."
"With what?" Chris asked.
Fi met his gaze steadily. "I'm going to figure out how to kill the Simurgh. To do that, I need information that only the Triumvirate has. And to get that information, I will likely need to blackmail them. I could use witnesses."
That was… not exactly what Jason had been expecting. But, at the same time, he'd much rather be in the room, helping Fi blackmail the most powerful parahumans on the planet than finding out after she was smeared across the street. "We'll go suit up," he offered, taking a step toward the dorms, not wanting Dennis and himself to be the only ones unprepared for the impending confrontation.
"Wait," Dennis cut in. Jason twisted to look at him in surprise. "This is the Triumvirate you're talking about. They're heroes." Dennis said it slowly, like he thought maybe Fi and Jason had forgotten that detail. He glanced between them cautiously.
Fi outright snorted at the protest. It wasn't her usual quiet huff through the nose that discretely indicated suppressed laughter or incredulity. It was a sound of outright scorn. "Sure. Right. If they were such heroes, there wouldn't be blackmail for me to use."
"Won't they want to help destroy the Simurgh?" Missy asked.
Before Fi could answer, Taylor put her two cents in. "Alexandria is one of the original heroes."
"If only you knew," Fi shot back. "Hero is not a sticker that makes someone suddenly bright and shiny. They're human. They make human mistakes. Only because they're a hero, a human mistake can mean hundreds of thousands of people die."
Fi took a deep breath, and turned deliberately more towards Missy. "They do want the Simurgh destroyed. And I intend to start by asking nicely. But the answers I want… might be a little incriminating themselves. The Triumvirate may not want to answer. They especially won't want to answer with a lot of witnesses."
Fi glanced at the whole team. "But I need you guys there. For emotional support. For restraint. I need you to tell me if I go too far. I can't trust their judgment, and my own is… affected."
The teenagers exchanged glances, and Jason stepped up next to Fi to offer his insight. "Guys… I know this is a bit of a shock. It's not what I thought I'd be doing when I woke up today. But…" he glanced at Fi. They'd never discussed this next part, but it seemed like an appropriate time to bring it up.
He took a deep breath.
"After Fi erased Behemoth, she was bleeding, so I took her to the medical center where Panacea was waiting for us. And so was every hero the Triumvirate could lay their hands on. Not just the three of them, but every mobile Protectorate member who can pack a punch, including my old boss Ranger and Armsmaster. They weren't just waiting for news, either."
Jason swallowed, carefully making eye contact with various team members as he continued. "I used to live not that far from Houston. I wouldn't say that I've seen a lot of Eidolon, because he was pretty busy and the Wards technically reported to Ranger, but I've seen more of him than most. Eidolon wasn't just waiting around. He was on guard. The Triumvirate, the heroes...they were tense. Prepared. While Fi was unconscious, they used all the Thinker power available to them to try to figure out who she was. She was lying there, helpless, and the general atmosphere was one of readiness."
Taylor and Chris seemed unconvinced, though the others were more believing. Fi wasn't reacting at all, which he decided was a good enough sign that it was okay to keep going. "When she did wake up, there was a very short conversation before she surrendered to Alexandria. And it was a surrender. She made it clear that the only reason she wasn't trying to leave was because she didn't want to fight her way out. No one corrected her, or told her she was free to go, or that they wouldn't stop her. The Endbringer truce should have still been in effect, but instead Alexandria herself grabbed Fi by the arm and lead her away."
Silence greeted his confession while the Wards shared looks. It was Dennis who finally spoke, proving again that he was the right one to be their leader. "Okay. I'm not saying I'm eager to face off against the Triumvirate, but this is a serious issue. If they know something that could stop the Simurgh, then maybe a little pressure is warranted. You're not going to use their secret identities?"
"No. If it comes to that, the material itself is morally repugnant or illegal, or both. It's not just a secret, it's bad juju," Fi assured him, and Jason reflected on the bizarre nature of a world where the promise that heroes did evil was a reassurance.
Chris, now looking more convinced, added, "Promise me, you'll ask nicely first."
"I will," Fi answered immediately. "I don't intend to lead with the heavy guns. But I don't expect this to be easy." She looked away from Chris and met Taylor's eyes steadily. "I'd like to skin this particular cat on the first try. So we'll start small, and escalate as necessary. I want the Simurgh dead, today."
Without being able to pin-point exactly why, Jason was reminded of her multi-step plan to deal with Sophia. She'd started out simple, just a dropped comment in the base which had escalated into a confrontation. When that hadn't worked, she'd illegally hacked into Sophia's phone. Whether she'd purposefully escalated by involving Dragon or whether the tinker had involved herself, it was yet another level of response to what was, in essence, bullying.
How far would she escalate to destroy an Endbringer?
On the other hand, destroying the Simurgh would save hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives. What was a little blackmail next to that?
Taylor seemed to be on Jason's wavelength, though probably for her own reasons. "We're with you, Fi. Promise." The rest of the team nodded their agreement, or at least didn't protest.
Dennis nodded slowly, and followed Jason towards the dorms to get into uniform. Before Jason could turn into his own room, Dennis grabbed his arm and whispered, "Is she trying to get herself killed?"
The thought hadn't actually occurred to Jason, but he gave it due consideration before answering. She did seem to be emotionally unstable, swinging from one state to the next, but was she suicidal? No. Her tone since they'd left the church had displayed none of the chilling stoicism that had scared him earlier in the day. She might be willing to die if it meant taking out the Simurgh, but he didn't think she was looking for death.
Jason shook his head firmly, to make up for his hesitation. "No." Remembering her earlier words he tacked on, "There would be easier ways for her to do it if she was."
Dennis seemed to accept that, because he let Jason go and continued towards his own room.
Pulling on the suit felt a little different this time. Jason had never put it on while knowing there was a good chance he'd be facing down heroes. He trusted Fi, trusted her judgment, and if she said blackmail would be necessary, he believed it. It was just a lot to wrap his head around.
Before he was ready mentally, he was dressed and back in the main conference room, where he found the rest of the team, minus Clockblocker, sitting around the table. Gallant was standing between two white boards which had been dragged over from their usual corner. Beetle and Contract were sitting directly across from the boards, Beetle looking smug while Contract seemed a little wary.
Contract was talking as Intrepid and Clockblocker came around the corner. "Clockblocker pointed out to me that you're my team now. And Intrepid made a very good point about new perspectives. So before we go wave a red flag in front of the Triumvirate, I am going to fill you in on what I already know, and we'll try to solve the issue ourselves, starting from the ground up. Fresh eyes, and all that."
"I thought you'd spent years working on this?" Kid Win asked, as Intrepid chose the seat closest to the whiteboards, across from Contract where he could face her and read her expressions more easily.
Contract shrugged, a little reluctant, but she answered. "As Intrepid pointed out, I need to talk to someone. And the other thing I realized when he said that, is that I spent a great deal of time discovering the nuances of my powers, one tiny piece at a time, and I was always surrounded by the same people day in and day out. We've never sought an outside opinion. There might be underlying assumptions we never questioned."
She glanced around the table, lingering on Clockblocker specifically. "Understand, the few occasions where an outside party has managed to gain a detailed understanding of the mechanics of my powers have not ended well. Granted, they were my enemies and sought specifically to do harm to me and mine – but the fact stands that there are things I simply will not explain. You'll be able to gather a working understanding of the whats without needing all the hows and whys. So when I say back off, you back off."
Around the table, everyone nodded. "Start from the beginning," Beetle suggested. "Pretend we're a blank slate, except that this time you can actually trust us."
Contract still seemed a little cautious, but then she nodded determinedly. "My power is based in sacrifice. The greater the cost I pay, the greater an effect I can buy. Greater not in the sense of monetary worth but based on its impact to me."
"Can you elaborate?" Beetle prompted, as Contract paused.
Slowly, Contract continued. "I don't know how familiar you all are with the Bible, but you might know the tale of the widow who gave two coins to the temple?" She met blank stares around the table.
"Jesus was at the temple, and when he saw her gift, he said she had contributed much more than the rich men who had given great wealth, because she was poor and gave everything she had."
Beetle was nodding in comprehension, but the rest of the team seemed taken aback by the biblical reference. Even having seen her in the church, quoting obscure passages to the priest, he wasn't fully sure what to make of this, but it was only a brief example to illustrate her point. Perhaps she had religion on the mind after their visit.
"It works the same way for both my costs and my effects. If giving it up means more to me, the cost is more valuable. If obtaining something means a great deal to me, the effect is more expensive. Clock, last night you mentioned the PRT giving me a budget to use to create contracts… do you see now why it wouldn't work? The money wouldn't mean anything to me. Abstractly, I'd know that it had come from taxes and so it would have a little bit of value emotionally, picturing that, but it'd be more effective to just spend the money on better armor than it would be for me to trade it for a force-field to deflect a blow. Does that make sense?"
"Sure. I guess. But is there anything we can do to help? So you don't have to pay these costs alone?"
Contract hesitated. Intrepid guessed that she had been planning on moving the conversation in another direction, but instead she hovered over the question in indecision. Finally, she answered. "Other people can pay a cost, or part of a cost, if they understand what's going on. If you know that it's a sacrifice, and you accept that, and you trust me to negotiate the terms… it works."
Beetle and Vista both leaned in, eager, but Contract hurried on, qualifying the statement. "Sometimes. There's a lot of trust involved. You have to trust me implicitly, and I have to be able to trust you, that you're really willing to do it. And I have to care about the person taking on the cost, and it has to be the sort of cost I'd care about if I was to do it for myself. It's the sympathy, the empathy, I feel and the guilt that I'm the one inflicting it, that lets the cost matter. I act as the bridge, I guess you could say.
"So, for example, if everyone in the world gave up a hundred bucks, it wouldn't really be more powerful than if each of you gave up a hundred bucks, because the human brain is really bad at multiplication. And if one of you gave up… I don't know… if one of you accepted the cost that eating meat would make you sick, it wouldn't really count as a big sacrifice, no matter how much you love meat, because I'm pretty indifferent to the stuff."
"But you do care enough about us that we could share a cost?" Beetle asked gently.
Contract gave a jerky nod, but qualified her statement, "Probably. Depending on the cost."
Beetle glanced over Intrepid's shoulder, and he realized that Gallant had been taking notes the whole time. The white board now read:
Costs=effects
Size depends on personal emotion
Others pay=TRUST
Costs "bridged"= emotional connection (cost and person)
Wards count
It was coded enough just by abbreviation that someone who hadn't heard the discussion probably wouldn't understand, at least not easily or without Thinker powers, but it was detailed enough to act as a reminder for the Wards.
"So this all depends on emotion, right?" Vista checked, glancing over to the board as well, thinking on what they had learned. Although the details were new, the main idea was familiar from her previous explanations. Even the ability to spread the cost between others had been hinted at.
Even so, the picture felt a little more complete now.
"The human brain is bad at multiplying…" Kid Win mused aloud. "It's not so great with division, either. What happens if you introduce probability?"
The Wards all looked at him, so he explained. "What if you say, I want to trade A for B, when B would is more expensive than A. Normally, it wouldn't work, but you qualify it by saying you'll only make the trade if you flip a coin and it comes up heads. Does the 50% uncertainty make B less expensive?"
Contract sighed. "Sort of. As Clock has seen, and as some of you may have guessed, there are a number of work-arounds that I've developed over the years. Probability is one of them. But the scenario you described doesn't work, Kid Win, because you can just keep flipping the coin. On other hand, if you make the deal, I will sacrifice A regardless of the coin flip, and I will receive B only in the case of flipping heads, you can reduce the cost. But it doesn't reduce by 50%. It's hard to quantify, but I'd say you gain only 20 or 25%. It's hard to convince yourself emotionally that you're equally likely to fail and to succeed.
"On one memorable occasion I was having a string of truly horrible luck, and I made a probability deal, which reduced the cost to less than a third of the normal with just a single coin flip. I got heads and made out like a bandit. Ash suspects that the incident actually made such deals less effective overall, because I secretly believe that I'll always flip heads, no matter how many times the opposite comes true."
If Contract realized that she had spoken of Ash in the present tense, there was no sign of it. Fortunately, no one seemed to want to correct her, so it passed un-remarked.
"What else can you do to cheat?" Beetle pressed, moving the conversation along.
"Sometimes re-wording how I think of the sacrifice or the effect will work, but only in closed contracts. For example, when I healed Clock's dad I focused on 'I'm doing a favor for my teammate' rather than 'I'm saving a life' and I also decided that the cost was 'moving into the bloody PRT base' rather than 'leaving behind the Smiths' who I didn't care about anyway.
"That's not typically very effective, unless I can make the deal on the fly and not over-think it. The harder you try to fool yourself, the harder it is to do. I can occassionally reduce the emotional impact by lumping contract together, but it's only a five percent reduction if that.
"Ignorance works sometimes. Jo drove me up to a warehouse once that had a clinic built on the other half, and told me to heal everyone in the building. Stuff like that typically only works once, though."
Beetle reached to the center of the table, grabbed a post-it, and wrote something on it. Then she peeled it off, folded it up, and handed it to Vista. "How much would that cost?" She asked, pointing to the paper.
Contract sighed. "More that I'm willing to pay. I strongly suspect you wrote down 'destroy the Simurgh.' In addition to the fact that I don't know what I could trade for that, I wouldn't make the deal just in case you actually wrote down 'the next coin flip will be a heads' or 'we will all find a penny today.' I have to have some idea of what I'm doing."
Beetle's face fell, and Vista opened the note. "Erase the Simurgh with the same effect as Behemoth," she read aloud. Contract spread her hands in a remarkably effective I-told-you-so.
"It was worth a shot," Gallant said. He had added a column to the whiteboard titled Shortcuts.
Shortcuts
Coin Flip (dice?)
Word play (better on the spot)
Ignorance (one use, gen idea)
"Changing tracks, can you give us some more examples?" Clockblocker asked carefully. "Can you tell us the sacrifices you're currently paying, for example?"
Intrepid held his breath. His gut told him that this would be a touchy subject, though he wasn't sure precisely why. Contract looked at Clockblocker, and Intrepid just knew that it was on the tip of her tongue to say no, but at the last moment she glanced at Intrepid, met his gaze, and something she read in his face changed her mind.
"I am living in the Ward's base. I am cooperating with the PRT. I am permanently two inches shorter than I would otherwise be. I am now blonde." Intrepid felt himself react to that, his heart constricting in sympathy, but she didn't pause or give any hint that giving up her physical identity was any different than changing where she slept.
Instead she plowed ahead. "I am giving no direct help to anyone from my previous life. My dog is dead." Her voice hitched, and Intrepid guessed that she had just remembered that Ash, too, was dead, even if it wasn't part of a deal.
"I…" her voice broke. She looked back to Clockblocker. "You don't get to ask for details on this one." Then she looked up at Gallant, who was furiously writing. "I betrayed my family."
She glanced down at her hands. "I am no longer ambidextrous, having given up most of the function in my left hand. I haven't shot a gun since Behemoth." She was quiet for a while. "I think that's all."
"Damn." Vista whispered, looking at the list. Even abbreviated by Gallant's note taking, it was daunting.
"Can we ask what this bought?" Kid Win said, sounding a little shaky.
"All sort of things. I needed more computer skills than I had if I wanted to deal with Sophia, I protected a building in New York, I healed Clock's father, I dealt with the bullies in Winslow, there was some stuff in New York when I was with the Wards there… it's been a rough couple of months."
Beetle reached out and put a hand on her arm. "Thank you for your part in handling Sophia." Contract smiled, and blushed.
"Least I could do." She cleared her throat, and purposefully looked toward Gallant, before Clockblocker could offer his own heart-felt thanks. "That reminds me of another short cut. I can look for tools rather than solutions. For example, I decided to use hacking to prove Sophia's guilt, instead of just straight trading for someone in authority to catch her red-handed, or forcing her to confess. It took longer, and it nearly backfired, but it was cheaper because it was less sure."
"Okay." Beetle was looking very pensive. "I'm not actually suggesting we do this, but what if…" she trailed off until Contract waved her on, clearly concerned with how her suggestion would be taken.
"We don't know the exact nature of the first Endbringer sacrifice, but you said it was basically a matter of betrayal, right? So what would happen if you were to be exposed to a master like Heartbreaker, and then he were to order you to stay away from him, but left you seriously loyal and in love. Would that sort of mimic the same cost?"
All things considered, Contract took the suggestion that she let herself be mastered very calmly. Given her extreme resistance to Company and other manipulations, Intrepid was not expecting her to shrug in response to that query, and from the look on her face, neither was Beetle.
"Well, in theory being forced to walk away from an emotional bond that strong would be sufficient to do significant damage to the Simurgh, probably erase her like I did Behemoth. But you've got a number of issues:
"First, that would release Behemoth. If I was Heartbroken, I wouldn't care about the betrayal currently containing Behemoth, so that cost would vanish, and I'd have seconds, maybe half a minute tops to figure out a new cost to trade for his disappearance, which puts us right back on square one. And that's assuming I even try to find a trade, because I might be too messed up to even care.
"Second, enduring inner conflict on the level of being separated from Heartbreaker would probably guarantee suicide, and I don't know what happens to ongoing contracts at the time of my death.
"Third, there's a decent chance that any master trying to control me will end up dead."
For a moment, everyone around the table seemed to just absorb that. Then Clockblocker and Intrepid both opened their mouth at the same time, but Intrepid kept talking and Clockblocker cut himself off to listen.
"Why? How would they die?"
Contract shifted in her seat, uncomfortable. "I don't want to lie to you, but I'm genuinely not sure that you'd believe me if I told you." She closed her eyes, tilting her head back, thinking. "Maybe you can believe this, even if it's sort of misleading." She opened her eyes and met his gaze.
"I have it on good authority that there are powerful forces at work in the world, and that I am worth more to them alive than dead. I believe these forces will exert at least some effort to keep me alive, which is why I haven't worried too much about what happens to my contracts after I die. It has been implied that these forces would also intervene if I was to be emotionally mastered or manipulated in such a way as to destroy my free will."
Immediately, Intrepid smelled conspiracy. Powerful forces had to be capes, right? Then he caught himself and forcefully reminded himself that she had explicitly warned them that the information would be misleading. Better to accept the fact she (probably) couldn't be mastered and move on.
Clockblocker cleared his throat, "What else might release Behemoth? I think we can all agree we need to avoid those routes."
Contract sighed. "It's about balance. The contract with Behemoth is if-then, so both the cost and the effect are on-going. It's a pretty rare type of deal for me. It means that the cost and effect have to stay balanced at all times. If I continue in my betrayal, then Behemoth stays put. If I stop caring as much about my actions, then the contract tips out of balance. It's the betrayal, not the actual act, that matters. There's some fluctuation daily, of course, because no one is made of stone, but the key is to stay within an order of magnitude of balance. Right now, it's actually tipped in our favor.
"I made the contract with the understanding that the remaining Endbringers would continue in a natural attack progression. It was the best way I could come up with to say that taking out Behemoth wouldn't just mean that we saw more of the other two. Only apparently it didn't work. Somehow, the natural reaction to my destroying Behemoth is for the Simurgh to attack early.
"I don't know why they reacted that way, but the key is that keeping Behemoth gone doesn't mean as much to me now as it did back in January. Normally it wouldn't matter. The effect would be a closed effect, even if the cost was still open. Whatever wording I used, I'd be stuck with. But because the contract is if-then, I'm currently actively paying for more than I'm getting. Keeping Behemoth gone doesn't mean much if the other two, or more, are just going to rampage.
"So we've got a little bit of extra capitol to play with. Ash was hoping I could use that extra rope to take out the Simurgh. It's not that much extra credit, but it's pretty valuable."
"So what do you need from the Triumvirate?" Vista asked, staring at the board.
"Facts. I need to know everything they know about the origins of the Endbringers, and everything about the Endbringers themselves. The more I know, the better the chance that I can find a shortcut."
"You don't think they'll give you that information willingly?" Kid Win asked.
Contract shrugged. "Legally, I can't answer that."
Intrepid had expected her to say that the information was too dangerous, but invoking the law worked too, right up until Vista realized, "You do know that blackmail is illegal too, right?"
Contract shrugged again. "That's why I'm warning you now. Get out if you want to."
Vista shook her head. "No, I'm with you. Especially if you promise to ask nicely first," she teased.
"Of course."
Vista glanced around the table. "Then I think we're all with you."
Intrepid remembered back in January, watching Panacea talk to Alexandria, and being impressed with how she kept her cool and even pushed back against the hero slightly. He glanced around the table and marveled at how much could change in two short months.
Around the table, heads nodded, and Wards murmured or spoke their agreement. Then they all sort of glanced at each other awkwardly for a moment. "So, uh, do we invite them down?" Kid Win asked tentatively.
"Unless you guys can think of any other questions or loopholes for my powers, I think so. I mean, do you see solutions I'm missing, here?"
Beetle spoke up, breaking herself out of whatever thoughts she had been lost in. "I feel like it would be more effective for us to explore detailed strategy after we have all the facts on our enemy."
"Then let's do this," Contract said, as she met Intrepid's eyes. Despite the many, many ways this could go wrong, Intrepid gave her his best smile. At the very least, it wouldn't be boring.