"What the fuck happened?!" A metal clad fist slammed into the large desk hard enough to leave a dent in the highly polished and expensive wood, but the man whose fist it was didn't even notice. He was too busy staring daggers across the desk. "Where the fucking hell is Victor? How did this operation go to shit so quickly?" Breathing hard, Kaiser leaned on both fists and glared viciously at the man on the other side of the desk.

"We don't know," the other individual finally replied, just a little nervously despite himself. Kreig swallowed dryly as Kaiser's attention intensified. "The last we heard from him, he was heading to the Jeffries building to provide overwatch the same as usual. Then he…"

"He what?" Kaiser growled when the other man hesitated.

"He disappeared. Didn't check in when we expected, and when I called him, there was no answer. His phone just gives an unreachable message, like it was turned off or something. By the time we realized he wasn't where he should be, we'd already started, and that's why things went to shit. The PRT responded faster than we expected for some reason, and since their recent security sweep we've lost almost all of our moles, so we didn't realize that they somehow figured out what we were planning until it was almost too late." Krieg shrugged, looking extremely annoyed. "We got blindsided, basically. Victor should have given us early warning they were coming but without that…" He spread his hands. "And having two separate BBPD SWAT teams turn up just made it worse. They weren't fucking around with containment foam, they went straight for shotguns. The Mayor's investigation apparently compromised our BBPD sources too, and the cops are in a real mood at the moment."

"Fucking Christ!" Kaiser shouted, before sitting down again and thumping the desk with a fist, not as hard this time although still forcefully enough to make the entire room resound from the noise. "And now the PRT has Othala and Rune."

"Othala was busy healing Stormtiger after that fucking cop shot him in the gut and didn't notice that bitch Militia sneaking up on her. Dropped her with a taser and nearly got Stormtiger too. He was lucky to escape, especially since she didn't finish the job. He'll be laid up for at least two weeks without her power."

"And Rune?"

"Didn't duck fast enough. Dauntless nearly took her fool head off with that lance of his, because she was paying too much attention to the fighting in front of her and not enough to her surroundings." Krieg sighed heavily as he shook his head. "What do you expect from a teenager?"

"A minimum level of competence would be ideal," Kaiser grated, drumming his fingers on the desk. "So we're down four capes at the moment. Two captured, one injured, and fuck knows what happened to the last one. Do I have that right?"

"Pretty much, yeah. And while Rune isn't a serious loss, although her flight abilities are useful, Victor and Othala are a disaster." Krieg shook his head. "Either one would be bad, both at once is a serious fucking problem. We don't have any healing power available now, leaving aside her other abilities, and Victor was a key factor in almost everything we do."

"We need to retrieve the two women," Kaiser said after thinking things over. "At least we know where they are."

"That might be difficult," Krieg very reluctantly said. His superior glared at him, so he expanded on the topic. "Like I said, we're down most of our inside sources at the PRT. We've only got two low level people left and it'll take time to recruit more. If we try anything with them, we stand a good chance of having one or both taken out of play, since the PRT are paying a lot more attention than usual for some reason to anything unusual. And without Victor's skills, infiltrating the building would be… extremely hard."

"During transport, then," Kaiser said impatiently.

"My information is that they're planning on evacuating both of our people via air, using one of Dragon's transports." Krieg swallowed hard as the other man's eyes bored into his. "Piggot has changed the protocols, and she's apparently decided that holding high value captives locally for any length of time isn't a good idea. As far as I can find out, they're going to ship them to New York for trial. We don't have anything available that can intercept a Dragon transport, at least without declaring war on the PRT, and if we do that, the response is likely to be… excessive. Especially since with New York involved that means Legend might end up providing an escort…"

Kaiser groaned, putting his head in his hands in a rare display of irritation. After a few seconds of grumbling inaudibly, he lifted his head and glared at Kaiser. "Fuck it. Fine. We probably can't do anything about that problem right now. We'll work on how to get them back once the current situation plays out. What about Victor? Where the goddamn hell did he vanish to? And why? Did someone get him, or what?"

"I honestly have no idea at all," Krieg admitted uneasily. "I can't see him defecting or anything like that. He believes in the cause, he's not going to cut a deal with the pigs or anyone else. But we couldn't find a single clue about where he did go. I don't think the PRT got him, because they'd have put out a press release crowing about it within hours. If the ABB had taken him out, they'd have announced it to the world too. You know what those animals are like. And aside from anything else, since Oni Lee offed himself, Lung has been keeping quiet. Probably embarrassed about his idiotic sidekick or something."

He allowed himself a small smirk for a moment, and Kaiser nearly chuckled. "I'm surprised something like that didn't happen years ago, to be honest."

"The BBPD? Could they have done it?" Kaiser asked after a moment.

"They might have taken him by surprise and killed him, sure, although that's not likely, but I doubt they'd be able to actually hold him otherwise," Krieg shrugged. "And again if they'd done that we'd have heard about it by now."

"Coil?"

"No one's heard anything from that asshole for weeks. Probably not, but I couldn't prove it one way or the other."

Tapping the desk, Kaiser thought. "That doesn't seem to leave a lot of options," he mused out loud, more puzzled than angry at this point. Although he was still more than a little annoyed, he was extremely confused. As Krieg had said, it was highly unlikely that Victor would have vanished of his own accord, although he certainly had the skills to pull the trick off. Assuming that he hadn't that meant someone else had vanished him, the question being who?

"No, I agree," Kreig replied with a puzzled nod. "Might be someone from outside the Bay, but… I haven't heard about anyone trying to move in. Could even be some other government agency, I guess, like the FBI or something but then it's not really their style either."

"The CIA have certainly made people disappear in the past," Kaiser commented.

"Sure, but they're not allowed to work in the US," Kreig responded.

"Like that would stop them."

"True." The other man looked somewhat worried. "Still, I don't know why the CIA would be after Victor. Or any of us. They mostly stick to overthrowing banana republics and stay out of Parahuman stuff, as far as I know."

"Who's left then?"

"I don't have a fucking clue, Kaiser."

They looked at each other in silence for a while. Kaiser's right forefinger had scraped quite a gouge in the desk by this point due to his irritation. "He's got to be somewhere," the E88 leader finally said.

"I agree. I just don't know where. Or who, why or how, for that matter." Krieg shook his head slowly. "I'm almost certain it wasn't his idea but past that I just don't know."

"Jesus. What the hell is going on in this fucking city recently?" Kaiser growled. "Everything seems to be changing without any obvious reason for it. Starting with that fucking… ship…" Both of them looked at each other for a long moment, then simultaneously turned their heads to peer out the window of his office towards the mouth of the bay, where dimly through the blowing snow and bad light of a winter morning they could just make out the mouth of the bay. It looked quite different without the mass of the Northern Girl blocking it as they'd been used to for so long.

"You think it's connected?" Krieg queried, his voice uncertain.

"I can't figure out how, but that fucking thing also vanished into thin air without any obvious cause," Kaiser replied thoughtfully. "Did we ever find out what the PRT discovered about it?"

"As far as I know, they didn't find out anything," Kreig told him. "They spent quite a lot of time looking though. Inconclusive results, apparently. In other words they don't have the faintest idea. And since we've lost most of our insight into them since then, we can't easily find out if anything else has been found more recently. I do know Armsmaster put quite a lot of effort into looking into the thing and couldn't find any useful information at all."

"I hate that bastard but I'll admit he's good at what he does." Kaiser tapped his fingers on the desk again. "So if he couldn't find anything, that implies that either there wasn't anything to find, or it was something so unusual he couldn't recognize it…" Both of them exchanged looks. Krieg shook his head a little.

"You think whatever took the ship came back for Victor? Why him? How?"

"I don't know, but it seems suspicious that we have two separate total disappearances without their being a connection of some sort, in the same city within months of each other." Kaiser was thinking hard as he stared back out the window. "It might be completely unrelated, sure, but it might not be too." Turning back to his underling, he leaned back in the chair. "The problem is finding out who's behind it. If we can work that out, we can probably figure out how they did it. And why."

"We have nothing to work with though. I sent people to backtrack Victor's movements, and they were able to trace him right to the Jeffries building and up past the third floor. Problem is that at that point his footprints vanished because there wasn't any snow left on his boots, so he could have gone anywhere in the building beyond that. Whoever got him could have done it almost anywhere, although it almost certainly happened there somewhere. They searched the entire building and didn't find a thing out of place. He was just… gone."

The other man looked mildly amused for a second. "Some of them said it was probably aliens. Idiots. A teleporter, maybe, or just old fashioned snatch and grab. It doesn't need Parahuman powers to grab someone, although it makes it easier. That said it was so clean it's weird. No sign of a struggle, no evidence at all, he just seems to have popped out of existence."

"Do we know of any teleporter abilities that work like that?" Kaiser queried.

"About the only one I can immediately think of is that asshole in the Travelers. Trickster or something like that. From what I remember he's supposed to be able to teleport someone line of sight, but he does it by swapping them with something else of about the same mass. Our people didn't find anything that suggested a power like that was used."

"Travelers. I've heard of them. Where are they now?"

"I'm not certain. I think somewhere in Montana. I'll check."

"Do that, just in case, but it sounds unlikely." Kaiser sighed heavily. "Fuck it. We do not need this sort of crap right now. You look into anything else that might account for what happened. Put out the word we're looking for anything unusual. New Parahumans, unexplained disappearances, anything at all that might be connected. I'll see if we can borrow a Thinker to investigate. We can't afford to lose Victor, he's too important and knows too much."

Krieg nodded, standing up. "And if it turns out to be aliens?" he asked with a small smile.

Kaiser sighed again. "I'll probably fucking retire. But it's not aliens. It's someone attacking us. When I find out who, I'll take a long time explaining why no one fucks with the Empire."

Krieg chuckled as he headed for the door, leaving his boss standing in front of the tinted window staring out at the bay with a reflective look on his face and worry in his heart alongside the anger.

Signing the last of the after action reports with a deep sense of satisfaction, Emily dropped it into her out tray and leaned back, massaging her right hand with the left one. "A good result," she said, looking over her desk at Renick and Armsmaster, who were sitting and standing respectively. "Well done."

"Thank you, Director," the latter replied. "We got lucky in that we received a report of E88 movement in time to intercept them before they were able to anticipate our arrival, but I am very pleased with how well our forces performed. It would have been ideal if we'd captured more than Othala and Rune, of course. I'd have liked to take Hookwolf off the board, for example."

"Don't minimize how much of an impact losing those two will have on the Empire's strength," Renick commented. "Othala was disproportionately valuable even though she's a non-combatant. Her healing abilities were one of the main reasons we've had so much trouble putting them down hard in the past. Without her, and her powers enhancing the others, or healing their wounds, Kaiser is going to be a lot more careful about how he operates. And Rune was their main Mover even if you ignore her offensive ability which was fairly high."

"True," Armsmaster nodded after thinking the other man's words over. "You're right, of course. Even so, Hookwolf or Stormtiger, or even Cricket, are responsible for a large amount of the damage the E88 can cause, so taking any of them out of action would have been even more useful."

"From these reports I suspect Stormtiger at least isn't going to be an issue for quite a while," Emily remarked, indicating her out box. "Militia's observations suggest Othala didn't manage to finish healing him, and he took a load of buckshot to the gut. That's going to slow him down a hell of a lot until he heals the slow way even if she saved his life." She shook her head a little. "I'm almost sorry that officer didn't manage to finish the fucker off. It would have saved a lot of trouble in the future. But I'll take what I can get.

"The BBPD did account well for themselves yesterday, I'll admit," Armsmaster responded. "Their rules of engagement were somewhat more lethal than ideal even so."

"The cops, the ones who aren't paid by the E88, often don't like the Empire," she pointed out. "Not considering how many of them have been killed over the years by those Nazi fuckers."

"A valid point," he replied with a small smile. "I dislike Nazis myself."

As she was about to say something else, there was a knock on her door, causing her to look that way. "Enter," she called. The door opened to reveal Assault, out of costume and wearing street clothes, with an odd expression on his face.

She raised an eyebrow. He came inside and closed the door, then walked over to her desk. "I've just found out something… strange," he said to her unvoiced question.

"Which is?" she prompted when he stopped.

"I was talking to a couple of people I know, at a bar I sometimes go to," he began. "People connected to the Empire. They have no idea who I am, of course, but sometimes they let something useful drop when I'm buying the beers."

"And?" She was well aware of the sort of person he was talking about and had a decent idea of what this bar was like, having been in a lot of them in her past.

"And apparently the Empire has lost Victor."

She stared at him, as did Armsmaster and Renick. "Lost Victor? In what sense, lost him."

Assault shrugged with a bemused expression. "Pretty much exactly as it sounds. They can't find him. He disappeared. Vanished. Ceased to be available." The sandy-haired man shook his head. "They've been looking for him since the fight, apparently. He was supposed to be providing sniper cover, but they lost contact with him just before we turned up, and when someone went to find him, they can't find a trace of the bastard. He's nowhere to be found without any explanation of why, from what they said. Kaiser is furious, and everyone's running around asking stupid questions all over the city, but so far nothing at all has turned up."

"Fuck me," Renick commented in disbelief. "Did he run or something?"

"It's a possibility but my guys didn't think it was likely. Victor's a true believer, and had no reason to jump ship," Assault replied, glancing at him. "Everyone's working on the basis that it was enemy action rather than voluntary absconding. I think they're probably right from what I know about the bastard. Someone got him, somehow, but how and who is a complete mystery. No evidence, no word, no outside interference that anyone can find out about… He just went pop. Which is fucking strange." The man gestured with one hand. "Went into a building downtown and never came out. They searched it, not a single clue to show what happened. For all anyone knows he was abducted by aliens or something."

Emily snorted, almost amused. "We should be so lucky," she muttered, thinking. This was going to change the gang dynamics a lot more than the two young women they'd captured, as Victor was Kaiser's right hand man and one of the more dangerous capes the E88 possessed. Without him available the gang was definitely well under par, and the loss of Rune and Othala as well would make a massive difference to the whole situation. With the ABB also down a cape due to his own stupidity, and Coil out of play, that made…

She paused, as a thought struck her. Looking at Armsmaster, she said, "Like Coil, you think?"

He looked back, appearing thoughtful. "An intriguing suggestion, Director. It's possible, I agree, although it doesn't get us any closer to knowing the truth. But it does suggest we may have more help under the table than we realize. It occurs to me that without the Coil situation we wouldn't have been able to find all the moles we've cleared out recently, and without that happening, the E88 would likely have been able to get enough warning of our reaction to fend us off much more effectively. As has happened in the past, of course. And without Victor, they were significantly reduced in battlefield effectiveness and will remain so. Which led to us capturing two other capes which will reduce that capability even further as Mr Renick commented. Our situation has been remarkably improved with surprisingly small changes to the overall field. I can't help but consider the possibility that this may well be the end result of a very careful plan by an unknown party."

They all looked at each other, considering his words. Emily certainly couldn't discount them, as was having similar thoughts.

"A Thinker, perhaps?" she asked slowly.

He shrugged minutely. "That is certainly one possibility. It could also simply be someone, or some group, with enough experience in intelligence operations to be able to work out the natural weak points in both organizations and the resources to acquire both Coil and Victor at the right time to produce the desired result. It would take a fair amount of effort, but a government agency of the right type could undoubtedly pull it off even without Parahuman aid if they put enough effort into the process. But we still don't know which agency or why they would be operating in Brocton Bay."

"So what you're saying is that it could be anything from a Simurgh plot to the NSA sneaking around," Assault commented after a moment.

"Essentially, yes. Although I think both of those are at the extreme ends of probability," the other man replied. "The first more than the second."

"That was almost a human response. Your programming is getting better," Assault added, grinning, which made Armsmaster stare at him and sigh faintly. Renick suppressed a small smile for a moment. Emily thought, ignoring the byplay with was all too familiar, then shrugged. In a sense it didn't really matter what the truth behind all this weirdness was right now, what mattered was that they had an opportunity to make significant inroads into the gang problem while both the E88 and the ABB were working well under par. She said as much.

"Agreed," Armsmaster nodded. "We should take advantage of the current situation while we can. The E88 at least will attempt to recruit replacement capes, and also recover Othala and Rune. Lung may well be looking for new Parahuman support as well even now."

"Othala and Rune will be leaving the Rig inside two hours, so they're very unlikely to get them back," Renick pointed out, glancing at his phone. "I doubt even the Empire is going to try taking down a Dragon transport. She'd wipe them out if they did, leaving aside how it would piss off Legend, and I doubt even Kaiser fancies his chances against him."

"That does still leave their remaining capes, and a lot more foot soldiers than I like to think about," Emily sighed. "But it's still a big improvement on the usual state of affairs. All right. We'll work out the best way to capitalize on the opportunity we seem to have been handed as fast as we can, before either of them manages to build up their strength again. We also need to keep an eye on the Merchants in case Skidmark gets the bright idea to jump in and start something because the other gangs are having problems. All we need is that fuckwit kicking off a gang war before we can get everything in place."

"Perhaps we should deal with him first," Renick suggested. "We've always concentrated on the E88 and the ABB as the bigger threats, but if they're going to be functionally less effective for a while, we could use that time to clean out the Merchants before they start having ideas above their competence."

"We'll get some people on planning out how to do that if we get the chance," Emily replied, nodding, as he was right. "We don't have the resources to take on all three of them, but if we can spread our efforts correctly… We might have a chance to at least seriously weaken all of them at once. Which will make our jobs a hell of a lot easier if we can pull it off."

"And maybe whoever is abducting capes will get Skids for us, save us the trouble," Assault put in brightly. "Assuming the aliens don't find the smell too much, of course…" He grinned as the other three looked at him with various expressions of annoyance, then added, "I'd better get back to work."

"Yes. You should," Emily growled. He waved and left the room, making her sigh before she began planning with the other two.

The whole time she was wondering who was doing whatever it was they were actually doing, and how. And hoping that Victor enjoyed his experience as little as she was very much wishing Coil did.

She wasn't keen on Nazis either.

Danny put the notebook down and stared at it, then lifted his eyes to his daughter, who was watching him with interest over her breakfast. "You worked all that out yesterday?" he asked in disbelief. "In a few hours you found out more about powers than everyone else has managed in thirty years?"

"Yep," Taylor replied, smiling a little. "It helps if you can ask someone who actually knows." She glanced at Lisa, who looked back with amusement, while eating her own breakfast. "And have the administration on your side, of course."

"Jesus," he finally muttered, picking up his coffee and taking a sip, then swallowing. "This is getting a little ridiculous. And worrying."

"Yeah, it's kind of weird, isn't it?" she commented, still smiling. "But it's fun too, learning all sorts of strange things. We'll need your help coming up with more questions, and Michelle and the guys too, I think."

"U.N.I.O.N. has a good intelligence division, I'm sure they're up to the job of handling an alien invasion," Lisa put in with a grin. Danny sighed heavily and drank more coffee. Papa's influence was clearly far too strong for comfort.

"Oh, yeah, we also caught Victor on the way home," Taylor added casually, timing it just right. The spray of coffee that resulted was ducked neatly amid a certain amount of laughter.

He was starting to think his life was a little much at times...