14. Liar

Riley tried to gather her thoughts as she walked back to the truck.

The good thing was that she wasn't bound in a white room while every ounce of information about the future was squeezed out of her. That meant they had another way to procure that information, but the woman in the suit wouldn't have gone out of her way just to say "hi."

Cauldron knew about her, and they wanted her to know it. What would she do while knowing that, that she otherwise wouldn't? Or was it the other way around? A warning not to interfere or tell people?

Then there was the terrifying notion that Bonesaw might be more useful to the woman in the suit somewhere down the line. Did Riley stand strong enough not to crumble with a handful of carefully chosen words, the way Bonesaw had?

Riley chewed on her lip as she walked mechanically, the taste of blood replacing the chocolate ice cream she'd dropped.

Cauldron wanted her for something, but they didn't want to say what. It meant that not saying it was part of the path to getting the right result, or that it didn't make a difference in the end, and they were simply conserving their most precious resource.

Realistically, she couldn't kill Scion on her own, so it probably wasn't it. The first time around, she hadn't been involved in the direct conflict, fixing and reanimating capes instead. If Cauldron had somehow acquired all of her future knowledge, surely they had a plan in the work already. That meant they wanted her for something else, but what?

Not soon, but later. Later than you think.

It was the memory her brain had latched onto in the moment. Not "breadth and depth." Not "say goodbye." Surely, it was relevant.

She arrived at the truck and climbed in, laying her backpack in the passenger seat. She then sat there for a moment, hands over her nose and mouth, regulating her breathing and heartbeat.

If she had all the resources in the world, and had just happened upon knowledge of how to prevent the apocalypse, what would she single one biotinker from the future for?

Not soon, but later. Later than you think.

Not Scion, but later.

This brought to mind her work with the broken triggers. The aftermath of Scion's death. What Valkyrie had been so scared of.

They want me to fix the network before it breaks, she realized.

Where to even start?

She arrived in Burlington shortly before dusk, and despite the picturesque view of Lake Champlain, the rest of the city might as well have a "closed for maintenance" sign at the entrance.

Construction crews busied themselves replacing windows on some buildings, but most were boarded up with wood or had plastic tacked on.

Businesses had hurried to reopen, several installing tables outside to attract customers despite the careful looks people were throwing around.

It had been what, two weeks, since the Nine had attacked Burlington? Of course, she had never seen the aftermath of their passage, and had never really thought about it. Most of the glass had been swept up, but smaller fragments had lodged themselves in the cracks of the sidewalk and in isolated corners. Everyone looked worn out, sporting either scars or bandages. Several had bandages over their eyes.

Riley parked the truck in a grocery store parking lot, noting that for once it didn't look out of place amidst the other cars with broken windows.

"Be good," she warned the spider boxes and the dead raven before sliding her backpack on and exiting the truck.

As she walked, she was put in mind of similar walks, in the immediate aftermath of Shatterbird's concert. Walking around to enjoy the desolation around.

Truth be told, desolation had been a home for most of her life.

Whenever the nascent bureaucracy and never-ending stream of paperwork she'd been swept into after Gold Morning became too much, she found herself looking back on it with fondness.

Now that she was visiting, Riley couldn't tell whether nostalgia had painted over reality or if it was her growing awareness of the cognitive dissonance from memories that had once been good.

It was soothing, in a way.

It existed without demanding an explanation. A fact of life. A truth uncovered. It was certainly more real than the hastily erected façades in the City to give the illusion that things were still the same.

But it didn't feel like home.

What was her home now? The room and lab at the Warden's base, where her every move was carefully monitored? The lonely truck where she slept and tinkered for now?

She slowly made her way down Main Street, until she arrived face to face with the Union Station, her target. The building was made of brown bricks, an archway with a wrought iron grill in the middle, framed by two entrances of formerly glassed doors with a green roof over them announcing "One Main." On the rooftop, she could glimpse one of the statues of flying monkeys.

As she'd seen in her research, a large, squarish object about her height was covered in tarps, the display case fixed to the pavement to make sure no one would remove it easily.

The tarps covered everything, and there were people around, so she would have to wait until night to glimpse her old work. For now, she kept walking, taking in the aftermath of the Nine's visit, something she had never really seen before.

There was a weight, a carefulness to everyone's movements.

A woman walked briskly around her, dragging her child along.

Something flickered at the edge of Riley's memory, something distant and painful and raw that resonated in the sound of glass crunching under feet and in the firm grip of the woman around her daughter.

For a second, Riley was the child, squeezed between an arm and a body that kept looking over its shoulder for reasons she couldn't grasp. They walked over a patch of red glass under a streetlight where the empty frame of a Christmas light ornament hung sadly. The snow and glass shards glinted as she kicked them with her pink winter boots.

Riley shut down the memory before it could unfold any further.

A shard of glass scraped against the pavement under her shoe, and she reflexively lifted her foot, letting it hover until she checked and double-checked for a safe place to step, resisting the urge to kick the glass.

How was it that she could remember the color of her winter boots, but not the face of the person holding her against themselves?

She made her way back to the truck, checking that everything was alright, and dropped her backpack on the backseat. Searching through her stuff, she found the stash of money she had taken from the hideout, and pocketed a handful of bills before heading to the grocery store. A sign at the entrance insisted that they were open.

She walked in and found the inside relatively normal compared to the rest of the town. What had been glass was now plastic or plywood, the freezer section was closed, and there was maybe less of a selection than usual, but there was food available.

She went through each isle, picking up what she needed. Sugar, salt, vinegar, baking soda, petroleum jelly, candy, Frooty Toots, some meat, marshmallows, and several cleaning products.

The bored cashier scanned her items, and she noted that they had working computers and scanners. Surely, they had been supplied by other branches of the franchise, in a bid to reopen as quickly as possible.

She paid and left to tinker with her purchases in the truck.

It was near midnight when Riley returned to the scene of the crime.

After making sure that there was no one around, she removed the tarp, and her breath caught in her throat.

Her art had been her pride, once.

"Your art? It's his art. His ideas. Everything's tainted with Jack. And you know it better than I do. You can think of all the little scenes and conversations. How your favorite projects were the ones your family applauded. The ones Jack praised, above all."

A shiver ran down her spine.

She could almost picture Jack praising her for this. So much that she'd regarded this as a masterpiece, enough to beg Mannequin to make a special case for it.

Her eyes met those of the man, then of the two children beside him. They were flayed, thorn fibers of muscles giving the appearance of fur, with wings made of their own ribcage and lungs behind them. The legs and arms had been inverted, to give them more of a simian appearance, and the faces held the exaggerated rictus that came with the lack of lips. Their intestines gave the illusion of a tail curled behind them. They wore their liver as a hat and their stomach lining as a vest, mimicking the flying monkeys from the Wizard of Oz.

She felt numb, but not from detachment. It was the kind of forceful emptiness you maintained through the sheer force of will after shutting down a thought you didn't want, but could still feel it creeping around the edges and threatening to break it.

There were rules. A long, elaborate process paved with paperwork and informed talks before anyone ended up on her table. Except there was no one to enforce the rules but herself.

"I'm going to heal you. Is that alright? One blink for yes, two for no."

The eyes twitched, reminding her that they could hardly blink without eyelids. They twitched once, which was a good enough answer.

Taking one last look around to make sure no one was there, she adjusted her hood, mask and goggles before reaching for the top of the display case to unlock it, pressing one finger in the right spot. The lock was keyed to her DNA. As soon as it opened, she put on gloves.

Then, she got to work.

The victims couldn't be moved without dying, so she worked there, in the open, periodically looking over her shoulder. The streetlights weren't working, and the moonlight wasn't enough to see properly, so she turned on her night vision.

The basics took an hour. First, surgery to reconnect everything the way it should be, then, removing the life-support apparatus. A balm made on the fly with stem cells from each victim then helped reconnect the muscle fibers and regrow skin and hair. The rest of the work was mostly cosmetic. By the end of hour two, the three looked like people again, and didn't even look like they just had surgery.

She went to get the truck and laid them down in the back, using the tarp to avoid any cross-contamination, then drove to the nearest hospital. There, she placed them next to the door to the ER, and gave them an antidote to the sedative before driving off.

They would wake up within minutes.

She returned to the case, and began methodically taking it apart, putting the pieces she needed in the truck.

She was nearly done when someone cleared their throat behind her.

"Hi there."

The tools dropped as she jumped. She turned and stepped away from the open pod in the same motion, ready to bolt or attack the second she had to.

A woman was nonchalantly sitting on the bench behind her, clad in a pale grey bodysuit with silvery panels and a dark emblem on the chest. She was black, a scarf covering the lower half of her face and braids spilling from beneath her grey hood.

A hero.

Shit.

Unknown powers, with possible backup. Trouble.

Old reflexes flared up, assessing the woman. The relaxed posture was calculated, but not completely an act. This meant a power that could protect, avoid or anticipate attacks.

Riley wasn't ready to fight.

The problem wasn't a lack of combat preparedness so much as the specific nature of those preparations. She'd fixed her injuries, but hadn't removed most of Bonesaw's inventory because it would have taken too long and she didn't have the right tools or the time to spare. As such, she was packing almost exclusively things that would either see her recognized or earn her a brand new kill order if used. She could use something and then fix it before it did too much damage, but with unknown powers at play, she couldn't count on it. Otherwise, she would have to mix something on the spot.

The worst part was that she had made a couple of relatively innocuous vials in case she was pulled over by a police officer, but she had forgotten it in the truck.

"Mind walking me through what you're doing?"

Riley didn't say anything and didn't move an inch.

"You're a new face."

Clenched muscles betrayed none of her relief.

Riley said nothing at first, and a prickling sensation built up on the back of her head until she had to bite the inside of her cheeks to keep the truth from escaping her. She latched on a different truth instead.

"First time out in costume," she said, voice low.

The cape gave a once-over to the shitty red, green and blue raincoat Riley had found at the cabin, with the hood tight around her face, her bright pink rain boots, the surgery mask that covered the lower part of her face, and the protective goggles that covered her eyes.

"I can see that."

The clothes served several specific purposes, and style was not one of them. They obscured her face and hair, the full coverage kept her from blowing her cover by shedding identifiable DNA all over the place (she hadn't had the time yet to alter the outer layer of her skin, her hair and bodily fluids). They were simple enough that she could quick-change and hide them in a pinch, and the individual pieces were nondescript enough to pass as regular clothing.

"You got a name?"

Again, the prickling sensation urging her to answer. Darn it. She hated those kinds of powers. She could counter it with her safeguards, but doing so might be noticeable, and would only raise more questions. Instead, she could choose her truths carefully.

"I haven't picked one." Jack had.

"New trigger?"

"I woke up a few days ago and everything had changed."

The woman sighed. "I guess that's to be expected with the last few weeks. I'm Liminal. Saw you drop those people at the hospital, so I followed you back here, not that you would have known."

Shit. She mentally retraced every step she had taken since the hospital, to see what it would look like from the outside and if she could plausibly sell her power as something different enough to avoid comparisons, but found alternative explanations slipping out of her grasp. Goddamn truth aura.

"Am I in trouble?"

"That depends. Doctors are taking the victims in charge as we speak, so they can assess exactly what you did. There's an argument to be made about not going through the proper channels first, and those people could technically sue you over it, but we can ease things over if you come in for an interview and some power testing. How did you even open the case? None of us could manage it."

"Chemical reaction." It was. With her DNA.

Liminal nodded.

"And what are you doing now?"

"I can use pieces of this thing to make other things. To help other people."

"Tinker," Liminal guessed.

"I suppose. You're pretty chill about this," Riley said, tentatively fiddling with her sticky gloves.

Liminal shrugged. "I would have stopped you if I thought you were doing harm. My boss would say that I should have intervened earlier anyways, but we're short-staffed and he can't complain too much unless he wants the shit patrols all to himself. I was there before they put the tarp up, and I know for a fact that those people were neither conscious nor in one piece a short while ago, so this was a definite improvement. Doesn't mean it's okay for you to go around doing this on your own."

"They were. Conscious, I mean."

"Jesus fuck that's horrible."

Riley hesitated.

"Yes." The word tasted like ash, and the truth stung.

"What did you do to them, exactly?"

A trick question, with the 'exactly' at the end. Still, she searched for a true answer.

"I used some of the things I'd made to fix them as well as I could."

"You have healing powers?"

Riley nodded.

"You should consider joining the Wards. There's no local team, but we can work something out."

"I don't think I fit the profile."

"How old are you?"

The body was twelve, but with the clothes covering everything and the small extension she'd added to her legs, she could pass for a late bloomer. She hadn't worn the flesh mask, since her face was mostly covered, so there would be no confusion about what was visible not fitting with her answer. The cape's power demanded the truth anyways.

"Sixteen."

"You're a cape, and you're a minor. That's all it really takes to join the Wards. Everything else, we can work with. Oh, and we need parental permission too, but we can send someone to talk to them if that's an issue."

"My family's dead," she blurted out, soothing the prickling sensation.

"I'm sorry."

"The Nine killed them," she added, unprompted.

Liminal's eyes widened, and the prickling was cranked down to a minimum. She inhaled as if to say something, then stopped and let the breath out, studying Riley for a long moment.

"There's a room at HQ with you're yet to be chosen name on it if you want, no strings attached," she finally said.

There certainly was. Specifically, a hermetically sealed room. Still, the sentiment was nice.

Fascinating, that she could speak only in truths and paint a picture that was so far removed from it.

"I'm still trying to figure things out."

"It doesn't have to be a permanent thing. You can test the water and see how you like it. In the meantime, it gives you a place to stay without having to worry about food or utilities. We can provide assistance in and out of costume, and act as a liaison with Social Services. You can see from up close what it's like to be a hero, with training and support."

"And paperwork."

"We're not supposed to mention the paperwork until after you've signed your soul away for good."

"My soul?"

"I'm kidding. The blood oath was abolished two years ago for sanitary reasons."

Riley smiled despite herself.

"How about this. Tomorrow morning, you swing by HQ, and we go visit your patients together to see how they're doing. I'm sure the doctors treating them have a lot of questions for you. That way you can help them give them the best care possible. What do you think?"

Phrased like that, it was hard to say no.

"I think it sounds good."

Liminal gave her her card, and Riley pocketed it.

"I know communications are hard lately, but if you have a working cellphone, my number on there."

"I do. Thanks."

"So I'll see you tomorrow?"

Seeing her hesitation, Liminal spoke again.

"I know you want to help people, and that's great, but there's a proper way to do it. Come see me tomorrow, and we can figure out how you can help. No strings attached."

"I'll see you around," Riley answered noncommittally before retreating to the truck in a hurry.