As he walked into the living room, where his daughter was lying on the sofa reading a book, she looked around and up at him. "Hi, Dad," she said, adding "Hi, Michelle," as the lawyer came in behind him.
"Hello, Taylor," Michelle replied, taking her coat off in the process.
"Did you have a good day?" Danny asked, doing likewise, then tossing it over the back of a chair.
"Yeah, not too bad," she replied, closing the book which he could see was a physics one, college level by the look of it, and sitting up. "Did some schoolwork, some experiments, went shopping, to the library too… Oh, yeah, I checked out that used electronics place just off the end of the Boardwalk and found a couple of computers that look decent for about a quarter of the price of new ones."
"Good work. We can go and have a look on Saturday, if they're worth it I'll buy them," he replied, sitting down in the chair he'd put his coat on. Michelle sat in another one and listened.
"I got some pasta, I thought about doing a tuna and pasta casserole if you'd like that," she went on.
"I would indeed like that," he grinned. "Haven't had that one for quite a while. Michelle? Would you like to stay for dinner?" He looked at the blonde, who smiled back.
"Certainly, Danny, that sounds very nice. Thank you."
"I'll make some coffee, I could do with it right now. It's been a long day on my end, although it went well all things considered." Standing up, he headed for the kitchen, got as far as the door, and stopped. After a moment he turned and gazed at Taylor, who looked back with an expression that he recognized from various times when she was younger, although she was trying to hide it. Not quite successfully, not to him. He knew her far too well.
"What else did you do?" he asked with a sigh. Michelle glanced at him, frowned slightly, then looked at Taylor with interest. His daughter's guilty look became a bit more obvious.
"Umm…" she prevaricated, clearly trying how best to put it. Sitting back down, he leaned forward.
"Just tell me," he advised.
"Well…" She chewed her lip. "I kinda… spotted a mugging or a kidnapping or something while I was walking back to the bus stop…"
He felt a distinct sinking sensation in his gut. "Oh, lord. What happened? Were you in danger?"
"Oh, no, none of them knew I was even there," she assured him quickly. "No one even got shot."
"Shot?" he echoed with the sinking sensation getting stronger. Michelle was listening carefully and looking highly intrigued. Taylor swallowed.
"Yeah. There were… four guys with guns trying to force this girl to do something, and another, um, six of them in the van. And an awful lot of guns and other equipment."
"What the hell did you get mixed up in?" he queried, very worried. She shrugged.
"I'm still not sure. No Nazi stuff I could see, no swastikas or anything, they didn't look Asian, and they were way too clean to be Merchants." Frowning in recollection, she went on after a moment as he listened with confusion, "Thinking about it they kind of looked like cops, or military, maybe. But none of them had any badges or anything like that, so I don't think they were that either. It's weird."
He and Michelle exchanged glances. She raised an eyebrow. Returning his attention to Taylor, he rather helplessly asked, "So what actually happened?"
"One of them was pointing a hand gun right at the girl, he had it almost on her head, and it looked like he might shoot her any second," she explained with an annoyed look. "I started to call the cops but it would have taken too long for them to turn up and all the Enforcers had vanished too. Which is weird, something was definitely up with that. Anyway, all I could think to do was grab them all and shove them into hammerspace. So I did."
He stared at her in silence for long enough that she blinked a few times, seeming uncertain, then repeated blankly, "You put four men and a girl into your pocket."
"Pretty much, yeah," she agreed, not seeming to notice how bizarre the concept was. Even with the skills she'd taught herself, it seemed a bit much. "And the van full of guys too, because they looked like they were going to look for the first set when they lost contact. I didn't want them shooting the place up with machine guns or something."
"You put ten men, a girl, a van, and a whole pile of weapons into your pocket," he said after a moment, taking his glasses off with one hand and rubbing his eyes with the other while wondering what he'd ever done to deserve this sort of thing happening around him.
"Basically. And now I don't know what to do with them," she grumbled. "I was going to tell you later after you were all mellow and full of pasta but you wormed it out of me."
"Jesus fucking Christ, this is insane," he sighed, shaking his head, then putting his glasses back on and fixing her with a stern look. "Taylor, we are trying to avoid the PRT, who I might add we are in the process of suing, and you're wandering around stealing gang members in bulk. Can I just point out, father to daughter, that these two things are a little contradictory?"
Muffled snorts of laughter made them both look to see Michelle with a hand over her mouth, her eyes glittering with hilarity. "What?" both Heberts said as one.
"You and Taylor are certainly adding a good deal of entertainment to life," she replied when she collected herself. "But we do seem to have a slight problem."
"Yeah. What do I do with a small army and enough weapons to take over City Hall?" Taylor asked with a scowl. "And how do I explain what happened to that poor girl?"
"I think we need to know the whole story, in detail, before we can make a decision as to the best way to proceed," the lawyer replied calmly. "Your description of the men is somewhat confusing, but I agree they don't seem to match any of the normal gangs. It's also unlikely they were PRT, police, or any other legitimate law enforcement organization based on their actions. So who are they? And why were they involved with this girl?"
"No idea," Taylor said, shaking her head. "OK, I was walking to the bus stop, and I heard a sound that made me think there was a fight or something down an alley…"
She spent half an hour recounting the entire story, answering questions both of them came up with. After a few minutes they all relocated to the kitchen where Danny made coffee as he really did need something to perk himself up, especially in the face of the current insanity. When she finished, he looked at Michelle who had been taking notes the entire time. "It sounds very sketchy to me, I have to admit," he said. "Taylor probably saved that kid's life. Although I'm worried that her parents are going to be terrified about her being missing."
"That does seem likely," the lawyer agreed. She re-read the last few paragraphs, underlining a few things. "Military pattern clothing and equipment from the description. Not to mention a lot more weaponry than you'd normally see in a simple mugging, leaving aside the minor fact it doesn't take ten large men and a van load of weapons to mug one person. Especially machine guns."
Taylor put in, "I'm not an expert on guns but they sure looked like military ones, like the ones I've seen in movies. And I remember Kurt and the other guys at the docks once showed me some of the stuff the DWA has found lying around the place after the E88 and the ABB got into it. These guns were much newer than most of that stuff from what I could see. And they had some sort of doohickey mounted under the gun itself, a sort of tube device…"
"A grenade launcher?" Danny said in horror. That sort of thing sounded stupidly dangerous in a city, although they certainly had plenty of examples of worse being used.
She shook her head. "No, it was sort of high tech, not like anything I've seen in a movie. There was a battery connected to it as well. Maybe a flashlight or something?"
"Sounds overkill for a flashlight but I suppose it's possible," he allowed. "But I agree, the whole setup sounds bizarre." Thinking hard, he suddenly recalled something he should have remembered immediately. "Ah… I wonder. Coil is supposed to use mercenaries from what I've heard, although we've never had any of them around the docks. Black clothing, military gear, squads of men…" He looked at Michelle who nodded slowly.
"Plausible, definitely. It would fit what little I know about his organization. No one really knows very much, and I don't think the PRT is even sure he's a Parahuman and not just some normal but very well off gang leader. Mafia or something, possibly."
"Might be, yeah. Still, it seems like overkill for one girl."
"Unless she's a cape."
Both he and Michelle turned to Taylor, who appeared thoughtful. She met their eyes. "It kind of makes sense, right? I've heard about how new Parahumans are at risk of being grabbed by a gang or something. Or the PRT. That's what happened to Sophia after all. So maybe this girl is a Parahuman that just triggered recently and Coil or someone found out about her, then tried to force her to work for him."
No one said anything for a few seconds. Then Michelle nodded. "That is an interesting idea, Taylor. And I agree, it makes at least as much sense as any other scenario I can come up with."
"If she is a cape she probably isn't a Brute or something, or she'd have managed to escape by herself," Danny suggested. "She'd likely have some ability that wasn't instantly useful. A Tinker, perhaps?"
"Or a Thinker, or some other ability that either wasn't directly suited to combat, or needed a long setup time," Michelle agreed. "Yes, it does fit. On the other hand it might just be someone who knew something the person behind all this wanted to know. We don't have enough information yet. But it's something to bear in mind as if she is a Parahuman she could well be dangerous."
"Yeah, but on the other hand I couldn't just watch someone get shot," Taylor sighed. "I don't know her, and maybe she's an awful person, but I don't know that and I still think I did the right thing."
"So do I although I won't deny it's added a level of complexity to life I wasn't expecting," Michelle smiled. "We'll figure it out, Taylor, don't worry. The big question is more along the lines of what do we do with the mercenaries, assuming that's who they really are. Your storage space doesn't allow time to pass so presumably there's no specific urgency or risk to keeping them in it for now."
"As far as I can tell, no, they could be there for years and be completely fine," the girl replied. "But I don't really want to carry ten mercenaries and a van around for the rest of my life. Seems a bit silly."
"Is it something that takes any effort?" Danny asked curiously.
"Nope, once they're in there, I don't have to do anything at all," she said with a shrug. "It wasn't all that hard putting them there either, which was interesting."
"I wonder how large an object you can do that to?" he mused. "We'll probably have to experiment at some point. Anyway, right now, we need to figure out what we do about the girl. The mercs can keep, the less people running around the damn place with guns the better as far as I'm concerned. And she probably knows who they actually are and can tell us. We also need to let her parents know she's all right."
"She might be a runaway, living on the streets, for all we know. But I can pull her out any time," Taylor offered. "I was thinking we probably don't want to do it here, and probably want to figure out how to do it without letting her know who we are until we know who she is."
"That is definitely true, yes," Michelle nodded. "If nothing else we would want to avoid giving any information away that would end up with the PRT, past the most basic level. It would only complicate matters on a number of fronts."
Danny sighed. "This is going to get messy, I can feel it in my bones," he muttered. "Let's have something to eat, then I can make some calls and set something up. I've got a few ideas."
Taylor nodded, smiled, and got up to start preparing her casserole, while he poured some more coffee and wondered what the next bizarre thing to happen would be.
Because the one thing he was certain of was that there would be one.
Later that night, in her room after Michelle had left having discussed the case with them, and plans had been made, Taylor sat and stared at her desk with a thoughtful expression. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed and was mulling over various ideas sparked by what she'd done earlier, and comments both Michelle and her dad had made while they tried to figure out how to sort out the problem her act of well-meant intervention had created.
She was still a bit annoyed at herself for having managed to engineer her way into the situation but like she'd said, she honestly didn't see what else she could really have done at the time. Leaving someone to get killed wasn't really something she was comfortable with, certainly not without knowing who the girl was and why those armed men were after her. Sure, if it had been Jack Slash or someone she'd have stood and watched with a smile on her face, but that was just sensible. Anyone would do the same in the case of a monster like that bastard.
But someone who was probably no more than about seventeen, if that, and seemed terrified? No, she needed a whole lot more justification than 'I didn't want to get involved' before she'd sit back and let it happen. Even if it then caused problems for her, which it definitely did.
Anyway, that aside, one thing that had come up in conversation was whether she could selectively pull things out of storage, in the sense of, she had people in her pocket, did she have to bring them out as-is or could she riffle through their pockets while leaving them in storage? In other words, could she extract parts of a whole object without extracting the original object as a single unit.
She'd noticed that taking an entire multi-ton vehicle full of people and equipment had taken less mental effort than grabbing five people at the same time but individually. Having considered why that might be the case, she'd found herself thinking it might be that the trick wasn't the amount of mass involved, or the complexity of that mass, but the number of separate actions carried out at the same time. Which did make a certain amount of sense. It was like juggling; carrying a handful of balls in a bag was easier than carrying five balls in one hand by tossing them up and catching them while walking. Which wasn't a bad analogy for what her modification to Anton's skill actually did, now she thought about it…
So... That being the case, now that she had all that stuff stored away, did she have to reverse the process exactly, or could she do it in separate steps? She knew she could pull the girl out without her assailants because although she'd grabbed them all on one shot, it was as five separate simultaneous operations. The van on the other hand had been one, and each of the people for that matter could be broken down into multiple objects taken as a whole if you considered things like clothes, phones, guns, and so on. Being able to remove all their weapons without letting the mercenaries out seemed like it could be a much safer way to deal with them, and had a lot of useful applications aside from that, but she didn't want to just try it and find out too late that it went horribly wrong. Body parts all over the place wouldn't exactly impress anyone, for a start.
She shuddered a little at her own imagination. Sometimes it was just a touch too vivid. And while she'd seen some pretty nasty shit over her life, both because of where she lived and where she went to school, she didn't want to add to that without a very good reason.
Taylor thought for a bit longer, then nodded to herself. Hopping to her feet she rummaged around in her closet for a moment, coming back with a cardboard shoe box a pair of long-ruined by Sophia sneakers had once come in. She took the lid off, shook out a spider which scuttled under her bed, watched it go with a bemused look, then went over to her desk and started filling the box with random items. Half a dozen pencils, a pen or two, some coins, an eraser, some balled up paper with drawings that hadn't been right on, and her stapler all ended up in the thing, then she put the lid back on and plonked it on the desk.
Going back to sit on the bed, she studied the box, then vanished it. Concentrating carefully she brought it back, while watching what happened when she did in the manner she felt she was getting quite good at. Each time she did this sort of thing she learned something new about how the whole thing worked, and each new insight gave her new ideas about how to modify the whole process. It was really fascinating and something she enjoyed doing even leaving aside the utility of the constantly improving skill.
After a few iterations, she nodded slowly to herself. Some things were coming into focus in a way that she hadn't quite noticed before. Attempting to split her attention between the disappearing box and, for want of a better concept, where it was disappearing to, she did her best to watch the path of the thing as it went from normal Reality to something much more abstract and back again. It took a lot of time and concentration but she was slowly beginning to work out something interesting, which is that when the thing she stuffed into her storage was in there, she still had a sort of awareness of it. More than the awareness she needed to retrieve it, of course, as that was part of the whole process that had to be present or she wouldn't be able to get things back from hammerspace.
Possibly that was what had happened when her dad learned the trick and was practicing, when those pens seemingly vanished entirely? He lost track of them and basically couldn't find them again to pull out of the whole right-angles-to-reality place they went…
That seemed plausible, and warranted further research at some point, certainly. Perhaps she was on the wrong path and they'd instead popped out somewhere entirely unconnected with where they were supposed to be. At right angles to reality was after all a rather vague description and left a lot open to question. Sooner or later she needed to work all that out.
But right now, she was starting to get a much better sense of where her stuff was going, and how. She finally concluded that when she stored something away it left a kind of… string, possibly, although that was entirely wrong, but at the same time it was less wrong that anything else she could come up with. So she decided she'd go with that. It left a kind of string, then, linking the thing she stored to her mind, and when she retrieved whatever it was, she more or less followed the string and pulled the thing back. The whole process was much more involved than that, of course, involved enough that it would take quite a few pages of writing to describe it in detail and probably require inventing a whole new language to describe it accurately, but that was close enough to work with.
Vanishing the box once more, she watched the linkage, the string, form and show her where it had gone. Which again wasn't really accurate as it implied a specific place was involved and as far as she could tell no such thing was actually true, hammerspace was basically dimensionless and static, so space as wasn't really a thing. In one sense it was infinite, in another it didn't exist at all, and it was kind of up to her to decide which, if either, description was in play at any moment. The whole thing made her head spin when she really thought about it, although with practice she was slowly understanding more of it than she suspected she should have been able to. Even so, she didn't need to understand all the details of whatever it was she was doing to be able to do it, she'd proven that very quickly. Much like walking, or vision, or all the other things a human could do without ever having to really break the process down into discrete steps. You just learned how to do it then did it. The more you thought about what you were doing the more complicated it got and you ended up lost in the weeds very quickly.
However, in this case, as she watched herself doing the thing, she learned more about how to do the thing, in a strangely self-referential way she still found bizarre but entertaining. So it wasn't really like walking or seeing after all…
Taylor shook her head rapidly a few times, realizing she was falling into a mental loop that would take her down a very strange rabbit hole yet again, as seemed to happen a lot when she started thinking hard about Papa's ideas and everything she'd learned from them. None of that was really relevant right now. Deliberately pushing the analysis of what she was doing to the side for later consideration, she went back to working out how to use what she was doing to do it better.
Bringing the box back into reality in her hand, she studied it carefully, then popped it away once more, watching the string again. Then, very cautiously, she followed that string to the now-technically-nonexistent box and explored the far end. "Hmm…" she hmmed, trying to work out exactly what it was she needed to do to achieve her goal. There was something gently poking at the edges of her mind that suggested a couple of paths to take. After a good ten minutes, she smiled as certain observations clicked into place. "Ahhh…" she breathed, feeling inspiration strike.
"So if I just do this," the girl mumbled, altering the 'direction' she was 'looking' at her concept of a box from, along a vector that was entirely imaginary, "can I… Oooh. That's cool."
As she'd pushed kind of at right angles to the thing that was already at right angles to normal four dimensional space, and yes, she thought, I know that's way too many orthogonal directions, live with it reality, the object that was a singular box had abruptly become a box containing other things. "The set of box contains all the sets that sum to box," she giggled to herself, awed at the peculiar mental construction she was observing with a sense she'd taught herself. Pushing harder made the individual sub-things which represented the pencils, pens, and other objects themselves flower into even smaller sub-things, which could also be broken down into smaller sets, and onwards to the point she started getting dizzy.
"Whoa… too much data," she muttered, putting her hands on her head to stop it floating away. "Head rush. Oof."
After a few seconds the sudden inrush of information faded as she let go of the excessive detail, going back to only having the box and its contents rather than what had seemed to be every single atom that made up those contents. Once she recovered from the bizarre experience, she very cautiously tried bringing just one item from inside the box back into existence.
There was a sharp crack sound and she recoiled as the pen shattered against the floor. "Whoops… Got that momentum vector a bit wrong," Taylor said with annoyance.
"What the hell was that, Taylor?" her father's voice came from his bedroom.
"Sorry, Dad, I was experimenting and screwed up," she called back.
"Please try to keep the noise down while you're bending the universe over your knee, will you? I'm trying to get to sleep. And go to bed, it's late."
"At least it's not a school night," the girl replied, getting a laugh back. "I'll be in bed soon, don't worry."
"No more explosions if you can help it," he said, before going quiet again. A little embarrassed but amused she collected the various bits of pen and dropped them into the garbage container under her desk, then sat down again and tried to work out where she'd gone wrong. It didn't take her long to figure it out and she tried again, very carefully indeed. This time the second pen appeared on the floor in front of her without any fuss at all.
"Cool. Very cool indeed." She rapidly pulled all the contents out of the box one by one, putting them back on the desk where they'd originally come from, then yanked the box out of storage into her hand again. Opening it, she grinned at the empty container. "Now that is going to come in handy," she mused as she put it back in the closet, then headed for the bathroom to brush her teeth. Ten minutes later she was in bed, smiling a little as she fell asleep.
"This should be what you wanted, Danny," Kurt said, as the two men watched some of the other dock workers finish up the modifications to the room they'd been working on for hours. "Lined with copper sheet, overlapped so there are no gaps, floor, ceiling and walls, That's grounded in four places. It completely blocks radio signals, we tried cell phones, the radios, and some wifi stuff. Not a hint of a signal inside there. No one's going to be calling out, and any phones will be totally blocked. Same with any radio tracker or anything like that the van might have in it."
"Great. And the floor will take the weight?"
"No problem, it's concrete under two inches of plywood." Kurt nodded with a smile. "This window here is two and a half inches of reinforced glass, the stuff banks use. It'll stop at least one shot of anything up to a fifty cal round although it would need to be replaced. And the one way mirror is on this side."
"Fantastic work," Danny smiled. "The shielding covers this area too?"
"Of course, the window wouldn't help much about radio signals. As soon as the door there is closed, this place is totally shielded." Kurt indicated the door behind them, then pointed at the one that was currently open in front of them. "That door is out of the tanker we scrapped a couple of years back, solid steel and water-tight. It's welded into the walls and you'd need either a cutting torch or explosives to shift the thing now. We removed the handle on the inside and welded a plate over the hole. No way to open it from the inside without a lot of effort or a serious Brute. Lights are also behind bullet-resistant glass. All controlled from here." He tapped a bank of switches next to the window. "With all the shielding and insulation the room's damn near soundproof. Microphones in the ceiling link to speakers over here, and the mic next to the window goes to speakers in there too. Everything's running off batteries so there's no direct link through the power cables just in case."
"Should do the job," Danny nodded, pleased. "Might be overkill but better safe than sorry."
"You really think these guys are Coil's?" his old friend asked as they stepped out of the way of the work crew. Two men wheeled a large set of oxy-acetylene welding equipment past them on a trolley, several other people carrying toolboxes and materials following behind. He waved to them as they left the building, which was tucked inside the maze of workshops that made up the DWA facility, hidden away well out of public view and once used to store flammable materials hence the extremely solid construction.
Shrugging, Danny admitted, "I can't be certain. Taylor says they don't seem to have any of the usual Empire crap, and they don't look like ABB, and she's sure they're not Merchants because they seemed to know what day it was." Kurt snickered at the comment. Walking over to the repurposed ship hatch, Danny ducked inside, moving to the middle of the forty foot square room and looking around. His friend followed. "Michelle is pretty sure they're not LEOs of some sort, although it'll be fucking embarrassing if they are. Assuming she's right, that only really leaves Coil. And from what Taylor described, they might have Tinker weapons, which would pretty much prove it, because he's the only one I've ever heard of around here who does that aside from the PRT and they don't equip their troops with that sort of thing."
"Sure seems likely, then," Kurt replied with a frown. "I wonder what the bastards were up to?"
"No idea, but if it's Coil or any other gang it won't be ideal," he said. "This really looks good. Right, we'll set things up and see what happens next, I guess."
"This isn't quite what we normally do, you know," Kurt commented as they left the building. He was grinning.
"Yeah, but that seems to be par for the course these days," Danny sighed. "I blame Papa."
"Never met the guy, but he sounds like fun," his friend chuckled.
"You're not the one who's had to live with the results of that old bastards work."
"True, although that said we do seem to be reaping the rewards, so I can't complain."
They exchanged a look, and a smile.
"There is that, yes." Both disappeared into another building, still mildly arguing the point.
Taylor stood next to her dad, Michelle on his other side, with Kurt and two other dock workers, Matt Jenkins, a very burly ex marine and current electrician, along with Kate Sanders, a woman who could bend a crowbar in her bare hands and worked with the rest of the stevedores. They were present for backup should it become necessary but hopefully wouldn't be required.
All of them were looking through the window into the currently brightly lit improvised shielded and armored room that had taken the workers most of the day to construct, after quite a lot of designing the night before. In the middle of it was a chair, but otherwise it was entirely empty. "I guess we get the girl back first?" she queried.
"Seems like the sensible thing, yeah," her dad replied. "I'm feeling very guilty about probably making some other parents wonder where their daughter is and I'd prefer to resolve that as soon as we can." Reaching to the side he flipped some switches, most of the ceiling lights going out and leaving only one above the chair, which illuminated it but not a lot else. The lights in their small offshoot of the main room were dimmed almost to extinction, only allowing them to see each other as outlines. "And depending on what she says we'll know more about who those guys are and from that what we should do about them. Which is the really tricky part if we want to keep the PRT out of our hair."
"OK. You want me to bring her back with all her stuff, or try separating her phone from her?"
"Let's leave the poor girl with her belongings, Taylor," Michelle advised. "In there it won't work anyway, and you said she wasn't armed, so I doubt we have all that much to worry about. When we bring the mercenaries out, then you strip them of anything dangerous."
"Got it." Taylor nodded. "Tell me when."
Kurt pressed the record button on the camcorder that was aimed through the window. "I'm ready here."
"All right. Let's see who our blonde teenager is and what they wanted with her," Taylor's father remarked. "Bring her out, Taylor."
She nodded and a moment later there was a very confused looking girl standing a couple of feet from the chair. A moment after that she yelped, staggered, and fell over.
"Huh," Taylor mumbled, "I didn't expect that to happen. The squirrel was fine, just puzzled. I hope she's all right."
They kept watching, although Kurt had his hand on the big medical kit they'd pulled from the infirmary as a precaution.
Lisa Wilbourn blinked with shock as the mercenaries surrounding her abruptly vanished. As did the alley she was in, the snow on the ground, and absolutely everything else. Between one moment and the next she was apparently somewhere entirely different, without anything to show what happened or how. It was like a splice in a piece of film, the transition was so sudden.
She just had time to recognize that she seemed to be in a dark place in front of a chair which was lit from above before the worst Thinker headache she'd had so far hit her like a brick to the head, combined with the most bizarre sensation she'd ever experienced, which gave the impression that something was gaping at her in total disbelief. The pain was so sharp and so intense that she couldn't even scream, she just felt her entire body lock up then collapse like someone turned her off at the main switch.
Only seconds later, as she lay on the floor gasping in shock and staring up at a light above her, the pain faded nearly as fast as it had occurred. Utterly relieved and completely baffled she tried to get her breathing under control, succeeding after a moment or two. Sitting up, she looked around, seeing that outside the pool of illumination surrounding the chair next to her everything was completely dark. "What the fucking hell?" she muttered, almost afraid to let her power go to work due to the previous pain.
For some weird reason she got the impression that her power was also highly confused, which was a first in her experience.
Was this some new trick of that bastard who'd tried to kidnap her? He'd tried once before a couple of months back but the attempt had been foiled by a completely accidental series of events involving Armsmaster trying to catch Leet and Über, which had raised absolute chaos through part of the city for hours. During that period she'd managed to escape and had spent the next six weeks being extremely paranoid and lying low, trying to stay out of sight of anyone. She should have left the city in retrospect but it had taken her quite a while to get here in the first place and after several close calls which could easily have gone very bad, she was disinclined to risk traveling too far again until she got enough cash in to do it properly. There were a hell of a lot of villains out there who seemed to pop out of the woodwork whenever they got wind of a lone Parahuman and she really didn't feel like getting snatched up by one of the gangs.
Or, for that matter, by the PRT, since her birth name and identity would inevitably come to light at that point and her fucking parents would get involved, which would probably be worse than the gangs in many ways. There was a reason she'd left home, and she had zero intention of going back. Ever.
But it was just her luck that at the point she'd finally started to relax slightly with no sight of this Coil fucker for ages that she'd get jumped by his goddamn mercs, chased into an alley, and nearly shot while in the process of being forced to work for the shit. It wasn't a good choice, cold blooded murder or what her power seemed fairly sure was actually worse. Coil was not a good man. He wasn't even a bad man, he was an evil shit who someone needed to put a bullet into as soon as possible from what she could deduce.
'Where the hell am I?' she wondered with considerable worry. Looking around very carefully once more without standing up, she tried to work out what had happened. The sudden transition suggested something like teleportation, which in turn meant a Parahuman power, but there was no sign of anyone, nor any technology. Aside from that light above her. The chair was just a chair, made of wood and not even fastened to the floor. A very faint glint to one side made her think there was a reflection there, maybe from a glass or metal surface, but other than that the dark was all-encompassing.
Feeling the floor, she found it seemed to be made of metal, but when she tapped it she heard a wooden clunk. So metal over wood. It looked like copper, too, which was an odd design choice. Experimentally poking the chair she found it would slide on the floor without trouble, so it definitely wasn't bolted down. She snapped her fingers and heard echoes suggesting she was in a large but enclosed space. Listening carefully all she could hear once they died down was her own pulse in her ears.
This whole experience was surreal, and worrying. So, rather reluctantly, she let her power have a go at it, flinching at the possibility of something so painful happening again. Luckily nothing seemed to happen other than the usual.
'OK, so where am I and what happened?' she thought.
Room approximately forty by forty by twenty feet
Plywood floor over concrete, sheathed in grounded copper sheet
Walls constructed of steel reinforced concrete with brick cladding, sheathed in grounded copper sheet
Ceiling constructed of steel reinforced concrete, sheathed in grounded copper sheet
Room is faraday cage intended to prevent radio signals entering or leaving
Multiple observers behind bullet resistant mirrored window in wall to north
Microphones and speakers in ceiling
Location is…
Location unable to be determined due to manner of arrival
'What manner of arrival?' Lisa frowned as she stood up, since nothing seemed to be immediately dangerous, merely very weird indeed. Checking herself over she found she was still wearing her coat, and everything that had been in her pockets was still there including her phone. Curiously pulling it out she looked at the screen and saw as she expected that it showed no bars at all.Temporal mismatch between current location and original location
Temporal offset sixteen hours five minutes eighteen seconds since partial disconnection
Method of creating temporal offset unknown
She froze, thinking hard. Temporal offset? Did that mean what it sounded like?Yes
Lisa blinked at the one word answer, not having expected it.And what did 'partial disconnection' mean?
This time she didn't get an answer, although she got the distinct impression that her power wanted to tell her but for some reason couldn't. Which was probably the weirdest thing yet.
'So it wasn't teleportation, or it wasn't completely teleportation, then? It was some sort of time stop too? That's why the time and date on my phone hasn't changed?'
Evidence suggests temporal stasis was involved
Method of creating temporal stasis unknown
More data is required
"Yeah, that part I worked out for myself," she grumbled very quietly. Looking around again, she finally shrugged and sat in the chair, which at least had a nice cushion on it and a padded back. More loudly, she called, "OK, who are you and where am I? And what do you want?" Her head was just starting to ache a little, showing the signs of an incipient Thinker headache, something she was all too familiar with although they weren't as bad these days as when she'd first Triggered. Or, possibly, built a higher pain tolerance. So her voice was a bit sharper than she'd intended. Catching herself, she tried to avoid letting her mouth get away from her as it had a tendency to do, since until she knew what was going on that might end up costing her.There was a slight click, then a voice said, echoing a little in the room, "Hello, miss. Are you all right? You looked like you were in pain there for a while."
She looked up to where the voice had come from, then around the room. "I'm fine, I just had a really bad headache for a few seconds. It's gone now. Who are you?" It was a man's voice, sounding mature and genuinely worried, but for all she knew that was just an act. "Are you the cops? The PRT? Or one of the gangs?"
"We're none of the above," he replied immediately, sounding mildly amused now. "You'll forgive me if I don't instantly reveal our identity. We're not too sure yet who you are and the situation you were recovered from gives us some concern."
Male, approximately 39 years old, well educated, calm but concerned
Non hostile but ready to take action if required
Not alone
Her ability seemed confident, and it made her relax a little. Sudden death seemed unlikely, which was good, but she still had no real idea what the fuck was going on, which wasn't."Recovered from?" she echoed, not letting her thoughts show on her face. "Recovered how exactly? One moment I was there, next I was here. That sounds like teleportation to me, which makes me think you're either a Parahuman or know one."
"The exact method used is not relevant right now," he replied, chuckling. He sounded curious and determined but not worried. "Let's just say that one of our people happened to run across you and those people menacing you and decided to intervene before someone got hurt. And now we need to know what was going on so we can work out what our next step is. We don't mean you any harm, if that helps, but we also want to avoid any trouble. But we'll have you back with your family as soon as we can figure out the safest way all around."
As far as she could tell with both her power and her native wit he seemed sincere and honest as far as it went. But that wasn't a complete assurance, since she was still captive and had no idea what had happened.
"So, with that in mind, can we know your name, Miss?" he added.
She considered the question for a moment, then with a shrug decided it wasn't worth not telling him. They could always gas her or something and take her wallet, which had her fake driving license in it, so her identity wasn't exactly impossible to work out without her cooperation. "Lisa," she replied. "And I'd really prefer not to go back to my family, because we seriously don't get on. Like, even slightly, so don't worry about them. I sure as hell don't."
He was silent for a few seconds, then said, "I understand, I think. All right, Lisa. I'm sorry about all this cloak and dagger ridiculousness but for the moment we don't seem to have a choice. There were four people around you when our agent stepped in. They were all armed and by the looks of it they were trying to force you to speak on a phone. You might not realize it but six more were in a vehicle nearby. Do you know who they work for and what they wanted with you?"
'Our agent? Really?' she thought with what was almost amusement. Based on his voice as he'd said it her power told her he also was amused and playing a part, but the question was real.
Sighing, she replied, "They're mercenaries who work for Coil, the super-villain. He's a bastard who someone needs to shoot in the head as soon as possible, trust me. They were trying to get me to talk to him, he was on the phone when whatever it is you did happened. And if they report back to him what you did he's going to come looking for you. He's got a lot more of them and more guns than the fucking army does."
"They won't be reporting back to him any time soon," he assured her, making her eyes widen.
"Holy… fuck me, you grabbed them too?" she yelped in shock.
"And their van too," he confirmed, laughing for a moment. "So don't worry about that part, at least not now. The only people who know what happened are us. Why did Coil want you so badly he'd send ten heavily armed men after you and pay off the Enforcers?"
"… Wow. You guys are good," she managed. "How did you know he bribed the Enforcers to look the other way?"
"They were conveniently and suspiciously absent," her mysterious interrogator replied. "Which is highly unusual for that part of the Boardwalk at the time you were accosted. The only real explanation is someone paid them to not be there."
"Yeah, Coil has a lot of resources," she commented with annoyance. "He's rich for a start."
"I see. And the reason he wanted you?"
She hesitated, not really happy about telling the truth.
"I assume it's because you are a Parahuman."
"Fuck. You guys really are good," she growled. Apparently they'd worked it out.
"It was one of the more plausible reasons that someone would send that many people with that many guns after one teenaged girl," he said with good humor. "I'm glad to see we were right. Some of the other ideas we had were much worse and I'd prefer not to think about them. I assume your powers aren't really suited for combat?"
"No," she sighed. "Look, you realize this isn't the sort of thing most Parahumans like talking about, especially with people they have never met? It's… weird."
"Yes, I do realize, and I'm sorry, I don't mean to be rude," he apologized. "And we honestly don't mean you any harm. Our agent stepped in because the situation looked bad, without really thinking through exactly what we'd do after that point, and we're trying to work that out with the minimum amount of difficulty for both you and us. All right, Lisa, you've answered most of our questions. Do you happen to know who Coil is and where he keeps himself?"
Lisa shook her head slowly. "I'm not completely sure, no. I am certain he's connected to the PRT, or has moles inside it, so if you're planning on handing me over to them, he's going to make another attempt to get me which will probably succeed. Unless he just kills me." She was being entirely honest as she was frankly scared shitless of what her power had told her about Coil and how likely it was that he'd get her if she went anywhere near the PRT.
"Ah. That is… unfortunate," her interrogator said slowly. "You're completely one hundred percent sure of that?"
"Yeah. I'm a Thinker and making connections most people would miss is kind of my thing," she told him as she wriggled around in the chair to get comfortable. "That's what the bastard wanted me for. He's some sort of Thinker himself, I'm pretty sure, and he's bad news. I don't know exactly what his plans are but I doubt most people would like them."
"I see. Do you have any idea what his connection with the PRT really is? Does he only have moles, or is there a stronger link?"
"I'm not completely sure, but I think there's a stronger link, or there was. Maybe he worked for them once? I've been hiding from the fucker for weeks and haven't really had the chance to dig into it, because I was worried if I did he'd find out." She shrugged again. "Sorry."
"That's fine, don't worry, Lisa. I'll be back in a little while, I need to talk to someone else." The click sounded again, echoing through the room, and the slight background hum of an active intercom died off. After minute or two of waiting she pulled her phone out again, turned the flashlight on, and aimed it around the room. Exactly as her power had told her, coppery reflections bounced back from every surface, the whole room taking on an orange glow, with the sole exception being a three by five foot mirror on the wall facing the chair. The glass looked extremely thick, which made sense if it was indeed bullet resistant.
Getting up she walked over to it, tapped it and heard a dull thunk, then pressed her face against it. "I know you're there," she couldn't resist saying although all she could see was her own reflection at extreme close range. There was no reply, so after a moment she went back and sat down, then started playing Angry Birds on her phone as she waited. There didn't seem to be anything else she could do and at least it was warm and dry.
"Think she's on the level?" Kurt asked, looking at Danny, who thought it over then nodded slowly.
"Yeah, I think she probably is. The girl seems genuinely scared of Coil and if she really is a Thinker that would explain a lot." He glanced at Michelle who nodded too.
"I'd tend to agree, Danny. She certainly comes across as someone who is very worried about where she is and extremely confused about what happened, but at the same time relieved that she's away from the situation Taylor pulled her out of. I expect there are a lot of other things going on in the background, such as where she's been living and how she's been supporting herself, because if she's been successfully hiding from Coil without any support she'll have had to stay out of sight. Which means no job, which in turn probably means petty crime."
Danny looked back at their guest, who was waving her phone around at the moment, the flashlight on. "She's clean and well dressed, doesn't look like a typical runaway living on the street."
"No, but if she's able to leverage her ability, she can probably gather enough money to make ends meet easily enough, and there are any number of places around the city where someone could hole up in reasonable comfort if they could pay for it. As dangerous as Brockton Bay is, there are certainly people who would be safe enough for someone in her position. And if she can pick them out…" Michelle shrugged. "She'd probably stand a better chance than many people under the same circumstances."
"Good point," he acknowledged. "The question is, though, what do we do with her now? If she's right about Coil, and from what I know about the guy and what I've found out since last night, he won't give up easily. If we put her back on the street she's in trouble. Especially if she's right about him having something to do with the PRT…"
"That part is exceptionally worrying, yes," Michelle answered, frowning. "And it's very hard to prove one way or the other. If he really is connected that way, even making quiet inquiries is likely to arouse suspicion, and that would probably lead him back here. Possibly with a small army. Which is hardly ideal even if Taylor can vanish the lot of them."
Everyone looked at Taylor, who shrugged with a smile. "I can do that, yeah, but sooner or later we'll need to put them somewhere. We've already got ten of them, we don't need any more if we can help it."
"Yeah," Danny agreed. "We could ask her if she wants out of the city. That would be easy enough, Taylor sticks her in her pocket then we go on a short trip. No one would know."
"We can ask, yes, but that does risk putting her into a situation as bad as or worse than she finds herself in now," the lawyer replied.
Kate nodded, having been listening quietly next to Matt the whole time. "Yeah, Danny, Parahuman kids have a shitty time of it on their own. Best case she ends up in the Wards somewhere, which she might or might not like. Worst case she ends up dead. And everything between those probably involves a gang."
He sighed. "I know. We should ask, but you're all right. So what else do we do?"
"Keep her?" Kurt suggested with a grin. "Never know when Thinker might come in handy." He looked at Taylor, his grin widening. "We can keep her in Taylor's pocket, it would keep the food bill down if nothing else."
Taylor laughed, making Danny and the others smile. "I don't think that's the optimal solution," he replied even so. "Not to mention being a bit cruel." Looking to the side at Lisa, whose face was plastered to the window as she tried to see through it, he shook his head. "I guess we ask the kid what she wants to do and see if we can make it work somehow."
"Certainly worth asking," Kurt agreed. Everyone fell silent again as Danny reached out for the talk switch and pressed it.
Once more the click sounded. "Sorry about that Lisa. We were just discussing what our next move was." She looked up from her game at the sound, then put her phone away.
"What did you decide?" she queried a little uncertainly. Her power was working on trying to identify who these people were and her headache was getting slowly worse, but with so little information it was having a hard time. Whoever they were, they'd managed to arrange the situation to give her very little usable information, either by luck or by careful design.
"It's largely up to you," he replied. "We can arrange to transport you out of the city to a destination of your choosing if you want. We can do that in a way that no one will discover, almost guaranteed."
She considered the suggestion. "OK. And if I didn't want that, what else do you have?"
"We can put you back in the city, but I get the impression that you'd prefer not to risk that," he said.
"Not really, no," she replied with feeling. "Not while Coil is out there. That fucker is persistent."
"Yeah, that much we realize. We could arrange to get you to the PRT, outside Brockton Bay, if that would help. Boston, perhaps, or New York. You could join the Wards there, from what I understand they're always looking for young Parahumans."
"I'd prefer not to work for them, I have to admit," she said after thinking it over. "Too many rules. I don't get on with too many rules."
He laughed. "I can't entirely blame you, but some rules are kind of needed. So what does that leave? You're at risk as long as Coil is around, from what you tell us, you're not keen on the PRT which I honestly can't blame you for, and you don't think being dropped in some other city is entirely ideal. Which, again, I can understand. My problem is that I feel responsible to make sure you have a chance and I'm not sure what the next move is."
Is being truthful
Genuinely wishes to help
Father of teenaged girl, sees similarity in your situation and hers
Daughter was subjected to prolonged bullying campaign
Is suspicious of PRT for a number of reasons
Long association with city and bad previous experience with gangs
Has unusual resources
Her power helpfully chimed in, almost giving the feeling of wanting to suggest a course of action rather than just stating facts.'So what should I do, then?' she thought at it. 'Because I'm really not getting any good ideas.'
Ask to join organization
'What? Are you nuts? I don't know who the fuck these guys are!'Current hosts are unknown
Method of temporal stasis unknown
Data is unavailable
Acquisition of data only possible through joining organization
Data leads to knowledge
Knowledge leads to freedom
Freedom leads to more data
'And now you're getting weird too,' she sighed mentally. A certain sensation of what was almost but not quite amusement came from somewhere. She tried to pretend that hadn't happened, for her own peace of mind if nothing else. Starting to believe her power was smirking at her wasn't comforting at all."Are you hiring?" she finally called out.
There was a long pause, then he asked, sounding a mite befuddled, "Excuse me?"
"Hey, I don't know who you are, but you seem at least to be willing to let me go, and haven't tried to force me into anything. Or hand me over to the PRT. I'm thinking that maybe, at least for now, it might be in my best interests to stick around. And maybe you need a Thinker who gets crippling migraines if she overuses her power?" Lisa smiled winningly at the window. "Before that happens, I'm really good with all sorts of things."
"Hold on, please," he said, still sounding baffled.
"Take your time, no need to hurry on my account," she replied loftily, waving a hand, then resumed her game. The click happened again.
"Um…" Taylor's dad looked at her, then the others. "Did that just happen?"
"Looks like it did, yeah," Kurt replied, chuckling. "She's way ahead of us. Kid might have the right idea."
"How the hell do we hire a, what, seventeen year old Parahuman?" Danny said helplessly. "Hire her to do what?"
"She could be your assistant," Taylor suggested with a grin. Her dad gave her a look.
"Yeah, no, I don't think I could handle having some teenaged kid no matter how smart or talented being my assistant," he growled. "Give her about ten years and a degree in accounting or something, fine, but right now we don't really have a slot she'd fit into."
"Well, I'm sure we could find something for her to do in the agency," Matt grinned. Taylor giggled as her father gave him a look.
"We are not in fact a spy organization."
Matt, Kurt, Michelle, Kate, and Taylor all looked at the shielded room, each other, then her father, who put his hand on his face. "You sure about that dad?" she asked, smiling.
"This is all your fault," he muttered under his hand, before lowering it and putting his glasses back on.
"Yeah, sorry about that," she replied, shrugging.
"And even if we did find a place for her, we'd still need to make sure that Coil didn't find out," he went on after glaring at her a bit. "Which is going to be tricky unless we leave her locked in there."
"Oh, that part's easy," she commented. Everyone looked at her.
"Do expand on that, please," he invited.
Taylor shrugged. "We get him before he gets her," she said, having spent some time while Lisa was talking thinking about the problem. "All we need to find out is where he happens to live."
"And how do we do that?" he asked in a long suffering voice.
"I bet between her powers and the pocket full of mercenaries I have we can figure it out," she smiled, pointing through the window at Lisa, who was now lying across the arms of the chair idly kicking one foot in the air while still playing a game on her phone. "She's got a lot of incentive to help, after all."
"Then what?" he queried, brows furrowed. After a second, before she'd had a chance to speak, his expression changed. "Oh, for god's sake…"
"Yeah. He's got to be somewhere in the city. We find out, and I grab him right out of his lair. We can figure out what to do with him after that, but once he's out of the way, it'll make things a lot easier," Taylor said with a grin.
"I can't help but feel you're very much glossing over a lot of extremely important details," her dad sighed. "A lot of them. And what happened to not getting involved, anyway?"
"If we do it right no one will know we did anything at all," she said calmly.
He rubbed his eyes again. "Jesus. You let your kid learn one paranormal trick and the world stops making sense completely," he said under his breath. Then he looked around at the others, who were listening with interest. "Does that sound as insane to you guys as it does to me?"
"Taylor's got a point, Danny," Kurt commented thoughtfully. "If we let the kid go in the city we might be signing her death warrant and Coil might also end up coming after us if he works out who interfered with his plan. Even if we drop her off in LA or something, he might get word and figure it out too, especially if he is a Thinker. We can't stick her on ice indefinitely, and he's still got god knows how many more mercs working for him. Might be the best defense is a good offense. We go after him before he goes after us. Or just fucks things up even more for everyone. At the moment he probably doesn't have a clue what happened and we could use that to our advantage."
"If Lisa is correct that Coil is indeed connected to or has informants inside the PRT it would be unwise to allow them to learn anything about what happened," Michelle put in. "Leaving aside not wanting to let them know about what Taylor learned to do, and the legal issue with them. While I have some reservations, I can't say the idea isn't worth considering. Although it would need very careful execution if we want to avoid anyone finding out what happened."
"I can't believe I'm listening to this," Taylor's dad sighed. "But here I am." He glanced at Kate and Matt, both of whom nodded, then hit the switch again. "Lisa? We've got an idea I'd like to run past you..."
"The fucking Dock Worker's Association?" Lisa stared at the people on the other side of the door. "What the fuck?"
The brunette girl who was a little younger than her grinned, even as the man who was clearly her father sighed heavily. "Not bad. Good power. So what's your full name, Lisa?"
"How in the name of everything holy do you think the Dock Worker's Association can take on an entire mercenary army and a Parahuman gang boss?" Lisa went on, not really paying attention to the question.
"Oh. Lisa Wilbourn," the girl said, looking at a card she was holding. Lisa turned to stare at her.
"What?"
"That's what your driving license says," she replied, holding up a card that definitely was Lisa's license. Which was in her wallet, which was still in her pocket when she quickly stuck her hand in to check. "Although it's got your age down as eighteen, but I don't think that's entirely right?" She inspected Lisa closely, while the blonde pulled her wallet out and looked through it. "I'd have guessed seventeen, maybe."
"How the hell did you do that?" Lisa asked, utterly confused when she saw her license was missing.
"Do what?" the brunette replied, looking at a phone. "Hey, cool game."
Lisa checked. Then she stomped over and retrieved her phone with a grab. "Stop that!"
"Stop what?" the other girl asked innocently.
"Stealing my phone and my license!"
"I don't have your phone, you have your phone," she replied with a small smile. "And I'd assume your license is in your wallet where it belongs."
Lisa checked. It was.
Her father was leaning against the wall convulsed with laughter while the others were grinning like idiots, even the lawyer.
Glaring at the now giggling girl, Lisa opened her mouth to say something unkind, stopped dead, and stared. Then she very slowly turned to look back into the room at the chair, before returning her attention to the girl in front of her. Inside her head, her power was, and she'd swear this was true even though it couldn't be, practically salivating at what she and it had just realized.
"Oh my god," she breathed. "That's how you did it." A number of things became clear in an instant. "And you can yoink him right out of his fucking office chair from across the street…."
"Around several corners, yeah," the girl grinned. "But if you tell anyone and put my dad or anyone else at risk I'll put you in my pocket for a year, OK?"
Even through the good natured smile her eyes were hard, and Lisa knew without doubt that she meant it.
"I get it, yeah. And trust me, I've got no intention of betraying the people who saved me from that fucker. I'm in." She held out her hand.
The girl shook it. "Nice to meet you. I'm Taylor Hebert."
"I have a feeling that this is the beginning of an interesting friendship," Lisa replied, entirely honestly and wondering what the hell she'd stumbled into.
"Yeah, me too," Taylor smiled.