Releasing the talk button on the microphone, Danny looked around as his daughter tapped his arm. "Problem?" he asked, seeing through the night-vision gear that her face had an odd expression on it.

"I'm… not entirely sure," she replied, sounding puzzled. "Something's happened, and we should talk about it before we get back to questioning him." Taylor indicated through the window to where Calvert was sitting with his head in his hands, looking completely beaten. Even so Danny didn't trust him as far as he could heave the bastard, and nothing they'd learned so far had reduced that feeling even a little.

He nodded his understanding. "Shove him back in storage then, he'll keep."

Taylor glanced through the window and he followed her gaze to see that both the man and the chair had vanished. Matt hit the switches to turn the lights back on, having warned everyone to turn their goggles off. Reaching up Danny removed his own, putting them down on the table under the observation window. "We can pick this up tomorrow if we need to," he commented. "As far as Mr Calvert is concerned he'll never notice even if this takes a month."

"It's a fucking weird way to run an interrogation, but it's an effective one," Matt chuckled, shaking his head. "Although we're going to have to feed the bastard at some point, and give him more than just bottles of water. Don't want him keeling over on us. U.N.I.O.N. might get the wrong type of reputation…"

Glaring at him, which had absolutely no effect other than a grin, Danny sighed then turned back to his daughter who was giggling. Beyond her he could see Lisa apparently deep in thought, her lips slightly moving now and then. "So what's going on?" he asked curiously, everyone else gathering around to listen too.

"Lisa had a… breakthrough… I guess," Taylor replied slowly, obviously trying to pick her words carefully. She shrugged almost bewilderedly. "As far as I can tell she's managed to basically convince her power, by talking very fast and confusing it to, be a lot more effective than it was supposed to be. Yeah, I know, it's ridiculous, but apparently it just happened. She's… persuasive."

Danny stared at her for a long few seconds, lost for words. What the fuck? He looked around at the others and they were all clearly thinking the same. Michelle looked completely fascinated, Matt was scratching his chin reflectively, and Kurt was leaning on the wall examining Lisa closely, as was Kate. Lisa herself didn't seem to be paying much attention to any of them right at the moment.

"She did what?" he finally asked carefully, not sure he was understanding things.

Taylor shrugged again. "You know how she said her power was a lot more talkative and helpful since we accidentally sort of confused it?" she asked. He nodded. "Well, apparently it finds all this absolutely the best thing since ever and wants to join in, but from what she said it pretty much told her that it wasn't allowed to tell her some things she wanted to know, and so she threatened it that if it didn't find a way to get around those restrictions, she wouldn't let it learn any more of what I'm learning. She blackmailed her own power, and it worked." His daughter had a very strange expression, which mixed confusion, amusement, and a significant amount of respect.

"She learned in about five minutes probably more about powers than the PRT has managed in decades, more or less accidentally. Turns out that powers really are something external to a human, and she says they're actually probably more like computers than anything else. And they're networked. She convinced her own power to talk itself into rationalizing a requirement to contact a higher level power or something, and ask it for the restrictions to be loosened. Not removed, as far as we can work out, because the very top level of the network is the only one that can do that, but the second level administrator has the right access credentials to turn down the security a lot even so."

No one said a thing for some time after she stopped talking, but they exchanged wondering glances. Eventually she resumed, "Once it got its security patch or whatever it was, it got really talkative. And it's not only told her a whole mess of stuff about our friend Mr Calvert, but about a lot more besides. I think we probably need to talk about what she's finding out before we keep on with him."

Studying her face for a little while, Danny saw she was definitely both puzzled and worried, as well as being highly intrigued. He nodded he agreement. "All right, I could do with a break from this anyway." He looked at his watch. "It's nearly half past ten. Why don't we get some food in, go up to the conference room, and you can fill us in on what you two have discovered. We can get back to Calvert tomorrow, or whenever. We're not in a hurry and to be honest we probably need to think about everything we've got from him already."

"It'll take me at least a couple of days just to work out all the legal implications of what he's confessed to as it is," Michelle commented, tapping one finger on her journal in which she'd written a couple of dozen pages of notes. "That man is, or at least was, highly dangerous and totally without any redeeming characteristics at all. If we hadn't shut him down, I dread to think what he would have done to get his own way. None of us would have enjoyed the end result of his plotting. Lisa and any other Parahuman he laid hands on less so than everyone else…" She didn't look impressed.

"Yeah, he's a complete bastard and we should probably tie some cinder blocks to his feet when we're done and chuck him over the side of a trawler," Kurt added, scowling. Danny wasn't entirely sure he was joking.

Danny wasn't entirely sure he didn't agree.

Nothing that Calvert had revealed so far had made him out in a positive light, that much was fair to say. And combined with the data that Lisa and Taylor had already extracted from his computers and notes, it implicated a rather impressive number of current and former city, state, and even federal employees in an amazingly far-reaching criminal enterprise. When this information was passed on to the relevant authorities, an awful lot of dubious actions of the past decade were going to very suddenly come home to roost.

Roy Christner was probably going to dance a jig even more impressive than the post-ship-removal one when he found out…

"I'd prefer that we hand him over to the relevant people instead of simply executing him, Kurt," he replied after a moment or two. His old friend shrugged, smiling darkly.

"Fair enough. You're the Chief."

Matt started laughing and even Michelle was hiding a smile. Danny shook his head in despair. "Come on, then, let's get something to eat and talk about what we learned." He guided a giggling daughter out of the room with a hand on her back, Lisa looking up and following along with the others.

"Aliens." Matt's voice was flat. Lisa spread her hands and nodded helplessly.

"Apparently, yeah."

"At least it's not demons like that one guy on PHO says," Taylor commented with a small grin. Lisa laughed for a moment but went back to looking rather worried.

"My power won't, or can't, tell me everything. It's still got lots of restrictions the administrator can't remove without higher authority, and that's not going to happen unless the top level node is removed from play. I get the distinct impression that both my power and whatever the fuck it is that this administrator is really don't like their boss. I mean, not even a little. But they're stuck with it. Even so they're actively looking for loopholes to bypass as much of what they're told not to do as they can."

She looked somewhat embarrassed but proud at the same time. "That might be my fault," she admitted, making Taylor chuckle. "Apparently I'm a bad influence."

Taylor's father shook his head wonderingly. "Unbelievable. And no one else knows?"

"I'm not sure that's true, but I don't have any proof one way or the other," Lisa replied, shaking her head. "I mean, there's all sorts of rumors online, but that's just how it always works. There's certainly no evidence I've ever heard about. Lots of people have suggested powers being the fault of aliens in the past, but they always suggest things are the fault of aliens. Or magic, or gods, or an ancient curse, or whatever other stupid reason you want to believe. No one actually knows, or if they do they're not saying. Maybe the government does know, but why would they tell anyone?"

"She's got a point," Kurt replied with a nod. "Maybe the higher-ups at the PRT, or in the Pentagon, know about this. Maybe not. Probably not, I'd guess, but if they did they're sure never going to let anyone else know if only because of national security excuses."

"And it's not as if this becoming public knowledge would in any way help," Michelle pointed out, tapping a pen on the pages she'd been noting down Lisa's observations. "The public are not rational at the best of times. Alien invasions wouldn't add to the stability of everything…"

"No, I guess not," her father agreed, rubbing his forehead. "The question is, what if anything do we do with this information? What can we do about it? If the government knows already, going and talking to them is only going to raise more questions than we want and make things excessively complicated, and if they don't know I somehow doubt they're just going to take our word for it." He shrugged slightly as they all thought about it.

"It's not like this is immediately critical information," Matt remarked after a little while. "If Lisa's… whatever the fuck it is inside her head… is telling the truth, the aliens have been here for thirty years or so already. We're still here too, so imminent obliteration doesn't seem to be a major threat. Someone is going to have to do something about it sooner or later but I can't see right now how we can. Unless Taylor comes up with something really bizarre."

Everyone looked at Taylor, who looked back. "I'll think about it," she replied, having been doing that ever since Lisa told her what her power was talking about. "It might take a while."

"No hurry." Matt grinned as she chuckled. "I wasn't expecting it to be super easy."

Her father looked at the table, then raised his eyes to study Lisa, who met his gaze with her own. "All right. Let's see if I have this right. Your power, and all Parahuman abilities, are basically the result of an alien computer network or something like that, with godlike power, which turned up thirty years ago and is basically trying to learn everything it can about… everything. The long term end result being some nebulous goal it can't or won't properly explain, but the immediate result being that it's so addicted to new information it'll do pretty much anything to get access to it, including break its own rules. And it's managed to persuade its own network administrator to help hack the both of them. All because Taylor is doing something so bizarre than an alien supercomputer thinks it's weird?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Lisa replied with a nod and an almost apologetic smile.

"Damn it, Papa, this is probably somehow your fault, I can feel it," he grumbled under his breath, glancing at Taylor who just shrugged.

"I can't see how we can use that specific information at the moment although it does raise a large number of fascinating questions," Michelle said after a short pause. "But the more useful information about Mr Calvert does seem to be something we can leverage."

"Yeah, that bit is interesting," Taylor replied, nodding, as was Lisa.

"His power isn't like mine," the other girl put in. "According to my power, his one is faulty. And he didn't Trigger like most Parahumans do. An anomalous origin, it says. I'm not completely clear on exactly what that means, and it's still having a bit of trouble explaining it properly."

She stopped and got the expression that Taylor knew meant her power was saying something. After a moment she frowned. "Really? You're sure?" she mumbled. "Huh. OK, that just makes it weirder…" Looking at them, she resumed more loudly, "I think it's just told me that his ability was deliberately given to him by someone. Or he… Oh. He bought it. Fucking hell. Are those rumors on the internet right? You can buy powers?"

They all looked at each other. "I've read something like that, I think," Michelle said. "It's one of the less plausible internet myths, but it's persistent as I recall."

"Yeah, people have been talking about that for at least fifteen years," Lisa agreed, still frowning in thought. "No one ever has proof though. Of course. But… apparently it's a thing? Fuck me. But the powers are… broken? Or… no, it's saying they're basically dead. How does that work?"

Taylor considered her friend's words, then closed her eyes to shut out distractions and very carefully probed the stored Thomas Calvert, diving very deeply into beneath and watching as his body exploded into an almost infinitely complex web of data. Concentrating on his head, then his brain, she followed the same route as she'd done many times now, zeroing in on the structures that defined a Parahuman ability. As she examined them more and more closely the complexities of everything else fell away, leaving only those specific parts, which she drove deeper and deeper into. The conduit that led somewhere ill defined, somewhere she now thought probably had an alien computer or something on the other end of, was still there but it was not quite as it had been before she'd let him out in the secure room.

Before it had been an almost imperceptible, nearly impossibly subtle memory of a trail that was still clearly defined and when you knew what to look for, distinct. It had taken quite a bit of mental work to discern from the mass of other data that made up whatever it was she was really examining when doing this, but once found it was obvious. Now, though… Now it was clearly having severe trouble with life in general.

It was still present, still a pathway that let to something else outside the confines of the form of her captive stuck in non-time beneath, but it wasn't as it had been. It seemed to have weakened considerably and even though frozen between one instant and the next, looked like it was on the verge of failing. She couldn't have explained how she knew that, but the senses she'd learned over the last weeks and months were telling her this linkage, or possibly what was on the other end of it, was damaged and not at all like the equivalent one that Lisa had.

"Lisa's right," she murmured, not opening her eyes as she looked at the link from every possible angle, although that was entirely not what she was really doing. "It's not the same as hers. There's something… wrong… with it, even not knowing what it is. And it's changed since I last looked at it."

"My power says that his power can't adapt to a partial disconnection since it's… I think pretty much just running on automatic or something. Hard to explain," Lisa's voice said. "It reconnected when it sensed him appear, but the link is damaged. Or it's running out of energy. Or both, I think."

"Interesting…" Taylor studied the connection imprint for a few more seconds, then released it and opened her eyes, blinking a little as the impossibly multidimensional nature of beneath was replaced with the thin veneer of reality that lay over it like the skin on a jug of custard.

"I'm going to have to really spend some time examining that later," she went on, looking around. "But it's definitely not the same as her power is. I don't have any other samples to check so I can't be completely sure, but two different sources for powers is consistent with the data I do have. If I can find some other Parahumans and check them…" She thought as everyone exchanged looks.

"I think going around and grabbing random experimental subjects might be getting a little close to being a problem, Taylor," her father said slowly.

She grinned at him. "If we grab villains? Who's going to complain about that?"

"Them, for a start," he replied dryly. But he was looking thoughtful, she noticed…

"Expanding the operation of U.N.I.O.N. aside, which incidentally I have no trouble with," Matt put in, making her father sigh, "What does that mean for Coil?"

Lisa and Taylor exchanged glances. "Well, we know a lot more about how his power works, or worked anyway, so that's useful," Lisa replied after a moment. "And will really shit him up, I suspect. Which is always funny. Might come in handy if we need to persuade him some more."

"And I'm almost certain I can just cut that last bit of link if I want to," Taylor added thoughtfully. "I'm not sure quite how yet, but… His power isn't working properly already and I bet it wouldn't take much to break it entirely. Or find whatever is at the other end and grab it."

"You think you can steal a Parahuman power?" her father said in tones of disbelief and resignation.

Taylor shrugged, smiling a little. "I'm willing to give it a shot."

"Of course you are. How did I raise a daughter who's so prone to eldritch kleptomania?" he mumbled, raising his eyes to the ceiling and causing everyone to laugh. "What will you try to acquire next? Mars? Cthulhu?"

"Ooh, there's a thought," she said brightly. "I always wanted a pet."

"Do not bring a Great Old One into my house, young lady," he instructed firmly. "We have standards."

She stuck her tongue out at him and Lisa collapsed on the table laughing. "You are so weird, Taylor. And Danny is as bad."

"The Chief is a strange guy, that's why he's the Chief," Matt said wisely, nodding.

Michelle, who was looking highly amused, shook her head. "If you can permanently disable his ability, Taylor, aside from anything else that suggests a method to allow us to safely hand him over to the correct authorities without him being able to readily escape," she said thoughtfully, looking at her notes again. "Without this dual timeline simulation thing in play, he's much less dangerous."

"My power thinks his power is already broken enough that he's not going to be able to do that any more," Lisa commented, looking pleased. "From what it says his power will probably just stop working entirely all by itself sooner or later. But it doesn't know how long that will take aside from 'eventually.'"

"If you can turn off Parahuman powers at will, that's got the potential to cause a lot of really weird problems," Kurt remarked, making everyone look at him. "A lot of Parahumans would probably get really upset at the suggestion."

"I bet some would jump at the chance though," Kate added, making him glance at her, then nod slowly.

"Yeah, you're probably right there. But it would be a damned tricky situation to find those people without anyone else finding out and causing trouble."

She nodded agreement. Taylor was considering the thought too, which was interesting, but finally said, "I'm not planning on that at the moment even if it is possible. Let's keep that as a possible secret weapon for now."

"Yes, let's not make the situation any more insanely complex than it already is," her father urged, seeming tired. "We've got way more than enough other things to think about at the moment." He reached out and snagged the last of the spring rolls left from the food they'd brought up with them and ate it. "It's been a long day and we need to concentrate on what we do with Coil and his people. The sooner we can get rid of him and let the authorities deal with the fallout, the better. I think we need to spend a few days going over all the information we currently have to work out the best path forward, squeeze anything else we need out of him as required, then hand off the whole package deal to someone else. Alien computer networks are a secondary issue that can keep for now. And I can't believe I'm saying that, but god knows life is bizarre these days…"

"It'll take me a while to figure out what to do about his power anyway, Dad," Taylor said. "And I need to check on my crystals too, before we go home."

"All right, let's call it a night then. Good work everyone, and Lisa, I don't quite know what to say. I can't help thinking you've probably done something you shouldn't have, but it seems to have worked, so… good job." He smiled at Lisa, who looked pleased.

"My power did half the work, I just talked it into that."

"Which is probably something I should be deeply worried about," he muttered as he stood up. "Between you and Taylor I fear for my sanity. And Reality. Please try not to bend it too much."

"No promises, Dad," Taylor replied brightly, hopping to her feet. He sighed, shaking his head, then put his arm over her shoulder and gave her a hug.

"You are far, far too much like your mom sometimes."

"I do what I can because I must," she replied calmly.

"For Science!" Lisa cried, waving her silly hat over her head.

"Oh, god," he sighed quietly as they left the room, but she knew his heart wasn't in it. He was having fun, really.

After all, how could he not?