"Have you noticed how strange things are getting around here?"
Amy looked up from the book she was reading to see her sister peering out the window of the living room, her face in profile showing a reflective thoughtfulness that many people wouldn't think in character for the blonde. She knew better, as Vicky was in fact an intelligent and well educated girl who did in fact think quite hard about a lot of things. She was, after all, easily able to keep up with her AP Parahuman studies classes at the university on top of her high school work, which was definitely something she needed a considerable amount of brains to manage.
Vicky simply had, at times, poor impulse control. That was not necessarily a function of how smart one was after all. And her powers didn't help, of course. An impulse that in normal people would probably either not amount to anything much, or at worse cause minimal chaos, in a Brute of her level could be a lot more… damaging… than you'd want. And her aura, which she found hard to tamp down sometimes, certainly didn't make the overall situation less potentially difficult...
This had caused problems in the past, and while Amy knew Vicky was aware of these issues, and was working on controlling them, future problems were entirely possible even so.
Unfortunately this had, despite the best efforts of everyone in New Wave, left the other girl with something of a reputation, which Amy felt was in many cases unwarranted even if there was an element of truth to aspects of it. Of course Vicky had much stronger feelings about the whole thing and would go on at length expressing those feelings given half a chance.
It was fair to say Amy's sister wasn't fond of people who compared her to various natural disasters…
"How do you mean?" the brunette asked, putting a finger in the book to mark her place, while watching the other girl. "Strange in what way?"
"Strange in pretty much every way," Vicky replied, still looking out at the winter landscape of their front yard. "Shadow Stalker's gone under mysterious circumstances and the PRT won't say why. Or at least what they said is obviously not completely accurate from what Dennis has told us. That giant wreck vanished from the Bay. Mom's actually smirking to herself sometimes, which is weird. Asbestos closed Winslow, and half a dozen other buildings now too. The Mayor's gone all in on rooting out corruption in City Hall. Half the last administration got arrested, a dozen cops were hauled away by the other cops, the Feds apparently grabbed several people in all sorts of places, and Dean told me the other day that no one has heard a thing from Coil for weeks." She shrugged, then turned around and half-sat on the windowsill, looking back at Amy, who pushed herself a little more erect in the sofa and leaned on the cushions while studying her sister.
"No one's even sure Coil's a thing," Amy commented with a lift of an eyebrow. "I mean, a Parahuman. He exists at least but no one has a clue what his powers even are."
"I'm not sure he does exist anymore," Vicky almost smiled, before going back to seeming pensive. "I've heard rumors that someone got him. Or something."
"Something?" Amy repeated quizzically. "Like a monster? It was hiding under his bed and ate him?"
Vicky did grin this time, giggling a little. "Or it was in the dryer and jumped him when he went to change his shirt… I don't know. Monster? Probably not, but around this place, who knows? But Dean said that there hasn't been a single sighting of his mercs for ages, anywhere in the city. Just dropped out of sight overnight weeks back."
"Maybe he just decided that Brockton wasn't the right place for whatever it is he does," Amy suggested. "Went to annoy some other city, perhaps?"
Her sister shrugged. "I don't have a clue. No one does. Can't say I'd miss him if he did. We already have way too many villains as it is. But it's still weird. And then you have the way that the ABB have gone all quiet since Oni Lee fucked himself, and even the E88 seem a little less obvious right now. You'd think they'd have jumped at the chance to do something idiotic while Lung was distracted or whatever it is, but until yesterday they'd been quieter than usual for quite a while. And then when they do decide to fuck around, the PRT made them find out way faster and more effectively than they usually manage. So now they're down Rune and Othala, which has got to hurt. And Piggot didn't take any chances, she shipped both of them out by air in hours, which is yet another weird change to the usual sort of thing."
Amy was nodding slowly as she listened. Her sister was right, the situation in the last month or so around the city had changed more than she'd seen before, in a number of ways. But she certainly couldn't see any connection between them.
What did a ship vanishing in the night, the PRT getting off their ass and doing their job properly for once, the Mayor cleaning house like a rabid maid after dust bunnies, and Oni Lee committing suicide-by-stupidity have in common? And how did it relate to asbestos and a super-villain's mercenaries?
"It would take one hell of a conspiracy theorist to link all of those together," she remarked with a snort of humor. "If that's what you're going for."
Vicky shook her head, her blonde hair flying about her shoulders for a second. "Not really. I can't see how they're all connected aside from happening in the same place at roughly the same time. But it still seems a bit bizarre to me. Like things are going along the way they always do then bang, everything changes almost overnight. Weird coincidences, probably, but it makes you think, right?" She moved to sit on the other end of the sofa, Amy curling her legs up to make room for her sister. Leaning back she put her arms along the back of the sofa and stared out the window again. "And it makes me wonder what else will change."
"Hopefully something good," Amy said.
"Yeah. Hopefully. Maybe Kaiser will fall down a well and vanish too or something." She grinned as Amy laughed.
"We should be so lucky. I'd like to push all of the Nazis down a well then fill it with concrete…"
"Most people would," her sister noted wisely.
They sat in companionable silence for a little while, Amy joining her sister in peering out into the chilly morning at the crisp white view. Few cars were moving around at the moment, this early in the day. Eventually Vicky sighed. "I wonder what Sophia did do?" she muttered almost inaudibly.
"Something that got her properly fucked," Amy responded quietly. "Reading between the lines of what Dennis said the other day, and thinking about what I've seen because of her before, my money is on her killing someone. Or several someones."
The blonde looked at her for a long moment, then slowly nodded, looking sad. "Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me, to be honest. She was an angry, vicious girl and really violent. I've heard quite a lot of rumors in the last year about things she did before they caught her, and for that matter after they caught her… I could believe she'd do something stupid and it finally caught up with her."
"And Carol knows what that is," Amy added after a second.
Vicky met her eyes. "I think so too. But she's never going to tell us."
"No." Amy shrugged a little. "I'm fine with that, I guess. We don't need to know the details. But it's linked to the thing at Winslow, for damn sure."
"Yeah. All those questions she was asking… That was definitely building some sort of legal case. Probably against Winslow itself, and the PRT, I'll bet. Because if it was Sophia who got arrested for dealing, after she tried to set someone else up for the same thing… I doubt that girl's parents were very happy about it."
"No. And could you blame them? That sort of record would follow you around for years." Amy shook her head in disgust. "I don't know why anyone would try to set someone up to be arrested as a drug dealer but it's a shitty thing to do."
Vicky nodded agreement, looking pensive. "Poor girl. I hope she's all right."
"We might never know, because Carol certainly won't mention who it was. But considering how pleased with herself she is at the moment, I think whoever she's working for probably is going to end up getting more or less anything they ask for. And the PRT won't be very happy about that." Amy grinned at her sister, who was smirking a little.
"Probably not. Kind of serves them right though. They should have noticed Stalker was a horrible person and stopped her," Vicky replied with a shrug, not sounding all that worried about the PRT having a bad day. Amy herself wasn't, either. She didn't have anything specific against the organization other than a sense that they didn't really try hard enough to fix things, but she thought this whole situation was something they'd dropped themselves into and should have picked up on much earlier. Before someone innocent nearly got their life ruined due to the actions of one of their own people.
Oh well. Hopefully the mystery nearly a victim would end up with enough payout that it would make up for whatever it was Sophia had put her through other than the drugs thing. The one part Amy was certain of was that there was no way this was a spur of the moment attack, which implied that the Ward had probably been doing other things for some time before she overstepped herself.
The Dallon girl wasn't fond of bullies and felt that one getting hung by their own rope was both apt and hilarious. Vicky, she knew, felt much the same.
The two sisters sat in comfortable quiet for some time, Amy going back to reading her book and Vicky lost in her own thoughts, until eventually the blonde spoke again. "I feel like doing some last minute Christmas shopping. Want to come?"
Lowering her book once more, Amy glanced at her sister. "I thought you had a Dean for doing that?" she commented with a small evil smile, causing the other girl to poke her in the leg with a giggle.
"I can buy things myself, you know!"
"So you claim but most of the time it seems to be his money doing the buying…"
"He's got plenty of money and likes paying for things."
"I'm sure he does. Such a sweet boy. So generous."
Vicky stuck out her tongue as Amy laughed.
"I know you don't get on with him, which is weird, by the way, he really is a nice guy, but I'll ignore that for now," her sister chuckled. "I just thought some sister time without anyone else would be fun. It's early, we can go shopping, get something to eat, wander around for a while and watch the tourists watching us… Why not?"
With a faint amused sigh Amy closed her book. "Fine. Just to keep you happy."
"Oh, poor Amy, the hard life of having to go outside and not bury yourself in a book for the whole day," Vicky said melodramatically, rising to her feet and pressing the back of her hand against her brow. "It's terrible, the life I force on you. Being… sociable. Ugh."
"Enough, stop being so… so… you," Amy managed through her giggling. "I'll come. I want to check out some bookshops anyway."
Vicky grabbed her arms and heaved her to her feet, giving her a wide eyed look. "It's the Christmas break, Ames! Stop reading and let's have fun!"
"Reading is fun," Amy protested, still smiling.
"You are such a nerd," her sister said with a shake of her head.
"You're one to talk, Ms AP Parahuman Studies. How nerdy can you get?"
Smiling brilliantly, the other Dallon sister put her arm around the shorter Amy and squeezed affectionately. "Not as nerdy as you," she whispered into Amy's ear with a giggle of her own. "You have… The Knack."
"Idiot." Amy disentangled herself from her sister, then shook her head. "Stop being strange and let's go if we're going." She was feeling oddly cheerful at the moment, their discussion of how the city was apparently changing for the better having had more of an impact on her mood than she'd have expected. By the looks of it Vicky was feeling the same way.
The blonde chuckled, then both of them headed off to put on coats and boots. Shortly they were ascending into the air from the back yard, the cold crisp air staved off by lots of layers and good cheer.
"Your daughter and her friends are a credit to the ideals of U.N.I.O.N., Chief."
Danny glared at Kurt, who merely grinned back at him. "Stop that," he growled. "You're at least as bad as they are, which is horrifying. Encouraging them is the last thing we need."
"It's nice to see initiative used by the younger agents," Matt put in with a broad smile, causing Danny to sigh heavily and rest his forehead on clasped hands. "I remember back in my day, when I first went through U.N.I.O.N. training, how the people at the top tended to be dismissive of the agent in the field taking advantage of circumstances… Now look at how it's going! With an enlightened chief like you in charge of the agency, we're really going places."
"Jesus Christ, what did I ever do to deserve this?" Danny moaned into his hands which were now over his face, his glasses pushed up. "I tried to live a good life, tried to help my friends and family, and now this bizarre excuse for a… a…. whatever the fuck it is… is happening and it won't stop happening!"
"Cheer up, Chief, you're doing a fantastic job," Kurt comforted him solicitously, patting him on the back.
Lisa, who along with Taylor, was attempting to stifle her laughter, something that was exceptionally difficult, waited until the poor man lifted his head and gave his old friends a look of annoyance. "I have to ask myself if this entire place has always been staffed by complete lunatics, or whether the lunacy is my daughter's fault," he finally sighed, leaning back and shaking his head in despair. Lisa didn't need her power, which was watching proceedings with considerable amusement of its own, to know that he was only half-serious. Taylor's father was overall enjoying himself but the way things insisted on going steadily weirder was confusing him.
It was confusing her too, she was forced to admit, but it was the good sort of confusion she wouldn't have missed for the world. And enormous fun to boot.
"You know as well as I do we're all nuts, Danny," Kurt assured him calmly. "The entire Docks is crazy. If anyone here was sane they wouldn't be here in the first place, right?"
"He's not wrong," Kate commented from the other side of the table, grinning. "Just roll with it, Danny. It's fun."
"And they managed to snag a Nazi, which is really impressive at their age," Matt added approvingly. "I'm always up for grabbing Nazis. Preferable by something sensitive, then squeezing hard…"
Danny sighed again, but looked around at them all with a small smile of his own. "All right, fair enough, catching Victor like that was a good job, I suppose. The question is, what are we going to do with the bastard now we have him? He's not quite on the level of Hookwolf, but the man's dangerous in all sorts of ways. Not to mention a confirmed killer. I know for a fact he's murdered at least ten people in the last year."
"I'm sure not planning on letting him out until I work out how to make sure his power isn't going to cause problems," Taylor remarked seriously. "One way or the other."
"That sounds ominous," Kate chuckled. "Good. Ominous is exactly what we want for that fucker." Taylor grinned as the older woman gave her an approving look.
"His power works on line of sight and proximity from what I can find out," Lisa put in, having spent some time both searching the net and communing with her power last night. "If necessary we can set up a camera system in the secure room and run an optical cable link far enough away that we're all out of range. My power is sure his power won't be able to do anything if we do that."
"As far as I can tell the administrator agrees," Taylor said, making everyone look at her. "I think it would probably make sure his power couldn't hurt us anyway, but I don't know how."
"Ah. Your own Parahuman power that's not actually a Parahuman power," Matt commented, looking puzzled and intrigued. Taylor had filled them all in on what she and the other two girls had deduced yesterday, and there had been quite a lot of puzzlement and interested talk during this. "Or more accurately, not a Parahuman power yet. That still sounds completely ridiculous…"
"I know, but as far as I can tell it's correct," the brunette replied, shrugging a little helplessly. "It's absolutely fascinated by all the things I've worked out and since Lisa talked her power into contacting it, it's been staring at me non-stop. I can feel it."
"Weird, isn't it?" Lisa said knowingly. Taylor nodded agreement.
"Yeah. On the other hand, I get the impression it's prepared to both help and protect us because it both doesn't want to lose out on learning cool new tricks, and really really doesn't like its boss. Which is even weirder, I'll admit, but it's useful."
"We seem to have several things that need to be worked on," Danny said after they'd all been silent for a moment, thinking about the situation. Everyone turned to him. "One is what to do with Coil and his people. One is what we do with Victor. And one is coming up with a good list of questions for Lisa's oddly cooperative power, so we can try to work out what on earth is actually going on with the whole alien invader thing. And even as I say that I can't believe that I'm saying that. Alien invasions… Christ on a stick. We're a dockworker's association not something out of the X-Files." He shook his head in incredulous wonder.
"Looks like we're both, Danny," Kate laughed. "I'm fine with that. And by the sound of it, we're in the right place with the right people to find out things that probably no one else can."
"Which is the most peculiar part of the whole thing," he mumbled, sighing. "But I suppose someone has to do something, and by what Taylor and Lisa tell us, the current conspiracy who seem to know at least part of this are probably not actually very good at it."
"My power is not impressed with them," Lisa confirmed, getting a sense of agreement from the back of her mind. Along with definite contempt.
"Fine. Whatever. We'll try to figure out the truth. Because apparently it's out there…" He shook his head slowly and wonderingly. "Life used to be a lot simpler."
"And a lot less entertaining," Kurt replied wisely. "I don't miss wondering if we'd be able to pay the bills next month."
"There is that, yes." Taylor's father nodded. "A good point indeed. All right, then." He looked at the pad in front of him which he'd scribbled some notes on, then tapped the first entry with the pen he picked up. "Coil. What do we do with him? We've extracted about all the useful information from him, his people, and his servers we can get, correct?"
Everyone looked at each other for a moment. "I think we have a few more questions for him, but depending on the answers, we're probably done with the asshole," Lisa finally said. "All his mercs have told us everything useful they knew. And Taylor and I have got a hell of a lot of data out of his servers, although there's probably still more work needed to get everything. But we can do that over time, I don't think there's any real hurry for what's left."
Taylor nodded next to her. "Yep. Lisa's cleaned him out completely, and laundered the money so thoroughly her power is certain no one else has a hope of ever finding it. And we set up some shell companies to transfer all his possessions to, like his buildings and his yacht. So anything useful he had now belongs to U.N.I.O.N. Except his base, which I really want…" She grinned at her father as everyone else laughed. He fixed her with a long-suffering look.
"Where are you going to put an underground base even if you can steal it, Taylor?" he asked in a manner both amused and resigned. She shrugged.
"I'm still working on that. It's a tricky problem, true, but I bet I can figure it out."
"That's what worries me," he grumbled. She giggled, causing Lisa to smile.
"Anyway, from our point of view," Taylor went on, indicating Lisa with a finger, then herself, "We don't really have any use for him now aside from a few more questions. Mostly about who sold him his powers. Or rather, since we know who sold him his powers, what he knows about them. Or thinks he knows about them, which is probably not the same thing."
Danny nodded, making some notes, then looked around the table. "Anyone else need a super-villain for anything?" he queried.
"Can't think of a use for him," Kurt replied, shaking his head. "Aside from a boat anchor. And he's too skinny to make a good one."
"A few concrete blocks tied to him would fix that," Kate suggested with an evil smile.
"Bastard deserves that and more," Matt nodded. "But like Danny said, probably best not to resort to that level if we don't have to. I vote we hand him over to the PRT. I'll bet Director Piggot would enjoy a nice Christmas interrogation."
"Given her history with the asshole, you bet your ass she would," Lisa told him. She'd worked out a lot of intriguing things about the relationship between Calvert and Director Piggot and she was totally certain that the woman absolutely loathed their captive.
"I think that's probably the best approach unless anyone else has a better idea?" Danny remarked, looking around the table. Everyone indicated assent. "Fine. We'll have to arrange a method to do that which doesn't let them work out who was behind his capture, because I really don't want the PRT sticking their noses into our business, but considering the people involved, I doubt that will be too difficult." He looked grimly satisfied as they all nodded approval.
"We'll make copies of his data," Taylor said. "His server setup had a big tape drive for backups, so we can use that, and make sure that anything which could cause problems for us isn't included. We should probably keep the servers themselves because they'll come in handy aside from anything else, and there's still a lot of stuff to look through. But we can definitely hand over enough information to bury him, along with all the stuff he stole from the PRT."
"We do not hand over any of his research into other Parahumans, though," Lisa commented firmly, causing them to look at her. "That could be disastrous if it ever got out. Just a rumor would be enough to cause chaos. If the PRT get their hands on it…" She shook her head. "Best not to risk it."
"It was mostly only on paper, correct?" Danny asked.
"Yeah. He isn't a complete idiot," she replied.
"Which bits are missing?" Michelle, who had been listening quietly the whole time, asked innocently, making them all look at her then laugh.
"Common sense for one," Lisa finally replied when she recovered.
"That does appear to be a common trait among Parahumans and the PRT," the lawyer nodded, smiling a little. "Unfortunately."
"All right. We ask him any final questions, get a nice little information package arranged for the PRT, and work out how to hand him and his people over without leaving any clues to who did it," Danny said, making some notes, then raising his eyes to look around the rest. Everyone nodded agreement.
"Before we do that, I want to try one last experiment with him," Taylor put in, causing Lisa and the others to turn their attention to her.
"Which is?" her father asked, a shade apprehensively.
"I'm going to try fully turning his power off permanently," she replied, looking thoughtful. "I think I can see enough of how it works now to do that. At least in his case. Mostly because his conduit is already so damaged that it's not as complicated as it would be with a properly functioning one. And I want to check if I'm right, because that's useful data I need for Victor."
Everyone gazed at her in silence for a few seconds. Lisa wasn't surprised as such, but she was slightly taken aback even after having talked to her friend about exactly this for days. "You think you've got enough information now?" she finally asked.
Taylor half-nodded, half-shrugged, meeting her eyes. "I'm pretty sure I do, yeah. In a way it's quite easy, at least in theory. I think I can basically pull him out of beneath and leave the conduit behind. Like I do with things like clothes and guns and whatnot. It's… not quite the same thing, it's more like the trick with momentum in one way, but different in all the others. Studying Victor gave me a lot of interesting ideas. I have a feeling there are several ways to break the connection, but this one feels like it will work best with dead powers. I can't really explain why, it's another of those 'don't have the terminology' problems, but it makes sense in here." She tapped her head with one finger.
"Huh. Interesting." Lisa felt her own power apparently thinking much the same thing, although with a certain amount of incredulity alongside that.
"What are the risks to him?" Michelle asked curiously, studying Taylor. "We don't want to damage the man any more than absolutely necessary and human experimentation is… let's put it down as rather a gray area at best. Even if he's a murderous super villain with a body count, we have certain legal responsibilities towards him while he's in our custody."
Taylor nodded her understanding. "I don't think it will actually harm him," she replied after a moment or two of obviously considering her words. "Physically, at any rate. I'm not doing anything to his body, this is more like…" She looked around, visibly trying to come up with a suitable analogy. "...Like moving something out of a beam of sunlight on the windowsill. Although not really. I'm going to leave the memory of something that's not really there behind when I bring him back. Wow. It's hard to figure out the words. I really need to sit down sometime and write a good book on how this sort of thing works." The girl smiled momentarily. "I'll have to invent even more words than Papa did…"
"I see," the lawyer replied after a few seconds, nodding slowly. "I think. So the effect on him physically will be, in theory, limited to removing his connection to his power. I wonder what the effects mentally will be?"
"He's not going to enjoy it," Lisa put in with a sense of satisfaction. "My power is pretty sure of that and finds it kind of funny. But it also agrees, now it's stopped staring incredulously at Taylor, that there's no real risk to Calvert. Some powers might be a problem, like Case 53s, I think, but in his case he'll live." She smiled maliciously. "With any luck he'll really, really hate it though."
Matt snorted with laughter. "Not your favorite guy, is he, Lisa?"
"Not as such, no," she agreed vehemently, causing him to laugh again.
"Doesn't surprise me," he murmured.
"Can you do the same thing to Victor?" Kate asked with interest.
"That's the basic idea, but his situation is a little more complicated," Taylor replied with a nod. "His power is alive, whatever that really means in the case of powers. It's 'deployed' as Lisa's power puts it. And when I had a look at it, it's very different to Calvert's one. His is all folded up in a cool way, lots of interesting dimensional strangeness going on, probably as Anne suggested to make it easier to transport. Victor's is… very much larger and unfolded across an absolutely huge area as far as I can tell."
She shook her head in wonder. "It's hard to work out just how big it really is, because looking beneath at things in another dimension or whatever is going in isn't like normal sight in any way you can imagine, but it's definitely enormous. And since it's alive, for a given definition of the word, it might try to reconnect to him if I yoink the connection. Lisa's power certainly panicked when it lost her link and grabbed her again the moment it found her. I want to make sure his power can't do that, and right now I'm not sure how. But I'm working on it."
"Well, there's no real hurry to deal with him, right?" Kurt commented. "He'll keep for now while you study the problem."
"Yeah. That's the idea." Taylor nodded with a smile. "But I'd like to get rid of Coil and all his people. They're cluttering up beneath and making it untidy."
"It's an apparently infinite storage space, Taylor," her father pointed out.
"I know, but even so." She shrugged, grinning.
With a small sigh he nodded, making more notes. "Fine. That takes care of Victor for the moment. Taylor sits on him until after Christmas when we can revisit what the next step will be with the man. Now… the big one. Alien invasions, inept conspiracies, and god alone knows what else. And a strangely cooperative alien super power with annoying restrictions on what's classified as need to know information." He stared at the notebook with a puzzled expression for some seconds, then looked up and at each of them in turn. "As we seem to have found ourselves in the position of being able to find out more about the truth of the whole bizarre situation than probably anyone else, what do we ask Lisa's power? Any ideas?"
The whole group sat there for a while, thinking about the situation they found themselves in. Even Lisa was having some trouble with the whole idea at times, when she really thought about what they'd discovered so far. It was something so out there you wouldn't believe it in a novel, she mused, but then reality apparently didn't have to stick to believability…
"I think," Michelle began after some consideration, causing everyone to turn to her, "that we need to work out a comprehensive list of the things we want to know, then work out the best list of yes/no questions to ask Lisa's power to confirm. Approaching it in an ad-hoc manner will if nothing else take much longer than properly considering our queries up front, I feel. Certainly that is how I would approach a legal case with a potentially hostile witness, which this bears some similarity to. Lisa's power, as I understand it, actively wants to help but can't simply tell us all we want to find out, so if we can come up with a sensible list of well thought out queries we should be able to get the most efficient answers. If nothing else it will save considerable time and effort on Lisa's behalf."
"That sounds like a good idea, yeah," Matt agreed, looking thoughtful. "We should probably work up a list of categories of question, then any required subcategories, and figure out how they relate to each other. We may find an answer to one question actually answers several, or changes the questions we need to ask."
"Precisely." The lawyer pulled her own pad more directly in front of her and picked up her pen, clicking it then starting to write. "Main categories, in no particular order, would seem to be things like, details on the existing conspiracy that's selling powers, such as why they're doing this, how, where they got their information from, whether they know the dangers of what they're doing, if they're dangerous to us, what their end goals actually are, and so on. Then another one being the alien or aliens themselves, why they're here, what they're trying to achieve, how we can stop it in the event it's as bad as I fear it might be, et cetera. Another category is powers themselves, how they work, what they're intended to do… Also, possibly as a subcategory of that, why the second level administrator and Lisa's power are so cooperative with us, what they want separate from what the alien itself wants, whether they'll continue to aid us…"
She looked at the list she'd jotted down then up at them. "I expect there are many more things we will want to determine but that should get us started."
"This is going to take a while," Danny said with a shake of his head. "All right. I think we break for lunch, think about that list, and see if we can all come up with some other questions too. And I'm thinking that we may want to bring some other people in on this, people who might have some experience in what's getting close to a cross between a spy story and a science fiction one…"
"Who are you thinking about, Danny?" Kurt asked curiously. Then his eyebrows went up as Danny looked at him with a somewhat worried expression. "Oh. Oh boy. Yeah, I can see it, but… him?"
"Man knows his conspiracies and he's got a hell of a lot of experience with some fucking bizarre shit," Matt chuckled, having apparently also worked it out immediately. Lisa looked at Taylor, then back at the others, her power whispering into her mind. It was having a lot of fun from what she could tell, and suggested that things were going to get a lot stranger before long.
Shortly they were heading for the cafeteria and some food, while Danny had vanished on a mission, bearing the look of someone who was already regretting what he was going to do…
Pat looked up as the door opened, nodding to Danny Hebert as he entered. "Hey, Danny. How's things?" he questioned, already reaching for a pint glass.
"Not bad, Pat," the other man replied, glancing at the pint Pat was pouring, then looking around the room for a moment. His eyes stopped on one familiar figure, he sighed very faintly, then seemed to take a deep breath. "Make it two, if you would."
"No problem, Danny," the bar owner replied, having followed Danny's gaze. He put the first pint on the table, then moved to a different tap for the second. Shortly both were being carried by the other man across the room. Pat watched as he sat down across from Erwin and pushed one of the pints across to the old and completely nuts man, who looked at it with a raised eyebrow then accepted it. Decided that for the sake of his own peace of mind it was best not to ask, he turned to serve a couple of other people who'd just come in.
He did wonder why Erwin left with Danny half an hour later, but again, there were things it was best not to pry too deeply into.
And who knew? Possibly when Erwin came back he'd actually pay his fecking tab off… Stranger things had happened.
Admittedly Pat couldn't immediately think of an example, but he was sure he was right.
"Just a few more questions, Mr Calvert."
Thomas ground his teeth together, but he couldn't really do much else. The questioning had seemed to go on for hours. He was exhausted, baffled, furious to the point he'd gone right out the other side into a sort of resigned calm, and apprehensive about what the future held. Whoever these people really were, they knew far, far too much about things he was certain he'd buried for good years ago. They definitely had totally compromised his computers, there was no doubt about that at all based on some of the questions and statements, and he was depressingly well aware that they'd acquired every last asset he had.
It wasn't like they hadn't flat out told him that right at the beginning hours ago. He'd held out a distant hope that his interrogator had been bluffing, that they'd only got some of the information, but it had become blatantly obvious over the interminable series of questions that this was a fool's hope. No, they had everything, just as that bastard with the infuriatingly calm voice who never seemed to get impatient or annoyed had claimed.
But there were a lot of things he'd been asked that hadn't been in his server files, or written down anywhere. Things from a decade or more in the past, when he was just starting out, information he'd gone to significant effort to utterly erase from any records. But somehow these people, this agency or whatever it truly was, had known those things. He had no idea how. They'd have had to have been watching him for literally yea…
He froze even through his exhaustion as a terrible conclusion formed. They had been watching him for years. It was the only thing that fitted all the evidence. Whoever these people really were, they'd been somewhere in the background monitoring his every move for over a decade, and he'd never even had an inkling about it. Who were they?
Not Cauldron. Thomas was certain about that. This was not at all in keeping with Cauldron's methodology, and to be completely honest seemed to have a level of subtlety and competence that didn't quite fit. Cauldron were terrifyingly powerful, true. They had far too many resources, including… her. But one thing they weren't, at least in his experience, was all that subtle. Once you came to their notice, they made it very clear indeed that you lived or died on their sufferance, and didn't play games in the darkness.
These people? They didn't make threats, they didn't point a scary cape at you, they didn't appear in your office with a gun, they just… knew things. Things no one should have known. Things he was fairly certain even Cauldron didn't know about him. And the worst of it was, he didn't have the faintest idea who they were, how they knew what they knew, or what they actually wanted. Aside from information.
All the information.
And to top it off, somehow they'd neutralized his power. It hadn't worked correctly since he'd found himself here in this completely silent dark room, with this haunted Chair that followed him around. Whatever they'd done, however they'd done it, his power was… broken. It sputtered and flickered whenever he tried using it, in a manner that not only gave him a headache, but didn't make any sense. A power inhibitor, either Tinker Tech or via a Parahuman ability, didn't work like that. Not according to everything he'd ever managed to find out about such things. They simply shut powers down cold, either for a limited time, or over a limited area. Sometimes both. Usually once you were out of range of whatever it was, your power would come back as if nothing had happened, although he'd read about one or two methods that would cause a slow return over minutes to hours.
In his case, though… it was like his power was guttering out like an ancient fluorescent tube on its last legs, blinking on and off ineffectually. And it was one of the most unsettling things he'd ever experienced for more reasons than just the loss of something he relied on. At the back of his mind he could almost swear something was falling apart, breaking down as if it was eroding away in a fast current.
He didn't like the sensation at all.
The man behind the wall, or wherever he actually was, having paused for a good twenty seconds, calmly asked, "Who sold you your powers?"
Thomas froze. How did they even know that?
"Wh… what do you mean?" he replied, licking dry lips as he fruitlessly looked around at the utterly dark room outside the pool of light he was sitting in, then up at the spotlight above him.
"Your Parahuman ability isn't the result of a natural Trigger event, Mr Calvert. We are well aware that you purchased your ability from an organization that sells such things. We wish to know what you know about that organization."
He swallowed hard. This was even worse than everything that had come before it. If he didn't tell them, god knew what the end result would be, but he didn't think he'd enjoy it. On the other hand, if he told them about Cauldron, they would be less than pleased. That had been made abundantly clear.
"I don't know what you mean," he tried.
The interrogator chuckled tolerantly. "Of course you do, Mr Calvert. You purchased a Parahuman ability, the dual time line power you've been using for twelve… no, thirteen years now. The one that is no longer functional. How much did you pay for it? Did you know exactly what you were getting, or was it… Ah. I see. It was a class of power, not a specifically defined one. And it cost you… eight and a half million dollars?"
Glaring into the darkness, Thomas felt despair. How were they doing this? Even a high end Thinker would have trouble coming up with the things they were apparently pulling out of thin air. Especially so fast.
"A name, Mr Calvert, please."
He dropped his head onto his chest. "They call themselves… Cauldron." Half expecting to feel the cold metal of a pistol barrel on the back of his neck, he flinched.
Nothing happened.
"I see. And how did you first come into contact with… Cauldron?"
With a sense of resignation mixed with dull anger and impotent confusion, Thomas threw caution to the wind and answered the questions.
There were many of them, and some were very peculiar. He never did work out just what they were genuinely trying to learn. Not that it mattered any more.
"Cauldron?" Taylor looked at her dad, then Lisa, feeling that someone somewhere had really lost the plot. "Why 'Cauldron?'" The story as related by Calvert and supplemented by Lisa's power was just silly in many respects. The name only being part of the silliness.
Lisa shrugged. "No idea. Maybe it was randomly chosen?"
"Or someone really likes cooking." Taylor sighed, shaking her head. "They sound… suboptimal from a common sense perspective."
"They sound like idiots," her father grumbled. "Good intentions to start with, but with no real idea how to go about whatever they're trying to do, and some very dubious ethical standards at best."
"Yeah, I wasn't impressed by what he said," Lisa agreed. "My power is a lot less impressed than I am."
"The administrator isn't very happy about them either as far as I can tell," Taylor added, smiling briefly as she got an impression of annoyed concurrence.
"Well, whatever they are, they're not currently our problem, so there's no point wasting time on them for now," her father said. "Assuming the administrator can keep them off our backs."
Taylor nodded as she felt a protective sensation, as if something was patting her on the head while holding a loaded gun ready and looking around suspiciously. "I think we're good there, dad. It's definitely determined to keep us safe."
"Keep you safe, I think," Lisa put in, a shade worriedly. "I'm not entirely convinced the rest of us are as important."
"You are all important to me, so that means you're important to the administrator. Right, administrator?" Taylor glanced around the room, as if she'd see something even as she knew she wouldn't. The feeling of acceptance and confirmation that came back even so made her smile. "Yeah, it knows. We're all in this together."
Lisa was staring at her with a sort of amused disbelief. "I can't work out if you're more scary than the actual alien superpower that is sneaking around in the background or not," she mumbled, shaking her head. Taylor grinned at her, and something else did as well, making Lisa twitch.
"Shit," she muttered. "That will never stop being weird even compared to my power. Which is giggling to itself. Fucking thing."
Taylor's father looked between them, then at Matt and the others, who were watching wearing various expressions. "Anyway…," he said after a moment or two. "We can get back to that later. We've got enough useful information to build quite a list of questions for your power, Lisa, but for now we need to deal with Coil."
"I've got a few ideas for that, Danny," Matt commented.
"Me too," Kate added, Kurt nodding next to her.
"It will take a day or so to finish all the documentation," Michelle put in, flipping through yet another notebook, with a glance at Lisa who signified agreement with a motion of one hand. "And make all the tape backups of the relevant data. We should probably assume we'll be notifying the PRT on the twenty-fourth, to give us plenty of time to make sure everything is ready."
"Piggot is going to love her little gift," a highly amused gravelly voice commented from the side of the room, everyone looking to see Erwin grinning at them. He'd been watching with great interest and what looked like approval ever since Taylor's dad had come in with him just after lunch, and had asked a lot of very good questions at various times. Not to mention having a fair number of useful suggestions.
Taylor had known, or at least know about, the crazy older man for years. Her mother had apparently known him quite well, and it was apparent her dad did as well, and she herself knew him well enough to exchange waves when they happened to pass in the street. He had a certain reputation, which was a strange sort of tolerant respect, combined with an amount of resigned bemusement. If some of the stories both her parents had told her about what he'd claimed over the years were true, he'd done just about everything you could do and somehow lived through it.
And apparently he knew an awful lot about military, police, and PRT operational matters, from what her father had said. Which was useful…
"We just need to be sure they can't trace anything back to us," Michelle remarked.
"Easy enough, we can use Coil's own equipment like we did for the guns to print everything, so even if they do manage to trace any of it, it'll lead right back to him," Matt responded with a grin. "And we're really good at making sure any gear we leave behind is about as anonymous as it gets. A fair number of people here have… useful skills… in that sort of thing."
"Can probably teach you a few tricks you might not have come across," Erwin offered cheerfully. "Had a lot of practice with this sort of thing over the years. Be nice to see the skills going to a new generation." He looked slyly at Taylor's father, with a sidelong grin at her and Lisa. "U.N.I.O.N. has some very competent agents, from what I hear."
"Oh, god," her dad sighed. Erwin chuckled to himself.
"Buck up, lad, this will be hilarious," he stated with an evil smirk. "Just like old times. Even if I am retired, you never forget the trade craft."
"You are at least as insane as they are, so god help us all," her dad sighed, even as everyone else was laughing. His lips were twitching though. "Come on, let's get to work. I don't plan on spending the entire Christmas holiday period doing this cloak and dagger stuff."
"Ooh, a cloak. I could get one to go with the hat," Lisa said brightly, tilting the tricorn she kept wearing when doing this sort of thing to a sharp angle and giving him a smirk.
"I can think of interesting things to do with a dagger," Taylor mused out loud, causing Lisa to giggle and her father to put his hand over his eyes.
"Enough," he ordered. "We have work to do. Stop trying to worry me."
"You got it, Chief," Taylor replied brightly, smiling at him. Next to her, Lisa snapped off a sharp salute and clicked her heels together. Her dad stared at both of them, shook his head, and turned, walking out of the room without another word. Sharing a grin with Lisa and hearing Erwin laugh behind them, both girls followed.
"What the hell is that?" Clockblocker stared across the street at the door of a building he knew was empty, as the company that had owned it had gone bust about a year ago and no one seemed interested in buying the place. It had been some sort of office building, and was four stories of old brickwork with quite a few windows, all of them boarded up now.
However, although when they'd gone past the building less than five minutes ago in the other direction it had looked exactly as it normally did, now there was a large fluorescent orange sign on the sheet of wood covering the door, which had certainly not been there earlier. A yard square, it had written on it in big black letters, "For the attention of the PRT. Merry Christmas, Director."
He exchanged a puzzled glance with Kid Win, who was staring at the same thing he was while standing on his flying board. Both of them slowly edged closer, keeping a wary eye out for anything dangerous. You never knew what might be a trap, after all. The pair of them were on their way back from a Christmas Eve patrol, more accurately a PR event, on the boardwalk and had only diverted down a side alley to investigate a noise Dennis had thought he'd heard. Nothing had been apparent, though, so after a quick check around, they'd made their way back to the main road, only to find that in the brief period they'd been distracted someone had put this sign up.
Why? How? He looked around, and couldn't see anything other than an empty road leading in one direction towards the waterfront, and in the other back to the more populated part of the commercial district. A couple of hundred yards that way there were lots of people wandering around doing last minute shopping, plenty of traffic, and everything was lit up in a festive way. Here, though, it was pretty much abandoned right now, the road a smaller one that was entirely office buildings and as a result deserted at this time of evening so close to Christmas. It was a convenient route back to the PRT building avoiding the crowds which is why they'd taken it, having had enough of tourists for the moment.
"Any ideas?" he said in a low voice to his friend, who shook his head.
"Nope. I can't see anyone around either. We were only gone a few minutes, and I didn't hear a thing!"
"No footprints in the snow there," Dennis pointed out. He looked up at the roof line, seeing only street light glow reflected from low cloud, then at the road, which didn't even have any fresh tire tracks as far as he could tell.
They shared a glance, then Dennis tapped his comm earpiece. "Console?"
"Receiving, Clockblocker," Vista's voice immediately replied, sounding professional even if high pitched, which always amused him. "Problem?"
"I… don't know," he said after a moment or two. "It's weird, though. We've got a sign on a door to an abandoned building that somehow appeared when we weren't looking. I swear it wasn't there five or six minutes ago, and now it is."
"A sign?" Vista sounded confused. "What sort of sign?"
"It says 'For the attention of the PRT. Merry Christmas' in large friendly letters," he replied, shaking his head.
There was silence for a few seconds. "You're pulling my leg," she finally replied.
"No, honest. I'm looking right at it. Big orange sign, and it says exactly what I said it says."
"Any signs of who did it?" she queried.
"No. Not a clue we can see."
"It might be a trap. Don't get any closer. I'll pass it up the chain."
"Roger that. We thought the same thing. We're not going an inch closer to it." He looked at Chris, who was already backing away, having been listening in. Missy's voice vanished with a click.
Fifteen seconds later, the earpiece clicked again. "Report, Clockblocker," Armsmaster's voice said in clipped tones. He told the older hero exactly what he'd told Vista. There was again a pause, until Armsmaster replied, "Backup is en route. Do not approach the site. Retreat to at least two hundred yards distance and wait for assistance."
"Understood, sir," he replied, nodding to Chris, who started moving back again. He followed, both of them stopping at the specified distance. Already he could hear the sound of a PRT transport approaching, the distinctive whine of the transmission from the large APC carrying through the quiet street. "We've retreated to a safe distance."
"I'll be there shortly," the older man's voice said. "Armsmaster out."
Once again a click sounded. Dennis turned to face Chris. "What do you think? Someone playing a joke, a trap, or something else?"
His colleague shrugged. "I have no idea. It might be any or all of those."
"Guess we'll find out soon," he said, looking to the left where the PRT truck was rumbling down the street towards them. Way down at the far end he could also see Armsmaster's bike turning onto the street near the waterfront and accelerating in their direction.
Both the transport and Armsmaster arrived at almost the same time, the latter dismounting his motorcycle having parked it next to them. The PRT troopers along with Velocity climbed out of the back of the transport and took up positions facing the building Dennis indicated. Armsmaster produced a set of binoculars and aimed them at the door, reading the sign for a moment, then lowered them. He seemed puzzled more than anything else.
"Odd…" he muttered almost inaudibly.
"What do you think it is, sir?" Chris asked.
"Unknown at this time," the older man replied without taking his eyes off the sign. He watched it for a minute or so, then turned without a word and walked off, heading towards his bike. Chris and Dennis exchanged looks and followed. When they got there he was pulling a few items out of one of the storage compartments of the bike and quickly assembling some sort of small drone, which he tossed into the air without ceremony when it was done. The thing whined into life and hovered, then zipped off towards the building. Everyone watched as it stopped in front of the sign and scanned it with a visible faint bluish beam of light.
"No fingerprints…" Armsmaster muttered, apparently looking at his HUD. "No energy signature, no chemical residue other than that expected from standard printer ink. No apparent technology, paper stuck to the door with conventional sign paste…" The drone scanned the boarded up door as well, the Tinker waiting patiently. "No triggers for anything, no explosives, toxins, chemical weapons… Nothing apparently dangerous at all. On the face of it the sign is merely a sign." He turned to Dennis and Chris. "And you saw no indication of who might have put it there?"
"No, sir. Nothing at all. It must have happened when we were checking out a weird noise down that alley next to the building, and we were gone five minutes max. It definitely wasn't there before we went into the alley." Chris looked at Dennis, who nodded agreement.
"Interesting…" Armsmaster looked back to the drone, some invisible command sending it to scan the rest of the building. Only a couple of minutes later he stiffened. "I'm reading… sixty seven human life signs in the interior of the building. Ground floor, near the middle. All apparently alive, possibly unconscious." Stalking towards the building he snapped orders, the troopers quickly following, while Velocity joined him. Moments later he'd unshipped his halberd and used it to rip the sheet of thick plywood off the door, two troopers grabbing it and propping it beside the entrance. Both Protectorate heroes vanished inside the building, four of the troopers going with with, while the other four waited outside.
Chris and Dennis exchanged glances.
"You curious too?" the latter said quietly. Chris nodded slowly.
They looked at the building again, then each other, before sauntering in that direction, Chris carrying his board under his arm now. Arriving at the door, they peered inside, seeing lights somewhere in there, from flashlights. Just as Dennis was about to try to talk his way past the troopers who were watching them, one put his hand to his helmet. "Yes, sir," he said sharply, waving the other three to follow. All four of them disappeared inside the building.
Left alone outside, Dennis and Chris stared after them, somewhat taken aback.
"That's… a thing," Chris mumbled.
"Yeah. On the other hand, no one is watching us now, so…"
Dennis waved at the open door. "After you."
"Oh, great, I get to be the canary again," Chris sighed, but nevertheless he slowly advanced into the old office building, Dennis bringing up the rear. They headed towards the sounds of orders being given, and all the lights, keeping a careful eye out for either angry superiors or anything dangerous. When they arrived near where all the commotion was they found a huge open-plan office on the other side of a set of double doors, and peered inside through the glass. Rather oddly about a dozen shipping containers were sitting in a neat row in the middle of the large space, making Dennis wonder how on earth they'd ended up there. Each one of them was much too large to fit through any of the doors he could see, and he knew the things weighed at least a couple of tons each.
Armsmaster was standing in front of one of the containers, the door of which was gaping open, looking into it. He seemed startled if his body language was anything to go on, although Dennis thought he could also sense a significant amount of satisfaction for some reason. Moments later two of the troopers came out of the container frogmarching a tall skinny black dude between them, the man only wearing boxers and looking somewhat chilly as well as ready to drop from exhaustion. Not to mention like he wished he was absolutely anywhere but here.
He seemed to be muttering to himself with a very strange expression on his face, which if Dennis was any judge was mostly stunned horror.
"Isn't that…" Chris began, also watching with confusion.
"That Commander Calvert guy?" Dennis completed for him.
"Yeah. I haven't seen him around for weeks, now I think about it."
"Me either. I wonder what the fuck is going on here?"
"Nothing you need to worry about, Clockblocker," a voice said from behind them, making both shriek in shock and whirl around, to see Director Piggot and Miss Militia standing behind them. Neither had heard the two women approach. Director Piggot looked tired, but also viciously pleased with herself. She glanced over their shoulders, then back to them. "Your patrol is over. Report back to the PRT building. And gentlemen? Do not mention anything you saw here to anyone until I tell you it's allowed, do you understand me?"
Dennis nodded as fast as he could, swallowing a little. There was something about the look in the woman's eyes that told him now was not the time for any form of joke. He put his hand on Chris's shoulder and guided his friend around the two women and down the hallway towards the exit as fast as seemed polite. When the pair risked a glance back as they left, neither the Director nor Miss Militia was in sight.
"I wonder what that was all about?" he said in a low voice as they made haste back towards base, neither wanting to risk the ire of the formidable woman.
"I have no idea, and I don't think I want to know," Chris replied quietly, shivering a little. "Did you see the look in her eyes? Like she wanted to eat someone's heart…"
"Yeah," Dennis nodded, feeling cold. He suddenly had a much better idea of just how dangerous the Director used to be when she was in active service.
Not at all someone he wanted to point that look at him.
They were quiet the rest of the walk back to the PRT building.
Emily stared through the cell window at the broken man on the other side, her face expressionless. After some time, she turned and walked away.
The small smile she was wearing as she left the building made quite a few people flinch as she passed. The fact that she was humming 'Santa Claus is Coming to Town' under her breath made them pale...
"Yeah, it worked perfectly," Taylor said with a sense of achievement, only some of which was coming from her. "It took a little experimentation but I was right. And his power is still there at the other end of the conduit."
"Are you going to try the same thing with Victor?" Anne asked.
"Not yet, I need some more thinking about him, but at some point." Taylor smiled, looking at the older girl, then Lisa. "Right now, though, I have a different cunning plan."
Both her friends leaned forward with interest as she unrolled a blueprint on the kitchen table. "I present Operation: All Your Base Are Belong To Us."
Anne and Lisa exchanged a grin, then they all started making notes on exactly how they were going to go about stealing an entire Endbringer shelter.
The tricky part was doing it without making the building above it fall down, but Taylor had a plan for that.