Leaf
Chapter Eleven
Miss Militia brushed a bit of ash off from her costume, but she knew that the smell of smoke would stay with her. She had spent the night chasing shadows, always arriving after the explosion. Never in time to stop it, but in time to see a woman in her sixties with a leg blown off, lying next to a man her same age pierced with shrapnel.
It was just another day on the job. People called her a hero, but that term had never suited her, and on nights like this least of all. Miss Militia was a soldier, and always would be.
Right now, her city was at war, and between the bombs and the guns and the screams and the bodies, it was enough to make her feel like she was a child again.
When she was called to report to Director Piggot's office, she felt only the barest twinge of annoyance, which she quelled as her grenade launcher turned into a hunting rifle. The bombings had been a distraction. The real fight was in the PRT building with Lung. Miss Militia returned with the bulk of the Protectorate, but while Armsmaster led the charge, Miss Militia met with the director.
"Hell of a night," Piggot said as she entered.
"It's nearly over," she replied. "What did you want to see me about?"
Piggot pushed herself up from her chair. She moved slowly, her body having molded around a lifestyle full of desks and paperwork. But she was a soldier too. It wasn't obvious in the way she looked, but she was as stubborn and relentless as they came.
"Have a seat," she said.
Miss Militia complied. There was a security camera feed on Piggot's monitor. "What am I looking at?"
The director walked across the office to stretch her legs. "Leaf," she said.
She looked up. "What?"
"Leaf. You spoke with her when she was arrested weeks ago, then again on Thursday when she broke into the country club. She was spotted again in the company of the Undersiders that night breaking Tattletale out of the hospital ward, and then again tonight when the Undersiders took advantage of the bombings to break out Grue."
Miss Militia's eyes widened. "She was here?" She had been surprised when Leaf had begun associating with the Undersiders, though she had hoped that it had been a singular event. But to work with them twice? And take advantage of a city-wide crisis?
"She was. You know her better than anyone else, and you're good with people. Understanding her intentions will help us as we move forward. Vista came up to slow the Undersiders' assault, and shortly afterward a group of ABB members, led by Oni Lee, arrived to break Lung out of custody. Watch the video."
Bombs have been going off across the city, a sociopath attacked the PRT, Lung nearly escaped, and you choose to focus on Leaf? That made no sense. Leaf was, at worst, a nuisance. Any hero that tried to fight her would look bad if they won and worse if they lost, and in most cases it was better to focus on virtually anything else. The Undersiders as a whole were barely more than that. They were usually good at getting away before they got into trouble, but they didn't have the firepower to hold their ground if they got cornered. On a night where the entire city had devolved into a warzone, focusing on a small child on a small team seemed ...
The video showed Vista standing in the lobby. The picture was clear, though the colors were muted and the perspective distorted, either due to the camera's design or because of Vista's powers at work. Before Miss Militia had time to take much in, a figure appeared behind Vista blocking the view. He swung a sword, then walked away.
When Miss Militia could see her again, Vista was lying on the floor with a pool of blood where her head should have been.
"Keep watching," Piggot said when she saw her expression.
Miss Militia looked back at the screen. This wasn't possible. It ... it had to be some sort of trick, right? Vista couldn't just ... but she could. Anyone could die, and there were plenty of villains out there willing to do much worse.
As she watched the video, Vista's blood flowed into the cracks in the floor's tiling. There was action on the edges of the screen, but nothing that Miss Militia could bring herself to care about. After a few seconds, a small figure with long black hair slid over to Vista's side and stuck her severed head back on her neck.
That's not how it works, she thought, recognizing her. You can't just reattach the head and expect the person to get up and walk again, Leaf. When someone dies ...
"She wakes up several minutes later," Piggot said without looking at the screen. "Vista's being examined for brain damage and other lingering side effects, but she was able to rejoin the fight soon afterward, trapping Lung in the elevator shaft he was attempting to climb out of. In light of this recent development, what do you make of Leaf?"
Miss Militia skipped ahead in the video. "So Vista is alive?"
"Yes. There's hardly any evidence she was hurt at all."
She studied the feed, wishing that there was some way to enhance the quality of the video. Was ... was Vista breathing? It was just vague enough where Miss Militia could choose to doubt or choose to believe. Leaf collapsed in a projection of a chair beneath her and Tattletale soon joined with Vista still lying—alive or dead—in her own blood.
She skipped ahead again until Leaf and Tattletale were replaced by four PRT troopers who stood around her protectively—reverently—and helped her to her feet.
Lazarus, come forth.
"It's a miracle," she whispered. There was no other way to put it. While other capes referred to their trigger events as the worst moments of their lives—if they talked about them at all—hers had been a theophany. One preceded and succeeded by death, but a theophany all the same. She had seen the hand of God in her life ever since, and she could not see Vista risen from the dead as anything else.
"A miracle?" Piggot said, her tone sardonic. "Dozens of people died tonight, and one of them came back. If this is a miracle, God needs to up his game."
Miss Militia glanced up at her. That was, unfortunately, the usual response to these sorts of things and why she kept her beliefs to herself. Powers worked according to scientific laws, the experts claimed, even if they didn't know what those laws were. To attribute the power that had saved Hana years ago and what was left of her village to anything other than chance was superstitious nonsense.
"You say that Vista is still being examined?" she asked, returning to the business at hand. "So she's still in the hospital ward?"
"Hospital ward? No, no, she's in Master/Stranger confinement, getting every brain scan we have available until we're certain she's still Vista and not a villain puppeting her corpse."
Miss Militia stared at her, trying to keep the disapproval from her eyes. It was the director's job to be prepared for the unexpected, and when it came to parahumans the unexpected happened every day. Still, there was a difference between expecting the worst and assuming the worst.
"Leaf doesn't have a Master power."
"She didn't know she had a healing power until tonight," Piggot said. "And Regent does have a Master power. He used it all the time back when he was Hijack. Our intel suggests that taking control of a body used to take hours for him, but if that body had no living brain to compete with him for control? Could he cut those hours down to minutes? Then you have Tattletale, who could breeze through security passcodes without trying. When you put that all together, I have no choice but to take the necessary precautions."
"I see. Do you think that's likely?"
"I think it's possible. We both know that powers can synergize in unexpected ways. Bakuda and Oni Lee were a combination that took us by surprise tonight, and I don't want to go through the same mess with the Undersiders. Regent has kept a low profile since joining them, but the Undersiders have grown bolder recently. Tattletale has a reason to hold a grudge against us after her recent arrest, and we don't know enough about her powers to discount her abilities. We know even less of Leaf, if she would even be on board with this sort of operation."
"She wouldn't be."
Piggot raised an eyebrow. "You sound certain."
She grabbed her weapon—a long machete—and stood up from Piggot's desk. She felt out of place in the director's seat, which was probably why Piggot had invited her to sit down in the first place. "I'm far from a qualified expert on Leaf's motivations, and you'd do better to consult a child psychologist than me, but her history and the two chance meetings I've had with her suggest a child playing a game than any criminal mastermind with a grand plan."
It struck her that the director could have Gallant examine Vista and come back with a far more reliable assessment than anything Miss Militia could give, but this wasn't just about Vista any more. Leaf had either given Regent Vista's mended corpse or raised her from the dead, and either action was enough to make her worthy of the PRT's attention.
Piggot resumed her position at her desk. "So we have a villain who has flat out refused to become a hero, but would go out of her way to save one. That seems a bit incongruous to me."
Miss Militia considered that. "We've been fighting this war for a long time trying to keep this city safe, but I don't think Leaf sees the world that way. Until recently she's behaved more as a child playing Capes than a genuine villain. Have you ... have you seen children play games often, Director?" She honestly didn't know. They were both dedicated to their jobs, but Piggot's job didn't send her out on patrols.
"I don't get out much," Piggot said dryly. "Is this the game with a magnifying glass and an anthill, or one of the others?"
"Any of the games children play with each other. Many of them are violent, dangerous, and nonsensical at the best of times, but whenever a child gets hurt on the playground, they all stop playing. Vista was hurt, and Leaf stopped playing."
Piggot frowned thoughtfully. "And if I need more of a reason than that?"
Piggot always needed more to convince her of anything, not just for herself but for her superiors who would receive these reports filtered through Piggot's skepticism. Miss Militia was acting according to her instincts, but were her instincts based on anything real?
They were. "There's something else, something from our last meeting that I neglected to mention."
Piggot raised an eyebrow. "That's not like you."
"I included everything Leaf did, but not everything I said." She hadn't thought Leaf had been listening when Leaf changed the topic back to stealing food, but until then there had been an intensity to the child's expression that seemed to hear more layers of meaning to her words than her words even had.
But Miss Militia had discounted her, like everyone else. She knew that Leaf could make a good hero, but it was arrogant to see only what she and the PRT could make of the child and ignore what the child could make of herself.
"I gave her my standard hero pitch," she continued. "I told her that her powers were given to her, but not for her, and she would be able to attain more value with them by using them for others than for herself."
Piggot leaned back in her chair. "Ah, that one. And she took you literally, breaking two villains out of custody within forty-eight hours."
"As well as saving Vista's life," she reminded her. "We came out ahead in that deal, I believe. Is there anything else I can help you with?"
Piggot shook her head. "No. You're on standby in case Armsmaster screws up restraining Lung or another bomb goes off."
She turned to leave, but stopped when she reached the door. "Where is Leaf now?"
"With the rest of her team, as far as I know. A short ranged EMP knocked out the security cameras on the prison floor and Grue's powers obscured much of the footage we were able to gather, but the rest of the Undersiders certainly made it out, so I assume she did too."
Miss Militia wasn't sure how to feel about that. She would have liked to talk to the girl again, but Leaf didn't deserve to be imprisoned. Miss Militia would have happily pardoned her for all her past crimes if it was up to her. But knowing that the girl had wound up in the company of rapists and murderers did not sit well with her.
"And Oni Lee?"
The corners of Piggot's mouth twitched in a rare smile. "He's nearly impossible to capture and he crossed the line hard. I've written to Chief Director Costa-Brown, but that's just a formality at this point. You can expect him to have a kill order before dawn.
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It was a long walk home, all the way to the docks. It would have been shorter for Brian to head to his downtown apartment, but that wasn't his home anymore. He heard sirens blaring on every block and he saw more buildings on fire than had power, so he doubted that the PRT would be waiting to arrest him, but he wouldn't put it past Shadow Stalker to try to murder him in his bed.
Besides, he still had work to do, so he headed to the docks. The loft would be his home for now, at least until he was able to get a new identity. He had never been that attached to Brian Laborn, but that was who he had been his whole life, and he'd never be able to be that man again.
He wasn't worried about going into the most dangerous part of the city. He walked in a cloud of darkness during a blackout at night; he'd stand out more if he were invisible. When he finally arrived, Tattletale, Regent, and Bitch were still in costume.
Tattletale wasn't surprised to see him. "You made it back," she noted. "And Lift didn't."
That hit him like a punch to the gut. He had hoped that she had somehow made it back before him and that he had just missed her somehow. "I'm going to get changed," he said. He didn't have a spare costume, but it wouldn't look right to go out in a prison uniform. "Then we're heading back."
"That's a relief," Regent said. "I was worried that you were going to want to do something measured and well thought out."
"He has a point," Lisa said, taking her mask off. "If Lift's still alive—"
"She is."
"Then another hour won't make her more arrested than she is right now. We need to figure out where we're going, so have a seat Brian, and tell us exactly what happened."
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Brian never saw Lisa as a confidant. She was impossible to lie to, but also difficult to trust. Oh, he doubted that she would ever use what she knew in an act of direct betrayal, but she would remember everything. Everytime she looked at him, he felt like she was cataloguing every dirty secret he had, and then she would smile that little smile of hers, and that would be enough to unsettle him.
Good thing Brian didn't need a confidant. Talking about his problems never made him feel better. "And so I left her," he said. "With Shadow Stalker." If anything, talking about it made him feel worse. "And Lung."
Lisa didn't answer for a while. She didn't offer any empty platitudes like, "It wasn't your fault," or "You did your best." She just chewed her lip and stared at her computer screen.
"Alright," she said. "That should be enough for now. Let me know if you remember anything else, no matter how insignificant it seems."
He stared at her. "That's it?"
She looked up at him. "Were you expecting something more?"
"Yes! We don't have time to sit around and think about things! She could be hurt right now! She could be ..."
He didn't say it. He couldn't say it.
Lisa shot him a glare. "Hey, I'm working with secondhand information here. I have to filter out your personal biases, account for all the things you didn't feel were important enough to mention, and then extrapolate everything else. That doesn't leave me a whole lot to work with."
"Figure it out."
Lisa held his gaze. "Yeah. Sure. In the meantime, go take a walk."
He blinked. "What?" That sounded like a dismissal.
"You're distracting me. Go on. I'll call you if I ... figure it out."
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Brian went through his apartment one last time. He had spent months on the place, decorating it, furnishing it, planning it, dreaming it. His room here, Aisha's room there (soundproofed, because he knew how she liked her music), living room by the front door and the kitchen right in the middle. Neither of them could cook to save their lives, but in the dream they could.
But now ... now it seemed like such a waste, of time, of money, of—of everything. How much more money would he have made if he hadn't needed the boss to launder it so much? How much more could he have gotten done if he hadn't needed to put in his hours at his fake job? He had gotten into villainy for the money and the things he could do with it. Now he had to stay in the life of crime because it was all he had left.
He filled up a duffle bag with scraps of his old life, clothes, his toothbrush, things that he could buy but didn't want to waste the time doing so. Nothing ... sentimental, though. Nothing personal. The place had been meant for someone else from the start.
He hauled the bag upstairs and onto the roof where Rachel was waiting for him. She didn't need to bring all three dogs to carry two people, but she hadn't wanted to leave any behind. Two of them had gotten arrested at the same time he had—or captured, at least—and had been rescued at the same time too.
"You got everything?" Rachel said.
"Yeah."
She climbed up on one of her dogs and waited for him to do the same. Instead, he took a moment to look around at the city. Instead of the glowing lights that stayed on all night, the city was dark except for a few buildings that were burning or had backup power. The Protectorate Headquarters was one of them, and from here he could see the green forcefield out in the bay. He would have been able to see the stars if it weren't for the smoke, and it would have been peaceful if it weren't for the sirens.
"You coming?" she demanded.
Brian turned to her. "Do you think she'll be okay?" It was a stupid question, but he asked it anyway.
"Dunno."
She sounded indifferent, like she didn't care one way or another. Brian wanted to get angry, but this was Rachel he was talking to. "When Judas and Brutas were taken, did you think they were going to be okay?"
He couldn't read her facial expression in the darkness, but he could guess it. "I knew," she said. "I knew that either they were gonna be okay, or I was gonna kill someone."
And that was it. He could always rely on Rachel for the straight forward approach. He remembered the night he'd triggered—he never really forgot it. The experience had been a terrifying, frantic rush, and for a long time afterward he'd had nightmares about what would have happened if he had ignored Aisha's call or had arrived too late, but in it's own way, the experience had been simple. There had been only one choice to make, and he had made it.
Now? Now there was no choice to make, or a thousand choices to make with no clue of which was right. Attacking the PRT building would get them nowhere if Lift had been transferred to the PHQ, and attacking the PHQ would do nothing if she was already dead. Stress wasn't a problem if he could direct it. Pressure in one direction was a rocket. Pressure in all directions was an explosion.
But Rachel had a point. He could wait a little bit longer and either find out what he needed to do—or if there was nothing else to do, who he needed to kill.
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Come on, pick up, pick up.
"Who is this?" Miss Militia's voice came in through the phone. "How do you have this number?"
"Hey, Miss Militia!" Lisa said, her voice dripping with cheer. "Hate to call you so late, but I knew you'd be up."
The phone went silent for a moment.
Subject does not sleep. Noctis cape. Uncommon side effect of parahuman abilities.
Lisa had had her suspicions based off of the woman's patrol schedule, but by confirming it like this she hoped to put Miss Militia off balance.
"Who is this?" Miss Militia said again, her voice somehow even more business like.
"Oh, sorry, it's me, Tattletale. We haven't met yet; whenever I drop by, you always seem to be busy. Anyway, I won't keep you, I just wanted—"
"Tattletale? Of the Undersiders?"
"Uh-huh, that's me. I'm just calling because we dropped by the PRT building a while ago to, you know, break Grue out, and of course Leaf wanted to hang out with capes her own age which is so hard to do when you're thirteen, but she hasn't come home yet, and we're starting to get worried."
Lisa hated doing this. She was revealing way too much, and most of what she knew was only useful if they didn't know that she knew it, but she was backed up against the wall here. The boss had a few spies in the PRT, but none of them had anything. Hacking their systems wouldn't do any good for a while now, and they were running out of time.
"I'm not sure we should be having this conversation."
She resisted the urge to throw her phone against the wall, take out her gun, and shoot it until she ran out of bullets. "Look," she said, sounding far more relaxed than she felt. "I just want to know if she's spending the night or not. She and Vista seemed to really hit it off so that wouldn't surprise me, but I just want to know so I can ... so I can stop worrying."
Don't hang up on me. If you hang up, I swear I'll ... I'll ...
"Strange that you should bring up Vista," Miss Militia said. "I saw the security footage. It looked like you tried to stop Leaf from healing her."
Lisa hesitated. Miss Militia was harder to read than most, and over the phone Lisa couldn't do much more than tell if she was directly lying. And without Lift to recharge her powers, she didn't have much left.
"I wasn't sure if she could survive that," she said, resorting to honesty. "As far as I'm concerned, she still hasn't. I know I don't deserve any favors from you guys, but she does, and your side doesn't have the time, the resources, or, with maybe a few exceptions, even the inclination to go looking for her. We do."
There. If Miss Militia kept avoiding the question and wasting time, they had her. Lisa would know that Lift was safe and sound, locked up somewhere and probably being subjected to every dirty trick in the book to recruit her, but alive.
"We don't have her," the hero said at last. "We assumed that she had escaped with Grue. If she hasn't, we haven't found any trace of her. We have managed to dig Lung up out of the rubble the fight left behind, but there was no sign of her or Oni Lee. I'm sorry."
And that was that. An I'm sorry from a career hero. Things couldn't get more bleak than that. Lisa felt numb as she hung up, and her mind drifted. Just last night when she was lying in bed in the worst pain of her life, Lift had appeared with a glow that could only be called angelic. She had saved her. It had been like something out of a fairytale. Then just an hour ago she had given Vista all she had and would have gone after Brian with nothing if Lisa hadn't brought a couple of Snickers.
I don't know if I could have talked her out of it, but damn it, I should have tried! Lift was stubborn, but Lisa could work with stubborn. And now ... now Lisa wanted to just break down and ...
But she didn't. She didn't do that sort of thing anymore. She'd been down that hole before, and there wasn't any light at the end of it. She had to keep moving forward, even if she was running in circles.
Miss Militia not lying. Lift last seen with Shadow Stalker. Shadow Stalker did not report encounter. Results, actions not favorable.
Lisa blocked off the flow of information. She had grown too reliant on it since Lift had started recharging her, and with her gone Lisa had maybe fifteen minutes left.
She hadn't expected Miss Militia to be trying anything, and her powers confirmed that. The surge of insight brought up a good point about Shadow Stalker, but not a helpful one. It wasn't like the Undersiders could hunt her down and make her talk, not in any timeframe that mattered.
Brian doesn't know, Coil's network doesn't know, and Miss Militia doesn't know. But they all knew part of what had happened. If she could connect the pieces ...
Oni Lee would not leave unnoticed. Fast, violent, direct, would leave signs of departure. Found alternate exit.
Alternate exit? Of course. The PRT would have set up a perimeter, and Oni Lee would have left a trail of ashes from his clones, and probably would have tried to kill someone on the way out. Even if he were too injured to fight, he would have tried to get out fast instead of quietly. He may have gotten killed in the fight, but Lisa doubted it. Therefore ...
She pulled up the floor plans for the PRT building on her laptop. Rubble. The fight left behind rubble. Was that a clue? Lift had a sword, Oni Lee had explosives, and Lung was a flaming monster, so walls wouldn't withstand much.
She tracked the pathway of the fight through the building up to where Lift and Brian were separated, then pulled something up on another tab that she had studied while planning the bank robbery.
Lisa had spent more time than she had ever wanted to in the sewers, and hadn't even gotten to use it as an escape route. Now though, it might have what she was looking for.
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Alec opened his eyes and found himself on the couch. He must have fallen asleep, and he hadn't even bothered to take his costume off. That was sloppy. He was lazy, but he went for the good looking kind of lazy, not the sleep-in-your-clothes, work-in-your-pajamas kind of lazy. He stretched, sat up (or at least tried to) and plopped back down.
He spotted Lisa was on the other couch, tapping on the keyboard of her laptop. "Ugh. What time is it?"
Lisa didn't spare him a glance. "Four twelve."
He paused to register that information. "I thought we were heading back out. What happened?"
"Nothing." She sounded annoyed. "Nothing, nothing, and then more nothing. Coil's got nothing, I got nothing. Heck, I even phoned Miss Militia, and she's got nothing."
He perked up at that. "Wait, Miss Militia? Army girl with the anything gun?"
"Yup. Didn't know squat, so I can say Lift hasn't been arrested, but that's it."
Alec frowned. "So, doesn't that pretty much tell you everything? I mean, she's either here, in jail, or dead, and she's not here or in jail, so ..."
Lisa glared at him. "Go back to sleep. You're not helping."
"Hey, we both know I bring a lot of things to the team, but help isn't one of them. So am I missing something important, or are you just married to the denial stage of grieving?"
Another glare. "You have a better idea?"
"Sure. Move on to stage two, because anger's way more fun. Swift, brutal revenge, Lisa, it cures all ills. I wasn't really paying attention when Brian was telling us what happened, but it seemed like everything was Shadow Stalker's fault. I mean, Lung's too, but Crossbow Girl's easier to mess with. So you use your super brain nonsense and find out where she lives, we break in while she's sleeping, I do my thing, then I can make her chop off her own hands and write bloody confessions with her stumps on her bedroom wall until she bleeds to death."
"That wouldn't make anything better."
"No," he admitted. "But what will? Besides raising the dead, not much, and the only one who knew that trick is—"
"Don't say it!"
"Okay." He stretched out again. He really ought to just get changed and go to bed.
"Besides," Lisa added. "It wouldn't be enough. I mean, seriously, dismember her and watch her bleed out? What are we, cavemen? You have to build up to it, let her dread what's coming before you strike, and then draw it out for as long as you can. Keep her locked up for a few weeks and bring her out on jobs, play it off like she switched sides. Actually, no, she'd enjoy that too much. Give her something demeaning to do, like, like ... you said you wanted a henchmaid to clean up the place? She'd hate that. Then we could, I don't know, work out what her trigger event was and make her live through that over and over again. Skin her alive, wait for it to grow back, skin her again. After it stops being fun, we can hand her over to Kaiser's gang to do all the stuff we're not willing to do."
Alec considered that. It did sound a lot better than his idea. Dang, he was losing his touch.
"She'd hate that," Lisa said after a moment.
"Well, that's kinda the point."
"Not Shadow Stalker. Lift. Remember the night she joined us? Ran into Brian and Shadow Stalker killed them both? Brian wanted to kill her there and then. If she didn't want to follow the rules, he wasn't going to either."
"Would have saved us a lot of trouble," he admitted.
"Oh yeah." She stared at her computer screen, her eyes unmoving. "Of course, Lift wouldn't have wanted to join us after seeing him kill someone. Then Lung would have killed us all or worse, or I'd still be stuck in the hospital waiting for my parents to come pick me up."
Alec didn't know much about Lisa's parents, but he doubted they were as bad as his. "Why would she hate it?"
Lift had barely been on the team for any time at all, and they had only pulled one job together before breaking the others out of jail. She had been with him when they were harassing the ABB, and Lift had been as flippant and carefree as, well, him. Even when Lung showed up, everything had been a game to her, except ... except when she had been healing those girls.
That had been the one important thing for her that night, and to this day Alec couldn't understand why.
"I mean," he said, twirling his scepter between two fingers, "she wouldn't want to see us kill anyone." No one did, but some people were better at not seeing things than others. He was able to see nothing with his eyes wide open. "But now that she's ... you know, she's not going to see anything at all."
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Lisa didn't have an answer for him. She usually did, but she also usually had more than ten minutes of insight left before a relentless migrain racked her brain for a solid week.
But why not? Why not give up, go out, and ruin someone else's day? Be generous with what you got, even when what you got is misery. It beat staying still. It beat looking back.
But revenge was a consolation prize. When her neck had been broken, she had plotted wonderful retribution against Panacea and Glory Girl because she had nothing to hope for. Lift had given hope back to her with her arms and legs and freedom, and she had glutted herself on it all. Now she couldn't give up and get back at Shadow Stalker or Oni Lee or even Lung. She couldn't give up at all when there was still a chance that ... that ...
I should go to bed, she thought. Burning myself out won't help anyone, and I'm at a dead end. Her powers needed information to analyze, and she had long since squeezed her sources dry.
She checked the battery on her laptop. Only a few minutes left, and with the city wide blackout, she wouldn't be able to charge it. Even if she turned it off now it would be dead by morning, and after that the trail would be cold and she'd have nothing left but ... but the consolation prize.
She refreshed her news tabs just in case the ABB targets gave her a clue, and she found something new. A hostage video. She watched and rewatched it, not because it was proof that everyone was having a bad night, but because the hostage was reading a script written by Bakuda.
Brian came in through the door carrying a bag of personal items with Rachel right behind him. "Tell me you have good news," he said, "because I'm heading back out either way."
Good news? Lisa had dead ends aplenty that weren't going to help them and puzzle pieces that she couldn't connect. She released her hold on her power just in case it could give her—and the rest of the team—something to hold on to.
And it did. Her eyes widened as her power gave her the answer that had been staring her in the face, and she laughed.
"Lisa?" Brian said, setting his bag down. "Are you okay? Is that .. is that a good news laugh, or ..."
"I'm betting it's the Lisa broke laugh," Alec said. "But it could be both."
"It's good news," Lisa said. "The best news since Bakuda started bombing the city. Here, look at this." She turned her laptop toward him and clicked on the video.
"My name is Amy Dallon, commonly known as Panacea of New Wave. I am being held hostage by the ABB."
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Brian stared at the screen. It was pretty generic as far as hostage videos went, but that was to be expected. Bakuda hadn't been in the business for very long, and plenty of villains followed the cape-flic cliches until they figured out what did and didn't work.
"So, what am I supposed to be getting out of this?" Judging by her tone, Panacea was reading from a script. He knew that Lisa wouldn't be able to tell if the script was a lie, only if Panacea believed it. As for the script itself, it was straight forward. If the New Wave interfered with the ABB in any way, she would die, and if Bakuda was captured, she would die. Removing a major hero team was a hell of a move on Bakuda's part, but not one that helped them.
"She just had brain surgery," Lisa said.
Brian looked up at her. "What? How can you tell that?"
"Posture," Lisa said. "She's way too stiff. Not scared stiff, stiff as in Bakuda didn't use any anesthesia and every time she tilts her head it causes her pain. Couldn't have happened to a nicer girl, but that's beside the point."
Get to the point, he thought. This is no time to be showing off! But if Lisa thought she had the time to show off, it meant that she wasn't in a hurry, and that was good news. Hopefully. "So why would she need brain surgery? Was she hurt when they captured her?"
"Was she lobotomized?" Alec asked. "She sounded lobotomized."
"Not nearly enough Brian, but again, beside the point." She turned to Alec. "Also, no. Remember the last time you fought Oni Lee? Remember how you broke his legs so even if he didn't get arrested he wouldn't be a threat for a while? Remember how that didn't work out at all?" Lisa gestured toward her computer. "That's why they captured Panacea. Now, if it was just a one time thing, they could have pointed a gun at her and made her heal him, but I'm thinking Bakuda implanted a kill switch."
"Okay. But what does that have to do with Lift? How does that help us?"
"It shows us the big picture, and Lift is just a small part of that. ABB numbers have skyrocketed in the past week, and I'm betting all the new recruits have bombs in their heads too. Panacea shows us that Bakuda is in it for the long haul and is moving up to capes. Tinkers are never just Tinkers. You build a jetpack and you're a Mover, build a laser gun and you're a Blaster. Bakuda's committed to playing the Master, and that means people, and capes especially, are a resource for her.
"I called Miss Militia, and she hasn't seen any sign of Lift. She hasn't been arrested, and no one found her remains. Oni Lee's behavior wasn't making sense either. He left quietly and unnoticed instead of leaving a trail of bodies as he teleported out of there. From what you told me about the fight, I suspect you guys blew a hole into a sewer main, but why would he leave the slow way through a place that literally smells like crap?"
"Because he couldn't teleport," Brian said, "because ... he was taking someone with him."
"It wasn't Lung. Lung was recaptured," Lisa said. "That leaves Lift."
"So you're saying," Brian said slowly, "that Lift has been captured by Oni Lee so Bakuda could put a kill switch in her, make her work for them, and kill her if she ever pisses them off."
"I'm saying," Lisa said, "that she's alive. I call that good news."
WWW
Rachel lay on her bed, surrounded by warm furry bodies. She rubbed a belly and scratched behind an ear and was rewarded with wet sloppy licks.
She had missed her dogs. The PRT labcoats hadn't hurt them, but not hurting them meant food, water, and a cage. Not hurting them meant strange smells, cold voices, and no walkies. Her dogs deserved better than that. Now the pack was together again.
Well, maybe they were still missing a human. Rachel hadn't yet decided how Lift fit into things. They had too many humans on the team already, and she had never gotten used to the new kid. Though Lift had helped break Brutus and Judas free, as well as two of her human teammates, so ...
The other humans were talking animatedly now. It sounded like they were arguing over something. Rachel hoped they didn't keep her up all night. It was almost morning and she hadn't gotten any sleep yet.
She pulled out a dog treat and tossed it to Brutus, who jumped up and caught it in the air. He chomped down on it, spilling crumbs on the floor that Judas licked up, and wagged his tail happily.
Her teammates began talking more loudly, and it sounded like in a little while they were going to drag her out on a rescue mission or a pay back mission or something. She'd go along with that, she supposed, but right now with her dogs safe and home, things couldn't be better.
WWW
A/n This was one of the hardest chapters for me to write, and it also had the least amount of Lift. Hmm. Maybe that means something. I'll have to get her rescued as soon as possible to beat my writer's block.
A huge thanks to Exile Immortal for helping along every step of the way, from the idea stage to the outline stage all the way to the final draft. I'd also like to thank my patrons, Exiled Immortal, Prime 2.0, Sphinxes, Kelsey Bull, Hubris Prime, Apofatix, and Janember for their support. Man, I remember a few months ago when I only had like one of you guys. You're the best.