Little Hunter

Somer's Rock never really changed.

Same deaf owners. Same ratty seats and floors. Same emptiness that begged the question of how the place stayed open to anyone who didn't know the answer.

Lisa, of course, knew the answer.

Around the table were a dozen villains in full costume. Some more villainous than others. Faultline sat with Gregor at her back. Citrine had two other Ambassador's along—a single red tear was added to their matching white masks. A very artistic touch. Rook sat with Cozen beside him, and at the far end of the table, Sundancer was managing to look less uncomfortable than she really was.

The table hadn't changed much in the past year. Brockton Bay's cape scene was stable and had remained stable since March's last desperate attempt to make Lily love her crazy ass.

She'd be back but that was a worry for another day.

At the moment, Lisa had one worry.

Lying through her damn teeth.

"No idea what you're talking about," she said with an annoyed smirk. "Seriously. I have Snuff on the backhand for that sort of thing when needed. Why would I hire a cape none of us have heard of before?"

"And one so inept she got caught," Faultline added, which was a lure. Faultline wasn't a thinker, but she was infuriatingly capable of thinking things through.

"Because I'd hire an assassin who decides to fight the entire Pure in one night and failed to keep it a secret."

Granted, Lisa expected something to explode when she let Nanku run wild and dangled herself out open for attack. That her thinker counterpart would turn that into an ambush on Nanku instead—and that Nanku would fucking win was not a possibility she considered. Then there was Iron Rain's final march into why even bother, which begged so many questions.

And all the videos on the Internet which landed her in an annoying meeting distracting her from things that mattered.

"So you didn't hire her?" Rook asked.

"Absolutely not." Which wasn't even a lie. "I'm not that sloppy. Come on guys. I thought we had some professional respect in this room?"

"We do," Citrine replied dryly. "But that still begs the question where this cape came from and why they went after the Pure."

"I'd love to find out," Lisa lied.

Nanku took familial protectiveness to an absurd place, especially given how much bitterness she was carrying toward her mother.

They needed to get her out of the city. If she even tried to stick around every hero and villain in the bay would be gunning for her. No one cared that the Nazis had it coming. Heroes couldn't have a mass murderer running around and the villains wouldn't want to sit around waiting to see if they were next.

"What does Weaver say about all of this?"

Lisa looked Citrine in the eye. "It's villain business. You know how this works."

"And neither of you have read into the Pure threatening to kill Weaver and this cape wiping the Pure out?"

"Rune is still alive," Bouncer declared.

"Rune hightailed it out of here while the going was good," Lisa answered. "She's probably flying off to Atlantic City, changing her name, and taking a new lease on life. Only reason she was still in the club was Othala and Victor."

One of whom was sharing a basement room adjacent to Alabaster until Lisa could figure out what to do with her.

"There's a rumor going around that this cape is her daughter."

It took every ounce of will in Lisa's addicted body not to react to that. She didn't normally like actively thinking about the way her fingers quivered. A side effect of Coil's lovely drug cocktail to keep her docile. Permanent, even years after Annette forced her into a room and sat with her while she vomited, sweated, and screamed.

"Is that something someone is saying?" Lisa asked with feigned amusement. "Please tell me we're not dredging PHO now."

"It's come to us through channels in the PRT."

Impossible.

Lisa knew all of Accord's contacts and Accord was dead. Some of them had switched to other parties and Lisa scooped most of them up herself. The PRT wasn't openly broadcasting that they knew Nanku and Annette were related and Lisa had checked all of her people to see if that detail was leaking.

It wasn't.

Not from the PRT.

So where was Citrine getting that?

"What channel?" Faultline asked, looking between the women.

"I'm not going to say that."

Lisa took a peek. Citrine's mask hid her face, and her dress hid much of her body. It gave Lisa less to work with, but she'd known Citrine for years and she knew enough about the woman.

Lie.

How incredibly unhelpful.

She was lying? More like fishing.

"What does it matter?" Sundancer asked. "We have to do something about her."

"The Pure were bad," Stacer said, "but they were subtle. This is all over the news and social media."

"Our hold on the city is based on our ability to keep the criminal world relatively bloodless," Citrine agreed. "So long as bodies aren't dropping left and right, Weaver works with us, and the city remains peaceful for everyone."

"If the heroes deal with this cape they might wonder why they tolerate us," Faultline added. Her mask turned. "If she's Weaver's daughter, Weaver might be removed from her position."

Shit. Shit. Shit.

She didn't see this coming.

How did she not see this coming? It was bloody brilliant!

"We're in agreement then?" Citrine looked around the table Lisa had no choice but to agree. "Very well. We hunt this cape down and deal with them ourselves."

The fucking irony.

Someone left her a breadcrumb and she was fishing. Now the villains were after Nanku. Nanku wouldn't back down. She didn't know how. She wasn't a cape, not in her mentality or approach. Weaver would never let her daughter be killed. She'd attack a villain who tried and Citrine would wonder if that breadcrumb she doubted really was true.

Brilliant.

The Pure being dead didn't matter. Turning Weaver and the city's villains against one another was a far better way to send it all burning to the ground.

Lisa jammed her thumb into her cheek and a chill ran up her spine.

Fuck, that was devious.

Citrine was no sucker. Some cape coming to her with answers to all her questions would raise a thousand red flags, but a cape just dropping information to be picked up and pieced together? That was good. Very good.

They really had been playing the wrong game.

None of it was ever about the Pure. It didn't even seem like a ploy to take over the city.

Untapping her power in small bursts and thinking it through, Lisa couldn't shake the feeling the only conceivable goal to everything was simply to bring down what Annette and the Undersiders had built.

Who would do that?

Who would have zero interest in territory, power, or wealth, and be solely and exclusively interested in seeing everything they'd built come crashing down? Everything she'd built come crashing down. So insanely personal. Personal like Nanku wiping out the Nazis just to start things off personal.

Aside from a dead man named Calvert—and Lisa was absolutely certain he was dead—who hated her anywhere close to that much?

Lisa straightened, alone at the table.

"Fuck"—she shot to her feet—"me."

~ ~ ~

"Anne."

Shawn breathed deep and watched his wife collect papers into files. One after the other. Clipping. Stapling. Binding.

When she put her mind to something she went all the way. There were no half-measures. He appreciated that about her.

Except when she committed herself to ignoring everything. Including him.

"Anne," Shawn repeated.

It was a spiral for her. A sort of thinker-specific obsession when she used her power for too long or tried delving too deep. Normally she kept a good handle on it but when Calvert started trying to go after Rose in his insane scheme to kill her and take control of the city… What Shawn was seeing was almost that bad.

Warily, Shawn stepped forward and firmly grabbed Annette's wrist.

"Anne."

She jerked, straightening and turning to face him with a manic expression.

"Slow down," he said in a calm tone. "Walk back, Anne. Sit."

He guided her into the seat and knelt beside her.

"Calm."

"Curtz is going to kill her," she said bluntly.

"He's not going to kill her."

At least, Shawn didn't think so.

Annette was being excluded from most of the planning. Curtz claimed it was because anything could happen and involving Annette in the capture and arrest of her own daughter—the source of her trigger event, though she'd never come out and told anyone but Shawn—any more than necessary was cruel. He wasn't wrong.

But Shawn didn't think he expected 'anything' to happen.

If anything, he seemed to have almost too clear an eye on how to capture Taylor. Nanku. Thermal imaging to see through her cloak. Specialized confoam dispenser to ensnare her. Tranquilizers to knock her unconscious so her weapons could be removed.

There was something going on, but thankfully for Annette, killing Nanku wasn't the plan.

Shawn didn't think Annette could survive another dead daughter.

"He thinks she's a mass murderer," Anne said suddenly.

Shawn couldn't find a way to say the words, 'because she is.'

Annette shook her head and turned back to the files. "No. She can't be behind all of it. South America. Africa. Siberia. The killings go back before she was born. Before parahumans even appeared. Maybe the first parahumans, I don't know, but Taylor wasn't even alive in 1854 or 1918 when the first concrete murders I can find happened."

Shawn blinked. "Anne, what—"

"1854," she said. "A group of a Chacktaw found dead by US cavalry near the border with Indian territory. The only survivor was a teen girl who said 'a demon came from the air and stalked them for a week.' Glowing yellow eyes and with a scorpion tail that spat fire."

She pushed the page aside.

"1918, a special company of soldiers trained for breaking trench lines were found dead. They'd only been out of contact with other units for three days, but all eighty of the men were dead save two who both said 'a giant' attacked them with knives and blades and killed them one by one. They credited their survival to falling into mud. Their commanders attributed the story to shell shock."

"Anne."

"1938. Multiple groups of soldiers in the Picos de Europa vanish on all sides of the Spanish Civil War. A single unit radioed that they'd found a speck of a strange metal a day before they vanished too."

Shawn shook his head and reached for her wrist again, but she was starting back into the spiral.

"The oldest such story I can find is in 1529 when a Spanish ship off the coast of El Salvador began trying to find and kill Gonzalo Guerrero. The captain said in his log the natives summoned a demon that could lift a man with one hand, appeared and disappeared at will, and skinned the men to take their skulls. He claimed to have killed it with a shipboard cannon after it severed his arm with blades attached to its wrist."

"ANNE!"

"Taylor couldn't have done any of this! It's some group or faction that's hundreds of years old and just keeps killing people! They took Taylor and they made her the way she is and it's not her fault!"

She ignored him, resisting his hold while she snatched another piece of paper.

"Before the attack on the camp, there were a series of murders across Africa and Europe all targeting some pharmaceutical company! Right before the attack on the camp and after the murders in Europe stopped Heather Anders—Max Ander's wife before Kayden—was killed. Everyone blamed the Teeth when it happened but what if it was this cult and they massacred the camp and they took Taylor!?"

Her eyes were manic.

Furious.

"There are PRT files. There's a damn case number. Case-87. Late cold war a mercenary rescue team goes into Columbia to rescue a CIA asset. Most of the team was killed, the sole survivor reported an 'alien' creature with the same kind of equipment Taylor has, and in 1990…"

Her voice trailed off and the words died in her throat.

She'd missed that. Shawn knew everything about Weaver's crusade to find who massacred the camp. Every detail Annette uncovered. Every piece of evidence. Every lead. She zeroed in on Nilbog like everyone else… and she'd missed this.

All of it.

"You've been talking to Tattletale," Shawn said.

She didn't answer. She knew that if she did, he might be in as much trouble as she was if anyone ever decided to bring down the hammer for what she'd done. The deal with the not-so-evil devils she'd forced with the Undersiders to eradicate open violence in Brockton Bay.

"What did she say?" Shawn pressed.

Annette shook her head.

Shawn inhaled and looked over the papers. "I'm taking you home. You know you shouldn't be here right now."

She didn't respond and he stood.

Shawn left the room and found Hannah and Curtz in the hall.

"She won't do it," Hannah said.

"Taylor's death was her trigger," Shawn replied. He looked pointedly at Curtz. "You can say you want her alive all you want, she won't believe you and she'll do nothing but try to defend and protect Taylor. She needs to be completely uninvolved in this."

"You as well, perhaps." Curtz watched him a moment. "Thus far, the younger Hebert has not killed anyone but the Pure. She could have harmed Vista, Assault, or Battery. She could have killed Dauntless."

A lingering ache in Shawn's shoulder was less certain, but he hoped. For Anne's sake.

If Taylor started killing heroes at the drop of a hat, she'd join the ranks of villains like the Slaughterhouse Nine and the Teeth.

The kind of villains heroes couldn't afford to pull punches with, and didn't.

"Take her home," Curtz said. "She's laying low with her wounds now, but she won't stay that way."

The Director turned away, and Shawn watched him go.

Curtz had always been an odd one. At first, he was convinced that the man was meant to root out Anne's dealings with the Undersiders. Instead, he'd mostly sat back and let Anne and Tattletale do it.

Shawn learned a lot from that.

How the PRT really operated. What they really valued. And he'd seen the Protectorate wasn't so different.

Heroes weren't everything they wanted people to think they were.

Himself included.

Hannah lingered a moment while Curtz left, but she said nothing. She'd basically let Anne take over. Running the team was never what she wanted.

When she left, Shawn turned back to the room and helped Anne up.

They went through the less busied parts of the building. Got in an elevator. Crossed the backlot. Got in the car.

Anne maintained the ruse until they were a block away.

She straightened, pulled her hair back, and popped the bottom of her fist into the side panel of the door.

It came loose and she removed a tinker-tech phone from inside.

"Wait," Shawn warned. He checked the mirrors, but not for cars. The PRT was too smart for that. "Drone."

He may have juiced the car's side mirrors once or twice over the years with his power.

One thing having a thinker for a wife teaches a man.

Not everything is about raw power. If it was, then the likes of Kaiser, Lung, and the Butcher would rule the world already.

"Rose?" Anne asked.

"Pure aren't trying to kill you anymore," Shawn replied, "and the thinker apparently was never into that. She's with Addison and Missy for a few hours more."

Anne nodded and kept the phone low. She dialed and Shawn turned toward the apartment.

"You don't have to do this," she whispered. "I didn't ask—"

"You don't have to."

He'd seen her.

Taylor was a victim. Whatever happened to her, she'd come out worse for it, but she didn't deserve to die because the world and powers messed her up. And whatever Curtz was after, Shawn was well acquainted with another cold truth.

There were fates worse than death.