Chapter 19
After the meeting, I went down to the gym to burn my frustration on the treadmill. I ran until I could barely stand anymore, until the anger bled out of me and that the bees on the rooftop stopped being so aggressive I had to consciously hold them back from stinging the guards stationed there, but I didn't feel any better.
With the PRT taking its sweet time, we'd lost our only lead on Dinah.
After seeing them in action, I highly doubted that the investigation into the construction company would yield anything, which meant that I would have to find Coil's backup base by myself.
As the treadmill came to a stop, I wiped the sweat off my face with a towel and took a long gulp of water from my bottle. Then, I went to my room, collapsing on my desk chair, and texted Lanaro to ask her where I could get an atlas or a detailed map of Brockton Bay like Miss Militia had in her office, pretending that it was to help me give accurate coordinates whenever my bugs found an incident on patrol. She told me to come by her office after lunch, and that she would have one of each for me.
I changed out of my running clothes and into my costume, then headed out, passing Vista on the console.
I ate lunch alone in the cafeteria, since I didn't want Vista to see me bringing my food to my room like a hermit, then I went to see Lanaro to collect my map and atlas. The atlas could actually be useful on patrol, but the map was strictly for unsanctioned use.
I went back to my room and taped it to the section of wall in front of my desk. With a highlighter, I drew a circle marking my range around the location of the PRT HQ, and filled it in to indicate that I'd checked this zone. I also marked the location of the base Coil had vacated. If I could fill in more of the map with every patrol, I could eventually narrow down the location of his backup base by process of elimination, if I didn't outright find it while searching.
Beside the map, I placed a post-it note with Lisa's words about Coil's power. "Most of us mere mortals can't see both paths at once."
What did it mean? That he had some kind of precognition that allowed him to see different outcomes? How did that tie in with his coin trick? Could he choose the outcome he wanted? I could only speculate. One way or another, combined with Dinah's power, it gave him a comfortable advance on anything we could try against him.
Even if I did manage to find his base, I had no idea what the next step would be. Maybe the PRT would mobilize against him, but it felt more likely that the Thinker warnings would hold them back long enough to give him time to move again. I couldn't let that happen.
I taped the spring of forget-me-nots to the wall, just above the post-it note.
I'd checked online, and the flower held various meanings in floriography, but a few in particular had caught my attention. Long-lasting bonds. Memory. Resilience. Loyalty. Trust.
Was that Lisa's way of saying that she was still on my side? I couldn't interpret it any other way.
I had no way to contact her, and the loft was in one of the areas Leviathan had destroyed, so I couldn't even go there to try and find her, but it gave me hope that I would have someone by my side if and when I decided to go up against Coil without the PRT's support.
If Lisa had wanted me to join her right away, she would have given me a way to contact her or a place to meet. That she hadn't possibly meant that she needed me to stay where I was for now, or that she wasn't ready to go up against Coil just yet. I had to trust that she had some kind of plan in the works.
Until I could see her again, I would stick to my plan to find Coil's base. It gave me a goal, something to focus on, and at least gave me the impression that I could make some progress about Dinah.
After I was done decorating my wall, I went to my appointment on the third floor for a crash course about the paperwork we had to fill and how to update the database records, which took the whole afternoon.
Then, I went on a double patrol with Assault, taking the same route as yesterday after Déjà Vu had declared it free from Coil's machinations.
Like yesterday, we encountered various homeless people, a few of which I recognized from our previous patrol, some with pets, and others who either hadn't gone to the shelters we tried to direct them to, or the shelters had been full by the time they arrived. Like yesterday, we got in touch with the coordinator to find out which shelters had vacancies, and gave directions to the nearest ones. Again, I let Assault do the talking, and he didn't push me to participate.
We also stopped a handful of crimes in progress, letting my bees deal with the perpetrators before we arrested them, and we intervene to deescalate a situation between two groups of people looking to squat the same building, before escorting them all to the nearest shelter with enough free beds.
Meanwhile I scoured the city's underground for anything out of the ordinary. By the time we came back to base for my shift on the console, I had another stretch of town to highlight on my map.
Over the weekend, my number of patrols increased, and we began to leave the safer routes behind to cover more and more of the city, allowing me to search new areas.
The Monday after Coil had leaked the footage of my fight with Shadow Stalker, I spent the morning being interviewed by some well-meaning out of town agents investigating the Shadow Stalker situation and Piggot's management, which put me between a rock and a hard place. As much as Piggot might have mishandled Shadow Stalker from the start, and as much as I might resent her for not acting sooner to save Dinah, Coil wanted her gone, and it was only through sheer spite against him that I managed to defend or minimize her actions.
The investigation also churned some uncomfortable feelings when they asked me about things I didn't want to think about, like the bullying and my trigger event. They also wanted to know everything that I'd done to try and put a stop to the bullying, and I was acutely aware that it wasn't much. Which I supposed was a good thing, given that my overall goal was to keep Piggot from getting fired, but admitting it felt like pulling teeth, and shouldering that blame twisted something ugly in my stomach.
I wished I could have gone on patrol as soon as they were done to clear my head and focus on my search, but my schedule had been cleared at Maureen's demand.
I'd been made the face of Greenpeace's Save The Bees campaign, so we spent the afternoon filming capsules about bees, the environment and pesticides, as well as ads and photoshoots for the handful of products the Image department had hurried to put together around my new identity, because the PRT always had its priorities straight in a time of crisis. I supposed they were hoping to capitalize on my apparent popularity across the country following the leak, since half of the city still lacked power and certainly wouldn't be buying merch online anytime soon. That, or they thought that plastering my face everywhere was a viable solution to their recurring Shadow Stalker problem.
I had to admit that someone had actually put thought into matching the products to the image of me that they were building up. There were some honeycomb-shaped wildflower seed bombs, pollinator-friendly seed packets, bee bath and bee habitat kits, "pardon the weeds, we're feeding the bees" lawn signs and other variations proudly stating that no chemicals were used, gardening gloves, knee pads and aprons, honey-flavored beeswax lip balm, and bee plushies, as well as the more conventional superhero merch, all with an asterisk stating that a percentage of the profits would go to Greenpeace's bee conservation fund.
I also inherited a brand deal for running shoes that had once been Shadow Stalker's, and the PRT had managed to convince the company to throw it at me in a bid for damage control after the bad publicity generated by their association with her. We filmed an ad of me running in front of a green screen, the running shoes replacing my usual boots.
My mask didn't betray my gritted teeth at the uselessness of it all, though Maureen did call me out a few times about not smiling enough, though she stopped after I told her about the Shadow Stalker investigation.
By the time I returned to the Wards headquarters for my double shift on the console, I was exhausted in a different way than after patrols, with nothing to show for it on my map.
After that, I began patrolling in earnest, and the days blurred together.
On top of patrols, I did a ride-along on supply convoys nearly every day. The schedule was erratic, trying to be unpredictable, sometimes in the middle of the night. Most of the time, Déjà Vu did some last minute adjustments to the trajectory to avoid trouble, but even then, some of the confrontations were unavoidable, especially the closer they happened to the supply centers and shelters where we were delivering the supplies. On those days, Déjà Vu coordinated our response, and the full Protectorate deployed to try and take out the gang members before the convoy arrived.
Of course, whenever we managed to bring a cape into custody, the rest of their gang mobilized to free them, either from the van transferring them or from the prison they were transfered to.
Tattletale's speech about cops and robbers and maintaining the status quo was a lot more discouraging from the other side of things.
With Déjà Vu's efforts and the targeted strikes hammering the point home, supply convoys became less of an easy mark for gangs, which only meant that they doubled down on disrupting the supply distribution further down the chain, and that the Protectorate and Wards had to step up and establish a presence there too, stretching their resources thinner. In the end, protecting supplies and ensuring that they were delivered to the people who needed them most remained a daily struggle no matter what.
After patrolling with Assault for a few days, I started going with the other members of the Protectorate — save for Armsmaster, thankfully — and so far, they were all relatively nice about it. Some, like Triumph and Revoke, were more reserved and stern, while others, like Battery, offered me heaps of advice and encouragement about being a hero. Miss Militia didn't make much small talk, but she was quick to play up my strengths and adapt the patrolling routes to take my range into account.
It was also discouraging, the amount of crime we encountered on every patrol. The Archer's Bridge Merchants, superpowered drug dealers, served as a rallying point and had found a captive audience in those who had very little left in post-Leviathan Brockton Bay. Led by Skidmark, whom I knew mostly as the guy who'd been knocked down several pegs by all the gangs at Somer's Rock, they encouraged looting, violence, and general chaos, on top of attacking the city's infrastructures.
For each incident, there was a pile of paperwork to fill. Multiply by one or two dozen incidents every day, and it ate most of our downtime.
When I wasn't patrolling, doing ride-alongs or filling paperwork while manning the console, I took care of the hives and the inhabitants of my workshop, learned braille and Morse code, and ran on the treadmill.
The running, especially, was the only thing that let me sleep at night, keeping my thoughts from growing out of control.
That, and the wilted spring of forget-me-nots I looked at whenever I felt discouraged.
The more time passed without news about Coil, the less I believed that Piggot would actually do something. Knowing that she was Coil's main target didn't make the situation any less frustrating, especially after I had to essentially defend her during the investigation on her leadership. It only led to more resentment brewing.
Still, every night, I dutifully highlighted new sections of the map in my room, patiently waiting for Lisa to make contact with me again.
Meanwhile, time didn't change much between me and the other Wards. Clockblocker seemed more or less fine with my presence when the others weren't around, though we didn't exactly have time to socialize, and I gave Kid Win and Vista a wide berth whenever I could. It helped that since I was patrolling with members of the Protectorate through most of the day, I only saw them in passing and when I was manning the console.
Then, as if we didn't have enough on our plates already, Piggot began coordinating our shifts to squeeze in a few hours of class every day to follow regulations, since we couldn't go to school. She didn't outright state it, but I got the impression that she had received a slap on the wrist over it. Classes consisted mainly of trying not to fall asleep from the exhaustion while watching lectures from a college course about parahumans.
I could tell that I wasn't the only one who was frustrated with the state of things. Whether it was the endless patrols, the rampant crime, the useless classes, the forced proximity, the grief, or the helplessness of being unable to make things better despite our best efforts, everyone's fuse was shorter.
It felt like only a matter of time before the powder keg blew up.