Little Hunter

Annette glared across the table, glad and terrified just how much practice she'd gotten at that over the years.

In her time as a cape, Annette shared a lot of tables with a lot of people. Most of them unpleasant. Piggot. Armsmaster. Coil. Kaiser and Lung. Some weird woman in a fedora she didn't care to think about.

Director Curtz held his hands folded together.

He was a young man. Lean. Sandy hair and dark eyes. A small scar marked the top of his left ear.

Not the ambitious sort, which always surprised Annette. Since Brockton Bay ceased being a constant source of news about cape carnage the city had gone through three directors. Piggot lasted a year before she seemed to consider her work as done as she could get it. Martin was killed by the Nine.

Curtz arrived after and had occupied the chair quietly for nearly three years.

And all of a sudden he was throwing his weight around.

Annette kept trying to puzzle out why. He'd been content—so long as the city was quiet—to be quiet.

Around the room, staff were preoccupied. The carnage came in bits and pieces.

First the massacre at the old Medhall building. Dozens dead. Vehicles destroyed. More firepower than anyone knew the Pure had. That was bad, but not so bad Annette couldn't spin it. The Pure lured Rachel out to kill her and she had no choice but to defend her life and the lives of her dogs.

A mansion in the hills beyond the city exploded after. The fire department was still digging through the wreckage, but the PRT had records of the property. The Richter family were closely tied to a number of Neo-Nazi groups and that several members were parahumans was all but an open secret.

Fenja and Menja. Annette was certain the two women were dead, along with anyone else in the building.

And then the brawl in the Trainyard. A dozen armed men dead. Two might live, minus limbs and covered in burns respectively. Stormtiger and Crusader were dead. No sign of Othala. Cricket was chased down and killed, and then a brawl ensued on the beach nearby between Iron Rain and…

Annette's fingers curled under the table.

She'd known.

It was plain as day and hard as it was she wasn't a total fool.

Nanku was different. There were pieces of Taylor there. Bits she recognized beyond her face or her eyes.

But Nanku wasn't Taylor anymore.

She was someone else, and she was a killer.

Killer.

The word rattled about and echoed.

Nanku was a killer and her capacity for it was on par with the Nine. She might have actually topped the Nine in terms of single-night body counts minus the likes of Shatterbird and Burnscar. They could attack whole buildings and cities, but the comparison was about as good as a comparison of Stalin and Hitler.

A great way to miss any point worth making.

"Rain's been apprehended," one of the staffers announced. "Vista has her in custody."

"Risks?" Curtz asked.

"Her injuries are disorienting her."

"Standard procedure then. We'll need to use Type-12 restraints. Contact Dragon for support. As I understand her power can't be used if she's not touching the ground."

"I'll make the call," someone offered.

"And bring her in and under guard," Curtz added. "For her and against anyone who might make another attempt to murder her."

Annette's eyes narrowed. "What about the other cape?"

"Assault and Battery are reporting they had her on the run. She tried to flee." The staffer turned her head, listening. "Dauntless is injured."

Annette's hand balled into a fist.

"Minor puncture wound to his shoulder. He had the suspect cape in hand but she dropped into the water and slipped away."

"Search the shore," Curtz ordered. "She can't stay underwater forever. Injuries will slow her down."

She'd be killed.

The PRT gave capes a lot of leeway. Most people didn't get it. They couldn't think past the first steps of anger and catharsis.

Wantonly killing every cape that was a problem was madness. Every cape would be backed into a corner. Every crime would be a war. Life and death. Destruction piling up faster than anyone could try to fix it.

Killing capes just because they were monsters ignored that they were monsters, and the only thing worse than monsters running wild was monsters destroying everything that might try to destroy them.

But the PRT had limits.

So many bodies this quickly? Kaiser's Empire never accrued that kind of body count. Lung's Asian Bad Boyz. The Merchants. Coil. The Teeth. The Nine really were the best comparison short of Amy and Annette wasn't going to bring that up.

Hundreds died when Amy broke.

The world came within an inch of an apocalypse. Annette wasn't entirely sure how they'd pulled it off in the end. She wasn't sure what Carol said to make Phage stop long enough for some cape with a death beam power to kill her.

Carol was never the same after her daughter died, and her surviving child had to be sent away for help.

Annette hadn't checked on Victoria in a long time. Maybe she should.

"Rain's status now?"

"Secured. Injuries to her shoulder."

"Treatment is secondary to containment." Curtz turned his head. "I know we're used to problems happenstancing their way out of sight or being handed to us with bows, but we do all those drills for a reason."

Annette frowned.

The room continued about its business and Annette glanced at her phone. Calling Lisa was too risky. Curtz was moving suddenly. After something. Until Annette knew what she needed to tread carefully.

"Anything to add, Weaver?"

"Sitting here is a misuse of my power."

"Your power is best for investigation and is valid after an incident has been resolved and the area secured. Especially when one of our perpetrators is a cape with a stated interest in murdering you."

"And as I keep trying to tell you and everyone else, I can talk her down if we're face to face."

"You're track record on that front is not going very well of late."

"That's a low blow, Director. A bit beneath you."

Curtz looked at her intently. He'd always struck her as intelligent, but distant. She'd never gotten the sense he liked her, but Annette was surprised how much distaste charged his gaze. He disliked her, and he disliked her a lot.

"So is keeping a secret this badly," he replied. "I'm sure you're not naive enough to think the PRT likes the arrangement you've set up in Brockton Bay."

Heads turned and Annette kept her face plain and her gaze even.

She hated power politics. Too much bravado and posturing. Too little actual work being done.

"I don't know what you mean," she countered.

"But," Curtz continued, "it did stop the city from being such a damned mess, and as long as the Undersiders and their cronies stuck to small-time and bloodless, the PRT was content to let them tangle with Watchdog in mind games. The world has bigger problems than a band of petty thieves turned underworld bosses."

"Tends to happen with Endbringers destroying cities and the Nine running around."

"Indeed." Curtz inhaled and pursed his lips. "But we have a problem now, Weaver, and you're not helping it by trying to play dumb."

He reached out and tapped a control on the phone beside him.

The screen at his back switched, and an image appeared.

Blurry, but marked by a human shape swinging a bladed weapon into a man's throat.

Annette sat up.

The night had been a damned disaster. One mess after another. A long, painful, hard night where she'd gone from one bad idea to a blood bath in Captain's hill, a burning building, a brawl in the Trainyard.

And the angle of the image. "Who took that?"

"A very good question," Curtz said. "Almost as good as who put it online and posted a claim on PHO and across social media that the Undersiders hired a cape assassin to murder the Pure."

Annette sat forward. "What?"

Preposterous. Lisa would do a lot of things, even things she didn't like. She had the capacity to kill. But Annette knew her and it was a leap to jump from Lisa's willingness to do unsavory things to orchestrating a mass killing.

"I found it a tad strange too," Curtz agreed.

Annette rose and crossed the room.

Looking over the shoulder of one staffer, she squinted at the ongoing response online.

Someone recorded the battle, and then released it. Accused the Undersiders of hiring an assassin. That was absurd. The Undersiders had no such history.

The Thinker.

"We've been playing the wrong game the whole time," Annette mumbled.

"I'd say so," Curtz agreed. "Were you ever really the target or a red herring meant to cause something to snap?"

He pointed.

"In this case, something rather conveniently timed."

Impossible.

There was no way the thinker could have accounted for Nanku. She came out of nowhere. No one could have predicted her except a pre-cog. Was that the thinker's power?

But what was the motivation? To bring down the Undersiders?

"This changes everything," Annette whispered. "This isn't an attempt on my life. It's something else."

The Thinker was using Aster.

Indignation rose in Annette's throat.

"So it would seem." Curtz sat back in his seat. "And now we have a whole new problem, and a wild card that I can't turn a blind eye toward."

"We don't know that—"

"Don't. The coincidence stretched credulity before, and your contributions to the Protectorate and the PRT are the only reason you're not being brought up on charges for trying to cover up your daughter's murder spree."

Annette didn't face him.

She thought. Searching for any path.

She couldn't find one.

The room around her was silent and more than one set of eyes watched and waited. Most of those present were people she knew. Not well, but the PRT wasn't that different from everyone else.

Heroes were heroes.

People believed in them. In her. Even as the people around the building realized what she was doing—that she and Tattletale were conspiring together to control Brockton Bay's underworld—they believed in her. That she was doing what she did because it saved lives, even if it doomed others.

Annette made her peace with that. In the knowledge that Addison or Rose could walk the street and be as safe as anyone could be.

Coming to terms with how everyone else felt about it was… Harder.

"I can think a lot of negative things about you, Weaver. But I don't believe for a second you sicced your daughter on the Pure. I find it infinitely more likely she was the one telling the truth. That she came back to the city to make some peace, found out what was going on, and took matters into her own hands."

"The Pure decided to break the unwritten rules," Annette said. "They were going to attack me and my younger daughter at our home."

It was better.

Better she be seen as an extreme vigilante than a mass murderer with no sense of restraint. The PRT arrested one. The other was Birdcaged, or killed.

"She's trying to protect us."

"I suppose we'll have to arrest her to find out."

Damn it.

Curtz stood slowly.

"If you have a way to contact her, then do it," he said in a tone that brokered no compromise. "Say whatever you have to say. Just get her somewhere we can surround her and if we're lucky we can bring her in alive."

Annette shook her head.

That was bad, but she'd figure something out.

The thinker was worse.

They'd been played. Tattletale was right. It was never about Aster's revenge. That was a smokescreen. A ploy.

But this?

Annette guessed a lot of possibilities after Accord died, but she never fathomed the goal was something as ambitious as turning Brockton Bay upside down.

And Nanku gave them the perfect chance.

~ ~ ~

Nanku woke slowly.

The bleariness in her eyes clung and her surroundings were both strange and smudged across her vision. The room was small. A set of stairs led to a door in the ceiling and a small bathroom tucked into a nook beneath. The walls were rushed.

A hastily assembled space. Not constructed by typical means. The walls were rough and dirt spilled through the boards. A roughly assembled staircase led to a door in the ceiling. A trap door to the floor above.

Nanku blinked and reached out with her power.

Dusk and Dawn turned their heads in the room above. They scuttled toward the door and began trying to work it open.

Talon limbs weren't very good for opening closed doors.

The noise drew the attention of a woman above. Nanku's mind was still dazed and she needed a moment.

Dusk and Dawn moved aside instinctively, making room for a hand to reach down and lift the trap door.

Bitch came down the steps and didn't flinch as the Twins rushed through the opening.

Dawn leaped onto the bed and began arranging the sheets. Dusk circled the room, searching the walls and testing them with taps of his knuckle. Something about being underground brought a new set of instincts out.

Taking a stool from the wall, Bitch took a seat beside the bed.

"Look like shit," she said.

"Fine," Nanku replied. She tried to sit up but her body protested.

Definitely a broken rib.

A cockroach found her equipment under the bed. She searched piece by piece. Weapon to weapon. It was all there. Nothing missing.

That was a start.

"Med-kit."

Bitch stared.

"Box. Size of my hand."

Bitch hunched down and reached under the bed. She fiddled a bit. Turned a few pieces over one way and then another. When she finally found it she'd searched nearly everything. Nanku wasn't sure that was a coincidence.

Checking to see if she'd grabbed any of her weapons.

Smart.

"Here."

Bitch set the box down and Nanku pushed it open with her thumb.

"Can't get a healer," Bitch said. "Broken ribs. Bad cuts."

"I've had worse."

"Be worse if you try to run."

"I'm not dumb."

"Fought the Nazis and the Protectorate. Seems pretty dumb."

"I breathe. The Pure don't."

Nanku checked her med kit. She had the tools to deal with the rib, but she'd have to cut into her own skin to reach the bone. She'd done that before and it wasn't pleasant. Pain was a fleeting thing. Nanku could endure it.

She just didn't like it. She wasn't a sadist.

There was a bone suture in the kit. It was meant for knitting bones. Still hurt but she wouldn't have to worry about her own lungs filling with blood.

"Heroes are looking for you," Bitch said.

"Figured."

"Don't need trouble. Stay here."

Nanku's hand stopped and she looked Bitch in the eye.

The girl didn't blink. "I have rope."

Nanku reached out. Dusk and Dawn both turned on Bitch and rattled in their throats.

Bitch whistled. Two dozen dogs barked in response.

Nanku scoffed.

Bitch huffed.

"Why?" Nanku asked

"Helped me," Bitch answered. "I help you. Even."

Nanku tilted her head. "Tattletale?"

"She's smart. Probably knows already."

"My mother?"

Bitch shrugged. "Telling her makes trouble. Don't make trouble."

"Fine."

That was fair.

Nanku leaned back onto her pillow and closed her eyes.

"I'll bring food later. Stay put and stay quiet."

Nanku laid down but kept the kit close. Dusk and Dawn settled around her. Their wings began vibrating. It did soothe the aches in her muscles. The pain in her ribs not so much.

She'd rest a bit. Rebuild her strength. Then she'd cut into her side and mend the rib.

After she rested.

A rest sounded good, the more she thought about it.

If nothing else, Iron Rain was captured. She couldn't hurt her mother or Rose now. There was still the thinker but they obviously weren't that smart. They'd lost everything in a night. Some thinker.

Nanku took a deep breath and eased herself to drift away.

When she woke, angry brown eyes glared at her.

Rose kicked Nanku in her uninjured side far too hard. The world spun wildly. Her body twisted in the air and her back struck the wall.

Nanku's vision blurred and she had to restrain Dusk and Dawn from attacking.

She hit the floor and started.

Rose stomped her foot on the bed, heedless of the Twins hissing at her.

"Meanie!"

***

And before anyone asks; Rose triggered before Taylor returned to Earth and has had her powers for years.