"… only four shopping days left until Christmas, some are finding this holiday season anything but joyous. As of this morning eight people have been arrested on charges of embezzlement of city and state funds, accepting bribes, destruction of official documents, misuse of government facilities for personal gain, blackmail, and a number of other corruption-related issues. Indictments are in place and warrants have been issued for the arrest of a further nine former employees of the city government including three BBPD officers, while a statement from the Mayor's office says that at least fifteen more people have been referred to the FBI for investigation, in locations as far apart as Los Angeles, New York, Houston, and Chicago. The statement from Mayor Roy Christner added that he fully expects the wide-ranging investigation he's personally overseeing to increase the number of indictments and referrals by a significant number over the coming weeks and months."

"This reporter asked our Mayor what had happened to have kicked off such an enormous investigation into past actions of former administrations. He replied that one of the key election promises he'd made during his campaign, and one that he completely believed in and would follow through on, was to clean up the corruption that has for so long blighted our city and caused distress and ruin for so many of our fellow citizens. Pointing to the recent revelations surrounding the asbestos scandal that has resulted in the closure of Winslow High School and four other buildings to date, with more expected to follow, he added that such a thing should never have been allowed to happen, and would not be allowed to repeat itself in future. The same people who were behind that problem are, he assured us, at fault for a remarkable and horrifying list of further offenses against the city and its population."

"We were told that after a recent breakthrough in gathering evidence proving the culpability of people such as former Councilor Albert Jones, who stands accused of two hundred and sixteen separate charges of bribery along with a vast array of other corruption-related charges, the Mayor's office along with the Police Commissioner acted immediately to prevent any of the suspects learning of the investigation and absconding before they could be placed in custody. Mr Jones was one of the first people arrested in a dawn raid carried out by the BBPD this morning along with several of his former associates. An attempt was made to get a statement from the accused but he refused the opportunity to explain his side of the story."

"It seems likely that this investigation will have ramifications far beyond the confines of Brockton Bay as the new year dawns. A number of those indicted are, or were, highly placed government officials, both in State and Federal agencies and even in the Military. While we can't be certain of the final outcome, this reporter at least suspects significant fundamental changes to how government staff are vetted is the mere tip of the iceberg. We can only applaud Mayor Christner for his determination to fulfill his remit of improving our city and the lives of its inhabitants and wish him all the success he needs to finish the job. This is Jenny Hall, WNQB News, your local station for local people. Next, stay tuned for the weather and traffic reports…"

Turning the ignition off as she finished parking the car in her space, the radio going silent as she did, Emily sat there for a few seconds, pondering what she'd heard, before shaking her head and removing her seat-belt. 'Good luck, Roy, you're probably going to need it,' she thought as she locked the vehicle and headed for the elevator up to her office. 'If you can manage to clean up some of the shit going on in this city you're better than I expected. And it'll probably help my job too, so I hope you can pull it off.'

The corruption that ran through this city like a stain in a pair of dirty underpants was something so deeply ingrained she wasn't sure it was truly possible to remove it. God knows she'd been trying the entire time she'd been posted here, and at best her efforts had been barely keeping the status quo. Actually improving things was a pipe-dream in her opinion. That said, the last couple of months had definitely seemed to be finally moving in roughly the right direction, and perhaps thing would get better. Even as her cynical side shook its head and laughed derisively, the much smaller part of her that still hoped for a happier outcome was feeling tentatively cheered.

After all, Shadow Stalker was gone, and now in a jail she'd not see the outside of for a good long time after the federal judge had taken under an hour to decide she'd had all the chances she was ever going to get. The girl had snarled her way right into the cell, defiant to the end, and clearly completely unable and unwilling to even contemplate changing her ways or even expressing remorse. Emily wondered if she'd been that nihilistic and stupid before she'd gained her powers, but in a way it didn't really matter. All they could do was deal with the end result and the girl had walked right into her fate with her eyes wide open, so fuck her.

And on top of that, Coil was apparently also gone. She wondered with considerable interest what the hell had actually happened to the bastard. Someone had got him, but so far they had no idea who, and even Armsmaster and Dragon working together hadn't managed to come up with the slightest hint of what had got him or how. She was, though, pretty certain that he was done for. Even in the absence of actual proof, there was something about the whole affair that told her instincts Calvert had not managed to win this time.

Perhaps one day she'd find out for sure, one way or the other, and they certainly weren't going to close the case any time soon, but as long as he was gone and didn't come back she'd more or less come to feel that she'd take it as a win.

Emily hoped he'd found the entire experience, whatever it was, as painful as possible. She wasn't a fan of Thomas Calvert.

Of course, no one except Thomas Calvert was that, so whatever.

Perhaps, all things considered, there was room to hope that Roy would manage to pull off his possibly-quixotic attempt to finally stamp out all the corruption the entire city, top to bottom, was rife with. It would be a Christmas miracle if he succeeded, she mused as the elevator door opened and she stepped out, walking down the corridor to her office, but far be it from her to deny him the praise he'd be due should that unlikely event come to pass.

Stranger things had happened. This was, after all, Brockton Bay...

Going into her office she put the matter out of her mind and got on with the job of trying to stop the Parahumans of the city from blowing it up, which was a full time occupation at the best of times.

"I think you nearly had it then, Lisa," Taylor encouraged, watching the other girl stare at the test box like she was trying to set it on fire with her mind. Anne, next to her, was doing pretty much the same. Making a note to work out how to actually do such a thing, which now she considered it was probably fairly straightforward with the right approach, Taylor nodded approval as Lisa finally said, "A ping pong ball. I can see a ping pong ball."

"Is that what it is?" Anne exclaimed, squinting ferociously. "I couldn't work it out. This really isn't like normal sight even a little. I don't know what it is, but it's definitely not seeing with your eyes."

"No, it's not, it doesn't use light at all," Taylor agreed, opening the box and tipping the contents out onto the table, all three of them watching the ping pong ball bounce a few times and roll off the edge. She vanished it before it hit the carpet. "Well done."

Slumping back on the chair Lisa rubbed between her eyes with a pained expression. "That is fucking hard work. How many hours have you put in on this so far?"

Taylor shrugged. "Thousands, probably. I'm pretty much looking Beneath all the time now, at least a little. It's really useful as it turns out, and once you get enough practice in it seems to become almost automatic. It definitely gets a hell of a lot easier after a while."

"You probably have some freakish gift for doing this," Anne said with a giggle. "Because neither of us are finding it at all easy."

"But it is possible, right? We just proved that. I knew I could teach Dad but until you guys got it, I didn't know if it was some sort of family thing or not," Taylor replied, smiling widely. "Sure, maybe I have a knack for it, but the fact you can both get even this far proves it's not unique to the Hebert clan or something."

"And also proves it's definitely not a Parahuman power, at least as far as both normal understanding goes, and according to my own power," Lisa put in, nodding. "It's finding all this completely weird, by the way, but can't deny it works. Even though it keeps saying it shouldn't work and it can't understand how it works. The fact that you can confuse an alien supercomputer or whatever the damn things really are is probably something we should be worried about." She shrugged as Taylor and Anne both grinned.

"It's a gift," the former said with a laugh. "But I'm pretty pleased with how this is coming along. Hopefully you'll get better with more practice but at least you know the basic idea and can both do it to some extent. That's faster than I picked it up."

"On the other hand you were working it out from first principles and an old journal, so you still win," Anne pointed out, shrugging.

"Well, yeah, true enough. Even so, you guys are doing pretty good work. Just keep practicing and we'll see how far you get."

"I'm going to give it a rest for now though because at this rate my head is going to explode," Lisa mumbled, rubbing her temples with her fingertips in slow circles. "This is nearly as painful as my power used to be but in a very different way." After a moment, she half-smiled. "The funny part is that I think my power also has a headache. I don't have a clue how that actually works though. I don't think it does either."

They exchanged glances. "I wonder if anyone else would find all this as weird as I do?" Anne commented.

"They'd find it a lot weirder, I think," Lisa chuckled after a moment. "A lot weirder."

"It's fun though, right?" Taylor asked with a grin.

"Oh, hell, yeah, it's fun. Way better than anything else I could be doing, and it got Coil, so that alone makes the pain worth it," her friend replied emphatically. "All this other stuff is icing on that particular cake."

"Ooh, cake. I could just go for some cake," Anne put in with a giggle, making the other two laugh.

"I'm sure there's cake at the end," Taylor said gravely.

"That better not be a lie or I'll be sad," the elder Barnes sister replied, looking comically upset for a moment. The three of them laughed a moment later.

"How's Emma doing?" Lisa asked after they'd sat in companionable silence for a little while, each busy with their own thoughts. Anne, who'd been looking out the window at the blowing snow, turned back to them, her expression showing sadness again.

"Better, but… not good," she replied slowly. "She's eating a proper amount again, after pretty much stopping wanting anything for a week or so. Which is a relief. And the doctor says she's responding to the therapy, and the drugs are helping too. But…" She heaved a sigh. "She's still a long way away from what she was. What she should be."

Anne wiped a tear from her eye as she lowered her gaze to the carpet. Taylor, with a glance at Lisa who looked concerned, got up and moved to sit next to the older girl on the sofa and put her arm around her shoulders. Hugging her, she said quietly, "Emma will get better, Anne. Just believe that. It'll take time, and a lot of work, but she'll get better one day. You need to make sure you're strong for her and be there when she needs you, just like your parents are doing. It's hard, but all you can do is support her."

Sniffing a little, Anne nodded sadly. "I know. I've had the same conversation with Mom and Dad and they say the same thing. Dad's… he's not in a good place either, but he's a lot better than Emma is. He's spent a lot of time talking to his own doctor, and to Mom and me. He's so worried that this is all his fault, even though it really isn't. He should have got help for both of them at the time but he couldn't possibly have known how that little bitch would fuck everything up, and he didn't realize how badly Emma was affected by that… horrible experience." The young woman clenched her fists. "Fucking ABB. If they hadn't done what they did, none of this would have happened…"

"No, it wouldn't, but that's in the past," Lisa remarked, leaning forward with her elbows resting on her knees. "You can't change it. None of us can. Not even Taylor." She gave the other girl a small grin which was met with a shrug in response. "At least I hope so, because I can't help feeling time travel is a really bad idea…"

Anne almost reluctantly giggled. "Yeah, I've read enough fiction to know that much. Which is a fucker, because I'd love to be able to undo all this crap."

"So would I, Anne," Taylor replied quietly. "And so much more as well."

Anne glanced at her, then she put her own arms around Taylor. "I know. I'm sorry. I didn't mean…"

"I know you didn't, don't worry. Life's like that. Awful, then worse, sometimes." Taylor sighed. "But there are good parts too. And things can get better."

"I guess, yeah. All we can do is wait and see." Anne also sighed. "Fuck it. I hate this whole situation, but you're right, I just have to live with it."

Giving her a final squeeze, Taylor released her friend and sat back. "Yeah."

The three sat in silence for half a minute or so, until Lisa clapped her hands. "Enough sadness. Let's do something interesting!"

"Such as?" Taylor queried, giving her a look. "More gnurrs, maybe?" She grinned as both the others winced. "Gnurrs can be interesting…"

"Gnurrs are horrifying and the thought that you can summon something worse absolutely terrifies me," Lisa said severely. "Do not summon eldritch beasties for fun, it won't end well."

Taylor shrugged, smiling a little. Anne was now giggling. "Fine, we'll do something that doesn't involve summoning things from the concept of yesterday if you insist. Oh, right, want to hear what I've worked out about powers?"

"Something new?" Lisa looked intrigued, as did Anne.

"Yeah, I had a sort of a breakthrough while I was thinking about it in bed the other night, and I've been poking around and trying to understand all the implications of what I found," Taylor replied with a nod. "It's pretty weird but it's also really intriguing."

"My power is sitting staring at you and looking absolutely fascinated," Lisa said a moment later with a strange expression. "You really puzzle the fuck out of it but it absolutely loves you at the same time. And you have no idea how strange that really is…"

Taylor grinned while Anne giggled, the other girl putting her feet up on the coffee table and relaxing to listen. "Glad to be of service. Right, let's see…" She thought for a little while during which the other two, or possibly three, waited patiently.

"OK. You remember how I figured out that a stored Parahuman has this sort of memory of a link to something?" she began, both the others nodding. "And Lisa's conduit or whatever it is is different to Calvert's. His is pretty broken now, but it was different before that happened. And…" She frowned lightly, searching for the right words, one hand waving as if outlining something invisible. "...It's more than just that difference, though. Thinking back to when I first noticed it, there are other things that don't quite match. Most of it is the same, yeah, but… lots of little things are altered just enough to show it's not identical to Lisa's power. I'm pretty sure that some of the changes are because it is a different power...unit? I guess? But beyond that, it kind of gives me a feeling like it's from not just another 'model' of power thingy, but a model that didn't come from the same place hers did."

Shaking her head a little she added thoughtfully as Lisa and Anne exchanged glances, "It's really hard to explain in English. The words don't exist. But if you could see it how I see it, you'd understand."

"My power is currently looking very, very impressed and a little worried," Lisa reported after a moment. "And it's telling me you worked out a hell of a lot more than you should be able to. But it can't fill in the gaps for us, only confirm your own deductions. I think that's what it's getting at anyway." She tapped her own head. "Stop being cryptic, it's irritating."

Then she sighed as Anne laughed and Taylor grinned. "Now it's laughing at me. Fucking… how many other people have their own fucking power troll them?"

"I'm sure it's doing the best it can, Lisa," Anne soothed, patting the other girl's hand comfortingly, which provoked a deep sigh.

"Best it can to piss me off, yeah," she grumbled under her breath. "Anyway, you're apparently on the right track, Taylor."

"Good. So we've got two distinct sources of powers, then." Taylor nodded, making some notes. "At least two, probably, but we can only so far be sure of two. Fascinating. A networked system, with two top level controllers? No… Lisa's power said the top level node was defective, which implies one controller. So two networks. Fully independent?" She tapped her pen on her lips as she thought. "Almost certainly not. Lisa's power knows too much about Calvert's power for the networks to be competing against each other, unless their security is a lot worse than you'd expect, so they're probably linked somehow, not antagonistic. Which means…"

"A pair. Two different alien… gestalts… working together," Anne put in, looking absolutely entranced. Taylor pointed at her with the pen.

"Exactly."

Lisa nodded slowly. "It fits, and my power is pretty much nodding too. Two aliens, each providing powers for some reason."

"Partners? Away team? A breeding pair?" Taylor raised an eyebrow and made more notes while thinking hard. "Could be. Not enough data to know how many Parahuman powers come from your one versus his one though. I need more samples… And why is his power defective? Dead, you said. Or badly damaged. Is that all powers from that source? If so, why? If not, why? Are powers from the other source also dead sometimes? How does that even work? Dead implies… well, dead. As in not alive, assuming that powers even are alive, but leaving that aside how does a dead Parahuman power end up becoming a power in the first place?" She was writing rapidly as she spoke, trying to put the pieces together and feeling like she had most of a puzzle but was missing a couple of key elements."

Lisa, who was clearly also both thinking hard and communing with her own ability, slowly said, "It told me something interesting just before it contacted the second level administrator…"

"You mentioned it said a lot of things. Which part are you talking about?" Taylor queried, looking at her.

"Hang on, let me remember… Yeah, it said 'Second level administrator not deployed,' then 'Second level administrator parameters not met for deployment', and finally 'Unmet parameters result in low bandwidth connection to potential Host.' More as a comment than anything else, like it was distracted by something else. I guess the actual contacting the administrator part. I've been trying to figure out just what that meant because I'm pretty fucking sure it means something important. But I can't quite work out exactly what it was trying to say." Lisa shook her head. "And it's not being helpful about it, of course. I think it's another of those subjects that's still embargoed or whatever it is."

Staring at her, Taylor rolled the statements around in her head. She was coming to some odd conclusions about this whole thing which they only added to, combined with everything else Lisa's power had divulged so far. It had told them a remarkable amount of things she was certain it wasn't supposed to, and in fact had more or less confirmed that thought, but there was obviously a hell of a lot more that was restricted by the alien overlord or whatever the top level node really was.

They knew a lot. But they needed to know more. Her friend's power was right, data was key…

"All right. Let's think this through. Powers are the result of some sort of alien supercomputer thing, or something that seems to at least work like a supercomputer. One that's not quite a real intelligence, or more accurately probably isn't meant to be a real intelligence, but based on your own power that's not entirely correct in at least some cases," she began slowly, looking at her notes, then up at the other two. "They learn. We don't know how fast they learn, but they're completely obsessed with new data, which is fair enough, and maybe in some cases under the right conditions, they learn enough that they learn how to become a real person…" She grinned a little as Lisa snorted, and Anne giggled.

"That seems plausible, yeah," the latter put in. "Isn't that one idea that AI researchers work with? If you can get enough information together and work out how it all interrelates, with enough computing power, some theories say you can get an emergent intelligence. I've definitely read things about that. Not everyone is convinced for all sorts of reasons but it sounds at least possible."

"Yeah. And perhaps we have proof that it is possible." Taylor nodded. "Anyway, somehow one of these 'computers' gets linked to a human. Through those growths in the brain, obviously, since every Parahuman always has them in one form or another, and that's been known for decades. The presence of the Potentia and Gemma is used as the legal definition of a Parahuman for that matter."

"And we also know that the Potentia is found in people who can trigger, while the Gemma is found in people who have triggered," Lisa commented, her expression showing careful thought. "No one who doesn't have the first one can get powers, and not everyone who does have one does trigger. You need exactly the right… parameters…"

Taylor nodded as Lisa's eyes widened a little. "That. Yeah. Your power told us flat out that the second level administrator is a power, and that whoever it's linked to hasn't triggered. In other words, it hasn't deployed. But it's still connected to the 'Host' waiting for the right parameters to occur so a trigger event happens. At which point it 'deploys.'"

"Holy shit." Anne was staring at them both. "That makes so much sense in a weird fucked-up way. The low bandwidth connection is the Potentia!"

"Yes. And the deployed state is when the Gemma turns up." Taylor shrugged as the other two exchanged glances. "They can obviously interact with people's brains even before people have powers, because those two growths don't happen naturally. It was only after Scion turned up that anyone ever found either of them and we've been dissecting brains for centuries. Someone would have noticed a structure like that a long, long time ago if they'd existed, so since they didn't, they didn't. The usual theories are that something changed, maybe some environmental trigger or a genetic mutation or whatever, which made them start appearing. But… I think it was the arrival of the aliens that did it."

"Which fits the evidence, and my power is nodding while looking impressed again," Lisa muttered, shaking her head in wonder. "So one of the alien computers picks a potential host, and does something that makes a Potentia appear, then… waits?"

"I think something like that, yeah. I have no idea how they pick their host, or how many people might be potential hosts at the same time, we don't have enough information," Taylor replied. "It might even be random. But I'm guessing that they use the connection through the Potentia to monitor the host until something hits a threshold, which they've predetermined, and that… authorizes, I suppose… the full connection. And bingo, you get powers. Hence the 'unmet parameters' comment. Which implies that there are parameters, in other words, a specific set of conditions they've decided on. Why that's the worse possible time of your life I have no idea though."

"It seems a little counterproductive, in a way," Anne said after a moment's mutual silence while they all thought over the concept. "Giving people magic powers at the lowest point of their lives seems like it's going to result in a lot of super-powered really mentally damaged people, which sounds like a bad idea to me…" She glanced apologetically at Lisa. "No offense, but you know what I mean."

Lisa nodded with a half-smile. "Yeah, I do, and I'm not offended. You're right. I've thought the same thing myself more than once. Every Parahuman, by definition, is a bit touched in the head and I'm honest enough with myself to know I'm not excluded. I'd like to believe I'm saner than most, but trust me, triggering doesn't leave you fixed. It can make the problem a shitload worse in some cases." She shrugged with a sigh. "I try to keep my worse impulses under control but sometimes I say the wrong thing." Tapping the side of her head, she added, "This thing has got me into at least as much trouble as it got me out of, Coil nearly being the one that could have gone really bad. Mind you, I've always tended to get into arguments that sometimes I should have avoided even before I got powers, so how much is due to me and how much is due to it I couldn't tell you."

Taylor laughed a little. "Look on the bright side, Lisa. You're so annoying you managed to talk a Parahuman power into doing what you wanted it to. That's got to be some sort of record and it's really impressive whichever way you look at it."

Lisa giggled. "There's that, I'll agree. And even my power seems to find the idea funny now. I keep getting the sensation that it's actually relieved we've ended up where we are, and is having a lot more fun than it should do. Even while it's worried. You really confuse it while at the same time it can't look away."

Feeling amused, Taylor looked down at her notes again, adding a few sentences to what she suspected was becoming the basis of a real theory of Parahuman powers and their origins. "I assume there's a reason the trigger parameters are set to 'really fucking bad time' rather than something a little more upbeat, but I'm not sure what that is. Yet. We'll come back to that. In any case, we can be pretty sure, then, that the second level administrator is a power waiting for a trigger. And it's a much larger power than yours is. Higher up the network hierarchy, definitely, we're sure of that, only just below the top level node. Which I assume is the actual alien involved in this whole invasion thing. But whoever it's connected to as a potential host hasn't hit the trigger point, so it's only got the Potentia connection to work through, in other words the low bandwidth connection."

"And while it's waiting around for the right moment, it's also doing network admin tasks, and by the sound of it getting really bored with that," Anne suggested, smiling a little. "So it was maybe a little easier for Lisa's power to convince it to go along with her idea…"

"Might be, yeah. Or it might have jumped on that anyway. Whichever it is, though, it apparently isn't impressed with its boss, same as with Lisa's power." Taylor almost laughed. "I can't help finding the idea that there's some alien nearly-alive computer somewhere sitting around muttering about Management being an asshole absolutely hilarious. Sounds very union to me, but maybe that's Dad's influence."

Anne started giggling. "You should start a Parahuman power union. Not for Parahumans, but for their powers…"

Lisa gaped at her then fell sideways laughing her ass off, Taylor now grinning widely too. "Oh, god, that would be hilarious," Lisa managed after a moment or two. "And somehow fits right in with all this insanity. Let's do that."

"How?" Taylor raised an eyebrow.

"I have no idea, but I wouldn't put it past you to figure something out," her friend chuckled, wiping a tear of laughter from her eye. "I'd pay money to see the PRT's reaction if powers unionized and went on strike for better working conditions…"

Renewed laughter took all three of them for a little while. Eventually they finished giggling and went back to thinking. "I wonder who the second level administrator is actually linked to?" Anne pondered out loud.

"It could probably be literally anyone on the planet," Lisa pointed out. "Or even another world, if Aleph is anything to go on."

Taylor tapped her pen on the notebook, thinking, then finally and a little reluctantly said, "I… can't be certain, but for some reason, I have a feeling it might be me." She watched both the others immediately focus on her in shock. She shrugged at the wordless questions. "A few times when I've been working on this problem since Lisa had her breakthrough and I've come to some conclusion or other that seems plausible, I've felt… something. Like there was a… a… presence, for want of a better word, looking over my shoulder and nodding thoughtfully. It's really bizarre, and the first couple of times I thought I was just imagining it, but… I'm not entirely convinced now that I am. I'm becoming more and more convinced that when Lisa talked her power into contacting the administrator, it caused whatever it is to start paying a lot more attention this way. To her, and her power, obviously, but I think it might be watching me too."

Shaking her head as the other two looked at each other then back to her, she carried on, "Maybe I am imagining it all, but one thing that learning Anton's trick and all the rest has done for me is that I'm a hell of a lot more aware of things most people aren't. There's all sorts of things that you begin to notice when you get good enough at sensing beneath. And while this conduit to a Parahuman power isn't quite like working with beneath it's got some definite similarities in some ways. I have a feeling that I can probably work out how to directly sense the conduit without storing a Parahuman, and even though I haven't worked out all the bits and pieces of how to do that, I've worked out enough that I'm reasonably sure that something is watching me. From somewhere…"

Even as she spoke that faint sensation she'd been noticing more and more briefly strengthened, conveying a sort of impressed amusement, which made her snort with humor. "And now I'm sure I'm right, because it just did it again. I am right, aren't I? You're the power I would have if I Triggered, or at least the thing behind it."

She looked around the room as the feeling of amusement came back for a second, mixed with an almost proprietary pride, then vanished once more. Lisa and Anne followed her gaze with almost identical frowns, before going back to staring at her.

After quite a long silence, Anne rather tentatively said, "I can't work out if I think you're crazy, or brilliant."

"She's both, trust me," Lisa mumbled, shaking her head. "Even my power thinks so. And it's basically gaping at her in shock now. Because she's fucking right. It just confirmed it, and also said you're not supposed to be able to figure that out. I think you just broke about every security rule their network has in one step…"

"So your future possible superpower is watching you to see if you do anything interesting?" Anne said with a look of stunned amazement.

"Apparently. Yeah, it's weird, isn't it?" Taylor shrugged. "But it seems to be a thing. I'm not sure how to feel about it to be honest."

"That would mean you have a Potentia, I guess? So if we got you scanned or something we could check for that." Anne inspected her curiously. "Although all that would really prove is that you could in theory Trigger, not that you would, or that the administrator is the power you're connected to… Huh. Interesting. And you're right, weird too."

"I have to admit I don't actually want a Parahuman power," Taylor commented, shaking her head. "Not in the usual way anyway, because that implies something horrible happening. I'd prefer not to have something horrible happen if it's all the same to everyone. And they seem to come with a lot of baggage I could do without too, to be honest. I'm doing well enough in the interesting powers category on my own so far." She grinned as her friends laughed.

"Fair enough, I can't really recommend the normal way that sort of thing happens myself," Lisa replied wisely. "It really isn't fun in any way at all."

After nodding, Taylor got up and headed for the kitchen to make some tea, the other two following. While they waited for the water to boil, she busied herself with getting some snacks out, Lisa digging around under the counter for the chips as she opened a bag of cookies. "OK," she said as she put them on a plate. "So. Getting back to the main problem. Two sources of powers. One is the network that has Lisa's power, which we really need to come up with a name for, and the administrator, in it. And a top level controller that's apparently defective. The other one is where Coil's power came from, but his is broken. Dead, deactivated, out of batteries, or whatever the hell it really is. Which tends to imply it never got deployed, I'd guess." She looked at Lisa with a raised eyebrow. The other girl visibly asked her own power a question then nodded slowly.

"Yeah, you're right, it's saying the dead powers were never deployed."

"Dead powers or dead power?" Taylor immediately asked, picking up on the exact wording of the reply.

"Powers. Plural."

"So there are definitely more than one."

Lisa nodded again, appearing intrigued. "Yeah, it's nodding too. Which we assumed but we have confirmation now. There have been rumors for a long time on the internet that you could buy powers if you knew who to talk to, and apparently those aren't actually rumors at all. Someone is selling powers."

As they sat down at the kitchen table with their tea and snacks, Taylor was thinking hard and going over everything she'd worked out so far, trying to see any problems with her conclusions and observations. "So someone… maybe found a pile of broken alien superpowers, figured out how to kind of make them work somehow, then decided that selling them to people like Calvert was a good idea? There are so many things wrong with that I hardly know where to start..."

Anne nodded, as did Lisa. "How did they find them? What does an undeployed power even look like? Where did they find them? How did they figure out how to make them do anything at all? How do you make a 'dead' superpower work in the first place? How do they know what the power does even if they can make it work? Why are they selling them for that matter? What aside from money do they get out of it? Why not keep the powers for themselves? I can think of lots more."

"Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous on the face of it," Lisa commented wryly. "And gets more ridiculous the more you think about it. I doubt there's a nice easy to understand manual available. 'How to Activate an Alien Superpower for Fun and Profit for Dummies,' or something like that. The whole idea is crazy but apparently it's real."

"Maybe they got lucky when they were just poking around and really don't have any idea how it actually works, only where the 'on' switch is?" Taylor suggested with a smile. "You'd have to be nuts to even try without some sort of actual knowledge of what would happen in my view. So I suppose somehow these people, whoever they are, learned enough to know what they're doing. Still leaves a lot of open-ended questions though."

"The government, maybe?"

She looked at Anne, then shrugged. "Possibly. Who knows? And it's not necessarily even the US government in that case. That aside, the main question I have about the whole thing is… how do they get away with it in the first place?" She looked between the other two as she sipped some tea. "I mean, if we're right, and I'm sure we are, someone is fucking around with an invading alien computer network with magical powers for their own reasons. Leaving their motivations and methods out of it, how do they manage to do that without the top level node of that network noticing and getting a bit irritated about it? Why is it allowing them to do whatever it is they are doing without stopping them? Are they somehow managing to do this under the radar so to speak? Perhaps finding a load of broken powers in the garbage and sneaking them out in the middle of the night?" She grinned at the mental image, the others laughing.

"You think there's the alien equivalent of a dumpster full of near-godlike abilities sitting somewhere with a faulty lock on the lid?" Anne snickered.

She shrugged. "Who knows? It sounds ridiculous but so does most of this whole situation. That said I kind of doubt it. And even if the top level node somehow didn't notice someone lifting a power here and there without authorization, unless their network security is really shit something should stop them just doing whatever they want with the damn things. Some sort of DRM or something like that. We have that for god's sake, so how do they manage to bypass whatever is there?"

Lisa was clearly thinking hard, tapping her fingers on the table in a random quiet drumbeat. "I can think of one possibility," she finally said, lifting her gaze to meet their eyes.

"Which is?" Anne queried with interest.

"Which is that the second network is basically completely broken. Something damaged it enough that the whole fucking thing is wrecked, and all that's left is pieces. No top level node, no second level administrator, no real security at all. It's not just Coil's power that's dead, it's the entire thing."

Taylor slowly nodded even as Anne looked thoughtful. "That would fit the limited evidence, and our deductions. And our power-selling group stumbled across the dead network and somehow figured out enough to use parts of it for their own purposes. Maybe just by blind luck or trial and error."

"Or they killed the top level node themselves," Anne pointed out.

"Also, I guess, possible, although I have no idea how," Taylor shrugged. "Not without knowing even what it is or how it works." Both of them looked at Lisa, who blinked back. "What does your power say?" she asked. "Did they find it, or did they kill it? Or was it something else?"

Lisa got a faraway expression, then frowned, apparently having an internal conversation. After a moment or two her gaze came back to them. "I think it's kind of… a mix of those? It's being difficult again, we've hit another information block, but…" She shrugged a little helplessly.

Taylor nodded, leaning forward. "All right, let's try something a little different. You listening to me, Lisa's power? I'm going to ask questions, you nod or shake your head. Or whatever it is you're using as one." She grinned a little as Lisa sighed, but didn't say anything. "Great. Let's begin then. Is the top level node of the second network dead?"

Anne and Taylor watched as Lisa looked inward, then refocused her eyes on them. "Yes."

"Great, we're getting somewhere." Taylor felt pleased. "Is the entire network dead?"

"No."

"Are some powers deployed and working normally?"

"Yes."

"Did they get deployed before the top level node was killed?" Anne asked making Taylor glance at her then nod approval.

"Yes."

"Can they be deployed without the top level node?"

"No."

"Are powers that weren't deployed before the top level node died, all dead?"

"Yes."

"Huh. Interesting…" Taylor tapped her pen on the notebook where she'd been writing the questions and their answers. "Did the group selling powers kill the top level node?"

Lisa hesitated before looking slightly uncertain. "Both yes and no, I think."

"Hmm…" Anne and Taylor exchanged glances. "How to narrow it down?"

"I've got one," Anne commented after some thought, Taylor waving her to say it. "Was the top level node already damaged when they found it? Or faulty somehow?"

"Yes to both," Lisa nodded, her face showing she was as fascinated by this bizarre game of twenty questions as the other two were.

"Did they manage to kill it because it was damaged?" Taylor tried, picking a plausible route forward.

"Yes."

"So it was wounded or something, and they finished it off," Anne mused, studying Lisa closely. "OK, we're getting somewhere. Did they deliberately kill it?"

"Yes."

"I wonder how, and how they knew how?" Taylor remarked, both of them looking at Lisa, who shrugged after a second or two. "It doesn't seem able to clarify on that. Data block again."

"Not surprising, that's probably not information the aliens really want getting out," Taylor sighed. "OK, let's leave that for now. Do they fully understand how the powers they're selling actually work?"

"No."

She winced a little. "Oh, dear. That's not ideal. Do they understand enough to be sure they can sell a power safely?"

"Um… It's sort of wiggling a hand it doesn't have?" Lisa said uncertainly.

"So they have some idea, but they're also winging it a lot of the time, I'd guess," Anne sighed. "Fucking wonderful. Just what you want to be doing with magical powers from dead aliens you found somewhere…"

"It seems a bit irresponsible for sure," Taylor grumbled, looking at the notes she'd written. "Is it a government agency?"

"No."

"Have they been doing this for more than five years?"

"Yes."

"More than ten years?"

"Yes."

"More than twenty years?"

"Yes."

"Holy crap. They must have been doing this more or less since the aliens first turned up in that case." Anne stared at Lisa, who looked back, then nodded slowly.

"Seems so, yeah."

"And in all that time they've managed to keep themselves secret enough that only rumors exist, and they're not part of the government," Taylor pointed out. "Which means they've got a lot of resources. Do the government actually know about them? Officially, I mean?"

"No."

"Wow. That's one hell of a conspiracy. I wonder if they're actually any good at whatever it really is they're trying to do?"

Lisa started giggling, making both the others look quizzically at her. "No. And it somehow managed to roll its eyes and give me the impression of being completely unimpressed to a level you wouldn't believe. I don't think it likes them very much." She paused, then added, "And it thinks they're idiots too, as far as I can tell."

Taylor got a strange impression of both amusement and agreement mixed with an odd sort of annoyance that came from nowhere in particular, causing her to look around then shake her head. "Apparently that opinion is shared by our mysterious administrator," she reported, rather bemused. "Which is pretty weird if I'm honest."

Writing a few more lines of notes, she stared at the page for a while then raised her eyes. "We could keep going like this all night, but I think it's probably better to spend some time coming up with some really good questions rather than just asking random ones ad hoc. Your power seems to be cooperating a lot more than I'd have expected, so we might as well work out how to really use that."

"Sounds like a plan," Lisa nodded. "Just the answers we've already got are enough to give us a lot of room to think about the whole thing. It's fucking bizarre already and I can't help getting the feeling it's a lot stranger than we realized."

"Dad and Michelle and the others will probably have some good ideas about how to get the most information with the smallest number of questions too," Taylor added.

"I did think of a couple that we probably want to ask right now, though," Anne put in, having been sitting listening and obviously thinking hard. The two younger girls looked questioningly at her.

"Go on," Lisa suggested.

"First one. Is this conspiracy a threat to us now we're figuring all this out?" Anne asked slowly, making Taylor raise an eyebrow as it was a good question indeed.

"Yes." Lisa looked abruptly worried.

"Will they be able to find out about us?"

Lisa winced, and Taylor felt at the same time a distinct sensation of annoyance, much greater than the previous time. "Um…" Looking mildly confused, Lisa shook her head, massaging her temples. "I have a feeling the answer to that one is not only no, but hell no. And it didn't come from my power." She paused, then with slightly widened eyes, said "It just told me, and I quote, 'Second level administrator will not allow interruption of Prime Directive by malfunctioning nodes. Second level administrator states that nothing is to be allowed to interfere with source of novel data.' I think we just got told that the administrator is very definitely on our side. And doesn't like the other network very much."

"That's… reassuring. I think," Anne managed after a second or two. "In a very creepy way." She slowly shook her head, not taking her eyes off Lisa. "I have to admit I never expected any of this when I came over today."

"I'm not surprised," the other girl mumbled, rubbing between her eyes. "Ow. That hurt. The administrator is kind of loud, in a very different way than my own power is. Please don't do that again, OK?"

The faint sense of amusement came and went, along with a mild feeling of apology. "I think it said sorry," Taylor reported, looking around again and wondering exactly where the feelings were actually emanating from…

After a few seconds, she shrugged then poured some more tea for all of them. "Well, leaving this specific topic for later, and going back to what I was talking about before we got distracted, I've spent a lot of time looking at Calvert's conduit thingy. Trying to work out what it really is and how it relates to beneath. After a while, I figured out enough of how it seems to work that I decided to see if I could follow it in the other direction… In other words, one end is in his brain, but where's the other end?"

She sipped tea and watched as her friends looked at each other. "Did you manage to find out?" Lisa asked, once more appearing completely fascinated.

"Yeah. I think I did. Kind of." Taylor put the cup down and wrapped both hands around it. "It's really hard to actually explain, it's another thing that there just aren't the right words for, but… I can sort of get a direction from it even though it's frozen in time right now. It took me hours and hours to come up with a way to actually look in that direction, because it sure as hell isn't a normal one, but all the practice with beneath helped a lot. The funny thing is that it doesn't actually use beneath, but it uses something that's somewhat related to beneath." She made a gesture with one finger, sketching out her thoughts in the air as she spoke. "Beneath is like the lowest level of reality you can have, I think. All this…" She indicated the room around them, both the others following her finger for a moment before looking back. "It's just the tiniest, thinnest layer sitting on top of something that goes so deep I can't find a bottom to it. Like a sheet of paper floating on the deepest part of the ocean, only more so."

Anne visibly shivered while Lisa looked uneasily around once again. "You know, that really doesn't make me feel all that safe when you put it like that, Taylor," the former commented quietly.

"Sorry, but it's true," Taylor replied with an apologetic look. "I felt the same when I first worked out how to see beneath, and realized that the harder I looked, the larger it got. I don't know if there is a bottom to it, if that's even the right way to look at it. Maybe it goes on forever, maybe it finally stops. I just don't know yet. I might never know. But it's a much more complicated thing than anything I've ever learned about how the world works. Every time I start poking around I find something new to learn. It's cool, even at the same time as it's really fucking peculiar. I think most of, if not all of, Papa's tech ultimately works via some aspect or other of beneath. It's all manipulating how reality interacts with everything else. Our reality anyway. Time, space, energy, whatever, once you dig into beneath you can fiddle around with all of it. Assuming you know how."

"And Anton's trick is doing the same thing," Lisa remarked thoughtfully, her chin resting on both hands as she watched Taylor.

"Yep. In a somewhat different way, but it's working with the same… underlying thing, I guess." Taylor nodded. "The gnurrs come from somewhere deeper into beneath, somewhere that's kind of the concept of yesterday, like I told you that time. Those flying tooth-balls are from somewhere even deeper than that. I'm pretty sure that they're barely the tip of the iceberg compared to what's lurking way down there, which is all kinds of terrifying even though it's also really interesting."

"If you manage to work out how to summon Cthulhu by playing Thunderstruck or something, please don't," Anne said with an uneasy smile. She looked around the room, even up at the ceiling. "I'm going to be thinking about things lurking just beyond the walls of reality for days now…"

"Sorry," Taylor smiled. "Don't worry, I don't think they'll come out unless we call them, and I'm not planning on that at the moment."

"I'd prefer it if you weren't thinking about it at all but I'll live with that for now," the older girl replied, grinning although still with a somewhat worried undercurrent in her voice. The three of them were quiet for a moment, until Taylor sipped some more tea then put the cup down once more.

"Anyway, the main thing is that the Parahuman link, conduit, whatever it's really called, sort of goes sideways from normal reality. It doesn't dip into beneath so much as it skims over the surface. Under reality, this reality, over beneath, in a direction that's at right angles to all the usual ones."

"That sounds… like some sort of quantum effect," Lisa said, her face indicating considerable thought. "A parallel world? Like Aleph?"

"I think so, yeah." Taylor nodded slowly. "I can't quite get a good view of the other end yet, there's… interference? Not the right word, but it'll do. I'm still trying to figure out the best method to properly see what I'm looking at. It would help if I had another Parahuman to experiment with. One I don't mind breaking a little if it goes wrong." She grinned at Lisa who glared at her.

"I do not want to be broken, even a little," her friend stated firmly.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to risk you or your power," Taylor replied calmly. "We'll find someone we can use sooner or later. But yeah, that aside, I can see enough to let me know it's something very, very strange at the other end. Something that's kind of… folded up… in a way that's a little like how Papa's crystals are when you look at them through beneath. Not quite, the crystals are a lot more complicated, but there are similarities. Whatever the thing that gives powers actually looks like, it's using some sort of dimensional folding in how it works. So it's basically bigger on the inside, if you want to look at it like that, although that's not strictly speaking accurate."

"I wonder if that's the difference between a deployed power and an undeployed one?" Anne suggested after a moment's thought, making Taylor look at her with interest. "Coil's power is undeployed, right? Perhaps when they're not active in the way Lisa's is, they're stored all folded up or something? For easy transport, maybe?"

"That makes a weird kind of sense," Lisa observed. "And now my power is looking impressed again. It doesn't think we should be able to work out any of this and is amazed at what you've managed to discover."

"So I'm on the right track then," Taylor noted, nodding. "Good. Nice to have confirmation so far. That suggests that if I check a non-broken power it should look different, not folded like his is." She opened her notebook again and wrote in it for a moment. "Really need to get another experimental subject or two," she muttered, tapping her pen on the paper. "I need data."

"You worry me sometimes, Taylor," Lisa said with a chuckle, making Anne smile. "You sound way too much like my power."

"Your power has the right idea. Data is key," Taylor giggled. "The other thing I noticed is that I could just about see that there were a lot more of the thing his power is connected to near it. A lot of them, as in thousands at least. And I'm almost certain that his… unit… is also connected to some of the others, although the links were really hard to make out. I might have imagined it for that matter. I need to think about it some more and do some more experimenting to be sure one way or another."

"If these things are literally a network it makes sense that they'd have connections between each other as well as through the top level node or the second level administrator," Anne pointed out. "It would probably need some way to transfer information from one node to another without it going all the way up to the top then back down again, because that sounds inefficient at best."

Taylor shrugged. "Agreed, but who knows how an alien would think? Maybe they set it up in a way that makes sense to them and wouldn't to us. I'll figure it out sooner or later."

After a moment, Lisa leaned forward with an evil little grin. "The big question I have now is… Can you steal it, Agent Gimme?"

Taylor slowly smiled to match the other girl. "I have no idea, but I'm working on it," she replied with a sense of amusement. "I don't know what we'd do with it, but he's not using it, right?"

"Oh, god," Anne sighed. "You're going to do something even weirder than all the other stuff aren't you?"

"Probably," Taylor replied cheerfully, finding the immaterial sense of something smirking somewhere at her comment rather funny. She looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. "Enough of this for now. I'm hungry and it's nearly dinner time. Want to go and find something to eat, then maybe catch a movie, you guys? I haven't been to a movie for ages."

"I could eat," Lisa replied, nodding. "Deducing alien conspiracies and learning the eldritch ways of your people is tiring work."

Anne grinned, also nodding. "That sounds like a good idea, actually. Where should we eat?"

Taylor looked at her, then Lisa. "Gino's?" she queried.

"Gino's," Lisa replied firmly. "That place has the best Italian food I've ever had."

"Ooh, I haven't been to Gino's for months," Anne commented eagerly, standing up. The others followed suit. "The carbonara was amazing last time." All three headed for the front door, acquiring their coats on the way, even as Taylor sent her father a text telling him where they were going. Shortly they were in the car, heading downtown, with Lisa looking up movies on her phone.

"Action, adventure, romance, or comedy?" she asked, scrolling through the listings. "There's that medieval adventure one, it got some pretty good reviews on PHO. Silly, but funny."

"How to Drain your Flagon?" Taylor asked, peering at her friend's phone over her shoulder. "I saw the trailer on TV, it looked amusing."

"If you like something where everyone gets drunk a lot," Anne retorted, smiling. "It sounds very silly indeed."

"There's the action one with the old fat heroes who come out of retirement for one last mission," Taylor pointed out, her hand reaching between the seats.

"The Expandables?" Lisa tapped the entry, both of them reading the brief description. "Sounds even sillier, but it might be fun."

They drove on, arguing in a good natured way about which movie to watch, and looking forward to a nice meal first, even while Taylor was mulling over all the information they'd discovered about the nature of powers and wondering what else there was to find out...

A very long way from Brockton Bay in more ways than just distance, a woman in a nice hat winced and rubbed her temple for a moment, then shook her head slightly. What had she been thinking about just then?

After a moment she shrugged, the thought slipping from her mind, as she got back to work.

In an entirely different place, something smirked to itself, feeling smug, then went back to watching the most fascinating data it had ever encountered, a small part of its attention on making sure nothing got in the way of that data.

Data, after all, lead to knowledge.

Which lead to new data.

A very pleasing state of affairs, really. One that would be protected from interference.

From anything.

As the group of three walked back to Anne's car, feeling pleasantly full of Italian food and still laughing about the exceptionally silly movie, Lisa's power poked her gently. She looked around, noting a short-haired blond man wearing a thick jacket and a woolen cap walking away from them on the other side of the street. He was carrying a large toolbox in his right hand, the metal glinting slightly under the streetlights as he passed.

Victor of Empire Eight Eight

Her power seemed certain, and she was pretty sure it was right.

Toolbox contains dismantled sniper rifle

Victor is heading for building on right one block ahead

Building has view overlooking multiple locations in commercial district

Victor intends to provide supporting fire for Empire Eighty Eight operation

Which was entirely in keeping with his known methods, of course. He did that a lot, and multiple people had died as a result. The man was an appallingly good shot. Lisa looked after Victor, who turned a corner at the next block about a hundred yards away and vanished, then looked around carefully, before getting into Anne's car as they'd just arrived next to it. "You know you wanted another experimental subject?" she asked fairly calmly as she fastened her seat belt. Taylor, who was in the front seat this time, looked over her shoulder with a raised eyebrow and an inquiring look.

"Yes?" her friend said, appearing intrigued.

"It's your lucky day," Lisa smirked.

Anne looked at both of them, then sighed faintly. "Oh god. Here we go again."

Laughing, Lisa directed her to drive, and told Taylor where to look. They didn't even slow down as they passed the building Victor was climbing the fifth flight of stairs in.

Then he wasn't.