Taylor Hebert, Medhall Intern
Part Twenty-Two: Debrief
[A/N 1: This chapter commissioned by GW_Yoda and beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
[A/N 2: This has been one hell of a month, and it's not done yet. I went through a cyclone, fought off a cold, had a friend visit over the course of a week, and I've had to deal with a dodgy ankle. Still, here's the chapter. Whoo.]
Taylor
"Shit!" Brian stopped in his tracks, even as we headed for the elevator. I thought he'd maybe figured out that as armoured up as we were, with five monster dogs (even ones that were steadily shrinking back to normal size, which didn't look weird at all) there was no way in hell we were going to fit into the passenger elevator.
Director Piggot looked back at him and opened her mouth, but Tattletale held up her hand. "Something's wrong," she said.
The other two members of the Undersiders immediately looked around warily, no doubt used to treachery from their line of work, but Brian shook his head. "Families," he explained. "We have to contact them right now."
Shit! Dad! I immediately felt terrible for not remembering that sooner; in my defense, we'd been on the back foot more or less since I'd connected the dots in Tracey's office, using her login. The trouble was, I didn't own a phone; hell, back in the Medhall building, I'd had to use a landline to call Greg for help. "Can I borrow a phone, please?"
"The PRT would be happy to—" began the woman in the business suit.
"Nuh-uh," Tattletale interrupted. "No doubt you'll be trying your hardest to find out their real identities anyway, but you're going to have to work a little harder than that. Guys, your phones?" Demonstrating that she meant what she said, she pulled out a sleek latest-model smartphone, and woke it up with what looked like an eight-digit passcode while shielding the screen with her other hand. "Here," she said, handing it to me. "Knock yourself out."
"Thanks." I zoned out then, concentrating so I didn't get Dad's office number wrong. In the background, I was vaguely aware of Regent and Bitch handing their phones over to Greg and Tracey, but I wasn't paying them a great deal of attention right then.
I hit the last digit, scanned the number to make sure it was correct, then tapped the Call icon. Immediately, it began to ring.
Come on … come on … pick up. Please pick up.
Dockworkers' Association
Danny Hebert
When the phone rang, Danny frowned slightly. Taylor always rode home on the bus with Greg—nice boy, definitely good for Taylor—so there'd be minimal reason for her to call him before five. The TV across the room—he usually kept it on mute—was playing a new spot about the Empire Eighty-Eight getting into a running battle with someone who might have been the Undersiders, though it looked like they weren't sure. Even if it wasn't, gangs came and went all the time in Brockton Bay; they usually had to either work at not antagonising the big dogs or be aware that if they Fucked Around there would inevitably be a Finding Out phase.
Turning his attention from the scrolling chyron at the bottom of the TV screen, Danny picked up the phone. "Good afternoon, you've reached the Dockworkers' Association. Danny Hebert speaking, how can I help you?"
"Good afternoon, Mr Hebert." The reply was smooth and confident and just a little familiar. "This is Max Anders. I'm calling about your daughter Taylor."
"Uh … Mr Anders, right!" Yes, he definitely remembered that voice now. After all, they'd spoken face to face not so long ago, on the road up Captain's Hill. "What … what about Taylor? Has something happened? Is she hurt?" He recalled all too vividly the fright he'd felt after the Shadow Stalker incursion into the Medhall building.
"Oh, no, it's nothing like that." Anders chuckled warmly. "Here, I'll put her on. She can fill you in herself."
That didn't sound so bad. Danny relaxed back into his chair. "Okay, sure." Taylor could've definitely made many worse choices for her boss than Max Anders, he reflected.
"Hi, Dad." Taylor sounded fairly cheerful. "So, this is basically my fault. I stayed back to finish one last thing, and Greg was going to wait for me, but he got a call from his mom so he left before I finished. But now I really don't want to ride the bus alone, so could you come pick me up from the Medhall building, pretty please?"
"Absolutely." He was far enough ahead in his paperwork to be able to leave early this once. "I'll be there as soon as I can. Pick you up around the back?"
"Sure, that'll be perfect." He could hear the relief in her voice. "You're the best. When we get home, I'll make you a cup of coffee just the way you like it."
"Yeah, that'll be great," he said absently, already in the process of shutting down the ancient desktop computer that was all his budget could cover. "See you soon."
Kaiser
Max shook his head admiringly as Victor ended the call. "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it. You really do have all the skills, don't you?"
Victor cleared his throat a couple of times, then smirked. "It helps that I spent so much time in her presence. And that she doesn't have a squeaky chipmunk voice like that idiot Clements girl. If I wanted to emulate her voice, I'd need to do something drastic to my most prized possessions."
"Good thing we didn't have to go that far." Max shook his head. "Othala's stretched to the limit as it is, healing Stormtiger again as well as Fog, and dealing with the rest of Rune's broken bones. Also, trying to fix whatever the fuck it was they did to Krieg." He still remembered the agonising chill touch of the black tentacles in the sub-basement of Medhall.
"Weren't we going to try to contact the other families?" asked Victor. "The more hostages the better, and all that?"
"I've got people on the way to the Veder house and the Laborn residence as we speak," Max explained. "Danny Hebert's the only one who doesn't carry a cell phone. Better to go to where they are than to trust we can pull them to where we are."
Victor frowned. "Somehow, I can't help thinking that no matter who we grab, those three will be spilling the beans before we can start applying pressure. Shouldn't we be concentrating on pulling our visible assets so we can go underground?"
"The guilty flee where none pursueth," Max quoted. "I know we're actually guilty of what they'll be saying, but the PRT won't be able to prove it, at least not immediately. And if our lawyers can muddy the waters sufficiently before we force them to recant, we might even be able to sidestep it altogether."
"Ever the optimist, hmm?" Victor grinned and slapped Max on the shoulder. "You know what I'm going to regret most about this whole shitshow? Apart from Purity taking it on the chin, I mean?"
"We can break her out," Max declared confidently. Though he wouldn't rush the jailbreak too much. She'd never roll over on him, but maybe a few extra days sitting in a cell would underline how much she depended on him and the Empire Eighty-Eight, especially now that she was well and truly outed. Though coming to think of that … "Send someone to pick up Theo and Aster from Kayden's apartment before the PRT gets there."
Given Kayden's avowed intention to go hero, being the one who had control over her daughter would go a long way toward determining her ongoing loyalties. He didn't think Director Piggot would take the initiative in recruiting her, but stranger things had happened before now.
"Sure." Victor started sending a text, but he kept talking without looking at the screen. "So, what I'm going to regret most of all isn't the bullshit we just went through, but how we had someone like Taylor, with all that sheer goddamn potential, working for us … and it was never going to work out. Not in a million fucking years."
Max didn't want to concede that last point. "I'm not so sure about that. If we'd had a few more months to work on her, cement her loyalty to us as people, we might've been able to pull another Harcourt. And Veder would've followed in her footsteps."
"Grimshaw would've been a complication, no matter what," Victor reminded him. "According to Harcourt, she was competent but she didn't have Taylor's spark of genius and level of resourcefulness. And even though she's been working for us for years, she still didn't hesitate to try to sell us down the river."
"Maybe if Justin was still alive, he might've been able to talk her around," Max suggested, but he personally wouldn't have bet his life savings on it. "But even if that wasn't the case, you should really have killed her off then and there, rather than getting complicated by faking her death. Why the fuck didn't you do that, exactly?"
"I told you," Victor said tiredly. "She sent off a text, and I decided we needed to find out who to before we put her in the ground for good. Events were moving too fast. Bad calls were made."
"Well, now we really need to cut all this off at the pass." Max straightened his suit jacket. "Did Hebert sound convinced?"
Victor's smile would not have looked amiss on a shark. "Entirely."
Taylor
The phone rang for what felt like forever before someone finally picked it up. "Good afternoon, you've reached the Dockworkers' Association, Danny Hebert's office." I recognised Lacey's voice, albeit a little breathless. "I'm sorry, Mr Hebert's gone home for the day, but if you want I can take a message."
I frowned. Dad, going home for the day this early? Right when I needed to talk to him urgently? That made no sense; or rather, it made sense in a way I didn't want it to.
"Hi, Lacey, it's me," I said. "When did Dad leave, and did he say exactly where he was going? Because I really, really need to get a message to him."
"Oh, Taylor." She switched seamlessly from 'professional' to 'personal'. "He, uh, he actually said he was going to pick you up from the Medhall building. Something about how your boyfriend ditched you?"
It was the worst possible news I could've had. "Lacey, you've got to stop him! He can't go to Medhall!"
"What? Why? Isn't that where you are?" Kurt and Lacey didn't have any kids, but I still heard 'concerned parent' in her voice. "Taylor, what's going on? Why don't you want your dad to pick you up?"
"I'm not there! I'm at the PRT building!" The words spilled out of my mouth. "Medhall is full of Empire Eighty-Eight, and they just tried to kill me! Stop him! Please!"
I wasn't quite sure what part of that got her attention, but I heard the phone handpiece hit the desk. Distantly, I could hear Lacey calling out to others in the office, but her voice was too faint for me to make out the words. As my hand clenched around the phone, the plastic creaking in my grip, I saw the blue-suited woman staring at me.
"Is that true?" she demanded.
I nodded, still listening intently to the phone. "Yeah. Tracey figured it out, so they faked her death and when they got what they wanted from her, they were gonna kill her for real. Then I figured it out too, and me and Greg and, uh, Grue made a run for it. Hookwolf and Stormtiger and Victor were chasing us through the service passages, inside the walls."
"And Max Anders?" she asked, her tone intent. "Does he know about it? Is he complicit? Or are they using his business as cover behind his back?"
Greg laughed hollowly, apparently done with his phone call. "Ma'am, he's Kaiser. I'd be downright astonished if he didn't know about it."
The woman blinked, apparently taken aback for the first time since she'd entered the discussion, which said a lot for her ability to handle new information. "Anders is Kaiser? You know this for a fact?" From the tone of her voice, she was reconsidering some of her prior assumptions.
"Yup," Greg confirmed. "We were right there in the room while him and Victor and Stormtiger and Hookwolf and Cricket discussed how they were going to coerce me and Taylor into being loyal to them. To Medhall."
"Murder," I filled in. "It was going to involve murder. I was supposed to kill Tracey, and Greg was supposed to kill Grue, and they'd hold that over our heads forever. The alternative was that they'd murder me and Greg and Dad and Greg's mom, so there wasn't really a good option."
"Wait." That was Armsmaster. "You're teenagers. What do you have to offer that Kaiser and the Empire Eighty-Eight would be willing to give you even that much leeway over? Unless it's your powers …?"
Armsmaster's lack of social adroitness was something even I knew about, so I chose not to be offended by his words. "No, it's not the powers, though he probably would've been even more interested if we had them then. We, um, kind of saved him a ton of money, back when we were interns." I paused, thinking. "Greg clobbered Shadow Stalker after she nearly murdered Victor and tried to murder me. I found a bunch of Coil's moles in the building. And I'm pretty sure Grue saved the Empire Eighty-Eight from being outed, totally by accident, after me and Greg convinced Kaiser to hire him on as a security guard."
The silence that fell across the parking garage was broken by a bark of laughter from Regent. "Haha, you fucking did what now?"
"Coil? You're sure?" The woman in the blue business suit was zeroing in on me.
"Wait, wait." I held up my hand to give her the message that I preferred having personal space. "Who exactly are you, again?"
"Director Emily Piggot, Parahuman Response Teams." The response was as curt as it was automatic. "You were saying about Coil?"
"Uh, yeah," I said. Holy shit, she's the PRT boss! And she's talking to me! If my adrenaline glands hadn't already been sending out for more supplies, I would've felt as breathless as I had once been when talking to Max Anders (though not as awestruck because, to be fair, she just wasn't that charismatic). "They had me checking employment records and I noticed some of the social security numbers were in sequence, so I pointed this out to my boss. There was a huge investigation that I was totally left out of. But they told me after the fact that I'd uncovered an infiltration by Coil's people."
"Was there any indication—" she began, but just then I heard voices on the phone I was still holding to my ear. I held up my hand again, and turned away from her. Talking to the Director of the PRT was absolutely a big deal, but Dad came first.
Danny
It wasn't until Danny was pulling out of the Dockworkers' Association parking lot that something Taylor had said made him frown. They usually drank tea rather than coffee at home, and Danny always made the coffee when they did drink it. So why did she say she was going to make me a cup of coffee the way I like it? She's got no idea how I like it.
It was a puzzle, and Danny didn't like puzzles. Thinking back, she'd sounded just a little hoarse, like she was coming down with a cold … or she'd been crying. But she'd been outwardly upbeat, like nothing was wrong.
Something just didn't add up.
A car horn sounded from behind him, and he realised he'd rolled to a stop in the exit to the parking lot while he'd been thinking about things. He waved to acknowledge his gaffe and put the car into gear, preparatory to driving out of the parking lot. But then the horn sounded again, repeatedly and insistently.
Looking in the rearview mirror, he saw Lacey in the car she shared with Kurt, waving frantically out the window. He couldn't decipher most of the gestures, but one seemed to mean 'come back' and another was a horizontal slashing cut-off motion. Puzzled, he put the car in reverse and waited; she backed up almost immediately, giving him the room to reverse as well.
As soon as he was out of the exit, he pulled to one side and stopped the car. Lacey was getting out of her car, so he set the handbrake and got out as well. "What's up?" he asked. "Is there some sort of emergency?" He was going to have to call Taylor back, he figured.
"Oh, thank God I caught you!" She stopped, leaning against her car with one hand raised while she caught her breath. "Taylor's not at Medhall! She's at PRT building!"
"What? But I just talked to her." This wasn't making any sense at all.
"No, no, no, that wasn't her. The real one just called." She straightened up and half-ran over to him. "Medhall's full of Empire Eighty-Eight, and she found out."
"What?"
"It's okay, she's fine. She's more worried about you."
"Me? Why me?"
"Because you were going to Medhall!" she shouted.
Even with the doubts he'd been having earlier, this was still something he had trouble getting his head around. "Taylor's at the PRT building? Are you sure?"
"Of course not," she snapped. "I regularly have heart attacks trying to stop you from driving off to be a hostage for supervillains for fun."
"Hostage? Why?" Events were moving too fast.
"Because she knows who they are." She gestured toward the Association building. "I dropped the phone on your desk and ran, so she might not have hung up yet."
Still not at all sure what the hell was going on, he returned to his car, turned off the engine, and locked it up. "Who was pretending to be her? Was it Emma again?" On second thought, he doubted very much that Emma (for all her faults) would be affiliated with the Empire.
"She didn't say. All she said was that Medhall was full of Empire Eighty-Eight."
Despite the fact that she'd already covered that, he still had trouble believing it. "But … Medhall are good people. I've met some of them. They think Taylor walks on water, and she thinks the same about them."
"I'm guessing that's before she found out they were Empire Eighty-Eight." Lacey turned her hands palm up to emphasise her words. "But she sure sounded genuine about it."
"Okay, okay, I got it." Danny headed back into the building at a fast walk, with Lacey trailing behind him. When he got to his office, the phone handset was still lying on the desk from where Lacey had apparently left it. Sitting down in his chair, he scooped it up. "Hello?"
"Dad, thank God." Whether this was Taylor or someone else—the idea had occurred to him on the way back into the office that this could be a fake—it certainly sounded like her. She also sounded stressed as hell. "Lacey told you?"
"Lacey told me what you said, yes." Danny was listening hard to the ambient noise at the other end of the phone call. There were echoes, and other voices in the background, but none he could pick out. "What's going on?"
She took a deep breath. "Okay, long story short? Medhall is Empire Eighty-Eight. Max Anders is Kaiser, Bradley is Hookwolf, Mr Grayson is Victor, and I don't think you met anyone else. When they realised I knew this, they tried to grab me, but I'd gotten hold of Greg and the new security hire, and we got away through the maintenance passages and rescued Tracey on the way."
He frowned, uncertain how to say this. "Honey … Tracey's dead. You told me that yourself."
"I thought she was too. But they faked her death when she found out about them, so they could kill her when it suited them. Greg and I found her and rescued her, then busted out of there."
This was starting to sound more and more like the plot of an action movie. He wanted to believe it was Taylor he was talking to, but there was still the chance he was being punked. They'd done it once, after all. "Taylor … don't take this the wrong way, but what's the nickname your mom always used for you?"
"What? Oh, right. She called me Little Owl." She paused. "Wait, if they can pretend to be me, then they can pretend to be you too. Um, back when me and Emma were still friends and we used to play heroes and villains, when she played Alexandria, who did I play?"
Now that was going back a ways. He paused, racking his brain. It had been a very distinctive name, to do with her hair … "Ah. Aha. The Infamous Doctor Curlyhair."
"That's the one." She sounded pleased just for a moment, then her tone went serious again. "Can you just come to the PRT building, please? I don't think home or work's safe. Not until we can deal with the Empire once and for all."
"Yeah, I can see that." Taking family members hostage to menace someone into not testifying against them was totally something Nazis would do. It had been the go-to tactic for organised crime long before the Empire came on the scene, after all, and nobody had ever accused Nazis of possessing a superior moral compass to someone like Al Capone. "I'm on the way."
"Drive safe."
"Always." He ended the call and came to his feet. "Lacey, we're shutting down until Monday. Right now, I'm heading to the PRT building. Get the place locked up and everyone offsite." The last thing he wanted was one of his friends and colleagues to end up with a gun to their head.
"Got it, boss. Go."
"Going."
Taylor
"Thanks," I said to Tattletale as I handed her phone back to her. "That's a huge weight off my mind."
"Hey, don't worry about it." She grinned impishly—she'd removed her helmet, as had Regent, though Bitch seemed to have taken hers off, liked the look of it, and put it back on—and tilted her head toward Brian. "Grue seems to think you're worth helping out, so I'm just going along with that. Also, I'm truly intrigued as to how you put together the clues about Max Anders and the rest of the Empire Eighty-Eight. You'd think they would be more careful about dropping hints about that sort of thing in front of interns. Especially ones who've already shown a talent for connecting the dots."
"I would also be interested in such things," the Director stated bluntly. "Especially if you happen to possess actual proof. Personally, I would be willing to take your word that Max Anders is Kaiser, but the moment we attempt to set one foot inside Medhall, we're going to need a warrant backed up by cast-iron evidence."
"Um." I thought for a moment. "Purity is Kayden Russel, Max Anders' ex-wife."
The Director tilted her head. "Is that so? Intriguing and problematic for the man, but at best circumstantial."
"But the fact that I knew it before you unmasked her means I've been into their files." I tapped my breastplate with my fingertip. "I took notes."
"Anyone can write anything." She looked and sounded as though she truly regretted the words she had to say. "I need something that can't be faked in five minutes by someone with a grudge, or a lucky guess."
"How about screenshots?" asked Tracey. She held up Bitch's phone. "I emailed them to myself before I told Ms Harcourt."
"Let me see that." The Director took the phone and started flicking through the images, zooming in on some of them. "Okay, yes, these are definitely … I need these images pulled down, backed up and deep-analysed, stat." Turning to Armsmaster, she passed the phone to him.
"Hey!" Bitch protested. "That's my phone!"
"It's also the same phone you deliberately lose every other day," snarked Regent. "Why is it you only want it back when someone else finds it useful?"
"Because it's my damn phone, and she can't just give it away to someone else!" Bitch actually sounded angry at this. At her side, no doubt picking up her mood, her dogs growled. "Especially an asshole like Armsmaster, who'll get everything else off it!"
"We have spares," Tattletale assured her. "There's nothing on there that we can't handle them knowing."
"But it's my phone," Bitch insisted stubbornly. "Give it back, or I start growing my dogs!"
"Oh, for fuck's sake," Brian said irritably. "Give it back to her. Tracey, here." He passed her his phone. "Pull up the emails on that."
I looked between the Undersiders as Bitch snatched her phone back from Armsmaster. I'd only been exposed to their interactions for a relatively short time, and I didn't know everything about them—that seemed to be Tattletale's jam—but I already had a rough idea of their interpersonal dynamic and their motivations. They were villains, but not in the same way as the Empire Eighty-Eight were.
The Undersiders weren't united by a cause of hatred like the Empire, or pseudo-racial unity like the ABB. As far as I could tell, they were a bunch of teenagers who were in it for the money; the trouble was, there wasn't enough camaraderie to overcome the snark and anger. What the final glue was that held them together, I couldn't quite figure out. Not yet, anyway.
Brian's action seemed to disarm the tension as Tracey went into her emails again, then passed the phone on to Armsmaster. I caught Tattletale looking speculatively at me, as though she'd figured out what I'd seen in her group. "You're actually pretty good at this," she said cheerfully. "I'm better, but for someone without any powers or formal training, you've definitely got a talent."
"Gee, thanks." I didn't want to piss her off, so I left out some of the sarcasm I was feeling. "Seems like all it's really good for is getting me in over my head in a Nazi organisation without actually telling me that they were Nazis. I mean, Greg and I were getting hand to hand training from Hookwolf and Cricket!" It was hard to express how totally bizarre that was without shouting, but I did my best.
"If that's the session I'm thinking about, Grue was helping Hookwolf and Cricket train you," Tattletale agreed, sounding highly amused. "Apparently Kaiser's son was there, and some other girl …?"
"Theo's actually a nice kid, but the other one was Rune." I glanced over at Brian. "I'm pretty sure she had her costume and school ID in her pack when you stopped those ABB assholes from mugging her. There's no other good reason why Kaiser and Hookwolf would've been so insistent on her doing the training. Basically, punishment duty."
"So why was Theo being punished?" asked Brian. "Bradley—I mean Hookwolf—made sure I didn't go easy on him either."
Greg chuckled. "He got drunk at the wake we attended for Justin. You've never seen a guy who wanted less to be there."
"Why would Kaiser punish him for that?" asked Tracey. "Did he cause a scene or something?"
I shook my head. "No. Greg and I put it into his head that he should tell his old man that he didn't want to inherit Medhall. So I'm guessing he did, while he was still drunk. And he probably opted out of the Empire Eighty-Eight at the same time."
"Hahaha, wow." Tattletale's grin broadened. "For a control freak like Kaiser, that's gotta be right up there in the 'fuck you and the horse you rode in on' stakes."
"All that and more, yeah." I glanced at Greg and Tracey. "Oh, and you do know Justin was Crusader, right?"
Tracey nodded heavily. "I know. I couldn't believe it when I saw it at first, but …" She sighed. "I guess it's better this way. I don't have to devote any time to hating him. He's dead, along with the man I thought he was."
"What, really?" Greg sounded surprised. "Huh. I never made that connection."
"Justin …" Director Piggot's head came up. "The man Shadow Stalker killed, right? On Captain's Hill."
"Yup." I shook my head in mild disbelief. "In one of the biggest strokes of irony in recent history, she murdered Crusader and damn near killed Victor, all the while having no idea what she was really doing."
"Wait, does she get to walk because they're really supervillains?" asked Greg, sounding worried.
"Hm, no." The Director chuckled grimly. "Intent matters, here. She had no idea who they were, otherwise she would've made it clear at the time. In any case, they didn't have kill orders, and they weren't committing crimes requiring a lethal response at the time."
I rolled my eyes. "For her, 'existing' and 'breathing the same air as me' were sufficiently heinous crimes to warrant kicking the shit out of someone. Been there, done that. Wouldn't recommend the T-shirt."
"Holy shit, you know Shadow Stalker personally?" Regent's voice was positively gleeful. "How much of a coincidence is that? You know an ex-Ward, you were working for supervillains, and you were working with another villain."
"None of which I knew about at the time," I retorted defensively. "I'm pretty sure I don't know anyone in Coil's organisation, and I'm damn sure I'm not part-timing for the ABB. Also, Grue's pretty heroic in my book. Saved my life and Greg's more than once, and Tracey's too." I turned to the Director. "Did anyone tell you he was going to take on Hookwolf, Cricket, Kaiser, Stormtiger, and Victor all by himself, just to give the rest of us a chance to get out of Medhall?"
I couldn't see Brian's expression, but I got the impression he'd just rolled his eyes. "To keep the record straight, I thoroughly underestimated Cricket. She kicked my ass all by herself."
"Still, you made the effort," Tracey said. "And I seriously appreciate it."
"Your phone." Armsmaster handed Brian's phone back. "Images have been saved and backed up. Just out of curiosity, what's that armour made from? I'm having trouble placing the exact alloy."
"Oh, it's not my doing." Brian indicated Greg. "He made it. We're just wearing it."
"Ah, yeah," Greg said awkwardly when Armsmaster turned toward him. "I guess it's one of my powers. I take whatever metal's available and make it into this stuff. I call it 'darksteel'. Kind of dorky, I know."
Dorky or not, it had saved our asses, so I weighed in on the matter. "As I recall, this is made up of Kaiser's metal, Hookwolf's metal, Stormtiger's chains, Cricket's head-cage, a few bullets, and most of an elevator."
Armsmaster took a step back. "So … Shaker rather than Tinker, then. You can control it, right?"
"Oh, totally." Greg chuckled nervously. "Don't worry, your halberd's safe from me. But if you want a sample, I can give you one." Holding out his hand, he made a curl of metal detach from the top of his shield and reform in his palm as a short-bladed knife with a contoured handle.
Stepping forward again, Armsmaster took the knife, holding it close to his visor like he was examining it minutely. "How do you achieve the darkening of the alloy?"
"Literally darkness. I mix it in." Greg gestured toward the rest of us. "We've all got themes of darkness in our powers. I think we get it from Grue."
Everyone turned to look at Brian then, and I suspected that we were only just starting to delve into the discussion about our powers and how they interacted.
So long as we got food in the process, and so long as Dad was safe, I really didn't care.
Kaiser
Max's phone rang. He turned away from where Victor was briefing Medhall's legion of lawyers on his version of the upcoming shitstorm—for shitstorm it would assuredly be, no matter how well-prepped they were for it—and took it out. The caller ID read Bradley, so he opened the door and ducked out into the corridor, already swiping to accept the call.
"Please tell me you have good news," he said. Once they had Hebert in custody, the danger posed by Taylor would be greatly reduced; depending on how good Victor was at posing subtle threats, they might even be able to leverage her into overturning the testimony of the other two. The Veder boy, at least, could be depended on to follow her lead.
They were already winding up to spin the Grimshaw woman's supposed death as a stunt by a disgruntled soon-to-be-ex-employee, rewriting her fitness reports post-Crusader as someone who had gone off the deep end into a morass of conspiracy theory. The exact substance of their cover story, he knew, didn't matter so much as the emotions it evoked. As with everything else important, it would be decided in the court of public opinion long before the legal system ever got their teeth into it.
"How long ago did you contact Hebert?" asked Hookwolf in a way that told Max immediately that no, there was no good news in the offing. "He should've been here already." As it was, he was stuck watching the rear parking lot along with Cricket, so as to take Hebert into custody as soon as the man arrived.
Max checked his watch. "Yes. Yes, he should have." For Hebert to have taken this long meant that either Victor had screwed up somehow in his impersonation of her, or something else had alerted Hebert to the ruse before he got to Medhall.
Between Hebert's absence and the time that had passed, he had to assume that the four perfidious employees had spilled the beans about Medhall's connection with the Empire Eighty-Eight, though there was still an element of doubt regarding exactly how much they knew. And even if they knew things, knowing and proving were two entirely different breeds of feline. They could tattle all they liked to the PRT, but this would hardly be the first time a perfectly blameless corporation had had such allegations levelled at it.
"Keep waiting?"
He considered the option, then shook his head. "No. Put one man on it, with orders to bring Hebert to you if he shows. Also, check in with the men you sent to pick up Veder's, Grimshaw's and Laborn's family members. I need to know how that's going."
"Will do." Hookwolf paused. "How bad you reckon this is gonna get?"
"We'll get through it," Max assured him, working to convince himself as much as Hookwolf. "The Empire Eighty-Eight's bigger than both of us, and it's not about to fold because of a few snitches. I'll stand firm, look them right in the eye, and challenge them to prove a damn thing."
"Gotcha." He wasn't sure how much he'd convinced Hookwolf of his words, but the man ended the call without arguing, which was a good thing.
Deciding on the next course of action, Max re-entered the conference room where Victor was still expounding on legal strategies. "Mr Grayson, a word if you will?"
"Of course, Mr Anders." Victor turned to the legal team. "Take five. Brainstorm some ideas between yourselves." As perfectly composed as ever, he followed Max out the door and closed it behind him. "Yes?"
Max opted to start with a softball question. "How's it going in there?"
"Depends." Victor gave Max a serious look. "If we can flip any of them, I'd say we've got a good chance of skating free and clear. Have we got Hebert yet?"
"No." The time for softball was over. "I think it's time Kaiser got seen committing some dastardly deed in public."
Victor frowned. "Is that wise? If this goes badly, reminding the public that we're villains who occasionally hurt people might not be a good move."
"True. But while Kaiser is out and about raising hell, Max Anders will be giving an extremely public press conference out in front of the building." Max waited to make sure Victor got the idea.
"Ah. Of course." They'd done this before, but not very often.
While having Victor make a public appearance at the same time that Kaiser committed a public act of villainy made for a great alibi, the fact was that Max didn't need an alibi. Not once in all the years that Medhall had been active had anyone seriously connected the dots between it and the Empire. Nobody had even suggested that the popular, handsome, wealthy Max Anders might be a supervillain.
"Finish up in there and I'll set it up," Max decided briskly. "The PRT won't move on anything they've been told for at least a couple of hours, while they cross all the t's and dot all the i's. That's the downside of being the good guys; they've got to at least pretend to follow the rules."
"Agreed. Are we breaking Purity out?"
It was tempting, but Max shook his head. "That would be hitting them where they're strongest, and suggesting that they're on to something. We'll do that in a few days, after all this has died down. Where has the ABB made its latest advance?"
Victor didn't even need to stop and think. "The elementary school on the corner of Fisher and Richmond. There's a couple of grocery stores on that block."
Max nodded. "Well, we're taking it back, while you make a speech about the importance of law and order in our fine city. Finish off with a vague promise to donate to some worthy cause or other. That's always good for a few column inches."
"I'll make it some minority group, to really throw them off," Victor suggested with a smirk. "Every mixed message we give them is a good message."
"Absolutely." Max didn't give a damn which charity got the money, so long as he was seen to be donating it and looking good in the process. "Let's get this done."
The hostage plan might have fallen through—given the lack of messages from Hookwolf, it seemed that more than Hebert had evaded his tender mercies—but he had more than one string to his bow.
We can still win this. He had to believe it.
Danny
Parking in front of the PRT building and walking in felt a little risky to Danny, especially with the Empire Eighty-Eight potentially gunning for him. Drive-by shootings didn't take place quite as often in Brockton Bay as they had in the Bad Old Days, but they were absolutely still known to happen from time to time. So, as he didn't feel like headlining the nine o'clock news, he found his way around the back of the building, to where two armoured guards stood behind polycarbonate windows, on either side of a very firmly closed blast door.
"Sir!" A voice crackled out of a speaker. "Turn your vehicle around and leave! This building is on lockdown!"
"Wait, wait!" he called, waving his arm out the window. "I'm expected! My daughter asked me to come here! My name's Danny Hebert!"
There was a pause. "Your daughter? What's her name?"
"Taylor," he said. "Taylor Hebert. This is about the Empire Eighty-Eight thing. She asked me to come here for my safety."
Again, there was a brief pause. "Exit your vehicle and face the camera. Do not make any sudden moves."
Carefully, Danny did as he was told. The camera lens was shielded behind the same sort of polycarbonate that the guards were using, and he looked directly into it. He had no doubt that he and the car were being scanned a dozen different ways by less obvious detectors, but he didn't care. So long as he could get to where Taylor was and make sure she was okay, he was fine with whatever they did.
After what was probably only thirty seconds or so, but felt like several hours, the speaker crackled once more. "Mr Hebert, enter your vehicle and drive forward slowly. Follow the instructions of the guard. Do not deviate, or you and your vehicle will be foamed. Do you understand?"
He nodded several times. "Yes. Yes, I understand." He got back into the car and let it roll forward at a crawl. The blast doors rumbled upward out of the way, but he kept his movement nice and slow until he was sure the car would fit underneath.
Once the car was inside, he saw the guard gesturing for him to pull into a vacant car spot. Up ahead, as his eyes adjusted to the glare of the harsh fluorescent lights, he saw a bunch of people in black armour, but that wasn't his problem right then. Doing what he was told, then getting to Taylor, was his entire concern.
Pulling into the parking spot, he set the handbrake then killed the engine. On getting out of the car, he was confronted by the guard. "Do you consent to a pat-down, sir? Security reasons."
"Sure, go ahead." Danny had been frisked once or twice before, in the aftermath of accompanying Anne-Rose to protest marches. It had been quite some time ago, but some things never changed.
The guard was professional and quick about it, and stopped short of the point where Danny would've felt the need to suggest the man buy him dinner first. "Done, sir. Over there." The helmet faceplate was opaque, but the guard pointed at the group of black-armoured people.
"Thank you." He walked in that direction, hoping that one of these capes—they had to be capes, given that most of them were wearing medieval style plate armour, with one even sporting a large shield—could tell him where he needed to be.
"Dad!" Taylor's voice suddenly echoed through the parking garage; he looked around, trying to pinpoint where she was. And then a slim figure broke away from the crowd and ran in his direction; he blinked as he registered that it had to be a teenage girl, but wearing the same armour as the rest of them. "Dad!" she shouted again.
"Taylor?" He started forward into a run himself, tears springing into his eyes. He had no idea what was going on here, especially why Taylor was wearing some Renfaire knockoff that made it hard to focus on her in the less than stellar lighting down here, but he honestly did not give a flying fuck right then.
They came together in a hug that drove the breath out of him, but he didn't care; wrapping his arms around her, armour and all, he spun her around. Her helmet had a hinged faceplate; raised, it showed her laughing teary expression. "Dad, I was so worried about you!"
"It's good to see you're okay too," he said, not quite wanting to let her go yet. "But what's going on? What's all this about Medhall and the Empire Eighty-Eight? And where did you get that armour from?"
She giggled, a release of tension. "Well, let's just say, it's a long, long story."
End of Part Twenty-Two