One More Trigger
Part Thirty-Six: Drilling Down
[A/N 1: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
[A/N 2: There will be slurs by a racist character. These views do not reflect my own.]
Othala
Diane Grayson sat in the interrogation room, entirely ignoring the fact that she was handcuffed to the table. She didn't even care that there were almost certainly people watching her from behind the large mirror set into the wall across from her, or that the eyepatch she wore was the one she customarily sported in her villain persona, with the odal rune in red on the white leather. Miss Militia's words bounced around inside her skull, disarranging her thoughts until she couldn't string one to another.
Think about what Crusader's got on you, what he could prove against you. The way this sort of thing works, whoever gets in first is the one who gets the deal. Everyone else is shit out of luck.
She'd mustered the strength to deny her supervillain identity yet again—surely if she said it enough, they'd have to at least start doubting—but then the hero had left her with the most chilling statement of all.
I'm going to speak with Crusader now. Let's see what he has to say about all this.
She knew damn well Alex wouldn't say a word against her. That wasn't just a belief on her part, it was an article of faith. This was the sort of situation where he didn't just hold his own, but actively thrived.
But Miss Militia hadn't said jack about him. For a sand nigger, she was pretty damn bright. Justin was the weak link in the chain, and she knew it. Worse, he had history for this sort of thing.
Once upon a time, when they'd been sitting and waiting for a meeting to start, he'd shared his trigger event with them. He'd had a retarded sister, both physically and mentally, with health problems so bad that she required some kind of unspecified organ transplants to stay alive. As her brother, he was the closest genetic match, and he hadn't been really given a choice in the matter.
He'd tried to end both their problems by literally pulling the plug on her, but he'd been caught and in the ensuing round of accusations and guilt trips, he'd gotten powers. While he never talked about what happened after that, she had all the information she needed. When the going gets tough, he discards anyone he feels is holding him back, even family.
Right now, she was squarely in those crosshairs, complete with an itchy feeling right between her shoulderblades. For all that they'd been teammates for years and had each other's backs a hundred times, they'd never been in this specific situation. Just like her, he would be staring down the barrel of a prison sentence; even more so than her, because while she'd only ever been strictly support, he'd played an active role in every crime he'd been a part of.
She could even imagine Miss Militia's strategy with him. Looking at him out of a video screen (because only the terminally moronic would go face to face with someone they believed was Crusader if they didn't have to) she'd probably say something along the lines of, Victor and Othala are a married couple. They'll support each other, and throw you to the wolves.
Not that she would. She was loyal to the Empire, and to the people in it. Max knew that. Victor definitely knew it. Justin … should know it.
Normally, she'd never hear a word against him. He was a good teammate and solid in his support for the others. But (the treacherous voices in the back of her head said) …
… like her, he wasn't a combat cape. While he'd won any number of fights, he'd never gotten into them himself; his ghosts did all the fighting. He never had to worry about being punched in the face, or shot, or stabbed.
This was perhaps the first time that he'd actually had to face a serious problem himself, instead of interposing as many ghosts as he needed to between himself and the enemy. It was a highly unpleasant experience for her, and he had to be at least as unhappy about it as she was. In fact, he probably had it worse than she did, because she'd never had a power she could use to defend herself or attack others. He did have such a power, but was unable to use it now without outing himself.
He had to be feeling pretty damn vulnerable. She knew that because she was feeling vulnerable.
And Miss Militia was talking to him right now.
Fuck.
Kaiser
About half an hour after Max got off the line with Hookwolf, the phone rang again. He saw as he picked it up that it was Krieg. "Well?" he asked as soon as he had the handset to his ear.
"We haff big problems." Krieg sounded actually flustered enough for his accent to slip through. "I sink Papa has zem. All sree."
"What?" Max shook his head. 'Papa' meant the PRT, by way of the phonetic alphabet. "No, that's not right. I've heard nothing." The PRT loved their victories; it should've been splashed all over the morning news. He paused, frowning. "And it doesn't even make sense. Justin had a thing he was planning to do today with Bradley, so he would've gone straight home to get some sleep."
"I didn't hear it directly." Krieg sounded slightly more under control. "I made contact with Alexander's people inside the building, just to see if they'd heard anything. Nothing specific about any grabs, but they have a car in holding that rammed the bollards last night. License plate matches Alexander's. The whisper is, the people in it were drunk. But that's everything they could tell me. There's an information blackout over anything else about the incident."
Max let Krieg's slight lapse in infosec go by, because there really was no good way to couch all of that in innocuous terms, and it was the sort of thing he needed to know yesterday. If he was reading between the lines correctly, all three of them had gotten drunk after leaving the Medhall meeting, and tried to ram-raid the PRT building. That wasn't the worst of it, or even close to the worst. A simple attempted ramming would also have made the news, but the fact that the PRT were making it need-to-know even inside the building, where normally it would be a case of 'how stupid were those dumbasses' around the water-cooler, meant there was another layer of fuckery going on.
There was only one thing it could be. The PRT knew who they were. Max closed his eyes.
Okay, think. Think.
Once the PRT figured out who they had ahold of, they would've raided their homes before the ink on the search warrants even had time to dry.
What would they find?
Costumes. That's something no lawyer can explain away.
That wasn't quite true: a really top-notch lawyer could pull off the 'cosplaying' gambit, but not with all three of them at once. Even the most lenient judge in the world would raise an eyebrow at that.
Motherfucker.
He had no idea what had possessed Victor and the others to do what Krieg said they'd done, but they'd done it, and now the shit was in the process of impacting the fan at transonic velocities.
Alexander Grayson—Victor—knew almost as much about the inner workings of Medhall as Max himself did, but he also had access to every anti-interrogation technique it was possible for someone to learn; Max wasn't worried about him.
Justin and Diane—Crusader and Othala—were another story altogether. He had no concerns about their loyalty to the cause. There was no way they would willingly give up Max or the Empire; the key word there being 'willingly'.
Both were young, and while neither of them had as much insight into the Empire as a whole as Max or Victor, both of them absolutely knew enough to rip the guts clear out of the ongoing masquerade. Every last secret identity, for one thing. And it was a cast-iron cinch that the PRT would be leaning on them very hard indeed for that information.
Max couldn't really blame them; he'd been flouting the law for years, after all. But that didn't mean he was willing to roll over and play dead for them now that they had hold of a thread that promised to unravel his whole organisation. If he could get his people back out of the clutches of the PRT before the interrogators broke them, it wouldn't get them their secret identities back, but he'd be able to maintain his own, and those of the rest of the Empire.
Failing that and as a last resort, the very precautions that the PRT used to make sure that their prisoners stayed prisoners should make it easier for his moles to ensure that they kept their mouths shut permanently. It wouldn't be his first choice, or even his second, but if he couldn't deal with the situation in any other way, his needs were absolutely going to trump theirs. And to be brutally honest, it was ultimately their fault; it wasn't like someone else had forced them to drunk-drive a car into the lobby of the PRT building.
Something was nagging at him, trying to grab his attention. He knew Krieg would be waiting for instructions, but he had to figure out what he was missing. It was important, he knew that much.
Seeking inspiration, he took the phone away from his ear and looked at it for a moment, and then the penny dropped. Shit, the PRT will have their phones! And I tried to call them!
Putting the phone back to his ear, he did his best to keep his voice calm, just in case there was someone listening in. "I think it's a good idea to discuss this in person in one hour, same venue as last night. Inform Bradley, please. Everyone goes to alternate phones. I'll put out the word to everyone else. See you soon." He ended the call, put the phone on the desk, and stared at it.
If the PRT had the phones of the absent members, then they would be going through what they could of them with a fine-tooth comb. Incoming calls would be tagged and backtraced, and the numbers retrieved. He had to assume that the phone he'd just been using, along with Krieg's and Hookwolf's, were irretrievably compromised. Hopefully, nobody else had tried to contact them.
Opening his desk drawer, he took out a burner phone and sent a mass text to everyone except the three captured capes, Hookwolf, and Krieg. Urgent face to face meeting, one hour, location 3B. Go to burners.
With luck, he decided as he extracted the SIM from the compromised phone, he would be able to contain the damage and get his people back before anything else happened.
Winslow High, Between First and Second Period
Sparx
"Hey."
"Hey."
Emma bumped fists with Taylor, who was grinning broadly. She noted that Madison, next to Taylor, was also smirking. "You two look pleased with yourselves."
"We should," Madison agreed. "Everyone who left Medhall last night did it with leaf-bugs and booster bugs on their cars. Taylor got home addresses."
Taylor said nothing, but her level of pure smugness threatened to rival Lisa at her most obnoxious.
"Well, damn." Emma raised her eyebrows. "So, were we right? Option Four?"
Taylor nodded. "Either that, or one of them is also squatting in Max Anders' house." She rolled her eyes to show what she thought of that particular hypothesis. "The PRT's locked itself down tighter than a Protestant convent on St Patrick's Day, but the Empire's gotten wise anyway." She'd gotten that last one from a Dockworker called Gerry, once upon a time.
"Wise?" Emma frowned. "About what? That we did it?"
"No, that the PRT's got them." Taylor grinned. "You know how I was putting bugs on everyone? This morning, I heard a fascinating series of conversations between Max Anders and two people I'm pretty sure were Hookwolf and Krieg, from both ends of the call even." She handed a notebook to Emma. "Transcripts."
Emma's eyebrows rose toward her hairline as she read each line of the supposedly secure phone calls. "Well, that's definitely interesting, alright. Mads, have you read this?"
"Not yet. We were just getting to that bit." Madison accepted the notebook as Emma handed it to her. "Thanks."
"No problem. So, who do you think we should go after next?"
Taylor's grin morphed into an expression that would've made the average homicidal maniac back away slowly while making no sudden moves. "Oh, I've got ideas. But I'd like to discuss them with everyone else first."
Madison nodded. "I vote Stormtiger. He gives air manipulators a bad name."
Emma high-fived her. "As good a reason as any."
Miss Militia
When the trooper led Othala into the interrogation room, Hannah was sitting across the table as though she'd never left. Holding the folder up like a book, she pretended to read the contents while Othala was secured back in place. Even after the trooper left the room, she affected not to notice for another thirty seconds, before putting the folder down.
"Sorry to keep you waiting. Crusader had a lot to say." She hadn't been near Crusader, but Othala would never be able to prove it. The time had been mostly spent getting an earpiece fitted so information could be passed back and forth without the prisoner noticing.
"He's lying!" Othala blurted. "I never did anything!"
Hannah waited for fifteen seconds, then started to get up. "Not good enough, sorry."
"Wait! If he says I did stuff, he's lying! But I can tell you what he did!"
"We already know what he did in public," Hannah said patiently. "That's part and parcel of being a supervillain. If you're going to get any kind of plea bargain agreement, we're going to need a lot more than that."
As hints went, it was fairly broad, but it had the desired effect. Othala grimaced. "Okay, but I want to make a deal."
Hannah leaned back in her seat and raised an eyebrow. "You're not exactly in a position to force us to agree to any deals."
"Alex," Othala forced out. "Whatever I get out of this, he gets it too. Both of us or neither of us. That's the deal. Take it or leave it."
Hannah put on a thoughtful expression. "Nothing for Crusader?"
"If he's talking to you already, then fuck him." Othala's eye searched Hannah's face. "We got a deal?"
It was almost amusing to watch the tension build in the villain's expression as Hannah remained silently deadpan. She had to purse her lips to keep from smiling. "Hmm. So you're willing to waive your right to remain silent and your right to a lawyer?"
"Does Justin have a lawyer?"
Hannah solemnly shook her head. "No, he does not."
"Alright, then. What do I get if I talk to you?" She tried to hold up her hand, but the cuffs prevented the movement. "Wait, what's Justin asked for?"
"It doesn't work that way." Hannah inserted a chiding note into her voice. "That's between us and him. You have to work out your own deal."
"Okay, um, total amnesty for anything we might have done."
Hannah chuckled. "You know it doesn't work that way, either. Not unless you give us literally everything about the Empire Eighty-Eight. Names, dates, crimes that we don't know about yet, banking details, names of their moles in law enforcement. Everything we need to bring them down for good. That's worth total amnesty. Anything less just won't cut it."
"But … I don't know all that stuff." Othala was looking less happy by the second.
"Calm down, that's okay." Hannah opted for letting her down easy, rather than pushing harder. "Whatever you can help us with is good. Mainly, we're interested in confirming information we've already acquired from other sources. If it pans out, we'll definitely pass it on that you've willingly cooperated with us." She did her best to make it sound almost routine and boring. Yeah, yeah, you've agreed to talk. Let's see if you can make it worth our while.
"What information? Where did you get it? Was it Crusader?"
Hannah raised an eyebrow, noting the name shift. "I can neither confirm nor deny."
A Little Earlier
Director Piggot's Office
"Ma'am, we may have a break in the Ram-Raid case."
Emily sat up a little straighter at Armsmaster's words. "Brief me."
"Someone tried to call Crusader's phone. I didn't answer it. There were three attempts, which gave me a good cut for location via cell towers. Then someone else tried to call Victor's and Othala's phones. Again, I got a good location cut. Same location. I've already been into Crusader's and Othala's phones; Victor's is a harder nut to crack. The one who called Crusader is down as Bradley in Othala's phone and Hooky in Crusader's phone."
He paused, and Emily smiled grimly. "Hookwolf. Bradley Meadows. You've got more. What is it? And where are these calls coming from?"
Armsmaster took a deep breath, audible over the phone. "The one who called Victor and Othala is down as Boss-Man in Crusader's phone, K in Victor's phone, and Max in Othala's phone. And the location all these calls came from is right over the top of the Medhall building.."
"Which is the recorded place of employment for all three of them." When she'd heard that piece of information, Emily had considered one of them working there as inconsequential and two as a possible coincidence, but all three was a pattern she couldn't afford to ignore. "So it's true. The Medhall corporation is an Empire Eighty-Eight front. Max Anders is Kaiser."
"That's what the information so far seems to point to, yes. I'm ninety-five percent sure of it. But …"
"But not one hundred percent." Emily let out a tiny sigh. "And Max Anders has pitbulls in three-piece suits who will bury us, legally speaking, if we make the accusation but can't get it to stick. Good work. Keep digging. Let me know when we've got enough to choke the pitbulls with."
"Will do, ma'am."
Now
Othala
Diane stared at Miss Militia, trying to figure out how little she could get away with giving the woman. She didn't want to betray the Empire, but right now Max Anders wasn't staring down the barrel of a prison sentence, and she was. Worse, if she was reading correctly between the lines of what Miss Militia was saying, Justin was already trying to sell her out to keep himself out of prison.
Fuck that.
"What information are you talking about?" She tried to force a nonchalant tone. "If I don't know about it, I don't know about it."
"Well, we'll see. If you can't answer even basic questions, I might have to assume you're not interested in cooperating." Miss Militia's eyebrows rose slightly. "First question. Hookwolf's real name."
Diane had been braced for something like Max's name—he had to know she'd been taken by now, and was taking precautions—and the softball question caught her unawares. "Oh, uh, Bradley. Bradley Meadows." Wait, don't they know that one already?
"Good." Miss Militia ticked something off. "Purity's real name."
"Kayden Russel." Diane paused, feeling a twinge of remorse. "Not that she's in the team anymore. Walked away from us after she had Kaiser's kid. We still talk, but that's about it. Says she wants to go hero, or some crap like that."
"Mmm-hmm." It was like Miss Militia wasn't even listening. Tick, went the pen. "Night's name."
"Dorothy Schmidt. Creepy bitch. Her and her husband both."
Miss Militia tilted her head slightly. "Oh, so they are married? Hm. I think you just settled a bet between Assault and Velocity." She made a note in the file. "Cricket's name."
"Melody Jurist." Diane was starting to relax. As far as she knew, the PRT knew most of this stuff already. If it gets me what I want, I might as well play along.
It went on like that, touching on Fog, Stormtiger, Rune, Alabaster, Krieg, and the Biermann twins. Finally, Miss Militia looked up from the folder. "So, Kaiser would be Max Anders, then?"
Diane's head came up, and she stared at the Protectorate hero. "What—how did you know that?" She'd had some vague idea of holding out for a more definite offer of better treatment, but this pronouncement had taken the wind entirely out of her sails.
Miss Militia ticked off points on her fingers. "You, Crusader and Victor all work in the Medhall building. Kayden Russel is Max Anders' ex-wife, and you said she had a child by Kaiser. I've met Max Anders, and I've fought Kaiser. If they were not the same man, one would be dead by now. Neither one would accept having to take orders from the other."
"Oh." Well, she wasn't wrong. Kaiser could be proud to a fault. "Um. So, uh, does that help with me and Alex?"
"Absolutely." Miss Militia nodded firmly. "You're doing great. Of course, anything else you can give me would just improve matters."
On one level, Diane knew she was being played, but on the one that mattered, she didn't care. Any chance at all of keeping herself and Alex out of prison, she was going to grab with both hands. "Okay, um, let me think …"
Medhall Sub-Basement
Kaiser
"So it's true?" demanded Hookwolf. "The PRT's got all three of them?"
"That's what I understand." Max was just as unhappy as Hookwolf sounded. "According to Victor's people in the building, his car is in impound after it rammed the bollards with drunk people on board. What I want to know is, what could have possessed them to perform such a ridiculous stunt? Crusader, I can just barely see doing it. Othala, less likely, and Victor, never."
Krieg nodded. "I have been thinking about it, and I suspect foul play."
"You mean they were Mastered." Stormtiger was on his feet, pacing back and forth. Odd breezes flitted through the room, stirring papers pinned to the corkboards.
"Perhaps." Krieg stuck to his guns. "Are there any human Masters in the city?"
Max shook his head. "Nobody who could Master three people at once, or do it at all at a moment's notice."
Cricket put her electronic larynx to her throat. "Regent can puppet people. You know, that annoying little shit from the Undersiders."
"Wouldn't be him." Alabaster sounded definite. "Worst I've ever heard of is that he can make people trip, or throw their guns away. Unless he's had a major power upgrade, he's not about to make three people get drunk then ram a car into the PRT headquarters. That's a long way out of his league."
"More to the point, why would he?" Max was fully aware that this question hung over every possible culprit in the matter. "Unless I'm missing something, we don't have any real beef with the Undersiders right now."
"Still running the dog fights," Hookwolf reminded him. "That gets Bitch's panties in a twist."
"It does not scan," objected Krieg. "If Bitch recruited Regent to come after us, then they would come after Hookwolf or Stormtiger or Cricket. Not after three capes who've never even attended a dogfight."
"An' if it was her," Stormtiger added, "she woulda made an example of them, not handed 'em over to the PRT. Nah, Krieg's right. Doesn't feel like the Undersiders."
"Well then, who?" Max was feeling more than a little irritated. He'd been hoping they'd be able to figure out who was pulling this shit on the Empire; that knowledge would've informed their next actions. Specifically, who to track down and gruesomely murder. "Some out of towner looking to cut in on our action, given that Lung and Coil are under lock and key?"
Hookwolf frowned. "Haven't heard of anyone coming in, but it'd have to be a whole team. Thinker to get themselves up to speed with the town and figure out who Victor and the others were, maybe a Tinker to grab 'em all by surprise, an' a Master to make 'em get drunk and drive into the bollards."
"Or it could be a local team." Krieg held up his hand to forestall the immediate protests. "Let us not miss the forest for the trees. Consider this: if we were to ignore the need for a Master to be involved, who would be our first suspect in the matter? Who is our most urgent concern at the moment?"
Max frowned. "The Samaritans, of course. They've run rampant over the villains inside the city, not to mention the Slaughterhouse Nine."
"Twice, even," Hookwolf just had to put in. "Most people didn't used to survive their first run-in with those assholes."
"Wait," Rune objected. "You think it's actually the Samaritans? What about the Master side of things?"
"We know they rammed the bollards, and that they were drunk. That is literally all we know at this moment." Krieg's tone was precise and measured. "Mastery is the simplest way that could have been achieved, but I doubt it is the only one. The Samaritans have built a strong reputation for resourcefulness and being able to meet any challenge at short notice. Do you honestly believe they could not have pulled that off?"
A silence fell over the table. Even Stormtiger stopped pacing. Max examined the concept from all angles and prodded it a few times before admitting in his own mind that it appeared to be sound.
"I have just one issue with this," he said eventually. "If we assume it was the Samaritans who did all this, and we redouble all our efforts to squashing the Samaritans, only to find out it wasn't them … what happens then?"
Krieg nodded in acknowledgement. "That is a distinct possibility, yes. But if that were the case, we would still be faced with two extant threats, and dealing with one of them is good, no matter which one we tackle first. If, on the other hand, it is the Samaritans doing this …" He let his voice trail off.
"… then if we gank those annoying little bitches, all this shit goes away." Hookwolf nodded. "Yeah, that works for me."
"So if it is them …" Menja began.
"… how do you think they're doing it?" finished Fenja.
Max curled his lip. "I'll be sure to ask the last one alive, just before we consign her to a shallow grave." He waited until the table-slapping and other sounds of approbation died down before raising his voice. "Next order of business. Victor, Othala and Crusader have been in PRT custody for approximately twelve hours. Part of that undoubtedly was taken up with recovering from a drunken stupor, but we have to assume that they're being vigorously interrogated. What are the chances that they'll break?"
Alabaster shook his head. "Victor, not a goddamn chance in hell. He's more likely to end up with stuff about them."
"True." Krieg frowned. "Crusader is just stubborn enough to hold out, even to his own detriment. I have my doubts, however, about Othala."
"Hey, O's staunch!" objected Rune. "She'd never give us up!" She gestured around the table. "She's been there for all of us! Healed us, given us boosts, helped us win fights! You can't just write her off like that!"
"Nobody's writing her off." Max gave her a serious look. "However, she's the next youngest member of the team after you, and she's never had to go head-to-head with law enforcement. You wouldn't break; you've been incarcerated before. But she doesn't know the little psychological tricks they can pull. If they made her believe, for instance, that Victor had turned on her to get a lighter sentence, that might get to her."
"Wouldn't work." Alabaster made a scissoring motion with his hands. "She'd never believe that. But if they told her that Crusader was fucking her over to get off easy …" He spread his hands. "She might just fall for it."
"Let's put a pin in that for a moment." Max steepled his fingers. "There are two other security issues that need to be addressed. Hookwolf, Krieg; you both called their phones. This means the PRT has your numbers. Has anyone else tried to call them since last night?"
After a moment, Rune's hand went up. "After Krieg called, asking me if I'd heard from O, I sent her a text, but she never replied. Just 'Hey, girl, whassup?'."
"Dump the SIM," Max said bluntly. "That one's almost certainly got a trace on it by now. Anyone else?"
Nobody answered, which he took as a good sign. Rune, Hookwolf and Krieg all pulled their phones out and set about extracting the SIM cards, not without a little grumbling from the teenager. Ignoring her, Alabaster turned to Max. "You said two security issues. What's the other one?"
"Medhall." Max gestured at the ceiling. "All three of them work here. I'd wager even Director Piggot at her most oblivious is likely to find something suspicious in that."
Krieg looked up from his phone. "As I recall, that was your idea. 'Keep everything in-house', I believe was your phrasing at the time."
"Well, what's done is done." Max smoothly pivoted away from what he'd been about to say. "Pointing fingers isn't going to do anyone any good. We need to figure out where we go from here. How do we deflect official attention away from Medhall?" And away from me, he didn't quite say.
"Might be harder than we think." Alabaster sat forward. "Getting back to Othala maybe spilling the beans, it doesn't matter what we do on our end if she's feeding them what they need to know on their end."
Max hadn't wanted to raise that specific topic; not from squeamishness or any particular attachment to Othala, but because it was easier to run the show if the others didn't think he was willing to discard them at the drop of a hat. Now that it had been introduced, of course, he jumped right onto it. "Go on."
"Well, it's simple," Alabaster said after a momentary pause. "We can say no all we like, but if she's telling them yes, they'll just keep looking. So we've either gotta totally discredit her somehow, or just plain take her away from the PRT. Maybe both."
Max leaned back in his chair and affected a thoughtful pose. "And when you say, 'take her away from the PRT' …?"
Rune broke in from across the table. "Rescue, duh. What did you think he was talking about?" She paused, belatedly remembering who she was addressing. "Uh, sir."
"And what if it's impossible to rescue her?" asked Hookwolf. "If the PRT knows who they've got their hands on, that place'll be more watertight than a duck's butthole. Even if we busted in, we'd have no idea which cells they're in." He looked over at Krieg. "Can Victor's moles get them out?"
Krieg grimaced. "Get them out? Unlikely. Right now, that information is need to know, and they're not high enough in the food chain to have that need. We'd burn all of them if we attempted a breakout from inside, with a low probability of success."
"Recorded testimony's one thing, but getting an actual witness on the stand is solid gold for judges and juries, right?" Alabaster said, looking around the table. "What if we just, you know, cut our losses? Had the moles remove the witness?"
"What the fuck?" Rune came to her feet. "You're saying we should murder Othala? Shut her up by killing her, just because it's more convenient that way? Is that what you're saying?"
"Sit! Down!" Max's voice crackled across the room. Despite her agitation, the teenager dropped back into her seat without hesitation. "The course of action Alabaster is suggesting isn't more convenient. In fact, it's seriously inconvenient. As you say, Othala is a valued member of the team. Her power has helped us all at one point or another. Victor would be devastated at her loss. But."
There was silence for a moment, then Rune ventured the question. "But …?"
Max took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. "But we're up against the wall, here. There are no good options, and even the bad ones are going to be difficult to pull off. If we do nothing, or if we don't try hard enough, the Empire falls. Medhall will be gone, and with it most of our resources. Our secret identities, gone. Everything we have, crumbled to dust. Do you truly want that?"
"You know I don't!" She glared at him, apparently forgetting again that he was in charge. "Why don't we just bust in there and take them away from the PRT? I can totally put a ten-ton block of concrete clean through the wall if I have to."
"Because we don't have the intel we need, and even if we did, we haven't got the heavy hitters to get in there and out again." There. It was out in the open. "Victor could worm the intel out of their computer systems, and Crusader could infiltrate the building with ghosts and find any prisoners we wanted, but they're the ones in there. This is why we've always waited until Hookwolf was on the Birdcage transport before springing him."
"Purity could do it." Rune hadn't backed down yet. This was a level of attitude that he was going to have to address at some point. "And if she brought Night and Fog in to help, it would be even easier."
"Are you not listening? I've been trying to tell you—wait." He paused as what she'd said finally registered with him. "Purity?"
Rune was right, he realised. Purity—Kayden—would absolutely add enough firepower to the team to allow them to spring the other three from durance vile, especially if (as Rune had suggested) Night and Fog came in on it as well.
Krieg nodded approvingly. "Her presence would definitely change matters, yes. You should perhaps give her a call."
"Fine," he agreed. "I will." And if she says no, then she's the bad guy and not me.
Of course, he knew exactly which buttons to press to make sure she didn't. Because he was very, very good at motivating people.
Purity
When the phone rang, Kayden snatched it up in case it woke Aster. Her daughter slept on undisturbed, so Kayden stepped into the kitchen and put the phone to her ear. The number on the caller ID was unknown to her, so she was braced to give an earful to the person on the other end if they turned out to be a telemarketer. "Hello?"
"Good morning. Have I called at a bad time?" Max's voice was jovial, which rang rather loud alarm bells in her mind. Her ex-husband was never this cheerful, unless he either wanted something or had just gotten what he wanted.
"Not really. Aster's just gone down. What do you want?" She tried not to sound curt, but it wasn't easy.
"Oh, good. We have a slight problem, and I'm hoping you can help us with it. Last night, Alex, Diane and Justin ended up in a little trouble. They need to be extracted from Papa's house before difficult questions get asked and answered."
"How did—no, never mind." Kayden eased the kitchen door most of the way closed, so she could keep an eye on Aster and talk at the same time. "What part do you see me playing in this scenario?"
He chuckled lightly. "What you're best at." Which meant blowing large holes in buildings.
Kayden hesitated. She wanted to just tell him no and end the call before he inevitably talked her into his latest ill-advised scheme, but the question nagged at her. "What's your plan for if I'm unavailable?"
His tone became a lot more serious. "Without you, we can't realistically pull it off. If they stay where they are, the odds that one or more of them will get loose lips—probably Diane—get higher all the time. And if that happens, a lot of information about our social club gets spread far and wide, including who you are. I'm sure that CPS would be thoroughly unreasonable about allowing custody to certain people. Nobody wants to go there."
He was right, she realised as a chill seized her heart. Any information leaks about the Empire Eighty-Eight would inevitably out her at the same time. They would absolutely try to take Aster away from her.
I'll kill them all first. It didn't matter who 'they' were. If they tried to take her daughter, they would die.
"So, what's plan B then? I know you, Max. You always have a plan B."
He was really good at the whole 'regretful necessity' tone. If she hadn't heard it a thousand times before, she might even have bought it. "After some discussion, it was decided that for the good of the social club, if we had no other options, we might have to remove the problem from consideration."
His weasel-wording was so smooth that she took a couple of seconds to decipher it. "You mean you'd have her taken care of."
"It certainly wouldn't be my first choice." He sounded so sincere, she almost believed him. "Unfortunately, sometimes hard decisions have to be made, especially when you're caught between two unpalatable options. Would you truly choose to endanger Aster to save her life? Because that's what it comes down to."
Her grip on the phone was so tight, the plastic creaked in her hand. She knew without looking that her knuckles were white. "Goddamn it, Max. Fuck you with a rusty garden fork. I'm trying to be a hero here, and I'm really making headway now that the opposition is behind bars. But if I do this for you, all that goes away."
"Are you blaming me for whatever they did to end up where they are? Because I really don't think that's fair." He didn't even have to try for injured innocence that time, because (irritatingly enough) it was actually justified. "I certainly didn't plan this. We're still not totally sure how it happened, though our current theory is that the Samaritans did it. So if you want to blame anyone, blame them."
She slid to her knees, teeth clenched and eyes shut tight, wishing she was callous enough to condemn Othala to death and be fine with it. But she wasn't. The Empire Eighty-Eight had been her only family for far too long, and she still considered Diane to be her friend.
"When?" she forced out. She knew she was abandoning her dream of being a hero, but that was Max all over; he was good at fucking up dreams for people.
"Noon shift change. I'll put Theo in a cab to your apartment, to watch Aster. You can take it back to the Medhall building. We'll go over the final plan then, and hit them while they still think we know nothing. Oh, and can you get Night and Fog in on this too?"
Kayden hesitated. Geoff and Dorothy were just a phone call away, and would definitely come along if she asked. But they were even less concerned about the sanctity of human life than the rest of the Empire. Any innocent bystanders would be in grave danger, just for being nearby.
On the other hand, the margin between success and failure could easily be dictated by whether they were there or not. And she did not want her door to be kicked in one day while she was out, and Aster just … taken. The very notion made her want to kill something.
In for a penny, in for a pound. "… fine," she said, on the tail end of a sigh. "I'll get them in on it too."
"Excellent." She could just tell he was beaming. Why wouldn't he be? He'd gotten what he wanted, after all. "I'll see you soon, then."
Ladybug
About halfway through World Issues, with Mr Gladly waffling on about how the 2003 trade deficit between Indonesia and Australia had led to political changes in both nations, I began to get the impression that something was shaping up to be very wrong indeed.
As a matter of course, I'd kept tabs on all the members of the Empire that we'd located and identified, and I'd noticed a pattern of movement that was quite concerning. Kaiser was already in the Medhall building, but he'd sent a text and then gone down within the building to an area well below ground level; the same place Crusader, Victor and Othala had gone on the previous night. Again, he went through the rigmarole of covering himself with bug spray. I'd anticipated this and left the booster bug in his office, but a couple of leaf-bugs had made the trip down with him.
Other members of the Empire whom I'd already marked with leaf-bugs came in to join him, some from outside and a couple from within the building. I couldn't listen in on the discussion because leaf-bugs were good at hiding and avoiding bug spray, not espionage. However, I did have one detach itself from each person and scuttle across the floor, up the wall and along the ceiling until they were directly over the table.
Any one bug had terrible eyesight, but I was figuring out how to get a gestalt of what they saw and form a single not-so-bad image out of it, after I'd read how astronomers could use a bunch of telescopes spread over a wide area to simulate a single scope with much better angular resolution. And I really, really wanted to know what they were looking at on the table.
While I was still figuring that one out, three more people arrived and made their way down into the sub-basement. Hastily, I shoved leaf-bugs onto them as well, and tried to figure out what was going on.
There were two women, one of whom was quite petite, and one man. He and the taller woman seemed to be together. When Kaiser kissed the petite woman, I had my clue. This had to be Purity, and the last pair would be Night and Fog.
We'd thought Purity had separated herself from the Empire, but here she was, attending a planning session. Why hadn't she come to the one last night? And why were Night and Fog here?
Then Kaiser leaned over the table and tapped the big sheet of paper in the middle, just as I finally managed to get my ceiling bugs to focus properly on it.
I was looking at a plan of the PRT building.
What they were saying was out of my reach, thanks to the bug-spray precaution, but I was pretty sure this wasn't a meeting of the local Architectural Appreciation Society. I was already aware that the Empire knew where their three missing members had disappeared to. From this, it looked like they were planning to go break them out, and Kaiser had somehow roped in Purity, Night, and Fog as extra muscle.
Well, crap.
End of Part Thirty-Six