-ooo-
Recoil
Part 6-4: Resolving Fallout
[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
The moment of horrified realisation passed, and I knew what I had to do. My pistol came up, braced two-handed. "PRT!" I shouted. "Ned Hollows, stand down! Night Terror, you're under arrest!"
If I'd been an unprepared civilian, or even an ordinary cop, I would've died about two seconds later. The threat of a gun had historically made people more likely to obey a cop's orders, so even with the advent of capes, police officers were used to throwing out the challenge and having people do what they were told. Only ten years had passed since Scion's appearance, and even then the first capes had proven themselves all too vulnerable to violence. Institutional reflex had yet to reprogram itself to the new reality, so cops facing capes with fast-acting Blaster powers tended to die without even knowing why.
Civilians would normally freeze, which could be fatal. If they had guns, they lacked even the training that cops got.
I was neither a cop nor a civilian. I'd been a villain in one of the most conflict-torn cities in the continental US, then I'd been a hero. And then … I'd been thrown in the deep end, and spent six years building up the skills I needed to save the world. In the process, the PRT had trained me on how to deal with this sort of situation.
I knew just how deadly, just how dangerous a cape could be if he decided to go all out. I'd faced more than one in my absurdly short career. Despite the fact that I was still only in my twenties, I was perhaps the most ludicrously prepared non-powered person on the face of the Earth when it came to dealing with capes.
Still, with all of that, my training didn't tell me how to win. Just how to not immediately die.
A tentacle made of gleaming darkness, edged with what may have been razor-edged claws (I could only see them in profile) lashed clumsily out at me. I'd already shifted my balance to dive and roll aside (see above about training) so the dark appendage hummed over my head. A distant part of my mind analysed this and decided that his powers were definitely unrelated to Brian's, especially considering that Grue's darkness had no texture and no definable 'surface' whereas Night Terror's 'shadow' was more like a projected shape that light could reflect from.
Not that this made me any more likely to let it hit me.
I'd already had my pistol lined up on what I figured to be Night Terror's centre mass, so I started firing as I went into the dive, then sent three more shots downrange after I came up on one knee.
Ned had Triggered, that was clear. Exactly what he'd Triggered into was less certain. His near-death experience at the hands of Night Terror had obviously afforded him a different powerset than the one he would've gotten at the hands of the Department of Corrections. I just had to hope that he'd do what he was told, and not get into the fight. Or if he had to get into the fight, for it not to be against us.
In the meantime, I had Night Terror to focus on. The light wasn't great, and the swirling shadows didn't give me much to work with, but he didn't seem to be going down from the shots I'd put into him.
Maybe his shadows are bulletproof. He still seemed to be a bit loopy over Ned's trigger event—I got the impression that the shadow-tentacle attack had been purely by reflex—but that wasn't actually helping me.
"Taylor." That was Ruth. She was swaying on her feet, but getting steadier by the second. The pistol she'd borrowed from Kinsey was pointed at the ground instead of the hostile parahuman. "What should I do?" The subtext was clear; she was asking me if she should unleash her power.
I'd never personally seen it in action, though Lisa had shown me several virtual movies on the subject. She was still being annoyingly vague as to where Ruth was getting all this experience with her power, though.
What I did know was that streams of molten metal and plasma had no place on a suburban city street. In fact, I shouldn't really have been firing my pistol; even one missed shot could go straight through a wall and kill an innocent. Not only could Ruth potentially set fire to basically everything, but lights were starting to come on. People would be looking out windows.
While mobile phone cameras were still not really a thing yet, the last thing we needed was for that one idiot with an actual camera to snap a picture of a PRT Major outing herself as a parahuman. I gave her a quick head-shake. There were times and places where that sort of power needed to be unleashed. This wasn't it.
"Missed me." Night Terror's voice was deep enough to shake my bones, but I suspected it was a power effect rather than his normal vocalisation.
I lifted my pistol, aiming at where I thought his head might be. Ruth began to raise her weapon as well, but she had it pointed at a totally different part of the shifting black shadowy mass. Oh, wait. Lisa said something about how Ruth's power lets her see into the infra-red. She can see his body heat in all that.
This was entirely the wrong place for a cape battle to happen in, especially with Blaster and Shaker powers involved. While super-powers had been around for a little while, the civilian population was unused to the idea (just as the police were) that a cape battle could be dangerous to them. Endbringers and other S-class threats were a lot less regular than they were in my time, so it was all just a big show to most of them.
Which meant we had to end this fast. Night Terror didn't have a kill order on him yet, but I didn't have time for that sort of bureaucratic nonsense. He was a clear and present danger to me, as well as an unspecified number of his future victims. Not to mention his previous victims. Just like with the idiot in that gas station in Batavia once upon a time, my best option was an immediate and lethal response.
To tell the truth, I had already been planning on this. Only with Crawler in mind.
Switching my aim, I lined up on a slightly more solid-looking silhouette within the forest of undulating shadows. Three times I fired, going for centre mass rather than head height. If the 'shadows' were as solid as they looked (even if he wasn't where I was shooting at) hopefully they would provide an adequate backstop for my bullets. Sometimes a hard decision had to be made, and not shooting the murderous cape was (in this instance) what I considered to be the wrong one. A pouch on my belt held a magazine with one specific round on top of the stack, but I wasn't going to even consider using it until I had a clear shot.
Something jerked and recoiled within the mass of shifting darkness, and I heard a wordless cry of pain, once more so deep that I felt it as much as heard it. Didn't miss that time, asshole. But he was still up, still active. I dropped my left hand away from the pistol, preparing to go for the second magazine. If there was any time when I'd have that clear shot, this was it.
More tentacles exploded from the central mass, scything through the night air. I ducked under one, but a second clipped me and knocked me off balance, and a third wrapped around my legs, just below the knee. I felt blades slicing through the cloth into my legs as I was dragged off my feet, but that wasn't the worst bit. The worst bit was the overwhelming feeling of utter terror and loss that flooded through my guts, the instant his shadow came into contact with me.
I'd felt fear before. Loss was something I was no stranger to. A good deal of my life had been taken up with one or another of these emotions. But this terror and this loss were unnatural, imposed from outside. I couldn't think my way around them, and I no longer had my bugs to push them aside into. This didn't stop me from trying all the same, and in fact I felt as though the horrific pressure had lessened somewhat. Inch by inch, my left hand crept to my waist.
Beside me, I heard Ruth crying, even as she curled into a ball. I tried not to listen too hard to what she was saying, though to be honest it was easy to ignore her, as images of Mom and Dad and all my friends were crowding into my mind. I'd lost everything before I was sent back from New Delhi, even Lisa …
Anger flared hot inside me, burning away at the waves of desolation that tried to drown me under, to choke my resistance down to nothing. I had not lost Lisa! She was right here with me! My fingers grasped the magazine and pulled it from its holder. Fear still flooded my mind—going up against Night Terror was the last thing I wanted to do—but I hadn't gotten to where I was by letting fear of the unknown (or even the known) stop me. I had faced Glory Girl, Valefor, Leviathan, even Behemoth. A second-rate emotion-manipulator was not going to get the better of me.
Tears filled my eyes, shudders wracked my body and I wanted to throw up, but I concentrated on two things. One, to keep hold of my pistol. Two, to get the second magazine into place. If anything could kill Night Terror, it was the special round contained in that one. Inch by inch, fighting the seizures that made my arms want to lock up into total uselessness, I brought the two together. One magazine dropped out, clattering on the asphalt. The other slotted into place, only made possible by the fact that I'd performed this one action so many times that it was beyond second nature. Blinking tears from my eyes, I brought the pistol to bear, and fired.
To no effect.
I tried to fire again, but I'd lost my sight picture. My brain yammered at me: that round was already in the breech; this is the magic bullet! SHOOT!
"You've got to be shitting me."
Night Terror stared at me—or at least, that was what I interpreted his expression as. He drew back his arm, then a spear of blackness launched itself in my general direction. I had no time. If I fired now, with no target, I'd throw away the opportunity.
Lights flared up, blindingly bright. An engine roared as the pedal slammed to metal. Night Terror screamed as the tentacles and shadowy barriers on that side sublimed away to fog, a split second before the car would've ploughed into them. I felt the grip around my legs vanish. The spear took another half-second to dissolve, but it lashed out past my feet, as I was already falling. The emotional grip on my mind abruptly vanished, and I was clear-headed once more. And falling. Falling was also an aspect there.
Fortunately, he hadn't been holding me too high off the ground. I saw it coming, got my arms in the way, and rolled with the landing. It was neither easy nor fun, and I lost some skin and picked up some bruises, but nothing broke this time. Small mercies.
Rolling on to my side, I looked around, trying to orient myself. The car had slewed around, its headlights—on high beam, thank you Kinsey—throwing their glare over a man lying hunched on the ground. It didn't immediately match what I'd seen of what Ned had looked like after his premature Trigger event, so I had to guess it was Night Terror, bereft of his shadow tentacles.
And then someone else stepped into the light. As I levered myself painfully to my feet—I was going to need medical attention for the cuts on my legs, just not immediately—I recognised them as Ruth. She dropped to one knee beside Night Terror and put her hand over his mouth.
This had all the signs of trouble. Still clutching the pistol—if he started to get up, he was going to get the bullet in centre mass—I hobbled in her direction. Son of a bitch, but those cuts hurt. I was just glad he hadn't sliced a tendon in the process.
As I drew closer, Kinsey came hurrying over to me. "Ma'am, are you all right?" he asked. "Your legs …"
"We can deal with my legs in a minute," I assured him. "Secure the perimeter. There'll be a guy around here somewhere. Obvious parahuman. His name's Ned. Don't provoke him but tell him to stick around. I want to talk to him."
"Understood." Kinsey moved off with purpose. If Ned had been shaken anywhere near as much as I had by the experience, he wouldn't have gone far. Besides, we'd just saved his life. If he was still human enough to feel gratitude for that, then I could definitely use him. Otherwise, he'd go on the list.
"How dare you," hissed Ruth as I came up to her and Night Terror. "How dare you reach into my head and pull out all that shit? You had no right. You deserve this."
With a shock, I realised that tears were still running down her face. Her fingers were digging into his skin so hard, I wouldn't have been at all surprised if they'd left bruises. "Major," I said. She paid me no attention. I tried again. "Ma'am?"
"Go away, Taylor," she replied without looking up. "This piece of shit is going to die, and he's going to know why before he does." I didn't know what I was more surprised at; the genuine venom in her voice, or the casual obscenity. Whatever Night Terror's power had dredged up in her mind, it had hurt her badly.
"Not a good idea, ma'am," I said carefully. My pistol was at my side, but I searched for a good shot. Not to hit Ruth, but to take out Night Terror before he revived and started making trouble again.
She whipped her head around to face me, and I saw the glow of red in her eyes. There was molten metal under her skin, trying its best to get free. "You do not give me orders, Captain!" she snapped.
"Ma'am, this isn't an order." I took a few steps closer, keeping my voice down. "This is advice. Parahumans can't hold rank in the PRT. If he's found dead from an obviously parahuman ability …"
For a long moment, I thought she was going to ignore me and (at my best guess) fill his body full of molten steel. Or perhaps bury him under it. The hand over his mouth twitched and flexed, and I thought I saw bright spots moving under the skin.
I had some little idea of what Ruth had just been through, having undergone my own version of it. My advantage lay in the fact that a good portion of my life had consisted of being shat on from varying heights, so I was kind of used to it. For me, suffering had been a way of life. For her, it was a new experience, and it was hitting her all the harder because of that.
Slowly, her shoulders lost their rigid tension. Almost imperceptibly, she slumped. The grip of her hand over his mouth loosened. "You're right—" she began.
His eyes flickered, so quickly I almost missed it. But in the shadow she cast, I saw more tentacles unfurling, lashing toward her leg. "Major!" I shouted, pointing.
I could only assume, later, that she acted from pure instinct. Her hand glowed red for just a moment, then clamped down again. He let out a horrible gurgling scream, or tried to; barely any of it was audible past her muffling grasp. Even from where I was, I smelled burning meat. "Major, out of the way!" I shouted, stepping forward. With my left hand, I worked the slide of my pistol and caught the round that popped out. Letting the slide snap forward, I moved up alongside Ruth. She was already moving aside, giving me room. I fired, straight down into his lower jaw so that the bullet would leave a definitive channel as it blasted through flesh and bone. It wouldn't exit the back of his head, because there was a cooling mass of metal in the way. Even as I fired the shot, Night Terror was dead. A mouth and throat full of molten steel tended to have that effect.
"Captain, is everything all right?" That was Kinsey, somewhere outside my line of sight.
Hastily, I answered; it wouldn't do to have him come over and find out Ruth's little secret. "Everything's all right here, Kinsey. The perp's … deceased." I stepped out of the glare of the headlights and reached into the car to turn the headlights off. "Yourself?"
"We're fine out here, ma'am," he replied. "Excuse me." I wondered why he'd said that, but learned the reason a few seconds later when he raised his voice to a moderate bellow. "Everyone! Please stay inside! This is a Parahuman Response Teams operation!"
My legs were still working as I made my way back to where Ruth waited alongside Night Terror's corpse, though I was pretty sure I could feel blood running down my calves. "How are your legs?" I asked quietly.
"Lacerated, but I'll survive," she replied, equally softly. "Why did you shoot him?"
"Cover," I told her. "How much metal did you put down his throat anyway? And can you get it out?"
"Enough to kill him," she murmured grimly. "I can get it out, but how's that going to help? There'll still be metal particles in there. I won't be able to get it all."
"Trust me," I said. "I have a plan. Also, I have a first aid kit in the back of the car. If you could get it, please?" Leaning against the side of the car, I slid down until I was sitting on the ground. "I'm not sure if I can walk any more."
" … right," she said. To my relief, she leaned down and reached into Night Terror's open mouth. I did need first aid, but I also needed to keep Ruth's powers a secret. At least for a while longer.
-ooo-
I was seated on the passenger seat of the car, while Ruth applied dressings to my legs, when Kinsey got back to us. Behind him, doing his best to keep to the shadows, was the man who would once have become Crawler. Now, his skin looked harder and rougher than was normal for a human being, and his eyes smouldered a deep, sullen red. The palms and fingertips of both hands also glowed the same colour. But on his face was an uncertain expression; it was clear he had no idea what had happened, or what to do now.
"Ma'am, you never said you were injured!" Kinsey may have been my subordinate as far as rank went, and he knew I was no dummy when it came to making tactical decisions, but that didn't mean he was slavishly deferential in other ways. Or at all, really.
Our relationship had been honed and shaped over the last year (had it really been just one year? It had felt more like ten) that we'd been working together. He knew that he could say whatever he damn well liked to me, and I'd take it all on board. Unfortunately, that meant he could and did say whatever he damn well liked to me. Up to and including tearing me a new one for pulling idiotic stunts like this.
"It wasn't really important, Kinsey," I said, trying to head the problem off at the pass. "Major Goldstein is an accomplished medic, who can deal with any such problems. I was more concerned with ensuring that Night Terror was put down." Focusing past him, I fixed my eye on the newly triggered parahuman. "Mr Hollows, I presume." In the corner of my vision, I saw Kinsey subside, but I didn't think for a moment that he'd given up on lecturing me. He was stubborn like that. It was one of the reasons we got along so well.
Ned Hollows looked startled at being so addressed. "Uh, yeah, uh, sorry about—"
"Never mind all that," I advised him. "Mistakes were made. You nearly died. How are you feeling now?"
"Oh, uh …" He held out his hands, palm up. They bore silent testament that he was never going to be the same again. Mercifully, although his new powers had caused him to fill out somewhat (and gain six inches of height) his clothing was still mostly intact. Not that anything short of a set of full-body armour was going to do anything toward concealing his identity, right now.
"I understand." I tried to aim for reassuring and impersonal, all at the same time. While I wanted Ned Hollows on side, my plans didn't include having him imprint on me like a baby duck. "Things are going to be very strange for a while. You may change back to normal once the crisis is over, or you may not." Based on what he'd been like before, I was betting on 'not'. "However, I have a place you can go, and people you can stay with, if you're interested." The lack of comprehension in his expression reminded me of whom I was talking to. "Regular food, a warm bed. Also, a job. Well-paying, for as long as you want it." Even if his powers were initially useless, I was sure Lisa could tell me what they were actually good for. And if they turned out as powerful as they were in my time, a little guidance in how to develop them would a very good idea. While Andrea's mercenaries would probably appreciate parahuman backup, it would be best if said backup were human-shaped, not Crawler-shaped.
"What do I gotta do?" The interest in his tone matched his expression. Bingo.
I gave him a dry smile. "Whatever you're capable of doing. You'll get paid, no matter what that is." It wouldn't be exactly hard to get him to exert his powers. With parahumans, it never was. The money was just an incentive for him not to wander off and try to go into business for himself. However, it was time for a touch of reverse psychology. "I mean, you're not locked into this. You're free to go if you want. It's your choice."
"N-no!" He blurted the word out almost desperately as he reached for the lifeline I was teasing him with. "I'll stay. What do you want me to do?"
I smiled. It seemed he could take instruction after all.
-ooo-
The police got there ten minutes later.
They were understandably upset about the dead body in the middle of the road (we hadn't moved him) but Ruth and I brandished our PRT IDs flagrantly and talked fast to keep them from pulling anything drastic until the PRT officially showed up. Kinsey loomed in the background like the quintessential sergeant that he was, and Ned sat quietly in the back seat of the car.
It had taken no effort at all to convince Ned not to talk to the police. In fact, 'not talking to the authorities' was probably his default state. He'd been a little dubious when I told him not to talk to the PRT either, given that Kinsey, Ruth and I were manifestly part of that organisation, but he caught on quickly to the idea of institutional secrets.
When the PRT arrived, they were just as unhappy with us, but managed to hide it in the name of 'us against them'. A trooper was detailed to drive the rental back to the PRT base, while the four of us were escorted there in the back of a van. Given the state of my legs, I had to be helped up into the vehicle. Ruth was in better shape, but she let them think she also needed assistance.
I gathered that our status wasn't quite 'under arrest', but it certainly wasn't 'free to go', either. Someone higher up the chain of command was almost certainly pissed as fuck that they'd been woken up to deal with this, and I was pretty sure I'd find out who in short order.
Of the four of us, Ned looked the most nervous. We were sharing the back of the van with six fully-armoured troopers, and containment foam hadn't been invented yet so they had tasers and live ammo. Whatever we said and did was being recorded for posterity (I knew the schematics of these vans quite well) so I didn't do anything as obvious as strike up a conversation. But I caught his eye and held it until he started paying attention, then lifted one eyebrow slightly as if to ask 'is this all they got?'.
He seemed to calm down a little then, so I turned my attention to Ruth. From what Lisa had told me, her PRT career had been utterly without blemish up until now. She was used to cruising under the radar and not drawing official attention. In fact, she had the type of career—in terms of obscurity, not achievements—that I could only wish that I had. I'd ruined that … or rather, her determination to not be left out of the action had done it for me. Of course, her presence just may have saved my life. I hoped her military career wouldn't be placed in too much jeopardy.
She was sitting beside me in the swaying van, so I nudged her elbow with mine. Her eyes slid sideways toward me, and I lifted the corner of my mouth in a slight grin. I'd been in this sort of position before. While I didn't overly enjoy official attention, I liked public attention far less, and the PRT had shown up before the news crews had arrived. And yes, having a strip torn off by the powers that be was never pleasant, but at least it would come to an end.
I felt her relax slightly, so I let my eyes rest on Kinsey. He was the one I was least worried about, and I felt a smile crease my lips as I noted that my faith in him was justified. Leaning back in his seat, eyes closed and hands clasped in front of him, Kinsey was either asleep or doing a damn good impression of it. Only Kinsey.
-ooo-
"Shots fired on a suburban street at two AM! A dead man with his throat burned out! Undercover ops in my city without asking my permission, or even goddamn informing me! I want to know exactly what the hell you were thinking, and why I shouldn't court-martial the lot of you!"
The only thing missing from the tirade was a fist smashed on the desk, but Director Dyson didn't seem to be the fist-smashing type. She didn't need it; her anger came through just fine without requiring overt physical expression.
Director Kathryn Dyson was sixty-one years old, with short-cut blonde hair that showed more than a few silver highlights. She was slender, almost as skinny as I recalled Blackwell being back in the day, but she carried it—and the responsibilities of command—far better. And I'd been right; she was pissed as fuck.
I sat at attention before her desk, along with Ruth. This was in no way any kind of favouritism; word had gone ahead about our injuries, and two wheelchairs had been scrounged from somewhere to accommodate us. Kinsey had wheeled Ruth in, while I'd handled my own transport. It wasn't as though I was unused to being in a wheelchair, after all. Now he stood alongside us, while our pistols lay on Dyson's desk. None of us were in uniform; nor was Ned (obviously) as he stood behind us, flanked on either side by a PRT trooper. Ruth and I had vouched for him as a new Trigger (which just barely meant he didn't get arrested on suspicion of anything), and Director Dyson hadn't bothered to have him removed from her office before she began to read us the riot act. It struck me that this might be deliberate; perhaps she'd decided to ensure that he knew exactly what to expect if he fucked up this badly in her city.
Not that I intended to let her have it all her own way. Still at attention with my eyes fixed on the wall six inches over her head, I cleared my throat. "Permission to speak, ma'am?"
She ground to a halt. I could feel her simmering anger as an almost physical force. Maybe I was channelling Lisa just a little, but I felt I could track the slight shift in emotion that let Dyson choose to pay attention to what I was saying. Still angry, just redirecting it. Waiting for me to say one thing out of place so she can hammer me for it.
"Permission granted." I'd been right. She didn't sound any more forgiving. The words make it good would've been superfluous.
I took a deep breath, sifting through possibilities. My cold-reading skills were pretty good, but I didn't have a long baseline to work with; so far, all my impressions of Director Dyson involved annoyance shading through to cold fury. I just had to see if I could reach the person behind the anger.
"Ma'am, I know this was a screwup," I said firmly. "I was working with minimal data, but I've done more with less before. There was a killer out there who was preying on nurses, and I didn't want to let him claim even one more victim."
"Nurses." If Dyson's attention had been focused on me up till now, it was now laser-intense. "You didn't mention nurses before."
I nodded to acknowledge her point. "I apologise for that. It was a detail that didn't seem important at the time." I refrained from hammering home the point that we'd actually stopped the killer. Very terminally so.
"Well, it's important now." Dyson eyed me caustically. "There are obviously details of this operation that I am not yet acquainted with. I suggest you fill me in. Immediately."
"Yes, ma'am," I said. "I don't know if you were aware of this, but Major Goldstein helped save my life a couple of months ago. I'd heard she was on leave and I was in the area on my duties, so I dropped in to say hello. It turns out that an old friend of hers is the head nurse in a local hospital, and her nurses were being harassed when they left work. One never made it home. She knew I was with Intelligence, so she asked me if I could look into it." I paused to let her parse this.
It took her less than two seconds. "And you agreed. Without passing any of this on to us." 'Us' meaning the PRT, I figured. "Or even the regular authorities."
"With all due respect to the regular authorities, ma'am," I said, the tiniest hint of scorn I'd added deliberately overturning the 'all due respect' phrasing, "it would've been twenty-four to forty-eight hours before they started taking me seriously. By then, two more nurses would potentially have been dead. I wasn't about to allow that."
It was easy for her to agree with me, which was why I'd phrased things the way I had. Of course, I still wasn't out of the woods. "And you didn't pass any of this on to the PRT, why, exactly?" This was a trap; there was no way I could use the same excuse again. Even if it was essentially accurate (and it kind of was), institutional pride would make it impossible for her to accept it. I wanted to get out of trouble, not farther into it. Fortunately, I had another way out.
"I wasn't aware, then, that the killer was a parahuman," I said. This was the first outright lie I'd given her, and I tried to make the transition as smooth as possible. "As far as I knew, this was an opportunistic thug who liked to stalk women. That sort of thing simply isn't in the PRT's wheelhouse. I was aiming for a citizen's arrest. We had Kinsey for backup, but there was no way our guy would come at us with him in the vicinity."
Dyson's gaze switched from me to Kinsey. "Is this true, Sergeant?"
I didn't sigh with relief, and I didn't relax, although I wanted to do both. Drawing Dyson's attention to Kinsey was a dirty trick on my part, but I didn't want her looking too closely at Ruth. Kinsey had a competent poker face, but he wouldn't need to use it, given that what I'd just said matched what he considered to be the truth. I'd told Ruth that I knew there was a parahuman involved, but I'd just said something entirely different to Director Dyson, and I wanted to give Ruth a chance to gather her thoughts in case Dyson started interrogating her over it.
One of these days, I decided, I wouldn't have any more secrets to keep. On that day, my life would become immeasurably easier. And, of course, my mission would probably be over.
"Ma'am, yes, ma'am," Kinsey replied, precisely on cue. "That's exactly what happened."
Director Dyson gave a tiny nod, though I wasn't far enough into her head to be certain what she'd just confirmed. "Very well, Captain. At what point did you discover that he was indeed a parahuman? And when did this person come into it?" She indicated past me, to Ned. "And who is he?"
I took a deep breath. "To answer your last question first, ma'am, we're going with the working codename Redeye. He was a random passer-by who happened to run into Night Terror before we did." Which had the virtue of being almost true. "Night Terror nearly killed him, but he underwent a Trigger event first. We heard it happening and attended the scene. Night Terror attacked us, just before Kinsey showed up and rammed him with the car." I nodded toward my legs, and the bandages thereon. "If I'd known who he was then, I certainly would have called on PRT assistance to take him down."
"Night Terror." Director Dyson rolled the name around her mouth like it had a bad taste. "That's the dead man's name?"
"The one and only," I confirmed. "Up till now, he's been a small-time creep flying under the radar, but he's always gotten off on the fear and pain he caused people. This was basically inevitable."
Her lips twisted in a harsh grimace. This sort of behaviour, unfortunately, wasn't unknown to either of us. Parahumans were renowned for taking the bad habits of humanity and escalating them to the next level. The good too, but the bad generally had more of a knock-on effect over time. "Our officers found flattened slugs around his body, and a shallow wound in his left shoulder. But you didn't kill him with a normal bullet."
"No, his shadows were solid projections," I agreed. "They gave him visual cover as well as actual. This made it virtually impossible to get a kill-shot on him until Kinsey rammed him. That gave me the chance to put him down for good."
Dyson's eyebrows drew down. "There was no kill order on him. If he was helpless, shooting him in cold blood was murder. Why didn't you call on him to surrender? And what did you do to him?"
I indicated my pistol with a nod. "Thermite round. I had two. You'll find particles of metal in his throat. The other round should be in the breech." I knew it would be, having replaced it in the gun while waiting for the PRT to arrive. "He wasn't helpless. I shot him just before he would've attacked us again. His tentacles were already forming, and I wasn't about to go for a second round with him."
Reaching across the desk, Dyson took up the Glock. Exhibiting admirable firearm safety awareness, she pointed it at neither one of us, even as she popped out the magazine and worked the slide to eject the round in question. The shiny red bullet dropped into her hand, and she held it up to the light to inspect it. "Thermite round," she said carefully. "Where, exactly, did you get thermite rounds from? I know for a fact that the PRT doesn't issue these, even to hotshot Intelligence officers. In fact, we don't even have them."
"They're not PRT issue, ma'am," I conceded. "Intelligence officers are expected to make contacts out in the field; it's a significant part of how we do what we do. There's a neutral Tinker out there who can basically create any substance that's physically possible, as well as a way to contain it and release it when needed. Thermite rounds are just one of the things he creates. I got a couple of them through a mutual contact a while ago. He'll be pleased to know how effective they are." I waited for her to query the word 'neutral', but it seemed that she'd gotten the memo about how 'rogues' were now 'neutrals'.
"You're talking about how you killed a man, Captain," she said tartly. "That's hardly a cause for celebration." However, her anger had abated considerably, and she was listening rather than accusing.
"A murderer who was perfectly willing to kill again, ma'am." I changed up my body language to be more assertive. "He might not have earned an official kill order so far, but every indication I had tells me he would've gotten there sooner rather than later." I very carefully didn't shrug. "At that moment, he was getting up again. I didn't have time for gentle measures, so I made the call."
"So you burned him to death with a mouthful of thermite." She shook her head, looking suddenly weary. "That wasn't a question, Captain. It doesn't sound as though you had any real options there."
"I do not believe I did," I agreed. "Parahumans have a way of removing the easy options, and that's not even taking crazies like Jack Slash into account."
"Isn't that the truth." For the first time, she gave me a wry smile. "I suppose the city owes you a debt of gratitude. Not that anyone will ever really find out what happened. And as this was an entirely unsanctioned mission, it's not like the PRT can actually reward you for it without sending the wrong message altogether."
"Well, to be honest, ma'am, fame is the very last thing I want." I was pleased to be able to circle back around to the truth. "I just want to do my job and get it right."
"Don't we all," she sighed. Just for a moment, I saw the tired human being looking out from behind her eyes. Then she re-engaged Director mode. "And you, Redeye. Is what she said accurate?"
This was it. If Ned wanted to fuck me over, now was his perfect opportunity. Or even if he forgot his lines. He wasn't the sharpest spoon in the drawer, and Director Dyson had a certain intensity about her.
"Uh, sure," he said. "It happened just that way. I thought that asshole was gonna kill me for sure. He tried real hard, anyway."
Again, she nodded. "I'm sure it was an unpleasant experience. What are you going to do with yourself now? I can put you in touch with the Protectorate, if you're interested in joining."
My hands ached with the effort of not tensing them. White knuckles would've been a dead giveaway, so I kept them clasped in my lap. What if he decided that the Protectorate offer was better than mine?
His hesitation didn't help in the slightest. The silence in the room stretched out, broken only by the soft ticking of the clock on the wall. I wanted to shout at Ned to say something.
"Yeah, no," Ned said at last. "Too many people know me here. Figure I might move someplace else. Start fresh."
My overly rapid heart-rate put the lie to my poker face. I'd primed him on what to say, but right up until that moment I hadn't been certain he'd remember his lines, or even if he'd still be interested in my offer. It seemed I'd picked the right strategy in appealing to his cupidity, or maybe it was just that I had an unfair advantage in knowing more about the man than Dyson did.
Not that I'd ever had any moral objection against making use of an unfair advantage.
-ooo-
0500 Hours
A Small Airfield Outside of Seattle
A chill breeze blew across the airstrip. Landing lights shone lonely in the pre-dawn darkness. I sat in the passenger seat of the car with the door open, with Kinsey in the driver's seat. Ned paced up and down outside the car, rubbing his hands together for warmth but apparently unwilling to seek refuge in the car again.
"Are you sure they'll be okay with me lookin' like this?"
In accordance with my personal prediction, he still hadn't reverted away from his altered form. Every now and again, he would remind himself of that fact, which caused another round of insecurity. It made me wonder if his initial upgrades as Crawler had been because he was trying to kill himself rather than power himself up. Or even the later ones, for that matter.
He hadn't shown any abilities out of the ordinary (if I ignored the rough skin and glowing eyes and hands) but I made a mental note to ask Lisa about it, the next chance I got. However, I did know that every cape had the potential to cause conflict somehow, and I was sure I could leverage that once I knew the details of his personal curse.
In the meantime, of course, I just had to keep him from talking himself out of our agreement. "They'll be fine with it," I assured him, again. "These are guys who respect toughness. You're a cape." I leaned closer and lowered my voice conspiratorially. "And if they do have a problem with it, I'll come and kick their asses for being idiots."
He chuckled at that. "Yeah, I guess you just might, at that." He paced away again and looked eastward, to where the morning glow was outlining the Cascades. "I just ain't never been someone people ever looked up to, you know?"
"I actually know the feeling," I said. "But it's not something you're ever going to have to worry about ever again." I tilted my head as the breeze brought a welcome sound to my ears. "And I believe I hear your ride."
"What? Where?" He looked around, then up into the air as he finally registered the sound of the helicopter. "Where'm I goin'?"
"I'm not at liberty to say," I told him. Which sounded better than you'll find out when you get there.
"Yeah, well, thanks for stickin' your neck out for me." He came back over to the car and awkwardly held his hand out. "Nobody ever done that before."
I took it, the rough skin almost abrasive against my palm, and shook. "You've got a second chance. Don't screw it up." The chopper was a lot louder now, and I could see the blinking lights on its fuselage. "Headlights," I said to Kinsey. Obediently, he turned on the high-beams, illuminating a swathe of runway.
"I won't," Ned assured me. "I done some stupid things, but I ain't that stupid."
"Good." I leaned forward and lowered my voice. The chopper was almost overhead now, flaring its rotors to begin its descent. "One more thing. Anyone asks you about anyone you met here? You never heard any names. You don't know nothin' about nobody."
That was when he smiled, for the first time since I'd met him. At that point, I figured he thought he was seeing the actions of a kindred spirit. This, at least, was familiar to him. Comfortable. He knew what he was dealing with, or so he thought.
"I never saw your faces, I never heard your names," he confirmed. So long as I didn't screw him over, the unspoken agreement continued, he wouldn't screw me over. Not that I intended to screw him over. In that (as well as a few other particulars) I was different from most of his previous criminal associates. If he held up his end of the deal, Andrea and I would hold up mine.
"Good!" I shouted. "Go!" I'd had to raise my voice because the helicopter was less than ten feet from the cracked concrete by now, ground effect causing clouds of dust and grit to billow everywhere. I closed my door to keep the irritating particulates from stinging my face.
As the skids of the military surplus chopper fleetingly touched down, the side door slid open. Ned ran across and scrambled inside, assisted by crewmen with helmet visors pulled down to make them anonymous. Barely had he vanished inside before the side door slid shut behind him and the helicopter increased power again.
I watched as it lifted off and turned south. The glow in the east was stronger now, presaging the sunrise soon to come. When I rolled my window down, the sound of the rotors was almost inaudible once more.
Well, that's done. Letting out a sigh to release the tension I hadn't known I'd been feeling, I leaned back in my seat. "Back to the motel, Kinsey," I ordered. "Time we caught some shuteye." We were certainly long overdue for it.
"Ma'am," he agreed, starting the car. We were rolling along the road away from the airstrip when he spoke up again. "Permission to ask a question."
I was starting to doze off, or I had been until he said those words. Kinsey knew me very well, to the point that he was fully aware that he always had permission to speak his mind. Asking for permission was his way of warning me that I might not like the question. "Granted."
"Ma'am, there were things you said to Director Dyson and to me that don't match up with the facts that I've since observed," he said carefully. "Are these things I'm going to have to worry about, or am I just not cleared for them?"
That was definitely a question. I considered the answer for about half a mile, then spoke.
"Kinsey, you're almost certainly aware by now that there are interests that I'm working with, separate from the PRT. I'm not working against the PRT in any significant fashion, but in order to do my job right, there are resources I have—and need—that the PRT simply can't supply. I'd prefer to keep you separate from all this, so that you can plausibly deny anything if someone asks. Or, if all this makes you uncomfortable, let me know and I'll expedite paperwork to transfer you to whichever PRT base you wish."
There. That was the gauntlet thrown down in no uncertain fashion. I'd broached the subject once before, in a roundabout fashion. He'd replied in a satisfactory manner then, but it remained to be seen if he was still of the same mind.
When he replied, his voice was almost reproving. "Ma'am, all you needed to say was that I'm not cleared. If I asked for a transfer, you'd have to break in another orderly, and I don't wish to inflict that on anyone. You or the orderly."
He fell silent then, gradually increasing speed to bring the car up the ramp on to the freeway back into Seattle. As I pondered his words, I had to work to keep a smile off of my face. That was him saying as bluntly as possible that he didn't care about my extracurricular activities, even the ones that involved shipping freshly-triggered parahumans away on mysterious helicopters at oh-dark-thirty.
The glow to the east suddenly broke above the mountain ridge, sending spikes of intolerably bright light through the car. I pulled on my oversized sun-glasses and slid down in my seat to avoid it. "Wake me when we get to the motel," I said, and closed my eyes.
"Yes, ma'am."
-ooo-
Later That Day
Outside Darlene Hobbs' House
Kinsey got out of the car and opened my door for me. It was a struggle for me to get out, but Kinsey had thoughtfully produced my walking-stick from somewhere, and that made all the difference. "Will you be needing assistance, ma'am?" he asked anyway.
"Thank you Kinsey, but I'll be fine." I had attended the PRT clinic once Kinsey and I'd had a solid six hours of sleep. This was in no way a slur against Ruth; she was an exemplary physician, but her tools hadn't been the best at the time. The attending physician had asked a few leading questions, to which I'd given him non-informative answers which boiled down to 'ask Director Dyson'. After that, he'd reined in his curiosity and stitched a few of the deeper cuts, then dealt with the road-rash on my hands and arms. With that and the sleep behind me, I was actually feeling in reasonable shape for the situation, if I ignored the bruising that I'd sustained.
Come to think of it, this applied to the aftermath of most of my misadventures.
Using the cane and the hand-rail, I made it up the stairs by myself. Ruth, waiting at the top of the steps, offered her arm for me to use in lieu of the hand-rail. "How are you feeling, Taylor?"
I accepted her assistance, and tried not to lean too obviously on her as we made our way into the house. The last thing I wanted to do was pull a stitch. "I've had worse. At least it's not a broken leg, this time." Along with the other life-threatening conditions I'd been suffering from after the Compound firefight. I wasn't going to say I was suffering from PTSD, but I'd been almighty glad I wasn't going on that chopper with Ned. Some memories were best left unvisited.
"There is that." She helped me sit down on the same sofa I'd used before, and I relaxed into the comfort. Kinsey took up his position beside me.
Mrs Hobbs bustled into the room with yet another tray of cookies—I was pretty sure the previous day's effort wouldn't have survived young Sammy—and eyed me with concern. "Girl," she declared. "You look like death warmed over. You sure you don't wanna lie down awhile?"
Lying down for a while didn't actually sound too bad, but I had a very rough schedule I wanted to keep to, and I could always recline the seat back in the car. "I'll be fine," I assured her. "It's not as bad as it looks."
"Captain Snow would say that if she had a two-foot length of metal sticking out of her stomach," Ruth said dryly from her chair as she took a cookie. "In fact, I believe she did something similar, once upon a time. But in this case, she's correct. So long as she doesn't get into any other scrapes until those cuts heal, of course." She punctuated her statement with a severe look at me, then took a bite out of the cookie.
"I've got no plans to do anything of the sort," I assured her, almost meekly (for me, anyway). "Kinsey's made it clear that he does the driving, which leaves me clear to sit back and relax."
"Well, good." Darlene's look of concern hadn't changed when she focused her attention me again. "Ruthie says you done got the asshole that killed lil' Pattie?"
I shot a glance at Ruth, and she nodded. "Police dragged the lake this morning, per the tip-off you gave me. They found her body."
"Oh, good." It wasn't good that she was dead, but now at least her friends and loved ones had closure. I turned back to Darlene. "Yes. I shot him right in the head. He won't be hurting your nurses ever again." Neither would Ned be stalking and harassing them, but she didn't need to know that little complicating factor. Some narratives were best kept simple.
"Thank you." She got up and came over to me, and took my hands in hers. "Cap'n Snow, you done a good thing last night, an' there ain't no way I can repay you."
Standing up was an effort, but not too much of one. "Mrs Hobbs … Darlene … I'd do it again, in a heartbeat. And call me Taylor." Disengaging my hands from hers, I gave her a hug. Her strong arms enfolded me in return, reinforcing my conviction that this had been the right thing to do.
Even absent the Crawler aspect, I hadn't been lying about being willing to do it again. While I was absolutely set on my path to save the world, I had to make sure that my sights didn't raise so high that I ended up ignoring the individual people who also needed help.
To paraphrase an old saying, what use was saving the world if I lost my humanity in the process?
End of Part 6-4