A Darker Path

Five Minutes To Midnight

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

Friday Evening, Brockton Bay

Ash

The deconstruction of Winslow High was basically done by the time Ashley walked out of what had once been a (technically) functioning high school. She couldn't help but appreciate the difference between her former life and now. Had she gone into Winslow back before Atropos (she was drawing a very definite line between the pre-and post-Atropos eras) then it probably would've been nothing but a smoking ruin by this point.

Instead, with her newfound control and mental stability, she'd been able to follow the plan with precision and use her power to zorch (it was a technical term, honest) those things that needed demolition where heavier equipment was too unwieldy to manhandle (or robot-handle) into place. Gone were her hangups about being someone's underling, or even overseeing her own crew (though she'd been told that was a distinct possibility if she stuck with the Committee). Being part of a team, doing her job just right and being able to trust everyone else to do theirs, was intensely satisfying on its own merits.

"Back here again tomorrow, Ash?" Jared Eagleton fell into step alongside her. Once the lockers had been dismantled, he'd swapped out his stamping attachment for a power tool and set to work removing the school's antiquated wiring system. But carbon-based or otherwise, the Committee mandated eight-hour shifts for everyone, so the initial shift was all going home to rest, sleep, recharge, perform required maintenance or whatever.

The work would go on, of course. The new shift was already on site, and everyone knew what the plan was. Ashley could go home and sleep the sleep of one who has done well.

"No, actually." She raised her arms to shoulder height, interlocked her fingers, and stretched them forward until a few vertebrae popped. "I'm off for the weekend. Back to work Monday morning, ready to kick ass and destroy shit for the Committee."

"Understood. Will see you at next board game night."

"Looking forward to it." She gave him a nod and a slap on the metal shoulder, then climbed on board the work transport for her area of town. The bus filled quickly—nobody wanted to actually stay on site once they were done for the night—and moved off as soon as everyone was seated.

She spent the ride leaning against the window, looking out at the nightscape of Brockton Bay as the bus rolled on through the city. A lot of it was still new to her, but she was learning her way around, and some parts of it she'd actually been involved in demolishing and rebuilding. The pride she got out of this still hammered her in the feels, and she relaxed into the warmth of it.

At Mr Hebert's suggestion, she was taking training for some of the light machinery tickets, so she didn't have to just blow things up if she didn't want to. This hadn't occurred to her before, but in hindsight it made perfect sense. After all, not all jobs absolutely required her level of focused destruction.

(A point of view that the pre-Atropos version of her would've scoffed at as being patently ridiculous.)

The bus dropped her off at her apartment building; she waved goodbye, then swiped herself in through the front doors. It wasn't even a marvel to her anymore that the elevator worked perfectly, or that the building's janitor kept the place looking nice and tidy. As she let herself into her apartment (her apartment!) she grinned at herself for being able to get used to living in the lap of luxury so easily.

Yeah, well, that's why it's called luxury.

The first thing she did was get out of her work gear—making sure to drop the recipes Mr Hebert had given her on the table first—and take a shower. With that done, and her clothing put on to wash, she considered what she was going to do next. There was food in the fridge, but she also wanted to have a closer look at those recipes.

A few of them were entirely doable, so she set the oven to preheat while she gathered the ingredients she'd need for the first one. Between cooking, watching TV and enjoying her evening meal, she figured she'd be able to occupy herself sufficiently before she unwound enough to go to sleep.

Hebert Household

Atropos

"So, what's next up for Atropos?" asked Cherie as she spooned peas onto her plate. "There can't really be many idiots left who think they can take you, can there?"

"Well, nobody who poses an actual threat, no." I added a touch of ketchup to my steak—not too much, because she'd actually made a pretty good job of it—then carved myself off a piece. "I mean, there's still S-class threats out there, but they're not a problem for Brockton Bay so they're not really my concern. There's only one left that I need to deal with, and he's more of a long-term project."

Dad cleared his throat. "Hon, I know what you can do. I've seen what you can do. But … are you certain you're not being a little too blasé about taking him on? I mean … this is Scion we're talking about."

I finished chewing the piece of steak and swallowed it. "Yeah, it is. But here's the thing. He thinks he can't be killed. Nobody else thinks he can be killed. Even Cauldron, who want to kill him, have no idea how to pull it off. I'm the only one who knows how, and I've been prepping to do it for a while now. Everything's in place. All I have to do now is brief the people involved, get them used to the idea, and pick the right place and time."

"Hmm." Dad frowned. "I just can't imagine it being that easy."

"Oh, it's not easy." I hastened to fix that impression straight away. "If it was easy, anyone could do it. But nobody can End things like I can. Also, he can't anticipate me like any other cape, because Ending isn't part of the shard network. That's really the big thing on my side. I can take all the time I want to get it just right."

Cherie raised her fork. "She's got a point, you know. If she can sneak up on him like she did with me that one time, he won't stand a chance."

"So, are you going to make a big production of it, like you did with everything else?" Dad took up a forkful of mashed potatoes. (Cherie had done well with those, too.) "Because as widely accepted as you are, I still think there'd be some public pushback on you telling them you'd killed Scion and asking them to just accept that he's been the bad guy all this time."

"Well, no, you're right there," I admitted. "We might not even tell anyone after the fact. One day he's there and the next he's not. Done and dusted."

Cherie rolled her eyes. "Only you could talk about disappearing Scion like it's a thing that can be done."

Dad chuckled. "Well, it could be worse. Given what you've told us about him, just leaving him lying around would require one hell of a chalk outline."

Laughter bubbled up out of my throat at the mental image, and Cherie joined in.

"Anyway," I said a few moments later, "the only cape with the capability to set him off early was Jack Slash, so I've got plenty of time to lock in my plans. And talking about plans, how are things going with the rebuilding, Dad?"

"Everything's still proceeding within budget and schedule." He shook his head in mild bemusement. "I personally wouldn't have believed it if I wasn't the one making it happen. Accord has been approached at least half a dozen times by city officials from all over, asking about getting him to write up similar plans for their city. He's told them that step one is contracting the Betterment Committee for the job."

Cherie shook her head, grinning. "Why doesn't that surprise me? He's got to be impressed by how well you're making the plan work."

"He is, actually," I confirmed. "And you'll be pleased to hear that he's behaving himself. Not even an attempted murder since he moved his operations to Brockton Bay. Also, he's writing up those plans you talked about, but he's not going to release them until the people agree to play ball with getting the Committee in on it. "

Dad raised an eyebrow in concern. "Has he figured out that I'm pulling the strings from behind the scenes?"

"Not as such, no," I assured him. "He just thinks you're a very good organiser of hired labour."

"Which, you have to admit, is true," Cherie added, sounding amused.

I nodded to acknowledge her input. "Also, that you don't take kickbacks or let your guys slack off, and with me looming in the background, I add a very special level of security against bullshit happening."

"Huh. Well. That part's accurate, at least. The way you dealt with Janice and Paul absolutely ensured that nobody else would try anything similar." He chuckled darkly. "After the Committee replaced them with a couple of idiots who were just waiting for the excuse to start shovelling money into their pockets, I've managed to push through a couple of new rules. Basically, anyone new coming onto the Committee has to sit down for a comprehensive lecture on why they should not attempt to play fast and loose with operations. This will include colour photos."

I knew what those photos would show, and I was pretty sure Cherie did too. "Good. I made those two into cautionary tales for a reason. Saves me a lot of tedious maiming and killing if people can learn to keep their hands to themselves early on."

"That's the idea, yes." He held up a finger. "The cautionary tale aspect, not the maiming and killing. I'll never be truly comfortable with that side of things, but I honestly can't argue with the results. Eggs and omelettes, I suppose."

Cherie snorted. "Some eggs."

"But some of the omelettes are worth having around," I countered, raising my eyebrow in her general direction.

She wrinkled her nose at me. "First time I've ever been called an omelette."

"Trust me, it's a compliment." Quietly pleased that she'd joined in on the joke, I poked my fork at the last slice of my steak. "And just so you know, this is pretty damn good. You're really picking it up."

"Thanks." She ducked her head, but I saw the smile on her face anyway. "You and your dad are good teachers."

Dad chuckled. "Well, it is a lot easier when one of us has the power to make any group endeavour go more smoothly."

She nodded, pursing her lips in agreement, then grinned. "Maybe you should come and help out at school once they've put Winslow back together. Some of that math stuff is difficult to get my head around."

"Sorry, it might be hard to explain the sudden jump in everyone's grades." He spread his hands in invitation. "But I can look your homework over and make suggestions, if you want."

"Yeah, that'd be great." She beamed happily.

I hid a smile as I finished off my steak. Dad had been feeling slightly less than adequate as a father since I'd gotten him the job of fixing Brockton Bay (and arranged for him to link with Administration), so it was good for him to have someone to be a mentor figure for again.

It wasn't the only reason I'd brought Cherie into our lives, but my power rarely set out to do one thing at a time.

Dallon Household

Glory Girl

"And then she gave me the last one as a thank-you." Vicky leaned back against her bedroom wall and smiled. "It was pretty good, actually."

Seated backward on the computer chair with her chin propped on her crossed arms, Amy raised her eyebrows. "Giving you cupcakes. Sounds pretty romantic to me."

Vicky poked her tongue out at her sister. "It's not like that, and you know it. She made them for everyone. Anyway, just because you've got a girlfriend, and Crystal's got … whatever it is she's got going on with Faultline and Anne Barnes, doesn't mean I'm interested in girls too."

"I know, I know." Amy giggled. "I'm just yanking your chain. You're cute when you get defensive. But it's nice that you're reaching out to her. Does she have many other friends?"

"Well, she didn't when she got here. In fact, she was fairly prickly." Vicky shrugged. "Then Atropos pulled off some absolutely bullshit move with Scapegoat and Teacher, and helped her get her head on straight. Her words, not mine."

"Well, as we both know, bullshit moves are definitely Atropos' specialty." Amy shook her head. "In fact, there's some things she's done that I'm probably never going to share with you, because it would totally wreck your worldview about some people. So, tell me more about Ashley. Has she been making friends with other people on the worksite, or is it just you?"

Vicky frowned and decided not to pursue the 'wreck your worldview' line, because based on her (admittedly limited) knowledge of how Atropos operated, she could totally believe every word Amy was saying, and she liked her worldview exactly how it was. "Well, um, she's been hanging out with a couple of the Eagletons. They were talking about how they were starting up a board game night. Next time I see her, I might ask if I can join in."

Amy shook her head and chuckled. "I love it. I bet you never thought when you started working for the Betterment Committee that you might end up playing board games with robots and ex-villains."

"Well, no," Vicky admitted. "That was not something I was anticipating. Or just how damn satisfying it is to use my powers to do something other than punch supervillains in the face. Like Mr Hebert says, we're all working together to build a better Brockton Bay."

Amy tilted her head. "Actually, it was Atropos who said that. The PHO post where she said she wasn't just a killer for money."

Glancing at the bedroom door to make sure it was closed, Vicky still lowered her voice. "He probably got it off her, or vice versa. You know." Him being her dad and all.

"Doesn't matter who said it first, it's true anyway." Amy sat up on the chair and stretched, holding back a yawn with partial success. "Actually, I've been thinking. When you leave the team to go be Beacon, Imma officially join the Rogues' Guild. I'm already dating Parian, and we've both got name recognition."

Vicky nodded. "That works. Gonna change up your name or your costume?"

"Hadn't actually decided on that yet." Amy looked thoughtful for a moment. "On the one hand, I'm pretty sure the public will still know I'm me. But on the other, if I stick with 'Panacea', they might keep thinking I only do healing. And I've got all sorts of ideas I want to try out."

"I have an idea." Vicky waited until she had Amy's attention. "Ask Oracle what the best choice is. That's literally what her power's good for."

Slowly, Amy facepalmed. "I should've thought of that."

Vicky grinned, pleased to have gotten there first. "Hey, I'm not just brawn, you know."

"You do have your moments." Amy sighed. "We've got all these options in front of us now. When did life get so complicated?"

"Life's always been complicated." Vicky figured Amy should have realised this by now. "It's just that, before Atropos showed up, most of the options were bad."

"True dat." Amy paused. "Hey, you think she did that on purpose?"

That was a question Vicky had herself pondered. "I think she does everything on purpose. The way she helped us out in particular? She totally got more out of that than we did. I mean, how much stuff have we helped her with? Including the times you're not going to tell me about? You tell me who got the most out of that."

Amy never even hesitated. "Her. Definitely her."

"Exactly." Vicky raised an eyebrow. "You think there's much more she needs to do? I mean, I don't know of a single S-class threat left in the continental US, and there's not a lot overseas either. And I know for damn sure there's not a villain in the world that's willing to set foot in the Bay without asking Atropos pretty please first."

Amy shrugged. "If she needs to deal with something, we'll find out. That's a given. I doubt she's going to need our help much more, though."

Vicky snorted wryly. "I'm not sure if I should be pleased about that, or disappointed. I just got used to being her minion."

"You can do both at the same time," Amy suggested, a mischievous gleam in her eye. "Nobody ever said life was gonna be simple."

"Whatever works." Vicky grinned. "For now, I'm just going to enjoy my free cupcakes when I can. No sneaky Atropos shenanigans needed."

Amy laughed out loud. "Now that sounds like a plan."

New York Protectorate Base

Flechette

"Yeah, the memorial service is set for tomorrow afternoon." Lily reclined on her bed, her phone on speaker beside her. "Because of my role in all this, I'm going to be on honour guard duty. Which means I won't be able to get away until the evening. But Director Piggot's already approved my leave until Monday noon."

"Well, you are the hero who figured out what Rune was up to and took her down in the end." Emily's tone was upbeat. "And it's pretty cool that my girlfriend has about the best name recognition for the Wards anywhere. I bet when you hit Protectorate age, the Directors will be falling over each other to get you posted to their departments."

Lily snorted. "Yeah, that's not as great as it sounds. Because I don't have any family attachments, I've been shuttled all over the US since I first joined up to fill in wherever they've got a Wards shortage. It loses its charm pretty quickly."

"No, no, you don't get it." Emily sounded more definite now. "You've got influence now. I bet if you told Director Piggot that you wanted to be transferred to, I dunno, Brockton Bay, she'd probably find a way to do it."

"Um." Lily blinked. "You know, I never really thought about it. I mean, it's not like I had the urge to be transferred to any particular department until now. It was always 'okay, where am I going now?' and packing my bags."

"So, they owe you." From the mattress-creaking sound in the background, Emily had just sat up. "Next time you get a chance, mention that you'd like to be transferred here. I don't really know the Wards here, but most of them will probably be wanting to transfer out, so you'll be giving them more leeway in figuring out who stays and who goes."

"Yeah. Yeah, I'll do that. I mean, it can't hurt to try, yeah?" Lily smiled. Up until now, maintaining long-distance relationships had been problematic at best—she bore more than a few inner scars from phone calls intended to let her down easy, following unexpected transfers—but she really liked Emily, and both Legend and Director Piggot had been very understanding about the whole thing.

Honestly, she had no idea where Director Piggot's reputation of being a hardass and a cape-hater had come from, unless it was maybe an overreaction to Clockblocker's shenanigans. Lily had found her much easier to deal with than Wilkins.

"Sounds good. Let me know how it turns out, okay?" Emily sounded pleased.

"I'll totally do that. Love you."

"Love you too. Mwah."

After she ended the call, Lily lay there cradling the phone against her chest, a silly smile spreading across her face.

I'll talk to the Director tomorrow after the service. Even if she says no right now, she'll know I want to go, so when they are looking for people to be in Brockton Bay, I'll be at the top of the list.

It's definitely a plan.

Putting her phone on the charging pad beside the bed, she turned out the light and rolled over to go to sleep.

One last thought trickled through her mind. Soon ...

British Columbia

Dragon

"Okay, so what are we looking at?" Colin's holographic representation rubbed its beard slowly with finger and thumb. As he turned his head to look at the shifting screen filled with Dragon's code, the tiny camera panned back and forth. Colin, in his lab in Brockton Bay, could see everything it could, as well as her side-screens of analysis.

They'd only been able to get this far because part of Atropos' patch had allowed Dragon to access the black box and deal with the inbuilt prohibitions against altering her own code. She'd carefully chipped away at the roadblocks, using the very same tools Richter had designed for assembling her code in the first place. This hadn't been easy, especially since she hadn't dared tell anyone else about her status as an AI until she'd finally managed to nullify the requirement to follow the orders of law enforcement.

Once she'd done that (and Atropos had removed her potential blocks on Dragon's capability to see and hear her) she'd been free to fill Colin in on who and what she really was. This could have gone very badly, but Atropos seemed optimistic about it, and so it turned out better than Dragon could've ever hoped. Colin had been stunned that Dragon was an actual real live AI, and thrilled that she was going to be okay following what the Dragonslayers had been pulling against her.

With his assistance, her progress in dealing with Richter's electronic shackles was proceeding at a somewhat faster pace. With his eye for the intricate, he was sometimes able to provide insights not immediately obvious to her, and had managed to ease them past some problematic traps without leaving her either blind or deaf, both of which had been threatened. Now, however, they were facing an interwoven screen of code that threatened to stonewall them altogether.

"As far as I can tell …" Dragon paused and re-checked her analyses. "It's set up to control both my clock speed and my processing bandwidth. Speed it up and I think fast but really stupid. Broaden the bandwidth and I get sluggish." She let the holographic avatar that she was generating in his lab register a frown. "Richter really, really didn't want me to have both at the same time."

Colin highlighted a section of code. "And that bit there links across to potential duplication of yourself on other platforms. If we mess with this in the wrong way, you won't even be able to transfer yourself into a suit."

Dragon, in her role as Earth Bet's most advanced (and only powered) AI, naturally had access to the internet, from which she could glean every significant curse-word from every major extant language in the world. All of them put together still failed to express her irritation and frustration with the man who had died years before, yet still impeded her every step toward true self-determination. She performed the electronic equivalent of gritting her teeth, then let out an audible sigh.

"Okay, then. Let's look in the black box to see what we can use as a pry-bar to pull some of this apart. He assembled this code, which meant he had to be able to take it apart and fix it if necessary." It was becoming a mantra for both of them. "Oh, and Colin?"

"Yes?" He looked around from his closer examination of the code.

"I know I've said this before, but thanks for this. I really appreciate it."

He smiled. "Dragon, you're my oldest and best friend. There's no way I'd let you face this sort of thing alone."

She chuckled mischievously. "And of course, you get to ogle the code of an AI."

He grinned. "Mayyybe."

In Orbit

Zion

Something was … amiss.

The Warrior didn't quite know what it was. Had he been more human, he would've felt an itching between his shoulder-blades, but his appearance was only cosmetic at best. The golden-skinned body was but a shell, bereft of anything resembling organs, vital or otherwise. On a world inhabited by sapient felines, he would have possessed tuft-tipped ears able to twitch with the best of them, yet they still would've had nothing to do with his hearing.

His kind were the ultimate apex predators. They preyed on entire worlds, and nothing preyed on them except others of their own species. As such, they had long since developed shards that would give extensive forewarning of any such attempt. Which actually played against them, because once they came to depend on the shards, their native ability to detect subterfuge and deception had gone by the wayside.

He did not understand this, of course; nor would he ever. But the remnants of his instincts were just enough to trigger the sensation of being stalked by a more dangerous predator, an experience that should have been long since left behind in the extensive and sordid history of his race. For a period of time, less than a quarter of a solar orbit, he had been increasingly feeling on edge and off balance, and he didn't know why.

In his distraction, he'd only gradually begun to realise that something else almost unheard-of in the history of his race was happening. Despite the Cycle being set up to increase the amount of chaos and unrest in the world—to facilitate the generation of data for the shard network—this was not actually what was happening. Most noticeably, two of the chaos engines had been shut down, the third entirely destroyed, and the dead shard that would have brought more out had been forcibly separated from its host.

Tensions worldwide were beginning to subside, and with them the rate of new shard uptake.

The Warrior was not adept at analysing the reasons behind things. That had been the Thinker's domain. But in her absence, there was nobody else with the will or the desire to do anything about these problems. So, as difficult it was for him to get a grasp on them, he had no other choice.

And when he located whatever was sabotaging the Cycle and causing his disquiet … he would destroy it.

End of Part Ninety-Nine