"...fuck me," Lisa said, eventually, staring at her screen. "I think you did it. You actually did it."

She exhaled. "That fucker is dead. How did you even do that?"

"He made a big deal about how his power was one we couldn't escape," Taylor replied. "And that meant he was trapping me."

She rubbed her nose. "And-"

"Your trigger event," Lisa realized. "Your power gets stronger in conditions matching your trigger event. Which means feeling trapped… your range increased so you could track him at all times by, mites and things like that. Things everyone has on them."

The Thinker winced. "So, you could tell civilian identities… okay, sure, that's probably more common than we like to think, but – so you knew where he was."

"Then I decided when to kill him three days in advance," Taylor added. "You'd be amazed how many spiders you can sneak into someone's house or secret base if you've got a week to plan. Launched the attack on exactly the pre-planned minute. "

Lisa winced. "I… don't really want to think much about that," she admitted. "So what now?"

"My range is going back down," Taylor replied. "I'm going to head over to the docks, I've got something to sort out with the reserves."

"Reserves?" Lisa repeated, then stared at Taylor.

A grin stole over her face.

"Okay, I need to see this."

"...Director?" Renick said, nervously.

"What?" Piggot asked. "I'm in the middle of dialysis. And we still need to work out what happened to Calvert."

"About that," Renick hedged. "As your deputy, I think it's very important that you break your session up."

Piggot sighed. "All right," she said. "But if this isn't urgent enough I'm docking some of your pay for interfering with a medical procedure."

Renick didn't change his mind, and Piggot went through the laborious process of disconnecting herself from the machine.

Then went into her office.

Then stared out the window.

"...why are there twenty thousand dancing crabs on the street outside?" she asked.

"Armsmaster claims that it's thirty-two thousand, seven hundred and sixty eight," Renick provided. "He built a crabometer."

"Of course he did," Piggot grumbled. "The man is… Armsmaster."

That was as scathing a criticism as she could give.

As she watched, though, the crabs began doing something else.

"What?" she asked, as they all lowered their pincers in unison, forming a kind of uniform sea of red.

"Yeah, they've been doing this, too," Renick replied.

Then some of the crabs raised their pincers, and others left them down.

Suddenly, instead of a uniform sea of red, it was a pattern. And not just any pattern, a pattern a lot like a black-and-white bitmap screen.

Spelling out letters.

THOMAS CALVERT

WAS COIL

IS DEAD

CRAB RAVE, they said.

"What," Piggot demanded. "Calvert was – was Coil? Are we…"

She groaned. "I just realized I'm going to have to write a report on this. And I'm going to have to say I'm launching an internal investigation because of a whistleblower complaint from a crab rave."

The PRT director rubbed her temples. "I hate this fucking city."

AN:

Because why not.