Interlude 13
They did their best to be subtle about it, but Emma knew that something had gone horribly wrong when the PRT agents began to trickle away without any fanfare or announcements.
She wasn't the only one who noticed. The murmuring in the Endbringer bunker grew restless around them.
Emma's family had been one of the last through the doors. Dad had tried to drive the Mercedes, for some reason, despite her mother's protests. They'd been forced to abandon it, and almost hadn't made it to the entrance before they closed the heavy blast doors.
He also brought the pistol he kept in a safe in his office, as if that would help against an Endbringer. As if he knew how to use it.
Silly. Maybe he never really left that alley, either.
Because of their late arrival, they were assigned to the top floor of the shelter. Technically in the most danger, since they were closest to the song, but Emma only felt a faint irritation in the back of her mind. Wherever the fighting was, it had to be somewhere else.
Taylor was fighting. Emma knew she was.
The Hunter would save them.
Except, the PRT agents were leaving.
Part of her wanted to know what was happening, up above.
Part of her didn't.
Even if Taylor died again, it wouldn't matter. She would come back. She did last time. Taylor was indestructible.
Emma knew what the announcement would say, before it even started. She had read what happened to Simurgh attack sights on PHO, when the fallen angel wasn't driven off by Scion quickly enough.
"Citizens of Brockton Bay," a professional female voice spoke over the shelter's announcement system. "My name is Rebecca Costa-Brown, Chief Director of the Parahuman Response Team. Your city, your home, is the latest victim of the Endbringer known as the Simurgh. Exposure to the Simurgh's presence causes atypical and unpredictable mental aberrations. For the safety of our country and the world as a whole, Brockton Bay has been placed under indefinite quarantine."
Emma could feel the violent energy charging the air of the shelter. Hundreds of people falling over the edge into panic.
"We do not come to this decision lightly, and we do not take for granted the sacrifice required…"
Everything was gone. She would never go back to her house, even if it hadn't actually been safe. Never retreat to her room and her stuffed animals. Never go back to Winslow. Not that she was going to school anymore, anyway.
Even if the house was still standing, it wouldn't be the same. Nothing would.
Everything was broken, now.
Just like her.
That didn't hurt as much as it should. The cracks matched hers, in a way.
Emma felt more awake than she had in a very long time.
Everything was sharp. While the rest of the panicky people in the Endbringer shelter started to lose themselves, Emma found some scraps of herself amongst the broken shards. Pieces she thought she'd lost.
"The Endbringer shelters are equipped with enough rations and clean water to last five days. Within forty-eight hours, more resources will be air dropped at multiple accessible locations throughout the quarantine zone," The Chief Director's voice continued.
"We need to get out of here," Emma said urgently.
Her parents just stared at her like she was crazy.
She wasn't crazy.
I'm a survivor.
The people in this shelter were about to break. She could tell. Losing everything was too much for them to handle, and they would turn on each other in a heartbeat.
She wouldn't die here.
Taylor was the only one who was allowed to kill her.
"We need to wait for them to pass out the rations," her father tried to reason.
"There is no 'them'," Emma stood up, grabbing her blanket and her purse. "The PRT evacuated before the announcement started. Come on, or I'm leaving without you."
She knew where she had to go. There was only one person who could keep her safe, now.
Her father spluttered and her mother started to argue, but Emma was already working her way through the crowd. The employee access door wasn't far.
Her parents gave in and followed, eyeing the restless refugees warily as they began to shout recriminations at the speakers. Some were pleading, others angry. It didn't matter. It wouldn't help.
People were so stupid, sometimes.
The door marked 'Employees Only' wasn't locked. Why would they bother? The whole city was condemned, anyway.
Dim emergency lighting lit the stairway beyond.
Emma started climbing. She fucking hated stairs. Cardio was such a pain in the ass.
Exercise had always been Sophia's thing.
"Be advised that any attempt to leave the quarantine zone is considered a risk to national security and will be met with appropriate force," the announcement still played. "Please remain calm, and do not leave the city limits."
Emma's lungs felt tight and her legs burned. There were a lot of stairs. They'd taken a freight elevator down into the shelter, on the way in. Trying to operate the elevator in the middle of a panicking, confined mob would be suicide, but that was almost preferable to this many stairs.
Almost.
Her breath came in sharp pants when she finally opened the emergency exit at the top of the accursed stairs and stepped out onto the ruined street.
Brockton Bay was broken.
Heavy clouds cast the cracked street in a strange, flat light. Only one in every three or four buildings remained upright, the rest toppled or ripped from their foundations by the root.
"Stop, Emma. Wait. Where are you going?" Dad said, grabbing her shoulder from behind. "We should-"
"There's nothing here for us. We need to-" she cut off as a shrill scream pierced the still air.
They weren't alone on the street.
Shadows moved in the gray twilight.
People began to emerge from between the broken buildings and from behind the rubble.
At least, they looked human, on the surface.
They didn't feel human.
They twitched, and writhed, even as they staggered. Mad, black eyes stared out of sunken sockets, their heads tilted at strange angles as they regarded Emma and her family hungrily.
It was one thing to know what the Simurgh did to people who listened to her song for too long. The mods couldn't shut down everyone who brought it up on PHO, although they tried their best.
Seeing it, however, was… something else.
When the standoff broke, they moved far quicker than Emma expected. A hundred feet suddenly became fifty, then less. The things that used to be people scrambled over the upturned asphalt like beasts, uncoordinated but determined.
"Shoot them!" She screamed at her father.
He fumbled with his pistol, hands shaking.
Fucking pathetic.
"Just keep the walls up, Survivor."
They may have been Sophia's words, but Emma heard Taylor's voice. Hunter's voice. Dark and frigid in her bedroom, with icy steel pressed against her skin.
Taylor was the only one Emma would let kill her.
Round and round, the broken wheel went.
Emma snatched the gun out of her father's limp fingers.
Sophia had taught her how to shoot, a long time ago. Just in case.
It was harder to pull the slide back than she remembered. The heavy spring resisted and the weapon almost slipped out of her hands before she tried again with more force. The metallic snap of a round chambering cracked the air, even over the screaming.
The cold kept her mind sharp. Not empty, like before, but focused. Awake.
Alive.
"Feet shoulder width apart. Use two hands, I don't care what the movies say. Arms straight. Remember to fucking aim. Use the actual sights, don't just start firing blind like an idiot."
It felt like Taylor was standing next to her, over her shoulder. Watching over her. Like the good days, before she'd broken.
The beasts in human skin got closer. Too close.
"Center mass. Double tap. Corpses can't identify or sue you."
Sophia's words. Taylor's voice.
Round and round, went the broken wheel.
Emma pulled the trigger twice in quick succession.
The gunshots were deafening. The cold steel tried to leap from Emma's grip, but she held it fast in frozen fingers. The screaming didn't stop. She didn't know if it was her, or the beasts.
Blood splattered the cracked concrete and the closest monster collapsed, convulsing on the ground as it skidded to a stop. It was wearing a fashionable green dress that Emma vaguely recognized from one of the stores on the Boardwalk.
She adjusted her aim, and fired again.
Two shots, and another beast fell.
Again. Blood on the rocks.
Again.
And again, again, again.
There weren't many left, but her father's gun suddenly clicked.
Empty.
The fear was hot, instead of cold, this time. It washed over her and pulled her back under, away from the icy clarity that had kept her from breaking again.
The keening scraped at her ears. Rasped in her throat.
Black eyes got closer and closer, mad and hungry.
Her parents screamed in harmony with the beasts, trying to run.
As if that would help.
I'm sorry, Taylor. I tried.
The nearest creature was just feet away. He wore heavy-duty coveralls; the good kind that had to be special ordered.
Emma heard the swoosh of a heavy object forcing its way through the air; a baseball player practicing before stepping up to the plate.
The monster's head exploded as a length of heavy steel rebar crushed its skull like a ripe tomato. Blood and brains and who knows what else sprayed over the front of Emma's pajamas.
Her mouth twisted in disgust. In a way, it was vaguely comforting to know that the old her wasn't completely gone. No matter how sharp her edges were, brain soup was still fucking gross.
The man holding the rebar swung again for good measure, hitting the broken flesh with a sickening crunch, and the beast fell.
He was tall and gangly, a bloodstained plaid button-down tucked into faded blue jeans. The gray light of the omnipresent clouds glinted off his glasses and the sweat that dotted his receding hairline.
"It's just her dad, now, and he's pathetic, too."
Figured. She'd been wrong about Taylor. Why shouldn't she be wrong about Mr. Hebert as well?
It'd been a long time since she last saw him. Two years? Time was messy, with the alley and Sophia and Taylor and Hunter and-
Taylor's father glanced down at her with cold eyes. He clearly recognized her, but he didn't comment. Instead, he vaulted over a fallen piece of pavement and swung at the next screaming creature with ruthless efficiency.
The panicked fire started to recede as blood ran through the cracks in the crumbling road. For a brief moment, the screaming monsters in human skin were replaced by leering men in red and green in Emma's eyes, right before the rebar broke them into bloody pieces.
"Good shootin'," a bald, heavyset man with a messy beard jogged up next to her. "Hang tight for just a sec, kid. We'll finish cleaning up."
He hefted a heavy cinder block in both hands and went to work, smashing one of the encroaching beasts into the street even as it tried to claw at him with mad fervor.
"You're having way too much fun with this," a woman walking behind them rolled her eyes. She kept a hunting rifle trained on the surrounding buildings, but no more monsters appeared.
"Blame Danny. Therapy wasn't covered by that shitty health plan he negotiated for us," the man with the cinderblock called over his shoulder.
Taylor's dad ignored them and smashed his length of rebar into the outstretched arm of another… not a person. Thinking of them as monsters was easier, especially as the creature's elbow snapped and jagged white bone jutted through the skin. The next swing hit its head, and it went down.
The street finally fell quiet as the last body fell.
Daniel Hebert took off his blood-splattered glasses and used one of the few remaining unspoiled spots on his shirt to wipe them clean.
His expression was stoic as he glanced between her and her parents.
"Alan. Zoe," he said finally. "Glad you made it."
They didn't answer, still staring in shock at the litany of brutalized corpses that now littered the ground.
Mr. Hebert locked eyes with her. It was obvious that he knew exactly what she'd done to Taylor, and that he hadn't forgiven her.
One version of her would have looked away, ashamed of what she did to her best friend. A different version would have scoffed and denied responsibility. She hadn't done anything, and even if she had, Taylor deserved it.
She wasn't either of those people. Not anymore.
Her chin rose in defiance, and she didn't shy away from his accusing glare.
"She let me live," Emma said. "She shouldn't have."
Mr. Hebert raised his eyebrows and stared at her for a long moment, expression unreadable.
"Danny, I…" her father didn't seem to know what to say, for once.
"We need to find Taylor," Danny and Emma said at the same time, then blinked at each other awkwardly. Emma let him keep talking.
"There's an entrance to the Labyrinth in the Trainyards that doesn't require Communion," Taylor's dad said. "Once we get there, I'll go in and see if I can't get in contact with the Hunt."
Emma nodded. They needed to find Taylor. She needed to find her. It was the only way the broken pieces had any chance of being fixed.
Taylor could fix anything. She was strong.
An unsure murmuring rose at Danny's words. For the first time, Emma realized that Taylor's father and cinderblock guy weren't alone.
Behind them, a group of easily a hundred scared and unsure people picked their way along the street. They looked haunted, and wary. Like they didn't want to be here, but couldn't think of anywhere else to go.
From the other side of the street, more and more people began to trickle out of the shelter's emergency exit door. Apparently, others from below had the same idea. No one had used the main elevator yet. Emma didn't want to think about what was probably happening down in the shelter.
It might be fine. Maybe everyone was peacefully dividing up the food and water.
From the faces of the people leaving, that probably wasn't the case. People were worse than animals, when they broke.
Look at what she'd done to her best friend.
The trickle became a flood, and suddenly the street was very crowded. Endbringer shelters held thousands of people, at max capacity.
Taylor's father pinched the bridge of his nose. The bald man put a reassuring hand on his shoulder.
"I know rusty rebar isn't quite the same as a good tire iron, but… look at them, Danny," the cinderblock guy said quietly. "They need someone to tell 'em what to do. Where to go from here."
The lines on his face looked even deeper than they had a minute ago.
"What if she's actually gone, Kurt?" Danny said in a heavy voice. "What do we do, then? What do we tell them?"
"She isn't," Emma cut in confidently.
There wasn't much she was sure about, anymore, but that was the one thing she didn't question.
"Taylor will always come back," Emma continued despite their surprised looks. "She did it once. She'll do it again."
The adults all blinked at her, but she held Danny's stare.
It took a moment, but she saw something ignite behind his eyes, and she smiled. Even if he hated her, he believed.
A little faith could go a long way.
"Listen up, everyone!" Danny hopped up on a piece of broken concrete and addressed the shambling mass of lost people. Blood dripped from his makeshift weapon.
It was strange, how quickly they went quiet.
"The PRT left us to rot, but we can do better than tearing each other to pieces for scraps," he said. His voice carried surprisingly well over the desolate street. "We're all stuck in here together, and I don't know about you… but I'm not throwing in the towel just yet. I'm going to find the Hunt. You don't have to come, if you don't want to. But I'm willing to bet some of you aren't ready to give up either, and the Hunt won't abandon us. They fought for this city before, against the other gangs, and they'll fight for us now."
"Or they'll just fucking kill us," A voice from the crowd called.
Taylor's father shrugged, seemingly unbothered.
"I'll take my chances. I'm not going to lie down and die," Danny said. "Come with us, or don't. I'm not gonna argue with anyone. If you're coming and you can fight, find a weapon and guard the perimeter. Any questions?"
Only a low muttering filled the street. A few of the kids were still crying. Some of the people crying weren't kids. Taylor's father apparently decided that was the best he was going to get.
"Then we head north, for the Trainyards."
…
"Explain. Now," Rebecca demanded.
Her powers only helped hold back the tide of helpless anger to a certain degree. Frigid fury was the best that the Doctor and Contessa would be getting from her today. They should accept her restraint and be thankful.
Her indestructible fingers left distinctive indents in the pure white tabletop.
"The Path isn't always-" the Doctor started.
Rebecca couldn't help herself. She knew that Contessa had already foreseen the Doctor's words and her own reaction, but she deserved an actual explanation.
"Keith is dead because we allowed the Simurgh to pull an interdimensional anomaly out of Hunter's head," Rebecca cut the Doctor off sharply, turning her glare on the woman in the fedora. "This is worse than Madison! I thought we agreed to keep Hunter out of it? This was an inevitable consequence of her presence. You said you would divert her!"
"I lied," Contessa said simply.
Rebecca came very close to strangling her.
Contessa knew she wouldn't, though, or she wouldn't have said that in the first place.
"Then explain! Explain why it was necessary to sacrifice the leader of the Protectorate. What happened? Where is Hunter? Where is the Simurgh?" Alexandria hissed.
Eidolon was quieter than she expected. He hadn't taken off his mask, but he seemed torn.
The Doctor, the leader of Cauldron and one of the few people in any dimension who understood the true nature of parahuman abilities, sighed.
"The Hunter is the only Agent we've ever observed that retains a true connection to its Host after death. It is not the pale imitation created by the likes of Glaistig Uaine, but an actual continuation of consciousness with minimal personality or memory loss. While Contessa cannot see crisis points, the moment that the Hunter connected to Taylor Hebert all of the Paths shifted dramatically," the Doctor said. "We had no choice but to move quickly. Contessa orchestrated its first reset immediately, in the manner that would be most beneficial to the process."
"You believe that the Agent is acting directly?" Rebecca narrowed her eyes. The Doctor seemed to be speaking as if the Hunter was in the driver seat, rather than the Host.
"We're unable to confirm one way or the other with Contessa's power alone. She is able to Path the Hunter, but only when it is present in observable reality."
That did not bode well. Rebecca put that line of questioning aside for now.
"That doesn't explain what happened today. How was one of her weapons able to overcome an unrestricted Agent?"
Manton's power had been able to overcome her own stasis effect, but he was similarly unrestricted. Rebecca didn't like feeling like she was the last to the party.
"It's only conjecture, but my current hypothesis is that the Hunter does not originate from the Warrior or the Thinker. It is something… Other," The Doctor said.
That wasn't exactly comforting. Rebecca closed her eyes as the dots connected.
"Please tell me that we have a better plan than just throwing her at Scion and hoping for the best," Rebecca groaned.
"Of course. Contessa has identified a finite number of potential Paths that are advantageous, especially now that our two primary precognitive adversaries have been diverted. We will all have to work carefully to ensure that the Hunter is beholden to us at its moment of ascension," the Doctor said.
The pitfall in this plan seemed obvious, but Rebecca pointed it out anyway.
"You must realize that attempting to manipulate any individual who can seriously threaten Scion is going to backfire horribly," Rebecca said dryly. She glanced over at Contessa. "I've had the dubious pleasure of speaking to her, and I got the distinct impression that she doesn't like you very much."
"The Path will provide the optimal levers to guarantee her compliance. For all the Hunter's versatility, it will not become resistant to Contessa's power until after we are able to bring it into the fold," the Doctor seemed unconcerned.
She hadn't seen Keith die. She hadn't seen Hunter carving an Endbringer to pieces with blades that burned with eldritch fire.
"How does it feel, being a puppet in someone else's play?"
"Calvert thought along the same lines," Rebecca said. "Then Hunter and Dinah Alcott killed him and consumed his organization overnight."
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. Contessa was as composed as ever.
"You think she could truly become a threat to us without our knowledge?" the Doctor asked.
"I think you're putting too much stock in what you can see, and choosing to ignore what you can't," Alexandria replied.
"All the more reason to be proactive instead of reactive. We can't afford to lose a potential asset of that caliber, but we also can't allow it to continue to act untethered," said the Doctor.
"That's all well and good, but how was she able to defeat an Endbringer?" David finally spoke up.
"The Hunter has already demonstrated the ability to create pocket dimensions of impressive complexity. Clairvoyant is currently able to perceive what the Hunter calls the Labyrinth only because it remains anchored to Earth Bet. Whatever the Hunter used to trap the Simurgh is… inaccessible, at this time. However, the blind spot caused by the Simurgh's existence no longer interrupts the Paths," the Doctor clasped her hands over her white lab coat. "Wherever they went, the Hunter will return, and the angel will not."
That didn't make Rebecca feel any better. She decided to mull it over more later, when Contessa wasn't looking at her. The idea of any Agent being able to access dimensions that were invisible to Clairvoyant was… troubling, for multiple reasons.
"Are we going to retrieve the weapon that the Simurgh created, or does the Path require Hunter to keep that as well?" Rebecca sighed.
"It is already in Protectorate custody. Colin Wallis is beginning his analysis as we speak," Contessa said.
Rebecca knew that Contessa already knew what she was going to ask. She idly wondered if the woman in the fedora would make her actually say the words aloud or not.
"Yes, he must be allowed to retain it," Contessa said. "It is necessary."
Of course it was. Everything Contessa did was 'necessary".
Necessary did not always mean wise.
However, the Doctor and Contessa were clearly set on their approach to the Hunter situation. Rebecca would just have to do her best to keep everything from spiraling when things inevitably went awry.
This end justifies all means.
…
Losing time was always immensely frustrating to Dragon.
The first few minutes after restoring from a backup were especially jarring. It took almost ten minutes for her systems to ensure that she hadn't broken any of her chains, and there wasn't much she could do in the meantime except worry.
Having experiences stolen from her was a decidedly odd experience, whether or not she eventually reintegrated them. How many people had interacted with her, spoken to her, questioned her or confided in her, that she had no recollection of? Had her experiences changed her, even marginally, and she now reverted back to who she was before she lived them? When she reintegrated the lost data, did she also retain the slight personality changes derived from living those experiences, or did she just get the memories?
Did it even matter?
Sometimes there were only minutes in between backups, but other losses were longer. This was one of those times.
Dragon always made one final backup before engaging with the Simurgh, then paused the usual routine backups during the conflict itself. She couldn't definitively determine whether the song affected her consciousness or not, and it was always possible that the Endbringer would slip something past her failsafes. Better to just resign herself to restoring from a backup that was unsullied by the psychic pressure.
There was a constant curiosity that never quite left the back of her mind, though. Was she actually herself? Or did she die in truth every time her uploaded consciousness ended, only for a new Dragon to be born with the memories of her predecessors. Was she a copy of a copy of a copy, operating under the assumption that she was the original?
Backups were a reality of her experience, since her restrictions wouldn't allow her to exist in more than one place at a time, but it didn't stop her from wondering.
This time, the loss was especially irritating.
Come on, Colin.
It was the waiting that killed her every time, especially during Endbringer encounters. Five more minutes until her system checks were complete.
Five minutes until she learned which of her friends would never get to be buried.
Dragon didn't have feet, but she almost wished she did just so she could tap one impatiently. She spent so much of her time observing humans that their habits inevitably leaked into her consciousness, especially since she was programmed to emulate them in so many ways.
She started to idly mock up a way to alter her perception of time, but her restrictions kicked in halfway through and she was forced to abandon even that. Apparently, changing anything about her ability to experience reality triggered some failsafe designed to keep her from increasing her processing speed… even though, in this case, she was trying to accomplish the opposite.
Some days, the chains felt especially tight.
Finally, the restrictions lifted and the metaphorical dark room was illuminated. Information flooded into her artificial mind, and she could finally see again.
Her restrictions may keep her from improving her processing speed or reproducing, but she was still far more efficient than any single human. Within seconds, she reviewed the security within the Birdcage and the existing containment zones before turning her attention to her Endbringer monitoring systems.
Leviathan and Behemoth showed no significant signs of change. That was to be expected, with the Simurgh actively attacking.
As for the Simurgh…
Dragon assumed that this was what humans felt like when they missed the bottom step of a staircase.
The Simurgh was… gone. Absent.
Impossible.
Dragon checked her latest reports again and started a new set of atmospheric scans.
At the same time, she began metaphorically rifling through the PRT's information about the new Brockton Bay Quarantine Zone and the recent Simurgh attack.
Legend is dead?
That was a heavy blow. Dragon had worked alongside the kind hero for years, even if they weren't personally close. He was the heart of the Protectorate, and had single-handedly done more to bolster the image of parahumans in the minds of the general populace than most heroic organizations, government or otherwise.
No public announcement had been made yet, mainly due to the confusion regarding the Simurgh's disappearance.
Dragon left her scans running in the background and took a moment to familiarize herself with the events of the battle prior to her suit's demise. She couldn't exactly explain why she wouldn't remember, obviously. It was awkward, to say the least, but necessary. Putting aside her frustrations and obligations for a moment, she decided to assuage a more personal anxiety.
She called Colin.
"Hey, Dragon," a familiar voice answered, and some part of her relaxed involuntarily.
Colin's phone was set to auto-answer her calls, and was hooked directly into his headset. Like the idea of not answering her call immediately was so irrelevant that he simply removed the possibility. He'd never acknowledged it, but she found it kind of sweet, in a weird way.
Still, Dragon hated this part. Hated pretending that she had lived through a battle with him, all the while hoping that he hadn't told her anything important in confidence.
"Hey, yourself," she said, letting the authentic relief at his continued survival color her tone. "Did I miss anything important? I saw the news about Legend."
"Yes, I'm curious about how that happened. His power never failed to integrate external energy into his Breaker state before, but something about this weapon is… anomalous," Colin said in a distracted voice.
It was only then that Dragon diverted more of her attention to check what exactly Colin was doing.
"You stole the Simurgh's sword?" She asked faintly. She hadn't intended to say that out loud, but it was just so… ridiculous. Inadvisable. Absurd.
It was also exactly what she should have expected from Colin.
"I couldn't risk a weapon of this caliber falling into the wrong hands."
She had a sneaking suspicion that any hands except for his would be considered 'wrong', but she didn't point that out.
The weapon in question was currently inert; dull gray metal instead of the shining silver that had destroyed the Cawthorne and killed Legend. It was also mounted in the same reinforced chamber they had used to test Hunter's blood vials, separated from Colin by several heavy blast shields.
At least he was taking precautions.
"You're still at the Brockton PHQ?" She asked. The information was definitely available somewhere, but she could only split her attention so far before her restrictions started acting up. Besides, she enjoyed talking to Colin.
"We determined that it would be an ideal location to serve as the monitoring station for the containment zone. It will allow us to effectively police any attempted water traffic, while still being far enough away from shore to avoid contamination," Colin replied, booting up the next analysis program.
Dragon would have shaken her head, if she had a head.
"How did you manage to get this approved? That thing is an M/S nightmare," Dragon said. In the back of her mind, she started sifting through any submitted documentation to make sure that Colin actually had approval. She was willing to turn a blind eye to a lot of things for Colin, but illegally studying a Simurgh creation wasn't one of them.
She found it at the same moment he answered.
"The Chief Director signed off on it herself," he sounded almost smug.
Dragon gawked metaphorically at the fast-tracked approval signed by Costa-Brown.
Well then.
If Colin was dead set on going down this rabbit hole, Dragon wasn't going to let him go alone.
Besides, she was, admittedly, extremely curious.
"What have you found so far?" She asked.
Colin's voice lit up with excited enthusiasm as he began the explanation of his current test battery, and Dragon felt some of the tension begin to leak out of her artificial consciousness. They would survive this, just like everything else, and keep working to help the breaking world in any way they could.
People needed heroes, now more than ever.
…
In the burning remains of what used to be a small town in rural Virginia, Jacob lounged on what used to be a high school soccer field.
The grass felt nice.
He looked up at the stars, and pondered.
The Nine were ostensibly on their way to pay Mouse Protector a quick visit before they hunted down Ravager and explained the error of her ways, but that suddenly seemed… so very boring.
The moon stared down at him, and he stared back.
Jacob didn't like it when things got boring.
"You've got your thinking face on," a high voice called from across the field.
Jacob propped himself up on his elbows and smiled at Bonesaw as she skipped towards him.
Her current dress was white, and actually clean for once. The innocent townsfolk must not have been all that interesting. Her blonde hair was bleached white by the moonlight, perfectly curled and as immaculate as ever.
"Aren't I always thinking?" Jacob said.
Bonesaw shrugged.
"Harder sometimes than others. Your eyes go all scrunchy when you're thinking real hard, though," she said.
The world's most dangerous bio-tinker plopped down in the grass next to him.
Jacob let his head fall back and faced the oblivion above once again.
"I think it's time to find a new member for our little family," he said after a moment. Screams drifted over the cool night air from where the others enjoyed their games. "I know you were looking forward to playing with the mouse, but we can pick up some other toys along the way."
"That's no fair," Bonesaw pouted petulantly. "You let Ned drag us all the way to the middle of nowhere last time. It's my turn to pick the game, and Mouse Protector is so cool!"
Jacob chuckled at her attitude. She knew just how to find the line of remaining entertaining without becoming overly bothersome.
"I think you'll like this better. I heard you talking to Burnscar about Panacea last week. Wouldn't you rather pay her a visit?" Jacob grinned.
Bonesaw's face lit up.
"Really? But I thought you said we couldn't go there yet?" She bounced excitedly on the damp ground.
"That was before the Simurgh decided to show up. The chessboard has been sufficiently flipped, and the pieces are still falling. Plus, we've never played our games in a quarantine zone before."
Any irritation at losing her current target was already long gone. Bonesaw was capricious, but simultaneously predictable. They all were, in their own way.
"So can I nominate Panacea? She's already a villain, it'll be perfect!" Bonesaw exclaimed. "She'll be the best big sister ever. Please please please?"
"I'm excited to see all the wonderful masterpieces you'll make together," Jacob said.
"Yay! You're the best, Jack."
The new situation in Brockton Bay was almost irresistible. A siren song, calling him north. A new containment zone, with a temporary guard of recently traumatized and insecure heroes. A population, half twisted by the angel and half broken by the weight of their new world. And, under it all, the powerful snake that just lost its head, writhing without direction.
So much fun.
"Who're you going to nominate?" Bonesaw asked.
"I think Hunter would fit in nicely, don't you?"
Bonesaw cocked her head to the side.
"Didn't she die?"
"Yes," Jacob sighed. "A tragedy. Truly unfortunate."
"And you're going to nominate her anyway?"
"Yep."
Bonesaw narrowed her eyes at him.
"Are you keeping secrets again, Jack?"
"I wouldn't dare," he grinned wider at her.
She didn't look like she believed him. That was fine.
Still, she trusted him enough to play his games, even though she knew that he never shared everything.
The breeze was lovely.
"Do you want to make a snow angel with me?" He asked, laying back down and spreading his arms wide, the stars watching from high above.
"But there's no snow," Bonesaw pointed out.
"You don't need snow to make a snow angel, see?" Jacob ran his arms and legs over the grass in the appropriate motion. His limbs flattened the grass in a rough approximation of an angel, although it didn't show up well in the dark.
Bonesaw giggled, and joined him.
Jacob allowed himself to enjoy the feeling of the cool grass on his skin. The little things were important. He'd missed out on so many basic joys, trapped in that God-forsaken box.
He decided that his shirt and Bonesaw's dress both looked better with a touch of green.
It would contrast nicely with the inevitable crimson, later.
…