《Delphic》 Chapter 1 - Dinner Party Viewing rapidly in reverse could be dizzying. Still, when I have a corpse and need to find a killer, it¡¯s usually the easiest way. The mottled pattern of sunlight through the trees shifted rapidly across the patch of bare earth that I carefully watched. Day shifted to night, then back to day again, in less than a minute. The shadows moved westward across the ground as the sun crossed the sky from west to east, an unnatural repentance of its habitual course. I almost missed the blur of motion in the dead of night, but in the last light of the previous day the earth had shifted noticeably. Clearly I had just rewound past the night when the corpse was buried. I moved the scene forward again at a less accelerated pace. Few details of the man were visible under the overcast night sky. Even less of him could be made out when his flashlight clicked to brilliant life, but soon the wet gleam of the garbage bag was visible, and the blade of his well-used shovel. That was confirmation enough. I had no interest in watching the rest of the profane interment. The scene reversed again, scarcely faster than real time, as I focused on following the man in his uncanny reverse-trek to the road. Even through the dense trees his progress was surprisingly rapid, fueled no doubt by fear of discovery. The road was several feet above the level of the forest ground, with a rounded but steep shoulder, and the pickup had been driven down that shoulder and far enough off the road to perhaps avoid some attention. Here I could see the man¡¯s face ¨C young, white, thin trimmed beard, eyes hard and determined, teeth gritted in distaste. As he reversed the process of pulling the bag out of the pickup, I memorized the license plate. Following a vehicle in reverse is still something I find a great deal of difficulty with. When I am tracking someone forward, I can automatically ride with them in real time or faster, but I have to separately focus on both reversing the scene and moving it when tracking them backward. I had considered following the man as he left the scene instead, but I wanted to grab the girl¡¯s name this session if possible. After backing him up enough to determine the direction the truck had come from, I used my typical shortcut. Freezing the moment, I lifted my vantage up above the road and rapidly moved to the closest intersection in his direction of travel. A more rapid stationary rewind until I spot my prey, determine his direction, and repeat the reverse trace. Traffic was sparse this late at night and this far outside the city proper. Once the pickup was traced back from a more main street onto a tributary road, I stuck with it more directly, presuming I¡¯d be arriving at a stop soon. The siren blare of the alarm surprised me, almost causing me to lose the scene. I held onto it, though, and fumbled for the snooze button. I had forgotten I had set the cooking timer at all, but the lasagna would survive a few extra minutes in the oven while I wrapped things up. A three-bedroom ¡°starter home¡± in a nice neighborhood was admittedly not what I was expecting to be led back to, but it takes all kinds (of murderers). I noted the address and let myself open my eyes. A quick IM to Paris:
Me: license and address, no ID yet
She didn¡¯t respond right away, so I locked the box, grabbed my mobile off the charger, and headed upstairs. My mom had always taught me that the key to a good lasagna is the noodles. We softened them in basil-infused water before layering them, still warm, with cool strata of dairy, meat, and sauce. A high oven temperature gave the right mix of a slightly crispy outer layer and properly gooey insides without overly rendering the sauce. I slid the pan of garlic bread ¨C already buttered, seasoned, and sliced ¨C into the smaller toaster oven before flipping on the light in the ¡°real¡± oven. The lasagna was already done, heading for overdone, so I delayed no further in pulling it out of the oven and onto the cooling rack. Visitors are usually surprised when they see how well-equipped my kitchen is; it doesn¡¯t match my classification as ¡°bachelor living by himself.¡± I stick to the same basic comfort foods my mother made for us growing up, but I take personal pride in making them very well, often with my own twist. I scurried over to my bedroom and ensuite to change shirts and run a thick pick through my hair. I¡¯d need to head downtown for a buzz within a week or two as my hair had grown out long enough to be a nuisance. Other than the unruly hair, the short twenty-something black man that looked back at me from the bathroom mirror was satisfactory. A red collared shirt set off my brown skin and eyes, framing my quiet smile. I¡¯m thin without being scrawny, and keep a casual wardrobe that says ¡°polite and harmless.¡± It works for me. This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience. The Kurtzwiles were across the street and about three houses down, just on the lip of the long cul-de-sac that we call home. Judy Kurtzwile, matron of Illiad Court, greeted me warmly at her door and directed me and my insulated casserole bag to the oversized kitchen of their split-level. ¡°Hector!¡± came the excited greeting from the youngest of the three women frantically buzzing about the kitchen. May, a college junior, came home most weekends for free meals and laundry service from her mother. Their house was directly across from mine. The lasagna pan and basket of bread were quickly and perfunctorily praised by the women before being swept into the food tornado as I was swept out. More warm greetings followed as I made my way into the great room. I made it a point to come to these neighborly meals as often as I was invited ¨C usually every two to three weeks ¨C and the dozen people socializing in the room knew me well. I deduced that the guests of honor, whom I had not yet met, were still on their way. I spent a couple of minutes exchanging pleasantries with neighbors before I heard a bellowing ¡°Hector!¡± from the furniture circled around the television at the other end of the large room. With an internal eye roll and a surface mask of friendliness, I answered the summons. Bill Kurtzwile held court in his plush leather seat. He was easily the largest man in the room, both in height and girth, a powerful white man with less than half a head of white hair and the hard vitality of a man half his age. He gestured with a bottle of beer to the three other men taking up the other seats in the half-sequestered area, each man facing the muted TV from which cable news had evidently triggered the conversation. Bill Junior, the youngest of the four men, looked ready to resume pouncing on whatever point he had been in the middle of before I was spotted, clearly held back by the bare civility of needing to greet me first. The other two men had the relaxed look of enjoying casual political discussion in a social setting. ¡°Hector,¡± Junior began, ¡°good to see you. I was just tellin¡¯ Dad that he¡¯s overreacting to this whole thing about Peregrine and the Washington Monument.¡± He gestured with his bottle at the TV, which showed footage of emergency responders crawling through the stone and steel rubble that had recently been the five-hundred-foot structure. ¡°The Fiendish Four were on their way to attack Congress in session, probably with thousands of civilian casualties. Peregrine stopped him. This was collateral damage, y¡¯know?¡± I knew only too well. Peregrine was one of the stronger costumed supers who worked in the DC area. Unsurprisingly, the seat of the federal government attracted a higher quantity and quality of heroes than here in Detroit. Peregrine¡¯s high flight speed, and ability to transfer momentum to his targets, made him a very visible asset for USST (United States Super Team). But he also had a very high rate of, as Junior put it, ¡°collateral damage.¡± Including a number of incidents that the government had managed to keep out of the national press. I shrugged, but before I could respond, Bill Senior jumped in: ¡°Collateral damage my ass. We¡¯re not talking about a parking garage here. This is a major American monument, and it will cost the taxpayer ¨C that¡¯s us, Jack ¨C millions to rebuild. If the jackasses in Congress can ever straighten out the budget.¡± He took a quick pull of his beer and continued. ¡°The Team belongs overseas, Junior. Fighting threats to America like they¡¯ve been doing for decades. Not here duking it out over our cities, putting Americans at risk. In my day, supers that operated here were rightfully treated as the vigilantes they were. Police powers for supers? We¡¯ll have our own super dictators next like half the third world already does.¡± The other two older men chimed their agreement while Junior turned to me for support. This was a microcosm of the national debate ¨C an aging generation hostile to the newer Super Teams operating here, with less opposition in each younger demographic. Most considered it an argument that would resolve itself in the passage of time. In truth, I shared a lot of Bill¡¯s concerns, but it appeared my opinion wasn¡¯t really being sought. The Bills could easily argue between them until dinner was served. Fortunately, a round of greetings soon indicated that the guests of honor had arrived. The Morris family had moved into their home a week ago, and this dinner was our way of welcoming them to the neighborhood. Karl and Laila Morris had recently moved from LA with, I had been assured by a nosy neighbor, a ¡°thoroughly adorable¡± little girl. The girl in question was wrapped around her mother¡¯s head and shoulders as her father tried to coax her down. Our little cul de sac was a pretty even mix of white and black households, but the Morrises were the first Asians to move in, and I could see everyone was bending over backward to make a good first impression. The newcomers¡¯ clothes were a bit light for the weather, not surprising when Californians move to Michigan. The little girl, Deborah, really was adorable, and was soon shyly smiling from behind her mother¡¯s capri-clad legs. Laila was tall for an Asian woman, and had surprisingly prominent laugh lines for a young mom. Her grin was large and infectious, and she accepted handshakes and hugs with good grace. When I got my chance to approach and greet them, it was Kurt who grabbed my hand first. ¡°You must be Hector. John says you¡¯re the guy to get our Internet turned on quickly?¡± ¡°Happy to,¡± I quipped, ¡°I¡¯m surprised you weren¡¯t knocking on my door before now. I could never survive that long without Internet.¡± Laila shook my hand and responded, ¡°We¡¯ve been getting our fix at work. And Deb is still young enough not to need it, right sweetie?¡± She made some further joke about binge watching, but I missed it. When May asked, ¡°Hector, are you all right?¡± I realized I had missed a whole line of conversation. I had stopped moving or tracking the conversation because I was still trying to process what I had heard. Not the content of the message, but the timbre of the voice combined with her face had caused a jolt of recognition I could not quickly recover from. Laila Morris is a super. Chapter 2 - Polarity By the time I shook off my surprise and allowed myself to be led to the dinner table, multiple dishes were already being passed around. Bright conversation flowed around and over me without fully penetrating. I did everything in my power not to look at Laila, but this was likely more noticeable than just looking at her. I have very little experience trying to actively hide this level of nervousness. The third time someone asked me about my discomfort, I announced I was feeling ill and quickly took my leave. This was much remarked upon, I¡¯m sure, but better than the alternative. I walked determinedly back to my house and carefully locked the door before heading downstairs to my office and computer system. I stared at the blank monitor while trying to figure out what to do. I hadn¡¯t felt this scared in several months. My instinct was to boot up, log in, and look for a problem to occupy my attention ¨C I might have an IM from Paris, too ¨C but that might be the worst thing I could do with a known superhero literally down the block. I started by thinking through what I knew about Polarity. Last I checked, she was a card-carrying member of California Combined Super Team (typically spelled and pronounced ¡°CAST¡±), a standing combat asset for the LA branch (¡°SoCAST¡±) with more than occasional assignments to the San Francisco branch (¡°NorCAST¡±). A moderately powerful ferrokinetic, she had detailed control over metals in her immediate vicinity, down to the molecular level. Polarity typically wore a half-ton suit of platinum, iron, and carbon, which she crystallized into some sort of strong but highly ductile steel. It had been about three months since SoCAST had asked for my help with a mission, but Polarity was definitely part of the core team at that time ¨C which is how I came to have seen and heard enough of her to immediately recognize her tonight. Fortunately, she would not have seen or heard me. SoCAST had been alerted to a likely super incursion near Orange County. I know that seems like a vague description, but ¡°near Orange County¡± is the best I can do because the phenomenon was covering a large area. Half the parking meters would be pulled up along one side of a street, a lamp post would be wrapped around a mailbox on the other side, and that was it. Then two blocks away a vehicle would be flipped over and two more with wheels pulled off. No rhyme or reason, and no witness reports of the culprit. Things escalated quickly when the first body was found ¨C or, more accurately, the first body parts. The woman¡¯s head and torso were thrown against a shop window while her four detached limbs lay on the sidewalk. It had all the same carelessness and chaos as the property damage, easily a continuation of the pattern were it not, well, murder. It was the dead woman, and the two additional victims discovered shortly thereafter, that made Colonel Cold (in command back at SoCAST base) decide to call in Delphic. As usual, I was added to the team¡¯s secure channels and video feeds and asked to help identify the phenomenon and how to stop it. Identification took me a little under two minutes, as I could bring up a site of destruction and rewind to the event that caused it very quickly. Even frozen, however, the scene was a muddled blur, the super¡¯s features smeared over an image a half block long. My power¡¯s maximum resolution is 8-12 ms (something about the de Broglie wavelength of omicron particles according to the Doc), which meant this was a high-velocity speedster. Rare and dangerous even when properly disciplined; doubly so when clearly out of control. I allowed the scene to progress forward at a crawl, enough to see a mailbox sliced in two as it met a flickering vortex less than a meter ahead of the man. He seemed to be actively and determinedly running, not carried along by his powers but pushing them to their fullest. There was no way to easily see if he even realized the damage he was causing. I followed along behind the path of destruction, zooming upward and outward to keep him in view¡­ there! A single still frame of the man momentarily lurching forward as he regrouped and changed direction. Hispanic adult, tall and lanky, only a few tatters of lycra still clinging to his nearly-nude body. The blur resumed in a different direction. I typed out a message to the team that was synthesized in my Delphic voice: ¡°I analyze the subject to be a speedster with a powerful forward attack power, kinetic-based and highly variable. After each half-mile jaunt, he pauses for about one twentieth of a second. He may be vulnerable during these pauses.¡± It was about a half-second before the open channels to Polarity, Inexor, and Boom started to echo small fragments of Delphic¡¯s voice back to me, which is an embarrassing amount of lag but unavoidable. Our solution would need to rely on prediction rather than reaction. I released my View and focused on the monitors in front of my desk, quickly placing pins on a digital map of the area already being shared with SoCAST. ¡°Stopping points are estimated with large error margins. I don¡¯t see a pattern. He¡¯s too fast to intercept.¡± Colonel Cold¡¯s voice answered, ¡°Then don¡¯t intercept; predict. We have three heavy hitters in the chopper ready to drop as soon as we give the word. Project ahead and come up with a place he¡¯ll likely go.¡± ¡°I can¡¯t do that without determining the pattern,¡± I had my synth reply, ¡°and he doesn¡¯t even seem to be trying to stay in the same general area. It¡¯s a random walk.¡± ¡°Then what do you suggest we do?¡± Polarity¡¯s rich female voice came through the channel with a slight echo ¨C hardly a surprise considering her head and the mic were encased in her signature metal armor. ¡°We don¡¯t have any agents, or even weapons, that move at supersonic speeds.¡± I sat in my basement 2000 miles away, a model of physical comfort, pyjama pants sliding against the cool leather of my chair. I stared at the map, willing a better solution to come into focus. These weren¡¯t my friends, my neighbors, or my town that this maniac was ripping apart. They were looking to me to provide an answer, but none of the consequences of failure would reach me or mine. Were it not for my View, for the way it drew me personally into the scenes I witnessed, it would seem entirely unreal. I opened my View again, quickly finding and entering the helicopter. The three supers were wearing small, durable action cams as well as mics, with Boom and Polarity currently each in the others¡¯ field of vision. Boom, her crash helmet under one arm, was looking anxious, straining against an invisible leash to be let loose, to punish a wrongdoer. She was a slight woman, young, skin just dark enough to be more likely Latina than tanned. Her eyes flashed with frustrated aggression. Her long black hair was messily tied above her head in deference to the helmet; it made her look younger. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Polarity¡¯s helm was a placid surface of polished silver, but I knew her demeanor would mirror Boom¡¯s if I could see it. I quickly peeked under the helmet, and saw I was wrong. She looked tired and wary, and her narrow face was a sharp contrast from Boom¡¯s. I¡¯d have guessed ten years¡¯ difference in their age if I hadn¡¯t already known otherwise. The big difference, I suspected, is that Polarity had been working these missions for almost four years. This was Boom¡¯s second month as a member of SoCAST¡¯s primary mission team. I wondered how much more they would match when Boom had been at it a full year. I sighed, then began typing a response. ¡°Under the circumstances, our best bet is to position you at a thoroughfare that he¡¯s likely to cross eventually. If he¡¯s neither targeting nor avoiding particular locations, any prominent road is as good as any other. Can the three of you form an effective barricade ¨C something that could stop a rocket-powered missile, for example?¡± Polarity and Boom both turned to Inexor, who nodded. Although Polarity was taller than he was in her bulky suit, it was a near thing. Inexor was just shy of seven feet tall, rail-thin, quite pale although he¡¯d told me his mother was a Mexican immigrant (¡°Strong Spanish blood,¡± he¡¯d boasted with a wide grin). He had the cowl on his suit in place, a form-fitting and colorful number done in pale purple and off-white to complement the signature light blue glow of active powers. ¡°Even spread out across the road, my wall should be strong enough to deflect this guy,¡± Inexor said in his heavily accented English. A tooltip landed on the shared digital map, courtesy of HQ. ¡°Analytics recommend dropping there, Broad Street between Magnolia and Third. It¡¯s the most central location he hasn¡¯t hit yet.¡± The supers noticeably shifted as the chopper banked to head toward the identified point. Polarity said, ¡°Boom and I can stagger ourselves behind the forcefield in case he manages to punch through or jump over. Has he done any of that so far?¡± ¡°Not that I¡¯ve seen,¡± I typed back. ¡°I¡¯m going to step my frame rate up a bit to try to trace him in closer to real time.¡± I couldn¡¯t actually do anything like this, of course, but I inserted my View two hundred feet up above the speedster¡¯s last known location and reworked back and forth as fast as I could manage while keeping him in sight. Doc had lent me a small Omicron emitter that I was using to try to train myself to see the radiation directly. For the moment I was stuck with visible light¨Cand very near ultraviolet ¨Cbetter than nothing, but not as useful as near infrared would be. I could see the telltale blue glow as easily as anyone else, but direct detection would be far easier. ¡°Asset delivery in seventy-five seconds,¡± announced the pilot. CAST used Coast Guard personnel for most operations and logistical roles. ¡°Disturbances just south of El Modena,¡± I typed blind. Thank goodness for touch typing and competent autocorrect. I watched as the cargo helicopter hovered thirty feet above the ground. The blue glowing chimera that emerged would have been hard to discern if I did not already know what I was looking at ¨C a towering steel giant on one side of a purple and white figure, a tiny biker on the other side. Inexor looked deific, floating gently toward the ground as the beams pulsed from his outstretched hands. The light shut off briefly when the three supers were barely a foot above the street, six boots of diverse size all hitting the pavement. I could hear the sirens over my connection as local police arrived, quickly diverting nearby traffic according to Polarity¡¯s directions. The road was three lanes total on this block, and both sides had long stone buildings built up close to the narrow sidewalks. Despite being the widest artery road in this area, there was little enough space that the street lights were bolted directly to the building walls to hang out over traffic. I had never seen Inexor form his full-strength barrier, and I was impressed. From a wide stance on the yellow line, he extended his arms fully to either side and then bent his elbows so his forearms pointed straight up, making a ¡°U¡±. A thick plane of force a foot wide began at those arms and extended outward toward the curbs on either side. It crept forward at an inch a second, reaching about twice as high as the super himself and soon extending all the way to the walls. A very effective roadblock. All Omicron force constructions are the same translucent blue, but the thickness of Inexor¡¯s working looked solid and virtually opaque. The super certainly looked like his energy and concentration were fully committed to it. Behind him, Polarity¡¯s ferric form flowed slowly downward and recrystallized into something more base-heavy and low to the ground, less like a humanoid suit and more like a half-melted car. A strange cracking sound reverberated through her suit and the open comm as she extended roots into the street, although these would prove a hindrance if the speedster were moving around her rather than trying to meet her directly. Polarity was not in the center of the road but near the right curb, and Boom was similarly positioned to the left. Small cracks began snaking out from the concrete at her position, the only visible sign that she was building up to the powerful concussive force that was her namesake. I pulled back to resume tracking; it took several seconds. ¡°Subject is zig-zagging but making progress in your direction. If he ends up here anytime soon, it should be within a minute or so.¡± ¡°Acknowledged,¡± came Polarity¡¯s tense reply. The other two were fully committed to their powers and said nothing. Fifty-four seconds later, it was over. I didn¡¯t see it at the time but I did rewind and View it afterwards. There wasn¡¯t a fight so much as a massive collision, which occurred at far too high a speed for anyone to meaningfully react. The speedster headed to the right to cut around the costumed hero and straight towards Polarity. When reviewing later, I surmised that the direction was intentional ¨C that he was aiming for the metallic object just as he had earlier aimed for the mailboxes and cars along his route. Damage was part of his goals, and whatever this thing was it would certainly be impressive in scrambled pieces. The man hit Inexor¡¯s force wall at approximately Mach 3, and although he successfully punched through it, the interaction between the two fields rebounded upon both men, rendering them unconscious and canceling both effects. Suddenly rather than a protected and devastating speedster, a limp body with no protection was hurtling forward at an impossible speed. The man¡¯s remaining clothes and much of his skin was peeled off as the air tore into him, slowing him but not nearly enough as he hit the solid silver barrier of super steel at well above terminal velocity. The metal wasn¡¯t significantly dented, but every solid part of the man¡¯s body was instantly liquefied against the metal surface. I didn¡¯t understand Polarity¡¯s reaction to this at the time, so later I investigated her powers. Apparently she had very limited sensory perception through the whole of her suit ¨C she could see shapes all around her, wherever light touched the metal she was controlling, and could even sense by touch anything that contacted her metal. Polarity had just experienced the full viscera of a human being splattering wetly against her. Every bone, muscle, and organ. And thanks to her surface ferrokinesis, every iron-infused drop of blood. I returned my sight to the scene as Polarity let out a long, keening wail. By the time I could see her, the metal was pooled on the asphalt around her as though she had flung it quickly away. She was on her knees, holding her head, and alternating between screams and loud sobs. She didn¡¯t stop crying for a long time. Chapter 3 - Missing Persons I let my attention return to the present. In the months since, I¡¯d not worked with or seen Polarity again, but I did check her records every once in a while. I presumed she¡¯d been given some time off and maybe some counseling, and would be back on SoCAST active duty when she was ready. Supers break down, just as any emergency responders do; the job takes its toll. But now something else was going on, and it was very hard to even process what it might be. If I had recognized Laila randomly in Detroit or elsewhere, I would conclude that she had been relocated, possibly even retired. But it was too much of a coincidence that she would end up here, on my block. Deciding to boot up after all, I closed my eyes and brought up the interior of the Morris¡¯s new home. Kurt was putting away leftovers in plastic containers while Laila changed her daughter¡¯s clothes and put her to bed. A quick look around the house implied a genuine move rather than a flimsy front. Every room was furnished, with a handful of cardboard boxes in corners here and there supporting an ongoing unpacking routine. Most rooms included at least one piece of abstract art ¨C metal structures that somehow managed to convey an integral and welcoming part of the decor. The garage had been converted into a workshop, with benches along two walls, a large lathe, and welding tools as well as several large pieces of metal. Maybe Laila was sculpting as a way to deal with her stress, or maybe this was her day job. This amount of work convinced me that, whyever Polarity was in town, it was not a short-term assignment. You didn¡¯t move your whole life across the country for a one-off mission. So why was she here? Since she obviously wasn¡¯t actively looking for me at the moment, I returned to my system. With knowhow and a lot of cash, it¡¯s not hard to both build and conceal a quite high powered rig in any sizable US metropolitan area. I used significantly more power than the power company recorded, but not to any extent that would risk an outage. At the height of summer with full processor use and maximum cooling I might cap 45 kW versus the average home¡¯s 1 to 3. At most I was doubling the usage on my street. Hardly a crisis. My desk was pretty much uncluttered ¨C three monitors, keyboard, mouse, mic with boom guard, a couple of spare cables and two half-dissected dead ASICs. Also a stack of granola bars and a couple of emergency waters in easy arm¡¯s reach, secondary in their purpose to the well-stocked fridge in the corner of the room. The peripherals were plugged into a homemade tower just under the desk that ran three optical connections to the three floor-to-ceiling cabinets on the other end of the room. Each one water-cooled, an amalgam of distributed blades and parallel chips. The size of the frames were deceptive, because getting consistent performance required enough heat dissipation that stacking the units any more densely was counterproductive. Within each massive structure was enough space for me to stick my head between any two components and repair either one in situ. Still, I strongly suspect my system¡¯s optimization and threading is the best on the planet. I¡¯ve cracked two or three problems that I know the major hardware companies are still tackling. The bottleneck in the system is consistently how quickly and accurately I can set it to its tasks ¨C which was the whole point in spending over $2 million in hardware. While I was considering money, I accessed the private console the FBI had provided Delphic and looked to see what additional files had been provided. Lewis had been busy ¨C ten new entries, each with substantial detail. Bounties ranged from $150 thousand to $700 thousand¡­ except for one of the ten. It had the same info as the others, but under ¡°bounty¡± it listed ¡°N/A.¡± That piqued my interest. A missing person case, likely kidnapping. A seven-year-old girl, Vivi Michaels. Dates, times, locations, detailed description of the girl. Nothing in the file on why the FBI had the case or a motive for the kidnapping. I brought up an IM window, running through an anonymizer and three Alice&Bob encryption pairs as usual.
Me: Hi Lewis. Are you still in? I had a couple of questions about the Michaels case.
To be honest, I knew he was in, because I¡¯d Viewed his office for a second to check. But I found Delphic tended to be more effective when he stayed polite and kept his unnerving insights more sporadic. The ellipsis indicating my correspondent was replying popped up less than a minute later.
Lew383: Hi. I¡¯m here.
I could see that he was typing more, but I wanted to cut to the chase.
Me: Lewis, how did this case end up in my file? Me: We agreed on live cases with an active bounty of $100k or more. Me: This case seems to be a local case and no bounty.
By the disappearance of the ellipsis, it seemed that the agent was thinking rather than writing. A resumed ellipsis and another minute later:
Lew383: There is a reward, it¡¯s just not offered by the FBI Lew383: Michaels is offering a personal reward of 250k
That immediately raised a dozen other questions. And Lewis was still typing.
Lew383: Michaels is a beltway businessman with some contacts in my office and among the supers Lew383: I spoke to him earlier today Lew383: he is desperate for you to take this case
IM is a less than expressive medium, but I could tell that desperate was the operative word there.
Me: Do you have any sense as to why?
My back itches any time someone targets Delphic for particular attention, and the outstanding situation with Laila/Polarity had put me on edge already. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. Another long ellipsis.
Lew383: nothing definite, but my gut tells me there is a Super caught up in this somehow Lew383: the initial investigation hasn¡¯t turned up any Lew383: Michaels may know something he hasn¡¯t said Me: Time is of the essence?
I tended to prefer files that had ¡°run cold,¡± because there is less chance the Feds¡¯ normal tools would crack it without me.
Lew383: according to Michaels, yes, but I¡¯d expect Dad to say that about a case Lew383: a lost kid needs to be everyone¡¯s top priority
I murmured an answer to myself that I didn¡¯t type to Lewis, ¡°Just as long as it¡¯s a white girl from a good neighborhood, yeah.¡± The majority of missing children were from broken families of color in poor neighborhoods, and usually merited little more than a file shoved in a cabinet and maybe an outdated photo on a website somewhere. News coverage, and significant resources, tended to be spent on pretty white girls sent to good schools, living in big houses. After all, nobody expected these ¡°nice¡± families to have problems ¨C the cable news audience couldn¡¯t easily tell themselves they were better than these people. So it was news. As I often did, I thought about how I, at least as Delphic, was reinforcing this double standard by taking cases with substantial rewards. Benjamin Michaels could spend a quarter-million to find his daughter; a seven-year-old girl whose poor single mother discovered her missing on the other side of town would have no such help. I reminded myself that this is part of why I was working with my sister, Paris, on Detroit homicides. No glamor or high-profile preference here: any case assigned to Paris that was a candidate to be closed unsolved would first be brought to me. I hadn¡¯t failed yet. My mental tangent lasted just long enough for Lewis to notice.
Lew383: can I tell mr. Michaels that you are on the case? Lew383: he left me his number when we spoke yesterday Lew383: said he¡¯d be happy to speak with you
I shrugged to myself. The truth is that this case had too many unusual details to pass up.
Me: His number is in the file. Me: Don¡¯t call him, but if he calls you, let him know I¡¯m analyzing the case.
Lewis¡¯s next message was quick enough that he had anticipated my answer.
Lew383: that¡¯s good to hear Lew383: i don¡¯t think we would get anywhere on this one, to be honest Lew383: we appreciate your help, Delphic Lew383: i just wish we knew how you did it, so we could adopt some of your methods Me: Lewis, I have explained before that my methods are a combination of things you legally can¡¯t do, and things you physically can¡¯t do. Me: You can¡¯t jump from a smart phone to an isolated server; you can¡¯t take over a chip at the circuitry level. Me: The FBI doesn¡¯t beat itself up over not moving as fast as Millisec or being able to shotput a car like Aurocs. Me: A super that is literally inside the Internet shouldn¡¯t be a cause for consternation either. Lew383: your right, I shouldnt of brought it up Lew383: anything else i can help with?
I ignored his grammatical mistakes, as usual, gave my goodbyes, and closed the session. I knew how important it was for me to explicitly reinforce my grand deception regarding Delphic. Over the past five years, I had established Delphic as a unique super without a physical body ¨C originally a tech-controlling super who was accidentally uploaded into the very systems he once controlled. This false identity provided me a considerable amount of cover against anyone who might go after Delphic. As long as I continued to do seemingly miraculous feats with technology (through a combination of my Viewing power with world-class hacking skills), my facade was quite solid. But if the Delphic lie was ever exposed, my life was likely over. I confirmed there was no response from Paris yet, and sat down to review the Michaels file in more detail. Benjamin Michaels, 53, was twice divorced and had weekend visitation rights with his only child, Vivi, by his second marriage. Michaels was listed as the CEO for Effitech, a small business consulting firm focusing on government and military contracts. Effitech¡¯s recent focus seemed to be in providing ¡°specialized personnel services,¡± which I took to mean they serviced the USST somehow. That¡¯s a good rule of thumb when looking at government departments or contractors: when they start to get vague about what they do, they are probably working with the military or the super teams. There were two addresses of record given for Benjamin Michaels: a multi-acre rural plot in central Texas, and a small Townhouse inside DC proper. The latter was where Vivi and her father were reported to have stayed the day she was taken. The two had taken an afternoon walk down to one of the many nearby parks, which apparently was habitual for them, and Vivi ran ahead out of sight. He didn¡¯t see her again. Mr. Michaels looked around frantically for several minutes, presuming that Vivi was likely just around the block or maybe even hiding, before he broke down and called the police. Beat cops were there within five minutes of the call, but the amount of DC foot traffic on a Sunday afternoon was too much to control. Questions to pedestrians and nearby businesses both turned up nothing. A street camera a couple of blocks away showed when father and daughter had passed that way, but none showed Vivi after that. Seen as a local police matter for most of the evening, its visibility escalated when Michaels started making calls to his contacts in DC. Beltway news ran with the story, and dazzling pictures of young Vivi ornamented every network. Mom and Dad¡¯s tear-streaked faces made for good viewership numbers, too. The file didn¡¯t say anything specific about Michaels¡¯ talk with FBI Agent Lewis; it just stated that the conversation occurred and mentioned the cash reward. With a head full of street locations and landmarks, I closed my eyes and moved my View to the Old Post Office in Washington, DC. I kept this location fresh in my memory because it made it easy to rewind to a particular time in the past. Four full rotations of the hour hand around the clock¡¯s face, and another three hours to match the times listed in the file, and I oriented myself above a bright Sunday on the Mall to find the missing girl. I was still moving along the unnaturally still scene, keeping track of street signs along my path, when the doorbell rang. I thought about ignoring it, but in the wake of the dinner party, that seemed foolish. Cursing inwardly, I released my View, quickly locked down my box, and jumped up to open the door. May stood on the other side, my casserole warmer under one arm, a dimpled half-grin brightening her clear face. ¡°Hey Hector! Feeling any better?¡± The evening just got a bit more interesting. Chapter 4 - May and Vivi It took me a minute to fully accommodate this new happening. This minute was spent with a vacant gaze that slowly slid up and down May¡¯s quite small frame. The half-grin turned into a full grin as she gamely returned my look. May was dressed poorly for the weather in tiny shorts that barely peeked out below a long Lawrence Tech t-shirt, one leg turned out as she stood in cotton-candy pink sandals that matched the color of her toenails. Her dark hair was loose, buffeted playfully by the chill winds that passed down our street once the sun was down. The pretty coed¡¯s pale skin was starting to turn ruddy in patches from just her short exposure. I came to my senses and ushered her inside. If I had thought to consider the reaction of my neighbors to my absence earlier, I would not have been surprised that May would come over. She had visited me a few times since I moved to the neighborhood, ostensibly to ask for my help with some of her surprisingly challenging engineering coursework, but more often a chance to unload some emotional stress building up at home or school. There had been some tears shed, and a handful of sessions had evolved into kissing, but we both agreed not to take it any further than that. I value my friendships with my neighbors, and May¡¯s friendship most of all. As I turned to shut the front door, May floated into the kitchen and unloaded the dishes from the casserole container directly into the sink. I interrupted her before she could start washing them in earnest. ¡°Thanks, May, but I can take care of my own dishes.¡± I pulled out both of the bar stools kept under one end of the counter and gestured her to a seat. ¡°Water? Beer?¡± ¡°Nothing, thanks.¡± She sat gingerly, a butterfly only lightly perched upon a branch. ¡°I really just came over to see how you were. You did not look yourself tonight. Not at all.¡± She cocked her head again, apparently hoping that enough plaintive stares might cause my hidden condition to reveal itself. ¡°I, ah,¡± my gaze ran the length of my cabinets, which were overdue for refinishing. ¡°I had leftovers for lunch; something didn¡¯t agree with me. I¡¯m fine now.¡± Only once I had finished the excuse did I meet her eyes; they were scornful. As accomplished a liar as I am in the digital world, stripped of my smoke and mirrors, I couldn¡¯t fool a girl scout. ¡°Hector, what¡¯s going on? Really?¡± Her voice attempted to glove the hard steel in it with velvet concern. ¡°You seemed upset from the moment you saw Kurt and Laila tonight. Did they say or do something¡­ um¡­ problematic?¡± I shook my head vigorously. ¡°No, May; they were great! I¡¯m happy to have them as my neighbors.¡± Again I had moved into an evasive tone, and again May picked up on it. ¡°It¡¯s¡­ well, I recognized them from somewhere, is all. It¡¯s probably nothing ¨C I just thought Laila looked familiar.¡± My young friend put one manicured finger up to her chin as she thought about this. ¡°Hm. Laila explained at dinner that she¡¯s a sculptor, and has attended installations of her work at industrial art exhibitions in Detroit and Chicago over the years. Maybe you remember her from one of those.¡± I gave a nod and a shrug. ¡°Maybe. I¡¯m not really into that sort of thing, but it¡¯s possible I was helping with a fundraiser or something.¡± She smirked. ¡°You and your pet projects.¡± Switching gears, ¡°The Morrises are good people, Hector. Whatever your problem, pull the bug out of your ass and make nice, okay?¡± Her brilliant smile took any sting out of her words. ¡°I look forward to seeing you, so I¡¯m not giving you any excuse to stop coming to the dinners.¡± I gave a wan smile and a small sigh. ¡°I¡¯ll work it out; don¡¯t worry. How¡¯s school?¡± ¡°Well, the coursework is a breeze, but one of my TA¡¯s seems to have it out for me¡­¡± she and I allowed our conversation to shift to easier subjects, touching on the gossip I¡¯d missed at the dinner and who was falling out with whom among her little circle at Lawrence. She took a beer, after all, and it was a good hour before she made to leave. ¡°Careful,¡± I called after her as she trotted up the street to her parent¡¯s house, ¡°and remember your coat next time!¡± I closed and locked the front door and took a minute to compose myself. Talking to May had made me feel much better, as it often did. May could be a little too trusting at times, but mostly she had a good sense for people. If nothing about Kurt and Polarity struck her as phony, then maybe I had nothing to worry about. Regardless, I found it hard to keep up any level of paranoia after having been shown such unvarnished concern and warmth. I extended my break from Viewing a few minutes longer by washing the day¡¯s dishes, including the prodigal lasagna pan and container. I¡¯d not gotten around to adding a dishwasher to the place; overall the kitchen was the most out-of-date room in the entire house. Well-equipped, lovingly used, but perfectly at home behind Julia Child. A well-used dish towel went into the laundry hamper as I headed back downstairs and decided what to tackle next. Logging into my box, I saw I finally had a response from Paris¡­ and, gratifyingly, also a message from the Doc. My sister¡¯s response was grateful if subdued:
BluBlood44: Wow, wasn¡¯t expecting that. BluBlood44: Okay, I¡¯ll run that address and we¡¯ll discuss at breakfast. BluBlood44: My place?
I agreed and wished her a good night. The Doc¡¯s message was similarly brief. Doc¡¯s correspondence was with Delphic rather than Hector, and tended to stick pretty closely to common interests. Despite the unsavory timbre of our dealings, he was always a delightful and polite conversationalist who provided two things I strongly craved ¨C knowledge about super powers, and access to restricted technology. Any time he had something to say, it was in my interest to listen. But in this case, the message was ominously vague. I¡¯d need to follow up with him soon. I closed my eyes, and soon found my View once more moving quickly through the uptown streets of DC two days past. The warm weather really did make the streets surprisingly crowded, so that even when I had found the appropriate avenue, it took nearly an hour for me to spot my particular targets. I finally found the two of them, happily enjoying a walk down the busy way and properly dressed for the sunny but chill day. Benjamin had a light jacket on over shirtsleeves with an open collar, tucked into a pair of slacks, with colorful walking shoes. Vivi, as the file had indicated, was wearing a floral-patterned lilac dress with several layers of white ruffles propping up the long skirt. The dress stuck out from what appeared to be a full winter coat, its hood thrown back and bobbing wildly, half full of locks of wavy blonde hair. Vivi also wore practical walking shoes, although in a purple and pink. Something that wasn¡¯t mentioned in the file was that daddy and daughter had a dog with them. A half-sized Jack Russell terrier stayed close to Vivi¡¯s heels even though it was Benjamin who held his leash, towering over his young human and canine charges. As the sidewalks became more crowded, Benjamin kept a shorter leash on the puppy, but Vivi was not so constrained. She weaved between two groups heading in opposite directions, negotiating a canyon in foot traffic formed by a tree grill and a city trash can, and swung around the corner completely out of sight of her father and dog. The straining dog and indulgent man turned the corner, Benjamin¡¯s eyes alert as he tried to recapture the sight of Vivi. The girl was nowhere in sight. I froze the scene and looked at the last spot where I had marked her position, adjusting the vantage and angle, but the throng of people did not include a little girl. I let the scene run forward a bit, and confirmed that, yes, this was the point in which Benjamin began looking for Vivi in earnest and soon called for the police. Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. I rewound to the point where Vivi turned the corner and tracked her closely, advancing the scene forward at a crawling pace. Vivi¡¯s hair and clothing, like those of the other DC pedestrians, looked strangely weightless in the slowed bluster. As the girl adroitly dodged through a small clog of fast-moving travelers coming the other way, she brushed past a group of five businessmen, presumably from out of town considering their sizable rolling luggage ¨C and here, it seems, was the abduction of Vivi Michaels. The gentlemen in question gave the air of experienced New York travellers, checking smartphones and exchanging savvy witticisms with each other, although their sizable luggage marred this image slightly. Three of the men trailed large wheeled bags behind them ¨C the kind that can only be checked on a flight. They walked in a loose ¡°V¡± formation with the large bag of the lead man abreast with the other two men whose bags were further behind. The other two men walked directly behind the leader¡¯s bag on either side, closer than the two other bag-carriers, and this provided significant visual cover from most angles for the leader¡¯s piece of oversized luggage. The men never broke stride. As Vivi threaded her way between the point traveller and the man on his left, the empty-handed one on that side scooped her with one hand directly into the luggage, whose lid he held open with his other hand and then closed and latched securely. Vivi out of sight in a matter of seconds, and the men continued their chatting and phone use as though nothing had happened. I lost the View and allowed myself to flop fully back into my chair. This was no opportunistic grabbing or amateur job; this was fully professional. A pickup this smooth could thwart most conventional surveillance; even if a camera had happened to pick up Vivi on that block, the chances were still good that the culprits wouldn¡¯t have been fingered. I drained a warm water bottle before resuming my View. Fortunately I still had the ¡°feel¡± of the place from the moment I let up; I quickly inserted myself at the same point, then followed the men in real time. The five kidnappers walked bruskly around Benjamin as he turned the corner, the father already starting to look anxious when young Vivi did not immediately appear. Two more blocks took them to a taxi stand where the five men split two vehicles that had, by all appearances, been called through a rideshare app well before Vivi was grabbed. The men helped each other lift their three large suitcases into the trunks of the two vehicles. The noise level of the city, particularly so near downtown traffic, was undoubtedly sufficient to drown out any muffled protests that little Vivi might be making as her bag was dumped roughly in the trunk compartment of a small crossover utility vehicle. I took a moment to commit both license plates to memory. The two vehicles lost each other quickly in the stop-and-go traffic of the Capitol, and I followed the one with Vivi. I accelerated the View to about quadruple speed, making myself a third passenger. The pale skin and dirty blonde hair of the two travelers contrasted with the dark hair and skin of the driver, who I took for Middle Eastern. The perennial weakness of my Viewing powers was always particularly pronounced during these times ¨C I had sight but no sound. Whatever conversation was bouncing between the three men in the car, I had no way of eavesdropping. As the ride progressed, I noticed that the driver had not taken any of the obvious routes to Robby, which was the destination listed on the app. Robert F. Kennedy International Airport, named after the second President of the illustrious Kennedy dynasty that had so slickly dominated politics since the 60s, was nestled along the D.C. Beltway and a short if clogged ride from downtown. Perhaps there had been a miscommunication as to the correct airport ¨C they had turned onto a route heading west, towards Teddy (both airports being named after Kennedys providing all the evidence as to who owned this town). It would take nearly an hour at this time of day, even on a Sunday, to get into the northern Virginia countryside where much of the domestic traffic was relegated. But, less than 20 minutes later according to the clock on the automobile dash and around 5 in real time for me, I watched the driver pull off onto a smaller secondary road and immediately turn south. This area was one of the least developed so close to D.C., a rarified stretch of older farmhouses interspersed with newer prefabricated mansions. The road quality plummeted. The SUV turned down a dirt road with a rusty mailbox in front of it, the address numbers askew and barely hanging to the post. Almost a mile down the road, the small farmhouse looked no better maintained than the rest of the property. The fields lay fallow, unplanted this year or possibly this decade. Two of the front windows were cracked with the dark spikes of missing pieces. As the driver pulled up to the house, the two passengers quickly and efficiently got out from either side and lifted the suitcase out of the back. They carried it between them through the front door, which was closed but not locked. One stepped in front of the other to ease the suitcase down a flight of stairs into a basement area. The basement appeared to be finished, and clean. A flip of a light switch spilled harsh white rays from bare fluorescent bulbs, revealing a makeshift cell ¨C cot with bare mattress, sink, bucket, and half a dozen boxes of cereal. Pale linoleum floors ran between painted cinderblock walls. The luggage was gingerly sat in the middle of the space and unlatched, opened to find an unconscious girl in a tangle of hair and cloth. Her adrenaline had likely run out some time ago. The men exchanged a nod and exited the basement, securing the basement door from the outside with a padlock. I let the men leave in the SUV and returned to Vivi. She slept for more than an hour. When she finally roused herself, it took only a cursory exploration of the space before she broke down and cried. I didn¡¯t want to watch this, so I moved my View to outside the house and fast-forwarded at high speed. By the time I reached the present, I had noticed no additional visitors at all. Bracing myself, I re-entered the basement in the present. The light was on, and Vivi was again asleep, this time on the cot. She looked pale and extremely grubby, although there were no obvious injuries. Two of the cereal boxes were open. I look a couple more minutes to make sure I had the precise location of the farmhouse, and dropped my View. The cold-blooded practicality of this operation was impressive, presuming this was a hostage kidnapping (and what else could it be?). A healthy elementary-age child can survive by herself, unsupervised, with negligible chance of escaping or being discovered, for enough days to sort out a ransom. The perps can flee the country and sell her location at a safe distance. I called up a browser map and confirmed the exact address. I found and made a VoIP call to the county 911 line. An older woman¡¯s voice answered. ¡°911. What¡¯s your address?¡± ¡°418 County Road 7,¡± replied my synth. ¡°What¡¯s the emergency?¡± ¡°A young girl is locked up in an abandoned basement.¡± A slight pause. ¡°Who am I speaking to?¡± ¡°This is Delphic.¡± The synthesized nature of the voice must be obvious by now. The woman¡¯s voice stayed even and professional. ¡°It¡¯s against the law to call this line under false pretenses.¡± ¡°Please send police and an ambulance to 418 County Road 7. Vivi Michaels has been locked in the basement for two days.¡± Another pause. ¡°The missing girl?¡± The woman¡¯s speech was faster now, less controlled. ¡°Correct. She was kidnapped and locked in the basement at 418 County Road 7.¡± Repetition can help a lot on these calls. ¡°The kidnappers have not returned. She is alone, and likely terrified. Please send help.¡± ¡°Hold please.¡± A longer pause. ¡°I have dispatched an emergency team and police to the scene. Will you be there to give a statement?¡± This time the delay was mine, although the question was certainly reasonable under normal circumstances. ¡°I am an electronic entity without a physical body. I will not be at the location.¡± ¡°When can you give a statement?¡± ¡°I will email the police department and set up time for an interview.¡± ¡°Sir, I need to take down contact info for -¡± I hung up at this point. She was just doing her job, but opening up her line for other calls was a better use of both my time and hers. I checked the file again and dialed another number. It picked up almost immediately. ¡°This is Michaels.¡± The voice was half-hoarse and borne down with palpable concern. ¡°Benjamin Michaels, this is Delphic.¡± My synth had no trouble with the two common names, although the -s at the end of ¡®Michael¡¯ was unnaturally lengthened. ¡°Mr. Delphic, thank God! Agent Lewis said you were going to try to find Vivi. Is that right, you¡¯ll look for her?¡± His voice was higher, nakedly pleading. ¡°I found her already.¡± A beat of less than a second, then a shout, ¡°You what?! When, where is she? Is she safe?¡± In the background I heard a female voice asking what was going on. The mother maybe? Michaels said a muffled ¡°He found her,¡± there was a shushed squeal. I waited a moment before replying. ¡°She is in northern Virginia, an out-of-the way corner of Fairfax County. I already notified the authorities who are on their way to get her.¡± I typed and sent over their urgent chatter, ¡°If you call the Fairfax County Sheriff, they will have more details on the rescue than I do.¡± Michaels (and, I concluded, his ex wife) were yelling over each other in gratitude. I waited patiently until they had settled down. ¡°I¡¯m glad I could help, and I¡¯m glad that Vivi is okay. Once you¡¯ve had a chance to see to her, contact Agent Lewis about forwarding my payment.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think that will be necessary, Mr. Delphic. Just give me an account number and I¡¯ll have the funds transferred right now!¡± ¡°It can wait a few days. Take care of your little girl now. Leave business until later.¡± I had little doubt the money would come in time, but right now Vivi surely needed her parents¡¯ immediate attention. ¡°Of course! Of course. Thank you!¡± Michaels hung up, and I sat back. I thought about the fallout from this case. A young girl had been taken from her family and locked away, completely alone, for days. Any physical damage will likely be remedied with a bath and a warm meal, but the trauma would likely never completely fade. That a group of men could so callously derail the health and life of a young girl made me furious. And, after all, there was no reason I had to close the case now. I drained a bottle of water and ate a granola bar, then sat back and closed my eyes. Within a few minutes, I watched the farmhouse retreating in the distance from inside the SUV. It was going to be a long night. Chapter 5 - Paris I wrenched awake the next morning, my feet already hitting the floor as I eyed my bedside clock with zealously-pressed dispassion. Five hours forty minutes ¨C the same as every night, never more or less, and never any dreams or even memory of going to sleep. My last clear recollection of the previous evening, after laboriously IDing all five of Vivi¡¯s kidnappers and briefly confirming that the girl had been safely claimed, was the sound of the almost-dead vibrating toothbrush against my tongue as I looked myself square in the eye. Unusual metabolism and sleeping habits are very common in supers, at least according to the few studies that have been conducted since the Stevens scandal. Some few require an excessive amount of sleep, either regularly or after any significant exertion. Others seem to operate with a frugal circadian budget. I never have been sure whether to slot myself in this latter group, as my own reduced sleep schedule is accompanied by an ambient fuzziness that seems to discourage feats of energy or focus. Nor can I go back to sleep to dispel it ¨C once I¡¯m up, I¡¯m up for the day. Three memorable hours of fruitlessly lying completely still in bed one early morning rendered me quite confident on this. My solution is pharmaceutical. 45 mg amphetamine salts taken twice daily ¨C an admittedly ridiculous dosage for an average man of my weight, but the minimum amount that keeps me fully clear and alert. I have a bona fide prescription¡­ for 15 mg a day, that I fill in parallel with six different online dispensaries. Four pills (including a morning anti-nausea med to help with the high stimulant), a quick shave and shower, and a load of laundry later, I pulled out of my driveway in my 10-year-old sedan and maneuvered my way across town to Northboro. My only sartorial nod to the weather was a light windbreaker; my car¡¯s heater blasted chill air that warmed incrementally as I dodged through traffic. Even on a dry morning, Detroit looks somehow damp in the pre-dawn sterility of street lamps. It¡¯s not a city that goes dark, at least not the industrial and commercial areas and the better residential neighborhoods. There is always traffic, full stop, no exceptions. But if you beat the sun by enough, it¡¯s worth cutting through the city rather than looping around, even when moving between distant ¡®burbs. Northboro, like Dogwood Hills where my neighbors and I reside, is a solid middle class neighborhood. Both reflect the color palette of that designation: a solid mix of black and white families in varied proportions. The really nice areas have little such mixing, nor do the truly poor ones ¨C if for no other reason than the money skews heavily towards one race and away from the other. It fits, then, that families like the Donnell household in which I was raised ¨C homes of mixed parentage ¨C find their way to these same neighborhoods. Dad had grown up in a white neighborhood but he and Mom had moved into a mostly black area when they were first married. It worked out for them to move into Mom¡¯s parents¡¯ home when Paris was small. In this case ¡°small¡± is a relative term. Paris has always been a deceptively large woman, tall and well-built. She has Mom¡¯s beautiful black features writ large. As I pulled up the driveway, my lights briefly illuminated the smooth purple painted facade of the two-story I called ¡°home¡± for many years. The front of the house looked no different than it had fifteen years ago, not a single change in decoration or plant life ¨C a consistency that took solid seasonal effort from Dad. Annual paint jobs, monthly pruning and landscaping: not a bad retirement hobby for him according to Mom. I wouldn¡¯t enjoy it, but my own ¡°hobbies¡± will undoubtedly eat up as much time as I let them. I turned the knob and appreciated that the door has been unlocked for me (Dad would never let them leave it unlocked overnight). Paris was already at the table with a cup of coffee in hand. Her hat was perched on the table, her only concession to pre-shift informality. She always looked the model officer in her uniform ¨C all polished metal and pressed blue ¨C under a carefully looped bundle of tight black braids. She never wore her hair down anymore as far as I could tell. As I made my way back to the kitchen, a tiny feminine form in a flannel gown flitted from around the corner and took me in a quick hug. I lowered my head for the obligatory maternal kiss and morning greeting. ¡°Two minutes left on the muffins,¡± she announced quickly as she headed past me to the stairs. ¡°You kids be good.¡± ¡°Yes¡¯m,¡± was the extent of my answer. Although both Mom and Dad preferred to sleep in these days, she would often wake up early and make breakfast before retreating for a couple more hours¡¯ sleep. Blueberry muffins were a favorite of both mine and Paris¡¯s, and neither of us had the knack for baking them. Having stood up to greet me, my much taller and thicker sister stepped forward and opened her arms for a hug. She let me come to her, and I happily did, squishing myself against her as closely as possible. As always, it felt like hugging a warm, cloth-covered statue. Her flesh had absolutely zero give; none of the feminine softness we all take for granted when in contact with our distaff friends and relations. Still, my daily encounter with the sensation had accustomed me to it, and it now had the comfort of long familiarity and association with my only sister and best friend. I lingered as long as she wanted; I would not cut short one of the only times in the day that Paris would deliberately touch another human. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Like me, Paris was a secret and unregistered super. Unlike me, her powers could not be concealed for deployment at a convenient time. Paris constantly and involuntarily projected a powerful forcefield that neutralized forces, great or small, that might otherwise impact her flesh. It made her, for lack of a better word, physically invulnerable. But it also came with a very significant downside. To conceal her powers, she had developed habits to meticulously avoid human contact (other than with me, Mom, and Dad). She couldn¡¯t hug, shake hands, accept an arm around the shoulder ¨C any of the above would feel weird to the other person and raise unanswerable questions. Dating was likewise out of the question. I think it was at least in part because of this necessary avoidance that my sister had become something of a workaholic. She happily took on extra shifts, pursued difficult cases, and jumped into dangerous assignments. While on duty she was meticulously by-the-book, and her condition allowed her to rather easily take down a perp twice her size unarmed. Few in the department were surprised when she was first in her year to make detective. And as it got around the department that she was completely hands-off with both men and women, there was no whiff of the usual rumors of quid pro quo for her promotions, either. As we broke our hug, Detective Paris Donnell, DPD, let her smile drop and returned to her seat at the kitchen table. I poured myself a glass of milk while watching the clock, and at the appropriate time pulled the muffin tin out of the oven. While I plated two steamy blueberry muffins each for me and Paris, she pushed the tablet that she had been reviewing to my side of the table. ¡°Daniel and Josie Walker,¡± she showed me a set of pictures that looked like they were pulled from social media. Standard vacation poses, a couple that looked like they were taken in a dorm. ¡°Met at Wayne State, married two years ago. Moved into the address you gave me last year. Moved out about a month ago; no forwarding address.¡± She took another sip of her coffee, waiting for my reaction. ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s him. The timing works out on the move, doesn¡¯t it?¡± I pushed the tablet back in her direction. She nodded. ¡°It does, and it explains why our initial leads came up as dead ends. Neither of them have roots in the area.¡± Paris sighed over her coffee, ¡°Daniel¡¯s stopped posting to his social pages but he didn¡¯t scrub them. Extended records search probably won¡¯t come back until tomorrow, but it looks like he moved back to the Minneapolis area. Probably told his family that they had a falling out and needed to start over.¡± I shook my head. ¡°Nothing really satisfying about this one, huh?¡± Paris met my gloomy gaze with her own hard stare. ¡°There never was gonna be, lil¡¯bro. Even when we catch a real baddie ¨C a career thug or a crazy ¨C it doesn¡¯t bring anybody back. Doesn¡¯t fix the harm they¡¯ve done to other people¡¯s lives.¡± She upended her cup, sucking down the dregs, careful not to hit the ceramic too hard against her lips. ¡°You tell yourself that this means they won¡¯t be doing any more. And maybe the next one like ¡¯em will think a little harder. And that¡¯s the most you get.¡± Paris shrugged up from the table, pouring herself another cup of coffee and grabbing another muffin. ¡°And I have more bad news.¡± She raised an eyebrow, waiting to make sure she had my attention. I bit into my second muffin and nodded. ¡°McQueen paid me a visit yesterday.¡± Assistant Director McQueen was her supervisor in Homicide. Paris tended to speak of him favorably as an investigator and a boss. I nodded for her to continue. ¡°The unusual number of solved cases these past few months has started to be remarked-upon¡­ and not in a good way.¡± She slid back into her seat as I tried to process this. ¡°There¡¯s concern that you¡¯re solving so many cases? Isn¡¯t that your job?¡± A wry shug. ¡°I¡¯m told my job is to spend my time on viable cases, not hopeless ones. The fact that I¡­ we¡­ really you¡± ¨C I wanted to protest but chose not to interrupt ¨C ¡°are solving them doesn¡¯t help.¡± Her eyes rolled in unrestrained exasperation. ¡°It makes it worse, because it makes the rest of the department look bad. As though I was wrecking the curve for the other students.¡± I knew the exact moment when her facade slipped ¨C when she decided to vent her anger in front of me. Her whole posture closed in and moved forward like a stalking predator. She slapped her hand against the table. ¡°I¡¯ve had it with them! I¡¯ve dealt with this my whole life, and it just doesn¡¯t end. First they get on me because they assume I¡¯m not good enough ¨C just filling a quota ¨C then they get on me because I¡¯m too good. Making waves, disrupting the system, whatever ridiculous excuse.¡± She pushed herself half up from her seat and looked me in the eyes. ¡°They just¡­ they don¡¯t want me to succeed, Hector. They don¡¯t.¡± From what I knew of my sister, anger was a better reaction than grief to these frustrations. I nodded. ¡°You don¡¯t look like a detective, sis. You¡¯re not male enough or white enough to be good at it ¨C it messes with their view of the world.¡± I drained my juice. ¡°Screw them. We¡¯ll keep this up, and we¡¯ll keep our eyes open for harassment or sabotage. They can¡¯t do anything to you for being too good, and they know it.¡± ¡°But being under the microscope puts you in danger too, lil¡¯bro.¡± She sat back. ¡°Using undisclosed powers in law enforcement ¨C either my own, or someone else¡¯s ¨C is still a crime in Michigan. I don¡¯t suspect that¡¯s going to change any time soon.¡± I gave a nervous grin. ¡°Eh, it¡¯s not the most legally questionable part of my day.¡± Paris wasn¡¯t smiling. ¡°For the hundredth time, this Delphic stuff is going to catch up with you eventually.¡± Looking at the time, she grabbed her hat and rose, tugging on her uniform. ¡°Make an exit plan, okay?¡± I moved in for a goodbye hug. ¡°Okay, Paris, I will. Be careful out there.¡± ¡°Always.¡± She headed toward the garage. I cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher¡­ and then slapped my forehead. With the concerns about Paris and the homicide department, I hadn¡¯t gotten around to telling her about Polarity. Something to discuss at breakfast tomorrow. Chapter 6 - Work I lingered a while longer in the sitting room of my childhood home, enjoying the toasty warmth absorbed by the carpet and upholstery and the easy rumble of an antiquated HVAC, before setting out for my first job of the day. Thanks in no small part to my own influence via some well-written and cheaply sold software, both Lion Electric and DetCom, the largest electricity and internet providers respectively, had moved to a flexible ¡°job¡± system for licensed and bonded professionals across the city. A typical installation service call would enter a queue and be taken in between two and three weeks, nonessential repairs five to ten days; ¡°expedited service¡± paid a premium and would usually be snapped up and handled the next day. Somebody with decent tools and transportation could make a full-time job out of it, and a few did, although most used it as extra part-time income while going to school or working elsewhere. Night and weekend calls were not unusual, particularly in safer neighborhoods. This is what Hector Donnell did, according to my CV and my neighbors. As day jobs go, it was flexible and provided me an excuse to go anywhere in the city. I had taken three internet installs and a transformer repair all midtown. A full but not frantic day if all ran to plan. My first installation went without incident, and my second was a no-show even after multiple calls to the provided number. By early afternoon, I found myself climbing access rungs to a relay about fifteen feet above a corner convenience store. This was not my actual repair call, but it was the reason for the jobs I selected. Over the last two years, I had positioned a variety of omicron sensors around Detroit, each with a range of around 5 miles. The sensors drew negligible power from the boxes where they were placed and didn¡¯t stick out much among the myriad boards and kludges that were part of the modern electrical framework, but they provided me a broad if shallow look at where supers might be operating in the city. The sensors had so far led me to three unregistered supers, found after tracking over fifty alerts total. I¡¯d refined my software based on these trials and errors, but it was too early to tell if the fewer alerts meant more accuracy or just lower frequency overall. As I replaced my basic unit with a more sensitive triangulating device, I took notice of someone on the street below who was trying to get my attention. A middle-aged man with a thick mop of hair and a bushy mustache was waving a hand at me and yelling ¡°Hey!¡± every few seconds, his other hand protected against the chill in his dingy suede jacket. I took a few seconds to View the immediate past and see him walk from behind the counter at the convenience store, guessing he was either manager or owner of the place. I nodded and waved a hand at him, securing my tools and the removed device before climbing down from the box. ¡°Good afternoon,¡± I began. The man shook his shoulders, glancing around in practiced skepticism. ¡°Nah, it¡¯s a kinda blue day. What were you doin¡¯ up there, son?¡± I patted my tool belt and pointed up at the relay. ¡°Got a call to check that unit. Somebody reported an outage further up the road.¡± I nodded to the shop. ¡°You work there?¡± The man nodded in return. He gave his mustache a quick scratch and squinted at the building, as if trying to see it with new eyes. ¡°Own the place. One of the kids came in, and mentioned you out here.¡± He looked me up and down with hostile suspicion. ¡°Thought it might be a kid up to no good.¡± I shook my head. ¡°No sir, just doing my job. Did you notice any outages yesterday or today?¡± My cover story might seem thin, but the truth is that aging city infrastructure almost always has small problems and hiccups. Only a very dedicated and targeted investigation would be likely to pick up on a lie. He gave himself another minute examining me before apparently deciding that I passed. ¡°No, power¡¯s been fine.¡± After another moment, he added, ¡°Careful with your colors there.¡± I looked down at my outfit. The blue jacket was my standard outerwear for fall. ¡°Sorry, is it dangerous to wear blue around there?¡± ¡°Just recently. A new gang started up around here, tagging buildings and signalling in blue.¡± He pointed to his own brown jacket. ¡°Part of why the kid mentioned you, I figure. Although I haven¡¯t seen them out in the middle of the day. Better to check, still, right?¡± I nodded, and checked my mobile. ¡°I have to get to my next call. Thanks for the heads up. I¡¯ll leave the blue at home next time.¡± When I got to the transformer, I could see why there had been a call: the padlock on the unit had been smashed off, leaving it wide open. The box doubled as controller box for the traffic signals, but a quick check showed everything working properly. I added a second triangulation sensor to the box and synced it to the network before adding a fresh padlock (charged to Lion). Working together, the two sensors would provide much more fine detail about omicron emissions in this area of midtown. I could return to retrieve the detailed data in a couple of days, and if there were any ongoing pattern to the signals, I should be able to locate a source. On the way home, I checked my work dashboard and was pleased to note that the Morris house was now listed as a pending job. I had a script active to automatically grab any listings in my neighborhood as soon as they were posted in the system, assuring that any installations or repairs that might trigger discovery of my modifications to the street¡¯s grid would not be taken by another worker. In practice, this also meant that any jobs near me were taken promptly even without the clients paying any premium. I¡¯d advised my neighbors not to bother electing ¡°express service,¡± and I took good care of them. It raised a minor alarm that the job was only posted now, since they usually became available within a few hours of a client calling them in, even if most were not handled for days or weeks thereafter. Had Kurt and Laila never gotten around to calling DetCom? Maybe a service rep had forgotten to click ¡°Submit¡± and the error had just been caught. No way to be sure. Thanks to my missed call, I already had a new modem and router in my trunk, so I pulled up at the Morrises¡¯. From the outside, nothing about the house stood out from the rest of the neighborhood: the same neutral color scheme, the same unassuming bushes and sparse lawn. The inside I had already seen the day before ¨C their layout mirrored mine. I distinctly heard the ring inside as I pressed the doorbell. I waited more than a minute before pressing it again, and this time I quickly heard the creaks and clacks of hard boots on parquet floor as Laila Morris rushed to the door. From her demeanor as well as her garb, she was clearly not expecting company. Sweat beaded on her face under hair pulled back in a severe ponytail. A heavy grey smock hung over a tight t-shirt and frayed, stained jeans, tucked into clunky steel-toed work boots. Her annoyed expression softened somewhat as she eyed me, my toolbelt, and the box under one arm. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. ¡°Laila, hi. It¡¯s Hector.¡± I worked very hard to keep my expression more friendly than curious ¨C people with secrets are understandably threatened by curiosity. ¡°Did I catch you at a bad time? I can come back later.¡± I¡¯ve never been great with body language, but I thought I managed to come off as more willing than eager. The tall Asian woman shook her head, absent-mindedly running a hand back through her hair. ¡°Not a bad time at all, Hector. I was just working on a piece. What can I do for you?¡± She managed a single glance back toward her garage before mentally shifting to engage me more fully. I tried a small smile. ¡°It¡¯s what I can do for you, actually. Internet? Your job came in from DetCom, so I wanted to drop by and,¡± shifting the box a bit, ¡°hook you up.¡± ¡°Sure, come on in.¡± She stood aside and held the door as she motioned me past her and into her sitting room. I was drawn immediately to the metal sculpture that seemed, if not the focal piece of the room, certainly its most eye-catching feature. In person it seemed larger and more solid, and yet somehow it blended into the space warmly. Laila noticed me looking. ¡°That¡¯s one of mine. I sculpt metal.¡± Her gaze was warmer now, clearly welcoming a comment and confident in her craft. ¡°It¡¯s nice. You were working on a new piece in your garage, you said?¡± Her eyes narrowed slightly for just a moment¡­ I noticed too late that she hadn¡¯t said anything about the garage. But all she said was, ¡°That¡¯s right. There¡¯s an industrial art expo next month, and I¡¯m putting together an exhibit. Come see.¡± As I followed her into the workshop, the temperature change was dramatic. She had propped the inside door open; if the garage was insulated it was producing enough heat for the rest of the house. I bet she¡¯d want the inner door shut and the large garage door open in the summer time. Three steel structures laid along the length of the garage, far more angular in their geometry than anything I¡¯d seen (or Viewed) in the home. Flat plates marked a base surface that showed each piece to currently be on its side; upright, it would be at least twice human height. I¡¯d seen industrial sculpture of this sort before ¨C meant to be admired up close and from directly underneath. They provide a sense of human ingenuity, of raw power, that I could already feel being instilled in them by the artist in their construction. Laila just leaned against her bench and let me walk among the pieces. Thinking about the speedster incident, I wondered if these larger pieces were part of Laila re-claiming her strength against something that made her feel vulnerable. I could see why a super with metal powers would learn to craft in that medium, to take strong possession of the unfeeling metals with which she entrusted her life. I ran a hand along a horizontal strut, cool to my fingers in contrast to sweltering air. ¡°These are¡­ daunting,¡± I offered. She smirked. ¡°That¡¯s a good word.¡± I saw her take a mental step back, trying to see with fresh eyes. ¡°I¡¯ll transport the pieces separately, but I¡¯m planning to attach cross-pieces on-site that will tie them together.¡± She nodded to a long, narrow I-beam with its end inserted into the lathe. ¡°Finished, assembled¡­ even more ¡®daunting,¡¯ I hope.¡± ¡°I suspect so.¡± I could feel myself starting to sweat a little already, and looked pointedly back toward the rest of the house. Laila drew herself up and led me out. ¡°It usually doesn¡¯t, but this much metal in the house may have some unusual shielding effects on the Wifi,¡± I mentioned conversationally. ¡°If you don¡¯t mind, I¡¯ll put a repeater in one of the upstairs closets. Do you know where the cable drop is?¡± I picked my box back up off the kitchen counter and looked to her for directions. It soon became clear that Laila did not know where the cable drop was¡­ and, on closer inspection, there didn¡¯t appear to be one. Laila and I were soon outside at the back of the house, looking at the living room wall and discussing where to drill the hole. We came to a pretty quick decision, and I pulled a small handheld unit and a drill bit off my tool belt. ¡°Where are Kurt and Deb?¡± I asked as I adjusted and tested the bit. ¡°Kurt¡¯s on shift until late tonight,¡± Laila answered, ¡°And Mrs. Anders has been watching Deb during the day so I can work. We¡¯re thinking of putting her in preschool after the holidays.¡± Any further comment was cut off by the piercing whine of metal on siding, then wood, as I quickly drilled through the wall and switched bits to enlarge the hole. ¡°Did she go to daycare before?¡± While you were taking down violent criminals, I certainly did not add. ¡°No, we had family,¡± she said flatly, and didn¡¯t seem to want to say anything more. I ran the cable, plugged the hole, and we moved back inside. ¡°Kurt¡¯s FBI, yes? Working up at the field office on Michigan Avenue?¡± The cable modem and router were connected behind a sofa in one corner of the living room, and I was waiting for confirmation that the Morrises were greenlit for data before I deployed the repeater. I caught a slight wariness to Laila¡¯s otherwise friendly expression as she answered. ¡°Mostly, yes, although he¡¯s over at the hospital or the police station sometimes,¡± she decided to allow. ¡°He¡¯s forensics. Most of the time his workload is pretty light, but when they need him they work him solid for a few days. We¡¯re fortunate I can set my own schedule.¡± Her gaze turned inward. My work phone buzzed with the notification I was waiting for. ¡°All set here. Any preference for upstairs?¡± She shrugged and led me up one flight over newly-laid laminate flooring into what, from the junk and lack of bed, I took to be the spare bedroom. Three metal sculptures, clearly stored rather than deployed as decoration, crowded each other and us as we picked our way to the room¡¯s small closet. There was, fortunately, an outlet along one closet wall, and configuring the smaller router to repeat the WiFi signal was quick work. Laila was happy to continue to chat while I did my job. I tested the signal strength and showed Laila how to change the default username and password. She thanked me heartily and showed me out with a genuine smile. As I moved my car up the street to my own driveway and headed inside, I reflected that everything I had seen so far was still consistent with Laila and Kurt having been moved up here for reasons unrelated to me. Coincidences do happen, I heard from the part of my brain that tries hardest to maintain detached skepticism from my more colorful hunches. But it didn¡¯t stop me from making a beeline for my basement desk. The program that I executed was one I had yet to use for more than a quick test previously. It very quickly had access to voice files with timestamps going back about an hour, each marked with one of two unit numbers. Clicking on the earliest file, I heard a flat ¡°Kurt¡¯s FBI, yes?¡± in my own slightly nasal baritone, followed soon by Laila¡¯s alto response. Opening a later file gave me a record of similar quality for our upstairs chatter. The mics in both routers were clearly working as intended. I had purchased these spy mics from Doc more than a year back, and each time DetCom issued a new router model I dutifully installed them, but this was the first time I had decided to plant them in someone¡¯s home. Probably because I had lived with it since puberty, I no longer thought about invading people¡¯s privacy with my Viewing, but this was different somehow. It seemed more invasive, as though the curtain of silence between me and my subjects was a final garment I was ripping away. But, as uncomfortable as I genuinely was with this, the situation was simply too dangerous to not gain whatever intel I could. I would run the files through a speech recognition program and mine them for keywords, reviewing conversations that might actually concern me or Polarity¡¯s assignment. I brought up a different dashboard to see a URL access list: a shopping site and two social media pages. The packet sniffer also showed encrypted email, which I might try to hack into later, but at least the internet monitor was reporting. All in all, I suspected I was getting more information out of their newly installed system than they were. If the Morrises were what they appeared, then I owed them an apology, although I¡¯d never be able to deliver it. If not¡­ I hadn¡¯t figured out what to do yet. As usual, my big sister was right. I need an exit. Chapter 7 - Bad Weather Once I was confident that my recordings of the Morrises would accumulate on their own, I checked and found that Doc was online and available. The hour wasn¡¯t too late as yet, and I wanted to get to bed early in anticipation of work tomorrow. Although I hadn¡¯t taken any jobs for tomorrow, today¡¯s cool but clear day was projected to develop into wind and rain late into the night. It was a condition of taking jobs from Lion that, with some restrictions, repairmen be available after inclement weather to handle the uptick in emergency repair calls. These jobs would be assigned with a short service window, and failing to respond could impact your ability to take jobs in the future. At least we received the rate for expedited work. Since I wouldn¡¯t wake up to any sort of alarm or alert in the middle of the night, I had to make sure that my five hours and forty minutes ended well before I¡¯d need to get to a job. Early to bed, early to rise ¨C in emergencies only. I put in a voice call to Doc, and was happy to hear his voice right away. ¡°Good evening, my friend,¡± came the rich but scratchy voice of the aging scientist. ¡°How are you?¡± As busy as I knew Doc Stevens was (and I had Viewed him enough times to know that he was often overseeing active experiments, chatting by text, and coding while we talked), he always opened our conversations with small talk. From what I knew of the Doc¡¯s history and personality, he didn¡¯t usually indulge these sorts of pleasantries. I¡¯d broached the subject with him once, early in our talks, and he explained that the idea of talking to a digital intelligence intrigued him, and that he introduced ¡°human elements¡± into our calls in order to gauge my reactions. ¡°I¡¯m moving smoothly towards completing my objectives,¡± I replied in my Delphic voice. ¡°It is good to hear from you, although usually your messages are a bit more forthcoming than this one was.¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t want to give anyone extra reason to try to listen in on this conversation.¡± Interesting. ¡°We are speaking now. What is this about?¡± The line picked up the sound of rustling paper. ¡°A freelancer that I have¡­ an arrangement with¡­ shared some information with me yesterday, and it seemed prudent to inform you.¡± A slight delay, and I could hear the clatter of a keyboard on his end. ¡°He took on an unusual kidnapping job in the States over the weekend. A seven-year-old girl in the DC area.¡± ¡°Vivi Michaels,¡± I interjected. ¡°I found her on behalf of the FBI yesterday, and was preparing to send info of the kidnappers¡¯ whereabouts to them.¡± A pause; Doc didn¡¯t immediately respond. ¡°Were you planning to ask a favor on your associate¡¯s behalf?¡± I could probably leave one of the names out of my report without impeding the investigation into whomever hired them. It might be worth it, depending on what Doc was wanting to trade. But he declined. ¡°If you want to help law enforcement chase him down, by all means do,¡± he said. ¡°I hadn¡¯t known you were being asked to help with the case. Although it confirms that I was right to want to inform you about it. After my associate reported his suspicions, I checked the payment amounts for the job against a number of accounts that I keep an eye on. A similar amount of money was withdrawn from a Cayman account that launders foreign expenditures by the CIA.¡± Raspy breathing on the line ¨C he was waiting for a response from me. ¡°I¡¯m not following. Are you saying that the CIA was behind the Michaels kidnapping?¡± That didn¡¯t make sense for several reasons, the first of which was that the CIA wasn¡¯t supposed to be operating on US soil at all. I guess that would be a good reason to hire unaffiliated agents, I pointed out to myself. ¡°Either them or an affiliated organization tapping CIA resources, yes.¡± ¡°To what end?¡± I still didn¡¯t get how Doc was connecting this back to me. ¡°I really don¡¯t know. Half the time I think those agents are just screwing with people when and where they can and hoping that something will eventually come out of it that they can claim was their purpose all along.¡± I could imagine him shaking his head; I heard his sigh. ¡°In any event, I have sporadic access to internal budget figures I can cross-check when spending like this happens. And the division codes for these payments are the reason I called.¡± More papers rustling. ¡°Apparently this was a FAM operation.¡± Foreign Asset Monitoring was the CIA branch charged with keeping track of supers around the world. It started as a management branch for US super teams overseas, but before long it included an intelligence function for spying on foreign supers ¨C and this became its sole function when the super teams themselves were given their own bureau under the Department of Justice. Any ¡°asset¡± regularly deployed by a foreign power was on a list monitored by a team of agents and analysts. I typed out, ¡°So the Michaels kidnapping had something to do with foreign supers? From which country?¡± ¡°Domestic.¡± My stomach sank. The list of supers on FAM¡¯s domestic list was small ¨C just supers with unknown origins that operate primarily or solely in the US. It was mostly villains that hadn¡¯t yet been successfully ID¡¯d, and those few vigilantes that managed to dodge registration requirements. Like Delphic. Doc continued, ¡°considering you were approached about finding the girl, I would presume that FAM is targeting you in some way. It might have been something as simple as a fact-finding mission. Testing your limits and abilities.¡± His voice was swamp mud roiled by shifting gravel. ¡°Or they might actually be trying to track you down, trap you somehow.¡± A further pause, and I could hear the shrug in his voice when he spoke again. ¡°Or this whole line of reasoning might be spurious, and this is for something else. Maybe Michaels¡¯ company was bidding on CIA work and someone wanted to test him. But regardless, you should be informed. Now you are.¡± I nodded, but obviously he couldn¡¯t see it. ¡°I appreciate the information,¡± I sent by synth. ¡°I¡¯ll be careful.¡± ¡°About that,¡± Doc shifted to a stronger and more business-like tone. The chat program informed me he was sending a file. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. The file included several documents, each with a person¡¯s name. I opened one: Andrea Suez, years of experience, skills, references. ¡°Are these resumes?¡± I typed. Had I been speaking to the Doc in my own voice, it would have been incredulous. ¡°Along with known background and a rough personality profile. All competent people I have worked with before or are working with now. In the States or willing to relocate, presuming you prefer to keep your activities focused there.¡± His voice sounded strained, urgent. ¡°Enhanced intellect, even at digital speeds, is not a substitute for specialized expertise. With as much as you¡¯re trying to accomplish, and with the sort of attention you¡¯re garnering, you should have a dedicated security team at minimum. Intelligence analysts to look for opportunities and threats. An answering service, a facilities manager.¡± ¡°Doctor, I¡¯m a person, not a business,¡± I replied. ¡°I don¡¯t need to hire staff; I can handle my projects efficiently as I am, with outside help as needed.¡± ¡°You can exercise much more extensive control over employees than over allies,¡± he retorted. ¡°Delphic, you can¡¯t properly pursue your interests if you are the only one watching out for them. I know you can afford it. Look into it.¡± The call ended. Doc Stevens had forgotten to add small talk at the end; I suspect his treatment there was far closer to what most people would get from him. It was normalizing in a way. I saved the personnel files locally and checked my messages. Agent Lewis was asking for a two-hour teleconference tomorrow at noon, with several names on the invite list¡­ including Benjamin Michaels himself. I sent back my acceptance, and took some time updating the FBI file with the most current information. I woke up at a little after 4 am. My phone showed an alert from Lion Electric; a quick check out the window showed that the storm had come just as expected and dumped a couple of inches of freezing rain. A text to Paris cancelled our breakfast meeting. Checking the address for the service call, I let out a low curse. La Fleure. In this weather, it would take more than an hour just to get there. I quickly put myself together and bundled up tight, with work gloves and boots. Most importantly for the location, I tightened a Lion Electric ball cap over my knit winter hat and pocketed not only my ID but a printed copy of the work order. La Fleure being one of the wealthy white neighborhoods, and me being a black man, I was guaranteed to be speaking to a policeman in the next few hours. This was the one time I wish Lion Electric had us wear neck-to-ankle work suits like they have for their full-time employees. Minorities that do yard work typically have obvious uniforms for the same reason; it might lower the daily number of calls to the police about your presence from half a dozen to one or two. I strapped a steel ladder to the roof of my car and slowly pulled out onto icy roads, heading southwest. The light pre-dawn traffic was counteracted by some jam or accident every couple of miles. It was closer to an hour and a half before I pulled off the road next to a long brick-lined drive that led up to a five million dollar home. The neighborhood was lousy with trees, with only a half acre or so of cleared and manicured lawn surrounding each manor. A branch heavy with ice had broken off a large maple and pulled a line out of a relay that fed, if my map was correct, three houses on this side of the street. The size of these houses probably came with four-digit monthly electric bills, so Lion had good reason for wanting the situation resolved quickly. I had taken down the ladder and was carefully working my way up an ice-coated incline when I heard the rumble of an approaching motorcycle. Ready for the obvious, I mused how quickly the police could respond to a call in this neighborhood while setting the ladder down on the ground and reaching into my tool belt for my license and work order. The bike that pulled up next to my car was substantial, a solid body of black and chrome. The man stepping off of it was similarly solid and complimented his vehicle¡¯s color scheme, wearing heavy riding leathers in dull black and metallic colors that met on a diagonal across his torso. A thick lead pipe, easily five feet long, hung across his back. His helmet was a solid surface of reflected chrome all the way around, giving no indication of a visor or faceplate separate from the rest. He removed the helmet even as his silver boots found the icy ground, shaking out a mane of grey-streaked black hair and adjusting his silver and black full-face mask. If his outfit wasn¡¯t so clearly a hero costume, he¡¯d most resemble the antagonist of a very stylized slasher film. Argent, a long-time member of the Detroit Super Team, took in my work clothes and the tree branch and nodded quickly. ¡°Ay. You here to fix the¡­ thing?¡± He gestured vaguely at the branch caught on the line. I nodded back, holding up my work order at eye level. ¡°Got the call two hours ago.¡± The slits in the mask didn¡¯t let me see his eyes, and I found it off-putting. ¡°Something the matter?¡± As if I didn¡¯t know. Thirty pounds of leather lifted as he gave a shrug. ¡°Nah, DPD got a call about a bla¡­ about a guy who didn¡¯t live here walking around.¡± Impossible to tell if the self-edit had made him look away from me. ¡°If they¡¯d noticed the hat and everything¡­¡± another helpless shrug. I shrugged myself. ¡°Most of them don¡¯t bother looking that close.¡± I put the paper away and moved to pick up my ladder again. ¡°Let me,¡± the super stepped over, and before I could respond he had managed to pull the ladder entirely out of my hands. ¡°Where¡¯d you need it?¡± Argent¡¯s power manipulated inertia in objects he touched. He could lift objects like they weighed nothing, then swing them at you with enough force to knock a semi over on its side. The truck had made good footage for the nightly news. Once I resigned myself to Argent¡¯s help, we made short work of the project. I would have had to descend the ladder and move it at least twice to repair and reconnect the line, but Argent could easily and quickly move the ladder with me still on it. A little vertigo was worth the time saved. He asked a couple of leading questions and we chatted while I secured and double-checked the relay. Argent didn¡¯t say much, and could be a little hard to hear clearly behind the mask, but I figured out that DPD was swamped with traffic-related emergencies this morning and DST had been asked to assist with patrol. That¡¯s why I was talking to a super and not a cop as I¡¯d expected. After the line was repaired and he¡¯d stowed the ladder back on top of my car, the super reached out his hand. ¡°Be safe out there, Hector. Sorry about whatever idiot called you in.¡± I shook his hand and gave him a genuine smile. ¡°Happens all the time, Argent. And this time I¡¯m grateful. You¡¯d make a fantastic electrician¡¯s assistant if you ever get tired of DST.¡± He gave a chuckle and mounted his bike. In my car, I marked the job as finished and waited until his engine was no longer audible before heading for home. I spent the drive home thinking about Argent and how nice it was to get to shake his hand. Since the time I was adopted in the Donnell household, I had dreamed of becoming a superhero like the ones on the news. The ones they made movies out of. Men and women fighting villains and saving towns from destruction. And, at least in my own fantasies, the best part was always being a member of a super team. I loved the idea of having a group of friends and allies that counted on me, that respected me. In a sense, I was fulfilling that dream with Delphic. But, as shallow as this might seem, I resented the fact that I never got to look a hero in the eyes when they thanked me. I never got a handshake or a hug; I could see their smile when they succeeded, but they couldn¡¯t ever smile at me. I badly wanted to be not just a faceless internet avatar ¨C not just a tool for saving others ¨C but a real live person that they knew and respected. A flesh and blood part of the team. Well, I finally said to myself, if you wanted that, you should have prayed for a power other than just seeing things. I put my yearning aside. Even if I couldn¡¯t fit in quite the way I¡¯d like to, I could still do the work. I had saved lives, and could no doubt save many more. I could call myself a hero, even if I never got to hear the other heroes say it. That would have to be enough. Chapter 8 - Meetings I had to ease into my turn for the fourth time that morning as I sidled onto a paved road mottled with ice, the gleaming spots making traction a poorly-kept promise. I was still more than ten minutes¡¯ slow drive from the house, and I was carefully monitoring nearby traffic as the city started to wake up. A chime echoed in the dry air from the passenger seat ¨C the shrill tone I had set for notifications from Lion Electric. I allowed myself a quick glance and cursed. Pulling off into a strip mall parking area, I checked the details and address of the new mandatory job that Lion had just assigned me. The balance of the morning was a slog. As I was in the middle of this second job ¨C resetting a breaker box in an uptown retail area ¨C I was assigned a third. It took me to another suburban neighborhood and, thanks to conflicting accounts as to where the downed line actually was, more time to find the problem than to actually fix it. By the time I stepped through my own doors again I was achingly cold and bone-tired, as much by the strain of careful driving on icy roads as by the repairs. I started a pan of coconut oil on low heat as I booted up my box downstairs and checked the time. It was almost ten. Two hours was plenty of time to put a few graphics together for the meeting. I made myself a couple of grilled sandwiches with new potatoes and contemplated the two-hour time block while munching. A request for any sort of post mortem on my FBI cases was unusual ¨C typically I uploaded all the data I had generated and got a text message thanking me, and a bump to the funds in my account. If they wanted to speak to me for this long, either someone up the chain from Agent Lewis was scrutinizing the case, or they wanted an opportunity to talk to me about something else. I had been mulling over whether to mention the CIA connection, either in the meeting or privately to Agent Lewis, but I came to the conclusion that I¡¯d need to keep that to myself for now. The relationship between the two agencies was an ambiguous tangle, and trying to either explain or cover for my source ¨C officially an expat wanted for treason by a wide swath of the First World ¨C weighed heavier than any assistance I could expect to receive from the Feds. I finalized my presentation files and brought up my video conference software. With two minutes to spare, I dialed into the number that Agent Lewis had provided and joined a conference that, from the remnants of donuts on the table, had already been in progress for some time. The teleconference room seated twelve at a long narrow desk, but only five seats were occupied ¨C all by white men in dark suits. I immediately recognized Benjamin Michaels on one side of the table, and Agents Lewis and Daubert on the other. Agent Daubert was Lewis¡¯s immediate superior at the Bureau and, I had been previously told, the one who actually authorized my payouts. While both Lewis and the other (I suspected) FBI Agent on that side of the table appeared to be in their late thirties, Daubert was at least a decade older, as was the cut of his jacket. Daubert greeted my avatar on the conference screen and made introductions. The other agent was Jeffries, who was liaison to Effitech and officially assigned the kidnapping case. The younger man sitting next to Michaels was an Effitech analyst named Jim Cordon. Wrapping up pleasantries, Daubert brought the group down to business. ¡°We wanted to coordinate intelligence and next steps on this case. Thanks to Delphic, a young girl is back with her parents again,¡± appreciative nods all around the table, ¡°but until those responsible are caught and their motives known, the threat has to be considered ongoing.¡± Michaels jumped in eagerly here: ¡°Right, yes, that¡¯s the issue. We need more data.¡± He pushed attention to the screen and Delphic¡¯s avatar. ¡°Mr. Delphic, my analysts tell me that if they had found Vivi themselves, they would have generated a massive data set that would provide a foothold for identifying the kidnappers. I am led to believe you are withholding this data?¡± Although said with a questioning tone, this last was clearly meant as a challenge. This was a common theme in my dealings with intelligence agencies, and so I repeated a well-worn response. ¡°My analysis does not comprise a legible data set that I can share. I can extract data from it, but it takes considerable resources to do so and is of marginal value.¡± The reaction around the table to this was visibly negative from everyone but Lewis. ¡°Considering that I have already identified and located all five of the participating kidnappers, what further data is needed?¡± Michaels looked to Cordon. His analyst replied, ¡°If we are to have any chance of tracing these men back to an employer, we need whatever you have. We can¡¯t know ahead of time which information will be relevant.¡± The younger man took off a pair of glasses that he wiped against the side of his jacket while speaking. He had the air of a college lecturer. ¡°It comes down to what information we expect to have for use so late in the investigation. Having to pick up the analysis piece essentially from scratch will be¡­ inefficient.¡± His newly polished glasses returned to their perch, and he met Daubert¡¯s eyes above the lenses. Daubert picked up the thread of discussion. ¡°Delphic, we¡¯re motivated to finger more than just the men on the ground. Can you tell us anything more about who they are or how you found them?¡± I wasn¡¯t going to get a better opening than that. My avatar in the conference room was replaced by an irregular grid marked by DC street names. The stylized aerial view zoomed towards one particular cluster of city blocks. ¡°Here is where Vivi Michaels was reported missing.¡± A single blue dot appeared along one street near the center of the map. ¡°This is the recorded location of Mr. Michaels¡¯ phone at the time he made his first call to the police.¡± Over a hundred red dots suddenly blanketed the map, mostly bunched up against the streets. ¡°And these are the only mobile devices that recorded a proximate location within the five minutes prior to that call.¡± Most of the red dots sprouted lines, and the map zoomed out to cover more territory as at least some of the lines left the original area. ¡°These are the identified mobile devices¡¯ listed locations over the next half hour.¡± The center of the map was smeared in red, but the few lines that had made it furthest now stood out prominently. ¡°Among the identified devices, most were registered to people whose locations could be easily correlated with verifiable work and residential addresses, or whose routes only stopped at public places.¡± At this, most of the lines on the screen faded to a dull orange, leaving only a handful in bright red. ¡°Of the remainder, the farmhouse stop was the most out-of-the-ordinary, and so the first one I checked.¡± The map zoomed in on the Northern Virginia area where the farmhouse was, marked with a spike of two red lines where they had turned off the road. ¡°And Vivi was there.¡± It was Michaels who spoke again. ¡°How did you determine that?¡± I left the display up on its final frame as I responded. ¡°You are asking how I determined that Vivi Michaels was actually in the farmhouse?¡± He nodded. ¡°I had help for that part. I would prefer not to get into specifics.¡± Daubert cleared his throat; the FBI supervisor was visibly unhappy with this answer. ¡°Delphic, are you saying you had a civilian scout out the farmhouse? That¡¯s¡­ really not appropriate procedure in these sorts of situations.¡± The other agent, Jeffries, nodded emphatically. Lewis looked a bit concerned. At home, I sighed. Fortunately my exasperation could not creep into my synthesized response. ¡°No, I scouted the area myself using a remote video drone. The assistance was in local handling and deployment of the drone ¨C and I really must insist on not disclosing any more.¡± Especially since this was the extent of the details that I had fabricated as an excuse for being able to confirm Vivi¡¯s location. There was of course no assistant or drone, but secrecy should be a sufficient cover for my tale. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. The Effitech analyst spoke next, his eyes still trained on the rapidly-scrawled page of notes on a pad in front of him. It looked as though he was trying to make some rough calculations based on my presentation. ¡°So, wait, this involved sorting through¡­ the DC towers have a load of¡­ hm¡­¡± he looked up. ¡°How were you able to access those records? NSA?¡± Both Michaels and the Feds gave him sharp looks in response to that last conjecture; I allowed myself a grin. ¡°I¡¯m not going to be explaining how I accessed individual GPS logs from four software providers and over a dozen cellular carriers,¡± the synthetic voice insisted with, it sounded to me, a slightly sardonic tone, ¡°other than to note, as I have explained many times, it is a procedure that you are neither legally nor logistically able to replicate.¡± I gave a moment for this to sink in before adding, ¡°You may certainly presume NSA involvement if you prefer.¡± A little neither-confirm-nor-deny to muddy the waters. Michaels again: ¡°Agent Daubert, you can see why the stonewalling here puts us in a precarious position moving forward¡­.¡± With occasional additions from his analyst, the Effitech CEO elaborated once again on his need for further information. Although he made little in the way of new points, he managed to hit the same themes repeatedly for the better part of ten minutes. Overall quite an impassioned plea. As the contractor made his push, I considered that this must be a difficult position that he found himself in with frustrating frequency. Intelligence agencies were, by their nature, tight-lipped with information. Their need-to-know reflexes often resulted in those who actually do need to know having to fight hard to get access to relevant data. Any intelligence company with experience working for the government undoubtedly had a long history of wheedling scraps of information out of agents, of getting departments to give up the morsels needed for a successful operation. Michaels was clearly a veteran at this process, and he was certainly hammering hard at this wall that, from his perspective, needed to come down. Unfortunately, the wall he was pounding on didn¡¯t hide relevant information ¨C the vault, in this case, was empty. He couldn¡¯t earn access to data that didn¡¯t actually exist. But since I was unlikely to convince him of that, I had to simply hold my ground. I noticed that as Michaels continued to outline his reasons, Daubert¡¯s demeanor was shifting. His forward posture pulled back, his aggressive look softened, and he seemed increasingly worn out. He gave off the distinct impression of someone who was tired of a meeting that had gone on for too long. As Michaels wound down, Daubert let himself lean back in his seat and spoke. ¡°Ben,¡± he started, ¡°how long have you and I been doing this?¡± The change in subject seemed to take the exec by surprise. ¡°Fifteen years, I think, Terry,¡± he allowed, ¡°give or take?¡± His expression was wary, and his answer came out more as a question. The older agent nodded, and a grin started at the corners of his mouth. ¡°During that time,¡± he let his lips pull back a bit into a weak smile, ¡°what have I always said about supers?¡± There was a sparkle in his eye. Michaels had keyed in on what Daubert was saying, as, it appeared, had both of the other FBI agents. Cordon still looked confused. ¡°Let them do it their own way,¡± he replied, clearly a rote recitation rather than his own view. Daubert nodded. ¡°It¡¯s a policy that¡¯s served me well, and I think it applies well here, too.¡± He turned to the screen, ¡°Delphic, can you make yourself available to Effitech and the Bureau if we have specific questions we could use your help answering?¡± His tone made it clear this was only formally a request. ¡°Yes,¡± I typed and sent, simply. Daubert shrugged and nodded. ¡°Okay?¡± he shot to Michaels. The CEO frowned. ¡°I guess it has to be.¡± He added a belated, ¡°Thank you, Mr. Delphic.¡± Daubert collected himself and moved forward again, resuming a more active posture. ¡°I¡¯m anxious to move on to the more pressing matter.¡± He checked his watch. ¡°Perhaps a quick run down for Delphic while we wait for everyone else?¡± Agent Jeffries nodded and opened his laptop; soon a presentation slide with text over an FBI background was added to the teleconference channel. It read ¡°Lamarck Investigation ¨C CLASSIFIED¡± and had today¡¯s date. I presumed this had something to do with the super that went by the name Lamarck. He was a common fixture in photographs of the USST, although I had never worked with him directly. Lamarck was widely popular because he was known to be a licensed MD and a visible spokesman for medical causes ¨C children¡¯s hospitals, affordable health care, and the like. His powers had something to do with healing, too, but I couldn¡¯t remember exactly what. As Jeffries advanced to the next slide ¨C an event timeline that apparently started yesterday morning ¨C I opened a browser window and did a quick search on Lamarck. The first results were not profile pages, however, but news articles, all within the last day: ¡°American Super Dead in Canadian Capitol;¡± and ¡°5 Things You Need to Know about the Lamarck Shooting.¡± Apparently this was national news, and with the poor weather and my own issues I had managed to miss it. I quickly skimmed the articles, learning that the American super had been shot in broad daylight and rushed to the hospital within seconds, but was quickly pronounced dead. No terrorist or subversive group, super or otherwise, had claimed responsibility. Jeffries moved quickly through his presentation. Lamarck had flown in the previous day for a visit to Ottawa Civic Hospital¡¯s expanded oncology wing. The visit included a meet and greet with city officials, some time spent with excited child patients, and a press junket with two local supers, Velo and Carcajou. ¡°The three men left the hospital by a side entrance on Elsevier Street heading east,¡± the agent said while bringing up a street view of downtown Ottawa. They looked like generic navigation photos rather than recent surveillance footage, likely taken months earlier on a clear day. The buildings and trees sprung up from neat pavement like a well-kept orchard. Everything was painted in rich, warm colors, a deliberate visual rebuke to the often harsh weather. ¡°As you¡¯ll see later from the video clips we recovered, the fans were out in force. All three of the assets engaged lightly with civilians while attempting to maintain a walking pace towards their destination.¡± Jeffries moved to the next slide. ¡°The food truck was two blocks east and one block north of the hospital. It¡¯s visible there, on the left side of the photograph in green.¡± Another slide, with a photo centered on a corner with a crosswalk. ¡°The crossing signal changed as everyone arrived at this intersection. Lamarck was talking to a pair of fans when the attack happened. We¡¯ve recovered three videos so far that clearly show Lamarck during the attack.¡± The presentation shifted to show a four-way split screen; three videos were queued up while a small playback control panel with a slider bar occupied the fourth area. Jeffries presumably hit play. The different angles of the videos were slightly disorienting. The most close-in view seemed to only be two or three people behind the front of the crowd. It was fixed tightly on Lamarck, who conveyed a friendly and casual air with his speech and posture, as though he would be happy to stay and chat all day. Lamarck wore a single piece of spandex that stretched from his head to his toes in a complex pattern of white and rich green. A kind mouth and strong jaw were the only flesh visible ¨C his eyes were covered by green lenses, the rest of the head concealed within his bold costume. The suit showed off his bodybuilder physique, hugging prominent muscles framed by broad, square shoulders. A second video showed a wide-angle shot of the three supers and the crowd from across the street; the third was apparently taken by someone running to join the crowd, as it was shaky and moved in as the three videos continued to play in sync. Velo wore a black t-shirt with his stylized biking logo under an open red jacket with matching red workout pants and black runners. He normally wore a distinctive helmet over his red and black domino mask, but he had apparently donned the mask alone. Carcajou, by far the shortest of the three men, was squarely bedecked in layers of furs and leathers, like a particularly militant version of a colonial frontier trapper. The furs varied in color from red to light brown, matching his own shaggy hair and beard with disconcerting continuity. Both Canadian supers seemed as much at ease with the crowd as Lamarck. When the gunshot rang out, there was a bare second of almost-silence before bedlam. Lamarck was no longer in the close-up frame but could still be seen in the other two views as Velo scooped him up and ran back in the direction they had come. Within another three seconds the speedster was halfway back to the the hospital and out of frame. Carcajou yelled for people to take cover as he moved into the intersection, his eyes fixed on something out of frame. The video froze. ¡°Lamarck was pronounced dead at Ottowa Civic at 12:14 pm. OST deployed three more heavies to the area, and local police support arrived within minutes to disperse the crowd¡­.¡± A loud knock sounded on the door to the conference room. Two more white men entered the room. The first to appear was dressed in the dark suit that was ubiquitous for the place, making the contrast with the second man¡¯s colorful clothing even more evident. The black and grey feather patterns on the cowl flaring out into a wide-train cloak should have looked ridiculous, but the awesome sight of Peregrine flying through the air at astonishing speeds gave him an aura of majesty even when standing in a doorway. His booming voice was too loud for the room: ¡°What¡¯s this I hear about using Delphic to look for Lamarck¡¯s killer?¡± Daubert put up a hand, and gestured to the seats. ¡°Introductions, first, everyone. Then down to business.¡± While the new agent and super choose seats, I took a moment to stand and stretch. I hate meetings. Chapter 9 - Peregrine As Daubert made introductions, which appeared to be primarily for Peregrine¡¯s benefit as everyone else knew each other, I opened up a text file and listed the meeting participants: The setup concerned me for a few reasons, but the biggest reason was that no one had actually asked me to get involved. I¡¯m sure the Feds at least saw this as an emergency; I could understand why they hadn¡¯t thought to ask me. But it meant I didn¡¯t know what exactly I was being asked to do. Three years ago I would have said this was obvious ¨C identify the bad guy, track down his current location. But as many interactions had taught me, today¡¯s discussion on Vivi being just one example, there¡¯s often more regarding what they want and how they want it. I had occasionally entertained making a formal application for Super Team status. There were plenty that would have me; I was one of the most regularly called upon non-member supers in the States. But my independence afforded me a lot of slack about how I reported and what I left out ¨C not to mention any presumed illegalities in how I acquired my intelligence ¨C that would be steadily eroded if I were on a team. I would be expected to divulge my methods, to give regular reports on my actions, and even submit to records requests. Not something I could allow. One of the major drawbacks of my current approach was the perception of Delphic by both the public and team-affiliated supers. There was substantial ambivalence about the use of superheroes in the US to begin with, and many of the efforts to assuage people¡¯s concerns were predicated on the controls exercised on the Super Teams ¨C the very controls I was seeking to avoid. So, although the majority of press and coverage was still favorable, there were sizable veins of suspicion that had to be acknowledged and handled. Peregrine¡¯s position on the question was not a secret, and he wasted little time in sharing it with the room. He had let his cape billow over the back of his leather conference chair, and he sat ramrod straight and ill at ease as though he¡¯d rather be in motion. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t it make more sense,¡± he began, ¡°to rely on Team resources for this?¡± His eyes took in the whole room but he stayed facing the conference screen and my avatar. ¡°I have assurances from dozens of supers that their groups are entirely at our disposal. I¡¯m flying to New York after this to discuss with Liberty¡­ it doesn¡¯t seem like a situation where we need to outsource manpower.¡± Daubert shook his head. ¡°You¡¯re thinking about this the wrong way. This isn¡¯t a pitched battle, or even a manhunt. It¡¯s a murder investigation.¡± He met the eyes of each of his own agents in turn. ¡°An investigation being run by an allied government within their territory, not ours. We don¡¯t need a hundred heavies trying to cross the border into Ontario.¡± He let himself scowl briefly at this mental image. ¡°Which is why Jeffries is handling this case. He has a good track record working with the RCMP. He should be able to keep our foot firmly wedged in the door on this.¡± Jeffries nodded. During the introductions, he¡¯d shut down the presentation and was skimming a half dozen printed pages. He kept them in his eyeline as he addressed the room. ¡°That¡¯s the key to this process. We don¡¯t want to get locked out of the investigation, which means we need to provide good intelligence and solid support. We want the Canadians to value our usefulness on this more than they fear our meddling.¡± The note of frustration in Peregrine¡¯s voice carried well; it was unnecessarily loud for the space. ¡°It¡¯s our teammate that died. How can bringing the killer to justice be meddling?¡± Jeffries didn¡¯t raise his voice; he didn¡¯t attempt to match Peregrine¡¯s level of anguished energy. His tone stayed smooth and professional. ¡°It¡¯s the perception that we need to manage here.¡± He shuffled his papers once again. ¡°The US side of this investigation is classified sensitive but not secret. We¡¯ve been instructed to share freely with the Canadian side, and we¡¯ve been assured by the RCMP that everyone they are including has what we would consider basic security clearance.¡± At this point, Jeffries did pull himself up a bit as though to put on an air of command, but it was undermined when he glanced at Daubert for approval. Still, his voice was stern. ¡°When speaking with Inspector Heathcote or any of her personnel, present yourself as at their service and, to the extent practicable, under their authority. However, internally, we consider our investigation to be separate from theirs and our personnel as well. Report what they ask you to do and, whenever possible, wait for confirmation from us. Share information directly related to the investigation only. Please remember,¡± he was considerably louder now, ¡°your Canadian counterparts are not clear for either sensitive or secret information outside the narrow scope of this investigation.¡± There was a momentary pause around the table before Daubert nodded to Keeley. The deputy dialed a number on the teleconference console. It was answered on the first ring. ¡°This is Heathcote,¡± a strong feminine voice echoed across the line. Daubert spoke up, ¡°Inspector Heathcote, thank you for waiting on our call.¡± A short silence before she answered: ¡°Ah, yes, the conference, good. Let me sign in here¡­¡± a second feed joined the first on my screens. Brigitte Heathcote¡¯s severe suit would not have looked out of place in the conference room, although her gender and brown skin would have at least broke the demographic monotony. Our viewpoint looked awkwardly up at her and in poor resolution, likely a laptop or mobile device. Although the angle put most of her surroundings out of view, a cloth barrier into a larger space implied she was in some sort of cubicle. A background murmur was picked up by her mic, which again indicated an open office environment. Her demeanor was stony but harshly alert. Daubert took the lead again. ¡°Good afternoon. This is DC: Agent Daubert, Keeley, Lewis, and Jeffries.¡± A perfunctory nod at each in turn. ¡°Ben Michaels and mister Cordon from Effitech are here as well, and Peregrine. Delphic is on the call. And Inspector Heathcote in¡­ sorry?¡± ¡°Ottawa field office,¡± she replied at once. ¡°We appreciate your support. You were going to send us a roster? A mixed team?¡± Jeffries cleared his throat. ¡°Right, I wanted to discuss with you before finalizing the roster. Three agents and a contracting analyst on the norm ¨C ah, Agency side,¡± a brief cough and headshake, ¡°and some number of supers.¡± Heathcote frowned. ¡°How many?¡± Peregrine shot, ¡°How many do you want?¡± Attention turned to him, which seemed more to his liking. ¡°I can have three full teams there within the hour. Just say the word.¡± The RCMP officer tilted her head and studied the display, as though to make sure whatever she said next would not be construed as ¡®the word.¡¯ ¡°Thank you, mister Peregrine, but we¡¯ve already allocated what super support we need from Canadian assets.¡± She redirected to Jeffries. ¡°I was told Spinner and Delphic had volunteered; I can secure border clearance for the two of them easily enough. And confirm active clearance for the Teams that already have it? NEST, New York, USST of course¡­¡± Peregrine nodded, seemingly placated. Heathcote continued, ¡°Although we won¡¯t have official tasks for the supers¡­ outside the two we specifically requested¡± (me and Spinner, apparently, although this was the first I had heard of it) ¡°¡­I¡¯ll make sure you¡¯re known to have clearance for the extent of this operation. Codename Caduceus.¡± That drew an eyebrow-raise from several of us. I had decided after previous run-ins with government naming practices that there were no particularly good codenames, just less terrible ones. Both Jeffries and Keeley were taking notes on their laptops and no one immediately spoke up, so I took the initiative. ¡°Good afternoon, Inspector. Delphic speaking,¡± my synthesized voice came over the channel. ¡°I don¡¯t wish to derail the discussion, but I believe there may have been a slight miscommunication regarding my role in this.¡± I could see concern starting to manifest on the Feds¡¯ faces, particularly Lewis¡¯s, but I pressed on. ¡°I¡¯m happy to help, but I¡¯d appreciate more specifics as to how, and under what terms. No one corresponded with me about this case prior to the present meeting; I have made no commitments.¡± As I finished my comment, I saw Lewis¡¯s posture crumple. Only in retrospect did I realize that, since Jeffries had begun the briefing on Lamarck, Lewis had been consciously keeping a blank expression. He looked both frustrated and worried now. Daubert¡¯s scowl turned on Lewis, who was covering the lower half of his face with one hand. Daubert¡¯s next question was pointed at Lewis, even though nominally directed in me. ¡°Are you not under contract with the Bureau, mister Delphic? I had understood we had you on a contractor basis.¡± Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. Lewis flinched and tried to keep his voice steady as he answered, ¡°I tried to explain, sir, Delphic¡¯s arrangement lets him choose which cases he pursues. He¡¯s paid based on successful results, rather than which cases he takes on.¡± ¡°Disgusting mercenaries.¡± This was from Peregrine, said at a volume enough lower than his normal projected tone that it could charitably have been intended to be kept to his person, but nonetheless plenty loud enough for everyone to hear. The insult turned my stomach, but the meeting continued as if it hadn¡¯t been said. Daubert nodded, a sigh escaping his lips. ¡°I apologize for misunderstanding the situation, Delphic. I take it we need to come up with a number so you can evaluate whether to support the case?¡± The reactions I saw from others in the room were not positive; it seemed others shared Peregrine¡¯s attitudes about ¡®mercenary supers¡¯ even if they were more tactful about sharing them. Heathcote, at least, seemed neutral if a little disinterested in the exchange. But the knot in my stomach was tightening ¨C I didn¡¯t like the way this made me look to people whose respect I genuinely wanted. ¡°That won¡¯t be necessary,¡± I had Delphic reply. ¡°As I said to the Inspector, I¡¯ll commit to help right now. Agent Lewis and I can determine payment at another time.¡± People had started to relax, but Peregrine wasn¡¯t done. His eyes pierced me through the camera lens. ¡°Five million,¡± he practically shouted. Everyone else looked perplexed. ¡°How much of your processing power does that buy, Delphic? Five million dollars.¡± He swept his hand over the table like he was brushing away irrelevant chaffe. I started to type a reply, but he continued quickly, ¡°We all know you¡¯re used to making a hundred thousand or more for a few hours¡¯ work. Five million is still more than even you pull in a month.¡± He was growing even louder as he spit his words at me, and he rose with inhuman swiftness. He turned to Keeley. ¡°I¡¯ll have the money wired to you as soon as I get to New York. Make sure the merc gets it.¡± Between two frames of the streaming video, he moved from his seat to the door and opened it. ¡°See you in Ottawa, Delphic.¡± The slam of the door against its frame was loud even through the room mic. This reaction was not wholly out of character for Peregrine, but it was quite a bit more severe and dramatic than I had expected. I had worked with him on USST missions at least a half dozen times, and while he had always looked down his nose at my contributions and addressed himself to HQ rather than speaking with me directly, I had interpreted his feelings as mild annoyance rather than outright contempt. He¡¯d certainly never thrown my payroll arrangements in my face before or anything similarly crass. I briefly reviewed what I knew of the A-list super. 24-year-old Robert Smiles lived alone in a large estate within commuter distance of the Capitol, where he worked as an intern for the Representative from Ohio¡¯s 9th Congressional District (the Congresswoman was herself a retired USST member). A little digging revealed that it was unlikely Robert Smiles existed even five years ago ¨C it appeared that whomever Peregrine was before this, it was more convenient to the DoJ to give him a clean identity. Peregrine¡¯s reputation within the super community was as a powerful, dedicated hero with a hair trigger and no interest in self-reflection or nuance. His flight power was the third fastest on record at over 500 mph, and he had the most potent defensive feature that had yet been measured: upon colliding with an object while in flight, all of Peregrine¡¯s momentum would transfer to the object, leaving Peregrine stationary and unharmed. This meant that Peregrine could repeatedly create and then impart a significant impulse to anything he could touch. The issue was, diverting malfunctioning airplanes and dive-bombing criminals at high speeds seemed to be all that interested the guy. He consistently put in long hours with USST and, even when off-duty, seemed to spend more time in his suit surveilling the Eastern US from above than he spent fleshing out his civilian life. It would not have surprised me if the other Super Team members were the only people he would consider close friends. I realized that, as personal as his outburst might have seemed, Peregrine was probably reacting more to the loss of Lamarck than to anything actually having to do with me. I made a note to try to put us on better footing when the opportunity presented. ¡°¡­ can move ahead with that, today, if that fits your requirements, mister Delphic?¡± Heathcote looked expectantly at the camera as I moved out of my reverie, realizing I had missed a good three minutes of back-and-forth between the inspector and Daubert. Panicking, I mentally flailed for some vague response I could use until I caught the thread of the discussion, but soon realized I¡¯d have to own up to it. ¡°Apologies inspector, I missed your query. Can you repeat please?¡± No visible reaction but tension in her jaw. It was certain that Peregrine was not the only one who was strained to near breaking by this tragedy. ¡°You can contact my sergeant as soon as we conclude here to walk you around the scene and review our forensic records, and you can let her know today what other acquisitions you will need, in terms of authorization or resources. Will this be acceptable?¡± ¡°Yes, thank you.¡± ¡°And we can expect you four gentlemen tomorrow afternoon?¡± she directed to the others. The men responded with sober nods. ¡°Let me bring you quickly up to speed on what we currently know, then.¡± The inspector relied heavily on her written notes as she provided us their most current findings and conclusions. I was expecting to have access to the file she was reading from, but I made my own notes anyway. Lamarck had been hit by a three-round burst of 5.56 caliber shells, almost certainly fired from a gas-powered rifle ¨C illegal for civilian possession on either side of the border, but readily available to military operations and on the black market. The angle of impact implied a vantage from the roof of any of the four buildings closest to the intersection on the opposite block from the corner where the supers were standing. Velo¡¯s rescue actions were irrelevant as Lamarck was killed essentially instantly when the bullets atomized about half of his brain matter, although considering Lamarck¡¯s known ability to quickly heal himself and others, it was not surprising that Velo might have thought otherwise. The autopsy had to be delayed several hours, because the corpse¡¯s tissues refused to stay separated and quickly healed over each incision that was made. At about the eight-hour mark, the effect had diminished enough to allow a full post mortem. The autopsy confirmed the documentary evidence and preliminary conclusions. Initial canvassing recovered 73 videos of the area over the relevant period, but none included the roofs of any of the four buildings, or any suspicious egress from the area. There were no plausible claims of responsibility from known criminal or terrorist organizations, although plenty of the latter were celebrating the ¡°blow against American imperialism.¡± Monitored channels showed no traffic spikes leading up to the attack. Heathcote sighed, ¡°Every avenue we¡¯ve pursued so far has come up dry. We¡¯re running out of leads faster than we can generate new ones.¡± She made eye contact in turn with each of the four men assigned to the case, ¡°We welcome the fresh eyes, but to be honest? I don¡¯t expect we¡¯re going to break this.¡± It was clearly a hard admission for her to make, but from the way she said it I had the impression she was repeating a malediction she had already pronounced earlier in the day. I doubted it made it any easier. And yet there was a decent chance that I could break this case within the next hour. So, rather than contact Sergeant Waterford immediately, I closed my eyes and rose above Detroit. I didn¡¯t View Canada much, and currently didn¡¯t have any scenes kept close enough in memory that were a better starting point for Ottawa than right here in my home city. So I pulled out and up, up and out, until my View was at the edge of being obscured by haze in the wet atmosphere. I moved east over the Great Lakes, using obvious landmarks and occasionally zooming in enough to see major roads and cities, until I zeroed in directly on Canada¡¯s capitol. Finding Ottawa Hospital¡¯s Civic campus was short work. The intersection in question was open to regular traffic now and suffered a steady trickle of pedestrians. By the time my rewind had reached mid-morning, there was an active crime scene with a taped outline on the concrete and several people with badges inside a cordoned area. Other than a couple of black-and-whites roaming the area, little appeared to happen during the previous night. By the time I had hit and passed sundown, the scene was crawling with both uniformed and suited personnel¡­ and a few costumed heroes. The latter appeared to be mostly talking among themselves and to the uniforms, while the suits took photographs and moved around a lot. At some point Inspector Heathcote herself came and went. Finally the crowds collected in their uncanny reverse motions, and I saw the masked speedster in black and red deliver the warm corpse of Lamarck back to the intersection. His body lurched upright as large bloody craters disappeared from his face and skull. I let the scene run until the instant when the first bullet hit his temple. With my attention fully on that one piece of metal, I slowly reversed the scene, tracing its trajectory to the source. The bullet¡¯s high speed meant that it travelled several meters in the smallest window of time I could isolate. The bullet looked like an impossibly thin rod of dull metal; as I willed the scene to reverse, it approached the roof second back from the corner building across the street. It was barely an arm¡¯s length away from the building when it disappeared. I crawled my View forward and back repeatedly to confirm it, and watched the smeared image of the bullet appear out of thin air each time, only about half the length in the first instant as it attained when I moved the time further forward. I circled my View around to directly behind it; the cross section where the back half was absent appeared completely black, as though none of the daylight otherwise reflecting off the projectile could reach it. Soon I had identified the second and third shots that had been reported in the burst. The other bullets followed similar but non-identical trajectories to the first, and each image was sliced at a point in midair at the same distance from the building roof. The spacing was consistent with a select-fire burst. Moving my View to the roof itself, I saw significant movement in the gravel that covered the flat surface. Over the next hour, I shifted in space and time all around the roof, but other than smaller shifts in gravel both before and after the attack, I found nothing. The access hatch leading from the roof into the building never opened; no individuals suddenly appeared or disappeared in the vicinity. My hope of a quick resolution to this case vanished as thoroughly as the signs of movement on the roof just minutes after the attack. But at least I could give the RCMP a real lead. The assassin was a super with a flawless invisibility power. And even though that meant there was no quick way to identify the perpetrator, at least it left us with a defined list of suspects. Returning to the present, I pulled up the number for Sergeant Waterford. No reason to leave her waiting any longer. We had work to do. Chapter 10 - Suspects My first and ongoing description for Sergeant Diane Waterford was ¡°fresh-faced.¡± Having attained her rank certainly reflected admirable experience and competence, and yet she maintained the smiling eagerness of a neophyte. It was, I grudgingly admitted, far more pleasant than the funereal air the FBI meeting had held. Diane, as she insisted I call her, was clearly a fan of Delphic¡¯s. I use the word ¡°fan¡± advisedly, as she had a comprehensive knowledge of my work with various super teams that I typically only saw on certain online groups for which I was the focus (or that Silicon Valley cult that had decided I was the harbinger for the AI Singularity, but I usually didn¡¯t count them). Usefully, Diane was a RCMP specialist on super heroes. She was a go-to analyst when crimes involving Super Team members, as victims or suspects, were the subject of national investigations. I watched the somewhat jumpy streaming image of the mountie in her dark suit. She had been led to expect that we would be heading downtown to the crime scene, but I canceled that excursion, explaining that I already had a detailed map of the area. ¡°You have access to all the relevant files. Is there anything else I can do to help your analysis?¡± The smile was occasionally overlaid with another emotion but never fully vanished, like a composite image of different expressions. ¡°Possibly,¡± my synthetic voice replied. ¡°I have some conclusions based on preliminary metrics. Why don¡¯t I share them, and we can decide where to move from there?¡± Her smile got wider and she grabbed a pad and pencil. ¡°Sure, that¡¯s great!¡± ¡°First, the shots came from the 2765 building, on the roof above Tip¡¯s Vintage Clothing. They were fired by a super with invisibility.¡± Her eyes widened in surprise above her smile. ¡°Actual invisibility? Not super speed or camouflage?¡± Her question was reasonable just based on the numbers: some level of enhanced speed was very common among supers, while a power rendering a person or object visually undetectable was much rarer. I had done a quick search before calling her, and the total number of named supers that could do what I had Viewed was nine, worldwide. ¡°Actual invisibility. Selectively eliminating emitted visible light from the super, while allowing light that contacts the super to pass unimpeded,¡± I clarified. ¡°My analysis concludes that the shooter, along with any equipment or accomplices, was invisible, while the bullets regained visibility while in flight. Waterford¡¯s head tilted slightly as she tried to process this. ¡°We don¡¯t have video of that; how can you be sure?¡± ¡°I acquired additional data from methods not open to Canadian law enforcement,¡± came my stock reply. Her quick nod accepted this. ¡°Invisibility power gives us a very limited pool of suspects.¡± The sergeant thought for a minute before responding, ¡°Narrowly construed, thirteen possibilities. Specialized replication, under forty. And then the standard seventy or so tertiary candidates.¡± She opened up her laptop and had already started what looked like a spreadsheet list. This was a much broader list than I was expecting. ¡°I had identified nine named supers who meet the power profile. Can you explain how you ended up with over one hundred?¡± She nodded, and pressed a screen-share button so I could see her spreadsheet directly. ¡°Nine active and four retired supers with P.S.I., proximity selective invisibility.¡± She highlighted the appropriate names; this list roughly matched my own. ¡°These thirty-seven have abilities that manipulate or project visible light, and are believed to be able to replicate an effect similar to P.S.I.¡± I recognized almost none of the names on her second list. Diane then opened and shared a second spreadsheet, entitled ¡®Meta-adaptive.¡¯ She continued, ¡°And then we have the list of known active and at-large supers, excluding augments, with powers that are either known to be highly variable, like Wildcard, or changeable over time, like The Ritualist. Any attempt to identify a suspect based on power usage has to take the tertiary list into account.¡± ¡°What are augments?¡± I asked. I had heard the term used in a few different ways, but the context wasn¡¯t clear to me here. Diane Waterford frowned. It was the first time I had seen the smile leave her face since we started the call. ¡°Excuse me,¡± she mumbled quickly, and then ended the call. I certainly hadn¡¯t expected such an abrupt ending to what had otherwise been a very informative conversation. My hunch was that Waterford had thought of something particularly important that needed her full attention, so it seemed reasonable to wait a bit before trying to call again. So, I took the opportunity to follow up on one of the first avenues that had opened up from learning of the invisibility power. Doc Stevens¡¯ lab was located in Eutopia, a South American kraterocracy that was known as Bolivia before its takeover by Ak¡¯b¡¯al and his followers. The aging autocrat had agreed to allow Stevens to conduct his research unimpeded, and with significant resources, after the doctor had been compelled to flee the US. His facilities, set high in the mountains, were fresh in my memory. Doc himself was in his main chemistry lab, which was not unusual for the fastidious researcher. I moved my View to the facility quarters and soon found the man I was looking for: Fernando Campos, AKA Glimmer. He wore simple, dark clothing and reclined barefoot in an overstuffed chair, reading a paperback. His stylishly long hair and rounded features made him look like an office professional on vacation. The night before, Glimmer had returned from an excursion that, I was able to determine, had lasted the three previous days. This meant he was unaccounted-for during the shooting. I rewound the full four days to track Glimmer¡¯s departure from the base. As I understood to often be the case, he travelled with Kyle Tran, AKA Glitch, a lean man with a hard, dangerous look. The two of them strapped into light aircraft and I watched in fascination as they launched the craft directly out of the lab-based hangar. They were in the air in seconds, and bare seconds after that, I found myself Viewing the warm haze of a late spring sky. Glimmer had extended his invisibility over the entire plane and, unfortunately, my power apparently wouldn¡¯t automatically compensate to stay with passengers I couldn¡¯t see. My Viewing attempts had been unable to clear Glimmer, which left me with little choice but to contact Doc directly and ask. As I pulled up his contact data, I received an incoming call from Diane. The sergeant¡¯s smile was back in place, if looking more strained than before. ¡°Sorry about that,¡± she ran quickly into and through the apology, ¡°I made a rather severe error and had to address it immediately.¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t notice any error,¡± I replied. ¡°The augments,¡± Diane explained. ¡°They¡¯re common knowledge for Agency analysts, but you didn¡¯t have clearance.¡± She blew out a puff of air. ¡°You do now. Inspector Heathcote was impressed with your need for the data.¡± A few clicks later, she continued, ¡°I¡¯ve copied the hub file over if you want to take a look.¡± She waited for my response. I hadn¡¯t spent any time looking at the RCMP¡¯s investigation files yet, but I took this opportunity to log in and find the file marked ¡®Human Augmentation Projects ¨C General.¡¯ It discussed, in general terms, the status of attempts to produce or replicate powers in normal humans. Although research in this area was formally banned by international treaty after the Stevens scandal, it was widely assumed that most nations with any sort of budget for secret military research had ventured there. Three approaches were mentioned in the document: machine enhancement, genetic engineering, and beam exposure. More than half the document was devoted to the third method, as this was the one that had apparently yielded fruit thus far. Certain individuals would temporarily emit Omicron radiation, and in a few cases exhibit unusual abilities, after extended proximity to high-energy Upsilon beams. Common side effects were, quite predictably, severe radiation poisoning. I could still see Diane waiting patiently; she had shared the suspect spreadsheet again and seemed to be re-ordering the rows. I noticed that the names being sorted toward the top were superheroes and North American civilians. ¡°Diane,¡± I opened, ¡°did you share the data on augments because you are concerned that one of them might be a suspect? Or just to make sure our analysis wasn¡¯t excluding key data.¡± Looking up from the tabulated columns and at my motionless avatar, she licked her lips in consideration. ¡°Mostly the second one, I think. There have been a couple of Canadian experiments and one out of Germany that might be relevant, but this is looking like a planned attack. The augment process isn¡¯t reliable enough and the powers don¡¯t last long enough for something like this.¡± Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author''s preferred platform and support their work! ¡°But there are augment projects that have replicated invisibility powers, at least for a short time?¡± My question was met with a nod, so I continued, ¡°meaning it¡¯s plausible, if anyone had managed a dependable augmentation?¡± ¡°Right, but¡­¡± she took a breath as she tried to put her instincts into words. ¡°If that¡¯s what we¡¯re dealing with, then it¡¯s not a small lab or lone actor. We¡¯re talking about a government project at that point. Actual plans, policies, training¡­¡± she shrugged. ¡°It¡¯s not impossible, but it¡¯s a much bigger stretch and harder to investigate than just one or a small group of rogue supers. So¡­¡± and she brought up her spreadsheet again ¡°¡­ let¡¯s focus on the primary and secondary suspect lists, and plan out how to investigate these names.¡± Diane and I started working our way through the list, discussing plausibility, motive, and how we might get hold of different suspects for questioning. But my mind kept being drawn back to the Doc¡¯s employee, Glimmer. I bid Diane goodnight with an assurance that I had everything I needed to begin some first-order investigations on the suspect list. We agreed to touch base the following afternoon, but I let her know that I¡¯d be dedicating ¡°cycles¡± to the names on the list for a couple of days at least. Hopefully I was managing expectations for the pace of the work I¡¯d be able to actually deliver. I shot a congruent message to the address I¡¯d been given for Inspector Heathcote, letting her know there was no reason to meet again so soon and that I was well taken care of (adding a few words about Diane¡¯s ¨C ¡°Sergeant Waterford¡¯s¡± ¨C clear competence and enthusiasm, for good measure). Hopefully this would give me a little bit of room to play; I was so far happy that the RCMP seemed content to let me gather data using my own methods rather than trying to micromanage my actions or assign me to specific analysis tasks. I would not be surprised if a call from Agent Lewis had filled them in on my preferred mode of operation. I checked again and saw that the Doc was online¡­ but at the same time, I noticed a new email from Paris with attachments. An armed robbery turned homicide was about to be closed unsolved. I scanned the info that had been collected on the dead liquor store owner who was shot from behind the counter after handing the register¡¯s cash to his assailants in an otherwise empty store. The surveillance camera showed two teenagers in ski masks, and witnesses reported a third kid that stayed in the car during the excursion. A half-hearted trawling of the usual midtown ne¡¯er-do-wells hadn¡¯t raised anything to the surface. I dialed Doc, and he answered promptly as usual. ¡°Good evening, Delphic,¡± he began. ¡°To what do I owe the pleasure? Something to report since yesterday?¡± ¡°Good evening,¡± I replied. ¡°Nothing further on the Michaels matter. But there was something else I wanted to ask you about.¡± ¡°Oh?¡± his raspy voice conveyed distance and unconcern. ¡°Please do.¡± ¡°It¡¯s about the death of Lamarck.¡± I could almost hear his nod. ¡°Shot yesterday by sniper fire, if I recall.¡± He rustled something. ¡°The Mounties call you in on this one? Or the Feds?¡± ¡°Both. They are very interested in identifying the culprit.¡± Apparently Doc did not share their urgency ¨C his tone stayed light, as though this were an academic detour of no real weight. I found it off-putting. ¡°I haven¡¯t heard anything about it,¡± he volunteered. ¡°If it¡¯s part of a larger plot then the group involved is taking pains to stay underground.¡± ¡°I wanted to talk to you specifically because Glimmer is on the suspect list.¡± The rustling stopped. Doc¡¯s tone dropped from mercurial to saturnine. ¡°Fred? Why would you think he was involved?¡± ¡°The sniper was under an invisibility power.¡± I considered typing more, but decided to wait on Doc¡¯s response. It took a couple of minutes before he responded. ¡°Fred will be up in a minute.¡± His tone shifted, more pointed. ¡°How did you come to the conclusion it was an invisibility power, specifically? More precisely ¨C what evidence has led you to that conclusion?¡± His question hung in the air for just scant seconds before the Doc followed up with more: ¡°The reason I ask is because there are a variety of omicron aberrations ¨C powers ¨C that can replicate invisibility under certain observations. In-person witnesses can be subject to neural hijacking¡­ illusions¡­.¡± I heard him swallow before continuing. ¡°Some powers can finely manipulate electronic media, and a few can specifically block or misinform perceptive powers. So, depending on your source, there are other options than actual electromagnetic redirection.¡± This was a very good point. I would have to bring it up with Diane, as I wasn¡¯t sure which of these kinds of powers, if any, were included in her suspect list. In her position, I likely would have assumed a digital source for the invisibility claim and tweaked my list accordingly. I was trying to process this idea of supers that could block perceptive powers. I had never heard of this ¨C possibly because perceptive powers were themselves rare, and the ability to block them would probably be something held back as a trump card. The possibility had unpleasant implications for me. Could I trust what I was seeing with my View? In fact, without knowing more about how such blocking powers work, I had no easy way to distinguish between them and actual invisibility when Viewing. Could the Ottawa sniper be a power blocker? I needed to know more. But at this point I heard a new voice came over the line. ¡°I¡¯m here, Doctor. How can I help?¡± ¡°Ah, Fred, thanks for coming over. I have Delphic on the line here.¡± He paused. ¡°Hello mister Campos. Delphic here,¡± I typed and sent. ¡°Mister Delphic, yes. I don¡¯t think we¡¯ve spoken before. A pleasure to meet you.¡± Glimmer¡¯s voice was smooth and expressive, a contrast from Doc¡¯s gravelly and colorless tone. ¡°Likewise,¡± I responded politely. ¡°Could I impose on you to answer a couple of questions?¡± Another pause. As I waited for a response, I closed my eyes and set my View on the lab space. It was clear there was some visual by-play between the two that I didn¡¯t want to miss. They were in a lab space the size of a residential parlor or small conference room. Benches abutted three walls, lab stools tucked under them. The bench surfaces were clear and clean; lamps hung on the wall over each bench with a set of four nozzles nearby. It was a setup similar to the science labs I remembered from my gen ed courses at U of M. The Doc was in an office chair in front of a desk on the fourth wall, well below the bench surfaces. The desk was covered in papers and lab journals, and it looked as though Doc had been marking up one of the journals before he had turned to give his full attention to Campos. The disgraced researcher projected the unambiguous image of advanced age. He had stereotypically wild silver hair framing a wrinkled face with large, cold eyes. A badly creased tie spilled unevenly over the front of a short sleeved dress shirt; the colors clashed. Fernando Campos, in contrast, would not have looked out of place at an upscale Brazillian dance club. A dark green shirt framed a face that barely showed his scant twenty-five years under hair that looked professionally curled. Even his hands, moving expressively as he apparently made a point to his boss, looked carefully maintained. The computer monitor sticking up from piles of paper on the desk showed the active call and the muted line. The two looked wary and stressed; I was surprised it didn¡¯t seem to come through in their voices. Clicking on a mouse hidden among the mess, Doc replied, ¡°It depends on the questions. Sorry, but I¡¯m not going to ask Fred to give up any more than he¡¯s comfortable sharing.¡± This earned an irked look from the younger man. Doc returned a shrug. ¡°I understand,¡± I typed blind. ¡°This is about what you were doing yesterday, midday.¡± To give him an easy chance to lie, I added, ¡°Were you there at the lab?¡± He shook his head. ¡°No, we were offsite managing a project.¡± ¡°We?¡± Campos raised an eyebrow to Doc, who conveyed permission with a nod. ¡°Kyle and I.¡± ¡°Kyle train, also known as Glitch?¡± And here my autocorrect had messed me up. Flustered, I left my View and returned my attention to my computer. ¡°It¡¯s Kyle Tran,¡± he responded with clear irritation, ¡°also known as Kyle, or mister Tran to you.¡± Doc jumped in, ¡°Fred and Kyle¡¯s identities aren¡¯t secret, and they dislike using their call names outside of missions.¡± Easier just to press on. ¡°Where was the project?¡± ¡°Nowhere near Canada,¡± he quipped. Clearly Doc had said something as to what this was about. ¡°Old World, not in the Americas. I don¡¯t care to be more specific.¡± That was not helpful. ¡°I would very much like to verify your specific location at midday yesterday. Noon US Eastern time.¡± The super¡¯s voice was hot and hostile. ¡°That won¡¯t be possible. Is there anything else I can help you with?¡± ¡°Mister Campos,¡± I decided to try one more time, ¡°I would very much like the data to remove you from the suspect list of a high profile murder investigation. Is there nothing else about your whereabouts or activities yesterday that you¡¯re willing to tell me?¡± The Doc said, ¡°It looks like that¡¯s all you¡¯re going to get from him. Sorry.¡± He lowered his voice, ¡°Fred walked away, I¡¯m afraid. He has his secrets, and doesn¡¯t much trust government operatives.¡± ¡°I¡¯m hardly that.¡± ¡°Aren¡¯t you, though? They¡¯re paying you.¡± He had a dull amusement in his voice. ¡°Actually, it¡¯s Peregrine paying me this time.¡± I gave Doc a brief run-down of the hero¡¯s participation in the FBI meeting. I heard some rustling, and a couple of mouse clicks. ¡°Actually, Peregrine doesn¡¯t have that sort of cash,¡± Doc said. ¡°I can¡¯t be sure until later in the week, but I suspect he got Harmony Norberg to provide the funds.¡± I had considered this possibility as well. It was an open secret that Lady Liberty, a primary asset of the New York Super Team, was popular and photogenic heiress Norberg. She was openly political and a perennial defender of Peregrine¡¯s antics. Tabloids speculated a more prurient relationship between the two. It took me a second to work myself up to it, but Doc¡¯s advice was usually worth asking for. I typed, ¡°Should I be concerned about Peregrine? I had not seen him so openly hostile before.¡± Doc¡¯s answer was immediate. ¡°Not at all. He¡¯s rash, yes, and he thinks in black and white. But he¡¯s loyal. His heart¡¯s in the right place. He¡¯s not vindictive or petty.¡± Personally I felt his actions in the meeting were petty, but I let Doc continue. ¡°Show your value as you have in the past and Peregrine won¡¯t make himself a problem. And, Delphic?¡± ¡°Yes?¡± The single synthesized word was clipped. ¡°Fernando didn¡¯t do this,¡± he said. ¡°I have a good idea what they were likely doing the last couple of days, though it¡¯s not my project and not my place to say.¡± He sighed. ¡°But I understand why he wants it to stay a secret. He really was nowhere near Canada. You¡¯re looking for someone else.¡± We chatted for a couple more minutes about spring weather moving into summer there in the Southern Hemisphere, and then disconnected. My instincts matched Doc¡¯s claims ¨C Campos wasn¡¯t the sniper. But, as a rule, I never relied on instincts until I could back them up with solid facts. So Campos stayed firmly on the suspect list. It was getting late, and I was hungry but not yet tired. In the kitchen I heated up the last of my leftovers and spent my dinner time planning a menu for tomorrow and the weekend. Once the washing up was done, I opened the file from Paris again and matched the convenience store to its location midtown. I might as well have names to discuss with my sister over breakfast. Chapter 11 - Eggs and Seeds I woke up the next morning a bit confused. I remembered recovering the names of the three young men the previous night, and the plate number of the vehicle they used, but I didn¡¯t remember whether I relayed that info to Paris before heading to bed. A quick trip down to my system confirmed that I had. As I cycled a load to the dryer that I didn¡¯t remember putting in the washer the night before, I thought yet again that one of these days my pre-sleep memory gap was going to cause me a problem. I had considered keeping a notepad by my bed to write down my last few minutes before I fell asleep, but so far there were no issues that a quick Viewing couldn¡¯t fill in if I really needed it to. I had just stepped out of the shower when I heard my front door open and close. I quickly dressed and then greeted my uniformed sister in the kitchen. She had taken a seat and was reading something on her tablet. Paris rose for her obligatory hug, then moved over to my one-cup coffee brewer while I got out the ingredients for omlettes. I was slicing the last half onion and grating almost the last of my hard cheese, so I knew a grocery run was called for over the weekend. ¡°White or wheat?¡± I asked my sister as I plugged in my pop-up toaster. ¡°Raisin?¡± she asked hopefully, but I shook my head. The raisin bread is a favorite of mine, too, and I never seem to stock quite enough to get me through to grocery day. ¡°Bagel?¡± she tried next. I checked the appropriate cabinet and nodded. She gave me a sunny grin while she sat down with her coffee. When Paris started in on her murder case, I interjected. ¡°Before I forget. There¡¯s a new neighbor family in town almost two weeks now, and I¡¯m trying to decide how worried I should be. Please don¡¯t freak out,¡± I added quickly as she started to freak out. I cracked four eggs over the mushrooms, onions, and spinach I had sauteed in the skillet, and started whisking them with one hand while throwing in diced tomatoes and shredded cheese with the other. I was out of red peppers. ¡°I met them at a dinner party Monday night, and recognized one of them as a super I have worked with before. Polarity ¨C she was on the California team until recently.¡± I split the mixture in half with a spatula and let it sizzle and brown on the bottom. ¡°I can¡¯t work out why they would be here. The move checks out, but ending up in my neighborhood by chance would be a big coincidence.¡± I glanced up as Paris finished a sip from her mug, her eyes fixed in an expression I knew was deliberative. ¡°Well,¡± she began, ¡°maybe not as big of a coincidence as you¡¯d think.¡± She took another sip before she said, ¡°What were some of the reasons you choose this neighborhood?¡± I folded the two masses over onto themselves and flipped them as I gave my well-worn answer. ¡°Close to but north of the freeway, low crime, low turnover of homeowners, not within a city jurisdiction, several young families, stable home prices if I want to sell and move out.¡± ¡°And at least a few of those are important because you want to be able to move around the city without being under scrutiny, right?¡± The toast and bagels popped as I scooped our breakfast out of the skillet and onto two plates. ¡°Centrally located but out-of-the-way; rare to have new neighbors but easy to sell. The sort of things any super would be looking for, right?¡± I poured my orange juice and sat down across from Paris. We both dug into our omlettes while I though about what she was saying. ¡°The point being,¡± I restated as much for myself as for her, ¡°that the odds of a super relocating to Detroit and ending up in my neighborhood at random are better than I thought, because they¡¯d be looking for some of the same things I was.¡± She nodded, then held a dry bagel half in one hand and looked at me forlornly. I caught the hint and got up to retrieve butter and jam from the fridge. ¡°Have you investigated at all?¡± ¡°Not as much as I could, I¡¯ll admit. This week has been particularly busy, first with that short fuse kidnapping case, and then getting thrown into the investigation yesterday. Oh! I should probably tell you about that too.¡± I could tell my homicide detective sister was quite engrossed as I filled her in on the Lamarck shooting and my work so far. I mentioned the FBI meeting and Peregrine, but I left out Glimmer and Doc. Paris had never liked my association with the ¡°creepy¡± scientist and his hangers-on, and while I didn¡¯t actively conceal my dealings, I tended to gloss over them with her. We had finished the eggs and I had popped in a second round of toast and bagels by the time I¡¯d reviewed what I had found in Viewing the shooting and the startings of a suspect list with Diane. Paris¡¯s questions were mostly directed towards the RCMP process and personnel ¨C how many officers, what labor division, what time table on reports and information releases? I knew none of the above. ¡°No offense, lil¡¯bro, but you¡¯re still coming at this like an amateur,¡± she sighed. ¡°If you don¡¯t have a good idea of who¡¯s covering what, and what sort of delay is involved in getting info spread around, you¡¯re gonna miss something important. Guaranteed.¡± The toaster popped a second time, and she moved to the fridge and got herself cream cheese for it. ¡°Yesterday afternoon, right, you told¡­ whatever her name is, the sergeant¡­ to look for an invisible super. Who knows that info now? The whole team? Just the detective at the top of the case? The inspector, whatever?¡± I shrugged, and she sighed again. ¡°I¡¯ll write up a little email with a list of what you need to know, and how you might ask your officer about them. You said there¡¯s one more super working the case, Spinner?¡± ¡°So I was told. The guy runs with NEST out of Boston; I¡¯ve never worked with him.¡± New England Super Team had very good press but had only a couple of real heavies on their roster at present. Thanks to Spinner and 4cast, the firepower they had was usually enough. They often managed to take out threats early or were able to identify a need for collaboration by New York or DC in time for the other teams to make the trip. ¡°I don¡¯t get his name. What does he do, exactly?¡± I shrugged. ¡°It¡¯s not clear to me either, even after researching him a bit online. I¡¯ve seen a video of him taking out a group of guys with guns, and he uses a very athletic fighting style with a lot of spinning and dodging. Maybe that¡¯s all the name means.¡± ¡°He hasn¡¯t ever explained it?¡± ¡°Not as far as I can tell. There¡¯s a lot of speculation among fans and experts, obviously. He¡¯s got super strength and reflexes, and some sort of super senses. Some people say he¡¯s a super-brain.¡± Paris snorted. ¡°That¡¯s always their go-to for unknown powers. Didn¡¯t your Doc prove that it wasn¡¯t possible for powers to do that?¡± ¡°To increase intelligence? I don¡¯t think he proved that, no. I agree with him, though, that if powers could do that, we probably would have seen the evidence of it before now. The world chess champion is still a non-super; supers aren¡¯t even represented amongst Nobel Prize winners yet. Other than Peace.¡± I drank down the last of my orange juice. Paris looked idley into the bottom of her empty mug, then looked up at me grimly. ¡°You¡¯re not gonna like this next thing.¡± She tried on a smile, but it looked wan. ¡°Yeah?¡± I kept my own expression light and smirked. I had a feeling I knew what she was going to say. ¡°I think you need to change up your priorities and get a definitive answer on this Polarity thing.¡± She kept on, seeing me ready to interject. ¡°It¡¯s an immediate danger to you, personally, Hector. If something¡¯s gone wrong and you can¡¯t lie low, you need to know that. Like, yesterday.¡± Her serious expression was infectious, but I resisted valiantly. ¡°Just a few minutes ago, you said I was overreacting. That it¡¯s probably just a coincidence.¡± She shook her head. ¡°Not probably, no ¨C just possibly. But that¡¯s not the point. Even if it¡¯s just an outside chance this is a move by someone in the government, the consequences are dire. Fatal.¡± Another head shake, this one with an inward-looking expression. ¡°You can¡¯t afford to play this off. You¡¯re too vulnerable here. If they know who you are, you¡¯re in real danger.¡± She was right, of course ¨C she usually was. I worked hard to be safe and practical, but it was my sister who could get a quick grasp of the big picture and how best to act. I nodded. ¡°Okay, I¡¯ll make Polarity my top priority today. Dig as deep as I can, spend most of the day on it.¡± I pulled out my mobile and checked my dashboard. ¡°Diane wants another call this afternoon, but other than that I¡¯m free.¡± I had found and scheduled jobs at midtown the following day to collect my sensor data, but none for today. Paris smiled in satisfaction, checking her watch. ¡°I need to go soon, but let¡¯s discuss these punks from midtown.¡± She slid me the tablet; it showed three mugshots side-by-side. ¡°Those are the boys?¡± It wasn¡¯t really a question; I nodded. ¡°Gangbangers. The oldest is sixteen; they occasionally get booked and dragged through a round with Child Protective Services but there aren¡¯t the resources to follow up.¡± She took the tablet back. ¡°The address given for each of them is the same ¨C a house in the part of midtown claimed by the Megs, or Megas. They picked up some of the pieces when Deedrick was arrested and his boys pushed out a few months back.¡± If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. On the tablet was an address and street map. I studied them closely for a minute, and then closed my eyes. It was the work of moments to View in midtown again as I had last night, this time in the present. I navigated to the address quickly ¨C a residential block with small houses in disrepair, so common in modern Detroit. Five young men and two women lay unmoving in various states of undress in the small common room of the house, needles and a pipe both visible on a long crate propped up in front of an old, ripped couch. ¡°They¡¯re there now. They partied last night,¡± I said after I had confirmed two of the five faces in the common room. The third was in a bedroom, legs tangled with a girl on a dirty mattress. Paris got to her feat. ¡°Okay! That really simplifies things.¡± She pulled out her mobile and started sending text messages. ¡°I¡¯ll get Vice to work up a no-knock on the house and we¡¯ll do a drug raid this morning. The vehicle there?¡± I pulled back out to the street and confirmed. ¡°Right out front.¡± ¡°Perfect. I should get on this right away.¡± She opened her arms and received my full-strength hug. ¡°Figure this thing out, lil¡¯bro. And let me know if you need help, okay?¡± Her worried gaze reminded me so much of Mom, it was a little guilt-inducing. ¡°Yes ma¡¯am. Go get ¡¯em.¡± She saw herself out as I got to working on the dishes. I heard the click of the deadbolt as she relocked my front door from the outside with her key. A protective older sibling indeed. The clutter of activity this week had certainly provided me reasons to place the Polarity issue on the back burner, but I had to admit to myself they were mainly just excuses. The real reason I hadn¡¯t tackled the issue was because anything further I could think of would either be incredibly risky (like hacking into SoCAST¡¯s systems to look for records of her current assignment) or exhaustingly time consuming (like following Polarity back over days, or even weeks, until she is given something revealing about her assignment). I put the idea of asking either Doc or Lewis about Polarity into the ¡°risky¡± category: the former because it concerns me to provide Doc more information related too closely to my actual location, and the latter because it could potentially leak to whomever in the government is involved with whatever Polarity is doing. I had the same concern with asking any of my closer contacts among the super community; there was no way to guarantee that my inquiry would remain confidential. However, now that I had been assigned to the Lamarck investigation, I had additional options ¨C I could make queries or requests under the cover of the assignment. As I thought through how I might go about this, I considered multiple approaches: While Paris had been adamant that she wanted to me to resolve this, and quickly, none of my list of options seemed particularly safe. Knowing her, she would want me to exercise caution. So, for the time being, I kept my options simmering in the back of my mind and accessed the audio files picked up at the Morris¡¯s house. I could hope that something was said that would provide me a less ambiguous path. I perused my curated audio files by keyword, and was slightly surprised at the large number of hits. Picking out a random few to listen to, the reason was evident ¨C my speech recognition was very lenient, and the file list riddled with false positives. ¡°Helping,¡± ¡°Delta,¡± and ¡°belt,¡± were all tagged as matches for ¡°Delphic.¡± A dozen different words with an ¡°ooh¡± vowel followed by an unstressed syllable came back as ¡°super.¡± I grabbed a much more unforgiving speech processor to try to filter out most of these and, since the total recorded speech only came to about six and a half hours, I set the whole file list on auto-play in the background at 1.5x speed. I had told myself earlier that I would only eavesdrop on conversations otherwise identified as relevant, but Paris had imported to me that I couldn¡¯t really afford to take this matter lightly. Privacy is ever the casualty of security. While listening to Kurt and Laila decide on dinner in artificially-accelerated voices, I brought up my own local copy of Diane¡¯s suspect list. The first name on it was a retired Canadian super with a known civilian identity. It took me the better part of an hour to find her home in Vancouver and verify that she was, in fact, at home on the day in question and not thousands of miles away on a roof in Ottawa. She was actually out to lunch with a friend at the time of the shooting itself, so my Viewing in this case was likely only verifying something Diane would have already heard from a solid alibi. The next two cases were similarly clear-cut; I was able to add location details to each name on the list specifying where they were and what they were doing at the time of the shooting. Subsequent Views should be marginally faster as I could start from recent Views already in Canada; if nothing else, this investigation was certainly expanding my familiarity with our northern neighbor. The fourth name on the list was an active super: Yellow Rose, a member of the regional Ontario Super Team. Her invisibility power, according to Diane¡¯s records, became active automatically whenever she left the ground under her flight power (full hover, slow acceleration, max speed 70 kmh). Her yellow costume was an armored suit with a variety of non-lethal munitions: tear gas, flashbangs, bolt-action rifle with rubber bullets, long-range taser. I could immediately see how useful her powers could be in crowd control. Unfortunately, Yellow Rose¡¯s civilian identity was secret, and she was not on duty during the time of the shooting. She arrived at Ontario team HQ in Toronto the following afternoon, appearing in front of the second-story balcony used as a fliers¡¯ entrance. I was starting to learn that tracing invisible people with a vision-based power was not ideal. Yellow Rose, at least when wearing her armor, was quite happy to fly any time she ventured outdoors. And once she was in the air, she was quite thoroughly out of my View. I needed more information. From my vantage, sneaking into the Ontario supers¡¯ system was a lot less dangerous than doing the same in California, if only because the RCMP had less reason to expect it. It was no work at all to find a user at the HQ and watch when they typed in their username and password. It was very little additional work to establish a VPN with those credentials ¨C and once I had access to the internal portals, it was minutes to find the people with admin access. Another round of Viewing brought me the ability to access the system remotely as an administrator. I had already created my own separate admin credentials and was doctoring the logs when I heard, ¡°¡­exactly like a superhero, I¡¯d say. A little old fashioned, if anything. Wait around for a call for help¡­¡± it was Laila¡¯s voice. I paused the recording and finished erasing my recent remote logins from the RCMP¡¯s records before rewinding and listening to the audio file in earnest. I couldn¡¯t make out everything they were saying; this was the upstairs mic, and I suspected they were talking in their bedroom. They kept the doors open most of the time so they could hear Deb across the hall; if not, I might have missed a lot more. They were having a sort of lovers¡¯ half-argument over the situation in Detroit. Kyle was complaining that he¡¯d lost a likely promotion by the move. ¡°You know I¡¯ve always been supportive of what you do,¡± he appealed to his wife. ¡°That hasn¡¯t changed. It¡¯s just, I understood it when we lived in LA. You had a messed up schedule because you were patrolling, rescuing people.¡± Laila¡¯s voice carried a lot of pain. ¡°I didn¡¯t want to uproot us any more than you did, baby. I really didn¡¯t.¡± He sighed. ¡°I know that. I just¡­ you¡¯re a ¡®seed asset.¡¯ Some sort of weird CIA secrecy stuff, right? Not really, like, a superhero.¡± Laila raised her voice considerably in response. ¡°What I¡¯m doing now isn¡¯t glamorous, sure, but it¡¯s exactly like a superhero, I¡¯d say. A little old fashioned, if anything. Wait around for a call for help, swoop in to save the day, maintain my secret identity otherwise. Remember in the fifties when those guys in tights would rush into the phone booth and jump out to stop a robbery or something? This is more like that.¡± Kyle chuckled a little. ¡°I guess so. It just¡­ I¡¯m worried that they¡¯re not taking you seriously with this. It doesn¡¯t seem -¡± Laila interrupted, ¡°They¡¯re taking me as seriously as I can expect them to considering my breakdown.¡± He started up again, but she interrupted again: ¡°We¡¯ve talked about this. I know I¡¯m ready, but they have to be cautious. Lives at stake, remember?¡± ¡°And in the meantime, you¡¯re here in the house by yourself while I¡¯m cutting up cadavers and running redundant tests.¡± ¡°What, you¡¯re worried I can¡¯t handle myself?¡± her tone was lighter, even more amused. ¡°No, but¡­ I just¡­¡± he sighed deeply again. ¡°I just¡­¡± he mumbled a few more words that I couldn¡¯t make out. Laila mumbled a response, and soon the recording ended. They had stopped speaking at a volume loud enough for the microphone to stay active. According to their conversation, Laila was a ¡°seed asset.¡± It was a known CIA tactic to embed supers, in their civilian identities, into populations of interest to provide information and be ready to help if a situation went hot. If spy memoirs and anonymous newspaper sources could be believed, the asset often spent months and sometimes years doing nothing but reporting back to the Agency, building bonds of friendship and trust with locals. Much like sleeper agents, their true loyalty would only become clear when they were activated ¨C if they ever were. As often as not, the need for the asset would pass and the person would move away without ever having been revealed. The short conversation had raised more questions. Was this neighborhood specifically selected because of me? It seemed likely. And yet, it was quite possible that Polarity hadn¡¯t been told who the broader mission was targeting. What, if anything, did she know? And, if this was about me, what sort of operation was underway? There was no reason to believe that the operation was supposed to come to any sort of head within a week, or even a month. I could conceivably be waiting years before a team of CIA agents knocked on my door ¨C but, on the other hand, they could come tomorrow. Without more information, I was racing against an unseen clock. I still needed to learn more. At least now I knew there was something for me to learn. Chapter 12 - Canadian Supers A two-word text came in from Paris:
BluBlood44: got em
It was the best news so far today. I promised myself I would watch the raid later, but I was anxious to track down Yellow Rose and ¨C if I was being honest with myself ¨C spend some more time not thinking about the asset on call down the block that would happily slam a half-ton of metal into me if the right guy in a suit asked her to. Like the DoJ, the RCMP greatly preferred to have the identities of its supers on file, although nowhere near all of the supers agreed to this. There was nothing like a master file (far too dangerous), but the electronic dossier on each team member included information locked to different clearance levels, with civilian identity available only at the highest levels of the organization. It was with great civic pride that I promoted my admin account to such a lofty position. Darla Trembly was a thirty-two-year-old florist (a little on the nose?) from British Columbia. She ran a little shop called The Petal Place in a Toronto suburb. The shop was half of a duplex with Darla and her dog living in the other half. She had married young but was four years divorced, no kids. She was quite visible throughout the noon hour of two days prior, tending her shop with quiet concentration, until she received what I saw was an emergency message about the Lamarck shooting. She was quite clearly not on the roof of a building two hundred fifty miles away from her shop. After I noted her location, I searched the list for other RCMP-affiliated supers without publicly-known identities. There were four, and three of them had their identities listed in their secure dossiers. Now that I knew what I was doing, it was taking me longer to cover my tracks than to get in and get the data I needed. I left my superuser account available on the system for the time being, but when this investigation was finished I planned to wipe the account. It was worth having to repeat the effort later in order not to leave such an obvious sign of a security breach discoverable long-term. In a bit over an hour, I had cleared the other three Canadian supers in the same way as Yellow Rose: I found them working their day jobs at the time of the shooting. That left one active super without a known identity, even with respect to the Crown, and two retirees as the remaining Canadian suspects. The ¡°¨¦quipe de la Justice au Qu¨¦bec¡± was one of the largest and most spread-out super teams in Canada owing to the fact that none of Quebec¡¯s cities other than Montreal had a local team. The francophone supers (¡°les justiciers¡±) seemed to prefer acting as informal city subteams under a larger central administration, which admittedly was closer to how things were done in continental Europe. Le R¨ºve had headed out on a patrol of Laval the day of the shooting. His costume was a tight-fitting body stocking of dull grey with a cloud logo in white on the chest, and it fully covered his face in grey except for a band of white at eye level. He vanished as he left the Laval local HQ at a bit after nine ¨C or, at least, that¡¯s what I assumed he meant to do. As I Viewed him walking down the street, he never completely vanished; parts of him were always visible in a pale green that flickered and danced around his form. I froze my View to scrutinize his form in more detail. The pale green coated his head and one of his legs, the rest of him vanished, as though I were looking at sliced parts of a solid wax mannequin that had been suspended in their logical places. I allowed the View to advance slowly and watched the green wax migrate haphazardly while reshaping to follow a man¡¯s silhouette. I allowed Le R¨ºve to resume his walk down the streets of Laval, following him when he ducked down an alleyway and, as he traversed the unpeopled space, reappeared as a middle-aged gentleman in a suit and business outerwear. This fit the record on Le R¨ºve¡¯s power set: fine control over the visible light immediately around his body. But parts of his body were still mottled in green. It dawned on me what I was seeing: the part of my vision that extended into the near-ultraviolet. I already knew that my brain had re-normalized the parts of the spectrum outside my normal visual range into a palette of colors that I could understand, and usually I was able to ignore these false colors and focus on the visible light. But in this case it appeared the super was unknowingly including a frequency of UV in his crafted image that he himself couldn¡¯t see, and therefore couldn¡¯t control. This made Le R¨ºve easy for me to track. Even though he changed disguises multiple times an hour and often without breaking stride, I was able to speed up my View without being concerned that I¡¯d lose him in a crowd. I could easily spot the one person on the street with green patches sliding over his skin and clothes (or ¡°her,¡± as his disguises were quite varied). When he turned invisible, the green patches remained. When I saw him stop and take a call that I could see was, again, an emergency alert about the Lamarck shooting, I was able to check him off the suspect list. Twin brothers Tommy and Reggie Kilabuk were a harder problem. The Laser Twins, as they had been known during their time working for the Northern Canadian Super Team, had a registered address at a small village in Nunavut that, when I finally found it, was a cabin that had clearly not been used in quite some time. I would likely be able to track them down eventually; they were not particularly known for using their invisibility but rather other manipulations of visible light. I decided to return to them later. Moving down the list, I was able to clear five American supers in the course of an hour by finding the ones that were on duty rosters that day and checking the relevant HQ. Since Diane could do the same with a couple of calls, this was hardly a ground-breaking accomplishment. I was in the process of reversing the trail of a sixth American super when I received an incoming call from Diane. Answering it, I saw three people in front of a cloth barrier similar to what I had seen at the RCMP field office the previous day: Sergeant Waterford, Inspector Heathcote, and Spinner. The Boston super¡¯s deep green uniform, padded layers rather than skin-tight, had a sparse webbing of silver radiating from silver piping on the shoulders; I knew there was similar piping on the legs as well. He wore a friendly smile that bookended well with Diane¡¯s on the other side of the Inspector, whose expression still looked strained and completely humorless. Spinner wore a silver visor that wrapped past his ears over a coif the same material as his body armor, concealing his hair and wrapping around his chin. From the wrinkle lines visible on his face, I suspected a lot of his hair would match the silver of his piping. ¡°This is Delphic,¡± I opened. It was the Inspector who spoke first: ¡°Good afternoon, Mister Delphic. I had asked the sergeant to see if we could clarify a couple of things with you. Mister Spinner wanted to introduce himself as well,¡± she nodded to the man. Spinner¡¯s broad grin was more disarming than it should have been considering his hidden eyes. ¡°Hey, man, it¡¯s good to meet you.¡± His speech was a fast and very Bostonian staccato. ¡°I talked to Silversmith and Selene before I flew out of Boston yesterday ¨C they say hi.¡± I remembered that the two of them were involved in a raid on a Vermont compound eighteen months previously where I had provided reconnaissance and support. We¡¯d had a couple of days to plan, and with my help, the supers that had turned on the other residents of the compound were apprehended with minimal casualties. It could have easily been another Waco or Spokane, but instead it ended up being PR boosts to super teams as a whole. I replied, ¡°Hi, Spinner. I have been meaning to catch up with those two.¡± I hadn¡¯t. ¡°I¡¯ll give them a call when I have a chance.¡± I wouldn¡¯t. ¡°How was your flight?¡± I didn¡¯t care. I was on edge and my patience for niceties was low; I was fortunate I didn¡¯t have to smile or try to keep a friendly tone of voice. ¡°It was nice. The Feds set me up on a charter flight. I don¡¯t usually get the red carpet treatment.¡± He emphasized the first syllables of ¡°charter¡± and ¡°carpet¡± with a complete lack of ¡°R¡± sound; his regional accent was thick enough that it sounded affected. ¡°I know the feeling. They¡¯re always throttling my bandwidth,¡± I quipped. The three expressions on the screen froze momentarily and Diane looked at the other two. ¡°I think that was a joke,¡± she said, smirking a bit. That got a chuckle out of Heathcote and Spinner, and Spinner said, ¡°Ah, gotcha. Anyways, I know you¡¯re in an odd place on the whole mobility thing. Can I dial you in later when I head to the scene? I wanted to take a look and talk it out with ya.¡± ¡°Sure.¡± No reason not to be agreeable. ¡°Inspector, you said there were questions you were looking for me to clear up?¡± Heathcote nodded. ¡°We need more specifics on your analysis of the scene, and how you determined the sniper is an invisible super. There is still no digital recording that includes the roof during the relevant period. How do you know?¡± I could see that Diane was nodding along with this line of questioning. Just like with Vivi Michaels, wanting the data analysis that led to my conclusion was a perfectly reasonable request. And just like with Vivi, I was not in a position to answer it. So, as usual, I lied. ¡°There were at least two visual records that included the relevant roof, in fact,¡± I replied, ¡°neither of which are available to you by lawful means.¡± ¡°Please elaborate,¡± the inspector said flatly. I sighed while typing the next response. ¡°You recovered seventy-three recordings. I have recovered ninety-six, because my process does not involve asking people to voluntarily surrender them. Several people present at the scene had good reasons not to want to cooperate with police. I don¡¯t bother asking.¡± This put a smirk on Spinner¡¯s face. Diane nodded agreeably while the inspector took a deep, shuddering breath. ¡°Please provide copies of the files,¡± Heathcote finally said. Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. ¡°I won¡¯t do that,¡± I replied immediately. ¡°And you don¡¯t need them. The recordings show that the position from which the shots were fired was clear of any visible person at the time. I have carefully verified the bullet trajectories ¨C I know exactly where the shooter was, and there isn¡¯t anything to see there.¡± ¡°It¡¯s possible there¡¯s an artifact in the footage that you missed,¡± Diane rejoindered. ¡°You have the information you need,¡± was my cold electronic reply. Heathcote¡¯s frown deepened. ¡°Mister Delphic, we respect your need to investigate in your own way, but you need to be sharing with us what you find.¡± She rubbed her mouth with one hand, clearly frustrated. ¡°I must insist.¡± I let the tension ramp in silence for a few heartbeats before giving my response. ¡°Inspector Heathcote,¡± I replied, ¡°I am happy to collaborate on this as much as possible. I have already confirmed airtight alibis for a third of the suspects on Diane¡¯s list. I am unambiguously contributing to this investigation.¡± She reluctantly nodded. ¡°I have to uphold my personal ethics when I perform these sort of wide-net, intrusive searches on private data. I won¡¯t turn over the files. I won¡¯t provide an innocent individual¡¯s information to the government without their consent, unless there¡¯s a pressing need.¡± As the Delphic voice sounded, I was relieved to see that Heathcote was not becoming angry. Her hand had moved up to her temple and she had hunched forward slightly to accommodate it; her position suggested a headache that was getting worse. ¡°I could get a warrant for the files. No,¡± she continued before I could respond, ¡°I¡¯m quite certain that will make no difference. All right!¡± She sat up fully straight and lowered her hands, the picture of a powerful senior officer. ¡°Thank you for the clarification. And thank you,¡± a bit softer, ¡°for your help with the investigation. The team is grateful.¡± ¡°No, inspector, thank you for understanding my unusual requirements,¡± I replied. This was the second time in so many days that those calling the shots had made the point but decided not to press it to breaking. However, if the visible signs of progress in the investigation ever abated, I was certain she would be much less lenient. Heathcote pulled out and looked at her mobile device. ¡°I have to run. Diane was going to fill you in on another theory that popped up today.¡± With a perfunctory nod she stood and left. I caught a chuckle from Spinner as Diane typed onto her laptop. It was the sergeant who spoke. ¡°First off, regarding the suspect list,¡± she said, sharing a file, ¡°there¡¯s the updated spreadsheet; I¡¯ve uploaded it to your portal. Spinner says he knows some of the US supers on the list and can make some calls for us.¡± The super nodded, ¡°No biggie. They¡¯re used to cooperating with investigations when this sort of thing goes down. Being a super,¡± this was directed more at me than Diane, ¡°it¡¯s pretty much guaranteed that if somebody gets away with a crime and the powers match yours, they¡¯ll come looking for your alibi.¡± He shrugged. ¡°Thank you,¡± Diane continued. ¡°Delphic, you said you had some results on the subjects?¡± ¡°That¡¯s correct. I have cleared eleven Canadian suspects from the top of the list. Further analysis is needed on the other four.¡± She looked up and down her own list again. ¡°That¡¯s all the Canadian names on the primary and secondary list, right? Leaving us with¡­ thirty-one, I think?¡± She re-sorted the list again. ¡°More than half are in the States.¡± She shrugged her shoulders and made eye contact with Spinner. ¡°Crossing names off the list is two-edged. On the one hand, it seems like making progress. But on the other hand, you may just be closer to concluding the culprit isn¡¯t actually on your list.¡± ¡°I will send a list confirming the suspects I have cleared,¡± I announced. ¡°If you and Spinner can determine which suspects each of you wants to try to contact first, I can rearrange my own searching to focus first on the remainder.¡± Spinner nodded. ¡°I¡¯ll shoot you a list when we get back from checking out the scene. I¡¯d like to head out there now, if it¡¯s okay.¡± He was asking permission of Diane. She gave a distracted nod as she continued to order and reorder the suspect list. But as Spinner got up say goodbye, Diane raised her head and said, ¡°Oh! One other thing,¡± she said, and gestured the man back into his seat. ¡°Corporal Tackett brought up an unsolved case from a few months back that he thinks might be related. I¡¯ve uploaded some files on it and I wanted to discuss whether either of you think it¡¯s worth giving priority to.¡± She shared a presentation which consisted of unlabeled pictures. ¡°Bertrand Saxena was a member of BCST under the name Valour.¡± The first picture was visibly an excerpt from a larger photograph of supers. It showed a man in full articulated armor, the helmet¡¯s faceplate open, the super¡¯s uneven and toothy grin visible under a cloth half mask with eyeholes. ¡°He lived alone in a Vancouver apartment, worked an undemanding dayjob in a private high school cafeteria.¡± The picture switched to a selfie taken by Bertrand with two older women, all three dressed in the same button-down shirt and slacks with prominent hair nets. ¡°Valour unexpectedly missed a duty shift with BCST and didn¡¯t answer his phone. A friend on the team who knew his civilian identity went to check on him, found his door unlocked, and found him inside.¡± The new picture showed the body of what was still identifiably Bertrand Saxena sprawled on a couch, his throat a mass of blood and flesh. The black handle of a kitchen knife protruded from his right eye socket. Congealed blood covered the right side of his face, his white shirt stained red down the front and sides. The presentation changed to a four-way split of pictures. One showed the body at a wider angle, and the other three showed close-ups of the eye and neck wounds. ¡°Forensics say the neck was stabbed six or seven times, with the same knife as the eye,¡± said Diane. Her voice was cold and she was not smiling. The presentation switched to a single, well-lit shot of a black-bladed knife on a specimen table, black-red fluid caked across the implement. ¡°The weapon is a sharp ceramic kitchen knife, part of a mail-order set. Saxena had a different, metal set in his kitchen ¨C it appears the killer brought the weapon.¡± The next picture showed the main area of the apartment, the end of the couch opposite where the body was found visible at the edge of the photograph. The visible walls had shields, swords, and medieval crests as decoration; the suit of armor in one corner did not look at all out of place. ¡°The furniture was untouched and nothing appeared to be missing. The front door wasn¡¯t forced. No fingerprints were found on the weapon, no leavings on the body. All DNA at the scene match Saxena and work friends.¡± Diane closed the presentation as she continued her explanation. ¡°The reason why Tackett brought this to my attention is that Saxena¡¯s murder, which was officially closed as unsolved, has signs of super involvement. Valour¡¯s abilities were ferrokinetic, and the killer had the foresight to bring a non-metallic blade with him. There are no defensive wounds; the signs of struggle are weaker than expected unless he¡¯d already been stabbed when he started struggling. Everything is consistent with a cold, deliberate murder.¡± She took a big breath before continuing. ¡°The apartment is on the second floor, and first and second floor camera footage show no unidentified persons that day. A super with invisibility or disguise powers fit the evidence. RCMP took over the case but never got anywhere; closed it after four months.¡± Diane still wasn¡¯t smiling as she turned her attention more directly to us, but as she spoke she allowed the beginnings of a kind smile to creep back in. ¡°So, gentlemen, what do you think? Do we shelve this for the time being, or add a second murder to our investigation?¡± ¡°We¡¯re, what, six or seven months out? Focusing on a cold case is prob¡¯ly a waste of time,¡± Spinner shrugged. ¡°I will look into it a bit further,¡± I offered. ¡°Colonel Tackett will speak with me if I need additional details?¡± Diane nodded. ¡°I¡¯ll add the case file to your dashboard. Do send me your notes on the suspects, please, and I¡¯ll let you know when I¡¯ve decided who to tackle next.¡± Spinner put a hand up to his visor, pressing something on the side. ¡°Dinnertime,¡± he announced. ¡°Wanna grab a bite before I head down to the scene?¡± he smiled at Diane. ¡°Sure,¡± she said, her own smile back at full wattage. ¡°Thanks again, Delphic. Remember you can call me anytime if you need me.¡± ¡°Enjoy dinner,¡± I replied. ¡°Spinner, you will call me from the scene?¡± ¡°Yep. Give it an hour or so.¡± He waved and Diane disconnected the call. I took five minutes to change out the laundry and empty my bladder before pulling up the Valour file. I got a date and an estimate of the murder time, memorized the address, and checked my mental map of Vancouver against an online map before closing my eyes and opening my View. The weather hadn¡¯t hit the West Coast as hard this week as out east. The city had some of the same warmth I had started to associate with Ottawa, with a greater sense of bustle at least this time in the evening. Finding a bank with an outside 24-hour display showing the date didn¡¯t take long, and I let the rest of the environment wash over me as I focused my attention on that date. I rewound at my maximum speed, a few seconds per day, ignoring everything but the numbers in front of me, the gleam on the display surface flickering annoyingly in the changing light. The spring day that I soon Viewed seemed crisp if clear, a noticeable wind disturbing everything in sight. Valour¡¯s apartment was in a long building of three stories with a closed garage below. I watched residents approach the glass front door, most entering unique codes on a keypad while a few used physical keys on the lock instead. Half of the first floor was devoted to an office, mail area, and laundry facilities, plus twenty apartments. The second and third floors were apartments only, with a small trash chute next to the stairwell on either end. I noted the position of the cameras. They were designed to catch comings and goings in the common areas and the stairwells, and did not record the stretches of hallway where the apartment entrances were. I set my View to approximately half an hour before the estimated time of the murder, and entered Valour¡¯s apartment. He sat on his couch, wearing the same clothes as I had seen in his photographs, engrossed in a paperback. As I Viewed the super quietly reading, he occasionally took and sipped from glass of water on the table next to him. The door wasn¡¯t locked. I had positioned my view so I could see it around the corner from where Barnard sat. It opened smoothly, just wide enough to admit a person, and a moment later it shut as the handle turned from the inside. Bernard didn¡¯t notice; he sat and read his book. The invisible assassin took their time; it was at least another five minutes before the first deep puncture wound blossomed from the hero¡¯s neck. Even as his expression changed to confusion and pain, a second and third and fourth wound appeared. Blood ran freely from the wounds down the shirt, and some spurted and hung flattened in midair, outlining the blade and some of the handle of a knife that plunged yet again to add another wound to the slick gore. Even as the bloody blade moved up from the neck to a different target, its red coating faded to transparency and then nothing. The deep implosion of the eye was still horrifying even though I had been expecting it. What had been a human being so recently was now unambiguously a corpse. The knife suddenly appeared in the wound just before the apartment door was thrown open and quickly shut. Rewinding and freezing the scene, carefully noticed that the same sort of half-knife was visible at the right moments: a cross section inky black where the rest of the knife should be, moving from the farthest corner to the door as the killer no doubt moved until the weapon was no longer within its range. Although somewhat nauseated, I rewound further and watched the stabbing slowly and in detail. No blood got on any part of the killer other than the knife, so I never caught a glimpse even in silhouette of a hand or limb. The killer was careful and single-minded, taking no time to relish the kill or explore the apartment: in and out. I spent a few minutes monitoring the stairwells and determining that one of the second-story doors to the stairs, which were recessed out of sight of the cameras, had opened slowly and slightly not long after the murder was completed. I saw no other unpeopled openings of any door, but there had been plenty of people returning from work to their apartments earlier. All of the doors had mechanical door-closers to make sure the doors shut slowly without slamming; anyone who opened the door fully would provide a convenient interval for an invisible intruder. I withdrew to the present, intrigued by the apparent congruence between the two killings. Since I had seen the same or very similar powers at work during both events, it made sense to attribute both murders to the same person, at least provisionally. But where exactly did that put us? Who would be motivated to first take out a Canadian super on a provincial team, and then, six months later, a support super for USST? The means and opportunity were evident, but the motive was still entirely elusive. And without that, I was starting to doubt how far we¡¯d be able to get. Chapter 13 - The Streets of Ottawa When I answered Spinner¡¯s call, I found myself looking down a clean Ottawa thoroughfare under a darkening sky. We were moving at a walking pace, and occasionally I saw a green gloved hand wave back at a passing pedestrian or motorist. If Spinner¡¯s headgear was electronic, it made sense it would include an outward-facing cam for team coordination. ¡°This is Delphic,¡± I sent. Spinner¡¯s voice came at a low volume and crisp tone: a sharp contrast from his broad and jovial mannerisms earlier. ¡°Spinner here. I¡¯m on my gear. Do you copy me clearly?¡± ¡°Yes. It appears you¡¯re walking from the direction of the hospital campus to the scene. Is that correct?¡± ¡°I am. I wanted to see if there were any trails coming from the hospital, but none still visible. And we know the one biker guy did a speed run back after the hit.¡± ¡°I can confirm that Velo carried Lamarck¡¯s body at accelerated speeds. Can I ask what trails you are looking for?¡± ¡°Right, probably nobody¡¯s filled you in. It¡¯s not something we want to go public.¡± He waited at a light before crossing the street. ¡°I can sense power use by other supers, and if the super is actively using a power while they move, I can follow it. The trail lingers for a while.¡± He reached the intersection and looked around. ¡°Yeah, there¡¯s a very faint trail here that moves off that way,¡± pointing across the street in the direction that the shots were fired. ¡°Carca-whatever, who ran after the sniper. I bet that was him.¡± The view raised as he looked up, centering on the rooftops. ¡°Oh yeah, sniper was definitely up there.¡± ¡°What is it you see?¡± ¡°There¡¯s like a blob centered right at the corner, sticks out into the space over the sidewalk. I¡¯ve seen it before with area powers, they come in a bubble.¡± He shrugged. ¡°If the guy was firing bullets from there, you could probably see them once they left the bubble. He might be able to like, stick some of his power on something to keep it hidden longer, but I doubt it would survive getting shot through a gun.¡± I started to type a response, but I stopped when I realized the image was moving toward the building very rapidly. At first I thought Spinner might be zooming in on the sniper¡¯s vantage, but shaky angle and changing perspective quickly confirmed that he was running at a startling pace. Traffic was fortunately clear as Spinner moved into the road and then lifted off the ground. The building dropped below and rushed directly underneath and I heard a soft curse over the line. The next noise was a loud thud, and it was hard to tell if the shuddering visual that followed was the super or the building. ¡°My¡­ ah¡­ my aim was off,¡± came Spinner¡¯s panting admission. ¡°I meant to grab onto the edge but I overshot.¡± He took in the gravel surface and swept his gaze carefully across the while roof. After a couple of minutes, he looked off toward the north and raised a hand. ¡°Flight,¡± he pronounced. ¡°Came and left from that way.¡± ¡°Can we follow?¡± I asked. The scene moved with a sideways shake. ¡°Trail¡¯s gone within about two dozen yards. It doesn¡¯t stick in the air.¡± ¡°Does that mean something changed regarding their power usage?¡± ¡°Nah, the trail always does this when it¡¯s too far away from solid ground,¡± he explained. ¡°I figure it¡¯s like a scent: sticks to buildings or streets for a while, but only a couple of hours at most over air or water.¡± He sounded like he had just about recovered his breath, and up on the roof he was less concerned about staying quiet. ¡°The good news is, I have the scent now.¡± Spinner seemed to enjoy the questions, so I kept them coming. ¡°You can recognize trails from different powers?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± he boasted. ¡°Each trail is unique to a super ¨C I can always tell a super that I¡¯ve seen before.¡± The camera view was across the tops of many buildings in the creeping dusk. ¡°When the team ¨C¡± he cut himself off as another voice, or a tinny echo of one, cut across the channel. ¡°Spinner, this is Ottawa HQ. Can you confirm your position at Fifth and Elsevier?¡± ¡°That is my position, affirmative.¡± His tone was louder, clear and crisp in the cold air. ¡°We have an active pursuit heading south on West Fourth Street,¡± continued the voice. ¡°Five suspects on foot.¡± The image was moving rapidly again; this time it looked like Spinner was moving to the edge of the roof to drop down from it. I could see very little as he made his abbreviated climb. ¡°Supers?¡± I heard Spinner ask, and immediately after, the line went dead. I was already centering myself to View when an invitation came in for Delphic to join the OST operations channels. I knew from my work earlier in the day that they used a very similar system to the US super teams, and within only a couple of minutes I had video feeds for three deployed supers, as well as a team map with an approximate location for the suspects. They had last been seen heading south on Fourth Street, and unless they doubled back, they would encounter Spinner approaching from the south several minutes before either of Carcajou or Fray (a third of the way across town in a police van, sirens wailing), could get there. ¡°Delphic, this is Ottawa HQ.¡± The woman¡¯s voice, low and with a pronounced Irish Canadian accent, was much clearer now as it was no longer getting to me indirectly through Spinner¡¯s headset. ¡°We have a super incursion. Five suspects are carrying valuable property looted from nearby.¡± ¡°Just the one super, though, right?¡± Spinner¡¯s voice was no clearer than before but he was no longer making any effort to stay quiet; a heavy puff came over the line intermittently as he strained to move at speed. ¡°One confirmed,¡± the woman from HQ corrected. ¡°Reports say five figures. Three men are carrying stolen items, a fourth man is armed, and a woman has used force projection on both officers and vehicles. You should be able to see them up ahead.¡± While Spinner had ran north down the sidewalk, I noticed that no cars or people had passed him heading south. The reason was clear as soon as he rounded a bend in the road and his camera showed, still three blocks away, a group of five figures running rapidly toward him. Behind the fugitives, on both sides of the street, were the bulks of cars tossed onto their sides or laying on their tops. Several vehicle bodies blended with smashed or shattered store fronts, and no people were visible anywhere other than the suspects themselves. The voice from HQ came over the line, ¡°Spinner, you may engage at your readiness. Lethal force is not, repeat not, authorized at this time. Again, authorization for lethal force is negative.¡± Since I had not been expecting to work directly with a super team during the investigation, I had not looked into the details of Canada¡¯s somewhat notorious ¡°no kill¡± policy. I had read that it was one of the ways they justified using supers at all: that a skilled super team could bring down criminals without killing or crippling them, and with less danger to themselves than the constabulary would face. ¡°Acknowledged,¡± was Spinner¡¯s answer. He had stopped while still two blocks away and seemed to be studying the people approaching him. All five were dressed the same in heavy black winter clothes with black ski masks over their faces. A man with a large sack over his back kept pace with an empty-handed woman ahead of the other three men. The group came to a stop halfway down the next block, with an intersection and a number of parked cars still lining the road between them and Spinner. ¡°Powers on both the two in front,¡± Spinner said. He was on the sidewalk, and as he spoke he began walking forward at a leisurely pace. ¡°Nothing yet from the other three.¡± As Spinner continued his gradual advance, the man and woman designated as supers were in heated discussion. Spinner reached the intersection. The man with the gun ¨C the one other than the woman not holding a loot bag ¨C stepped up beside the other two and pointed his weapon at the costumed hero. I didn¡¯t want to miss what was happening, but at the same time I wasn¡¯t providing any value watching the interaction in the present. I brought my View up at the roof and quickly moved north and east to get my eyes on the suspects while at the same time rewinding to where I could hopefully get more illuminating data. As the thieves came into sight and I let time run normally, I saw the woman confronting a blockade of three police cruisers as another pulled up from a side street. Five uniformed officers stood among the cruisers with weapons drawn. I moved my View in closer on the five. The two in front ¨C the woman and the man with by far the largest bag, those Spinner had pointed to as having powers ¨C were more than a head shorter than the other three and seemed older as well, the worn stance and movements of someone with too many years riding their bones. Rays of pale blue shot out from the woman¡¯s outstretched hands to the cruiser forming the middle of the blockade. As the cops cleared away from this car, it slid forward and then off to the side where the fourth car was braking to a halt. One door was already open on the side vehicle as the woman aligned her captured car between herself and the new arrival, but the door closed without ejecting any human passengers in response to the super¡¯s power use. A pulse of bright blue came out of both her hands and ran down the rays; the car slid rapidly across the street toward the other and collided hard with it. Even as the cars collided, the group of five were on the move toward the empty space in the middle of the blockade, which the police had (wisely) abandoned. Putting out both arms again, the woman stood for a few heartbeats as another set of rays hit the vehicle on her side and a pulse came out half a second later, sending the cruiser end-over-end away and towards the curb. A minute later, the other leader put his free hand against the remaining car and shoved hard to the side; it slid fifteen feet away. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it''s taken without permission from the author. Report it. I really wanted to know where these two came from and what was in those bags, but the little I had seen might allow me to provide at least some advice only if the encounter wasn¡¯t already over ¨C plus, just then, three gunshots echoed over the open channel. I dropped my View. While I was under, the scene had not been static. Spinner was looking out from behind a parked car while the gun guy and the beam woman had spread and were both aiming in his direction. The other three, the ones carrying bags, had doubled back north to, based on the angle they were running, turn east down a sidestreet. I heard a loud expletive from Spinner as he suddenly dropped to the ground and rolled under the car. A flash of blue illuminated the dark underside for an instant as the civilian sedan was blasted up and behind the supine super. As it left he was already moving to a crouch and up, spinning sideways as he launched forward and then springing back just after. The camera angle changed rapidly and seemingly randomly as he moved. It was nauseating to watch. After checking to see that the other supers were still three more minutes out, I dove back under, pushing my View to the present and the new vantage as quickly as I was able. He wasn¡¯t much easier to follow from a third-person vantage. He mostly stayed low to the ground, twisting and sprinting in different directions, spinning and ducking at odd angles. He occasionally made a sudden back flip or forward leap but always into some spring or roll that set him in a different direction. Three blue bursts had passed harmlessly into the ground as the woman tried to track him, and one had hit another parked car pushing it off the road. None had hit Spinner. ¡°I think he¡¯s got a tracker in his visor,¡± I heard a different woman¡¯s voice say. I presumed it was Fray, riding to the scene. ¡°He¡¯s waiting for a clear solution to put them down but he¡¯s not getting one.¡± ¡°Hold on man, we¡¯re almost there!¡± That voice reverberated over the channel at surprising volume; Carcajou was ready to fight. Spinner didn¡¯t respond, but HQ did. ¡°Based on the suspect¡¯s power range, we will be dropping you half a klick north on Fourth Street to reinforce Spinner.¡± The voices seemed surreal, being so removed from the intense battle in front of my sight. ¡°What about the other three?¡± ¡°We are setting up another blockade to try to confront them. No indication what the other super does.¡± I dropped my View again and quickly responded. ¡°Enhanced strength,¡± my synthetic voice said over the comm. ¡°He pushed a police vehicle away with one hand earlier.¡± ¡°Who¡¯s this?¡± Carcajou¡¯s voice came across as more of a bellow than a roar this time. ¡°Delphic is supporting,¡± responded HQ. ¡°Any other intel to share?¡± I thought for a minute about what I had seen the woman do with the vehicles, and the undamaged street. ¡°Confirm, please. Officers were hit with concussive blasts but all survived. Is that correct?¡± A momentary pause before the answer. ¡°That¡¯s right.¡± ¡°Then her force is mass-proportional rather than mass-invariant.¡± I got no response over the channel, so I continued. ¡°Spinner is stronger than her blast.¡± I heard a small huff that I realized was what the woman in HQ used as a scoffing sound. ¡°She blasted a car into another car. That¡¯s thousands of pounds of force.¡± ¡°It¡¯s thousands of pounds of metal,¡± came my reply. ¡°There aren¡¯t dents in any of the vehicles where the blasts hit. And there are no cracks or other marks in the street where the blasts missed.¡± Another gunshot rang out, but it was impossible to get a fix on the action from only Spinner¡¯s erratic perspective. The line was silent several seconds, other than Spinner¡¯s labored breathing and occasional slaps on the pavement. HQ broke the silence: ¡°The other super is charging the blockade. We are diverting Caracajou and Fray to their position.¡± There was a rumble-filled moan over the line¡­ it was Carcajou and he didn¡¯t sound happy. ¡°What does HE do then?!¡± There was no confusion about who ¡°HE¡± was. ¡°Delphic?¡± One word from HQ, and then silence on the channel. Apparently my intel (read: ¡°guess¡±) was as good as a plan now. ¡°Spinner, can you get to her by soaking one blast?¡± ¡°Yep.¡± An immediate response with no hesitation. ¡°If you can somehow jump towards her with your full strength, that should be enough to overcome her blast force.¡± But by the time the synthetic voice said the word ¡°enough,¡± Spinner had launched himself off the street curb closest to the woman and opposite the gunman. His visor cam got a clear shot of her hard eyes and savage grimace as the intense blue light pulsed out from her hands, and Spinner¡¯s forward momentum reduced noticeably but not nearly enough. Even at sub-second windows, Spinner¡¯s acrobatics were remarkable. His launch had been slightly off-center and with sufficient torque to allow him to brush past the woman¡¯s shoulder and land an axe kick solidly in her back. She went face-down with an audible ¡°thump¡± and didn¡¯t try to get back up. Spinner landed, crouched according to the camera angle, and looked up at the gunman. He waited. The gunman dropped his weapon and hit his knees. A few blocks away, a small woman in a red and orange jumpsuit stepped out of a van and into chaos. Watching from her cam, and Carcajou¡¯s just behind her, I could see a lone figure in black pounding repeatedly on an already battered cruiser, then shoving the vehicle out of the way to get at the men behind. Occasional gunfire rang out even as the cops backed away from their vehicles. At the heroes¡¯ feet were the bloody forms of the other two men, and it wasn¡¯t hard to see what had happened. The men had confronted the blockade, banking on an apparently bulletproof super to drive the cops away like last time. The cops had eventually opened fire ¨C and while the leader was bulletproof, the other two were not. What might have started out with some semblance of a plan was now just a violent rush in blind anger. Fray turned back to Carcajou for only a second, long enough to say, ¡°I got the target, you help the civvies.¡± She wore an orange mask over her nose and mouth with oversized teeth painted over it; the top half of her face was visible under a hood. Fray had bulky gloves that extended up her forearms and several pieces of equipment hung from a utility belt and netting on her back. Carcajou¡¯s camera showed him kneeling to examine one of the two injured suspects while Fray moved forward quickly and, depressing a button on one wrist, shot taser leads directly into the attacking man¡¯s back. He gave a shout of pain as electricity discharged, and he whirled around on his new attacker. Fray continued to advance, launching a set of taser leads from her other wrist which immediately began pumping the man with further volts. The super was starting to look unsteady on his feet, but he charged forward, with arms out to grab Fray. She danced backward and grabbed each of his wrists in one of her hands. As soon as both hands were touching the man, there was a blue glow at both points of contact; the man tensed up, spasming, his eyes glazed. After several seconds, Fray let the man go and he fell limply to the ground. Carcajou had produced some medical bandaging from somewhere and was competently wrapping up bullet wounds to reduce blood loss. Now that the violence was over, police approached to assist the first aid efforts and take custody of the criminals. A similar bustle was ramping up at Spinner¡¯s location, and the supers stayed at each scene long enough to make sure the thieves with powers were adequately restrained. It was at Spinner¡¯s site where the news crews first arrived. The woman had awakened by this time but didn¡¯t seem inclined to give the police any more trouble. Spinner had directed that her arms be tightly bound behind her back. Removing her mask revealed a wrinkled face, dark and dangerous eyes set within deep copper skin. She glared at everything with naked contempt. When the woman saw the first news crew approach, the camera recording the upended cars and smashed storefronts along the road, she stepped towards them; her police attendants stayed alongside but made no attempt to stop her. Spinner hung back. I suspected he was as interested as anyone else to hear what she had to say. The reporter kept glancing over her shoulder as she approached the woman, narrating into her hand mic. ¡°This is 17 News Ottawa, first on the scene downtown where a Super Battle has taken place. The devastation ¨C¡± But the woman had waited long enough, and she began yelling at the reporter, who quickly moved the mic into her face to catch her words clearly. ¡°They wouldn¡¯t give them back! They¡¯re people, not objects. You can¡¯t study people. It¡¯s grave-robbing! They profane our grandparents. They make us all like animals!¡± She took a breath, then, giving the reporter time to ask, ¡°So you did this?¡± ¡°No!¡± she shouted. ¡°They did this, the government. All we did was take back what was ours. What had been stolen, that¡¯s all.¡± She shook her head, and some of her long grey hair flew into her face. ¡°We didn¡¯t hurt anybody, we weren¡¯t going to hurt anybody. They were ours! They stole what was ours. We took it back! Didn¡¯t hurt anybody.¡± The reporter asked, ¡°Who are you?¡± but the woman didn¡¯t respond. She was crying now, although her eyes were still no less hard or hateful. A second news crew arrived at the same time that a police wagon pulled up, and both took footage of Spinner helping uniformed police load the two bound figures into the back of the vehicle. Two microphones were thrust in his face as he turned away from the van. ¡°17 News Ottawa. What happened here?¡± The second crew seemed happy to let the first reporter ask the questions. ¡°Crime suspects fleein¡¯ on foot.¡± I noticed that Spinner¡¯s Boston accent was far thicker and broader again in front of the cameras. ¡°Five of ¡¯em, two supers. One of ¡¯em starts throwing cars around, so they called OST in to take care of it.¡± ¡°Are you a new member of Ottawa Super Team? What¡¯s your name?¡± ¡°Yeah no, I¡¯m visiting from out of town. Spinner, New England Super Team. Boston.¡± Although I was still watching through Spinner¡¯s own camera, I was certain his smile was at full brightness. ¡°You took down both those supers by yourself?¡± ¡°Nah, just the one super here. Fray and Carcajou took down the other when the perps split up.¡± I saw his glove gesture east. ¡°And anyway it wasn¡¯t just me, I had Delphic helping me out.¡± I was not expecting to get any public acknowledgement, as I was seldom mentioned by other supers in front of the press. I felt an upwelling of pride; it was nice to be acknowledged, despite the possible ramifications of more exposure. ¡°You and Delphic fought together against those two?¡± ¡°Sort of, yeah. Delphic is like a digital hero or whatever. He analyzed the situation and, like, figured out how I could take them out.¡± Projected clearly to the cameras: ¡°Thanks, buddy! Couldn¡¯ta done it withoutcha!¡± The voice from HQ came over the channel. ¡°Spinner, please report to headquarters for a debriefing.¡± ¡°Gotta go!¡± The super didn¡¯t take any time for pleasantries. The motion of the camera suggested an abrupt pivot and all-out sprint with an impressively superhuman jump across the nearby intersection. Checking the other scene, three ambulances had been called and three figures were loaded in on gurneys. I saw Fray climb in with the super, restrained with reinforced metal bands across his limbs and torso, while Carcajou climbed back up into the police wagon to be taken back to HQ. From Carcajou¡¯s camera, I saw all three of the EMT vehicles leave the scene. Only two ran their sirens. It didn¡¯t take long for me to confirm that, yes, of the two men who went down with bullet wounds, only one survived. I took a little more time to see what they had been up to. The five of them had broken into a lab facility associated with the University of Ottawa and emptied a bunch of specimen cases. They had loaded all of the bones and tools they could find into their bags. I believed that woman, whatever her name was. These were clearly First Nations people trying to reclaim what they saw as their own. I didn¡¯t see any greed or bloodlust in what they had done: just a desire to have those bones back, to set them to rest where they belonged. But whatever their motives, they had put people¡¯s lives in danger, even shot at Spinner. They would surely go to jail for a long time. For the two supers, it was likely to be the rest of their lives. I couldn¡¯t deny this was justice, but it didn¡¯t feel like there was any clear good in it, either. The whole debacle was an unexpected and exhausting ending to a long day. I confirmed the timing on my electrical repair jobs for the next morning and went upstairs to make myself a late dinner. Chapter 14 - Interview The media mayhem built throughout the morning, but I was blissfully unaware of it until noon. I had gone to my parents¡¯ again for a quick breakfast and broke the ¡°seed asset¡± news to Paris, and she had freaked out and admonished me about as expected. The morning repair calls and recovery of the sensors had gone without incident. As lunchtime loomed, I had a cart full of groceries and was finishing up making my produce selections when my sister¡¯s tone sounded. Her message to me was just a link. I followed it to a political blog site ¨C one of the ridiculous polemic sites that pay writers by the kiloclick ¨C and was confronted with the headline: ¡°¡®You Weren¡¯t F***ing There¡¯ ¨C Peregrine Attacks Crusoe Live on Air.¡± I thought Peregrine had done the media rounds on the Washington Monument incident on Tuesday, but the blogs got traffic by endlessly rehashing old news, so it might have just been a late piece. But, in fact, it wasn¡¯t. The article quickly informed the reader that, earlier that morning, the USST hero had lost his cool when asked about the reports that two visiting American supers had interfered in an altercation between First Nations protesters and the Canadian government. An accompanying picture showed a poor grey-haired woman, her arms visibly restrained, weeping while Spinner grinned in the background. It was a very suggestive picture for the narrative they were selling. Spinner looked young, white, powerful, and smug. Molina, as the article informed me her name was, looked old, frail, oppressed, and broken. The angle was obvious. The headline was an exaggeration, thankfully. Peregrine had interrupted the host, Amir Crusoe, as he was asking why Spinner hadn¡¯t tried to talk Molina down rather than ¡°assaulting¡± her. His rant had not made him look either measured or compassionate. The footage being played and replayed was filmed from the second floor of a nearby building and showed only the tail end of the encounter, as Spinner leapt into the woman, took a blast from her with little visible effect, and then hit her from behind. Out of context, it looked very much like a powerful man beating down and physically dominating somebody¡¯s aging mother. With these optics, I could understand why there was a mounting buzz to lash out at someone, and Spinner certainly seemed to be taking the brunt of it. He had been quite insistent on mentioning my involvement, too. I had seen the publicity downsides vaguely last night; they were in sharp focus today. I spent a lot less time than usual selecting produce ¨C grabbing and bagging the first item I reached rather than a choosy perusal ¨C and was through checkout and back to my house within 25 minutes of receiving Paris¡¯s first message. I threw unopened grocery bags into my fridge and freezer and headed downstairs. I had quite a few messages waiting. Agent Lewis apparently thought an immediate teleconference was necessary. He said so in several different instant messages and in repeated invitations to join calls that I had already missed. Delphic¡¯s email address that I handed out only to contacts in the super community had been written to by five different heroes, all of whom left similar missives to express their support, as well as advice for talking to the media that circled around the theme of ¡°stick to the message and don¡¯t say too much.¡± Most interesting was that apparently somebody at the FBI or RCMP had leaked my direct number for teleconference calls, because I had three missed calls from a number that turned out to be a producer for a popular pundit with an evening show. I briefly checked my other accounts. Doc had sent me a list of names and page numbers which corresponded to entries from the resume list with PR expertise. While I was mulling that over, another call came in from Agent Lewis, and against my better judgment I answered. ¡°Delphic. Lewis here.¡± The young professional¡¯s dark suit was flawless as always but his hair was mussed. His tone was more frazzled than usual. ¡°Hold on a minute; I¡¯m going to get Nibuo on the line.¡± I drew a blank on the name. A quick internet search filled in that Shannah Nibuo was a DoJ media liaison, and with that connection I vaguely recalled supers mentioning her before in the context of PR. A second image joined the first. From the camera¡¯s view of her head and torso, the woman appeared to be carrying a lot of extra weight; no obvious makeup obscured the lines on her face. Her smile was broad and practiced, white teeth against very dark skin. ¡°Delphic, I don¡¯t believe we have met. I¡¯m Shannah Nibuo; I help our super teams with their public image. Thanks for getting back with me so quickly.¡± ¡°Good afternoon. Can I ask what this is about?¡± I had directed the question more at Lewis but it was Nibuo who answered. ¡°The super teams administration here at the DoJ would like you to accept an invitation to go on Krystal West¡¯s show tonight on cable news.¡± I had to collect myself for a moment, as this was the opposite of what I was expecting. I genuinely thought they were calling to talk me out of media interviews. Although in retrospect, the emails from my super contacts hinted that they were expecting Delphic to end up saying something to the news. When I didn¡¯t immediately respond, the media liaison spoke again. ¡°We have tentatively confirmed with West¡¯s team that you can appear, but obviously the choice is yours. Is this something you are willing to do?¡± ¡°Can I ask why you want me to do this?¡± I knew that certain hi-profile supers did their share of media circuits, but I presumed it was something the government tried to tightly control. Nibuo¡¯s smile, which has struck me as pretense to begin with, had already faded to a businesslike expression. ¡°We¡¯re dealing with a somewhat sticky situation because of your and Spinner¡¯s involvement in the incident. The ongoing investigation into Lamarck is giving this story more legs than it might normally have. It would help for you to be seen reaffirming that you recognize you¡¯re guests in Canada and working at the invitation of their government.¡± ¡°I can do that,¡± I agreed. The synthesized voice didn¡¯t let me express the reluctance I was feeling. ¡°Has the OST not already put out a statement confirming we were working at their request?¡± Nibuo¡¯s expression betrayed frustration, and Lewis¡¯s mirrored it. After a short pause, it was Lewis who responded. ¡°They haven¡¯t, and we don¡¯t think they will.¡± That certainly explained the ongoing issues. ¡°Why not? Did Spinner or I break protocol?¡± Lewis shook his head. ¡°We think they¡¯ve been asked to keep quiet until they can hammer out a recruitment deal.¡± ¡°With the two supers?¡± Nibuo said, ¡°Northern Canada is always understaffed; few of the locals are registered supers and nobody else wants to work up there. Molina and Brick would add two serious heavies to the roster.¡± It seemed like a very cynical approach to offer police powers to people who had been in a firefight with authorities just the day before, but I could understand why the government wouldn¡¯t want its hands tied with what could end up being a delicate PR position. But the silence from Canada would make our protestations seem far less sincere; I could understand why my own handlers would risk putting me in front of a camera (figuratively speaking). I typed out my next question and sent it. ¡°Is there anything I need to do to prepare?¡± ¡°I¡¯ll email you a rundown of talking points and suggestions. Just remember not to reveal anything about the Lamarck investigation that isn¡¯t already public.¡± ¡°Or the Michaels case,¡± Lewis interjected. ¡°The recovery of Vivi is public, but the details you gave us about the kidnappers are still sensitive.¡± I wondered how Michaels and Effitech were dividing their attention between pursuing the kidnappers and supporting the shooting investigation. Considering how confident the RCMP seemed to be in their own teams, I suspected the contractor company was mostly free to work on the former. ¡°Acknowledged,¡± sounded the Delphic response. ¡°I promise not to reveal state secrets or unveil my plans for the overthrow of the United States on national television.¡± After a short pause, Lewis explained to Nibuo, ¡°He intended that as a joke.¡± She ended the call with sincere thanks from the DoJ. The Whole Story with Krystal West was a pundit vehicle, typical of the after-dinner program lineup at any of the cable news stations. I easily arranged a time to call in before the show would start, giving significant leeway to make sure nothing was wrong with the feed in either direction. The producer was disappointed to find out that Delphic didn¡¯t have a ¡°live¡± avatar of any kind ¨C just a still image and a synthesized voice ¨C but he said they¡¯d make it work. With about three hours to spare, I started water boiling for a quick and simple pasta dish and did some more homework. I tracked the other major interviews on this point that had been made in the day, read some articles on Molina and her crew, and made a couple of more discreet inquiries. I wanted to be prepared for any of the verbal traps these sorts of interviews were known for. I took one call during this preparatory period. Spinner gave me a grin that was, somehow, just as world-weary today as it had looked the last time I had seen him the night before. ¡°Hey man. How¡¯re ya holding up?¡± His smoothness and accent were both fully switched on. The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°Hi, Spinner. I¡¯m sorry to report that I haven¡¯t made any progress on our suspect list since last night,¡± I lamented. ¡°The altercation from yesterday has eaten into my time.¡± Spinner chuckled. ¡°Yeah, no kidding. It¡¯s been damage control all day.¡± He gave a shrug. ¡°I wanted to make sure we were okay.¡± It was hard to tell with his upper face under the broad viser, but he sounded uncertain of himself, like he was genuinely worried he had done something to upset me. In the moment, I couldn¡¯t think of anything he had done that would cause that reaction. ¡°Certainly, Spinner. I enjoyed working with you last night. I wasn¡¯t aware there was a reason why we might not be okay.¡± I wanted to phrase it more as a question, but I wasn¡¯t sure how to do so in a way that would convey the subtlety within a synthesized voice. His second shrug was a rerun of the first. ¡°If we¡¯re good, we¡¯re good,¡± he started, ¡°but I feel like I didn¡¯t do you a solid by having OST dial you in yesterday, and then shout out to you with that news crew. I heard Shannah has you facing down West later.¡± Apparently news traveled fast. ¡°Quite the opposite. I appreciate you including me, and then trusting my assessment. It was my pleasure to help.¡± The pause stretched, so I added, ¡°You have nothing to be sorry for, Spinner. You treated me like a fellow hero. Not all heroes do that. Thank you.¡± Spinner¡¯s grin brightened in some hard-to-define manner. ¡°No problem, man, you deserve it. You¡¯ve always done good by my team, y¡¯know?¡± He cocked his head. ¡°Hey, uh, I know you probably need to like defrag or something for the interview tonight, but when all this dies down, you and me should have a chat with 4cast. NEST has been leading the country in anticipating and responding to crime in a proactive way, and your skills could really help us out. Analytics and stuff.¡± He nodded. ¡°Good luck, man ¨C I got your back, okay?¡± ¡°Thanks, Spinner,¡± I sent before ending the call. At least if I was going to be raked over the coals, there was one person out there who was unambiguously thankful for my help. Over the last ninety minutes before the call, I asked for and received confirmation from Doc on one particular fact, prepared a graphic and a couple of video segments, and pre-typed a dozen longer responses to probable questions. I dialed in at the appropriate time. The image that appeared on my screen was a desk-up view of a square-shouldered blonde. Krystal West was pretty in the conventional way acceptable to TV executives ¨C a fit young white woman with prominent curves. She was reviewing a small stack of papers as a gentleman mostly out of the shot applied another layer of makeup. ¡°Delphic?¡± her voice was high-pitched but resonant, not nasal or squeaky. She kept her mouth relaxed for the make-up but I could see the start of a smile in her eyes. ¡°This is Delphic,¡± I quickly wrote. ¡°Good evening, Ms. West.¡± ¡°Ah good! Mary said she had trouble getting hold of your people. I was really hoping you could be on with me tonight. Thanks, Mark!¡± As the makeup man moved away, she gave a full smile into the camera. Every word was precisely enunciated and spoken slowly; it put weight behind what she was saying. ¡°This format will be okay for the interview? The techs wanted to make sure we could hear and see each other clearly. It¡¯s just that avatar for you?¡± ¡°I have a couple of graphics to display based on what we discuss.¡± ¡°Good. Is that okay, Bill? We¡¯ve got what we need?¡± A short pause. ¡°Good, thank you! Okay, we have an introduction and clip that should last eight minutes, then we¡¯ll introduce you and talk. We should be on a little over fifteen minutes. Time, please?¡± I presumed she was getting answers from her earpiece; I wasn¡¯t hearing them. ¡°Good. Okay, Delphic, that means you¡¯re on in twelve minutes! Thank you!¡± She turned her head to the side and said something, but I heard no sound; they must have cut her mic. The view cycled between a wide-shot and two close-shot cameras. I watched Krystal sip from a water bottle and lightly swipe a tissue across her lips. She nodded to someone and pulled her posture upward, the smile replaced with a serious if open expression. ¡°Good evening.¡± Krystal had dropped into a smooth, rhythmic voice that promised hard facts and genuine concern. ¡°At about this time yesterday, Ottawa citizens watched as its police force stared down First Nations protesters, ending in gunfire and the loss of one young man¡¯s life. Police were surprised during the confrontation when two of the protesters used super powers to defend themselves, prompting the Ottawa Super Team to send its own supers in response.¡± Her face and voice each became more animated as she came to the twist. ¡°But before the Canadian supers could arrive, two American supers intervened, in a manner that some onlookers have described as ¡®brutal.''¡± The sound cut out again, and Krystal took several sips of her water while looking away from the camera. I could surmise that they had cut together the footage of Spinner kicking Molina with an ¡®eyewitness¡¯ interview. I wondered how they would stretch that into eight minutes; in reality it was a little over five when Krystal nodded and resumed her television posture. ¡°A fair question ¨C one which we are asking here, on The Whole Story.¡± She strung out the words like a title of honor. ¡°Speaking with us tonight is an unregistered super who goes by the name ¡®Delphic¡¯ and was reportedly Spinner¡¯s partner during last night¡¯s events. Delphic, thank you for being with us.¡± I started to respond, but after only a very short pause for breath she continued on. ¡°The articles on this have reported you as an American super, but my understanding is that you actually reside in the internet, is that correct? Do you consider yourself an American?¡± These were not the questions I had prepared for, but after a moment of surprise I composed an answer. ¡°It¡¯s a pleasure to be here, Krystal. I was born and raised in the United States and I certainly consider myself an American. It¡¯s true that an accident left me without a physical body, but I still work and pay taxes as a US citizen.¡± ¡°A corporation can pay taxes, too, and I¡¯d hardly consider it a person. But thanks for clarifying your position. As an American, do you think it¡¯s your job to involve yourself in our allies¡¯ internal affairs? You do agree this was an internal matter, don¡¯t you?¡± There were so many erroneous assumptions underlying these questions that it was hard to unpack them. I took a straightforward approach. ¡°It was a theft in progress. Spinner and I were contacted by the Ottawa Team to help.¡± ¡°That¡¯s not what the Canadian government is saying. Can you explain why American supers would feel the need to get involved based on no more than your own opinion that your help was required?¡± Her words and tone blended together seamlessly to created a palpable push. She intended to keep me off-balance. She wanted this whole conversation framed within illegitimate American action. So, I activated a prepared file. My avatar was overlaid with the transcript of the audio that played: Ottawa HQ¡¯s call to Spinner. The clip stopped before the first hard cut and then seamlessly resumed just as Spinner first encountered Molina, ending with the voice from HQ saying, ¡°Spinner, you may engage at your readiness.¡± Krystal didn¡¯t miss a beat, although I could tell I had surprised her. ¡°Okay, thank you. We just heard the call from Ottawa HQ to Spinner authorizing him to engage. Are you going to be in any sort of trouble for sharing that?¡± I had a prewritten answer for this question. ¡°I would never put heroes in danger by sharing private or sensitive information. Everything I played reflects facts about the case that are already public. And from the legal side, these are recordings of mine permitted under both US and Canadian law.¡± ¡°I guess that¡¯s for the courts to decide.¡± She pivoted topics with ease. ¡°First Nations groups say this is symptomatic of how law enforcement treats them ¨C as criminals instead of citizens. The decision to assault Molina rather than talking to her¡­ was that yours or Spinner¡¯s?¡± ¡°I would say the decision to fight was made by the two people who attacked. Gerard Mason shot at Spinner. Molina Sawyer threw a car at him. This was before any of them had a chance to say a word.¡± ¡°But Spinner had already been ordered to arrest them. Do you not think native peoples have the right to defend themselves?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think anyone has the right to shoot at law enforcement while running away with stolen property, no.¡± ¡°So you don¡¯t believe them when they claim that they were reclaiming what rightfully belonged to them? The bones and tools of their ancestors?¡± ¡°Canadian universities don¡¯t study the artifacts of modern indigenous groups without their express permission. These remains ¨C many of which were damaged by the rough handling they received ¨C were from over a thousand years ago, from groups that left no modern descendants.¡± ¡°So you support treating First Nations graves like science experiments, as long as they are old enough?¡± ¡°I support following Canadian law. These people broke into a lab and stole samples. Everything that happened is a logical consequence of that decision.¡± ¡°And now they should go to jail?¡± ¡°Now they should stand trial. This was a crime against a Canadian University. It will be up to the Canadian courts what happens to them.¡± ¡°So your interest is in seeing criminals brought to justice.¡± Her pace increased a bit in excitement. ¡°Is that why you and Spinner agreed to help find the assassin who shot Lamarck?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know why Spinner is helping,¡± I responded, ¡°but, yes, I¡¯d like to see the killer face justice.¡± ¡°How do you respond to accusations that you¡¯re in it for a paycheck? Isn¡¯t it true that you charge a fee to the government for every criminal you catch?¡± Her tone made it clear she didn¡¯t think much of people doing hero work for money. ¡°Yes, like other professional supers, I am paid for the work I do. I believe the work of law enforcement is extremely valuable.¡± ¡°You demand a much higher fee than most supers, though, don¡¯t you? Isn¡¯t it true that you¡¯re charging five million dollars to find Lamarck¡¯s killer? How is that not profiting off a tragedy?¡± Although I was miffed she¡¯s decided to play the ¡®mercenary¡¯ card, I was fortunately prepared for it. ¡°Krystal, you just signed a three-year deal with your network for ninety million dollars. Are you also profiting off tragedy?¡± She actually did miss a beat that time, but only one, and then she came back out swinging. ¡°You¡¯re saying that covering the news is just like law enforcement? That charging millions of dollars to help find a killer is the same as earning the market rate for delivering a news program? I hardly think the two are the same, and the difference is that I don¡¯t claim to be a hero.¡± I had a pre-written response that I entered, but it seemed my audio feed had already been cut off. Krystal continued, ¡°Delphic, we¡¯re out of time, but thank you for joining us tonight. After the break, how much do taxpayers pay our super teams, and what do they do with the money? You¡¯re watching The Whole Story with Krystal West.¡± The video feed stayed on Krystal as someone entered the frame to tease her hair. The next voice I heard wasn¡¯t Krystal¡¯s though. ¡°Hi, Delphic? I¡¯m Kevin, one of the assistant producers. That was a fantastic segment; thanks for coming on! Is there anything I can do for you?¡± I was sure that these were words he said multiple times a day. ¡°You¡¯re welcome. When the rest of the show is over, please thank Krystal for having me on. ¡± ¡°Will do!¡± I heard, and then I cut the connection. In the aftermath of the interview, I spent some time gauging the reaction on social media. The responses were more positive than I expected, and most of the negative comments were around the $5 million fee. A sizable chunk of Krystal¡¯s audience seemed to agree with her that being paid to report on tragedies isn¡¯t the same as being paid to help with them. Still, the consensus seemed to be that I had held my own, and playing the audio transcript of HQ¡¯s authorization (which I anonymously made available on a few video sharing sites) was much remarked-upon. A terse missive from Shannah thanked me for my help. As I reviewed the updated suspect list from Diane and considered if I was up for Viewing any of them tonight, I found myself looking through Doc¡¯s file of resumes instead. It was hard to miss that, if I had a publicist, I could have spent a much more productive (and enjoyable) afternoon while they dealt with the media. If my pace of high-exposure jobs continued to accelerate, I would have to seriously look at hiring help. I could certainly afford it. I responded to a message from Vill confirming that I would, in fact, make the raid the next afternoon. After a busy week, not looking like it would let up in the immediate future, I wasn¡¯t going to allow myself to cancel on my Saturday recreation. Tonight, Delphic modestly thanked all his congratulating ¡°friends¡± that wrote him after having seen the interview. Tomorrow, I, Hector, would be the one spending time with friends. Chapter 15 - Raids Saturday morning started earlier than usual. If the week leaves me feeling isolated, I often spend a late Friday night at a club downtown, nursing a beer and watching other people dance. If the week has left me drained ¨C forced to interact daily as myself or my hero persona, like this week ¨C I¡¯ll stay home instead with a book or a favorite film. The sun beat me up by less than an hour. The first half of the morning was spent with a vacuum, mop, and scrub brush. Over the summer and winter breaks, twins come home from college and take over house-cleaning tasks for several of us to line their pockets, but the rest of the year I¡¯m on my own. Paris had picked up second and third shifts for the day and so was coming by at lunchtime. Mid morning I got a text from Chu confirming the time and location of the afternoon raid. I checked the kitchen and, yes, I had apparently remembered to set a frozen package of beef out to thaw the night before, so lunch wouldn¡¯t take long. I had a couple of hours left to play hero. Pulling up the suspect list, I noticed another sheet had been added to the file and some rearrangements made. The new sheet listed flight powers, and the most highly-prioritized suspects seemed to be those who were known to fly, or (based on the cross-references in the database) had established allies that could. Of those I had already Viewed and cleared, only Yellow Rose had her own flight power, so adding flight altered the angle of attack. However, I was skeptical that this would help the search. If you include all the ways that powers can provide ¡°flight,¡± a lot of supers qualify. There are explicit flyers, of course, like Peregrine or Yellow Rose. Many supers with field projection or telekinesis, like Inexor or Molina, can lift and move themselves as easily as any other object. Even supers that manipulate materials like Polarity can often create an effect in their suit that either makes them buoyant in air or provides enough thrust for flight. Taking into account that the sniper may not have been working alone, the possibilities were myriad. Still, the connections had moved two groups up the list that piqued my interest. Both were criminal groups of supers, often called ¡°villain teams¡± because they had costumes and codenames just as hero teams did. Both had been spotted within the last month, but not in North America, which is why they weren¡¯t initially considered likely. The Few currently had five members at large in Sao Paulo. The group started a decade ago when four members of a Texas-based security firm were arrested for trying to run a ¡°protection¡± racket, arranging for businesses to be vandalized and burgled unless they received periodic payment. They fled south, and one was confirmed to have been killed in a firefight in El Salvador. When they popped up in Brazil they added two local villains to their crew. Brazil¡¯s government-aligned super forces tended not to venture much outside the Rio area, and a number of syndicates controlled much of the rest of the country. The Few fit right in. The villain team had been reported as part of a turf war three weeks previously. Local police investigated gunfire and found the team destroying buildings in a junkyard that was used to alter and sell stolen cars. As soon as they spotted the cops, the villains ran, but were identified before they could get away. I first brought up Doc¡¯s lab over in Eutopia, and quickly elevated my vantage for a long-distance move. Rather than trying to hit specific landmarks, I just headed east as fast I could until I hit water. I dropped my View to study a map of the Atlantic Coastline. Sao Paulo was within my sites after about 20 minutes. Finding the junkyard took another 20 minutes, and was only possible because the modern internet can match locations to satellite footage so easily. (At least JFK¡¯s notorious obsession with space had yielded real benefits in communication here on Earth once NASA had finally given up on the ridiculous goal of trying to reach the Moon and focused on affordable launches to low Earth orbit.) At the present it seemed abandoned, the buildings half torn apart. As I turned the clock back 20 days, I got to see the cause first-hand. I rewound rapidly while watching a door on a small outbuilding hanging by one hinge, and I stopped when I saw it had been restored. Allowing the scene to go forward again, I saw a man reach down with a gauntleted hand to tear the door off its frame. The man wore a stylized helmet, gauntlets, and thick boots over what appeared to be regular clothes. This was Jank, the team¡¯s only flyer ¨C and that was using the term ¡°flyer¡± loosely. Jank used impractically heavy metal accessories that could cause considerable damage when moved in concert with his focused power, and he could generate enough force to lift himself and another person with it. I suspected this slow and awkward mode of flight was too strenuous for Jank to keep up over significant distances. The way Jank moved back from the door, it was clear that gunfire was the expected response. There were three men inside wearing greasy coveralls and firing weapons. The men had moved a tall workbench away from the wall and were crouching behind it. I could see them flinch as the sound of the shots reverberated in the small space. Jank beckoned to the rest of his crew. Dearth and Dread were dressed identically in thin burgundy suits with full face masks. Iguana and Poison Frog didn¡¯t bother with masks and wore T-shirts with animal patterns above camo-pattern fatigues. All four of them wore combat boots, harnesses with knives and handguns, and netting with tactical gear. After a few hand signals toward the door, Iguana held Dread¡¯s hand and the two of them disappeared. I could see Jank yelling something, and looked over to see that one of the men yelled something back. The standoff was over a minute later when Dread and Iguana appeared directly behind the men, each with a gun already firing point blank at a different skull. Dread dispatched the third man with a third bullet before the man could finish turning around. Looking around the junkyard, I noticed the rest of the buildings resembled their damaged state in the present, which told me I was near the end of the encounter. Two police vehicles had driven up at the yard gate, lights flashing, and four uniformed officers got out and drew weapons before moving into the yard. The Few heard the sirens and were not idle. Dearth and Dread drew weapons and took up positions behind tall piles of scrap while Jank worked on opening a hole in the fence behind the out building. I watched the twins alternate cover fire while occasionally shifting positions. I hadn¡¯t ever had to deal with ¡°linked¡± supers, but the way they could effortlessly coordinate without any hesitation or visible signal impressed me. By the time the two rear-guard supers turned tail and fled through the fence¡¯s newest egress, they had given the rest of their crew a sizable head start. I followed them through streets and alleys of various sizes and, while nowhere near ¡°speedster¡± levels of speed, the twins were certainly keeping a sustained pace of Olympic caliber. The cops would not be catching up on foot. The pair were about two miles from the junkyard when they jumped into an aging coupe and sped away, shedding their costumes in the car and donning nondescript lounge wear. Their features were dark enough that they would not look out-of-place next to locals; based on photos in the file I had studied earlier, only Jank was pale enough to really stand out in southern Brazil. The coupe pulled up at a sizable home built on the beach, walled in on three sides and overlooking the ocean. The other three supers had already arrived in an unmarked van, and everyone was in civilian clothes as they walked in. I noted the house¡¯s location and address, then with some difficulty counted back the right number of days from the present. I was in luck, in that at the same time Lamarck was shot a quarter of the way around the world in Ottawa, both Jank and Iguana were still asleep in their beds. It was satisfying to update the ¡°last known location¡± fields in the suspect file with the Few¡¯s current whereabouts. The only issue for me was that in none of the snooping I had done did Poison Frog use his powers. The suspect entry was blank too. It was an itch I knew I would have to get around to scratching. I had a bit of time before I expected Paris for lunch, so I headed upstairs to chop the veggies and brown the meat. It was less than ten minutes before the doorbell rang. I wasn¡¯t expecting that, because Paris was happy to let herself in. An opened door revealed, not my sister, but two of my closest friends. Larry and Vill stood wrapped up against the cold, their arms loaded down with bags of chips and two boxes of cola cans. I immediately let them in and unburdened them in the kitchen, and they happily doffed their winter coats in the warm house. ¡°Did I miss a message? I wasn¡¯t expecting you,¡± I said as I hung their coats in the closet and went to check the simmering food. Vill giggled, ¡°We decided to come over and surprise you.¡± She put her hands in her pockets shyly and gave me a broad grin. The plump blonde was dressed in a baggy sweatsuit that always looked like it was about to fall off, but didn¡¯t due to the ample curves that she was keen to conceal under it. Larry mirrored her broad grin and pushed his glasses back up his nose, adding, ¡°We brought snacks and drinks. We figured you wouldn¡¯t mind the company.¡± Having shed his coat, Larry was in a t-shirt and jeans. He was a head and shoulders taller than me, and while lanky in college, he had put on significant pounds since. I never thought a black man looked good with stubble, but Larry never seemed to put in the effort to stay clean-shaven. ¡°You¡¯re always welcome here,¡± I told them sincerely. ¡°I just wasn¡¯t expecting you. Have you had lunch?¡± They met each other¡¯s eyes as they shook their heads, grinning, and then we all three broke down in relaxed laughter. Everyone in the room understood the transparent ploy: they had showed up early enough to guarantee I¡¯d invite them to lunch. A variation of this played out at least once every couple of months, as Vill particularly was always looking for excuses for the three of us to get together. It seemed silly to her that the half of the group that had settled in the same city wouldn¡¯t meet in person more often. Stretching lunch for two into a meal for four was easily done. I boiled a pot of water and asked Vill to help me add some linguini while I finished stirring the vegetables into the meat. Larry retrieved their boxes from the car and started setting up in the living room. My guest wifi was plenty stable enough for the afternoon raid. Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Lunch was on the dining room table at the same time Paris arrived. There were somewhat awkward greetings as my friends respected Paris¡¯s desire not to be touched, and Paris rethought her expected topics of conversation for the meal in light of the added company. I slid a premade pie from the freezer into the oven as we sat down to the meal. A quickly tossed salad and plenty of pasta filled out what otherwise would have seemed a meager serving of beef. Paris sat at the head of the table against the back wall, where no one would need to move past her. ¡°So, Detective Donnell, now, huh?¡± Larry opened. My sister smiled. ¡°Just this spring. I¡¯m lucky to get to work homicide at my age.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not luck,¡± I disagreed. ¡°It¡¯s dedication. You¡¯ve always put in more hours than anyone else and shown what you could do.¡± Larry nodded, ¡°Don¡¯t even try to be modest, Paris. Our boy here tells us what you¡¯re up to; you¡¯ve been ratted out.¡± He winked at her as he took a bite off his fork. Larry was the most outgoing of our group and had always been a bit flirty, in a goofy casual way, with my sister. ¡°If you¡¯re a detective now, what¡¯s with the uniform? I mean, it looks good on you,¡± another cheesy wink, ¡°but I thought detectives wore suits.¡± Paris shrugged. ¡°I¡¯m on patrol today. Anybody on the force can sign up to pull extra shifts, and I decided that I would keep my edge better if I didn¡¯t forget how to walk a beat.¡± She took two quick bites before adding, ¡°Even during the week I try to work a double, one desk and one patrol, and unless I¡¯m out talking to witnesses I just wear my blues all day. I worked hard for the uniform; I like it.¡± Vill asked, ¡°Don¡¯t you stand out? If all the other detectives are in suits, I mean.¡± That made Paris smile, and not nicely. ¡°Honey, look at me. Ain¡¯t no way I don¡¯t stand out, makes no difference what I wear.¡± That got a chuckle out of me and Larry and an uncomfortable nod from Vill. She tended to get a little antsy when anything race-related came up, which was usually only when Paris was there as Larry and I avoided the topic with her. Vill had grown up in a white neighborhood in a white town in a white area of Wisconsin, where issues of race just weren¡¯t discussed. It was a blissful ignorance that only white people could really afford to have, and we never saw any reason to infringe upon it. Paris, in turn, asked about my friends¡¯ career situations, and soon we were chatting about the vagaries of freelance software design and business services. By the time the pie came out, we all felt fully caught up on the parts of our lives that we shared. A couple of strained glances from Paris told me she really wanted to discuss some of our secrets, but I could only shrug in response. It would have to wait for another time. Larry moved the conversation forward on safer ground, ¡°So what do you think about the super strike?¡± He looked sideways at Paris as though he expected a strong opinion. ¡°What¡¯s this about?¡± I asked. I didn¡¯t see a confused look on Vill or Paris, so I was the only one out of the loop this time. ¡°Local news,¡± Vill responded. ¡°Remember that freezing rain earlier in the week?¡± She caught herself, ¡°Oh, right, you already said you were out doing repair jobs that morning. Duh.¡± She flushed and sat back from her plate. I connected the dots. ¡°Does this have anything to do with DST helping the police with service calls when the traffic got crazy?¡± Vill nodded. ¡°I saw one of them out myself, Argent,¡± I added by way of explanation. That earned widened eyes from around the table, especially my sister. Whom I now realized I hadn¡¯t told about this earlier. Larry said, ¡°Argent is definitely part of the group that¡¯s striking. Apparently,¡± he continued with a half-moving mouthful of pie, ¡°it¡¯s a payroll issue. DST didn¡¯t budget for the extra hours and DPD says they won¡¯t pay them. An email from the city budget office insulting the supers leaked, and here we are.¡± ¡°Meaning what? No supers protecting Detroit?¡± The city would be a sitting duck for any criminal supers that could overpower police. Larry shook his head. ¡°Nobody seems to know exactly what it means, but the ¡®striking¡¯ supers are still covering on-call shifts. I can¡¯t imagine them ignoring an emergency.¡± Paris spoke up, ¡°The loudest talk has been about them not cooperating with us on raids. Our SWAT budget has been repeatedly slashed the last couple of years because DST can provide the same support as an armored squad, but cheaper. I was part of a drug raid on Thursday and we had two supers leading the entry.¡± She had mentioned the supers¡¯ involvement offhand at breakfast the previous morning, but it wasn¡¯t unusual enough for me to ask for details. Vill raised an eyebrow. ¡°You¡¯re both rubbing elbows with local celebrities this week, huh?¡± I shrugged. ¡°I can¡¯t see this ending up in the supers¡¯ favor. Strikes that put lives at risk get way unpopular way fast.¡± Larry mirrored my shrug, ¡°They seem to be hoping that the police chief will wise up quickly and respond with an olive branch. Everyone¡¯s hoping this resolves before lives are actually put at risk.¡± ¡°Speaking of putting lives at risk,¡± Paris stood up, ¡°I need to get to my shift.¡± At a pointed look from her I stood too so she could pass my way. ¡°It was good to see you two.¡± To me, ¡°You can keep ¡¯em around a few months longer. Enjoy your game.¡± My living room was set up with the recliner most centrally located in front of the flat screen wall display, because its main use was for the weekly raid and my occasional solo DVD consumption. My friends had gotten out a card table and set their boxes under it, their two monitors sitting back-to-back in the center. I personally would have figured that transferring macros and game settings to a laptop would be easier than transporting a full tower system across town, but everybody has their gaming quirks. I donned and switched on my wireless headset before moving my TV tray, with my keyboard and mouse already atop it, in front of my recliner. ¡°Hey Hector,¡± came the friendly light voice of Chu over my headset. ¡°Hi,¡± I replied, and continued warmly, ¡°guess who decided to join me for lunch again today?¡± My friend chuckled. ¡°Once a freeloader, always a freeloader. You should know.¡± Chu teased us about the fact that, thanks to him, none of us paid a monthly subscription fee for the game we all played. Chu worked as a programmer for the game¡¯s publisher and was eligible for a half-dozen free ¡®family¡¯ accounts that he gave to us. Since most of us only played that game during our weekly group session, this short circuited any discussion about whether one session a week was worth a monthly fee. As the loading screen came up on my wall display, Terry, Larry, and Vill added their voices to the channel. Despite having a wife, two children, and a demanding job as a lobbyist in Atlanta, Terry was fastidiously punctual and never missed any portion of our game time. After a quick round of greetings, the channel went silent as we all logged in and prepared our characters for the day¡¯s adventure. Noah joined us midway through our pre-raid preparations. While Terry and Chu were both well-compensated for full-time, difficult work, Noah¡¯s job was the one that most people would call ¡°successful.¡± He had taken his skills to Wall Street and was now a prominent financial analyst and fund manager. Weekend work was a normal part of his lifestyle, now, and it was getting rarer that he managed to join us at all. When the whole group got together, I was always entertained by how varied our lives were. We all started out as computer science and engineering double majors at the University of Michigan, where we became fast and (I hoped) lifelong friends. And while I knew there was no guarantee this would continue, it was nice that more than half a decade after graduation we still managed to spend time with each other regularly. Chu¡¯s generalist led the six of us to a plateau overlooking a dark forest, the entry point for the day¡¯s encounter. We were playing a mid-level party from the Arcana faction, our second playthrough that we had started after we capped out our Nature faction characters the year before. All of us had switched out for different roles than we played the first time through, and were having a great time. My runic warder was acting as the party tank, which required good preparation and positioning and then pretty much played itself through most of the combat. While the Arcanists were seen as a high-complexity faction to play, reviews of the game suggested their quests were the most varied and their overall story arc (which each of us other than Chu had taken pains not to spoil) the best developed. Today was interesting because, as we descended from the plateau into the forest as part of our first cut scene, we were confronted by hostile NPCs that we knew as friendlies from our previous playthrough. It was neat to see some of the interaction between factions that often seemed lacking in the game outside of explicit player-versus-player zones. We soon got into the heavy business of exploring and clearing out the forest, with Larry¡¯s beguiler enchantress keeping distant enemies under control while I drew close enemies to focus on me and the rest of the party chipped away with solid damage. It was Terry that eventually opened up the chat to current events once we had our rhythm going. ¡°Did anybody else notice how much the super teams were in the news this week?¡± he opened, and then waited for some noncommittal grunts of agreement before continuing. ¡°First there was the DC super battle, then not one but two in Ottawa, and Peregrine involved in both.¡± ¡°Not really,¡± Larry said. ¡°He was in DC, yeah, but he wasn¡¯t actually in Canada for either of the two incidents either. He just likes media attention.¡± ¡°I thought he was involved with that Native American lady, Molina?¡± Vill spoke up. ¡°I think that was just Spinner and Delphic,¡± Larry replied. ¡°Anybody else remember?¡± Noah answered, ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s right. Peregrine was just the one that cussed out the guy on the morning news.¡± Terry laughed out loud at that, a bit startling over the line. ¡°That was hilarious! Everybody watched the clip, right?¡± Affirming grunts. ¡°Crusoe looked like it was Christmas come early! And then Delphic revealing Krystal¡¯s salary on air, did you see that? They¡¯ve tried to push shorter clips of his interview that don¡¯t include it, but I watched that one live.¡± He chuckled to himself as his character hit a giant forest animal with some sort of ice bolt and he started charging up. ¡°Two trolls incoming,¡± Larry said mostly for my benefit as a stun wore off them. I sent a pain rune at both and refreshed my shields. ¡°I don¡¯t know, it seemed like he was deflecting. Five million does seem excessive to help catch a criminal. Even when the teams actually stop villains in the act they don¡¯t get paid that much.¡± ¡°Agh, took a crit,¡± I interjected, ¡°heals please.¡± ¡°I got it,¡± Chu volunteered, and through the indecipherable muddle of different lights and sounds I saw my health bar fill. ¡°I kind of see Delphic as more like a company than a person,¡± he offered. ¡°Like, he¡¯s not out there fighting, he¡¯s providing information. The search engines make a lot more money than he does, and his info probably saves hero lives just like the armor and stuff they spend millions on. Seems fair.¡± ¡°If they can find the super that did it, it¡¯s money well-spent,¡± Terry proclaimed. ¡°But they need to find the guy quickly. You heard that Seattle and Dallas have already suspended their invisible supers until the sniper is found? That¡¯s profiling or something.¡± ¡°Profiling is okay when it¡¯s based on good data,¡± Vill said, and I thought she¡¯d say more, but nothing came. I glanced over at her, and she had reddened again. Maybe she was worried it made her sound racist. ¡°Yeah, profiling just means trying to limit who could have done it by matching suspects to what you know about the criminal,¡± I jumped in, and saw Vill relax. ¡°You¡¯re right, though, Terry ¨C law enforcement needs to step up their game and track this guy down.¡± I was speaking as much to myself as to them. The Molina distraction had cost me much of yesterday, and as important as this time with my friends was, a hero-murdering super at large needed to be a more urgent priority. But other than the long, laborious process of clearing suspects from our long list, there wasn¡¯t anything directly impactful that I could do. It was just a matter of putting in the hours. I needed to set aside the distractions and focus my attention fully on this investigation: the one I had been paid a controversially large amount of money for; the one that was having collateral real-world implications. And as I resolved to do just that, I had to use a long-cooldown dimensional slide to intercept a nasty monster going after Vill¡¯s squishy evoker. No more distractions, I promised to myself, after we clear this raid. Chapter 16 - Secret Meetings As I waved from my doorway at Larry¡¯s SUV backing out of my drive, I had already switched mental gears towards the evening¡¯s tasks. I was working to recall enough details of a View of Zurich from two weeks past that I could begin there; if not, I would have to start in DC and move across the Atlantic. While I had found some absolute limits to my abilities, what I could feasibly accomplish in a given unit of time mostly depended on my memory and concentration. I needed ¡°fresh¡± scenes to start my View, and the number of different locations I could reasonably keep in mind depended on my emotional state and perceptual clarity. Calling up a View had more to it than just knowing what a location looked like; I had experimented with recorded images, including 3D panoramas, of new locations without success. Having already seen the location ¨C either in person or through a previous use of my View ¨C was a hard limit on its starting locale. From the comfort of my desk chair, my computer system open and ready for work, I carefully meditated on the alternating classic and modern lines of Zurich¡¯s eclectic city scape. My memory trolled through misty half-images for several minutes before they snapped into focus and I sank into my View. As I sank, I instinctually rewound past sunset and the present darkness, allowing the return of daylight to assail me. I don¡¯t know if it¡¯s a quirk of the climate or due to the ever-present lake, but bluish haze always seems to be permeating the city, as though I¡¯m viewing it through a novelty lens. Still breathtakingly beautiful, though. I only allowed myself a handful of breaths before raising my View up to a superior, maplike vantage. The mountainous macro-features made central Europe easy to navigate from a bird¡¯s eye just by tracing the right range¡­ or so I thought. When I briefly dropped my View to check against a satellite map, though, I had diverted myself to Nuremburg. I scrutinized the map more before moving my View properly south to Munich. As I surfaced again to consult my records, I noticed an unidentified Alice&Bob chat window that had made it past my spam filter. The message was unexpected. ¡°Delphic, this is Diane. I need to talk to you about something, unmonitored.¡± The encrypted chat program said she was still online but didn¡¯t indicate she was writing any more. Not many people had my public key, but enough did that there was no guarantee this was actually the RCMP sergeant. ¡°I¡¯m here, Diane. Please stand by,¡± was all I wrote. Then I went under. Sergeant Waterford had left the Ottawa field office an hour previously. I followed her blonde hair and severe suit down the street to a nearby hotel, up the elevator, and to the door of her small room. I fast-forwarded to the present before moving my View inside. She sat cross-legged on the queen-sized bed in a white bra and panties: a pleasant view of an unquestionably lovely woman that I would very much enjoy under different circumstances. Looking over her shoulder at the screen of her laptop, the Alice&Bob chat window with her message and my response was up. She bit her lip as I watched, visually impatient for my response. I dropped my View (somewhat reluctantly) and sent another message. ¡°I confirmed your identity. Is something wrong?¡± ¡°How did you confirm my identity? This is supposed to be anonymous.¡± ¡°Your data still comes from somewhere. It¡¯s just encrypted so no one can read it. The chat servers¡¯ proxies are decent but not uncrackable.¡± This was true, which is why my own connection to Alice&Bob ran through extra layers to obscure the source. ¡°That worries me. I wanted to talk to you in a way that couldn¡¯t be tracked by either of our agencies.¡± I let myself View her again, just briefly. She was pacing now, occasionally running her hands through her hair, keeping an eye on the laptop waiting for my response. Her gait was unpretentious, free of affectation or display. I had always found that people were most refreshing when they believed themselves to be entirely alone, unseen. For a second time I reverted to my desk before I became enthralled by the sight. ¡°There is never any guarantee of that, but the chances are low. What is your concern?¡± The ellipsis icon hung on the screen for a while as she wrote. I closed my eyes to View her again, but realized I didn¡¯t have a good reason to this time. There is a line between investigation and flat-out peeping, and I suspected I had already crossed it. I refrained. ¡°The augment projects aren¡¯t run out of our agency and we are being denied access. Even some records of experiments I could access before are now restricted from me.¡± After these lines appeared, she was still shown to be writing more, so I waited. ¡°Heathcote was told that the DRDC is independently investigating its subjects and will confirm they were not involved. I think this stonewalling may mean they know something. Or someone was involved maybe.¡± More typing. ¡°RCMP¡¯s hands are tied. Yours aren¡¯t.¡± While not operating with the same massive budget as US military research, Canada¡¯s Defence Research and Development was every bit as resourceful and secretive as its American and European counterparts. It did not escape me that, if I tangled with them, I would be going after the same agency that developed Canada¡¯s defenses against hackers and cyber warfare, and there was no question that this would include cutting-edge United States resources. I typed, ¡°You are asking me to go after the Canadian augments without your help?¡± Her response came quickly. ¡°With the help I can give unofficially.¡± We both knew that wouldn¡¯t be much. ¡°I can point you to the facilities and give you access through my account. What little access I still have.¡± ¡°Does Spinner know about this?¡± ¡°He does. He is heading back to the states to see what he can learn about their projects. Some super team members have worked with augments before, and he thinks he can call in favors.¡± ¡°This seems very dangerous.¡± ¡°I agree. But the alternative is to run into a dead end and close the case.¡± A slightly longer pause. ¡°A lot of us work with the supers. They are part of the RCMP too, we take care of each other. We need to find who did this.¡± I had a strong impulse to jump into this immediately, but it warred with a more rational fear as to the likely consequences. When departments of the same government start engaging in espionage against each other rather than cooperating, it never goes well for the agents stuck in the middle. These cautious instincts were, however, only a weak protest against the internal forces urging me forward on this. My own self-image, my desire to be a hero, was wrapped up in this ¨C in the idea that I would press forward to save lives and seek justice even at personal risk. And, if military-sponsored augments were really out killing supers, then that needed to come to light. The idea of DRDC (or DARPA in the States) actively concealing murderers to protect their research was blood-boiling. Internally, I chose to acknowledge a third reason that was at least as strong as the first two: I didn¡¯t want to disappoint Diane or Spinner by turning them down. Despite only having known them for a handful of days, they afforded me a respect and trust that really satiated a deep hunger I had for camaraderie and praise as a hero. It simply isn¡¯t that hard to talk yourself into choosing what will make others like you. ¡°I will investigate the Canadian augment program and its subjects,¡± I sent. ¡°You said that you have physical addresses for their facilities?¡± She sent me a file transfer protocol directory link, a long string of numbers on a website hosting domain. ¡°There are nine files in the directory, and all of them are encrypted using your public key for A&B. They have addresses for the four facilities where the augment experiments have taken place, although two have since closed down.¡± I started downloading and checking the files while she continued. ¡°In each city where they decided to run the experiment, their process was the same: find an empty building in a medical services park, set up under a new fake business name, advertise clinical trials.¡± ¡°The summary document you provided me earlier would imply an omicron sensor and upsilon beam emitter at the facility. Is that correct?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± A longer pause before the next long message appeared. ¡°The initial clinical trial was a simple medical exam and blood work. Looking for that .3% of the population with the genetic markers for powers that don¡¯t have powers. Offering those people a lot of money to undergo a background check, sign an NDA, and then spend a week in the ¡®clinic¡¯ undergoing the exposure tests.¡± ¡°What if some of the subjects already had powers but had concealed them?¡± ¡°They identified ten people in that category. We made records for them in the supers registry and put them under seal like with any secret identity. Defense cut them loose from the project, obviously.¡± The ethics were questionable here: it didn¡¯t seem they were meeting the constraints of ¡®informed consent.¡¯ This was not surprising for research condemned by the international community. Diane continued to message me. ¡°The files have some of the trial data, but it¡¯s heavily redacted. No personal info for the subjects. That¡¯s a big part of what we need to investigate them.¡± ¡°If the trial data includes powers, that at least tells us which records to target.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t rely on that. Many of the powers were variable or just not recorded.¡± ¡°How many subjects were tested under the program?¡± ¡°Over 400 reported successes from an initial pool of a thousand subjected to the beams.¡± Short pause. ¡°And 60 deaths.¡± I was amazed they could keep that quiet. ¡°Is that what shut down two of the facilities?¡± ¡°No.¡± The initial reply was immediate and then followed by the rest of the message. ¡°They are currently focused on additional testing for the successes who volunteered to stay with the project. All of those could fit into two clinics so they closed the other two. ¡± ¡°If they are testing powers, would they not need to move to a larger secured area? You can¡¯t really fly or run inside a medical building.¡± ¡°We think some of them have, but DRDC won¡¯t confirm it. Their super testing labs are in Toronto. That¡¯s most likely.¡± That provided me with a lot of avenues to pursue. ¡°I will see what I can figure out. Are we going to continue to use this channel?¡± ¡°Yes. I¡¯ll keep my personal laptop here away from HQ and their network. That means we can only talk about this in the evening.¡± Stolen novel; please report. ¡°I approve. Don¡¯t take unnecessary risks.¡± ¡°You¡¯re the one taking the risks. Please be careful.¡± I let myself peek one more time. Her unguarded face showed genuine concern. It was touching. I dropped my View and responded, ¡°I will be as careful as I can be under these circumstances. But we have a killer to find.¡± ¡°Good luck,¡± was her last message before her status changed to offline. Looking through her files, I could understand why Diane was stymied. The records were piecemeal, disorganized and clearly incomplete. There were tantalizing hints of what we were looking for, with words like ¡®vanished¡¯ and even ¡®invisible¡¯ embedded in descriptions of subject testing, but never with supporting details. This new undertaking would involve a sidestep from what we had been doing thus far, and so I decided to put the augments aside for the evening and tackle them fresh in the morning. Sunday is the best option for hacking during daylight hours, since you¡¯re least likely to run into active personnel that might detect you or conflict with your access in real time. I decided to go ahead and tackle my European villain team, even though Canadian Defence being so cagey about the augments made other suspects less likely. But first, I remembered that I had a backlog of Morris family conversations still being processed and uploaded for my review. I scanned through the generated transcripts to see if anything interesting had been said. It had. Pulling up a downstairs file from the previous evening, I heard what appeared to be a children¡¯s educational program of some kind, interspersed with relaxed matrimonial banter. Hearing Kurt and Laila over the television was a challenge, but what they were talking about was certainly worth the effort. ¡°Does the business in Ottawa move up your timetable, do you think?¡± I heard Kurt ask. ¡°No,¡± Laila replied quickly, then backpedaled. ¡°I can¡¯t really know for sure. But I haven¡¯t heard anything from them about it. I think it¡¯s just a little publicity hiccup in the Lamarck case.¡± ¡°Did you know Lamarck?¡± ¡°Not really,¡± her tone was subdued. ¡°He healed Red Gryphon after the Luxor incident last year. She said he was a good guy, really friendly and super polite. Easier to talk to than most of the US Team.¡± A pause. ¡°It will be tough if they activate me in the middle of one of these big cases, especially if it¡¯s because they know Delphic will be busy elsewhere?¡± Her tone was plaintive and uneven. ¡°Like, he¡¯s out helping the heroes or finding a killer or whatever, and I¡¯m here arresting his friend?¡± ¡°Yeah,¡± Kurt said, because it was clear Laila just wanted to talk this out. ¡°It would be easier if I knew what Hector did. He just seems like a nice guy, a little closed in. Not the sort that I¡¯d expect would be helping a criminal.¡± ¡°I got a different vibe off him, honestly,¡± Kurt said. ¡°He has that apparent harmlessness and reserve that can hide anything. A lot of those quiet guys are perfectly harmless, but some are sociopaths.¡± He threw out, almost as an afterthought, ¡°But that doesn¡¯t mean Hector actually did anything.¡± ¡°You think his connection to Delphic would be enough for them to take him in if they didn¡¯t have dirt on him?¡± ¡°Sure,¡± Kurt didn¡¯t have the emotional investment in this that Laila seemed to. ¡°Investigators do it all the time. Get the guy you need, figure out what the dirt is later.¡± A pause. ¡°I really don¡¯t like the sound of that.¡± ¡°No, you wouldn¡¯t,¡± Kurt¡¯s tone carried just the hint of mockery. ¡°You like your criminals to be unambiguous, clearly and deliberately harming others. But what the Feds see is a lot more grey than that. People who genuinely believe that they¡¯re gaming the system for perfectly innocent ends, helping their company or political party or friends. When all the people you care about are benefiting, and any harm is abstracted against people you never see, it¡¯s much easier to fool yourself.¡± ¡°Hmmm,¡± Laila vocalized. ¡°So Hector might be helping Delphic to commit crimes, and still be a basically decent person who just convinces himself it¡¯s okay?¡± ¡°Plenty of criminals have families,¡± Kurt responded. ¡°Work an honest job, go to church, lend their neighbors a hand.¡± That last was clearly directed at me. ¡°We aren¡¯t out to judge their character. We seek justice for their actions.¡± ¡°You do,¡± she quipped, ¡°I¡¯m just the muscle.¡± There were giggles after that, and the conversation moved on. I was distressed that Polarity was willing to come after me on the government¡¯s say-so, with no idea what I had supposedly done. I had suspected this before, but hearing her confirm it was still unpleasant. At least I could take solace that, if wheels against me were turning, they didn¡¯t seem to be turning any faster than before ¨C as far as she knew. As before, it was easier to divert these trains of thought with work that didn¡¯t directly affect my life. The Frauenkirche clock tower was quite easy to find and not far from my destination point, so I counted the fifty backwards revolutions of its small hand around the massive face. On the appropriate evening I made my way to a small jewelers set in the corner of an old building on an even older street. Like many jewelry shops anywhere in the developed world, this jeweler had modern security features ¨C an anachronism among the classic architecture and decor. Stepping in from the street, a customer would find herself in a small anteroom looking at the black crossings of security glass separating her from an impeccably dressed man in a suit. The man would press a button on a fob in his pocket, temporarily unlocking the interior door while locking the exterior at the same time, and then would open the interior door and welcome the customer in with a flourish. The ¡°airlock¡± was by no means a robbery-proof layout, but in conjunction with the armed attendant it discouraged any but the most resolute criminals. The ¨¹bermenschen were quite resolute. When he stepped into the anteroom, I immediately recognized the lone man from the pictures in his profile. Baldur had taken a super name that did not match his appearance: a small white man with an unhealthy leanness of features and bright burrowing eyes. Still, he was well-groomed and in crisp shirtsleeves. There were twelve named members of the ¨¹bermenschen in the records, and Baldur was one of four connected with this robbery; infuriatingly, he was also one of five for whom powers were not definitively known. Supervillains very rarely counted non-supers in their number; they would work with them as allies or henchmen but tended to have a clear delineation between such conspirators and team members. It was therefore presumed that Baldur was a super even if his powers were not known. Baldur nodded and stepped forward as the guard held the door open for him. He stopped past the doorway but still within the arc of the security door and asked the guard a question, gesturing into the building. Because I had read the after-action report, I knew that the delay was to give time for his invisible teammates to move past him into the main area. Aside from the guard, the shop had two employees and four customers. The ¡°sales floor¡± was arranged much like an exhibition with well-lit glass containers disposed strategically about the area, intermixed with antique furniture and more specialized displays. An older salesman was helping a young couple look at bracelets, while the younger associate was speaking with a woman customer approximately her own age over a case of ornate rings. The remaining customer was browsing, clearly waiting his turn to be helped. Baldur moved a few steps to allow the guard to close the door, and then everything happened at once. A tall blonde woman in an all white jumpsuit and domino mask, Whiteout, appeared next to the older jeweler with a handgun already trained steadily at his head. Baldur pulled his own weapon from behind him in a smooth motion that took the guard entirely by surprise. A mousy woman in a light blue cocktail dress, Skadi, seized the other associate around the neck and placed two of her foot-long claws, ending in glistening sharp points, against the woman¡¯s temple. The fourth villain appeared at the same time, dressed in a generic black jogging suit with a matching black ski mask. She was not identified in the report and I couldn¡¯t match her to any of the known ¨¹bermenschen profiles. She yelled for attention and got it; after a few more words, seven people were face down on the ground. None other than the guard showed any emotion but fear; the guard looked more chagrined than scared. Whiteout took up a corner monitoring position with her handgun while the other three each broke a different display case and started sweeping their contents into satchels brought for the purpose. None of the civilians tried to play hero, and it took less than 10 minutes for the displays to be emptied, including a lock box from within one antique cabinet containg half a million Euros in loose diamonds, according to the report. While I didn¡¯t see Baldur do anything extraordinary during this period, the unnamed super¡¯s motions included short jerks that were obviously accelerated. A minor speedster was a good guess. The four left much the way they had come, with all but Baldur vanishing from sight as he closed the security door, unlocking the front entrance. Seven people were still cowed on the shop floor as empty-handed Baldur (having handed his satchel to Whiteout) strolled quickly down the street. A delivery van was parked near a loading zone just two blocks away. Baldur opened the back doors and climbed in. A minute later the doors appeared to close themselves. Whiteout dropped the invisibility once they were away from the city proper. The attitude of the four was celebrational; this was clearly seen as a great success. The unnamed woman, who having taken off her ski mask I could now confirm was not a known ¨¹bermensch, was rummaging through one of the satchels and making pronouncements about pieces she drew out. The delivery van pulled into low set of modern buildings that, from the glass roof visible above, flanked a large greenhouse. The side of the van advertised the same plant nursery named on the sign in front of the complex. Navigating a drive circling around to the rear of the complex, the van nestled against a building wall and brought forth its four passengers and driver. The latter was a young man that could serve as a model for an Aryan nation recruitment poster ¨C blond flat top over bright blue eyes and a chiseled jaw, muscles bulging from neck to calf. This super went by Warner, and was the most famous member of the ¨¹bermenschen. The five of them bypassed the nursery buildings, heading up a path that passed through a copse of mature deciduous trees. Well-concealed from the road, with a green roof that blended into the rest of the forested area, was a long building of wood and mortar. It most resembled a hunting lodge, and following the team into the interior confirmed that impression. Antique rifles and classic taxidermy lined the walls. The five were welcomed by two further ¨¹bermenschen waiting at a long table in a central common area. I recognized the plump blonde woman, Valkyrie, in casual clothes even though her only profile photos had been in costume. Allfather, the grizzled man in shirtsleeves at the head of the table, sipped from a steaming coffee mug while he greeted the others. The ¨¹bermenschen had been wanted criminals in Europe for some time, but had categorically evaded capture. A part of that was simply being smart: they avoided dramatic and dangerous clashes with the heroes. Instead, they kept to a mix of quick and practical jobs like that day¡¯s robbery, along with occasional planned public appearances. The other factor to their success was contingent on those public appearances: their substantial local support in parts of Poland, Austria, and Germany. The Stalingrad Accords in 1946 had, it was now universally agreed, sown the seeds of permanent nationalism in the territories that remained under the Third Reich¡¯s control until the democratic uprisings some 30 years later. Roosevelt¡¯s decision to placate Goering¡¯s Nazi regime, while perhaps necessary after the Allies¡¯ catastrophic loss at Normandy, poured cold water on wartime pride. It left Hitler¡¯s successor in power over the Germanic States in exchange for a withdrawal from occupied France, Belgium, and large parts of the crumbling Soviet Union. It was a significant factor in the constant political and cultural turmoil the area had endured since. In the modern era, as long as moderates throughout Germany continued to push for economic unification with the rest of Europe, the nationalists would surely continue to fuel their members¡¯ ire to push back. I couldn¡¯t even imagine why this ¡°European Union¡± idea continued to come up every few years; barring a significant existential threat to bind them together, I just couldn¡¯t ever see the fiercely proud European powers overcoming their squabbles to do it. The short of it was that this villain group was enough of a political animal to leave them with plenty of hiding places and allies throughout the country. And, unlike with the Few in Brazil, I could not expect them to stay in one location for the intervening weeks. Valkyrie and Whiteout were the two members of this group that put them on the suspect list for the Lamarck murder. Valkyrie was a swift flyer who could carry multiple allies along with her, and Whiteout¡¯s powers, while believed to be limited to minutes at a time, were more than sufficient for the brief rooftop excursion. I kept an eye on the common table and tried to fast forward at maximum speed, but the movements were too quick for me to keep track. I slowed down during each daylight cycle until I saw one of the two women. About two weeks passed this way, although I quickly lost count of the exact day. I was about a week from the present when neither of my two targets showed up all day. Rewinding to the previous day, it was clear both of them were preparing to leave with Baldur and Warner. At just before dusk, two days before Lamarck¡¯s shooting, the four of them walked out the front entrance of the nursery and squeezed into a sedan driven by a man I could not name. None of them were in costume: they wore the blouses and button-down shirts I associated with German businesswear. The sedan pulled into a garage in one of Munich¡¯s office parks, unloading its five passengers to an office building with the sleepy near-vacancy that followed the close of business. They signed in with a laconic security guard and made their way up to the fourth floor offices of the building. They chose the correct business from the three sharing the floor, past a formal-looking reception desk where they were greeted by a man still in his full dark suit and led to a cosy conference room. At that point my stomach turned cold. I dropped my View and immediately started redoubling my research on the ¨¹bermenschen activities and allies. I was missing something important, and I couldn¡¯t reasonably continue until I understood it. I needed to figure out why a powerful supervillain team was consulting with the Munich branch of Effitech, Inc. Chapter 17 - Brunch and Betrayal Senior Detective Arthur Donnell, DPD (retired), took a bite of quiche as he looked over his notepad. ¡°So, Effitech is pursuing leads in the kidnapping case, was hired to consult on the Lamarck investigation, and now has some sort of ties to German terrorists.¡± He looked across the dining room table at me for confirmation. After the tumultuous events of the previous evening, I had been thrilled to hear upon awakening that my family had gotten up for sunrise services and would then be returning home for brunch. I had time to make the bacon and spinach quiche before heading over. While I sympathized with Mom¡¯s scowl whenever Dad over-indulged, I couldn¡¯t help but feel pride that he was on his third slice of my dish. Dad might take one helping out of politeness, but never three. I nodded and gestured for him to continue. He scratched his chin and mused, ¡°You¡¯re concerned that this is too much of a coincidence.¡± Another bite of quiche and then, ¡°the CIA is behind the kidnapping¡­ how did you learn that, again?¡± His look sharpened as I shook my head and made a ¡®moving on¡¯ gesture. ¡°And somebody in government doesn¡¯t want their experimental supers questioned about Lamarck. Meaning,¡± he bared his teeth in a sardonic mockery of a grin, ¡°that they had something to do with Lamarck.¡± He flipped a page back in his notepad, and I was struck by how familiar this all felt. Dad had started bringing his investigations to the dinner table when I was in middle school. He¡¯d go over notes and lines of reasoning; Paris and I would throw out wild ideas while Mom played skeptic and referee. It made me feel like Encyclopedia Brown ¨C although Paris was probably the better analog to the child detective, since any new insights Dad took back to his cases were usually hers. In large part, it was Dad and Mom¡¯s complete openness with us ¨C their willingness to include us in their secrets, to build the mental privacy wall around all of us instead of just the two of them ¨C that led us to trust them with our own dire secrets when we got older. Although I would never want them to, I knew they would both give their lives before betraying our trust. The three of them shared blood, but all four of us shared the deep bond of family. In this modern reenactment of our dinnertime talks, though, more of the details of the tableau were wrong than just our ages. As I laid out the Lamarck case and my new concerns about Effitech, the two women at the table had offered very little in the way of commentary or criticism, instead projecting a wordless discomfort in stereo. Dad and I soldiered on. ¡°This German group¡­ you¡¯re sure they¡¯re not behind the Lamarck shooting?¡± I shrugged. ¡°I¡¯m sure that their invisibility and flight supers aren¡¯t. They didn¡¯t leave Germany following the Effitech meeting a week ago. I followed a team to a city near Berlin where they quietly raided a police station gun cache and delivered the weapons to a port in Hamburg. Whiteout returned, alone -¡± ¡°She makes the group invisible?¡± Dad interrupted me to confirm. ¡°Right, limited to three people and their possessions as far as I¡¯ve seen. She returned alone to the Effitech building to pick up a briefcase with small vials of liquid in it and a data drive.¡± ¡°Payment?¡± I nodded. ¡°Payment for the guns, yeah, that was my guess. The vials were unmarked, and they stowed the data drive without looking at it. That brings us to the present.¡± Dad scratched his chin again. ¡°So, the ¨¹bermenschen are still in Europe, and other than being connected to Effitech don¡¯t have any identified role in the Lamarck situation, right?¡± He waited for my shrug. ¡°Prune it.¡± I watched him draw a line beside a whole section of his notes and make a couple of quick marks. ¡°The augments direction is the one that smells right for the Lamarck case. The Effitech matter is something different.¡± ¡°But I was only watching the ¨¹bermenschen because of the Lamarck case,¡± I protested. ¡°Isn¡¯t that too much of a coincidence?¡± At this, Dad turned and smiled at Mom, who begrudgingly spoke. ¡°False dichotomy,¡± she said, without much enthusiasm. ¡°The only possibilities aren¡¯t direct involvement or coincidence. There may be a more tenuous connection that explains the correlation. For example,¡± she warmed up a bit as she speculated, ¡°if Effitech is acting on behalf of the CIA or other intelligence agency, they would tend to look for supergroups with mobility and stealth assets. Neither you, nor they, are targeting supers at random, so the chances that one of the groups you are looking for would also be working for them on an unrelated mission are higher than naive probability.¡± Dad nodded, ¡°I agree. Prune it,¡± he said again, and it sounded like an order. Dad knew he didn¡¯t have any real authority in these matters, but he also knew how much I respected his investigative skills. By record and reputation, he was one of the most skilled Detroit homicide detectives in living memory. And although she hadn¡¯t proven it yet, I was confident there was another of those sitting at the table with us. Paris finished the last bite of her breakfast, which markedly had included none of my quiche, and cleared her throat. ¡°So, Laila Morris,¡± she began slowly. ¡°Yes?¡± The change in topic seemed abrupt; I was anxious to address Paris¡¯s question and get back to the present issue of the Lamarck investigation and augments. ¡°Is a super.¡± She carefully hid her anger under a surface molasses, clearly trying to lead and mollify me. ¡°Polarity, yes.¡± I waited for her to spit it out so we could move along. ¡°Working with the CIA.¡± She kept her tone sweet and even. ¡°Or another intelligence agency, yes, as a seed asset.¡± I turned to Dad, ¡°which connects back to Effitech again, because -¡± ¡°Hector.¡± Paris captured my entire attention with my name bellowed a little too loudly for a dinner table conversation. ¡°A CIA seed asset that you have now confirmed is explicitly stationed in your neighborhood, with you as a target, for working with Delphic. Yes?¡± I nodded again. ¡°Yes.¡± I waited for her to continue this time. Paris threw exasperated hands at our mother. Gladys Donnell sipped her coffee and then asked, ¡°Son, what would happen if Polarity got the call to arrest you?¡± I looked to Dad, trying to figure out the reasons for these questions. He nodded to me, indicating I should answer. ¡°She¡¯d suit up and come arrest me. I don¡¯t see that there¡¯s much I can do about that,¡± I blinked and shrugged. ¡°Who at the CIA is involved in planting this seed asset?¡± I shook my head in preparation of answering that I didn¡¯t know, but she pressed forward. ¡°What are they investigating Delphic for? What are the parameters for having you arrested, and who gets to decide? You don¡¯t know any of these things, right?¡± I nodded. ¡°Don¡¯t you have methods of figuring them out?¡± ¡°Not easily. The risk in hacking CIA servers -¡± Mom interrupted, ¡°- is less than the risks you are facing now. How many of these actions have you really considered?¡± I thought back over the last few days. Ever since discovering that my worst fears were realized ¨C that I really was under government observation ¨C I had pushed the issue aside. I hadn¡¯t genuinely taken any steps to address the situation. And even now, I was having trouble understanding why I should. Mom tried to reach across the dining room table to grab my hands, but unsurprisingly she couldn¡¯t reach. Neither she nor I were large people. So she came around and pulled up a chair right next to me, then entwined her fingers with mine on top of the table. ¡°Baby, d¡¯you remember what we talked about when you first told me about your powers?¡± Her tone was softer but somehow more urgent than before. I smiled, ¡°Quite a few words on their ethical use, I remember. We kept revisiting scenarios for months after that.¡± I looked back fondly on those chats. ¡°That too, baby,¡± she cooed, ¡°but I was talking about the mental risk factors.¡± She waited a minute as I thought back on it. ¡°You thought,¡± I was having trouble recalling, ¡°that extended Viewing would remove me from the immediacy of my own life. I¡¯d cease to see the things happening as ¡®real.''¡± ¡°Depersonalization,¡± she offered. ¡°And particularly derealization. A person is still aware of what¡¯s going on, but dissociates it from his own life. He avoids acting on it, because it¡¯s not ¡®real.''¡± I tried to recall how our discussion went. ¡°But didn¡¯t I point out, and you agreed, that this was almost always the result of severe trauma? That as long as I kept a cool head I would probably be fine?¡± I had shifted my seating entirely to face my mother now, the few remaining morsels on my plate forgotten. Mom met my gaze and shook her head. ¡°I acknowledged that, dear; I didn¡¯t agree. I think you wrote my warning off on that basis, but the truth is that your power puts you in a unique psychological state that I suspect will always be vulnerable to this problem.¡± Stolen story; please report. She started to increase the volume and intensity of her speech as she confirmed that she hadn¡¯t lost me. ¡°You make detailed observations of situations halfway around the world. You jump your vision around in time and space, analyze people who will never directly impact your real life.¡± Her hand squeezed mine. ¡°You have conditioned yourself to see Delphic, and the things you do with your powers, as divorced from your life as Hector. And, because, you can move your attention between different cases, you are staying away from the situation that could seriously affect your life.¡± ¡°All our lives,¡± Paris supplied. ¡°You can bet we¡¯re all on their radar.¡± I looked her full in the face to take the brunt of her anger, but her expression showed fierce concern instead. She was worried about me much more than about herself. I thought for a moment about my situation and our family. Paris was right ¨C ignoring an existential threat to me, especially one from the government, put her at risk as well. Except that I wasn¡¯t even the real target from their point of view; just working with Delphic. Would that merit the resources to look into my family too? In the steely regard of my mother and sister, I could see that I was reflexively working to discount the danger, to downgrade the level of risk. And, having realized that, I willed myself to internalize it instead. The sinking feeling in my stomach blossomed like a poisonous flower. I imagined agents battering down my door, weapons drawn; I saw them unplugging and dismantling my hardware to be carted away. Myself and my sister in separate mirrored rooms, interrogated then left to sleep. Paris terminated, unable to wear her uniform ever again. I closed my eyes and brought up a View of a German farmhouse. Skadi, Warner, and the unnamed speedster I had started calling ¡°Mouse¡± in my own head had spent the night there the last two evenings, but it looked like Baldur had arrived in a vehicle and they were preparing to move on. It was late afternoon; I rewound to confirm that there were no other visitors during the day. I jumped back to the hunting lodge where Valkyrie and Allfather were still hosting Whiteout and¡­ I heard the shouts of ¡°Hector!¡± at the same time I felt Mom¡¯s tiny hands roughly shake my shoulder. I opened my eyes; she scrutinized them with medical assessment. ¡°Adderall?¡± she asked softly. When I nodded, she stepped up and gave me a hug, awkwardly around my chair, holding my head to her. It was too brief; when she pushed herself back to her chair I wasn¡¯t ready for her to let go. ¡°Baby, you have a built-in escape mechanism in your power. You¡¯re starting to exhibit addictive behavior. Do you understand?¡± I frowned. ¡°I get what you¡¯re saying, Mom, but I don¡¯t see it. I¡¯m not people-watching; I¡¯m not hopping around Europe on a lark. I monitor dangerous criminals; I solve murders and help heroes.¡± I glanced over at Paris for a moment; the way her scared and worried expression mirrored her mother¡¯s made her face look like a magnified reflection, albeit without the laugh lines. Mom glanced at Paris, too, before she responded. ¡°Yes, it¡¯s important work. No doubt. But you can still abuse it. In fact, when people are doing their dream jobs,¡± she deliberately and pointedly looked at her husband and daughter in turn, ¡°they are more likely to unhealthily obsess over their work. Deprioritize their own wellbeing and their other commitments.¡± Rather than leave it at implication, she said, ¡°Your father and I had it out several times during his career, and I have had to start talking to your sister about it recently as well.¡± Dad cleared his throat, ¡°I came by it honestly, though. When I was growing up I didn¡¯t learn ¡®balance¡¯ or ¡®priorities.¡¯ Men worked, and if you worked harder you were a better man.¡± He shrugged. ¡°And my daddy taught his sons the same,¡± Mom agreed. ¡°If you can only get people to learn one lesson, hard work is a good one.¡± She caught my eye again. ¡°My kids can learn more, though.¡± Her tone became almost reverent as she repeated words I had heard many times. ¡°Invest attention and effort proportional to utility. Don¡¯t maximize; optimize. An act carries all its consequences. Your perspective is intrinsically limited.¡± ¡°All these I have followed from my youth,¡± I replied with a smile. Mom twitched an eyebrow; she didn¡¯t approve of me no longer attending church, but she didn¡¯t bring it up unless I pushed. Cheekily quoting the Bible during a serious conversation was certainly pushing. ¡°You may not remember, dear,¡± she proffered with some acerbity, ¡°but Jesus¡¯s response to the rich young ruler was to give him a fresh rule that He knew would humble him.¡± She chuckled at my wary look. ¡°I¡¯m only human, so let me add an easier one.¡± Paris chimed in: ¡°Thou shalt not ignore an imminent personal threat.¡± Mom shut her mouth and swallowed whatever she was about to say. She nodded at her daughter. ¡°Okay, that one.¡± It was clear to me that my family was rather seriously overreacting to what it still seemed to me was reasonable behavior. But what Mom was saying made enough sense to listen to, even if I didn¡¯t think I would need to change much in practice. I nodded in agreement. ¡°Okay.¡± Mom leaned forward more, her eyes closely focused on mine. ¡°Hector,¡± she said, ¡°I want you to come over here this week for breakfasts, and plan to talk to me after your sister heads to work.¡± ¡°You¡¯re not usually up that early,¡± I pointed out. Her lips thinned in a closed-mouth grimace. ¡°I¡¯ll make it work this week.¡± I nodded. ¡°Thanks for worrying about me, guys.¡± I meant it. Misguided or not, I depended on that fact that they cared for me. It was a constant calm in the center of an ever-changing world. ¡°Do you agree with Dad¡¯s assessment that I should sideline the ¨¹bermenschen and focus on the augments?¡± ¡°I think he¡¯s right about that, yeah.¡± Paris answered quickly. ¡°But can we circle back please? What¡¯s your plan for Polarity?¡± I mulled it over, carefully keeping the panic down. ¡°I think¡­ I need to figure out who at the CIA is after Delphic, and why.¡± ¡°Into the lion¡¯s maw, then?¡± Dad asked. At my nod, he said, ¡°Have you considered the direct approach?¡± ¡°I¡¯m not sure what you mean,¡± I said to encourage him to explain. The women looked equally unsure. ¡°Have Delphic call Polarity and ask for a meeting with her CIA contact.¡± At my surprised look he added, ¡°or go through your FBI agent friend. Or dig just deep enough to get the name and number of the agent in charge.¡± He bit into his last piece of toast. Dad was the only one of us with anything left that we intended to eat. Paris said, ¡°That gives up the advantage that we know about the mission and they don¡¯t think we do. Is it worth it?¡± I shrugged. ¡°It might be, if there¡¯s a chance to talk them out of it. Or at least know what I need to do to avoid them pulling the trigger.¡± I winced, instantly regretting my choice of metaphor. Dad shrugged. ¡°Make sure it¡¯s an option you consider. On tough cases there was always a tradeoff between monitoring a suspect for more information and bringing him in. You can¡¯t keep surveillance secret forever, and an interrogation is much more fruitful as an ambush.¡± Paris and I chatted about investigation strategies, and speculated as to possible CIA motives, as we washed the dishes. It was only when I was grabbing my coat and giving goodbye hugs that she surprised me by asking, ¡°Have you brought Doc Stevens into this?¡± ¡°No. I don¡¯t want to bring Hector to his attention. Have you changed your mind about him?¡± She wrinkled her nose. ¡°Definitely not. But info through him is probably less dangerous than info from the source.¡± This reinforced for me, more even than the earlier discussion, just how worried my sister was. I promised to consider all my options and headed home. Over the next couple of hours, I discovered that CIA information systems were uniquely vulnerable to my powers. At its core, the CIA used ¡°human intelligence¡± ¨C spies and informants ¨C to keep track of our enemies (and allies). They were notorious for interfering in foreign affairs, having backed one side or the other in a variety of power struggles (Iran, Poland, even some of the early kratocracies in South America and Africa). A ridiculous amount of money, most of it not accounted for, was applied to maintain their informant network. CIA spies were expected to be anywhere and everywhere. Because of this, the CIA relied on state of the art encryption and communication protocols, but also made it as easy as possible for authorized users to access their system from anywhere in the world. Agents were pressed hard never to write down their password and to memorize long, random sequences to make them too strong for raw cracking. But if you happened to be able to stare straight at the keyboard while an agent put the password in, none of those measures made any difference. The other major security feature in the CIA system was project-specific authorization. If you weren¡¯t assigned to know about a particular project, you wouldn¡¯t be able to access that project¡¯s files without being granted that access from its manager. But how would you know whom to ask for authorization? The CIA conveniently listed the manager and their contact information, available to any user. This gave me my next target to View. In short, within two hours, I had access to the asset file for Polarity and dossiers on both Delphic and Hector. Polarity¡¯s file outlined procedures for contacting her through a local agent, and noted that ¡°Strictly no telephonic or other remote communication is to be used. Paper documents and in-person briefings only.¡± The same instructions were in both the Delphic and Hector dossiers. The file included the name of her handler and the default instructions she had been given if she was activated: ¡°Assist agents in apprehending Hector Donnell. If no agents are present, apprehend Hector Donnell and convey safely to Detroit Super Team Headquarters.¡± The Hector file included another nasty surprise: May had been reporting on me. Apparently she had been a CIA informant since 2013, tasked with keeping an eye on a number of young adults in the Detroit area that were flagged for monitoring. May¡¯s parents had moved into the neighborhood so she could get close to me; most of her other targets were in the vicinity of Lawrence. I had originally been flagged at U of M and my movements outlined since that time. Seeing so much of my friendship with May distilled to a suspect profile made me physically ill. I considered her a close friend. She apparently considered me a paycheck. I hoped she didn¡¯t visit soon; I didn¡¯t think I could convincingly fake our detente, now that I knew. The Delphic file was much longer than the other two and included a complete list of known interactions with various super teams and with federal agents, along with analyses of my abilities as used during each event. A lot of time was spent speculating on what sorts of digital systems I could move into or control remotely. Several references were made to sharing particular data to an NSA project called Iron Lantern, although the project and my relationship to it were not explained. The most recent updates to the Delphic dossier described the Vivi Michaels kidnapping ¨C which, as it turns out, was planned and executed by Effitech itself. I had to verify several times that this was actually what the file said, because of how appalling this idea was. Michaels had his own daughter kidnapped and locked up for days in order to test my abilities and provide opportunities to interact with me! What parent could do that? It didn¡¯t seem possible. But the evidence was plain. Quotes were included of Effitech debriefing the hired kidnappers, and they matched what I had seen. The test was considered inconclusive but at least suggestive of Delphic¡¯s limits: no electronics were present in the farmhouse, but I had been able to track the mobile devices that moved from the abduction to the farmhouse. Suggestions were made for eliminating this possibility in the next test. As horrifying as all this was, it was helpful in one very specific way: I was no longer fearful of the CIA. I was furious. They had tainted my friendship with May; they had paid for the torture of a little girl. They clearly had no compunction violating my privacy or anyone¡¯s freedom. They seemed to have no particular respect for the law. I carefully identified, and downloaded full personnel records for, the agents responsible for planning, authorizing, and facilitating these missions. There were tactics to consider, but I could not leave their actions unanswered. Somebody would be held accountable. There would be a reckoning. Chapter 18 - Agents As I popped two extra amphetamine capsules, I took a couple of minutes to submit an order for more with a seventh online pharmacy. When I push my Viewing times longer multiple days in a row, I need the bump late in the day. I didn¡¯t want to run out of pills prematurely. The CIA profile for Hector mentioned my amphetamine prescription but didn¡¯t say anything about my over-filling, which probably meant they¡¯d missed it. I was careful: all but one of the online fills used fake names and were sent to rented mailboxes in the business district. I had not been as lucky in tampering with the Lion Electric meters on Iliad Court: pictures of a doctored control unit had been taken for ¡°leverage.¡± Any time that level of detail appeared in the files was a surprise, because in other areas they were silent. The Hector file provided no inkling as to how he had been identified as connected with Delphic. Neither of the files explained why Delphic and Hector were placed under surveillance to begin with. Also missing were the instructions to Effitech that had resulted in the staged kidnapping. The reason for the patchwork nature of the files was twofold. First and most obvious was the standing order not to rely on digital communication. Many reports and analyses were hand-written and given in person. Finding and reading those handwritten files was, I decided, a high priority. The second reason was that the three CIA agents assigned to this project, while each reported to the same project manager, did not coordinate with each other. Each had a different sphere of responsibility for which the Delphic case was only one small part. Determining how those responsibilities overlapped and contributed to my own case was my mission for the rest of the afternoon and evening (and possibly well into the night). I started with Marsden, an ¡°asset manager.¡± I decided it was euphemism for someone who handles field agents ¨C relaying reports and orders, keeping track of their situation and safety. Finding her desk at Langley wasn¡¯t hard, and she worked a long day ¨C twelve hours average over the two weeks I rapidly Viewed. Agent Marsden wore slight variations on the same suit every day: jacket and long skirt in the same subdued color over a lighter blouse. Her orange-red hair formed a fuzzy halo around a bright, expressive face. Most of her day was spent making phone calls and responding to emails. A fair amount of her correspondence was with the DoJ, because the majority of her ¡°assets¡± were supers. Polarity¡¯s situation was atypical, though, because most of the assets seemed to be informants in their home communities, often as part of their day jobs. While a few were super teams, most of what I saw were people with powers that were too weak or situational for them to be regular heroes. The DoJ referred some failed Super Team applicants to CIA asset management, where they could at least be of occasional use and earn a modest retainer. Laila Morris met Kathryn Marsden in a Langley conference room forty-five days ago. The lowest level of the J. Edgar Hoover Intelligence Building included a several such ¡°silent¡± rooms, each of which was separately shielded from EM signals and thoroughly soundproofed. A small lockbox outside the door received both women¡¯s phones as they entered. While other rooms in the hallway had computer systems and a projector, this one did not. I was impressed by how effectively this would have excluded me from any inkling of their discussion had I actually been Delphic. The CIA was well-equipped for electronic surveillance and bugs. They were not equipped for a super with a Viewing power. As Laila made notes on a legal pad, Marsden thumbed through a thick paper file and spoke. Several times she slid a page over for Laila to look at. The pages included photographs, web print-outs (including, it looked like, the Ask About Me forum page I had done as Delphic last year), and exerpts of text from intelligence reports. The reports were unredacted and I started to recognize content that was not in the CIA files I had read. Although I was limited to piecemeal review of whichever pages Marsden looked at or at least paged through, I soon got the gyst: the Hector/Delphic connection was a recent conclusion of CIA Agent Tucker Simms in collaboration with the NSA¡¯s Iron Lantern project. Simms was the next of the four CIA agents on my list to follow, but I wasn¡¯t done with Marsden yet. Laila¡¯s scribbled notes were informative. Marsden instructed her not to seek me out directly but to stay visible in the neighborhood and encourage any attempts I made to contact her. ¡°Acquaintance good, friend better¡± she wrote at one point, then stopped for a minute and exchanged a few tense words with her handler before completing the thought, ¡°lover best.¡± Hm. My first thought upon reading this note was that I hadn¡¯t gotten any sense that Laila wanted to seduce me, or was open to me seducing her. This would have been a complete non-starter for me regardless, because I don¡¯t mess with married women as a rule. But it did make me wonder if Laila¡¯s interjection was her questioning her affirmative obligations on this point and being reassured that she could just aim for ¡°friend¡± instead. My second thought was that May had probably gotten a similar briefing at some point. Which meant she had literally been directed to sleep with me and any of her other targets she could get into bed. I dropped my View long enough to get a soda out of the basement fridge, but it didn¡¯t get the taste of ashes out of my mouth. Late in their session, I received another useful insight. The two of them set up a secret message protocol that both carefully took notes on. Laila could call or receive a call from her ¡®grandmother in Virginia¡¯ and provide a coded update on her contact with me, couched in terms regarding her daughter Deborah¡¯s progress. They came up with a dozen particular phrases with specific meanings, plus a word substitution list for broader messages. The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. Nowhere in the file or notes was any reference made to exactly what Delphic was alleged to have done, and the only incriminating thing mentioned to Polarity about Hector ¨C at least as far as I could extrapolate from my silent movie ¨C was that ¡°Hector assists Delphic.¡± While it was useful to better understand Polarity¡¯s rules of engagement, deeper insights would need to come from elsewhere. Marsden commuted home to Alexandria every night in a five-year-old SUV. She shared a townhouse with her sister and brother-in-law and their twin toddlers. She often babysat evenings. Agent Simms was balding and pale; he looked at least ten years older than his recorded 45 years. He wore shorts and a t-shirt on any day he didn¡¯t have a scheduled meeting, relying on a suit he kept in a dry cleaning bag hung on the corner of his cubicle if a meeting outside his own department came up at the last minute. Simms worked for Foreign Asset Monitoring in ¡°profiling.¡± He gathered records associated with whatever supers he was assigned and pieced them together into a coherent narrative for each super. FAM assigned him to the Delphic file shortly after I started the persona almost six years ago. Watching him work, I saw that mine was not his only assignment going back years. It looked like FAM religiously tracked every super in the world and noted each time they were spotted or reported on. Until a super joined an official team, was incarcerated, or was confirmed killed, that super would have an active CIA file. There were many files on secret supers, as well ¨C individuals who were suspected or confirmed to have super powers they had neither registered nor revealed publicly. It was settled law that the US government could not compel citizens to disclose super powers (Huddleston v. Florida, a 1973 Supreme Court decision), but in much of the Western world, it was a serious crime not to register. ¡°Leverage,¡± indeed, for those living abroad who might be persuaded to help out Uncle Sam. After seeing two files on secret supers, I diverted my attention briefly to assuage my concerns. Paris Donnell, it seemed, did not have a CIA file nor appear on any suspect list. It was the first genuinely good news I¡¯d had in hours, but I was glad of it. As an afterthought. I searched on Lawrence Stevens. There were not just one but three separate active files on the Doc. A quick perusal showed more than a thousand pages of content. Copies of these files joined the others I had downloaded. I rapidly scanned Simms¡¯ past from the vantage of his office, looking for anything unusual. It was almost three months in the past when I saw him arrive for the day already wearing a suit. Later that day, he joined two other men in the same ¡°silent room¡± that Marsden had taken Laila. This was the meeting, I realized, where Simms and an NSA agent had reported to Simms¡¯ boss, one of the supervisors of FAM, the connection between Delphic and Hector. The NSA man, Agent William Brody, looked like a younger and healthier version of Simms, while the FAM supervisor, Senior Agent Rajiv ¡°Chip¡± Bhattacharyya, split their difference in apparent age. The meeting was smooth and easy; ¡®Chip¡¯ sat a friendly tone that quickly drained any tension from the other two men. Apparently, Delphic¡¯s internet presence was not untraceable once the NSA were involved. They had managed to hide pieces of tracking worms and beacon executables within the encrypted communications between Delphic and various super teams, and even in the FBI missing persons dashboard. With my proxies and remote servers, the signals they received back were widely spread, but enough hit in Detroit for them to try a focused search there. Once they looked close enough, the usage patterns were clearly correlated. It was virtually certain that Delphic was regularly communicating with Hector Donnell, and using hardware from Hector¡¯s location to run at least some of his operations. This led to my second good news of the evening: from the way the Agents talked about accessing systems to plant tracers, it was clear that neither the FBI nor the DoJ knew about the operation. My Fed and super contacts were almost certainly clean, which fit what Simms and Brody were asking the CIA to do. The print-outs passed to Chip were straightforward. Iron Lantern was less than six months from deployment. Before that could happen, steps needed to be taken to make sure Delphic¡¯s powers were well understood and his allies accounted for. While the NSA laid the groundwork for their operation, an active CIA operation was requested to find out more about the digital super. I followed Chip from there, and it was he that met multiple times with Effitech¡¯s Benjamin Michaels to discuss the need for better intelligence on Delphic. The funds were procured and the intelligence goals outlined in detail; it was up to Effitech to design and execute an operation to learn what FAM wanted to know. The kidnapping plan was hatched shortly after Michaels had a prolonged fight with his wife. For the better part of year, Benjamin Michaels had been trying to persuade his estranged wife Elizabeth to move back in with him, and he had mercilessly used their daughter Vivi as leverage for this. Time with Vivi was a constant point of contention between them; Elizabeth let Ben see his daughter every weekend, but never accepted invitations to spend time with them. From the time I spent surveilling Benjamin, I realized that he had arranged for Vivi to be the victim in an attempt to get Elizabeth, who was living and seeking work in the DC area, to move back into their much more secure Texas ranch. I found the address in the present and his plan seemed to have worked: the three of them were cuddled up together asleep in the large house¡¯s master suite. A vision of domestic contentment. So far, the government actors in this drama weren¡¯t seeming so much like scheming villains as simply men and women directed to do a difficult job. I was starting to form ideas as to how I might be able to disrupt each of the individuals involved, but I didn¡¯t see an easy way to ensure that other agents wouldn¡¯t be assigned to continue the project. The logical thing to do next would be to start gathering more intelligence on the NSA side, but I had a strong fear that it would not be as easy as the CIA hacking had been. This was not just because the NSA was most directly involved with cyber warfare and signal intelligence, but also because the little I had seen about Iron Lantern led me to believe it was intended to be some sort of major digital offensive capable of dealing with Delphic. The CIA had been most vulnerable to a digital attack, so I hoped that the NSA might prove a softer target if I took a human intelligence approach. I bundled up everything I had learned so far and created a new message: ¡°My friend Hector is in trouble, and I may be as well. I would like to consult with you at your earliest convenience.¡± I attached the files and my own notes on what I had discovered, and sent it. Ten minutes later, I heard a video call request come in as I was eating a cold sandwich in the kitchen. I rushed downstairs and accepted the call, my Delphic avatar appearing opposite a conference table with five people sitting around it. From the head of the table, Doc Stevens spoke: ¡°Good evening, Mister Delphic. What can we do for you?¡± I finished the sandwich in two bites, and then started my deal with the Devil. Interlude - In re Stevens ADVISORY OPINION OF THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ET AL. REGARDING LAWRENCE H. STEVENS, PHD Opinion delivered by POSNER, R. joined by HIROSHINO, M. and LU, W. FACTUAL BACKGROUND LAWRENCE H. STEVENS is an American-born scientist and engineer. He holds doctoral degrees in physics from the University of California Berkeley and in biomedical engineering from Johns Hopkins University. In 1982, he became the first researcher to win two Nobel Prizes in the same year: in Physics for the discovery of the Stevens meson (denoted by the Greek letter ¡°omicron¡±), and in Medicine for uncovering Stevens radiation sensitivity as a generalized indicator of atypical human abilities (colloquially ¡°super powers¡±)[1]. He is primary or co-author on over four hundred papers on the Stevens meson, the upsilon beam, and the mechanisms of a variety of powers. Stevens holds nineteen patents covering the ¡°Stevens detector¡± and various methods for measuring the use of super powers. Following the success of his early research, Stevens became a regular consultant for the United States Central Intelligence Agency in 1978 and later for the Department of Justice. He provided support in the diagnosis and treatment of deleterious conditions unique to supers and in the tactical containment of criminal supers. Also in 1978, Stevens opened a private medical lab on the outskirts of Los Alamos, New Mexico (the ¡°Stevens Main Lab¡±), and began recruiting both engineers and medical personnel for his ongoing research. In 1980, Stevens built a large annex to his lab to act as an intensive care unit and surgical theatre for ill and injured supers (the ¡°Stevens ICU¡±). Stevens acquired five additional patents on medical equipment specially designed to penetrate a body altered by super strength and invulnerability. The Stevens ICU surgical team was credited with saving the lives of several high-profile supers. On July 12, 1988, American law enforcement super ¡°Seraph¡± was visiting an injured colleague in the Stevens ICU. She left the hospital annex and entered, unauthorized[2], the main lab, where she discovered a hidden facility in which several supers were being held in various forms of containment. Seraph acted immediately to free the supers, detaching them from equipment and destroying between 30 and 50 unidentified machines. The conditions of the victims and their status when found are provided as Appendix A to this opinion. Of the 73 victims found alive in the facility, only 32 survived extraction and treatment for their injuries. The remains of over 400 supers were eventually identified as specimens. Stevens was out of the country and expatriated to the nation of Eutopia[3]. He refused to return to the United States for this proceeding, noting the outstanding warrants for his arrest, but was represented by counsel. His personal statement is attached as Appendix B to this opinion. AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSES At oral argument, Stevens¡¯ counsel provided evidence that he had renounced his citizenship in the United States for vassalship in the Kingdom of Eutopia. An affidavit from Monarch Ak¡¯b¡¯al was presented alleging that Stevens acted fully within the bounds of their laws, and upon his fealty oath was granted blanket clemency from past actions taken against foreign individuals and governments. This Court, applying international law under the authority of the United Nations, rejects these arguments as immaterial to the charges under consideration. It is explicitly the function of this Court to try crimes that are ignored or sanctioned by national authorities. Furthermore, the Monarchy of Eutopia is not acknowledged by the United Nations as a legitimate government nor admitted thereto. INAPPLICABLE CHARGES We begin by noting a variety of charges laid against Stevens under international law and treaty that are inapplicable to this case for a variety of reasons. The Court declines the charges of war crimes on the basis that Stevens was not engaged in any violent conflict that could reasonably be considered a war. Stevens is neither a de facto or de jure commander of any military force nor the head of any armed organization or state. In short, Stevens cannot be guilty of war crimes because he is not capable of waging war. The Court declines the charges of terrorism on the basis that Stevens carefully conducted his operations in secret, with no plans that they would ever come to light. By its nature, a terroristic act must be carried out in order to cause fear or to coerce the cooperation of a population or state. The Court declines the charges of genocide because there is no basis for finding the necessary mental state. We find that Stevens did not act with malice towards supers as a group nor intend to eliminate or subjugate supers as a group by his actions. APPLICABLE CHARGE: HUMAN TRAFFICKING This Court finds sufficient evidence to conclude that Stevens deprived individuals of their liberty for purposes of profiting from them, and therefore, Stevens is guilty of no less than 270 counts of human trafficking in violation of international law[4]. Human trafficking is usually carried out for purposes of slave labor or sexual slavery, but we find that kidnapping and confining persons for non-consensual experimentation also qualifies under the description. APPLICABLE CHARGE: TORTURE This Court finds sufficient evidence to conclude that Stevens carried out prolonged, painful procedures against civilians in order to extract information, and therefore is guilty of no fewer than 48 counts of torture in violation of international law[5]. Again, we recognize that torture is most typically understood as coercion to extract information known to the victim, or as pain inflicted for purposes of punishment, but this Court concludes that painful experimentation on the victim without their consent also qualifies under the description. APPLICABLE CHARGE: ATROCITY This Court finds sufficient evidence to conclude that Stevens carried out repugnant and inhuman acts of violence against hundreds of noncombatants, and that taken as a whole, this constitutes an atrocity under international law [6]. Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. APPLICABLE CHARGE: CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY This Court finds sufficient evidence to conclude that Stevens carried out numerous medical procedures which violated the basic humanity and dignity of the persons on which they were performed, and therefore is guilty of no less than 475 crimes against humanity in violation of international law[7]. ADVISORY MEASURES This Court has been asked to recommend immediate consequences that could be taken voluntarily by member states and private organizations worldwide to effectively sanction Dr. Lawrence H. Stevens for his conduct in violation of international law. In this matter we are particularly grateful for the Amicus Curiae brief provided by the National Academy of Sciences, an organization with which Stevens was closely affiliated. Stevens¡¯ career has been largely dedicated to the advancement of science and of his own academic prestige. He has won numerous awards and published in every major journal within his fields. While he earned great wealth, it was the advancement of scientific knowledge and the renown of his own role in it that he has always counted as profit. A fundamental principle of justice is that a criminal should not profit from his crimes. It is therefore the advice of this Court that the role of Lawrence H. Stevens in the scientific community be essentially eliminated, his awards stripped, and his discoveries disattributed. This is a unique action never taken in the history of modern science, but the crimes of Stevens in the name of science are similarly unique. The Court therefore recommends that the following actions be taken:
  1. The postsecondary education of LAWRENCE H. STEVENS, including each of his academic degrees, are rescinded by the universities that issued them. His name is stricken from all rolls and lists of graduates, and his transcripts destroyed.
  2. The awards and honors of LAWRENCE H. STEVENS, including all memberships in all professional and honorific organizations, and most particularly his two Nobel prizes, are rescinded by the organizations that issued them. His name is to be stricken from all rolls and lists of awardees.
  3. The papers for which LAWRENCE H. STEVENS is primary author are withdrawn from the journals in which they appear, except to the extent that co-authors can show significant independent contribution not involving Stevens, in which case those portions of the papers may be retained.
  4. The papers for which LAWRENCE H. STEVENS is a contributing author are corrected to exclude his name and redacted to exclude any material to which he was a direct contributor.
  5. The patents owned by LAWRENCE H. STEVENS are corrected to remove his name and then assigned to a non-profit organization, to administrate a fair and equitable collection of royalties for use of the patented technology, said royalties paid to the victims and their families.
  6. The scientific discoveries and laboratory devices bearing the name ¡®Stevens,¡¯ or any derivative thereof, are renamed. For example, the International Society of Particle Physics has already agreed that Stevens mesons can be called ¡°omicron particles¡± and Stevens detectors ¡°omicron detectors¡± in reference to the notation already in use to describe their interactions. The American Medical Association is considering a proposition to rename the Stevens blade specialized surgical instrument as the ¡°super blade.¡±
  7. Academics who studied under or were advised by LAWRENCE H. STEVENS have their own work examined and, should it be found to built primarily from the work of Stevens himself, are required to submit additional or different research without this dependency. The Court does not advise that such individuals lose their academic standing provided their substitute research is completed and submitted without unreasonable delay.
  8. LAWRENCE H. STEVENS, or his representatives, are excluded from attending conferences, submitting papers, or speaking at any academic institution. Where necessary, investigations are made to assure that future papers and speakers do not rely on his work or training.
  9. Any academic who attempts to work with LAWRENCE H. STEVENS in the future on any endeavor of research or of engineering is thereafter excluded from the academic community in the same manner as Stevens himself.
CONCLUSION There is no more zealous perpetrator of evil than he who believes his evil to be good. Lawrence H. Stevens, in pursuit of super powers, ignored the personhood of the human beings possessing those powers. He twisted his own talents, and those of his victims, into unspeakable horror and unmitigated evil. A generation ago, the humanity of supers was called into question. They were called ¡°freaks¡± and ¡°monsters.¡± They are neither, but real monsters do exist. We have passed sentence on one today. This OPINION is delivered on 18 JUNE 1990 and is NON-BINDING under international law. Footnote 1: For the balance of this opinion, we will use ¡°power¡± and ¡°super power¡± to refer to a person¡¯s unusual abilities, and ¡°super¡± to refer to the person, in conformity with common usage. We will not use the terms ¡°hero¡± or ¡°villain¡± due to prejudicial considerations. See the US Supreme Court¡¯s opinion in Huddleston v. Florida, 1973, Footnote 2 for further notes regarding this usage. Footnote 2: Neither in their written statements nor at oral argument did the US Government argue that Seraph was acting in a law enforcement capacity in entering the main lab. No evidence was presented that she had probable cause to believe a crime was taking place. Seraph was not acting in furtherance of an open investigation. Footnote 3: Although its current name of ¡°Eutopia¡± is in common use, this name is not universally recognized by the international community. ¡°Bolivia¡± is the official designation of this region by the United Nations. Footnote 4: As noted in Appendix A, forensic experts concluded that patients were taken live from the Stevens ICU to the Stevens Lab in no fewer than 200 cases. The Court makes no affirmative finding of innocence in the remaining 275 identified cases, but rather chooses to conclude clear guilt in only those cases where the evidence is clear and convincing. Footnote 5: As noted in Appendix A, forensic experts concluded that at least 48 patients were conscious for significant portions of the procedures. Footnote 6: As this crime under international law takes into account the scope of the incident as a whole, it is properly considered a single charge rather than separate charges for each individual. Footnote 7: As noted in Appendix A, forensic experts concluded that no fewer than 475 patients were transferred and experimented on, either while alive or shortly after death. This Court finds that each one of these cases should be counted as an applicable charge. APPENDIX A ¨C Conditions of Victims [Redacted] APPENDIX B ¨C Personal Statement of Defendant To the World, and especially to those hurting: Please know that I am sorry. Individuals sensitive to the spin-3/2 gauge fermion make up approximately 0.03% of the population, in part because, by my estimate, in excess of 99% of human beings originally conceived with the condition die before or shortly after birth. The majority of those who do survive are deformed or show no powers. The total population of those with exceptional abilities is fewer than half a million individuals worldwide. I strongly believe that just a handful of these individuals may hold the key to vastly increased longevity for all of humanity, as well as the tools necessary to make the sensitivity condition itself survivable for most, rather than just a lucky few. Please know that the vast majority of those taken to my hidden lab were already dying, with dire diagnoses that the best facilities in the world could not treat. As my breakthroughs accelerated, a handful of patients whose conditions were not inevitably terminal ¨C who might have survived ¨C were also taken to contribute to the research. Although I could not ask them, I know that every one of them would have willingly sacrificed themselves for the unparalleled extent to which their deaths would benefit humanity. It was my intent that every one of these brave men and women be remembered as the heroes they were, and the horror inflicted on their families by the graphic publication of images of my experiments is truly agonizing. I would never have wanted any of you to see this. The fantastic lengths to which I stretched myself and my subjects, the things I was forced to see, were always to be terrors that I alone would carry within me. Now they are shared by all, and the world is a worse place for it. I cannot regret my experiments, for their benefits will still outweigh their harm, even now. But I do feel genuine regret for failing all of you in not concealing them better, and I offer my deepest sympathy for all of the pain that has been caused. This promise I can give: the suffering will not be in vain. There could be no greater insult to my experimental subjects than to discard my efforts at this late date. I will make sure, as long as I am alive, that these experiments yield the full extent of their potential fruit: that every branch on this tree be pruned and cultivated until the harvest is so plentiful that we all imbibe its juices. My sincere condolences, Dr. Lawrence H. Stephens, PhD Chapter 19 - A Problem and a Plan The people around the table seemed content to wait as I collected myself. Despite the teleconference display being at the opposite end of the rectangular table from the Doc, each of the four were turned nearly flush with the table to keep him in view. There was little doubt who was running the meeting. ¡°Thank you very much for meeting with me,¡± the Delphic voice played over conference room speakers. ¡°This is unexpected, and I am sorry that I am not familiar with everyone here.¡± Doc nodded toward the two men on his left. ¡°You know Fred and Kyle, I think.¡± Kyle Tran (Glitch) matched his partner Fernando Campos (Glimmer) both in wary expression and aggressive fashion choices, although the bold clothes looked different on his narrower and longer frame. I hoped Fred wasn¡¯t still angry at me for my earlier questions about Lamarck; from what little I had seen of their organization I didn¡¯t think I could count on Doc to reign him in. To the woman immediately to his right, he said, ¡°This is Kat, head of logistics for the lab.¡± The woman was tall, dark skinned with softened features that contrasted with the strong lines of a revealing top. She had the poise of a professional and a laptop opened in front of her; the only one at the table. Briefly considering Kat, I decided I was misinterpreting some of the clothing choices. What I thought of as ¡°club wear¡± ¨C provocative and tight clothing displaying the body to good effect, which I had seen Fred in before but was worn by Kyle and Kat as well ¨C was worn in this room with the air of professional attire. I had never spent any time understanding Eutopian norms, and they seemed to be evident here. The other woman, olive-skinned and shorter, wore a white button-down blouse that matched European sensibilities about office wear. She also wore a visible side holster and sat within easy reach of an assault rifle propped against the table. Doc nodded to her next, ¡°Janice is head of security here. She has an advanced degree in strategic planning and I often consult with her on more¡­ tactical projects.¡± He gave her a second nod, this one just for her rather than for me, and she returned it. The Doc turned back to the screen. ¡°Mister Crum will call in shortly, but I see no reason to wait. Kat, the Donnell file first please. Mister Delphic, please explain the situation.¡± Doc¡¯s cadence was keeping me on edge, and I still didn¡¯t feel collected. I swallowed and started typing. ¡°Hector is a friend of mine who lives outside of Detroit.¡± A shared screen joined the meeting table on the call, and I saw the same outdated profile shot from my file along with the summary bio page. Hector Donnell, 28. Detroit, MI addresses, phone numbers, and employment. My life on a sample platter. ¡°Hector has worked with me in certain matters. He is highly skilled in building computer hardware and I have availed myself of his expertise,¡± I supplied. Over the last couple of days I had started building a Delphic/Hector history in my head, and now I had to put it to the test. ¡°Is he a super? Omicron sensitive, I mean.¡± The question came from Kyle who was now fielding half-harsh looks from Doc and Kat. Doc, at least, consistently avoided the word ¡®super¡¯. ¡°Not to my knowledge,¡± I replied. This question I had prepared for. ¡°He has worked in proximity to omicron detectors without setting them off. Most likely he is not.¡± ¡°How did he end up on their radar?¡± Janice asked. Doc responded, ¡°The file on him goes back to when he graduated in 2012. He¡¯s a skill asset, which means National Resources monitors his whereabouts.¡± Fred leaned back in his seat. ¡°The CIA watches US citizens?¡± Janice leaned forward, mirroring him, and nodded. ¡°Anybody they think could be a candidate for foreign recruitment. Same way they justify a ¡®Domestic¡¯ budget for supers.¡± I noticed the ¡®s¡¯ word from her didn¡¯t get the same looks. ¡°The takeaway,¡± Doc continued, ¡°is that the connection came from monitoring Mister Donnell rather than Mister Delphic. Which leads to the next question.¡± Doc sat with his hands calmly folded atop the table. ¡°What losses would you incur by cutting ties with him at this late date?¡± His face was steel, and he asked this question with minimal expression. The others around the table were not so stoic. Fred was trying to suppress an eyeroll and Kyle¡¯s brows lowered to match a small frown. Janice snapped her head to look keenly at the Doc, while Kat focused her attention on her laptop. This was not a question I had considered. I was a bit horrified to find myself, unknown to them, not only the subject of this hypothetical severance but also its object. How would Delphic respond to this? It was tough to trace the tangle of identities and motives I was supposed to be simulating. It took me a minute to recover, but I decided to continue the way I had from the beginning. Not a cold unfeeling utility calculator, but a person. With friends. I finally had Delphic send, ¡°I am unwilling to consider those costs to me separate from the costs to Hector.¡± Doc didn¡¯t move, but the others reacted with¡­ smugness, was the closest I could approximate. ¡°He is a friend, and his well-being matters to me.¡± ¡°Which is why,¡± Doc spoke again, still not moving an inch, ¡°you need to fully consider cutting ties. Hector Donnell is not a direct target.¡± He spread his hands and rose his head to stare sharply into the camera. ¡°You are. Mister Donnell¡¯s connection to you is the reason he has a powerful law enforcement officer watching him.¡± The others¡¯ expressions had moved back to something more neutral; apparently we were back on regular territory. ¡°If they have him brought in, it will be either to neutralize his help to you at an opportune time, or as a bargaining chip. Dropping him is an easy way to protect him.¡± ¡°It would be a costly break,¡± I insisted. ¡°I¡¯ve sunk a lot of resources into my hardware in Detroit. Also, I fail to see how I sever the relationship in a way that takes Hector out of danger.¡± ¡°He¡¯s already tagged under you,¡± Janice agreed. ¡°They aren¡¯t going to pull his tail or write him off unless they are forced to.¡± ¡°Can¡¯t they be forced to?¡± Kat asked. The shared screen didn¡¯t show activity but she had been typing in the background. ¡°Hector can invoke full citizen rights in the US, like a member of the Noble Caste here.¡± Doc nodded, turning slightly to her. ¡°In theory, yes. But it¡¯s not as simple as here. It¡¯s all more¡­ codified. Layers of proceedings. That¡¯s why we need Harold.¡± He scratched his chin. ¡°We can set aside the question of a retreat, for now, since we aren¡¯t sure how to effect one. And I will return to my primary question.¡± He reverted to the exact, neutral businesslike posture he had when the call started. ¡°What can we do for you?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know, Doctor. I am still in the process of analyzing the full extent of the agency actions and plans. I was primarily looking for information or perhaps advice on how to proceed.¡± Doc licked his lips, crossing his arms across his chest. ¡°Have you figured out what ¡®Iron Lantern¡¯ is?¡± ¡°I have not. It appears to be an NSA project, and I am reluctant to enter their systems directly.¡± Doc nodded. ¡°This I can help with. Kyle?¡± Doc looked to the nonplussed man, who gave a single slow nod. ¡°NSA, Iron Lantern. Should I go make the call now?¡± He took Doc¡¯s sweeping hand gesture as assent, stood up, and left the room. I knew very little of Kyle Tran¡¯s background. He was an American expatriate and had not been registered with a super team prior to his move to Eutopia. However he had wound up working with the Doc, he still had some way of getting US government information. It made me wonder if Doc¡¯s insights about the budget for the Michaels kidnapping weren¡¯t also through Tran. This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. ¡°Based on the situation as I understand it now, I see eight broad tactics we can use in some combination.¡± He nodded to Kat and the shared screen changed to a blank document. As the Doc spoke, she typed the header words into a list. ¡°One, remove the agents. There are fewer than a dozen personnel with any knowledge of this case. If suddenly none of them are available, the case stymies, if it doesn¡¯t collapse altogether.¡± ¡®Remove¡¯ was a rather cold-blooded euphemism for ¡®kill,¡¯ and it made my own blood freeze to hear it. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t that level of interference have serious repercussions?¡± I had Delphic ask. ¡°It would depend on how it was done,¡± Doc said calmly. ¡°One agent could accept a lucrative job at a private firm; another could be reassigned to other cases within the agency. Certain agents could be quietly persuaded to retire early. More direct, attention-seeking methods might not be needed at all.¡± That helped my conscience a bit. So assassination was in play, but not an opening move. I lit on my next objection. ¡°How much does this obstruct the agency in the long term? They will assign more personnel, will they not?¡± Any government office had churn, I knew, and keeping thorough files and reports allowed agents to step into each others¡¯ shoes. ¡°Two.¡± Doc smiled. ¡°Attack the records. You can do that digitally, yes? Destroy or modify all of their computer records on Hector and Delphic to make them valueless or worse?¡± ¡°There¡¯s a paper-only order in place,¡± Kat interjected as she put the text from the Delphic file on the screen. ¡°They¡¯re not putting operational instructions or critical information in the digital files.¡± A throat-clearing sound came over the line and was quickly matched to Fred Campos by the looks of the other attendees. ¡°Do we know where the files are?¡± Doc looked to Kat, and then to the screen. He waited for me to answer. ¡°The CIA files are stored in the agents¡¯ offices,¡± I typed. ¡°Langley?¡± asked Fred. ¡°Correct.¡± ¡°Not a problem.¡± The super looked smug. Doc nodded, considering the issue settled. This made me uneasy, and I was divided as to why. Part of me was concerned that Glimmer¡¯s attitude was unmerited bravado. Another part of me worried about the implications for my country¡¯s security if it weren¡¯t. ¡°Three,¡± the Doc announced. ¡°Countermeasures to agency action¡­¡± It was almost an hour of planning later when Kyle Tran returned, setting a notepad on the conference table. We were more than half an hour into working through the implications of Iron Lantern when another screen was added to the call. Harold Crum, Jr. was in late middle age and gave an air of bad health, his paunch noticeable within his suit jacket and his thinning hair more grey than blonde. He spoke with a pleasantly rich baritone. ¡°Hello everyone. Lawrence, I¡¯m sorry it took me so long to get back with you. It has been a terribly busy day.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a Sunday,¡± Doc said perplexed. ¡°Trial tomorrow,¡± the man explained. ¡°But you said this was urgent. I haven¡¯t yet reviewed the files you sent.¡± ¡°Have you met Delphic?¡± ¡°I¡¯ve not had the pleasure. Delphic, the digital superhero, yes? He¡¯s on the line?¡± ¡°Good evening, Mister Crum. This is Delphic.¡± I wasn¡¯t entirely understanding the attorney¡¯s role in this, even after working through a nominal strategy with the Doc and his crew. ¡°Delphic, I¡¯m Harold Crum. My father and I have represented Doctor Stevens for many years. I take it you¡¯re in a spot of legal trouble?¡± ¡°I¡¯m more concerned about my friend Hector,¡± I began, and the Doc and I quickly summarized the situation for him. ¡°Well, the first thing to know is that the CIA arresting Hector in the US, or ordering the seed agent to do so, would almost certainly be illegal,¡± Crum began, ¡°but the second thing to know is that they won¡¯t care. They will order their agents and assets to do whatever they think is best and take their lumps in court afterward. Warrants? Probable cause? Oversight?¡± He shook his head. ¡°These are people who believe that success makes a career and failure is swept under the rug. They don¡¯t play fair with their enemies, and the only difference between foreign and US enemies is how secretive they are about it.¡± He pivoted, ¡°The flip side of this, is that it¡¯s not hard to get accusations to stick. Courts know our intelligence agents are shady. Judges and US attorneys don¡¯t like it when they target Americans. So there¡¯s ammo there.¡± He took a long swallow from an insulated cup. ¡°Hector could file in federal court for an injunction prohibiting Polarity from arresting him without a court order. But even with that, there are several other ways they can legally go after both of you if they choose.¡± He shrugged. ¡°Anything they do, we can fight afterwards, but that doesn¡¯t make it any less damaging now.¡± The discussion continued for quite a while longer. After almost two hours, Harold hung up and the two male supers left to make additional preparations. We had a plan, and for the first time in a while I felt more excited than scared. With Doc, Kat, and Janice still left in the room, Kat spoke up next. ¡°It¡¯s confirmed. You have an invitation to reside here in Eutopia for as long as necessary. Please provide me with Mister Donnell¡¯s contact data and I will send him instructions on how to arrange transport.¡± ¡°Thank you, but it seems very unlikely that Hector would be willing to leave Detroit.¡± Kat nodded, and Doc broached the remaining subject. ¡°Are you ready to discuss payment?¡± His face was hard again, not showing any particular emotion but too intense to be called neutral. ¡°You have been hinting that you are looking for something other than cash,¡± I typed. ¡°The effort and risks being taken aren¡¯t worthwhile in exchange for funds, although Kat will write you up a bill for the operational expenses incurred. Harold is quite pricey as well.¡± He cleared his throat, then nodded to Kat again. A small file transferred. ¡°This is a list of the data we need. It¡¯s substantial. We want everything on this list by the end of the month, and a method in place by which you can alert us to any significant changes.¡± I opened and perused the file. Pharmaceutical production and shipping schedules. Hospital requisition numbers. The physical locations of hospital pharmacies, security codes on controlled substance lockers. Several major hospital networks across the United States were included. It was all incredibly disconcerting. ¡°This data set will not be easy to come by,¡± I typed. ¡°What is it for?¡± ¡°We are nearing a breakthrough on a new vaccine,¡± he explained. ¡°And we plan to release it into the American patient population covertly.¡± ¡°That¡¯s highly unethical,¡± I typed, but before I sent it, I thought better of it. The Doc wasn¡¯t asking for this data for several weeks: well after the CIA issues would be resolved. I had plenty of time to debate informed medical consent with him after I was safe. So I deleted my objection and instead sent, ¡°I can have it by the first week in December.¡± The Doc nodded and hung up without another word. Left in the silence of my basement, I would have loved to reflect on the repercussions of this, but there was far too much left to do and I was already exhausted. I gave myself a quick bathroom break and one more pill before sinking into my View. A small converted office building near Alexandria was my target. The structure stood well away from adjacent buildings with a camera mounted above the front entrance. There were two cars parked against the building, and a quick look inside confirmed that all three members of the Iron Lantern project were inside. Analyst Bonnie Lam¡¯s fingers literally blurred as she typed at super-human speed. I was enthralled, and ended up watching over her shoulder as she wrote some sort of signal handling module in a few minutes that would have taken me at least an hour. She used an unusual keyboard, a fully smooth surface without raised keys which I presumed help accommodate her speed by eliminating some of the mechanical elements. What I found truly impressive was the speed of her mind, which at the level she was working was as much a natural limitation as typing speed. I was far less impressed with her coworkers, Agent William Brody and Analyst Susan Shives, whom I found sharing a naked embrace on a couch in Brody¡¯s office two rooms away. A quick check showed that this was a daily occurance. Brody, who as the lead Agent on the Iron Lantern project was Shives¡¯ immediate superior, would take ¡®breaks¡¯ with Shives at least a couple of times a day before ending a late evening in bed with his wife. The Iron Lantern project had a well-defined objective: create a data-rich system (known in information security as a ¡°honeypot¡±) capable of attracting and trapping an advanced digital intelligence. While the NSA would certainly claim such a system could have multiple uses, its one plausible target was clear. They intended to capture Delphic. Ignoring their extracurriculars, the three agents were an effective team. Lam did the work of an entire team of programmers while Shives reconfigured and maintained hardware and Brody assisted with tests. Brody also fetched existing code from outside the Iron Lantern facility when needed. Security was simple, but tight. Nothing in the building could send and receive signals outside of it. The Agents didn¡¯t bring any electronics in with them and a metal cage enclosed the work areas. Signal jammers were also deployed liberally. An electronic lock on the outside opened to old-fashioned deadbolts inside. Hardware that needed to be brought into the system was disassembled and the pieces placed in cases with insulated foam, to be re-assembled by hand within the facility. To import code, Brody would print out the source, bring the hard copies in, and scan them into the system by hand. Most importantly, I was able to confirm that no measure was taken to create an off-site backup of the Iron Lantern code. Brody reported progress to his own manager, but the three backup drives were all kept in the project building itself. I confirmed this to the Doc and moved on to other preparations. By 9 am, I was completely exhausted, remaining conscious only due to the effects of a quantity of stimulants even I recognized as dangerous. This was a point, however, on which we had all agreed: each day that passed provided more opportunities for things to go wrong in some unanticipated way. A rapid response was imperative. So, having received a final confirmation from the Doc, I made the phone call. It rang three times before being picked up. It would have appeared on her ID display as an office number from Virginia. ¡°Hello?¡± her clear voice sounded well-rested. ¡°Laila Morris, this is Delphic,¡± the synthesized voice said over the line. ¡°We need to talk.¡± Chapter 20 - Diplomacy and Duplicity There had been a lot of disagreement with my strong desire to have Delphic contact Laila this morning, but I felt it was necessary for two reasons. First, she represented the earliest and most extreme pivot point in the full scheme. If for any reason Polarity was activated and apprehended Hector within the first 48 hours, it changed the timing and importance of several other actions. Unbeknownst to Doc and his crew, it would also take Delphic out of commission over the same period. The direct route to pin down this variable was worth the risk. The second reason came from considering the long-term outlook for me. Presuming everything could be resolved and Delphic remained in operation, I had to pay attention to my reputation among the superhero community. Talking to Polarity now showed respect and goodwill, even if she wouldn¡¯t immediately appreciate what I was doing. I slipped under for a momentary View of Laila. The dull ache spread behind my eyes as I closed them, a loud complaint from my overtaxed brain. She leaned over the kitchen counter with wide eyes and a drawn mouth. She wore similar clothes to what I¡¯d seen on my last visit, appropriate for welding work. A damp dishrag lay forgotten on the counter in front of her, the dishwasher half loaded behind her. I tolerated the crescendoing headache as best I could while I focused on our dialogue, intermittently Viewing when I could spare the attention. Her voice returned, not steely or wary as I might have expected but light and friendly. ¡°This is Laila. Who did you say you were again?¡± ¡°This is Delphic.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know anyone by that name. Is this a telemarketer?¡± I detected nothing out of place in her inflection. She was a much better actor than I was. ¡°Ms. Morris, I appreciate your difficult position. If your act is for my benefit, there is no need.¡± I punched through quickly, hoping a dialog would be possible. ¡°You have been assigned as a seed agent targeting Hector Donnell in an attack against me.¡± I saw her eyes widen, but her voice showed no hint of admission or apprehension. ¡°Hector? My neighbor the cable guy? What does he have to do with this?¡± ¡°Please check your email.¡± I watched her move to the sitting room and open up her laptop. She launched her email client, as well as a chat window. She quickly typed out a message, ¡°We have a problem!¡± and sent it as her inbox loaded with new mail. Fortunately, all of the internet traffic through the Morris home router was still relayed through my eavesdropping server. As she had opened the chat client, I identified the headers for the chat data and blocked them from being relayed. Her laptop still registered as being connected and the server validated the messages as sent, but whoever was supposed to be on the other end wouldn¡¯t get them. ¡°The email has several attachments, and you should look at all of them,¡± the Delphic voice continued over the phone line. ¡°Please open the first one as I summarize.¡± She opened the first attachment; it loaded a document file of several hundred pages. ¡°What you are looking at is an unabridged compilation of the government¡¯s records on me. Five years of speculation and analysis, incident write-ups, and curated news articles. Everything the FBI, the CIA, and the NSA has on me.¡± I watched her start to scroll through the pages. ¡°There is dangerous information in there. The current whereabouts of certain criminals, the names of agents, and the like. Please be careful with it.¡± Laila had typed ¡°Are you there?¡± into the chat window and I could tell she was growing anxious having received no answer. She said, ¡°Why would you give me this? You¡¯re not supposed to have these files. I¡¯m not supposed to have these files.¡± She scrolled through page after page with uncontrolled fascination. ¡°I had to give you everything so you can conclude for yourself that what I am saying is true.¡± ¡°Which is?¡± Her voice was about a quarter octave deeper. She was dropping the facade. ¡°They are not investigating a crime. They are committing one.¡± I watched her eyes narrow at this as she continued to read through after-action reports filed by FBI agents from Super Team missions years ago. ¡°You¡¯re saying government agents are conspiring against you?¡± Her teeth showed in an unkind grin, ¡°How original.¡± ¡°Please open the third file,¡± was my Delphic response. ¡°Not the second?¡± ¡°The third addresses what you just said.¡± It would have been more dramatic if the files had been in the correct order, but alas. As she opened it, I explained, ¡°These are scanned records detailing the Iron Lantern project. Many of them are by hand, as the NSA is extremely strict about digital devices at the facility. The objectives are clearly outlined in the first several pages, though.¡± Laila¡¯s eyes had moved from suspicion to simple focus as she allowed herself to dive into the documents. ¡°A network intentionally set up like a maze.¡± She scrolled further. ¡°¡®Digital entity containment¡¯? Meaning you?¡± ¡°Meaning me. The dollars are black, not officially allocated, but they were approved and budgeted for this almost two years ago.¡± This was yet another occasion where I wish I could convey tone in my synthetic voice. ¡°If this is an NSA project, where does the CIA fit in?¡± ¡°The second file, if you please,¡± I responded. ¡°Hector¡¯s record. This one is slightly redacted. I blacked out evidence that he¡¯s hacking the Lion Electric power meters.¡± ¡°That¡¯s a crime, isn¡¯t it?¡± She was grasping for a foothold. ¡°Yes, but not a matter of national security. Note the justification given for the agent looking into it.¡± ¡°Leverage.¡± She was sitting up straighter now, her tone backed with steel. Any pretense of weakness was gone. ¡°The CIA uncovered the connection between you and Hector?¡± ¡°They were spying on Hector for unrelated reasons. When the link was discovered, they decided that Hector would need to be neutralized when they came after me.¡± ¡°And that¡¯s what they expected me to do?¡± ¡°Yes, and for a particular reason. Can you open the fourth link?¡± Laila first checked her chat window, but didn¡¯t write anything more when she saw no reply. She opened another large document, this one digitally indexed into several sections. ¡°You don¡¯t have to read through all of this one,¡± I typed. ¡°The first memo is an executive summary.¡± ¡°Legal opinions?¡± My attention was elsewhere but I thought she rolled her eyes. ¡°Restrictions on CIA and NSA activities. Neither of them can make an arrest in the United States.¡± ¡°Not even when they¡¯re investigating someone?¡± ¡°They¡¯re not American law enforcement. They don¡¯t have jurisdiction within the US.¡± ¡°So who do they¡­ the FBI. Or any federal law enforcement. Like me.¡± I was elated by what I saw in her eyes ¨C a glint of molten anger. ¡°As a federal officer, what is your standard for arresting an American civilian?¡± ¡°Reasonable suspicion of a federal crime, intervention to prevent imminent harm, or hot pursuit of a fleeing felon,¡± Laila rattled it off without hesitation. ¡°Which of those would justify detaining Hector?¡± She thought for a full minute before answering. Her words thudded like lead. ¡°None of them,¡± she replied. ¡°I was told I was acting as an agent for the CIA, not under my DoJ authority.¡± The anger glowed brighter. Polarity¡¯s admissions of the last couple of minutes showed that she was past pretending. As I had strongly hoped, she was more concerned with the agency¡¯s underhanded use of her in ignorance than with the means by which I had obtained and was sharing their records. I had read her correctly, and I was greatly relieved. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. ¡°So, what do we do?¡± I appreciated the ¡®we.¡¯ ¡°First, please don¡¯t attack Hector,¡± I said. I was happy to see her nod to herself. ¡°Second, I¡¯d like you to suit up and talk to a US attorney about the material in an affidavit. It¡¯s the seventh attachment.¡± She opened the file; it was a statement from ¡®registered California Combined Super Team member Polarity¡¯ outlining what she had been ordered to do by CIA agents. Civilian names and addresses were not given; nobody would be able to find Hector or Laila from it. ¡°You want me to try to get the DoJ to sue the CIA?¡± There was just a pinch of wry amusement in her incredulity. ¡°No. I am preparing to file an injunction against the government. Once a US attorney has agreed that none of the material in the affidavit is illegal for you to witness to, we want Polarity to attend a deposition.¡± ¡°If I refuse?¡± There was still a hint of mockery in her voice. ¡°I would tell my attorney to live without your testimony. I owe you just for not attacking my friend.¡± That set her back a bit; the joking tone left her voice. ¡°Your friend?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± I sent immediately. ¡°Hector is one of my closest friends. He¡¯s helpless; a civilian, as far as I¡¯m concerned. It¡¯s up to me to protect him.¡± Polarity shook her head, perplexed. ¡°So this whole time, you saw me as a loaded gun aimed at your friend?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± ¡°What drove you to have this conversation, then? What if I had blown you off, turned around and told my agent contact everything?¡± She checked the chat window again; when she saw it was still free of any reply, she closed it. ¡°The risk seemed reasonable,¡± I said. ¡°You seemed like you could be made to understand.¡± ¡°Mmmm,¡± she mused. ¡°How much of this have you told Hector?¡± ¡°All of it.¡± I had batted around different versions of this story, but having my civilian identity as a visible part of the plan later would make ignorance hard to reconcile. ¡°Hector and your attorneys know my identity?¡± I could hear a little of her anger directed toward me at that. ¡°Just Hector,¡± I corrected. ¡°The attorneys are operating with me as the client and plaintiff rather than Hector. For now even they don¡¯t know his identity. It¡¯s too bad he doesn¡¯t have a code name and costume like you do.¡± ¡°It has its own problems.¡± She gave another feral grin. It changed into a bitten lip, which lasted in silence for more than a minute before she spoke again. ¡°Okay,¡± she decided. ¡°I¡¯ll do that.¡± She hung up. The pain was excruciating, but I Viewed Laila for several minutes more after we hung up. She called and spoke to Kurt, just letting him know that ¡®work¡¯ had come up and she would be out. She then made an appointment at the US attorney¡¯s office and headed downtown in her cargo van. The back part of the van was loaded down with large pieces of sheet metal ¡ª enough, I surmised, for a Polarity-sized suit. A message exchange with Doc later, and I was in my own vehicle heading across town with a small tower computer carefully strapped into the passenger seat. I turned onto the feeder street for my parent¡¯s neighborhood, and¡­ It was early afternoon when I awoke. I languished in my bed for just long enough to enjoy the complete absence of pain; the contrast from the earlier pounding headache represented a welcome release. My relief was short-lived, however, when I checked the time. It was six and a half hours since the last time I could remember, which was driving to Mom and Dad¡¯s house to set up the equipment. A quick View verified my suspicion: There was almost an hour of my own actions for which I had no first-hand memory. Fortunately whatever I said to Mom seemed to be normal because she didn¡¯t look surprised or upset. The system test went smoothly, and I had obviously made it safely home. While completing a minimal shower, I mentally reviewed the next day and a half. Most of the prep work was done, the raw info already in the hands of Doc¡¯s people. Thirty-plus hours would be plenty of time for me to complete my remaining tasks, *if* those were all I was committed to do. But the Lamarck case was still ongoing, and my part of that investigation now included snooping against the wishes of the Canadian government, making it time sensitive as well. I put two slices of pumpernickel in the toaster, warmed up some leftover meat in the microwave, and piled on some greens to make a quick lunch. I checked my messages downstairs. The Doc confirmed that everything was acquired and in place for the evening. Lady Liberty had sent me a meeting invite for first thing tomorrow morning. Diane had likely stopped by her hotel room over lunch, because the Canadian agent had sent me a message over the private line that Spinner had an update. My View showed that Laila had returned from downtown an hour before and had stopped by and grabbed her daughter on the way home. Moving to the present, Deborah was now enjoying a cartoon while her mother worked on dinner from the adjacent kitchen. The dishwasher was running. I exchanged a quick set of messages with Mom, brushed my teeth, and headed across the street. When Laila opened her front door this time, she gave no welcome smile or other false warmth. Without a word she stood aside and shut the door behind me. ¡°Hi, sorry to bother you.¡± I turned and tried a weak smile of my own, which she didn¡¯t return. She swept past me into her sitting room, taking one of a pair of chairs in the corner furthest away from Deb and the TV. She pointed to the other. ¡°Hector,¡± she sighed, drawing out the ¡®h¡¯ sound with a strong exhalation, ¡°why are you over here? I¡¯m already on edge after talking to that attorney today.¡± She glanced toward her little girl, making it clear that her apprehensions weren¡¯t just for herself. Before I could explain, Laila¡¯s phone rang. She frowned at the number but answered anyway. ¡°Yes?¡± She didn¡¯t mask her tense irritation. ¡°He is. I take it you sent him over?¡± She kept her eyes on me warily. ¡°All right, hold on.¡± She tapped two buttons and held the phone out and between us. ¡°You¡¯re on speaker.¡± The familiar synthetic voice said, ¡°Hector, can you hear me? This is Delphic.¡± ¡°Hey man. Laila was just telling me how great it is to have me over on such a low-stress day.¡± She have me a look that made it clear my sarcasm wasn¡¯t appreciated. ¡°I¡¯m sorry to bother you both. This matter is time-sensitive,¡± Delphic explained. ¡°I wanted to speak with you together so that there was no confusion or ambiguity about what will be happening next.¡± ¡°The lawsuit?¡± Laila asked. ¡°Yes,¡± answered the Delphic voice. ¡°A request for temporary injunction will be filed in the morning in Virginia federal court. We think we will have a hearing by Friday. Everything is being filed under seal.¡± ¡°Not public then?¡± I asked hopefully. ¡°Not if we can help it. But that¡¯s part of why I wanted us to talk. There is no guarantee this won¡¯t become public, and also no guarantee that someone in the government won¡¯t leak your identities.¡± ¡°They can do that?¡± Laila was surprised. ¡°Not legally. Both of you should be protected according to the lawyers, but especially you, Laila. Revealing the secret identity of a superhero is a federal crime.¡± ¡°They could still do it, though?¡± I asked. ¡°It would be illegal, but there¡¯s not any practical way to stop it if they decide they want to get petty?¡± ¡°Not that I can see,¡± Delphic said. A tugging on my pants leg prompted me to look down at the plump toddler who, with a confident smile, thrust her arms up at me. I picked Deb up and sat her on my right leg, where she happily turned her attention back to the cartoons still playing across the room. Laila¡¯s expression hadn¡¯t lost any of its steel, but she didn¡¯t seem to mind Deb choosing me to hold her. ¡°I won¡¯t lie: everything about this freaks me out.¡± She swallowed. ¡°But I put in a call to a woman I know at Justice, and your legal assessment was spot-on. The CIA has done this before, and it was the law officer left holding the bag. I¡¯m on board.¡± ¡°Thank you,¡± came the voice over the phone. ¡°Hector?¡± ¡°Laila figured it out, but that doesn¡¯t mean the next guy will,¡± I assessed. ¡°I hope we can keep our names off the news.¡± ¡°Okay. Laila, the best way for you to get in contact with me is to respond to the email I sent you before. Hector, we will be in touch. Thank you both.¡± ¡°Thanks,¡± she said and ended the call. As she put the phone down, Deb suddenly lunged forward at her mother. I managed to keep my grip on her long enough for Laila to reach out and take her. ¡°I know this is messing things up for you guys,¡± I said by way of apology. ¡°Thank you for sticking your neck out.¡± She nodded, still not smiling. Her shoulders drooped just a touch as she said, ¡°I¡¯m¡­ sorry I was ready to. You know. I just saw it as carrying out the mission.¡± She shrugged. ¡°That¡¯s not really an excuse.¡± I nodded, standing up and turning half toward the door. ¡°I understand. It¡¯s not as though you meant me harm, not really. You fight crime, and this was a part of that.¡± She stood and followed me to the door, still holding a wriggling two-year-old in her arms. I let myself out, and she closed the door behind me. I waited until I was behind my own locked door and down into my basement before I opened up secure chat. ¡°All done,¡± I typed. ¡°How did I do?¡± the message came back almost immediately. ¡°Fantastic, Mom! I can¡¯t think of a single difference between what you said and how Delphic would have said it. A+.¡± ¡°Most of it was pre-written baby.¡± ¡°Not all of it. Maybe I should retire and you can be Delphic from now on.¡± ¡°No thank you.¡± A longer pause before she continued, ¡°I will do this again if you need to both be somewhere together, but Delphic¡¯s speech patterns need to stay consistent. He is very visible.¡± ¡°I know. Thanks.¡± I watched her status change to offline. I checked the time. The workaholic speedster programmer, Bonnie, left the office on Mondays to attend an aerobics class at a nearby gym and then went home afterwards. That was about four hours away. A View in the present showed the three agents all at work ¨C Susan testing a network card, Bill talking to Bonnie about a particular code section. On my machine I brought up the remote module for both Susan and Bill¡¯s phones, confirming their status and locations. Susan had left hers in her car while Bill¡¯s was at home on a charger in the hallway. Most smart phones are set up to automatically download and install updates from the network providers; it is trivial to gain access and control with the right malware. Putting the false messaging log together had not taken long once I had done the more laborious work of establishing when the agents actually arrived at home each day. And with a bit of detached voyeurism I was able to make sure the messages provided a fully factual description of the philandering, accurate each day to that day¡¯s activities. The results were titillating to say the least. This was necessary because Agent Brody and Analyst Shives were, perhaps not surprisingly, careful enough to have avoided producing any such incriminating evidence. There were no cameras or microphones recording them where they screwed, no suspiciously flirtatious messages sent by text or email. Susan and Mrs. Brody (Tabitha), as cordial acquaintances, texted more often than the illicit pair. To prompt the required debacle, some creative accounting was on order. The props were ready and the players were not deviating from their predicted paths. The curtain would raise very soon. Chapter 21 - Iron Rusts With a few hours before my next direct role in the operation, I knew it made sense to take it easy, but I was too amped up. I had another sandwich and thought about where else I could productively direct my energy. Finally I decided I had put off investigating the augments long enough. I wanted to have something ready when Diane or Spinner called me about it, if nothing more than a list of augment subjects that should not be pursued as suspects. Of the four clinics that Defense Research and Development Canada had originally operated, the Vancouver and Winnipeg sites were discontinued and dismantled. It took me about twenty minutes to locate the Winnipeg clinic site and rewind to View them shutting it down. The two clinics that were still open were in Calgary and Montreal, and I started by Viewing the Calgary clinic. Calgary had a more rural feel than most of the cities I had visited recently, buildings set farther apart with less crowding and more green spaces. I doubt I ever would have found the facility without inside information. From the outside it was identical in appearance to hundreds of specialty medical operations you¡¯d find in any city its size. Nothing stood out: not its unassuming sign for Advanced Medical Professionals out front nor its perfectly ordinary waiting room with a locked door back to examination rooms and doctor¡¯s offices. Only the rearmost personnel-only areas were noticeably different, as multiple storerooms had been opened up into one room where the semi-trailer-sized upsilon emitter sat. The emitter plate was a disk a foot thick and more than six feet across mounted onto one side of the otherwise rectangular housing, which on examination bore the hallmarks of actually being a semi-trailer. The size and configuration of the beam emitter itself marked the standard Boeing Marietta device used on American gunships, except for the second identical black plate that faced the first and trailed thick cables leading back to the unit. The ¡®receiver plate,¡¯ developed more than twenty years after the original beam weapon, prompted a dramatic improvement in beam testing and basic research. It allowed a coherent upsilon beam to form between the two plates, provided they were connected to the same source and within a small enough area. The true genius of the emitters, according to the Doc, was the tiny expenditure of energy associated with running one. They required charging a capacitor of very high voltage across a series of plates having a variety of different densities and magnetic moment, with both the thin iridium and thick gold plates greatly inflating the device costs due to material alone. But activating the emitter did not notably discharge the system; as long as a modest current was run with no interruption, the devastating beam would continue at full strength. This made the beam a perfect solution for the military needs of large industrial nations: a massive initial investment and only moderate upkeep costs. The downside was that the technology had resisted attempts to turn it to constructive ends. The emitted beam was not particularly energetic, and the difficulty of containing it over more than a small distance made it too dangerous to use even for demolition under most circumstances. It killed and destroyed, and after seventy years from its ruinous use during the land invasion of Japan, that was still its primary purpose. If anything useful came of these augment experiments, that could potentially change. I doubted, though, that if the best the program could do was 40% activation with 6% lethality, that it would be good enough to reverse the sentiment and stigma that established the international ban. The building was impressively large. I counted ten rooms that were equipped with hospital beds and a full suite of medical monitoring equipment, four of which were occupied by patients. Six offices were in use, presumably by medical professionals, two women in scrubs occupied which were mostly likely nurses¡¯ stations, and two burly men in scrubs could have been mistaken for orderlies if I didn¡¯t already know from the documents that the buildings had 24-hour security. That morning, the four subjects had arrived at the building. They weighed in, had their vitals taken, and then were sat in chairs along an examination room wall. The beam emitter chamber was on the other side. The emitter was activated for a little over an hour, after which the four patients were taken to different examination stations for testing by the medical researchers. They were directed to sprint on treadmills; to pull on hydraulic resistance equipment; to touch and interact with a variety of substances. Each subject spent time in a chair in the middle of a mostly empty room, save for the ubiquitous sensing equipment that always included at least an infrared camera and an omicron detector. I didn¡¯t have time to watch the tests in detail, but my abbreviated Viewing caught powers on two of the four. One of the women ¨C short, scrawny, in her late 30s ¨C reached superhuman metrics on the speed and strength tests. However, the effects were short-lived; repeating the tests three hours later showed a marked decline in her performance although it still looked to be well above her baseline. I¡¯d never encountered a hydrokinetic before, but a college-age young man ¨C muscular with bad skin ¨C exhibited exactly that. He put his hand in a shallow tub of water and watched as the water climbed up his hand to surround his bare arm. In two hours of testing, he showed he could move patches of the water around the surface of his body and propel small amounts of it away from him; with intense concentration he was even able to attract water to himself from a few inches away. The autonomic component of the power was particularly interesting: once the water was positioned on his body it stayed with him even when he was directed to fully focus on other tasks. A quick cross reference with the incomplete augment records I had showed that this was their fourth session with this young man; the only powers description was ¡°fluid manipulation.¡± I rewound my way back through recent weeks and was soon able to determine a routine for the augment testing. A different group of three to six subjects was brought in each Monday and Thursday and kept for three days and two nights of testing. Nothing in the records I had indicated how the schedule was configured, but the same people were not grouped with each other from session to session. It did seem that individuals with observed powers were scheduled more frequently than those whose records only included ¡®omicron emission¡¯ as their power description. Pushing back some months and looking for additional patterns, I did note that those subjects who showed the most promise often stopped appearing in the schedule at all. I predicted these were the individuals I would find at the DRDC lab in Toronto. Realizing I would soon need to direct my attention back to Alexandria, I finished the night¡¯s augment investigation by Viewing the tests that occurred the previous Monday. With the upsilon beams only on twice a week, and most augment powers fading within a couple of days, the six subjects that were activated the day before the Lamarck assassination were the most feasible culprits. Unfortunately, none of the six exhibited an invisibility power, although one of them could fly. I took down the six names, anyway. I returned my View to the Iron Lantern facility, where Bonnie was still working away while Susan and Bill indulged in a ¡®break¡¯. As I waited, I confirmed once again with the Doc that Glimmer and Glitch were in place for their part of the night¡¯s activities. I needn¡¯t have worried. I uploaded and sync¡¯d the new text log to Susan¡¯s and Bill¡¯s phones while I waited, and did one more passthrough of the draft email. I had been concerned that Bonnie might watch her accounts closer than other users and so had not been willing to access her email before tonight, which meant the email coming from her was written with only the sparse correspondence I had read over her shoulder. Hopefully actions would speak louder than words, and the evidence corroborating its claims would overcome any suspicion about its authorship. In a small Virginia suburb a few miles from Alexandria, I watched Tabitha Brody collect her daughter¡¯s discarded soccer clothes before sitting with her at the dining room table, staring at an open math workbook. Bill¡¯s phone was on a charger in the downstairs hallway; I had switched it from silent to full volume minutes previously. A jump to the project leader and his paramour showed them rapidly recovering from their exploits, so the timing was good. I had set the text message tone to something abrasive and long, so it would be difficult to ignore. As it was, I sent four of them stretched out over several minutes before Tabitha went looking for the device. Although I had prepared to escalate if necessary, up to and including ¡®accidentally¡¯ having Susan send a message to Tabitha¡¯s phone, the four messages were enough. Mrs. Brody picked up Bill Brody¡¯s phone and unlocked it. Starting with the most recent message, ¡°Let¡¯s see if we can sneak one in before lunch tomorrow,¡± the increasingly devastated woman scrolled up into a forest of flirting, innuendo, and outright celebration of the ongoing tryst. As many messages came from Bill as to him:, each one a proclamation of his infidelity. This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. I had several contingencies in place depending on how Tabitha chose to respond, but they were again not necessary. Agent Bill Brody arrived home 25 minutes later to find the deadbolt thrown and a single sheet of paper folded and taped to the front door. The note was short and to the point: ¡°I know about Susan. Stay with her if you want. You¡¯re not coming in this house again.¡± Agent Brody knocked and pounded for several minutes, but his determination broke long before his wife¡¯s. He got back in his car and headed to Analyst Shives¡¯ apartment. Seeing this turn of events, I made some last moment modifications to the email draft, then sat back to wait. Bonnie wrapped up and set the building alarms in plenty of time to make her class. I watched her step out of her car into the parking lot across the street from the gym, and vanish. I hadn¡¯t pressed the Doc on the specifics of the plan for the NSA analyst; she had dedicated her effort to finding a way to capture and neutralize me. But I had at least received assurances that she would not be summarily killed, and I was willing to chalk up any lesser fate as the consequences of her own actions. I hit the send button on the email a moment later. It was addressed to Agent Dewalt, who was Brody¡¯s immediate supervisor, with copies to Human Resources and several Senior Agents. The email outlined the reasons that the analyst was resigning from the Agency effective immediately. The email painted a vivid picture of a project leader unabashedly abusing his position over two female subordinates. As Susan agreed to sleep with him and Bonnie did not, Bill began moving more and more of the project responsibilities over to Bonnie while continuing to give Susan equal credit. Having finally had enough, Bonnie had confronted Bill on his behavior that very morning, only to be told that Susan would corroborate any accusations that Bill made to torpedo Bonnie¡¯s career. Bill had insisted that his behavior was normal and accepted in the Agency, and that an unspoken agreement existed among the male agents that would believe and protect him over her. Bonnie underlined all of this with two pieces of corroborating data. First, the log of text messages between the agents, copied by Bonnie and provided as an attachment, showed their ongoing relationship (itself sufficient reason to dismiss Brody for sleeping with a subordinate). Second, Bonnie pointed out that the affair could be immediately verified simply by confirming Brody¡¯s sleeping arrangements for that very evening. I was gratified when two agents knocked on Susan¡¯s door later that evening and spoke with Bill wearing expressions that telegraphed their disapproval. The message from Doc soon after that Glitch and Glimmer had finished ¡®cleaning up¡¯ was just as satisfying. This meant the physical records had been removed from the agency offices. I allowed myself to be extra careful accessing the NSA records, and so it took more than three hours before every CIA or NSA file describing Iron Lantern, Delphic, or Hector was stripped of relevant information. If either agency wanted to resume its efforts, it would be starting over from scratch. Eventually someone would access the Iron Lantern building, still heavily shielded, only to find every hard drive in the facility so thoroughly stripped of data that no amount of forensic reconstruction would find a single trace of the project code. Their failure was guaranteed by the fact that Glitch had carefully replaced each of them with a new drive of the exact same model; the actual Iron Lantern drives and backups were on the aircraft back to Eutopia along with the only surviving handwritten notes. I had no illusions that this was the end. My behavior was heavy-handed and might have left personal resentment in its wake. There was still much to do, and the very necessity of these steps was evidence that I needed to be proactive about my security. As paranoid as I had told myself I needed to be, I had fallen into the common trap of optimism bias and failed to be paranoid *enough*. I needed to do better. Still, this was clearly a win, however short-term the victory. A man needs one every now and then to keep him going. I poured myself some juice and thought a bit more about the fallout. I wanted to feel good about what had been accomplished tonight, but I couldn¡¯t ignore the collateral damage. Tabitha Brody and her kids would certainly be devastated. Bonnie Lam, whatever options the Doc might provide for her, could almost certainly not come back to the agency. And Laila Morris would now have to deal with a lawsuit and probably difficult agency questions. I texted my sister and asked her to come by after work. Paris was always better than me at coming to grips with the reality of law enforcement ¨C a job that habitually harms people and destroys lives in pursuit of the greater good. She¡¯d say something pithy and overly fatalistic and it would somehow make me feel better about everything. When I came out of the bathroom, I had an invitation for a three-way encrypted chat with Diane and an unknown account I assumed was Spinner¡¯s. My View showed Diane in her hotel room. I joined. Spinner and Diane had been messaging for several minutes already, coordinating his return to Ottawa. We exchanged greetings; all three of us had stayed continually busy since the last time we spoke. Diane sent,¡±Spinner said he had something he wanted to share with us right away.¡± ¡°Yes,¡± came Spinner¡¯s text. ¡°In Buffalo where they have an emitter set up, using it on prison inmates.¡± ¡°That seems counterproductive for making heroes,¡± I pointed out. ¡°It¡¯s not uncommon for risky medical research though,¡± Diane replied. ¡°You work out the bugs on disposable subjects, and move on to law abiding citizens when the technique is safe.¡± ¡°Is there any reason DRDC didn¡¯t use this approach?¡± I was genuinely curious. ¡°Numbers. You have a lot more prisoners in the States than we do.¡± No argument there. Spinner sent an raised-eyebrow frowny face and followed it up with, ¡°I got some info from local heroes who stand by while they use the beam, just in case you know. Anyway I found out about a villain team they picked up over the weekend.¡± Diane asked, ¡°Augments on the team?¡± ¡°No,¡± was sent, and then, ¡°three of them caught trying to rob a bank. Routine. Except there had been four of them.¡± Neither Diane nor I typed anything before Spinner continued. ¡°I couldn¡¯t get the file, the name was Sujoko Intan. Killed on Oct 27 by an invisible attacker.¡± ¡°Killed how?¡± ¡°Poison. They were meeting at a bar when she suddenly gets stuck by a needle in her gut. Nobody sees it happen, the needle just appears.¡± Very interesting. ¡°This would fit the escalation pattern. Valour was alone, Lamarck was on a public street in front of lots of people. If this victim was between the two, it makes sense that she would be in a small group in a semi-public space.¡± Diane went in a different direction. ¡°Why assume an invisible attacker? Couldn¡¯t it have been someone shooting the needle from a distance?¡± ¡°Or throwing with enhanced strength,¡± I supplied. ¡°All three witnesses agree. She stood up in pain, and then the needle appeared. It started out invisible.¡± I had a sneaking suspicion¡­ ¡°Was it a metabolic poison?¡± ¡°Cyanide.¡± ¡°She was a speedster?¡± ¡°Yes. Did you find her record?¡± ¡°Not yet.¡± Cyanide is a metabolic inhibitor; it blocks your body¡¯s cells from using oxygen, so you asphyxiate even though you are breathing. It usually takes a few minutes. But if a person with super speed started accelerating their body, and necessarily their metabolism, then a metabolic poison could proliferate and kill in seconds instead. ¡°Another attack tailored to its victim,¡± I pointed out. ¡°A ceramic knife against a metal controller, destroying the head against rapid regeneration of the body, poison that speeds up with a speedster. Deliberate and planned.¡± Spinner continued, ¡°Delphic can find out more? Maybe we can find a pattern.¡± Diane wrote, ¡°Any progress on the augments as suspects?¡± ¡°The DRDC activates a different batch of test subjects at each of their clinics twice a week,¡± I explained. ¡°None of the same patients were scheduled on both the day that Valour was killed and the day before Lamarck. Powers last less than a day on average and very few persist more than three days. So if there is an augment involved, it would have had to be those Monday activations.¡± ¡°And Thursday for Intan,¡± Diane supplied. ¡°27 October was a Friday.¡± ¡°I will see what I can find out about Intan, and if I can confirm the connection,¡± I sent. ¡°I should inform you both of one other matter that is occupying my attention right now.¡± I briefly outlined the Iron Lantern project and the seed asset assigned to my ¡®friend¡¯ without revealing his name or Polarity¡¯s. The two let me finish without interjecting any messages, and it wasn¡¯t until I explained there was a sealed legal case being filed that they both messaged back at once. ¡°Good, nail em to the floor,¡± Spinner posted. ¡°That¡¯s terrible. If I can help tell me,¡± Diane sent at the same time. I felt fortunate for them both. We agreed to convene another encrypted chat tomorrow at noon over Diane¡¯s lunch hour. As we disconnected, I immediately turned my attention to learning more about Sujoko Intan. Despite the relative lack of gore, I found Viewing the murder of the Indonesian-Canadian just as horrifying as the first two. The concern and determination of her friends as they yanked out the needle and desperately worked to get her moving towards help was painful to watch knowing its futility. I¡¯ve never enjoyed tragedy. The bar¡¯s back entrance was unmonitored, and the unexplained and unseen movements of the door within two minutes before and after the event made invisibility the inescapable conclusion. Another flawless murder, leaving no trace of the killer. Another human life ended in cold blood, no reason given or divined. I knew I was missing something, but the almost routine work with Paris or with various supers had provided me little need for developing genuine detective skills. Why bother understanding factors like motive when you can just see who did it? I usually thumbed to the last few pages of the mystery. Not so this time. I started accessing everything available on Sujoko Inran (Snowshoe), putting together a detailed victim profile I could cross reference with my assembled files on Bertrand Saxena (Valour) and Donald Thompson (Lamarck). I shed a fleeting smile when the message came in from Paris. She was off shift and would join me within the hour. I went upstairs to put on coffee and slide a tray of frozen cinnamon rolls in the oven. If I was going to be stuck playing detective, I might as well get some help from the real thing. Chapter 22 - The Hunt ¡°Are you sure about this?¡± I asked as I double-checked that my access into the Canadian Super Team system hadn¡¯t been disturbed since I last used it. Paris finished a loud slurp echoing from her mug and, featuring the last lonely arc of pastry in her other hand, jabbed, ¡°No, li¡¯l bro. If I was sure I wouldn¡¯t want you to get the files.¡± Nodding, I returned my attention to the interface. Both Carcajou and Velo had known secret identities and extensive profiles. I quickly downloaded their main files, searched and grabbed a couple of more restricted ancillary files, and took the time to cover my tracks. Paris tapped noisily on her tablet with her stylus, looking out of place in the folding chair I had set out for her behind my own wheeled leather office chair. I had shown her around the basement two years ago after I¡¯d finished the supercomputer rig, but that was it ¨C my basement is not a space where I ever entertain guests. Paris was helping me, at my explicit request, and it was still a grating imposition. The profiles were in a shared folder that she had access to, and I heard a very satisfied ¡®Aha¡¯ as she continued her tapping. After another couple of minutes I cracked. ¡°Anything to share?¡± She looked at me with a barely concealed grin and nodded. A couple of button presses and her display was mirrored by one monitor. It showed a simple table with three columns: Valour, Snowshoe, and Lamarck. Each attribute was shown in parallel across a row. ¡°The problem is simple: there is no pattern here. Valour and Snowshoe are the same age, comparable in power level, both born and raised in Canada, keep many of the same contacts. Lamarck is vastly more powerful -¡± ¡°There¡¯s no objective metric for that,¡± I cut in. Power ¡®ratings¡¯ are ridiculously subjective. ¡°Super Team membership ¨C local, regional, or national,¡± she rebuked me for being surly. ¡°I know I¡¯ve heard you say ¡®local-tier¡¯ before, man ¨C don¡¯t be a jerk about it.¡± She tapped a couple of buttons, and the third column changed from Lamarck to Velo. ¡°And here we have a clear pattern. Three Canadians who¡­ get this¡­ went to college together.¡± I looked at the data ¨C wow. ¡°University of Alberta in Edmonton. A two-year overlap. That¡¯s really¡­ I mean, it¡¯s¡­¡± I shook my head. ¡°What made you think to look at this?¡± ¡°Degrees of freedom,¡± she explained. ¡°When the facts aren¡¯t all adding up, find the ones with the most wiggle. We have two precision kills at close range, and a third that relies on a long range shot onto a crowded street.¡± She shrugged. ¡°What if he missed his intended target? The question jumps out at you.¡± ¡°So you figure the RCMP investigators have been asking this question?¡± ¡°Yeah, but they don¡¯t have the data to answer it. We do. The killer missed.¡± She finished the last bite. ¡°And I¡¯d bet three more of these things ¨C with double icing ¨C that he went to school with the victims.¡± ¡°No bet.¡± I pulled up the school¡¯s website. ¡°Around seventy-five thousand students would have attended sometime during those two years. Still not a manageable list.¡± She shrugged. ¡°Search against the database of augment subjects. And anyone else who knows where the clinics are: government scientists, military, cleaning people. Cast a wide net, you¡¯re still not gonna get more than a dozen names.¡± ¡°The chance of someone other than a subject being a viable augment is unlikely.¡± My sister condescended, ¡°The chance that at least one of the thousands of people who have happened to pass near a beam emitter is a viable augment is pretty likely.¡± She let out a small sigh. ¡°Homicide is rare, thankfully, because homicide only happens at the extremes.¡± She ticked off her fingers. ¡°Extreme provocation, extreme psychosis, extreme danger, extreme reward. That also means you can¡¯t ignore the rare events, the outliers, because your priors already embody the unlikely.¡± ¡°It only takes one. Huh.¡± I mirrored her sigh with one of my own. ¡°It¡¯s largely academic, anyway, because we don¡¯t have a database with educational information even for the subjects themselves.¡± She openly smirked at me, then frowned into her empty cup. Carefully rising to her feet for a refill, she shot, ¡°You have names, right? For subjects and employees? Get a school registry for the two years and see who¡¯s on both lists.¡± I had, in fact, come to the same conclusion and was already hunting for an in to the university registrar¡¯s system. I was downloading the records by the time Paris set back down with a steaming cup and another roll. There were four hits. Two were false positives ¨C not the university students but different people with the same name. One university alum was a test subject with shapeshifting powers. The other was a DRDC researcher. Jordan Meer, according to his CV, had a masters degree in molecular biology from the University of Alberta; his masters thesis involved running tests on tissue samples from volunteer supers to stimulate omicron emission. He had been hired by the DRDC directly out of Edmonton and put to work correlating omicron sensor data with particular subjects and tests. The previous Monday, Meer had been scheduled to come into work at the Montreal clinic at noon. He had, in fact, entered the building more than an hour before the rest of the staff and hidden in a corner of a cluttered stockroom for several hours. The corner was opposite the emitter room, and he was as close to the upsilon beam as the slated subjects, if not closer. Shortly after the emitter was deactivated, Meer disappeared from the room. He became visible in a toilet stall nearby and performed his duties as normal the rest of the day. I was not in the least surprised that the following day, Mr. Meer¡¯s day off, he decided to take a road trip to Ottawa with a disassembled M16 automatic rifle carefully concealed in the spare tire well of his car. While Paris waited patiently next to me, I watched him park in a multi-level hospital lot about three miles north of the Ottawa Civic Hospital campus. He carefully assembled his weapon right there in the trunk of his vehicle, and then disappeared again. I had seen enough. Dropping the View, I sighed, ¡°It¡¯s him. Jordan Meer, DRDC lab tech.¡± I took a swig of bottled water. ¡°I¡¯ll make sure he still has the M16 in his house and see what other evidence I can point the Mounties to. But there¡¯s no doubt that this is the guy.¡± Paris nodded. ¡°Good work, li¡¯l bro. Proud of you.¡± I shook my head. ¡°It was at least as much you, sis.¡± ¡°Nah,¡± she said, ¡°I was just speeding up the same thought process you would have come to soon enough.¡± She stood up to stretch, clearly ready to call it a night. ¡°If anything, it¡¯s the agent girl and that hero from Boston you need to thank. They did the running around, and they were the ones who identified the other two cases. We just,¡± a sly wink, ¡°put it all together. And you, my super powered sibling, confirmed it.¡± This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. She left with a hug and an extracted promise that she would hear all about the fallout tomorrow. I dropped back into my View to confirm Meer¡¯s location and status in the present. Meer and his car weren¡¯t at home or at the clinic. I quickly rewound my View in front of his home and confirmed that he had left Montreal three hours ago heading west toward Ottawa. On a guess, I shifted my View to the same Ottawa hospital parking garage that the killer had used last week. His car was there again, albeit on the different level of the garage. A quick rewind showed that he had, again, assembled and loaded his M16 before disappearing. All of this had happened twenty minutes ago. This was no longer just a matter of getting the RCMP to apprehend the killer. He was on the prowl. Velo was in immediate danger. Connecting to the system received an immediate answer. ¡°This is Ottawa Super Team headquarters. Are you Delphic?¡± I recognized the voice from last week¡¯s incident. Her name was ¡®Calm-¡®¡­ no¡­ ¡®Stillwater.¡¯ ¡°This is Delphic,¡± I replied. ¡°I need to contact Velo immediately. It¡¯s an emergency.¡± ¡°Acknowledged. Calling Velo.¡± I continued, ¡°Is Velo on patrol?¡± ¡°Yes, he patrols retail districts after dark a couple of times a week. What¡¯s the emergency?¡± ¡°Lamarck¡¯s killer is loose with Velo as his likely target.¡± ¡°Oh! That¡¯s -¡± I heard a voice in the background, then Stillwater repeated, ¡°Velo isn¡¯t responding. He carries a cell phone on him but if he¡¯s in traffic it¡¯s often a few minutes before he stops to answer it.¡± ¡°Do you have his position?¡± ¡°No, he doesn¡¯t have a comm unit on him when he patrols. Just the phone. Technically he¡¯s not on OST duty right now.¡± ¡°What¡¯s his cell number?¡± I punctuated the request with a text message into the OST system, which is handled by a different staff member in the HQ. I received a text response with Velo¡¯s number. ¡°Sending,¡± replied Stillwater. ¡°Stand by,¡± announced my Delphic voice as I began a search against the carriers for Velo¡¯s phone. While that was running, I made another call. ¡°Yo,¡± Spinner answered. ¡°Spinner, this is Delphic. How fast can you get to Ottawa?¡± After a minute, he answered, ¡°I¡¯m in Buffalo. I could grab a car and be there by midnight. Why?¡± ¡°I found the killer, and he¡¯s in Ottawa right now. He¡¯s after Velo.¡± ¡°Who?¡± ¡°The speedster standing next to Lamarck when he was shot. Velo was the real target.¡± Spinner cursed. ¡°Have you tipped him off so he can lay low?¡± ¡°I¡¯m working on it.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll be there in 45 minutes,¡± Spinner said with increased certainty. I could only imagine how he would manage that, but now wasn¡¯t the time. ¡°I¡¯ll message you with GPS coordinates of where he turned invisible. He¡¯ll have more than an hour¡¯s head start, though.¡± ¡°Keep ¡®im alive until I get there. Ottawa HQ knows?¡± ¡°They do.¡± ¡°¡®kay, see you soon.¡± He cut the channel. ¡°Ottawa HQ,¡± I had Delphic send over their line again. ¡°Delphic,¡± replied Stillwater¡¯s voice. ¡°We¡¯ve not received an answer from Velo and still don¡¯t know his location. Can you provide more details on the suspect?¡± I notice she didn¡¯t say ¡®killer¡¯ like I did. ¡°Jason Meer, twenty-eight, sending an image now. Armed with an M16 assault rifle, no optics. Presumed to have flight and invisibility. Motives unknown.¡± I sent the profile picture along with a link to a publicly available CV; I refrained from sending any of the DRDC files. I also added coordinates and an address for the parking garage while saying, ¡°He was here at 2035 local time. Spinner is in-bound to that location, arrival time of 2145. We have to secure the target.¡± ¡°This isn¡¯t an exercise, eh? Let¡¯s get boots on the ground.¡± Stillwater kept the channel open but it was clear she was addressing the people around her, not me. ¡°Get OPD to put out an all-points on Velo, they know what he looks like.¡± A man¡¯s voice, soft due to distance from the pick-up, said, ¡°A fan site says he was spotted in Overbrook about ten minutes ago.¡± That was something I could work with. I glanced at a map to relate Overbrook to my most recent View locations and dropped into the present. Drifting into that neighborhood, I moved my vantage into that neighborhood and rewound, looking for the bicyclist super. Even narrowed down to within a dozen blocks, though, I couldn¡¯t spot him. The streets reflected a steady flow of after-dinner traffic, nowhere near as thick as rush hour but still including dozens of bikers within site at any moment. It was quite possible that Velo, when he did appear, would be moving at high speed, leaving me stuck combing the streets at a crawling rewind, hoping for better intel. The same quiet male voice reported, ¡°Toronto HQ says Full Tilt got word and is on his way, ETA eight minutes. They¡¯ve put a helo in the air with two heavies as well.¡± Stillwater sighed. ¡°That¡¯s, what, an hour fifteen to get here? Good on Full Tilt but tell the helicopter to turn around.¡± ¡°Incoming call from Velo.¡± ¡°Finally! Connect to us and Delphic.¡± The sounds of moving traffic and background chatter upwelled behind the super¡¯s voice. ¡°HQ, it¡¯s Velo. What¡¯s the fuss? I¡¯m standing here with a constable says you got an APB out on me.¡± His voice was strong and high with a pleasant Canadian lilt, slightly distorted from the poor cellular signal. ¡°Velo, we have Delphic on the line. He reports -¡± ¡°Oh Delphic, eh? I saw that mess with the First Nations folks the other day. You still workin¡¯ the Lamarck case?¡± Velo¡¯s tone was perfectly at ease, and he pushed forward quickly into pleasant conversation. ¡°Delphic here. We have identified the killer as Jordan Meer. Velo, you were the target, not Lamarck.¡± ¡°Jordan Meer? From university? Man I haven¡¯t seen that guy in years.¡± Some urgency was creeping into Velo¡¯s tone, but not nearly enough. Stillwater diverted the conversation. ¡°Jordan Meer is at large in Ottawa and expected to target you again. Velo, can you please give us your location so we can send assistance?¡± ¡°I¡¯m at Whately and Maple over near Central right now. But, wait, the killer was invisible, yeah? Jordan¡¯s not a super.¡± ¡°Apparently he is,¡± Stillwater snapped. ¡°No, you don¡¯t understand. It was a whole thing?¡± He gathered his thoughts before explaining, ¡°Jordan was in a club for supers, secret membership and all, like a support group. We found out he was lying about having powers. He was kicked out of the club, almost got expelled from the school.¡± Motive. ¡°Velo,¡± I asked, ¡°were Bertrand Saxena and Sujoko Inran also members of this group?¡± The super coughed, then cursed. There was a short pause, and then he cursed again. ¡°How¡­ did Jordan¡­?¡± ¡°Jordan killed them.¡± There was no time to step softly. He cursed again. ¡°But why would Jordan conceal his powers when -¡± Stillwater cut in, ¡°His motives are a discussion for later. You need to take cover.¡± ¡°Right,¡± Velp agreed. ¡°If this guy is a sniper, I could zip over to the mall garage and head to an underground level.¡± Whately and Maple¡­ I checked the map again, and in another minute I finally got Velo in my View. I saw a trickle of foot traffic rubbernecking around the marked cruiser with its flashers on pulled up to the sidewalk. Velo was leaning on his bike next to a uniformed cop, holding a¡­ flip phone, of all the backwards nonsense¡­ awkwardly over his helmeted ear. ¡°Definitely take cover,¡± Stillwater agreed, ¡°but also steer clear of civilians. Meer didn¡¯t hesitate to shoot at you before, despite the surrounding crowd.¡± ¡°So what¡¯s the plan? Are we baiting him out?¡± I watched as Velo nodded in the cop¡¯s direction and jumped back on his bike, merging with traffic and maneuvering one-handed while his other held the phone. A pause told me Stillwater was considering, so I had Delphic point out, ¡°Putting the target out as an enticement is high risk with low reward. Spinner will arrive in a half hour and can track Meer. I suggest Velo get entirely out of sight, probably out of costume.¡± ¡°You¡¯re figuring,¡± Velo¡¯s voice echoed in the low-ceiling garage, ¡°that Jordan won¡¯t get frustrated looking for me and just start shooting. I¡¯m not okay hiding if it puts civilians at risk.¡± ¡°Jordan Meer has not attacked at random before. There is no reason to believe this has changed.¡± ¡°The loon with the machine gun is real predictable, eh?¡± I heard bitter amusement in the super¡¯s voice. ¡°Velo,¡± Stillwater¡¯s tone remained calm as always. ¡°The OST members currently on shift would like to rendezvous with you to provide support.¡± ¡°Sure, but why?¡± He chuckled. ¡°It¡¯s Fray, Zed-M, and the Mallet, yeah? None o¡¯ them can take a bullet any better than me.¡± I checked the shift roster on the OST system and confirmed. Fray had electrical powers, as I had seen the previous week when she took down the bone thief. Zed-M could create force constructs at a distance, but they were too fragile to work as armor. The Mallet was strong enough to swing a big mallet. I was starting to wonder how cities in Canada justified staffing their super teams like this. Velo and Stillwater were also on the list, and¡­ ¡°Stillwater, are you bulletproof?¡± I asked. ¡°I¡­ not officially, but yes.¡± Her tone was quieter than it had otherwise been. ¡°Why not have Stillwater wear Velo¡¯s costume?¡± Silence reigned for a minute before Stillwater herself answered, ¡°I can¡¯t think of any reason why not.¡± Chapter 23 - Apprehension The Velo fan page was a wealth of information. He ranged widely in his nightly rides, which were clearly more public relations than law enforcement, but there were a few main thoroughfares that he managed to cover just about every time. Personal time contraction is one of the most common super powers; its usefulness varies widely depending on what if any accompanying defenses the super has. A speedster without any sort of protection to accompany their abilities is very limited in how much they can accelerate, what their top speed can be, and how they can interact with anything outside themselves. With good shielding like Full Tilt, or a partial phasing effect like Millisec, you can reach velocities and time scales that defy belief. Otherwise¡­ well, you can impress gawkers by biking at car speeds and become a poster boy for energy conservation, like Velo. The super¡¯s distinctive red helmet and colorful costume was easy to spot along Centre Street as the rider coasted leisurely, waving to pedestrians but not stopping to chat as Velo often did. In addition to police cruisers positioned at strategic points nearby but never within line of sight of Velo, Full Tilt sat aboard his motorcycle ten blocks away at the mouth of a half-open fire station garage door. His passenger was a pleasant surprise: Silver Soul, a member of Canada¡¯s National Super Team. I hadn¡¯t known that Full Tilt¡¯s bike could carry a second rider even when accelerated; I would have to watch him later to see how it worked. Quite a bit was left to chance. Would Meer strike at Velo from a preset vantage; was he waiting to get him in a confined area? Would something ¨C the weather, traffic, suspicion ¨C cause him to abort? Would he switch to a secondary target? If Jacob Meer returned to his car, he¡¯d find that it wouldn¡¯t start, and that Mallet and Fray could easily disable the occupants of a vehicle whether seen or unseen. If he simply stayed put or flew off, we wouldn¡¯t have any way to know until Spinner arrived. But those contingencies were secondary, at least for the moment. My View moved smoothly with the red-helmeted rider in the present, following ¡®his¡¯ (really her) muscle-powered venture through the night-lit streets of Ottawa. With shoes just barely touching the blacktop on either side of the bicycle, the rider stopped behind a pickup truck at a four-way intersection. The helmeted head swung rapidly left as she jerked one, two, three times in rapid succession before I brought my View to a halt. At my slowest rate of rewind speed, the slug tumbling end-over-end through the air seemed to creep backwards ¨C a relieving testament to the effectiveness of Stillwater¡¯s power damping the kinetic energy of objects in her vicinity. The power had almost no effect on objects slower than 120 kmh, but faster objects showed rapid slowdown when approaching her. It was an amazing power against speedsters and ¨C as demonstrated ¨C bullets. She was basically against an unusually large-caliber bb gun. Speeding up the rewind slightly, I started to follow the trail of bullets backwards to their source. I had expected to finish my tracking job in seconds, but I soon encountered a problem I hadn¡¯t had with the earlier attempt: light. It was fully dark at this point, and while the ample lights of downtown Ottawa made for a clear scene at street level, by the time the bullets¡¯ height cleared those lamps they were very difficult to see. Still, the trajectory was suggestive, and within a couple of minutes I was quite certain of the building location of the sniper, who seemed comfortable recreating the circumstances of his last misplaced murder. The coordinates and address were conveyed to the system in a rapid break from my View before I returned to the present at the second-story vantage. No sign of the sniper himself, but his actions could be divined from the street-level reactions. ¡®Velo¡¯ dismounted the bike and looked around as another pattern of twitches showed that Meer had released yet another burst of fire. I was certain that he would give up and flee any second. Even as the hunter-green blur of Full Tilt¡¯s motorcycle slid into the intersection at impossible speeds, the silver body suit and armor of the woman clinging to him glowed an iridescent blue. Silver Soul¡¯s construct, a detailed doppelganger of her features in that eerie blue, flew out from her and straight towards me ¨C that is, towards the sniper¡¯s perch. She came in slightly low, her glowing foot clipping the roof¡¯s corner and throwing her forward at a precipitous angle. She righted herself and held her arms out as though welcoming a hug, and it seemed like she may have touched something briefly. She swung her arms around, continuing to fly across the roof surface at speed, but felt no other contact. The blue glowing body canvassed the air above and immediately around the roof to no effect. On the ground, motored speedster and pedaled counterpart met at a sidewalk corner. ¡°He was there, I felt him for a second,¡± came Silver Soul¡¯s shrill voice over the channel. ¡°He flew off immediately. I don¡¯t have any way to track him.¡± ¡°We, ah, we¡¯re waiting for Spinner,¡± the response from HQ was tentative. Zed-M had no prior experience managing a team, but had relieved Stillwater because he was still at the building when she left. He sounded younger than I am. Silver Soul¡¯s construct flew quickly backwards as though yanked by an invisible cord, half-intersecting Full Tilt and passing through unhindered before being reabsorbed into the heroine¡¯s body. ¡°So what now?¡± she asked. Stillwater, in Velo¡¯s gear and helmet, was speaking with the police at the scene working to set up a perimeter and addressing questions from civilians. Many had fled when the shooting started, but just as many were now gravitating toward the scene. ¡°We, ah, I think you should, that is¡­¡± A short pause before Zed-M said, overly loudly. ¡°Full Tilt and Silver Soul, please join Fray in staking out the parking garage. Have Stillwater resume her bike ride but move toward headquarters. I would like Meer¡¯s attention on the hard target if possible.¡± ¡°We have a designation for him yet?¡± asked a voice I didn¡¯t recognize. I watched the green and silver supers exchange brief words with Stillwater before the motorcycle blurred away. ¡°Ambush fits,¡± this one I recognized as Fray. Apparently her own ambush position didn¡¯t require radio silence. ¡°Eh, database says it¡¯s the English name for a guy working out of Ecuador.¡± ¡°You can reuse the one-word names for villains,¡± Zed-M pointed out. ¡°Okay, I¡¯ll override it. Ambush, yeah.¡± His voice then said much more formally, ¡°Request to connect from unknown US channel.¡± ¡°Not Spinner?¡± asked Zed-M. ¡°Different channel, I think it¡¯s USST.¡± ¡°That¡­ ah. Answer¡­ it.¡± His gulp was audible. My vantage moved to follow Stillwater as she rode Velo¡¯s bike back onto the road and into the evening traffic. ¡°This is Ottawa HQ.¡± Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. ¡°Peregrine here. I¡¯m incoming with Spinner, wanted to confirm the landing location.¡± The audio was harsh and tinny with a constant background ¡®whoosh¡¯ of heavy wind ¨C quite understandable for a super flying at high velocity. The background noise cut out at the same time his words did. I typed out a response as quickly as I could. ¡°Spinner should be sent to the address of the attack on Stillwater. He can track Ambush from there.¡± ¡°Ambush? Is Emboscador behind this attack?¡± Peregrine said. His tone was dismissive of the possibility. ¡°I don¡¯t¡­ who¡­¡± Zed-M stumbled. ¡°The guy in Ecuador.¡± The second man in HQ raised his voice to be heard over the channel. ¡°Sorry, Peregrine, no. This is a new Canadian villain. We just designated him.¡± ¡°Understood. Stillwater¡¯s condition?¡± ¡°She is unharmed,¡± Zed-M responded while mustering more confidence. ¡°Forward Peregrine the new coordinates. What¡¯s your ETA?¡± ¡°Sev¡­ nine minutes. Can you explain the situation? Spinner didn¡¯t have time to brief me.¡± However he was carrying Spinner, it must not allow for in-flight conversation. ¡°Ambush has invisibility and flight, no other powers known,¡± Zed-M said. ¡°He was targeting Velo of the Ottawa Super Team and hit¡­ Lamarck by mistake.¡± He cleared his throat. ¡°Delphic identified his vehicle at your old destination point. He¡¯s got an automatic weapon and¡­ ah, was tracking Velo. We put Stillwater in Velo¡¯s costume. The, ah¡­ the shooter took the bait but disappeared before we could capture him.¡± ¡°You want Spinner to track him down?¡± ¡°Ah¡­ yeah.¡± ¡°Did I hear Delphic¡¯s voice on the channel?¡± his volume increased considerably. There was a short pause, which I took as an invitation to speak. ¡°Yes it was. I have been monitoring Stillwater¡¯s position to make sure she is not attacked again. Based on his past conduct, I suspect that Ambush is in retreat.¡± Peregrine¡¯s smug was palpable. ¡°I heard from Spinner that you figured out some trick for that fight last week. Got anything for us tonight?¡± I considered for just a moment before answering, ¡°He is armed with an assault rifle. Objects he touches become invisible within a few seconds. We don¡¯t know his flight speed or whether he has any additional abilities.¡± ¡°No clever workaround for any of this?¡± ¡°Not yet.¡± Stillwater was halfway back to HQ when another channel opened. ¡°Spinner here.¡± His voice carried the same exhausted tone as it had after the street fight the previous Thursday. ¡°Peregrine is setting me down on a rooftop. Did one of our guys encounter the sniper up here?¡± ¡°This is Ottawa HQ. Welcome, Spinner. The sniper has been designated Ambush-¡± ¡°Emboscador? He doesn¡¯t-¡± ¡°Not Emboscador.¡± Zed-M¡¯s voice was notably steadier, though this time with frustration. ¡°Jason Meer, an Alberta native. He fired shots twenty-five minutes ago from that rooftop. He¡­ uh¡­ disengaged when Silver Soul attempted to respond.¡± ¡°Full Tilt here. Silver Soul and I are with Fray, but I¡¯m keeping a pin in Spinner¡¯s position. Ready to move at a word.¡± ¡°Let¡¯s move,¡± exclaimed Spinner. I shifted my View back to the sniper¡¯s vantage. The white in Peregrine¡¯s cowl and Spinner¡¯s silver piping were all that were visible on the roof. Spinner quickly leapt down to the street below and ran south, following a trail only he could see. Peregrine floated along at above the level of the street lamps, trailing well behind Spinner but always within sight. His carriage suggested this was a leisurely pace for him, while his companion ran full out. Panting was occasionally picked up by Spinner¡¯s mic. Spinner took a breath to speak as he approached a corner five blocks away, a street in Centre Town flanked by four- and five-story office buildings. ¡°The trail ends here. Fly me up above the building level again, let me see if it starts again.¡± Rather than watching Peregrine pick up Spinner, I rewound my View. The supers moved backwards away from the corner, but I stayed focused on the pedestrians walking backwards towards the intersection. It was hard to properly gauge the time passing in reverse, but about two minutes passed in real time before I saw a group backwards-walking towards the intersection with a man in a tan coat and jeans at the rear ¨C the clothing Meer was wearing. I stopped the View and angled around to confirm. Ambush had found a group waiting at the corner for a light change and joined it. The long tan coat concealed his rifle, which he held carefully along the side of his body to reduce his profile. What had prompted him to move from invisibility to anonymity on this occasion, when he never had before? This question pulled at me as I accelerated the scene forward again while following Meer. The simplest answer was that he had done so, but I had never been able to follow him far enough to see it. The man stayed with the largest group of pedestrians over another few blocks, changing direction multiple times. I ran the View as fast as I could to try to catch up to the present. While passing between two buildings, he abruptly turned aside into the alleyway and vanished again as he passed from the lighted sidewalk into the structures¡¯ penumbra. I dropped my View to add the new coordinate to the team system. I focused again on the audio coming from HQ and picked up Spinner¡¯s voice saying, ¡°¡­ line of sight, so if there is another trail, I can¡¯t always see it.¡± ¡°The trail resumes in an alley on Morris Avenue. The coordinates are provided.¡± Spinner immediately set off for the new destination. Peregrine, still floating along behind, asked, ¡°How did you figure that out?¡± I started to put together a detailed ¡®explanation,¡¯ but I decided to keep it to myself. In the heat of the moment it was likely I would not be pressed, and I could come up with a better story given more time. The area map showed that Ambush was still a mile and a half from his car, and he seemed in no hurry to get to it. But his path also wasn¡¯t taking him any closer to Velo¡¯s route or HQ. Up to this point, his conduct had always been careful and focused ¨C attack the target, then quickly leave. Maybe he had another target in mind? ¡°Is Velo available?¡± I sent to HQ. ¡°He¡¯s¡­ ah, yeah, I think he¡¯s back here?¡± ¡°Have him call me on a separate channel.¡± I needed to get the names of the rest of that university support group and see if any of them were active locally. ¡°He entered the cinema.¡± The words from Spinner were said at moderate volume, but they still rang out like a shot in my ears. At this time in the evening, a full theater was the perfect target for someone with an automatic weapon and nothing to lose. On the display I could see through Spinner¡¯s visor as he entered the front doors of the small building, worn carpet under warm lights contrasting the bright front area with the dim hallways leading to the films. I sank back into my View and followed as quickly as I could in an attempt to get my own eyes on the scene. Zed-M¡¯s voice began, ¡°Spinner¡­ you, ah, you have to engage with nonlethal-¡± ¡°We know,¡± snapped Peregrine. ¡°We can¡¯t kill him. Give us something useful or shut up.¡± My View caught up to Peregrine, mere steps behind Spinner, as the tracking super pushed open the doors to Theatre 5 showing The Vor Game. A mismatched duo in futuristic mechanics¡¯ overalls trod a space station catwalk on the screen above, but it was the tableau in the central walkway that had brought Spinner and Peregrine to a halt. Jordan Meer stood, fully visible, behind a kneeling girl turned towards the heroes, an expression of terror on her face. The barrel of his rifle was inches from the back of her head. Only about a dozen other people were dispersed among the seats, having clearly been cowed by the criminal and hostage. ¡°Peregrine!¡± Jordan exclaimed, a manic grin spread across his face. ¡°I didn¡¯t realize I rated so highly.¡± The mic in either Spinner or Peregrine¡¯s costume must have been excellent, because the criminal¡¯s voice carried clearly over the channel. The cowled super stepped in front of Spinner. ¡°You don¡¯t, Jordan Meer. Drop your weapon.¡± ¡°Now why would I do that?¡± The man started turning his gun to point down the aisle as he vanished from sight. There was hardly a blur as the scene changed. Peregrine floated inches from the ground, just past where the girl kneeled. The M16 rifle clattered at his feet. Peregrine shot forward, this time slow enough to see while still faster than any unaided human could move. Moving forward to where the aisle ended in a low wall below the screen, he groped awkwardly at unseen limbs before straightening up. One hand clutched in the air, held at an upward angle. ¡°Appear,¡± he commanded. The man dangled from Peregrine¡¯s grasp, both hands futilely pulling at the super¡¯s arm. ¡°Cuffs,¡± said the super. Spinner tossed him a pair, and he lowered to the ground as he maneuvered the man to bind his arms behind his back. Spinner had picked up the rifle and was speaking quietly with the girl on the floor. The lights had been brought up and the film stopped, but the shocked theater-goers seemed stuck to their seats. The crowd gathering outside of Theatre 5 were not so restrained. Several phones could be seen recording the supers as they walked the criminal out of the building and into a police van. I disconnected from HQ to inform Diane. On balance, I hoped that whatever authorities would review her flouting of regulations would take this positive result into account. Epilogue - Group Loyalty Paul sat on the locker room bench with his helmet in his hands. He had bagged his costume to be laundered ¨C Stillwater sweated far more on his bike than he did ¨C but the bright red headgear remained. On his good days, he felt pride looking at it. It was an emblem of the good he was doing, a symbol of long hours spent promoting community projects and encouraging others. On his bad days, Paul acknowledged that he himself was little more than a symbol ¨C an icon reminding citizens of their heroes. Other heroes, the ones that matter in a fight. Today, Paul had been confronted with the deaths of two old friends at the hands of someone he had once confided his secrets to. A poser, a toxic hanger-on of supers. Powerless and disruptive. A man who had somehow gained powers after all, and was coming after those who had rejected him years before. Even then, with him as the target, the team hadn¡¯t thought to use him in the fight. Call in the ¡®heavies,¡¯ don¡¯t rely on the mascots. Another hero in Velo¡¯s costume was more valuable than Velo himself. He was a joke. Full stop. But¡­ maybe he didn¡¯t have to be? Paul stowed his personal bike in his garage and, thanks to the lateness of the hour, entered a house already given to slumber. He snuck in and kissed the twins, the baby, and his exhausted wife. He cheated just a little, stepping quickly and lightly enough to minimize the chance of waking them. Retrieving the card from his wallet, he sat on the living room couch and stared at it for a long time. He remembered the man who had given it to him, surprised when he counted that three months had passed since then. ¡®Improvement Solutions¡¯ and a local number were printed in indigo ink against a thick cream stock. No logo, no tag line ¨C just a company name and number. The man who had given it to him had a rumpled shirt, thinning brown hair, and an air of a community college professor. The two watched as a bartender separated a pair of patrons close to starting a brawl. Paul just stood there in his helmeted costume; it had not occurred to anyone to even ask for his help. The other man had clapped him on the red and black shoulder of his Velo costume to get his attention. ¡°If you¡¯re a super, why didn¡¯t you jump in there?¡± Paul shrugged. ¡°He has it under control.¡± The man shook his head, glancing at the super out of the corner of his eye. ¡°Pathetic.¡± He said it quiet enough that only Paul could hear. Paul leaned in a bit as he responded, ¡°Look, I¡¯m not Lady Liberty or Aurochs. I don¡¯t punch through walls. I can run or ride a bike pretty fast.¡± ¡°You¡¯re wrong,¡± the man said, turning to meet his eyes. ¡°That¡¯s not all you can do. It¡¯s as much as you choose to do.¡± He stood up and handed Paul the card. ¡°If you decide you want to access the rest of your potential, to learn to be powerful¡­ call us.¡± Paul recalled the sounds of the sniper rounds on the crowded corner, felt the weight of Lamarck¡¯s lifeless body as he cowardly ran away from the scene. He pictured Peregrine flying forward, capturing Jason Meer and disabling him in moments ¨C while Paul watched the video feed of it back at headquarters. With newfound resolve, he took out his flip phone and dialed the number. ********* ¡°Probably not as much trouble as you¡¯re thinking,¡± Paris answered. She took another look around the empty parking lot, seldom in use since the DPD had started ramping up the drug busts over the summer. As Randy approached from down the street, she caught his eye but waved him back. He nodded and made his way across the lot and back out to the sidewalk, taking another solo patrol around the block. ¡°It may not even end up on her record.¡± Paris turned herself back around to the wooden fence marking one end of the lot. A quick break for a personal call was permitted on a night beat. She seldom took one, but her little brother¡¯s earlier text had provoked an immediate desire to milk the information out of him. ¡°That¡¯s what she said,¡± Hector replied, ¡°but that seems like bad policy. If they want their people to follow their security protocols, shouldn¡¯t they punish any breach severely? She stole and shared secure files. She looked into the augment program when she was ordered not to.¡± Paris scoffed. ¡°Are you wantin¡¯ her to get in trouble?¡± ¡°Oh come on, obviously not.¡± She chuckled at his indignant tone. Hector wasn¡¯t as easy to rile up as he used to be and she enjoyed the opportunity. ¡°So, here¡¯s the reality of it, like it or not.¡± She allowed her voice to increase and carry just a bit to emphasize her next point. ¡°She was right. However much her superiors might want to nail her to the floor, the long and short of it is that when you get the guy and solve the case, they overlook the sketchy steps you took to do it.¡± ¡°So as long as you always get the win, you¡¯re untouchable.¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± Paris turned her head to eye an automobile sliding slowly along the road adjacent the lot. Even traffic was down to almost nothing at this time of night. ¡°Just like coaches. Nobody has time to nitpick what you¡¯re doing when it¡¯s working. The losses are what get you the lectures and discipline.¡± This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report. ¡°I hope you¡¯re right. Diane really came through for me on this case.¡± Paris snickered. ¡°There¡¯s that ¡®Diane¡¯ again.¡± ¡°What? That¡¯s her name.¡± ¡°That¡¯s her first name. And you say it the same way you used to say ¡®Karen¡¯ in high school.¡± Paris heard a sigh on the line as Hector audibly shrugged off her light teasing. ¡°Anyway. Sergeant Waterford did a lot of the heavy lifting. I need to do what I can to make sure she doesn¡¯t get in trouble for it.¡± ¡°What happens to the guy? Ambush, right?¡¯ ¡°He¡¯s charged with three murders plus one attempt, plus the hostage thing. He gets life with no possibility of parole.¡± ¡°They don¡¯t execute him even though he was using powers?¡± ¡°No, that¡¯s pretty much just a US thing. That¡¯s how they¡¯re getting him to plead guilty, actually. DC wants to extradite for Lamarck and prosecute as a capital crime.¡± ¡°So he lives the rest of his life in Canadian prison rather than warming an electric chair in the District.¡± ¡°That¡¯s right. Brunch tomorrow?¡± ¡°5 o¡¯clock. Bring quiche.¡± ¡°You wish, sis. I¡¯ll see you then.¡± As soon as Paris hung up, she typed a text to Randy to let him know she was ready to rejoin him. The brightening of the fence slats across from her was the first sign she had that something was happening. The growl and the squeak of brakes were next as she spun around, the phone dropping from her hands. She felt the vertigo of being pushed suddenly backwards and the cold sensation of something pressing against her stomach and pelvis in the front and all along her back. Paris stood up, cracking and ripping sounds accompanying her motion as fragments of wood fell around her. The bumper, grill, and front of a large sedan were crumpled in a dented U, the same shape as her small frame. She had been hit head-on and thrown into the fence, a large section of which was demolished. As she got to her feet, a man stepped around the open driver door already pointing his pistol in her direction. He wore a dark blue jacket and cap over a black shirt and dark jeans. He took three steps closer, then three more, pointing the gun straight at her nose. It was almost touching before he pulled the trigger. Her head jerked back just a couple of inches and she flinched slightly at the sound of the shots. The man ¨C boy? ¨C took a step back, the weapon visibly shaking, and Paris looked back at him, her face unmarred. She grabbed the gun from him; he hardly resisted. ¡°Freeze! Hands in the air!¡± came Sergeant Randall Backer¡¯s shout from her left. His own weapon had a clear line of sight to the boy, whose gaze never left the woman in front of him as he laced his hands behind his head. ¡°You¡¯re a super,¡± the boy said to her. He smiled. ¡°A super cop. That¡¯s illegal or some shit.¡± Randy approached slowly, arcing to the right to be behind the blue-jacketed youth. ¡°Heh, Winnie will love this. Donnell the super cop. They can probably get me-¡± The two shots rang out, louder and somehow cleaner than the others. One lodged in his neck, the other square between his shoulders, and Paris quickly stepped back into the fence rubble as he fell forward. Paris looked to her partner in shock, but Randy was already holstering his piece. ¡°Drop his weapon there next to him. You all right?¡± She took a fresh look at the pistol that she held in reverse along the body. She let it fall to the ground. ¡°Yeah, I guess he¡­¡± she swallowed hard. Randy examined the massive circular dent in the front of the car as he pulled on evidence gloves. ¡°That doesn¡¯t track.¡± He looked around and spotted the nearby pole. ¡°There we go.¡± Paris¡¯s mind was in some sort of energy saving mode. She reacted hardly at all as Randy started the car and drove it over to the metal pole, urging it forward with enough force to angle it away from the car although not enough to knock it over entirely. As he inspected its new position and nodded in satisfaction, Paris walked slowly over to him. ¡°Let¡¯s get back to the cruiser and call this in,¡± he said. ¡°Guy tried to run you down, hit the fence and then the pole, came out firing at you, I fired back and took him down.¡± He marched purposefully away from the scene and she hurried to keep up with him. ¡°Any holes?¡± She forced her brain to move back into professional mode and considered the question. ¡°The car doesn¡¯t fit that story; there won¡¯t be any wood scratches in the dented portion like there should be. But¡­ they won¡¯t catch it.¡± She hadn¡¯t remembered retrieving her phone but she had it. She sent a simple message to Hector: ¡®Watch me from after we hung up. Talk tomorrow.¡¯ Randy nodded. The police car was another half block away. The silence persisted as they approached and got into the cruiser. Randy called in the incident and waited until they were ordered to return for debriefing. They were halfway back to the station before either of them spoke. ¡°When did you figure it out?¡± Paris surprised herself by being the one to speak first, although under the circumstances she was surely the one who had more questions. ¡°A couple of guys at the academy keep an eye out. We were put on notice when you joined the force.¡± ¡°We?¡± Randy nodded. ¡°A few of us, keeping an eye on the few of you.¡± That got a sharp look from her. ¡°There are others?¡± ¡°A couple others, yeah. You¡¯re not as clever as you think you are, y¡¯know? Think you can fool a station full of cops.¡± Struck by a sudden terrible thought, Paris asked, ¡°My Dad?¡± Randy¡¯s expression didn¡¯t change. ¡°Can¡¯t say who. You get sloppy if you think you can stop concealing it.¡± He tapped his fingers along the edge of the steering wheel. ¡°The Chief is not in the know, and neither¡¯s IA. You¡¯re on your own there. Not sure why you thought giving case files to your hacker brother was a smart move, but you¡¯re young.¡± Randy was pushing 50, a face that once might have born freckles now cracked with hard lines and dark streaks. ¡°So if internal affairs asks¡­¡± Randy grimaced. ¡°Didn¡¯t hear nothing, didn¡¯t see nothing. Come on, Donnell, what do you think this is all about?¡± Paris drew a blank and stayed silent. ¡°You bleed blue, stupid kid. Nobody¡¯s going to roll over on you. They won¡¯t get a word of testimony. And if some human garbage comes after you like that boy did, we¡¯ll do what we do.¡± He shrugged. ¡°You have all of our backs, we have yours. You know how this works.¡± ¡°Yeah. I guess I do.¡± Paris was reeling from all of this. She had gotten through her head that that it was the rest of the department against her, but ¨C deep down, she knew better. Paris had never been involved in a coverup before, and if she had been told about this situation an hour ago, she would have been horrified. While she told herself she should be, the truth was that she couldn¡¯t work up any moral indignation. She had stared down the barrel of a gun while a man pulled the trigger. His intent was unambiguous cold-blooded murder. What Randy had done didn¡¯t feel corrupt; it felt just. She had made a few mistakes, she knew. And her own carelessness had put her and Randy in a dangerous situation. But she felt better about herself and her job than she had in a long time. She concealed a smile as the two of them walked into the station. Prologue - Now Hiring Fitz jumped down the stairs and swung around the doorway to reach the ringing phone on his desk. He looked up at the wall clock. The final report had been sent less than ten minutes before, and it was no surprise for a client to call right after. He probably should have stayed and waited for the call rather than heading upstairs. ¡°Hello?¡± He shifted around to fall hard into his office chair, a minor perk that came with the small storefront he had starting renting almost a year ago. At the time, its most important feature was the included living space on the second floor. The arrangement was mostly to his advantage, although the lack of physical separation between his work and more personal spaces was sometimes wearing. ¡°Mr. Fitzwallace, this is Delphic. Thank you for sending the report.¡± A chill still ran up Fitz¡¯s spine whenever he heard the mechanical voice. There were synthetic voices on the market that could often be mistaken for the real thing; Delphic¡¯s was intentionally inhuman. ¡°Do you have time to speak with me? I had a few questions.¡± ¡°Of course, Mr. Delphic.¡± His voice was smooth and soft; any rasp in it was well-hidden. ¡°Was everything to your satisfaction?¡± ¡°Entirely so,¡± the machine replied. ¡°You uncovered several connections between the Steele family and the local black market. More than I had originally expected, in fact.¡± The pause was almost long enough to prompt a reply but not quite. ¡°How did you decide where to plant the sensors?¡± ¡°I know where people usually sweep for bugs, so I put the sensors where they don¡¯t. Your instructions were clear they didn¡¯t need to have line of sight or be close enough for sound. That made it much easier.¡± ¡°How did you avoid detection when you planted them?¡± Fitz grinned to himself. ¡°Lots of experience.¡± ¡°And judicious use of your perceptive power, correct?¡± Fitz started to seize up, but forced himself down. Delphic knew stuff; that was its whole thing. He was a fool for not anticipating that it would know about him. ¡°Only when I¡¯m pretty sure I can get away with it undetected.¡± The pause was slightly longer than normal. ¡°You sound unhappy that I mentioned your powers. I hope I have not caused you distress.¡± ¡°Nah, it¡¯s fine. Should have figured.¡± He scratched his head as he brought a file up on his desk computer. ¡°So, did I pass?¡± ¡°What do you mean?¡± The synthetic voice didn¡¯t sound very much like a question; the intonation was all wrong. ¡°Whatever it was you were testing me for.¡± The assignment required a broad smattering of different skills, and both the time required and the amount of documentation provided to accomplish it were uncharacteristic of a real job. Fitz had figured out before he started that the machine had some ulterior motive. ¡°Did I pass? Because if so, I¡¯d like to go ahead and discuss what¡¯s on the agenda next.¡± Fitz didn¡¯t want to come across as desperate, and he wasn¡¯t in any immediate danger of falling behind on rent or anything. But he was eating into his savings more months than he was putting anything away. Freelance detective work, particularly when the police didn¡¯t vouch for you, wasn¡¯t as steady as he¡¯d expected. ¡°You passed.¡± The pause before Delphic spoke again was shorter than he expected. ¡°My intent was not to ask you to complete another assignment.¡± His stomach flopped. ¡°Then why did -¡± ¡°I¡¯d like to hire you. Full time.¡± Fitz felt a rush of hope, but a twist in his gut reminded him to stay cautious. ¡°Full time? Doing what?¡± ¡°Things I can¡¯t easily do. Like placing sensors. Talking to people anonymously. If I wanted to, say, walk into a hardware store and buy a piece of lumber, how would I do that? The internet is amazing nowadays, but it leaves damning records and requires days of lead time.¡± ¡°Huh, I hadn¡¯t really thought of that.¡± He had, actually. He had been meaning to ask Delphic how it managed low-key face-to-face meetings. Now he knew: it hired employees to handle them. A horrifying thought occurred to Fitz. ¡°Would that make me¡­ a henchman?¡± ¡°In a sense, yes,¡± Delphic answered with no hesitation. ¡°I am also hiring office staff, but your role is different. I want someone that I trust to provide both discreet and competent support as I need it.¡± ¡°Without regard for the law,¡± Fitz pointed out wryly. There was a very slight pause before Delphic responded again. ¡°I want you to regard the law, certainly. I want you to understand the law well enough to skirt the obvious pitfalls and stay out of trouble.¡± Its artificial articulation was measured and even, but there seemed to be more energy behind the words somehow. ¡°For fifteen years you served Atlanta PD, ferreting out corruption in government and in local businesses. You knew where the department drew the line, and how not to get caught.¡± ¡°And then I got caught.¡± ¡°You took down the wrong people, they exposed you for using powers. The prohibition against supers in law enforcement is foolish and short-sighted.¡± Again, the mechanized tone made it hard to read the energy behind the words that he was sure was there. ¡°Doesn¡¯t make me any more employable.¡± Fitz couldn¡¯t entirely keep the bitterness from his tone. ¡°I find you very employable. Will you hear my offer?¡± He leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling, thinking. This was all happening very quickly, but¡­ ¡°Sure, Mister Delphic.¡± ¡°Fifteen thousand dollars a month.¡± His eyes widened; that was twice his best month¡¯s gross earnings to date. ¡°If you choose to maintain your business as a cover, which I recommend, we can arrange payments from multiple accounts to simulate different clients. I expect you to pay all your taxes, however. Do not cross the IRS.¡± He grinned at that. ¡°Wouldn¡¯t dream of it.¡± ¡°I will cover your travel expenses as well, which will be substantial. Your physical presence and situational awareness are your most valuable assets for me, so I plan to put you front and center whenever I need you. You will keep track of the hours you work and request time off whenever they build up to considerably more than a regular work week.¡± Fitz nodded to himself; this all sounded very reasonable. Time to look for the catch. ¡°Are you sending me into dangerous situations?¡± ¡°Not all the time, but sometimes, yes. I work with super teams to take down dangerous criminals.¡± A short pause, as though the machine were evaluating something. ¡°Slightly more dangerous than what you¡¯re doing now. Still significantly less dangerous than police work.¡± Fitz mulled that over. ¡°I think you¡¯re underestimating the danger. A day tracking a supervillain has a higher chance of a lethal incident than a month going after regular criminals.¡± ¡°I concede the point.¡± The smooth tone was even, impassive. ¡°Do you need time to consider?¡± The ex-cop gave himself a minute to think, then let himself break into a grin. ¡°Not, really no. I¡¯m in.¡± He sat forward and focused on his remaining concerns. ¡°Two things though.¡± ¡°I¡¯m listening.¡± ¡°My car¡¯s on her last legs. It¡¯s stretching the meaning of ¡®travel expenses¡¯ a bit, but I wanted to ask about an advance against a new-¡± ¡°You¡¯ll want to answer that.¡± There was a click; the line had gone dead. Less than a minute later, Fitz popped up from his desk at a pounding on the office¡¯s front door. It was frosted glass, an old-style ¡°T. Fitzwallace, Private Detective¡± carefully stenciled on it. The hours were posted and the current time was firmly after. When Fitz opened the door, he only had a moment to process the weedy young man standing in front of it before his gaze swept over to the curb. Parked quite illegally along the narrow sidewalk was the single most beautiful thing Fitz had ever seen. The Acura NSX was sleek black, chrome accents catching the dying light of the Decatur evening. In a haze, Fitz took the key fob from the young man and approached the sports car. He circled it twice before getting in the seat. Seven minutes later, he hit 105 mph on the highway heading north. When Fitz next slid into his office chair and picked up the phone, he glanced at the clock to verify that a bit over an hour had passed. The car, equipped as it was, cost about the same as what Delphic was asking him for a years¡¯ work. Moreover it was equipped exactly as he wanted it ¨C color, features, everything. Someone had checked his browsing history. This novel''s true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there. ¡°This is Delphic,¡± the machine answered on the second ring. ¡°A new NSX order takes months. How did you have it here today?¡± He steeled his voice for suspicion but he knew some of the excitement had leaked out. ¡°I asked,¡± Delphic replied, ¡°just over a week ago. They accommodated my request. Is the car to your liking?¡± ¡°It¡¯s my dream car, as you know.¡± Fitz shook his head to clear it ¨C an action that hadn¡¯t worked the first two times he tried it. ¡°And not justifiable as a travel expense, since it¡¯s so noticable. So what¡¯s your game here? Trying to buy my loyalty?¡± ¡°Trying to show mine,¡± Delphic replied. ¡°I took the time to determine that you wanted this. I took further time and considerable effort, as well as money, to get it for you. Timothy-¡± ¡°Fitz,¡± he replied automatically. ¡°Fitz, I¡¯m asking you to go into dangerous situations for me. I¡¯m asking you to do legally questionable things for me. And I¡¯m asking you to take actions that I can¡¯t easily take myself but are very important to me. By paying you well and treating you with respect, I will earn your trust and loyalty.¡± Fitz mulled things over for another minute, idly toying with the key chain that he hadn¡¯t let go since he left the car. ¡°I¡¯ll still mostly need to rent something when I¡¯m sneaking around.¡± ¡°It¡¯s in the budget.¡± The detective grinned and shrugged to himself. There was never any real doubt. ¡°Then I accept. What¡¯s first?¡± ************ Ex-NSA analyst Bonnie Lam adjusted herself for the third time. The silk blouse was low-cut, which combined with the underwire bra created a quite¡­ noticeable¡­ cleavage effect. Modesty was impossible, but her vigilance at least kept decency in reach. The short skirt was made of some material that bounced up to reveal her thighs regularly. She would have mitigated the effect by walking more slowly and carefully, but her companion set a brisk pace. ¡°Ready for your first day?¡± Kat¡¯s short red camisole hugged her tightly, both emphasizing her large breasts and baring the lower curve of her round stomach. Not much better than a halter top. Her black pants were creased like slacks but hugged her closely like yoga pants. It was exactly the sort of thing the sorority girls used to wear to class ¨C which was about the only way that those girls and ¡®class¡¯ would appear in the same sentence. ¡°Mostly, yes. I just wish you had found me more¡­ appropriate clothing.¡± Kat took another look up and down Bonnie¡¯s petite frame. ¡°What¡¯s wrong with these? I picked them out myself ¨C they look good on you.¡± Bonnie smoothed down her skirt. ¡°Not for working in a lab. These clothes are¡­¡± she mumbled, ¡°flirty.¡± Her guide and new roommate nodded. ¡°Exactly. You¡¯re Nobility; you¡¯re expected to display your status.¡± Kat¡¯s long dark hair fell across her shoulders as her short legs surprisingly kept an aggressive pace. She didn¡¯t walk ¨C she strutted. ¡°Dressing like this is a status symbol?¡± Kat nodded. ¡°Only members of the Noble Caste are allowed to advertise themselves in the open. Men and women dressed like this ¨C who move like this¡± she tossed her hair back and to the left, proudly, ¡°let everyone else know who we are.¡± Bonnie kept pace with Kat as she considered her words. ¡°How does sexuality connect with being a Noble?¡± ¡°Eugenics.¡± Bonnie stopped in the middle of the hallway, her eyes wide. Kat turned after a moment and faced her. Bonnie asked, ¡°What did you say?¡± ¡°Eugenics. Controlled breeding programs. Nobles are free to reproduce widely to increase the rate of omicron sensitivity in the population. The lower castes are not.¡± Kat seemed confused as to why Bonnie¡¯s expression was still so dark. ¡°Can we walk? The lab¡¯s just around the corner here.¡± The ¡®hallways¡¯ were little more than well-lit tunnels moving between different parts of the facility. Kat (actually ¡°Princess K¡¯at¡± according to a late night internet search, although no one called her that) had given her a comprehensive tour earlier, but still insisted on taking her everywhere until she was acclimated. It had not been an easy decision to decide to work for Doctor Stevens after everything that had happened. Waking up in Eutopia had been a shock, and her first hours after arrival had been spent vomiting from the innoculations and antitoxins that Doctor Varilla and her assistants injected into Bonnie before she could enter the facility. In the end, the prospect of working with a prize-winning genius on technology that would revolutionize the world overcame the fear and anger she felt at what Delphic had arranged to do with Bonnie and her NSA work. And the daunting idea of learning a new country and culture, particularly one as strange as Eutopia, was offset by the lack of close connections she had ever made back in Virginia. Originally she had been offered another couple of weeks to accommodate herself, with Kat as her guide. But last night ¡®the Doc¡¯ had asked her to start early, explaining that he wanted additional help on a product that he had an unexpectedly tight deadline to get operational. Now, on top of all this, she had just been informed that Eutopia was a nation-sized breeding program. And she was expected to represent its Nobility? She hoped Doc Stevens had a lot of work ready for her. She needn¡¯t have worried. The room Kat ushered her to was sized and equipped like an industrial lab: more than a thousand square feet of space with tool shelves and bins of equipment throughout. A fourth of the room was marked off with yellow caution tape. In a different corner of the room, the Doc was staring at a monitor mounted on a standing desk. Doc Stevens glanced back only briefly before returning to his screen, which Bonnie saw was modeling the output of a simulated circuit diagram. From the back, his white hair looked thinner. ¡°Bonnie, good! Come here please.¡± Kat nodded. ¡°I¡¯ll leave you to it.¡± Doc dismissed her with a wave. As Bonnie approached her new boss, he turned to face her for the first time. His eyes sunk to her outfit and he smiled. ¡°Excellent, you¡¯re taking your station seriously! I was worried about that.¡± Bonnie hunched forward shyly. ¡°I¡¯m not really comfortable with it.¡± He nodded. ¡°Kyle threw a fit. You¡¯ll get used to it.¡± ¡°Why don¡¯t you-¡± ¡°Two reasons.¡± The Doc picked up a device from the desk while talking. A thin nylon rope stretched between three metal cases, each the size of a deck of cards. ¡°Age and status. Nobility usually stop ¡®advertising¡¯ when they have their first grandchild; I¡¯m over eighty. It¡¯s also ambiguous whether I¡¯m in the caste or not since I don¡¯t publicly acknowledge any powers. Put this on.¡± Bonnie took the device, which the Doc had held out to her like a necklace. ¡°What does it do?¡± ¡°Monitors your temporal contraction. If it works, we¡¯ll know just how fast you¡¯re going while you work.¡± Bonnie nodded and put it on; the metal adhered very lightly to her skin. The low cut of the blouse meant it didn¡¯t get in the way of what she surmised were sensors. Doc gestured to the cordoned area. A desk monitor similar to his was set up, but the keyboard in front of it was contact-sensitive: adapted to accelerated input rather than reliant on mechanical action. A clear container rested on a table straddling the caution tape. ¡°This is your work area. Instructions are on the computer. Everything you need should be provided, but you can request anything else by messaging me. Items will be placed in the bin. Nobody else will get in your way or touch anything in there.¡± Bonnie nodded. ¡°What¡¯s the project?¡± ¡°Building a coherent upsilon field resonator. I¡¯ve worked out the theory and the first two dozen harmonics in three dimensions, but I need third-order smoothing. A hundred harmonics at least.¡± Bonnie blushed. ¡°I¡­ don¡¯t know what that means.¡± The old man¡¯s eyebrows raised, and his voice lowered in a self-indulgent rasp. ¡°You¡¯ll figure it out. I estimate that background reading, completing the calculations, and building the circuits should take you about thirty-five hours. We¡¯re starting the procedure in five, so,¡± he gestured to her with a shrug, ¡°sevenfold acceleration or better. Let me know if you need me.¡± She hadn¡¯t. She knew from past experience that she could maintain tenfold acceleration for the entirety of a work shift, and she looked up from adding the 134th and final circuit to the mechanism to find that just over three hours had passed. Doc showed little reaction other than a nod of approval. The two of them worked together to install the mechanism and configure the emitters. The system was calculated to excite an eight cubic meter area, and preliminary tests showed it did so well within specifications. The one thing that hadn¡¯t been explained was what the device was supposed to do. That became clear when Dr. Varilla and her assistants entered the room. The three women wore surgical scrubs with sensible shoes. They wheeled in a metal table and positioned it in the middle of the emitter area. Removing the cloth covering the man¡­ no, the corpse on the table, the surgeon went to work. ¡°Recovering this specimen took longer than expected,¡± the Doc explained to Bonnie. Apparently they were expected to watch, or at least he was. Bonnie didn¡¯t particularly want to, but couldn¡¯t bring herself to ask to leave. ¡°An omicron sensitive with a strong internal forcefield and accelerated natural regeneration, both of which he could share temporarily with those nearby.¡± He pointed to the corpse¡¯s head, a significant section of which was missing. ¡°His injury exceeded his abilities.¡± ¡°Lamarck?!¡± Bonnie said, loud enough that the two assistants glanced their way for just a moment. ¡°This is the body of the US super that got shot a month ago?¡± ¡°Less than three weeks, actually. Which is the point. Even kept at low temperature, the cells decay rapidly. The sooner we can activate the resonance, the more there will be to see.¡± Bonnie was appalled. Voices sympathetic to Stevens and to Eutopia had insisted for decades that human experimentation was no longer the focus of his research. And here she was, on the very first day, watching them sew up a fallen hero to hit his body with radiation from a prototype she had just made. Kat had been very clear that she was a guest, not a prisoner, and could leave at any time. As Bonnie watched the work being done repairing the body from a thorough autopsy, she mentally worked on the wording of her resignation. When Varilla announced completion, Bonnie looked in disgust at the lifeless form stretched out in front of them. One eye and much of the back of the skull was missing, casualty of the bullet that had proved too immediate and lethal an injury for even super healing. The stitched-together torso was a mosaic of thick, burgundy fluid oozing across pale skin, only the body hair creating any semblance of life. Its skin lay loose over flesh already beginning to dessicate. ¡®Repaired¡¯ or not, it was a corpse, not a man. Half a dozen other people had entered the room. The two men in less sensible clothing Bonnie identified as Glimmer and Glitch, two other supers employed here. Kat had joined as well, and three (modestly dressed) women she didn¡¯t know. Everyone stood well back from the testing area as Doc Stevens activated the emitters. Nothing happened at first, other than the same quiet humming that Bonnie had heard when the machine was activated on an empty area. But, as they watched, the scars sank onto the corpse¡¯s skin and disappeared. Monitoring equipment showed a temperature increase, and as they continued to watch, the missing pieces of the badly damaged head seemed to fill themselves in. Varilla and her assistants scrambled for more medical sensors as the Doc made sure his own radiation sensors were capturing everything. But everyone froze when the corpse, its skin already having reclaimed its ruddiness, twitched and shuddered in a coughing fit. An apparently uninjured man sat up on the table, spitting out a thick fluid and looking around in surprise, but his surprise was matched by that of the onlookers. Meeting the man¡¯s eyes, the Doc said, ¡°Huh. I was not expecting this.¡± Bonnie reconsidered her immediate resignation. There was, after all, much to do. Chapter 1 - All the Way to the Bank The pre-dawn morning made it harder to make out the motions of the delivery driver as he tapped on the keypad, but I reversed his motion a few times until I was certain which buttons he was pressing. Baltimore wasn¡¯t easy on its drivers, and I sent a silent thanks to the man as I dropped my View. I understood the chill of outdoor work in the early morning; my own day job put me in that place often enough. One nice perk of my real work is that I could sit cozily at my basement desk, coding information-gathering routines or Viewing distant locations. My main physical concern was not getting enough exercise. I entered the code number into the spreadsheet and checked over my work. In total, Doc¡¯s requisitions for hospital codes and information had taken around ten hours of work, which I had spaced out over the last week. I still had another week and a half before it was due, and I was no closer than a week ago to deciding whether to give it to him. The requested information was thorough. A biological agent introduced in the supply lines whose security I had penetrated would spread through the US population at epidemic rates. Even a purely non-infectious agent, like a chemical, if introduced in all the medication supplies this would give the Doc access to, would provide widespread national exposure. If what the Doc intended was a Trojan horse, this would put the Greeks well within the inner walls of Troy. Of course, under that tale, I¡¯d be dead by then. I made a mental note not to go against a super named Achilles any time soon. It said something about my mindset that, despite the danger, I was strongly leaning toward giving Doc Stevens what he had asked for. I knew some of this was simple sentiment ¨C not wanting to disappoint a man who held me in genuine esteem, and not wanting to go back on my word ¨C but a larger part was practical. The Doc had a network and resources that dwarfed my own. Refusing his request closed doors that I may very well have to have open in the future for me to survive. When I agreed to take Doc¡¯s help in dismantling Iron Lantern, I had thought of it as a deal with the Devil, but that wasn¡¯t quite right. The Devil tended to cheat men out of the benefit of their bargain, and the Doc had done no such thing. Nor did I have any reason to doubt his genuine desire to help people. I just couldn¡¯t trust his definition of ¡®help¡¯ to match¡­ a sane person¡¯s. Less a deal with the Devil, then, and more a deal with one of those mischievous creatures from pre-Christian European mythology. Not good, not evil; just inscrutible to mortals. The call came in exactly as scheduled, and I was thankful that other matters over the coming days would distract me from my pending dilemma. ¡°This is Delphic,¡± my synthetic voice answered. ¡°Delphic, this is Liberty.¡± The video on the call was crisp, showing her solid bronze helmet with its fully detailed faceplate. The unmoving face was not an exact match to the Statue of Liberty, but the placid expression was the same. Many considered the mask comforting, but I found it disconcerting. ¡°Thank you for your forbearance in rescheduling this meeting. It¡¯s been over a week, and I really am sorry that it kept getting pushed back.¡± ¡°Since we have no pressing business, the delay caused no harm,¡± I typed and allowed my Delphic voice to respond. ¡°In fact, I am not certain why the meeting is necessary at all. I presume that you had originally scheduled it to discuss progress on the Lamarck shooting.¡± ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± she agreed. ¡°Do you need any further information regarding that case? I understand you have access to the closing reports, which covered all pertinent details.¡± ¡°No, the reports were adequate.¡± Her tone was even. I realized that her mask provided some of the same advantage as my digital persona in eliminating any facial reactions and at least somewhat insulating any changes in vocal timbre. She was certainly harder to read than a hero like Peregrine. ¡°Congratulations on identifying the killer so quickly.¡± ¡°Thank you. American and Canadian law enforcement -¡® ¡°- were instrumental in the investigation and capture,¡± she repeated along with the machine voice. ¡°Yes, I¡¯m familiar with the official statement. But I don¡¯t mean to mince words.¡± She tried for a dramatic pause, but the lack of eye contact on either side dulled the effect. Her mask and my avatar made the use of a visual display on the call superfluous. ¡°If you hadn¡¯t figured out what you did, when you did, Jordan Meer would have at least one more kill under his belt. Did you know that Velo has young children?¡± ¡°I did not.¡± I had accessed the secure file, including civilian identity, of the local Ottawa superhero who was Meer¡¯s actual target when he missed and killed the US Super Team member, Lamarck, instead. But once the killer was apprehended, I hadn¡¯t spent any further time learning about the lives of the victims. ¡°You¡¯re the reason they still have a father. So¡­ well done.¡± I heard no mockery in Liberty¡¯s voice on this; she seemed entirely sincere. It suggested that her own strength to continue the wearying work of a superhero might come, at least in part, from the knowledge of families she had kept whole. Her voice raised in volume and lowered in pitch as she continued, ¡°We need to move past congratulations, though, and onto business. What¡¯s going on between you and the NSA?¡± I should not have been surprised by this line of inquiry. Harmony Norberg, heiress of the Norberg fortune, was as connected in national politics as her poorly-concealed alter ego, Lady Liberty of the New York Super Team, was within the intelligence community. I typed my reply: ¡°I doubt there is anything I would be permitted to say that you don¡¯t already know.¡± Her mask rotated left and right in a head-shake gesture. Without any facial expression it was hard to pin down the reaction precisely. ¡°That was really unwise. We rely on US intelligence to support a lot of what we do, and they rely on us. Going after them in court creates problems for all of us.¡± ¡°Their actions represented the betrayal of trust. I¡¯m just trying to hold them accountable.¡± ¡°We have less¡­ visible ways of doing that. There¡¯s a liaison at the DoJ who can bring concerns directly to senior administrators at any of the intelligence agencies.¡± ¡°Considering what they were doing, it hardly seemed wise to bring to their attention that I know.¡± ¡°You mean Iron Lantern? The project that you trashed?¡± ¡°Are you aware of what the project was designed to do?¡± ¡°Attract and trap an AI.¡± Her bland tone conveyed an unnerving disinterest in the whole idea. ¡°I discovered the project and filed my lawsuit against it. I had nothing to do with its destruction.¡± Something of a double-bluff, perhaps, but it seemed like a reasonable denial. ¡°Still, if the project was trashed, I am glad. I doubt you would be as accepting of a government project designed to kill you.¡± Liberty chuckled. ¡°Then you don¡¯t know me very well. I¡¯ve worked with DARPA to make sure the DoD has a targeting solution against every super on the East Coast.¡± I found that very hard to believe. ¡°Even yourself?¡± ¡°Tandem controlled guided missile pair.¡± She spouted it off with almost cheerful abandon. ¡°Peregrine?¡± ¡°High-temperature incendiaries.¡± ¡°Millisec?¡± ¡°Aerosolized serin derivative.¡± ¡°Aurocks?¡± ¡°Tactical nuke.¡± I sat staring at my monitor for several moments. It didn¡¯t seem at all plausible that a popular super could be so¡­ cold.. about murdering her colleagues. ¡°None of this is classified?¡± ¡°It¡¯s all classified. Which by now I¡¯m certain is no barrier to you at all.¡± A slight edge creeped into her tone. ¡°The point is, working with rather than against the authorities is what separates the heroes from the villains. And I¡¯m getting worried about which side you¡¯re on.¡± There was nothing new about these accusations; Peregrine and others had expressed their concerns about me for years. ¡°I provide support to super teams. Your suspicions are groundless.¡± Liberty¡¯s tone sharpened more, ¡°Then why are you represented by the same firm as Lawrence Stevens?¡± The real answer was that the Doc had arranged it. ¡°Crum Bernhard has thousands of clients. They also have expertise in fighting for the rights of supers in court.¡± Her scoffing laugh maintained her aggressive tone. ¡°In the same week that one of Iron Lantern¡¯s programmers ¨C a super no less ¨C resigns and moves to Eutopia to work with Stevens¡­ the same week all Iron Lantern records are destroyed¡­ the firm representing you and Mister Stevens files a suit alleging the NSA is illegally spying on an unnamed civilian with ties to you.¡± A surprisingly slender gauntlet came into view as she gestured; it was the same green patina color as her mask. ¡°I¡¯m not really asking if you¡¯re working with him. I¡¯m asking why.¡± This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. ¡°And this would be a concern because you believe Doctor Stevens is a supervillain?¡± ¡°Mister Stevens? Who hasn¡¯t held an accredited degree in thirty years? Because of all that torturing and murdering he did?¡± Liberty¡¯s muffled voice was loud and clipped, but the venom was more theatrical than genuine. ¡°Your concern is noted. I claim no connection to the man, other than purchasing some of his products.¡± Since it was an open secret that US intelligence agencies still bought and used emitters and detectors sold by Stevens onto the black market, she could hardly fault me for doing the same. ¡°And I don¡¯t believe you. So, two free pieces of advice about¡­ Mister¡­ Stevens.¡± She stretched the honorific out as long as she could. ¡°First, if you want to see his true colors, suggest, just off-hand, that you might not be able to fulfill a debt to the man. Second, to give you an idea of the effects of a friendship with Stevens on your other friends?¡± She paused, interrupting her verbal cadence, and pressed two buttons on her gauntlet with the opposite hand. ¡°Ask Spinner, please excuse me for just a second.¡± Whatever drama she had intended to end her second piece of advice had been derailed by something else requiring her attention. She had muted the channel but left the image on, and I watched with idle interest as she continued to move her helmeted head and occasionally make button presses on her wrist. I felt her body language was getting more agitated as I watched, but I had to admit to myself that it was just as likely I was reading overmuch into the poor visual cues I had. I brought up the portal for the New York Super Team operational system and logged in. It had been more than a year since I had been asked to aid in a New York City incident, and it was unlikely I still had legitimate system access, but there was no harm in trying while I waited. The display lit up immediately with a map, active team roster, and data feed ¨C I was in! As I processed the visual information, the voice of Liberty could be heard loud and clear over the channel: ¡°- reason not to land them in range or even fly over. The NYPD have hostage negotiators. This is a bank robbery.¡± A male voice the system identified as GigaGiant responded, ¡°There are an unknown number of supers in there with civilian hostages. We need to go in.¡± ¡°We can push the decision off for a few minutes,¡± a feminine voice, brighter and softer than Liberty¡¯s, said. ¡°Heavy pair with support alpha and beta. Approach and deploy from the East side a block over, and stay out of sight.¡± It spoke with authority and wasn¡¯t labeled with a channel; this was HQ. ¡°We will see if the intel is any clearer when you get there.¡± There was no reason to leave that to wishful thinking. I closed my eyes and sank into my View, a bird¡¯s-eye perspective of New York City looking inland from over the water. Building and landscape features along the coast provided broad markers to point me toward the address of the banking office under siege. My View¡¯s movement speed in the present was limited only by sight and thought, but more than two minutes passed from the time I closed my eyes until I could examine the interior of the city bank branch. The building layout was clearly divided, by decor as much as by function, into three distinct areas. The front portion was open to customers and focused more on accessibility than security: well-lit and open with more barriers between spaces and front offices formed by windows than by walls. A white man in a balaclava held an M16 in front of about a dozen New Yorkers cowering against one wall of the space. The middle section, past the teller windows and the set of nondescript ¡®Authorized Personnel Only¡¯ doors, was set up as an office. All vertical surfaces were beige wall or shelf or filing cabinet. Here, a smaller black man in a facemask stood at the door to a break room. His gun, identical to the first, was pointed at seven clean-cut, distressed bank workers perched in chairs and on the room¡¯s table. The back third of the building clarified for me why this would have at least seemed a decent target for a robbery. Carts and inserts that I recognized as fitting conveniently into armored trucks were available alongside rolling doors opening onto loading bays. This area was a labyrinth of concrete and carbonized steel, with no part of it accessible without some seemingly irregular combination of keys, codes, and dials. This wasn¡¯t just a branch location to serve personal banking; it was a hub location for commercial services. That meant a real vault, better security, and potentially a lot more cash on site. The path from the front areas to the last two robbers involved passing through four previously secured entrances that had already been breached ¨C doors torn off or battered in. They were women, or at least appeared so by the cut of their nondescript fall clothing and mask choices. The one driving her fists into the thick metal of the vault door was the larger of the two. She had violet highlights in her long dark hair, tied back and pouncing chaotically against her neck as she punched at the sealed entrance with great passion but little apparent effect. Her hands were bare below the sleeves of an oversized black leather jacket, the lower half of her face behind a bandana with a pink and gray kitty design on it. The punching woman¡¯s fists were surrounded by a dim blue light coming from the upturned palms of the woman next to her, whose unwavering stare made her look as though she were exerting herself every bit as much as her partner. Her own knit mask left only the eyes free. I focused to rewind the flow of time in my View, skipping back to when the first silver fragment of latch hit the opposite wall, and minutes further as the team of four entered the bank. As they reversed their entrance to the building, they also reversed their masking, and so I looked attentively as they removed their coverings to show me their faces. All four were in their teens or twenties. The two women looked Hispanic, and despite a difference in build, carried enough facial similarities to be sisters. My most recent high-profile mission, discovering the murderer of a United States Super Team hero killed while in Canada, had left me with an excellent resource that I had taken steps to update and automate: a worldwide database of known supers. It took seconds to match broad power set, race, and age range and determine that Nikki and Ezzi Bordone were known and at large. The chatter had kept up while I was researching. The deployed super team was sitting and waiting while NYPD completed the parameter and discussed options. I tagged the appropriate files in the NYST database, then typed and sent my own voice message. ¡°Delphic here. There are two armed men and two powered women inside. The supers are Nikolita Bordone and her sister Ezmerelda, designated Hitter and Forgetter. Their powers are superstrength and defensive field projection.¡± ¡°Hitter and Forgetter?¡± GigaGiant snorted. ¡°Where do they come up with-¡± ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter,¡± Liberty¡¯s louder and unassailable voice cut in. ¡°What¡¯s the hostage situation?¡± ¡°Divided up between the front and office areas with one gunman on each. The sisters are attempting to physically force the vault in the back.¡± ¡°That¡¯s dumb,¡± I heard a new voice say. The dash labeled it ¡®Refraxx¡¯. I hoped that was a typo. ¡°It is, but it¡¯s to our advantage,¡± Liberty replied. ¡°Pet, I think this new intel makes a team assault viable. Your call.¡± I quickly Viewed and returned; the situation was unchanged. There were a few more visible dents in the vault door, but nothing resembling a breach yet. ¡°All right,¡± agreed HQ. ¡°Let¡¯s do it now. We¡¯re informing the squad. Go.¡± The system¡¯s roster showed GigaGiant leading the field team of Whisper, Refraxx, and High-Cap. From Refraxx¡¯s shoulder camera, the physically formidable team leader was already bounding around the corner and over the police cordon to land at the bank¡¯s front entrance. GigaGiant was an impossibly muscled and completely hairless slab of man with unnaturally pale blue skin that complimented his white and blue skintight costume. High-Cap¡¯s smaller lithe form jogged after him, her hair tucked under her signature red cap that in conjunction with her red uniform reminded me of a movie bellhop. Style choices aside, she was the team¡¯s second ¡®heavy.¡¯ I didn¡¯t know the extent of her powers, but it implied she could take point position in a firefight. Whisper had no camera feed and her position wasn¡¯t marked in the system with the others. After a moment¡¯s thought, I remembered why: she turned herself insubstantial over several seconds of concentration and could fly and move at rapid speed until dropping the effect. I remembered thinking of the power as sort of a ¡®discount Millisec¡¯ ¨C the speedster could switch states near-instantly. Whisper¡¯s ability made her choose targets carefully, and¡­ hm¡­ ¡°Delphic to GigaGiant.¡± ¡°Yes?¡± They were about to enter; there was no subtlety to the annoyance in his voice. ¡°Suggested tactic. Have Whisper bypass the gunmen and target Forgetter: the shorter woman wearing the black mask. She provides the defenses for both of them. Hitter is a fragile weapon once her sister is down.¡± From Refraxx¡¯s feed I saw the large man nod, and say something to a darker patch of video next to him that must have been Whisper. Even knowing where she was, I couldn¡¯t really see her. I returned to my View to observe the raid in real time. Whisper did more with my advice than I had suggested. The mauve-costumed hero punched Forgetter hard, in the back of the head, while Hitter was still driving her hands into the reinforced steel as hard as she possibly could. Forgetter crumpled to the ground; Hitter sank to her knees in pain as the bones in both her hands snapped with the full force of her strength driving them against the door. At the same time, the other three supers were entering the bank howling war cries. The volume was intentional, as the goal was to get the gunmen to swing their weapons away from the hostages to point them in the direction of the two bulletproof heroes. GigaGiant took three bullets from the white robber¡¯s gun before it flew out of his hands (due to Refraxx¡¯s power, I assumed from his hand motions at the same time). High-Cap never slowed down from moving toward the back offices and the second gunman. She leapt through the door, feet first, her yell reverberating off the walls. This man, however, didn¡¯t follow the script. He panicked¡­ but he squeezed the trigger on his gas-fired fully automatic rifle before he jerked it across the room and towards High-Cap. My View was right behind her. The red-clad super heard the sonic assault of the bullets far before she could have seen the results of them hitting the soft flesh of those sitting in the employee break room. It was clear to me that the extent of her knowledge was that the criminal was still pointing into the room and still firing the weapon. She landed on her feet just to his left. Her punch drove through his head, ripping it more than halfway off his neck. The gun stopped firing as the slack body hit the floor. I stayed plugged into the NYST system during the immediate aftermath, and no one begrudged it of me. There were six fatalities total: four civilians from gunshot wounds, the gunman who had shot them, and Ezzi Bordone. Whisper¡¯s knock-out punch had killed the woman within minutes, silently, before anyone had bothered to even check if she was breathing. Hitter¡¯s self-inflicted injuries would require a long recovery, as would the gun wounds of two civilians. Whether Hitter would have the opportunity to heal was an open question; New York had a felony murder statute that put the death penalty on the table if powers were used. Lady Liberty didn¡¯t call me back that day. Her apology email came late that night, and explained that she was taking personal responsibility for calling the families of the dead victims. She sent me an invitation for a party the Norbergs were having the following weekend. I wondered if she had intended some more finessed explanation for the connection, some fig leaf for her secret identity, and had just been too emotionally exhausted to bother. If so, it wasn¡¯t something I would hold against her. Chapter 2 - A Donnell Thanksgiving I always started early on Thanksgiving morning, since my sophomore year at U of M when I first volunteered to contribute my skills to the meal. In the early years, this meant making sure I was home in my childhood bedroom the night before and ready to start well before dawn in stepping and fetching for Mom. As I showed myself an able and enthusiastic learner, I worked my way up to preparing side dishes and eventually even the freedom to include my own recipes. After I moved into my own house, Mom and I started apportioning the dishes between us to make use of the two ovens. At this point my perfectionist mother saw me as a full partner in the sacred rites of Thanksgiving Dinner. By the time the sun was up, there were three different electric dishes simmering away in my kitchen along with a double-stacked oven and a chopping board full of greens. Stuffing is the most contentious culinary item on the family¡¯s Thanksgiving menu, as Dad and Uncle Gil each have family recipes that differ from my maternal grandmother¡¯s, and my generation hasn¡¯t coalesced around one of the three. Fortunately Bateman family stuffing (really ¡®dressing,¡¯ I¡¯m told) can be baked separate from the turkey, and so we buy two smaller birds and make all three varieties. I prefer Mom¡¯s myself ¨C the sweeter mix that includes cranberry sauce tends to infuse out into the bird more than the other way around ¨C but I dutifully stuff my bird with the Donnell savory celery mix every year and receive Dad¡¯s approval and thanks. I was running slightly behind schedule as I slid the turkey from the oven and covered the dish, layering it in towels. When the doorbell rang, I picked up the bundle and headed for the door. ¡°Open please!¡± I yelled. The door opened and I passed through it, expecting to greet Laila or Kurt, but it was a pale girl in a jogging suit that opened the door. I kept most of my grimace off my face. I had known I¡¯d have to deal with this later in the weekend. ¡°May, hi! Can you get the passenger door for me?¡± I stepped onto my porch and let her go ahead of me to open the way to my car¡¯s seat. The dish was nestled safely against the seat back. I glanced across the street and confirmed that the Morris¡¯s car was still empty, closing my car door and moving back onto the porch with May trailing me. I turned to face May and hung my arms against the sides of the open doorway. Her whole face was pulled completely down, as though she had just dropped every muscle that she usually used to emote. Only her eyes were still bright, and it was a small glimmer. ¡°What can I help you with?¡± I knew from experience that my face, while technically smiling, did not look friendly. Without a synthetic voice and avatar to hide behind, I just don¡¯t have a particular knack for hiding my feelings. May crossed her arms in front of her, looking down and to the side, eyes occasionally flickering past me into the house. ¡°Can I come in?¡¯ ¡°No.¡± The word felt like a slap to me as I said it, and her eyes widened a second before they turned to me in earnest. ¡°It¡¯s cold out here,¡± she pleaded. ¡°Yes,¡± I said with a touch of apology. ¡°What can I help you with?¡¯ She looked around. There were no other people visible right at the moment, but cars passed down this street regularly. ¡°We need to talk. I don¡¯t think we should do it out here.¡± ¡°Better than letting you in my house again.¡± It sounded more flippant than I felt, and I shrugged as I said it. May turned away from me, her arms still wrapped around herself. The jacket sleeves of her outfit were long enough to hide her hands. After a moment of staring at her back, I noticed her shoulders were shaking rapidly. She was crying. I closed the door on her and locked it. The rest of the dishes took a few minutes to wrap up and would take three trips to the car. Closing my eyes for just a second to check on something, I made a quick call before stacking up two shallow glass dishes and opening my front door again. May¡¯s lips were pulled tight in determination and her eyes were brighter than before. I stepped around her to get to the car and place the dishes. When I turned around, she had moved into my kitchen. I got no closer than the doorway between the foyer and kitchen. The college girl that looked half my weight and two thirds my age perched on a stool. ¡°May, I need you to leave.¡± She crossed her arms over her belly as she met my eyes. Her body language was vulnerable ¨C more petulant than demanding. ¡°No. Not until you explain why you did it.¡± I shook my head. ¡°I don¡¯t owe you any explanations, May. I don¡¯t want you in my house.¡± I stayed just outside the kitchen doorway, so she could walk past me and out the front door without us touching. ¡°Nobody talks to me now.¡± She was trying to work herself up to rage, but she couldn¡¯t get past her self-pity. ¡°Not just the guys I reported on. Nobody wants anything to do with me. Not even in my study groups.¡± I shrugged. ¡°That makes sense.¡± She looked up into my eyes and a flash of anger gleamed past the glassy tears. ¡°You don¡¯t care that you ruined my life? You won¡¯t even give me a reason?¡± I met her eyes with my own. ¡°So your angle here is, what? The problem wasn¡¯t you spying on your classmates? You weren¡¯t betraying your friends? The real betrayal is that someone told them what you were doing?¡± ¡°It didn¡¯t hurt them!¡± She spat. ¡°Nobody got hurt as long as it stayed secret.¡± ¡°Yeah, that¡¯s the first thing everybody learns about the government spying on its citizens¡­ how harmless it all is.¡± ¡°They weren¡¯t criminals. They were being monitored for recruiting.¡± She said the words as a prayer, clung to them as a talisman. My stomach knotted up in anger and frustration, as almost reflexively I grinned. It was a grin of irony, of overwhelming frustration ¨C there was no joy in it. ¡°Poor little suburban white girl,¡± I growled softly. ¡°So free with the secrets of others, so indignant when your own are bared.¡± Her lips quivered as I continued. ¡°Never considering anyone else for even a second. Never saying, ¡®Gee, I wonder if helping the CIA gather information on a black man could put him in danger?¡¯ They have such a stellar civil rights record, you know.¡± I had looked away, watching the street, but I felt May¡¯s eyes on me. ¡°Hector, I -¡± ¡°Your ride¡¯s here.¡± I nodded to the cruiser that, lights flashing, had pulled up to the curb. May didn¡¯t move as the two uniformed officers approached the door. I held my license out to them and spoke first. ¡°Good morning, gentlemen. This is my house, and this woman won¡¯t leave. I need you to take a report, please.¡± The officer who took my license looked to be 35, white, and more than a head taller than me. He squinted at my ID and leaned forward through the door to see May. She was crying in earnest now, head in her hands while still perched on the stool. ¡°Ah, geez¡­ Son, the DPD don¡¯t take emergency calls to handle messy breakups.¡± He handed me back my ID. ¡°I¡¯m sure she¡¯ll leave quietly when she calms down a bit.¡± I sighed. ¡°Sir, the young lady lives down the street. We¡¯re not dating. I didn¡¯t invite her in, and she¡¯s refusing to leave.¡± He rose an eyebrow and stepped onto his back foot, looking at me. ¡°You couldn¡¯t handle this on your own?¡± I returned his look. ¡°Without ending up in handcuffs myself?¡± He turned and looked to his partner for that one. ¡°I¡¯m not much for identity politics, but I just don¡¯t see how I get in a fight with an angry white girl and come out ahead.¡± He nodded. ¡°She¡¯s been making trouble for me. I don¡¯t want to deal with her anymore. Write this up so I can get a restraining order.¡± That finally got through to May. She sprang up from the stool and marched out of my house. The three of us watched her go. The other officer, who looked closer my own age, pulled out a pad and paper. ¡°Name and address?¡± By the time the report was written up, Kurt was waiting in my driveway. It looked like Laila and Deb were already in their car and ready to go. I got another mumbled warning about ¡°misusing police resources¡± as the officers headed off and I turned my attention to the day¡¯s invitees. It had surprised me when the Morris family had taken me up on the offer to join us for Thanksgiving. They were unable to make the trip to California with Kurt¡¯s work obligations, and seemed genuinely touched to have been invited. I owed Laila Morris. According to my attorney, Harold Crum Jr., it was her sealed testimony (under her super name Polarity) that gave us enough evidence to get a preliminary injunction. Until the lawsuit went to trial, government agencies were explicitly prohibited from monitoring or pursuing information on Delphic and Hector Donnell. The Morris¡¯ car easily followed mine out into the Detroit morning, which was sunny and dry despite the biting cold. I took us around town rather than through since it would be easier for them not to lose me on the highway loops. Like many cities, Detroit¡¯s character completely transformed from night to day, into something welcoming and friendly. It was a good ambience for a meal with extended family. Cars lined both sides of the suburban street where the purple Donnell house sat, but a small space just next to the drive was clear thanks to the intimidating presence of a tall young black woman standing protectively next to the mailbox. My sister Paris looked striking in a red and yellow leaf-pattern dress with a dark police windbreaker left open. She sternly stepped back and pointed me to the space, gesturing my follow-on to take a place of honor in the driveway. Teenage hands opened doors and grabbed dishes even as I exited my car. I was left with free hands to help Laila with her toddler and her own fare. Her dishes were covered by cloth only; I smelled something tangy and a pleasant green scent of cooked vegetables. Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! The Morris¡¯s were immediately pounced on by my relatives as Mom yanked me back to the kitchen. ¡°Good morning, dear. You¡¯re twenty minutes late,¡± she said as she took a long pan out of my arms and lifted the dish towel. ¡°Spare ribs. Korean?¡± ¡°Laila¡¯s mom¡¯s Korean, yeah. Hi Aunt Nessa.¡± I stepped around my tiny mom to give a quick squeeze and peck to her even tinier sister who was pouring filling onto a pie crust. ¡°Well, neither of those smell like kimchi, thank goodness,¡± mumbled Mom as she pulled a sheet of rolls out of the oven. ¡°Toss the salad, dear, and make sure the plates are set. Prayer in five.¡± I brought both bowls of salad out to the dining room where Kurt Morris stood speaking with two older men. My Dad and Uncle Gil looked a matched set despite their obvious physical dissimilarity, the white policeman and the black construction worker. They both stood a head taller than anyone else and carried bulk that was mostly muscle, showing the reserved strength of confident family men. ¡°Prayer in five,¡± I announced as I moved through into the sitting room. A second table had been set up in place of the room¡¯s usual furniture, and my college-age twin cousins fawned over Deb as her mom looked on. Everyone gathered around the dining room table and Dad spoke. ¡°It¡¯s always an honor to have so many loving people join us for this meal,¡± he beamed. ¡°Welcome to the Morris¡¯s, away from their own family in California. Consider our home and family to be yours for as long as you are in Detroit.¡± Nods all around. ¡°Let¡¯s pray. Father, we have much to be thankful for. Good food and good friends, warm homes and full lives. Guide us to greater generosity with what we have been blessed, and greater courage to serve and protect others. In the name of Jesus¡­¡± The room echoed with half a dozen voices saying ¡°Amen,¡± and Mom took charge. Bodies moved through the kitchen to scoop sides onto plates buffet-style, while meat and stuffing were added to plates at the table. As usual, Paris had vanished during the prayer and returned once everyone else was seated, avoiding the chaotic jostling of bodies. Paris¡¯s secret, her physical invulnerability, wasn¡¯t something she could turn off. It meant any accidental collision with her would feel like bumping into a concrete wall. Her aversion to physical touch was well-known, and she was careful to avoid crowds or situations where her status as a super might be revealed. The first few savory bites were taken in relative quiet. Conversation resumed with a question. My fifteen-year-old cousin, Jake, youngest person in the house other than Deb, opened with, ¡°So I think Peregrine could take Aurochs.¡± The volley was mostly directed at me. When Jake and I had first spent any time together, years ago, we had bonded over a shared enthusiasm for prominent superheroes. My fandom flame had been quenched somewhat by personal interaction, but Jake had no way to know that. Jake¡¯s parents were proud of him, and so was I. He was a black boy growing up around other boys who no doubt glorified elements of gang culture, just as I had been. Like me, and millions of others, he was dedicated to making something better of himself then many people thought a black man was capable of, in spite of failing schools and bad influences. He was playing to his strengths, studying, preparing for college ¨C following a path laid by his older sisters who were already in college. The two biggest reasons for his attitude were sitting farther down the side of the table. Gilliam and Vanessa Bateman listened to Jake, gave him advice, encouraged him, disciplined him. They were real parents ¨C the kind my Mom and Dad were, and I hoped to be one day. ¡°How d¡¯you figure?¡± It was my Dad that rose to the bait first, giving Kurt a side wink to let him know the discussion was in fun. ¡°He¡¯s called The Indestructable for a reason. Remember that time he jumped in front of a missile and just stopped it?¡± ¡°We actually covered that in my Mech-E class on friction. What he did isn¡¯t possible,¡± said my cousin Dee, bouncing little Deb on one knee. She was bubbly and outgoing and I had trouble remembering she was on a five year accelerated track to get her Masters in Chemical Engineering. ¡°How do you figure out if it¡¯s possible,¡± Jake replied, ¡°if we don¡¯t even know what the limits to super powers are?¡± ¡°No, I mean, like,¡± Dee took a second to collect her thoughts. ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter how strong he is. He was standing on asphalt. So at best,¡± she gave Deb a bite of mashed potato, ¡°he should have left big deep tracks in the road, you know, to push against him as much as he was pushing against the missile. A hundred and fifty meters, is what we calculated I think.¡± She shrugged. ¡°There were two little potholes ¨C footprints ¨C and that¡¯s it. Most of the missile¡¯s momentum didn¡¯t go anyhere.¡± ¡°Why are people so obsessed with supers these days?¡± Aunt Nessa threw in. ¡°They don¡¯t address any of the real problems.¡± Mom rose to this one. ¡°They help more than they hurt. Supers are much more racially diverse than the underlying population.¡± ¡°Really?¡± asked Jake. Mom nodded. ¡°Around one out of four supers are biracial, as opposed to around three percent of Americans.¡± ¡°So Paris or Hector are more likely to have powers than anybody else here?¡± Jake seemed amused by the idea. ¡°Just Paris; I¡¯m adopted remember,¡± I noted. ¡°I have the same chance as you guys.¡± I could see my parents were a bit uncomfortable with the direction of the conversation. ¡°Laila, your parents are white and Korean, yes?¡± Her smile, at least, seemed genuine and not at all nervous. ¡°Yep. Dad¡¯s family was from Oregon, and Mom is first generation from South Korea.¡± She added, ¡°Kurt¡¯s about a sixteenth European too, and the rest is Chinese.¡± ¡°So he would have the higher chance, too?¡± Jake asked my mom. ¡°Maybe. I think it depends on how recent the mixing is.¡± Aunt Nessa shook her head. ¡°Even if this is true, it¡¯s just like with pro players. The athletes are diverse but the managers, where the real money is¡­¡± ¡°Nobody makes money being a superhero,¡± Paris contradicted. ¡°Delphic is,¡± said Jake. ¡°He got five million for taking down Ambush, right?¡± Nessa pressed. ¡°A white guy behind a desk makes bank. The stooges in costumes get concussions.¡± ¡°Delphic isn¡¯t white,¡± I said. Paris and Mom both snapped to me with fearful looks; I saw Dad¡¯s eyes widen as well although he kept his gaze on his plate. Aunt Nessa just asked, ¡°Why would you say that, baby?¡± I could hear my blood rushing thunderously around my head as I tried to come up with a glib response. Nothing publicly known about Delphic implied his race, or even what race he would have been before his ¡®accident¡¯ left him without a physical body. Seconds passed as I blanked on an answer. Mom supplied a response. ¡°You know Hector¡¯s talk about robots and civil rights. He wants Delphic to be a test case, I think.¡± Nessa scowled. ¡°A white man doesn¡¯t change to a different race just because he loses his body in some accident.¡± ¡°We don¡¯t know if he was white before. Or a man,¡± Jake remarked. ¡°He sounds like one on TV,¡± said Dee. ¡°That¡¯s a program he uses. The voice files are actually public domain; there are some videos out there where people take the interviews he¡¯s done and dub in different answers.¡± Jake grinned. ¡°Some of them are pretty funny.¡± Uncle Gil¡¯s softer, deeper voice sounded next. ¡°I think the problem with the idea of super teams,¡± he said, ¡°is that it pushes this idea that success is genetic. Excellence is an accident of birth. Not an American idea.¡± ¡°Well,¡± Mom said, ¡°Jefferson wrote about a natural aristocracy. There¡¯s a long American tradition of God-given genius and self-made men.¡± She shrugged. ¡°Supers are hired and revered based on what they add to the team.¡± ¡°Peregrine could drop Aurochs into the ocean. That was my point,¡± Jake said with unconcealed annoyance at the adults¡¯ tangents. I thought about leaving it alone, but¡­ ¡°Actually, he floats.¡± ¡°Aurochs? No way.¡± My cousin¡¯s look was scornful. ¡°Yeah. Remember him jumping into the Potomac and back out to join the fight on DC a few weeks ago? His feet never hit the bottom. Enough positive buoyancy to shoot up onto land.¡± Jake considered that. ¡°But, he fought the Ritualist on an oil rig, like, a year and a half ago. He stepped off the side and sank like a stone.¡± ¡°Maybe he varies his personal mass?¡± Laila suggested. ¡°It would explain how he can absorb force, and control whether he sinks or floats.¡± That was, I knew, the Doc¡¯s explanation for Aurochs¡¯ unusual abilities. But bringing up Doctor Stevens to this group wouldn¡¯t earn me any points; even Paris openly disliked him. I let the speculation pass without comment, and conversation drifted to topics with less personal interest to me. The Morris¡¯s left after dessert with a sincere invitation from my parents to return soon. While most of the extended family gathered in the den for football and afternoon naps, Paris joined me in my car for a trip back to my house. By maternal fiat, Thanksgiving was the one holiday that Paris could not volunteer to work. As a single woman, she stepped forward to take shifts at Christmas, Halloween, Valentine¡¯s, Independence Day, and all of the other days that people usually take off to be with loved ones. I did much the same, taking expedited repair jobs no one else wanted. But on Thanksgiving alone, Mom insisted we book no paid hours all day to allow ourselves the full pleasure of food and family. Still, Mom didn¡¯t begrudge the two of us making an excuse to go discuss our secrets, the same as we did any normal day. The car was filled with the good smells of leftovers, a half dozen dishes to repackage and repurpose upon arriving home. ¡°The inquest is over already?¡± I asked. Paris nodded. ¡°It was a really bare-bones investigation, like Randy predicted. They confirmed the physical evidence with forensics, called me in to corroborate Randy¡¯s story, and that was it.¡± ¡°There wasn¡¯t a separate inquest on your role in the shooting?¡± ¡°My gun didn¡¯t fire, so no need.¡± She shook her head. ¡°I guess I already knew this was how it works. Cops see so many awful scenes, we¡¯re just looking to match the facts up and move on. If everything fits the pattern, there¡¯s nothing more to do.¡± She coughed once, twice in the conditioned air. ¡°We save our full scrutiny for when something seems out of place. A good enough alibi, and you never get there.¡± ¡°You sound disappointed.¡± She sighed. ¡°Not for this case, not really. More for the other cases where we might be getting it wrong because of the same attitude.¡± My sister shook her head as though to clear a memory. ¡°How is the coverage of the bank robbery?¡± ¡°Every bit as bad as you¡¯d expect.¡± I gave a sigh of my own. ¡°Half a dozen dead can¡¯t be spun into a good outcome.¡± ¡°I get that, but¡­ taking supers into custody? That seems a little much.¡± ¡°I agree. Whisper and High-Cap each killed a bank robber. One of them was in the process of shooting hostages. It all seems pretty open and shut.¡± ¡°Is it true that Lady Liberty told the supers not to go in¡­ but, ah¡­¡± Paris was uncharacteristically hesitant. ¡°But Delphic said the opposite and they listened to him instead? No,¡± I said. ¡°Liberty agreed with the plan after I shared my intel. I wasn¡¯t overriding a much more experienced super.¡± She nodded thoughtfully. ¡°Yeah, that didn¡¯t sound like you. So, what went wrong?¡± I made the turn into my neighborhood. ¡°That¡¯s the worst part of it: I still don¡¯t know. The robber panicked and opened fire, and I¡¯m not convinced there is anything we should have done differently.¡± As we pulled into the driveway, Paris asked, ¡°What did the message from Spinner say?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know. My phone informs me with a disguised notification when I get an urgent message, but I can¡¯t access it directly from the phone.¡± I headed straight downstairs while Paris carried in the dishes. The message itself was content-free: just a missive from Spinner to call him right away. I obliged. The video call came up with Spinner¡¯s visor view. It showed the enclosed walls and close-together seats of a small airplane. The ambient noise, even through Spinner¡¯s filter, told me he was in the air. ¡°Delphic. Happy Thanksgivin¡¯,¡± the super said in his exaggerated Boston accent. ¡°And to you, Spinner,¡± my synthetic voice replied smoothly. ¡°What¡¯s up?¡± ¡°Liberty called me in to help with the bank robbery situation. She, ah, didn¡¯t want to call you about it. I don¡¯t know why, and I figured you¡¯d want to know, so.¡± If I could see him I¡¯m sure there would be an expressive shrug. As it was, the airplane bulkhead didn¡¯t provide much visual cue. ¡°I appreciate that.¡± I wasn¡¯t sure why Lady Liberty wanted to exclude me, but it was nice to have a friend who wasn¡¯t afraid to go against her. ¡°What is the situation? I had heard that Whisper and High-Cap were being detained while the deaths were investigated?¡± ¡°Yeah, and apparently Whisper¡­ you know her? I haven¡¯t met her.¡± ¡°We haven¡¯t spoken.¡± ¡°Yeah okay. Anyway, she took it hard, y¡¯know? Liberty said they needed to let her out, go home to recover. NYPD insisted on doin¡¯ it by the book. Put her in a holding cell and everything.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t like where this is going,¡± Paris said from behind and above me. I hadn¡¯t noticed her standing next to my chair. ¡°Was there an incident with Whisper?¡± I typed and asked. ¡°You could say that. Cell¡¯s empty. Video footage shows nothing.¡± Paris cursed. I felt the same way. Spinner didn¡¯t sound any happier than either of us as he announced. ¡°They¡¯re bringing me in to find her. We have a fugitive super on our hands.¡± Chapter 3 - Not with a Bang The police station where Whisper and High-Cap were being held was not the closest one to the scene of the bank robbery. It was a larger station set on a block where offices were interspersed with apartments. While not the size of the mammoth buildings surrounding it, the station had ample jail space to accommodate two prisoners taking up individual cells for a couple of days. I centered my View at the front of the police station and moved in on a single uniformed clerk solemnly keeping watch from a central desk. A dozen desks were stationed behind the clerk¡¯s, with only one of them currently having an occupant, also in uniform. In the present, I watched a large, inebriated man led by two much smaller men in uniform. The drunk walked in an exhausted sway. He was pushed to the right with a nod from his captors to the desk clerk. The unflappable sentry pressed a button on the desk that opened a pair of doors on the right side of the room, and the trio moved through into processing. I skipped past the rooms where prisoners would be fingerprinted and searched and into the holding area proper. One side of a wide room was sectioned off by floor-to-ceiling vertical bars into two large jail areas, each with an open toilet and three beds bolted to the wall. Stretched out on beds in the same cell were two older teenage boys. Folding chairs sat open against the opposite wall, outside the cells. I headed down the corridor past the holding area and saw heavy doors on both sides. At the end of the hall facing towards me was a desk that could have been cut off of the desk out front ¨C the same height and features, but much shorter. I angled around to confirm that, as I suspected, there were buttons on the desk to lock and unlock each room in the corridor. This desk was currently unmanned. The six individual cells each had a bed, toilet, and sink, as well as a small fold-down writing surface at the end of the bed. In the present, only one was occupied. High-Cap had a small stack of paperback books on the floor next to her bed and one in her hands where she sat cross-legged on the bed, her back supported by the wall. She had her hat on the bed beside her and her wingtipped shoes kicked off, but otherwise was in her full costume. She looked relaxed. I opened my eyes briefly and glanced over to Paris, who was doing something on her tablet. ¡°Told you it was boring,¡± I shot at her. ¡°No kidding,¡± she looked up. ¡°Your eyelids don¡¯t glow or anything. It¡¯s just my baby brother with his eyes closed. You could be napping for all I can tell.¡± Her eyes narrowed at me, suddenly suspicious. ¡°You weren¡¯t napping, were you?¡± ¡°I literally can¡¯t do that.¡± ¡°Oh, yeah, the one-size-fits-all sleep thing.¡± ¡°Are you sure you want to stick around? Spinner¡¯s on the ground in¡­¡± I glanced at the clock widget on my , ¡°fifty minutes, and I want to have as much info for him as possible when he lands.¡± Paris shrugged. ¡°I want to see how this plays out. I know where the kitchen is. I can make myself a sandwich if I get bored.¡± ¡°Just please put the bread away properly.¡± ¡°Yes mom.¡± Without thinking, I reached for my amphetamine salts and took two pills. Paris watched me swallow them, and I looked back at her defiantly, fighting down my impulse to cringe in embarrassment. She broke eye contact first, looking back to her tablet. I closed my eyes and sank into my View. Spinner¡¯s info was that Whisper had been seen at 10 pm the previous night and was missing by 8 am the next morning. The procedures for checking on non-violent prisoners were very lax, and because prisoners were often moved for additional processing or questioning, the alarm wasn¡¯t raised until several hours later. That¡¯s how Spinner found himself on a plane late in the afternoon, and how I found myself Viewing an NYPD jail cell on Thanksgiving. I placed my View looking down from the ceiling of High-Cap¡¯s cell and rewound it. I skipped past visits by uniformed officers, which were most likely questions about Whisper¡¯s whereabouts, and kept rewinding until sunlight no longer illuminated a patch of the cell bed. In the pre-dawn glow, I halted and took a look around. The suited super slept fitfully. The hallway was silent and empty. None of the other rooms were occupied. I rewound further, focusing on High-Cap¡¯s restless bedbound figure. It was around midnight, by my estimation, when I saw that Hi-Cap was sitting up in bed, and not alone. The girl who sat on the opposite end of the bed gave off an impression of mousiness, even in her form-fitting mauve and burgundy costume. The body suit included oddly-shaped headgear: a flexible upper-face mask with chin strap that left her short, frizzy dark hair free. None of Whisper¡¯s visible features were noteworthy; she might have been a white girl with a tan, a light-skinned black girl, or any of a dozen other things. I let my View flow forward normally, watching the two supers on the bed. They chatted amicably, both sporting weak smiles that looked forced. High-Cap pulled one leg up to her chest and hugged it. I fast-forwarded the scene just a little bit, stopping it at the moment where Whisper appeared to vanish. Her diffuse form was easier to see when I let the scene play at normal speed, distortions in the air rippling and shifting around her position. She moved into the ventilator grille above the cell door, and a moment later exited the grille in what I took to be her own room. ¡°It¡¯s almost one,¡± I said for Paris¡¯s benefit, ¡°and Whisper is still in her room. She used her power to go over and talk to Hi-Cap at around midnight.¡± ¡°She was out of her cell, but she didn¡¯t leave the station?¡± Paris always seemed louder to me than I did to myself, and this was especially apparent in contrast to the humming electronics that were usually the only soundtrack to my Viewing. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. ¡°Not yet.¡± I watched her perch on the end of her bed where her table surface was already folded down. A single manila folder sat next to a picked-over microwave dinner tray. She opened the folder, and I moved to read over her shoulder. ¡°She¡­ that¡¯s¡­¡± I inhaled sharply. ¡°She got the file for the woman she killed.¡± ¡°Oh geez,¡± Paris moaned. I felt a surge of frustration toward whomever decided giving her that file would be a good idea. I can¡¯t imagine sitting in a locked room reading details about someone you hit, and who died as a result, was healthy ¨C even if the woman was a criminal and the death was accidental. After about twenty minutes of flipping through the file, she abruptly looked up toward the door as a policeman opened it and entered. She nodded as he spoke, and I noticed from my vantage that he was palming a small unmarked bottle in his right hand. Whisper faced toward the wall and placed her hands on the fold-out table as the uniformed man approached. He gave no warning before raising the bottle to her face and releasing a long spray. Whisper jerked back, whipping her head toward him, and her outline started to blur¡­ then reverted to fully solid as she slumped forward unconscious. The man had Whisper¡¯s limp form over his shoulder and was exiting the room when a second uniformed officer met him. The two of them shared Whisper¡¯s weight to quickly move out into the holding cell and through a service door into a back corridor. The rear entrance to the station abutted a small garage; all the nearby spaces were taken by NYPD cruisers, slumbering as soundly as their owners no doubt were. An ambulance waited at the door. Its emergency lights were off. The two policemen placed Whisper on a gurney escorted by a single EMT, a woman, and helped her roll it into the vehicle. The ambulance pulled away with only two technicians and Whisper aboard, the cops returning to the station. The woman rode in the back with the unconscious super and performed her duties with the assurance of long practice. The woman searched and found a zipper on the neck of Whisper¡¯s form-fitting costume. Undoing it down the side, she bared the super¡¯s flank to jab and depress a small syringe in it. The colorful outfit, mask and all, was removed completely and replaced with a nondescript patient gown. Whisper had not worn any underwear, and none was provided. Once the unconscious girl was dressed in hospital wear, the EMT strapped her properly to the mobile examination surface and began what I expected was a standard field exam: pulse, temperature, and the like. An oxygen mask was attached to Whisper¡¯s face, and she could have been any generic girl receiving emergency care. From her facial features I guessed she was Hispanic. The costume folded into a surprisingly small bundle. The EMT placed it in a bag marked with the symbol for biological waste and threw it in one of the ambulance compartments. Just as she was taking Whisper¡¯s pulse for the second time, the ambulance pulled to a stop. The hospital entrance did not have the red markings of an emergency room. The female EMT and her male partner wheeled Whisper¡¯s gurney through a double set of automatic doors and past a security guard that made no move to stop them. The ground floor rooms all appeared to be offices, but a large elevator took them to patient rooms on the twelfth floor. They deposited Whisper in a private room that was set up for a new patient. Within minutes she was in bed, hooked up to an IV and monitoring equipment. The EMT¡¯s left. I jumped to the present; Whisper was still there and still unconscious. ¡°They took her,¡± I said as I opened my eyes. ¡°She didn¡¯t run?¡± Paris asked, surprised. I shook my head. ¡°Nope. She was knocked unconscious and taken to a private hospital room.¡± ¡°Wow. Who would do that?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± I closed my eyes, ¡°but it¡¯s time to find out.¡± I only had twenty minutes until Spinner landed, which wasn¡¯t enough for a background investigation but could at least give me the names and current locations of the two cops and two EMTs (if they really were any such thing). With Spinner¡¯s plane five minutes from the ground, I dialed a number. ¡°Delphic,¡± answered Lady Liberty. ¡°I take it Spinner called you, despite my request?¡± ¡°He did. And I have found Whisper.¡± **************** The hospital elevator opened on the twelfth floor where an older man in a tie stood flanked by two security guards. ¡°I can¡¯t let you go any further. This is a private facility.¡± Out of the elevator stepped Refraxx, a reedy boy in an odd suit checked in multiple shades of blue. My friend, Spinner, in his green and silver costume with his prominent visor, followed along with two NYPD officers. Lady Liberty came last; her helmet camera supplied the video feed for me to see everyone else. It could have been a stand-off, but it wasn¡¯t. Refraxx put his hand out towards the three men in a vertical chopping motion, and they all slid rapidly toward the left hallway wall, hitting it with three loud thuds. They stayed pressed against the wall, their breath knocked out of them, as the supers and cops quickly moved down to the room number I had specified. I don¡¯t think the door was locked, but with Refraxx there I couldn¡¯t be certain. The one hospital bed in the room was surrounded by monitoring equipment, a breathing machine, and two intravenous drips. The super in blue was at bedside, and Spinner wasn¡¯t a second behind him. The girl occupying the bed would not be recognized as Whisper without her costume. To any casual observer, even a medical professional, she would appear to be a normal young woman kept unconscious after some internal trauma. Private hospitals like this one held hundreds of patients seen by dozens of doctors; there was no reason for anyone to look for her here or see she was out of place. Liberty herself didn¡¯t cross the threshold into the room, but she was ready to stop the man in the tie when he recovered and tried to enter. ¡°You can¡¯t just-¡± he started, but Liberty¡¯s feed showed her long over-sized bronze fingers laid gently against his chest, and he wisely stopped talking. Gently, indeed ¨C a punch by that same suited hand could pulverize concrete. ¡°The woman in that bed was kidnapped and kept here against her will,¡± the Lady said, her voice cool and clear. ¡°This is a crime scene now. Bring her records, and get your boss.¡± The man paled and shook his head. ¡°We would never¡­ I¡¯m the general manager here.¡± ¡°When this young lady sues the hospital into receivership, are you the one she bankrupts?¡± ¡°Uh, no¡­ the actual owners¡­¡± ¡°Get me one of them. And her file. Now.¡± She never did raise her voice; if anything the tone became more conversational. But the manager went away, and he waved his hired muscle to come along with him. Refraxx took Whisper¡¯s hand while Spinner studied the set-up. ¡°They¡¯re keepin¡¯ her under. This is sick.¡± ¡°Well, let¡¯s get her out of here, then.¡± I still wasn¡¯t used to Refraxx¡¯s jarring voice ¨C it seemed too nasal and grating for an adult super. ¡°No,¡± Liberty replied. ¡°We¡¯re not going to touch any of this until we get a doctor in here. And we¡¯re not leaving without a medical transfer.¡± Refraxx¡¯s fury was visible around his asymmetrical mask. ¡°They snatched her, drugged her. We can¡¯t just-¡± ¡°I want to make sure,¡± Liberty talked over him, still not raising her own voice at all, ¡°that any harm she suffers is traced to the scum that did this, not to us. I don¡¯t want any room for doubt.¡± He swallowed, nodded, and turned his attention back to the intubated woman. In the hospital gown she looked pale, underfed, and fragile. ¡°Hold on there baby, I gotcha,¡± he said under his breath, but the channel picked it up anyway. Chapter 4 - Malpractice ¡°I still don¡¯t get it,¡± Spinner said. ¡°We¡¯re not more than a couple of miles from the station. Why hide her so close?¡± ¡°This is New York City,¡± Lady Liberty reminded him. ¡°Two blocks would have been far enough. No power trail. No leads.¡± She spread her arms wide, a passable substitute gesture in a suit that wouldn¡¯t shrug. ¡°If you hadn¡¯t gone against what I requested and brought in Delphic, we wouldn¡¯t have found her today. Or this week, unless somebody caught one of the abductors and cracked him.¡± She was talking about successful interrogation, but the way she said it made it sound like physically breaking him open would do as well. ¡°It¡¯s big of you to admit that about Delphic,¡± Spinner said. ¡°Ego doesn¡¯t serve my interests.¡± She threw the line out like a maxim. ¡°We¡¯re lucky to have him.¡± ¡°So¡­ who did this?¡± asked Refraxx, his hand and eyes still on Whisper¡¯s slumbering form. ¡°That¡¯s the million dollar question,¡± Liberty agreed. ¡°Just to check ¨C Delphic, you haven¡¯t figured out who is ultimately responsible for this yet?¡± She raised her voice unnecessarily when addressing me, like people often do with speaker phones. ¡°Not yet,¡± I admitted. ¡°I focused on finding Whisper and the immediate actors, and getting you to them.¡± ¡°Do you know if they¡¯ve been caught yet?¡± The voice made me visibly jump, and I jerked around to face my sister. Paris hadn¡¯t left, but she had sat so quietly for the past half hour that I had forgotten she was still here. ¡°No, the other teams are on a separate mission channel. Actually neither is dialed into HQ.¡± I brought up my NYST dashboard, which showed a segmented map with three dots clustered at the hospital (Liberty¡¯s group), two dots on a residential area far to the north, and another two near the river to the west. ¡°That¡¯s weird -¡± Paris started, but I signaled her with a hand to hold off so I could hear what Liberty was saying. ¡°¡­ need to know what we¡¯re dealing with,¡± was all I caught. ¡°I¡¯d say get her out of custody either way,¡± Spinner put in. ¡°We know she ain¡¯t gonna get charged and she¡¯d recover a lot more quickly at home.¡± ¡°Not necessarily,¡± Liberty¡¯s voice was lower and slower now as she gave opinions rather than orders. ¡°HC doesn¡¯t always take time for herself. In the tank she can¡¯t be out on extra patrols, plus they¡¯re making her see a counselor. Good for her.¡± Refraxx shook his head and rolled his eyes. ¡°Typical of you to want to lock someone up for her own good. You have serious control issues, LL.¡± ¡°Oh, very true. But you know the best way to deal with control issues?¡± She was definitely smiling through the solid mask. ¡°Always be the one in control.¡± ¡°Hunting B to Trail Team,¡± a woman¡¯s voice said, labeled on the dashboard as Orange Nimbus. ¡°Target four is in custody. Returning to HQ.¡± ¡°Any trouble?¡± Liberty asked. ¡°None.¡± Her laugh was light and melodic. ¡°The other bar patrons didn¡¯t hardly react when we extracted the guy. He¡¯s terrified but he¡¯s keeping his cool so far.¡± ¡°Okay, well, keep an eye on one, three and four at HQ until we¡¯re done here.¡± ¡°Any luck?¡± ¡°Yeah, Delphic was a hundred percent. Whisper¡¯s been pumped full of drugs and kept in a private room. Don¡¯t know how long until they would have moved her.¡± ¡°Well, hopefully these guys will have something to tell you. This much fear, it shouldn¡¯t take much.¡± ¡°Any other strong emotions?¡± Orange Nimbus laughed louder. ¡°Yeah, this one is horny. Like, capital H. Couple of whiffs I caught nearby says he might have gotten some too if we hadn¡¯t filled up his dance card.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t count on it,¡± a more distant female voice said. Presuming it was Orange Nimbus¡¯s partner, the dashboard gave the name as Enki. ¡°He¡¯s a creep, and they didn¡¯t look that desperate.¡± ¡°You only saw them. I felt them,¡± said Orange Nimbus. ¡°I¡¯ll tell you, the¡­¡± Another button press by Liberty and Hunter B was no longer on the channel. ¡°So the one girl can, like, read minds?¡± Paris¡¯s question was less of a surprise this time; I don¡¯t think my start was visible. I clicked on Orange Nimbus on the active roster. ¡°She can detect strong emotions from people nearby. She¡¯s not a heavy; it looks like they mostly rely on her enhanced senses and use her as a sharp shooter.¡± ¡°She senses emotions and she¡¯s a sniper?¡± Paris sounded personally offended. ¡°She should be doing my job. Think of how incredible it would be to know how each question makes a perp feel.¡± I shrugged. ¡°Until somebody decides you¡¯re too good at it and outs you as a super. I can¡¯t really criticize her for choosing a career where her powers are legal.¡± Paris shut up, and I immediately regretted what I had said. Considering her own ongoing struggles with her decision to join the police force and conceal her powers, I had crossed a line to bring the issue up the way I did. I really had no stones to throw at my big sister, considering my own choices. Keeping my identity under wraps was a serious operation of misdirection and security that was already more than half sunk. Hector Donnell was now known by at least a dozen people to be a close associate of Delphic. The Doc¡¯s knowledge of this connection was my biggest ongoing concern, and would be a large factor in my decision of whether or not to give him the hospital codes. Delphic might be perceived as effectively untouchable at this point, but Hector was a known entity in a known location. Further dialog in Whisper¡¯s room had been set aside by the presence of her doctor. Liberty stepped aside to let him in the room, swiftly taking the file from his hands as he passed by. He turned briefly but decided the fight wasn¡¯t worth it. ¡°What can I help you with?¡± the man asked as he shuffled Spinner aside to get at the monitoring equipment. He pressed a couple of buttons and thumbed through different displays. ¡°I was told I had to come speak with you. Here I am.¡± The man, short and of Indian descent, wore the standard bulky medical jacket with a surprising number of pockets. He pulled out a pen light and moved to the head of the bed, manually opening and examining one of the unconscious girl¡¯s eyes, then the other. ¡°Doctor Soin, this says you¡¯re the admitting physician,¡± Liberty said over the open file. ¡°What exactly is wrong with Miss¡­ ah¡­ ¡®Samantha Mayer¡¯ and how did you come to admit her?¡± ¡°I received a call that she was going to be brought in. I work with a medical services company on a referral basis.¡± He pressed an instrument against her forehead and read the temperature. The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°What is the -¡± Liberty began but abruptly stopped as Spinner¡¯s arms shot out. At the same instant that Dr. Soin pulled his next tool from his jacket, Spinner¡¯s left hand closed around it and pulled up as his right hand closed around the doctor¡¯s wrist and pulled it down. The man was disarmed within a half second of pulling what we could all now see was a compact pistol. He stood pressed against Spinner with his hand twisted painfully behind him. ¡°He was about to shoot her,¡± Spinner yelled as the two other supers surged forward then checked themselves. Whatever danger there had been was resolved now. But after the initial hesitation, Refraxx stepped around the bed and stood nose to nose with the man ¨C or more accurately nose to forehead since the super was taller. ¡°Who are you, and what do you want with her?¡± he hissed through bared teeth. ¡°Ow!¡± The man yelled, struggling against Spinner. ¡°Get off me! I have a permit for that gun!¡± ¡°You don¡¯t have a permit to shoot a patient with it,¡± quipped Liberty. ¡°I wasn¡¯t going to shoot anyone, I- OWW!¡± Spinner had yanked up, hard, on his captive arm. ¡°Don¡¯t give me that! I saw you shoot that girl in the face!¡± I was still reeling from the speed of this whole interaction, Spinner¡¯s exclamation dialed the confusion up further. What could he possibly have meant by that? ¡°What did he mean by that?¡± Paris asked, echoing my own thoughts. We didn¡¯t have time to discuss it. ¡°I d-don¡¯t know¡­¡± The man was panting, his face screwed up in pain. Spinner yanked up again, his own mouth a grimace of unvarnished anger. The tension in the room wasn¡¯t going down; rather the opposite. Refraxx¡¯s face matched Spinner¡¯s, his eyes wide and fiery. He took a step back and met the doctor¡¯s eyes. ¡°Tell me,¡± he rasped. The doctor shook his head. ¡°I don¡¯t -¡± Refraxx raised his left hand to chest height, his gloved fingers splayed open. The doctor¡¯s denial caught with his breath as the super¡¯s fingers curved just slightly. The restrained man started a low keening. ¡°Tell me,¡± Refraxx growled. ¡°Refraxx,¡± Liberty warned, ¡°you can¡¯t.¡± ¡°Stop! I don¡¯t- AAAAAAAAGH!¡± The man¡¯s denial turned to a full-throated scream as Refraxx¡¯s hand twitched to tighten his loose grip on the empty air just another inch. ¡°Zee! Stop!¡± Liberty said, and her own arm was up now, pointing at her ally. Her hand glowed slightly the telltale pale blue. Just as Soin stopped screaming to suck in air, Refraxx let his hand drop. The doctor¡¯s whole body dropped at the same time, its strings cut, hanging against Spinner¡¯s arm hold. ¡°Trail Team to Hunting A. Status?¡± Liberty began after opening the channel. Refraxx turned away and moved back to his position at Whisper¡¯s side. ¡°Hunting A here.¡± I recognized GigaGiant¡¯s voice. ¡°We located target one at her apartment and she agreed to come peacefully. We gave her a few minutes to use the facilities and pack an overnight bag.¡± ¡°All right. Be advised we are apprehending the doctor that admitted Whisper to this private hospital.¡± ¡°Delphic was right about that?¡± The super sounded surprised. ¡°Correct. The doctor tried to pull a gun on her not five minutes ago. These targets are upgraded to confirmed dangerous and should be treated as violent.¡± There was a slight pause, then GigaGiant responded, ¡°I understand. What is your plan?¡± ¡°We have a fifth target to interrogate. See you at HQ.¡± Liberty returned her attention to Spinner. ¡°Can you take him there while Refraxx and I relocate Whisper?¡± Everyone agreed this was the best plan. ¡°I¡¯m going to shut down the active feeds for this team for now. Whisper is going to an undisclosed location.¡± She had already pushed a button on her wrist to start another call. ¡°Delphic, thanks again for your help. We¡­ I¡­ would be grateful for any further insights. I¡¯ll make sure you have access to everything we have. Goodnight.¡± I sat staring at the NYST dashboard and thinking about the most efficient approaches for cracking this case. The obvious thing to do would be to track Dr. Soin back to some contact or instruction that would lead to more info¡­ ¡°That was intense,¡± Paris said, and I started yet again after having forgotten she was there. ¡°Dude pulled a gun in a room with supers. Wow.¡± ¡°It seemed more like an act of desperation than anything else,¡± I pointed out. ¡°Your very best case in that situation would be taking out Whisper before they capture you. You really have no chance against even one of those supers with normal reflexes and a handgun. Much less all three.¡± I shrugged. Paris nodded. ¡°So, are you going to see who was calling?¡± I gave her a bewildered look, so she said, ¡°You know, your phone? Like half an hour ago, when it rang and you just ignored it?¡± I shook my head. ¡°I didn¡¯t hear it. I get very focused sometimes, even when I¡¯m just working in the present.¡± She shrugged. ¡°Well, you might want to see who it was.¡± Nodding, I checked the call ID, but it wasn¡¯t a stored number. It was listed as an international call, from¡­ hm. South America. This was confusing for a simple reason: my phone belonged to Hector Donnell. I used it as a correspondence number for my doctor and my jobs; it was how my friends called to talk to me. The number didn¡¯t belong to Delphic; I never used it as a contact number for Delphic. My super alter ego had several contacts south of Mexico, including police and government groups I had worked with as well as a handful of formerly US supers who had emigrated. And the Doc, of course. But these contacts were not Hector¡¯s. The caller had left a voicemail, so I played it on speaker: ¡°Mister Donnell, this is Doctor Anne Varilla at the Stevens Research Complex in Eutopia.¡± Her voice was smooth and expressive. ¡°I am sorry for calling you out of the blue, and on a holiday, but I need to speak with you about a very important matter. Please return my call as soon as you can.¡± She ended with a number and restatement of her name. I had never spoken with Varilla, but the Doc spoke very highly of her. She was both a dedicated medical researcher and a talented surgeon, and she oversaw the medical research teams at Doc¡¯s lab. Doc mentioned ¡®Anne¡¯ only rarely but always in glowing terms. I looked at Paris, who gave me a clearly interested look back. There was no time difference between Eutopia and US Eastern, and the hour was late but not unreasonably so. I dialed her, the phone still on speaker. She picked up on the second ring. ¡°Hi, is this Hector Donnell?¡± ¡°Hello, yes. This is Doctor Varilla?¡± ¡°It is. Thank you for returning my call. Has our¡­ ah, mutual friend discussed our work with you at all?¡± I wondered what she would do if I said no. ¡°I am aware that Doctor Stevens works with Delphic, yeah, and he asked for your help when the CIA got on me. He said he¡¯d take care of that, though.¡± I tried to sound defensive, which wasn¡¯t hard because it¡¯s how I felt. ¡°Okay, I understand. Hector, if it¡¯s all right, I¡¯d like to get Doctor Stevens in here to help with the explanation.¡± There was a pause on the line. Paris shrugged. ¡°Yes, that would be fine. Thank you,¡± I answered. The wait was about three minutes before the familiar raspy voice came on the line. ¡°Mister Donnell. This is Doctor Lawrence Stevens.¡± ¡°Hello, sir.¡± It felt different talking to him using my own voice, rather than Delphic¡¯s. ¡°Anne wanted me to explain the situation, so I¡¯ll get right to the point.¡± His voice was percussive and kept a steady rhythm. ¡°We acquired a sample of your DNA and ran an analysis.¡± My and Paris¡¯s eyes both widened at the same moment. I was certainly not expecting to hear this. When I didn¡¯t immediately respond, he continued: ¡°Based on your association with Delphic, we wanted to determine if you were omicron sensitive. We went ahead and did a full work-up, all the known genes.¡± Anne took over from the Doc¡¯s explanation. ¡°Give us your email and we¡¯ll send you the analysis. The point is, there are fifteen known genes that can contribute to omicron sensitivity.¡± ¡°I thought there were eleven?¡± I asked, happy for the momentary destraction. ¡°Eleven published,¡± she explained. ¡°We have discovered three others, and a team in Korea found a fifteenth exclusive to Tibet and Nepal; their article is still undergoing peer review.¡± The Doc cleared his throat. ¡°The point is, most omicron sensitives have two genes. It¡¯s rare to have more because they tend to occur in very different ethnic groups.¡± He cleared his throat again. ¡°You have four.¡± I exchanged looks with Paris again; she seemed as worried as I felt. ¡°Meaning what?¡± I finally asked. Anne answered, ¡°Meaning, first, that you are most definitely omicron sensitive. And, second, that you need to be screened.¡± That didn¡¯t sound good. ¡°Screened? Like, for cancer?¡± ¡°Among other things,¡± she said. ¡°There are twelve chronic conditions that can accompany one or more of the genes you have. One of them is high susceptibility to certain gliomas and lymphomas. Four are neurological conditions which are almost always misdiagnosed as psychological.¡± ¡°The point is,¡± Doc Stevens concluded, ¡°we are the only facility set up to test for and, if needed, treat all twelve.¡± His tone brooked no alternative. ¡°Come here.¡± Paris was staring at me with concern, and fear was starting to rise within me. I didn¡¯t know much about my biological parents. They had never been an important influence in my life after I was adopted, and I had no interest in Viewing back into my childhood to find out more. Supposedly I had come to the Donnell household with a family medical history, all of which essentially read ¡®generic African-American family.¡¯ And although I knew that powers had a strong genetic component, I also knew that most supers in my generation did not have super parents. Now my willful ignorance might very well come back to haunt me, and there was little I could do about it. I was being offered a trip to Eutopia, and I had little doubt that if I took it I¡¯d find myself forced to make further difficult decisions. But the alternative was sitting on a genetic time bomb that may or may not be armed. ¡°Thank you for calling me. I¡¯ll be in touch,¡± was all I said before hanging up. Chapter 5 - Recollection ¡°You¡¯re not seriously thinking of taking him up on it?¡± Paris stood up from her seat next to my desk, stretching; it was late and she needed sleep. Unlike my unalterable five hours and forty minutes a night, Paris¡¯s sleep patterns were normal for her active lifestyle; she needed a full night¡¯s sleep. I gave myself a minute to compose a real answer. ¡°I¡­ don¡¯t know. I¡¯m certainly going to check out what they¡¯re saying for myself.¡± I looked toward my computer monitors but didn¡¯t really see them. ¡°If I really do have genetic markers for any disorders, I need to follow up on that.¡± ¡°Well, yeah! But get, like, a real doctor,¡± she scoffed. ¡°You didn¡¯t give him your DNA to look at, did you?¡± I shook my head. ¡°The mad scientist who stole a sample from you shouldn¡¯t be your first choice for a GP, lil¡¯bro.¡± I shrugged. ¡°I get what you¡¯re saying, but¡­ you know as well as I do that medical conditions surrounding supers are not well-researched -¡± ¡°A problem,¡± Paris reminded me, ¡°that your Doc has a fair bit to do with.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think so.¡± I rubbed my nose, feeling a bit of fatigue creeping in myself. ¡°I mean, I think the scandal set back some research when it happened in the eighties. But I don¡¯t see people connecting current research with Stevens.¡± I stood up and contributed my own lazy stretch. ¡°It¡¯s probably just money. Rare diseases often have trouble getting a research budget behind them, because even if a cure is found, they won¡¯t sell enough of it to recoup costs.¡± ¡°So, what¡¯s the point of worrying about a problem that nobody can fix, anyway?¡± She shifted her gaze ¨C this wasn¡¯t an enjoyable topic for her. ¡°That¡¯s the thing ¨C Eutopia is run by supers, and it¡¯s bankrolling Doc to find solutions to super problems.¡± A couple of clicks of my mouse locked my computer and I gestured for Paris to join me in climbing the stairs. ¡°So they might actually have treatments to some of these rare conditions,¡± Paris admitted. ¡°They might be the only ones that do. Couch tonight?¡± I ducked into my bedroom for my guest sheets and extra pillow. ¡°Mom¡¯s expecting us for breakfast,¡± my sister called from out in the hallway. She never came into my bedroom ¨C a leftover habit from the respect we always gave each others¡¯ spaces when we lived under the same roof. ¡°We¡¯ll head over at four thirty.¡± I passed her to head into the sitting room, tucking sheets into the couch. ¡°Gives you time to shower at home. I¡¯ll pack the leftovers to make breakfast sandwiches when we get there.¡± As I turned to face Paris, I noted that she had a troubled expression on her face. I sat down on the newly made ¡®bed¡¯ and patted for her to join me. I knew it would take her a bit to work up to it. The clock read 4:00 as I jerked myself awake. I cursed internally ¨C whatever Paris had wanted to speak with me about the night before, I had apparently went to sleep soon after, and had lost it. I quickly Viewed the missing time. My sister and I had talked on the couch for about twenty minutes. She had cried at one point, and there were multiple hugs. I noted the discomfort on my own face during the hug but I hadn¡¯t said anything ¨C a hug by Paris could easily feel like getting ground against multiple rocks if she was less than careful. But the scene gave me no clue as to what we had talked about. My increasingly frequent amnesia was one of the few secrets I had managed to keep from my parents and sister up to this point. With them already concerned that I was having trouble keeping a handle on my immediate environment, I didn¡¯t want to give them further reason for worry. But the fact that I was finding myself jerking awake more and more often with no memory of heading to bed the night before was becoming dangerous to ignore ¨C and I had no obvious excuse. I started the coffee brewing before jumping in the shower. When I came into the kitchen shaved and dressed, Paris was sitting there gulping down her second cup from the two-serving pot. Her eyes were red from crying. I wish I knew why. ¡°Did you say the office was today?¡± she asked as we pulled out of my garage. This late in the year, we had beat the sun by two hours at least. ¡°Hopefully, yes ¨C if the two people I¡¯m wanting to hire show up. The initial work is finished, but I¡¯m not exactly conducting this job interview in a conventional way.¡± ¡°It¡¯s not exactly a conventional job,¡± she chuckled. ¡°True. Ah, hey.¡± Better to bite the bullet. ¡°About last night.¡± In my peripheral vision I saw her tense. She said, ¡°Not this morning, please, Hector. I need to be exhausted or drunk to be willing to get into that.¡± Unfortunate. ¡°Okay, but. Just know I-¡± ¡°I know,¡± she snapped. ¡°Have you decided where you¡¯re headed tonight?¡± I didn¡¯t remember mentioning to her that I was planning to hit town that evening. ¡°Probably Tin Roof. Or if it has a long line, The Scene.¡± She made a gagging noise. ¡°You always go to The Scene.¡± ¡°Because there¡¯s never a line.¡± ¡°Because it¡¯s played out.¡± She was grinning at me now, blatantly teasing. ¡°That¡¯s why it¡¯s my fallback.¡± ¡°Lame,¡± she insisted. ¡°I¡¯ll be at your place by six.¡± ¡°Heaven forbid I dress myself,¡± I muttered. ¡°Paris forbid at least. Heaven prob¡¯ly has higher standards.¡± I noticed a street light flickering a block up from Mom and Dad¡¯s house and made a mental note of the location. Mom was already up and putting on coffee when we walked in; Paris quickly bounded up the stairs while I sat my bags on the counter and started unpacking plastic containers. ¡°Didn¡¯t we just send all that home with you yesterday?¡± Mom asked, moving up beside me for her filial kiss. She wore a silk robe tied loosely over full flannel pajamas; the nights were certainly cold enough for them. ¡°Yes, and I¡¯ll take the¡­ leftover¡­ leftovers with me when I go,¡± I promised. ¡°I just like hot breakfast sandwiches the day after Thanksgiving.¡± I brought out a package of English muffins; Mom nodded and pulled out some eggs. Eggs define a breakfast sandwich; you can add eggs to just about any sandwich or wrap and call it breakfast. But I agree with the trend to also differentiate the sandwich bread. I don¡¯t personally like the extra sweetness of pancakes or waffles, although I understand the appeal. That leaves biscuits or English muffins, and the latter are acceptable when slid into a toaster oven with just a bit of butter to melt in. Biscuits are a whole separate production. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. I prefer to stir my sandwich sauce into the eggs, which can fluff them up a bit. A moderately spicy barbecue goes well with slices of leftover turkey. I brought over some pre-sliced Swiss cheese for the girls, but I count the eggs in place of the cheese and top mine off with the usual litany of fresh sandwich veggies. As an experiment, I tried adding stuffing to a skillet of shredded potatoes for a twist on hashbrowns. It was edible but not great. Paris joined us just as the plates were being added to the table. She somehow looked both bigger and older in her uniform. ¡°Where did you two get off to last night?¡± Mom asked as we got settled. ¡°Just Hector¡¯s place,¡± my sister said. ¡°A New York super got kidnapped. I hung out and watched Delphic crack the case.¡± She beamed at me with genuine pride. Mom took a bit of her sandwich and chewed thoughtfully. ¡°You¡¯re being called in for things like this more often now, aren¡¯t you?¡± ¡°Not really,¡± I answered immediately. Then I took a mental step back and thought about it. ¡°I mean, there has been a gradual build-up of demand from when Delphic first started assisting super teams. This is part of why I¡¯m opening the office.¡± I took a long drink from my water glass. ¡°There are enough people asking for my time that it makes sense for there to be a person other than me for them to talk to.¡± ¡°You mean Delphic¡¯s time, dear,¡± Mom corrected softly. ¡°No, actually. I mean my time.¡± I had been thinking about this quite a bit recently. ¡°They may think what they¡¯re looking for is help from Delphic, but what they are actually asking for ¨C what I will actually give them if I agree to help ¨C is my time. My mental energy and focus in finding the information they need.¡± I took another long drink; I found I wasn¡¯t very hungry. My mom nodded and seemed to be considering what to say next. After a minute, she shook her head and took another bite of sandwich. Paris looked from her to me, and then said, ¡°I think Mom is concerned that you seem to be investing more of yourself in Delphic, and not doing as much with Hector.¡± Mom nodded, chewing. I shrugged. ¡°Maybe, but why is that wrong? Delphic has earned more than fifteen million dollars in the past five years. He¡¯s saved hundreds of lives, has appeared on national television, and is regularly called upon by some of the most famous supers in America.¡± Both Mom and Paris were looking between each other and me with increasingly worried glances, but I pressed on. ¡°Hector Donnell lives alone. He earns thirty-five grand a year fixing power lines and hooking up cable. He¡¯s got loving parents and an amazing sister,¡± I nodded at them with a real smile, ¡°some good friends he plays games with. And that¡¯s it.¡± The girls didn¡¯t seem to have an easy response to this. I took a bite of hashbrowns and added, ¡°I don¡¯t want to neglect you, or push my friends away. But the rest of my time? What other people devote to challenging careers and involved hobbies?¡± I dropped my fork and put a hand to my chest. ¡°I am saving lives with that time. Catching bad guys. It¡¯s not exactly a waste.¡± There was a lull in the conversation as everyone focused on their food. Paris broke the silence. ¡°Speaking of catching bad guys, I have a case for you.¡± ¡°Really?¡± It had been a while since she had asked me to help with one of her cases in Detroit Homicide. The last had turned out to be three gang members from Mega ¨C same as the young man that tried to kill her a couple of days later. ¡°I thought we were holding off until the investigation on you closes?¡± ¡°I thought so, too,¡± Mom put in. ¡°No reason to push your luck, dear.¡± ¡°I know, but¡­¡± she swiped on her tablet and handed it to me. ¡°Take a look.¡± It took me a moment to understand what I was seeing, and when I realized what it was, I immediately pushed the tablet away from me. ¡°Not during breakfast, please!¡± It was some gory surgical scene. Paris grinned. ¡°Sorry,¡± she said with no sincerity. ¡°Point is, this is an unusual case. The polar bears at the zoo have been getting sick for several months now. This week, one of them died.¡± Mom scoffed. ¡°DPD is solving a bear homicide? Or ¡®ursacide,¡¯ I guess it would be¡­¡± Paris shook her head. ¡°It¡¯s not the bear¡¯s death that brought us in. It¡¯s what they found inside the bear.¡± ¡°They did an autopsy on the bear?¡± I asked. ¡°Yeah, like I said, all the bears had been sick. They wanted to figure out why. What they found were bone fragments in the stomach that were identified as human.¡± She swiped at her tablet again. ¡°Once they knew to look, they found other remains in the bears¡¯ leavings¡­ looks like four to six humans over as many months. We¡¯ve matched two missing persons reports, but it¡¯s tentative.¡± She shrugged. ¡°They didn¡¯t leave us much to work with.¡± I looked over the scraps of my breakfast and decided I was ready to be done. I took the tablet back. ¡°So why bring this to me so soon? This was just uncovered, right? It¡¯s hardly a cold case.¡± She shrugged. ¡°Yeah, but this isn¡¯t a single incident. It¡¯s a pattern.¡± ¡°You think the killer is still active,¡± Mom realized. ¡°And until he¡¯s found,¡± Paris pointed out, ¡°there¡¯s no way to know how often he¡¯s killing or why. He could be hiding bodies in different places.¡± I finally caught on. ¡°You¡¯re thinking serial killer.¡± My sister made eye contact with each of us and nodded. ¡°The Detroit Zoo isn¡¯t in an isolated location; there are much easier ways to dump bodies. This smells like routine to me. Ritual.¡± I shuddered. The very idea of someone who killed, not as the means to some selfish end, but as a twisted end of its own ¨C killed for the pleasure of it ¨C was deeply disturbing to me. Paris seemed to be having similar thoughts. ¡°I will remind you, children,¡± my mother broke the glum silence, ¡°that roughly half of confirmed violent psychopathy is linked with powers.¡± She got up to pour herself a fresh cup of coffee. ¡°I¡¯ve actually read up on this. I think there¡¯s massive self-selection bias in that statistic,¡± I said. I waited for a response, but my sister just beckoned me in a ¡®get on with it¡¯ gesture. ¡°Powerful supers can do a lot more damage more easily than a normal human. My guess is that we detect and catch more of these supers because they kill more, sooner, rather than because they are more likely to go psycho.¡± Mom sat back down and leaned on the table. ¡°Any evidence behind that hypothesis?¡± ¡°Power distribution. Only a small minority of supers have powers that would meaningfully help them kill, maybe fifteen or twenty percent. But of those super-powered serial killers, the number is more than ninety percent.¡± Both Mom and sis looked skeptical; I knew they¡¯d be checking my stats later. ¡°The rate of psycho killers among ¡®weak¡¯ supers, or at least ones with powers that aren¡¯t useful to a serial killer, are close to proportional.¡± Paris shrugged while meeting my eyes. ¡°Either way, Mom, we¡¯ll be careful.¡± She rose from her chair, smoothing down her uniform and giving me and Mom goodbye hugs. As she turned to go, she flashed a big grin. ¡°Oh yeah, don¡¯t forget to tell Mom about the Doc sequencing your DNA and wanting to run tests on you.¡± Mom gasped, ¡°Say what?!¡± My sister was already out the door. So much for sibling solidarity. I could feel the heat of Mom¡¯s stare without having to look up. ¡°Baby, what¡¯s this about Doc Stevens and your DNA? I thought he knew you as Delphic.¡± I ran my hand through my hair. I really didn¡¯t want to get into this with Mom today. ¡°He does. But remember, he helped Delphic with the situation where the CIA was targeting me as Hector. Doc and his team see Hector and Delphic as friends, just like Laila and Kurt do, and the government agents we¡¯re suing.¡± I took a breath to collect my thoughts and risked a glance at Mom. She nodded that she was following, so I continued. ¡°Doc called Hector today, introduced himself, and said they had my DNA. I had four super genes out of the fifteen, he said.¡± ¡°I thought there were nine.¡± I shooed that line away. ¡°He had a Eutopian doctor insisting I could have any of twelve genetic diseases and needed to come to them for testing.¡± I took a breath, then released it. ¡°That¡¯s it, really.¡± ¡°What do you think he really wants?¡± As Mom spoke, I noticed her tone had modulated to something more neutral ¨C her professional therapist voice. It meant she was scared. ¡°Probably just data.¡± I shook my head. ¡°If he¡¯s telling the truth about the four genes, I¡¯m probably rare for a first generation super.¡± ¡°We already knew you were pretty rare, son,¡± she replied. ¡°As far as we know, your ability is unique to you.¡± She ticked off her fingers, ¡°Perceptive power, no distance limit, no time limit on use. Even without the fact that you can also adjust forward and backward in time, the other three would have put you in single digits worldwide.¡± ¡°All of which means that if Doc knew the truth¡­¡± ¡°There is little chance you could visit him and then leave again. I¡¯ll get those, dear,¡± she stopped me as I tried to collect the plates for the sink. ¡°You get ready for your business meeting.¡± I was not a particularly tall man, but as Mom pressed herself up to me for a goodbye hug, her forehead barely reached my chest. ¡°Hector, I will ask you one thing,¡± she said, looking up into my face.¡± ¡°Yes¡¯m?¡± I beamed warmly. ¡°Tell us before you leave, if you decide to go.¡± ¡°To Eutopia?¡± ¡°Or anywhere, really.¡± She gave me an extra squeeze. ¡°I get worried.¡± I had to admit that when I was in my right mind, so did I. Chapter 6 - Painful Questions I thought out my morning on the drive home. The meeting with Georgia and Matti Gardner, my prospective employees, was set for 9 am Pacific time, which meant I had four hours to invest. I wanted to focus on the polar bear case, but when I had laundry going and sat down at my computer, I turned my attention to the situation in New York instead. The coordination involved in this attack made it a big deal. Among both normal criminals and super villains, the ability to work together to pull off a plan with more steps than just ¡°get the guy and run¡± transforms the nature of the threat. Run-of-the-mill criminals, even supers, are momentary emergencies. They either cause harm on the spot or they are stopped. But organized crime ¨C villain teams, masterminds, cults, and the like ¨C can cause ongoing harm that is hard to even identify. To be stopped, they have to be rooted out. I recognized the broader strategic danger there, even if I don¡¯t always agree with which groups receive which labels (e.g. Doc). NYST¡¯s system showed five rooms at HQ booked by Lady Liberty for ¡°questioning suspects,¡± followed by the numbers 1-4 and, for the last room, ¡°Soin.¡± The system showed all of last night¡¯s supers as active at HQ, other than Refraxx, but none had camera feeds available. I was surprised to see High-Cap on the list as well. Spinner was shown as tied into the system, so I dialed him through it. His visor feed came up, showing him in a lit hallway with Liberty and GigaGiant. The heroine wore her bronze costume, but her hulking companion was in bone slacks and a red shirt. The business casual outfit looked odd with his pale blue skin. ¡°G¡¯morning, Delphic. Get enough sleep?¡± Spinner greeted. Liberty pressed buttons on her left wrist, and the system informed me that she and GigaGiant had been added to the channel. ¡°Yes, thank you,¡± I typed and sent. ¡°I apologize for my absence, but reintegrating myself after intense data analysis takes time.¡± ¡°Huh. I didn¡¯t actually know that,¡± Spinner replied. ¡°I take it, then, that you don¡¯t have any more leads for us on who is ultimately responsible?¡± asked Lady Liberty. ¡°Not yet,¡± I repeated from last night. ¡°I wanted to review the recordings of the suspect interviews from last night, but they have not been made available. ¡°There aren¡¯t any,¡± Liberty explained. ¡°Last night¡¯s sessions weren¡¯t recorded.¡± I noticed as she said this that GigaGiant, who had to look significantly below his own eye level to see the faces of his colleagues, briefly raised his gaze to eye level and turned his mouth down in a frown. He shook it off after a minute. ¡°That¡¯s unfortunate,¡± I had Delphic say. ¡°May I ask why not?¡± ¡°Power-assisted interrogation,¡± GigaGiant¡¯s voice rumbled, ¡°isn¡¯t admissible in New York.¡± ¡°And we¡¯ve found that the most effective methods for questioning¡­ make for poor PR,¡± the Lady added. ¡°That¡¯s because it¡¯s sick,¡± Spinner said. ¡°Torture isn¡¯t a reliable way to get information.¡± ¡°Not by itself,¡± the larger super replied. By unspoken agreement the three of them headed down the hall. Liberty said, ¡°We¡¯re not sure to make of what we¡¯ve found out. Apparently Whisper wasn¡¯t the first. Some unexplained disappearances of suspects and witnesses over the past two years can be chalked up to these guys and a half dozen of their friends.¡± This was a difficult claim to take seriously. A covert abduction ring operating in New York City? But if it were true, the consequences went far beyond NYST. ¡°That seems like a matter for the police department,¡± I typed. ¡°That¡¯s what I said,¡± Spinner interjected. ¡°If we had uncovered somethin¡¯ like this in Boston, it woulda been dumped on the city¡¯s finest by now.¡± ¡°We¡¯ll turn the perps and the intel over to them when we¡¯re done,¡± Liberty replied, ¡°but NYPD doesn¡¯t share with us. Half the time they don¡¯t even let us interview their suspects. We have to get what we can while they¡¯re in our custody.¡± The three arrived at a large steel door. ¡°The mystery is this Doctor Soin. He¡¯s admitted to organizing the pickup, but he won¡¯t tell us who hired him. Or what motivated him to try to kill Whisper when she was found.¡± Another set of button presses on Liberty¡¯s forearm resulted in an audible click, as well as an alert on the NYST dashboard that ¡°questioning suspects ¨C Soin¡± was unlocked. Spinner entered first, followed by Liberty; GigaGiant remained in the hallway. The video from Spinner¡¯s stream was bent around the edges due to the wide-angle lens he employed in his visor. Often this wasn¡¯t noticeable, but in the enclosed space of the room it added to the claustrophobic feel. The room was oppressively lit by ceiling fluorescents. The intended centerpiece of the space was a sturdy wooden table that was currently pushed to one corner. Doctor Soin, stripped of his medical jacket but otherwise dressed the same as last night, was tightly bound to a heavy padded chair. Against one wall, in a matching padded chair, sat a dark-skinned woman with a long billowing mane of bright orange hair. She wore a thin black shirt and slacks with black flats and gloves; the only color on her was a small cloud logo on her shirt the same color as her hair. Orange Nimbus looked exhausted. Her eyes were forced open too wide and her mouth was slightly open in a panting frown. But I could tell by her defiant look toward Spinner and Liberty that asking her to stop and get sleep would be wasted breath. In a folding chair sitting right next to the doctor was Enki, an unnaturally pale goth girl in a stylized indigo costume laced up like a corset. She looked up at the newcomers with a polite smile. ¡°Something wrong?¡± she asked sweetly. If Orange Nimbus was exhausted, Enki looked the opposite: well-rested and vigorous. ¡°Don¡¯t mind us.¡± Liberty moved to the side of the room opposite Nimbus; Spinner leaned back against the re-locked door. Enki nodded and returned her attention to the bound man in front of her. She lightly touched him near his elbow, and his whole body shaked as he tried and failed to flinch away. She ran a single teasing fingertip up and down his arm. The man let out a faint whimpering noise. ¡°Okay, Pathik, I think that¡¯s long enough. Have you remembered anything else?¡± She spoke close to his ear, loud enough to be heard clearly in the small room but quiet enough to seem strangely intimate. The tone reminded me of a nurse coaxing a sick patient. The doctor cleared his throat. ¡°No, nothing else.¡± ¡°Lie.¡± This one word from Orange Nimbus had an immediate effect on the doctor. ¡°No! It¡­ there¡¯s¡­ I can¡¯t! Please!¡± He pulled at his bonds, yelling plaintively. He didn¡¯t stop yelling as Enki placed one hand around his throat and the other resting lightly on his shoulder. The look on his face was terrified, and then he wasn¡¯t moving at all other than fast shallow breaths. ¡°We¡¯ll give him a couple of minutes,¡± she smiled. ¡°What is happening to him?¡± I asked, realizing that Enki and Orange probably couldn¡¯t hear me. ¡°She¡¯s paralyzed him and made him feel pain,¡± Spinner said. ¡°He can¡¯t even scream.¡± Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road. ¡°It focuses the pain better,¡± the girl explained. ¡°Oh, hey, somebody¡¯s on channel?¡± She reached into a small pouch and pulled out an earpiece; Liberty patched her in. ¡°Is it Delphic? Please tell me it¡¯s Delphic.¡± ¡°This is Delphic.¡± ¡°Sweet! Hi. Love your work.¡± She flashed a smile at Spinner¡¯s visor, intuiting correctly that I was seeing his feed. She turned back to Liberty. ¡°Soin has been managing the pickups for a few months now. He doesn¡¯t know who takes them; his contact is a guy named Joe Thick.¡± Liberty inclined her helmet slightly in a nod. ¡°That fits; he¡¯s a local fixer. Usually keeps his hands clean but passes money and messages around.¡± ¡°Did you find out why he tried to kill Whisper?¡± I asked. ¡°He got an email just before he was called in. It said if Whisper made it out alive, they¡¯d kill him.¡± ¡°That¡­ is a bit much for Thick and his crowd,¡± Liberty admitted. ¡°Anything else?¡± ¡°We¡¯ve gotten a bunch of names,¡± Enki bragged. ¡°Eleven abductors, including all four of the people we already have, and five past victims.¡± She grinned. ¡°He¡¯s remembering more.¡± ¡°I¡­ think that¡¯s enough,¡± Liberty decided. ¡°The police can do the rest. We have the info relevant to us.¡± Enki shrugged. ¡°Okay.¡± She laid a hand across the bound man¡¯s forehead and he started screaming a second later, but it ran out into desperate panting shortly after. The pale super stood up and moved in front of Doctor Soin, staring into his eyes as she reached out and cradled his face in her hands. ¡°Pathik, you gave us what we needed. We¡¯re all done!¡± He made a repeating sound; I realized he was laughing in relief. ¡°Now, are you going to make me come see you again?¡± His laughing turned to choking and he recaptured his breath. ¡°No, no. I¡¯m done. I am done with all of this. I¡¯m sorry! I¡¯m sorry.¡± She patted his cheeks and turned to Orange Nimbus, taking her hand to pull her up out of the chair and toward the door. ¡°C¡¯mon, O.N. We¡¯re off for the rest of the day,¡± she announced. ¡°Hey Delphic, do me a favor.¡± ¡°How can I help?¡± I responded. Lady Liberty paused in unfastening the ties holding Doctor Soin to the chair to unlock the door. ¡°If I show up in the papers over this, remember it¡¯s Ehhhn-ki, E-N-K-I. Not ¡®inky.¡¯ The god, not the adverb.¡± ¡°Adjective,¡± the exhausted Orange Nimbus added. ¡°Right, not that.¡± She pocketed her earpiece again. Hand in hand, the two supers left the room. ¡°Thanks for your cooperation, doctor. We¡¯ll be turning you over to NYPD shortly,¡± Liberty said as she bundled up the final tie. ¡°I¡¯ll send in breakfast for you.¡± The man rubbed his wrists thoughtfully. ¡°That¡¯s it?¡± he said, a barely controlled shriek. ¡°You lock me in here for¡­ how many hours with that, that monster ¨C the pain¡­ and now you¡¯re sending me to the police?¡± He inhaled, gathering his strength. ¡°You can¡¯t do that! You will go to jail, all of you¡­¡± ¡°I assure you, doctor, NYST has every right to hold a suspect for questioning. And to turn over a murderer to the police.¡± She turned to Spinner. ¡°Shall we?¡± After exiting, Liberty led Spinner and GigaGiant to another room with the same furniture. Only Spinner took a chair; they likely weren¡¯t designed to bear the weight of the other two. ¡°I had Spinner over to the station. There was a trail between Whisper¡¯s room and High-Cap¡¯s through the ventilation, but none leading away from the rooms.¡± ¡°I haven¡¯t seen Whisper in action yet, but the trail would have to be hers,¡± Spinner explained. ¡°High-Cap admitted that Whisper had come over to her room. So, that leaves no powers unaccounted for.¡± ¡°Time to bring in Thick, then?¡± GigaGiant asked. ¡°He¡¯s our open lead.¡± ¡°Not yet,¡± Liberty responded. ¡°Delphic, can you see what you can get first? I think bringing him in might send everyone else too far underground.¡± ¡°I¡¯m on it.¡± ¡°Thanks. I¡¯ll make a couple of indirect queries too.¡± She sighed. ¡°A lot of us were up for part or all of the night. Whisper and High-Cap are safe for now; let¡¯s regroup tomorrow and see what we¡¯ve come up with.¡± The call ended just then, which surprised me. I was checking some of my office documents, making sure I was fully prepared for my noon meeting, when an audio call from Spinner came in ¨C not on the NYST system this time. ¡°Hey, man,¡± Spinner said as soon as I answered. His speech was rushed and clearly not happy. ¡°Hi, Spinner. You wanted to discuss something privately?¡± I still hadn¡¯t implemented anything in the synthetic voice resembling intonation; I just had to hope he read my meaning correctly. ¡°Yeah. I was talking to GG earlier, about Enki and the¡­ questioning.¡± His breathing sounded heavy and slow, a forced regularity. ¡°He says this is becoming routine for NYST. I wasn¡¯t happy to hear that.¡± ¡°They are using Enki¡¯s pain power to extract information from suspects?¡± ¡°Yeah, he says it¡¯s happening every week or so. Pretty much whenever they round up somebody that they expect is working for somebody else.¡± He paused for a few seconds. ¡°You¡¯ve seen it now, too. Am I freaking out for no reason? What d¡¯you think?¡± I called to mind the look on Doctor Soin¡¯s face when she touched him. It was a deep, nauseating terror ¨C and yet, this was a man who had been willing to shoot an unconscious girl dead after kidnapping her, based on an anonymous threat. ¡°Does the power leave lingering pain or injury?¡± I asked. ¡°No. GG says the perps flinch from touch for a while, but that¡¯s just remembering the pain.¡± Spinner didn¡¯t sound like he thought that was a sufficient excuse. ¡°None of the New York supers have a problem with it?¡± The New York Super Team was unusually large, owing in part to the high frequency of super activity in the city. I would not expect three dozen supers to fall into lockstep on a matter this ethically grey. ¡°He didn¡¯t come out and say it, but I got the impression a lot of heroes on the team haven¡¯t been filled in on this. But those that have aren¡¯t all good with it. A few have voiced objections ¨C Whisper being one of the loudest. As backwards as that sounds.¡± I wondered how Whisper would have felt about questioning Doctor Soin. I doubted Refraxx would share her reluctance. ¡°I understand the objections. On some level I share them.¡± I typed and deleted and retype four times before sending the next sentence: ¡°But if it¡¯s to help victims, and it¡¯s the criminal who pays the cost, it¡¯s probably worth it. Even with our discomfort.¡± ¡°Hmm.¡± The noise wasn¡¯t agreement or contradiction, just acknowledgement. ¡°You know about my dad.¡± He said it as a statement, not a question. This wasn¡¯t the first time he¡¯d assumed I knew things about him. The truth was that I didn¡¯t; I hadn¡¯t uncovered his civilian identity or dug into his personal history. ¡°I don¡¯t.¡± The words were too flat, coming from my synth. ¡°I could find out, if that would make this easier.¡± He sighed, a massive push of air. ¡°Nah, I¡¯ll tell you. But fill in any gaps later, huh? Name¡¯s Ari, by the way.¡± I didn¡¯t know what to say to that. What I typed was, ¡°Thank you for trusting me.¡± ¡°My Dad was a superhero. A good one,¡± he explained. ¡°Blackbird. The original, not the late nineties extreme one, or the emo kid that uses the name now. Part of the old aerial super team from the seventies.¡± I was familiar with the Birds, the US super team he was talking about, although I didn¡¯t know any of the members specifically. Because of their high mobility, they were often the only team that could respond quickly enough to surprise attacks by villains. It was a high-profile team, but a very dangerous one. ¡°I was six when Dad went down. Collateral damage, really. Some crazy guy was trying to take down that giant Jesus statue, you know, the one in Brazil?¡± ¡°Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro.¡± ¡°Yeah, I think so. Dad and two other fliers carried heavies in to deal with the guy, who was sending out shock waves. They were knocked out of the sky. One was killed on the spot.¡± His breathing was heavy for a minute before he continued. ¡°Dad was badly hurt, but they got him up to the Stevens Hospital in Los Alamos. Best care in the world, they said. I believed them ¨C we got to visit Dad twice and there were always plenty of nurses around. All the equipment was chrome with flashing lights. Plenty futuristic for 1987.¡± I had figured out how this story was going to go by now, and the cold was spreading out in my gut. I wasn¡¯t going to cut him off; I would face this head-on. ¡°Mom and me, we were mad about the ashes. I mean, we never thought they were lying to us about him dying suddenly, about the cremation. We were just angry they did it before we could see the body. Before we could say goodbye.¡± Spinner¡¯s¡­ Ari¡¯s tone was more wistful than angry. ¡°I think mostly bein¡¯ mad left us less room to go to pieces. Dad was always big on ¡®standing against the storm,¡¯ y¡¯know, courage when things get bad. Hero stuff.¡± He paused again, and this time I had something I could say. ¡°You¡¯re a hero now. He would be proud.¡± His response to that was not anything I was expecting. His next words were shouted, louder than I had ever heard from him. ¡°Don¡¯t you try to tell me what he would be! You did NOT know him!¡± He panted over the line, his breathing almost a growl. ¡°Sorry,¡± was all I could think to send. His breathing quieted, and his next words were back to his previous cadence, as though the outburst had never happened. ¡°Dad wasn¡¯t dead, not yet anyway. I was fifteen before I found out what had actually happened to him. I¡¯ll¡­ let you look up the specifics.¡± He was picturing it for himself, I could tell. ¡°I¡¯m grateful to Seraph for freeing him, even if it did kill him. She performed a mercy. But¡­ well¡­ ¡°My point, man, is that I¡¯m not willing to ignore evil just ¡¯cause somebody has some¡­ greater good¡­ in mind. Once you start makin¡¯ those decisions? You¡¯re one of the bad guys. And somebody needs to put you down.¡± Spinner disconnected after thanking me for speaking with him. He was right to have assumed I would look into him; I really should have, once it was clear that we would continue to work together. With each of our unusual abilities, both so useful in finding others, that was very likely. The other realization from our conversation was why Liberty had suggested the I talk to Spinner about Doc Stevens. Considering that his father was one of the Doc¡¯s experimental victims, his predictable hostility would be entirely justified. It was another snag in the tangled tapestry of Delphic¡¯s interactions, a skein held together by tensions and separate arrangements that forced me to manage information as much as personalities. One day, I¡¯d fail in my elaborate juggling act and have to deal with the consequences. But for that day, I made notes on what to go after next in New York, then turned my attention to a small building in California. It was time to meet the team that would run Delphic Incorporated. Chapter 7 - Senior Management Setting up the room had been what finally convinced me to hire Fitz. It was small for a corner office. The style was distinctly industrial, with Art Deco flourishes that invoked the Golden Gate Bridge ¨C a copper bass-relief of which was hung against one wall. The floor was sections of metal grille with soft colored lights glowing up from below; the lighting above was recessed into a rather low ceiling. Two imposing chairs sat before a sweeping chrome desk that curved around and along the wall to surround a small chair, also on metal. The desk adjacent the wall was presented as the primary work surface, with a bulky keyboard and trackball set permanently therein below a monitor that was itself set into the wall, behind clear glass as though a museum display. What I expected to be a two-day project with the three guys I hired, had taken six days ¨C and half of that was having them re-do what they did wrong. I could have done most of it myself in ten hours with a second guy to do some of the lifting. Managing others remotely was infuriating sometimes. It was a quarter to noon, 8:45 Pacific time. I had already turned the video conferencing camera on remotely, but not the display, when Leo led the Gardner twins into the room. Except for some very evident nerves, Georgia Gardner managed the picture of the young Latina professional. Her tan business suit was pressed, her long hair tightly done up in wrapped braids at her neck. She managed not to call attention to the gloves she wore, or the thick insulated soles of the work boots that hid under her suit. I noted, mostly for confirmation of the extensive research and preparation I had done, that the pleats of her pants and the tail of her jacket hung oddly, seeming to stick to her or flare out at different moments. She took in the room with perplexed appreciation ¨C she liked what she saw, but didn¡¯t understand it. Matti Gardner also wore a professional suit, in navy blue, but her appearance drew away from her choice of dress. In place of skin, she was covered in layers of small overlapping scales, each about the size of a paperclip. She had no hair, although the scales from her crown down the back of her head were thicker and longer, forming a downward cascade that suggested spikes or frills. She didn¡¯t bother with gloves like her sister ¨C her hands were scaled as well, with flared scales along the backs of her hands running up her fingers like extended claws. Unlike her sister, Matti¡¯s expression didn¡¯t betray any glimmer of hope or excitement. She was stern, and increasingly wary as she looked around the room. ¡°This will be the COO¡¯s office,¡± Leo said as he moved around the desk to sit in the large chair. ¡°Please have a seat. The owner thanks you for your patience in conducting the process at arm¡¯s length up until now, and is excited to meet with you today. We have about ten minutes. Did you have any questions I can answer in the interim?¡± While he was speaking, Matti had taken her sister¡¯s arm and helped Georgia slowly and carefully sit down in her chair. Georgia furrowed her brow as she settled into her seat, and I saw her casually moving her sleeved arm against one of the high chair arms. Matti dropped into the other chair without ceremony. Georgia spoke up. Her voice carried well and had a full, high tone. ¡°To be honest, Mr. Palfrey, we have enough unanswered questions that I¡¯m not sure why we agreed to come.¡± She glanced at her sister, received a small nod, and continued. ¡°We signed your nondisclosure agreement a week ago. We¡¯ve had multiple meetings with you together and separately, answered all your questions. And we still don¡¯t know anything about this new company or who the owner is.¡± Matti added, ¡°Or anything about what we would be expected to do!¡± I stared at the screen in surprise. Leo had gotten them into the room cold, with no information about me or the job. I had hired him based on second-hand recommendations; he was supposed to be the best consultant in Silicon Valley for launching a start-up. I had certainly not told him to leave my best candidates in the dark through multiple days of meetings and interviews. But looking back, it was quite possible I had. When Leo and I first discussed staffing my new company, I explained that secrecy was of paramount importance until we launched, particularly with our candidate hires. I had assumed that he would fill the Gardner sisters in once I had them sign the NDA, but I had never explicitly told him that. This was going to make today¡¯s meeting quite a bit messier. ¡°¡­ certain he will fill you in himself, as soon as he calls in,¡± Leo finished. I decided that was my line. I shut off my one-way feed to the office¡¯s systems and dialed in. The video feed resumed after only a short delay, with Leo¡¯s fingers on the track ball where he had answered the incoming call. ¡°Good morning, Mister Delphic,¡± he said brightly. ¡°How are you today?¡± ¡°Hello, Leo. It has been an eventful day so far. How was your Thanksgiving?¡± ¡°Tiring,¡± he admitted with a smile. ¡°I¡¯d like you to meet Matti and Georgia Gardner.¡± He let the chair roll back slightly, placing himself and them closer to the same frame in the camera view. ¡°Ladies, this is Delphic, the CEO of Delphic incorporated.¡± ¡°Hello to both of you,¡± my synthetic voice said over the built in microphone system. I was using my classic avatar, a still image of an ¡®Omphalos¡¯ coin believed to have come from ancient Delphi. Matti¡¯s expression hadn¡¯t changed, but Georgia¡¯s had passed quickly from bewilderment to anger. ¡°Who put you up to this?¡± She asked. She had moved forward in her seat and was balanced to stand up at any moment, but she kept her seat. ¡°Someone¡¯s recording, I assume? A prank for social media?¡± ¡°Georgia, I assure you, this is no prank,¡± Leo insisted. He, too, seemed ready to get up, presumably to chase the women if they did. ¡°What makes you think that?¡± Georgia¡¯s face was screwed up in something combining fury and embarrassment. ¡°I don¡¯t care why! It¡¯s seriously not funny. Putting us through all of that for other peoples¡¯ amusement-¡± I needed to intervene. ¡°I can see we have a misunderstanding here,¡± I quickly typed, ¡°and I expect it¡¯s my fault. Leo, do you mind leaving me alone with Georgia and Matti?¡± The man looked perplexed but he didn¡¯t hesitate. With a nod he stood up and walked past the women, into the empty floor space of the office proper. I waited until he was well out of earshot. ¡°I need to apologize,¡± I sent, ¡°to both of you. I thought Leo would have filled you in on a number of details before today, and he thought I wanted to do it myself.¡± Georgia¡¯s expression softened slightly; Matti looked as stone-faced as before. ¡°I did not intend to spring this much on you today. I expected you would already know who I was and my plans for this space. Today was just supposed to be the day I met you, showed you the office, and explained your positions.¡± Matti asked, ¡°You¡¯re for real? You¡¯re actually the superhero, Delphic?¡± Other than a slight narrowing of her eyes, I saw no change of expression. ¡°I am very much real. This isn¡¯t a prank. Although I can understand why you might think it is.¡± ¡°Why¡¯s that?¡± Georgia challenged. ¡°Both of you are active on internet sites that discuss superheroes. Both of you hold yourselves out as being fans of my work.¡± Georgia blanched. ¡°You know who we are online?¡± The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°On the main fan boards you are KuteKittieLAX, spelled with a k, and Matti is OmicronJunkie.¡± As they heard this, Georgia whipped around to watch her sister, whose face finally had a real expression ¨C her eyes were wide, and the scales around her face were lightening. It took me a few seconds to realize she was¡­ embarrassed. That wasn¡¯t the response I was hoping to have. ¡°There is nothing for you to be embarrassed about. You said very nice things about me, and speculated as to some interesting ways that I could use my powers. Some of which I¡¯m hoping to put into effect¡­¡± Georgia was biting her own hand, snickering, while Matti had bent over enough to bury her face in her arms. The reaction didn¡¯t seem to fit what I was saying. ¡°Can I ask what is the matter?¡± I asked. ¡°I didn¡¯t realize I had said anything insulting.¡± Georgia calmed down enough to ask, ¡°How much of the forums did you actually read? How many of¡­ ah, OmicronJunkie¡¯s stories did you¡­?¡± ¡°Stories, meaning fanfiction?¡± When I got a nod, I answered. ¡°I hadn¡¯t paid attention to those sites, no. I read your comments on the discussion boards, speculating about powers.¡± ¡°Ah.¡± Georgia settled down a bit, and reached out to place a reassuring hand on Matti, who was composing herself. ¡°I take it Matti has written¡­ what¡¯s the term, celebrity fanfiction? With me as a character.¡± ¡°You could call it that,¡± the scaled sister muttered. ¡°That¡¯s very flattering. Again, I¡¯m sorry to have embarrassed you.¡± ¡°People just¡­ ah, sorry,¡± Georgia fought down giggles. ¡°People just don¡¯t expect to get that stuff tagged to their real life. Anonymity, you know?¡± I certainly did ¨C that was the reason for the whole ¡®Delphic¡¯ identity in the first place. ¡°Will this impact your willingness to work with me?¡± Matti¡¯s coloration was almost back to normal as the two of them shared a glance, and then nodded at the same time. ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± Matti insisted. ¡°Then I¡¯d like to get into the details. Georgia, you¡¯ve been working with the Mitner Group on lateral recruitment and also retention consulting, is that correct?¡± I could see a little bit of her earlier nervousness returning. ¡°That¡¯s right.¡± ¡°No it¡¯s not,¡± Matti interjected. She pulled herself up and back, focusing her full attention on my avatar ¨C avoiding her sister¡¯s indignant gaze. ¡°Matti, what are you-¡± Georgia began, the other twin cut her off. ¡°They¡¯ve been dumping off the hardest projects on her for years now.¡± Matti¡¯s tone had moved from flat to angry, although her face didn¡¯t move with it. ¡°Full department moves. Company mergers. Impossible clients.¡± ¡°Matti,¡± Georgia tried again, ¡°we cant-¡± ¡°Ms. Gardner,¡± this time it was I who cut her off. ¡°I would like to hear Matti¡¯s impression of your time at Mitner, if you please.¡± Emboldened, Matti continued. ¡°They convinced her that she shouldn¡¯t do any of the facetime, because of her condition,¡± she gestured at Georgia¡¯s gloves; Georgia tugged on one nervously. ¡°Involuntary capacitance,¡± I sent. ¡°She builds up charges. It wasn¡¯t bad when we were teenagers, or even in college, but it¡¯s gotten worse. And her colleagues have used it as an excuse to work her dead while taking her credit.¡± ¡°Georgia,¡± I asked, ¡°is this an accurate description?¡± She nodded. ¡°Would you prefer a job where you managed assets and clients face-to-face, and handled your own cases?¡± ¡°Yes, but,¡± she licked her lips, holding up a gloved hand, ¡°the shocking problem is real. I really can¡¯t take meetings in person unless I keep my distance. I can¡¯t even be around computers for more than a few minutes. It was time to pull out my first Ace. ¡°Can I ask you, how many discharges have you felt since you entered this room?¡± Her eyes widened as she thought back. ¡°Well, none, actually. That¡¯s why I wore the insulated gloves and boots.¡± ¡°Take them off.¡± Georgia looked to her sister, who gave her a ¡®go on¡¯ nod. She took her gloves off, one at a time, to reveal long fingers painted a deep blue. It took me a moment to realize why the color seemed to fit so well ¨C it matched Matti¡¯s scales. She reached down to pull off her boots, revealing socks the same cream color as her blouse. Reluctantly, she put one foot on the floor, then the other. ¡°Do you know how lightning rods work?¡± I asked, and they just shook their heads. ¡°A common misconception is that their primary purpose is to attract lightning strikes. But their main benefit is reducing the frequency of strikes in the first place. ¡°All of the decorations you see, the furniture, and even the floor itself. They¡¯re all made of electrically conductive metal, and they¡¯re all grounded. Every surface in here drains the electricity from you as quickly as it can build up, the same way that lightning rods drain excess charge out of the air.¡± Georgia took in the room with new eyes, and saw how I had chosen copper and bronze decorations with angular features. Her eyes went to the base of one knick-knack where a bit of the grounding wire was barely visible. ¡°Come sit behind the desk,¡± I invited her. She gingerly stepped over the grilles in her stocking feet, and eased into the more giving chair. ¡°That¡¯s aluminum mesh microplated in silver. Springy, strong ¨C and highly conductive.¡± She bounced the seat up and down, testing it. ¡°Come over to the keyboard.¡± Georgia rolled over to the part of the desk up against the wall. I could see her start to object¡­ and then think better of it. She waited on me instead. ¡°Try it. The keys are heavily insulated elements. I couldn¡¯t get a conventional optical mouse to work reliably, hence the trackball. But the monitor¡¯s far enough recessed to avoid contact, and the box itself is in another room.¡± I was enjoying my explanation, and Georgia certainly didn¡¯t seem bored yet, so I kept typing and sending. ¡°None of this is new technology, by the way. There are engineering labs that deal with high voltage devices and volatile components. Building the proper work environment is a solved problem.¡± ¡°This seems like a significant expense to go through for one employee,¡± Georgia said. ¡°It¡¯s actually less expensive than many COO offices in the Valley,¡± I retorted. That got Georgia jerking her head up in surprise again. ¡°Leo said that, didn¡¯t he? COO? Chief operating officer?¡± ¡°That¡¯s correct. I hope you want the job, because the office is already here.¡± Georgia turned and made eye contact with her sister again. From the placement of the camera, I couldn¡¯t see her face when she did that. Matti¡¯s was still impassive, but she did give a small nod. ¡°What would I do, exactly?¡± She turned back to face the screen and the camera as she asked. She looked genuinely pleased, with a broad smile she seemed to be trying and failing to suppress. ¡°You would seek out and manage the company¡¯s projects,¡± I said. ¡°They will fall into three categories. Revenue, benevolence, and research.¡± ¡°That¡¯s quite vague,¡± Matti pointed out. ¡°It is vague,¡± I agreed, ¡°because I want Delphic Incorporated to be flexible. It¡¯s a business, and I intend to provide high-valued services so that we turn a substantial profit.¡± ¡°Revenue projects,¡± Georgia said. ¡°Correct. I have three years to demonstrate to my investors that I can run a company this size and make a profit.¡± ¡°Who are your investors?¡± Matti asked. ¡°Two venture capital firms in the area. Collectively they contributed thirty-five million with a projected return on investment of one hundred percent.¡± ¡°We have to turn thirty-five million into seventy million in three years?¡± Matti sputtered. ¡°I am sinking five million of my own money into the company, and I want to be able to pay off the investors and still have thirty million to continue operations.¡± ¡°I stand corrected. We turn forty million into a hundred and ten million. Piece of cake,¡± she quipped. Her scaly features really were quite striking, beautiful even, when she let herself show emotion. ¡°So we need high-value projects. Finding, landing, and managing those clients will be the bulk of your job, Georgia. If you take it.¡± The woman nodded thoughtfully. She reached a hand toward her opposite wrist as though to adjust her glove; her hand froze when it felt nothing there, then dropped into her lap. ¡°The benevolence projects?¡± ¡°A set of clients we don¡¯t charge for. There are situations where my abilities can uniquely help someone. Times when other options will probably fail, or have already failed.¡± Both sisters nodded while I clarified. ¡°I don¡¯t mean donating money. The company may do that, too, but I will handle that directly if so. Benevolence projects should be limited to situations where Delphic Incorporated would be sought out to help if there was money involved. Something we¡¯re suited to use our talents on.¡± ¡°It may be hard to balance paid and unpaid projects,¡± Georgia mused. ¡°True,¡± I agreed, ¡°but that¡¯s the job.¡± The silence stretched out a moment, and it was again Matti that broke it. ¡°I understand you had a job for me as well?¡± She smiled somewhat harshly. ¡°Did you build an office that makes me not look like a freak?¡± My heart really went out to her, noting the deep hurt underlying her attempt at levity. ¡°I haven¡¯t furnished your office,¡± I typed. ¡°You¡¯ve seen the space here. How to apportion out and furnish it is a job for the CPO.¡± ¡°Chief procurement officer?¡± Georgia was indignant. ¡°My sister has an established background in finance and has audited major corporate departments, and you¡¯re asking her to be your personal shopper?¡± ¡°Not hardly,¡± I replied. I typed quickly to diffuse the negative reaction. ¡°Matti will be CFO, CPO, and personnel manager. I fully expect her to hire a half dozen employees to manage these roles.¡± I looked and saw that Georgia seemed mollified, but Matti¡¯s expression hadn¡¯t changed. ¡°Within the first year, Matti¡¯s role will grow into multiple full-time jobs. But I believe with her expertise I¡¯m better off handing her the keys to all of it and letting her hire subordinates to handle the details.¡± Georgia and I both looked to Matti, and she smiled. Not a big smile ¨C small and quiet. But I swelled with pride anyway. ¡°You have contracts for us to sign?¡± Matti asked. ¡°I¡¯ll call Leo back in,¡± I typed and sent. ¡°Let me say one more thing. If this endeavor works, it will be because I found the right two people to run this company.¡± Georgia kicked back, letting the chair lean with her. ¡°If anybody can make this work, we can.¡± She met Matti¡¯s eyes one more time and got another nod. ¡°That¡¯s not a brag; it just the truth.¡± She was right. I made the call to Leo. Chapter 8 - Exploitation
Dr. Pathik Soin: This is a quick note regarding your patient, Samantha Mayer. I pay you very well to assure that our acquisitions aren¡¯t found. Ms. Mayer has been discovered and is surrounded by supers as we speak. I am disappointed. You are going to personally deal with this. Provided that the girl does not leave the building alive, I¡¯ll consider the matter settled. Otherwise, consider yourself a matter to settle instead. Deepika looks recovered from her pregnancy, and little Javaneh is beautiful. Send them my love. Unless I see them before you do.
When I accessed Doctor Soin¡¯s mailbox and found the anonymous email that had convinced him to shoot Whisper, I was excited at cracking the challenge. The email had a spoofed header and had been sent across RR, a volunteer network of servers designed to route traffic to conceal its origin. Popular wisdom says that an email routed through a proper anonymizing network is impossible to track, unless you have some data about the end user that you can correlate to the message (which is how the NSA typically does it). The latter possibility was feasible for me. Every year over the past eight years, I had released a different worm into the internet ecosystem for the purpose of providing low-bandwidth data on request. Only three of the eight had been identified as malware by internet security firms. More importantly, none of the eight had been traced to me by the NSA or CIA according to their case records. Much like biological diseases, malware seldom gets noticed and defended against until it causes noticeable problems. If it sits dormant, doing nothing other than collecting a small table of data and occasionally pinging an IP address for instructions, it can potentially do so for several years. High contagiousness and low morbidity is ideal for maximum spread in a population. I decided to leave my five worms to spread unmolested for the moment, though, and focused on a safer way to trace the message ¨C simulation. Essentially, I could float my own messages along the network, each acting exactly as though they had originated from various locations in and near New York City. Observing the paths taken by the messages over their network (including a non-negligible number that I had direct access to) allowed the system to progressively narrow where the message could have originated. I say ¡°essentially¡± because it¡¯s not actually anywhere near this simple. The encryption isn¡¯t trivial. The network shifts as clients are added and removed, plus the sheer amount of routes make an exhaustive search impossible. Each of these problems is easily addressed with the right algorithms, but applying each solution on top of the others adds at least one order of magnitude to the processing time. Despite the risks, I decided to segment the procedure and tie each module to a separate optimization algorithm. This multiplied the possibility that something could get hung up, but the intra-blade protocols were flexible enough that they should be able to jump past hang-up cases and work around them when needed. If the anonymous email originated from an address in the NYC area, I estimated a 60% chance that I¡¯d have it within 10 hours. With the outdoor temperature near freezing, I was reminded of one of the few advantages of working in a city so far north. Even with my open cabinets and water cooling, the temperature in the room would start climbing as the search occupied between 80% and 95% of system resources. In the summer this would be sweltering; in the winter it kept the house cozy. I heard Paris come in as I finished my shower. I opened the door between the bathroom and my bedroom with my towel around my hips, so she and I could chat while I worked on my hair. ¡°How was patrol?¡± I asked. Usually Paris went out on second or third shift, but most of homicide was still out on Black Friday and she had found a day shift to cover. ¡°Crazy. People treat the one day sale like it¡¯s a matter of life and death.¡± She laid out my Wolverines jacket and started placing different ties up against it. ¡°You¡¯d think nobody¡¯s heard of online shopping.¡± ¡°Plenty of people have. The crowds are less than they were five years ago.¡± I worked a little bit of product into my hair to control the frizziness. ¡°That¡¯s something at least. I think just the black frames.¡± ¡°I trust you. Which shoes?¡± As I came out of the bathroom, she handed me a pair of boxers. ¡°Not sure, I¡¯ll go check.¡± My sister closed the bedroom door on her way to the hall closet where I kept my ¡°weekend¡± shoes. I couldn¡¯t get over the ridiculousness of it ¨C spending two or three hundred dollars for a pair of running or street shoes that were, quite frankly, not very well made. The price by itself didn¡¯t bother me; my work shoes (steel toed boots for most jobs, rubber-soled hightops for when I¡¯d be climbing a service pole) cost nearly as much. But these ¡®kicks¡¯ (Paris had said that term was played out now and not to use it) were pure prestige items, like peacock feathers. They wore out quickly and provided almost no arch support ¨C but the name and the style were recognized, and wearing them sent the right message. The lightweight University of Michigan windbreaker would do nothing in this weather, but that wasn¡¯t the point. I put it on over a short-sleeved button-down shirt and thin tie, and zipped it up to make a V like a sport coat. My slacks fit well. I was relieved when Paris brought back one of the more subdued pairs of shoes, in red and dark blue. With them securely laced, I added my glasses with the black frames. My sister crowded behind me as I stood in front of my full-length mirror. ¡°Hot,¡± was what she said with a smile. I adjusted the glasses, feigning confidence. I always felt a twinge of guilt putting them on. I don¡¯t need them to see ¨C my eyesight is exceptional. But they had a very important filtering effect that was worth the minor inconvenience. I had found that the sort of girls that I could have a decent conversation with were more likely to give me a second look if I wore the glasses, and the sort of girls that I prefer to avoid were less likely to express interest. The glasses had been Paris¡¯s idea to begin with. I took them off briefly, looking them over and trying to make a decision. ¡°Not this again,¡± she quipped. ¡°Wear the glasses, Hector.¡± ¡°It doesn¡¯t seem honest,¡± I told her, as I had many time before. She snorted. ¡°You¡¯re using your look to say, ¡®I¡¯m as smart as I am hot. Let¡¯s talk about, like, computers or whatever,''¡± she giggled. ¡°It¡¯s not dishonest because you are smart, and you do want to talk about your nerd stuff before you get into her pants.¡± Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. ¡°Or instead of,¡± I insisted. ¡°Yeah, bro, I know. Fresh social interaction, let off steam, enthusiastic consent, blah blah blah.¡± She had a smile on her face while she rolled her eyes. ¡°You need to get laid.¡± I rolled my own eyes at that, but Paris was poking me in a spot where I couldn¡¯t, in good conscience, poke her back. We never spoke of it directly, but we both knew that a big reason for these outings was for me to do on Paris¡¯s behalf what she can¡¯t do for herself. Like all humans, Paris craves touch. She desires intimacy as much as your average twenty-something. She wants someone to hold, to kiss, to make love to and then cuddle with. But her power makes all of that impossible. Even if she didn¡¯t have to studiously avoid places where humans are crushed together to avoid outing herself, she would more than likely injure someone with something as simple as a deep kiss. Her flesh does not yield, at all, period. I had encouraged her to at least join online communities ¨C to find friends, and maybe even a long-distance boyfriend. She had yet to do this, to my knowledge. Paris had always been a hands-on person; I don¡¯t think online interactions felt real to her. In any event, I wore the glasses. I took some condoms, some cash, my black card, my ID, my phone, some breath mints, a pocket multi-tool, a small stack of business cards, and a pen. I double-checked my overnight bag and stashed it in the trunk. Paris gave me a kiss on the cheek and headed home. Before leaving, I briefly checked on the progress of the trace. It was moving more slowly than I had expected. I still estimated a 60% chance of success, but it would take upwards of 18 hours. I set the system to upload a status readout on a private server every fifteen minutes, which I could check from my smart phone. As a rule, I don¡¯t provide myself with any direct control of my system from a remote device; no matter how secure you think this is, there are always holes. Despite being half the distance that it was to go across town to my parents¡¯ house, the drive into midtown Detroit was longer. Efforts to revitalize this part of the city had borne some fruit ¨C there were shops still open after dark; the streetlights worked. Historical sites of the auto and music industries from decades past sprinkled the area, interspersed with poorly maintained buildings and newer ones. More importantly for my purposes, midtown was the location of one of the largest universities in the country, Wayne State, and the night life of its students. These were the places I would go, usually alone, to diffuse stress and escape responsibility in an environment designed to disrupt focus, to force interaction and movement on instinct. I was out early; it was barely dusk. No surprise, then, to find the front of the Tin Roof clear, the stanchions not yet defining a line of supplicants. I drove two blocks away and pulled up in front of a three-star hotel. ¡°Mister Donnell. How was your week, sir?¡± As the black man helped me up out of my seat, I was eye level with his bowtie. He traded me a valet ticket for a $20 bill. ¡°Very good, Mack. How was your Thanksgiving?¡± I made it a habit to always come to this valet station, and inevitably Mack was here every Friday night. He was a junior at WSU studying economics, and working nights and weekends to supplement his scholarship. Mack shrugged, a slight frown on his face. ¡°I stuck around to get some studying done and make my shifts,¡± he said. ¡°Wasn¡¯t worth the four hour drive home. Mama said it was okay as long as I was home for Christmas.¡± ¡°Oh, man. Sorry to hear that.¡± A holiday wasn¡¯t something everyone could afford to take. ¡°It was tough, but you know. Gotta stay on the ball. Delayed gratification, and all that.¡± He gave a shallow smile. It made me cringe, though ¨C didn¡¯t like the idea of anyone being alone on Thanksgiving. I pulled a card out of my pocket. ¡°Hey, here¡¯s my cell number. If you find yourself alone in Detroit on a holiday again ¨C New Years, Fourth of July, whatever, give me a call. The Donnells would be happy to have you.¡± Mack politely accepted, but I could tell he was put off by the idea. ¡°Thank you, sir. That¡¯s very kind.¡± He carefully climbed into my car and drove away with a friendly wave. Over my short walk to the club, I ended up following behind a group of five ¨C two guys and three girls ¨C headed to the same place. We joined a short line in front of the entrance that hadn¡¯t been there when I had driven by just a few minutes before. ¡°Hey, do I know you?¡± came a high-pitched voice. The three girls from the group of five were clustered together in line, shivering noticably in the chill. Two of them, like their two male escorts, were white, but the third girl was the one who called to me. I stepped forward and made eye contact. She wore a thick hooded WSU pullover, but the hood was down displaying a mountain of untamed hair. A lot of American blacks are medium brown like Mom, but this girl¡¯s skin was a much darker shade, close to my own. Her face showed an easy smile, and I warmed to it at once. ¡°I don¡¯t think so,¡± I returned, and kept eye contact, ¡°but we can fix that. I¡¯m Hector.¡± I kept enough distance that my outstretched hand didn¡¯t invade her space. She took my hand with an enthusiastic grip. ¡°Kimberly.¡± She let her hand linger in mine. ¡°Not a Wayne student, then?¡± I shook my head as I reluctantly let go, pointing to my jacket. ¡°Michigan.¡± ¡°Oh yeah? Home for the holiday weekend?¡± I shook my head but kept my back smile. ¡°I graduated and moved back. This is home, though.¡± She eyed me again, a little warily. ¡°You must be older than you look.¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t think it was polite to ask a man¡¯s age.¡± As the line slowly moved, Kimberly¡¯s two girlfriends had drifted up to join the guys, giving us the illusion of space for one-on-one chat. ¡°You¡¯ll have to give it up soon enough,¡± she pointed out. ¡°They¡¯re checking ID tonight.¡± ¡°So I see.¡± ¡°Besides, that¡¯s women over thirty.¡± ¡°Sorry?¡± ¡°Not asking age. It¡¯s a rule to protect women whose age might be considered a liability.¡± ¡°Why would age be considered a liability?¡± She cocked her head slightly, not certain if I was joking. ¡°Would you be talking to me if I were thirty-five instead of twenty-five?¡± I was enjoying the somewhat more serious turn to the discussion despite myself. ¡°No, but only because of the age mismatch. If I were also ten years older, I certainly would.¡± She smiled a little and looked me up and down. ¡°And yet, I¡¯d guess you¡¯d just about split the difference between me and older-me. Am I right?¡± At twenty-nine, I had to nod. ¡°Supports my point. Nearly forty year old Hector might still chat up twenty-five year old Kimberly, but younger Hector considers older Kim outside his range.¡± She gave a nod and a shrug. I nodded back. ¡°You¡¯re right, the rule makes sense in that context.¡± Letting myself dwell on the issues for a minute, I stepped forward with her again; their group was next in line. ¡°So, why the gender mismatch? Why do older men seem to have more flexibility?¡± ¡°There are quite a few people trying to unravel that,¡± Kim said, ¡°but the simple answer is wealth creation.¡± ¡°Already?¡± exclaimed one of her friends, a short blonde who had turned around to scold. ¡°Don¡¯t break out the feminist talk when you¡¯ve just met the guy!¡± Both girls had wicked smiles on their faces, and the other one took her shot: ¡°Good girls don¡¯t give up their ideology until the third date. You¡¯re such an academic slut.¡± She drew out the last word and giggled. Kimberly just rolled her eyes. ¡°I wasn¡¯t talking feminism, just culture.¡± I nodded for her to continue. ¡°It¡¯s not controversial that we live under a set of defined gender roles, where men and women have different expectations and approved behaviors. That¡¯s not feminism. Feminism is the stance that these roles harm women and need to be changed somehow.¡± ¡°That makes sense,¡± I allowed. ¡°You were saying that wealth creation gives men more age flexibility?¡± Kimberly shrugged. ¡°Nothing controversial. Men are valued by their ability to create wealth, women by their attractiveness and ability to create a family.¡± ¡°So women¡¯s¡­ ¡®value¡¯¡­ declines with age while men¡¯s doesn¡¯t?¡± I followed her logic this far at least. ¡°Because older women are less attractive while older men have more money,¡± she summarized. ¡°Especially when talking about cultural conventions, which are more interested in generalities than realities.¡± She nodded toward her friends, adding, ¡°The university environment largely destroys that dynamic, though.¡± ¡°You think so?¡± her blonde friend challenged. ¡°I¡¯d say there are still a lot of, like, vestiges of it. Men still pay, and women are still the ones with beauty regimens.¡± ¡°Yes, but a community of students without jobs lacks wealth signifiers as social status,¡± Kimberly said. ¡°Not entirely,¡± said the guy standing next to the blonde woman. He was about a head taller than me, and wore a button-down shirt with a soft collar. His stance and eyes advertised barely restrained violence, but his smile was kind. ¡°Men still try to advertise wealth with cars and clothes. And Greek status is wrapped up a lot in family money.¡± ¡°I hadn¡¯t thought of it that way,¡± Kimberly admitted, ¡°but you¡¯re right. Our culture creeps in wherever it can.¡± ¡°We¡¯re presuming this is a bad thing?¡± I asked. Kimberly shrugged. ¡°That¡¯s feminism again. Culture is constraining; progressive activism pushes against those constraints.¡± We reached the head of the line and the six of us were processed as a group. Kimberly pointedly looked over my shoulder when I showed my ID. I returned the favor; she was twenty-five, as she said. A lie from either of us would have been forgivable on such a minor issue, but we had both been honest with each other. It was an auspicious beginning to the evening. Chapter 9 - The Tin Roof Although all six of us had to show our licenses, only the men had to pay a cover charge. We were each given two small faded tickets with blocky, flavorful type, patterned after speakeasy cards. ¡°What are these?¡± the blonde asked, holding one up to try to get better light. I began, ¡°Back during Prohibition,¡± at the same time that Kimberly started, ¡°In the nineteen-twenties,¡± and we stopped. I joined in with the low-key laughter that followed. I gestured at Kimberly, and she explained. ¡°In the nineteen twenties, during Prohibition,¡± a nod to me, ¡°secret clubs called speakeasies served alcohol. They used cards to limit who could get in, trying to evade authorities and keep the place underground.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a cute way to do drink tickets,¡± I added. This late in the season, the Tin Roof ran on two levels. We entered on the ground floor, where more than half the area was taken up by the open central space. Fifty people were already dancing in tight knots. A large bar stood off to one side with its customary stool seats; tables at standing height peppered the stage with the band stationed at the back. The area above the dance floor was open to the second level, where sit-down tables and booths ringed the room. In warmer weather, the club opened the roof to a second band and packed patrons with the novelty of open-air music and dancing, but not in late November. The band occupying the stage as we walked in was pleasant, an eight-player outfit with a couple of brass and a saxophone. Their up-tempo swing piece was catchy. The six of us settled at a table far enough away from the band to allow for talking. I asked to buy Kimberly a drink, and she nodded. The bar wasn¡¯t too crowded, and a young bartender made eye contact with me within a couple of minutes. She limited her reaction to a raised eyebrow when I pulled out my black card, and nodded at my requests. I don¡¯t try to fool myself about the thrill it gives me to have money. While I prefer a small house in the same sort of middle class neighborhood I grew up in, and a car I can park around town without immediately becoming a target, I don¡¯t think there¡¯s any particular virtue in living below your means. Throwing cash around on a night out ¨C starting a tab on a card with no limit ¨C is fun. ¡°No luck?¡± Kimberly asked when I approached the table empty-handed. ¡°Drinks are coming.¡± I nodded to a server as he came our way. He sat two tall beer glasses in front of me and Kimberly, then placed a bottled water next to each one. ¡°This is my favorite dark draft they have.¡± Kim picked hers up and took a generous gulp. Her lips pursed in a way I found very cute. ¡°It¡¯s good. What¡¯s with the water?¡± The server walked away with the other orders, and the table¡¯s attention turned their curiosity on my answer. ¡°A lot of hangover symptoms are from dehydration. I chase each beer with a water, and I feel a lot better for it in the morning.¡± I took another gulp of my own beer, and prompted, ¡°You were saying that feminism pushes against culture?¡± ¡°That¡¯s the purpose of progressivism generally, yeah.¡± She kept eye contact with me while taking another pull from her glass. It left a fleck of foam on her upper lip that she absently wiped off with the back of her hand. ¡°Its goal is to change something in society it doesn¡¯t like. Some combination of structure, status, and culture.¡± ¡°What¡¯s the feminist approach?¡± I drank deeply as I enjoyed her explanation. ¡°There is no unified approach. Feminism has become a major driving component of academia for two generations now; it encompasses three main waves each with contradictory movements and subgroups.¡± ¡°That sounds like a lot to put under a single label.¡± My beer was drained; I signaled for another at the server who was dropping off bottles for the other four. I looked at the water distastefully but took a dutiful mouthful. Kimberly shrugged. ¡°A lot of people agree, but there are good historical reasons for everyone to want to stay under the umbrella term.¡± She was nursing her own drink more slowly. ¡°Is that what you study at Wayne?¡± Smiling, she shook her head. ¡°I¡¯m pursuing a master¡¯s in law and policy. I have a bachelor¡¯s in sociology that I¡¯m applying to my thesis.¡± ¡°A grad student,¡± I acknowledged cheerfully. ¡°There aren¡¯t that many twenty-five-year-old undergrads.¡± We continued to chat, and enjoyed a couple of other dark drafts. The women got the men out on the dance floor when the band started in with a trumpet solo that promised something fast. To my surprise, I joined in. I¡¯m not a terrible dancer, but normally I¡¯m too self-conscious to enjoy it much. Kimberly didn¡¯t give me that chance. As we moved onto the floor, she had slipped out of her college jacket and revealed a dazzling dress in teal and gold that she filled out exceptionally. The dress flared out over her hips and then just ended, with black leggings below. She flounced playfully onto the floor and I was helpless to resist following. Her attention never left me for a moment during the dance, and she moved with arms and hips and feet in a way I had no hope to match. It didn¡¯t matter; I provided a focal point for her movements, and move she did. Kimberly¡¯s eyes were flecked with gold, and she wore a pale pink lipstick that emphasized her darting tongue when it appeared. By the end of that first dance I was thoroughly entranced. We didn¡¯t leave the floor until the band had finished their first set. I noticed the two girls were by themselves at the table as we returned to it; the boys were still circulating on the dance floor. After catching our breath and draining a bottle of water, Kimberly introduced me to her friends over another beer. It turned out that the four students were in a political science course for which Kimberly was a TA. Since the five of them were all sticking to campus over the holiday, they decided to go out together. Kimberly had been out with the two girls, Kylie and Michelle, before, but they only knew the two guys, Rick and Joseph, from class. We had a decent amount of time to talk, because the DJ hired to fill in between the live sets was a cringeworthy performer. He took three trips to wheel all of his equipment onstage, which included custom lights and large speakers in addition to¡­ yes, a fog machine. As we chatted about Michelle¡¯s majors (education and history), I noticed the DJ plug each of his devices into the same multi-outlet extension cord, which he in turn plugged into the wall. I saw a spark at the wall even from across the room; the wiring in this building was not very robust, and I considered how easy it would be for a circuit overload to shut down the whole place. The question kept nagging at me while Michelle and Kimberly swapped unflattering observations about Wayne polisci profs, and I finally decided to seek an answer. I closed my eyes and sank into my View. The building was laid out as expected ¨C a basement boiler room with a central fuse box, helpfully open and clearly labeled. A single circuit with a 50-amp breaker covered the entire ground floor of the club, except the washroom areas. The basement opened to outside steps at the rear ¨C I opened my eyes in reaction to a sharp elbow from Kimberly. ¡°Sorry?¡± I squeaked. ¡°You didn¡¯t say what you studied at Michigan,¡± Kylie repeated. I spared an eye at Kimberly, who looked amused rather than annoyed at me. ¡°Didn¡¯t I? Electrical engineering.¡± A partial answer, but reasonable for the conversation. ¡°Finding the squishy science too boring, huh?¡± Kimberly quipped, nudging me more broadly with her arm. ¡°Sorry,¡± I repeated. ¡°I¡¯m a very visual thinker -¡± ¡°Oh, we could tell!¡± Michelle cut in; the two younger girls giggled while Kimberly¡¯s grin broadened again. ¡°- I close my eyes to think through things sometimes. It¡¯s a bad habit.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll say,¡± Michelle said. ¡°We spend way too much effort on ourselves for you guys to not to look.¡± ¡°And drool,¡± Kylie agreed. ¡°But in fairness, he¡¯s not looking much at us anyway.¡± There was a moment¡¯s awkward pause before Kimberly backtracked. ¡°I take it that EE wasn¡¯t on your list?¡± she asked Kylie, who was still undeclared as to her major. ¡°Nothing in engineering, thanks. CS would be the closest.¡± Michelle nodded. ¡°Kylie¡¯s really good with computers. She¡¯s resident tech support in our dorm.¡± The blonde rolled her eyes. ¡°Not by choice. With a building full of freshman girls, there¡¯s always some sort of virus being passed around. You¡¯d think they¡¯d be better at using protection,¡± she smirked. ¡°Bareback is more fun,¡± Michelle quipped, and the three girls succumbed to a round of giggling again. The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. The conversation moved on to hometowns, and Kimberly traded stories about Baltimore for mine about Detroit. Michelle was jumping in with her own anecdote when the DJ announced the return of the live band for another set. The four of us decided to return to the floor as a group to begin with, and I allowed the three coeds to share me amongst them with wry forbearance. By the second song, however, Kimberly had moved close enough to stake her exclusive claim. The two friends spun off in eager search of prey. Kimberly and I had kept sampling different drafts during the evening, and despite a sanguine pace and interwoven hydration, we were both noticeably inebriated by now. I was as entranced as before, but now the source was other than visual¡­ it was closeness, warmth, and a wonderful smell mixing blooming flowers with green earth. Our hands stayed affixed to each other as we tangled and untangled in slow spins and uncoordinated grinds. It was delightful chaos. We returned to the table to catch our breath after half the set. The first face I saw standing there was unfamiliar, and I prepared to apologize and go. I then noticed that the arm around her belonged to one of the two polisci boys from Wayne. The two men had drawn a group of three girls to our table, who were listening with amused attention at an animated story. We squeezed in ¨C seven being beyond the modest surface¡¯s planned capacity ¨C and listened while drinking water. ¡°So they toss the guy the ball, right? And then a second ball, and a third. He¡¯s bouncing them around a bit like he¡¯s about to drop them, and suddenly¡­ he¡¯s up in the air, fifteen feet above the ground.¡± He held his arms out and pantomimed looking down. ¡°The stands are going crazy, cheering, and he flies back and forth between the two nets, dropping one ball in one, then one in the second, then back to the first. Then he just flies back to the center of the field and stretches out his arms for applause,¡± the student stretched his armed up and out from the shoulders in a wide V, ¡°and the crowd eats it up. I¡¯ll be honest, it was the most fun I had watching the games last season.¡± ¡°So, what, the mascot was like a super?¡± one of the girls asked. She and her friends were decked in clubwear with unnatural makeup colors and an unhealthy amount of glitter. ¡°Right,¡± the other male student spoke up, his arm still around the tallest of the three women. ¡°A sophomore student that can fly. I don¡¯t know how they talked him into putting on that bird costume. Hope he¡¯s getting a scholarship or something.¡± ¡°I¡¯m sure some hero has him bankrolled,¡± the woman replied. ¡°Team was from Saginaw, right? I bet the Midland Super Team roster has a new flier listed already.¡± That earned a nod from the other two, but not from Kimberly: ¡°That¡¯s not as likely as you¡¯d think.¡± The three women had, after the initial greeting, pointedly not included the newcomer in the conversation. Now they turned their attention in her direction. ¡°Oh? Why not?¡± Kimberly took the attention in stride. ¡°Most powered individuals don¡¯t work for the super teams.¡± She raised her glass while adding, ¡°If you meet a super at random, ninety-seven times out of hundred you¡¯ve just met a civilian with an unusual talent.¡± She took a good gulp of beer, her mouth pursing in appreciation ¨C a look I liked even better each time I saw it on her face. The girl scoffed. ¡°Yeah, right. Three percent? There¡¯s like a thousand costumed heroes in the states alone.¡± ¡°And fifty thousand not in costume. Most of whom are about as likely to tell you they¡¯re a super as someone is to tell you if they have an extra toe. The two conditions are about as common, by the way.¡± She took another substantial pull from her beer, nearly finishing it. ¡°Where do you get your numbers?¡± I asked. The looks from the others at the table were skeptical, but I was simply curious. ¡°A couple of large cohort studies, one based out of Portland and one in Helsinki. It also fits self-reporting data from clinical surveys if you correct for certain substantiated self-selection biases.¡± I stared as she finished her beer, then she put on a mischievous smile. ¡°That¡¯s my master¡¯s thesis, anyway. I¡¯ll tell you if it holds up when I¡¯m done writing it.¡± The look on the other girl¡¯s face melted from challenge to admiration with that last line. ¡°Oh! You¡¯re, like, a scientist?¡± Kim shrugged, which was enough. ¡°That¡¯s so cool! Do you know Joseph?¡± The student with his arm around her smiled, and I finally learned his name as he said, ¡°Yes, Kimberly teaches political science at the university.¡± ¡°Didn¡¯t you say law and policy?¡± I asked. ¡°Law and Policy is a masters program under polisci,¡± she explained. ¡°It¡¯s considered an interdisciplinary subject. Which is another way of saying they don¡¯t have a clear label for what I¡¯m studying.¡± Joseph said, ¡°Yeah, what exactly is it that you¡¯re studying?¡± Kimberly cleared her throat. ¡°Civilian power use. How powered individuals that don¡¯t join super teams use their abilities, and how we regulate those uses.¡± ¡°Like that super construction crew in Texas?¡± one of the girls asked. Kimberly nodded. ¡°I¡¯m glad Joseph mentioned the Saginaw Valley mascot; I hadn¡¯t heard about that, and I will probably try to get an interview with him.¡± The conversation drifted back into college sports. Our breath reclaimed, Kimberly and I made to stand up and rejoin the dancers when the live set came to an end. We looked at each other as the DJ began playing something fast, and with a mutual shrug, we joined the floor anyway. Patrons had gradually filled the building over time, and even the less popular generic dance music of the DJ still drew a crowd to the floor. Visibility was cut as mist billowed out from the stage, fluorescing with rapidly cycling colors. The DJ¡¯s oversized speakers boomed, and Kimberly and I shook and writhed along with a hundred other bodies. The unnatural quiet that followed the sudden silencing of all of the DJ¡¯s equipment was the most jarring part of the experience, even more than having all of the overhead and wall lights on the first floor of the club go out. The lull only lasted a few heartbeats before the ambient volume increased with the querulous murmurs of clubgoers, but this was enough for me to solidify my own course of action. Kimberly¡¯s arms that had been resting loosely on my shoulders tightened around me, drawing me close. ¡°What happened?¡± she asked in my ear. ¡°Tripped the breaker,¡± I explained, moving my head back enough to meet her eyes. ¡°Let¡¯s fix it.¡± Her eyes narrowed in confusion for just a moment before widening in clear delight, and she nodded. I kept hold of her hand as I quickly maneuvered us around milling dancers surrounded by dark fog who suddenly had nothing to dance to. Kimberly and I stepped up onto the stage, where the DJ ¨C an undersized teenager ¨C flipped switches on his equipment in flustered bewilderment. He didn¡¯t notice my approach, yanking his thick orange extension cord at that moment. Nobody tried to stop us as I headed out the door below the red glow of the ¡®EXIT¡¯ sign and to the right of the stage, Kimberly in tow. The alley behind the long building shared by the Tin Roof and three other businesses provided a discarded panel of cardboard with which we wedged the exit door open. The concrete steps down to the building basement bore cracks from settling and long use, but were free of detritus and surface grime ¨C signs of regular upkeep. I sighed in relief when the catch on the metal door handle depressed, opening into the basement. It was the biggest gamble in my plan, since the multi-tool in my pocket didn¡¯t include real lock picks. The basement light was on, dimly illuminating a space cluttered with tools and equipment. I knocked an empty mop bucket over while picking my way across to the open breaker box. Gesturing at the box, I stepped back and allowed Kimberly the honor of reaching up and resetting the one switch that was moved in the opposite direction of all the others. We traded a nod and made our way out. I paused a moment on the way out of the basement to look around and find a long orange extension cord connected to a floor cleaner. I disconnected the cord and hung it on my shoulder, following my companion out. Back in the Tin Roof, the crowd¡¯s volume level had increased since the lights came back up. At the back door, I handed the female end of the cord to Kimberly. ¡°See if you can get the speakers plugged in here.¡± She nodded. The men¡¯s bathroom had a covered outlet just inside the front door that opened easily to a flathead screwdriver. I joined Kimberly on the stage just as she and the DJ finished connecting the two speakers to a splitter now plugged into the orange cord. ¡°Hey man, thanks for helping me out,¡± the young man said when he saw me. ¡°I don¡¯t know what made the fuse blow; it¡¯s never happened before.¡± ¡°The circuit breaker tripped,¡± I explained. ¡°You need to keep an eye on the total current pulled by your equipment against the maximum load a building¡¯s circuit will allow. Split the load between two circuits when you need to.¡± The boy nodded, murmuring gratitude, but I didn¡¯t think he retained what I¡¯d said. With the load now split between two building circuits, I was confident he wouldn¡¯t trip the breaker again; what happened during his next gig was his own problem. When he resumed playing some inanely-spun dance number, the crowd fell back into enthusiastic revelry as though nothing had happened. We made our way back to our home table, where we found plenty of room: Joseph and Rick were still there, and each had a woman from earlier plastered closely to his side. The third member of their glittery trio was nowhere to be seen. ¡°Were you guys out on the floor when the lights went down? That was crazy, right?¡± the talkative blonde greeted us. Kimberly nodded, and announced with a big grin, ¡°Hector fixed it.¡± ¡°Who¡¯s Hector?¡± the other girl asked. Her shorter friend smacked her playfully with the back of her hand. ¡°He¡¯s Hector,¡± she chided loudly. ¡°Oh, sorry! I missed your boyfriend¡¯s name,¡± she said. Her speech had the pronounced slur of someone with senses dulled by alcohol, something she seemed quite content with. ¡°It¡¯s fine,¡± Kimberly said quickly, but she was already shifting her gaze to me. ¡°You knew exactly where to go and what to do. It was fun to watch,¡± she leaned into me, placing her chin on my shoulder. I felt a thrill shoot up through me. ¡°What did you do?¡± Rick asked. Kimberly pulled back and looked to me to answer. I had the attention of everyone at the table for only the third time that evening. I explained, ¡°He had too many things plugged into the same circuit. Older retail buildings are often wired just like residences, and it¡¯s not hard to overload them if you plug in too many appliances that draw a lot of power.¡± ¡°So you just went down and reset the breaker?¡± Rick asked. ¡°How did you know where to go?¡± ¡°He figured it out earlier,¡± Kimberly said. ¡°When Hector first saw the DJ setting up tonight, I watched him zone out and close his eyes. You were picturing the building layout and the location of the breaker box, weren¡¯t you.¡± She didn¡¯t state it as a question. ¡°You were thinking through the steps to fix the problem if the circuit tripped.¡± ¡°That¡¯s so cool,¡± the blonde said. ¡°How do you do that?¡± I shook my head. ¡°It¡¯s a flattering idea, but I don¡¯t have that sort of genius. I was really just clearing my head.¡± Lifting my beer, I proclaimed, ¡°These have a nice kick.¡± Conversation again drifted to other topics and the evening proceeded apace. Even with breaks for dancing and frequent hydration, I was consuming more beer than Kimberly and the difference in our buzz was starting to get noticeable, so I slowed down. We drank less and danced more. At half past midnight, as we pressed against each other during a slow number with a wailing sax solo, Kimberly grabbed my shoulders and pulled me down until my ear was next to her lips. ¡°Let¡¯s get out of here,¡± she said. It¡¯s amazing how fast you can move toward something you want unambiguously. Two full minutes did not pass from the time her last word hit my ear to the moment we stepped out of the front door of the Tin Roof, her coat donned and my credit card back in my pocket. Her grin and wave to Kylie on the way out had been returned, which was the extent of her need to explain anything to her student companions. They all had seemed quite happy with Kimberly¡¯s find, and I knew they¡¯d be pleasantly surprised when they went to leave and discovered they¡¯d been drinking on my tab. It was a short walk to Kimberly¡¯s off-campus apartment, a snug two-bedroom affair that she explained she shared with two roommates. They were fortunately asleep, and soon Kimberly and I were back to a fascinating and snappy dialog in an environment with far less ambient noise¡­ and, shortly thereafter considerably less clothing. Neither my thoughts nor my vision left that small bedroom for a quite pleasant interval thereafter. Chapter 10 - Follow-up I jerked awake with the momentary shock that I was not in my own bed, and I was not alone. That was my first and immediate scare, but it drained away as I remembered the previous delightful evening, and the source of that delight, who was still deep asleep and greedily tightened against me. The second fear that upwelled was about how much of last night I had missed, but there didn¡¯t seem to be any holes in my memory. I remembered Kimberly drifting off to sleep before me, so if there was any memory loss before I slept, it was an entirely uneventful interval. The goddess fortunately did not stir when I extracted myself from the silk of her embrace and the warmth of her bed. I pulled on boxers and slipped carefully out her door, making a beeline for the shared bathroom at the end of the hallway. Bladder emptied, I splashed cold water at my face and tried to focus on my image in the vanity mirror, but it came back fuzzy and flickering. I would have trouble concentrating until I had my pills¡­ which were in my overnight bag, in my valet-parked car, two blocks past the Tin Roof. I always packed my overnight bag before a night out, but I hadn¡¯t yet figured out a way to actually ask a prospective partner if I could collect it from my car before going to her place. In my head it always sounded arrogant, like I had been certain I was going to be going home with someone regardless. That¡¯s not a signal you want to send. I snaked back into Kimberly¡¯s bedroom just long enough to grab my things and move out into the apartment sitting room. I had my pants up and was in the process of buttoning up my shirt when an unfamiliar voice spoke. ¡°Hello, strange man in my apartment.¡± The woman stood in the kitchen, staring at my bare chest as I froze in surprise at her greeting. She was tall and obviously dressed to work out, a band tying back shoulder length brown hair, a sports bra and jogging shorts the extent of her outfit other than socks and trainers. I nodded and resumed buttoning. ¡°Hello, Kimberly¡¯s roommate.¡± Socks, shoes, and¡­ I¡¯d left the glasses on her dresser. No real loss. The woman had been suppressing a smile, which I now knew because she released it onto her face at the mention of Kimberly¡¯s name. ¡°I figured she¡¯d picked you up. Good for you.¡± She nodded, dipping her gaze appreciatively. ¡°Good for her,¡± she murmured more to herself. I maneuvered my way around her in the small kitchen, heading for the refrigerator. ¡°Before or after?¡± I asked, nodding at her own clothing. ¡°Before,¡± she said, for the first time changing her stance as though a bit self-conscious about me seeing her. While she wasn¡¯t in terrific shape ¨C she had a noticeable bulge at her midsection and visible fat at her bare arms and thighs ¨C she still struck me as very attractive. It reminded me of what Kimberly had said the night before about attractiveness being value for a woman the way wealth was for a man. Few women I had met weren¡¯t self-conscious about their body; it seemed the rule rather than the exception. I nodded as I opened the refrigerator door and took stock. The contents were woefully inadequate for my purposes. I responded on autopilot to whatever the roommate said next while I considered if I could possibly make breakfast with the present foodstuffs; it seemed beyond my expertise. I consulted my mobile and found a small farm-to-shelf grocer open this early, just three blocks in the same direction as my overnight bag. The roommate had apparently used my distraction with the refrigerator to take her leave, so I was free to do the same. I wrote a quick note on the back of a business card and left it on the kitchen table, then made my way out of the apartment and down the street. It took the valet (whom I didn¡¯t recognize) a frustrating amount of time to bring my car up to the parking circle just so I could retrieve my bag. I still tipped him 20 before pulling out my portable pill container and swallowing the contents dry. My head cleared immediately, which I knew was largely psychological but no less welcome for it. The small shop turned out to be Chinese. The older man running the shop spoke very little English, and he scowled unhappily when I entered. Still, all the ingredients I needed were there. He shook his head when I pulled out my card (it wouldn¡¯t surprise me if he¡¯d never seen a black card before), but efficiently took my cash and gave me change. His initial scowl had been replaced by a small smile by the end of the transaction, and the Mandarin he spoke as I left sounded friendly. I shouldered my way into the apartment with my overnight bag slung over one shoulder and my grocery sack tucked under the opposite arm. ¡°Is this the guy?¡± a new voice asked. Closing the door, I turned around to find myself face to face with a short, dark-haired girl, hands on her hips and expression livid. Kimberly was sitting on their couch wrapped in a robe, and was looking up at me in surprise. Streaks around reddened eyes made it clear she had been crying. ¡°Hi Hector,¡± she said, and her voice wasn¡¯t the confident and sexy woman from the night before. It was scared and vulnerable. ¡°Good morning, Kimberly. Did something happen while I was out?¡± My first instinct was that she was upset at something I had done, but experience had taught me not to assume. ¡°Do you know,¡± the girl in front of me leaned forward, her voice loud and dangerous, ¡°how disheartening it is to go to bed next to someone new, and wake up to find he¡¯s left?¡± I craned around the small woman to make eye contact with Kimberly, who looked like she was close to tears again. The angry girl shifted as though to block me if I tried to reach her. ¡°Didn¡¯t you get my note?¡± I asked. Kimberly held up the business card with my name, number, and email on the front. She read what I had written on the back. ¡°¡®Getting food.¡¯ Without me, apparently.¡± She sighed heavily, standing up herself and taking a step in our direction. ¡°That was more ambiguous than I intended, sorry.¡± I held up the grocery bag. ¡°I wanted to surprise you by making breakfast, but you didn¡¯t even have eggs in your fridge.¡± Her eyes went to the brown bag in my arms for the first time, and widened more. ¡°So you¡­ bought groceries?¡± A smirk flittered onto her face. ¡°That¡¯s what the note meant?¡± I nodded. ¡°I should have been more clear¡­¡± ¡°Yes, you should have, but¡­¡± Kimberly stepped up as the angry girl pivoted away from me to open the way. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and took the brown bag out of my hands. ¡°I can¡¯t get Juni or Sienna to go grocery shopping.¡± She looked to her roommate, who rolled her eyes. ¡°After one night you¡¯re a better housemate than they are.¡± The other woman still had a stern look on her face. She cleared her throat and stuck out her hand. ¡°I¡¯m Sienna. I take it you¡¯re Hector.¡± She had east Asian coloration and features and was wearing a loose t-shirt and sweatpants that I took for loungewear. ¡°Pleased to meet you,¡± I replied with a hearty handshake. There was a slight spark of static electricity as our hands released. ¡°Your roommate is fantastic. I have no interest in calling it quits after last night.¡± I kept eye contact with Sienna as I said it, but I paid more attention to Kimberly¡¯s smile widening in the periphery of my vision. Sienna¡¯s gaze flickered to the brown bag. ¡°We¡¯ll see how breakfast goes. If you¡¯re a decent cook, I might let her keep you.¡± She turned on her heel and strutted back to her room, never cracking a smile the whole time. Kimberly gave a hearty laugh as her roommate walked away. ¡°I hope you bought enough to feed four.¡± She whistled when she looked in the bag. ¡°Yeah, you did. Wow.¡± I shrugged. ¡°I figured making pancakes and frittatas for the whole apartment would be a good diplomatic gesture. May I?¡± Smiling, Kimberly sat the bag on the counter and waved me into the kitchen. ¡°Let me get dressed,¡± she said as she headed back to her room. I spun to watch as she passed me, enjoying the way her robe swayed against her legs. When she got to her door she caught me looking; her eyes glinted as she slid into her room and away from my gaze. Infatuation is a terrible foundation for a relationship because it doesn¡¯t last; you grow out of it when the person is no longer new. But as an incentive to put in energy with someone you¡¯ve just met, it definitely packs a punch. The kitchen wasn¡¯t well-used, but despite the nearly empty larder there were plenty of imperishables. A pinch of powered nutmeg and a little bit of vanilla extract were added to the pancakes; I stirred small amounts of a half dozen different savory spices in with the eggs. I whipped up the egg batter with cream while the vegetables roasted in oil: chopped okra was my surprise find this morning, along with juicy red peppers and some artichoke hearts. People sometimes make the mistake of putting the eggs over the veggies while they are still almost raw, but you want them well-grilled before they get buried. I turn the heat way down before I add the eggs to keep the dish fluffy and avoid scorching. Unless they have a medically restricted diet, everyone salts their eggs. I try to avoid this by adding other flavorings that provide saltiness plus some further flavor note. Oregano is one of my all-purpose spices. ¡°Smells good.¡± The taller roommate sat at the kitchen table, still in her workout gear. Her hair was dark and slick with sweat that escaped in single drops down her face. If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. ¡°Juni, I presume,¡± I extended a hand to her in greeting, but she shook her head while wiping her damp hand against her side. The motion made her jiggle in a distracting fashion. ¡°It¡¯s Juniper. I haven¡¯t heard your name yet.¡± I took her hint to retract my hand. ¡°Hector.¡± I flipped another pancake onto a waiting plate and checked the first frittata. ¡°Good workout?¡± She coughed. ¡°Any workout you walk away from.¡± Her eyes followed the motion of the finished food. ¡°Is Kimmy up?¡± ¡°Her and Sienna both. This is breakfast for four.¡± ¡°Mmmm.¡± Her appreciative noise made me smile. ¡°You go to U of M?¡± ¡°I did; I work here in Detroit now. Are you a Wayne student?¡± She nodded. ¡°Kimberly and I are finishing our master¡¯s. Sienna¡¯s onto her doctorate.¡± ¡°All political science?¡± As the first frittata continued to simmer, I finished the last stack of pancakes and repurposed the skillet to start on the second frittata. ¡°Nope. Forensics and metrology.¡± ¡°Which of you studies the weather?¡± Juniper snorted with laughter. ¡°Hey Sienna!¡± She called loudly. ¡°Yeah?¡± The much smaller woman took her place at the kitchen table, as did Kimberly. ¡°Hector wants to know about your weather studies,¡± Juniper quipped, enjoying Kimberly¡¯s amused glance and the doctoral student¡¯s eye roll. ¡°Metrology, not meteorology,¡± she recited. ¡°The study of measurement.¡± ¡°Ah. My mistake.¡± I added a generous slice of frittata to each plate beside a small pile of pancakes. ¡°I get that all the time,¡± she admitted. The women each took a plate and dug in unceremoniously. ¡°It¡¯s low profile as its own field of study. Most metrology is just seen as part of its subject matter discipline ¨C particle physics, organic chemistry, industrial manufacture. But there are particular engineering problems for which metrology itself is the best source for a solution.¡± I chewed a bite of egg while watching the three women for their reactions. There were smiles and enthusiastic sounds from all three, so I endeavored to move the conversation forward. ¡°Forensics, then?¡± I directed to Juniper, who nodded. ¡°Planning on a career in law enforcement?¡± It was another trite response, but she answered in good humor. ¡°If that ever becomes possible, I want the training. Gotta be private work for now though.¡± Kimberly explained to my puzzled expression, ¡°Juni¡¯s a super, so she¡¯s ineligible to work in law enforcement.¡± ¡°Unless I joined a super team,¡± she muttered through a mouthful of breakfast. ¡°It¡¯s an outdated law,¡± Kimberly told me, but I could tell it was more directed at Juniper. ¡°There was a time when public mistrust of powers were high enough that their use in law enforcement delegitimized investigations. Defense attorneys used it to call material evidence into question.¡± ¡°You mean, if the cop who collected the evidence was a super, people thought the super could¡­ tamper with the evidence somehow?¡± The pancakes were a little dry; I grabbed the butter. ¡°It seems silly now, but people didn¡¯t have a frame of reference for the sort of things that powered individuals can and can¡¯t do.¡± ¡°Most people still don¡¯t,¡± Sienna said. ¡°What most people know about supers is limited to what they see on the news. All hero and villain stuff.¡± ¡°That¡¯s why you¡¯re studying civilian supers, right?¡± I asked Kimberly. She nodded. ¡°Policies need to be based on the rule, not the exception. Statutes about power use should be tailored to the majority of powered individuals, the civilians. Instead they¡¯re almost entirely made with the super teams and criminal villains in mind.¡± ¡°Civilization is more than just law enforcement,¡± Juniper added. I mopped up some excess syrup with a forkful of frittata and munched my breakfast thoughtfully. ¡°I¡¯m not sure I agree,¡± I offered. All three of my conversants reacted to this declaration: Juniper with confusion and surprise, Sienna with a hostile frown, and Kimberly with a delighted half-grin. It was Kimberly who said, ¡°You think we should make policy based on the minority of supers who are on the teams?¡± ¡°Some policies.¡± I stood up and grabbed the last stack of pancakes, distributing them evenly on the mostly empty plates. ¡°I¡¯m thinking about safety regulations. They¡¯re not based on the average circumstances, but on the worst case scenarios. For example, police at a traffic stop have policies to keep them safe, not from the nine hundred and ninety-nine normal stops, but from the trigger-happy psycho they meet that thousandth time.¡± ¡°So you¡¯ll impose a cost on the thousand innocent people because of the one criminal?¡± Sienna spouted through a mouth full of breakfast. ¡°I¡¯d think you of all people could see the problem with that approach.¡± I raised an eyebrow at this, but I declined to challenge her on it ¨C other than brief eye contact and sympathy from Kimberly. ¡°It¡¯s not ideal, but it mitigates the risk. And in the same way, super heroes and villains tend to have the strongest and most dangerous powers. For safety and security, we would focus on them because they pose the most significant risks.¡± ¡°You¡¯re ignoring the Pyre Problem, then,¡± Juniper said. ¡°What¡¯s that?¡± The super looked to Kimberly, but my date nodded back to her. Juniper said, ¡°It¡¯s a hypothetical to demonstrate the disconnect between different ideas of ¡®power level.¡¯ A super who can instantly and completely incinerate anything ¨C or anyone ¨C he looks at.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think anyone can do that,¡± I assessed. ¡°Hence the word ¡®hypothetical,''¡± Sienna shot. Juniper resumed her explanation. ¡°The point is that Pyre would not be an effective superhero. Or even an effective criminal, for any end goal short of widespread destruction. But Pyre would almost certainly rate highly in most measurements of power.¡± I nodded. ¡°So you¡¯re saying that if we base policies specifically on super teams and villains, we will miss any risky powers that aren¡¯t suited to hero work or crime.¡± ¡°You got it,¡± Kimberly nodded. ¡°But there¡¯s a good reason we still mainly use heroes to make policy.¡± She rose from her seat and began to collect the plates from the table. I immediately rose to join her, but with a smile she stepped over and placed a hand on my chest, pushing gently. I let her lower me back into my seat. She leaned forward to give me a scorching kiss before resuming her tidying up. ¡°I, ah¡­¡± After a moment I shook off the distraction. ¡°You were saying we shouldn¡¯t base policy on superheroes. But now you¡¯re saying we have a good reason?¡± Kimberly nodded as she put the gathered dishes in the sink and started some water running. ¡°It¡¯s more convenient to use the information readily at hand. The teams are the most visible supers we have; they tend to submit more readily to examination and are tracked over time. It introduces all the selection biases, but you at least end up with a data set to work from.¡± ¡°Inaccurate data is worse than no data,¡± Sienna insisted. ¡°Which is why I want better data on civilian supers,¡± Kimberly replied. At the table, Juniper meditated on her emptying coffee mug while Sienna eyed me clinically. ¡°Kim says you¡¯re an electrical engineer,¡± Sienna challenged. ¡°I have a master¡¯s in it, but I¡¯m really more of an electrician now.¡± I kept my tone light and ventured a smile, but she wasn¡¯t having it. ¡°I took home a circuit board from one of the lab detectors and have been trying to find the short in it. Would you like to come take a look?¡± Her voice didn¡¯t change tone, but she at least made the invitation at a lower volume level. Kimberly turned around from the sink briefly, casting a worried glance at Sienna and then back at me. But Juniper caught Kimberly¡¯s eye and gave her a nod, and she went back to washing the dishes. ¡°Sure,¡± I said, following the small woman¡¯s lead as she rose from the table. The bedroom we stepped into was almost twice the size of Kimberly¡¯s and set up much like a traditional college dorm room, identical twin beds and desks mirrored between the two sides. Both sides were similarly clutter-free, except for the cluttered desk surfaces. ¡°Have a seat,¡± Sienna gestured at her desk chair, and I slid into it. The front half of the desk was cleared except for an adjustable table magnifier and an ASIC board the size of a sheet of paper. I looked up sharply when I heard the soft click of the door latching as Sienna closed it. Her expression was pinched, aggressively wary, and her posture leaned forward as though preserving her momentum. I made to get up, but she reached out her hand to my shoulder in a twisted parallel to the affection shown by Kimberly just minutes before. I let her guide me back into a seated position, and as her hand left my shoulder, I felt the pinprick of another small static shock. ¡°Does she know?¡± Sienna began without preamble. My heart sank. There were a dozen different things she could be talking about, but whichever it was, I couldn¡¯t imagine this ending well. ¡°Does she know what?¡± ¡°That you¡¯re a super.¡± I opened my mouth to protest, but she held up a single finger and I fell silent. She brought her finger within a millimeter of my cheek, and I felt another tiny prick of electric discharge. ¡°The charge differential is caused by omicron emissions. I don¡¯t even think that what I do is technically a power; it¡¯s just an expression of omicron sensitivity.¡± She moved her hand to just above my hair, and I could feel it frizzing up, being drawn toward her. I¡¯d had enough. I pushed her desk chair back and stood, keeping my distance. ¡°That shows that you¡¯re a super, not me.¡± I was proud of how calm I sounded. Sienna shook her head. ¡°It¡¯s an interaction effect. I only feel it when I touch other omicron sensitives, and it only creates enough of a charge for both of us to feel if the other person is a super.¡± I looked at her dubiously, so she added, ¡°I¡¯ve checked it against omicron readings in the lab. This much charge this quickly, I¡¯d be willing to bet you have at least three of the genes.¡± I took another half step back and slightly to the side; the desk chair was between me and Sienna, but she was blocking the door. I almost fell over backwards as the back of my legs bumped against her bed. ¡°I¡¯m not a super. I don¡¯t know what readings you think you¡¯re taking, but I¡¯ve never shown any powers or even been detected on a scan. I¡¯m normal.¡± Sienna¡¯s eyes narrowed further at the word ¡®normal.¡¯ Younger supers tended to see the term as a backhanded insult, implying having powers made you a freak. She replied, ¡°You¡¯re not a very good liar, Hector.¡± ¡°I¡¯m not -¡± ¡°I don¡¯t really care.¡± A swipe of her hand cut off my protestations. ¡°I brought you in here to make one thing clear.¡± She took a step toward me, and visibly tried to relax her face and posture to help keep her voice down enough not to be overheard. ¡°Kim has baggage when it comes to supers, and an intense hatred of secret identities. If you want to stick around¡­. and you seem nice enough¡­ you need to tell her the whole truth about who and what you are.¡± She had advanced until she was almost on top of me again, her eyes boring deeply into mine. ¡°If she finds out on her own, or if you wait too long, you¡¯ll be done. And I¡¯ll be the one she cries on. Again.¡± Sienna stared at me for several seconds, stretching into a minute, before I nodded. She replied with a nod of her own and led me back to the apartment¡¯s common area. The dishwashing machine was humming merrily from the kitchen. The other two girls had moved to the sitting room couch, and we joined them on matching chairs. As the four of us spoke, talking about Wayne State and the dangers of Detroit in the winter, I noticed that Sienna had thawed considerably since our confrontation in her room. It was a common engineer¡¯s mentality: in her mind she had addressed the problem and could leave it behind until it needed attention again. I greatly admired that level of compartmentalization. Juniper and Sienna courteously returned to their room while Kimberly saw me out. The goodbye kiss persisted until it was in danger of returning us to her room, but we both knew that it was the right time to end our first encounter together. When I invited her out to dinner Monday night, she delightfully accepted, and I took my leave. Walking to the hotel valet for the second time that morning, I sent a message to Paris asking when she would be home from work. I needed to take Sienna¡¯s warning seriously and decide what to do about a woman who, while both fascinating and excellent company, had a complicated relationship with supers. While Paris had lived under the constant risk of discovery for years, until recently I had managed to keep Delphic almost completely out of my life as Hector. The situation with the CIA had started to blur the lines. Was I willing to blur those lines even more? Kimberly¡¯s face, voice, and body dominated my thoughts as I drove home, and I realized I had already made up my mind. Chapter 11 - In Reverse The email to Doctor Soin had been sent from a cafe with free wireless internet in Newark. The man who sent it hadn¡¯t even entered the business; he¡¯d just walked past with his tablet computer tucked under his arm. The system had automatically connected and sent out the email over the RR anonymizing network without the user doing anything. So close to its larger counterpart, Newark is New York City in miniature. The area of New Jersey exists in the shadow of New York and much of its population commutes between the two states regularly. Following the lanky white teenager in reverse down a sidewalk in the pre-dusk, I was struck by how haphazard it all looked. Pedestrians and traffic alike slunk around streets painted with uneven lines, jumping concrete crevasses with frantic but tentative urgency. The teenager wore his light hair buzzed against his scalp and wore a hooded sweatshirt and cargo pants with thick work boots. At first blush, his wardrobe gave the impression of a cargo hauler or dock worker, but the details didn¡¯t fit. The boy didn¡¯t have calluses or muscles to speak of, and the clothes were similarly fresh ¨C no major scuffs or tears. I got the impression of an actor playing the role of a blue collar worker. The young man made his way several blocks south to where retail and office businesses gave way to warehouses and shipping centers. Four semi-trailers were docked at the warehouse that the boy entered ¨C or, to be more precise, exited. Two dozen men of varying ages moved around, pulling boxes from shelves and packing pallets to move onto the trailers. All were dressed similar to my mark, although some had shed outer layers in the warmth of the indoors to reveal muscled, sweaty bodies in tanks and t-shirts. Most of the older men carried extra pounds in their gut, but they were uniformly larger men to begin with and not a one (my mark excepted) lacked the bulk of daily physical work. I followed my young man up two flights of stairs to a set of rooms above the high ceiling of the inventory level, and through a door with a proximity scanner that turned from red to green as he approached. I stopped my View at this entrance and reversed the flow of time, accelerating the boy moving quickly down the stairs and out of sight. Powering forward at a rapid pace, I soon saw the same guy climbing the stairs again, in the usual manner rather than in reverse. No one else had used the entrance during this time. He waved his hand at the scanner and opened the door impatiently as the light turned to green. The rooms had always been the territory of upper management, but what had once been office space had been hastily converted into luxurious quarters. Three corner offices had been made into sizable bedrooms, the windows darkly painted over but the sunlight replaced with ample floor lamps and recessed studio lighting. A stocked kitchen and wet bar, a pool table and dartboard, and two sitting areas with large TV¡¯s had all been added to what previously would have served as the home of numerous cubicles. Occupying two of the larger chairs were a pair of older men who did not fit the mold of the laborers below. They were each at least sixty, grey going to bald, dressed in shirt sleeves with suspenders. Their features, from their squashed noses to their ruddy and wrinkled skin, told me they were brothers. Each sat on the edge of his chair, mouth moving, the two deep in serious discussion. The young man plopped in a chair a fair distance from his elders; they looked up at his approach. He responded, nodding, without looking in their direction, and opened up his laptop in a clearly dismissive gesture. The men didn¡¯t seem to mind; one of them took out a phone and dialed, holding the speaker call for both of them to hear. When I first learned to use my View, it was situations like this that compelled me to try lip reading. The results were disastrous. On two occasions I had acted on information gleaned from deciphering lip movements that turned out to be entirely off-base. The majority of speech information is formed inside the mouth, and even expert lip readers barely hit one word in three in controlled studies. The upshot is that, as a matter of policy, I did not even attempt to lip read. There comes a point where the cost and likelihood of constructing false information exceeds the value and likelihood of recovering true information. While I still looked for ways to exploit my View, I had temporarily consigned verbal conversations to the unknown. Instead, I sought out firm information I could use, like the phone number of a person named ¡®Dave D¡¯ that the two men were talking to. I dropped my View and focused on the satellite map of Newark, tagging the warehouse and writing down its address. Adding the name and number to my notes, I sat back for a minute and tried to get my head around the big picture. Whoever wanted Whisper was very well-informed; they had agents remove her from prison within hours of her unplanned stay. More impressive, they had time to get a message to Doctor Soin on site with no more than a few minutes notice that NYST supers were approaching. This implied an admirable competence and operational flexibility. Much more chilling was what they were willing to do to her; they would rather see Whisper killed than allow her to be reclaimed from the hospital. I still couldn¡¯t wrap my mind around what that was supposed to accomplish. It was the opposite of a cover-up: a murder attempt on a hero was a big red cape to a super team. Refraxx, and no doubt several of Whisper¡¯s other friends, would push to take down the perpetrator at any cost. The apparent conclusion was therefore that the person or group who orchestrated this wanted to direct the attention of NYST. A misdirection, to be used as a distraction? That hardly seemed plausible considering how many other heroes New York could bring to bear. A frame-up, though, was a possibility. An underground power could gain considerable ground bringing heat down on a rival, even if the matter were eventually cleared up. I pulled up a list I had compiled of the known criminal players in the greater NYC area, but I was distracted by an unexpected call to Delphic¡¯s video chat number. The incoming call was tagged as NYST but with an unknown extension; curious, I answered. ¡°This is Delphic,¡± I sent as I mentally processed the image before me. The plush seating area held two figures in casual college-age clothing. The man was a foot taller than the woman and had his arm wrapped tightly around her. Her posture and demeanor projected no emotion of her own, instead seeming to be swallowed up by his massive presence. ¡°Delphic, I hope this isn¡¯t a bad time.¡± Upon speaking, I instantly placed Refraxx¡¯s nasal voice. The height and coloration matched Refraxx¡¯s ¨C and immediately brought to mind that the height and coloration of the woman tight against him matched Whisper. I quickly typed a response. ¡°Not at all. Sorry for my confusion, but I wasn¡¯t expecting to see you two out of costume.¡± ¡°See? I told you he would know.¡± Whisper¡¯s voice was just barely louder than her name implied, breathy and impermanent, a melody in constant decrescendo. The man gave a smiling nod and gestured toward their camera. ¡°Go on, then.¡± To me, he said, ¡°Lakki insisted we call and speak to you.¡± Sitting up and clothed, ¡®Lakki¡¯ fit the description of a shy young Indian woman, her hair pulled back and untamed just as in her costume. ¡°Thank you for finding me,¡± she said. It felt awkward, like she was forcing difficult words out. ¡°I don¡¯t remember any of it. Zee says I would have been out of the city before I was found, if not for you.¡± ¡°You¡¯re welcome,¡± I replied. ¡°How are you feeling?¡± Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. She coughed. ¡°H¡­ honestly? Not good.¡± She backed herself up against her partner even more closely, her arms wrapped tight around her and rubbing as though she were cold. ¡°Hitting¡­ ah, killing her was the last thing I really did. Since then, it¡¯s all been out of my control.¡± Refraxx (¡®Zee;¡¯ I would have to look up their records soon) squeezed her into his side, and she burrowed desperately. ¡°You still want to talk about the rest of it?¡± he asked her softly. The softness was relative; his directed murmur was still louder than her normal speech had been. Lakki shook her head, her unruly hair moving out of sync with the rest of her. ¡°You go ¡®head.¡± I saw Zee release his grip on her as she began to fade from sight, her increasingly insubstantial form slipping out of the room like an eerie breeze. He didn¡¯t make any move to watch her go. He held his forehead in his hands for a moment, displaying his stress clearly, unconcerned at my continued telepresence. I patiently waited as he collected himself. He finally looked up, as though to make eye contact with my motionless avatar. ¡°I don¡¯t want¡­¡± He stopped and started again. ¡°To begin with, let me say it again. Thank you so much. I don¡¯t know if you get told that enough. It¡­ you¡­¡± He put out his right hand, and a dozen metal balls, each about the size of an egg, floated into the air in front of him. He started six moving in one direction, and then the other six in the opposite direction, and began directing them to circle each other, keeping them synchronized so as not to collide or move out of the space immediately in front of him. Individual balls began to take on more complicated paths, and soon I was staring at a display with too many sweeping, orbiting bodies to focus on at once. By long practice, Zee ¨C Refraxx ¨C was doing it. And he maintained the disparate motions without pause even as he turned his attention back to me. ¡°I hope you don¡¯t mind; it helps me focus. Clears my head.¡± The cadence in his voice was much closer to what I had seen before when he was in costume. His hero habits ran deep. ¡°Not at all.¡± I sent. ¡°I do hope that lack¡­ key feels better. I do not envy what she went through.¡± My synth didn¡¯t handle her name with particular grace. ¡°I think the fact that she was out cold for most of it is what really bothers her. Here I was, worried out of my gourd, and she wasn¡¯t even, like, conscious.¡± He shook his head. ¡°She¡¯s never liked being the object, the thing that gets acted upon. She wants to be the subject that does the acting.¡± ¡°Helplessness is a common feeling among victims of violent crime.¡± He paused, then nodded. ¡°Yeah, I suppose this is pretty much that. Good call.¡± He slowly and smoothly moved the balls one at a time to some place below the camera¡¯s coverage. ¡°So, with the next thing, we just¡­ we don¡¯t want to come off as ungrateful. We do appreciate what you¡¯ve done already.¡± My stomach sank. ¡°Are you concerned about the lack of progress on identifying those behind the kidnapping?¡± Zee nodded and gave an apologetic shrug. ¡°We¡­ ah, we heard you spent some time on Friday decorating an office building.¡± His tone had an accusatory note in it. ¡°That¡¯s incorrect. I met with the executive officers of my start-up corporation. Setting up the new office space was on the agenda, but it wasn¡¯t something I provided my own processing time to.¡± In fact, I had spent quite a bit of my own time and mental effort, at least on Georgia¡¯s office. But this wasn¡¯t the right situation to admit that. ¡°Harmony says you usually only spend a handful of hours a day on the super stuff. If I were in your shoes¡­¡± his fingered twitched, and he swallowed before finishing, ¡°You figure things out that no one else is figuring out. You solve unsolved cases. Why do so little of it?¡± He didn¡¯t raise his volume, but his pitch did raise; he sounded like he was pleading. He couldn¡¯t hear my sigh, or see me flinch from the implied accusation. That I could do so much more. That keeping Delphic a part-time activity, a hobby almost, was surely costing lives. I responded with my stock answer. ¡°I am already near my limit on what I can accomplish.¡± I could see the skepticism creep into his eyes as I continued. ¡°I¡¯m only active doing this sort of work for a few hours a day because during that time I¡¯m putting my analysis capabilities under severe strain. The hour it took me to find Whisper, for example, involved a nonlinear search pattern that translates into over seventeen quadrillion operations. Any brain, even mine, simply can¡¯t keep up that level of activity without having to recover.¡± I could see that Refraxx was buying it. He was nodding along with my explanation and seemed to really be listening. I continued. ¡°Unfortunately, I¡¯ve found no way to decrease the time associated with my recovery. Although hosted over computer processors in some nebulous way, my mind is still fundamentally a messy human brain with its trillions of connections. I have to reset myself with sleep or risk my health¡­ and if something is damaged, no neurosurgeon or computer engineer in the world is going to know how to fix it.¡± ¡°So the reason why we only see you for a few hours each day is because the rest of your day is spent sleeping? Recovering your¡­ stability?¡± This made sense to him; it was an answer he could live with. ¡°That¡¯s right. I can sometimes engage in low level activities ¨C casual conversation or routine maintenance ¨C while I rest. But a good chunk of it is actual sleep. I¡¯ve even managed to isolate some data pulses similar to delta brain waves while I do it.¡± ¡°Okay. Wow. Uh, thanks for the answer. And, I guess, not biting my head off for asking the question.¡± ¡°It was a good question.¡± Better than he even knew ¨C one I tried hard not to spend too much time asking myself. ¡°I have located the source of the threatening email that Doctor Soin received. We may very well have the culprit in hand very soon.¡± ¡°I certainly hope so,¡± he agreed excitedly. ¡°I should go track down Lakki. Thanks again, Delphic. Oh, and hey! On that start up thing.¡± He had stood from the couch and was moving closer to the camera. ¡°Delphic Incorporated.¡± He snorted. ¡°Not at all subtle. I like it. Anyway, next time you offer equity, hit me up. Wellspring would love to help you out.¡± With that offer, I had a decent idea of who ¡®Zee¡¯ actually was. The sprawling Dumond family were the owners of the Wellspring Investment Group, a Wall Street venture powerhouse. There was speculation of super powers somewhere among the clan, which it turned out was spot on. ¡°I will take you up on that. Give lack¡­key my best.¡± He nodded and ended the call. Tracking down the real identities of the two supers was a short task. Sure enough, mogul-to-be Zachary Dumond-Wilson was known to be an item with heiress Lakshmi Visser. I added their files to my list for later reading. My to-do list was growing faster than I could cross items off of it, a sure sign that a long night or three would be needed. But I wasn¡¯t there yet; it was early afternoon, and I was ready to find out just what sort of men would want to harm Whisper. But before I could launch another search, I checked my email, and found an urgent message from the Doc asking for me to call him at my very earliest convenience. I double checked that, yes, the message had come to Delphic and not to Hector. Having interactions between the Eutopia-based facility and both of my alter egos was an increasing risk, an obvious shatterpoint in my already flimsy facade. I needed to resolve the pending issues, but I was rather certain that the Doc was going to be giving me a new one instead. Doc picked up my call on the first ring, audio-only as usual. ¡°Good afternoon, Mister Delphic. Thanks for getting in touch with me so quickly. How are you?¡± Doc¡¯s scratchy voice had its usual tone, but it pushed forward at a faster pace than usual. He was in a hurry. ¡°My objectives are proceeding, thank you,¡± I responded. ¡°Good. Please, allow me to get straight to the point. I¡¯d like to ask your help on a sensitive issue.¡± I had not heard the Doc speak this way before. I understood that much of what we discussed was in some sense confidential, but usually it was my secrecy rather than the Doc¡¯s that was of concern. ¡°How can I help?¡± ¡°First, I¡¯m sorry, but I need to be explicit on this. Can you agree to keep our discussion in confidence even if you decide you can¡¯t, or won¡¯t, provide your assistance?¡± He sounded quite urgent on this point; his cadence sped up even further. ¡°I agree to that, Doctor. You didn¡¯t really need to ask. I always keep your confidence.¡± Other than sharing it with my parents and Paris, of course, but I considered that the same thing. ¡°All right, then. I need your help smuggling someone into the United States.¡± That was not what I expected. ¡°I am surprised at your request,¡± I sent. ¡°Glimmer and Glitch are far better at undetected transport than anything I could arrange.¡± ¡°Yes, and they¡¯ll be providing the transport,¡± he explained. ¡°What I want you to do is provide his cover story. A trail of records that makes it plausible for him to have been misplaced for a month, without any suspicion that he found his way down here.¡± ¡°Do you mean medical records?¡± I asked. ¡°Was he injured?¡± ¡°More than that.¡± Some amusement crept into his tone. ¡°He was killed, in fact.¡± ¡°You¡¯re smuggling a corpse back into the States?¡± I was becoming more confused by the minute. ¡°Oh, he got better.¡± He gave a real laugh this time, one that quickly gave way to a serious coughing fit. When he recovered, he said, ¡°Jacques Guillaume. You¡¯ve heard of him?¡± Heat climbed my throat. ¡°The superhero, Lamarck?¡± I added, ¡°His brain was destroyed by a bullet. They did an autopsy.¡± ¡°He got better,¡± Doc insisted. ¡°But he can¡¯t have gotten better down here. We need to send him home. Are you in?¡± When I recovered enough to respond, we discussed the logistics of a reverse kidnapping. Interlude - Rebirth What scared Jack the most, was that he couldn¡¯t figure out what he didn¡¯t remember. After three days, he was at the point where he understood most of what was said to him, and could usually respond in kind. But too often, halfway through his sentence, he would grasp for a word that just wasn¡¯t there. He would have no inkling that the word was missing until it wouldn¡¯t come, and then he would have to sidestep it until his conversation partner (which varied over the course of the day) could figure him out and supply it. The same happened even more frequently when Jack tried to read. The most basic words, what Anne called ¡®sight words,¡¯ came effortlessly, but then he would come to a word that he had no recollection of at all. He¡¯d have to sound it out, like a small child, like it was meaningless gibberish, and then relearn its meaning. And the next time he saw it, and the time after that, he might have to repeat the process before it stuck with him. It was humiliating. To his surprise, both Anne and Kat had limitless patience with him. Most of his waking hours were spent with one of the two of them. He talked as best he could about a variety of subjects; he read school-aged primers and named pictures shown to him. Anne had made her interest clear early on; he was a unique medical case. ¡°Loss of ability and memory due to brain damage has been studied in many patients,¡± she had explained, ¡°but before now, the patient always had a damaged brain to go along with it. Thanks to your powers, Jack, your brain is completely healthy ¨C a physically perfect specimen.¡± ¡°My brain grew back, but without any of my knowledge in it,¡± he had said. ¡°Yes. The powers can draw from your natural healing processes and your genetic blueprints, but the particular configurations of neurons that made up your memories and skills in the region of your brain that was destroyed are just gone.¡± Her look had been sympathetic, but excited. ¡°But since your brain is completely intact, there is no reason you can¡¯t relearn everything you¡¯ve lost. The hardware is all still there. We just have to fill the software and data back in.¡± Anne invested hours of every day helping him do just that. She also seemed constantly surprised by which skills he retained and which he lost; for example, he was immediately able to walk without trouble, but he had no reflexes for catching a thrown object. He had trouble holding a glass to his lips, but no problem feeding himself with a spoon. The joy of discovery continued to show in her even as he quickly mastered many of these basic living skills; according to Anne, he was moving through months of childhood development in a matter of a few days. Kat was his other consistent companion, and her interest was more personal. She helped him explore the limits of his memory, diving into his childhood and his missions as a superhero (his identity was no secret here). His recall of people from his past was particularly poor. He could recall times spent with his Mom and Dad growing up, but when Kat first said their names and then later when he was shown pictures of them, he didn¡¯t recognize who they were. Members of the US Super Team were the same, although once he was given the names and faces, he was quick to slot them in to memories of important events. For Kat, much of the focus was in recapturing the emotions he paired with events and people. She was constantly asking him how he felt, helping him name his elation or embarrassment or anger. The time spent alone with her was intense, and she made no secret that she was attracted to him as he found himself growing quickly fond of her. The living conditions were comfortable, if by no means luxurious. He missed the sunlight; the area where his bed and facilities were located was obviously deep underground, all the light provided by fluorescents and lamps strategically placed. He asked Anne about it, and she assured him she would look into getting him ¡®a visit upstairs.¡¯ Jack saw Doctor Stevens a handful of times, and each time only briefly. The old man¡¯s physical frailty was obvious, especially compared with Jack¡¯s own flawless physique. But Doc (as he insisted on being called) exhibited an acute mind that always gave Jack pause. He knew there was a reason he should be very wary of the man, but nobody else brought it up and Jack wasn¡¯t sure how to do so. Doc¡¯s main reason for visiting seemed to be to confirm that he wanted to leave. Certainly Jack understood that the Stevens Research Lab was one of the few places in the world equipped to understand his condition and help him recover from it? But Jack remained quite adamant: he wanted to go home, to Washington, DC and his friends and his life there. His fifth day at the facility, while sitting across from Kat at the small table in his quarters and sipping a cup of coffee, Jack received another visit from Doctor Stevens. Two other men accompanied the doctor; he had seen them only once before, when he first woke up dazed and bewildered in Doc¡¯s lab. They were introduced as Frank and Kyle. Kat quickly gave up her chair to Stevens but made no move to leave the room, standing near the two young men as the doctor began to speak. ¡°Jacques -¡± ¡°Jack, please,¡± he quickly interrupted. So far he had corrected the Doc the same way each time they spoke. ¡°Jack, then,¡± Stevens rasped. ¡°As you¡¯ve requested, we¡¯re making arrangements to get you back to the States.¡± Jack perked up at this, but he caught a movement from Kat. Her mouth was neutral, but when he looked her way, he saw a frown line in her forehead that meant she was concealing her disappointment. He turned his attention back to Stevens. ¡°That¡¯s good news. When do I need to be ready to go?¡± ¡°Late tomorrow, provided there aren¡¯t any further complications,¡± the Doc replied. ¡°But before we send you off, I¡¯d like to talk to you about our situation here and make an important request.¡± Doc waited to get Jack¡¯s nod, and then continued. ¡°We are in a precarious situation here. The research we do is often looked upon poorly by the rest of the world. The US government especially looks for opportunities to condemn us. I have no doubt that if they knew of our involvement with you here, Jack, they¡¯d say we kidnapped and /t?rCH?rd/ you.¡± If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation. Jack cocked his head and glanced back at Kat again. ¡°I¡¯m sorry. Kidnapped and¡­ what?¡± ¡°/t?rCH?rd/ you. /t?rCH?r/?¡± When he shook his head again, Kat stepped up, typing the word on her tablet. ¡°/t?rCH?r/, T-O-R-T-U-R-E. Inflicting pain as punishment or to extract information.¡± She showed him the word, and his mouth moved has he repeated it to himself, working to commit it to memory. ¡°Thank you,¡± Jack asked, then turned his attention back to the doctor. ¡°Why would they think I had been¡­ tortured? You¡¯ve treated me with nothing but kindness since I woke up.¡± He gave a two-handed gesture to designate his quarters. ¡°Food, company, regular check-ups to make sure I¡¯m okay.¡± Stevens shrugged. ¡°I just want you to understand that our involvement in your situation would cause us problems.¡± Jack nodded. ¡°When I arrive in the States, you¡¯d like me to keep it a¡­¡± he swallowed. ¡°¡­ a¡­¡± ¡°A secret,¡± the Doc supplied. Jack took a breath and tried again. ¡°You¡¯d like me to keep your involvement a secret. Not tell them where I¡¯ve been all this time.¡± ¡°We¡¯ve arranged a convincing cover for you,¡± Stevens said. ¡°A paper trail, and even fake medical charts. Everything will show you were shipped from Ottawa directly back to the States and treated there, slowly recovering from total amnesia.¡± ¡°People will really buy that?¡± Jack asked. ¡°I was a corpse when I left Canada.¡± ¡°Super powers are poorly understood. Quite a bit gets chalked up to ¡®unexpected effects.''¡± ¡°Something your Agency has used as a convenient excuse more than once,¡± Kat added. Jack swirled the remaining coffee in his cup and sighed. He looked up at Kat again, and she met his eyes. Leaving here meant leaving her¡­ but he knew he had to get back to the person he was before. He squared his shoulders as he addressed the Doctor. ¡°Tomorrow, then. And make sure to provide me enough about my cover to keep it straight.¡± ¡°Thanks, Jack,¡± the old man said, briefly laying a hand on his arm as he rose to leave. ¡°We appreciate your cooperation.¡± Kyle helped the Doc up, but Frank lingered a minute while they left. The man wore the more revealing clothing that Kat said was appropriate for supers in Eutopia. His crisp, youthful features and darker skin made Jack mentally pair him with Kat ¨C both attractive young people comfortable in their own skin. ¡°We will leave at sunset tomorrow evening,¡± he said without preamble. ¡°Take a calming pill before the flight. Do you have fear of heights?¡± ¡°I¡­ don¡¯t think so,¡± was the best Jack could do. ¡°People find flying under my powers to be disorienting. I recommend trying to sleep on the flight.¡± He got a nod and took his leave. As the door closed behind Frank, Kat slid back into her seat and refilled both of their cups. Jack added cream and took a sip. He liked coffee because the smell connected him to memories of his past. Coffee was familiar, and anything that could provide the comfort of a routine, however illusory, was welcome. ¡°We have talked about what you would have here,¡± Kat began. It wasn¡¯t a new topic. ¡°Look at Bonnie. Or Frank! We¡¯re gods among men here.¡± She looked into her cup. ¡°What are you back there?¡± ¡°Part of a team.¡± He hardly needed to remind her; she had helped him reclaim many memories: of purging poison from Greenery; of protecting Peregrin against Bloodphage; of saving the Dreamer from lethal wounds. ¡°A team that has grieved for you and moved on.¡± She slowly moved a finger from her coffee mug to her chin, then up to trace her lips. She caught his eyes as they followed the motion. ¡°The research here is going to save tens of millions of lives. Doctor Stevens says your abilities could cut years off.¡± Jack looked at her, and she smiled back, her eyes imploring. But soon he looked away and shook his head. ¡°I¡­ Kat, I really am grateful to have met you here. And I don¡¯t know that I can explain it. But I have a full life already, and I want to return to it.¡± As Jack turned to meet her eyes again, he found that she had moved out of the chair and over next to him. Her eyes shined with the beginnings of tears, but her mouth was screwed up into an irreverent expression. ¡°Then I guess tonight¡­¡± she moved her arms around him, leaning into him, ¡°¡­ is all we have.¡± Kat guided him to the bed when their kiss finally broke, and were both delighted to discover another area in which Jack¡¯s skills had remained intact. It was just after sunset when the plane departed, carrying its two crew and its supercargo of one. Frank¡¯s warning of the previous day was well-given when the entire vehicle vanished from Jack¡¯s sight, leaving him floating in an inky blackness. He closed his eyes and appreciated that his other senses told a different tale; he could feel his seat and straps around him and hear the quiet hum of the plane in operation. It was after midnight when they landed in an isolated pasture somewhere in western Maryland. As scary and surprising as the flight had been, the walk to the hospital wasn¡¯t much better. The two black-clad men held his hands on either side as they found their way onto a country road and then eventually to a secluded private treatment center nearby, but Jack had to make the entire trip without the ability to see his body. He didn¡¯t even lose sight when closing his eyelids. Worse, throughout the trip, he would occasionally find that his vantage point had changed between one step and the next. This almost certainly involved another power, but he was too concerned about breaking their stealth to try and ask. Within an hour of landing, Jack found himself staring up at the side of an imposing four-story structure, and a moment later, he found himself standing inside a dark and empty patient room. Frank and Kyle appeared (as did his own body) and helped him change into a patient gown, configure the bed and the room¡¯s monitoring equipment, and finally unlock and open the room¡¯s door. With a final nod and wave, the pair vanished again. Jack expected concerned nurses to discover him at any moment, and so was surprised that during the rest of the night (in which he was too excited to sleep), a woman in scrubs glanced briefly into the room on two occasions, but otherwise he received no visitors. It was around 7 am, with the shift change, that pandemonium began. Fortunately for Jack¡¯s nervousness about his cover story, he was seldom addressed directly. Instead, doctors, nurses, aids, and administrators all talked about him to each other. While a few hold-outs insisted they didn¡¯t remember him, most trusted the medical records that Jack had been there for some time. It was early afternoon that familiar faces began appearing: his super teammates, although in anonymous civilian garb. Jack maintained the pretence of only grudgingly recognizing each of them, but was enthusiastically led to quickly remember. The real shock came when a remarkably pretty woman with long, dark hair bustled in, her arms full of the most beautiful baby girl he had ever seen. The woman took one look at him, exclaimed, ¡°Jack! It¡¯s true!¡± and rushed to the side of his bed. She couldn¡¯t seem to decide whether to crush him herself or let the baby do it for her. Jack was overwhelmed by their attention, but genuinely confused as to who they were. Neither the woman nor the baby triggered any memories at all, and neither image had appeared in Kat¡¯s daily quizzes. Still, the way the woman laid into him with kisses, cooing to the child about ¡®Daddy¡¯ being home, he soon was able to unravel the terrible truth. It was a testament to his quick thinking and acting skills that the reunion of Mr. and Mrs. Jacques and Danielle Guillaume was not marred by his initial ignorance. Even as Jack subtly probed to learn the names of his young baby girl, and the boy toddler his mother presented moments later, he silently pledged to himself that no one would ever know the extent of what he had forgotten. He realized why, on some level, he had been so insistent to come home, despite the appealing life he might have lived in Eutopia. He had a remarkable family, with a loving and dedicated wife. His first priority was to fall in love with her again. Chapter 12 - Commitment ¡°I feel like a broken record at this point,¡± my sister began, ¡°but you can¡¯t be serious.¡± I shrugged as I savored a hot bite of oatmeal, layered with honey. It was a low-key breakfast, eaten before the rest of my family headed to church. I was the only one fully dressed; Paris and Mom each sported pajamas under robes while Dad wore his traditional Sunday domestic outfit of underwear with black socks. After a Saturday afternoon and evening spent falsifying records for Lamarck¡¯s imminent return, I knew that I had a long Sunday ahead of me working with NYST. Rather than divide the day up with brunch, I decided to join my family for their light breakfast before church. ¡°You¡¯re outed to one roommate, and there¡¯s no way you can keep seeing Kimberly without her learning, too,¡± Paris offered, accepting my nod of agreement. ¡°So walk away, li¡¯l bro. Not a hard call.¡± As she slurped down coffee, my sister caught our dad¡¯s eyes. He hadn¡¯t shaved yet, and he scratched at his neck while he chewed a piece of toast. A days¡¯ growth was enough to notice the stubble was a lighter color than his head hair had ever been before it went grey. Dad met his daughter¡¯s gaze, his own left eyelid half-closing as he swiveled to face her squarely. She nodded slightly in my direction, which caused Dad to quirk an eyebrow, which in turn made Paris frown slightly. Dad closed his eyes and nodded, and Paris shrugged, rising carefully from the table. Mom had expressed to me, privately, that she was sometimes a bit envious of Paris¡¯s ability to hold what amounted to elaborate conversations with Dad using only facial expressions over a few seconds. It was a knack that neither Mom and I had, and while I¡¯d put forward the idea that it was their common profession that allowed for it, there was already a rudimentary form of it when Paris was a teenager. A natural physical empathy that the two of them shared, and we didn¡¯t. The gist was clear, though, when Paris started clearing dishes while Dad picked up her line of attack. ¡°I take it you haven¡¯t done anything to actually confirm what she told you?¡± Dad cleared his throat, gulping down milk as he pinned me under his policeman¡¯s stoic glower. ¡°Check her or her friends out, make sure they¡¯re not government plants?¡± I sighed, but stopped short of actually rolling my eyes. ¡°We¡¯ve been over this, Dad. I don¡¯t make it a habit to spy on the people in my life.¡± Dad raised an eyebrow at that, but didn¡¯t respond in words. I knew what he was thinking: over the years, this wasn¡¯t a policy I had applied with any consistency. No doubt he would bring up some of the prying I had done into the lives of authority figures when I first came into my abilities in high school, if he thought he needed to. I hadn¡¯t realized I was in a staring contest with him until I dropped my gaze. ¡°Anymore,¡± I qualified, when I realized what he was waiting for. ¡°I¡¯ve made some mistakes, but I don¡¯t do that sort of thing anymore.¡± ¡°Delphic does, though,¡± Mom pointed out. She was pointedly not looking at Dad or me, her attention on a department store circular. She slowly stirred her cooling coffee with a spoon as she pretended to browse women¡¯s clothing. ¡°Criminals,¡± I replied. ¡°Suspects. Not personal.¡± Mom kept her eyes down, her tone level. ¡°Those supers you hired, what were they suspected of?¡± I knew it was a rhetorical question, but it still rankled that I didn¡¯t have a good answer. She was right, of course: as Delphic I had never balked at investigating allies and finding out more information about people on either side of the law. I had dived deeply into the lives of Fitz and the Gardner sisters. I¡¯d accessed secure government files on a number of occasions. I shrugged. My spoon noisily scraped the sides of the bowl as I captured the last of my breakfast. Dad¡¯s eyes were still on me. ¡°I met her at a club,¡± I said. ¡°There¡¯s no reason to think she¡¯s secretly¡­ whatever.¡± Dad relied, ¡°Other than the fact that she¡¯s writing a thesis on supers, has two supers for roommates, and that she immediately targeted you before you even made it into the building.¡± He cleared his throat again. ¡°Think back¡­ did she let you out of her sight the entire time you two were there? Restroom break, anything?¡± I thought back and shook my head. ¡°It was an intense evening.¡± ¡°Sounds like it,¡± he nodded. ¡°You like her a lot.¡± He didn¡¯t bother to make it a question. ¡°So swallow your pride and snoop a little.¡± Dad rose from the table without waiting for my response. Mom set down her magazine and followed him upstairs to get dressed. Before I could properly collect my thoughts, Paris pulled up a chair next to me. From the kitchen, the dishwasher started its noisy rumbling. ¡°You said you had some other news to share?¡± She added as much levity as she could to her voice. Nodding, I announced. ¡°Lamarck isn¡¯t dead after all.¡± Paris¡¯s eyes grew wide at this. ¡°You mean, like, somebody new took the superhero name? Or they managed to copy his powers? You couldn¡¯t mean¡­ his head was blown off!¡± ¡°Not blown off. The bullet hit the brain and destroyed an estimated fifteen percent of his grey matter. Enough to kill him on the spot.¡± Now my sister gave me a look of confusion. ¡°But you just said -¡± ¡°The Doc,¡± I interjected, and saw Paris¡¯s expression immediately darken, ¡°Got hold of the body and tested some sort of enhancement field on it. Brought him back.¡± Paris scowled. ¡°Brought him back?!¡± When my eyes narrowed, she continued, ¡°There are so many less ridiculous explanations than literal resurrection. Cloning, shapeshifting, brainwashing with plastic surgery. Heck, the idea that Stevens arranged to have him smuggled out of Ontario alive, somehow, and got him out of a coma, is more plausible.¡± I had started shaking my head halfway through her speculation. ¡°It checks out. They wheeled a corpse into a room prepared with some heavily modified upsilon emitters. A living person walked out.¡± ¡°You Viewed it?¡± Paris said it like I was cheating. I cocked my head. ¡°Sort of.¡± My sister gave a sigh. ¡°Stop hiding the ball, li¡¯l bro. How did you ¡®sort of¡¯ see it? That¡¯s not how your power works.¡± ¡°Never before that I can remember, no. But I can¡¯t see the guy actually get up off the slab. It¡­¡± I tried to explain it. ¡°Everything in the room started shining brighter and brighter, like someone was turning the contrast up on an old CRT monitor. I couldn¡¯t make out any detail at that point; I was effectively blinded.¡± ¡°This happened when Stevens turned the machine on?¡± Paris asked. ¡°Before he did, actually, by a few seconds. I tried Viewing forward and backward, but the effect was consistent, as though the glow was part of the scene itself.¡± I added, ¡°It couldn¡¯t have been, though, because no one there reacted to it. It¡¯s pretty obvious that whatever that device did, it interacted with my own powers.¡± ¡°Quite convenient,¡± Paris interjected, ¡°since it stops you from being able to confirm the miracle itself.¡± ¡°What are you insinuating?¡± I scoffed. ¡°That the Doc used an unknown effect of an untested machine to block a power that he doesn¡¯t know about?¡± Paris shrugged. ¡°You said he¡¯s mentioned ¡®perceptive powers¡¯ before. It could have been designed to block spying from more than just you.¡± I shook my head. ¡°If he had tech like that, he¡¯d use it over the whole facility. Everything is already heavily shielded, and he uses external jammers against long-range radio. If he had a machine he could turn on to block powers, I¡¯d never be able to View his lab at all.¡± Paris nodded, conceding the point, but murmured, ¡°You¡¯re underestimating him.¡± Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. ¡°And you,¡± I quieted my voice to match hers, ¡°are being paranoid about him.¡± ¡°Somebody has to.¡± She favored me with a kind smile as she finally allowed the clock to pull her upstairs to finish getting ready for church. That made it an appropriate time for me to take my leave, but a yelled ¡°Hector!¡± from Mom stopped me halfway to the door. I diverted myself to the top of the stairs, where I found her choosing a pair of earrings to match her dress. ¡°Yes,¡± I answered letting her know that I was there. ¡°This Kimberly. You serious about her?¡± She avoided using the word ¡®love,¡¯ but I knew the implications of the question. It wasn¡¯t an unreasonable question. Serious psychiatric professional that Mom was, she nonetheless believed that the right person could sink deep into you very quickly. One of her favorite claims was that she had fallen in love with Dad less than twenty minutes into their first date, and Dad had taken a couple of months to catch up to her. He privately told me she was exaggerating, but not by much. Deciding to genuinely consider the question, I thought back to Kimberly, our evening and night together, and how much I enjoyed her company. But I also worked my way through the following day and evening, realizing that once I was away from her, she hadn¡¯t distracted me at all from my investigation work or what I had put together for Lamarck. Growing fond of her, definitely. Falling for her? ¡°Not yet,¡± I finally said in reply. ¡°It¡¯s too early. I¡¯m going to take some time¡­ going to let her take some time.¡± Mom nodded. ¡°That¡¯s very wise. Don¡¯t do anything life-changing until your heart demands it of you.¡± ¡°Yes¡¯m.¡± She beckoned me over and I bent down to plant a kiss on her forehead. ¡°See you for breakfast tomorrow, baby. We¡¯ll be praying for you.¡± ¡°Thanks Mom. I know you always do.¡± I used the ride home from my parents¡¯ to mentally align myself to the day¡¯s objectives. My attention today would mainly be on New York ¨C first, to brief Lady Liberty and NYST on the Kowalczyk brothers; later, to attend the Norbergs¡¯ evening event. I had never interacted with Harmony Norberg out of costume, and I was interested to see how much of her Liberty persona was a crime-fighting facade. I headed downstairs to work on my presentation for the day, but instead found myself acceding to the Doc¡¯s request for Delphic to call him. I first checked Hector¡¯s numbers and accounts, but the Doc hadn¡¯t sent anything more to Hector after Anne Varilla¡¯s email with my genetic data. This was likely just follow-up on the Lamarck situation, then. My call was answered audio-only. ¡°Delphic,¡± his voice was scratchier than usual this morning, almost to the point of unintelligibility. ¡°Thank you for calling me this morning. I hope I didn¡¯t interrupt your plans.¡± ¡°You did not,¡± I sent quickly. ¡°Good.¡± The sounds of rustling papers were almost as loud as his voice. ¡°Were there any complications with Jacques¡¯ records?¡± The Doc had provided me access to a server with detailed medical records for a ¡®John Doe¡¯ and information about a private rehabilitation and treatment center near DC. The records had Lamarck in a stable coma for most of the preceding month, with him waking up and slowly regaining his facilities on a timeline that matched when he actually woke up in Doc¡¯s lab. I wasn¡¯t sure why Doc had provided Jacques¡¯ actual medical records on the server as well, but he had. From how well the falsified records matched the real ones, including medications and test results, Doc (or perhaps Dr. Varilla) wanted the medical professionals in DC to have accurate information on him. ¡°There were no complications,¡± I sent as Delphic. ¡°John Doe has been monitored continuously since he was brought in as a coma patient, and has only recently awakened with severe retrograde amnesia.¡± ¡°And the room?¡± ¡°There wasn¡¯t a single room that had been vacant over the last month. I had to edit four other patient records.¡± There was more to it than that, since I wasn¡¯t using the hospital system¡¯s user interface to make the changes. The system was smart enough to log such edits regardless of origin and user. I had to go in and edit the files directly. ¡°Are you sure that was wise?¡± Doc asked. ¡°It reconciles inconsistencies, but it also means there are now five patient files that don¡¯t match memories, rather than just one.¡± I had considered the same question. ¡°If the main risk were chance discovery, then your concern would be valid,¡± My Delphic voice replied. ¡°In this case, we can be certain that the John Doe record will receive scrutiny. Minimizing the alterations is less important than assuring the records match.¡± ¡°All right, thank you.¡± He let out a very audible sigh. ¡°I must admit, as much as I hate to lose the potential research benefits of his particular omnicron aberration, I am relieved that he has decided to return.¡± That was certainly surprising coming from the Doc. ¡°Why is that?¡± ¡°Anne¡­ ah, doctor Varilla¡­ has diverted time from other projects to spend with Jacques. His unique case is more personally interesting to her than some of our core research. It removes a distraction.¡± He coughed briefly before continuing. ¡°Worse, the ethical situation with Kat is troubling.¡± ¡°Your head of logistics has an ethical quandary?¡± I had looked up Princess Ka¡¯at after the Doc had introduced us weeks ago. She was an acknowledged daughter of King Ak¡¯b¡¯al, the solitary ruler of Eutopia and an extremely powerful super. Many of Ak¡¯b¡¯al¡¯s children were prominent in the Kingdom as powerful supers in their own right, but Ka¡¯at was not. Supposedly, the King only acknowledged his children when they manifested powers¡­ and yet, Ka¡¯at had been acknowledged quietly, without any of the King¡¯s usual bombast. The Doc hissed a laugh. ¡°It¡¯s no quandary for her; she¡¯s quite confident of her position. She¡¯s been seducing Jacques.¡± ¡°He¡¯s married.¡± ¡°She insists he¡¯s not. She frames it in terms of Eutopian versus American views on marriage, which makes it a lot harder for me to put my foot down.¡± I let myself consider the situation for a moment, but I was drawing a blank as to what Ka¡¯at¡¯s argument could actually be. ¡°She is positing a legal ambiguity due to him having been dead?¡± I asked. ¡°No. She claims that you¡¯re not married to someone you don¡¯t¡­ ah, hold in your heart.¡± He cleared his throat, almost mumbling. ¡°Kat says if he can¡¯t remember his wife, then he¡¯s not her husband anymore.¡± ¡°Guillaume can¡¯t remember his wife?¡± ¡°Apparently not.¡± I tried to put myself in Jacques Guillaume¡¯s place. Waking up feeling perfectly healthy in body, but with a memory riddled with holes. What relationships might I lose, or lose so much of their foundation as to make them unsalvageable? We are our memories; it would be an absolute nightmare. I found myself growing angry at the idea of a person taking advantage of someone suffering in this way. It just seemed so selfish. ¡°I can understand why you are relieved for that situation to resolve itself,¡± I finally sent. ¡°It¡¯s certainly a load off,¡± he agreed. ¡°Now, regarding your help in this matter. We need to discuss your payment.¡± I had a prepared response for this topic. ¡°Discharge my debt for your help with the Iron Lantern matter. I¡¯m willing to call it even if you are.¡± This sidestepped the issues with his original requested payment, alleviating my fears in the process. There was another short pause. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Delphic, but I can¡¯t accept that,¡± Doc finally said, his tone aping kindness. I frowned, and typed, ¡°May I ask why not?¡± ¡°What I¡¯ve asked you to provide for payment from that job,¡± the Doc replied, ¡°is far more valuable to me than your services here. I need to insist that you provide the information that we agreed upon, and look for another fair payment for yesterday¡¯s services. Money is always a possibility.¡± I could not ignore how forceful his tone sounded. I recalled that, just four days ago, Lady Liberty had told me to see how the Doc would react if I refused to honor an agreement. Doc had always been patient with me¡­ ¡°Doctor, I have developed misgivings about providing you with access to so much of the United States medical infrastructure,¡± I sent. When Doc didn¡¯t respond, I kept going. ¡°If you believe the two services are not balanced in terms of value, I am comfortable offering further services or items of value to balance them. But I would prefer to find an alternate payment for our earlier agreement.¡± ¡°I¡­¡± his voice was stronger now, rising in volume, easier to hear. ¡°I understand your position, Delphic, but I am not open to renegotiating that agreement. You already received what we agreed to, and I really must¡­ insist¡­ that you provide me with what you owe.¡± Added as an afterthought, ¡°By the end of next week, as we agreed.¡± I chilled at the tone of his words. They were severe, with more passion in them than he usually put in his voice. His message was a gauntlet wrapped in velvet, and the soft cloth was already worn thin. I couldn¡¯t help myself. ¡°What if I refuse, Doctor?¡± I wanted to take back the words as soon as I heard them from the Delphic voice. ¡°It would certainly destroy the trust I¡¯ve placed in you, for starters,¡± he quipped. ¡°Why bother working with someone who doesn¡¯t keep their word?¡± ¡°For starters?¡± I asked. ¡°What, that¡¯s not enough?¡± Doc growled. ¡°Do you want me to threaten you, or¡­ oh.¡± He stopped a moment, and when he spoke again, I somehow knew he had a grin on his face. ¡°Oh, yes, heh. Very clever indeed.¡± The change in tone almost gave me whiplash. ¡°Was it Eddings at the Bureau? Or¡­ no, it was Norberg herself, I bet.¡± He chuckled, the rasp returning to his voice as he did. ¡°She¡¯s trying to convince you I¡¯m the enemy, told you to renege. Watch my reaction.¡± I didn¡¯t see any reason to lie. ¡°Lady Liberty is quite opposed to heroes having any relationship with you, Doctor.¡± ¡°Hypocritical of her,¡± he replied. ¡°Check out any of her office spaces, or even the Norberg estate on Long Island. I guarantee her omicron detectors and beam projectors aren¡¯t American knock-offs.¡± ¡°Thank you for the information.¡± ¡°Norberg got her wires crossed on me, though,¡± Doc volunteered. ¡°I¡¯ve taken some harsh actions against men who have crossed me before¡­ but those were criminals. Unscrupulous, nasty people in their own right.¡± He breathed out heavily in a way I couldn¡¯t identify over the audio. ¡°I don¡¯t make it a habit to threaten or extort the people I do business with. Not unless they¡¯re the sort of people who only listen to threats in the first place.¡± ¡°That¡¯s good to know,¡± I sent. I still didn¡¯t have any intention of crossing the Doc if I could help it¡­ he was undoubtedly the most dangerous person that I dealt with. But it was genuinely good to know that he wasn¡¯t dealing with me the way he would a villain or cutthroat mercenary. ¡°Look, let¡¯s table the payment discussion for another time,¡± he said. ¡°Thanks for taking care of things so quickly.¡± I logged off, and checked the clock. I had less than an hour before my scheduled meeting with NYST, and a couple of loose ends that I wanted to tie up first. It was barely mid-morning, and I could already tell it was going to be a very long day. Chapter 13 - Family Enterprise Like most Super Team facilities, the New York Super Team headquarters building was furnished for the twenty-first century. Every space assumed the use of connected technology and the inclusion of members not present. Most rooms were modular and broadly configurable, with furniture that could be collected to form a more structured space or dispersed to allow for relaxed collaboration. When my call was answered, the video feed showed costumed superheroes perched in various degrees of recline on colorful, rounded stools and chairs strewn haphazardly about the room. Despite having Viewed and taken calls from NYST HQ on several occasions, I realized I had no idea where in the building this room was, or how to distinguish it by name or description from any of two dozen others. ¡°Delphic. Hello!¡± Lady Liberty was standing off to one side, her voice patched into the system so that she was able to speak normally into her helmet. ¡°Good morning. This is a larger group than I had expected.¡± I counted fifteen heroes in the room altogether, and only recognized half of them. GigaGiant was notably absent, as was Orange Nimbus, although High-Cap shared a modernist loveseat with Whisper. The older hero seemed on edge, perched forward and looking intently around the room. Whisper¡¯s arms were demurely in her lap; she was only barely resisting the urge to wrap her arms around herself. Refraxx lounged on a colorful padded stool wide enough to be an ottoman, explicitly keeping a respectful distance from Whisper. Despite his behavior in her hospital room, the two of them weren¡¯t a couple in costume; having your heroic and civilian identities both dating was one of the fastest ways to be publicly recognized and outed. The other heroes whose names I immediately placed were Enki, Fleetfoot, Kodiak Minor, and Petiolule. The speedster and heavy hitter were well-known NYST members, but I only recognized ¡®Pet,¡¯ as she was usually called, because I had looked her up after the bank robbery incident. That day, she called the shots from HQ ¨C officially, it was her decision to first deploy the team to the bank and then to send them in. Her skintight costume was in shades of green and white, done in an intricate leaflet pattern; she wore nothing over her short brown hair. Despite her code name and overt plant theme, her listed powers were enhanced senses and strength. ¡°A lot of us are concerned about the kidnapping,¡± Liberty responded. ¡°There is quite a bit of interest in who was behind it.¡± ¡°Acknowledged.¡± I brought up my presentation. The first slide showed a photograph with two men standing in front of a sedan. The man on the left appeared to be in his early forties, with the height and size of a linebacker. The man on the right, in his sixties, was of regular height and build but looked small when next to his companion. The slide labeled them as ¡®Big Joe¡¯ and ¡®Old Joe.¡¯ ¡°The Kowalczyk brothers,¡± a hero I didn¡¯t recognize in blue and gold exclaimed. ¡°They¡¯re behind it?¡± ¡°They are.¡± I moved to the next slide, showing a map of Newark flanked by water. ¡°The Kowalczyks run a crime organization that includes stakes in many trucking, shipping, and logistics companies. Approximately thirty percent of the industry serving New York state from New Jersey has direct or indirect ties to the family.¡± ¡°This isn¡¯t news,¡± Lady Liberty pointed out. ¡°The Feds have been after the Kowalczyks for years, and can¡¯t get anything on them.¡± She turned more directly face the other supers. ¡°We¡¯ve not been able to touch them because they stay on the other side of the river. Half a dozen lawsuits brought against them in New York have been thrown back over to Jersey to die.¡± ¡°Why is that still possible in the twenty-first century?¡± Fleetfoot said. Her speech sounded deliberate and over-annunciated. ¡°To have organized crime, I mean. It just¡­ seems like something we should have grown past.¡± Liberty raised her arms in that pantomime that substituted for a shrug. ¡°Some diseases mutate rather than dying. Probably nine out of ten transactions the Kowalczyks are involved in are perfectly legitimate. But then somebody plays hardball on a negotiation, and gets paid a visit. Next day they sign the contract with no further problems¡­ using their left hand, because the right one¡¯s in a cast.¡± I added, ¡°Big Joe and Old Joe were enforcers for their uncle, Buzz Kowalczyk, when he ran the business.¡± I went back to the picture slide. ¡°Both have known powers, in the speed and strength categories respectively. Old Joe is confirmed bulletproof, while Big Joe has been reported to dodge gunfire, but I was unable to confirm this.¡± A spot check over the last six months revealed no one interested in even trying to pull a gun on the pair. ¡°What happened to Buzz?¡± The blue and gold hero asked. ¡°Cancer,¡± Lady Liberty answered. ¡°Almost fifteen years ago now. Neither of the Joes were ever known for their brains. FBI figured the operation would fall apart, revert to legitimate business. But these two have managed to keep it going somehow.¡± ¡°I believe I can explain why,¡± I sent. ¡°These brothers still aren¡¯t running the operation.¡± I felt a thrill when Liberty jerked around in surprise towards the screen. I switched to another slide, this one showing a man the same build as Old Joe, slightly younger, and with fewer wrinkles and a fiercer expression. ¡°Buzz Kowalczyk, Junior.¡± ¡°HA!¡± The noise took me by surprise. I realized belatedly that it came from Liberty, and that it was a sort of involuntary exclamation at my reveal. The other supers turned and looked at her, but she made no move to explain it. ¡°Buzz¡¯s son went to school as an accountant. He wasn¡¯t ever involved with the business; we thought he was clean.¡± I played a video of a three-dimensional graphic of Newark, zooming in and pointing to a particular building. ¡°I was able to trace the email to this warehouse. Junior lives on the second floor and hosts one or both of his cousins when conducting family business.¡± ¡°Awesome,¡± Refraxx exclaimed. The lanky super in his blue spandex stood up, stretching. ¡°We have a positive ID and a location. We can have this guy in custody within the hour.¡± From the removed vantage of a video call, I could still tell that the tension increased dramatically when he said this. Lady Liberty faced him squarely, turning fully away from the camera so that all I could see was the bronze green of her suit¡¯s back. ¡°In custody for what, exactly, Refraxx?¡± She emphasized the name. ¡°Under whose authority?¡± The man straightened up his posture, squaring off across the length of the room. ¡°For kidnapping. That¡¯s a federal crime, right? We¡¯re feds, that¡¯s what the courses they made us take said.¡± Liberty turned her helmeted head in a slow shake. ¡°Nothing Delphic has said today fixes the problems we talked about before. We need an arrest warrant from a federal judge in New Jersey. And we need the evidence to get it.¡± If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. Refraxx gave a long look over to Whisper, who was trying to look anywhere other than back at him. His already nasal voice raised to a higher pitch. ¡°We have evidence. Delphic has-¡± ¡°Absolutely nothing we can give to a judge,¡± Liberty raised her voice in volume if not pitch to shut him up. ¡°Unless our friend here changed his MO overnight.¡± Her rhetorical question echoed sardonically. ¡°Delphic, do you have any files that were obtained legally, from public records? Or perhaps you secured a search warrant after a probable cause hearing? No?¡± I resented Liberty¡¯s tone, but she was right. ¡°Your assumptions are correct. I am sorry, but I do not yet have enough that can be verified through legitimate means.¡± ¡°You¡¯ve gotta be kidding me,¡± Refraxx muttered. He didn¡¯t return to his seat, but his shift in posture made it seem like he¡¯d lost half his height. He stole sharp, momentary glances at Whisper. She stolidly refused to look back. ¡°Let¡¯s not whine about the fact that this hasn¡¯t been gift-wrapped,¡± Liberty insisted. ¡°Delphic didn¡¯t come here today with a mission ready for us to complete ¨C a villain madly cackling as he destroys buildings downtown. He came with information. Solid intel on a much more sinister sort of threat.¡± ¡°We may not have the smoking gun to arrest the Kowalczyks tonight,¡± I added, ¡°but we now know where to look. Who is calling the shots, and how.¡± ¡°What were they going to do with her?¡± asked the black-clad Enki. Her tone was bland and even, as though she were asking where in the yard they were planning to plant flowers. ¡°What happened to the others?¡± ¡°They were shipped overseas. Buzz has at least three international brokers that he works with to acquire particular personnel to meet specific requests.¡± The mood of the room grew even darker as I continued. ¡°Age, build, and body type. Particular occupation or special skills. There¡¯s a bounty list with seventeen entries for individuals with various powers. Whisper¡¯s power is on that list.¡± ¡°So,¡± Enki said, ¡°who wrote the list?¡± Lady Liberty had turned the masked face of her helmet back to the camera, and she continued to face that direction¡­ to face ¡®me¡¯¡­ as she said, ¡°I can think of one person.¡± There was no question that she meant the Doc. Admittedly, the thought had crossed my mind as well, but I genuinely didn¡¯t think he had anything to do with this. Not because he was incapable of it ¨C I would fully admit that he was ¨C but I would have come across it in the time I had spent looking over Doc¡¯s shoulder. The only reason I had missed Lamarck was that Doc didn¡¯t end up working with him directly, instead leaving the work to personnel whom I didn¡¯t spend as much time Viewing. Even so, I was pretty confident that given another week or two, I likely would have encountered Jacques Guillaume even if Doc hadn¡¯t come to me for help. ¡°I can think of seventy-four,¡± I sent. It was a complete lie. Covert government programs were all that had occurred to me. But for whatever reason, I didn¡¯t want Liberty zeroing in on the Doc. I told myself it wasn¡¯t personal; he clearly wasn¡¯t the culprit. ¡°Excellent. Add them to the record, please.¡± She made the request off-hand and immediately moved on. ¡°This¡­. ha. Well, this isn¡¯t either the best nor the worst possible news,¡± she offered to the room. ¡°A couple of recommendations. First, many of you haven¡¯t dealt with the Kowalczyk brothers before. If you have contacts on the New Jersey side ¨C informants, old friends, business relations ¨C consider reaching out to them to see what we can dig up.¡± Most of the heroes were nodding at her, although Refraxx had a deep scowl and didn¡¯t seem to be paying the least bit attention. ¡°Second, we¡¯ve been exploring surveillance and stealth uses for various abilities, mostly just as open brainstorming sessions. I think this is a good reason to move from the hypothetical to the actual. Talk to your teammates, and think about how you might be able to apply yourself and your skills to determining what the Kowalczyks might do next and catching them at it.¡± She moved her hand up to press her opposite wrist. ¡°I¡¯m inviting everyone here to tomorrow¡¯s meeting. Let¡¯s move quickly.¡± Her voice rose in pitch, announcer-style, as she addressed me. ¡°This was excellent work, Delphic. I¡¯ll put in for your payment and commendation. We appreciate your help in getting us what we need.¡± Voices briefly rose around the room ¨C expressions of thanks, generic salutations. I had started to type a response when the call ended. The abrupt disconnection took me by surprise. Liberty¡¯s reaction was a deliberate dismissal, and I wondered what was motivating it. Clearly she felt that my role in the investigation was done, and inviting ¡®everyone¡¯ to tomorrow¡¯s meeting wouldn¡¯t include me. They were clearly planning something resembling a stake out of the Kowalczyks, and were finding ways to use their powers to aid in surveillance. It was blatantly irrational not to include me; I was easily the best source of surveillance they had. So why the brush-off? A few minutes later, I was still trying to wrap my head around it as I poured myself a bowl of hot soup. The remainder of the veggies from my downtown grocery run ¨C what hadn¡¯t made it into the frittatas ¨C rendered into an excellent soup stock. I was planning to cook and flavor each serving separately in a small pot, just before eating, to practice some different mixes. After just two spoonfuls (unfortunately over-salted), I pushed the bowl away and closed my eyes. Just as I had feared, I Viewed four empty rooms at the Headquarters before I found the one where Liberty was still chatting away. Most of the room had cleared out, but four people remained: Liberty, Refraxx, Whisper, and Enki. The couple had apparently dropped their aloofness when the crowd had left, because Whisper¡¯s position clinging to Refraxx was as intimately close as what they had shown me on the phone in civilian garb. From his expression, and also his broad gestures, Refraxx was still clearly chafing over the NYST not taking more direct action. Based on her body language, and the way she positioned her feet and turned herself more toward Liberty, it seemed that Enki felt the same. The two of them were taking turns expressing their displeasure to the suited super, who quite patiently waited to respond. Whisper didn¡¯t say a word. As I watched, Refraxx finally nodded, grabbed Whisper¡¯s hand, and stalked toward the door. He gestured and it flew open with visible force before he reached it. Enki hung back to exchange another sentence or two, but soon left as well. As soon as she was alone, Liberty turned back to what I could now see was a screen that took up the full length of one wall. She dialed a contact¡­ I dropped my View and ran for the stairs. I managed to unlock my system and answer her call before it was automatically declined. ¡°This is Delphic,¡± I sent. ¡°You don¡¯t have seventy-four names,¡± the woman said, amusement in her voice. As I watched, she hit two buttons on her wrist, and carefully lifted her helmet off of her suit. Harmony Norberg¡¯s face was flushed red from her time in the suit, but she was still pretty. A mass of straw hair was kept up with innumerable bindings, and she flashed me a wide smile that brought out the pronounced dimples in her cheeks. With Kelda Norberg such a visible celebrity and socialite, it was important to remember that when people called Harmony ¡®plain,¡¯ it was only in relation to her stunning older sister. ¡°You don¡¯t,¡± she repeated herself, her voice no longer echoing through a helmet mic, ¡°even have seven names, much less seventy-four.¡± She looked at the screen expectantly, as though a static avatar could ever give something away. ¡°Some of the names are, admittedly, more far-fetched than others,¡± I dissembled, ¡°but the entire list is seventy-four individuals and entities.¡± ¡°No, it¡¯s not.¡± She took a breath, seeming to be happy to taste air outside her suit. ¡°You¡¯re coming tonight?¡± ¡°A dinner party in the Hamptons with the Norberg sisters,¡± I sent. ¡°I am honored to accept.¡± She nodded. ¡°If you can, dial in at six. I want to check out the teleconference drone, make sure you can control it and that the signal is clean.¡± ¡°I will speak with you at six, then,¡± I responded. I wanted to ask her more ¨C about her motivation for cutting off my role in the kidnapping investigation ¨C but I couldn¡¯t think of what to type. After a moment, a brilliant and open grin still lighting up the shot, her head nodding just slightly, she ended the call yet again. I wasn¡¯t sure if it was good instinct or overwrought paranoia, but too much about Liberty¡¯s actions wasn¡¯t making sense. I couldn¡¯t predict her, and that was a good sign that I was missing some important element of either her beliefs or her goals. While nowhere near as dangerous as the Doc, she certainly could make things more difficult for me in a number of ways if she so chose. I had never intended to show up unprepared for the Norberg dinner, but my need for better intel had taken on further urgency. I was going to spend a lot of the afternoon Viewing, I realized. I hoped the party was worth it. Chapter 14 - The Hamptons Despite their ridiculous size and visible opulence, locating a particular property in the Hamptons can be surprisingly difficult. Manors are often recessed a mile or more from the road, make copious use of landscaping features and tree cover, and follow no uniformity in spacing and construction. A celebrity or mogul who chooses to purchase a Southampton estate on multiple acres of land does not want her privacy easily breached; many addresses (including the one for the Norbergs¡¯ house) aren¡¯t available on the major navigation services. No matter how elusive one wishes to be, however, the tax man has his day. Surreptitious access to the hamlet¡¯s records office led to an accurate geographic map with parcel data included. The ¡®modest¡¯ manor had a footprint of over 6,000 square feet, tripled by use of both a second story and a full basement. Guiding my View through sitting rooms and guest bedrooms on the second floor, any doubt as to the identity of the owners fled. While tastefully done and clearly very costly, a superhero theme pervaded the space. Hallways and quiet corners held, instead of ornamental suits of armor, replicas of the armor of famous supers. Other rooms would share a color palette with one superhero¡¯s costume, the hero¡¯s own emblem included in the design of a wall sconce or woven into a tapestry. I found myself bewildered by the lengths to which the theme had been pushed. I found Harmony Norberg on the first floor of the manor in an interior room dominated by a desk overlooking a dozen monitors. Several of the monitors shifted minute by minute to different camera views within and surrounding the building, implying this area to be a security office. Harmony had changed out of her armor and into a blouse and jeans. My eye was first drawn to the thick black metal bars that ran up next to her legs, meeting at a solid harness surrounding her pelvis. I remembered the thorough media coverage when, in her teens, Harmony became one of the first experimental users of the new powered walk-assist exoskeleton, allowing her to move around with far greater freedom than a wheelchair. Ten-year-old Kelda Norberg had not been with her parents and sister the day their private plane crashed near Chesapeake Bay, leaving Harmony to pull herself and her mangled legs out of the fiery wreckage that had already claimed the lives of everyone else aboard. But their parents had left nothing to chance with regard to the fate of the Norberg holdings ¨C everything was left to the girls, with guardians and trustees having only very limited authority over the assets until the real inheritors came of age. The sisters grew into both charm and brilliance, with a deep and abiding loyalty to each other that made them an inseparable pair in the mind of the public. Harmony and another woman ¨C clearly not her sister, although she looked familiar to me ¨C were working on a broad wheeled cart with a mounted screen and camera, nearly as tall as they were. The wheels were motorized and the screen and camera mounted on an articulated arm. This was the teleconference drone she had mentioned that she wanted me to call in early to test. The other woman, dressed business casual, was typing on a wireless keyboard connected with the system. From what she was doing, it was clear the drone had a large on-board power supply and a massive disk drive. As I watched, the two women moved between the drone and a terminal in the room connected to the home¡¯s wireless internet system. The software controlling the routers had identified the drone¡¯s unique device address, and they were tweaking the settings on the bandwidth of its connection. A readout on the drone¡¯s screen showed the fluctuating connection speeds as measured from its end. They were throttling the bandwidth ¨C intentionally limiting how much data the drone could send and receive over the wireless network. The woman assisting Harmony looked up briefly and made a comment that left her smirking. It was at this point that I realized who she was: NSA Analyst Susan Shives, formerly of the Iron Lantern project. I had known that Shives was still employed by the Agency, but was convinced that she had been reassigned to a different project unrelated to me. When I had revealed her affair with her boss to his wife and the NSA higher-ups in order to shut down Iron Lantern, it was Agent Brody that had taken the brunt of the impact. He was on leave pending the conclusion of the investigation, and would almost certainly be terminated. Shives, on the other hand, while still technically under investigation as well, was allowed to join a new team the week following the incident. The dominant narrative inside the Agency was to view Brody as a coercive boss, and both of the analysts as his victims. This didn¡¯t fit what I had seen. Shives was very much a willing participant in their ongoing affair, and had been as careful in concealing it as Brody. Fair or not, the fallout was that the analyst was still employed by the government¡­ and, by the looks of it, was still working on trapping me. I rewound my View by the better part of an hour and watched Susan put the trap together from the beginning. The plan became clear: they would provide the drone as a teleconference option, then worsen the wireless connection until it became spotty. This would induce me to ¡®jump¡¯ into the drone via wire and pilot it locally. A concealed mechanical switch would deactivate all the external comm ports and seal me in the machine. I was less than impressed with their plan. It was obviously a non-starter for reasons they didn¡¯t know (I¡¯m not actually a disembodied computer-hopping intelligence). But even assuming my cover to be true, the plan greatly underestimated my wariness and preparedness. Multiple steps depended on me freely choosing one option over another, based on persuasion rather than coercion. There was no way to reliably secure the desired outcome if I declined Liberty¡¯s suggestions, and I would lose nothing in doing so. Well¡­ not nothing. I lost the opportunity to interact with supers in a more casual setting, including Liberty herself as Harmony. The party offered a taste of the camaraderie that I craved as a super, and I needed to admit at least to myself that the temptation was strong. Did Liberty understand me that well, that her bait was so apt? Or perhaps what I felt was more common among supers than I thought. I deliberated as to what sort of message to send by my response to this trap. If I let them know that I knew, it might just encourage them to be even sneakier next time. And even though this trap wasn¡¯t an actual threat, Shives at least knew about Hector as an associate of Delphic. There was no guarantee the next attack would be as harmless. My best approach was to thwart their plan in a manner that gave them as little data as possible. Analyst Shives left the manor more than an hour before Harmony had suggested I call her. It was appropriately cautious of them to completely remove her from the premises, since the three members of Iron Lantern were known antagonists. Since the whole plan hinged on the reliability of the internet connection, the router was accessible by a remote user. It is a trivial task to cause a routine or program to not work; it takes considerably more finesse to do so in a way that is not obvious. Fortunately they had wanted a time delay before the throttling started in earnest; a misplaced zero made sure that the connection would be at full strength until well after the party. It would look to them like a perfectly mundane error, the kind you risk any time you run new code. Just as interesting, the cameras and monitoring station were on the same network as the wireless routers, and with the right purloined credentials I cemented access to them as well. This I was not surreptitious about, as it was comfortably within Delphic¡¯s normal behavior. Every room in the manor was surveilled, restrooms and closets included ¨C except for the two largest bedrooms and their en suite baths. Both were well lived in, and which belonged to Harmony was obvious from the presence of a motorized sling hung from a winch to assist her out of bed. The bookcase in Harmony¡¯s bedroom was, in my own opinion, a bit too on the nose. The other bedrooms didn¡¯t have such heavy floor-to-ceiling shelves. I wasn¡¯t at all surprised when I moved my View through it and found a small dressing room with the Lady Liberty suit docked and awaiting its owner. The suit was, unfortunately, not linked into the house¡¯s systems; I would have loved to access its control systems and determine the full feature list. How did the interface manage to integrate seamlessly with Harmony¡¯s own powers? It was probably one of the most complex feats of engineering in the world not owned by a national military or space program. Reluctantly I turned from Harmony¡¯s secrets back to her activities. She had been joined by her older sister, Kelda, who was dressed in a similar blouse and slacks but somehow managed to make both seem more feminine. She stood half a head taller than her younger sister who was herself by no means a small woman, and yet Kelda gave the impression of being much smaller than Harmony. She floated around a large sitting room, breezily directing a dozen men and women as they moved furniture and set up covered dishes. The dinner would be served in buffet style, to my surprise; I had expected table service. Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. The logic behind the buffet configuration became evident as the hired help began to depart from the building, leaving the sisters alone in the house with two servants who were dressed and behaved notably differently from the caterers. Kelda took the two of them for last minute preparations while Harmony returned to her drone and used it to place a call. ¡°This is Delphic.¡± ¡°Hi!¡± The same bright smile met the camera as earlier that afternoon. ¡°The drone should be ready to go; I¡¯m here with it now. Do you need me to send you the IP and subnet addresses?¡± ¡°That shouldn¡¯t be necessary. One moment.¡± I had already found and connected to the mobile device. The controls were straightforward; I backed the unit away from Harmony and tilted the arm to continue pointing directly at her. ¡°This is an excellent device. Thank you for providing it.¡± ¡°My pleasure,¡± she beamed. ¡°I should let you know, the WiFi in the area of the house where the party will be can get awfully spotty. The unit is equipped with an eight petabyte drive and a bleeding edge processor.¡± Her tone was more earnest than was ideal for the bait she was laying for her trap. ¡°If remote piloting becomes a chore, you¡¯re welcome to¡­ what¡¯s the term, jump? Into the drone?¡± ¡°Jumping is a reasonable analogy,¡± I agreed. ¡°Again, Harmony, I really appreciate your hospitality and your willingness to include me.¡± I moved the articulated arm to ¡®see¡¯ around the room. ¡°Telepresence is much safer for me in a new place, but we will see how the connection holds up.¡± I saw Harmony¡¯s face briefly take on the ghost of a smirk at my last remark. From her perspective, everything was in place and the bait was deployed. She had no way of knowing that, no matter how tasty the offering, I couldn¡¯t actually be hooked. Harmony brought me out of the security room, walking ahead of me and pointing out features of the main floor of the manor. I could hear the quiet but present hum of servo motors in her mobility harness as she moved, maintaining an aggressive pace. As she took each step, her leg swung out slightly, as though she couldn¡¯t bend them quite as far as she needed to. The result was a bit stiff-legged and awkward looking, but it functioned perfectly well. In the main receiving area of the manor, Kelda stood in front of a large wall-mounted screen, the back of her legs almost touching the seat of a couch upholstered in maroon and peach with small horns featured in the fabric pattern (the colors and logo of Aurochs). She held the remote in one delicate hand and pecked at it with her opposite painted index finger, a look of concentration scrunching up her face. ¡°Kelda, have you met Delphic?¡± Harmony greeted her, angling to include ¡®me¡¯ in her sister¡¯s line of sight. Just then the television channel switched to the football pre-show, and a look of relief crossed the woman¡¯s face. She put the remote down and crossed to us. ¡°No, I haven¡¯t had the pleasure. Delphic, welcome! I hope my sister¡¯s project is to your liking?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a flattering accommodation, thank you. I understand that the two of you work closely together on these projects?¡± Kelda shook her head, meeting her sister¡¯s eyes. ¡°Oh, no. I mean, Norberg is still mainly a financial services firm, and Harmony is as much a genius in that field as anywhere else.¡± Her eyes flashed for a moment even as her smile grew wider. ¡°But her¡­ other¡­ interests are her own. Other than finding licensing partners for some of her more marketable innovations, I don¡¯t have much to do with them.¡± She looked the drone up and down in appreciation. ¡°I can imagine any number of global businesses putting one of these telepresence drones in each office for important visitors.¡± ¡°You don¡¯t mind being used as a guinea pig, do you?¡± Harmony laughed. ¡°I¡¯m happy to beta test your prototype,¡± I insisted. ¡°So far it¡¯s working great. Easy controls and a crystal clear signal.¡± I made sure my camera had Harmony¡¯s face in view so that I could see her reaction to that last comment, and I thought I saw her eyes narrow briefly. But when she spoke, it was a blatant subject change. ¡°We should start receiving guests any minute now. It¡¯s always surprised me how all these emergency responders, whose entire job revolves around showing up on time, manage to consistently be late for any kind of event.¡± ¡°They save all of their punctuality for the job, of course,¡± Kelda quipped. Not a minute later, her expression brightened as she turned to look up at something past me. ¡°Altin! There you are!¡± The woman swept around me, graceful as a dancer, and I missed the apparently energetic reunion as I swiveled the camera around to follow. By the time they were in my view, Kelda was climbing down from the towering muscular man with ice blue skin that was unmistakably GigaGiant. His face had as little expression as always, but I could see the corners of his lips tug a bit at the attentions of the glamorous woman. Harmony¡¯s greeting was more subdued. ¡°Good to see you, Altin. I take it everything is settled with that uptown business?¡± The man nodded and made to speak, but Kelda cut him off, stretching on her tip-toes to touch a single finger to his lips. ¡°No sir! Harm, you know the rules. Anything but work.¡± She took a step back toward her sister with a playful scowl look on her face. ¡°You guys spend all day every day down at headquarters talking this stuff out. I think it¡¯s telling,¡± she directed her speech to me, the newcomer, ¡°that we had to make a rule forcing them to talk about anything else.¡± She sighed dramatically. ¡°The things I do for family,¡± Harmony replied, gesturing Altin toward the room where the buffet was set up. ¡°You must be starved! There¡¯s beef tips with broccoli.¡± ¡°I¡¯m always starved¡­¡± the man grumbled. Kelda had made no move to follow them, and instead smiled at the coin avatar displaying on my drone¡¯s screen. Her beauty and joy were so infectious, I felt inclined to smile back even though I knew she couldn¡¯t see me. The effect was dispelled, though, when the next thing she said was in an entirely different tone, hissed through teeth that kept up the rictus of the smile. ¡°She means well,¡± the socialite whispered. ¡°Please don¡¯t think otherwise.¡± I turned my camera up to put her face front and center. I realized that while her mouth was smiling, her eyes were¡­ pleading. ¡°I don¡¯t understand,¡± I sent. ¡°Harmony, you mean?¡± Kelda nodded. ¡°She¡¯s put herself at odds with you, I think.¡± She shifted her expression, to something more perplexed but still pleasant. She kept half her attention focused on Harmony to cease this conversation should she return. ¡°The matter with Doctor Stevens, how she uses Enki. She still thinks you may not be on our side.¡± All of that was true, but I was surprised to hear her say it. I let the moment pass as I decided what to say, and Kelda spoke up again. ¡°You are, though. You¡¯re trying to be a hero. You want to do good.¡± She swallowed. ¡°So does she. Her heart¡¯s in the right place. That¡¯s what I need you to know.¡± She dropped most of her smile as she said, ¡°If we¡¯ve gotten to where good heroes can¡¯t even trust their own kind, I don¡¯t know if¨C¡± Whatever else Kelda had intended to tell me, she was cut off by the persistent influx of people who arrived. They were introduced by their civilian names, but internally I continued to think of them according to their code names. First Enki and Orange Nimbus arrived, followed by Pet and Fleetfoot. The blue and gold hero (whose code name I had determined was Intersect) came next, and then High-Cap with Whisper. They kept coming. Within a half hour, the party was in full force, sporting more than two dozen attendees and all of them superheroes. The teleconference drone was only an ambiguous success. Unlike my usual role relegated to a voice over the comm system, I had a physical presence on which people could focus. However, the drone was different enough from a human presence that many found it awkward to interact with, and it was difficult to stay included in groups that tended to coalesce and then disband organically. Still, when I was genuinely included in a conversation, it was singularly fun. High-Cap, for instance (¡®Sarah,¡¯ she had said) was an amateur thespian with an absurd sense of humor. While Whisper (¡®Lakki¡¯) seemed content to hide in a corner making phone calls, her older friend had immediately put away two glasses of wine and began some very inappropriate, very funny comments about the current Kennedy administration. This was the mood I was in when I realized that Whisper really had tuned out the party altogether, making call after call on her mobile phone and looking increasingly worried. When an opening presented itself, I approached her. ¡°Is something the matter, Lakki?¡± I asked, the synth smoothly handling the name since I had taken the time to program it in. When she looked up, I noticed she was pale, her eyes starting to puff up as though preparing to shed tears. ¡°Delphic, hi! I¡­ ah¡­ I mean¡­.¡± she stuttered, finding difficulty stringing together her thoughts coherently. ¡°Yes?¡± I prompted, giving her time to collect herself. She finally calmed down enough to respond. ¡°It¡¯s Zee. He texted me earlier, saying he was too angry for the party tonight and to go without him.¡± She scowled at the memory. ¡°And I¡¯ve been trying to get hold of him since we got here, you know, just to say hi to everyone? But he isn¡¯t picking up. And¡­ it¡¯s worrying me.¡± That was an understatement; she was barely holding back from crying. ¡°Would you like me to trace his phone signal and confirm that he is safe?¡± I offered. Lakki rubbed her hands over both eyes before saying, ¡°Could you, please? I can give you his number.¡± ¡°That won¡¯t be necessary, Lakki. Just be patient. I will find him.¡± I switched out my avatar for one with a little display overlaying the image that said, ¡®Delphic Live Conversation Module Offline. Please Stand By.¡¯ This done, I closed my eyes and dove into my View. It took very little time to follow Refraxx out of the conference room with Whisper, or to the locker rooms where they separated to change into civilian clothing. They reunited, now Zee and Lakki, and used one of several hidden rear exits from HQ. I followed them as quickly as I could as they took the subway to an apartment building in Soho. Zee saw his girl into her building, but then immediately turned around and reversed course. I watched him ride the subway back to HQ, take a different secret entrance into the building, and then suit up again; less than an hour total passed that he was in civilian garb. Refraxx then headed to the HQ garage where he unlocked a motorcycle done in his same multi-tone blue color scheme. It was a heavy bike, the kind that could hold its own at highway speeds for long stretches. He turned it on, warmed it up, and programmed an address that he queried from the NYST system. I felt a punch to the gut when I saw the address. More than an hour ago, without a single message to anyone or request for aid, Refraxx had headed entirely on his own to the Kowalczyks¡¯ hideout. Chapter 15 - A Battle in Newark I¡¯m not a physicist; I know just enough to recognize my own ignorance on the subject. For example, I know that powers are called ¡®omicron aberrations¡¯ by some scientists, and that they are believed to be caused by vibrations within a ¡®gauge field¡¯ with ¡®half-integer spin¡¯ (generally thought impossible until the discovery and later exploitation of upsilon waves). I don¡¯t know all of the implications for this, but it does mean that one term (discouraged among many scientists) for the effects is ¡®pseudo-gravity.¡¯ Many powers essentially replicate things that gravitational energy could do if applied selectively. It¡¯s this reason why enhanced strength and speed, in myriad slight variations, are the most common powers: they are each basic alterations to aspects of the user¡¯s interaction with the world based on the user¡¯s mass and energy. It¡¯s also why more than 90% of pregnancies with activated genes for super powers aren¡¯t carried to term: random fluctuations in mass are going to be very dangerous to a delicate developing human. This is also given as a reason why so many powers are observed to have built-in safeguards or defenses to protect the wielder. Not because this is strictly inherent in the power itself, but the existence of those defensive features make it far more likely for the super to develop into adulthood. These defensive powers act to protect the user against attacks using powers of the kind that the user has themselves; for example, a super with the ability to manipulate electrical energy will automatically ground or divert electrical energy away from their own body, and would have a ready defense against electrical attacks (either by other supers or by a stun gun, for example). It also means that, in a battle between supers with different kinds of powers (for example, enhanced strength and enhanced speed versus powerful telekinesis), it may be impossible to know ahead of time how the powers of one super will interact with the defenses of another. That¡¯s why super battles often involve earlier probing attacks before significant resources are committed. I didn¡¯t consciously process all of this information again when I realized that Refraxx had headed to Newark, but the conclusion was in the forefront of my mind as I decided what to do. My first action was immediate; I displayed the warehouse address on Delphic¡¯s drone screen. Lakki was still waiting nervously to hear back from me. ¡°Refraxx headed to the Kowalczyk warehouse more than an hour ago,¡± I sent in Delphic¡¯s voice. ¡°I will try to locate him.¡± She froze in a scowl of terrified anger for several seconds, staring at my screen, before calling out. ¡°No! He¡­ Harm!¡± She looked around calling out for her host. ¡°Harmony! Help!¡± I didn¡¯t see Liberty nearby, but Kelda was standing with GigaGiant and Fleetfoot just a few feet away. They turned and moved towards us, Kelda in the lead with a worried expression on her face. ¡°Is something the matter, Ms. Lakshmi?¡± she asked. The young woman shook her head vigorously, hunching in on herself as though she could retreat into a protective carapace. She nodded toward me. ¡°Zee went to Newark to confront the kidnappers. I¡­¡± she looked at me, pleadingly. ¡°I didn¡¯t know he would do that. He usually isn¡¯t¡­¡± her expression darkened, ¡°¡­ but when it¡¯s about me¡­¡± ¡°I need to attempt to locate him,¡± I sent. ¡°Please stand by.¡± Just then a loud cracking sound came over the line, and I noticed the other three flinch as Fleetfoot left the room, whipping the air up sufficiently to make a visible wind. I dismissed the sight as I sank into my View, mentally recalling the warehouse and hoping that I wasn¡¯t too late. A guardhouse with a boom gate blocking the drive up to the warehouse appeared to be its only external security. The building looked grimier at night, its blacked-out windows and loading bays dully reflecting the street lamps that formed cones of light on the dark of the asphalt. A quick sweep around the building showed three cars and a pickup truck, but no motorcycle in sight. ¡°Are you calling him?¡± I heard Liberty¡¯s voice through the channel. ¡°I¡¯ve been trying all night,¡± Whisper replied. ¡°He¡¯s not answering me.¡± ¡°Maybe Delphic can hack his phone, or the motorcycle,¡± rumbled GigaGiant. I didn¡¯t have time to respond to them. I moved my View into the second floor of the building where Buzz stayed, hoping to find something that might either discourage Refraxx or aid what he was doing. What I found was Buzz Kowalczyk, Junior, sitting side by side with both Joes watching football. One younger man was the only other person in sight ¨C not the same one who delivered the email the previous week, but similar enough in look and dress that he might have been a brother. It was clear the Kowalczyks kept their hideout for family. Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. ¡°It¡¯s well over a hundred miles from here,¡± I heard Liberty saying over the drone audio. ¡°There¡¯s no way we can get there in time to do anything.¡± ¡°Call the police?¡± Lakki pleaded. ¡°Adding them or NJST just puts Zee in worse shape,¡± Liberty replied. ¡°Any outcome I can think of, we don¡¯t want witnesses.¡± Liberty¡¯s focus was squarely on what Refraxx had decided to do. A super picking a brawl with someone like this was assault with a deadly weapon ¨C and when the weapon was super powers, it could be tried in federal court as a capital crime. Not something you wanted third party witnesses to, even sympathetic ones. Based on the time that Refraxx¡¯s motorcycle had left HQ, his estimated arrival was any minute. I moved my View back out to the street in time to see the blue motorcycle dodge around the boom gate, past the unmanned guardhouse, and brake in front of the warehouse doors. I had never before seen the signature blue glow of omicron radiation around Refraxx, but I saw it now. I didn¡¯t know if it was evidence of his intense emotion or a lack of control, but he thrust his open hand forward at the warehouse doors and I watched a spear of blue energy fly from his hand to strike them. The metal doors were set to open outward, but they and the frame in which they were set flew inward, leaving a gaping hole in the warehouse wall that Refraxx stalked through. When the inner security door on the second floor was opened the same way, it revealed three men standing and facing the entrance, only just responding to the undoubtedly loud noises from the floor below. There was a sudden pause on both sides as Refraxx oriented on his suddenly revealed targets, who in turn tried to process what they were seeing. Except for the younger Kowalczyk, all of the men recovered in the same instant. A visible act of will caused a wave of blue, opaque enough to seem tangible, to cascade from the superhero¡¯s outstretched hands. Buzz and the boy immediately slammed backwards against the wall, hard. The two enforcers did not. Big Joe leaned to the side as Refraxx reached toward them; he appeared twenty feet to the left and prepared to move again. Old Joe leaned forward, instead, and fought to move against the force pushing him back. The blue light, moving through the other men as though they weren¡¯t there, thickened and diverted around Old Joe as though he were a rock splitting the current in a stream. ¡°¡­ the first we could expect to get on the scene, and not for almost an hour. It¡¯s the best we can do; will you give the order?¡± Liberty¡¯s voice was knotted with emotion as she spoke, but I realized I was missing context. I tuned her out again to focus on the battle. The wave of force let up as Refraxx focused his full attention to the enhanced strength of Old Joe. As soon as he was no longer pressed against the wall, the young man scurried out of the room, staying low to the ground. Buzz made no sudden movements as he regained his footing, neither fleeing nor fighting but rubbing the back of his head, dazed. The blue-clad Refraxx didn¡¯t pause between attacks, pouring a solid bolt of energy out of his hands that enveloped Old Joe and pulled upwards. The man¡¯s bald head penetrated the ceiling tiles above, his visible legs kicking as the telekinetic force held him there. This lasted only seconds, though, before a blur of motion resulted in Refraxx being held by Big Joe from behind. The speedster yanked the hero¡¯s arms backward to immobilize him, and when Refraxx opened his mouth in a yelp of pain, Old Joe was released to fall to the floor. While the older man made it to his knees, his younger partner yanked up harder with enough force to break one or both of his captive¡¯s arms. However, Refraxx was not idle. Even as the glow vanished from Old Joe and he fell, the super closed his eyes. Big Joe began to glow blue; he was wrenched violently off his feet and away from Refraxx even as Old Joe found his footing again. Refraxx had no intention of giving Old Joe the time to mount an attack. Turning to the side, he held one hand out to each enforcer. Big Joe continued to float harmlessly in the open air, and with another blue surge of translucent energy, Old Joe was taken off his feet again to join him. Refraxx shifted the position of both enforcers so they were neither between him and the door, nor him and Buzz, and took another look at the leader of the Kowalzyk family. The man¡¯s expression hadn¡¯t changed; he still looked disoriented. Refraxx gave an order, and Buzz took a step forward, placing his hands behind his head and kneeling on the ground. I didn¡¯t see the bursts of red appear on the shoulder and stomach of Refraxx¡¯s costume until after the blue light had already ceased to glow, the enforcers each landing on their feet. Everyone paused for a second time as heads swiveled to the doorway where the young man stood, the pistol still pointed at Refraxx. The hero collapsed to his knees, lurching forward to vomit blood as he hugged his right arm over his limply hanging left. I bellowed in fear and rage as I watched the scene unfold, but no one heard me. It was clear that Refraxx was no longer a threat, but that he would need immediate medical attention, and I resolved to call 911 in Newark and see that he got it. But before I could drop my View, I saw Old Joe step in front of the kneeling hero. He showed no hesitation in picking the bleeding super up by his throat in one hand, lifting him off the ground until his feet dangled uselessly. I have never been able to feel or hear through my View; I am strictly limited to what I can see. As they stood there, Refraxx¡¯s life in their hands, I couldn¡¯t hear the words spoken by Buzz or Big Joe, although I saw their mouths move. I couldn¡¯t hear the agonizing screams of Refraxx held in Old Joe¡¯s iron grip, although I saw the fear in his eyes and the labored, shuddering compression of his chest. I have never been able to hear anything, so I must have imagined the crunching sound as the enforcer squeezed with his super strength, his hand coated bright red as he pulverized every part of Refraxx¡¯s neck from windpipe to spine, killing him in moments. Old Joe then threw the lifeless body aside, but I dropped my View before I could see where it landed. There was no reason to call an ambulance after all. I ran to the toilet and threw up, the sickening crunch still reverberating in my head. Chapter 16 - In Transit One of my Dad¡¯s most overused sayings, which I¡¯ve noticed Paris repeating since she was promoted to homicide: ¡°It¡¯s not the crime; it¡¯s the cover-up.¡± Watching the Kowalczyks following their encounter with Refraxx, I understood just what they meant. Big Joe hunched over the distinctive blue motorcycle as he drove it away from the warehouse. The kid and Buzz worked on the apartment with bleach and scrub brushes, quickly eliminating any traces of blood. Old Joe slung the bagged up body into the trunk of a green SUV parked behind the warehouse, carefully moving around the sparse lamps to stay in the shadows. I had seen enough. Dropping my View, I dialed through my VoIP line. Use of the Delphic synth had taken too much time the last time, so I brought up a different program. ¡°Nine, one, one. What¡¯s your emergency?¡± a man¡¯s voice drawled. ¡°A man with a gun. I heard shots.¡± The voice was female, and a far more convincing speech synthesizer than my Delphic program. To mask any imperfections, it was sent through a filter to replicate the noise of a poor-quality cell phone mic. ¡°Stay calm, ma¡¯am. Are you in a safe place?¡± ¡°I think so. It looks like. I see a hole in the building.¡± ¡°Please give your location, ma¡¯am.¡± ¡°A warehouse on Shore, past Thirty-Third. Superior Shipping Solutions.¡± ¡°Superior¡­¡± keys cracked loudly. ¡°Eight nine nine one four Shore Boulevard?¡± That was the address. ¡°I don¡¯t know, maybe. I didn¡¯t see the numbers,¡± the woman¡¯s voice said. ¡°I¡¯ve dispatched police to that location. Please stay on the-¡± I disconnected the signal. There was no reason to say anything else and risk countermanding the dispatch. Logging into the NYST system, I saw that two heroes were inbound with an ETA of 21 minutes: Bronze Scarab and Flawless Form, both heavies. They needed to know the full parameters of the situation they were flying into. However, informing Whisper and the other partygoers was a more immediate concern, as I knew they were panicked about Refraxx¡¯s status. I accessed the drone again, but was not provided any movement controls this time. The video feed was pointing upwards at Harmony, showing the walls and ceiling of a second story room rather than the parlor area that the drone was previously in. ¡°Delphic, thank you for calling me back,¡± she began. ¡°I could really use your help with what I¡¯m doing now.¡± From her posture, arm positions, and the focus of her gaze off-screen, I concluded that she was working at a desk computer. ¡°I have an important update on the situation,¡± I sent. Harmony nodded, but didn¡¯t turn to face the device. ¡°Refraxx attacked the warehouse and was killed. I¡¯m sorry.¡± It seemed so abrupt even as I sent it, but time was limited. I hoped that someone else would take on the task of sharing this information with Whisper; I had no doubt how devastated she would be. Harmony¡¯s reaction was not what I expected. Her hands came into view as she crossed them under her arms, hugging herself. She pushed back and looked squarely at me¡­ or at least the camera¡­ for the first time. ¡°You¡¯re sure?¡± she said. ¡°It¡¯s not a comatose state, or a seemingly lethal wound? He¡¯s actually dead?¡± ¡°His neck was deliberately crushed by super strength. He is unambiguously dead at the hands of the Kowalczyk brothers.¡± ¡°At the hand of Old Joe, right?¡± Harmony asked quietly. ¡°He¡¯s the enforcer with super strength. He deliberately broke Zee¡¯s neck to kill him.¡± I didn¡¯t see any reason to ameliorate this. ¡°That¡¯s correct. There were four men in the warehouse apartment, and they are now working to dispose of Refraxx¡¯s vehicle and body.¡± She nodded, her hands reaching out of frame again as she turned back to the desk. ¡°That makes this even more important. Here I¡¯ll flag these.¡± My NYST system dashboard lit up with links to particular records as she continued explaining. ¡°Refraxx was sent on a solo recon mission near the warehouse. He heard gunshots and screams inside and had to investigate.¡± This didn¡¯t make sense. ¡°You sent him on a mission without readily available backup, at a time when much of the rest of the team would be out of reach?¡± I typed and sent before I could stop myself. She nodded. ¡°Unfortunately, that¡¯s what we¡¯re going with. If Refraxx went off on a tear, then the Kowalczyks were just defending themselves. If he was on an authorized mission, then they shot a law enforcement officer on duty.¡± She shook her head. ¡°I¡¯m backdating the edits, but I don¡¯t have the skills to cover my own tracks. Just getting the description to something believable is hard enough. Can you help?¡± None of this smelled right to me. Liberty didn¡¯t seem nearly as shocked by her friend¡¯s death as I expected, and her response was thought out well, as though it were planned. But then, Refraxx wasn¡¯t exactly a ¡®friend¡¯. He had sided with Whisper in the ongoing argument over interrogation techniques. He had openly questioned Liberty¡¯s leadership. In the short time I had seen him in action, he had come off as reckless and violent¡­ and not in a way that someone like Liberty could expect to control. Combined with her current reaction, and her recent attempt to capture Delphic, Liberty¡¯s motives were highly suspect. But even so, her actions made perfect sense. She was salvaging what little of the situation she could, by at least making sure Zee¡¯s killers went to jail. I agreed with that, even if nothing else made sense. ¡°Yes, I will help,¡± I finally sent. ¡°Please continue working on the corrected narrative. I will modify the files.¡± A very brief smile flashed as she nodded in response, then her focused expression returned. ¡°Could you update the inbound team on the current status? You have more recent intel than anyone else.¡± A note of impatience underlay her otherwise cheerful tone; as polite as the request was, it was a dismissal. There was one issue to clear up first. ¡°You will inform Whisper,¡± I sent. It wasn¡¯t phrased as a question. She didn¡¯t look up, but her shoulders and arms tensed. ¡°Oh, you didn¡¯t tell her first? I think she should hear it from you.¡± Her voice wavered only slightly, but I heard the plaintive note there. I sighed to myself. ¡°Acknowledged.¡± I disconnected. With less than a quarter hour left until the inbound team arrived at the warehouse, their briefing was higher priority. I told myself that, as I was certainly not looking forward to speaking with Whisper. It had the advantage of most likely being true as well. This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. Bronze Scarab and Flawless Form were both listed as heavies in the NYST system, cleared for deployment as the front line of a team even in situations of anticipated violence. A minimum requirement for being a heavy is that you¡¯re bulletproof: you can function unimpeded even when facing gunfire. The two heroes¡¯ profiles showed ¡®sustained construct armor¡¯ and ¡®physical resilience¡¯ as the basis for their heavy designations, respectively. Their channels were not open when I called in, but they answered immediately. I received a video feed from Bronze Scarab showing the nighttime lights of New Jersey ahead with the glimmering Hudson below. The image occasionally pulled upward rapidly as though the camera-holder were jumping. ¡°Bronze Scarab and Flawless Form, this is Delphic,¡± I sent over their channel. ¡°I will brief you on the situation.¡± ¡°I can hear you fine,¡± a woman¡¯s voice said. ¡°FF?¡± The video briefly angled downward as Bronze Scarab looked toward her partner. I was surprised by what I saw; the tall super was held by the solid ice-blue claws of some impossibly large bird of prey. At first I was worried that the exposure to the high altitude winds had caused his exposed skin, including a completely bald head, to flush, but after a moment¡¯s reflection I called up his profile image and realized that his skin was that lavender color all the time. ¡°I copy,¡± came the slightly hoarse reply from the male super. His costume appeared to be a lightweight grey gi, pressed awkwardly against his lanky body by the force of the wind. Flawless Form was safe but not comfortable. ¡°Refraxx was performing solo reconnaissance of the Kowalczyk warehouse on his motorcycle,¡± I began. ¡°Um, why?¡± Bronze Scarab asked. ¡°He¡¯s not cleared for that sort of mission.¡± ¡°We¡¯ve both partnered with Refraxx before,¡± Flawless Form agreed. ¡°He¡¯s rather bad at avoiding attention. His powers don¡¯t help with stealth either.¡± The silence stretched as I found myself at a loss for a convincing reply. They were right; Refraxx was not a good candidate for that sort of mission, at least not solo¡­ ¡°Delphic, are you still there?¡± Bronze Scarab asked. ¡°I am still on the line,¡± I sent. ¡°Sorry for the delay; I was accessing Lady Liberty¡¯s records on Refraxx¡¯s mission parameters.¡± Time to make something up. ¡°He had an underground contact that he claimed could provide surveillance support and he didn¡¯t want to spook her with additional heroes.¡± I would have to fill Liberty in on my embellishments. ¡°The mission was not supposed to involve direct engagement with the targets.¡± I heard a high-pitch burst of rapid-fire laughter from Bronze Scarab. ¡°Thank you for actually answering us! I was sure you were going to stonewall.¡± ¡°Has that happened before?¡± ¡°More often than not,¡± Flawless Form noted. I immediately regretted my ad lib; a refusal to answer would apparently not have been unusual. I had opened myself up to an unnecessary risk. Still, the damage was done. ¡°Much of this is tentative, extrapolated after the fact,¡± I qualified. ¡°It seems that Refraxx saw or heard something in the warehouse that compelled him to act. A local woman called reporting gunfire. He might have heard the shots.¡± ¡°He didn¡¯t call for backup?¡± Flawless Form¡¯s question dripped with disapproval. ¡°He was running silent for surveillance.¡± This part, at least, I had thought about. ¡°He apparently identified the situation as an eminent emergency. He demolished both exterior and interior doorways in order to reach the scene.¡± ¡°Sure, if he thought someone¡¯s life might be in danger.¡± Bronze Scarab¡¯s tone was more agreeable than her partner¡¯s, at least towards Refraxx. ¡°As far as I can tell, the ensuing incident was not recorded,¡± I sent. I took a deep breath and exhaled a long sigh as I typed out the next part. ¡°Buzz Kowalczyk and his two powerful enforcers were there, along with a younger relative armed with a gun.¡± ¡°Oh no,¡± I heard Bronze Scarab mutter. ¡°Ten minutes later, one of the enforcers placed Refraxx¡¯s body in the trunk of a dark green utility vehicle parked behind the warehouse. The body had two bullet wounds, and the neck was broken by super strength.¡± There was a short stunned silence before Flawless Form spoke. ¡°He¡¯s dead, is what you¡¯re saying.¡± ¡°Refraxx is dead, yes. And his killers are hiding his corpse.¡± Another pause, then Bronze Scarab: ¡°Let¡¯s take these guys down.¡± I thrilled, resonating with her tone; I also very much wanted to see these guys taken down for what they had done. But I came back down to Earth when I heard Flawless Form speak again. The hoarseness was gone from his voice; despite his uncomfortable travelling position, his speech was smooth and even. ¡°What abilities do these enforcers have? Enhanced strength and stamina?¡± ¡°One of them has super strength and invulnerability. The other has enhanced speed.¡± ¡°What sort of invulnerability? Physical resilience or force projection?¡± he asked. I hadn¡¯t heard the distinction characterized before, but the answer was clear to me. ¡°Force projection. There¡¯s evidence he resisted a telekinetic attack from Refraxx.¡± Bronze Scarab cursed. ¡°I may not be able to restrain him, then.¡± ¡°If they resist,¡± her partner continued, ¡°the speedster is your primary target. I¡¯ll deal with the other. Do we know names? How are they dressed?¡± I continued to provide details of the scenario in response to Flawless Form¡¯s questions over the next few minutes. The questions only stopped when the NYST client noted that the team was approaching its target, and headquarters joined the channel. ¡°Hey guys, Zephyr here.¡± The speech was just slightly too loud and fast to be easily understood. ¡°Just a heads up, there may be cops on the scene.¡± I heard another surprisingly loud curse from Bronze Scarab. ¡°Are we still going in hot?¡± There was silence over the channel for nearly a minute. ¡°Yeah, go in swinging. This is a rescue mission, straight up. Take down the targets and get our boy out of there. We¡¯ll deal with the fallout after.¡± As the warehouse became visible within the video feed, I closed my eyes and returned to my View of the same scene. Standing in front of the hole that used to be the main entrance of the building, Buzz had a large smile on his face, entertaining two uniformed police officers who stood and laughed with him. Buzz noticed the oversized blue form first, and the cops followed his gaze, all jocularity fleeing their expressions. The three stood gaping as the heroes landed, and I didn¡¯t blame them. What approached was not a detailed glowing form of a bird, but more like a hastily brushed background bird in a watercolor painting. No head was evident, nor could feathers be made out on the form. Instead, the long smooth wings extended twenty feet from either side of the small woman whose arm movements matched their slow beating. The oversized claws released Flawless Form ten feet above the ground, and he somersaulted through his landing, coming out of his forward roll to stand upright almost within arm¡¯s reach of one of the uniformed police. Bronze Scarab¡¯s bird¡¯s wings and claws were shrinking into themselves at the same time, melding into a translucent shape that surrounded her like a watery aura. The decreased opacity of the form allowed the woman¡¯s costume to be visible for the first time: a cloth ensemble in metallic brown, including a top and short skirt styled to suggest ancient hoplite armor. Stripes in the skirt matched the scarab emblem on her chest and sleeves done in midnight blue. As her boots touched the concrete of the warehouse yard, the police took a step back away from her and towards Buzz telegraphing who they saw as the charge and who as the threat. Hands rested on buttoned holsters. But even as they stepped back, Buzz took a step forward and raised a hand. ¡°Hey there. You guys here about the emergency call? I think we¡¯re already sorted out, aren¡¯t we, officers?¡± Bronze Scarab took another step forward to reply. ¡°Are you Buzz Kowalczyk?¡± she asked. While this staredown was happening, Flawless Form¡¯s attention was on the gates and walkways surrounding the warehouse. Without saying a word, he took off at a run on a walkway that appeared to lead around the side of the building. Buzz had just started to answer Scarab when he noticed her partner moving. ¡°I don¡¯t see how¡­. Hey! Get back here! This is private property!¡± I panned my View up and swung it around to see both Buzz and Flawless Form as the latter turned the corner, immediately zeroing in on the correct SUV based on my earlier description. ¡°There was clearly an incident here,¡± Bronze Scarab explained. ¡°He is checking around the building for any other,¡± she gestured at the missing door, ¡°external damage.¡± The super was halfway between the building corner and the vehicle when a loud boom was heard over the channel as Flawless Form abruptly stopped. Big Joe was now standing directly in front of him, close enough for their noses to nearly touch. ¡°What was that?¡± Zephyr exclaimed over the channel. I pushed my View forward to watch as Big Joe locked eyes with Flawless Form, a determined frown on his face. The hero¡¯s eyes flickered to his right, and the enforcer leaned slightly in that direction. A glance to the left received the same reaction. Without saying a word, Big Joe had made his intent clear: he wasn¡¯t planning to let Flawless Form past him. The t¨ºte-¨¤-t¨ºte lasted only seconds before Flawless Form moved, and all Hell broke loose. Chapter 17 - Hot Pursuit I didn¡¯t find out until later that Flawless Form¡¯s physical enhancements were limited to healing and invulnerability; his powers included no super strength or speed. That¡¯s why what happened next was surprising, because despite Big Joe¡¯s speed, he was entirely outclassed. In films, martial arts are dramatized ¨C broad, sweeping motions into stylish poses ¨C but the best way I can characterize the super¡¯s movements is ¡°efficient.¡± He took a half-step forward as he punched with his left hand, and halfway through the motion Big Joe¡¯s right hand closed around the lavender wrist to stop him. But, seemingly simultaneous with the punch, the hero¡¯s right hand was already rising up to grab and hold onto the speedster¡¯s arm. The punch transitioned to a wrench up and a push back, and Big Joe was on the other side of the thinner man, turned around, and stumbling backward off-balance. Flawless Form made three more steps toward the green vehicle by the time Big Joe had found his balance, but on the fourth step, accompanied by another boom, the enforcer¡¯s foot collided with the back of his leg. The hero slid forward along the concrete, and he deliberately leaned forward with the force of it, placing one palm on the ground and righting himself with it. Joe had to stand from his own simultaneous fall, as the kick had bounced him almost as far backward as it sent his target forward. The hero stood, turning halfway toward his foe, as the latter leaned and moved again. Bronze Scarab appeared around the corner as Flawless Form twitched to the left, then to the right, blocking, with his fists and his elbows, attacks that were no more than blurs to me. In two successive booms, Big Joe stood near the parked cars for just a moment before speeding toward the hero again. But before he had even started moving, Flawless Form¡¯s arms were extending to grasp and pull upward, and Big Joe appeared next with his arm and shirt held in the hero¡¯s hands as he was again wrenched up and off the ground. This time he never landed. A pair of thick blue vines streamed from Bronze Scarab as she charged towards them. One vine was immediately on-target, wrapping tightly around one of Big Joe¡¯s legs, while the other initially hit her ally¡¯s arm and had to be relaxed and re-aimed. This minor mistake was no opening for the enforcer, however; for the second time in less than an hour he found himself immobilized simply by being held away from anything able to provide purchase. ¡°Hey whoa! What are you doin¡¯ to Joe?!¡± Buzz Kowalczyk finally made it around the corner, the short jaunt enough to see him red and starting to wind. The two policemen stood to either side and slightly behind him, and one of them had now drawn his weapon. ¡°Say he¡¯s under arrest,¡± came Zephyr¡¯s voice over the channel. ¡°I¡¯m arresting him,¡± Bronze Scarab announced. ¡°For what? He hasn¡¯t done nothin¡¯.¡± Buzz¡¯s body language was growing increasingly belligerent. He pointed a finger at Bronze Scarab as he hustled up to her, leaning forward to enter her personal space. ¡°You got no reason to be here, no jurisdiction, and no warrant, so put him down¡­. Hey!¡± The last word was directed at Flawless Form, who had resumed his single-minded trip to the car I had identified as holding Refraxx¡¯s corpse. He tried the trunk latch, but it was locked. Buzz kept yelling. ¡°Get away from Joe¡¯s car! You know you can¡¯t just start snoopin¡¯ around without no warrant!¡± His face was even redder now, but he seemed content to stay next to Bronze Scarab and yell rather than moving any closer to her partner. ¡°Ma¡¯am,¡± the policeman with the drawn weapon said, ¡°I think we need to ask you to put the guy down, please.¡± He looked to be the younger of the two, but the other cop clearly deferred to him. He held his pistol in both hands pointed toward the ground. ¡°Let¡¯s all step over here, away from the vehicles, and talk this out.¡± ¡°No way!¡± Zephyr denied over the HQ channel. ¡°This is a federal case now, the locals can¡¯t interfere.¡± ¡°Sounds like they can and will,¡± Bronze Scarab said quietly. She had moved her captive until he was just outside arm¡¯s reach of her, still dangling upside-down by his ankles. ¡°What was that?¡± the policeman asked her. ¡°Officer,¡± she began, ¡°this man assaulted a federal agent with a lethal weapon. As I said, he¡¯s under arrest now. I won¡¯t be turning him loose.¡± ¡°Now you¡¯re just makin¡¯ stuff up!¡± Buzz said. ¡°Joe don¡¯t carry no gun.¡± ¡°He can move at supersonic speeds. I¡¯m sure you heard it a minute ago,¡± this was directed more at the cops than as a reply to the criminal. ¡°He employed his powers to attack one of us, and that¡¯s against the law.¡± ¡°He attacked me first!¡± bellowed Big Joe, who continued to struggle without purchase. ¡°It was self defense.¡± ¡°And you can tell that to the judge. You¡¯re still under arrest.¡± Bronze Scarab looked to the cops for a verdict. The younger policemen looked at his partner, who nodded. ¡°All right. But Mr. Kowalczyk is right on the other stuff. You can¡¯t just start poking around.¡± ¡°Hot pursuit,¡± Zephyr suggested. ¡°Tell them about Refraxx.¡± Unnoticed in the background, Flawless Form had silently walked back toward Bronze Scarab until he stood almost beside her. Her aura and presence made her look much larger than she clearly was when her taller partner was near her to compare with. The lanky hero was the one who responded next. ¡°Did Mr. Kowalczyk explain to you about the fight he had with a registered super hero earlier?¡± This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. The cops¡¯ eyes both widened. ¡°No,¡± the older one said. His voice was higher pitched than I expected, a smooth tenor very similar to Flawless Form¡¯s. ¡°He said there had been an equipment accident.¡± ¡°We came here on a report that he had been attacked, badly injured, and shoved into the trunk of that car,¡± Flawless Form explained. ¡°We don¡¯t need a warrant to try to rescue him, do we?¡± ¡°Not if it¡¯s¡­ what, like an emergency? I don¡¯t think so,¡± the younger cop agreed. He addressed Buzz again. ¡°Sir, you seemed to know who the car belongs to, yeah? Could we get a key out here and take a look?¡± ¡°Are you kidding me!?!¡± I didn¡¯t think the crime boss could get any redder, but he did, flushing a bright color that couldn¡¯t be healthy. ¡°No way am I getting Joe out here to open up his car based on some wacked out story that he stuffed a corpse in it.¡± At that, both cops swiveled to give Buzz Kowalczyk their full attention. ¡°Sir,¡± the younger cop said, his words low and careful. ¡°Nobody said anything about a corpse.¡± As his gaffe sunk in, blood drained from Buzz¡¯s features, changing them from bright red to a paler pink. ¡°That¡¯s what he said, was¡­ wait, I¡­¡± He shook his head, and took out his phone. ¡°I¡¯ll get Joe down here.¡± ¡°We should call this in too?¡± The older cop stated it as a question to the younger, who nodded. ¡°Let¡¯s open up the trunk and talk to Joe, and then we¡¯ll need to call back in with an update.¡± He holstered his weapon again, noticeably relaxing despite the dangling form of Big Joe still held by his ankles next to the two New York supers. ¡°So this was a super fight, huh?¡± The man¡¯s curiosity was genuine, and was clearly echoed by his partner. Buzz spoke into his phone, facing away from the group, and I couldn¡¯t hear either half of the conversation over Bronze Scarab¡¯s answer. ¡°We think so,¡± she began. ¡°Refraxx was only supposed to be meeting someone in the area, but it looks like he heard gunshots and entered the warehouse to investigate. A witness saw his body being carried out later.¡± ¡°Who? There wasn¡¯t anyone nearby to question when we arrived.¡± She shrugged. ¡°We weren¡¯t told; probably an anonymous tip-off. People don¡¯t like to have their names in the record when supers are involved.¡± ¡°You¡¯d be surprised how often that applies to regular police work, too,¡± he said, ¡°it¡¯s kind of a double standard that -¡± The uniformed officer¡¯s next words were cut off by gun shots, at least five in as many seconds. Even as the young cop fell over, one of his legs having taken a bullet, the sudden attack had immobilized him and his partner as well as Bronze Scarab as they tried to get their bearings with the shots echoing around the nearby building and small lot. I, too, was momentarily disoriented. I swiveled my View around to the warehouse, where Old Joe had launched himself out of a rear exit and in Bronze Scarab¡¯s direction. The young man stood in the doorway, trading out an empty clip for a new one. But while most of us hesitated, two people did not. Flawless Form slid forward the moment the first shot was heard, shielding the fallen policemen¡¯s body with his own. Buzz Kowalczyk had been waiting for the sound of gunfire, and without even looking around to confirm, he closed on the older officer facing away from him. He grabbed the man¡¯s upper arm with one hand and placed his other hand, palm open, on the back of the man¡¯s head. I was not expecting the flames that licked against the back of the man¡¯s head and climbed his arm, any more than I was expecting the sleeves of Buzz Kowalczyk¡¯s shirt to darken and curl toward his shoulders. But the cop¡¯s screams brought Bronze Scarab out of her momentary stupor, lunging at the (obviously super-powered) crime boss with one appendage while holding the speedster enforcer with the other. The cop¡¯s skin blackened and the flames spread as she wrapped her loose vine around one of Kowalczyk¡¯s arms, preparing to yank him off. Old Joe¡¯s fist sunk into the body of her glowing construct at this point, getting within inches of her flesh and knocking her backwards off her feet. Both of her extended appendages released and flowed back into the blue mass as it grew more opaque immediately around her; her hands flew up to her head as though she had been pummeled hard. Old Joe moved quickly forward to stand over the fallen heroine, his left hand trying to find purchase in the blue mass of her armor as he wound up his right fist and slammed it down into her. Again it stopped inches away from her body, and again the glowing blue seemed to contract inwards and solidify around her. He punched again, causing an audible groan from the woman on the ground. The groan was audible because the policeman had stopped screaming, his skin still bubbling and steaming as Buzz dropped the fresh corpse onto the ground. ¡°Joe, now! Mikey, come on!¡± the boss yelled, and ran into the parking lot. Big Joe had regained his feet and was the first in the nondescript black car, followed quickly by Buzz and¡­ Mikey, Old Joe bringing up the rear. Flawless Form was trying to stabilize the young cop while Bronze Scarab groaned in pain on the ground; the sedan peeled out of the parking lot unmolested. The chatter on the HQ channel had been constant since the first gun shot, but it finally cleared up into something intelligible. ¡°Team, report,¡± Zephyr said. ¡°Are you injured? What happened?¡± I was in the best position to answer him. ¡°Four suspects fleeing in a black sedan,¡± I sent, and keyed the license plate number into the NYST system. ¡°Both police officers on the scene were assaulted. Buzz Kowalczyk used previously unknown tactothermic powers to kill one officer. A bullet from the same gun used on Refraxx shot and disabled the other officer. Bronze Scarab is insensate.¡± Zephyr groaned, a noise that seemed every bit as deeply felt as Bronze Scarab¡¯s. ¡°FF, is the cop going to live?¡± ¡°Yes,¡± the super said without hesitation. ¡°His leg is badly fractured, but he¡¯ll survive it.¡± ¡°I need to call this in,¡± the cop winced, holding his leg. ¡°Zephyr, can you contact Newark PD for¡­¡± Flawless Form looked at the officer¡¯s name badge. ¡°Sergeant Trellis, please. Let them know there was a violent incident and two officers down.¡± ¡°Will do. Your backup is still twenty minutes out. Liberty said to expect extra support shortly after that, but she wouldn¡¯t say who.¡± Bronze Scarab sighed, finally sitting up. ¡°Well, I hope whoever it is, they¡¯re packing more power than we were.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think power was the issue,¡± Flawless Form disagreed. ¡°We were caught by surprise, and then they went after the nor¡­ um, the officers instead of us.¡± ¡°Police and EMT¡¯s are on their way, five minutes max,¡± Zephyr supplied. Bronze Scarab stood, and moved towards the cars. ¡°That gives us time to confirm.¡± Nobody said a word as a large, stylized crowbar formed in blue in her hands. She wedged the tool under the edge of the trunk and pushed down, hard, with both hands. The trunk popped open, revealing taped trash bags that were quickly torn apart to reveal the mangled and blood-streaked body of Refraxx. A limping Sergeant Trellis, leaning against Flawless Form, insisted on seeing for himself. The three of them were still standing there, clustered around the back of the car in silence, when two police cruisers pulled up behind them. Warring grief and anger on their faces, the survivors turned to address more of Newark¡¯s finest¡­ and, I hoped, concoct a plan to finally end this mess. Chapter 18 - Power and Responsibility It took very little time to locate the Kowalczyks by rewinding my View to just before they left the warehouse and riding along. Mikey was hunched over with his head between his legs the entire car ride, and Old Joe periodically rubbed his back and murmured something. Buzz and Big Joe were having a much louder discussion in the front seat. They hadn¡¯t left the city, instead holing up in a small duplex¨Ca condo in a residential ne ighborhood close to the shore. They used a coded keypad to get the car into the garage. The way the enforcers rifled through the kitchen cupboards and pantry indicated that they would be staying for some time. I noted the address and the condo¡¯s available exits, confirming that the four of them were still there in the present before turning my attention back to the scene unfolding at the warehouse. Yellow tape cordoned off the area where the fray had occurred; they were hauling the policeman¡¯s charred body away from the scene. Sergeant Trellis watched from his seat at the back of an ambulance, emergency workers still checking his temporary bindings. ¡°You need to be seen to properly,¡± Flawless Form said to the injured cop. The super was standing just at the edge of the circle made by the working lights of the ambulance: close enough to be seen, but far enough to stay out of everyone¡¯s way. I noticed that the tall man seemed entirely confident in his posture but awkwardly uncertain in his demeanor, and I wondered how he managed both. ¡°Bone fragments may migrate and cause more damage of the injury isn¡¯t addressed soon.¡± The policeman nodded, but said, ¡°Once I brief the Captain, I promise. I¡¯m sure he¡¯ll be here soon.¡± His gaze locked on the body of his partner as its gurney was lifted into the back of a second emergency vehicle. ¡°Nobody deserves to die like that. It was¡­¡± he shuddered and trailed off. ¡°Did you know him long?¡± Flawless Form asked softly. Trellis shook his head. ¡°Six months. He was a rookie, joined the force after twenty years as a navy MP.¡± His eyes fixed to something unseen in the middle distance. ¡°Everything he saw was by the book before tonight. I don¡¯t even think he ever drew his gun on duty.¡± ¡°Hey guys,¡± Zephyr began. ¡°Let¡¯s get this settled as IDP while we have a minute. Bronze Scarab?¡± Her video feed showed the recently scrubbed apartment where Refraxx had died. ¡°Yeah, HQ?¡± ¡°For the record, do the ongoing actions of these suspects constitute an Imminent Danger to the Public, likely to result in further casualties if left unchecked?¡± There was a loud sigh from her and a brief pause. Zephyr was setting things up to justify the hero team not having to try to take the Kowalczyks by minimal force. Otherwise, teams could be stuck in the loop of engaging with an enemy that would injure or kill and then immediately flee. ¡°Confirmed,¡± she finally said. ¡°Suspects are IDP.¡± Her voice was strong and clear. Zephyr continued. ¡°Flawless Form, for the record, are the suspects an Imminent Danger to the Public?¡± The hero had turned away from Trellis and left the island of light entirely. In the dark, I noticed that small dots interspersed at random on his skin seemed to glow faintly, like a sparse dusting of invisible sequins. ¡°Negative,¡± he muttered softly. Zephyr cursed. ¡°FF, it¡¯s a good thing I didn¡¯t hear that,¡± he shot. ¡°I need your confirmation, for the record, that the men that murdered a super and burned a normie alive¡­ Are. Imminently. Dangerous.¡± ¡°They¡¯re¡­¡± the hero coughed a bit, clearing his throat. His next words came out clearer. ¡°They don¡¯t fit the profile of an IPD. These aren¡¯t supers on a rampage.¡± Zephyr sputtered, and the tempo of his speech accelerated. ¡°Look we all know you have this whole nonlethal thing that you¡¯re always pushing and I get it I really do but this isn¡¯t a situation where we have the luxury two men are dead already and these are clearly very -¡± ¡°Hey!¡± The shout was not only louder than Flawless Form¡¯s normal voice but half an octave higher. He followed up on successfully cutting Zephyr off. ¡°You know I play by the rules, HQ. If you tell us it¡¯s an IPD situation then I¡¯m obliged to treat it as one.¡± He inhaled sharply before continuing. ¡°But I saw the ambush, and the intent wasn¡¯t to hurt anyone. It was to get away.¡± I watched him turn halfway around toward the spot where the cop had burned alive. ¡°Private Nunez was killed, but Kowalczyk made no attempt to move on to any of the rest of us. The attack on Bronze Scarab was called off the moment Buzz thought they could escape. I just¡­¡± Zephyr cut back in. ¡°I appreciate your desire for accuracy, but we really need a unanimous assessment to -¡± ¡°I just.¡± The reassertion was even firmer this time. ¡°I just don¡¯t think they¡¯ll kill anyone they don¡¯t have to. They may be reckless about who gets hurt, but they¡¯re not out to cause destruction. It¡¯s not an IPD scenario.¡± ¡°Eh, screw it,¡± Zephyr said seemingly to himself. And then a much more professional, ¡°Thank you for your assessment. Now, for the record, this is an IPD scenario. You are directed to neutralize the four suspects -¡± ¡°Four!?¡± exclaimed Bronze Scarab. I, too, was surprised they were counting Mikey. ¡°- by the most expedient means and without regard for their safety. I repeat your primary objective is to neutralize the suspects, not to capture them. Is that clear?¡± ¡°Yes, HQ, that¡¯s clear.¡± Bronze Scarab responded. Her partner did not. Zephyr began again. ¡°Flawless Form, do you copy the -¡± Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°Yes HQ, I copy. Please stand by.¡± He moved back to stand next to Trellis as a black town car maneuvered between cruisers. Bronze Scarab also moved to flank the injured officer. Two men in dark suits exited the car; each had a gold badge pinning his tie to his shirt. ¡°Captain!¡± the officer called, waving the men over as they took in the nighttime scene. The older of the two men, clearly the one in charge, was broad-shouldered and round-bodied. His lined face aged him to at least fifty, but he still sported a full head of straw blond hair. His partner was a taller, younger Asian man with a deliberately neutral expression. ¡°Trellis, what happened?¡± the rotund older man spoke with a large voice that carried well. He leaned forward as he walked, not stopping until he was looming directly over the injured sergeant, unconcerned with personal space. ¡°Powered perps, sir. They got Nunez.¡± ¡°I heard.¡± He leaned in even closer, catching both of the policeman¡¯s eyes in his own as he slapped a hand onto his shoulder. ¡°I¡¯m sorry, son. I really am.¡± ¡°Me too, Captain,¡± I heard Trellis say, and from the close vantage of my View, I saw the younger officer relax at the same time that the captain tensed. The burden of the night ¨C the heavy emotional load of the whole situation, the death of the cop ¨C was somehow transferred from that young man to his superior in the space of a few heartbeats. In the next moment, the captain leaned back from his man and nodded, gesturing to the EMTs to prepare to leave. They closed up the ambulance, but one stayed near Trellis as he listened to his superior. The captain turned his attention to the costumed heroes on either side. ¡°You two were involved in the fight?¡± They both nodded, and Bronze Scarab spoke. ¡°That¡¯s right. Refraxx,¡± she gestured to the open trunk where the mangled body still lay, ¡°was in a fight, and we were sent down to back him up.¡± ¡°These perps killed your friend? That¡¯s what started all of this?¡± His voice was hard, the questions more interrogation than concern. Both heroes nodded again, and she continued. ¡°They killed him and hid the body there. They told Trellis the damage to the building was an equipment accident; there had been no fight. It¡¯s clear they meant to keep the murder a secret and hide the body somewhere.¡± ¡°Oh, that¡¯s clear is it?¡± The captain¡¯s tone was caustic, dripping with disdain. ¡°So these perps are talking, nice and peaceful, to my boys, and you two show up and start throwing punches?¡± ¡°No, that¡¯s not what happened,¡± Flawless Form said. ¡°We showed up to investigate and were attacked. We certainly didn¡¯t start a fight unprovoked.¡± ¡°Uh huh,¡± the captain drawled. ¡°Jeremy, is that so?¡± he asked Trellis. ¡°Yes sir,¡± the sergeant replied with no hesitation. ¡°Mister Kowalczyk had just -¡± ¡°Say what now?¡± the older man interrupted. ¡°Who did you say these perps were?¡± ¡°The Kowalczyks,¡± Jeremy repeated. ¡°Buzz, two named Joe, and a younger one whose name they didn¡¯t give.¡± ¡°Buzz Kowalczyk has been dead for more than a decade.¡± The captain traded a worried glance with his partner. ¡°Whoever you saw here tonight, whatever he called himself -¡± ¡°Junior, sir,¡± Flawless Form interjected. ¡°Buzz Kowalczyk, Junior.¡± ¡°Buzz had a son?¡± ¡°One with a tight leash on his father¡¯s enforcers, from what I could see,¡± Sergeant Trellis pointed out. ¡°Obviously not tight enough, if he gets his cover blown and they kill two people within an hour,¡± the captain muttered. ¡°The important point,¡± Bronze Scarab insisted, ¡°is that there¡¯s a group of super villains on the loose in Newark, and we have no idea where they¡¯re going or why.¡± I couldn¡¯t have asked for a better opening. ¡°They are hiding in a suburban residence twelve miles from your current location,¡± I sent. ¡°They are planning to stay there for at least the next few hours.¡± ¡°They won¡¯t be loose in my city for long,¡± the captain insisted. His speech overlapped with mine; he had no reason to refrain from talking over me since he couldn¡¯t hear over the NYST channels. ¡°Sorry, correction,¡± Bronze Scarab supplied. ¡°They went to ground, and we know where.¡± ¡°How?!¡± this exclamation came not from the captain himself, but from his partner. ¡°Delphic is supporting the team,¡± Flawless Form answered. ¡°Oh,¡± the taller man responded. I was quite gratified that this seemed to be a sufficient explanation. ¡°Quick update, guys,¡± Zephyr announced. ¡°The van¡¯s tied up at least another ten minutes getting over the bridge, but Liberty says your other support should be there any time.¡± I missed the first part of the captain¡¯s next statement: ¡°¡­ get a SWAT team mobilized to flush them out. Have your headquarters call the dispatch with the address and details on the perps. This will be over in twenty minutes.¡± ¡°Thanks for your offer of assistance, captain, but I don¡¯t think there¡¯s any reason to put your men in further danger,¡± Bronze Scarab replied. The captain took a step back, a snarl curling his lips; he exchanged a bemused glance with his partner. ¡°Assistance?! That¡¯s not what I said!¡± His voice, loud to begin with, was now booming enough to create a bit of reverb in the line. ¡°The perps are in my city, not in New York. You give us the info we need, and we will clean up this mess.¡± He squared himself against her and kept her eyes. ¡°The supers have done enough damage to Newark for one night. We can take it from here.¡± A faint flush washed over Bronze Scarab¡¯s features at this; she made fists out of her hands although she managed to leave them firmly at her sides. ¡°With all due respect, captain, it¡¯s the supers that are in a position to resolve this mess,¡± she insisted, struggling to keep her tone civil. ¡°Uh huh,¡± he grunted again, and pulled his shortwave receiver out of his belt. He turned away from the supers as he began, ¡°Marcie, get me Tim on the phone. We need the full team to roll out as soon as we get the address¡­.¡± The roiling blue tentacle had stretched halfway from Bronze Scarab to the captain when Flawless Form¡¯s hand touched her shoulder. The construct stopped reaching and quickly pulled back as she gave a grateful nod to her partner and regained her control. ¡°So Captain Mallory is mobilizing a SWAT team?¡± Zephyr asked. ¡°At least one of them is bulletproof! How is he planning to take them down?¡± Bronze Scarab coughed. ¡°For that matter, how are we? I don¡¯t have anything that can stop Old Joe.¡± ¡°Who¡¯s the backup?¡± Flawless Form asked. ¡°Nine-Point-Nine and Framerate,¡± she answered. The right eye of her mask had a miniature lens in it that acted as a display; that explained how she had the navigation data to fly directly to the warehouse. ¡°That might do it,¡± he admitted. ¡°If he slows Joe down and she reduces his leverage, you should be able to get him immobilized.¡± The heroine nodded, but she still looked uncertain. ¡°If not, what would we -¡± ¡°Good evening,¡± said a baritone voice. The two supers each jumped at the man who stood facing them, near where the captain had stood during their previous exchange. Sergeant Trellis also gave the man his full attention, and murmurs from the police still working nearby made it clear his presence had been noted. Millisec wasn¡¯t tall. He wore a midnight blue costume with heavy plating on his head and torso, but tight around his muscular arms and legs. A large pack was securely fastened to his back, and several projections from his belt made it clear he was heavily equipped¡­ or perhaps armed. The emblem across his chest was a stylized clock with two long hands right next to each other, as though the second hand was caught in the instant of ticking over. The dark costume color made the medium brown skin of his chin and hands seem lighter by comparison. ¡°I take it you¡¯re the surprise?¡± Bronze Scarab asked, but she didn¡¯t wait for an answer. ¡°Did Liberty fill you in on the situation here?¡± ¡°Refraxx is in trouble and needs a rescue, right?¡± The heroine sighed in weary resignation. ¡°Not quite.¡± She gestured for the USST hero to follow her over to the open trunk. ¡°We¡¯ll fill you in, and quickly. We have an assault to plan.¡± Chapter 19 - Imminent Danger Despite advancements in materials technology over the past few decades, superhero costumes still ran the gamut between stylistic and functional. The line wasn¡¯t always clear; for example, most people would consider Flawless Form¡¯s gi to be a functional choice, but there were plenty of other options that would provide similar coverage and freedom of movement. The gi also suggested unarmed combat as a matter of style. There was no ambiguity in the two costumes worn by the supers who stepped out of the armored van. 9.9 wore a shimmering unitard and skirt that would have gone unremarked at any figure skating competition, with a matching half-mask framed by feathered hair. Framerate was faceless behind military police riot gear, a superhero emblem in place of department insignia. The outfits screamed ¡°style¡± and ¡°function¡± respectively. I had checked their profiles and listed powers while Bronze Scarab and Flawless Form filled in Millisec on the situation. 9.9 manipulated friction in her vicinity, allowing her to skate on virtually any surface and trip up suspects. Reading between the lines in her file, it looked like the main problem that she had run into was friendly fire ¨C she affected an area and had sometimes tripped up her allies as well. Framerate was one of the newest members of NYST, and another recruit from the ¡°reformed villain¡± program. He could focus on a person to speed up or slow down their passage of time. That meant he could be a low-grade speedster when working on his own, but was expected to be far more effective in a group scenario where he could enhance an ally. Millisec shifted position to include the two arriving supers. Trellis had been carted off to the hospital; other than Captain Mallory, the only personnel left on the scene were a handful of uniformed police hanging around the trunk where Refraxx¡¯s body still lay. There were apparently complications about removing a federal law enforcement victim from the scene. ¡°I¡¯m mainly worried about the extent of their powers that they haven¡¯t shown us yet,¡± Millisec said. ¡°Buzz wasn¡¯t even known to be a super, right? He can burn something by touch, but what about at a distance? Does it tire him out? Is he protected from heat? How much control does he have?¡± ¡°He had gotten increasingly angry during our encounter,¡± Flawless Form supplied, ¡°and visibly flushed. It¡¯s possible he was channeling excess heat from inside. The ability might even be linked to his anger somehow.¡± ¡°So it¡¯s true?¡± asked 9.9 in an accented mezzo soprano. ¡°The targets killed a cop and are IPD?¡± In response to nods from the other supers, she continued, ¡°What about the kid? He¡¯s just got a gun, right?¡± ¡°HQ didn¡¯t distinguish,¡± Bronze Scarab said. ¡°But if we can¡¯t disarm and arrest a kid with a gun, we should hang up our capes.¡± ¡°None of us are wearing capes,¡± Millisec pointed out. ¡°Mission tactics are your call,¡± Zephyr said over the channel. ¡°I¡¯m not going to micromanage you. But don¡¯t put your team in danger to protect an IPD, all right? That¡¯s the whole point.¡± ¡°Oh, hey, HQ. Is Liberty there?¡± Millisec said. His tone was casual, like he was having a regular phone conversation. ¡°I¡¯m listening,¡± sounded Lady Liberty¡¯s rich female voice. ¡°But I¡¯m not there. We¡¯re en route back to New York. Two hours minimum.¡± ¡°Oh! Good.¡± He shifted gears with practiced ease. ¡°I think we can be pretty confident that Old Joe is just standard enhanced force and shielding by projection. The hardest of the three to deal with, but no surprises there. I¡¯m worried about what Buzz can do, but I doubt he has any serious defenses to what we¡¯re packing. That leaves Big Joe.¡± ¡°I can handle Big Joe,¡± Flawless Form answered plainly. Millisec looked over the super with speculation. ¡°How?¡± ¡°He telegraphs his moves,¡± he explained. ¡°Before a burst of speed, he takes a second to plan what he¡¯s going to do. If I can see him, I can counter him.¡± ¡°As long as he comes after you,¡± Liberty inserted. ¡°What about if he¡¯s smart, stays on the periphery, attacks the soft targets? By which I mean Nine-point-nine and Framerate.¡± ¡°We should be okay,¡± said Framerate. ¡°I can counter him if he comes after me. Nine can stay mobile enough to keep him off her.¡± ¡°That¡¯s not a great answer,¡± Liberty said. ¡°You two are going to need to coordinate against the heavy. I don¡¯t think the team can keep him restrained without both of you on him.¡± ¡°Okay,¡± Millisec mused. ¡°So what¡¯s the plan, exactly?¡± ¡°Is there any reason,¡± 9.9 asked, ¡°why we don¡¯t wait two hours for more supers to show up?¡± Zephyr answered, ¡°Not unless we want to give Newark PD first crack at it. They¡¯ll act within the hour, no question.¡± ¡°Right, so, plan?¡± Millisec insisted. There was a momentary pause, broken by Bronze Scarab: ¡°Delphic, anything?¡± Way to put me on the spot. ¡°Millisec,¡± I sent, ¡°you have night vision equipment, correct?¡± ¡°Up to about Mach four, yeah,¡± he responded. There were looks from several of the other supers present, so he explained. ¡°The pack is specially shielded, because a lot of electronic stuff starts to short out at higher speeds. Don¡¯t know why.¡± ¡°Here is a plan,¡± I continued. ¡°Cut power to the house, then ambush them based on neutralizing the least tractable threats.¡± The supers looked uncertain so I elaborated. ¡°Disarm Mikey, hobble Big Joe, stun Buzz. Do everything you can before they can coordinate a response.¡± ¡°What if something happens to him?¡± Liberty asked. ¡°You¡¯re sending him in by himself.¡± I was irked by her phrasing. I wasn¡¯t sending the team anywhere. I was just offering a plan; I wasn¡¯t in charge. ¡°The rest of the team can follow me up,¡± Millisec offered. ¡°I¡¯m planning to avoid Old Joe; I don¡¯t think there¡¯s much I can do to him.¡± ¡°Hey,¡± the captain said as the two officers approached the group again. ¡°Let¡¯s get some ID if you guys are going to hang out at my crime scene.¡± He looked the three new arrivals up and down with disdain. ¡°That won¡¯t be necessary,¡± Millisec said. ¡°We were just heading out. I¡¯ll see you guys there.¡± ¡°Hey, wait! You can¡¯t¡­¡± but at this point it was clear that Millisec was long gone, a small rustling of hair and clothes accompanying his silent passage. Millisec was significantly faster than any other human on the planet, having a known running speed of approximately Mach 10 (over seven thousand miles per hour, able to get anywhere in the continental US in about 20 minutes). When researching USST, I had learned a fair amount about his abilities, which were detailed in his secured files. His temporal acceleration, which reduced his effective mass and his rate of interaction with stationary matter, capped out at 300 to 1 ¨C giving him 5 minutes of movement for every second in the outside world. But because the acceleration took him ¡°out of phase¡± with the rest of us, this didn¡¯t allow him to abuse momentum like some other supers could; no steel-breaking supersonic fists for him. Still, in addition to allowing him to react and position himself perfectly, he could retain a small fraction of his momentum when ¡°phasing in¡± and returning to normal speed. He had used powerful jump kicks and charging tackles on several occasions. The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. ¡°We¡¯re going to raid that residential location,¡± the captain rounded on Bronze Scarab, whom he had pegged for the team leader, ¡°and recover the suspects. Are you going to be in our way?¡± The heroine glanced at her teammates, tensing up, before responding. ¡°No, sir. We¡¯ll stay out of your way.¡± The captain¡¯s eyes narrowed, but after a moment¡¯s further scowl, he turned on his heel and moved off with his partner. ¡°¡­ because we¡¯ll have the mission done before your team gets there,¡± she murmured, a comment that the captain thankfully could not hear, although her own team did. Smiles cracked on the heroes¡¯ faces as they crowded into the van. I transitioned my View to the hide-out at the same time that Millisec spoke over the channel. ¡°I stopped a block away. I¡¯ll stay out of sight until the rest of the team gets here.¡± Lights were on in the kitchen, but not in the adjacent living room where Old Joe and Mikey sat on opposite ends of a threadbare couch. Each held a beer bottle, although the darker amber of Mikey¡¯s told me his was still mostly untouched, unlike his mentor¡¯s. The other two men were upstairs in separate bedrooms. Until recently they had both been asleep, but Buzz was sitting up at the side of the bed talking into his mobile phone. His eyes narrowed and his lips pursed as he listened, and despite the poor light from the hallway, his skin was visibly flushed. ¡°Big Joe is asleep,¡± I sent over the team channel, ¡°but the other three are not.¡± ¡°Where in the house are they?¡± Millisec asked. I started to answer, but stopped as Buzz stood up, moving into the hallway and yelling something. Somebody from downstairs must have responded to him, because he looked that way and called out, heading down the stairs. I looked in on the other bedroom, but Big Joe hadn¡¯t stirred. I shared their movements, and Zephyr cursed. ¡°Must have been police chatter. Somebody tipped him off that they¡¯re prepping a raid.¡± The kid grabbed a duffel bag that had been tossed in the corner and headed to the car in the garage, while Joe took two grocery bags and started loading up items from the kitchen cabinets. Buzz went back upstairs to prod his other enforcer awake. ¡°We¡¯ll be there in two,¡± Bronze Scarab said. ¡°Do we abort now that they¡¯ve been tipped off? Wait and regroup?¡± ¡°They will likely be leaving the residence within the next few minutes,¡± I shared. Millisec was confident. ¡°We should do it, now. They¡¯re as vulnerable as they¡¯re going to get.¡± Nobody proffered a counterargument. From their camera feeds I saw the New York supers exit from the van directly across the street from the target house. Flawless Form and 9.9 each had a pair of dark goggles resting above their eyes, as did Millisec when he appeared briefly giving a thumbs up. Bronze Scarab and Framerate had night vision features built into their existing eyewear, meaning the whole team was ready for the nighttime operation. ¡°Old Joe and Mikey are still in the kitchen. Buzz is standing over Big Joe in the bedroom as he puts his shoes on,¡± I sent. Bronze Scarab headed for the front door, bathing the front step in faint blue as a single large hammer-like shape grew from both of her hands. Flawless Form was right at her side with Framerate and 9.9 just behind. ¡°Millisec?¡± ¡°Ready.¡± I couldn¡¯t see him, but I knew he was behind the house at the trunk wire next to the power meter, ready to sever the line that fed electricity to the house. ¡°On my mark.¡± She pivoted to the sides, holding the hammer behind her with both hands, and the tension mounted. ¡°Mark!¡± She said, bringing her blue construct around and into the front door with all her might. The loud crunching crack of the door breaking away from its frame resounded, and at the same time both the upstairs and downstairs windows ceased to glow with indoor light. The dark blur of Millisec passed through the doorway as Bronze Scarab recoiled from the blow, her hammer construct losing shape. Flawless Form rushed in, heading around the front stairs and into the kitchen. The active microphones on the NYST supers picked up something happening upstairs, where Millisec had gone, but for the time being I kept my View downstairs where Old Joe was running toward the commotion in the front. Mikey had the duffel slung over one shoulder and had flung open the garage door, heading for the car. Old Joe rounded the corner from the kitchen at the same time that Flawless Form did, and both of them visibly recoiled as though hitting a solid surface. Both adjusted and reached for the other an instant later. The powers of the two were not symmetrical. Old Joe had greatly enhanced strength and high-powered force projection, making it useless to punch or kick him. Flawless Form knew this. Instead, the martial artist pulled the enforcer¡¯s limbs into and through the man¡¯s own lunge and, bending low to the ground, tumbled with him into a hold that twisted Joe¡¯s limbs entirely behind his back at an awkward angle. An odd half-yelp sounded from above as Buzz hurtled forcefully down the stairs and into the opposite wall with a thud. This noise almost matched the unnerving cracking noise from where Flawless Form continued to hold Old Joe, but Buzz¡¯s yelp was nowhere near the volume of Joe¡¯s horrific cry of pain that came next. There is a downside to force projection as the basis of your defensive power. If someone can find a way through it ¨C like, for instance, slowly forcing your limbs out of joint until they separate from their sockets ¨C your actual underlying physique is no better than a baseline human. You can feel the same amount of pain, and an injury can put you out of commission for just as long. FF had completely dislocated both of Joe¡¯s shoulders. As the hero released him, he slumped against the nearest wall, weeping; the old criminal was out of the fight. Buzz, on the other hand, was not yet ready to call it quits. He stood at the foot of the stairs, his face and neck flushed an unnatural orange, and as Flawless Form approached him from one side and the other supers watched him from the doorway, his shirt caught on fire. It was Flawless Form that Buzz chose to face as bluish flames licked around Buzz¡¯s chest and up both his arms, causing patches of his shirt to blacken and flake away. The flames themselves didn¡¯t cover his head or hands, but only due lack of fuel, not lack of heat: the distortion in the air coming off of him made it clear that Buzz Kowalczyk¡¯s surface temperature was truly dangerous everywhere above the waist. But whatever the man was planning, Flawless Form did not stand there and wait to react. The martial artist simply charged him, fists cocked and ready. Buzz took two steps back, grinning, ready to envelop the hero in a roiling bear hug¡­ and found himself unable to move backwards, as small but strong cords (light blue, entirely unaffected by the heat) were wrapping around his limbs and hindering his movements, courtesy of Bronze Scarab. Framerate was focusing on Buzz as well, and the crime boss seemed almost comically slow in trying to respond to the rapid and repeated blows to the gut, head, and legs that FF unleashed. The lavender hero had no expression on his face as each fist and foot repeatedly drew back from contact with Buzz blackened and charred, much of the flesh eaten by the flames¡­ only to have it grow and smooth out within moments as his healing power instantly reversed the damage. Flawless Form did finally show pain, visibly gritting his teeth, when he wrapped his arms around Buzz Kowalczyk in a submission hold to put him under. I couldn¡¯t look away from the gruesome sight of the hero¡¯s arm and chest muscles shriveling up like overdone meat glimpsed through the smoking holes burned in the grey gi, until Buzz finally succumbed and FF¡¯s lavender flesh bloomed healthy again (the gi, of course, was not restored). The willpower necessary to fight every instinct and hold tightly onto something that is burning you, is one of the most heroic things I¡¯ve seen. Old Joe was still whimpering as Buzz collapsed on the ground, and it was then that young Mikey decided to make his appearance to save the day yet again. Unfortunately, he was anticipated this time¡­ even as he stepped from the garage into the kitchen, the impossibly graceful form of 9.9 zig-zagged past him and yanked the gun out of his grasp, sending his feet out from under him on the suddenly frictionless floor. ¡°We¡¯ve got three,¡± Bronze Scarab announced quickly. ¡°Millisec, how are -¡± That was as far as she got before the speedster appeared in front of her, tossing a hogtied and gagged Big Joe into the hallway next to his partner. ¡°That was weird,¡± he offered continuing to look toward the speedster enforcer but focused elsewhere. ¡°Hey, I wouldn¡¯t recommend untying Joe here until we get an expert in.¡± ¡°On what?¡± Zephyr asked. ¡°Spacetime¡­ dimension¡­ stuff. You know, the high level speed stuff.¡± He took deep breaths, in and out, as though forcing himself to relax. ¡°There¡¯s something going on with this guy¡¯s powers.¡± He shook his head. ¡°But more importantly, we did it! All four targets down, HQ. No casualties!¡± He took a slightly closer look at Flawless Form, who was still crouching near Buzz. ¡°Right?¡± The others nodded. ¡°All four down,¡± Bronze Scarab agreed. ¡°Good,¡± came Zephyr¡¯s voice, laden with frustration. ¡°Because Newark PD just arrived at your location, and somebody is very unhappy with us.¡± Chapter 20 - Special Weapons And Tactics Over the last twenty years, much of US law enforcement had reduced or eliminated SWAT teams as their functions were taken over by local super teams. The pseudo-military nature of SWAT operations had never sat well with a lot of civilians, so turning those missions over to the supers was popular. This move also restricted the much higher casualty rate of tactical engagements to the supers, where losses were easier for the public to stomach for some reason (supers¡¯ lives aren¡¯t as ¡°real¡± as normal people¡¯s, I guess). New Jersey was different. State and local police had no desire to integrate with federal super teams and could not be compelled to do so. The three official New Jersey teams (NJST out of Trenton plus local teams in Camden and Atlantic City) received no state funding or support; when Jersey wanted to spend money on law enforcement, they doubled down on police and state troopers. The result was what the supers encountered as they emerged from the house with captured criminals in tow. I counted six cruisers and two larger armored vans forming a blockade in front of the house, and more than twenty men in black riot-control armor very similar to what Framerate was wearing. Most held military-grade P88s, an automatic weapon popular with US and Western European law enforcement. Two teams, however, were set up behind broad turrets each supporting an anti-materiel weapon, what was often called the ¡®brute buster.¡¯ The weapon propelled dense shells at an incredibly high velocity, enough to penetrate an armored vehicle ¨C or the natural defensive shielding of many super powers. With those turret guns in evidence, another major anti-super weapon was likely being deployed. I checked the P88s at random and immediately found three that had been modified into ¡®speed busters.¡¯ These had a sophisticated active sonar capability and a fourth firing mode that would cause the weapon to spray bullets once it detected movement past a certain threshold. Unlike the ¡®brute busters,¡¯ I had never heard of the ¡®speed buster¡¯ actually being effective against real acceleration powers; speedsters already avoided being in the line of fire of automatic weapons in the first place. But maybe the weapons had a positive morale effect on the officers. This active SWAT formation and blockade is what the supers saw as they emerged from the house. Millisec came out first, followed by Bronze Scarab with all four targets floating along behind her, and Flawless Form directly behind them. The SWATs, though stationed at varying distances behind cover, formed a rough quarter-circle around the front door. ¡°You can stand down!¡± announced Millisec as he led the procession toward the van. They hadn¡¯t block the vehicle directly, I noticed. ¡°All targets are in custody!¡± ¡°This is the Newark PD,¡± came the response, amplified from multiple external cruiser speakers. I spotted Captain Mallory behind an open driver¡¯s side door speaking into a CB handset. ¡°Drop your weapons and place your hands behind your head.¡± ¡°They can¡¯t do that!¡± Millisec gestured back at the four floating men. ¡°They¡¯ve already been disarmed and secured! You can stand down!¡± At this point, both turret guns were tracking the dark blue form of Millisec. The automatic weapons were clearly hot and aimed his way as well, although it didn¡¯t look like the ¡®speed buster¡¯ feature was currently active. ¡°This is your last warning,¡± the captain continued. ¡°The Newark PD is taking control of this crime scene. Everyone at this address is under arrest. All of you, drop your weapons, now!¡± ¡°He¡¯s not serious!¡± Zephyr scoffed. ¡°Newark¡¯s really trying to arrest a super team in the middle of a mission?¡± ¡°Seems that way,¡± Millisec responded. The other team members hadn¡¯t recovered from their surprise yet. ¡°They literally can¡¯t do that,¡± Liberty sounded over the channel. ¡°You¡¯re federal law enforcement. They can¡¯t arrest you for doing your job.¡± ¡°Oh? Good then,¡± Millisec said. And he smeared into a blur. It took him twelve seconds total to disarm all fifteen of the officers holding firearms and remove the two larger guns from their turrets. I tried to visually track his movement, but it was simply too fast. Millisec would be visible for as much as a quarter second at a time as he slowed down enough to pull a weapon out of a man¡¯s grasp or kick a wrist or stomach. There were indignant shouts, startlingly loud sounds of flesh hitting metal, and the grating noise of uneven wind against various microphone pick-ups as he worked. ¡°Now freeze! Stop this at once! You¡¯re under ¨C¡± was as much as the captain managed to get out before he flinched and fumbled with the handset. His flinch was due to Millisec dropping a large pile of guns, stacked neatly like firewood, at his feet. The super stood just behind them and let the silence stretch for a few seconds as the guns clanged and clattered against each other, settling onto the ground. Although he spoke at a low volume not intended to carry beyond their two persons, Millisec¡¯s tone was not casual; every word was crisp and full of venom. ¡°Captain, as I said, the targets are in custody,¡± he spat. ¡°We¡¯re removing them to NYST headquarters. Don¡¯t interfere further.¡± ¡°Get in the van and get out of there, quickly,¡± Zephyr ordered. Bronze Scarab and the rest of the team complied, quickly loading everyone into the seats of the rear area. 9.9 slid in the front driver¡¯s seat. Captain Mallory let go the handset altogether as he stared into the masked eyes of the super. ¡°What do you think you¡¯re doing?¡± Mallory was the taller of the two men, and also the more self-assured. But the policeman¡¯s gaze held a flicker of fear that was entirely absent from Millisec¡¯s. The super raised one finger and inhaled, considering his reply. He held that pose as he watched the van doors shut and the team roll away from the scene. ¡°We¡¯re leaving,¡± he finally said. The rush of air pushed the cruiser door back from the captain as the super departed. I dropped my View and focused my attention on the video feeds from NYST, which showed three supers carefully securing four Kowalczyks in the back of the van. The body behind the driver¡¯s cabin had two built-in benches along each side with reinforced metal rungs and bars for latching restraints. Buzz¡¯s eyes started to peek open as the long cuffs holding his arms behind his back were fastened to the wall. Mikey was clearly terrified as he received the same treatment. Bronze Scarab set Big Joe, his hands and feet still bound together, sideways on a cushioned bench and produced a length of steel cable to run between his shackles and the wall. ¡°You¡¯re done resisting?¡± this was from Flawless Form, who had removed the cuffs from Old Joe and was holding his dislocated arms behind the enforcer¡¯s back. The older man winced in pain as the van listed to the left, pulling his arms against the super¡¯s grip. ¡°Yeah,¡± he coughed out. ¡°I yield, man. You got me.¡± Flawless Form¡¯s mouth tightened into a line for a moment before he said, ¡°I¡¯m going to pop your shoulders back in. This will hurt.¡± The super gripped the man¡¯s left arm with both hands, bracing his knee against the hip. This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Old Joe sought and held Mikey¡¯s eyes as the younger man watched the procedure with interest. A long, slow pull outward was accompanied by a small pop, and then an immediate reversal to push inward resulted in a second louder click. Old Joe¡¯s loud yell and a stream of curses followed. The super didn¡¯t draw out the process but immediately shifted and repeated it for the other arm, eliciting a louder bout of salty language. ¡°Hey Buzz,¡± Big Joe groaned from his awkward position. ¡°We need to settle the thing.¡± ¡°They got mics in here,¡± Mikey warned. His voice was lower than I had expected, if toneless and nervous. ¡°Eh,¡± said Buzz. ¡°Prob¡¯ly the last chance we¡¯ll have together. Once we get to HQ they¡¯ll separate us.¡± ¡°Let them talk,¡± Zephyr said over the team channel. ¡°Unless they start coordinating an escape action or something. More evidence.¡± ¡°You know they¡¯ll go easier on a kid,¡± Big Joe said. He looked straight at Buzz, pointedly not at Mikey. Buzz scoffed noisily. ¡°Are you kidding? Somebody¡¯s gonna be made an example. And, no offense buddy,¡± he looked down his nose at their junior member, ¡°you¡¯re a cub scout. They¡¯ll have you confessing to everything from pickpocketing to high treason in ¡¯bout a minute.¡± Mikey scowled at that. Old Joe was thinking hard, glancing between Mikey and Buzz. ¡°I¡¯m the obvious choice,¡± he pointed out. Buzz shook his head, but it was Mikey who spoke. ¡°No, Dad!¡± his voice was softer, pleading, if still deep. ¡°You can¡¯t! You¡­ promised¡­ Mom¡­¡± he dwindled to silence as he spoke. ¡°Promised your mother I¡¯d keep you safe,¡± the older man chuckled cruelly. ¡°Never much chance of keeping that one.¡± Silence followed that comment. ¡°Does anyone have any idea what they¡¯re talking about?¡± The rumbling voice was GigaGiant¡¯s; it came over the same feed as Liberty¡¯s. ¡°No clue,¡± 9.9 answered. She was out of earshot up in the driver¡¯s seat. ¡°Delphic?¡± asked Zephyr. I was starting to really dislike that question. ¡°Nothing beyond the obvious,¡± I typed and sent. ¡°They are arguing about appointing one of them to do something. They are being intentionally vague as to what. I speculate an opportunity for one of them to escape or to somehow become exempt from prosecution.¡± ¡°It could be,¡± Liberty mused, ¡°that they think one of them can turn state¡¯s evidence on the others and walk.¡± Zephyr laughed. ¡°Then they¡¯re in for a rude awakening. We have all four of them dead to rights!¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know,¡± Liberty rebutted. ¡°They¡¯re the only eye witnesses to what happened to Refraxx. They-¡± she cut off when it was clear that Buzz had started speaking again. ¡°¡­be me, guys,¡± he insisted. ¡°I promised you I¡¯d take the fall if it came down to it.¡± He nodded to Mikey and Old Joe. ¡°You two need each other, and you,¡± swiveling his nod to take in the supine Big Joe, ¡°need to watch out for both of them.¡± ¡°Boss,¡± Big Joe said, and he saw Buzz scowl in response to the title. ¡°Boss.¡± He said it more loudly, defiantly. ¡°They¡¯ll kill you. You can¡¯t.¡± Buzz opened his mouth in a wide, feral grin; for a moment it seemed like there was a fire glowing inside his mouth. ¡°Don¡¯t worry. I have a plan.¡± ¡°Now I¡¯m worried,¡± Zephyr announced. ¡°Should we be worried?¡± Framerate asked Buzz, echoing Zephyr¡¯s thought. The super sat between Mikey and Old Joe, across from Buzz, who closed his mouth with a clack of teeth before opening his mouth to answer. Buzz canceled his reply when they felt the van begin to rapidly slow down. As it came to a stop, one of the two rear doors opened and Millisec stepped up to sit on the other side of Mikey from Framerate (across from Big Joe). Bronze Scarab addressed the US super first. ¡°Not that I¡¯m complaining, Millisec, but don¡¯t you usually head off as soon as the field work is done?¡± The speedster nodded. ¡°Yeah, but I wanted to ask about this guy¡¯s powers.¡± He gestured to the hogtied enforcer. ¡°Seriously, man, what was that?¡± ¡°What was what?¡± Bronze Scarab asked. Big Joe ignored her and addressed Millisec, shaking his head. ¡°Don¡¯t know. Not sure it¡¯s real.¡± ¡°What¡¯s not real?¡± Bronze Scarab asked again. ¡°Obviously it¡¯s real, man. We were both there.¡± Millisec scrutinized the enforcer. ¡°Why would you think it¡¯s not real?¡± ¡°What¡¯s not real?¡± Bronze Scarab pressed. ¡°Joe¡¯s dream land,¡± answered Buzz. He seemed amused by the interruption. ¡°When Joe speeds around, he sometimes sees an imaginary world rather than the real one.¡± ¡°He told you about this?¡± Millisec asked. ¡°Yeah,¡± Old Joe answered. ¡°We¡¯ve all heard the stories. But it ain¡¯t real.¡± ¡°How do you know?¡± Bronze Scarab was captivated by the idea. Tension mounted in silence; Old Joe and Buzz waited for their compatriot to speak. ¡°Nothin¡¯ comes back with me,¡± Big Joe relented. ¡°Tried pickin¡¯ up a rock¡­ always lots of rocks around. Doesn¡¯t stick.¡± He struggled against his bonds a bit. ¡°Cameras don¡¯t see nothin¡¯. Nobody can come with.¡± ¡°Until now,¡± Millisec reminded him. Joe nodded to concede the point. ¡°So either my dreams are contagious, or it¡¯s a real place.¡± ¡°Probably someplace on Earth,¡± Millisec said. ¡°Gravity felt normal, and so did the air. A bit hot.¡± He stared at something unseen. ¡°Looked like a desert.¡± ¡°What happens if you leave something there?¡± Bronze Scarab continued to express her interest. ¡°Can you come back and pick it up later?¡± ¡°It doesn¡¯t stay; it comes back with me,¡± Joe said. ¡°And I¡¯ve made footprints in the dirt but never seen any when I return. I think I¡¯m somewhere different each time.¡± Millisec hummed thoughtfully. ¡°So, when I held onto you while -¡± ¡°As interesting as all this is,¡± Buzz interrupted. ¡°I think we better clamp it until we have a chance to lawyer up. Okay boys?¡± He ignored the frustrated look from Millisec and accepted his underlings¡¯ nods. Silence reigned in the van for several minutes. I expected Millisec to try to push for more, or to leave, but he instead unslung his backpack and started inspecting various pieces of equipment. Most of his pieces were purely mechanical ¨C rope, some liquids, a telescoping baton. The few items with electronic components were shielded in individual metal casings, and I saw the pack itself was lined with metal. I felt a pang of jealousy when I thought about what it was like to be the fastest man on Earth. No one questioned Millisec¡¯s heroism. His powers, supported by both training and resources, provided him with viable solutions to thousands of dangerous scenarios. He probably saved, or assisted in saving, more people on a weekly basis than most local super teams helped in a month. But then I remembered back to my video call with Zee and Lakki, and how awful it felt to have to make excuses for the things I didn¡¯t do. The problem would be a million times worse for Millisec; with few limitations on where he could be or what he could accomplish, any minute spent to have a personal life or even rest would cost how many lives? From what little I had seen, the man dealt with the problem by compartmentalizing. He thought about one problem at a time, and he didn¡¯t let himself dwell on what wasn¡¯t directly in front of him. That undoubtedly made him less skilled when a broader perspective was needed, but it might be what he had to do to stay sane. As I let my emotions flow from jealousy into concern and then pity, I noticed a request on the NYST dashboard for me to switch to a private channel. I complied. ¡°This is Delphic.¡± ¡°Hey, Zephyr here.¡± His voice was intentionally soft, enough so that I strained to make out his words. ¡°So, Whisper just showed up at HQ.¡± ¡°Whisper is there with you?¡± I wasn¡¯t expecting her to be anywhere near NYST operations right now; there was no indication in her file that she could cover large distances quickly. ¡°She is and she¡¯s I don¡¯t know what exactly but she wasn¡¯toldandnowshe¡­¡± He cut off his own rapid speech, inhaling deeply. ¡°Something I said set her off. She vanished. Can you check on her? Trace her com?¡± ¡°I will try,¡± I sent, and disconnected. When Whisper wasn¡¯t solid, I had great difficulty in tracing her with my View. So I tried the easy way first ¨C I called her. She picked up after almost a minute, audio only. ¡°Yes.¡± The word evaporated over the line, weightless, flavorless. I started typing about Zephyr asking me to look on her, but I stopped myself and deleted it. Instead I sent, ¡°Hi Lakki. You have been told about Zee.¡± A shuddering sigh. ¡°Yes, Delphic. He¡¯s gone.¡± ¡°I am very sorry.¡± My synthesized voice couldn¡¯t do justice to the sentiment. ¡°I know. I know you did everything you could for him.¡± I heard a slight rustle, and then a video feed came on. I didn¡¯t recognize the background; she wasn¡¯t at NYST headquarters. Whisper¡¯s ¨C Lakshmi¡¯s ¨C mask was pulled up above her eyes, puffy and still tear-filled. She stared blindly down at me ¨C likely into a mobile device ¨C and tried a subdued smile through her tears. ¡°Zee would have wanted me to show my gratitude. That was always important to him. So¡­ thank you.¡± I couldn¡¯t think of anything fitting. ¡°You¡¯re welcome.¡± Neither of us spoke for a minute, and she kept the camera pointing at her the whole time. I watched her collect herself: straightening her posture, squaring her shoulders, hardening her eyes. When she finally put her mask back into place, the motion was quick and definite. ¡°So,¡± she said, her eyes somehow boring into mine even through the video stream, ¡°are you ready to talk about why Lady Liberty had Refraxx killed, and what we can do about it?¡± Chapter 21 - Cold Calculations My first feeling upon hearing Whisper accuse Liberty was massive shock, but my second was great relief. It was terrific to hear that I wasn¡¯t the only person who had noted that the NYST leader¡¯s behavior often seemed more in line with pursuing personal goals than in concretely meeting the law enforcement needs of New York. Still, I wanted to treat Lakshmi¡¯s own conclusions with some delicate scrutiny until I understood their basis. ¡°You believe that Lady Liberty is responsible for Refraxx¡¯s death at the hands of Kowalczyk¡¯s enforcer?¡± I asked. Whisper nodded. ¡°It fits the facts I know. Although it will be useful to have you verify some details I don¡¯t know.¡± ¡°Go on.¡± ¡°First, that she¡¯s trying to have it both ways. Privately, to us, Zee went off on his own¡­ hotheaded¡­¡± she audibly sobbed, but forced herself to stop. ¡°Sorry. So, to us, the cover story is that this was just Refraxx on his own. But then the official story is that he was on a solo mission for NYST, right?¡± ¡°Yes. I¡¯ve been asked to help with doctoring the records for that.¡± ¡°Okay, so¡­ what if that¡¯s the actual truth?¡± I thought but didn¡¯t reply, so she continued. ¡°What if Liberty did send Refraxx out there, and the story of him doing it on his own is a cover?¡± ¡°Didn¡¯t you say earlier today that this was the sort of thing you could see him deciding to do, though? The solo decision seems in character.¡± As I sent this, I was worried my implied negative judgement of Zee might upset her further. Her hair flopped over her headpiece as she nodded. ¡°That¡¯s what makes it a good cover ¨C it¡¯s plausible as a lie.¡± It also made it plausible as the truth. ¡°Liberty intended for Refraxx to be killed by the enforcers?¡± The woman ran a hand through her upturned shock of hair. ¡°Yeah, or¡­ she planned for it?¡± I don¡¯t think she intended it as a question despite the intonation. ¡°She once said something to me about making lots of plans, and taking advantage of whichever one worked. Did you watch the new Dinklage movies?¡± ¡°The Vorkosigan films?¡± I had seen both of the ones released so far, and read the underlying books. ¡°Right, the Norberg group helped fund those. Harmony¡¯s a big fan. Something in the most recent film¡­¡± ¡°Not one path to victory, but all paths,¡± I sent quickly from memory. It was one of the tag lines from The Vor Game. Lakshmi nodded. ¡°She says stuff like that sometimes. It makes me think¡­¡± Her mouth moved for a minute, but I couldn¡¯t pick out any words. ¡°¡­ she wasn¡¯t counting on Zee losing, but she was ready to use it if it happened.¡± This was sending me into dizzy knots. I knew I shouldn¡¯t pick at it, but¡­ ¡°So you think she was comfortable sacrificing him? That this was a good outcome?¡± ¡°Him and¡­ and others.¡± Keeping a firm voice was an act of will at this point. ¡°The follow-up team, too.¡± That seemed far-fetched. ¡°Including Millsec?¡± She gave a quick headshake. ¡°No, I mean the immediate backup: Bronze Scarab and Flawless Form. They were sent out when Zee¡¯s situation was unknown.¡± ¡°I thought they were picked because they could get there quickly.¡± ¡°Bronze Scarab was. But she could have carried almost anyone. So why FF? His powers aren¡¯t suited.¡± ¡°Liberty believed that the support would fail?¡± Considering the actual outcome, that seemed plausible. ¡°Could fail, and the better for her if so. Zee always said that Flawless Form was the strongest critic of her little torture projects.¡± ¡°Is that her motive for wanting to get rid of Refraxx? The enhanced interrogations?¡± Her shrug was in the negative. ¡°He didn¡¯t really oppose them, other than supporting me. It¡¯s more about shoring up her power base against someone that constantly questioned her.¡± Her palm came into view. ¡°But now that he¡¯s gone, she will definitely take advantage of it to push me to the outside.¡± She sighed. ¡°Don¡¯t be surprised if I¡¯m put on ¡®mental health leave¡¯ for a few days, and then never cleared to return to missions. Two capes with one stone.¡± Her words were cold and biting. There was no neutral detachment here; Lakki saw this as personal. I asked, ¡°So if you¡¯ve felt this way about Lady Liberty, why visit her house? Why stay on the team?¡± ¡°For Zee,¡± she immediately answered. ¡°He always talked about ¡®friendly rivalry¡¯ and that the Norbergs were much better as allies than enemies.¡± She unthinkingly let camera view turn away from her. ¡°He was living out his dream being a superhero. I was mostly there to be with him.¡± The tilt let me see the wall and ceiling behind her: old wood panelling and concrete baffles. Not residential features. ¡°Are you in a secure location?¡± The camera angle tilted back to show her face as she nodded. ¡°NY Public has closed stacks. I¡¯ve used this study room for years. Never seen a soul.¡± She pivoted. ¡°So the big question is, what do we do about Lady Liberty?¡± That problem had been on my mind all day, and I still didn¡¯t have a solution. ¡°I am not sure what there is we can do,¡± I sent. ¡°We could try to gather evidence that she intended what happened to Refraxx, or to any other supers she¡¯s hurt.¡± In silence I considered how much I trusted Whisper, and decided to share further. ¡°Liberty attempted to capture me today.¡± The girl¡¯s face scrunched up in surprise. ¡°Capture? How?¡± ¡°The telepresence robot at the manor. She brought in a CIA analyst to build a trap into it. Hit the switch to cut off all of its external ports.¡± Her mouth thinned out. ¡°She has a lot of government contacts. Um, so, why didn¡¯t she flip the switch when you were in there?¡± ¡°I never jumped into it. I stayed on remote access the whole time.¡± Whisper nodded. ¡°Another contingency. And you didn¡¯t confront her on it?¡± I didn¡¯t have a good way to shrug. ¡°I might have, if other events hadn¡¯t eclipsed it.¡± ¡°It¡­ doesn¡¯t seem¡­¡± her sentence slowed and diminished as though she were a music box just winding down. ¡°It has the same problem as everything else. I see the disconnect? Between who she is and what she claims? But¡­ I don¡¯t see any way that it helps. Any way to exploit it. None of it is really a weakness.¡± This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it. ¡°You¡¯re looking for a weakness?¡± I probed. ¡°To what end?¡± Her nostrils flared as her eyes and mouth flattened. ¡°She needs to answer for what she¡¯s done.¡± The steel was there again, but it always appeared for barely a moment, the length of one or two sentences, and then was gone. ¡°That¡¯s not an answer,¡± I sent, and before she could respond immediately followed up with, ¡°Please hear me out.¡± She took a breath and swallowed whatever she had been about to say next, willing to let me speak. ¡°Justice is a motivation, not an end goal,¡± I explained. ¡°What does it look like for Liberty to have answered for her crimes? Would it be enough that she has explained them? Or given an apology?¡± I continued to type as I checked Whisper¡¯s reaction; she was nodding reluctantly. ¡°Are you seeking to have her removed from NYST? As a super altogether? Do you want to see her in jail? Maimed or killed?¡± I knew I had gone too far in my description when she scowled. ¡°I don¡¯t need revenge,¡± she set down solemnly. ¡°Justice, because actions need to have consequences, even if you¡¯re Lady Liberty.¡± ¡°What do those consequences look like?¡± ¡°¡­ don¡¯t know.¡± She was back to almost imperceptible. ¡°Well, until we have a handle on that, I don¡¯t see that we can even plan a reasonable response.¡± When she nodded, I continued. ¡°If we expect Liberty to suffer any consequences at all, we¡¯re going to have to get help.¡± Whisper¡¯s face scrunched up further as she shook her head. ¡°No¡­ not¡­ him. Not them.¡± ¡°What do you mean?¡± I had a pretty good idea what she was going to say, but I wasn¡¯t going to borrow trouble in case I was wrong. ¡°Your mad scientist friend and his henchmen. Stevens. I¡­¡± she coughed and drew herself up. ¡°Zee wouldn¡¯t have wanted me to get involved with a super villain, not even to win a fight like this. Can¡­ we leave them out of it, please.¡± She didn¡¯t make it sound like a request. ¡°Acknowledged,¡± I sent. ¡°I disagree with your characterization of Doctor Stevens as a super villain -¡± ¡°Doesn¡¯t matter,¡± she interjected softly. ¡°- but we have allies closer to home.¡± ¡°New England? Spinner?¡± she supplied. ¡°Among others.¡± I had a few markers I could call in from other heroes I had helped; there were a number of professional supers across the country who considered me an acquaintance and ally if not a friend. ¡°I am still not entirely certain what it is we are trying to accomplish, which makes it harder to ask others to join us.¡± Whisper¡¯s face screwed up, then left the frame as she hunched over. ¡°We¡¯re on the same page, though, right? We need to do something?¡± It was a hungry question. ¡°We agree on that, yes.¡± I could see her eyes again as she said, ¡°Then let me think about it, okay? Maybe call Spinner? Or whoever else you can trust.¡± She re-centered the camera on her and put on a half-hearted smile. ¡°We can talk more tomorrow?¡± ¡°Tomorrow, then,¡± I sent, and she disconnected. When I turned back to the monitors, I found it difficult to focus on them; I was bleary with fatigue. It surprised me when I looked at the clock and saw how early in the evening it still was. Everything that happened with Refraxx and the Kowalczyks had taken place in under two hours, although it felt more like two days. If all ran according to plan, within another four hours, Lamarck would be back on US soil¡­ and hopefully I would be sound asleep by then. I reviewed my repair and installation schedule for the next morning, knowing I had to be home around lunch time to attend the meetings that my new employees had asked for. I had just texted Paris about breakfast when I was notified of an incoming call from Lady Liberty. The HQ system showed that she (along with GigaGiant, Petiolule, and Enki) had arrived at New York HQ ahead of the captives. ¡°This is Delphic,¡± I sent upon answering. The video showed the costumed back of GigaGiant as he rummaged through a large locked cabinet, retrieving two thermal sleeping bags. ¡°How is Whisper?¡± Liberty and GG were in one of NYST¡¯s supply rooms. She turned away from the blue super to open another cabinet and pull out hospital-grade blankets. She stacked them into a growing pile of cold weather gear. ¡°She is grieving,¡± I said in my Delphic voice, deciding to stick with the obvious. ¡°A luxury I¡¯m happy to give her. Hopefully the rest of us will have time to grieve, soon enough. Extra-large, you think? No, probably double X.¡± She added a parka and a set of men¡¯s thermal underwear to the pile before wrapping her suit-clad arms around the whole lot. The camera picked up the hallways of the HQ building from around the edges of the stack of winter gear as Liberty effortlessly carried it along. She continued, ¡°I wanted to make sure that your conversation with her had gone okay. I also wanted to confirm she wasn¡¯t in the building, since the system has trouble tracking her.¡± She turned into a tiled hallway with small rooms set up as clinical exam rooms, opening a door to one such room and piling the gear inside. As she turned around, GigaGiant passed her field of view in depositing a second such pile in the same room. ¡°She was not in the building when we spoke,¡± I supplied. ¡°Probably in the library stacks,¡± the superheroine mused. ¡°Or she might have headed out to Zee¡¯s place.¡± Her tone turned disapproving. ¡°I hope not. That¡¯s the last thing she needs right now.¡± ¡°Not for you to say,¡± the low voice of GigaGiant interjected. ¡°She might need to go there to say goodbye.¡± ¡°She¡¯ll have plenty of time for that,¡± responded Liberty. ¡°She¡¯s on mental health leave until she gets a full psych eval. And I want to make sure she doesn¡¯t get any ideas about going near Buzz. He¡¯s no good to us unless he¡¯s treated by the book.¡± I lost the thread of conversation for just a second as I thought about how Liberty had just confirmed Whisper¡¯s prediction that she would be put on leave. When I recovered, I sent, ¡°Whisper indicated no interest in interacting with any of the suspects.¡± ¡°That¡¯s good. We¡¯re going to have enough problems already just with the containment. Here, let me show you.¡± I could hear her metal footsteps ringing louder than her larger ally¡¯s thudding footfalls as they headed down two flights of stairs. They paused at a bulky metal door until it slid ponderously into the wall for long enough for them to get through. Another tiled hallway was hung with several obvious cameras, each pointing toward a different cell. The cell that Liberty finally stopped at had its own thick metal door, this one with shatterproof glass making a small window at eye level. I thought the glass was a frosted white until GigaGiant smeared a dinner-plate-sized blue hand across it, showing that it was clear glass that had fogged up. Liberty turned her attention to the panel next to the door. ¡°A balmy five degrees Celsius, thirty percent relative humidity,¡± she announced happily. ¡°You are preparing this cell for Buzz Kowalczyk?¡± I asked. The lump in my stomach was distracting; the only motivation for these sort of conditions was to watch him suffer. ¡°Quantico has a setup with inert gas, but this is the best we can do for a firestarter.¡± She checked the readings on the console before moving farther down the hall. ¡°There isn¡¯t any evidence that Buzz Kowalczyk can regulate his internal temperature in extreme environments,¡± I insisted. ¡°That¡¯s not something all tactothermic supers can do.¡± Liberty¡¯s smooth chuckle harmonized with the deeper notes of GigaGiant¡¯s own laughter. ¡°We¡¯ll get the evidence soon,¡± she said. ¡°Doctor will check on him at least twice an hour. With the cold weather survival gear, he should be fine.¡± ¡°You saw the images of Officer Nunez same as we did,¡± the giant added. ¡°Why agonize over his discomfort?¡± ¡°Weren¡¯t you just saying,¡± I tried, ¡°that everything needs to be done by the book?¡± ¡°This is,¡± she insisted. ¡°A cold room is standard containment. Approved procedure.¡± I would be willing to bet that Lady Liberty had found the worst possible treatment for Buzz that she could fit within the rules. But there didn¡¯t seem any reason to point this out to her. ¡°Thanks again for all of your help today, Delphic,¡± the heroine said as she entered another room, inspecting heavy steel manacles solidly fused into a thick metal wall. ¡°You¡¯ll be able to¡­ check those files we talked about before you call it a night?¡± Her voice had a detectable tension in it, which was better than the unrelenting confidence she had kept up for the rest of the call. ¡°Affirmative,¡± I sent. ¡°I¡¯ll confirm once the matter is resolved.¡± ¡°You¡¯re a godsend,¡± she cheered, and ended the call. Modifying the NYST records to match Liberty¡¯s reports (and my ad hoc explanations) took the rest of my evening. Part of the reason it took so long was the meticulous local records I kept throughout the process. By the time I was finished, and gratefully collapsed into my bed, no file or log in the entire system was inconsistent with our story. Refraxx had been on a discrete solo mission for the Team, not acting on his own. The original state of every altered file, and a step-by-step log of the alterations, were all recorded within my own system. I seldom took such pains to incriminate myself, but then, I seldom performed hacking services for someone who had tried to betray me earlier in the same day. I drifted to sleep more slowly than usual, despite my fatigue. The truth was that none of the resources I had available, nor those I suspected Whisper had, seemed enough to deal with a top tier, politically-connected powerhouse like Lady Liberty. I was frightened, because I knew that even if we were likely to lose, we would almost certainly fight the battle anyway. Chapter 22 - Starting up Before calling into my office, I took a moment to View it. I didn¡¯t expect to see much, considering it was Monday when I had only hired the Gardners the previous Friday. I knew they had dipped into the company accounts they had been given access to, and so I was optimistic that the office space might include some additional furniture. What my View revealed caused me to think I had somehow espied the wrong office. More than a dozen modern desks were set up in an open style behind a reception desk, which was manned by a young lady with a permanent smile on her face. Three of the other desks were also occupied with young professionals, two speaking to each other as the third typed on a laptop. None of these people were familiar to me, and I started to move my View outside the building when I saw the front of the reception desk. A large omphalos coin, sleek and gold in the modern European style with ¡®Delphic, Inc.¡¯ below it, was emblazoned along it, facing the front entrance. I couldn¡¯t wait to talk with my personnel manager. Fortunately, I didn¡¯t have to wait long. Matti Gardner came out of her office. She wore a sleeveless top over hip-hugging slacks. The look was more casual than I was used to for office wear; it showed off the glistening iridescent scales along both of her arms. She briefly knocked on the COO¡¯s door and stalked into the open office area with a demeanor of pure business. The four people sitting there turned to her like flowers following the sun, and whatever she said got them all quickly up and moving toward the opposite end of the space. As they arranged themselves around a meeting table large enough to seat twelve, I noticed they were all dressed in a semi-casual manner that fit in with Matti¡¯s outfit. The exception came out a moment later; Georgia Gardner wore a suit seemingly identical, other than color, to the one I had seen at the interview. The grounded gloves and boots were in place as well. It was Matti who grabbed a tablet, turning on a large flat screen and camera resting on a cart at the unoccupied end of the long table. I answered the call as soon as it came through. ¡°This is Delphic.¡± ¡°Good morning, sir. Thank you for joining us.¡± Georgia¡¯s tone was consummately professional; she had unambiguous control of the space. ¡°I knew you¡¯d want to see us¡­ in person, I guess you could say.¡± She paused, nodding down the table, and I took stock of who was there. The one man at the table, in shirtsleeves, had the light tan and almost-shaved head I associated with younger Hispanic men. He and the shorter black woman next to him were each staring down at their smartphones and typing, occasionally glancing at the others¡¯ screen or face. The other two new faces were turned expectantly toward the screen. The one who had been sitting at the front desk was a tall Asian girl with a lot of makeup and excellent posture. A short-haired bespectacled white girl barely visible over her open laptop rounded out the group. ¡°Dill and Shauna are brand managers,¡± Georgia started out. The chatting man and woman looked up at the same time; it somehow seemed natural that they were synchronized. ¡°They¡¯re business students at San Mateo with a marketing focus. Guys?¡± ¡°You have excellent optics,¡± Shauna began as Dill nodded. ¡°Top-half recognition for national supers. Under-twenty-five associations are with technology and intelligence, which is pretty much the sweet spot for positives with that group right now.¡± Dill seamlessly jumped in. ¡°Downside is the ¡®big brother¡¯ vibe,¡± he made air quotes with his fingers ¡°a lot more of a negative for the twenties and thirties cohort. We should be able to decouple you from social media¡­¡± I knew public relations was important, and I appreciated the Gardners¡¯ foresight in finding plugged-in millennials to manage it for me. I also found the details to be dishearteningly cynical, and just-plain boring. The two kept up their imbricated descriptions for another five minutes, but I didn¡¯t retain another word of it. From their wandering gaze, I don¡¯t think Matti or the laptop girl did either, although both the receptionist and Georgia kept their full attention on the brand managers. ¡°Thank you,¡± Georgia responded about two seconds after the pair fell silent. ¡°Any questions, sir?¡± ¡°That was a lot of information to take in,¡± I sent, hoping this response was broad enough to fit any context I missed. ¡°It sounds like this gives your team a number of items to work on.¡± That got a double nod. ¡°Is there anything that you need from me?¡± The two glanced at each other, and then back my way. ¡°Advanced notice,¡± Dill answered. ¡°For anything that¡¯s going to get public exposure.¡± ¡°So we can help frame it,¡± Shauna added. ¡°I see,¡± said my Delphic voice as I thought about yesterday¡¯s events. The arrest had broken yesterday in Newark area news, and there was no reason to let my team be blindsided by it. Why not tell them? ¡°So for example,¡± I typed, ¡°if I had been involved in an altercation yesterday involved the deaths of a superhero and a police officer at the hands of a group of powered criminals, followed by their arrests¡­¡± The wide-eyed looks of everyone at the table were gratifying¡­ or, rather, almost everyone, as the girl with the laptop was focused on her screen. ¡°Yes,¡± Shauna said as she recovered. ¡°We would definitely want to-¡± ¡°Newark,¡± the laptop girl announced, cutting off Shauna, who made no attempt to regain the floor. ¡°Buzz Kowalczyk, Joe Scartelyk, Joseph and Mikhail Wladiminski. Is that supposed to be a W or V sound? I can never remember.¡± Two more clicks. ¡°V sound.¡± ¡°Correct,¡± I typed. Matti was smiling as she gestured to the young woman. ¡°Ozzie is our researcher. We hired her away from UC Berkeley¡¯s medical library.¡± The girl put up her hand and wiggled her fingers in a quaint hello. ¡°Hi, Mister Delphic. Nice to meet you; I¡¯m a fan.¡± ¡°You¡¯d have to be, to leave Cal,¡± Shauna put in. Ozzie shrugged, ¡°Berkeley has cachet, certainly, but this pays a lot better.¡± She blushed slightly after saying it, and her eyes moved back to the screen. Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. ¡°While we¡¯re admitting things,¡± the made-up Asian girl announced in a bright voice with a clear southern California inflection, ¡°I have pretty much no idea who you are.¡± She said it with a kind smile, and it brought soft laughter from the rest of the table. I liked her immediately. ¡°Kay is covering the front desk,¡± Georgia said. ¡°And since that¡¯s everyone, let¡¯s get down to business.¡± The presentation was not slickly produced, but Georgia made her points clearly. She had broken down the company¡¯s operations into four pieces: finding new clients, managing existing clients, public image, and support. For each function she had a timeline and benchmarks, but I didn¡¯t care about the details. Georgia was taking to her position admirably, and I was happy to leave her to it. ¡°¡­ gives us plenty to do over the next few months. And if no one has anything more, I¡¯d like to give our CEO ¨C and, as I explained, really our principal client ¨C the last word. Delphic?¡± I looked out on my team of six employees, and they looked in at me (except for Dill and Shauna on their devices). The silence had already stretched for too long by the time I collected my thoughts enough to start typing. ¡°Thank you all, again, for joining this company. I believe a talented team can accomplish something exceptional, and we have that opportunity here.¡± This got a solemn nod from Georgia, and no reaction from anyone else. ¡°I decided that I needed this team when I found myself spending more and more of my own time on matters for which I have no special talent, like managing money and seeking out potential projects. Because the number of hours I can be active per day is quite limited, this time was directly reducing the time that I could be spending on support for super teams and investigation of cold cases: matters for which my nature and powers make me a unique asset.¡± There were more nods, now; this made sense to the team, and fit well into what Georgia had been saying. I continued, ¡°That is my primary objective for this company, as a resource to leverage my time and talents to better use, both in turning a profit and in helping people. I have every confidence that we will do so.¡± After a momentary silence, the table erupted into the rustling sounds of several people getting up from their chairs and gathering their belongings. But before I or Matti could disconnect the call, Shauna reached a hand out for my attention. ¡°Wait a tick, please,¡± she said. ¡°We wanted to get some details from you on the Kowal¡­ zick? Kowal-stick?¡± ¡°Kowal-chick,¡± Dill supplied correctly. ¡°The Kowalczyk incident. This was a New York mission, and there was a fatality?¡± ¡°There was, although I am not certain that his name has been released yet,¡± I sent. The two of them traded a concerned look. ¡°Sir, our job is a lot easier if we learn things before they become public knowledge,¡± Dill stressed. ¡°It¡¯s usually easier to get out ahead of a mess,¡± Shauna added, ¡°than to try to clean up when you¡¯re in the middle of one.¡± I knew they had a point, but I was still wary. ¡°I will keep that in mind. Was there anything else?¡± Sauna sighed. ¡°You can¡¯t give us any more details than what we can get off the news sites?¡± ¡°I would rather not be responsible for releasing any new information. But I appreciate your enthusiasm.¡± The two of them stood up together and headed back to their desks without another word, leaving me looking at an empty conference table, so I closed the line. I went ahead and called Matti, since she had informed me the day before that she wanted a private discussion after the ¡®general meeting.¡¯ (In retrospect, calling it that should have clued me in that there would be more than just the two of them there, but I had assumed Georgia was just being officious.) The video feed changed to a side view of Matti¡¯s office, which while nowhere near as densely decorated as Georgia¡¯s, at least sported sufficient knick-knacks to appear occupied. My CFO was seated at her modest desk and was facing the researcher, Ozzie, perched in one of her two guest chairs. ¡°Hello again,¡± the businesswoman began. When she turned her head, the scales along the rounded top of her head reflected the overhead lighting in a galactic spray of shimmering flecks, even through the webcam. ¡°Ozzie asked if she could bring up something in private, if you don¡¯t mind.¡± ¡°I didn¡¯t intend to interrupt. Please, call me back when you are finished.¡± Matti¡¯s chuckle had a small wheeze to it. ¡°No, not excluding you. She wanted to call you and express her concerns.¡± ¡°All right,¡± I sent, and waited. Ozzie had her laptop closed on the front edge of Matti¡¯s desk. She scratched her hands absently on the knees of her pants, returning Matti¡¯s gaze as the silence stretched. Finally she spoke. ¡°I don¡¯t mean any disrespect, to you or to Ms. Gardner-¡± ¡°Matti,¡± the older woman insisted. ¡°-but I¡¯m concerned as to whether I will really have a role here.¡± She swallowed compulsively, seemed to be trying to move her hands to her laptop but suppressing the motion. ¡°You talked today about focusing on what you¡¯re best at, sir. But doesn¡¯t that include what I do? Synthesizing raw data from different sources into a usable form is one of the things you¡¯ve been described as doing in several teams¡¯ after-action reports.¡± ¡°You¡¯re worried about being redundant?¡± I probed. With a sideways glance, she nodded. ¡°Why do you need me to do, in a couple of hours and possibly a trip to the library, what you can do in thirty seconds?¡± Her concern was reasonable in light of my persona, but here was where things got tricky. In truth, her two hours of work would likely save me four or five, since I was just a human being with my unique Vision powers and not actually a super-powerful computer intellect. But that was certainly not something I could share with her. Another lie, then. ¡°Having you available is more of a help then you realize, because there are very few situations where I would attempt to condense hours of complicated analysis into mere minutes,¡± I explained. ¡°The effort to perform those sorts of calculations is extremely taxing. More so, in fact, than if I had taken two hours and processed the material at normal speed.¡± This got a look of interest and curiosity from Matti every bit as sharp as the one from Ozzie, but it was the latter who followed up. ¡°So different functions take different amounts of internal¡­ energy? Effort?¡± ¡°Correct. If I pushed myself to my limits constantly, I¡¯d be online for only a few minutes every day.¡± ¡°Oh!¡± Ozzie nodded happily. ¡°Well, in that case, I can understand why you¡¯d rather give an experienced researcher¡­¡± she paused a second, blushing, ¡°sorry, I mean, you know I have experience, I¡¯m not trying to brag¡­¡± ¡°It¡¯s not bragging to accurately state your own abilities,¡± Matti insisted. ¡°False modesty helps no one. State your competencies honestly and directly.¡± She turned her attention to me. ¡°Ozzie has a PhD in library science and more than four years with the UC library system. She has primary authorship of eight peer reviewed papers, mostly on publication bias and the replication problem.¡± Matti pinned Ozzie with a proud glare that saw the researcher blushing further. ¡°Any modesty she showed would be false modesty.¡± The researcher shook her head rapidly, as though to shake off the effusive praise, but she didn¡¯t contradict what Matti was saying. ¡°Please,¡± Ozzie said after another short pause, ¡°let me know how I can help. It¡¯s really useful to understand that you have limited internal resources, essentially limited time in which to act. There¡¯s probably quite a bit I can help you with.¡± ¡°I am certain there is. Thank you,¡± I said. She nodded, picked up her laptop, and left, closing Matti¡¯s office door behind her. ¡°So, what do you think?¡± Matti asked me once we were alone. ¡°Home runs all around on the team, I think.¡± ¡°Can you forward me their CVs, please?¡± I asked. ¡°I am very impressed by your initiative and the speed at which you are working. I¡¯m not questioning any of your choices.¡± ¡°But you¡¯d still like your own opportunity to evaluate their credentials and know what each of them is capable of, right?¡± Matti interjected. ¡°I am gratified that you understand.¡± She nodded. ¡°Good. Do you have any other questions about our hiring plans before we move on to other issues?¡± She certainly could pique my interest. ¡°No, please continue.¡± ¡°All right. If you don¡¯t mind, let me start with a simple question.¡± I watched as Matti stood and made her way to her office door. She opened it enough to stick her head out and look around, clearly wanting to make sure that no one was even potentially in earshot before she continued. Returning to her seat, she asked, ¡°Who, exactly, is Hector Donnell?¡± Chapter 23 - Buffer Overflow The first explanation that occurred to me for Matti knowing my name was that Lady Liberty had contacted her, although for what purpose I was not immediately clear. Other possibilities surfaced right after, and I realized it would be premature for me to jump to any conclusion. What I typed and sent was, ¡°I am familiar with mister Donnell, but I need more context for your question.¡± Matti snorted. ¡°I should hope you¡¯re familiar with him, since you¡¯ve given him access to millions of dollars over the years.¡± She shared her screen with me; it showed a spreadsheet formatted as an account ledger. ¡°Not counting the company, Hector Donnell has spent more of your money than you have. So, I will ask again, who is he?¡± ¡°He is a close friend of mine. He maintains one of my earliest server clusters at his home in Detroit,¡± I said, then rejoined. ¡°How did you find out about our connection?¡± The small grin on Matti¡¯s lips was, I was learning, a significant effort for her to manage with the scales covering her face. ¡°You put me and Georgia on your accounts, remember? The rest was basic record-keeping and a little forensic accounting.¡± She scoffed, ¡°If you thought you were keeping the financial connection between you and Donnell a secret¡­ well, you need a real accountant.¡± She ended with smug confidence, ¡°And now you have one.¡± I listened as best I could while she laid out some things I could do to better shield my income from scrutiny ¨C multiple layers of holding companies, offshore numbers accounts, liquidity measures, and the like. She lost me about five minutes in, but it was twenty-five before she finished. ¡°So you can put these safeguards in place? And it¡¯s all legal?¡± I had no qualms about illegal actions when necessary, but I wanted it to be a deliberate choice rather than ignorance on my part. ¡°Already on it. And, yes, it¡¯s all legal ¨C at least for today. Financial regulators are constantly working to close loopholes while financiers open new ones.¡± She shrugged. ¡°There¡¯s a reason you¡¯re paying me for two weeks of continuing education a year.¡± ¡°I am?¡± ¡°You are. It¡¯s in the revised contract. Oh! That reminds me.¡± She opened a document file on her screen. ¡°Those contracts you gave us on Friday were terrible. We¡¯re retaining Prasun Massey now, and they¡¯ve supplied better ones. I¡¯ll send you copies. These are what the new hires signed, and we¡¯ll be signing a more elaborate version once the Prasun associate ¨C Sandy, I think ¨C finishes them.¡± She clicked over to her email. ¡°Tomorrow, looks like.¡± She was certainly moving forward at full steam. ¡°Do I get to speak with these lawyers? They represent my company, after all.¡± Matti shrugged. ¡°If you want, but there¡¯s no real need. Georgia and I know how to work with them.¡± She looked straight into the camera, and it felt like her gold-flecked eyes met mine, even though she had nothing to focus on. ¡°Delphic, putting this endeavor in our hands is the single best decision you¡¯ve ever made. Let us know what you need, or if you have any concerns¡­ but otherwise, let us do our jobs. Okay? We¡¯ve got this.¡± I sighed to myself. It certainly seemed like they did. ¡°Acknowledged.¡± There was another shimmering glint as she nodded. ¡°Call Georgia now. Let her know the Donnell thing turned out to be a non-issue. She had some other things to run past you.¡± She cut the line. I dialed Georgia, but her line was busy; I was invited to leave a message. I didn¡¯t bother. Even so, about a minute later, I received an instant message from her with two brief lines of text: ¡°On a call. Urgent or can I call you back?¡± Apparently my calls weren¡¯t automatically a reason to drop everything else. ¡°Matti said to call you. Not urgent,¡± I sent back. I made a mental list of the most pressing items left to do today: My morning cable installation appointments had been uneventful, other than finally recovering some of the omicron sensors I had placed around Midtown a month ago. That data would need to be analyzed to see if there really was unregistered super activity in that area or not. That item needed to go on the longer list of matters to address, if not today, then certainly sooner rather than later: I remember when I was in high school, Dad discouraged me from making lists like these, saying they never did anything for him other than wrack his nerves with the number of things left to accomplish. But Mom, like me, had always sworn by them ¨C they provided an opportunity to prioritize and tackle tasks in order of immediacy or importance, rather than preferentially addressing some issues while ignoring others. It was admittedly a daunting list, but it at least assured me that I wouldn¡¯t find myself bored this week. I decided to start from the top, and pulled out my personal smartphone to make my next call. ¡°Well hello, Hector,¡± came Kimberly¡¯s warmth over the phone. ¡°I was hoping I¡¯d hear from you.¡± ¡°Because we have a date tonight,¡± I asked. I knotted up a bit as I waited for her response. ¡°Yes, exactly,¡± she said after a short pause that was not good for my stress level. ¡°Sorry if I become hard to hear; you caught me on the way to office hours. Mondays and Thursdays are my fullest days this semester.¡± ¡°I¡¯m glad I didn¡¯t call any later, then. What time are you free?¡± Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. ¡°Six thirty.¡± Another short pause. ¡°Actually, if you¡¯re available at six, you could drop by and catch the last half hour of one of my classes. I bet you¡¯d find it interesting.¡± ¡°Yeah? It would be okay for me to sit in?¡± ¡°It¡¯s my lecture; I can run it however I want.¡± I could hear her self-satisfied smirk. ¡°Okay, I¡¯ll be there!¡± I was too loud; my voice had raised in pitch. I took a breath to calm down. ¡°Where would you like to go to dinner?¡± ¡°Surprise me.¡± ¡°Any allergies? Strong dislikes?¡± ¡°Not really. Well, I¡¯m not really into what they serve at, ah, wings places? Sports bars with nothing but fried and spicy stuff?¡± She giggled. ¡°I don¡¯t think you were planning anything like that, anyway.¡± ¡°No, but I¡¯ll keep it in mind for the future.¡± ¡°The future, huh? Confident, are we?¡± ¡°I figure it¡¯s like a job interview. You never go wrong talking like you plan to be there forever.¡± ¡°I see, I¡¯m just a transitional girlfriend, then. Something to pad your resume before finding a career relationship.¡± ¡°You¡¯re onto me. Send me directions to the classroom and I¡¯ll see you at six. We¡¯ll leave straight from the lecture to dinner?¡± ¡°See you then.¡± I caught my breath for just a moment before closing my eyes and picturing a dingy office in Decatur, Georgia. It was still within normal working hours, and I was gratified to see that Timothy Fitzgerald was both dressed and sober. That had not always been the case in the past year, especially when he didn¡¯t have active clients. Losing his job on the force had been far harder on him than he¡¯d ever admit. Fitz was tinkering with a small bronze casing the size of a pack of cigarettes, one of the omicron sensor units that I had sent him so he could familiarize himself with their operation. These units were twenty years ahead of anything a police department could admit to owning, taking advantage of the Doc¡¯s latest improvements to miniturize what used to take up the space of a microwave oven. The case was open and one of the circuit boards was unmounted. Outside the government, Fitz was the only contact I had who still used a landline telephone. I dialed his number without dropping my View and watched him press a button to answer it on speaker. ¡°Hey boss,¡± he opened without taking his eyes off the print-out of the sensor manual. I dropped my View finally to focus on typing my responses. ¡°Again, I would prefer Delphic. How did you know it was me?¡± ¡°I couldn¡¯t think of anyone else that would be calling me. I¡¯m taking apart this seven-B-thirty-nine sensor you sent me. Lots of pins on this board. Okay to replace with wires?¡± ¡°For what purpose?¡± ¡°If I can move the chips next to each other rather than stacking them, I can slip a sensor in some tighter spaces.¡± I mulled it over. ¡°Yes, but keep temperatures in mind. Very cold copper or aluminum changes conductivity more than the silver used in the pins and might throw off the reading.¡± ¡°Sure. So, why the call?¡± ¡°A case. Are you familiar with the Norbergs?¡± ¡°The New York heiresses?¡± ¡°Kelda and Harmony, yes. I would like you to go New York and see if you can find out what they¡¯re involved in.¡± He cleared his throat roughly. ¡°They run an investment group, right? And probably some charities. Plus they¡¯re minor celebrities, so they probably do a lot. Can you narrow it down?¡± ¡°Illicit connections to organized crime and supers.¡± ¡°That works. Isn¡¯t one of the girls suspected to be¡­¡± ¡°Harmony Norberg is Lady Liberty. It is an open secret among supers.¡± I reminded myself that Fitz didn¡¯t travel in these same circles. ¡°Oh she is?¡± He said it lightly, as though he were surprised to be reminded that Albany was the state capital. ¡°Why am I investigating an established superhero?¡± ¡°Have you heard about Refraxx and the situation in Newark?¡± I had considered a few words before settling on ¡®situation.¡¯ ¡°I haven¡¯t. Should I have?¡± ¡°I will send you some background and links to news about it. A super was killed, and I suspect foul play may have been involved.¡± ¡°Really.¡± It wasn¡¯t a question; it was a statement of disbelief. ¡°She runs the largest super team in the country. Or at least she has the reputation for running it. What happened?¡± Technically, California Combined was larger, but I kept that to myself. ¡°I would rather let you form your own conclusions.¡± ¡°As you say. I¡¯ll buy a ticket for tomorrow. Talk to you then.¡± ¡°Goodbye.¡± As I put together the promised data for Fitz, I decided not to mention him to Whisper for the time being. He was a useful resource for me to maintain my reputation as the omnipresent Delphic, and I had more flexibility with deploying him if I was the only one who knew he was there. I was agonizing over whether to include the collaboration between me and Liberty to falsify NYST system records when the another audio call to Delphic came in. ¡°Spinner,¡± I began, ¡°thank you for returning my call.¡± ¡°Uh, what now?¡± the Boston super asked. ¡°I think we got our wires crossed, man. I didn¡¯t get a message to call you.¡± ¡°It was sent early this morning.¡± ¡°Oh, well, I haven¡¯t checked since I was called in by the DC team.¡± He was referring to the United States Super Team, but USST also doubled as the local team in the greater DC area. ¡°That¡¯s what I was callin¡¯ you about.¡± ¡°How can I assist you?¡± Based on the timing, there was only one thing I could think of that this could be, and it complicated matters considerably. ¡°So our old friend Lamarck,¡± he began. The joviality was forced and uncomfortable. ¡°The last victim of that killer we tracked down a few weeks back.¡± Just as I thought. ¡°A member of USST,¡± I supplied, feigning ignorance, ¡°which is what made the death an international incident. What about him?¡± ¡°He¡¯s alive!¡± Spinner dropped the news like it was a bombshell. ¡°Lamarck is alive? Didn¡¯t they do an autopsy on him?¡± I tried to channel some of my sister¡¯s initial skepticism as though it were my own. ¡°Yeah, I don¡¯t pretend I understand it. Apparently he¡¯s been hanging out in a hospital since he was shot, stuck in a coma and then with no memory until today.¡± ¡°That¡¯s surprising, but also excellent news,¡± I pointed out. ¡°Yeah, but¡­ doesn¡¯t¡­ smell right, y¡¯know? So Perigrine asked me a fly in and take a look. And guess what?¡± ¡°Other supers have been in the area recently?¡± I guessed. That fit Spinner¡¯s abilities. ¡°Yep. Lamarck came with at least two other supers, just last night!¡± He let that sink in before adding, ¡°and not just any two supers; the Gremlin Twins.¡± This confused me. ¡°Who are they?¡± ¡°I haven¡¯t told you about them before? They¡¯ve been my number one unknowns for a while now.¡± ¡°No, I do not believe we have discussed this.¡± ¡°Oh, okay. So, each power that I sense has a unique¡­ flavor to it. That¡¯s how I tell them apart,¡± he explained. ¡°So when I see a trail for a power that I haven¡¯t identified, I make sure to fix it in my memory. If the same trail shows up mutliple times, I give it a name as I work on making a pattern in the appearances.¡± ¡°These two supers have shown up before?¡± ¡°Four other times,¡± Spinner agreed. ¡°Always together. They fly in, do something, and fly out, without anyone ever seeing them. They¡¯re always messing with something. Gremlin Twins.¡± He added, ¡°This is the first time they¡¯ve carried another person, as far as I can tell. The other times were unauthorized access and sabotage or, in one case, stealing some file folders out of an office drawer.¡± I grimaced; that last was a large part of what Doc¡¯s associates, Glimmer and Glitch, had done for me. I arrested my typing for another minute, giving Spinner a further chance to share. ¡°Anyway, I was calling to ask you to take a look at the hospital files here. See if you can figure out who¡¯s behind altering them.¡± That would be a very short investigation. ¡°I will look into it. Do you have a contact at the hospital for accessing their system?¡± He cursed. ¡°I was supposed to ask about that. Can we¡­ hold on a sec, emergency call.¡± The audio line was silent for several seconds before he came back on. ¡°Delphic?¡± ¡°Yes, Spinner?¡± I sent. ¡°Liberty?¡± he asked next, and I felt a strong chill of fear. ¡°I copy,¡± the heroine said. ¡°Okay, go for it,¡± Spinner invited. ¡°Spinner, are you aware we kidnapped Buzz Kowalczyk and three of his men last night?¡± ¡°The Newark guys, yeah. Bad business.¡± ¡°As of four hours ago,¡± Liberty continued, ¡°the four of them were isolated in cells here at New York HQ. We had guards posted and all the usual containment precautions.¡± ¡°Okay. And something happened?¡± Spinner prompted. ¡°The Kowalczyks¡¯ attorney arrived half an hour ago. When they went to retreive Buzz from his cell, they checked in on the other three,¡± her breathing was audible. ¡°Buzz was there, undisturbed, but the other cells are unoccupied. His men are gone.¡± Interlude - Tickets Please Junior was in Hell. This Hell was not the sweltering caverns so often found in modern depictions, but rather, the inescapable ice vaults of Dante¡¯s poetic imaginings. He remembered an illustration in a book he had read in college, showing the fate of humanity¡¯s worst traitors: entirely encased in frigid matter, no sound, no movement, experiencing only the biting cold. The isolation made it all ten times worse. He had no idea what condition his cousins and nephew were in; nobody had even tried to speak with him since he had been brought in the night before. Twice he had been pulled out of the tiny room and taken to a toilet to relieve himself, and then returned to the freezing cell without a single word from the guard. His fierce demands were met with blank looks and stoic silence. Nor could Junior call his flames to combat the cold. His hands were cuffed behind his back, his body wrapped in itchy woolen clothing under thick winter gear. The layers and blankets were thick enough that they would certainly smolder and burn should Junior bring forth the fire inside him, leaving him devoid of even their inadequate protection. Junior languished, sleeping fitfully when he could, and making plans when he could not. He still had two cards to play, and they would need to both be trumps for him and his boys to all live out the year. He had nearly drifted off to sleep when he heard the voice. ¡°Booze?¡± Junior forced his eyes open, despite the aching cold, and looked around. ¡°What?¡± ¡°Are you Booze? Booze, name with a K?¡± The voice seemed to come from just to the left of his head, but turning that way he didn¡¯t see anything. ¡°Buzz Kowalczyk, yes.¡± Junior forced his weight forward to stand up from the bare mattress frame where he had been sitting. He slowly toddled around but saw no one. ¡°Where are you?¡± When the floating face appeared six inches from his own, Junior flinched hard enough to fall backwards onto the cot. ¡°Whoa!¡± The face, of a lean Asian man, seemed disturbingly two-dimensional without the rest of the body to frame it. ¡°Calm down. You called in your tickets. Am hear to get you.¡± His English was clipped but quite clear. The face moved back a fraction and a hand became visible, rubbing the nose. ¡°Ooh, really cold in there. What did you do?¡± ¡°I fought the local supers and lost,¡± Junior replied. ¡°You¡¯re Twixt, then.¡± ¡°Yes, that¡¯s me. Rankai, or what you said.¡± He looked at something outside the cell. ¡°Looks like four of you, but you only bought three tickets. Which three do I take?¡± Junior licked his lips. ¡°I will happily buy a fourth ticket,¡± he began. ¡°You obviously have us at an advantage, so really whatever terms-¡± ¡°No deal.¡± He cut Junior off, his face impassive. ¡°You can buy a ticket later. Right now, am taking three.¡± His face floated to Junior¡¯s right, and three ovals opened on the left, each the size of a car tire. Junior peered through each in turn. Big Joe sat on a thin mattress, the heavy manacles on his hands and feet connected by a long chain that ran through a bolt in the floor. Old Joe was restrained against the wall in his cell, his arms and torso bound to a steel clamp that also kept his feet off the ground. Mikey laid on the cot in his cell, unbound and asleep. ¡°Choose two,¡± Twixt said. The sound of the Chinese super¡¯s voice alerted the occupants of the cells. ¡°Boss!¡± Exclaimed Old Joe, his eyes lighting up, at the same time that Big Joe hissed ¡°Buzz!¡± and shuffled towards the circle. Mikey stirred, sitting up dizzily. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. ¡°I choose all three,¡± Junior stated flatly. ¡°Not enough tickets,¡± Twixt insisted. ¡°Choose two, quickly please. Don¡¯t know how long we have.¡± ¡°Buzz, look at us.¡± Big Joe¡¯s face was near the portal now, and he spoke in a confiding, low tone. ¡°Look how they have us. The kid¡¯ll be fine here. They won¡¯t execute a normie. They won¡¯t even torture one.¡± He blinked rapidly as the cold reached his face. ¡°What, are they freezing you in there? That can¡¯t be legal.¡± ¡°I guess it is, for fire starters,¡± Junior sighed. He flicked his head over to Old Joe. ¡°You already know Joe won¡¯t leave without his son.¡± ¡°He will if we promise to come back for him,¡± the bigger man pressed. ¡°You¡¯re still the Boss.¡± Junior nodded, despite knowing better. Their real Boss, the actual Buzz, had died more than a decade ago. But when Pop¡¯s illness had come on so suddenly, he had made his son promise to step in and run the business. Too many families depended on them ¨C and his cousins, the Joes, most of all. Nobody else had called him Junior since the day Pop passed, but he knew who he was. A college-educated accountant, pretending to be a crime boss. He had done his best; worked hard to see that the business prospered, that books were carefully cooked to fly under investigators¡¯ radar. But now it was over, their little empire brought low by a reckless kid with a death wish. All the legit holdings had good managers and should survive the unwinding, but the underground rackets would get gobbled up by other families or just flounder. Big Joe still stood at the small midair window, less than an arm¡¯s length away. He squinted against the cold, waiting for Junior¡¯s answer. Finally he added, ¡°If not the boy, then me. I don¡¯t have prints on either of the bodies. Without you there, they got no case against me.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t think it works that way, Uncle Joe,¡± Mikey stepped up to his own window. Old Joe was still clamped against the wall, but the other three were in close proximity, like they could reach through and touch the others. ¡°They¡¯ll tag any of us for both of the two guys, talk about aiding and abetting. But I¡¯m a normie. Worst I¡¯ll get is prison; they won¡¯t fry me.¡± Implying the feds would execute any of the rest of them, which was almost certainly true. ¡°Mister Boo¡­B¡­Buzz, please make a selection.¡± Twixt¡¯s tone was level, unhurried. Nothing had changed Junior¡¯s mind; there was only one answer. ¡°All three, mister Twixt. I am staying. Take my men.¡± ¡°Boss, no!¡± Old Joe¡¯s voice was strained and definitely not hushed. ¡°We gotta protect you! We can¡¯t leave you here.¡± ¡°Joe.¡± Junior steeled himself, let his gaze take on the fire that he knew most of Newark respected. It was a more substantial, more lasting fire than the one he could call to cover his skin. ¡°Head with Twixt and follow the plan. Look after each other. Keep your heads down. I will come find you when I can. Ya got me?!¡± That had been Pop¡¯s way of closing discussion, giving his orders. It worked just as well when Junior used it. ¡°Yeah boss.¡± The oldest of the four seemed to deflate, collapsing against the wall clamp. But his eyes stayed alertly fixed on the proceedings. ¡°Okay!¡± The Chinese super¡¯s tone was lively and louder. ¡°Young guy, don¡¯t move. Tall guy, step away from your chain.¡± Big Joe moved to the side of the room, still visible in the window but no longer close to it. Mikey¡¯s window vanished, as did Twixt¡¯s, leaving just the Joes¡¯ cells to Junior¡¯s eyes. A clanking sound came from Old Joe¡¯s cell as the wall clamp slowly parted, disgorging its prisoner. Smacking hard into the cement floor, he took laborious breaths on hands and knees. Big Joe let out a brief yelp as Twixt ¨C wearing a stylized costume in gold and grey ¨C appeared next to him in his cell. The super hefted a large, black axe over one shoulder and brought it down at full force upon a length of chain laying on the floor. The axe left two separate lengths of chain in its wake, as well as a sizable gash in the cement. Both Twixt and Big Joe vanished from the cell at the same moment. And when he glanced back to Old Joe¡¯s cell, he was gone as well. The two windows closed, and Twixt¡¯s face reappeared in front of Junior. ¡°Good fortune, mister Buzz. We are going now. I leave a parting gift.¡± As the face vanished, Junior felt the rumble of his cell¡¯s ventilation system kick in. The warm air was incredibly welcome, although the change was sudden enough that his extremities ached. In the much more comfortable environment of the rapidly warming cell, Junior thought again about their situation and his plans. Big Joe¡¯s arguments were sound; he was probably the wrong person to have left behind. He was the one most likely able to do something about their situation on the outside. But Junior had never forgot the promise he made to Pop. Right call or not, he knew his decision would have made the old man proud. He had taken care of his boys. The rest, he¡¯d live with. Chapter 24 - Historic The Fiendish Four, as they are customarily known, represent four of the most powerful supers in the world; they have been a staple of the Times Top 50 Powered People list since they reached national prominence in the aftermath of the 2001 World Trade Center attack (usually just called 8-28 these days). Most lists rate Twixt as less dangerous than his teammates (at least Vapula and Utuqaq; there was no consensus on Wildcard), but I have always felt that was naive. Sure, mass-variable shapeshifting and glacier-sized ice manipulation were both powerful, but the shear breadth of possibilities for someone who can create multiple spacial distortion effects over arbitrary distances is essentially incalculable. As I understood his powers, there was nothing at all stopping Twixt (or »íÈ»¿ªÀÊ, roughly ¡®beholding the open spaces¡¯) from delivering a nuclear warhead directly into the Oval Office. This may be why, whenever the supervillain team isn¡¯t actively attacking, most authorities prefer to ignore their continued existence. At the moment, I was making this rather hard for Lady Liberty to do. ¡°This isn¡¯t how the Four usually operate,¡± she pointed out. ¡°How did you ID him?¡± ¡°I have forwarded you the camera record and time stamp where his portal is visible,¡± I sent. ¡°It is clearly his finger in the frame.¡± Finding the one time when a portal could be seen by one of the hallway cameras ¨C the moment where Twixt opened Old Joe¡¯s restraints ¨C had taken longer than watching the exchange between the prisoners and the supervillain. ¡°There¡¯s no question it was Twixt?¡± she asked. It was her sixth variation on this same question. ¡°The man said it was Twixt, LL. You got some reason to think it couldn¡¯t be?¡± Spinner¡¯s interjection was most welcome, although his tone had become harsher than usual. ¡°You have his trail, correct?¡± Liberty redirected. ¡°Yeah, but what¡¯s the point?¡± He paused for effect, but then kept on before she could answer. ¡°I spend another half day travelling to spend five seconds looking at the cells and say, yeah, Delphic was right? I already know he is. He always is. Get off it.¡± The heroine persisted. ¡°Looking at the trails, you could-¡± ¡°It¡¯s Twixt, Harm. He¡¯s gone. It¡¯s done.¡± ¡°Spinner. We still have Buzz. We¡¯ll squeeze details out of him, too. But we need all the intel that-¡± Her voice cut off abruptly, indicating a disconnected line. I heard my friend let out a frustrated grunt. ¡°She never listens. Doesn¡¯t know how to pick her battles.¡± ¡°You have encountered the Fiendish Four previously?¡± I asked. ¡°Just the aftermath, playing bloodhound. It¡¯s easy enough to see where they¡¯ve been¡­ although the demon guy only leaves a trail if he¡¯s eating stuff, and the grab bag one has a new trail for each new power. But thanks to Twixt they always get away clean.¡± ¡°You have seen him work alone before?¡± ¡°Eh, good point. No, it¡¯s always the four of ¡¯em when they show up.¡± Uh oh. ¡°Doesn¡¯t that imply that the other three are also in New York?¡± ¡°Were,¡± he corrected. ¡°By the time we know where Twixt has been, he and the rest of the group are already gone.¡± Considering, he adds, ¡°Although NYST should be figuring out what the rest of them were up to.¡± ¡°You didn¡¯t seem keen to make the trip out there,¡± I observed. ¡°Yeah, I¡­ probably overreacted. But I feel like I¡¯m being overused.¡± Another sigh. ¡°NEST is a big job in its own right, but since the other regional leaders found out about my trail sight, I spend more than half the time on the road. It¡¯s exhausting.¡± ¡°So you¡¯re putting your foot down.¡± ¡°Trying to, yeah. Oh hey!¡± His tone pivoted to something more upbeat. ¡°You had something you wanted to talk to me about, right?¡± After Spinner had just opened up that he was feeling overused, it seemed like a bad time. ¡°Yes, but I think it should wait.¡± ¡°All right. Uh¡­¡± I heard a hissing noise, likely him drawing breath through closed teeth. ¡°I¡¯m about ready to call you out on something. If you have a few more minutes.¡± ¡°I have the time.¡± ¡°Well, I¡­ just¡­ look, I don¡¯t want you to feel attacked. Y¡¯know I consider you one of the good ones.¡± ¡°I feel the same about you. We are friends.¡± ¡°Good¡­ so¡­ it¡¯s just, I¡¯m pretty sure you¡¯re lying about what your powers are.¡± I was starting to feel like I couldn¡¯t catch a break today. ¡°That¡¯s a surprising accusation. What makes you think that?¡± ¡°Not a no, eh?¡± Spinner asked sharply. ¡°You just don¡¯t¡­¡± he let out a frustrated sigh. ¡°The things you know don¡¯t, like, cleanly match what tech should show you. Today¡¯s a good example. I¡¯m sure NYST had already checked all the HQ footage and hadn¡¯t seen Twixt. So how did you know it was him?¡± ¡°I could analyze the images in far greater detail. I found that -¡± ¡°I don¡¯t buy it, man. I¡¯m sorry. When you were able to pick up Ambush¡¯s trail after he turned his powers off? Details you¡¯ve given of unmonitored, closed rooms?¡± Spinner¡¯s speech sped up slightly as he pressed on. ¡°Doesn¡¯t fit, but something else does. Hey, let me give you video for a bit.¡± I accepted the added feed when it came up a moment later. Spinner sat in the driver¡¯s seat of a parked car, his mouth half turned up in an apologetic smile. His eyes were hidden by his silver viser, and the angle made it clear he was filming himself with a mobile device. ¡°If I seem a bit more ready to accept you than most,¡± he continued, ¡°it¡¯s because of how much you remind me of 4cast. The boy is not good with people, mind you, but when he speaks with confidence he¡¯s never wrong. I trust him because his track record justifies it.¡± I was skeptical that his confident predictions were correct all the time, but that was something I could look into on my own. I typed, ¡°What does that have to do with me?¡± ¡°The sort of things you say, they¡­ feel¡­ kinda the same. Like¡­¡± The super ran his hand through hair with significant grey in it, which always surprised me when I saw it. He just didn¡¯t¡­ sound¡­ old. ¡°You named yourself after an oracle, and you know things that I don¡¯t see how you could possibly know. You¡¯re not just a tech super, are you? You¡¯re a precog, too.¡± While not quite right, Spinner¡¯s conclusion made sense. Precognition was what he had experience with. My long-distance View into the past was unprecedented as far as I knew. But how should I respond to his conclusions? I really didn¡¯t know. ¡°Aren¡¯t you?¡± Spinner prompted as my silence stretched out. It was an opportunity to come clean with someone whom I considered a trustworthy ally. I was sorely tempted¡­ but I couldn¡¯t risk it. Instead, I doubled down, repeating some of the stories I had spread online over the years about Delphic¡¯s abilities. ¡°Spinner, I am genuinely sorry to disappoint you. What you see isn¡¯t precognition.¡± ¡°Okay, then what is it?¡± ¡°Differential stochastic projection models, or DSP.¡± ¡°Never heard of it,¡± his grin had actually gotten bigger; I was amusing him. ¡°I have access to massive computing power. Trillions of operations a second running in parallel. This lets me simulate variations of scenarios of the near past and determine which ones best match the present.¡± Love what you''re reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on. ¡°So just, like, run rewind on the same virtual scene over and over until it fits?¡± ¡°More like¡­ start with all the possible scenes and erase the ones that don¡¯t work until you¡¯re just left with one.¡± Spinner shook his head. ¡°Nah, you sound like you see the answer, like it just came to you. Not like you reasoned your way into it.¡± ¡°That¡¯s how it feels to me. I can¡¯t follow the DSP; I¡¯m limited to my own neural thought processes¡­ although with some modest enhancements and quite a lot of optimization. The DSP model just pops up with an answer or a set of answers, often in the form of images or particular data records.¡± I could see my friend nodding his head forward slightly; he was buying it. ¡°So in a way it is kind of like an oracle, in that I get an answer and the mechanism to get it is opaque to me.¡± Spinner shrugged a shoulder, then shook his head vigorously and gave me a grin. ¡°All right, that checks out.¡± His grin softened as he thought of something else. ¡°Hey, this DSP thing¡­ I think I¡¯ve heard people saying that something like that is what¡¯s happening with 4cast. That he¡¯s not really seeing the future, just¡­ projecting it based on things in the present.¡± While Spinner brought this up, he tapped the side of his visor twice and the video feed changed. From his own vantage point, the camera in his mask, I watched him put down his smart phone and start the car. There was snow coating the grass in what I presumed was Maryland. ¡°Do they think your own precognition works the same way?¡± If he was in the mood to talk about it, I saw no need to bottle my own curiosity about his powers. ¡°I think so, yeah. What I see is a lot more detailed, right? But also just a handful of seconds around the present.¡± He lets out a laugh as he makes a turn onto the highway. ¡°Anyway, I¡¯m sorry if I put you on the spot, there. I just figure with you and me supporting the same teams more often these days, we should keep the air clear between us.¡± ¡°I understand,¡± my Delphic voice replied, still with its artificial cadence and tone. ¡°You meant no harm, and caused none.¡± ¡°All right. Let¡¯s talk soon, okay? And give Whisper my condolences if you talk to her before I do.¡± ¡°Certainly. Goodbye.¡± Checking the time, I needed to start getting ready to meet Kimberly. One more quick call first. I didn¡¯t bother listening to Lady Liberty¡¯s message; I called her back directly. ¡°Were you able to get through to him?¡± she began with no preliminaries. The video framed her armored head and shoulders at an HQ office space. It took me a moment to understand her question. ¡°Spinner¡¯s reticence has a larger cause,¡± I explained. ¡°So, no. Unless you can show why he is badly needed in this particular circumstance, it appears he is heading home.¡± She let out a groan. ¡°The Four are a real threat. This isn¡¯t the time to whine about fairness.¡± This told me that Liberty was aware of Spinner¡¯s concern but pushed anyway. ¡°This seems like the right time to me,¡± I disagreed. ¡°This is a situation where we have already identified the super involved, and do not expect that they will have left a trail that can be followed.¡± ¡°But we can¡¯t be certain without him here.¡± ¡°And that is why this is a good time for him to refuse. You aren¡¯t requesting him to provide the handholds to an otherwise intractable problem, or to follow an established trace. You just want him as a double check.¡± ¡°What else is he going to do; beat up muggers?¡± Sneering at Spinner¡¯s work for his own team was exactly what was bothering him. I started typing a message to this effect¡­ and then stopped. Why provide insight to Liberty on this; why help her ease tensions with Spinner? If I wanted to recruit Spinner to act against her, it was to my advantage to let this fester. So instead, I typed, ¡°Any sign of Twixt¡¯s teammates? I understand it is unusual to see any of them without the others.¡± Her helmet swiveled to either side in a headshake. ¡°No, and if this is a break in pattern rather than just a detection failure, I don¡¯t know what to make of it.¡± ¡°If I can assist further, let me know,¡± I made to end the call. ¡°One thing that might help,¡± Liberty said, ¡°see if you can get any further in identifying Buzz¡¯s overseas contacts for buying slaves. Maybe that will connect back to the Four somehow.¡± ¡°Acknowledged,¡± I sent, and hung up. The multiple layers of secrets, motivations, and deceptions were starting to wear on me. I was happy to leave them all behind for the remainder of the evening and enjoy time on purely personal endeavors. Without Paris to micromanage my look, I kept things simple ¨C a red dress shirt with a soft bone-colored tie; red hi-tops under black slacks. With a fresh outfit in my overnight bag (and a quick note to myself that I had fallen behind on laundry over the weekend), I shrugged on a heavy leather jacket before driving to Wayne State University¡¯s campus. Daylight had already spent itself as I pulled into one of a dozen parking lots interspersed among squat stone buildings, but the electric lights were quite generous. I easily walked from my car, down an uneven footpath, and to the door of the complex housing Kimberly¡¯s class without ever leaving the demesnes of the lampposts. ¡°¡­ clear case of government overreach,¡± Kimberly¡¯s voice carried through the lecture hall without echoes. There were around fifty students in the room, sitting at long tables arranged in tiered rows. The door where I came in was along one side of the front of the hall, near where Kimberly stood to speak. My date wore a knee length skirt over velvet leggings, and a matching jacket and blouse. She was much better dressed than the students who had on some combination of flannel, sweats, and denim. ¡°So what are some of the reasons that Korstad gives for the friction between Civil Rights leaders and supers?¡± She caught my eye long enough to give me a wink as I slipped into an empty seat in the second row. ¡°The law enforcement connection,¡± one student called out. Kimberly extended her hand and nodded, signaling the young woman to say more. ¡°Um, the famous supers had been, like, vigilantes and spies and stuff. So they were connected to the establishment, and the movement was the opposite.¡± ¡°Excellent,¡± Kimberly acknowledged. ¡°Even figures pushing for equality aren¡¯t immune from other prejudices, and the perception of supers were as law-and-order advocates. Anything else?¡± ¡°It undercut their equality message,¡± a male voice bellowed from the back. ¡°The very existence of supers went against what they were preaching.¡± ¡°Undercut equality,¡± Kimberly repeated. ¡°Say a little more, please. How do powers do that?¡± ¡°Well, the American idea that both JFK and MLK were pushing was the whole, all men are created equal thing. Like, that was how we get that segregation is bad, the differences we see between races aren¡¯t real. But¡­¡± the student, a short white boy with spiky hair, licked his lips, ¡°but what if that¡¯s wrong? What if it turns out that some people really are born better than others, that everyone is not the same? That¡¯s why Rosenberg focused so much effort on finding supers in post-War Germany.¡± Several students raised their hands when Rosenberg was mentioned. Kimberly pointed to one sitting behind me. ¡°But there¡¯s no racial group that has a monopoly on supers,¡± she said. ¡°Strong powers come from multiple genes. You need diverse ancestry for that.¡± Kimberly replied, ¡°Remember that we¡¯re talking about 1968 here. It wasn¡¯t even common knowledge that super powers were heritable, and the Reich was still making loud noises about breeding ¡®super men.''¡± She typed something into her tablet and showed an iconic image from Time: President Kennedy and Fuhrer Bormann looking in opposite directions under a headline, ¡®The Balance of Power.¡¯ ¡°Kennedy¡¯s vocal support for Civil Rights legislation was based on contrasting it with what the Nazis were doing, and using that contrast against the southern wing of his own party. Supers would have weakened the message.¡± ¡°Are you implying,¡± another student asked, ¡°that Lyndon Johnson and the Southern Democrats agreed with the Nazis?¡± ¡°Not at all,¡± the lecturer smirked. ¡°I¡¯m saying that making them look like Nazis is how JFK kept the party nomination, won his third term¡­ and played right into the hands of the GOP Southern Strategy.¡± She let that sink in for a moment before continuing. ¡°Getting back on topic¡­ we have the stereotype of supers as friends of law enforcement, and the unfortunate association of supers with mid-century eugenics. What else?¡± From a quiet voice in the front row: ¡°Korstad also talks about the lack of pressure, since most supers could ¡®pass¡¯ as normies.¡± ¡°Everyone hear that?¡± Kim asked. ¡°There was less pressure from powered people as a group because so many of them can ¡®pass.¡¯ Does that sound familiar?¡± Several voices returned similar answers. ¡°Gay rights, exactly. The ability of minorities to stay ¡®in the closet¡¯ strongly impacted their investment in the struggle during this period. Women and people of color don¡¯t typically ¡®pass,¡¯ and these groups were the ones whose very visible oppression prompted much of the activism and reforms in this period.¡± ¡°That¡¯s pretty harsh,¡± one of the students who had spoken earlier called out. ¡°You¡¯re saying it¡¯s LGBT people¡¯s fault their rights came later?¡± Kimberly rounded on that, and her mouth lost its smile for the first time since I¡¯d entered the room. ¡°No. How did you get that from what I said?¡± ¡°You were saying that minorities that weren¡¯t as visible¡­ weren¡¯t as motivated to fight.¡± She seemed less sure of herself under her instructor¡¯s gaze. ¡°Yes, but that doesn¡¯t suddenly make the discrimination their fault.¡± She shook her head, eyes closed, trying to recapture some line of reasoning. ¡°It¡¯s important to understand why certain groups acted together and others didn¡¯t, why the pressure to push back against injustice drove movements at different times. None of it is an assignment of blame. The blame is squarely on the inequalities in the system and those who took advantage of them to harm the vulnerable. Not the victims.¡± When she opened her eyes, four more hands were up and a low level of murmur had started. She looked around the room and said, ¡°That¡¯s it for today. Next session, we¡¯ll cover the Registration Acts and Huddleston, so make sure you¡¯ve done the reading.¡± I stayed seated as the students around me collected their things and slowly headed towards the exit. The class had immediately changed from low murmurs to regular voices when their lecturer finished, and it would be a few minutes before enough students had left to make private conversation really possible again. After giving me an adorable smile and wave, Kimberly kept her attention on the lectern, organizing and folding her loose pages of notes and stuffing them in her sizable messenger bag. Two of the students who had made comments during the session approached her. I couldn¡¯t hear their exchange, but it ended with her nodding in my direction and giving salutations of departure. I stood and braced up against the corner of the table as she looked me over. She approved of what she saw, and her lips pursed a bit as she took a quarter step¡­ away from me, her eyes holding mine. I thought I had a read on her body language, but if I were mistaken¡­ I stepped around the edge of the table and into her personal space, and felt her hands snake up my back as I leaned into a solid kiss. I had judged the situation correctly. When Kimberly caught her breath a few minutes later, she just said, ¡°So, where to?¡± Chapter 25 - Dinner at Vines My beautiful date didn¡¯t miss a beat when I opened the passenger door to her, managing a peck on the cheek before climbing in. As I got in on the driver¡¯s side and started the engine, I noticed an amused smirk on her face. Those so far had tended to be at my expense, although never in a hurtful way. ¡°What is it?¡± I asked, maneuvering us out of the lot and onto the road. ¡°This car suits you,¡± she said. ¡°It¡¯s small and unassuming, but with all the upgrades.¡± I could feel her beam even with my eyes on the road. ¡°Clean on the inside and out. And I¡¯d be willing to bet it¡¯s had every scheduled maintenance performed on time.¡± I don¡¯t know why, but I blushed. I nodded; her comments didn¡¯t seem to require anything more. ¡°I had a car at Duke.¡± ¡°You didn¡¯t bring it here?¡± ¡°No, I hardly ever used it. Everything was within an easy walking distance at Duke. One of those ¡®bubble¡¯ campuses everyone talks about.¡± She sighed, looking out the window. ¡°So I drove it back to Baltimore and gave it to my little brother, still in high school at the time.¡± ¡°Right, two siblings you said. A younger brother and sister.¡± She had mentioned them at some point as contrasting examples of men and women entering college, although I forgot what her point had been. ¡°Yep! And I¡¯m gonna guess¡­ you¡¯re an only child.¡± Her smile was expectant when I glanced over briefly. I smiled, too; it was her first guess about me that was off the mark. ¡°I have an older sister, actually ¨C although, I¡¯m adopted, so you get half credit. I¡­ don¡¯t think I had any biological siblings.¡± ¡°Nice try saving me, but no ¨C adopted family is family. Bad guess. Hmm.¡± I felt her gaze on me. ¡°It¡¯s just¡­ well, you strike me as someone who lives alone, who takes pride in self-sufficiency. Which doesn¡¯t fit having an older sister, unless the two of you don¡¯t get along¡­ and I definitely don¡¯t get that vibe from you. I didn¡¯t even before you tensed up in disagreement the moment I said it.¡± She was right ¨C I had reacted poorly to the implication that Paris and I weren¡¯t close. The truth was that this whole line of inquiry was making me uncomfortable. Kimberly was putting me under the microscope, and I was squirming. I tried to think of a way to change the subject. ¡°We can definitely change the subject. I¡¯m sorry,¡± she offered. ¡°I think I got a bit nervous about tonight, and started overthinking things. But I can tell I got your back up.¡± I nodded. ¡°The class was nice. The students seem engaged by the material.¡± ¡°It¡¯s a colorful period. A lot of the iconic superheroes went public, and their interactions with Civil Rights¡­ well, it didn¡¯t always match expectations.¡± ¡°Yeah.¡± I swallowed. ¡°I¡­ am¡­ not sure how much I agree with what you said, there at the end? About blame?¡± ¡°Oh? I don¡¯t think you can fault people for just wanting to live their lives. Doing what¡¯s expected of them.¡± Her smile dropped again. ¡°I see your point. But you know the old saying, evil triumphs if the rest of us do nothing.¡± ¡°Kennedy in 1961. He didn¡¯t originate the saying, but it¡¯s why Americans know it.¡± ¡°Okay. It¡¯s just¡­ I do feel, that if you lived at a time where you saw those injustices, and ignored them because they weren¡¯t happening to you¡­¡± ¡°Silence bears some culpability,¡± Kimberly finished for me. ¡°Some, sure. Especially in a society where exploiting minorities makes life better for the majority. Cheap production, segregated benefits.¡± Out of the corner of my eye I saw her nod, but she didn¡¯t say anything right away. The silence stretched on for a bit. ¡°We¡¯re still doing it,¡± she finally said. I wasn¡¯t sure what she meant, so I cocked my head slightly. I didn¡¯t know how well the gesture could be seen in the car. ¡°The exploitation. In lots of ways. But the one that no one seems bothered by is the superheroes themselves. Do you know there¡¯s a fifteen percent fatality rate over ten years?¡± ¡°It¡¯s a dangerous job,¡± I agreed. ¡°There is literally no other job that is one percent that dangerous. Civil war soldiers in Africa have higher survival rates than that.¡± Her voice was raised, full of conviction. ¡°A life saving drug with that fatality rate would never get FDA approval. But we just accept it as a normal part of superhero work.¡± ¡°What choice do we have?¡± I found myself asking. ¡°The supers are standing between us and dangerous criminals. In a world where one person can be born with the firepower of a platoon of soldiers, we need to recruit and train people who can respond to that.¡± We had been rolling down one of the main stretches of Midtown. I turned into an alley, sidling the car up to a space in a half full parking lot behind a row of store fronts. ¡°I am not saying we don¡¯t need superheroes,¡± Kim replied as we parked. ¡°I¡¯m saying we need to be more concerned with what happens to them.¡± I thought about my response as I opened my door into the frigid Detroit evening. When I rounded the hood of the car to reach the passenger door, I saw Kimberly looking intently into the mirror of a small makeup compact, murmuring under her breath. When I opened her door, she snapped it shut and her smile blossomed on her face. ¡°People are very concerned about supers,¡± I said as Kimberly took my hand to lift her out of the low carriage. ¡°They are celebrities, and their deaths are big news. Take the Lamarck shooting.¡± She shook her head. ¡°Lamarck was national news because he was USST, and because he was killed in Canada. Most super deaths don¡¯t get that sort of coverage. Have you heard of Refraxx?¡± ¡°A New York super?¡± ¡°New Jersey, actually. Killed in a drug bust this weekend. Only made the local news.¡± She met my eyes as I held the door open for her. ¡°Along with Sonic Silk and Nightwatch in the South, and two other heroes in Portland. The news networks are filling twenty-four hours of airtime and still didn¡¯t give them a mention.¡± The light in Terry Vine¡¯s Restaurante Italiano came mostly from dim electric ¡®candles¡¯ hung along the walls. The warm central air combined with the dimness to evoke a smokey atmosphere. The dining areas were a labyrinth of smaller rooms, somewhat muffling the noise from so many tables. But the increased intimacy was undermined by the patrons filling the waiting area and standing along the walls. I was surprised to see such crowding on a Monday night, especially after having no trouble finding a parking space. Based on the age and dress of the waiting customers, it looked like some sort of event ¨C maybe a play? ¨C must have wrapped up nearby. With some difficulty, I maneuvered over to the hostess¡¯s stand, where a tall woman with a wooden smile made marks with a grease pencil. I was familiar with a lot of the staff of Vine¡¯s, but I hadn¡¯t seen her before. She glanced up briefly, then returned her full attention to her seating chart. I waited for her to look up and acknowledge me, but when she did finally look up, she immediately caught the attention of a server nearby and made no attempt to address me. This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. ¡°Hi!¡± I began. ¡°I have a reservation for -¡± ¡°Just a moment, sir,¡± she said. ¡°Gina, do we have another seat for¡­¡± she followed the waitress she was talking to as the younger woman passed, moving away from her station. I felt a pull at my arm, and turned to see Kimberly take it with her own, pressing her side lightly against mine. She smiled reassuringly. I watched the hostess as she returned to the stand. She wore the white shirt and slacks of a Vine¡¯s server, but with the addition of a red silk bow. Tall and dark-skinned, her hair tucked under in a simple bun, she reminded me more than a little of Harmony Norberg. I met her eyes as she approached her station, but as she came to a halt I realized that her look and smile were both directed behind Kim and me, toward an older couple that stood behind us waiting their own turn. ¡°Can I help you?¡± She said, easily loud enough to be heard even over the chatter of the room. ¡°Yes,¡± I said, deciding my best approach was to pretend that she was speaking to me anyway. ¡°We have a reservation.¡± The woman¡¯s smile stiffened even more as she looked down at me. ¡°For two, yes?¡± She turned a couple of pages in a notebook in front of her. ¡°I¡¯m afraid I don¡¯t see it.¡± Her eyes moved back to the couple behind us. ¡°Let me just quickly ask these people¡­¡± In one smooth motion, Kimberly nudged me slightly as she stepped forward and yanked the notebook off the booth. She thumbed to the last non-blank page as the hostess made protesting noises. ¡°Here it is,¡± she said. ¡°Party of two, for,¡± she glanced at the clock on the wall, ¡°one minute from now.¡± ¡°My mistake,¡± the hostess bounced back immediately. ¡°I must have missed it.¡± My date slid the notebook back, open to the correct page. ¡°Mistakes happen. Asking for the name would have helped you find it.¡± ¡°Right, of course,¡± she nodded, her finger scanning down the page again. ¡°Which¡­ ah¡­¡± ¡°Donnell,¡± I replied. I watched the hostess¡¯s face carefully as she read my entry. I enjoyed seeing her eyes go slightly wide in reading what it said. The hostess looked me up and down as she beckoned us to follow her. Kimberly risked a questioning glance at me before stepping after the quick gait of the taller woman. The small round table was set in the center of a small space carved out from the angled intersection of two other rooms, partially baffled from each. As we approached it, our hostess made to stand behind one of the chairs, but I cleared my throat and shook my head. ¡°Thanks,¡± I said firmly. ¡°Have a good evening.¡± She acknowledged the dismissal and walked rapidly away, while I took her place in pulling out Kimberly¡¯s chair. ¡°Any idea what all that was about?¡± Kim asked as I took my own seat. ¡°A ¡®lost¡¯ reservation? You seemed familiar enough with them.¡± She grimaced. ¡°No, that part was normal enough. I mean the look on her face when she actually saw the reservation. You requested a special table?¡± When I nodded, she looked around. ¡°What¡¯s special about it?¡± ¡°It¡¯s close to the kitchen. That will be important later.¡± ¡°Suspenseful,¡± she smiled. I shrugged. ¡°It¡¯s a fun little thing.¡± My hands folded themselves, business-like, on the table as I focused my attention. ¡°Let¡¯s talk food.¡± Her smiled broadened further. ¡°Why do I get the feeling that it¡¯s your turn to lecture?¡± ¡°Because you are extremely perceptive. What would you normally¡­¡± I dropped my question as the waitress appeared next to our table, handing each of us a wine menu. ¡°Welcome to Vine¡¯s. I¡¯m Inez; can I recommend a glass of white to start?¡± ¡°Good evening, Inez,¡± I replied. ¡°Just water before the meal, please, and we¡¯ll wait to pair our drinks with dinner, is that okay?¡± The question was directed across the table, and Kim gave me an encouraging nod. ¡°Who¡¯s in the kitchen tonight?¡± ¡°Chef Reed, sir.¡± ¡°TJ!¡± I replied brightly, and the server nodded. ¡°Excellent. Give us a couple of minutes?¡± ¡°Of course, sir.¡± She left, a male server appearing immediately behind her to leave us two water glasses and a full decanter. ¡°So, let me back up. You like pasta?¡± ¡°Sure.¡± Kimberly¡¯s mouth was pursed slightly, hiding her smile in her sparkling eyes. She seemed to find this¡­ amusing, I thought. ¡°It allows for the cook to select texture independent from flavor. You can play with the ingredients in your sauce, and independent from that, any of a dozen different shapes to the pasta can add definition and scope to how that flavor is packaged.¡± ¡°Hmm.¡± My date gave real effort to evaluate what I was saying. ¡°That seems like it¡¯s just a property of what ¡®sauce¡¯ does in any type of dish. Like, even a grilled chicken breast, say, can be basted or drizzled or, marinated, I guess?¡± She looked for a nod from me, which I happily supplied. ¡°And the sauce provides different flavors while the meat provides the texture. Right?¡± I inclined my head slightly to concede the point. ¡°True. So, what¡¯s your usual stand-by order for Italian food?¡± ¡°Without a menu? I guess¡­ probably chicken alfredo. Although I do try to be adventurous at new places. Um, nothing with too much garlic, though.¡± She stuck out her tongue in a minor ¡®blech¡¯ expression. I nodded. ¡°Usually TJ has a really great cream sauce I think you¡¯ll like.¡± ¡°Why don¡¯t we have menus?¡± She flipped over the wine list that Inez had brought, as though a dinner selection might appear. ¡°That¡¯s the fun little surprise. And¡­ here we are!¡± My smile was broad as I leaned back to let the waiter slide a shallow bowl holding a steaming pale liquid. I snatched up my spoon and slurped a mouthful from it immediately. ¡°Wedding soup! With¡­ not pork, though.¡± ¡°Indeed. Venison, in fact.¡± The woman in white coat and chef¡¯s hat stood at the end of the table, poised and alert. She always had a regal bearing when she was in charge of the kitchen, and allowed herself only the barest hint of a smile. ¡°Hector, always a pleasure.¡± She gave a cursory nod across the table. ¡°I don¡¯t believe I have met your friend.¡± She glanced down at Kimberly¡¯s untouched bowl. My date caught the look and raised her own spoon. ¡°Excellent,¡± she said after taking a silent bite¡­ she didn¡¯t slurp like I did. ¡°TJ, this is Kimberly Griffin. Kim, this is the best chef in Detroit.¡± TJ¡¯s eyebrows raised at me. ¡°The two other chefs here would contest that.¡± I nodded. ¡°And when it¡¯s their kitchen, they can be the best.¡± Normally she would have delivered a rejoinder, but today she returned to business. ¡°Our usual arrangement?¡± When I nodded, she added, ¡°Ms. Griffin, can I interest you in a risotto? Or perhaps eggplant parmesan?¡± Kimberly was lost; she looked to me. ¡°What are you getting?¡± I shrugged. ¡°Whatever she¡¯s been working on. I see if I can identify any secret ingredients, and give her my frank opinion.¡± TJ saw another woman in a white jacket wave at her from the doorway leading back to the kitchen. ¡°Sorry, it looks like I¡¯m needed. I¡¯ll send Inez by to get your order.¡± She waved a hand at me as she walked away. Something was clearly bothering the chef; I¡¯d never seen her this curt with a table. Maybe they were short-handed on a night this busy, and that had soured the mood in the kitchen. ¡°She was a lot less friendly than usual, huh?¡± Kimberly smiled calmly. She kept her voice low, not wanting to be overheard. I nodded. ¡°She¡¯s usually quite colorful with banter, specially when we talk food.¡± ¡°You haven¡¯t figured it out?¡± Kimberly lowered her voice even more, and looked around to make sure none of the servers were close. ¡°I¡¯m going to guess you¡¯ve not brought a woman here before.¡± ¡°My sister. But¡­ not a date, no.¡± I was uneasy about what she was implying. Her smile tightened. ¡°Yeah, she¡¯s into you. I could see her consciously turn down her flirting when she realized we were on a date.¡± Surprised, I shook my head. ¡°No, that doesn¡¯t fit. TJ is nice and outgoing to everyone. I met her in a cooking class that Terry ran for charity a couple of years back.¡± She was as certain as I felt uncertain. ¡°It¡¯s cute that you don¡¯t see it.¡± I felt a touch on my knuckles; she¡¯d slid her hand across the table to touch mine. I kept still and let her do the touching. ¡°Let me make a couple of guesses.¡± I wasn¡¯t sure where she was getting at, but her ideas were quite ego-affirming. I waited. ¡°You¡¯re a patron of the arts here in town, invited to gallery openings and concerts.¡± Kimberly lifted her hand to cut me off. ¡°That¡¯s not the guess; I looked into you after¡­ our introduction. But here¡¯s the guess ¨C there are a couple of different curators in the local scene that have taste like yours and seek you out at these meetings. Both young and female.¡± My mind flashed first to Becca, and then rapidly to Talia, Aimee, and Elaine. All women that could potentially fit Kimberly¡¯s description, but all perfectly innocent. She continued, ¡°Your local bank branch has a quite friendly customer service rep who always takes care of you. Young and female. Not just this restaurant, but other favorite restaurants you frequent have a chef, hostess, or at least a waitress that always manages to chat you up when you come in. Young. Female.¡± Other faces and names popped into my head, but.. she was getting ridiculous. ¡°They¡¯re in the service industry. They¡¯re nice to me for the same reason I¡¯m nice when I¡¯m working.¡± I frowned. ¡°Guys always think a girl is into them just because they¡¯re nice. It¡¯s frankly pathetic. I wouldn¡¯t do that.¡± ¡°Oh, I know!¡± Kimberly agreed. ¡°A girl¡¯s got to club you over the head to get anywhere.¡± She saw my distressed expression and rubbed her fingers over my hand. ¡°Relax, Hector. I find you delightful. I just wanted to warn you¡­¡± she let her enthusiasm fade a bit. ¡°Yes?¡± ¡°If¡­ you and I¡­¡± she shrugged, blushing. ¡°If you keep taking me out, I don¡¯t want you to be surprised by this reaction from, ah, ¡®friends.''¡± Inez choose that moment to return to the table. ¡°Chef Reed told me that we needed to work out an order for you, ma¡¯am?¡± I nodded, capturing the waitress¡¯s attention then meeting Kimberly¡¯s eyes again. I turned my hand over on the table and grasped hers. ¡°I think we can come up with something.¡± Chapter 26 - Opening up I didn¡¯t know the name of my entree. Some sort of odd twisty shell with alternating fillings of cheese and sauce. I think different shells were supposed to be different cheeses based solely on variations in color; the flavors were muted compared to the pockets of sauce and I couldn¡¯t really distinguish them. Still, it was the sort of hardy dish I really sunk my teeth into, with vibrant flavors leaking out of each bite. I conveyed my highest praise to the kitchen. I paired it with a California red. Kimberly loved her buttery white sauce over capellini. I had a couple of bites and it was quite good. TJ had roasted radishes, as well as capers and spinach, and tossed them all into the thin noodles; steam came off Kimberly¡¯s plate every time she dug a fork in. My suggestion of a chilled riesling (off the dessert menu) got a negative reaction from Inez, but Kimberly agreed it was a good pairing. While Kim and I chatted brightly about the food, most of my mind was still on TJ. I really wanted to just dismiss the idea that she was ¡®into¡¯ me, but my date¡¯s assessment had been distressingly accurate on all counts. Which meant I was, what, making friends around Detroit under false pretenses? It¡¯s not as though I was that good looking; short, thin, and black isn¡¯t at the top of many women¡¯s wish lists. Okay, I wasn¡¯t particularly short. Or scrawny. Just sort of average. ¡°¡­ tuned me out almost a minute ago,¡± Kimberly finished. She still sported a half smile, but her eyes were piercing. ¡°Sorry! Sorry.¡± I stabbed at a morsel on my plate and stirred it around. ¡°I¡¯m having a great time, it¡¯s just -¡± ¡°You can¡¯t get your mind off TJ. And she¡¯s not coming back to the table.¡± She watched my reaction over the rim of her glass as she sipped her wine. Kim¡¯s pronouncements were starting to worry me. How did she so consistently know what I was thinking? I let myself stare at her as I considered if there was any way for me to ask politely, without inviting a similar query in response. I knew that, thanks to Sienna, my powers were an issue I¡¯d have to tackle soon, but it wasn¡¯t a bridge I wanted to cross quite yet. Her makeup was more understated than it had been on Friday, her lipstick a more natural color with less eyeliner. But she was still clearly made up, and very attractive. I liked the way the fabric of her top shifted across her curves when she moved. ¡°That¡¯s better,¡± she murmured softly, one side of her mouth quirking up. ¡°I like having your attention. Look,¡± the word was said as an exhalation, ¡°I promise that these girls seeing you with an attractive date is not going to hurt your chances with them.¡± I blinked. ¡°That wasn¡¯t my concern at all.¡± ¡°No, but you would have thought of it eventually.¡± She carefully cut and forked a mouthful of angel hair. ¡°Expect two different reactions: folds, and double-downs.¡± ¡°Poker, really?¡± I gave her a wry smile of my own. ¡°Blackjack, I think. Not my terms.¡± Kim shrugged. ¡°Anyway, some of your ¡®friends¡¯ will back off. Others will ramp the flirting up higher.¡± She grinned. ¡°Those are the fun ones.¡± That didn¡¯t sound fun to me, and she apparently saw that on my face. ¡°Fun for me, because I get to play off of it. Her doing that means she¡¯s fair game.¡± I frowned. ¡°Fair game for what?¡± She shook her head. ¡°You¡¯ll see when it happens.¡± That sounded sinister to me. ¡°Kimberly, can I ask you a question?¡± ¡°That depends.¡± Her look at me was sharp. ¡°Are you ready to tell me yet?¡± My stomach sank. More empty talk? Playing with me? ¡°What do you mean?¡± She laughed softly. ¡°It¡¯s okay, Hector. Take your time. I already spoke with Sienna and straightened her out.¡± ¡°About what?¡± ¡°I don¡¯t know; that¡¯s the point.¡± She broke eye contact to take another bite; her plate was nearly empty. ¡°You have a secret. She knows. And she threatened you, that she would tell me unless you do.¡± Kimberly gauged my reaction and nodded, satisfied at what she saw. She scraped her fork against her plate, collecting the final bits of mushroom and noodle. ¡°How did you know that?¡± I asked. It seemed time to be direct. ¡°Why do you seem to know what I¡¯m thinking?¡± ¡°I¡¯m very, very good at reading people. A natural talent,¡± she insisted. ¡°I knew Sienna and you had talked about a secret because you were both concealing it from me when you came out of her room. So I¡­¡± her eyes shifted away from mine ¡°¡­ made a couple of educated guesses, and got her to admit what she did. Roommate stuff.¡± Her tone was deliberately flippant ¨C more so than she actually felt about this. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. ¡°Could we wait and talk about this in the car?¡± I didn¡¯t see anyone else around, but it was far too sensitive a topic to risk. ¡°Sure. So¡­ dessert?¡± We shared a piece of tiramisu, and I had hot tea because I was driving. Neither Kimberly nor I were impressed by the dessert. It had some detectable grittiness in it, most likely from not mixing one of the layers well enough. She tried a couple of times to engage me in lighter conversation over the shared confection, but my worry over the secrecy issues stopped them from taking off. I realized I might be rapidly approaching a decision point whether I liked it or not. Kimberly was great, no doubt. But I had known her for less than a week; I¡¯d not yet spent even 24 full hours in her presence. So, while I was excited to continue to spend time with her ¨C to pursue a romance with her ¨C if the price for that was entrusting her with my career and future, it wasn¡¯t one I was willing to pay. Not this soon. I met her eyes shortly after deciding this, just as she finished the last forkful of dessert. The smile completely dropped off her face, both eyes and mouth, as she read my resolve and reflected it as fatalism. Her smile didn¡¯t return as I escorted her swiftly to the car and into her seat, nor when I turned the ignition and backed us out of the lot. It was clear from her tone that the smile had not returned as she broke the silence. ¡°So what made you decide that you can¡¯t trust me?¡± Kimberly asked, and the embers of my suspicions reignited, blossoming into a hot roar. Her question left no place for uncertainty. She wasn¡¯t making guesses; she knew what I was thinking. ¡°What you did, just now, for one thing.¡± An unimposing, neutral tone had always come naturally to me, and I leaned on it now. My eyes still fixed on the road, I heard rather than saw her exasperation by means of a sigh. ¡°Hector, I mean no offense by what I¡¯m about to say. It¡¯s something I really like about you,¡± she insisted. ¡°But you are really easy to read. You wear your thoughts and emotions on your face, your hands, your smallest movements. When you¡¯re an open book, it¡¯s hardly my fault that I take a peek in the pages.¡± I gave a nod; she could look at me even as I focused on getting us back to her place. ¡°Okay.¡± I didn¡¯t sound convincing even to myself, but I really didn¡¯t know what else to say. ¡°I¡¯m still hoping you¡¯ll change your mind and tell me, whatever it us,¡± she said. ¡°I think you¡¯ll be surprised at how well I handle it. But I can wait, and earn your trust.¡± Curiosity got the better of me, so I asked, ¡°What do you think the secret is?¡± Kimberly¡¯s answer sounded more like she was smiling again. ¡°You¡¯re a super. Sienna found out and¡­ because of what happened with Starsword, she wouldn¡¯t leave it alone. Threatened you if you didn¡¯t tell me.¡± I fought down the panic at her guess and zeroed in on a tangent. ¡°Starsword? A hero?¡± ¡°North Carolina Super Team. We dated for the better part of three years. Or rather, I dated the fake identity he used to attend college. I was another part of his cover. Telling me the truth never crossed his mind.¡± The easy way she spoke of it increased my unease. ¡°Doesn¡¯t talking about Starsword¡¯s identity risk endangering him?¡± ¡°It¡¯s not his identity anymore.¡± Kimberly spoke in a strained monotone, as though she was forcing herself to express less emotion than she felt. ¡°He was outed senior year ¨C a car full of drunk freshmen flipped over practically in front of him. He didn¡¯t hesitate, didn¡¯t sneak off to go change into a costume. He just dove right in. Very heroic.¡± The last was said with a mocking scoff. ¡°You don¡¯t think what he did was heroic?¡± ¡°No, that part was.¡± She was harder to hear as she faced her window. ¡°When the story hit the school paper, tying him to NCST¡­ he vanished. Flat out. Not a word, not an explanation. Thoroughly ghosted.¡± Another deep sigh, with a self-deprecating chuckle built in. ¡°After three years?¡± I couldn¡¯t imagine treating someone that way. I carefully turned onto a side street cutting past her apartment building. ¡°I think¡­¡± another sigh. ¡°I don¡¯t think it ever was real for him, the way it was for me. ¡®Keenan¡¯ was always just a role, something to pull on and wear for as long as it was needed. And so the rest of us ¨C not just me as his girlfriend, but the fraternity he joined, his intramural teams and study partners, his roommates ¨C weren¡¯t real connections. We were disposable. Part of the mask.¡± I found a spot to pull into, as the silence stretched. I was mulling over her story, considering it in the context of other supers with civilian identities. The majority considered their civilian lives to be, in one way or another, who they ¡®really were.¡¯ The hero costume and name were a persona, to be used to carry out missions. Then they took off the colorful disguise and lived their ¡®real¡¯ life as a normal person. But this Starsword wasn¡¯t my first exposure to the idea of a hero who saw his superhero name and personality as his true self. Peregrine clearly saw himself this way ¨C he bothered with his constructed civilian self only as much as the DOJ insisted he do so. And while I didn¡¯t know him all that well yet, I got the impression that Spinner might be the same. I had peeked into his civilian life to know that he didn¡¯t have a family or a day job; most of his waking hours were spent in costume, supporting NEST or lending his talents out to other Teams. Even so, I couldn¡¯t imagine Peregrine or Spinner cutting ties so abruptly and callously with a civilian contact. Whatever Starsword¡¯s motives, it had left Kimberly with a deep wound. ¡°Nothing to say?¡± I caught the tremor in her voice, at odds with her forced flippancy. ¡°Oh! This is my place. I guess that¡¯s¡­ an answer.¡± I had pulled into an open curb space just down the road from her building. I shook my head as I turned to give her my visual attention now that we were parked. ¡°If you took something from me coming here, it was not intentional. Had you thought we were going somewhere else?¡± She cocked her head, then pulled her messenger bag up from between her feet. ¡°I packed for overnight. I was¡­ pretty sure¡­¡± she blushed. ¡°My place?¡± I asked, and she gave a small nod. ¡°Do you¡­ still¡­?¡± She nodded again. I did my best to conceal a grin as I put the car in gear and headed out of town. Chapter 27 - Awakening It took me a full ten seconds, after waking up, to remember that I shouldn¡¯t have expected to wake up alone. I had already forced myself out of bed and towards the bathroom when this occurred to me. Kimberly had come over last night. Once I knew to look for it, I found signs of her presence, from mussed sheets on the side of the bed that was usually empty, to discarded tissues imprinted with makeup in the bathroom trashcan. The room also carried just a hint of sweetness, a mere suggestion of the perfume she had worn the night before. I remembered our long evening together. The enjoyable conversation without the need to stick to or avoid any topic. The shedding of clothes and inhibitions as we each became more relaxed and more excited at the same time. I had stayed up for two or three hours after she had drifted off to sleep, trying to decide what to tell her. As far as I could remember, I had had no resolution to the dilemma by the time I finally succumbed. My remembrance was cut short by the sounds of laughter downstairs. Two voices, and I had a pretty good idea of whom. My View quickly confirmed it: Kim, dressed in last night¡¯s clothes except for her make-up, munched on toast in the kitchen across from Paris in her full uniform. There were several ways this could go badly for me. Popping a pill and shrugging into my shirt and pants, I quickly moved downstairs to join breakfast. ¡°¡­ museum, but I¡¯m not really sure why. He always got C¡¯s in art as a kid.¡± Paris¡¯s remark got a chuckle from Kimberly before I rounded into view. My date was perched on one of my barstools in front of a plate at the counter; Paris was moving between her own plate and sputtering a skillet of potato hash. On the stove. ¡°Morning, lil¡¯bro! Thought I¡¯d miss you. Gotta leave in ten.¡± Paris kept to her side of the counter as Kim flitted down and over to me, reaching up on tiptoes to run a hand through my hair. It was always uneven in the morning if I didn¡¯t tame it. She pulled me down for a kiss that was animated and¡­ mmm¡­ a bit possessive. ¡°Morning,¡± my date said. ¡°Paris told me to let you sleep; I hope that was okay.¡± I nodded. ¡°Yes, thank you. I don¡¯t need very many hours of sleep, but I have a pretty awful day if I don¡¯t get the amount I need.¡± ¡°He¡¯s not exaggerating; I¡¯ve seen it,¡± my sister confirmed. She deemed the hash done, pulling a third plate from the cabinet and sliding a third of it onto each of our plates. She didn¡¯t look up at us before tucking into it with her fork. I took my seat next to Kimberly, not at all minding when she nudged hers over far enough that we touched hips while we ate. The hash was good, not overly crispy like Paris sometimes made. ¡°Your sister and I were talking about you,¡± Kimberly opened. ¡°And before I forget: if you felt like I gave you any sort of a hard time about the secrecy, you have my sincere apology. I had no idea you were worried about Paris.¡± My sister jerked her head up to look with alarm at Kim and then at me, while I felt my body tensing up. The contact with Kimberly was suddenly unpleasant. Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings. ¡°Kim, I don¡¯t know what you think you know, but I think we should wait and discuss this between the two of us,¡± I began. It seemed like the sort of thing I would say if I was as clueless as I wanted her to think I was. ¡°Not a chance.¡± Paris got to her feet, backing up a couple of steps from the table and crossing her arms. ¡°I don¡¯t appreciate being talked about, Hector, you know that. So what have you guys been talking about that concerns me?¡± ¡°A recent study discovered,¡± Kim explained, ¡°that over thirty percent of people claiming an aversion or phobia involving touch, were concealing some form of touch-activated power.¡± ¡°Thirty percent? That seems really high,¡± I responded, feigning ignorance of the obvious connection. Kim nodded. ¡°There is probably a selection bias in play, so I suspect the real number is lower.¡± She gestured to Paris. ¡°But still high enough that with the available supporting information ¨C and the indirect questions I asked over breakfast ¨C I¡¯m pretty certain that that¡¯s what going on with Paris. If I touch her, I¡¯ll get a shock, or be set on fire, or teleported away. Or maybe I¡¯ll just feel some unexpected plasticity or cold. Or-¡± ¡°That¡¯s enough of that,¡± I said, softly. Paris¡¯s crossed arms had turned into a tight self-hug. She had no idea how to respond to this. ¡°You don¡¯t have anything to be afraid of,¡± Kimberly said with a smile. ¡°I¡¯d never tell anyone; I don¡¯t want to hurt you.¡± She leaned forward, peering curiously at Paris. ¡°What¡¯s wrong? What -¡± Kim stopped as she turned to me again and saw my expression. Paris was scared; I was livid. So much so that I was having difficulty seeing straight. Kimberly swallowed, her eyes wide. ¡°Hector. Please, I¡­.¡± I turned and bounded up the stairs to my room, grabbing my phone. Kim was yelling up the stairs, ¡°I wouldn¡¯t hurt you! I just want you to trust me!¡± The app was up and the info input by the time I was back down the stairs. I heard the garage door clanking as it opened; Paris had fled, and I completely understood that. ¡°You don¡¯t have anything to fear from me.¡± Kim¡¯s beautiful, bright eyes were starting to tear up now, which only made them sparkle more. I wouldn¡¯t pretend, even to myself, that they didn¡¯t affect me. ¡°That¡¯s not something you can convince me by digging. By pushing and pushing on everything,¡± I insisted. ¡°It¡¯s certainly not something you¡¯re going to convince my sister over breakfast. What were you thinking?¡± It was a plea more than anything, for her to give me some way to salvage this. She shook her head slightly, ¡°It would have been wrong of me to figure it out and not tell you.¡± ¡°You didn¡¯t figure anything out,¡± I countered. ¡°You were reaching. And for what I¡¯m unsure. I already knew you were smart.¡± Kim wiped her hands across her eyes. I¡¯d never seen her slouch when standing before. ¡°Let¡¯s just sit down and talk about this.¡± ¡°Not today,¡± I announced, holding up my phone. ¡°Your ride will be here in five minutes.¡± ¡°Don¡¯t,¡± she pleaded, tears flowing now. ¡°Make sure to close the door securely behind you.¡± ¡°Hector!¡± I felt her nails as she grabbed my wrist, but I jerked it away and climbed the stairs. She didn¡¯t follow me up. I sat on my bed and closed my eyes, Viewing her until she walked out the door and into the back of the hired ride. Once Kimberly was well on her way, I took the time to text Paris. ¡°So sorry that happened. Didn¡¯t realize.¡± There wasn¡¯t any immediate response from her, but I did get a text from Kimberly: ¡°Is that it? You¡¯re done with me?¡± ¡°Not forever. Just for today. Please give me a little time.¡± I would never make that radical of a decision on immediate notice. It required more thought. Kim sent back: ¡°Okay. Whatever you decide, no need to be scared. I would never.¡± ¡°Good to know,¡± was all I responded. When I stepped out of the shower, there was a message from Paris. ¡°not ur fault¡± and then ¡°family dinner?¡± I also had a text from Mom wanting to know what to make and if I were up to bringing a couple of sides. There were a lot of issues to work through as Delphic before even thinking about dinner, but I went ahead and agreed anyway. If I kept myself busy, maybe the whole thing would hurt less. Chapter 28 - Resistance Meeting Fitz worked fast. By the time I had a couple of bags of frozen veggies thawing in the sink and managed to collect myself enough to log on, he had five audio pickups and two omicron sensors deployed about the Norberg Mansion. Even better, Hamony¡¯s private server ¨C the one hosting her suit¡¯s control software ¨C was cloned on an accessible box for my perusal. I should have hired a guy years ago. Analysis of the Norbergs¡¯ files would have to wait, though, because Whisper wanted to speak again, at my earliest convenience. She had adapted quite adroitly to the use of anonymous accounts and layering encryption. According to her message, she¡¯d made significant progress in winning allies to the effort to take down Liberty. When I entered the video conference number she had sent me, and the code key, it resolved to the same room where I had once watched Refraxx de-stress by levitating a set of steel balls. The balls in question (or ones very much like them) were spread across a large glass coffee table in front of the sleek furniture that framed the space. The young, uncovered face of Lakki offered me a weak smile from a wing back chair orbiting the larger couch. Two women, one sharply dressed up and the other down, shared the couch. I placed Enki first (¡®Bahar,¡¯ from the party.) The smaller, lighter-skinned woman¡¯s identity, I didn¡¯t immediately place; she had a stern bearing that I associated with professionals. The identity of the man in the other wing back chair was as easy as the first. Flawless Form¡¯s lavender skin was impossible to miss, and he didn¡¯t wear a mask even when in costume. His cream buttoned-down shirt and dark slacks matched the smaller woman on the couch in level of formality, and that¡¯s what allowed me to place the latter. Whisper, Enki, Flawless Form, and Bronze Scarab, all out of costume. Definitely not whom I had expected. The moments passed in silence as I identified them. Finally, Bahar, the woman I knew as Enki, spoke. ¡°Is he on? I see his symbol there.¡± When Lakki nodded, she said. ¡°Delphic?¡± ¡°This is Delphic,¡± I answered. ¡°Lakki, these are the people you wanted me to speak with?¡± The young Indian-American woman swallowed, nodding. ¡°I¡¯ve told them. They are willing to help.¡± ¡°Good ol¡¯ Harm needs to be taken down a peg,¡± quipped Bahar. ¡°Happy to oblige.¡± Her inclusion was what was surprising me. Along with Orange Nimbus, it was Enki¡¯s power that was applied in Liberty¡¯s ¡®enhanced interrogations.¡¯ I had assumed she would be one of the Team leader¡¯s allies. ¡°Miss Bahar,¡± I typed and sent in my Delphic voice, ¡°how did you come to hear about our endeavor?¡± ¡°You¡¯re asking why I¡¯m on board with this, when I¡¯m mascot for Team Torture?¡± The woman¡¯s name and features were Persian, but her demeanor and speech patterns were pure New Yorker. ¡°I don¡¯t lose any sleep over what I do to those scumbags, but that doesn¡¯t mean I¡¯m okay with getting a hero killed.¡± She glanced at Lakki. ¡°Zee was a good guy, and loyal. If Harmony set him up¡­ she needs to answer for that.¡± ¡°I¡¯m still unclear on how we think that¡¯s going to happen,¡± Flawless Form added calmly. ¡°If there were¡­ records?¡­ Delphic would have them, right?¡± ¡°I have not found any,¡± I agreed, ¡°but some may exist in places I haven¡¯t been able to look.¡± Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. ¡°If we¡¯re thinking she hired the Kowalczyks, she may have done it through Norberg Capital,¡± Lakki pointed out. ¡°Could she do that without Kelda knowing?¡± Bronze Scarab inquired. The younger sister was the one who actually controlled the legitimate business. ¡°I think so,¡± Lakki nodded. ¡°Harmony is given a lot of money to invest in speculative research, with very little oversight. She could easily move funds around through the NC accounts without raising suspicion.¡± Enki added, ¡°It¡¯s just as likely that Kelda is in on it. She backs up Harmony on anything related to supers.¡± ¡°Which leads us to the real question,¡± Flawless From repeated. ¡°What are we going to do about it?¡± The four supers collectively turned to look at my icon on the video conference display, and waited for me to speak. Since I had no better answer than anyone else, the silence stretched out. Finally, I typed a response. ¡°I will see how secure the Norberg Capital systems are. In the meantime, just keep on the alert for any information that might be of help.¡± ¡°And be vigilant,¡± Flawless Form added, ¡°regarding your mission assignments. I plan to demand backup if any mission looks like it has the potential for us to be ambushed or outnumbered.¡± ¡°I¡¯m grounded for the time being,¡± Lakki agreed, ¡°so keep me in mind if you want unofficial support on anything. Zee¡¯s parents are roping me in to planning the funeral,¡± an exchange of sympathetic looks around the room, ¡°which is quickly becoming the social event of the season.¡± ¡°Delphic,¡± Bronze Scarab said, ¡°were you invited to the wake tomorrow?¡± ¡°I was not. This is for Refraxx?¡± She nodded. ¡°Just some beers and a chance for people to speak in-costume. Liberty says the city will have a larger memorial service at some point, but we¡­¡± she grimaced ¡°¡­ need something now.¡± ¡°I¡¯ll dial in. Thank you for letting me know.¡± Flawless Form asked, ¡°Are we speaking with anyone else about this situation?¡± ¡°I intend to approach Spinner about it,¡± I sent. ¡°Ooh,¡± Enki shook her head. ¡°I wouldn¡¯t. He¡¯s friendly enough but very by-the-book as far as super stuff goes. And he¡¯s worked with Liberty a lot.¡± ¡°I have worked with Spinner a fair amount myself,¡± I had Delphic respond, ¡°and we have spoken specifically about his disapproval of Lady Liberty¡¯s policies. I don¡¯t agree with your assessment.¡± ¡°We certainly have to be cautious,¡± Whisper acknowledged, and a small buzzing sound started. ¡°If we mistakenly¡­ oh!¡± She held up her vibrating phone. ¡°It¡¯s Spinner. Or Bernard, rather; it¡¯s on my civilian line.¡± ¡°That¡¯s suspicious timing,¡± Flawless Form said. Lakki held up her phone as though it might detonate in her hand. ¡°Should I answer it?¡± There were reluctant nods around the room, and she held a finger to her lips, signalling for silence, before accepting the call. ¡°Hi Bernard,¡± Lakki said. ¡°Did you make it back to Boston okay?¡± ¡°Hey, ah, yeah. I¡­ um¡­ is, ah, Delphic on the line?¡± The voice was Spinner¡¯s, but it was transparently perplexed. Everyone looked at each other in alarm for just a moment, before Lakki¡¯s face broke into a belabored smile. ¡°Tommy had you make the call?¡± ¡°Got it in one. So Delphic is on the line?¡± Whisper shook her head, something the super on speaker clearly wouldn¡¯t see. ¡°What¡¯s this about, Bernard?¡± There was a slight pause before he spoke again. ¡°Tommy said it was best if you explain it, but that you shouldn¡¯t argue about me. I¡¯ll be a hundred percent on¡­ your side? Whatever that means. Him too, apparently.¡± ¡°Who¡¯s Tommy?¡± Flawless Form asked quietly. I was glad he posed the question so I wouldn¡¯t have to. ¡°4cast,¡± Enki whispered. That made sense. The teenager was a powerful precognitive, although the details weren¡¯t well understood. Spinner made it clear he trusted 4cast implicitly, so it fit that he would make the call on the younger super¡¯s say so. ¡°Does that mean,¡± Lakki asked, ¡°that Tommy has some help for us? Maybe a lead?¡± ¡°Not that he mentioned to me.¡± Spinner sounded more confident as it became clear that she knew what he was calling about. ¡°So, does that mean you¡¯re going to fill me in, about this thing I apparently agree with?¡± Whisper shrugged, and looked at the camera. I wished I could shrug back. ¡°Hello?¡± Spinner goaded after several heartbeats of silence. ¡°Okay,¡± I finally typed and sent. ¡°Let¡¯s bring him on board.¡± After all, if there was some deception going on, it was clear that they knew enough to scuttle our plans either way. We might as well pretend that we knew what we were doing. Chapter 29 - In Our Genes It was a difficult call, but I finally decided to leave out the potatoes. I scraped the wedges into tupperware and made a note to fry them up later in the week. In their place I added more broccoli stalks, two whipped eggs, and an extra half-cup of mozzarella. I had the casserole in the oven and was starting to dice up some apples for a cobbler when the doorbell rang, followed by some vigorous knocking. My View showed one person on the other side; I certainly hadn¡¯t been expecting her. ¡°Sienna, was it?¡± I asked the scowling young Asian woman as I opened the door. She wore a suede jacket over a blouse and skirt that reminded me of a department store retail worker. ¡°Come in, please.¡± Kim¡¯s roommate followed me back to the kitchen, taking the same bar stool that my date had used that morning. ¡°What smells good?¡± she asked, but the question was flat, with more wariness and forced politeness than genuine interest. ¡°Cauliflower casserole,¡± I explained, resuming my apple peeling and dicing. ¡°I¡¯m leaving in an hour for dinner at my parents¡¯. What brings you out this way?¡± ¡°Kim spent the better part of the day in her room, visibly upset,¡± Sienna replied. ¡°She wouldn¡¯t talk about why. Said she ¡®would only be making it worse.''¡± ¡°So, you came here to ask me.¡± I started mixing the batter for the cobbler crust, making sure to add brown sugar. It provided better contrast that way, rather than putting it in the apple filling. My uninvited guest didn¡¯t immediately respond. When I looked up at her, she raised her eyebrows and spread her arms. She expected me to begin explaining. ¡°I¡¯m sorry to hear she was upset. Can I offer you a drink?¡± When she nodded, I added, ¡°Wine?¡± She shrugged, so I took two glasses from the cabinet and uncorked an inexpensive red from a rack in my pantry. I selected it pretty much at random, poured generously, and added a bottle of water from the refrigerator next to each of our glasses. ¡°You¡¯re sorry she was upset,¡± Sienna echoed, ¡°but you¡¯re not sorry about what you did.¡± It was half a question. I sat down across from her, my baking abandoned for the moment. I mulled over a mouthful of the wine and her inquiry. ¡°I¡­ suppose I could have handled it better than I did. But I don¡¯t regret my decisions. Asking her to leave was the right choice. Taking some time to figure this out, also the right choice.¡± ¡°Which leaves her devastated, crying in our apartment, waiting to hear from you,¡± she glared at me. I nodded, sipping from my glass. ¡°I take no pleasure in that. Is there something I could say¡­ or do¡­ that might help?¡± ¡°Other than moving past whatever happened this morning?¡± the grad student threw out rhetorically. She sighed, ¡°No, nothing else.¡± A large gulp of wine preceded her next words. ¡°It¡¯s just¡­ she means a lot to us, do you understand? I want to know that you¡¯ll give Kimberly as much as she seems intent on giving you.¡± I topped off her glass and studied her earnest expression. ¡°If we get past this hurdle and we¡¯re still together, there¡¯s a good chance I will be able to tell you that.¡± ¡°But not today?¡± I shook my head. ¡°I¡¯m still deciding, and I¡¯m not going to pretend otherwise to reassure you.¡± Her eyes narrowed. ¡°You really think you may be finished? Entirely done with her?¡± With a sigh, I stood back up and returned to my batter. ¡°I guess that¡¯s as good an answer as I¡¯m going to get.¡± Sienna pushed back from the bar and nodded to me as she made her way to the door. ¡°I hope you make the right decision.¡± Nodding, I let her show herself out. I sank into my View and followed her as she got into her sedan and drove away. Out of interest, I kept watching her for the better part of ten minutes, until she was back on the main loop in the direction of the university. Upon opening my eyes, I bounded to the basement and pulled out a portable evidence kit I had gotten from Paris for just such a situation as this. A latex glove was all that touched Sienna¡¯s wine glass as I placed it in a specimen bag. Did I suspect the fingerprints or ¨C if there was enough saliva ¨C DNA from Sienna would yield any useful information? Not really; at the most I thought they¡¯d identify the same person I¡¯d get from just doing a background check on her name. But, even so, I placed the wine glass next to Kim¡¯s coffee mug and used tissues. My sister would appreciate the gesture. I finished prepping the cobbler and jumped into the shower, barely finishing in time to pull the casserole out of the oven. The small evidence case joined me in the front seat along with the casserole bag and a covered dish with the unbaked dessert. One reason I preferred breakfast to dinner at my parents¡¯ was the commute. More of the traffic was directed the other way in the morning, but whatever time from the early afternoon on that I headed from my neighborhood to theirs, I ended up slowed to a crawl for at least some of the trip. Despite my frustrating delay, the absence of a vehicle in the driveway told me that I had beaten Paris home. My hands were quite full with two dishes and the evidence case, and it was fortunate that Dad was waiting to open the door for me. Any time I saw Arthur Donnell on a day other than Sunday, I was reminded how much my very conservative instincts regarding fashion I owed to him. His button-down shirt and slacks would make him look like an elderly office worker if he weren¡¯t so broad and well-muscled; instead, it made him look like a bouncer dressed like an office worker. Mom had taken me aside years ago to remind me that, as an older white man, Dad could get away with a lot of things that would get me in trouble as a younger black man. But in the end, I had found that emulating a lot of Dad¡¯s choices ¨C particularly on my much smaller, thinner frame ¨C marked me as rule-abiding and nonthreatening. Not a bad approach navigating different neighborhoods in and around Detroit. Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon. ¡°Casserole?¡± Dad asked with a smile as I passed him. I gave him a nod as he followed me into the kitchen. ¡°What¡¯s with the evidence kit?¡± ¡°Specimens from Kimberly and Sienna.¡± At Dad¡¯s questioning glance, I explained, ¡°Kim¡¯s roommate came by this afternoon. Since she wouldn¡¯t say why she was so upset, Sienna wanted to try to get it from me.¡± Dad nodded. ¡°So you sat her down and had her drink a cup of coffee or something.¡± ¡°Wine,¡± I supplied. ¡°Paris will appreciate that. She¡¯s really riled up.¡± ¡°Am not,¡± my sister rejoined as she swept into the room, giving our father a kiss on his cheek. ¡°Worried, suspicious, sure. But hardly riled. Ooh, specimens?¡± She popped open the evidence case and took a look. ¡°The wine glass was from last night?¡± ¡°No, from Kim¡¯s roommate. She came by this afternoon.¡± I turned on the oven light and peeked in at a roast. ¡°I need to put the cobbler in as soon as that¡¯s done; where¡¯s Mom?¡± Paris frowned. ¡°A roommate so involved that she treks halfway across town to grill you. That doesn¡¯t raise any red flags.¡± ¡°Pretty common in my day,¡± Dad put in. ¡°Your Mom¡¯s friends certainly worked me over. Close girlfriends feel like they have to provide support and vetting for relationships.¡± Paris coughed. ¡°Yeah, I guess I wouldn¡¯t know much about that.¡± She held up a hand before Dad, his brow now furrowed in consternation, could reply. ¡°No, I get it, Dad. I don¡¯t need a talk about it. The ¡®no close girlfriends¡¯ thing is a choice.¡± ¡°None?¡± Mom said as she swept into the room. Although she came from upstairs rather than from outside, her path was identical to Paris¡¯s minutes before, including a peck on the cheek ¨C greeting me, rather than Dad. She wore a subdued blouse and skirt, meaning she hadn¡¯t changed since coming home from work. It struck me, then, what an interesting set of crossed pairs we made. Mom was slightly shorter than me, just as Paris was slightly shorter than Dad, and our mannerisms were in many ways the same just as theirs were from their shared occupation. We were certainly lucky to have each other, for both affection and mutual support. ¡°You know what I mean,¡± Paris said defensively. ¡°Close girlfriends other than my mom. Love you Mom!¡± She grabbed the evidence case and ran it to her car. My mother opened the oven and checked the meat thermometer, then grabbed mitts to take out the ceramic pot holding the roast. ¡°So, how¡¯d you manage with her, after Paris left?¡± She glanced over at my cobbler, and turned the heat on the oven down, leaving its door slightly ajar. ¡°Poorly,¡± I admitted. ¡°She was looking for emotional reassurance, and I didn¡¯t really have any. I let her know I wasn¡¯t ending things, but pretty much just kicked her out of my house.¡± I set the oven timer as I slid the cobbler in; it should be done before we¡¯d finished with dinner. ¡°Are you in love with her yet?¡± Mom asked, just as she had after my first encounter. Paris stepped in the room to grab the plates and silverware and go set the table; Mom tossed a large salad as Dad and I just stood in the kitchen leaning on different counters. ¡°Still no,¡± I answered honestly. ¡°Dump her,¡± Dad shot firmly. ¡°Arthur!¡± Mom stopped her salad-tossing long enough to give her husband a reproachful look. ¡°She¡¯s dangerous,¡± he shrugged, nodding to acknowledge Mom¡¯s ire but not heeding her rebuke. ¡°If you¡¯re not tied to her yet, don¡¯t make things harder on yourself.¡± And the rest of the family, was the unspoken but very clear addition there. ¡°I disagree!¡± Paris shouted from the dining room. ¡°The casserole smells delicious, dear,¡± my Mom smiled as she picked up four small bowls that she had already filled with salad. She nodded to me and my contribution, and to Dad and the roast, and we all joined my sister at the freshly-set table. There was a short reprieve as we sorted out salads and drinks, then munched away happily on the mixed greens in vinaigrette. Dad picked up the line of inquiry as he began to carve the roast; I passed the casserole around at the same time so everyone could choose their own portion. ¡°You don¡¯t think he should dump her?¡± Dad asked Paris, polite surprise in his voice. My sister shook her head. ¡°She¡¯s very intelligent, and more than a little emotional.¡± When she noted my expression, she added, ¡°Being emotional isn¡¯t a bad thing, lil¡¯bro. Most guys like it. It¡¯s pretty much a given, with girly girls.¡± ¡°But in this case, it means she¡¯s volatile, is what you¡¯re saying?¡± Mom supplied. ¡°Right. She at least paid lip service to the idea of privacy and secrecy. I¡¯m a lot less worried about her accidentally letting something slip, than I am about her getting ticked at you and going out of her way to say something.¡± I tasted the roast while I thought about what Paris was saying. ¡°It¡¯s certainly something to consider, but I don¡¯t see it as a big concern,¡± I finally explained. ¡°If Kimberly is who she appears to be, then she¡¯s both honest and kind-hearted. She wouldn¡¯t try to hurt me like that, either directly or through you. She¡¯s the sort whose emotional responses would be self-harm rather than harming others.¡± ¡°That¡¯s an oddly confident assessment,¡± Mom said. I shrugged. ¡°We¡¯ve talked a lot. I have a good bead on the person she at least presents herself as. I¡¯m much more worried about whether there¡¯s something shadier going on.¡± ¡°Well,¡± Paris slid her tablet over to me, ¡°her record¡¯s clean. So are her roommates, except that Juniper got too many points on her license at one time and had to take a class.¡± ¡°You ran those today?¡± I asked. Paris nodded. ¡°We¡¯re past the point where it¡¯s reasonable to be skittish about this, Hector. I did my police thing, and you need to do your Delphic thing on them, too.¡± I looked to my parents, Dad and then Mom, and they both nodded their agreement. ¡°Okay,¡± I assented. ¡°So¡­ what exactly should I do?¡± Mom kept tucking into her food as Paris and Dad exchanged confused looks. ¡°You know¡­ look into their pasts? Make sure they are who they say they are?¡± ¡°You mean, like, jump five years back and make sure their pasts aren¡¯t manufactured?¡± When Paris just looked at me again, I continued. ¡°You understand my powers well enough to know that I can¡¯t just follow someone everywhere they go through months of time. I can quickly run through weeks of time in a specific location, stopping whenever something unusual happens. Or I can spy on an event we are already aware of. But tailing a person day or night for month after month, everywhere they go, would take a ridiculous amount of my time.¡± Paris nodded. ¡°Right, so look back a few days and see if Kimberly has had unexpected calls or contacts with anyone. And get her passwords, obviously. The same stuff you did with the CIA.¡± ¡°Even though there¡¯s no evidence she¡¯s doing anything wrong? Spy on her for safety¡¯s sake?¡± ¡°Yes.¡± It was Mom who voiced it, but the sentiment around the table was clearly unanimous. ¡°This isn¡¯t just about you anymore, baby. Either through a good guess, or something worse, this girl knows about your sister. You need to stop shying away from this, and find out what you can.¡± She nodded at Paris. ¡°You owe it to her.¡± Paris blushed at that, but didn¡¯t contradict Mom. ¡°I still say you should cut her loose,¡± Dad offered again, but the rest of us ignored him this time. We turned to more mundane and pleasant conversation topics during dessert. I had put too much cinnamon in the cobbler. Fortunately there was vanilla ice cream in the freezer, and that offset the strong flavor enough to make it palatable. By the time I packed up my dishes and headed home, I was already considering the best lines of approach for Viewing Kimberly¡­ and trying not to hate myself for it. Chapter 30 - Deep dive If I was going to try to unravel Kimberly¡¯s cover story, the easiest thread to start pulling on was Starsword. Her claim was that she had ended a three-year relationship with him while they went to school together at Duke, and that he vanished after saving fellow students in a car crash. It took very little time to find news articles about the crash and Starsword¡¯s revealed identity, Keenan Ilunga. Three different bystanders recorded from different angles as the tall student jumped towards the crash and the overturned car, glowing gauntlets materializing over his hands and forearms. The sedan had crumpled badly in the crash, and none of the four doors were unscathed, but Starsword¡¯s hands dug into the passenger side door and pulled it cleanly off its hinges before crawling in. In truth, the situation wasn¡¯t as dangerous as it looked. Modern automobiles seldom combust, even when badly damaged; this one never did. In retrospect, Keenan probably could have waited and allowed the emergency responders to do their jobs when they arrived a few short minutes later. But news accounts of Starsword made it clear that he was the sort of superhero who prided himself on jumping into the fray. The fallout was less respectable. I first rewound to one day before the accident, easily navigating the dormitories of Duke¡¯s campus after dark to find the room that Keenan and Kimberly shared. They were both busy students, and the short time that I Viewed them simply showed them sitting near each other reading their own thick textbooks. They fell asleep in each others¡¯ arms, and went their own way to class the next morning ¨C neither knowing that it was the last time they¡¯d see each other. Kim stayed up most of the night. I watched over her shoulder as she messaged several of her and Keenan¡¯s mutual acquaintances, while also following the developing story of Starsword and the car accident. No one had seen or heard from Keenan since he walked away from the scene. As her relationship with the outed super was no secret, Kim received more than her share of attention over the following days. She stayed visibly friendly and cheerful during this time, but her private demeanor fell from concerned to despondent within a week. Keenan had made no move to reclaim his belongings, even; their shared space still contained everything from his clothes to his laptop. Late one night halfway through the second week, she tried a dozen passwords on his laptop without success. It was almost a month later when she gathered the device up, along with his clothes and other belongings, and sent the lot down the dorm¡¯s trash disposal chute. I was hooked. Over my next three days, I followed Kimberly through her evening routine has the weeks turned into months and the crying jags into cold stares. I couldn¡¯t read her mind, but I saw her private moments, the things she did when alone just for herself. She was recovering: allowing herself genuine smiles; spending time with friends; turning the pages of her books instead of just staring. I got to her graduation as the weekend hit in my real life. She was, as far as I could tell, genuinely healed by this point¡­ if more subdued than I knew her in the present. I watched her march across the stage at graduation, spotting her cheering parents in the crowd, then return to her room to finish packing for a summer overseas before her move to Detroit for grad school. Saturday morning, I joined Paris for a late breakfast while thinking about what I had found¡­ or more importantly, hadn¡¯t found. ¡°She told the truth,¡± I said, as much to myself as my sister as I stared into a glass of grapefruit juice. ¡°She was abandoned by her boyfriend when he got outed as a super. It ruined her senior year.¡± ¡°And that¡¯s why I haven¡¯t seen you for the better part of a week?¡± she raised an eyebrow. ¡°You¡¯ve been spending¡­ how many hours a day spying on that girl¡¯s past?¡± I shrugged. ¡°Enough to be certain.¡± Her eyes narrowed. ¡°Enough to eclipse everything else in your life?¡± This was punctuated with a bite of croissant. She was right. I¡¯d blown off two requested conference calls with my staff at Delphic Incorporated. Fitz was in a holding pattern in New York, and Whisper was asking in text messages why I had stopped joining her calls. I reflected on this while taking another sip; the juice was too bitter for me, but I had no appetite. I looked up at my sister, who held her accusatory glare. It was an uncomfortable moment until I croaked a response, ¡°Yeah, I shoved pretty much everything else aside to do a deep dive on Kimberly. I -¡± a deep sigh, ¡°I had to find something to justify freezing her out.¡± ¡°But you didn¡¯t,¡± she pointed out. ¡°So¡­ now what?¡± Her lips tugged upwards a bit. ¡°You visit her, show her your soft underbelly, apologize for your suspicions?¡± ¡°Would that work?¡± I furrowed my brow in consideration. Paris nodded. ¡°Oh, yeah. She¡¯s looking to continue things, no question. The roommates may be a little harder, but¡­¡± she chewed her last bite, then reached for the last item in the breadbasket. ¡°From everything they¡¯ve done so far, they¡¯re just treating her like a li¡¯l sis. Or at least the one girl is, Sienna. She¡¯ll come around once Kimberly does.¡± I narrowed my eyes at Paris. ¡°And you¡¯re completely on board with this?¡± My sister nodded, tapping on her tablet as she absently gathered her breakfastware. ¡°We¡¯ve talked a couple of times this week. She apologized for setting me on edge the way she did, and my gut tells me she¡¯s genuine.¡± She turned her full attention to the empty plate and stood up to clear the table. She delivered a careful kiss to my forehead on her way to the door. ¡°Gotta go. Good luck.¡± Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. My mind was still focused on the daunting process of contacting Kimberly ¨C enough so that my front door was closing behind Paris before I registered what she¡¯d said. ¡°Wait, you talked to her? How did you¡­ huh.¡± I sighed, not managing to haul myself up to pursue the matter. I stared blankly at the counter backsplash for a half hour (or maybe just a few seconds; I couldn¡¯t really tell) before hauling myself up to start on the dishes. Paris was reacting true to form: ¡°all back or all in,¡± as Dad was fond of describing it. Which meant, now that she¡¯d made nice with my girlfrie¡­ with Kim, I would upset her by not pursuing the matter. And, with what I had (not) found, it would be unfair for me to continue to treat Kim with suspicion. I needed to be careful, though, not to over-focus on ¡®fairness.¡¯ My time and attention were not entitlements, ¡®owed¡¯ to Kimberly simply because she¡¯d passed a background check and waited patiently. If I went to her now, it had to reflect a genuine desire to be with her, not a sense of obligation. Taking stock of my household chores, I was surprised but pleased to see that my good habits had continued even when I wasn¡¯t thinking about them. The pile in the laundry room was manageably small, the mail opened and sorted; I¡¯d apparently even scrubbed the toilets at some point, although I had no recollection of it. This left my digital duties to attend, and those I had not maintained on auto-pilot. A liaison at Lion Electric was inquiring why I hadn¡¯t taken any jobs in a week. Georgia had queued up multiple items in need of my attention and requested a call to resolve them first thing Monday. Whisper wanted me to call her as soon as I could, day or night. Fitz was pushing for me to either give him additional instructions, or let him return home. So, one matter to deal with as Hector (two, really, since tackling this stuff was a way of putting off Kimberly) and three as Delphic. The tone of Whisper¡¯s messages implied frustration, so I called her first. ¡°Delphic, hi!¡± The audio-only response that answered me was Whisper¡¯s voice. Each couple of words were accompanied by a heavy puff of breath. ¡°Is everything all right, on your end?¡± ¡°All within acceptable parameters,¡± my response played. ¡°I apologize for my unannounced absence.¡± ¡°Spinner explained to me that your,¡± she inhaled deeply after having lost her breath for a minute, ¡°uptime, could be unpredictable. And not really under your control.¡± She was offering me an easy excuse¡­ and I took it. ¡°That¡¯s correct. I can force the matter when I am required to, but it has severe costs. How have matters progressed in my absence?¡± ¡°Overwhelmingly quickly.¡± A low hum in the background died off, and a moment later a video feed joined the audio. Whisper was in her full form-fitting outfit, her hair and headband glistening with sweat as she stepped away from an inclined treadmill. ¡°That¡¯s part of why I was anxious to get hold of you. We¡¯ve found the Norberg Holdings server where Liberty¡¯s emails are stored.¡± She hung her video pickup ¨C presumably a phone ¨C in front an area with gymnastics equipment. ¡°You don¡¯t mind if I keep up with my training routine while we talk?¡± ¡°Not at all.¡± Having the space for these sort of facilities in a New York apartment was bordering on the absurd, reminding me again that while I¡¯d done very well for myself as Delphic, I was interfacing with families that could gain or lose my net worth in a single day trade. ¡°The plan,¡± she lifted herself up on a set of uneven bars, ¡°is to head in tomorrow evening. The Norbergs have an award function to attend; one that wasn¡¯t too hard for me to beg off, considering.¡± I saw her eyes harden in concentration as she inhaled, muscles tensing, and swung around, leaping for a pair of rings positioned four feet up and ten feet away from her perch. To my knowledge, Whisper had no strength, speed, or endurance enhancement in her power set. The leap should not have been possible. But I noticed that, as she made her jump, the visual feed seemed to blur her image. She shot past the target rings, having to rapidly grab and yank herself backwards to avoid a nasty fall. ¡°Ack! Sorry. New techniques.¡± Steadying the rings, she flipped over to balance her full weight on her hands while her body pointed upward, straightened legs in a familiar gymnastic posture. ¡°So, while we know Harmony and her sister are elsewhere and the building is otherwise closed down, I¡¯ll slip in and copy the server. Or just take it. Wanting your advice on that.¡± ¡°You were planning to mount this infiltration yourself?¡± I asked. ¡°Why not a larger team, now that we have allies?¡± Rather than responding right away, I watched as her image blurred again, but this time entirely in place. Tentatively, she withdrew her hands from the rings, hanging in midair, her flickering image floating with no visible support. ¡°Smaller is better for a stealth mission,¡± she recited. ¡°I¡¯d feel a lot better with you in my ear¡­ although we¡¯ll not be using official comms, for obvious reas¡­ ons¡­¡± I could vaguely see her push her arms downward as though to arrest the start of a gradual fall. It didn¡¯t help, and when she spun to grab the rings again, her hands passed right through them. She let out a surprised squeak as she plummeted rapidly towards the gym mat, which was suddenly far too thin for what it was about to receive. Whisper never hit the floor, however. Her blurry form flickered more as she dissipated, collecting and solidifying in a standing position in front of me. Her mouth was screwed up into a frustrated grimace. ¡°Sorry about that,¡± she told me again. ¡°Zee had always talked about exploring the limits of my abilities, and¡­ it¡­¡± her tone faltered, ending in little more than a mumble, ¡°feels like a way to keep him closer. Dumb, I know.¡± She had folded in on herself, her eyes wandering the floor and the walls without reaching the level of the camera. It was hard for me to hear her talk like that, but I wanted her to feel free to say what she needed to say. ¡°You don¡¯t need to feel embarrassed about doing things to remember Zee,¡± I finally typed. She nodded, looking up and giving the screen a hint of a smile, before it segued into a determined frown. ¡°I¡¯m not going to let them sideline me,¡± she spat, taking a step forward and grabbing the mobile. ¡°Zee¡¯s hero work was the most central part of him¡­ the most alive. It¡¯s how he saw us changing the world. Not through our money or business connections, but doing the work of real heroes.¡± ¡°Zee would approve of this mission,¡± I said it as a half-question. She nodded, moving away from the gym area and pulling her mask and headwear off even as she replied. ¡°Very much. He¡¯d whine that he wasn¡¯t coming with me, but he¡¯d be all over it.¡± She placed the phone so that it was looking down on her sitting at a computer desk. ¡°And since I¡¯d rather not get caught or killed, we have some planning to do.¡± I started a message to Fitz as I listened to Whisper¡¯s plan. Putting off my reckoning with Kimberly had just gotten much easier. Interlude - The Other Half (part 1) Harmony Norberg awoke to excruciating pain, dozens of knives piercing her lower back, pelvis, and legs. This had been the first sensation she registered every morning for most of her life. The pain had in no way dulled or diminished over the years as her doctors had hoped; if anything, it seemed to be getting worse. Before moving a muscle or opening her eyes, she uttered a prayer for intercession. Saint Julia of Corsica was her veneration that day ¨C a young girl who chose torture and death rather than betray her faith before an angry Pagan mob. Harmony had long believed that the miracles attributed to the Saints might very well have been early instances of powers, back when the conditions for exhibiting them would have been much rarer. One day, she thought as she completed her recitation, those of us who have devoted our lives to heroism will be recognized as the martyrs we are. ¡°Talking to yourself?¡± The throaty, masculine voice startled her to open her eyes. She looked in surprise at the man sharing her bed, his muscular body seeming somehow spring-loaded despite his reclined position. ¡°I know you¡¯re awake, Libby, you can stop pretending.¡± ¡°Why are you still here?¡± Harmony asked her boyfriend, regretting the words immediately. She scowled as she tried to think of a way to add something nicer without implying that she misspoke. Peregrine shrugged. ¡°I didn¡¯t have any meetings this morning, so no need to rush off. Is that okay?¡± ¡°Uh¡­ sure. Yeah, okay,¡± she echoed, mentally thinking through how she¡¯d alter her morning routine to include a partner. She glanced at the equipment suspending a lift arm near her bed, which would normally lower the sling that she would roll herself into before being transferred to her walker. She imagined what it would look to Peregrine ¨C awkward and undignified, and frowned, looking for a way to escape his inevitable pity. But, following her eyes, he shook his head. ¡°Evening routine in reverse, huh?¡± He waited for her nod of permission before sliding off the mattress to his feet, bending and scooping her up in his powerful arms. It shouldn¡¯t have been impressive ¨C while not a tiny woman, she weighed not a fourth of what she would in her full Liberty costume, and he carried that without difficulty ¨C but she warmed with an upwelling of affection as he cradled her naked form to himself. She had always detested being taken care of by others, showcasing her physical shortcomings. But with Peregrine it¡­ didn¡¯t feel so bad. He carefully aligned her legs and butt with the open frame of her exoskeleton, and she made eye contact with him as she turned it on and the contacts closed around her lower body. ¡°Thanks,¡± she forced herself to say as she walked towards her en suite bathroom. ¡°Don¡¯t mention it,¡± he fired back by reflex. ¡°What do you have planned this morning? Anything I can lend a hand with?¡± He raised his volume just slightly as she pulled the bathroom door almost-closed behind her, implicitly requesting a small amount of privacy. ¡°No,¡± she replied at the same volume. ¡°You¡¯re still getting our decoys tomorrow, right?¡± ¡°First thing, yeah,¡± Peregrine agreed. ¡°Although I still don¡¯t understand why we¡¯re drawing foreigners into this. There are half a dozen reliable disguise agents in the eastern US.¡± Harmony had been about to turn on her shower, but that prompted her to stick her head back out into the bedroom and meet his eyes. ¡°It¡¯s basic opsec, Perry. If Whisper ¨C or, more likely, Delphic ¨C gets a clue that we¡¯re onto them, the entire ambush falls apart. We¡¯ve dictated the terms of engagement this time, but there¡¯s no guarantee we¡¯ll have the same advantages next time.¡± She shrugged, although he couldn¡¯t see it. ¡°When you have an internal breach like this, you use external agents.¡± Peregrine sighed. ¡°I still think that if we just tell them we know what they¡¯re planning, come clean about everything¡­¡± She frowned at him; he could be exasperatingly naive at times. ¡°We¡¯re way past that. Conspiracy to interfere with federal agents; misappropriation of department resources. Most of those who signed on to Whisper and Delphic¡¯s little quest might give up, take a slap on the wrist ¨C but the core bad actors are in this for blood.¡± ¡°She¡¯s grieving, Libby,¡± came his soft reply. Harmony frowned at him, then stood up straight and closed the bathroom door. The long, hot shower was a rejuvenating boon. When she emerged, she found that Peregrine had produced a set of civilian clothes from somewhere and was laying back in her bed, waiting on her¡­ No, floating just above her bed, in fact. He turned to look at her as she walked over to her closet, his eyes lingering on her nudity in a way that warmed her almost as much as the shower had. It made her wish she had some way to program a more¡­ exaggerated walk into her mobility equipment; something with swaying hips, maybe. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. ¡°Before I forget,¡± she shot, ¡°call down to Sveta on the intercom. Tell her plus one for breakfast. Assuming you¡¯ll eat with us?¡± The levitating man grinned. ¡°You bet. Never have had breakfast here.¡± He floated over to the unit on the nightstand as she moved into the closet proper. ¡°Hey, uh, hello?¡± Harmony quickly plucked underwear, slacks, and a blouse from the shelves and racks of her closet as Peregrine awkwardly addressed the kitchen staff. She¡¯d noticed before how his easy confidence when dealing with her, or other supers, evaporated when speaking to normies out-of-costume. He saw the world starkly in terms of heroes, criminals, and civilians, and was off-balance when not interacting within those roles. The walk-assist device went rigid at her bidding, opening just enough for her to tug on her clothes while still supported by its solid frame. Every move that Harmony made a compromise between ease and efficiency, often dictated by her limitations and equipment. And always, with every reach, every twist, every flex¡­ the pain. Returning to the bedroom, she watched Peregrine effortlessly step into his jeans with aesthetic admiration and just a minor twinge of envy. His powers made daily physical tasks effortless for him; he could literally float his way through life, after all. Even her very best suit advancements ¨C powered, as they were, by the virtually limitless electric charge her own body produced ¨C couldn¡¯t match his natural speed or strength. It would be easy to resent him if he weren¡¯t so¡­ He looked up at her, his face showing such transparent delight in her presence that she, as usual, found it impossible to keep up any pretext of hostility. He was brash, stubborn, reckless, and often single-minded to the point of idiocy¡­ but he was one hundred percent hers, not a disloyal or calculating bone in his perfect body. Harmony stepped up to her boyfriend, now clad in last night¡¯s civilian clothes, and pulled him in for a long kiss. He returned her affection instantly, and they only broke when it became clear that they were in danger of resuming last night¡¯s activities and missing breakfast. As she pulled back, though, she met his eyes with some seriousness. ¡°Ready to come clean yet?¡± He frowned down at her; even with the added inches from her walker, she didn¡¯t match his height. ¡°About what?¡± She sighed. ¡°You like patterns and routines as much as I do. And we¡¯ve spent many evenings together, but this is your first time to spend the whole night. Why the change?¡± Harmony tracked Peregrine¡¯s eyes as they darted away from hers, concealing something. ¡°I¡­ just thought it might be nice. That you¡¯d like to see me. A¡­ little more.¡± He stumbled over the words. ¡°I can¡­ go¡­¡± he swallowed as he made the offer. The interior bedroom didn¡¯t have any windows, but she could tell he was mentally preparing a flight plan that would take him out of the mansion in seconds. ¡°You¡¯re welcome to stay,¡± Harmony insisted, taking one of his hands in both of hers. ¡°I just want to know what changed.¡± She took the hand and nuzzled it against her cheek. ¡°Perry, we work so well together because we understand each other. You know me, and why I do the things I do. And I know you¡¯re¡­ ah, impulsive sometimes, but at least in retrospect I can usually understand the actions you¡¯ve taken as well.¡± She shrugged. ¡°If I¡¯m reading too much into it, that¡¯s fine. We can go to breakfast.¡± She squeezed his hand once, briefly before letting go and turning toward the door to the hallway. ¡°I, uh¡­¡± as he started to answer, Harmony turned back with a neutral expression, willing him to go on. ¡°I was talking with Millisec, when we were manning HQ together last week. We, ah, talked about¡­¡± he let out an embarrassed cough (Adorable, Harmony thought.) ¡°dating. Romantic¡­ stuff. He mentioned how much trouble he was in, when he got an emergency call and had to leave before his girlfriend had woken up.¡± Harmony¡¯s eyebrows rose. ¡°You talked about¡­ us? At work?¡± Peregrine had always been very insistent that they keep their relationship low-key, and explicitly not talk about it with the other heroes. Peregrine winced guiltily, briefly meeting her stare. ¡°Not by name, or anything. I was really more listening to him than anything else.¡± He looked down again. ¡°Anyway, he mentioned that women feel¡­ used, I guess? Unimportant? If you leave. After.¡± ¡°Ah,¡± she let the wide grin split her face. ¡°So you were worried that you were being a bad boyfriend.¡± She approached him again, offering him a reassuring hug. He moved into her arms, and she felt rather than saw her nod of agreement. ¡°Sorry, Libby. I didn¡¯t know.¡± With a shake of her head, she chuckled. ¡°You¡¯re cute. But it¡¯s nothing you need to worry about.¡± She leaned back enough to see his face, but didn¡¯t break their embrace. ¡°I promise you that I¡¯ll tell you if I¡¯m feeling¡­ ¡®used.¡¯ Or neglected, or whatnot. Have I ever been shy in asking for what I want from you?¡± She added a lilt to her voice at her last question, and put on a half-smirk to make it more suggestive. ¡°No, I guess not.¡± He pulled her in for a deeper hug, one that knocked the breath out of her. ¡°Come on,¡± she announced, grabbing his hand and moving towards the door. ¡°I want to make sure we have time to visit with Kelda before she heads into the office.¡± They linked arms as they made their way from the upper residential wing to the central home area where the elevators were. ¡°Hey, Perry?¡± She added as they rode down. ¡°Yeah?¡± ¡°We¡¯re neither one of us normal, right?¡± She looked for his nod of agreement. ¡°Right.¡± ¡°So, our relationship doesn¡¯t have to be normal, either. Don¡¯t spend too much energy trying to compare us to what other couples do, okay? Let¡¯s just decide what we want.¡± Harmony was satisfied with his smiling face as they exited the elevator. Interlude - The Other Half (part 2) Peregrine mentally rehearsed his greeting for Libby¡¯s sister as they made their way down the long hallway to the room where breakfast was served. She was a normie ¨C but one of the few that knew his real name and used it even when he was out of costume. He liked Kelda, and any time he ran into her he tried his best to show it. Their pace was dictated by Liberty¡¯s gait, which while quite smooth for robotic movement, was still on the slow side. He still felt the urge, as he always had, to scoop her up and fly the two of them along, but he knew better than to even suggest it. Liberty felt the same pride in her equipment that he did in his powers, and it would be wrong to take her self-sufficiency away for something like walking. It had taken him a long time to get comfortable seeing her out of her suit. He had known the strong, confident form of Lady Liberty before she ever introduced him to her normie cover, and he never would think of her as ¡°Harmony¡± anymore than he thought of himself as ¡°Robert.¡± They knew who they really were. As they entered the dining room, hand-in-hand, Peregrine caught sight of a tall woman in an apron just leaving, having apparently placed the steaming breakfast plates at two fresh settings of the ornate oak table. Kelda sat alone, her phone propped against a bread plate as she took a mouthful of some sort of oats and listened. ¡°¡­ certainly within her authority,¡± the male voice sounded through the phone. ¡°But David says the tax liability would be prohibitive if we don¡¯t ¨C¡± ¡°Miguel,¡± Keldra interrupted, ¡°she just came in. I¡¯ll call you back.¡± ¡°Yes ma¡¯am,¡± was the extent of the response before Kelda tapped to end the call, looking up at them with a smile. Kelda Norberg shared her sister¡¯s honey-blonde hair and clear blue eyes, but her angular features and no-nonsense bob made her seem far older. According to Libby, Kelda had been concerned for many years of being overlooked or discounted because of her youth, and so had adopted a more mature appearance. ¡°Peregrine,¡± she said, and as always, the softness in her voice and genuine smile offset the severity from her initial appearance. ¡°So glad you decided to join us for breakfast, finally. I was starting to wonder if your intentions were honorable.¡± His lips turned up at her obvious attempt at banter ¨C nothing that would work in a confrontation with supers, but a passable normie attempt. ¡°I can assure you that they are not,¡± he replied ¨C which got widened eyes from both sisters. ¡°What? Was that not -¡± ¡°It was fine, Perry,¡± Liberty said as she slid into her own spot at the table, her walker reclining at a button-push into a seated position. ¡°Good morning, my dear sister.¡± She crossed herself reflexively, closing her eyes for moment before picking up a piece of buttered toast. ¡°What did Miguel want?¡± ¡°Company business,¡± Kelda said while glancing pointedly at Peregrine. He took his own seat, content to let their family dynamic play out as he¡¯d seen before. If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. ¡°If it¡¯s about the R&D expenditures, Perry¡¯s read in,¡± Liberty said around a mouthful. ¡°Read in,¡± Keldra repeated. ¡°Harmony, we¡¯re not the government. We¡¯re not even a contractor; we¡¯re a financial services company.¡± ¡°It¡¯s the twenty-first century,¡± the younger sister shot back. ¡°Successful enterprises branch out. And we¡¯ve made profits every quarter since we partnered with FAM.¡± Kelda¡¯s smile vanished. ¡°Profits that you¡¯ve rolled back in to your ¡®silver bullet¡¯ projects -¡± ¡°Which, as I¡¯ve told you, will more than pay themselves off when collecting rewards for defeating the most notorious and dangerous supers.¡± Liberty nodded to Peregrine as she said it, and he froze, uncertain how she was planning for him to respond. Kelda frowned. ¡°I still don¡¯t know how you managed to keep our involvement in Iron Lantern out of the newspaper coverage and the lawsuit. But if something like that happens again -¡± ¡°It won¡¯t,¡± the younger sister growled. In the brief silence that followed, Peregrine felt the tension mounting between the two. He ate quietly. ¡°Miguel says you¡¯ve moved another three million from the operating account into private accounts,¡± Kelda chided. ¡°That money belongs to Norberg Capital, Harm. We have shareholders.¡± ¡°Minority shareholders. And we both know what my public visibility does for our share price.¡± She took another bite, her eyes gleaming with defiance. ¡°Plenty of our close business associates have made the connection, and that¡¯s certainly benefitted the company¡¯s profile,¡± Kelda admitted. ¡°But you can¡¯t move assets around like that without serious tax consequences. There are reporting requirements. We have to clear these things with our people first.¡± ¡°There¡¯s no time for that.¡± ¡°Then use our personal accounts, not the corporate accounts.¡± Liberty shook her head. ¡°I¡¯ve explained before why that won¡¯t work. A check from me would draw all of the wrong sorts of attention. I can¡¯t -¡± ¡°You can¡¯t be bothered to do what¡¯s best for us,¡± Kelda dovetailed, ¡°when it¡¯s not what¡¯s best for Lady Liberty.¡± Libby met her sister¡¯s icy stare with a conflagration. ¡°You know that¡¯s not so. How much time do I spend in a given week attending social events, giving talks, negotiating deals? For ¡®us,¡¯ as you so starkly describe it?¡± ¡°Time that would be better spent fighting crime?¡± Kelda clarified. ¡°Of course it would,¡± Peregrine finally decided to speak up. ¡°Other than being objectively the strongest super in the city, Liberty just understands the New York Team better than anyone else. Her being in charge saves lives.¡± He jerked his head upward. ¡°Money¡¯s just money, Kelda.¡± He kept his gaze on the older sister, managing not to glance as his girlfriend even as he felt her attention on him in turn. Kelda¡¯s own icy look melted a bit as she replied. ¡°I know that. Truly I do.¡± She looked from one to the other, and Peregrine thought he heard a pleading note creep into her voice. ¡°But a lot of businesses ¨C a lot of people ¨C depend on Norberg Holdings, too.¡± ¡°And I know that.¡± Libby was trying to soften her own tone as Kelda did, but it didn¡¯t sound nearly as genuine. ¡°I promise that the next time we need a line item for the black budget, I¡¯ll talk to either Miguel or you.¡± ¡°First,¡± Kelda emphasized. ¡°You¡¯ll¡­ ¡®read¡¯ one of us in before you move the money.¡± She looked expectedly at her sister. Libby nodded. ¡°Yes. Of course.¡± Her eyes met Kelda the whole time she said it, and her intonation was clear and neutral. That¡¯s how Peregrine knew that Liberty was lying. She had no intention of changing her M.O., and if another project needed the resources and she couldn¡¯t risk a leak, she¡¯d do the same thing again. But at least the rest of breakfast was pleasant. Chapter 31 - Reconnecting I was disappointed, but not surprised, when Sienna was the one that opened the door to the apartment. She put a scowl on her face, creating a tableau very similar to when I had first met her a week prior¡­ except that she did a poor job of concealing the smile at the corners of her eyes and mouth. ¡°It took you long enough.¡± She stepped back to let me in the apartment, looking me up and down and at the large bag I cradled in one arm. ¡°That better be an apology gift. It¡¯s been a week, Hector. Not cool.¡± ¡°It¡¯s been four days,¡± came Juniper¡¯s voice from around the corner in the kitchen. ¡°Sure, take his side,¡± Sienna called back, but it came across as playful. ¡°Well, go on.¡± They looked at me solemnly as I made my way toward Kim¡¯s room, my stomach already tied in knots. She opened the door as I was raising my hand to knock. Since both Sienna and Julie had been dressed down in apartment t-shirts, I was unprepared for Kimberly¡¯s much nicer appearance. Her bust was emphasized in a low-cut top that barely tucked into a tight set of slacks. Her perfume hung strongly in the air, and as I finally raised my eyes to her face, she was wearing make-up as well. That face was blank ¨C no smile, no frown, just an even stare. She broke the silence. ¡°Let¡¯s start with the bottom line, Hector. Are you here to say goodbye, or try again?¡± When I opened my mouth to respond, I was surprised by how dry it was. ¡°Try. A¡­ again. Continue,¡± I coughed the last word out, pushing harder than I probably should have. A flicker of a smile brightened her lips for just a moment before she reigned it in behind her controlled expression and nodded. In the same even tone as before, ¡°I¡¯m happy to hear that. Come in.¡± Her room was as clean as I remembered. She perched on the side of her bed, gesturing to her desk chair that had been positioned to face it. As I sat, I found the pressure building up inside me, and fast; as much as I wanted to resolve things with Kim, I had no idea what to say first. And then Kimberly surprised me again: ¡°I don¡¯t want to have a repeat of last time. So here¡¯s what I¡¯d like to do.¡± She tucked one foot up under her knee and leaned an arm back on her bed; it undermined the illusion that she was feeling nothing. ¡°I¡¯m gonna tell you the rest of it. What I think I¡¯ve figured out; what I suspect. About you and Paris. Not accusations, you understand. Nothing I have a problem with ¨C just what I think is most likely true. And, before I say it, I promise you,¡± she leaned forward, ¡°I haven¡¯t broken into some files somewhere, I¡¯m not on anybody¡¯s payroll. This is just Kim knowing the world of supers, making good guesses. Or maybe bad guesses, but they¡¯re just guesses either way. Okay?¡± I nodded. ¡°I¡¯ve already concluded that¡¯s what you¡¯re doing, yeah. It¡¯s just that -¡° ¡°Don¡¯t jump ahead,¡± she interrupted. ¡°Once I¡¯ve told you what I think, you can decide what you want to do. You can,¡± she ticked off her fingers, ¡°correct my misconceptions, or let me think what I think. You can fill in details, or leave me in the dark. You can decide, again, if you still want to try this, with me, or just¡­¡± Kim choked on the next word, and broke eye contact for a second until she recovered her voice. ¡°You can decide to try again or to walk out the door. I¡¯m only going to ask one thing.¡± If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it. Her eyes held mine at this point, and it took nearly a minute before I realized she was waiting for me to prompt her. ¡°What is the one thing?¡± ¡°After I lay my cards on the table tonight, if you decide you still want there to be¡­ whatever this is¡­¡± she spread her hands out vaguely, ¡°no more freaking out because of what I guess about you, or what I figure out. Can you promise me that?¡± I gave it just a moment¡¯s consideration before I nodded. ¡°Yeah. I can promise that.¡± Her shoulders seemed to untense a little as she accepted my agreement. ¡°Then, let¡¯s get to it.¡± She watched my face intensely as she started in. ¡°You are a super with an information power. I don¡¯t know if it¡¯s a prediction ability like 4cast, or an analysis ability like Stratico. But something along those lines. And you¡¯re employed in secret ¨C probably by a branch of the government ¨C to support them with your powers. That¡¯s why you¡¯re so protective of your technology, and half of why you¡¯re paranoid: if agents from Eutopia or China, or one of the international villain groups, found out who you were, it could put you in danger.¡± Her legs still folded under her on the bed, she gave me a minute to let this sink in, although I could tell she wasn¡¯t done. ¡°That is very close to correct,¡± I finally admitted. ¡°And I hope that helps explain how I treated you.¡± ¡°I¡¯d already forgiven you for that, Hector,¡± Kim insisted. ¡°This is about what comes next, not about what happened before.¡± I gave her a quiet nod before she continued. ¡°You help Paris with her homicide cases, and probably to conceal her own powers from the DPD. That¡¯s the larger half of your fear, because if she¡¯s discovered, she¡¯s done as a cop.¡± ¡°Not to mention possible jail time,¡± I added, but Kimberly shook her head. ¡°That never happens anymore. This isn¡¯t the sixties; showing a super was involved with a case won¡¯t get a jury to let them off, and the cops never get jail time. She¡¯d be kicked off the force, yeah ¨C and that¡¯s bad enough, it¡¯s her whole career. But it makes them look bad if they try to haul her up on charges.¡± What she was saying fit my own limited experience. That was how it had gone down with Fitz, certainly, and other cops I knew who had later became private security or even tried their hands as professional supers. ¡°Even so, we still take this all very seriously,¡± I pushed again. ¡°I know,¡± Kim said, ¡°and I have some suggestions on ways you can do a better job hiding. I¡¯ve done a lot of research into this area, Hector ¨C there are groups out there that support people like Paris, and do so very discreetly.¡± When her hand reached out to lightly touch my arm, I realized that her position had shifted, little by little, until she was sitting off the edge of the bed, our knees almost touching. ¡°Don¡¯t you see how lonely she is?¡± Paris, lonely? That didn¡¯t make sense; she¡¯d always been either as social or self-sufficient as she needed to be. ¡°You really think so?¡± Her nod was accompanied by the beginnings of a smile, towards my naivety, I presumed. ¡°Yes, but a lot less than she would be if you and your parents weren¡¯t around for her.¡± That brought the discussion to a standstill for a moment, and as I met Kim¡¯s eyes, I realized a couple of things. First, I was no longer nervous; we¡¯d fallen right back into our same conversational rhythm from before. And, even better, Kim¡¯s expression was more like before as well. Her lips were upturned, not the tight neutrality from when I opened the door, and her eyes were softened as well. That told me, more than her words, that maybe she really was ready for this thing to go on. Both of us were content to let the gaze linger for a minute before I broke the silence. ¡°Is¡­ that all? Ah¡­¡± I quickly grabbed for more as I saw her face start to darken. ¡°I mean, is that all that you guess? I know you wanted to explain everything.¡± Kimberly nodded, her eyes dropping in fear. ¡°So¡­ where does that leave us?¡± This was the easy part. I wrapped her in my arms, my mouth finding hers without a word, and she melted against me. The kiss lasted a long time. I felt rather than saw her tears when they came. We were both allowing ourselves to feel again, to see what would come of our time together without holding back. And yet, I was still holding back. For even after everything she had said and my own feelings, my decision to trust her, I still wasn¡¯t going to let her in on the true secret. She hadn¡¯t connected me to Delphic; she could stay disconnected from that part of me, at least for now. Chapter 32 - Go / No Go
Delphic, You have yet to fulfill your side of the bargain. I understand your reluctance, but I can no longer wait for you to make a decision.
It was unusual for the Doc to do this sort of thing by writing rather than verbally, but I had avoided returning his calls for nearly a week now. Despite the threatening tone, I didn¡¯t really blame him for being upset. He had been counting on the hospital info, which I had agreed to provide. I didn¡¯t know the shelf life of this ¡®vaccine¡¯ of his.
If I have not received the agreed-upon data within 24 hours, consider our business relationship terminated. That means I will no longer take your interests into account when I deploy agents in and around North America. You will likely find the results of this, at a minimum, uncomfortable for you and your remaining allies. As a reminder that we are allies, I have enclosed correspondence between our mutual antagonist, Ms. Norberg, and a financial firm that she contracted to buy up the debt to your start-up, Delphic Inc. This came to my attention early enough that I was able to prevent the transaction, but Ms. Norberg is not one to give up easily. Frankly, you have too many enemies to afford to lose a friend. I can say from personal experience that a mistake can have lifelong repercussions. Don¡¯t make one here. -Doc
I stood from my desk, the dread sitting deep. Twenty-four hours to either give Doc the keys to the kingdom or lose my single most powerful contact. And it wasn¡¯t even the most time-sensitive situation I had to deal with on this dreary Sunday. My call to Whisper connected with an image very similar to that of a few days¡¯ prior: the sitting room of an impossibly large New York townhouse, occupied by superheroes. The roster had changed: while Whisper herself was still supported by Blue Scarab, neither Flawless Form nor Enki were there. Spinner perched on the edge of a recliner, a half-empty juice glass in one hand. Two other women, neither of them in costume or bearing obvious physical signs of their powers, looked to their hostess with patient unease. ¡°Delphic, good.¡± When Whisper spoke, her voice did not match her namesake; it seemed even louder and more confident than during our planning from the day before. ¡°That¡¯s everyone who can be here. Enki and FF are on call at HQ for the day, hopefully keeping an eye open there. Liberty and Peregrine haven¡¯t been seen downtown yet. If we wait until the dinner itself, we should have a minimum of two hours to get in and out.¡± ¡°Sooner is better,¡± Spinner commented; it sounded like something he had mentioned to them before. ¡°There¡¯s no telling how much time it will take to subvert security or overcome the building¡¯s defenses. If we can be assured that Liberty is indisposed -¡° Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. ¡°We can¡¯t, though.¡± One of the women that I didn¡¯t know spoke up; she had the clipped cadence of a native New Yorker. ¡°That¡¯s the whole point of waiting until the event: we know that Harmony is somewhere that she can¡¯t easily leave from.¡± ¡°If we¡¯re detected, she¡¯ll take the social hit and come for us anyway,¡± Spinner insisted. ¡°She¡¯s done it before. The separation between her and Liberty is a pretext ¨C half the city elite already know.¡± ¡°Spinner,¡± I typed to have Delphic say, ¡°Are you speaking with predictive knowledge about how Liberty will react?¡± ¡°No, sorry,¡± he frowned. ¡°It took most of 4cast¡¯s juice to manage the -¡± he looked around and swallowed ¡°- something, ah, else he was working on. He can¡¯t give us much about how it¡¯s going to go down.¡± I breathed a sigh of relief when Spinner managed to stop himself from mentioning the other matter. 4cast had helped us put a contingency together should Liberty (or, worse, Peregrine) get wind of what we were doing in time to try something. It wasn¡¯t an ideal solution; we¡¯d much rather find the evidence on the Norberg Capital servers and get out without seeing them. But I was glad we had a plan in place either way. 4cast himself had sent me a message earlier explaining the matter, with a strong request that I not mention it to the rest of Whisper¡¯s group. Whisper herself knew, as did Spinner. But, at least according to 4cast, the chances of things getting back to Liberty were too high if anyone else was told. Also, the rest of the plan didn¡¯t hinge on it. This was decidedly not my preferred way to run a team. The idea of meting out different levels of information to different team members, of leaving allies in the dark on salient facts, rubbed me the wrong way. But, in the end, I accepted that it wasn¡¯t my call to make. These people weren¡¯t here at my request; they and I had agreed to back Whisper and find justice for Refraxx. ¡°Everyone here,¡± Whisper nodded to the four others, ¡°will suit up for field work. Make sure you¡¯ve left the NYST comms at home; we don¡¯t want to trip any alerts they¡¯ve set up.¡± I interjected, ¡°Your private comms may have more latency issues and occasionally drop your signal. The super team electronics can demand priority on the network, and I can¡¯t duplicate that without risking detection.¡± ¡°How do villains do it?¡± Bronze Scarab asked. ¡°I¡¯ve never heard them have those sort of issues.¡± ¡°More than once we¡¯ve shut down portable signal boosters, usually in, like, a big work van,¡± Spinner explained before I could type a response. ¡°In fact, that¡¯s tipped us off at least twice that something was going down. Delphic¡¯s right not to risk it.¡± Whisper tapped on her mobile, bringing up a floor diagram of the Norberg Capital offices. ¡°The secure server isn¡¯t in the IT server room for the company; it¡¯s in a closet just off Harmony¡¯s office. The windows are sealed, the ventilation between floors is filtered, but there¡¯s a straight shot up the elevator shaft.¡± She gestured down to the table in front of her where electronics were set out. ¡°A keycard for the entrance, an override for the elevator doors, and a device to quickly image the drive. Thirty minutes at most.¡± ¡°I don¡¯t like having you enter the building alone, but yeah, none of us have an easy way to duplicate your ability,¡± Spinner frowned. ¡°But if anything happens, I should be able to reach your position in less than a minute.¡± ¡°By shattering a window,¡± the same unknown woman pointed out. ¡°Likely triggering every alarm in the place.¡± ¡°Which is why it¡¯s not Plan A,¡± Whisper reminded her. ¡°If everything goes according to plan, I¡¯ll be able to do all of this myself with Delphic in my ear. When things go wrong,¡± she spread her arms, ¡°that¡¯s when I¡¯ll be grateful that my friends are nearby.¡± ¡°If we¡¯re doing this,¡± Bronze Scarab said, ¡°it¡¯s time to suit up and head out, since it will be at least 20 minutes to actually get to the NC building. Go or no go?¡± ¡°Go,¡± Whisper said immediately. ¡°Yeah, it¡¯s time,¡± Spinner agreed. ¡°Go.¡± ¡°Go.¡± ¡°Go.¡± The two unnamed women answered at nearly the same time. ¡°Go,¡± Bronze Scarab echoed. ¡°Delphic?¡± Despite all the planning, it all seemed too fast. I could see a hundred ways this could go wrong. But it was the best way ¨C possibly the only way ¨C to find enough on Lady Liberty to take her down. There really was only one answer. ¡°Go.¡± Chapter 33 - Intangible Doc had once admitted to me that shape-shifting was likely the least well-understood of the higher-tier super abilities. Almost all other powers ¨C from super strength and speed to energy projection, from telekinesis to matter creation ¨C stayed firmly in the realm of fundamental physics. Any power that altered the human body had to contend with the complex and delicate realm of biology. On the one end were healing powers, like those of Flawless Form or Lamarck. Here, the mystery was how the body knew what form to ¡°revert¡± to when the healing happened, and that at least could be chalked up to information found in the super¡¯s genetics. On the other end were true shape-changers, with Vapula being the best known example. It was hotly contested whether the Fiendish Four member was mass-restricted, but other logical restrictions didn¡¯t appear to apply. Vapula was known to have successfully replaced over a hundred different people, his form effortlessly reproducing their clothing and equipment as well as perfectly mirroring their physical features. He was on record as having fought as a full-sized Bengal tiger with accurate strength and reflexes, and had reduced himself into a hummingbird on several occasions. A tree, a section of brick wall, and a puddle of water had become Vapula on different occasions. Whisper lay between these two extremes. Her power was more of an alteration than just healing, although healing was a known side effect of her transformation. But it was still much less than a true shape-changer, as Whisper could take only a single alternate form: an intangible but visible cloud of coherent vapor. In this form, Whisper could still see and hear. She could move with surprising speed through the air, and anything passing through her did no harm. If a barrier was air-permeable, it was Whisper-permeable. Whisper could carry objects with her while transformed, although electronics were known to short out if left turned on. This was why Whisper was typically not issued a camera or comm while deployed by NYST. All of the devices I had given her were heavily shielded (not that I knew that would help) and had external toggle switches for ON and OFF, but it was possible that one or more of the gadgets would fail. I just hoped it wouldn¡¯t be the comm. I had Viewed the Norberg Capital building recently enough that I could picture it immediately upon closing my eyes. I traced the entire route that Whisper was to take, moving past the keycard-controlled glass doors and manned security desk to the elevator banks. Inside the shaft, there was enough emergency lighting to make out the faded numbers marking each floor. Then up to the fourteenth, through the ceiling ventilation into the office helpfully labeled ¡°Harmony Norberg, Vice President of Special Projects.¡± The server sat in a closet with a mechanical lock, status lights glowing in the dark space. Everything as expected. ¡°The patrol is behind,¡± Flawless Form¡¯s voice came over the private line. ¡°Delay five to make sure they¡¯re past Broadway.¡± ¡°Roger,¡± Whisper said. ¡°I¡¯m down the block. I¡¯ll wait five.¡± ¡°I¡¯m already in position,¡± Spinner announced. ¡°Spotted the patrollers earlier, but they¡¯re sticking to ground level. Two, yeah?¡± ¡°Swelter and Orange Nimbus,¡± Flawless Form confirmed. ¡°We tried to get Scarab on the patrol, but no luck.¡± Whisper addressed me again. ¡°Delphic, I¡¯m going to keep the comm off from here until I¡¯m on Liberty¡¯s floor. One less distraction while I¡¯m passing the desk.¡± I opened my eyes to type a response. ¡°Understood. I am monitoring the building; I will alert the channel if a problem arises.¡± ¡°All right, goodbye.¡± I don¡¯t know if the collective sigh was truly audible on the comm or just my imagination, but the tension was certainly real as Whisper¡¯s device left the line. I didn''t see Whisper manifest on ground level, but I did View her entering the Norberg Capital building. She wore an embroidered blouse and slacks as though she were a member of the cleaning crew. She waved her keycard in front of the NFC panel, a convincing expression of ennui on her young face. A nod was all that passed between her and the desk-bound guard as she walked directly toward the elevator banks that served the top floors. The nondescript woman pressed the button to summon the elevator, carefully palming the wallet-sized override device to keep it away from the vantage of the security cameras. She entered and waited until the doors closed around her before plugging the device into the emergency access panel within the elevator car. Immediately the car descended to a basement-level maintenance bay while the doors guarding the shaft on each floor were pulled open just slightly, a common failsafe to allow them to be pried apart if needed. Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author. It took forty seconds for Whisper to apparate to the fourteenth floor, reconstituting just in front of the elevator and strolling to the VP office. Unlike the front entrance, we had no keycard that work for this door, but fortunately the ventilation system just above the door fed into the ceiling of Harmony''s room without any filters blocking the passage. I watched Whisper turning on her comm as she reformed inside the room. "Back on," she announced to another collective sigh, this time of relief. "All good so far. The plug-in thing worked on the elevator. The vents into here had a couple of turns I wasn''t expecting, but I should be able to reverse course early enough." "Remind me why we''re not breaking the window on the way out," one of the two women (codenamed ''Gingersnap,'' I''d found out) asked. "To avoid triggering any alarms," I typed to have Delphic say. "When Whisper removes the elevator override and walks out the door, the only record of her presence will be a valid keycard log and surveillance footage that never shows her face." When I returned to my View from typing, Whisper had already inserted the picks in the closet lock. "Just another minute. Got it," she exclaimed as she turned the handle, opening the door. The server slights flashed placidly. There was a moment of confusion as she found a port to insert the thumb drive and switch it on. A light on it flashed red, then blue. "I''m uploading. Ten minutes?" "At most. It may be much quicker. Wait for the green light," I reminded her. "Any word from downtown?" Spinner asked. I brought up a live feed of the charity dinner where Liberty and Peregrine were both visible in their civilian identities. "Everyone is where they are supposed to be." But as I typed out those words for Delphic to say, an unknown user contacted me on Alice&Bob. I wasn''t expecting to hear from anyone. I brought up the message.
Anon84457: She took the bait. Anon84457: Now she''s mine.
Alarmed, I closed my eyes quickly and Viewed Whisper once more in the present. She was at full alert, waiting for that solid green light that would let her leave. I opened my eyes again, staring at the message in front of me.
Me: Who is this? Anon84457: You''re Delphic. And this is Lady Liberty. Anon84457: But you already knew that.
I froze, uncertain how to respond. "Green light," Whisper announced. "Unplugging and getting out of here. Going silent." "Lady Liberty may already know," I had Delphic say, but Whisper had already gone offline. "Wait, what?" Spinner asked. I began to type a response, but then I heard Spinner''s voice again. "Peregrine''s here!" I sunk into my View again, intending to move up to the roof where Spinner was positioned. But something captured my attention first: I couldn''t see Whisper anywhere. I rewound slightly. She evaporated to enter the ceiling vents, then never emerged again into the office. In the present, she was nowhere to be seen. "Delphic." Peregrine''s voice was heard from Spinner''s comm. "Lady Liberty will be here momentarily. I''d advise you take no hasty action until then." As I heard this, I also saw the elevator on the building''s fourteenth floor open and the copper green of Liberty''s powered suit emerge, stalking quickly down the hall to an access hatch near her office. She pulled a metal cylinder no bigger than a scuba tank from the wall, disconnecting the nozzle where it snaked up towards the ceiling. With her free hand, I watched Liberty make small motions like she was manipulating buttons on an invisible screen, then resume walking toward the elevator.
Anon84457: I have Whisper. I am taking her to the roof. Me: You kidnapped a super?
It was hard to multitask between my View and the screen, but after I sent my message, I saw Liberty pause for nearly a minute to respond.
Anon84457: I captured a thief. Anon84457: She can go to jail. Or this tank can fail and we can have another funeral. Anon84457: The decision will be yours. See you on the roof.