Reality Intrudes [Worm/Matrix AU]

Reality Intrudes

Part Nine: Investigations

[A/N: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]
[A/N 2: Because the chapters for this story are deliberately short, there will be two. I'll be posting the second one tomorrow.]

The Next Morning
Medhall Tower

Looking down at the two bodies, stretched out on metal tables in the in-house clinic Medhall maintained, Max Anders clenched his fists. "What in God's name happened?"

He felt fully justified in asking the question. Where Alabaster should've had a head was … nothing. Just a ragged stump, as if someone had hacked his head off with the world's bluntest paring knife. But Max knew that wasn't what had happened, because it wouldn't have worked. (Also, Alabaster would've had something to say about it).

Victor's death hadn't been as dramatic, though his head was a distinct mess after the shotgun slug had removed a good deal of the contents of his skull and spread them over the wall. That bit, at least, was understandable, at least technically. But he'd been working alongside Alabaster for years. They'd been an extremely effective team.

Which made their deaths all the more shocking, along with the takedowns—some lethal, some otherwise—of the rest of the men in that stash house. They'd gotten word that some 'scary woman on a rooftop' was going to make a run on it, so he'd ramped up the guard force. Extra guns, a visible presence, and two of his best close-quarters guys on site. It should've been a combination that either convinced the wannabe raider to go elsewhere or put her down for good once she entered the house.

She'd torn through them like an out-of-control bandsaw.

Now, he was down the money and guns that had been stored there, as well as two members of the Empire Eighty-Eight itself. And he didn't know who to blame, who to send his people after for bloody vengeance. The only thing he had was a single fact, repeated by every person who'd survived the massacre.

It had all been done by one person. The woman on the rooftop.

Cape or not, he couldn't stomach the idea that just one person had shredded his assembled guard force like wet newspaper, then taken down Victor and Alabaster like she'd trained to do that exact thing. The Empire Eighty-Eight happened to other people. This sort of thing didn't happen to them.

Hookwolf didn't look any happier than Max felt. While he hadn't been drinking buddies with either man, they'd all still been part of the same team. Looking down at the pair of cadavers, he shook his head. "I got nothin'. Cops in that part of town are paid off. Nobody goes near our stuff. PRT op would've been a lot louder, with choppers. None of the other gangs have anyone who could do what this bitch did. My guess is, it's an out-of-towner looking to make her mark."

Well, she certainly fucking did that, Max managed not to say. "Did we get any description at all?"

Hookwolf looked around at him, his expression even less happy than normal. "Yeah. But they don't add up. Morry and Joe, the fuckwits who met her first, thought she was a schoolkid. Dragged her into an alley to mug her." He didn't say what they both knew; when two grown men drag a teenage girl into an alley, it rarely ends well for the girl. Neither of them cared at that moment. "But she went cape on them. Bullshit martial-arts movie stuff like running on walls. Beat fuck out of them, broke some bones, then dragged Morry up to the rooftop and questioned him. Morry swears she was like seven feet tall then. Holding him out over the alley with one hand. There's no way a normal kid has that kind of muscle."

Max nodded. "Okay, so we're looking at a Brute, maybe a combat Thinker, possible Changer. What did she look like?"

"Uh, hang on." Hookwolf dug a grimy notepad out of his pants pocket and thumbed it to the right page. "A bit of a weed, tall for a girl, curly black hair, glasses. Totally harmless until she started kicking their asses. Joe says he saw her jump like ten feet in the air, do a triple backflip, and kick Morry in the face."

"That's something to go on with." Max knew, though, there were literally hundreds of school-age children in Brockton Bay who fit that description, and fake glasses were a thing, especially if she'd been trying to bait them into grabbing her. Which, considering her later actions, seemed likely. "How about the survivors from the stash house?"

Hookwolf turned to the next page and squinted at his handwriting. "She had a hat and a long coat on. Nobody saw her hair, and she was wearing shades this time. And she had a shotgun and pistols. They said she was like seven feet tall, and nothing slowed her down. You know that Stallone movie, Terminator? They said she was like that."

"Fuck." Max ran his hand through his hair. "So, you think two different people, or a Changer?"

"One person." Hookwolf's voice was definite. "No way an adult would let the sidekick handle the mugging alone."

Max nodded to concede the point. "Okay, so is it a kid who can Change to look like an adult, or an adult who can look like a kid?" The answer to this would define who they'd be looking for.

Hookwolf grimaced in thought. "Adult, for sure. There's no way a kid can have that much training under their belt. But she's good enough of a Changer to look like a kid close up. So she might be hiding out like that. I mean, who looks at a kid?" His tone turned scornful.

"We start looking at them, as of right now." Max set his jaw. "Kid or adult, I want her tracked down and made an example of. How many outsiders know we've lost people?" By 'people', he meant the bodies on the tables, not the faceless mooks. He could always get more minions.

"Only thing that travels faster than light is the fuckin' grapevine," Hookwolf quoted in his own inimitable fashion. "People know shit went down, and that maybe someone died, but we've managed to keep details sketchy. But it's gonna get out sooner or later. Sure, Victor could be laid up, even with Othala healing him, but nothing keeps Alabaster down. We can't keep it secret forever."

Max growled under his breath in agreement. "True. How is Othala holding up, anyway?"

"She's a fuckin' mess." Hookwolf shook his head. "Blames herself for not being there."

Technically, Max agreed with her. If she'd been present to give Victor invulnerability or super-speed or one of the other powers she could bestow, the fight may have gone much differently. But she wasn't a combat cape, so he'd kept her out of what he figured would be a close-combat situation. Still, what was done was done. "How soon before you think she'll be on deck again?"

"Fucked if I know." Hookwolf shut the notebook again and stuffed it back into his pocket. "Maybe after we find this bitch and rip her head off? Nobody comes after us like this. Nobody."

Max nodded. "Put the word out. Everyone keeps an eye out for a tall woman with curly black hair and maybe glasses. Or a girl. Once we've got some names and photos, we show them to Morry and Joe, and see if anything rings a bell."

"Why not just grab up everyone who looks like that?" Hookwolf cracked his knuckles. "Get 'em all at once." From his tone of voice, he wasn't advocating letting the remainder go. Dead women told no tales.

"Because if she realises we're doing it, she'll go underground. Or hit us from another direction." Max couldn't believe he had to spell this out. "She killed Alabaster. If she can do that, nobody's safe."

"Once I'm bladed up—" Hookwolf began to boast.

"You can die, too," Max interrupted him. "An armour-piercing round through the right section of your body will kill you just as dead. If she can take on Victor and Alabaster and murder them both with zero prep, we have to assume she can figure out how to take you down as well."

Hookwolf didn't like it but as far as Max was concerned, he didn't have to, so long as he did what he was told. "Okay, fine."

"Good." Max raised his eyebrows for emphasis. "And when you do go after her, make sure there's at least three of you. Got it?"

He received a reluctant nod back. Hookwolf did like his warrior code bullshit, but the law had been laid down. "Got it."

"Good." Max looked down at his deceased henchmen one more time, then turned and left the impromptu morgue. "Now go find that bitch, so we can kill her."

<><>​

PRT Building
Wards Area
Shadow Stalker

"Hi, Sophia."

Dean's expression as he offered the greeting was bland, with no hint of secret amusement, but she glowered at him anyway. "What the fuck's that supposed to mean?"

Stopping at the entrance to the kitchenette, he turned and came back to where she was sprawled on the sofa in front of the large-screen TV. "It's supposed to mean, 'Hi, Sophia'. It's a friendly greeting. You looked a little unhappy, I thought people might've been ignoring you, so I said hello."

Sitting up, she intensified her glare. "You thought I looked unhappy? Keep your fucking empathy powers to yourself, Gallant."

"Jesus, what's your problem?" He stared at her. "I was being polite. Courteous, even. And my powers didn't even come into it. You're sitting there with an expression like you just found half a worm in your apple. We haven't been briefed on whatever shit happened to you yesterday, but don't take it out on us."

"There's a reason for that." Triumph came out of his office, fully costumed up. "There were details that needed to be cleared up. That's now happened. Costume, please, Sophia. The Director wants to see us."

All her bad temper fell away as she came to her feet. "Fuckin' A! Best news I heard all day. They finally catch that bitch?"

"Well, the Director said to get up there as soon as possible, so I'm going with 'maybe'."

But Triumph was talking to her back. Sophia was already on her way to her room, where her costume hung on its rack, waiting to be donned. Hebert was going down, and Sophia wanted a ringside seat.

As she put her mask on carefully, she could feel the tenderness in her nose. It had been reset, but she'd refused a splint, mainly because she didn't want anyone else knowing her nose had been broken in the first place. Nobody gets away with that shit.

Fully costumed, she headed back out into the common room. Kid Win waved as they passed the monitor console, but Sophia ignored him. People who fucked with Wards got the Birdcage, right?

The ride in the elevator passed by in silence; Sophia couldn't tell what Triumph was thinking behind that stupid lion mask, but she was impatient as fuck. She was first out of the elevator at the top, nearly bumping into a PRT trooper. With a muttered, "Sorry"—didn't want Triumph telling tales out of school to Piggy, after all—she dodged around the guy and headed for the Director's office.

He caught up to her after she'd only been waiting somewhere between twenty seconds and a fucking eternity, and opened the door to the outer office. "Triumph and Shadow Stalker to see the Director, please."

The secretary didn't even look up. "Go right in. Everyone else is already here."

Everyone else? Before Sophia could do more than ask herself the question, Triumph opened the door and ushered her in.

'Everyone else' turned out to be the Director, the Deputy Director, and Armsmaster. The two extras were standing on either side of the desk, while the Director sat behind it.

"Good, you're here." Piggot wasn't one for pleasantries. That was one thing Sophia actually liked about her. She didn't piss in your pocket and tell you it was raining. "Shadow Stalker, we've gotten a break in the case you were involved in yesterday."

"So you caught her?" Sophia looked around, wondering what the big fuss was all about. "What's going on? Is she going to the Birdcage?"

"It's too early to tell," Armsmaster cut in. "If you could do us a favour, and tell us what happened yesterday, from your point of view? We need to fill in a few gaps."

"Sure, okay." Sophia took a deep breath, trying to recall exactly what she'd told them the day before. "I was in class, and one of Emma's friends texted me to say Hebert had come into the classroom and dragged Emma out by the ear. I went looking for them, and tracked them down in one of the girls' bathrooms. Hebert was in her underwear, and making Emma wash her jeans."

"Why?" interrupted Renick. "What was wrong with them?"

Sophia shrugged as casually as she knew how. "They were dirty? She didn't know how to do laundry at home? I don't know why Hebert does the shit she does. Anyway, I came in there, and Hebert went nuts on me. She'd already busted Emma's nose, and she went after me as well. I'm good. I know I'm good. But she cleaned my clock hard. Busted my nose and all. She's gotta be a cape. It's the only explanation."

"Understood," Piggot said. "Now, you contacted your PRT liaison and told her that you hadn't outed yourself using powers, correct? Taylor Hebert has no idea of your real identity?"

Shit. Umm … Behind the mask, Sophia grimaced. "I might've gone to shadow once, to get out of a hold. It happened real fast." Part of her wanted to claim, wanted to believe, there was no way Hebert would've noticed and connected the dots.

"So she could know you're a cape." Armsmaster's voice was hard. "Why didn't you tell us before?"

"I was all hyped up, and it slipped my mind," Sophia retorted. She was lying, but he had no way of telling that. "Has there been anything …?"

Renick shook his head. "Nothing."

Sophia let out her breath in a huff of relief. "Good, then she doesn't know. Hebert's a coward and a wimp. If she knew something like that, she'd shout it out loud then run and hide."

"That remains to be seen." Piggot nodded to Sophia. "Keep going."

"There's not much else to tell." Sophia shrugged. "When I came to, Hebert had stolen our clothes, including my phones. Cops showed up, and we raised the alarm."

"That's right," Renick said. "We put a trace on the Wards phone, and it showed up alongside a bus route, on a store awning." He leaned forward slightly. "The passcode registry showed it had been opened once since you lost track of it. One attempt, correct first time. How did Miss Hebert know your passcode, Shadow Stalker? Did you tell her?"

"What?" Sophia looked around at the three adults staring at her. "She didn't! I didn't! That's a six-digit code! There's no fuckin' way she could've guessed her way in!"

"That's what Deputy Director Renick is saying, Shadow Stalker," Piggot pressed. "She knew your code. How did she know your code? Did you set it to your birthday?"

"Oh, puh-leeze," scoffed Sophia. "I'm not stupid." It was what she had had it set to, until Emma had explained how many people did just that. So she'd changed it. "I had it set to the date I leave the Wards." That was a date she would never forget.

The three adults glanced at each other. "Reasonable," allowed Renick. "And not blatantly obvious."

"Except to someone who knows Stalker well," Piggot responded. "And has access to that information."

"Hm," Armsmaster said. "Only someone who's on the inside would know the first and have the chance at the second. Neither of which, if our information is correct, fits Ms. Hebert. Shadow Stalker's end date isn't exactly widely known."

"Unless she's an intuitive Thinker," Sophia pointed out, in as reasonable a tone as she could manage. "She's already a combat Thinker, maybe a Brute. Why not a brainiac, too?"

Renick nodded. "Well, that would cover how she knows those details."

"True," the Director agreed. "Which brings us to the other matter." Piggot fixed her eyes on Sophia. "When police were called, they found a locker filled with … extremely unhygienic matter. Ms. Hebert's footprints led directly from that locker to the classroom in question, and then up to the bathroom where you had your scuffle with her. The locker was assigned to her. It is my personal belief that she had been locked into that locker with all that material and left there. When she forced her way out, she went directly to where Ms. Barnes was, and dragged her directly to a bathroom, where she forced Ms. Barnes to clean her clothing." She laced her fingers together in front of her. "Would you like to give us any reason you might be able to think of as to why she would target Ms. Barnes?"

Sonovabitch. Motherfucker. Sophia was teetering on a cliff edge as it was. The only way through was to brazen it out. It wasn't like they'd be able to search her phone. "She used to be besties with Emma, but she got too freaky, so Emma walked away from her. Maybe she blames Emma for whoever locked her in there?"

"You know, I like that." Piggot's voice was ruminative. "It covers the facts without actually paying attention to the details. Except, there's one tiny problem. We decided to work on the idea that she had a logical reason for doing it. We couldn't check your phone, but we could apply for a warrant to search Ms. Barnes' phone. And we got that two hours ago. We finished searching it fifteen minutes ago."

Fuu—

Armsmaster stepped forward, halberd snapping into line. "Shadow Stalker—"

—uuu—

Sophia spun around, lunging for the door.

"STOP!"

Even as she went to shadow, Triumph's shout hammered into her from the side. It disarranged her and flung her into the door frame. She collapsed to the floor, and Armsmaster's net closed over her an instant later.

—uuck.

"You're under arrest for multiple violations of your probation," Armsmaster continued. "Including—but not limited to—conspiracy to commit a crime, theft of property, destruction of property, assault, and false imprisonment."

Still dazed, she was hoisted up in the net like a fresh-caught fish. She could feel tiny jolts of electricity from it, so she knew better than to try to phase through. "B-but Hebert," she tried to say.

"Is still our problem." Piggot had come out from behind the desk. She looked at Sophia with no emotion at all. "You're the one who probably triggered her in that locker, so I hope you're proud of yourself. But you've got nothing more to worry about on that score. By the time I'm done with you, you won't be a Ward anymore. You'll be a number in a cell." She paused, then fired one final shot. "And with any luck, Taylor Hebert will be your replacement."

As the door opened and Armsmaster stepped outside, Sophia began a singular rant which continued as they went down in the elevator, was uninterrupted by her being processed through into the holding cells, didn't stop as she was locked into secure holding, and went on for some time thereafter.

But nobody cared.



End of Part Nine

 

Reality Intrudes

Part Ten: Unreality Check

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

Taylor was in the locker again. But before she could panic, she felt her heart rate slow. Her body moving with purpose, she placed her hands on the back wall of the locker and pushed. In disbelief, she felt the metal at her back bending and tearing free of its mounting, and she stepped back into the corridor.

Am I dreaming? What's going on here?

It was weird. She recalled reading the letter from Morrigan and destroying it, and she'd gone back to bed after that. After lying there staring into the darkness for a long time, she'd eventually drifted off to sleep.

So, this had to be a dream.

But it wasn't like any dream she'd ever experienced before. She saw herself striding through the school as if riding in an illusory passenger seat. Everything was sharp-edged, and her body moved with purpose. It just wasn't following her purpose.

The weird thing was, every detail was sharp, even things at the edge of her vision. It wasn't like a memory, where things she hadn't focused on were absent. While her dream-self entered the classroom and dragged Emma out by the ear, she wondered what was going on. Then, just as they reached the bathroom, she got it. It was like watching a movie.

A highly entertaining movie, she had to admit. It had a certain amount of schadenfreude to it, all of which Taylor enjoyed tremendously. The moment when Emma tried to flee, only to have her nose broken on the washbasin bench, was … therapeutic.

But then her dream-self took a phone from her jeans pocket, one that Taylor had never seen before. Where did that phone come from? What's going on here?

Taylor concentrated on the phone call, ignoring Emma's pathetic attempts at scrubbing the horrific stains from her clothing. Who was the 'Operator', and why did Taylor want to smack him?

The person piloting her body, Morrigan, wasn't thrilled with him either. This sounded like a long-standing rivalry. When Morrigan explained how she didn't just want to 'pull out' (this was already the weirdest Mastery case Taylor had ever heard of) and leave Taylor holding the bag, Taylor wanted to hug her. How bizarre is it that this woman I've never met, who's puppeting my body without asking first, is still the nicest person I've met in years?

When Sophia came in, Taylor wasn't sure what to expect, but standing there and getting hit was not it. Yeah, been here before. The phone left her dream-self's hand and skittered under the bench, and she mentally winced in expectation of a follow-up kick. But whatever the reason Morrigan had for taking the first hit, she flipped acrobatically to her feet in a way Taylor could never have performed to evade it.

Then she stood still again as Sophia threw a punch at her face. At the same time, in the corner of her picture, Taylor saw Emma scoop up the phone and drop it into one of the discarded shoes. You bitch. I hope she kicks your ass all over again.

At the very last instant, Morrigan faked Sophia out, blocking the blow and putting her in a hold. From the look on Sophia's face, she was just as surprised as Taylor herself. How the hell did she make my body move so fast?

And then came the next surprise. Just as Morrigan was asking Emma about how the clothing was coming on, Sophia's arm dissolved into black smoke just for an instant, reforming outside the hold Morrigan had on her. Holy shit, she was right. Sophia is Shadow Stalker. It wasn't that she'd disbelieved, exactly, but it had been hard to wrap her head around.

Still assimilating that, Taylor was almost too distracted to see the follow-up. This time, Morrigan was taking no shit. The first punch, she knocked aside. There was a second that Taylor didn't even see, that Morrigan caught full-on. And finally, a glorious, beautiful head-butt that knocked Sophia cold.

If Taylor had had a physical body of her own inside the dream, she would've been waving pom-poms at this point. But all she could do was cheer inside her own head as Morrigan stole Emma's blouse and boots, and Sophia's jeans. And then, once she discovered where Emma had put the phone—helped when it conveniently started ringing—she took everything except their underwear and dropped what she didn't need in the trash can outside.

Taylor was still giggling over that when Morrigan got back on the phone with the Operator. Between the highly fascinating conversation and how the person piloting her body chose to go downstairs—jumping, a flight at a time—she was mentally out of breath by the time Morrigan got outside. With a dramatic dive-and-roll, no less.

Taylor could've told her what the Operator already had; police response to Winslow calls was … slow. The running joke was, they preferred to wait until the bodies stopped twitching. After all that action, leaving on a bus was a distinct anticlimax.

When Morrigan discovered that Sophia had owned two phones, Taylor was intrigued, though what was on the older one barely surprised her at all. She was more than a little perplexed by just how much effort all three had put into planning to make her life hell. Couldn't they have found a less time-intensive hobby, like overthrowing third-world nations?

What got a lot more interesting was when Morrigan called the obnoxious Operator for the PIN code for the newer phone … and he gave it to her. Plus, he alluded to how Sophia had tagged them in the bathroom, which implied he'd been watching somehow … maybe?

And the 'what the fuck' rating just jumped another notch when Morrigan was looking at a list of the Brockton Bay Wards … and didn't know who they were. Even Taylor knew who they were, so long as she had a list to look at. Where is this woman from?

She flicked through the contacts, then sat back and apparently relaxed for a bit. Taylor figured she needed to unwind before doing whatever she did next. Things had been getting a little hectic.

When the Operator guy rang back to warn her of a trace program on the phone, Morrigan said something about 'agents' which made Taylor wonder if the NSA or FBI were involved. Taylor just wondered how he'd known about what was on the phone in Morrigan's hand, even when it wasn't being used to make calls.

Bullshit hacking skills are bullshit, I guess.

When Morrigan went into the library, the first thing she did was check out PHO. Which was reasonable; Taylor kind of wanted to know what was happening back at Winslow herself. But she didn't go there. She went to the Wards page.

Specifically, to Shadow Stalker's page.

It took a few seconds for Taylor to realise that this was where Morrigan had figured out for the first time that Sophia was a cape, and who she really was.

The reminder pissed her off so much that she nearly missed Morrigan going into the wider PHO, and her reactions to stuff everyone knew, like Behemoth and Leviathan. From what she and the Operator were saying, they'd never seen this stuff before. Any of it.

Taylor began to thoughtfully formulate some questions of her own, such as:

Where are these people from? Because they aren't from Earth Bet.

Who's the Operator?

Who's the Captain?

What's the rest of this stuff they're talking about?

She was still mulling these over when Morrigan piloted her body out of the library. First, she went and got a snack (with Taylor's money), but Taylor got to enjoy it as well, so she couldn't be too pissed about that. But then … she went and got herself mugged.

Or rather, she let someone try to mug her.

Taylor had seen a hint of her capabilities when she beat up Emma and Sophia, but the beatdown she laid on the muggers was … spectacular. She frisked (and robbed them) with ruthless professionalism; by the time Taylor realised this had been the point of the whole exercise, she'd jumped onto a dumpster with one of the muggers over her shoulder and was running up the fire escape. With him still over her shoulder!

There was another phone call, something about 'checking the code' that Taylor couldn't quite figure out, then Morrigan started interrogating the guy while casually holding him out over the alleyway. Specifically, she wanted to know about the gangs, and where the nearest Empire Eighty-Eight stash house was. He told her, of course. Taylor couldn't imagine a circumstance where people wouldn't tell Morrigan what she wanted to know. She had a certain way about her.

Taylor was more or less settled in for the ride now. She knew her body would end up being okay; this was what had happened, not what would happen, so there was no anxiety there, but she did want to know what Morrigan had done in the meantime. The subsequent phone calls with the Operator didn't get her much more information, except that he was good at deflecting phone calls, and there was a mention of something called 'blue-pills'. The conversation ended, leaving Taylor puzzled.

Did that sound like what I thought it sounded like? Because to me, it sounded like they were talking about the real world having computer code applied to it. But that can't be right.

Can it?

Taylor was already mentally composing the letter to Morrigan in her head. Most of it was questions so far; but of course, they were going to have to wait until she was back in charge of her body, with a pen in her hand.

She wondered if Morrigan had known she'd be able to go back through these memories like this. From the tone of the letter, she suspected not.

Morrigan definitely had a plan, and Taylor still hadn't forgotten the mention of having dealt with Victor and Alabaster, but it was interesting to watch it all come together. First was the shopping trip, where she got a nice hat and a seriously rocking long coat. Then …

… then she went and raided the stash house.

It was exhilarating and terrifying, and beat the living hell out of any action movie Taylor had ever watched. A stolen truck, guns everywhere, and Taylor got to watch Morrigan just go through the bad guys like a combine harvester in a field of ripe wheat.

It got really scary when she ran into Victor and Alabaster, though. Alabaster just kept getting up, and Victor kept coming after her while his buddy ran interference. Taylor started to worry when Morrigan started missing shots she'd hit with before.

Then Morrigan made the phone call, and that was when everything changed. Taylor could feel it like she was plugged into a high-voltage powerline, the current pouring through every muscle and into her brain. Morrigan was back up to speed, and she pulled the most ridiculously bullshit move Taylor had ever seen. Even in the trashiest action movie, they'd never blown a guy's head all the way off while doing a backward somersault off the wall. But she did it anyway. And Alabaster didn't get up again.

Once she got rid of Alabaster, Victor was easy; Morrigan barely broke step as she killed him. Then she went downstairs, robbed the place blind, and set it all on fire. Taylor just wished she had popcorn.

After that, things eased off. Morrigan had clearly gotten what she wanted, so she took a cab to a gas station and washed up in the bathroom, scrubbing with the cheap soap, probably to get rid of the smell of gunshot residue. Then she went to the Market and bought some cheap but comfortable clothes. Emma's and Sophia's clothing went into a Goodwill bin; the phones, separated from their SIM cards and batteries, ended up in the duffel.

If she'd been impressed before, Taylor was downright astonished at how well Morrigan sneaked into the house while her father wandered around keeping an eye out for her. Getting through the kitchen and down into the basement without making a sound was pretty cool, too. There was an old coal hatch that had been boarded up years ago; Morrigan had the cover off in five minutes, and the duffel stored inside (along with the perforated long coat and the neat hat) in another thirty seconds. Then she went back upstairs and let Dad think she'd just come in.

Dinner was excellent, even experienced second hand. Morrigan had told the truth about what her father now knew, which clued in Taylor enough not to give the game away. After that, Morrigan apparently dipped into her memories (as she'd done to get into the house and talk to Dad, duh) to get her pyjamas from her room, have a shower, and go to bed.

Well, not all the way to bed. She sat up for a while, pen in hand, carefully writing out a very familiar-looking letter. Then she climbed into bed, put her (Taylor's) glasses aside, and turned out the light. After wrapping herself in a cocoon of blankets with the folded letter in her hand, she opened the phone in her other hand and pressed the button.

"Operator."

"I've done what I can. Pull me out."

"Roger."

The dream ended, and Taylor sat up in bed. Carefully, she put her feet on the floor and crept over to her bedroom door. The corridor was in darkness, but that didn't matter; she knew every inch of the house anyway. And she had to know. Down the stairs she went, and around through the kitchen to the basement door.

In the basement it was even darker, despite the grimy windows set high in the wall. Taylor closed the door, then found the dangling light cord and pulled it. When the bare bulb clicked on, the light dazzled Taylor's dark-adapted eyes for a moment until she blinked them clear. Tiptoeing down the stairs, she went over to the coal chute, stared at the cover for a second, then opened it the same way Morrigan had closed it.

The duffel was there, as were the long coat and hat.

It was all true.

"Holy shit," she murmured. "Holy … shiiit."

Carefully, she closed the cover again, went back up the steps, and turned off the light before opening the basement door. She was thirsty, so she got a glass of water from the sink and drank it while looking out the window at the back lawn, dimly lit from the street.

If she'd needed proof for what Morrigan had said in the letter, she had it all, and more.

But she also had questions.

Lots of questions.

<><>​

Morrigan

I grunt as I roll out of my rack. The shuteye was nice, but that insertion was the roughest one I've done in quite some time. Plus, the emergency upload of combat skills has left me with an unpleasant tingling at the base of my skull.

I shamble along to the head and splash cold water on my face, so I feel halfway human. Then I pull on my genuine imitation blue jeans, head through to the mess hall, and dial myself up a nice, tasty bowl of gruel (yes, that's sarcasm. Glad you noticed). Already, I'm missing the coffee and pastry I bought with Taylor's money yesterday.

The first spoonful is halfway to my mouth when the PA system chunters to life. "Morrigan, report to Operations. Morrigan, report to Operations."

"Ohh, fuck me sideways," I mutter as I get up from the table. But they never said not to bring food along, so I do just that. Besides, I'm hungry as fuck.

When I wander in through the hatchway to Operations, Loki is already there, coffee cup in hand, with Captain Hornblower leaning over his shoulder. They both turn to look at me. I eat a spoonful of gruel and look right back at them. "What?"

"We have a potential problem," Captain Hornblower informs me. Far from giving me the stink-eye over the bowl of gruel, she looks like a person with much more pressing issues. "Loki discovered it when he was checking to make sure Taylor Hebert had suffered no ill effects from the insertion yesterday."

I eat another spoonful of gruel. Hey, I'm hungry. "So, what's the issue?" I hope nothing's happened to the kid. She doesn't deserve the shit that's been dropped on her from a great height.

"The issue," Loki says in the tone of someone handing over a problem to someone else, "is that the connection you made to Taylor Hebert somehow recorded the entire insertion where she could access it. She's just lived through the whole thing in a dream state. Every second of it."

I blink. "Well, shit." Looks like the letter I wrote her wasn't really necessary after all.

"Is that all you've got to say?" demands Loki. "If you don't recall, we talked about stuff on the phone that she would've heard. Stuff we don't want her knowing!"

I eat another spoonful of gruel. "Stuff you don't want her knowing," I correct him. "I already wrote her a letter and explained basically what was going on, in terms she'd understand. Now … I guess she understands a bit more. So when she asks me questions about that …" I look at Captain Hornblower and raise my eyebrows in a question.

Hornblower looks right back at me. "You're the lead Operative on this mission," she says. Which is a fancy way of saying I'm the only Operative, but I'm not complaining. "I leave it to your judgement."

I'd be touched, but I seem to recall her also pointing out how I'd be likely to ignore orders to do what I felt like anyway, so I just accept that she's a realist. "Thanks, Captain. When do you want me to go back in?"

She considers this. "Do you have a time limit you need to meet?"

I finish off my gruel and put the bowl down right in front of Loki. Yeah, I'm totally petty like that. "I was thinking about going out at five or so tonight, local time. Give her the chance to get through a day of school on her own, without those other hell-beasts there on her back all the time. Once it's dark, I'm gonna need to go out and start beating up blue-pills and shaking the bushes until I've got a lot better idea of what's going on under the surface. Maybe give one of their crime lords another kick in the teeth."

Captain Hornblower nods. "Sounds like a plan. Rest and relax, but stay close to Ops in case she gets in danger, and you need to go in and bail her out."

"Hey," says Loki, taking a drink of his crappy coffee. "She just got up. Check it out, Mo-Mo. You got yourself a pen pal."

<><>​

Feeling rested and refreshed, Taylor sat at her desk in her pyjamas, the morning sunlight slanting in through the window. Taking the pen in hand, she carefully wrote her reply to Morrigan's letter.

Hi.

I totally believe you.

I have some questions, though.

Where do you come from? Are you even really here? Are you even really human?

What's a blue-pill? Is that what you call people like me, or just capes?

Who is the Operator? He sounds like an asshole.

Who is the Captain?

Is the Matrix a computer simulation of Earth Bet? Are we all programs? Do powers really cause glitches in the code?

Where do powers come from?

Do I have a real body, and if so, where is it?

More questions as I think of them.

Taylor

<><>​

I'm laughing so hard I have to lean against a console while the Captain hands Loki a cloth to clean off his console and screen, where he sprayed his crappy coffee. Privately, I resolve to do something nice for Taylor Hebert. Her 'He sounds like an asshole' line hit the mark perfectly, just like Loki's coffee did.

"So, she knows," I say after I catch my breath. "Well, shit."

Captain Hornblower nods acknowledgement in my general direction. "Indeed."

This mission just got a whole lot more interesting.

Good thing I enjoy interesting.



End of Part Ten

 

Reality Intrudes

Part Eleven: Fallout

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



PRT ENE Building

Director Emily Piggot

Triumph grimaced as Shadow Stalker's ranting died away along the corridor. "A pity to see someone with so much promise go bad," he said. "I can't help thinking there should've been something we could have said or done, to avert this."

Emily shook her head. "We gave her every chance. She chose to keep offending, and trying to cover it up, even after she was brought into the Wards under you as an alternative to juvenile detention. This was her last lifeline, and she chose to throw it back in our faces."

He tilted his head, a slightly overdone gesture to compensate for having only the lower part of his face visible. "What you said to her, about having Taylor Hebert come in as her replacement; do you really think that's an option? We know extremely little about her at the moment, least of all whether she's willing to even join the Wards."

Emily nodded. "That's true. Fortunately, I've got people on that."

<><>​

Taylor

She was just finishing breakfast when her father looked across at her. "Considering what happened yesterday, and how badly Winslow's been falling down on the job so far, I'm going to give you a lift into school and explain how I'm really invested in this shit never happening again. Also, so they don't suddenly get the bright idea to blame you for everything."

Taylor nodded. "That's … I'd like to say they probably wouldn't do that, but I've kinda lost all faith with them to be anything but totally self-serving, so that's probably a good idea. Thanks, I'll definitely take you up on that." Getting up, she started to clear the table.

"Good." He finished his coffee and pushed his own chair back, just as there came a knock on the front door. Frowning, he looked at Taylor. "Were we expecting visitors this morning?"

"Um …" Taylor quickly went back over what Morrigan had done on the previous day. Did she leave evidence that led back to me? "Not sure. I'll go see who it is."

She put the plates down again and trotted through the living room to the entrance hall. Slotting the chain into place on the front door, she opened it slightly. "Who is it?" she asked.

"Ah, hi," a guy's voice answered. He sounded chatty and personable, even though she couldn't see his face. "We're here to read the gas meter. Do you mind if we come in?"

"Uh … what? We don't have the gas on here. Dad!" She raised her voice. "They say they're here to read the gas meter!"

"That'll be a good trick," he called back. "We don't have the gas on." She heard his footsteps coming along the entrance hall. "Who's out there, really?" he demanded.

"Brockton Bay Gas and Illumination," the cheerful voice insisted. "Here to read your meter. We'll be in and out in a jiffy."

Danny stepped forward and motioned for Taylor to get behind him. "As my daughter and I both just informed you, we don't have the gas connected to this house. I'm going to need to see some ID, or we're calling the police, right now."

"Certainly, sir." A wallet was slipped through the gap. Open, it showed a badge and an ID card … one that identified the holder as a member of the Parahuman Response Teams. "And now that we've established to any nosy neighbours that we're just here to read the meter, would you mind letting us in for that chat, sir?"

"Not just yet." Danny seemed to be considering his options. "Who do you want to talk to, and why?"

"Your daughter Taylor, if we could." This was a second voice, a young woman.

Danny turned and looked at Taylor, with his eyebrows raised in query. Why do the PRT want to talk to you?

While she could think of several good reasons, she made herself shrug. Back when she was spending time at the Barnes household, she'd heard any number of stories from Emma's dad about how people accidentally confessed to things they weren't even suspected of. No matter what they got her on, there was no point in making it easy for them. "Maybe the Shadow Stalker thing?" she hazarded, keeping her voice low. One of the things she recalled from the 'movie' was Morrigan-as-her telling her dad about that.

He nodded briefly. "Makes sense," he murmured in reply, then raised his voice. "Why?"

The woman answered again. "Because we'd like to get Taylor's side of what happened with Sophia Hess yesterday. And we'd really rather not have to do it while standing on your front doorstep."

Danny grimaced and glanced at his watch. "I can let you in. Ten minutes, max. Any questions for my daughter come through me. Any questions I don't like, you're out of here. Got it?"

"Absolutely," agreed the guy at once. "We only want to talk."

"Hm." There was a grimace on Danny's face, as though he didn't totally believe them, but in the end he closed the door and took the chain off the hook.

"Hi," enthused the man who stepped through the doorway. "Ethan Saunders, at your service. This is my partner and totally my best friend, Jess Everett." He shook Danny's hand firmly. "Danny Hebert, yes? And you must be Taylor."

Drawn in despite her own misgivings, Taylor found herself warming to him. "That's me," she acknowledged. "What do you want to know about Sophia? Because I can tell you a lot, and none of it good."

"That's exactly what we're looking for." Agent Everett slipped past her partner and shook Taylor's hand. "Is it okay if we come through and sit down? Because the last thing we want this to feel like is an interrogation."

Even though that's exactly what it's gonna be. Taylor wasn't sure where that thought came from, but she wasn't about to disagree with it. "Say, if this is about Sophia, I've got some stuff upstairs that might throw some light on the subject, if you're interested?"

"Definitely," said Agent Saunders. "We'll be interested in whatever you've got to show us."

"While she's getting that," Danny said, "come on through. Can I interest you in a cup of coffee?"

"Now there's an offer I can't refuse," Agent Saunders agreed. "Lead the way, Mr Hebert."

As Danny went through to the kitchen, Taylor darted upstairs. Heading along the corridor to her room, she glanced suspiciously over her shoulder in case either of the agents had followed her. Neither one had, so she ducked into her room and retrieved the stack of pages from under the tacky Christmas sweater on the top shelf of her closet. The bulldog clip she was using to hold them together was having to strain a little, and she made a mental note to get a bigger one.

<><>​

Morrigan

I'm dozing in my rack when the PA system grinds to life. "Morrigan to Operations, stat. That means get your butt here now!" It's staticky and distorted, but I can pick out Loki's smarm from fifty yards in pitch darkness under heavy gunfire.

It's tempting to dally around for ten or fifteen minutes to teach him a lesson about who's authorized to give orders to whom. Case in point: he is not my commanding officer, and never will be.

But right now, it's more important to get there fast, because it sounds like Taylor Hebert's in trouble. If she gets injured or killed, her career as our conduit into the Earth Bet server would be set back to square zero. Also, I'm getting kind of attached to the kid. (Especially since she called Loki an asshole).

So I get there as fast as humanly possible, pausing only to put pants on. As I swing around the hatch-frame into Operations, I focus on the waterfall display in front of Loki and the Captain. Taylor's still in her house and uninjured, which is good, but there are two strangers in the house as well. "Who're they?"

"ID says PRT," the Captain informs me tensely. "I've got my doubts."

I'm already dropping into the chair and fastening my restraints. "Local criminals, trying for a stealth recruitment after they saw her performance yesterday? Or maybe Agents?" I haven't seen any of the latter yet (if I discount the maybe-sighting of one by Danny yesterday) but the mission hasn't hit the forty-eight hour mark yet either.

"Possible, but it's more likely that it's two of their 'capes', investigating the chance that she's one as well, since you roughed up one of theirs yesterday. After all, would you send non-Operatives to check in on another Operative?"

The Captain's voice is non-judgemental, even as Loki sneaks me a smug look behind her back. "Hey," I say defensively. "That little cow totally had it coming."

"I'm not saying she didn't," Hornblower agrees. "However, it did have the undesired side effect of putting you on their radar."

"Gotcha," I say, and slide my arms into the wrist restraints. "So, am I going in now?"

"Not yet, but be ready in case you have to." The Captain studies the screen intently. "They don't seem to be there to arrest her, but I honestly don't know how she'll do under pressure."

I shift in the chair, lining up my neck with the hole for the Matrix jack and trying to relax at the same time. "From the letter she wrote after she saw what I'd been up to, pretty damn well."

There's a snort from Loki. Nope, he hasn't forgotten the 'sounds like an asshole' comment, either. "Let's hope so."

<><>​

Taylor

When she got back downstairs, the two agents were seated in the kitchen, and Danny was just pouring coffee for Agent Everett. "Here," she said, dropping the pages on the table in front of the female agent. "Feel free to take photos, but I want to keep the original."

"What is it?" asked Agent Saunders and Danny more or less simultaneously, but Agent Everett was already reading the first page.

She went through two more, then pulled out her phone. "I'm definitely going to want pictures, yes. Is this just from September of last year?"

"Taylor, is that what I think it is?" asked Danny at the same time.

"It's what they've been doing to me. What the school's been letting them do to me, while they carefully look the other way," she said in answer to both. "It started in two thousand nine, but I only started keeping track last year."

Agent Everett nodded. "I'm going to want to get pictures of all this. Saunders, would you mind handling the questions?"

"Fine." Agent Saunders affected a put-upon tone. "I'll ask the boring old questions." Taking a sip of coffee, he nodded to Taylor. "So, yesterday. Sophia Hess and Emma Barnes. What actually happened there?"

Taylor glanced at her dad, who nodded. She took a deep breath, ready to launch into her tale of woe, then she paused. The more details she gave, the more they'd be able to tease out of her, until they had something to incriminate her on. But on the other hand, if she told them something they could never disprove, with the only witnesses being people who were predisposed to being antagonistic to her …

"After I got out of the locker," she said neutrally, "I went to Emma's next classroom. She was one of the two who'd put me in there, so I figured she needed to help clean up my stuff. So we went up to the bathroom and she started cleaning my clothing. Out of the goodness of her heart, of course."

Agent Saunders raised an eyebrow. "Ms Barnes claims you forced her to clean your clothing, and broke her nose when she refused."

She met his gaze with hers, and refused to back down. "Just so you know, Emma Barnes couldn't lie straight in bed. If she said the sky was blue, I'd get a second opinion."

Apparently caught on the back foot, he coughed into his fist and regained his composure. "Be that as it may, when Sophia Hess got there, they both say you attacked her and took their clothing."

"Well, that's impressive." Taylor gave him another raised-eyebrow look. "Sophia and I had a free and frank exchange of views, and we all agreed that Emma was taking far too long to clean my clothing, so we traded clothes, and I left."

"An exchange of views?" He tilted his head, as though trying to figure out what I was saying. "They say you broke Sophia's nose and knocked her out. That's some exchange of views, right there."

"Honestly?" Taylor hid a grin. "If I was capable of doing that, don't you think I would've done it back when they first started on me?"

"Well … no," he admitted with an irritated twitch. "However, if you'd triggered with powers in that locker, you might now have the ability to do that."

Silence fell as Taylor regarded him steadily. Even Agent Everett had ceased taking photos of the pages, and Danny was staring fixedly at Agent Saunders.

"And if I didn't?" Taylor asked.

"Are you saying you didn't?" he countered quickly.

Danny cleared his throat. "Are you trying to trick my daughter into admitting to having super-powers? Does the PRT have the legal right to force that sort of information from people now?"

Agent Everett swallowed heavily. Saunders glanced at her, then shook his head hastily. "No, no, of course not. It was speculation only, a hypothetical answer to the question."

"Well, your hypothesis is based on faulty data," Taylor stated with as much snark as she could pack into the sentence. "I don't have powers."

"Ah." Saunders frowned. "So how did you break Sh—Sophia's nose? And knock her out?"

Taylor considered letting the agents know that her father was already aware of Shadow Stalker's real identity, but decided it was too much fun watching Saunders tap-dance around it. "Who says I did?"

"They do," Saunders insisted. "Sophia Hess and Emma Barnes."

"And given what else they've said about me since September before last, they're hardly credible witnesses. Let's see…." Holding up a finger for each point, she said, "I'm simultaneously bulimic, anorexic, a lesbian, a man-hungry whore, too ugly to you-know-what, and a junkie. Also, to the teachers and staff, I'm a troublemaker and an attention-seeker. Of which exactly none is true. So, if they chose to give me their clothing and then turn around and claim that I beat them up and stole it … who are you going to believe?"

Agent Everett turned another page. "Uh … she's got a point. The amount of stuff they've been doing to her is frankly ridiculous. Seeing what's already in here, I honestly wouldn't put that past them."

"Actually, I'm curious about something." Danny leaned into the ongoing discussion. "Two bullies claiming to have been beaten up in a high school bathroom and their clothing stolen by their victim isn't exactly a common occurrence … but why exactly is the PRT involved in all this?"

Taylor saw both agents wince as the shot went home. Danny had struck right at the heart of the little deception that was going on, and neither one liked it. "Let me guess," she snarked. "They claimed I was a dangerous cape, and that's how I supposedly beat them up?"

"That was the gist of the claim, yes," Saunders confirmed. "You're saying that you didn't beat them up, powers or otherwise?"

"I believe my daughter's already made that clear," snapped Danny. "Are you going to keep asking her the same question in different ways, or accept that she's telling the truth?"

Taylor was impressed. Her father knew the truth; or rather, he knew what she'd told him. And yet, here he was, backing her solidly against the PRT.

"Okay, moving on," Saunders acknowledged. "Ms Hess said that after you left, both her phones were missing. She says you took them."

When Taylor gave him the speculative look, she could tell from his expression that he knew what was coming next. "What would I do that for? I'm not even allowed to own a phone."

"That's not for me to say." Saunders' tone hardened slightly. "We traced one of the phones, and determined that it was well outside the school, travelling in a vehicle of some sort. Perhaps a bus. How did you leave Winslow?"

Taylor shrugged. "Can't remember."

"Where did you go once you left Winslow?"

"I dunno."

He breathed in deeply through his nostrils. "Did you take her phones?"

"Agent Saunders." Her father held his hand up. "Back off, right now. Quick question, Taylor; do you have either one of Ms Hess' phones on you right now?"

Taylor beamed at her dad. "No, I don't."

Agent Everett cleared her throat again. "If you, uh, 'swapped clothing' with Ms Barnes and Ms Hess, where is that clothing now? Did you bring it home?"

"No, I bought new clothes and left the old stuff in a Goodwill bin," Taylor explained.

"Which one?" prompted Saunders.

Taylor shrugged. "I dunno."

He twitched again, then turned to his partner. "Everett, we need to talk. Outside. Now."

"Alright." She weighted down the pages with salt and pepper shakers and gave Taylor an engaging grin. "Don't want to lose my place."

"Probably not a bad idea," Taylor agreed. She watched as the two went to the back door and let themselves out. The door closed behind them and they walked a little way out into the yard. Facing away from the house, the two agents began to converse.

"Come on," said Danny quietly. He led the way into the living room and used the remote to turn the TV on. "I don't know that they've bugged the place, but I'm not going to trust them until I see a reason to."

"Okay, yeah, I didn't even think of that," Taylor admitted. Leaving the room to allow the suspects to converse in 'private' had to be one of the number one tricks in law enforcement. "What did you want to talk about?"

He put his hands on his hips and looked her in the eye. "I can tell when someone's pulling a line of bullshit. And you and Agent Saunders are both trying to bullshit each other. And you're not fooling anyone with your stonewall act. Neither is he, but he's slightly better at it."

"What's that line Emma's dad always uses?" Taylor asked rhetorically. "'Never admit to anything they can't prove?' He might suspect stuff, but so long as I don't actually agree that I did something, he can't prove it. And until I know why he's trying to get me to admit I took Sophia's phone on the bus, fuck him. He can whistle in the wind."

"He also wants you to admit to being a cape," Danny pointed out. "Which reminds me; are you?"

"Sorry, Dad," she said without a quiver of remorse. "The answer's gonna be 'no' whether I am or not. Plausible deniability, you know."

He didn't like it, she could tell, but neither was he going to push the matter. "That's fair, I guess. Just tell me you're not going to become a villain. I'm not sure my heart could take it."

"Zero plans to rob banks and plot world domination while cackling menacingly," she reassured him.

"Oh, good." The moment of levity over, his serious demeanour returned. "Just remember, I am not going to stand by and let anyone steamroll—"

"Coming back in," she warned him quietly, just as the back door latch clicked open.

<><>​

In the Back Yard

Assault

Ethan ground his teeth. "Jesus Christ, and I thought I was good with teenagers. That kid's harder to deal with than Shadow Stalker at her pissiest."

"Calm down," Jess advised him. "You think she's a cape?"

"Don't you?" he retorted. "She's hiding something, and that's the most obvious thing it could be."

"Well, you going at her like a bull at a gate isn't helping, you know."

Closing his eyes, he breathed deeply, letting the tension dissipate from his shoulders. "The craziest thing here is that we're not even trying to protect Stalker. She's going down. They haven't finished going through the Barnes girl's phone and we know she's going down."

"You just want to know how that girl in there broke a six-digit PIN on her first try, don't you?" Her grin was almost impish.

"Of course I damn well do." He shook his head. "The techs are adamant it can't be done. She did it, or whoever she gave the phone to. But we can't ask her outright without explaining how a high school student had a special phone with that level of PIN, and how we know it was broken into."

She frowned. "What's the possibility that she knows Hess is Stalker?"

"Shit." He rubbed his lower lip with his thumbnail. "If Hess showed her powers during the fight, one hundred percent. But if she beat Hess with her powers—that she's just gotten—while Hess was using her abilities, she must be pretty damn good. Because Hess is almost as good as she thinks she is."

"And if Hess didn't show off her powers? What's the chances of Hebert finding out from the phone? What was accessed?"

He looked unhappy. "Not sure. Damn it. We're going to have to read them both in, aren't we?"

"Can't see any way out of it." She brightened. "But like you said, Stalker's not going to be a Ward much longer anyway."

"Not after this fuckup, no." He turned and gestured toward the house. "I'll get the forms from the car. You go in and keep them talking."

"Copy that."

<><>​

Taylor

Danny turned the TV off as Agent Everett came in through the back door. "We've come to a decision," she said. "It requires just a little bit of paperwork, which Agent Saunders is fetching from the car."

"Paperwork?" he asked as he and Taylor sat down at the table again. "I'm not signing Taylor up for anything without a damn good reason."

"Wouldn't expect you to," she agreed. "Though, just saying, if Taylor did happen to have powers, she could do a lot worse than going into the Wards."

Taylor rolled her eyes. "Still don't have powers, over here. Just saying."

"Understood." Agent Everett took out her phone and started to photograph the pages again.

Dad glanced at his watch. "The ten minutes I gave you is nearly up. I've still got to get Taylor to school. You don't want her to be late, on top of missing all her classes yesterday, do you?"

"—yeah, thanks, I'll keep you posted." The back door opened again, and Agent Saunders entered, with his phone to his ear. He seemed to be his chipper self once more, and he was carrying a Manila folder in his free hand. Ending the call, he slid the phone into his pocket, then dropped the folder on the table. "If I can get you two to sign these, we can be a little more open about what's going on here."

"Oh, good." Danny took the folder, opened it, and started reading the forms within. About halfway through, he looked over at Agent Saunders, who had seated himself. "These are non-disclosures. Why do we need these?"

"As I said." Agent Saunders seemed to have recovered from going head-to-head with me. "Once you've signed those, there's a lot more we can tell you about the situation."

Taylor figured she could guess what it was—Sophia Hess' status as a cape, among other things—but she couldn't see why they'd be telling her that. "I'll sign only if Dad says it's okay."

"Just give me a moment and I'll let you know." Danny kept reading through the documents, checking every line. While Taylor didn't think they'd sneak in a stealthy Wards membership in the fine print, she definitely figured it was worth doing.

Eventually, he sat back and passed one of the documents over to Taylor. "It all seems above board to me. I'll have to co-sign yours, to make it binding."

That followed, given that Taylor was a minor. "Sure, okay. Got a pen?"

Agent Everett loaned Taylor her pen. She filled in her details and scribbled her signature, then passed it and the form to her father, who filled out his own form then signed both. Handing back the pen to Everett, he raised his eyebrows. "Okay, the t's are crossed and the i's dotted. Can we stop tap-dancing now?"

"Sure." Agent Saunders gathered up the non-disclosure forms and stashed them back in the folder. "Fact number one, that I'm reasonably sure you already knew. Sophia Hess is the Ward known as Shadow Stalker."

Taylor shared a glance with her father, then they both looked back at the PRT agents. "I am shocked," Danny said, deadpan.

"Surprised," echoed Taylor.

"Flabbergasted," Danny added helpfully.

Taylor leaned forward. "Which leaves me wondering, how long have you guys known about this, and covered it up?"

Agent Everett winced. "We didn't know. We're currently unraveling the cover-up. And Stalker is going to be an ex-Ward by the end of the day. That's the second fact."

Now that, Taylor hadn't known. "Really." It wasn't a question.

"Really." Saunders had a grin on his face that was more teeth than humour. Interestingly enough, it looked more genuine than when he'd been talking to Taylor before. "Your little clash with her in the bathroom opened a whole can of worms. We were unable to access her phones, because some unknown person made off with them—" He paused to give Taylor an extremely dry look, "—but fortunately we were able to get a warrant for Ms Barnes' phone. And it's proven to be an absolute trove of incriminating texts. So yes, Sophia Hess is going to be punted out of the Wards in a high ballistic arc that ends up in secure juvey holding. Any questions?"

"Yeah," said Danny. "As satisfying as this is, why are you telling us?"

"Because Sophia had two phones, not one," Agent Everett explained. "One was personally owned, and the other was Wards issued. We have no idea what happened to the personal one—though it would be nice to get our hands on it, to absolutely seal the deal—but the Wards one was electronically pinged as riding in a vehicle, probably a bus, around the time that someone used the six-digit PIN to open it up, on the first try."

Taylor leaned back in her chair, feigning unconcern. "Good trick, but what's that got to do with me?"

Agent Saunders took up the ball. "Because we found the phone, and lifted fingerprints off it. I was in contact with the lab, just now. The prints don't match Sophia Hess, who we had on file, or Emma Barnes, who got printed just today. They do match the most recent prints on your school locker combination lock. Which, I've got to say, the tech who lifted those prints? Deserves a medal. So yeah, they're your prints."

"You're not in trouble," Agent Everett hastened to say. "We just want to know how you cracked a six-digit PIN in one try. As you might imagine, right now it's a bit of a security issue for us."

Taylor shrugged. "Lucky guess. I was just fiddling and got it right first go. But when there wasn't anything incriminating about Sophia on it, I tossed it."

The two agents glanced at each other, then Saunders shook his head. "Come on now, you've got to be able to do better than that. 'Lucky guess'? Nobody's that lucky."

"And now you're calling my daughter a liar." Danny stood up. "We've listened to what you have to say, we've signed your NDAs, and now we'd like you to leave."

To their credit, they didn't argue. Agent Everett looked at the portion of the pages she hadn't photographed. "I'd like to get the rest of these, sometime. Also, you should really think about the Wards."

Taylor smiled at her. At the very least, she'd been polite about it. "We can make an appointment. And you enabled Shadow Stalker for years, so that'd be a hard pass even if I did have powers."

After a round of hand-shaking, the two PRT agents left the house and went out to the car. Watching through the blinds, Taylor was puzzled when Agent Saunders paused and saluted in her general direction. Then they got in the car and drove away.

<><>​

Assault

Jess looked askance at Ethan as they pulled out onto the road. "What was that for?"

"It's a long time since anyone's done passive-aggressive better than me," he said with a sigh, relaxing back into the seat. "Part of me wants to get her into the Wards, just to see the look on Piggot's face when she realises what she's gotten herself into."

Jess shook her head. "You're mean."

"But I'm not wrong."

<><>​

Morrigan

Loki shakes his head. "Well, I'll be damned. Are you sure this isn't a two-way link, Captain? Because that's something Momo here would pull."

"I'm quite aware of Morrigan's arguing techniques, thank you very much," Captain Hornblower retorts. "This is a new technique, yes. It's not impossible that a little leakage might occur. But it's not problematic enough to justify pulling the plug."

That's all I need to hear. I finish removing the restraints and get up from the chair. "I'm going to hit the head then stack a few more zee's," I announce. "Call me if anything actually important happens."

Trudging out of Operations, I yawn. Beauty sleep awaits.

And tonight … another deep dive into the Brockton Bay underworld.



End of Part Eleven

 

Reality Intrudes

Part Twelve: More of the Same

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



PRT ENE Building
Director's Office

Director Piggot

Emily Piggot did not like to shout or scream or rant and rave when she was pissed off. That sort of thing unsettled the lower ranks for no good reason. She wanted them to consider that everything was normal and above-board until she really wanted them unsettled. That was why, instead of grimacing and pinching the bridge of her nose, she merely laced her hands together in front of her.

"So, to recap. You had to reveal Shadow Stalker's secret identity, and all you got regarding the PIN entry was a claim of a 'lucky guess'."

Assault, now back in costume, waggled his hand from side to side. "If you ask me, they already knew. At least now, they can't legally talk about it."

In Emily's mind, 'legally' was not a word that she preferred to depend on. "In your opinion, will that stop them?"

"I don't think they were likely to in the first place," Battery said. "But I'm also pretty certain they're not looking for official attention, and now spreading that word is guaranteed to draw attention. So, all told, I'd call it a net benefit to us."

"Good. And the rest of it? Did you get an idea of her powers?"

Assault's mouth tightened, and Battery answered for him. "She was particularly unforthcoming. Anytime we tried to get a straight answer out of her, she deflected with a question or gave a non-answer. Overall, I got the strong impression that she trusts us about as far as she could throw this building. Any suggestion that she might have powers was met with a strong refusal of the possibility, to the point that she did her best to cast doubt upon the notion of having engaged Shadow Stalker in the bathroom."

Emily could feel her knuckles turning white under the tension, so she deliberately relaxed her hands. "Did we get any kind of win at all out of the situation, over and above having marginally decreased the chance of Shadow Stalker's situation being made public?"

"Maybe," offered Battery, pulling out her phone. "We got a bunch of evidence we can use to nail Shadow Stalker and her cohorts to the wall, if they're stupid enough to try to take it to trial." She woke it up and tapped the screen a few times, then handed the phone to Emily.

Even considering the size of the screen, it wasn't hard to read the painstakingly inscribed notes dictating act after act of bullying. Emily flicked through the images, noting the attached dates. "How much of this does she have?"

"More than I was able to get pictures of in the time we were there." Battery accepted her phone back. "A lot more."

"Good." Emily nodded; perhaps she could turn this around after all. "Make an appointment to get it all. Emphasise that it will help put Stalker away for good. Maybe that will help engender enough trust that she'll tell us how she beat the little fool, and how she opened the phone."

"Just so you know, we're not her favourite people," Assault said. "As far as she's concerned, everything that Stalker pulled is on us."

"Which isn't an inaccurate summation," Emily noted. "Back in the day, they taught me that as an officer, my subordinates' screwups were my personal responsibility. Stalker screwed up, but we were the ones who allowed her to do it via insufficient oversight." She pinned him with a solid glare. "Which you are never to repeat outside this office, and I'll deny I ever said it if you do."

"Understood, ma'am." Assault seemed to consider the matter for a moment. "On the upside, they seemed to be more resigned than angry. It's going to be a long hard slog to get her trust again—if we ever had it—but at least they weren't talking lawsuits, against us."

Emily considered that. While the NDAs would prevent the Heberts from bringing lawsuits on the matter of Shadow Stalker being Sophia Hess against the PRT, they would have no such obstacles in suing Winslow into the bedrock. She wished them all the luck in that endeavour. "That's something, at least," she conceded. "We're done, here. Have that information you got from the Hebert girl entered in the evidence against Hess. If it does go to trial, we may wish to subpoena her to testify for the prosecution."

Assault actually snickered. "If we do that, we may just see the first case ever of a non-Mover spontaneously manifesting the ability to move faster than sound, in her hurry to be here on time."

Shaking her head, Emily gestured at the door. "Get out of here."

They left, Assault still chuckling.

<><>​

Taylor

She'd known Sophia was under arrest, which was heartening to say the least—it seemed the PRT wasn't totally corrupt and/or incompetent—and the fact that they'd been going through Emma's phone records suggested that she was in custody as well. This was borne out by the fact that nobody had bothered her before home room, or even on the walk from Computer Studies to World Affairs.

This run of good luck came to a screeching halt the moment she entered Mr Gladly's classroom and saw Madison and Julia sitting side by side. Okay, I can work with this. All she had to do was stay as far away from those two as possible, and not draw their attention. Hopefully, with Emma and Sophia both absent, they would be less likely to pull something on her. And if wishes were SUVs, we'd all drive to school.

Madison sneered at her, then looked disappointed as Taylor walked past her usual desk—the suspiciously shiny appearance of the chair indicating glue or something similar—and took one down near the back. Julia whispered something to Madison, and they both giggled. Whatever they were amused about, Taylor was fairly sure she'd learn about it sooner or later. Whether she wanted to or not.

"Good morning, class!" Mr Gladly was in fine form, at least. "Could I get you to hand up your homework from yesterday, please?"

Taylor just sat there. Danny had had a quiet but intense discussion with Principal Blackwell before school started. This had resulted in a promise that no more bullying would take place (she'd believe that when she saw it) and Taylor being gifted brand-new textbooks, plus a backpack that had been languishing in lost-and-found for the last six months. Blackwell had also sent out texts to Taylor's teachers to not ask her for the previous day's homework.

Of course, Madison had to push matters. "Taylor, where's your homework?" she called across the room. "Did you forget?"

"Madison—" began Mr Gladly, but Taylor had had enough.

"No." She stood up. "I didn't forget, Madison. I didn't get the homework because I wasn't here. This is because I got shut in my locker by Emma Barnes and Sophia Hess. When I got out, I got new clothes and went home. And Emma and Sophia are now facing assault charges. Any questions?"

Amid a silence so vivid that it was possible to hear a fly buzzing against the windowpane, she sat down again. Everybody turned to face forward, with only the occasional sidelong glance at her. That was fine; she preferred it that way.

Wow, she asked herself. Where did that come from? It appeared that being 'possessed' by Morrigan and going out to kick ass had positive effects on her self-esteem; who knew?

Of course, this good feeling wasn't going to last. She had far too much experience in such matters. Shit happened to her because shit happened to her.

<><>​

Madison

Taylor had done the inexcusable. She had fought back. Worse, she'd brought the authorities into it, and she'd snitched. Madison had no idea how Taylor had won against Sophia (with or without Emma in the mix) but she'd walked out of school wearing their clothing, or so the rumour went.

And now Emma wasn't in school, and neither was Sophia. Madison wasn't at all sure what had happened to them—Taylor's story about them facing assault charges was just too far-fetched to be true—but they weren't responding to her texts or answering her calls. Whatever was going on, it was Taylor's fault.

And she had to be punished for it.

"Okay," Madison said in a low tone. "Everyone knows what we've got to do, right?"

Julia rolled her eyes. "Yes, Mads. We all know."

That was totally the wrong tone to take with the future queen bee of Winslow—if she pulled this off, she'd be getting mega respect from everyone—but she let it slide this one time. "Good," she said. "Let's do this."

Hebert probably didn't know they knew she preferred the third-floor girls' bathrooms to hide out and eat her lunch, but the secret was out. One of the other girls had spotted her coming in here once too often for it to be a random chance thing, so Madison had squirreled away that information for when it would be useful. Like right now.

Madison led the way into the bathroom with Julia right behind her. The other four followed, two of them taking up station just inside the door to prevent Hebert from making a run for it. To Madison's surprise, Hebert wasn't lurking in a stall, but instead washing her hands.

"Oh, hey," she said, slinging her backpack over one shoulder and heading for the air jet to dry her hands. "I'll be out of your way in a minute, and you can do whatever you came in here to do."

This was not what Madison had expected. Fear, yes. Cringing, yes. An attempt to hide in one of the stalls, definitely. But not this … dismissal.

"What the fuck did you do to Emma and Sophia, you bitch?" she shouted.

Hebert turned and looked at her. Abruptly, Madison was reminded of the difference in their height; even in the brightly lit bathroom, Hebert seemed to loom menacingly over her. "I think you've got it wrong," she said bluntly. "They attacked me."

Julia stepped up alongside Madison. "You're not getting it. That sort of thing, we sort out between ourselves. We don't bring the teachers or cops in on it. Snitches get stitches."

Hebert actually laughed. "Is that supposed to be a threat?" Shaking her head, she turned away toward the air jet. "Go away and stop embarrassing yourself."

Julia let out a squeal of pure rage and launched herself at Hebert's back. As per instructions, the other two started coming in as well. Madison hung back because (as she told herself) she was the one who ordered beatdowns, not the one who delivered them.

That was when it all went horribly wrong.

Somehow, Hebert sidestepped Julia's rush, then swung a crisp, neat elbow to her jaw. Julia went down like a marionette with its strings cut, but Hebert was still moving. The first girl to get close to her suffered a punch to the stomach that dropped her on top of Julia, while the second one had her legs swept from under her.

Madison stared at the heap of groaning girls, then at Hebert, who wasn't even ruffled yet. "What? No! You two!" She gestured to the girls at the door. "Get her!"

"Yeah," said Hebert, holding her hand out and doing a little beckoning gesture with her fingers. "Come get me."

"Fuck that, she knows Kung Fu." One of the girls opened the door they'd been supposedly guarding. "You're on your own." They both ducked out; the door banged shut behind them.

Madison was starting to get the impression that she had fucked up in a truly fundamental manner. Was this what happened to Emma and Sophia? Is Hebert some kind of cape? What the fuck's going on here? She truly, desperately wanted to pee right now.

The air jet rumbled as Hebert dried her hands. After a moment, she turned to Madison. "Don't let this happen again." Then she was gone, the bathroom door banging shut behind her.

Madison stumbled into a stall and locked herself in. Sitting on the toilet, arms wrapped around herself, she rocked back and forth slowly.

Fuck this shit, I'm out.

<><>​

Taylor

Heart beating a mile a minute, Taylor found an unlocked classroom. Shoving the door open, she stumbled inside and leaned against the wall, trying not to hyperventilate.

"Holy fuck," she said out loud. "Was that me? Did I do that?"

When she first saw the posse Madison had brought along, she'd known she had overplayed her hand. They were there to get revenge for Emma and Sophia, because how dare she defend herself. But right at that moment, she knew reverting to her previously retiring ways would accomplish exactly nothing, so she'd decided to keep pushing the bluff as hard as she could.

Julia had attacked her anyway; this hadn't come as a tremendous surprise. What had surprised Taylor was the lethal speed and precision with which she'd found herself responding. It was as though she had muscle memory for things she'd never learned, never experienced. Her elbow was still stinging from the strike to Julia's jaw and her middle-finger knuckle was sore from the punch to the other girl, while her leg … was actually pretty good, honestly.

Which was downright astonishing, given that she'd demolished those three girls in about five seconds flat. She hadn't known what sort of threats were appropriate after pulling that sort of thing, but she'd gone with 'don't let this happen again' as a kind of catch-all vague phrase.

Pulling a chair down off a desk, she sat down and scrubbed her hands over her face. This has got to be something to do with Morrigan. But how do I ask her about it? 'Oh hey, I think I'm picking up skills from you.'?

It wasn't something she could do anything about right then, so she got up from the chair. Lunchtime beckoned, and she hadn't had time to pack anything to bring from home. So it looked like she'd have to brave the cafeteria line.

I just hope nobody else comes at me. This sort of thing, I can totally do without.

<><>​

Morrigan

"Okay, what is it now?" I grumble, ducking in through the open hatch into Operations. "I just got to damn sleep. Again."

"There's been a new development," says Captain Hornblower crisply. "Play it back, Loki."

Grumpily, I pull up a chair and sit down to watch the show. The waterfall display shows Taylor Hebert being cornered in what looks like the same high-school bathroom as I kicked Sophia Hess's ass in yesterday. One against six; I draw air in through my teeth in a pained hiss. This is gonna be bloody, especially if they decide to kick her while she's down.

"Why didn't you call me earlier?" I ask as Madison and some other girl crowd in on her. "I could've jacked in there and … holy shit."

The next few seconds, after Taylor drops the first girl with an elbow to the jaw, are glorious. She doesn't waste a single move; in fact, the moves are what I'd use in that situation. Exactly those moves.

"That's why," Loki says as Taylor leaves the bathroom. "By the time I got the Captain in here, it was already done and dusted." He looks almost accusingly at Captain Hornblower. "I wasn't aware she could kick ass like that."

"She can't." Hornblower gestures at the console. "You did the original analysis of her. Pull it back up and compare to her current stats."

"Sure thing, Captain." He starts typing and dragging in files, then sets up two screens, each with a Matrix avatar breakdown on it. To the left is Taylor Hebert, before we showed up. To the right, her stats right at this moment. We stare at it.

"Well, holy shit." I run my hands through my hair. "No wonder she kicked their asses like they owed her money. Her combat stats are nearly as good as mine. How the hell did that happen?"

"I may have an idea." Captain Hornblower frowns. "The incident with the skill thief. Loki, what did you upload for Morrigan?"

"Everything. Her entire combat block. Why?"

I get it at the same time that he does. "Because it didn't just go to me. It went to Taylor as well. Seeing as I was using her body at the time."

Loki blinks. "Well, damn."

Rubbing her chin with one finger, Captain Hornblower stares at the screen. "Indeed."

I take a deep breath. I know what I've got to do now, and I'm really not looking forward to it. "Captain ..."

Hornblower glances around at me. "What is it?"

"I'm going to have to talk to her."

Loki stares. "You have got to be kidding."

I wish I was.

<><>​

Taylor

Getting home after the school day ended ... was kind of an anticlimax, really. Her day had started with a visit from a couple of PRT agents, and then hit the high note when she beat up three girls in the bathroom and traumatized three others. Lunch had offered no surprises, which had been nice in a non-event way. Emma's absence from Mr Quinlan's math class had strongly suggested that Taylor's assumption about her ex-best-friend being in police custody was more than just a possibility.

With a sigh, she dropped onto the sofa, tossed her new/old backpack to one side, and relaxed into the cushions. Her father would be home in an hour or two, and they would undoubtedly hash over the visit from the PRT again. But until then, she had time to just close her eyes and try to make sense of the chaos that had overtaken her life.

The TV came on.

This was not supposed to happen, unless someone was sitting on the remote. No; there it was, sitting demurely on the arm of the sofa. She hadn't touched it.

When the picture formed, it wasn't any TV show or actor she knew; instead, it was a woman with a messy blonde brush-cut and pronounced cheekbones, in front of a blank white background. She stared out of the screen, looking directly into Taylor's eyes, or so it seemed. "Hello, Taylor."

Taylor blinked. "What?" That's some kind of coincidence. Definitely creepy, though.

The woman grinned and the camera pulled back, to show her wearing a well-used denim coat over an olive drab T-shirt, blue jeans and military style boots. Behind her, the background changed, a wall sliding into view, then a sofa ... one that looked identical to the one Taylor was sitting on. All the way down to having a surprised-looking Taylor sitting on it.

"Hi," the woman said, sitting down on the sofa beside Taylor. "Morrigan. It's good to meet you."

Her voice sounded so near, so real, that Taylor couldn't help glancing around to make sure she was really alone. So when she saw the blonde woman actually seated on the sofa, it came as a severe shock to the system.

"Holy shit!" she yelped, leaping half off the sofa. "Who—how—where the fuck—"

"Damn, Taylor," Morrigan chuckled. "That's some potty mouth you've got there. Keep at it, you'll get there someday. So hey, yeah, I'm the one who got you out of the locker and kicked Sophia's ass yesterday. Pleased to meet you."

Taylor blinked slowly and lowered herself back down onto the sofa. "Is this real?" she asked. "How can this be real?"

Morrigan waggled a hand in midair. "It's as real as anything in the Matrix. That is, as real as we want it to be. To answer your questions in brief: you were actually pretty well on the money with your letter this morning. The Matrix is a massively parallel ultra-complex VR network that was built God knows how long ago to embed all of humanity in a gigantic Beowulf cluster. You are living in the Matrix. Your entire life is an electronic lie. I'm a free human, living life in the real, looking to cut humanity free from dreaming about electric sheep."

Taylor frowned. "Okay, but if you can do this, why not pull us all out?"

"Because it's a bit harder than unplugging your laptop, kid. We've got to put a trace in the system that's subtle enough to duck past the admin programs and locate your real body. Then we tell it to eject you, and we go find you. Very time and effort consuming. It's a lot easier to chat like this." Morrigan gestured at the living room around them. "This is a sandbox that we slid into place around your house. You're not outside the Matrix, and I'm not jacked all the way in. Just by the way, we've got a time limit; the system admin will be doing an error-check sweep soon and that'll pick this up for sure."

Taylor was keeping ahead of what was going on, but only barely. "Okay, how can you do the impossible things that you do, and how was I able to beat up those girls today at school?"

Morrigan grinned. "Being aware of the Matrix gives you a certain amount of power over it. Some people even manage to break themselves free through sheer blind stubbornness. It also helps to be a rebel against whatever system you're a part of. And once you're out, you can be trained in techniques for leaning on the Matrix and making reality do what you want it to do. As for what happened today, one of the ways we train our Matrix avatars is by uploading skill programs into them. That asshole Victor had the ability to draw on the skills of other Matrix avatars. When Loki, my Operator, re-uploaded my skillset ..."

It was easy to fill in the blanks. "I got them too? Huh. I guess that kinda makes sense. Hey, that Loki guy. Is he ..."

"The one you called an asshole?" Morrigan cackled out loud. "Yup. Wouldn't worry about it though. He totally is."

"Right." Taylor found herself grinning; Morrigan's sense of humour was infectious. Still, she had a serious question to ask. "So, if you're not here to get any of us out, what are you doing here at all? Why take over my body like this?"

"Because we do want to get you all out eventually." Morrigan wasn't smiling anymore either. "This server's on a downhill spiral. The protocols are weird so we can't just jack in as per normal, and we need to investigate it as much as possible so we know what we're up against before we start trying to evacuate the population. And that's where you come in." She paused and looked Taylor in the eye. "Are you game to keep going?"

Taylor firmed her jaw and nodded. "Yeah. I am."

Morrigan clapped her on the shoulder. "Excellent. I—"

A phone went off in her pocket and she wrinkled her nose. "Goddamn it. If this is Loki messing with me ..." She pulled it out and flipped it open. Taylor stared; it looked identical to the one she'd been using in the dream sequence. "Morrigan."

There was a tinny voice, on the edge of hearing. Morrigan growled at the back of her throat.

"You have to go?" asked Taylor.

"Gotta go. Thirty-second warning. See you tonight, kid."

Taylor nodded. "See you then."

Morrigan gave her a smartass grin, then lifted the phone to her ear. "Okay, pull me out."

It was like watching a movie special effect. Morrigan literally dissolved from the feet upward into silvery static that dissipated, finishing at the phone itself. At the same time, the TV went blank and both the sound and light texture in the room altered almost imperceptibly.

Taylor sat back on the sofa, thinking through what had just happened. This was more than a weird dream, more than a moment of unexpected martial arts. Morrigan was real. Taylor had spoken to her.

Holy shit, I've been chosen to help save the world.

It was a heady feeling.

Now, all she had to do was live up to it.



End of Part Twelve

 

Reality Intrudes

Part Thirteen: Who Needs Luck, I Know Kung Fu

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



Morrigan

The tinny little alarm clock jangles, jiggling back and forth on the chain that connects it to the frame of the bunk above mine. I hate the thing, but it wakes me up when I need to be on my feet, and it doesn't use batteries. So I'm not about to use it for throwing practice … yet.

Getting up, I stretch the kinks out of my muscles. It's a good idea to go into a Matrix insertion nice and limber, otherwise you can come out of there with cramps on your cramps. If the last dive into that hellhole they laughingly call a civilised city was any indication, I'm gonna need to be on my toes every second I'm in there.

I traipse along to the ablution block and shower in cold water, partly because it'll wake me up some more and partly because there isn't a whole heap of warm water for the purpose. Even back in Zion, it's a good idea to keep hot showers nice and short. One more reason why the Machines needed to get shot in the face soonest.

I heard they were talking about recolonising the surface. Makes you wonder what's left up there. We made the Machines in our own image, so I'm not exactly optimistic.

Clean, dry, and dressed, I stop by the commissary and acquire a bowl of gruel. Nutritious, filling or tasty: pick one. I nod to the other members of the crew as I stroll along to Operations. Nobody but Hornblower, Loki and me know the whole story about what we're doing here, and it'll be a good idea to keep it that way for as long as possible.

The last thing we want is some misguided do-gooder mass-dumping the already-traumatised inhabitants of Bet into a whole other dystopian paradise. Or worse, getting the attention of the Scion program. We'd be fine, but the whole Earth Bet server would be fucked nine ways from Sunday, and I don't play that way.

I step through the door just a few minutes short of showtime. Hornblower is seated in the corner of the room reading something on a tablet, while Loki is making himself comfortable in the Operator's chair, with the waterfall display in front of him. It's a weird feeling: I know that in the server, Taylor is fully aware that I'll be stepping into her head and going out to perform constructive acts of violence on the assholes who infest her city. And apparently, she's perfectly okay with this.

"Her Majesty finally chooses to arrive," snarks Loki. "Did we stop to curtsey to the adoring masses?"

"They curtsey to me, asshole. You should try it sometime." I flip him the bird as I settle down into the chair, then I go back to eating my gruel. When I talk next, I ignore Loki and address Hornblower. "Anything new since I had the chat with her?"

Hornblower shakes her head, apparently willing to overlook my back-and-forth with Loki if it will keep things moving along. "No. She did her homework and ate dinner with her father. There doesn't seem to have been any trouble over the brawl; whether because they didn't want to admit she'd beaten them up, or because the school administration is so apathetic, I'm still not sure."

"My vote's on 'both'," I decide. "Having seen what that place is like first-hand, I'm guessing the assholes running the place are just fine with ignoring their duty of care so long as the almighty dollar keeps dropping into their paychecks. And as for the little sociopaths who infest that school, admitting that three of them got beaten up at once by a nobody like Taylor Hebert would be worse than the actual beating. Nobody would take them seriously after that. What's Madison been up to?"

Loki shrugs. "Fucked if I know. Which of the little shits is Madison, and why do you care?"

I repress the urge to wing the bowl of gruel across the room at his oh-so-punchable face. "She's the third member of the unholy trinity, the cutesy one who set the other three on Taylor in the bathrooms. I can see them just laying low and denying that anything of the sort happened, but how she reacts is going to set the tempo for the rest of it. She's trying to be the queen bitch since I beat up Emma and Sophia, and I'm interested in seeing if she's going to be smart and listen to Taylor's warning, or do something stupid. If she's aiming for 'stupid', I might have to do something about her before she fucks up our entire operation. That's why the fuck I care."

"Oh." To his credit, he actually listens to my explanation. It's probably because Hornblower's in the same room, but he still listens. Turning back to his screens, he opens a secondary window and mumbles to himself as he types in commands. I tune him out as I finish my gruel.

"So what's your plan for tonight?" asks Hornblower. "Continue following up on the Empire Eighty-Eight? They seem to be a large operation."

"… no," I decide. "It's tempting, but I think I'll see what's going on with this Lung character. Being able to spit fireballs and grow to twenty feet tall is a pretty impressive reworking of the laws of physics, even in a server like this one."

Loki blows a raspberry as he swivels on his chair to face me. "You're just scared you might run into an actual challenge, now the Empire knows you're here."

"It's more like I'm keeping them off balance," I correct him. "I out-skilled the skill thief and killed the unkillable man. They're gonna be jumping at shadows, wondering which direction I'll be coming at them from next."

"Morrigan is correct," Hornblower intervenes before the argument can get heated. "When you're one against many, it's vital that you don't get into a pattern that they can recognise and anticipate."

"Right you are, Captain," smarms Loki. I can tell he's doing his best to make it clear that he's agreeing with her, and that he doesn't give two shits about my opinions. Turning his head, he checks his screen over. "And the kid's just settling down to sleep now … hah!"

"'Hah'? What's 'hah'?" I ask, leaning forward to see.

"You'll find out." He smirks at me over his shoulder while deliberately blocking my view of the waterfall display with his body. "Best time to go is right now, Captain."

I really want to get up out of the chair and shove him out of the way to see what he's hiding from me, but professionalism takes over and I settle down again. Besides, clocking a crewmate, even someone as odious as Loki, is frowned upon if you do it in front of your captain. Don't ask me, I don't make the rules.

Putting the empty bowl to one side, I slide my arms into the restraints and relax into the padding of the chair. Last time I jumped into Taylor Hebert's head, I wasn't sure how it was going to go, and I really didn't know how she was going to take having her body hijacked. This time, at least I know she's okay with the procedure, and I've got a better idea of what I'm doing in Earth Bet.

"Understood." Hornblower puts her tablet aside and gets up. I close my eyes and exhale, sending my tensions away as I relax into the chair. When the Matrix jack hits my port, I'm ready. Hornblower plugs me in, Loki hits a key, and I'm down the rabbit-hole again.

I open my eyes in Taylor Hebert's bedroom. Sitting up, I look down at myself and discover what Loki was laughing at. For a change, it's nothing bad.

Before going to bed, Taylor must have snuck downstairs and retrieved the shoulder-bag, the long coat, and the hat. The outfit I was wearing when I killed Victor and Alabaster (yes, I checked them up after the fact; I still think Captain Nazi and Whitey McWhiteface were better names) is hanging over my computer chair and there's a shotgun lying alongside the bed, with a box of ammo beside it. Also, Alabaster's shoulder holsters and pistols, and a box of ammo beside them.

I mentally chalk up a plus mark toward Taylor's common sense; even though she's likely got all my gun skills, she's left them unloaded with the breeches open, so I know exactly what I'm dealing with when I pick the things up. The first thing I do is put on the shoulder rig (adjusting the straps because Alabaster had some heft, and Taylor … doesn't) and the long coat. Then I load the guns and put some spare ammo in the long-coat pockets. The shotgun goes over my shoulder on its sling.

Getting outside is the easiest thing of all. I open the bedroom window, pause to make sure there aren't any inconvenient witnesses, then climb out and kick off from the sill to land just inside the fence. But now I have my next hurdle: transport.

In a normal Matrix insertion, the Operator will program the Operatives up a car, or even just drop them where they need to be. Things are different here, so I've got to be smart about this. If I'd been thinking ahead, I would've 'borrowed' Danny's car keys, and filled it up on the way back.

God dammit. I bite the bullet and pull out my phone. Loki must be loving this.

"Operator. Forget something, Mo-Mo?"

I grit my teeth. "Shut up and find me the nearest motorbike." I love motorbikes. They're so easy to bend the laws of physics with. Everyone's seen so many impossible stunts in movies, they'll just accept that kind of bullshit in what they consider to be real life.

"Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Well, if you were mighty to begin with." I hear the clicking of keys. "One block west. Better hurry before someone else steals it."

"Oh, ha ha."

"No, I'm serious. Some local five-finger discount artists are eyeing it off right now. Better put the pedal to the metal if you want metal to put pedal to."

Well, shit. I end the call, hurdle the fence, and start heading west. Nobody's out and about at this time, which suits me down to the ground. I can really stride out, hitting speeds no bluepill can match, hopefully to get there before our prospective motorbike thieves make off with it.

Don't get me wrong: I can run really fast. But motorbikes can go faster, and they don't get tired. And with a little reality-nudging, they can be persuaded not to run out of fuel any time soon.

I swing around the corner of the block just as the bike's being quietly wheeled out of the driveway by a grown man, with two teenage boys in attendance. Aww, isn't that cute; they're learning crime from the master.

Unfortunately for them and their boss/dad/uncle/older male role model, I'm not there to enable them in their larcenous ways. I'm here for the motorbike. So just about the time they spot me coming, I've got enough speed up to go for a flying jump kick. I pass between Junior Bike Thieves One and Two, and hammer the guy in the chest with my heel. Then I fiddle Matrix physics a little so I backflip off the impact, land astride the bike, and catch it before it can fall.

The ignition's already been busted open, probably so they could unlock the handlebars. I spot the two wires I need and twist them together. The bike roars to life, especially when I give it some throttle.

Up until now, the kids have been frozen in shock, possibly because I kicked their mentor five yards down the street, and possibly because I've got a shotgun slung over my back. But when Bike Thief (Senior) sits up and yells at them, they go to grab me. However, it's too late for that; I kick the thing into gear and peel out of there. The last thing I see in the rear-view mirror is the lights of the house coming on, and the three thieves scattering (and staggering, in the case of the one I kicked) into the darkness.

There's nothing quite like cruising the streets late at night on a stolen motorbike, looking for trouble. I know for a fact it'll find me shortly, or I'll find it, and then we'll see what's what. I've read up everything I could about Lung and the Stupidly Spelled Racist Name Gang, but there's nothing like personal experience, in my opinion.

Also, I want to see if Oni Lee is really all that.

Riding one-handed (because I can) I sigh and fish out my phone again. Brockton Bay's a big place, and there are easier ways to look for a super-powered crime lord than by cruising around and looking for places where the smoke is rising. I don't like having to do it this way, but I do it anyway.

"Operator. Wow, you're needy tonight."

"Fuck you. Where can I find Lung?"

"Okay, not needy. Suicidal. But hey, who am I to argue with the mentally impaired? Sending you the address now."

He ends the call before I can reply with a suitably cutting quip, so instead I flip the bird toward where I'm guessing the waterfall-display point of view might be.

The address pops up on the phone, followed by a useful little map to show me how to get there. I've already memorised the general layout of the city, so I won't have much trouble getting there. Putting the phone away, I gun the bike to pop a wheelie on general principles, then accelerate straight through the speed limit in the general direction of Lung.

I've got a date with a rage dragon.

<><>​

Lung

As far as Kenta was concerned, the night had started well but was beginning to go downhill.

One of the blonde giantesses—he'd never made the effort to tell them apart—shoved a thirty-foot spear at him, but he turned aside so the bladed head merely scraped off his scales. In return, he blew a vast plume of flame back at her. Her sister's shield intervened just in time, though he suspected the spearwoman would be lacking in the eyebrow department, come the end of the fight.

He'd long suspected that their ability to minimise incoming damage was limited mainly to actual physical attacks, such as bullets and cars. Flame wasn't as easy to shrug off; against a larger opponent, it spread. Their caution when dealing with his fire breath seemed to be bearing that out, but landing a proper attack was difficult when they worked together like this.

The news that both Victor and Alabaster had fallen to some unspecified opponent (he'd scoffed at the description of a 'seven foot tall woman with eyes of death') had been a welcome one, but when he'd initiated a push into Empire territory it seemed they hadn't been caught napping. Oni Lee was duelling with Stormtiger somewhere out of sight; the occasional sound of a grenade explosion indicated that they weren't done yet. It was quickly becoming clear that the more time he wasted on this fight, the more Empire capes would arrive to oppose him.

He'd meant this to be a quick push to secure territory, done and dusted before the Empire could respond. It was shaping up to be anything but. However, he was up to the challenge, and could escalate further and faster than any of his opponents could—

The roar of a motorcycle engine behind him almost drowned out the pistol shot. The cape with the sword and shield rocked back, her hand going to her face. Another shot rang out, this time from a shotgun if Kenta was any judge; she staggered back, almost dropping her shield as red showed through a tiny gap in the armour at her shoulder. What is this? He wasn't aware of any of his followers who was an expert sniper.

Glancing behind him, he saw the oncoming motorcycle rider; apparently deciding that proper riding rules were for wimps, she—it was a woman—had one foot on the fuel tank, with the other steering and keeping the hand-throttle wide open. As he watched, she fired the shotgun once with her right hand, and the pistol four times with her left. The giantesses staggered backward again as the rider somehow managed to target the minuscule gaps in their armour; while the shots wouldn't kill them at that size, they'd certainly sting, and a deer slug to the eye might still blind one of them.

An unspoken agreement seemed to pass between the pair and they began to back off, spear held in a defensive position and shield ready to block any more shots. Kenta grinned savagely. He wasn't sure who this newcomer was, or why she'd chosen to aid the Azn Bad Boys against the Empire, but—

Too late, he realised that the motorbike wasn't slowing down, and that the illumination of the headlights seemed to be centering around him. He looked around, just in time to see the bike hit a piece of debris from the fight and take to the air. The long-coat clad woman—she was wearing a fedora, he registered absently—kicked off just in time.

Even at twelve feet tall, taking a motorcycle to the face was not something he could do lightly. The impact was massive, sending him sprawling across the road. Although he didn't quite pass out, he came close.

<><>​

Morrigan

In the instants before impact, I'm idly wondering exactly how the local Matrix justifies thirty-foot-tall women, even as strong as they clearly are. I mean, the square-cube law exists for a reason. But then the motorbike encounters Lung's face and they both go over backward, bits and pieces flying off the bike in all directions. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be getting the non-existent security bond back.

I'm already airborne at this point, flying toward the Valkyrie twins. Mungo and Fungo, or something like that. One's got a spear and the other's got a sword and shield. I mean, what's with that? If I could grow that tall, I'd be packing a Smith & Wesson .500, and I'd be laying down fire with that sucker like there was no tomorrow. I'd literally be firing two-inch shells. That's the sort of ordnance that makes buildings bend over and kiss their asses goodbye.

The one with the spear tries to bring it up toward me, like she can defend against what I'm doing. I twist in mid-air and land on the spear shaft, then run up it. Directly toward her.

Her sister—or clone, or whatever—tries to intervene with her sword, but I snap off a shot in her direction, through the tiny eyeslit. Tiny at normal sizes, maybe. Since Loki replenished my skills, I've been able to hit a gnat's ass blindfolded in a coal cellar with a brass band playing in the background.

Her head jerks back; I think I got her in the eye. Probably won't blind her, the reaction isn't pronounced enough for that, but she's gonna be feeling that for the next few days. Which is totally her problem and not mine at all.

With sword-girl being kept honest, I holster the pistol and work the action of the shotgun. This time around, I'm loaded with deer slugs from beginning to end. Like the pistol shots, they won't be lethal, but with the way one of those slugs can disassemble a bluepill, it's gotta be hurting her. Left eye, right eye, boom boom.

She drops the spear and bolts. Hitting the ground, I roll to my feet.

The one with the sword retreats also; she shouts something about being sorry I crossed the Empire, but I draw the pistol again and place a shot into her open mouth through a gap in her armour. She coughs and chokes, then staggers after the other one.

There's still a fight going on, if the sounds I can hear are any indication. I sling the shotgun and reload the pistol with economical moves, then head toward the sound of combat.

Turns out it's Oni Lee fighting some guy doing the shirtless thing with chains and a tiger mask. I am mildly offended by the chains concept. Didn't those things go out in the nineties?

The moment I see them, I start laying down fire. Three at Oni Lee, and six more at the tiger guy. Tiger Storm? Maybe Stormtiger? I remember thinking it was a stupid name, anyway.

Lee takes the hits, then dissolves into ash. A tingle at the base of my neck warns me, and I duck aside just as he's about to gank me with a respectably sized knife. I take away the knife and shoot him in the face, only for both him and the knife to dissolve in turn.

I've already fired six times at Stormtiger. As per his PHO page, he's generated a gust of wind that blew five of them off course. The sixth one has punched a nice hole through his lower calf muscle, and he's now bleeding. Go me.

He's also throwing wind-claws at both me and Lee, so that's less of a 'go me' situation, but hey, I'm a glass-half-full kinda gal. I fend off Lee's second and third attempt to introduce my insides to the outside, dodge some hostile bits of air, then ricochet a bullet off the pavement to hit tiger-boy in the hip. Well, I was aiming at his groin, but it's not a precise science.

Apparently realising that a) I can actually shoot him, despite his vaunted (actually, does anyone even use 'vaunted' anymore? Is it just taking up valuable space in the dictionary? Can we boot that word out of the English language?) ability to redirect bullets, and b) he's wounded and alone in this fight, he decides to fuck off as well.

Works for me. The teleporting wannabe edgelord is starting to get a little irritating, and I don't want to saddle Taylor with cleaning too much Lee ash off my clothing in the morning. So I leave Drizzle-kitty to retreat with his tail between his legs, and turn my attention to Oni Lee.

His problem is, he thinks he can't be beaten.

I know I can be beaten, and what's more, I know how he can be beaten.

He's skilled, but I'm a fucking Matrix Operative with more asskicking programmed into my stats than a hundred lifetimes could give me. Plus, I know one thing he doesn't.

This isn't real.

That's not air we're breathing.

So when he pulls his teleport-clone bullshit, I lean into the Matrix. Now I know exactly where and when he's going to pop up. I defend against the outgoing clone, and backfist the just-arrived one in the throat as he manifests. He gurgles and staggers, I shoot the one in front of me before he can pull a pin on his grenade, then throw out a side-kick to get the new new one in the ribs. Two of them go, and he falls over, still clutching at his throat.

The fourth one gets shot in the kneecap, and I cartwheel over to where the fifth one's going to appear. A dropping knee smash splits his mask wide open and shatters his nose. He collapses, out like a light.

As his clones all around me pop to ash, I stand up and dust myself off, looking around to make sure Lung is still on the ground. He'll be getting up in a minute, once he extracts what's left of the motorbike from his sinus cavity, but I don't have be here when he does.

Well, that was a nice little workout. What's next?



End of Part Thirteen

 

Reality Intrudes

Part Fourteen: Poking the Bear

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

Morrigan

I'm just deciding which way I'll go—either Downtown and kick the shit out of Coil, or to the Trainyards so I can explain to Skidmark why he shouldn't sell drugs to high school kids, using extreme percussion as a teaching aid—when my phone rings. Taking it out, I flick it open. "Is there a problem?"

"Maybe. Got one of their 'superheroes' closing on your position. The guy with the armour fetish and the halberd. Might want to make yourself scarce." Loki doesn't even sound mocking, right now.

"Armsmaster. Right. Got it." I close the phone and pocket it again.

Just for a moment, I consider not being here when the guy shows up, but seriously? If he's all that as a superhero, if he leads a whole bunch of these 'capes' at all effectively, how the fuck are they letting both a white-supremacist and an Asian supremacist supervillain gang just walk around like they own the place? I wonder if anyone ever asks him questions like this, or do they just let crap slide all the time, because superheroes can do no wrong or some shit like that.

Ask me about my deep and abiding respect for the forces of law and order. Go ahead, ask me.

I hear the motorbike before I see it. It's got a deep rumbling quality about the engine that says to me that it's tuned to go from zero to insane in three point one seconds. The online sites say that Armsmaster has rejiggered this thing from the ground up to his own personal specs, and from what I can see when he rolls around the corner, they're not far wrong.

Lung sits up, groaning, just as Armsmaster rolls to a halt. There's a glance in my direction, but the superhero's attention is all on the guy who took a motorbike in the teeth and survived. I mean, he's not wrong, but I do feel a little slighted.

Just in case he's got some kind of fancy facial recognition in that helmet of his, I've put on the shades I bought the previous day, over my glasses. The PRT already has Taylor in their sights; there's no reason to verify their suspicions. I had considered putting a scarf over my face or something similar, but that would make it damn clear that I'm trying to hide my identity, which would only serve to draw more attention.

He unlimbers his halberd—ooh, nice, it actually unfolds, with a very techy-sounding series of clicks and clacks—and jabs Lung with the tip. Doesn't stabbify him with it, even though Lung's lost a lot of weight in the last few minutes and doesn't have his scales anymore. The tip just touches him, and I'm pretty sure I hear a hiss, like a pressurised system.

Lung jerks away from him and climbs to his feet, but Armsmaster just jabs him again. There's a second hiss. This time, when Lung takes a step, he stumbles. From the fuzzy look in his eyes, he's not connecting all the dots right now. Then he takes two more steps toward Armsmaster—who backs up out of the way—and falls flat on his face.

Buck-ass naked, I have to say. No pants to be seen, which kind of makes sense. He probably doesn't shop at the same place the Hulk does, for Big and Purple Pants for All Occasions.

Once Lung starts to snore, Armsmaster turns toward me. He doesn't put the halberd away, which indicates that he's not entirely sure about my intentions.

Okay, so he's not a total idiot.

That opinion gets revised real quick, when he opens his mouth. "You gonna fight me?"

I'd been intending to get his measure before vanishing into the shadows—hey, on a superhero world, you do what superheroes do—but mainly in a non-violent manner. However, that question just plain pushes all my buttons. It's a challenge I can't pass up.

I work my neck, popping it one way and then the other. "Already kicked the asses of two masked idiots tonight. Might as well make it three for three."

Armsmaster brings up his halberd, aiming the tip at me. I take in everything about him, every aspect of his stance and his balance, and of the fact that two tiny prongs are now protruding from the tip of the weapon, where there previously had been a needle. He's good—I'll give him that, he's very good—but someone should maybe inform him that he's got tells when he's about to unload that halberd at someone.

There's the slightest twitch in his right arm, barely noticeable under the armour, and I leap up and over the crackling stream of electricity that he's just tried to nail me with. Kudos for the wireless taser; someone expecting a big-ass bladed weapon would be caught totally unawares by that. If that someone wasn't me, of course.

As he tries to sweep the thing up to catch me, I come down on it with both heels. He's strong, and the armour adds some power to his moves, but even my (lack of) weight landing on it does force it downward. And then it's all over bar the shouting, because now I've got my hands on him, and I also have a ton of momentum behind me. Getting a good grip on his arm and helmet and using him as a fulcrum, I swing around then up and over, throwing him off balance. He staggers wildly, his armour's servos whining audibly, and throws out his other arm in an attempt to regain his equilibrium, but it's far too late.

I'm cheating, of course. I probably mass one-fifth of what he does in the armour, and that's being generous. But in the Matrix, I don't do what physics says. When I'm jacked in, physics is my bitch, and that's particularly true in this specific server. So if I decide I'm going to use some bullshit martial-arts trickery to toss a power-armoured superhero around like a rag doll, that's what's going to happen.

Keeping a good grip on his armour, I plant my feet on the ground, and perform a gorgeous shoulder throw. He lets out a startled yell as he briefly goes airborne, then slams down hard on his back. That armour would have to be padded, right? Right.

There's gonna be some dents in the armour—and the asphalt—but it's not my armour and not my asphalt.

Going up onto my knees on top of him, I haul off and deliver a strike straight down into the front of his helmet. Not hard enough to shatter his skull and kill him—he hasn't done anything to deserve that—but definitely enough to utterly fuck up any computer-driven analysis software and recording system he might have in there. As an added bonus, it'll kill any HUD he's got running, so if he was cheating with low-light vision, tough. It's back to Mark One Eyeball for Mama Armsmaster's little boy.

I step off him and stand up. On the way over to where he parked his bike, I pull out my phone.

"Operator. Wow, you really do make friends and influence people wherever you go, don't you?"

"It's part of my inimitable charm," I say blandly. "So, what security and tracking does he have on his wheels, and how do I disable that?"

Because of course I'm going to steal his damn bike. I've been wanting to ride it since I saw it. And I know for a cast-iron fact that I'll be able to get better performance out of it than he can.

"In case you were wondering, the Captain just facepalmed," Loki says with the kind of glee that comes from knowing he's not the one who's going to be in trouble. Meh; some things are just worth it. "Sending a schematic to your phone."

I've been counting on this: he could have cock-blocked me from doing what I really wanted to do, but then I won't get in nearly as much trouble. My phone chimes as the schematic arrives, and I study it carefully. There are three separate trackers, plus two override units that Armsmaster will be able to use to take control altogether, one disguised as a power junction. But first I'll have to take care of the remote immobiliser; otherwise it'll all be for nothing.

I grin. Piece of cake.

<><>​

Armsmaster

Colin groaned and sat up, shaking his head. There were tinkling noises inside his helmet when he did this, which didn't give him a good feeling about matters. Cracks radiated across his visor, and the entire HUD was down. This wasn't much of a surprise, given that the rest of the helmet was down as well.

Lung was still unconscious, which was a bonus, and Oni Lee lay nearby. Colin thought the latter was alive, but after the extremely brief encounter he'd had with the parahuman who'd taken the ABB capes down, he wasn't so sure. Someone who could hit so hard as to wreck his helmet (any harder, and he would've been wearing his HUD as an involuntary implant) could certainly kill someone with a punch or a kick, either accidentally or deliberately.

He looked around toward where he'd left his bike; to his shock, he saw the parahuman still there, crouching by the bike. As he watched, squinting in the dimness, she pulled a component out and dropped it on the ground. Shock combined with outrage as he realised that she'd just removed the second remote override module, the one that looked just like any other part of the bike. Already on the ground were the primary override, the immobiliser and the voice command module.

As of ten seconds ago, the most he'd be able to do with his bike would be to track it. Okay, I can do that. Just play possum until she's gone, then call in the cavalry. She can't fight us all.

Then she smacked that panel closed, opened another one, and plucked out one of the trackers.

Christ, how the hell did she know how to do that?

Just waiting for her to leave was no longer an option; from the way she was going, she'd have his bike totally anonymous before too long. The halberd wasn't lying too far away, so he reached out for it. While the primary teleport-retrieval trigger had been in the currently-defunct helmet—and if that wasn't a wake-up call about not having everything controlled via the HUD, he didn't know what was—he had a secondary haptic control in his right gauntlet. Flexing his fingers in the coded pattern, he tapped the side of his index finger twice with his thumb, then waited. One second later, the halberd vanished from where it was lying and reappeared in his hand.

The cape didn't seem to notice, but that wasn't necessarily a good thing. She'd found the second tracker while he was deciding what to do. From the way she was going, he had zero faith in the idea that she might not know where the third one was, or how to emergency-start the bike.

He'd put far too much time and effort into making the bike the fastest thing on the road to simply lie there and let her ride off on it. More to the point, there was no way in hell he was going to allow some no-name cape to boost his goddamn motorcycle. Brute or no Brute, he would take her down.

Rolling over, he triggered the wireless taser again. She was crouched by the bike, with nowhere to go. The girl was good—he would be the first to admit that—but he was better.

He could've sworn she was looking in entirely the wrong direction, but between the triggering of the taser and the emission of the charge, she vaulted over the bike, evading the shot altogether. Sitting up with a surge of adrenaline, he used the halberd to vault himself to his feet, a little trick he'd been practicing for just this sort of moment. The moment he was upright, he brought the halberd around to try for another shot. If she tried to close with him, he was going to activate the plasma blade, to hell with continuum-of-force guidelines.

Instead, she swung her leg over the bike, and hit the high beams. He hadn't realised she'd compromised its systems that far, and regretted not anticipating it. This close, the tweaked halogen bulbs produced a wall of light that his unassisted visor did exactly zilch to mitigate; he could barely even see his own hand as he brought it up to shield himself against the light.

In the next second, the bike engine kicked over, and he swore luridly. She's fucking getting away! Leaping forward, going off memory, he swung the halberd in a wide sweep, activating the plasma mode as he did so. The possibility of wrecking the bike, something that he'd been quietly concerned about, had ceased to be an issue. Stopping the cape was more of a priority.

The blade hit and sheared through something, which clattered to the ground. Unfortunately, the receding sound of the engine informed him that whatever he'd hit, it wasn't her or the bike. By the time his vision cleared, both she and it were gone, though the parking meter he'd hit was still glowing orange at the cut.

As he stood there in frustration, fists clenched around the halberd, he became aware of wheezing, painful laughter. He looked around to find Oni Lee lying on the grimy asphalt, laughing at him through half a mask. Lee had been shot at least twice, and didn't seem inclined to move, but he was showing his bloodstained teeth in a painful grin.

"She … got … us … all … good," he managed. Colin honestly wasn't sure if the man didn't know much English, or if this was due to the injuries he'd suffered at the hands of the just-departed cape; either way, this was the longest speech he'd heard out of Oni Lee, ever.

"Oh, shut up," he said irritably. Fortunately, he'd anticipated the possibility of his helmet radio going out of action, so he'd taken to carrying around a phone. Fumbling the earpiece cord out from its niche in the bottom edge of the helmet was a little tricky, but he managed it, and plugged the phone in.

He spent the few seconds until the call went through wondering exactly how he was going to explain this away. There was no way he wanted to just come out and admit that he'd been beaten up then let his assailant get away with the bike, but as that was what had technically happened, he was probably going to have to just downplay it. A lot.

"You've reached the PRT hotline, how may we help you?"

Colin sighed. The number he was using was supposed to patch him straight through to PRT Ops, and from there he could be forwarded on to the Deputy Director's office. Instead, the program had screwed up—again—and dumped him into the hotline queue. "This is Armsmaster, verification Alpha-Simurgh-Two-Delta-Ellisburg-Zulu-Three. I need a priority line to Operations." Now that he'd spoken that out loud with people potentially listening in, that would be automatically changed. He'd have to go and find out what the new code was as soon as he was finished with the debriefing over this incident.

"Wait one minute, sir …" He heard the rattle of keys as she undoubtedly entered the verification string he'd given her. "Verification accepted, sir. Are you on a secure line?"

"No, I am not." He could mod up the phone all he liked, but at the end of the day it was still a cellphone. "I will not be discussing any classified information." Such as secret identities, or PRT operating procedures.

"Understood, sir. Patching you through now."

A moment later, the background noise on the line changed, and a man's voice answered. "Operations. What can we do for you, Armsmaster?"

He let out an aggravated sigh. This was the part that threatened to hurt more than the actual fight, or even the defeat. "I need a pickup from Casey Street and Church Avenue. Myself and two prisoners. Oni Lee is suffering GSW and other potential injuries, and Lung has been tranquillised. I'm uncertain as to how long he'll take to metabolise what I used on him."

There was a few seconds of silence. "… understood. Transport for two prisoners plus yourself." Another pause, and he knew what was coming next. "Uh … what about your bike?"

He gritted his teeth. "It's a long, long story."

Despite the curiosity he could feel radiating from the other end of the line, the man was professional enough to not push it. "Copy that. Van dispatched, with medical supplies and cape escort."

"Understood. I'll stand by here."

Ending the call, he was left with his thoughts, as dark and frustrated as they were.

Who the hell was that, and how did she break into my bike so easily?

He would bring her in, he promised himself, and then he'd get some answers.

Because if he didn't fix this shit post-haste, he knew those above him would start asking questions about his fitness for running the ENE Protectorate team; questions he couldn't afford to have people ask.

<><>​

Morrigan

I was right. It's a fuckin' amazing bike.

I'm tooling through the streets of Brockton Bay on top of a monster machine that was built to do one thing, and do it well: carry four to five hundred pounds of man and armour across town in the shortest possible time. With only eighty pounds of me on board, the power to weight ratio just hit the 'fuck, yeah' range, and I'm having the time of my life. My one regret is that Taylor doesn't have any place to keep it; I'm pretty sure that even Danny would notice if I stuck it in the back yard with a tarp over it and a sign saying, 'NOTHING TO SEE HERE'.

But I mean, come on. The guy literally challenged me to a fight. He was totally asking for it. I should've taken his halberd too, but I don't actually have anyplace to carry it. Besides, I don't think we've got any halberd training scenarios in the skill uploads. Though if we could take stuff out of the Matrix, I'd totally have it mounted over my bunk.

Oh, well. If he wants to be a dick about it the next time I see him, I'll just take his bike again. He kind of strikes me as the type of person who's in urgent need of having a stick extracted from his ass. A little bit of humility goes a long way. Of course, in my case it goes a long way in the other direction from me, glancing back nervously as it goes.

However, I haven't just been beating up people at random. Nor have I decided to go native; all this has been for a good reason. (Well, as far as I'm concerned, violence isn't the answer to problems. Violence is the question, and the answer is 'yes'.)

This has all been part of my fact-finding mission. Kicking over anthills is the best way to make a lot of ants start running around madly, and Loki and Hornblower will be gathering a ton of data while I'm smacking bad guys and having fun. It's honestly a win-win situation. But sad to say, the need for egregious violence is coming to an end. Just one or two more, and I'll be moving on to the next phase.

I'm still tossing up which of the bad guys to go and ruin the night of—Coil, who honestly sounds kind of boring, or Skidmark, who sounds like I'd want about three showers just to get over meeting him and who's barely a gang leader anyway—when my choice is made for me. Directly ahead of me, a bunch of lizard-rhino-dog things gallop on through the intersection, with four teenagers riding astride. All in costume, all with that subtle air of 'don't give a fuck' that gives me the strong impression that they absolutely do give a fuck, and desperately want you to give a fuck, but insist on pretending that they don't give a fuck.

Because teenagers.

All of which also gives me the strong impression that they're not four members of the local Junior Superhero Chamber of Commerce, out for a midnight charity ride.

Long story short, these are villains.

I catch sight of a tall guy all in black, with a skull-faced helmet—he glances over at me, then pulls a double-take that should've popped every vertebra in his neck—and a memory pings, from one of the PHO files. They're past the intersection by the time I get there, but I don't care. Laying the bike way over, I drift it around the corner to the sweet, sweet smell of burning rubber, then open her out on the straight again. Pulling out my phone, I call Loki.

"Operator. Are you trying to get yourself put on the Most Wanted list? Not that you don't belong there, I mean."

I cut him off. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Who's that ahead of me?"

His keyboard rattles briefly. "Those would be the Undersiders. Smash-and-grab teenage villains. Reputation for escaping and evading."

"Cool, thanks." I hang up. As good as I am, I'm going to need both hands for this. They've got a rep for escaping and evading, huh?

Challenge accepted.



End of Part Fourteen