A Darker Path [Worm Fanfic]

A Darker Path

Part Sixty-Eight: Wake-Up Call

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


9:17 PM Pacific Standard Time, March 2, 2011 (12:17 AM, March 3, Eastern Standard Time)

PRT Quarantine Site 2: Freedom, California

"Pastor! Wake up! You must wake up!"

"Mmph. What is it? A raid? Is the PRT attacking?" He sat up in bed and squinted into the glare of the lantern the young man held, shading his eyes with one hand. There were no shots, no shouts in the cool of the night.

"No. This is something different. I had a feeling that something was wrong, so I was looking at the PHO boards. You must look at this."

The man called Pastor accepted the phone that was handed to him. While he would have vastly preferred to shun the world outside Freedom as it had shunned him with its wall and its guards, to ignore potential dangers was to be unready for them. So, a few trusted members of the Flock maintained a watch on social media for any mention of their enclave.

For so long, there had been nothing. The world outside Freedom could stumble along to its own particular variety of Hell, while inside they had enough to live and thrive, thanks to the bounty afforded from the miraculous abilities of the Flock. However, those charged to keep watch had never shirked their duty, for they were faithful to him and the other members of the Flock.

The young man's face was fearful in the glow of the phone's screen. Pastor wondered why; even when the local politicians called for the downfall of Freedom, it never went anywhere. He was too powerful, his Flock was definitely too powerful, and once they had the votes, the promises faded away like morning fog.

And then he saw the message. The crude, raw threats from the one called Atropos. He had heard the name, but only in passing, not enough to fix it in his memory. Well, it was fixed there now. "Tell me, who is this Atropos? What have they done, to make this threat? Why do you fear them?"

And the boy spoke. The words tumbled from him about how Atropos had set herself against the criminals that infested her home city, and slaughtered their leaders, giving each one until midnight to surrender or leave. The parallel was unmistakeable.

But that was not all. Working alone, or so it seemed, she had confronted the drug trade within that city. An impossible task by any normal metric, and yet she had utterly eviscerated it. The Slaughterhouse Nine—Pastor had heard of them, to be sure—had invaded her city, and she had annihilated them. Then Butcher and the Teeth suffered the same fate.

A week ago, in a place called Canberra on the far side of the world, she had killed the Simurgh. Since then, the false king called Nilbog had fallen to her hand, followed by the abomination called the Machine Army. None stood in her way; even those who were nominally charged with upholding the secular law stepped aside when she approached.

The boy spoke of others, but Pastor no longer cared. Atropos was no ordinary cape. Her powers were not the miracles that Pastor invoked in others, but something far darker. She was a destroying angel, sent by a higher power, and her function was to herald the End of Days. If he stood in her way, his ability to grant miracles would be stripped from him and he would be crucified, not as a way to ascend to his heavenly reward, but as a punishment designed to kill him in great torment.

But what had he done to earn her wrath? Had he not gathered his Flock, and granted them the miraculous abilities that were his Gift? Had he not …

In a flash of divine inspiration, he saw his error. It had been right there before him the whole time, the sin of Pride. But it was not too late. He knew what path he must follow.

"Rouse the Flock. Bring them together," he ordered. "I must address them."

"Yes, Pastor."

<><>​

2325 Hours Central Standard Time (12:25 AM EST)

PRT Quarantine Site 1: Gary, Indiana

When his position and rank were taken into consideration, Colonel Reginald Frost considered himself an eminently reasonable man. Being the commanding officer of the first quarantine site that the PRT had ever established was a powerful responsibility, so his decisions needed to be forward-thinking and fair-minded. The city of Gary had cut itself off from the rest of the United States, so it was his job to keep it cut off.

Had it just been ordinary, everyday citizens who had rioted and taken over City Hall, then the National Guard response would've been sufficient to quell it. But the riots had been incited and exacerbated by supervillains, working to overthrow the city's law enforcement personnel. When the Guard showed up, they were unprepared for the lethal reception, and retreated in disorder.

The PRT had stepped in then, encircling the city with barricades and allowing citizens to flee through checkpoints. In the early days, outside villains had heard about the 'wide open city' and worked at sneaking in; some had even succeeded. But once the security had tightened up, nobody and nothing got in or out of the city, unless it was through a checkpoint.

Citizens (or rather, refugees) still got out. Precautions were taken, of course; they were questioned and fingerprinted, just to ensure that they weren't villains attempting to escape. Several had been caught this way, yet still they tried. The recent discovery that MRIs could give a strong hint at whether someone had active powers came in handy there as well.

Nothing else, however, was allowed in or out. Frost suspected that there were capes smuggling supplies into the city, and possibly other capes out, via powers, but it could only be a trickle at best. Cape battles could sometimes be seen or heard, quite likely over resources.

His view remained steadfast: they could always surrender.

But now this new thing had come up. Up until this year, he'd browsed the ParaHumans Online boards once in a while, usually to catch up on information that didn't seem to be available elsewhere. From early January onward, however, a new villain called Atropos had been making more and more waves.

There was no need to gather evidence to determine her exploits; she seemed cheerfully determined to confess all in her own thread on PHO. Each new kill, or group of kills, was a villain of one stripe or another; he'd been moderately impressed when she made it through her first week without dying to the villains she was trying to drive out of Brockton Bay.

When she took down the Slaughterhouse Nine, 'impressed' was far too understated a word.

Then she killed the Simurgh, and that blew all previous expectations out of the water.

He'd been suspecting something more was going to happen when he heard about how the Ellisburg and Eagleton quarantine sites had been rendered inactive, once more by Atropos. But the final icing on the cake had come with her latest post.

Gary, Indiana and Gallup, New Mexico: All villains have twenty-four hours to either vacate the premises or surrender to the nearest authorities (or both). Yes, Hideout, that means you too.

The timestamp on the post put it at just after midnight Eastern Daylight Time, or about fifteen minutes ago.

Accompanying it was a direct order from Chief Director Rebecca Costa-Brown. Disseminate this information, and all available information about Atropos, to the population of Gary immediately.

They had the capacity to do just that. Once in a while, they activated it, overriding all TV signals and internet activity, to remind the villains that the option of surrender and a fair trial, even for the core group that had stormed City Hall and murdered the mayor, was always on the table.

Now, it seemed, the Chief Director had lost patience with the waiting game. Sending Atropos in was, in all ways bar the literal one, the nuclear option. The villains within the city would have twenty-three hours and change to decide whether they wanted to leave the city or die in place; there was no third option.

Colonel Frost had only one thought on the matter: About damn time, ma'am.

He smiled as he gave the order: "Open all channels. Transmit the following information …"

<><>​

2301 Mountain Standard Time (1:01 AM EST)

PRT Quarantine Site 6: Gallup, New Mexico

"It's not a joke! It's not a hoax! I saw the photos from Canberra! The Nilbog footage! The way she decimated the fucking Machine Army!" Dust Devil's voice rose above all the others, augmented by his aerokinetic powers. "Forget Kaiser and Lung! They're small-time! She waltzed through the fucking Nine like they were a bunch of preschoolers playing cops and robbers! And she's fucking coming here!" He hated the way his voice rose at the end, but that was what it was like when his nuts kept trying to retreat into his chest cavity.

"So, we stay undercover like we do every other time the PR Tiddies do an overflight." Hideout's tone was derisive. "If she can't find us, she can't kill us."

Dust Devil stared at him. "Did you even read the post? Or did you just listen to everyone else talking about it?"

"What the fuck is it to you?" Hideout made a show of pulling a beer out of his shadespace, popping the tab, and taking a drink. "You assholes woke me up from a dream where I was rubbing lotion on Alexandria's back on a nudie beach, an' she was just about to roll over. I can't be expected to read every fuckin' thing around here."

"You want to see this, man." Jury-Rig's suit was only still functional because she specifically needed low-grade materials to make it work. She extended a secondary arm with a trashed Speak & Spell screen attached to the far end. As Hideout peered at it, text began to scroll up the screen.

"The fuck?" Hideout's bestubbled face—to be fair, that described every man there, and some of the women—paled by a couple of shades. "That bitch called me out by name?"

"Uh … dude?" Dust Devil raised a couple of fingers. "According to everything the PRT sent in, she's a combat Thinker who's basically off the charts, plus a strongly suspected precog, maybe a clairvoyant, and definitely a teleporter. Do you really want to fucking piss off someone who can maybe hear what you're saying, and will absolutely fucking kill you if she feels like it?"

Hideout looked around, apparently only just now noticing that everyone around him had moved a few paces away, leaving him in an empty space. "How can she … nobody can reach me when I'm in shadespace! You guys know that! I've hidden all of you at one time or another!"

"Unless you know how," Jury-Rig pointed out. "And, you know, combat Thinker. She took apart the Nine in less than an hour, and most of that was walking time. She knew their weaknesses, sure enough. Wanna bet she doesn't know yours?"

Hideout fell silent, sucking on his beer like it was momma's milk. If the argument was a game, he looked like he didn't want to play anymore.

"Okay," said Dust Devil. "Cards on the table. We've all done bad shit. We surrender, we're doing hard time, no two ways about it. But would we rather go down fighting, or just walk out and let them slap the cuffs on?"

As he scanned the crowd, not even he knew which way the vote would go.

<><>​

6:20 Eastern Standard Time

Stafford, New Hampshire

As the sun rose over the small town, in a ruined house not improved at all by the gaping hole that had been blasted out through one wall, a woman paced back and forth, arguing with herself.

If anyone had been watching her, they would've had good reason to assume she had mental problems. Even on good days, her emotions were all over the place; on bad days, she had to actively work at not shredding every idiot who accidentally bumped into her on the sidewalk. Her mental situation was not in a good place.

But what she didn't have was dissociative personality disorder, even though her background was ripe for it. My mind is all in one piece, thank you very much. Every thought was sharp as a tack, and they all followed on from one another in perfect sequence. The trouble was, she still had the problem where they veered from one point to another like a drunk driver on an icy highway, and wrestling with a life-changing decision such as this wasn't helping in the slightest.

"I've always wanted to be a supervillain," she reminded herself, stomping from one end of the dingy living room to the other. "Kick ass. Take charge. Wreck shit any time I feel like it. Not have to answer to anyone, ever."

"Yeah, and how's that turned out?" she countered, on the way back. "I'm totally living the high life now. Squatting in abandoned buildings, living off PRT charity. Oh, yeah, that's taking charge of my life."

Turnabout. Stomp stomp, the floorboards vibrating underfoot. "It's not charity. Charity means pity. They don't pity me. They're scared of me. They've been paying me to not go out as a villain."

She slapped the wall with her open hand, in a way that would've risked an accidental blast forty-eight hours earlier. Now, no such thing happened. Back across the floor she went. "I'm barely on their radar. Pay for my internet and my electricity, drop off food, detail a couple of B-list heroes to babysit me?"

This time she punched the wall, not quite hard enough to split skin. She was angry, not stupid. Her knuckles still stung, but she refused to acknowledge it. "If I was such a low priority, they wouldn't even be doing that. I've killed people. I destroyed the Woad Giant. They might've driven me out of Boston, but I fucked up Blasto's little toy monster on the way out. Fuck him."

On the way back, she kicked the chair out of the way. "With everything else that's happening, I'm not a huge priority. That's a fact I have to accept."

She changed direction and kicked the wobbly chair this time; it clattered across the floor, the loose leg coming off. "Damsel of Distress is somebody. If I wasn't, then Atropos wouldn't have come to me. She wouldn't have put that effort into fixing my hands. She knows what I can do."

Stopping at the good chair, she sat down in it, staring at her upturned hands. They looked the same as they always had, but nothing could be further from the truth. "What the fuck did Atropos get my hands fixed for? What did she think she was going to get from me?"

She cupped her hands together, gently releasing the energy to build up in the cage of her fingers, going no farther, until the crackling, snarling energy within felt like it ate up the light in the room. If she let it go now, the detonation might destroy the house. But she didn't do that; instead, she let it leach away back into her hands, the darkness dwindling away.

For the past day, she'd been vacillating over the problem. It wasn't a simple case of a debt being owed; she'd neither asked for the surgery nor offered a payment for it. In her mind, that slate was clear.

But Atropos had made an offer to pay her well to do what she was good at, in a city where she was unlikely to encounter villains from her past. There would be therapy too, which she recognised she probably needed. Best of all, there would be comfortable surroundings that she could call her own, and food from stores that she strongly suspected would never run short of her favourite snacks at the worst possible moment.

Or she could seize her own destiny and strike out as a villain, showing the world that Damsel of Distress was back in a huge way. With the modifications to her hands, her blasts would never go astray and she had far better control than ever before. The mortifying malfunctions that had transpired before would never happen again. She could gather minions and henchmen around her who would truly respect her …

Right up until someone skated them out from under me. She still seethed, in the long lonely watches of the night when her mind wandered back to such things, about her ignominious departure from Boston. The people she'd recruited and talked into supporting her, who had then melted away at a few honeyed words from the other would-be crime-lords of Boston, among them Accord.

She'd never been good at the mastermind shit. Manipulation and subterfuge weren't anything like her forte. She preferred problems she could look in the eye, and maybe blast the crap out of if she needed to, not sneaking or backstabbing.

If she was honest with herself—really honest with herself—that was why her efforts in Boston had come adrift. She'd been building an empire, spreading outward, but not putting any effort into sinking firm foundations. Very much a case of 'you work for me and I pay you'.

But the Clockwork Dogs and Blastgerm and the others had been gathering support behind the scenes, so when it came to a confrontation, half the people she'd thought were solid had been given good reasons not to work for her, and the other half chickened out when the first half deserted her. She'd had no firm foundations, which meant that her entire organisation had crumbled at the first shove. Reduced to the one person she could depend on—herself—with all her potential hires working for someone else, she'd done the smart thing and retreated from Boston. Staying would've meant either dying or working as someone else's underling in whatever capacity they chose, and she had no taste for either.

Her powers becoming more reliable would undoubtedly help her revamped criminal career, but the damage had been done. No matter what the truth was, the word would be spread that Damsel of Distress was broken, flawed, unreliable. As with everything else, in the criminal world it took a thousand successes to erase one failure, and she couldn't bank on her henchmen not abandoning her again at the first setback.

She rose to her feet, pacing again, but silently this time. All the arguments had been spoken out loud and repeated enough times that her ears still rang with them. Now she had to sift through them and find her reality, going forward.

If I go to Brockton Bay—

She stopped that thought right there. To go to Brockton Bay as a villain would mean her death. She knew it, as readily as she knew her powers would no longer betray her. When she'd gone before, she knew Edict and Licit hadn't called ahead to alert Atropos, because she had called them. And yet, the masked spectre of Brockton Bay had been waiting for her and put a shotgun to the back of her head.

If I go to Brockton Bay, it will be on Atropos' terms.

Would that be so bad?

She paused and thought that over.

The favourable side of it would be that she would have good pay (she had no idea what a shot-firer made, but it was apparently a skilled job, so more than a normal wage) and free accommodation, if she was willing to settle for 'unimaginative'.

She'd settled for a hell of a lot worse, in the last few years.

Comfortable accommodations with clean sheets and regular meals was something she actually hadn't had very often over the last few years, but she could definitely make a damn good try at getting accustomed to. Being paid to destroy shit was also a distinct bonus. No doubt they had other capes who could zap stuff with their powers, but nobody could fuck anything up like she could.

And then there was the downside. She'd be getting paid, which meant she would be working for someone. People would be telling her where and what to blast. As an employee, she wouldn't be totally in control of her own destiny. She'd be an underling.

Compounding on that, she would be required to undergo therapy. Atropos had been very firm on that point. One more element of control that she'd be forced to give up.

But …

She'd spoken with Jessica Yamada, whom Atropos had left alone in the house with her. Mrs Yamada had been empathetic, asking her what she thought of all this. She had cared.

Ashley wasn't used to people caring. In her experience, people ordered and they took. Sometimes they manipulated, but it was with tricky words and it always ended up worse for the people they were talking to.

Mrs Yamada had explained in her gentle way that therapy wasn't an instant fix. It was a process, designed to assist people to work out coping strategies, and to keep them on track with those strategies. They hadn't had long, but she'd coaxed Ashley into sharing some of her circumstances, and making a few suggestions here and there. Minor things, but more than anyone had ever done for her before.

She knew she was volatile and had a hair trigger. It was kind of her thing. However, it had also worked against her more than once. She'd gotten pissed off, allowed someone to provoke her at the wrong moment, and shit had gone sideways.

The epiphany burst on her all at once. If therapy could help her learn how to not be provoked by assholes, that would totally be a net benefit to her future career as a supervillain. After all, she didn't have to work for Atropos forever. And she would totally be working for Atropos, not anyone else, because Atropos was the one supplying the money. The ones telling her where to blast, they would be underlings also in Atropos' pay.

And once I've saved up enough of a stake to kick my career over properly, I quit the job all nice and proper, and leave Brockton Bay far behind me. Go be a villain elsewhere. Show those assholes what Damsel of Distress can really do.

Yeah, that was totally a plan. She smiled and went to her bag. The card with the number of the Brockton Bay Betterment Committee was at the top, and her phone was freshly charged.

"This is Damsel of Distress. Ashley Stillons. Atropos gave me this number." Get her cards on the table from the start.

From her lack of reaction, the lady on the other end of the line might well have gotten calls like this every day. "Good morning, Ms Stillons. We were told to expect your call. The ticket will be waiting at the bus depot by the time you get there."

She blinked. "Oh, uh, thank you." The words were a little foreign to her, but they kind of fitted. "I'll be there."

"That's good to hear. There will be someone waiting to pick you up at the Port Authority building here in Brockton Bay. Do you have any questions?"

"No, uh, I mean, no, I should be fine." She absolutely had questions, but wasn't sure how to phrase them. Anyway, she was good at picking up things as she went along.

"Then we'll see you when you get here, Ms Stillons. Enjoy the bus ride."

"Yeah, um, bye." She ended the call, feeling a little weirded out. The lady on the other end had known who she was but was still perfectly okay with talking to her. That was rare in her experience.

Slinging her bag over her shoulder, she decided what else she was going to take with her. The pillow and blanket were grungy as fuck—the house didn't have a working washing machine, and the last time she'd tried to wash something like that in the bath, she'd destroyed the bath—and there was no way she was going to lug the TV all the way to the bus depot and then carry it on the bus.

I should've asked if 'comfortable' meant 'has a TV'.

Fuck it. I'll deal.

There was enough of the food left from the supply Atropos had left behind that she'd be able to snack on the bus ride to Brockton Bay, so she took that too. And finally, she took up the twisted chunk of matter that she'd salvaged from the Woad Giant's corpse. It was the trophy from her biggest fuck-you, and she wasn't about to leave it behind.

She walked out the front door, leaving it wide open. When she got to the sidewalk, she gave the house the finger. Her shelter it may have been, but it was a shitty shelter.

Turning away from her old life, she set out for the bus depot. It would mean a few miles of walking, but she knew where she was going now.

Brockton Bay, here I come.

<><>​

7:00 AM Eastern Standard Time

PRT Quarantine Site 5: Flint, Michigan

The announcement boomed out across the city at regular intervals. TVs and computer screens, what few that remained active in the city, repeated the information. Soon, all who cared to know about it would be fully informed about their encroaching doom.

They definitely knew who they were. She'd told them that if they didn't cut that shit out, she would come over there. The message had gotten through.

However, within the barricades that had excised Flint from the rest of the nation, more cape abilities festered and plotted than in any other place on Earth. Each and every one of them had power, and it is the very nature of power that the hand grasps readily but releases reluctantly.

They knew that if they cast aside their gruesome talismans, they would lose what had made them special. And it was the nature of the sunk cost fallacy that not one of them could countenance going back to merely normal.

Even as the various gangs intrigued and strove against each other, not one dared raising the idea of spurning the golden goose and surrendering to the PRT. The mere suggestion would see them ridiculed and ostracised, and anyone actually attempting to do it would be murdered on the spot.

As the day wore on, Flint emulated its namesake and stood obdurate.

<><>​

8:00 AM, Brockton Bay

En Route to Winslow

Charlotte leaned back against the window of the bus, idly scrolling through PHO. She noted that there was a new Atropos thread up and opened it, her eyebrows raising as she read the comments. The footage afforded her a few minutes of entertainment, though she wasn't that into action movies, so she went back to reading what people had to say about the demise of the Machine Army.

When she got to the part where Atropos had pledged to clear out four separate quarantine zones in twenty-four hours, she frowned. How's she going to pull that off, all at the same time? Those places are all the way across the country from each other.

That was when her phone rang. Worse, the caller ID said Atropos. She hadn't even known her phone possessed a font like that. It took her two tries to flick the accept icon.

"H-hello?"

"The answer is, with smoke and mirrors. That's where you come in, if you're still willing."

Her breath caught in her throat and her heart rate seemed to double. Looking out the bus window at the familiar scenery passing by helped to steady her, but not by a great deal. She'd done an extremely stupid thing not so long ago, posing as Atropos to scare off a burglar who was hitting local mechanic shops. The burglar had turned out to be a Tinker, and Atropos herself had showed up behind her after he'd fled to turn himself in.

Atropos hadn't been too angry with her, and had even shown a little interest in allowing her to do it again sometime. Her exact words had been, 'if I need your help screwing with people's heads, I'll let you know'.

Now, it seemed, she was letting Charlotte know.

There was only one answer she could give. "Y-yes. What do you want me to do?"

"Nothing dangerous. Not as dangerous as confronting Chariot, anyway."

As Atropos explained what she wanted done, Charlotte listened very carefully indeed.

If they pulled this one off, Atropos was going to screw with so many people's heads.


Relevant Side-Story


End of Part Sixty-Eight

 

A Darker Path

Part Sixty-Nine: Facets and Aspects

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


11:40 AM

Taylor

I pretended not to watch the clock as Mr Gladly swung into the finale of his lesson. "So, as you can see, while the rise of the Three Blasphemies did cause a certain amount of disruption in and around the nascent European Union, it also caused them to work much more closely together in the interests of mutual security. Are there any questions?"

He beamed, no doubt because he'd managed to work the word 'nascent' into his lesson. I was pretty sure he'd found it in a thesaurus and had made a note to use it somewhere. The amusing thing, it wasn't even for our benefit, but for that of the impassive auditor sitting at the back of the classroom, taking notes on his teaching style and how well we appeared to be absorbing the knowledge he was dishing out.

The upside of the presence of the auditor was that Gladly no longer favoured the 'popular' students over everyone else. This hadn't been a problem for me since I'd Ended any tendency for people to try to bully me, but it was nice to see that he could be a good teacher if he actually put some damn effort into it.

"Uh, yeah." Predictably, that was Sparky. "What's 'nascent' mean?"

I watched Gladly's expression just crumble as his attempt at sounding polished and erudite (another word Sparky would probably get wrong) fell flatter than a pancake with Behemoth tap-dancing on it. "It means new, emerging," he said after a few seconds of awkward silence.

"Oh." A few other people around the classroom got the same oh expression on their faces, but they hadn't said anything then and they didn't now. It looked like they were happy for him to ask the question and look stupid while they got the answer along with him.

Kids could be assholes. News at eleven.

"So, homework for tomorrow." Gladly scrambled to try to recover some of the poise he'd been working with before. "Pick a single attack or incident by the Three Blasphemies, and then show the results of it, good and bad."

If he'd meant to say more, it would've been drowned out by the sound of people starting to pack up. Unlike me, they weren't even pretending not to watch the clock. I did the same, though not being nearly as loud as the others.

The bell rang then, and we all got up out of our desks. Gladly had conceded defeat and was cleaning off the chalkboard; I wondered idly if we would get whiteboards when the school was upgraded. It would be nice.

As I was waiting for the tide of students going out the door to slacken somewhat, I overheard a few of them talking, probably not meant for my ears.

"Hey, how long do you think Atropos would take to gank the Blasphemies?"

"I dunno, there's three of 'em."

"Yeah, but this is Atropos, man."

"True dat."

They moved out of earshot before I had the chance to find out what they thought my minimum time was (I was pretty sure I could beat it, whatever it was), but I was heartened anyway. The fact that they were able to discuss Atropos in a positive fashion while I was potentially within hearing distance meant that I could maybe walk through the school without everyone freezing up, while maintaining the do-not-fuck-with reputation. Also, the tone of the discussion had been good feedback, in and of itself.

It would be easier to do my thing going forward if people didn't get in the way. The short-term solution was to make them fear me, and I was doing that, but fear when left unchecked sooner or later morphed into resentment and hatred. Turning it into respect was harder; that generally required allowing just enough give and take that they understood they could work with me without controlling my every move. Making myself predictable, as I'd explained to Jack Slash.

Making myself palatable.

Talking about palatable; I went to the cafeteria and grabbed lunch. While I was heading to an unoccupied table, I spotted Cherie just lining up. She caught my eye, and I nodded.

We didn't normally sit together, because I didn't want to paint a target on her back as being Atropos' friend, but once in a while I figured it couldn't hurt. Besides, she was still working on building a social circle without using her powers or ending up with a boyfriend, and the fact that she was eighteen among a bunch of fourteen through seventeen-year-olds didn't help overly much. So I sat down, and she came over and took a seat opposite me.

"Hey," I said lightly. "How's things?" I picked up my wrap and took a bite out of it. Not fantastic, but definitely edible.

"Learning more every day." She smirked, lowering her voice. "Half the class is talking about the quarantine zones, and trying to figure out how you're going to do it. The other half thinks they've already figured it out."

She knew, of course. I'd filled her in on Charlotte's little impersonation stunt, and exactly how long Charlotte had spent practicing in front of the mirror to mimic my mannerisms. Her voice acting was less polished, but I had a workaround for that.

I nodded and stuck the straw in my juice popper to take a drink. "That's half the fun of all this. Keeping them guessing, then doing something they never expected. Showing off, being fancy, is underrated."

"I'll say." She started eating her own lunch, talking between the bites. "I thought I knew a bit about presentation when I came here. You kinda schooled me on that one."

"Mwahahaha," I said, deadpan. "Fear my fearsome fearsomeness."

She wrinkled her nose at me, then grinned. "You are such a dork."

We chatted a little longer until I finished my meal, then I got up from the table. "Gotta run. Places to go, functions to attend."

She waved her plastic fork in my general direction. "See you after school."

Slinging my pack over my shoulder, I headed out of the cafeteria, in the general direction of the nearest girls' washroom. Nobody paid any particular attention to me as I slipped in through the door and locked myself into a cubicle. I didn't even bother sitting down as I pulled up my sleeve, flipped open the access panel of the teleporter, and hit the go button to open a pre-calculated portal.

One short step later put me in my bedroom, where my Atropos costume was already laid out on the bed. I changed into it with swift, efficient movements, leaving my pack and school clothing in its place. Then I tapped the teleporter for a quick jump that placed me downstairs, in front of the fridge.

There was another bottle of champagne there, prettied up with nonspecific wrapping paper and a couple of decorative ribbons. I was pretty sure Dad had earmarked one or two of the others for the end-of-month meeting of the Betterment Committee, but I didn't care. Better use would be made of them than by Vista's parents, that was for sure.

Taking the bottle out, I closed the fridge door and spent thirty seconds or so programming in the next few jumps I needed to do. The longer I could manage to hide the nature of the teleporter from everyone around me, the longer I'd be able to capitalise on the mystique it gave me. Timers set, I closed the access panel and pulled my sleeve down.

Three … two … one … go.

I went.

<><>​

PRT Building Function Room

Director Emily Piggot

God, I wish I was anywhere but here.

Emily would much rather have simply climbed on board the chopper on Friday afternoon and gone to New York with a minimum of fanfare. It wasn't that she didn't have any respect or regard for the people she'd be leaving behind (though New York and Boston would have oversight on the ENE facility, just in case) but that she wasn't entirely sure they had all that much for her.

She was the hardass, the headkicker. Everyone knew she disliked capes on principle, and she'd had occasion from time to time to express this distaste. It wasn't exactly one way; she'd heard about the nicknames. 'Miss Piggy' was perhaps the least uncomplimentary one.

Still, they'd spotted her now. It was too late to run. She walked into the function room wearing her best suit, with her medal ribbons pinned in a perfect row because she'd fucking earned them, and maybe the troops needed one last reminder that she wasn't just some random desk weenie.

Assault was the first to greet her, with Battery close behind. He held out his hand, an unusually thoughtful expression on his face. "Director. It's been a good run, hasn't it?"

"It has." She shook his hand, his grip firm. "We've had our differences, but I'm pleased to say you outpaced all my expectations and worries." She'd been opposed to the whole concept of having a rebranded villain in her city, but the Chief Director had backed up Legend on the matter … and he had turned out to be far less of a clusterfuck than she'd feared.

"Why, Director." The smartass grin she'd expected to see was back, creasing one corner of his mouth. "A compliment? Do we need to call master-stranger protocols?"

While Emily was half-considering that very thing—it would get her out of this gathering, for one thing—Battery murmured something about 'sleeping on the couch' to Assault, then stepped up. "Please ignore him. He hasn't punched a Nazi in weeks, and when he gets bored, he gets snarky."

"Not my doing, I'm afraid." Emily smiled politely at Battery—she was one of the more responsible capes in the local Protectorate—and unleashed some of her own snark. "If he wishes to complain, I hear Atropos can be easily reached on PHO." Some small part of her mind braced for what just might happen next.

"Ha ha ha, nope." Assault shook his head fervently. "I can be accused of being many things, but I'll never be so stupid or tired of life as to say something even remotely negative about her."

"That's probably wise of you." Atropos stepped out of the shadowy portal that had formed just behind him, carrying a brightly wrapped object.

"Jesus!" Assault jumped at least four feet sideways, ending up on the far side of Battery.

"No, Atropos." The black-clad cape sounded mildly amused. "There's a difference."

Pausing to catch his breath, Assault glared at her. "That was not funny!"

"Oh, I wouldn't say that." Emily found her first genuine smile of the day. "I'd ask you what you're doing here, Atropos, but I'm pretty sure the answer would be 'whatever I feel like'. Or is there something I need to know about, right now?"

"Nothing immediate springs to mind." Atropos offered her the object, which appeared to be the size and shape of a bottle of wine. "I just wanted to give you this as a token of my respect, and wish you all the best in your new posting."

"Well, thank you." Emily accepted the bottle, which felt chilled to the touch. "Not to sound ungrateful, but you are aware that I can't drink this, yes?" If Atropos didn't know about her ruined kidneys, Emily would eat her best dress shoes. As she'd said to Armsmaster not so long ago, I'm just going to assume from here on out that if there's something she wants to know, she knows it.

Atropos tilted her head slightly to the side. "True, but you are aware that Miss Medic could clone you a brand-new set of kidneys and install them, zero Tinkertech required, in less than a week, yes? Otherwise, that champagne is just going to have to go to waste." She let out a melodramatic sigh, even going so far as to put the back of her hand to her forehead. "Oh, the horror. The humanity."

Emily blinked. The overblown acting was definitely Atropos' style, but the other part was actually an aspect she hadn't considered. "… I'll have to think about that," she prevaricated.

The main reason she hadn't quite trusted any cape to heal her kidneys and calf muscles was because if they didn't know how their powers worked, she damn well wasn't going to trust them to mess with her vital organs. Also because when things got tough, capes folded, and she had zero desire to be the subject of a cautionary tale about a failed attempt to grow kidneys from scratch. Tinkertech kidneys were also a huge no-no because they would need regular maintenance.

But cloned kidneys, created from her own cells, could be examined independently and even implanted by non-cape doctors. Zero chance of rejection. She could finally be free of the damned hemodialysis.

She really was going to have to think about that.

Ignoring the spreading pool of silence that had fallen on the room since people started noticing Atropos standing there, she frowned. "Tell me one thing. Why?"

Why are you so concerned about my health, she meant. Atropos, for all the undeniable good she'd done, was a killer at heart. In her own words, she Ended things, sometimes quite dramatically. Rarely, if ever, did she do something for the good of just one person.

"You're going to be the Director of PRT New York for the next four months." Atropos' tone was quite matter of fact. "Wilkins' legacy probably lingers here and there, so you're going to have your work cut out for you. No PRT Department can do its job properly unless it's on top of its form, including its Director. Especially its Director."

Emily didn't even bother asking how Atropos knew about her upcoming retirement. Over and above that, however, she had her answer. Atropos wanted the PRT and police to be able to do their jobs properly, so she didn't have to do their jobs for them.

It was still surreal as fuck to have a blatant criminal working to improve the PRT and police departments.

"Understood." Still, she held back from making a definitive promise. This was her decision, and she refused to be stampeded into it. However, she was reminded of something else. "I received a communication today, from Director Armstrong in Boston. He said Damsel of Distress boarded a bus coming here this morning and was concerned about her well-being, especially considering her reception the last time she showed up here." She was reasonably sure all was well, considering the report and the footage from Tenebrae's bodycam, but it was always good to check.

"Ms Stillons is fine." Atropos may as well have been discussing the weather. "This time, she was invited. As you know, her power issues have been Ended, and she's accepted my offer to work for the Betterment Committee as a demolitions specialist."

Emily nodded. As little as she enjoyed having a powerful, mentally unstable cape coming into her city, knowing Atropos had matters under control made her feel somewhat better. And of course, by Friday evening she would be in New York, and the craziness of Brockton Bay would no longer be her direct responsibility.

"Thank you for confirming that. And …" She hesitated, wishing she knew if there were any microphones trained on her. Then she mentally snorted. Fuck it. What can they do, force me to retire early? "… thank you for what you've done for Brockton Bay. I can't condone the methods—it's my job not to condone the methods—but I do appreciate the results. Also, thank you for not targeting my people, even when they were trying to arrest you."

"You're welcome." If Atropos was being sarcastic, Emily couldn't tell. "Kick ass, take names, and don't let the bastards wear you down." She touched the brim of her hat with two fingers in an ironic salute. "Toodles." Then she stepped backward into the shadowy portal that formed behind her. It vanished a couple of seconds later, leaving the bottle of wine in Emily's hand as the only trace that she'd even been there.

"Goddamn smartass …" muttered Assault, shaking his head. It seemed he was more rattled by Atropos appearing behind him than he was willing to admit.

"You're just irritated that she can showboat harder than you." Battery put her hand under his elbow. "Come on, let's go sit down for a minute."

Emily watched them go, then looked down at the bottle she was holding. As a gift from a serial killer to a serving PRT Director, it was possibly unique in the annals of PRT history.

She was damned if she was going to let anyone else drink it, though.

<><>​

Around the Same Time

Damsel of Distress

Ashley looked around at the city as the man who'd handled her entry interview, a gangly guy called Hebert, drove the Betterment Committee vehicle with expert ease. She'd been in some pretty crappy places, and knew down-and-out when she saw it. Brockton Bay, she figured, had been verging on that in some places, but there was a sense of hope and optimism from the freshly repaired roads, the new signage, and even the way people went down the sidewalk.

Talking about the sidewalks, she noticed there was something she wasn't seeing: homeless and panhandlers. She'd once heard someone say that the true measure of a society was how they treated the people at the bottom. That didn't apply to her; she'd never be at the bottom of anything.

But she was interested in finding out how the real down-and-outers were treated. Were they hustled out of sight? Shuffled around until the bureaucracy could conveniently forget about them?

"Something I can help you with?" Hebert asked as they slowed to a stop at a set of traffic lights. "You look like you have a question or two."

"Yeah. Where are the homeless people?" Ashley gestured out the window. "City this size, there's always a few. But I'm not seeing any. Do you gather them all up and put them out of sight, out of mind to keep your nice tidy little city clean?"

"That's a good question," Hebert said seriously. "You see the induction packet I gave you back at the office? There's a card in there with your name on it. Everyone in Brockton Bay under a certain income level gets one. I've got one. Our pay goes onto it, and so do our stimulus payments. There's a couple of thousand on there right now, for incidental expenses. All our previously homeless people are living in cheap, affordable housing, with access to whatever medical care they need. A lot of them are actually working for the Betterment Committee."

"Huh." She dug into the hefty envelope and found the card. Sure enough, it had her name and picture on it. A little sticky note told her what the PIN was, and how to change it. "So, what happens if someone steals one?"

"Atropos gets it back." His tone wasn't even slightly joking. "Or tells us exactly where it is, if she's busy. If it's been destroyed, there'll be another one in your mail slot by the next day. She is invested in this project, and the last thing she wants is people walking away from it because they aren't being taken proper care of."

Having someone like Atropos as paymaster, Ashley decided, would go a long way toward making sure nobody got fucky with the money between payer and payee. Still, there were questions she needed answering before she actually signed on the dotted line. Before she could settle on the next one, however, Hebert brought the pickup to a halt outside a block of apartments.

"We bought these up and renovated them," he said as he set the parking brake and cut the engine. "Not exactly high-end, but they've got all the creature comforts and they're a good start for getting your own place." Without missing a step, he took out his card—a near-twin to the one she had found in the packet—and tapped a reader next to the door. It buzzed and clicked, allowing Hebert to push it open. "I get an override, because I'm kind of in charge," he explained half-apologetically.

Ashley was immediately suspicious. "Override to what? How far does that let you in?" He hadn't shown any signs of being a skeev, but some could hide it better than others.

His answer was prompt. "Just the lobby, so I can come and knock on someone's door and do a wellness check if they don't show up for work and don't answer their phone." He led the way inside; the lobby was relatively spartan but neat and clean with bland carpet underfoot. Ashley caught the fading smell of fresh paint.

There were stairs, but he hit the button for the elevator and it arrived promptly. Ashley raised her eyebrows. "This thing works?"

"If it doesn't, it'll get fixed." Hebert stepped in, and she followed him. "As I said, we look after our people." He tapped the button for the second floor, and the elevator rumbled upward. It arrived without much in the way of fanfare, and the doors opened smoothly. Ashley noted that the carpet was the same as in the lobby; bland, but fresh and neat. "Now, none of the apartments on this floor are taken yet, so I can do this." He went to the nearest door, which was showing a green light on the reader, and opened it.

Ashley looked the apartment over critically. It wasn't huge, but that wasn't a deal-breaker. Shower cubicle with a washer-dryer next to it. Efficiently designed kitchen and general living area. A separate bedroom (almost filled by a comfortable single bed) with built-in closets, containing pillows and other linens. She'd already discovered the towels in the bathroom cabinet, along with the generic toiletries.

As Atropos had explained to her, it was unimaginative, but it was absolutely liveable. She'd spent far too much of her life in dingy warehouses and abandoned houses; compared to those places, this was the purest lap of luxury. And it had a TV.

"Internet?" she asked. Unlike the pokiness of the place, lack of internet would totally be a dealbreaker.

"Free for low-bandwidth stuff, and we're rolling out low-cost wireless for high-bandwidth in this area of town in nine days … I think." Behind his glasses, his eyes went distant for a second. "Yes, nine days."

The question of where she was going to be living had been solved. She'd take it. But now, other questions were queuing up to be asked. "How do I get to where I'll be working?" She doubted she'd be walking, and cabs would eat up her money faster than a slot machine.

"Work bus will show up to take you where you need to go. You'll get an automatic notification twenty minutes before it's due, and a phone call five minutes after that if you don't acknowledge the text message. Roster will be texted to your phone a week ahead of time." The way Hebert was rattling off the answers, he'd clearly given them many times before.

"Who sets the roster? You?" She headed into the kitchenette and tested the hot and cold faucets. They worked, the water ran clear, and the hot water steamed impressively.

"I get directives from above for what we need to get done, and I assign people according to their specifications and qualifications." He spoke crisply, no bullshit, all business. "If you need a day off for personal matters, let us know and we can move things around. If you want more work, same deal. Stay on long-term and you will accumulate leave hours and other benefits, according to the union rules."

"Union rules?" She frowned. "I don't know anything about that." Never having been part of the workforce, she wasn't sure what 'leave hours' were either, but she didn't want to look like an idiot for asking.

"It's not a huge deal." He gestured to himself. "I'm the union rep for the Dockworkers' Association, so I made sure there was a union agreement baked into the plan we're using. It basically assures that everybody gets paid fairly and on time, and that nobody gets screwed over by management decisions. Everyone who works for the Betterment Committee is by definition a member of the union."

"So …" She tried to parse that through. "Some jerkass on the crew can't just fire me and kick me out of the city because he doesn't like my face, or because I used to be a villain?"

"No, they can't." Again, his tone was firm, with no room for misunderstanding. "If anyone has a problem with you, they bring it to me. Likewise, if you have a problem with someone, you bring it to me. I review all sides of the case, see if there isn't some way the matter can be resolved without anyone being fired, and reach the fairest conclusion for everyone concerned. Either way, you'd be assigned an advocate in the matter, who'd make sure nothing's been left out on your side. And if it turned out that someone was trying to victimise you for their own benefit …" His expression hardened. "That person would very soon have his own problems to deal with."

Ashley thought back to how she'd been driven out of Boston by the machinations of the other villains, undercut and betrayed by people she'd thought she could depend on. She'd had nobody on her side, nobody impartially reviewing the situation. They'd just decided they wanted her out, and thus she was out. This was a whole new, and thoroughly weird, take on the concept. I can tell this guy's never been a supervillain.

While she was still trying to get her head around it, she thought of something else she wanted to ask. "Where do I buy stuff? Food, clothes, shoes?"

"Ah, that's easy." His attitude had gone back to 'easy-going'. "When you walk out the front door, if you turn left there's a convenience store about three blocks down that sells basically everything you'll need for short notice groceries. It's been expanding recently, so they're getting more and more products in. For more serious shopping, there's a bus stop a block in the other direction, and the bus will take you to a strip mall about a mile away. If you can't find everything you need there, I will be sincerely astonished."

And he already said my card had a couple of grand on it … wait. "I'm gonna need an ATM, to get cash out to pay for the bus." She doubted the bus driver would be happy to make change for a twenty, and she was never in the mood to take crap from people over shitty details like that.

"Nope." He took his card out again, and pointed at a small symbol printed on it. "When you get on and off the bus, you tap the card on the reader that looks like this. It automatically deducts the fare."

"What, really?" She'd vaguely heard about something like that but had never looked too closely at it. As far as she was concerned, it sounded too much like Tinker bullshit to go anywhere.

"Absolutely. We started rolling it out shortly after we had the cards distributed. Once we get the ferry up and running again, it'll be working on the same system." He sounded quite pleased with himself.

"Okay, so how about—" She was intending to ask what the guidelines for decorating the place were—there was no way she wanted to live someplace with sterile, blank walls for any length of time—when he whipped his phone out of his pocket and put it to his ear. She hadn't even heard it ring.

"Hebert." His expression was rock-solid serious now. "Yes, she's with me now. Yes, I know where that is. We're five minutes away. I'll check." Holding the phone to his chest, he turned to her. "Ms Stillons, I know we haven't signed anything yet, but your assistance is needed. Are you willing to help?"

This was it. This was the decision point. Now was the time when she figured out whether she was going to stay and work for the Betterment Committee or walk out and go her own way.

Her rebellious soul pushed back against being under someone else's thumb, however lightly it pressed. Nobody tells me what to do! She'd always been her own boss, been the master of her own destiny, wherever it led.

But …

Her hands had been repaired without any strings attached. She'd been invited to Brockton Bay, not ordered. The apartment was all she could've asked for, and more. When she'd asked about the take-home pay, the figure Hebert had quoted was extremely adequate. And despite being under pressure, Hebert was asking, not ordering.

She took a deep breath.

"Yes."

<><>​

Danny

The accident had not yet happened.

It was going to happen, and soon. Nobody was going to die, not if he could help it, but everything was going to have to go just right.

This was a wake-up call to him that his power was neither omniscient nor omnipotent. He saw things that the group effort was about to effect, and he could alter probabilities in minor ways to stave off problems before they happened. Since getting his power, he'd been able to consistently keep things ahead of schedule and below budget, and make sure nobody got hurt.

Today, someone was going to get hurt.

As he drove with white-knuckled intensity, he concentrated part of his mind on the building that the four-man crew was just walking into. Decrepit, shoddily built with low-grade concrete, it had always been slated for demolition. If he hadn't had his power, if he hadn't been interfering right at this second, they'd be walking into a death-trap. As it was, he could adjust their footsteps and hold off the inevitable collapse until all but one were out of harm's way.

No matter how he ran the numbers, someone was going to get hurt. The only way out of it was to call them directly, but he didn't have a radio in the truck, an oversight that he intended to amend at the first opportunity. Using his phone to call someone who had a radio and patch through the warning that way was potentially possible, but people would still get hurt and his secret would be outed.

He hated no-win situations.

Maintaining the truck's performance at the very outer edge of its capabilities, manipulating the inexorable collapse of the building so that nobody was killed and only one was trapped, he drove on.

<><>​

Taylor

I flushed the toilet for appearances' sake and unlocked the stall, then went across and washed my hands. Dressed once more in my school-going clothes, my plan was to go and read in the library until the bell rang for class again. Atropos wouldn't be needed until it was time to deal with the quarantine zones, after all.

Just as I pushed the washroom door open and stepped into the corridor, Dad's face popped into my mind. He was under stress, and possibly needed assistance. I paid more attention, and details flowed into my mind: a building collapse that he wasn't quite able to forestall. Someone was going to be trapped.

Got it.

As I strolled casually along toward the library, I took my phone out. Victoria Dallon had never given me her number, but that was no obstacle. I tapped it in anyway, and waited for the response.

"Hello?" Her tone was cautious, but that was only to be expected. I'd never actually called her before, after all.

"Hello, Glory Girl. A building is in the process of collapsing on the corner of Webster and Patterson. One of the work crew that was checking it out will be trapped in the rubble. If you hurry, you'll be able to get there in time to help. Look for Danny Hebert. He'll be the tall guy with the hard hat." I kept my tone calm and even. No pressure, no demands. Just the facts.

When she spoke next, she was all business. "Understood. Webster and Patterson. Tall guy with the hard hat. On it." The call ended.

I put my phone away and continued toward the library. There was nothing else I'd be able to do to help, and I was interested in where the book I'd been reading was going with the narrative.

<><>​

Damsel of Distress

Ashley was strongly considering the idea that Hebert had been a professional racing driver in a former lifetime. She wasn't scared—being who and what she was, nothing scared her (apart from Atropos)—but the way he whipped the truck around corners and gunned it through lights just ahead of the red, flashing lights and an atonal siren clearing the way, she was definitely impressed. And he'd kept doing it while talking on the phone.

Not with it in his hand, of course; he'd slapped it into a holder on the dash when they tumbled into the pickup, before reaching into the back seat to grab paraphernalia for her. A hard hat, a pair of lightweight protective goggles, a high-vis vest, and a pair of work boots that were (astoundingly enough) of a size to fit even her petite feet. The phone had rung after they'd been on the road for a couple of rather hectic minutes, and he'd said, "Answer call," without taking his eyes off the road.

The person on the other end had babbled about a collapsed building, and Hebert had just said, "I know. I'm on the way with help. Do what you can to keep everything stable."

After that, he'd concentrated on driving, taking side-streets and back-alleys that she'd had no idea even existed before the vehicle dived into them, at speeds that had to be illegal. All she could do was hang on after pulling on the goggles and fitting the hard hat to her head. She had no idea how she looked with them on, but if anyone laughed, she was going to obliterate them.

Hebert wasn't laughing. He drove up to a pile of rubble that still had a cloud of dust drifting away from it, and skidded the vehicle to a halt. From the back seat he produced a second hard hat and vest, which he put on as soon as he exited the vehicle. "Vest and boots, please," he said, eyes searching the ruins of the building.

She put them on, if only because he'd said please, and moved on with him. Overhead, a slender figure topped by golden curls dropped out of the sky, swooping close as they began clambering over the rubble. Ashley initially ignored her, noting that the boots did a lot better job of protecting her feet than the sandals would have.

"Atropos called me," the flying girl said. "How can I help?"

"Of course she did," muttered Hebert, then raised his voice. "Thanks for coming, Glory Girl. Get us to the trapped man, then do what I say." He raised his left hand above his head, palm inward. Standing to his left, Ashley figured out what he was doing and raised her right arm in the same way.

A moment later, Glory Girl took hold of both of them at once, fingers like vice grips closing on Ashley's wrist. She grabbed Glory Girl's wrist in turn, which took some of the strain off. Hebert grunted as they were lifted off the ground and carried a few dozen feet over the mound of rubble to where three dust-covered men stood around a dark hole about two feet in diameter.

"Okay, now what?" asked Glory Girl as she let them go. She radiated a strong willingness to help. "Where's the trapped man?"

"Down there," one of the dust-covered men said, pointing into the hole. "Says there's something lying across his back, but he can still move his toes."

"I can lift some of it away," offered Glory Girl. "Clear it so you can pull him out."

"No, that'll cause this stuff up here to cave in before you can get to him." Hebert pointed at the mound of rubble that was overshadowing them all. "Ms Stillons, can you take the top ten feet of that off, please?"

Ashley looked at the heap of broken concrete, and smiled. "I thought you'd never ask." Holding up both hands, palm out, she called on the energy, the anger that had roiled inside her ever since she was forced to leave Boston. It erupted from her hands in a snarling, howling torrent of darkness, destroying the concrete that threatened to fall, concentrating where it didn't evaporate.

Back and forth across the mound she played the twin cones of devastation, bringing the rubble down to a much more manageable height. Then, just because she could, she brought her index finger to her lips and blew imaginary smoke from the tip.

"Excellent." Hebert's tone was no less sincere for being clipped and curt. "Perfect. Glory Girl, lift that slab there out of the way and hold it there. Gentlemen, clear that rubble away from on top of Alexander. Don't try to lift the beam."

As they jumped to obey, Ashley stood watching with interest. This was the sort of teamwork she'd always wanted with her minions. To be the person who knew what call to make and when to make it.

With the slab lifted and the rubble cleared, it became obvious that a heavy beam, one end broken off, was lying across Alexander's back. As far as she was concerned, he was lucky that whatever was under him had given way enough that it hadn't crushed him flat.

"I can cut that beam off, if you want."

As they looked at her, she realised with a shock that she was the one who'd spoken, who'd volunteered to help. Where did that come from?

But Hebert was nodding. "I was just about to ask. If you could, sever it so we can lever it away."

If I can, hah. You ain't seen nothing yet. She stepped up to Alexander and cupped her left hand around her right fist, with her right index finger pointing out like a gun barrel. Squinting her left eye, she sighted down her finger with her right. All of this was entirely unnecessary; she always knew where her blasts were going. But it looked all kinds of kickass.

Using the narrowest blast she'd ever generated, she sliced through the concrete beam like a laser, only much cooler. It took just a few seconds, then she stepped back and let the big strong men deal with actually getting the cut-off chunk out of the way. Alexander groaned as they tried to move him, and Hebert told them to stop.

"Glory Girl, in the back of my vehicle, there's a back-board. Do you know what one is?" She nodded, and he continued. "Good. Grab that, and the first-aid kit."

"Sure thing." She lofted into the air and zoomed out of sight.

"That was very well done," Hebert said to Ashley. "I can see you're extremely versatile. So, have you made up your mind as to whether you'll take the job or not?"

"Say yes," croaked the guy called Alexander. "You're badass as hell."

She smiled, soaking up the praise. It was only her due, of course.

"Yeah," she said. "I think I will."



End of Part Sixty-Nine

 

Day's End

"This is where I am." Ashley gestured out through the windshield at the apartment building ahead. "Mr Hebert was showing me through it earlier."

"Ah, cool." Lacey, the woman driving the minibus, was solid and chunky, but she had an infectious smile and she seemed to not recognise Ashley as a notorious supervillain. On one level that irritated Ashley slightly, but on another it heartened her. "I remember when we were fixing this place up. We went through it like a dose of salts, found every damn thing that was wrong with it, and fixed it. If Kurt and me didn't already have a place, I wouldn't mind living there."

"It seems like a worthwhile place." She considered it more than that, especially since the Betterment Committee had specifically renovated it for the purpose.

The minibus came to a halt, and Ashley opened the passenger side door and climbed out. Lacey handed her the large paper bag full of her work paraphernalia, then waved as she closed the door. "See you 'round, hero girl."

That jolted something in her chest, especially as the other guys in the back of the minibus joined in with raucous cheers. The minibus drove off, leaving her standing at the curb, staring after it with the bag in her hand. I'm not a hero. I'm a supervillain. But she couldn't forget the grin on Lacey's face, or the approving looks on the faces of her work colleagues.

Turning, she approached the door, then dug out the card and tapped the reader. The door clicked open, and she went inside. She knew which apartment she'd been assigned. It wasn't the exact same one as she'd been shown, but by the time she rode up in the elevator and found it, she couldn't tell the difference.

Letting the door close behind her, she left her bag and the twisted remnant of the Woad Giant on the small table in the living area and went into the bedroom. Upturning the paper bag, she dumped the contents on the mattress. High-vis vest, several sets of overalls in her size, the work boots she'd worn to rescue Alexander, a hard hat and safety goggles. Socks fell out last of all. All provided to protect her.

She frowned, and spent several minutes pulling all the packaging and tags off the new clothing, and hanging them up in the closet. Going through into the bathroom, she investigated the washer-dryer and found a tiny bottle of washing liquid, good for maybe two washes. Good enough. From her bag, she pulled out her spare dress and the several sets of underwear that she washed when she got the chance. These went into the washer-dryer, along with the correct amount of liquid, then she started it going.

The packaging went into the trash can she found in the kitchenette, then she took her card and let herself out of the apartment. Going downstairs in the lift that was still miraculously working, she went outside and turned left. The three blocks were not a difficult walk, and she found the convenience store readily enough.

She could see what Mr Hebert had been talking about regarding the store expanding into new products. It looked like they were trying a bit of everything, to see what their customers liked. The proprietors, an Asian couple, greeted her when she came in and asked if there was anything in particular she was looking for. She opted to look for herself and browsed around the store, coming up with a selection of fruit and other snacks, plus a couple of tasty-looking prepackaged meals.

There'd been a microwave in the kitchenette, so she grabbed a frozen pizza as well. No, she didn't have any issues about that at all.

It was still a little bit of a shock to just swipe the card and enter the PIN, and have it beep cheerfully and accept the total. The couple thanked her for shopping in their store and invited her to come back anytime. She didn't say anything as she left, mainly because she wasn't sure what to say to that. Just like the word 'please' didn't appear in her vocabulary, the phrase 'thank you' was pretty damn rare as well.

She walked back to the apartment, went upstairs, and stashed her groceries in the fridge. The washer had finished its load, so she switched it to dryer mode and started it going again.

There was still something missing.

Downstairs again, but this time she turned right. After a block of walking, she came to the bus stop. The bus came shortly after, so quickly that she suspected that she'd timed it perfectly, by sheer accident. Of course, she'd never admit that to anyone.

She had ridden on some pretty crappy buses in her time. The one from Stafford to Brockton Bay was kind of middle-of-the-road, but this one was top of the line. The tap-on reader was there when she climbed on board; it beeped cheerfully when she tapped it. She sat down in a comfortable seat where she could see out through the windshield, grabbed a moulded plastic handhold, and waited until it drove off.

The strip mall was easy to pick out. She tapped off as she descended to the sidewalk—it was amazing how easy it was to form that habit—and headed into the anchor store for the whole lot, a mid-range department store. The food situation was dealt with for the moment—she would get actual ingredients in at some point and teach herself how to fucking cook because now she could—so she was in the market for clothes. And shoes.

Again, nobody seemed to remark on her pure white hair or obvious resemblance to a notorious supervillain, leaving her feeling a little off-balance. She picked out a couple of dresses in her preferred style, plus a pair of jeans and a couple of black T-shirts with Goth themes to them, then rounded her purchases out with a couple of pairs of shoes and some more underwear.

Again, her card happily paid for the lot without hesitation. It was almost like a magic wand; just wave it, and everything was dealt with. She pushed that thought away. There was no such thing as a magic wand in her world. Everything went to suck eventually. It always did.

She went to the bus stop, and was pleasantly surprised when one turned up in relatively short order. A tall black guy got up out of his seat and offered it to her, leaving his two sisters sitting in the seat behind, chatting up a storm about every inane topic under the sun. Though she couldn't help wondering if she'd met the younger of the pair somewhere before. There was something about her voice …

She got back to the apartment, nodded to the black guy for letting her have his seat, then tapped off the bus and started back to the apartment. The two younger girls waved at her on the way past as the bus drove off. She kept walking, and let herself into the apartment block, feeling as though she'd walked ten miles.

The elevator was nice going up—no need for stairs—and letting herself into her apartment actually allowed some of the tension to leach out of her muscles. It had been a long day, and the stress from all the new and unexpected stimuli was starting to get to her. With the door firmly closed behind her, she took her new purchases into the bedroom and put them away as well. Her underwear looked weird in the drawer next to the fuzzy socks, but it would just have to deal.

Toiletries would be next on her shopping list, she figured. But the bathroom held generic ones, so that was good enough right now. Stripping down and dropping her clothing in the laundry hamper, she tried out her new shower for the first time.

It was heavenly.

Holding her head under the spray so the hot needles of water could massage her scalp, she leaned her elbows against the tiled wall with her eyes closed, feeling the water run down over her face. More and more of her tension eased the longer she held that position, until she finally turned and let it work its magic on the back of her neck and down her back. Swiping water out of her eyes, she applied shampoo, then body wash, then conditioner.

Her hair never got dirty; or rather, if it did, she could blast it clean. She could even do the same with herself. But that wasn't the same as having a shower, especially one that felt like lasers scouring every last bit of sweat and dirt and ick off her body. And when she turned her back on it and rolled her shoulders under the stinging spray, she could feel the tension in her back and neck muscles just melting away.

She had to get out eventually, and so she did. An exorbitantly fluffy towel was there to envelop her admittedly skinny body and remove all the clinging moisture, after which she went to the washer-dryer and took out the still-warm clothing she'd just washed. Dressed and feeling human once more, working her brush through her hair, she went to the fridge and took out the frozen pizza.

Her stomach rumbled, just looking at it. She took great pleasure in unboxing it and putting it into the microwave oven, then leaned back against the bench and brushed her hair while it went around and around and cheese melted and bubbled, sending its delicious odours right to her hindbrain.

When the microwave dinged, she took the pizza out and placed it on the table. There was a basic sharp knife in the cutlery drawer, so she used that to carve out a slice. Taking up the remote, she turned the TV on and settled into a comfortable chair next to the table. As the screen lit up and a news talking head appeared, she allowed herself to take the first luxurious bite of food prepared in her kitchen, in her apartment.

She chewed and swallowed, the taste explosion in her mouth bringing tears to her eyes of sheer pleasure. A click on the remote brought up a movie, one she'd seen before, but she liked it anyway. As the hero hung upside down from a helicopter, spraying machine-gun fire at the bad guy, she took another bite of pizza. It was just as good as the first time.

A strange feeling overcame her. She couldn't really place it, but the best she could describe it was that there was not one goddamn thing wrong with her life right now.

And she was absolutely not crying, because she did not cry. The pizza was too hot, or something.

Yeah, that was it.

She kept eating the pizza anyway, because it was too damn good to waste, while tears rolled down her cheeks.

 

A Darker Path

Part Seventy: Clearing the Air

[A/N 1: This chapter beta-read by Lady Columbine of Mystal.]

[A/N 2: This one just kept growing and growing, and there was no good place to split it up, so you have a monster sized chapter this time. Woo!]

Relevant Side Story

Relevant Side Story

Relevant Side Story


Three Supervillains

"It's unfair, that's what it is!"

"I know it is, Gina, but what are we going to do about it? She kills anyone who comes after her."

"She won't kill me, Bethany."

"That's right, she won't kill Ryan! She can't! Nobody can!"

"Okay, fine, but how are we going to get to where she is?"

"I know the four places she'll be around midnight tonight. The quarantine sites."

"Ooh, good thinking, Ryan!"

"Yeah, but which one do we go to, Gina?"

"Gary. It's closest, and my mom will drive us."

"And what do we do when she shows up? She shoots people."

"We don't attack her. We distract her, and Ryan takes her down."

"I can do that."

"If you're sure about that …"

"Well, how else am I supposed to get back into the top ratings if we don't put her out of the running? She's been hogging them for the last two months!"

"I guess …"

<><>​

Glory Girl

"Nearly home."

Vicky spoke loudly enough for Amy to hear her through the headphones she was wearing. It used to be that Amy would enjoy flying almost as much as Vicky did, but these days, she seemed to prefer putting music on and just chilling with her eyes closed for the duration of the flight. In fact, she was overall a lot more relaxed and happier than she had been for … well, years.

While Vicky tried not to think about it specifically, this change in her sister's attitude seemed to line up altogether too close to their first, disastrous encounter with Atropos. She was almost sure it was a coincidence … but she'd seen far too much of how Atropos operated to assume anything at all was a coincidence around her. Amy had also been sneaking out to meet Atropos (or being picked up by her; Vicky wasn't clear on that bit) which was the weirdest bit. Amy claimed to dislike Atropos, and she normally couldn't lie to save her life … so why was she happier now?

Not that Vicky could really claim to be any more consistent. She'd actively lobbied to go off on the last escapade with Atropos and Amy, and had been surprised at the amount of disappointment she felt when she was denied the chance. And then, when Atropos had called her during lunch break, she hadn't even hesitated to fly off and be the hero of the hour.

Not that she'd been able to hang around long after getting the back-board up to the injured guy. Mr Hebert, the tall guy, had been talking to the young woman with blaster powers, Ms Stillons, about smoothing out a track to get them back down to ground level, so she wasn't even really needed for that. As it was, she'd only just got back to Arcadia in time for class.

As she let Amy down on her feet, her sister gave her a smile. "Thanks. Just gonna go check on Smaug. Make sure he didn't get lonely without me."

"He's a lizard, Ames. He probably slept all day." But Amy was already gone, dashing into the house.

Vicky sighed and rolled her eyes. Sometimes, it seemed that Amy spent more time talking to the bearded dragon (who was admittedly kinda cute) than to the rest of her family. Still, if having a pet was what had given her a new lease on happiness, as opposed to her occasional association with Atropos, Vicky was all for that. Ames had saved too many people to count from various medical afflictions; she deserved a little happiness of her own.

She went inside and waved to her father on the way through to the kitchen. He waved back, then returned to watching TV. The flight home had given her a case of dry-mouth, so she poured herself a glass of juice then came back out to the living room. "What are you watching?"

"Game show." He snorted. "They're asking cape questions, and half the official answers are wrong."

"Why does that not surprise me?" Vicky sat down to watch. As she drank the juice, she thought over the decision she'd made and wondered how badly it would impact him. Even though he's the one who put the idea into my head.

Amy came downstairs after a little while to grab some cookies, then went back up. Mark found a news channel and started watching that instead. Vicky put her glass in the sink, then got her homework out and started doing it.

Carol arrived home a little after five, the car easing into the garage and the door rumbling down. Vicky was nearly done with her homework, but now she couldn't focus anymore. She'd keyed herself up for this moment for so long that all she could think of was the words she needed to say.

Leaving the open books on the table, she headed upstairs as the connecting door from the garage opened. Mark greeted Carol, but all Vicky heard was the rumble of his voice, no words. Heading along to Amy's door, she knocked on it. "Hey, Ames. You busy?"

"Not really." She heard footsteps on carpet, then the door opened. "Why? What's up?"

"Come downstairs for a second?" Vicky grimaced. The moment was accelerating closer and closer like a runaway freight train, and the impact was likely to be considerable. "There's something I want to say to everyone, and I think you need to be there. That way you won't be left out of the loop when Mom starts yelling at me."

"What? Why?" Amy blinked. "What's going on, Vicky? We don't have any secrets, remember?" She paused, too late. "Uh—"

Vicky raised her eyebrows. "Right. Like sneaking out with Atropos. Listen, I want to catch Mom before she locks herself in her study. Please come down now?"

Amy had gone pink at the reminder of her indiscretion, and now she nodded. "Okay, fine. You twisted my arm." She stepped out of her room and closed the door behind her. "Let's go see what revelation you have for the maternal unit." She tilted her head sideways, peering at Vicky. "You're not gay." It wasn't a question.

"No. And don't pry." Vicky led the way downstairs. "Uh, Mom?"

She'd gotten to the bottom of the stairs just in time; Carol turned back from the corridor leading to her study. "Yes, Victoria? Is this important?"

"I think it is." Vicky braced herself. "Mom, Dad, Amy, I have an announcement to make. Can we turn the TV off for a second, please?"

Mark frowned mildly, but did as he was asked; the TV went dark. "What is it, Vicky?"

"I …" Vicky took a deep breath. "I want to start working after school for the Betterment Committee." That wasn't all she intended to say, but it was a good beginning.

"What?" Carol blinked. "That … well, that'll cut into your patrol times, but we can manage it, certainly. Why the big fuss over it?"

"Because that's not all I want to do." In for a penny, in for a pound. "I'll be turning eighteen this year. When I finish school—" As it was, there were only three months left in the school year. "—I want to either go full-time into working for them, or if I've decided that's not for me, I want to leave Brockton Bay and go to Boston or New York and join the Wards or Protectorate there. Where I can actually make a difference."

Stunned silence reigned within the house for the exact amount of time it took Carol Dallon to draw in an outraged breath. "What?"

For his part, Mark looked at Vicky, then evidently recalled the conversation they'd had where he'd suggested doing this exact thing. She didn't know now whether he'd been just trying to cheer her up, or even if he'd thought she would never go through with it, but he didn't seem to have anything to say about it. When Carol looked at him for support, he just shrugged as if to say, I got nothing.

Carol tried again. "You can't do that! You're part of New Wave!" Vicky got the impression that to her, this was an unimpeachable argument. New Wave was the beginning and end of it.

"I can and I will." Vicky had been willing to entertain logical arguments, but 'you can't' was just plain denial.

"You're a minor!"

"I'll be eighteen!"

"I forbid it!"

Vicky felt her temper rising, but she stopped before she could say something she would later look back on and cringe. Holding up her hands, she breathed in and out a couple of times until she felt in control again. "Mom, you can't 'forbid' me from doing something like that. I'm not five anymore."

The look of betrayal in Carol's eyes cut her to the quick. "Victoria, you're still my child, living under my roof."

"I could move out." It was more of a rebuttal than a threat.

"Where would you go?" It wasn't quite a 'gotcha', but from the look in her eyes, Carol hoped it was.

Unexpectedly, Amy fielded that one. "The, uh, Betterment Committee has cheap accommodation for its workers." She folded her arms and looked away as everyone stared at her.

"And you would know that … why?" asked Vicky.

"That's what I heard, anyway," Amy mumbled.

Hmm. Exactly what have you been talking to Atropos about? "And that's where I'll go." Vicky squared her shoulders, grateful for the out. "But I'm not doing it now. I just wanted to tell you what my plans were."

Carol took the opportunity to also regain her poise. "Victoria, what's brought this on? Why do you want to leave the team?"

A question that wasn't an accusation in disguise, she could answer. "I talked about this with Dad a while ago. I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels here, yelling at jaywalkers. Without the gangs as an issue, the cops are actually able to keep on top of crime a lot easier. Pretty soon, we'll be calling dibs on muggers. I want to do something where my powers can make a difference, like working for the Betterment Committee here or fighting crime in one of those cities where they've still got supervillains." The last four words sounded so weird to say, but she said them anyway.

Carol turned her attention to Mark. "You advised her to do this?" Why? her tone seemed to ask.

Mark stood up so he didn't have to keep twisting his neck around to participate. "She was drowning her sorrows in ice-cream, and I gave her a little pep-talk about growing up and moving on, maybe updating her image. I didn't think she was totally serious about going to another city then, but to be honest, I can see her point. When was the last time we even heard a gunshot, out on patrol?"

"But …" Carol seemed to be at a loss now. "What about Dean? I thought you were going to … well, you make a very nice couple, is what I'm saying."

Vicky shook her head. "I broke up with Dean. He wasn't honest with me about some stuff, and we're through." It was more than that, but she didn't want to bring that up here. Finding out that Dean had had his powers given to him by drinking a vial from the semi-mythical Cauldron had been bad enough, but he'd once lied to her about it, described a fake trigger event. She needed to move on from him, and being in the same city didn't help.

Carol didn't argue about that, but she did switch back to her main point. "This is our team. We've put our lives into it. We've shed blood for it. How can you just walk away from it now?"

Vicky debated whether to tell her that New Wave had been based on a failed premise from the beginning. In her own head, it sounded cruel, but was it worth it, to pull the Band-aid off quickly? Or would Carol take it as another betrayal?

Amy raised her hand. "Um … maybe this isn't the best time for this, but I'm thinking about stepping back from the team. From being a hero."

"What?" And there's the other shoe. I wondered where that came from.

"What?" This one did seem to take Mark aback.

"What?" Carol's reaction was the most dramatic, possibly because of the one-two punch. "How can you stop being a hero? I was okay with you having a girlfriend in the Rogues, but now this? I thought we were getting better. We were getting better!"

"We're totally getting better, but …" Amy hesitated. "I want to go rogue. I want to do more with my powers than just heal people." She grimaced, as though she knew the next bit would not get a great reaction. "And, you know, maybe get paid for it?"

"Do more?" Mark sounded puzzled. "You're a healer. That's what you do."

"Paid?" Carol was a little slower off the mark, possibly because she had stalled on that word. It was one thing to get money for team sponsorships, Vicky mused now that the heat was off her, but quite another to be paid simply for using one's powers. "Why do you want to get paid?"

"Because that's what happens when normal people use their skills to help others," Amy retorted, showing more gumption than Vicky had seen her using in quite some time. "And if I'm not lining up with the rest of the team as Panacea, then I'm going to need some kind of income." She paused for a moment then added, "Also, I'm not just a healer. I never have been."

"So, what do you want to do with your powers that you haven't been doing before?" Vicky was honestly curious. She knew about Amy's ability to reverse ageing, but that was basically healing the damage done by time … wasn't it?

Amy ticked off points on her fingers. "Custom houseplants, like fluorescent roses. Rainbow poodles. Cosmetic surgery. Turning off the genetic propensity for weight gain, or turning it on for people who want to gain weight. Instant-growing trees for the Betterment Committee."

From the way they were staring at her, she may as well have grown a second head and started declaiming the Necronomicon in Klingon. Vicky wasn't sure about her parents, but she'd had no idea what was coming when Amy started speaking. "… and you've always been able to do all that?"

"Sure." Amy held her hands out, palm up. "Healing is the tiniest fraction of what I can do. Fixing an organism back to its original template? That's easy. And boring. Imagine if da Vinci had only been allowed to do charcoal sketches of fruit baskets on three-by-five cards, his entire life. That's me. That's what I've been doing."

Mark frowned. "So … when you said you couldn't do brains …?" His voice held a mixture of doubt and hope.

"I said that because I don't want to do brains." Amy's voice was firm. "There's so much interconnected stuff going on there. Memories and skills and thoughts and attitudes and likes and dislikes and … everything. I could totally do stuff, but I don't. There's the privacy issue, for one thing. And then there's the chance that I do something for someone, and they decide to sue me because they say I did it wrong. How can I prove I didn't? One of the things you always taught me was that you can't prove a negative. Broken arm? Any doctor can prove in thirty seconds it's not broken anymore. Coffee now tastes like week-old urine? I can't disprove that kind of allegation."

Carol frowned and pulled out her phone. "I'm calling Sarah. We need to get the whole family in on this." She pointed at Vicky. "And don't think for a moment that you're off the hook, young lady."

"Wait a moment." Mark raised his hand. "Carol, maybe we need to step back a little on this, and take a breath before we say or do something we might regret later."

"What do you mean?" Carol tilted her head. "Don't tell me you're on their side in all this?"

"I'm saying there doesn't need to be an us-and-them side. Carol, honey, look at them." Mark gestured toward Vicky and Amy. "We've raised two wonderful girls, but they're almost adults now. Vicky's always been headstrong, and Amy seems to have picked it up along the way. If we push back now, all we're going to achieve is to shove them further away from us. What I'm saying is, maybe it's time to think about compromise?"

"Compromise." Carol said it like a dirty word, but she wasn't bristling as much anymore. Her lips compressed as she looked at Vicky and Amy, then she drew in air through her nostrils. "Okay. Let's sit down and talk this through one step at a time. Come on."

Vicky glanced at Amy as they all sat down in the living room. Neither one spoke, though Amy raised her eyebrows hopefully. Vicky wasn't that optimistic, but she was willing to see where the chips fell.

<><>​

2330 Eastern Standard Time

Charlotte

Dressed in her Atropos costume, Charlotte eased out through the back door and let it close behind her. Heart thumping along at about seventeen beats a second, she pulled it carefully until the latch engaged with a click that sounded almost as loud as a gunshot in the quiet night air. Freezing in place, she waited for any noises from inside or lights coming on, but nothing happened.

Letting out a long breath, she stepped down from the porch then froze again as part of the darkness moved toward her. Her heart rate momentarily tripled, then steadied down again as she made out the faint white triangle of Atropos' shirt front, bisected by the tie. Not for the first time, she wondered if she was really cut out for what she'd signed up to do.

"Hi," murmured the shadowy killer. Unlike Charlotte, she seemed entirely at home in the darkness. "Are you ready for this? Remember the script?"

"Y-yes," whispered Charlotte. The folded piece of paper had mysteriously ended up in her backpack, and she'd spent the afternoon and evening memorising what it said, re-reading it at every opportunity until the words floated in her mind's eye.

"Good." A hand closed over her shoulder. "Turn to your left and walk forward."

Obeying Atropos' voice and the urging of her hand, Charlotte turned to her left and walked forward. Between one step and the next, everything changed; the night noises, the light level, even the ambient temperature. She was standing on a rooftop, vaguely illuminated by lights from below, of which there seemed to be more than a few.

"Wh-where are we?" she asked.

"The outskirts of Gallup, New Mexico." Atropos' voice was steady and reassuring. The hand lifted off her shoulder and pointed over an area where a bunch of buildings seemed to have been demolished. "The quarantine site is that way. Go toward the biggest bunch of PRT vans you can see."

"And what do I do when I get there?" Charlotte was starting to get nervous all over again.

"Get to the front lines of the PRT. Don't push or shove, just say, 'coming through'. They'll step aside for you. Go to where the lights and cameras are. Step into view at twenty minutes to midnight, which is twenty to ten where we are right now. Quote the script. Once everything starts moving, do that flourish you've been practicing with the shears, then step into the portal."

Charlotte felt weak in the knees. She'd gotten her hands on a genuine pair of bodice shears, and she'd been practicing a flourish with them every chance she got. But to find out that not only did Atropos know about it, but she also approved … wow.

"Uh … what portal?" she belatedly asked.

"There'll be a portal." Atropos gestured. "Fire escape's that way. Time's a-ticking."

"Right, right." Charlotte headed in that direction, eyes searching the darkness for the ladder. Pausing, she looked back over her shoulder. "How are you going to do the other three zones if I'm doing this one?"

Atropos' form was just a silhouette against the faintly illuminated sky. "Pastor was going to hold out to the last minute, but he lost his nerve two hours ago. Released his hold over the people in Freedom, then speed-walked out of his zone before they came all the way to their senses. Submitted to arrest and let them slap the cuffs on. The PRT has people checking his victims out. I can handle the other two pretty easily."

"Oh." Charlotte took one more step, then found the top of the fire escape. "Okay, I'm heading down now."

There was no answer; she glanced back again, and saw nobody on the rooftop.

Well, shit. I'm definitely on my own now.

By the time she got to the bottom, her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she picked her way across the cleared ground toward where the PRT vehicles were clustered around what she figured was the main entrance to the Gallup quarantine zone.

Atropos, she figured, didn't run. She was always right where she needed to be, at the correct time. So she moved forward at a steady, deliberate pace. No rush, no fluster.

Twice she encountered troopers moving around in a steady, purposeful manner. Each time, when they saw her, she gave them a nod of respect and kept going. The troopers just stood and watched her go by. Nobody tried to stop her.

When she got closer to where the lights were, she saw it was a temporary stage set up between two PRT vans. They looked like they had a good view of the main entrance, and there were cameras trained on the men up on the stage. One looked like a politician, and the other was a PRT officer in full armour, but holding his helmet under his arm. As far as she could tell, they were conducting a TV interview while they were waiting for Atropos.

Or, you know, her representative.

Palming her phone out of her pocket, she checked the time then dropped it back in. She had thirty seconds to be in place, so she moved forward. There were troopers guarding the steps leading up to the stage, and one stepped in her way. "I can't let you … uhh …" He hesitated when he saw who she was pretending to be.

"Coming through, trooper." She tried to sound uncompromising, the way Atropos would be in this situation.

"Uh, yes, ma'am." He stepped back out of the way.

"Thank you." She climbed the steps onto the stage, trying not to let her knees shake.

Lights bathed her. Both the politician and the PRT officer turned to see who had intruded, and fell silent. Ahead of her, on the other side of the barricades, massive floodlights illuminated the capes inside the Gallup quarantine zone. They'd taken over a seven square mile area south of I-40 and turned it into their own personal fiefdom, but now she got the impression they were a lot less sure about their position.

Ignoring the two men, she stepped up to the microphone. The script that she'd read and re-read compulsively came back to her. Switch microphone to public address. There was a switch with a setting marked PA, so she clicked it that way.

Let them sweat for a moment. She could do that.

When you talk, do it slowly and steadily. Don't rush. Don't try to be menacing. You're explaining the facts of life to them. To you, it's no big deal.

"About twenty-four hours ago, you were warned that I was coming here," she said. "You were given the choice to either evacuate, surrender or die."

Her words rolled out over the quarantine zone. Not a voice raised in protest. Even the night insects were quiet.

"The way I see it, right now you're being given the option to surrender or die. No way to just leave. Well, let's fix that." She turned to the PRT officer. "Have your men stand down. Open a corridor through the PRT lines. If any of them want to leave, let them."

"I can't do that!" he protested. "Those are dangerous villains! I …"

Don't argue. Don't push back. Just look at him.

"I … um … very well." He took a radio and spoke into it, giving orders.

"This can't be what the Chief Director wanted," the politician said, sounding worried.

Be matter of fact. "She asked me to clear the zone. Didn't specify how. This is the most efficient way."

That's the carrot. Now the stick. She turned back to the microphone. "As you can see, a way is being cleared for you to just leave, but there is a catch! As of right now, you are all on your second warnings. Submit to arrest, and you're fine. You may choose to leave, but if you deliberately commit even one felony from this moment on, I will know about it, I will know who you are, and I will murder you in a gruesome yet ironically amusing fashion. Same goes for if you choose to stay inside the zone."

Pause to let that sink in.

"So, if you think you can manage to go straight, feel free to head for the tall timber. Otherwise, I'd suggest you come and have a heart-to-heart with these friendly PRT troopers here instead. I'm sure they've got some nice comfortable jail cells all warmed up for you."

As she stepped back from the microphone, she could see the look of comprehension on the PRT officer's face. Some would almost certainly choose to walk, but the vast majority would peacefully surrender to the troopers amassed for the occasion. "Go ahead and open the gates."

Orders were given, and the gates rolled aside. The capes inside, few if any in recognisable costumes, started forward into the wide laneway that had been cleared for them, that led all the way out past the PRT troopers. Charlotte wondered which ones were going to make a run for it, and which would surrender.

The wave parted, going to the left and right. She saw men and women putting their hands up and approaching the PRT officers. Others, seeing the way the trend was going, did the same.

"God damn," the officer said, shaking his head. "I had no idea what you were doing, but … no, this works. This really works."

"Give my regards to the Chief Director." Charlotte took her shears out and performed the flourish she'd worked so hard at perfecting. "Toodles." Right on schedule, the portal opened before her, and she stepped into it.

As it closed behind her, she looked around to see her bedroom, the night-light glowing gently in the wall plug. The shears slid from her fingers and bounced off the floor. Staggering to the bed, she sat down heavily on the mattress. "Oh, my God. I did it." Slightly unhinged laughter bubbled up from her throat. "I did it. They really thought I was Atropos. Hoooooly shit."

Reaching up with shaking hands, she loosened the tie and pulled it off, then started on the rest of the costume. She had to take three stabs at it before she finally got it undone, then she got up and removed the whole thing. It felt like forever before she had it folded and stored away at the back of her closet, not helped by the occasional fit of near-hysterical giggles.

She took even longer to get to sleep.

I wonder how Atropos did with the other two zones …

<><>​

Atropos

I'd always known that Gallup would be the 'safe' zone. All I had to do was get Charlotte there, have her say her lines, and teleport her home. Just the effect of 'my' presence, and the speech she gave, would promote the effect that I needed. Having the teleporter project its starting and ending points at some distance from the actual unit wasn't something I wanted to do very often, mainly because it took somewhat longer to allow even a short jump afterward, but there were factors involved that wouldn't allow me to pull it off in any other way.

Allowing my power to time my movements precisely to hers, so that anyone watching the footage side by side would have trouble determining who was in which location, I walked onto the raised platform that had been set up a little distance from the main entrance to the Gary quarantine zone. Director Hearthrow of the Chicago PRT was talking in low tones to the officer nominally in charge of the area, as well as a tall rangy PRT officer whom my power identified as James Tagg. They all turned to look at me as I showed up.

I knew damn well that the capes inside the Gary zone were watching to see what the hell was going on. All the troops on the outside were on high alert, full armour, heavily armed. If I went in there and started killing, there would be a concerted effort at a breakout, and PRT personnel would die.

I preferred my way. Better optics. Also, the only enemy I was going to face wasn't going to come from inside.

Stepping past the three men, I raised the bullhorn I'd had slung over my shoulder the whole time. My power mimicked Charlotte's tone of voice, as well as the exact words she was using, all the way down to the microsecond pauses. When the PRT ran them side by side (and they would), they wouldn't be able to tell the difference. "About twenty-four hours ago, you were warned that I was coming here …"

When I gave the order to open a lane, I directed it to the officer in charge. He glanced at Hearthrow, who looked like a deer frozen in the headlights, then at Tagg. Tagg nodded once, briefly. "Do it." Then he turned to me. "Interesting strategy. Did the Chief Director okay it?" The tone of his voice said quite clearly this isn't how I'd do it, but I'm willing to watch and learn.

"She asked me to clear the zone," I said. "Didn't specify how. This is the most efficient way." We both knew who 'she' was. I raised the bullhorn again. "As you can see, a way is being cleared for you to just leave …"

As I clarified, I saw the smile spread across his face. He'd gambled, and it had paid off. Those villains who didn't hand themselves into PRT custody would be my responsibility, and God have mercy on their souls. I knew this, because I could hear him explaining it to Hearthrow and the officer in a low tone while I spoke.

Stepping back, I gave the order for the gates to be opened. Many would've snuck out in the last twenty-four hours, and they'd be exempt from my two-strikes rule, but those who came out now knew damn well that they were living under my sufferance. The few who took the route to freedom would do their utmost to go straight, I knew that much.

It was almost time for the next act in this little play. I slung the bullhorn as I watched the capes emerge and make the decision whether to try for freedom or settle for incarceration. Time ticked down and I pulled out my shears. The flourish was apparently based on what I'd done now and again on camera, and it wasn't too bad; again, I performed it exactly in time with Charlotte.

"No!" The word rang out behind me, high-pitched with anger and the fact that it was coming from a child's throat. At the same time, two explosions knocked the few PRT troopers behind us sprawling.

I turned, concealing the fact that I'd just slipped a tiny tub of Riley's preparation out of my pocket and dosed the tip of the shears with it. Still idly twirling them, the tub back in my pocket, I took stock of the three kids who'd just shown up. "Oh, hey," I said. "Shouldn't you three be in bed? School night and all."

"Fuck school and fuck you!" Bambina stomped the ground and kicked off with an explosion. She wasn't heading for me, but for Tagg, who'd started to pull a pistol. The explosion she created when she landed sent all three men sprawling; the pistol skittered across the ground.

"Careful," I said mildly. "You could hurt someone, doing that."

"Bambina and me aren't here to hurt you," Starlet said, tossing a few of her explosive darts, knocking more men over. "That's August Prince's job."

The kid in question, serious looking with a widow's peak, stalked toward me, carrying a mace. "You made Bambina look bad. So, I'm gonna make you look bad."

I sighed and addressed everyone who was capable of listening. "See, this is the problem with kid supervillains. Nobody wants to fight them, because if you win you've beaten up on a kid, and if you lose, you just lost to a kid. They get overconfident."

"Shut up!" yelled Bambina.

Starlet tossed a dart my way. It wasn't going to come close enough to do more than knock me sprawling, but I wasn't playing that game. Drawing my pistol, I shot it out of the air, causing a premature explosion that made her stagger backward.

"You want to know why I haven't given you any warnings yet?" I asked. August Prince swung the mace. I swayed out of the way. "Because you're no threat. I'm not going to kill you. I'm not even going to hurt you." He swung again; while he was still recovering, I got my phone out and took a selfie with him.

"Shut up and lose already!" Bambina had been bouncing around the perimeter, raising explosions, and now she came for me. She couldn't hit close enough to August Prince to harm him, but she wanted to ragdoll me into the air, so I'd be vulnerable when I came down.

I wasn't playing that game, either. When August Prince's next swing came past, I let my power take the reins and pluck the mace out of his hand. The same movement allowed my shears to open a shallow cut on his hand. Then I threw the mace hard at Bambina, catching her in the solar plexus; she went down in a coughing, gasping heap. "Well, much, anyway," I added.

Starlet went to throw another dart and I shot that one out of the air too, close enough to smash her to the ground with her own explosion. I took two long strides to get to Bambina, got a selfie with her, then sliced her hand with the shears while I was grabbing the mace. Behind me, August Prince pulled his pistol and aimed at my back, but I threw the mace without looking, clobbering him in the face.

Starlet was just struggling to her feet when I reached her. I kicked her legs out from under her, took a selfie, then nicked her hand with the shears. Then I put my phone away and picked her up by the front of her costume, dragging her over to where the other two were.

"Of course," I announced, "what I just said about not wanting to fight kids doesn't apply to me. I don't fight. I end fights. And powers." Raising a hand, I gestured to the PRT troopers, who were just now getting themselves back into order. "All yours, now."

My teleporter still had a few minutes to go before it would be ready to take me anywhere, so I sheathed my shears, put my hands in my pockets and pretended to chill while the PRT troopers took the three little shitheads into custody.

Bambina was the first to try to use her power to escape, and the shocked look on her face was worth the entire fight. "My powers! What've you done with my powers?"

"You attacked me while knowing I kill powers." I shrugged. "Sounds like consent to be depowered to me. What do you think, Tagg? Same?"

Dusting himself off and setting his cap on straight, he stepped up alongside me. I noted that his pistol was back in its holster. "I think these little delinquents deserve whatever punishment you chose to deal to them. When you get to the point where the opposition has thrown all civilised rules out the window, the only winning move can be to reply in kind."

"That's basically been my business model from the start, yeah. Though I'm curious as to what you think about the way I've been doing things. When you get too well known as the person who kills assholes really, really effectively, it's hard to get honest feedback."

He chuckled briefly, harshly. "I hear what you're saying. I got a lot of flak from the way I dealt with the Lausanne Simurgh victims. Still do, occasionally."

I shrugged briefly. "You gotta do what you gotta do. I killed one of Heartbreaker's kids before the man himself came to town and I was able to End his influence over them. The other one surrendered, so he got to live. They don't always surrender. That's a fact of life."

"I've studied your case." It wasn't an admission or even a confession, just a matter-of-fact statement. "You don't go after innocents, and you give the guilty a chance to not die."

"Not always." I wasn't feeling guilty about this, because why should I? However, I did want his input. "I didn't give Oni Lee a warning. And I didn't tell the Nine not to come to town. I just killed them when they did."

This time, his chuckle was warmer. "I don't know a single person who wouldn't have done exactly what you did with the Nine, if they had the capability. As for Oni Lee, I didn't have personal experience with him, but all the reports say he was a problematic individual. If you were going to kill anyone to make a point, he would be as good as any." He frowned. "Actually, I do have one question."

I knew what was coming, but I nodded anyway. "Shoot."

"You mentioned Heartbreaker's children. On the PHO boards, you said there were four of his children he was never getting back. From questioning the remaining members of his little clan, we got four names. Jean-Paul, cape name Hijack, who ended up in the Undersiders as Regent, then joined the Red Hands after he fled Brockton Bay. Nicholas, no cape name, who died when you cut his throat. Guillaume, also no cape name, who surrendered to the PRT at your behest. And Cherie, cape name Cherish, whom Guillaume last saw in your company. Would you be able to give me any idea of her whereabouts, or if she's even still alive?"

"She's alive and well, and not committing crimes," I told him truthfully but unhelpfully. "I've placed her with a good parental role model. I honestly don't think the PRT coming in right now would help her to any significant degree."

"And if she happens to want to see her siblings at some point?" He wasn't pressuring me, just testing the waters.

"She hasn't expressed that particular wish yet, but she'll tell me if she does. You'll notice that those kids didn't really like each other that much, mainly because their father used to set them against each other. I'm not going to force her to do something she doesn't want to do." I raised my head. "Time I moved along. I've still got Flint to deal with."

He nodded to acknowledge this. "Good luck. I doubt you'll get the capes there to cooperate like you did here."

"I know I won't. Toodles." With the teleporter finally on deck again, the portal formed and I stepped on through.

It was eleven minutes to the hour when I arrived. There was no lit-up stage, no politicians looking to get face time to scrounge a few more votes. Just PRT officers and troopers, all in armour. I saw a few tracked armoured vehicles that looked like they might have been borrowed from the local National Guard; unsurprising, because I also saw National Guard personnel nearby.

"Gentlemen," I announced, heading toward where the commanding officers of the various contingents were conversing among themselves. "I understand there's a hitch."

They turned toward me. Helmets were on but visors had been opened, so I saw their expressions. These ranged from worry to resignation. The local PRT commander stepped forward. "Yes. We've detected a number of overlapping teleport interdiction zones within the city. Once you get inside, you'll have to proceed on foot. At some point, you'll be inevitably dogpiled by their strongest capes."

I nodded. "I figured they'd try something like this. You get that many capes in one city, there's bound to be a few Tinkers among them." I unslung the bullhorn and put it on the ground; even if anyone examined it, all they'd get was that it had once been the property of the Dockworkers' Association. "May I borrow a rifle? Plus a spare magazine, if that's not too much trouble."

They looked at me incredulously, but the National Guard commander turned and gestured. One of his men double-timed over, and handed me an assault rifle. The extra magazine, I slipped into a pocket. I nodded to the soldier, and he stepped back out of the way.

As I was checking the rifle over, the PRT commander spoke up. "I have to ask. What do you think you can do with a rifle and sixty rounds, plus whatever else you're carrying? There are literally thousands of capes in there."

"At least a dozen of which are listening in on us right now." Not counting the three who were trying to read my mind and getting nosebleeds for their trouble, but I didn't bother mentioning that part. "I've got nine and a half minutes. I'm just going to End the problem with the best weapon at hand. Me."

Raising my hand, I snapped my fingers. The teleporter jumped me to the nearest observation post on top of the wall; I ignored the guard's startled response, and raised the rifle. I wasn't aiming at any of the capes that were massing here and there, but at a tiny emitter, several hundred yards away. I fired; the antenna was severed, and one of the interdiction fields went down. Half a second later, the teleporter jumped me a hundred yards into Flint.

23:51:03

I appeared right behind a cape who appeared to have been watching my part of the wall with binoculars. Before he could react, I stabbed him with the shears. If he'd been a normal trigger, the remainder of the paste on the blades would've reverted him, but things didn't work that way in Flint. But that was okay; the shears went right through his neck and out the other side, and I sliced his windpipe and jugular on the way out.

Flicking the blood off the blades, I sprinted for the other end of the roof, just ahead of a crackle of green lightning that hit the unfortunate sentry and fried his section of rooftop. He was as good as dead anyway; this just sped things up a little. The green lightning guy realised I was out of his kill-zone at the same time as another one who apparently had a laser Blaster ability.

A huge trench was carved in the roof as they both swung their attacks toward me. I drew my pistol and fired once, killing the laser guy. He dropped out of the sky, spoiling the lightning thrower's aim for just long enough. As he reacquired his aim, the PRT sentry I'd appeared beside figured out what was going on, and hammered three shots into him, taking him out of the picture. I would've shot him myself, but his lightning aura made him almost impervious to low-calibre bullets, and I needed all the rifle ammo that I had.

As I reached the end of the roof, I leaped outward, as though I'd be able to cross the twenty yards of distance to the next building in a single jump. Instead, at about the same time as my arc started curving downward (and well after I passed into the next teleport interdiction field) I fired the rifle three times, knocking out the emitters as they came into view. The teleporter kicked in, bypassing two rooftops and dropping me into an alleyway between two buildings.

23:51:14

There were Thinkers in the horde of capes that were targeting me that could detect me by my exhaled breath and the rustle of cloth on my back. A few were trying to detect my power use and my power stopped those dead, but I couldn't go undetected by all. While the next emitters would be a bit harder to reach, I was getting closer.

I used up half the magazine in my pistol as I came out of the alleyway; not on the capes with offensive powers, but on the ones who were hanging back, vectoring their buddies in on my location. They fell, blood and brains spraying over the ruined asphalt, and I kept running … straight for the combat capes. Each wore a tiny pouch on a chain or a thong around his or her neck. They hesitated for a vital half-second, then unleashed their powers at me.

At where I'd been, rather. I went down in a roll, under a torrent of flame and a buzzsaw of sparking metal shards, then came up between them, grabbing their gruesome power-granting talismans and yanking them free. Holding them in the air, I flourished them while I kept going straight ahead. Behind me, I heard the ones I'd taken the power-granting fragments away from screaming at the others not to shoot, they might hit the bits. That was about the time the fight broke out.

The whole problem with Flint had started when someone triggered with the ability to bestow powers to anyone just by staying in their vicinity for a while. His second biggest mistake was to form a gang, bestowing powers on his underlings. The biggest mistake? Turning his back on one of his lieutenants, who'd decided that they wanted to be in charge, so they took him down and started cutting him open to see what made him tick.

As it turned out, with appropriate Tinker tech to keep him alive, all the parts they carved off him contained his power. Between willing volunteers (who were given bits and pieces) and forced inductees (who were made to eat small pieces) a large percentage of the population of Flint became capes, all part of the original gang. This didn't last long, as several of the underlings decided to split off on their own, and they couldn't be depowered except by force. By the time the Chief Director called me in on it, the quarantine zone contained several gangs, usually vicious rivals, but for me … they'd make an exception.

I tossed the pieces aside as I entered the alley across the street, and started up the closest fire escape. My self-appointed timer was ticking down, and I needed to be on the roof before the next flier came over. The closer I got to the original power granter, the more emitters there would be, and the harder it would be to target them. My only real advantages were that I'd gotten past their initial perimeter, and that they didn't have many capes left who could track my location.

Coming out on the rooftop, I immediately started scrambling up the water tower. Fliers were inbound, but while they knew I was in the vicinity, they weren't certain where. They'd know in a few seconds, but that was okay. Going loud was an unavoidable part of this particular mission.

When I reached the top, I unslung the rifle and started firing. The last time, I'd dealt with three emitters. Now I had fifteen more in my sights, some more than two miles away. I fired as fast as I could, working with the cyclic rate of the assault rifle, killing the overlapping fields. When the last one fell, a great arc of the interdiction field was gone, except for the middle.

Where my target was.

I teleported forward again, vanishing as a chunk of what looked like lava-coated granite homed in on me from the side. A hundred yards behind me, the water tower detonated.

23:53:17

I appeared on a highway overpass. Chunks had been blown out of the side of it, possibly from a turf battle. Keeping low, I moved on, not wanting to waste more ammunition than I had to. The building I was aiming at was still more than a mile away, and I could only teleport every ten seconds.

The timer ticked over.

23:53:27

I was immediately closer, running through what appeared to be an overgrown park.

23:53:37

Moving through an abandoned industrial facility. No angle to snipe any more emitters.

23:53:47

23:53:57

23:54:08

23:54:18

The locations began to blur together. I was fit, but my breath was rasping in my lungs. When I caught glimpses of my target, it didn't look any closer than before. Sometimes it felt like I was running forever through darkness.

23:56:50

I figured it had been twenty jumps from the overpass that put me in front of the building. Several storeys high, with at least one emitter right in the middle of the roof, protected by screens. The only way in was through the front door. Right where all the guards were.

Well, this was going to get tedious. Fortunately, most of the capes were more than a mile away, looking for me where I'd been before I slipped away. So I only had the ones in front of me to worry about.

Yay.

The four clustered around the front entrance alerted as I started across the street, but I didn't give them the chance to raise the alarm; my pistol, silenced as it was, only startled night birds. Nobody inside the building would've heard.

This was going to change. I only had five left in the pistol. There were forty-one left for the rifle, but I was going to need every last one of those. Especially the very last one.

I pushed the door in, and started up the stairs, moving as quietly as I knew how. When I got to the second floor, I knew there were some coming down, and that I could get three of them, but the fourth would get away. Or I could take out all four, but take a hit that might slow me down later.

My preference was to stay in top fighting form for as long as possible. No sense in letting the assholes nickel-and-dime me down. So I whipped around the corner and eyesocketed three, then nailed the last one through the kneecap as he flailed back through the doorway. He was a flier, so I wouldn't be able to catch him that way, but with any luck it would slow him down.

23:58:01

The time for quiet was over; if the alarm hadn't been raised yet, it was just a matter of seconds. Ignoring the need for silence and my own aching leg muscles, I sprinted up the stairs. I was almost to the correct floor when the first wave of defenders arrived in earnest.

They were speedsters, but not in the way Velocity was. He had a Breaker state where everything slowed down for him, but he could barely affect the physical world until he slowed down again. Great for getting across town, terrible for punching bad guys fifty times a second.

These guys had Brute-scale leg-muscles, all fast-twitch. They did explosive bursts of speed, but only in a straight line. And they were all the same. Every single one. Facial features, the lot.

I heard them coming, got into the right position, and fired my pistol at the correct instant. It took out the left leg of the first guy coming down the stairs as he blurred into sight, and he tumbled. His buddies didn't have time to adjust to the brand-new obstacle, and they all went down in a welter of limbs and high-frequency cursing that would've had the local bat population blushing. I holstered my pistol and kept going.

As I came up the next flight of stairs, I saw the speedster guy on the landing; like Spree had done once upon a time, he was popping out duplicates. But the duplication wasn't his power; I knew that implicitly. That was someone else, forcing him to duplicate. I didn't care either way. One bullet from the rifle dealt with the original speedster, plus the ones that had been coming up from behind me.

23:58:46

But there were more capes up there than the speedster. The next wave to come down were heavy, bulky, grey-skinned, and all identical as fuck. The duplicator was at it again.

Their skins were bulletproof, but their eyes and mouths weren't. I fired the rifle as fast as I could, advancing up the stairs. The grey guys—slow moving but once they got hold of me, I would not be breaking free—went down in waves, but more kept coming. I reached the end of the magazine, slapped in a new one, and kept firing. The rifle was killing them faster than they were coming at me, but I had a limited supply of bullets and if I couldn't get to the duplicator, they had an unlimited supply of assholes.

Thirty-nine more grey guys bit the big one before I stopped firing. There was one in the chamber, but I was reserving that for when I needed it. More were coming at me, slow, reaching, shoulder to shoulder. Whipping off my long-coat, I threw it in the faces of the closest one, then leaped and kicked off from the stair rail to land on his head. If I couldn't go through them, I'd go over them.

It was like running up a down escalator; I was able to evade the grabby hands, but they were now flooding down the stairs, and every step I made onto a bald grey head only got me a half or a quarter step forward. But I was nearly there. Almost to the doorway.

23:59:55

Then the grey men stopped, and two big guys blocked the doorway almost totally, from side to side. They were so big that they couldn't both have fitted down the stairwell at the same time. And, of course, they were identical to each other.

But I'd seen my prize. The tank in which the brain of the cape power plague originator floated, kept alive and (if my power was correct) aware of everything that was happening to every last part of him by a complicated Tinkertech device. The tank, of course, was bulletproof. But it had a lid.

I brought the rifle up, even as one of the big guys pushed through the doorway, crunching aside part of the wall as he came. It lined up with my target and I fired. He grabbed the barrel an instant later, crushing it with dismaying ease. I'd hoped to give it back in better order than that.

As other hands grabbed me, I pulled my shears and flung them through the tiny gap left in the doorway. Razor steel glinting silver, they arced across the room. The bullet had struck the edge of the lid, dislodging it before ricocheting off to strike the OFF button of the Tinkertech life support machine. My shears plunged through the gap thus created, spearing into the water and impaling the brain floating there. Punching straight through the corona pollentia.

Oh, and delivering a fatal wound at the same time. Because that was also my plan. But I wanted the powers dead now, before the Asshole Collective decided to rip my arms and legs off as a final fuck-you.

23:59:59

I knew the instant the plan had worked, because the hands holding me faded away as the duplicates vanished. I'd be bruised here and there in the morning, I knew; the grey-skinned guys had not been gentle in grabbing me. But it didn't matter.

Taking out my phone, I dialled a number as I strolled into the room. A whole bunch of ex-capes stared at me, but I wasn't after them. Pushing the cover all the way off the tank, I reached into the nutrient-laden water to retrieve my shears. They'd done their job. I'd told the assholes in Flint to 'cut that shit out', but it had taken the shears to actually do the cutting. Or rather, stabbing, but I wasn't going to split hairs.

The phone rang at the other end. "Hello? Atropos?"

"The same," I said cheerfully as I dried off my shears preparatory to sheathing them. "As you've probably guessed from the number of ex-fliers suddenly plummeting to the ground, the only cape left in Flint is me. You're welcome to come in and clean house."

"Ah. Right. We wondered. Um … thank you."

"You're welcome." I headed out the door again. That coat and I had been through a lot together, and I wasn't about to leave it behind. "Give the Chief Director my regards."

My coat was okay, though a bit scuffed here and there from being trampled. I shook it out and put it on, then headed downstairs and out of the building. The four capes I'd shot on the way in were still lying untidily on the pavement, but that wasn't my problem. I headed across the street to where the emitter no longer prevented teleportation, then dialled in the coordinates for home.

I really, really needed a shower and a bed, in that order.

The portal formed, and I stepped through it.



End of Part Seventy

[A/N: That's it for another two or three weeks. See you then.]