One Bad Day Pt 4 (Patreon)

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

Taylor

Lisa covered her eyes with her hand. "No, Aisha." Her voice was almost a groan. "We are not going to be robbing a bank. For a start, I'm the only professional villain here. The last thing I want to do is raise my profile right now, and I'm pretty sure Taylor wants to keep her head down for her own reasons. And of course, even if Panacea was willing to break the law so blatantly, there's a good chance that Glory Girl would eviscerate anyone who threatened her."

I looked at Amy, hoping she'd deny the charge. Sure, Glory Girl was different now, but I wasn't quite sure just how badly she'd been affected. Amy dropped her eyes rather than contest the point, causing my stomach to lurch. "She wouldn't ... would she?" I asked.

"If I tell her not to, no," Amy said quietly. "But I can fix her. I know I can. I just need time to get it right."

“You won't be able to, not like that,” Lisa informed her bluntly. “You're thinking you can go by your memories of what she's like, and rebuild her like that? Won't work. All you'll get is a caricature, based on what you think you remember about her. One that you'll be tweaking for the rest of your life. Until she gets enough self-awareness to understand what you've truly done to her, and either kills you or kills herself. Or both.”

“I've got to try!” shrieked Amy, clenching her hands in her hair and squeezing her eyes shut. “I'm not a monster! I'm not!”

The wave of fear made me take a step back, and I was pretty sure I was on the edge of it. Lisa must have caught the full force because she doubled up, gagging. When I looked at Victoria, she was hovering in place with her finger pointed at the erstwhile villain. “Don't upset Amy,” she said in her childlike tone. “I will be angry if you do.”

“It's all right,” I said soothingly, moving forward again and holding my open hands up to show I was harmless. “Nobody's upsetting Amy. And I bet Lisa has a plan to make it work. Right, Lisa?” I prayed I was reading the situation correctly. If Lisa didn't have an alternate, she wouldn't have said 'not like that' … I hoped, anyway. I'd already noted her tendency to go overboard in destroying opposing ideas before putting her own up in their place.

It took Amy a few seconds to register what I was saying, then she turned to Lisa. “Is that true? Do you know how to fix this?” The raw hope in her face was almost too much for me to bear; for all of our sakes, I prayed Lisa did actually have a solution.

Fortunately, Vicky caught Amy's change in mood, and the fear aura died away. She drifted back down to the ground, but her eyes never left Lisa.

Lisa hacked and coughed a few times, then spat off to the side. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she straightened up again. “Yeah, of course I've got a plan,” she said. “I've even got a backup plan. It's dangerous and difficult as fuck, but that's what you get when you pull this sort of shit. If monumental fuckups were easy to unravel, they wouldn't be monumental fuckups.”

I winced at the momentary flare of anger on Amy's face, but the healer seemed to accept the judgemental words in the spirit they were offered. “I'll do it,” she declared. “Anything. Just tell me how to fix her.”

“Well, here's the thing,” Lisa stated baldly. “You don't fix her. Your power isn't set up that way, any more than a pencil with an eraser on the end is good at reconstructing what's been written after the eraser's been over it. We're going to have to go farther afield for this. Ever hear of Toybox?”

I blinked. “Uh, is that a cape?” To me, it sounded like something a Tinker would call himself. Though what a toy-based Tinker had to do with this situation, I had no idea.

“No, it's not.” Amy shook her head. For the first time, she seemed to be engaging with Lisa. “It's a bunch of rogue capes, though they are all Tinkers. You think one of them could …” She paused, enlightenment spreading over her face. “Shit, of course. Cranial?”

“Cranial,” Lisa confirmed. “Apparently she's the go-to person for memory transfer and personality implantation. Not that I figure there's much in the way of a legitimate market for that sort of thing.” She must've been feeling better, because her trademark grin had returned to her face. “However, in Vicky's case, it's just what the doctor ordered.”

Amy nodded slowly, but then she grimaced. “Okay, I get that. But after all that, we're still stuck with the problem that my memories of her are probably unreliable. How do we get around that?”

That got her an eye-roll from Lisa. “Seriously, were you even listening when I said it was going to be difficult and dangerous?”

I decided to stick my oar in at this point. “Uh, I thought you were saying that contacting Toybox was going to be the difficult and dangerous bit. Or maybe they'd make us go and do stuff for them before they'd help us.”

“Hah, nope.” Lisa's grin was back in full force by now. She shook her head. “Finding Toybox is easy, if you have the right contacts, and I've got those. Paying for the service will be a bit harder, but money's easy to come by if you know what you're doing and you're not too fussed about legalities.”

“Hah!” I jumped as Aisha faded back into view. Holy shit, Brian had a sister, and she's been standing here all this time, and I didn't know she was there! “I knew we were gonna be robbing a bank! Someone hand me the phone, 'cause I called it!”

Lisa facepalmed, properly this time. “Bank robbery is about the worst way to make money there is,” she explained patiently. “But we can burn that bridge when we come to it. No, that's not the difficult or dangerous part.”

“So what is it?” Amy had a peculiar expression on her face, as if she wasn't sure that she wanted to know.

Steepling her fingers, Lisa looked at us over them, obviously doing her best to portray a notorious supervillain. Her shit-eating grin didn't hurt the image, either. “We have to kidnap Glory Girl's friends and family, of course.”

<><>

Danny

“Okay, Hebert. Up an' at 'em. Your ride's here.”

The words sliced through Danny's uneasy sleep like a hot knife through soft butter. He blinked his eyes open, then rubbed at them to get rid of the crap in the corners. As he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bench, he felt his spine pop in half a dozen places. Either he was getting old, or that was seriously not a good place to sleep. At first glance, he was going with 'both'.

Fumbling around half-blind, he located his glasses on the floor beside the bench, wondering for the first time since he'd woken up exactly why he was sleeping on a hard bench rather than his soft bed. Or who it was that had woken him up with those brisk words. Putting his glasses on, he looked in the direction of the speaker and found his questions were being answered with more questions.

Staring around the interior of the jail cell, he frowned. “What the hell am I doing here?” he asked almost plaintively.

The police officer on the other side of the bars shrugged. “You punched a cop,” he said. “That shit tends to get you arrested. But hey, it's your lucky day.”

Punched a … what the fuck? “Wait, why … ?” Danny's question trailed off as his treacherous memory started replaying scenes from the previous night in his head. “Ah.” And now that he thought about it, his knuckles were kind of sore. Also, he had two sore spots under his shirt. Those were where the taser darts had gone in. He wasn't surprised he had trouble remembering what had happened after that. Or before it, for that matter.

“Yeah, ah,” the cop snorted. “But we aren't runnin' a bed and breakfast here, and word's come down from on high that you're to be handed over to the PRT. Who just showed up. So get on your feet and back up to the bars.” By way of explanation, he waved a pair of handcuffs. “You might look like a skinny drink of water, but from the way you laid out Bannon last night, I'm taking zero chances with you.”

“PRT?” asked Danny, feeling as though he still had some mileage to catch up in this conversation. “What does the PRT want with me?”

“Buddy, I am sincerely fucked if I know,” the cop replied. “But it's not my job to ask. It's my job to escort you out there so we can hand you over. So unless you really feel like staying in there and being charged with assaulting a police officer, be a pal and back up to the bars, huh?” He jingled the handcuffs again.

“Right. Yeah.” Climbing to his feet, Danny shambled up to the bars. As he did so, he saw a second officer standing off to the side, hand on his taser. It seemed they really weren't taking any chances with him. Resignedly, he turned around and shoved his hands awkwardly through the bars.

“That's the way.” A hand roughly grabbed one of his wrists and he felt the cold metal closing over it, then the process was repeated with his other wrist. “Okay, good. Now, we're gonna escort you out there and hand you over. The paperwork's been filed. Give us any trouble and we will tase your sorry ass and drag you out. Got it?”

“Got it,” Danny replied numbly.

“Good. Now step forward away from the bars.”

Obediently, Danny moved away from the entrance to the cell. He heard it open, and turned around as the two police officers entered the cell. Each of them took hold of one of his arms, and they walked him out of the cell and down the corridor. He didn't try to resist, which was a good thing, because it wouldn't have done him any good.

Waiting for him was a single PRT soldier, accompanied by a superhero. Shorter than him—the only capes in Brockton Bay that weren't were some of the villains—she wore well-cut camouflage fatigues and a flag-patterned scarf across her face, as well as a similarly-themed sash around her waist. The cops around her seemed more concerned by the M-60 she was carrying across her shoulders than by the weapon held by the PRT trooper. He knew who she was, of course; Miss Militia was a household name.

“Here's your boy,” announced the officer who was holding his left arm. “One Daniel Hebert, in good condition. Not sure exactly what you want him for, but the paperwork all checks out.”

“Thanks, guys,” Miss Militia said. “We'll take him from here.” She nodded to the PRT soldier, who stepped forward and took hold of Danny's arm. She hadn't answered the implied question, and he suspected it would've stayed unanswered even if the cop had asked it directly.

They went out through the back of the station, where a PRT van waited patiently. The soldier holding his arm never spoke, and Danny wasn't even sure if it was a guy or a girl behind that opaque faceplate, though he suspected the former due to their sheer bulk. He was made to stand and wait while they took his cuffs off. The back of the van was opened and the trooper directed him to climb inside, then followed him in.

If he'd thought they were going to be any less vigilant about him than the police were, he would've been somewhat mistaken. Manacles were locked around his wrists and the chain led down through a ring-bolt on his chair to another one on the floor. So long as he sat back in the reasonably-comfortable seat, he had no problems, but any attempt to get up and escape or attack his guard would end very quickly.

The rear doors (open so that Miss Militia could observe the procedure, he was certain) closed, and a few moments later he heard the passenger-side door open and close as well. The engine started, and the van began to move.

Danny turned his head to look at the guard, seeing only his distorted reflection in the faceplate. “Can I ask you what's going on?”

He didn't really expect an answer so when the guard did speak, he was somewhat surprised. “Sir, my job is to guard you,” the hollow disembodied voice replied. “If you attempt to get out of those chains, I will foam you. Do you understand?” The tone was so matter-of-fact that the guy had to have said that exact same thing many times before.

“Oh, uh, sure.” Danny subsided. “But can I ask you what's going on?”

“Yes, you can ask questions.” Miss Militia's voice came over speakers mounted toward the front of the compartment. “But this vehicle isn't secure, so we're limited in the answers we can give. We'll have more information for you when we get to the PRT building.”

“Right. Gotcha.” Danny still wasn't sure what was going on, and why the PRT wanted to talk to him about the bullshit charges against Taylor—because really, what other reason did anyone in authority want him for right now?—so he settled back to enjoy the ride. Or at least, not hate it too much.

<><>

Sarah Pelham

Outside the Dallon Household

Neil knocked again. “She's not answering,” he said. The comment was unnecessary; Sarah could easily see that her sister wasn't answering the door. More worryingly, neither of her nieces had answered the door either. Which meant they were either sleeping in after whatever adventures they'd had being out and about, or they were still out and about. The second scenario was the problematic one.

“Fine, I'll use my key,” she said, bowing to the inevitable. As she dug it out of her purse, she wondered if Carol had actually taken the girls out somewhere. The garage doors were closed, so she couldn't tell one way or the other. No, she decided as she fitted the key into the lock. The state of mind that Carol had been in, she wouldn't be likely to give Amy a lift anywhere. Or let them out of her sight for at least twenty-four hours.

The lock clicked, and she dropped the keyring back into her purse. Turning the handle, she pushed the door open. As she stepped inside, she sniffed as she smelled a strong odour.

“Whew,” Neil said as he followed her inside. “Smells like a distillery in here.”

It didn't, quite, but the whiff of alcohol was strong in the still air inside the house. That was when she heard the disjointed snoring, which was quite unlike Carol or either of the kids. Her eyes met Neil's in a silent question, and he shrugged in reply. All right, then. Hoping that Carol hadn't brought some strange guy home, but not sure what else it could be, Sarah drifted into the air and threw a light shield around herself. Probably overreacting but better safe than sorry. Silently, she floated through the doorway into the living room … and stopped dead in mid-air.

“Carol?” she exclaimed in shock, her feet hitting the ground again with a thud.

Neil crowded in past her, then came to a halt as well. “Fuck,” he said almost admiringly. “She's plastered.”

He wasn't wrong. Carol lay sprawled on the couch, emitting snores that wouldn't have been out of place coming from a malfunctioning rock-crusher. Her hair was a mess, and one arm trailed off the side of the couch, a glass lying on its side a few inches from her fingertips. A large discoloured patch in the carpet next to the glass, along with the residual pooling of amber liquid in the glass itself, told them where the smell was coming from. On the coffee table, a bottle sat with only half an inch or so of matching fluid in the bottom of it.

“Carol doesn't drink,” Sarah said automatically, then flushed as the evidence of the scene before her made it plain that yes, Carol had taken at least one drink. “Well, I didn't think she drank.”

“Looks like she took it up in a hurry,” Neil observed. “Need a hand getting her upstairs?” He frowned as she stared at him in puzzlement. “Well, I figured you'd want to get her cleaned up and into bed, is all. 'Cause she's not gonna be waking up from a bender like that till at least midday.”

Sarah sighed. “Good point. I got this.” Carefully, she formed a force field between Carol and the couch and lifted her sister into the air. Neil helpfully lifted Carol's dangling arm and draped it over her stomach. Turning, she made her burden waft its way toward the stairs. Literally hovering over Carol, she accompanied her sister upward to the second floor, then stopped. “Do me a favour?” she called over her shoulder.

Neil paused in the act of picking up the dropped glass. “Sure, babe, what do you want?”

“Check on the girls? Just open their bedroom doors and look in? If they're home and still asleep, I don't want to be worrying while I'm dealing with Carol.” She kept going, up the stairs and toward the bathroom. Hopefully a shower would wake Carol up. And if not, she needed to sleep it off in her own bed, not on that couch.

“Not a problem,” her husband replied from downstairs. “I'll just put this in the sink.”

Sarah allowed herself a tiny smile as she navigated her snoring—and yes, drooling—sister in through the bathroom door. Same old Neil. He was always careful about leaving things lying around on the floor, usually because if he stood on anything like that, it broke.

Undressing a sleeping person wasn't exactly the easiest thing in the world, especially as Sarah had to make sure to keep a skin-level force field up at all times. While she didn't think Carol would spontaneously manifest an energy blade and try to kill her, she'd never seen her sister drunk like this ever. So safe was definitely better than sorry.

Eventually, however, she got Carol undressed and into the shower, supported by a rough framework of force fields. Her sister mumbled and moved a little under the pounding spray of hot water, but never truly woke up, even when Sarah washed her face with a wet cloth. Maybe I should use cold water instead. But she didn't want to be cruel to Carol, and there was still going to be a massive hangover to deal with once her sister woke up.

The shower done with, she dressed Carol in pyjamas she had Neil locate and hand in around the door, then floated her off to bed using the same forcefield-stretcher she'd used to get her up the stairs. None of this was physically strenuous, but by the time she pulled the covers over her sister and sat back on the edge of the bed, she felt like she'd been through the wringer. “Gah.” Looking around as Neil leaned into the room, she raised her eyebrows interrogatively. “Please tell me the girls are in their rooms.”

His grimace told her everything she didn't want to know. “Sorry. No sign of them. Not even a note on the fridge telling her they were going out.”

Gusting out a sigh, Sarah stood up. “Okay, this is starting to seriously concern me. Let's go downstairs, then you call Eric and I'll call Crystal, and see if between us we can't get a list of friends they might be staying with.”

Neil nodded, his face set in lines of worry. “Should we alert the PRT that they're missing?”

Up until now, Sarah had dismissed the idea, but now she began to seriously consider it. With the PRT, Protectorate and Wards all looking for the two girls, the chances of locating them would go up dramatically. On the other hand … “Let's hold off on that until we've checked with their friends,” she decided. “The last thing we want is to spread any sort of rumour that New Wave is coming apart at the seams.” After Mark's death, that had become a major concern for the both of them. “But if we can't find them then …” She didn't have to say any more.

Her husband nodded. “Got it.”

Together, they went downstairs.

<><>

Coil

Thomas Calvert was pissed.

In a series of events that he was still working to sort out, one of his catspaw groups—including the very useful Tattletale—had slipped from his grasp. The death of Grue he could have gotten around, and in fact he'd thought Hardcase had things in hand. He'd advised the young man to keep Tattletale on a tight rein because he had no illusions about how she could twist orders to suit herself, given no oversight. The condition—or rather, the state of dress—in which he'd found Hardcase suggested that maybe he should've been a little more circumspect in how he worded his orders, but that was beyond the point.

The point was that his Tattletale had defied his orders and killed his subordinate, who was also her team leader. He'd known she wanted to cut loose from his leadership, but murder was a line she'd never crossed before. She tended to destroy people with words, not weapons. Now she'd done it once, he couldn't trust her not to do it again, and he definitely couldn't trust her not to try to put a bullet in him at some point. She had to die, or appear to die, in such a way that sent a message to the rest of his minions: cross me and this is what happens to you.

Of course, if he could get hold of her on the quiet, her death wasn't totally necessary. He'd been working on a backup plan for a while, just in case he managed to get his hands on another Thinker. It involved copious amounts of addictive drugs, though in order to strike just the right balance (he didn't want the end result to be babbling uselessness or death, after all) he'd need someone with the right skills to keep the subject alive, well and mostly lucid. Lacking another Thinker, and with her field usefulness at an end, Tattletale would make a perfect test subject.

An almost equally irritating aspect was that he now had no real way to maintain his control over Regent or Bitch without revealing himself to them as their mysterious boss. They were far more useful masquerading as part of an independent team than as two disparate capes without Thinker or Shaker support. With the deaths of both Grue and Hardcase and the defection of Tattletale, the reputation of the Undersiders as the untouchable escape artist team was gone forever. In fact, the Undersiders themselves were finished as a team, unless the indolent Regent and the savagely uncaring Bitch could be persuaded to keep up the pretext. Maybe if he ordered Circus to join … but the androgynous cape had already made it clear that she worked alone.

God damn it.

As was his habit, he'd spent the previous night both in his base keeping up with the current situation in Brockton Bay—and trying to find Tattletale!—and getting a restful night's sleep. On rising, he'd dropped the 'base' timeline, split time again, and called in sick with one of his timelines. That timeline had him now in the base again, micro-managing the day-to-day operations in an effort to get a lead on his wayward Thinker. In the other, he was in his office, dealing with the inevitable paperwork that cropped up for a PRT strike team commander.

The entire purpose of the visit had been to observe the interaction between Hardcase and Tattletale. While the new team leader had been boastfully confident about his ability to keep 'his people' in line, Calvert was all too aware that field reports could often differ drastically from the objective reality on the ground, so he'd wanted to drop in unexpectedly—while Regent and Bitch were both out, of course—and see for himself.

He'd seen, all right. Hardcase was dead, with an arrow in his eye—where the hell had the bitch gotten an arrow from?—and Tattletale was in the wind. A cursory search of the base had assured him that the other two capes had not bolted in the same way; all their belongings were still there. The trouble was, what to do with them?

With a sigh, the version of him in the base picked up his landline and selected Circus' number from the directory. A tap of the finger and the phone began to ring.

“Hello?” The tone was cautious. Circus must have recognised his number.

“Circus, are you busy?” It never hurt to pretend to be caring about his subordinates' time.

“A little. Why?” He heard a shuffling noise, then a grunt. However, she'd answered the phone, so it couldn't be too drastic.

It was time to get her attention. “I'd like to double your remittance, for additional duties.”

“The money would be nice, but what additional duties?” She hadn't lost the cautious tone. Some people, he decided, were just too paranoid.

Oh, well. In for a penny. “I need someone to step in as leader of the Undersiders, and you're the first person I thought of.”

There was a rude noise over the phone. “First person after Hardcase, you mean. Why, what happened to him?”

Well, at least she hadn't heard that much about what was going on. Though how she knew about Hardcase in the first place, he wasn't sure. “He's no longer in the picture. Tattletale murdered him and ran. Without strong leadership, Bitch and Regent are likely to just wander off. I need you to provide that strong leadership.”

“Four times.” She grunted again. “Final offer.”

“Four times … ?” He wasn't quite sure what she meant. Surely she didn't intend …

“Not double my usual. Four times. Those two are trouble for any team leader, and I don't do teams. I want four times the usual pay, or no deal.”

He grimaced, but she had him over a barrel and he knew it. “Fine, on one condition.”

“No promises.” At least she wasn't shooting him down before even hearing it.

“You make it your priority to hunt down Tattletale and deliver her to me, alive. Any other level of injury, I don't care. She just has to be able to hear and speak.” And feel, but that was a given. Torture might be only so-so at getting specific information out of people, but it was a wonderful way of breaking them.

“You're going to send her two previous teammates to help hunt her down? You realise that's got the potential to backfire really badly.” Her tone was thoughtful rather than dismissive, which was encouraging.

“Bitch only cares about her dogs, and Regent doesn't care about anyone,” he pointed out. Still, Circus had a point. “But I'll be doubling their pay for this particular mission, just in case,” he decided.

“And a bonus on completion,” she added, apparently just to yank his chain. “We want 'em to feel good about it afterward, right?”

He gritted his teeth. Next she'd be demanding the pound of flesh closest to his heart. Still, she was a professional, and her words made sense. “Including yourself, I have no doubt?”

“Naturally.” He could almost see the shit-eating grin on her face. “So, we have a deal?”

At some point in the future, he decided, he and Circus were going to have a long talk about why she shouldn't antagonise her boss. There was likely to be a lot of screaming involved. If she was lucky (for a given definition of 'lucky') it would be in a disposable timeline. “We have a deal,” he conceded.

“Good,” she said brightly. “I'll get right on it.”

He put the phone down again and leaned back in his ergonomic chair. It was time to check on the Pitter situation, he decided. Now that Tattletale had essentially volunteered to be his captive Thinker, he needed to push forward on that front faster than ever. Still trying to decide whether he was going to take one or both of her eyes as payback for the trouble she was putting him through, he picked up the phone again.

<><>

Danny

The interrogation room seemed to be an exact duplicate of the ones he'd seen in cop shows, from the uncomfortable-looking chair behind the bolted-down table to the wide mirror on the opposite wall. He wondered absently if anyone was actually fooled by the one-way glass any more, or if it was just tradition.

The PRT trooper pointed at the chair and he sat down, fully aware that any show of defiance on his part would be remarkably unwise at this point. After all, they'd taken him away from the police, who would've otherwise been charging him with punching that one cop. Which made him wonder what the PRT wanted him for. Is this about Taylor? He couldn't imagine why. As messy as it was, he couldn't imagine the PRT involving themselves in a school stabbing—whoever it was who'd done it. He spread his hands on the table, glad that they'd at least left the cuffs off of him.

The door opened again, and a heavy-set woman wearing a blue business suit entered, carrying a briefcase. The PRT trooper saluted, and she casually returned it. Miss Militia followed her into the room, carrying a folding chair. Unfolded, the chair was placed on the other side of the table and the overweight woman lowered herself into it, placing the briefcase on the floor beside her. Miss Militia moved to the other side of the room to the guard and took up a similar posture. Danny didn't miss the large pistol in the holster at her side, however.

“Mr Hebert, my name is Emily Piggot,” the woman opposite him said, her steel-grey eyes fixed on his face. “Do you know who I am?”

“You're the Director of the PRT in Brockton Bay,” Danny replied. He hadn't known that all at once, but the salute plus a few half-remembered TV appearances had clued him in. The name had just nailed it down for him. He thought he could see dark roots in her blonde pageboy bob. Underneath the softening effect of the extra weight, he caught a glimpse of a frighteningly intense woman, one who'd never stepped aside for anything. What happened to you? he wondered. “What I don't know is why I'm here, and what you want from me.”

“It's about your daughter,” Piggot said bluntly. Her eyes never left his face.

“Let me guess: the bullshit murder accusation? Because that's all it is. Total bullshit. Taylor would never hurt anyone.” As he spoke, his mind sought out possibilities. Why was the PRT interrogating him over this? Again, he drew a total blank. He considered clamming up and asking for a lawyer, but if he did that, he'd never find out what they really wanted.

“Yes and no,” Piggot retorted. “Taylor did stab someone, but she's not the murderer. Someone else is. We're trying to find out who, and why, and what happened.”

Danny felt the world waver slightly, but he took a deep breath and forced himself to focus. Okay, so they're not trying to pin the murder on Taylor. Still, it's not good. “What do you need me for?”

“We need Taylor to come in, to tell us her side of things,” Piggot explained briefly. “But before that happens, we need to find out some information from you.”

“Okay ...” He wasn't sure quite what was going on, but at least they weren't screaming accusations at him. “What do you want to know?”

What Piggot said next came in from left field. “Would it surprise you to know that the victim was black?”

“Why would that make a difference?” Danny shot back. “Black, white, Asian, Hispanic; what's your point?”

Director Piggot never hesitated. “The point is that we're certain the murder was racially motivated, and we're trying to find out if Taylor is involved in anything to do with that.”

He placed both hands flat on the table and leaned forward. In his peripheral vision, he saw both Miss Militia and the PRT guard take a step closer, but he didn't care. “She's not. I taught my little girl better than to think like that. No way is she one of those racist assholes. No how, no way, never. You've got a better chance of getting Martin Luther King to join up.” Breathing heavily, he subsided back into his chair.

“Understood.” Reaching down, Piggot took up the briefcase and put it on the table. The clicks of the latches opening echoed in the room, then she lifted the lid and took out a form. “We're legally not allowed to tell you any more until you sign this.” Placing a cheap plastic pen on top of the form, she skated it over to Danny.

He took it and turned it around. Looking at the top of the form, he discovered that it was a non-disclosure agreement with his name and details already filled out. Unfortunately, it didn't tell him what information he was enjoined not to disclose, except that it referred to 'details pertinent to the secret identity of a cape or capes' which could apparently be found in 'Document 3A'.

Do they think Taylor stabbed a cape? It was the only conclusion that made any sense. No wonder they were so anxious to get me away from the cops.

He ran his eye down the NDA, looking for any clauses that might lock him into anything else. Nothing jumped out at him, so he took up the pen and signed it, then leaned back in his chair. “So, how exactly do you think a fifteen year old girl got the better of a cape, knife or no knife?”

“That's what we're trying to find out.” Her expression sour, the Director retrieved the NDA. “Sophia Hess was the Ward known as Shadow Stalker. Yesterday, there was an altercation between your daughter and her, as well as two other girls. Shadow Stalker was stabbed repeatedly, then her throat was cut and a swastika carved in her back. Another girl was swarmed by a mass of venomous bugs, and died as a result. The third girl got away and raised the alarm, specifically naming your daughter as the instigator. Taylor escaped in the confusion, and is still at large. Due to a mix-up in communication, the police reached your house before we did, and you were apparently arrested for attacking them.”

“I didn't attack them,” Danny said defensively. “One of the assholes told me my daughter was going away for murder, so I punched him out.”

“I understand he has a fractured jaw,” Piggot replied blandly. “For the record, that charge has been dropped, but don't try that here.”

Danny nodded. “Okay. Got it. So this Sophia Hess was the Ward called Shadow Stalker. I think I saw her on TV once. And you think Taylor attacked her because she was black?”

“It was a working theory, especially after we saw the swastika,” Miss Militia interjected. “So you're absolutely sure that your daughter doesn't have Empire leanings.” It wasn't a question.

“One hundred percent,” Danny said. “She's got no tattoos that I know of. She hasn't shaved her head. Hell, ask her best friend. Emma Barnes. She'll vouch for Taylor.”

“Mr Hebert …” Director Piggot's voice was almost gentle. “Emma Barnes was the third girl. The one who raised the alarm.”

What. The. Fuck?

<><>

Emily Piggot

Danny Hebert's face went utterly slack at that piece of information. Either he'd been unaware of the rift between his daughter and Emma Barnes, or he was the best actor Emily had ever met, bar none. Just as Emily was going to push for further information, her phone rang.

God damn it. Of all the timing. She took the phone from her pocket and checked the number, then stood up. “I have to take this,” she said. “We'll resume when I return.”

Stepping out of the interrogation room, she pressed the icon to answer the phone. “What is it, Armsmaster?” she asked tersely. “I was in the middle of something important.”

“Your hunch paid off, Director,” the Tinker replied, sounding as happy as he ever did. “There was definitely something strange going on in this bathroom.”

Emily's head came up and she instinctively took a couple of steps down the hall, away from the interrogation room. “Explain.” 'Something strange' could mean a lot of things.

“I built the black-light emitter as you suggested. It's a little strong—the paint's bubbled in a few places—but I got readings that suggest something biological got splattered all over that stall. Something they tried really hard to eliminate.” He sounded immensely satisfied with himself.

Emily wondered just how powerful a UV emitter had to be to make paint bubble, but shook her head. She had more important things to worry about. “Did you get a sample?”

“Yes. There was a single droplet on the underside of the toilet seat. I missed it on my first two passes, but got it on my third. My portable crime lab analysed it as containing traces of a bactericide, blood, insect remains and a fibrous material. But it's the blood that's interesting.”

Armsmaster's portable crime lab took up about two cubic feet of his motorcycle and contained the most miniaturised automated analysis equipment that Piggot had ever seen. She was curious about the bactericide, but it seemed he wanted her to ask about the blood. “How is the blood interesting?”

“Because it's menstrual blood. Different in composition from normal blood. That droplet came from a feminine waste product bin. One that bugs had gotten into.”

His conclusion was absolutely inescapable, and triggered a memory of a photo. “Wasn't there something about the bins there …?”

“Yes. I asked about those. It seemed some of the students were using the regular ones for stashing drugs and weapons, so they got in a special model, a little larger, that could be locked. Of course, the locks all went missing in the first two weeks, and they never bothered replacing them.”

Emily was somehow not surprised. This was Winslow, after all. “So you're saying that a sanitary bin got emptied into that toilet stall. Was there any trace of it on Miss Clements or Shadow Stalker or Miss Barnes?”

“None that I saw. But again, you're correct. After I figured that out, I checked the toilets on either side for rubber residue on the seats or lids. And I found some. One set matches the tread patterns of the shoes Miss Clements was wearing. I haven't matched the other set.”

The visual imagery matched. Two girls standing on the toilet lids, hoisting sanitary bins over the top of the divider, to dump the contents on … “This was an attack on Taylor Hebert.”

“Agreed. I checked on the bins throughout the school. They were reluctant to let me, so I had to lean on them a bit, but I found a pair in the teachers' restrooms which hadn't been used at all, and had been scrubbed clean on the outside.”

“The school actively tried to cover up the prior attack, and pin it all on the Hebert girl.” Emily felt her anger rising. “I'm betting the other set of tread patterns you find matches either Miss Barnes or Shadow Stalker.”

“That's my conclusion.” Armsmaster didn't sound as angry as Emily was, but he tended to get more absorbed in his work. “I'll be writing it all up in my report, and I'll be checking Shadow Stalker's effects once I return to base.”

“Good.” This was going to lead to serious legal trouble for Winslow. How much legal trouble depended on what Taylor Hebert had to say for herself once she was brought in, but Emily was sure Blackwell would lose her job over this. “I need to get back to what I was doing. Good work, Armsmaster.”

“Thank you, Director.” He cut the call off then, about two seconds before she would've done so herself. She headed back toward the interrogation room, mulling over the new information. Would having a sanitary bin dumped over her have caused the Hebert girl to trigger? It seemed at least vaguely plausible, and would explain where the powers had come from.

Still, a knife wasn't powers, so she had to have had it before the whole confrontation. Which indicated at least a certain amount of intent to cause harm. She could've been carrying it to protect herself, but a knife usually worked better as a deterrent than an actual close-in weapon. Unless, of course, she didn't show it to anyone until she was in a clinch, and then she stabbed Shadow Stalker.

Emily pushed open the door and entered the interrogation room. Everyone was where she'd left them; Danny still sitting at the table, with Miss Militia and the guard doing a good impression of bookends at either side of the room. “Now, then,” she said as she took a seat once more. “Where were we?”

<><>

Danny

“Emma Barnes.” Danny still had trouble saying the name in that context. “You're saying she said Taylor killed those girls?” It was just not believable.

“Exactly.” Piggot leaned forward. “Moreover, she claims that she and your daughter drifted apart after they reached high school. However, I've just received information suggesting that not only were Emma and Taylor on the outs, but Emma and some of her friends may have been victimising Taylor. Had you heard if she'd been having trouble at school with anyone at all?”

Danny shook his head, his mind spinning. “No. Nothing at all.” Recalling the reason for the lack of communication, he had the grace to look sheepish. “But we haven't been talking all that much recently. My wife, Taylor's mother, died just a few years ago, and we're still not totally recovered from that.”

Piggot's expression softened slightly. “My condolences. I know what it's like to lose someone.” It didn't last long. “So, you had no idea that anyone was picking on Taylor? That she may have decided to bring something to school to defend herself with? A knife, for instance?”

“No.” Danny shook his head decisively. “Definitely not. What sort of a knife was it, anyway? A kitchen knife?”

“We don't think so.” The Director held out her hands about ten inches apart. “From the shape of the wounds, it was a double-edged fighting knife of some sort. Do you have any idea where she might have gotten her hands on one of those?”

This was getting more and more surreal for Danny. “No. I keep telling you. Taylor's not a violent person. If you'd told me she had a kitchen knife, we'd have had something to talk about, because she could've grabbed one on the way to school. But if you're talking about a combat knife, not a chance. Taylor doesn't have that many friends, and none at all who'd be able to get a knife like that for her.”

Director Piggot nodded. “Understood. Well, when we bring her in, we can ask her. In the meantime, I need to ask you one more question. And I want you to think carefully about the answer.”

“No promises.” Danny was being cautious about this. Nothing they'd asked him so far had threatened to pin any crimes on him, which was why he hadn't asked for a lawyer in earnest yet, but that could change.

“That's fair.” Piggot leaned forward slightly. “Are you aware your daughter has powers?”

What. The. Fuck?

<><>

Taylor

“No, wait, what the fuck?” Amy waved her hands back and forth in the classic 'cut off' gesture. “No way. We're not kidnapping her friends and my family.” She paused, frowning. “Why do you want to kidnap them? We aren't villains. At least, I'm not. And nor is Vicky.”

“I really gotta chime in here,” I added. “Kidnapping is not the way to keep ourselves on the down-low. Just saying.”

“It's for a good cause,” Lisa insisted. “We get everyone together in Cranial's lab, wherever that is. Then she records all their memories of Vicky. The good, the bad, the mediocre, whatever. Everything that they ever saw her do. Then she meshes it all together and uses that to build a gestalt personality. That gets overlaid on Vicky's brain, tying in with what's already there.” She made a flourishing gesture with her hand. “Voila.”

It made sense. I hadn't even known about Cranial's existence, but Lisa made it sound so simple.

“Yeah,” protested Amy. “But kidnapping? That means we have to fight them, and if they all come after us at once, we'll probably lose.”

She definitely had a point. “Suppose we don't kidnap them,” I suggested. “Why don't we just ask them? I'm sure they'd volunteer to help Vicky get her mind back.”

Lisa sighed and looked pointedly at Amy. “Brandish,” she said bluntly.

“Well, she might not freak out,” Amy said defensively.

Lisa's expression was dubious at best. “Your stepmom has gone even more crazy-bitch since your stepdad died. I give it a seventy-thirty chance that the moment you even hint about what you've done to her prize daughter, she'll come after you with her discount lightsaber. And what if they just refuse to go along with it? I know I'd be justifiably concerned about letting a rogue Tinker rummage around in my head.”

“Well, we've got to do something,” argued Amy.

“Okay, how about this.” Aisha stepped forward. “Why don't we go with the 'ask them nicely' thing and if they don't go along with it, we jump straight to 'kidnap'?”

I shared a glance with Lisa. “That could work … I guess?” I ventured.

“Better than nothing,” Lisa agreed, then looked at Amy. “Well?”

Amy tangled both hands in her hair and clenched her eyes shut. “Arrgh,” she groaned. “Why does this shit keep happening to me?”

“That's not a no,” Lisa observed.

“No, it ain't,” Aisha agreed.

“Plan 'kidnapping is plan B' is a go,” I said, wondering when my world got so weird.

“Arrgh.”

Part 5