All Alone Pt 12 (Patreon)

Revelations

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

[A/N 2: I apologise for how late this chapter is coming out. The month has been horrendous.]

[A/N 3: The Empire Eighty-Eight will be espousing racist ideas and slurs in this fic. The author does not share these views.]

Taylor

I unlocked the back door and stepped inside, just as the clock in the living room chimed. "See? Made it home by eleven."

"Barely," Dad said dryly. "Now, of the two of us, you still need to sleep. You'd best get to that, young lady. I'd really rather not have to come out to the school and pretend to ask you why you're falling asleep in class."

"Right." I rolled my eyes. "With the energy I took from Alabaster, I feel like I could keep going for forty-eight hours straight. How do you feel?"

"Like I could bench-press the Forsberg Gallery one-handed," he admitted. "I don't think I've ever seen Sophia skip before."

"Neither have I." I grinned. "When she comes down off the rush you two got out of that, she's going to be so damn embarrassed."

He nodded in agreement. "Did you know you could do that before, or was it something you weren't aware of?"

"I don't really think I was close to any capes before, I mean ones who weren't dead." Plus, Cricket had been kind of threatening me, and I'd been running on fumes at the time. "So, the knowledge was there, but not really obvious. If that makes sense."

"I'm not a cape, so I don't know what makes sense and what doesn't." He paused. "Wait, so you can only draw from capes?"

That was a question I hadn't actually considered before, so I looked inward, querying my power. "I think … I get a lot more energy out of capes. Baseline humans can be tapped, but there's less there to draw on."

He looked thoughtful. "So you do tap their powers for energy, even when they aren't like Alabaster?"

"I guess so." I hadn't really thought it through like that. "Huh. I hope they don't figure it out. It would utterly suck to have all the capes run away from me or blast me from range."

Dad nodded soberly. "Yeah, that's definitely something you'll want to keep under wraps." He nodded toward the entrance hall and the stairs within. "But you still need to get some sleep before school."

"Sure, okay." I headed upstairs, marvelling at the energy that seemed to fill me to the brim. It took a conscious effort to drop out of the shadow realm, which brought me back to normal human levels of fatigue; hopefully I'd stay that way when I was asleep. Having to wake up just so I could make myself tired again struck me as a long and boring way to spend a night.

After a brief shower, I sat down in front of my computer with my hair up in a towel. Dad had told me to go to bed, sure, but I just wanted to check PHO and see what they were saying about our totally badass capture of Cricket and Alabaster.

To my mild disappointment, not many people were talking about it. The usual Guy in the Know, Bagrat, hadn't weighed in yet, which probably meant very few people knew about it. I considered making a post, but decided to leave it until morning. As Animator, I didn't want to come across as someone who blew their own horn.

It was really, really tempting, though.

I was just about to log off when I noticed that I'd been pinged with a private message. When I opened it, it was from Officer Lagos.

Hi,

What the hell did you do? I was just reading, and then it felt like I'd stuck my finger in an electrical socket, but in a good way. Was this what you meant when you said I might feel some energy boosts? I'm pretty sure I've got a pulse again now, and I'm so juiced up I feel like going for a ten mile sprint. Am I alive again? What's going on?

Kenny

I sighed. Discovering the energy draw power was a good thing, but now I was going to have to pull the rug out from under the poor guy.

Hey.

Sorry about that. It was kind of an unexpected incident. It should happen again, but not so dramatically as this time. The extra energy you feel should bleed off in time. And I'm sorry to say this, but you're still deceased. The energy's just making you look and feel a lot more lifelike. That'll probably go away too as the excess drains away.

Sorry again,

Animator

After shutting the computer down, I climbed into bed. Hopefully, staying out of the shadow realm would keep it from depleting while I slept. I also hoped that Officer Lagos would understand why I couldn't keep him powered up all the time.

Having powers, I mused sleepily, was a whole lot more complicated than Saturday morning cartoons let on.

<><>

Brockton Bay General Hospital

Rodney Stafford

The butterflies breeding in Rodney's stomach were beginning to assume the proportions of B-52 bombers. He was totally aware that what he was planning to do broke many hospital regulations and several actual laws, but it was also what needed to be done. The zombie maker had to be stopped, and if Doctor Cartwright and the PRT couldn't see that, then it was up to Rodney. Mr Calvert, and Brockton Bay, were depending on him.

Dressed in his darkest clothing, with a baseball cap pulled low down over his forehead, he sidled up to the unassuming doorway. This entrance wasn't used a lot, so hopefully the night security shift wouldn't be watching the cameras too closely.

As he pulled out his swipe card and turned it around to make sure the magnetic strip faced the right way, he took a deep breath. This didn't alleviate the tension in his guts even a little bit. How movie secret agents made it through even one mission without getting terminal ulcers, he had no idea.

He was pretty sure the card-swipes were recorded somewhere, but nobody had ever mentioned anything about them being monitored, so he figured he was safe there. Hopefully, by the time this got back to him, Mr Calvert would've gotten to the bottom of the zombie thing, so he'd be exonerated. In fact, he would be a hero. Mr Calvert had assured him of this.

With an almost spasmodic motion, he swiped the card through the reader. Time seemed to stretch endlessly … and then the light turned green, the reader beeped agreeably, and the door clicked open. He hesitated almost long enough for the door to lock itself again, but grabbed it in time and yanked it open, then ducked inside.

Brockton Bay General wasn't modern enough to have automatic motion sensor light switches, or maybe the administration was too cheap to install them. The upside of this was that he could sneak through the hospital without leaving an obvious trail of where he was going. He was actually okay with the lack of lighting, because he knew his way around well enough not to need it.

However, a dark-clad figure lurking within the hospital would be hard to explain away to any roving security guards—they were dumb, but they weren't that dumb—so he ducked into a handy maintenance closet. There, he pulled off the dark outer clothing, leaving the scrubs he was wearing under them in plain view. As an afterthought, he transferred his phone, car keys and wallet from the dark sweat pants to his scrubs. He couldn't wear the cap, but he did have a hair cover, resembling a shower cap, to put on in its place. The last thing he needed, a clipboard, he found hanging on the wall near the door.

Thus disguised (was it a disguise, he wondered, to pretend to be the very thing that you were?) he strode confidently through the hospital. Armed with the clipboard, he walked straight past a nurse station; the nurse barely glanced up from the book she was reading. Wearing scrubs and a lanyard, carrying a clipboard, he may as well have been invisible.

Next, he needed to find an unattended terminal to get into the system with. The hospital admin would've all gone home for the night, but their computers tended to be password-locked, and he didn't have those passwords. What he needed was a general-use terminal that didn't have a bored nurse sitting near it. Bored nurses were perhaps the nosiest people on Earth, and if a mere intern sat down at a terminal and started using it, he would have someone peering over his shoulder in less than a minute.

The trouble was, none of the empty wards had terminals in them, and none of the terminals in the occupied wards were unattended. Careful not to pass by any nurse station twice in quick succession, so as not to arouse the curiosity of an aforementioned bored nurse, he scouted through the corridors, looking for somewhere he could log on and get what he needed.

Finally, in desperation, he slunk through to the admin wing. A passworded terminal was better than no terminal at all, and he had one final potential solution up his sleeve. He just had to hope that pop culture was right about one more thing.

Moving as quietly as he knew how—an intern with a clipboard didn't look out of place among the patients, but he was certainly not where he was supposed to be, here—he snuck down the corridor, testing door-handles as he went. "Come on," he muttered. "Come on …"

In the distance, he heard heavy boot-steps, echoing along the hallways. A distant splash of light, reflected from worn vinyl and faded paint, presaged the approach of a security guard. There was nowhere for him to hide. Frantically, he jiggled door handles—until suddenly, one opened. Tumbling through into the office beyond, he realised that the light was still on. Panicking, he stared at the desk before he registered that it was empty.

Oh. They just packed up and went home, and didn't even lock their door.

Stupid of them, lucky for me.

Carefully, he closed the door behind him, then turned the little knob that locked it from the outside. Finally, he hit the light switch, so the patrolling guard wouldn't even see the line of light under the door. He'd heard guards gossiping between themselves about administrators who did just this, relying on security to lock their offices for them, but this was the first time he'd actually learned it was true.

What did that one guy say? The definition of an administrator is someone who's smart enough to require a lock on his office door, but still needs security to lock it for him.

The footsteps were closer now. Had the guard seen the flare of light from the open door? He dared not move. Holding his mouth open, he breathed as silently as he knew how.

Steadily, the footsteps approached. He jumped violently as the door handle rattled. But the footsteps never paused; the guard just kept going. Lucky I locked it.

Feeling the sweat drying on his forehead below the hair-cover, he waited until he could no longer hear the footsteps, and his heartbeat had gone back to something approaching normality. Then he snuck around behind the desk.

It was too much to ask that they'd also left their computer open and ready to use. When he wriggled the mouse, it popped up with the hospital's logo and a password request.

He knew enough to not try random passwords; after six attempts, the terminal would lock down and a message would automatically be sent to security. But he still had his other option, which was looking better all the time. Unfortunately, it entailed a bit of risk, but that was unavoidable if he was going to get the information Mr Calvert needed.

Getting up from the desk, he snuck over to the door, cracked it open, and peered out into the dark corridor. Holding his breath, he listened for several long seconds. No footsteps, no shouts. Nothing except the thumping of blood in his ears.

He closed the door, then flipped the light switch. Going back to the desk, he started checking for sticky notes. If whoever owned this office was absent-minded enough to leave the lights on and door unlocked when they went home for the day, he reasoned, then they'd most likely write down their password and leave it near the terminal … assuming pop culture was correct, of course.

It took him thirty seconds.

Eyes flicking back and forth between the keyboard and the note he'd found half-under the mouse pad, he tapped in the password, then hit Enter. The screen cleared, then came up with the usual screen he'd seen every time he logged in.

Jumping up, he headed over to the door and turned off the lights, then returned to the desk. The last thing he wanted was for the security guard to return and wonder why there was a light on under the door when it had previously been dark. He might not, but Rodney wasn't willing to risk the fate of the world on 'might not'.

Now that he was in the system, his next job was to find the correct information. He sat back in the chair for a moment, recalling exactly when all this had happened; not just the date, but the time of night. Finally, when he figured he had it right, he navigated back through previous intakes to the right day and time, and started checking file by file.

People came into the hospital all the time, and more than a few died. It was the nature of serious injuries; sometimes the people died, sometimes they lived. Photos would've been handy for quicker identification, but all he had were half-remembered names and causes of death.

It took him much longer than he was comfortable with before he stumbled on Sophia Hess. At first, he'd glanced past her file because it wasn't marked as a death. Cartwright, that interfering asshole, had doctored the paperwork and marked it, 'further treatment recommended'. But her name was Sophia, she was a teenage girl, and the noted injuries matched what he recalled.

With that knowledge in mind, it took him less time to find Danny and Taylor Hebert—I knew her name started with T!—the father and daughter who'd also been there. Or rather, the other zombie and the zombie maker. The gang member she'd also raised as a zombie but had failed to keep active or something was listed as DOA, but Rodney wasn't so sure about that. What if he gets up again?

Rodney selected the four files and sent them to the printer in the corner of the office. Then he used his phone to take photos of all four and emailed the photos to himself. There was no way in hell he was going to let bureaucracy win this time. This information was going to get out if he had to tell Mr Calvert how to get into his emails with his one phone call from jail.

After deleting the photos from his phone—there was no sense in leaving clues to what he'd done—he backed out of the search then shut the terminal down. Finally, he retrieved the pages from the printer and clipped them in behind the pages on the clipboard he'd 'borrowed'. Okay, now it's time to get this information to Mr Calvert.

He was just heading for the door when he heard the jingle of keys from outside and the rattle of the door handle. Shit, shit, shit, how did they know?

That didn't matter. It was something he could worry about later. What he had to worry about right now was getting past the guard. For all his previous bravado about saving the world by calling Mr Calvert from jail, he had no illusions about his personal toughness. His occupation, once he entered the correctional system, was likely to be best described as 'prison bitch'.

Backing up, he ran into a visitor's chair with his butt. This gave him a desperate idea. He tucked the clipboard under his arm and picked up the chair, then backed up a little more.

As the door opened, he could hear what the guard was saying on the radio as the flashlight beam swept across the office. "Lights are off, doesn't look like—what the fuck?"

That was when Rodney charged him, using the chair as a battering ram. They collided heavily, but Rodney had been set for it while the guard had been caught on the back foot. Together, they spilled out into the corridor, and the guard landed heavily on his ass. Rodney dropped the chair and ran for it, clutching the clipboard like a lifeline.

He wasn't a runner—and in fact, hadn't run any distance for quite some time—but adrenaline was a fine inducement, and he actually managed to get to the corner before the guard got his feet under him. The guard's voice, alternating between calls for backup and threats of ever-increasing violence when he caught the interloper, spurred Rodney on as he panted and sweated and felt like his lungs were about to seize up.

Fortunately, he knew the layout of the hospital well enough to locate the nearest set of fire stairs. Stumbling down them, he clung to the railing for dear life, hoping his legs wouldn't give out before he got to the bottom. He was almost there when the door at the top opened; he kept his head down, hoping the guard wouldn't recognise him from the back, and scuttled down the remaining steps.

"Come back here!" The guard's voice reverberated through the stairwell, but Rodney was done taking orders.

He hit the fire door leading outside with his hand, and kept stumbling on. While he hadn't parked his car in any of the hospital parking lots—he wasn't an idiot—it was still around the far side of the complex from where he'd come out, which meant he had a long walk in front of him. Setting off into the darkness, he held tight to the precious clipboard.

I succeeded, he told himself. I got it. They'd catch up with him eventually, but by then the apocalypse would've been averted. He would be a bona fide hero.

I just saved the fucking world.

<><>

Kaiser

"Tell me again."

Max had heard what the mook had to say twice now, but he was still having trouble putting it together in his head. Cricket was good at what she did, even against someone like Shadow Stalker, and Alabaster was virtually unstoppable. Two new capes and a punk kid should not have posed a serious threat to them, much less beaten up nine guys and captured the pair of them like chumps.

"W-we were setting up the initiation," stammered the idiot. "One of the little shits screamed, then the lookout said capes were coming. It was Shadow Stalker and a tall asshole in a top hat and long coat, some kind of Brute. I saw him knocking guys out with one punch. The bitch in the veil was stupid strong too. Ripped the axe handle clear out of my hands."

"Yes, yes, I got that already." Max gestured impatiently. "Get to the part where Cricket and Alabaster were captured." Already in his mind, he was figuring out how to spring them from PRT holding. They weren't the biggest powerhouses in the Empire, but they were definitely useful.

"I—I didn't see 'em get taken down." The guy was nervous, which wasn't surprising given the fact that both Max and Hookwolf were both paying him close and personal attention. "I hid down the street and watched. The capes came out in about one minute with Cricket and Alabaster. Cricket was barely there, like she didn't know which way was up. Alabaster was even worse. He couldn't even stand up by himself." He paused. "And there was something wrong with his arm."

"His arm?" Kaiser wrenched his thoughts away from how ridiculous it was that any kind of hit could put Alabaster down for more than four and a half seconds. "You didn't mention that before."

"When the PRT got there, they did something with his arm. I thought they were cuffing him, but now I'm pretty sure they were putting an inflatable cast on him."

Max shared a gaze of mutual incomprehension with Hookwolf. Why in God's name would Alabaster of all people need a cast on his arm?

"You're sure it was Alabaster?" Hookwolf prompted. "It wasn't someone else wearing the same clothes or something?"

"Totally sure." The mook spread his hands. "There was a streetlight and everything. Nobody else in this city's got skin that white."

Max nodded to acknowledge the point. The story had basically been the same in every iteration, except for the detail of the supposedly broken arm, which (unbelievable as it was) didn't actually contradict anything else. Of course, all the relevant details were just plain bullshit. Cricket had been a cage fighter, and she could take a hit and come up swinging. Alabaster just plain didn't stay down. And his bones definitely didn't stay broken.

"Understood," Max said. "Now, you don't tell anyone about this. At all. Ever. Got it?"

Hookwolf clenched his fist and a long, jagged blade grew out from between his knuckles, a silent promise as to what would happen if anything was said.

"Totally. Absolutely. Not a word." The guy was babbling now, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. "Won't say a thing."

Max believed him. "Leave us."

Hookwolf watched him go, then turned to Max once the door shut behind him. "We just gonna let him blab to everyone, the first time he gets a drink inside him? I coulda shut him up permanently."

"I was tempted," Max replied honestly, "but one thing my father always drummed into me was 'never shoot the messenger'. If your people are too scared to bring bad news to you, you never hear about the things you need to hear about until it's too late."

"Hm." Hookwolf frowned. It was clear that he wanted to argue, but didn't know what to say. "Okay, fuck it. He talks, it's on you."

Max chuckled mirthlessly. "It's always on me. It always has been. So what's going on, do you think? Some kind of Breaker or Master effect that's forcing them in to stay in a catatonic state? Or a Trump, suppressing their powers?"

"Maybe," grunted Hookwolf. "Can't know for sure until we bust 'em out and see for ourselves."

"True. So, how do you suggest we handle the situation?" He would make his own mind up, of course, but the point of having lieutenants was to get an outside point of view.

"What, for busting them out or dealing with the assholes who fucked with them?"

"The capes. I'll work out the details of freeing Cricket and Alabaster from the PRT." He didn't have any outright moles in the organisation yet, but there were some people within it who shared points of view with the Empire. Asked the right questions in the right ways, they could get him the information he needed to organise matters.

"We set a trap." Hookwolf's expression was ugly. "They want to fuck with our initiations? We do another one, make it loud and proud. When they come after that one, we land on 'em with both feet." From the way shards of razor-edged metal slid out from under his skin, he didn't intend to stop with his feet.

Max nodded sagely, as though he'd just been waiting for Hookwolf to suggest exactly that. In all honesty, he hadn't considered doing it that way, but it didn't matter. If it worked, it worked. "Excellent. Set it up, and let me know how it turns out."

Hookwolf grinned savagely. Max got the impression he was really going to enjoy this. "You got it."

<><>

PRT Building

Deputy Director Renick's Office

"Lay it out for me," Paul ordered. "Best case, worst case, most probable case. What are we looking at, here?"

Miss Militia took a deep breath. "Best case we can hope for is that we can keep a lid on this and recruit Animator into the Protectorate, along with her cohorts. Worst case, it gets out and every villain cape out there goes after her with blood in their eye, because nobody wants a cape out there who can even temporarily suspend their powers. Most probable …" She paused. "We aren't likely to be able to recruit her unless there is a serious attempt to kill her, and that spooks her into our ranks. And unless she starts raising people all over, who's going to believe she can really bring back the dead?"

Paul nodded to acknowledge her analysis, then looked at Assault. "Do you concur?"

Assault ran his hand over his mouth, rubbing his lips with the side of his finger. "Pretty much, yeah. I know I'm not going to be shaking hands with Animator any time soon. She wrecked them, and the ramifications of Alabaster's broken arm are even more terrifying than facing her in a fight."

Miss Militia nodded. "She could've killed him, both of them, but she chose not to. That's the only good thing in all this. Apart from the fact that we've got two killers off the streets for the moment."

"That's true." Paul didn't address the point about Alabaster's arm. That was something he would gladly pass on to Emily in the morning, and let her deal with. Given her dislike of capes, it was even odds whether she'd think it was a good thing or a bad thing. "The Empire has broken Hookwolf out of Birdcage transports before. Do you think they're likely to try to spring Alabaster and Cricket from holding?"

Assault grimaced. "Almost certainly. Kaiser's both a proud man and a total asshole. He'd consider this an insult to the Empire, and he'd work to get them out. Not because he cares about them, but because he cares about the optics of the situation."

Miss Militia cleared her throat. "Yes and no. Yes, he's a proud man. Yes, he cares about the optics. But breaking out Cricket and Alabaster is going to take resources. While he's mustering those, there's something else he's going to be doing."

"Animator," Paul said. "He'll be going after Animator."

The scarf over Miss Militia's face hid most of her expression, but the resigned tone of her voice made up for it. "I'd bet my power on it."

Assault let out a soundless whistle. "Well, let's hope they're watching their backs."

Amen, agreed Paul.

<><>

Coil

Well, that's interesting.

Thomas couldn't wait to hear back from Rodney Stafford regarding the success (or otherwise) of his foray into Brockton General. In the worst case, of course, he would've been intercepted and interrogated. Thomas held zero faith in the ability of the wayward intern to hold out against questioning; his own name would be under scrutiny in short order.

This was, of course, why he was holding back from dropping the other timeline. Once Stafford succeeded in getting the information back to him, the whole incident would never have happened. Animator and her father would have zero warning that he was on their trail.

But in the meantime, he'd picked up a lead on something new. Specifically, gossip had reached his eyes and ears in the BBPD that one of their own had perished due to gang violence near the Lord Street Markets … and he'd been brought back to life by Animator. He was currently on paid leave, so the whisper went, while the higher-ups tried to figure out whether or not having a dead cop walking around and drawing a wage was a good thing for the department.

I think I need to meet this Officer Lagos. An interview under the vague umbrella of 'PRT business' would answer many of his questions about what actually happened to people who were 'animated', and how hard they were to put down for good after the effect took hold.

It would probably be best, he decided, to make that visit in the timeline where he wasn't waiting for Rodney Stafford to contact him after the hospital infiltration. If anyone queried him about his interest in the matter, he was a consultant for the PRT, and coming back from the dead was surely a subject of interest for them. The PRT didn't need to know that if the information was favourable, he would also be doing his best to influence Animator to come work for him.

Thinkers were useful, certainly, and he would be looking out for the possibility of getting one or more to work for him once he had established himself as a person of influence in Brockton Bay, but the old saw about birds in the hand was as true as ever. If he could establish dominance over Animator, then having a bunch of men beholden to her for their very existence would be extremely useful indeed.

His head came up as a message pinged on his phone. Got it. Where do you want to meet?

Caution immediately intruded itself on his thought processes. This felt too quick, too easy. Without his power to act as a fallback, it was much harder to avoid a potential trap if Stafford had been grabbed and flipped.

Tomorrow at noon, he typed, then gave the address of a sidewalk café in the city. Any BBPD or PRT assets would find it hard to hang around for long without giving themselves away, and he'd have time to survey the situation and sheer off if things looked hinky. At the same time, in the safe timeline, he could be having his perfectly innocuous chat with Officer Lagos, and gathering information from that side too.

Mentally, he gave himself a pat on the back. Within twenty-four hours, he'd have the information he needed in hand, and be ready to advance to the next step in his plan.

<><>

Next Morning

Taylor

The smell of cooking breakfast wafted across my nose as I trotted downstairs. "Morning, Dad!" I called out.

"Morning," he replied. "How's the energy store? Still plenty of gas in the tank?"

"Let me see." I slipped into the shadow realm; everything immediately went translucent around me, and sounds became hollow echoes. I also felt amazingly energetic. "Yep, still there." From what I could tell, it hadn't notably diminished from last night.

"Yeah, I felt that from here." I heard the sound of the spatula scraping on the pan as I came through the living room. "So, do you think you're up for going to school today?"

I shrugged. "It's not like I've really got a choice, right?" Besides, Winslow was okay, if I ignored the gang presence. They ignored me in return, which suited us both. "Those fishermen's sunglasses you got allow me to wear my regular glasses and kind of conceal the darkness effect when I'm not in the shadow realm. You've contacted the school about me needing to wear them?"

He nodded. "I told them you'd strained your eyes and need to wear them. To be honest, they didn't seem overly interested. They didn't even ask for a doctor's note."

"Well, that's useful." I wasn't really being sarcastic. Getting a doctor's note to conceal a sudden case of super-powers was probably a lot easier for members of the Wards, so having the school not care was kind of a bonus, right then.

Not that I would've been totally averse to joining the Wards (if they'd have me; my power was kind of morbid) but that would probably involve the PRT wanting to poke and prod at Dad and Sophia to find out the limits of their revival. I was in no way a fan of that idea. Reanimating that gang asshole who'd helped kill Dad was about the limit of my willingness to experiment in that direction, and we'd found out what we needed to know.

We chatted over breakfast, and discovered that Dad enjoyed his food more if he was powered up at the time (though it was still nice if he wasn't). It was almost weird how normal it was, especially when he got in the car to go to work and I headed off down the street to catch the bus to school.

<><>

Rodney

Notice of Disciplinary Hearing.

The email glared out at him from his laptop screen. He stared back at it, not quite daring to click on it. If he didn't open the email, he could plausibly claim not to know about it.

Things weren't supposed to have moved this quickly. He hadn't even gotten the information to Mr Calvert yet, and already they'd figured out that he was the one who'd gone into the hospital. What if they sent the police to his apartment? If they seized everything as evidence and didn't allow him a phone call, he'd never be able to get the information to Mr Calvert!

His apartment was supposed to be his sanctum sanctorum, his final redoubt. This was why he'd stocked it up for the long haul, and installed extra locks on the doors. But precautions that would let him evade zombies (or post-apocalyptic scavengers) wouldn't work against the cops; they'd just bring up a battering ram and bust the door in anyway.

They'd arrest me. For trying to actually save the whole city, the whole world, from a zombie plague.

How fair is that?

Muttering to himself, he dragged his bug-out bag out from under his bed, shoved a few extra tins of baked beans in there—he didn't really like them, but they kept more or less forever—and stuffed the printout from the hospital in on top. Then he zipped it up and heaved it onto his shoulder with a grunt.

Bug-out bags sounded cool, but he'd learned that if he tried to take everything he wanted, it was way too heavy. So, he'd had to compromise. It wasn't something he was pleased about, but he couldn't see a way around it either.

Halfway to the door, he realised he wouldn't get far without shoes. Fuck. He hated being rushed, because he forgot stuff or did it in the wrong order. Setting the bag down, he dragged his sneakers onto his feet, then hefted it again, went to the front door, and peered out. There was nobody in the corridor, but he didn't trust that to last very long. If I'm going to go, I have to go now.

For a long moment, he agonised over the laptop, then folded it, stuffed it into its case along with its cord, and picked it up with his spare hand. Edging out into the corridor, he locked the door behind him, then headed in the direction of the back stairs. If they were watching the front (which they might well be doing) he wanted to be well away before they kicked the front door in.

I just have to get this information to Mr Calvert. Then everyone will see I'm a hero. They might even give me a medal.

Hitching the bug-out bag higher on his shoulder and starting to regret the last few tins that he'd shoved in there, he trudged toward the exit.

<><>

Hookwolf

"Okay, the plan is simple," Brad said. He was riding in the passenger seat of the van, mask off and sunglasses on, with the rest of the guys in the back. "We cruise around until we see a nigger or a slant or a spic or a rag-head on their own, and we grab him, but we make sure members of the public see it. Then we take him somewhere and the new guys do their thing. Stormtiger and me will be there to fuck up Animator and her asshole friends if they decide to make a move on us. Does anyone not understand this?" If anyone didn't understand it, he figured, they could get out and walk. Stopping the van was optional.

Gang initiations were serious business. New blood needed to be tested and gauged. Nobody wanted a pussy backing them up, and undercover cops were right out. He was pretty sure cops weren't allowed to kick the shit out of anyone as part of their cover, at least not seriously, so he never passed anyone until he'd seen them break ribs or crack somebody's skull.

Which meant that anyone messing with an initiation was messing with gang business. The whole master-race creed was something Brad could take or leave, but the Empire was all the family he had, and he believed in nobody fucking up family. Even over and above what they'd done to Cricket—whatever it was, it had to be pretty bad—these assholes were shitting on his people. Nobody pulled that sort of shit, not when he was around to do something about it.

One way or another, Animator was going to learn that.

<><>

Taylor

"Hey, nice shades." Sophia grinned at me as I climbed the front steps of Winslow. "Got a dog or a white cane to go with them?"

I responded with the extremely mature expedient of flipping her the bird. "Oh, ha ha. I see you've been hanging around Dad far too long already, if you're stealing his jokes."

"Your dad's actually pretty cool, for an old guy." Sophia fell into step alongside me. "And I don't say that about many people."

I had to stop and think about that. Did I think of Dad as 'cool'? It was more like he was just there. Coolness or lack thereof didn't come into it. "Okay, sure, whatever you say."

"I do say." Her tone lowered and became more serious. "Oh, and just so you know, Julia and Madison are around here somewhere. They're still trying to get me to join their little posse."

"Right." I sighed. Madison was adorably cute and Julia more conventionally pretty, but they'd both gushed over Sophia's 'gorgeous hair' (okay, it was pretty nice) and 'supermodel looks' (again, she looked nice if she made the effort, but her class-A resting bitch face militated against that) in a blatantly transparent attempt to get her to join their clique. "Muscle, right?" We got to my locker and I pulled my backpack out of it.

She snorted. "What I'm thinking. That, or they're into tall, dark and brooding." Her tone made it clear that she was joking.

I raised my eyebrows in lieu of a smirk. Sophia, wise to my expressions, gave me a medium-dirty look.

"Well," I said, "that's always a possibility. Have you seen either of them giving you lingering, wistful stares?" I was quite proud of the way I kept my face straight while saying this.

Her elbow jab totally failed to connect, but not for want of trying. "Don't even joke about it," she growled. "My life is complicated enough right now without having to tell a couple of ninth-graders that I'm not interested in romance."

I shrugged. "You're a ninth-grader. Just saying."

"Not the point."

The bell for home room rang, and I raised my head. "See you at lunch?"

"Sure."

We headed off on our different trajectories, her for Math class and me for Spanish. I didn't care, so long as nobody messed with my glasses.

<><>

Coil (Safe Timeline)

The first time he drove past Officer Lagos' apartment building, Thomas was checking the vehicles. He'd found out the licence plate of the cop's personal car, and ascertained for himself that it was still sitting out front. He's at home. Perfect.

Another sweep past, this time looking for a place to pull his own car over. It didn't bear any PRT markings, because a mere civilian consultant didn't rate such things. This was probably a good thing, because in this neighbourhood, anything resembling a cop car would likely get stripped to the chassis within a few hours, if parked overnight. Even in the daytime, it would get graffiti'd and the tyres slashed in the time it took to walk into a corner store and buy a paper.

Spotting a likely space a little way down the block, Thomas slowed down and grimaced at the way the van behind him got too close for his liking. He slowed some more and put on his indicators, to show that he was actually parking. The van backed off a little, giving him the chance to pull to a stop and start reversing. He wasn't a master at reverse parallel parking, but he figured he was good enough. The van didn't charge past him, but that was no longer his problem.

Finally situated in the parking space, he sighed with relief and killed the engine. His seat belt came off and he opened the door … and that was when the van came roaring up and screeched to a halt right next to his car. The side door slid open, and men jumped out.

What the fuck?

Before he could close and lock the door, strong hands dragged it open and he was wrenched from the car. He had just long enough to regret that he wasn't wearing the .38 Special that was currently residing in the glove compartment before his arms were forced behind him and zip-ties applied with far more force than finesse. Even as he started to shout for help, someone else dragged his head back and slapped a strip of duct tape across his mouth.

He was still trying to figure out what the fuck was going on—this sort of shit didn't happen to him!—as he was bundled into the back of the van. The side door slid shut; as if this had been a signal (which it was, in a way) the van's engine revved and it started off down the road at what promised to be an unsafe speed.

Looking around the interior of the van, he began to recognise gang tattoos and colours, and his heart sank. Empire Eighty-Eight.

Oh, fuck.