by wildbow
“Knowing I’ll get sick if I don’t get it, being able to see it, what it’s like, the getting sick, and as it gets closer to happening, higher percentages, it feels more real, so clear a picture it’s almost as bad as getting sick for real. Even if there’s only a nine point two—”
“You’ll get some to tide you over in a bit, pet,” Coil interrupted her, in as reassuring a tone as he could manage. It was impossible to conceal all of his irritation at being disturbed from his thoughts, but she was distracted enough by her own problems that she likely didn’t notice.
His plan was succeeding, though it had been delayed slightly by recent circumstances. Potential enemies were divided or reduced in numbers, the city all the more vulnerable to being seized. Victory was so close he could taste it.
Perhaps worthy of a celebration. Coil maintained his own vices. It would be unfair to expect more of himself, when he had the unique talent he did.
It had certainly been an expensive talent. Even with his ability to game the markets in a way that clairvoyants and precognitives couldn’t detect, it had taken him years to pay it off. A maddening, frustrating endeavor, when he had already been thinking of plans he wanted to set in motion, having to postpone them. And he still owed a favor, even now, up to a week’s services. He couldn’t be sure if he was powerful and secure enough to fight back if they demanded too expensive a price, or too much of his time at a point critical to his plan.
He canceled the reality where he stood at his pet’s bedside, found himself still at the computer. Best to leave the world where his pet wasn’t so tired, in case he wanted to ask more questions that morning.
The worlds he created weren’t real. They were little more than an especially vivid, accurate dream. To enjoy a whole separate world, free of any consequences beyond the ones he wanted? It would be unreasonable if he didn’t indulge in it. Anyone would, given the chance.
These entertainments kept him centered, utterly calm. He needed that, after the irritation of dealing with the Travelers’ girl.
He touched a button on his phone, “Mr. Pitter? My office.”
“Yes sir,” the reply sounded.
He was on the brink of achieving his goals. It would be a laughable tragedy, to get this close, only to have his power fail him, to accidentally choose the wrong reality, or to have his other self killed by accident or malicious intent, forcing him to live with the ramifications of these idle amusements. For now, he wouldn’t touch his pet, nor any of his powered subordinates. Not when he was this close.
A click of what appeared to be a part of his desktop wallpaper made his bottommost drawer pop open.
Mr. Pitter entered the room. “Sir?”
One reality: “My pet needs her ‘candy’, a low dosage, please.”
The other: another click of his computer mouse, remotely locking the doors. Mr. Pitter turned, alarmed, tested the door.
For now, even with the safeguard of his other realities, he would do nothing he couldn’t explain away if he had to. He wouldn’t entertain himself with anybody he couldn’t replace. Mr. Pitter? Replaceable.
No such thing as being too paranoid, after all.
Sentinel 9.1
It was seven-thirty in the evening in a medium sized airport. Weren’t there supposed to be people?
There had been staff, for sure. The odd staff member to greet him as he got off the plane, another to see him past the gates. Still, the terminals were empty, there were no crowds, the shops and restaurants were all closed. Only half the lights were on. For the first time, he was wondering if he was getting in over his head.
At least there were no people making the same old jokes about the metal detectors.
Baggage claim had three carousels, which should have been in operation, delivering a regular supply of people’s luggage onto the conveyor belts, crowds gathered around them in anticipation. Instead, there was a single man in uniform with three large bags already piled onto a cart.
“I can take my bags, I’m stronger than I look.”
“It’s alright, son,” the man replied, “It’s good to have something to do that isn’t cleaning up.”
Son. That bothered him more than he cared to admit. Not that he had any ideas about his own ethnicity, but it was vaguely condescending. A reminder that people didn’t know how to act around him.
“Alright,” he conceded. “Where are we headed?”
The man gestured toward a set of double doors, then gripped the handle of the cart to push it in that same direction.
Stainless steel handles on the doors. He put his hands on the painted surface instead, pushed them open, and then held one of the doors open for the cart. He was distracted enough that he almost didn’t notice the group waiting for him.
The group consisted of a squad of PRT officers with their regular assortment of nonlethal weaponry and a large woman with a bleached blonde bob.
“Weld, I’m glad you made it,” she managed to say the words without a trace of humor or smile on her face. She extended a hand.
He glanced quickly at her hand, checking there were no rings, then shook it. “Thank you, ma’am. Director Piggot, I’m assuming?”
“You assume correctly. Shall we?”
He nodded.
As they fell into step, he asked, “Where is everyone?”
“This airport was attacked by one of the local villain groups just three days ago. The front lobby and ticket claim were ransacked, and the airport has shut down for the time being, with only special cases such as yourself coming or going.”
“I take it things are bad?”
“Yes. We have seen this type of situation before, if not to this extreme. Too many citizens here had been living paycheck to paycheck or were unemployed. There was a great deal of latent frustration and unhappiness with the status quo. A powder keg needing only a spark to set it off.”
Weld nodded, “And the arrival of an Endbringer is a bit more than a spark. I see. I know the Endbringers tend to target areas where they know they can do the most damage. You think Leviathan did it on purpose? Attacked this city because he knew this would happen?”
“If someone raised the idea, I wouldn’t dismiss it. But our focus should be on what we do in the here and now. Are you ready to take command of the local Wards?”
“I’m ready to try.”
“Good. The team here is smaller than your old team in Boston. It currently consists of Clockblocker, Vista, Kid Win and Shadow Stalker. We had two members die in the attack, and a third left with his family when they evacuated.”
PRT uniforms opened the doors, and he followed the Director onto a helipad, followed shortly after by the other PRT uniforms and man with his luggage. A black helicopter with the PRT logo on the sides sat there, propeller already whirring in preparation for takeoff.
The Director took the hand of a uniform inside the helicopter, stepping inside, and Weld followed her up, refusing a helping hand. The helicopter shifted slightly with the addition of his six hundred pounds of weight.
When the door shut, cutting off the worst of the noise, he took the offered headphones and put them on. When he spoke, his voice came through the headphones crystal clear, without a trace of the ambient noise of the helicopter, “So there’s only five of us?”
“There will be more. We’ve got a lead on a young man who could be joining as a new member, assuming we can get close enough to him to make the offer. I trust you know your classifications?”
“I do,” Weld nodded. He’d memorized it as a rhyme, as suggested by his old boss. Maybe that had been the intention from the start:
Mover, shaker,
Brute and breaker.
Master, tinker,
Blaster and thinker,
Striker, changer,
Trump and stranger.
He was classified as a brute and changer, classifications meant for the unnaturally tough and strong and for those who could change their shape to some extent, respectively. He never liked the word brute
being applied to him, even though he was aware that the labels had originally been intended for the PRT teams to identify and label villains, specifically. It was only later that they had been extended to identifying the heroes as well.
“Right. This potential recruit is tentatively marked down as a tinker–mover. It isn’t unusual for powers to emerge in the wake of an event as serious as this. For this reason, we keep careful track of things to see if we cannot detect any new parahumans. This young man has been observed in the south end, moving at over a hundred miles an hour with the assistance of a mechanical suit. His inclusion on a local team would help fill gaps left by the death of Velocity, a local Protectorate member, and Armsmaster’s retirement.”
Weld nodded.
“Others may make themselves known, and we will approach each of them in turn. To help fill the gap in the meantime, Flechette is arriving from New York.”
Weld chuckled, just under his breath.
“Something amusing?”
He was surprised that she had heard or noticed the laugh. “No, it’s just that we know each other. Our teams are—were—friendly rivals, kind of. We’d meet two or three times a year and compete, just to spar and practice our skills against less familiar opponents. We’d joke around about which team was better, give each other a hard time.”
“I certainly hope this ‘rivalry’ isn’t going to hamper your ability to lead this team and work with her.” There was no humor in her tone. Just the opposite.
“Um, no, ma’am,” he replied, chastened. The helicopter lifted into the air. A glance out the window showed the sprawl of the city. It was dark out, but much of the city was unlit, nothing shining through the windows, no street lights illuminating the roads, nor the headlights and taillights of traffic.
Noting where he was looking, Director Piggot spoke, “Because the current situation is serious, and it isn’t improving as fast as we’d like. You’re going to have to be on the top of your game.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Clockblocker and Vista are your best assets. Clockblocker is a striker seven with touch-based time-stopping. Vista is a shaker nine. Large scale spatial distortion.”
“Geez louise. The others?”
“Kid Win is a tinker four. Guns and antigravity devices, primarily. Shadow Stalker is more ambiguous. Breaker three, sublabels are stranger two, mover one. Her particular nature as a ‘breaker’ makes her superlight, semi-gaseous, transparent and capable of passing through solid surfaces.”
“Okay. The team sounds well rounded, I can work with that.”
She handed him a stack of files. “Here’s the files on local factions, including your new team, and a file on the solo heroes and villains. You’ll have limited access to the databases as well, which you should be familiar with, but this should get you the essential details to get underway. I’ve ordered those files loosely by priority, so you’ll find the most need-to-know information at the top of the pile.”
Weld took the folders and opened the one for the Wards, glanced through it to memorize the faces of his new team. Then he went to the next file, “Then the top priority as far as opposition goes is… the Archer’s Bridge Merchants? Superpowered drug dealers. A shaker two, tinker two slash mover three and a shifter four. These aren’t big numbers. Am I missing something?”
“Context. They’ve become a rallying point, representatives and leaders for those on the lowest rungs of society. Too many civilians who were the have-nots think allying with the Merchants is a way to become the haves. People that were angry, disenfranchised or both have gravitated towards the group, are seeking to overturn the social order.”
“So they’ve got, what, a following of homeless?”
“Brockton Bay doesn’t, or didn’t, have many that you could strictly call homeless, as there were so many abandoned buildings to squat in. When the Endbringer attacked, he chose the area with many of these buildings.”
“I think I remember, yeah. The area where the fight started didn’t exactly look upscale.”
“The sad irony of this is that the defending parahumans protected that area, while other locations were leveled by the tidal waves. That area, known to locals as the Docks, was not under the control of any organized crime or villain organization even before the attack. After the battle’s conclusion, it was swiftly occupied by the Merchants and growing numbers of their followers, and is now one of the areas with reliable shelter. Not entirely, but more than many. By the time our local heroes were finished with search, rescue and minimizing damage, their number of followers had reached a critical mass. In the past several days, they’ve begun attacking the city infrastructure, the airport, grocery stores, malls and they’ve repeatedly seized medical supplies and food as they come in.”
“So a big priority will be safeguarding incoming supplies from relief efforts, protecting key areas of the city so it can recuperate from the disaster.”
“Yes, for the time being.”
“Let’s see, the next group is… Fenrir’s Chosen?”
“One of two major offshoots of the Aryan villain group, Empire Eighty-Eight, which fell apart after the death of their leader, Kaiser. Fenrir’s Chosen are led by Hookwolf. Violent, utterly merciless, and reveling in the current chaos.”
“And it looks like he’s a shaper four, brute seven, with the longest list of homicides or suspected homicides I’ve seen on someone who wasn’t already in prison. Thick file, I take it he has lots of followers?”
“The largest group in terms of parahuman numbers, at present.”
“And this second group, The Pure, is the second offshoot of that Aryan group, I take it?”
“Small but powerful. Their leader, Purity, is a blaster eight and mover four.”
“Yeah, there’s a breaker nine, a shifter eight with stranger three and a master six in that group? I buy that they’re powerful.”
“Their leader has made overtures to us, offering cooperation in helping us regain control of the city. We have refused her for the time being. If she approaches you, you are in no way, shape or form permitted to agree to any deals.”
“Noted. Let’s see… Coil, powers unknown. The Travelers have high ratings on their powers, but their crimes are low end, pretty much. There’s the Undersiders… three master classifications in one team.”
“Only one of whom is of any particular concern. Investigations into two members have suggested sociopathic tendencies, and if they’re channeling their efforts into low threat activities such as robberies, we can afford to ignore them for the time being.”
“Faultline’s Crew. Mercenaries, low rating, mediocre rating, low rating… A shaker twelve? Seriously?”
“The girl has cognitive deficiencies that reduce the effective threat she poses, but yes. Again, that group is not an imminent threat. In the current situation, I might suggest you leave them be if you cross paths, conserve your group’s strength for the priority opponents. The Merchants and Hookwolf’s group.”
“Okay. I’ll have this memorized by the end of the week.”
“I expect you will. That brings us to more mundane matters. You’ll be enrolled full-time at Arcadia High School. It’s close to the Wards headquarters, and your teachers have been informed about your special nature. I’m afraid there’s no easy answers as far as your appearance and how the rest of the student body will react to you.”
Weld looked down at his hands. His body, from skin to hair to bone, was all metal and alloys of varying types. “I’ve dealt with it before, I’ll manage.”
“We can’t enroll you in the co-op program, as your absence would be noted, and would draw attention to others who are using the co-op program to mask their attendance in the Wards. It won’t be easy, attending high school full-time, keeping up with your coursework and leading the team in your off hours.”
“It’s fine. I don’t have to sleep much, anyways, so it’s good to keep busy.”
“Good to hear that. All that said, I have asked your teachers to ma
ke special arrangements, reducing expectations toward your homework, provided you are not struggling in any subjects. The Wards program will also provide tutors should you need them.”
“Okay, cool.”
“You’ll have time to get into the swing of things without worrying about school, as the high schools are all currently shut down for repairs and to allow time for thorough investigation of the premises. When the schools are open, we’ll have you take three courses and attend first year classes on parahumans at the University, if that suits you?”
“Perfect.”
“You’ll be living in a private room in the Wards headquarters, and you’ll have a monthly allowance of four hundred dollars in addition to the money put into your trust account by the program. We expect you’ll spend this allowance on necessities, such as food and clothing. You do still eat, yes?”
“Yes,” he answered her, bending the truth. While he did eat, it was a negligible amount. As he saw it, there was no real harm done if he pocketed some of that extra money and said he spent it on food. Given that his tongue was made of an alloy and the pleasures of food were a shadow of what they should be, it was only fair that he enjoy himself in some other way. He knew that some staff back in Boston had caught on, but they hadn’t said anything. Director Piggot here gave him the vibe that maybe she wouldn’t be so cool with it. He’d be more careful until he knew for sure.
“Your quarters have been checked and double checked, so there is no exposed metal, no screws, nails, frames or pegs.”
“I appreciate the thought,” he told her. His physiology had the unfortunate drawback that he couldn’t help but attach to and absorb metal he touched. While it had been crippling when he’d first been found, dumped in a junkyard, he had learned ways around it. He could rearrange the metals that formed his body, separate them into their composite elements, and he extended this particular trick to push all the impurities in the metals out to his ‘skin’. The impurities, unlike the metal that composed the rest of him, didn’t bond, giving him the ability to handle things with his hands and teeth if he needed to. It didn’t always work—at least once a week there was one embarrassing moments where he bonded with someone’s wedding ring during a handshake or bumped into a shelf display—but it helped. Clothes helped as well.