by wildbow
“You and I both know this place is far too large to explore in one lifetime,” he answered.
“True.”
“And if we were to surmise that you’re the culprit here, there’s nothing saying you couldn’t have your doormaker maintain a path to another alternate reality where you have captives stashed away. It would even explain why there haven’t been any real missing persons cases that we can link to the case-fifty-threes, if you’re simply snatching them from another reality and depositing them in our reality when you’re done.”
She spread her arms wide. “I don’t know what I can say to convince you.”
“You trust me, don’t you?” Alexandria asked.
“Yes,” Legend said.
“I’ve trained myself in kinesics. I can look at a person’s face and body language and know if they’re lying. And I can tell you the Doctor is telling the truth.”
Legend sighed. “Right.”
“We’re okay, then?” the Doctor asked.
Legend nodded. “I’m sorry to accuse you.”
“It’s understandable. This situation doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
“I can’t add anything here, and my power’s not volunteering anything that could help to solve this particular mystery,” Eidolon spoke. “I guess we have yet another unanswered question on our hands.”
Legend sighed, “More than one. William Manton and his link to Siberian, the tattoo on his right hand, our end of the world scenario and the role Jack plays as the catalyst. Too many to count.”
“None of this has to be addressed today,” Alexandria said. “Why don’t you go home? We’ll consider the situation and come up with a plan and some likely explanations.”
Legend nodded. The thought of holding Arthur and Keith in his arms energized him.
The Doctor turned to Eidolon, “You want another booster shot?”
“Probably another Endbringer attack coming up, it’s best if I’m in top form.”
While the others talked and planned, Legend stood and left without a farewell.
An opening between realities unfolded before he was half of the way down the alabaster white hallway. He stepped through the opening to the oil rig, and then began his flight back to New York City.
But he didn’t go home.
Instead, Legend descended on the rooftop of the NYC Protectorate offices. A tinker-made scanner verified who he was and opened the doors for him in time for him to walk through.
He nodded a greeting to everyone he passed. When people asked him how things had gone, he offered them a response that was polite but short enough that it was clear he wasn’t looking for further conversation.
He reached his office and closed the door.
He was careful to start up a virtual operating system preloaded with the standard PRT databases and software. Nothing that would leave a trace on his regular OS. He unplugged the fiber-optic cables and disabled the wireless.
The precautions were little use if he was already being watched, but it made him feel better.
Once his computer was isolated from outside influences, he withdrew a USB cable from one drawer, plugging one end into the keyboard. He reached up to one ear and withdrew an earbud. The other end of the USB cable connected to it.
ASCII art of Kid Win’s face popped up as the earbud connected to the computer, along with the text, ‘thank you’.
He couldn’t bring himself to smile.
Problems of self-confidence aside, Kid Win had produced an interface that was easy to use. Legend clicked on the yellow button and waited. Voices played from the computer’s speakers. He adjusted the volume and listened.
“We suspect that Bonesaw and Siberian also escaped, with Hookwolf as a new member of their group.”
“I see.”
“Any reason for the curiosity?”
“Hard to keep track of what goes on beyond these walls, sometimes.”
Text appeared, transcribing what was being said. The program paused, the image of the yellow button popping back out. A red word appeared below the last statement: LIE.
A vague lie, but not a damning one. His pulse was pounding as he hit the waiting yellow button to resume the record.
“We have no need for human experimentation. The Number Man can calculate the odds of success for a given formula.”
LIE.
He clicked again.
“…Who knows enough about Cauldron to tattoo or brand them with the mark while simultaneously having access to these kinds of resources?” His own voice was the one playing from the speakers.
“It’s not us,” the Doctor’s voice answered his.
LIE.
He sat staring at the screen, horrified.
Cauldron had given him his powers, had given him what he needed to be at the very top, to lead the largest collection of superheroes in the world. They hadn’t wanted much in exchange. He kept an eye out to make sure nobody got too curious about Cauldron, diverted them if they did. He’d greased the wheels for some of Cauldron’s top customers. He was also ready to defend Cauldron if and when it became public knowledge. It was for the greater good, he told himself. There was no way for Cauldron to operate otherwise, lest the world’s governments fight over the ability to create whole armies of people with powers and interfere with the organization’s ability to operate.
It would operate, he knew, it obviously wasn’t in a location where it could be raided or seized by military forces, but it wouldn’t be able to reach nearly as many people, and capes would come under scrutiny with the possibility that they’d purchased their powers.
He’d committed to this because Cauldron was essential. With the rise of the Endbringers and threats like the Slaughterhouse Nine, the world was in need of heroes. Cauldron produced more heroes than villains, because there was none of the trauma of a trigger event to throw them off. Even for those individuals who turned to crime, Cauldron was able to leverage the favors that were part of the contract in order to guide their path. More superheroes meant better chances for everyone when it came to fighting the Endbringers and dealing with the big threats.
It struck him that this wasn’t necessarily true. If the Doctor had lied about human experimentation, she could have lied about those details as well, too.
Human experimentation on a large scale. Unwitting, or perhaps unwilling to connect the dots, he’d helped it happen in a way.
His hand shook as he reached for the mouse. He clicked the button once more, hoping there would be something he could use to convince himself that this was a mistake. A false positive, a clue that Cauldron was really a force for good after all. Hadn’t Armsmaster said that his lie detection system was imperfect? Or maybe Kid Win had generated errors in the code. The alterations had been minor but comprehensive: Legend hadn’t wanted to be informed in real-time about the lies, lest he give something away.
“And you don’t know anything about how William Manton is connected to all this?”
“I’m as mystified as you are.”
LIE.
He knew what came next, with the conversation fresh in his memory. He didn’t want to press the button again, but there was little choice.
“I’ve trained myself in kinesics. I can look at a person’s face and body language and know if they’re lying. And I can tell you the Doctor is telling the truth.”
The red text popped up as the last four and a half words appeared. LIE.
Alexandria knew. Of course she had. Her ability to read people, her vast troves of knowledge, her ability to see patterns. And she was the most willing of their group to take the hard, ugly road. Had been since Siberian had hospitalized her.
Click.
His own voice. “I’m sorry to accuse you.”
LIE.
Had he been lying? He supposed he had. He didn’t like the Doctor, and he hadn’t truly felt sorry for his suspicions. Ever since he’d seen William Manton with the Slaughterhouse Nine, he’d harbored doubts about what was going on.
&n
bsp; Those doubts had become quiet conviction after he’d gone to see Battery in the hospital. One of Bonesaw’s mechanical spiders had cut her suit. He knew exactly the kind of disorientation, hallucination and waves of paranoia she would have experienced as the gas took hold. While she reeled and tried to get a grip on reality, she’d likely left herself open for further attacks. Whatever the case, one of the spiders had injected her with a poison Bonesaw had devised.
Her death had been slow, painful and inevitable. It had been engineered to strike those notes in a way that millions of years of evolution had yet to refine a plant’s toxin or an animal’s venom. Lying in the hospital bed, still delirious, Battery had used halting sentences to tell him about Cauldon, about buying her powers, and about Cauldron asking her to help Siberian and Shatterbird escape. She’d planned to pursue the Nine, to offer assistance and then kill one or both of the villains. Battery had begged him for affirmation that she’d tried to do the right thing, that he would find the answers she didn’t. He’d reassured her the best he could.
She’d died not long after.
He almost couldn’t bring himself to click the yellow button again. Alexandria had been lying to him. And that only left…
Click.
Eidolon’s voice came from the speakers. “I can’t add anything here, and my power’s not volunteering anything that could help to solve this particular mystery. I guess we have yet another unanswered question on our hands.”
The word was in red letters on the screen. It could have been his own pulse behind his retinas, but the letters seemed to throb with a heartbeat of their own. LIE.
“All lies,” Legend whispered the words to himself.
Colony 15.1
Bentley lunged in my direction, and I could feel my people backing away behind me. I stood firm. The mutant bulldog landed with both front paws first, the impact so heavy that spittle and moisture was flung from his massive body.
A low, guttural noise tore its way from Bentley’s throat as he surged forward again. I could hear yelps and shouts of alarm from the crowd behind me.
Wood splintered, cracked, and finally gave way. Behind Bentley, the husk of a fire-scorched building collapsed. Chains that had been lashed to the building’s wooden supports trailed from the dog’s harness as he bounded toward Bitch. Of everyone present, only Bitch and I held our ground as the dog barreled into his master, practically bouncing with joy.
Bitch, for her part, wrapped her arms around his head as he lifted her off the ground. “Good boy!”
He’s just a dog. Beneath the three-thousand-ish pounds of muscle and the exterior of tangled muscle and bone, he was still a dopey dog who adored his master. Bitch had given him what he’d been yearning for since he was abandoned or abused in his past life. She’d offered him the affection and companionship he’d been wanting for years.
I could relate. Not in terms of Bitch, specifically, but I could relate.
“Get to work clearing that up!” I ordered. My swarm augmented my voice to carry it across the crowd of my followers. There were twenty-two adults and twenty kids. With Coil’s assistance, I’d brought in work gloves and black hazmat suits, but most people were wearing only the lower body of the suits. It was too warm for the full suits, and the masks were largely unnecessary. Everyone was dripping from the rain, but nobody was really complaining. I rather liked it; it was refreshing in the otherwise warm day.
A generator stirred to life a short distance down the street, and there was something of a rush as people hurried to get away from the intimidating presence of the big bad supervillains and their mutant animals. That, and there was something of a fight to get the power tools. There were only so many circular saws and chainsaws to go around, and anyone who didn’t have one was tasked with carrying the cut wood instead.
I created a barrier of bugs to stop one of the teenagers from reaching for a circular saw.
“If you’re under eighteen, you don’t get to use power tools,” I called out. “Priority goes to the people who know how the tools are used. Able bodied adults get second dibs. Listen carefully to the guys who know what they’re doing, and work somewhere dry if possible. We’ve had enough casualties, let’s not have anything stupid happening with someone slipping or losing their grip in the rain. If someone’s being an idiot, tell Sierra, and she’ll inform me.”
Sierra glanced at me and nodded.
I turned my attention to Bitch.
“You owe me,” she said. The rain had plastered her short hair against her scalp. Her gang of four people stood by with dogs on leashes: Barker, Biter, a college-aged kid with the scars of four parallel claw marks running across his face, and a girl with her arm in a sling. They didn’t look scared, like my people had, but they still didn’t look fantastically thrilled to be in close vicinity to one of Bitch’s dogs on full throttle.
Nevermind that you were the one that came here early. “Of course. We’ll get you and your people some lunch.”
She frowned. “Lunch?”
There was a bit of a pause. I waited patiently as she considered the idea.
“Fine,” she decided.
“Come on,” I told her. “We’ll go to my place while we wait for the others.”
While Bentley had been helping to tear down and dismantle the derelict building, I’d been contemplating how I’d leverage Bitch’s early arrival to mend fences and rebuild some trust. I’d decided on something simple, as that seemed to work best with Bitch. I imagined that she hadn’t paid a lot of attention to stuff like food as she took hold of her territory. Odds were good that she’d asked Coil for a lot of easy food she could stuff in her pockets and eat on the go. She probably wouldn’t pay much attention to stuff like seasonings or variety in courses.
I’d recently spent some time looking back on our past interactions. Her perspective toward me had zig-zagged between a kind of hesitant acceptance and hostility. We’d met, she’d attacked me. We’d gone to the bank robbery, and she’d been open and excited, only to do a one-eighty and start shouting at me after misinterpreting something I said. Two steps forward, one step back. Until I’d left the group and then been outed as an undercover operative a short while later. That had been a good solid one-hundred steps back.
Recovering from that breach of trust had proven far more difficult than anything that came before. Not quite impossible, though; I’d apparently proved myself in the recent past, because Bitch was making an effort on her end. She was here earlier than I’d asked, for one thing, and she hadn’t murdered me when I asked for a hand with some things I couldn’t handle with my own power.
She glanced back at her group and whistled once, making a ‘come hither’ gesture. I couldn’t tell if she was signaling her dogs and expecting the people to follow or if she was treating her own people like she did her dogs. She grabbed the chain at Bentley’s neck and used it to lead him.
Barker and Biter looked pretty unimpressed, either way. Barker especially.
We didn’t talk as we made our way to my headquarters, and I was okay with that. Every exchange between us was one more chance for me to inadvertently offend her, and the silence gave me a bit more time to consider how to tackle all of this. I was used to feeling like I had to approach every conversation with a strategy, planning out what I was going to say so I didn’t sound like an idiot. That went double for Bitch, because a slip-up could set me back days or weeks in terms of our friendship.
Should friendship even be my goal? Maybe I was better off just trying to be a teammate.
If it was just for my sake, I could probably convince myself. As it stood, though, I was thinking of Bitch. I felt like I would be abandoning her to a pretty lonely existence if I didn’t at least try.
I let them into my lair, after sweeping the area with my bugs to check for any observers, unlocking and opening the shutter. Charlotte had experienced a few sleepless nights since the scare three nights ago, so I’d given her permission to take it easy here, with the warning that I’d have
guests and would want her assistance. She still looked a little wary as Bitch, Biter, and Barker entered.
“Hamburgers?” I asked Bitch. She nodded. When I looked at her minions, they signaled agreement. Good. Easy and simple.
“Charlotte, would you mind? Maybe fries, too, if you know how to make them on the stove?”
“I don’t, but there’s some in the freezer that I can do. They aren’t bad,” she replied.
“Good. When you have a second, some towels for the dogs, too.”
“Okay.”
I led the others into the sitting area on the ground floor. With the shutter up, some dim light filtered through the rain-streaked windows. Bitch was outside, tending to Bentley, who had yet to shrink to a more normal size.
I stepped outside to give her directions to where she could stow Bentley until he’d returned to a more normal size, pointing the way to the beach. She marched off with the one-ton monstrous dog, not offering a response.
Which left me to deal with her people in the meantime.
Barker and Biter gave me something of a George and Lennie vibe, with the smaller guy as the brains of the outfit, the larger one as the big oaf. While I didn’t have any major clues to Barker’s powers, Biter was clearly a physical powerhouse. He stood over six feet in height with a severe underbite exaggerated by a metal bear-trap style band of metal around his lower jaw. His teeth, I saw, were filed into points. His costume featured spiked knuckle-dusters and a number of leather straps and belts over his clothes. Each length of leather was studded with sharp spikes.
Barker was an inch or two shorter than me, his hair and beard cut short enough that there was more skin than hair showing. His eyes seemed overly large for his face, with heavy lids and folds around them that made him look older than he probably was. His ‘costume’ consisted of a black sleeveless t-shirt, jeans and tattooing around his mouth. I’d seen him in something more conventional when Coil had introduced him to us, but now the only sign of his parahuman nature was the faint smoke that curled out of his mouth. Just going by his lack of bulk and short stature, I thought I might be able to take him in a no-powers fist fight.