by wildbow
“Quite alright,” my lawyer responded. He flashed a smile, “I expect that’s why Ms. Hebert has asked that you retire, Director Tagg. Her colleague, known by the alias Tattletale, has apparently confirmed that you’ve put in the requisite number of years. You could collect your pension without issue.”
I watched as Tagg leaned back in his seat. He gave me a smug look. He thinks he got to me.
“You’re dangerous,” I said. “You’ve got a soldier’s mentality at a time when we need peace. You’d let the world burn to… give me a bloody nose. You said it yourself. You’re unyielding, and we need compromise.”
“A reality that Ms. Hebert feels Miss Militia would be better equipped to accommodate,” my lawyer added. “That’s our third term.”
There weren’t any retorts or rebuttals from the ‘good guys’. Instead, they exchanged glances across the table, everyone looking between Miss Militia and Director Tagg.
“The PRT is led by non-capes,” Miss Militia said.
“That can change,” I said. “Nearly a week ago, you and I had a conversation. We talked about the issues within the PRT, the fact that you had to kowtow to non-capes and all the problems that posed. I think the non-capes who tend to find powerful positions in the PRT are getting there by dangerous roads. They tend to have backgrounds with the police, military, and anti-parahuman strike teams. It sets up a combative mindset, where we don’t need one. With a cape in charge of the local team, at the very least, I could hope that there’d be a shared perspective.”
“You think Miss Militia would be easier to manipulate,” Tagg accused me.
“I think she’s a no-nonsense type. I know she’s a respected cape, that her power… it’s not one you want to cross paths with, so there’d be little doubt she could put up a fight if it came down to it. And she listens. She doesn’t always do what I’d want her to, but I can live with that.”
“This sets a precedent,” Miss Militia said. “One that I doubt our superiors would be happy with. One I doubt the public would be happy with.”
“When I showed up the night you guys outed me to the public, Tagg was boasting about your fantastic public relations department,” I said. “How virtually anything could be sold to the public, given time.”
“It’s ultimately up to the Director,” Triumph said. “But what if, hypothetically, we had a figurehead leader, with Miss Militia as the person that was really calling the shots?”
I shook my head. “Not good enough.”
“You actually have the temerity to play hardball?” Tagg asked, his voice rising a notch. “I think you’re missing the fact that you’re securely in our custody, and you already surrendered. If it comes down to it, we can see you shipped off with Dragon and Defiant, keep you airborne and away from any large body of insects until your trial by teleconference.”
“And my teammates?” I asked.
“That’s up to you,” he said. “But I don’t think you have it in you to sacrifice them for… this.”
“I guess I have a higher estimation of them than you do. Don’t tell your people to stop underestimating me, only to slip up and expect to win wholesale against the rest of the Undersiders. I think they’d surprise you. Surprise all of you.”
“You said you need compromise,” Miss Militia said. “But you won’t budge on this point? A figurehead leader would keep the public content and give you what you’re asking for.”
“What I want,” I said, “is to set a precedent. Fixing Brockton Bay doesn’t do a thing, if we don’t leave doors open to fix things elsewhere. If one cape becomes head of the local PRT, then it could happen elsewhere.”
Director Tagg drummed his fingertips on the metal table for a few seconds. When he spoke, his tone was derisive. “Your arrogance boggles the fucking mind. You want to change the world, and you think a confession on television and the threat of your friends attacking the PRT will be incentive enough? You’re not that big a fish.”
“I don’t want to change the world,” I said. “I want to make it possible for things to change.”
“Semantics.”
I sighed. My glasses were slipping down my nose. I had to bend over to put them in reach of my hand so I could push them up.
“Is that it?” Miss Militia asked.
“One more thing,” Mr. Calle said. “My client has a request.”
All eyes turned to me. I straightened. “I recognize that I’m asking for some big things. I’m hoping that the… scale of some of what I’m asking for is tempered by the fact that this is all constructive. It puts us in a better place and leaves us prepared to face down the real threats: the impending apocalypse, the Endbringers, the forces who’d want to move into this city and abuse the portal. I’m going to ask for one more thing in that vein. Don’t send me to the Birdcage. Don’t send me to juvie, or hang me for treason. It’s… not constructive.”
“What would you have us do?” Mrs. Yamada spoke up.
“Use me. I get that it wouldn’t work, having me join the Wards. Too much baggage. But… the end of the world hinges on Jack Slash doing something within the next two years. You absolved Armsmaster of his crimes and sent him out to hunt them down. Do the same with me. I can cover a lot of ground in a search, I have experience fighting them, and if you needed it, nobody would even have to know I was doing it. I’d be one more body on the ground, relatively discreet, and maybe that gives us all a slightly better chance of keeping Dinah’s prediction from coming to pass.”
I wasn’t even done talking when I saw the looks, felt a sinking in my gut as the various people in charge exchanged glances. Tagg smiled a little. Miss Militia looked… concerned. The only person who looked as confused as I felt was Clockblocker.
“What?” I asked.
“Your intel is out of date,” Tagg said. His heavily lined eyes were staring at me, studying me.
“What?” I asked. “You already stopped them?”
“No,” he said, and the word was a growl. He didn’t elaborate further.
“Taylor,” Miss Militia rescued me, “Do you know where the Slaughterhouse Nine went after leaving Brockton Bay?”
“A series of small towns, then Boston,” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “And they struck one target after Boston. Toybox.”
I remembered seeing the name on Tattletale’s bulletin board. “Who or where is Toybox?”
“What’s Toybox, you mean,” the Director said.
“What’s Toybox?” I asked.
“May I?” Miss Militia asked Tagg. He gave her a curt nod, and she took hold of the laptop in front of him. It took her a few moments to log in and open the page. She unplugged the cord from the laptop and handed it to Mrs. Yamada, who handed it to my lawyer. He set it so we could both see it. Mr. Calle clicked the touchpad to page through the various images and documents.
“Toybox is a black market organization,” Miss Militia said. “Tinkers who operate solo find life rather difficult, due to a lack of resources and the fact that gangs and government organizations are very, very persistent when it comes to recruiting them. Faced with the prospect of spending their lives on the run, trying to avoid being forcibly recruited into one organization or another, most turn to the Protectorate or the Wards. For those few who don’t, Toybox is… was a refuge of sorts. Tinkers would join, share technology, stay in the enclave as long as they needed to build up a reputation and whatever tools they needed, they would share thirty-three percent of any proceeds with the rest of the group, helping to keep others afloat. Toybox sustained itself with barter, by moving frequently, operating between the scope of heroes and villains, and by selling less-than-legal goods to criminal groups.”
I could see the images, grainy black and white photos of various tinkers huddled together, or standing behind tables loaded down with ray guns and the like. There was a chronology of sorts, to the point that I could see the group evolve, some leaving as others joined, the enclave shifting from a group as small as four members to as many as
fifteen.
“The Slaughterhouse Nine attacked them at the end of June,” Miss Militia said. “In doing so, they appropriated all of the tinker technology and all of the tinkers that were staying with the group. See page thirty-six and on.”
Mr. Calle paged forward until the images showed up.
Pyrotechnical. A tinker focusing on flame manipulation, special effects, guns.
Cranial. A tinker specializing in neurology. Brain scans, draining thoughts, recording thoughts.
Big Rig. A tinker who built drones that built things in turn, particularly buildings.
Bauble. A girl who specialized in glassworking and glassworking tools, including tools that could turn inorganic matter into glass.
Dodge. A boy, twelve, who made access devices for pocket dimensions.
Toy Soldier. A powersuit user with a suit the size of a small building.
Glace. A tinker specializing in cryogenics and stasis.
“The Nine have access to all of their work?” I felt an inarticulate feeling of horror creep over me. I couldn’t imagine anything particular, but anything that enhanced the capabilities and options that Slaughterhouse Nine had at their disposal?
“And access to the work of Blasto, a cloning specialist they assaulted and kidnapped in Boston,” Miss Militia said.
I sat back and the chain of my cuffs went taut, my arms stretched out in front of me. “This doesn’t change things. If anything, you need all of the help you can get. This is serious.”
“It’s complicated,” Miss Militia said.
“Seems pretty damn simple,” I said.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Because they’re gone. They stopped.”
I shut my mouth, staring.
“The Slaughterhouse Nine attacked Toybox, taking the group’s devices for themselves, and they disappeared. We suspect they used Dodge’s devices to exit into a pocket dimension, and by the time we’d found a way to follow, they’d exited elsewhere.”
“They’re dimension hopping?”
“Dodge’s devices only exit from Bet to pocket worlds he creates with his devices, back to Bet. We believe they exited somewhere on Bet, possibly in another state, then used another device to hide. Which would be where they are now. Without knowing where they entered that particular pocket, we can’t hope to find them,” Miss Militia said. “We know their patterns. They tend to cut a swathe of destruction across North America, and it’s rare for even a handful of days to pass without them taking any action at all. Between the PRT’s past experience with the group, our thinkers, and the fact that they haven’t made an appearance in nearly ten days, we believe we’ve worked out what they’re doing.”
I stared at the laptop. It was still on the last page. Glace.
“Cryogenics,” I said.
“Stasis,” Miss Militia agreed. “The pressure grew too intense, with Defiant and Dragon’s pursuit, they weren’t recovering from losses fast enough. They’ve gone into hiding, and we think they plan to wait.”
Wait, I thought.
“How long?” Clockblocker asked.
“We can’t know for sure,” Miss Militia replied. “But if they’ve put themselves in a cryogenic sleep, they could wake and resume their normal activities days, weeks, months or years from now. Depending on the resources they have available, they might well emerge with clones of their current members at their side.”
Tattletale should have told me, I thought, even as I knew why she hadn’t. Her power had been out of commission. She’d been out of commission. We’d known the Nine attacked the Toybox, but we’d missed what that meant in the grand scheme of things. Through a combination of Tattletale’s ailment and a hundred other small distractions, we’d missed out on the reason Defiant and Dragon had been able to abandon their hunt for the Nine and visit Arcadia.
“Does Jack know?” I asked. “I mean, I know he knows he’s supposed to end the world, but does he know he sets it in motion within two years?”
Miss Militia shook her head. “We don’t think so. Which means that, unless there’s something specific they want to wake up for, we can’t even begin to guess when he’ll have his team wake up.”
Silence hung in the air for long seconds.
“Now you know. These are your demands?” Tagg spoke up.
“We’ll need to discuss things and revise our terms with this new information in mind,” Mr. Calle said, glancing at me. I nodded once.
“Better do some heavy revision,” Director Tagg said. “And do it fast, because it’s not that long until sundown, and I won’t be accepting any of your terms as they stand. You said it yourself, nobody wants this fight.”
I frowned, watching each of them making their way out of the interrogation room.
Tagg joined Miss Militia’s side, and I couldn’t help but notice the way she adopted a guarded position, folding her arms as he approached. It gave me a flicker of hope.
Until the bugs I’d planted inside the fold of Tagg’s collar caught a fragment of something he was saying.
“…her father.”
Cell 22.3
The door slammed shut as the last of the heroes departed. They joined the PRT uniforms and Wards who had gathered just in front of the elevator, leaving me and my lawyer to talk in private.
It should have been quieter, but things got more disruptive. The moment the door was shut, a handful of seconds passed, and then everyone started talking. Mr. Calle saying something to me, Director Tagg talking to his deputy and Miss Militia, Clockblocker talking with his teammates.
“This is more or less what we expected…” Mr. Calle was saying.
“Call him. And let me know when he arrives.” Director Tagg, talking about my dad.
“She wanted to defect,” Clockblocker told the waiting Wards. “Join Defiant and Dragon, go hunt the Slaughterhouse Nine…”
“You created pressure with the deadline, he’s trying to turn it around on you…” Mr. Calle said.
“I know he’s trying to turn it around on me,” I said. I slid forward until I was sitting on the very edge of the chair, my elbows on the table, forehead resting against my hands. “I didn’t think he’d be this stupid, and I kind of hoped someone would speak up, give a little momentum to what I was proposing.”
“People are stupid,” Mr. Calle said. “The question is how we can use that. If we—”
Some heroes simultaneously began to voice their thoughts, to the point that I failed to take any of it in. It was too much. Too much input, all together. I couldn’t track it all. I shut my eyes. “Do me a favor?”
“You’re the client.”
“Five minutes,” I said. “Five minutes to think, with some quiet.”
“Would pen scratches bother you?”
I shook my head.
Mr. Calle didn’t reply to that. Instead, he started writing on a pad of yellow, lined paper, apparently unconcerned that I’d just brushed him off.
“…a hot button for her,” Mrs. Yamada was telling the Director. “It’s a pattern, with the timeline we established. Something happens to her father, and she escalates.”
“Yes,” the Director replied. “But let’s not talk about that here. Not while she could be listening. We give Kid Win’s drones a chance to check us over before talking about any of that…”
“Hunting the Slaughterhouse Nine?” Vista was asking. The Wards were lagging a short distance behind the adult members of the PRT and Protectorate.
“Yeah. As in, step down from her position here, stop the guys who are supposed to end the world,” Clockblocker said.
“She didn’t kill any, did she?” Kid Win asked.
“Grue supposedly killed Burnscar, Piggot killed Crawler and Mannequin, they killed Cherish themselves, basically, Vista finished off Shatterbird after things caved in on them at the Echidna fight… no, Skitter didn’t kill any, I don’t think. She was there, though. Have to give her credit, she made a difference in that last fight with Mannequin and Crawler.”
; “Which doesn’t matter,” Tagg said. He’d overheard, it seemed, and stopped at the open elevator door. “Because she also wanted us to condone criminal activity in this city. Think about what that really means. Your careers would be dead in the water once people caught on to the fact that you weren’t going after the real threats. You’d be known for being corrupt. Flechette’s actions threaten to taint this organization for some time to come.”
“Wait, wait,” Kid Win said, “Flechette?”
“We’re telling them?” Clockblocker asked. “It’s confirmed? It’s not a trick?”
“It’s not Regent,” Miss Militia said. “The timing doesn’t fit. No, it doesn’t look like it’s a trick. She sent us an email and the details include only things she knows. It feels right.”
There was a pause.
“What happened?” Crucible asked.
“Flechette is stepping down from the Wards program. She is going to be assisting the Undersiders in the future, helping Parian,” Miss Militia said.
“No!” Vista said, raising her voice. “No! She became a villain? What… what the hell!?”
“Vista,” Clockblocker said. “She was in love.”
“She was still one of us. Did you do something?”
I wasn’t sure who she was talking to, until Tagg responded, “No. We didn’t do a thing to her. Everyone that’s been in Brockton Bay over the past weeks and months has dealt with a lot, and I think this is her wrestling with something on her own. I have immense respect for Flechette, and all I can do, all we can do, is hope she comes to her senses.”
“What about her parents? Her family?” Vista asked.
“I can’t talk about anything my patients discuss with me in my office,” Mrs. Yamada replied. “I’m sorry.”
“She came from a broken home,” Miss Militia supplied the information instead. “She bounced between her mother, her father and the surrogate mother who had attempted to renege on the deal they’d made and keep her. With the number of times she changed between them and moved, I can’t imagine she has strong ties to the idea of ‘home’. Even within the Wards… New York has five small teams, and she moved between them as she changed residences.”