by wildbow
“What do you even say?” I asked. “She’s dead.”
“And that will make a lot of people lose hope,” Miss Militia said. “We have other ideas, but we need something bigger, more concrete.”
“But she’s dead,” I said. “The only way to change the reaction is to convince everyone we have a winning game plan anyways. That the PRT isn’t fucked, which it is.”
“The A.I. craft,” Defiant said, turning to look at the Pendragon. “Expendable, versatile, devastating in their own right, and there’s image attached to them. They’ll get the public’s imagination fired up.”
Miss Militia shook her head. “There’ll be doubts, it’s not enough. Behemoth can generate electromagnetic waves that wipe out electronics. Even many reinforced electronics, if he’s close enough. The Simurgh can scramble coding. We don’t just have to convince the public. We need to convince the heroes, and they know these things.”
“And they know what the difference is going to be, without Alexandria on the front lines,” Defiant said. He sighed audibly. “Four times now, she’s been the deciding factor in beating the Simurgh back early. Once with Leviathan, when I was new to the Protectorate.”
“We can reduce the impact of the loss with careful word choice and a good speech,” Miss Militia said. “If Skitter is willing to call off her other dogs.”
I glanced at the phone in my hand. “Okay.”
“No demands this time?”
“Believe it or not, I want to fix things,” I said, as I dialed Mr. Calle’s number. “We’re on the same side here. The difference is I consider my friends to be a part of a workable scenario. I have my issues with you guys, but I’m extending the benefit of a doubt again, and I’m hoping it doesn’t come back to bite me in the ass. Again.”
The phone rang. Mr. Calle answered. “Quinn Calle speaking.”
“It’s Taylor Hebert.”
“Ah, excellent. I’d feared they’d executed you or sent you to be incarcerated.”
“I’m sorry for, um, that,” I said.
“They had one of your good friends in a body bag, or they led you to believe they did. You reacted as many would, with anger and pain. You were simply, how to put it… better equipped than the rest of us mere mortals to express that anger and pain.”
“I wouldn’t have blamed you if you’d left.”
“Rest assured, Ms. Hebert, I’ve dealt with worse.”
“Okay,” I said. “I need you to back off on whatever threats you’re directing at the PRT.”
“No can do, I’m afraid.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because, right at this moment, you’re in the custody of the heroes. They’ve given you a phone, no doubt, and they’ve caught you at an emotionally vulnerable moment. For your benefit, I can’t assume you’re of sound mind or that you aren’t being coerced.”
“How do we change your mind?”
“I wouldn’t mind an invitation to the discussion.”
“We’re sending a vehicle your way,” I said. “Where are you?”
“The lovely little shop with the donuts I visited this morning.”
“Okay,” I said, putting my hand over the mouthpiece, “He says—”
I stopped. The armored suit Miss Militia had left was already moving, heading directly for my territory. She’d been listening in.
“Never mind.”
“Let’s talk about our game plan,” Miss Militia said. “We’ve got the peripheral stuff in the works. You’re bringing the suits in?”
“Yes,” Defiant said. “She is. Chevalier is on the way as well, and we’ve contacted the media.”
Miss Militia nodded. “The two major crises are being held at bay, thanks to Skitter’s cooperation. We can’t keep the word from spreading through other channels, so let’s cover every base we can. We only get one shot at this.”
“Key points being Skitter’s role in this, and addressing how we deal with Alexandria’s demise,” Defiant said.
“My role?” I asked. “I thought you wanted me to call off the attack?”
“No,” Miss Militia said. “There’s more.”
I narrowed my eyes, very conscious of the fact that there were three rather powerful capes and one mechanized suit in my immediate vicinity. “What more?”
She glanced at Defiant, then back to me. “We’d like you to be there for the conference with the media. Dragon’s going over footage, and so long as your lawyer doesn’t release the unedited content, we can hide the worst of the details from the media. Shape the narrative.”
“You’re lying,” I said.
“We’re revising the truth,” she said. She paused. “Yes. We’re lying.”
“And you want me to participate in that?”
“Yes. Your presence will lend a degree of legitimacy to what we’re saying. We’re on opposite sides, in the public eye, making it all the more meaningful if we agree on what happened.”
“Are you fighting to keep the PRT going, or are you working to rebuild it?” I asked.
“Rebuild it,” she said. No hesitation.
“And you’re doing it by starting with a lie. Just like they did.”
“Yes,” she said. Again, there was no hesitation. “There’s no pretty, perfect answers, and concessions have to be made. Questions and issues on a greater scale mean more repercussions for failure, and they call for bigger concessions if we want to ensure success.”
“And this is a big event, a lot of power,” I said. “Big concessions?”
“Yes,” she said. She looked ten times as tired as she said it.
I folded my arms. I couldn’t disagree. I didn’t like it. But I’d been a leader. I’d made shady calls. I’d hurt people. Had lied, cheated, stolen, killed.
The sun was gone, hidden by the mountains, and the clouds were changing from purple to black. How long until the new deadline? Twenty minutes?
I could see Defiant, saw him conversing with Dragon and Miss Militia.
I saw how he folded his arms, still holding his spear, so it rested against his shoulder. How he planted his feet further apart. A warrior’s stance.
It inspired a memory, of my first night out in costume. The bad guy lying defeated on the street below, the city quiet around us, the dark sky overhead, with only meager light illuminating us. Framing the situation, talking about options and priorities.
Not so different from the scene here. The villain wasn’t here. Alexandria had fallen a distance away. But the city was quiet, the area still blockaded, the sky was dark, and the topic of discussion…
I thought of something, one moment in that night’s discussion when I’d thought that maybe Armsmaster could live up to the reputation, that he could really truly be someone who I could look up to.
“Hey,” I said.
Heads turned my way.
“As far as Alexandria goes, what if we turn it around?”
“Turn it around?”
“Way back, when I first started out in costume, I had a talk with Armsmaster. He told me that I should be happy I was mistaken for a villain, because it meant I didn’t have to fight the Undersiders. This was before I joined them. It reminded me of how I’d been trying to deal with the shit I was going through back then, turning negatives into positives. I think we can do that here.”
“How?” Miss Militia asked. She glanced at Dragon’s craft, just now arriving to bring my lawyer to us.
“So long as we’re lying,” I said, “let’s go wholesale. We present Alexandria as the villain she was.”
“That’ll make the situation worse,” Miss Militia said.
“It depends on how we present the idea,” I said.
Dragon’s suit once again came to a stop at the edge of the roof, as it had when it had delivered Miss Militia. It turned sideways, and the body opened, revealing my lawyer, looking more stressed than I’d seen him, in the midst of a rather compact cockpit.
Mr. Calle accepted Miss Militia’s offered hand in stepping down to
the rooftop, and seemed to relax the instant his feet touched solid ground.
“Whoo,” he said. “Never let it be said that my job isn’t an adventure. You’re well, Ms. Hebert?”
“I am.”
“You haven’t made any deals?”
“Nothing permanent.”
“Good.”
Dragon touched my shoulder. When I turned her way, she set her fingers in my hand, pulling me after her with the light contact of two of her fingertips. Gentle, easy to avoid, but clear enough.
I followed as she led me to her hovering Dragon-craft, Mr. Calle a step behind me. Mr. Calle had longer legs than I did, but he was the one who hesitated at the gap before stepping into the open cockpit.
Once I was on board, Dragon reached over to the wall and opened a shallow drawer, no more than three inches deep. The drawer opened with a noise like something from a science fiction movie.
I stared at the contents.
“How?” I asked, and all of the confidence was gone from my voice. “Wait, nevermind. You’re fu—you’re tinkers, damn it.”
Mr. Calle stepped up beside me, placing one hand on my shoulder in an uncharacteristic need for some support. He looked down. “I take it we’ve reached something of a consensus here?”
“I have no idea,” I said.
“Yes,” Defiant said, from the rooftop.
“Then it seems I need to draw up some paperwork,” Mr. Calle said. “For formality’s sake, if nothing else.”
“Do it in five minutes,” Miss Militia said, from Defiant’s side. “We’re out of time. The media’s here.”
“Five?” Mr. Calle seemed momentarily pained. “Paper, fast.”
Dragon handed him a sleek keyboard, pointing to a screen. He started typing.
“I’ll credit you this, Ms. Hebert,” my lawyer said, as he typed away, tabbing to different windows to draw up pages he could copy-paste from. “You manage a great deal of grief and chaos in very short spans of time.”
* * *
Chevalier had arrived, and stepped into the cockpit. Gold and silver armor, his cannonblade resting against one shoulder. He briefly clasped hands with Defiant.
I stopped tidying my hair long enough to take the stylus from Dragon, scribbling my signature on the offered pad. Others were already present—Miss Militia’s and Defiant’s. The Chief Director’s signature appeared as the document was signed from a remote location.
“You’re ready?” Chevalier asked me.
I shook my head. “No.”
“But you’re willing?”
“Yeah,” I said. I rubbed my arms, then zipped up my prison-issue sweatshirt. “Has to be done, doesn’t it?”
“It’s not pretty,” he said. “There’s a lot of ugliness in this. But yes. This gives us the best chance.”
I nodded. I still had Miss Militia’s phone. I dialed Tattletale.
“Yo?”
“Turn on the TV,” I said. “And call them off. Unless something goes horribly wrong, this is it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah,” I said. No, I thought.
I hung up.
All together, we stepped out of the cockpit and walked around the craft.
The Wards were here. Clockblocker, Vista, Kid Win and Crucible, standing on guard.
Rounding the corner, we approached the open street where the crowd of reporters waited. Television cameras shifted to focus on the reporters announcing our arrival, or to follow us as we walked. Tripod-mounted lights cast shafts of light across the road, all converging on one point, the makeshift stage—the flat ledge of the Dragon-suit’s wing, five feet off the ground. Voices bubbled around us, a million questions, almost a singular noise.
Chevalier stepped forward, and they simultaneously drew quiet. He had a presence, a kind of nobility that garnered respect.
“Today, not two hours ago, Alexandria was killed.”
I could barely see the reporters past the massive lights that were shedding light on the stage, on us. They were solemn, focused on every single word. They didn’t even flinch at the news. They’d already known.
“Alexandria was a veteran among capes. She was one of the first capes, one who was present for almost every major catastrophe in the last twenty years. With every challenge she surmounted, she reaffirmed our belief in her, showed us how strong she was, how impervious and noble she was.”
He lowered his head. I resisted the urge to fidget. This was showing live, to homes across America.
On a rooftop nearby, capes teleported in. Other capes, flying, were touching down on top of a news car. Dovetail, with Sere beside her.
“If that was it, this would be hard enough,” he spoke. “But she was a mythic figure in her own way. She was a living symbol, recognized across the world. She was a leader among us. She was a friend to some of us.”
I sensed rather than saw Eidolon, hovering well above the reach of the lights. Legend was close too, though less intent on hiding.
I steeled myself for what came next, willing myself to stay calm, to not give anything away.
“And she was a traitor.”
That garnered a response from the news reporters. Shouted questions pierced the silence that loomed in the wake of Chevalier’s words.
He continued. “When Alexandria was slain, earlier today, it was done by individuals standing on this stage.”
Every word carefully chosen, so it was technically or at least partially true. Alexandria was a traitor, with her involvement with Cauldron, she had been slain at the hands of someone on the stage.
“There are individuals out there right now, who have kept quiet about recent events. Only last month, there was an event in this city, a threat that was theorized to be a nascent Endbringer. In the wake of that event, Alexandria was revealed to be partially responsible.”
The reporters, I noted, were deathly still. Deer in the headlights.
“Good capes,” Chevalier said, “burdened by conscience, walked away from the PRT. Without them to serve as our backbone, we were left gutted. There has been rampant speculation on what has been going on within the PRT, on what might have caused so many capes to abandon it. We—they—couldn’t speak because Alexandria held a position of power, because she was purportedly invincible, unassailable. Because of the threat she posed, and the resources she had at her disposal.”
Others were joining the crowd of reporters. Civilians, returning now that the blockades had been taken down, maybe going home, only to see the scene, the heroes in the spotlight. They clustered, or parked at the periphery of the crowd, getting out of their cars.
How many millions were tuning in right this moment?
“Some of us left, because their consciences couldn’t bear serving a corrupt power. Others, many of us on the stage included, stayed, because we felt the PRT, the Protectorate, the Wards program and the teams that draw on us for resources were too important. I’m not here to say one decision was better than the other, or to lay blame with those who sided with her. In coming weeks and months, our capes, accountants and lawyers will be meeting with anyone and everyone in a position of power within the Protectorate program or the PRT, ensuring nothing of this scale occurs again.”
Something moved into my range. An insect. Large.
Atlas.
I moved him experimentally, and felt how incredibly weary he was. His reserves of energy were drained, his body dying. His forelegs touched the walls around him. He’d been placed in the back of a van.
And the occupants of that van—bugs entered open windows to make contact with the others. Lisa, Brian, Alec and Aisha. I could hear the echo, time delayed by five seconds, as they watched Chevalier speak on a tablet PC.
“Alexandria betrayed us on a fundamental level, and the whole cape community has felt that. The public has felt that. I urge people not to blame her. She had no less than eighteen fights against the Simurgh. We had been led to believe her powers rendered her immune, but she was clever enough to hide and alter
the evidence. She was a victim, and it’s a testament to her character that she fought off the Simurgh’s influence for as long as she did.”
And there’s the first egregious lie, I thought.
With luck, nobody would believe anyone that was callous enough to point it out. Nobody would want to believe them. It was an ugly thought, that Alexandria could be twisted to act against our interests just because of who she was. She’d worked with Cauldron, had experimented on humans, all in the interest of… what? Creating powers? Selling them?
I swallowed hard. I knew what came next.
“It was due to a concerted effort this evening that we were able to stop Alexandria before more damage could be done.”
Chevalier reached out, put a hand on my shoulder. He drew me closer to him, until I stood in front of him and he had both hands resting on my shoulders.
“Many will recognize Taylor Hebert, revealed to be Skitter in a controversial confrontation at the school just a week ago, a confrontation Alexandria ordered. Taylor Hebert played a crucial role in stopping Alexandria in a moment of crisis, ending the fight.”
And now half the world hates me, I thought, staring forward. The glare was so intense I thought my eyes might start crossing. And the other half… I don’t know what the other half thinks.
I’d agreed to share ‘credit’ for the kill, but only because there had been a consensus that people wouldn’t believe it if I took sole responsibility.
Chevalier wasn’t speaking. I saw a red light go on at the corner of my collar. The microphone Dragon had clipped there was live. The signals would be received by all equipped, official cameras. Something the PRT had arranged for convenience’s sake some time ago.
I had a chance to speak in my own defense, in front of countless tens or hundreds of millions of eyes, and the words were dying in my throat.
My thoughts were grinding to a standstill. What was I supposed to say? We’d barely had any time to prepare. We hadn’t had time to prepare.
There were whole lines I was supposed to give. Ideas I was supposed to express, striking the right tone, and I’d gone blank.
I couldn’t defend myself like this, even with rehearsed lines.
Chevalier rescued me. He spoke, his voice clear. “This isn’t a happy day.”