“Oh? Me either.”
Colin leaned back and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, “I’d give my left foot for that little perk.”
Hannah nodded. There were others like her? She asked the computer screen, “Do you remember?”
“Sorry? I don’t understand,” Dragon replied.
“Nevermind.” If Dragon did remember, Hannah knew the answer to that question would have been different. Dragon was too smart to miss the connection.
“We were talking shop,” Colin spoke. He motioned to the Halberd he had in front of him. “Procrastination through Tinker stuff. I think tonight’s project was a success.”
“Oh?”
Armsmaster stood, seizing the Halberd in one hand. He pressed a button on the handle, and the blade blurred. Without even swinging the weapon, he let the heavier top end fall against an empty stainless steel mannequin that might have held a spare suit of his armor. Dust blossomed where the blade touched the mannequin, and it passed through without resistance. Pieces of the mannequin clattered to the ground.
“Impressive,” she told him.
He pressed a button, and the blur around the blade dissipated in a steel-colored smoke, leaving only the normal axehead top of the weapon.
“Only problems are that it’s vulnerable to forcefields, fire, and other intense energy, and the apparatus takes up too much space in the upper end. Even with my power, it likely means I’d have to do without some of the kit I’ve gotten used to.”
“I trust you’ll figure it out,” Hannah told him. Then with mock sternness, she put her hands on her hips, “Now, no more distracting me. Just what are you procrastinating on?”
Colin ran one of his hands over his short cropped brown hair, sighed. “Right. You have as much say as I do, in this.”
He walked back to his desk and slumped down into his seat. He kicked a screwdriver and a pair of pliers from the corner of the desk to put his feet up, one ankle crossed over the other. Reaching in the opposite direction, he grabbed a stack of folders and let them fall to the desk.
“Piggot has decided to take action in reflection of recent events. Both the Wards and the Protectorate are being restructured.”
Hannah winced, “How bad?”
Shrugging, Colin told her, “As far as the Wards go, we’re losing Aegis. Piggot and the PRT want to see how he does leading a different team, and the boy’s parents are amenable. He’ll stay in the Wards for a little longer, to suggest he’s younger than he is.”
“A shame. Who do we get?”
“It’s a swap. It’ll be Weld from the Boston team.”
“I don’t know him,” Hannah admitted.
“He’s a good kid with a good record,” Dragon chimed in from the computer, “Ferrous biology, absorbs metals through his skin. Strong, tough, good grades across the board, high marks in the tactics simulations. Likable, and a scan of the web shows feedback for him is higher than average, which is impressive, considering he’s one of the Case 53s.”
“He’s got the tattoo?” Hannah asked.
“The mark is branded into his heel, not tattooed, but yes.”
Hannah nodded. “What else?”
Colin frowned, “We’re supposed to pick two others from our Wards team to transfer to one of the other major teams, nearby. I settled on Kid Win, I’m stuck on the others.”
“Browbeat?”
“Too new. Might be able to sell it to Piggot, but my suspicion is that she’ll think it looks bad, giving up our newbie.”
“Hm. Gallant won’t be able to leave for Boston. Too many logistical issues,” Hannah glanced at the computer. She couldn’t say more.
“You can speak freely,” Colin spoke, “Dragon has either read the record in question, or she’s reading it as we speak.”
“Gallant has local responsibilities, and is expected to start helping with his father’s local business enterprise,” Dragon spoke, giving truth to Colin’s words, “Miss Militia is right, he’s a local fixture. And his girlfriend is here.”
Hannah nodded, “Painful to give up Vista or Clockblocker. They’re our big guns, and they’re local heroes after the role they played in that bomb scare. Shadow Stalker?”
Colin shook his head, “There would be more trouble over handing over someone like Shadow Stalker to another team than there would be if we gave away a newbie like Browbeat. Discipline problems.”
“Still?” she asked. Armsmaster nodded.
Hannah frowned, “Alright. This is what you do, then. Propose Shadow Stalker and Kid Win. If Piggot does refuse Shadow Stalker, and you should make an argument that Shadow Stalker might need a change of scenery, Piggot will have a harder time refusing Browbeat, right after.”
Colin rubbed his chin, where his beard traced the edges of his jaw, nodded.
“If she doesn’t agree to giving away either of the two, and you really should play hardball on that, you can offer Clockblocker. He graduates this summer, anyways, and I’d say he’s got enough friends and contacts here that he might apply to come back to Brockton Bay to join our Protectorate when he turns eighteen. Best case scenario for us, and it’s not like Boston or New York need more capes.”
Colin sighed, “You’re better at this than I ever was.”
Hannah wasn’t sure how to respond. Colin had his strengths, but he was right.
He went on, “Congratulations.” He picked up the second folder and held it out to her.
“What?” She took it, opened it.
“There’s a change to our team, too, according to Piggot and the rest of the oversight. You’ve been promoted. Within the next two weeks, this building and this team will be transferred to your command.”
She stood there, paging through the folder of paperwork, stunned. “Where are you going?”
“Chicago.”
Hannah broke into a smile, “Chicago! That’s fantastic! A bigger city, a bigger team! Where’s Myrddin being moved?”
“He stays in Chicago.”
Hannah shook her head, “But…” she trailed off.
The hard look on Colin’s face was telling enough.
“I’m so sorry,” she spoke.
“It’s the politics,” Colin spoke, leaning back, “I’m good at this. Better than most, if you don’t mind me boasting. Everything I bring to the table, I worked my ass off for. But when it comes to shaking hands, managing people, navigating the bureaucracy… I’m not good at it, won’t ever be. Because of that, I’m getting demoted, and I can probably give up on ever being in charge of another team.”
“I’m sorry. I know how much you wanted-”
“It’s fine,” he said, but it was clear in the curtness and hardness of his tone that it wasn’t. He turned away and touched his keyboard. In the darkness of the room, his face briefly reflected the blue light of the screen. His brow furrowed.
“Dragon. That program you gave me, predicting the patterns of class S threats, remember it? I made a few modifications, to see if I couldn’t catch any highlights, I’m running a dozen of them concurrently. One, I called HS203. I want you to look directly at this. I’ve put it behind some pretty heavy security, but if you wait a second, I’ll-”
“I’m already looking over it,” Dragon interrupted. “I see what you did. Linking my data to atmospheric shifts. I think I see it.”
Hannah walked around the desk and leaned over Colin’s shoulder to see the screen. A map of the east coast was superimposed with a rainbow hued cloud. “This doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“Nothing’s truly random,” Colin explained, his voice tight, “Any data shows a pattern eventually, if you dig deep enough. Dragon started work on an early warning system for the Endbringers, to see if we can’t anticipate where they’ll strike next, prepare to some degree. We know there’s some rules they follow, though we don’t know why. They come one at a time, months apart, rarely hitting the same area twice in a short span of time. We know they’re drawn to areas where they perceive vulnerability, where they
think they can cause the most damage. Nuclear reactors, the Birdcage, places recently hit by natural disasters…”
He clicked the mouse, and the image zoomed in on a section of the coastline.
“…Or ongoing conflict,” Hannah finished for him, her eyes widening. “The ABB, Empire Eighty-Eight, the fighting here? It’s coming here? Now?“
Colin didn’t have a reply for her. “Dragon? Brockton Bay falls within the predicted zone, and the city is on the list of locations that rate high enough on the sensitivity or negative media scale. Add my data, the correlations between abrupt microshifts in temperature, air pressure and-”
“The data is good.” Dragon’s voice, synthesized to mask the most telling details about her identity, held no trace of doubt.
“Good enough to call for help?”
“Good enough.”
Colin moved quickly, spinning in his chair to reach a small console. He opened a glass panel and flipped a switch. Air raid sirens immediately began their ominous whine.
“Dragon, I’ll contact Piggot and the Protectorate teams. You get hold of everyone else that matters. You know who’s most needed.”
“Already on it.”
He turned to Hannah, and their eyes met briefly. Much was communicated between them in that moment, and she wasn’t sure she liked what she saw in his eyes.
A glimmer of hope?
“Miss Militia. Recruit the locals. And we need a place to gather.”
She swallowed her concerns. “Yes sir!”
Arc 8: Extermination
8.01
The crush of bodies was a tide that Tattletale and I had to push through. There were a thousand or more scared people in our immediate area, surging against and around us. Even our costumes didn’t give people much pause or reason to give us space. Thoughtless in their panic, the crowd was guided only by the barricades of policemen and police cars that had been established at the intersections to guide the masses to the shelters.
Everybody had been informed, in the pamphlets that came in the mail and in schools, about emergency procedures. There were multi-level shelters spaced around the city, enough for people to hunker down in for a few hours. They’d all been told that they could bring our larger pets if the animals could be trusted to behave. They could bring only necessary medical supplies and what they could have on their person. People weren’t allowed to use their cars, unless they were in one of the areas on the periphery of town. Too easy for there to be an accident in the panic and hurry, leaving everyone else stuck in a traffic jam when disaster arrived.
But people were stupid. A chronic condition of our society, that so many people somehow thought they were special, the exception to the rule. In this panicked crowd, every rule was being broken. There were people with luggage on wheels, one kid carrying a lizard in a glass cage. People were pushing and shoving, shouting and swearing. Pets were reacting to the ambient stress with barks and snarls, dashing around and getting others tripped or tangled up in leashes. Tattletale and I passed two cars that were even making their way forward in the midst of stampede, inch by inch, honking their horns the entire time. Between the air raid sirens and the honking horns, I couldn’t make out the words people were shouting. I could barely think.
We reached a trio of police officers, who had used their cars and yellow tape to cordon off two sides of an intersection. I could see the eyes on the officer nearest me widen in recognition. He was about to say something, but the officer next to him put a hand on his shoulder, reached in the window of the police car. He pushed pieces of paper into each of our hands.
I glanced over it, found what I needed, and gave him a curt nod. Tattletale grabbed my hand and pulled me away.
The paper, labelled at the top with the words ‘Parahuman Response’, contained a picture of our destination in black and white and directions on how to get there. It wasn’t far – the area which divided the Docks and Downtown, a short distance East from the mall where Brian and I had gone.
The closer we got to our destination, the more the crowd thinned out. We saw another crowd moving toward a different shelter as we got close, but we could avoid that by detouring around that particular set of streets.
As we got close enough for me to wonder what direction to take, I saw the streak of smoke as an huge armored suit plunged down from the sky, just a block away. It was clue enough for Tattletale to pull me forward to follow it. Reaching the end of the street, we saw our destination on the other side of a nearly empty four lane road.
The building was fairly nondescript. Six stories tall, it featured dark brown brick and dark tinted windows, and sat alone on a grassy hill. A nearly empty parking lot sat between us and the building, and a stretch of beach sat on the far end. People in PRT uniforms stood guard around the parking lot and entrance, and four of the five vehicles in the parking lot were PRT vans, with turret-mounted hoses and armored exteriors. As good an indication as any that this was the meeting place.
Past the hill and to the left was Dragon, in a mechanical suit that was as large as two PRT vans put together, four legged, with what looked like a single jet engine on top, still smoking from her recent flight. On either side of the engine or oversized jetpack or whatever it was, were two shoulder mounted missile launchers, each pre-loaded with four missiles longer than I was tall. She was facing the water, unmoving, like a gargoyle standing guard.
I saw what she was watching. A stormcloud in the distance. It hung over the water with an opaque curtain of rain descending down from it. It was gradually getting closer.
As we approached the parking lot, a squad of PRT officers blocked our way. I felt a moment’s trepidation. Were any of these the same people we’d attacked at the Protectorate’s fundraiser? I couldn’t tell, with their helmets and tinted faceguards covering their faces.
With a sound like a muffled thunderclap, a half dozen people appeared in the center of the empty lot. When I saw who they were, I was awestruck. That wasn’t hyperbole or whatever, I was using the word awestruck in the original, zero-embellishment sense of the word.
Alexandria stood at the head of the crowd that had just arrived. Her head turned from one side to the other as she surveyed her new surroundings, the long, straight black hair that spilled from the back of her helmet sweeping from one side to the other. She was everything that made you think ‘superheroine’; athletic, tall, muscular, but still feminine. Her costume was black and light gray, with an image of a tower in the center of her chest, and she featured a wide, heavy cape that flowed over her shoulders and draped onto the ground beside and behind her. Alexandria.
Her team – people I recognized but couldn’t necessarily name – followed behind her in a loose formation. Only one man in a blue and black uniform and cap stayed behind in the middle of the parking lot. He looked around for a few moments, then disappeared with a crack and a whoosh, smaller than the one that had brought the entire group there.
Tattletale and I circled around the parking lot, to avoid getting in the way of any incoming teleporters. We were nearly to the door when we heard another group arrive behind us, the same way Alexandria had come. Teenagers, this time. I couldn’t place them, but the brighter colors of their costumes led me to suspect they were heroes. The man who’d teleported them in said something I couldn’t make out over the the wailing air raid sirens, and they quickly set to marching in our direction.
Leading them out of the parking lot was a shirtless, muscled boy with metal skin, eyes and hair and a strange texture to his shoulders and spine. Among other things, I noticed the tines of a fork sticking out near his neck, and what might have been the wires of a chain link fence half melted into his opposite shoulder. But where that strange half-melted-metal texture didn’t cover him, his metal body was exceedingly detailed and refined. His ‘skin’ was a dusky dark gray metal with the slightest of swirls of lighter metals in it, and his ‘adonis’ musculature was perfectly etched out in the metal, with silver lines tracing his muscle definition like ve
ins of metal in raw ore. His eyes, too, were silver, and two lines ran from the corners of them down his cheekbones and to the sides of his jaw.
He clapped one heavy hand down on my shoulder as he passed me and offered me a tight smile.
It seemed we were allies, at least for the time being.
Tattletale and I followed his group into the building.
Folding chairs had been set into rows and columns in the center of the lobby, facing a trio of widescreen television sets, which in turn were backed by a series of large windows overlooking the beach. Through the windows, we had the perfect view of the looming storm.
As daunting as the approaching clouds were, what drew my attention was the crowd. There were people filling the lobby. Only a few were local.
Empire Eighty-Eight was here, at the back corner of the room. I saw Hookwolf there, half covered in a layer of his metal hooks and barbs. I didn’t see Cricket or Stormtiger. He glared at Tattletale and I.
The Travelers were all present, I noted, the only other local team of villains to show. Faultline’s crew was absent, and I couldn’t help but note that Coil wasn’t around. He wasn’t a front lines kind of guy, but he’d at least supplied his soldiers for the ABB situation.
The local heroes were present in force. I wasn’t surprised – skipping this fight, as a hero, let alone a team of heroes, would be unforgivable to the public. Aegis was talking with the metal skinned boy who’d arrived at the same time as Tattletale and I. A large group of fifteen or so other teenagers were gathered and talking amongst themselves. There was some joking, the occasional laughter, but it felt forced, strained. False bravado. I was assuming they were all Wards, from at least three different cities.
The kids from New Wave were near the Wards -Glory Girl, Panacea, Laserdream and Shielder- but they weren’t really joining in with the conversation the Wards were having. I could see Glory Girl and Gallant standing together; she was holding his hand. Panacea was sitting backwards on a chair just beside where Glory Girl stood, her arms folded over the chair back, chin resting on her wrists. She glared at the two of us, though the look was mainly directed at Tattletale. Near Panacea, the adults of New Wave had pulled the folding chairs into a rough circle so they could sit while they talked in a bit of a huddle.
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