“I like it,” Bonesaw said, “It sounds fun! But what about Siberian? How is she supposed to tell them the rules?”
“We’ll help her out on that front. Same test as usual, Siberian?”
Siberian nodded. She reached out to Bonesaw’s face and used her thumb to wipe away a spatter of blood before licking the digit clean.
“In any case, we’ve hashed this out enough. I’ll think it over tonight and have something proper to present to you and the capes of this city who will be our… opposition. I can add some rules, to cover loopholes and keep this little event manageable. Panacea, Armsmaster, Bitch, Regent, the buried girl and Hookwolf. Burnscar didn’t nominate one, and I’ve already dispatched mine. That’s six candidates, we need to remove five. And when we’re done and we’ve established our superiority, we can kill this Tattletale, her friends, and everyone else, just to make our point. Good?”
There were signs, nods and murmurs of agreement all around.
“Good. Go. Have fun. Mop up the stragglers. Don’t worry about leaving any alive. They already know we’re here. No more than five minutes before we leave. We can’t have our grand battle with the locals so soon.”
His monsters returned to their carnage. He watched them at their work and their play, noting all of the little things. He knew all too well that Shatterbird pretended civility, but she got as restless as Siberian when things got quiet, and she would look up from whatever book she read every thirty, fifteen or ten seconds, as if waiting for something to happen, craving it. Siberian would begin to look at her group members in a hungry way. She didn’t need to eat, but she enjoyed the experience, wanted it the same way someone else might crave their morning coffee. Stimulation.
Crawler, he knew, wouldn’t show any signs of boredom or restlessness. When he lost patience with things, it was an explosive affair, almost unmanageable.
Keeping this group in line was a matter of balancing carrots against sticks. A constant, delicate process. Every member sought something from the others, however solitary they might strive to appear, carrots that Jack could use to keep them as part of the group and entice them to stay, to cooperate. It was not easy: what served as a stick to one might easily be a carrot to another.
Shatterbird, who had deigned to observe for the moment, hovering over the scene, was an individual who craved validation. She would be insulted to hear it spoken aloud, but she needed to be powerful in the eyes of others, civilian or teammate. She could tolerate much, but an insult or a joke at her expense could push her over the edge. As carrots went, a simple word of praise could satisfy her for a week, and an opportunity to shine could sate her for a month. It was why he allowed her to ‘sing’ each time they arrived somewhere new, even as he found it repetitive and boring, brooking the same scenarios time after time. Her stick was easy enough: the threat of physical harm, or the embarrassment of being made to lose control. Were she to attack a member of the group, Siberian or Crawler would retaliate, and they would hurt or kill her. It would be inevitable, unequivocal. The idea of the shame she’d feel in that ignoble defeat held her back as much as anything.
Siberian watched as Bonesaw began excising and stitching together groups of muscle and collections of organs she and her mechanical spiders were harvesting from the fallen. It was taking on a vaguely human shape.
Siberian was tricky. He doubted anyone else in the group was even aware, but their most feral member harbored a fondness for Bonesaw. Siberian had little imagination, and was perfectly comfortable rehashing the same violent and visceral scenarios time and again, but she nonetheless enjoyed Bonesaw’s work. She saw a kind of beauty in it. Even more than that, he sometimes wondered if Siberian didn’t reciprocate Bonesaw’s desire for family. Bonesaw alternately referred to Siberian as an older sister or the family pet, but Siberian’s fondness for Bonesaw bordered on the maternal, like a mother bear for her cub. Did anyone else in the group note how Siberian seemed to keep Bonesaw’s company, to assume she would accompany the young girl when she went out, and carefully kept Bonesaw in sight at all times?
Siberian’s stick was Bonesaw, the possibility of losing the girl’s company in one way, shape, or form. Threats against the girl would be met with a fury like no other. Boredom, similarly, would see Siberian stalking off on her own to amuse herself, a scenario that grounded the group until Siberian’s return hours or days later. Such usually meant a hasty retreat as the heroes who had realized that they could not defeat Siberian came after the rest of the group.
Bonesaw wanted a family. Her stick was disapproval, a revoking of any ‘love’ from those closest to her. She was far younger, emotionally, than her outward appearance suggested. She had bad dreams at night if she didn’t sleep in the embrace of one of her older teammates, usually Siberian. When she didn’t sleep, or when her mood otherwise soured, she was as intolerable as any of the others, and among the most dangerous.
Crawler wanted to be stronger, and remained with the group because it put him in constant danger. His other motivation was more subtle. He was patiently awaiting the day Siberian might honestly and brutally attempt to take him apart. The only stick Jack could wield was the possibility that the group might dissolve before that happened. On the other side of the coin, the day Crawler decided there was no longer any threat that could evolve him further would be… troubling. It was why Jack had ordered Siberian to let the boy with the glowing hair go. Finding the lad again would give Crawler something to do, and it would give Crawler a taste for what Siberian had to offer.
Burnscar was more sensitive, in many respects. She had to be managed, provoked or set up to use her power so she remained in a more dangerous mindset. Too much one way, and she became depressed and scared, vulnerable. Too much the other way, and she became reckless, potentially attacking him or one of the others and sparking disaster.
Mannequin had his mission. Few things bothered him as much as seeing someone try to help others and succeed where he had catastrophically failed. To keep Mannequin in line, Jack could remind Mannequin of who he had once been. A simple casual utterance of the name ‘Alan’ served as effectively as a slap in the face to someone else. He rarely needed such considerations; Mannequin was predictable, manageable.
And Cherish, who would not survive their stay in Brockton Bay… after a fashion. Hope was her carrot, but she had only sticks waiting for her. He met her eyes and knew she knew what he was thinking. She was all too aware an ugly fate awaited her, but didn’t know what it was. The fear helped curb her. Still, he would have to watch his back.
Carrots and sticks. A game of constant balance. A thousand factors. Even now, he was taking notes on their candidates, deciding what would work and what wouldn’t.
Armsmaster and Regent were abrasive enough that they would likely prick Shatterbird’s pride. Bitch would be a risk at first, but he trusted his ability to manage her and stop any fights from erupting.
Siberian would become jealous of any growing relationship between Panacea and Bonesaw.
The buried girl was only a candidate because Crawler hoped she was strong enough to fight him. Either she would fail to hurt him and he would grow tired of her, or she would succeed and he would have no reason to stay in the group.
That left him two candidates who might work. He doubted either Hookwolf or Bitch had what it took to stay in the group long-term. They would soon be replaced, killed by an enemy or a member of the group, but they would not upset his carefully staged balance while they remained members.
He could manipulate the outcome of this little contest, see that one of the two lasted to the end. It would be hard, requiring the best he could employ in subtlety and head games.
The wind blew flame-heated air at his back, thick with the smell of smoke and the sweet tang of blood.
He smiled. These challenges, after all, served as his own carrot.
12.x (Donation Interlude; Jamie)
She couldn’t shake the idea that it was a hoax. Three times, she almost turned around a
nd headed back home.
Twenty eight miles west from New York City, down the 202, to where there were more trees than houses and the roads hadn’t been maintained for too many years. It hadn’t rained recently, but there were murky puddles in the road where the water had settled into broad depressions.
Water sprayed as she deliberately aimed for one puddle. Forty five minutes of driving, trying to convince herself this was real, not seeing anyone on the road for the last ten minutes, she’d started to feel lost. The concrete action of steering into the puddle and getting the expected result seemed to ground her.
Every action had an equal and opposite reaction. It was the way things were supposed to work. Action and consequence.
Driving to the middle of nowhere was the action. But what was the consequence? Wasting two hours of her time on one of the last weekends of freedom she had before she was due to start school? For a mere chance she might get what she needed?
She had to stop and reverse to reread a number on a mailbox. 2062. She steered into the long dirt driveway. A farm sat in the distance, with a rotted-out grain silo and a barn nearby.
What if this wasn’t just meant to waste her time? What if it was more sinister? If there was a gang of men waiting for her, ready to drag her off somewhere…
She shook her head. She knew how to defend herself. Her father had taught her, and she’d taken classes. They didn’t necessarily know she was a woman from her email address. She’d left a note with her roommate, sealed with instructions not to open it or read the details unless she failed to return home. Topping it off, the necklace she wore had a built-in GPS. A gift from her sixteenth birthday from her dad. If there was trouble, the note she’d left with her roommate had instructions to contact her dad and track her down using the necklace.
She stopped by the barn and sat in the car for a minute, peering around to try to see if anyone was near, the engine idling. A minute passed before she felt secure enough that she wouldn’t be ambushed and shifted the car into park. She held the key like a weapon as she stepped out of the car. She didn’t hold the individual keys between her fingers, like an amateur would be inclined to do, but held it like a knife instead.
The barn was the final destination of the route the email had outlined for her. Empty. It smelled of stale manure, rotting hay and mold. The exterior was covered in peeling red paint.
She checked her watch. She was eight minutes early.
There were no other cars on the property. That meant there were eight minutes for someone to come down that road with the cracks, potholes and puddles, pull down the long driveway and come meet her at the barn.
Her weight shifted from foot to foot, as her impatience manifested in restlessness. Eight minutes before she found out if she’d been played for a fool.
She used her shoes to kick a few loose stones from the dirt driveway, smoothed it out, and then kicked them off. Barefoot, she planted her feet a shoulder width apart, then bent her knees as though she were sitting down in a chair, her arms outstretched in front of her for balance. She bent low, straightened, then repeated the process several more times.
Deep breaths.
Centering herself, she began on the next form, placing her feet perpendicular to one another, and transferring her weight from one foot to the other, from toe to heel to the heel of the other foot.
Her digital watch interrupted her exercises with a steady beeping. She’d set an alarm for the meeting deadline. Right this minute, she was supposed to be meeting someone.
And there was no car in sight.
Sighing, humiliated, she donned her shoes, opened her car door and prepared to leave. She wouldn’t speak of this to anyone.
“Leaving? After coming all this way?” The voice was female, rich with hints of a French accent, but the English was probably better than her own.
She turned, then stepped a few feet in front of her car to look inside the barn.
A woman stood there, dark-skinned, with her hair cut into a short style that was more utilitarian than stylish. She wore a doctor’s lab coat and held a white plastic clipboard with both hands.
That wasn’t the startling thing.
At a point halfway inside the barn, there ceased to be any barn at all. White tiled floor and white-painted walls stretched a distance behind the woman, and the ceiling was all glass, hiding a smooth distribution of flourescent lights that made it all glow evenly.
“Who are you?”
“Some call me Mother, but that is meant to be tongue-in-cheek. Those with a more professional attitude know me as Doctor.”
“I’m-”
“No names. We’ve already investigated you, we know much of what we need to know, but I think there is a great deal of symbolic value in having you maintain some anonymity. Pick a name, and I will use it for the duration of this meeting. It doesn’t need to be permanent or long-term.”
“Okay. Is it supposed to be a fake regular name or a codename or…?”
“Anything.”
“Jamie.” It was the name her parents had been planning to give her baby sister. They’d broken up before that happened.
“Jamie it is. Come. I have an employee that is relocating this section of my offices to this spot, but it taxes him, and there’ll be less wait for the return trip if we don’t strain him.”
Jamie looked over her shoulder at her car. The GPS wouldn’t do her much good here, she suspected. It would take a leap of faith.
She hurried over and stepped close to the Doctor, crossing that border from packed dirt and moldy hay to clean tiled floor.
There was a rush of wind, and the surroundings swam violently for two or three seconds. When the image had resolved again, they stood in the middle section of a long hallway. It looked like a hospital, sterile, white, clean, but it was empty. There were no people, and there was no equipment.
“Welcome to Cauldron,” the Doctor said.
■
“How did you find me? I just got an email.”
“I’d have to check my notes. We have ways of finding interested parties. If I remember right, you were browsing websites, researching ways to acquire tinker-made armor and weapons?”
Jamie nodded. ”I was. So many were fakes or scams that I wasn’t willing to trust the ones that did look legit.”
“We own several of those sites. All are fakes. That might have been where we first noticed your activity.”
“That’s a little creepy.”
“Creepiness is an unfortunate reality when you’re forced to operate covertly, without a steady customer base.”
“Why? Why not go public?”
“Countries would go to war over what we have at our disposal. A way to grant powers to anyone who wants them. They would want armies of parahuman soldiers. Even if we did manage to establish ourselves as a neutral party without government interference, Cauldron would be infiltrated by those looking to steal our secrets. Spies, thieves.”
“And people who wanted to establish a rival business?”
They were reaching the end of the hallway. The Doctor smiled lightly. ”And that. Please, through this door.”
Jamie prided herself on her ability to identify evasions and untruths. The Doctor was humoring her when she replied to the question about rival businesses. The idea didn’t seem to worry her. Why?
Jamie stepped through the open door and entered a large room. As with the hallway, the decor was predominantly white. There was a desk of white marble with a white leather chair, and two plastic chairs facing the desk. A modestly sized monitor sat at one corner of the desk, with a compact keyboard placed in front of it, and no mouse. The space was spartan.
I’d go crazy in here. There’s no personality to this place.
Stranger still was the lack of dust. Since her arrival, Jamie hadn’t seen anyone but the Doctor. How did the Doctor keep everything so clean?
“Have a seat.”
Jamie sat in one of the plastic chairs.
“I like to talk
and establish expectations before we begin. You should know that almost every aspect of this experience can be tailored to your tastes. Cauldron’s usual routine, however, is to arrange one face to face meeting. We’ll discuss your budget, your situation and goals, and then we’ll peruse a catalog to find something that fits your budget and will hopefully give you the results you desire. There is a two month waiting period, during which time I will assign you some testing, some regarding your physical condition, other tests for psychological reasons.”
“Psychological? Is that to make sure I won’t flip out and go villain when I get powers?”
“That is not a concern. Though your question seems to indicate that you hope to be a hero?” The Doctor made it a half-question, half-statement.
Jamie’s brow furrowed. ”Wait, so you give powers to people who want to be villains?”
“We give powers to anyone who pays. Rest assured, if you wish to end this meeting now because of a pang of conscience, we can see you returned to the barn shortly.”
Jamie hesitated, then shook her head. ”It’s fine.”
“The testing will include blood tests, stress tests, MRI, CAT scan, radiographic scans and a Torsten DNA sequencing. These scans are primarily for our purposes, and if you’d prefer, you can have your family doctor arrange or conduct these tests instead for a small fee. A larger fee will allow you to skip the tests entirely.”
Fees and additional expenses. No. The testing wasn’t so important that she’d spend her money on it.
“You can conduct the tests however you want,” Jamie said.
“Good. You’ll need to forgive me, but I must be blunt. Cauldron operates on a strict policy of secrecy. It is crass of me to do this, but know that if you pass on any knowledge of what transpired here, we have ways to find out, and we’ll be forced to employ countermeasures. This is in effect even if you decide you do not wish to sign anything.”
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