“That only returns us to the issue of how we control our interests. We can’t have deviations running around, or we’ll bring disaster down on our own heads.”
“I was thinking we use you in the field, Number Man.”
The Number Man leaned back in his chair. “Me.”
“You’d perform. You have performed in the past.”
“I suppose,” he mused. He rubbed his chin. He needed to shave. “A long time ago.”
“I know you wanted to get away from that business, but-”
He shook his head. “No. This is bigger than things I want. If I can participate in this, I can get my hands dirty. We’ll be looking for the Slaughterhouse Nine, I take it?”
“No. The heroes are already looking, I’m not sure what we could contribute. There are other matters to consider, and we’re giving up a great deal of control behind the scenes by having you in the field, rather than working elsewhere.”
“I take it this is another risk we’re taking?”
“Yes. Increasing the volatility of the formulas, deploying you while we reserve Contessa for the more severe situations, allowing the public to discover more of Cauldron’s role in things…”
“Hopefully not too much,” he said.
The Doctor shook her head. “Not too much. When will you be prepared to relieve her?”
“A day or two. Let me get prepared.” He stood. “I left the data on the laptop. Funding, the movements of key groups.”
“Thank you.”
He left the room. His power alerted him about the Custodian’s presence as he entered the hallway. The sum of a million infinitesimal details.
It also informed him of the seam in the hallway, marking the nearly invisible Doormaker portal. He stepped from the Doctor’s headquarters to the hallway leading to his own office.
Doormaker had changed the landscape beyond his window. An Earth of black magma and brilliant sunsets in the middle of the day, apparently.
He moved his Dali picture, sliding it to one side, and stepped into the doorway beyond.
Barring incidents like earlier in the day, it had been a long time since he had exercised his power in any serious way.
The costume, neatly folded on a shelf at the end of the closet, seemed so very small as he unfolded it.
Even the smell, it brought back memories.
■
1987
The pair of them were breathing heavily.
They exchanged glances. Two faces, spattered with flecks of blood.
Jacob carefully stepped around the expanding pool of blood. He crouched by the body, then grinned.
The other face wasn’t smiling at all. It was grim, a stark opposite, just as their hair colors were nearly opposites.
We’re nearly opposites in more than hair color.
“He can die after all,” Jacob mused.
“Yes.”
“Wasn’t all that,” Jacob mused. He looked almost disappointed.
“Maybe not.”
“Bastard!” Jacob kicked the body. “Prick!”
I’m worried he’ll get up all of a sudden, even with his guts hanging out and half his blood on the ground.
Jacob stretched, and wet blood ran down his arm as he raised it over his head. He still held the murder weapon. One of the murder weapons. It had been a shared effort.
“This doesn’t end it. They’ll come after us.”
“We could lie,” Jacob said. “Tell them he used mind control.”
“They won’t believe us.”
“Then we run with it. Everyone will have an idea who we are, after this, we can make a name for ourselves.”
“We have names.”
“A reputation. Don’t tell me you don’t feel like there is something bigger, something better. You call yourself Harbinger. That’s all about the things to come.”
“His name for me, not mine,” Harbinger said.
“But the idea… There’s something bigger than this, something at the end of the road,” Jacob said.
“I don’t see the point.”
“But you feel it, don’t you? The rush?”
“Yes,” Harbinger said.
“Forget the stupid names and spandex. Tell me your heart isn’t pounding, that you’ve never felt more alive than this.”
Harbinger shook his head.
“We can live this. Together. Every waking second…”
“Jacob.”
“Jack,” Jacob said. He kicked King’s body again. “Fuck it. He always called me Jacob, practically purring. His little killer in training. As if I could match up to his Gray Boy. I want to be more than that. Get out from under his shadow.”
“Okay… Jack.”
“If it’s a farce, a joke, let’s run with it. We take simple names, dumb names, and we make people quake in their shoes at the sound. Jack… Slash.”
“I’m… no. I won’t.”
Jack wheeled on him, knife in hand.
“You want to fight?” Jack asked. The smile had dropped from his face.
The look in his eyes… hungry.
“No. That’s just it. I don’t want to keep doing this.”
“You said it yourself. You feel the rush, like you’re on the cusp of something greater.”
“I do feel it, but I think I can get there by walking a different road,” Harbinger said.
He could see the disappointment on Jack’s face. See the way Jack’s knuckles whitened as he tightened his grip on the blade. His power blossomed around the boy, showing possible attack vectors. Too many. Harbinger wasn’t sure he’d survive.
He might have to throw himself in the way of the attack and kill his friend before a more serious attack could be delivered.
Or…
“I’ll play, though,” he said.
“Play?”
“Make a name for myself.”
Jack smiled.
■
Present
The Number Man set the costume down. He picked up the knife. The same one he’d used to stab King in the back, buying Jack time to open the man’s stomach.
He wouldn’t wear a costume. Wouldn’t do anything particularly fancy. He’d even keep this name. A measure of respect to an old friend. Something to challenge convention.
Jack was his other number, his inverse. The Number Man was working to save lives, and he killed as a matter of kindness. Jack considered killing a matter of fact, and any life he spared was only for his own twisted ends.
The Number Man still considered the man a friend, as much as he knew that friendship was one of those ephemeral constructs. One of the delusions people subjected themselves to, to make the world make sense.
Or maybe Jack was family. They’d started out on the same path, after all.
Did Jack know that there was another parallel? That the numbers and the research with Cauldron were illustrating something else entirely?
The Number Man had been gifted with powers of perception. To see the underpinnings of the world. In a roundabout way, he used his power for killing, for destruction. Jack had been gifted with a power that was good only for killing, but the Number Man harbored a suspicion that Jack was more than that.
Research within Cauldron had included tinkers, drawing many conclusions about how tinkers operated. Some were well vested in mechanical details, drawing a great deal from it to fabricate their work. Others had little idea about the technical aspects of what they created, relying more on instinct and creativity, relying more on their agents to draw up an idea of how their work would function. It was quite possible that other capes were doing the same thing.
There was no way Jack should have made it this far on luck and instinct alone. Not dealing with the monsters he interacted with on a daily basis. The idea had started as a theory, but had taken on a life of its own: was it possible that Jack was drawing on the same agent that granted him his powers? Wittingly or unwittingly?
Did he have a second set of eyes watching out for him? Sharpening
his instincts? Giving him a sense of imminent danger or his vulnerable targets?
And more to the point: why?
Was Jack, perhaps, in particular sync with his agent in mindset?
And if he was, did that suggest something about their motives?
21.y (Interlude, Parian)
How did the others do it? They entered into a room and people respected them.
Sabah walked through her territory, a black, bipedal unicorn just behind her. She had muscle, but the stares she got were hard ones, challenging.
Was it that she’d inherited territory that Bitch had controlled, once? Territory where people had been afraid to go outside for fear of being attacked by dogs? She’d tried to make it clear she wasn’t that kind of leader, had tried to emulate Skitter, even, but it hadn’t worked. Gifts she’d brought in were rejected outright, or taken wordlessly, as if people thought she owed them something for being in charge. She’d saved people from the Teeth… saved them from extortion, threats.
Not even a thank-you.
She couldn’t shake the suspicion that, well, she hadn’t been here when the disasters hit Brockton Bay. She hadn’t been a line of defense between these people and the Slaughterhouse Nine, the Merchants, the Chosen, or the Pure.
She’d been one of those people, instead. She’d escaped being the victim, but… she’d lost so many people she cared about.
It wasn’t the first time she’d done this. Gravitating towards one idea, feeling like she’d finally found the one thing she had to do. It was never easy. Always an uphill climb.
High school had been hard because she’d immigrated from Basra with her family. She’d had an incomplete understanding of English, had been forced to learn the language as she learned the subject matter. Her parents had been too occupied with their own issues and their own adjustment to help her out, so she’d done it alone.
Sabah was still kind of proud that she’d managed it, even if it wasn’t something that anyone else had ever recognized. A private, personal victory.
She’d attended university, and had gravitated towards the grittier subjects. She’d taken math courses, focusing on engineering after her first year, because they had been the subjects she’d found easiest in her transition to an English high school. She’d been okay with it, not happy but not miserable, but still, she hadn’t had a person to confide in. She’d stuck it out on her own, quietly uncomfortable with where she was in every sense of the word, unwilling to burden her family with her relatively minor issues.
Being a girl in a male-dominated field, she’d drawn attention from one student. A boy. He’d been nice, but he’d also been under the impression that being nice demanded reciprocation, as though every action deserved an equal and appropriate reaction from her.
He was always there. They had the same classes, because they were in the same program, barely twenty-five of them in all, and Brockton Bay’s college wasn’t that big. He was always interested in talking to her, and her more demure rejections had had no effect.
She tried a clear ‘no’, and it didn’t work. He’d gone away for a few days, then came back, making another casual hint about them maybe going out.
She tried a harsh no, laced with all the anger and frustration she’d been feeling, and she got labeled a ‘bitch’. The other students, friends or acquaintances of her would-be-paramour, wound up hearing and turned on her. Her schoolwork started to suffer, because she didn’t have the study groups, nobody willing to work with her on projects and presentations.
So, after six weeks of that, she’d caved. She told him she’d had a bad day, apologized for her attitude. She’d hated herself for doing it.
It only served to put her right back where she’d been before, dreading going to class and dealing with him. Always with that vague fear that he’d escalate, that he’d start sending her emails or phoning her.
And because of the way she’d done it, she’d burned a bridge. She couldn’t defuse the relationship with a statement to the effect of, ‘I don’t like boys.’ He would have seen it as another manipulation, and she couldn’t have managed if she were cut off again.
Her father’s terminal heart attack had been another straw on the camel’s back. Alone, it was nothing, but in combination with everything else… Sabah had triggered on what was only one in a long string of nights spent alone, stewing in frustration, fear and anger in her dorm room. She’d glimpsed something bigger, something that was beyond her recall now, and she’d gained her powers.
That had been the push she’d needed to walk away from the boy and the engineering program. She’d found a new goal. Success in fashion design. As far away from engineering as she could get. Her mom had been disappointed, but she’d felt like she maybe had a direction. She’d made friends. Even moved out of a coveted single-bed dorm room to a double to socialize more.
It hadn’t lasted long, that motivation. Even before Leviathan came and dashed the college to pieces, she’d had doubts about whether it was what she was meant to do.
Even before the Slaughterhouse Nine had killed her mom, her aunt, her cousin, and her roommate, she’d been feeling hopeless, desperate.
She’d taken Skitter’s offer, hoping that maybe, this time, it would be different. That maybe, if it was something she needed to do, rather than something she wanted, she’d find that direction, find that focus.
She hadn’t. From beginning to end, it had felt as hollow as each of the earlier ventures.
Sabah made her way to her headquarters, her atelier, and she couldn’t help but notice the way people stared, or the way they didn’t show her the respect that Skitter seemed to naturally accept and respond to.
She hadn’t been here when it counted. Now they were moving on, and she was rudderless once again.
Always an uphill climb.
She’d just reached her atelier when her phone rang. A text.
Flechette:
Skitter showed up at PRT office and turned self in. They taking her to cell right now.
She had to reread it to make sure she wasn’t getting the wrong impression. Skitter… The ramifications of this… The… What?
Before she could even wrap her head around the subject, there was another text.
Flechette:
You know anything about this?
The heroes seemed as confused about this as Sabah was.
Parian:
Nothing.
She found Tattletale on the contact list, tried calling.
A busy signal.
A text instead?
Parian:Tt skitter just surrendered to heroes
The reply was almost immediate:
Tt:I know. come 2 meet place from other nite asap. First floor.
No answers, no information, only an order to meet up.
The unicorn wouldn’t do, put together like it was. It had to be deconstructed, repurposed.
Her power gave her fine control with lightweight materials. That wasn’t a problem. Threads unwound, seams coming undone.
But her control of larger things was an entirely different beast. Her telekinesis fell apart when she tried to move anything heavier than a half-pound or so, her dexterity and speed in moving those objects that much slower. Worse, her telekinesis exploded, and not even in a constructive manner. It got more and more unstable as she tried to move larger things, until it simply… expanded, dissipated over an area in an attempt to extend control to a multitude of tiny, lightweight objects.
She began reconstructing the unicorn into a quadruped.
She’d experimented, after getting her power. Found that she could contain the telekinesis and keep it from dissipating. It hadn’t been constructive until she started working with more flexible materials. Porous materials worked best, because her telekinesis could soak into them, through them, and allow her to move the fabric rather than just the material within. The gaps in the fabric allowed her to feed power into the ‘shell’ without it building to critical mass and collapsing. Cloth worked best. Torn or
ripped seams could be mended, any other damage proved easily fixable, compared to the issues sturdier material posed. It was plentiful, cheap, and effective. Cloth was her ideal material.
And once the construction was formed, a shell that trapped the telekinetic energy within until it was heavy, she could move it as a collective whole.
The unicorn, at her bidding, bent down to allow her to climb onto its back. Once she was securely in place, belted onto the cloth animal for security, it took off.
There was no instinct here. It was all forced, all clumsily hobbled together with a power that probably wasn’t intended for this use. If powers even had an intent backing them up.
As such, it took time to find the unicorn’s stride. She had to watch where it put its ‘hooves’, fashioned of work gloves and the scraps of rubber boots. She could feel with her power, where it was, but she couldn’t see through its eyes, and any coordination it possessed was limited to what she could give it from her current position.
She wasn’t good at this. Navigating the streets, where they were congested with cars, or making her way through the areas where there was construction, littered with obstacles and pitfalls. At being a cape, at being an important cape.
The Forsberg Gallery appeared, and she ducked off to one side to deconstruct the unicorn.
The material formed two smaller creations, for a smaller profile, and for some muscle to move a barricade meant to keep bystanders out of the construction area around the gallery.
Tattletale, Regent and Imp were already there when she arrived, along with two of Tattletale’s soldiers and one of Regent’s underlings. A television was hooked up, standing in the center of the room.
“…not yet confirmed, but sources suggest that the supervillain is within a containment cell, as authorities convene to discuss…“
Parian glanced at Tattletale, who was sitting on the stairs, head hanging. She was wearing full-coverage sunglasses over her mask. Solemn, staring at the ground, or just resting, with her eyes closed.
“Any details?” Parian asked.
“No,” Regent said. “Nothing but the obvious.”
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