by John McCrae
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 and 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.”
“Countermeasures?”
“Our response will reflect the gravity of the offense. We have clients who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the products and services we offer. It is our obligation to protect them.”
“What kind of countermeasures? Would you kill me?”
“We try to avoid murder in the course of doing business, not just because of the moral issues, but because it draws attention. For leaks, our usual procedure is to discredit the individual in question and deploy our in-house division of parahumans to drive them into hiding, remove their powers or both.”
Try to avoid murder. The phrasing implied the Doctor or Cauldron had gone that far before. She didn’t like that, and she especially didn’t like the fact that the Doctor was phrasing things so she’d miss that detail if she wasn’t listening carefully.
“It’s fine. I don’t intend to break the rules.”
“Few do. Still, I’ve done my duty and informed you. Tell me about yourself, Jamie. I know your father is in law enforcement.”
“He’s a detective, yeah.”
“Does that have anything to do with why you’re here?”
Jamie frowned and looked away. ”Yeah.”
“Tell me.”
“A year ago… well, it all started two years ago. There were two criminals called Ramrod and Fleece. The local heroes brought them into custody, partially because of my dad’s work in tracking the pair down. Three strikes act applied to Fleece, and Ramrod was in for murder with intent. They put them in special cells, got them a court date, and everything was normal. My dad worked to gather the evidence, made some deals with informants to testify anonymously, and everything. The court process takes a lot longer than it does on TV.”
“Too true.”
“Finally, after about a year of court appearances and one minor appeal they managed to squeeze in there, it was decided. The pair was supposed to go to the Birdcage. Except someone broke them out.”
“I think I’m beginning to understand.”
Jamie gnawed on her lip for a second. Just thinking about it pissed her off. ”His name is Madcap, and he’s a mercenary that specia
lizes in breaking people out of jail. Sometimes even when they’re in the convoy on the way to the Birdcage. And it’s just… wrong. It’s not the way things should work. Months or years of investigation, good police and good heroes risking their lives to finally catch someone and arrest them, a year of trial, and all it takes is one fucking asshole with powers to free them?”
“And so you’ve spent the last year trying to find a way to purchase powers, with the intent of righting that wrong?”
“I want to stop him. And not just him. I want to help things make sense again, even if it means playing unfair because they’re playing unfair. Crime should have consequences.”
The Doctor typed something onto the keyboard, paused, and then typed something else. “Madcap. Well, the good news is that he isn’t one of ours, so there’s no conflict of interest. The bad news is that the PRT rated him as a striker seven.”
Jamie’s face settled into a grim expression. ”I know. My dad has resources. I took the time to look up Madcap’s records.”
“Having looked into your finances-”
“I’ve got a place in the city that was left to me. My dad doesn’t know about it, so it’d be easy to sell it and not have anyone close to me get curious where they money went. Current housing market says I could sell it for three-quarters of a million dollars. I just have to sell it.”
“We can expedite this. Cauldron is prepared to buy the property from you for seven hundred and thirty thousand dollars, renting it out to you in the meantime if you require it. We will sell it at our leisure rather than wait for you to find a buyer.”